Lotte’s “dental” chewing gum – supposedly helps keep teeth white. I nominate it for Official Chewing Gum of Aryanfest 2004.
Another Awaji Bridge Sunset
Wait, maybe this isn’t the bridge. How am I supposed to remember? I was driving, man.
Overstocked
I have no idea why the stalls crammed into overflowing buildings of Namdaemun were so enthralling. It may have been the sheer volume of stuff literally stacked to the ceilings… Or the fact that most of the stores fell into one of the following categories:
– Medicinal/Pharmaceutical
– Leather belts, wallets, and stainless steel kitchenware
– Fake zippos, stunguns, and sunglasses
There were hundreds of stalls on multiple floors of this building… Simply wonderful just to wander around.
One reason why digital cameras suck
I wanted to take photos this weekend but I somehow managed to lose BOTH chargers for the rechargeable Li-Ion batteries. I invested in a second unit since I thought it would be nice to always have one in the car for trips. How I lost both of them is a complete mystery and makes me want to buy a whole new camera.
Gadgets can be clever and evil, and conspire to either sate you only temporarily or completely consume you; toys beget toys.
Unicorn Board
The hard board at Bill’s. Remarkably sharp in B&W.
King of Konbeni
Lawson is the foundation upon which modern lifestyles are built in Japan.
I have never confirmed the oft-heard rumor regarding the Lawson closest to my university, Morimedo Lawson – that it was the busiest branch in Japan. Well, on the 26th of every month I wouldn’t dispute it…
Brief Statement
Waiting for Bill outside of a Mickey D’s in Shinsaibashi, I was proposed by some Chinese girls who offered to do just this. Wait that’s a lie. They only offered a massage, “kimochi yoku shite ageru yo ni-chan”. Goddamn, gotta love that.
Anyway, this sticker was pasted to a light pole right outside the golden arches, and the previously mentioned ladies of da knight giggled ferociously as I nerdily took a photo of it. Biotches.
The Other Pink Meat
I wrote a haiku today, inspired by this site:
Dusty desert road.
Weary rocket soldier sits,
opening the can.
Obviously, I’ve been playing too much Generals lately. And Adam’s recent post on Spam ignited a firestorm in my gut. I was forced to recognize that I need Spam on a regular basis. Need. But it’s too damn expensive in Japan. It’s as if they still price it the same way they did on the black market after the war, but adjusted for inflation.
Happy Spam thoughts:
Spam is one of the few foods that taste better in the “low salt” version. I tried a can of the spicy-flavored Spam a couple weeks ago and it was nice, but I prefer the low salt Spam sliced into slabs and crispy-fried with eggs, sunny side up, decorated with ketchup and sriracha sauce. Oh, damn, why so I do this to myself at work? I’m HUNGRY.
When I was ten or eleven years old, my friend Kohei came to a profound realization and announced that “Spam” spelled backwards is “maps”. It would be much less embarassing for him if I had forgotten to state that he was twice my age; luckily, I remembered.
UPDATE: It seems my black market comment above may have been unfounded. Apparently we Americans blessed the Japanese with loads of Spam after the war, at least this seems to be the case in some people’s experiences:
http://runker_room.tripod.com/tiestalk/spam.htm
You MUST try a Spam Musubi before you die. Must. A musubi is just a ball of rice. Spam musubi has chunks of pink (former) flesh interspersed in it. I have independently developed a thermonuclear version version of the Spam musubi involving kimchi and mayonnaise, and it is a meal unto itself unless you are drunk. In which case, I sincerely hope you don’t get barfy, because the only grosser thing to spew is a meat pizza (personal Bombay Sapphire memory – friends don’t let friends drink gin neat, even if there is no ice and nothing to mix it with).
“The Panther keeps on biting me…”
If you are a mac buff, go forth:
The Macintosh at 20: Interview with Jef Raskin
And by “mac buff”, I mean a true OG (GFINDER) type playa. Not this new breed of iTards whose solution to everything in life is “Buy a Mac!” Yeah, buy a $2000 mac to surf the net and send e-mail you brainless chatwhores.
“Chatwhores” should be my word for the day, but it’s even below my taking credit for.
Note: This entry was posted by my Powerbook 190 (16-shade greyscale, although the right bottom corner of the lcd has inexplicably become a solid yellow). Which means not a goddamn thing except that I miss System 7. Am I alone in my misery?
By the way, GFINDER worked for me exactly ONE time out of approximately 200,000 tries. It exited the command window to the Finder, and then froze, instead of just freezing at the command window.
Bust out the clay tablets already
A client just asked for a 90MB 3D CAD file data to be sent on multiple storage mediums: 250MB Zip, 100MB Zip, CD-R, 128MB MO, and split up on floppies for God’s sake! His reasoning: The workshop in Singapore uses old equipment. He will not listen to my reasoning along the lines of, “if they can open a 3D CAD file that size, I would assume they can surely pull data off a CD.”
Somebody send me an IT geek with a few free hours to play the floppy insert-write-eject-label game (cuz I really SUCK at it)! Well, this is a first if nothing else. All hail the mighty morphin’ corporate tech retards!