I'm writing Japanese, I think I'm writing Japanese, I really think so!

Many thanks to Jonathon for a fascinating essay on writing and reading in Japanese. In tribute, though my corresponding knowledge of the Korean language is dwarfed by his knowledge of Japanese, I hope to offer a mini-essay on the simple elegance of the Korean alphabet. Soon.
I find it revealing (although perhaps because it seems so obvious, it’s also facile and misleading) to contrast the Byzantine complexities of written Japanese with the simplicity and directness of Korean, and muse on the corresponding characters of the peoples.
More on this later.

Japanese Women Walking

Platforms, baby!Via Visible Darkness, an interesting mental journey, begun, as it were, with a single step, as all journeys are. Worth your time, whether or not you’ve any abiding interest in gender equality issues, or Japanese women, or their shoes.

“Can one assume that the mostly domestic position of Japanese women in their society influences the way they walk? Maybe, since the political unconscious is precisely that, unconscious, when Japanese women walk with their feet pointing to the inside – to uchi – they are marking with their bodies the space of the traditional Japan –the time when the men went out and the women stayed in. Of course, there is no proof that such time ever existed. Most likely, someone can object, what I am trying to do here is orientalize the Japanese, and find in the feet of the women, in the way they walk, a kind of last bastion of old Japan, a sign of the exotic. And yet, it is possible to suspect that, since the traditional Japan – whether it ever existed, or has just been imagined–is becoming more and more distant from the actual conditions of daily life of the majority of the people, the position of women’s feet may also be marking a renewed choice for pleasures located before, beneath, or beyond the regulations of the cutthroat corporate world occupied by men.” [more…]

Malacca Rattan?

This comment was left recently by B. Rai, in reference to a half-remembered post I made some time ago at Metafilter which mentioned the amusing and odd TV commercials for Malacca Rattan :

Hello there,
I just did a google search on the old Rattan To Go ads and I’m afraid to say that you seem to be the sole authority for info on this on the net. Only four results were found, and I read your comments on metafilter.com. I’m glad such a television treasure has not been forgotton!
I am an ex-pat Vancouverite living in London and working in animation. I saw these ads when I was a kid, but strangely they’ve stuck in my mind. The reason I’m writing is because I remembered this ad a while back and am basing a sitcom character on Blue Mancune, the star of the ad, who I believe lives in Vancouver. Unfortunately I cannot fully remember the lyrics to the tune. I’ve got:
Malacca for the money
Wicker for the show
——– to get ready baby
Rattan, to go
I’m trying to finish a script and this is driving me nuts. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks,
B. Rai

I can’t remember, but perhaps there are some other Vancouverites-of-the-80’s who can. Leave a comment if you can help, and perhaps the mystery lyric can be unearthed!
Tangentially, it pleases me greatly to be the sole authority on the net for something.

Almost There

OK, the newish layout is live. With IE 6 it looks like crap at 800 by 600, and is still a little wonky at 1024 by 768, but my brain hurts, and I need a break.
Please let me know if the new layout is killing your browser. It would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Better to have loved and lost…

This thread at Mefi is worth following. Unfortunately, I am way too drunk at the moment to add anything worth saying to it, or process adequately what’s being said, but I’m also sober enough to want to bookmark it to read tomorrow when I’m more coherent. Please enjoy the words. Linky-dinky.

What is Fnord?

People (most of whom I dislike, on principle. No, really.) do tend to pooh-pooh Discordianism, and The Church of the Subgenius, and all that fincantabulous hooey. I say let ’em!
That reminds me of a song….

this is your life this is your life this is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time. you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. we are all a part of the same compost heap, we are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. you are not your bank account, you are not the clothes you wear. you are not the contents of your wallet. you are not your bowel cancer. you are not your grande latte. you are not the car you drive. you are not your f–king khakis. you have to give up, you have to give up. you have to realize that someday you will die, until you know that you are useless. I say let me never be complete. I say may I never be content. I say deliver me from swedish furniture! I say deliver me from clever art. I say deliver me from clear skin and perfect teeth. I say you have to give up. I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, I didn’t actually say any of that funky sh-t, Chuck Palahniuk did. Or rather, Brad Pitt did, which proves to me at least that he may be a Hollywood pretty boy, go-ash darn it, but he’s no dumm-eh!
That’s an entirely different set of flatware, Sherlock! What I originally mean to say before this all went sideways on me (how the hell did that happen?) was that memepool had a Hail Eris comma Subgenius slash Bob Dobbs post recently (†), and fnord is still amusing to me, even though I am not sixteen any longer (despite the undeniable fact that I’ve still got an unreasonably large number of zits and a tendency to shout things like “Rock and Roll!” in an embarrassingly Wayne’s World sort of way when I hear powerchords or cowbells).
You got a problem with that?

Buddy, can ya spare 500 Won?

willworkforfoodchicken.jpg
I realized this evening, for no readily apparent reason, that I was quite accustomed to being asked for money, with wildly varying degrees of aggression and/or supplication, anywhere from 3 to 10 times a day, on my short walk from our apartment in Surrey Hills to Town Hall House, the headquarters of OmniHyperGlobalMegaNet, when I lived in Sydney.
I have not once been approached here in Korea. Not once in 8 months.
Why do you reckon that is?

Magic. Painful magic, but magic.

When I got home from the university this afternoon, I could barely walk. The chronic pain that I’ve been experiencing in my feet (achilles tendonitis, for about 10 years, on and off, and I suspect a touch of arthritis, which runs in the family) flared up today, and I was hobbling, grimacing, cursing under my breath, and figuratively shaking a fist at the sky and hurling imprecations at any deity that might be looking at the moment.
I hadn’t been to the acupuncturist in about 5 days – my longest stretch in a month.
I just wanted to sit on the sofa and watch the National Geographic channel, but my ladylove cajoled me out the door, and off I staggered, my copy of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in hand.
It’s about two hours later now, and I feel so much better, it is astonishing. Night and day. I mean, it still hurts, but it’s gone from a 5-alarm fire to a hibachi. Night and freaking day.
This sh-t really works.

Hi ho!

Hi ho! If you can watch all of these without clutching your skull and bellowing like a confused waterbuffalo, you’re a better man/woman/other than I. Go ahead, give it a try, I double-dog dare ya! [evil laugh]
Wintertime Hi Ho!
Food poisoning Hi Ho!
Forest fun Hi Ho !
Too inexplicable to summarize Hi Ho jolly fun!
Hi Ho meets Jaws!
Hi Ho romance!
Hi Ho fishing misadventures!
Hi Ho saves the princess!
It’s a Hi Ho Christmas!
[Japanese ad wackiness via Tom Tomorrow (who rocks) and the ‘pile (which also rocks, in a different, yet equally righteous way (uhh..dude))]

Sargasso Seas?

This is tacking much closer into the Sargasso Seas of blogly circle-jerking (from which few emerge!) than I usually like to venture, but : Tom Matrullo deftly and pyrotechnically weaves my post about an oceanic metaphor for the web, which was mostly just a late evening braindump while drinking beer, into a tapestry much deeper and more vital than I could have anticipated. My thanks to him, and to Jeneane and Jonathon also, for taking my thoughts a little further, and helping me better understand this crap that seems to emerge sometimes, unbidden, when I put hands to keyboard.

I'm a little surprised

I’m a little surprised that few seem to be interested in kicking Dvorak’s ass about his latest swipe at blogdom, or even paying much attention, really. I wonder if that’s a) because we secretly agree or b) because no one much gives a damn anymore about his odd anti-blog hobbyhorse.
I suspect the answer is b).
People have decided not to feed the troll.
I did find this amusing, though :

“Show that you’re an independent free spirit by adding a lot of profanity to your text. “

f–kin’ a, Johnny-boy! You got my number.

Coffee? Tea? Deconstruction? comments.

Reuters : Garbage trucks

Reuters :

Garbage trucks in the south Taiwan city of Tainan will soon broadcast English lessons from loudspeakers to educate citizens as they haul away the rubbish.
“Even grandmothers and grandfathers will be able to speak the most basic conversational English after listening for a few dozen times,” the United Daily News newspaper quoted Tainan mayor Hsu Tain-tsair as saying.

If only they’d start something like this here. Not only would it make my job easier, but all the piles of refuse on the street would become a wistful memory. Of course first they’d actually have to buy some garbage trucks….

…They hung a sign up

…They hung a sign up in out town
“if you live it up, you won’t
live it down”
So, she left Monte Rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
She went and took that California trip
Well, the moon was gold, her
Hair like wind
She said don’t look back just
Come on Jim
Oh you got to
Hold on, Hold on
You got to hold on
Take my hand, I’m standing right here
You gotta hold on

– Hold On – Tom Waits

The instant-referrer gadget

The instant-referrer gadget down there on the right (no, further down, oh, oh, yeah…there!) has just shown me that scant minutes ago, someone reached here with Googlage : how+the+f–k+does+aluminum+sulfate+get+produced?. This is a thing of beauty to me.
Welcome, my chymical friend. Have a beer. Put your feet up. f–k Aluminum Sulfate, let me whisper to you tales of booze and madness. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll make you forget those covalent bonds, I’ll sing you the siren song that will lure you into a rich and deeply imperfect world of words and bad photoshops, I will sing the body eclectic…