Garbage Trucks

Garbage trucks are extremely cute here. They're painted baby blue with a big yellow elephant straight out of a children's book on them. I'll edit in a picture when I get one. They also talk and play a little tune. You can listen to it below.

A comment on commenting.

I've finally looked at the settings for this thing and have turned on free for all posting in the comments. So there's no longer any need to register a Blogger account to leave comments although you will need to decipher whatever picture the machine decides to throw your way.

I'm not just doing this out of the goodness of my heart though. I'm expecting to see some codes posted in the Mario Kart comments pronto. PRONTO!!!

ITT Doraemon conquers polio.

This is an ad at the platform in Wakamatsu-kawada on the Oedo-sen which is a subway that runs through Shinjuku. It's an ad for curing polio. I just think Doraemon is really cute although the picture doesn't quite show his expression. A pissed of Doraemon is cute indeed. Oh, it also shows the extent to which anime permeates the Japanese culture yadda, yadda, yaddda. I just had the funny feeling that right now a Japanese guy in the US is blogging the social significance of an anti-MS ad featuring Snoopy. Scary!

Geeks

I've been getting snappish everytime I've heard the g-word lately. I'm going to vent my issues here and hope that it relieves the pressure. Feel free to skip this.

Anyone who's been by Wired or Slashdot or any other popular tech oriented web site in the past five minutes has doubtlessly heard that geeks are taking over the world. This pains me to my heart because I know that it is simply not true, as much as I wish it was. I know because I've seen the people that were called geeks back when the word was an insult instead of a banner. I assure you that the people who were called geeks are not taking over the world. Far from it. They continue to be shunned, powerless and avoided by the world at large. They don't get dates, they don't have plans for the weekends that don't consist of playing video games or watching movies with the other rejects, they are not appreciated at work or at school and they most certainly are not taking over the world.

The people who are taking over the world are the same ones who've been running it all along. Extroverts, scenesters, every kind of socially adept politically saavy social group you care to name. These are the people taking over the world just as they've taken over the moniker geek. They follow comics, books, games and movies the same way a day trader follows currencies and beef futures. They adapt their tastes to give them the widest spread of common interests with the widest spread of people possible. This is a very smart thing to do. It ensures popularity and desirability amongst one's peers. It is quite an essential skill to master if one is to take over the world as these people are.

The old version of geek was nothing anyone would aspire to be. Geeks were geeks because they were as God had made them. No one in their right mind would want to be one, least of all the geeks themselves. This is why they turned to fantasy, sci-fi and video games that can easily eat up 40 hours in a week. They turned because they were outcasts. They could find no place in the real world so they turned to fictional worlds finding more of a home amongst their fantasies than they ever had in reality. This is the fundamental difference between the old geek and the new shinier version. The old geek would follow entertainment which allowed them to escape the real world whereas the new geek follows entertainment to advance in the real world.

The old geek wasn't after knowledge for the sake of others. No one was going to be impressed by how many times you'd read the Silmarillion. This was information you kept to yourself unless you happened to be in the company of the other outcasts who would be impressed by this knowledge. Still that wasn't why said geek was rereading the book or trying to memorize the Quenya alphabet. They were doing it to numb the endless boredom of long nights and weeks spent alone. It was something done because it had to be done. It was a show of obedience to one's nature. The same nature that prevented one from taking a place in the real world.

This is why the new geek has me tearing my hair out. To see this ultimately pathetic pursuit turned into a marketing device makes me sick. To see the people who were too dense to associate with the old geek throw on the trappings and make their way through the world on the backs of old geeks everywhere pisses me off no end. This is why I can't stand hearing the g-word anymore. Not the way it's used today. Because every time I hear it I'm seeing these poor schmucks waiting for acceptance from society which is not going to come. The old geeks will always be as they have been. There will just be a new word to describe them. And I'll be sitting here feeling terrible for them and hating the opportunists that have stolen what glory should have been theirs.

Shinjuku at night

So here's some video I shot in Shinjuku on my phone's camera. Enjoy.

Just saw this for the first time

Every cell phone in Tokyo has a camera. More than half the women under the age of 30 in Tokyo wear very short skirts year round. This is why all the cameras on all the cell phones in Tokyo make a noise whenever you take a picture. You can disable/modify any sound on your phone except the camera. This is why.

This sign is up on the escalator in the Kichijoji train station. It's fairly common to see women holding their skirts close whenever they're on an escalator. Trains also have problems with groping when they are very crowded. By very crowded I mean that the last four or five people are jammed into the car by the force of the doors closing on them. This is typical traffic heading into Tokyo in the mornings and out of Tokyo when people get off work. As a result there are cars designated just for women during certain peak hours.

I don't know enough about Japanese men, or the dating scene or homelife to offer any insight into this. I think I'm cool with that though.

Just saw the new Harry Potter

I guess it's just from having read the books a few times, but wow this movie was awful. I dug up the thread on somethingawful and most of the people there loved it. I guess it was more a movie for the people who haven't read the books. I didn't feel like I was watching a Harry Potter movie though. Much like I didn't feel like I was watching a Star Wars movie when Episode 2 came out. The cuts were all in the wrong places, what was left in was a hodge podge of the worst teen-angst in the book plus some Hollywood shine to keep the mouth breathers in their seats, the treatment of Dumbledore was horrendous, etc...

I appreciate the difficulty in translating a book the size of Goblet of Fire to a movie, but seeing Harry Potter get the 90210 treatment was a real blow. I can't even muster any hope for Order of the Phoenix since most of the essential plot elements which are set up in Goblet of Fire got cut.

In short, I long for the days of phosphor based film. The possiblity of every reel of this movie spontaneously combusting would make me sleep better at night.

Mario Kart DS

Well, after a frustrating 15 minutes of doing network troubleshooting in a language I can't read (quite fun I assure you)I finally got online with this beast. Turns out I needed to manually set the DNS servers in settings. No problem and I learned that "setsudanshimashita" means "disconnected". That's not the point of this post though. The point is, if you have a DS, Mario Kart and a wireless connection there's something you need to do for me:

POST YOUR FRIEND CODE IN THE COMMENTS

Everyone I play against randomly just wtfpwnz me. I reckon the people who are reading this might be more my level. So post your codes please. :D

Oh Apple, you've broken my heart...

I've had my powerbook for about 2 years now. In those two years it's given me exemplary service. I don't think I've ever loved a computer as much as I have this one. Never a glitch, never a problem. I measured uptime in months. Until now. With Tiger, Apple has in no uncertain terms screwed my pooch. Of all the things that Tiger could have broken it broke my wireless, and a laptop without wireless is an unsharpened pencil. Given that it had accumulated two years worth of crap I backed up my important stuff and nuked the sucker. Format and a clean install. Now instead of intermittant wireless performance I have none at all. This is a heart breaking development for me as things have gone so well. I'll keep plugging away for another week, but if the issue persists it's Debian time. Oh Apple...