Month: February 2004

OK, just one more…

Why stop when I’m on a roll?

Meet Dudley Hiibel. He’s a 59 year old cowboy who owns a small ranch outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. He lives a simple life, but he’s his own man. You probably never would have heard of Dudley Hiibel if it weren’t for his belief in the U.S. Constitution.
One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with “failure to cooperate” for refusing to show ID on demand. And it’s all on video.
On the 22nd of March 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Dudley and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show “the papers” whenever a cop demands them.

Eeeenteresting, no? I haven’t read it all yet. Go see for yourself, I’m busy working:
http://papersplease.org/hiibel/
ALSO:
Beware of Big Brother’s spies – they’re everywhere!

CSS Zen Garden / Hangame Japan

Now that I have a legion of troopers aspiring to find the One True Way for their site design, I present a Scroll of Knowledge:
http://csszengarden.com
Hurry up and click already.
//
For the troops on furlough, I present the best and most addictive free game site in all of Japan. I’m talking original MMPORG (if you now what that abbreviation means, you are a fucking nerd. like me.), card games like poker and hanafuda, mah-jong, pachinko, etc. etc. etc.:
HANGAME Japan
I think the parent company is one of the biggie Korean portal sites like Daum. John and his wife got me hooked on Korean hanafuda (called “Go Stop”) last year on Daum, but I couldn’t play because in order to sign up, you pretty much must emit kimchi stench from your pores and hate American GIs (even though they are the only reason that crazy Kim motherfucker and his starving hordes aren’t gnawing off your arms after a massive artillery barrage). I guess what I’m trying to say is, you need a Korean citizen’s ID# to sign up for that shit and I don’t have one and can’t be bothered to research faking one. So I looked around for approximately 1.4672 hours and although I found many free hanafuda games online, they all suxx0r3d compared to the Daum Go Stop game.
Then I found the Japanese HANGAME site. It rocks. I played more hanafuda this week than CS. Oh. My. God. Don’t worry, I’ll make up for it tonight. Gotta try out those newly powered-up Beretta Elites that Steam made it a point to tweak.
If you read this whole post and understood every reference that was made, you are a pathetic game-otaku webhead geek. Join my HANGAME group after signup. My handles are “cyberdogma” and “cosmicbuddha”. Very original, I know. STFU.
Oh, if you care to learn about hanafuda, look at this pathetic nerd’s site:
sloperama.com
That is all for today. I have been pretending to be working on the new export regulation checklist since this morning and I need a break before I turn in some half-ass initial draft. It’s only hours before I will go home, yell “wooo, it’s Fridaaaaay!” at the cats that are sitting on my street, unlock my door, sit on the sofa, then wonder how the hell I slept so long when I wake up 48 hours later.

Look wot I can do!

Wow. I just wrote the PERFECT POST here and lost it when I accidentally closed the browser window. Hooray for me!
No, I will not attempt to recreate it. That would be like trying to top my harshest drinking record (16 Spirytus shots) – maybe possible, but not without great suffering.
Speaking of Spirytus, I just found out from the distributor’s site that the shit isn’t really meant for drinking as-is (as if we didn’t know before):

Poland is a big, world producer of spirit obtained by the fermentation of grain or potatoes. The purification of the spirit is made by rectification in modern automated plants. Spirit obtained in this way is of an ideal purity; it is natural and serves as the basis of Polish vodka, world famous for their high quality. It is sought by consumers in order to make home made infusions of fruits and for healing purposes.

Me and Bill should be veritable doctors by now judging from all the “healing” we’ve practiced over the years.
Although the site lists the existence of a sissy brother (151 proof), I’ve only ever seen the real deal – 96% alcohol, baby. Why the fuck would they want to copy Ronrico with that half-percentage point 151 proof figure anyway? For those in the know, there can be no substitute. Spirytus separates the men from the boys, everytime.

Miwa Otori

MIWATORI.jpg
If you drive down route 169 from Nara toward the city of Sakurai you will see a huge black “o-tori” that stands at the entrance of a parking area for Miwa shrine (Miwa-jinja or Miwa-myojin in Japanese).
This is the largest o-tori in Japan and the jinja is located at the base of a mountain. There is an ancient cedar tree there that a white snake (actually a reincarnation of the myojin) is reincarnated in. But you might not find many references to it on the web because the animistic details of the shrine might not have been written about much in English. And the history of this shrine, one of the oldest, is sometimes debated because of the different branches of shinto (and varying beliefs) that have appeared since then.

Sony Obelisk

SONYKNOB.jpg
This is a wired remote controller for my Sony head unit installed in one of Silvia’s 2-DIN slots. I specifically bought this toy because it had been around for at least 10 years and I thought it would be dropped in favor of a new model. Bingo! I was right and the new ones are wireless, though less 80’s-looking and hence worthless in my opinion. I think I may be one of three people in the universe who can change the settings for the subwoofer output’s high pass filter one-handed in the dark without looking at the display. Now somebody give me A GODDAMN COOKIE.

Running Strong

ODO.jpg
My Silvia still runs smooth after 150,000 kilos. That’s quite a distance for a four-banger, and is a testament to the design of the SR-20DE engine. The engine is chain driven and my mechanic tells me he sees them pass the 200k mark in other cars (Nissan Primera, etc.). The thing is, I’m not just puttin’ around all the time. I put serious (but loving) strain on that car and she comes through every time. So I reciprocate by keeping her pretty. This, in fact, is cause for ribbing from my buddies (when they see me bust out the tire wax) and also causes Nam to get quite angry (note I specifically did not say jealous).