Author: Justin

Typhoon Tokage

I always used to laugh when I saw somebody use an umbrella in high winds, seemingly being pulled around by an invisible donkey until the inevitable point where the umbrella is pulled outward like a double-jointed flagellate. No more. That shit happened to me today and I almost got my eye poked out. After so many close calls with BB guns in my youth, it would just be wrong to lose an eye any other way.
Yes, friends, it’s another installment of this year’s hit quiz show, Name That Typhoon!
Hint: Today’s typhoon has a Japanese name.
What’s that? I thought the Japanese didn’t name their typhoons and simply numbered them.
That’s absolutely true, today’s typhoon is #23. Apparently what happened is that the Stupendously Hip International Typhoon-Naming Organization (SHIT-NO) ran out of English names. For the last typhoon, they just made some stupid ass name up. This time, they are honoring the kamikaze, or divine wind, that saved Japan from invading Mongol hordes not once but two times way back in history when there were samurais and fiefs and shit.
// ALERT! JUST ANNOUNCED ON COMPANY PA: WORK WILL END EARLY DUE TO TYPHOON! SCUTTLE BACK TO YOUR HOLES, LITTLE PEONS! LIVE TO SERVE ANOTHER DAY! //
Uh oh. It’s really howling out there. Hope I don’t poke an eye out.

Cheerful Monday People…

Must die.
Please God, make them go away. I asked one of the girls why she was all smiles today. She said it was because the new fax machine we ordered came in this morning. She said its sparkling newness was a good omen for the rest of the week.
Oh. Well then.
The thing is, I can’t figure out if she was high on the reefer and making fun of me, or if this is just a sign that the Japanese take their trademark happy worker bee thing a bit too seriously.

Free E-books: The Baen Free Library

If you like (mostly science) fiction, you should definitely check out the Baen Free Library. On the home page you will find a mission statement by the head “librarian,” Eric Flint, who explains why the books in the library, even though most of them are also available in paper form, are made available for free download. After ordering several paid subscriptions in order to read sequels to books I found in the free library, I can say that I agree with Mr. Flint’s reasoning 100%. I greatly admire what these people are doing.
Over the past couple years I’ve read every book available for download in the Free Library (I prefer RTF format files, which I usually convert to text in Word and read on my laptops or cellphone), and although the Belisarius series and the 163x books, among others, are old favorites, the book I enjoyed the most is Sisters of Glass.
Mind you, a lot of the books in there aren’t so hot, but then again, its all FREE so I can’t really complain. Besides, half the fun of going through any library of books I don’t know is separating the wheat from the chaff.
If you like the works you read for free, you might want to check out their paid Webscriptions and subscribe for their paid stories, as I have in the past, although there is no obligation to do so. One really cool thing about the webscriptions is that they will often offer a free download of the works you purchased to someone of your choosing. Like I said, checkcheckcheckcheckcheck-cha-check it out .
Note: I don’t profit in any way from linking to these sites, I just think they kick ass and deserve more recognition.
Update: BTW, one of the reasons I liked Sisters of Glass so much is that it read so much like a Gibson novel (my first post today spurred this one) – so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually did write it.

Well Done

Back in January, in this post, I wrote about Japan’s de facto online price comparison site, kakaku.com. Much like Buy.com and other American equivalents, kakaku is constantly expanding their listings – from all manner of new and used electronics to insurance plans, hotel rates, and sports equipment. Even so, I was surprised to visit their page for the first time in quite a while this morning and find their newest listing: Funeral services.
Link:
http://www.kakaku.com/sougi/
I’ll translate the instructions for you:
STEP 1: Select desired funeral plan and region. Plans available are Cremation Only (I assume there’s a further choice of Regular or Extra Crispy), Family and Relatives, Standard (40 people), Standard (100 people), Company, or Special (musical themed or non-religious themed, etc.). Regions are currently limited to Tokyo and Kanazawa.
STEP 2: Make more detailed choices.
STEP 3: Receive a quote.
Quick! Easy! We’ll only charge you half the price of a new car to think up a special Buddhist name for the afterlife! Yes, I know I will go to hell for writing this. Satan, beware.
On a more serious tip, though, there’s a listing for a place in Tokyo that will burn a body for you for the modest sum of 136,500 yen ($1,250). Something to keep in mind.

Ask C. Buddha: Celebrity Dreams

Jen e-mailed about the newly-created Nick Nolte’s Diary and asked why celebrities are “always writing about dreams and feelings and flowery shit.”
Well Jen, that’s simple. Celebrities are, for the most part, total fucking pansies with a shitload of free time between making horrible movies, getting jasmine-infused honey colonics, and modeling for “charity.” As for the “vivid dreams” which are a trademark of their web writings, celebrities can obviously afford better drugs and booze than the rest of us.

Phuket Breeze

It was a glorious sunset over the mountains and we walked the endless rows of fruitstands and tourist giftshops in search of seafood. As we neared the plaza concentrated with seafood stands, a young man approached and invited us over to one of his tables. Other stall owners caught movement out of the corners of their eyes as they performed various tasks – wiping down tables, setting out plates – and also came over to beg our patronage.
“Cheapcheap!”
“You want snapperfish?”
“You want crab?”
“Good seafood! Best!!”
We were the very first customers of the night in the whole plaza, and we were being greeted accordingly; we quickly became the center of a very large and growing crowd.
“We have freshest fish!”
“Lobster good!”
“Seafood stew!”
We were inundated with the pleas of a dozen business-hungry vendors. What a wonderfully empowering, yet embarassing sensation! How to choose among them all? We listened to more pitches:
“You like Tom Yum soup?”
“We have noodles, sir!”
“Japanese beer!”
“Kon-ni-chiwa!”
In a fit of desperation, the solution suddenly came to me:
“OKAY ALL Y’ALL NEED TO LISTEN UP! THE PERSON WHO CAN JUMP THE HIGHEST GETS OUR PATRONAGE!”
Nobody seemed to understand this brilliant concept, so I demonstrated, hands raised in the air, I started jumping up and down. My, how they got into it.
“HIGHER LADDIES, JUMP HIGHER!”
As the crowd got even larger, filling with jumping bodies wearing aprons and chef’s hats, I glanced sideways at my companions. They both looked kind of shellshocked, and I admit, it felt a bit like being trapped in a House of Pain video.
A real asshole, at this point, would have led his companions away and made everybody feel stupid for performing tricks for free. I, however, was hungry, and judged the winner of the jumping contest on the spot. We ended up having a very mediocre seafood dinner at his stand, so I learned something valuable that day: How a high a person can jump is a poor indicator of their cooking skills. I learn new things every single day, I tell you.
For the next trip somewhere similar, I’ll have to think of a new benchmark. Any suggestions?

Roadkill in Japan

Have you ever thought that your presence in this world wouldn’t be missed much if you suddenly died? You may be right. Whoever ran over the black cat and just left it there in the middle of my parking lot so all cars coming in or going out would run over it again and again, fuck you.
I wrapped it in my carwash towel and placed it in a nearby caged dumpster; luckily today was trash day.
This roadkill thing really gets to me, though. Roadkill is never cleaned up in Japan. When my pal Gatson’s dad came to visit, he observed this is because “it’s no one’s job to clean up roadkill in Japan, so it just stays there.” Pretty smart guy.
I remember a dachshund that got run over at the exit ramp of a highway in Osaka. The ramp had a traffic light that you almost always needed to stop at, so over the period of six months or so, I got to see this dog corpse in varying stages of decomposition. The most revolting stage was the maggot infestation, which happened fairly early on. Toward the end, it looked like a mummy with two big gaping eyeholes in the dessicated skin still stretched over its skull. The funny thing was that I never caught a whiff of it, even when it must have smelled really ripe, cause that’s just how fucking rank certain parts of Osaka get all year round.