my.bicycle

A sharp pencil. A canta-loop. The possibilities are endless.

Way too much free time and an OCD personality have generated this truly stunning list of impure deviations in Jackson's rendering of Lord of the Rings.

Apple now offers customizable RSS feeds for their iTMS (iTunes Music Store). Here's one I just made that shows anything added in every genre I like. Man, Apple sure seems to understand a lot of what makes techie stuff fun and cool. Now if they'd only launch the iTMS for Japan... (via MacMinute)

54.76190476190476% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

Five terrible fake names for Greg Kihn albums

1. Kihntankerous
2. Kihnjoined Twins
3. Kihn-Tiki
4. Under Kihnstruction
5. Kihntucky Rain

(via luscious boingboing)

Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno have helped to found MUDDA, a union of downloadable music artists. I can't wait to see what comes of this... (via boingboing)

Casemod-as-flamebait.

When I showed my friend, who happens to love Apple, he looked sick. He did not say anything to me. He just put his hands on his head and was in shock. I wish I had a picture of that.(...)I use it mostly for Internet, ripping music/DVDs and pissing off my friend.

oh, dear jesus. what have you done? (via futurismic)

Update: It was apparently just a prank. Though it's still a mystery where the innards of the G5 case went, before the current owner got it.

• A brick building in Tokyo near the Imperial grounds
  
• Roppongi Hills 1
  
• Roppongi Hills 2
  
• Roppongi Hills 3
  
• Roppongi Hills 4 (+ me)
  
• Roppongi Hills 5
  
• Osaka - Dotonboribashi: Kirin Tower
  
• Osaka - Dotonboribashi: Glico Runner
  
• Osaka - Dotonboribashi: Korean, Christian-evangelist performance on the bridge + stunned pedestrians
  
• Osaka - Dotonboribashi: Giant crab attack
  
• Osaka - Sennichimae: Night illuminated temple
  
• Kishiwada: Volunteer Center and partial ruins
  
• Kishiwada: Kitties
  
• Kishiwada: Volunteer Center's external spiral staircase
  
• Now: the top o my tv

A life-sized woman casemod (for non-PC PC's; there are others)
Realdoll bits and pieces (not safe for work, even though it's just silicone), including severed heads that (along with Dick Nixon) may rule us in the Futurama days to come.
A Secret Museum.
Japanese Goth Gyaru and Kana, of "visual kei" rock fame.
M. Christian's Bachelor Machine (comments to follow)

I've got a thing for the Matrix. I liked each of the movies; all three of them were great. I enjoyed this viewpoint here, as well.

If the machines find out about this Magic Super Cloud Killing Powder, we can kiss our Blacken the Sky Plan the hell goodbye. Ah, well. We know how that worked out, don't we?

Check out this absolutely ruling Death Star. (via alterslash)

A brief note to anyone who's using the XML comments link to keep up with Comments posting: I'm not sure if it's entirely consistent. I've missed a couple notes recently via FeedReader. I've not managed to isolate whether it's a feed or aggregator problem. More to follow.

Update: I have uninstalled BottomFeeder, which had previously failed to run properly after one particularly spectacular crash, reinstalled it, and set it up with the feeds for this blog and the comments. It sees everything fine. FeedReader for some reason, not only fails to recognize the order that the items in the XML feed are listed in, it drops some items for mysterious reasons. Pfff. "Alpha."

Update 2: FeedReader appears to have stalled in development. A shame, because it looks so nicely polished, and appears so nicely functional for something that is inexplicably futzing the aggregation of my Comments feed. (Note: ARRRGGgghh!!!!! (...!)). The site's last update was last September, though the binaries for the latest build appear to have been released two days ago, Sourceforge isn't showing anything new when I go there:
FeedReader 2.5 Alpha 610 [show only this release] 2003-04-23 17:00: bleh.
On the PC, currently BottomFeeder, with its save-to-FTP option, is my work/home default RSS reader. Anyone have a better suggestion?

My very favorite mash-up/bootie deejay, DSICO (that no talent hack) says his whole Bootie of Choice and I'm Not a Retard albums are available for download.

Labels: mashup

The picture of Darl McBride that opens this article makes me want to slap him. I think I'd have to wait in a long line to do that, though. (via alterslash)

"It's a little like Fiat marketing its cars while banning them from being driven by non-European citizens or outside towns," the court commented. The Italian case may well have knock-on effects on other products which are available in the country, such as region-locked DVD players - and it may even embolden mod chippers in other European countries with similar laws to press legal cases over the issue.

Italian courts have ruled that chipmodding PS2s is legal in Italy. There is a case in Australia contending that it's illegal, and akin to price-fixing. Apparently in Australia, this is already true for PS2 software.

I'm all for users being able to back up their purchased games, think they should not have region-coding and I'm not happy with piracy. Telling every customer that they can only mess with their purchased items in a company-approved way is asinine. This appears to be the main message of a recent Fair Use themed game, Carabella. (via gamespot)

Gorgeous gallery of various Tokyo sites. (via boingboing)

I have sometimes been under the impression that police are lazy. Self-arrest takes the cake (donut), though. (via Stealth Tribe)

Five minutes ago, a package arrived: a small espresso maker in the Italian, stove-top style. Two minutes ago I completed my first espresso-making operation with it. Long live the new flesh.

It's not me. And I'm not the East Coast guy who teaches Girls Rowing, either.

Blogger has begun offering their own RSS feed through Atom. I have changed the XML link to the appropriate new file, and I want it to work, but I'm not sure how many aggregators currently support the format. Tim's BottomFeeder (crossplatform) should be fine, but FeedReader (Windows) and NetNewWire Lite (OS X) don't like it a bit. Funny that I wrote and asked Blogger Support about this just days ago; more funny still that the out-of-the-box solution they provide doesn't appear to adhere to a universal standard.

Update: BottomFeeder likes Blogger's Atom feeds just swell. NewsMonster should, too.

One more thought: Blogstreet allows people to make their own feeds for /any/ blog. So if you've got some slacker who hasn't updated with a feed yet, you can use it on theirs.

Between the story of guy who tried to live on McD's for 30 days and the excellent book Fast Food Nation, I will never eat at McD's again. I'm at 6+ months already. (via kellysue)

New pictures of the rumored Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) unit! Or not. I had not previously made the connection that Nintendo has made previous forays into dual-screen units: Game&Watch for one, and technically speaking, the VirtualBoy displayed on two screens.

Update: Justin offers some sunshine on the topic. (via P-A)

Update 2: Costikyan makes a comment or three.

Yesterday I was finally able to watch Star Trek: Nemesis, the tenth Star Trek movie and ostensibly the last "Next Generation" movie. Simply put: I'm done, and if this is the best that Paramount can muster to continue the Next Gen. property, I hope it is the last movie.

From Star Trek VII: Generations onward, the movies took on the cast of the Next Generation. Despite the best aspects of the series being its ensemble cast working well together, taking turns in the spotlight, and playing off of each other, the movies with the same cast consist of ways to showcase how remarkably clever Captain Picard and Lt. Cmdr. Data are, and what fabulous acting chops the Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner have, respectively. They are remarkably talented, but Trek is at its best and most interesting when the entire group is interacting, and perhaps more importantly, in the way and pace that the characters move in-and-out of the focus of the narrative. Two guys hogging all the screentime is not what Trek is about, and it's sad to see that this is the direction that the movies have taken.

As if to top this trend with something even more centralized to those two characters, Nemesis revolves around making an additional Picard and an additional Data as the primary foils. Good grief, who promotes this kind of thing within the studio? The Praetor Shinzon, a clone of Picard, is obsessed with him, needs him to solidify his worldview (and some other DNA technobabble) -- the whole movie is about obsession about Picard; this is ironically the status of the entire movie franchise. At one point in the movie, Picards head fills the whole screen as he marches purposefully toward the cameraman and states, "This isn't about me anymore." Sadly, this only meant it changed to Data, who has one of the most interesting E.V.A.'s I've seen, before meaninglessly blowing himself up, for want of a autotransporter beacon.

Several things come to mind here: Was there only one of those beacons? That might have been stated, but it's unclear. They said "prototype," but that didn't clear up why it can't be replicated. Data presenting Picard with the device, then hanging out for the boom was like watching Bruce Willis intentionally go into the end of Armageddon with a broken wristwatch. What else...? The subatomic radiation that Shinzon is using was clearly detectable (though only theoretical!) in the beginning of the movie, but his perfect cloak can hide it along with everything else. Hm. Okay, fine: technobabble is not held to internal consistency. What about the transporting through shields? What about broken transporters working on the beacon? What about... Oh, sorry; I was really getting to be a pain-in-the-ass, nitpicking geek there. A list of the problems with the movie feels like it would nearly become a shot-by-shot recounting. It felt really sloppy, and disrectful to the efforts of keeping the shows honest. If this is the curve the movies are on, let me off here.

Last July, five years into their ten year contract, Activision decided to sue Viacom (Paramount) due to the "stagnation" of the Trek license as a property. A better idea than that, unless Activision needed something to keep their lawyers busy, would be to make a new deal with Paramount, wherein the content of the games would be considered Trek "canon." Maybe players could be Riker, Picard, or Data -- maybe not. But I can't think of a single Trek fan that would be able to resist playing through additional storylines that were considered really, really, really part of the same universe as the TV shows and movies.

UPDATE: Maybe these guys can keep the dream alive.

Labels: TV

Attention, The South: This shit does not help you overcome the stereotype of being backward, childbeating, religious fanatics. (via DPH)

Blog entry by Henry Jenkins discussing the effects of ratings systems in interactive entertainment.

I share the group’s belief that M-rated games should not be consumed by children -- not because they increase the likelihood of real world violence (a point of contention) but because they are emotionally disturbing and apt to cause nightmares and because they trivialize the human consequences of violence. Where we might differ would be in the grey area represented by adolescence. Some teens are mature enough to handle more disturbing content, others are not. Adolescence represents a threshold category in our culture and if teens are not given access to some more disturbing content while they still live at home, parents lose the ability to help them adjust to some of the realities of our culture. So, M-rated games should not be consumed by children at all and should be consumed by teens in a home where adults are fully aware of what they are playing and are willing to talk through the issues such games pose.

It is clear that G.W.B. wants to capitalize on the "maybe things are rocky, but you don't switch horses midstream" rhetoric that Michael Moore predicted in Dude, Where's My Country?

President Bush, wrapping the themes of his re-election campaign in an upbeat State of the Union address, said Tuesday night that America enjoys a growing economy but is still at war and must not "falter and leave our work unfinished."
After more than two years without a terrorist attack, he said it was tempting but wrong to think the danger had passed.
(...)
"Twenty-eight months have passed since Sept. 11, 2001 over two years without an attack on American soil and it is tempting to believe that the danger is behind us. That hope is understandable, comforting and false." (via ABC)

This is less a midstream proposition, as the work that is unfinished is the War on Terror. From the same Moore book, the question is "How do we wage war on a noun?" For the curious, the actual state of the union address is available from Britain. (via Findory) Further insight is available here.

BoingBoing's "winners" for Link Fu Too: Shaolin Webmonkey Beatdown have been announced. The world is far stranger than imagined, and it's not just a local-to-Japan phenomenon. I am most wigged-out by the custom fan-art with Stevie Nicks site, because so many people have commissioned them. I just don't understand; would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?

God help us all.

PS: Next time I am in a melée, I want to wield these.

John Perry Barlow is certain that Spalding Gray committed suicide. Gray appears to have had not only an interesting, but difficult life.

• A group blog for an apartment building in Los Angeles. Apparently guys named Brian are fond of this Blogger template. (via boingboing)
• BDSM of Japan. It is what it says it is, but it's more of a "hands across the world" approach of a Japanese guy to introduce the English speaking world to the joy of Japanese bondage. For heaven's sake, be wary of sketchy links that are not for the tame (or tasteful). Just enjoy the zen of the language:
  There is a wonderful smell in the female leg steamed in boots.
  Toes wrapped by the stocking of nylon is very attractive.
  Do you like female foot?
• Production I.G. of Ghost in the Shell fame has an RSS feed for their project status/press releases. (thanks, M., for the link to the GitS PS2 game, which also lead to this cool site)

(via sarah)

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman has generated the first really intriguing review to come out of Powell's review-a-day service. In Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country, the author consistently refers to George W. as "Mr. Bush," instead of "President Bush." I thought this was an effective, but childish way to underline the questionable method through which the he entered into power. After reading this quote:

Using Napoleon as a case study, the author analyzes how a "revolutionary power" goes about overturning a stable political system. In short, the revolutionary power rejects the legitimacy of the system in power, but instead of stating this openly to a fickle public, the "revolutionary power" maintains a public façade of support for the current system, while all the while working under the table to undermine it, only coming clean once the change has become irreversible.

I got the shakes for a little bit.

WETA concept artwork from the new live-action Evangelion movie. Some of it's new to me, some of it was on the AICN burst about it some time ago. I note with some sadness that Asuka Langley has been renamed "Kate Rose," unless that's some kind of Blue Harvest thing. (via timmeh)

You're cautious, a bit paranoid. You left the scene for the suburban married life, but somehow, touble seems to follow you and piss on your mornings. You are quick to share your point of view, but have no problems with giving in to the requests of wives and wolves.
Why am i constantly stuck competing with Quentin? (via All Who Wander)

neo's vidjo for Futureshock's Late at Night (14MB). Things look like this all the time here. It is only included as a sample of common visual phenomenon in Japan. (Quicktime complained when I tried to open this in a default manner, so I'm providing the direct link) (via jeansnow)

Better than the real thing: Playmate bloopers.

Somewhere between "ha-ha" and "bad fish": A Cotton Candy Autopsy (via boingboing)

Warren Ellis rips into GM crops; I laughed repeatedly. Short little machinegun barks and snorting noises -- trés uncool. For the record, I'm against GM crops, the same as I'm against any kind of monoculture. Reliance on them sets us up for incredible problems. A single disease might take out one type of crop; if that is the only type of crop being grown, it all goes away. Lately larger agribusinesses have filled fields with their GM crops, then sued neighboring farms when the GM crop shows up in the neighbor's farm. This seems like me suing my neighbor when I've broken their window with a stray baseball. But the descriptive "granola-crunching hippie who probably lives on rectum-paralysing medication to stop them constantly fountaining a stream of seed-riddled diarrhoea" had me going.

Side note: Covers to Japanese magazines. Missing the high-gloss, superslick paper, but cool none the less. (via JeanSnow)

Labels: music

Hello Brian,
Thanks for writing in. Currently, Blogger does not offer RSS services.
Please be assured that the development team is constantly working hard to release new features and we'll keep your suggestion in mind. I suggest you check back with Blogger real soon!
Best regards, ________.

From: "Brian Wanamaker
Subject: RSS feed?
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 05:26:25 -0800
Hello!
I've read through the help stuff, and all RSS related Support items refer
to BloggerPro features. I would be willing to pay for BloggerPro to get
RSS, but it appears the for-pay BloggerPro option has been discontinued.

How can I get an RSS feed for my blogs?

Thanks,
Brian

Oh, how I want RSS feed-ing-ness. If anyone wants to keep up with the comments, the XML link is here.

Update: Golly, thanks to Steven K. --

Scattershot offers a piece on how all the pretty dollies are not real, based on a BBC article. Though it fails to mention the theory (BBC: research, hello?) it immediately got me started thinking about and commenting on the uncanny valley, of course. The concept has fascinated me for a while; previously the frontpage of my site was an explanation of the theory. Simply put, it seems the further CG manages to push the envelope toward realism, the more the autonomous nitpicking function in our heads start to work on it. Not just CG, either. Robots, zombies, dolls; anything that attempts to be humanlike but is not human, has difficulty in somewhat inverse proportion to how nearly successful it has become.

Why is it simpler to evoke an empathic reaction out of a smiley. Why should Munch's "The Scream" have more effect on us than this one? Even this rendering: :-O is more likely to get a response than poor Aki Ross.

NOJ will be releasing the Famicom -flavored GBA (via gamespot)

> Thanks for turning me on to the Japan Tribe.
> Specific questions would include:
> 1. How is the climate there?
> 2. Do many people speak English there or is it neccesary to learn Japanese before I leave?
> 3. What did you miss about America while there?
> 4. What didn't you miss?

The climate varies widely based on the region. The wikipedia entry on Japan has a lot of good information about the culture and geopgraphy, but suffice it to say that the north island, Hokkaido gets pretty darned cold in winter, and the south island, Okinawa gets very hot in the summer. Okinawa doesn't get particularly cold in winter, and Hokkaido apparently has a very pleasant summer. The rest of Japan gets actual seasons, with a mild spring and autumn, a hot and humid summer, and a snowy winter. It was a big surprise for me as someone who was raised in southern California. It's nice, though -- it adds a kind of pace to the year, and it feels like time is actually passing, rather than the endless, sunny limbo of Los Angeles.

English is spoken minimally. Japanese people are abe to read and write English much more readily than speak it. Depending on where you go, you will have better luck finding someone who speaks English. Tokyo and Kyoto are reasonably easy to get along without any Japanese language skills. However, and I don't know how to emphasize this enough, even minimal Japanese study will go a long way toward smoothing your way. Japanese people are usually very helpful to anyone trying to learn the language. It is a surprising contrast to America, where most people only speak one language, and get frustrated if others don't speak English natively. It's a good idea to study some, and be prepared to learn a lot more once you arrive.

What do I miss the most? My family and friends, mostly. The internet has ameliorated a good portion of the isolation I experienced in 1993-94, but it's still rough to be on the other side of the planet from so many people that are important to me. Relaxing spaces; there aren't many nice coffeeshops around in which relaxing is possible. Starbucks is booming over here, but the vibe is different. They're so popular and busy, so full of people all the time, that sitting and hogging a table for a few hours would be really inconsiderate; and inconsideration is really the one unpardonable sin over here.

There is no cheap and easily accessible Mexican, either. However, the abundance of good, reasonably priced Japanese food prevents me from whining too much about that.

What I do not miss is a very long list:

• Expensive, mediocre Japanese food
• A mean average of mediocre and expensive restaurants in general
• Driving to work (I take a train now; the difference in stress level is phenomenal)
• American candy (I'll take o-manju instead)
  American service: waitresses, waiters, flight attendants, checkout clerks... Service in Japan is incomparably, unfailingly complete. When I'm in the US, and am expected to tip for bogglingly inferior service, I accept it as a cultural conceit, but not one I'm happy about.
• My neighbor, a redneck pool cleaner, who would noisily connect the hydraulic controlled boat trailer to his GMC pickup truck at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings, though his truck and trailer where parked next to three apartment windows, the closest of which was my bedroom window. When I asked politely if he could keep the noise level down, he looked like he wanted to fight. I can't imagine anything similar happening here, even if I was dealing with Yakuza.

So I like it here. It's an impressive country. I miss things having to do with the American spirit, and other intangibles, but it's nice to be here, now.

.brian

Spalding Gray is missing? This is less weird than worrisome. Spalding is one of the most interesting spoken word performers of our time. He appeared to overcome a tremendously colorful background. He performed at UCSC in 1990 or '91, and I was lucky enough to see him in one of the small theaters in the arts area. He told a story about how he lost his faith; his parents were Christian Scientists, and he initially defaulted to that belief system. One time, as a small child, he was accidently burned by a hot surface, like a radiator. Due to their faith, his parents did not take him for treatment, but instead wrapped the wound and prayed for removal of the "error." In time, the wound became badly infected, and (i think) his teacher took him to see the school nurse. When they unwrapped the wound, the nurse screamed. In that moment, Spalding was overwhelmed with the emotional reaction of a health professional. He realized his parents were going about it all wrong... (via mike)

G is for Garth.

Gamespot ran Konami's announcement about my company's next big wrestling project. (Update: Today it's the 2nd most requested game on GameSpot! Go, us!)

DPH has a bit on Luis Vuitton bag design by Takashi Murakami. I'm familiar with his work, but haven't put a name to the pieces I'd seen. Check this interview with Murakami for one artist's struggle with the public perception of his obsession.

There was a piece in a model show in Tokyo about 10 years ago, of a robot that looked like a young girl. She was nude, and broken into pieces, obviously having been forcibly destroyed by some malevolent force. Lying there in the snow, dead/deactivated, I read the title: "This is why otaku are hated."

The term is a perjorative here in Japan, with none of the "reclamation" that has occurred for "geek" or "nerd" in the United States. It can only conjure the image of the smeagol-like unwashed, the terminally obsessed. It's a stereotype, and like many stereotypes, it has manifested based on consensual perception of a subgroup. Like any stereotype, it also gracelessly fails to address portions of the phenotype that don't exhibit the behavior of the gross mean, and in doing so limits its own accuracy as a categorization, while simultaneously relegating the "abnormal" portion of the group to its main body, preventing understanding of the actual breadth and diversity of the stereotyped group.

Further obsessives: execrator: grotesque photomanipulations of simulated damage and experimentation (from DPH), Gentarou Araki, the creator of the model I mentioned, anyone who contributed to the list of all fighting game characters, ever, people who learn to speak Klingon (or Romulan), and anyone who practices cosplay.

Strange coinky-dinky: the TV is showing a special on a low-ranking Japanese "tarento" who has been sent to China to study insect-based cuisine. She is an insect otaku, and has just eaten a live kuwagata on camera. One of the viewing panel, a more successful actor than she, is a young man who is also an insect otaku. Except he just keeps kuwagata as pets. He was visibly distressed at watching her eat one of his potential pets while it was still wiggling. "I don't even want to talk to you anymore." Hey, bub -- neither would I.

RSS is going to be the next big thing. If you think I'm "so 2003" for making note of this, ask your Mom if she's using it. Nobody outside of the early adopters (in this case, primarily primarily bloggers), knows what it is yet. But they will. All this preamble by way of promoting my current s/w happiness, which is the freeware app (alpha) FeedReader. I'm still hammering away at a couple mid-level UI issues, but so far I like it. Previously NewsMonster was my aggregator of choice, as it is integrated directly into Mozilla.

Wired is running a string of Macintosh articles right now, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. They point out that Microsoft has always been a s/w producing ally to Macintosh computers. Of course they're interested in keeping Macs around; who else is going to show them how a GUI should work?

Lastly: Hotmail just sent me this note, letting me know that my account is in danger:

Don't let your Hotmail account freeze up!
As a valued customer, we want to remind you that if your e-mail account goes over the 2MB storage limit, it will be automatically frozen. That means:
• You won't be able to send any e-mail messages
• All messages sent to you will bounce back without notification
Your e-mail account will stay frozen until you delete enough messages to put your account under the 2MB limit. So make sure to monitor your account and delete messages regularly in order to stay well under the limit.
To avoid this hassle, sign up for MSN® Hotmail® Extra Storage. Starting at just $19.95* a year, Extra Storage gives you a much larger inbox. It's the easiest way to avoid a frozen account.

My account is at 28% usage, and hasn't gone above 40% in months. What the crap?

Just one small example of quiet, charming, high-minded design, combined with reckless abandon for language that makes Japan so charming. Alive in Kyoto also provided some convenient kanji learning tools in a recent post (rikai.com and hiragana megane). (via alive in kyoto)

The Governator has lifted US$2,000,000,000 from California's education budget in a bid to make sure that young people can only elocute at his level. It may also shore up part of the budget. Good grief; aren't CA schools already in 50th place in the nation? Can they slide any further into Dis?

Schwarzenegger's budget plan, set for release Friday, calls for an overall increase of $200 in per-pupil funding but falls far short of the $4 billion that schools could claim under voter-approved funding mandates.

Voters say, "Yeah, we're screwed for education; drop another US$4b on them." Governator says, "Try half." Great...

To close the remaining gap, Schwarzenegger aides have said, he might propose a number of one-time savings -- such as selling surplus state land and curtailing transportation programs.

"Surplus state land"? What does that even mean? State land is held in trust for the citizenry, right? Or is this some other use of the term, not referrring to parks and reserves, but instead to government offices that aren't in use, due to previous cutbacks?

We apparently need even less transportation solutions as well. Will someone please ship a copy of SimCity to the Governator, so he can see how this stuff works? We have got D-I-C-K for safe, reliable, public transportation in CA. It needs to improve, if growth is to happen at all. I also encourage him to try the 405/10 Fwy junction in LA, or the 101/880 Hwy junction in Silicon Valley for examples of how not to leave public transportation in limbo while an area expands. Crap!

Redubbed G.I. Joe PSAs. On crack. (somewhere offa Tribe.net)

When I think of exotic, foreign lands, I tend to think that everyone over there is cooler than where I'm from. Stupid to have the lurking "grass is always greener" syndrome lurking behind something so large. But it's there, and it gets me when I'm not careful.

But people are the same the world over. Not the details, but in broad strokes, we are all very similar, and have the same drives, in the same order: food, shelter, health, leisure. So it shouldn't be as surprising to me as it was to find that clubgoing, quasi-indie youths in Argentina look just as lame as they do in the U.S. I think the kids in the last 2 pix are throwing the Vampire: The Masquerade LARP sign for "I'm invisible!" (Dood, you're so not!) I guess what worries me most is that these kids, as well as the ones in the U.S. have bought into the "alternative" scene as packaged and sold by the RIAA. Slipknot, Korn, Marylin Manson, t-shirts in fantastic representation: the best dissident goods an allowance can buy.

I come away with two things after finding those pix: (1) Most young people are dorky, whether or not they're in the in-crowd, the alternative crowd du decade, in a band, in the school band, or on the math team -- all dorks, and that's fine. It's a relief. (2) It's good to see Destro out and about. That guy needs to get a day-job.

Karate studying nun. (via Jeremy)

New all-CGI movie coming from France. Game by Namco (Xilam) to follow.

Apex has shown its hand in the console wars. Well, not a console. It's a PC... kinda. An MP3-and-CD-and-DVD(-r,-rw,-+)-playing, set-top box that will be aple to play PC games with a feature called "drop-and-play." Patches and such will be handled automagically if the box is recognizes the title. Console companies make their money on the per-game moneys they receive, not the narrow, nearly non-existent margins of the console itself. Where is the profit on this thing? (via gamespot) Note: They Might Be Giants' live album, Extreme Tire Damage is teh awesome.

Labels: music

Rowan Atkinson as Lord Voldemort.

I am as happy as a little girl.

A set of "baby-on-board" style placards for cars, dealing humorously with the paranoid, terror-riddled, fear-based world that the Bush regime would have us believe it's become:

Additionally:

This is how i usually feel about it.

(via DPH)

(more from K.D. about the stealthtribe-born imaginary band)
Rolling Stone Vidizine Issue #15

"Serious Issues"
- K. D. Bryan shares his thoughts with us on the newly reissued "Use Ointment - The Best of the Fungal Issues"
by Mariannar Trent

I am sitting on a wicker chair, beside a calico kitty, in the middle of a tropical bungalow, across from a legend, below a thatched ceiling, over a river and through some smoke, as I stare openly at the infamously reclusive K.D. Bryan.

My jaw hangs agape and a trickle of drool falls unnoticed as Bryan, now aged 67, prepares for the installation of a SubCue receiver.

His famous intensity does not seem to have been dulled by age. His pupils still stare with the fevered passion seen on the album covers of the mid 00's, his hands seem as powerful as when they beat a man to death with drumsticks for booking the FI's on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, his eyebrow is raised in the same manner it was raised when his famous wedding photos with Gina Gershon were shot, his -

"Are you just going to keep staring at me like that? 'Cause you're giving me the heebies."

His voice sends tremors of excitment up and down my internal organs. I desperately wish for the days of his youth, when young reporters could use laptop computers to cover the obvious bluges in their pants or pocket protectors to hide their frenzied nipples. I am armed only with my excitement and can sense that we will get nowhere fast unless I get right down to business.

I try to hide my aching desire through a sheen of haughty disdain.

"This is your first time using SubCue? That surprises me, given your producer and manager status of newer music. How do you keep cutting edge with your clients, like The Hatefuck Trio?"

K.D. merely sighs, muttering "I fucking hate reporters. Somebody get me another Banana Shooter." I am flush with anxiety and eroticism.

Soon, the installation is complete and the living legend in front of me settles back deeply into a wall of pillows. "Let's get this fucking show on the road. Trivia about the hits on the album, quality of the transfer, blah fuckity blah. Right. C'mon. Here we go. Where's my fucking shooter?"

Bryan's kimono-style Fiberwear nestles in tightly around his veiny torso and his eyes close. Soon, very soon, he shares the tidbits, comments and profane commands that you can only read here in RSI. First, please enjoy this comvid for delicious Supple, the drink that gives you firmer skin - now in muscat, ginger and milk flavors!

The vibrations of the music begin, causing his head to vibrate slightly. The small Bryan smile, so recognizable from billboards and posters, comes into view. I fight to keep from molesting myself. His comments are as follows:

"Shiny Like A Ninja's Heart!"
from their debut album "No Time for A Title"

"Mmmmm. Yeah. This is what put us on the map. At first, we were worried that it wouldn't get enough airplay because of that line about [performing oral sex] on the corpse of Emily Dickinson. But, heh, I remember Brian - good old Brian, he went to every major airplay market in the country and he - He had this voice changing machine he bought at a dollar store. What he did was, he called every radio station and said he'd blow it up if they didn't play the new single from the Fungal Issues. Ahhh, Brian. What a guy. I think Sarah showing up at that record executive's door naked with a riding crop probably helped a lot too. That and well, the music itself still makes me fucking proud as hell. Travis' wood block solo on this one? I STILL get chills just listening to it. We've had our differences but that, man? That was golden."

"Nativity Sex"
from their third hit album, "Infectious Fingernails"

"Okay, okay, this one is- I'm sure you've heard this story already but I'm going to set the record straight. The line "Lick my clit, Baby Jesus" doesn't come from Tim X-13's ex-girlfriend's orgasms. Nor was it from Travis, though that glory-hound would like you to believe he crapped out the entire band on a 15-minute cigarette break. Sorry. Sorry Travis. Bad blood, trying to get hemoglobin treatments for it. Anyway. "Lick my clit, Baby Jesus." That was from Brian, who else?

We were all stuck in Germany on Christmas Eve and we were all in a pretty bad way. Travis, Tim and I had all gone out for curry which we ended up not being able to find. We came home in a terrible mood, only to find out that Sarah had tied up our concierge and was forcing him to ritualistically suck on her toenails. Because she felt badly that he had to work on Christmas Eve. Or something.

We didn't mind so much but now we had nobody to harass for our curry. That was when Tim found Brian curled up underneath the sofa, whispering to himself and crying. Turns out he'd eaten our entire supply of acid while watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special in French. I bent in close, just to make sure he wasn't swallowing his tongue or something and I heard him muttering the magic words - "Lick my clit, Baby Jesus". I turned to Travis and said "Get me my tape recorder, right the fuck now." and the next morning we had a lyrics track for our third gold platinum hit. Heh. Memories.

Boy, the Right-Wingers didn't like that one much at all. Banned in 11 countries. And Kentucky. Not that we ever fucking went to Kentucky."

"Feel My Viscera"
from their 11th album, "youdon'tlooklikemycousinstevewhothefuckareyougetoffmyfuckingfuton"

"Right. Yeeeaah. Okay. This is Tim's opus. His fucking baby. Man. This was- I heard he got on seventeen best-of lists when you did that "Greatest Whatever's" thing. He blew us all away with his work here. What can I fucking say? Genius. Nobody plays a washboard like him. Nobody ever will. The solo album he did - that was such a fucking tragedy. The world, they, the world just wasn't fucking ready. Nobody knew what to do with his kind of sound just yet. It was just so beautiful but they- Look, I love this song. I really do. But it's FIFTY-SEVEN MINUTES LONG. Could we maybe, just, skip over it? Or something? I think I'll get a massive fucking aneurysm if we have it vibrating in my goddamn skull for that long. I mean, yeah, it's amazing and all but even when he was recording it the rest of us just went out for all-you-can-eat pizza. Could we just- thank you. Jesus on a biscuit."

"Squirrel of Rage"
from their 14th album, "We Are the Fungal Issues," their first album after the tragic death of Brian Wanamaker

"Total shit. Move on."

"I Am Your Pet Freak"
from their record-setting 17th album, "Setting Babies on Fire"

"YES. God, yes. This was the first time I think we really clicked again. We'd always said Brian would be with us in spirit but this album was when it really worked. I think the effort we put in meant a lot. And the Santeria priestesses, with the uh, reanimated cyborg flesh grafts and electrodes, well, they had a lot to do with it too. But mostly, I give all the praise and credit to Sarah. It was her idea to forcibly re-animate parts of Brian and it was her mindset at the time that really was the driving force for the album.

I'd hit a dryspell creatively. She'd just given up her third child for adoption to a Third World country to force him to grow up stronger and faster but somehow - Somehow, that just energized her all the more. Sarah was a whirlwind, a dynamo, a fucking goddess and not just sexually in this case. Half the songs on this album were written by her. This one was one of mine but still, the energy? All Sarah's. Travis had her name tattooed on his clavicle after this was done, right above Brian's left eye. And Tim gave her part of his left ear in tribute. That was a great year for us. A really good fucking year. Second renaissance, man. Second Renaissance."

Shortly after this last rambling memory of happier times, K.D. Bryan's head took on a new kind of hum - his snoring. His handlers came in quietly and I was ushered out of the room before I could awaken him and ask him for further thoughts, ideas or demands on my body.

Without even being able to fondle his lower right forearm, where a decayed remnant of Wanamaker's nose taunts me, I am forced out by his transsexual bodyguards and tossed unceremoniously onto the black sands that border his property.

As I lay upon the beach with a broken femur, I can see the loons taking flight before a brilliant green and purple sunset. I realize in quiet retrospect that the moments I spent in the presence of K.D. Bryan were akin to the time a mosquito might spend sucking on the blood of God. There were

PLEASE INSERT $350 AMERICAN FOR NEXT TWENTY-FIVE PAGES
* wildly fumbling for my BitPass for RS Vidizine

Labels: music

Zombie guides. (via fark)

Holy crap(hound). My other blog is on BOINGBOING!

Sometimes when I watch Japanese TV advertisements, I feel like I'm seeing other people's dreams. The moviestars that lend their presence here (though one would be hard pressed to find them on US advertisements, last time I checked), have been a source of amusement back in the U.S. There's Arnie's longish foray into vitamin drink pimping. Sofia Coppola's movie, Lost in Translation uses the gimmick of Four Roses bourbon to get Murray's character to Japan. When I was in Japan in 1993-4, Christopher Lambert and (pre-comeback) Sean Connery were hawking that then. I'm reminded daily that this is a different country, with different values than the U.S. Many times, that's a good thing. Other times, it's not. It's just disturbing to see action stars Jean Reno and Timothy Dalton hawk cigarettes over here. Hey, speak Lark.

Blogwise features a number of blogs (currently 74!) in their Japan category. There are a lot of interesting sites to check; more than I would have predicted. I don't know how I would have ever found Alive in Kyoto without it. Sadly there are a couple double-entry'd, and some that have lapsed into unused. In this latter category, I offer the ass-hattery of Why Japan Sucks, because it used the same blogger template I do, while maintaining a nearly exact-opposite of my attitude. (via jeansnow.net) I stumbled into, and like Hunkabutta, and though it's not a blog, the vaguely-Japanese-themed Copper has one me over with it's Little Nemo in Slumberland qualities.

I feel lucky that I came upon this: "Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected." It seems to confirm what I've held for years, and was nicely quoted in the comments: "Chance favors the prepared mind. -- Pasteur" (Article at BBC via metafilter)