Second Language

British1 English words learned in the last three weeks:

ice lolly - noun, Popsicle
khazi (ka zi) - noun, toilet
Pelican crossing - noun, a crosswalk with pedestrian controlled signals across the street. Not to be confused with a puffin crossing
Puffin crossing - noun, noun, a crosswalk with pedestrian controlled signals on the same side of the street. Not to be confused with a Toucan crossing
rock up - verb, to arrive (note: considered dated by under-25s)
slapper - noun, a promiscuous woman. See also slag.
toad in the hole - noun, sausages cooked in batter, usually served with gravy and vegetables
Toucan crossing - noun, a crosswalk with pedestrian controlled signals, also for cyclist use. Not to be confused with the now obsolete Panda Crossing.

1. I am aware that khazi is a British adoption of a foreign word. I am also aware that your average Brit is more than likely to claim that because it's spoken in the cradle of English language that it's a more valid English word than something like MILF, dingleberry, bling or aluminum.

How far is East?

It's been almost three months since I left Japan. From Tokyo, I went to Los Angeles for a week, and from there I went to Albuquerque. Try to imagine one of those Indiana Jones maps with the red lines on it to make this part a little more interesting. Anyway, after some rest, I continued more or less east on to England. Yeah. I'm living in England now. Pip pip. But being in this bastion of Western culture, I'm finding that there's a wholly different understanding of east and west here. It seems like for most people here, Asia is the part of the world that includes Pakistan, India, China, and uh, is Hong Kong part of...? Er, yeah, and China.

And that isn't to say those aren't Asian countries. But that's pretty much it, at least in terms of what affects most people's thinking here. That stuff about Korea? Primarily troublesome for people's mental rearranging of the "List of Countries That Can Nuke Something Besides TV Dinners." The recent coup in Thailand? Tack that on the "Places folks go on exotic vacations that I've always wanted to know more about someday" list. Laos or Cambodia? Same list. And Japan? That place I devoted the last five years to? "Oh yeah, I've eaten some of their food/seen a movie or dance from there/know a guy who went there and listened to his half-baked observations" list.

Which is to say that there is a whole world of stuff here that is considered "Asian" that I'm going to have to learn about. For instance, it's a little after sunset here and my otherwise quiet neighborhood sounds like an old west gunfight. It's fireworks being set off to mark the Hindu festival of Diwali. But that shouldn't be confused with the celebrations for the end of the fasts for Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which also took place tonight. It's just a coincidence that this year the first day of the tenth month in the Islamic calendar coincides with the end of the seventh month of the National Civil calendar of India.

And the recent Japanese holiday of 体育の日? Or about the upcoming 文化の日? Not even worth mentioning to people here. It's not really a part of what's been included in British international culture exchanges. East, but not Asia? Too-far East? Or is it so far away that I need to say it's Western Pacific?

What the hell, people?

I leave you alone for a week, and what do you do? Claim that the Patriot Act didn't go far enough and let a Senate committee pass a bill allowing even more wiretapping, surveillance and all around snooping on Americans.

Then the Attorney General claims that he needs ISPs to give up information on all their users to catch child pornographers. I'm sure that there's very few people who want to defend child pornography. But just between you and me, I've never actually met a child pornographer; I don't get around enough, maybe. And I suspect most producers of said materials aren't going to hand out business cards that say "Kiddie Porn." And most of them aren't going to fill in "Child Smut Producer" in the occupation section of any sort of questionnaire. And I'd be willing to bet that 99% of them would operate outside of a country that requires a law like 18 USC 2257. Incidentally, this law requires everyone the producers to get proof of id from anyone who is visible in a porn film, nude or otherwise, and keep it available for the attorney general of the US. Presumably so he can, y'know, check they're all 21 or something, and not just to cruise for names and phone numbers and stuff.

Now, in all fairness, this hasn't just been to make the DOJ look cool. As a matter of fact, just this month they arrested some guy for importing some rather nasty videos.

But they weren't child porn. They didn't even claim to be. It was just a bunch of adults who seem to have a thing for excretions that most people don't like. Now, does this bust make your life any worse? Probably not. But it does mark one more fringe group that has been separated from the herd and picked off at leisure. The main reason these guys got busted? Their product was "obscene."

You know the classic legal definition of obscenity, don't you? Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when speaking of what could be considered pornographic, said "I know it when I see it."

That's all we have to go on: the opinion of a person who isn't even elected by the citizens of the country. And in this case, it's a person who was appointed over the objections of a great many people for his views on, among other things, who was and was not suitable for normal treatment as opposed to "special handling."

Sorry. I've gone on a bit long here. My point is this: the current administration has already clamped down on professors and teachers with politics and home countries they don't like, now they're going after people who like things in their bedrooms that this administration doesn't like.

What's to say you're not next?

Onwards and, er, overwards...

All right, as you may or may not know, I spent the last four and a half years in Japan. Really, about as good a place to be made to feel like an alien as any. Safe, clean, and brimming with societal norms that have no logical level of correlation with the norms I was raised with. Sure, "Sayonara, Robocop!" correlates one to one with "Goodbye, 8 Man!", but there's absolutely no correlation between the English "that'll be difficult" (this is where you bribe me) and the Japanese "that'll be difficult" (Are you stupid or just foreign? No.)

So it was an exercise in trying to adapt.

And I'm not done yet. This will be my last post from the US for a while. Next stop: Merry olde Eng-lande. I'll be trying to restart my official-type education there, so from now on, replace "outskirts of Tokyo" with "outskirts of London" and "Konichiwa, biatch" with "Cheerio, biatch."

New island.

New language.

Same old dumbass Datsun. See you in Soho, suckas!*



*Note: actual presence in Soho not guaranteed.

It's a Miracle...

The birth of a baby boy for the long-suffering Japanese imperial family means a couple of things, in my own humble opinion:
a) We can stop listening to jackass throwback neanderthals talk about the need to protect the throne from the enervating effect of women1,
b) We can listen to a bunch of people whose job it is to make noise about things make a lot of noise about how this will be the thing that inspires Japanese families to finally start having more kids to reverse the population decline,
c) An all-important return to the news that really matters: Killing kittens, the value of Pluto and which half of T&A is more naughty than the other2.

1. "I'm glad it's a boy," said Ryoji Inoue, 33, a salaryman interviewed at a subway station here. "I want the male succession to be maintained. That's because Japanese society is still led by men. I hope a couple of more boys will be born. The imperial law can be changed when we don't have any choice in the future."
- For Japanese, their prince has finally come, By Norimitsu Onishi The New York Times, September 6, 2006

2. "Our earlier request to cover the photo [of a naked, pregnant Britney Spears] from the waist down was because of nudity, not because we had anything against pregnant women," he said, adding that officials later decided that censoring the photo would be inappropriate. -Tatsuya Edakubo, Tokyo Metro spokesman
-Tokyo Subway to Display Naked Spears Ad, By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Aug 24, 2006 (AP)

Surprised?

Workers lose traction over past 10 years
Despite strong productivity growth, wages don't keep pace and fewer workers receive health and pension coverage.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer
September 2 2006: 8:56 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Working for The Man may never have been an overpaid joy, but it has offered a decent way to make a living.
Yet it's become less decent, especially considering how strong productivity growth has been, according to findings from the 2006 edition of The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal nonprofit research group.
Between 1995 and 2005, productivity -- a measure of the quantity and quality of what workers produce per hour -- grew 33.4 percent. But hourly wages rose only 11 percent, with almost all of that increase coming during the late 1990s, according to EPI.
Looking back even farther, the disparity is greater. Since 1979, productivity rose 67 percent, while wages rose only 8.9 percent.

So, if productivity, which is supposed to be a quantifiable measure of the value of work, is up one third but wages are only up about one tenth, where's the value of all that extra work going?

Hmmm.

This is a tough one.

Who could possibly have an answer?

The Bends

I thought that I could try and ease myself back into Western life. So I've been, except for a weekend in Austin, mostly staying home. Turns out that I'm in need of something like a hyperbaric chamber for the rest of the world. Small talk is still difficult, I'm having trouble catching the verbal and gestural cues that augment meaning, and I can't stand more than 30 minutes of commercial television. I mean, I used to be able to watch TV for hours on end. And now, well, let's just say some old or foreign commercials are more entertaining to me than the programming

2:49 AM and I don't feel like sleeping. 1:37 PM and I couldn't stay awake.

Let us just say that I may be trying to get back too quickly, and the change has carbonated my brain.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Been in Austin, Texas over the weekend.

Having a very good time.

Photos and comments later...

Fight Cavities: Aid Terrorism

Okay, so some people (who we're not being allowed to see,) were apparently foiled in their plot to blow up multiple airplanes (which flights/airlines we're not being allowed to hear) using some sort of liquid explosives.

So now US travelers are not being allowed to bring any liquids, gels, pastes or non-Newtonian fluids onboard.


With the exceptions of prescription medication, baby food and breast milk.

The toddlers in front of me got to keep their applesauce, but I had to throw away my toothpaste and deodorant.



Seriously: gel deodorant = bad, breast milk = okay.

Like Malaria, I figure...

I get the feeling that it's going to take me quite a while to get Japan out of my system, and that it'll probably never be gone completely. I'll be minding my own business when suddenly I'll get all dizzy and feverish under a wave of nostalgia for getting a hot towel served with my beer or having a room full of kids repeating after me "vampires want blood." The last week was a struggle (that I usually failed in) to not start every sentence with "in Japan..."

Sorry, y'all, but that's pretty much all I've got in the way of personal experiences for the last couple of years. So while I try and accrue some new material, I'll be working through a backlog of stuff that I meant to post but never got around to. And hopefully, at some point in the near future, I'll be able to talk about something else.

Like maybe my long-rumored-but-as-yet-unsubstantiated plans to go back to school...

(Did that do anything in the way of building suspense? C'mon, tune in next time.)