Now I know why I feel as if my brain was leaking out through the nostrils and my joints were made of hot rubber. But how come, I ask! I'm no tyrant nor dictator.
Et tu, mucus, contra me?
Et tu, mucus, contra me?
2011-03-15
2011-03-14
Be careful what you wish for
Some/all of You may find this offensive, but there's one thing about this whole earthquake/tsunami affair I find very amusing in a somewhat morbid way. Namely the fact, that after, lets say roughly, two or three generations of kids/teenagers had been digesting pop-culture works by authors who fantasize about future Japan as a country either in the midst, or in the aftermath of some nationwide calamity (be it natural disaster, alien invasion, or whatnot), such a calamity finally happens. I am aware that depicting such versions of the future was to some extent a method for dealing with the trauma of nuclear bombings and postwar destruction (e.g. "Godzilla"). However, I can't help but smirk and think that they finally got their wish.
2011-03-06
Charlie don't surf, Machette don't text...
...and those majoring Japanese studies don't (usually) sing. Unfortunately art-history ones do. Or some of them. They even have an annual event. Which I happened to attend last Tuesday, not knowing what I had gotten into. Think: the winners of a deathmatch between "Idol" and "Mam talent" casting dropouts. There were moments when I just sat there and cringed, face frozen into a mask of disbelief, wondering if that what I had been hearing and seeing (as the visual input was just as absurd as the aural) was real. Singing that bad is an art in itself. I mean usually one can easily gauge one's abilities. Not those guys. It was just like watching some play where the denizens of Tone-deafistan were hypnotized into thinking each and every one of them is a goddamn Pavarotti. Don't remember when I last had this much fun.
2011-03-02
A matter of distaste
Some people wouldn't know a good illustration if it smacked them in the face with a shovel.
The old switcheroo
While wordpress may have been innovative 3 years ago now it's more like a lazy herbivore sitting on a rock and napping in the sun. Complacent. Greedy. I mean making users pay for custom css templates or the ability to implement 3rd party stats??? Tsk, tsk. Now I can't be having with that sort of thing. Also, I'm considering switching to Opera or IE (Chrome is out of the question - see: never put all your eggs in one basket; as is Safari: I just don't fucking like Apple.) as it seems that the same malady that struck my former blogging platform plagues my current browser. And the argument of an indispensable extension is no longer valid, as nowadays I usually query either this or an offline dictionary. So out with the old, in with the new.
2011-02-28
2011-02-23
Wintermute
The bitch is back... Perhaps name calling is a bit out of line here, but my attitude towards the present time of year has always been a borderline mix between aesthetic awe and physical loathing. Well, maybe not always, but times when I was a kid and the only reasons for going outside in winter were to build a snowman/mock igloo, go sleighing or some such don't count anymore.
I stood smoking in the kitchen yesterday. As icy tendrils of air seeping in from the outside kept brushing against my skin, I watched twin reflections of the sun from some adjacent windows of a building in the distance. As the light waned it turned bloodorange, then seeping into the red of festival lanterns. Such a distinct, striking color. Same as that pale, cool shade of green smack in the middle between the blues and the reds just over the twilight horizon. Unmistakable. Most prominent in the winter months. Standing there, wisps of smoke slowly sucked out of the room, just for a moment I felt completely at peace. All the everyday bellyaches and frustrations frozen off and bled away by the fading light. Near ataraxia. Moments like that really balance the books. Trudging on errands while the frigid wind bites under a monochrome overcast sky doesn't seem as bothersome for a while. The only drawback is that they're so rare. Sometimes I think that gray skies are this countries major affliction from which everything else stems.
I woke today after a dream of being Dustin Hoffman trying (successfully) to blow up some kind of mine. Escaping at the last moment through an underground river I turned back into myself only to surface in some indoor swimming pool, where I was a participant in the annual inter-department university championship of synchronized swimming with dolphins. There's nothing like waking up at 6:30 to a world already on the brink of dawn instead in the midst of night like just a month ago. It's bright and crisp outside. There remains only one thing to do. Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
I stood smoking in the kitchen yesterday. As icy tendrils of air seeping in from the outside kept brushing against my skin, I watched twin reflections of the sun from some adjacent windows of a building in the distance. As the light waned it turned bloodorange, then seeping into the red of festival lanterns. Such a distinct, striking color. Same as that pale, cool shade of green smack in the middle between the blues and the reds just over the twilight horizon. Unmistakable. Most prominent in the winter months. Standing there, wisps of smoke slowly sucked out of the room, just for a moment I felt completely at peace. All the everyday bellyaches and frustrations frozen off and bled away by the fading light. Near ataraxia. Moments like that really balance the books. Trudging on errands while the frigid wind bites under a monochrome overcast sky doesn't seem as bothersome for a while. The only drawback is that they're so rare. Sometimes I think that gray skies are this countries major affliction from which everything else stems.
I woke today after a dream of being Dustin Hoffman trying (successfully) to blow up some kind of mine. Escaping at the last moment through an underground river I turned back into myself only to surface in some indoor swimming pool, where I was a participant in the annual inter-department university championship of synchronized swimming with dolphins. There's nothing like waking up at 6:30 to a world already on the brink of dawn instead in the midst of night like just a month ago. It's bright and crisp outside. There remains only one thing to do. Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
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