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Monday, September 29, 2003
"industrial cedar", power lines, concrete.
world scrabble champion
dead buses from japan
awesome
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Violent Flash Mobs
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
oh my god, i am glad i am out of japan.
what a shitty place that was. politically it's a joke, total corruption. everyone works really hard for no reason, and lets all their money be stolen by the construction ministry and yakuza.
what a cramped horrible place, all concrete and power lines. i am so glad to be here in southern california! beautiful, undeveloped hills and mountains, beaches with no concrete on them! in downtown San Luis Obispo, there's a main street with people all walking along, a stream running right through the center of town with grass, trees, natural banks, benches! no power lines! no signs saying various obvious things! no public announcements repeating every 2 minutes saying useless things! no ads! it's so incredible! i feel a sense of expansion and relief that i never had in japan.
Polls suggest that the deployment is opposed by more than half of the Japanese public. Support has eroded as US casualty figures have grown. Newspapers carry anxious front-page reports about the continued attacks and deaths in Iraq.ha ha, losers! everyone in the country is against it, but it doesn't matter, it's going to happen anyway! get out while you can, the ship is sinking!Under article nine of its war-renouncing constitution, Japan theoretically rejects the use of force to settle international disputes.
But Mr Koizumi and his predecessors have steadily eroded the significance of this document to allow the SDF to serve as a more active ally to the US.
Yesterday, the best they could manage was a mini-riot in which one MP climbed on the table. If they had really wished to delay the bill until the end of the current session of parliament on Monday, they could have done so with a volley of censure motions.from the guardianHowever, as has often been the case, yesterday's scripted drama ended in time for the MPs to take the weekend off.
holy shit, just now out the window of the train to work i saw a 3 foot helicopter hovering low. i could see the rice pressed down below it. it was gone in a second, i looked around but nobody else had seen it.
Monday, June 30, 2003
on sunday NHK shows a 2 hour go program. i really enjoy it. its a single
knockout tournament, lasting one year, one game played a week. the players are pros,
30 seconds a move. so about an hour total. there's always a female host and a male commentator, the man changes every week. it's interesting to watch their interaction. i like to see examples of people who are extremely specialized in non-human skills in a social situation.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
just watched requiem for a dream. yucko.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
people who believe in ghosts are dumb.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
japanese tv always covers japanese players in the majors. they always cover
matsui before ichiro. even though ichiro is way better. people here say they like
matsui a lot better though. because hes got real japanese spirit.
japanese baseball exhibits reverse affirmitive action - they are limited to 2 foreign players per team, so that means that for a given skill level, a foreign player is worth less, since they aren't universally tradable/usable. so for a set amount of money, you can get a more skilled foreign player than japanese one.
it works opposite to the way affirmitave action works - affirmitave action increases the competition for members of the minority, so their cost goes up, while their actual skill remains the same.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
1050 am japanese tv. one junior high school drama. one guy singing to animation about a friend he can't apologize to. three infomercials. one for vitamins. one for an amazing cleaner. one for an exercise machine, translated from english.
Saturday, June 14, 2003
so much goddam food on japanese tv.
Saturday, June 14, 2003
no mercy for 3 inch spiders who hang out in my shower. it just makes it easier for me to scald them to death. japanese ppl have this idea that you shouldnt kill them.
Saturday, June 14, 2003
japan is ridiculous. when i started my new job, one day a week id go up to a tiny mountain school. they would have a taxi ready to take me Ck. it cost about 30 dollars.they were surprised when i suggested that i just take the train back to the office, for 2 dollars.
Saturday, June 14, 2003
The internet cafe recently reinstalled windows, so the 3 gigs of south park i hadn't gotten around to burning are goine. i'm setting up the permanent kazaa download system again though. They don't seem to realize yet that it's that little kazaa icon down there in the corner that makes this one computer so slow.
Today i'm looking for that one madonna video, beautiful stranger, where she keeps rubbing up against mike myers. I love that one.
Monday, April 28, 2003
here's the sign i'm going to make for my next protest:
Globalize Human Rights
most people agree that everyone deserves food, water, basic medical, a place to sleep, etc. Once you have that, people deserve free speech, the right to participate politically, the right to an education.
The US typically claims that the best way to guarantee those things for the third world is to make those countries rich. We go about that by forcing them to make labor cheap, by having no pollution laws, free speech. we support gov'ts who kill union leaders and activists, because we like stability. The WTO bans "goods discrimination" - that means that governments are not allowed to refuse to buy something just because it was made by child labor, or was made in a way that pollutes. So a law like "The US gov't may not import products made by child slave labor" is illegal under WTO! I don't think this has worked - there are still not that many real democracies in the world, there are tons of corrupt autocracies and dictatorships.
Think how great it would be to be part of a country that is really dedicated to bringing freedom and opportunity to everyone in the world! I would love to volunteer for government service then. Think if the constitution said "the goal of the country is to bring happiness and freedom to everyone in the world, and the government must act in accordance with that".
Sometimes I think it would be good to do foreign service, but I just know that I would write some report that would get forwarded up, until it got to somebody appointed by bush who absolutely doesn't give a fuck if 10,000 little kids die for no reason. He'd evaluate with respect to how good it could make him look, how many suckers he can trick into thinking he cares, but most likely would just ignore it.
I leave kazaa running in the internet cafe with a big todo list, and come back to check up on it and burn cds every few days. Today I got a lot of good stuff.
Man, that moment of tension when I walk in here every time - look to make sure nobody's on my computer, walk up and see that little kazaa icon down there, and then look to see the masses of stuff it's gotten while I've been gone. This is really addictive.
My other favorite things to get are of course seinfeld, curb your enthusiasm, dr katz, jackass. also some anime nerds seem to have done homemade subtitles on a various japanese things, of course anime, but also some weird moments from japanese tv. I have thought of doing that, because although lots of foreigners watch strange japanese tv, most of us don't really get what's going on.
oh yeah, and you can get some good text files on kazaa, although it's not too popular. all the project gutenburg stuff, but also some modern books.
I also got a bunch of charles bukowski reading his poetry in his drunken ass way, that's good stuff. there're also robert frost reading a few of his poems in his great old voice. But there are some other modern guys reading his stuff which kind of sucks.
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Japan is fucking annoying me right now. There are big sound trucks riding around everywhere, blaring continuous "political" messages. But nobody ever talks about the real issues except the communists; the rest of them are like "I am so and so, please vote for me. I'll try hard. Thank you very much". Over and over, really loud, right in downtown, and then go by my house in the rice fields too.
Yesterday I heard one coming, and went out and stood on the street with my arms crossed, trying to look pissed. The woman with the mic and traditional white gloves, waving at nothingness saw me, and I said "urusai", which means "noisy". It's what teachers say to kids when they're talking at the back of the class. The woman looked a little surprised, and then apologized (into the mic) "I have no excuse, it's because of the election" and then started up the regular message going down the street.
The other day I heard 4 of them pass in half an hour starting from 8 am. They go until 8 pm.
Next time one passes my house I am going to stand in the street and make up some story about my sick grandma that's sleeping in the house that they woke up. I was also thinking of putting up a sign that said "I, as a foreigner, am really surprised at the Japanese election style. In my country, as well as lots of other developed countries, that kind of stuff is illegal, because it annoys everybody. In all the posters you put up, why not have some real political discourse, explaining your ideas, what you stand for or are against, instead of just having big face shots next to the name? If japan is going to become a modern country, it needs to fix this". Maybe that'll shame them into at least not doing it right by my house.
Really, the fact that everyone puts up with this is a sign for how puny the political system is here. 90% of the population is against something, and yet it's still legal. If a simple law, overwhelmingly supported, can't even get passed banning this, there's no hope of actually fixing the problems of this society.
For example, 70% of the population opposes the war in Iraq. But the government and ruling party supports it. It seems like a sure thing to oppose the war and get elected, but nobody runs on that issue except the communists. They're the only ones who actually have a political message on their campaign signs, even if it is something simplistic like "for vibrant society, and against war". The rest of them don't even mention political issues, just names.
Really though, I don't wake up and worry every day about people in Bangladesh, or Indonesia; the only reason I'm constantly annoyed here is because I live here. It's never going to change, so the best thing is just to leave. And that's what I'm going to do.
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Review of Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
I was hanging out in Osaka and I found this really nice park, Utsubo koen, and read this book there. It is really good. I liked it a lot more than "hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world". It's kind of a romance set in 1969 Japan.
Then I read "forever war" by joe haldeman. It was really great, I read it in about 2 days. I thought it was going to be a different book though - I remember vaguely reading this other SF short story once about the far future where humanity is in a war that's been going on forever, with new technological developments constantly coming from earth. Over time, people change their genes to redirect their desires, so the fighter pilots have their sex drive somehow linked to their fighting. Each ship is huge and has a complete unchanging society in it, and most of the people have forgotten what it's all about. I thought that was going to be forever war, but although the tone is similar enough that I think it was written by the same person, it wasn't the same book.
There are lots of stories like that, I read them when I was younger and there are some strong memories of some idea, but I have no idea who wrote them. Another one I call "creatron", it's about a guy who buys this simulation machine, kind of like simearth, and gradually makes this world, starting at 1 dimension, going to 2, then 3. He watches a big bang, the slow condensation of matter. Then with the force of his will he creates the first life. It evolves into something intelligent eventually. By constantly watching it, he learns their language. he watches their wars and descent into dark ages. Unlike simcity, there is a knob on the machine that controls his emotional attachment to the people, so when he turns it up he can feel all the death and pain of the people during war, or he can turn it down and just watch. The people write poetry, worship "god", and some eventually decided god is dead. Then he sees a button on the machine he's never used before; the instruction manual says it's been disabled, but it's a "total immersion" button, if you push it when watching an individual, you become them for their life and only regain your awareness when that person dies. However, that function's been disabled because it's supposedly too dangerous. But he pushes it anyway, and becomes one of his creations.
Anyway, that's the story, I remember it vividly but I don't know what it is. I know I'll find it again one day though.
Now, I'm reading a book about a misguided christian revolution in china in the 1850s, the "Taiping heavenly kingdom", it's interesting. But chinese names are really hard to keep straight in english, since all the interesting kanji and tones are stripped out.
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
I finished "Dogs & Demons" by Alex Kerr. It was really good. Living in japan without reading this book is a waste of your time. It made me not want to live here anymore. All the things I'd started to notice over the years were confirmed - concreting over everything, ugly buidings everywhere, total political disinterest by the people, government resistance to any change, corruption in the government, pollution problems, working hard and never addressing the real problems, the stupid bullshit that is today's tea ceremony, ikebana, traditional arts. The only "traditional" thing I like in japan is the game of go, which can't stagnate, because there is an element of competition. Like Sumo. Unlike tea ceremony, which no matter how boring and stupid it is, everyone will ooh and ahh. can you imagine anything worse than taking 2 hours to drink a cup of tea, where every motion, every conversation is completely scripted and invariant?
Today i was walking and saw a temple, on entering the grounds it was actually pretty nice, there were a couple of cool stone dogs, it was all right. walking out, i looked down and saw fallen leaves on the ground, and that was nice too. then i saw that in the stone path there was a post sticking up to ground level, some kind of sewage or water pipe or something, right there in the middle of this supposedly old path. then i saw a big electrical box next to the wall. then i looked at the wall, and saw that it was shitty concrete blocks, kind of dirty and smudged, and painted this off light brown. that was the end of my enjoyment of the place.
before i leave i have to get into a conversation about this with someone. how can they put up with this? they make out like they're so tough with their gaman, endurance, but really they're just trained slaves who are too afraid to complain.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
I am in アメリカ村, 大阪. I came a couple of days ago to see DJ Shadow at Big Cat.
The show was pretty good. His albums are good, after all, so what would you expect. the order was a little different than the albums.
he did one cool thing, playing video samples of bad drum istructional videos at different speeds and orders and stuff so it looked like the guy was playing crazy.
Tonight i went to a show at BEARS Nanba. 4 bands.
the other band was a couple of prettyboy asshole showoffs.
the last band was 3 girls, a bass, drums, guitar. drummer was chubby and cute, bopping along with her curly black hair and thick arms. but they didn't rock at all, just played covers written 50 years ago. girl bands that try to rock need to actually rock, like bikini kill, otherwise they suck.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
If you take a text file and replace all the occurences of a letter with img links to pictures of that letter, and then load the text file in a html viewer, you can make your own fonts. You can do this with wordpad and mspaint fairly easily. just set up mspaint to make say 32x32 pixel images, zoom in, and draw away, occasionally reloading the html to see how it looks as you rewrite more letters.
it is really fun. I have made about 20 fonts in 3 days. You can make variable width or constant width fonts, or fonts with major serifs, or sans serif. I like big serifs personally.
Also, it is good for making interesting-looking patterns, or for do it yourself steganography - instead of making the images be of letters, just make them tiny random pictures, 3x3 pixels. They still contain all the information you want, and you can use them as backgrounds.
Do you know that pattern that looks like weaving, with two strings coming in and one going over the top of the other? Well, I made one that looks like that too, with 4 inputs, and it looks pretty cool if you make lots of different kinds that link with eachother - so a has the horizontal line going on top, b has them spinning around eachother in the middle, c has them connecting diagonally, etc. it's constant width so the exits on all 4 sides of one letter hook up to the surrounding letters. when applied to a random text file it looks nice. (I have been using "The insidious fu man chu" to test the looks of various fonts.)
Thursday, June 20, 2002
29. Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels. "- from the gospel of thomas - one of the apocrypha. It turns out there were at 30 or more "gospels", all floating around the first and second century, all written based on earlier sources, some found and some lost.
It's fun to wonder how christianity today would be different if just one of these books or even verses had been canonized.
Thursday, June 20, 2002
winter has ended in kochi.
I have let the internet at home lapse, because I have better things to do - study japanese & go, skip rocks, play pool, and go to the beach.
I've lost faith in this whole internet thing. it's still cool and all, and getting a bunch of free weird mp3s from kazaa is awesome. it's fun to play with. but it's too addictive. and it's a lot of work keeping a computer set up so it doesn't annoy the hell out of me. i hope all you internet people out there keep up the fight, putting strange/useful stuff up with your own money. most of us have enough money to leave it up there for the rest of our lives, and that's good.
the best thing i have found lately is http://www.hourofslack.com which has a bunch of subgenius hours of strange radio. some of them are absolutely genius. as far as i can see it's a bunch of acid heads who hate religion and like science and weirdness. i love them.
I am probably going to burning man again this year. maybe I'll see you guys there.
I hope to come back to the internet one day. I still have lots of ideas. But it's too annoying dealing with publishing on a windows box, and that's all i have now. when something is set up so I can just use a http://www.everything2.com style interface and easily have my pages linked to each other I'll be back.
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
