The Wanderer

Clang, clang, whoops, too late.

2009-08-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

BafflePecans: I'm such a robot.
DontSymbiosis: Robots are awesome.
BafflePecans: Thank you!

2009-08-13T07:39:00.001-07:00

A conversation with Erin, co-worker at Barnes & Noble.

2009-08-12T23:18:00.000-07:00

Erin and I were in the movie theater last night when a preview for 2012 came on.

Erin: Well, it must be true. We have a whole section about it, you know. Anything we have a whole section of books devoted to must be true.

Me: Yeah, but we also have a whole section about new-age religion.

(pause)

Me: Wait, that's the same section.

Maybe if you push them together and use the valley as a reservoir?

2009-08-09T01:39:00.000-07:00

The Aussie and I were discussing the new set of Evony ads.

The Aussie: This site has an Evony ad I haven't seen before.
The Aussie: They're up to topless ladies in provocative poses now.
Me: Oh, seriously?
The Aussie: Seriously.
Me: Those Evony ads move faster than -I- do, apparently.
The Aussie: When do I get the invitation to play discreetly with you?
Me: You already DO!
Me: In your browser.
The Aussie: MY LORD
Me: What did you think you were getting exactly?
Me: I advertised myself as a Civ clone but I turned out just to be some hot chick who constantly comes onto you.
Me: Huge disappointment really.
The Aussie: I know, right?
The Aussie: Now I'll never save my queen.
Me: "I'm so aroused by you, Australian love-monkey!" "That's great, but I said BUILD the AQUADUCT."
The Aussie: SEX WILL NOT GENERATE WORKERS FAST ENOUGH
Me: "Shall I remove my top?" "I don't know, will that get potable water to the industrious plebs, do you think?"

KCCI (Channel 8) News Crawl, 3:30 am, 10 Sept 2008 (Wednesday)

2008-09-10T01:28:00.000-07:00

When mail arrives at Pat Livingston's house now days it's an adventure. She started receiving letters last week postmarked in 1970. Iowa State Patrol troopers are testing a new high-tech system designed to allow voice commands to control some car functions. A dump truck and farm tractor collide Tuesday morning flipping the tractor onto its side. Both drivers walked away without seriously injuries. For details on news headlines go to www.kcci.com.
Updated school board election results available now at KCCI.com.

Conversations in America

2008-08-21T05:18:00.000-07:00

(in a convenience store near a hotel, my first store since returning to the States)

Me: They.. they make chocolate Skittles now?
Michael: Yeah, sorry, things got a little crazy while you were away.
(pause)
Clerk: You know, I think this is the most fun I've ever seen anyone have in a convenience store.

Well, that's empathy for you

2008-08-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

A conversation at the internet cafe:

Clerk: Would you happen to have any of our coupons?
Me: Sure. (I fish them out.)
Clerk: Ah, I mean.. what about the part at the top here?
Me: You mean this coupon here?
Clerk: No, above that even.. this big blank piece here.
Me: Aaaahhh. I uh.. think I wrote my name and phone number on that part and gave it to a boy.
Clerk: Oh. Oh! Well... (lost for further comment, she fetches a new one for me and uses that instead.)

End_of_the_line

2008-07-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

For Senator Kelley, wherever they are.

This is the end of the line
Trying to make it
in time
My heart aches
To be right.

I'll search forever
For anything
That reminds me of you

And I'll hope forever
That someday
I'll find you.

This is the last hurrah
Let it sound tonight
I can't sleep with
These open wounds

And I'll search forever
For anything
That reminds me of you

And I'll hope forever
That someday
I'll find you

To Summarize

2008-07-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

Japan - your fish is good, but you're all crazy.

Recurring Memories - Summer Evening Version

2008-07-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

Some memories of mine tend to float into my head at random intervals, unrelated to the things I'm doing at the moment, like some random program that keeps asking you to update it while you're browsing YouTube. I think they're related to the weather.

Today's goes like this -

We wander into our favorite Chinese place to pick up an order we've placed. It's run by your typical "Owns a Chinese Restaurant in a Small Town in Iowa" family, so at first, we didn't talk much, but by now we've ordered from there so frequently by now that they just laugh when we come in. We've gone in for years and years - enough so that they laugh and congratulate two of us when we start dating, coming in holding hands.

As we walk in on this particular summer's evening, 5 minutes before closing time, the phone rings, and the oldest man of the family picks it up.

"Hello, Taco Bell, how may I help you?"
*long pause*
"Hah! No, no, it just me."

"Ahh," I think, "They really do fit in well here."

Badua

2008-07-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

This morning, I woke up from a dream that I remembered really clearly, rare for me. I had gotten a plane ticket to a place that I think was called "Badua", which I wasn't entirely clear on location-wise, only that it wasn't here. I had to travel to get to the airport, and when I got in the plane, it was just a little four-seater, occupied only by the pilot, myself, and a boy who was probably based on the archetype of the boy I met at my ex's poetry reading - small, buff, hairy, and eager in a way that made me assume that he could only be a first-year. I sat back and let him do the impressing of the Japanese pilot, who was a Japanese woman. She informed me that Badua was in Aomori, and young-and-eager informed me that he was ONLY going to see Badua, since Aomori has a "dearth of culture" (his words.) Then we flew through a shopping mall that had so much colored glass I thought it was a cathedral.

My father used to fly a two-seater plane, sometimes even four. These were the first planes I'd ever flown in.

http://www.traveljournals.net/explore/india/map/m2901669/badua.html

When I woke up, this song got stuck in my head -
Are you really
in the lovely evening light
that throws its shadows to the ground?
And when I wake up
enchanted and alone
I don't know where to turn my eyes

It Might Be Related II

2008-07-08T05:17:00.000-07:00

The lights in the parking lot I live in turn off whenever someone drives in using headlights. I suppose they're light-sensitive or something, but this has never stopped being unnerving. Since I noticed it. Two weeks ago.

Today was the third-last Eikaiwa class of my two years here. I showed my Eikaiwa ladies this - http://rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order/ and although they started off by trying to figure out what the menu writers originally had meant, we ended up all laughing until we cried. They can barely produce English, but they are beginning to understand what it means.

This reminds me of a time someone who never let me chose music (wanting to play me all his techno first, presumably) let me choose the music. I was so lost for ideas that I just lit a candle and played Azure Ray.

She doesn't have to say a thing - we just keep laughing all night long; all night long.

I feel that I have done well.

It Might Be Related

2008-07-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

Today, I realized that no matter how desperately you want a really sweet, intelligent guy to see you as even potentially more than just a friend, the message will get lost somewhere along the way, even if you're both drunk. This is not his fault.

Also, I learned today that you shouldn't use "Gyarados" as a hangman word unless you're fully prepared to draw one that doesn't look like a giant blue chalk slug, although the overall uproar that it provokes still outweighs the confusion it causes afterwards.

I can't help but feel that these two things are related somehow, and that if I could only grasp the link, I'd have it for once. Emo? Not really. It's a chance, isn't it?

Rather Poetically Failed English

2008-06-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

"I went home. I ate supper. I studied for English. Then I watched TV. So I usuallyed life."

Tuesdays

2008-05-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

110 kids is about 100 kids too many to make kites with. Still -

worth it.

A Conversation with Yuan (from China)

2008-05-11T00:11:00.000-07:00

(Yuan comes knocking at my door at 8pm, after I've just had dinner with another friend who popped in from Gosh.)

Yuan. Hey! I found the place they teach karate! They're having it tonight, at the community center. You have to come! There's only one girl, and she's maybe 3 years old.
Me. Tonight?
Yuan. Yeah!
Me. I'd love to, but I'm really really tired. And besides, I don't have an exercise bra clean right now.
Yuan. A what?
Me. You know, it's got no cups, and it keeps you from bouncing all around - it's really important for me, because, well.. obviously.
Yuan. Yeah, I should get one too! Although this (gestures) is really not me; this is padded. Feel it!
Me. Uhmm..
Yuan. (takes my hand and demonstrates what she means by "padded bra") See?
Me. Ahh, right.
Yuan. Hey!
Me. (removing hands) Oh, sorry.
Yuan. But you will come next week? Pinky swear!
Me. Yes, definitely. (pinky swear occurs)
Yuan. Maybe we can go find one this weekend?
Me. Yeah, absolutely. There's this place called "Uniqlo" where they have cheap clothes, but really good. I really need some new underwear. Actually I'm so low on underwear right now that I'm wearing boys' underwear. See? (Unzips a bit to reveal the blue checkered top of a pair of boxer shorts)
Yuan. You have weird hobbies.

To the fridge.

2008-05-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

Iconic Photography Revisited

2008-04-22T04:45:00.000-07:00

Today, only a few minutes before Eikaiwa, I started wondering what my Japanese friends/Eikaiwa group would think if I showed them some of history's most moving, world-changing photos, knowing they would lack the context to see the "apparent" message right off the bat. Results were fascinating.

I started with a photo I figured they'd definitely know about. Sawa-chan pinned it correctly as Neil Armstrong, although I realized a minute later that this is actually Buzz Aldrin, as taken by Armstrong. I was still glad she knew the name.

I asked the group to give me two sentences each, or if that turned out to be too hard, just a few words from the dictionary. Their thoughts below the photos.

This one's from Teiko-san, who has a running gag that she is still 29. (She's in her mid to late 50s.)
"He is standing on the moon. I want go to the moon, becuse I want meet moon's labbit. I'm 29 year's old. so I don't know this picture. a long time ago."
Me. But I'm 24, and I know this picture!
Teiko. No, no, but I am foreigner.
Me. We're all foreigners to the moon.
Then, when she said the rabbit part, she gave me a big meaningful look that meant, "Now YOU get to ask me about Japanese culture!"

Sawa-chan, as we call her, has apparently read a few "the moon landing was faked" theories. I need to bring her "Dave the Moon Man" (The Looper song.)
"Did he need waits for walking on the moon. Why did he has a shadow? Did his friends expose him to a light?"

Junko-san, who has a pretty damn good head on her shoulders -
"We went to the moon a long time ago. But we don't visit it yet."

Mikki, who's the closest to my age in the group, and who came to the party - whoo! Drinking and smoking and 80's rock-based DJing for the win!
"There is no color. I don't know he is happy or not."

Ms. Satou, who doesn't think she knows as much English as she does -
"a snowy country, a snowman"

Ms. Satou's daugher Momo, in Japanese, since she's still working on the alphabet.
"It doesn't look like he's really in outer space."

Teiko- (this scene is, in fact, inadvertently recreated every morning, all across the country, by depressed Japanese housewives with a lot of disposable income, now that I think of it)
"They are waiting open the store. They have eco bag."*

Sawa-chan-
"Almost black people have to wait a bus but white people have a car. They can through all roard. Black people's life are different white American people. He said There's no way like the American way."

Junko-san-
"At first I think they are lining up to distribute at WWII. But I don't know why they are lining up."

Mikki-
"They look like sad. What are they waiting for. I don't want to join them."

Ms. Michiyama- (If this is unclear, her Japanese means "It's a group of foreign tourists.")
"a countryman a group tour"

Momo-
"Why are they standing in line?"

*Eco bags - reusable cloth or synthetic bags sold at the grocery store to "help the environment" as you fill them with products that are almost always wrapped in at least two bags already.

Final thought - in the billboard of photo #2, even the damn DOG is white.

If Wishes were Taxis

2008-04-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

More crazy weekend hijinx later, in "Diary of Error", which was 78% written when I went to lunch, entrusting the saved draft in my naïveté to the button marked "Save as Draft".

For now, though, a diversion. Saturday morning I was walking in between rice paddies, trying to find my way back to town and to my car by walking in what I presumed was a vaguely town-ward direction, when I came across a taxi. In the middle of the rice paddies. Lucky me! But why was there a taxi just sitting there, in the middle of nowhere? Rin speculates that after I got dropped off by the taxi man, he returned to being a tree, having finished the last wish he received from his fairy.

Well, obviously. Tohoku is just swarming with fairies-in-training - low-level fairies, if you will - who desperately need to find easy wishes to fulfill to complete their degrees. (They will then move to Tokyo, where they can define their own senses of self-value, unhappy with settling for marrying high-ranking town officials, which doesn't tend to be fulfilling unless you're REALLY into having this year's Louis Vuitton handbag.*)

The wishes these fairies can grant have a very limited range of awesomeness, which is of course measured in kittens, (EU; AUS; US[North]**) centikittens, or decikittens, for when the amount of joy doesn't reach that of a whole kitten.

In the range of 1 to 25 centikittens are such wishes as:
- being a taxi driver for 3-5 passengers in suburban Misawa on a slightly dreary spring morning
-catching a mild cold on a day when there's a "Fresh Price of Bel-Air" marathon on, and although they keep rerunning the one where his real dad comes back and then abandons him again, they only loop it back in there every 5 or 6 episodes
-finding half a can of leftover beans in the back of the fridge.

*Apparently a lot of people are, though. My mother and I began competing to see who could count the most of these, both in Tokyo and Aomori. She still leads me 97-85. My father caught twelve, and he was the one watching the road. The best place to count are coffeeshops, because many girls with 1400 USD LV handbags will then whip out a 300 dollar wallet, increasing your count by one each time. I encourage everyone to play competitive Vuittonspotting in Tokyo. Good form*** dictates you point wildly toward the bag and shout the number - "Forty-nine!" - in a loud, clear voice so that there is no question as to what the score is, and who gets the point.****

**Russian, US (South of Mason-Dixon line) Standard is puppies*****, where cats are still considered God's gift to man for target practice - even****** tiny soft ones with big eyes - and the familars and companions of them devil women to boot.******1/2 Because of the unfortuate history behind this substitution, it is acceptable to use puppies interchangably with kittens outside these regions only with legitimate photographic documentation of a personal connection to a specific beloved pet dog. In a pinch, (allergies, for example, with a doctor's note) gerbils may be acceptable, but the conversion rate to kittipuppies (proposed UN Weights and Measures compromise, not yet implemented) fluctuates rapidly, so research (particularly pre-1987 data) may need to be adjusted for inflation, etc.

***Official Olympic Ruling, Italy, March 2007, Map-of-Rome-all-those-taxi-drivers-hand-outspotting judges' committee.

****This, or camping them, hunting them through the window-slits of passing subway cars, and then going into Manic Handbag Chase mode when the car empties,m running through crowds, ducking briefcases, and launching yourself high into the air, above the stampede to yell "NINETY-ONE, NINETY-TWO, NINETY-THREE!" so that the rest of your party knows you have a kill.*******(7)

*****Yes, I know that the "puppy" is already a measurement of happiness. But we all must forge our own paths through the jungle that is International Standard Weights and Measures.

******Especially those. How dare they manipulate us into giving them love? Why can't they just grovel, like some of the less intelligent dog breeds, or children, or wives have to? Where the hell do cats get off?********

******1/2Rudyard Kipling wrote a lovely essay about the history of cats, in which the main character, the cat, says, "I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me."

"Then that Man said, `Yes, but he has not made a bargain with me or with all proper Men after me.' Then he took off his two leather boots and he took up his little stone axe (that makes three) and he fetched a piece of wood and a hatchet (that is five altogether), and he set them out in a row and he said, `Now we will make our bargain. If you do not catch mice when you are in the Cave for always and always and always, I will throw these five things at you whenever I see you, and so shall all proper Men do after me.'
`Ah,' said the Woman, listening, `this is a very clever Cat, but he is not so clever as my Man.'
The Cat counted the five things (and they looked very knobby) and he said, `I will catch mice when I am in the Cave for always and always and always; but still I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.'
`Not when I am near,' said the Man, `If you had not said that last I would have put all these things away for always and always and always; but I am now going to throw my boots and my little stone axe (that makes three) at you whenever I meet you. And so shall all proper Men do after me.'... Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always trow things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they don't pull his tail too hard."

What a great bargain for the cat, eh? He's graciously allowed to do his job at catching all the mice as long 3/5 of men get to throw boots or little hatchets at him.

Kiplinglogic is, in fact, from another planet. You might know the place. It's very near where Hemingway's from originally.********1/2

*******(7)Mom, you rock.

********San Diego. They're changing cars there to ride the California Zephyr up to Eugene, Oregon.*********

********1/2 Yes, yes, before I get hate mail, I do understand Hemingway.

*********This is a wonderfully fractal style of writing, by the way. Life's not linear. Why should writing be?^10ten^

^10ten^Next time, I'll make it into an interactive vector-based flowchart*********** with multicolor willowfractals just waving in the internet tradewinds that blow off the southern coast of Google this time of year and make Stumbleupon the tropical destination spot of the season.

***********Yeah, right, I will.

PS. Treat your dogs well, too, of course.

The Sanka Safeword

2008-04-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

There are only a few situations I can think of where it's totally understood that everyone involved is pretending. LARPs, for one. The kinky obvious for another. (Or is it only the obvious to me, since I've been killing time at work recently by chain-reading the Savage Love archives?) And, of course, being in Japan.

Early on in my days of learning Japanese (this really should have been a warning sign, in retrospect, but I have always been fabulously oblivious to early warning signs), Angela and I came across a dialogue in which the honorable mister foreign visitor is honorably received at the honorable Japanese host's honorable house. He's offered a drink, and he politely refuses twice, then humbly (and honorably!) accepts the drink and sips it, proudly knowing that he and his host have fulfilled their moral obligation to attempt to out-stoic one another, since giving a drink obviously puts the host at a disadvantage (except at my house, where it frees up valuable shelf space) and taking the drink obviously puts the guest at an advantage (except if he, in some massive lapse of sanity-and why would this ever happen anyway?-, doesn't want the drink).

So, saying "Yes, I'd like a drink," gets you a drink.

And saying "No, I would not like a drink" also gets you a drink.

We asked the obvious question - what do you say if you don't want a drink? Of the four native Japanese speakers around at the time, none of them could think of anything. "You just take the drink."

Harmless enough. But what if what you don't want is something you really don't want? What if you don't want the optional IP phone service installed because it makes calling complicated and you prefer to use Skype? What if you don't want the "good" seat because it's next to the skebbe gym teacher who makes passes at you when you get drunk? What if you honestly just don't want to stare at a cup of Sanka for ten minutes while three well-meaning office ladies hover around and say "dozou" repeatedly, then giggle to each other and chat about how you must simply not understand? "What's not to understand? There is Sanka! Consume!"

It is for this reason that I propose Japan adopt a safeword. In keeping with all good safewords, it should imply neither "No" nor "Yes", have very little to do with the situation at hand, and above all, be nonsexy.

So, Japan, for the sake of maintaining a healthy, respectful relationship, I need you to do this with me. I would like our safeword to be "Abe Vigoda". I have no other reason to say, "Abe Vigoda." If I need to refer to him specifically, I will talk about "that guy who played Tessio in The Godfather." If I ever actually say the words "Abe Vigoda", all the roleplay stops, and YOU LISTEN.

And if I refuse the drink THEN, I mean business. I am NOT just being polite. If you put a hot beverage in front of me, I will turn into a kind of beverage-wielding Hulk monster, and throw it right across the teacher's room, wreaking havoc on Doraemon clocks, posters, and cell phone danglies. I said, "No thank you." And I meant it.

Ochadays

2008-02-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

I made a worksheet asking the students to count things. Yukari-sensei looked at it, then at me, practically heartbroken:
"You can count the clouds?"

Strangely Lyrical Spam Involving George Soros II

2008-02-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

Financial markets hopped from one country to the next in search of yet one more detail.

1841 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the captive hadn't known about the project? How could he not have known?

Although no one will meet with you, I am sure that you will nevertheless to penetrate.

It did, however, have the same intoxicating smell of an interview, noting that the Soros people had already contacted...

Strangely Lyrical Spam Involving George Soros

2008-02-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

079105 When Soros believed he was right about an investment, nothing and all that the world contained was rational. Date Size

Beautiful Quotes from Hateful People

2008-02-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

"Tide comes in, tide goes out... Storm - regeneration. Sun... uhm, moon. Stars."
-Bill O'Reilly

non-half-ass-non-sock-non-porn

2008-02-04T07:15:00.000-08:00

wayward saints or iwakiyama

2007-10-25T07:34:00.001-07:00