This new Beasties album sounds really great playing softly in the background right now – the beats are funky and I can’t hear the lyrics. As far as I’m concerned that’s the best of both worlds. A dog that doesn’t shit, so to speak.

Well, maybe the time difference can count for something. Happy Father’s Day, dad, and thank you for not selling us all to gypsies continued support throughout the years. You are a good father and I only hope I can do as well (the time is coming pretty soon I think).

Yesterday being “big trash” day, when one can dispose of the unnecessities that clutter life, liberty, and the, um, American way with impunity – you know, old furniture, broken appliances, the big stack of bathroom reading material that’s been piling up for eighteen months – I made a major life decision and threw away all of my frying pans. Five, to be exact. They were all used extensively over the years and starting to sport bald spots in the Teflon coating or rust spots at the handle joint, so I threw them out. People who know my packrat ways will not be surprised to hear that I found it extremely…

To my Air France stewardess friend, who is coming over tomorrow: Nothing says friend like a bottle of Chateau Margaux. May I suggest the 1961? But why am I telling you this? I’ll stick to what I, as an American, know best. Crackers and cheese whiz are totally on me.

Well, it looks like Typhoon #2 (Japanese don’t follow the western convention for typhoon naming – on one hand, I suppose it’s kinda nice not having to admit that your cities got “battered by Alice” or “ravaged by Gertrude”) – is coming straight for my island tonight. Last time a typhoon came by I had to drive over the bridge between here and Kobe, and it was like the movie Twister in that I just had to crack my window to see just how strong the wind was blowing. In an instant, every loose toll receipt, shopping bag, hamburger wrapper, etc., whipped out the window as if we were at…

So it turns out that my girlfriend brought back more for me from Thailand than met the eye. I inherited this Bangkok bug that is just laying me to waste. For starters, a 24/7 splitting headache that can only be fought off with the Big Green Pills (Nyquil). Sore throat. Sporadic coughing and lung-boogers. General shit-like feeling and soreness of joints. Compounded by the crappy weather today – rainy, hot, and humid – and the screwy air conditioning in our office which means I suck down cold humid air instead of hot humid air. As you can imagine, the overall effect this bug has puts me in a foul mood,…

The other day I wrote a fairly long reply in the comments after derailing my own train of thought and forgetting whatever it was I originally intended on saying. It was in response to something my mom wrote in the comments about cleanliness being next to godliness. Since a couple friends and I have since hijacked that comment thread for a debauchery support group meeting this weekend, I figured it was only fair to bring that long comment out and let it stand on its own out here in the light: Cleanliness: Diligence in keeping clean Godliness: Piety by virtue of being a godly person I can say with some…

It’s Monday. My girlfriend went back to Thailand yesterday to do research for her doctorate. She will come back in a month or so, so the “hundred years” I used in the title are just my props to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote the only book I have ever attempted to read in Spanish. (Huge digression alert!) I can only speak enough cholo to bum a cigarette from Mexican kids smoking in the school bathroom, but I kept the English version of the book next to me for reference. It worked, in a way, but forever convinced me that mandatory foreign language classes in public high schools are good for…

I am a packrat. I am also a slob by nature, although sometimes I put on a good show of being organized when it counts. I spent the weekend cleaning out my small room upstairs and thinking, “Damn, I’m a packrat.” During my long years as an amateur geek/professional gadget junkie, I have accumulated enough electronic parts and contraptions to completely fill a six-tatami room. I’m talking boxes haphazardly stacked to the ceiling. This is a room you do not want to be in during an earthquake, which isn’t really a joke since this island was the epicenter of the largest quake in Japan in recent history. A hundred pounds…