And from waaay out of left field...

I dunno if you'll find this interesting or not, but this struck me as a thoughtful response to a singularly puzzling question:

Why is so much of the fan fiction online that's about romantic or sexual entaglements usually about male characters but written by women?

What exactly are they trying to teach these kids?

Stop me if I'm repeating myself, but I just found this photo again.

Last year there was a highly publicized kidnapping in Japan. Some guy snatched a elementary school girl and sent pictures and ransom demands to the kid's mom using her mobile phone. So naturally, all the elementary schools started putting up PSA posters warning kids to be wary of strangers. Pretty standard stuff. But the poster they put up in all the public schools was this one, which claimed that sometimes bad people will act like nice people to try and trick you. But the bad people in the picture ALL looked like foreigners. Stereotypical, round-eyed, big-nosed foreigners. Even though most Japanese cartoon characters tend to look sort of, well, non-Asian, there are a couple of standard cues used to mark which characters are supposed to be non-Japanese. Big noses or prominent nose bridges being the most obvious.

And for the record, the kid was taken by an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, regular looking Japanese guy. He wasn't half-anything, he wasn't from Okinawa, and he wasn't even that strange-looking.

Testing the waters...

I'm starting to get a little curious about who's on the other side of this blog. I mean, I know that the Nerd Hater is out there, a former Grade School Role Model, and sometimes even some other people who I've actually met face to face.

But who else is out there? Who am I talking to?

Pikachu's a Lush!

There's nothing Pikachu likes better than that first cocktail of the day.

Sorry for the inconvenience...

But on the off chance you want to make a comment, I've had to activate a word-verification system because of a sudden torrent of bot-produced spam comments.

The worst part is that none of them were for stuff I'd be interested in buying, looking at or mocking. It was just for boring crap.



Kind of like most advertisements, now that I think about it.

Inexplicable

On sunday, Japan celebrated the closing of the World Exposition 2005 in Aichi Japan. In theory, this was supposed to be Japan's chance to showcase itself, its relations with the other nations, and all its great forward thinking policies and scientific advances. Like not allowing people to bring their own food so they have to stop at one of the "gourmet restaurants" to get something to eat. (The policy was dropped after much public outcry.)

But this was in Aichi, a prefecture in the middle of Japan. So why was there a blimp which seems to be meant to encourage foreign tourism in Japan with its "Yookoso Japan/Japan Welcomes You" logo, circling a suburban Saitama area, in the eastern part of Japan? And why has it been doing so on weekends for the last couple of months, hundreds of miles away from the International Exposition?

I'm not one for pointless paranoia, but seriously... what the hell is going on here? Either there's some other security/surveillance reason to have a aerial observation platfom circling a suburban population center, or else there really is someone who thinks that there is a mass of untapped international tourism money hidden in Saitama, just waiting for a blimp-borne message to unleash it.

There are signs everywhere.

1. The slacks from my best black suit, the one I had tailor-made in Hong Kong, began to unravel at the knee. They are now unsuitable for work or any other social event where I don't want to look like a well dressed hobo.
2. My sneakers suffered a massive structural failure. The uppers separated from the soles across over 65% of the instep and split open on the opposite side.
3. After well over 6 hours of trying to endure the Lovecraftian torment of Dell Japan: Customer Service Center, I finally recieved confirmation that not only has my laptop screen completely burned out, croaked, that is, but my repair coverage has also passed its "best-before" date. That is, expired.


4. I, however, seem to have survived another year. Happy Birthday to me.

Highlights from France: the Medeival Faire part 2

Hear me now and believe me later: No good can come from hitting on a girl wearing a sword that's bigger than yours. There are waaaaay too many issues to overcome there.

Highlights from France: the Medeival Faire part 1

While rambling around the French countryside, I stumbled into a Medieval Faire. There I learned one thing: dorks are the same the world over. For example, there are five points worth noting on this particularly repellent specimen.
1. The "Shakespeare in Love" facial hair.
2. The bedsheet-cape.
3. The animal horn trumpet with metal mouthpiece bought at a booth at the very same medeival fair.
4. The glossy black leather moccasins.
5. (Not visible) Attempts to pick up on young woman by complimenting her cheese-curdlingly ugly baby.

What's in a name?

I have to admit, I have always had trouble with titles. I assumed that they were meant to tell you what something was. When I tried to figure out how they functioned, I wound up putting them into three categories. They would either describe the item in an obvious and explicit way, by naming some key character, location, thing or event, or else it would be named for some supposedly meaningful theme or idea in the work.

Which is why I had so much trouble naming this damned blog. I was pretty happy with the first name it had. It had something to do with the theme/location and it suggested a moderately offensive bit of slang to boot. But I've been successively less satisfied with the other names. Especially the last one, which translated as "wickedness, vice, or evil." Sure, I thought it sounded pretty cool, but it really wasn't appropriate.

You see, I chose that name in a moment of anger. I can't really recall if it was anger at myself, some government-authorized shenanigans, the damnable stupidity of the human animal or something else entirely. But I have to admit that I'm not always bashing these entries out in a bile-tinged haze of keyboard damaging vitriol. Honestly, being that angry all the time burns a lot of energy, and I don't have the time to prepare enough food for that kind of caloric demand.

Hmmm. That was a bit of a tangent. Let me get back to the point. Hopefully this will be the last title change for a while. I think this one will fit a bit better, is less pretentious than the foreign stuff, and includes the ever-important crappy pun that I'm just not happy without. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Orbits of an Alien Son. As soon as the co-pilot and I finish with the drink cart, beverage service for the rest of you can begin.