Category: Exploits

From the Guardian: In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema
In my third year of university here, my pal T came back from a two year journey all over the world, most recently Paris, with a crazy gypsy girlfriend in tow. She had red hair and crooked teeth, and although I never caught her doing it, I swear she had a little bag of bones she would occasionally toss into the ashes with which to determine the alignment of Jupiter or tomorrow’s chance of rain, or some such crap. Actually, she was pretty cool to hang out with because she made T act like a man sometimes, which is more than I can say for his sad, sorry, married ass now (sorry T, I call ’em as I see ’em). She eventually went back to France when her Japanese tourist visa expired, and I tagged along when Taro went to visit.
Imagine my surprise when I found out she was the most normal person in her entire group of friends (let me put it this way, I was even more surprised than T was when she came to met us at the airport with a totally new hairstyle – short hair now dyed black, with shoulder-length cornrow extensions she had done at an “African barbershop”). Her friends were essentially street kids. The night we got there, we rented a car and drove into the dark heart of the city to look for them on unmarked sidestreets. We found them in squatting at some funky construction site, accessible only by climbing under a chain link fence marked with the French equivalent of “No Trespassing.” It was a reunion with old friends for T, and I got to know everybody quickly. It was a true ghetto party, complete with trash can fires and sticky balls of black sin smuggled fresh from Nepal. At some point the whiskey ran out and bottles of wine were produced, only to reveal that nobody had a corkscrew, So someone brought out a hammer and the rest of the night was spent eating cold merguez sandwiches and gingerly sipping from bottles with broken necks (when I said ghetto, I meant it).
The reason any of this pertains to the link above is that I recall a conversation regarding the catacombs beneath the city. You see, T’s friends had this squatting stuff down to a science. Apparently, after buildings are condemned in certain disticts of Paris, they are essentially fair game for a whole year. They aren’t torn down, and the police don’t kick out squatters. So these kids were moving to freshly condemned buildings from year to year, although if picking got slim, they could always sleep “below the city.” At the time, I thought they were joking, but I guess the spooky catacombs are only a part of a huge tunnel network they have there… Dim lighting and gloomy rooms painted with religious symbols, eh? All I can think is, that sounds awfully like the Mines of Moria. My inner geek is urging me to find out what T’s ex is doing these days – that would be an awfully cool trip.
So what say you, T? There’s nothing like calling up an old flame out of the blue on behalf of a good friend’s inner geek, is there?
I’ll bring the corkscrew this time.

It removes inhibitions. I met this girl ten seconds ago. Bill (on the left) may have met her before, but how the hell do I know. She came in after my cousin Tait (who I have misspelled as “Tate” until now, sorry cuz) called her. Jeez, I have no idea what has happened since that Spirytus shot. I’ll shut up now, sorry.

This article at Slate caught my eye today:
One Giant Lift for Mankind: The race for the 1,000-pound bench press.
When I trained for football and wrestling in high school, I was happy to be able to bench 200. But ten times that? Half a ton? Even with the super redneck denim shirts or whatever, I fear these guys will only learn their limits when something gives out with a sickening snap. I know what too much weight on the bar feels like. It feels like your elbows might pop out. If you’re positioned poorly on the bench, you know it right away. Sometimes, the veins stand out on your forehead as you turn beet red and wish you hadn’t been stupid enough to try it without a spotter (or anyone within grunting or panicked yelping distance; how I survived my own stupidity all these years is a mystery). Steroid accusations and neck-deficiency issues aside, 1000 pounds is an amazing figure.
Anyway. You know how everyone at the gym jokes about the real muscleheads being able to lift cars that get in their way, etc., right? Standard jibes that denounce the practicality of being so big and so strong? I stopped making those jokes after a powerlifting guy that I knew got in a horrible car accident my junior year. What happened, in brief, was a frontal collision into the side of a (thankfully empty) school bus. Said person was driving with his seatbelt on, the car was a Honda Accord (no airbag), and there were no other passengers. Speed at time of collision was estimated between 35-45mph and according to witnesses, there was no time for him to brake.
Typically, this is a fatal scenario, with the steering column crushing the driver’s chest or perhaps the windshield exploding outward with the impact of the driver’s head. However, this guy survived against all odds. He was badly injured and hospitalized for months, but had survived an accident that should have been fatal. How did he do it?
According to his doctor, who conferred with the EMTs that worked the scene, the driver had avoided fatal injury because he had apparently bench pressed the steering wheel at time of impact. They had found him slumped over with his hands still gripping the wheel.
….
Sometimes I go to the hardware store and think about this when I look at the hammers. Never know when you’ll need a bigger hammer.

6. Life is flowing like water through my fingers. Time running out… Must adopt harried writing style. Also sentence fragments. And abrvi8… No wait that’s 13375p34K. So immature. Maybe I’ll just clean up my act and post only about politics.
6a. Nah, fuck that.
7. Why is it still so hard to surf true-believer political blogs and not feel slightly depressed afterward? (I bring this up because I suspect it only gets worse with age.)
7a. And why do politicians giving speeches on TV still look so much better when Hollywood does it? Can’t we get someone who sounds smarter than an actor on the fucking stage and in charge of really important shit that affects every aspect of our lives?
8. Car insurance gets cheaper in Japan when you turn 30. This is actually the second of two discount age levels for anything above legally required coverage. The first one is when you turn 26.
8a. Now this is not a huge amount of cash I’m talking about here, but with most people bitching at me to slow down (or to stop tailgating Porsche weenies who drive under the speed limit) all the time, it’s nice for someone to finally acknowledge my spotless driving record. Monetarily. The ironic thing is that I need to get coverage for all ages anyway if Adam wants to drive my car when he moves out here (later this week, BTW).
9. On balmy summer nights, Astrocreep 2000 is still the undefeated champion of impulsive gas pedal stomping on moonlit stretches of open highway.
9a. No I’m not shitting you. White Zombie was a great band, and Astrocreep 2K was absolutely phenomenal, although a couple of their songs on that album got way overplayed. This is how MTV and hit charts poison good bands (can anybody say “Frogstomp?”).
10. Mondays still suck, the people around me are still idiots, and in my ten year visit to this country, I have now sworn under my breath (in English so as not to be understood) at someone during a conversation approximately a hundred thousand million billion times.
10a. I’ve only been caught doing it a few times, once by a lady cop who was writing me up a bullshit parking ticket and apparently understood the words “fucking bitch.” I’d never been so scared my whole life as when she replied in perfect English, “what did you just call me?”, then called for backup.

1. Beer is still best served ice cold (amazingly, I had anticipated this one).
2. Your older friends weren’t just joking the whole time, they really are happy you’ve joined their middle-aged ranks.
3. Guitar solos still sound better when you’re wasted.
3a. People still call it Teenage Wasteland.
4. You still hate it when the pitifully drunk basket case comes to relate their newest tragedies.
4a. “…cause no one else cares”
4b. It’s still too fucked up to reply, “Either do I”
4c. But it’s still fun to fantasize about.
5. People still come to see what you’re doing on the computer (in a bar for chrissake!) and because you don’t want to even begin to try explaining what blogging is to the average drunk non-geek, you just tell them you’re “reading mail.”
5a. And perhaps you still suddenly feel very self-conscious and cut your post short.

As I spend the last hours of my youth at sea, on a ferry to Osaka to be precise, I can’t help but think with much pride that I’M STILL IN MY TWENTIES!!!!!!!

Hey, I just got back to my Osaka business hotel from dinner with some clients. Like, right this second. And the first thing on my mind? “I haven’t blogged forever – I think I’ll write a post even before taking off my GodAwfulStanky socks. So obviously, I’m hammered. But then again, I’m in my twenties, so everything is good.
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a United States Air Force B-29 aircraft, dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The city was leveled.
On August 6, 1974, another bomb was dropped:

Ouch like a motherfucker, y’all. Seriously.
Never thought this life would be such a blast, but you all have made it worth living and then some. Props.

Well, last night there was a duststorm which pretty much ruined my attempts at photography. Today it’s raining. This bad boy is the reason for the foul weather. My island (Awajishima) is located right under the eye of the storm shown in the last frame of the animation.
I’ll attempt to take more photos tonight, but I’m afraid they won’t turn out as well as I had hoped.
UPDATE: We got totally rained out. Life sucks. Lileks, stand down.

Tonight and tomorrow I will be taking photos of the Awa Dance here in Sumoto. If you are a Minnesotan named James Lileks who once wrote about the Awa Dance on your kick-ass site (The Bleat) quite fondly, or even if you aren’t, please check out the photos someday. I’ll try to make it worth your time, even if I’m not nearly worthy.
Some keyword obscuria, because history repeats itself:
Japanese dance
hands above

On Monday, after saying farewell to Adam, Merin, Matt, and Kuniko in downtown Fukuoka, I jumped in a taxi and headed to the airport. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the cabbie was a woman. This was a first for me, so I took full advantage of it and we had a long conversation all the way to the airport. She told me that she’d been a cabbie for twelve years, and the conversation kind of blossomed from there; she was one of those old pros that have interesting stories to tell, and drive a cab because it’s their calling in life.
That wasn’t the only nice thing about this cab ride, however. She knew the streets really well. At one point, approaching a long line of cars, she pulled a U-turn and drove through a housing area where the streets were so narrow there was no room for pedestrians – so she honked at them and they scurried into their little nooks and crannies! My kind of driver.
The fare was 2,090 yen. I gave her three 1,000 yen notes and told her to keep the change. It made her so happy, she almost started crying, in that “grateful grandmother” type of way.
As they say, sometimes it’s not where you’re going, but how you get there. What a great way to end my stay.