Author: Justin

Parking Inspector Assault #2

This time it happened in Okayama, the home of Momotaro (the chldren’s story character, not the kaitenzushi chain): Man busted for biting parking inspector
Now I’m just waiting for the first BIG story to hit. You know, “Man Drags Parking Inspector 2 Kilometers, Claims He Thought It Was Rat,” or, “Angry Ninjutsu Student Disembowels Parking Inspector,” something like that. Followed by a critical review of how revenues collected from third-party ticket collections aren’t reaching the projects they were intended for, how parking inspectors are ticketing innocent cars because they work on an underhand commission from their employers, and how it’s STILL FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND A PARKING SPACE ANYWHERE IN THE CITY.
Let’s all guess how many politician’s relatives started companies in the past six months that bid on the ticketing work…
Related Links:
The first assault on an inspector (flying knee kick of death)
Wherein I predicted violence unto parking inspectors (Truth be told, I was kinda looking forward to it… It’s all fun unil someone’s eye gets poked out.)

Butcher Standard

That video I posted yesterday is stuck in my head. On one hand, it’s been positively liberating having that tune on my lips all day. Delivery truck cuts me off on the way to work? Hey yo, fuck the shit. Cleaning lady wants to sweep out the stall next to mine while I’m dropping a load? Shit the fuck. The air conditioner in our ferroconcrete office breaks down for the third time this month, on the hottest day so far this year, and we can’t have it fixed because it requires tearing out part of the ceiling which is a safety hazard during work hours? FUCK THE FUCKING SHIT.
On the other hand, too many fucks and shits makes me sound like a Canadian rock star. So instead of emulating, I will instead try to use the power of link. Watch this blog closely.

Never called on a long solo

Dave just sent in this article regarding the King of Thailand’s love of jazz. (I hereby refuse to use CNN’s pathetically retarded titles as links anymore.)
No denying the king seems really cool, but it must be pretty damn hard for him to get an honest opinion of his music.
Nam was in Bangkok this weekend and she said there were more yellow shirts than Ojibagaeri (it’s a Tenrikyo thing, baby) in August.

Sumoto River Update – Explosion of Turtles and Mullet

The view out of the bus window this morning was unusually interesting. A huge crane pontoon was working in conjunction with a tugboat to maneuver a trash barge (used to transport river silt dredged from the river bottom) next to it. The crane operater was very skilled and the men working under the huge yellow arm completely trusted him. He had a soft touch and you couldn’t even hear the metal scoop as it grabbed the side of the barge – why is heavy machinery so fascinating to me? I think in another life, I was a dumptruck driver who ran a freelance backhoe operation on weekends.
Anyway, the Sumoto River is once again teeming with mullet fry, something I haven’t seen since the hurricane caused the big flood a couple of years ago. Also, I counted seventeen turtles on the way to work. Seventeen! That’s probably more than I’ve seen in total over the past five years! The were mostly small ones, about the size of the palm of your hand. I like to think that these are offspring of the big daddy I released upstream a couple years ago.
One more interesting thing regarding the mullet: When the big ones come upriver this time of year, they start looking quite moldy and beat-up. I don’t know why this is, at first I thought they were spawning and dying off like salmon, but this is not the case. Maybe they are molting. In any case, the skin under their scales is white, and they start losing scales in large patches. This gives them the appearance of white koi! I’ve overheard a few people in the past few weeks talking about or pointing out the “schools of koi” in the river! This is funny as hell, especially since my little brother and I used to think the same thing and tried to catch them with koi bait – unsuccessfully – for months! It wasn’t until we saw them schooling in clearer water that we could tell the difference; they really do look like carp in the water. When viewed out of water, they look a lot different, their face is squared and they are have a distinctively prehistoric look to them.