(I started writing this a while ago, but then I sold all of the jokes to gypsies, so now I must furnish the entry with new ones.)
An old friend of mine won an Oscar recently, which is excellent, and much like the crafty Ms. Passion, I had an influx of traffic on this here website due to a link on said friend's old blog. Given the, uh, adult nature of the traffic, I am feeling a certain amount of pressure to adopt an intriguing pseudonym like "Lorenzo from Accounting" or "Lunch", and posit scenarios which might better fit the expectations of these new visitors.
I never thought it would happen to me! Despite his incorrect and shameful choice of headgear, the professional affiliation of great service toward our corporation was overwhelming! Together, we searched very much to achieve bare financial milestones established with great knowing by the regional management for whom effortless brilliance of leadership and strategy is infinitely disappointed by our meager abilities and profound inadequacy. But yet we both felt great seriousness toward our professional responsibilities!
There is an article coming in a local newspaper about the travel book, so I am looking forward to that. In the March edition, upon much consideration, we decided to change "Birdgeport" to "Bridgeport" on the map for that part of the city. One bar on the south side closed, so that came out, and a Neapolitan pizza place on the north side went in. But we haven't done anything about the somewhat daffy computer-generated index, which has to be seen to be appreciated.
Reports have it that Cheeta was featured on Episode 350 of This American Life. I haven't listened yet, but I am always excited for the old fellow to get some of the recognition he so richly deserves. His masterwork "Green, Brown, Yellow" recently had its first formal exhibition in my living room during a party, and I think everyone was very impressed. (I should note that I had it framed at The Practical Angle in Chicago and they did a fine job.)
I never thought it would happen to me! I was just sitting there on the mountain, on the lookout for peanuts or old fruit, when...
July 14, 2007
Spotrick says:
And that's why monkeys should not be allowed to drive.
Kat(i)e says:
I am confused - should I be looking at this from right to left? Either way it seems the cartoon is out of order.. >Is he is the car or not? Why does he get out midway thru and look at the car as though it's not his "Oh well, I'll drive it anyway! >Insert maniacal monkey laugh here<"
chimpsonfilm says:
It's a tough one. If we go right to left, then we can assume that he was driving really fast but in a straight line (1), got frustrated with the fact that the car was fully under his control and easy to operate, which is not as he was led to expect machinery would be (2), and decided to drink in order to restore his confusion toward human technology (3) - possibly this all relates to a deep-seated fear of evolution and absorption into the mechanized human world on the monkey's part. I'm not sure. Sadly, my kanji reading ability is abysmal.
June 21, 2007
It is almost time to return to the websites of our youth, almost time to speak again of the early summer crazy. I am back from Hiroshima, back from Australia and Thailand and Cambodia and Vietnam, back in Chicago. I have some things to post from the back-log before I really get caught up, though.
Below is an entry that I started last July and never finished. It's about bowling and some of the students from Hiroshima. I can't remember how much more I planned to add, but it has a narrative and establishes some suspense, so I think it's worth passing on.
July 24, 2006
There was another school bowling event a couple weeks ago. This was the second of its kind; in an earlier entry, I described how the first one began with frustration and ended with delicious maple cream cookies. Evidently, I had talked up these maple cream cookies so much they ascended from third prize to first prize this time around. Second prize was a jar of some kind of seaweed jerky, and I didn't get a good look at third prize; the "good effort" prize, which as far as I can tell was given to the bowler with the worst score who was the biggest spaz about it, was a can of Hanshin Tigers coffee. I wasn't on the prize committee. It's the sole province of a demented, cheerful old lady who enjoys failing to learn anything about pronunciation from me on Saturday afternoons.
(She respects my authority as teacher and would never contradict me, but I have to keep an eye on her during class, because she is fond of instructing the other students on any points that I do not specifically cover. I had to dedicate like half a class to un-learning to make the 'you' in 'thank you' high and squeaky because of her. She had taught them that your intonation should go up really sharply on 'you', and they're all terrified of her, so they do what she says. Meanwhile, this woman doesn't even know how to introduce herself.)
The second time was bigger than the first; the students who organized the event had so much fun last time that they drew up rosters, diagrams and flow-charts for this one. (That's how the Japanese show they are having a good time.) There were to be three games. Each teacher was made captain of a team, and the team rosters changed every game in order to give all of the students a chance to flourish under their favorite foreigner's leadership. That, also, was not my idea. I'm paid to be a pleasant, encouraging figure in a classroom. I'm not paid to be that way at a bowling alley. The rules are different in a bowling alley. Nobody gets congratulated for anything less than a mark, and a score of less than 100 is cause for great shame and embarrassment; if there are nihilists in the parking lot, we fight them, and if you throw two gutter balls in a row, you are banned from bowling in the presence of other human beings for at least one year. I don't think any of that is unreasonable. Unfortunately, the other teachers were being model cheerleaders for their charges, making me look like a sullen mope instead of the figure of unimpeachable integrity that I actually was. When my "team members" jumped around and squealed with delight over making contact with the pins - and looked at me for approval - I didn't know what to do, so I stuffed eight Ricola tablets in my mouth and abdicated the ability to speak. (I'm not totally positive whose Ricola tablets those were. There was a bag of them, so I helped myself.)
Predictably enough, I started slowly. The Ricola tablets were down to a relatively manageable blob by the middle of the second game, and I began rolling well. I only registered an 8 in the first frame of the third game, but then a zen state descended upon me and I reeled off eight marks in a row. It was, perhaps, some manner of Ricola-induced derangement; I don't know. My memories are fuzzy. I remember a lot of chest-bumping with a Japanese guy who was bowling well at another lane. I've forgotten his name - I do remember that he only knew one English preposition, 'near', and he had discovered that people thought it was hilarious if he just kept using 'near' instead of learning any other prepositions, even though his teacher was annoyed at everyone for encouraging him, so there was a lot of chest-bumping and yelling "near!" - but when I emerged from the zen state, it was the tenth frame, and a huge crowd of people had been watching me for some time, and I didn't pick up the spare, leaving me just barely short of 200. I hadn't looked at the score since the beginning of the game, so I honestly didn't even know I was close. Someone told me, and I crumpled to the floor.
I should explain that I want that 200. I want it like I used to want to be president, like I used to want to be an astronaut; I want it like I used to want to be published. I really want that 200. The thing about bowling - what separates it from almost every other sport - is that the circumstances never change. It's always you, your arm, and a ball with three holes in it - always ten pins at the other end of a long, wooden lane. In basketball or soccer, one game may be drastically different from another because of the opponents, or your overall physical fitness, or even the conditions of the place where the game is played. Each game is its own, independent entity. But bowling exists outside of time and history. When I bowl, I am bowling in that moment, but I am also bowling in every game I have ever bowled. I am still with my friends at the Diversey Rock 'n Bowl in Chicago on a Tuesday night, and I am still alone at JJ Club Ichi Maru Maru in Kyoto, waiting for the rain to pass. Nothing is past. Every game is a response to every other game; everything is everything. (And that's why 300, a perfect game, is not something I like to think about; it represents transcendence, but it also represents death.)
I picked myself up off the floor, now aware of my failure. At the prize ceremony, I was awarded first place, and the delicious maple cream cookies. I had been far and away the winner of the total pin count and three-game average. Everyone congratulated me. But I could think only of the failure. I didn't know how to say "I want to die" in Japanese, so I did the best I could, which was to say "I am going to a grave", which confused everyone.
So there is that; we are back in the present day, in 2007. We all went bowling several more times in the months that were to come, and had a grand old time doing it. I still haven't bowled 200, and haven't really come any closer than I did then, but I've had some respectable games. My friend and frequent correspondent Arden emailed me a few weeks ago about a book he was reading where a Japanese general, Shoichi Yokoi, returned from his second tour of duty in the war and said, "It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive." I guess that's what I was going for with the end of that entry. Well, now it's published.
I keep forgetting how much I enjoy this sort of thing. Jesus! I haven't even written on here about the monkey painting that I bought. That will be the next topic.
January 25, 2007
Shinzo Abe, there is trouble between us:
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese students need to work harder, spend more time in school and face stricter discipline, advisers to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday in a report the premier described as "wonderful."
Japanese students need to spend more time in school? Six days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day is not enough? In the time I have spent bitch-slapping Kim Jong Il back and forth - and it has been a fine time, with strange, incongruous beards - have I overlooked the real monster in our midst?
Don't make me welcome you to the English world, Abe. It a medical fact that I have no qualms.
July 24, 2006
Oh my! Why is your web browser so excited? Well, probably because it's time for another edition of...
NEW! LET'S ENJOY: PEPSI RED
In light of the overwhelming love of all humanity for Pepsi Blue, that fine carbonated beverage which has now replaced water in most faucets across the world, it seems only natural to introduce Pepsi Red. Or it did, about a month ago. According to reports, "Contents of "Pepsi red" are "Strange balance for the stimulation of the carbonic acid only of the spice flavor and cola to exceed. "Moreover, it is a feature that the impact is large because of red impressive the beverage of contents."
American beverage companies have an odd habit of test-marketing new soft drinks here. It doesn't make a lot of sense - Japanese people don't like soda very much. You can find Coke almost anywhere, and any bar or restaurant will be perfectly happy to serve you "cola" and charge you the same price as they would for "biru", but there isn't really any room for anything else. If Suntory has an extra space in one of their Suntory Boss vending machines - e.g. no new flavors of canned coffee this month - they might have a can of Pepsi Twist available, although "lemon" means something different to Japanese people than it does to everyone else. I see Melon Fanta in certain convenience stores as well, and there are a few generic bubble-gum flavored sodas. But that's about it. So why would you treat Japan as a representative sample population for a prospective American launch? When I lived in Osaka, Vanilla Coke was beating a slow, shameful retreat from vending machines in advance of its upcoming failure in the American market. The version of Coke that was supposed to bring joy back into the bloated hearts of all those Atkins fuckers debuted with a gigantic advertising campaign and thoroughly embarassed its ancestors back in summer 2004 shortly before doing the exact same thing in the USA. (I should ask someone if they tried Coke Blak here before I arrived.) So I don't know if Pepsi Red will ever make it to to the US. It's already gone from stores and nobody liked it except for me and one of the Canadians, so it was hardly much of a financial success, but that hasn't stopped them before.
Yes: I liked it. It was kind of weird, but it retained the better characteristics of a caramel-based soda while incorporating a cinnamon taste that was enough to stimulate the taste buds without being too strong. At least I think it was cinnamon. Someone else thought it was ginger. According to another source, "I hear that Suntory Limited newly puts "Pepsi red" on the market, this power is accelerated, and the activation of the carbonic acid market was attempted this time. Do you feel a still pungent sharp taste until guessing from the image of red though "Cola of the spice flavor" cannot imagine very much?"
So that's something that should be considered as well. Speaking of things that are beyond imagination:
NEW! LET'S ENJOY: UNBELIEVABLY PAINFUL DORITOS
I've mentioned odd packaging decisions by Doritos Japan before, but this is really something special. As anyone who has taken a marketing class will tell you, the conventional approach would be to disassociate your brand from the sensation of having your nuts squashed by a strange man in an orange bodysuit, let alone a strange man in an orange bodysuit who has grabbed your ankles for extra leverage while squashing your nuts. But Doritos Japan is not bound by the tired old conventional wisdom that the promise of excruciating pain is not a selling point, or that sadomasochist latex enthusiasts do not represent a large enough target market for a major product launch.
According to the back of the bag, these fellows have a blog, where you can see the guy in the orange suit fantasize about naked women while he tries to work, and you can also see the guy in the yellow suit hover indecisively over conveyor belts of food. (Sex, presumably, is no longer much of an issue for him.)
July 13, 2006
I made it rain in my apartment! This is my greatest achievement yet. As you can imagine, being in Japan and all, I live in fairly small quarters. Last night, I left the air conditioner on at a shamelessly cold temperature. I meant to turn it off, but I didn't remember until I was already in bed, warm in my blanket, and I wasn't about to sell out my sleepy contentment by standing up. I had the fan going all night, too. In the morning, I opened my balcony door to check the conditions outside: hot and humid as fuck, actually. I pondered the outdoors for a few seconds and then closed the door. Then I turned up the a/c, which hangs over the balcony door, with the fan a few feet away, blowing in the direction of both the hot air and the cold air. A few seconds later, a few drops of rain fell on me. Obviously, I have become some kind of weather god. This is a remarkable development. I will accept requests for use of my powers from desert nations of good, upstanding character. My rates are reasonable. All proceeds will be used for research and development, specifically:
And they're all coming to Pyongyang with me. Oh, yes. Increases the number of Canadian passports I need, but every one will be worth it.
So, as I mentioned a few entries ago, the school has been doing a lot of advertising lately. Yesterday, one of the staff asked if I would mind chatting with a student while being photographed. I said fine, because I was in a cooperative mood. She showed me pictures of some of the poses and hand gestures that they would like, and said that I should talk about summer. Out in the area set aside for the photo shoot, there was a pleasant looking Japanese guy I'd never met before. I sat down, introduced myself, and started the conversation about summer. He mentioned swimming, so we talked a little about beaches, and that led to barbecue, so we talked about various foods you can barbecue for a while, and then we went back to beaches until the photographer had everything she needed. They seemed pleased with the results. Later, though, I discovered that a transcript of the conversation was going to be included with the photos, in Japanese and English, and because the person doing the transcription did not speak much English, it went something like this:
MASAHIRO: Often I am my friends swimming! It is Yamaguchi Prefecture. Also we eat the food.
TEACHER: Do you BBQ like it?
MASAHIRO: Yes I am many kinds of meats like.
TEACHER: I like!
So I begged them to let me do a quick touch-up on the transcript. There wasn't much I could do other than a rough fix on the grammar, unfortunately. The structure of the conversation, as understood by the transcriptionist, really turned on my passionate love and praise for hamburgers and giant sausages. They pretty much have me exhorting every man, woman and child in Japan to eat a giant sausage in the summer. (Which, as long-time readers know, is exactly the sort of thing I do. It's my own unique spin on being a vegetarian.) I didn't even get to see the whole transcript. I bet they have me totally renouncing every method of eating corn other than with soy sauce, because that came up, too.
This, by the way, is part of a recent ad:
Why is my disembodied head floating next to a koala?!?! Why are the advertising departments at these schools never, ever on speaking terms with the education departments?
June 30, 2006
We played charades with the weather; humidity chose poison gas, and everyone guessed on the first try. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere that wasn't humid in the summer, but for whatever reason, Hiroshima-style has me reeling.
Let's get back on track with some exhilirating product reviews:
NEW! LET'S ENJOY: GRILLED CHEESE FLAVOR PRINGLES
I have never met one, but I suspect that Japanese flavor scientists are a bunch of cocky bastards. They routinely set ridiculous tasks for themselves, and they have no sense of their own limits. I remember being faintly astonished to find a bag of Ozack baked-potato flavored chips during my first trip to a convenience store in Japan. I mean, here were potatoes that had been flavored to taste like...other potatoes. And it worked. There are failures, too, of course. Calbee makes these pizza-flavored chips that have the pizza flavoring caked into the ridges of the chips; they are disgusting. You'll have to get someone else to tell you how the shrimp and crab chips taste.
This, though, has to be the apotheosis of flavor science. Everyone makes cheese-flavored chips. But using only the medium of powder dusted on Pringles, can these guys communicate the difference between cheese and grilled cheese? This is no small matter of variation. They are trying to express changing states of matter through taste. It's absurd. It can't be done. Can it?
Well, no, actually. I sat in the park, up in the hills, eating my can of Grilled Cheese Pringles in the shade on a sunny day. Every can comes with a free giveaway make-up compact mirror. You flip the lid, look at yourself and think, well, I don't look any fatter, so why not polish off this can? Alternately, if you are me, you slip the mirror into your messenger bag, finish reading your book and feed the rest of the chips to the feral cats who frequent the park. Imagine that a Hollywood executive wanted to make a really classy Oscar-winning picture, "Cheese", but he has no idea how to do it. He gets in touch with this fellow named Uwe Boll, who, within an hour of the meeting, has a script and a budget ready. The executive is thrilled to have met such a go-getter, and "Cheese" goes into production. One day, however, just before shooting was scheduled to begin, Uwe Boll disappears. Nobody knows where he went. After much hand-wringing, the executive goes with a new director, Alfred Hitchcock. A few line changes are made here and there, but they're on a tight schedule, so Hitchcock has to direct "Cheese" from the budget Uwe Boll negotiated, as well as the basic story Boll came up with. The resulting film, bearing little resemblance to the snazzy Oscar-winner originally envisioned, is re-titled "Grilled Cheese" and marketed as a genre flick to avoid competition with Ron Howard's forthcoming somewhat more faithful production of the original idea.
(See, these seductively witty celebrity metaphors: they massage your sense of cleverness without passing on any message to your senses. Fuck 'em, right? It was fun to write, though. Did your great-grandmother ever set out a platter of old Sociables and similar crackers with thick cheese paste in the middle? Did you ever open one up and eat it like an Oreo? That's sort of how these taste, but more faintly, of course. Not awful, but I don't think I'll buy them again.)
NEW! LET'S ENJOY: GRAPEFRUIT FLAVOR AIR
You can buy iPod Nanos and Shuffles at 7-11 next to cans of air that cost about $5.50. Yeah, it's Japan. I always expected it would be this way, but it wasn't until recently.
They don't give you anywhere near enough air for it to be worth the price, but it is kind of fun. There are flavor strips that you fit into a slot in the oxygen mask. I chose grapefruit. (I forget what the other option was.) Just a little assembly required; then you sit back, relax and huff oxygen. It's not immediately apparent whether it's working or not, but then all of a sudden you realize you're getting weirdly emotional about this episode of "Doctor Who", and, hey, you're high on oxygen. Thanks, Japan!
I think we all know that canned air is the future.
June 23, 2006
Today, I began the delicate process of negotiating with the Canadians to get them to loan me their passports so I can go to North Korea and call Kim Jong Il a little bitch to his face. Although we are from the land of the free, United States citizens are not allowed to travel to North Korea or Cuba. (I'm not sure if we can still go to Iran. I'm not really up for that, anyway.) I am totally aggravated that all of the other foreigners here are allowed to go to North Korea, and I'm not. (My friend Adam, who is an English citizen but has a US green card, can't go either - the terms of his green card prohibit it. I already asked him.)
Initial results were promising:
"Give me your passport," I said to the first Canadian.
"Why do you want my passport?" he asked.
"I need to go to North Korea, and I can't go with mine," I said.
"No," he said.
"Come on," I said. "It's important."
"Why?" he asked.
"I need to call Kim Jong Il a little bitch," I said.
"You just did," he said.
"That didn't count," I said. "It has to be in North Korea."
"I'm not giving you my passport," he said.
"It's for freedom," I said. "Doesn't freedom mean anything to you?"
"No," he said.
"Goddam Canadian," I muttered.
The second Canadian walked into the room, searching for a textbook.
"Give me your passport," I said.
"Why?" he asked.
"He wants to go to North Korea," said the first Canadian.
"Why the hell do you want to go to North Korea?" asked the second Canadian.
"It's an insane, repressive dictatorship," I said.
"Yeah," he said.
"Exactly," I said.
"No," he said.
"This is important," I said.
"No," he said.
So the groundwork was laid. Later, one of the Canadians had the school radio tuned to some 70's and 80's rock hits station, and Rush came on. In a brilliant strategic manuever, I complimented Neil Peart's drumming. I reckon I'm wearing them down. It'll be New Year's in Pyongyang for me! Here's a suggestion about a hundred times better than the Juche idea: wear a bucket around your neck, Kim, you little bitch, because I am going to make you cry.
We got paid today. I managed to spend my entire paycheck last month; I had to pay double rent for the apartment, and the rest went to video games, ice cream, bowling, massages and a new suit. It's a hell of a life I'm leading over here. I'm going to be more responsible this month. (Kim Jong Il is reading this, and he's going, "Typical decadent American capitalist." Yeah, well, I produced like twice as much agriculture as you last month, and that was just from the week I didn't wash the dishes and something funky was going on at the bottom of the sink. Sorry, Kim, you little bitch. I'm always going to win.)
Wait, what the hell was I talking about? The students want to go bowling again this weekend, so that's what we'll be doing on Sunday. The school encourages us to go out with students. I am leery of this practice, because every minute I spend with students outside of work is a minute in which I am not calling Kim Jong Il a little bitch, but it's bowling, right? The first school outing to the bowling alley was about a month ago. At that point, it had been literally two years since last I bowled. I love the fair pastime of bowling, and I don't think I've been obscure about that, but it had been awhile. All I really want out of life is some peace of mind and a bowling team. I used to want more - to be president, to be an astronaut, to be a famous artist - but now I'd be totally content with peace of mind and a bowling team. Well, things weren't going that well for me, and I wasn't bowling. Alternately, I wasn't bowling, and things weren't going that well for me.
My form was abysmal during the first game. I couldn't place the ball where I wanted it, and even threw a couple of gutterballs. I grew sullen and refused to talk to anyone, bewildering the students; fortunately, the Canadians picked up the slack. I improved slightly for the second game, rolling a 115, but I still got into an argument with an old lady who told it was a good score.
"[[It's not good]]," I told her.
"[[It's good]]," she said.
"[[No]]," I said, sternly. "[[It's bad]]."
For the third game, I dropped a 168 and had bowlers from several lanes over gathered around to watch my last three frames. Shit was working in that third game; I couldn't throw a strike, for some reason, but I was picking up some remarkable spares, earning peals of applause from the crowd. One of the students had brought prizes for the best performances. First place got a nice leather wallet, but I was the real winner, because I was third, and that warranted a huge box of delicious maple cream cookies.
June 20, 2006
I'd appreciate if readers using Internet Explorer would email me about anything that doesn't appear to be working correctly on this site. I designed it using Firefox and tested it with Safari and Lynx, but I don't have access to a copy of IE. In this day and age, shouldn't the browsers agree on what an HTML tag means? Oh, but they don't.
It's too bad about the Carolina team winning the Stanley Cup. The Canadians in my office really had their hopes up. Neither of them are from Edmonton, but it's kind of a national concern for Canadians. (It's like Jesus said about taxes. "Render unto God what is God's. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Well, shit, render unto the Canadians the Stanley Cup.) I'm the only one with an internet connection, so I took it upon myself to provide them with updates. They asked if I wanted to split the difference between the Canadian and American versions and have a Thanksgiving dinner in early November. I made reference to my nuts in my reply. I am interested in alternately confirming and confounding stereotypes of imperialistic American behavior.
OMG SCARY MOVIE
Written and Directed by Marc Heiden Produced by Marc Heiden Cinematography by Marc Heiden Starring Marc Heiden and a giant crab
OMG ITS TOO SCARY MOVIE - FRENCH GUY
SHITS ALL OVER "PSYCHO" - ALFERD HITCHCOCKC
COULD USE SOME ROMANCE - HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER
I think I am establishing a reputation as an intense and uncompromising filmmaker.
BACK TO THE PART WHERE I AM RUDE TO CANADIANS
"If you want me to lend legitimacy to your little event, you'll hold it on the proper day," I said. "Canadian Thanksgiving. What are you guys even celebrating?"
"Same thing as you," said the Canadians. "The family gets together and we have a nice meal, lots of food, usually turkey or something."
"They brought us corn and then we gave them smallpox blankets," I said. "Get a vicious historical irony and then I'll take you seriously."
"Fine, then don't come," said the Canadians.
"Fine, then, I won't," I said.
"Oh, come on, it'll be fun," they said.
"See you fuckers in the third week of November," I said.
This is all a bluff, of course. I can't cook and, if they've been paying attention, they know that. I have nothing to bring to this dinner except a general willingness to eat, and possibly bread, if I make it to the bakery before it closes. And smallpox blankets. Who has smallpox? Do I want to spend money on blankets? Will napkins do? I'm going to sleep now, and when I awake, I hope to see advice from Lewis Cass in the comments section for this post.
UPDATE: Thanksgiving is the fourth week of November. Damn it. This isn't the first time I've made that mistake. Did the Canadians interpret it as a willingness to compromise? To be on the safe side, I had better desecrate a maple leaf at work as soon as possible.
June 15, 2006
I've been drifting between "bearded" and "not quite bearded, but clearly can't be arsed to shave" ever since I arrived back in Japan. But I shaved on Wednesday morning for reasons now obscure to me, and the staff at my school pounced upon it like a pack of hyenas on holiday, snapping promotional photos for the school website. This was a pragmatic decision for them: I have sideburns at the moment, and I have made it known around the office that I am headed toward Wolfman Jack, pedal to the metal, not looking back, so I think they had a meeting and decided that this might be the best chance they'll have for months to catch me looking presentable. Before I started working here, I actually had to sign a waiver formally authorizing them to use my image for advertisements and promotional purposes, and apparently they're serious about it. They chose one of my most photogenic students and had us pose together in front of the white board, my arm draped condescendingly around his shoulders, according to their direction. (He is my Buddy. I am Supporting him on his Climb up Mount English. We are Together in This. What, exactly, are the semiotics here?) The results should be pretty weird. In retaliation, I conducted an entire class in an Irish accent. I need to get scruffy fast.
TWO VIDEOS, BECAUSE MULTIMEDIA IS TEH HOTT
Look! It's YouTube. Click on them, and they play for you, right here, without leaving this page. Jesus, the web, it's still fairly shit, isn't it? I mean, you used to be able to log on to a BBS and the ANSI would play for you right away without you clicking some button. I set the bar at "telekinetic mind control rays" and I urge you all to do the same. (But let's be ready to compromise on "jetpacks". Trust me, I am fucking good with strategy.)
So, that was during Golden Week, which is a string of national holidays at the end of April, comprising about a week's worth of vacation, depending on how much humanity resides at your corporate level. The weather was beautiful for most of the week, so we said, "Let's go to a baseball game," and it finally rained. Well, that's how it goes. You can buy bowls of ramen or udon at the game, along with the usual snacking and drinking options, so it's not hard to keep warm. (And, if you are a foreigner, everyone is always giving you weird Japanese snack food.) At that point, the Hiroshima Carp were down 4-0, had played terribly all game, and it had just started raining. They finally, barely pushed through a run. How do the fans react?
(At the end, I had to put the camera down because a random guy wanted to hug me.)
And that's the seventh inning stretch, complete with jet balloons. We were privileged to be sitting in the (intensely packed) bleachers next to the Carp oendan, music / chant-leaders. They reminded me a lot of the yakuza in Kyoto, and I mean that in the best possible way: masters of their universe, unapproachable to those who live under their direction, inexplicably down with foreigners. I have some good photos that I'll post another time.
I think we all know that "Carp" is the best nickname in any major professional sports league.
June 13, 2006
Yes, there are occasional reminders that, although I've lived here before, I am not at home. Tonight, after work, I went running by the river. I usually run at night, away from the crowds. Hiroshima is run-down and tropical along the banks of the rivers that don't flow downtown; it makes for a pleasant course, if not quite as nice as the Kamogawa in Kyoto. After I'd run about half my usual route, I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't tell if it had fallen or been kicked up by my cross-trainers. It was dark, though, and I wasn't carrying anything that I would care about dropping; anyway, my attention was immediately occupied by a curiously large, cool bead of sweat I could feel making its way down my right leg. I puzzled over it for a while and assumed that exhaustion was playing tricks on me. Finally, turning away from the river, I came to an intersection and had to stop for a moment to let cars pass. That's when I noticed that there was a thin, slimy snake on my leg.
I kept my cool and dealt with it. Look, though, this isn't Kyoto - surrounded by a ring of mountains, well away from the sea, complete with ancient cultural treasures to attest to the fact that nobody has gone stomping through there recently. This is Hiroshima. Flying reptiles are a serious concern here - this is where it all began. If Godzilla's parents were a celebrity superstar couple, they would have named him "Hiroshima".
It's wise to keep wary.
A FEW VARIATIONS ON THAT BIT ABOUT GODZILLA'S PARENTS, OR, KAIJU N THE HOOD
When Godzilla talks about something that happened back in the day, this is where it probably happened. When Godzilla surveys the young monsters and wonders when all these scenesters showed up, muses about how much better it was when it was D.I.Y., this is where they did it. When Godzilla needs to salve his coke-scarred sense of self-worth by claiming some exclusive awareness of where they lead a simple, honest life, far away from the cynical star-fuckers on the coasts, this is where he's talking about. The first time Godzilla lifted a shop, this is where he lifted it from; when Godzilla gets released from the volcano and the judge says he has to live under house arrest at his mom's house, this is where Ghidorah shows up at all hours and this is where the backyard gets fucking destroyed but nobody is all that bothered because they're just happy to see him doing well again, and they hope he'll stay clean this time.
I could keep going.
Following on from yesterday:
FIVE SONGS I WOULDN'T HAVE EXPECTED TO BE AVAILABLE AT A JAPANESE KARAOKE BOX
1. Death From Above 1979, Romantic Rights
2. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Is This Home On Ice
4. Sid Vicious, My Way
3. The Rapture, Olio and I Need Your Love (but not House of Jealous Lovers...!)
Obviously, my rendition of My Way was note-fucking-perfect. Damn! I have raised Nancy Spungen from the dead and now I have no idea what to do with her.
June 12, 2006
There was an earthquake this morning. I was asleep, although not soundly: I'd only been out for an hour, and in the creeping humidity of the Hiroshima summer, and in the unsettled stomach of a man who'd eaten things he couldn't identify at some horrifically expensive Japanese restaurant the night before, sleep had taken the form of flight, with one of those small, bounce-several-times-until-you-get-some-air-under-you prop planes and a cracked jungle runway as the means of take-off. It wasn't coming easily. I was wracked with guilt as well. Earlier that day, I'd sworn that I'd go find some wild monkeys on Monday (there might be some on an island near Shikoku, reachable within two and a half hours), and it was now clear that I wasn't going to get enough sleep to do it. I was also consumed with thoughs of revenge upon a drunken co-worker who babbled non-stop through what everyone else agreed was an achingly gorgeous (my adjectives, but the point remains) rendition of "No Surprises" at karaoke.
Fuck! Everything shook. Naturally, it took me a while to understand that I wasn't asleep. I tried to remember what I'd been taught to do when everything started shaking. We had fire drills and tornado drills at my grade school, but I couldn't remember if there had been any drills for this sort of thing. I thought about safety drills and how unlikely it seemed that the building could stand much longer, given how much it was shaking, and whether, when it fell, it would fold evenly and without a cloud of dust, like a deck of cards - I had decided that it would, when the earthquake finally stopped. I heard a television go on in the apartment below me, and someone in another apartment swore in English. I stumbled to my computer to confer with the internet. I figured the news wouldn't have anything yet, but it seemed totally irresponsible of the weather not to mention the earthquake. I made it out to the balcony to clear my head; I could hear the television, and a telephone conversation next door. The first few cars after that sounded like furtive escape attempts.
Announcements began on previously-unseen loudspeakers outside. I remember a jingle before the voice began, because there usually is a jingle, and then a firm voice said, "Hiroshima," and a few more sentences after that. I had to marvel at the fact that I couldn't understand a single word, other than "Hiroshima". My Japanese isn't terrible, but I couldn't even pick a preposition out of there. The announcement was repeated three times. I studied the tone of the voice carefully. It was saying that nothing had been broken, I decided. It listed some places that hadn't been damaged, and described several respects in which there wasn't any trouble. I went back to sleep and slept pretty soundly.
When I woke up, I discovered that a bottle of olive oil had fallen from a shelf in my kitchen and broken on the floor. Also, a few dishes that had been drying on the rack above the sink had fallen back into the sink; they'd have to be washed again. I muttered angrily, pulled on a pair of jeans and went for a massage instead of dealing with it.
(news) A strong earthquake rattled southern Japan early Monday followed by a milder temblor in the north, but there was no danger of a tsunami from either, the nation's meteorological agency said.
At least five people were injured from the magnitude-6.2 quake in the south, but no one died, Kyodo News agency reported. No injuries or damage were reported from the second quake, Kyodo said.
The first quake occurred at around 5 a.m. 87 miles underground in Oita Prefecture (state) on the southern island of Kyushu. It struck wide areas of southern and western Japan, Kyodo said.
As it turns out, my neighbor swore because he realized that his fish tank - and his two turtles - were perched directly above his computers (and his video game systems, and his external drives, and his router, et cetera), and the entire thing was shaking pretty hard. He lunged for the fish tank and held it tightly, wondering if he should try to lift it from the shelf and away to safety, or if that was too risky. In the end, the turtles were fine. Nobody saved my goddam olive oil, though. Jesus, I still need to clean that.
(news) A woman in her 60s was hospitalized in stable condition after hitting her head on a pole in the city of Matsuyama on southwestern Shikoku island, the fire department said.
In the city of Hiroshima, a junior high school student was injured by a falling object, a 56-year-old man hurt his arm and a man in his 40s was scratched on his face by his frightened cat, officials said.
In Hatsukaichi city of Hiroshima prefecture, an 82-year-old woman fell and broke her right leg after her dog was surprised by the quake and dragged her on the ground, a fire department official said.
In another case, a man staying at a campsite in southwestern Miyazaki prefecture "hit his elbow hard against a wall when rushing to turn off the heat, but the injury was very mild," a prefectural official said.
The junior high school student was still up from the night before, studying. I'm fairly certain about that. I'd be curious to know how the cat developed an association between that guy's face and earthquakes, though. "I can stop this," the cat thought. "That's the face. It's all on my shoulders now. I've been waiting for this. By God, this is what I was put here to do. And now, I'm going to stop the world from shaking. I'm going after that face."
After the World Cup match that night, we compared notes. A few people had caught different pieces of the announcement. Evidently, it had been quite detailed (and not pre-recorded), with notes on the epicentre, the force of the quake, and the fact that no tsunamis had been created. We talked about what had fallen in our apartments, how disorienting it had been to wake up during an earthquake, and how this never happens back home.
May 23, 2005
I know that a lot of people are pissed off because I haven't covered the walking panda story yet. What you have to understand is that I am battling a number of firmly entrenched financial interests in my ongoing crusade to expose the panda porn once and for all, and while nothing escapes my notice, it doesn't necessarily get written up right away, because there is a strategy at work here. I don't have the kind of resources that the panda sex industry does. In all honesty, I did mean to cover this last week, but then I got side-tracked with the Oregon Trail thing. I'm here now, though, and here it is:
TOKYO (AFP) A lesser panda is proving a hit at a zoo near Tokyo as it can stand on two legs like a human being for about 10 seconds, an unusual feat for the species, zoo officials said. The two-year-old male panda named Futa stands up several times a day when "it sees something interesting", said Hiroyuki Asano, an official of Chiba Zoological Park, southeast of the capital. "We have kept lesser pandas for nearly 20 years at this zoo, but I have not seen one like Futa, which can stand for such a long time," Asano said. "Futa is like an idol to his fans."
I remain doubtful that even a panda can make walking upright "cool", but if these fans really are driven to imitate their idol, it can't be a bad thing. Seriously, though, what does a lesser panda have to do to stop being lesser? The poor bastard is walking upright for ten whole seconds and has legions of devoted fans, and he's still a lesser panda. At some point, Futa has to begin to wonder why he even bothers.
The furry, seven-kilogramme (15 pound) animal, whose natural habitat are the mountains of China and the Himalayas, was born in another zoo in central Japan. Unlike the black-and-white giant panda, the lesser panda has brown fur with a stripe on its tail. Futa, fed fruits and bamboo every day, has a female mate, and the zoo hopes they will have a baby panda in the near future.
A PANDA'S LAMENT
FUTA: Look! I'm walking!
ZOOKEEPER: That's great. We hope you will walk over to the female panda's vagina.
FUTA: But see how the crowds enjoy my walking!
ZOOKEEPER: You know what they would really enjoy? Two pandas fucking.
FUTA: But this is nearly unprecedented among my species!
ZOOKEEPER: We must have more panda babies. All else is irrelevant.
Apparently - and I'm not making this up - Futa has a grandfather named Ron who is also good at walking upright. Way to go, Ron. But nothing in the world matters less than a panda who's too old to make more babies.
Every once in a while, I feel a responsibility to put something on here that absolutely nobody other than myself is going to find amusing. This photo gallery is fairly old - it's from my second day in Russia, when I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to do by myself in Vladivostok on a rainy day. There was a museum built in mounds overlooking the bay with decommissioned chain guns and missiles sitting around, and I don't even know if I was supposed to be walking around up there, and I guess technically I don't even know if any of them were actually decommissioned, but eventually I wandered into a cave-like museum dedicated to the Russians who had, throughout history, kept Asians out of this particular area. And, as it so often does, a certain madness set in, and I started trying to photograph the little army men in the museum's many dioramas in dramatic ways. The lighting was very bad (I believe there were proles on treadmills at the power station), but I did my best, and I really do think the last few are nice. I could make this one available as a print. It's even more pleasant at three times the size.
I still haven't found a satisfactory program for making simple, unobtrusive photo albums. I had wrangled Picasa to behave more or less as I wanted it to, but installing the otherwise excellent Picasa 2 replaced my modifications with the butt-ugly defaults. Jesus! I bore even myself with this technical discourse. My love affair with Gmail ended abruptly today when I received a "Lockdown in Sector 4!" message that kept me out of my email all day, which I found stressful. (Fuck your sci-fi whimsy! I could be missing important messages from Nigerian bank executives! The Nigerians prize me for my turn-around time.) Admittedly, I got a lot of work done, but it's not an experience I'd like to repeat. Access to my account was restored, unannounced, a few hours later. A cursory web search revealed a variety of factors that cause Gmail accounts to get locked down, but I don't know which one did me in. If someone tried to send me a monkey, please let me know and I will give you an alternate email address. Apparently it's against the Terms of Use to send live animals as attachments. Who reads those things?
February 25, 2005
Some people have written to ask if I knew the Killer Japanese Seizure Robots. Actually, I did. I cannot pretend that their English showed much improvement while I was there, but I miss them all the same. I go to their webpage rather often and feel nostalgic, and also epileptic.
Last week, in the midst of discussing my own impending birthday, I delivered a powerful oration on the nature of holidays in North Korea, noting that, as far as I could tell, St. Patrick's Day was the only one that had not been revealed by the North Korean media to be Kim Jong Il-related in origin. Following up on that, we have the following from our sideline reporter, Arden:
I really am as shocked as anyone about the failure in coalescence of Kim Jong Il and St. Patrick's Day. One upside of flunking out of U of I was my opportunity to study "The History of China and Japan" at the substantially less politically correct Parkland College, where you learn things like, "Korea is known as the Ireland of the Orient, because they also have a history of alcoholism." With a shared culture like that, how could these countries not be attending each other's parties?
I thought about that, and I suppose one reason might be the hair issue. We know, from science, that all Irish people look like this, while the government of North Korea has set clear guidelines for hair and attire. How, then, might a drunken North Korean socialist fanatic judge the Irish?
1. The hair of the Irish is too long in the back, and it is unruly. Although men aged over 50 are given allowed two extra centimeters of hair to cover balding, that is clearly intended for use toward comb-overs. Irish people allow their excess hair to spill out of their hats, and it provides no aid towards concealing their baldness.
2. The nappy ends of the hair and beards of Irish people tends to suggest that they do not get a trim once every fifteen days, as prescribed. That leaves them with undue amounts of free time in which to be infiltrated by corrupt capitalist ideas.
3. There are, the North Korean media reports, civic advantages to wearing smart shoes. Irish people, however, choose to wear long, yellow shoes that are pointy and bent upward at the end. By no reasonable measure are the shoes of the Irish smart. In fact, as one representative from the goverment argued, "No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded." It is a sensitive issue, even among fellow drunks, when one's personality has been downgraded.
4. If there is a link between a person's clothes and appearance and their ideological and emotional state, one is hardly encouraged by the inability of the Irish to put their hats on straight. Are Irish people perpetually drunkenly challenging the world to fight because they favor pointy clothing over smoother, less angular ensembles, or do they favor pointy clothing because they are drunkenly challenging the world to fight?
The sad fact is that while North Korea and Ireland may be able to overlook those differences before the wine starts flowing, it is inevitable that, by the end of the night, someone will have accused someone else of falling short of ideals in accordance of a socialist lifestyle, and someone else will suggest loudly that certain parties appear more interested in socialism than girls and are, therefore, gay. None of that is likely to be taken well; fisticuffs will probably ensue. So maybe that's why.
The skill with which I settle things has to be admired.
(news) But U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci told reporters Wednesday that he was perplexed over Canada's apparent decision to allow Washington to make decision if a missile was headed toward its territory. "Why would you want to give up sovereignty?" he said. "We don't get it. We think Canada would want to be in the room deciding what to do about an incoming missile that might be heading toward Canada."
Fucking hell! Yes, you might think they would...but they don't. That is the central enigma of the Canadian psyche and I cannot believe we have such a hopeless incompetent as this Paul Cellucci contending with it. The Canadians are going to eat him alive, metaphorically of course, there is no telling what they will actually do, but it is not going to turn out well for any of us. God damn. Get him out of there!
To answer your next question, yes, I am willing to take over as Ambassador to Canada. Holy shit! I will be so good at it.
My life has been quiet for the last week or so. Tonight, I will get my car back. My mother went joy-riding in it a few weeks ago and some guy rammed into the back left corner while it was parked, so his insurance is paying for the entire rear bumper to be re-painted. That's nice, I guess, but there is really no point to having a freshly-painted bumper when you live in the city and park on the street. Like moths to flame, degenerates without any semblance of parallel-parking ability will be hypnotized by its bright, unscarred green, given over to the irrational notion that they have plenty of room to fit their rusted-out Oldsmobile behind my car. I will be lucky if the bumper lasts two days before returning to its previous state, or worse. Really, what's the point? Every time I see one of those stupid gee-whiz-so-fast DSL commercials, I shake my fist. Fuck the internet! Where is my rocket-pack? I was led to believe there would be rocket-packs! I am increasingly irate, and a disturbance even to myself.
There is one more thing that I should mention - you have no idea how thoroughly these entries encapsulate everything that is on my mind at the time they are written, so I can't leave anything out - and that is the death of Hunter S. Thompson, the noted American lion-tamer. It's hard to write anything about Hunter S. Thompson because you must constantly check yourself to be sure you are not trying to write like him; perhaps it's not a problem for the old folks, the hardened professionals, but we young'uns have to watch out for it. You either wind up sounding like a pale, mis-shapen imitation of the man or a colorless version of yourself. (Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Raymond Carver: read them, but not while you are writing anything of your own.)
There have been many tributes, summations, epitaphs and reflections over the last week or so, and nearly all of them have had a palpable self-consciousness about them in some way, shape or form. You can't be unfair about that, though. Nobody was expecting to have to write these things; everyone was caught off guard, and only the worst among us were glad to have the chance. When it comes to memorials for Hunter S. Thompson, all you can really ask is that they leave you with something. Compare, for example, this one, by Alexander Cockburn, to this one, by ESPN writer Eric Neel. One writer is far more skilled than the other, far better-versed in history and politics and literature, and the other is more or less exactly what I wrote about, timidly placing words next to each other until a column has been formed. And the interesting thing is, the first one leaves you with less than cat shit, and the other one leaves you with this:
The only time I ever spent with Hunter Thompson took place on one strange night at his home outside Aspen. I read aloud from his latest book that night -- Hunter liked that kind of thing, liked to hear his words come alive, he said. I held a number of weapons, the names of which I can't even remember, because he would just hand them to you and say, "Here, feel that." (My friend Daniel carried a sword around for more than an hour for fear of offending the good doctor.)
I was taken on a tour of photographs on the walls (not framed, just tacked up there in little collages), some of the young, fit journalist, some of the baggier, more weathered writer, some of the headlong madman, and all with a half-remembered story. I ate some kind of crackers and cheese and nursed a glass of gin, praying he wouldn't peg me for the lightweight I really am. And for a stretch, I sat next to him on a low-slung leather couch watching the Kings and Lakers go head-to-head in the fourth quarter. Hunter had money on the Lakers. They were winning but not covering, so every missed shout was a wincing blue streak and a chance for him to ask me what the hell they were doing and why wouldn't Kobe feed the Big Daddy?!
Everyone hates on Hunter S. Thompson's Page 2 columns, but I liked them. It was fucking cool when he wrote this, about the 2001 Bears:
"I owe the Bears an apology. I called them "phony," but I was wrong. They are a gang of Assassins and I fear them. They will croak St. Louis in the playoffs."
Even after the Bears got killed in the playoffs, we fans still had that, not the Lombardi Trophy but not that bad either. More than anything else, I liked the Page 2 columns because most of them were evidence that someone to whom I felt a deep sense of gratitude was now enjoying himself with friends watching sports. I liked the Eric Neel column because I wanted to watch football in that room, even though there was no way that it was not going to be awkward as hell for a non-drinker (non-smoker, non-drug user, non-meat eater!) like me. Possibly, I would have been shot. Well, Eric Neel told me what it would have been like, a little.
(Does anyone else remember how, in the days after September 11, 2001, every fucking so-called celebrity in the country solemnly pressed Their Take against our chests, hoping that Theirs would be the One that Was Remembered, that History would Say, This One Commemorated It, This One Defined the Moment? Well, unlike basically all of them, Hunter S. Thompson's column doesn't look like shit when you read it today.)
One thing the man had absolutely mastered as a writer - there were many things, of course, but I'm just going to identify one of them, because this is only a weblog, after all, and you people don't even provide me with an expense account - was the full range of synonyms for the verb 'to say'. Read something he wrote with that in mind. I always enjoyed that about his writing. But, again, be careful about doing it while you're writing something, or you'll wind up having to print out a list from some online dictionary to avoid feeling like a brick-layer every time you settle for 'say'. He opened up one of his books with this quotation from Mark Twain:
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.
Yes. That, exactly.
I keep straying. Here is my entry into the eulogy-stakes:
Hunter S. Thompson could tame lions, fierce motherfuckers with sharp teeth. I saw him do it. He's gone now, but you can bet those lions still see him when they go to sleep, here and forevermore.
Mahalo.
February 10, 2005
Let me briefly explain the circumstances that led to my silence. I started a new job, temporary but indefinite, working on a two-man Project. One of the two people was responsible for training me, and the other was intended to take the lead once she was gone. The Project is nebulous, with many regulations and procedures, pockets of arcana in scattered locations. Well, fine, I thought. I am just the sort of man you want to deal with that. But my training was about 30% complete when the first day was over and my predecessor left. Then the second team member called in sick, leaving me alone to attempt to make sense of things. Then he called in sick again. Then they fired him, leaving me alone on the Project. In an attempt to make good, they brought in someone to take his place and asked me to train the new guy, mid-way through my own first week, with none of my own questions answered. The new guy arrived and, upon first glimpse of the Project, more or less shut down. He will only handle simple tasks as I assign them to him. I am alone at the front of the Project. I do not fully understand it, but I must manage it as best I can. I am, at times, overwhelmed. I try to visualize a game of whack-a-mole to give order to what I am doing, but frequently the vision changes to one of a dark chamber, with tentacles emerging from the holes in the box, rising until the box can no longer hold the writhing mass within - the only thing that never changes is that I am still holding the same foam mallet, ill-equipped. That is the nature of what I face. This is the first quiet moment I have had to gather my thoughts about the Project, so it is now that I am writing, after all of that silence.
It pays okay, but I probably gotta get some more money at some point.
North Korea announced that they have nuclear bombs today. The first AP article that I read this morning mentioned that Bush had referred to them as part of the Axis of Evil as part of an attempt to get them to cooperate, but later drafts appear to have clarified that he hasn't called them Evil lately and that was the attempt to get them to cooperate. Which makes a bit more sense, although it is still based on flawed reasoning. Generally, in situations where I have told someone that they are evil, I have not had a good reaction from them, even after initiating another conversation wherein I do not make explicit reference to their evil; moreover, in situations where I have told someone that they are evil and that the guy standing next to them is evil, too, and then I have punched the guy standing next to them in the face, I have received extremely poor reactions. I can assure the Bush administration that my clinical trials on this issue were performed with the greatest attention to scientific integrity. I don't know if they will look upon that as a positive, though.
It makes me feel bad for the Japanese, though. They are very nervous about North Korea. An old English teacher told me once about how students would always say they were afraid of going to the beach because North Korean submarines would get them, and the English teachers would make fun of the students, making all sorts of hilarious riffs in the teachers room. Apparently, everyone felt pretty bad when those fears turned out to be well-grounded. I wasn't there at the time, so I was permitted the righteousness of the recent, which is always nice.
Let me describe a little bit more about what we do at the Project. I gave my co-worker a list of people to contact about some classes they had been taking. He went through the list and complained.
"I don't want to contact her," he said. "She failed this Conflict Resolution class she took."
"The conflict must still be raging," I agreed. "No way to know what you'll be walking into."
"I can't send her an email either," he said. "She also failed Principles of Effective Written Communication."
"She'll probably just hit a lot of random keys and then call you a dick," I said. "Well, do your best."
I moved into my new apartment last week. It is a very nice one bedroom apartment in Chicago, in the neighborhood that they call Ukrainian Village. By the time I left Japan, my spatial schema had been re-adjusted to the point where I found shoeboxes perfectly acceptable and always remembered to keep my head down when going through doorways, so my new apartment has what appear to me as vast, untamed areas of wilderness and ceilings that must scrape the very surface of the stars, even though I can clearly hear some guy walking around on the third floor. (Is he God?) But this is America, and we must have places to put the things we are surely going to buy. I am happy in my new apartment. It is relaxing and peaceful there, and I can afford the rent, at least so far.
My birthday is on a Saturday this year (February 19th), which is really more pressure than I am prepared to handle right now.
Oof! Back to work.
January 25, 2005
And now I am back in Chicago. I was in Japan, and then I was in Russia, and then I was in Las Vegas, and then I was in Connecticut, and now I am here, again, in Chicago. I will write until this album is over, and then I will go for a walk, because it is sunny outside and it makes me kind of crazy to sit up here in this spare bedroom all day surrounded by my handful of possessions and the adjunct thousands of my stepfather's video collection.
"Did you know that you have two copies of Desperate Journey?" I asked.
"You can't have that one," he said.
"I wasn't asking for it," I said. "I was just making note of it."
"No, I need two copies of that," he said, eyeing me suspiciously.
I will do a brief job taking notes on a focus group on Wednesday, and then I will start working in a longer-term position on Friday. Over the weekend, I will move my stuff into a new apartment, and on Tuesday, I will move my self into that apartment. After that, I don't know. I have to go ahead and turn 27 in a few weeks. At some point, I should put together the Lego set of the Mos Eisley cantina scene that I bought on sale at a Target on New Year's Eve, allowing Lego Han Solo to shoot Lego Greedo first. I'll have to make a few phone calls and see if they offer memberships for discounted admission at the Division Street Russian Bath House, whose walking-distance proximity to my new apartment will be frequently exploited if they're willing to drop below $22 per visit. The yakuza baths in Kyoto only charged 300 yen. Even with the falling dollar, that's still pretty cheap. I miss the yakuza baths. I'll never know if that one guy got the yellow added to his full-back dragon tattoo. You could see where it was going to be, but...
(news) BASRA — As Iraq’s election campaign enters its final stages, most candidates are more worried about staying alive than canvassing for votes. Even the few like Shia politician Mansour Al Tamimi who have openly joined the electoral race are avoiding debates and rallies at all cost. Fears of assassination loom so large that most of the 7,500 candidates taking part in the January 30 poll are keeping their names secret, denying voters information normally considered fundamental to the democratic process.
Do you have to be a born or naturalized Iraqi citizen to run in their upcoming elections? If Nader had any kind of foresight, he would have ditched the U.S. presidential election and run in Iraq. He could have diverted all of his money from campus copy-shops to security and then won debate after debate just by showing up. He'd have achieved all of his purposes. Sure, there is the risk of getting blown up, but since when was that a concern? Come on. I am the only person who has vision.
Below, you will find a new set of photos, rather a large bunch, taken on my way up and down Mount Fuji in Japan over the summer. I discovered some interesting things on the trip, such as the fact that you should not attempt to climb a mountain in old basketball shoes, and also that my fear of heights, previously so slight as to be nothing more than an amusing footnote, becomes a major issue when it's dark and there are no lights or fences or handrails and I'm coming down a steep, smooth slope at an elevation of over 3000 meters, in old basketball shoes. But, really, it was fucking awesome, so please enjoy the photos. I didn't photograph the way that life-saving chocolate bars kept getting more and more expensive at each shack I passed, or that Coke and cans of hot corn cost about five dollars each at the summit. I had been in Japan for more than a year at that point, and the omnipresence of vending machines had ceased to be in any way remarkable by then.
January 9, 2005
My New Year's resolution is to quit signing my own name on my credit card receipts. I've had it with that; it is a sham and I renounce it. Leon Trotsky, Jean Valjean, Mookie Blaylock, Dingus McGee and Batman have recently made purchases that were charged against my account, and none of them were challenged. Come on, Trotsky (a diner) believed in the revolutionary overthrow of the entire system on which the card is based. Valjean (Citgo) is a convicted criminal and parole violator. Batman (Citgo), I can understand. Maybe he needed some gas to drive across town and stop the Joker, and you didn't want to stand in the way of that. But Mookie (Toys R Us)? Do I look like I never averaged more than 5.3 rebounds per game? Frankly, that's insulting.
That is my only resolution. I believe in keeping things modest.
The new photo gallery below is from Japan. Although only one of the two castles is found on the Osaka map of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters, the presence of ninjas at Himeji-jo make it a more than acceptable substitute for its lesser counterpart in Osaka, which can be picked up and thrown by any monster worth its sea-salt.
December 30, 2004
One of the things that I really missed about America was quarters. They are a bomb-ass form of currency and life in other countries is poorer for not having them. The 100 Yen coin in Japan is shaped much like a quarter, but it is dangerous for Americans when the dollar-unit is not represented by a paper bill, because we are not taught to be serious about how we spend our coins, and therefore they can go pretty quickly. Japanese money doesn't involve paper until you get up to 1000 Yen. I have a special fondness for the Y1000 bill, because it features Soseki Natsume, a novelist from the Meiji era whose most famous book was a 650 page epic called I Am A Cat in which the narrator is a cat, written long before college rhet class students were writing stories from the perspective of a spoon. I wound up at Natsume's summer house once, by accident, and found a life-size black-and-white cardboard cut-out of him kneeling on the porch, racking his brain for ideas, and I thought of the words of another of his narrators, Botchan:
"Ever since I was a child, my inherent recklessness has brought me nothing but trouble."
One of my students quoted that to me once, in their own translation.
No! I am talking about quarters. I don't need to tell you why they are good: they make arcades come to life, two of them buy you a can of pop, one of them buys a fine gumball, or at least it should. It's the phone-call coin. I have never felt completely without options as long as I am in possession of a quarter. The fifty-cent piece tried and failed to subordinate the quarter. Any coin that is called a 'piece' is not a coin that I trust. God damn! I found a dime on the street in Osaka once and was understandably perplexed. How can a coin that small expect to compete? On one hand, you could always swindle my brother into swapping a big nickel for a small dime. On the other hand, when you did, you'd earned five extra cents. Way to go. What are you going to get with that? And the little bastard holds a grudge.
When I returned to the USA, I was excited to see the progress that had been made in the State Quarters series since I'd been gone. I used to enjoy a good evening sitting around the fire, talking shit about the quarters of different states. (In case any readers of this webpage have ever thought that it might be fun to hang out with me, that should set you straight about what you could expect.) Ohio has and continues to be the best, as it prominently features a moon-man; Indiana was generally acknowledged as the next best, owing to their use of a giant race-car. The quarter of my current home state, Connecticut, is for shit, which is, in that way, much like the state slogan. But what are you going to do? They elect Joe Lieberman to the Senate here.
As for quarters introducted after I left, everyone knew Illinois was going to go with Lincoln, but at least it was Action Lincoln. Wisconsin probably has a valid claim to best quarter now, which must be something nice to talk about on those cold, wintry nights. The one that interested me the most, however, was Florida:
Has anyone else noticed how interesting that is? I know what they think they're going for with that design, or at least what they think you think they're going for. But has anyone noticed the order of events there? The Spanish galleon is arriving just after the space-ship has left. They are saying that the space-ship was there first. In other words, the Florida quarter argues for a retrograde interpretation of history - either that, or it's suggesting that human beings were planted on the earth by aliens. That's a pretty fucking provocative thesis for a state quarter, especially considering their electoral history.
It is a lazy Thursday afternoon at the consulting company. For all of my bluster about keeping their expectations precisely modulated to ensure the perfect nexus of slack and paycheck, it turns out that I finished the first draft of my project too early, so I had to take an unpaid holiday on Monday until they had the revisions ready. I was much more careful with the revisions, leaving thirty minutes' worth of work to be accomplished today, so that I could not be left at home again while they catch up. This is a nice consulting company, though, and I wish them no harm. I do good work for them. In a show of school spirit that surprised even me, I used orange-and-blue as the dominant color scheme for the presentations I worked on. The presentations are all about building teams and being a leader. Interestingly enough, counter to the notions of some of my colleagues, they do not appear to recommend punching people in the face. I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and put that in there for them. They seem wise, though, and perhaps they do not need my counsel. For example, there are always snacks in the kitchen. They keep a basket stocked with chips, peanuts and chocolate. Why do more businesses not realize that the loyalty earned with free food far outweighs the actual cost to purchase it? If Beelzetron had kept me stocked with cookies they'd have saved a fortune on white-out.
December 22, 2004
I am trying to get my sea legs back with this whole web-page thing. It's been a while. I did my best to keep it current while I was in Japan, but the fact is, to me, weblogs are all about being stuck at work. I don't really understand people who blog from places other than work. What is the motivation? If you weren't chained to a keyboard, only able to half-concentrate among the piercing hum of a hundred office machines, why wouldn't you just go outside and play, or read a book? For all of the goofy talk about digital content revolution, it has always seemed to me that weblogs are just the new media scheme for caged birds to sing. Or talk shit, as the case may be.
Poo-too-weet. There will be new photo galleries added over the next few weeks and they will be tremendously exciting, each bringing vivid illumination to some fascinating corner of the world. Below, you can already find a link to one such visual journey, in which monkeys run wild over a sleepy Japanese suburb and the police are helpless to stop them. There is a story that goes along with that gallery, and now seems like a good time to tell it. The suburb in question is in the northern part of Kyoto, near the mountains. My friends Tianni and Travis lived there. One warm summer night, not long before I left, they had me over to their place for dinner, and we had a grand time. Travis told me that one of his co-workers had talked to someone who claimed to have seen monkeys running through the streets in that area once, a long time ago. The monkeys had come down from the mountains for whatever reason, and then the police had chased them away. We talked about how great it would be if that were true. Monkeys in a city, I thought. Holy shit. When it was time to catch the last train, I walked back to the subway by myself, calling out "monkeys!" along the way in that way that I do when I'm walking around and looking for something I don't really expect to find. (Friends of mine will know the tone of voice.) Then I boarded the train and went home. Tianni had the next day off, so I didn't see her until Tuesday. When she came into work, she pressed her digital camera into my hands without a word. The photo gallery below records what had happened the next morning.
Honestly, if you are not standing on your feet and cheering by the last photograph, I do not know you.
I went to the Mark Twain House on Saturday. Let me tell you, Mark Twain had a fucking awesome house. His wallpaper was 84% better than the best wallpaper I had ever seen before. They had the house all decked out for Christmas, which was nice. The tour guide said they hoped to have the kitchen restored by May, so maybe I'll go back and check out the kitchen.
July 28, 2004
Suddenly my house was full of Japanese people barely able to express their fervent wish for cargo shorts from Abercrombie & Fitch. The web-site was confounding to them; when they sent a party to solicit my help, the rest were gathered around the house computer downstairs, mucking about on the investor relations page. Why are these people in my house? I thought. I do not know most of them. Who are they? Which one of them intends to wear these shorts? A representative pressed a scrap of paper into my hands with a mailing address almost a hundred miles away. I set up an account for the leader, who identified herself as Goki, and then found the shorts they wanted: men's cargo shorts, on sale. Their credit card was no good, and they sent me away while they called the bank. Twenty minutes later, I was summoned to finish the transaction and promised watermelon. I thought, well, might as well see this one through, and also watermelon is good. I ordered the shorts and they spent the next five minutes thanking me and bowing to me. Now I am enjoying some watermelon, and it's just another summer day.
Last night I was at the public baths when a yakuza captain walked in, flanked by a few lieutenants. The unaffiliated Japanese people scrambled out of there, but I had only just arrived, and frankly they did not seem bothered by my presence. The captain took a while stripping down while the hastily-naked lieutenants ran around clearing the sit-down shower stalls and setting up a cascade of bowls with warm soapy water. One of them disappeared with my soap and soap-dish, which I had left in the shower stall I had used, as per local custom. "Watashi no desu," I muttered. The bright green dragon on his back sneered in my general direction as he disappeared with my soap.
I was writing that, and the Japanese returned with another emissary. Apparently, in their enthusiasm, they had attempted to repeat what I'd done and had ordered another pair of shorts, which they did not want. Also, Goki was spelling her name differently now. I went downstairs and fixed everything to the usual outsized amount of praise.
So, I was sitting there in the steam room, watching helplessly through the window as the lieutenant disappeared with my soap, and finally the captain walked in. A lieutenant turned on a shower for him, and he sat under the water long enough to get went. Then a lieutenant held open the door of the steam room while another walked in and set a white cushion on the bench next to me. The first lieutentant kept the door open - you're letting all the steam out, idiot - while the second grabbed a bowl and splashed water from the baths on the floor in a trail from where the captain sat to the door of the steam room. The captain stood up and followed the path. When he was inside, the first lieutenant closed the door and stood by his side while the second, joined by a third, continued scooping water out of the baths and splashing it all over the floor. The captain looked at me and I nodded. He nodded back. After less than a minute, he headed outside and sat back down at the shower stall. The three lieutenants went into formation around him. One began barking military-like signals and another began dumping the bowls over the captain's head, one-by-one, while the third refilled them. Several bowls later, they made an abrupt departure and I was alone.
I swear this is all happening in real-time: the Japanese just sent another emissary to ask what kinds of fruit I like, because they intend to buy me a great deal of fruit for what I've done. I still don't understand who these people are, but let me press on with some recent events.
On Father's Day, I was given the following cookie by the grocery store:
I kept it for a few days, and then I went ahead and ate it. Should those who are not fathers be given cookies intended for those who are? Well, the cookie was all right, and as has always been my policy, I apologize for nothing when it comes to cookies.
My friend Andrew did a special lesson - open to any student - on jazz and blues music. Tadashi showed up. He is a deranged little man, the least-successful son in a family of successful businessmen, perhaps because he forms half-cocked plans such as working as a bag-boy at a grocery store subsidiary of a corporation he admires, believing it sent a message to the executive board about his respect for them. I had him in a lesson I did once on language for buying gifts. While the other students decided to buy jewelry, setting up purchasing roleplays nicely, Tadashi gave his hypothetical mother the gift of some groceries. I yelled at him and he acknowledged his mistake. He announced one day that he was getting fat and began chain-smoking to help him lose weight - which he did, although now his clothes are too big. He spends his weekends doing volunteer palm readings at bookstores. One day, I did not feel like teaching a lesson, so I told him to read my palm instead. He gasped with astonishment and said that I had two emotion lines, whereas most people have only one; I had an extremely hot emotion line and an extremely cold one. That figures, I thought. Tadashi also said that I was moving in the right direction to meet my destiny, which should arrive around the time I am 35, and that my 22nd year had been very significant for me. I did nothing when I was 22; I did less that year than any year since perhaps my infancy. But that's what Tadashi said.
Anyway, Andrew had some madlib blues lyrics ready for the students, and here are Tadashi's:
Woke up this (time of day) NIGHT and I crawled right out of (uncomfortable place) JAIL.
Well, my (someone or something you care about) BOYGIRL FRIEND was gone and I was left here all (medical condition) NERVOUSNESS.
Yeah, I ain't had no (something good) SALARY since (date) WW II.
No, I been (something bad) SLAVING and (even worse) JAIL since (see date above) WW I.
Think I'll go and (method of suicide) SMOKE DRRUNK before the (see condition above) SLAVING gets too much.
It was true on the day those lyrics were written and it is true today that the line "Yeah, I ain't had no salary since World War 2" causes me to lose my shit.
June 13, 2004
ONE OF MY STUDENTS RECAPS THE NBA FINALS FOR YOU
I love basketball: playing it, watching it, talking about it. Mayumi is a student who used to come to my school regularly, and if there were no other students in the class, I would toss the book lesson and just teach her basketball terminology. She played basketball when she was in high school, and she was tall for her age, so her coach started her at power forward. Because this was before the current generation of 7-foot European finesse players who play in the low post and are equally capable of shooting from the perimeter, the coach yelled at her whenever she shot three-pointers, which is what she really wanted to do. And so, a promising basketball career was stifled; Dirk Nowitzki came too late for this poor woman.
Now Mayumi is too busy with work and her family to come to class, so we correspond by email every once in a while about the NBA playoffs. Being a devotee of Mike Bibby and the Sacramento Kings, she was heartbroken to see her team fall just short once again. We agreed that we were hoping for an Indiana vs Minnesota match-up in the Finals, which did not come about either. But we're both solidly behind the Detroit Pistons and their heroic efforts in the struggle against the creeping miasma of the Los Angeles Lakers. Because I thought it was excellent writing and because I wanted to know if readers could see my influence as a teacher in the writing of my students, here is Mayumi's recap of Game Three:
I watched Game 3 of the Finals yesterday. I was so excited about the Pistons. Pistons was back to defense that is quick, and their rebounds were stronger than Lakers. Shaq and Kobe couldn't get points as usual. I think Defense is the best Offense. And if it gets many rebounds it will be able to control of the game! Beet L.A. !! I'm sorry I'm difficult to explain...
I think that is damn fine analysis.
June 12, 2004
Oh, early summer crazy, I am your victim again. How many summers must I feel your wrath? This is the fourth since I have been out of college. Let me be free of you! Let me become accustomed to working full-time during the season of warm weather! I make such poor, irrational decisions when you are coursing through my veins. 'Trouble' ceases to be my middle name and becomes my first. I had to spend most of last summer in a temple to ensure I didn't do anything I would regret. I have spoken to the Buddhist masters about the early summer crazy, and they have assured me that I am just going to have to deal with it. Fuck those guys! I wish to be free! On the plus side, apparently I became invulnerable to the weapons of mortal men midway through last month. It's possible that the Buddhist masters were just telling me that to get me out of their office. I'm not sure. Well, either way, it was nice of them to say.
Oh, that's enough. I'm all right. I had about the best week ever, so I have no reason to complain. The only serious problem I have right now, other than patience, is finding a place to shoot a summer monkey photo series, which will complete the year. The best unexplored frontier is way down south, in the mystical forests of Yakushima, but I don't think I'll have the resources to make it down there. I remember mention of monkeys over-running a city called Totsukawa that's not too far away, but I haven't been able to turn up any more information on that story. Awajishima is a possibility - it's an island not far from Kobe, and there is apparently a monkey park there. But I kind of prefer the 'monkeys in mystical forests' and 'monkeys over-running a city' angles. Don't worry, I won't let you down. I am very serious about these things.
Here is sadness, though: Lost In Translation has finally received limited release in Japan, but it is only playing in Tokyo and Kanagawa right now, with no assurances that it will ever come to Kyoto or Osaka. Obviously some powerful observations could be made whilst watching it with a Japanese audience. I have some notion that I ought to take up a collection to pay for the bullet train ticket up there with the pledge that I'll write up the results into the kind of serious fucking journalism for which I am known, but those bullet train tickets are really rather expensive. I've seen it, anyway, thanks to Mr. Internet. (People think he is only good at porn and weblogs, but he is also good at movies, bless him.) A few people emailed last fall to ask what I thought about the movie, being in Japan and all. "It is as it was," I reply. So there's that.
There is a new version of Coke in the vending machines here. It's called 'Coca-Cola C2'. Supposedly, they are test-marketing it in Japan before it is released in the United States. Of course, the packaging is of little help when attempting to discern the intent or angle behind this formula. It tastes like regular Coke with something-or-other missing. It might be the no-carb soda that idiots across America have been demanding, or perhaps it's sodium-free, or perhaps it's aimed at religious separatists who believe that things that have taste are temptations of the devil. Either way, it is not very good, and I suspect that somebody in the head office is going to be doing 'the honorable thing' because of this by the time the summer's over.
I made some falafel for dinner and it turned out reasonably well, so much so that I would like to eat it again. This box of falafel mix was a gift. I have some notion that more can be purchased at the international food store somewhere downtown, but I think it would be much more fun if boxes of falafel were simply mailed to me by people who read this webpage. If I know you as well as I think I know you, you will enjoy sauntering into the post office and, when asked what it is that you are mailing, declaring that you are mailing some falafel to Japan. Let me also include the caveat that the new Japanese girl in our house had never eaten falafel before, so I gave her a piece along with some of the cucumber dip that goes along with it, and she apparently enjoyed it so much that she did the dishes while I was upstairs eating. (She was downstairs watching "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!") I have some concern that this may mean we're married now, but I'm going to assume the best. So, please send the falafel to the following address:
M. HEIDEN
217 Iwataki-cho
Sanomiya-cho Dori
Shimogyo-ku
Kyoto-shi 600-8115
Japan
Please mark the box 'FALAFEL'. Thank you. Once you have done so, please turn off the lights in your room and stare at the following image for seventy-five consecutive minutes:
Shortly thereafter, you should become separated from your body and begin to visualize yourself as a sort of Sanrio Santa Claus, tumbling through the pink aether with Col. Sanders and the Kitty:
At that point you will be given the choice of learning the secret of your birth or the secret of your death. It may not be clear which character holds which secret. Choose well.
May 28, 2004
Let us now speak of animals. First, I would like to discuss how they can be employed in the education of those who seek to speak English:
ANIMAL KNOCKOUT
This is a simple game that is played with the animal flashcards that are intended to be used in the kids classes. The deck is shuffled, the cards are dealt and the terms 'high-stakes', 'fold' and 'hold 'em' are taught, more for the instructor's amusement than anything else. (Anyone who has lived in Japan for any period of time will know that there is no need to teach Japanese people the word 'gambler'.) Each student lays down an animal, and then a battle ensues in which students attempt to 'knockout' the other students' animals by playing cards from their hand and making comparisons in which their animal is superior to that of their opponent. ("My monkey is smarter than your mouse," etc.) In the game's debut, Chisato (a housewife) and Chieko (a thirteen year old girl) savaged each others' forces, leaving the witless Morihisa (god knows what he does for a living) largely unscathed. It was looking like a serious tactical error when Chieko was left with only a rabbit to face Morihisa, who was showing a horse and had, let's face it, already done seven lessons on how to make comparisons whereas she was on her first, but Morihisa, frozen, was unable to generate a comparison in which the horse trumped the rabbit and could only watch as his entire kingdom was laid to waste by the rabbit.
THE WORLD FAMOUS ANIMAL TOURNAMENT
One thing I like very much about Japanese people is that they can always be counted on to have an opinion about animals. Now, I'm fairly confident that any of my friends could produce a top-five-animals list in fairly short order, but the average man-on-the-street back in the USA has, I suspect, not given very much thought to the subject, which is very stupid not to have done. At the beginning of the class, students are asked to list their top five animals. (Nobody has trouble doing this.) Then they are taught how to make similes ('_ is as [adj.] as _' or '_ is not as [adj.] as _'), and while they are doing a silent reading exercise, I use the top five lists to seed the tournament. Snakes, wolves and pirahnas get automatic bids because they are featured in the text lesson I use to give the exercise an air of scholastic legitimacy, and also because every great competition needs villains as well as heroes, teams you root for as well as teams you root against. All of the #1 animals from the students' lists make the tournament, and so do animals featured on more than one list. Then, after some educational mumbo-jumbo, we are ready to play. Comparisons must be made, each series is best-of-three; the rest is up to chance.
For two consecutive tournaments, Dogs came in as the consensus top-ranked species, and for two consecutive tournaments, Dogs made first-round exits. Their collapse in the first tournament remains the most shocking. Though hardly a small-species team, Birds had shown very little support prior to the match, earning a bid only because I had spent a while explaining the differences between parrots and parakeets and I needed a low-ranked team to fill out the lower end of the bracket. (The seeding procedures weren't completely finalized at that point.) In the end, Dogs' inability to fly cost them greatly. Birds' triumph was short-lived, as they got swept by Goldfish in the next round. But for a while, they were the toast of the Animal Tournament.
Dogs would suffer another upset loss to Pirahnas in the Animal Tournament II before finally righting the ship and reaching the finals against Cats in Animal Tournament III, going on to topple Cinderella-story Koalas in Animal Tournament IV. "I fucking hate Dogs," said Andrew, a fellow teacher. "They're the Manchester United of Animal Tournament."
Pirahnas are the Gonzaga of Animal Tournament. They never, ever appear on anyone's top five lists, yet tournament after tournament, thanks largely to the sharpness of their teeth and their swimming ability, they upset a larger-species competitor and go on an improbable run that stops just short of the trophy. In Animal Tournament II, the class wiseacre decided that he was backing Pirahnas all the way, and his aggressive approach stunned the rest of the class; before they had really begun to get comfortable with the target structure, he'd led Pirahnas to an upset of heavily-favored Dogs. (Dogs vs. Pirahnas is one of the great rivalries of Animal Tournament. They played twice more after that first matchup, with Dogs winning the next two.) By the time the next round began, the rest of the class was a little more prepared to back their own animals. Pirahnas took the first comparison, but Cats roared back to seize the second. The wiseacre was ready and spoke quickly, making a comparison on the grounds of 'cool'...but he made a key mistake in sen