nardical

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One of the rites of passage in an Asian American household is fighting with your sibling for the eyeballs of the fish served up for dinner (assuming one large whole fish shared by the whole table, as opposed to smaller fish that provide eyeballs for each person). What I definitely do not remember is fighting over fish balls. Must be a SE Asian thing.
Photo taken in the Thai Town area of LA.

HIMAWARI

SUNFLOUR.jpgHa! After those last posts, we need some happyhappyjoyjoy around here! LOOK AT THIS PIC! UNBEREAVABLE (Interestingly enough, this oft-heard-on-Jap-TV-pronunciation could be an actual word if spelled like this.)!
Two words are the reason for my joy regarding this photo: No filters.
And no, I am not referring to my work for tobacco companies.
Although my phone does have photo editing capabilities, in fact it’s a virtual “Photoshop XLE” (sorry for the geek reference), I have not – to this point – employed any graphis filters or otherwise done any editing to the photos on this moblog. Mainly because it’s hard enough to get good photos as is. These photos are hard enough to see cuz they’re SO DAMN SMALL that a solarized image of my car just might end up being mistaken for, say, a picture of Gray Davis orally gratifying Ann Coulter at the Pirates of the Caribbean (ride, not movie).
Having said that, I will have to experiment more with my phone and post some edited pics here as long as there’s no danger of being accused of posting cyberfelch.
Then again, Net Nanny hates me anyway.

I, Enki

Dude. This is my greatest accomplishment in years. I inadvertently stumbled onto two Neal Stephenson short stories YOU NEVER EVEN KNEW EXISTED.
Spew is on the WIRED site, but I guess I just never found it until now.
I am posting the entirety of the Great Simoleon Caper in the extended entry of this post for posterity, because I can’t find it on a server I trust to keep it up forever.

Continue reading “I, Enki”

Nitsuj Adihsoy

Well, that’s the first time I’ve spelled my name backwards for a long, long time. The last time was in 5th or 6th grade when my best friend Ben Stebbing insisted we call each other by our own names backwards. He moved to England the next year and the last time I Googled him I determined he was either dead or in a Liverpool mental hospital. (Ben, if you are alive and have access to the net, speak up my friend.)
What spurred this memory today? It ties into the best news I’ve heard all week:
In my past life I was known as J.U.S.T.I.N.,
the Jaded and Unbelievably Socratic Tibetan Ironmonger of Nubia
And all this time I thought Tibetans had a natural resistance to hemlock…
It only gets better: C.B.U.D.D.H.A.,
the Civilized , Brazenly Underrated Dogcatcher Drudge Hindi from Araby
Hat tip to J-Walk Blog

Where’s me brolly?

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Well, it looks like Typhoon #2 (Japanese don’t follow the western convention for typhoon naming – on one hand, I suppose it’s kinda nice not having to admit that your cities got “battered by Alice” or “ravaged by Gertrude”) – is coming straight for my island tonight. Last time a typhoon came by I had to drive over the bridge between here and Kobe, and it was like the movie Twister in that I just had to crack my window to see just how strong the wind was blowing. In an instant, every loose toll receipt, shopping bag, hamburger wrapper, etc., whipped out the window as if we were at 30,000 feet and if I’d had the foresight to attach GPS trackers to everything, I probably could have mapped out the eye of the storm (I guess that makes my Silvia “Dorothy” in this analogy but I won’t go there.).
The weather today is what I like to call, “fungus-inducing.” Basically, this is the kind of humidity that causes jungle foot, crotch rot, and the downfall of western civilization. You actually feel dryer in the shower on days like this. I might as well spend the night in there since big storms usually destroy my satellite reception and the last one screwed with my FTTH connection as well.
It totally cracked me up when my Aussie pal told me what a brolly is. And a sultana (as in, “Sultana Bran”). Thanks to William Gibson, I know what a standover is. Damn, I really need to visit Australia sometime soon. After I buy a D70, I think.