abecedary.org

2007 is the year of the pig! Some sticklers will insist that is undignified and maintain that this is the year of the boar. Either way, I want bacon!

40.

I made it this far. Not bad.

Yes, I have been listening to the DK’s again, but more importantly, I’m back in Phnom Penh. Last time I blogged about PP, which was just almost one year and embarrassingly few posts ago, I hated it. I was taken to task by one former resident and I can begin to see why. All I can say in my defense is that coming to a country fresh, rather than after a month plus of travel makes a difference. So does staying a hotel where every third person isn’t asking you “Want boom-boom mistah!”

That isn’t to say that all of the denizens of Phnom Penh are leaving me alone. I ran into an obviously very, very burnt hippy. If he were a creme brulee, they would have held the torch on him until the porcelain dish started to melt. The stream of consciousness was amusing for about ten minutes, but after the non-stop description of his movie project, soundtrack, intro to Britney Spears’ former musical maestro, dope smuggling from Canada to New York, wind surfing near Pattaya and the secret five bedroom cave he found there, his new eco-tourism project, the relief NGO to be called Can-bode-well connecting his uppercrust Canuck government types with all “the really turned on kids”, the yoga, his dog, the fact that he had 2500 photos on his Windoze desktop, it started to wear.

He did describe his NGO goals: “This place is changing, man. It is going to change and I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to get all the people out to nature and this place is going to become perfect. Cambodia will become perfect. This is the place to come if you want to see a society become perfect in a year. And, I will make it happen.”

I think that was what Pol Pot said.

Let’s just hope his speed wears off eventually.

Attack of the flabby fascists!

abecedary on Flickr.

February 11 is Constitution Day (建国記念の日) a national holiday in Japan. This is a perfect excuse for wannabe yak lunkheads, loser bootboys, and tubby skinheads to hit the streets in their sound trucks. Et-chan got these photos in Shibuya on her way home this afternoon.

These uyoku make everybody’s life hell, but they are in cahoots with the yakuza and the cops, so nothing ever happens.

Today they helped to keep Japan pure by whacking on some tourist who thought he would take a picture of the crazy parade.

But, then why in hell do they have a gaijin videographer? The guy with the video was riding in one of the vans with the ultranationalists! Makes no sense at all to me.

So, we were moving offices at work today. I headed towards the door with a crate in my arms. A cabinet on coasters was a little bit closer to the door than last time. My left foot caught the cabinet. The sharp corner of the hardwood laminate door caught my lower arm. My lower arm caught my full momentum.

I think I broke a big blood vessel. It didn’t even turn red, just white then purple-blue. My hand turned white and started shaking. The vein on the inside of my arm swelled up later, but then subsided.

It hurt like the proverbial one that has maternal intercourse—still does.

It was so loud when I hit the door, it surprised me. Still hurts to pick up anything with my left hand. Anything, even a paperback or frosty libation. Even typing is less than comfy.

But, enough whining. check back for the pretty colors.

Yep, I upgraded this ole blog to 2.0 of Wordpress. That is to say I finally got around to upgrading my own blog. I upgraded these others right after the release:

• vensite.org
• tokyofoodcast.com
• elpweb.com/materials/
• efl.cc

So, time to get the show on the road again after a hiatus that really stretches the possible uses of that word beyond the snapping point.

According to Energy Fiend, 148.58 cans of Red Bull will push me over the top and into my grave. However, they specified cans of Red Bull, not bottles of Krating Daeng. Good thing I never had more than three in one day. I wonder about the M-150?

So, I was going to throw a bunch of pictures from my latest travels up on Flickr and blog ‘em a bit. My library has not gotten so unreasonably large that any attempt to do anything with iPhoto was useless. iLife 5 seemed to become required rather than simply inevitable, so I picked it up at Bic the other day.

A nap and the desire to just fart around and watch the new on DVD (at least here in film-release-retarded Japan) Dawn of the Dead meant I didn’t actually install it yesterday. After I finished my work for today, I thought again. Why not Tigerize at this point as well? Time to clean up everything, not just iPhoto. Plus, I needed a walk and had to go to Muji in Yurakucho anyhow, so a stop by the Apple Store Ginza wouldn’t kill me. Maybe they’d have a nice new headset or something to Skype with. Bic was seriously deficient in headsets and I hate Softmap.

Stroll in. Pick up Tiger. Ask for the Academic Version. No dice. “Web only”, they said. Funny, last time I was in Bic they had it. Might as well go back there, save myself a few thousand yen and get the member points. Told the guy that was what I was going to do and received the standard moshiwake gozaimasen response.

Is there any reason to go to the Apple Store? Sure the Ginza shop looks cool, but I’ve been here before. Is the Genius Bar any good? My experience in Boston and Connecticut stores bodes ill. Any of the problems I’ve had have been in English, so not really appropriate here, even if I explain them in Japanese. Do they have a membership or rewards card? Nope. I’m spending Obirin’s money, so getting 3-5% in credit points from some other shop makes the money go farther. So why come here?

So I can kvetch on my blog at the free iMac table and charge my battery depleted shuffle for the walk to Bic and the train home!

Not posted much (understatement of the year) lately. There are of course a million reasons why, but let’s just cut to the chase and chalk it up to a combination of being insanely busy last term, bone lazy the rest of the time, and offline almost all of the past month.

I’m back in Tokyo. Jet-lagged, suffering from the heat, but very happy. My travels this last month in the States were just plain extremely satisfying: old friends, some good hikes, time with Et-chan, Jim’s wedding, and visits with the family. I hit Seattle, Bellingham, Gloucester, Maine, Connecticut, Somerville, and San Mateo along the way. Have to get cracking on Wikitravel again before things fade.

I’ll sort out the photos this evening and try to get some good sets up on Flickr, but for now I’m going for a walk. I still have lots of time off before I have to get back to campus, so I’m going to enjoy Tokyo for a bit the next few weeks.

I finally saw it. Unbelievable.

I’m gonna watch it again. for the third time. It’s a whole ugly beautiful part of my life.

17 Ramones shows: 1982-1989.