Working Overtime

I've been a bit busy lately. Having fun...



XTC-Senses Working Overtime

Engineers in Training

Very cool...



[H/T: Sivacracy]

Taking the Piss

Ahh, it's Friday afternoon. Between the usual daydreams, two things weigh heavily on my mind: what brand of beer am I going to drink tonight, and what in the fuck am I going to do for Glenn and Dave's Photo Challenge this week (Glenn's topic this week is lychnobite, a word that neither appears in my OED nor is recognized by my spell-checker; fucking bastard!).

Anyway, as my mind wanders I start thinking about sadism and masochism and stuff like that (maybe this story was in the back of my mind...). I'm no prude or anything, but frankly that whole area has always been a bit mystifying to me. I don't like being hurt or humiliated and, as far as I can tell, I don't have any yearnings to hurt and/or humiliate anyone else. Clearly, though, a lot of people get their kicks this way. And if everyone involved is consenting, well then, who am I to say it's wrong?

I was reminded of a story a friend told me about 20 years ago. My friend, whom I haven't seen for a long time, is a gay man from small town Nova Scotia. He told me about the first time he went to New York City. While he was there he was invited to go to some kind of private sex club. I don't recall if the place was exclusively for gays, or not, but as he described what he saw and what went on there it sounded like a pretty weird place. (I've been to a few weird places myself, but this was definitely beyond anything I've experienced, before or since his telling of it.)

One part of my friend's story, both funny and illuminating, has become almost a parable for me, a lesson in how to get along in life. (Some who read the following may feel disgusted, but really, I can't see why.) My friend told me that at this club there was a "special" room for anyone who needed to take a piss. In the room there was a bathtub, and in the bathtub there was a naked man. There was a line of other men in the room who, when it was their turn, would piss on the guy in the bathtub. I recoiled in disgust when my friend told me this, but he patiently explained that the guy in the tub liked to be pissed on, it was, in fact, a big turn on for him. When he put it that way, it didn't seem so disgusting to me. I mean, it wasn't like anyone was pissing on me, or asking me to piss on someone else. Why should I give a shit (hmm... maybe a poor choice of words there...!)?

One question was still burning in my mind, though. I looked my friend in the eye and asked, "Did you piss on the guy?" My friend got a sheepish look on his face and stammered, "Well, you know, there's this guy who likes to be pissed on, and I, like, really had to take a leak, so... yeah, I pissed on him. Why the hell not!?" I'm not sure why, but that was probably the oddest, funniest thing I've ever heard anyone say. I laughed out loud then, and I still laugh every time I think about it.

The Pause That Refreshes?

Vending machines in Japan are famous (notorious?) for offering a wide variety of products. Here's a vending machine you'll never see in Japan.

[Pic swiped from Thrillist.]

Out of the Frying Pan...

Tomorrow is my last day of classes for this school year. I also think my dental appointments will finish this week or, possibly, next (thank fuck, because I'm starting to feel like a trapped animal every time I go lately...). Anyway, while there's always a shitload of stuff to do, I should be in a better mood, and I should have a bit more time to, like, actually write something here once in a while...

But, then again, I just got a call from a buddy asking if I were interested in throwing a set of tunes together for a rock'n'roll gig in a couple of weeks. Damn right I am...

Just Dessert

Next time you're at a Chinese restaurant, try asking for a Japanese fortune cookie.

Little Wing

Last night, somewhat unexpectedly, I found myself on stage at a bar playing drums to Hendrix's "Little Wing". I've heard the tune a million times, of course, but last night was the first time I'd ever played it. It was fun (well, OK, maybe a bit more than just "fun"...).

Jimi Hendrix-Little Wing

If I bought a new drum kit on the credit card, I wonder if my wife would notice...

Apologia

The thud of drums and
droning guitars, a soundtrack.
Waves crashing on cliffs.

Life without meaning,
death without meaning; abyss.
This has been my life.

To reconcile this
with a young girl's smiling face--
what's a guy to do?

Existentially
speaking, I'm between a rock
and an, umm... hard place.

Opening Salvo

Heh, cool. My first blog post from a hotel room. And I'm drinking beer, too! You'd think an almost-50-year-old guy could think of something a bit more... reflective to say on such an auspicious occasion, but fuck it. I've decided that I rather like blogging and drinking in hotel rooms, and I don't care what the neighbors might think...

[Note to self: it's all fine and dandy to have rockin' tunes on the laptop, but next time you'll have to remember that laptops have crap speakers... more beer might "fix" the problem, though...]

Great song title (and pretty good tune, too): ZZ Top: "A Fool for Your Stockings".

Fukuoka is a good, fun city (about the same size as Vancouver), and I recommend it to anybody visiting Kyushu, but I've been here a million times. Bring on Manila!

You already knew this: Repeated listening has led me to believe that Dream Syndicate must have heard a few Velvet Underground albums...

A good friend told me that when he was in Manila one time the band Rage Against the Machine was staying at the same hotel. In the hotel lobby they had a sign that read "Welcome, Rage Against the Machine!" Thinking about this induces the giggles...

This is why the Japanese will conquer the world (thanks Japan Probe):



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For all the talk about the iphone, I can't think of a single reason why anyone in Japan would want to buy one--collectors aside (and really, compared to what's available here, it's an antique). (Prompted by my purchase yesterday of a new keitai).

Chuck Berry's "Nadine" must surely be ranked among the greatest performances of all time. Chuck fuckin' Berry! Ouch!

More ZZ Top: "Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell". You know, back in my drum-playin' daze, ZZ Top had almost god-like status. Not because they were "fashionable", and not because they were "cutting edge" (although Eliminator, in my opinion, ranks as one of the most ground-breaking rock albums of all-time). No, ZZ Top just played like everyone else could only dream of playing, they were every rocker's favorite band...

Ahh... The Yardbirds... now there was a band...

Early flight tomorrow, must sleep...

The Cell Phone Camera and Its Myriad Uses

The weather is beginning to get a bit cool here in Miyazaki, which means it's time to re-calibrate my air conditioner to start blowing warm air. And while this might strike the unsuspecting reader as a pretty mundane sort of task, it is, in fact, a twice-a-year exercise in annoyance and frustration for me. Why? Well, because the air conditioner's remote control buttons and settings are in Japanese, that's why. In the past I've put on a brave face and hauled out my dictionaries and, through a tiring process of trial and error, tried to work out the arcane workings of this most cursed of devices. The sin of pride, you see, has kept me from simply asking someone who actually knows Japanese (and believe me, there's certainly no shortage of such people in these parts) to turn on the air conditioner for me. No, much like the proverbial man who turns a deaf ear to his wife's desperate entreaties to "just stop and fucking ask someone for directions, will you?", I refused to bow to the reality of my utter incompetence in reading Japanese...

... until the other day. I'd been pondering this problem when, of a sudden, it struck me: "idiot, you've got a Japanese lesson today, why not ask your teacher?" Why not, indeed. After all, this is a business relationship, so it's not quite the same as groveling on my stomach in the hall outside my office in the hope someone will notice me and take pity. I was dazzled by the sheer simplicity of my own genius! When my teacher came by my office later that day I asked her straight out, "how the hell does this thing work and can you please write it on the whiteboard in a form I can understand?" As I said, this is a business relationship, precluding any visible sign of contempt she may have secretly harbored toward one so pathetic he can't even turn on the fucking air conditioner without help. Like a true professional she complied with my request, even offering a few explanatory comments and a demonstration of how to use the remote control (the last, perhaps, bordered on insolence; but it also could simply have been an eagerness to help...).

Anyway, at the end of my lesson not only did I now know how to order a burger and fries in Japanese, I had at my disposal the means to control the temperature of my office! As soon as my teacher left I took a picture of the whiteboard with my cell phone, uploaded it into my computer, and then printed it off. Hah! No more chilly days in my office! Yes indeed, I'll surely enjoy working in my nicely heated office. At least until spring...

At the Dentist

This didn't seem to be an ordinary waiting room in an ordinary dentist's office. For one thing, they didn't have any magazines. They had photocopies of what appeared to be journal articles, or maybe short stories-- A4 pages stapled together. They also had some unusual stuff on the walls-- a poster of Bela Lugosi as Dracula here, one of Bill Murray there...

He picked up one of the article-like reproductions, Notes from Underground. He vaguely recalled having read this in university, something about a guy with a toothache. Like a complete idiot, he chuckled to himself, thinking, "what a coincidence!"

I Had to Pay for a Band-aid, but I Didn't Marry a Man...

For anyone who cares, I'm back from a great couple of weeks in Nova Scotia. There'll be lots of (crappy) photos in the near future, and I may even try my hand at actually writing something. While I'm checking out what you all have been up to, a few random comments...

Damn, I didn't think it could be done (by me), but it was: over two weeks without so much as a sniff of the internets (although I gotta say I'm a little disappointed that I didn't lose any weight; on the plus side, my bum shoulder seems to have healed itself...).

Speaking of losing weight, yikes! Every time I leave Japan it seems I've entered "Land of the Giants." My fellow North Americans, please, hit the salad bar once in a while, will ya?

There is such a thing as normal, and it ain't bad: Watching my daughter and my mother get to know each other was a fuckin' trip...

Beer seems to have a more pronounced effect when coupled with jet lag/lack of sleep. Think of the money we could all save if only I could get a government grant to study this!

You may like it, you may hate it, but it's a fact: Canadians (or people acting like them) will eventually take over the world and usher in an era of world peace and high taxes...

It's a little tough to love a place as much as I love Halifax, and know there's nothing there for me that will sustain my family the way Japan has and will continue to do...

Seeya soon...

Non-stop, 24-hour-a-day, Action-packed Excitement

Tea towels from Wales are a popular item for Japanese tourists.

The tea towels we have in Japan tend to be much thinner and smaller. The material appeals to the Japanese as do the bright colours, we find them very beautiful.

Anarchists in Ottawa "attack" Bank of Nova Scotia branches.

It happened because we are tired of living on our knees beneath a system forged by the plots and nightmares of assassins and thieves! Destroy Capitalism and its conspiring defenders!

Dog bites man.

Newburgh [Indiana] police used a K-9 to arrest a man after he refused to come out from under his ex-wife's mobile home Sunday. Cvetic ran away through a back door when an officer arrived. Using his police dog, officer Chad Bailey tracked Cvetic to underneath the trailer. When Cvetic refused to show his hands or come out, Bailey released the dog, who bit Cvetic several times.

More rain for Green Bay, high of 67.

Rain is forecast throughout the week. Today should see scattered showers, with thunderstorms also possible after 1 p.m. Cloudy, with a high near 67. East southeast wind between 9 and 11 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40 percent.

Google.com number one search result for search term "google".

Google
Google. Advanced Search · Preferences · Language Tools · Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google. ©2007 Google. [Click for more information] Stock quote for GOOG
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Random Ramblings...

Are we what we do? Is it inconceivable that, say, the best French chef in the world might actually hate French food? Would this make him, somehow, less professional? Isn't the very essence of "professionalism" doing the very best job you can while putting your personal feelings aside? Is it inconceivable that the best person in the world for some particular job might actually hate that job at the same time as she's trying to re-define it?

Would you say that what someone does is ultimately more important than what he says? (Think carefully, lest ye become an existentialist!)

What would you say about a guy who didn't give a shit what he did for a living, as long as it kept his family in food and clothes, etc.?

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Personally, I think the world would be a better place if everyone liked White Zombie.

Arts and Sciences

Back in my grad school days I used to work part-time as a bartender. One of my co-workers at this job, and a fellow grad student, was a young woman who was doing a PhD in Biology. I was doing a lowly MA in Classics, and I was 10 years older than her ( I didn't enter uni until I was in my 30s). Sometimes we would drink, and talk, and argue. We often argued about the "utility" of study in the "humanities." She was a real "scientist" so I usually forgave her generally unforgiving views of the humanities.

One night we were at a party. My friend didn't drink much, because she always had lab work, reports, and a bunch of other stuff to do every day. At this particular party I got completely blotto, and found myself hugging the toilet, if you know what I mean. Anyway, my friend finds me and figures this is a good time to "get one in".

"Jesus, Rick, look at yourself. You humanities students are something else. Do you guys ever, like, study or anything?"

I've got puke on my chin. I'm drunk, I'm sick, I'm wasted. I look at her and say, "For Christ's sake, what the fuck do you think I'm doing now?"

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

[William Blake, "The Tiger"]

Coloring Outside the Lines

I ask you, gentle readers, when a guy posts a picture of some coloring he did with his little girl on a rainy day, is it a) an act of pure, fatherly love, something joyous that he wants to share with the whole world; b) an act of sheer desperation, a sure sign the idiot has nothing to say so he's cynically hoping the sappiness of it all will fool his readers; or c) both of the above?



By the way, can you guess which one I did?

Wish You Were Here

The last couple of years my family lived in Winnipeg we lived on the air force base there because there were no available PMQ's available on the army base (we'd lived off-base until, I guess, it became too expensive). The elementary school I attended was just on the other side of the school's sports field. Being an army kid on an air force base wasn't always easy.

-----

I remember drinking with my old man and some of his old army buddies one night. I guess I must've been about 20 or 25. My dad went for a leak or something and one of his buddies leaned over the table at me and, getting all sincere, said, "You know, your old man could have gone a lot further in the army. He had too many friends, though..."

-----

One day my father was mowing the lawn. He was using an electric lawnmower. I think they were pretty common back in the 60's. Maybe they still are, I don't know. It was summertime, but I was in the basement shooting pucks at a concrete wall. I don't remember where my mom and sisters were. So, my dad's mowing the lawn. I can hear the electric hum of the mower as it cuts the grass. It stops, and just a moment later I hear my old man say, "Shit!" Not loudly, mind you...

-----

My dad loved to party. So do I. It was once a family tradition to have a party on Boxing Day, with family and friends and neighbors. I remember one year it was getting quite late and there were only a few people left at the party. My father was asleep (well, passed out) on the sofa. This guy, a neighbor who'd been sitting there the whole night drinking my old man's booze, turns to me and says, "You know, don't you, that your old man is an asshole?" This startled me a bit, so I asked him to repeat himself. He did. We were sitting near the fireplace, so my initial impulse was to club him with the poker, stuff him in, and burn him. Fortunately (for both of us), my father had taught me better. Instead, I just stood up and told him he had 30 seconds to finish his drink and get the fuck out and never come back. This loser actually had the nerve to appeal to my mother, who didn't even waste time getting details. "If my son says, get out, well then, get out." Yeah...

-----

So I go upstairs and outside to see what my dad is swearing about. Yikes. He's standing there with the index finger of one his hands kinda hanging there and bleeding. A lot. (I found out later that he'd turned off the mower to clean the blades. Apparently the blades of electric mowers can take a few seconds to stop after being turned off...) He pulls out a white handkerchief from his pocket, and as he's wrapping his hand he calmly asks me to to into the kitchen and get the car keys. A few seconds later I bring out the keys and he says, "Let's go for a drive." We go to the hospital and he gets his finger stitched back on. He never flinched. Not for a moment. I'll never forget it.

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My father died about 7 months before I came to Japan. He died too young (64). He never met my wife, or our daughter, or his recently born great-granddaughter (to my niece). His birthday would have been the 4th of July. My father was my biggest "fan." I remember, crying to my my mother as my father was dying, saying that I was nothing without him. Wish you were here...