Evidence for the prosecution

(April 18, 2008) As part of its abuse and neglect case, my blog offered up this pointless morsel into evidence. It has allegedly been sitting as a draft since it was first written and then apparently abandoned in late 2006. Lawyers for the lazy could not be bothered to comment.
Since the NYT link won't really work anymore, let me clarify; I have no idea anymore what the article was about. The Ann Coulter bit is always amusing, though.
Well, if Bush says so, what kind of fools would we be to listen to the professionals?
Ann Coulter has a tantrum

Psychic, I tell ya

Wow, me and the New York Times (you know, the liberal rag that's the voice of the evil Jews and homosexuals), we're like this. I know you couldn't see that, but my fingers were entwined, symbolizing our union in bacchanalian homage to Satan, in whose service we are determined to ruin your family by not being like you. My chaotic rant the other day about language and what have you must have inspired them (the NYT, that is), because on the very same day they published an article about "Bucking the English-only Mentality" in education. Keep in mind that I'm in Japan, so my September 24th is 12 hours or so ahead of theirs, so no I didn't read it - and still can't. They've reached some higher level of evil, probably at least level 16, while I'm a mere level 5, so I'm not allowed to read the article unless I actually pay for Times Select. If anyone has the text I'd much appreciate it. (Can you imagine the nerve in the age of the internet, to demand that people actually give money for something besides their connection? That's evil squared.)

Another interesting article I admit I haven't had time to fully read, but looks very good, is this one from 1993 (ok, i know it's pretty old) about alcohol consumption maybe not being a bad thing in moderation. I'll see the authors of that in Hell while we're being violated in every orifice and then some by demons on "Takin' Care of Liberals" duty. The article refers to another NYT article about a couple who lost their restaurant in Red country (NC) because they put wine on the menu, and their righteous asinine Christian customership dried up because how dare that be a choice.

Oh yeah, and another in the DUH category: the Iraq war increased the real threat of terrorism. Directly. Cause and effect. This one's gonna need a lot of spin, like in one of those high G-force simulators fighter pilots and astronauts use, whipping out the old Gravitron won't do it this time.

That's all. The post stops here.

How to feel inadequately traveled

These are the countries I've been to. And even then it's grossly exaggerated, I've only been to tiny portions of these places.



Create your own visited countries map

That's all, the last two posts were pretty long so I'll change it up a bit here and not write pages upon pages of nothing in particular. I'm all about the variety.

10 things

Credo - 10 things you have to believe to be a Republican
Lies and Lying Liars who Fund Them

Just a couple of links to great entries in a health-related blog. Ok, so the first link is more of a rant about people dense enough to support Bush, but generally the authors' posts are really insightful and focused on health issues, but as health care is tied inextricably to the economy and politics, it's a pretty far-ranging topic.

Anyway, on to today's ramblings. I was in the movie rental store ("Family Book") the other day and noticed some of the changed titles on Japanese releases of "Foreigner" movies. Conan is no longer a Barbarian, he's Conan the Great. Kinda makes Arnie sound like a magician. Or there's Resident Evil becoming Biohazard, and many others. But the one that fascinated me was The Color of Money - which becomes Hustler 2. Why the 2? I couldn't find anything just called Hustler, let alone a prequel to Color. (Added Sep. 26 - Ok, so maybe there is a sort of prequel. See the comments. My bad.) Maybe just because Newman and Cruise were partners, but the title is still gibberish. It drives me nuts to watch language being butchered like this, and this is a mild example. I don't care if people anywhere want to change the titles of whatever they want to make more sense to the locals, but to make a mockery of someone else's language to do it is just lame. I know this in itself isn't really a big deal, but so many things in Japan do this. Some phrase that is at best vaguely recognizable as having some meaning in English becomes standard Japanese, to the point that even though borrowed foreign words are written in a separate alphabet (linguistic apartheid?) Japanese people often don't realize that it's actually neither Japanese nor real English. Things like "Everybody fashion!"(a current popular slogan) are part of the common vernacular.

Surely a huge cause of this is that English is considered pretty cool here and probably anywhere that still buys the mythology of the American Dream - I don't know how many times I've seen "American Coffee" advertised like it's gold - but it doesn't seem so much to ask that we not be constantly talked down to by people who insist the general public can't handle anything that takes more than 30 seconds to communicate. Japan's uniquely tortured, fashionable English is well-documented and famous but reaches well beyond its shores. Western celebrities who take spots in Japanese commercials for quick cash on the side usually seem to keep their integrity hovering at least a few millimeters off the floor - Tommy Lee Jones barely speaks or does so in Japanese in this Boss Coffee commercial, Kiefer Sutherland manages to make sense in his Calorie Mate spots, there are others from Ang Lee, Natalie Portman, Angelina Jolie, maybe we can pass off John Travolta's shot because it was the 80's and just a brand name anyway, and Ahnuld skips on English, not that that's unusual, but if anyone can find the spot Uma Thurman is in with the Kill Bill costume on a motorcycle spouting nonsense, I'd be much obliged. Now that's rock bottom. The whisky commercial with Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is not far off at all - obviously it's just a paycheck, but how hard can it be for someone with that kind of star power to look at a script written in their native tongue and suggest changes?

The company I work for is technically a publishing company, with a native English-speaking staff of around 300 and growing, but their publications and even their English textbooks are riddled with mistakes too typically Japanese and awkward to make on a keyboard to believe that they were just typos. Obviously someone was too proud to ask a decent proofreader to have a look. I can't help but picture the nephews of company chairmen all over the country assuming that their 6 months abroad made them fluent enough to write anything you please in English, and then unable to risk losing face by getting a proofreader even if they were willing to do so.

None of this is to say that Japanese is alone in this. We do it all the time in English, and to a far larger extent, given how eclectic and flexible the language is, and how far the British Empire stretched. Then there are helpless and confused Chinese characters tattoed all over people who couldn't be bothered to find out what they mean or get them done properly. French and Spanish words routinely have all their grace and music stripped when they get assimilated. English is like the Borg, it's the ten-cent whore of the language world. It just absorbs everything, which is both its beauty and its greatest weakness. Sure it's a language of amazing versatility (and don't even get me started on the "language of Shakepseare" bit), but that versatility brings the pitfall of believing there's no point in learning other languages, like the apocryphal stories of Americans who've never been more than 5 or 10 miles from home, despite the relative wealth, freedom, and opportunity to travel, because "we done got ever'thang a body needs right here". Aside from the mental benefits of bilingualism, especially from an early age, there are untranslatable words in every language.

Maybe I'm weird but I believe in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, learning just for the joy of it, art for art's sake, all that liberal hippy crap. I hope and believe that most people share that view, although I have to wonder how people of otherwise reasonable intelligence can not only believe in God but insist that God and science are mutually exclusive. If God created the universe, didn't he also create the laws of science that govern it? I don't go quite as far as Richard Dawkins in this clip from The Root of All Evil, where the premise is essentially that religion is destroying civilization, but I do believe that the spiritual benefits of any religion and the inner peace faith can bring have to be weighed carefully against the radical elements and intolerance that people seem determined to read into religious texts. (Yes, I do realize my topic is wandering a bit, check the title of the blog.)



On the other hand, maybe I'm just getting all preachy because what I ended up renting was V for Vendetta. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it, not as the typical Hollywood wire-fighting and stuff blowing up fare, but because it's a thought-provoking look at terrorism and the mindset that inspires it, and the idea that in the right circumstances it's not necessarily a bad thing. The movie doesn't offer pat answers about right and wrong, though it does lean towards V pretty strongly in most parts and is full of obvious references to the Bush administration.

Unfortunately the disc also included the pilot of "Supernatural", a mind-numbingly flat ghost story series that's probably old news or hopefully cancelled back home by now. I watched the entire painful episode hoping to find enough in the end to redeem it. No luck.

That's about all for today, I'll leave you with two things: one last photo, just a light chuckle. If you think God and Technology can't coexist, check out this computer school. And last, a reminder that mangling English can also be fun!

Now you see me

Wow, time really does fly when you're having fun. I've been away for a while, but I've been having a blast. Loads to talk about, but I haven't got a whole lot of time just now. I'll get through what I can, and for the rest, you'll just have to... wait longer.

Several friends have had their escaping from Japan parties in the last couple of weeks, so I've spent a few days in Saitama, the concrete bleah between Gunma and Tokyo. I forgot to bring my camera when I went to Molly and Andrew's combined sayonara party, which is just as well, because surprise surprise, I got drunk and sang my voice off at karaoke till 5 am. But I don't think I particularly made an ass of myself, which is a nice change. Everyone else was drunk anyway, so here's hoping they won't remember if I did.

On the job front, I hope I'm not jinxing anything here, but I applied for a promotion to the curriculum development team and they're going to bring me down to Nagoya to test run for a few days at Head Office. Apparently I'm one of two finalists. If it comes down to a swimsuit competition I haven't got a chance though; I have a feeling the other applicant is a girl. My sneaking suspicion is that they just wanna laugh at me and staple my tie to things, but I guess I'll find out. If that doesn't pan out, I have two other standing job offers with different companies and I might go to one of those.

My kickstand was stolen about two weeks ago. I have a fairly nice bike that saves me a ton of money when it comes to trains, and I parked it at the train station bike parking lot for about three hours while I went out carousing with some friends, when I came back the kickstand was gone. Friggin high school kids. I guess it serves me right, I had an accessory pouch under the seat and forgot my hex wrench set in there. (The whole pouch was stolen, but I don't particularly need or miss it or anything that was in it.) It was just attached with velcro, so I'm betting some kid stole the pouch, looked inside and found the hex wrenches, and thought, "what the hell, why not go for gold?" My idea at the moment, assuming I even bother to buy a new one, is to put a note inside the accessory pouch written in French, maybe make it look like a love note or something so that the kid might get curious about what it says and take it to a teacher for kicks, but it'll actually say "whoever gave you this stole it from my bike" or words to that effect. Any suggestions on what to put on the note are welcome, just leave a comment on this post. I try to keep it in perspective anyway, knowing the entire bike would likely have been stolen several times over by now if I used such a flimsy lock in North America.

Beside one of my schools there's a new ramen restaurant where the owner, a friend of one of my coworkers, never lets me pay for anything and keeps piling more food in front of me. He's like my Japanese mom. His English skills and those of his staff are shall we say non-existent, so I muddle through in Japanese as best I can and we all usually manage to get our ideas across. A few weeks ago he invited me to a seasonal restaurant he owns along with two of my coworkers and their boyfriend and husband respectively. (No, it was not a triple date.) The restaurant is on the banks of the Kiryu River and they offer very very fresh fish kept in a large pool by the entrance.

Eating this thing is a ritual in itself: first you gently mash it with your chopsticks, then use them to sever the tail and most of the head - but leave the spine intact. Then you grab the head and pull out the spine, ribcage, organs and the majority of the tiny bones intact. Voila! dig in... there's not a whole lotta meat left on one of these little guys after all that, but it's pretty good. Unfortunately I lack the finesse required to do the surgery just so, and I always ended up just pulling the head off. Then I had to rummage around with my fingers in hot deep-fried fish to find the spine and ever so gently pull it out. By far the most interesting dish of the evening, and I distinguish 'interesting' from 'good' here, was a paste made by pureeing the organs of one or two of the little guys. It's in the blue china dish in the background. It was a nasty pale brown and had to be one of the most bitter things I've ever tasted. Fotunately it was only about a teaspoon of the stuff, but even so only two of us even tried it at all. A tiny dab on one of my chopsticks was enough to tell me it wasn't for me, but Takako managed to finish hers somehow, grimacing the whole time. Ninomiya-san, the owner, had to take off early to go back to his other restaurant, but he warned us before he left that it was not a dish to everyone's liking, so we really didn't have to feel obliged to eat it. Phew. There were also several other varieties of fish, lots of beer, and a dessert that tastes kinda like a puff of dust in jello, and everyone left feeling quite content but knowing we'd be hungry again soon.

It was quite a nice evening, sitting in an open-sided building on the banks of the river that the fish came from so their cousins can watch you disembowel and eat their family, and as the five of us left we figured the bill would probably come to at least 6 or 7 thousand yen each (60-70 dollars, and well worth it), but the cashier had instructions not to let us pay for any of it, or give us any information about how much it would have been.

Thanks, Ninomiya-san!

I've got a backlog of funny pictures, but I think I'll wrap up for the day with just this one of a music shop here in Kiryu. See if you can spot the most interesting instrument they offer.



"Lessons in what? I know I have a skin flute around here somewhere... or perhaps you meant a rusty trombone?" Actually I had to check the real definition, which is disappointingly mundane, but it sure stands out doesn't it?

Well, gee, Cletus, ya think?

Wow. Oops. I just realized this post is a bit outdated. I started it a few days ago and didn't have time to finish it, and you know how the hours just fly by when you're playing with your belly button lint or whatever the hell I was doing. So here it is days late and getting stale, but I gotta feed this monkey! So I'm posting it anyway.

The Senate Intelligence Committee (no, it's not a search for some or an oxymoron) yesterday released last year's report by the CIA about Hussein-Al Qaeda ties. More specifically, the complete lack of them. About the only surprise in the report is that the Republican-controlled committee let the word out. Sure, the real thing came out last year, but better late than never, right? At least it was in time for the elections. It just might have been a threat to National Security to tell the mothers of 3,000 dead soldiers that their children died not to spread democracy or fight terrorism, but for oil. On the other hand, I have heard of a documentary about the soldiers in Iraq (I can't find it now) where one of them says "I sure hope we're here for oil" or something to that effect. Oh goody. This is the kind of stuff Ann Coulter skims off the top of her fetid little pond of a mind. (My all-time favorite by her is, "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it." But it is a very hard choice; there is a lot of really premium, choice idiocy among her nosenuggets of wisdom. One more: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." Delightful lady, isn't she?)

As recently as Aug. 21, President Bush said at a news conference that Mr. Hussein “had relations with Zarqawi.’’ But a C.I.A. report completed in October 2005 concluded instead that Mr. Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor or even turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,” according to the new Senate findings.

The C.I.A. report also contradicted claims made in February 2003 by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who mentioned Mr. Zarqawi no fewer than 20 times during a speech to the United Nations Security Council that made the administration’s case for going to war. In that speech, Mr. Powell said that Iraq “today harbors a deadly terrorist network’’ headed by Mr. Zarqawi, and dismissed as “not credible’’ assertions by the Iraqi government that it had no knowledge of Mr. Zarqawi’s whereabouts.

Well, color me surprised...

I looked at my good friend Youtube's belly button lint for a while and came up with these:

MC Bush on The Daily Show
A trippy effects video with real quotations
Don't worry when you see the title of this one
George Bush: Mistaken

And last, here's another article similar to the one mentioned in the previous post about the spread of Western lifestyle and eating habits creating problems for people around the world.

Thanks for reading.

In my own little corner

Since I live in japan, it's always a treat when I find English reading outside of the internet, especially when it's not the spin-it-till-it-pukes swill that Fox et al pump out. So when I found a good, lucid article about the problems of a growing population - not in numbers, but in literal size, I just had to come back to the net and create a link so that I can find it again. (Added 09/12:) Here's my favorite bit:

Technology has changed everything but us. We evolved to survive scarcity. We crave fat. We're quick to gain weight and slow to lose it. Double what you serve us; we'll double what we eat. Thanks to technology, the deprivation that made these traits useful is gone. So is the link between flavors and nutrients. The food industry can sell you sweetness without fruit, salt without protein, creaminess without milk. We can fatten and starve you at the same time.

Please have a look for yourself, but be careful not to be branded Anti-American (thanks Kris!) just because you like to hear ideas once in a while.

Also, please be patient with me while I bring the last trinkets from the old site over.

Finally, a solution!

You know, a lot of good things have come out of Switzerland: knives, watches, Einstein's famous e=thingy, Cyndi Lauper's ancestors. The Swiss invented light, and just look how handy that turned out to be.

Yes, they're an innovative and hardworking bunch of folks, and recently Canada had the benefit of one of Switzerland's pioneer thinkers turn his attention to our highway woes. Specifically, speeding. During a brief roadside interview last Sunday, he took a few moments of his tremendously valuable time and disclosed the seeds of a potential solution to an undisclosed OPP officer. So Canada, what are you waiting for? Send in the goats!

please hold...

Looks like I'm gonna have to migrate my posts over here manually. This could take a while.
(Cue muzak)
Done! (I think). I had no way to bring the comments over, but not to worry, they're still on the old version. Meanwhile, all new posts will show up here. The 'migrated' tag is on all the old ones to satisfy all your nostalgic needs, not to mention the original blog still going strong, or at least cryogenically preserved.

Go ahead, make my... order a double

(Original post and comments here.)

You know how it is. You want extra butter? Dark meat, anyone? Gravy on your salad? They deep-fry the fries here in a vat of cheese and top them with crisp chicken skin, want some? Well, according to this guy, or at least the doctor who autopsied him, go ahead. The 5'7", 140-lb last surviving WW1 vet in California died at 112, with the organs of a 50 or 60 year old, even though his diet consisted "largely of sausages and waffles." The same doctor went on to say, “A lot of people think or imagine that your good habits and bad habits contribute to your longevity. But we often find it is in the genes rather than lifestyle.” (Click the title for the article these quotations came from.)

I think that's just misleading. I'm no doctor, but I think it's a fair guess to say the vast majority of people don't have the genes to live a long life with a crappy diet and bad habits, and the burden on our economy and health care systems is on my side in this one, I think. (The Canadian site, not as good, is here.) It's absurd and harmful for a doctor to say crap like this without clarifying himself, and it's the kind of thing that hardens tobacco lobbyists' nipples. This is the crap they seize on, despite years of science, common knowledge, and a pretty good recent US federal court ruling against tobacco companies. I know there's no mention in the first article of the "supercentenarian" being a smoker, but I've already talked about obesity above and in a previous post, and even though some of the comments there made it clear that some people didn't realize I was kidding in that one, I'm gonna lay off. In any case, smoking definitely deserves a serious mention here as a huge risk factor and cause of grief for millions of people.

I'm becoming a grumpy old fart. Ah well, whatcha gonna do? To lighten the mood, here's a photo of a toilet.

Teehee, it's a toilet!

Aha, but not just any toilet. Note the sticker on the underside of the lid. Can't read it? Try this one(click for a larger version):

Instructions!

See, some very rural people or older folks in Japan who still aren't used to western toilets don't quite get the idea. Once in a while you can still walk into a public bathroom and find footprints on the seat, facing the back. So they include instructions, and pretty detailed ones at that. Meticulous folks, the Japanese.

6 Minutes of Awesome

(Original post and comments here.)

Click the title, take 6 minutes out of your day, and enjoy. This should be the most linked to video on the net for the next few days. Absolutely brilliant. I just hope a few americans see it before they head to the polls.

Holy Brastrap Batman!

(Original post and comments here.)

I'm stunned. Flabbergasted has been redefined. I'm blown away, and can't decide whether I'm upset or not about there not being any photos to go along with this post. I want proof. I've just seen the most unbelievable thing yet on Japanese television, and I cannot conceive of what will take its place. When I've talked to people about what they know about Japanese tv invariably it's something about Iron Chef or maybe Takeshi's Castle, but this is something that I think the west is unlikely to ever syndicate. Keep in mind that it was only around 9:30, maybe 10.

The only thing I can do is describe the show. Please bear with me, this is my best approximation of how I experienced this and, with my limited Japanese, pieced together the details of what the hell was going on.

When I flip to the channel, there are 6 girls and 1 guy on stage. The girls all look around 13-15 so they're probably 18-19 (you get used to the age-guessing arithmetic here after a while), all wearing uniform pink shirts with a slogan and something to do with a mermaid but the resolution and focus are inadequate to know more. The guy (perhaps 20) is rarely seen, and it doesn't take long to deduce that he's not the feature here, just the emcee. One of the girls has pulled the side of her skirt down enough that she can lift the waistband of her underwear to show to the camera, which obligingly zooms in for a closeup, then two of them hold up their skirts for the cameras to pan slowly across their undies for a few seconds. The camera zooms back out to a shot of the two girls obviously being featured (the other four hover in the background and don't warrant a microphone), and suddenly a family name comes up on screen below them (Kobayashi in Osaka or something like that). The two girls are given a magic marker, with which they write/draw on the shirts they're wearing for a few moments.

There is much applause for Kobayashi-san as two of the girls in the background step forward to accept large ziploc bags and hold them out for the featured girls. They, in turn, proceed to strip off their shirts and reach under their skirts to take off their underwear, which are all destined for the ziplocs. Someone in the studio takes a photo of them standing there topless, there is much applause, and they depart.

By this time I have pieced together a few more things from the intermittent glimpses of the t-shirts and banner:

• The shirts say "Stop!AIDS" [sic] - sounds more like a warning sign, doesn't it?


• The woman on the t-shirts I thought might be a mermaid is just standing in a giant condom


• This is the 2006 24-hour fundraiser - presumably for AIDS-related causes x, y and z

Two new girls come on, very briefly introduce themselves, give a hint of what they're wearing, and a CG banner slides onscreen. They say "Start!" (well, ok, "Staato") and a white-board is greenscreened into the bottom left corner of the screen with "24 yen" written on it (that's basically 24 cents, give or take a pittance). The last piece clicks into place: people are phoning in bids to get these girls' underwear! I didn't want to believe it when it first occurred to me, but this put the nails in the coffin, even though 24 yen has to be a joke. The girls continue to show their frilly bras and demonstrate that the panties you can buy are going to come straight off their bodies. All this while the bids keep coming in, and top out at 35,000 yen($350) when, for whatever reason, the bidding ends, which the generous So-and-so-san in Wherever won. There is much applause, and the Ziploc Strip begins again.

Some kind philanthropist shells out 50,000 yen for the next two girls' dainties, perhaps because one of them was too modest to show her panties to the camera while she was wearing them and would only show them to the emcee. Someone obligingly held a thin strip of paper in front of the camera when she had to lift her skirt a bit to take them off. (NB - they obviously weren't prepared for this possibility.)

I flipped back across this channel about half an hour later and the parade was still going.

Now I realize that it's largely my North American upbringing that makes my first instinct tell me there's something weird about topless young girls on early evening TV, and I try to look past that. They're adults and don't seem to be prostitutes or anything, just normal girls trying to raise some money for a good cause. What was really tough to wrap my head around was that the society here is so used to the idea of buying girls' freshly worn underwear that this probably didn't raise an eyebrow. It reminded me of the time a Japanese friend told me to call her "Yellow Monkey", and another responded to my astonishment with, "It's OK, we're all Japs here. And you guys are Limeys, and Yanks, and ...what do you say for Canadians, anyway?"(Good question. Canucks? Doesn't really have the same connotations.) Don't get me wrong, not having to tiptoe around the PC monster 24/7 is great, but I should think there is a line somewhere between calling consenting friends Japs and Yellow Monkeys and leering old men drooling with anticipation of the first whiff when they open their Ziploc bag full of hot-off-the-press underwear.

Am I just a prude?

Finally Keikyu, Boy meets goat, and Bear gets political

(Original post and comments here.)

I just love good news! But what do you get for this couple?

It's good to finally have the Fuji story out of the way. I really wanted it posted but had a hard time finding the time to do it - twice. In any case, it's done and now I can go back to posting trivial crap. Isn't that nice? I've got tons more photos and stuff on the way, including the magnificent keikyu poster.

I'll get back on here hopefully this afternoon to throw on a few more photos and maybe start a caption contest. I gotta get some hustle on at the moment.

<play yourself some elevator music for a few minutes>

Ok, I'm back. I realize it's a couple of years old, but I thought this was a good cautionary tale. Trust our friends in Nature, stay away from Bush.

But on to the main event. Here's some more wacky Japanalicious English and assorted unsanity.

Fashion critic in Nagoya Apparently if you're not careful about how you dress, the sun will send his fists of fury after you. It goes without saying that gramps' glasses are a no-no, but even little old ladies aren't safe from that vicious south-southeast jab. And I can tell you now, the sun being the massive ancient nuclear reactor that it is, if it's getting impatient about a little thing like some of us not being able to coordinate an outfit, we might be in trouble. I think maybe sunny-bunny needs a nappy-wappy, huh?


British Style, huh? About the meal. Cornflakes is eaten in the morning and daytime eats sandwiches and potato chips... Fish is what fried the white fish... British people attach vinegar, when eating Fish & Chips... grayvy sauce is attached and eaten to it... Garnishes are... A carrot, a cabbage, a pea, etc.
Yes, yes, of course we knew all that, except the bit about milk chocolate containing very much milk. Dammit man, you've been questioning him for 92 hours straight and this is all you've got? Where is the Amulet? Who is this "grayvy" and how does he know about Vegetarian? Speak!

Now we're getting somewhere It also runs today...
Well done, Stevens! I say, chaps, we should have the Amulet within which can see from the only Britain owns the red. Great Scott! what am I Saying? He must have brought some virus in here and more more more! Where is the place to want to go? Let's go out with me!

Drunkomo, the new Docomo mascot, had a few too many before showing up for work this morning.




And finally, the tremendously popular gay Swedish wrestling marionette duo "Slammerungdasheize" are here to tell us about Keikyu's caption contest!
"At this time, we invite all of you to encaptionate this photo. Please tell us of your desire for to see its underwords with use of comment feature. Winner will appear when selectioned. Thank you! We are on fire!"

Fuji-san

(Original post and comments here.)

This is the long-awaited blog exclusive abridged edition; you can find my absurdly detailed version at my otherwise useless geocities page.
And of course there's also Morgan and Maya's version. Don't ask which of them is the Fat Buddha, though; it might be a touchy subject.
PS - sorry about posting this half a dozen times, the formatting around the photos refuses to behave

So a while back I heard about a few of my coworkers planning to scale the Monster (aka the Fooj, aka Mt. Fuji) to watch the sunrise, so I decided to grab me a piece of that action, having missed out the first time around Nippon. The climb is not an uncommon feat, so I wasn't overly worried as I packed my junk and slapped on a pair of sneakers.

Morgan and Maya were going along too, and Morgan figured out that our itinerary made it pretty much impossible to make it to the top by the 5:03 sunrise... which would be a bit of a downer after climbing a mountain to watch the sunrise. So we (meaning he) did some legwork and found an alternate route that would allow us to complete the mission. It was a few hours longer commute and required trainhopping that made us feel like Frogger, but you only do this once, so you do it right, right? Right. ... Where was I?

Oh yeah. The Fuji Express, a beautifully painted train with legroom for 12 at every seat. This little gem afforded us some great views of Fuji while we bobbed and weaved through the little mountains approaching the one that gets almost as much action as Ms. Hilton. It's honestly pretty impressive as you approach, and I almost think even the Japanese engineers gave some consideration to the aesthetics when they designed the route. Unlikely I know, but it's just possible. Or it might be that a few peeks at the peak were unavoidable. It is pretty big. Considering that we were going during Obon, it was also nice to see that the train wasn't full of climbers. All the guidebooks warn that Obon is a bad time, what with every Japanese person taking advantage of the one holiday they more or less all get during climbing season, plus a flood of tourists and gaijin desperate to get the same pictures and postcards as all of their friends.

While waiting for our bus to depart from Kawaguchiko we picked up walking sticks, replenished our water reserves, and sat around on our thumbs. A good time was had by all, except maybe the anonymous lady blowing chunks in the powder room. The bus trip was a bit frightening, but by this point we all dozed, waiting for our 2nd wind to arrive. Ok, be honest, maybe 22nd (there were a lot of nuts in the trail mix).

We hang out at Gogome, the 5th station, for about an hour, psyching up, pigging out, zoning in, and so forth. What I find really great about the throng of climbers that rode up with us was that while some do their stretches and/or comment about the air being noticeably thinner, some are also having a quick smoke to prepare their lungs for the beating they're about to take. Virtually everyone who arrived at the same time as us also leaves within 15 minutes.

As I said, this is Station 5 (elevation 2,305m) of the actual climb. So when I say we climbed Fuji, I only mean we got to the top (3,776m) without a giant slingshot. We took a bus this far because the slope and the time involved to this point are just not worth it. By all accounts I've heard it's just a really loooong hike up to that point, and where's the drama in that? Where ya gonna get your "Save yourself!" and "Give me the ring!" moments on a long hike, huh? You won't, that's where. So we fast-forwarded to the good parts.

For the first couple of minutes after departing Station 5 (at 21:35) we think we've fast-forwarded way too far...we're heading downhill, and as omens go, we don't exactly need tea-leaves to know that's a bad thing. Fortunately, the trail gets its act together and we're soon going up. At the 6th Station (2,390m, 22:10ish) we're a bit ahead of schedule and feeling good about the climb, so after a short break we play a couple of sets of tennis and take a cooking class press on.

Pretty much the whole climb after that is a blur of darkness, trail mix, branding our walking sticks, and replacing flashlight batteries since I didn't think ahead like M&M did to get one of those stylish and adorable headlamps. I'm surprised how much of the climb has reinforced concrete shoring up the sides of the walking trails, or chicken wire forming the loose volcanic rock into steps, but to keep it "rugged and natural" (Japanese style) the trail itself is rarely paved. They don't go quite that far.

Probably the most memorable moment comes when Morgan figures out his wallet is missing, most likely dropped on the bus. Denial, anger, bargaining, etc; 2700+ metres up we have it all, but there's nothing to be done about the wallet till we get back down in any case, and dawn at the summit is coming with or without us, so on we go through the traffic jams and lineups, guided by other people's flashlights so much that I turn off my own for long segments of the climb. My feet are getting blisters, and long periods of mostly standing in line on the narrow trails is not helping me forget about them. It's actually a relief when the trail gets steeper and rockier because people are forced to spread out a bit more and I can concentrate on something more interesting than my aching legs and the faces and voices of the people we keep leapfrogging because they rest anywhere they want while we take our breathers at the stations. You know, the way civilized folk do.

One other thing that sticks out is hearing one of the other gaijin near me get late-night cranky to his friends about the Japanese people behind us. They keep saying, "Sugoi" (in this case, roughly meaning 'wow') about every 5 seconds. Once you live here for a while, that word basically fades into the background noise because it's so versatile and overused. After Jo Schmo points it out, though, it comes back to the surface and I start noticing it every time. Plus I have lots of time to think back over the last segment or so of the climb and my mental replay is peppered with 'sugoi' too. So now I'm hearing it double and getting late-night cranky about it myself. Perfect. When Morgan leads a surge forward to get away from that cluster I'm only too happy to follow.

As we ascend, the traffic gets more and more backed up and I can't help but note how Japanese this whole little pilgrimage is turning out. You just don't get this kind of problem on the other famous mountains of the world, I should think. There were literally thousands of people all told. From maybe 15 or so to around 60, everybody was getting a little Fuji action. On the way down we even saw a guy carrying a small spaniel and leading his young daughter. Has anyone seen this kind of thing on Kilimanjaro?

		Finally, after a long period of concern about the lightening eastern sky and whether we'd make it in time, at 04:45 we reach the top, pass through the symbolic gate, find a slightly less crowded spot, and stop dead in our tracks. tadaaaaaaaaaa....! We're not about to move anytime soon and we start frantically snapping photos of where the sun will be when it gets its lazy butt outta bed, still 15 minutes off. To be fair, the cloudscape is pretty spectacular and along with everyone else there except possibly the tour guides and shop staff, we already know we'll never see this in person again. When the sun finally pokes out from behind the cloud horizon, there is bountiful if tired cheering, a bit of singing, and a deafening sustained chorus of shutter clicks. Eventually, though, we've stared at and posed in front of and clicked on everything in sight, and we proceed up the last few steps to where the crowd has more or less gotten stuck: the mall. There's no Walmart there yet, but on top of Fuji there is a string of shops for souvenirs, soup (re: everything else: "No, we've run out of that"), engravings, omemori, etc. Even the bathroom is a business, and at 200 yen a visit I think they're doing alright. There are 10 toilets and 5 urinals, and I still wait in line for at least half an hour.
Click for larger versions

There's also the crater, conveniently located between us and the weather station on the far side, at the actual highest point. It's about a half hour walk there, which means a half hour walk back, which means we take the obligatory snaps and fuggedaboudit. We're going home. But that becomes an ordeal in itself.

Bated Breath

(Original post and comments here.)

Click the title for an article in the NY times. I'm just fascinated wondering how Bush will sneak out of his main objection. Should be a classic bit of backpedaling.

In other news, the fuji story is finally up on my webpage and monstrously huge, still working on trimming it down so's it wont be an obscenely long blog entry, but it's taken way too long to get this far, so I'll put it up on my site for now. Here's one other linkto tide you over.

That's My Soul up There

(Original post and comments here.)

Feed me, Seymour!

Biking along the highway the other day, I saw this section of tree that got left behind because it had been a little too accommodating about the fence it was growing beside; the links literally go through the trunk in about half a dozen places. The tree just grew around the fence and then absorbed it. Brilliant.

Coming soon... The Fuji saga is still in the works. There's drama, there's suspense, there's passion and betrayal! Even - yes, why not? - MURDER most foul! And all that's just in the hype! Watch this space for it.

UPDATE (Aug 21st): In the meantime and in-between time, here's my climbing companions' account of the fiascapade.

One Last One

(Original post and comments here.)

I have to do one more about silly photos, then I promise I'll post real stuff for a while. Yes, I survived Fuji, that saga is in the works, but for now you'll have to make do with this.

I hope that clears it up for you. This is at a hair salon outside a friend's old apartment. I really like that you can basically tell what they were getting at, but the whole thing drank a good dose of Dr. Jekyll's formula when noone was looking. In case it's hard to read, it says, "This hair style is symbol of womanlike./ Is your hair style nice and beauty now ?/ If you lose your control making your hair style./ Please remember back about us." We're the ones who get it right when it matters.

You uhh, you gonna buy that? What a lovely afternoon! Aren't we comfortable here together? I hope you're enjoying your time in this store, fellow shopper! Aren't these products nice? You have certainly taken your time - 23 seconds, in fact - to look at the 3rd red sweater from the top on table 7, followed by a detailed examination of two of the mannequins in section J-4. Let's chat again sometime!

In a modern living space it's important to reach a good ratio of trapeze equipment to drugged wildlife... Mind you, I'm really not sure if I like having so many spare batteries east of the hot wax vats, what do the principles of Feng Shui have to say about it?

Just what are they up to?

(Original post and comments here.)

I saw this old weathered sign at a recycling station near my house a while ago and forgot about it until I biked by it yesterday morning. It advertises some kind of book of weight loss tips and the bit at the top says you can lose 5 kilos in 10 days.

First, if the difference between the before and after images is 5 kilos, I'm a furry yellow elephant.

Second, notice how the transition arrow points both ways. Not sure what they're implying there, or how it's supposed to promote sales of this book.

Third, why on earth should the grossly obese woman want to change at all? Can you imagine the state of our Horrible Warning System if everyone whose life expectancy was measured in hours started to get in shape? Scientists are still debating whether it would cause a new Skinny Age or Global Eating, but as I understand it, this is a summary of how they play out:

1) All the SHBC (Single Hovering Brain Cell, for those of you with less medical expertise) people who mistake a cracker for a meal would start running out of people to feel superior to and would eat less and less to keep ahead of the descending average weight. At the point that they become transparent, fashion magazines would go wild trying to take credit for the trend and begin a fresh assault on the self-confidence of the now hopelessly behind the times and stigmatized "Opaque." They would begin an even more dramatic weight purge to get in line with fashion demands, and this would be the first stage where the trend would spread widely to the male population due to the undesirability of dating Opaque men. Until this point only Gap employees and hairdressers were affected among the male population. Blown around by errant breezes and lacking the energy to save themselves, most of the anemic population would drown in large puddles or starve to death in treetops.

Pretty grim, I know. But the Global Eating scenario is no better:

2) Noting declining sales in western countries, corporations begin a desperate campaign to bring food (and the concurrent electrical supply necessary for refrigeration) to untapped markets at reasonable prices. Television follows as a marketing tool. Initially Ethiopians and rural Chinese farmers are often heard wondering what to do with Feta Cheese in a Can and Dubble-Krispy Bubble-gum-flavored Pork Rinds, among others, although the decision never takes long. Finally not having to watch loved ones starve to death, and able to watch endless reruns of Friends(brought to you by...), people lose interest in blowing each other up. As recruitment becomes more and more difficult, frenzied suicide bombers steal a nuclear warhead and detonate it at the center of the earth, destroying the ENTIRE PLANET.

Think before you diet.

Can you say 'Bandwagon'?

(Original post and comments here.)

Have you seen this crap?

http://www.davincimethod.com/indigo.html

"I always thought my kid was more of a fuschia. Got anything for him?"

But ultimately that's not why I'm here. You guessed it, I have more goofy photos to share with you, because I'm a sharer. A giver. A bestower of substances. From flatulence to photos, you can count on me to share it if I got it. If you need some eggplant or a spare sacroiliac, you're on your own. Speaking of eggplant, I was checking out a little supermarket I biked by this morning and the lady putting produce on the tables had, I swear to (insert local deity), an eggplant that came out of the box shaped like a penguin. I wish I had that photo, I would share it with you too, but custody was awarded to the classification "Eggplant" and so I cannot. Penguins and photos all over the neighborhood are planning to appeal this latest decision.

...unless you want to The wonders of the 100 yen shop are not to be believed. I wanted to get one just to confuse smokers, but wiser heads prevailed. Oh, how I was looking forward to watching the twitching worsen when they tried to process this, maybe if I got lucky I could watch someone's head explode... Too bad they're persecuted so much already, as it is most smokers I know would probably just glance at this and then ash in my hair.

Home Pie and Creamy Powder I put these together to save YOU time. Damn I'm too nice.
Home Pie: On a bed of the finest Norwegian driveway and garnished with ground windowpanes.
Creamy Powder: Every time I think they've finally made the dehydrated mayonnaise I've dreamed of for so long, it's just coffee whitener. Or creamer. (Is that a dirty word?) Whatever. If it has to do with coffee, I can't be bothered.

Bite Size Beer My ex's mother used to drink one of these a day because she couldn't handle a normal-sized beer but she liked the taste and heard it was good for your health. I've heard they're actually intended to be left on tombstones as offerings to the departed(more likely the caretakers). That kind of cool take on spirituality is what redeems the culture here; when you die, sure you get flowers and whatnot, but how about something you enjoyed in life to take with you? Remember, a spirit only weighs 21 ounces, so at afterlife parties this is at least the equivalent of a keg.

Pet Sugar Can't keep up with the hectic demands a goldfish places on your life? Japan has the answer for you.

Used Hard But I didn't hear any complaints.



Okay, I still have a backlog of several years worth of stuff like this and I find more all the time, but that's all for today. Wait'll I get around to putting the Keikyu poster on. Mwahahaha.

See you next time! In case you're wondering, comments can be left by clicking the word 'comments' below...

(Update Sep 06/06: the Keikyu poster is finally here!)

To see what I can see...

(Original post and comments here.)

Apologies for the first two incomplete incarnations of this post, especially to any of you who have (thank you!) subscribed to hear about updates. I very nearly promise not to make any more superficial nitpicking changes to this post.

Here's a fun one from Nara I took in late 2004. It was a small poster for the spherical rice cake things in bags at the bottom of the photo that you could probably kill a small elephant with if you got one right between the eyes. We tried nibbling on one, but imagine trying to get a start on a rock-hard sphere the size of both your fists placed side by side. Well, actually, my fists, which are sort of medium to large, just so we're all on the same page. Since we were in Nara anyway, we tried giving it to the deer, a few of whom tried gamely at it before moving on to easier fare. I should mention that I don't advocate feeding wildlife, but 'wild' no more applies to the deer in Nara than 'actor' does to Ahnuld. Those things are so tourist friendly they'll friendly your hand right off if you don't let go of their crackers quick enough.

In any case the nose-picking is a reference to one of the famous Buddha statues in town. The statue is huge, and in the temple there is a massive wooden pillar beside it with a hole cut out that's the same size as his nostril. If you can get through it's said to give you long life, or good health, or intimate knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System, or some such crap. Anyway, I made it through, but the only photo I have is really really blurry. Blew the minds of all the school children waiting in line to try it when this huge gaijin got in line with them, and I don't think they thought I could understand Japanese because they were all going on about how there's no way on earth I'd make it through. Suckers! I'm tall by local standards, but built like a pen. Goes to show you how acute their spatial reasoning was. Man, 8-year-olds can be so dumb sometimes. I should have started taking bets. "Pay up, kid, or your goofy yellow ball cap might have an accident."

Okay folks, enough of that tangent, who got me started on that anyway? For my next trick I'm going to climb Mount Fuji - next week! Not the next week of procrastination fame, but August 14th (15th if the weather forgets to cooperate). Only 38 billion people a year do it, so I gotta start shaping up. No more donut and beer breakfasts for this little fitness buff, for the next week I'm a lean, mean, climbing machine.

Of course once I've had that awesome high of seeing the sunrise from "so much closer" and pushing my body to its limits and what have you, I'll be right back down in the comfortable lows again. Hey, if they're all highs you forget how good you've got it, right? Gotta keep the average low so that the highs are more spectacular, that's what I always say...but in most contexts it makes no sense. hyuk hyuk.

Also, the 43rd annual Kiryu Yagibushi Festival was this past weekend, pictures of me doing an awful butchery of the traditional dance alongside 500 other people will fit right here shortly, but until I get them from Jon or whoever was taking the pictures while I decided to make an ass of myself, here's one I took of some of my coworkers having a shot at it - er, not making an ass of me, just, oh nevermind. Interestingly enough, not all of the Japanese people knew it, and I think maybe our presence there shamed them into giving it a shot. Whatever the reason, once we had a decent grasp of how it went, each of us at various points had to teach a newcomer or two.

Oh, and I have to put a link to this joke on here. Have a look at the rest of the Jumbo Joke site as well, it's damn funny and well-laid out. Start with the Quick Sanity Test.

Amazing Reproductive Quality

(Original post and comments here.)

A few weeks ago I had to cover for a coworker at one of her classrooms for a day. Next door was this little gem:

I know, so what, right? Nothing special about that. But look what H.C.C. stands for:


Pretty awesome what photocopiers can do these days.

I can ablate pogrom bobolink johnson on MY budget?!?!?!

(Original post and comments here.)

In other news, every once in a while, my crappy Yahoo junkmail filters let a really obvious one make it all the way to my inbox. Here's one that forced my brain to switch to emergency power after shorting out. I thought the text just sounded so convincingly Native English speaker-like, this must have been written by an American:

______________________________________________________

Subject: Hello blutwurst herpes!

Heads up compatriot Ammericaan Home0wners.


I am Frank Spears. In respect to the USA residential moortgage current forecast, our lending specialists want to inform you how upcoming home-loan rates will raise drastically.

Since you received this message, hence you can benefit for amazing refinancing rate.

Today's best: 4,7%

(I snipped the url - mike)

Start saving the real dollars!


. chimney momentous monaco sandbag ablate pogrom bobolink johnson.

monarch abdomen electroencephalogram china abhorred.

______________________________________________________

It was a masterpiece, I could tell right off the bat. With a subject line like that, how can you miss? And what timing too, I was just thinking I should get a nice new (Dutch?) moortgage, even though in Japan it's practically illegal for me to use the air, let alone own a house. Us wacky Ammericaans.

When my $32,000,000 gets back from Nigeria I'm SO buying a fleet of penis enlargers and signing up on all the big beautiful singles with pics websites 'cause Amber, Tiffany, and Britney all want to hook up tonight after I take care of my mortgage woes. I know, you're pretty jealous, huh?

On Second Thought (and defective Ball Cheese)

(Original post and comments here.)

I hope the previous post was at least moderately entertaining. But I got to thinking...Mushroom Research? Man, in a country where the psychedelic variety are at least semi-legal, maybe guys that chose looking at fungus as a career wouldn't be so dull after all. It's one of those things that probably wouldn't have much of a middle ground, like art films; they'd either be brilliant or godawful boring.

Anyway, I promised more about Fressay, but it's just a grocery store. What I found there is what I want to talk about, but first, can anyone tell me if Dr. Pepper has labels like this back home?:


By the way, you can click on the title of this post to go to Dr. Pepper's Japanese home page and see these in their native habitat, or click on the pictures to see larger versions. If you can't read it, the site is www.drpp.jp ... yeah, Dr. PP, that's right. No pun intended, I'm sure. What really drew me to these was the subtle tastefulness of the sexual references and imagery. The first time I read one of these labels I started laughing out loud in the grocery store, which is a sure way to get sent to the loony bin in Japan. Basically only small children and high school girls make any noise in public.

Seriously though, I can't believe the marketing weirdness involved in selling carbonated sugar water. This baffles me. I'm just as much for gratuitous displays as the next guy, but what's up with the hillbilly frog? Who invited this guy along? What skillz has this guy gotta have to be hanging out with those chicks?

There's an 'interview' with the Pepper Chix on the site. Apparently their names are a bit more down to earth than their ahem mammary glands, which isn't saying much, I know: Julie, Peg, Markie, and Ashley. (One of those may be the frog, I don't know enough Japanese to say for sure.) By the way, I'm gonna try to find some labels that still have these guys' predecessors on them, the busty rollerskating insect transformer girls. Then you might appreciate that in some ways, this is a step UP in quality.

Some more packaging bizarreness:
Doritos NEW "Better'n a Kick in the Nads" flavor! You technically can't get them for false advertising on that, they are just the teensiest bit better than a kick in the nads. If you're curious, the label at the top says "Taitsukun Adult Doritos" and the black triangles are what these things actually look like. Interestingly, I think the yellow guy is the hero, Taitsukun.
(Update: A Japanese friend told me these two guys are friends in an old Japanese comic, and the message beside them reads "The Electric Massage is back." Kinda one of those things where the translation renders the whole thing even weirder.)

Ball Cheese - Visit a harvesting station near you! Trust me, the bit after Ball says 'Cheese' - or to be precise chiizu - in Katakana (phonetic Japanese for foreign words). I'm impressed that the word cheese is in a speech bubble coming from the cheese itself. Very artistic. The whole thing is particularly special because I found this little gem in a store inventively named "Bakery Outlet." What went wrong with this product that got it sent to the outlet? I figure you have to be hurting pretty bad to go out and buy not just ball cheese, but defective ball cheese.

And that is the end.

Good of you to drop by

(Original post and comments here.)

Hey, thanks for coming over. Apologies about the condition of the place, I really gotta get some wallpaper up and whatnot, but for the moment, here's my foray into the blogging world.


   My life is gonna be so full of adventure and hijinks, I'm getting all tingly. I hadn't realized until today that I was in a fast-paced action movie...it just needs a lot of editing.
   This afternoon I went for a bike ride up into the mountains. No reason, no destination, just getting out there. As I left Fressay (a grocery store on the edge of civilization - more about it later), I decided to avoid the main road and just hop up the little mountain that's right behind the store. About 10 seconds' ride later, what do I see but a sign screaming about underground missile silos and tests conducted in secrecy by men in lab coats sworn to secrecy who live in a moral vacuum. One of them, probably named Steve or Kurt, may decide to help me later when a subplot reveals his boss has been taking credit for his discoveries or finding hideous new biological warfare applications for the work done there.
   Ok, well, it didn't exactly say that, but to one who knows how to read between the lines it's pretty clear when you say something like "Japan Mushroom Research Institute" that there's some impending nuclear disaster brewing up the mountainside and the sign was obviously meant to bore away intruders.
   Who would put an actual mushroom research institute in a sleepy little town like Kiryu when the local law enforcement officials are practically begging to be corrupted by money and power and the chance to be a part of a grand scheme? Sounds like Steven Seagal may be dropping by later. I can't wait to see him kick the crap out of 20 or 30 guys at a time. That'll so make six months of living in a pimple on the ass of Nowhere worthwhile.
   Sure enough, when I got a little further up the mountainside, there was not much around, no barrels of glowing waste or piles of skeletal remains, just the occasional barrier with a polite message about 'road closed'. The sort of thing that really gets the hair on the back of your neck standing at attention. A big operation like this has gotta be pretty slick to keep all that stuff hidden well. When I arrived at the main "Mushroom Research" building, it looks like it hasn't even been opened in months, yet there was a well-maintained car parked outside. Keep in mind, I hadn't been accosted by any security thugs the size of industrial refrigerators, not even a single robotic bird tried to peck my eyes out, so I can tell these guys are pretty confident in their little illusion, huddled in their miles of bunkers deep underground.
   Man, exploring those tunnels is gonna be so awesome, especially after I wrestle a gun away from the first unsuspecting security guy that stumbles over me while he's using the company mobile phone to call his girlfriend.
   Maybe I should call up the gang from Goonies, they'd be able to give me some pointers on how to avoid booby traps and that kind of thing. I gotta be careful not to go in knowing too much, though, because then they might dig up bad guys who could aim reasonably well. Or maybe not, it's not as though even James Bond runs into many of those.
   So anyway, if you don't hear any more from me in the next couple of days, don't be fooled by the lookalike they'll train to take my place and pretend everything is ok. Send help! I'll be held for questioning deep underground until some unlikely duo with funny one-liners comes to get me. It'll be a relief when I finally get thrown in the snake-pit with a little bit of blood running down from a small cut at the corner of my mouth, cause then you know a last-minute rescue is on the way. I'm just lucky I'm not a black guy, or I'd know the rescuers would get there just in time to watch the last of my crushed body disappear into the mouth of some monstrous python.