Hot. Lunch. No batteries. Ennui.

I designed a logo today, and it is totally cool. (No word yet on whether or not it will actually be used, but it is cool, I tell you.)

It's really hot today. I took off my overshirt and shoes to eat lunch under the canopy at the mini-stage at Riverwalk. While I was there, a huge group of children came by, and then that group of regular exercisers arrived to do their leg lifts. I managed somehow to not get kicked in the head.

When I finished eating, I walked around taking pictures for awhile. Unfortunately, I ran out of batteries rather quickly, so I couldn't take pictures of all the pretty flowers I kept seeing. I was obsessed with this weird bird--I guess it was some kind of duck, all black with a short white bill--and I used the digital zoom to get pictures of it, and that chewed right through the AAs.

Alas.

I headed up to Broad Street to see if I could find some batteries, to no avail. At that point I lost the desire to explore any further (it's so hot), so I ended up coming back to the office a little early.

Is it just me, or is it extraordinarily irritating to have to stay in one place (that isn't your home) for eight hours? Nine when you add in the lunch. I mean, come on. I want to be going places if I'm not at home.

What's really important

I found this on Snopes today. It's one of those things you might get in an email forward from your mom. But it's one of the good ones.

You don't actually have to take the quiz. Just read this straight through and you'll get the point. It is trying to make an awesome point!

Here's the first quiz:

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America contest.

4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The facts are, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

6. Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.

A timely tee

Buy it at Threadless.

I just had the worst epiphany ever

Ever since I was a teenager, I have looked forward to my 30s and 40s. I always thought that would be the best time of my life. By then I would understand who I was, and I would be settled into my life. (I also assumed I would be married and have kids. No problem on the first one; so much for the second one. But I digress.)

I didn't spend much time thinking about the meantime, but I guess I assumed I would get all the "exploring" out of the way, get all that "figuring stuff out" done so I could relax.

I'm twenty-seven years old. I've barely explored anywhere, and I haven't figured out anything!

What am I doing with my life? Why am I sitting around in my underwear reading blogs and watching MacGyver at 4 in the freaking afternoon?

I may be somewhat "trapped" by our current lack of funds, but that doesn't mean I can't do anything! It just means I have to try harder to make the things I want to do work out.

But instead, I've just been sitting around whining and wishing.

I'm going to run out of "exploring" time before I've actually done anything!

Blogging is not the end-all communications solution

Peter Ejtel came by and posted a comment on my entry "The "blogger market"; plus, a question for my readers". He clarified his position with Tucows and then went on to ramble about the current "revolution" (there's always a revolution, isn't there?).

I posted a reply that you might find interesting. In it I was finally able to quantify the reasons why blogging is troubling to me as a medium.

HAHAHAHA

Mercenary Girl just did a flying side-kick out the eighth story window...! Nice going, spaz ;D

Or maybe it was more like "Hehn"...

MacGyver: I thought you were leaving.
Mercenary Girl: Couldn't run the risk that you'd find the device and disarm it.
MacGyver: Oh, yeah, you think I can do that?
Mercenary Girl: Don't be modest. Everybody knows MacGyver's MacGyver.
MacGyver (shrugging modestly): Eh.

Feelings of helplessness reflected in a dream?

Last night I dreamed I was part of some sort of roleplay. (As is usual in my roleplay dreams, everything was a LARP. I guess that's because dreams are so visual...)

I had chosen to be the ship captain, but nobody would do what I said. I kept running around the deck yelling at the crew to hurry up and do the things that needed to get done, but they all ignored me. Eventually, AJ, who was the GM, pulled me aside and asked me why I had to be the captain. I said it was because I liked being in charge and having my decisions make a difference. He then suggested I could be a monkey in a cage belonging to one of the other characters. I asked him how in the world that would allow my decisions to carry weight in the game, and he said, "I'll make sure you have influence."

I wasn't buying it.

BTW, today's PvP? Awesome.

Player versus Player, now with 50% more Jesus of Nazareth.

Tycho is my hero

Look at what he posted yesterday:

I Have Invented A New Word

Mon, June 27 2005 - 4:00 PM
by: Tycho

That words is lexiconnoisseur.

It describes the sort of person who would make up a word like that and then tell everyone about it.

(CW)TB

:D :D :D :D :D

Matsuda-san, you moron...!

Just watched Yawara episode 32.

Man...he totally screwed himself over. "I want to write a great article about it," indeed!

Well, I've been pulling for Matsuda and Yawara pretty much since the beginning, and I don't think this setback will stop them from getting together, but it is annoying to watch him shoot himself in the foot!

OMG...*drool*

Pizza Hut's 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza is soooooooooooooooo gooooooooooooooooooood...

A new game...a new era

Forums are all about dogpiling on people, which is why I typically don't read them, but Hai linked me to a pretty funny thread, and here it is.

You only wish you had TrueFlava.

"Mind-blowing sex" is such a cliche

But, you know, I couldn't come up with anything else, because my mind was blown by the sex.

Apparently I have to list 10 hot celebrities

From Mari's blog.

Directions: List 10 celebrities that you find attractive (in no particular order) and then tag 5 of your friends.

Um. Okay. Hot celebs. Here we go...

1. Richard Dean Anderson
2. Ayumi Hamasaki [Edit 6:30 pm: Sorry Ayu, but I just remembered that Cillian Murphy is uberhawt.]
3. Angelina Jolie
4. Uma Thurman
5. Bruce Willis
6. Drew Barrymore
7. Halle Berry


Am I just in the wrong mood for this or something? Surely I find more people hot...let's see...


8. Famke Janssen


Umm...can I include people who used to be hot? Because if so,


9. Jennifer Aniston
10. Courteney Cox

Bleh, I'm feeling extraordinarily uninterested in my list. Maybe because I had mind-blowing sex with the hottest man on the planet last night...

Beer for the dead

I've been reading the Miyakonojo archives, and there is all kinds of good stuff in there, but I just came across this extraordinarily well crafted sentence (part of this post) and wanted to share it:

She always has exactly one can of beer each evening, like clockwork, always pouring about a third of it into a separate glass that goes to the butsudan so the spirits of those no longer with us can also catch a buzz.

Another Japan blog

Eventually my day will be nothing but reading Japan blogs. That day may not actually be too far off.

Today JP at Japundit linked to Miyakonojo, the blog of Miklos Fejer, an EFL teacher in Miyakonojo City, Miyazaki Prefecture.

(JP's post is hilarious, by the way; it includes the following: "Jack [Bauer] has been appearing in a Japanese TV commercial ... for Calorie Mate, a bland cookie that's packed with all the vitamins and minerals that a tough CTU operative needs to replenish energy used up by jumping out of helicopters as he barks into his cell phone.")

Miklos' blog is funny and interesting (as you might have expected), so I'm subscribing (as if you couldn't figure that out). Here's a memorable quote from a post about a headache:

A suppository.

"For a headache?" I asked. "It's not me arse that's the problem, it's me noggin'!"

Yeah, she says, it'll cure you right up.

But the look on my face told her I wasn't going for it.

"I'll do it for you," she says, patting me on the knee and giving me a reassuring look and then went back to her chicken.

I had many questions for her. Why do they make headache medicine in suppository form? Why did she have it on her? Why did she think I would be happier having her give it to me than doing my own self?

It reminded me of the time I ate that curry in Taipei and David London, the kind man that he is, bought me some "special" medicines which I had to politely decline, but the whole thing backfired on me when a doctor at the San Joaquin County Hospital decided to give me a rectal exam and then a nurse walked in mid-way and you don't want to know how that story ended and jeez for the love of God doesn't anybody have an aspirin?!

XD

Here's me being anal again

BoingBoing linked to a couple of articles about a monkey biting a drive-thru girl in Morehead, Kentucky. Only they spelled it Moorhead.

It seems like BoingBoing misspelled the name of another Kentucky city not too long ago, but I can't remember which. Either way, it's annoying. I mean, the correct spelling is right there, in both articles.

I don't think they are maliciously trying to make Kentucky seem unimportant by misspelling the names of its cities...but that's the result. It just seems like they don't think Kentucky is worthy of spell-checking. "Oh, well, no one knows where Moorhead is, anyway..."

[Update 4:37 pm: Hey! They fixed it! At approximately 2:16 pm, it would seem. Yay!]

A link from AJ

This is too funny not to share. A Raleigh messageboard took advantage of the snow day business closings submission procedure of its local news station and got some pretty bad stuff put on live TV! Here's somebody's blog post about it, and here's the original messageboard thread.

My favorite is the very first picture on the blog :D

I found another blog!

I read all my news through Bloglines, which occasionally will tell me if someone has linked to an article I'm reading. Joe Stump linked to that BoingBoing article I mentioned in the previous post; his hilarious and right-on-target commentary is right here.

This guy is pretty sharp and funny. I think I'll subscribe!

OMG evil censors think BoingBoing is PORN!

I'll give it to you in Cory Doctorow's conspiracy-theory martyr writing style:

Surfcontrol.com is a censorware site that blocks parts of the Internet that it considers to be offensive, of an adult nature, or "inappropriate" for some reason or another. They have currently listed this site as an "adult website." I just got off the phone with a manager at SurfControl, who assures me that they've corrected the error, but that it will take 24h for the fix to take hold. During that period, users of Surfcontrol's paying customers will be walled off from Boing Boing the same way that Chinese and Iranian citizens are prevented from seeing parts of the Internet due to the judgements of unaccountable authorities in those countries.

OH NOES! Somebody at Surfcontrol.com must have seen all those Xeni posts! Quick, let's pretend she doesn't post illicit, NSFW images all the freaking time. Yes, BoingBoing is as pure as the driven snow! I can't believe they got censored! Oh the humanity!

So who's the next TOM?

First it was Tom Hanks, and now it's Tom Cruise. Who's lined up to be the next Totally Overused Man?

Space fireworks

NASA's Deep Impact probe will (hopefully) smash into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, (hopefully) giving scientists their first glimpse of primordial space dust.

Grammier has likened it to standing in the middle of the road and being hit by a semi-truck going 23,000 mph - "you know, just bam!" The energy produced by the crash will be like detonating nearly 5 tons of TNT.

Man, I love NASA.

Something about the idea of cracking open an ancient comet to reveal the building blocks of the universe kind of puts me on edge, though. I'm sure there's a great science fiction story in there somewhere.

And who knows...maybe

This July, science fiction will become science fact.

Death-Comet

Starring Tom Cruise
Directed by Jerry Bruckheimer

"You know, just bam!"

Farewell to Tigger and Piglet

Voice of Winnie the Pooh's Tigger dies
Paul Winchell also created voice for 'The Smurfs'

John Fiedler, voice of Piglet, dies
Actor also starred in 'Bob Newhart Show'

Two (or maybe three, depending on your hyphen usage) words

Cat-ear spoilers.

Tee hee, you can see her boobie

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has signed off on an order to remove the blue drapes John Ashcroft had ordered to cover two "scantily-clad" statues at the Justice Department.

In the past, snagging a photo of the attorney general in front of the statues has been somewhat of a sport for photographers.

When former Attorney General Edwin Meese released a report on pornography in the 1980s, photographers dived to the floor to capture the image of him raising the report in the air, with the partially nude female statue behind him.

This is pretty hilarious. It's funny just how far some people go with their desire to remove sexuality from everyday life.

We should all go to the Asuka Onda Festival.

Back home again

Eight hour drive--successful!

I stopped at Grandma's on my way out of town, and she gave me one of Grandpa's Aubrey-Awbrey of Virginia and Kentucky books. I'm thinking of setting up a site for it someday. Grandma gave me permission to republish the material for non-profit purposes.

Again the drive provided ample time to think about plenty of things. This time I pondered that I always think about stopping at various sights along the way, but I hardly ever do. (The one time I did stop, to see Lost Sea, I didn't actually go into the attraction because it cost something like $15!) Today I thought that I should make a list of all the places I want to stop and visit, and then start doing them all one at a time.

Here are some of them, off the top of my head:

• Anything in Jellico (I just think the name "Jellico" is great)
• Renfro Valley
• The Smokies
• Lost Sea (for real this time)
• Cumberland Falls (I've actually been there, a decade ago...I want to go back)
• Colonel Sanders KFC Cafe and Museum (I drove past it once)
• Boonesborough (although I am confused as to whether or not that is actually "Fort Boonesboro", or just a town with that name...if it's the latter, then never mind)
• "Adult World" (it's this huge warehouse of adult products somewhere in Tennessee...seeing it cracks me up every time)
• Gatlinburg
• That outlet mall north of Atlanta
• Any of those places advertising boiled peanuts, homemade fudge, or (in Georgia) peaches and onions
• Downtown Atlanta (yes, someday I would like to actually stop there, instead of just driving through and rubbernecking)

That's about all I can think of right now. (And that's plenty, really.)

I also thought on my drive about the name "Conrad" for a boy. Then I thought, "Conrad Leonidas Meadows". Then I thought, "That child would have a hard life."

Then I thought, "I'm thinking about having kids again."

I noticed something interesting on my drive about my MuVo. When I have it on repeat/shuffle all, it will play lots of songs from folders that have lots of songs in them--often the same songs numerous times--but it completely leaves out folders with only a few songs in them. I literally couldn't hear anything from my "Kyou Kara Maou" and "Misc Anime" folders without changing the play mode to "Repeat Folder" (or "Normal") and then Skipping Folder to those directories. Weird.

(And yes, before you ask, I did sit there hitting "Next" over and over and over, waiting for one of those songs to come up. They never did.)

My second gas-up took place at a Chevron somewhere in Tennessee. Their prices were actually five cents higher than I'd been seeing elsewhere, but I didn't feel like going anywhere else. When I was finished, my car pulled its oh-so-cute "What? Start? I don't know how to do that" routine. I tried it over and over for a long time. When I finally glanced up at the station and thought about going in there for some help, I noticed that it was closed. (Tricky pay at the pump people!) I resigned myself to trying the car again and again until it finally started up. It always startles the hell out of me when it suddenly roars to life after doing nothing but clicking despondently.

I saw two notable billboards on the drive, and I didn't want to forget them so I actually used my MuVo to record myself briefly describing them. I'd upload the sound file, but it's really not all that interesting, so instead I'll just write what the billboards were.

The first one, just north of Atlanta, had a picture of the faces of Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong Il, and Saddam Hussein, with the headline: "News is important. Now more than ever."

I wonder what Mr. Kim would think of being lumped together with bin Laden and Hussein. I'm sure if he finds out about that billboard it will do nothing for our diplomatic relations with North Korea.

The second billboard was somewhere east of Atlanta. To get this one you must know that I had previously passed on the same highway a car dealership with a huge inflatable purple gorilla holding a car over his head. The billboard featured a screaming purple gorilla and the text, "The 05 chikins are here." I was perplexed until I noticed the cow mannequin, and then I laughed out loud. (Literally. And I pounded the steering wheel, too.) Go Chick-Fil-A!

Somewhere near (I think) Covington, Georgia, there was a huge car accident on the westbound side of I-20. Traffic was completely stopped; they weren't even letting one lane through. As I drove past I counted eight cars on tow trucks or along the side of the road surrounded by police cars. The line of traffic behind the pileup lasted for ages. Towards the front of the line, many people had their cars shut off and were walking around on the median. While I didn't get a picture of the aftermath of the actual accident or the front of the line, I did take a few of the rest of the line of cars. I also said aloud, sympathetically, "Sucks to be you."

Just give up, already

I made the (admittedly lame) comment to my mom today that if I had a daughter, she'd have to move to South America. (Because Mom moved from Illinois to Kentucky, and I moved from Kentucky to Georgia. We just keep going south. See? Ha, ha.)

Mom didn't laugh, or even tell me how stupid that joke was. Instead, she very seriously told me that I shouldn't focus my happiness on something that might not happen. She said she wants me to be happy. She may have even said that plenty of people are happy without children. I don't actually know. I can't remember exactly what she said. It's like my brain shut down when she said it, or started adding to what she was saying, or something.

I tried to say that I was getting over it, but that felt like a lie so I didn't say anything.

National Treasure

Just watched National Treasure with my brother and his wife (and ha! Now that statement isn't specific enough to let you know who I'm talking about! It was Ben and Manda).

What a great movie!

I'd heard good things about it, but you know me. Watch movies? Never.

It's not that I have anything against movies. Hell, I took two film courses in college. I just...never watch them. (And that includes many of the films I was supposed to watch for class.)

But anyway...this movie is fun. It's very fast-paced--you have to pay attention or you might miss the reasoning behind all the running around. But that's cool!

There's more to it than a simple treasure hunt, a lot more. There's a rival, a love interest, and family conflict. Plus there's a sidekick type guy who is absolutely hilarious--he gets most of the best lines. All the pieces fit together perfectly at all times. The movie is firing on all cylinders from the very beginning and simply does not let up until its highly satisfying conclusion.

I don't know (or care) if the story is plausible. It's done in such a way that I believed in it. And that is what makes for a good time at the movies :)

(Disclaimer: I started crying over a children's book called Big Brother, Little Brother today. It was just so sweet! "When Big Brother cries like this, who knows why? Little Brother."

(So, I'm a sap. Bear that in mind.)

Democracy in Japan

Part two of Ampontan's discussion of Japanese prime ministers, and Junichiro Koizumi in particular, is up. (Part one is here, and here's where I linked to it.) A tantalizing tidbit:

Has the prime minister of any other country chosen not to hold an election because his party was sure to be successful in that election? Yet that was exactly Koizumi's predicament.

The article has a fantastic conclusion, and this two-parter has made me simultaneously wish Koizumi wasn't stepping down next year, and understand why he's doing it.

It would seem, based on Ampontan's evaluation, that Koizumi simply loves democracy.

Japan's nuclear allergy

Yokosuka, Japan, site of a United States Navy base, is treating the 2008 decommissioning of the USS Kitty Hawk and its planned replacement with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier as a major issue in its current mayoral campaign. While all four candidates oppose a nuclear-powered carrier, none have actually come up with a way to keep one from being assigned to the base. (The typical strategy so far seems to be to petition Tokyo.)

Opposition to the nuclear carrier seems rooted in the nation's deep aversion to all things nuclear. Asahi provides this example of justification for the opinion that nuclear vessels are dangerous:

In July 1998, a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine called at Yokosuka and city officials said they detected abnormally high radioactivity in the water.

This sounds to me like the same pseudoscience fueling the campaign against the use of depleted uranium rounds, but I could be mistaken. Does anyone know if radiation has ever been shown to be higher in the waters around nuclear vessels?

Stupidity is the mother of innovation

I think this news story demonstrates both the low and the high end of human capability:

Arthur Richardson thought he'd pull a prank and pretend to swallow a friend's truck key. Unfortunately, Wednesday's prank backfired when Richardson plopped the key in his mouth and gravity took over.

Richardson went to a doctor Thursday, who X-rayed his stomach and got a clear picture of the key. The doctor said the key posed no danger, but Richardson's friend needed to use his truck.

So Richardson and his friend took the X-rays to a locksmith, who used the pictures to fashion a new key. And it worked in the truck.

Bravo.

Today's evocative phrase

Kevin (who does not have a blog or webpage, because he sucks) linked me to the blog of a friend of his, Jake Zigler, who is staying in Japan for a month. I've been enjoying reading about his trip this afternoon.

The writing here is not art, per se. He rambles, and there are grammatical and spelling errors, and the only organization seems to be chronological. This is fine, of course. I'm interested in the content and can therefore forgive a lack of polish.

But I was reminded that even the most haphazard writing can yield powerful prose. During the post describing his anxiety about suddenly being alone in a country where no one speaks English fluently, Jake writes the following:

I'm pretty sure I spelled Caucasian incorrectly and I felt like an idiot and it was in pen.

It's its own paragraph, following some general situational descriptions. And it works, profoundly.

It's short and simple. The lack of commas to separate the three independent clauses adds to the effect of feeling overwhelmed. Ending with "and it was in pen" is so much more powerful than starting with that fact; you get the mistake, you get the emotion, and then you get the "oh shit, he can't fix it, either".

Wonderfully executed.

Two interesting news stories

A guy passing himself off as a British spy swindled people out of their money for 10 years. He used his "earnings" to finance his James Bond lifestyle. Yahoo! has the story.

Meanwhile, the Leo Burnett advertising agency (for which my uncle once worked) has released the results of a survey of 2,000 men around the world, from which they discovered that men are more complex than advertising campaigns typically give them credit for. Also from Yahoo!.

Understanding Japanese prime ministers

Ampontan at Japundit has posted the first in a series about Japanese prime ministers.

You will not see an accurate assessment of Koizumi as prime minister for the simple reason that the pundits will base their judgements on the premise that Koizumi is a political leader in the way that term is understood in the West. He is not, and never has been. The Japanese political commentators should know better (and probably do, but their careers and self-esteem depend on pretending that Japan is run like the other industrialized countries), and few foreign journalists take the time to understand how the Japanese government works, much less try to explain it to their readers.

It would seem that Ampontan has stepped up to the plate!

This just doesn't seem right.

From MSNBC:

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses - even against their will - for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

Basically, the court said that it wasn't up to them to make the decision--that it was up to local governments. But it was a close vote.

I can see how it is problematic to let the federal government mandate how local properties are used, and I am of course a staunch supporter of the rights of local governments. I firmly believe that communities should be able to look out for their own needs as they see fit; blanket rulings by a federal body can be irrelevant or can hinder a community with its own unique needs. However, it seems to me that people's homes should be something sacred--that people should at least feel secure in their living arrangements. It just feels wrong that now a local government can decide to kick people out of their houses in order to put up a mall.

According to the article, Kentucky, along with South Carolina and six other states, has laws against "eminent domain when the economic purpose is not to eliminate blight". Georgia hasn't been definitive on the issue yet.

Rationalizing a paradox

From Hiroshima bomber expresses hope for a nuke-free world:

"I felt, the bomb was successful, the mission was successful, and the entire Manhattan Project was successful," he said. "And so we were going to end the war or significantly shorten the war. And that's what we were trying to do."

Kirk said that the feeling he had at that time hasn't changed in the 60 years since. He also answered a question many Japanese people have in mind; was it necessary to drop the bomb?

"Well, my personal feeling was that Japan was a beaten nation before we ever dropped the atomic bomb. Eighty-five percent of the industrial capacity of Japan was ruined before we ever dropped the bomb," he said. "A rational, knowledgeable people would have ended the war a long time before we ever dropped the bombs ... They wanted to fight the last big battle on the beaches."

Kirk then said that more people would have lost their lives if the bombs had not been used against Japan.

"No question about it. Even if there had not been an invasion, there would have been a lot more people (dead) as a result of not ending the war."

This is not a new opinion, obviously, but I wanted to establish that before I went on to quote the following:

Perhaps ironically, Kirk -- like many people around the world -- hopes the bomb will disappear from the globe.

"I think it should be abolished. I really do. But if we are going to have anybody that has an atomic bomb, then I want one more than anybody else," Kirk said.

I am having trouble with this basically because I share that opinion, and I tend to suspect my own opinions of being ill-informed. It also seems paradoxical to me to claim that the decision to nuke was the right one at the time, but that it will always be the wrong one in the future. That doesn't seem like a claim you can make. I guess you can argue that people didn't have all the information back then--maybe they thought it was just a big bomb, and didn't realize that with the explosion would come horrible radiation sickness. Assuming that was the case, then the previous argument can work. The decision was made without complete information. It was the best decision possible at the time. But now we know better. We know that there should always be another way.

Of course, I have no idea if the ignorance my rationalization requires was a reality for those who made the decision to use the bomb.

(I probably don't need to point out that the second part of Kirk's statement at the end of the article is problematic--as long as there are governments that share that opinion, there is zero chance of the bomb ever being "abolished".)

Biking trails in and around Augusta

The Augusta Chronicle has a feature about the area's apparently awesome biking trails. The feature could have been hmm, I don't know, longer, with further discussion of all the trails in the area, but heck...it is nice to see someone writing about biking.

Three minutes into the ride, I blindly followed Mrs. Allen down a hill that hooked to the left and led to a 20-foot-long, 2-foot-wide plank bridge that she easily traversed. The bridge spans a dried-out riverbed, which is fortunate because the ramp leading to it proved too steep, and when I turned left to regain my balance, over the edge I went.

Sounds like fun to me!

Click here to read "Hold on tight, and bring the bug spray" by Patrick Verel.

Something else to see in Japan

Ampontan at Japundit writes about the Asuka Onda Festival at the Asukaniimasu Shrine in Asuka-mura, Nara Prefecture.

The reason you'll never read about this festival in a newspaper is that the central event is the simulated performance of the sex act on stage in front of an audience.

Read the article for the full description of the festivities. Man. I have got to see this.

Fortunately, it's held on the first Sunday of February every year!

MIT. I still like to pretend I'll attend there someday.

Via the Divine Miss Em.

There were some interesting questions on there. I was somewhat horrified by my estimate of how much time each week I spend on blogs...

I want to go to Rits

Justin Klein's descriptions of his amazing experiences at Ritsumeikan University have really made me jealous. Today's especially. I really want to go.

Probably no way I can do it though.

Sticking around Kentucky for a few more days

I just called my internship people, and they told me to take as much time as I need.

They are really cool.

The day after

I woke up remembering how it felt to hold Gaila. I don't know what I dreamed about, but they weren't bad dreams.

When I got up, as usual, the first thing I did was sit down at my computer, check my downloads and read news. Dad had made fried potatoes and bacon and started on scrambled eggs with green onions. When the eggs were done, I poured myself some orange juice and sat down to enjoy breakfast with him. Mom, Hairy, and Mac got up and went outside. Like last night, Hairy had some trouble getting up the stairs on his way back in, but this time he made it.

Fox News is still talking about that girl who went missing in Aruba. Dad always has Fox News on, so we half-watched it while eating breakfast. When the weather came on, I noticed that their 3D graphic showed stars behind the Earth, and I wondered aloud whether or not the constellations were correct. Dad took that and ran with it: "It'll be a huge expose on MSNBC! Those constellations were in the wrong place, which proves that the map they were using was at least two days old!"

After breakfast, I came back to my computer to write this post and put up some links. So here they are:

Kenyan grandfather, 73, kills leopard with hands

Peasant farmer Daniel M'Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.

M'Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard's mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal's tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.

Remember how metal stuff was sticking out of guard rails in Japan, and they thought it was sabotage? Turns out it was just caused by cars crashing into the railings. Oddly, I actually thought of that recently--the 13th Street Bridge over the Savannah River has metal fragments sticking out of it in places that I have never been able to figure out, and it made me wonder if cars crashed there and left pieces. And that made me wonder about the Japan stuff.

In any case, Yahoo! and Asahi both have the story.

In other news, apparently the police at Musashino Police Station in Tokyo are fingerprinting the homeless and keeping that information in a database. Why? Japan Today says,

Deputy chief officer Kiyonobu Yuge said the police fingerprinted the homeless for the purpose of confirming their identities in the case it became necessary in the future.

Mainichi has a much longer story:

Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department has for decades kept photographic, fingerprint and documentary records of homeless people living on Kichijoji streets, the Mainichi has learned.

Anybody working at the Musashino Police Station has access to the records, which the station has been keeping on file since 1984.

"We use them because (the homeless) don't have registered addresses. It's not great to go around gathering fingerprints, but if we don't do that, there's no way we can identify anybody," station deputy chief Kiyonobu Yuge said. "We've got the permission of the individuals, so there's no problem. I can't tell you how many people we have on record."

Naturally, people are upset by this.

Did you see what Charles Jenkins said about Kim Jong Il during his weeklong trip to the US? From Japan Today:

Jenkins said Kim is an "evil man" who lives a "luxury life...with sports cars, 200,000 American movie" videos and other things that his people do not have.

Jenkins said he had expected that American people would criticize him for deserting and going to North Korea, and said he regrets it as "I let down the American soldiers, the U.S. Army and the American people" and made it "difficult" for his family in the United States.

But he said he is "sure" that people would understand after learning of the "very difficult" time he went through in North Korea, which he had thought he would never be able to leave.

"The first 15 years were very difficult" with North Korea trying to "brainwash" him, Jenkins said. But he stressed, "I was never brainwashed."

Apparently he's writing a book about his life. It sounds like it'd be an interesting read. (I wonder if he's writing it in English, Japanese, or both? Does he speak Japanese?)

So apparently the Tube is hotter than Miami now. Really hot. (Apologies for that website--when I loaded it, a big flash ad that looked like a list of news stories completely covered the actual article. There is a close button on the top right. Stupid flash ads...)

Heatwave conditions - and trains that are already packed - mean the " apparent temperature" has soared above 40C on many routes.

The apparent temperature is an index produced by scientists to show how hot it feels, taking into effect air temperature and humidity.

Its results raise serious concerns about the safety of Tube passengers, with medical experts warning they face dehydration as a result of travelling on stifling carriages.

Thankfully, they found a couple of people to state the obvious:

Ted Collard, 45, a business consultant from Mitcham, said: "It's bloody hot down here. Every day it is the same. They should put air conditioning in the stations."

[...]

And American tourist Claudia Nie, 52, a manager at chemical firm in Ohio, said: "I am surprised it is so hot down here.

"It doesn't even get this hot in Ohio. Why don't they have air conditioning or something?

Helping the blind to "see" birds

From Asahi.com:

Uchiyama, a native of Gifu Prefecture, began his woodworking career making traditional inlaid wood pictures, in which colors and textures of different woods are blended in various figures and patterns. He learned the art from his father, and eventually started his own business in Tokyo.

Then 25 years ago, when business was slow, a friend showed him how to make a bird carving. Before long, Uchiyama was showing his handiwork at crafts events around Japan.

At one, a blind person ran his fingers over one small carving.

"Its song is so loud, I never imagined it to be such a little bird," he commented.

The words resonated with Uchiyama.

He decided he wanted to help blind people "see" his birds.

Since he is so exacting with his work, his wood carvings tend to be pretty expensive. Here's what he does to make his models accessible to more people:

First, Uchiyama makes a carved wooden mold of a bird figure. Then, he pours a resin mixture into the mold, enabling him to make many copies of the same carving. He has used this method to replicate carvings of eight species, including the kingfisher, sparrow and the great tit.

The models feature each species' characteristic curve of beak, feather details, even down to the shape of the claw. He embeds a recording of the bird's song in each figure.

Listening to the birdsong, a blind person can feel the bird's shape and imagine how it flies.

This is a really neat story.

Gaila's dead

At about a quarter to five Mom took Gaila outside and washed the majority of the blood off her leg. Gaila tended to bleed from her mouth onto her leg and then lick at it, smearing it all over. Once she was clean Mom (or somebody) spread a blanket in the floor of the van, and then everyone--Mom, AJ, Ben, and I--started out the door. No one actually said "Let's go". We just all sort of went.

I had thought I wanted to take a picture of how Gaila's face looked, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. As the boys moved towards the door, I picked up my purse and left the camera where it was.

"Come on, Gaila," we said, and she obediently followed us outside and around to the van, and then climbed right in. I sat on the chair near her (Connor usually sits in that seat these days, so I had to move the booster seat) and brushed her to get rid of all the hair she was shedding. She eventually relaxed and laid down on the blanket.

The trip down 169 to Harrodsburg and then up to the vet seemed really long, and the winding bumpiness of the roads didn't help. "Maybe it's your shocks," AJ said when Mom commented sarcastically about how nice and flat the road was.

I just brushed and petted Gaila as much as I could. She was alert, and it seemed like her pain and discomfort weren't bothering her, but I knew that was because she was nervous and excited to see where she was going.

When we got to the vet, she wouldn't get out of the van until I did, and then she wouldn't follow me in. She tried to hobble away, and AJ had to pick her up and carry her. I had been imagining that she knew where she was going and what was going to happen, and that she accepted it, so seeing this made me feel a little sick. I didn't want her last moments to be filled with fear.

For some reason the vet had her weighed--54 pounds--and then AJ lifted her onto the exam table, where a towel had been spread. At first Gaila sat down when we told her, but as time passed with her on the table (with the vet making what to me was unnecessary small talk), she grew more and more nervous, and finally stood and refused to sit again.

"I guess it won't get any easier," the vet said finally. He'd been talking about how he was there when Gaila and her brothers and sisters were born, and how no three dogs from such a pitiful beginning could have found more love. "I wish you could have seen her when I first did," he said. "She was this big." And he held his fingers about four inches apart. It seemed pretty unbelievable...but I have a hard time believing that when she was still just a puppy, and I picked her out for my very own, I was able to--and did--carry her around inside my shirt. (Back then I wore flannel shirts over T-shirts, so I would button the bottom of the flannel and carry her in it like a pouch.) Eleven years later, I could still pick her up (awkwardly), but there's no way she would fit in my shirt.

I had been standing close to Gaila, my hand on her chest to keep her from leaping off the table, but then the vet eased her to her haunches and his assistant moved between us, lying Gaila down and holding her. I squeezed back in so that I was close to her face, and stroked her head. The vet shaved a patch of hair on Gaila's remaining front leg; she trembled, but didn't escape the grasp of the assistant.

"Don't worry," I said as the vet slid the needle under her skin. "You'll feel better soon."

The vet said something encouraging along those same lines, but I was startled by the sight of Gaila's blood wisping out into the pink liquid in the large syringe and didn't listen to him. To be honest, I was pretty much ignoring everything he said anyway.

The overdose worked faster than I was expecting. The vet's assistant let go of Gaila and I pretty much collapsed on top of her, wrapping my arm around her and pressing my face into her neck and just stroking her. Mom and my brothers petted her and rubbed my back. I heard Mom crying and the boys snuffling.

"Cancer is a terrible thing," the vet said. "In humans and in animals." For a moment I was incredulous. Why did he have to say that? was all I could think. I have long drawn parallels between myself and Gaila, and for some reason, at that moment, the thought that cancer had caused all this was unbearable, even though it's true and always has been. I had been calling it a tumor. Somehow to hear it called by its true name was shocking and hurtful.

I knew when she was gone even though I wasn't looking at her. I was holding her, and one moment there was still life in her, and the next there just...wasn't. I drew back out of some instinctive distaste at embracing a corpse. My fingers plucked awkwardly, pointlessly at the hair around her ears. She couldn't feel me petting and loving her anymore.

Shortly after that, a final shudder of breath passed out of her body. I didn't want to be petting her anymore, there didn't seem to be a use to it. She was gone. I started crying harder, and I wrapped my arm around AJ and turned my face away.

The vet waited a little longer before checking for a heartbeat, and then said, "I'll give you some time alone with her." He and his assistant left.

I was hugging AJ and clinging to Mom's arm and crying, but I wasn't sobbing yet. I turned back to the corpse and knelt into it and kissed her head and whispered, "I love you, baby." And then I sobbed. I collapsed onto the table, face in my arms, and wailed. Someone just beyond the room murmured something sympathetically. At some point, AJ said, "You did the right thing." But I wasn't worried about that. My dog had to die. My dog was dead. There's no blame. There's just total helplessness.

I let myself cry for as long as I had to, but was able to compose myself quickly, for the sake of my family and the people in the other room. When I raised away from the table AJ dragged me into a fierce hug and held me for a long time. Then I hugged Mom, and then Ben.

Mom said we'd go ahead and go, and said for me to come out when I was ready, and left the room. I looked at Gaila's body. It oddly seemed to be moving. It was so still that my brain was compensating for how unnatural she seemed. I evaluated her clinically, walked around the table and gazed into her lifeless eyes.

My dog wasn't there anymore.

She was at peace--however stupid that sounds.

I felt like I had to say something, and I wanted to let AJ know that I didn't feel guilty, so I kept gazing into Gaila's eyes and said, "I'm glad you can rest now." One of the boys murmured something in agreement. But that wasn't enough, it wasn't right to just say that, so I went on, "I wish it didn't have to be this way," and again one of the boys made a noise. "But I'm glad you can rest."

And that was pretty much all I could say--no great speeches came into my mind about what a great dog she was, how much I loved her, how beautiful and devoted and competitive and strong she was. I knew they would come if I looked for them, but I also knew that with them would come more sobbing, and I didn't want to stay with her body anymore. Her body wasn't her. It was time to let it, and her, go.

"Goodbye, sweetheart," I said, and kissed her head. New tears burned and threatened to fall. I thought that maybe the boys would leave me alone with her a little, and said, "Okay, we can go now." But they didn't move, so I preceded them out of the exam room and through the front office and out the door to the van. I thought as I left that I should turn and look at the people behind the counter and maybe say thank you to them, but I didn't want to, so I didn't.

On the ride back I did not need to focus on comforting a sick, frightened dog. I would never have to worry about that again.

I looked at the beautiful green rolling hills of my native Kentucky and loved them. I thought of Gaila. I thought back on the experience of her death as much as I could without reliving it. Then I thought that someday Mom would die, and that I didn't know if I would be able to handle it. Mom is the type of person who seems like she should live forever.

I tried to stop thinking about death after that. Towards the end of the ride, I even engaged in some small talk about how a Lowe's is being built at the intersection of 169 and the bypass.

We got back and spent some awkward time in the office together. We talked about morbid and silly things like how we wanted to be taken care of when we died. I said I wanted to be cremated. AJ said he didn't know. Ben said he wanted to be stuffed. AJ reminded Ben that once he'd said he wanted to be set ablaze and sent off on a ship like a Viking, and a discussion ensued about whether Ben or the boat would burn up first. A metal boat was suggested by someone, and AJ remarked that it would then wash up at England with nothing in it. Ben concluded, "Well, if I'm stuffed, like this--" and he struck a horror-show Frankenstein pose "--then when I wash up on England, I'll look like this--" and he made the same pose. I had to laugh.

Gaila's ashes will be ready sometime next week. I had planned to drive home tomorrow. Based on how I feel tomorrow, I will either go with that plan, or stay a little longer. Logan's birthday is tomorrow, and his party is Saturday, so it would be nice to be here for that. I would just have to call the internship and tell them I can't make it this week.

I don't know what I want to do yet.

Ending her suffering

If I had any doubts about putting Gaila down--and who am I kidding? Of course I had doubts--they have been thoroughly dispelled by being here and seeing her quality of life.

She is strong and brave, and she knows she's loved. But she is in pain. She has trouble breathing. When I let her lick my plate after lunch, the motion of her tongue sent the stench of her rotting flesh all over the room.

Earlier, when she was napping and I knelt to pet her, she started out of her sleep and then looked reproachfully at me as if I had broken her peace, plunged her back into torment by awakening her. The pain overwhelmed any happiness she might have gained from my affection. She didn't wag her tail at all.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, and let her be.

Long day

I think a lot during the ~8 hour drive from Augusta to Nicholasville. Today, I was able to listen to anime mp3s thanks to the generosity of my good friend Hai Phan, and that took the edge off, especially when nice fast ones came on, like the Eurobeat Initial D stuff. But for the most part it's just driving, and thinking. The music just gives my brain an additional something to work with.

Today, I thought about my old college roommate, and how things might have gone if we had never met during summer orientation and arranged to live in the same suite.

I thought about my husband, and how sometimes I have to explain to him my emotional needs. I wondered briefly what it would be like to have a husband who just instinctively knew what to do to comfort me.

I thought about my dream, even though I tried not to. I thought about the parts I didn't mention in my earlier post. Weird sexual parts that added a creepy patina to the already dreadful death-knowledge.

I thought, briefly, about Gaila's last shuddering breath.

I thought about how I'm giving up on dieting temporarily, and how I wasn't really hungry anyway and could wait to eat until Chattanooga. (I later had a chicken burrito supreme from Taco Bell and a large chocolate shake from Hardee's. And I must say, they were both excellent.)

I took pictures of skyscrapers, blasted cliff faces, trees, and rain. Yes, while driving.

I thought about how when I think, I have a feeling, and then I try to put it into words as if I was going to post it on this journal. Sometimes I will go over a sentence or paragraph again and again while the rest of the thought is congealing.

I don't remember any of the "posts" I "wrote" on the drive. That's a shame, because I think I had at least one decent metaphor.

I thought about how Luke and Tycho and Eric Burns have distinctive writing styles, and how I don't feel that my writing has any particular style at all. It's just there, and when I try to augment it I feel like a fake.

I thought about the nature of liking people. Part of me feels that I should be able to like everyone. I stupidly told someone in a chat room recently that I didn't like him. He asked why, and I said something to the effect of "We share zero values." He responded with incredulity at my criteria, stating, "That's poor." I don't know what better reason there could be for not liking someone than not sharing values with them. At least it's an ideological divide, rather than one based on race or gender or something that can't be controlled. But then I wondered if I was simply trying to justify my harsh appraisals of other people--wondered if there truly is a good reason not to like someone. Yuuri--who has become my hero in pretty much every regard--tends to like everyone, regardless of who they are. He'll get mad at people, but he has never said to someone, "I don't like you." Not even Adelbert. His "justice", rather, is based on his intrinsic belief that people are good. He points out what they've done wrong, expecting that they will agree and change their ways. (He is actually more successful when he isn't invoking the power of the Maou, which typically scares everyone into running away and doesn't accomplish much other than saving the Mazoku's asses. Except that one time where he saved the world. But I digress.)

I thought about Aunt Carol, who is all alone now on her farm in Illinois. Uncle Lee died a year ago of a stroke. Carol has had a heart transplant and is very physically weak. She is getting along solely through the strength of her will. I thought of how I would like to go to her and help her...and I thought of how temporary, how band-aid, such a visit would be. I thought that she should move closer to one of her sisters--my mom--and allow herself to be helped. But then I thought that she would be giving up everything she has worked so hard to achieve with her home and her animals. It would be so hard to lose that independence, even though technically she has lost it already.

I thought that there are no simple solutions in life.

I also ate some cheese crackers with peanut butter and drank a Mr. Pibb, and got sunburned up my left arm and in a patch down my left cheek. I drove through two torrential rainstorms that left visibility close to nil. I listened to Conrad's Theme on repeat for a long long time. Fuji Syuusuke's "Black Rain" came on randomly twice, each time during one of the thunderstorms.

When I got up this morning, I was so nauseous I didn't think I would be able to eat at all. I couldn't stop thinking about my dream and about Gaila for a long time. I read news and worked on packing until I felt better, then ate some Crunch Berries. When I finally left home at 11am, I had pretty much clamped down the nausea and memory of the dream. I purposefully didn't bring any Touch mp3s, because they would remind me of the dream. (To explain why would be a spoiler.)

I ultimately enjoyed my drive, my time to myself. And when I got here I spent time with each of my parents, and Connor and Logan and AJ and Faye. And it was nice.

My mother told me a story about her old dog, Buttons. Dad's grandmother, Ma McCormick, had asked to keep the dog, and Mom agreed to give her Buttons because Dad didn't like her, and her barking tended to wake us babies up. Buttons aged and eventually died. Ma said to Mom, "I knew she was going to die, so I put her in the barn."

Mom said she wished she hadn't told her that. She said that Ma wanted to avoid painful things, get them out of sight.

I think I have that trait, too, and it shames me.

Gaila's breathing as she lies across the room, just beyond the partition where I can't see her, is ragged and wet, and her coughing sounds like giblets falling into a pail.

Her face is cottage cheese...but she still wags her tail.

I had a horrible dream

I watched someone die. I knew he was going to die, but it took so long for it to happen. And meanwhile, none of the people around him realized he was dying. Maybe if they'd taken him to the hospital it would have been okay, but they didn't do anything.

A couple of times he actually got out of bed, and that just made it worse.

After he died, everything was a mess. I had a new nephew named Ben who was about one year old, and he ran into the street. I ran after him screaming "Ben! Ben!" and was able to catch up to him.

Then some terrorists shot these guys who worked at a radio station for saying bad things about them, but the radio guys shoved a container of gasoline at them as they tried to escape, and Dad's workshop went up in flames. I had to use Hairy's body as a shield from the explosion, and I hated myself.

Man 1, Bank 0

I just spent an hour or so reading this.

The sad thing is, I feel like I've read it before!

It's still funny, in any case.

Going to Kentucky

Gaila will be put to sleep either tomorrow (the 20th) or the next day. I'm going to be with her, and to see her ashes buried in the backyard. I'll leave sometime tomorrow morning.

Apparently the tumor is so big that it is tearing her face apart, and her muzzle is rotting and falling to pieces. She's bleeding everywhere, and her situation will not improve.

I will be there with her in the end, unless she passes away before I get there.

I got a new T-shirt yesterday at Target

I think it's funny, so here's a picture.

You can also see how much longer my hair has gotten in this shot. You see, it needs to be shorter, at least towards the front, because it's not very voluminous.

Sorry for my horrid complexion. What can I say, it's hot here, and I don't do much to take care of my "beauty" ;P

Oh, hell, I guess I'll watch Wild Striker

Kevin and Hai have been giving me shit about not watching this series for months now. I'm kind of stuck on the work I was doing for my WordPress template--sometimes you just need to step away for awhile and let the thoughts congeal--and I was considering watching more Kaikan AngstPhrase, but what the hell. Wild Striker it is.

Audioscrobbler

So, I signed up for Audioscrobbler. Now you can see what music I listen to.

When I shift to WordPress (boy, that refrain is getting old) I'll have some Audioscrobbler data in my About Me page, I think.

Kyou Kara Maou LARP dream

Earlier today I took a nap to escape my bad mood. (I do that a lot. In my defense, watching TV wasn't working, and I couldn't concentrate on my book.) Towards the end of the nap, I had a rather odd dream.

I was LARPing as Kyou Kara Maou characters, here in our apartment, except we had an upstairs room that I kept forgetting existed. My mom was one of the other LARPers, and I'm pretty sure AJ was one of them too. At one point in the game there was some kind of problem that needed to be solved; I, as Gwendal, called a council so that the Maou could be informed.

"Okay," I said as I approached the table, "I'm RPing like three different characters, so I'll just say who I'm playing whenever I talk." I think I was also playing Wolfram and Celi. But then I started thinking, Who's playing Yuuri? Do I have to play him too? and realizing that I had way too much control over the game already.

Oh, and yes, I did actually say "Arr Pee-ing". ;P

My kind of weather

I just went to satisfy my craving for fat, and the weather was so nice that I wanted to comment on it.

It's cooler outside than it is in the apartment, despite our air conditioning and fans. There's a slight breeze, and rain's falling in random, medium droplets. There was a loud thunderstorm earlier that actually woke me from my nap, and the resulting cool, breezy humidity made me wish I wasn't just going down the street, but instead was out on an adventure.

As I drove up to McDonald's, lightning flashed intermittently, silently. There were no bolts; it was instead like a camera's flash going off across half the sky. I drove with the windows rolled up to keep the rain out but was not uncomfortable; the air coming through the open vents was cool and refreshing.

It was just nice.

I want to bake a huge, fudgey cake, with gobs of icing.

I also want to go get a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

News.

In horrifying news today:

Priest unrepentent after crucifying of nun (via Drudge)

A Romanian Orthodox priest who ordered the crucifixion of a young nun because she was "possessed by the devil" and now faces murder charges was unrepentant on Saturday as he celebrated a funeral mass for his alleged victim.

"God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," Father Daniel, 29, the superior of the Holy Trinity monastery in north-eastern Romania, said before celebrating a short mass "for the soul of the deceased", in the presence of 13 nuns who showed no visible emotion.

He insisted that from the religious point of view, the crucifixion of Maricica Irina Cornici, 23, was "entirely justified", but admitted that he faced excommunication as well as prosecution, and was seeking a "good lawyer".

Just...o_o

In the "was that really a good idea" department:

Michael Jackson's acquittal celebration was attended by one of his jurors! (Also via Drudge.)

Among the approximately 400 people who arrived at the Chumash Indian Casino was juror Pauline Coccoz. When she walked into the casino and heard Jackson's music playing, Coccoz said, the enormity of what had transpired hit her.

"They were playing 'Beat It,' and I almost started to cry," she said as she waited to enter the showroom.

Uh, yeah. Was that the best thing to say?

In Oops! news:

Plane crashes on California freeway

A small plane crashed onto a heavily traveled freeway, clipping a vehicle and injuring two people aboard the plane, authorities said Saturday.

The 1952 Beech Bonanza V35 had engine failure late Friday due to a fuel problem on its way from Sacramento to Fullerton and crashed onto the Ventura Freeway, fire Capt. Ed Cowan said.

I have it on good authority that MacGyver hates flying light planes. Just so you know.

In "well, hmm, I could have told you that" news:

Most prefer to watch movies at home

Hollywood is in the midst of its longest box-office slump in 20 years, and 2005 is shaping up as the worst year for movie attendance in nearly a decade, if theater business continues at the same lackluster rate.

While 73 percent said they preferred staying home to watch movies on DVD, videotape or pay-per-view, 22 percent said they would rather see them at a movie theater, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and AOL News by Ipsos.

I saw the results of a study earlier today that discovered that larger brains lead to higher intelligence. Modern research is so impressive!

This part of the movie poll article stood out to me, though:

But the poll found that people who use DVDs, watch pay-per-view movies on cable, download movies from the Internet and play computer games actually go to movies in theaters more than people at the same income levels who don't use those technologies. That suggests the technology may be complementing rather than competing with theatergoing.

Damn straight. I likes that kinda result! :D

Finally, in Star Wars news:

I guess the sextet will be released in 3D in a few years. (WTF?) Also from that article, concerning the TV series,

one of the shows would follow the adventures of a young Luke Skywalker, and reveal how certain characters ended up together.

I wonder if "certain characters" might include Han, Chewie, and/or Lando...

I like how the original article states that its source is "www.www.mainichi-msn.co.jp.com". That's, like, a ridiculous URL, that doesn't even exist. I can only assume they mean www.mainichi-msn.co.jp. (I had no idea, by the way, that Mainichi and MSN had teamed up!) Anyway, I can't find that article on the site, but that's probably because 1) their search sucks; 2) my Japanese skills suck. Alas! I did find this article about the Revenge of the Sith premiere (did you know that Star Wars in Japanese is スター・ウォーズ?), and starwars.jp, which is...interesting. Is it official? :>

Oh! I found it! :D スター・ウォーズ：１００時間テレビドラマ化 Funny, that's a lot shorter than the FlixnJoystix article.

I like how they refer to the new TV series as a "100 hour television drama". Very precise!

"Yes, it seems that the Japanese like nothing quite so much as getting touched up by a man in a mouse costume."

The Cynical Traveller went to Tokyo Disneyland! Oh, the humanity.

Of course Disneyland isn't just about rides;

unfotunately.

There's also the chance to take in a choreographed parade, eat an overpriced microwave meal or buy a graven idol of an anthropomorhic mouse.

The picture captions are hi-larious.

I'm going to give up on losing weight for awhile

I've maintained the same weight for over a month now, with no sign of ever losing weight again. Plus, I keep trying to eat healthy, and then pigging out on snacks like Hershey bars. It's getting ridiculous. I don't know why I'm in this self-destructive cycle and why I can't seem to break out of the rut, but I'm tired of looking at my weight every day and seeing that I'm stuck.

Willie Costley was on Jeopardy!

I had no idea until Tracy Saylor (another Jessamine County High 1996 grad) emailed me and mentioned she saw him. I haven't heard from Willie in aeons, so this video was pretty funny. He looks (and sounds) so different!

Here's the page where I found that video. There's a picture of Willie there, too, but I don't know how long it'll stay there so I'm putting it here:

Willie and I went to the Homecoming dance together our junior year. We'd been friends since middle (elementary?) school, too; he and I and Eddie used to hang out, and I was in a lot of classes with him. We were on the same bus route, when I took the bus to school.

Sure brings back memories.

Bleh.

Bleh, bleh, bleh.

Bleh.

On the infertility issue...

Prudie sez:

As a rule, most women who cannot conceive get over the narcissistic injury and go on to make good decisions.

Heh.

New PT Cruiser design looks pretty much like the old one

Derik linked to this story in his supplement with the comment, "Two words: Who cares? This is supposed to be CNN." ;D

I'm interested, of course, because after seeing how great Mari's PT Cruiser is, I've been coveting one for myself. The small changes and various improvements listed in the article sound fine to me.

Now, if only I could get it in pale purple, blue, or pink. Something pretty and pearlescent, like those special Playstations Sean and I saw in Japan...

Surprise US proposal puts Japan in awkward position

From Asahi.com:

Washington proposed adding two nations--including Japan--to the permanent membership club of the [United Nations] Security Council. But Japan wants to give priority to a resolution on Security Council expansion drawn up by the Group of Four nations--Japan, Germany, Brazil and India.

The United States supports Japan's desire to become a permanent member, but it opposes the G-4 proposal because it would add six permanent seats to the council and could dilute U.S. influence in the world body.

With the United States making public its opposition to the G-4's plan, it will be that much more difficult for the resolution to be adopted at the United Nations.

When asked about U.S. support for Japan's bid, Koizumi said: "It's good for Japan, but not for the other nations. We must think about the international community as a whole. I'd like to ask for more understanding from the U.S."

I have to say, I'm glad Japan isn't just turning its back on its partner nations so it can get that coveted Security Council seat. That loyalty is really impressive. It makes me wonder if/why the White House thought Japan would go along with it, and how the White House's stance towards Japan might have changed if Japan had actually taken them up on the offer.

Japan has been asserting its independence from the US for some time now. To back away from an alliance with peer nations and cheerfully accept a handout from the US would undermine everything they've accomplished.

Japan's postal system

From Japan Today:

Japan's parliament decided Friday to extend the current Diet session by 55 days until Aug 13 to enable the passage of bills to privatize Japan Post.

This is something Koizumi has been working towards for a long time. It's nice for him that it's going to happen before he leaves office next year.

Proponents of privatization here in the US argue that it will improve quality and reduce overhead to run the postal service like a regular business--that the postal service will be better able to compete for customers if it isn't tied to the government and its bureaucracy. I tend to think that the idea makes sense, but you never really know how something will work out until you try it. It will be interesting to see, therefore, how privatization goes for Japan. Will the proposed benefits become reality? What sorts of problems will they encounter? How might we avoid the same problems?

Links to me

Every now and then I like to check Technorati to see if anyone's linking to me. Usually I'm disappointed.

Today, though, I discovered that I'm in Japundit's blogroll! O_O!!! That is so cool!

From there, I thought I'd just google for "pixelscribbles" and see what happened, and I came up with the following:

NetNewsWire Lite 2.0b37 Change Notes

NetNewsWire no longer refuses to parse Atom feeds with Shift_JIS encoding. (It used to be that Shift-JIS reliably made the XML parser crash, but it doesn't appear to be the case any more.) For instance, the following feed now works: http://pixelscribbles.com/journal/rss/atom.xml

Wow, I didn't know that Shift_JIS caused a problem in Atom with NetNewsWire. Though I guess it doesn't anymore! And I've apparently been linked by them since April. Dude!

Also, I seem to be listed by blogdirectory.com and everyfeed.com...whatever those are. In addition, I come up in these weird results of searches on Jennifer Wilbanks ;P

That's pretty much it for links to me, other than people in my blogroll and the occasional trackback from where I've linked to someone else. And really, that's what I expect--it's not like I'm writing anything gripping here.

And that is why I'm so psyched to be linked from Japundit!

To tell you the truth, I've been thinking about trying to be a contributor over there. I don't know if I'm really qualified, as I haven't lived in Japan, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about Japan, don't I? And if they linked to me...maybe that means they think I say stuff that's worth saying about Japan.

So...we'll see.

NITTA YUKA IS A STUPID HO.

Hate her, hate her, HATE. HER.

Microsoft complicit in state censorship?

Global Voices Online has been abuzz lately with discussions of MSN Spaces' Chinese blog service, and how it censors words like "freedom" in blog titles. Rebecca MacKinnon has been especially prolific on the subject, with the following posts:

China Update: more on blog registration and censorship 6/12

Microsoft has launched a Chinese-language version of it's Spaces blog hosting service, and guess what? Users are banned from using the word "democracy" and other politically sensitive words to label their blogs - although it does appear possible to use those words within blog posts, for now. (As noted in my interview with Isaac Mao, people who set up blogs under this service don't have to register with the authorities because MSN is already obliging the government by policing their content.) But then, MSN is already in the censorship game even in the U.S., as Boing Boing discovered soon after the service's launch.

My response to Scoble [on her own blog] 6/14

I lived in China for nine years straight as a journalist, and if you add up other times I've lived there it comes to nearly 12. I don't know what students and professors Scoble met with, and what context he met them in. But to state that Chinese students and professors have an "anti-free-speech stance" is the biggest pile of horseshit about China I've come across in quite some time. And believe me, there are a great many such piles out there these days.

In my experience, most Chinese, like all other human beings I've ever met, would very much like to have freedom of speech. This goes for students, professors, workers, farmers, retirees, religious practitioners, and even many government officials. Many said so to me in on-the-record interviews. Many more told me so privately, in trusted confidence over beers (or something stronger) among friends.

What they don't want is to lose their jobs and educational opportunities by pushing too hard at the restrictions their government has placed on their ability to speak. They work within the bounds of the possible, and since people in China can say a lot more now than they were allowed to say 20 years ago, most take the long-term view.

How To Hack Chinese MSN Spaces to Use Banned Words 6/15

Thanks to Bennett Haselton of Peacefire.org for the following public service instructions for Chinese users wanting to circumvent the word filters on MSN Spaces China to put e.g. "democracy" in the title of their blogs.

[...]

WARNING! Even though you can use these instructions to insert banned words into the title of your Chinese blog, Internet access in China is still monitored and controlled by the government. If you use these instructions to post banned material, you should not publish your blog from an Internet terminal where your actions could be traced back to you personally, and you should not publish anything on your blog that could be used to identify you. You should also use a HotMail.com address that doesn't identify you by your real name (create a new HotMail.com account if necessary).

Screenshots of Censorship 6/16

Some Chinese bloggers have said that they were able to set up Chinese language MSN Spaces blogs using the "forbidden" political words. To clarify the situation I tried to set up my own freedom loving Chinese blog. I went into the MSN Spaces Chinese interface at: http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=zh-cn, and tried to set up a blog titled 我?言?自由人?和民主, which means "I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy."

Chinese Bloggers on Censorship, MSN, Etc. 6/17

One thing many people may not realize is that Microsoft has a long history of p.r. problems in China, and that the "anti-Microsoft monopoly" sentiment is very strong both in parts of the Chinese government bureaucracy (who don't want to be overly dependent on foreign software and thus prefer Linux-based systems for national security reasons) as well as amongst independent Chinese techies and bloggers who are concerned about the concentration of too much power in one foreign software company - which many believe is stifling the emergence of a homegrown software industry.

I have to say, her argument against Microsoft's Scoble makes sense:

I agree with Scoble: no outsiders, including Microsoft, can force China to change. But nobody's asking Microsoft to force China to do anything. The issue is whether Microsoft should be collaborating with the Chinese regime as it builds an increasingly sophisticated system of Internet censorship and control. (See this ONI report for lots of details on that system.) Declining to collaborate with this system is not "forcing the Chinese into a position they don't believe in." Declining to collaborate would be the only way to show that your stated belief in free speech is more than 空?: empty words. If you believe that Chinese people deserve the same respect as Americans, then please put your money where your mouth is.

This is an interesting situation to watch develop. In the meantime, won't you join me (and others) in boycotting MSN Spaces? There's no good reason to use the service, anyway.

[Please excuse the question marks in the Chinese characters in this post. When I switch to WordPress, hopefully I will be able to display all characters correctly. As it is now, if I change the charset to UTF-8, all my Japanese posts come out wonky, so I'm not going to mess with it until the shift.]

Tips for writers

John Hewitt has some advice for me.

If you want to have a career as a freelance writer, you need to view it as a business.

Freelance writing involves making sales. Being a salesperson means risking rejection.

There will always be better writers than you, and there will always be writers who are worse than you but make more money. Concentrate on your own career.

There's plenty more great stuff in the article. And after that one, Hewitt goes on to write another one, this time filled with handy business tips:

Always keep a calendar. It should include such things as a writing schedule, upcoming meetings, assignment deadlines, submission response dates (expected replies), upcoming payments, upcoming publication dates and tax deadlines.

Track all of your submissions and replies. You can use a program such as Microsoft Outlook or simply keep a notebook or planner. There are plenty of planning / scheduling books at any large bookstore. Look around until you find one that seems to suit you. Read a book about time management while you are there. Time management is crucial for professional writers.

Start a filing system. Keep copies of all of your manuscripts and publications. Keep research files on the topics you write about. Keep all of your receipts and invoices. Keep all of your tax records.

Lost news articles from the WWII bombing of Nagasaki

Sid posted today:

The Mainichi Shimbun has a special today about the lost articles of Pulitzer Prize-winner George Weller - the first Western journalist to see Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing 60 years ago. Weller snuck in despite a Gen. MacArthur ban, and wrote 25,000 words detailing what he saw. He sent them to Tokyo by hand, where the military refused to release or return them. Weller thought they were lost forever, but his son, Andrew, found carbon copies a year ago in his father's Rome apartment.

An Editor & Publisher article quotes Weller's son saying that Weller thought he was censored because MacArthur wanted all the credit for winning the war, while others suggest the U.S. didn't want details of the horrific effects of radiation affecting world opinion. At the time, the standard line was that anyone not killed in the blast of the bombs was fine - there was no such thing as radiation sickness, which Weller named "disease X" in the pieces.

The Mainichi has four of the articles online. The second and fourth go into disturbing detail about what's happening to the people who "survived" the blast.

Totally weird article likening the US to the failing Republic of Star Wars

It's not an unheard of comparison (hell, George Lucas made it quite blatantly) but Neal Stephenson gets there in an odd way. It's like the article starts out being about one thing, but by the end, it's a political statement.

There could be some merit to the idea that the American dream is to be able to "veg out", but Stephenson's conclusion assumes that eventually no one will want to "geek out". We've still got plenty of geeks...people who find vegging out boring. I, personally, prefer a mix of both.

Because of that, while I found the majority of the article somewhat interesting, the ending smacked to me of yet another doomsday-for-America prophecy.

You know, the kind of tired rhetoric that people who hate America can veg out to ;>

Touch spoiler (it's just too cool not to mention!)

I watched episode 95 yesterday, and will watch 96 shortly. Something very very cool happened in episode 95 re: the redemption of Kashiwaba.

Coach Nishio showed up, recovered from his collapse. It was looking like the gig was up; Kashiwaba wouldn't have the chance to exact his revenge after all.

But Nishio said he wasn't coming back to coach the team. He said he wasn't a good coach; that because of him, many players had left the team without realizing their true potential; that Kashiwaba had gone further than he'd thought possible; and that it took a real coach to get to the Koushien.

Then he said:

"I'm counting on you, Kashiwaba Eijirou."

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I literally gasped and clapped my hands over my heart. "He knows!" I cried. "He knows!"

Now, it's all in Kashiwaba's hands...!

Haha :D

This is funny. (Via BoingBoing.)

More information, please

Japan firm claims world's largest gold bullion bar

Japan's Mitsubishi Materials Corp. says it has produced the world's biggest gold bullion bar, a 250-kg block worth about $3.44 billion at current prices.

How? Through alchemy? I mean, did they artificially create gold in a laboratory, or is it just extremely difficult to get existing gold to form into a bar?

Yes, I really am this ignorant!

Issues

I have always, for as long as I remember, had trouble discussing things with people.

When I was in my first year of college, my friend Stephan was talking with me and my boyfriend Chris about women in the military. I actually don't remember what his position was; it had something to do with women being fighter pilots, but I can't remember if he was for or against.

I honestly hadn't thought about the issue much. I felt in my gut that what he was saying was wrong, but I couldn't find any real arguments to back myself up. I got flustered, and finally just ended up walking away from the table. Later, Chris told me that Stephan had said to him, "I couldn't put up with that."

That pissed me off, but I knew he was right.

Since that time, I've had many other discussions go sour. I always seem to get to a point where I don't feel like further discussion is going to do anything for me. And the other person's arguments seem to build up higher and higher, oppressing me. It's happened with Sam, leading to quite a few fights that fortunately didn't end our friendship, and it's happened with AJ, and it's happened with other people who may not have even realized it was happening, because as I've noticed this about myself I've tried to hide how touchy I am about my opinions.

But hiding it isn't working; I just get even more upset.

I always tell myself that the solution is to learn more so that I'm able to discuss my opinions in an informed way. But the majority of my opinions are based on emotion; it feels fake to go and search for facts that justify my feelings.

The better route, I guess, is to mistrust my opinions unless I know a lot about the subject already.

But this doesn't cover my opinions about entertainment. When people say they don't like something that I do like, I tend to want that to be the end of the discussion. I don't want to hear them list all the reasons why they don't like it, because that feels to me like they are dumping on me. Since my opinions are emotion-based, and entertainment is largely something that speaks to who we are as individuals, it feels almost like a personal attack when someone explains to me in detail why something I like isn't any good.

This is something I'm going to have to fix about myself.

It's pointless to get worked up over stuff like this. The other person does not mean to insult me by saying they don't like what I like. They don't see in it what I see. They're not me. I can't expect them to know how much things mean to me. I can't ask people to censor themselves to spare my feelings.

I am going to have to change my attitude...if I can only figure out how.

I hate cancer

That's so ridiculous to say; it's not like anyone likes cancer. But it's all I can think of to describe what I'm feeling right now.

I've mostly overcome my own resentment about what cancer did to me, though that hollow ache will probably be with me for the rest of my life. But just because my cancer is gone, hopefully never to return, it doesn't mean all is well. Cancer is still out there hurting so many people. So many people aren't anywhere near as lucky as me.

All that happened to me was infertility. Look what happened to this family:

Susan [Torres] had first developed melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, as a teenager in Houston, but had been cancer-free for nearly nine years.

So when Susan began to have headaches and nausea early last month, Torres says, there was no reason to suspect it was anything more than the miseries of early pregnancy. On May 6, the couple made an emergency room visit, where Susan was rehydrated, fed some bland crackers and sent home to rest.

The next night, while he was feeding Susan, "she just stopped," Torres says. Using techniques he had learned as a lifeguard, Torres restarted his wife's breathing. Emergency medical technicians arrived in minutes. Four hours later, a still-dazed Torres was standing outside an operating room and hearing from a neurosurgeon that cancer had invaded Susan's brain.

A day after, when it was clear Susan had survived surgery, Torres faced an agonizing choice: keeping his wife on life support, with a slim chance of producing a live though perhaps disabled baby, or allowing her to die.

Unspoken, but hovering like a cloud: Picking the first option would be hugely costly. He'd be ground down by unimaginable debt. The couple has health insurance but expects it will cover only a fraction of the cost, currently running at least $7,500 a day, he says.

It's just so horrible...and it's scary, too, that her cancer came back after 9 whole years.

I hate cancer. I just hate it.

Conrart Weller

So, while watching my Kyo Kara Maoh! DVD 1 from Amazon.com, I was horrified to see Conrad introduce himself as "Conrart".

Conrart?!?!?

There is a line a little later where he tells Yuuri that people familiar with English have an easier time saying "Conrad", and that Yuuri should feel free to call him that. I was aware of this line, and I started to wonder if that line's existence was the only reason for the bizarro Geneon spelling. (The fansubbers didn't do anything with that.)

However, I'm checking out NHK's Kyou Kara Maou character page, and it lists Conrad's name as:

コンラッド（ウェラ卿コンラート）
Konraddo (Wera-kyou Konraato)

So that would be two different spellings of his given name. The first is obviously Conrad, and the second?

Err...Conrart it is, then...

Seriously, they do use a long /a/ sound to get the English /r/. (Japanese /r/s are pronounced at the front of the mouth, just like our /l/.)

So, apparently Geneon wasn't just making shit up.

The "let's hide everything from Yuuri" dynamic

So.

Yuuri's dad, mom, and brother all know he's the Maou. They don't tell him anything about it, or give him any chance to prepare.

Murata knows he's the Maou. He doesn't say anything either. In fact, even when it's revealed that Murata is the Great Sage, he doesn't come completely clean, and often works subtle political machinations behind Yuuri's back.

Conrad doesn't say anything about Yuuri having Julia's soul, until Adelbert is about to kill Yuuri--and then it's only out of desperation. On the one hand, I can understand his reticence, but on the other, dude.

The three brothers all seem to prefer to sweep Stoffel under the rug rather than explain what happened with him to Yuuri. The same goes for Huber. Yuuri gets his information in very roundabout ways, when he could easily get it from the principal players.

Everyone seems to have a "protect Yuuri" complex. His brother certainly does, as evidenced by episode 42. Wolfram does. Conrad had one in the worst way--he confessed to Leila that he thought he was the only one who could protect Yuuri, but that after being at his side for so long he realized that it was actually Yuuri protecting him. (Jury's still out on whether or not his complex is actually over, though ;>) And Murata does, to the point that he is willing to disobey the will of the Shinou/Original King/whatever you want to call that guy. (Though I think Murata gets a kick out of "disobeying", anyway. After all, he was the Shinou's contemporary. It's kind of hard to suddenly be subservient to someone who was essentially your college roommate.)

What Yuuri has shown time and time again is that he is more than capable of dealing with problems himself. He was chosen as the Maou for a reason, after all. What he needs is support and information, not people who pretend to go along with his ideas and then run their own schemes behind his back.

In a way, I feel like all of these people are using Yuuri. Murata especially. They're trying to keep him innocent. Perhaps to guarantee the purity of his rage--the only thing that has been shown to release his Maryoku. Some might say they don't think he's capable of dealing with things (Wolfram calls him a "wimp"). Some might think that he's a pushover and try to deal with everything without having to involve him. But the court at Blood Pledge Castle needs to be careful not to turn into a bunch of Stoffels ;P

Fortunately, Yuuri doesn't put up with this kind of thing. It may take him longer to get to Murata than to the others, but it will happen, damn it.

Of course, the fact that he keeps travelling from one world to the other doesn't really help him get a good foothold in either place.