Courtesy of the G-man, who declares, “I LUV OSAKA.” ($100/hour fine for unauthorized parking)
Month: May 2006
Something stuck in one’s ear
Chinchin!
One of the photos Nam took today, her last full day in Japan for the foreseeable future. We went on a drive out to Akashi to look for a dog (shiba-ken) her cousin wants us to send to Thailand (long story). I bought her a Coolpix S6 last week to take home, so she was taking her first shots with it today.
She leaves to Thailand tomorrow morning. I go to work as usual. That sucks total chinchin.
Cleanup
For the past month or so we’ve been cleaning up the house and finally sent 3 cubic meters of stuff to Mahasarakham via Pakmail this past Monday. Nam is taking off in a couple of days, and I’m still inspired by her seriously amazing ability to root through ten+ year old crap and throw it all away. We’ve probably thrown away over 70-80 bags of trash.
So anyway, I’m digging through all of my computer backups on floppy, CD, DVD, ZIP, EZ drive, MO, JAZ, etc., etc., and so forth.
I found some of the artwork and posters I used to do before gigs, when I was in my Photoshop phase (and believe me, it was all about version 4.0). I liked this one especially, because I remember how long it took me to freehand a Mandelbrot on a 5″ Wacom tablet:
See? I was all about Macintosh until Steve Jobs started charging for .mac accounts (previously announced “free for life”), and this was pretty much the apex of my Photoshop skills. Nowadays there’s filters to churn this shit out, but that’s pretty much the modern equivalent of “I had to walk 9 miles to school through the snow,” isn’t it?
Well, fuck, Steve Jobs made Apple dead to me and now I do my bit by punching out random iPodders on the subway, so I guess there really is a sort of cosmic balance.
Well. Back to cleaning.
UPDATE:
I found a version I like even better.
By the Time I Get to Arizona
Some of this extreme cuisine article is pretty funny until you start to suspect what a stupid redneck twat the author is… In this day and age, he can’t even pull off a convincing Long Duk Dong… Other than that, fine effort, Cletus.
Six Drummers
(video is close to ten minutes long, let it load for a while before playing)
I talked to T on the phone today. He said he’s going to a factory for part time work during his spare time these days, and that he’s going to record the sounds of the machines with which to make a song. This video can be kind of an inspiration, I guess.
Side note: The horizontal volume slider on the TV really brought back some memories.
Nipponese Vatos
Japanese Lowrider Life
It’s true, we even have them out here on my island.
This repository, my head
I just remembered one of the funniest things I ever heard.
About seven years ago I got trapped in a conversation with a roomful of girls, and the topic of the conversation of course turned to the topic it always turns to in a roomful of only girls, that is, feminine hygeine products. Anyway, the funny part: This one Chinese girl admitted that the first time she used tampons, she had no idea how to use them and she ended up shoving in 7 or 8, and then proceeded to go about her normal business for the day.
(I’m hoping there’s a Confucian equivalent to Kegels.)
That story still makes me smile.
307 is my magic number
I’m not a Numerologist or anything, hell, I hardly even believe in math. Yet, I become strangely obsessed with numbers and compulsively count things out in my head on occassion. You know, the number of steps I take from point A to point B, or the number of cars I pass on the highway. Stuff like that. Or even simpler things, like tapping my fingers on a desk and counting the beat – performing a repetetive action for the sake of counting. I think I do this when I’m bored, but I’ve been doing it for so long now, it’s become a kind of meditation as well.
Another thing I’ve noticed over the years is that certain numbers keep popping up here and there. I don’t mean meaningful numbers like 5 or 24 or 100. I mean numbers that appear much more frequently than they should. Do you know what I mean?
One number that keeps appearing in my life is 307. It was not always so, or more accurately, I do not think it was always so. You see, 307 was my room number in my college dorm. A couple of years into my residency there, I started noticing that the room number 307 was used on TV and movies quite often. Then I realized that I knew someone else who lived in an apartment #307. Over the years, I’ve entered several room 307s – visiting people or offices with that number. I’ve been assigned room 307 at hotels all over the world. And let us not forget that the Toto U307C is the seemingly most popular urinal in men’s restrooms all over Japan.
So what is it with this number? Am I the only one to have noticed the frequency of it?
Lets look at Google:
Search for 306 returns 85,700,000 results
Search for 307 returns 127,000,000 results
Search for 308 returns 76,700,000 results
Holy shit! I’m not sure that proves a thing, but it does seem uncannily popular, doesn’t it?
What is the meaning?
What is the significance?
(Also, in this case, are meaning and significance necessarily synonymous?)
Will 307 aliens from the planet 307 someday abduct me and threaten to blow up planet Earth unless I guess the number they are thinking of?
Will I one day play the lottery and win $307 million using the repeating string of 307307307307?
Will I ever live in another room 307 and find out I can see dead people?
………..
It’s a fucking conspiracy, I tell you.