Author: Justin

Gnarls Barkley Revealed

NY Times magazine has put up an excellent profile of Danger Mouse: The DJ Auteur
You know what? You can kind of hear the fact that he digs Portishead in his music.
I remember telling M’s boyfriend (self-declared “biggest Jay-Z fan in the world”) via long distance call to Canada that my favorite Jay-Z album was the Grey Album. His reply (he hadn’t heard it yet): “Even better than Blueprint 2?”
Oh, hell yes.

CNN Breaking News 2006/06/19

“Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to be cited for failure to wear a helmet, not having a proper license at time of his June 12 accident.”

  1. And this affects me and 99.9999999% of the world how?
  2. Please tell me why he should care about a fucking traffic citation, as opposed to, say, the massive trauma to his face and head.
  3. Please tell me why you consider this worthy of an e-mail news alert while, say, this is not.

Environmental Monarch

Thai fishermen have declared they will no longer intentionally catch the Mekong Giant Catfish, in honor of their king: LINK
Granted, this only covers part of the problem as the river runs through/is boundary to multiple countries. Plus, I can just imagine the rush of people cutting up nets to collect on multiple $500 payoffs. But still… It speaks a lot for having a monarchy that is respected and revered.
(via Magnoy)

Free 80’s Music

A digg user has posted 100 free 80’s mp3s over on his blog.
Go download some and relive the glory years of commie-fearing, plastic neon superconductivity.
By the way, I noticed they had G-mans new favorite karaoke jam on that page, Cutting Crew’s I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight. His semi-faithful rendition of that horrible song at the Big Echo in Umeda a couple months ago had me blowing beer out my nose.
Legal note: Piracy is bad. I do not advocate swilling rum while raping damsels on a dead man’s chest. On the other hand, YOHOHO BIOOOTCHES!

Future Spirits

Taro’s aunts called from Horyuji to say they were harvesting this year’s plums from the ancient trees in their front yard and to ask if I wanted to come pick up the resulting umeshu in seven or eight years.
Um, yes.
I can think of many stupider reasons I’ve heard for visiting Japan.

Bottled Water

In general, bottled water from France is expensive and disgusting.
Funny, it doesn’t taste nearly as bad drinking it when you’re in France. Maybe they save the good stuff for domestic consumption and export the lower grades. After all, that’s what Japan does with, say, solar panels (I’ve seen the sorting bins at the factory so I know this to be true; Grade A stays in Japan, Grade B is exported to America, and anything below that is shipped everywhere else.).
The worst tasting bottled water, in my opinion, is evian. And of course, evian spelled backwards is naive.
That is as far as I can bear to think today, thank you.

Red Mystery Beetle

Anybody know offhand what this bad boy is?

(click on image to enlarge)
I found him crawling on my car last month. When I tried to touch him, he flew off into the wind.
UPDATE #1: I’ve put in an inquiry to What’s That Bug. They say they are swamped, but maybe something will work out.
UPDATE #2: Whats That Bug wrote back:

Hi Justin,
We believe this beauty is one of the Cerambycid Longhorns, though we are not positive, and we have no idea of the species. The list of specimens that could use Eric Eaton’s assistance is growing and we are not sure when he will return from collecting in West Virginia. How large was this beetle?

To which I replied:

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. The beetle was approximately one inch in length. I will continue to try and find additional information here in Japan, and will update you if anything comes to light.

I’m really impressed with the dedication of the authors of the Whats That Bug site – go check them out as our correspondence is posted there as well, and they may update there when their resident beetle expert returns. Meanwhile, if any of you can help with the identification, I’d be grateful.
I wonder if this is the Eric to whom they refer. Wow!
MYSTERY SOLVED!: T harnessed his ancient Oriental powers of deduction and came up with what looks like the correct answer. This longhorn beetle is commonly known in Japan as a ?????? (benikamikiri); Latin name: Purpuricenus (Sternoplistes) temminckii.
Sources:
http://www2.gol.com/users/nanacorp/ZUKAN/beni.htm
http://naturaljapan.net/?pp_album=1&pp_image=benikamikiri01.jpg