It’s always amusing to see columnists writing about places they’ve obviously never been: Clash of the superstores / Yamada Denki enters Osaka’s competitive electronics market Basically, it’s hype like this that led us to take a trip down there yesterday. The night before was Adam’s birthday/farewell party in Umeda, and we stayed the night at a cheap hotel located in the illegalalienwhore district. As we all had some electronics shopping to do (a cranial implant here, a bionic limb augmentation there, you know, standard DenDen cyberware stuff), we decided to check out the vaunted new Yamada Denki complex (hereafter referred to as “Labia 1” – hey, they asked for it).…

I was going to ask my bro to do something just like this since he’s going home in a couple weeks: The Great Taco Hunt: A guide to the Los Angeles taco scene Oh well, I guess he’s gonna have to think up something else to blog (fire hydrants of Orange County, or Surfer Photos from the Pier…)

This is a very, very interesting diagram: Corporate Ownership of Organic Food Companies Something to think about the next time you go shopping at Earth Foods for organic soybean carab tofutti w/vitamin C-enriched daikon sprout topping. Corporate ownership of organic food isn’t necessarily bad in my mind, it’s just funny that, say, Crispy Sugar Bombs and Rutabagels have common roots.

Speaking of sheep, get a load of this shit. What the fuck? I guess I like my coffee rainbow now. I only wear rainbow t-shirts. The tires on my car are rainbow. The total absence of light is rainbow. And most people from Africa are rainbow. Political correctness is the second most evil export from America (the first: Britney Spears).

– A Thai who can’t eat spicy food. – A diabetic Thai. – A Thai with a peanut allergy. Any of the conditions listed above will ensure that the unfortunate party will almost never eat food outside their homes. In Thailand, the land of delicious food aplenty, that is just bad luck, and bad karma.

Oh my god, Jack Bauer is my hero.

So after 9/11, I signed up for e-mail updates from CNN for breaking news items – you know, back then it was impossible to get to major news sites and even the big newsbloggers were getting bogged down with traffic. I figured it was a good way to be kept kinda in the loop for major events, etc… It worked out kind of in that way, in that sometimes the e-mails would cover stories that we just don’t get coverage of in Japan, even on CNN International. The thing is, though, it sometimes makes me sad. Like today, the CNN Breaking News alert I received contained the following info only:…

Look, I understand both sides of the issue fairly well – on this issue there isn’t much middle ground to speak of – and I agree that Japan should at least abide by the treaties it has already signed. HOWEVER, claiming that the Japanese are hunting whales to extinction is just as dishonest. I’m just saying.