Adventurepan

It's a conspiracy!

2009-03-14T15:30:00.003+09:00

Humans are interesting. They do a lot of weird shit seemingly without rhyme or reason, but I've come to one important conclusion about people: They're consistent.

Sometimes people appear to act irrationally. "Wow, I didn't see that coming." This is probably because you're working with incomplete information, which may or may not be intentional on the part of the person in question. If someone fucks you over out of the blue, I promise you that you're not the first person they've done it to. It's even possible for a person to be consistently inconsistent, but this is rare and is a conclusion to which one ought not jump. Spend more time with a person like this, get to know more about them, and you'll see trends -- I can almost guarantee it.

Anyway, I have a buddy who, like most of my friends from the USMC, is a bit of an extremist. Whatever he does -- whether it's being a feckless layabout, being generous, violating rules, working, whatever, he does balls to the wall with generally questionable results. His biggest problem is probably because his lack of attention span or follow-through isn't safe from his overall extremist ways. He recently created a conspiracy theory website, and has enthusiastically invited me to join his cause. This blog entry is devoted to him, which he will probably read, so it may be written with kid gloves because I love this guy like a brother. But it's something I think about a lot. The topic today is:

Why I don't do conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories are fun to think about, and occur to a lot of people naturally because folks tend to be suspicious, accusatory, and like feeling victimized. The innerwebs has exacerbated the whole conspiracy craze, putting people with similar theories together and creating a lot of group cohesion vs a common enemy, whatever that may be.

That's not the real problem I have with conspiracy theories. My biggest issue (among some other smaller ones) is that they promote intellectual laziness. Here's how.

You can't lose

If you end up being right about your conspiracy, you look cool, write a book, etc.. If conspiracy theories gain momentum, huge sums of money and man hours are devoted to proving them wrong. If you're completely wrong, it doesn't matter. There's no risk or accountability. Lazy.

Convenient Built-in Mechanisms

By their very nature, conspiracy theories attempt to tackle issues involving "all powerful" and usually detached entities that exist above society's radar, calling them out on their shady, immoral, or manipulative activities. These entities are usually in the form of some nameless, faceless government agency, or a popularly demonized political figure. The convenient things about the idea of omniscient government agencies is that they can do whatever they want without any oversight or any restraints. This allows conspiracy theorists to say "Well, they're in on it" or "That's what they want you to believe" when their theories are categorically debunked by credible sources without entertaining the idea that there might be something to these stories. Lazy.

Fear-based, exploitative, and dishonest tactics

Scaring ignorant people into believing your assertion using partial information is dishonest. Obviously conspiracy theorists aren't alone in doing this, but it's their bread and butter. This is crucial because conspiracy theorists are not there to inform, they are there to influence -- big difference. They're pushing some thing for some reason, which is annoying and insulting when it's done through half-truths or intentionally incomplete information. Just because it's not a lie doesn't mean it's not dishonest. And Lazy.

So to recap, we have:

a) Win-win/no accountability or responsibility for being wrong, and classic burden-of-proof shifting tactics during debates
b) Convenient built-in mechanisms and canned responses that theorists use when faced with evidence refuting their theory which "enables" them to continue making the same assertions ad nauseum
c) Fear-based tactics which exploit the ignorant using dishonest tactics

Sound familiar? Maybe....Something else I "don't do"?

wait for it.......
waaaaaaaait for it........

Religion!

Conspiracy theories surrounding religion are brilliantly ironic. I "don't do" religion for the same reason that I don't do conspiracy theories. It hinders progress by setting up a situation impossible to disprove based on flimsy rhetoric. The burden of proof is intentionally shifted, allowing folks to make an assertions and watch the very people they are trying to convince run around and find out the truth. When faced with contrary evidence, the conspiracy theorist AND the religious zealot will cling to their beliefs -- which is what they are, beliefs -- using uncreative, canned responses which end any conversation or exploration of the truth. It's all very convenient and, I'll say again, intellectually lazy on the part of those who espouse the theories.

And that, my frengs, is why I don't do conspiracy theories.

Sweeping the Nation!****

2009-01-21T23:32:00.003+09:00

And the world.

Reading (and writing a stupid comment) over at my friend's blog (and the fact that I have a paper due soon and don't feel like writing it) have prompted me to come out of hiding. Two blog posts in a months time, can you stand it??

I guess I'm technically an ex-pat. I never liked that word, because "expatriate" sounds like an "ex-patriot," which would make me a former patriot, which is not the case. I like to think that I'm still a patriot, even though that word has until recently (yesterday) had negative connotations. Many folks would have you believe that while Bush was in office, you were supposed to be ashamed of the US of A. Being an expat, and apparently a representative of the US and therefore accountable for all of Bush's policies, I have been called to the carpet many times by the locals for everything from the GWoT to subprime lending. Yes, all Japanese people are aware of subprime lending. All I can do is shrug and tell them that the situation is more complicated than the news reports, and that I lack the language facilities to explain it. This is somewhat true -- I can express what I understand, which isn't much, but it's much easier to feign ignorance because I really don't feel like engaging in such conversations. The same goes with the concept of patriotism and love for one's country. Patriotism and nationalism is strange to Japanese people, as it was illegal until 2006 to teach it in schools.

Anyway, I like to think of patriotism in simpler terms. It's like your family. They might piss you off, but they're still family. You still love them, and even if they really fuckup, it's not cool for people outside of your family to talk shit about it and it's OK to get irritated about it. Something like that.

Anyway, this post wasn't supposed to be about patriotism -- my point is that to me, real patriotism isn't something that changes depending on who's in office. It shouldn't ebb and flow like the tide, and it shouldn't explode because of a terrorist attack or some other tragedy. It's shouldn't be a fad and it shouldn't be bandwagonable (new word).

Living in Japan, I'm no stranger to bandwagoning. Japanese culture is probably more susceptible to bandwagoning and "group think" than other places due to how children are socialized, and I always think about how much fun and easy it must be to be a marketing executive here. I sometimes think they have a contest to see how insulting and brazen they can be, but it never fails -- they sell products and the absurdity of each "boom" is trumped by every successive "boom". I guess I never thought the USA was really so susceptible, but bandwagoning seems to have morphed into something interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the:

Bandwagon of Free Thought

Its genius lies in its irony. Who would have thought? Now, bandwagoning on political issues is one thing -- it's sort've like the love for a sports team (which I also have trouble wrapping my mind around). Usually it's a side or a team or a movement, but free thought? Disagree? You're an automaton. You're a neocon. You're a fascist. But you're certainly not a free thinker unless you're on board. It appears that atheism is en vogue these days too, which based on some stuff I've been reading, is a little disturbing due to fervor with which people are not believing in God. Irony. And everyone knows I've been an atheist forever*.

Watching the festivities on TV is like getting kicked in the jaw by irony over and over, as I see people putting so much "hope" in a man who has so little experience. Granted, he is an amazing orator. He inspires. He could very well turn this country in a new direction, but I'm sure most people don't really know how. They just believe he will. Believe, my friends. It's not a matter of hope, it's a matter of faith, because faith and hope are directly at odds with each other**. Faith is stronger than hope, because people with faith know without knowing that something is so. Ya dig? Historically, faith is the stuff of bandwagoning, while hope can lead to ostracism.

So yeah, I'm hopeful. I hope for increased social welfare reform. I hope for a more liberal form of democracy. I hope for world peace. I hope for anthropomorphic garden shears dancing in butterscotch waterfalls***. But faith is never something I've been particularly good at, for which I am eternally ~~doomed~~ grateful. I wish the new Commander in Chief good luck, and sincerely hope for a good next few years.

* - level 6
** - I got that line from Tom Robbins' "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates"
*** - Free beer to whoever can get that reference -- no googling! (You won't find it on google anyway ;) )
**** - This post is convoluted and pretty much sucks

Redneck Gays

2009-01-06T01:21:00.002+09:00

I know I don't post a lot these days.. This academic program I'm in offers me enough of a writing outlet I guess, and by the time I'm done reading and writing I don't really feel like writing anything more. Nammean?

That doesn't mean I don't have the same amount (or lack thereof) of shit floating around in my head as, say, youm (yes youm), but sometimes when I sit down and scratch out an idea, it's disjointed and unorganized. I'll figure it out sometime. A biproduct of being forced to write/critique organization for class and for my job makes me scoff at shit that is too here and there.

That won't stop me from posting the following drivel though.. Assuming my 3 readers even pop by anymore...

So I spent the new years at the inlaws' house. New years in Japanistan is kinda like Xmas in the US of A in that it's a time when you get together with the fam. Imagine my chagrin when I realized what the alternative to drinking all night and kissing strangers would be. Sacrifices, folks.

Anyway, on the way back I was getting a little drowsy and the missez was sleeping, so I drank a redbull and busted out the ole' CD case. I have a jukebox in my car that automatically dumps CDs onto a harddrive, so I don't usually look at the CDs, but I had a good idea for keeping myself awake.

Back when it was cool and not risky at all to download the piss out of copyrighted music, I, like any innerwebs user, did so. My friends did too. We would also make CDs and dump all our music collection on eachothers' HDs as well. So I have 6 "backup" CDs with about 200 mp3s on them a piece. My car can play mp3s off of CDs, so I started throwing the backup CDs in and cruising down memory lane.

I don't have an iPod and refuse to buy one. I have a little mp3 player that I listen to when I'm doing boring cardio, but to be honest I haven't updated the play list in about 3 years. I love me some music but I'm not the "gotta have 10,000 songs with me at all times or I'll just DIE" type person. Six CDs with 200 songs on it a piece though, that's nothing to sneeze at. so I made my way through the CDs from the back, starting at #6, which is where I get to anticlimactic point of all this buildup, namely a song by Rage Against the Machine.

I'm not really a fan of RATM -- their stupid lyrics are a little hard to handle. Some of their stuff is cool though, and I always liked "Renegades of Funk". Give it a listen if you haven't before, or you'd like to be reminded of it.

Anyway, I was listening to it and I remembered what a regionally famous friend of mine (Eddie) once said, probably about 10 years ago. "You know," he said, "the first time I heard this song I thought they were saying 'We're the Redneck Gays who Fuck.'" So the song comes on about 4 hours into my drive home, giving me a serious case of the giggles thinking about it. Here are some token lyrics:

Since the Prehistoric ages and the days of ancient Greece
Right down through the Middle Ages
Planet earth kept going through changes
And then the renaissance came, the times continued to change
Nothing stayed the same, but there were always redneck gays
Like Chief Sitting Bull, Tom Paine
Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X
They were redneck gays of their time and age
The mighty Redneck gays

We're the redneck gays who fuck
(fuck!)
We're the redneck gays who fuck
(fuck!)

Or...

There was a time when our music
Was something called a Big Street beat
People would gather from all around
To get down to the big sound
You had to be a redneck gay in those days
To take a man to the dance floor

I dunno. I guess it seemed a lot funnier then. As I write it down, like my other stuff, it's really not that funny. You know, singing a tribute redneck gays (who fuck) having a huge impact on history with such earnestness. Or calling MLK, Malcolm X, and Sittingbull "Redneck gays". That's funny to me.

Anywho, I was surprised at how listening to songs I hadn't heard in so long re-energized me. The drive went by really quickly, as I listened to songs I hadn't heard in forever and reminisced about where I was/what I was doing when I was "into it". Anyway, I thought I'd share a few of the other songs with you that I heard during my walk down auralmemory lane. You can tell I was on CDs 5 and 6 'cuz the names of the groups are all at the end of the alphabet. Enjoy.

Some Ween:

A little stinkfist ala Tool:

Used to watch this on that show 120 Minutes on MTV as a college freshman. I kinda liked it:

OutKast and frayunds for mah bruvvahs:

Holy crapola...

2008-09-30T18:55:00.001+09:00

...it's been a while.

But check this out. I made an original funny today, and I know it's original because I looked on the googles and it wasn't there.

I commented on my friend's facebook picture and referred to some people as "hummus actuals". Say it really fast. You see? It sounds like "homosexuals", but it's actually constructed of two words that are not only completely related to one another, but also completely unrelated to homosexual people and homosexuality!

Then I thought about how awesome it would have been in the USMC if our team call sign was "Hummus Actual." I can 100% guarantiddly-dee you that no one would figure it out until it was too late. They would just think it was a strange callsign, or that there was some inside story to it and wouldn't bother to ask what it meant because people were always afraid of not being "in" on something. They'd think it was weird, but would be too worried about coming up with their own cool call signs like "stingray" or "cannibal" or "pipehitter." We'd be on a mission or something and it'd go down. We'd be talking on SATCOM so we'd have to speak. really. slowly. and. deliberately.

"Head. Hunter. Head. Hunter. This. Is. Huh. Muh. Sac. Shu. Al. I have you spittin' nickles. How me. Ohhhhhh-ver?"

We'd come back and people would be all pissed off, and then we could pretend like we didn't know what the big deal was. "Well, everyone on our team likes hummus for real. So like actually. Hummus actual. Why, what's up?"

Talking on the radio was always entertaining. In the movies, you see people grabbin the handset and talking clearly and expressing themselves clearly, but nothing could be farther from reality. Most people would completely lose their minds when they picked up the handset. They'd start stammering and forget what they were gonna say. I always prided myself on being able to freestyle on the radio nice and smooth, and throw a lot of passive-aggressive zingers at whoever happened to be in the rear. Smartass comments sound more funny when they're being said really slowly and deliberately for some reason. Something like, "Be. Advised. We. Cannot. Move. That. Distance. In. The. Given. Time. Because. We. Cannot. Fly." Little Joe will vouch for my radio shenanigans. I also liked saying stuff like "Roger that, and go fuck yourself", but keying off the mic during the profanities part and watching the expression on everyones' faces.

The whole radio snarkage thing got me in trouble once because I was reeeeaalllllyyy pushing the passive-aggressive-smartass envelope to people who I knew (and who knew that I knew) were much higher ranking than me back on the ship. It turned out that my snarkiness was being broadcasted on a speaker throughout the entire area, and I was told in no uncertain terms to "police myself". This may have contributed to me being put on shore patrol the first night we were in Guam, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I've been a little nostalgic lately because I went back to Okinawa for a business trip the other week and saw the young Marines being bored and not really doing a whole lot. Part of me was envious of that. When we were't going on missions and being rude over the radio, we didn't do a whole lot. We'd show up to "work" at about 8:30am, sit round till 11:30am, go to lunch, come back around 1 or 1:30, sit around all day, then go home at 4 or 4:30. Hit the gym. Get dinner. Maybe watch a movie. Maybe go to Kinville and get drunk. Rinse, wash, and repeat. It was a good temporary life, I was with guys I loved, and I was meeting a lot of really cool people.

Unfortuantely though Kinville is a lot different these days, due to strict curfews affecting all marines on Island. Even the officers have to be back by midnight, so some of my favorite bars had closed down. It was deaderd'n shit out there. But I still love me some Kinville, and I was recognized by one of the bar owners about 5 minutes after I got there. I still have my Kinville pass, bitches.

Other than that, busybusybusy. I'm 1/3'd done with my masters, I'm training a lot, I'm kickin' it with the old lady, and everything else. Things are good. Just thought I'd put up a little update and let everyone know what's up.

No Stimulus Package for moi!

2008-07-15T23:55:00.001+09:00

That's right folks. I'm assed out of $600 and will be unable to stimulate the American economy from over here in Japan. Here's why:

To be eligible for a stimulus payment, taxpayers must have valid Social Security numbers. Anyone who does not have a valid Social Security number, including those who file using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), an Adoption Taxpayer Identification Number (ATIN) or any other identification number issued by the IRS is not eligible for this payment.

Both individuals listed on a married filing jointly return must have valid Social Security numbers to qualify for a stimulus payment.

Oh snap! I went an married a non-American citizen last year on April 23rd, right after taxes were due.

Then I went to the bank and tried to get her an ATM card on my account because I'm a swashbuckling breadwinner, and I was told that she needed an Individual Tax ID number (ITIN) to get it.

Then I found out that I had to wait a year or so to get that, because in order to get it I had to file my taxes jointly (along with the application). So I did.

ITIN received? Check.
ATM card with wife's name on it procured? Check.
Disqualified from receiving stimulus package? Check.

Far be it from me to mention that, you know, I'm a tax paying citizen with a valid social security number. And I guess I can ignore the fact that I spent 5 years in the USMC and have been working overseas in federal service directly for the military for the last 3 years. And during my 6 months in Afghanistan as a contractor I cheerfully paid a total of $15,000 in taxes...

...and it's not a question of "deserving" it, because I personally don't believe anyone "deserves" anything. You get what you get based on what you do to get it. That's just how I feel about things.

...but don't I rate?

Maybe just a little bit? Just a smidge? Just a...teensie...tiny...bit?

Apparently not.

The loss of $600 that I never had anyway doesn't bother me too much. My wife feels differently however. She expressed her view on the whole situation rather eloquently, and I quote: "That's bullshit."

On the bright side, according to this articles, military folks who previously fell under what I like to call the "GoEffYourselfYouRaceTraitor Rule" are now eligible to get their dinero. Folks like me are not, and given the increasing role that civilians play in support of the military and the US government overseas, I think this is more than just a little fucked up.

I urge you to shoot an email to your congressman. It would mean a lot to ~~my wife's shoe collection~~ a lot of people overseas who, in my opinion, "rate".

If I were in charge...

2008-05-22T20:30:00.002+09:00

...But I'm not...

...But if I were, and by "in charge" I mean "in charge of something that would empower me to hook up what I'm about to talk about", this is what I would do. This is a long post by the way, but I think you'll like it.

A little background first...

I recently bought a new car, because the pimp mobile, while pimp, is also a V8, and gas is getting a little expensive. I was tired of putting $100 a month in it when I commute 5 minutes one way to work. Sure, it was comfortable, and it was like driving around in a lazyboy, but it was time to get something a little more practical.

So I went from this:

To this:

(Mine's black)

Granted, it has a "not getting laid" blast radius of about 500 meters, but I like the idea of having a station wagon sized car with slidey rear doors. And it can seat 7 if you put the back seat up. The best part though are the options. Two cameras (one for backing, one on the side) for parking, with lines that move when you move the steering wheel to show where your car is heading. It has a "music box" which automatically downloads onto a harddrive and labels any CD you put into it, and the navigation system is badass. The top view or 3D views are creepily accurate, and it will even tell you where traffic jams are, how far ahead they go, and will reroute you.

Every time I use it to get from point A to point B, I think about this cool idea, which I'm about to tell you about. Then I go to work and rant about it until my co-workers begin to make light of my brilliant idea, causing me to sit there and stew. I'd like to caveat this entire thing by saying that I'm sure someone has already thought of it and it's probably in the works. But here goes.

The navigation system is guided by GPS, and some (not sure if mine is) are (I believe) assisted by cell technology (towers). GPS receivers are just that -- receivers -- but imagine if they were transceivers? What if this tranceiver received GPS signals and transmitted its location to the nearest cell tower, which sent your constantly updated position, direction, speed, and destination to a computer, which would put your car on a map along with everyone else's car, and guide traffic? What if everyone had it, so every car's location, speed, direction, and destination were available to this computer, which could, like some Queen Mother Alien Thing, tell drivers which roads to take and which lanes to travel to create the most efficient traffic flows possible? What if this computer were also connected to traffic signals, further guiding traffic?

Ground Rules -- the Overlord Computer

For the sake of this idea, let's assume that the Overlord Computer, or OLC for short, is a cubic acre uber-super-computer in a bomb-proof, earfquake-proof basement with super-redundancy backups. Let's assume that the OLC's algorithyms and formulas and whatever voodoo magic that makes computers work would take into account all kinds of traffic patterns and variations, because I'm sure there are PhDs out there in traffic flow stuffy. Basically, do exactly what I hate about a lot of movies -- let's explain a lot of stuff by using the mystical computer.

Still, a computer with complex traffic flow algorythems isn't that crazy a concept and using computers to map traffic flow patterns and create models has been done since computers came to be. Still with me? Great.

Why / How it Could Work

Any red-blooded American knows that this would never fly in America, mainly due to Americans being convinced that "big brother" is watching them, intense privacy issues, and a general disdain of being told what to do. Any red-blooded American would cut the wires on the transmitter part of the unit. Any red-blooded American would look at where the navigation system was telling them to go, roll down the window, extend his or her middle finger, proclaim that all other motorists were "sheep", and go their own, "better" way. All motorists would do this at the same time. Chaos would ensue, and the project would be a bust.

But this is Japan, baby!

In Japan, though, where there are a lot of roads but it's still ridiculously congested, I think this could work. One thing a lot of people notice when they visit Japan is that there are no "piece of shit cars" on the road. This is because each car must go through a very strict inspection every few years, and fixing problems is so prohibitively expensive that most people just opt for a newer car. Also, Japanese people like buying new stuff and don't like being seen with older models of goods. Because of this, in a few years, almost every car will be equipped with some manner of navigation system. Further, the GPS tranceiver system could be a part of the inspection process, so even if a car doesn't have an up-to-date navigation system, the OLC would at least know and account for the car's location, direction, and speed.

One way that social change is enacted in Japan is by social pressure or shame. You see it all the time. On TV, there has been a recent campaign for "smoking manners" and to use "portable ashtrays".

People carry these around and ash in them. It's become shiek. Recycling is another example of this sort of marketing. Japanese people are insane about recycling, more so than Americans, but if you ask any one of them what happens to their garbage, why it's sorted the way it is, etc, they have no idea, but they all do it. The launching of this OLC traffic system would be preceded by a huge PR campaign. YOU can help solve Japan's congestion problem. Follow your navigation system like everyone else. Everyone wins.

Another thing Japanese people love (again, more than Americans) are "point cards." Every where you go, you get a point card, which result in discounts later on. One way to make this system work (because people aren't that giving) is to give points based on how much you actually follow the OLC's guidance. These points can be redeemed at, say, toll ways (Japanese highways are not free), trains, convenience stores, etc.. It's amazing how fast a population's sense of Civic Duty will increase when you start throwing in free shit.

Possible Problems

Duh...

SkyNet

Another problem would be hackers. What's to keep some 14 year old in Romania from diverting all traffic into Tokyo bay? Good question. Possibly a secondary failsafe system that would activate in such a case. Another benefit would be that in order to hack the system, one would have to hack the Japanese cell infrastructure. I think it'd be tough. I'm probably wrong though. But making transmissions cell-based might complicate things. Also, if the system's infrastructure were also cell-based, individual cells could be shut down or rerouted to other cells. Uber redundancy, given Japan's cell coverage. Even if the system shit the bed, cars' internal navigation systems would still get people where they need to go until the problem is solved.

Again, I'm probably wrong, but it sounds good.

Here's why it Needs to Happen

For the sake of Japan's traffic, that's why. It's freakin congested here. Japan could serve as a model to other countries. If it works, and it will, it will sell itself. One thing people hate is sitting in traffic. If listening to the OLC's commands allowed you to roll more, even at a slightly slower rate, people would love it.

The biggest reason though is that sometime in the future, cars are going to be automated. You know it's going to happen. Japan already has cars that parallel park themselves. There are contests every year where students and virgins submit autonomous cars in a distance race. Results have been shakey at best, but it's going to happen. with no OLC-like system firmly in place, these automated cars will be automated bumper cars. The already established OLC infrastructure will eventually serve as a guidance system for future driver-less cars. I don't think that we will ever have flying cars -- gravity is as unforgiving as it is a factor in everything in the universe -- but I think automated cars are a possibility, and they'll need a mother brain.

So that's my idea. Or rather an old idea that is most likely google-able, but I don't want to google it because I prefer to maintain the illusion (read: delusion) that I thought it up first.

Flame out!!!

2008-04-12T00:10:00.000+09:00

This is inspired by a post after at my freng's blog, where he posed the question:

Is it just me, or is anyone else delighted at the fiasco that the Chinese Olympic flame torch run has become?

Yes, Vance, I. Am. What's also delightful is the notion that granting a country the olympics will somehow cajole them into getting their shit together.

But I won't stop there.

You know what's even better? Seeing this retarded version of modern diplomacy fall flat on its face. You all know what I'm referring to. It's this cowardly brand of international relations that somehow hopes to gain acquiesence through granting prestigious rewards and privileges given before, yes, before seeing results, and without clearly stating the desired outcome.

Here's how we used to do it:

If you don't knock off [whatever], [undesirable outcome] will happen.

Here's how it's done now:

Here, take this prestigious opportunity -- welcome to the international community! Now that you're one of us, act like one of us! We insist!

It's kind've like paying it forward, but with really important stuff. Like peace prizes, territory, or the Olympics.

It blows my mind that anyone in either the internatinal community or on the Olympic community thought that giving China the olympics would be a good idea. I also think it's funny that everyone bought the idea that China had some sort of committment to cleaning their shit up in time for the games. "Hey, congrats guys. You have 7 years to clean up your environment, labor practices, relationship with Tibet, and unfuck 5,000 or so years of backwardsness. Welcome to the international community!! Now if you could go ahead and refrain from not freeing Tibet, that'd be superduper!"

Then after making such a politically based decision, they expect everyone to be a-political and let it go. I love the olympics and what it represents, but folks don't want to let it be what it is. And haven't for a while. It's pretty freakin' ridiculous when the torch runners are doing route recons, SDRs, and rate a PSD.

My suspicions are confirmed over at AoSHQ, where he mentions the IOC President discussing China's "moral engagement" to improve human rights. The idea of China engaging in some sort of "moral engagement" is like expecting North Korea to take part in the 21st century.:

[The IOC President] also told a news conference that China -- under fire over a crackdown in Tibet and a host of other issues -- had promised that winning the right to host the Games would lead to an improvement in human rights.

"We definitely ask China to respect this moral engagement," he added.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters that Rogge's view of a "crisis" might have been exaggerated, and made it clear China would not engage in a discussion on its human rights performance.

That's how China tells you to go fuck yourself. With Jiang Yu. Neither she, nor her coiffure, messes about. Or discusses Human Rights, apparently.

I'm often dumbstruck by the fundamental lack understanding that so called intellectual elites have when it comes to dealing with fellow human beings. I remember in college (as an anthropology major), lower-classmen would get jumped on all the time by professors for not embracing cultures or countries they weren't used to. Being ethnocentric was as good as being a racist. That's why I get such a kick out of this sort of stuff. Moral Engagement??? Its ethnocentricity is eclipsed only by the sweet, sweet irony that accompanies it -- that the Chinese were somehow expected to adopt our views, be them environmental, economic, or humanitarian -- in return for being granted the opportunity to host an international athletic event. Or the idea that they would, given their histroy, comply or do what they said they'd do. Chinese and Judeo-Christian Europeans do not share the same value systems. There's nothing wrong with that, but to expect otherwise is silly, and, if I may be so bold, ethnofuckingcentric.

The best part still goes back to this form of diplomacy and why it's so cowardly. I bet they have a team of blond/grey-haired-blue-eyed IKEA-sittin round-glasses-wearin british-english-speakin really-hard-to-get-into-name-school-graduatin funny-facial-expression-havin people coming up with this stuff. I bet they're easily outraged over stupid shit and enjoy engaging in "intellectual" conversations about moral relativism. They enjoy disagreeing with things and see it as a very important contribution of their essential existence. They like this kind of passive-aggressive diplomacy because if it blows up in their face, they're not responsible for anything really happening (cuz they didnt do shit), but if it works out they can all sit there and congratulate themselves and sing themselves praises in academic journals about the success of their new diplomatic paradigm. And they'll definitely use the word "paradigm". They'll give it a name that begins with neo- or post- and ends in -al or -ism, likely containing the word "classic" or "modern", depending on how they spin their "theory". They're all jockying to see who can do the most by doing the least and by being the biggest pussy.

This whole situation reminds me of getting drunk. It's really funny at first but too much of it makes me throw up and scream at loved ones.

Birdie

2008-03-06T22:29:00.006+09:00

I'm gonna do an emo blog post.

It's gonna consist of my "thoughts". Let's kick it off.

Mood: Torrid

--Birds--

Rome hit the Japanese video stores recently, so I rented the crap out of it. It took a while to get into it, and to be honest, I don't really give a shit about all the intrigue and betrayal, especially with the womenfolk.

The biggest problem I had with the series though...was that there was a cockatoo in several scenes.

Cockatoos are from Australia, and only Australia.

Some of you probably think this isn't a big deal, but this kind of shit makes go nanners and will often make me dislike a movie or a TV show.
.

Sulpher. Crested. Fucking. Cockatoo.

In Rome.

Are you for serious?

--Intermission--

The missez and I got this CD with a bunch of "grammy" songs on it. Most of the songs on the CD, as well as a lot of contemporary music, sounds like it's just trying to imitate 80s music. Or pre-80s music. Don't get me wrong -- a lot of Bob Dylan lyrics are absurd -- but it just doesn't sound the same when someone born circa 1980 sings similar horseshit. Those guys my dad listen to? They were on the cusp. Makin history. They were there. Doin' it. These guys? Sheeit. It's like listening to a poorly delivered punchline set to a catchy mandolin jingle.

--Intermission part douche--

Japanese houseware stores all play house music. Ten minutes in one of those places makes me want to find the nearest piece of eurotrash in a muscle shirt and fuzzy kangol hat and punch him right in the snotbox.

--Birds part Douche--

I got a bird.

This should really come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I've had a long history with our little feathered friends.

I got my first bird when I was 10 or so, named Blinkey. We bought him a friend soon after named Gelsey, named after Gelsey Kirkland, pronounced like G, not J, and not K. Not Kelsey Grammar. Gelsey Kirkland. Blinkey suffered a fall and lost the use of his legs, but managed to live for an additional two years. I gave that little sonofabitch physical therapy. He'd roll around on the bottom of his cage and I'd grab him and work his little legs back and forth so they wouldn't atrophe, just like the kid on my block when I was younger who had cerebral palsey. That's no-shit where I got it from. And it worked. He eventually could stagger around and sit around on his ass. Gelsey lived until I was at bootcamp. That's 11 years. She died when I was at bootcamp. I asked my dad how the birds were doing the day of my graduation. We were having a beer on Coronado Island. He said she fell off her perch. He was in the other room and heard the crash and knew exactly what happened.

Then he said he didn't tell me about it while I was at bootcamp because he didn't want me to become "distraught". That's the word he used. "Distraught". Later that day we saw Saving Private Ryan in the theater. The day I graduated bootcamp. That made me feel a little distraught too.

The most distraught I got at bootcamp was when I had to euthanize an injured hummingbird and hide it underneath a rock. I saw him on the ground and I didn't want him to suffer any more. I was with this fatbody in our platoon named Jordan. I was trying to be somber about it but he kept rushing me because he didn't want to get in trouble. No respect for the dead.

I've had to euthanize a few birds; it never gets easier. Like the time I euthanized about 12 pheasants with a shotgun. That definitely wasn't fun. Not at all. Nor were they yummy.

The best part about that ~~bloodbath~~ trip was that afterwards, my friend said, "You know, I wasn't sure how you would be able to handle this, what with you loving birds and all. But you really didn't have much compunction at all about blowing them out of the sky. Like at all."

I dubbed that day "Pheasant Holocaust 2004."

Truth be told I didn't know how I'd handle it. It's kinda like when you punch a man in the face for the first time. You just can't get enough of it. Until someone punches you back. Fortunately for us, pheasants do not have access to nor the capability of using shotguns. Thank the lord for that.

All of these stories are true, and the magazine "Bird Talk" is an actual magazine that I subscribed to throughout junior high and high school. I had a breeding pair of finches and a few parakeets and that magazine is fucking awesome for bird owners.

But check this out, I went ahead and bought a little parrot. A lovebird to be exact. I had one that lived with me in the barracks in Hawaii, and I've always been a fan. They're good little pets but require a lot of attention and are codedependent.

birdie

They're also pretty bright. They learn how to escape from their cages pretty quick, as seen here. They really don't like being inside their cages -- you can see him trying to get out when I close the cage door.

birdie2

Goin to DC tomorrow. Bettuh axe summody.

What's new?

2008-02-09T03:52:00.000+09:00

What's new indeed.

Been a busy year.

Had the wedding ceremony. It was great -- the hotel we did it at did an awesome job. If you'd like to see a buttload of pictures, shoot me an email or give me your email address. One of the highlights of the day, for me, was when we were waiting to go back into the reception and there was a lady and two tiny kids in the lobby. The mommy gathered the kids together and said, "Look! Look at the Princess." I thought that was cute for some reason.

She looked great, and there were a lot of cool little things that happened at the wedding and reception that made it a really unique experience.

I decided to start workin on my masters. It's gettin' about time, and I don't really have an excuse not to have one anymore. At some point my career is going to take me back to the states, and it'll be nice to have something to show for it other than dead brain cells and fucked up ligaments. Either way, the amount of time it takes to compose a post can be better spent working on those classes. I'll definitely see what I can do though, and maybe stick to posts making fun of media stories. Those are always fun and emotionally cathartic. Those are always gems. I've never done online courses before, but it's a little bit like crack. I can't relax until the assignment is done, and even when it is done, there's "class participation" via the discussion board which weighs heavily on the grades, and sometimes it's hard to come up with something that sounds intelligent. So in the meantime, you might have to be content with me vandalizing your blog (if you have one) while I try not to neglect mine.

In other news, I'm now "management". I've been "management" since Sept, but only "filling in" until the position got filled. I guess I can't fake the funk anymore and should probably figure out what my job is and what I'm supposed to be doing at work. I've spent the last 3 years tricking everyone into thinking that I'm doing anything at work, so this should be a challenge. A full time job, if you will.

So yeah. Stay tuned for updates. You know where to find me...

Good Training, Gents

2007-12-18T19:04:00.000+09:00

I haven't been posting regularly -- things are nutty. But I did do something cool this weekend I guess.

I saw I am Legend this weekend and I really enjoyed it. It was really nice to be able to go and see a movie without having seen a single trailer, and as a result I spent the first good part of the movie trying to figure out just what the crap was going on.

--- Spoiler Alert ---

The movie had some really good scary elements in it, but the thing I liked the most about it is how they portrayed the main character dealing with being the only person on Manhattan Island (or as he thought the rest of the world). How did he do this? Routine. He had weird little routines that I can guarant-freaking-tee you would do too. I think the average movie goer would dismiss this stuff as weird and as a sign that he was going crazy, but I thought it made perfect sense. Dressing up mannequins, talking to them, renting DVDs and pretending like it's all normal, watching recorded news on the TV as he eats his breakfast. There was no normalcy in his life, so he manufactured it.

And when the Brazilian chick shows up and he freaks out because she eats his bacon that he was "saving"? You'd freak out too. And how even though he hasn't seen a soul for 3 years, he doesn't seem particularly happy to see her. Why? She fucked up his routine. He had stuff all how he liked it and she started throwing monkey wrenches in the mix. (As it turns out, big time..)

When I was in Afghanistan, North Korea, and on ship, I spent a lot of time being bored. Not 3 years by any stretch, but if I were to put you in a confined area with nothing to do for a while, you'll be bored and get stir crazy too. Try it sometime -- just sit in your room all day and do nothing. The one thing that kept us sane during the boring times was routine, and breaks in routine were incredibly irritating. Routine is an excellent remedy to boredom -- it gives you a purpose, even if it's pointless, and if gives you a reason to wake up. The main character had his projects (like, you know, curing the weird virus), but he still had his daily routine that he did. He wasn't nuts -- quite the opposite -- he was maintaining his sanity, and I found it to be way more insightful than it appeared on the surface.

I've loved the post-apocalyptic getup ever since I read "The Stand". That book really freaked me out and made me, a highschool freshman, think pretty hard about what I'd do in a similar situation (assuming the Cap'm Trips didn't get me.) One thing people will do if everyone except for a small population dies is arm themselves to the teeth, mainly to protect themselves from other people who are armed to the teeth and taking advantage of a consequence-free bonanza. Just think of it. People would be living off of 7-11 food, unless they knew how to skin a deer or met someone who could skin a deer that didn't murder you. Otherwise it'd be beef jerky and ramen. A man alone on Manhattan could live a really long time by siphoning gasoline and eating cheeze-its and canned corn. I could at least. If you were in the midwest or somewhere that isn't an island you could probably survive as an individual almost indefinitely, barring any animal attacks, disease, injuries, weather/acts of nature, and everything else that can go wrong when you have no social infrastructure. One thing I really liked in The Stand that it was really good about showcasing people dying for really stupid reasons following the breakdown of society, which would totally happen. You'd try riding a motorcycle for the first time, fall off, and die a slow agonizing death wishing you hadn't been so stupid.

I think a lot can be learned from this movie and movies like it, especially when the zombie/vampire-like-zombie virus either arrives via meteor or is created by the government. And it will. While this isn't a zombie movie per-se, a lot can be learned from it in case of post-apocalyptic-humanoid-buffoonery.

Don't hunt deer with an M4

This guy was an army officer and he would have had an arsenal at his disposal, no doubt including high-power rifles with scopes. A .556 isn't gonna stop a deer, but an elephant gun with a x50 scope would. Or some other ridiculous rifle that he'd no doubt be able to find in the NYC. If I were in his shoes, a high-powered rifle would definitely be organic to my up-armored SUV.

Don't hunt post-apocalypse humanoid creatures with an M4

Again, if an M4 can't stop a skinny all hopped up on khat, you know it's not gonna stop these guys. Semi-automatic shotgun all the way! As I mentioned before, you'll be armed to the teeth, and will have plenty of time on your hands for weapons training.

Procure more than one dog

This movie showed how invaluable dogs are. Man's best friend for chrissakes. If I were alive in this situation, I would have a pack of dogs. Not just one. I'd be the consummate alpha dog, and my loyal hunden would protect me and the rest of the pack from whatever was out there.

He was prepared...pretty well... Make sure you're more than pretty prepared.

I figured he'd be more prepared. It's like he was, but he wasn't. No panic room. No backup IR lighting. No redundant fail-safes just incase they found out where he lived, which they likely would anyway. Once they breached the house he was pretty much fucked. My house would be a giant IR lamp encrusted steel death trap -- just incase -- if the humanoids were indeed vampiric. I would tailor it to whatever their achilles heal was.

I think any zombie apocalypto would agree with me on these points, and I haven't really put a lot of thought into it. Still, it's good that we make movies like this, because when the zombie virus comes, we can't predict the exact nature of its effects. Now we have some tools in our toolbox, just in case the zombies are suspiciously vampire-like and can only come out at night.

With that, I leave you with this.

Ye Olde Shitty Exchange Rate

2007-11-19T19:09:00.000+09:00

Yeah, we're all feeling the exchange rate over here, especially those of us paid in U.S. Dollars. I feel for the people in Europe though, and I feel for myself because I want to go to Europe next year in April and it's going to be incredibly expensive.

So I was reading this article today talking about some folks' reactions in Europe and I got a bit of a chuckle.

Apparently there's this woman in her 60s, one Eunice Lipton, who weighed in on the subject:

"The dollar is having a terrible impact on us," said U.S. writer Eunice Lipton, a New Yorker who most of the year lives in Paris with her husband, artist Ken Aptekaar.

It's really important that you read any quote by her in a faux-high-society accent.

"We earn our money primarily in the States and then transfer it here. In the last few days we have transferred $15,000 which became 10,200 euros and that is killing us," she said.

Oh, Eunice. I'm sure it's going to be a lean winter for you and your husband.

She continues:

"I can't complain because the Americans have had it round the other way for years. I'm in my 60s and I've been coming here since I was 19 and most of that time I've been able to eat in great restaurants for very little money," she said.

"In the past, I knew the exchange rate was great for us and I sort of gloated about it, without trying to be rude. Now our terms of reference are different. It is not amusing. I just hope it gets better."

Oh, it is "not amusing"? I'm sure that for someone who is "amused" by things such as a transferring 5-figure amounts here and there and spending most of your time in France, this would indeed be most "not amusing". And also, thank you for just "sort of" gloating about it, so as not to be rude.

She goes on, showcasing her aversion to rudeness:

"It's not going to make me go back to America," said Lipton in Paris.

"It won't stay this way. (President George W.) Bush hasn't cared at all about what the dollar is worth because he is so provincial. Americans are provincial in general and most of them don't even realize what the dollar is worth overseas."

I love this attitude. Americans aren't aware of the U.S. exchange rate overseas because they're "provincial"....not because they aren't transferring large sums of money into foreign currency. The reason she is aware of the exchange rate is because she's non-provincial and wuuuuuhldly....not because she is transferring large sums of money into foreign currency. Right? Right? How rare -- "worldly" people dismissing those who don't share their interests as "provincial". What what?? You don't know that the dollar is weakening against the yen? You rube! And what's this you say? You weren't aware that Japanese whalers are alpha-maling their way into protected waters to commence Humpback Holocaust '07? Hilljacks, every one of you!!

I'm sure blaming Bush gets her a lot of mileage out there in Gay Pair-ee too.

Frenchman: "Zee doll-air! Eet eez, eeeh, how you say, seaux leaux!"

Her Royal Highness Mizz Lipton: "BusHitler McChimpyBurton!"

Frenchman: "liouxlz!"

Dear Eunice,
While I'm not in the US of A right now, I'll go out on a limb and say that most Americans care about as much about the exchange rate in France as they do about whether or not it will "make you go back to America" or not. Why? Not because they're provincial, but because neither has any bearing on their world view. Am I saying that the international exchange rate doesn't effect them? Of course not. But they're not feeling it directly, so it's completely off their radar, relevant or not. In the meantime, I'm sure you'll be tightening your belt and preparing for a winter consisting of baguettes and water. Maybe you can throw some cheese in there to clear your palate of that nasty crow taste that your French friends are going to make you eat after living all fat and arrogant for so long.

Love always from the provinces,
-Me

No justice! No peace!

2007-11-10T00:44:00.000+09:00

So get this, the Japanese government is cutting the salaries a bunch of its contracted workers, so they're going on strike this month.

For 4 hours.

Yeah, they're striking for 4 hours. Nothing says "we'll leverage our demands by paralyzing our employer" like a 4 hour strike. Union representatives added that if their demands are not met, they'll "make scary faces" and "jump up and down a lot".

What a bunch of power-playing masters of negotiation. Fear them.

My boss told me that when he was teaching English for companies in Japan, the workers would go on strike from 11:30-12:30 in the afternoon. During their lunch break they'd sit there with signs, then return to work at 12:39 on the dot.

I have over some of these guys working under me now, so I asked em how many were striking and they came back saying that no one is interested in striking and that they'd all be at work. But it turns out they're not allowed into work, so even if they're not interested in taking part they still have to strike and take 4 hours of no-pay time in the shorts.

That union doesnt sound like such a great idea anymore, does it there Shinsuke.

I get unions. I get why they started. But I also get what they've turned into. It doesn't really seem to jive well with the Japanese personality though. This isn't the Land of the Free, Home of the Cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face. Aside from the residents of St Petersburg, no one is more willing to use their house for firewood than a "Union Guy". Food schmood, we'll deal with that later. You can take the food off my plate, you corporate bastards, but you can't take my pride!! Now pay me $35 for driving this forklift or we'll all stop working, harrass Mexicans who do it for us, and badmouth Chinamen for stealing our jobs when we prevent our steel mill from competing with them!

O rly? Confrontational nature of this sign aside, if one of my employees had this sign, I would immediately assume that they had an inflated sense of entitlement and would do the minimum amount of work possible. If they were, for whatever reason, authorized to leave early, they'd be the first one out the door, but if asked to stay 10 minutes more to take care of something, would start shouting union bylaws.

That being said, it's a shame that the Japanese government is shorting these people like $300 a month.. But weak-ass reactions like this make it apparent why the Japanese middle-class are still working like slaves for low salaries and put up with sub-standard living conditions.

Other than that, I was sitting my couch after ~~eating an entire bag of shrooms and smoking an ounce of hash~~ work the other day and I got a kick out of this video.

I think it caught my attention because ~~I completely flipped the fuck out cuz I had just eaten a bunch of shrooms~~ the video is shot in one take, like those Ebay commercials.

Ee Ess Who?

2007-10-31T20:19:00.000+09:00

So I got the missez enrolled in an ESL course here through an accredited US college.

Awesome.

She speaks English well, but wants to refine it and eventually take some business classes so she can maybe score a job should we [inevitably] return to the YouEss of Fucking Eigh, the greatest nation on the planet.

So I drop her off to the class, and there's a dude in there talking to one of the other girls taking the class.

And by "talking to" I mean "hitting on".

He wasn't even involved with the class. He just worked at the college. And he's in there hitting on the students. Blatantly. His game was, "If you need help in English, call me." Yeah, that's hot. If she's 26 years old and can get fooled by that, she deserves whatever funk or STD she gets from him. I also appreciated him speaking broken high school-level Japanese to her so it would be less obvious that he was hitting on her. Take off douchebag, you've overstayed your welcome.

So I dumped her off, came home, layed on the couch for 3 hours, and went to get her. Naturally I was curious about the topics covered, and was a little surprised at what I heard. I heard about Iraq, the national deficit, about how Al Gore would have been a better president, about how Al Gore won anobel peace price, about global warming. Amazingly enough, and hold onto your hats for this one, he also made sure to mention how quickly he received his BA, MA, and PhD. He's. Highly. Educated. You see.

Awesome. Part deux.

Weird -- I coulda sworn we registered for an English as a Second Language class, not some guy blathering about his political views to a bunch of Japanese women.

Then again, this shouldn't surprise me. When I was a student in Nagoya, I went to this company that sends (read: whores out)roundeye like me to places that need a roundeye in the class to speak roundeye. They didn't even interview me. They asked where I was from and what my visa status was. Blammo, hired, 3500yen an hour. So they sent me a fax with directions on how to get to this school, and I showed up to find a very hostile Canadian wondering why another roundeye was sent to his class. "I dunno man," the 19-year-old version of me said, "I just went where they told me to go." He looked at me in a way which could only be described as "What the fuck eh" and spent the next 2 hours interrogating me about past atrocities visited upon the native population of North America by the United States Government.

"Hey man, I just wanted to come here, speaky roundeye, and get some scrill."

"Negative buddeeh, not until you apologize for exterminating the Injuns eh."

I left there feeling like I'd been sodomized by a whooping band of Lakota phantasms. "Nice shirts guys, how'd that work out for you?", I cackled, as their ethereal forms heaved and ho'd in a strange display of fast-forwarded air buggery.

Seriously though. The Canadian was an asshole and made me dislike Canadians for a really long time, and the missez's teacher thinks an English improvement course is a forum for him to voice his opinions.

Yeah, I know. Both examples are pretty innocuous. A bunch of Japanese women and/or old people aren't really going to topple governments or change future policy based on what some dude with a pony tail, pot belly, and halitosis says to them really. really. slowly.

BUT.

Consider, for a moment, what can happen to little kids.

Yes, everything above what I'm about to say was an introduction for what I'm about to say. And since I emailed most of the readers of this blog what I'm about to say, you should all be closing this window right about now.

That being said, there are these little islands between Korea and Japan called the Liancourt Rocks or, if you hate the Japanese, "Dokdo", and if you hate the Koreans, "Takeshima". These islands are highly disputed and the source of a lot of problems between Korea and Japan. When you see what they look like, you'll understand why.

I know right? Take another look.

Anyway, my buddy sent me a couple links to a forum that had some pictures from a subway in Korea. There were a bunch of drawings from middleschoolers and high schoolers all over the wall, and some of them were pretty entertaining.

And by "entertaining" I mean "disturbing."

Link

Enjoy. Discuss.

Adventurea...RE...a....

2007-10-22T20:28:00.000+09:00

That's Adventurea, not Adventarrhea. Or worse yet, Adventorrhea. You know whaddamean.

Or maybe you don't.

Basically what happened last week, my Birthday week, is I went to Korea with the misses. Our mission? Food. Because one thing Korea has a lot of is Korean food, and everyone knows Korean food is teh sh1znit.

If you're a friend of mine there's a special message for you at the end of this post... If you don't know me, give it a peep anyhow. If you don't like me, take it to heart. But yeah, I decided to cheese out there at the last minute.

Stay with me.

Anywho, we planned our trip to begin with a visit to the Missez' family down in Mie Prefecture, so we loaded up the whip and headed down.

I know it's pretty gheytardit to post pics of your car, but I really love this car. I've never loved a car I owned before, but this car. Mmm. Love it. She's smooth and her engine purrs, just like you think when you hear an engine being described as "purring" in a book. That's the kind of shit I'm talking about here. When she gets on the open road, in addition to purring she hums, and by "hum" I mean "haul ace without you really knowing it". The missez took the first shift and I noticed the speedomoter at 150kph a couple times (93 mph). She seemed to be enjoying herself and was getting us from point A to point B most rikitick, so I didn't mention anything. Someone else did. No sooner had she waxed poetic about the love of the open road than a plain-clothed copper pulled us over.

My refusal to take anything remotely seriously kicked in and I giggled maniacally as we pulled into the rest stop, and I took a picture of her as she was escorted into the cop car.

She came back with a verbal warning, but informed me that it would have been around a $1000 fine if he cited her. I'm pretty sure that would have put the kibosh on my giggling fit.

So smooth sailing the rest of the way, until we hit about a 2 hour traffic jam. We kicked it in Mie for a couple days then cruised to the port and took a 40 minute high speed catamaran ferry across the bay, hopped on a plane, and less than 2 hours later it was Kimchi time. I think from her house to Korea was about 4 hours. Awesome.

We came in around early evening and got a bus to the hotel, which was located in Itaewon, which is a really great location and an area I was pretty familiar with. So here's a rundown with some pics. Click on the image for a bigger version.

The first night we went to Dongdaemoon, which is pretty cool looking at night.

The second day we went for a stroll, and came upon the Korean War Memorial just down the road. There are a lot of really cool static displays for you to goof around on and take pictures with.

The missez decided to get some on the Triple-A.

We didn't want to discriminate against the valiant North Koreans, so we posed in front of a Mig-19 that was taken off the hands of a defector.

The missez showed her Commie Pride by sporting a nice red scarf for most of the trip.

The museum had some amazing architecture, and a Vietnam Wall-esque area with the names of everyone killed during the war. Very somber stuff. And not to be out done by their Comrades Up North, some dramatic statues.

The enxt day we went on a DMZ Tour....Which wasn't so much a DMZ tour as much as it was a tour of things really close to the DMZ. I was really hoping to go to Panmunjom/The Joint Security Area so my wife could take a gander at it (I went there a few years ago), but instead we went to Dorasan Station, which is the last station in South Korea on the line that will "reunify the two countries", to the Dorasan Observatory, which is the highest point in the area with a really stunning view to North Korea, and the Third Tunnel of Aggression. Here are some pics.

View into North Korea. You couldn't take pictures from the front of the observatory, so I took this from above my head.

The missez hangin' with some ROK guards at the station.

My only complaint on the Really-close-to-the-DMZ-tour was that there wasn't really enough time to do anything at each stop. It was pretty rushed, but still worth the money to go if you're ever in town. Try and hook it up through the base, though, because that way you are sure to go to the JSA.

In between tours and photo-ops, we ate a great deal of Korean food and I believe I successfully negated about a month or two's worth of physical exertion. Back to the drawing board with my bloated ass....but it was soooooo good. At night we hung out with some friends of mine who I hadn't seen in a very long time, and who just happen to have ended up in Korea in the Army in the same unit, even though one of them was in the Marines with me and the other was a civilian living in Tokyo after I got out. That stuff happens to me all the time and it never ceases to be completely awesome.

We made the hour-and-a-half flight back to Nagoya, Ferried it back to Mie, and I had my 31st Birthday. Looks like I'm officially in my 30s. The not-so-white side of my family threw me a little party, and the wife and I went out for some drinks and converation afterwards. Great time and very relaxing. A few days later and back we came, minus the traffic jam and being pulled over, marking the end of an excellent trip.

I also mark this trip as the end of one chapter and the beginning of another in the volume of books representing my life. I see this past chapter as the story of the last 6 months, from the time I got married til now, marking a great deal of positive changes both personally and professionally for myself. This summer has been absolutely amazing, I've travelled off-island three times, and gotten to kindle, re-kindle, and stoke friendships with people I consider very close friends. It's an amazing feeling to know that the people I've seen over the past few months -- the people I respect and admire and aspire to be like -- I can call my friends. I look forward to the next chapters to come, when I can see more people I don't see as much as I should.

The next time you tip one back, give the people you love a thought -- a mental acknowledgement to the thoughts they send your way more often than you may realize -- and drink deeply. Maintain relationships with the people close to you and always remember why it is you're friends with them in the first place. Enjoy your time with them and send them gestures of thanks and gratitude, because you never know if or when you'll see them again.

Thanks for reading.

Tadaima!

2007-10-01T19:46:00.001+09:00

...but let's keep it real here, my babies -- taidaima and okaeri are relative. But you knew that already didn't you?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand SCENE!

Let's lighten it up a little bit, via some vids posted on my beloved AoSHQ. It seems SNL has done it again.

And when you're done digesting that, this one is quick but definitely good for the lulz:

So anyway, I'm back from the funniest country on the planet, the United States of America.
International travel gives me a great sense of accomplishment for a number of reasons, but what makes me feel proudest is how much I can contribute to thetransference of matter.

It may be just an urban legend, but some "scientists" like to say that matter is neither
created nor destroy, it just changes form. Carl Sagan used to like to say that we were "starstuff". Now we all know that both of these statements are a load of hooey, but it's fun to think about nonetheless, and maybe someday we can put them and thosepeople who think we "evolved" from "apes" in a "camp" where they're all "concentrated" together and we can make a little party of it.

Anyway, the highlight of my trip is to go to the east coast, eat beef from cows that were grazed on grass from the US of A, which was nourished from the feces and corpses of American animals, flying back to Japan, and contributing to the local sewage system. Can you think of a more puretransference of matter? In a hippie sort of way.

It sounded a lot better when I thought it up in the bathroom during the cathartic transferred matter delivery session I had after I got home...

It was an awesome trip. The people I hung out made me miss living in the USA, but the people I spend most of my time around (Americans I don't know) made me happy I don't. Thanks to everyone who took time out of their regularly scheduled broadcast to come out and hang, and I
can't wait to see you again. I hope you all make it out to Japan one of these years.

Thar she blows!

2007-08-28T16:54:00.000+09:00

A hump like a.. Oh my. Oh my god.

That was the scene last week, according to an article entitled Whale harpooned, hauled in by Japanese boat in front of whale-watching tourists.

SAPPORO -- Eco-tourists on a whale-watching vessel, looking forward to observing the mighty creatures in their natural habitat, were instead greeted by the sight of a harpooned whale being dragged in by a Japanese whaling vessel on Friday.

At about 10:44 a.m. on Friday, a whale was spotted spraying water from its blowhole near a whaling boat, about 3.5 kilometers away from the whale-watching vessel off the coast of Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula. But when the vessel approached, the passengers on board found that the whalers had harpooned the Baird's beaked whale, and it was hauled in by the whaling boat about 20 minutes later.

I'm not really sure why this article gave me such a case of the giggles. Maybe it was because the people on board we referred to as "eco-tourists". Or maybe it was because the article said that "a French woman who was on the vessel with her husband reportedly said the experience made her feel ill".

What's worse than a boatload of eco-tourists? A boatload of French eco-tourists.

Toshifumi Nakamura, the whaling ship's captain, was quoted as saying, "Nothing says 'eco-tourism' like a column of blood and sputum shooting out of a whale's blowhole. The vomit and tears of anguish from the whale watchers also serve as chum for many types of fish, which we catch and eat for lunch."

A baby-seal troller that happened to be in the area snapped a picture of the distraught French woman.

That stuff wasn't in the actual article, but I'm pretty sure that's how it went down.

This part was in the article though:

The 46-year-old captain of the passenger vessel was disappointed by the incident, which took place about 14 kilometers east of Rausu Port in Hokkaido.

"It's my job to show people whales and it's the whalers' job to catch them, but I wonder how this can be avoided," he said.

Here's a tip: Bring binoculars. Or a spyglass, which you should already have if you're the Captain of a Vessel. It said the whale and the whaling ship were 3,500m away when they headed over. That's just over 2 miles - not far. If you're running a whale watching tour with a bunch of crazy French eco-tourists and you see a whaling ship approaching a whale, don't go towards it. I'm just spit-ballin' here, but it also might be better if you didn't run your whale watching tours where whales are harvested.

Another thing that made me chuckle is the fact that I'm sure the whaling captain knew that the whale watchers were there, but just cruised by with a giant whale corpse lashed to his ship. "Oh, was I not supposed to butcher this fellah? I thought you guys wanted a better look. Here's a close up."

Mental note: Don't whale watch in countries that like eating whales. Especially Japan, where when they don't feel like being told what to do, they do what you don't want them to do times a thousand right in front of you.

"Don't mind him, he's homeschooled"

2007-08-23T22:39:00.000+09:00

That's what I said to my friend's girlfriend a few years ago when he was goofing around.

"What's THAT supposed to mean? I was homeschooled", she snarled.

Foot-in-mouth 72347 of 93627.

The reason I bring this up is because for some reason, over the last few days I've heard a couple of people mention homeschooling. I have pretty strong reactions to homeschooling, mainly because I think it's a huge disservice to children. I did a quick little google search on homeschooling and found this written by an advocate of homeschooling. Here are some reasons he thinks it's a good idea, and some of his refutations of commonly held misconceptions.

Let's take a look.

One of the silliest and most annoying comments made to homeschooling parents is, "Aren't you concerned about how your child will be able to socialize with others?". What is being implied here is that the homeschooled child is some kind of introverted misfit who cannot relate to other people, children, and the outside world. In reality, most of the homeschooled children that I have known and met are not only outgoing, but polite and respectful, too. This is a sharp contrast to the public school children that I have known, who can't relate to adults and whose behavior is rude and inconsiderate.

Introverted? No. Misfit? Yes. A child who interacts with mainly children will not interact like an adult, and a child who only interacts with adults will not act like a child and will be, by definition, a mis fit. It's a matter of peer groups.

Who is responsible for creating this "socialization" problem? This myth has been perpetrated by sociologists, psychologists, public school administrators, the NEA (and local teacher's unions), etc., whenever they comment on homeschooling to the news media. These are the same people who give Ritalin (a very strong narcotic) and other drugs to schoolchildren, in place of discipline.

I guess finger pointing and conspiracy theorizing is included in the homeschool curriculum.

Opponents of homeschooling can't complain about average test scores, since homeschooled children consistently outscore public school children, so they instead make a problem that doesn't exist.

Aah the test score. I love it when people cite test scores. While I do agree that there should be a standard, test scores are often more indicative of how well someone studied for a test rather than how much information they actually know or can retain. Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans (and most other people I guess) regularly pwn Americans in the whole test taking thing and like to point to it as some evidence that they are smarter/superior/whatever to us. Suffice it to say that I have yet to see Americans flocking to other countries seeking citizenship and jobs, while the opposite is readily observable. I also like citing test scores because I got a 900 on the SAT and a 21 on the ACT, which has gotten me a lot of laughs. I turned out ok.

In order for children to become assimilated into society properly, it is important to have a variety of experiences and be exposed to differing opinions and views.

Nothing says "differing opinions" than having parents create and teach a curriculum.

Homeschooling allows parents the freedom to associate with other interested parties, visit local businesses, museums, libraries, etc. as part of school, and to interact with people of all ages in the community. For example, my son goes on field trips with other homeschooling families in our community.

Again, I'm sure the range of opinions and outlooks is earth shattering.

My wife and I like to bring our son with us when we are visiting with friends and other adults. How else will he learn to be an adult, if he never has contact with adults?

He's got a point here. When I wasn't associating with children at my public concentrationcampschoolag, I was barred from interacting with adults and locked in a closet. Homeschooling would have been totally awesome because I would have been able to hang out with adults, which is what I really wanted to do when I was a child. Anyway I'll be right back, I made doodie in my pants and need my mom to change it for me, because my public school upbringing never taught me how to be an adult.

Dakota Fanning: Homeschooled

The title of this video clip should be "When Social Maladroits Collide". I can't say that though, because Japan has extremely high test scores compared to the USA.

Some homeschoolers probably find the precociousness of their children charming. Some homeschoolers, like one I met before, wear velcro shoes with suits. I find a lot of this sort of behavior reminiscent of Asberger's syndrome. Being a kid is fun -- Chuck E Cheese rules apply. Let a kid be a kid.

I'm sure homeschooling has its benefits, but it's easy to overlook the "socializing" factor because it's difficult to measure. I've met a lot of mal-socialized products of public school systems. Hell, most would say that I'm malsocialized myself. But the homeschooled people I've met (and their parents) are off the charts and ill equipped to deal with the hardships and cruelty of many social situations. Social interaction is nasty business, and some people have a tough time dealing with it. I did. But having it thrust upon me made me a stronger person, and I'm didn't have to deal with it for the first time at age 18, 20, or 25. I hated school, but what I learned there was more valuable than anything that can be found on a standardized test. Apathetic parents make apathetic students -- if a parent is unconcerned about their kid's progress at school, the kid will be unconcerned, and vice-versa. Denying a child years worth of a shared cultural foundation is, as I said, a disservice, which will be obvious to everyone around them for a very long time.

Disclaimer: I don't have any psychological or sociological data to back any of this up, but this might help my case because according to the author of the page I cited, psychologists and sociologists are responsible for the myth that homeschooled kids are poorly socialized. All opinions are formed based on the personal experiences of me, a social misfit in many ways, having my socks knocked off by the misfit behavior of homeschooled kids I've met.

Am I missing something?

2007-07-30T14:52:00.000+09:00

OK, so I'm reading about how Timmy Taliban kidnapped a gang of Koreans in this article, and now Hamid Karzai is pulling the hospitality card which seems pretty negotiable. If you're waondering where this whole hospitality thing comes in, it has to do with pashtun wali:

There are numerous intricate tenets of Pashtunwali that influence Pashtun social behavior. One of the better known tenets is Melmastia or the notion of hospitality and asylum to all guests seeking help. Perceived wrongs or injustice call for Badal or swift revenge.

See, it's a pashtun thaang.

Melmastia was what kept a SEAL from being handed over to the Taliban when an Afghan was nursing him back to health, and it was also used as a justification to keep from handing Osama bin Laden over as Mullah Omar is quoted here, Handing over bin Laden is like giving up a pillar of Islam"—i.e., impossible—is that they are Pashtun, and the Pashtunwali Code places a huge amount of emphasis not only on giving hospitality, but refuge.

Well isn't that conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.

"The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of our Islamic and Afghan values," Karzai told a South Korean envoy during a meeting at the presidential palace, according to a statement from his office.

Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the right to kill women.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they shouldn't do it."

Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, replied, "lolz!"

Are these guys for serious? I've never known any religion to be particularly "reality based", but there are observable phenomena available to us, you know things like "Afghan Muslims killing women and children". The Taliban are dirtbags, yes, but most of them are also Afghans and all of them are Muslims. Why do these guys even bother saying stuff like this? That would be like me saying, "Clearly Americans love Japanese food, because in general Americans are thin and in shape." Well, not really, but my point is that it's completely retarded and easily seen to be ridiculous.

Here's another gem:

Pope Benedict XVI also called for the hostages' release, saying the perpetrators should "desist from the evil they have carried out and give back their victims unharmed."

Oh, I have an idea. A bus load of Christians was kidnapped in Whackjobbi Muslimistan. Someone get the Pope on the phone so he can call the Taliban evil, because the Taliban clearly gives a shit about the Pope and all his authority. Why not have the Dalai Lama chime in? The Pope is probably on top of the "People the Taliban would like to gut on the innerwebs" list, and at the bottom of the "People who ought to be lecturing people from other religions about fucked up stuff done in the name of religion" list.

I'm predicting this to go very very badly. I'm also predicting that Korea will somehow blame this on America, because America forced a busload of Korean Christians to drive around Afghanistan even after Koreans were permitted from getting visas to go there. Yeah, it's our fault. We created the Taliban after all, right?

Just thought I'd throw that out there, since today's theme seems to be "saying retarded shit".

Updates later, depending on how this goes…

Racist!

2007-07-24T23:09:00.001+09:00

So I was surfing through commenters' blogs on Hammer's blog and came upon an article linked from this site, which resulted in a day of sporadic giggling fits, much to the chagrin of my dear wife.

[While driving home from the grocery store, during one of the fits of laughter]

"Why do you keep laughing for no reason? You're really creeping me out."

"Hm, it's kinda hard to explain. I'm thinking about this article I read today that had something really ridiculous in it."

"What did it say?"

So I thought about it for a while, how to explain why a racial slur would make me break into hysterics every time I thought about it, without seeming like I myself was a kard karrying klansman.

The article I'm referring to is this one, about how porches are making a comeback and the subsequent social implications. I'll go ahead and post the last two paragraphs, which contained the zinger, emphasis mine:

As newcomers to Herndon last year, Joanna Wilbur says she and her husband, Chris, found that sitting outside was "a way to make friends and connect ourselves more with the people living on our cul-de-sac. After work, people would come up to the porch and introduce themselves, or we'd say hi to them as they walked down the street. One couple would bring their daughter over to play on the porch swing."

The porch sealed the deal for the couple -- she's a credit union retirement specialist, he's an Army translator -- because it strongly evoked her Midwestern childhood. "I was a big-time porch monkey in St. Louis. Everyone was outside on the stoop until long after the streetlights came on."

All Clerks 2 references aside, the last line of the last paragraph had me in stitches. Why? For a number of reasons, but mainly because I couldn't believe that a) someone would say something like that, and b) the editor at the Washington Post would allow something like that to be published. I've noticed that a lot of people these days are fond of saying 'I was the only white kid at my high school', as if it gives them some street cred or makes them hard, but not me. I grew up in public schools, mainly white, mainly military brats, far from the darty souff, but somehow, somehow, I managed to acquire the knowledge that porch monkey is indeed a racial epithet.

"Porch monkey? Why is that a racial slur?", my wife asked.

"Hm, I dunno, maybe because it's saying that black people are simian in appearance and intelligence, and that they refuse to do anything but sit on the porch due to laziness?" I guess I'd never really given much thought to the etymology, but that was the best I could do.

"Wow, that's pretty bad."

And it is. So I got the thinking about how that made it through the presses, and I came up with a couple possibilities:

Ignorance

No, not the "I'm a racist cuz I'm ignorant" ignorance, but (again, Clerks 2 references aside) her not knowing that it's a racial slur. I've been familiar with this from a very early age, when I was watching a movie with my dad and everyone was throwing around the word "Chinaman", so I did too. "Don't say that, that's a bad word", said my dad, which I repeated to my grandmother when she was throwing it around one day. "Who says it's a bad word?" asked my grandmother. "Dad did", which elicited a predictable reaction from my grandmother who a) understood my dad is an area expert on China and b) thinks that area experts in general are lazy and stupid possessing no more knowledge than the last article she read about their particular area in National Geographic at the doctor's waiting room. "It's not a bad word", she replied patiently. "I think 'Chinamen' is a nice word. Chinamen. Yeah. Chinamen." ...Aaand I got to hear that word about 15 more times during the next 20 minutes. (As a side note, you can imagine how much this made me laugh a number of years later.)

We get a lot of that around here in Japan, too.

The biggest one around here is the word "Jap". Maybe it's just ingrained in my or something, and while I don't get all fired up when I hear it, it does rub me the wrong way. I suppose "gaijin" could be considered derogatory too, but like "Jap", I don't really bother correcting people who use it anymore. When I say "You know, that's kinda derogatory," they usually just give me the "nah-ah" business, and/or go ahead and, like my precious gramma, disagree with me and use it as much as they can around me because they know it irritates me.

I suspect that the woman quoted had no idea that it was a "bad word", but most surprisingly, that the editor didn't know. I find it hard to believe that a professional wordsmith working for the WaPo, presumably (unlike me) with a strong background in journalism, would not know the expression. There may be another explanation though, namely:

...zing!!!!

While I personally wouldn't practice this form of humor using a racial slur, I can certainly appreciate it when I see it. Think of this as a joke (something meant to make someone laugh) that is a) time released and/or b) like shooting a gun into the air in a crowded city -- you probably won't hit someone, but if you do, they're gonna really feel it (though in the case of the joke they'll laugh really hard, not die). Humor like MST3K and Homestarrunner include a lot of these -- where the humor is incredibly esoteric and sometimes hits you a little while later, resulting in genuine lolz when you get it.

Perhaps this is what Mrs Wilbur intended, intentionally launching a nuke-tipped probe through the WaPo's editing processes just to see if it could get through because, well, that'd just be funny now, wouldn't it? Regardless of whether or not it was intentional, which I'm pretty sure it wasn't (because when I showed people at work a few folks didn't get why it was so weird either), it reached me and had me utterly incapacitated for at least a good 15 minutes throughout the course of the day. So again, Mrs Wilbur whether your bigotry was a result of a malicious mind or just being a simpleton, on behalf of myself and all my friends I sent it to (who I knew would laugh for the same reasons, I thank you.

Return to Oki!

2007-07-19T22:45:00.000+09:00

Who am I? I always like to say that I define myself by the people I've met and the places I've been. Anyone who knows me knows that Japan has of course played a big role in the "who I am" part, but some of (all two of) you might not understand how important a role Okinawa played in my life. I came to Okinawa in 2002, deployed with my first team. Upon finishing my study abroad in 1997, I had only spent a week or so in Japan until then, and was focused on other stuff making Japan pretty much a non-enitity in my life. Somehow I was still able to speakum Japanese when we arrived, and became a defacto tourguide/translator for my team. "Don't let on that you speak Japanese" they'd say, thinking (like everyone else) that Japanese people sit around pondering with one another the actions of roundeye in the vicinity. This lasted about 5 minutes into the first bender we went on (which coincidentally was about 5 minutes after we arrived) and I set about getting to ~~offend~~ know the locals.

It was as if Japan had been waiting for its prodigal son (me) to return, and I felt the country (even though it was Okinawa) and its people welcomed me with open arms. Everyone was friendly, appreciative that I spoke the language, and whenever I'd roll up they were happy to see me. Even though the unit we were with in the Marines pretty much sucked, after a month or so I wrote back to my parent unit and asked to stay for an additional six months. I thought about re-enlisting but the stupidity of things in Okinawa and the experience I was having made me realize that I had a calling outside of the USMC, and that calling was Japan. If I couldn't stay in Okinawa or Japan within the Marines, it was time to get out, which I did. Fast forward to now -- past 5 months spent goofing off in Tokyo, 6 months spent collecting unemployment at my parents' house, 7 months in Afghanistan getting an inappropriate salary for getting drunk, and 2 and a half years in Tokyostan leading up to a marriage with my looovely wife. Four years later I make it back to Okinawa for a conference; back to the place that jarred me back to reality and awakened a lost love of adventure and human interaction.

It's always hard to go back. As I rode up Okinawa's route 58 coming from the airport I saw my old haunts; places from a different where and when, inseparable from the people I experienced them with. There was the curry house I went to with Chazriel, Durl, little Joe and everyone else. That's the parking spot we dropped the van off in when we shanghai'd a humvee and goofed off in starbucks all morning. There's the parking garage Kev passed out in after sprinting out of an establishment without paying (which was awkward, considering we knew the owners). I imsgined all of us as we were on those spots, like black and white ghosts on a color backdrop, and I felt like an imposter violating the purity of how I remembered things to be.

After the conference I knew I had to make it up to Kinville -- back to the tiny area of bars where we spent so much time, just to see it again. Kinville itself is a lot different, as they've "beautified" it. Where there used to be a parking lot there is now a little park, and they've made some of the streets pedestrian only. This is all well and good, if you care to ignore the scummy buildings and buy-me-drinkie bars lining the streets. I went on Wednesday night at around 10:30pm, which was good because all the lower enlisted folk have a 12pm curfew and nothing's going on on Wednesdays anwyay. When I walked into the bars it was instant reaction. It was like Kinville was sitting there waiting for me to come back. As if they were expecting me to walk in at any time but were just as surprised to see me nonetheless. The three major usual suspects where there (for those of you who have been there, that would be Meg, Erika, and Miki), as well as the owner, Rika, and her half Taiwanese husband named Hito (who we used to call Lao Ching Wan simply because he was half Chinese). Miki is the owner of Edgar, pictured below.

I asked her where he was, and she said he was at home. Apparently he was running around on the bar one night and took a crap on the bar, alarming one of the Japanese customers, and was subsequently banned. :( Since there were no customers it was nice to go between Rika's three establishments and catch up with whoever was working there. At each place there were pictures from another life, usually Eddie and I, eyes at half-mast, on one of our weekly benders.

At the end of the night I had one last stop -- King Tacos. Taco Rice with Cheese (and sauce!) was the traditional post-drink food, particularly from King Tacos, and I had to get some. I turned the corner and headed down and stepped on an enormous piece of glass. It was one of those situations where you're half in the bag and pain doesn't so much register as an "owie!" as much as you brain says, "hey, knock knock man, there's something in your foot." So I stopped and pulled the large chunk of glass from out of my foot and through my flipflop from which it protruded and threw the glass away. "Man that sucked," said my mind, as I plodded onward towards the red and yellow sign. My foot was getting slick and my brain was telling me, "Hey assface, we have a situation", so I paused and checked out my flipflop, which was now covered in blood. Yeah, it hurt like a bitch, but not hurt-hurt cuz I was drunk, but more in the "FYI this is your brain speaking, your foot hurts" sense, so I continued on and ordered my taco rice. Yeah, I was bleeding like a stuck pig, but I didn't really see why that should keep me from getting some food. I remembered the lady who gave me my food -- once 4 or 5 years ago we had drank until 10am or so, me, her, and the owner of some hole in the wall bar, but I didn't expect she'd remember me and I'm pretty sure she didn't. An Okinawan fellow was asking me about my foot and I said it ought to be alright, because I was more interested in hopping in a cab and gorging myself on this Mana from Kinville on the way home. The cabride was shorter than the way in because we took the expressway and he delivered me to my door, so I cleaned off the blood and scrubbed my wound and reflected on the nights transgressions.

Okinawa is a part of me, just as much as the scar I'm bound to have on the bottom of my food from a shard of filthy glass in Kinville. It might seem a little pathetic that I make a trip far from where I was to see a few people who are still working in the same dingy bars and remember a crepster like my friends and I, but they were a huge and important part of my Okinawa experience which ultimately led me to where I am today. They were our cultural brokers and picked us up when we were (physically) unable to do it by ourselves, but most of all they are just kind, generous, and patient people who will never forget us as we will never forget them.

Kyle, Eddie, Little Joe, Erika, and Rika.

No Country for Old Card Board

2007-07-15T21:00:00.001+09:00

Well, ladies and gelmen, the good lord has seen fit to pick up a large portion of the Pacific Ocean and dump it right down on the good citizens of Japan in the form of a Typhoon. Typhoons like rolling through the Japanese archipelago a couple times a year, but if you're in the area of Tokyo it ain't suh bad. Okinawa? Well, Okinawans don't so much weather the storm so much as they get buckwheated by it, so every time a typhoon rolls up on us, I expect it to be a lot worse than it really is, and my wife tells me to cowboy up and return the goddamn DVDs, I ain't gonna get swept up to Oz.

Speaking of Okinawa, now that the typhoon is all cried out, it looks like I'm a go to leave tomorrow. I was a little worried that the trip might get cancelled, but everything's OK.

Anyway, this post is about some things that have been constantly on TV lately and that really tie into some things that the Japanese are really into, namely:

Food

Overdoing things

Ridiculing the Chinese

Food is really important in Japan. Like really important. Not having access to Japanese food is no-go criteria for most Japanese people, and most cannot really imagine being without it. As with many other cultures, it's a major part of their identity and what makes them unique from other tribes. As a result, you can guarantee a food show being on TV at pretty much any time of day. Shows include cooking shows, shows where people go to different restaurants, and recently, competitive eating shows. They like this girl called "Gyaru Sone", "gyaru" meaning "girl" meaning "girl with bleach blond hair and too much makeup, like the ones in Shibuya," and "Sone" pronounced "Soh-Neh", which is her last name. At 5'4 and 95 lbs, she can eat an insane amount of food. Here's what she looks like, on the right:

She's been getting a lot of airtime these days, but it's pretty obvious she's half-retarded, which according to my wife will lead to her downfall. "She's cute, sure, but the only thing she can do is eat. She'll be gone soon."

I gotta say though, her eating accomplishments are pretty ridonkulous, and they've done some pretty funny stuff with it, like last night when they dressed her up in an old lady suit and had her compete with a bunch of fat foreigners, and of course she destroyed them all. She wasn't even playing for real and she ate 30 plates. That's insane. That's 60 pieces of sushi. The most I've eaten is 18 plates (32 pieces), and people looked at me like I was a complete glutton. That's not the best part tho -- she said she once ate 183 pieces of sushi in 30 minutes. On another show she ate 40,000 calories of Chinese food.

In any case, she seems to be bringing back the lost art of competitive eating in Japan, which to me exemplifies two things that the Japanese are all about: Food and Overdoing something to the point of it being self-destructive. I mean really, what are the Japanese people famous for? Sushi and working themselves to death, Tempura and Kamikaze charges, Donburi and standing under cold waterfalls doing karate stuff. Competitive eating is the ultimate expression of what it is to be Japanese -- enjoying something you love to the point of it completely sucking and ultimately leading to your painful death.

When the Japanese aren't eating or expressing themselves through Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, they enjoy relaxing in natural springs, climbing Mount Fuji, and ridiculing the Chinese. And who wouldn't? The Chinese love being offensive, and nothing could be more offensive than feeding people card board. For some reason this CCTV investigation has Japan up in arms, or at least the Japanese media up in arms cuz it's been on TV all week, about some Chinese dude who made steamed buns containing cut up cardboard. Like a lot -- a 6:4 ratio of carboard to pork. Here's a video showing how he did it:

The part with the guy standing there with his shirt off has been on TV a lot here, especially a part where he says "Most people can't even tell", and when asked whether he tried eating it, he said hellz no. I believe the reason they keep showing this is to take attention away from this story, where a Japanese company was pawning pork off as beef. I can't even imagine what would happen if this had happened in the USA, what with all the people who don't dig on swine, but Japan isn't really burdened with "racial diversity", and even if there were outcry stemming from religious taboos, it would fall upon deaf ears.

So yeah, that's the size of it. If you go to China and you get some steamed buns, check the content because if might be 60% cardboard and 40% rotten pork, and if you come to Japan and you don't dig on swine, make sure you don't dig on beef either, because there's no telling what could be in it. In the meantime I'd like you to check out this book -- it's good, and they're making a movie out of it. I think they might just be able to pull it off.

Also, congrats to Fadi for adding an ARTO to his team. Nice.

And I know I used buckwheat in a post a long time ago, but I couldn't resist.

Later-

...Update

2007-07-12T10:31:00.000+09:00

Woe, this whole blogging thing just hasn't been happening lately, as I settle into my new little life. I've definitely had a lot of material because I work in bizarro world, but the whole "blogging things about work" seems like a really bad idea, and after I 'sanitize' my posts as much as I can to avoid getting in trouble of hurting people's feelings, it just doesn't really sound as good or as funny. I'd hate for someone that I have to work with every day to read about how much of a dumbfuck I thought they or spouse or child was, and even if I'm vague about it it'd be really obvious who I was talking about because there are so many creepsters running around.

I'm going to Okinawa next week and the DC area next month for bizniss, which completely rocks, so mark your calendars. Okinawa will definitely produce a good post because my year there in the Marines had such a profound impact on my future, i,e. realizing that the "real Marine Corps" wasn't somewhere I wanted to stay, and that Japan was. All my best friends down there have pretty much left -- Okinawa is depressed in a lot of ways and can be rough on people -- but I know a few folks and can't wait to stop by and see them. Literally. Cuz they call work at bars. I can't wait to eat some taco rice with cheese, which is Okinawa's mana from heaven, and (according to that wikipedia article) originated where I spent an inappropriate amount of time -- Kin, aka "Kinville", right outside Camp Hansen. If you look at that Kinville article, it has pictures of some bars in Kin. I like looking at that site because I have a funny story involving all three or so of them (Champion, Orion, Blue Hawaii), two of which involved one of my friend getting attacked by a group of filipinas (which I knew would happen as soon as he went in so I stayed outside) or another friend being beat up by 6 gunnys who mistook him for someone else.

Sea stories are way more funny when told in person, so instead of boring you all, I'll leave you with this picture of my wife I made on a southpark character generator. I'm so dead.

Embracing My Inner Asshole

2007-06-30T11:55:00.000+09:00

Ask anyone who knows me pretty well -- Can Paully be an asshole? And they will probably laugh at your naivety. I don't think people who don't know me (or had never seen me behave in normal day-to-day activities) would have the same opinion, because I'm generally a lot more quiet, reserved, and 'neutral' with people I don't really know/have just met.

Oddly enough, even when I rally ought to be acting like an asshole to people I don't know well (i,e. rude service, poor work ethic, failure to do their job), I usually don't, because I can't be bothered, especially when it comes to my housing and furniture, which is provided by my employer. Before, if something was wrong with a furniture item or service was really shitty, if it didn't put me out or didn't bother me, I didn't make an issue out of it. I didn't care. For instance, at my old place, the light in the bathroom flickered and never worked correctly. I never mentioned anything about it, because pooping under dim conditions just didn't motivate me enough to make a phone call.

This may have to do with me generally being treated poorly by whoever/whatever I've been working for for the last, oh, 8 years. My wife would probably agree with the following assessment -- my expectations of costumer service and general living standards are pretty low.

Me not gettin'er done using my willingness to leverage, use colorful (not foul) language, and generally say what's on my mind when dealing with customer service people and/or strangers has always seemed a little strange to me. Sure, there are times where someone I don't know catches me in a bad moment and I lay it on thick, but like I said, I reserve such behavior for friends and loved ones (yeah, it's shitty isn't it?) In any case, having a wife has changed that in a few ways, because substandard customer service leads to the Wrath of Wife, which trumps any feelings of hesitation I have when dealing with these people and unleashes the military might ...which is...me being a meanie.

So dropped by housing (you remember, the housing mafia) and asked for another chair for our dining room set and a carpet for one of our rooms. They said they'd be by sometime between 8:30 and 11:30 (yeah thanks) but that was OK, because I was taking some time off to recover from my friends' new bar opening in Shibuya. Long story short, i got home at about 7am and they showed up at about 9:30. While I didn't go overboard with the drinks, I was still tired, and when they unrolled the carpet it had a stain that only a large 4 legged animal (or a 2 legged animal with dysentery) could have produced. The three dudes rolled it out, and I immediately knew my wife would flip if she saw it. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: No.
Guy: What?
Me: Look at that stain.
Guy: *pause, looks confused* Yeah, but the description on the inventory sheet is that it's in 'good condition'.
Me: Really? Cuz the rug looks like something went to the toilet on it.
Guy: *pauses again* Does it smell?
Me: I didn't say it smells like something went to the toilet on it, I said it looks like something did. Can you not see that stain?
Guy: *considers stain for a moment*
Me: *Getting irritated* Get it outta here.
So the guy did what I knew he'd do, and called up his supervisor. This always happens in Japan, as opposed to what I'm used to, which would be a supervisor telling someone to 'figure it out' and not bother them with bullshit. I go through a pattern of initially feeling sorry for the supervisor I'm talking to (because I can tell it's some tiny Japanese woman) and then getting pissed off them 2 or 3 minutes into the conversation. Here's how the conversation went:

Her: What's the problem?
Me: There's a huge stain on the carpet and I don't want it in my house.
Her: Is it bad?
Me: It looks like something went to the bathroom on the carpet. It's big.
Her: What?
Me: It looks like something went to the toilet on the carpet.
Her: What do you mean?
Me: (this is the transition from feeling bad to anger) It. Looks. Like. Something. Took. A. Shit. On. The. Carpet. Maybe. An. Animal. Or. A. Human.
Her: Does it smell?
Me: Whether it smells is neither here nor there. I don't want it here because it looks bad.
Her: All of our carpets have stains on them.
Me: The one in my living room is the exact same and it doesn't.
Her: OK, we can bring another carpet by sometime in the afternoon.
Me: Sometime in the afternoon?
Her: Yes, sometime after 12:30.

This is anger time. In order to get a carpet without a huge shit stain on it, I have to potentially hang out at my place all day, which was a no-go, cuz my wife had to go to the dentist.

Her: Why don't you come by and make another appointment for next week.

I did something now that I usually don't do, in fact I don't think I've ever actually said it, because it's usually invoked under such obnoxious circumstances:

Me: Who's the customer here? Why does it seem like I'm servicing you guys or that I'm working at your pleasure or convenience?

I was about to go on a full blown tirade, but she interrupted me and asked me to give the workman the phone. They chatted, he left, and they were back 10 minutes later with a new damn carpet. 10 minutes!!!! That's it, lickity split!

Instead of just going and getting a different carpet, or woe hold on, just not giving me a shitstained carpet to begin with, they took a perfectly good ruined morning and made it even worse. They wanted me to wait a couple days, or sacrifice an entire day to accommodate their shitty customer service.

A lot of people say stuff like, "Well, what can you do? They're in charge." If it weren't for the fact that my wife's expectation levels are much higher than my own, I'd probably say the same thing. But in holding these people accountable for providing good service, I've discovered that they're in charge and call the shots because they're empowered by people who are intimidated by them or don't care enough to ask them difficult questions.

So yeah. Join me in finding the fine line between getting the service you rate but still not be a complete asswipe. Make it humorous for those around you, or if nothing else, make it bloggable, unlike this piece of tripe of a post. Sheeit.

LA Story

2007-06-16T02:53:00.000+09:00

Or should it be LA Times? Or LA Law? Or LA Confidential? Whatever. The trip to LA was completely awesome, but not really because of LA itself. And yeah, I know Fast Times was set in San Diego. Or at least that the actual high school is there, cuz my novice rowing coach graduated from it.

OK, so where to start? I guess I'll kick it off with the touristy thing we did. We went to Hollywood, because that's something you ought to do when you're in LA. I knew Hollywood was a shithole, but it was really nice to go there and see just what a shithole it is with my own two eyes. I'm amazed that it can be portrayed as somewhat glamorous of a place at all. We went to the Chinese Theatre, where the hand prints are, which is just a bunch of tourists milling around looking at hand prints, of which we were a part of. There are people there dressed as Darth Vader, Spiderman, Shrek, etc, but the costumes aren't professional. I might even go so far as to say they're home made. By unskilled people. Like unskilled homeless people. Like I felt embarrassed for them, and embarrassed that for whatever reason they felt that by dressing up in a $5 costume they somehow enhanced the Hollywood experience. I bet they have a union and everything, and a code of rules and etiquette, and refer to themselves as "practitioners" of a "craft". If anything, they underlined, italicized, and boldfaced how sad the myth of Hollywood is, an empty cicada shell of a town. I didn't take any pictures of anything there, because it was all a bit depressing.

My uncle lives about 5 minutes from Magic Mountain (6 flags), so we spent the day there with my cousin and his new wife. A lot of the schools are still in session so we didn't have to wait in line for too many of the rides, and it was a complete roller coaster fest. Awesome. Whenever I ride a roller coaster, I think about what it would be like to bring a a villager from the Amazon basin along with me, and what their likely reaction would be. I've always thought that would really be a lot of fun. Since I don't have one handy, I have to bully my wife into riding rides that make her uncomfortable, and her initial reaction when asked to ride the DEVIL DIVE seemed like a good opportunity to ellicit a similar response. We also decided that she would be the one to pull the release, which was awesome. Here we are being hoisted up.

Here we are after screaming back and forth a few times.

We had a video made, but I don't know how to rip it and put it on the googles.

My cousin's wedding was really nice, the food was great, and it was nice to hobnob with some folks I hadn't seen for 9+ years. Weddings are not-so-good for actually getting to spend a lot of quality time with people though, especially the people being wed. I think that flying back from Japan for just a wedding might not be such a great investment, and likewise, flying to Japan just for my wedding ceremony would have the same effects. So if you want to come see me, don't come during my wedding ceremony. My request for prima nocturna was also rejected, which put me off a little bit, but the open bar made everything OK. Here's a pic of me and the Mrs before heading over. Get a good look, cuz I hate wearin' suits.

I shanghai'd one of my dad's ties with Chinese characters on it.

All in all, it was an awesome trip. One of those week-and-a-half trips that seems like it lasted a month, and that you really don't want to see end. I came back to work today (Friday) for the helluvit and because I knew I'd have 200 emails of madness waiting for me, and got about a week's worth of work done. Our Japanese workers were chilling while I was gone, it seems, so I didn't have to worry about too much. God bless'um.

Some a la carte observations about the USA and my little trip:

In Japan, drivers enrage me due to their obliviousness. In the USA, drivers enrage me because they're assholes. Maybe these are accurate reflections on each respective culture's personalities in general. When I'm signaling to get into a lane in Japan and I look at the other driver, I can tell they're thinking about manga and schoolgirl porn. They're just staring straight ahead. In the USA though, they make eye contact and speed forward. Road rage central.

I thought Reality TV was out of control 2 years ago, and it still is.

Pop culture is out of control too. I wanted to bring it up but I didn't want to be another person being overheard talking about pop culture icons like everyone else I was around and overhearing.

The Spicoli look really seems to be in with the youngsters these days. I couldn't help but feel like an old man constantly thinking stuff like "get a damn haircut" or "learn how to wear a hat". Then again, during our high school years we had a choice between the Zach Morris and the mullet.

Flying on a plane full of Chinese people is an experience. You know how Americans act in movie theatres these days? It's like that times 10 only on an airplane, and the humor/irritation (depending on your position on the plane) of it is compounded by strict FAA regulations, terror threats, and ornery post-menopausal flight attendants. I'm wondering when American Airlines is going to figure out that they need at least one Chinese speaking attendant in economy class on flights from Cali to Japan.

Most shocking experience: At Magic Mountain this big fat lady whacked her 5-or-so-year-old son right in the mouth, then told him to "quit his fucking whining".

I wanted to pull a Benicio and Ryan on her fat ass. Don't click on this if you're offended by strong language, but it's probably my favoritest film moment ever.

And that's how it all went down.

The Americas

2007-06-07T00:14:00.000+09:00

Here I am, back in America, while my wife and sister and mother run around town and look at wedding dresses. If I have to look at another dress or hear another conversation about shoes, I'm going to scream... So I thought I'd chill here at home while they did their thing.

Anyway, we flew in to Chicago, which is an awesome city as always. One thing that really strikes me about Chicago (as opposed to Tokyo) is the amount of personality the city has. With the exception of Kyoto, everything in Japan was pretty much leveled during WWII, and the newer cities don't really have much personality to them. If it's not a shrine or a temple and it's oldish, the Japanese will destroy and build something fresh and new. Walking around Chicago with its wide streets and building fronts made of brick or constructed in art-deco, the city feels that much more vibrant. We stayed at a family friend's apartment, which is on the 30th floor of a building right on the river. The view was, in a word, ridonkulous, because you're pretty much right there amongst the buildings in the skyline. Here's a pic of me and the missez (click for larger version).

I have some awesome pics of the buildings at night that I will put up when I get back to Japan, because I didn't bring a cable for the missezes camera. The apartment is right across from the East River Fitness Club, where Oprah works out. It's always fun to come home and listen to my father trash talk Oprah. He says stuff like "She uses adoration for oxygen" and "She doesn't so much 'have guests' as much as she 'holds court'". I've also found that chasing my sister (now 33) around the house with used kleenex is just as fun as it was when I was 6.

After a couple days running around Chicago, we made the 3.5 hour drive back to Iowa City. Coming back to Iowa City (where I went to college and where my parents live) is always kind've weird. It never changes but it's always different -- bars and sandwich shops close, and new ones take their place. Every time I come back I can be guaranteed to see some of the same people doing pretty much the same thing they were doing when I was here 10 years ago. The Java House coffee shop, where I studied at before it was cool to study in coffee shops and before Starbucks took over the world, still smells of custom coffees and pretension, and Brueggers Bagels still rock my socks. Eventually though it seems like everything turns into a bar, making this a pretty cool place to go to college, but not such a good place for getting burger king or hardees, both of which are now bars.

Seeing as how I only went to college here (one of which was spent in Japan), I don't really feel a connection to the city and I dont consider it "home" in any sense of the word. All my friends have since graduated and generally left, so it's pretty much a hang-out-with-the-fam type place, but it's still a good place to walk around and look at all the weird people. But in general it's always just kind've eerie to revisit where we used to live, especially since I came here when I was 17 years old, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ripe with hope and optimism and ready for adventure. I think of the person I was back then, what I've done in the last 12 or 13 years, the person I've become, and yeah, the word I can really use to describe the whole experience is "eerie". Like Iowa City, somehow I'm basically the same, but basically different. It's just one of those things you can't really put your finger on I guess.

Anyway, here are a couple other pics. My mom, dad, me and the misses:

And my sister and I:

Tomorrow we'll head out to LA for my cousin's wedding, hang out there for 5 or 6 days, and then head back to Japanistan. I'll update on the bottom of this post, so stay tuned, ye 2 or 3 readers. (I'd also apologize in advance for not calling anyone yet. Busy + family time + introducing new wife to family + jetlag = not a lot of time for that, nyam sayin? I know you understand.)

...or what?

2007-05-23T21:47:00.000+09:00

I've written a post or two mentioning the attitude of the Japanese workers around where I work, and how their behavior, attitude, and conduct would really not fly in regular Japanese society. This has become more evident as I've had to deal with them in situating myself with married life, and because my wife routinely points out how unacceptable their behavior is by Japanese standards. The biggest problem (and maybe the culprit) leading to this behavior is the idea of someone becoming "Americanized". Apparently, if a Japanese person is "Americanized", they're allowed to be rude, because hey, Americans are such rude barbarians when compared to the gentle, oh-so-polite Japanese, right? And if they're "Americanized", it's not really their fault, it's the fault of Chimpy McBushitlerburton's imperialistic exportation of American culture, which oppresses the poor Japanese and turns them into materialistic assfaces against their will, destroying more than a millennium of tea ceremony, rock gardens, and Mt Fuji appreciation.

Well, I don't accept this, and will gladly respond to "Americanized" Japanese workers with some good ole' Americanized confrontation, which most "Americanized" Japanese people who work here do not have the stomach for. The women who work here are especially bad, because so many of the older guys here are in semper sniffus mode and would rather pet them and give them food pellets than put their foot in their ass. Not this roundeye. Not on my watch.

Nuance

There are certain things we do when we speak or write or generally communicate to add additional meaning to what we're saying, i,e. pragmatics, which has always been really fascinating to me. A lot of this attached is lost online, but when we're face to face, it's usually pretty clear what people mean when they're saying something even if they're not explicitly saying it. Context is also really important. There are also certain things that we can add to the end of a sentence or certain words we can add to dramatically change the strength of the meaning of a simple statement, like:

"Are you kidding me?"
vs
"Are you fucking kidding me?"

For native speakers of a language, these little "rudeness markers" are intuitive and almost involuntary, though people like to pretend they aren't. I'm not really interested in native speakers today, because I'm griping about some of the Japanese staff around here. For non-native speakers, these little rudeness markers are learned, making their use very intentional. As native speakers, we throw things into our spoken language almost unintentionally, depending on our mood or what we think about someone, but even for really good non-native speakers, usage is still intentional and deliberate. At some point in their language learning career, they learned what certain grammatical patterns mean and what their nuances mean. If I want to imply something or come off harsh or like a jackass in Japanese, I know how to do it because I learned it either in class or by seeing it done by native speakers. Yes, people can make mistakes, and when I was learning I made mistakes, like the time I told someone to basically "shut the fuck up" but didn't intend it to come out so harsh, but for advanced language practitioners, particularly people whose job is the language, they don't really have an excuse. They know what they're doing.

So today a Japanese person had a question about something, and she punctuated it with "...or what?"

Notice the difference between these two sentences:

"Are we leaving?"
vs
"Are we leaving or what?"

Small difference? I think not.

I've discovered after working here for a while that the only way to deal with a so called "Americanized' Japanese person is to deal with them in "American" terms. They've come to think that being rude and excusing it as "Americanization" is acceptable, because a lot of Americans around here feel they have to be overly polite and respectful to the Japanese staff because that's the Japanese way (even if they're being rude, apparently) or, as I said before, they're on the sniff. So here's how the conversation today began:

[She enters my office]
Her: "Did you want me to do this from now on or what?"
Me [incredulous, surprised expression]: "Or what? What's that mean?"
Her: I was just wondering if you wanted me to do this from now on,
that's all.

The entire exchange was very fast. When people come at you like that, they're trying to take you off guard a little bit, so it's important not to hesitate when you respond. If you had a pair of special glasses, kind've like IR glasses, but instead of IR filters they had like a "pragmatics filter", here's how the conversation would look:

Her: I'm asking a question in a rude manner.
Me: I'm expressing my disapproval of your rudeness.
Her: I acknowledge your disapproval and that I am out of line, and
shall restate my question in a more appropriate and professional manner. Communications restored.

During these exchanges, I try to maintain pressure on whoever I'm dealing with with my tone and body language, but gradually go back to my normal relaxed self as the conversation continues, so by the time the conversation ends, we're all having a good-hearted belly laugh like at the end of an Airwolf episode. This way everyone leaves happy and no one's mad, except for me of course, even if I'm not showing it.

Americanization: No seriously, you don't have to be a jerk

While America has its share of bitches and assholes (present company not excluded), Americanization to me is more than acting like a fool in public -- it's about confidence and assertiveness born of freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and the knowledge of one's unalienable personal rights granted by none other than The Almighty Hizself (regardless of whether or not you believe in any almighty). Here in Japan where confidence and assertiveness are seen as disruptive to social harmony (i,e. rude) and personal liberties play second fiddle to group harmony, it's not a huge surprise that to them Americanized behavior generally = Rude, and therefore Rude generally = How Americans roll. My official response: Hogwash! I deal with men and women every day who somehow manage to be confident, assertive, and decidedly not rude. I could go on endless metarants about how every country has pros and cons, and how the USA and Japan have great points and bad points, but I'll simplify it and just make you a deal: If you take personal responsibility for your own rude behavior and don't attribute it to being "Americanized", I won't call it being "Japanized" the next time I see a morbidly obese 35 year old gaijin taking pictures of highschool girls' skirts and reading pornographic manga on the train. Thanks.

Safari in Japan

2007-05-14T23:36:00.000+09:00

In keeping with my subconscious desire to be attacked by a lion, me and the missez loaded up the Cima and drove to the base of Mt Fuji to a safari park they have there. It's about an hour drive on the expressway, and the tolls cost about $20. Yeah, it's a bit much, but it takes more than twice the amount of time taking non-expressway and I didn't feel like sitting in traffic for 5 or so hours of the day. Now this is a picture heavy post, so click on the pics for larger size.

So what's a Safari Park like? It's just like Jurassic Park, only instead of Dinosaurs, you have all kinds of animals that are not extinct, and instead of fully automated cars that get thrown off cliffs by Tyrannasaurii, you can drive your own car and nothing attacks you. Or at least nothing attacked me. I really wanted to peal out or lay on the horn to get the wretched animals to look at the camera, but my desire not to get kicked out kept me from doing so. They also politely ask that you remain in your car and leave your windows closed, as seen with this sign:

They have it broken down by areas, which a double gate to keep animals from mixing and creating ligers or otherwise killing each other in front of impressionable children. Here are the categories:

Bear area

Lion area

Tiger area

Cheetah area

Elephant area

Herbivore area

Mountain herbivore area

I have to say that the Safari park seems like a much better alternative to Zoos. I'm not a huge fan of either I guess, but at least in the Safari park they have more room to run around in, not to mention a good view of Mt Fuji. We started off in the bear area, with one bear strolling down the middle of the street and another one languishing in a pool.

After the bear area we went into the lion area. Near the front was a group of little lion cubs frollicking with their mommies.

I wondered why they were kind've cordoned off behind electrical wire, but it made sense after I saw all the male lions humping the female lions. Spring was definitely in the air.

Does this guy look happy? He should, cuz he just finished gettin' his freak on.

Anyone who has watched big cat diaries knows that adult male lions like to roll up gangstah style on other lion prides and kill all the previous males' youngsters to reduce gene pool competition. Hopefully this wasn't a "trial and error" process of discovery by the Safari Park... We all know how the Japanese love their cameras, and I'm sure footage of a couple male lions killing a bunch of cubs would have been a black eye for the park.

All the tigers were hiding, so we blew through that area and into the Cheetah area. We didn't see any open-savannah style running of course -- the Cheetahs were in full-on Chester Cheetah mode, as seen here.

The elephants were busy being big and awe inspiring, and I thought that it might be a good story if an elephant shat on my car. Bird shit is one thing. But Elephant shit? That's something you never hear about.

I actually enjoyed the herbivore area. They had lots of different types of animals there, cuz, you know, herbivores annihilate the herb, not each other. Killing is the last thing on your mind after annihilating some herb. They had zebras, giraffes, bison, antelope, goats, yaks, camels, and even some flamingos and ostriches. Picture time.

I tried getting this giraffe in with Mt Fuji, but neither party wanted to cooperate. Almost though.

I spent a lot of time checking out this bison. Weird to think that the US used to be covered with these fellers, until the White Man came through and exterminated them all. Who can blame them though? They're tasty.

If you pay a little extra, you can look at the animals in one of these ridiculous busses. The advantage is that you can feed some of the animals I guess. The disadvantage would be that you can't get good pictures because of the bars on the side, and a lion can bite your hand off. It also wasn't that warm ouside, so I was happy we decided to drive ourselves. The camels were the first ones over to get some chow.

There were some Rhinos hanging out, and the Zebras were walkin' down the street like they owned the place. Let's see how smug they act when we accidentally leave the lion gate ajar. I wonder if anyone has ever hit an animal with their car there? Maybe just given it a nudge? It's tempting, but I didn't want a zebra to mule-kick my windshield, so I let them act like they were in charge.

In the mountain herbivore area they had some elk. I think they were elk. Maybe caribou. I'm not sure. There were some mountain goats too. All in all, the animals seemed fat 'n' lazy, which is no doubt a biproduct of having a non-competetive food supply and that no creatures are trying eat them.

After the drive safari part (or before, depending on your preference), there is a little area where you can go up and get a close look at some of God's wonderful creatures, including, but not limited to:

Merekats

Kangaroos

Two huge dogs that look like Barkley from Sesame Street and are probably 2 or 3 tail-pullings from ripping out a Japanese child's throat

Tony's favorite animal

A couple seals

A miniature pony race, which was really funny

I loves me some Merekats, so we snapped off a shot.

Since it is Fuji Safari Park, it's right at the foot of Mt Fuji, so me and the missez took some obligatory shots. Here's the missez, lookin perdy as ever.

Here's me, looking not-so-perdy as ever, sportin' my jits t-shirt.

After we finished with the Safari, we cruised to an outlet mall and bought household acoutrements (I demand you pronounce it "ah-koo-twuh-muuuh"), headed back to our neck of the woods, and consumed an inappropriate amount of sushi. I had 16 plates, in addition to some other goodies.

My only complaints about the Safari park was that there were no wildebeest. I have a really good idea for a "Trials of Life" section of the park, where you could have a mile long race-track filled with Wildebeest. They'd just run around in circles, not unlike their migratory life cycle in Africa, eating, pooping, humping, and getting brutally killed by all manner of predatory animals. People could pay a fee to watch a feeding session, where a lion chases after the herd and tries to kill one of them. If the lion fails, it gets the crap shocked out of it by an electrified collar, because if we can't get some pleasure out of watching a lion disembowel a gnu, at least we can watch a lion flail around on the ground getting electrishocked. Everyone's a winner.

Either way, Fuji Safari Park is a good way to spend the day.

Is something burning? part deux...

2007-05-07T11:21:00.000+09:00

Someone's pants are on fire, and I think it's really funny.

Yeah, I'm a civilian, but I work on a base, and the base provides me housing. They have to. It's in something called a "transportation agreement", that says "We moved you out here, and we must provide you housing." It's pretty nice, except when you start running into bureaucrats who think they can pull a fast one on you or strong arm folks into doing what they want you to do. Anytime you deal with people like that, they forget that people like me are the customer and they are responsible for serving me, not the other way around. I don't exist to provide a body to fill in their housing unit, no no. They exist to provide me with "adequate" housing. Notice the TUOQ there to emphasise the subjectivity of "adequate".

Don't Strong Arm me, Mmkay?

I don't like it when people put the proverbial screws on me, especially when it's an organization like the aforementioned housing department. Just the notion that they would put the screws on me for whatever reason is pretty offensive, and I will do everything within reason not to bend. Unfortunately for them, I married someone born and raised in Japan, who likes being strong armed even less, and who has higher standards for quality of living than I do. The result? Let's find out.

"We're doing you a favor"

On Friday the housing department extended an olive branch. "Here's an apartment," they said. "Do you want it or not?" "Well," I answered, "I'm not going to say yay or nay until my wife sees it." This should be obvious to anyone who's married. They seemed a little confused, so I innocently asked them, "Don't you think it's important to involve your spouse in the decision making process?" to which they were like "OH YES of course it is," at which point they started to apply the screws.

My wife's apartment lease ended last Saturday, so we had to move her whole life down here then. I was faced with a dilemma -- where to put it? It won't fit in my place now, so I headed to the housing department and asked if there was somewhere to put it. "No problem," said the lady. "We should be able to find somewhere."

So fast forward to when they're offering the new apartment. I say, "I don't want to say yes or no until my wife sees it," and the lady responds with, "Well, if you accept it, you can put her stuff in there and wait until you move in. If you don't accept it, well, we don't have anywhere to put her things. Not only that," she continued, "but if you decline it, you'll be put to the bottom of the housing list." "Are there a lot of people on the list now?" I asked, "Oh yeah," she chortled, making it clear that it would be a very long wait (she did the "laugh while saying 'oh yeah' for emphasis" thing). In other words, I don't have to accept what they offer, that is, if I don't mind living with all my wife's stuff and being moved to the bottom of the housing priority list.

I was in the Marines for 5 years. I know when I'm gettin' strong armed.

So on Saturday, the wife and I move all her stuff down, and we go check out the housing unit. She didn't like it (I knew she wouldn't), and I encouraged her to turn it down if she didn't like it. I want her to be happy with the place, and I didn't like the feeling of being railroaded into accepting it. Hated it, in fact. So when she said "No," I skipped down to housing and reported it.

Since it was Saturday, the normal lady wasn't there. The guy who was there (we'll call him "M") was super cool and had no vested interest in the married housing thing. When he heard about my situation, he made a phone call (on a Saturday, remember), and within 5 minutes we had a place to put her stuff. M told me to stop by on Monday and we'd talk some more. So much for the "no where to put your stuff thing" eh?

So today I went to housing with the new guy in my office, and I found out that there is no one after me on the housing list. The lady had some wiggle room on the "there's no where to put your stuff" thing, because maybe there wasn't anywhere to put it here (we had to drive it to a different housing area), so she could maybe claim that's what she meant. But the other one is pretty cut and dry.

Me: Are there other people on the list?
Her: Oh yeah.

I asked a question, she answered in the affirmative, when the answer was actually the negative.

I think she grossly underestimated my Strongarmdar (that's a radar for being strongarmed), my aversion to it, and my insatiable hunger to find out everything I can about whatever situation I am in. She also should have, I dunno, either let everyone in on her lie, or maybe lied to everyone in the office, just in case I wasn't as stupid as she thought I was. Part of me gets a kick out of this, because in a way I think I called her bluff. Had I accepted the unit, I wouldn't have found out that there were areas to put my wife's stuff, and I wouldn't have found out about no one else being on the list. The dynamic has changed, and if I feel the screws being applied once more, well, I have a blatant lie in my back pocket, ready for use. Hopefully I don't have to bust it out.

Married..!

2007-04-26T18:37:00.000+09:00

Married..!

That's right, my babies, the Knot hath been tiedethed. I am betrothed. This bull is officially in pasture. Kind've.

Since the ceremony isn't going to be until January, we went down to the city hall and turned in all the necessary paperwork. I was amazed at how easy it was, because experience tells us that when dealing with city halls and paperwork and whatnot here in Japan, there's always a catch. I talked to an international lawyer about why it was so easy to do, and he just said, "Well, the Japanese aren't really flooding the USA wanting to work there, so it's no biggie." I guess I had my ducks lined up in a row all nice and neat, with the proper translations and everything, because 45 minutes or so after arriving, it was done!

The Embassy website here is pretty awesome for information, and have ready-made forms available. The tone of the directions to getting married is almost flippant, kind've like "yeah, you know, just to this and this, you're good." I printed out a little form that was a "fill in the blank" for translation purposes (gotta get the English version) and the new Missez translated it. Kinda cool I thought -- our official English version is hand written by her. In the appropriate spaces at least. Since marriages here are recognized in the USA, the next step is to grab some form and bring it along with our English version up to the Embassy, which is a huge pain in the ass but mighty necessary.

We're moving into a pretty big place (3 bedrooms = big?) pretty soon here, so if you wanna come and stay 'bout an hour outside the hottest spots in Tokyo (by train), be sure to hit us up.

I don't really mean that of course, but I'm all grownsed up now so I hafta maintain appearances. *sniff*

Either way, I'm really happy. It seems strange to be Married because it's such an adult thing to do, which ought to make sense because I'm 30, but it feels right. I hope you all get to meet her soon.

Give Them Their Moment

2007-04-19T21:04:00.000+09:00

I really didn't want to chime in about what happened at VA Tech, because as I've told a few folks, I'm distant -- physically and emotionally -- from it. I'm a few thousand miles away, and I didn't know anyone there. It sounds cold, but it's how it is. This of course doesn't keep me from seeing what a tragedy it was and being saddened by the course of events, but I'm not going to concentrate on that right now.

Last night I was talking to the future missez about the memorial in Hiroshima, and some common reactions that Americans have about it. As an American with knowledge of what the Japanese were up to in WWII, it was hard for me not to walk through there and roll my eyes a little bit. There's Hiroshi's tricycle, there's Sachiko's lunch box. I couldn't help but think I, as an American, was being made to feel guilty about little kids getting vaporized, knowing full well that the Japanese were running around Manchuria bayoneting babies and burying villagers alive by the thousands. I discussed this with her, and she brought up a good point. The memorial is not about Nanking, it's not about Pearl Harbor, it's not about what the extra curricular activities of the Japanese soldiers. It's not about remembering the war, it's about remembering the residents of Hiroshima who were going about their daily lives and were killed either in the blink of an eye, or worse yet, by radiation poisoning. A lot of the time I was thinking, "Why would an ethnic Korean care? The Japanese have a history of discriminating against you guys." But to her, it wasn't about politics, ethnicity, or race -- it was much simpler. The memorial is what it is, which is something to help us remember the horrors of dropping a nuclear bomb on a fully populated city. Nothing more, nothing less. I was basically politicizing it based on my own background, which takes the focus off those who lost their lives that day, who likely had nothing to do with what the Imperial Army's actions across Asia. The memorial is about giving them their moment of remembrance, which isn't a lot to ask.

This morning, my discussion with her fresh in my mind, I saw this video:

To me, what was a beautiful, powerful speech, was marred by the following addition:

We do not understand this tragedy
We know we did nothing to deserve it
But neither does a child in Africa dying of aids
Neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army
Neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water
Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of night in his crib in the home its father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized

Try as I may, I can't understand why it was necessary to put that in there. It killed it for me. This was a service to remember the students that lost their lives a few days ago, not suffering in general. Yes, there is suffering in the world, but like so many people in the limelight, she used the wrong forum to express her personal views on a general subject. Comparing the suffering of the thousands directly affected by Cho Seung Hui's shooting spree to an emotionally distraught baby elephant borders on comedic absurdity. There is a time and a place to showcase the suffering of Appalachians living on unstable plots of earth, and a memorial at VA Tech seemed an inappropriate venue. Many public figures think that tragedy raises them above reproach, but I disagree. Mentioning Africans, Mexicans, Appalachians, and pachyderms draws more attention away from faces and names of the people being remembered than it does raise awareness to the unrelated suffering of anonymous symbols across the world. Ms Giovanni clearly has misplaced priorities, and cheapened an opportunity to give those students the moment they deserved.

Semper Sniffus

2007-04-17T15:38:00.000+09:00

You ever meet someone who's always "on the sniff"? "Sniffing" is a word to describe a guy who is aggressively in the act of chasing women. A British friend always says it -- he calls people "sniffers" and describes some people as "always on the sniff". It perfectly conjures the image of a dog running around from person to person, sniffing asses and putting their nose in crotches, making situations embarrassing and a little awkward for the rest of civilized humanity. No matter where you are or what you're doing, they simply can't resist and enthusiastically give in to their urges. They can't not "put it out there" or make some comment to just about any woman that walks by. It's almost as if they can't go to bed at night unless they have some sort of banter with a woman, no matter how inappropriate the situation or how awkward a situation it might create.

Semper Sniffus -- Always Sniffing

Asia seems to attract a lot of these guys. Like A LOT. Like "Are you fucking kidding me?" a lot. And for the purpose of today's blog, I'm not going to be talking about young single guys -- it's natural for young guys running around Japan to be on the sniff -- who wouldn't be? I'm talking about older guys. Older married guys. Older like in-their-50s-guys who can't order food, get a ticket, or so much as walk down the street without throwin' out the "vibe". I like referring to these old guys as "creepsters". In Thailand, they are known as "Germans".

Why this behavior offends me

Believe it or not, I couldn't really care less of some dude it being unfaithful to his wife unless it directly effects me (i,e. I'm being called in for an investigation of his infidelity or I'm put in the "cover for this guy" or "rat him out" position that people are so fond of putting me in). Granted, I'm not going to trust the guy either. There was a guy I worked with in Afghanistan named Rob, whose nickname was "The Bipolar Express". I actually saw him shoot a loaded bus in the engine with an M4 once. Anyway, one time he told me about when he first started working border patrol (great job for "The Bipolar Express," I know). "I tell you man, I got the best advice my first day," he said, in the intense way he said anything and everything. "This guy told me to never trust guys who fuck around on their wives. He told me to watch 'em, and sure as shit, the guys that always talked about fucking around on their wives? Couldn't fuggin trust em man. So I never trust a man who fucks around on his wife. Ever." I thought this was pretty good advice, and in general, a pretty good way to calibrate your moral compass.

While I feel that whatever disfunctions exist between man and wife are between man and wife, sniffers still piss me off for a number of reasons, namely:

1) Stop wasting my time

I'd say 95% of the human-to-human-interaction-type jobs here (and by "here" I mean in the area I work, not in Japan) are filled by women, who in general are not ugly. Sometimes I'll walk into some personnel section and think to myself, "This is ridiculous, I can't believe no one is getting fired for unethical hiring practices." That's how bad it is some places. The result? It seems like whenever I'm trying to get some stupid paperwork done anywhere, there's some jackass sniffin' on the Japanese staff. This will always be a problem because even if the Japanese staff were direct enough to tell them to fuck off (most aren't), the sniffers are too socially inept to really understand that they're being told to go away. "Get the fuck out of your office? lolz you're so cute when you say that, I want to give you jellybeans. *sniffsniff*"

So pretty please, with sugar on top, stop sniffing on the support personnel. I need to get a signature most riki-tik and I probably left my lights on.

2) I have a problem with presumptuous people

I mentioned that I don't care about what goes on in someone else's relationship, but how do these guys know that? They don't. They just presume that I routinely violate the trust of a woman I have pledged my trust to, and that I condone similar actions. Why do these guys presume that I approve of their lifestyle? Why do they think that I'm OK with adultury and listening to their lecherrous thoughts on women that I work with? Do they think I never tire of the question, "Oh yeah? How's she look?" when talking about any member the opposite sex? And most importantly, why is it inappropriate for me to tell these guys that they're scumbags and to stop wasting my time by talking to every woman that walks by?!?!

3) I believe in Equality

Most people, particularly people who haven't historically enjoyed equal status, like to say they want equality, but they really don't mean it. Most people don't want to be equal -- most people want preferential treatment. They want to be acknowledged for being different, but only in a good way. Anything less, including being treated equally, isn't good enough for them. Sniffers put women on a pedestal and give them preferential treatment, in effect turning back the hands of Women's Equality because women don't have to perform equally if they are decent looking (again, subjective). I see it in a lot of interactions with the customer service women around here -- they have an attitude that most Japanese people simply don't have. I can hear it in their voice when they treat me like a sniffer and throw some snark at me, and I can see it in their shocked and horrified expressions when I sneer at them with naked disgust and repeat back whatever bullshit they chirped at me oh-so-passive-aggressively.

Holy crap, are you ok? You look like someone shot you in the face with a paintball gun.

No, Paully treated me with equality and professionalism, and I owe him thanks.

Yeah right. I wish it'd go down like that, but instead they say that I have a poor relationship with my mother or I am a misogynist. No shit -- informants have told me so. That's what they say, even though I'm their closest ally in the fight for equality.

I got a little off track there, but it's all related to the snifing epidemic and why it irritates me so much. Are you on always on the sniff? Are you married and you:

Compliment every woman in the service industry

Strike up meaningless conversations with women in the service industry

Ask service industry women retarded questions and interrupt them in their work

Make shit out of other guys in your party in an attempt to establish yourself as "the funny guy" when women are around

Ask about the status of every woman you come in contact with

Are unable to carry on a simple conversation because you can't keep your eyes off every woman that walks by

Make heavily nuanced comments about every woman that you meet

Be overly friendly and supportive to "good looking" (subjective) women at work and treat the swamp donkeys like non-people

If an outside sniffer takes an interest in "your women", refer to the person as a "pig" and repeatedly bring up the fact that he's married

Answer yes to any of these real situations? Congrats, you're a sniffer, and I don't think we can be friends.

RIP Kurt

2007-04-12T15:14:00.000+09:00

If you haven't already heard, Kurt Vonnegut died today at the tender age of 84.

While Mr Vonnegut and I certainly didn't see eye-to-eye on many contemporary issues, I always held him in high regard for getting me heavly into reading (particularly contemporary literature).

In highschool I took AP English because I heard that you didn't have to learn English grammar if you made it in. All four years of highschool we were supposed to be reading books, but I liked to play a little game I called "Don't read the book and see if you can still pass", which I really regret -- I missed out on some good reading. Finally in my senior year I decided to go ahead and actually read the books assigned, the first of which was The Great Gatsby. "Woe", I thought. "This is pretty good shit. Maybe I'll read the next one too." The second book assigned was Slaughterhouse 5, and I was an instant Vonnegut fan.

I met a Cuban fellow by the name of Jose, who is the father of my cousin's ex-girlfriend. Jose is the most hyper-intelligent, least formally educated person I'd ever met (and probably have ever met). The first time I met him, I was taking a nap on his couch waiting for my cousin to wake me up. Unbeknownest to me, my cousin had left me there in a strange house owned by people who I didn't know. Anyway, I woke up and Jose was putting weed into a pipe and working on a painting about Princess Diana's death. It was a work in progress, and looked like a 3rd grader had made it. "Do you want some?", He asked, motioning to his pipe. "No thanks," I said, "I'm joining the Marines in 1 week." So we talked for a bit, and I noticed he had some Vonnegut books on his shelf. "I love Kurt Vonnegut," I proclaimed, and Jose stopped what he was doing and looked at me. "One time I was talking to someone on the phone, and he referred to Kurt Vonnegut as 'mind candy'. Mind candy!", said Jose in his accented Cubano English. "Do you know what I said to him, Paully?" he asked. I waited a moment for his response.

"I said, 'You know what? Fuck you.'", he plainly stated, punctuating it with a triumphant hit off his pipe, and continued painting a flaming car with blood flying out of the windows.

For some reason I always thought Mr. Vonnegut would have gotten a kick out of that -- maybe even would have found it strangely appropriate.

Had to be there I guess.

RIP Kurt.

...More adventures...

2007-04-09T20:49:00.000+09:00

I apologize for neglecting my blog. I'm sure all of my four viewers have their browsers up, hitting "refresh" in desperation and wondering why I have forsaken them.

Suffice it to say I've been busy, but then again that's not really an excuse. It's not that nothing has been going on, I've just been too lazy to write anything. So let's whoop it on. Click on the pics for bigger images.

Last weekend we had a little engagement party..! My friend organized it for me, which was really cool of him. We atually stayed out until the trains started back up again at 5:30, which is good because instead of spending $40 for a cab ride, you spend $4 for the train. I think I spent a total of $15, because people were buying us drinks, and we just walked past the cover-charge desk and no one said anything. That's how we roll, folks. Before the club though we went to an izakaya and had some beer and food. Izakayas are a great deal of fun.

Here's me and the Akinator with our engagement icecream.

Here's a closer look at it.

It says "Paul *heart* Aki" and "Congratulations on the Engagement".

After the izakaya, we went to a club called "Camelot". I think that's a pretty ridiculous name for a club, but it's always a good time, and we're usually the only roundeye there. Here's me and the wimminfolks.

And no, that's not Quest Love in the background. That's my friend Damon. He's a cool dude, and caters parties here in Tokyo specializing in soul food. It's fun to get him going on local soul food places here run by Japanese people, and how disgusting he finds them. "I saw him making fried chicken with salt and pepper!! What's that?!" Here's a picture of him and Henry.

I was glad Henry came out. It was his first time "out on the town" after a year and a half in Tokyo (he's married) and he hung like a champ. He's a mutant, one of my best friends out here, and makes me feel like a defenseless infant on the mat 3 times a week. He really kicks my ass.

All in all it was an absolutely awesome night, and I really appreciated everyone coming out and paying for me and the future missez.

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine from the states came to visit -- one Wade A. We were in the Marines together, and due to some unfortunate events that he was very much in control oh, his parting from the marines was, how shall we say, under other than favorable conditions. He's still my friend though and I've known him since 1998.

We went out for the obligatory drunk fest over the weekend, and I took a day off during the week so that we could go to Kamakura, home of the really huge freaking Buddha.

Here's me standing in front of it.

Kamakura is like the Las Vegas of temples. I mean, if there were temples instead of casinos in Las Vegas. And less lights. We went to an assload of little templets -- that's a word I made up referring to little temples kinda tucked away here and there. It's easy to get all templed and shrined out when going to places like Kamakura and Kyoto; it's hard to keep track after a while. Here are some cool pictures though.

This picture was taken at Hasedera. I kept referring to it as the Smurf Army, until I found out that the figuring are actually for unborn babies that have died.

Here's another shot.

It's a little sad, because people who have lost children bring little toys and bibs and hats for the figurines. I of course didn't know this, and felt bad later.

Here are some big Buddhist feet. I'm not really sure what it means.

The little sign says "Please don't 'ride' on top." I know those look like swastikas, but they're not.

Here's a little waterfall I posed by.

We also walked along the beach, and since I love birds, even ravens, I took a picture of a few of them enjoying the view with us.

I also played with a squirrel, which tore the shit out of my finger. He didn't get his picture for that.

So there you have it. Adventurepan, Adventures in Japan guaranteed.

Rules Rule

2007-03-27T22:37:00.000+09:00

I have a certain take on rules. In practice, it's probably not much different than how most Americans regard rules, but I think that depending on the outcome of my choices, my viewpoint is a much different than my esteemed countrymen.

Again, as with most Americans, I tend to follow rules so long as they when the need suits me, and to ignore rules that are pointless or inconvenient. Rules are for other people.

Breaking Rules

When I encounter a rule that is pointless or inconvenient, I do a quick risk assessment to determine the following criteria:

What are the chances of me getting caught?

If I get got, what are the potential followup inconveniences?

This takes about 2 seconds, and it works because I'm not a (complete) retard.

One thing to remember here is that I (generally) live my life by the "Do unto others" golden rule, so I don't really need to factor in "harm to others" or "possibilities of someone coming after me to kick my ass". I don't take things that aren't mine, and I don't fuck other people over. Of course, there is the odd exception when one someone else puts us in a position where we have no choice but to do something cruel, but like I always say: While we should never revel in cruelty, we must acknowledge that some people need a good dose of it from time to time.

I digress.

The biggest difference between my outlook and most other peoples' outlook is that I acknowledge my own personal accountability if I get caught being bad. If I get dinged for speeding, the cop is not being an asshole, he's doing his job. Some might say the cop is being a prick for pulling me over for going 3 miles over the speedlimit, I say "Well, I was going 3 miles over the speed limit." Stuff like that pisses me off, but I can only be mad at myself.

As I've mentioned in a lot of other posts, many aspects Japanese peoples' viewpoints "in general" is a complete 180 of how I do business, and rules are one of these areas. And when I say anything about "Japanese" in this post, just pretend I wrote "in general" after it. Also, I'm not saying in this post that the Japanese never break rules -- quite the contrary -- but I think their motives and "risk assessment" are based on totally different things, which I might talk about some other time.

Japanese society is very ordered. The Japanese educational system encourages uniformity, and deviation from the norm is punished by shunning and bullying at all levels. While it breeds a very compliant society indeed, it also breeds an incredibly inflexible and uncreative one. I get someone in my office at work almost every day asking for guidance on some trivial matter, and if I have a few minutes or I'm feeling saucey, I get a kick out of asking them what their opinion is on an official matter that they could possibly be held accountable for. Unlike Americans, they won't tell me their opinion or say what a bunch of retards their co-workers are. Instead, they'll maneuver the conversation to try and get me to say what my opinion is, which they'll repeat back to me (expecting me to say "yes") and then leave, so they can tell everyone in their office what the "official" opinion is. This process can sometimes bring people on the verge of tears, depending on how persistent I am in being a pain. A couple weeks ago I kept pushing a woman I work with for her opinion on something and she squatted down on the ground and put her face between her knees. It was a little awkward. (This is an extreme case -- she's a little nutty.)

In Japan, the fact that a rule is a rule is, in and of itself, a reason to enforce it, where in the USA, people who unquestionably enforce rules are ridiculed. In the USA if we encounter a rule that we think is stupid at, say, a store or a gym and we question the worker about it, they will either laugh it off and let you do whatever you want, or they'll say "Look man, I don't make the rules and I don't wanna get fired, so just do it OK?" In Japan, if you question a rule, the person will simply say, "It's a rule", and that's that. If you tell them it's a stupid rule, they'll simply repeat themselves. Here, the value of a rule isn't determined by what the rule is "ruling". The value of the rule lies in the fact that it's a rule, which is good enough.

I'd like to mention that I don't fight rules here, I just comply, because if a rule is written it will be enforced with a last dying breath. I always get a kick out of other roundeye who come here and try and talk their way around rules though, and listen to them talk about how stupid the store clerk or gym attendent was for simply repeating "It's a rule" over and over again.

A good example of how this mentality is both good and bad here in Japan is in how Japanese people deal with cross-walks. Jaywalking in Japan is almost unheard, and if you do it, people you don't know will gasp audibly, and your Japanese friends will "mention it to you."

"I aaah noticed you Jaywalked back there."
"Yeah."
"Not to common over here..."
"Yeah."

That's Japanese for, "Ix-nay on the aywalking-jay, assface."

The result? Fewer people get nailed by oncoming traffic, right?

*but*

When Japanese people cross the street, they don't look both ways, because it doesn't really fit into their reality that a car would come out of nowhere and flatten them. The crosswalk light is green, after all, so the traffic light must be red. Rules are rules.

Another thing that's common is, because of a rule's intrinsic value, the spirit of a rule is totally ignored and it is followed to the letter. Recently, it was decreed that all bicyclists in this area will wear helmets. So now there are a bunch of people riding around with either construction worker hardhats or full-on motorcycle helmets (which is really funny). Rule's aren't interpreted, and if you're not careful directing your Japanese coworkers, pandemonium will ensue. (Japanese people also take this to an extreme by playing dumb, and do things that would get you screamed at in the USA. That doesn't work here though, because after all, you didn't specify the rule well enough, so it's not their fault, it's your fault.)

The reason I thought about this today is because I had a conversation with a Japanese lawyer about name-changing after marriage. Does she have to change her name? Can she keep her name in Japan for Japanese things (it's way easier socially) and be my last name in the states? And what I got was a little bit more like a Monty Python skit. I was getting a kick out of it at first, but in the end it was a frustrating experience. It went something like this:

"Can she keep her last name here but have my last name in the USA?"

"In Japan, one of you must change your name. Those are the rules."

"OK, what if we don't? What if she keeps her last name here but when we go to the states someday she takes on my last name there?"

"Oh I see, you want to change your name to her last name then."

"No, I'm not changing my last name."

"We Japanese change our last name."

"Well this is kind've different, given my status here."

"Ok, so she'll have your last name here in Japan."

"No, no one is going to change their name. She's going to keep her last name here and I'm going to keep mine."

*pause*

"One of you must change your last name."

"What if we don't? What are the penalties? Do they check?"

"...So you will take her last name?"

The whole time he was illustrating his points using circles and boxes on a piece of paper, just for clarity. It's like playing those old text based games, where you're telling it to do something really really simple but, since it's not within the 4 or 5 choices possible, it simply doesn't work. That's how I feel a lot of times in Japan.

As I said before, I don't like telling the people here that the rule they are steadfastly defending is retarded, I get a kick out of reactions I see when I tell them that I will be violating a rule that they themselves are not accountable for enforcing. Many people here can't really wrap their minds around the fact that an unenforced rule is not really a rule.

Obsessive adherence to rules, whether they be social or written, make Japan great, but at the same time cripple it. An insistence to cling to rules or values because it's what "should" be done because everyone else is doing it and because that's how it's always be done. It's one of the dualities that makes living here so interesting and frustrating.

...Time to clear the Air...

2007-03-19T22:20:00.000+09:00

Ever since I stopped working in Afghanistan, I've continued supplying the company I worked for with fresh bodies for the grinder.

Just kiddin' about the grinder part. But seriously, I enjoy hooking people up with the company -- they're an amazing group of guys who have somehow managed to run a contracting company with integrity and a solid reputation, and I like introducing them to solid guys I know who don't mind a little bullshit for a 6 figure salary.

Right now I'm trying to hook up another friend of mine, and we talked about some of the dangers involved. I told him a little about my token carbomb experience, which I briefly wrote about here after it happened.

Today at work I decided to google the names of one of the guys that I knew who got killed, and I found an article that had me somewhat incredulous, linked here. The story was written last Christmas, which one would think would give everyone time to reflect and maybe get their facts straight. I'd like to go ahead and point out some aspects of it that I found silly or just not true. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or rude, I just want to set the record straight on a few key points. This is one of those times where I can honestly say I was there, before, during, and after, and know some background on the situation. I know some of the key members of the story and I know a lot of the facts (or factual errors) contained within. It awoke some of my sleeping demons, and I've never really written about it but I think about it all the time.

Ok, let's dive in.

Mr. Owens' predecessor was killed in an al-Qaeda bomb attack in 2004. In May, a DynCorp police trainer was killed in a suicide bomb attack while sitting behind armored plating in an SUV identical to the one Mr. Owens uses to transport his boss.

The attack was a suicide bomber

According to this article, the bomber was not a suicide bomber. One of their names is Mohammed Haider, who was responsible for orchestrating the attack. He drove up to the side of the building, jumped out of the car, ran down the street, and blew up the car.

He was not sitting inside an armored car.

None of the excursions we used at the time were up-armored. His predecessor, who is mentioned below and who we nicknamed "Tactical Steve" because he was always decked out in highspeed gear, was standing outside when it happened.

Next.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Herbert Lloyd, whom Mr. Owens guards as DynCorp's top commander in Afghanistan, refers to the company's mission as "God's work." Whenever he sits down to eat inside one of DynCorp's communal mess halls, he bows his head in silent prayer while his staff members either bow their own heads or sit silently.

This is completely true. Herb Lloyd was the project manager of our get up and insisted on being called "The General", which none of us would. I always got a kick out of him because he was so obese that he couldn't even close his body armor. His front plate was constantly at a 45 degree angle and he was unable to fasten the velcro straps. After almost getting whacked, he would run around waving his arms talking about God and Jesus, sometimes to the Nepalese workers, who weren't Christians and couldn't understand English hardly at all. No one liked Mr Lloyd. He wanted to be treated like a King, and didn't like people from our company because we didn't show enough reverence. Funny though, he would never talk to us, he would just call our boss and tell him that we were disrespectful and lazy because we wouldn't hop to our feet when he walked in the room. Anytime we were working on something he would come in and demand to know what we were doing, then call our boss and bitch about something.

Here's my favorite quote:

"I loved John Deuley (Tactical Steve). We were really close. ... I don't think there was anything we could've done to prevent that [attack]. I really believe that," Gen. Lloyd said.

This is ridiculous. Check out this picture of the bomb site, that my friend took from the top of the building:

As you can see, there's about 12 feet between the crater (the giant pothole) and the building. There were no barriers, and people moved back and forth through that street unopposed. One of the reasons we were not there when the bomb went off is because we knew it was going to get hit. We knew that from day one. We avoided that house at all costs. Based on common sense and a basic understanding of "soft targets" and which of our compounds was the most likey to get hit we avoided that house like the plague.

Another DynCorp executive back in Texas, Richard Cashon, is named in the widows' suit as another "agent" of what they allege is the company's lax decision-making on security. Although neither he nor Gen. Lloyd are listed as defendants, both are accused of putting financial concerns ahead of the lives of their employees and not taking even minimal precautions, such as parking company vehicles to block the street and serve as deterrent barriers, to protect the staff from attack.

Ya think? Just look at the picture. There was a huge sliding blue metal door into the compound. They never found it.

The suit also suggests that DynCorp had taunted al-Qaeda into attacking by choosing a house formerly used by its leader, Osama bin Laden, as the DynHouse headquarters.

This was the big fucking joke. People yucked this one up a lot. "This here was Oosama Beiin Laaahden's hayuss! He done planned naain wuun wuun heyurr!!" But they didn't hit that house because Osama lived there. They hit it because they could. Fortunately, the kitchen was under renovations, or it would have been a complete bloodbath. Coincidence that they hit it at 5:30pm? I think not. That was the height of dinner. The place had been cased, but lucky for us AQ was about a week off from killing 50+ people. (We ate at a different compound anyway.) If the house we stayed at just down the road had been hit at the exact time, I would be hamburger meat right now, because we were outside on the street the instant the bomb went off.

DynCorp, which was a contractor to the State Department and therefore a representative of the U.S. government, could not simply block streets or install machine-gun posts without the host government's approval, Mr. Cashon said.

The day after the attack, huge jersey barriers blocked off the streets around all the compounds with three armed guards manning the checkpoints at all times. Didn't seem to take too much time then.

God's Work

Funny how God and Money are mutually inexclusive. Before I went to work in Afghanistan, my dad asked me if I was doing it to serve patriotism or whatever. I chuckled and said, "No, it's all about the money." Anyone who says any differently is delusional. Let's see how many people apply for work in Afghanistan or the middle east for $30k a year. Oh wait, they do. They're called "service members".

Everyone who works for a contracting company knows the score. Some people do it because they want to look cool, some people want some adventure, but in the end, it all comes down to money. It's all about money. The companies want money. The employees want money. I figured as long as there was money to get, I may as well get it while the gettin' was good, and I got my small slice of the pie, but it's nowhere near what these companies are making.

I don't think that Herb Lloyd is a bad man. I'm sure he was deeply affected by the deaths of those involved, because he is a person and because he acted like a complete loon for a while after the blast -- I can't say I'd act any differently. But that article is blowing some serious smoke, and I found it a little bit tough to swallow. I don't know if the families of those killed got their money in the suits they filed against the company, but there is no doubt in my mind or the minds of anyone I worked with that it could have and should have been avoided. We knew from day one that it was not a matter of if, but a matter of when, and if we were thinking that than policy makers must have been thinking the same thing.

John picked me up from the airport after I'd flown on a mission somewhere, I think to Jalalabad, the day before the bomb. I sometimes think about him running his mouth up in the front seat, joking about this and that, all of us completely oblivious that he would be blown in half the next day. I think about all he left behind (three children), and other people I've known who have died prematurely for whatever reason when I kiss my girl good night and thank my lucky stars that I was just down the street and not at the blast site -- it seems disrespectful not to.

...are you asking me for a CHALLENGE?!?!?

2007-03-15T22:55:00.000+09:00

Today I got this question from someone about UFC/MMA:

I got to thinking after watching Hughes wrestling /
boxing / jiujitsu style of fighting and how prevalent
that is within the UFC, what happened to all the Bruce
Lee type dudes?

This is a stupid, but serious question, but doesn't
the dominance of someone like Hughes with that type of
style just go to prove that all those flashy strikes
and jumping around and that kind of shit may look good
in the movies, but are really just a waste of time on
the street?

Seriously, has there been some pure martial artist
(Karate, Kung-Fu, Shaolin Monkiness) that has done
well in one of these tourneys?

That, my friend, is a wonderful question.

Notice how whenever you're watching UFC or Pride or any MMA bout, you will never ever see this:

If Mister Miyagi was a master of karate and could kick anyone's ass, wouldn't he dominate any MMA competition?

Why is it that so many people you meet who claim to be a "black belt" in a martial art are about are about as warrior-like as a labradoodle and you feel you could probably take 'em?

I think as a lot of people who grew up watching the karate kid are probably wondering what's up with all this.

Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) like aikido, taekwondo, etc, are just that -- traditional -- and things based on and emphasizing tradition and form above all else are rarely all that practical. Failure of something to adapt and evolve in an ever changing world is a good way to get passed up, and fighting styles are no different. TMA folks aren't doing it for the practicality of it, they're doing it for the tradition of it, and die-hard practitioners of TMAs, when asked about practicality against other forms, will likely dismiss other forms as being "impure" or argue why their arts are so much more practical by explaining how they would counter this and that or utilize pressure points and death strikes.

By coincidence, in the gym locker room today, I overheard a conversation between someone asking an aikido guy what the difference between jiujitsu and aikido was. According to the Aikido guy, a US Army officer, Aikido was much more practical for soldiers because in a combat situation, it is much more useful to break someone's neck than to roll around with them on the ground.

One reason TMA practitioners will give for their suspicious absence in MMA tournaments is that their art is "too lethal" and that they don't want to kill their opponent.

Nothing says "I'm gonna let you break my neck" like this picture:

Check out this vid to see him pwning with strikes and grappling.

So what is it about the grappling/wrestling and kick boxing that makes these guys so much better than the Masters of Aikido? Why is it that any state-level high school wrestler could own a most taekwondo blackbelts? Why am I confident that as a lowly BJJ blue belt, I could easy submit any of the aikido blackbelts that work out at the gym on base? The answer is pretty simple:

Sparring.

Combat sports like kickboxing and grappling all have that in common. While TMA practitioners are working on their katas and moves that only work if the person does what they want them to do, grapplers and kickboxers are sparring. Three times a week when I train, at some point during the "sparring" session, I will go for at least 6 minutes at 100% of my abilities to try and submit the other guy, and he is trying to do the same thing to me. Sparring is exhausting and conditions a person physically, while getting them used to up close and personal one-on-one competition where losing sucks and often times hurts like a bitch. Imagine only dry-firing a gun because you can't bare the possibility of hurting someone by firing off a round -- once you DO fire the gun at a target, you'll never hit it like you expected. The staunch TMA practitioner's inability to spar at 100% is the very thing that prevents them from being effective at their art in a "real" situation against a highschool wrestler or in an MMA competition. Ironic, isn't it? Sparring is also what keeps a lot of people out of grappling, because they don't really like the up close and personal aspect of it, nor do they like the prospect of being humbled over... and over... and over... again. Starting a combat sport that involves sparring is a tough road, and it's understandable if people don't want to stick with it.

I'm not knocking TMA -- they teach poise, confidence, and discipline to young people, make them stronger and teach them how to punch and kick. But as the Gracies showed the world through their Gracie Challenges, when it comes time to put up or shut up, grappling was far more practical, and as tournaments like UFC emmerged, styles evolved requiring a combination of striking and grappling, all of which have the common theme of sparring.

When I heard the aikido guy advertising his style's ability to "snap an opponent's neck" and move on, I really got a kick out of it. Even as a practitioner of aikido he's living in Hollywood, and probably imagines himself flowing through buildings in the Sunni triangle snapping necks Stephen Segal style. In that way I think some TMAs give people a false sense of confidence because they're not forced to put their skills on the line every single day by sparring, which result in very humbling experiences every time you train. To each his own though. Watching these guys in their aikido costumes with their smug, "pure" TMA demeanor makes the odd victory of mine on the thankless road of struggle, conditioning, and humbling losses all the more sweet. Their delusion makes me stronger.

Thanks for reading.

Vatos Locos for Pan-American Citizenship?

2007-03-14T09:23:00.000+09:00

I love living abroad.

To read about one nation's insanity is one thing; to experience it is another. And while Japan isn't the only whack place in the world, I can certainly appreciate it and get a good laugh out of it when Leaders of Nations say outrageous shit, especially about immigration laws.

Ok, as always, I'm going to talk in terms of comparisons. The way I see immigration laws, which differs from other peoples' view I'm sure, is similar to how I view the rules of someone else's house. (Notice that I didn't say "cultural rules", which I go out of my way to flagrantly violate on the regular.) Maybe at my house I put my feet up on the table, but maybe at Brando's house it's not allowed. I respect that. Maybe at Brando's house it's acceptable not to flush after dropping deuce, but maybe at my house it's a rule to flush and swab any skidmarks. He (generally) respects that. When I go over to Brando's house, I don't demand that he change the rules of his house to suit either my rules or my whims, because I am a guest and because I am not a contributor to his household. Nor do I make demands, verbal or written, about what his house rules should be. If I violate or ignore Brando's household rules, I will likely receive a warning or, worst case scenario, I will be persona non grata'd from Brandostan. If I do not like the rules of Brandostan or think that Madam President Wife is unreasonable, I am free to leave, and will likely be shown to the door.

As someone who lives abroad, has weathered the immigration law circus, and sees what happens to people when you don't, I feel like I have a pretty good spot on the old soap box de moral highground on which to speak. In any case, I saw a really funny quote in this article in yahoo news, which said the following:

Deportation is a sore issue in Guatemala, and Bush's host bluntly told him, "The Guatemalan people would have preferred a more clear and positive response — no more deportations."

He said it bluntly, did he. Look out.

I sometimes think it's a shame that our leaders aren't really allowed to make outrageous statements in response to other outrageous statements. Here's what "Bush's host" is saying:

People from our country who violate your immigration laws are not subject to your immigration laws, and become your problem when you catch them. Quit sending them back.

I mean, think about that for a second. Imagine if the neighbors' kids kept sneaking over to your house to fuck around on your lawn, and when you brought them back home, the parents said "Stop bringing them back." Now I understand that deportees have kids and whatnot, but the last time I checked, having kids wasn't an amnesty box for violating the law. To me, intentionally manipulating the sympathy of the American law system by having a couple kids once you get here makes the crime even more grievous. Bull. Shit. They say it's cruel to deport them away from their kids? They say their kids can't be deported because they're citizens and shouldn't be without parents? OK then -- your kids, your problem. Don't prey upon our sympathies and feelings towards children, which you obviously lack. Your kids are dual citizens and can come back whenever, but you can't. Enjoy your plane ride home.

Another thing I got a kick out of in the article was the last line, which said this:

Mayan priests had decided to purify the sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after Bush's visit, and Bush decided to purify the sacred achaeological site with an FAE to eliminate "bad priests" after his visit.

I made up the second half of that quote.

This line is a gem too, from an article about Bush's visit to Me-hee-ko:

Calderon has ridiculed the fence — a mix of physical and high-tech barriers — and likens it to the Berlin Wall.

Get el realo.

I guess history isn't required curriculum during the fast track to become the President of Mexico. "Well, let's see, can I make a holocaust reference here? Hm, no. Oh, I know, the Berlin Wall. That's a good one."

Again, if Outrageous yet Practical Outburst Man were President, he might say:

Hey Calderon -- you don't like us building a wall on our sovereign nation's soil? Too bad. If we want to build a giant chocolate sculpture of Fernando Cortez sodomizing Montezuma right there on I-5, we'll fucking do it. It's not the responsibility of the US to take care of Mexican citizens. That's your job. And to show you the irony of the whole situation, we'll build the wall using guest-worker Mexicans, guest pass expired upon completion of the wall. It should be a pretty good bargain at $.30 an hour. You wanna play the "who's the biggest asshole" game? We'll play. We're Americans. We invented that game.

What an awful thing to say. I'm sure glad Outrageous yet Practical Outburst man isn't President.

Listen up, folks. I'm all about migrant workers. I'm all about guest worker programs. If Americans feel that they are too good to do certain jobs, fuck 'em, someone else who values employment will do it, and do it well. But it's not a damn free-for-all, and while laws are a pain in the ass, they prevent chaos and abuse of the system. Again, I've experienced and am looking forward to years of the "Immigration Visa Game", and while I don't enjoy it, I do it. If nothing else, it keeps me eligible for international employment, which is something I would never ever give up.

Fish and Jesus

2007-03-06T14:46:00.000+09:00

I don't consider myself the jealous type. If someone has something, whether it be an item or ability, I know myself well enough to know whether or not I can attain it or not, and if I can, I go for it. I'm not like those fools on American Idol who get up on stage and imitate Hellen Keller a capella, fully expecting to be selected. I don't work out and train hard and tell people that I'm going to be a world champion, because I know I'm not putting in the time and I don't have the right mind set. I'm a realist. Either way, sometimes it takes a little persistance on my part, but I can usually land something I want once I think I can.

Still, for all my efforts, there are two things that, no matter how hard I try or think about, I will never be able to figure out.

Fish and Jesus.

More specifically, seafood and religious faith.

Fish

I'm jealous of people who can put fish (with the exception of tuna - raw tuna pwns) in their mouth and consume it without experiencing something not unlike an electric shock of nausea blast through their body, followed by aftershocks of revulsion. People seem to dig on fish a lot, especially on an island nation. Every where I go, people are eating almost every type of sea creature imaginable, sometimes live, often raw, and they think I'm some sort of freak for not eating it. It's funny how people can't seem to understand it, as if they don't find any food unappetizing. "Why don't you like fish?" they ask. "Because it's fucking nasty," I reply, and they say "No it's not."

Oh, ok, thanks. You're right. It's not nasty after all. Fuggin-A, load me up a plate, I'm gonna dig in.

I once tried to use a little analogy to explain what it's like for me. A person challenged me and my fish disorder, and I said, "Do you like eating human shit?" "Of course not," they cried, "That's digusting!" I said, "Same thing," but they gave me a horrified look and said, "No it's not. Shit's gross. You can't eat that." I sighed and sulked, explaining to them how cockroaches and shrimp were basically the same thing, but they ignored me while they wolfed down vile bottom-feeder after vile-bottom feeder, carefully deturding each one before consumption.

I've tried to "acquire a taste" for fish. I tried when I was a student in Japan for the first time, so that I wouldn't offend my host mother by refusing to eat her cooking. "It's important to respect other cultures' food," I was always told. Being the complete bitch that she was, she of course served me some form of sea mucous my first night there, and I subsequently offended her by not eating it. (I also pissed her off (unintentionally) when I tried to tell her that I didn't like the food, and I told her that her cooking sucked. Language barrier + Sea food = disaster for me.)

I lived in Monterey, CA for almost two years, a mile or so from cannery row. I lived in Hawaii. I live on an island now. What better places to square my taste buds away? But no dice. I've tried. It's. Still. Fucking. Gross. I'm sorry to all you and your fish-eating friends out there. I can't do it. I don't expect you to stop eating fish, I just expect you to not look at me like I'm a pedophile when I tell you I don't monj on sea creatures, that's all.

Jesus

I was watching UFC yesterday. Good show. But one thing that struck me was all the fighters praising God and Jesus after they won. This makes me a little jealous, because I don't really feel that important to any dieties. I don't have a Gunny in the Sky making sure I've got chow and clean linen. These guys, though. They feel like the creator of the universe helped them win. This amazes me. They know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Supreme Being, in charge of everything, took a little break from running Time and Space and the universe and creation and photosynthesis and everything, and hooked them up with the Dubya. The best part is that even if they lose, they don't really lose, because God is still hooking them up with something. The Creator still took time out of his busy schedule to show them something. To teach them a lesson. To make them stronger. Or to punish them for doing a line of coke off a strippers ass during the last UFC post-party. Or whatever. God works in strange ways, ya hurrd meh? Still, even if you lose, you win, because you have a personal relationship with the Gee Oh Dee. It's like they're trolling for attention from the grand sysadmin who created the innernets, and getting all excited when their IP gets banned because just because they were acknowledged.

A lot of people pity me for my lack of faith, but it just doesn't jive with the way I think. It's similar to the whole fish thing in that I could ask you to acquire a taste for mud or lint or rabbit pellets, but try as you might, you probably wouldn't ever really enjoy eating them, let alone devote your existence to them. It would be cool to experience God and religion and stuff like that -- not in the sense of "I wish God would speak to me" -- but that it would be pretty cool to be under the impression that I was so awesome and special, that the creator of the universe was hooking me up with the skills to beat the dogshit out of someone else. So before anyone reading this writes anything about "just having faith," save your breath, because I'll respond simply by telling you to get over yourself and learn to enjoy eating birdpoop. Both are silly ideas to their intended audience, though I'd venture to say that religion has led to more human deaths than birdpoop has.

So there you have it. Fish and Jesus. Two things that are beyond my comprehension and will never be a part of my life, and that until the day I die, people will pity me and treat me like a savage for not embracing. I might have the last laugh though, when we meet up in hell, and you tell me bout how you got to the Pearly Gates and found them guarded by this guy instead of who you'd hoped for.

Phone Phun

2007-03-01T22:51:00.000+09:00

Here's a little general update -- make things light and apolitical and try to stay on the topic of Japan.

I love having a camera phone in Japan, because the cameras are pretty good quality (if you use em right) and more importantly, if I see something funny, I can take a picture of it.

First and foremost, I have an announcement -- I'm engaged. :) I aksed the girl you may have seen on here from time to time to marry me and she said yes. It was one of those cool question poppings where you know the answer before you aks it, but women like doing things by the rules. So I did. She's definitely the cat's meow, and we have a special thing going. We are also probably the only two people on the planet willing to put up with each other's shit, which is a most rare find and a beautiful thing. We'll get murred April 23rd, and have a ceremony in January over here.

So I'll start my photo montage by doing what I do best, which is to piss her off.

Item 1: Kotatsu-mania

Here's a little picture I took of us chilling in the kotatsu cuz Japanese apartments don't have central heating and they're cold as hell.

She insists she looks horrible, but I think she looks super duper.

Item 2: Deepressing Coffee

Japanese people like to combine English words to make up new words which native speakers cannot understand. This confuses them a lot because they think they're being helpful, but we have no idea what they're saying. It's called gairaigo, literally "outside come language" (外来語). These clever word combos can be pretty funny, like the following coffee that I bought:

It sounds like some kind've Eye-tralian mental condition, but no, it's just "Deep Espresso". Not too bad tasting, either.

Item 3: I LOVE that movie !!

While I was ring shopping, I saw an advertisement for a ring called the "Trilogy Ring", which is three diamonds on one ring representing different stuff. I got a big kick out of it so surreptitiously snapped of a picture, because you're not supposed to take pictures of the rings.

It reminded me of my most favoritest trirogy ever.

Item 4: I love THAT movie, too!

Memento is one of my favorite movies, so I bought a copy for the aforementioned future missez and demanded she watch and enjoy it too, which she did. Here's the Japanese cover:

Notice anything weird?

Yeah, me neither.

Gay Pearce is a dreamboat.

Item 5: Gnarly Soft Drinks

Here's how things work in Japan:

An all you can drink "drink bar" is a buffet of drinks.

A buffet a "schmorgasbord".

Schmorgasbord comes from the word smörgåsbord.

The word smörgåsbord is from Sweden.

Vikings are from Sweden.

Therefore:

The first time I saw "Drink Viking", I laughed for about 10 minutes just picturing a huge viking serving drinks to Japanese people. No one else saw the humor.

Interestingly enough, I've found a rare picture of a real Soft Drink Viking, but he doesn't serve drinks, he serves people. With....them....Drinks I mean.

He's Norwegian, see. That's why it works.

Item 6: Physical Graffiti

Everyone loves the "F" word. Non-native English speakers everywhere recognize it. When I was playing blackjack in a Chinese hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, every time someone yelled "fuck" the Chinese dealers would laugh hysterically and say, "haha! Fuck! haha!" It's taken on a life of its own as a word, and English learners are constantly trying to improve their usage of it, which leads to some really funny usage.

I've always been fascinated by graffiti, and love reading it wherever I go. I like to see what people say when they're pruposefully being naughty or sitting on the juan. The Japanese, ever industrious, have shown a knack for very succinct styles of graffiti using the linguistic object of their affection, as seen below.

She's 5'7 by the way, so you can see how tall it is. I think it's funny that some Japanese youth saw the need to write that word in such huge letters in a VERY crowded area -- about 100 meters from Nakano station. Nakano ward is the most densely populated area, so an insane amount of people walk by it every day. I'll have to see how long it stays there.

Item 7: Think of Waterfalls

Wanna go peepee but you're experiencing some stage fright? Have no fear, the Japanese have an answer for you. Some toilets are equipped with a sound system to make the sound of a stream, to assist you in overcoming your urinary disfunctions. Oh, I'm sorry, it's a Stream Melody.

And PRESS the push-button, mkay? Don't, uuh, pull it. It's not a pull-button.

Item 8: Fuji, the fickle mistress

Since I'm always bitching about Mt Fuji hiding whenever I'm near her, I thought I'd post a little pic I snapped off when I was down there helping some folks out a couple weeks ago.

OK, more after this weekend. It's going to be a kick ass weekend -- literally. I'm going to a Ninja restaurant on Saturday and K-1 on Sunday. I have my shirt all picked out.

Reducto ad STFU LOLZum

2007-02-26T10:17:00.000+09:00

I got yelled at by someone today for not posting in a while. I apologize, but it's not that I don't have plenty of stuff going on or stuff on the backburner, it's just that as usual I'm having trouble keeping it coherent. You might think this odd given the incoherency of everything else I've ever written on this stupid blog, but meaningless paragraphs randomly strung together is better than meaningless words strung together, which is what you'd get otherwise.

These days I've been thinking a lot about "comparisons". I put "comparisons" in quotes for no particular reason at all, maybe to point out that many of the "comparisons" being made are weak at best, and offensive in that the person making the "comparison" must assume that you, the listener, is retarded enough to accept what they're saying as being a good comparison in the first place.

I love comparisons, analogies, similes, etc, because they make people understand a concept. While it's not my profession, I pride myself on being a good "teacher" in that I can take an idea that's in my head and present it in such a way that it is transferred to another person's head in the manner that I intended, and a good way to do this is using comparisons. Absurd analogies and comparisons are also good for humor, and used correctly they can be used as a powerful tool to ridicule and evoke explosive laughter from large groups of people, which is something I absolutely love doing.

OK, but sometimes comparisons can be bad. For instance, what if I were to say, "Birds are warm blooded praying mantises." You would probably demand an explanation, right?

"Well," I would say, "Both of them fly around, live in trees, and eat bugs. So when it comes down to it, they're pretty much the same thing."

I would say this with a straight face. I would say it with an arrogance that would almost make you want to believe it too. Almost.

"Therefore," I would continue, "If we want to stop bird flu, we should put modified roach motels in trees, because praying mantises are closely related to cockroaches, and as you can see from my previous evidence, they're all pretty much the same thing, so roach motels in trees should do the trick."

If I said that, you would probably think I was intentionally being funny. Or that my chromosome count was off.

The problem with my comparison is that I'm taking two things that are "foundationally" (carbon-based organisms, have the same food sources, occupy the same ecological niche) the same, but I'm completely ignoring the insane amount of factors that make them different, so basing policies on these similarities or showcasing these similarities seems (to me at least) either naive or disingenuous.

Now, if I were to say something like that to you, you would no doubt want to point out the obvious differences to me. Regardless of whether or not you were for or against bird control, wouldn't you, the well-versed citizen, want to point out how ridiculous my statement is? Wouldn't you laugh it off and wonder how I could condescendingly think you would actually agree with what I was saying?

Of course you would. Unless, of course, you agreed with the "end" to my "means". You might a) secretly think I was an idiot but remain suspiciously quiet. You might b) even rally behind me just because you agreed with the ends. Or maybe c), you were so ignorant about birds and mantids that you thought it sounded pretty good, so why think about it?

The thing that got me thinking about all this hooey was when I heard someone on the news say "We've been in Iraq longer than we were involved in WWII."

Super.

I reckon was made in the context of "In other words, this has gone on long enough! Look at all we accomplished in 4 short years compared to this horrible quagmire we're in now!"

This is an example of a really bad comparison. Here's why.

Much like in my little example above, the person is taking two things which are "foundationally" the same (the U.S. is involved in a military campaign overseas) while totally ignoring a bajillion (give or take) variables that are completely different.

So here's what I'm going to do, and what I suggest everyone here does. And this isn't a partisan thing. This is you, a responsible citizen, righting the wrongs made by irresponsible people with an impressionable audience.

Using our fancy-schmancy reductio ad absurdum style, take it up another notch. When someone in a debate/argument situation makes a ridiculous comparison, just take the ball and run with it. Their ball. They're giving it to you. If someone wants to open up a forum to comparisons, they forfeit the right to complain when you use their own comparison against them. Here's an example:

"You know, Iraq is a quagmire. We've been there longer than we were in WWII!"

"Dear God. You're not serious... Have you no soul?"

"What do you mean?"

"You advocate 'total war' to make things go faster? You want to firebomb cities? You're a monster."

The number of ridiculous things you could say is limited only by the number of differences between the two things being compared, and I'll wager there are more differences between WWII and the GWOT than there are similarities. Either way, the idea is to get them to say something like, "Well that's different", at which point you'll sit back in your chair, give em a "pistol shot" with one hand while making a clicking sound, and say, "Egg-ZACKED-leeeeee," and then tell them what your next drink will be.

Unfortunately though, that would never happen. The person would probably just tell you that you were "brainwashed," a "sheep", or that you "just accepted what fox news/CNN (depending on what side they were on) feeds you," then change the subject. Still, if you're around friends and you manage one of those rare moments where you're on your feet and can bust something like that out, I can guarantee explosive laughter, at which point you will be dubbed the hero of the night. And there's nothing better than that.

So here's your homework:

Think of some good political "comparisons" that people enjoy throwing out. It might be a little harder to find them from the "conservative" side of the house because they're a little less prone to hyperbole, but see what you can scrape up. OK, once you've found the ridiculous comparison, take their ball and run with it using reductio ad absurdum and make them look like complete morons. The beauty of this is that it's totally non-partisan, because if a comparison is out there for all the world to see, and if it's fucked up, it will either stand up on its own or it won't, regardless of politics. Let's work together to improve our ability to make people look stupid during bar debates.

For the record, here are some other favorites of mine (and by "favorites" I mean "they make me want to scream"):

Bush is a Terrorist !!
Iraq = Vietnam
"When it comes down to it, people are the same wherever you go."
Anything involving Godwin's Law or Reducto ad Hitlerum.
etc etc

Have fun with this one.

INCOMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-02-13T11:01:00.000+09:00

TOKYO (AP) _ An explosion was heard near a U.S. Army base south of Tokyo late Monday and police suspected an attempted attack on the base, Kyodo News agency reported.

The blast was in the area of the U.S. Army's Camp Zama, Kyodo said. The report did not say whether there were any injuries or damage.

Police found parts of a ''launch pad'' near the base, Kyodo said, and investigators suspected a ''guerrilla attack.''

No further details were immediately available.

The coolest thing about this debacle is that they found Launchpad nearby.

I always wondered what became of him. Apparently he's shooting mortars at US bases in Japan.

Hot.

I think these guys should probably keep their day jobs, assuming they have them, because they're not very good at terroristing.

In order to be a successful terrorist (or successfully carry out a terrorist operation), three things must be in place:

Means
Motivation
Opportunity

If you can remove any one of those three, an operation simply will not happen. Period. Marinate on it for a coupla mikes.

Ultimately you want people to have zero of the three. The fewer the better of course. In this case, all three were present, but one of the factors (MEANS) was really weak. It wasn't there, so they did their best and came up short. Sorry fellahs. Good luck next time. But you had explosive munitions in Japan, which has an insane conviction rate on crime, so good luck. Might wanna think about leaving the country.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanywho----

I haven't been posting lately because I have, surprisingly enough, been pretty busy. There don't seem to be enough hours in the day. I've been training super hard; running hard at lunch and either lifting or rolling in the afternoon, and by the time 7pm hits I'm pretty much incapacitated. Sometimes I sit on my couch and zone out for two hours and can't really account for time. All of a sudden it's bedtime. Last night after rolling I went to get some groceries and I almost had to take a knee in the store due to fatigue. I don't remember the last time I was that fried -- maybe during anaerobic threshold training in college? Great stuff, but don't make any plans afterwards.
I sometimes wonder what the point is of punishing myself and putting myself through so much discomfort. Maybe it's where I'm comfortable? Maybe I've brainwashed myself into thinking that it's the only way I can really stay healthy? It is, of course, and I think I'm in much better shape than most people 10 years younger than me. Maybe I'm carrying around emotional baggage, everyday trying to prove to myself that I'm not a weak, chubby 17 year old who couldn't do a single pull-up or run a quarter mile without having to stop. Talk about issues. But hell, I reckon there are much worse, more self-destructive issues to have, so I'm doin' OK.

That is, of course, until Launchpad McQuack puts a mortar round through my window.

Valentines Day tomorrow. Juuuuuuuuuust might more to report after that. Sit tight.

ps: You have probably seen em already, but everytime I see one of these it blows my mind. And why on earth would anyone want to play with one?!?!

Our ligers were raised on a baby bottle, and they still enjoy getting them as treats. They are not tame from these activities, they are trained to behave. They will still bite or even kill someone given the right set of circumstances.

Suuper… Driving a car is dangerous too, but not because the car can have a bad day and bite your head off after you raise it and love it and nurture it from a baby car.

I am, how you say, hole of ass?

2007-01-30T18:11:00.000+09:00

Anyone who's ever spent any amount of time in The
Suck, AKA the USMC, will tell you that scaling cliffs, playing death chess, and smartly brandishing marmaduke swords is hard work that changes a person.

Still, I don't think my experience in the Marines made me mean and definitely didn't make me cynical -- I consider myself to be optimistic to a fault -- I believe it made me realistic. This realism can often be misinterpreted as cynicism, because human beings are just so completely fucked up. Most people with certain experiences seem to be "cynical" or whatever, but it's just them seeing the world through a different pair of glasses and reacting accordingly.

In the Marines, especially in my unit (or any combat arms unit that doesn't have any women in it), being hurt is shameful. Simply put, if you are hurt, you are a pussy, and if you are truly hurt, don't complain about it because no one cares. Pain is something that you deal with on your own. (Notice that I didn't say "injured". There's no shame in snapping on the DZ or having some sort of injury that renders solid, no-shit proof, like an X-ray, a protruding bone, or a caved orbital. Caved orbitals are just manly.)

Believe it or not, the USMC has no shortage of people who pretend to be hurt when they're more than capable of completing the task at hand. Five years of witnessing this made me even more realistic (not cynical) when someone claims to be hurt....

.....almost....too.....realistic........

.....especially when applying USMC "reality" to a 105 lb girl...

So this weekend we went snowboarding again. I wanted some practice for when I go "for real" with my friends, but the place we went to was super small (it literally took me 2 minutes to board to the bottom off the lift) and, unfortunately, the Missez hurt herself on the second run. I got to the bottom of the hill and saw her laying there on the ground, immobile.

"Ok, time to get up!" I said.

No movement

"Are you ok??" I asked impatiently.

Finally there was some movement. She had hurt her right elbow the last time we went boarding, so I figured this was more of the same -- a little bump with some theatrics thrown in for fun. I asked her if she was OK and she said her arm really hurt, so I told her to walk (slide?) it off and we hopped back in the chair to go back up.

When we de-seated, I accidentally knocked her over cuz, well, I'm still kinda figuring shit out, and she decided to sit that run out. I told her that I'd come back up in a few minutes and we could go back down together. When I came back up we boarded down again, and she said she wanted to go to the medical center.

We went and talked to the dude at the Medical Center, and she explained to him what was happening. He told her that maybe she should see a doctor, but I shrugged it off. I figured he was doing the typical Japanese-over-reaction, just in case her arm was really fucked up so he couldn't get blamed for anything. I finished up the day with a few more runs and came back, and we headed back to Tokyo by bus.

She was complaining a bit from the pain on the way back, and I was trying to figure out if it was a ligament or a tendon or something, but to be honest she didn't really react to any of the pressure I applied to the soft-tissue parts of her arm. The cartiledge, tendons, muscles, etc, seemed OK, so I didn't really know what the problem was.

I was reading Kyle Maynard's book, "No Excuses," which is an auto-biography about a dude who was a state high school wrestler even though he doesn't have any arms and legs.

"Look at this guy," I chided. "He doesn't have any arms and legs and he doesn't complain."

Aren't I just the funny guy?

So we got back to Tokyo and we cruised over to the hospital.

I'm sure you can probably figure what happened next, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it.

Now, I don't normally do things that I feel absolutely and utterly horrible about. Normally I walk the Earth filled with righteousness and an arrogance found only in rigid caste-system societies or, I dunno, a society where there are a lot of dickheads about. But Sunday night was a definite exception. One of those times I just felt like the lowest creature on the planet. Like, I dunno, "The Supreme Reigning Overlord of the Planet of Assholia called, he wants his throne back" type shit.

Survey says....................Fractured elbow.

They say a picture's worth 1000 words..... This one says two specific words pretty well, which I deserved x infinity.

Once again, I was the Biggest Asshole in Tokyo, maybe in all of Japan. Maybe of the Far East. And that's saying a lot.

This is my public apology and acknowledgement of being the Hugest Asshole Ever. It isn't the first, and definitely won't be the last time I claim this dubious title, and believe you me, I'll be deservedly hearing about this one for quite some time.

Just whom do you think you are?

2007-01-22T22:00:00.000+09:00

"Whom" is one of my favorite words because people on the innernets like to use it to try and grammatically alpha male someone else but usually end up using it incorrectly and end up looking really stupid. It's like a rhetorical firework that keeps on blowing up and changing colors. "Oooh! Aaah!" The hits just don't stop. The whom is typically embedded (incorrectly of course) in a statement dripping with arrogance and/or some other incorrect statement or misuse of they're/there/their.

I think I do a pretty good job of not misusing words because if I'm not 100% sure of them, I either a) look them up or b) use a word I'm 100% with. There's nothing wrong with this. Being wrong while attempting to look smart is like waaaaay worse than using a more simple word, so why not stick with the basics? Surrsly people, keep it simple. I'm sure you did a really nice job on argumentative writing style or debating or whatever in your freshman rhetoric class, but no one here is impressed. Unless you've really got your shit together, you're casting fake pearls before mongoloid swine by trying to be all snarky and literary..

The translators we have around here like using "whom" a lot. They also like putting stuff in the passive form (i,e. "The book was bought") because in Japanese the verb is at the end of the sentence, so it's a little bit easier for them. Also, when describing something, they like to say things like, "Did you see the girl who was riding on the bike?" as opposed to "Did you see that chick on the bike?" because it fits in a little bit easier with how their language works. Neither is wrong, but as far as "whom" goes, I propose that we get rid of it all together. I propose that we just say "WHO" for all situations and save a lot of pseudo-scholars a great deal of virtual-embarrassment.

Most of you probably agree with me, but some of you probably think that it's some sacred facet of the English language that must be preserved because of the essential role it plays. To you, I respond with the following:

That's me raising the bullshit flag. Or Bowser raising it.

You just want to keep "whom" around because you know how to use and you think that makes you special. You think it distinguishes you from the proletariat who doesn't know when and when not to throw a fucking /m/ noise at the end of the word "Who". You probably make a habit of correcting other peoples' grammar or pronunciation during debates instead of defending your position, which you have a tenuous grasp upon at best. Well I know what you're doing, because I do the same thing from time to time, so knock it off. Language snobbery does absolutely nothing to "maintain" some sort of language purity, because there's no such thing anyway. Probably the only thing keeping language from undergoing massive change from generation to generation is the written language, so just let language do what it's going to do anyway -- evolve. It likes evolving. It likes being streamlined. It will do it no matter what -- look at how educated folks spoke during the Civil War era. Languages don't like genitive cases and crazy bullshit like that. So just let it happen and let the /m/ go. If the word "who" had any major connection to the letter M, or if it were really a necessary distinction to be made in our silly language, we wouldn't be dealing with this problem in the first place. People wouldn't end up looking stupid in failed attempts at looking smart, and language snobs wouldn't be verbally buggering folks as part of some weird quest to make them feel bad about themselves.

So join me, folks. Help me abolish the word “whom” from the lexicon. It’s up to us to take a stand.

This post was written in lieu of anything else worth writing, and inspired by what I spend a lot of time doing at my job, which is correcting translations written in English by non-native speakers. Thank you for tolerating my stupid rant.

Snowboarding = Fun

2007-01-16T18:15:00.000+09:00

Check my shit out! Just 3 hours or so after I first put a snowboard on!

Yeah, I went snowboarding for the first time ever this weekend. Things like snowboarding kick an insane amount of ass for the simple reason that you can get pretty good at it in a relatively short time. Pretty good meaning that you can cruise down a hill slaloming back and forth, and a relatively short time meaning in like 5 or 6 hours.

All my Lazy Mo Frakkies, put your ass in a chair,
And languish around, like you just don't care.

You see, folks, here's the thing: I am lazy. Terribly lazy. It might not seem so given the relative success I've enjoyed in my adventures, what I'm good at, etc etc, but to be perfectly honest, 90% of my actions are done in an attempt to ensure less energy expenditure in the future. Take work for instance. The first thing I do when I go to a new job is look at how they do things and do things my own way to create the same results doing far less work. Just about everything I'm good at is stuff that I'm just good at, meaning that I have an ability or an aptitude for it, or I really enjoy doing it, so the amount of work required for me to be good at it is far less than other people who might be pursuing the same objective. I don't really consider myself a hard worker. Smart worker? Yes. Hard worker? No. Unlike the Japanese people I find myself surrounded by, I see no inherent "goodness" in working hard, especially if it can be avoided, and it usually can in an office environment. Does it feel good to relax after a hard day at work? Probably, but I wouldn't know, I can't remember the last time I did that. It feels good to relax after breaking myself off at the gym or getting my ass handed to me on the mat, but "working my ass off" isn't really something I'm down with. Feel me?

The main drawback to my slovenly, lazy lifestyle, is that while I've been lucky enough to have a knack or aptitude for a lot of things, there really isn't anything that I'm particularly great at, unless you include the ability to waste enormous amounts of time doing nothing. Yes, all that time I save by coming up with sneaky ways to do things? Completely wasted. Anyway I just can't be bothered to achieve greatness, and I lack the self-discipline, attention span, or ambition to be a master of anything. Am I saying "Oh I could be great, I just don't feel like it"? No, because I've never been great at anything, so I'm not so sure I could pull it off. In fact, I'd play it safe and say that I am not made of the stuff of greatness. But I'm totally fine with that -- being a jack of all trades is much more my style, and gives me flexibility in doing a lot of things, and if nothing else, enough information to bullshit my way around and appear to be smart, which is most important anyway.

....and anyone who knows me will tell you this: When I'm bad at something, I'm REALLY bad at it. Like "OMFG you've got a HFA lolz" bad at stuff. Namely simple arithmetic, things requiring sense of direction, or anything having any association with the two. Don't ask me to figure out anything having to do with numbers, because I will be really far off. I might be able to explain to you very eloquently how to get an answer, but numbers and my brain just don't jive, and I will give you an incorrect answer. And unless I've been somewhere at least 10 times on the same route and paid really close attention, don't make me in charge of getting from point A to point B. This can lead to a lot of stress for me, like when a major part of your job involves driving people around Kabul, but in that case I just demanded to drive everywhere so I could get a feel for the city and carried around a garmin. Otherwise, I avoid numbers and directions like the plague.

Sure, I take on things that I'm not good at from time to time, and eventually get good, but at the end of it all, what it boils down to is that I just hung out and failed miserably at something until finally, through osmosis or meatheadedness or muscle memory, I gained a "knack" for it. If you do something long enough, you're going to get good at it. Even if it takes a few years. But yeah, for the most part, I can't be bothered.

So this is why I liked snowboarding so much. It's something that's suuuuper fun that you can pick up really quickly. Since I don't have any aspirations to become a professional snowboarder or do tricks or impress anyone, I'm pretty happy to have been introduced to it, and I'm a little pissed off at everyone I know who snowboards for not being a little more coercive in trying to get me to pursue it. I will probably go out and blow an inappropriate amount of money on snowboarding gear, as I need to catch up with the rest of the world. I'm a little mad at you, the reader, for not getting me involved with this activity when I was in my teens. Oh, you didn't know me back then? Stop with the excuses. Man up. Buy me some snowboarding trips. You owe me at least that. Again, not enough trips to become "great", just so that I can become "pretty good" or maybe even "really good" sometime in a couple years. That's all I ask from you.

...so I was a little worried about it going into it -- am I going to really suck, is this going to be really hard for me, and am I going to make a scene on the mountainside? Am I going to fall a lot, completely lose my composure, and have a tantrum? But good news -- it was fun -- like really fucking fun. My friend that we went with was a snowboard instructor at Tahoe, and was able to explain it to me in a way that I could understand -- i,e. how you explain things to kindergartners -- and I was able to comprehend and apply the mechanics and coordination to figure shit out. The lady friend was also in the snowboarding club at her university, so she was able to add in some input too, and we now have a little wintertime hobby that we can enjoy together. Iddn't dat shweety weety?

So here's to my oldest favorite thing -- laziness -- and my new favorite thing -- snowboarding -- and how they compliment each other oh so well. I mean cripes, you're CARRIED up a mountain in a chair, and you get to the bottom by sliding down using low friction, an inclined slope, and gravity. How lazy is that?

Here are a couple other pics from the weekend.

Here are the Japanese Alps. Or as I like to call them, the Jalps. As you can see, the scenery is made all the more pristine by above-ground powerlines.

Here's Mt Fuji from the car. It's a shitty shot, but whuttevs.

Here's the ski area.

Pictures of ski areas look funny, because it appears that everyone is just standing there on the mountain. Ironically, that's the case a lot in Japan, because there was no shortage of people just sitting on their asses or not moving on the slopes. This caused me to fall a lot because I didn't want to crash into them. That and the fact that it was my first day and I sucked. But gimme time, I and will achieve sub-greatness -- the kind of sub-greatness that can make people who have never snowboarded before think I'm pretty good, which is all I'm really shooting for anyway. Wish me luck.

Please Escher Don't Hurt 'em

2007-01-09T09:00:00.000+09:00

I'll keep this post light. More an update than anything.

This weekend I went to the MC Escher exhibit up at Bunkamura in Shibuya.

I've always really liked his stuff, not because I'm into art appreciation, but just because it looks really cool. Everyone has seen his stuff. Yeah, his pictures festoon just about every wall of every elementary school classroom in our great nation, but anyone who dismisses me as a simpleton or unrefined for thinking his stuff is awesome can eat it.

Plus he made his shit without a computer. I can't even make it with a computer. Or a ruler. Or a slide-rule even. Fuck. I'm overwhelmed.

Anyway, as with doing anything in public places in Japan, it was not without frustrations. It seems like anytime you go anywhere to do anything in this country, the experience is not unlike riding the Yamanote train line during rush hour.

It was really crowded -- a full-scale beach landing against my defenseless roundeye sense of space. That wasn't the best part though.

You know how museums have little tape recorders or whatever that you can listen to as you walk around? Well, at this museum, they had pre-loaded Nintendo DS's with audio and video. So when people would approach a picture, they would listen to the description, then using their handy stylus, look at the picture on the screen.

It was a little bit like, I dunno, going to a movie theatre and watching the same movie on your PSP.

Only in Japan, I guess.

It wasn't too bad -- par for the course -- but it makes it hard for a savage like me to get any bit of culture in his life. I want to go check out cultural shit, but it's like seeing an exhibit in a sarcophagus full or zombies who don't want to each your brains, just invade your personal space. Maybe I should just give up? Maybe I should go on weekdays?

At least there were no groups of drunken ladies in their 60s, hootin' and hollerin', like at the last exhibit I went to.

Another cool thing this weekend is that I got a navigation system for my car.

Car navigation systems in Japan are badass, but I'd like to say that mine is nowhere near as cool as this one. It ain't bad though, and given my propensity to become horribly lost, it is very very necessary. You see, when you make a wrong turn in Tokyo, the city punishes you by taking 30 minutes of your life away, or making you crash into a wall. Or both. So now that I'm getting the scuff fixed in my car from when I brushed against said wall, my car may be considered somewhat pimped out.

Not that I care. But it's nice.

The best part is that the nav system was free. My girl's sister gave it to her to give to me 'cuz she has a newer version. Guess I made a good impression on them this past weekend when I visited for new years. Here's the two of them tormenting her neice.

Or perhaps I won their favor while playing a little New Years pachinko with her mom.

Either way, it's been a good couple weeks.

A Friend in Need?

2007-01-03T14:53:00.000+09:00

"Hi. Here's your money."

"Hey, woe, how'd you know I'd be here?"

"Y told me."

"Well, it's good to see you. It's been a while -- you're looking well."

"Yeah, thanks. Anyway, again, here's your money. Sorry it took so long to pay you back. Thank you for all your help."

"Oh, no problem. I appreciate it. Is everything good with you guys?"

"Yeah.. Everything is ok I suppose. I'm working at the same place, so is he, but money is tight.. ....and you know, things have been different -- our relationship with you has changed since before. Things are different."

"Well, they don't have to be. You know that, right? You're welcome to stop by my neck of the woods whenever you want, just like before. I'm the same. Everything's the same, everything's cool."

"Yeah. Well, I have to go. Sorry again for taking so long to pay you back, and thank you for everything you've done for us. You've been a great help."

...and she left.

I was struck by how weird the conversation was -- the whole vibe of the conversation was similar to getting things left behind at an ex's house. "Here's your shirt and sunglasses. Anyway, take care. Have a nice life." That sort of thing. So I sat at the restaurant bar sipping on my Vodka Tonic and waited for Y to show up.

Shame on Me

I had lent my friend some cash about a year and a half ago, and his wife had just paid me back out of the blue. When I lent him the money, he had just gotten out of the Navy and was looking to marry his fiance and start a life here in Japan. He was back stateside and in a pinch, and emailed me asking for some help.

Now gather round, kiddies, and listen up. What I'm about to tell you is common knowledge, but bears repeating.

Rule #1: People [non-family members] who ask you for money are the least likely to pay you back. That's why they're asking you for money in the first place -- because they don't have any -- which is not a normal state of affairs in a market based economy. If you do go against your gut feeling and lend them money, assume you'll never see it again, because you probably won't. And if you are putting the "friendship" up as collateral for the loan, don't be surprised when you lose a friend.

...Because that's how people who borrow money roll, babies. And believe it or not, I've found that most respectable people will dig through trash for food before they will approach friends for large-ish sums of money.

Having been burned in the past I knew this, of course, so when I got the email I asked his [then fiance] what she thought about it. She said "Absolutely not," which I told him, to which he replied, "Just transfer it, I'm getting some separation pay and I'll hit you back right away."

Rule #2: They're always "Good for it" and will always "Get you back next month". They always have some money that's about to come their way, which they will use to pay you back immediately, not for alcohol.

Out of some sense of responsibility I have for my friends, I didn't want to leave him high and dry, so I told his fiance to give me most of it in the form of a deposit, over half of it in yen, and I'd transfer the funds to his bank account, which was the same bank as me. Easy peasy. This way I'd at least have over half of it if he didn't pay me back, which I was pretty sure would happen.

So he came back from Japan a newly hatched civilian, and did what many newly hatched civilians do, which is go hog-wild.

Rule #3: If you borrow money from someone and you haven't paid them back, don't go into detail on the amount of money you blew getting shit faced over the course of a week, especially when it is greater than the amount they lent you. Don't show them your new tattoos either.

One thing about my friend is that much of his life is a train wreck. And not one of those freak train wrecks that comes out of no where. During the course of a conversation with him, he would describe a series of decisions/plans, and I'd sit there not saying anything as my mind played out a series of consequences that were most likely going to occur upon the execution of his plans. It was like that Bad Idea Jeans skit from SNL in the early 90s. I might say something like, "Are you sure that's such a good idea?" and be ignored. I'm used to that though, as people love ignoring me almost as much as I enjoy seeing my ignored suggested consequences come to fruition, to the point that I feel like a modern day Cassandra. Thanks a lot, Apollo.

Rule #4: I give sound advice. If you ask for my opinion or advice, I'm going to give it to you straight and recommend listening to it. I base most of my advice on experience garnered from personal failure and the failure of people close to me, so it's sort've like "Here's how you fuck up, here's how you avoid it" type advice. And as is made clear by this post and from 5 years in the Marine Corps, there has never been a shortage of fuckups to be found in my life, so I have a large fuckup pool of fuckup knowledge to draw from.

Mawwage

A lot of funny (and maddening) culture clashes occur in "multi-cultural relationships". Or is it "cross cultural"? I dunno. Funny shit happens when people from different countries hook up. One thing a lot of American guys don't understand when they decide to marry a Japanese woman is the transformation she will go through once married. In Japan, roles, customs, and what a person is "supposed to do" are very important, and dictate much of their day-to-day behavior. A woman's role as "wife" is one taken very seriously by most girls here, and like everything else here, there is no middle-ground and they will go all out in their supposed role as whatever. Regardless of how things were before marriage, a Japanese woman will often transform into this wife role upon saying "I do", and naively expect her free-wheelin' husband to morph into a responsible 9-5 husband. The guys in Korea called this "Ajummosis", or the overnight transformation of a young girl into an "Ajumma", literally "aunt". In other words, remember that fun, hip, party girl who didn't mind going out and hanging out with everyone til 6am? Yeah, she's suddenly decided that such behavior is horribly inappropriate, and expects you to stay at home and rent DVDs. I saw this one coming too, and felt like ordering some popcorn as I sat back and watched what I knew was about to happen...happen.

In the case of my friend, the formerly "cool hang out girl" decided that it was not only a good idea to express her dislike for her husband's behavior, but to insist upon showing up to gatherings and try to ruin the entire evening for everyone. She'd show up and it'd be like, "Ohhh!!! Heey!!! Good to see yooooouuuoooooooohnevermind, she's mad." It got to the point where every time I saw her she was in a miserable mood, so I just didn't deal with her. I dubbed her "Scowletor", as she had a permanent scowl on her face. She was someone I had previously considered a friend, but I didn't have time for stupid bullshit and petty rudeness like that. She was cold to me and cold to my girl, and homie don't play that. The fact that I never pressured them to pay me back and only mentioned it once in passing (in a year and a half) made me wonder what the deal was, and I figured they were distancing themselves to break contact.

Rule #5: Most people out there can put a price on friendship. Most people out there will sell you up the river if it's in their best interest. The trick is to identify those people early on and not put one's self in a position to get fucked. Some may call me naive. I disagree -- I know the risks -- but every once in a while I go against my gut feeling, and while it usually ends up bad, it doesn't always, which is worth the [occasional] risk for me. Besides, it's not like I do this all the time.

Anyway, she probably sensed my displeasure when I was around her (try as I may, it's hard for me to mask my feelings for people), and I noticed that interaction between me and them was becoming less and less. I'd shoot him an occasional text message to say what's up, but usually didn't get any response. After a while I figured "Whatever" and wrote them and the money off -- tough titties, I guess, but again, whatever -- I knew what I was getting into.

.....aaaaaaaand Present!

When Y came back from Hawaii last week, he told me he was meeting the two of them for dinner, and I filled him in a little bit about how my relationship with the two of them pretty much nonexistent. Y may have said something to them about it, maybe not, but I was still surprised when she showed up out of the blue with the money. I know it was awkward for her, because she didn't want to borrow the money, and for all her faults, she's a straight-up girl and I knew it hurt her pride to be in debt to me. This society has a lot of obligation issues too, and owing someone something is enough to drive people nuts, resulting in these weird obligation one-upman-ship situations. They even warned us about gift-giving before we came here as students. Anyway, while she thanked me up and down for being such a huge help to them over the past year and a half (not just monetarily -- I used to give her pep-talks and calm her down when she was freaking about his lack of employability), it was in true, formulaic Japanese fashion. Sort of like, "I'm saying this because it's appropriate, and while I may mean it, let's just understand that I'm now free and clear of any and all obligation to you, case closed, peace out." Japanese people seem to have an innate ability to be the coldest people in the world -- I made it clear that things were A-OK, we were good, shit was cool -- I just don't like awkward situations and I don't want people to feel like they owe me something, but she wasn't having any of it. She just wanted to get out of there, so I didn't press the issue. It also seems a bit ironic that the source of weirdness would come from the person who borrowed the money rather than from the person to whom it was owed. Then again, maybe Y told them that I mentioned they owed me money which pissed them off, but fuck that. Why?

Rule #6: If you borrow money from a friend and don't pay them back for a year and half, you forfeit the right to bitch when other people inevitably find out about your deadbeat behavior. Your integrity has a price, and it so happens to be the exact amount that you borrowed from them, and maybe an apology or two thrown in for good measure.

In the end, I could be just as naive as she is in an opposite sort of way, expecting things to somehow magically stay the same and not considering the thousands of other variables that can cause the other thousands of variables to change for whatever reason. I guess I'll just chalk it up as one of those cultural things, because sometimes that's just easier than pointless over-analyzation of a lost cause, even if it was important to me in the past.

Oh shit, Five-Oh!

2006-12-26T12:41:00.000+09:00

Let me start by saying that I think that police are great, and I have nothing but contempt for people who say they "hate cops" or whatever. That's fucking ridiculous. For most people in the USA, saying that you "hate cops" is like saying you "hate oxygen". "Damn, Cletus, I just hate this fuckin' air I always gotta be breathin!"

Yeah, sometimes some asshole crop-dusts your table at Bennigans or whatever and you get some bad air, but simply put, assuming you're a law abiding citizen, you'd appreciate air, like cops, a lot more, if all of a sudden it weren't around.

Okinawan Microcosm

In Okinawa, there was (is) an area outside of base called Kinville. They call it Kinville 'cuz the city is called "Kin" (金武 - weird character combo 'cuz it's Okinawan). Kinville is a scumhole little town 3 streets by 4 streets or so with nothing but dives and drinky bars of varying degrees of scumminess. Since Kinville is literally right across the street from Camp Hansen and filled to the brim with underage, drunken, retarded Teufelhunden, there is a sort of "shore patrol" that walks around and maintains "order". Before a certain incident, I hated 'em. Camp Guard was made up of the dregs of Hansen -- really digging there -- consisting of people who had previously gotten in trouble by Camp Guard. A common punishment for mouthing off to Camp Guard or not doing what they told you was, well, assignment to Camp Guard every weekend for a month. All they ever did to me was tell me to "tuck my shirt in", which really pissed me off, especially when they'd actually enter a bar, come up to my bar-stool, and tell me to do it. You had to comply, though, or you'd be joining 'em.

Anyway, one week there was a typhoon that came through Oki and knocked down a utility pole outside base, blocking the front gate. Word on the street was that Camp Guard wouldn't be patrolling the 'ville. "Good," I thought, "It'll be nice not being devildogged* by some fucking PFC." Was I wrong. Without Camp Guard, Kinville was pande-fucking-monium, and I sat there and watched a group of guys run through a bar and beat the dogshit out of about most of the people in the vicinity. I think I avoided their meticulous, death-squad-like beatdown fest by just pretending like I didn't see them -- I turned around, saw three guys going to town on a bunch of people, and just spun back around in my bar stool and stared at my drink. "Yeesh," I thought, "Here we go again," because I've gotten blasted by a random, consequence free punch while trying to mind my own business a couple of times, so I just waited for my turn. The punch never came, but a friend of mine got a rocks glass smashed on her face, resulting in a nice big scar, and I learned a good lesson -- Don't take public coercive protection forces, i,e. police, for granted, because when left up to their own devices, people will run amok. This lesson was reinforced during my stay in Afghanistan, where I learned that it was important not to leave the police to their own devices, because they'll run amok too. Quis Custodiet ipsos custodes? But all things considered, things aren't so bad in the USA, and people who act like the USA is a police state are fucking retarded. "Police" aren't scary. "La Policia" are. Go to a country with "La Policia" and tell me how bad you think the USA is.

Japan is great police-wise, maybe even better than the USA, and the fact that organized crime generally doesn't involve outside parties makes it a really safe place to be. Over here, the cops hang out in these places called Koban, or "police boxes", where instead of having a huge precinct full of cops, each neighborhood had a few little buildings scattered around housing 2 or 3 cops, who are in charge of that area and know everyone around the vicinity. Japan also has an incredibly high prosecution rate, though some of their practices may be a bit questionable to Americans, for example the right to hold someone without charges for up to a little over 3 weeks. And not releasing until the last day for really stupid reasons, like "...oh you didn't show enough remorse" or "...we didn't like your attitude," both of which have happened to friends of mine. The cops here have the reputation for being real dicks, and I've had mixed experiences, but after last night I'm changing my tune.

Oh sheeeyuzeeyuhtt nyuhnkuh it's the Peaux-Peaux!

I was sitting in my car near my girl's apartment while she ran inside a bookstore to grab something right quick when all of a sudden a police car whizzes by, stops right in front of me, and 4 cops roll up on me with a sense of urgency. "Great," I thought as always, so I just pretended like I didn't notice them until they knocked on my window. I figured they were going to tell me that I was illegally stopped, which I was, but the policeman leaned in with a friendly smile and said, "...Are you doing some shopping?"

As a roundeye in Japan, there are many situations (like this) where we make a split-second decision -- Should I pretend not to speak Japanese or not? I try not to do this because it's shadey, and people play "dumb gaijin" all the time to get out of paying for shit, which I am whole-heartedly against, so I tend to bust out with the Japaneazy unless the person is being a complete asshole (which happens from time to time). But this guy wasn't. He was being horribly polite, and he totally took me off guard. I was expecting a dickhead cop with some bullshit officious tone, bristling up to me with some stupid demand to see my passport and ask me a bunch of stupid questions or imply that I was a criminal (happened when I was a student), but his kindness totally took me off guard. I had no choice but to respond in the native speaky.

"Um, no," I said, "I'm just waiting here for a second. My girlfriend is buying a book, but she should be out soon."

...At which point she came out, looking surprised to see her chariot and prince surrounded by the Po-Po. When she hopped in, Mr Po-Lease-Mayun said something like, "We've been checking cars recently because a lot of bad people have been cruising around with knives and whatnot in their car, so would it be OK if we checked your trunk? I'm sooo sorry to impose like this, it being Christmas and all..."

Lesser gaijin would scream RACISM! Oh shit, he saw my car, which is gangsterish by Japanese standards, or he saw my Yankee-plates, and he's persecuting me for being a roundeye! Fucking racist Japanese people! I knew this would fuggin happen!!! If Japan had anything resembling the ACLU I'd SOOOO call them.

I've seen it happen in stores, on the street, in bars, everywhere in Japan -- some asshole foreigner will feel slighted and pull the racism card. It's like they just got their racism card recently issued to them, and now that they're a minority they're just dying to pull it on someone. Or pull it. However the racism card exchange is transacted. Anyway, sometimes foreigners get so racism-card-crazy, they accuse other foreigners of racism, which is just classic. I saw this one dude at the door of a bar flipping out on a nigerian doorman because the bar was "racist". Sweet.

...but to be honest, it didn't really cross my mind that I might be getting profiled until I noticed that some Japanese guy was getting searched right behind me. "Oh, I guess they're searching everyone who's stopped," I thought, "I guess it ain't a gaijin thing huh..."

Since this cop was polite, jovial, and just all-around nice, it never crossed my mind that I was being "oppressed," and since I had nothing to hide, I opened my trunk and tried to be as polite as possible in return.

That kinda got me thinkin'...

That's the Christmas spirit, folks. Carrying out the plan of the day in a polite, professional manner, when you could (in the opinion of many, I'm sure) be a complete asshole about everything. He didn't have to be nice about it -- he was doing his job, and in keeping with my own personal philosophies, had every right to specifically target my car for searching, as it fits the profile for someone who might be "up to no good" over here. He didn't have to apologize to me. He didn't have to apologize to my girl, saying that he was sorry because "...it is Christmas, after all!" He could have been an officious prick about everything, but he wasn't.

...So here's to those folks who are out there doing shitty, thankless jobs to ensure that ungrateful slobs like me can protest the holiday seasons while enjoying the days off of work. It may sound corny but a little politeness goes a long way. I'm grateful there are dudes like Mr Xmas Popo running around Tokyo keepin' me safe, and it's good to see a copper who understands how disarming a little politeness can be.

Happy Holidays (again)!

* being "devil dogged" or "lifed" in the USMC is when someone corrects you in some superfluous, stupid way, in an attempt to alpha male you. The "lifing" (called "lifing" because it's usually issued by a "lifer") usually begins with someone referring to you as "devil dog". ex, "Hey Devil Dog, I dunno why you got your hands in your pockets." People of lower ranks do not call people of higher ranks "devil dog," even though some belt-fed mofrackies would beg to differ. Furthermore, people do not call each other "devil dog" in all seriousness unless they are complete douchebags. Despite it's cool history, it's a generally pejorative term when one person uses it to address another. (The word "Marine" is also used in a similar fashion, as is "killer".)

Holiday Update !

2006-12-22T14:03:00.000+09:00

This holiday season marks my 3rd holiday blogged, and my 6th consecutive Christmas spent outside of the Continental US. What progress. Here's a history:

2001 -- Hawaii (where I was stationed)

Some friends of the family came out so I hung with them, and I don't even remember New Years. Typical go-out-and-get-housed bullshit I guess.

2002 -- Hawaii

This was between my Okinawa deployments, and I had about a month to sit around in Hawaii and do nothing. People who just got off deployment or were about to go didn't have to do anything, so I was dual-cool in that respect, showing up to work, if at all, around 10am. The same family friends came out, the difference being that this time I got shitfaced in Waikiki and thought it would be a good idea to sleep in their hotel room (at 4am), so I woke em up and barged in.

2003 -- Tokyo, Japan

I had to come back to Japan for 4 days to get all my stuff. I scored a work visa but got a wicked offer to train folks as a contractor at Ft Belvoir, so I decided to try my luck in the beltway area. This ended up bad, as the guy who hired me in Japan told me he was going to sue me for breach of contract with his "Tokyo Lawyers", and the job out east fell through.

2004 -- Kabul, Afghanistan

A result of me using up all my unemployment benefits and not having any money. On New Years Eve we shanghai'd one of the company vehicles and went "over the wire" to an ex-pat bar in Kabul and got in a lot of trouble the next day. I remember thinking it was really weird 'cuz everyone was talking about how mad the upper management was at me, but they never said anything to me about it. My direct manager was saying stuff like, "You're gonna have a lot of explaining to do, so-and-so is livid!!" but nothing ever came of it. This happened about 3 times.

2005 -- Tokyo, Japan

Last Christmas was spent getting into a huge fight with a bunch of drunken thugged out Nepalese factory workers, resulting in me issuing a manslap and a follow-up tussle. I was pretty sure I was going to get shit-stomped on the way back to the station, so I took an alternate route and have been started to lay low a bit whenever I went to Shibuya. The Nepalese are some of the kindest people you'll ever meet, but don't let anyone tell you differently -- they can't hold their booze. New years last year was a good time though (read: boozefest)

2006 -- Here and there, Japan

I'll be hanging out around here this weekend with Shoh'ty, and next weekend I'll cruise down to her hometown in Mie Prefecture. That's right next to Osaka, and the people there are super nice. We're gonna hit up Ise Jingu and possibly Osaka to see a college friend of mine. The last time I was in Mie was for a job interview in October 2003, where I got humiliated and reduced to a quivering mass by a group of 8 Japanese kids during a "practical application" interview to see if I had what it takes to teach kids English. Apparently I didn't. I'm sure this trip to Mie will be a lot better, assuming I don't do or say anything stupid, or crash into something with a vehicle.

It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of the holidays, except for the whole not-having-to-go-to-work thing. The only value of a New Years Resolution is "comedic", as the Earth making a lap around the sun isn't going to magically make someone change their slovenly ways or kick their addiction to nicotine. Still, while Japan is peopled by a barbaric, unchristian group of heathens, corporations and the service industry were keen to pick up on the whole Christmas thing for obvious reasons. You all think Christmas is corporatized in the States?? Hell, no one here is even Christian and they celebrate it! Japan is so corporatized, a company invented a holiday called "White Day", the Sadie Hawkins of Valentines Day. Kinda reminds me of the time a guy in my neighborhood had a "Half Birthday", when he turned 10 and a half, and his parents invited us all to come over and give him gifts. That seemed really weird even as an 11 year old. But I digress -- supply and demand rules apply, and this is a culture that loooooooves giving gifts.

So yeah. I hope everyone has a good time this Christmas weekend, doing whatever it is you do to either celebrate it or boycott it. I will be cooking dinner (read: tacos, stir fry, or frozen pizza) and maybe cracking a bottle of wine. I'm looking forward to next week because the Japanese staff gets like two weeks off for the holidays (New Years is a big deal in Japan ) so I'll be able to chill a little bit, catch up what I need to catch up on, and not field ridiculous questions like:

I have to fill out this application, what should I put for my eye color? I'm Japanese and have black eyes, but if I put "black," I'm afraid they will think I was punched in the face and suffering from a black eye. But as a Japanese person, I think my eyes are darker than brown (they say their eyes are "black"), and I wouldn't want to lie on an official application. What should I do?

No joke. Mind you, my job has nothing to do with administration, and this person has been working here since I was 3 years old. Probably not the first application ever filled out, but whatever. I'm going to enjoy my time off from work and my time off from the insanity that always ensues here in Adventurepan.

Have fun!

I coulda been a...............

2006-12-18T09:25:00.000+09:00

Well, this weekend I entered my first BJJ tournament. I figured "what the hell?", right? I'm a relatively new blue belt, so I figured I'd give it a shot and see what happened.

Let me begin by saying that most people, especially in Japan, it seems, will not enter a tournament just for the hell of it, so what you end up with are people who are really good.

Like... People who have been a blue-belt for 6 years.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I got my ass handed to me. The following is a pretty good summation of what occurred:

I love competing, and competed all through college and in some capacities in the Marines. College was rowing, which requires an insane amount of team work. And not the type of team work required for a sport like football or soccer. I'm talking about taking 4 or 8 people and making them do the exact same thing at the exact same time with the exact same balance and trying not to have them kill each other. I'll never forget what Brando said the first time we got off the water in the Fall of 1994:

I just wanna punch someone in the face right now.

The boats list really easily, and if you're not careful you can easily end up in the drink if you're in a single or a double, which Brando and I also did once. Then we went to Perkins and had breakfast all soaking wet, and when I was shivering Brando said another memorable quote:

You're cold? I thought you were a meat eater.

(That was pre-USMC, by the way)

In any case, rowing was always frustrating because it always felt like someone in the boat (never yourself, of course) was fucking everything up, screwing up the set, and slowing you down. Some people obviously sucked worse than others, and like any other sport, they seemed to not only be unaware of how bad they sucked, but under the impression that they were actually really good. Or even the best. When the boat isn't set, the oar hits you in the stomach or slams your fingers into the gunwales, both of which hurt... and cause blind rage. Then the person who is causing it is making snarky comments about being stuck with a shitty crew. Then you have a coxswain who doesn't know how to shut her stupid mouth. Then people don't come to practice and you have to do two hours of land training. At 5:30am. Do this for 4 years of college, then have people in your boat quit right before a race your senior year.

Collegiate rowing was easily the most thankless, grueling, heart wrenching thing I'd ever been (and have ever been, maybe) a part of. We couldn't get NCAA status (ooh-rah Title IX!) yet we competed with NCAA teams who had NCAA funding. We had shitty gear and sometimes even shittier coaches. It was a chewing-gum and shoelace operation, but it was without a question the most important pivotal event in my life up to that point. A crossroads -- something that for the most part de-pussified me, taught me a lot about people and commitment, and formed the basis for most of my outlooks and philosophies on life and people today. The ironic part is that if I joined the same organization now, I wouldn't stay with it because I'd immediately recognize that the people were flakes, the operation was fucked up, and it would end in nothing but anger.

Aah, the bliss of youthful ignorance, how I miss thee...

A few years ago my mom asked me if I ever missed rowing. "Fuck no." I wanted to say, but I just shook my head (cuz I don't swear at mom). Sure, I miss being out on the water, and there's no better feeling than when you have a crew that's bangin' as one and gliding through the water.. But when I think about rowing I think about all the heartache that came with it -- not because of the sport itself -- but because of the people involved. In a crew of 8 people, 7 guys could train their asses off and have flawless form, but 1 guy could completely wreck months and months of practice because his attitude sucked or because he insisted on smoking weed all the time.

I suppose most aspects of the military are a "team sport" too, but after I graduated from college (and rowing) I took on a much more selfish approach to physical fitness. If I blew a fitness test, there was only one person accountable for it -- ME -- and I liked that. If I couldn't get 20 pull ups, it wasn't because 3 seat was dragging his oar, it was because I didn't workout hard enough at lunch. If I was gassed during a run, it wasn't because the coxswain didn't know what she was doing, it was because, well, I didn't run enough. Likewise, I didn't put up with people bitching about being in bad shape, and I didn't really go out of my way to try and get malingerers to a higher physical fitness. They acted like I was privy to some special secret on how to get increase pullups or have a faster runtime. "How can I get more pullups?" theyd ask, and I'd say "Do a lot of pullups". They'd ask, "How can I improve my run time?" and I'd say, "Run a lot." They didn't wanna hear that though. They wanted something like, "Burn the hair of a scandanavian whoremonger, along with with two newt eyes, and increase your pullups most certainly will, gaining much applause and surprise!" ..or something.. Anyway, I figured if they don't wanna get up and put in their time? Fuggem. They're just gonna drag me down, and it reminded me of college a lot. Putting on running shoes and running my ass off was free of collegiate sports politics, and I never had to worry about shitty coaches, people not showing up, or the motor on the coach's boat shitting the bed. There were no witnesses to my early morning runs. The only evidence left behind were countless pairs of worn down running shoes, and while my efforts were also a decidedly thankless endeavor, all I needed was the road to run on, and he'd never fuck me over. He was never late for practice. He was always there when I needed him, never asking for anything in return, always challenging me to push myself harder.

While my running companion these days is the treadmill and I run a lot less, Brazilian jiujitsu allows me to continue with the "accountable only to me" philosophy. If someone beats me, they are better than me. Easy peasy. Even if there was a questionable call or it was "too close to tell," well, if I were better, it wouldn't be an issue now would it? I got my ass handed to me by a much more experienced guy than me this weekend, but being served my ass on a platter with a side of fries has always been something of a wake up call for me. My friends / training partners were like "whatever man, the guy was good", but fuck that. He didn't win, I lost, and there's only one person who is accountable for that, and only one person (with the help of my ninja training partners!) who can fix that and who can take responsibility for that.

Time to step it up a notch, bitches. Getting armbarred in front of 100 people is the Ghost of Dioxippus's way of telling me to increase the training a bit and keep from getting embarrassed again. Wish me luck.

=-=-=-

Sorry about the bullshit self-exploratory nature of the last couple posts. I'll get back on track after a few shots of Turkey and a healthy dose of hate crime.

Just kiddin' bout that last part.

I'll leave you with this great video of Tokyo that someone made. Enjoy..

I Love New Tokyo

Introducing E. G. May!

2006-12-08T11:43:00.000+09:00

Who is this E. G. May fellow, you ask? Well, it's not really E G May, it's how you pronounce "ijime" in Japanese, which means "bullying" (it's more like /meh/ than /may/ I guess..). I use it a lot at work to tell the Japanese staff to quit picking on me, but in all seriousness, it's a problem everywhere I think, and has been getting a lot of press here in Japan.

Ijime, a Personal History

I got picked on a lot when I was younger, for a number of reasons. I guess it all started when we moved to Australia because I spoke like a bloody yank, but that didn't really last too long because I picked up the accent in no time. Pretty minor stuff, mainly making fun of the way I said "are". But being smaller than most of my peers, moving around a lot, and a having a big mouth, as the years went by I started feeling the heat pretty bad.

Being on the chubby side certainly didn't help, and by the time I hit high school I had turned from being outgoing and generally happy to being pretty withdrawn. I never went to Homecoming. I never went to Prom. I didn't play any sports. I had maybe 4 or 5 friends, 2 close ones, throughout the entire 4 year ordeal. I wondered how people could be nice to me one on one but so cruel when they were in groups -- your basic Breakfast Club bullshit -- and it made me really angry. The only reason people remembered me was because I punched someone in the mouth in the middle of class for making a holocaust joke (and attacking me), which led to a lot more inner turmoil. All of a sudden people who I had known since 5th grade but who were "popular" and had treated me like a subhuman were being all friendly and cool and wanting to talk to me -- just because I blasted some hilljack in the teeth. "That's fucked up," I thought, and it made me hate them even more. Still, I stood up for myself. I didn't let it go. Someone tried to physically intimidate me and I made blood go everywhere, and while it was too little too late, people treated me completely different. I guess it was my first class in the University of People-Will-Shit-On-You-If-You-Let-Them, where I learned that sometimes in order to be treated like a human, you need to act like an animal. The irony of it troubled me. It was really overwhelming, but I still found myself wondering why I didn't punch someone a few years earlier.

So why am I talking about this? I read this here article about some Japanese kids who kicked the shit out of another 17 year old in the park, made him strip, and took pictures of him with their cell phone cameras. The kid was an orphan, and was tormented by these kids with stuff like "You stink because you've got no parents." But that's not what got me about this article. The last paragraph was:

Two times, in June and November this year, the victim approached his teacher, saying he was being harassed. One of the youths got angry and accused him of "squealing" on them. To avoid trouble the teacher reportedly contacted the youth's guardians and explained the situation, recommending that the 17-year-old stop coming to school.

Recommending he not come to school? That was the teacher's solution. Awesome.

"Um, hi, this is Mr Fujiwara. That orphan of yours came to me yesterday and mentioned that he'd been getting picked on all the time? Yeah. Mmmhmmm.. Anyway, the other children have been spending a little bit too much time tormenting him these days and their school work is suffering, so if you could just go ahead and not send him to school anymore, that'd be greeaaaat."

Nice work, sensei.

In the US of A, we have the saying "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," meaning that if you bitch about something for long enough and loud enough, someone will placate you. In Japan, they have a saying for a similar situation, but it means the exact opposite -- "deru kui ha utareru," which means "The nail sticking up gets hammered down."

Welcome to the Land of Socially Institutionalized Bullying and Self Loathing. Leave your sense of self at the door. It'll be returned to you if you leave the country, but we'll be needing it back if you ever return home..

Still, there has been a lot of press about bullying in Japan lately, mainly because teachers are getting in on the action. Yeah, teachers are picking on the kids. Joining in the fun. Smacking down those pesky nails that insist on sticking up. Recently a middle schooler killed himself after being bullied by classmates and a teacher, and the smug looking school administrators with their half-smiled apologies on TV made me want to throw up. They pay a lot of lip service to solving the problem, but it's a socially endemic fact of life here in Japan. I see it at work all the time among adults even. Standing up for one's self in Japan is seen as being "the nail," conformity is demanded and enforced, and creativity and originality are almost non-existent.

"Hey everyone, look at little Hiroshi, he wants to draw something different than everyone else. C'mon Hiroshi, just do what everyone else is doing. It's better that way. Now, aren't you happy? Can I get a thumbs-up?"

って感じ

Again, since I got picked on a lot in school I understand that Japan isn't alone in its bullying problem, but the motivations and results of it are a little different than in the USA, which is interesting to me. And, as always, this is Adventurepan, where we sometimes talk about Japan. Either way, when I think about all these Japanese kids who are going home at night and living in a personal hell of non-acceptance in what can be a very cold, cruel society, it makes me pretty sad. Japanese people have an infinitely larger capacity, almost desire, to put up with hardship than Americans do, and will go through enormous efforts not to be burdensome. That a human being at age 14, with all their potential, should feel that their very existence is too burdensome for society to handle and should therefore kill themselves is one of the most depressing things I can think of.

I reckon I'll have kids one of these years, maybe a little half-breed of my own, who will likely face some bullying of their own -- all my friends' half-breed kids do. I hope that I'll be able to give them the tools to deal with bullies on their own terms -- through violence; there's no other way -- but the integrity and wisdom to recognize it and put an end to things before it becomes a problem. Fortunately I don't have to deal with that problem now, but for the time being, I'll continue running around and freaking out whenever I see someone getting picked on, and making a complete fool of myself and yelling at children in public whenever they're ganging up on another kid "for the cause." Don't stifle different and creativity -- afterall, without creativity in Japan, we wouldn't have this:

Gut-Punch Thursday!

2006-11-30T22:32:00.000+09:00

I've been known to say that putting one's self in difficult or uncomfortable situations is a good way to rise to the challenge and kick some ass. Or fail. Miserably. But at least learn something. I guess it all started when I was in college and I joined the rowing team as a chubby 17 year old with minimal physical training experience. It continued when I went to Japan as an exchange student and I refused to hang out with anyone but'cept Japanese people to learn the language. I kept at it in the Marines, and part of me taking this job here in Japan was a continuation of it, because even though I didn't lie on my resume or anything to get hired, I had a lot of self doubt about my abilities to be effective at my job. For the most part I've risen to the challenge and done a good job, but today I felt like Corky Thatcher performing River Dance live at the Apollo.

One thing about learning a language is that no matter what you do, there's a lot going on in your brain that you really don't have a lot of control over. It's like a roller coaster. Some days you're on fire -- you cruise around like a ninja, there's no situation that you can't handle, you understand everything, and you feel like a native speaker. Other days, like today, you feel like an idiot and your brain simply won't kick into gear to get the job done.

I don't normally blog about work, but today was kinda comical in a few ways. Comical because, like I said, I felt like a tackling dummy. I haven't felt like I got gut-punched at work this badly since my first day of work, when, after moving my life to Japan, I found out that there was a "mistake" on my official job offer letter and that I'd be taking a $29,000 pay cut. Personnel's official response: "Whoops!" Anyway, I get a kick out of my job mainly because it involves a lot of eccentric personalities in my office, both American and Japanese. Keeps me on my toes. Or knocks me off my feet.

It started off with a meeting in the morning over a project I'm heading up that I almost lost control of, because a guy I work with wouldn't stop talking to me about his experiences working at a car dealership in the USA. I love the guy to death, but in one ear I was listening to 4 Japanese people discussing (in Japanese) one of the processes we were having a problem with as I tried to resolve it, and in the other ear I was listening to a 30 minute tale (in English) about life as a parts manager of a Honda dealership in 1978. By the end of the meeting I was a little bit hosed, so I got a sandwich, went back to my place, and zoned out for 45 minutes.

I came back and my old boss told me he was showing around a group of Japanese folks who were checking out our operation. They came through as scheduled and 20 or so Japanese people piled in the room. I was standing there on the side in my usual lean-on-the-filing-cabinet-looking-bored stance that I typically adopt when guests come through when my old boss says, "Take it away, Paully!" I said, "So, like, are you gonna do this?" and he said, "No, you can tell them about what we do." So I started stammering in Japanese. Like a fucking first year Japanese student. Like an idiot. Like a deaf Gypsy from Turkistan. Finally some dude pipes up and says, "uuuh, I'm an interpreter for these guys....." so I thought "fuggit" and just started speaking in English. Or trying. I don't know which made me look more like a fool -- stammering in Japanese or stammering in my native language. The first sentences sounded something like this:

Uhh, yeah.. Ok.. As you can see here.. Um, we do stuff... Umm.. I, uuh, well, I'm in charge of this.. And, you know.. As you can see by this stuff here. Yeah...

I looked around for a second at 20 inquisitive pairs of eyes, begging to know just what the fuck I was talking about. After an awkward 5 seconds or so looking back at them in abject confusion, I finally got my shit together and regained control of the English language, finishing off my little stammerfest.

My current boss walked in with a huge smile on his face (he was in the back). He seemed to've gotten a big kick out of my performance. All I could say was, "Did you like that? Get a nice view?" and he said, "Of what?" and I said, "Of me, showing my ass. That was awesome." He apologized, but I was too shellshocked to really care.

So after that, I was promptly told that a it was time for another meeting with some of our customers back in the states who had come to visit. Some big wigs. Four of our Japanese staff work for them, and while they are not directly employed by them, whenever the bigwigs come, the section chief tends to voice grievances that the big wigs really have no power to change, because administratively the Japanese workers are under the control of our organization. It's painful to watch, and the section chief insists on making it a complain session every time, with the same answers. The section chief will go on a 10 minute diatribe about something, which will end with the big wigs saying, "We don't control that. The organization here does." It took every ounce of restraint in my soul not to jump in and make it stop. So I drew pictures and kinda paid attention.

Part of my job is to edit the information given to the big wigs by the Japanese staff, which is why I was there. The meeting was held in Japanese with an interpreter sitting there, because I don't like doing simultaneous interpretation. I was sitting there, again, half listening and half doodling on a piece of paper. The Japanese section chief was going on about his many grievances which the folks from the states have no power over, when I looked up and thought to myself, "Did he just say what I think he said?"

It's great, hearing something that you wish you didn't hear in Japanese, then hearing it said in English. It's like getting manslapped and during the shock-phase where you're attempting to comprehend what just happened, your adversary kicks you in the throat. Sometimes you're not quite sure what they said, so you ask them to say it again. Since I wasn't directly part of the conversation I didn't have that option. Here's what I thought he said, in Japanese:

As you can see, our production is considerably lower than last year. This is for a few reasons, partly because the American staff is undermanned. The other reason is because Paully over there has been putting your products on a much lower priority than his other work, so we are suffering.

That was the manslap. That's when I stopped drawing a picture of a stick figure getting killed by a falcon. That's when I looked up and said to myself, "...he just say that?" That's when I felt a wakizashi sliding between my shoulder blades.

As I felt the blood rushing to my stomach, I heard the interpreter say the following:

As you can see, our production is considerably lower than last year. This is for a few reasons, partly because the American staff is undermanned. The other reason is because Paully over there has been putting your products on a much lower priority than his other work, so we are suffering.

I didn't really know what to say, because it's not true. Yes, I have had a lot on my plate, but I've been getting their shit done as fast as I've been doing anything else. Another good reason production isn't as high this year is because, well, the fiscal year began last month. So yeah. There probably isn't going to be as much done in the past month as there was in the past year. And in the 1 month represented in their little statistics? Around 1/12th of last year's total production. Hm..

So thanks buddy. I thought we were cool. I thought we were homies, because you come into my office and yap at me whenever you wanna talk about WWII airplanes or whatever weird shit you have on your mind. I pretend not to notice the awkwardness when I tell you I need to get back to work, which you ignore, and entertain your conversations about any and all aircraft since 1941. When you go on about things which I have no control over, I make sympathetic faces and curse the man. Roger that.

But I have news for you. Tomorrow I'm going to purchase a car. A pimp car. It looks like this.

You, sir, will never ride in my car*. Oh, and just so you know? Consider yourself photoshopped.

But that's as far as my revenge will go. I suppose I'll sit there, in the name of harmony, and continue to listen to your ridiculous senile babblings. You are a nice man, I think, but in the dozen or so years of working with roundeye you never learned our customs or etiquette. And why should you? We are your guests. We are simple barbarians after all, unable to comprehend your nepotistic subtleties and roundabout buddy fucking. I won't even tell our boss about what you said at the meeting that he luckily missed, because he will go completely apeshit and hire a 19 year old Filipina drinky-girl to fill the current opening just to spite you.

...and that, my friends, is what we call Cultural Sensitivity.

* yeah im seriously getting that car

We Don't Serve Your Kind Here........

2006-11-27T21:07:00.000+09:00

aka Don't Take Us To Nice Places

I've never written a food post, cuz I'm not real picky about what I eat. This weekend was good tho.

This weekend was my friend Yumi's birthday party, which she held at a really awesome prime rib joint called Lawry's.

Say Happy Birthday to the Yuminator!! And Thai and Kaz.

Apparently there's a Lawry's steakhouse in a few major cities around the globe. She sent us all emails asking if it was OK to have it there, and what do I care? It's a steakhouse.

Anyway, the joint was pretty cool. They have a few types of prime ribs, the difference of which is the size. The difference between mid-range and second-to-biggest was 500yen, so i figured what the hell? Kinda like when you get the ginormous size cup at the movie theatre because hey, it's 25 cents more, so fuggit. When you're ready to order, they wheel in this giant silver thing, which sorta resembles R2D2's obese silver cousin. It's a sort of grill/serving thing on wheels, and they cut the prime rib from a giant, 6000lb Diplodocus rib simmering within. Here's what the steel thing looks like:

Imagine my joy when the following was brought forth.

The meal was around 7000yen or so, so like $60ish. The prime rib was fab, as was the creamed corn and mashper-taters. Most of us also had a few drinks during dinner, so all in all it was a mellow evening. They also have an original spinning salad, where they spin a salad around in a bowl and put stuff in it. And it's good. Here's the waitresses doing it.

I got a kick out of their outfits, and quipped that they doubled as nurses for when one of us would be requiring the heimlich. I would say that they put up with us with grace, but the group I was with was really well behaved.

They brought out the desert menu, which also offered a host of surprises, including grappa. I knew what grappa was and had tasted it before, and the ladyfriend was curious as to what it was, so I ordered up a shot for 1000yen and had everyone take a taste. Most people couldn't get past the the scent, but just about everyone stomached a little sip of it. There was about a half a tiny glass left when we were about to leave, so a member of our party decided to slam it, which made him throw up in the bathroom before he left. Good thing he paid for that expensive meal, eh?

Here's me and the Mizz Aki, discussing something intently, as Craig prepares to devour his catch.

I wouldn't recommend getting grappa unless it's something that you, the hard core alcoholic requiring some some after-dinner rocket fuel, are jones-ing. The only thing I can compare it to is the booze we drank in Sasebo with the dead scorpions in the bottom, or the booze in North Korea with the two dead snakes floating around in it.

The moral of the story is, "that's why we don't take us nice places". Or rather, that's why we shouldn't order drinks from a power-alcoholic's menu.

Here's the crew:

...and then God farted, and it was good...

2006-11-19T18:31:00.000+09:00

So this weekend I went to Hakone. First thing's first -- it's pronounced like Ha-Koe-Nay, not Hah-Cone. It's not an icecream holder. Or something Brando calls a halloween costume. It's a lovely place near Mt Fuji, and, as per SOP, the ever fickle Mt Fuji was hidiing behind clouds. Aaah, Mizz Fuji, why must you toy with me so? I was able to get this little picture while she was peeking out to see if I was looking.

Gotcha suckah!!!

Me and the she-partner hopped in my ride and drove down there first thing in the morning on Saturday. The weather was clear at first but, as always, it got progressively shittier as the day went on. It's also getting pretty cold here, but we managed. We started off by driving to this gondola-deal, or as they call it, a "rope way", which took us to the top of a fancy hill.

It was about a 7 minute ride to the top, which was way colder than it was at the bottom. Still, it yielded a bounty of snazzy pics, which you will be able to enjoy now.

Here's the lake.

As you can see, the Japanese have out done themselves maintaining the majesty of the area, by placing a golf course in between the top of the mountain and the lake.

Here it is, a tad closer.

What are those? Boats? What sort of boats? Probably some sort of traditional boat. Well, kinda traditional I guess...

Yaar, matey, that be Mt Fuji over thaarrrrrr...

They actually have a huge union-jack paint scheme on the other side. I was pretty amazed that it was able to sail around with its sails furled. I wonder what sort of demon magic they used to keep it moving? Probably something like in that Juan Depp movie.

After looking around the rope-way area for a bit, we went over to check out some volcanic plumes. I love geology, and initially chose it as my major in college until I realized that it involved math, which made it a big fat no-go. But I'm still pretty interested in it, and always have been, as shown by the silver medal I won at the Science Olympiad in Geology in high school.

Yes, I was even cooler back then.

Anyway, one thing that I haven't done since I've been driving in Japan, including my time spent in Okinawa, is ram another car. I'd always wanted to see what would happen if I did -- you know, to better understand the traffic laws and such -- so on the way to the volcanic plumes I took the opportunity to rear-end the car in front of me.

Here's what happens when a 93 Carina (my car) plows into a mini-SUV with 4 unsuspecting Japanese people in it:

His car:

And my car:

I'm sure you probably asking yourself, "Hey what gives? His plate has a Japanese letter next to the blacked out number, and yours has a Y next to yours." That's why we call em Yankee plates, folks. I'm glad the cops know that a roundeye is driving whenever I cruise by.

Anyway, it was no small thing. I was hoping to give him all my cash, high-5 and pat asses, and drive on, but no, you have to involve the police. The cop came out to confirm that I did indeed rear end him, and insurance companies were contacted, and an hour-and-a-half dance ensued. Luckily we made it to the plumes before it got dark, which was at about 4:45pm up there. The cop was cooler than I expected -- in the past, I've found them to be prickish -- and we all had a chuckle when I announced that "our cars did battle, and mine clearly lost." har har har, yuck it up, I'm a fucking idiot.

Anyway, on to the plumes. Any one who's ever been by one of these geologic wonders knows that it smells like absolute shit. Or rather, like a fart. Like a really bad fart from someone who ate an inappropriate amount of hard boiled eggs. In a word (or 3), like my office. You start off at the bottom, and walk up to where the big vents are, by this little hut on the mountain:

Next to the hut, the fumes are almost overwhelming. When a breeze hits it right and it hits you in the face, it's like god is holding you down and farting in your mouth. A big, wet, palpable fart. Another tradition they have up there is that they boil eggs in the volcanic water which turns the shells black, so everyone is standing around eating hard boiled eggs and throwing the egg detritus on the ground and on these tables. I wonder who had that bright idea? "Hey, Satoshi, it doesn't smell bad enough up here. Let's boil eggs so everyone can eat em and throw pieces of egg everywhere, which will rot. Maybe we can cover up the smell of rotten eggs that volcanic sulfer brings with, well, real rotten eggs." Anyway, I took a little video on my camera of the plumes for you all to enjoy.

Here's a picture of me next to the cool sign.

And let's not forget my faithful navigator, who refused to let me drive after bulldozing some unsuspecting folks on a narrow road:

So that was my weekend adventure. I hope I don't lose my liscence, because you might remembed that the last time I was in Kyoto I thought it would give everyone a good laugh if I hit a pole with a rental van. These are the only two times I've struck something with a vehicle. Except in Afghanistan, but that's ok, because everyone hits stuff there. It doesn't count. Plus I wrote a fancy blog about it back then, so I've made sure to let everyone know when I smack something with a vehicle.

I hope you enjoy my stupid antics as much as I enjoy doing them.

Let’s go the Zoo, Fakkahs!

2006-11-13T21:54:00.000+09:00

Hey, check out my new hat!

And no, those aren’t Yankee Mikes in the background, they’re freakin Oliphants. Asiatic. Got it?

That’s right, me and the missez went to Ueno Zoo this past Sunday.

Everyone knows that I love animals. I grew up watching animal shows and when we all went to the park to start youth soccer, I was more interested in playing with ants. The first channels I have to know whenever I go somewhere are Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel, and if Shark Week or Big Cat Diaries or anything having to do with birds is on, good luck getting me to do anything else. I’m fixated on the tube like a retarded kid to a bus window. In Afghanistan we got the National Geographic channel, and I had all the commercials memorized and cheerfully sang along to them. I dig it, folks, that’s what I’m tryin’ to say.

This presents a quandary. How can a guy who likes animals possibly go to the zoo and have a good time?

Good question. Zoos are a little bit depressing. I’m used to seeing animals (albeit on the TV) running around in their natural habitats, running down prey, pwning their rivals’ babies, and crapping all over the place. Instead, there are these animals just sitting around doing nothing, peering from their enclosures while the equivalent of big macs with super-sized fries walk around and leer at them, just begging to be killed and eaten. Here’s a good video of a lion that wants to murder everything within view, but can’t. Poor fellah.

Still, I know that zookeepers love animals even more than me and devote their lives to making their lives comfortable. Being an animal (and in a lot of places, a human) really sucks, because everything around you is trying to take your genes out of the race and acquire the nutrients that are your muscle tissue. There is one animal, though, that I have a bit of a problem with. The animal that the Japanese (and Chinese I guess) love ever so much is the Giant Panda. I can’t really abide by the panda, because they refuse to mate and propagate their species. What happens to animals like that? They fall by the evolutionary wayside. But for some reason pandas are special, because they’re cute and cuddly. I disagree, as seen in this video, where a panda is intent on fucking some guy’s shit up.

Oh, so cuddly! Animals that are the same size or bigger than humans are typically about 100 times stronger than us, and when they get mad, they have a tendency to try and rip our heads off. Take chimps. Chimps are completely and utterly insane and fucked up, and when they have an inkling, they will tear your shit to pieces. So anyway, back to pandas.

Pandas refuse to procreate, which is pretty lame in my book. “Oh, I’m just a panda, I’m content on sitting on my ass and eating an inappropriate amount of bamboo and shitting over 200 times each each day while the WWF pimps me as their symbol. Save me lolz!!!” They have cute names like Ling-Ling and Sing-Sing and Gao-Gao. More like Gay-Gay. Weak sauce.

So here’s a little tribute I made to pandas all over the world.

This took more time than I intended, but I didn’t want to quit in the middle and waste what you clearly see is valuable time in my life. Furthermore, they're apparently doing better in the wild these days, not doubt due to the fact that it was punishable by death to kill them until recently.

Just down the road from the stupid pandas are some real bears. Bears that don’t fuck around and pimpslap your skull clean off just because you looked at them sideways.

Here's an example of what a polarbear will go through to try and annihilate your shiz-nit. I think I've posted it before.

Click here for the full video, and to see how horribly annoying that girl is.

No one wants to help the poor polar bears though, because they eat seals, and seals are cute.

Don’t get me wrong now – I’m not advocating seal clubbing.

That’s just kinda fucked up.

But sometimes things that are cute have a buttload of nutritional value, especially for our manly aforementioned bears.

Another thing I love is when animals do something really fucked up, folks will sagely proclaim, “Clearly they’re demonstrating decidedly human behavior.” Like when chimpanzees go on hunting parties and ambush some poor chimp, chewing off its face, hands, feet, and genitalia, or when a group of bottlenose dolphins gang rapes a spinner dolphin. Uuh, I think they were up to that shit way before humans were, and I don’t remember humans chewing off anyone’s face. We use tools to do that shit, because we can. Animals aren’t as smart as us, and if they had the brains to use a knife to massacre their rivals, you can bet your ass they would. Furthermore, animals can’t use language like us. I always got a chuckle in Anthro classes when students would sooo want to believe that, and even after giving a definition of language in human terms and being shown evidence that animals can’t use it like us, they didn’t believe it. They were convinced that animals could either talk the same way we could and we just couldn’t understand its subtleties, or they were talking on a different plane. Animals have complex communication methods, yes. But not like ours. They don’t use symbolic representation to mean other things. They don’t talk about things that will happen in the future in other locations. And when chimps were taught sign language, they only used it to get bananas. Scientists thought they could teach chimps or gorillas sign language and bring them into the field as interpreters ,like in Congo when that one ape is all like AMY SCARED! AMY SHIT PANTS! AMY PLAY WITH FECES AND THROW AT SCIENTISTS! AMY NEED GORILLASEX! Anyway it didn’t work and it won’t work, because apes aren't built like that. Some animals are pretty smart though. Like this fellah here. He's wearing a blanket. Oh my god, he must be as smart as us!!!

But for all our flaws and our “human tendencies” to run around butchering each other, he can't put 2 and 2 together and brain his buddy with a log because he's pissed off about something. He can't coordinate with his crew to pretend to be injured or sick and when the zookeepers come in, to tear the poor guy's throat out and wave it around triumphantly for the crowd. He’s on display being woo’d at by a bunch of screaming Japanese school children, not the other way around.

Stuck in my Eurotrash Prison

2006-11-06T13:28:00.000+09:00

Update...

I haven't written in a while, and I feel compelled to write about some bullshit. This post may have a few completely unrelated topics, so hold your comments until the end.

Topic One: Eurotrash rikey Tokyo

This one is from when I was in Don Quixote last night. Yeah, sounds like some strange shower scene in 15th century Spain, but there's store in Japan called Don Quixote which sells stuff that you might find in a dollar store, only for more than a dollar. Basically a general store consisting of cheap plastic goods made in China for a reasonable price. I was downstairs waiting for my friend to come down to the front, and this dude walks by with what I can only describe as a Billy Idol sneer wearing what I can only describe as something picked up out of Tyler Durden's laundry hamper. You know, camel hair jacket, weird flowered button up shirt unbuttoned down to the middle.
*
He had this Japanese girl with him who was dressed like a straight up prostitute, and he was mean-mugging everyone as he walked out. He was probably 5'7 and weighed 130lbs at the most, but he sure did look mad. I was standing there minding my own business with a bag of cream puffs in one hand (a present for bringing my friend some supplements) and a bag containing bottled water in the other, with my normal bored-waiting-for-someone look on my face. He seemed to take particular interest in me, and locked eyes with me as he walked out and turned the corner. I wonder what he was thinking? "I know you weren't checkin out my hot ass girlfriend. I will cut you." Well, hipster, everyone was checking out your girlfriend because she looked like some sort of Intergalactic Spacewhore. No one does fucked up apparel ensembles quite like the Japanese, who have a tendency to over-do just about everything. It's in their character. This girl was no different. I looked away after a second, because I'm not really sure what this guy was all about. Was he the confrontational type? Was he going to walk over and ask me what my problem was? Was he going to threaten me? I could have found all that out, but instead I just looked away. It's just easier that way. I hope though, Mr Eurotrash, that you pull that shit with a few friends of mine, who have no sense and will gladly put your face in the concrete. Guys like Mr Euro are either a) pussies who bluff or b) on borrowed time. Running around Tokyo mean-mugging everyone might last for a while, because Japanese people aren't weird about mean-mugging like we are, but this guy reminds me of the typical assface from abroad who's forgotten his Ps and Qs. He's been running around Tokyo acting a fool and acting tough for so long, he's forgotten himself cuz no one's slapped him in the mouth. Me? I'm docile. I don't want any problems. I just want to buy some water and bring some cream puffs home, where I can consume my plunder with no bumps or bruises. But there are a limited amount of guys like me running around, and I hope he gets smart soon. Did part of me want to stare him down and see what would happen? Did I want to do something that would make him approach me in a threatening way so I could somehow justify whatever absurd over-reaction I'd likely produce in the middle of Don Quixote, just for the amusement of myself and my friend who was upstairs with his girlfriend? Of course. I'm all about the "story". But you just gotta let some things go. Does it bother me that some douchebag with no style and a skanked out girl might feel emboldened by my apathy? Not in the least. If anything, I encourage it.

Topic Two: There are only two types of people who wear sunglasses at night.

Blind people and assholes. My friend Tim said that the other week at a club we were in, and I got a big kick out of it. Kind've goes along with topic one in a way, because the aforementioned Eurotrash are major culprits. A lot of Japanese dudes do it too. Not only does it not look cool, but it inhibits a person's sight. I could understand if they were a clubbin' albino and the lights bothered their corneas or whatever, but they're not. They're just assholes.

So I guess that means albinos can wear sunglasses at night too, God bless 'em.

Topic Three: I purchased Season 1 of Prison Break and watched the entire thing with the ladyfriend

I won't say it was "great". I'll say it was "pretty good". Yeah, it hooked me, but there were a few things that got on my nerves, the biggest of which were how they covered up weird plot holes and explained the unexplainable.

"Genius"

OK, so the main character's a genius, which explains how he can pull crazy shit out of his ass and foresee everything. I'm sorry, but I'd like something a little more complicated than "well he's a genius" to explain whenever he does something totally badass. I guess the human elements (pedophiles, psychopaths, mafiosos, crooked cops, etc) that are mucking up his plan make it interesting, but I like my protagonists to have flaws. And not flaws that enhance him somehow or endear him to the audience, like a weakness for saving puppies and giving ice cream to Ethiopians. No. I want something weird and debilitating, cuz everyone has a few of those flaws. Everyone I know that is brilliant in some way has a side of their personality that is completely fucked up and disfunctional, and this guy shouldnt be any different. Another thing that kinda goes along with that is the fact that we don't really know anything that he did before going to prison, so the producers can conveniently throw it in there to explain whatever he happens to be doing. "Oh, you see we didn't tell you this, but he married a stripper from Prague who's his outside contact and can deliver weird shit to him on the inside during conjugal visits." Wow, this guy thinks of everything! I wonder what else he thought of in preparation for his incarceration that we're going to find out to explain his next zany antics!!

"The Government"

Ok, I'm sure the government has some powerful influence and is capable of a lot of shadiness in real life, but I have my limits. And I'm not saying this out of some weird loyalty to the US of A. I'm talking about these weird, sancrosanct GMen running around invincibly with carte blanche to do whatever they want with the gadgets to be anywhere and find anyone. Also, for those of you who watched it, did you notice that the one Secret Service guy threatened to kill his partner no less than twice? "If you keep talking like that, I'm gonna have to put a bullet in your head". And he threatened to throw him down a well. I'm not even a cold blooded GMan killer and I wouldn't put up with that bullshit. If the chubby GMan were a cold blooded killer, and I assume he is because he blasted that one woman in the woods and didn't seem to have too much problem wasting folks left and right, he wouldn't puss out if his partner started talking shit. I've met my share of Type-A whackjobs that would likely fill these jobs, and they don't get to be weirdo type-A whackjobs by being pussies and letting people walk on them. And they certainly don't have normal homelives. This whole "Oh, I'm just a normal, every day guy with a picture perfect family who happens to be a fucking hitman" thing in Hollywood is getting a little bit tired. It makes normal people think, in some weird fantasy of theirs, that they can be a super-secret covert spy. Then they run around and talk about the "intel and spec ops" community like they could be a part of it, but they just choose not to be cuz Jennifer Garner can pull off the soccermom/superspy bit seamlessly. Normal, well adjusted people don't run around killing people with no remorse. They're called sociopaths. And they probably don't make good parents.

All in all, it was "Good". Do I want to see the next season? Yes I do. Unless they spend an entire season hatching a plan that eventually fails but miraculously coincides with his brother's stay of execution, cuz then they could pretty much do the show indefinitely. I kind've thought it was going to be a little bit better, but it wasn't a bad way to spend a weekend.

So what do you guys think? Wanna beat up some sunglasses-wearing-Eurotrash and plan a daring escape from prison? I'm down.

* yeah i know it's sting

Cultural Devolution

2006-10-27T14:24:00.000+09:00

Allow me to attempt to stay on topic here, for this is, after all, Adventurepan.

I know a lot of my posts stray outside the topic of Japan, but while I like to keep things Japan related (being that I'm here and whatnot), things get a little cloudy and I tend to lose focus.

That's ok though, because I don't tend to follow my own rules. And now I give you......a completely uncohesive, incoherent, pointless post!

.......SCENE!

I heard about this article posted in the NYT about Japanese people traveling to New York. It reminded me of a trend that I'd been reading about, namely two articles published in my beloved WaiWai. The first was an article about young Japanese people wasting their lives away in Cambodia. The second was about Cambodian dudes taking advantage of Japanese female tourists.

I read these types of articles and I just have to scratch my head, and wonder what people in these places think of Japanese people, and what the Japanese folks are thinking when they go over there. One thing that kinda depresses me is that Japanese folks a lot of times feel like Japan is some sorta prison, and feel obligated to act "Japanese" when they're here, and that somehow going somewhere else gives them to green light to do whatever they want, and they have a reputation for being pretty inconsiderate tourists (not that Americans are any better, but everyone expects that of Americans because we're generally loud and rude). Since Japan is a stratified and regimented country, when they get to their destinations, they don't really know what to do with themselves, so they end up doing pretty much the same thing they do in Japan surrounded only by Japanese people, and somehow that's liberating for them. The extent of the womens' cultural experience seems to be getting tricked into having sex with the dudes wherever they go and buying things that they could get anywhere in Tokyo. And as for the guys, well, I dunno what the hell they do.

I try not to be "that gaijin" who runs around talking shit about Japan all the time -- a lot of roundeye over here are consumed with a serious bitch complex about Japan -- but I feel that I talk approximately the same amount of shit about Japan as I do about the USA. I might even venture to say that recently I badmouth the youth of America more, as I am frequently subjected to user comments on myspace and youtube, which are typically written at a 3rd grade level by people with popped collars and huge, flat billed ball caps turned sideways.

Be that as it may, stuff like this makes me think about evolution. Yeah, I said it. Evolution. The societal type. Now, we all know natural selection, right? Things that, for whatever reason, can survive long enough to reproduce faster than its competitors will be more successful, and the other one will eventually go byebye. It doesn't necessarily have to do with how smart something is or how cool something is, all it has to be able to do is fill a specific niche and pass its genes on enough to survive. Pretty basic definition, I guess. Anywho, animals adapt physically (and behaviorally I guess) to deal with the shit sandwiches they're forced to eat on a daily basis, because aside from domesticated housepets, the life of an animal pretty much sucks. More specifically, if they haven't adapted well enough and everything changes, they're SOL. Humans on the other hand adapt extra somatically. I had an anthro prof whose favorite definition of culture was An Extra somatic means of adaptation. I like it too. Wanna see if someone knows what they're talking about? Ask them to define culture, and if they give you an answer like they know what they're talking about, they're lying. People write books about defining that word. But today, we're gonna define "culture" as "an extra somatic means of adaptation," and therefore, the mechanism by which a culture succeeds or fails. We're gonna include behavior and stuff like in there too, btw.

Follow me?

Good.

So where am I going with this? I'm concerned for the survival about Japan, that's all. Japanistan. Not that I'm predicting a doomsday thing or anything, but I think there are gonna be some serious consequences to some of the shit that's going down socially here. Am I worried about the survival of the USA? Naw, the USA will be OK, because Americans tend to adapt to change pretty well, which is a key to survival. Bear in mind, the smartest don't necessarily survive, the ones that can adapt and procreate survive. (So yeah, we'll be taken over by hilljacks I guess...) So what's wrong with Japan? And what am I most worried about? I'll tell you, and it's probably going to surprise some folks.

Tradition.

Yep. That thing that we all love so much about Japan. "A culture With Deep Traditions." or how about "A country Rooted in Deep Tradition." Notice the rooted part. In the USA, we like traditions, because we're generally pretty non-traditional. Traditions to us are more like a distraction; something we do once a week or once a year, or some silly ritual that we do during our martial arts class to bolster the sensei's ego. So what is a tradition anyway? Let's consult my good friends Merriam and Webster.

Let's use this one:

1 a : an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)

One thing about Japan is that their daily life is much more governed by these "customary patterns" (read: traditions) than those of us in the USA, and they are, again, in general, more accustomed to following patterned behavior and sticking to it for an indefinite amount of time. It's what's made their society great. Whenever they get hold of something, they perfect if through exhaustive revision. They (again, that "in general thing") have an almost limitless capacity (and seeming desire) to do shitty grunt work, and seem to derive pleasure out of sticking out really shitty situations and overcoming something "together as a group". It's something that's instilled in them from the time they're little kids. It's the sort of thing that enabled the odd Japanese soldier to live in a fucking cave until the 1980s, and it's what enabled them to stick it out during post war and completely rebuild their country in a couple decades.

But, dear readers, could it also be their bane? Their doom? Their Achilles-san's heel? What happens when they're no longer a happy homogeneous isolated country, and are all of a sudden competing with foreign countries? What happens when they're not allowed to seal their borders and marginalize foreigners (as much/as blatantly) anymore? What happens when that common thing -- that common ideal -- that drives people to dig in their heels and sacrifice everything is gone? I dunno, but I think we're just starting to see it now. There's this generation of listless Japanese 20-somethings and below who don't really see what the point of anything is. They're living at home until they're well into their 30s and just expecting something to happen, but the social mechanisms that made this feasible aren't really in place anymore. A lot of the Japanese women are working odd jobs for a few months, saving up some scrill, traveling to weird countries for a few months at a time, having sex with exotic men, and making their way back to Japan to repeat the process ad nauseum. They don't really have to worry about living expenses because their parents will house them infinitely, and they can just save up their money and/or hit up their parents for money to buy accessories and whatnot. The Japanese guys have the attractive option of joining a company, working 80 hours a week for about $2000 a month, on which they can live at home for free (and not meet women) or they can live in a shoebox in Tokyo and be house-poor. I often sit there and wonder what kind of force would be able to motivate these kids to get ambitious, fired up, and say "OK, this is bullshit." But they won't. Why? Because everyone before them has had to deal with it. Because they don't want to be the one(s) to stand up and draw attention to themselves.. Because it's all about the struggle, and we likes the struggle, doesn't we, precious? It's Tradition, bitches, and you bettuh reconnize. It's what We Japanese do. When Japanese people don't wanna act Japanese, they just scoot off to a foreign country, get they' freak on, feel liberated, and come back to the grind. The escapes found in rock gardens and meditation practices have simply been replaced by beach resorts and Manhattan Island. The birthrate in Japan is the lowest it's been ever, and right now all the baby boomers are fixin to retire. What's gonna happen I wonder? If Japan fails to adapt as a society, will it suffer the same fate as every other thing that has not been able to adapt in competitive situations? I think about the potential these people have and what they've been able to accomplish numerous times in history over incredibly short periods of time, and the loss of potential saddens me a little bit.

Again, I don't wanna seem like I'm Japan bashing, and anyone who knows me can tell you that I do a lot of America bashing too, which, uuh, somehow justifies anything I say I guess... When I talk to Japanese people about the future, I'm usually just met with shrugs. "We'll try real hard," they say, but trying hard at something that's doomed to fail is just gonna get you there faster. I asked my girl about what she thought might get people excited and motivated to change, and she doesn't really think anything could. "It's not a total waste," she said, "They're unambitious people, but we have a lot of smart, ambitious people here in Japan too. Those people will run stuff, and the unambitious will work at convenience stores, gas stations, etc, for the rest of their lives. After all, we need people to work at convenience stores, don't we?"

I guess she's got a point.

Discuss. I really want an informed, irrefutable, well stated comment showing me that I'm completely full of shit. I wanna be wrong on this one, folks. Show me that everything's gonna be ok.. h...hold me..

Three-to-the-Izz-Oh

2006-10-20T10:52:00.000+09:00

Yes, it's my birthday today. Well, it still is in the USA. It's officially not my birthday here in Japan, because Japanese culture is so far advanced over American culture, their country exists one day BEFORE you guys. Yeah. Stinky barbarians. FACE!

I took a day off work -- a legit one -- and saw the Lady in the Water movie with the fine, fine woman of posts previous. I admit that I like M. Night Shamalamadingdong's movies. I like situations where seemingly normal, average people are faced with something completely fucked up, but manage to pull through because they have some weird skeletons in their closet. Things aren't always as they seem, he seems to be trying to say.

After that we got some cake.

Ever wonder what it looks like when a newly-turned 30 year old is holding a super-super rich chocolate cake with inappropriately long candles wearing a t-shirt and underwear?

I thought you might.

That might look like a thumbs-up, but it's actually a fighting stance I developed during my time as a cage fighter. First I blind you with my Forehead Reflection of Doom. Right when you think I'm giving you a thumbs up, I strike you in the KOTT-DAMN mouth......guide

Just kidding. But the cake was super rich, and after just a smidge, I felt pretty incapacitated. And yeah, I was wearing boxer briefs.

It was pretty much the perfect birthday. No fanfare. No frills. Maybe this weekend I'll get my drink on, because people are supposed to buy me shots. Maybe I'll show the aforementioned lady how charming I can be when I'm throwing up on myself and peeing my pants.

I feel it also bears mentioning that this is the third birfday that I've blogged on. The first one, of course, was this one from Afghanistan, and the second one was last year, where I went on a stupid birthday rant. If you've somehow forgotten at some point while reading this what a complete retard I am, I recommend checking out those two posts.

Anyway, I thought I'd make a little post giving you all the opportunity to shower me with birthday wishes, and hopefully the odd Amazon.com gift certificate. More later.

Fear the Manslap...

2006-10-16T15:54:00.000+09:00

Looking at this picture really brought back a lot of memories of Afghanistan, mainly because, like, these people are obviously from there.

One thing I always got a kick out of in Afghanistan was the fact that anytime you drove past a huge group of kids, like when school was getting out or something, there were at least 2 kids that were no-shit going at it. Like for real. Like "I'm trying to injure you." The kids there beat the dogshit out of each other all the time. There are a lot of fights in the streets too, between adults. I liked it because for the most part, Afghans were pretty chill folks. Chill folks that like beating the crap out of each other and killing Russians.

One common form of physical expression down there is the Manslap, as shown in the above picture. This picture is a fine demonstration of a calmy administered manslap, complete with de-hatting, which makes anything more funny. Notice, if you will, the slapper's calm demeanor. He believes he is clearly in the right, because the slapee has committed some sort of greivous transgression. He's issued his slap with all the confidence he needs to assure that his message has gone through, loud and clear. His manslap must have also come from no where. This is a post-manslap picture, and the slapee's hands are only raised slightly. What speed! We are dealing with a professional.

Most of my friends know that I'm an advocate of the manslap, but that one must wield it very responsibly, like any sort of physical force. Manslaps are very, very powerful. Again, use them responsibly. Do you have a manslap story? I'd like to hear it. And yeah Joe, I already know yours. Or rather a few of them. There are so many.

So what happened this weekend? Well, the lady friend went back to her home town, so I hung out around Tokyo, trained on Friday evening and Saturday morning, then had a bit of a boozefest on Saturday night. I think I was pretty dehydrated and I was a cheap date, and the night turned into the typical "Paul says absurd things to people all night" show. I played my favorite "Pretend to mishear what people say and repeat back something outrageous or vulgar" game. I also played my other favorite, namely the "Tell the group of girls that your friends are talking to that you're really all homosexuals, and describe what you do to each other without letting your friends in on the joke" game. Oh, and another gem, which is the old "dry heave out of a cab window" game.

The cabby was getting a little nervous up there in the front seat, cuz I was mouth-sweating and sticking my head out the window. I looked at him and said, with the confidence similar to that of a seasoned doctor about to perform a simple procedure, "Don't worry -- I do this all the time. It's just routine," and proceeded to have myself a little bit of an ab workout. I hit the hay at about 5am, feeling none too good, and woke up at around 11am, feeling surprisingly spry and not-too-bad. A heaping bowl of noodles and a cup of joe later, I was ready to roll. And by ”ready to roll" I mean "ready to lay around and watch TV all day in my underwear and marvel at my brontosaurus-like constitution."

Oh yeah, and I took a picture of this too, for Mr Tony's T-shirt collection:

Smoke is billowing from a stand ashtray. If it were my home, I wouldn't be so calm.

Yeah, it's a retarded analogy, I know. Cuz we don't live in stand ashtrays. At least most of us don't.

Anyway...

Hawaii Trip!

2006-10-12T17:38:00.000+09:00

I’m gonna cheese out here for a bit, so bear with me.

Anyway…

For the last decade or so I’ve been on the move pretty constantly – a rolling stone collecting no moss, etc etc etc.. From traveling in college to being pretty mobile as an active duty Marine, I was never really able to hold down a relationship for a number of reasons, most recently because I was, and still pretty much am, very much a mal-socialized animal prone to outbursts of rudeness, crude behavior, a lack of manners, and general social malfeasance.

Almost 6 months ago I was fortunate enough to find someone who is more than forgiving and tolerant of my constant relationship fuckups and stupid, outrageous behavior. She amazes me with her wit, intelligence, and strength, and makes me want to be a better person.

This past weekend we went to Hawaii together, and had a great time. I never really thought I’d head back to Hawaii (I was stationed there before). While Hawaii is nice and all, it sort of represented a rough patch in the road for me in some ways. Going back with her was a big step in our relationship, and as we approach the “6 month mark,” I see it as an opening in a new chapter, and look forward to the future. I’d like to thank her for accepting me and my cornucopia of social/mental inadequacies, and for just being a really cool girl. I appreciate her tolerance for my sometimes erratic and explosive behavior, for never giving up, and for reminding me what it’s like to feel the way she makes me feel. At risk of sounding cliché or like a Top 40 song, I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure the guys will gimme a hard time about this one, but they’ll secretly be happy for me. ;)

Anywho, I rented a Geo Tracker convertible so we could cruise the island Hawaiian style, and not worry about becoming a target for the carjackers running rampant on the island. I’m happy to report that nothing was lost or stolen. We stayed in the lovely (and currently being renovated) Gateway Hotel right there in the thick of things in Waikiki, in easy walking distance of the “hotspots”, and more importantly, Dennys (Moons Over My Hammy mmmmmmm) and Jamba Juice. While I was ribbed for my penchant for making wrong turns and going the wrong direction, I was pretty proud of myself for remembering where things were, given my horrible sense of direction and ability to get lost.

So on to the pictures!!

We arrived at Diamondhead about 15 minutes too late, and the morbidly obese yet friendly local girl manning the guard shack didn’t let us continue to the top. That didn’t phase us though, as we snapped off a few pictures.

Here she is (erm, my girl, not the obese rent-a-cop), all smiles!

Here’s me, pimping my new shirt that she picked out for me the day before at Ala Moana.

Here’s the two of us together:

Here’s a pic of Hanauma Bay, which is like swimming around in an aquarium. We rented snorkels and went to town, and even saw a sea turtle.

Here’s a cool pic she took of herself near Waimanalo. She admitted that it took her a few tries to get it right, and she pulled it off pretty well:

Here we are on Waikiki Beach, around Sunset Time:

Here’s the sunset, which was more like a pseudo-sunset, cuz of the clouds on the horizon. It was pretty nonetheless:

And here she is, with Mr Diamondhead in the background. The picture is a little blurry, but it’s still nice:

So here’s to the future, and I can’t wait to take more groovy trips and exciting adventures together. Thanks for reading.

Backgammon + Injins + Parrots + Hezbollah = A Terrible Post

2006-10-02T14:35:00.000+09:00

Oooooooooh my gawd

This video is so funny on so many levels. I demand that you click upon it.

Their stupidity will be immortalized on the innernets, for generations and generations to see.

So will mine, but it's different. You see, me and my blogger circle get a kick out of self-deprecating humor, but never could it be misconstrued to be representative of our greater associations. Your associates should be ashamed, and not just because of your haircut and poor oratory skills.

Video highlights:

Poor public speaking, or should I say, stammering

Mature behavior

"We are all hezbollah"

Blond/blue peeps talking about the "struggle"

Peoples' ideas of "basic rights"

Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression are pretty cool, cuz apparently it means "Freedom for me to say and do whatever the fuck I want if it's politically motivated".. We've posted about this in the past tho, so I'll stop there.

You know how I protested the deforestation, comfort women, eating dolphins, and child exploitation this weekend?

I played backgammon until 5am Sunday morning. Suckahs.

Y'all know I love me some backgammon. My retarded cousin got me into it way back when, and I'm always looking for a new opponent. I've recently let my partner* into the inner-circle, and she wouldn't stop until she beat me, which would explain the 5am thing, but since I'm a master, she had to call it quits.

She beat me first thing Sunday morning tho, so good on her. She's a smarty.

Sunday we finished off the first season of LOST, and went to a BBQ, which was attended by a large group of hipstered out, unambitious Japanese youngsters. The meat was tasty though, the company was good, and after a few beers and an assload of meat we took off to look at shoes and rent a movie.

OK, I know I've harped on this before, but I think I remember someone saying this movie wasn't all that bad, so I rented it.

Hey, thanks for fuckin me Jinxy. As if Syriana didn't put me in the hole enough.

I love the fitted buckskins.

You know what part I found the most offensive was though? What really pissed me off?

The Presence of Tropical Parrots

The quick scene back at the camp with the tropical parrots. You probably don't even remember it, but it almost made me barf up a bunch of meat and beer. Yeah, for about one and a half seconds, they showed a couple Indians playing with two tropical parrots. In Virginia. In the 15th century. You're kidding me right? I guess you're gonna try and convince me that this small band of Indians had trade-routes down to South America? Or maybe you're going to tell me that bright orange and green parrots could survive there without getting taken the fuck out by a slew of birds of prey that would love nothing more than a brightly colored birdie to fly around in the darkened woods. I guess they'd survive the winters too? Get real. I'm so mad right now I can barely type.

I also thought the Indians in the movie acted like retards. I'm sure they were trying to portray them as unspoiled, childlike, and noble, but in the end they just came off looking retarded. Am I saying Indians were/are retarded? No. Am I saying they looked retarded in the movie? Yes. Also, did the Indians back then always wear body paint? Were they able to do nice mono-chromatic fading? Did they have some sort of primitive dirt-airbrush? Shit.

They say "God is in details". I'm tired of being insulted!!!

So to make a long story short, I'm not doing so well on movie credibility with the significant other*. I think that buying LOST was a move in the right direction cuz she liked that a lot, and now makes frequent references to being attacked by "The Others" while walking down the street, which never gets old to me... but I need some movie advice, people. I need a ringer. A sure shot. Help me out here. Something that's out on video in Japan.

So that's my life right now. My biggest worries include renting ethnographically incorrect/insulting movies and losing at backgammon. I'd say life is pretty good. Oh, and I'm going somewhere nice next weekend. Somewhere warm and sunny. Somewhere that starts with H, ends in I, and in the middle sounds something like "awai". I'll keep you updated.

* y'all know I used those words for comedic value. She's my girlfriend.

Muslims, Pork, and Rednecks

2006-09-25T13:33:00.000+09:00

Caution: I lost control of this post about 3/4 of the way down.

Sometimes it seems like I'm always the last to know.

So I had this interview thing on Satuday at 8am, which took over 4 and a half hours. Not bad for an interview. Jeepers. Either way, no hanging out in Tokyo on Friday night for me, so I came right home after jiujitsu, watched a little Conan, and passed the fahggout.

Anyway, the li'l lady wanted to go driving on Saturday, so I said "roger that" and she cruised down to my locale at about 2 or 3pm. Since most Japanese people don't have cars, and driving in the city is such a pain in the ass, it's sometimes nice to go for a little "country drive" from time to time, so it was a nice break from the grind. Anyway, south-south-west we cruised -- where we were going, I did not know, but apparently she somehow did, even though she kind've pretended like there was no plan. She saw a sign and said, "Wanna go there?" and I was like "yeah sure whatever," and we turned off.

The place was called "Yamanakako", which means something like "Inner-Mountain-Lake" or "Mountain-Inner-Lake" or "A lake that is in the mountains" or something like that. Usually I ignore names in Japan because they're not literal, kinda like in the USA. For instance, if I say "I'm going to Cedar Rapids," people generally don't think that I'm going white water rafting amid some trees. So we're driving along, doop-de-doo, we turn a corner after driving through winding mountain roads, and BLAMMO, there's a giant fucking lake right at the base of Mount Fuji.

Here's what it looks like.

Unfortunately, it was really cloudy, so it looked a little bit more like this:

I was pretty surprised, and demanded to know why I was unaware of this little piece of heaven, a mere 2 hour drive from my house.

She shrugged and looked at me like I'm dumb, 'cuz I am.

So we cruised around to some other places, checked out an outlet mall, and headed back.

"I SHALL RETURN," I shouted in my best MacArthur voice, and drove back to Tokyo. All and all, a very fun trip.

We made it back and decided to hit up this all-you-can-eat/drink Yakiniku place, which usually ends in disaster for me. For 2500yen, which is like $21.50, there is an all-you-can-eat/drink course which lasts for two hours. Most Japanese approach these deals with a level head, and figure, "Yay, we can enjoy ourselves without worrying about the price!" As you can probably imagine, though, Americans see "all you can eat/drink" deals as more of a "I have two hours to force as much beer and meat into my gizzard as I possibly can, let's whoop it on!" I am no different. Alas, I'm a slave to my cultural upbringing.

.....aaaaaaaaaaaaaand scene!

Imagine a world where the fois gras goose and the farmer are one in the same. And instead of figs, its meat and beer. And instead of harvesting the liver, the goose/farmer combo nearly pass out at the table.

That was me.

Anyway, every time I eat pork, I think about Muslims, cuz Muslims don't dig on swine. That's fine. No swine is fine. Everytime I think about Muslims not diggin' on swine, I think of how Afghans don't dig on swine either. Every time I think about how Afghans don't dig on swine, I think about how some of the rednecks in our program thought it was really fun to feed the Afghans pork-products without the Afghans knowing it.

"Haiy Main, didjoo see thay-yut? I may'd thayut po-leece chief eat a poh-wurk saw-sidge! a-hyu-hyu-hyu-hyu."

I'm sure a lot of people probably get a chuckle out of that, but not me. That makes me so mad, that I have difficulty typing about it even now. And it's not a religion thing. It's not a "har har, git them muslims" thing. The thing that pisses me off about it is the breach of trust. Those Afghans were receiving training to become policemen in various parts of Afghanistan, and their instructors were giving them pork. This was almost as offensive as the time I heard someone bragging about "having a turban painted on the side of his truck." "Har har har," he said, "I have a confirmed kill." "Wow," I replied, "I didn't realize any of our guys had taken fire or anything like that." "Oh, it t'wurn't nuthin laaaik thay-yut," he grinned. "I hit a kid with muh truck and he died."

Yeah. This guy hits a kid with an F250, the kid dies, and he's talking about painting a fucking turban on the side of his vehicle. This incident resulted in me having my first of about 30 tantrums/freak-the-fuck-out sessions in Afghanistan.

At the job interview on Saturday, the interviewer asked me why I took a nearly 66% pay-cut to come to Japan. I answered something like, "Well, it was my goal to come back here, blahblahblah, money's not important, blahblahblah," which isn't false. But what I wanted to say was this:

While the company I worked for in Afghanistan was stellar and grade-A, the people we supported were filth. I lost at least a dozen IQ points and most of my faith in humanity during the 7 months or so I was there, and not because of the Afghans. I realized who some of the people were that we were sending over there to help bring the Afghans back on their feet, and I was thunderstruck by their cultural destructiveness and tried to distance myself from them as best I could. Coming to Japan was a means to not only fulfill my personal goals, but to get away from a level of violence and stupidity I formerly thought somewhat more unlikely to exist among my fellow countrymen.

Don't get me wrong -- a majority of guys over there were good guys, so I guess the stuff I talked about with them (the good guys) doesn't stick out as much in my mind, because it was normal human-to-human interaction. But when I sit back after drinking beers and consuming enough meat for 3 Afghan families, I get a little reflective and can't help but feel a little mudded. I feel guilty for not raising a stink. I feel dirty for being a part of that organization, however loose the association, and being on the same pay role as those 4 or 5 people who were party to some of that shit.

So there I was, all meat drunk and buzzed from beer, thinking about Muslims, Pork, and Rednecks. My last thought before crashing like a coke-fiend at Jesus camp was...........them Afghans, they're good peeps...I wish they only knew that the swine they were putting their trust and confidence into were much more inferior than the swine they were being tricked into eating...