The reincarnation! Yet more about credit card mating rituals from this apple juice addict turned Inuit. Now almost no camel spit at all. Or, for my original blog, go here. To subscribe, click this icon: (More options at the bottom of the page)
Any of you who have been (rather foolishly) holding your breath waiting for my next post can heave a sigh of relief, a few gulps of air, and then check out pete's photostream on flickr.
Sadly, that era came to an abrupt pause about a month ago when my camera decided to turn everything in every photo not only blue, but unloadable onto my computer. Funny trick, that. So, until I get a new one --hint hint to the Christmas Donkey or whatever is sensitive enough to the beliefs of the Red Beanie Worshipers of Mideastern Jengaland to be politically correct-- I'm stuck editing the photos I've already got. At last count I can hold out about three weeks on the food, water, and roughly 15,000 snaps I've got socked away for a rainy day.
Wish me luck! And a generous Christmas Donkey wouldn't hurt!
err, sorry, that's a typo, i meant Kiryu. Yes, the vacation is over, the circus is packing up the tents and all the clowns are drawing straws to figure out who gets to drive. this may be heresy, but it might kinda sorta possibly be nice to not walk all day from temple to shrine to palace to mysterious rock whose plaque i can't read to incredible imperial estate that's not actually there anymore. You know, maybe. So yes, finally my year of silence is over! Let the random incoherent ramblings begin! (Fanfare, followed by one pair of hands clapping. thanks mom!)
(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
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 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.
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!
