Saturday, May 30, 2015

「ゴミお姉さん」


僕は二千七年に日本に行った時したい事一つが日本の野球の試合に見に行く事です。日本野球試合を見る事をロセッタストーンとして使うつもりでした。野球の事をもう知っています。日本人のファンを見て日本人の考え方をよく分かりに成って行くと思いました。
日本の野球試合とアメリカの野球試合の違い色々を発見しました。発見した違い一つは「ゴミお姉さん」です。
アメリカ試合では日本試合と一緒にスタジアムの売り手が座っているファンの席の間で歩いて飲み物や食べ物を売っています。でも従業員もう一人を見ました。私はその従業員を「ゴミお姉さん」と呼びます。
僕はゴミお姉さんを始めて気がついた時は三回のイニングの半分です。僕は訪問チームがフィールドに出て行くのを見ている所に隣りに座っている女性に肩をそっと叩かれました。女性を見た時に女性に丸めた紙がいっぱい段ボール箱を手渡されました。
「何これ」と思って女性は僕の後ろに頷きました。あそこで若い女性がビニール袋に皆さんのゴミを集めています。その若い女性は試合の間に三回か四回に戻ってゴミを集めてました。試合が終わるまでにスタジアムは試合が始まる所に殆ど奇麗に成ってきました。いらいでした。
その活動は日本らしい事だと思っていましたからそんな「ゴミお姉さん」が全部の日本スタジムにいると決め込んでいました。最近、僕の日本語と英語の会話練習グループに入っている日本人女性に「ゴミお姉さん」の事を話しました。グループ員も野球スタジムでアルバイトをしたのですがグループ員の働いていたスタジムでその仕事している人がいませんでした。そうして「ゴミお姉さん」と言う用語はちょっと不快だと思っていると言いました。
僕は絶対に失礼な事を言う積もりではありません。ニューズ番組の「天気お姉さん」、天気予報を発表をしている女性、のように「ゴミお姉さん」を使用していました。僕は日本人の潔癖一例を使用していました。僕はアメリカのスタジムで同じ活動を取り込むと良いだと思います。
今後、「ゴミお姉さん」と言う用語を言わない方が良いと思うですが、何か言いやすくて覚えやすくて楽しい用語が見付けたいです。
皆さん、この仕事に何の用語を言いますか。

"Trash Big-Sister"

When I went to Japan in 2007, one of the things I wanted to do was see a Japanese baseball game.  My thought was to use the game as a "Rosetta Stone."  I already knew the rules of baseball.  Watching the fans at the game would help me understand Japanese ways of thinking better.  
I discovered various difference between the experiences of watching Japanese and American baseball games.  One difference I discovered was that of the "Trash Big-Sister."  
As during American baseball games, vendors will walk amongst the seated fans at Japanese baseball games selling drinks and food.  But there was one employee I saw that I've never seen at an American baseball game.  I called this person, the "Trash Big-Sister." 
I first noticed the Trash Big-Sister halfway through the third inning.  I was watching the visiting team take the field.  The woman sitting next to me gently tapped me on the shoulder.  When I turned to look at her, she handed me a cardboard box filled with crumpled paper.  
"What's this?" I thought.  The woman nodded toward something behind me.  When I turned around, I saw a young lady carrying a plastic bag, gathering everyone's trash.  This was the "Trash Big-Sister."  During the game, "Trash Big-Sister" returned three or four times.  By the time the game was over, the stadium was almost as clean as it had been when the game was about to start.  Impressive.  
This seemed like such a Japanese thing to me, I assume that all of the stadiums in Japan had "Trash Big-Sister."  Recently, I was talking to a Japanese member of my Japanese/English Language Exchange group.  She also had a part-time job working in a baseball stadium.  She told me that, at her stadium, they did not have anyone doing such a job.  Also, she told me she thought the term, "Trash Big-Sister" was a bit rude.  
It was, absolutely, not my intention to be derogatory about Trash Big-Sister.  I was using the term in the same way the Japanese call the young lady that presents the weather report on news programs as "Weather Big-Sister."  I've told the story about Trash Big-Sister as an example of Japanese fastidiousness.  I think it would be great if American stadiums did something like this.  
From now on, I don't think I'll use the term, "Trash Big-Sister," in conversation.  I would like to find another term, one that's fun as well as easy to remember and say, to use instead.  
Can anyone out there tell me what they would call someone doing this job?  

Saturday, May 23, 2015

The World of Robot Boss is Coming


A story I wrote called "Robot Boss" appeared in the March, 2015 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine.  It's about an office worker that is having to deal with the AI that runs the department he works in when an important item sent to them is lost.  The AI blames the office work and tasks him with recovering the missing item.  The office work knows for certain that he did not lose the item, but also knows that in a world where everyone with a job has an "infallible" AI for a boss, simply insisting that it wasn't his fault will not be enough to get him off the hook.  
The idea for the story came from the marriage of my own experience as a middle manager of a legal support company similar to the one where the main character works (purely a coincidence, I assure you), and an article I read in Scientific American's May, 2013 issue entitled, "Who's the Boss?  Next-Gen Factory Robots Could Call the Shots," part of their in-depth report on the Future of Manufacturing.  
The gist of the article is that employees in the future will very likely find themselves working for robots, or the computational equivalent there of.  Robots, or other forms of automated systems, would do the bulk of the work, faster and more accurately that human workers could, while the humans would assist them in their functions, performing those steps that they could, still, do better than the robots.  In my story, the main character spends a good part of his work day translating hand-written passages in the documents his company receives that defeats the optical character recognition software of the AI.  This is something I've seen in my own work, even with the rise of digital medical records, there are still scanned notes that our software can't render.  
Reading this article, I realized that I, as the person managing and directing the staff in my department, was more likely to be replaced by the next wave of technological advancement than my employees.  Writing the story was my way of putting it into perspective and coping with this realization.  While writing the story, I remember thinking that the creative act of putting together experience with an imagined future and coming up with a piece of (what I hoped was) entertainment was something a robot or a computer program, no matter how foreseeably sophisticated, would not be able to do.  
This week, I have been given reasons to believe that I was wrong.  
I can blame National Public Radio for this.  I listen to NPR in the morning while getting ready for work.  This week's schedule had several stories that pointed toward the world of Robot Boss.  
The first of which, and the one that hit closest to home, was a story from Planet Money: An NPR Reporter Raced a Machine to Write a News Story.  Who Won?
The article was about a company called Automated Insights, and a program they created called WordSmith.  WordSmith takes information given to it to write simple, two or three paragraph news stories.  These stories have been in fields like sports reporting and financial news, areas which are more "programmable" than others.  WordSmith's articles appear on Yahoo! and Forbes, and are distributed via Associated Press.  Planet Money wanted to have a John Henry style contest, or perhaps I should call it a Watson on Jeopardy contest, to see who could write the better story based on the most recent financial report for the Denny's restaurant chain.  
To summarize, the human writer finished his story in 7 1/2 minutes.  The computer finished its story in two.  Reading the two, I agree that the human written story has more style.  The human writer also tried to put the facts in context, explaining why the sales figures were what they were.  What isn't obvious from the stories themselves is that WordSmith's voice, the style the human writer put into his word choice, is programmable.  The program can be taught to be more stylish.  And, more important from the standpoint of a news site hungry for copy, in the time it took the human writer to finish his report, WordSmith can work on 9,000+ similar articles at the same time.  
There was another story about a digital system encroaching on the creative realm previously dominated by humans.  Iamus is a computer program that writes music.  So far, all of its compositions have been in the field of modern classical music.  In 2012, Iamus had one of its symphonies performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.  
The pieces has been described as "musically interesting" by reviewers and music critics.  I am hoping that's a damnation by faint praise.  I did go on to YouTube to listen to one six minute piece by the same program, written before the symphony.  I didn't care for it much.  Then again, I'm not a big fan of contemporary classic music.  Beethoven is the mark I use to compare composers, and Iamus doesn't have the ability to shine his piano keys in my opinion (a limitation due to the fact his computer has no arms, for one).  
But it did remind me of another computerized effort in music called DarwinTunes.  Billed as a game, DarwinTunes creates music through the power of evolution.  A tune based on a random string of notes is generated.  People listen to it.  They decide if they like it or not, and which parts they like or don't like.  The program behind DarwinTunes takes that input and rewrites the tune.  This is presented to the "players," who give more feedback, and the cycle continues.  
The results can be fun.  Toe-tapping.  My toes did in fact tap to some of the samples I've listened to, along with some shoulder-swaying and head-bobbing.  It doesn't rise to the level of Lennon & McCartney, but it does show how a human with little skill or experience could assist a digital creator come up with something that could move people, or at least be pleasing and entertaining.  
This leads me, though, to questions about society's future.  Another radio program, Fresh Air (damn you, NPR!) had an interview with Martin Ford, the author of a book entitled "Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future."  
A silicon valley executive, Ford speculates on what will happen when educated, "white collar" workers can no longer find jobs because the robots and the AIs we've created no longer need them.  One of his opinions, put forth in his interview, is that automation in business is one of the reasons behind the wealth disparity that has been in the news in recent years. 
This was something I thought about while writing Robot Boss.  How will people survive if they don't have work?  In the story, I came up with what I called a "fleshy economy."  An underground economy of barter and trade, or using some sort of electronic currency like bit-coin, where people sell food grown in urban farms, or provide DIY services for other people to earn what they need to get food, a place to sleep, etc..  In the world of Robot Boss, no one expects to have a job for very long.  They'll work long enough to get "real money" and then convert it to the currency of the fleshy economy to live on.  
I didn't go into very much detail about the fleshy economy in my story.  Just enough to provide a background for the story itself.  I was, and still am, interested in what this economy might be like.  Even without listening to the Martin Ford interview on Fresh Air, I could see an inherent contradiction in this trend toward greater automation.  If no one has a job, and the money to pay for things from such a job, who'll buy all the goods and services these robotic manufacturers and service providers are making and providing?  
I've written a seed of a sequel to Robot Boss, one written from the perspective of the manager that was replaced by the AI unit featured in the story.  It's sitting on the hard drive of my computer waiting for me to finish it.  I've joked to myself that I should just let my computer finish it. 
Hmm...  Upon further consideration, I think I'll find a way to finish it myself.  Soon.  

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Here and There at the Same Time


Not much happened this week on the Spiritual Front.  I think the spiritual floodwaters are receding.  Now dealing with the aftermath.  
I think I came close to where the Japanese vampire hides during the day.  While walking  near the Norton Simon Museum, across the street where this grassy patch is located, I spotted a goose.  It was rooting through the grass.  
You don't see many geese in Pasadena.  As I walked past it on the sidewalk, not threatening or approaching it in any way, I said, "Just out here being goosey, Mr. Goose?"
That's when this bird turn on me.
I was turning away to continue my walk when I heard it.  This hissing sound, like an angry cat.  When I looked back, I saw the goose padding after me.  Wings spread wide.  Neck bent into a question mark.  Beak open.  Hissing at me with every step.  
I turned around and starting skipping backwards.  The goose kept coming.  My skipping turned into a reverse trot.  The goose was getting closer.  When I realized this bird was serious about doing me harm, I turned and started running down the sidewalk.  Only when I was near the corner of the street, did the goose stop its pursuit and returned to rooting in the grass for...  Bugs, or crumbs or whatever geese root in the grass for when not chasing after people.  He was acting as if nothing had ever happened.  
It was a ruse, of course.  As I walked away, I remembered that geese were used as watch animals during the middle ages.  Armies would pen them along the approaches to their camps.  The geese would honk and squawk (and probably chase and bite) anyone that approached.  
The goose was obviously guarding more than a patch of bug-filled ground.  It had to be guarding the entrance or approach to the Japanese vampire's daytime crypt.  Obviously.  
Unfortunately, after that incident, I didn't find any more clues to where the Japanese vampire's hideout.  The goose was gone the next time I walked through that area.  The vampire had heard the commotion, grabbed her goose and found herself another place to wait it out during daylight hours.  
But this encounter also got me to thinking, Am I ready for this?  I have been taking this river of spiritual energy running through my life since unblocking the rear door to my apartment as some sort of sign.  Changes were made.  Changes were coming.  I was turning into a Spiritual Warrior or a Modern Shaman.  
You don't start seeing beautiful Japanese vampires in grocery stories for no reason. 
But if I could be chased away buy some angry watch-bird, what sort of Modern Shaman could I be?  It wasn't even a watchdog!  
Though, as an aside, you have to admit choosing a goose was pretty clever of her.  If a dog started chasing people down the street, animal control would be called.  But if you called animal control over a goose chasing you, you just get laughed at.  
Not that I have any experience in that regard.  Pure speculation.  I swear.  
But like I said, it did get me thinking that I wasn't ready for all this.  Or, even worse, I might be too old for all this.  Past that time when you can be trained to become something like a Spiritual Warrior or a Modern Shaman.  
It would be like having a quota at work.  You have to sell so many cars by the end of the month.  Or you have to sell so much product in a day.  Then one day, your boss sends you an email saying your quota has been increased by 25%.  BAM!  Just like that, you're working just as hard as yesterday, but your falling behind in chunks.  And you start wondering what will happen when the fiscal reports come due.
That's what it's feeling like.  The Universe is trying to change me into some Modern Shaman but isn't giving me the means to do so.  How you train for something like this anyway?
Why, a pilgrimage, of course.  
I saw a documentary on NHK about the Shikoku Henro (四国遍路).  It's a pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku in Japan, where one visits all 88 of the temples established by a Buddhist monk posthumously known as Koubou Daishi in the Ninth Century.  People on this pilgrimage can travel by motorcycle, car or train, though the traditional way is to go on foot, visiting each of the 88 temples, and 130+ shrines on the same route, in a circuit that covers 750 miles.  There is a tradition amongst the people living along the pilgrimage route to help the pilgrims, giving them encouragement as well as gifts of food or even places to stay for the night.  
When I remembered this pilgrimage, I had a vision.  You might call it a day-dream produced by my vivid imagination, but I'm going to call it a vision.  I saw myself traveling through the mountains of Japan, wearing my wide brimmed conical hat, the white shirt that all henro wear, and carrying my walking staff.  I would meet someone on the way.  An old woman also dressed as a pilgrim.  Though apparently bent with age, she would be stronger than she appeared to be.  She would march from temple to temple, encouraging me to follow, imparting spiritual wisdom.  Waking the power within me.  By the time we returned to Ryouzenji (霊山寺), the Temple of the Sacred Mountain, I would be leaner, harder and bursting with a profound wisdom and power.  Evil forces would cringe when I approached.  I could cause miracles to happen with a flick of my fingertips.  
There were only two problems.  One, I wasn't in Japan.  Two, I had work the next day. 
Instead, I went walking in the rain.  About two thousand steps according to my pedometer.  Not bad.  Not a month long pilgrimage with an experienced Urban Mystic, though.  It did help me clear my mind a bit, get some sleep and get through the week. 
It didn't help me to feel more prepared the ride the Change that has Happened toward the Change to Take Place.  
I went hiking this morning as I usually did.  One of my colleagues from work joined me.  We met each other in the parking lot of the park.  
"Good Morning, Erick."  
"Good Morning, Sula.  How are you doing?"  
She nodded her head, left and right.  "About the same."  Sula is from Nepal.  She has family in the earthquake zone.  They are fine.  She is the most consistently happy person I know.  This question is closest she comes to being down.  
As we walked I talked a bit about my feelings to her.  I didn't tell her about the Japanese vampire, the guard-goose or any of that.  I did tell her about my desire to go on the Shikoku Henro.  Talking about walking twenty-five miles a day seemed an appropriate conversation on a two mile hike.  I told her about the need I felt to make myself ready for something. 
"Yes, yes.  You can do that.  Sometime I work for something very hard and it not come.  Sometime I don't do anything and it's there in my hand.  I just tell myself what will happen will happen.  I'm OK with that."  
Hmm.  I wasn't convinced.  Though, I do admit, with her Indian-sounding accent, it gave her words a very profoundly spiritual tone.    
Then, she looked at her watch.  "Hmm.  I guess Sula is still in bed."  
"But...  You're 'Sula'."  
"Ah.  No, no, no.  I said...  Chunla.  That's what I said.  I guess 'Chunla' is still in bed."  
Chunla is the name of another colleague who was supposed to join us on the trail, but hadn't arrived.  
But that's not what she said.  She said, "Sula."  Her own name.  She was clearly referring to herself, still in bed, while she was walking on the trail with me.  
Wow.  In this off-handed way, Sula had revealed to me that she was an Urban Mystic herself.  With the power of bilocation.  She was doing this to tell me that, while I was there on the hiking trail, I could be ELSEWHERE, in my head, gaining the power I needed to fulfill my role as a Modern Shaman.  She had used her mystical vision to see what was happening inside me and offered me this answer.  
"Ok.  I get it.  No bilocation going on here."  I gave her a wink to tell her that I got her message and that her secret was safe with me.  She pretended to give me a confused look, then smiled and started to talk about her boy's soccer game that was going to attend later. 
And while we walked, I tried to hear the jangle of rings attached to the end of the walking stick my OTHER hand held as I walked away from Ryouzenji.  

Saturday, May 09, 2015

MOre Pieces tO the PUzzLe


I need to be more careful.  They might be on to me. 
There have been a number of developments this week in the revelation I've been experiencing about the "True Nature" of the world around me, ever since I unblocked the rear door of my apartment and allowed the spiritual energy to flow freely.  
I've been warned.  Chased away.  Received strange phone calls.  And see towering fountains of water, akin to the pillars of smoke that lead Moses through the Sinai desert.  Such signs can only be ignored at one's peril.  
It started with a realization as to how I was able to see the Japanese Vampire a couple of weeks ago.  The modern science of optometry gave me the answer.  
I've written in this blog before about an eye condition I have called Kerartoconus.  It's a condition that stems from a cornea that's thinner that a normal person's eye, causing it to bulge forward in a cone shape.  Last year I got special lenses, with curves cut into the interior face that sits against my eye.  These curves allow the lens to match the shape of my badly formed cornea, allowing the lens to correct my vision.  
One thing the doctor told me when I was going through the treatment (a series of hard lens designed to reshape my cornea, followed by a permanent pair to act as a retainer for the new shape) was that I was going to need a pair of sunglasses to go with my new lenses.  By correcting my eyes focus, more light than I was used to was now going to reach my retina.  Indeed, one of the things I've noticed since I started wearing my lenses full time is how much brighter things have seen.  Even on cloudy days, I can find myself squinting against the glare.  And at night...
At night...  I can see much better than before...  
Of course!  Swap!  (That was the sound of me slapping my forehead with the palm of my hand).  The combination of the increased energy flow after unblocking my door in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui, and the increased amount of light being gathered by my retina with my new lenses, are what allowed me to see the Japanese vampire, despite her efforts to bend the light in the store around her to make herself invisible.  
As it always does, science provides a rational explanation.  
Unfortunately, there are people out there that won't allow reason to be their guide.  
I heard a story on the radio about a group of people that believe the Federal Government is about to launch an invasion of the states of Texas, Utah and other bastions of conservatism in this country.  They point to a joint military exercise that the pentagon has planned in order to exercises the armed forces ability to react across a wide region.  The exercise is called Jade Helm 15.  It will take place over a seven state area in the southwestern part of the United States.  
There are arch-conservative groups that say the real plan is to institute martial law in those areas not compliant enough with the wishes of the current federal administration.  They point to maps released in news briefings about the plan where Texas, and its cousin to the northwest, Utah, are colored red and marked as "enemy" territory.  Other people have passed on rumors about other people talking to other people WHO HAVE ACTUALLY SEEN empty train cars with shackles attached to their walls being hauled to the Texas border, with the "clear" intent of keeping prisoner anyone who resists this take-over.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott even took the step of mobilizing units of the Texas National to have them "monitor" federal troops participating in this so-called exercise.  
Now, at first glance this seemed ludicrous to me.  If for no other reason than the fact that the ranks of the United States military are filled with conservative people who would not willingly participate in such an exercise.  But, as with my realization over my ability to see vampires trying to become invisible, it only takes the correct combination of facts to gain clarity on a topic.  
In same blog posting where I informed you about the Japanese lady vampire I saw, I mentioned another encounter.  This was with a transient that was rooting through the trash at a gas station where I was filling up my car.  He was telling me about a giant laser the federal government uses to shoot down alien spacecraft trying to land on our planet.  Thirty billion dollars a pop, he told me, to shoot down one alien ship with this giant laser.  And they're firing it ALL THE TIME, he said, pointing at the night sky.  Pop, pop, pop!  
This week, I wondered, "What if one of those thirty billion shots into space...  Missed?" 
Are you feeling a cold chill crawl up your back on claws that evolved on another planet far, far away?  
The invasion of Texas is real.  But it's not coming from the federal government.  It's coming from space.  The aliens, dodging the 30 billion pop-pop-pops from our giant laser, have landed and established bases in our country.  In Texas, where NASA has one of its command and control center in the city of Houston.  And in Utah, where...  Uh...  There's...  Lots of empty spaces to hide.  Yeah.  They have built their bases and have very likely began infiltrating human society.  They have been spreading disbelief in human-caused climate change and in evolution as part of a campaign to discredit scientific inquiry, our best weapon against them.  The federal plan, Jade Helm 15, isn't an effort to impose martial law on American citizens.  It was a plan to capture the alien commanders on the ground and restore human control of these areas.  
Now that plan has been revealed, I'm sure the military will have to scale down their plans, lest panic amongst the people take the alien subterfuge as true.  
There is only one problem.  I may be able to spot a vampire through their spell of invisibility.  But how do I spot an alien invader disguised as a human?  
I think...  I hope...  There is someone out there trying to warning me.  
I started getting calls from a strange number.  It was an alien...  Uh, I meant, "foreign" number.  The country code was 504.  I didn't recognize this number and sent the call to voice mail.  
The person called back.  I sent it to voice mail again.  They called back.  Again.  And again.  And again!  
I got the idea that it might be someone from my Japanese language group.  Someone using their Japanese cell phone that needed help.  With this thought in mind, I answered the call the next time it came in.  
"Hello?"  I resisted the urge to say, "moshi, moshi," what Japanese use when answering the phone.  
"Namaumu Gerubu Nandawanda mumble-mumble-mumble..."  
"Huh?  Hello?  This is Erick Melton's phone.  Are you trying to reach me?"  I strained to listen.  Someone was speaking, but it sounded like they were standing ten feet from the phone.  They kept rambling on and on.  I wondered if they were speaking to someone else.  That was the tone.  
"Do...  You understand English?"  
"Mumble-rumble, namba-mamabe hoorumooruu..." 
"Ok.  I think...  I think you have the wrong number..."  
"NAMBA-PAMBA-MOORUU-BOOORUU!"  
"OK, OK..."  They were insistent.  What they said was important!  They wanted me to understand.  But...  "I don't know what you're saying.  I think you've got the wrong person.  I'm hanging up now."  
I thumbed the red button to cut them off.  They called back a moment later.  I killed that call.  And the next one that followed.  And the next.  And the next.  
I looked up the country code.  It's for Honduras.  It's near where my mom's family comes from, Belize.  But I don't know any one there.  
When the calls wouldn't stop, I blocked the number.  They changed to another phone number from Honduras.  I blocked that one, too.  And the next two numbers they changed to after that.  
It was a weird creepy phone call.  But then, since I unblocked the door, weird, creepy things have been happening.  The next day, looking up stuff on line, I saw they have "shamanistic tours" to Central America.  Could it be that some shaman in Honduras, had a vision of the danger I was in, and tried to call and warn me while in the midst of his vision.  It wasn't Spanish the voice was speaking.  Not Japanese either. 
Today, just in case, I went to unblock those numbers.  And...  They were...  ALREADY...  Unblocked.  
I need to hide what I know.  I'm not good at hiding my feelings.  People can tell when I'm angry, when I don't want to do something, when I'm pissed off.  I need to be careful.  I need to be stronger and more prepared for...  Whatever is coming.  
Hopefully soon, I'll be strong enough, and brave enough, to stand up against the forces of darkness that surround me.  Until then, I need to keep quiet, mind my business, keep my eyes and ears open, and not let my enemies know that I know that they are there.  
I am the only member of my own underground movement.  A spiritual warrior that has to hide his light.  
For now. 

Saturday, May 02, 2015

When the Spiritual Energy Dam Breaks


I'm pretty sure I saw a vampire this week.  And I think I saw her because I moved those bookshelves.  
I was shopping at Trader Joe's.  It was at night (of course).  I spotted her as I came out of the produce section, heading toward the cash registers.  
"Holy Crap!  A vampire!"  That's what I said to myself.  An exact quote.  I stopped and stared at her.  
She was striking.  The red dress caught my attention first.  It screamed, "LOOK AT ME!" but no one was.  She was standing there, about halfway between the end-cap with frozen pizza and the nearest cash register.  Everyone was walking past her, some within inches of her even though the store wasn't that crowded.  Her hair, as black as shadows in a cave at midnight, streamed past her shoulders and down her back.  It was like a cloak.  Her face was paler than moonlight.  She looked Japanese.  
She was looking around.  Not like someone lost, or someone trying to figure out where the meatless burgers or chicken masala frozen dinners were located.  She was looking at the other shoppers.  Watching them as they weren't watching her.  Following this one and that one with her eyes as they moved past her.  
She was shopping for dinner.  Just like me.  Except she wasn't interested in the cocoanut curry chicken dinner (which is good, I have it for lunch quite a bit).  She was interested in the shoppers.  
I moved toward the cash register when she turned my way.  I pretended I didn't notice her.  I watched her, hiding behind the check-out clerk's body as he rang me up.  She probably had some sort of...  Glamor, I guess you'd call it.  She had disguised herself to look like empty air.  That's why no one could see her.  No one, but me, it seemed.  
"Those bookshelves..."  
"Hmm?"  The clerk looked up at me as he was packing my canvas shopping bags.  
"Nothing."  I took the handles of the bag he offered me.  "Thanks."  
"Have a nice evening!"  
"You, too."  Then, "Be careful."  
I checked the news the next day.  No reports of any bodies drained of blood in Pasadena.  Of course, if someone went missing, that might not show up for days.  
The bookshelves I'm talking about are the ones that were blocking the rear door to my apartment.  I wrote about my plan in a previous blog posting ("Feng Shui and Translations Breakthroughs").  I went through with the plan of moving the shelves that I had set up in front of the back door to another wall.  I did it that morning.  The same morning I saw the lady vampire.  
I went looking for her the next night, by the way.  She wasn't at Trader Joe's the next night.  I also stopped in the local Pavilions and Starbucks, figuring if she thought Trader Joe's shoppers were tasty then customers at those stores might have the same sort of flavor.  
I walked past my favorite Japanese restaurant but didn't spot her there either.  Later, I thought, "Duh.  She doesn't want sashimi.  It's raw people she wants, not raw fish."  
Things have been a bit off since I moved those shelves. 
Besides the Japanese vampire, I was told about the government fighting aliens in orbit.  
"Pop!  Pop!  Pop!"  
"Eh?"  I was at the gas station, filling up my car.  This guy, a homeless man by the looks of him, was walking by my car.  Red faced.  Old dirty clothes.  Barefoot. 
He pointed toward the sky as I looked back at him.  
"Pop!  Pop!  Pop!"  
I looked up.  All I could see was the covering over the pumps.  
"What?"  Normally I don't engage people in situations like this.  But I've been unsettled this week.  A feeling that I'm missing out on something.  A bit shook up from seeing the vampire, too, probably.  
"They're up there!"  He pointed again.  "Pop!  Pop!  Pop!"  
Was he talking about the lights going out or something?  
He came closer.  He looked frustrated with me.  At my ignorance.  He pointed again.  I kept my eyes on him as I continued to pump my gas.  
"The government, they're fighting them.  Blowing them out of orbit.  Got this secret laser, they do.  Costs THIRTY BILLION a pop, for each one of them ships trying to land."  
"Aliens?" 
He nodded.  "Pop!  Pop!  Pop!  They're doing it right now.  Up there!  Thirty Billion a Pop!  Pop!  Pop!"  
I look up again, past the roof over the pumps.  Something blinked.  A plane...?
"Pop!"  He shook his finger at the sky.  "Thirty billion.  Pop!" 
I topped off my tank.  He dug through the trash can.  I didn't look up at the sky again.  
My bedroom has been much brighter since I moved the shelves.  This is easily explained.  The door they were blocking has a window in it.  Moving the shelves means more light is coming through the window.  
I used to keep the light over that door on at night.  I stopped doing that.  Too much light.  Having trouble sleeping.  Walking up in the middle of the night, thinking it was dawn.  Thinking that I was...  Someplace else.  In my room, but...  Elsewhere.  
Maybe lack of sleep is the problem.    
I walked around the night after that, but I didn't spot the vampire then either.  I looked up in the sky.  The glare from the street lights were too bright to let me see anything up there clearly.  No blinks.  No pops.  
Maybe it was a mistake to move the bookshelf.  I'm thinking, if the "energy" couldn't flow because of the bookshelf, then I might have let a whole lot of energy just...  Flow away, out the back door.  The front door was never blocked.  So, maybe what I had was this big reservoir of energy in my bedroom.  And now that the bookshelf is gone, its just rushing away.  Like when a dam breaks.  Whoosh!  And the vampire...  The aliens going Pop at thirty billion a shot...  Walking up at night in what feels like a different day...  All of that is me getting washed away on a flood of spiritual energy that I used to have safely contained.  
I heard something right before all of this happened.  It was on NPR.  The show, This American Life.  It was a story about beliefs and how hard it is for people to change them.  The lead story was about a guy, a Native American, who thought the old men of his tribe who called themselves "shaman" were lying.  Con artists, he thought.  Making stuff up to make themselves more important.  He decided to investigate by pretending he was interested in being trained.  
After some time being taught different things, one of the shamans showed him a trick.  When someone was sick, you took a small wad of cotton and put it in your mouth without the patient seeing it.  You then put your lips against the patient's body, over their heart, and made sucking sounds.  Then, all at once, you pulled away and bit on the inside of your mouth, soaking the cotton with your blood.  You then spat it out into your hand and showed it to the patient.  
"See?  That's the disease.  That's what was making you sick.  I sucked it out of you."  
The skeptic thought he had his proof.  A con trick.  No magic.  Nothing real.  But then, as part of his training, he was told to heal someone using this trick.  He followed the instructions, spat out the bloody cotton and showed it to the sick person.  
And they got better.  They were healed.  The next morning, the fever, the sickness, was gone.  
This was a lead in to a story about the placebo effect.  Another interesting fact they related was that there are studies that showed placebos having greater efficacy for people with Parkinson's Disease than actual treatment.  "Something happens to the body," one of the researchers said, "When you just believe."  
 I told someone about the vampire I spotted.  They said that they hoped it was true. 
"What, you think it would be a good thing to have blood-sucking demons hunting us at night to drink our souls?"  
"Well, no...  Not exactly."  She bobbed her head back and forth a bit.  "But, if it was true, life would be a lot more interesting than if this was all there was, right?"  
Hmm.  Maybe.  
One last thing.  I went on line, googling things like "vampire hunters" and "placebo effect" and "shamans."  I thought, if I could see the vampire when no one else could, then maybe I was some sort of...  Spiritual Warrior.  Meant to protect humanity from creatures like that.  
I googled "Spiritual Warrior."  This is what I found.

Guess it's good to know I can make a living from it.