You know what, I just realized something...most of you are probably home, or headed there right now, to enjoy a nice Thanksgiving dinner with your loved ones. WELL SCREW YOU. You know, I had completely forgotten about the holiday, since obviously there's not much mention of it in this country; but remembering it makes me realize just how much I wish I could be enjoying a nice turkey dinner like the one the Pilgrims shared with the Indians a little before they raped all their women and eradicated their culture right about now. Know what I had for dinner tonight? Fried rice. Fried rice. FRIED RICE AND A FUCKING $4 MANGO. That don't sound so very fucking Thanks-gih-vin-ee; now fucking do it? My knowledge of the relevant history is somewhat limited, but I'm fairly certain that no one hopped on the freakin' Mayflower for some freakin' takeout on the original Thanksgiving. But oh, you, all of you wouldn't care about all that, would you? You sit there and eat your delicious juicy turkey with the savory stuffing and mashed potatoes accompanied by cranberry sauce followed by a huge sweet slice of pie and never give even ONE FREAKIN' THOUGHT to poor old Galvin sitting over here with his lonliness and his fried rice and his $4 mango. Oh you all make me so sick. As far as I'm concerned none of you DESERVE an update; it would be pointless anyway seeing as you're all too busy stuffing your fat marbly gravy-stained faces.
What I DID do, however, being the gracious sort, is make a rather large update to my Links section. Of course it contains a total of about one link that I haven't included somewhere before, and in fact it's mostly just to encourage a circle of web-homoeroticism between my friends here and I; but on the plus side I included a new link button that, while way too big for anyone to ever actually consider using, is undeniably an oh-so-deliciously-clever tweaking on the name of a formerly popular file-sharing program. God, someone book me for murder charges, because I slay me, oh ho ho ho.
...that's right, what with all this cleverness pouring out of my ears I forgot about all this anger I have for you pouring out my ass. Except for, I guess, you Canadians, since lacking the cognitive capacity to construct or even use any sort of sharp cutting implement I doubt many of you have ever even eaten any sort of meat other than when Cousin Grunk caught under the crude square wheels of your Zoomy McFast-o-mobile (P.S. We Americans call them 'cars'). So I guess you're okay for once. But as for the rest of you, you'll have to excuse me, I'm now going to sit here for the next few dozen hours and make a whole shitload of those hand-tracing construction-paper turkeys until I no longer think of Thanksgiving. I hear there's this old Japanese belief that if someone is able to make a thousand of these things, then their atomic-bomb-related terminal illness is cured. Also, all of you die. See, it works out for everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. | message board
A couple of weeks ago, a teacher at a local high school was caught in a hotel room in a city about an hour away...with a 16 year-old girl...AND a 15-year old girl. Which, of course, makes him a source of a great shame to me as a teacher, but one giant fucking personal hero to me as a man. Schoolgirls selling their panties or bodies for money to buy expensive clothes of purses and stuff is a fairly rampant epidemic in this country, but this is the first time I've heard of such an occurence happening so close to me, let alone at Usuda High School, which Paolo-Sensei lives right next door to. Hearing this news from him, my initial reaction was one of pure, moral outrage, followed by fits of hysterical laughter upon realizing that he'd been caught with BOTH a 15 and 16 year-old. I mean, if you're gonna get caught, may as well get caught; am I right fellas? Long as they're old enough to chew their own food, that's what I always say!
Making this incident even better is the fact that Usuda High is the school the kid I tutor, Takuo, AKA Apt Pupil (see 11/12 entry) goes to. All WEEK I could barely wait for our lesson just so I could ask him about it and get more gossip. After all, he always rips into this teacher he calls "Sexual Harassment-Sensei", who may very well have been the culprit, so I imagined he would have a few things to say on the subject. When I brought it up with him, he immediately started laughing and painted me a picture of the special school assembly the principal held to explain to the students of what was going on: a meeting which, according to Takuo, was full of high school boys smiling widely, laughing covertly, and apparently on at least a couple occasions, openly whooping and cheering. I tried to think back to my own high school days -- if something similar happened at my school, would I and my male friends treat it with such irreverent candor? Then I remembered my 12th grade Economics teacher, who always wore tight khaki pants, which, whenever he'd stop and sit on a girl's desk while lecturing -- as he quite often did -- one could frequently see being filled with what appeared to be a miniature acaconda wrapping around his right thigh, apparently emerging from somewhere below his belly button. Boy, did THAT provide plenty of material. "Do ya think he's got a license to carry that thing?" and so on. So yeah, I suppose the reaction of Takuo and his friends to this latest little sordid bit of news is hardly surprising.
A related topic I've been curious about for a long time, for purely academic reasons I assure you, is: what exactly IS the age of consent in this country, anyhow? I'm not sure where I heard it, but I seem to remember someone telling me that until VERY fairly recently, the Japanese age of consent is set at 14 years of age. Which, you know, explains the rampant pedophilia in this country, as well as Sailor Moon. This...curiosity led me to the perhaps not altogether wise decision to go ahead and ask Takuo about it, figuring that hey, he's a high school boy, so he's gotta know. Of course, I was hesitant to actually USE the word "sex" with a kid I tutor, which left me to explain the topic with a very unconventional set of hand gestures that probably should never be used in an educational setting ever again. Several pantomimed penetrations later he finally got it, but, sadly and surprisingly, he had no clue. Which leads me to my next question -- what kind of high school boy is he, anyway, that does not know the age of consent by heart? Actually, I suppose in Japan it's not so much about "So y'think she's over 18?" but more like "So you think she'd be willing to let me pretend she's under 18 while I dress her up like a Gundam?"
Anyhow, with Takuo an apparent dead end, this left me to turn to my usual source of perverted losers with far more carnal knowledge they will ever have the opportunity to use: my messageboard! I posted the question, and within hours, *BAM*, the Legal Age of Consent Homepage! Turns out that it's 16-18 years of age in Japan, depending on the region. Well, that's...kinda disappointing. On a side note, I do believe I shall plan my next vacation to be somewhere in the region of Oman. As long as they're old enough to feebly resist and subsequently be easily overpowered, it's fair game; that's what I always say! | message board
I've decided that Japan is like some kind of great big temporal refrigerator that takes concepts from 50 years ago and keeps them perfectly preserved, albeit a bit moldy and often horribly mutated (okay, so it's a nuclear refrigerator). I've talked about this concept before, like with my archaically-fueled kerosene heater or the resemblance of my town to the town my father grew up in as a kid. And this weekend I encountered another piece of moldy frozen pie in the form of: a haircut. Getting a haircut is something I truly dread in this country, because a) it's expensive, and b) I never know if what I think is Japanese for "just a little off the top" actually means "please make my head look like a giant scrotum". I actually hate just getting my hair cut in general, since in the States, wanting to avoid being one of those "salon people", I always end up at some place that costs about as much as lunch for two at Burger King. I haven't even combed my hair since the eighth grade; y'think I really like forking over even twelve bucks to some beauty-school dropout so she can stab erratically at my head for the next hour like Edward Scissorhands with Tourette's Syndrome? NO. And in Japan it's even worse since it will run you $25 at LEAST, and that's only if you really look. Anyway, this explains why I grew that mullet last year, which in turn explains why I chose NOT to grow that mullet THIS year. Luckily, my town has almost as many barber shops as it does whores. Which is to say, a lot. "Scissors and Syphilis," that's our town motto! Okay, it's not, but it should be.
I'm digressing. Anyway, I figured one of the old-fashioned barber shops with the spinny red/white/blue pole thing, with male barbers, would be cheapest, so that is how I happened to find myself sitting in a chair being showed dozens of black-and-white photographs of "style guides" by an old man in a smock who apparently could barely see. Apparently I was not allowed to even just say 'a little off the top,' I needed to choose which one of these people I wanted to specifically look like. And what a selection! On the first sheet was Japanese James Deans #1-12; the second featured all sorts of wonderful floppy 80's hairdos that looked like they were conceived by headbutting powerful radiators repeatedly. I'd never even really seen anything like some of these hairstyles; frizzy, feathered concoctions that looked like they were about to take flight from their owners' heads at any second. Quite frankly I was surprised there wasn't a style sheet for the Samurai-style topknot or maybe some hip Kabuki fashions. Eventually I decided that no matter how he styled it in the shop, I could still just go home and rub my head against the carpet for a while to bring it back to my usual style, provided it was the proper length. I pointed my skinny little finger at a picture of a man who decided to part his hair from the very right of his head all the way to the left, in one gigantic, frizzy tidal wave of hair: "But a little thinner," I pleaded.
Anyway, after that, the haircut proved to be an overall pretty pleasant experience. Personally, I kinda joy in taking part in something like this, something I've only ever previously experienced via period movies. There wasn't a buzzer or clippers in the whole shop; he did the whole thing with scissors of various sizes and razors. We talked about politics, I faked knowledge of sports teams -- well okay, mostly HE talked but I at least grunted in agreement and pretended I understood. He even laid my chair back afterwards, put a hot towel on my face, and gave me a shave as well. Me, I've never had an old-fashioned shave like that, done with one of those old-fashioned switchblade-style razors that could really give you a pretty nasty old-fashioned gash if the barber so much as sneezes. Although of course around here the mutated Japanese-ness of the experience started to rear its ugly head; as not only did he just shave my chin, he shaved my ENTIRE FACE. I kinda have a fuzzy face, and he sought to fix that, as he blasphemously shaved down my trademark Groucho-Marx-esque eyebrows and even my entire forehead. Then he got a tiny pair of scissors, jammed them into my nose, and trimmed those hairs as well. Which felt, all right, a little weird, but it's about time someone got up in there.
When all was said and done, the entire thing took almost two hours; which probably sounds intolerably slow and excrutiating, but keep in mind that a) I have a LOT of hair, and b) I was still giddy on finding yet more 'Real Americana' in mutated Japanese form. Finally he took the towel and smock off me, and I was about to get up and thank him for a job well done when suddenly he threw a big blue net on my head and started almost violently spraying me with no less than three different kinds of hairspray. As always, you never question the guy with the razor, so I just kinda sat there until he was done. When the mist cleared and the netting was taken off, I looked in the mirror and saw looking back me a young man fit to work in middle management of some faceless financial firm...from 50 years ago. I put my hand up to it and damn if it didn't feel like a bird's nest, constructedly entirely out of copper wire. At long last he stood me up, dusted me off, and knowing my profession, said to me, "The first step to instilling order in young people comes from instilling order in your own appearance," pointing at my now extremely hard, apparently very ordered hairdo. Ordinarily I'd agree with him, but with that hairdo the only 'order' I would be instilling in young people would be in the form of their lining up to kick me in the shins and laugh at me for having a haircut their grandfathers might have worn in their youths. On my bike ride home I seriously considered taking a header straight into a concrete wall just to see if my new haircut would cushion the blow. Three shampoos later I was back to my normal 'static electricity' hairstyle, so it turned out all right, but still. A classic American haircut that Charlie Brown's dad might give, bookended up typical incidents of uniquely Japanese weirdness. Temporal refrigerator, man. Nuclear temporal refrigerator. | message board
Yesterday after coming home from work I opened my impenetrably secure mailbox (combination: "6"; no I am not making that up) only to find a rather large package jammed inside. Now, I wasn't expecting anything, and the return address was somewhere in the States with a name I only vaguely recognized, so understandably I was a bit cautious. I am, after all, a big Internet celebrity, so it only stands to reason that many of the things I receive in the mail should explode or contain human heads or be coated with poisons that can be absorbed through my pores. I mean, people on the messageboard have threatened to mail me pubes so one can never be too careful. Anyway, after pelting a defenseless neighborhood dog on a typically short lease with it a couple dozen times, I took it inside with me and carefully opened it. That was when I remembered that 'JohnKawamuraFanboy,' a frequent messageboard poster and former donator of $10.99 to my various donation accounts, offered to send me the following item which I have wrote about before that just so happened to be stocked in the toy store he works for. And that item is...
THE WAVE WONDER JUMPROPE.
Included in the package was a note reading, "Galvin, I didn't know if you preferred blondes or brunettes. So he sent BOTH. Oh, John, you shouldn't have.
Now, for those of you who are not familiar with this particular jumprope, I direct you back to my uh...early September entry, I can't be bothered to check exactly when. But it's there, so go look at it. Done? Good. Now, if you can't tell why I happen to find these jumpropes, or at least their packaging, so amusing, well then, you are probably not a perverted undersexed male with a sick sense of humor, and I'm afraid I cannot help you. LOOK at the girls on those packages! If necessary, click for a closer look and TELL me that image is meant to attract anything BUT pedophiles. And don't you just brush me off with, "Oh, Galvin, you've just seen too much horrible degrading pornography"; NO ONE holds jump rope handles like that, not unless they are meant to represent something ELSE that is long and cylindrical and in certain forms of media often appears pointed at a girl's face sometimes two or more at a time. American advertising companies are SICK. Although so am I, I suppose, for noticing.
On a side note, this 'glittery' Wave Wonder Jumprope is now getting sparkly shit all over my tatami floor. Oh well, I suppose it's suitably appropriate that the bukkake jumprope is bukkake-ing sparkly crap all over my apartment floor.
Anyway, JohnKawamuraFboy, I am quite grateful for the gift, even though I don't exactly know what I'm going to with these jumpropes after I finish this entry. Oh well, I'm sure I'll think of something. Wait a minute, I HAVE thought of something. Here is a link stolen from BitterLittleMan that is composed of such pure comedic gold that comedic gold as a whole is devalued due to the vast worldwide increase in quantity this particular comedic goldmine brings. If that makes any sense. Anyway, it's a Japanese message board set up so lonely Japanese honeys can post personal ads on the internet asking for quality WHITE FOREIGN SINGLE MAN companionship. This link brings out many feelings in me. On one level, it is hilarious to see a place set up specifically so purportedly large Western dong can be sought out. On another, it is sad because some of these women seem so desperately lonely. Then it goes back to being funny again since most of these ads are written in horribly broken English resulting in bluntly humorous phrases like ONLY SEX REFUSES TARGET ONE or an odd sort of poetry like
Please contact me the direction
of the blue single-man nature
of an eye which associates seriously.
It is very well!
A married person refuses
which I like to imagine being belted from the animated mouth of Cartoon Pocahontas as if it is some horribly dubbed musical number in a Disney cartoon. Anyway, perhaps you are wondering what this all has to do with the jumprope? Well, go to Page 16 of the above link to find out. So thank you, JohnKFBoy, for sending me those ropes. And screw you dammit Sakura Shogun, for posting that there. | message board
A brief and concise video summary of my weekend. Shut UP. | message board
I (stupidly) managed to sign away my entire weekend to some mysterious International Festival, but before I go, I wanted to share the following Playboy ad featured on The Onion right now:
Seriously, is it me or is this just really scraping the bottom of the porn barrel? How many of you have walked through a Wal-Mart thinking, "Gosh, I really wonder what this 70 year-old obese lady with a moustache looks like naked?" The fact that there ARE indeed hot clerks at a Wal-Mart somewhere is enough alone to blow my mind; but the implication that there apparently is a decently large portion of American consumers that manage feelings of sexual arousal while browsing through aisles of generic soda and off-brand electronics is what really gets me. Also, the sheer hilarity in taking a popular Wal-mart slogan and making it sexual is pure comedic gold.
Ahem. Yes, pointless entry. Anyway, off to that ominous international thing, of which I know nothing about. You know, one of these days, I'm gonna have to learn how to say 'no' when someone asks me to do something. | message board
School lunch is never exactly a gourmet treat, but I sat down to eat today only to find the following monstrosity resting on the tray before me:
Almonds and Little Dried Fish: Together at Last
Even if you can't read those squiggly lines that I'm told are the Japanese language, you can probably guess from the cute little drawing that contained within that innocent little beige package is, because someone apparently decided they are two tastes that really complement each other, almonds and anchovy-like little fish. I mean, look at that obnoxiously happy drawing, showing the little cartoon almond and the little cartoon fish (who by the way cannot BREATHE FUCKING AIR HOW 'BOUT SOME REALISM) holding hands as if they actually completely fucking belong together and are not the exact type of union that makes the Pope get his little Pope panties all into a bunch. Even more mystifying was with just what particular item of today's lunch I was supposed to eat this supposedly heavenly mix. Was I to sprinkle it on my cucumber/broccoli/corn/vinegar salad? My desert of watery yogurt heaped on top of canned pineapples and oranges? Was it meant to be smashed into the cracks in my giant stiff phallic bread roll and eaten that way? Maybe I was supposed to pour it into my milk; I don't fucking know, someone please fucking clue me in.
Perhaps you are wondering why the seemingly harmless peace-in-the-middle-east level uniting of fish and nuts is bothering me quite so much. Well, maybe it's because my life at work for the past couple weeks or so have been all almonds and dried fish too; but in a much subtler, larger sense. Which is to say it sucked and was awful, but even more so. Yes, that's it exactly: For the past two weeks, I have been getting naught but fish and nuts on the giant lunch tray that is my job. It has just been a complete nightmare. For some reason, these past coupla weeks many of the real teachers have been taking my coming as an excuse to go do something else and leave ME in charge of classfuls of 25+ elementary students, and just when my cold is starting to act up again too. As a result, lately I've had kids blatantly ignoring me, kids making fun of the way I speak Japanese, kids flat-out calling my one attempt in months to actually teach them something rather than just play a meaningless game boring. Kids crying for no discernable reason, kids kicking me in the knee for no discernable reason, me coming very close to drop-kicking them hard enough to pierce the hull of a submersible vessel for a VERY discernable reason. Today I broke a personal record today by having no less than FOUR boys crying today within the first 15 minutes of class. I was working with them in large groups so I had no idea what on earth even happened with those four kids; but after seeing them I could conjure up no more appropriate action than laughing very loudly and very openly right at them. This of course got some more students upset at me, since what kind of human being would laugh at four crying children; but really, I think the rest of them understood that I was laughing more at myself and my crap-ass life than I was the crying students. Although, of course, that did help.
Best line today, shortly after one of the four kids started crying AGAIN and chasing two of the others all throughout the room: "Why are you holding your head in your hands, Chow-sensei? Are you not feeling good?" I swear, after these past couple weeks, it's gotten to the point where I will consider this year a complete success if I manage to get through it without a single charge of child abuse added to my criminal record. | message board
I'm only tutoring one kid these days, pared down from my former load of approximately enough people to lay down end to end and nearly reach the fucking sun. When the night classroom I taught out of all last year closed down, I was planning on dropping tutoring entirely since honestly, I was growing a bit tired of it. However, when I informed one of my students of the impending closing he seemed disappointed enough for me to reconsider. I mean, it certainly wouldn't do me any harm to devote at least an hour out of my week to teaching English to a kid who, unlike most of my official-job students, actually really wants to learn it. Plus, he's a high school student, and a male, a combination of qualities that allows me to just teach him out of my apartment without getting questioning looks from the neighbors (it wouldn't look very good if any of my female or preteen students began frequently dropping by my place after dark). So now, my student, Takuo, drops by my place every Tuesday for an hour and we shoot the shit about whatever he wants. Mostly it's him tearing into teachers at school he hates, or stuff he dislikes about Japan. I think he finds both venting to me and just expressing such thoughts in English to be very liberating, since I get the feeling he doesn't get much opportunity to do either one otherwise. But what do I get out of this arrangement? Me, I get an excuse to clean my otherwise-filthy apartment at least once a week; and thirty dollars. Plus, y'know, the unexalted joy that comes from imparting knowledge to another human being. Cough.
Seriously though, I give this kid all the credit in the world. He's only in high school, and he's never had any outside study before he started coming to me, but given a topic he likes he can easily launch into 15-minute diatribes in English almost without taking a breath. Generally, it's usually him that talks most of the hour, and me just nodding and occasionally introducing new topics. He's not always totally comprehensible of course, and naturally the longer he talks on one subject the more broken his speech gets, but again, he's still only in high school. Most Japanese high school students are considered proficient in English if they can sputter out "I'm fine thank you" without accidentally adding fifteen extra syllables to it. The great thing about Takuo is even if he knows he's totally gonna blurt out an imperceptible string of mutant-English he'll go for it anyway; he always at least TRIES. Because of this, if this kid spent just a year or two in a foreign country, he'd be fluent in no time; I have no doubt about it.
Anyway. Despite initially being bothered that I was again being forced to give up an hour of my always-busy Tuesday nights of cleaning my toenails with my fingernails and then smelling them, I've come to newly enjoy my lessons with Takuo. It's always amusing to hear him tear apart the crusty old English teacher at his school, whom he refers to as "Sexual-Harassment-Sensei" or why all Japanese musicians suck and will never compare to the likes of Freddy Mercury. He seems to have an entirely different way of thinking from most of his classmates (at least, that's how he tells it, and I believe him) and I honestly think he's relieved to have me as an outlet to share his thoughts. At times, he does say some pretty, in my opinion, off-base things, but most of those I put down to either the language barrier or just plain youth. Like, the other day, he was telling me how human beings are like a virus to the planet, and how that if the human race became extinct, not only would the planet be much better off, but he'd be happy. Later he told me that hearing about little kids dying doesn't really make him sad, since he hates little kids (can't say I blame him), but middle-aged people dying would make him a little sad, for reasons he couldn't quite explain. Then we somehow got into his whole diatribe on how the current Emperor of Japan deserves to die to pay for his ancestor's cowardice in not just killing himself and ending World War II that much quicker. Oh, in case I didn't mention it, he believes that in terms of Axis leaders, Emperor Hirohito was actually far worse than Hitler, who Takuo doesn't seem as "all that bad" because again, at least he "had the guts to kill himself. At this point I brought up, you know, the Jews, to which he responded, "Oh, yeah, that was pretty bad. But besides that he wasn't so bad. History probably just made him sound that way."
So, as you can see, I've got Apt Fucking Pupil going on in my living room every Tuesday night.
See I can't really tell if I should ever step in with Takuo and try to "correct" his thinking, or to let him just go off with thoughts that will more than likely bleed off with age anyway. I mean, I hate telling people what's right and wrong and I certainly don't want him to stop seeing me as apparently the only person he wants to share stuff like this with; but still, if one of these weeks he comes in bearing a lampshade made out of human skin, I don't want anyone thinking I had any part in it. I'm sure it's mostly because he's at the age where kids just start getting rebellious and disliking everything about their society, and he probably thinks it's fun to have such offbeat thoughts. Also, there's the fact that again, even though he's a relatively good speaker, English isn't his native language so some of the stuff he says might not be coming out right. I mean, don't for one instant believe that I even remotely actually think this kid is a Nazi in the making; because I mean, he seems like one of the nicest, gentlest, enthusiastic kids I've ever met. But again, so was Apt Pupil.
Anyway, for my own sake of mind, at the end of the last lesson I asked him whether he thought the dropping of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II was a good thing, or a bad thing. Now, given that he often seems to characterize his own race as just a few scant levels above 'Demonic Sentient Hemorrhoids', you shouldn't be surprised to learn that his reply was an immediate "good thing." His reasons for this answer, though, quite put me right back at ease with him: "If the bomb wasn't dropped," he said, "then the war would have continued, and maybe my parents would have been killed or never met, and I never would have been born." See, I ask him a question about the moral implications about one of the most defining moments of death and war in all of human history, and he thinks about it only in terms of how it might effect himself. Ha, that's not called being a Nazi in the making, that's called being a kid in high school. That answer made me remember what I was like in high school, where after reading The Fountainhead and watching The Truman Show it was YEARS before I stopped being convinced that my life was one big Cosmic TV Show and that trying to be completely amoral was the way to go in life. In short, I know I've got nothing to worry about this kid, because frankly, in a lot of his way of thinking he reminds me of myself. And me, I turned out just fine, thank you very much. Now if you'll excuse me, there's some violent Jewish Bukkake porn that needs watching. | message board
Last entry got a far better response than I thought it would. I came close to deleting it on grounds of making myself appear far too fucking strange, but it seems I'm not the only person out there with fucked-up post-sleep visions.
So, my father, or my 'pops', as I've come to refer to him lately, came to visit this weekend, and only for the weekend. He was already in Tokyo during the week for my grandma's birthday party, so he dropped in to see his wayward son as well. At first I was concerned that he would be bored in my tiny little well, boring town, but he assured me that he enjoys just coming to my town because it reminds him of where he grew up in Taiwan. Boy, it should really tell you something about what kind of place I live in if it reminds my dad of a Taiwanese town from over 50 years ago. Anyway, we had a good father-son time, meaning we ate way too much food and took naps. It's funny though, when he and my mom visited last year at around the same time, it felt like much more of an event, as if I'd been living on the moon for five years and that was the only time they'd see me for five more. This time, though, it didn't feel much different from when my parents would visit me at college. I know my situation is different from most people's, but I've stopped bothering to quantify that difference. I live in a different town that I used to, doing something different than I used to; that's all I see it as these days. Okay, granted, were I in an American town it probably wouldn't have been necessary to teach my dad routes back to the hotel that would not result in him being assulted by aggressive Taiwanese girls offering $30 "feel-good massages", but you get the idea.
And of course, my pops brought along nearly an entire suitcase's worth of stuff for me: Pop-tarts, fruit roll-ups, Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers, 25 packs of AMERICAN instant ramen (I need my 17 variations of chicken flavor, not this soy sauce/miso shit)...now that I think about it, I probably should have requested some foodstuffs someone above the age of 9 would be interested in eating as well. But just like I'll frequently find myself eating KFC or McDonald's here, when I would almost never touch the stuff in America, the act of eating here is often not so much about actual eating so much as it is about nostalgia. I tell you, unless you've lived in a foreign country for a while, you just do not really know the true meaning of comfort food. I haven't really eaten a fruit roll-up (while sober) since I really was about 11, but here, when I eat one, it's like taking everything I only vaguely realize I left behind and uhm, putting it in my mouth and chewing it. Well, you get what I mean.
Oh, and I almost forgot; my dad also brought me one more rather exciting item...the new laptop I am typing this very entry on. I tell you, I could not BE
more excited. Upgrading computers is something that is as excitingly reassuring for us nerdy types as purchasing a new sports car or a fresh dosage of Herpes supressant is for the normal, otherwise socially healthy wang-compensating male. I tell you, I would be content to just lie on my bed all day gazing up
longingly at it. Were it a girl, I'd propose marraige immediately, even though I don't really believe in the institution. Were it a guy, I'd drop my heterosexuality like a particularly bad habit. Were it a well-endowed horse, I'd...uh, actually, let's not go there. But hey, 55 gigs of disk space. That might not sound like much to many of you assholds waving around your triple-digit hard drives in the face of anyone who gets too close like a giant paper-mache wang, but keep in mind I only had FOUR before. 55 gigs! Think of how much psychologically-scarring pornography and illegal pirated software uh, legitimate documents relevant only to my professional life that will hold.
Oh, and just one more time...6-6-6-6-6-6-6----666--6-6--6-6-6. That's right, I can FINALLY type fucking hyphens and 6s again without having to cut and past them each time. I've also uh, got my tilde back, and even though I don't often find myself typing Mexican, that, too, is appreciated.
Lastly, uh, there's not easy way to say this, but uh...perhaps many of you have noticed the new Paypal donation button that wasn't on the frontpage before. Personally, I think it's kind of obnoxious to have it, since it implies that I am actually putting things on here that are worth giving real actual money for, but well, since I started my messageboard people have given me almost sixty bucks in donations, and well, that got me thinking. If people are going to give me money anyway, why let them only do so through the messageboard, which is set up so I can ONLY use those donations FOR the messageboard? Why not say, let you people pay for my electric bill next month, or say, help buy me a pack of gum? At any rate, that's why I set up the Paypal account and put that button there, only because it was driving me nuts that I could be spending kindly donated money on probably even more worthless things than my messageboard. So, the large majority of you, feel free to ignore it, but to the few of you so inclined, well, let me now promise to you...I swear on the grave of my social life, that I shall do NOTHING even REMOTELY useful or exciting with your money. Hell, more than likely, I'll just buy a cheeseburger or something with it, eat half of it, then carelessly throw the rest away simply because it was not really me that paid for it. Okay, yeah, it can be considered as offsetting the really-quite-negligible costs of running this site, but other than that, all your well-meaning donations will really do is serve to make me feel just that much richer. THAT is my promise to you. Anyway, I'll just stick it on the bottom of the frontpage, there for those who still can't wait to part with their money, but the rest of you can safely ignore it. In fact, I promise I won't even mention it again. Uh-oh, I feel a sneeze coming on. Ah...Ah...AH-CHOO!
Oh, God bless me. My my, I'm sorry, my cold must be acting up again. Hey, you know what can be used to buy medicine for said cold? MONEY, i.e., yours. GIVE IT TO ME YOU GODDAMN BASTARD OR I SWEAR I'LL HUNT YOU DOWN AND I'LL...oh, my, what am I saying! Honestly, thank you for reading! Knowing I may have brought a little joy and sunshine into the gray, worthless life of some faceless fuckbot I don't even know is all the gratification I ever really need. Really. Truly. Cough PS pls give me $$$ ok thx. |message board
I warn you. This is gonna be kind of a weird one.
I haven't told many people this, but I actually suffer from something of a sleep disorder. It's not something that happens a whole lot, but before I knew what was causing it, it's something that would scare the living shit out of me a little bit more each time it happened. Y'see, occasionally, I'll wake up and find myself unable to move. That may not sound too frightening by itself, but believe me, waking up and realizing you are unable to move any part of your body is not the most comforting way for consciousness to first greet you. Usually it takes up to 30 seconds for it to fully sink in that no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot even wiggle a finger. After that, I'll try calling for help, and soon enough, screaming for anyone who could possibly hear me, before I even realize no sound is coming out of my mouth, because I can't move my lips. Then the shortness of breath kicks in, as I start thinking that, if the rest of my body won't move, maybe my lungs can't either. It will feel as if some unknown force is smothering me, exerting some kind of heavy pressure right on my chest. And so I'll be laying there, maybe about a minute in to all of this, completely paralyzed and practically wanting to cry because I'm wondering if I'm about to die. But this isn't even the bad part.
No, see, that comes when the hallucinations start.
The first time I had this happen to me was in my sophomore year of college. It's happened about seven or eight times since then, and each time I've had a different delusion. The first time, I was taking a nap after a long day of uh, studying, when I woke up, tangled in my blankets and unable to move. Since this was the first time it happened to me, I was just kinda wondering what the hell was going on. Mostly, I was annoyed because I was too hot with all those blankets wrapped around me, and was struggling to move just to get them off me. That was when I realized that, for some reason, there was a young black boy standing next to my bed. He was skinny like you'd see on a 'Save the Children' infomercial, wearing a ragged white T shirt and torn jeans, and had beady, sunken, almost glowing eyes. And he wasn't saying anything. He just stared at me, and he and I had ourselves a standoff, me unable to move and him apparently not finding any reason to. Then he slowly started stumbling towards me, and as he got closer and closer I tried harder and harder to move, or yell, or to get those damn blankets off me. Just as he got close enough to bring his hands up to my face, I finally managed to scream, just like they do in the movies, and my body abruptly snapped back into motion as I fell off my bed onto the floor in a heap, still tangled in those damn blankets. I unwrapped myself, stood up, and wondered just what the HELL had happened. After a bit I brushed it off as just a particularly vivid dream, and resolved to stop taking Nyquil when I wanted to take a nap. Still, for a while after that I did allow myself to idly wonder if my school was built on a slave burial ground or something.
The next time it happened was over a year later, a sporadic series that came every few months, but relatively mild experiences with no hallucinations. Still, that was almost just as bad when I'd wake up next to someone else and have it happen. I wouldn't have any hallucinations, no, but it was still torture waking up and feeling like you're dying, knowing that if only you could move a finger, or say something, you could wake the person next to you and they could save you.
Now, the next time I started having this problem again was the summer I spent at home before I began JET. Since I didn't have a job and had nothing to do all day, I took to going to bed pretty early, like around 10. But one night, I woke up at around 2 or 3 AM, and, for the first time in a while, found myself unable to move. Now see, this was the time where I first started to become honestly worried about my little problem, because that was when I started hearing the demonic voices, heard myself speaking in tongues, and felt my chest surge upward and spasm violently as it was flooded by what I could only assume were evil spirits that were sending the absolute iciest sensation through my body that I have ever felt. When I finally snapped out of this, I was in a cold sweat and honestly terrified to move, even though I now could. The next day, I actually asked my mom to put a Buddhist good luck charm in my bedroom just on the off-chance that it might help. Which should tell you that I was getting worried, since I have something of a chip on my shoulder about organized religion.
Anyway, I had a few more similar spells after that, much milder than before, but I didn't say anything. The next and last time I had a really bad spell happened in March or April of this year, here in Japan, when I again woke up in the middle of the night unable to move, and again started hearing voices. This time, though, it wasn't demonic voices, just...heh, Japanese. It was a man and a woman talking, and I remember laying there thinking, huh, that's funny, I've never heard my neighbors through the wall before (nor have I ever met them). Soon enough though, the voices started getting angry, and angrier and angrier. Soon it progressed into a full-on shouting match, then an actual physical fight, as I could hear the man getting ready to strike the woman. As it went on, she began crying, and pleading, and begging, and I knew for certain that he was about to kill her. I heard blunt sounds, wet sounds. I heard her screams decrease as his only grew louder, angrier. And here was nothing I could do about it; my body couldn't move, I could never go for help, never pick up the phone to call the police; all I could do was lay there and hear it happen. Then, finally, after seemingly hours, my body began moving again, and I sat up in bed, not wanting to go back to sleep, thinking I do not think in Japanese without trying very hard. I have never, ever dreamed in Japanese. From this, I began entertaining the thought that perhaps what I heard was real. Usually when I dream, and I begin to even suspect it's a dream, I'll soon realize it IS a dream, and then almost immediately wake up. But each time these paralysis fits have happened, the sensations were so vivid, so amazingly real. I sat there for a while, thinking long and hard about my past fits of paralysis and hallucinations, and by the end became fairly convinced that what I had been seeing and hearing each time was ghosts. What else could it be? Shortly after that, then, I decided that nah, that's not the problem. The problem is I'm just fucking CRAZY.
Now, naturally, like I said, I've never told a whole lot of people about this. Let's face it, I was seeing demons and ghosts, feeling myself being possessed, waking up convinced I was hearing grisly murders -- it's not something I was just going to bring up in casual conversaton with someone and just show and fucking tell. I mean, let's be honest, if positions were reversed and someone told me about similar experiences, I'd probably just slowly edge away and telephone the local insane asylum. But so, having no one in whom I felt comfortable confiding that I was almost certain that I was going completely fucking insane, who was left to turn to? Well, seeing as you're someone who reads webpages like these, perhaps you, too, would make a leap of logic similar to what I did:
I typed "sleep paralysis" and "can't move wake up" into Google, and within seconds I had dozens of sites detailing this phenomenon. Which leads me to wonder: Man, is there anything Google CAN'T do?
So, as I found out, what basically happens during these little fits is that I wake up while my body is still in the REM sleep cycle, which is when we dream, and, incidentally, when our non-essential motor functions are turned off so we don't act out our dreams in our sleep. So all that happens is I wake up too early, while my body is still paralyzed and my brain is still in the 'dream zone'. Thus, I AM actually awake, but then as I begin panicking because I can't move, the dreams my mind is still having begin tailoring themselves to my panic to try to rationalize what is going on. I've read on sites that what the paralyzed person sees completely depends on that person's personality, on what he fears or uses to justify the unexplained. Some people see large individuals holding them down physically. Some actually believe there is an elephant sitting on their chest. Me, I see ghosts and demons. What does that tell you? I see too many fucking movies.
Anyway, this disorder apparently is fairly common, and caused mostly by irregular sleep schedules. After reading that, I realized that pretty much every time it happened, I had gone to sleep at a time very different from my usual bedtime, like just for a nap or going to bed way too early. After reading that, I finally felt reassured, and now, even when it happens, I can usually will myself into moving a finger (or, as the case may be, wiggle my big toe), and from there move on to the rest of my body, fairly calmly since I now know what's causing it when I wake up like that. It's still not fun, per se, but now it's just a minor annoyance more than anything else. I do try to avoid naps though, because it's funny, it happens almost half the time I take one.
So uh, what was the point of all this? Hey, fuck if I know; I just felt like telling it. Okay, well, the latest time it happened was today...at school. Yes, my recent habit of catching catnaps at work has finally caught up with me, as I woke up paralyzed yet cognizant enough to realize that I was late for my next class. That was when I heard the principal coming down the hall looking for me, and now knowing how my disorder works, I knew I sure as hell wasn't imagining THAT. See, I've started commandeering the tatami room at this one school to uh, "prepare for classes", and if the principal walked in and found me laying there on the floor in an inexplicably immovable heap, well, that's one jig that would certainly be up. So whereas once I struggled to free myself from the thrall of imaginary monsters, I now lay there frantically trying to will my limbs back into motion to escape a somewhat real one. And for the first time of all the times I have woken up in this condition, I realized that, just as soon as I could move my lips again, the first thing I was going to do was laugh. | message board
Behold! My major purchase from this Tuesday, probably the most important thing I've bought in months:
For the 90% of you who live in civilized countries and thus probably have no idea what that gray monstrosity is, let me tell you: it's a kerosene heater. A top-of-the-line, high-tech kerosene heater, yes, but ultimately, it is still a ridiculously evolved form of an archaic heating technology. Personally, I don't get how this was ever allowed to happen. It's like some bizarre, sci-fi fantasy world where technology can only be evolved, never truly advanced, thus resulting in things like badass steam-powered speedboats or the treatment for every ailment being some giant fucking medical leeches.
I've complained about this before, but well, Japan is supposed to be some kind high-tech wonderland. However, here I am, in a time that is significantly not the 1800s, very rarely having to find and shoot my own dinner; yet still, somehow, I am forced to burn kerosene so as not to freeze my balls off after fording the Snake River in winter. This...anachronism now sitting my apartment confounds me to no end. See, I come from a civilized country where, if you don't go outside or look out the window, you have no way of telling what season it is. That's the way I like it. Here, on the other hand, when I'm at work during winter I constantly have to put on my big puffy winter coat whenever I want to go out into the hall, or even wear it while teaching if for some additionally confouding reason the teacher decides not to turn on the kerosene heater in the classroom. Call this ethnotricity if you must, but really, I've always been under the impression that if you depend on kerosene for heat, then you probably also eat bears for dinner.
Still, even though I am now sharing apartment space with technology whose fumes could very well kill me if I don't open the window every hour or so, I must admit, once you get used to the smell, the heater does its job quite well. The first day I bought it, it got so quickly warm and toasty and here that I sat around in my boxer shorts just because I could. Any technology that allows me to do this even in the face of impending winter is all right by me, headache-inducing fumes or not.
And at any rate, it's still better than the heating technology I made do with all of last winter, affectionately dubbed the "Rotisserie" heater by the Sakura Shogun. Where did it get this name? Well, from the GLARING, BRIGHT ORANGE, ROTATING LIGHT it emanates. Observe:
That vaguely ominous light, combined with a constant low, whirring noise, really does make anyone sitting next to it feel like they are being roasted on a slowly rotating spit. It's also a joy to try to sleep with this thing on, laying awake and staring up at the comforting giant orange outline of a friendly metal grate spinning all the fuck over the ceiling. Japan: constantly making technology that is convenient only under very specific circumstances. | message board
So I saw Kill Bill again last night. I'd probably even see it a third time if I could find someone else to go with again. I can't really pin down why I took to the movie so much. I mean, there are many reasons to like it. It's so violent, and funny, and has a kickass soundtrack...it's hard to pick out just one reason. I'd go into how half of it is set in America and half of it is set in Japan, thus making it speak oh so much to me, but anytime I read too much into something like that I start to feel like punching myself. Generally, though, even though it certainly may not be everyone's type of movie, it's just such a well done movie for what it is. Almost all the scenes can be taken completely seriously, or laughed at ironically, or both, depending on what mood you are in and your own history of pop culture absorbances. It's the perfect movie to get lost in; because even though the characters come off as very real, the world they live in and circumstances they have to deal with are so unlike our own that we never forget it's just a movie. It's full of little touches, like people carrying swords on planes, or Tokyo looking very much like the miniature models used in Godzilla movies, that make its world so coherent yet undeniably different from our own. Plus every time someone gets a limb chopped off gallons of blood spray out of them in a literal FOUNTAIN, and that's just so hilarious and awesome I don't know what to say.
Of course, every movie is not perfect, although Kill Bill's probably biggest flaw will not even be an issue to most people. I didn't want to go into this, since it's what every dork who has even just one year of high school Japanese study will be obnoxiously nitpicking on for years to come, but I can't resist. You see, for some reason, Tarantino decided to have his leads, Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu, deliver a fair bit of their dialogue in Japanese. And while it's supposed to be all dramatic and "ROOK THEY SPEAKA ZA JAPANEEZA", to the trained ear it comes off as rather...well, horrible. Let me tell you something; I have now been to lots and lots of movies in Japan, and I have NEVER heard a Japanese person laugh in the theater, even when I've gone to COMEDIES, except for the Japanese dialogue scenes in Kill Bill. It's a nitpick, yes, since most people will never notice it; but to people who are familiar with the language, such as, oh, THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF JAPAN, it's a really jarring moment for an otherwise very immersive movie. When Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu are standing up there stammering out barely-comprehensible lines like two bashful college students in their first year of Japanese class, it's not longer The Bride and O-Ren Ishii getting ready to kick the shit out of each other; it's two prissy actresses play-fighting with fake swords on a movie set. Hearing all the other people in the theater laugh in it made me slink down into my seat and swear never to speak another word of the language myself, such was my shame. To the Japanese people in the audience, the characters may as well have been speaking of Flied Lice and asking for FOHGIBDNESS PREEASE. It probably would have come off a lot better.
Now, maybe you still don't know what I'm talking about, so to better illustrate my point I have prepared a short reenactment of actual dialogue from the movie. In the speech bubble is the actual (or close enough) line delivered by the actors in Japanese, with the handy subtitles on the bottom depicting what these powerful, dramatic lines actually come across sounding like to the average Japanese viewer. So, here we go, Kill Bill Vol. 1, kindofcrap style:
There. See what I mean? With these, I have proved conclusively, without a shadow of a doubt, that I suck at Photoshop
AND have way too much time on my hands. Oh, and because it seems appropriate for the subject matter, one more thing:
There, that should just about get you in the mood. Now go see Kill Bill. | message board
Way too late of a night yesterday, so sounds like a stay-in Saturday if I've ever heard one. I think I can swing that.
This month's lovely journal banner comes from a kind soul named Endymion; which is surprising, since I didn't even beg
for someone to make me one this month. Let's let the artist explain his piece in his own words:
Be forewarned: It's about the ugliest thing I've ever seen, and my
wife
subscribes to medical journals. The brown blob in the middle is
supposed to be a turkey stuffed inside a loaf of bread, intended as
proof that I actually read your journal and don't just skim through
looking for pictures of skanky female JETs. And you're EATING it,
while
wearing a PILGRIM HAT! Get it? 'Cause it's November's banner? Oh
sweet Lord I suck. If you don't want to use it, I'm not gonna be offended. (I'll just
cry,
and then go find a life.) If you do, though, I request honorary
fuckbot
status, plus my own pony.
Anyway, as you can see, the effort is indeed appreciated, as I'm probably willing to use just about any banner someone
sends me, rather than actually make one myself. Still, I do believe this is one of the prettier banners I've ever had (out of
all FOUR of them, two of which were made by me, thus making them the aesthetic equivalent of entering James Caan's character
from Misery into a marathon). So thank you, Endymion, for your contribution. I can't do much for that pony, but one
thing I can do is bestow upon you your wished-for status of 'Honorary Fuckbot'. Why anyone would actually ASPIRE such status
is beyond me, of course, but it is not my role to judge; only to bestow. Because that's what I do.
What was my intended topic for this entry again? Oh yes. The movies. If I haven't mentioned it before, I love going to the
freakin' movies. I'm not entirely sure why. Mostly, I think I like it because even if the movie sucks, at worst I got to sit
in the dark and eat junk food for two hours. Then again, maybe, for someone who habitually keeps a running first-person narration of his
life running in his head at almost all times, it's nice to just sit down and be a completely inconsequential entity for a
couple of hours. Sitting at home watching a rented video will almost never do for me; I get fidgety and bored within minutes
without the immersive atmosphere of the dark theater drawing me in. This is why I'm pretty much willing to go see just about
ANY movie that comes out in theaters. It also explains why I, in recent months, have sat through The Core, Tomb
Raider 2, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and came embarassingly close to actually paying to see
2 Fast 2 Furious. Uh yeah, that explains it.
Yeah, it sounds really cheesy, but going to the movie theater just allows me to let me believe I'm somewhere else for a while;
an experience that obviously takes on an added dimension while living in a foreign country. Going to the movies now and then
while in Japan pretty much cures me of almost any bouts of homesickness I could possibly have, because when we're sitting
there in that dark theater and the movie's playing, I can easily pretend that for those two hours, I'm back in America. Okay,
so there's funky subtitles on the bottom of the screen, but if I squint I can just pretend there's a lot of dirt on
the bottom of the screen that through some remarkable coincidence happens to resemble the Japanese language. I'm not letting
something like that destroy the illusion, goddamn it. Which is not to say that there are not several other significant factors that somewhat differentiate the Japanese
moviegoing experience from the American one. For one, getting into the movie will run you a good eighteen dollars or so,
which is why I almost never saw a movie during my previous two years in Japan. But as soon as we found a theater around here
that offers a "Late Show" discount ("late" being 9 PM), for the relatively super-low price of under twelve bucks, well, that's
when we started seeing movies pretty much every other week.
Another difference comes immediately before the movie. In America, when the movie is about to start, the lights dim and
that's pretty much it. In Japan, depending on the theater you go to, the start of the movie is either signalled by some
obnoxious ditty played entirely on a triangle or a loud buzzing noise that goes, and I quote,
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT leaving the chances of the movie starting or the theater getting
bombed back to the Tokugawa Shogunate about equally likely. Then the previews will start, which by the way apparently do NOT have to be
"approved to be appropriate for all audiences", as I found out recently, when watching the trailer for
the Dawn of the Dead remake that features a fucking scary close-up of a little girl with half her fucking face
missing, which gave me nightmares for days. But then again, I generally find little girls scary anyway.
Now, here's where I was going to go into why I loved Kill Bill so much, but a) I
need to go eat some sushi now, and b) this entry has gotten too long to handle in one sitting anyway. But don't worry, Vol. 2
of this entry shall be out soon enough. I'm sure you can all handle the wait.
| message board .
Saturday the 1st, 2003: Kiru Biru
