Since rescuing Yoda the kitten last year, I have grown fonder of cats in general. We grew up with many cats as pets and we loved them as part of the family, but I never really liked other peoples cats or strays, of which my neighborhood in rural Japan is absolutely full (there are constantly between ten to fifteen strays on my street lined with only 20 or so houses). Cats, by nature, are selfish and pretty much endearing only to their owners - kind of like sports cars, except they are not especially benefitted by lugubrious waxing (I assume). What I'm trying to get at is that I'm cool with keeping cats as pets, but I can't stand "cat people." You know, the kind of people who keep 50 cats in their house and have to be dug out of caked up cat shit, hairballs, etc. by rescue teams after their neighbors complain about the smell for a few years straight. This is a kind of sickness in my book. Cat people were probably dogs in their past life, doing pennance in this one for all their past feline-chasing.

And there's always a cat person at work, isn't there? The lady with a cat-themed desk calendar, a closeup of a cat's face set as her desktop background, who seems to shed cat fur everywhere and, should her boyfriend (another cat person, natch) playfully slap her ass, would most definitely answer with a passionate meow. The thing is, I'm usually indifferent to this kind of shit. Doesn't faze me - cat people can be annoying, but they are generally nice and easy to please (just compliment the pictures of cats adorning their desk).

Today, however, I ran into a cat person who ruined my relationship with all cat people. The subject of our group conversation was a recent news item, how a driver in Shizuoka swerved to avoid hitting a cat and plowed into a line of nursery school children (story here). Standard reaction to this story, as you would expect, is that the driver is a dumbfuck. Or that maybe it was just his reflexes, reaction that caused it. Or that there were extenuating circumstances, etc., etc., etc.

What I did not expect was to hear was a stupid cat person defending the driver's actions, as in, "nobody was killed and the cat presumably survived, so it all worked out in the end." I was floored. I mean, you gotta be fucking kidding, right? Just do the math - 36 nursery school kids vs. one cat! Shit, even reverse that - 36 kittens vs. a single human being - and a normal person would opt to make kitty paste on the sidewalk every single time! No fucking question!

In the ensuing conversation, the cat person started to cry when I said she had no business driving a car. And since the cat person is a girl, her harpy friends all ganged up on me. Hey, I was just trying to drag her into the real world! They said, she is such a nice person, how could you scold her like that. And they called me a cat hater. Get your shit straight, you foul harpies. I am not a cat hater.

I am a cat-person hater. Meow that, bitches.

Has anyone else ever received extras in their shipment from Amazon? I ordered a couple of music CDs a while back and when they finally came a couple weeks ago in those new soft cardboard shipping sleeves that Amazon (JP) just started using, there were a couple of completely unrelated J-Pop CDs included in it (combined retail value: over 5,000 yen).

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Is god trying to make me like J-Pop?

Another huge Amazon annoyance is that half of the shit I ever order from them never comes through - first comes the e-mail that they are out of stock and the item is on backorder, then comes a message a month later that it is taking longer than expected. Finally, a few months after the initial order I receive a notice that the item is unobtainable and that Amazon is cancelling my order for it, sorry to have made you wait an entire fiscal quarter for the rest of the shit in the order, fuck you very much and have a nice day. I don't know if this is because my taste in books is fairly obscure (Sphinctral Polyp Rituals of the West Indies) or because Amazon are a bunch of incompetent fucks, but it is irritating as hell.

Damn you, Jeff Bezos!

Photos from last Sunday:

Nam with the gourmet catch of the day, a maruhagi (triggerfish).

Stephanie taking a hard day off from working the Gallic skies.

T-dog and Michelle serving it up raw.

A better photo of the spread.

Swimming to Catalina Island from the mainland is either stupid or insane, I can't decide which. I mean, there are GREAT WHITE SHARKS out there and he's worried about barracuda?

You will need a login/pass to view the LA Times article and video. Get it here.

An interview with Audioslave, just back from a huge concert in Havana is up at The Wave. Playing old Rage Against the Machine songs to 70,000 spectators sounds kinda like a recipe for revolution:

Township Rebellion
Rebel, rebel and yell
'Cause our people still dwell in hell
Locked in a cell
Yes, the structure's a cell
Mad is the story I tell
How long can we wait?
Come on, seein' what's at stake
Action for reaction
If your mind's in a somewhat complacent state
Get a check up
This is a stick up
Our freedom or your life
Lord, I wish I could be peacful
But there can be no sequel

Now freedom must be fundamental
In Johannesburg or South Central
On the mic, 'cause someone should tell 'em
To kick in the township rebellion

And as far as the Soundgarden covers go, how about this:

Gun
I got an idea of something we can
do with a gun
Sink load and fire till the empire
reaps what they've sown
Shoot shoot shoot till their minds
are open
Shoot shoot shoot till their eyes
are closed
Push push push till we
get some motion
Push push push till the
bombs explode

I got an idea of something
we can do with a gun

I wonder why they played such an uninspiring set... Maybe Fidel is just a big fan of "Bulls on Parade" and "Black Hole Sun" or something. Fucking bubblebum-pop commie bastard.

One of the primary reasons I stayed in Japan to work (instead of going back to the states) after graduating university was that I wanted to learn business Japanese. When I first came to this country, I was completely immersed in a Japanese environment, on my uncle's church out in Asuka Mura. It's in a very rural area. I saw other gaijin maybe once every couple weeks or so, usually they were visiting the ancient tombs for which the town is famous. So I went through some heavy culture shock and it was tough, but it helped prepare me for Japanese classes at Tenri University.

The Japanese studies program, which let you take mostly Japanese language classes/other assorted classes taught in English the first two years and then core classes in Japanese the last two years, allowed one to graduate with the equivalent of a BA (the program, in this format, no longer exists due to administration's pandering to students from China - no need to learn kanji from scratch, you see). So I studied out of class, usually just hanging around my pal T and his friends. Later I studied with my then-girfriend (now-wife) Nam, which is a funny story in itself - a Thai national teaching an American Japanese by default since neither spoke the other's native language - and later yet, by doing various part-time jobs. Bartending, construction, office work, city street work, sales work, ditch digging, cafeteria work, translation, teaching English, the long con, the short con, man-whoring at wholesale rates... ah, okay I think I've shared too much now but you get the picture. I learned a lot of my Japanese on the street, so to speak, and it turned something that I once considered near impossible into a reality. I was eventually very comfortable using a foreign language.

Since then, I've added to my language skills mainly by working here and plunging into as many new situations as possible, as well as by cultivating friendships with competent conversationalists (of whom, I am sorry to say, there is a general shortage of in this world, but especially in the serfdom of corporate Japan).

The point is, I kicked Japanese's ass, I mean really, thoroughly thrashed the shit out of it. It occasionally gets back up and puts up its dukes, but I just hammer away at it until it's sniveling like a little bitch in the corner again. I mean, in the world of language-boxing, I'm not the king or anything, but I am confident in my weight class...

Horrible analogy aside, I started writing this post because thinking about how I learned Japanese and how it made me feel in the early years has now got me thinking about Thai. Don't get me wrong, I'm up to the challenge and love learning languages, but I keep thinking about the down sides recently. You know, when you first start learning a new language, the learning curve is so steep - because you know nothing! There are many milestones in your pregression. Learning how to buy something in a store. Struggling to remember basic shit like numbers, money, time of day. Reaching a level of proficiency where you can understand what people say, but not being able to properly reply. Reaching another level, where you can fool people into thinking you're a native speaker just by using simple phrases, but being embarassed when you have to ask just what the fuck a certain word means.

The point is, mastering a language is very hard. I look forward to tackling the Thai language. In fact, I've already kind of started, practicing with my wife. But it is just so goddamn humbling learning a language from scratch. It's kind of a pain in the ass.

///

Someday, I hope my kids will thank me for making them learn three languages from the time they're born.

If Fox News Had Been Around Throughout History

"If you are near to this picture, Mr Angry is on the left and Mrs Calm is on the right. If you view it from a distance, they switch places!"

This is a pretty cool optical illusion. I just wish the faces could have been a bit easier to look at, but I guess attractiveness and androgeny are fairly mutually exclusive.

If you have a hard time seeing the illusion, there are better methods of viewing listed on the original site: LINK

(via linkfilter)

This is a well done fight sequence: LINK

Last Friday was a company holiday, so on Thursday night we had an enkai (drink-up) for the new guy at work. We went to a smoky yakiniku joint which was quite excellent, but all I could do was stare at the plastic toothpick holder on the table because I was trying not to think about work and whaddaya know, I was fucking surrounded by people from work, so I was actually quite lucky the toothpick holder was just so damn interesting...

In the world of the Japanese corporate drinkup, the meal is followed by drinking at a bar or "snack" (variations on this theme include karaoke, etc., but everybody knows not to fuck with my "never, ever" policy regarding karaoke) with scantily clothed hostesses ("hos" for short). Being newly married and having to patronize such a place posed a slight moral dilemma, but I am nothing if not a problem solver... I chose the place with the ugliest girls, I mean these girls were like modern day haguro (ladies of old with black-stained teeth) transplanted from Bumfuck, Kyushu, or something, so I wouldn't be tempted to look even the slightest bit at who was serving me, and instead concentrate on getting through the compulsory bottle of shitty whiskey as soon as humanly possible. And that is how I learned that the marketing team for Ballantine's must be passing around a big, fat dutchie (errr, on the right hand side) during their strategy sessions:

GO PLAY!... I would only have been more impressed with a "DRIVE HOME!", or, "OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY!", or maybe a nice recipe for a ROHYPNOL/WHISKEY FIZZ on the back label.

It's so cliche to talk shit about the new guy, but this one has basically started off on the wrong foot with me. First of all, he's a typical young cunt bragging about bitches and wine and women and beer, but I'll be damned if he wasn't nursing a CASSIS AND FUCKING ORANGE in a tall cocktail glass all night. And by "a" cassis and orange, I mean "one." He's one of those fuckers who insist they're on their fifth drink when it's quite obvious by the top layer of melted ice in their cocktail glass that they haven't drunk shit. And then who like fucking with people who really have been drinking when they get sloppy. Hey motherfucker! We EARNED the fucking right to be sloppy, bitch!

A while after that, we went to a sushi place I had never been to. I fell in love with the food there and despite my advanced level of inebriation, recognized this place as the Real Thing. Good Food, Good People, and fresh fish from local waters. The master and I hit it off instantly. I told him to keep the whole counter open for me on Saturday night, I'd bring in some friends. I also reserved the biggest maruhagi (type of triggerfish; sometimes called a "leatherjacket") in the fish tank. I stared him down as he looked at me through pursed lips, fins aflutter. "You are miiiine," I said. Eat up, fishy, put on more weight. Your day is a-coming.

That was how the weekend started.

///

Friday, Gatson called me up to ask for a ride to the high speed boat terminal near my house. He was taking a ten day trip back home to Oregon with his wife, baby, and in-laws in tow. So I took a shower and brushed my teeth three times, then went over to pick them up. Gatson's wife, Chie, was in that paranoid did-I-lock-all-the-doors-and-shut-off-everything mode, which I was admittedly only making worse by asking "did you remember to lock the upstairs windows?" and "what about the gas line?" every five minutes, all the way to the boat terminal. She was kind of stressing out about taking her elderly parents overseas for the first time; they had called asking if "six bottles of water are enough for the plane ride" the night before, so I guess she was justified. Little Sona-chan was an angel who slept the whole way after her initial "bursting into tears when seeing four-eyed Justin" routine, so that was good.

Anyway, we got to the Sumoto High Speed Boat Terminal and I found this absolute gem taped to the stall above the floor toilet:

Even though this is only funny to English speakers, it is not as funny when explained in English, but I will try. The intended meaning in Japanese is, "Return lever to upward position after flushing." However, since the Japanese isn't written very well as well as the fact that they use the originally foreign word "cock" in place of "lever," the sentence could also read "Slide your cock back up when you're done using it."

Shit, some things just don't carry over from one language to another. Toilet humor, though, is usually universal. I guess the exception may be written toilet humor.

///

Saturday night, some friends came out from the mainland. My brother Adam and my homeboy T. Stephanie from Mimizan (Air France stewardess). Michelle from Scarsborough, Canada (living a floor below Adam in Juso). We went to aforementioned sushi place and ate like starving cats from a goldfish tank. It was soooooooooooooooooooo good. The signature dish there is only made for special customers. I am special. We had several signature dishes, the nature of which I will not reveal at this time as words can only sully what I like to think of as "perfect heaven on a plate." I mean, seriously. I have been to $700 sushi dinners with gold-flake toppings and endangered Indochinese goby eggs, but this new creation is THE BEST SUSHI I HAVE EVER EATEN, BAR NONE. And that is coming from a fish snob.

I will only be here on the island until some time next year, so here is an open invitation: Come to Sumoto. I will take you to eat the signature dishes. You will not regret it.

That's the master holding down the fish I reserved earlier in the week, plus an identical friend.

There are two main types of triggerfish eaten in Japan, the maruhagi and the kawahagi. The maruhagi, as the name implies (many Japanese boats, including ones that are gutted when an American Navy submarine surfaces underneath them, are dubbed the "something maru", but "maru" in this context just means circle), are rounder than kawahagi. In Kansai, they are both simply called hage, even though they are distincly different species (Kansai people could care less about etymology, they only care if something tastes good or not). When the maruhagi are in season, the kawahagi are not, and vice-versa.

Preparing a hage (pronounced "ha-gay") to eat is a bit of a bitch - there's a special cutting technique involved, plus it needs to be skinned. The master was a stud, though. He got more sashimi off of those fish than I would have imagined possible. The texture of this fish is a bit rubbery, but in a good way. The flesh resembles that of a fugu, but is more tasty in my opinion. It is also delicious when steamed, but it would have been a waste to eat such fresh fish that way. The surprising thing about this fish is not its flesh, though. The liver of this fish is dipped in ponzu and eaten raw. It is the creamiest, most naturally sweet flavor you can possibly imagine. You would never think that it is part of a fish you are eating, nor would you think it is liver. More like ambrosia.

But the fish pr0n doesn't stop there.

The best mackerel I have ever eaten - a whole filet arranged as a giant futomaki. I should have taken my real camera for some close-ups, then you could have seen the perfect striping of the filet. I associate mackerel with a stinky, nasty, fishy stench and flavor, but there was not a trace of that in this fish.

In addition to the above, we had fresh aji, shima aji, tai, ika, maguro, and an awesome akadashi (red miso soup w/fish). The shop's master procures all ingredients including garnishes, soy sauce, and rice from this island, and swears by the quality of everything produced locally. How very trendily regional that may seem to those who care about such things, but like I said, what matters in Kansai is that it tastes good. And it does.

///

Sunday, we went fishing down at the port. I had seen some big fish under one of the boats moored in the harbor when I dropped off Gatson and his family on Thursday, so we returned to that spot. We took many photos with a real camera, so I will continue this story later, but it bears saying that the girls totally outfished the guys. Except for a pitifully small rockfish that T snagged and maybe something Adam caught but that I have no memory of, we (and especially I) were skunked - and yet it was a lot of fun.

More later.

Agnes Allen's Law: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

Army Laws: If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, pick it up. If you can't pick it up, paint it.

Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.

Bartz's Law of Hokey Horsepuckery: The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success.

Baruch's Rule for Determining Old Age: Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.

Basic Law of Construction: Cut it large and kick it into place.

Becker's Law: It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.

Benchley's Law: Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Berra's Law: You can observe a lot just by watching.

Bicycle Law: All bicycles weigh 50 pounds: A 30-pound bicycle needs a 20-pound lock and chain. A 40-pound bicycle needs a 10-pound lock and chain. A 50-pound bicycle needs no lock or chain.

Boling's Postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.

Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Boren's Laws of the Bureaucracy: 1. When in doubt, mumble. 2. When in trouble, delegate. 3. When in charge, ponder.

Borstelmann's Rule: If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.

Bralek's Rule for Success: Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you do when things go wrong.

Brien's First Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.

Cannon's Comment: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool MOM.

Cardinal Conundrum: An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is true.

Character and Appearance Law: People don't change; they only become more so.

Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea -- in Science, Politics, Art or Whatever -- evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the three phrases: 1. "It is completely impossible -- don't waste my time." 2. "It is possible, but it is not worth doing." 3. "I said it was a good idea all along."

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Cleveland's Highway Law: Highways in the worst need of repair naturally have low traffic counts, which results in low priority for repair work.

Clyde's Law: If you have something to do, and you put it off long enough, chances are someone else will do it for you.

Cohen's Law of Wisdom: Wisdom is considered a sign of weakness by the powerful because a wise man can lead without power but only a powerful man can lead without wisdom.

Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Colvard's Logical Premise: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen, or it won't.

Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology: 1. No action is without side-effects. 2. Nothing ever goes away. 3. There is no free lunch.

Cooper's Law: All machines are amplifiers.

Dieter's Law: The food that tastes the best has the highest number of calories.

Displaced Hassle Principle: To beat the bureaucracy, make your problem their problem.

Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough, you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.

Dykstra's Law: Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

Edelstein's Advice: Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.

Ehrlich's Rule: The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

Ettorre's Observation: The other line moves faster. Corollary: Don't try to change lines. The other line -- the one you were in originally -- will then move faster.

Farber's Third Law: We're all going down the same road in different directions

Finagle's Laws of Information: 1. The information you have is not what you want. 2. The information you want is not what you need. 3. The information you need is not what you can obtain. 4. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.

Finnigan's Law: The farther away the future is, the better it looks.

//

This one, of course, is from osaka bill (we are now looking for syndication in Romania and Latvia; drop me a line if you are interested and non-mafia)

Go create a police sketch of your own.

When I was a kid I used to make miniature gladiator rings in my backyard by digging a ring in the hard-packed dirt and filling it with water, so the gladiators inside the ring could not escape. The gladiators, of course, were ants, because ants are just badass. I used to hold these fights between red ants and black ants, in a ratio of about 10:1 because the red ants were so much bigger and stronger. The black ants basically acted like a bunch of sissies until the red ants started tearing them apart - then the group mind thing would kick in, and the black ants would swarm the red ones all at once, throwing themselves on their much larger and aggressive attackers.

The red ants could bite the black ones in half when they could get a hold of them, but the black ones would ride on their backs, out of reach. Pretty soon there would be a stalemate because the red ants didn't try to help each other out. Which is where the Beam of Death (via my trusty plastic magnifying glass) and Ring of Fire (lighter fluid in the "moat") came into play. The creed of the Ring of Fire was of course that All Must Die. All Must Be Purified with Fire (spoken, you will note, like a true pyro).

Back then, the concept of karma was still pretty much unknown to me. But it still felt wrong, somehow. Not as wrong as watching my friends shoot songbirds off of telephone wires with BB guns. Nor as wrong as the time this guy I was walking to the bus stop with threw a big rock at a horse, hitting it square in the chest, and stating afterward, simply, "fucking horses," but still - wrong on some inexplicable yet instinctive level...

It is interesting that I wrote this post with a completely different ending in mind, but fitting that it shall should end like this.

What do you get when you cross South Park with Big Trouble in Little China?

Big Trouble in Little South Park, of course!

Long live the Porkchop Express!

This is straight out of Star Trek, right? The one that featured the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I believe.

Some pictures of the capoeira meet we saw this weekend:

Click on the photos to see larger versions in a pop-up window.

If you liked these, there's many, many more I posted here.

Possibly the best cover of Baby Got Back (I hate that fucking song) ever made:

Thing a Week 5 - Baby Got Back

In the proud tradition of many white Americans who came before me I hereby steal and white-ify this thick and juicy piece of black culture. Watch for my album "Jonathan Coulton Sings Songs by Black People."

I think I like this version even better that Richard Cheese's. But RC's Man in the Box still reigns supreme.

A list of old TV show mp3s:
http://uglypc.ggh.org.uk/chrisb/old_tv/old_tv_mp3/

(via Kottke)

Yesterday Nam and I set out in the morning for a day in Osaka. My little brother has been studying capoeira with a group that practices in Shinsaibashi, and they were holding a west Japan tournament in Minatomachi. (My photos will hopefully be posted tonight.)

So we got to Osaka by utilizing the cheapest method available to individuals or small groups of people living on Awaji island for day trips to the mainland - the recently established one-day return ticket on the hydrofoil to KIX (2500 yen, including free parking).

We had lunch at Bombay Kitchen in Shinsaibashi (after all, God forgives sinners on the Sabbath as long as they eat at least two kinds of curry), and went to the capoeira tourney. I will leave my description of it to the photos I plan to post later, but overall it was pretty cool. There was a guy who was pulling flips and twists I would not have thought possible without using a wire. Anyways, that stuff comes later.

What I really want to get to is a conversation I had with my pal T, recently returned from Uzbekistan via Bangkok via Hong Kong. T has recently become bored with his incense importation/wholesaling and is curious to see how other people live. So he signed up with a temp agency and does temporary shit jobs just for kicks, even though he doesn't need the minimum wage paychecks. Very inverse-punk. Or something.

So the job he's doing today is at a kimchi factory near Tennoji. When I heard that, I told him it was his sacred duty to steal a vanful of rejected product from their dumpsters, but he declined. I guess middle age does that to you. So I settled for an employee discount that he mailed me about and will soon be the literal consumer of 1.2 kilos of kimchi for 1,000 yen (ten bucks). Awesome.

The best thing, though is the e-mail he just sent me to my cellphone. We had been ribbing him all yesterday about how much he was going to smell, how the garlicky tang of fresh kimchi is like Brut to Korean chicks, and how he should go to try hooking up in Tsuruhashi after work, etc. As it turns out, his biggest challenge is lunch in the factory cafeteria:

"I AM IN THE KIMCHI WORLD NOW、 A FUCKINGGOOD OBACHAN PUT A HUGE AMOUNT OF KIMCHI ON MY RICE. I CAN'T EAT ALL THIS SHIT BUT I SAID THANK YOU ANYWAY".

Fucking priceless, I tell you.

When I quit working in Osaka five years ago, this would have been my dream job:

//////

As the worldwide leader and innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co. Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home video game systems. The systems include Game Boy?, Nintendo? 64, Game Boy Advance and the NINTENDO GAMECUBE. Since the release of its first home video game system in 1985, Nintendo has sold more than 1.4 billion video games worldwide, creating enduring industry icons such as Mario and Donkey Kong and launching such franchises as Zelda and Pokemon. As a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo's operations in the Western Hemisphere.
We are looking to fill 6 Contract Bilingual Technical Writer/Translator positions.

Description of Duties
- Coordinates the production and distribution of technical documentation related to manufacturing, repair, and quality control of Nintendo products
- Translates/localizes manufacturing engineering and quality control documentation issued by the parent company and other technicaldocumentation
- Coordinates document project priorities and scheduling
- Assigns and archives localized documentation in the document control system (AGILE)
- Maintains the accuracy and quality of technical documentation localized from Japanese to English
- Researches and formulates technical information for publication
- Coordinates translation activities
- Initiates new publishing and localization procedures that improve current practices
- Supports other technical writing, translation, and localization projects as required
- Provides assistance on quality control and manufacturing engineering projects

Qualifications
- 3-5 years translation experience
- Written and verbal fluency in Japanese and English
- Excellent writing skills
- In-depth knowledge of Japanese and English, grammar, spelling and punctuation
- Ability to ascertain and formulate the information needed to complete localization of technical publications and content required to support English/Japanese and Japanese/English translations
- Excellent organizational and project management skills
- Ability to work independently with minimal supervision
- Experience using various document publishing software (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Visio, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator)
- Familiarity with Agile CM
- Experience in a technical environment is desirable

Education
- Undergraduate degree in English/Business or equivalent
** Applications and resumes will only be accepted through Nintendo's website at http://www.nintendo.com/corp/jobs.jsp as we no longer accept paper, faxed, or emailed resumes.

/////

Luckily, I found another one, pink shirts be damned. I wonder what Nintendo company uniforms look like, though. I'm guessing something like this:

Holy...

clicky, clicky

Update: I didn't realize that you need a login for that page. Go get one here.

See Dick run.

Run, Dick, run.

See Dick catch the the Chinese government official press agency Xinhua photoshopping astronaut photos.

Run, Dick, run.

For those of you coming to our wedding in Thailand, we will be hiring a couple of masseuses to stay at the hotel and treat all of our guests to muscle-kneading nirvana. Why masseuses as opposed to male masseurs?

Well, obviously, first this is because I'm a guy and I have a sausage-snatching-by-other-men phobia, but this is kind of beside the point, because the masseuses I intend to employ are old women. In fact, the one who we have already confirmed is an old, blind woman - so I know she rocks without even having met her. You see, I have had a variety of massages here and there over the years. They have been performed by males and females, young and old. The best massages I have ever had were all done by old women. Add to that fact the heightened physical awareness presumably caused by blindness, and you have the recipe for really being made an old woman's bitch on the massage table - I can't wait! How about you?

Coincidentally, I'm currently in the process of downloading all 25 of the original Zatoichi movies.

Katsu Shintaro was the fucking man!

I think I stumbled onto the riciest of them all - a virtual kingdom of kome.

Go check it out: 20050116 Tokyo Auto Salon 02

This is pretty funny: Top 15 Biblical Way to Acquire a Wife

My favorites:

- Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she's yours.
(Deuteronomy 21:11-13)

- Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock.
Moses (Exodus 2:16-21)

- Cut off 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law's enemies and get his daughter for a wife.
David (I Samuel 18:27)

- Become the emperor of a huge nation and hold a beauty contest.
Xerxes or Ahasuerus (Esther 2:3-4)

And I'm sure my pal T would agree:
- Don't be so picky. Make up for quality with quantity.
Solomon (1 Kings 11:1-3)

As promised...

The thing is, Kitty looks pretty good in it! Dammit Kitty, why are you always trying to contradict me!

The only other red-collared jacket I've seen recently was in a UK movie called The Business - a story based in the early 1980's.

I received the jacket part of my company's uniform this week. Oh my gay. Photos are of course forthcoming, possibly tonight.

It depends on if Hello Kitty is in the mood for modeling when I get home.

In this photo provided by the Everglades National Park, the carcass of a six-foot American alligator is shown protruding from the mid-section of a 13-foot Burmese python Monday, Sept. 26, 2005 in Everglades National Park, Fla., after the snake apparently swallowed the alligator resulting in the deaths of both animals.

LINK

Holy shit.

In Thailand, you can apparently rent an elephant for around $30 a day.

I assume I need to feed them a couple hundred pounds of monkeys or whatever they eat a day, as well, but still...

I might just rent one for everybody so we can play bumpercars or something.

FAQ: How many men does it take to open a beer?
Answer: None. It should be opened when she brings it.

FAQ: Why is a Laundromat a really bad place to pick up a woman?
Answer: Because a woman who can't even afford a washing machine will probably never be able to support you.

FAQ: Why do women have smaller feet than men?
Answer: It's one of those "evolutionary things" that allows them to stand closer to the kitchen sink.

FAQ: How do you know when a woman is about to say something smart?
Answer: When she starts a sentence with "A man once told me..."

FAQ: How do you fix a woman's watch?
Answer: You don't. There is a clock on the oven.

FAQ: Why do men fart more than women?
Answer: Because women can't shut up long enough to build up the required pressure.

FAQ: If your dog is barking at the back door and your wife is yelling at the front door, who do you let in first?
Answer: The dog, of course. He'll shut up once you let him in.

FAQ: What's worse than a Male Chauvinist Pig?
Answer: A woman who won't do what she's told.

FAQ: I married a Miss Right.
Answer: I just didn't know her first name was Always.

FAQ: Why do men die before their wives?
Answer: They want to.

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

(many thx to Osaka bill whose previous contribution, 25 SIGNS YOU HAVE GROWN UP, was linked/used extensively, then was eventually translated into French and spread even further.)

So our wedding is set for February 18th, in Nam's hometown of Mahasarakham, Thailand. We will perform a traditional Thai wedding ceremony in the morning, to be followed by the reception at a nearby hotel in the evening. We are trying to arrange as much as possible by ourselves, because neither Marty Sheen nor Jenny Lopez are available to be my wedding planner, although they say they might drop by for the reception, if schedules permit.

The morning procession consists of me and my entourage (cuz ahma gaaaaangsta) walking in a procession from one end of town to our new house. This is all I know from my limited research on the subject. In my mind, this means being led by monks all a-flutter and playing what I can only imagine as being traditional Thai wedding music, which is nice but kind of not spicy enough for my tastes.

So I proposed some improvements to Nam, including, but not limited to: A procession of elephants joined snout-to-tail with me riding the one in front and wearing a turban and gold armbands and a big Bollywood moustache (syn: mustache). The elephant behind me will be mounted with speaker towers from which will be blasting tunes of my choosing controlled from the crossfader on my pachyderm mixing table. The elephant behind that will be hauling the amplifiers and generators (ah, scratch that I need another beast behind that one to separate the electronics from the power source), and the elephants behind that will be hauling beer coolers. Of course, all the elephant handlers have to be midgets.

To which my beloved bride exclaimed, "I can't believe we're married, you freak!"

So I know I'm on the right track...

It nailed me spot-on. Go take it:

PERSONALITY TEST

Just thought this was funny...

Let's get funky now:

Jonzun Crew 1983

Sing along to this trancelike animation and purge some of that office angst:

Low Morale: Radiohead de Creep

And now in the continuing saga of America... Fuck Yeah!, we proudly present:

Topic: Terorists (sic) makng (sic) fun of DPRK and Dear Leader!

Just a few of the gems posted so far:

- "I stand with Comrade Kwango in saying that these are bastards. They should be found and smited good for their aggressions against the people of the DPRK and Generalissimo Kim Jong Il."

- "and comrades, not to forget: Kim Jong Il is really NOT a lonely man, he?s the father of the whole korean nation!!! Long live Kim Jong Il !!!"

- "Pizza cook man said that Dear Leader covort with Japanese women and burn 100 dollar notes lighting cigars like some capitalist evil one."

It is three in the morning, and the port of Osaka is alive with the sound of street races.

The crowd is sparse for a Saturday night, perhaps because of the rumor of a police raid. As with all the other recent crackdowns, they will round up any spectators as well as racers, and accuse everyone of racing. This may seem ironic since most of the spectators show up in normal cars and minivans, a stark contrast with the ultra-customized rice rockets tearing up the race strip, but Japanese cops have the art of coercion down well - most innocent people will sooner confess to a misdemeanor and pay a fine rather than spend a night in a holding cell, no matter how cozy they may be (holding cells in Japan are reportedly clean and sometimes even carpeted).

For now though, there is no police presence and chaos reigns on the strip. The strip is a kilometer long, starting at the end of the shipping docks, leading through the security gate (which somebody has slid open and disabled) down to a four way intersection that has been turned into an ad-hoc drift pad. The racers start at the intersection, race to the end of the docks, tug on their parking brakes for a quick 180, race back to the intersection and pull long drifting turns right. Tonight is more of a practice night for local racing gangs, so there is no defined finish line. There are also no spotters or safety precautions in place like there would be for a competition, which is why we almost died coming here...

We had been driving around the area in T's jeep looking for something to do when a white Toyota Crown came out of nowhere and almost fishboned us, then took off toward the (then) new ATC building. We followed, intending to pull the fools from the car and lay down the hurt, when we came upon the races. Intrigued, we parked a ways away and walked toward the sound of revving engines and squealing tires.

When we got there, the Crown we had followed was just lining up for a start. It took off down the docks, did an impressive 180 for a big sedan, and came back our way. As it turned right at the intersection, the front tire failed and it slammed into the guardrail at high speed, sending showers of sparks in the air and ripping off a door panel. Impressive performance, even though the Crown was the only normal car being raced that night. It stood out from the crowd of flashy RX-7s, riced-out GTOs, and elite hakogata Skylines, much as we college students did from the hardcore drivers observing from the sidelines.

We stood behind the guardrails, sipping on warm cans of cheap imported beer (Belgen Brau, around 160 yen at Lawson compared to cans of Kirin/Asahi at 250; these were the days before the happoshu boom) to wash the scent of burnt rubber and brakes down, and the cops never came.

It was one of the coolest nights I had ever spent in Japan, and we were eager to return at some point in the future, when we could afford the gas money and tolls from Nara again. Alas, it was not to be. T took some girl on a date to the ATC building a couple months later, and they happened upon a horrific sight - a man who had just hung himself and was dangling on the outside of the building. T swore never to return to that area, and the police cracked down on the races in that area hard, so they ceased to exist.

///

Related link: Osaka Stories (part 1 of ???)

I should note that Part 1 has become quite a popular link in the blogosphere, for all the wrong reasons. Some shithead comment spammer included a link for that page in his spams, presumably in an attempt to pollute blacklists with innocent domains. Take a look at the comments for that thread - it just ain't right.