Giving the Devil His Due ($13.89)

My thought of the day:
If the middle east is the cradle of society, then the midwest must be its gravesite.

But the phone calls and e-mails and messages have reminded me my friends are continually the most fantastic people ever so I have no right to complain.

In honor of yesterday being the 5th of November, take a look at this essential stuff:
-Operation Falcon is rounding up thousands of people in America without charges and god knows where they are being taken
-The FBI has a lack of evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11

The rest of the top 25 censored new stories of the year can be found by following this link:
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2008/index.htm

Remember, remember

Doing some blog cleaning. Purging dead blogs, people I don't really know or care to hear from again, and people who don't update. Going to get this thing operational and make it feel like mine again.

Whether you find this now or days or years later, if it's within your means and sphere of interest, why don't you make and share an mp3 of you reading a poem you like in this entry's comments. It'll be interesting and wonderfully pretentious! Come on, do it!

New roommate Ian is here, and he's cool! Speaking extremely generally, New Zealanders continually surprise me by being the best people I come across and I think I may have to relocate there. When your country isn't interesting (a truism unless sheep excite you) you have to become interesting. The Arthur principle.

My life had one of its few action scenes just now. I came into the parking lot and a nervous kid exclaimed (in Japanese): "Help, someone took my bike!" He wanted my bike so he could go chase him. Unthinkingly generous, I gave it to him, then realized maybe he was stealing my bike. I chased him on my second bike and he tried to lose me down a bunch of streets, pretending he didn't know I was behind him. Over near Thor's house, a train stalled him, and I got a picture of him. After that I asked if he could find the person and he said no, and he came back to my apartment with me and parked it. I almost lost Fermata! It was a workout.

Now to show Ian around. Ok, I just did. We had fun.

It feels like everything is starting over from scratch. Anna is leaving Nova. A whole heaping bunch of friends just left Japan. I may have to find a new job and apartment because of all the problems. Many uncertainties abound in a perfect parallel in nearly every area of my life. Rabelais is still certain. I adore this book the same way as Tristram Shandy.

Panurge pray'd Pantagruel to give him some more; but Pantagruel told him, that to give words, was the Part of a Lover. Sell me some then, I pray you, cry'd Panurge. That's the part of a Lawyer, return'd Pantagruel; I would sooner sell you silence, tho' at a dearer Rate, as Demosthenes formerly sold it by the means of his Argentangina or Silver Squinsey.

If you like the idea of free, national, high speed wireless broaband... which may become a reality if one group can bypass the FCC...

Then here's a petition you may like to be aboard.

Renewing my Visa, I had the famous ol one-year-in-Japan-holy-shit-what-am-I-doing moment that incapacitated me for a while. A well-timed letter kinda pulled me through but consequently made me homesick.

Everything is starting to look like robots. The portly Japanese housewife with a gob of face lotion in a large white smear across her chin, smiling like it's a birthday party, her repetitive animatronic head movements; the room full of people focusing on not dropping any hints about it and avoiding any risk of eye contact.... Would telling her be so bad? It's their insincerity that really stains her face. The people on the train fitting like lego men into their surroundings and the coworkers taking dumb potshots at Harry Potter and talking about how they need to work out and aspire to mate like insects.... I'm wondering, what elaborate artist spent the time to construct these Disney ride characters everywhere? Robots! Even their mental pathways. Chaosless! Every food is "delicious" at the expense of any other descriptive word. Everyone borrowing some mysteriously never-to-be-met person's dream of meeting the right girl and dying in front of their wedding-gift tv sets. Forget the Stepford Wives ... a far braver question is what if the robots were people?! And since they most hopefully are under it all, how do we bring that humanity out into the open? Where's their creativity? Reading Faust has reminded my soul of some things. For me, Faust is perfection bookified.

One reason to dislike people looking at you in public is a fear they'll see the equivalent of what you see when you look at them. Maybe that's why I'm holding the books up higher? Trust that inner goodness again. When you're surrounded by people that are stainlessly truly virtuous and good, you don't even care if you're wearing clothes. The master makes goodness for others, even where they've intended none.

On the obsessive artist-stalking front, Miranda July sent out a mass myspace message and signed it "mj." It only rebuffs my feelings to know that she's a Something-J sympathizer. That's basically a special wink for me.

When I leave Japan, I'm probably going through Hawaii, to visit my pacific-island-bound aunt and meet my parents for the return flight. Good thing I'm learning ukulele.

I'm way out of touch with everyone. So... Go on, give me the skinny!

When the sun found me this morning, the fog had cleared. All those vague and seemingly important thoughts were ghosts. Tangible, rational details were left. Messages from friends dispelled the worried clouds that seep in when the lines are severed. I remember now why feelings should be kept on a shorter leash than more reasoned thinkings. In the course of the morning, my excellent Aussie roommate and I boiled a tall can of coffee that had lost its heat. In the boiling saucepan, it looked ridiculous, but Bill Nye would have bowed to our ingenuity. Well, to Will's. My idea was to microwave it. Good thing Will doesn't let me do science. We discovered that the tatami floor would hold darts as well as any dartboard. So we placed the paper target from the shooting range on the floor and threw darts at the ground in arced trajectories. After inadvertently setting off a bottle rocket in the living room (which shot under the couch somehow, leaving a trail of singe and ash, in a beeline to the original long-lost remote control) we went to the park and discovered bottle rockets can go off underwater. Junko informed us that the police had secretly installed cameras all around our apartment complex. My roommate Will and I had this lofty discussion:

"Arrgh. I'm never going to drink anything again."
"You'll die!"
"Well... But water."
"Buttwater? Gross!"

These stupid little things make my life worth it. If I consider it, I have absolutely nothing to be complain about. Last weekend, the trip to Erin's nature-coated residence was a great time, and we even combined our geniuses to make the most important horror film ever constructed on planet earth which (with any luck) will soon be linked here. It features me dressed as a tanuki with large cardboard testes (that's what they look like, okay?) chasing her through a convenience store. Stay tuned.

Also I looked through my LJ memories and found this post. Had a great time reading it again. Back in the day, when I was one of you young whippersnappers, I'd encouraged Shannon to write a poem and he astonished me with his writing "ability." Hyping it in the writing communities caused an uproar and caused some to think me a troll. It's worth a re-read though, and cracked me up. Made me want to get this blog breathing again actually; de-privatize some of those better entries. Good job Shannon; how many poems accomplish that?

Tonight... Jerad just up'n bought himself a ticket for Japan this December! This gives me something to look forward to.
( Read more... )

It's my 3 day weekend. I had a great time watching Little Miss Sunshine, and reading ever more digital comics. (Jack got me into Planetary...) Had excellent conversations with a few cool friends from home. Talked to Danny on the phone while he's in Tokyo. Read some more Franny and Zooey. There are so many things to enjoy surrounding me and it's a constant threat: that these indulgences may comatize the creative center of the brain via the works of others.

Yesterday I signed my renewal contract in a meeting with the head honcho, Tim Simmons. He's a pretty nice guy. Today I was supposed to go renew my Visa, but I didn't. Then this news headline went up today: Nova is officially screwed. They can't start new students for six months. This means work's gonna be a walk in the park! Free lessons ahoy! That is, if my branch doesn't shut down and send me off to Multimedia I guess....

Everyone should read Aurelius' Meditations... Yeah. This entry is awfully uninspired so it ends here.

This is worth recording for how much it made me laugh today.

As you may or may not know, one of the perks of my job as an English teacher in Japan is having one or two Voice lessons in a day, where I basically have free conversation with whomever or however many people show up. It's recommended to bring a topic, and since my school has one of the most loyal followings for our voice lessons, there's a continual need to conceive new and interesting subjects/activities.

Today, though I often avoid film, literature, or comic book related topics so as not to endure a Japanese-ized (read: debauched to the point of satire) conversation on the things I care about, I chose to exchange upon the central conceit of superpowers. They could use the subject to acquire some topical words such as: invisible, invulnerable, x-ray vision, cyborg implants, super-speed, telepathic raptors, etc.

We started off by brainstorming many kinds of superpowers. We got through about 15, when a confused elderly lady suggested, "the sun."

I explained the topic once again and we got going back into the list; talking about the powers Super-man has (originally he couldn't fly - just leap really high).

Next it was suggested: "Astronauts."

I saved her with a good transition into the varying powers of the Fantastic Four, anyways. Etsuko, however, didn't let me get through all four of them before suggesting "woman diver who she can catch a fish in the water."

At this point, the company president began laughing at the idiocy. Before all was said and done, other superpowers my students suggested were:

-America
-Shoguns
-A man who can swallow a living goldfish
-A lot of money
-Global warming
-People who climb Mt Fuji

It is now my sole contention to write a legitimate comic book featuring all of these things as superpowers, though I'm not sure even Neil Gaiman could.

I will send something weird and something awesome to anybody who can make a musical instrument out of a banana.

Post a picture of it in my comments to qualify.

Last night, without a motive beyond a desire to taste some of the delicious moments of life that never seem to get served in one's own room, I wandered around Namba in Osaka and (overextending the metaphor) ... chewed on some nightlife? The trains stopped at midnight and I knew it'd be 5 or 6 til they began again, but the thought of going home seemed repulsive. Large mechanical crabs waved to me and I made it to the bookstore as it closed, sufficing to acquire Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, as well as a different translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra that translates some differences: "going down" instead of "going under", "superman" instead of "ubermensch," and I've caught about 30 or so other differences in the text. It's like playing Monopoly with all the colors rearranged.

While I was climbing a fence with some complete strangers (two Japanese guys), I noticed a railing that could be ascertained to provide a pathway onto the roof of a small bar. I sat up there and read about 100 pages of my new books by a streetlight a few feet away. It was fine weather; nice enough to remove one's jacket, but still cool enough to stave away any moths.

Eventually I came down. A family of foreigners watched me climbing down, stared blankly for a moment, and then asked me where the subway exit was. I walked them to it because it was on the way to the internet cafe, which is the next best thing to a hotel. Imagine 500 yen an hour, for a little computer desk and a warehouse of commodities spanning billiards, walls upon walls of comics, magazines (even porn?!), free soda, etc. A beautiful Russian girl introduced herself to me in English and we had a wonderful little conversation about strange reflexes and making a peasant the president. I did some printing and then took off and swung by a couple bars my friends occasionally frequent. Nobody there. So then I was walking by a 24 hour McDonalds, and I can't quite explain it; their advertising must be operating on the right frequency, because a McFlurry was instantaneously my sole objective in life.

Now I'm not going to sugar coat this. Sorry. Inside, there was a morbidly obese woman, something I had not seen in quite some time. And she was ordering two large fries, and a hamburger. It brought back memories of America (note: on that last word I just typed "home" and then changed it. Weird.). That would have been that, but then I made the mistake of sitting near her. A while later two of her acquaintances approached.

In a voice fit for a witch that visibly terrified the other Japanese people there at 4 AM, she began screaming wildly. "You were five seconds behind me and disappeared! Why didn't you answer your phones! GOD! You were probably sexing in the bushes!" They shouted back. There was more shouting. I looked them over for pistols. THEN the beautiful absurdity. While she was screaming, Ms Chubathon continued eating her sandwich.

*shoves face with fries*
"IS THAT FRIENDSHIP? DO YOU CALL THAT FRIENDSHIP?"
*takes a bite of a chicken sandwich*
"I MEAN IF YOU WANT TO DITCH ME, DON'T INVITE ME OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE!"

They eventually made up and she only screamed one more time (no, I am not making this up): "AND WHEN I GOT HERE THEY COULDN'T EVEN MAKE ME A GODDAMN SUNDAE. FUCK!" *slurps the last of her large Coke*

Now, I'm still as prone to enlivened bouts of hysterical madness as the next guy, but I think the Japanese cool and collected nature is infecting my brain, or being unlocked from where it already was within, because this whole scenario was, to me: disgusting. Repulsive. And not helping my blossoming anti-American sentiment. Sidenote: I helped break up the fight by indiscretely filming them.

After Brothers Karamazov, I was challenging myself to respect everything. If we can respect something, it pertains to us and at least merits discussion. If we are frightened that we don't understand it (and nobody understands anything) we treat it familiarly (which is to say we disrespect it) and permit it to cannibalize ourselves. If you don't like the effect being imposed on you, you must overcome this outwardly first, or it's an unfair expectation to be treated like your better half. My dangerous old mindset; that the world and the insular people in it had become a cartoon of itself, a farce, and so any immersion of myself into it felt like I had to pretend I wasn't in on the punchline, was insufficient for happiness. Thus, my desire for a Respect regarding all things. And incidents like this set me back pretty far in my respect of others.

So for the rest of the night, I tried to find the mysterious angle, the innocent child, present in that challenging grease-loving banshee. And by the time I got on the train the next morning, I was pretty sure she was the most beautiful, honest, and faultless person in the universe. A slave to her biology, to her wants, and to her temperament, still braving the eyes of the night despite an awareness and obvious physical qualifier for insecurity. Given up by her own hands to a knowledge she will never be loved and pounding against the glass wall that separates her. Each one of her scream's subtexts were a pleading for the value we all wish we could acquire. That's the same thing I have done. Coming home, after a couple other misadventures, I began to think I was in love with her and that I wish I could go back and brush the hair out of her eyes and press her into a sincere and innocent hug until her struggling stopped. I wish I could whisper into her ear that she can also nurture that very same Self she flogs for not being good enough. I wish there was compassion.

The aforementioned non-respectful Rj deleted his old journals, cause by his paranoid thinking, nobody "got him." But the new one is going to make this one public and maybe someone will.

This occasional interest in due process should worry you.

Edit: CNN swapped the first link, but I fixed it by finding the same story on Fox.

While touring Universal Studios Japan yesterday, and taking immense delight in rides based on such movies as Jaws, Back to the Future, Spider-man, Jurassic Park, and Waterworld, I began to conceive of a theme park geared towards film nerds. Less Hollywood blockbuster, and more Movie Fan-type fare, and the appropriate rides there should be for these movies.

Of course my first thought was Me and You and Everyone We Know. The visitor would sit in a giant pink shoe labeled either "Me" or "You". After a strange monologue by Miranda July (one that doesn't fall to comic effect by being dubbed into Japanese), the giant shoe-ship would then swing wildly up and down (maybe doing a complete loop-the-loop) like the pirate boat ride from Six Flags. As you leave the ride, your digitally-affected mind prevents you from having interpersonal contact with the people present who you'd like to befriend.

To deal with the lingering depression of man's isolation, the park attendee would then venture into the fantastic ride based on "Reservoir Dogs." You'd be tied in a chair, and a guy dressed up as Mr Blonde would dance around with a blade and cut off your ear (as long as the lawyers don't interfere with this vision). You could wear it on a necklace as a souveneir and, outside, get your picture taken with a large foam Christopher Walken mascot

The 4-D theater would be a hit. Everyone knows a 4-D theater sprays the audience with water when it rains, or blasts cold air if the character opens a fridge. My 4-D theater would be a Cassavetes film, where a snifter is placed in your hand, and as you drink heavily, you begin to realize the giant trap of life surrounding you, and hate the people you swore to love. Eventually you'd give an improvised monologue trying to convince people you aren't this little commodity but wind up hitting your wife and then almost having an affair. You come out profoundly shaken, morally debased, mid-monologue, and middle-aged.

For the final ride (there will be more if you propose them), I envision a grandiose spectacle. People are taken into a large facility with bars over the windows and many American POW's. The Nazis force you to do difficult labor. Gradually you spend weeks organizing an escape effort into the countryside. At the last minute it's botched, but a select handful of you make it away on motorbike. The Nazis give chase and kill Steve McQueen, but in this mixed-up, crazy ride, the participant is the determiner of his own destiny. Will you pass as a German? Will you try to kill the pursuer? (This ride is a problem though, because if we payroll Nazi's, we'll get accused of supporting such a thing. I suppose we could hire some help in the image control department though.)

If the park budget allows, the Fellini fan in me wants there to be a boat ride in which you paddle a rhinoceros away from a cruise liner in a lifeboat.

Who doesn't like lists? (Besides Santa's non-union transcriptionist....):

-My nutritional life has reconstituted itself via a delicious brand of Banana soy milk. It truly feels like parts of my mind and body are being restored by way of the protein I've been intaking, and there's a new awareness of my surroundings that came with it. Gone is the Rj that stared off ponderously for minutes at a time. Now I react if someone punches me. Speaking of:
-I've received a slightly defective new roommate who is a BMX rider and speaks like an Australian news broadcaster. He's fairly outgoing, as evidenced by his swinging from the handrails in the train, hearty farewells bidden to train disembarkers, and he also displays no reticensce in attacking his new roommates with BB guns. (Departing from my anti-firearm stance, he will now be made to reckon with my far-superior BB Glock.).... It's nice to have a person nearby who speaks the language of living, and to watch absurd ebaums videos with.
-I've had an unhealthy love affair with the Mad Max trilogy, even quoting it in some Nova lessons wherein nobody could possibly catch the reference. ("Two man lesson. One man learns.") Heretofore, I'm possibly the only person alive to admit they teared up a little during the Road Warrior.
-I went to an onsen and overcame my physical self-denunciation in an overwhelmingly romantic little Japanese village, in what was quite possibly the closest to a Perfect Day I have ever experienced in my retarded little life.
-The weather is now suitable for t-shirts and to take adventures to the park with Junko and her child, for the sake of language-exchanguage.
-You're not so bad as you were thinking you are, and other people's insecurities are no reason to screen your instincts. Let your truths out discriminately, because they do no good tucked away. You learned Barsoomian so quickly that you will be a chieftan soon.
-I know Snakes on a Plane (or Snake Flight as it's called in Japan) jokes are well past their prime, but I've only just discovered Blanks on a Blank and submit for your approval, "Raccoons on a Spaceshuttle" and "Cows on a Popemobile" (mainly for the awesome song).

Now for some homemade pizza and Terence Malick's "New World". Oh movies. How're you?

Against my protestations, twelve rolls of duct tape, and mercenaries, Anna has packed my suitcase and gone to Taiwan with her girlfriend to ski. Negating the anti-materialism slant of my previous post, I'd be lonely if I didn't have the new Zelda to fulfill all of my deranged (and possibly sexual) fantasies.

Currently avoiding permanent brain-death via:
The complete prose of Woody Allen (thank God for this book, I thought my smile was healing over in a big scab) and Kingdom of Fear. HST should stand for Hubris S Thompson.

Recently I was dissecting my former Japanese sensei, Roger Thomas. I often said, I'd believe any story about him because he didn't let any part of his psyche slip through. He'd be the perfect poker player. This physiology was a mystery to me: he maintained a Ben Stein-ish, frank and disenthused demeanor to perfectly counterpoint his anticipation and comfortability with any bit of absurdity or chaos I arraigned him with. It was as if a rogue angel had whispered to his ear the secret of life and he'd found it terribly uninteresting. His interpersonal communiques were 100% controlled explanations and, even with his wife, 0% immutable effusions. I think I'm understanding it now. He was split head from heart and inside him his soul was alive and joyous but with the inability to express it accurately, he surrendered the maintenance of an enthused persona and his smile melted into a Buscemi-eyed grimace and he bore all his joy secretly and at some distance from what was around him. People meeting him for the first time thought him an unlikely vampire or Edmund Dantes. I didn't really understand this til very, very recently, and I hope it's not too late.


So we're clear:

Precious: Interacting with all of your handicapped friends like the normal people they are.

But not: By sitting completely still in their public bathrooms, until the motion sensor switches off the light, in the hopes of capturing their surprised reactions on film.

(It's these small pleasures that count.)

They teach you that you must tailor a lesson to the student. The selection for the day is a D-level one, teaching students how to discuss Problems with Neighbors. The student, weighing in at 152 pounds, is the inimitable Tomoaki, a debonair octogenarian accenting his sports jumpsuit with a worn Disney vest. Ideally, the students who receive the best grades will be able to say something that reminds me of my college dorm life: such as "They always leave the trash in the yard [aka foyer]" or "They play loud music all night!" I wish such language had been as unnecessary for me in America as it is here.

In the first few minutes, you just chat with the student, regarding the topic, and to try and size up their operating level.

"Hello, Tomoaki."
"Hello Randurr." (My name's typical Japanese pronunciation)
"Do you ever have problems with your neighbor?" [Funny how this sentence doesn't resemble the Pandora's Box it is...]
"Yes."
"What problem?"
"I very surprise. My neighbor is dentist. Very good dentist. Always so kind. Always so help. Talking to him outside, he fall over. Heart attack. He is dead. So surprise! Next to me! Yesterday I went funeral. I and my wife."

Thumbing open his folder subtly, I quietly changed lessons to "Compliments."

Exceprt from approximately 20 minutes later:

"Can you compliment this tie?" [What can I say, forcing their praise is the only way I collect self-esteem!]
"I and my wife went to New York once before I had foot cancer."

...Huhbuhwha? At this point, I began wondering if my consciousness was doing some type of Quantum Leap. Whether I wanted to laugh or cry, I still don't know. At least he didn't mention the WW2 bombing of Osaka this time, wherein Americans killed his friend and destroyed his first home.



Switching horses mid-stream, let's observe a fine distinction:

Precious: An old woman feeding a flock of birds....

But not: ...by throwing the birdseed onto some train tracks; co-ercing them into suicide.



Well there we have it. A few insights I felt like sharing.

If I'm going to go through with this and revive this LJ, you should probably mind my turn-offs:
-Any show where somebody literally hanging from something (a coathanger, perhaps) jokes they are "Just hangin' around." (Note: Potentially funny if said by Saddam Hussein). Actually, nix the TV (and references thereto) altogether.
-Cancer


And thank you for your time.