BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: October 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The toothpaste's out of the tube
Lately, it seems there's almost daily news about yet another moralizing, bible-thumping, right wing, sanctimonious Republican getting caught sucking cock in a men's room. Today's installment features a state representative from Washington, and has enough funny elements I couldn't resist posting about it.
State Rep. Richard Curtis, R-La Center, admitted to having sex with a man he met at an adult video store in Spokane last week, according to a police report released Tuesday afternoon.
The police report offers a damning and far different version of events from the brief account Curtis gave to The Columbian Monday, one that seems likely to threaten Curtis’ political future.
The report is filled with graphic details of an encounter that began at a porn store on a Spokane Valley strip and concluded miles away in Curtis’ room at the city’s poshest hotel.
The police report contains an account of how Curtis allegedly donned women’s clothing, red stockings and a black sequined lingerie top before engaging in a sex act at the store. He continued to wear them throughout the night under his clothing.
...Curtis, 48, is married and has two daughters. The two-term legislator and retired fire department captain was in Spokane last week for a retreat with other Republican lawmakers in preparation for the 2008 Legislature.
...Castagna said Curtis told him that "his wife knew he liked men when they got married, but she was not into that, so he only did that when he was out of town," the detective wrote in his report.
How's that for the trifectagrand slam something metaphorically featuring more than four key points?
Cheating on his wife.
At a Republican retreat.
While cross-dressing.
In a porn store.
With a male.
Prostitute.
Richie's scored pretty high on the scandal-o-meter with this effort, but fear, you thousands of remaining gay, self-loathing, Republican politicians. This is impressive, but it can still be bested. Imagine if the honorable Representative had used drugs to entice an underaged slice of boytang back to his room? See, there are at least two more points to score, and that's before going to extremes, such as leaving the kid's dismembered body in the dumpster behind his hotel.
So yeah, it was a good effort, and the fact that the Republican basically outed himself by reporting the kid's nickel-and-dime extortion attempts is a nice bonus point, but I'm sure within the next year or two we'll see another white male family values campaigner top this one.
As for the title of this post, it's a quote found within the body of the article. I found it deliciously metaphor-rich, given the context in which it was used.
Medium-sized earthquake here tonight, and since most of you reading this have probably never felt one, I might as well comment. This one was a 5.6 on the magnitude scale, and about 50 miles south from my location. I felt 2 or 3 distinct sets of shaking waves. The first was short, and I initially thought someone in the apt downstairs had slammed their door really hard. It went on for several seconds, and by then I recognized the distinctive sensation. Jinx was scared, sitting up and looking around on the chair she favors beside my desk, but she calmed a bit when I stroked her.
A couple of seconds later the second wave of shaking hit, and it was stronger. Like a group of people slamming several doors at once, repeatedly, for about 5 seconds. Lights swayed a bit, tendrils of overhead plants did too, and Jinx looked worried. It was shaking enough that I gave a thought to something breaking; the power going out or the cable or something I needed, and I stabbed Control+S on the Word document I was writing. I didn't get up, but I did take my feet off of the footrest to get ready to move if the apt began to slide sideways, or anything dramatic.
There were several more small shakes a few seconds later, but not enough to bother with, and with no power interruption or other problems, I was unconcerned. I did check online to see if there was any news; if it had been a 7.8 and flattened half of LA, and I'd only felt the distant ending of it up here. No luck, it was just a 5.6 down south, near San Jose. And after texting a couple of friends to hear how it felt in their locations, I pretty much forgot about it. Hence me not posting this until hours later, when I saw news about it on Yahoo and remembered that I was going to blog about it.
I've never really understood why people get frightened of earthquakes. They get headlines, and every decade or so one takes out a few hundred people, or causes a tsunami, but you've got better odds of winning the lottery than being more than inconvenienced by a temblor. On the dangerous side, you've got a vastly better chance of being killed in a car crash or slipping in the shower or any number of other random accidents in your everyday life. Of course that's logic, and logic generally has nothing to do with fears. Which is why they're fears.
Amusingly horrible crime news that moves up to another level of LOL when more information is revealed. First, the quote, with the mug shot.
A part-time lab technician at Holy Name Hospital was caught having sex with the body of a 92-year-old woman in the hospital's morgue, authorities said Monday.
Authorities said Anthony Merino, 24, of West 185th Street in Manhattan was working a shift as a histology lab technician on Sunday morning when he asked a security guard for access to a refrigerated area adjacent to the morgue where human tissue samples are stored. The guard complied and then wandered away for several minutes, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.
"When he came back, he observed Mr. Merino violating the deceased victim" on a gurney, Molinelli said. "He immediately notified Teaneck police."
Okay, that's sad enough. I mean the guy's not only a necrophile, but with someone's great grandmother? Dude, that's just nasty. Not only is she 92... she's dead!
It gets funny when the rest of the news item basically just makes fun of the guy's MySpace page, and much funnier when you see it yourself. Take a look before Anthony, or someone else, takes it down.
The usual MySpace warnings apply; it's got some horrible music playing and it's uglier than any other webpage on the internet that's not also on MySpace, but it's worth it for the joke, the shirtless photos of the guy, and the dozens and dozens of Playboy bunny images scrolling, wallpapering, blinging, etc. Here's the "about me" part from right on top.
I work hard, so I party hard, that's my motto. I love playing all types of sports(football, basketball, track, baseball, and some soccer). I specialize in football and track. I now play semi-pro football, and I also studied various forms of Martial Arts, from Shotokan Karate, to Ninjitsu, and Lak Sao Chuan Fa Gung-Fu. I'm currently in college studing Engineering/Business Admin. also working. Time is my enemy, I never seem to have enough time to do all the things that I would like to do. I'm also into cars and motorcycles. I'm laid back, easy going and pretty cool to hang out.
I'm trying to imagine him explaining this one to his friends.
I was just curious if she'd be any colder than my ex. That bitch! Dude, seriously... she was hot for a 92 year old. You know how the camera adds 10 pounds? Death takes off like, 15 years. Hey, at least it wasn't a guy!
Party on, Anthony. You know you always wanted to be famous, and I'll bet you'll have a lot more than 41 friends once you get bailed out and have a chance to log on.
Today, in a real life conversation, I was talking to a friend about why some rappers have flow and rhythm and stand out and others are just another of the countless mush-mouthed bling-wearers. We didn't come to any definitive conclusions, and I'm not going to blog the whole discussion, but in the process of looking up a YouTube link to email the friend in a post conversation wrap up, I found a remix video I thought worth sharing.
The original track is Missy Elliot's Gossip People, most often heard as the soundtrack to about every other amateur jailbait stripper webcam movie on the Internet. I mentioned that song in the rapper conversation since I couldn't tell you one word Missy Elliot says in the whole song. She's got a good voice for that song, very throaty and soulful, but she should probably be a singer, not a rapper, since her words blend together into a sustained musical note. In contrast, the feat. rap on the song, from Ludicris, is instantly memorable and stands out for the flow and rhythm and clarity of his voice. He says nothing memorable or intelligent, but his delivery is great, and I think he gets a boost by the rest of the song being essentially 2.5 minutes of background noise. Catchy, tangy, strippertastic background music, but a 15 sec loop would serve basically the same purpose. (I've heard some versions of the song with another guest rapper, a female who goes before Ludicris, but I don't know who it is and her rap is the worst part of the song, so I'm not going to find out or link it now.)
At any rate, while looking for a link to that Missy Elliot song, I saw this one advertised as a Fat Boy Slim remix, and since I liked it a lot, I'm embedding it here. It's a subtle remix, just enhancing what's there, but it adds a second level of driving percussion, and makes the song feel a bit faster and more dancier. If you're into that sort of thing.
Daylight Saving Time has ended the weekend before Halloween for as long as I can remember. I always thought that was clever when I was of trick or treat'ing age, since it wasn't any fun to go around in a costume while it was still light out, and I much appreciated it getting dark at 5:30, instead of 6:30. In retrospect I think I had that backwards; most parents probably want it to remain lighter longer so their kids can trick or treat in at least twilight, but I was lucky enough to grow up before the media turned from new to entertainment, and began focusing obsessively on missing kids and child abuse. Therefore, back in my day, no one really worried all that much about child abduction or pedophiles or other bad things, and we had no problems wandering around after dark with bags full of bite-sized candies.
The other side of the daylight saving coin is that once the summertime clock change ends, it gets lighter earlier in the morning. I've not given that any thought since the misery of high school ended and I no longer had to get up at ridiculous, sleep-depriving hours. I'm awake today at 7:15am though and man... it's dark outside! No wonder they ended DST before Halloween. I'd hate to be a kid walking or biking to school today; it's damn near 7:30 and it's cold and still nighttime dark outside.
On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November. The Secretary of Energy will report the impact of this change to Congress. Congress retains the right to resume the 2005 Daylight Saving Time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete.
Sunrise here is now 7:34am, with sunset at 6:13pm. So it'll be dark at 5 starting next week, and still hardly light before 7. Not that I plan on being awake again at this time of the day for the foreseeable future.
Useful page with a collection of side by side comparative photos of marketing images of fast food vs. the item served in the stores.
Honestly, the actual fast food doesn't far too poorly, compared to the idealized advertised versions. Considering the time and preparation and artifice (Vaseline on the burgers to make them shine) that goes into advertising imagery, the fact that the the thing you get in 3 minutes for $2 is even edible is a triumph of foolproof, factory-style food preparation.
The only really revolting thing on the page is the oozing sludge of semen/swiss cheese atop the Wendy's Chicken Club, but that's more about my lack of interest in consuming a simulacrum of a partially-molten slab of male ejaculate, atop a piece of pressed, shaped, breaded, deep-fried chicken. That sandwich actually looks quite a bit like the idealized ad version, one blessed with extra "cheese".
The Boston Red Sox won the North American baseball championships tonight, sweeping the Colorado Rockies in four straight games. I didn't see a pitch and don't care enough about baseball to watch the highlights, but I'm sure it's very exciting for people who do care. I wasn't interested (I guess I was rooting for Colorado, just because Boston had 3x their payroll) but at least I was aware that World Series was underway. Here's what a twenty-one year old female friend said about it several days ago.
Me: 1-10 scale: how excited are you that the Red Sox are in the World Series? Do you need negative numbers? Her: What sport do the Red Sox play?
I think she was partially-joking, since if she didn't have any familiarity with the concept how would she have known I was asking a sport-related question? But I'm sure she was not misrepresenting her general level of interest in the issue. I have no scientific data, but in my experience women could not care less about baseball. Malaya will tolerate some football if I'm watching it and she enters the room; she likes the violence and pace and knows the fundamentals of the game. In contrast, she leaves the room, complaining loudly, if I happen to turn on baseball. "It's so boring! Nothing ever happens! They just stand around scratching their balls!" and words to that effect. Which is true, but the particular way they stand around, while nothing happens but ball-scratching, is an American tradition!
I wasn't planning on saying anything about this until December or January, but I don't see any reason not to mention it now. I've been attending a university full time for the past year and a half, and am set to finish my long-abandoned degree when I graduate after this semester. In like, 6 weeks. This is the primary reason I've been too busy to blog since the summer ended.
I've not mentioned my college return until now since I don't want to start talking about it until I can... talk about it. I've got a lot of amusing and absurd stories to tell about the experience, most of them written down when the events were fresh in my mind, but I can't start on that until I'm free and clear, since I don't want to Dooce myself. I'm not saying now, and I probably won't then, which school I'm attending, but as there aren't that many universities in the Bay Area, and as other details to be revealed later this year will narrow the geographic region, those of you with curiosity and any ability to use google will probably be able to find out. Not that that information will be of any value to you whatsoever.
I bring this up now as an extended apologetic, for my recent (months) of non-blogging. I'm zooming through 2.5 years of college in 1.5 years, and this, my last semester, is kind of insane. I'm taking 20 units, comprised of 5 3-unit classes, a 2-unit senior project, and 3 1-unit filler classes which were necessitated by an anticipated 3-unit summer class being canceled at the last minute. Of my 9 classes this semester, 7 have final papers of some sort, and the 8th class is senior project workshop, the entire purpose of which is constructing a research paper of approximately the size of any 4 others combined. All but one of these papers is due around the last week of November, immediately before or during finals. I've not done the tally lately, but I've got something like 7 research papers due, plus 5 final exams, in the 10 days immediately following the Thanksgiving holiday.
Needless to say, I'm kind of busy preparing for that, and am diligently trying to get papers done now, since it's not humanly possible to wrap up half a dozen research papers, all on different subjects, in a week, while attending a normal, rather busy class schedule, and preparing for final exams a few days later. Also needless to say, if you think the blogging here has been light for the past month, you're not going to see much improvement on that score until mid-December. Or possibly later, since I'm hoping to travel a bit and hopefully not spend any time thinking or reading anything that requires note-taking until after Xmas.
My main priority once the semester ends is going to be work on getting my fantasy novel(s) finished/edited/published, and I'm also going to be making up for the neglect I've shown to the HGL site, but I'm also going to be overhauling BlackChampagne.com. I won't promise an entirely new layout and improved function, but that's the plan at this point. I'm also planning to start more wisely embracing the Internet truth that most bloggers know; "People will line up for spam five times a day and ignore steak once a week." In other words, more frequent updates, several a day if possible, but since I'm not PZ they'll probably be shorter and smaller and less verbose. Which might well be a good thing. I'll still write longer discussions of things I want to discuss, but I doubt I'll ever return to the glory days of 2002-2004, when I was posting 30 or 40k updates almost every day. Not unless someone starts paying me a living wage to do it, and even then, I think I could find more productive uses for my time, and I'm sure you guys reading this could too. (Of your time. Not mine. Though probably that too.)
I mention this now since I had a brief anecdote/joke from this evening, that wouldn't have made much sense without the context. Earlier this evening I was sitting in bed doing some reading for a World Religions class. We've surveyed every major faith, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, along with primal religions and some other early goddess and cult stuff. We're on Christianity now, and I was sitting in bed (where I often retreat to read in peace and relative quiet) and going through the two course texts on world religions and filling out the reading question forms when I felt the need to stretch out. The early years of Jesus and the principle tenants of that particular monotheism were as exciting to me as you might imagine, and after stretching I pulled the comforter over my shoulder and closed my eyes. Just for a minute, mind you.
An hour later I blinked back into consciousness, my right ankle numbed by Jinx's furry, sprawling form, my neck kinked almost to the point of immobility. As I sat up and yawned and stretched, moving carefully to avoid dislodging the companionable feline, I found myself chuckling at the irony. Think of the millions of hours of slumber humans been been spurred into by the very topic that had lullabyed me, and think how few of those dozing individuals were fortunate enough to have a soft bed beneath them? I woke up with a sore neck, but it certainly beat a pew-numbed ass, or a glaring reverend breathing down my proverbial neck.
I bought four new tires earlier this year from Costco. Free flat fixes and tire rotation/rebalancing is included with the purchase, though this can be difficult to obtain, thanks to the chronically overcrowded and understaffed tire centers found at CostCo stores in California. I've had tires from them for much of the past 15 years, going back to when the company was called (the much more palatable) Price Club, and I've never had my tires tended to in less than 2 hours. It doesn't matter if you just want a 10 minute rotation or flat fix; they've always got a bunch of cars to tend to before yours.
On my most recent visit, I needed merely to get one tire replaced. All four still have nearly new tread, but one had a big cut along the sidewall and was leaking slowly. CostCo offers replacement, but it's not free. You get credit for how much tread is left, which entails them checking the mileage and measuring the depth of the tread with a little gauge. They then figure how much is left and refund you that amount, credited towards the new tire. In this case I got something like $84 back towards the price of the $97 tire.
Mercifully, there was no need to put my car up on the lift to do this, so on my first visit some weeks ago, I only had to wait 15 minutes while the 1 guy at the desk helped the 3 people there ahead of me. He then walked out to the parking lot by the garage bays (which is invariably located at least 50 yards from the entrance to the tire store at every CostCo I've ever visited) and inspected the tire, and measured it, and checked my mileage, and gave me a price estimate and put the single tire on order.
That was on a Thursday. They called me on Tuesday to say the tire was in, and when I had some time Thursday afternoon I went over to get the tire put on. Unfortunately, I didn't get there until 2, and I had to leave by 4:30 at the absolute latest, and they said it would take 2.5 hours to get to my car. I didn't want to wait two and a half hours only to find out that they were running slow and that I had to leave before they got to the 5 minute job of putting my new tire on. So I canceled the procedure, did some quick impulse shopping (75 pounds of potatoes and a leather recliner), and went on my way.
I didn't have a chance to get back there until the next Tuesday afternoon, when I arrived at 1:30, without a pressing need to be anywhere before 5. I had books to read/work on, and some interest in shopping through the rest of the strip mall (TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Shoe Pavilion, Target). They still had my new tire on hand and said it would take an hour and a half. So I made sure to note which tire was bad and what was wrong with it (so I could check to be sure they actually replaced it, rather than just moving it around), grabbed my bag, and walked across several acres of typically-pedestrian unfriendly empty parking spaces, to the other end of the mall. I had a snack, read a boring book for an hour, got a birthday card and some other impulse stuff in Target, found a new wine-red sweatshirt on sale at TJ Maxx for $5, and had little trouble killing 2 hours. My only mistake was hitting Target last, by which time I was hungry enough to be tempted by the greasy, plasticine, heat lamp special, coagulating slab of Pizza Hut "pizza" on display in the bright red, popcorn-stinking food area at Target. Fortunately I'd had an apple, so I wasn't hungry enough to violate my stomach and profane the hallowed food that is pizza by indulging in such a revolting example of the stuff.
CostCo had told me they'd call when the tire was done, but you and I both knew that would never happen, unless it got to be closing time and one of their undertrained clerks stumbled upon my keys on the pegboard and wondered why that car hadn't been picked up yet. I gave them 2 hours though, after they told me it would take 1.5, and happily, my car was done when I returned. I'd already paid (as required) before the procedure could begin, so I only had to wait 15 minutes while the 1 guy at the counter took care of the 2 people ahead of me in line.
He told me they'd put the new tire on and switched it with the back tire on that side, prompting me to ask, "You rotated all of them, right?" He gave me a blank, "dog hears a high-pitched noise" stare, and I knew, at once, that my fate was sealed. I pressed on anyway, out of sheer perversity and the fact that I enjoy such situations, on some low, brain-stem level of my consciousness.
"It's been 6000 miles since I got four tires, right? And my warranty requires that they be rotated every 5000 to 7500 miles, right? I assumed you guys would go ahead and perform that service, while the car was already here and up on the lift."
"Um, well you didn't say you wanted that done."
"No, but you never asked, and isn't the performance of that service the reason it takes two hours to get a flat fixed in this store? I am required to get them rotated every 6000 miles, and it's been 6000 miles since I bought them."
"Oh yeah. Well, you could come back tomorrow. If you'd just said something I'd have put that right on the paper and it would have been taken care of!"
I gave up at that point, since it wasn't quite amusing enough to bother without an amused audience. If Malaya had been there I might have asked if they'd put air in the new tire. And when he said, "Of course." I could have replied, "Well, obviously I'd want that done, but I never specifically told you to, so I thought I should check." Which would simply have perplexed the guy, who after all, isn't paid to think. That and he's got my credit card information, so there's no point in provoking him.
Besides, he was correct. I never specifically told him to rotate the tires, so he was legally blameless. Common sense was on my side, since my tires had 6k miles on them, were supposed to be rotated at around 6k miles, and since there was no possible reason anyone would not want that free, warranty-required service done. But hey, I didn't ask for it. For all he knew I was looking for an excuse to return next week and waste 2 more of the dwindling hours of my life wandering around the strip mall while waiting for a brief and largely cosmetic procedure to be completed on my car.
I did appreciate how cheerfully he apologized. Also, the tone of voice he used to tell me he'd happily have checked a box on the service form that would have ordered the grease monkeys to provide me with a legally-mandated service was quite soothing. Walking out to my un-tire-rotated vehicle, I checked to be sure they'd actually put a new tire on, and hadn't switched off the wrong one, chuckling to myself. The guy reminded me strongly of an individual I deal with regularly through another element of my online work. He's a really nice guy and seems to try very hard, but he's simply not competent at his job, and is astonishingly lacking in foresight. Every time I deal with him, or view one of his public releases, he always leaves off some critical aspect of the project, or fails to answer, in advance, the most obvious question his incomplete information release will spur. It's almost like he's playing some sort of game with the others working in this enterprise, where he puts out intentionally incomplete products, just to see who will be first to ask the obvious question(s). On the other hand, he's invigoratingly accomplished at apologizing when his requisite failures cause me, or others, inconvenience. It's a positive gift; one that I've noted approvingly (to everyone but him) since the beginning of our professional acquaintance. I always wind up almost feeling bad for pointing out the failing or blunder that necessitated the apology, and trust me, it takes a lot to make me feel sorry for someone else's incompetence.
The CostCo tire clerk wasn't quite that good, but in his defense, he had to make the apology in person, without any time to prepare. The other guy of which I anonymously speak chiefly interacts with me via email, and thus has time and opportunity to edit the appropriate contrition into his communiques. As with puns, and blog entries, apologies get credit for being quick.
Fascinating and occasionally hilarious blog post about the science behind erections, and the various treatments developed for treating ED. It's written by a PhD candidate in Biological Physics, and is scientific, thorough, appropriately-illustrated, and quite funny. The story about the first researcher to isolate and utilize the erection-causing drug papaverine is hilarious. Here's a quote from that; it's far funnier in the full context of the article, but I've got to cite something to get your attention. Plus it can't but help my site's search engine rank.
At this point, I, and I believe everyone else in the room, was agog. I could scarcely believe what was occurring on stage. But Prof. Brindley was not satisfied. He looked down sceptically at his pants and shook his head with dismay. 'Unfortunately, this doesn't display the results clearly enough'. He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped breathing.
But the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, 'I'd like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence'. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.
The screams seemed to shock Professor Brindley, who rapidly pulled up his trousers, returned to the podium, and terminated the lecture. The crowd dispersed in a state of flabbergasted disarray. I imagine that the urologists who attended with their partners had a lot of explaining to do. The rest is history. Prof Brindley's single-author paper reporting these results was published about 6 months later.
It'll give you something to think about next time you get one of those "H3rbal V1AGR4!!" emails, anyway.
The article didn't cover those "natural aphrodisiacs," since it's about science and not Internet marketing scams, but there is some information about the discovery of Viagra.
Pfizer was investigating a drug named "UK-92480" that they had discovered by rational drug design. It caused smooth muscle relaxation through inhibition of the phosphodiesterase (specifically PDE5), which is responsible for hydrolysis of cyclic GMP. It was hoped that inhibition of PDE5 would cause smooth muscle relaxation via the pathway above, and lower blood pressure in patients. Unfortunately, results were modest. An interesting side-effect of the drug was noticed by male patients however, and the drug was surprisingly popular among the study participants despite the poor control of blood-pressure. Pfizer, not being idiots, realized they had hit gold. Finally, a treatment for erectile dysfunction in pill form had arrived.
I've done a tremendous amount of non-fiction reading on a wide variety of subjects the past year+, and it's unfortunate that I've been too busy (with that reading, and other related things) to blog about it much. Lots of interesting new info and ideas though, and since I was just writing one to a friend in email, I figured it would make a decent blog post.
The most recent book is Japan: A Reinterpretation, by Patrick Smith. I haven't read a lot of books on Japan, so I can't say how good or bad this one is. It was recommended by a professor of Asian Studies, and it's got pretty good reviews on Amazon, and it's won some literary prizes, so that's something. I'll quote from the official Amazon blurb, since I'm too lazy to summarize the book myself.
For years westerners have viewed Japan as a nation of democratic, hard-working, unabashedly pro-Western people, a viewpoint promulgated mainly by a group of postwar scholars known as the Chrysanthemum Club. Journalist Patrick Smith takes a hard, fresh look at Japan and its relations with the West--particularly the United States--in Japan: A Reinterpretation. Smith asserts that the economic miracle we in the West have long admired was achieved at the expense of true political reform, creating a corporation instead of a democracy. Now that the miracle has collapsed, the Japanese are in a state of cultural, political, and social malaise.
A lot of the reviewers on Amazon accuse the book of racism, or at least being insulting towards the Japanese, and I didn't find that at all accurate. He describes the culture and country quite precisely. I don't know if he's entirely correct, and there are obviously a lot of generalizations that must be made to sum up 1600 years of history on a nation of 125m people in a 300 page book. But his conclusions all seem to be well-founded and researched and argued, and if some of them are somewhat negative, that's not racism. That's objective sociology.
It's not racist to describe a culture as it is, warts and all. Racism comes from the subjective opinion drawn from the description of a culture. If you love Anime and think Japan is the coolest place ever, then you might find Smith's book racist, since he doesn't describe the country you've idealized. That's your problem, though, and in fact you're the racist, since you're assigning traits and behaviors to an entire race of people based on very limited knowledge. Smith never says every single Japanese person is this way, or that way, and he never says they're bad for being how he says they are. Conclusions of that nature are up to the reader. Or the Amazon.com reviewer, in several cases.
What I emailed my friend about was the mention of anime, since the friend had just sent me a link to this, which is NSFW and seems to be some sort of body pillow, with a hot, topless anime chick on it, and real, protruding boobs. It's even got detachable panties, though I don't see the point in those, since the pillow/anatomy beneath is not visible, and not anatomically-correct in any event. Not that I really see the point in the rest of it, for that matter.
Anyway, it's one of those weird Japanese anime things that most of us Westerners see and wonder, "WTF? Why does everything Japanese = weird/perverted?"
I have an answer for that, but it'll come after I quote the only brief bit from Smith's book that mentions anime, in the form of the manga comic book:
To take a small example, let us consider a manga called The Silent Service that was published not long after the Gulf War. Manga, the ubiquitous comic books the Japanese lose themselves in, are full of violence, sex, and derring-do of all varieties. They are a prevalent addiction because they are an outlet for people whose social codes are rigid and confining. This makes them a kind of inverse image of the Japanese; a way to gather and explore the collective wishful thinking.
So manga are escapism, and they're so bizarre and weird since so many Japanese feel tremendous cultural/societal pressure to conform and be cogs in the wheel, which makes their need for bizarre escapism that much stronger. Most of Smith's book is about that issue, but it's about why it's true and how it came about historically, rather than exploring any particular cultural expressions of the overall cultural condition.
Thanks to this book and some other reading, I know a great deal about historical Japan, and how the nation and culture got to where they are today. I do not in any way "understand" the Japanese people though, nor do I have any more insight into their culture than what I expressed a paragraph or two ago. I don't think Smith would claim to either, especially not today. His book was published in 1997, and maybe this is just an example of my own cultural/temporal relativism, but I think contemporary (youth) Japanese culture has undergone a huge transformation since 1997, largely thanks to the Internet age causing such a global mutation and combination of cultures.
I do have some insight into why we see so much bizarre Japanese culture online, though. It's pretty simple; that's what makes headlines. Bloggers and news sites aren't going to post news about regular people doing regular things. What they (we) post about is the bizarre stuff, and then readers who know nothing about Japan (this list included me until about a month ago) draw sweeping generalizations about the entire culture based on its most outlying weirdness. It's as if other countries judged the US only by Paris Hilton, Fear Factor, Jerry Falwell, and The Bang Bus.
Come to think of it, that's pretty much what happens. Ouch. However, you can apply that mis-knowledge to your situation. If you're an American and you want to judge how accurate a view of Japan you get from what you see about the country/culture, when what you're seeing are body pillows with tits, oddly-pixeled tentacle porn, and game shows featuring strangers screaming at each other on subways, consider how accurate an appraisal of life in America you'd get from only seeing brief news items about the weirdest stuff we turn out?
One of my stated goals in writing the Band Names section (lo those many years ago) was to receive hate mail from hysterical 14 y/os, eager to defend the honor of their crush of the week. That's never really happened, and ironically, I've gotten far more hate mail from reading comprehension-challenged rock band fans who see the occasional high rating for a boy band's name, and confuse that with my actual opinion of the quality of their music.
I have some mail today from a fan of a boy band, but it's rather disappointing. The band is one I've never heard of since including it on my list (no idea how I heard of it to include it back then), and the mail isn't really a flame. Still, we takes our joys where we can find them.
RE: Westlife.
You really should get your facts right before start spilling dribble about a band you don't know anything about.
Firstly, They have released up tempo songs.
Secondly, Only one member is from Dublin (East coast of Ireland), the rest are from Silgo, (West coast of Ireland) That's why they are called Westlife.
I wasn't even sure I had that band on my listing, and was quite grateful the emailer had mentioned their name, since I never would have known who they were talking about otherwise. To quote myself:
A band that most of us in the US are fortunate enough to have never heard of. They are huge in the UK and Europe though, and are a boy band poured from the same mold as 98º or 'Nsync or whoever you want to compare them to. Young girls love them, adults who have no taste in music like them, everyone else wants to cram them into a gravel crushing machine. They apparently differ from the Backstreet Boys in that they don't even attempt to do any uptempo rock/pop. They just go right for the kill with one sappy love song after another, melting the hearts of insecure 14 y/o girls everywhere. Join me in despairing for Western Civilization.
Their name is not much. The point of most boy band names is to scream, "boy band" immediately. They almost always actually include the word "boy" in them, just to be doubly-sure no one is in any doubt as to their inauthenticity. These guys are from Dublin, which is on the east coast of Ireland, but on the west side of the Irish sea. That might be where they got the name, or it could be something else entirely. Not that it really matters.
I gave them a 2 with zero bonus points, and I don't see any need to adjust that score at this point. I have no idea where I learned anything about the tempo of their music; I wrote the Band Names entries in 2002, before YouTube or Wikipedia made researching this sort of thing effortless, and what info I accumulated back then was from listening to samples of songs on Amazon.com album sales pages, scanning some fansites, etc. I suppose their hits back then must have been all ballads, hence my comment, though 1) Accuracy was not my ultimate goal in those write ups (since inaccuracy was often funnier), and 2) Obviously I knew they had some songs that weren't about mopey love; they weren't an R&B band, after all.
Curious if the band even still existed, I checked wikipedia and was amazed to find that Westlife is still around, remains popular despite no longer being boy-band aged, has sold tens of millions of albums worldwide, and is huge in the UK and Asia. They've never had any sort of hit in the US though, which is probably why I've never heard of them; not that I've allowed more than the vaguest consciousness of pop music to penetrate my awareness since about 1994. The female who sent this email has an @UK return address, so that much makes sense, at least.
On a larger level, it seems that boy bands are a dead genre right now. In the US, at least. I've not heard of any new popular ones in years, and the fact that the forty-year old Backstreet Boys are trying to get some hype for a reunion seems to indicate that the genre is pretty moribund. Something is filling that void, of course; there's always a tween-aged girl market for catchy, sappy, non-threatening pop, but TV shows from kids' networks like Nickelodeon and Disney Channel seem to be filling it. Never fear though, pop culture is forever cyclical, and within 3 or 5 years the tide will turn and new groups of shiny-faced, lightly-choreographed, lip-synching, 22 y/o's will be appearing on TV screens and posters in the pink-themed bedrooms of 11 y/o girls all across this sporadically-great nation.
Update: Speaking of the death of boy bands and who young girls are pledging their musical hearts to... meet Hannah Montana.
All over the country, little girls are crying that they want -- they need -- tickets to see their idol, a 14-year-old named Miley Cyrus (a.k.a. Hannah Montana) in concert, and from coast to coast that has pushed mommies and daddies to extreme measures. That's why some scalpers and brokers are asking for as much as $3,000 a ticket, politicians have been staging news conferences and Ticketmaster officials have been ducking for cover.
"Hell hath no fury like the parent of a child throwing a tantrum," said a weary Joe Freeman, vice president of Ticketmaster. "People who have been in this business for a long time are watching what's happening, and they say there hasn't been a demand of this level or intensity since the Beatles or Elvis."
Somewhere, a reptilian, Don King-like promoter is furiously scheming to get his pack of well-scrubbed, miniature Justin Timberlands on an upcoming Disney Channel show, and once he does, boy bands will be back!
Yes, that's what it says. The fact that it's a .org is what really puts it over the top. Not a .com, which might indicate some slick commercialism, but a .org. It's an organization. It's about helping people.
As for the site itself, I have no idea. There's a forum with 2 posts ever, and that's it. The whole thing appears to be a joke involving the freakish, plastic-faced homonculi David Guest, a D-lister known solely for his near sham marriage to Liza Minelli. Did he at some point make a comment about Chinese girls? Does he have herpes? I have no idea, but he somehow inspired a site with a funny name and some very cute Asian girls on the main page banner, and that's more good to the world than 99% of the other celebrities out there have managed. So bonus points for him.
