Japanese Adventures

This blog defunct EDIT

2005-10-24T16:12:00.000-04:00

All information here is relevant now only as a historical curiosity. Please see my further adventures at Feeling is First. ::Note: this link was broken. It now points to the right site.::

Peace.

Homepage Facelifts and My Last Week

2005-08-24T00:11:00.000-04:00

Hey yo. So it is now wednesday of what is really my last week at work. Next week, I am technically working but will spend monday tues and wednesday cleaning my apartment (Read sleeping late and playing video games,then scrambling on wednesday).

I still havent finished my annual report nor my august version of News I, the newsletter I have to write. Curse you charley for your innovation! If you read this drop me a comment now and again!

www.alistapart.com and www.thefacebook.com seem to have both spit out brand new designs yesterday. A List Apart is perhaps the more important of the two, but the facebook change looks a lot slicker and more professional - did you know they are funded by the CIA? Did I post about that? I think it's funny.

So this week I am teaching my boss HTML. All his bosses keep coming up and telling me he is too dumb and won't understand but he's got the basic idea down within 2days and we are going to start work on the nissen page whenever he finishes faffing and comes over here to work on it.

Last night dropped Alex's car off for him in Mino. about 90 mins away driving,took the midnight train home. The midnight train stopped in the Mishima station and then didnt start again. They kept asking us to wait a bit longer and finally like an hour and a half goes by and they come down the aisle and ask me and jackie to take a cab, which they paid for. Apparently the train broke. Result is, it's 230 and we're in a taxi about an hour from home and I ask him could e please drive us to jackies apartment instead of to the station, cuz it:s not much farther and the other guy in the ab has to go to Saijo so its kinda on the way. He put up such a fight, he wanted to leave us in front of a deserted train station at 3am, and us falling over exhausted. The station is about a 30 min walk from jackie's so that would have just been v irritating. I was like "Are you serious? There are no other cabs here, it's 3am dude, just take us to where we have to go I will pay you the extra 300 yen of fare." and he was like "I am supposed to take you to Niihama station, I have no soul, oooooooooooo....." and so I punched him in the face and he finally drove us to jackie's, wisecracking the whole time about how far it was. The other guy in the car was pissed. Bad manners? Maybe. But no choice, jackie lives 3 blocks north of the street he had to take to Saijo, I can't believe he had issues with that request. Whatever.

So now I am tired and my stomach hurts and my eyes hurt. Do I whine too much? I think so. AT least I got most of my shopping done. I just gotta get stuff for family now. Blah. Work. More later, presumably.

The Big Picture: Corante > The Loom >

2005-08-23T03:59:00.000-04:00

The Big Picture: Corante > The Loom >

dodgeit - free. receive-only. email. no set up. rss.

2005-08-19T01:47:00.000-04:00

dodgeit - free. receive-only. email. no set up. rss.

way cool

Todd's Take on Japan: u t o d d p i a: Japan

2005-08-19T00:16:00.000-04:00

u t o d d p i a: Japan

Todd was asked the barrage of socio-political questions that everyone living in Japan gets asked every now and again, and has compiled and answered them succinctly and honestly. A great read for some basic information on Japanese culture in the here and now.

Blog Update

2005-08-17T03:02:00.000-04:00

Zach is in town. Met him in Osaka on friday. Spent friday night wandering, went to Nara on Saturday. Nara is amazing. There are hundreds of small deer that are completely unafraid of people, if slightly annoyed by gawking tourists rubbing them. If they smell food on you they will run up and chew through your pockets to get it.

In Nara is Todaiji. This means East Big Temple. I dunno about east but it is big. Photos as soon as I steal them from zachary. It is either the largest or the oldest wooden structure on earth, I forget which but could believe either. Just a massive wooden temple the size of the IX-center in cleveland (okay thats an exageration but youknowhatImean). Inside is a big buddha.

When I say big buddha, I mean that one petal of the lotus flower he is sitting on is 5 times my size. This is one big-ass buddha, sittin there lookin' all peaceful like. Next to him are other statues, not as impressive as they are only 3-5 times Zach's height. Some of these things were fierce - samurai warriors, or ghosts, or something, but these statues were ready to kick some ass. Again, photos as they come. If you go to Japan, go to Nara. Karen, sorry we didn't go there. :-D

Then back to Osaka for more wandering and a night ferry home to Niihama. Spent the first half of monday sleeping and the second half showing zach what there is to be seen across this town. That includes both temples and a few shrines. Stopped at hardware store to buy the stuff I needed to wire Jackie's phone line. Guess I managed to learn a thing or two from my dad afterall. Took zach back to jackie's, joshka and david came down and we had a great big dinner that I cooked (ok, zach peeled the shrimp) and some wine and watched Lost in Translation. I loved that movie before but like it so much more now. The only scene I don't like is that failed attempt at comedy where the absurd hooker comes to his room. But maybe it really is like that? I dunno, whatever. The film is great. It really captures the I-am-a-foreigner-in-japan experience, as well as the more elusive two-foreigners-interacting-in-japan experience very well.

The next day was mountain climbing. Jackie was somehow misinformed as to the affair and thought we were going swimming (that was perhaps due to vague instructions on my part?) so was a little confused in her bathing suit and flipflops when I explained it would be about a 2-hour hike to the top. She and Trisha hung back and walked in the river whilst zach and I tore up the big ass mountain and were rewarded with an amazing view. I had been up there before, but it was completely cloudy and I couldn't see anything. This time, I could see Niihama far off into the distance, fading into the sea. I got Z to take a photo of me looking off the cliff onto the city for my farewell shot in my final report. Again, will post shortly.

Today, zach explores niihama while I work. It is report writing day and my boss is looking over everything I have written. Lots of red ink. A combination of "tell your honest feelings about this year" and "egad you can't say that!" ensue. She knows I have been frustrated here, probably she reads my blog (hey there boss), so she is surprised to learn that I plan to do JET after this. She tells me most of the jets she knows are kind of sad and aimless, spending their best years doing work that isn't really anything but a delay of real life. I tell her it's good money and a chance to travel and she tells me that if I can't find meaning in life at home then I am not going to find it by leading an upscale lifestyle in Japan. I cannot help but agree. Her concern for my future is half touching and half sad, because I know she has her own regrets about her youth. At any rate I appreciate the empathy, being a whiney oaf and all.

Am finally starting to get the twinges of "...and then?" that I always knew would accompany my encroachment into The Future. Graduation in less than a year, and then? I guess grad school in english, but does that even interest me? I guess it does. Web design? Interesting for now. Meditation in a zen monastary? Ha, why not.

How are some people just interested in living life and others not? How do some people pick things and stick with them for 80 years, while some of us can't make karate practice twice in a month? Whatsit in me that makes me so damn unsatisfied and unsatisfiable?

Life is a mystery to me, but I am not altogether interested in solving it. Does that make me a bad person, fundamentally? Just the ultimate end of my fatal laziness, perhaps? Odd. Such emptiness. But they say that finding emptiness is difficult - perhaps I have an advantage?

Blog, blog, blog your life, dull though it may beee...

2005-08-10T20:04:00.000-04:00

verily verily verily verily I say unto thee...

I am not so sure where that is coming from.

Last night was my goodbye party from Nissen, it was a lot of fun. It wasn't just me, one of the managers got a promotion and is going to another office far away, and one of the women is getting married and quitting, and there are two new guys. So the five of us were the guests of honor and sat with the president of the company during dinner. Nice big dinner course, lots of booze, etc. Very tasty, a lot of people came to talk to me and ask me about my life and plans and etc.

We also each had to get up and say something in front of everyone. When it was my turn I gave a perfunctory thank you speech, it was all very laid back and casual atmosphere. Then everyone started asking m questions, wouldnt let me sit down. Best experiences, favorite things I did, etc.

Then the president's hand came up and he asks "How many girlfriends did you have in Japan?" to which I replied "Too many" and moved to sit but one of the other managers asked me "What are the main differences between japanese girls and american girls?" and I was like "uhhh" and then my main boss raised his hand and I was all relieved and he was like "Yes, we all want to know, please tell us."

At which point I said, "Sumimasen, nihongo ga wakarimasen." which means "Sorry, I dont understand japanese" and bowed and had a seat. It was fun.

After the dinner, one of the managers I didn't know too well kindly invited me out for drinks with some of the other guys and we had a good time. Some things about japan I will miss greatly.

Alison left wednesday morning. I am going to build her a website. At some point. For her art. At her goodbye party on tuesday night I accidentally used the old kendo shove on her and threw her across the parking lot. Then I accidentally hit jackie in the head twice with joshka's monk walking stick/sword. Hermmm...mayhaps I shouldn't be telling that story too loud.

TONIGHT, it being Thursday the 11th of August, I am going to hop (that means board) the ferry to Osaka with Jackie and we shall embark upon a quest to the great city. We arrive friday morning and spend the day doing whatever it is poor people do in Osaka. Then we go meet zach at the airport and take him out for a feast. Then the three of us find a love hotel (don't ye be gettin any ideas!) and spend the night in Osaka, then Saturday we catch a train to Nara.

Nara was the first permanent capital of Japan, before it moved to Kyoto and now Tokyo. At Nara, one can see Todaiji, which might just be the biggest and I am pretty sure is the oldest wooden structure in the world. Massive massive massive temple, the photos I have seen make it look like the sand crawler from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. There are also herds of wild deer there that chase after people. Sounds like a blast, ne?

So then in Nara we meet with Tricia and sleep in another love hotel (look, they're cheap, ok?) and then Sunday jackie returns to Osaka to catch a bus to Niihama. Zach and I, on the other hand, will buy a super train ticket in Nara and ride to Tokushima, which is on Shikoku. There we shall spend two days participating in a drunken dance festival. Everyone at work urges me to attend, they say if I dont go to the tokushima dance festival then the year is wasted. So that should be fun. I guess the whole they dance they sing "Fools are dancing and fools are watching. Both are fools, so why not dance?" It's a fair point.

So then monday or tuesday we catch a train from Tokushima to Niihama. The train system in Shikoku is kinda dismal, so itll take us a few hours to wind around from Tokushima to Niihama. By a few hours I mean a long, long time. Like 8 hours. But it's cool cuz we can sight-see and such.

So then zach and I will have a grand old time and then he will leave for Tokyo. By bicycle. Good luck with that, chief.

Anyway, that's a wrap. Stay tuned for next time on...

My Blog.

Swimming in the Pacific

2005-08-08T01:48:00.000-04:00

...or, How to Jump Waves Whilst Antagonizing Surfers

So Jackie and I were sitting around watching lousy movies saturday morning and we had a conversation along the lines of:

M: I'm tired.
J: Me too.
M: Let's take Alex's car, hop the expressway down to Kochi, eat someplace really expensive, spend the night down there, catch the morning shopping market, then head west on Route 56 until we hit an appropriately attractive strip of beach, where we can stop to play in the water, then drive for hours and hours around the western side of Shikoku before finally stopping in Ozu to buy some crappy snacks and then catch the expressway home?
J: Yeah ok.

So we did.

It was pretty cool, there was a food/bar/thing called Jungri-La in Kochi where I drank imported european beer and ate some sort of shrimp-and-alligator stir fry. Then we went to an Italian restaurant and had pasta and pizza and a bunch of wine. Then we found a hotel and I crashed and was asleep relatively early though my parents called (ever notice people only ever call you right after you have fallen asleep?) and told me they were going to give me some money for the purposes of me having money as I wrap up my japanese adventure. Cool. Thanks parents, I shall use it wisely (and cut back on imported beer and alligator meat (Can you just see this image of me as some sort of crazed dilletante (did I spell that right?) eating alligator meat and expensive beer on a whimsical trip to the coast? That's so 1870's British Aristocratic Youngest Son)). Then I went back to sleep, cuz that's the best course of action in a strange city with limited time on your hands.

So next day, we went to market and it sucked so we stopped at dollar store and i bought some camo boxers because I had neglected to pack a swimsuit and my extra underwear was wet from me wading at the shitty beach fully dressed. Then we left Kochi and drove until we found a great little beach, I changed into my extra shorts and my running shorts that I had brought for the ocassion and went for a swim. The water was gorgeous blue, the waves were a few feet over my head and the temperature was perfect. Great time, great introduction to the pacific.

Then we drove and drove and drove and drove, with periodic stops at Conbini's for bathroom use and food.

We were going to go see Alison in Matsuyama but I was just too tired. So we didn't.

Then we watched Finding Neverland which was I guess okay but a little too warm-hearted for my cold-hearted sensibilities.

Look for Jackie's video blog to emerge some time in the near future. She just got a computer and is actually computer-savvy for someone of her generation. (snicker). She will likely get internet soon enough and plans to create a blog where she can post little 60-second film clips from her cell phone. We took a bunch on our trip. Could be interesting and funny. Might be shit. Will keep you posted, I suppose!

I guess that's all for now.

Oh, and I have a new plan. I would like to be a JET in Okinawa. www.okinawajet.com

Sap

2005-08-05T02:51:00.000-04:00

I am confused. Very existensial, teen-angsty sort of mood. Driven by various conflicting impulses as regards the nature of self and who I am and, to quote Lost in Translation, who I am supposed to be.

I feel sometimes as though I am standing on a razor-thin cliff and if I fall one way I land in a room with a thousand angry apes and if I fall the other I land in a room with an enormous bloated venomous snake, and everyone is standing around me shouting which way I should fall but fuck if I know who to believe and even if I figured out which option was preferable I have no way of knowing if I even have any influence in which way I fall. And sometimes the wind picks up. And its like everyone is talking about ethics and right and wrong and I just want to stay standing. I have made it this far. Maybe I won't fall. But that leaves me on an edge. In the end, do I face the apes, an exercise in identification, or do I choose the snake and a trial of solitude?

Or do I sit on the fence?

Told you it was teen angsty. I should put on some emo and cry about ex girlfriends while I am at it. Life is funny.

Are other people worth it? The vast majority seem worthless, and accepting that gives me a small shot of elitist sentiment until I realize that rounded up that makes everyone worthless and what the fuck am I? But I am worthless, so there must be something to life besides worth?

I am a solipsistic self-loving bastard with no center. I am the universe, callous and cold, with no boundaries. Where has this mood come from?

A poem (yeats not me, "The Second Coming"):

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Another, but I think Eliot might be a complete loser. But why not, the last three lines from his the love song of j alfred prufrock:

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

And what the hell, we are feeling arty, here is Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach. When I first read this I cried myself to sleep at night for a month. Seems a bit much in retrospect, but you know teenagers:

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Does this qualify as a dark romantic mood? Perhaps I should be reading Byron but that needs wine and a solid text in front of one. I should give Manfred a spin. Although, there is one...

Darkness:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

...But, of course, She Walks in Beauty...

She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Love or death?

A photograph:

Karen took this. This is ritsurin park in Takamatsu. It is an image of what Japan would look like if haiku poets ruled the earth. As we all know, most of the haiku poets were destroyed in their last bid for world conquest, put down by gas station attendents and southern baptists, but they say a few remain and artificial manufactured peace may yet replace the artificial manufactured chaos we know today.

Me, I just liked the park.

So yeah, I am suffering from space madness. This is v odd. I am home a month from today. This whole year was a dream?

Zach comes in a week. That'll be fun.

What is real? What is worth it? Will you be my friend? Even if I don't always treat you right? I am learning.

What a sappy-ass post.

Sensationalism?

2005-08-04T02:36:00.000-04:00

Pharyngula::Bush endorses Intelligent Design creationism

so like, I was thinking. It strikes me that this is basically the age in which the future of religion is going to be decided. The more science I read, the more I see a growing disjunction between Science and Religion - Reason and Magic, as wiser men than I have called it. Not you, Dan, whoever you were quoting. But yeah, I think science has to win, even if it looks bleak right now. The more we learn the more the scientists can do and the priests and shamans can't. Mythology can't cling forever. Jon, this isn't even going as far as your imperative towards the scientific method - it's a pure value question and I believe straight-forward memetic evolution will sort it out.

Religious advocates are becoming, by necessity, almost antagonistic towards science - or at best ambivalent towards the processes that drives science.

By the same token, the scientific community seems to be putting up with less and less from the religious community. It's getting to the point now where one will have to chose a faction: either one believes in science, or one believes in religion. It didn't used to be like this - it was never a question of values. It used to be, "Yeah, I believe in God and God made the world and the world has physics, duh." So you could accept both using nice clean-cut second grade logic.

But now, there are certain values that are coming into question - and nothing illustrates this better than the "intelligent design" debate. The religious community must by default ultimately reject the basic scientific value, reason. I like how completely exasperated the author of the above-linked article sounds - the debate has moved from the theological speculative realm to a practical realm where, quite literally, a large portion of uneducated americans are insisting rather strongly that their children be taught lies. Intelligent Design is NOT a valid scientific theory, it's unfalsifiable, untestable, un-anything. It is a myth! I am not going to say that it is impossible that it is true; but to say that it is scientific is offensive.

So yeah, a value split. Are you there with God, the old white man with the beard and "holy water" on his breath, shouting down the scientists and damning fags and jews and censoring art? Or are you with the progressives, the godless, with value on truth and freedom and reason?

God, that is an old debate. Why am I just really feeling it now? I have been doing a lot of pop science reading, ever since Pinker got me started, and ya know what? They have answers for damn near all of it and they know what answers they need for the rest. I like the guy who said "What bothers me most about the creationists isn't that they are willing to believe a lie but that they are willing to settle for such a boring, easy lie. I mean, once we figure out How It Happened, the truth will be so much more astounding and beautiful..."

So yeah, I like that truth is knowable. Findable. Etc. I am with science. If you or your god want to come give us a hand, we could use the help on an AIDS vaccine, or ironing the kinks out of string theory. If ya'll just wanna sit around scratching your holy arses, well, I guess that's your prerogative but don't come near my kids, I don't trust you or your motivations.

Now, religion and LITERATURE, well, that's a different story. Catholocism is the single grandest work of art I am familiar with. If you want to teach creationism in English class I won't complain - though Milton is a better writer than, apparently, God, and I recommend Paradise Lost over Genesis, but ya know, to each their own.

Man, am I gonna become one of those really irritating people who are vocally against organized religion (pause for effect, as they do, when they say that, and looking at you meaningfully while giving you time to understand how clever their distinction between organized religion and non)? Nah, I don't think so, it's really not worth really arguing about or discussing (outside of your lit class).

Another article, a review of a book. I didn't find this too helpful but it has a few interesting thoughts in it Click.

So yeah, I guess science on my mind.

Here are a few more links for you:
3 Quarks Daily: Science, Lit, Culture Blog. Stephen Pinker's glowing endorsement.

Cosmic Variance: Science Blog, various social opinions thrown in for fun. Informal. Lots of useful links on the sidebar.

Devil's Details: Web Design Nexus. They notice little details that people have put into their pages, anything noticable or interesting. Cutting edge design ideas. Kinda cool.

So some good newws:

Scholarships: Apparently I DO have three quarters worth of National Merit. Groovy. That leaves me with one quarter of college that was paid for by a mysterious unknowable benefactor. Maybe it was god?

Job: I emailed my old boss Skip to ask if he had any room for me in his lab. He is in charge of the Digital Union, a primarily Mac-driven research center that is filled with prototype technology. He told me that, given the stuff I am into (web design, macs, photoshop) he might be able to find a place for me. Yippie.

Internship: Oh hell, I will just write about my current activities after this.

So yeah, work is going okay. I finished with the chemical company on friday. Starting this week I am spending a month in the Main Office where I started, writing reports. Have been trying to come to terms with exactly what happened at chemical company and why the page isn't done. It comes down to this: my supervisor was supposed to get me new content to put into the page. He first set about asking for said content around the 20th of July. As opposed to, say, March. As of today, said content has not yet been put together. I have gotten the page as far as I can get it. From here on out they is on their own, I guess. I will of course go back after my report writing to teach him how to make websites. At that point, if he has gotten it all together I will show him how to update the page. If not, it really is not my fault. I harbor no ill will and now that the threat of deadline is no longer over my head I am not filled with the murderous rage that characterized my mood all summer.

Speaking of which, I should mention that Todd, next year's intern (not to be confused with our old todd), told me that he's been reading my blog. (hi todd!) That's cool and all but it begs the question where did he hear about it? I suspect from Charley and Charley from Pat or something like that so it's all cool. Actually even if he heard about it from my boss and she is secretly aware of it it's fine. The one thing that worries me though is that my posts of late have been none too flattering towards little old niihama or this little old kaisha. So Todd, I don't want to scare you off. I have been crazy frustrated at times, but if I had it to do over again I would still come to Niihama. I would just perhaps be more organized about it. Anyway read around and you will find (erm, I hope) that I also have plenty of nice things to say.

This has turned into a bloated little post, eh? Still, not as long as those I wrote in my glory days. 5, 6 pages at a time, ne? Sometimes up to 10? Can't believe ya'll read all this shit. Posting has been sporadic and sparse of late tho, eh? Maybe like 5 posts this summer? Ah well, I believe I said in my very first post that there would be draughts. Is that how you spell Drout? english is funny.

Anyway, another month left in Japan, adventuring - and so, by extension, another month of Japanese Adventures. (That's the name of my blog.) After this I will open a new website and new blog, but not for a while I suspect. I will likely host it on Jon's www.gardennet.org, as soon as we get that sorted out. But that is in the future. In the meantime, if you want to be made aware of any future blogging activities from me, please drop a comment.

And that, as they say...

2005-07-27T21:28:00.000-04:00

Hey gang. Are you a gang? By saying "hey gang," am I somehow intrinsically implying a relation between the various readers of this humble journal?

The picture on the right is from the drinking party the company had after we mountain climbed, that's senba-san next to me, I work with her.

Work...is like, finished. I have gotten the homepage as far as it will go, my boss has told me there is nothing more for me to do until they send me new information to update the old stuff, and nobody has sent me anything of the sort. So I dunno if I count as a disgrace or not, I kinda blame my boss cuz he was supposed to ask for new information for me months ago and didn't do it until last week. But I don't reeeally care.

So. Here is how my last month is going to shape up.

Monday Aug 1 - Friday Aug 5: Writing July Report and year report.

Aug 6-7: chill.

Monday Aug 8-Thursday Aug 11: correct drafts of year report. Finish year report by Thursday, August 11.

Friday, August 12: be in Osaka to meet Zach, who is spontaneously coming for a week.

Saturday, Aug 13: go to Nara with Zach and Jackie and Tricia.

Sunday, Aug 14: Back to Osaka. Maybe kyoto? Jackie has to be back in Niihama by Monday Morning, so we shall see. I have vacation until Aug 16. (oh yeah - Aug 12-16 is vacation).

Monday/Tuesday: Go places and do stuff with Zach. Hiroshima? Kyoto? Nagoya? I have Alex's car and a few days off. hehehe.

Wednesday Aug 17-Friday Aug 19: Write final newsletter, English report.
Monday, Aug 22 - Friday, Aug 26: Teach my boss Fukushima-san HTML. Ha. This will be fun. I like him but he is a baseball player, he gets headaches thinking in japanese. Can't wait to show him in a week the stuff it took me 3 months to learn this year. Whee. And it's in English.
Aug 27-28: Chill.
Monday, Aug29 - Wed, Aug 31: final preparations. Clean apartment, clean out my desk, faff around. Whee.
Thurs, Sep 1 - Monday, Sep 5: tokyo with Jackie?
Monday, Sep 5, 1125am, JAL Flight 10 out of Narita - Leave This Country.

Other than that, it's vague. Arrive in Chicago 2 hours before I left, 9am on Monday (Labor Day) Morning. Back to NR. Move into cbus aptmt on Basil's birthday, Sept 9. See White Stripes in Cleveland with Dan on Sep 14. General chilling.

Scribbling

2005-07-21T19:46:00.000-04:00

These are some notes I have jotted.

1) To-do list (by the end of fall quarter I will...)

...be enrolled and active in two physical activities, at least one but maybe both martial arts.
...have raised my GPA.
...be presiding over an active finnegans wake reading group.
...have read the complete works of Stephen Pinker.
...have written two papers of which I am proud.
...have steady income.
...have figured out my thesis, and how to get money for it.
...have taken steps towards opening a bar - not that this is a definite plan or anything but I would like to think I could do it so I want to at least have a timetable and cost estimate.
...have started a respectable website.
...know how to cook three interesting dishes.

What think you?

2. My Thesis: Solipsism in Modernism.

Why? Pre-WWI, Europe itself was solipsistic, the West was solipsistic, academia was solipsistic - invisible, apart, structured, dependable. A sense that the rest of the world was a dream, not really relevant or applicable to anything.

This falls apart - the dream turns on the dreamer. The dreamer, as it turns out, was someone else. IE, the insight "Well if the world doesn't revolve around me, who does it revolve around?"

The dreamer is the one to whom the pieces make sense. If the world makes sense to you, then you are the solipsist, it is all in your head cuz you see the big picture. If suddenly the world is chaos, there must be someone above you who can fit you with all the things you can't understand into a more cohesive whole. In theory. Or maybe, just maybe, there is no dreamer, there is nobody who can see through the chaos to order because maybe there is no order. So, Eliot or Woolf, take your pick.

Solipsism in Ulysses: Stephen wants to be the dreamer, the character who is isolated and powerful. He is thwarted by the structure of the book - the mantle of "main character" is taken from him suddenly in chapter 4 and never really returned. Instead we get Bloom, the wandering Jew, representative of Old and New, East and West, a confused fusion of conflicts all resolved in an unassuming newsman who picks up his coffeecup by the nothandle and relishes the warmth. Older and Wiser than Stephen, if not quite as educated, Bloom is a level of complexity beyond stephen in that he can understand stephen and see a role for him whereas stephen can't really get beyond himself. So Bloom is the dreamer, as it were - but then bloom loses it and the text itself becomes the dreamer. Fragmentation and chaos and the narrator and writing style become our leaders, become the only lens which turns chaos to order. I guess, then, that Ulysses's insights on the matter of solipsism are that everyone wants to be the highest order of complexity, everyone wants to be the main character who intuitively understands, but there is always a higher, and even that is bounded by structure.

Wasteland and Solipsism: The Wasteland by Eliot presents the world as fragments and chaos, which to the reader make no real sense. There is a character, blind old tiresias, who understands everything, though. Sort of, he is unhappy, so one could say his rational understanding pushes everything to the limits but he cannot escape himself - The solipsist wondering who is dreaming him. Contrast him, then, with the character of Narcissus. Narcissus was in early drafts of this poem but was effectively killed off and sublated into the universe. He, too, understands everything - presumably on a deeper level than Tiresias can. In dying he became the world. T, who is immortal, can identify with the world as Other, whereas N, who is eternally dead, loses even the distinction between self and other and for him there is no such thing as a chaotic fragment. Wasteland on Solipsism, then, says that we must become one with the world to understand it - realize that the world outside of us is dreaming, but that there is no distinction between dream and dreamer. Very eastern.

To the Lighthouse and Solipsism: The mother has a holistic understanding of most things. She is nto perfect, but she is the dreamer figure - things unfold as she predicts, people behave as she predicts, life and the world of the text follow her understanding. Everyone else knows this, everyone sort of worships her. She is the lighthouse, essentially, standing there before everyone casting light into the darkness. Then one night she dies in her sleep. The rest of the book deals with everyone coming to terms with that - what happens to the dream when the dreamer dies? Woolf seems to be saying that this whole framework is illusion, albeit tempting illusion. There is no dreamer and there is no dream, there is only charisma and even the charismatic die. We sometimes feel that our very identity is contingent on someone else, and in that sense we are asking to be their dream. But this is a betrayal of self. We play along but in the end we need to know how to sail ourselves. Fragment is just memory and is beautiful for what it is.

Parade's End and Solipsism: Tietjins is Britain. Old Britain. Tory Aristocrat with pre-victorian values. He feels himself to be the dreamer, but the dream unravels. The dreams assert themselves - women's movement, lower classes, other countries. As Miss Wannop realizes after WWI, "It means no more RESPECT!" Tietjin's Dream is such that those below respect those above. WWI is then a betrayal of the lower by the higher, and so respect is lost. The whole system collapses. Am not done with this yet but don't suspect Tietjins will survive the peace.

Conclusions:

We always think that just because the world is playing along it means that it is our dream. When the world changes, when the narrator takes over, when the mother dies, we realize that it is an illusion. Sometimes we can't take it.
Modernism is about the world changing, and about how that effects individuals and societies alike. Framing the discussion in terms of Solipsism and Dreamers allows us to put (vaguely misused) labels on the forces being discussed.
The general conclusion, the general thing about which all this stuff is written, can perhaps best be expressed thus: We are only in charge of ourselves. There is no more respect unless we choose it. No matter who we become or what we do, the world/book/author/narrator/structure/plot is bigger than us and can destroy us or redeem us on a whim.
Modernism is about humility?
Modernism is Narcissism because when there is no more system to love you'd best love yourself?
Modernism treats solipsism as a lovable flaw, an attractive but distinctly wrong way to live.

What thoughts have ye, mateys?

Hey gang

2005-07-20T23:21:00.000-04:00

So it's been a while since I have posted, ne. To use the japanese grammatical construction, to say how come is to say that I have been v. busy.

I have another few days in the chemical company. The homepage is more or less done. The only that remains now is them asking me to change little shit. This is the kind of stuff I had wanted them to be giving me all along but it's like my main boss only just realized that hey, I am working on this and need help. Actually, I suspect he got yelled at. Whatever the cause, now he is calling people and getting information for me, so the trade-off is that I have gotten even busier but in smaller chunks. The main body of work is, as they say, finis.

If you would like a sneak peak, please go to www.ichimiya.co.jp/nissen/testing/eindex.htm

Now, I know what you are thinking. This looks a lot like the old site. That is indeed the case. It is the old site, I have changed up some photos and translated it and plopped the whole thing into a new standards-compliant structure, but on the surface it does look v similar.

Of special note should be the about us -> Facilities page, that took me a good week to get right.

So like, I had me a meeting with the bigwigs maybe a week ago and showed them this and also a new design I had cooked up and they yelled at me for the many errors I had. Like, the org chart was completely wrong, the facilities page had cities in the wrong places, etc. The activities page, with the identical content that it used to have (sorry, odd grammar there), drew one boss's ire - "Nissen does more than just host OSU Interns, you know." Apparently this is because there is a photograph of OSU on that page. This is all old content, of course, and though I had asked for updated content none was forthcoming. So I took a lot of heat at the meeting, they didn't really want to look at my new design ("That would take at least 6 months to get necessary approval etc!"), just yelled at me for errors. I sat there fuming but it was funny - I realized that I have been trying, I have been going to superiors to check shit etc, and this is what came out. At this point it's not my fault. When three guys stand around and look at the map I have shown them and tell me that everything is as it should be, I take their word for it. When I spend a day drawing up an org-chart from a disorganized bundle of papers thrust at me and then show it to my boss and he says "yeah, looks good," I don't second guess. When I ask for new content and new photographs and am told "yeah, we will get that," but never see it, what more is there for me to do?

So they basically tore me a new one but in the end I kinda felt a lot less stressed than I had been. Here I was doing this thankless task for a bunch of computer-illiterate drunks with nobody really helping me, nobody giving me the info I need, and then in the end they have the balls to blame me when it isn't perfect. So all the stress I had been feeling for months about this page evaporated, because I no longer gave a shit. And still really don't, but I don't mean that angrily or maliciously - hell, I am not even frustrated. I have given them my time and my best efforts and they can take them or leave them. I am still of course doing everything they tell me, making all the corrections. But it is with a lighthearted sense of ease now.

Here is a metaphor. Imagine that there is a big, giant shark. And imagine that there is me. And imagine that for months I got horrified every time it came close to me. And then imagine that one day I realized that there was a big wall of glass between me and the shark and that the shark would be in that tepid tank until it died, whereas I was free to leave at will.

That was like the insight I had at that meeting. Suckers.

Quarter Report to my teacher at school. Draft.

2005-07-06T22:58:00.000-04:00

I think maybe the ending needs to be touched up.

Mykola Bilokonsky

Ichimiya Internship

Spring 2005 Report

I concluded my last report with tales of New Employee seminars and cultural exchanges and speeches and all manner of responsibilities coming at me from every direction. Truth be told, March/April was perhaps the busiest I have been since coming out here. Life has since stabilized in some ways and become more stressful in others. Ever since April, with a few notable exceptions my resources have been spent almost entirely on learning web design and creating a page for Nissen. It is easier to focus with just one overriding concern on a daily basis, but all is not wine and roses and I have learned a thing or two about the difference between working on one’s personal webpage and designing a site for an international company.

But more on that later. First I’ll pick up the chronological narrative.

April

Upon my return from the new employee seminar in Kyoto, life simplified. For the first time in months I didn’t have a speech or report or otherwise drawn out project hanging over my head, so it was quite comfortable. The only extracurricular activity that demanded some preparation was a speech I was asked to give for the Niihama Guide Club’s annual meeting. I regaled them with a basic summary of and a few opinions regarding the history and culture of Ukraine – my Ukrainian heritage has proven distinctive and useful on more than one occasion out here and I have had several different groups contact me to ask me to speak to them about Ukraine. I feel like I am making the circuit of English Speaking Groups in Japan, but it works out well – I get to meet new people, research a subject that I should probably know more about anyway, and expand my cultural experiences.

Other than that, though, as I wrote above I devoted most of my time to web design. I did learn HTML about 10 years ago as a hobby, but as I have learned in the past few months things have changed. HTML alone no longer a webpage makes – I have mastered (X)HTML, CSS, gotten some general knowledge of flash and JavaScript, and in general learned a thousand times more than I ever knew I didn’t know. I have become converted through my studies to a strong belief in web standards. I have discovered a passion for keeping up to date on state-of-the-art technologies and cutting edge techniques using old technologies. I’ve learned a thousand things, and in April I spent my days creating more and more complex pages for practice. Gradually, ideas and designs took hold in my head and solidified into a general outline for the new website I was going to design. Finally, come May, I decided I was ready to put my newfound knowledge and abilities to work and design a final, not-for-practice draft of the website.

May

The bulk of May was spent in actual nose-to-the-grindstone web design. I came up with a design solution based the color scheme and basic layout of the current page but with fresher, larger images and a more streamlined look. I even managed to throw in a few little flourishes, like some rather difficult java script that allowed me to round the edges of various boxes, etc. This done, I put the design aside and turned to the content.

In contemporary web design, the separation of content and presentation is the most important thing for a web designer to understand. Old web pages written in HTML used to combine every element of what appeared on the page in one file – if you wanted a headline, you marked these particular words as, say, larger, bold and in a different font. And you did that every time you wanted a headline. Thus the content of the headline (“自動車部品”) became inextricably tied to the design instructions (Bold, Large, Font = WingDings, whatever).

Contemporary web standards teach us that when design and content are linked together a page stagnates – it becomes very difficult to change the design or update the content without having to overhaul the entire page. An excellent case in point is the current Nissen website. The preferred practice is to take the content of the webpage and put it one file and take the design rules and put them in another. Then, if you want some text to be a headline, you simply label it as a headline (this is content) and then you go to your design form and modify headlines. This way, all of your headlines can be modified with the change of one bit of code. Separation of content and presentation is essential for future updates, accessibility, easier compliance with internet search engines and a dozen other things that distinguish an okay website from a good one.

My plan, then, was to remove all of the content from the old page and put it into a word file. I would then go over it with my supervisors and we would edit it and change it and update it as needed, and I would then merge it with the design code I had waiting. All that remained was to introduce all of this to my bosses in a meeting and get the green light.

When the meeting actually happened, though, it didn’t go as smoothly as that. The meeting began and I explained that I would like some help checking the content of the website. The last time we had had a meeting they had pointed out a few flaws and things to update, which I had, so I wanted to make sure there were no other glaring flaws. When I presented the print-out of web-content with no background, no pictures and no layout, however, I was met with dubious faces. I tried to explain my rational for separating the content from the page – specifically, that the old design was stagnant and the new design not yet approved – but I think some of it was lost in my hastily assembled Japanese. Everyone was talking very quickly and looked unhappy, though I wasn’t sure why.

In retrospect, it was admittedly perhaps a bit foolish to go to a meeting with upper management and request them to go over 30-odd pages of text checking for factual errors. This had apparently not occurred to my supervisor, either, as he had helped me prepare for the meeting. The supervisors explained to me that they couldn’t just check the content, which had to be changed to webpage form and then sent out to the various people in charge of the various things I was talking about. Naruhodo, I said.

The next part of the meeting involved me introducing the new design I had come up with for the site. We gathered around my computer and I unveiled it – and received bewildered looks. “It looks like you made a completely new site,” someone observed.

This was frustrating. It dawned on me that the people in charge of my work had no idea what I had been working on for a few solid months, and I realized immediately that it was my fault for failing to communicate more closely. I was confused, though, as to why I struggle over a report of my activities every month if the people I submit it to apparently don’t read it. I had kept a running account of my monthly progress and ideas for the webpage and suddenly the individuals whose stamps appear on my report every month had no idea I had been working on a new webpage design.

So my supervisor and I explained what I had been working on and the general reaction was “Oh, okay. Well, interesting design, that’s one idea, but we can’t just change the whole site like this without lots of meetings and confirmations etc etc etc.” Naruhodo, I said.

I was asked to print up my design for consideration, and told that I should at least get confirmation for the basic structure of the page before designing a layout. Whereas the current page has “About Us”, “Products”, “Technology” and “Worldwide” sections, I had changed it to “Products”, “Technology”, “Company” and “Information” and reorganized it a bit. Realizing that it had been rather presumptuous of me to redesign the basic structure without getting express permission, I printed up my proposed changes and submitted them for approval. Once we had decided how the information was to be split up, I would modify my new design and submit that for approval and there would be happy endings all around. To my frustration, my proposal was neither approved nor denied but the individual to whom I submitted it assures me he will get to it shortly every time I follow up.

That, then, was a bad day. I felt that I had wasted a lot of time designing something that was going to get stuck in development, and I knew it was my fault for working too independently. I was faced with the thought that I would go down in Ichimiya History as one of the Bad Interns, one of Those Who Are Not Spoken Of. There are a couple, and I don’t want to be seen as a failure – so rather than getting discouraged, I made a new plan. More on that in the June section. First I would like to wrap up May (and put it forever behind me).

One day towards the end of the month, my boss asked me if I wouldn’t mind moving. Apparently, the toilet in my apartment flooded the guy two floors down every time I flushed it. Sure, said I, and preparations were made to clean up a different room in the Masaeda Apartment for me to move into. In the interim, the plan was for me to stay at Izumi Ryou – the place where interns used to live. I asked my boss, however, if perhaps it wouldn’t be simpler for me to stay at a friend’s house for the week it would take to clean up the new place. That was fine, I was told, but I would officially be in Izumi Ryou for a week. Fair enough.

So I moved in with my friend, who lives in a nice new apartment 5 minutes from the office. It was very convenient, we had a good time. A week later, I got all my stuff together and moved into my new place – only to be greeted by herds of cockroaches galloping freely across the tatami. This was shortly after my website meeting, and was the perfect thing to come home to after a particularly stressful week at work. The friend with whom I had been staying, who had come to help me move, took one look at the roaches and invited me to continue staying at her place until I could get the roach issue sorted.

I went to work the next day and asked about a roach spray or something and was told that they had sprayed prior to my moving in, but that we could spray again. So they sent one of the office ladies to the store and she came back with a big tub of something or other unhealthy for cockroaches. I took it home and used it, and the next day there were about a dozen roaches of varying sizes strewn about the apartment. I still find them under chairs and such to this day, and it’s been a month. Is this really standard living conditions in Japan? I could understand if I kept a really messy apartment and there was food everywhere etc, but this was prior to my move-in.

So, due to convenience and rapport with my friend, I basically continued to stay at hers until circumstances forced me to move back to Masaeda – but more on that in the June section.

June

The first two weeks of June saw me traveling around to various factories and offices across Japan on a fact-finding mission for the website. This was really great – I went as part of the annual safety inspection and we cruised around on the Shinkansen for two weeks. They took me to the Osaka General Office, the Molding Works, the Mie Factory, the Shiga Factory, Technocenter Tochigi, the Saitama Office, the Tokyo General Office and finally the Chiba facility. I packed my laptop, a notebook, and the digital camera they bought and prepared a set of questions I would ask at each place.

Part of my plans for the new website involved a much more detailed Facilities page. The current page has a single photograph for about half of Nissen’s facilities and nothing more than an address and phone number for most of them. I am replacing that with a comprehensive list of Nissen’s facilities sorted by department, each with a slide-show showcasing staff, location and products. I am adding general descriptions of each place, so that site visitors can learn more than that Nissen has an office that does something or other in Kumamoto. So as I traveled around, I was not only getting a brief introduction to each office but was compiling the data necessary for my website.

I returned from the last trip the night of Friday the 10^th, and from June 13^th had determined the solution to my website problem. I would first recreate an exact model of the current page, but instead of the archaic HTML code currently in use I would start from scratch with XHTML and CSS. That way, I figured, even if the rest of what I want to do gets caught up in the wheels of confirmation and scheduling and discussion, I could at least leave Nissen with a page that can be updated easily. It took me several weeks, but I finally created an identical-looking page with brand new state of the art code. The next step, as per the plan I created with my immediate supervisor, is to update a few key things. For example, the aforementioned Facilities page and several Products pages. I will add a page for the consignment division, and throw something up for recruiting purposes. Then when it comes time to present my work I will have a few definitive changes to show.

The very last thing I will do, if I have time, is create a new design. Since I am not starting from scratch and all of the content is already in place, and since I already have a flexible design built using the latest web standards, I can create a new design for the entire site in about a day plus an hour or two of overtime. That, however, is last priority.

So, as far as the homepage goes, here is my outlook. Worst-case scenario, I leave Nissen with a site that looks just like their old one but with an English translation and a new facilities page. It would, however, be an entirely brand new site built from the ground up with heavily commented code incorporating web standards. Translation, it would be easy for anyone to update from here on out. The current page cannot be updated – it must be replaced.

Best-case scenario, then, is that I add to this new page a fresh design that miraculously gets approved in my last month. I am not holding my breath – I now realize that such a thing must take a tremendous amount of time and that a complete overhaul would have had to begin in January or February in order to get all requisite approval and implementation by July. Fujita-san warned me when I started this that webpage design takes longer than I thought. I didn’t really listen as I have designed websites before, and the prospect of putting a new face on what is really a pretty basic site didn’t seem too daunting - but I had failed to take into consideration the chain of command and the way things are done in a large company. Lesson learned, hard way.

So that has been work the past few months. In short, I have been very frustrated. In the end, though, it won’t be for nothing as Nissen will have a page that is top of the line under the hood, even if it still looks similar on the outside. In addition, I have learned a new skillset – I am seriously considering studying design in a more formal setting. And I’ve learned a thing or two about working in a large corporation – namely, when in doubt, consult your superior.

Personal Life

On a more lighthearted side of the spectrum, I have been having a great time here, traveling and meeting people. Over Golden Week, my friends and I took a trip to Mount Aso in Kumamoto-ken. We camped, climbed the mountain, took a lot of pictures and did a lot of touristy things. It was gorgeous out there.

Later in May, my friend Tsuri Toshikazu came to visit me. I met Toshi at OSU last summer – I was his conversation partner. We became good friends quite quickly at OSU, as I introduced him to the kendo club and we would all go out together frequently. So it was very good to see someone from home during what could be called my darkest moments out here. He and his wife flew out from Tokyo and I met them in Matsuyama. We stayed in a hotel by Dogo Onsen and just chilled out for a weekend, which was a very welcome change of pace.

Between the week in Kyushu and the weekend in Matsuyama my funding was stretched pretty thinly, but I have gotten a bit better at pinching pennies and managed to avoid the dreaded week of instant ramen I occasionally run into at the end of the month.

At end of June, a just-graduated friend from OSU came out to see me. She will be here until July 13, and we are having a few adventures. We went to Hiroshima, but perhaps I should save that for my summer report so I have a few things to talk about. With the arrival of my friend came my return to Masaeda Apartment, which I have honestly grown to really revile.

Bursting pipes, flooding toilets, colonies of roaches – this really is kind of a bad place to live, and it wouldn’t irk so much except that I was told that Ichimiya Group owns other apartment buildings newer and closer to the office but that they decided not to put the interns there due to the proximity of the red light district. The moral high-ground is well and good but on a bad day I feel stuck in a cockroach farm 2 miles from work and anyone I know, without so much as the moped I am supposed to have to get around. That sucks.

Fuck, man, throw me a bone here.

Work works

2005-06-28T03:31:00.000-04:00

So I am at work. I don't like my job, it is just boring now. I am basically going to have to create a user interface for the old site and that's it. Just spruce up a few graphics and make the menu pretty. Pretty dull. And I am surprisingly bad at it, it's the simple stuff that fucks me up.

I want that Powerbook I saw on eBay (read my next post for a link). Did some checking (or rather, had will do some checking) and that is a 3000 dollar system. I got in touch with the seller and he doesnt seem to speak english natively but well enough and says will ship free from europe just wants the payment western union. ah, I wonder if that means he won't let me use paypal? It has paypal protection in case of a scam. And he has thousands of positive user comments on his account, meaning he is not just not-a-scam-artist but actually makes people really happy. I told him I would cast around desperately for the money but I dont make any promises and that was that. He says so cheap because he needs the cash for another deal he is working on.

I don't quite trust it but it seems to have enough safeguards in place...

AHA! I just checked back and it seems it was a scam. Fucker - ebay has deleted the listing saying "this has either ended or ebay has deleted the account. If ebay deleted the account, we advise against completing the sale outside of ebay. Do not under any circumstances pay with western union or any direct money transfer." Damn. Ah well. Woulda been nice.

What? This is odd...looks like he is not the only one with such a deal, unless it is all the same people. So they list the computer as a normal auction item and then say "email me if you want to buy this for 999 usd." Presumably if you email them they set up a Western Union transaction and you get scammed, but if you just buy it as an auction item you bid as normal and end up paying a regular price for it etc. I see. Obnoxious.

Ah well. I think I want to get into the ebay business. A couple of kids in high school made a fortune. I am here in Japan, surely there is something I could buy cheap and ship out over ebay, make a hundred bucks a month or something. Give me your thoughts, folks!

So Karen is here. We didn:t stick to the original schedule. Turns out when you pay 20 bucks a night for a hotel there are disadvantages - like, say, an 1130 curfew. "What happens if we are late?" I ask. "The gates open at 5," he says. Bah, they should have put that on the website.

So friday night we walked around a bit, had some okonomiyaki, I introduce karen to chuuhai, and crashed. Saturday, jet-lagged karen made me get up at 7 and we commenced our adventures - these included the osaka aquarium, which was slick with sharks and manta rays and all sorts of Really Big Fish; Namba Parks, a glorious shopping center with a garden/forest planted on the outside, which you can walk through, many stories above osaka and spreading across many floors; American Village, with loud music and overpriced clothing and the most stylish people Japan has to offer; The Mac Store, to fuel my newfound lust for Macintosh; Umeda, where we ran into a band playing in the street. Karen bought their demo disc for a dollar. The singer was cute, she was all hippy-lookin'. Then we rode the Ferris Wheel at Hep 5, got scared shitless cuz apparently we both afraid of heights, then went to Pat's for dinner. Pat's apartment slick as hell, lots of gadgets. Pat a changed man what with his new lifestyle; his girlfriend bosses him around in the kitchen. Oh, how the might have fallen... ;) So they cooked us a nice dinner and then we got back to the hotel in time to not be locked up.

Sunday, woke up, had leisurely morning, caught ferry, boated back to Niihama. Jackie Alex Alison Joshka met us at Marine Park, had big BBQ party, got thrown out of park, stayed anyway, drank, wrapped up the weekend.

Now work. Work blows.

Here is a picture:

that's me on the right.

No, it's not, I am not Japanese.

2005-06-27T20:27:00.000-04:00

This is a big bag of plastic materials. Blogger has now added images, making it simple to update my blog with photographs and graphics - AND the layout works well, too, so I can just sort of write around it. Groovy.

Anyway, only really updating to show ya'll this . I want to buy it, what do you think? This won't last very long at all but it's a 17inch powerbook, 1.67ghz 1gig RAM. 1000 dollars. Worth it? Loan me a thousand bucks? He will even ship to Japan. Pat, Alex, Jackie, check it.

Welcome to Hotel Raizan Minamikan/ Rooms

2005-06-22T02:07:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Hotel Raizan Minamikan/ Rooms

That's not too bad, this place has a one-month stay for about 500 bucks. This is in the middle of Osaka. That could be a killer vacation.

So this is the hotel where I am making reservations for karen and myself when we do Osaka/Kyoto this coming weekend.

Plans are a vague mix of as-follows:

Friday:
Osaka Aquarium (world famous, has a whale shark.), Maybe Osaka Castle, American Village, Namba, various siteseeing and eating. She gets in at 6 so figure our night won't really start til 8 so I think the aquarium may have to wait until Sunday, actually. Saturday night, Pat is eager to hang out so perhaps we will do that.

Saturday:
Kyoto. Kiyomizudera, Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, etc etc etc. Nijojo. Karen apparently bought an expensive camera so perhaps I will post some photographs.

Sunday:
Osaka Aquarium, early lunch/late breakfast, Ferry. Ferry leaves at one. In retrospect that is kind of a really rough schedule, only one full day for sightseeing in the Kansai district. Anyway, ferry arrives in Niihama at 8. Alex has agreed to meet us at the ferry port. Then it's to my apartment where I make karen help me carry a bed for her over from my other apartment. Hopefully the roaches stay dead and don't become roach-zombies, that would suck.

Monday: I work, karen sleeps. Perhaps dinner?
Tuesday: I work, Karen gets a tour of Niihama.
Wednesday: I work, Karen gets a tour of Imabari.
Thursday, Friday afternoon: I work, Karen...I dunno, she'll figure something out.
Friday night: I get paid friday and Alex is letting me use his car for the weekend so miscellaneous adventuring shall ensue. Matsuyama? Pacific Coast? Takamatsu? random movies and beer?

The following week, I work while karen does whatever it is she is going to be doing (with any luck, shopping for food and making my apartment comfortable, bwahaha) during the day and then we have miscalenous short-range adventures at night. At some point Ayako said she would like to hang out.

On Wednesday of that week, the 6th I believe, Karen gets to wear a kimono and drink tea while little old ladies take pictures of her.

That following weekend...Friday is 88cent beer night, Saturday is the new star wars movie and sunday is recuperation day. Jackie leaves Saturday.

Interesting, when is Hiroshima? Maybe we will do Hiroshima the weekend of the first. Yes, that is what we will do. Then Jackie can come too. That schedule forthcoming. Alex wanted to do hiroshima too but he has suddenly got plans the weekend of the 9th which is when we woulda done it. Hmm.

So anyway that leaves a few more days. I will work work work. Karen leaves from Osaka on Thursday at 1, so I will try to get the website to the point where they let me take Wednesday and Thursday off.

And that is Karen's Japan adventure. She gets massive points for being the only one to come visit. All the rest of you fools are gonna have work hard to make up for that. ;)

And yeah, that's a short blupdate but so it goes. Most of my energy right now, in terms of blogs, is directed a side-project:

http://wakeitup.blogspot.com

Check it out. If you think it sounds interesting, by all means join in. It is never too early or too late, with this kind of project you can jump in in the middle and it's no big deal.

Peace for now,
me

Tokyo

2005-06-12T19:44:00.000-04:00

Blog Update for Sarah Priest, who demanded more details in my descriptions of my travels. Apparently I am to write so descriptively and eloquently that photographs are made obsolete by the sheer weight and mass of my writing skills. Apparently my description of the bullet train was enough but come on write more.

Well then, okay. I will do what I can to write details in here, as they come. I am now on my trip to Tokyo and environs, so I will open this file and add observations every chance I get.

// Wednesday, July 8 2005. 17:50. Bullet Train en route to Tokyo. Somewhere in Kanto.

For starters, I am on the bullet train to Tokyo. It is about 6pm on Wednesday Evening. I will arrive in Tokyo at 630, and then hop a train from Tokyo to another city about an hour and a half to the north. Once there, I will have dinner and sleep in a hotel. The next morning, the people from the Tochigi Research Center will come meet us at the hotel at 730. I will get in their car and go to Tochigi, arriving around 830. Then there will be a meeting – the guys I am traveling with will explain the procedures for the safety inspection, will nod at me to say that I will ask questions later, and will get down to business. They will pour over dry documents, tell the Tochigi representatives about various safety related things (how well Nissen did this year, etc), inform them of any new policies, etc etc etc. Then the Tochigi guys will pass out the safety report for the past year, which includes a good many different things. The first few pages are basic company statistics, number of employees, equipment, etc. Then come 20 pages of safety information. The others will go over these pages carefully while I scour the first few pages of general information for tidbits that I can use in my website. I will enter this data into my computer and then sit quietly waiting for the first section of the meeting to wrap up (about an hour). I will then seize my camera and join them on an inspection of the facility. This means walking around and taking pictures of people working. This takes about 45 minutes. Then we reconvene in the meeting room and discuss the findings of the inspection and make closing comments – takes about 20 minutes, half an hour. Then we make our farewells, get driven to the station an hour away, and hop the train for Saitama for the factory we have there. Then we repeat the process at Saitama. We wrap up tomorrow in Tokyo itself, probably with a big dinner and a lot of booze. Then we get up early for another round – Friday we will be at the Tokyo Branch Office and the Chiba Factory before finally catching the last train home and arriving in Niihama a little after 11 on Friday night.

So that is the plan.

Let me see, maybe I can get in some basic details about my current situation.

I am sitting in seat 12A in a reserved car on the bullet train. Seat A is window, and Manabe-san the Olympian is asleep on my left after a few beers. To his left is a guy reading. My battery is dying so we will see how long this lasts. I had been plugged in earlier, but the only seats with plugs on the trains here are the front seats in each cabin. The guy who had the ticket for the front seat finally got on in Nagoya so I had to move back to 12A, but yeah, I was in 20C for a while and it was nice.

I am kinda sweating a bit cuz the AC on the train isn’t quite enough to deal with the vague humidity going on outside now that it is June. It gets real hot, they say, starting next week. And that’s when the bugs come out. Snake-light centipedes that are dangerous, and giant flying cockroaches. But I am digressing, this is to be a details post. We are about to stop at the Yokohama station. I will see about including a photograph. I have never been in Yokohama – it is sort of part of Tokyo, kinda. From here though it looks very rural; I see schools and grass and apartments, but now that I think about it I see a lot more apartments than I am used to seeing. This area looks very dense. Now I see parking lots, full of cars. Still, this doesn’t look urban – there are farms under me just now. Not what would be considered a real farm in America, in that there are maybe 12 small plots, but that’s what the farms are like in Niihama, and that’s country. The railway station is rather open-air, but enclosed enough to look safe in a storm.

The train has started up again so this means that I will be crossing into “Tokyo” at some point during this scribbling, unless my battery dies before then. The layout of the streets around/below me seems rather chaotic – not so much a standard, easy to follow grid pattern like they more or less have in Kyoto but rather an organic group of winding avenues set in no particular order. Japanese addresses are fucking weird, too. No street names means you get your house number relative to the part of the city where you live and it is up to the mailman to know where that building is.

I see the first skyscrapers in the distance. Ironically there are still farms and such but no as much, it’s almost entirely apartment buildings now. Now there are offices and a factory. And trains are speeding by me much more frequently.

This is my second drive through the greater Tokyo area, the first being upon arrival in Japan. You can check back to my first massive blog update for those details. Ha, there is the NEC building – I had an NEC computer ages ago. This looks like a large NEC complex, actually.

There seem to be at least 4 train tracks running parallel here, which suggests density. Usually you only get this kind of spread around stations but this is the middle of Yokohama. I would imagine these all get used.

It is slightly overcast today – we were afraid of rain but it looks like we will be okay. But it isn’t sunny and now that it’s after 6 it’s feeling like it’s going to from a dusky day to a dusky dusk. God frowns on Yokohama.

I wonder if this is Tokyo yet? We are making a brief stop at Shinagawa. I guess there is a station between Yokohama and Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train).

So I spent much of this trip working on Macromedia Flash 2004. I have designed a sort of interactive digital photo-album template, into which I will add select photos from these trips I am going on. I keep having great ideas about web design but we will see if I can get them all integrated in time.

This is indeed city now, but we just passed by a thickly wooded shrine/cemetery. I like that they can have shrines that think they are in the woods even in the middle of bustling cities. It’s a sort of stubborn denial of the perils of the modern age. “Umm…the forest is gone, man, we dozed it to put up this supermarket…” “No you didn’t.” “Uh…there are no trees…” “Yes there are.” You get the idea.

So here is Shinagawa station, much more urban and underground. I feel “in the city” now. We will arrive in Tokyo Station in 8 minutes. I am excited. That means I am going to wrap this up shortly so that I can put my computer away and get my shit together and ready to move.

I will be upset if there is no internet in the hotel I crash at tonight.

That reminds me I should probably look into hotels for when Karen visits, we will have to crash in Osaka for two nights.

Okay, 6 minutes and my battery is almost dead. This wraps up, more to come later.

// Thursday, 9 July 2005. Bullet Train from Uchinomiya to Omiya en route to Saitama for the second half of the day.

So day I have been in a shitty mood. Allow me to present a (detailed) list of causes for said mood, and then debunk them.

1) The hotel last night blew. The room was tinier than I am used to even here and the “internet” they offered was an in-house dialup service that connected me at 28.8 but only after an hour of configuring and arguing with the staff about why it wasn’t working, and then periodically disconnected me. That was annoying.
2) This morning. I couldn’t remember if were meeting at 7 or 730 in the library so I woke up at 6 and got ready and all and was down there by 700 but apparently it was 730 so I sat around for half an hour then finally someone I knew showed up (my boss didn’t answer his phone, I thought they’d left wout me). So I finally figured out what was up then had a minute and ran to 711 for breakfast and that led to some muffins which were good and some orange juice which turned out to be orange pop that made my stomach hurt.
3) Hurting Stomach Bilokonsky and his parade of stalwart companions fail to be greeted at 730 by their not-so-stalwart escort who overslept. The day is delayed by 30 minutes, resetting train schedules and removing lunch. Etc.
4) Said stalwart companions are shoved into a too-small car with a television unit in the front for an hour long drive to the facility. On said television is Japanese morning TV. Japanese television is inconceivably bad – did you see Lost in Translation? You remember that talk show he went on? That’s kinda tame compared to how off the wall not even funny tacky bad most JPTV is. Anyway this morning show was about the world cup soccer match that Japan won last night. It was just shots of drunk people screaming last night and then the people on the show laughing in a really irritating TV-laugh kind of way between gasping out such zingers as “I can’t believe it! Can you believe it? I mean really can you believe it? Whoooooooo!” and running around like asses. For an hour. With a stomach ache. On not enough sleep. In a cramped car. That was nice.
5) Finally time for the meeting. My computer detects wireless internet in the vicinity, unrestricted, and yet cannot connect. Irritating. Meeting lasts an age. Then pictures/tour that was cool. Then more eternal meeting. I start working with the pictures I had taken. Then meeting ends and they ask me if I have any questions. Last week I asked questions and my boss got annoyed with me and said “That’s all in the documents, let’s go.” So this week I didn’t really prepare any questions so I tried to wing a few to the dubious faces of seven Japanese businessmen with someplace-better-to-be. Felt like an ass.

And that was that. As you can see, most of these are my fault – I shoulda known what time to meet, confirmed it; I shoulda prepared questions better; I shoulda looked more carefully at what beverage I was buying; etc. But ah well, just cuz something is your fault doesn’t mean you don’t get irritated about it. So I was in a shitty mood this morning. Still kinda am cuz my stomach is feeling odd and I almost missed this bullet train cuz I was in the bathroom. They called my phone. Yeesh.

So the moral of this story is, why on earth would I let a bunch of stuff like that get me down? It seems downright silly. Here I am touring around Japan with stalwart companions (Ichimiya the millionaire on my right and Manabe the Olympian on my left, and everyone in front of us bending over backwards to show us Truth and Justice), with a bag full of technology that would make Norse Gods weep with envy, and the latest CD’s – Black Eyed Peas’s Monkey Business and White Stripes’s Get Behind Me Satan, which are both amazing amazing amazing. I have no reason to be irritated. Damn, I slipped into emotionally honest blog and out of detail collection.

So let me get some details down. This morning we were met by Touro Ichimiya, the son of Nissen’s president Yoshihiro Ichimiya. I haven’t really spoken to him cuz I am shy and never speak Japanese unless spoken to, but he represents something great. He is wearing a kind of audacious pinstripe suit – it is subtle and tasteful and expensive looking but something about it is confrontational and confident. He has a thickly knit gold tie which looks like it was cut from the golden fleece. And he is wearing brown shoes – in all my months here I have never seen a businessman in brown shoes, always black.

That was written on the train. I am continuing this entry in the middle of a meeting that has dragged an hour behind schedule. There are 6 of us sitting around a small table in an unairconditioned room and they are getting into complex details and things I just don’t understand, and as such I feel myself getting irritated again. I don’t want to be here. Such a brat.

Damn, my typing brings too much attention to me. Better stop.

Okay, back to this. Now even Prince Ichimiya and his Herculean Helper are sitting around rolling their eyes at how long this is taking. I think we all just want to go to bed. Or am I projecting? It’s 430 and I am tiiiired. Looks like the last push. We are down to small talk. Just walked around and inspected this warehouse. Am I jaded? I have learned enough this year to understand that mood is a choice, so why do I choose bad moods when things irritate me? Seems maybe I should choose bad moods when things please me and happy moods when things irritate me, sort of mix it up a bit.

Choice is everything. That is the greatest lesson of this year in Japan. A sub-lesson is that we should choose gratitude, that that is the best choice in any situation. But choice is everything. How’s that for a detail.

// Friday, 10 June 2005. 1pm. Chiba Facility, outside Tokyo. Conference room.

This is the last stop of this little journey. It is also the most massive, I think. This is the Chiba Factory, but it is an entire complex with god knows how many buildings. We are gonna do our inspection speech and then commence wandering and photographing. Right now I am in a room that seems vaguely sterile but without the sense of cleanliness that generally accompanies that observation. It looks dirty sterile – dead. But not sure why. Am sitting at one end of big table rectangle. I think we gonna get a powerpoint presentation against the far wall, meaning I have the best seat in the house.

Ichimiya-san is no longer with us. Someone said something about a golf game. Last night Manabe the Olympian and I went out to eat. We had a few drinks and talked about all sorts of stuff, including Prince Ichimiya. I observed that he was wearing nice shoes and manabe was like “And did you see his watch?” We were both duly impressed. I also said wasn’t it odd his shoes were brown. Manabe looked at me with some vague surprise, “Ah, so you noticed that, did you? Yeah…” “Well what does that mean?” ask I. “That he can do anything he wants and he is showing us?”

Manabe-san kinda shakes his head while agreeing with me, afraid to associate himself with a mutinous view but unwilling to lie. He asks me if I noticed that Nabae-kacho, the guy I blogged about before who is recently back from Singapore, also wears brown shoes. Somehow it fits – if I blogged about him before, which I think I did, then I am sure I mentioned how he seems so “Cool”, with a finger in every pie, flirting with the girls, chatting up the bosses. He seems an up-and-coming star in the company. I kinda don’t like him even though he is only kind to me. It’s because I am a bad person. But anyway, Manabe pointed out that he also wears brown shoes. It’s a sign, I guess. When you strap on brown shoes you are telling everyone around you to fuck off. With such expressions taken care of in attire, you are free to use your personality in any way you choose, which is why Nabae-kacho is so friendly and Prince Ichimiya so aloof. Shoes say everything. I need to pay more attention to my shoes – I suspect the professional world is one where they are a language to themselves.

Manabe-san was telling me how when Nabae-kacho joined the company Manabe was his boss, and joked that things have reversed now. Poor guy, he seems kinda sad. There is a general sense that he is forever top of the bottom, he’s like an enlisted man and is never going to make lieutenant. He’s like a sergeant, a capable leader of his squad but lacking in the specific favors of the specific people it would take to make it any farther. Nabae-san, however, has been promoted to Brown Shoes which is surely a step on the way to No Tie and Rolled Up Sleeves in Winter.

So they just turned on the powerpoint projector and I look up and there are craters on the wall and I think “Wow, this place looked dirty but intact, I hadn’t realized it was so dingy.” And then I realized that it was just the moonscape background on the computer being broadcast up at the wall. Ha, silly me.

So we are in the sitting-around-waiting-for-the-meeting-to-start phase. Probably give it another 15 minutes, get the ball rolling at 130 and over by 4. Be on the train by 5 or 6 and home by 12 or 1230.

Allow me a reverie as to the details of train travel. You get to the station in Niihama, and it is a little dingy. You are on a raised concrete platform with a fence behind you, and the tracks spread away in a field of gravel in every direction. You look at your ticket, see which car you are to board, and then look for the right painted number fading from the concrete as a crowd of high school girls giggles by you on the left looking at your crotch and a 90-year-old-couple looks at you in such a way as to give you the distinct impression that they forgive you for being American. So you go to spot 7 or whatever, and put down your heavy bag to wait the 7 minutes and 35 seconds until the train pulls in. Vaguely hot but not really, the humidity is building pockets and nests of wet in your clothing. TO BE CONTINUED…

// 19:45, Bullet Train from Tokyo to Okayama.
…CON TINUING. But I have lost interest in the pseudo-fictional train trip. That’s as far as you get. The train never arrives.

Have been on this bullet train for two hours, another hour and a half to Okayama, then an hour and a half to Niihama. I will be glad to be home. Gorgeous girl next to me but engrossed in her phone and I am not sure how to start a conversation across the aisle. Would be dif if she was right next to me but there are three feet between us. Grr and whatnot.

I want an iPod. Will you send me one?

Woot, just caught girl staring at me in reflection of window. She looking down shyly now. She wants me. Whee. Too bad I swore off JGirls. She has cool shoes on – they are kinda like sandles, right, picture the sole of the shoe with like a hand-width leather band in the front but not all the way up. Like slip-ons with the toes and back half of the foot open. And her jeans are riding low. And a lacy button-up shirt. I wonder if the guy sitting next to me can read this? Hey dude, what’s up?

So I have my tie off, not one but two shirt buttons undone, have had two beers, and am on weekend mode. Another 3 hours till I am home, then it’s to Jackie’s and the weekend commenceth. Last week I told Alison to shut up and she went home offended, so we gotta play nicer this week.

That’s twice she was looking at me, yeehaw. Unless she is just trying to catch me looking at her…hmm. Is it considered okay to try to pick up girls while “at work”?

I am tired of writing now. Bye!

There it all is. Bunch of crap. Read it, you know you want to.

2005-06-07T01:25:00.000-04:00

My laptop doesn’t like me. It crashes when I run movie files, even though I have updated all the drivers and done everything I was supposed to keep it running well. “But Myk,” you would say, were you partly prescient, “Since when are you using your computer for more than burning CD’s? You don’t have internet and spend all your time at home on your playstation or watching movies – you mean you and the computer have made up?”

Well, smartass, were you completely prescient you would realize that I am traveling around this week and next week. I have taken my computer with me to keep me company on train rides and in hotel rooms. Right now I am on the express from Okayama to Niihama, wrapping up a two day voyage of bullet trains and high resolution photographs. I have a veritable myriad of things to discuss in this update.

But first, please allow me the indulgence of meta-blogging for a moment. The very phenomenon known as “blog” is interesting, especially vis a vis yours more or less truly. By that I mean, I dunno anything. Reading this blog must be like hanging with me, but in concentrated and vaguely thought out doses and with no actual personality. You get snapshots – “This is my identity at 2:18 on Thursday afternoon.” And it is – my soul is at that instant engaged in the creation of the blog entry, which becomes something in itself permanent, ya know? I am archiving that instant of my being using text and the occasional photograph, and that instant is going to stand for me until kingdom come. Until the internet collapses from the inevitable weight of its own bloated, discarded cells – some sort of info-cancer – someone can find that moment of my soul on display for all to see. Unless I go back and change it, which I can.

I have control over the past. I can rewrite history with the click of an edit button, but all I would be doing would be writing the new present. The change date would be saved and I would ultimately be destroying a record by creating a new one. And even at that, give it enough time and some Yahoo- or Google-powered spiderbot will have created an archive that will find its way into the history (e)books studied by library science students in the year 3004 – Hey guys!

Why brood on this? Well for starters because my name is attached. That doesn’t mean anything per se, it cannot REALLY be traced by to physical whimsical me, but run a search for Bilokonsky and there appears a vague, implicit trail of my footprints across the world wide web over the course of 10 years. You will find that I am a registered member of the Ultima Dragons, a fan group for a video game I liked when I was 12. You will see that I once had two sentences worth of strong convictions regarding human cloning on some schmuck’s bulletin board – “Humans shouldn’t play god,” I wrote, strongly convicted. You will see I amwaswillbe a memberofficer of the Ohio State University Kendo Club, and that our club “Increases Skill, Numbers.” Go us. But over time, every word I have spewed into this vacuous forum will come back to circle over my head.

I almost said to haunt me, but that’s not right, is it? Someone will someday run a search about Niihama Japan and find out all of the mean, pig-headed arrogant things I have thought when I have been at my absolute lowest. I can be a pretty shitty human being. And yes, I could indeed say that those things will haunt me…but damn it, I won’t say that. Those things are a part of who I am in that they are who I was. If at that moment I felt that way then that is that, and it doesn’t make sense to regret let alone distance myself from that human being, does it? I wouldn’t be me now if not for him then cuz all I, right? I and I. Me, and me now. Memes.

Am I sounding like someone who is lecturing? I hate reading someone’s blog when they obviously feel like they have great wisdom to impart to everyone on earth, that’s not what I am going for and I am constantly hypersensitive that that is what I am taken for. I am musing at best, and that is that.

So yeah, that’s where that leaves me – Blogs, footprints in the flow. I am who I was who I will be, I Am He Who Is.

I am so tired of hiding flaws, of pretending to be so strong, of lying to others and myself and you do it too. I think what I like most about my blog is that my worst moments are there to be studied and thrown in my face by people so-inclined; it is a reminder of who I am and where I come from and from whom I can never separate myself. My blog, its worst moments, make me honest.

I have a livejournal out there, too, from when I was young. I have been ashamed of it for years, so much whining I did in there, so much writing like I understood life. I started to delete it once and now I am glad I never finished, it means I can come to terms with that asshole, too.

So that is my latest line of thinking: that we are all flawed, all forever frantically deleting old blogs before new friends find them. I am tired of that. My old blog is at www.livejournal.com/users/thebucket, and I can’t say I recommend reading it but that’s who I was and so it’s who I am.

Isn’t it odd to ever think “Me now.”? To ever identify with a moment, to think “This is who I am?” The moment you have that thought, “Me now” has become one with all the me’s that I wish had never been – all is flux, it’s a river. So realized Sidhartha. It’s like there is only past and future and the two are just one. And the blog, god the blog, it allows you to observe a human being in progress, it dissolves the illusion of stasis to which we cling so tightly…maybe?

To shift gears rapidly, I am traveling this week. Part of my website making process includes gathering information about various factories and offices across Japan and creating a comprehensive “Facilities” page with photos and phone numbers and other such tidbits. In order to do that, I am visiting these various places. The company is paying. They bought me a digital camera for use in the endeavor. I am not traveling alone, I am going with them cuz they are going around doing a safety inspection.

Wednesday was Osaka. We left niihama by train to Okayama at 920 and arrived in Okayama around 11. Then we caught the bullet train from Okayama to Osaka, arriving in Osaka at 1230ish. Then we had a meeting with the Osaka office people, and then we left by 330, following the same course back.

I just want to say that bullet trains are cool as hell. Each car is the size of a house, and there are like 20 of them. A long house. If you stand at one end of the platform, you cannot see the other end of the platform. Inside, it is more like a jet airliner than a train. The chairs are large and plush and stewardesses push around little carts with Pocky and Beer for sale. Needless to say, the train is fast. That’s why they call it the bullet train. It’s kinda cool, it’s like the business thing to do, I dunno anyone (except Pat but he’s special) who just sorta cruises around on the bullet train. It’s expensive as hell and everyone on it is really serious. All business. I felt professional.

I am wearing my suit and have been for three days.

Ah yes, I am doing that Pulp Fiction thing. Let me get back into chronological order. Thursday went to work, spent the morning writing my report, and caught train to Okayama from the afternoon. Followed same route as day before but this time stayed on well past Osaka, finally disembarking in Nagoya. Then another train to a towncity called Yakkoichi, which was bigger than you would think for a town you’ve never heard of.

My parter for all of these adventures is Manabe-san, who sets two seats down from me at work. He was an Olympic weightlifter, winning at least one medal in I believe 1988. He told me all about Olympic village, how there was no booze allowed there and the Japanese were too polite to complain but that the French refused to put up with such rubbish and so protested and so booze at Olympic Village was legalized. This is why Manabe-san likes the French. He is cool, he just sorta laughs and smiles a lot. I guess when you have an Olympic medal you don’t feel like you have a lot to prove, which makes you better than most people. I think. What do you think?

Anyway, my boss Jinno-san met us there and the three of us went out to eat (drink). I was so embarrassed. We went to an Izakaya (like a pub) and it was crazy busy and Jinno-san was so rude to the service. When stuff didn’t come fast enough he kept pushing the buzzer to make the poor girl come over and take his abuse. She kept apologizing and he just mimicked her voice and made fun of her. He kept looking at me and laughing at her, it made me feel terrible.

I suspect the measure of a person is in how he treats those he perceives to be below him. (I just used the sexist gender-neutral he there. If it bothers you…blow me, I can’t be asked.) Parenthetical irony is art. e e cummings is my hero, his writing is so fun.

I am feeling rushed cuz this train arrives at home in 5 minutes. I am not going to keep writing this now, I am signing off here and will finish later.

….

And now I pick up where I left off. It is days later – that was all written Friday night on the train, it is now Thursday afternoon.

So it’s 1230 and I am on my lunch break and wishing someone anyone would be on AIM but nobody is. Ya’ll are such tools, what with your “enjoying life” and “Studying for finals” and whatnot. I’ll have none, thank you much!

I am kinda ill. My stomach has been just sorta odd ever since the volcano adventure a month ago, and I believe Alex and Jackie have been feeling sorta under ever since as well. I sorta have this cold sweat thing going on and my stomach gives me diarrhea periodically. Charming, ne? Saw Million Dollar Baby the other night and the combination of one particular scene and my stomach made me run out of the theater to the toilet for fear of throwing up but I didn’t. Bleh. Tired of feeling like crap, need more exercise.

So back to an explanation of my business trips. I am going in order to take photographs, which I have done. I will post some at some later date. Other than that, I sit in long meetings twiddling my thumbs and not really knowing what’s going on.

Saw ayako yesterday for the first time since and she amused me by being so surprised at how bad my Japanese has gotten in the interim. She said at my peak I spoke like a Japanese but that now I speak like a marginally capable foreigner learning Japanese. I take it as a compliment? Anyway yeah, if I am going to run with the JP I need JP friends. Oddly I think they will be easier to come by in the States than Niihama.

But I am so sick of Japan and Japanese just about now, I need a break.

More business trip tomorrow. Leave for Tokyo and environs, back Friday night. Bleh. Busy. Doing a lot of reading. Got Bruce Lee Artist of Life, we will see if it teaches me anything.

Am also losing my voice from allergies. Am tired of this place. Allergies to various toxins pumped into the oxygen around me by in part the company that employs me. Am hard pressed to maintain my gratitude balance at times.

Anyway tired and worn and no rest for the weary and whatnot, but not quite battered down just yet. It is getting hot here, I am sweating my ass off at work. Wish I had brought a short-sleeved work shirt or two.

2005-05-29T20:54:00.000-04:00

Greetings, salutations, and all manner of perfunctory preamble. How do the last days of may find you?

I can't believe it is almost June. That means I have three months left out here. Madness. I am itching for a sort of all-american eating spree where I hit up like 15 of my favorite restaurants in columbus in the course of an afternoon. Who is with me? Who will be around?

So it is looking like teaching english in China seesm to be the new hip trendy thing to do for the up-and-coming of the intellectual elite. Japan is so passe, in Japan you can save money, but in China you can make 500 dollars a month and live like a king without having to worry about saving money for going home cuz you arent making enough to save. I kinda like that. Maybe I will go to China after college, following in the prestigious footsteps of Emily Patterson and Kate Grible and I would say Dan Jones but that seems to have fallen through. That's cool, what is it about the east that draws us? I think it might be that the most savage elements of their history were long enough ago that there is a sense of peace and enlightenment pervading the east during the age of "western history" from rome to now that was sort of, ya know, violent? I dunno.

Not Japan, though, Japan was always violent and a little mad. Nutters, they are.

But, what use have I for a rumination on the comparative merits of the various longitudes? None, I say, none! and so onward oneward Iwe press.

So last thursday I had a meeting with the upper level of management about the web work I have been doing. I did the "proper" web thing and separated content from style entirely, extracted all of the content into a word file and asked them to check it for me to tell me what needed to be updated. The plan then is that once I have a "correct" set of content, I can simply treat that as its own object and drop it into whatever web page style I feel like designing - or, more relevantly, I can drop it in to several styles and have them be completely unrelated but have the content the same. This is the New Big Thing in web design that has been evolving for years. You can now do RSS feeds of websites which basically extract just the content from pages and post it wherever you want it - content has become an object.

So, I print up the content object to go over first, and they kinda flip out that I would do this. There were no photos, no background, I think they were kinda scared that I had essentially destroyed their website by removing all the images. It took me forever to explain what I was doing and when I was done they looked at me skeptically and told me that if I wanted them to look at my content I had to put it in the page and print the whole thing out - in color! - for them to see. I tried to explain that I couldn't really make the page without knowing what content they wanted, but they proved implacable. So now I gotta kinda actually make the page and then add the content and then get it all to print out - which is harder than it sounds cuz I have some really basic scripts in the page that round corners on divs and the like so it looks good when it is on the screen but screen style and print style are two separate things and basically I can't print it to look like that. Unless I were to take a screenshot, hmmm...

So then I showed them what I had been working on and they were like "Wow! That's liek a whole new webpage, that's great!" and I was like "Well...wasn't I supposed to be making a whole new webpage?" But whatever. So basically what we are sitting on now is, I need to input the content into my design and then take screenshots of the basic outline and print it all up and then they can check the content. Rather silly and backwards and will take time, but at least there is a process.

Number two thing is, starting wednesday I begin my various tours of various plants across Japan. Wednesday I am in Osaka, Thursday and Friday in Kyushuu, and next week in Tokyo, Chiba and Saitama. There, I will take photographs and basically get the information I need for the little popup sites I want to make for each facility. It'll be good but I gotta get my idea approved and it could be a hassle? Anyway I am looking forward to it.

I am very scared that all of my webwork is ultimately not going to be used and that due to various beaurcratic forces I will not have time to finish this. Were everything cut and dry, I could easily simply enter the content and be done in 3 days. What I want more than anything is for someone to sit down with me and simply tell me what is true and what is false and then I could put it all in and then fill in the blanks in terms of what new content I need. But that is too much to ask because nobody wants to be associated with the website unless it has universal approval and so I am sort of sitting on my ass learning web design tricks on the web and irritations in the office. And it is my fault for not aggressively pursuing the things that needed to be done with the website. I have spent two months basically teaching myself a LOT about web design and the like but it is of course in the end not all that much; what I should have been doing is hunting down the people whose help I need, one at a time. We will see how this goes, I have two months left in this company. Gulp.

In other news, yesterday was a Walk. I had thought it was like a charity walk thing so I volunteered when they asked me, and I go and it was like a pro-Japan pro-Health walk where everyone just sort of stretched together like they do in school and then walked 4 or 7 kilometers. It was soooo herd mentality - everyone there was wearing the same sort of casual but not too casual clothing and a hat - every fucking head in the entire place was covered by a hat and you just knew that everyone that morning had thought "If I don't wear a hat I will get sunstroke and besides everyone else will think I am weird for not wearing a hat" and so of the 500 people that were there I was the only uncovered head. Weird.

I met up with some girls from work when I got there and we walked together. They kept asking me about girls and what type of girl I like and do I like anyone right now and all this middle school stuff. It's kinda funny and kinda cute and kinda annoying, I know the one likes me. I play myself off like a playboy trying to play innocent - they know I have a lot of female friends and they keep asking if I like one of them and I tell them I like all of them and that indeed I love everyone. They take that to mean I sleep around. They ask me why I am a "baddo bo-i" and I tell them that it's just that my heart is incapable of feeling anything but love for anyone. Then they laughed and the one that liked me rubbed my stomach and told me I was fat but not too fat, to which I reply that I am skinny in America and that I am hungry. Topics change.

I do not believe in tense. I want to establish that right now, if only so you can throw it in my face when I correct your tense agreement when you slip up.

Am fantasizing about Playstation 3 and the new Metal Gear 4 which just makes my heart sing.

Am living with Zach next year, don't think I posted that on here yet. We gonna listen to sad music and play poker and watch each other play video games. Excited. Zach and I have a relationship that is antagonistic or at least irritated almost as often as friendly, so he is the closest I have to a brother at OSU. We understand each other pretty well I think, though I am not sure why as he is not my closest friend but simply one who usually knows what I am thinking. I think ultimately we are very similar albeit he more aggressive and I more pretentious. As a result he is secure in the "knowledge" that he is stronger than me whereas I am secure in the "knowledge" that I am better than him. It works out well. I hope the place is big enough. ;)

So I thought I had three more quarters of scholarship left. I thought this because they told me I had three more quarters of scholarship left. They told me this because I tried to get scholarship for the summer and they said it involved a lot of hoops I had not jumped through; I said "no, thats not right, I got scholarship the summer of my freshman year and I didnt jump through any hoops." They said "no, you didnt, we dont know where that money came from but you have only used 9 quarters of scholarship." "Oh, I said, not ten [ed note: I do realize that one through nine are to be spelled out and that 10+ can be written in numerals, but I just reversed that. Do you care? Bugger off you tit!]? Does that mean that I have three more quarters of full tuition?" "Yes," they said. "Cool," I said.

But now they tell me I only have two more quarters because I have used ten. I don't disbelieve it as I sorta figured that money I got didnt come out of nowhere, but fuck them for fixing their paperwork after selling me on the lie. This means I gotta get the bulk of my classes out of the way and finished by the end of winter quarter. I will take 30 hours in the fall and 30 in the winter and that SHOULD do it but it won't be any fun. Then I will enroll part time in the fall and summer taking 4 hours each time of Thesis writing so that I can write my senior honors thesis about solipsism and narcissism in modernist literature. I need to write a thesis to graduate with distinction and I need to take at least 8 hours of the thesis writing thing to do that. I can probably win enough money to fund that. Then basically I have to find a job in a computer lab where I can earn 8 dollars an hour to sit and write my thesis for 60 hours a week. Through spring and summer.

Then I will graduate in the summer of 2006, which may make me too late for JET 2006. Hmm.

I much preferred the schedule where I took 30 hours a quarter for Fall, Winter and Spring quarters and then graduated with distinction in the spring, having written my thesis while participating in standard courseloads.

I could just drop out I suppose, what do you think of that?

Anyway, yeah, that is school. That means I may have to change the schedule on the right to include more science. Fuck. And I may just not take fifth year Japanese. What do you think of that?

Karen will be here in less than a month. Karen, bring some gnutella, I have the oddest craving for it.

That is all you get though my mind feels as though I could go on. I am stopping not for any reason, but for no reason.

"I can't see the end of me -
My whole expanse I cannot see;
I formulate infinity
Stored deep inside of me..."

Thoughts.

2005-05-23T20:47:00.000-04:00

Hey gang. Figure it’s about time for a blog update. This is weird, I all of a sudden have gotten terribly self-conscious about this blogging business and I am not altogether sure why. I suddenly can’t bring meself to write with the care-free light-hearted adventurous spirit that so aptly characterized my earlier posts. Now I am all of a sudden stressing about who is reading this and what it might make them think of me. What the fuck?

But, I will give it a go! This weekend was a lot of fun, Toshi and Mirai came to visit me in Matsuyama. We stayed in a hotel by Dogo Onsen, which is the oldest bath in Japan (3000 years and they still haven’t changed the water!). The whole Onsen (Public Bathing) thing is really popular here, so it’s kinda something that this hot spring has been used for 3000 years. Big tourist attraction, sorta down the street from me.

So anyway, Saturday I met them at the train station and then we went to the hotel and we drank and then ate a massive, massive feast. Then napped, drank, bathed in the hotel onsen several times in various order before finally cashing in our chips for the evening.

Next morning we got up nice and early and had a breakfast almost as massive as the previous night’s dinner. It was delicious. Then we went to the actual Dogo Onsen, which is in an old building (the building itself isn’t 3000 years old, of course…it’s only a few hundred years old, making it somewhat new and tacky…) (…) It was really pretty, just massive wooden construction. The biggest surprise was how small the actual onsen was – easily the smallest public bath I have been to in Japan, with maybe like 8 little shower heads on the side and a pool with about half the area (albeit twice the depth) of your standard onsen pool. It was hot. So we sat around there for an hour. There was a yakuza, too, with a big tattoo of a naked woman looking very sad on his back. That was the first time I have seen one of the famous yakuza tats, they are generally prohibited in the baths in Niihama.

Then we went to Matsuyama Castle, one of the more famous castles around, apparently. It is really old and really massive and sits on this huge hill in the center of matsuyama. You have to take a cable car to get to the top, and from there it’s a winding 10 minute trek to the inside of the gate. There was a gate with no door right by the main gate, which confused me. The sign said “Doorless Gate: Built to Confuse Invading Enemies,” but I take that as a sign that the people making signs didn’t know what it was for either.

So like, I live in Ehime, Matsuyama is the capital of Ehime, it’s 2 bucks and an hour and a half bus ride away, and all this time I had never gone to Matsuyama castle. Two weeks ago, they started renovations, which will be going on for a year. We went into the castle, but the whole thing is covered on the outside with scaffolding and canvas and so the famous view from the top was completely obscured. Kinda put a damper on the experience.

Anyway, after that we went to this café that I know about from previous misadventures where the proprietress remembered my friend who took me there and was nice to us. We had some pita sandwiches. Afterwards, Toshi had beer, Mirai had sweets, and I had both, making me sort of a gender-bender in the after-lunch ingestion department. Toshi shook his head disapprovingly at my sweet tooth but there was whipped cream and cranberry sauce to go with my scone and the whole thing sat well enough with my Guinness, which she just happens to carry at this little shop in the middle of nowhere matsuyama. I rather like Guinness.

Then we did some strolling and made it to the train station. I was getting ready to see them off when they noticed that the bus about to leave was bound for Niihama, so we made our hasty goodbyes and I hopped the bus, trusting them that it was indeed Niihama-bound. It was.

And that was my Matsuyama Bath Adventure. It was really great to see Toshi and Mirai again – they are the first physical reminder I have had that all those people I left behind were real. Toshi and Mirai, if you guys are reading this, thanks very much for coming all the way out to Ehime to see me, it was great! If you are still around when I go to Tokyo we will go have a few drinks.

Other news. Okay. Read this article. If it excites you, warms your heart, makes you think that maybe humanity can pull the occasional rabbit out of its generally dull, dirty hat, then here’s the deal. We are doing a Finnegans Wake reading. It will start this summer, and it will be based in Columbus. Dan is sort of heading it up for now, though I actually hope to sort of keep it going perpetually. The cyclical nature of the text is perfect for that.

“Wait a second, Myk…aren’t you, uh, kinda far away for that to be relevant to your current lifestyle?”

Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you. But, here is my idea. Finnegans Wake, as is written in the introduction to the Penguin edition, challenges our notion of the “ideal reader.” The ideal reader for finnegans wake speaks 40 languages, has a profound understanding of various fields from art history to cosmology to horse racing, is sensitive to both male and female sensibilities, and in a thousand other ways is nothing that a single reader could be. In short, the text was written for a group – a large group, the more people the better; in fact, the more diverse the better. Ideally, finnegans wake is to be read in tandem, in a sort of half-drunken unison, by a cross-section of humanity. What nobody seems to have really realized here is that this is essentially asking for an internet distribution and reading system – ie, WikiWake.

Yes, this is my dream. The wiki format, which essentially means that content is user-driven (see wikipedia for the most famous example) is perfect for the wake. I want to create a WikiWake website where people interested in finnegans wake can come and listen to the interpretations and ideas of their peers – and of course, where they can add their own ideas as well. The basic sense I am getting of this is that we would create an online community dedicated to a sort of perpetual reading of Finnegans Wake. My plan for the summer, as part of this group effort, is to type up the Wake and post it chapter by chapter as we discuss it. Now, I realize that there are already various internet texts – that’s not the point, I want to type it. The challenge awaiting me when I return to the states is going to be the creation of the actual WikiWake Site, where readers can come and comment on the text. The logistics could prove a bit tricky but I am up to the challenge. I want to do it well.

Then, if this all actually works, I am going to use it as winning entrant in the 2006 Denman Undergraduate Research thing and win a big prize. I am going to contact me old professor soon and ask for his blessing in this endeavor.

The summer reading group, then, is actually my test-run for an online international reading of The Wake, which, if it works, will serve as evidence in my grant application for the thing I am planning to set up. This is actually a Really Good Idea. I am very proud of it. Please do not steal it. Instead, please participate. We have set up a page for the summer at wakeitup.blogger.com and from there we will launch our first assault. The text is challenging but rewarding – you probably won’t understand more than a tiny bit the first time through, especially without the benefit of Sebastian Knowles at the helm, but I promise you it will be fun. Especially if you are in the Columbus area – they are going to be having meetings and reading the wake as it is meant to be read, out loud in a group with a few beers. I really would like to get this ball rolling and have it work, if not for the WikiWake idea then at least to have a group going for the continued enjoyment of this text. We could turn it into a student organization even, have weekly meetings and get school funding.

What do you all think?

Also, moving on, I have come to a decision. I want to go to graduate school in New York City. Whether this will be immediately after graduation or whether I go teach English in Japan for a year or two is still not decided, but I want to live in New York City and I want to go to graduate school in English Literature, probably modernist.

One of the things Toshi and I talked about was the difference between life in America and life in Japan, and one of the things we noticed was that one is really talking about life in non-big-city America vs life in non-big-city Japan. Once you are in the city, all of the differences are marginalized – life in Osaka and life in New York are going to have more in common than they have different. Surely cities have distinct flavors, but suddenly I see the world as an urban cosmopolis superimposed on suburban/rural/uneducated wilderness. I want to be in a citadel of culture. New York is going to be my home.

On a final note as I wrap this up (or am I?), I saw Closer last night. I really, really liked it, most of it was so real, the way they hurt each other and got hurt, the way they all played these games. It is, as Roger Ebert put it, a movie about four people who really deserve each other. Two couples, betrayals and love and lust and really the terror of life. Some scenes really really moved me. Makes me worry about the dating game. I wonder if I should date more. I could. Maybe I will? But I don’t want any more entanglements before I go home. My future is sort of very-slowly beginning to solidify, sort of the fragile crispy outer shell of the ice cube is forming, and it looks as though Japan will play a smaller part than once I thought. I like it here, I will vacation here in the future, but I need English too much to live here or start a serious relationship with a Japanese girl or anything. Even if my Japanese becomes perfect, I don’t like the language nearly as much as I have come to love English. When something is cool or wonderful or amazing or great or any number of superlative adjectives in English, it is “Sugoi!” in Japanese and that’s kinda it. English has layers of complexity that Japanese, for all its kanji, cannot give me. Japanese is beautiful in its own way, and I love the very idea of Kanji, but it is a pretty, artificial pond next to the ocean of English and that is that.

But who knows. I will keep up my language studies upon my return but my heart belongs to English and particularly Joyce these days. I will shrug it off as a pretension of my youth one day, perhaps, but for now I am not just content with it I am happy with it, thinking about the prospects of my WikiWake makes me glad. It makes me feel like I have a place, a thing to do.

And that was my update. What did you think? I think maybe one of my better ones, at least content-wise. I feel as though I have talked about many things, like every paragraph was saying something, as opposed to just using words. But maybe not. Does it feel forced? Writing it felt kinda forced in parts, but really free in others. Does that come across? I want to be a writer. I want to be a critic. I am looking forward to McHale’s lit crit class this fall. I am going to read The Language Instinct this summer. Everything is sort of falling into place, egad have I found a calling?

I have seen the near-future and it is pretension. But for its own sake, for art. What?

Wired News: Wright Hopes to Spore Another Hit

2005-05-22T22:45:00.000-04:00

Wired News: Wright Hopes to Spore Another Hit

Will Wright aims high. This is really interesting ona deep-ish level - we are talking about simulation of evolution, real-time etc.

adaptive path » ajax: a new approach to web applications

2005-05-20T04:06:00.000-04:00

adaptive path » ajax: a new approach to web applications

This is the future of the internet, seems like one of the most important developments since...I dunno, data.

Designing the Future - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com

2005-05-20T03:40:00.000-04:00

Designing the Future - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com

Design meets sustainability - interesting read, the future?

Testing

2005-05-20T02:18:00.000-04:00

They say I can post to blogger using only email. I am going to see if
that is true.

Wow, it is true. The line above this, as well as the subject of this update, were sent from my email. This means that were I so inclined I could update my blog from my phone. Nifty.

Spring Time Blog

2005-05-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

Seeing as it's almost summer I thought I'd switch to something a bit more lively and upbeat for me blog. Still kinda tweaking it but what do you think? All based on some other template, none of which particularly suit me but so it goes.

So yeah, welcome to the new Japanese Adventures! It's bright, it's lively, it's...mainly orange and white!

And hopefully I've done away with the various glitches that were plaguing my previous design thanks to all the random modding I had done.

Now.

It goes without saying it looks better on firefox, if only for various :hover effects.

So yeah.

What to talk about? Is this the long update I promised? I am not feeling particularly angsty or thoughtful, so that leaves me vaguely concerned that I cannot fulfill my obligations to you, vis a vis our relationship as blogger-bloggee. Specifically, I tremble in trepidation, stumble in synchronicity (ha! gotcha! That not only makes no sense but doesn't even fit the context - I used the word synchronicity strictly because I rather enjoy the Jungian concept of that name and wanted something that starts with S) etc right so can I be entertaining or at least interesting? Maybe acidic?

Latest thoughts.

Are some people just better than others? As good, left-leaning nonfascist progressives, rich in youth and blessed with education, our first response is a sort of knee-jerk NO!!!!

But...what if it is true? What if some people are simply more worthwhile? Allow me to spell out a theory, not one which I embrace necessarily but just a sort of theoretical breakdown of how elitism could progress. I want you to comment, and either support or oppose this theory, this outlook, with arguments and evidence. Please.

So.

I can line up all the people I know and some of them, to me, have a spark, have the sort of bright-eyed interested look that tells me that in interacting with them adventures can be found. Other people (most people?) have glassy eyes which bespeak of dullness (did I use the word bespeak right?).

At first I thought this was a question of intelligence where there are smart people and there are dumb people but frankly that's not true. The line has nothing to do with intelligence, education, skills, etc - merely with interest. The people I put into group A - Bright-Eyed, like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes - don't necessarily have to know anything or even be particularly intelligent; they simply are interested in life. The other people aren't.

This is all rather vague I know. It also naturally runs into the inevitable question of where we are each placed. This is not an exact science - I suspect on some level all I am really doing here is breaking people into groups based on impressions of my friends, perhaps. But, I think I really do think my friends are better people than most. Is it democratic? No. But I enjoy the company of my friends and not the company of most other people.

So does this speak more about me, social anxiety and inability to relate? Or is there some merit to this theory of prejudice?

I hesitate to post this as it is vague, poorly explained and paints me a bigot. But maybe I am - in fairness, there are people whose company I enjoy and people whose company I dont enjoy.

solipsism or observation?

Maaaadness.

David Hayter

2005-05-17T04:36:00.000-04:00

David Hayter

David Hayter not only voices Solid Snake and Spike Speigal (thats a lot of S's) but wrote the X-Men 2 movie? I noticed that on the ending credits the other night and finally remembered to check to see if it was him. Guess it was.

Mike Davidson -- Interactive Design, Print Design, Brand Consulting

2005-05-17T04:26:00.000-04:00

Mike Davidson -- Interactive Design, Print Design, Brand Consulting

This is an incredibly well-designed website. Just look at his top banner, it updates every two minutes with a photo of what I think is an island near Seattle which is where he seems to be based? Anyway yeah that and it updates the weather - and that's just sort of a gimmicky feature.

Now, what YOU will be interested in is his I-Pod Giveaway Contest. Nuff said, check it, and let me know if you have any ideas for the I-Pod in History but don't feel up to the challenge of creating it.

Also, I promise to have a long, rambling, ranting update soon. Many things heavy on my mind.

It starts. This isnt a hoax, is it?

2005-05-17T00:13:00.000-04:00

PlayStation 3 announced for 2006 - News at GameSpot

BBC NEWS | Americas | US chastity ring funding attacked

2005-05-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

BBC NEWS | Americas | US chastity ring funding attacked: "The Silver Ring Thing says more than 30,000 young people have committed themselves to premarital purity after attending the programme's three-hour presentations. "

I am glad to know that my government continues to pour money into such endeavors. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Also, it's reassuring to know that these seminars are three hours long. I mean, I have to admit I would find myself a tad skeptical if 30,000 young people with no life experience made emotional life-long pledges after only one or two hours of seminar. Way to go, Team Jesus!

I guess I would feel more comfortable about the budget these guys get if I knew that there was at least something there that said "But if you do, use a condom" but somehow I don't think that's what they're going for ("Congress first allocated money for abstinence-only programs in 1999, setting aside $80 million in grants, which go to a variety of religious, civic and medical organizations. To be eligible, groups must limit discussion of contraception to failure rates.").

There is even talk of a study at Texas A&M that shows that abstinance-only education is correlated with increased teen pregnancy and STD's. Lovely ne?

Why are we funding this? I am curious if not hopefull with regards to this law suit.

testing

2005-05-12T03:02:00.000-04:00

demo1,
originally uploaded by powerless.

I am trying to figure out this Flickr thing, its supposed to be the best thing that ever happened to photos online. This is an image I made this morning. Click it?

Hmm. That's unfortunate, it looks like I am unable to add more than one photo at a time like that?

At any rate, here, I will post a series of graphics. These represent my day's work today.

www.Vaclav.Vancura.org (EN)

2005-05-11T19:36:00.000-04:00

www.Vaclav.Vancura.org (EN)

Check out this site design. The content is nothing too grand but it is the first time I have seen a horizontal scroll bar put to good use, like it belongs. Interesting. Perhaps we will see more pages like this in the future?

Survey: do you guys like it when I post links in here to things I stumble upon, or would you rather I update my rants or nothing at all?

Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

2005-05-11T03:30:00.000-04:00

Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

Fight of the Century, Pinker vs Spelke on (Nature + Nurture) vs Nurture in terms of why there are so few high level female mathematicians. This seems to be sort of the cutting edge in gender theory these days.

Radio Ga-Ga

2005-05-10T01:42:00.000-04:00

Confessions of a Listener

This is a whimsical article from someone who loves the radio.

Web 2.0 what? Interesting read.

2005-05-09T20:22:00.000-04:00

Digital Web Magazine - Web 2.0 for Designers: "To summarize, these are what we see as the six main themes covering design in the Web 2.0 world:

1. Writing semantic markup (transition to XML)
2. Providing Web services (moving away from place)
3. Remixing content (about when and what, not who or why)
4. Emergent navigation and relevance (users are in control)
5. Adding metadata over time (communities building social information)
6. Shift to programming (separation of structure and style)"

The Huffington Post | The Blog

2005-05-09T20:20:00.000-04:00

The Huffington Post | The Blog

John Cusack has a blog? And was friends with Hunter S Thompson? Hm, who knew?

(web)space oddity

2005-05-07T01:08:00.000-04:00

Blog

Really tired. At work on a Saturday. Mild diarrhea. Don’t want to eat. All very odd.

This past week was golden week. That means it was a week made out of gold. No ha-ha I am just kidding. It was a week-long vacation. I went camping. With friends. At a hippy-rave on an active volcano. Nobody fell in. No drugs. Booze. Not much, though. Didn’t really socialize. Am feeling odd. Sat around with standard posse. Alex v funny. Alison v funny. Jackie v funny. Me crashed early both nights. Dolphins on the way there. Was cool. Jumped through ferry wake. My sentences underlined. That one not but should be as underlined is transitive but no object. That one no. That one yes. This hypnotic. Trying not to use subjects.

Or verbs. One or the other.

I couldn’t possibly be as tired as this entry seems could I? Last night watched movies. Starsky and Hutch was funny, also an old Kirk Douglass/Tony Curtis bit. I watched a good deal of Tony Curtis in tights/tunics skipping across the screen in homoerotic historical epics when young, but never did see this one, The Vikings. I was wondering what ever happened to him and apparently he is still alive, short and fat and doing this and that with the occasional appearance in that or this. Surreal. Underline.

So what is new with all of you? Happy Easter or am I late? Time has lost meaning.
*
Time passes
*
Lunch is now over. Is Saturday but was not sent home early. Why not? Because my boss called in sick and so there is nobody to send me home early. Boohiss. I wrote my march report that was good. Now to edit it but fuck that.

I crashed at Jackies last night but couldn’t find the razor I had stashed there so I have a week’s facial hair at work today. I look savage. Have taken to growling and eating raw meat with me hands.

I liked in the Vikings whenever you see Viking HQ its just all these big hairy men playing tug-of-war over a pit of fire or throwing axes at their wives or chaining people in the water and always with a hearty guffaw no matter what happens. It is so funny. “This is our fidelity test!” (woman dragged in, hair in three braids. Braids stretched out and nailed to board. Drunk husband throwing axes to cut braids.) “What if she is innocent?” “Then he will cut the braids! HAHAHA” “Well what if she is guilty?” “Then he’ll kill her! HAHAHA!” (drunk husband throws twice, misses braids and bride) “What if he misses with the last axe?” “Then we kill him! HAHAHA!”

The tug-of-war over a pit of flame was perhaps my favorite scene in the film as it is just a background distraction not even noticed by any characters – its just what Vikings do in their free time. I love it.

Irritated that me boss called in sick. Technical. That was a spelling check.

Read a bunch of Dan’s old college papers about 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut. I didn’t like them but know he is smarter than me so am dreading the thought of reading my old papers on the same topic. I feel I am so much hot air and have been and want when I get back to write genuine papers with genuine research and with genuine drafts and whatnot. They were nominating me for outstanding senior in the English department when I was but a wee sophomore and I think maybe it is time I did some work because I could be that guy if I just tried. I think. I’d rather try my ass off and not get some silly award than get it without trying, ya know? Or maybe not, it would be gratifying as all hell to have me name on a plaque at college AND high school. I’m such a nerd.

Toshi is coming to visit me next week, I look forward to it greatly. We are going to bum around Matsuyama and stay at an Onsen hotel and visit Matsuyama Castle and etc etc. Life is good.

So I started watching this anime Samurai Champloo about which I have heard this and that. It’s from the guys who did Bebop but instead of a sort of futuristic bounty hunter commentary on jazz it is a samurai tale put to hiphop. What I like most about it is that it uses hiphop not just as a soundtrack but as a sort of structural foundation, much in the way bebop did with Jazz. It seems to look at hiphop and say “well what makes hiphop hiphop and how can we apply that principle to animation and story telling?” and at least in the first episode the central thing I saw them doing was using the idea of scratching discs as sort of a playing with time, right, because you rewind and shit and so they splice together scenes going on at the same time by scratching back and changing over, its like its arranged by a DJ. Very cool. Much in the way bebop used Jazz quoting (playing something by someone else that is famous and simply putting a bit of ad hoc improve into it) I expect Champloo to use hiphop sampling, which is similar but with more emphasis on the synthetic element. And I read on a message board that the end to Champloo sucks which means I will likely enjoy it.

Also the animation is top notch perhaps the best fighting Ive seen tho the bebop movie was damn good. First 4 dvds out in the states check em out seems interesting enough and also very sad perhaps.

I wish I had an anime friend here. Maybe Joshka eh? I do know that that stupid aussie chick was all about anime but she kinda blew me off. I was all excited, guess I came on too strong. Still, I don’t like being blown off, doesn’t sit well with me.

I have an odd pulsing headache behind my right ear. I wonder if I have a tumor and any minute it will eat my brain? All in all I am not so into camping.

Ask E.T.: Sparklines or Wordgraphs--some draft pages from Beautiful Evidence

2005-04-26T19:30:00.000-04:00

Ask E.T.: Sparklines or Wordgraphs--some draft pages from Beautiful Evidence

So there is this guy Edward Tufte who seems to be a minor deity among designers. This is an interesting article of his I stumbled across about something called Sparklines - an idea that many cutting edge designers are starting to toss about. Perhaps we will see more of this. I suspect it may become standard.

Web Design is like fashion, things go in and out of style and every once in a while something sticks. It's cool to be on the inside in such a situation, makes me feel like I am rubbing elbows with fashion gurus. :)

The Office Wraith

2005-04-25T20:59:00.000-04:00

There is a woman who works I believe on the 7th floor of this building. I have never seen her speak to anyone. I have never seen her do anything. She is tall, pale, young and beautiful. The only thing I have EVER seen her do, in all my months here, is stare sadly out the hallway window. Sometimes she waters a plant.

Today I went up to the seventh floor to drop off some paperwork and there she was. Except today, possibly for the first time, she smiled at me sadly and said good morning. Then she went back to staring out the window.

I am at great risk because I fall in love easily with sad beautiful women.

I think she might be a ghost.

Short post, ne.

2005-04-25T03:42:00.000-04:00

So it's time for one of me blog updates, me hardies. As part of today's entertainment, I shall write the first sentence in the style of a pirate blogger. And I did. I am glad that's overwith.

I am reading murakami. I just finished translating a story called Kanou Crete, which I post only with the disclaimer that it is dirty and vaguely disturbing. If I keep up with the translations I am going to start a blog just for them. What say you? I thought so. It will be connected to this blog, sort of a "Blog Network" if you will. In the tradition of internet users everywhere, I am going to create a contracted form of the phrase "Blog Network" and use it from here on out, to the befuddlement of my contemporaries. Soon, someone will realize what I mean by "Bletwork" and start using it as well, without explaining it. It is in this vein that internet elitism takes hold and spreads.

So yes, my Literary Bletwork is in the cards. Perhaps to have it be a true literary Bletwork, I should ask various other friends with the ability to do so to translate stories from whatever language they speak into English. Then I can link to their blogs and create a mebletta (bletwork eaten by meta (I shouldnt be explaining this, tsk)). Dan, what say you? Spin me some Camus? The ultimate project of course would be Finnegans Wake this summer, into which I plan to pour a few hours a week. Anyone reading this and interested in an online reading group for Finnegans Wake should let me know. I won't hold my breath ye bland lubbers. That was clever.

Watched half of fight club last night. More than half. Up to the point where Edward Norton beats the shit out of the blonde guy in a jealous angst driven fury and when confronted by Brad Pitt for going nuts simply says "I felt like destroying something beautiful." One of my favorite scenes in a movie.

Anyway, here is the story I just translated. It's odd and a little dirty.

----------------------------------------------------------------
My name is Kanou Crete. I help my big sister, Kanou Malta, with her work.
Of course, Kanou Crete isn’t my real name. It’s the name I use when I help my big sister. When I’m not at work, I use my real name – Kanou Taki. The reason I call myself Crete is because my sister calls herself Malta.
I have never been to Crete Island.
Sometimes I look at a map. Crete is a Greek island near Africa. It has a stiff, long shape, sort of like a bone with some meat on it that’s been chewed by a dog, and has many famous ruins. The palace of Knossos is there. According to one legend, a tormented hero made his way through the labyrinth and saved the queen. If I ever get a chance, I’d really like to go there.
My work involves helping my big sister listen for the sound of water. My sister’s job is to listen to the sound of water. She listens to the sound of the water that flows through people. It probably goes without saying, but this isn’t work that just anyone can do. It takes talent and practice. In Japan, my big sister is probably the only one who can do it. My sister learned the ability long ago, in Malta. Alan Ginsberg and Keith Richards also came to the place where she was studying. On Malta, there is that sort of special place. In that place, water carries a lot of meaning. My big sister studied there for many years. Then she returned to Japan, called herself Kanou Malta, and set up shop listening to the sound of water inside of people.
We live in an isolated rental house in the mountains. As there is a basement, my sister keeps the water that is shipped from all over Japan down there; there are too many types to count. She has it all lined up in clay water jars. Just like wine, water is best stored in a cellar. My job is to make sure that those jars are all stored properly. I make sure that no garbage gets into the water, and that it doesn’t freeze in the winter. In the summer, I make sure the bugs don’t take over. It’s really not that hard a job. It doesn’t even take that much time. I spend most of my days drawing architectural designs. When a guest comes, I bring tea and such.
Every day, my sister puts her ear to each of the jars, one at a time, and makes sense of the indistinct sounds coming out of each. Every day, for two or three hours. That’s my sister’s daily ear training. Each water gives a slightly different sound. She lets me do it, too. I shut my eyes and concentrate all of my focus on my ears. But I can’t really hear the water. Most likely I just don’t have as much natural talent as my sister.
“First, listen to the water in the jar,” she tells me. “If you can do that, then you can also hear the water in people.” I try to make my ears focus, just like her. But I can’t hear anything. Every once in a while, I think that maybe I hear something. I feel like something very far away is…moving. It’s like listening for a tiny bug flap its wings two or three times. But it stops after an instant. It’s like it’s playing hide and seek or something.
She says it’s too bad I can’t hear it. “It’s especially important for someone like you to be able to hear the water inside peoples’ bodies.” The reason why is, I am a woman a problem. “If only you could just hear this!” she is always saying, shaking her head. “If only you could just hear this, your problem would go away, everything would be fine,” she says. My sister is really concerned about me.
I sure do have a problem. No matter what I do, I can’t solve my problem. The problem is, every time a man sees me, he attacks me. It doesn’t matter who, any man who sees me throws me down to the ground and takes his belt off. I don’t know why. But it’s been like that ever since I was young. Ever since I can remember.
I mean, sure, I am a beautiful woman if I say so myself. My body is fantastic. My breasts are huge, my hips are small (? しまっている). I think myself sexy when I look in the mirror. I see myself in the flabbergasted looks of all the men every time I walk down the street. “But surely not every beautiful woman on earth is constantly being assaulted!” says Malta. I think she’s right. The one with that problem is me. It’s probably partly my fault. Men probably react like that because of the way I cower. Then, they see me and get irritated and the next thing they know they want to assault me.
So, anyway, I have been assaulted by all sorts of men. Assaulted violently, against my will. By my teachers, by my classmates, by my architecture professor, by my uncle on my mothers side, by the guy who came to collect the gas bill, by the fireman who came to put out the fire when the house next door burned down – everyone! It doesn’t matter how I try to avoid it. I’ve been slashed by knives, punched in the face, strangled with a hose in the street. All sorts of incredibly violent ways!
As a result, I’d stopped going out. I felt that if I kept it up, I would finally be murdered. And so, holing up in an isolated mountain cabin, I look after jars of water in the basement.
Just once, I killed someone who was attacking me. Actually, to tell the truth, the one who killed him was my sister. He was, as expected, trying to assault me. In this basement. He was a police officer and had come to the house on some sort of investigation. The instant I opened my door it seemed he simply couldn’t take it, and knocked me to the ground. He started ripping my clothes off and got his pants down to his knees. His pistol was rattling. “Do what you want, just don’t kill me!” I said, cowering. He punched me in the face. Fortunately, just at that moment my sister Malta got home. She had heard the noise and was carrying a big bar in one hand. With the bar, she bashed the policeman in the back of the head. Something gave way and with a squishing sound the policeman collapsed. She went to the kitchen and came back with a carving knife. Using that, she slit the cop’s throat – nicely, like she was slicing open a tuna. She cut so smoothly it didn’t even make a sound. My sister is very good at sharpening carving knives. Knives she sharpens cut so well you wouldn’t believe it. I watched, in shock.
“Why are you doing that? Why did you cut his throat?” I asked.
“It’s better to slit the throat once, too, just to be on the safe side. This way there won’t be any trouble later. Anyway, he was a cop. This way he won’t get away,” she explained. She was putting his blood into one of her clay jars. “Better to extract his blood,” she said. “If we store it in here, it won’t spoil.” Grabbing him by the boots, we put him upside down in the clay jar. He was a large guy, so when we grabbed him by the feet to shake him he was very heavy. If Malta hadn’t been so strong, I don’t think we could have done it. She’s built like a lumberjack, and strong like one too. “It’s not your fault when men attack you!” she said, still holding his feet. “It’s the water in your body! It gets everyone riled up.”
“But how do I get rid of this water?” I asked. “I can’t just go on living like this, avoiding human contact! If this keeps up I’m going to kill myself!” I really want to get out and live in the world. I’m certified as a first-class architect. I obtained certification through a correspondence course. After I was certified, I entered lots of contests and won many prizes. My specialty is thermal combustion power stations.
“You mustn’t hurry. Clear your ears. When you do that, you can hear the reply,” Martha instructed. We shook the policeman’s feet and the last drop of blood fell into the jar.
“But we just killed a cop! What should we do? If this gets out we are in big trouble,” I said. Killing a cop is a serious offense. We’d probably be executed.
“We’ll bury him the back,” she said.
So, the two of us buried the policeman with the slit throat in the back yard. We threw in his pistol and his handcuffs and his clipboard and his boots and buried it all with him. Malta did it all – she dug the whole, moved the body, and filled the hole in. She cleaned up, singing “Goin to a Go-Go” in a Mick Jagger-esque voice. After she buried him, we packed the dirt and scattered dead leaves over it. Of course, the local cops investigated thoroughly. They searched for the missing police officer so thoroughly they were going through the roots of the grass. A detective even came to our place. We were asked many questions. But he didn’t find any clues. “No worries,” said Malta. “Nobody will find out. We slit his throat and drained all his blood, and we put him in a really deep hole.” And we breathed a sigh of relief.
But, starting the next week, the ghost of the police officer began to appear in our house. He would walk up and down the basement stairs with his pants around his knees, pistol rattling. I thought he was a rather indecent visitor, but whatever kind of visitor it is a ghost is a ghost.
“Kinda weird, huh? I told you, I cut his throat so he couldn’t cause trouble afterwards,” Malta explained. I was afraid of the ghost at first. After all, we were the ones who killed him. I slipped under my sisters covers and slept, shivering. “You’re not afraid of him, are you? He can’t do anything to you – we slit his throat and drained all his blood. He can’t even get it up!” Malta said.
And so I also got used to the ghost’s presence. All he did was walk in and out of the basement with his slit throat flapping around, so there was really nothing to be afraid of. He was just walking. Once I got used to seeing him, it wasn’t even worth talking about. He didn’t want to hurt me anymore. Since he didn’t have any blood left, he didn’t even have the power to assault me. Even if he tried to say anything, the air just whistled out of the whole in his throat and he couldn’t. It was exactly like my sister had said. Since she had slit his throat, there was no trouble. Sometimes, I’d walk around in front the ghost naked, just to see if I could provoke it. I even opened my legs. I even did lewd things. Things so lewd I would never have thought myself capable of doing them. Very audaciously. But it seemed that the ghost could no longer feel anything.
As a result, I got very self-confident.
I stopped being so cowardly.
“I am no longer cowardly. I am no longer afraid of anyone. I won’t be taken advantage of by anybody,” I told Malta.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “But you still have to learn to hear the sound of the water in your body. It’s very important.”

One day, the phone rang. It was a request for a design for a new jumbo thermal combustion power station slated for construction. That got me very excited. I had just been thinking about thermal combustion power station designs. I wanted to leave for the outside world and build thermal combustion power stations to my heart’s content.
“Yeah, but if you go outside you are going to run into trouble again,” Malta cautioned.
“Yeah, but I wanna try,” I said. “I just wanna try to start from scratch, one more time. I feel like it’ll go smoothly this time. I don’t cower anymore. I won’t be pushed around anymore!”
Malta shrugged her shoulders and said that if she couldn’t stop me she couldn’t stop me. “But be careful! Just make sure you prepare yourself.”
So I left for the outside world. And I designed all sorts of thermal combustion power plants. In the bat of an eye I became the most skilled architect in the world. I had a natural talent. My thermal combustion power plant designs were very original, reliable, and had never broken down. They were also very popular among the people that worked in them. Any time anyone wanted to build a thermal combustion power plant, they came to me first, without fail. I became very rich. I bought the entire building in the best part of town and moved in to the top floor. I installed alarms everywhere, I got electronic locks. I hired a gay bodyguard who looked like a gorilla.
Having taken all these precautions, I returned to an elegant lifestyle. Until he came.
He was very large. He had eyes so green they seemed to be on fire. He disabled my alarms. He tore off the electronic locks. He brushed the guard aside like dust. Finally he burst into my room. I didn’t cower in front of him, but he didn’t take much notice. He tore off all my clothes and brought his pants down to his knees. After forcing himself on me violently, he slit my throat with a knife. It was a very sharp knife and cut very well. My throat was cut like warm butter. It was too smooth, so I didn’t even have the sensation of being cut. ? Then the darkness came. The police officer approached me through the darkness. He looked like he wanted to say something, but all I could hear was the air flapping through the hole in his throat. Then, suddenly, I heard the water in my own body. Yes, I could really hear it. I lowered myself to my body and put my ear against it, and heard the tiny drips of water. Reroppu. Reroppu. Riroppu.

Reroppu. Reroppu. Riroppu.
My name is ・ Kanou　・ Crete
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arrr and that's that, me hardies.

Yeah

2005-04-21T00:05:00.000-04:00

So maybe we should all just put all of our efforts into consolidating all power behind one marginally tolerable if still corrupt and power loving oligarchic centralized world government. That will provide if nothing else stability.

Stability is maybe even more important than I ever considered, if only for its implications for science and culture. When a people is unstable, and only worry about war and politics, they don't have time for art or science; on the other hand, with the spread of (generally) stability in the western world in the 20th century, look how much we've uncovered? Maybe Bush's "democracy" is the way to go, if only as a stopgap? Can you imagine, then, if he goes on to destroy "terrorists" and dissidents around the world and established a world-wide america-esque democracy? Can you imagine the scientific progress if the scientific community were to expand by 10,000%? We'd have maybe a decade of blood-stained conquest on our hands and then another 20 years to convert religion and tradition into quaint distincitive memories that give each region or people a unique history and don't play a role in the future as self-contained objects. Figure 50 years, if we devote our efforts and convert/teach the conquered. In 50 years, the earth could be a borg-like collective dedicated to understanding the universe. Imagine!

Or we could, ya know, sleep through physics class like I plan to do upon return. Tsk.

But it'd be damn cool!

Oh and they found the largest ever necropolis in egypt, 7 bodies 4 of them slaves buried alive, whole thing predates pyramids. And Burmese troops used Chemical weapons. I think maybe those two facts juxtaposed led to my ramblings this afternoon. And dan beat me at chess twice though the second game I dunno, it was at the most critical junction and I had 90 seconds and I rushed it and he won. I think I coulda won. next time.

Thanks for reading!

The New York Review of Books: The Orange Revolution

2005-04-20T22:34:00.000-04:00

The New York Review of Books: The Orange Revolution

An interesting read, an educated (it seems) socipolitical analysis of the events in Ukraine last december, complete with some thoughts as to the implications for Post-Soviet Eurasia.

Ta-da!

2005-04-20T02:56:00.000-04:00

Here it is, ladies and germs, the very first short story I have ever translated into English from Japanese. There is at least one more translation of this story floating around the net but mine is better.

Bear in mind, I haven't "made this pretty" or whatnot yet, it's kind of a bare-bones translation. Anyway, the story is "Zombie" ("Zombies?") by Murakami Haruki. There is some vulgarity, there is some violence, there is a good deal of plain meanness. It is not for the faint of heart. And so, with no further ado,

-------------------------------------------------------------------
A man and a woman were walking down the road. It was a road next to a graveyard. It was the middle of the night. There was even mist out. It wasn’t that the two of them wanted to be walking in a place like that in the middle of the night. Through a variety of circumstances, they found themselves unable to avoid it. The two of them were holding hands tightly and walking quickly.
“It’s just like we’re in a Michael Jackson video,” she said.
“Yeah, the gravestones are gonna start moving,” he replied.
Just then, they heard the creaking sound of something heavy moving nearby. The two of them stopped walking and instinctively looked at each other.
The man laughed.
“No problem, it’s nothing to get nervous about. Just some tree branches rubbing against each other – the wind or something…”
But “the wind or something” wasn’t blowing. The woman took a deep breath and examined their surroundings. She had a bad feeling. It was like something terrible was about to happen.
Zombies.
But she couldn’t see anything. There was no indication that the dead had been resurrected. The two started to walk again.
The man’s face became strangely stiff.
“Why are you walking in such an odd way?” he asked her suddenly.
“Me?” she replied, surprised. “I’m walking oddly?”
“It’s so vulgar!” he said.
“What?”
“You’re bow-legged!”
She bit her lip. It was true that she might have such a tendency. The soles of her shoes wore down unevenly - but not so much that it was fair to say she was doing it on purpose, that was harsh!
But she didn’t say anything. She was in love with him, and moreover he was in love with her. They were to get married next month. She didn’t want to get into a petty fight. That was fair enough, right?
“You’re the first bow-legged woman I ever dated.”
“Oh?” she laughed, stiffly, looking sad. Was he drunk? No, she didn’t think he’d had any alcohol all day.
“And on top of that, you have three moles in your ear hole!” he continued.
“Are you looking for an argument?” she asked. “Which ear?”
“The right. Just inside the hole in your right ear. They’re ugly.”
“You don’t like moles?”
“I don’t like ugly moles. Someone who likes that sort of thing, ha, where are you gonna find someone like that?”
She bit her lips much, much harder.
“What’s more, sometimes, your body odor really smells!” he continued. “It kind of bothered me from the beginning. If it had been summer when we met, we wouldn’t be together right now.”
She sighed. Then she let go of his hand, which she had been gripping tightly.
“Hey!” she said. “That’s not like you. You’re never that harsh. Up until just now…”
“And your blouse collar is dirty! The one you’re wearing today. Why are you such a slob? Why can’t you do a single thing right?”
She was silent. She was so angry she couldn’t move her mouth.
“Is this okay? I have a mountain of things I want to tell you – you’re bow-legged, you smell bad, you’ve got a smudge on your collar, you have moles in your ears, these are just the main part of what I want to say. Why are you wearing those earrings? They don’t suit you, you look like a hooker… Actually, no – hookers usually have nicer things. You should wear them in your nose, it would go well with your double chin. Oooh and speaking of double chins, I just remembered! Your mother, she was a real pig! Just a complaining, grumbling pig! That’s exactly what you are going to be like in 20 years. Your gluttony will develop, you’ll be just like your mom! A pig. You eat with such gluttony! Oh, and don’t get me started about your father. He can’t even write using English characters! Ya know, recently he wrote a letter to my family – lemme tell you, we all got a good laugh out of it. He couldn’t even write the characters properly. Did that bastard even graduate elementary school? What a crude family. It’s a cultural slum! Someone should just soak the house in kerosene and burn it to the ground. It’ll finally just sizzle away with all that blubber.”
“If that’s how you feel, why are you marrying me?”
But he ignored the question, and called her a pig again.
“Oh God, and your pussy! It’s really nasty. I mean, yeah, I’m done – but jeez, it just hangs there like it’s made out of cheap gum! Lemme tell you, if it were me I would rather die than have such a thing attached to me. If I were a woman and looked like that, I would just die of embarrassment. It doesn’t even matter what kind of death – any kind of death at all would be better than living with such shame.”
She stood there in shock. “You…That’s…”
Suddenly, the man grabbed his own head. Warping his face into a pained expression, he squatted down. He began to tear at his temples with his fingers. “It hurts!” he shouted. “My head is going to come apart! It won’t stop! It hurts!!”
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“No I’m not okay! I can’t take it! My skin is tingling like it’s on fire!”
She touched his face with her hand. His face was hot enough to be on fire. She tried to comfort him, but when she touched him his skin, like some sort of outer layer peeling, came right off! Then, mucous-like red muscles came into view. Gasping, she backed up hurriedly.
He stood up, giving an evil laugh. Using his own hands, he removed the rest of the skin from his face. His eyeballs sank down. His nose became two simple black holes. His lips gone, his teeth stood out exposed. Those teeth were giving the evil laugh.
“The reason I am with you,” he said, “Is so that I can eat your pork-like meat! Is there another reason I would date you? Don’t you understand at least that much? Are you an idiot? Are you an idiot? Are you an idiot? Hahahahahahaha!”
Saying that, the mass of exposed muscle began to chase after her. She ran and ran, but she couldn’t escape from the bag of flesh behind her. Just as she made it to the edge of the graveyard, a hand grabbed her blouse’s collar. She screamed as loud as she could.
He was clutching her body.
Her throat was dry. He smiled at her.
“What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”
She lifted her body, looked around. They were in bed, in a hotel near the lake. She shook her head.
“Did I scream?”
“Terribly,” he replied, laughing. “It was a really huge shriek. I bet everyone in the hotel heard it. I mean if there was a murderer or something it’d be okay, but…”
“Sorry,” she said.
“No big deal,” he replied. “Was it a bad dream?”
“A dream so bad you couldn’t imagine.”
“Well, will you tell me about it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“But it’s better to talk about it! If you tell someone about it you’ll stop shaking like that.”
“It’s alright. Right now, I just don’t want to talk.”
The two of them lay in silence for a bit. She was hugging his naked chest. The purring voices of frogs could be heard from a distance. His chest was moving, pulsing slowly and certainly.
“Hey,” she said, at last continuing her thoughts. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“By any chance, do I have moles in my ear?”
“Moles?” he said. “You mean the three ugly ones in your right ear?”
She shut her eyes. It wasn’t over.
-

And there you have it.

Eh? Eh? I did that by meself! I understood a whole zombie comentary on marriage using only asian squiggles! And my computer dictionary...

ctina.com: Haruki Murakami: The Second Bakery Attack

2005-04-18T01:12:00.000-04:00

ctina.com: Haruki Murakami: The Second Bakery Attack

Unlike Da Vinci Code I enjoyed this. Short story. Silly. Possibly important.

Amazon.com: Books: The Da Vinci Code

2005-04-17T22:31:00.000-04:00

This book blows.

Although, sigh, I must confess to being gripped by it and wanting to see the end (I know, I know). But really, it was so bad. The writing style is juvenile, the characters ridiculous, the mysteries obnoxious and the big "revelations" written with a seeming grudge against subtlty. The whole thing is like comedy of the absurd - "So this guy walks into a bar with a chicken in his hand and The Da Vinci Code!!!"

I dunno I think mostly I am irritated cuz I lost sleep reading it cuz it makes you wanna know whats next and now I am tired and will never get those moments of my life back. I went to see what people were saying about it and was sad to learn that most of the "controversy" over this "modern work of literature" consists of people going "It could be true!" and "No it couldn't!" really loud back and forth. But everyone seems to agree that it is well-written and it just isnt. I dunno, maybe I should read more junk food books, I kinda don't.

But yeah.

Also the Niihama Guide Club started talking about international jewish conspiracies and the jews ruling the united states and "they say you can always tell one by looking at them, is that true mykola?" and I was just like "Listen folks, in my humble opinion, such idiotic theories are only embraced by the uneducated. It's a dangerous way to start thinking and what the fuck, anyway?" and they all kinda glared at me. I mean I know I'm kind of an arrogant smartass (though I have gotten better, I swear) but to hear these smug upper class housewives with nothing better to do talk about the Jewish Problem as they drink tea just made me furious. I would have probably really said things to make me not get invited back but my Japanese is too restrictive.

Or is it true? Karen, are you secretly pulling all the strings and you're playing us all for fools?

Why cant the world grow up. Gah.

In other news, was a good weekend. Heh. See, I spiral up from negativitiy into positivity in this post.

Friday night did karaoke for first time in a while. Was exposed to Franz Ferdinand, a band I was gonna not get into cuz they are too popular and I'm so indie (ha ha ha...) but frankly the guitars sounded great at karaoke so I may check em out.

Saturday gave a speech to the guideclub about Ukrainian history. Was kind of irritating cuz it was followed by this Jewish bullshit. It was also weird cuz a couple gaijin came in and didnt even look at me and left, I mean, we're all friends here, right? I was...sniff...hurt... At least the mormons talked to me kinda.

For the record, I am really tired cuz of Dan Brown. Fucker.

So then saturday afternoon went to Saijo where we visited the temple designed by Tadao Ando, who is great. My second time there but is really pretty and modernlooking which is odd for a temple but you gotta figure all the ancient designs wont last forever and in another thousand years youll take your flying car to the space ship temples anyway, right? Tradition must be overcome as a legitimizing force. Or not. Whatever.

So then saturday night was yakiniku and then bed by midnight. We rented Moonchild, one of my favorite little Japanese films (popstars and vampires and homoeroticism, oh my!), but not even the girlyboys could keep Jackie awake and I was too tired to watch a movie by myself. Sunday we went to Oshima, a little island off the coast of niihama.

It was wicked cool. We trekked through bamboo forests and harsh undergrowth and up mountains and through deserted (and not deserted) mountain cottages and farms and such and it was really out of the way and cool, I liked the hell otu of it. We found, after much exploration, a nice little beach and set up camp and read in the sun for a while. Then we hopped back to niihama only to discover that busses stop at 3 (!!!) on sundays and walked about 3 miles before Jackie gave in to Tricia and called other Tricia to give us a ride. Then we went out to eat (more yakiniku but not as good I thought) and then I was in bed by 11 but not asleep until about 3 as I was reading that stupid book. Then I overslept and now am at work and exhausted.

I want to go back to that island it reminded me kinda of besaid or something I cant put my finger on it but it was great.

That's all.

Ramble and Ramble, while eating his pie...

2005-04-13T22:36:00.000-04:00

Weird night last night.

So after work I go to Shimada-sans house to help her translate my speech about Ukraine for Saturday. Her 18month old kid was there and demanded the majority of the attention but we got some of it done, I will meet her again on friday. She also fed me beef curry and gave me a couple DVD's she said she highly recommends.

So after that I go home and on the way I stop at Circle K by my apartment. As I go in I notice that the two women in the car in the lot are giving me really odd, interested looks. Whatever, thinks I, and I go into the store. I shop around for a bit, assemble a collection of junk food indulgent enough to bring a tear to Jon's eye, pay, and notice that the car with the women in it is still there when I get out. As I am getting on my bike, they get out and approach me.

I make like my Japanese is worse than it is as tends to be my policy when I meet new people. Well, I cant say policy so much as, my japanese is awful when I am caught unawares and so I come across as ignorant of the language. But anyway, in basic japanese they slowly explained that they were representatives of some sort of a group that wants to spread joy through mystical powers. They asked me if they could come to my apartment to give me a demonstration and, curiously amused, I agreed. So we get to my place and they sit me on the floor facing one of them with the other behind me and tell me to close my eyes and pray to god for anything I have that I want granted. I am thinking, wait, two strangers in my house want me to close my eyes with one behind me while I am sitting on the floor? Sure, why not, so I does it. They do some sort of mumbo jumbo where the one in front of me like held her hand out towards me and so we sat for 5 minutes as I prayed they wouldn't suddenly stab me in the back and steal my playstation. I guess it worked cuz they didn't. I also tried to think about good health and wisdom and yadda yadda yadda.

But I am inherently distrustful of any religion that tells me I can achieve happiness through satisfaction of my desires, that seems silly. Anyway, then they sat there and asked me what I thought about it and I tried politely to thank them for their time and that I would look into their group. The old woman was like Oh you probably dont believe it but thats okay, you just have to try it and even if you dont believe it it will work cuz it is a miracle. I guess they wanted me to try the holding-my-hand-out-to-grant-the-desires-of-the-person-in-front-of-me trick. But in order to try it I have to go get one of these little things they wear around their neck cuz thats how God enters me? Anyway I was tired and they asked me to come to their temple in Niihama and I'm like Naaaaaaah that's okay but they pressed me and I figure well if they were gonna kill me they'd have done it by now so what the hell I might as well get a cultural experience.

So off to the temple we go where I meet some priestess woman with scary evil eyes who does the whole hand thing to me and the other women at the same time (I guess she must be more powerful?) Then she asked me to watch a video in english explaining it. Sure, why not, I'm already here.

So I watch the video and it is such crappy new-agey rubbish, I dunno. It's like a conflation of all the bad ideas in christianity and buddhism and kept trying to establish authority by saying "just the Buddha said..." or "just like Christ said..." or "just like Dante wrote..." (not kidding that was one of their references). I guess the basic goal is that you can achieve heaven on earth, or rather, that it is coming - that there is a difference between civilization and culture, that civilization (obviously) means freedom from war and disease and that given the state of things the world is not yet civilized, but it is cultured, which is sort of a step towards civilization. And that judgment day is coming and that there will be a terrible disease that will wipe out most people and depending on the state of your soul you get a different colored robe when you die and go to a different heaven/hell (there are 180 levels) to await rebirth (or maybe you stay there? It was vague) and that the only ones protected from the plague will be members of this group.

All the details came from revelation to some Japanese guy 70 years ago. The one thing that intrigued me in the video was that apparently this group has gotten like 15 world peace prizes including one from the United Nations? This was in the beginning when it was firing out factoids about many different things in an effort to sway vast groups of people (uh, we got ancestor worship, into that? No, uh, okay, we got an apocalypse! No? Damn. Rebirth? Oh oh! Peace! We got peace!) but what was interesting was that there was zero mention of what exactly they did to earn these peace prizes. As near as I can tell the purpose of the group is to build slick looking temples across japan and abduct gaijin from convenience stores. And the hand thing (which was called Jou Rei?).

So anyway this video was still going on around like 11 which is my bedtime and while I had indeed been trying to keep an open mind it was really getting irritating and they didnt know how long it was cuz it was only supposed to be 15 minutes and it had been goign for like 45 so they asked me if I wanted to keep watching and I was like, no thanks. They asked me if I wanted to receive the little neck thing and I said I would pass, but thank you for the evening. They took me downstairs to say goodbye and thank you to evileye priest woman but were afraid to knock on her door (there was like fear, the older woman was pushing the younger woman to knock). Finally they knocked and kinda pushed me forward and she saw that I could see into her office and yelled at them and they dragged me back and she came out into the hall to meet me and thanked me for coming and asked when I would like to get the neck thing that lets god in and I said thanks but no thanks and she just got really really cold and was like "Good Night." and then they took me home.

I cannot for the life of me remember any of the names of the figures or of the religion itself, just the hand thing, joh-rei. In fact I am not altogether certain that it wasnt a crazy dream. But it wasn't. Very surreal.

Anyway, yeah. Anyone heard of these folks? These hand-waving-peace-spreaders with awards to prove it? They were showing me pictures too, "Look! This is in America! Americans do this too!" I nodded sagely.

I dunno, I dont mean to sound cynical and it is nice of people to want to spread their joy...but what the fuck, man? I didnt get to bed until 1230 and then overslept. Gah.

Weeeee wish you a merry christmas, we wish you a merry christmas...

2005-04-12T19:08:00.000-04:00

So let's see, so far this month we've done the new-employee thing and how thats a huge deal, we've done life in a zen monastary complete with whacking monks and harsh meals, we've done cherry blossoms...

Ya know I sometimes worry that I am spending too much of this journal on inner turmoil and not enough on Japan, but the cultural stuff IS in here, isn't it? It's just diluted, surrounded by a lot of inner turmoil, which I suppose is a really good depiction of me in Japan.

There is a city called Imabari a bit to the west of here. (Does anyone else have a reeeeally hard time with East and West? Like, ya gotta stop and think every time you use one of those words, and even then you frequently fuck it up? I hate that.) Imabari has this bridge that connects it to Hiroshima, of Nuclear Holocaust fame. The bridge is miles and miles long, actually interconnected bridges strung between beautiful, heavily-forrested mountainy islands. One of my plans from before you were born, whipper-snapper, has been to bike from imabari to hiroshima. Frankly, however, that probably won't happen in this lifetime. HOWEVER, this weekend, there are vague plans to bike to Omishima, which is the third island out from Imabari. There, they have a massive shrine and a museum which houses a good 90% of Japan's historical armor and weapons. They even have yoshitsune and his brother's armor, set up facing each other. So that is that vague plan. If the weather is good and our genki-meter full, me and jackie and alison are thinking about biking to omishima. We would camp on the beach saturday night and then bike back sunday.

I had a goatee thing until last night. I tried to trim it, and as invariably happens when I try to trim my beard I cut a big chunk out by accident and had to shave it. To cut my losses, I decided to keep the mustache. So now I have a mustache, which is weird. I dont think I like it, I look like an asshole cop from CHiPS or The Rockford Files. But it's okay for a week of shock value. I'm lame like that.

How does one tell if one has a tapeworm? I am always hungry. I would like to blame it on a worm and not my abiding lust for the act of putting food in my mouth. Though that's gross.

Anyway, gonna keep it short.

Cheers!

mono no aware

2005-04-11T03:43:00.000-04:00

So me mum emailed me scanned copies of my tax returns. She filled em all out for me and all and all I had to do was sign them and send them back in time for april 14. Simple enough that I got it half done. Apparently I neglected to slap my signature on. Oops. At least I finally found that post office, right?

It is cherry blossom season now. That means for about two weeks (we is in the middle of it, prolly only got a few more days) like every other tree in this country is ablaze with bring pink flowers. It's really pretty cool, they do take it really seriously. I've been to several flower-viewing parties in the past week, which is code for get drunk in the park and talk to girls. Tho I wasnt picking up girls, for a reason which in retrospect is frankly elusive. In a few more days, the wind and rain will wash away the cherry blossoms until next april when they again come out for a few days.

For those of you not in the know about the appeal of cherry blossoms to the japanese, I think it all goes back to buddhism and the idea that all beauty fades and nothing in this world last, and thus everything has an inherent sadness to it (もののあわれ they call it, "mono no aware"). This became one of the central ideas of Japanese art a thousand years ago and they liked it so much they ran with it. The cherry blossoms, then, are incredibly beautiful but a part of the beauty is that they are destroyed shortly after flowering by even the gentlest of breezes. It's the metaphor for life etc. There are all these parks whose focus is cherry trees and so you go there 50 weeks of the year and there are just trees but you go for two weeks in early april and its like woah, as the song goes.

Many thoughts lately and none of yall have been on AIM for me to talk to. And by none of yall I mean Dan Jon Sarah, to whom I talk about me thoughts. Whats this, you went and got lives? But what about meeee?

Aaaanyway, this is going to be a short one as I am not feeling particularly inspired. Thanks for reading.

Firewheel Design | A Word Wrapped in Light

2005-04-08T00:58:00.000-04:00

Firewheel Design | A Word Wrapped in Light

If you are wondering why I have been posting so many links to crap in my blog lately its cuz I got this firefox extension that lets me right click on a page and "Blog it!" opening a little blog update window and it takes two seconds.

This article is interesting to anyone interested in language and/or communication, he is arguing against the premise - supported by the Pat Robertsons of the Linguistic World - that image-based culture makes us stupid. It is an interesting response, he postulates that we are in the nascent stages of developing a visual language, with emphasis on computer software. Just something I hadn't ever considered.

I'm An Intern In New York

2005-04-08T00:36:00.000-04:00

Would be cool if I were as clever as this intern, but sadly I lack the...the... Oh hell I dunno, but here's a good intern blog. Without further ado, I give you I'm An Intern In New York!

Of interest

2005-04-08T00:11:00.000-04:00

Adam Polselli's 2005 Color Forecast

Any designers out there what say you? Anyone feel like throwing together a page with these and we'll see how modern it is?

Oh wait...I'm a designer...

ROGER SANDALL - Spiked.

2005-04-07T19:47:00.000-04:00

ROGER SANDALL - Spiked.

Interesting enough. This one is for you, Dan, o noblest of savages.

Penny Arcade

2005-04-07T04:02:00.000-04:00

This just really never stops being funny

"Taking Liberty" by William A. Galston

2005-04-06T01:43:00.000-04:00

"Taking Liberty" by William A. Galston: "Whether we think of ourselves as progressives, liberals, or New Democrats, we cannot evade the challenge posed by these ideas and by the political currents they have set in motion. If we do not meet them head-on, we will prevail only infrequently and accidentally. And when we lose, which will be most of time, we will deserve it."

Interesting enough so far.

Man, I am posting a survey thing on here, something must be wrong with me

2005-04-05T04:24:00.000-04:00

The idea is you pick an artist and answer all the questions using only titles of that artist's songs.

band: Tom Waits

are you male or female: A Good Man is Hard to Find

describe yourself: We're All Mad Here, Big in Japan, Russian Dance, Goin' Out West, Innocent When you Dream (Barroom), Clap Hands

how do some people feel about you: Way Down in the Hole, So Long I'll See Ya, What's He Building?

describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: Tango Till They're Sore, Trampled Rose

describe your current boyfriend/girlfriend: Nobody, Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)

describe your friends: Diamonds on my Windshield, The Ghost of Saturday Night, Romeo is Bleeding, A Sight for Sore Eyes, The Briar and the Rose, Lucky Day, Rain Dogs

describe what you want to be: Little Trip to Heaven, Top of the Hill, Dead and Lovely, Lucky Day, Good Old World (Waltz), I'll Shoot the Moon, Ice Cream Man

describe how you live: Warm Beer and Cold Women, Bad Liver and a Broken Heart, I Never Talk to Strangers, Starving in the Belly of a Whale, Clang Boom Steam, Shore Leave

describe your roommate: The Part You Throw Away, Nobody

describe your parents: Hang On St. Christopher, Saving All My Love For You, Foreign Affair, Who Are You?

describe your dreams: Misery's the River of the World, Knife Chase, Earth Died Screaming, So It Goes, Blue Skies, I'm Your Late Night Evening Prostitute, Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own .38)

one thing you want to say to someone: Come On Up to the House
====================================================================================

Come On Up to the House is great.

So sorry for that indulgence but that was fun. :)

Long one

2005-04-04T00:22:00.000-04:00

I hesitate to post this it has personal thoughts and impressions and makes me self-conciouss and may offend people and I dunno. That said, go ahead. This is from the zen retreat:

_____________________
More and more every day I begin to think that it is incredibly important to believe that everyone is doing everything they can, that they are doing their best, and then to be satisfied with that fact rather than with the result. Right now someone is giving a presentation to a horde of 22 year old newly-become-members-of-society and the content of said presentation is Phone Memos. “If you don’t write a memo, you might not remember the details of the phone call.” It’s all just such obvious apparent horseshit and I would be offended if the company that just hired me with my fucking price-tag education felt compelled to tell me – check that, to take a half-hour presentation to tell me repeatedly – how and why it is important to take a phone message.

And yet I appreciate the thought, she walks everyone through it, has everyone take a dummy memo, etc. Its such a silly thing, you would think that she could just hand out the memo sheet (which has slots for such things as “Caller’s Name”, “Call Intended For”, “Person who took the Call” etc) and everyone would look at it and go “Yeah, okay.”

It’s just kinda silly ne. I mean this is the sort of thing that if you sit down at the phone and see a bunch of these you just start writing, because it is so self-explanatory, but she is honestly explaining the meaning of every element on the form with a complex powerpoint presentation. I could give my plant one of these memo sheets and trust it not to fuck it up.

Under normal circumstances I would see this as a great chance to whip myself up into a good old fashioned everyone-who-isn’t-me-is-a-moron frenzy, but today I restrain myself. I want to be happy dammit.

My new favorite concept is sustainability. Not that I would even go so far as to call sustainability desirable in any lasting sense (that is kind of a pun), but my thoughts have been dwelling on it. I have developed a thought. Right now it is just a thought.

It all started like this. I was writing down ideas for, well, things I can do to/with/for words, and I liked the phrase Idol Worship cuz it could become Idle Warship or Isle Washup or Eye Doll Washup or any number of twisted things without losing its original meaning. This is all Joyce, but you see where I am going with this.

So then I tried to do the same thing with the word Lineage, but had less luck. That devolved into the idea of Lineage as a demon that spans past and future, given the dual nature of the word itself, and that of course reminded me of the demon Legion from whichever Testament that was. I liked the idea of Lineage and Legion as related demons of some sort, with regards to humanity’s fears and aspirations. The more I thought about it the more I realized that there is a connection of sorts between the words; an inverse connection. I used a bit of creative reasoning but I am toying with the idea of asserting that the dynamic between the “demons” of the human heart, Legion and Lineage, is the fundamental dialectic when you talk about people.

Whaaaa? Say you. But consider. I want to put Lineage on a Y-axis, it is temporal, it is sustainability, it is elegance, it is reason, it is mind, it is consciousness, it is eyes – but it is not physical, it is not hands. It can see and it can think and it can judge and we can feel those powers in it – we feel our lineage both ways, but it doesn’t have a presence. Are you with me? Oppose that to Legion. Legion is X-axis, width, power over space, momentum, strength, passion, body, presence, arms. (Compare point by point to the list above those are the points of disjunction). But Legion, this show of strength that is everywhere, is only a moment long. It is ephemeral.

Are you with me? Look at the world and pick those things that are eternal (or long lasting) (Catholicism, democracy, the human race, etc) and call them lineage, they stretch from generation to generation. They are in constant fear of the present, aren’t they? That which has a history and plans for a future need fear only the now. The now is Legion, is events, is the physical existence of the world as it is today, it is terrorists and armies and new ideas and sex and drugs and rock and roll and all these things with no eye and no thought for tomorrow, these things that just want to need to exist. It is the thirst for power for power’s sake, the will to power, imperialism, Rome, England, America, etc. Lineage is humanity Legion is nation.

Both of these things appeal to us, huh? We like the idea of the unstoppable force as much as we like the idea of the unmovable object. But they only work to the extent that they cooperate, ne? All the lineage things that you can name off, history family species etc, are only in your head because they have some element of Legion, even now. The less Legion that there is, the thinner the angle on the graph becomes – until it is a vertical line. It works the other way too – Legion is only relevant to the degree that it impacts Lineage. It’s like each is a pen and we can only become aware of its presence to the degree that it writes on the other. Does that make sense? We are all trying not to become the asymptote that we will one day inevitably join.

A slope of one, a 45% angle on the axis, Legion fuses with Lineage, is the dream of every object, from person to rock to religion. It is the promise implied by ephemeral or intangible existence, the completion of the contract - eternal tangible presence. Mind fused with body. Soul, Spirit, God. Tyranny? Sustainability. I listed sustainability as a quality of Lineage above, but that must be wrong. Maybe that should just be longevity. Sustainability implies something is being sustained. It’s Pai Mei vs Terri Schiavo. Terri may be my flagship for longevity as distinct from sustainability.

But of course the place I want to insert these principles is the vague book idea I pounded out months ago. The indistinct female presence from before the dawn of time is of course Lineage; the fearless spontaneous pirate captain who lost his eye in a bet is Legion. It is about their love. I am really interested to see if they can make it work.

Love is a good place for this struggle – it is the abstract love and the here and now love, because the instants where you feel both – where you see the future while feeling the present and appreciating the past – are the eternal instants, ne? And the ones that haunt you when it is over. It is the eternal liberation and eternal oppression, the lack of an answer.

It is perfect.

And here I write this in a Buddhist temple where if I explained it to a monk he would laugh and tell me to hug the asymptote.

That was all written earlier today. Surprised I haven’t written more on this trip but frankly they keep me starving and hungry. And an hour ago they were hitting me with sticks. No joke.

So the rundown. There is this big new-employee orientation program thing, right? Yesterday (Friday) they had all the ceremony stuff at the main Ichimiya building. All these guys are becoming Society People, big deal and important and etc. Then, as a welcome to the working world, all 70 of them are led off to this Zen temple in Kyoto (which is where I am now). Here, there are various presentations given (such as the afore-mentioned note-taking and my English lesson tomorrow etc). Sure, Myk, I get you that far, but why pay to take 70 people to Kyoto and back for a few powerpoint shows? Well, smartass, it’s not just that. Part of what we do here is the Zen thing, right, so we are eating meals temple-style, doing zen meditation, walking around with our hands clasped in front of us barefoot, etc.

So, details. Food: 4 people to a table. Table has big bucket of disgusting rice, just white and pulpy. Not really disgusting, but nothing with it, right. And there is a ton. Table also has a big bucket of Miso soup, which is a soy-paste kinda soup with various stuff in it (like, onions and then a vegetable of the day, so mushroom stems or tofu chunks or whatever). Basically broth with a few chunks, right? And finally there is the side dish. This is like shredded veggies or steamed veggies or goo. There is a ton of that, too. So, at our introduction to the temple, we received our three bowls, a set of cheap wooden chopsticks, a cloth for wiping and a cloth for wrapping it all in. The rules for dinner are, you go in, sit four to a table quietly. When instructed to do so, you unwrap your chopsticks and bowls, and set them up in front of you, large medium small. You are to do this without making a sound. Then there is like 30 seconds of meditation, then you and your three table mates are to eat every shred of rice on the table, eat every bit of food so not so much a grain of rice is wasted. Now, you would think that this would be heaven, right, cuz you just get to eat (or is that just my image of heaven?). But the food tastes genuinely bad, like on purpose. It is as bland as you can imagine, it’s like eating 3 pounds of cardboard. And you have to do it as fast as you can. This is a parallel to teamwork at work apparently. You shovel it into your mouth, all soundlessly mind you, wasting not a minute and dropping not a grain of rice. Disgusting but it gets the filling my stomach job done. THEN comes the bad part. The last thing on the table is a pot of tea with barely any tea in it. Each of you pours a tiny bit of tea into the smallest bowl. You have a slice of pickled radish I forgot to mention. You take the pickled radish with your chopsticks and scrub the little bowl until it is clean, using radish and tea. Then you pour it all into the medium bowl and do it again. Then you pour it into your big bowl, the rice bowl, and scrub for all you are worth. Then you drink every drop of the tea and eat the radish. Yeah, it’s like that, that face you just made. The result is, you find yourself wishing against wish for the blandest food possible because it doesn’t make the tea absolutely undrinkable, right. So the first meal we had was shredded veggies so there were little shredded root things in my shot of tea, but the second meal we had some sort of gooey cooked vegetables that were very Chinese style and it was just like snot. And not only do you have to use the tea for your own bowl but someone has to use the tea to clean the serving bowl that it all came out of and scrub that with the tea then use that tea for their own bowls. The goo bowl was between me and this shy looking chick so I cleaned it and made her drink it. Heh heh heh.

Yeah I’m a bastard. Actually I was just gonna drink it but then she did. And I didn’t stop her. You can tell I feel guilty. There are actually a couple of things I feel guilty about but I can’t talk about them all here. I am lately evaluating myself and some decisions I’ve made lately and wondering.

It’s 9:15am Sunday morning and I have been up and busy for almost 5 hours. Today’s schedule: wake up at 430, brush teeth shave comb hair, assemble in Zazen hall by 5am for an hour of meditation. Will explain meditation later.

So at 6, those with big welts on their back limp back upstairs while the rest of us just walk, and then it is time for cleaning at 6. We are broken into groups and everyone has a cleaning responsibility. I was afraid they were going to make me scrub toilets with a radish or something but I just had to straighten up the meditation room, arranging cushions and such. Then it’s back upstairs and then back downstairs for breakfast.

Breakfast was this sort of gruel-like rice stuff, right, basically rice and hot water. Half-soup half-rice, like were-rice, or were-soup, or something like that. All the Japanese hate it but it tastes quite similar to plain, unseasoned, overly watery oatmeal – something which, for some reason, I have eaten quite a bit of in my day. So I had no problem with that. There is no miso soup for breakfast, and the side was this gooey seaweed thing which had a really interesting taste, which we all know I love. And there were ume-boshi, which are pickled plums. The Japanese hate them, too, but I really like them. So it worked out well for me.

After breakfast we assembled back in the great hall to hear what the main Buddhist guy had to say about life as a society-person. This was very technical and it looked like most of the Japanese folk didn’t understand what he was talking about, so there was very little hope for me, but I did realize he was talking about the World of Suffering, and how there are the four natural agonies (Birth, Aging, Sickness, Death) (apparently Shourenbyoushi in Japanese? That’s what he said and it makes sense provided Ren can mean aging. Unless he said ShouNENbyoushi which makes more sense in a way?). But then he went on to say that there were four terrors of life in society, as well. But he lost me there. He spent an hour explaining these things point by point and everyone around me was drifting off. My boss was maybe impressed with me cuz I was paying attention and came over and took a picture and made me wake up all the oafs sleeping around me. Oh yeah, Supermyk.

And so, all of that done, we assemble in our classroom in time for today’s work to begin at 9. Shudder. So now from 9 to 10 there is a presentation about driving safety which includes this video (That I have seen from the practice things) of car crashes and how to avoid them. It’s hella fun to watch, they just show footage from camera’s at intersections and these cars just plow into people and pedestrians at high velocity. It’s really exciting, though one wonders why they installed a camera at the intersection when a stoplight would have proven perhaps a bit more efficacious. But the video is telling them to do such things as slow down at blind corners and, uh, look both ways before crossing the street. Apparently valuable skills to begin acquiring now that they are Society-People.

After this there is a group activity from 10 until lunch, then lunch (shudder), then another 2 hours of group activity from 1 to 3, then Fujita-san (my most immediate boss) talks for half an hour about gender roles, then I give an English lesson for half an hour. That brings us to 4pm. At 4, the herd has an hour to work on their diaries which they are keeping every day (meaning I have an hour to listen to music in the teachers lounge, as it were), and then it is dinner time from 5 until 630. At 630 there is more zazen for an hour and a half this time, and that brings us to 8pm and preparations for departure. We hop the bus from here to the ferry, hang out at the ferry port for an hour and a half, then hop the ferry for Niihama. We arrive early morning, there is a community service cleaning project of some sort, then another presentation of some sort, then lunch (breakfast is on the ferry before we get off in niihama, meaning wake up will be around 5 I suspect), then basically from the afternoon I am on a regular work schedule again. Except on Tuesday I spend the day at the Freshman Seminar with these guys, which means I think I am gonna be on the receiving end of a lot more speeches and powerpoint presentations about taking phone memos and crossing streets. Yippie. So then that wraps up and then, at long last, this weekend is over.

BUT, I am actually really enjoying this on some level, it’s a really oddly Japanese experience. I couldn’t picture living in a temple with a bunch of coming-of-age Japanese kids in the states. Ha, it sounds like a sitcom. My catchphrase for my character (who is roguishly handsome and always doing something he really shouldn’t be) is “But I don’t understand Japanese!” and I always say it when the monks catch me scaling the fence or trying to catch the carp in the pool outside cuz damn it I need meat. And so then I say that and everyone laughs and I smile roguishly and they shake their heads and welcome me back to the fold.

Have you ever read any Norse mythology? The god Loki is really interesting, he is that sort of character. Always causing mischief, but generally kinda harmless and the gods all kinda roll their eyes and send him to bed with no supper and a smile and that sort of thing. But as the stories evolve, Loki develops this genuine hatred of the other gods, and his tricks become more and more mischievous and more and more malicious until he sheds all pretensions of play and is in open warfare with the pantheon, unleashing terror upon terror upon the world. Even then there are those who play him like the lovable rascal, and he just slaughters them. It is Loki, the archetypical cookie-jar-bandit, who eventually causes Ragnarok. Ragnarok is my favorite part of Norse mythology – some giant cosmic wolf is released by Loki, and he brings this horde of beasts that threaten the very existence of the universe itself. The gods fight against it, joined by the souls of all of the warriors in Valhalla (Valhalla is where you go when you die in battle, to drink mead and eat boar and have lots of sex until your services are required) who are finally awakened. The armies line up and the gods/humanity are completely overwhelmed and destroyed. Finally, Fenrir, the big wolf demon thing, eats Odin, father of the gods and lord of the world. And the gods and the souls of all humanity spend the rest of eternity in agony at the hands of their demonic conquerors. Isn’t that a great ending? Isn’t it great that the best fate in life is to die in combat so that you can at least party until your final defeat and unending pain? And people wonder why the Vikings were always so pissed off.

So anyway, yeah, I guess if I am the Loki archetype then I just try to eat the carp and say “But I don’t understand Japanese!” and smile sheepishly and then burn the temple down in the cover of night with all 800 monks inside. Then I ride back to Kyoto to report my success to my lord but the deed is so nefarious that the universe itself condemns my side of the war to pain and suffering and eventually a long epic is composed by blind guitarists to sooth the damned souls of my people about the rise and the fall of my epic house. I am mixing metaphors and references and stories but I think if you were all to get together and read this you could trace my influences and I assure you, in the end it is all deft and funny.

So anyway, Zazen. I should get around to explaining this. For those of you not schooled in classical Japanese religious practice (for shame!), zazen is the meditative practice of zen buddhism. The idea, of course, is to empty your mind of all thought and basically be at one with the universe, lose sense of self, something like that. I am being vague here. The ultimate goal is to attain sattori, enlightenment, through contemplation. There are rituals and in the end a zazen session is a lot like a catholic church service (by the way how is the pope?) only with a lot more time spent doing buddhist meditation.

So we sit there in lotus (or, for the weak (like me), half lotus) position, which is uncomfortable. We close our eyes, put our hands together in our lap with our thumbs pointed up, kinda close our eyes, and sit in silence for an hour. “But Myk!” you all shriek, “What was that about welts you said earlier? Why do some people get welts from sitting in silence for an hour?!” God you have a whiney voice, imaginary representative of my readership. The reason for the welts is that as we sit there, presumably emptying our mind of all thoughts, the monks walk around with these big wooden sticks and whack the shit out of people who are moving or not sitting properly or sometimes for no good reason at all. The first time I did it they just went from person to person and whacked us each a good six times on the back. The way it works is, they stop in front of you and tap your shoulder with their Big Fucking Stick. You open your eyes, act surprised that they are there (because you were so deep in meditation that you didn’t see/hear them arrive), and bow to them as they bow to you. Then you put hands on opposite shoulders and lean way forward. Then the monk whacks the shit out of you. Then you sit up and bow to the monk appreciatively. Then the monk looks at you sternly and moves to the next sucker. The guy who hit me I think held back – I heard the whackings the other people got (ha, word doesn’t think whackings is a word) and man they scared me. There is a kendo dojo in this temple and these monks whack like it. And anyway the result is that whereas you are supposed to be focusing on nothing and emptying your mind to liberate your soul, instead you have your eyes open a slit and are always worried about where the nearest whacking monk is. The best part is, they usually follow the whacking procedure but sometimes they just shout something, run across the room and whack someone across the back really suddenly and seemingly much harder than the normal whacking. I mean these monks are whacking like they have a grudge against bad posture. This morning’s session, the main whacking monk hit so hard you could hear the echoes for a few seconds after he was done. I was scared shitless the whole time even though it doesn’t REALLY matter, ya know? Like it hurts but it doesn’t hurt that much and I like pain anyway. But the idea that any second one of these guys can just run up and beat the shit out of me and I have to thank him is just something that hangs in the air like a bad smell, it makes it impossible to just chill out.

But yeah, this trip is cool. It’s like all sorts of stuff to just not look forward to – they even took the meals from me – all buffered by long periods of more or less downtime for me while the kiddies listen to presentations I have already seen twice. I am in an interesting position – I am the same age as these guys, and have also entered the company this year in a way, and yet in a way I am their senpai, I am ahead of them. They all kinda look up to me and speak to me deferentially, the way I speak to my bosses. They stand at attention when I walk by. Can you imagine? There are 70 people in this room who stand at attention when I walk by. I am going to teach them a bit later, and when it comes to sleeping arrangements I have a private room with one of the other instructors (the boss I have now at Nissen, Fukushima-san, I like him a lot) whereas they sleep on the floor in a giant room with bugs and drafty windows. And in the ferry as well – they are kinda in the cargo hold but I have the nicest room in the boat.

BUT, for all that, when the suits come off and it’s hang out time, they all love me. I eat with them, not with the bosses who wait, and on the ferry on the way over I drank with the bosses and then went and drank with them. It’s this weird sort of respect thing where they vacate one of the three chairs for me to sit in when they see me and pour me drinks and talk to me in English and ask me how to pick up girls. I am like Santa Claus, Hugh Hefner and Jesus rolled into one vaguely stressed out bag of poor Japanese skills. For them it’s like Christmas, Easter, and whatever the main holiday of the playboy faith is, all rolled into one. Why the reputation for being a ladies man? Well, as you may or may not know, there are supposedly biological differences between Japanese guys and Western guys, dealing with size. The Japanese guys kept asking me “How big is your weapon?” and I had no idea what they were talking about. Then one took a toothpick, put it in his crotch and said “I have a very small weapon.” And they all argued over who had the “smallest weapon.” Odd as hell lemme tell you. And so, given my presumed massive “weapon size” they all want to ask me for help picking up girls. Then they grabbed two unfortunate 18-year-old new company recruits (this was drinking on the ferry) two girls who were really shy and sat them down in front of me and demanded I pick them up. It was odd as hell, those poor girls were so embarrassed. I felt like I had just stumbled into never-land and the lost boys wanted me to explain how to deal with the odd feelings they have around Tiger Lilly. So I laughed and talked to the girls in a friendly way and didn’t “put any moves” on them, whatever that would entail. Then the girls left and I just shook my head at the guys. It is weird how they are treating me. I think drinks are gonna be on me on the ferry ride back. That or I may teach them poker, then I can take their money as well as their booze and any sense of masculinity. Heh, I feel like the great white invader and can’t understand the open-arms welcome.

So that is my role here. I spend the vast part of every day just kinda listening to what’s going on and typing away on my laptop. When the folks interact with me it is half worshipful and half buddy-esque which makes me feel like a character in a short story who is about to get whacked.

So the pope may already have died or if not will likely die shortly, eh? Can I ask someone with access to TV in the states to please tape any particularly good documentaries or whatnot about him? I have a vague sense of him as a genuine crusader for a better world, but I must confess to a lack of specific knowledge about him. I do know he has been a Good Guy by most peoples’ standards and would like to know more about him. Dan I am gonna go a step further in my request and ask that you be the one to do it, eh? Tape me a good one.

Tekken 5 came out here on Friday. I have been zenning so I haven’t picked it up yet but I will tomorrow. Dan and Jon, we can’t fight directly, but I leave open challenge for survival mode. My best in 4 is a paltry 23, but I suspect if I am in competition I will be inspired to excel in 5.

So I have gotten to be incredibly negative. Maybe I always have been? But I am just realizing that as I look at myself and the way I react to people things places ideas I am negative; not critical, that can be positive, I am uncritically negative. And that is wrong, that might be the thing I hate most about myself and now that it is in my spotlight I am gonna bust my ass to destroy it. I remember when I got here I was trying really hard to be positive about every experience but that faded at some point – I could probably find it in my blog and it was probably somewhere early on. Ah, probably October, the month that blew. Disillusionment and suffering. I betcha my positivity is taking a permanent vacation in October 2004. Gotta get it back, gotta reawaken the magic of the Moment.

Why, you ask (in that nasal voice), do I have such an insight now? Couple reasons. I always think of Jackie as pretty negative, and she has every right to be given her recent history, but the other night she told me that I am really negative. I denied it of course but she is right. And when the people you consider negative tell you that you are more negative, it is time to step back and reevaluate. Two, I was talking to the new girl in town the other day, Clare. She is like 18 from Australia and has been here a month and a half and still sounds the way I remember sounding in my first few weeks, just excited as fucking hell to be here and can’t believe she gets paid for this and look at this and look at that and wow wow wow, it was really inspiring and not in the sappy kinda way that some people are always like “oooooo preeeetty” right but in the “Yes, I understand and appreciate this so much that I am just gonna say ‘wow’ and mean it” kinda way. I like that, I have missed that, I don’t have any friends like that here.

My circle, which is basically Alison Tricia Jackie, tends towards the negative which is unfortunate and I wonder to what degree that is my influence. I wouldn’t presume myself to be so powerful or capable of spreading negativity, but the circle at school wasn’t a positivity-fest either. I am realizing a similar world exists here and want to do away with it. We can fix this, we can. It is spring and the flowers are coming out and there’s the genki new kid and dammit I am tired of looking down on things it’s time to look at the good side of things.

That’s why way back at the top of this post I was talking about how I wasn’t letting myself get irritated by the inanity of the presentations here. Normally I would but that’s so negative – I want to open myself to feeling impressed by how hard someone would work on a powerpoint presentation/speech about taking notes because even though it is simple it is something that really should be explained well. I think that ties in well to the meals here, too, I think the severity of the lifestyle is designed to impress a similar notion, maybe? It’s really easy to be yeah-yeah-okay-itadakimasu-lets-eat grateful for your food if it is delicious. Here they are trying to teach us to be grateful for food that is terrible. And I am learning, in spite of myself.

Genki Sudo says you should carry yourself with a feeling of gratitude in everything you do – he says, imagine how the world would change if we just SAID thank you to everything we use, every person, every meal, every once of pencil lead, etc. Because positivity is gratitude, isn’t it? That’s it. And ya know what? It is difficult. But wow, yeah, I am learning that lesson. I am tired of being mad at my boss for not replacing my moped, instead I am going to let myself appreciate the fact that they are giving me a place to live for a year, 1000 dollars a month, plane fare, many amazing meals, a trip to a zen temple, etc etc etc. When I first got here I had that sense of awe and gratitude. I loved my apartment. I still love my apartment. Such an odd mood I am in. Can I keep this up? I have been casting around for something, for an insight or a mood or something, for weeks now, and I think I finally found it. I have been searching Japan for gratitude but no matter what I do where I go who I meet I won’t find it because I resist it. Fuck that.

So anyway, yeah, sorry if that little rant seems sappy or trite, I think it might be the most important realization I’ve had out here. I dunno how I went from awe that my apartment had tatami to resentment that the hot water that they gave me doesn’t have a lot of pressure. Fuck that, fuck that fuck that. I am gonna be free of that at least and we will see where it takes me. Much to think about. Always there is the expectation that insight and lifestyle change is simple, that its difficulty lies in its simplicity, but it’s hard. If I want to change to a gratitude-centered life, I need to change the way I clean my apartment, I need to change the things my friends and I talk about, I need to change the way I do my work, and it is all conscious. Interesting.

I guess maybe now that I think about it that usually when I say “gratitude” I feel that it means “obligation,” and that is wrong – I think maybe to be truly grateful is to be free of a sense of obligation, right? Because gratitude is a sense of appreciation, not even of certain acts but of the world, isn’t it? And to confuse it with obligation, that’s like confusing positivity with...well, I dunno, with hamburgers. It’s not that they aren’t related, but obligation is just one small part of the world and it is the world that is the object of gratitude – just like hamburgers are one small part of the word and the world is the object of positivity. I feel as though I have had blinders on, but such epiphanies are always suspect. I guess I am writing this now with the sense that I know how to change the way I live but that’s never quite that easy is it. This mood could just be gas from the soup-rice wafting into my brain. But we will see. I am not claiming to be a newly-made human being, merely claiming to understand something, and I think that that understanding won’t fade if I let it sit a few days, right? So I haven’t attained enlightenment I have simply added yet another clear scale between The Way I Want to Be and The Way I Am, two forces that have this sort of gulf between them filled with vague lines. Every time I can straighten out a line I can cross it, if I try hard enough. Is that fair?

See now I am getting that irritating feeling that comes with being emotional, personal. I feel…self-conscious? Writing this in my blog. Like I shouldn’t be letting you see these thoughts, but that’s silly, isn’t it? The worst that’ll happen is I’ll revert to curmudgeon mode and you can wave this post in my face but frankly I’d deserve it. Or perhaps you will think less of me for spewing such obvious things in a public forum like I’ve stumbled upon something. Well, you might have a point. But frankly I feel like I have stumbled upon something. And then I get to thinking about how various people will react to reading the various stuff in here, how Dan will take me really seriously with a comically serious look on his face because he’s interested in what I have to say, how my mom will roll up her sleeves and see what her son is up to and smile while rolling her eyes at his latest intellectual foray into the depths of his soul, how my dad will just roll his eyes, how Jon will read three paragraphs today and two tomorrow and maybe finish if it’s interesting, how Sarah will read and think about the various things and email me later with thoughts about them, how Pat will read it and try to correlate the personality expressed in these paragraphs with the kinda boring guy he knows who hangs out with Jackie too much, how Ayako will read this with a dictionary in her hand, how Jackie will read this at work, casting nervous glances at her demonic boss, and feel kinda sad, how my little brothers will read this with a curious mix of respect for me and disdain for me that they can’t quite sort out, how I myself will read this later, what I will think about it. I dunno how accurate any of those are, but that is how you all look in my mind as you read through page after page of too-small gray text on a black screen, searching for you aren’t sure what but vaguely interested in getting to the end in case I say something that blows you away because deep down inside you think that just maybe I might be capable, but you aren’t sure why or even what I could say that would move you. Maybe you just read it to be nice. Why do you read it? Or do you? And so the self-doubt sets in and I feel like wrapping up, like stopping because I am too exposed like I am Prometheus chained regenerating to the rocks for the birds, and every paragraph, every honest revelation is a bit of flesh laid open to the eagles (that’s you, sorry) to digest without every really making me less. I worry what the eagles think of the taste. Odd, ne?.

Boy, I think I need to wrap up this little post, I am sitting at over 10 pages and this spans from the phone memo speech to the Lineage/Legion notion (which I want to explore a lot more yet) to the description of the zen thing to bitching about the food (I am ashamed for bitching about the food to my boss yesterday, I thought I was being funny and here it has taught me something) to my enlightenment about the notion of gratitude. I think the post was about gratitude when I started it but I didn’t know how to write it, it was vague in my head and now I have an idea. Isn’t that great how thinking works? It’s like sometimes you know the answers before you start, you feel something, you just aren’t sure of the question. We’ll see where this goes from here. Anyway I am gonna wrap up this little post. I will probably have more to write tomorrow.

Oh, one last thing because I find it funny. I was playing some music on my laptop during a break with my headphones and Fujita-san asks me if I can download some Destiny’s Child for her. I told that if she gets me internet in my apartment I will download anything she wants for her. She said okay. Nifty. Maybe I will open an I-Tunes account and start doing the download thing legally? God and I can finally start downloading Anime, how weird that I would come to Japan and need internet to get my cartoon fix. Although I am sure that at this point I can probably watch a lot of it w/out subs. But the problem of course is that the really cool stuff is technical and complex. It’d be like the time I played through metal gear solid 3 and got from start to finish without understanding the specifics of the plot.

Okay it’s not tomorrow but I am back from lunch now so I’ll make this a new section. My boss was just talking to me about girls in Japan, how I should have asked her for advice before dating here. My first impulse is to laugh at the idea of asking the gossipy woman above me for advice in my love life, but upon reflection she is sharper than one thinks and her advice is always on the ball. She says I shouldn’t date anyone here I wouldn’t consider/half plan on taking to America with me from the get-go. I guess now I understand why. I think it’s a fair plan. I don’t regret dating Ayako at all but am afraid that I’ve created some shitty karma for myself. So it goes. I am reminded of a quote I saw somewhere and have misplaced the source, but somewhere I have seen the words “no regrets just rebirth.” [editors note: from jon’s girlfriends facebook profile]

Have I ever told you my grand theory of rebirth? I like the idea of reincarnation, right, but the big problem everyone always has with it right from the get-go is that population has increased over the years so where do the new souls come from? Adam and Eve can only be two out of the 6 billion people we got, ne?

Ah but how about this! I like the idea of reincarnation being outside of time, as all such metaphysical hocus pocus usually is, right? Then it wouldn’t matter when you were born and there would just be an average number of souls, not all of whom are present in periods of low population, ne?

But THEN! Then, the icing on the cake is, if a soul can skip around in time in its path to being reborn, then who is to say that there is even more than one soul? Could it be possible that there is only one soul and that it circulates, reborn again and again, that each of us is a fresh instance of an old soul, the The Old Soul? That there is only one being? That everything you do to anyone you do to yourself? Nifty, eh?

Of course there are holes in the idea too great to point out, but isn’t it nice in an artistic sense?

I like my religions as art. There is no reasonable grounds for buying one over any other, so you might as well use aesthetics, right? When I become religious it will be for whatever group’s eschatology appeals to me as most aesthetic. Like the Norse Pantheon, for instance, is in the running.

Well boy did that mood fade fast. The insights remain but the boost of positive energy that went with them just disappeared. It came time for my presentation and my boss Fukushima-san forgot my name in the middle of introducing me. Then the whole time I was talking everyone looked at me like I was an idiot and didn’t really participate. Then I finished and there was a big applause and everyone told me great job. Fukushima-san felt awful, I could tell. I just wanted to crawl under a rock. Then I got a few phone emails that just made me feel awful, my karma is haunting me from various misadventures. Sigh. Put a good face on it I guess. Almost time for my last meal here. This is me at my worst. Let me see if I can put on a smile and wolf down whatever they drop in front of me.

“I am the resurrection and I am the life. I could never bring myself to hate you as I like.”
Not sure why that is relevant but it is in my ear in the moment. Catchy tune.

“There’s a man who spoke wonders, though I’ve never met him. He said, he who seeks finds, who knocks will be let in. I think of you in motion and just how close you are getting, and how eeeeevery little thing anticipates you… All down my veins, my heart strings call – are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?”

I love the line “every little thing anticipates you,” the word “anticipate” is perfect there. So that’s a bit of a switch from the last song, but don’t worry, I am still a godless heathen wandering blind and alone through a fiery maelstrom, just like you. Not you, Mom.

So the last meal here was, uh, I guess the same as the rest. I sat with kyokuchou, the main guy on this little adventure. There was no speaking as you are not allowed to speak during dinner here but I ate more and faster than he did so I think I made an okay impression? If not whatever. No, stop, I owe him a lot. I am gonna start checking myself when I am being a rude asshole. That’s a lot of checks. Although I suppose I can’t let myself start being rude to myself, either? I have to bear gratitude for myself as much as for anyone else, so self-respect is mandatory, eh? Curses.

I like how you can hear something wise a thousand times and never give it two moments of thought until you discover the same thing for yourself and realize “Oh, THAT’S what they were talking about.” Funny.

There are lots of song lyrics and impressions coming, I am just in that kind of mood. I know it breaks my blog rule number one but it’s okay, I am just really into it right now.

“Let me fall out of a window with confetti in my hair, deal me jacks or better on a blanket by the stairs; I tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past, so send me off to bed forever more…”

I made a music playlist here, it is an odd selection. Because I am just writing now I am going to list it out for you. Ready? Here it is:

David Bowie – All the Madmen
The White Stripes – In the Cold, Cold Night
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Are you the one (that I’ve been waiting for)?
Sugar Soul – Garden
Tom Waits – Tango Till They’re Sore
Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Nature Boy
The Stone Roses – I am the Resurrection
Dragon Ash – Shizuka na hibi no kaidan wo
Queen – One Vision

What think you?

“Well your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. And she tied you to her kitchen chair, and she broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the hallelujah…”

The Old Testament is gorgeous.

“Well baby I’ve been here before, I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor – ya know, I used to live alone before I knew you. And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch, but love is not a victory march – it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”

And what the hell,

“Well there was a time when you let me know what’s really goin on below, but now you never show that to me do ya? [rising volume, confidence] But remember when I moved in you? And the Holy Dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was hallelujah!”

But no, he doesn’t let us stop there. We think he will, that it will end bravely, the music trickles out, and then –

“Well maybe there’s a God above – but all I ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody that outdrew you. And it’s not a cry that you hear at night, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light – it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah!”
And then just “Hallelujah” repeats until your heart breaks, and it keeps going and going and there’s gentle music and in spite of it all, the final word is a worshipful “Hallelujah.” How amazing.

That final chord is broken really well by Nature Boy just jumping in –

“I was just a boy when I sat down to watch the news on TV. I saw some ordinary slaughter, I saw some routine atrocity. My father said ‘don’t look away, you got to be strong, you got to be bold now.’ He said that in the end it is beauty that is going to save the world.

And she moves among the sparrows, and she floats among the breeze, and she moves among the flowers, and she moves something deep inside of me….

I was walkin round the flower store like a leopard coming down with some sort of nervous hysteria; I saw you standing there green-eyes, black hair, up against the pink and purple wisteria. You said, ‘hey nature boy, you lookin’ at me with some unrighteous intention.’ I could not speak my knees went weak was having thoughts it was not in my best interest to mention.

And she moves among the flowers, and she floats among the smoke, and she moves along the shadows, and she moves me with just one little look…

You took me back to your place and dressed me up in a deep sea diver’s suit. You played the patriot, you raised the flag, and I stood at full salute. Well later on we smoked a pipe that struck me dumb and made it impossible to speak, as you closed in in slow motion quoting sapho in the original greek…

And she moves among the shadows, and she floats upon the breeze, and she moves among the cowbells, and we move through the days and through the years…

The years pass by we’re walking by the sea half-delirious. You smiled at me and said ‘Babe, I think this thing is getting kinda serious.’ You pointed at something and said ‘Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing?’ Well it was then that I broke down, it was then that you lifted me up again.

And she moves among the sparrows, and she walks across the sea, and she moves among the flowers, and she moves something deep inside of me…”

Now back to “I am the resurrection.”

I am not gonna bother. Zazen in a few minutes. Crap. Speaking of which, I should go to the bathroom before we start. Only Japanese-style squat toilets here, which is good because it means I finally learned to use them.

I think the song lyrics section is over now, you can uncover your eyes. And feel free to laugh at Nick Cave if it seems absurd to you, part of me thinks it is but there’s a beauty to it. I love that he met her in the flowershop by the wisteria. This from the guy who was once the baddest badboy of the punk/goth scene if my information is correct.

Going to Kyoto

2005-04-01T04:59:00.000-05:00

On my way to Kyoto for the weekend with work. Spending the weekend in a Zen temple, gonna get whacked really fucking hard with a board if I move during meditation apparently. Also teaching English. Boss lady pissed me off bad when she told me to redo my presentation yesterday, the day before we leave. Just not kosher, not when she has been working on it with me and didn't complain about any of it. Now she says it might be too boring and that the crowd wont cooperate, when before she told me not to worry about crowd cooperation because they are fresh out of college and speak english. Whatever. They get Ichiro's body parts and that's all I have to give.

BUT, the company entrance ceremony is cool. In Japan, starting work with a company when you graduate is a BIG DEAL, it's not like a part time job. Although the system is fading, there is still a sort of sense that your FUTURE has been DECIDED. All the speeches today are like "Today you are Shakaijin (society-person, someone who has been defined as a human being by taking up a functional role in society, it is like Adult but implies responsibilty and accountability and respect from Common Adults). Congratulations, the rest of your life starts now." And it's like, half of these people are just gonna run with this ball until they die. Crazy. They are all so nervous. It's almost cute.

So, this is a big thing for them and a big learning experience for me - I am almost inclined to call it the pivot of contemporary japanese society. And I am experiencing it first hand, and teaching english. I looked at this as kind of an annoying waste of a weekend before, but now I am looking forward to it.

I will be back from Kyoto next week. Until then, leave me some love.

2005-03-31T00:06:00.000-05:00

I have just been reading dozens and hundreds of web design articles and the one cliche phrase that I just love is "browser wars." Everyone who has been doing webdesign for 10 years or more remembers the days of IE vs Netscape competing, where they would purposely have mutually exclusively design flukes and such and web designers were forced to basically design for Netscape or design for IE. How many of you have vague memories of splash screens to big websites where you just had to click "Netscape" or "IE" before entering? Funny funny.

Anyway, all these guys are now web design gurus, right, they are the grizzled vets in the field who lived through the Browser Wars, the Dotcom Revolution, etc etc etc, and they all talk like old soldiers. "Most Web designers simply build sites quickly, using all the tricks they learned during the terrible browser wars. Tables for layout, font tags, hundreds of embedded images, single pixel GIFs, and so on" it's so funny, it's like how Kissinger and Gorbechov talk about the cuban missile crisis, like oh my god I cant believe we got through it.

I like that the internet has a violent history, it sort of reminds you that it is indeed a human enterprise and that, like in human history, the worst atrocities are still waiting for us.

And it's great because I remember those days so I feel elite, like I am part of a veterans club. :)

Albert Camus: THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS 288535

2005-03-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

Albert Camus: THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS 288535

I owe this one to Mr Jones. She's a lookin' at you, oh no I don't think so she's lookin' at me.

Well thats random

2005-03-29T18:46:00.000-05:00

I like Kofi Annan. Just generally speaking he seems okay in my book. Kofi, man, you ever need anything, you just lemme know, pal. *knuckle crack*

Indefensible Standpoints

2005-03-28T19:19:00.000-05:00

BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft and EU reach agreement

I think if Microsoft wants to include Media Player with Windows, fuck yeah let 'em. It's a solid program but it cannot do everything. What people are worried about is that MS is stifling growth and that might be the case but I have this sort of quiet urge in the back of my mind for a completely unified system, with a single standard. This isn't for ease of use or user-friendly simplicity but rather for compatibility. I dunno, I like the idea that none of the computers in Star Trek seem to have brand names and captain kirk never has to browse for a Mac version of this or that. Maybe the government can step in and encourage cooperation between our industry giants and when some genius steps up with a plan to blow them out of the water somehow make it in their interest to work with him instead of trying to destroy him. Provide tax breaks for adhering to industry standards and bonuses for advancing standards, that sort of thing.

I of course hold equally strong belief in the opposite view. I like the idea of a technological world where information is free (though for fucks sake pay for your software people it doesnt write itself), I like the idea of competing standards and the whole adam smith greed is good blah blah blah, Free Market isnt fashionable but it has its good points. I like that you can start your own empire with a C++ compiler and unhealthy eating and sleeping habits. What say you? Do we want universal compliance and to do away with anti-trust by making it open and collaborative, did I spell that right? or do we want free market open competition where the winners are given the laurel wreath and the losers slink away resenting them?

What about taxes, too. Here's another indefensible opinion I gave serious consideration to after a brief discussion with Jon. Flat sales tax for individuals. Do away with income tax. What? you shriek, your bleeding heart beating hard. That will hurt the poor and help the greedy capitalists. Well, it would if it is implemented that way. With income tax you can do tax breaks and such and make people pay less if they dont have it but if you have a flat tax all those single mothers are paying 30% more for their diapers while saving 10% on their annual taxes. You are outraged. Well, says I, wouldn't it be a simple matter to apply tax breaks to sales tax? Jons take on this was, no, that would involve a lack of privacy, the government always goign into peoples bank accounts to figure out if they deserve it or whatnot...but...what about something like this: there is a 30% tax, and everyone has to pay it. That is the default. Depending on your circumstances, however, you are given the option to apply for vouchers or waivers or whatever. You would of course voluntarily have to open your books to uncle sam and whatnot, but rather than figuring out what kind of check you get back when why etc, you just get a little card type deal, or maybe have it on your Drivers License or rather the digitial national ID card that we should really have moved on to by now that contains driving and tax and residential and everything information with a thumb print scanner. Ne? So then you buy your diapers and you show your card and you get 30% knocked off or whatever.

Corporations have income tax of course, but it deals with the ever-itchy issue of income tax charged twice on corporate earnings, since corporations dont pay sales tax it encourages business expansion, it simplifies the tax issue, it does away with april 14 for fucks sake, and it creates a system where you are held accountable for what you spend. I dont advocate the implementation of such a system necessarily - off the top of my head, it seems like it would be bad for the economy where the MPS would increase like crazy in middle class and up while the lower class would spend more (make sense? sure) though the lower class spending more may provide a bigger burst for the economy than we imagine. Corporate income tax would of course be fucking HIGH, this would encourage them to take advantage of lack of sales tax and stimulate corporate growth. Interseting. This would be a blow against suburban sprawl, forcing business and lower class into a relationship they have never really had, right? Suddenly business needs to expand and suddenly poor people can spend more money, middle and upper class start sitting on their trust funds which are tax free and useless...hmm. What woudl that do? I am almost tempted to support the implementation of such a system just to, ya know, mix things up.

Any thoughts? No of course not you losers never comment.

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / The evolutionary revolutionary

2005-03-28T00:44:00.001-05:00

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / The evolutionary revolutionary

Interesting.

spiked-health | Article | Our unhealthy obsession with sickness

2005-03-28T00:44:00.000-05:00

spiked-health | Article | Our unhealthy obsession with sickness

What do you think?

Urban Archipelago

2005-03-27T23:04:00.000-05:00

Urban Archipelago

This was a fun read. There are interesting thoughts beneath the venemous exterior, but frankly I am attracted to the venom as well.

MKaku.org | Theoretical Physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, science & technology

2005-03-25T04:03:00.000-05:00

MKaku.org | Theoretical Physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, science & technology

This guy is pretty slick. I want his books.

I am on my new computer at work. I love all 2300 megahertz's. Whee.

obscure metaphors and arcane applications

2005-03-25T00:22:00.000-05:00

So here I am again, sitting down, preparing to spew my conciousness forth into a little box on the screen of my computer. Readers, friends, I was hoping to tell you that I am writing this from my new computer - but alas! It is not to be! Not yet, anyway, they havent arrived yet. A box on both your cowses.

I would like to meet two people named Roman. Then, I could gather a group of all my friends together, as well as a few other Americans I am not necessarily friends with, and the two Romans, and I could make a speech starting with "Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears..." Everyone would be holding two ears of corn. You see where I am going with this.

I am getting closer to writing a book. Every day I can feel it coming, and its almost here, and I am just gonna spit it into word so fast it doesnt have time to realize its been written before it gets me a nobel or a pulitzer or a free meal or something.

Tekken 5 next week. Paid next week. Coincidence? I think not! Now to make a friend or two who plays tekken so I'm not just playing against ze computer ze whole time. Jackie, I think I may be forced to teach you.

To the lighthouse is so good it makes me long to be back in my Finnegans Wake class. Modernism is A-Okay. I brought The Wake with me but frankly I can't read it without a group. And don't look at me like that, you can't either.

I fell madly in love with a girl I work with but she has a boyfriend so I fell back out. Shame.

Apparently they are going to have a welcome party for me on Wednesday after I give my little American Culture presentation thing. Sure, okay. I wonder if I can get them to do it at the arcade and throw 100en coins into the machine all night. Thatd be slick.

They have Magic Cards in Japan, I cant remember if I posted aboot it but I found a comic book/card store. Except no comic books, since those are like regular books in Japan. So it's more of a card store. A card/porn store, really. With Gundam Wing action figures and decks of porn cards. All the highschool boys in Niihama seem to hang out there and I have gone there twice and its always the same guy working he must own it and he just looks overjoyed and thrilled to have such a store and to have all the kids like him and to have all the magic cards he could ever want. I kinda like him. The second time I went was to introduce new kid joshka to the place as he is a magic kinda guy.

Japanese Magic Cards are in Japanese, but they also sell English. Nifty ne? And they play every friday from 530 to whenever. I dont wanna be snooty but I got better things to do. Like play tekken at the arcade across the street. Ha. I love being young.

So I am preparing my cultural exchange thing. I give a self-introduction, talk about sports I have done in a sufficiently self-depracating way (did I spell that right? self? ...) (ie how bad I was when I played baseball as a child and how I never caught anything, and how everyone laughed at me until the last game. Then, in the last inning of the last game, a big fly ball came my way. Naturally, I say, I closed my eyes and protected my face with my hands, unable to move from fear. Suddenly I hear cheering, and I look, and the ball is in my glove. Complete fluke. True story.), then ask them all to introduce themselves and talk about what sports they do and how old they are (so I can tell which of the girls that look here are in my range, cuz ya just cant tell by looking, though I am getting a bit better at it), then I talk about Spectator Sports vs Participatory Sports in America, and our big 5 (base foot soccer basket hockey) and how the only of those that anyone ever realyl DOES is basketball, and do you have sports like that in japan that everyone likes but nobody does, and why do you suppose that is?

Then I go on to talk about sports we all do. I start with how in school we get to do sports and I give the list of what you can do what season soccer crosscountry boysfootball girlscheerleading in fall winter basketball wrestling volleyball spring track baseball something else I cant remember etc. Then I say that if you go on a picnic or something with your friends you need a frisbee it is essential, and I talk about frisbee games like frisbee golf and ultimate, but I dont give explanations so that way they will ask me to explain and it will take more time, and I talk about how if there is a court like at a park there is always volleyball or basketball or badminton and finally how sunday morning in the park are all the people running or riding their bikes for fitness and in Japan what sports do people actually do and why and is it school or private and gender divide or no and all sorts of stuff like that.

THEN (I am assuming each of these question sessions takes maybe a few mins) I talk about motivations for sports and how the Americans or at least myself do sports because its fun and we like to relax and its very hobby-esque and if it is not fun then we dont do it it is not GENERALLY something that people commit to the way they seem to in Japan but that also some people are really about what they are doing and so our reasons for doing sports are 1) health 2) fun 3) social 4) to be like our fathers but not necessarily in that order. So from there, aww, shucks, you know the drill, why do you do sports in japan and you there what did you say you did right soccer and why and do you still and why and you there how old did you say you were oh really lets go out for drinks and why?

Good god grammar is meaningless to me, it's like a vestigial tale did I spell that right? Speeling is gonna go nekst. Soon my writing will e free of all cosntraints and you can call me james joyce and nod patronizingly and shelve me though I scream stop stop stop understand me and you keep nodding cuz I didnt say stop stop stop I said asfdjkl;gj and all you can do is nod and shelve me until you get bored with my presence because even though it is gibberish you feel like it is saying something you dont understand and so you take me from the shelf and try again and fail and then you throw me out because afterall if I am not even legible what is my purpose?. So then you shelve me and I am torn between feeling alive and dead clever and dumb and in the end nothing matters and should we laugh or cry about that? Then you feel kinda the same sort of thing but you dont really know what it is you are feeling and one day after drinking you try again to read me and start on page 73 but really its garbage and in a fit of rage you throw me out, and they we are broken up and it's sad but we are free and it's happy and what the fuck?

What is with the word should, anyway? Where does it get off telling me what to do?

I am in a good mood.

like, radicals, man. all 214 of 'em.

2005-03-24T02:15:00.000-05:00

反面教師【はんめんきょうし】 a bad example from which one can learn

Hey yall its me again I have been updating like a fiend lately ne. Nobody comments though so I suspect I have lost my fan base. Drat, so much for the book deal.

I was reading some other blog and they had a list of kanji people would want for tattoo purposes and the coolest was 魑魅魍魎 (chimimouryou) just cuz it is so damn busy looking. The meaning is, evil spirits of the mountain, forest and river. I could have four kids and give them each one of the kanji on their head and then teach them crazy martial arts based on whatever kanji they got and then they could team up and it would be like any number of chinese kung fu movies. Asia is weird but ya gotta love it.

So what is new in your lives? I beg of you, post comments, tell me about yourselves. Do I have any secret readers that I dont know? That's mysterious. What about anyone reading that I do know? I am actually interested in you, ya know.

I will say that it has been interesting who I have kept in touch with/who has kept in touch with me. Dan I excuse you on general grounds of madness. Romel though, tsk, if you read this I would get mad at you in here but alas you can't even be bothered, I'm sure. Tubby.

I wonder if any of the people here other than Jackie ever peruse this? Oh and Jackie says I don't make her lovable enough in my blog and that I have to describe her in more glowing terms. But frankly, I think she gets quite a good deal in here and I don't really know what she is complaining about. I dunno that I would read through this sludge myself except that I find myself terribly interesting in a way that you couldn't really imagine. Shocked and apalled you would be all, were you to feel the depths of my narcissism, the scope of my solipsism. Madness and death.

So I have been makin flashcards out of kanji radicals today, I want to just learn them all already. It would really help me to memorize kanji if I knew every radical, and there are only like 200 and change. Then instead of telling myself "Okay, squiggly line and the thing from winter, squiggly line and the thing from winter" to remember I would use the meanings, so like "motion" and "descend" and that sort of thing. Much easier, ne?

I also stumbled upon a pretty slick site for japanese resources, including a nifty new dictionary that I downloaded that is prettier that JWPCE which I use now but which may indeed not be as practical, scary as that sounds. I suppose that would only sound scary if you know that JWPCE is tremendously impractical for E -> J conversion.

CSS Zen Garden is one of the cooler sites I've stumbled upon in my recent cybermeanderings. It illustrates the benefits of standards-compliance and efficient design in an impactful, effective way. Check it out. I think maybe in another life I will be a design student.

Interesting I just stumbled upon something called word press that promises to make my blog more powerful. Apparently I shall be as a god, all I have to do is eat this wordpress apple. Pat, is this what you use? Is it worth dabbling with? Mm, looks like something I can't be playing with until I get my own domain. And that day is coming, I think. I want a web presence.

Wow, and I say that I get a call from Fujita-san upstairs telling me that I will have a new top of the line PC with a 17inch liquid crystal monitor here for me tomorrow and please back up whatever needs to be backed up.

...

Okay, sure. Sounds like a plan. Please understand that I have been slaving away on an ancient box with a monitor that digs daggers into my eyes as I use it. I am happy. :-D

I love internet communities. That cyberspace can act as real space blows my mind every time I think about it, even now. That you can get together and be free. I also like that while it lacks boundaries we face in the physical world it has its own set of boundaries. So it is not transcendent, it is like a parallel universe. I think maybe with my new computer will begin a golden age of internet use at work. I will be able to get a new copy of Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, etc - all the things where my license expired. That will give me a month, I will have to be careful with the timing. I will pick a month with no other projects on the horizon and I will design a website so astounding that the gods quiver.

Alison tells me I speak in exagerated absolutes, but that is beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt the most preposterous thing I have heard in my twenty-two years and change.

Comment on this I want your thoughts.

I am really getting heavy into the first third eye blind disk.

2005-03-23T01:49:00.000-05:00

Dan you're gonna have to do better than that for an update. I hear tell you have become Superdan, Mega Dan if you will, and yet your online presence is smaller than ever. Tsk tsk tsk.

Stumbled upon a page containing all of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft yesterday, so I read "The Call of Cthulu" and I FINALLY feel qualified to read web comics. I tremendously appreciate the reputation Cthulu in geek culture. He is a being of incomprehensible malice, a demon sealed away to await an apocolypse far more terrible than any foretold in even the darkest of human religions, and in geek culture he has been reduced to a plush toy. Apparently there are slippers you can get. Magnificant. Tickle-me-cthulu.

I kinda liked the lovecraft I read but I will be honest, I expected it be a little...I dunno, better? The first story I read was kinda hokey. Cthulu was better, but I dunno, some of the word choice was hackneyed, some of it just a tad too racist/white mans burden to read comfortably. I do like the notion that these demons came from beyond the stars and are operating on some sort of a cosmic time table, and it is all natural, and they will awaken when humanity has reached their level of englightenment and freedom and has tossed away morality and restraint. Then and only then shall Cthulu and his fellow beasts rise up, and they will teach humanity new dances and unheard of delights. It's terrifying and yet so liberating. So I think that it is brilliant to make your unimaginable evil just omnipotent self-indulgence, especially if its aim with relation to humanity is to share those qualities for the purpose of greater delight for all involved. Monstrous and great. Tickle-me-cthulu.

Gonna watch Code 46 tonight. Something about sci fi, probably phillip k dick involved. I wanna read phillip k dick.

Apparently Alison has been having odd dreams. Snicker.

Am now reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I could never do woolf before, Mrs Dalloway has defeated me soundly at every attempt to scale her walls. Lighthouse doesnt seem different and yet it is, completely. It is so smart and so cleverly constructed and I feel brilliant because I pick out subtle elements that I know I wouldn't have been able to find by myslef, say, a year ago. So it is progress, in reading this book and liking it I am lining my education against the wall and marking its height with a pencil.

I also just finished (finally) Hells Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. It was really great, just a joy to read the whole time. The ending was good too, I think I like Thompson and will read more of him. That may induce me to take drugs in scarcely imaginable quantities but frankly I could use a phase like that in my life.

On my list of things I want to read and devour (and if you send me any of this I will love you forever): America the Book by Jon Stewart, Bruce Lee: Artist of Life by John Little, the Calvin and Hobbes canon, and a good book about meditation.

In terms of things going on OUTSIDE my head, let me see. It has been shite weather, raining the past few days. Watched half of Knights Tale the other day, which I really liked but had to turn it off cuz something came up and then we returned it. But to rewind, thursday was I believe Amadeus and two bottles of wine at Jackie's. Went (hungover) to an overnight friday night seminar thing where we talked about the seminar in kyoto in two weeks and then went out drinking and eating (all you can eat all you can drink at asahi beer garden. recommend.) Saturday got home, went (uber hungover) to Matsuyama with Jackie for a party at Kei's. Got to the party. Half heartedly talked to a few girls, the pretty one had a boyfriend, had a few drinks, went to sleep in front of a speaker before the DJ's even wrapped up. Woke up (reeeally hungover, with a speakerbuzz headache) the next morning, had cold refried beans from a can, felt the world spin, assumed it was hangover but was actually the earthquake off kyushu I guess (?), went home. Umm. That night met Joshka the new neighbor of jackie and alex who is sadly not into video games and is who is walking away from the tech game for a while. Sat around a while with him, he left, watched Monsters Ball which was good, then watched About Schmidt which frankly offended me. Did not drink. Crashed at Jackie's. Monday showed Joshka about town, went home and ended up back at Jackie's with Alison and a few movies and we ate dinner and crashed there and then tuesday was work and I worked and then went home even though I forgot my pillow at jackie's because frankly I forgot what my apartment looked like. So today am at work for another 50 mins then (surprise surprise) dinner and movie at jackies then I have to return movie at tsutaya by my house so I go home and then tomorrow is work and friday is work and weekend is beach BBQ if the weather likes us. Cannot wait to get back into beach bbq season.

I have like 9000 yen until 4/1 which is 90 dollars which should be okay but I owe 30 dollars to karate so I have been ducking the teacher but thats bad so Ill just take care of it tomorrow and use my emergency do not use under any circumstances money in the bank at the states which I have already touched twice but have about a hundred bucks left woooo.

Who is coming to visit me? Karen? Zach? Sarah? Dan? Turner? Pateras? I am demanding all of you to come. Seriously for like 700 bucks you could hop a round trip to osaka and a hotel room (or we stay at Pats, hey buddy) and we bum around kansai for a day or two. You can eat raw horse, drink good sake and knock up a fillipino sex worker in a snack bar. It'd be a good time.

I am learning so much Japanese lately it makes my head spin. I am on the verge of being advanced but my vocab blows which blows.

Oh and come on no need to flame my posts with comments, please? My fragile self-esteem is balancing on a razor's edge, you are going to send me spiraling into painful oblivion. Or just kinda irritate me, if you dont wanna read my blog please dont read it.

Anyway 45 minutes left of work, gah. Am preparing for my cultural exchange thing next week. It wont be as bad as I was afraid it would be, I am writing everything I will say out in advance, preparing tons of questions for everyone, etc. The theme is sports, so we will talk about popular sports to do in america vs japan, pop sports to watch, the reason people do sports, the attitudes behind sports (interesting note: according to my teacher, in Japan kids are handled very strictly when it comes to sports. The idea is, "What the fuck do you mean you cant?!?" and so the kids try really hard in order to not anger or disappoint their coaches and parents; in America, on the other hand, the general attitude is one of "Good job!" and so kids try hard in order to get praised even more.)(Also, the sort of silent "Do" attached to every sport - not so silent in traditional Japanese stuff (kendo, judo, kyudo, etc) "do" 道 means way or path or road, so its a much more goal oriented process, whereas in the states its much more fun oriented. Again, I am generalizing), then I will teach them some english (body parts!)(arms and legs, people, minds out of the gutter), then we will play a game of some sort with the body parts.(!) Simon says or something similar. It's an hour and a half but I can give a 10 minute self introduction (witty and charming, as it must necessarily be), talk for 5 minutes about the goals of these cultural exchange nights, spend 40 minutes addressing various aspects of the theme (sports: 10mins whats popular, 10mins why do it, 10mins what have you done, etc), then the rest of the time with english and game. No problem at all, though I do wish theyd tell me if its going to be like 10 people or 60.

After this, then, I have to prepare a speech about ukrainian history for the niihama guide club. Half an hour. Last time I did something like this I sort of danced around for 45 minutes relating vague anecdotes about the Cossacks and Poles and Russians and Turks, though I left out much of the venerable zeal such stories contained when I heard them in my youth from various nationalistic ukrainian old people. And of course the jewish conspiracies behind it all, the japanese just wouldnt understand the subtlties involved. (this is me rolling my eyes at the silly games of the old world) Anyway this time I would like to prepare better and maybe tell some folk stories. The part of me that is ukrainian still wont play right with the rest of me, I need to sort out my relationship with my heritage. I think if I could I would shed it like dead skin, but sadly that's easier said than done. And dont get me wrong I dont find it worthless, I just...I dunno, I identify myself as world citizen and so the treasures of ukrainian heritage wouldnt be any less mine were I to shed any sort of ukrainian identity I have in favor of a more world-embracing less jew-and-russian-hating viewpoint.

Except of course those treasures of ukrainian heritage which involve spitting in the face of overwhelming odds, of refusing to play the role assigned by the world etc. That sort of Romantic notion of course appeals to me very strongly, but it goes hand in hand with nationalism and bigotry and I am philosophically opposed. But it's cool. In the end its all just religion and fucked up education. I'd like to see a world where the outcasts are the ones trying to impose anything to begin with, because world citizens are so secure in their situation that tyrany is laughable. Then maybe I would favor nationalism, when nation could be defined as nothing more than a club of malcontents, friends all, intent on turning a perfect world on its side out of ennui. Tyrrany would be open opposition to freedom in the name of inequality, which of course it is now but somehow has the opposite reputation depending on the color of the flag.

I think I might be a bad person. I tend to hold others in contempt, my natural inclination is to dislike most people. I have been giving this much thought. I can act real nice and cordial to everyone but then I am being fake, putting on a show to seem like I am not really bad. But of course bad I am, bad am I, and in that case I am not only bad but dishonest, so isnt that worse? So maybe there isnt just a single bipolar spectrum between good person and bad person, it crosses with the one for true person or false person. And then our final rating is "okay" or "not okay." Generally I act rude and selfish because fuck you, so that makes me bad and honest, so that means I am okay. Were I bad and dishonest, I would be not okay. This is like the Ayako thing, I could have kept dating her but it would have been a sham and I would have felt dishonest and it drives me nuts. Were I a good human being I would have just been happy, right, and this isnt just an ayako thing of course but a good human being is content and at peace with his surroundings, not filled with hate, so were I a good human being it wouldnt have been dishonest to stay with her, but since I am a bad human being the only way I can keep my "ok" status was to leave her. Actually now that I think about it there is no reason to overlap the good/bad with real/false, I am only talking about real/false. I like people who are real even if they are bad, but do I like people who are false under any circumstances? Maybe. Must think through. And anyway its all just about who I wanna hang with anyway, so universal ethical structures can suck my moped. Which I dont have. Anyway this is why I can hang out with Chris Guile who is kinda bad just as easily as I can hang out with Brian Turner who may be Christ Come Again.

But I recognize that most people even among my friends are just putting on shows out of fear. I used to think people were afraid of each other but am starting to think that the reason for the mask or facade is fear of self.

I know this sounds all very holden caulfield and of course we all wear masks for situations, but a group of rebels in a perfect world would shed their masks from each other at the very least so that they could work in honest unison to do a bad thing knowingly. And I respect that in a sense.

Madness?

Are you still following me?

Hello?

If you have come this far congratulations, here is a cigar ====. I dont actually know how to make an ascii cigar. I wonder how long this particular rant is. I wish I wrote more things I liked a lot, that way I could publish this as a sort of gonzo blogging. Blogs are the natural forum actually for gonzo arent they? They are all about being in the middle of the shit. Blogs and embedded reporters should all take a look at Hunter.

So what is this I hear about some woman with a feeding tube and crazy parents? I hear tell it is on all the news and reasonable people the country over are kind of amazed that it is a big deal. Well, duh. America has become fundamentalist.

I want to establish RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW: if I am EVER in a persistant vegitative state where my mind is jelly and there is no hope of recovery, for gods sake slit my wrists, dont keep me alive at tremendous expense for whatever half-baked warm tingly feeling it gives you to see my moronically grinning mug. Unless all I am to you is a body, and my physical presence hooked up to gleaming metal instruments is really all you want from me, well, I guess I cannot stop you. But that is terribly disrespectful, I would hate to think I was being kept alive just so you could look at my face. Talk about objectification. But if you care about me, respect my wishes and waste me. No pulling no feeding tubes, either, just shoot me. And if anyone objects I want them buried with me.

Ha, actually, see if you can mummify me, that would be cool. Then maybe get my favorite professors and servant girls together and send 'em into the pyramid with me along with one reactionary conservative for every complaint.

I also like this "little eichmans" professor, but that's probably just because I am a flaming liberal and understand his point. Freedom of speech is fading fast. But, you ask, what if some professor started blaming the jews or something? Wouldnt I want him fired? Nah. I would just want him to debate openly on the subject matter with evidence for his claims. All this professor has done was draw a comparison between two examples of oppression, in my opinion, and the veracity of his claim can be tested with careful examination. To my understanding he is not making vague claims or citing mysterious texts or protecting sources. If you are upset by him then show his claim to be untenable. Even then dont fire him, either he will relent or he will be forced to acknowledge his claim to be irrational. Right?

Ah but if you find his claim to be distasteful regardless of its veracity, well, thats another matter. But that's kinda personal, no? Maybe challenge him to a duel but I dont know that he could reasonably lost his job over it.

Though America and its inhabitants surprise me every day. They have the highest standard of living in the world bar none and yet this? Surely Americans are looked up to as paragons of how to live by people everywhere (granted, not necessarily as paragons of how to conduct foreign policy) because we all need the sense of justice in the world, but wow, can you imagine the disillusionment of nepalese peasants to learn that they are more in touch with reasonable living than the people who voted bush in? or bush himself? Good stuff.

Anyway I can never tell if it is bad when I get heavily into my own opinions in my blog. On the one hand it is my blog and thus my prerogative (did I spell that right?) but on the other hand it is probably irritating to read, unless you find me interesting in which case we should go out for coffee.

But yeah, comment, tell me what you like and dont like about my blog. I am not promising to cater to my readers, but I am curious. I would appreciate the feedback.

So you should all go rent Amadeus

2005-03-21T21:08:00.000-05:00

It's really good.

Here is the first draft of my second-quarter report, hot off the presses, just written, I haven't so much as glanced over it so forgive any glaring errors in typing or judgment.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mykola Bilokonsky
Ichimiya Group Intern Report
Winter Quarter

General
The past few months have been magnificent. January turned out to be rather slow in the beginning, as the whole company was just coming back from winter break and everyone was too busy to deal much with the intern. As a result, I had a lot of downtime which I spent studying Japanese and writing reports and frankly trying desperately to spend in some meaningful way. By contrast, the latter half of the month was quite busy – I spent a day at Ichimiya Kosan, went to Toyo Kibou no Ie with Yasui-senmu, and went with Nakamoto-san to city hall where I received a tour of Niihama with introductions to various facilities like the school cafeteria food center, the garbage processing center and Hirose Park. The result was that in my last week or so before transferring to Nissen Kagaku I was so busy I didn’t have time to breathe, and my report and “News I” came out about a week late despite my plans to have it all over and done with before leaving Kaihatsu Group.
But, in February, leave Kaihatsu Group I did. I began work at Nissen Kagaku with a few distinct projects and a strong sense of purpose, elements that had been hard to find during my time at Kaihatsu Group because of the constantly fluctuating schedule. My tasks, to be specific, are as follows.
1. Nissen Website. The current homepage of Nissen Kagaku was designed in 2000 by a previous intern. It has not been updated since, and neither the content nor the design has aged gracefully. My task here has several parts. First I updated old information on the current page, and then I translated it into English. The third step in the process is to create an entirely new page, a task I am greatly looking forward to.
2. Cultural Exchange. In March, May and July I will host American-Japanese Cultural Exchange Events. In truth the very notion scares me, simply because the idea is so vague. Basically I will meet with anyone interested for about an hour and a half after work once every other month, and we will talk about some theme in culture (this month we will speak about Sports). There is to be some element of English-language instruction, but nothing too difficult. This is an exchange by definition and not a lecture or a lesson from me, and therein can be found the source of my nervousness because I am not sure to what degree I can count on the attendees to interact with me. One thing I have learned from my very occasional attempts to teach English while here is that if someone is too embarrassed to answer a question there is no stigma against sitting in silence with eyes on the ground until the questioner moves on, so I am having a terrifying vision of a room full of employees who don’t really want to be there and aren’t really sure what to do and how to interact with me and so sit in silence as we stare at each other awkwardly. I am preparing as best I can and will be sure to include a description of how things went in my next report.
3. Internship Website. To date, there is no place to get information about this internship. For the sake of future students interested in coming to study at Ichimiya, I want to consolidate various information and create an internet headquarters for this program. The creation of this site is contingent on how quickly I can finish the Nissen site.
4. Miscellaneous. I serve in my capacity as English Speaking Japanese Student, so I have typed up a few documents in English and help translate letters and that sort of thing.

Also in January, I took a trip to Naoshima with a few friends who have a more artistic bent. Naoshima is an island off the coast of Takamatsu with a strong artistic presence – there is a museum designed by Tadao Ando, various galleries, some interestingly decorated shrines and a few buildings in the city designed as works of art in themselves. My favorite involved an enormous structure which was entirely hollow and pitch black – I don’t know that I have ever been in such complete unrelenting darkness. Mounted in the far corner was a light so faint as to be almost invisible, and I guess the idea was that the unearthly dimness of the light made you feel as though you were seeing things. It was creepy and exciting.

February
As far as work goes, February was spent brushing up on HTML, learning CSS and other web-design skills, and typing up a 50 page document for Jinno Buchou. When I was younger, web design was a hobby of mine and so I am not entirely clueless about how to put a website together – but I haven’t done it in 10 years and the few weeks I spent brushing up proved invaluable. Basically every day I would start from scratch and create a website, each time a little more complicated than the time before. I’d learn a new technique just about every day (for instance, suckerfish drop-menus or java-enabled popup-windows) and by the next day would be able to write the whole thing in using hard code and start from there. I am confident in my ability to provide Nissen with a professional page by the time I am done here, something more akin to the current Ichimiya Transportation page than what they now.
The 50 page document was a long set of bylaws and contracts for use at London Industries – dress codes and patent registration and computer rules and so on. Apparently there was no computerized version, as all the files were hard-copy only. So I took a week and entered 10 pages a day. When I was done I was asked to translate the lot of it into Japanese, but after some consideration I had to tell Jinno Bucho that it was simply too difficult for me. My Japanese is improving by leaps and bounds, but to translate 50 pages of tightly-written American legal jargon into readable Japanese is a task that would take me all day every day from now until the time I left Nissen, and even then I would be bothering my boss every other word.
As a sort of alternative, I am copy-and-pasting it line by line into Babelfish, the online automatic translator, and creating a document that way, which I will then pass on to Jinno Bucho for editing. I have my doubts as to the efficacy of this procedure as such internet translations are notorious for spewing out gibberish, but it is as per his request and I have no problem complying. It beats me pouring over it and tearing my hair out in frustration.
On a more personal note, February saw me taking a second trip to Honshu. I took a weekend with my girlfriend at the time to Kyoto, where I did a lot of sight-seeing and eating of delicious food. We did all the main sites, Nijojo and Kiyomizudera and Kinkakuji and the like, but I have a confession to make. For all of my interest in Japanese history, my favorite site in Kyoto was the train station. Never in my life have I seen a building so magnificent, at-odds though it may be with Kyoto’s old-world reputation. The enormous outdoor staircase spanning ten floors to the top of the building, the panoramic view of the city, the restaurants – it was all incredibly impressive.
We also spent some time in Osaka during the trip and I shudder to confess that frankly I think I like Osaka more than I like Kyoto. What such an opinion is worth after only two days in each city is certainly up for debate, but the atmosphere in Osaka feels much more vibrant to me.
Having gone to Osaka for New Years, Naoshima in January and then Kyoto in February, I felt financial constrictions tightening. By the end of January I had torn through the money I put away in October when the Guide Club had paid me rather generously to proofread some literature. It is very generous of Ichimiya Group to not only provide airfare and a place to stay for interns, but also a monthly stipend. 100,000 is certainly enough to get by in Niihama, and with careful use is enough to either go out every weekend or go on a trip every month, but on that income any sort of extended travel becomes very difficult, which is unfortunate. I would imagine that most interns come because they are interested in Japan as a whole – so spending all but the occasional weekend in Niihama and environs can be quite frankly stifling at times. I would recommend, then, that future interns save a few hundred dollars so that they can take 3 or 4 days in Honshu now and again without worrying about making ends meet. In my opinion it is a good idea to see the stipend as “Niihama money”, and anything earned on the side as fit for spending on travel and the like.
Also in February I got really sick. I am not sure what caused it, but for four days I could barely leave my futon. Eating was more or less beyond me as I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach, and I had a fever dancing around 40 degrees. A few days of rest and two trips to the hospital finally set things right, but the I.V. I had to get was agonizing – I have a needle thing.

March
And that brings us to March. Work has gotten a bit busier as several of my projects have begun to demand attention at once. Japanese study has gotten more intensive as I have moved on to yet another book. My teacher tells me that as far as grammar and speaking/listening are concerned I am far beyond other people at my level but that when it comes to vocabulary I am pathetic. For this I simultaneously thank and blame the JSL program, which does an excellent job instilling grammar but which, admittedly, works with relatively small vocabulary.
As a sort of stopgap, I began in January to memorize four words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb/misc.) and a yojijukugo every day. I have compiled quite a list now, and while I can’t quite claim to remember all of them I can certainly say that my vocabulary has increased tremendously.
Another project that has come to the forefront is preparation for the New Employee Induction Ceremony in Kyoto on April 1st. I have been asked to prepare an English lesson, and so I have put together something about parts of the body and related expressions (te = hand, te wo kashite = give me a hand, etc). Still, the idea of standing in front of 70 new employees and trying to get them to participate for any extended period leaves me feeling somewhat nervous.
A sort of practice-run through of the various presentations was held at an overnight seminar on Friday, March 18th. When my turn came I opened up my Power Point presentation and was irritated to find that the timing on my slides was completely wrong – instead of things coming in point by point so that I could discuss each item individually, everything came on screen in large jumbles and my presentation became more of an explanation of how my presentation was going to go. It was terribly embarrassing and I am sure I looked like I had failed to prepare properly; everyone smiled and applauded when I was finished but it upset me. I don’t understand why it changed all of the settings, it might have had something to do with the fact that I was running it on a different computer – but nobody else seemed to have that problem. So that is something else I have to iron out. I did enjoy the tabe- and nomihodai at the Asahi beer factory afterwards. Tanaka-kyokuchou and I set the pace with beer and the food was delicious. I do enjoy the work-hard play-hard ethic that seems to run through the Japanese business world.
Also, the first of my aforementioned Cultural Exchange Nights is looming on the ever-approaching horizon. As I am talking about sports, the body-part English lesson is a good fit, but that leaves me with about an hour to somehow make interesting. I am worried but am not entirely unprepared. I’m planning on discussing what sports are most popular in America (both to watch and to do) and to ask about Japan; to give a history of my personal involvement in Athletics, things I have liked and things I haven’t liked, etc, and hopefully from there start a discussion about who does what sports and yeah let’s get together for a game of Frisbee some time; I want to do a bit about how to cheer in America as opposed to Japan – “Yeah! Come on! Go go go!” etc. I realize, though, that as embarrassed as I will be shouting at an imaginary athletic competition in front of 20-50 tired salarymen it will be very difficult to get anyone to show me just how people cheer in Japan. The whole thing feels like it might be a mistake, so I still have to work on it. I don’t think it will be bad but it has been the largest source of stress I have had hanging over me.
I finished the translation of the current Nissen site into English. Fukushima-san and myself presented it to management, and basically put it up page by page so that they could compare with the original site. The result was unfortunate – management seemed to realize for the first time that the current web page is 5 years out of date, so the plan now is for me to completely update the current page, and then translate the update, and THEN create a new page. To me it doesn’t make a lot of sense to fix the old page when the plan is to replace it so soon, especially when it will take a month to get the relevant information and updated photographs together. I am wondering if maybe they don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to replace it.
Finally, I am still working with the London Industry documents, feeding them into babelfish a little every day. It sounds simple but the formatting means I have to go about one line at a time and then make sure it doesn’t screw everything up when I paste it, so it is slow going.
In short, I have been very busy with a handful of specific challenges to work out. I greatly enjoy this element of my internship – at Kaihatsu Group I had long periods of time when I simply didn’t know what I should be doing, and on the whole prefer to be in a situation when I have 5 tasks arrayed in front of me – especially since they are all incredibly challenging and are all very frustrating to some degree. It makes me feel like I am using my time to grow, and while right now I find myself stressing about this or that I know that when I am finished with all of this I will be relieved and feel a sense of accomplishment.
My personal life, my “Japan Experience,” has been slow in March. As mentioned before my money situation is tight, and travel has been more or less out of the question; I had a girlfriend in Saijo, but we broke up this month; I have spent a lot of time just biking or walking around Niihama, now that the weather is nicer. Also, I have given up on Kendo. After stumbling around trying half-heartedly to find some way to make it work, I have decided that my time could be better spent in other pursuits. Specifically, pursuits that didn’t involve a lack of armor and an awkward practice schedule. So, for the time being, I have joined a Karate class with a friend of mine out here. I’ve been doing it for a little over a month now, attending twice a week, and I greatly enjoy it so far. I regret the kendo situation, and various coworkers enjoy teasing me about it once in a while as I made the mistake upon my arrival to talk about how I did kendo at university and how I want to do it here. I consider that my only real failure here, but at this point there’s nothing I can do about it. The karate allows me my fix of violence and screaming and I enjoy having a friend to do it with, so March has been relaxing, steady and peaceful – a welcome change from the hectic pace of the last few months.

Conclusion
So that’s where I stand at the moment. I have several projects arrayed before me, a work environment that I greatly enjoy (I forgot to mention above how much I like my co-workers at Nissen. They are great!), a lifestyle I am settling into, and the recently emerged promise of warm sunny days ahead. A Japanese friend of mine (my conversation partner the summer prior to this trip) will be returning to Japan for a bit in the near future and we are planning a trip out to Matsuyama and Dogo Onsen, which I have not yet visited. The warm weather means that weekend-long beach barbeques are on the horizon. My web-design skills improve every day, and there is some talk of a fact-finding mission across Japan to the various factories and offices so that I can get photographs and updated information for the website, which would be great.
In short, I am having a great time out here, but not the sort of great time I feel guilty for having. It is a lot of work and a lot of play, the whole experience right now is like the seminar followed by the enkai at the Asahi beer plant. In the end I am left with vague feelings of frustration at the challenges in front of me, vague feelings of anticipation for as-yet-unknown warm-weather fun to be had, and a general sense of appreciation for being here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nifty, ne? And all true.

I eat like a pig and it has never bothered me but maybe I shouldn't let me get fat. I am okay sexy now though. It's just always funny when I eat with the girls because I just have so much it is almost obscene, but at least its usually more or less healthy. Though that cake I bought last night was maybe a bit much.

Which one of you fucks was it recommended About Schmidt to me? That was...so bad. I am not even going to talk about that contrived chunk of rubbish, there was almost nothing in it worth seeing. How do you make a movie like that and then convince the world it is somehow stimulating? Every joke was fucking ordered from Acme Generic Jokes, Inc. Every plot twist was inevitable, and all the gimmicks? The 2 minutes floundering in a water bed? The "oh-look-its-funny-cuz-he-has-a-kink-in-his-neck-and-cant-keep-his-head-straight?" Followed by its sister, then "oh-look-he-took-too-much-medication-and-now-its-like-hes-high" coupled with their bastard lovechild "hes-at-a-formal-ocassion-acting-like-an-ass". The naked old lady? I mean its like American Pie for old retards. And if you dare tell me I just didnt understand it I will come back and hit you. Jack Nicholson is dead to me.

Okay, now I have Japanese Homework to do. Sigh.

Ichiro's Hamstring

2005-03-16T02:05:00.000-05:00

I want to write a blog update. Things are going okay. Today at work I am preparing an English lesson for three separate occasions within the next two weeks, they are going to be keeping me busy. I was going to talk about sports and kinda whittled it down to talking about body parts and their definitions in English. My “big plan,” as it were, is to put up a picture of Ichiro Suzuki the baseball player (who is worshipped as a sort of deity over here) and I have arrows pointing to arms and neck and feet and whatnot and we are going to go over definitions.

As an added bonus, I am throwing in some cultural information which may or may not help them to remember. For instance, when I teach them “Neck” I will also teach them “Pain in the Neck” so that they associate the two. You would be surprised how many Japanese expressions mirror our own – puffed out chest and nose in the air for pride, rosy cheeks for the glow of youth, double chin, give me a hand – they even have “Benkei’s Shin” which is basically Achilles Heel. So hopefully this will prove effective and my boss won’t beat me.

Karate is ever more fun though I did not go yesterday as having just broken up with Ayako I decided to embrace my sadness by scrounging around for auto-destructive things to do while avoiding things that could be construed as good for me. I was going to eat at McDonald’s and drink a lot, but then Jackie fed me a nice healthy meal and I had a glass of wine while watching The Graduate. Not quite as detrimental to my well-being as I had hoped, but oh well. I have got my first kata DOWN, tho, so if you attack me with a large group in a specific order I will put you down. Just do it slowly. And start from my left.

Apparently Karen from Jamaica starts this week, possibly yesterday. I kinda don’t like her, she is loud rude and abrasive, and moreso to anyone trying to be kind to her. That personality just doesn’t fit in Japan, she makes a complete ass of herself everywhere she goes and you are never sure if you want her to keep being rude to the Japanese or turn on you, which is just as irritating. Either way her company is unpleasant, I can’t wait to hear her complain about sitting in seizan during meditation before practice, or to see her “teach” the sensei how punches SHOULD work. On the plus side I may get to hit her repeatedly eventually, so it may all pay off.

Firefox continues to impress the hell out of me, it is breathing yet more life into the internet. I wonder should I make a stink about getting net access at my pad. The year is wrapping up, half over already, but now no ayako means more time sitting around at home, although now that the weather is getting better it means more time out doing stuff, so yeah, I probably don’t need it but it would be nice.

I had just written a message in here to Ayako, because I know she will be reading this, but I deleted it cuz that’s kinda lame. I will say though that there is nobody on this planet that cannot teach you something and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. But it really does depend on our willingness to learn.

Genki Sudo, the fighter Jon introduced me to, wrote a piece about how the world is our mirror, and the way we try to see the world is how we see it. Don’t laugh because you are happy, he writes, become happy by laughing. It’s so simple but I dunno. Sometimes it is easier to be sad? But I am not, I am feeling very okay right now. I do hate, though, when my blog takes a turn for 16-year-old-emokid emotional ranting.

But why is that, do I hate my emotions? No, I feel them and they are okay. It’s control issues perhaps. I’ve always been emotional even/especially when I try not to be, but trying anything regarding emotions is silly, isn’t it? I guess you really do just have to do what you feel like doing.

I also hate feeling self-conscious when I write. I get that though when I talk about emotions which is why I throw out some sort of self-disparaging comment about how I am acting like a child every time I so much as think about using the word “feel” in here. That’s silly, I do feel. Interesting. Life is too short to worry/think about, maybe feeling is the best way to go. I guess what’s wrong about being ashamed about feelings is that it doesn’t make any sense – I really don’t think that the distinction between reason and emotion is as sharp or meaningful as traditional western thing says it is. You simply are. That would be like saying it’s okay to acknowledge thoughts but not physical sensations – ha, and come to think of it, they say that too. But it’s total package, isn’t it?

God if you want me to fight some element of myself, I guess I could, but I don’t reeeeeally see a reason to. I could fight an army with my teeth tied behind my tongue if it made a difference. I kinda just wanted to use a weird expression, I am not necessarily making any sense here. Unless it means something to you in which case, sure, I meant that.

I think “kinda” will be a word within 15 years, in all the major dictionaries. What was the other one? Oh, right, the other day I was talking to someone who kept mistyping “each other” as “eachother” but I found it strangely appropriate. I would like that to be a compound word, but it won’t.

So there is this new guy Joshka from Utah arriving in Niihama to replace pat next week. At first we were all like “Josh…ka? Utah? Pat what have you done you got us a Mormon!!!!” but as it turns out he is not. We did some background checking on the internet about him, tho, (Josh if you end up reading this don’t take it personal ;)) and he seems like he’s okay. From what little I can find, anyway. Looks to be into Magic Cards at least, from the Wizards of the Coast page we found him on, and he is a certified tech geek which is greeeeeat. If he isn’t already into Tekken I will convert him (as I suspect he will be the most easily converted of the people I socialize with out here) and we shall make glorious Tekken together until august. Jackie and Alison are going to be shocked and appalled when they realize the depths of nerdom I am capable of. I am excited, I think I am going to like this guy.

Of course he could be a total wanker. We poured all of our worry into “What if hes mormon!?!?” and stressed about that so when we found out he wasn’t we all kinda breathed a sigh of relief and decided he was awesome but ya know, maybe not. He has a beard, I think it’s a good sign Jackie thinks no. Either way he is moving into Jackie and Alex’s building so we’ll be seeing him.

Alright I been typing this for a few mins now so I should probably go back to labeling pieces of Ichiro’s body. Can anybody think of a common saying about triceps?

Ichiro's Hamstring

2005-03-16T02:02:00.000-05:00

2005-03-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah so me and ayako broke up. Really sad but really inevitable. I wish I could just complain about her but realistically she was great, I think I just have a really hard time being happy and I am not sure why. I sure don’t like it.

In other news I learned a few more kanji expressions which I will share with you all:

色即是空　– shikisokuzekuu – apparently this is one of yoshimitsu’s lines in t5 dan. It is from the lotus sutra, and it basically means that “All is vanity,” the “real world” is an illusion, nothing is real. It’s probably the Japanese for what J says at the end of CB, though I have to go watch ep26 to be sure.

生者必滅　－ shoujahitsumetsu. This means that all living things die. Boy, I hate to be predictable, but the old Japanese must have just loved this stuff as much as I do. I do love the doom and gloomy and theatrical despair, though I don’t like actually being unhappy. I am pretty sure the two are almost unrelated.

悲歌慷慨　－　hikakougai. Indignant lamentation over the evils in the world.

針小棒大　－　shinshouboudai. Small needle big pole, ie, turning a molehill into a mountain.

主客転倒　－　shukakutentou. The host and the guest are reversed (like in a bar). It means that priorities are backwards, things are fucked up, relative importance is skewed. A college student who spends all his time working and not enough time studying.

面従腹背 ― menjuufukuhai. Face forward stomach back. IE, loyalty on one’s face but betrayal in one’s heart.

明鏡止水　－　meikyoushisui. Polished mirror still water. Serenity.

一期一会　－　ichigoichie. Once in a lifetime, but I guess the usage is more like, every time you meet with someone, every time you do something, treat it like it matters because it could be the last time or somesuch. Just act like everything you do it is your only chance to do it. I like this one a lot.

泣き面に鉢　－　nakitsura ni hachi. This isn’t a yojijukugo, it is just an expression, but how can you say no to “Bees to a crying face”? It’s like salt in wounds, when it rains it pours etc.

半死半生　－　hanshihanshou. Half dead half alive. Self-explanatory.

酒池肉林　－ shuchinikurin. Fountain of booze, forest of flesh. Debauchery, extravagance.

So on a less (more?) serious note, I had never been able to beat tekken force before (and this part I suppose is relevant only to those who know what I am talking about). I would occasionally make it to stage 3 but never farther, though I suppose I never really sat down to get the damn job done. After Ayako left last night I was so angry with myself that I decided to take it out on Heihachi and his cronies and I just played through the whole damn thing on one life, fueled by rage and auto-destructive impulses. Nobody could touch me. It almost scared me, like I wasn’t even the one doing it, steve just did his thing, he was pissed off. I felt so powerful.

It’s of course not about the stupid game, it’s the clarity of purpose and essentially intuitive problem solving. It happened to be tekken but I probably would have beat the shit out of say Karen from Jamaica or had some breakthrough in my Japanese or built a website designed and powered by fury had that been the situation.

And the source of that energy was the detachment, I didn’t give a shit what I was doing I just wanted to break things. I am glad I was in my apartment and sober and not at a party with a bunch of people that irritated me. And I’m glad I got it out of my system before I left, I went to Pats to eat with him and alex and Jackie later that night and was just kinda sad and no longer furious.

I don’t understand why simple happiness is so complicated. I could delight ayako for a week with a smile. How crummy of me to leave her instead. But I guess I have to try to keep looking. I dunno. No matter what or who I find its never enough, so the problem is inside, but fuck if I know. This is why I didn’t date for most of college. I think I might just become a slag like Todd and ravage the Japanese countryside in desperation and fury. Fuck ‘em all.

Orwell: Politics and the English Language

2005-03-11T03:15:00.000-05:00

Orwell: Politics and the English Language: "# Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
# Never us a long word where a short one will do.
# If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
# Never use the passive where you can use the active.
# Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
# Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

If only his essay wasn't so damn dry and hard to read. Still, maybe I will use these. It makes writing harder. Blah.

Also, an essay I read about successul writing for the web stresses that we should add links graciously, especially in editorial or personal sites. For that reason, I am gonna throw out a link to Dan's blog, a list apart (my new favorite website) , and, uh, Basil's journal which he hasn't updated in forever.

Please view these sites, they help me to grow daily.

Look what I found!

2005-03-10T21:45:00.000-05:00

I just...didn't expect it so soon. Where to now?

Man, use firefox, it is more awesome by the day. There are some really great extensions available.

a baffled king

2005-03-10T00:26:00.000-05:00

websmart nerdy type guys - is it cool to use SWF in a business page, or is it still not 100% integrated so theres the chance that when my boss's boss shows the page to the client it won't be able to load? 96% or something? what do you think, should I shy away from Flash to be safe?

Went out drinking with Ayako's dad and brother last night, that was cool. They took me to a few snack bars in Saijo where the girls all flirted with me. You'd think it would be awkward to flirted at in the presence of your girlfriend's father and brother but youd be wrong, it was a good night.

Pitched my website to the management this morning, along with my boss Fukashima-san, who I like. They were like "We have a web page?" No not quite, but what happened was, we were showing them my english version to get permission to put it up so I can get it behind me. But to make the english version make sense they had to have the Japanese version too. So for two hours they basically tore apart the Japanese site and pointed out all the dated information and whatnot. This is a site they have had for 5 years. It's going to take me at least two weeks to make all the changes they want and translate them and basically get to where I thought I was at this morning. Probably closer to a month as they make me fix more and more detailed stuff.

It's not a big deal, but here's the thing. The page is completely terrible, and I am going to make a new one just as soon as I can stop working on the old one. They are going to cost me one of the 5 months I have left here by making me fix the current page before I scrap it and make an entirely new, pretty page. It's a little like taking your car in to the shop to fix a scratch you've had for 20 years a week before you get a new car, and then getting the new car a month late cuz paying for the scratch repairs set you back too much to get the new car when you thought you would. Then you get the new car, finally, and you destroy the old one. It's just kind of silly, Fukushima-san seemed a bit irritated as well. Really it's their fault that they've had this page for 5 years and nobody has looked at it. On the plus side, upper management likes my ideas for rennovating the site, they thought some of the demo stuff I showed them was very clever. Clever like, replacing words and tiny pictures with giant pictures and less text for browsing and the like. And click the part of the car where the carpart is installed and it pops up. That sort of thing.

If I use flash I can rock their goofy little socks off. Even if I can't I can crap out a page thats prettier than this one, and this one is fucking complexly made, he has like 10 pages of code for one ugly webpage, its so silly.

So anyway yeah thats what Im up to. I look forward to having the current page behind me and getting my ass in gear on the new one, which will be magnificant.

Oh, another question for the nerdy types, Pat and Matt take note. Using CSS I know I can alter the style on all my pages by editing one file, but is there anything comparable for content? Like, if my menus are the same on every page, can I somehow create that externally and then import it into the page? So if my boss is like "Yeah thats pretty but I want this word and not that one on that menu" I dont have to crawl through 30 pages to do it?

that is all.

I cant get this song out of my head

2005-03-08T18:59:00.000-05:00

"Well I've heard there was a secret(sacred?) chord
That David played, and it pleased the lord -
But you don't really care for music, do ya?

And it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, and the major lift (what a line) -
A baffled king composing hallelujah..."

What words. The minor fall and the major lift? Talk about salvation in music. A baffled king composing hallelujah? Beautiful.

But I digress, I always get very annoyed when people talk about their music in their blogs, so I apologize for the indulgence.

I watched Mulholland Drive last night. Now, I have heard that it was terrible, that it was gibberish, that it was mental masturbation and not worth watching. That may be true, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was one of the more creative films I've seen in a while, and while certainly I am not up to the task of unifying the whole thing into a coherent single stream I certainly noticed several themes that were deftly explored (I like that word deftly, so rarely get to use it). My favorite was that, at least for a while, it was about characters when their movie gets cancelled, their story abandoned. They flounder around and disappear. Very vonnegut in a sense, but darker, broodier.

But frankly the lesbian sex was highly overrated.

My Japanese is getting better. I feel a more complete human being. I am not sure if I want to come back to Japan to teach, at least if I want to right away. I think maybe I want to do something in the states first, maybe grad school? Maybe law school? Maybe tekken with Dan until we attain sattori?

Thats all for now got me some japanese to study.

2005-03-07T23:22:00.000-05:00

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/xcbucket/

leonard cohen

2005-03-06T19:20:00.000-05:00

Am finding poetry in motion and music. The latter isn't so much an accomplishment, but a joy nonetheless. The former may be a result of the latter but is more likely the result of a week-long depression I am crawling out of.

This line is good:

"You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word,
It doesn't matter which you heard -
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah"

What is an example of an action taken out of neither fear nor desire? I will vaguely imply that I will send you a box of pocky if you convince me.

I am now reading a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. It might be okay. I miss James Joyce dearly, though, and will probably delve deeply into at least 2 pages of Finnegans Wake before the month is out.

I have decided that my favorite word out of Joyce is, to date, "unbewised" as used in "in the buginning was the woid, in the muddle was the soundance, and thereinofter we are in the unbewised again, vund vulsy volsy." or something to that effect. Unbewitched, un-made-wise, a place to be returned to, Eden before the fall, union, unity. An end to match the beginning, a point of departure and point of return, the Ithaca of our human odyssey. The unbewised is where we all feel home.

So I sold all of my video games but tekken 4 and the first two metal gears cuz they are effectively worthless, and I bought Final Fantasy X2 - International + Last Mission. International = mostly english. X2 = Yuna's concert. Yuna's Concert = slick.

May buy a gamecube, they kinda cheap here (75ish). Then I can get mario cart and aya will be happy.

"I saw your flag on the victory arch,
But love is not a victory march -
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah."

2005-03-02T02:43:00.000-05:00

I've not updated in a while. gomen.

Not a whole lot to say maybe?

Work is providing me with less fodder for my ravenous wit, which can only live on righteous indignation. I have been really loving the hell out of my job, and I pour over Dreamweaver and Flash MX2004 and Photoshop all day every day. Hell I would do it on the weekends if I had internet at my apartment. This is absolutely fantastic. I can make flash animations now! How cool is that? I have yet to make a really pretty one but I threw together something simple as a title page for the nissen website where you just choose english or japanese. I will put it up at www.ichimiya.co.jp/nissen/new/nissen-choose.htm Once you learn the basic shit like this it becomes a matter of getting nice photographs and refined looking buttons, right, so this is 90% of the work. The thing I love most about web design is that people who are good at it like to talk about it, and have a forum at their disposal which is a direct result of their abilities. As a consequence, the web is filled with tutorials and explanations of even the most obscure features of the most unused codes or techiniques. It is magnificant, you can pay thousands of dollars to learn web design or you can take a week with a computer and the internet and a few gigs of pirated software and you can put together something good.

Aesthetics of course will get you every time, if you are me. I really just have a hard time creating the actual graphics, but I think there might be someone here who will do that for me, tho I dont understand exactly. But even that will come if I take a week and learn photoshop inside out before it expires. If you know enough in the way of techinque you can almost replace the need for creativity, right? It's all embedded in the software...

Matt, Zach, how is the housing situation looking?

Kendo, how are you guys doing?

Jon, Dan, how is tekken 5 treating you?

Mom, sorry I forgot your birthday.

Kate, I was gonna email you and decided to write a brief blog instead.

Brian, congratulations on winning 100 bucks for being smart. Come to OSU.

Pat, all set for Osaka? When can I swipe those chairs from ya?

I don't know who actually reads this.

I went to Imabari with Aya this past weekend and bought a little 8-ball pillow that feels really comfortable, much like Alison's star pillows but bigger and it's an 8 ball. And I cleaned the hell out of my apartment. Okay not really but I pushed all the junk to the walls and found my vacuum cleaner. And did laundry.

Yeah, I guess these are the slow days. Osaka and Kyoto are so cool that I get back to Niihama and don't have much to say. I guess I could join various friends in lamenting the passing of the college era, but it doesn't ring true for me. You guys are all about to take off and rule the world, and I have another year. For what it is worth, I will miss you all tremendously - this last year of school for me when I get back is going to feel so hollow. I guess nothing for it but to live for the moment and enjoy the time as such. I am not trying to diss the few friends I will have remaining at OSU, I value you guys just as much, but it is going to be such a different scene.

I have kept this blog up for like 7 months now. Is that cool or what? How many hundreds of pages must I have typed into here? Madness and vanity. Every year I look at "Me up to this point" and violently reject everything that had come before, embracing the future. The result is that I always feel out of touch with who I was and who I will be, I am sort of a maelstrom of autodestructive tendencies that exists perpetually in the present. Maybe that will change once I finally sort my shit out, but it leaves me wondering if I am just going to despise this blog the way I despise my old live journal? As the unwelcome footprint-in-the-cement of a trespasser who used my body for a while?

I am kind of a really sad guy. I am no longer depressed like I was when I was 18-20, but I don't see a happy future like I did when I was 00-18. I just kind of see me doing whatever it is I happen to be doing unitl I die. And that's what we all do. I am turning this into yet another episode of Myk wears his heart on his sleeve and undergoes depressive psueudo-insight that belonged in 7th grade. Fuck that. I don't know. I don't care. I kinda just wanna sleep. Or work on web pages.

Momentum is everything for me. I want it to be nothing. I profess to like to change on a whim but I never change, I just keep going on the same basic line with my moods the only fluctuation. I don't like change, I like stasis and stagnation. I admire change for its difference from me. But I am rotting like most of you.

I want to be able to stop on a dime and go the other way and not care. Now how to bring that about. I need a pirate (air)ship and a crew of loyal mates. Or a stiff drink.

Don't mind the depressive tone I have other issues floating around right now that I don't want to write about but that are dragging me down. I would go back and delete the whining but I dont feel like checking where the website euphoria stopped and the bitching began so you get the whole dose. Bon apetit.

2005-02-24T00:54:00.000-05:00

Your Japanese Study of the Day

2005-02-23T20:48:00.000-05:00

横好き【よこずき】(n) being crazy about something, but not be good at it
("yokozuki")

蟷螂の斧【とうろうのおの】courageous but doomed resistance
("tourou no ono": praying mantis's axe)

屍蝋【しろう】(n) adipocere, grave wax (greying of the body fats of a corpse which rests in a moist but airless place)
("shirou". Who says I don't diversify?)

酒池肉林【しゅちにくりん】(n) sumptuous feast, debauch
("Shuu Chi Niku Rin" - Alcohol Pond Flesh Forest)

竜頭蛇尾【りゅうとうだび】(n) a strong beginning and a weak ending, an anticlimax
("Ryuu Tou Dabi" - Dragon's Head, Snake's Tale)

無芸大食【むげいたいしょく】(n) lacking the talent to do anything but eat
("Mu Gei Tai Shoku" - No Skill Big Eat)

Aren't you glad you know me? You would never have learned these otherwise.

So I have just been informed that Jose Canseco attributes all of his success to steroids. He was like some sort of hero, he was there with Nolan Ryan and Ricky Hendricks was it? The fast black guy who played for the A's? That's the second time today I have been thrown back to the age of 10. I have a Jose Canseco baseball card. I wonder if that just means that most of the good players use steroids? I guess maybe nothing matters.

On a side note, Bill Braskey. Do you know Bill Braskey? Bill Braskey was so tough that when he died (and that's a story too long to tell in itself) they performed an autopsy (naturally) and in his stomach all they found were rusty nails. Why, he was such a badass that he once punched a hole in a cow just to see who was coming up the road! The Braskey Family crest, if I saw it right, is a barracuda - eating Neil Armstrong.

I remember one time, Bill told me to put my coat on and that we were going out drinking. I was 12 at the time, and he (silencing my parents' objections with half a threat of a vague scowl) led me out to a small field and pulled out two folding chairs. We sat there for 11 years and eventually someone built a bar around us. They opened for business, and Bill had a shot of whiskey - he got one for me, too. Then he stood up, stretched, and torched the bar to the ground. "But Bill!" I yelled, above the roar of the flames. "Why?!"

"Kid," he told me, "I always leave a place the way I found it."

Whats your favorite queen song?

2005-02-23T18:37:00.000-05:00

I like One Vision, with Hammer to Fall, Radio Ga-ga, and Tie Your Mother Down vying for the spot.

So I got to work today, booted up my computer, and what do I see? "HARD DISK FAILURE." Oh joy, says I, it's a good thing everything I've done at work in Japan is on that hard disk. I panicked briefly (isn't it cool that panic becomes panicked with a k? I have always liked that) and then restarted the computer. It worked fine.

Lesson learned? Back up my shit. Yeah, really probably should. I will. Sure. Sigh. Baka.

Apparently there is a word for someone whose kanji writing abilities have atrophied due to over-reliance on word processors - ワープロ馬鹿. Waapurobaka. I like that.

I am still aching all over from my circa hour of vaguely strenuous karate two days ago. Methinks me has slid too far, unacceptable. The only thing for it is to do pushups on my punching knuckles until my hands fall off, and then work on kicks. Deshou?

Watched Resident Evil 2 last night, or "Biohazard 2" as the series is known in Japan. It was not bad, but I liked the first one.

I am writing my report for this month and am not sure what to write about. I have thrown in a description of the changes in web design since I was last into it, basically a rundown of CSS and how it differs from pre-CSS canonical HTML, but I suspect my boss will roll her eyes and cut that whole bit out. I have talked about how I had to type up 50 pages of legal mumbojumbo and mentioned that he wants me to translate it and that I doubt that I can but that I will ganbaru, but I neglected to mention my irritation that he didnt just ask the company for a digitized version because I refuse to believe they dont have this crap on file. Or for that matter my irritation that he isnt having that company's highly-paid and doubtless qualified japanese translator translate this. But I digress, it is learning experience, sigh.

I need more violence in my life. More and more I feel this desire for open physical conflict creeping up on me. Verbal sparring gets so old. I think karate came just in time. I want a real blokey circle of friends where we hit each other really hard from time to time for no particular reason. And don't talk about it.

I am deathly afraid that this computer will somehow shut itself off or I will otherwise lose what I am writing. I just kinda have blogger open and I turn to it now and again to update. So in that sense, this is not a regular stream-of-conciousness, it's more of an elapsed-time series of snapshots. I suppose the humor of the situation is that it's not much different from standard fare, is it? Loosely disconnected, vaguely irritating, you know you love it.

So the gang is leaving. Pat is going to Osaka, Jay to America, Drew and Jeff to Kochi...I say gang, but it really isn't one, is it? We've all just split into tiny groups that don't mingle. Or maybe there is mingling going on and nobody told me, egad. Who knows, I am happy. I will miss you guys. Pat especially, who is going to cook our extravagent dinners now? For the record Pat I really respect what you are doing.

I like that "peace" is a valediction that we all through around. Egad I misspelled throw. That is the second time in two days I have used through when I meant throw. I think this might be hell. But yeah, what a good word to use in parting. I like it especially cuz it was never particularly cool in my school so when I started using it in college it meant something and still does, its just not "seeya." It is a wish for peace. How simple and how...I dunno, its almost elegant.

So I am crawling around Facebook, and I just ran a search on Edison High School, which is where I would have gone had I not moved in fourth grade. I saw a few people I recognized, nobody I really liked or remembered for more than an instant. And then the last name was Geoff Young, a kid who used to live down the street from me. My parents didnt like him much cuz he was always a bit odd, but in retrospect he was one of the more interesting people I knew when I was a kid. That and he kinda got me into video games, I feel like I owe him. He lived with his mom in a broken down house around the corner, and now attends Rutgers apparently. I'm glad he got out of Berlin Heights, Ohio. It almost makes me feel nostalgic, like I have lost something. I didn't message him, but maybe I will at some point in the future. I hung with him, Leslie Freeman, the Gilbert boys and the Close girls until I moved at the end of fourth grade. And David Costello. David and the Gilberts I suspect grew up to be Berlin Heights residents, and the Close girls are Bible-belles who no doubt are deliberating how much of a sin it is that their boyfriend kissed them with tongue, though I liked them a lot as kids. But Geoff and Leslie were different. They were bigger than that town, even as 10 year olds. Nobody liked them and it wasn't that they didn't like people (contempt has always been my flaw, not the flaw of those I surround myself with), but rather that they didn't fit. I wonder what happened to Leslie? I bet she and geoff dated. I still remember when mario 3 came out, marvelling at the graphics at Zach Gilbert's house, Leslie asking the all-important "Does zero count as a life?" Telling Geoff how I saw Terminator with my uncle but he made me close my eyes for the scene with the guy and the girl and Geoff was like "oooh, they were probably doing you-know-what" but I wasn't-really-sure-what-though-I-had-some-idea and basil was all like "what what" but I cooly changed the subject.

Boy, all these years I have felt empty, like I came from nowhere going nowhere, but maybe that's not true. Maybe I will drop Geoff a line. I hope he didn't turn into a douchebag asshole and all my newfound childhood ideals are dashed. Maybe I won't drop Geoff a line.

That's enough of an update for now.

What's Bruce Lee got that I aint got?

2005-02-23T02:02:00.000-05:00

Other than roguish good looks, martial arts skills and philosophical balance?

I started Karate last night. I think I will stay with it. I want to beat you all up. The teacher is sort of oldish and grizzled, he reminded me of an affectionate pirate captain or a drill sergeant on his day off. He needed an eyepatch and a pipe.

I finished typing up all those pages of contracts that my boss wanted me to type up, and, as expected, he asked me to translate them. Joy. On the plus side its only 50 pages. I suspect the other half is waiting for me when I am finished. Which I don't foresee, but I suppose anything is possible.

Learned all sorts of vocab in Japanese this morning. Would cite example but have forgotten it all. So it goes.

Someone fix me I feel off.

At the arcade the other day (and I may have already written this I dont remember) I got my ass handed to me in tekken by someone who was so badass he proceeded to take my tekken card. I forgot it in the machine when I got up and when I went back for it he was just like "Nai, yo." ("It's not here, chump.") I guess that's fair.

For those not in the know, tekken 5 machines have these slots where you put your card in and it saves your data, and you earn money when you win and you can use that to buy equipment on the internet for your character. Each card has 500 fights on it. I had about 400 left on mine. So that's a bummer. The card costs 5 bucks, so I gotta get a new one but cant afford it this month. Bummer.

Music has started giving me headaches. I am done with music.

Yeah whatever.

I am really tired. No matter what time I go to bed I wake up tired. Guess I better start taking my vitamins more religiously, eh mum?

God I am so glad I am done entering that data. 50 pages of legal jargon is, quite frankly, a bitch to type. And each page seems to have a different format so I had to keep adjusting the spacing and whatnot. Fuck me, that was obnoxious. Now for the hard part. Sigh.

Do I sound tired?

Quiet Daily Japanese Study

2005-02-21T18:24:00.000-05:00

One line per day. I pick my words and phrases from stuff I read. I memorize one noun, verb, adjective, misc, and proverb every day. I actually remember most of them. Most. A few weak points. But I'd say I'm doing okay. I have everything on this list from "impact (衝撃)" to "subtle(微妙な)" to "cheeky/audacious(生意気な)". Sukoshi zutsu as they say. I am feeling kind of good about the ol' Japanese, I think my skill level has reached a new plateau. Which means I am going to have a burst of vocab memorization.

底、憧れる、緩い、ぼんやり、単刀直入
衝撃、応援する、深い、一瞬、一生懸命
初恋、確保する、美味な、のんびり、桑原桑原
無罪、対話する、生意気な、むかむか、悪事千里
不精髭、企画する、如才ない、極めて、暗中模索
説得力、抱える、斬新な、でたらめ、一喜一憂
交流、設ける、心地よい、過去、無我夢中
印象、乱す、しつこい、きちんと、五里霧中
先進国、笑い出す、微妙な、不正な、異口同音
食い意地、食い違う、悪縁の、わざと、傍若無人
行事、否定する、特定の、ひととき、一球入魂
移動、写す、真剣な、いらいら、古今東西
花嫁･花婿、交換する、幸運な、漠然と、温故知新
圧力、相半ばする、無駄な、明らかに、運否天賦
分解、解決する、憂鬱な、もどかしい、無芸大食
挑戦、捗る、見苦しい、めきめき、以心伝心
試験、合格する、悲しい、一方的、蟷螂之斧
風潮、分担する、あいまいな、一気に、竜頭蛇尾

Any questions?

My only real problem is actually using all this stuff. I recognize it if I hear it spoken slowly and I have a second or two to think about it, but I never really use any of these words. That was the plus side of Japanese class, they make you use the same damn words over and over until you are sick of them, but they stick. Chalk one up for Noda-sensei, whoda thunk. Though 3x as much vocab and kanji would have been nice.

So Hunter S Thompson offed himself yesterday. I saw that and I was really kinda like...Oh. Still I rather liked him, he is proof that you can be successful even if your greatest aspiration is to be a clever loser. Wonder why he shot himself. 67. Probably still clever. Probably still a loser. Inspires me to go ahead and finish Hells Angels already, I really enjoyed it while I was reading it, wonder why I put it aside? I wonder how Johnny Depp is taking it?

And after what seemed like a vague eternity, he arose...

2005-02-18T01:43:00.000-05:00

Yeah so I am more or less back together with my body now. I had to spend a few hours in a hospital, get a blood test, get an IV for a few hours, bleeeh. I had some sort of stomach bug, everyone talked real fast to Ayako the first time I went and to Fujita-san when I went back with her, and the general consensus was "just drink your medicine. I can't believe you went out for yakiniku." Right now I still feel kinda shakey and weak, especially my arms but thats just cuz I had needles in them, and that gives me the willies. That stupid IV, my left arm just feels nauseous, if that makes any sense.

But yeah, I spent about a week in bed with a fever around 102-103 for a few days which eventually dropped down to about 99-100ish with diarrhea and terrible stomach pains every time I so much as thought about food. After about 4 days of this I got sick of my apartment and dragged ayako out to eat Yakiniku (uh, meat you cook at the table, really greasy and delicious) and got much sicker. Been a fun ride. Just feel kinda blah.

Ayako came over every day to feed me and make sure I wasnt dead and to keep me company, so that was cool. It would be terrible to be sick in that shithole apartment with nobody, just alone with the shitholeness of the place, one with it as it were. So I appreciated that much. I watched a lot of movies. I am still trying to figure out if Azumi was worth seeing. It was so bad in so many ways and yet I kind of liked it? I guess Hideo Kojima had a cameo as one of the thousands of scuzzy villagers she slaughters at the end, shoulda kept my eyes open.

Got back to work and everyone is real nice and welcoming but I got me a lot of work to do. The website stuff I was working on took a turn for the rancidly busy as they need an english version of some sort up by next month. The original plan was new design for japanese version -> update japanese information with all original stuff -> translate that, my own work, into an english version. Now the plan is, update and translate old page ASAP, then continue with original plan.

On top of that, my one boss has like the bylaws or certification procedures or something for the office in Columbus. It's like 100 pages of legal jargon with bad grammar and apparently all they have is a hard copy. He tried to scan it in OCR but it came out 90% gibberish so the long and short of it is that in addition to the web work I have 100+ pages of text to typ up. I can't believe how shit the grammar and spelling is, cuz it is the English version. I have this gnawing fear he is going to ask me to translate it. The worst part is, they SURELY have this data somewhere in Columbus on disk, it is practically inconceiveable that they dont have it, its like all the rules for the way the whole company works, and this is a big fucking company. I suspect he just lost that and doesnt want to lose face by asking for another one. That kinda irritates me but at the same time its not hard just time consuming and I gotta be here anyway so its all good. But if he asks me to translate I'll be upset.

Alexander the Great is playing here, dunno for how much longre. I kinda wanna go see it - Colin Farrel as a big gay Alexander sounds like 3 hours of fun. But movie theater is 20 bucks a pop, that's a bit steep. I am actually broke for this month, but I got some cash yesterday for teaching english and get some tomorrow for giving a speech so I should be able to stumble across the finish line.

I also bought Final Fantasy 8 (in Japanese, of course) for 1800 yen and the entire series "X" (manga, not anime) for 1000 yen. I like to live dangerously. I also like that I can read comic books and play video games in Japanese, albeit slowly. I should really get on the Dragon Quest games, but even the old ones are really expensive, like upwards of 40 bucks for PS1 titles.

Next month I dont think I will be going anywhere, so I will have a little room to breathe in my wallet. That will be a welcome change, I have basically been running on empty since Christmas, yet always pulling out enough to spend on something fun.

I don't actually know what kind of medicine I have been taking or what they IV'd me full of at the hospital, that's probably kind of one of those bad ideas, but maybe more in the okay-bad category than, say, letting a sleazy looking indian with a french accent give me an IV at the club. Right?

Movies I watched and liked enough to remember watching from my movie binge this weekend: Versus, Azumi, Porco Rosso, Ocean's 11 (why is that so damn fun?), Chocolat (which irritated me tremendously but I have to confess to secretly kind of enjoying watching it for all its flag-waving crappiness), uhhh, and a bunch more I think.

Things I am reading: Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8), a sort of travelogue about crossword puzzles; Ulysses (dunno why I even put it, I cant beat Penelope, she kicks the shit out of me every time I open the book); The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell, hippy fodder but new thoughts); X (manga about...? So far it's just got a couple of kakkoii guys who dont talk just hate and a really girly girl but there are overtones of a plot, which would explain the other 17 volumes sitting under my table). I think maybe that's all. Was reading Naruto, but there are so many volumes of that I will never finish it, and 1 wasnt great enough to really get a grip on me so I switched to X.

Music of late? Uh...early Jurassic 5, many thanks to Jackie, and Sarah sent me a CD of a band called FrouFrou which is interesting, I suspect I may like it. I heard the new Jack Johnson at the record store and it sounds just about perfect, like Jack Johnson got into my head and figured out exactly what a perfect Jack Johnson disc should sound like and then followed my advice and made it. Thanks Jack. I shoulda bought that instead of Final Fantasy 8. Coldplay is getting some play as well.

Am starting to get a tad worried about housing next year. Zach, Matt, the three of us gotta talk and figure something out. Oh and then there is Turner who doesnt know yet if he will be at OSU, stupid "caring about the future" and "considering all the options." I could always live in my car. I'd have to get a car. But it's quite doable at OSU, and would be a realy buddhist experience, detachment from worldly possesions and whatnot. Of course I would just end up at your house playing playstation more often than not, but ya know, the rent would be cheap. For me. Cuz I wouldn't pay any. Shower at Larkins. Spend a lot of time at the library.

I tell ya, guys, I miss the student life. I miss saying "ah, fuck it" and not going to class if I don't feel like brushing my teeth. I miss columbus, my friends. I like it here but how can you ever feel a home when there's a deadline counting down? Eh, I guess there always is no matter where you go. I guess then that Niihama just doesn't feel like home, it's starting to feel like a working vacation with all work and no vacation and oh yeah pollution. But you have to give it to me, I have gone almost the entire winter before succumbing to this mood, so I think I'll be okay. Once summer hits and the typical weekend activity is a 3 day beach party I think maybe I will turn around. I think most of all I miss a world of English - my mind kind of switches off here and yet is always on, I am always hearing someone talking just too fast to understand but always catching about 45% of the content and left wondering about the rest.

It takes so damn long to learn a language. I need to study more and more carefully, use more flash cards. If you are wondering why I am writing this instead of doing work, fuck you. I typed in 10 pages of documentation and translated and updated 8 web pages. If that doesn't sound like a lot, shove it, I'm ahead of schedule. I also had a meeting this morning -

Nissen has a pamphlet and I guess they make a new one every few years, just company information and such that they use whenever they need to introduce the company. The guy from the company that makes them came for a sitdown with the head honchos and since I am designing the home page they brought me down to participate. I understood about 85% of what they were saying and in fact had key ideas about the new design that the bosses would have 30 minutes later, so I feel like I am in on the ground floor. They want to integrate brochure and website and come up with a universal Nissen style sheet of sorts. I'm going to be on the ground floor of this, giving input and designing things. I am going to try to get them to get me a better computer and a registered version of Dreamweaver, but first I need to blow their socks off with my productivity. Which has been good.

I received a big box of swedish fish from sarah this week, that made being sick seem not so bad. I do love swedish fish. I let my boss try one and she feinted it was so good then came to and demanded I pour some on a dish for her. If I were Sweden I would so keep them all to myself.

Anyway, I wanted to write a long entry, but this will have to do. I am gonna get a jump start on monday's page-typing, maybe I can finish this project a few days early and impress the hell out of my boss's boss's boss for whom I am doing this. That could prove to be a good idea.

I am dying

2005-02-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Blah. I am out of touch and may be for a few days more, my body is throwing a mutiny. I'll update when I hang the ringleaders and curtail the rum rations for the rest. Right now i just want to end my suffering. I have not been to work in days and actually miss it.

Blah.

Mythology

2005-02-10T01:45:00.000-05:00

Ten minutes to write before lunch. Am studying.

Was.

Made chicken last night, it was so good. I fried it. I made batter by mixing flour, an egg, and, get this, pineapple juice from a can of pineapple slices. Then I cut the chicken into little pieces (not quite little enough, more later) and dipped them in, then dipped them into a mess of flour, coconut and spices.

Then I fried them in my wok.

The only part that didn’t go so well: The outside cooked crazy fast, I think because the head was on too high. Some of the pieces were still raw on the inside despite being charred black on the outside, but I ate them anyway. Next time, lower heat and much more thinly sliced chicken. The taste, though, was soooooo good. If I hadn’t been in such a rush to get things dipped slapped cooked taken out whoops forgot to cook etc, I wanted also to dip some pineapple slices in the coconut mix and fry those up as well. Next time I will be sure to have an assistant, two hands weren’t enough. And maybe some sort of sauce? Although they really didn’t need one, they were kinda sweet but not overwhelmingly so. Maybe just over a bowl of rice. With some veggies on the side.

Anyway what else is new?

A book I am working on just now is “The Power of Myth” which is an interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. Some of it is irritating as fuck, “hippy fodder” as Jackie referred to it, but some of it is damn interesting.

I actually wrote a few pages of impressions about the myth stuff but its all in the form of barely-formulated half-notions referring to fragments masquerading as pieces of ideas. If I come up with something to write, Ill write it later.

Website is being a bitch. The IE/Mozilla distinctions are tearing me apart. I want to make a pretty page for Mozilla but I guess I am just gonna make an ugly page for IE. That’s a damn shame. I am learning a lot though – every day I come in here, I can do all the stuff it had taken me up to the day before to learn to do, and probably before lunch. Now it’s a question of efficiency. I had a great idea to use java to split the CSS into Mozilla and IE halves, but if I am gonna work something like that in there I had better be around next year and the year after to make the updates necessary. If not this page will date worse than…than…I dunno, the pimply nerd in high school?

Anyway I’m out. Shit to do.

Basil's livejournal

2005-02-08T00:11:00.000-05:00

My brother can be odd, but he writes some of most beautiful things. Just ignore any spelling and punctuation errors, I am thinking he is unconcerned with such trivialities.

Basil's livejournal:
"don't surrender

Run away with me somewhere
Where they only speak French,
It's a hundred degrees,
And when it rains - you get wet.
I never asked for anything more,
than to be your friend,
But it all amounts to nothing,
If we surrender in the end.

That's why i'm singing don't surrender
And become like all those strangers.
That's why I'm singing don't surrender
And give up everything you are
That's why I'm singing don't surrender
Don't surrender, you're too good
You represent my aspirations on this earth

May the love that you would feel,
And the climes that you would see,
And all that you would be,
Never bring you to your knees.
And may you never take the easy road,
Even in the dark,
When shadows block your eyes,
Just follow your heart.

And may the miseries of tomorrow,
when subtracted from their joys,
Leave you with a sum
far greater than zero,
I promise when the black holes, that surround us,
try to suck us in,
I won't let you surrender
The things that you'd hold onto

That's why i'm singing don't surrender
To become like all those strangers.
That's why I'm singing don't surrender
And give up everything you are
That's why I'm singing don't surrender
Don't surrender, you're too good
You represent my aspirations on this earth. "

Up to now

2005-02-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

Here is the product of the past week of labor. Note it is far from complete, and the format still needs a bit of touching up - but I finally have something I can display.

Tada!

Any comments and any feedback - especially from those of you gifted and/or experienced in web design - are more than welcome. Pat, as you can see I opted away from frames and jumped on the div wagon. It allows a lot of flexibility, but the biggest problem I run into is browser compatability. In a sense this website will be self-updating long after I leave, as various features I embedded will become active with new versions of ie.

For instance, those of you using ie 6 don't get to see my cool menus change on mouseover - that, apparently, is reserved for firefoxers. Your loss.

I am making this on a 400mhz hunk of scrap metal with no software. I downloaded dreamweaver but the license is about to expire. I would renew it but frankly all I am using is the text-editor to hand-script my code (I am sooooo 1337!) so I can delete it and get on with notepad. The real problem I have is image editing - I am limited to MS Paint for all image work here, which is why the top banners look shit and why you don't see much in the way of other pictures.

Now, don't judge the appearance yet, because it is amazing how much it will change when I throw in a horizontal line here and a pretty photo there. I guess I'm just trying to show ya'll what i've been up to for the past couple days. The real bulk of the work is in www.ichimiya.co.jp/nissen/new/scripts/nissen.css although that is a real mess right now.

One thing I would like to steal from the original page are the sideways text graphics on every section, but I would like to make new shiney ones more in line with my own aesthetic sensibilities. What I am hoping is, they will see what magnificant work I can do and decide to throw me a new computer with all sorts of cool specs. Har har.

In my defense, though, this is my first webpage in about 10 years. I may just start over, I have a few new ideas based on seeing other websites.

Have I told you guys how much I like working with html and css and whatnot? Makes me wish I had stuck with computer programming in high school cuz c++ and whatnot is exponentially more complex and exciting. But it's a lot like learning a language - html and css are really simple sets of grammatical rules. You want to set the background color of the cell of a table that you have your mouse over? That's like wanting to describe an active verb with an adverb, you have to know where it goes, what its scope is, whether or not the way you phrase it will spill over into other contents, etc.

In the end, I think, web design is a search for ultimate simplicity. Ironically, the more simply you learn to code, the more complex the product can become. If you keep everything clear, clean, and short, if you code efficiently, then it is really easy to keep track of things, know when and how to use them, etc. This is like what shelley said poetry does for language - you define new terms, perpetually attain new levels of abstraction. It's glorious brilliant magnificant, a good webpage written by a master is like kyoto station, a pillar holding up the future.

With the advent of css all of this became so much more clear - like, for example, if you look at the code for my blog, a lot of it is really simple, with the complexity carried in the css behind it.

I am getting all excited over something so silly as html and webdesign, why am I not studying programming? If I can feel like a minor deity after creating something whose sole function is aesthetic, imagine the empowerment of creating something functional, writing programs that do what you want them to do. I am not even any good at webpage design, though my skills double every minute I work on this. Were I to start over I think I would do away with tables entirely, the whole page would be so much more simple. I have picked out a way to do it in CSS, too - but this is my rough draft.

After I make nissen's page, I am going to make the internship page, and that will be gorgeous. I am envisioning a symphony of dark tones, sometimes blended and sometimes forced together. It will be a self-portrait, every division and every border reflecting the soul that creates it, every fusion of text and image a potent testamonial to the phoenix of creation.

I do enjoy grandiosity.