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.

Bonus French fun fact!

Just like in Japan, there's nothing wrong with installing a urinal by a window on the ground floor of a building in France.

And on a lighter note:

The accepted context for imported ideas and characters isn't even considered before use in Japan; exhibit 77d.

In Japan, the dark lord of the Sith digs jail-bait.
Totally.

Too many ideas, not enough understanding

You know, after re-reading that last bit, something just occurred to me. I can recall the first time I realized that someone like Batman would, by necessity, have to be a criminal. Generally, you can't just beat up other people no matter how much you think they deserve it, without being labeled a vigilante, a hooligan, or a criminal. Excepting, of course, those seemingly apocryphal stories about Judo stars beating up muggers. But by and large, we're not supposed to do anything besides calling the authorities. Which is logical, I guess, if you don't live in the Montana territory in the 1880s.

But for some reason I keep seeing stories about people resorting to extraordinary measures to protect what they think is just. C'mon, Knight Rider, The A-Team, Spenser for Hire, Mannix (no, "Mannix" is not a breakfast cereal...) and on and on and on. Why do we keep asking for someone to break the rules to make things better?

Initially, I was trying to be sarcastic. Just talking about a trend in fiction, y'know. But then it hit me: there are quite a few people who believe that justice is something worth struggling for. But they tend to be described as "radicals," "extremists" and "terrorists." Why else would someone strap a bomb to themselves and walk into a crowd? Why else would you fly your plane into an aircraft carrier? You don't do it for fun, and you probably don't honestly do it for the chicks. If you didn't actually believe that you were acting in the name of justice, that you were serving a higher cause, why else would you do it?

I am certainly oversimplifying an awful lot of things. First off, I don't really know anything about suicide bomber training, kamikaze pilots, CIA sleeper agents or army guys who throw themselves on grenades to save their buddies. Secondly, I don't claim to be able to define "justice" well enough to withstand any sort of honest philosophical inquiry. And I don't mean to imply that wearing spandex while beating up purse-snatchers and machine-gunning a bus load of civilians are even on the same continuum of valid moral choices. But if you use small, unambiguous terms, you can easily describe both motivations with the same sentences.

"Acting outside the law to meet one's idea of justice."

And that is where I start feeling more uneasy. You can usually spot a hypocritical act by the depth of the bullshit it's wrapped in. Anytime what sounds like a good idea comes with a lot of extra syllables, someone is being lined up to for an ass-fucking. Do you really think that

"...The President's goal to help unleash the productive potential of individuals in all nations..."
-2004 Republican Part Platform Statement

has anything do with actually helping individuals attain self-sufficiency in terms of food or health-care? Or is it just another effort to exploit a potential source of profit like oil, timber ormigrant labor?

My point is that you can usually understand an essentially moral idea because it can be explained simply. "Don't hit weaker people." "Be kind to people in trouble." "No raping." So why can such seemingly incompatible ideas be explained with the same simple words? Why can someone say "the rules are so wrong, the way society has treated those dear to me is so wrong, that I have to go outside what is accepted and fight for something better" and wind up killing so many people?

And what's wrong with my head that allows Batman and Spider-Man to wind up classified with the same essential reasons for action as a suicide bomber or an IRA assassin?

The thought which might worry me more is the prospect that there something about the "spread of democracy," as it's been practiced in the last 100 years, that winds up becoming a force that people feel a need to fight against? If the problem is in my head, that's just me. But if there's something essentially wrong with the way democratic ideology is practiced, that does and will affect a lot more people.

Approved by the Comic Dork Authority

I'm sorry if this is something I've said before, but I think it bears repeating. You really shouldn't let your kids spend too much time reading comics. Especially not books by Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Kurt Busiek or Frank Miller. Leaving aside the issues of violence, sex, language or questionable taste, letting your kids spend any amount of time reading these books is likely to warp their priorities. In general, these writers' books tend to follow one rather disturbing theme: that in a troubled world, people, struggling very hard to do the right thing, may suffer setbacks and losses, but in the end do manage to act on behalf of what they consider just.

Think about that for a moment. Do you really want your children to grow up with expectations influenced by ideas like that? Do you want to raise kids with the notion that justice is something worth struggling for, worth sacrificing for?
Really, save them and the rest of us a lot of trouble, disappointment and disillusionment by keeping them off of the hero-books. Give them an XBox 360 or something so they can play Tony Hawk 5 or Madden 2008 or whatever else has been carefully co-branded and synthesized for easy, dilemma-free consumption.

I also sort of miss public radio...

In my former, non-Japan existance, I used to really like This American Life. And not just because host Ira Glass is willing to devote whole hour-long shows to easy ideas like pets, but the less easy ones like fiascos, superpowers or what makes a Canadian Canadian.

Each week on TAL, as they refer to it on their own web page, they tackle a different topic in (usually) three acts. And sooner or later, it seems, they hit something that I can relate to, think about or laugh my ass off at.