YRZ

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Vending Machines, No. 36

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カラオケ (Karaoke)

Cell phone pic. Click to enlarge.

Weekly Photo Challenge: "Women"

Time once again for Glenn and Dave's Weekly Photo Challenge! This week's theme is "women."

My "big three":

Ripples

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Green Slime

As the sinus infection I mentioned last week is clearing up, and all manner of filth spews from my nose, I find myself oddly reminded of the pics you see below. Hope you're not eating lunch. Click to enlarge (if you insist).





Are you still here?

Window

One from the vaults that I had forgotten about. Click to enlarge.

Some Kind of Flower

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Will to Power

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Up and Down

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Cloudy Day

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Vending Machines, No. 35

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Shit...

... piss, cunt, fuck, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

Stairs

Cell phone pic. Click to enlarge.

Stones

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Tired

I'm tired of all this fucking rain...

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Perhaps they should have focus-grouped this new kids snack a bit more carefully.



[Via: Penny Arcade]

Flowers at Street Level

I have no idea what these flowers are (beyond the fact that, you know, they're flowers). I snapped these pics with my cell phone while waiting for the bus to bring my daughter home from kindergarten.
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Peace Tower: Detail (4)

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Yet Another Old Fart Friday Night Playlist

Listen to what I like and be amazed!

1. Gang Of Four - I Found That Essence Rare (3:15)
2. Garbage - Supervixen (3:55)
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Pretty Little Ditty (1:36)
4. Rheostatics - Claire (4:09)
5. Soundgarden - Somewhere (4:20)
6. L.L. Cool J. - Mama Said Knock You Out (4:52)
7. Spearhead - Keep Me Lifted (4:20)
8. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Nobody's Baby (2:33)
9. Bettye LaVette - Take Me Like I Am (3:45)
10. Eddie Novack - Psycho (3:32)
11. The Dandy Warhols - Godless (5:20)
12. The Allman Brothers Band - Dreams (7:17)
13. The Black Crowes - Remedy (5:24)
14. Dr. John - Right Place, Wrong Time (2:53)
15. Judas Priest - You've Got Another Thing Comin' (5:09)
16. Ten Years After - One of These Days (5:50)
17. ZZ Top - Just Got Paid (3:48)
18. Young Heart Attack - Mouthful Of Love (3:37)
19. Wreckless Eric - Whole Wide World (3:02)

We don't play all of these songs, but we could if we fuckin' felt like it. And we could kick your fuckin' ass, too...

The Dead Flowers

PSA

Apparently Chicago (!) have a "new" album out called Stone of Sisyphus... Ahem. If you're still reading, apparently it was considered too "edgy" by their record label when they recorded it in the early 90's... [Coughing sound...] Apparently delusional Chicago fans think it's some kind of lost "gem."

I guarantee you that this album is probably the worst piece of shit ever recorded (well, maybe after ELP's Love Beach...).

Godless

Hmm... For some reason I find myself playing the shit out of this song tonight:

Dandy Warhols-Godless

Go figure...

Poor Dictionary Decisions

This time from an Ob/Gyn department. (Sorry, you'll have to click the link. I wouldn't post such filthy language on this blog! Heh...)

Weekly Photo Challenge: "Poison"

This week for Glenn and Dave's Weekly Photo Challenge, the theme is "poison."

I couldn't resist (click to enlarge)...



Which will kill you first?

Radioactive

Cell phone pic. Click to enlarge.

Sick and Tired of Waking Up Sick and Tired

My sinuses have been really bothering me for the past couple of weeks. It hasn't helped that I've also been very busy. I went to a specialist this morning, and he confirmed what I'd already suspected: I've got some kind of infection that has spread throughout all the empty spaces in my head (believe me, we're talking a dimension unto itself here). I got a prescription, so I'll see how it goes over the next few days...

While I'm here I might as well talk a bit about something else that has been annoying me for, oh, about the last 10-15 years. I'm sick and tired of "false dichotomies", and I'm especially sick and tired of the false dichotomy of nature and nurture (or the environment, however it's currently expressed in "learned" circles these days). Let's get one thing straight from the get-go, OK? There is nothing, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, anything in the entire universe that can properly be called "unnatural." "Nurture" (or whatever) is simply a mode of nature, because nature is all there is.

When people call this or that "unnatural" what they really mean is that it's "disagreeable" (to the one speaking). I suppose this does give us some idea of the speaker's attitude about a given topic, but it's not really conveying much in the way of factual information. Others may actually be referring to the "supernatural" when they call something unnatural. This may give us some indication of the speaker's mental health, but (again) it's not really very helpful in matters of fact.

Basically, if anything actually exists, it cannot logically be "unnatural." Of course, it's only natural that many people are confused about this.

The End is Upon Us

That said a lot more than I ever could.

{H/T: Whiskey Fire]

Chain

Another cell phone pic. Click to enlarge.

Drivin' in the Rain

It's rainy season here and it's been raining steadily for the past couple of weeks. This is what things look like to me for about 90 minutes every day. Taken with my cell phone camera. Click to enlarge.







Bleh...

Shoot Out the Lights

Farting around with a cell phone pic. Click to enlarge.

Into the Night

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House

Cell phone pic. Click to enlarge.

We Can Now Report the Awful Truth

Muslims hate popsicles! [H/T Sadly, No!]

And these Muslims--who don't like American culture and want to shut it, and all American-style fun, down--have now succeeded in getting Dearborn Heights police to enforce old, never enforced noise rules to keep ice cream trucks out.

I regret that, should you actually read the above linked article, you will find absolutely no evidence, nor a link to any evidence, not any hint at all in fact, that this story isn't simply part of some fucked up fantasy going on in the mind of some batshit crazy wingnut.

I'd like to blame my own dementia on the Islamofascists. Unfortunately the Japanese believe in evolution and shit like that so they probably wouldn't fall for it. It would probably go something like this:

Me: Sorry I'm late sir, but you know these Islamofascists...
My Boss: What the fuck are you talking about?
Me: Well, you know, sir... about how Islamofascists are taking over the world and subjecting us to their will...?
My Boss: What the fuck are you talking about?
Me: Well, surely sir, you must have heard about this popsicle thing?
My Boss: Popsicle? What the fuck is a fucking popsicle?
Me: Well, it's like ice cream...
My Boss: Ice cream!? You're telling me you're late because of ice cream? Get the fuck out of my face you batshit crazy gaijin!
Me: But sir...
My Boss: Fuck off and shut the fuck up!

Yeah, I think it would go pretty much exactly like that.

Innocent

Sometimes (just sometimes, mind you) I feel that maybe I must be doing something right...
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Weekly Photo Challenge: "Tawdry"

[Wow. The boys are off and running early this week!]

This week the theme for Glenn and Dave's Weekly Photo Challenge is "tawdry."

In Japan (and I suppose elsewhere) there are entire sub-cultures based on tawdriness. Here are a couple of random examples from my (near inexhaustible) files:


[Read about my adventure in Hell!]


[I've never been able to bring myself to write about the horrors of Tokyo Disneyland, which I've been to twice. I know, with the dread certainty of a man with a 5-year-old daughter, that I'll return there one day...]

Alice Cooper-Welcome to my Nightmare

Avian Loo: The Saga Continues

It's amazing how fast this bird is growing. Mom doesn't seem to be around much this week. I expect it'll be flying away soon...

Help!

Canada needs strippers!

Facing a shortage of foreign exotic dancers, a group representing 53 of Ontario's strip club owners is turning to immigration consultants to find a loophole in the rules governing foreign workers.

Granted, it's a bit hard to tuck a Loonie into one's garter...



... and throwing coins is generally frowned upon at strip clubs...

Parking Lot at Night

Click to enlarge.

Bored in Black and White

I'm bored. Click to enlarge if you're bored too...









I'll probably regret this in the morning.

Jump!

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Fire Bowl

Detail from the Peace Tower. Click to enlarge.

My Face Will Blot Out the Sky...

A couple of months back I read the following in a New York Times article (East and West Part Ways in Test of Facial Expressions):

Researchers studying paintings from the 16th through 20th centuries, for example, have found that in Western portraits, the subject took up a larger portion of the picture and was painted in a way to make the subject stand out, the study said. In Eastern portraits, the subjects tended to be smaller and to blend into the background.

Even now, the differences often remain. When [...] researchers handed students cameras in an earlier study and asked them to take portraits, the subjects filled more space in the frame of the photographs taken by the Americans.

I've noticed this type of thing myself when I compare family pics I've taken with ones taken by my (Japanese) wife. In fact, I frequently (and perhaps naggingly) have to remind my wife that there is indeed a zoom control on the camera; the people in her pics look tiny to me.

Anyway, I was reminded of the above quote from the Times article again this past weekend when I saw some "portraits" of me and my wife that our 5-year-old daughter had drawn. Here's the one she made of me:



And here's the one she made of her mother:



Now, if you're finished laughing about my "big head" (my wife isn't yet), it's possible that you've noticed the different approaches my daughter took in drawing these pictures. Not particularly scientific, I confess, but (I thought) kinda interesting...