Anyway, this leads me to the picture you see on the left, a picture of the back of a box of Ritz crackers purchased here in Japan. You can't see the whole box, but it's basically a variety of recipe and serving suggestions for the product. One of the suggestions is "Ritz with beer", and really, why the hell not? I ask you, however, would Ritz dare to have it's product mentioned in conjunction with alcohol in Canada or the U.S. (I'm not certain about the U.K.)? Why can't a potato chip or peanut company in North America advertise it's product as the perfect complement to beer? Hell, why can't North American beer companies show someone actually drinking their products? Beer is a legal product, isn't it? Why this hypocrisy? Where does it come from? (Yeah, well, those are rhetorical questions, aren't they, because we know exactly where this hypocrisy and others come from...)
After an uneventful train ride I arrived at Shinjuku Station at around 11 a.m. Perfect! I scouted out the music shops and then had to decide what I was going to do about lunch. As luck would have it, I happened upon an "Irish Pub" (well, about as "Irish" as you're going to get in this part of the world, anyway). Perfect! A tasty club sandwich, an order of fries, and a couple of pints of Guinness settled nicely in my stomach, it was time to peruse and purchase some music!
There are a couple of Tower Records shops here in Miyazaki, and really, any music I want can be had here or purchased online, but the Tower Records in Shinjuku has a lot of "listening stations", which allowed me to sample a lot of different discs during a casual and thoroughly enjoyable three hours. From Tower Records I went to Disc Union, a very cool used CD shop, where I spent another couple of hours browsing before making my purchases. You can see my haul in the picture on the left. In case anyone is interested, at the end of the day I returned with the following albums:
There's really not much out there these days for guys like me who long for new bands with that "classic" rock sound. The last really good classic rock band to come along were Black Crowes. I've heard flashes of brilliance elsewhere, but only momentarily. It's not that I've got anything against what they call "rock" music these days, mind you. Nirvana and the whole "alt rock" thing have done a lot literally keeping rock music alive during the reign of rap/hip hop (a genre that, when it's good, is very good, but which these days seems to be suffering a worse case of bloat than rock did in the pre-punk days). What has always been lacking, to my mind, with the newer generation of rockers, is a certain flashiness, the strut that makes rock rock. Why the hell don't these guys play like whether or not they get laid tonight depends upon it? For fuck's sake, can anybody play a guitar solo anymore? Yeah, I know I sound like an old fart, and I am, but mark my words (sorry, I couldn't resist), this "pretend" rock 'n' roll will lead to the end of barroom brawls and teenage pregnancy... er, whatever.Drummer: Ray Luzier
Group: Army of Anyone
Album: Army of Anyone
Great Drum Fill: In the song "Goodbye", at about the 3 minute 10 second mark, Luzier launches into what is really a series of drum fills, the likes of which I haven't heard on a rock album for a long time. You'll hear other, more technically proficient stuff. You'll here other, more popular stuff. You won't hear anything better.
[Note: I'm truly sorry about the poor quality of the photo on the right. You see, for one thing it was taken with my cell phone. For another, I was a bit rushed while taking it because several people were looking at me like I was some kind of dork who'd never seen Col. Sanders before. They're right about the dork part, but I actually knew who Col. Sanders was before I came to Japan...]
At Christmas time the Japanese like to eat something called "Christmas cake". This cake is basically a sponge cake covered with whipped cream and topped with strawberries (and assorted "Christmas-y" decorations). If you ask a typical Japanese (and believe me folks, we here at Kyklops have interviewed untold millions in our quest to present you, our valuable readers, with the truth) she'll tell you that, in much the same way as driving an SUV helps one get closer to nature, eating Christmas cake is a deep, meaningful experience for her, a way for her to truly understand the meaning of Christmas. As far as deep, Christmas-y experiences in Japan go, eating Christmas cake probably lies somewhere between chowing down on the traditional Japanese Christmas meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken and boinking your boyfriend/girlfriend at a "love hotel" on Christmas Eve (we'll bring you more on these in future factoids).
Few (if any) of you know that I used to enjoy the lofty status of a rock drummer. That's right, I wasn't always a lowly university "professor" (someday I'll explain those quotes). I once had a job that was at least tangentially related to human happiness.Drummer: Keith Moon
Group: The Who
Album: Who's Next
Great Drum Fill: (It's Keith fucking Moon, do you need a fucking list?!?!) In "Baba O' Riley", after the lines "Don't cry, don't raise your eye, it's only teenage wasteland", Keith Moon (official Kyklops-sanctioned rock "god") blats out a drum fill that will live forever in the annals of rock.
I, Kyklops, hereby do solemnly swear to my loyal readership that I shall:
--never make gratuitous posts about "Nude Japanese Girls!!!"
--generally refrain from any mention of "Japanese Pornography!!!" (except in the context of stories dealing with "Strange Sexual Habits of the Japanese!!!")
--never write the phrase "Japanese Girls Want Your White Ass!!!"
--make no mention of the abomination known as "Kitty-chan"
Now that the horror of it all is a couple of days behind, me I guess I can talk about it a bit...
Damn, I could really use a smoke right now. Quitting smoking sucks. I'll stick with it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. In fact, I wouldn't recommend starting, either.
2005 Re-issue of an unheralded 1970 classic, with three bonus tracks. I can't say enough about how much I like this album. It was all I listened to in my car for a month when I first got it. Hmm... where to begin? From the liner notes: "Imagine a cross between the Latin rock of Santana and the funky progressions of Sly, slow it down a little, and that's about where you'll find Demon Fuzz." But really, there's more. Throw in some Osibisa, Meters, Funkadelic, very early Chicago, and a smidgen of early prog. It adds up to a delicious funky/jazzy/psychedelic blend of mind-blowing, breakbeat-laden glory. Apparently a sampling staple of UK DJs. Listen to tracks like "Disillusioned" and "Another Country" and hear the birth of 'trip-hop'!
Apparently, just as I've completed my 7th smoke-free week, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has launched an "anti-smoking wonder pill". Pfizer is the same company that developed Viagra (er, so I've just read). I wonder if anyone is taking both medications...? Surely you can see the joke potential here. Umm, assuming that you've ever smoked and..., oh, never mind...
Sam [Samuel Z. Arkoff] once said he could come into work and make up movie titles out of thin air, and many times a picture was sold based on a title alone, like Day The World Ended! They [Arkoff and James H. Nicholson] were that confident in what they could do.
Rock music has come to a standstill -- it's not going forward any more, it only bores me [...]
--Sting (ex-Police member)
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that, given the Japanese fondness for robots, in the future Japan will likely be populated by a few old geezers (like me) and millions of robots. It will, from end to end, probably look exactly like what you'll find at this site.
Greek mythology gives us the wonderful story of Sisyphus. You've heard of Sisyphus, he was the guy who so pissed off the gods that they blinded him and sentenced him to roll a giant boulder up to the top of a mountain. When he was finished he had to do it again. Every day. Forever....Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth...
...one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain... At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? ...Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory.
I (vaguely) remember having difficulty with the concept of 'history' when I was a small child. I imagined the past as some sort of undifferentiated place containing everything and everyone that wasn't here 'now'-- a kind of Parmenidean 'being', static and frozen. In the past, I imagined, cowboys co-existed with dinosaurs. Of course I had only a vague notion of 'linear time' and almost no notion of the age of the world and the universe. And of course at that early age I wouldn't have been able to articulate it like I just have.
One of the oddities of living in Miyazaki is that there are almost no radio stations. I sweep the tuner across the dial and there is only static punctuated by the three or four lonely stations my radio can pick up. In over eight years here I have never gotten into a car and heard a radio; I have never walked into a workplace, shop, or home and heard a radio (the only exceptions to this would be broadcasts of the annual high school baseball championship and/or broadcasts of Japan's games during the world cup); I've never met anyone here who listens to the radio to get the latest news and weather, to hear the latest songs, to find out what's happening in the city, etc. This is vaguely troubling to me, especially when I think about the number and variety of radio stations available to anyone anywhere in North America.
Fellows, if you're arn
I will spin a yarn
That was told to me by Able Seaman Jones.
Once he had the blues
So he took a cruise
Far away from night-clubs and from saxophones.
He said, "Yo Ho, I've made a certain port
And when you talk about real he-man sport":
Hot ginger and dynamite
There's nothing but that at night
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky-wacky
Woo.
The way they can entertain
Would hurry a hurricane
Back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky
Woo.
from "Back in Nagasaki" (1928, by Harry Warren / Mort Dixon)
Well, I have to say that, after two weeks without so much as a drag on a smoke, I feel completely brain-dead. Seriously. I go online and end up staring at this blog for hours wondering what to write (YouTube and link-trolling just aren't cutting it any more). It doesn't help much that I have to spend several hours a week in a class with equally brain-dead Japanese university students; nor that I'm expected to keep up with the latest brain-dead TEFL theories written by brain-dead foreigners like me whose students, at the end of the day, suck just as much at English as mine do. (The difference being, I suppose, that I'm quite willing to admit that my students are shit and don't see any point wasting time and paper on 'make-work' projects defending their shittiness and their complete apathy toward English specifically and anything remotely interesting generally. I swear Nietzsche must have been thinking about the Japanese when pondering "the last Man".)
The apparatus pictured on the right is the "Dream Love Chair", and is being billed as the "new erotic sensation" (the preceding links should satisfy the visually curious).Switching on the machine prompts the man's chair to move backward and forward, while the woman's slowly rotates. The machine has a five-gear speed system, with the fastest promising five thrusts per second. There's also a pause button to allow time to consider what's taking place.
Women's seats on the Dream Love Chair have even more functions. They can rotate in either direction at a whopping 10 different speeds! And the seat also vibrates -- at two adjustable speeds!
What's more, the machine is up to date when it comes to politically correct relations between the sexes, with the controls for the man's chair placed on a panel built into the woman's seat, meaning that she controls the pace and actions to a level suitable to her.
But the main effect, [...] is that the machine basically does all the moving for the couple, taking the drudgery out of grinding the pelvis.
Charred bodies prone on nuclear wasteland
Buddhas all
Died, never having dreamed what killed them.
I've mentioned here before that I'm a smoker. In fact, I've been smoking about a pack a day for over 30 years. Well, today is my daughter's fourth birthday, and I thought that along with the usual cake and presents I'd give her something special. Yep, that's right. As of today I am no longer a smoker. Now I realize all too well that that's much easier said than done (having given it a go countless times before). I guess the difference this time is that the stakes seem higher and time is running out. If I'm going to quit, I have to do it now. If I want to play with my daughter for more than a few more years, I have to quit now. Hell, if I want to see grandchildren, I'd bloody better do it now.
DPRK Successfully Conducts Underground Nuclear Test
Pyongyang, October 9 (KCNA) -- The Korean Central News Agency released the following report: The field of scientific research in the DPRK successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions on October 9, Juche 95 (2006) at a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation.
It has been confirmed that there was no such danger as radioactive emission in the course of the nuclear test as it was carried out under a scientific consideration and careful calculation.
The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent. It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defence capability.
It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it.
I have to admit, my friends, I’m a little confused about certain aspects of the situation here involving Mark Foley and the page. […]
Now, the liberals also tell us that sex and gender issues are just lifestyles, not choices. Maybe choices in the case of sex changes like the chopadickoffame and the adadictomy, but these are just lifestyle things, gender and so forth, we’re not to condemn. Any two people can love each other, any four people can love each other. You can define your family however you want, including your animal or animals. This we have been taught by the tolerant left among us. Kids can have sex, too. Not with somebody just in their age-group, alternative lifestyles, but not if the person is sexually active but younger, apparently. So we find here that there are limits. There are things that will offend liberals. Or are there? Because I continue to ask, are they really offended by this? How many of them wish they were in on the action?
