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Cockroach Reanimation at 2k views
My most popular YouTube vid, by far, is Cockroach Reanimation with Electro-stimulation, which just passed over 200,000 views. The viewing demographic is overwhelmingly 13-17 year old boys who like to point out that the cockroach “isn’t actually coming to life, it’s something about electrical impulses and nerves and something scientific-er than that, (insert insult of choice).” I have mixed feelings about this vid – it’s brought out all the little Mr. Wizards and smartasses and even one scary guy who requested electrocution of bigger things – but in the end, it’s nice to have a kind of popular YouTube upload that I made with a $1 electronic device and a…
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Kaiju vs. Ronin
I keep telling Max that Ultraman is a poser compared to the Master, but for some reason, he chooses kaiju over Kurosawa every single time.
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What’s going on (May 2011 edition)
So we went to Koh Samet for a few days with a bunch of my coworkers and some of their families. It was awesome, but I feel the need to write about what’s been happening around here before moving onto editing the trip photos and video. Max and Mina started school on May 18. Max is now going to the demonstration school at the old Maha Sarakham University campus, very close to the Rajabhat University where I work, because his old school shut down at the end of the last term. Mina is going to a nursery school very close to Nam’s office, at the new Maha Sarakham University campus. Both…
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STP
Linking to that STP video in my last post got me to thinking… How could their music videos have been so bad when their recorded live sessions were so good? Their first two albums were so good, the diminishing returns that followed could be forgiven (unlike Pearl Jam, who never learned how to stop making bad albums) I first heard them 18 years ago? Really?? Damn I feel old… Max will feel about them like I felt about the Beatles! (He won’t really like them for another 18 years?) One of my favorite thing about Wikipedia is that it teaches me new (mostly useless) stuff about things I’ve liked/used for…
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Woke up this morning, smiled at the rising sun…
…but only two little birds were right outside our doorstep. On a tall plant next to the stairs leading up to our front porch:
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Whoring in Japan
A commenter on a post I wrote last year has summarized what it’s like to be professionally serviced in Japan, complete with typical prices and the phrase, “moistened antibiotic towelette.” How to pay for sexy sexual sex in Tobita Shinchi, Japan. ////////////// Note: I take no responsibility if you get frowned at, beaten, robbed, ganked, or infected with Jap ghetto cooties because you go somewhere you shouldn’t. That is all.
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Water Business
I thought some translator was having fun when I saw a reference to “JR East Water Business Company” on this photo of a vending machine employing a facial recognition system. As it turns out, it was somebody in a higher position having fun with katakana English: (Many Japanese literally translate mizushobai — hostess bars, kyabakura [cabaret clubs], sunakku [err, snacks], etc. — as “water business.” Japanerds seem to prefer the term “water trade.” Of course, there’s no reason to break down this particular word and the Japanese that do it usually do it to show that they know some English…)
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a seed
Max, in twenty years will you remember when daddy told you that chicken pox causes you to see Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes in black in white? Because it was actually a PAL to NTSC-J conversion problem. I hooked up your DVD player to an old brownscreen set we brought from Japan (that Auntie Merin gave us) that’s been sitting unused in our bedroom forever. We moved you there to be under the new cooler, since it eats comparatively little juice and is running all day to keep you from sweating… Sorry ’bout that. It is kinda funny, though (at least funnier than my other idea, which was to tell you…
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hey, taro.
I am very busy just now, as you might tell from my lack of activity here. I will free up again in a week or so. In the meantime, I present you with taro:
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..random
Mina shook her head in serious disagreement 17 times in a row yesterday – I was asking about people she loves; apparently she just hates everyone, because by the time I got to the end I had run out of people she knows by name and had started naming animals. — Max just told his mother to leave him alone and go be with daddy. — I got an e-mail from a distant relative in Kyushu who runs a beauty salon that T, Adam, Inaba and I visited 12 (?) years ago when we went to visit my cousins Kana and Aya in Saga Prefecture (Saga was where my grandfather…
