My first GMail tragedy... Come on Google, you can do better than this!

A train of minivans, hailing from Fukuoka-ken, visits Ikeyama Suigen in Ubuyama-mura.

I originally posted this in an earlier post here. Japan is one of the few places in the world where it is considered "cool" to drive around in your mom's minivan.

The ending of this film bothered me so much that I had to go looking on the net, totally convinced that I had missed something vital in the 0.5 seconds it took me to throw a tissue in the garbage there near the end of the film during the parade scene.

Verdict: I didn't miss a goddamn thing.

So I'm on a coffee break and the guy next to me says, out of the blue, "I wonder how many legs you can pull off a centipede without impeding its ability to forage for food."
I'm at a loss for words, and I wonder if this line of thought has anything to do with the fact that he just got chewed a while ago out by the boss in front of the whole office for holding up production of a new product.

A few seconds later, in the same monotonous patter, he muses, "I wonder if its like one of those 16-wheel tractor trailers... If one or two go flat, there's basically no effect..."
Well, that's innocent enough, right? Typical engineer-type daydreams, I imagine.

Then: "I wonder if losing a leg is as painful for a centipede as it is for a human being."
Well. I finished my coffee in record time, my friends...

Work issues. Gotta love 'em.

Fer chrissakes man, you forgot to use the time-honored meatplow:
ode to my schlong

Must be Alzheimer's, you dirty old bastard... Happy Birthday!

I proudly present to you the latest combined efforts of myself and my little bro:
School of Rice

The purpose of the blog is twofold; first to document rice in the sense of tacky car mods (such as bazooka-like exhaust pipes, homemade rear wings, and HKS stickers), and second, to document anything else we categorize as rice. In other words, I have not a clue, but am determined to make this new blog a success because I like the name so much. School of Rice. Maybe I'll shelve some recipes there, too.

Be sure to check out the uber-rice shot Adam posted today... The recent BMW 7 series lineup is ugly enough as it is...

Spotted during a daytrip to Shikoku we saw many interesting things including a BMW 740i, stock in every way, except for the huge wing on the back. I can't think of another unnecessary modification to an otherwise nice car that this guy could have possibly done. I can only imagine what he plans on doing next.

This blog is dedicated to all things rice. So then, what is rice? You shall see, grasshopper, you shall see.

Now we start with the real hurt; time to break out the industrial strength can of Smear. I predict a scandal with drugs, hookers, or some such felony will break soon. Some possible headlines:

Jenna and Barbara Sic Secret Service on Gay Rapper! As a Joke! While Stoned!
Teresa Heinz: Godmother of John Walker Lindh Urged Him to Fight
Curious George to Michael J: I'll Watch Bubbles While You're Gone, Baby
Kerry, "Just a Cool Guy," Sucked Glass Dick with D12 Backstage, Says Eminem.
First Lady Owns Stock in Dutch Wife Co, Ltd.!

OK, this is obviously a work in progress, but you get what I mean. At some point, it stops being a choice between two candidates and becomes a shit-slinging contest... In the end, nobody emerges clean.

To all of you who can't catch a hint (such as repeated refusals as well as a 9-year renewal via Network Solutions AKA Bloodsuckers Inc.):
cosmicbuddha.com is not for sale. I don't give a fuck if you think it should belong to the Buddha's Association of Templar Sanctorium, the Online Buddhist Trinket Vendor Compendium, or His Holiness the Dalai Lama, it is mineminemine and I can very fucking well use it for whatever the fuck I want and you get zero - I repeat ZERO - input in this respect. You want to me to "keep it real" and have some followers send me golden prayer beads by registered mail until I asquiesce? Fine. Send me the whole string so I can melt them down and make myself a proper sceptre with which to smite you irritating fuckers.

And no, you cannot advertise for free here. You can't advertise here, period. Not on a banner ad, and not in the comments. I don't have any ads at all, and for good reason: I'm "keeping it real," a lot more real than you give me credit for... Let me ask you a question: Who do you think the Buddha would hate more, ME for having this domain name and "using swear words" on my own fucking site here, or YOU for pushing fake gold and jade Buddhist trinkets to people who are insecure in their own spiritualism?

Of course that's a ridiculous question; just look to whom I ask it.

//

After much soul searching, this domain is now for sale. Asking price is 1,000,000 undead souls (preferably the old and weak) and a string of 24k gold anal prayer beads. Now suck that, bioooooooooooootches.

My new favorite milblogger. And SDB, who is giving it up indefinitely. Some days you are asking for it just by turning on the computer.

My one paranoia, which is really strange since I basically grew up in the sea/swimming pools/mud flats/other various bodies of water, is sharks. Luckily, there weren't any hairy, hopping sharks back then to haunt my dreams:
http://smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/08/29/1093717842562.html (I refuse to use the utterly retarded title they thought up for the article; that's not even trying)

It occurred to me today that I haven't been to a public library (not counting my bathroom - don't laugh, even in an extended disaster situation there will always be enough "paper" in there) for a pretty goddamn long time - ever since moving out to this island, so about five years. After university, there just wasn't much reason to go, especially since I had my trusty old Powerbook 190 and an Asahi-net dial-up account. Oh, and also because I hate reading books in Japanese since I'm pretty good at it but not good enough to not want a dictionary beside me, and paper dictionaries are heavy.

I love public libraries, partly because I've always been a bookworm, but also because I love seeing what other people are reading. In Japan, just like anywhere else, you can tell an awful lot about people by the books they're reading. For instance, people who come in just to read newspapers are cheapskates (or poor), and generally have too much fucking time on their hands. They often reek of cheap coffee and are comparing ticket stubs to sports results. People who read western fantasy in Japanese are generally to be avoided (not a problem because they are almost always socially inept). People reading novels by Ramo Nakajima (even before he got busted on possession charges) have either smoked weed at some point in their lives, or have grandparents who lived in Manchuria. And people reading Osamu Dazai may be more prone to suicide by drowning than others. Go figure.

I also love public libraries for the same reasons I love public file servers. All those permissions and protocols and hierarchies, I suppose. For such a slob, I sure do love a clean house sometimes.

Are you shitting me? Is this really Quentin Tarantino's blog?
QT's Diary

I want proof... Maybe it will be forthcoming when the future releases he mentions start coming out, but I'm kinda skeptical. Maybe I'll wait for the websleuths to check it out. In the meantime, I'll be trolling for Samuel L. Jackson in the comments (re-enable them, Q-dog!).

New Scientist has put up an amazing interview with a man who survived the Chernobyl disaster, despite being at ground zero:
Cheating Chernobyl

His description of the reactor room is forever imprinted in my mind.

Back at work this week. What can I say. It's wonderful - my coworkers are courteous and professional, and management is sincere and warmhearted. I'd much rather be here catching up on ten days worth of e-mail and mostly forgotten business problems than, say, in the halls of Montezuma or the shores of Tripoli. I mean, I don't even think FedEx does pick-ups in some of those places - and I ask you this - what would your office life be without FedEx, you ungracious cur? I'll tell you: It would suck very hard, and very hard it would be sucking.

OFFICE WORKER TIP O' THE DAY
(limited to areas that have FedEx pick-ups) - by C. Buddha
The adhesive side of the transparent FedEx waybill pouches makes an excellent field expedient Lint Removal Tool. Simply peel off the paper backing and use it like you would normally use a piece of tape for the same purpose. That is, make repetetive pounding motions on the lint-ridden clothes in question and repeat wildly and incesssantly like a monkey on crack. With tape, this maneuver can take quite a while since it loses its stickiness after a short time and you need to keep tearing off new strips, but the huge (9' x 12') adhesive surface of the waybill pouches is awesome! Use this tip to awe your coworkers at company parties! Use all the time it saves you to pursue new hobbies! Best of all, do it all on your vendor's dime! FedEx is raping you all the time with those prices, so GO GET SOME PAYBACK.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that this is all really unnecessary if you use a lint brush. Hmm... Okay supposing that lint brushes work as well as a sticky waybill pouch (how the hell should I know; I forgot such a thing existed), here's the deal: If you have a lint brush at your desk at work, I can only retort that that's pretty anal and you might make a good successor to Martha Stewart (except that I have the feeling Martha would probably like my little hack). If you actually carry a lint brush around everywhere you go, you need professional help (and it really WILL be your fault when your kid gets caught torturing small animals), but in lieu of paid therapy you might just try letting it all out once in a while - you know, like a monkey. On crack.

If you are interested in finding more blogs with Japan-related content, be sure to stop by the JapanBloggers Webring and browse the members list. You're more than welcome to join us if you maintain a blog that suits the application criteria. After joining (or even if you aren't into the "webring" thing), you'll probably want to join the JapanBloggers Mailing List (Yahoo.com account required - Register today! It's free! Non-fattening! And all that other good shit!).

A complete list of members in the webring:
Aberrations on a Picture Book
Achikochi
AdamGraunke.com
Adrift in Japan
Adventurasia :: The Lounge
alive in kyoto
andrea's photo blog
Antipixel
Aranami
art and japanese culture
Art Brain
asagao's Blog
asbCreative
Band Man in Japan
Big in Japan
Blender
Blog From Another Dimension
Blogging it in Japan
Blogging Nippon
Bondi Books Blogspot
C@LLing Kevin
C. Buddha's Hasty Musings
Cerebral Soup
CFKOZAK
Chariotaku
chipple.net
Confessions of a Grade School Role Model
consumptive.org
cultured out
deepermotive
detlog
dottocomu
ELVTR {elevator}
EOFM.net
esthet.org
Fareast
frangipani
Fred
Freyburg.com
Fukuma Hair Flap
Funk'n Blog___Japanese Underground Culture Blog
Gary's Boring Blog
Gen Kanai weblog
genfab.com - creative and good quality and crazy
gme.jp
gmtPlus9
Harubaru * Far and Wide
heatshimmer sea of echo
Henrik
Hmmn
HOBO-SAN JOURNAL
IASnet Journal - The Beauty of Rocks
I don't mind if you forget me
IN-duce.net
i-sako
Japan
Jap|andrew
Japandy
Japan Blogger's WebMap
Japan Takes the Queen
Japanish
Japan. Life. Tanishi
j-dreaming
jjcha.net
Jm's myTaste music & movie
Kakyou's World Domination Diary
Ken Loo's World
Kitakyushu Views
Kristen's Japan (aka mediatinker)
Laughing~Knees
Life on the Tokyo Circuit
Live from Yokohama : Stuart Woodward
Lost In Translation
M@Blog
M@ck.:Blog.
Made In Tokyo
Marc's Japan Adventure
Marcela's Musings on Japan
Mayumix
ME AND OPHELIA
Mes deux neurones
metalbaby
Mikan Moblog
Mike Media
Mint Dandy
Moscow-Tokyo Nonstop
nipponDAZE
Nippon Goro Goro
Noriko's Yapping
Obscurity
Okite
On Gaien Higashi Dori
On my mind
opinios
Order of Randomness
Ore No Buloggu
Partido Vegetal Nacional
Photokyo
Pinku!
Pure Land Mountain
Rose Tinted Glasses

It removes inhibitions. I met this girl ten seconds ago. Bill (on the left) may have met her before, but how the hell do I know. She came in after my cousin Tait (who I have misspelled as "Tate" until now, sorry cuz) called her. Jeez, I have no idea what has happened since that Spirytus shot. I'll shut up now, sorry.

CS: Source is out! Counter-Strike on the HL2 engine! So far, only a fraction of the players are actually playing seriously, almost everyone is experimenting with the new physics enabled by this awesome engine. NVG goggles, as pictured here, got a serious power-up, as did flashbangs. No more of the screen just whiting out crap, now you get double/blurry vision and a screeeeching headache when you get flashed as well.

If you have a paid copy of Condition Zero, you qualify to beta test CS: Source. A tip: Join servers with a max capacity of 20 or under. If you don't, prepare for serious lag. Either way, you'll have lotsa fun plinking cans, barrels, and tires that are scattered around the map.... Speaking of which, I wonder when they'll release aztec. Dust is getting kind of boring, and I want to see the water effects like they showed in the demo movies.

I'm on break all this week and am taking the time to work on my late afternoon inverted snoring technique. Blogging will resume soon - see ya then!

A long list of games that can be downloaded for free over at the anandtech forums:
CLICK ME HARD, BABY

A lot of these are older commercial games that the developers have released for free since they are no longer really profitable and it's good publicity. It's a cool thing for them to do.

This one's for Michiko, who works at a patent office in Osaka:
Lawyers Unearth Early Patents
(registration required; get login and password at BugMeNot)

Two patent history nerds found the holy grail of the patent world, get ready for this now, the X-patents (forgive me for clowning you; I'm tired of always being the only geek in the room). One of them is for the internal combustion engine! Possibly signed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson! Hilarity ensues!

Lest anyone forget, we are at war:
One Enemy K.I.A.

It's easy to forget the bigger picture when you get caught up in the bullshit pushed by mass media. Regarding the coming elections, the war is by far the most important issue in my mind. That said, we now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

This article at Slate caught my eye today:
One Giant Lift for Mankind: The race for the 1,000-pound bench press.

When I trained for football and wrestling in high school, I was happy to be able to bench 200. But ten times that? Half a ton? Even with the super redneck denim shirts or whatever, I fear these guys will only learn their limits when something gives out with a sickening snap. I know what too much weight on the bar feels like. It feels like your elbows might pop out. If you're positioned poorly on the bench, you know it right away. Sometimes, the veins stand out on your forehead as you turn beet red and wish you hadn't been stupid enough to try it without a spotter (or anyone within grunting or panicked yelping distance; how I survived my own stupidity all these years is a mystery). Steroid accusations and neck-deficiency issues aside, 1000 pounds is an amazing figure.

Anyway. You know how everyone at the gym jokes about the real muscleheads being able to lift cars that get in their way, etc., right? Standard jibes that denounce the practicality of being so big and so strong? I stopped making those jokes after a powerlifting guy that I knew got in a horrible car accident my junior year. What happened, in brief, was a frontal collision into the side of a (thankfully empty) school bus. Said person was driving with his seatbelt on, the car was a Honda Accord (no airbag), and there were no other passengers. Speed at time of collision was estimated between 35-45mph and according to witnesses, there was no time for him to brake.

Typically, this is a fatal scenario, with the steering column crushing the driver's chest or perhaps the windshield exploding outward with the impact of the driver's head. However, this guy survived against all odds. He was badly injured and hospitalized for months, but had survived an accident that should have been fatal. How did he do it?

According to his doctor, who conferred with the EMTs that worked the scene, the driver had avoided fatal injury because he had apparently bench pressed the steering wheel at time of impact. They had found him slumped over with his hands still gripping the wheel.

....

Sometimes I go to the hardware store and think about this when I look at the hammers. Never know when you'll need a bigger hammer.

For some time now I've received questions from a few of you about blogging software/platforms. I tried my best to reply semi-coherently, but... Unfortunately, I am almost always busy or catching up on sleep (please contact me if you need a better excuse), so I know I've not been much help. I did point out helpful links where I could and I stumbled upon a very good one today:
An Overview of the Weblog Tools Market

It's a good place to start exploring from as the author has included pertinent links and presents a clear assessment of the weblogging tools market.

Update: If you were intimidated by the link above, check out this one first before going back:
What is Blogging?

6. Life is flowing like water through my fingers. Time running out... Must adopt harried writing style. Also sentence fragments. And abrvi8... No wait that's 13375p34K. So immature. Maybe I'll just clean up my act and post only about politics.
6a. Nah, fuck that.

7. Why is it still so hard to surf true-believer political blogs and not feel slightly depressed afterward? (I bring this up because I suspect it only gets worse with age.)
7a. And why do politicians giving speeches on TV still look so much better when Hollywood does it? Can't we get someone who sounds smarter than an actor on the fucking stage and in charge of really important shit that affects every aspect of our lives?

8. Car insurance gets cheaper in Japan when you turn 30. This is actually the second of two discount age levels for anything above legally required coverage. The first one is when you turn 26.
8a. Now this is not a huge amount of cash I'm talking about here, but with most people bitching at me to slow down (or to stop tailgating Porsche weenies who drive under the speed limit) all the time, it's nice for someone to finally acknowledge my spotless driving record. Monetarily. The ironic thing is that I need to get coverage for all ages anyway if Adam wants to drive my car when he moves out here (later this week, BTW).

9. On balmy summer nights, Astrocreep 2000 is still the undefeated champion of impulsive gas pedal stomping on moonlit stretches of open highway.
9a. No I'm not shitting you. White Zombie was a great band, and Astrocreep 2K was absolutely phenomenal, although a couple of their songs on that album got way overplayed. This is how MTV and hit charts poison good bands (can anybody say "Frogstomp?").

10. Mondays still suck, the people around me are still idiots, and in my ten year visit to this country, I have now sworn under my breath (in English so as not to be understood) at someone during a conversation approximately a hundred thousand million billion times.
10a. I've only been caught doing it a few times, once by a lady cop who was writing me up a bullshit parking ticket and apparently understood the words "fucking bitch." I'd never been so scared my whole life as when she replied in perfect English, "what did you just call me?", then called for backup.

1. Beer is still best served ice cold (amazingly, I had anticipated this one).

2. Your older friends weren't just joking the whole time, they really are happy you've joined their middle-aged ranks.

3. Guitar solos still sound better when you're wasted.
3a. People still call it Teenage Wasteland.

4. You still hate it when the pitifully drunk basket case comes to relate their newest tragedies.
4a. "...cause no one else cares"
4b. It's still too fucked up to reply, "Either do I"
4c. But it's still fun to fantasize about.

5. People still come to see what you're doing on the computer (in a bar for chrissake!) and because you don't want to even begin to try explaining what blogging is to the average drunk non-geek, you just tell them you're "reading mail."
5a. And perhaps you still suddenly feel very self-conscious and cut your post short.

As I spend the last hours of my youth at sea, on a ferry to Osaka to be precise, I can't help but think with much pride that I'M STILL IN MY TWENTIES!!!!!!!

MSDS. It stands for Material Safety Data Sheet, and those of you who don't already know what it is aren't missing out on much. An MSDS describes the chemical properties, hazards identification, first aid measures, accidental spill measures, storage and handling information, etcetera etcetera blahblahblahblah of a substance in uniformly boring detail (except the hand-scrawled ones from China, legal status of which is sometimes worrying, but which can be amusing from a "is there really a company called TIN DONG PLASTICS, Ltd.?" perspective). Anyway, when a new material is being evaluated for a product, the basic research starts with its MSDS to determine if it's suitable. Some of you working in shipping departments may know what an MSDS is since it must be included when shipping certain substances.

So I was reading one of these documents today for a kind of synthetic material (let's call it "Smaktophonium 57" for simplicity's sake) I had to research, and came across the following:

SKIN:
In studies on albino rabbits, Smaktophonium 57 copolymers caused moderate skin irritation. Molten polymer causes thermal burns.

EYES:
In studies on albino rabbits, Smaktophonium 57 copolymers were found to be transient, moderate eye irritants."

Yo! You in the white coat! Pass the visine already, fucker.

So how do I flash, "send up a hooker, two midgets, and a video camera?"

Yes, I'm at the Hard-on Hotel (that's really how it sounds when they pronounce it). My clients are at the nearby 4-star. Go figure.

Hey, I just got back to my Osaka business hotel from dinner with some clients. Like, right this second. And the first thing on my mind? "I haven't blogged forever - I think I'll write a post even before taking off my GodAwfulStanky socks. So obviously, I'm hammered. But then again, I'm in my twenties, so everything is good.

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a United States Air Force B-29 aircraft, dropped the "Little Boy" atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The city was leveled.

On August 6, 1974, another bomb was dropped:

Ouch like a motherfucker, y'all. Seriously.

Never thought this life would be such a blast, but you all have made it worth living and then some. Props.