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Applicosinox
Today’s New Word is: Applicosinox. Applicosinox made its debut about five years ago in a song recorded by Taro and I in his old juku (cram school). I made it up to fill a particular line in the song and it fit perfectly. Applicosinox is spiced wine made from apples that makes your nose itch and causes sneezing if you drink too much. On the plus side, your eyes start glowing like Dune if you drink more than a cup a day. A search for this word on Google used to return a lot more hits than it does now. In particular, I remember it being researched on a linguistics…
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Meat Conspiracy
Do you realize how hard it is to keep up with a no-carb diet right now in Japan? There are problems with all four of my food groups! Beef: Australian is the only beef available in quantity but the grade of meat they are importing has the texture of reconstituted beef jerky. Pork: Pork has always suffered a stigma here, and it sounds like they are going to stop the import of American pork due to the mad cow scare. (I was going to write a joke about increased imports of Canadian pork here but I got engrossed in this page instead. Too bad.) Chicken: Goddamn avian flu coupled with…
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Mudgrubber
On the way home from field archery a few months ago, I spotted this bad boy about to get squished on the road. We took him home for lack of a good place to release him, and I snapped this shot with the Nikon in one hand and steering wheel in the other. (On a scale of difficulty, it was somewhere between eating a Big Mac and changing a CD while driving.) Anyway, Mr. Turtle got to play in my bathtub for a few hours and he surprised us all by screeching the entire time. Yes, it’s true. Turtles screech. Eeek eeeeek eeeeeeeek. So the next time some hippie starts…
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New Word Primer
Well I thought of a new pursuit and went ahead with it before it escaped my memory (volatile). Now I should explain: When learning a new language, I often experience meltdown trying to think of the English equivalent of a particular word or phrase. Since I am a product of American public schools (K-12) and Japanese university, I am pretty much the stupidest, laziest, least-inclined-to-use-a-dictionary fool you will ever meet. Hence, my need to create new words, even if they already exist. OK? FAQ: Q. Can your New Words be used for free? A. No. Every spoken usage costs a beer. Every written usage costs a car (scaled to wealth…
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Scalpulation
The new word for today is “scalpulation.” Scalpulation is an answer or calculation derived by much head-scratching, chin-fondling, and mutterings of the word “Um”.
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OK, just one more…
Why stop when I’m on a roll? Meet Dudley Hiibel. He’s a 59 year old cowboy who owns a small ranch outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. He lives a simple life, but he’s his own man. You probably never would have heard of Dudley Hiibel if it weren’t for his belief in the U.S. Constitution. One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with “failure to cooperate” for refusing to show ID on demand. And it’s all on…
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CSS Zen Garden / Hangame Japan
Now that I have a legion of troopers aspiring to find the One True Way for their site design, I present a Scroll of Knowledge: http://csszengarden.com Hurry up and click already. // For the troops on furlough, I present the best and most addictive free game site in all of Japan. I’m talking original MMPORG (if you now what that abbreviation means, you are a fucking nerd. like me.), card games like poker and hanafuda, mah-jong, pachinko, etc. etc. etc.: HANGAME Japan I think the parent company is one of the biggie Korean portal sites like Daum. John and his wife got me hooked on Korean hanafuda (called “Go Stop”)…
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Look wot I can do!
Wow. I just wrote the PERFECT POST here and lost it when I accidentally closed the browser window. Hooray for me! No, I will not attempt to recreate it. That would be like trying to top my harshest drinking record (16 Spirytus shots) – maybe possible, but not without great suffering. Speaking of Spirytus, I just found out from the distributor’s site that the shit isn’t really meant for drinking as-is (as if we didn’t know before): Poland is a big, world producer of spirit obtained by the fermentation of grain or potatoes. The purification of the spirit is made by rectification in modern automated plants. Spirit obtained in this…
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Classical Thai Dance
Right now I’m sipping lemon chu-hi at Bill’s Bar and going through my photos from the Thai dance exhibition Nam participated in last week. Pictured here is a Japanese girl who is quite skilled and actually teaches others classical Thai dance. The dance group is comprised of both Japanese and Thai girls, and they perform all around Japan. I am waiting for the new Nikon D70 DSLR to be released and push down the price of the Canon Digital Rebel so I can buy a digicam that works better in low-light situations than my Coolpix 4500. I love the 4500 but it sucks for night/low-light pics. The Canon apparently does…
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Gyudon Pics
At the request of a certain hominid (and I suspect a fellow chowhound), I present borrowed gyudon pics. Here we have the gyudon (center), miso soup (right), pickled cabbage (left), and a cup of hot green tea in the blue cup. This is a set meal that was available at Yoshinoya stores in Japan for about 600 yen until the American cows went apeshit or whatever. Basically the only thing missing from this photo is the raw egg. Not very photogenic, I guess. First of all, whoever took this photo has to work on their color management because the red ginger looks like shredded carrots. Shame, shame. Please take better…
