scribbles

Knight Commander Bill Gates

Good lord, Bill Gates is going to get knighted. There goes the neighborhood.

Let's spread the word; the word is sickness

Oh, deary me. Kobe did something to me. See, let me explain about the weather we've been having around here. First, think about Hell. Now, do you have the image and feeling of all that pain and torturous burning rooted deep down into you yet? Take that immense idea of suffering and scorchedness like millions of tiny sharp nails pulling at your skin and dwell on that for a bit.

There, now that you've got that in your head, think of instead of it being hot that it were cold. That's right, a frozen Hell. Shit, it's been so goddamned cold here!!!

So when I got back home that night, I'd already felt The Evil creeping on my skin; I could feel it in my pores! By the next morning, I knew the inevitable had come, and I'd been consumed by The Evil! I spent the whole day in bed, and when I made attempts to plow my way to the W.C., I had to brace against the walls to prevent myself from becoming too friendly with my carpet. Damn, it's been some prime sufferin' these past few days. Had to even get my friend to help me buy groceries cause I couldn't even make it out the door much less to the super by myself.

Some others have been hit by The Evil as well: John La, Bambi, and Cyanide. Get better, ya sick puppies!

Chinese New Years in Japan

Today is Chinese New Years! Unfortunately, Japan doesn't follow by the Lunar calendar. Instead, it has a funky system dealing with the reign and deaths of emperors. For instance, on official documents, I have to remember to fill out my birthday as the 55th year of the Showa emperor's reign.

So, New Years for Japan is just like us crazy Americans: on January 1st.

But I, coming from Chinese descent, am inclined to (and homesick to!) have some sort of celebration for the year of my zodiac. So, I have plots to go to Kobe's Chinatown tonight to have some almost-authetic Chinese food for dinner. I might even get some of that nice jello-like stuff (neen goh) that my grandma makes every year.

Doc on the Doc

The good ol' Doc gives us some word about the Doc from Vermont:

Dean is an okay speaker. He's not great. I'm told he can be very good, but I haven't seen it yet. But he's also a doctor. Good politicians tell you want you want to hear. Good doctors tell you what you need to hear, whether you want it or not.

He's speaking a bit about Dean's post-Iowa speech which I haven't had a chance to peek at yet.

Jay Jay Lin

Hey, it turns out that Jeremy Lin has a webpage in these nether regions as well. And, as he notes himself:

If you're into this sort of thing, see my modest collection of fairly explicit but funny fruit (now including vegetable) porn. Sadly, this appears to be the most popular part of my site.

My freakin' eyes!

Movin' on Over

I've decided and started moving my scribble (I don't even think people know I call them that!) entries into a real kind of system instead of using my dinky PHP scripts. And in doing so, I have to manually add my old archive of entries onto the new system. So, things will be messy around here for a week or so.

(It used to be pretty popular to put those "under construction" images on webpages; I guess they've gone out of fashion because people finally realized that those images never got taken off their sites.)

Hey, I've even gone so far as to let people post comments(!). Please use this newfound power for good and not evil (I had my reasons for not allowing it before, and I'll have a trial run with it for now!).

Bicycle vs. Taxi

The Rotaract Club (some mutant form of the Rotary Club, I presume) held a meeting at someplace named Hitomachi Kouryuukan at Gojo-Kawaramachi. It was shits and giggles, but I didn't get enough to eat.

Anyhow, I made my trek back, doing my superman on a bike thing down Gojo. Oh, I'm hot, I'm sexy, I'm swervin' past the peds and the porn--yea, that's one cool Ivan on wheels. Woah, that's a tight fit between those two old ladies--schwam! I make it right through them. Can I make this light in time? Woosh! My special organ increases in size. Oh-ho-ho! What's this? A taxi coming out of a parking lot? Let's get past thiCRUNCH! CLUNK! POINK! ... I'm on the cement, and all I can hear are the words fucking son-of-a-bitch!!! (yes, in English) come out of my mouth. I'm not really sure how to react after this because, well, I'm rather upset and worried what's gonna happen next.

He'd hit the right side of my pedalling device, and I can see the front basket is beaten to some weird puddy formation. My man-purse and bike lock had fallen out, and my chin is on the pavement. I can feel the usual "scratched my knees on the floor" feelings. I kind of feel like cursing some more.

The middle-aged taxi driver gets out, and sings out the standard apologies, and all I can hear coming from my mouth is "I'm alright, I'm fine" (in Japanese). I'm still rather upset, and he starts saying stuff to me that I can half-understand. I hear him pop out the word for "policeman" and then I think there was "please forget." I tell him that I'm not clear on what he's getting at, so he takes out a 10,000yen bill (that's roughly $100, kids) and hands it to me; and he re-iterates to me to please forget.

Well, I figured that my bike isn't even worth 100 smackers, and I don't seem to have any problems with any of the necessary body parts; well, other than a small scratch on the face and an itch on my wrist (however, the wrist's started to be a little queer since I've gotten home, hmm).

He says something like he wanted my name or somesuch and handed me a pad and paper, so I write it down. He's confused that I don't have a Japanese name, so I let him know I'm American. I'm not sure what happened, but I think I was supposed to write my address or somesuch but he didn't ask for it. Instead, he kind of let me go (I was thinking I was fine, and dealing with the police really would have been more problematic than I wanted), and he went off.

But now I'm feeling all weirded out thinking I shouldn't have taken the money and called the cops. But, on third thought, I think it's fine: it more than pays for my bike's repairs (actually, it doesn't even have to been fixed, it just moves weird but works fine), and I wasn't upset enough to get the guy in trouble.

Oh, man, that was some fall, though.

Oh, the Irony

Lesson to learn: don't post when upset.

So, I was a bit peeved when writing up my last post. Carol e-mailed me telling me how he's getting heat for being the frontrunner (I know that, poo! :P) Anyhow, she goes on:

He seems so damned pissed off all the time, I mean with reason but I want more than anger. Anger tends to get things going but not stick, thus I am worried he will lose momentum.

I don't really think he's so upset, I responded:

I actually don't feel that Dean is angry; in fact, I get the opposite feeling from him: cool and collected. I was actually quite surprised when you said that.

I was stumbling around this tangled web some more, and I popped onto Metafilter which pointed me to a recent article by Salon: The Media vs. Howard Dean. It takes a viewing of a Flash ad to read the whole article, but it's worth it.

Maybe I just don't read enough news nowadays from way over here, but I just haven't gotten the whole "angry" Dean feeling (it's been more like the Ivan angry at Japan feeling!)

Give Me A Break!

OK, so the cat is coming outta the bag: I like Dean. So, what the hell is up with this Dean-bashing madness?

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton forced Dean to acknowledge Sunday that no blacks or Hispanics served in his cabinet during 12 years as governor.

What the fuck is this? Affirmative Action for Cabinet members? First of all, as noted by said article, Dean's state of Vermont's population is 98% white. Second, a Cabinet member uses his mind to do his job--not flashing his skin color around; in other words: it doesn't fucking matter what race his Cabinet members are. By emphasizing that, Sharpton's become the racist bastard.

In a semi-related note, I sometimes get upset at being treated as a foreigner here in Japan. It's not so much of a problem for me, but my white friends get bombarded with people who want to be "friends" with them. In fact, they just want to take a picture of a foreigner (preferably a white guy), tell their friends, and don't give a shit about our personalities. I had an experience where some of my white American friends and I went to a bar and started chatting with a group of Japanese folk. I could tell they were gonna be annoying just cause they laughed a bit too loud and a bit too much. They wanted to take my friends' pictures (oh, but, not one with me cause I'm not white enough!), asked us some general questions (that we've all been asked a thousand times: where are we from, are we students, blah blah), and then the conversation just stopped. Congratulations, we've made yet another shallow friendship in Japan!

It's a conspiracy, I tell you! C-O-N... spiracy!

Have you Noticed?

So sue me! I'm too lazy to post in Japanese; I'll do it when I want to dammit!

I rented The Very Best of Elvis Costello. That's right, kids, you can rent CD's here in the world of wide-eyed wonder. Rent. Rip. Mix. Burn.

The photo gallery seems unrecoverable. There's been much discussion about this issue on the forums here on Freeshell; apparently, the Gallery works on some servers here but not. Mayhaps there will be resolution soon--and mayhaps not. I've moved it offsite to where it seems to be working better for now.

Did you see how the site got all funky for a few days? PHP was disabled for a bit. It was havoc! Or rather--people complained too much, and smj (sysadmin here) did a good job at getting things back to normal quickly.

Bush is going to try to pull some JFK-wannabe stuff and shoot us to both the Moon and Mars within a decade. Part of me thinks he's crazy. Another part of me says: "Let's go go go! To infinity and beyond!" I have my suspicions that this has something to do with China's getting into space (remember what I said?) and the recent successful (erg, kind of) landing of the Spirit rover on Mars. Space Race Part Deux!

Why UNIX is Badass

I got out of bed, or rather crawled outta bed, this morning with my usual post-snowboarding muscle aches. My arms, my legs, and my neck. I feel like an old man. Sonny, hand me my cane!

I'm sitting on an express train heading back to Kyoto, listening to Evanescance's Fallen album. If you haven't heard it yet, I recommend you do so without haste. Go, do it now! All of it is good!

Anyhoo, I sit here, and I'm thinking how badass my iBook is (again). This whole MacOS X business just makes me all giddy. Ya see, Apple is damned good at making kick-ass user experiences. Meanwhile, UNIX geeks have been making software with the whole "do one thing and do it well" philosophy, perfecting bits of software one byte at a time. The beauty of it is that these two worlds can meet without conflict. Apple can make kick-ass user interfaces with UNIX-philosophy developed software, reaping the benefits of generations of development; and through it all, the user is the ultimate winner.

You just can't get that with Microsoft. In Microsoft's "include everything together" way of thinking, there's just no room for any of that. It's just not flexible enough for there to be the choice and freedom that the UNIX world offers. It's not a matter of money; it's more a matter of evolution. The old dog, unless it starts to learn some new tricks, isn't gonna have much of a chance down the line.

Toyama Travellin'

In a prefecture between Tokyo and Kyoto called Toyama with a pair of aching legs. "For what reason?" does my dear reader ask? Today, in my friend Kawago's hometown, Toyama, I went skiing for the first time in Japan. From the top of the hill, we had a fantastic view of the ocean; that, coupled with the gorgeous weather made for a smashing day on the slopes. Not to mention that there's udon and ramen to eat on the hill other than my usual hot dogs, burgers, and fries.

After that slushing experience, we jollied over to a nearby bath house, complete with an outdoor bath! Oh, be still my beating bruises.

Following that, Kawago's family treated me to Chinese food. Well, not really Chinese food but kinda: Japanese-style Chinese food just ain't the same as mom's home cookin'!

Oh, and I found a WiFi hotspot. I love my iBook! Woohoo!

Happy Atarashii Year!

Crap! I had a nice and inspirational entry and then there were technical difficulties, causing a rift in the space-time continuum, ultimately making a cat meow and my iBook log off and close all its applications at the same time. Oh, well!

I'm sitting in Seattle's Best, making good use of the WiFi they've got here, drinking a cup-o mint tea.

It's a new year, and despite what most people think of me (that is, I'm non-traditionalist, breaking rules, and pioneering new pavements for society), I always like to think of New Years as a new start (that's right, kids, just like everybody else). I got a haircut in a Japanese hair salon. Unlike my usual 10 minute $6 cut behind Sister Ling's house in Oakland, I got a 60 minute $30 cut with massage and shampoo by four Japanese dudes whom I had a slightly difficult time communicating with. I cleaned my room. My heart is refreshed, and my life continues to a bolder and better year!

Now, despite all this banter of new new new, I've realized that I have to remember about the old. That is, I've been in an intellectual graveyard these past few months, and my mind has just been a dead piece of mad-cow meat doing nothing but figuring out what to cook the next day. Ho! No more! This is one Ivan that's remembered that he needs some goddamned intellectual stimulation! So, heeding that call for gratuitous destruction of intellectual idleness, I purchased Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Hegemon and J.D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction. Oh, how my mind did pull into the words of those pages like light to dead stars. Salinger's sarcastic witticism: oh, great and glorious English, how I love thee!!

I've just purchased more books through Amazon.co.jp, so I'm soon to be smothering myself in the fabulous fornications of more wonderous adventures in cerebral movements!



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複雑英語。ふく、ふく、ふく、ふくざつ！