New Year, Same Old Thing

I'm ready for a change. I don't know what it is, maybe something biological, but after doing the same-old same-old, I get all antsy in the pantsy and start yearning for something different. It's not that things are bad, just a sense of unease that I've been feeling as of late.

It's not that things aren't going well - I had a great winter holiday. Sayaka and I went skiing in Hokkaido for a few days, then spent the New Year first at the shrine by my house, then met friends and talked, drank, and danced. 2008 has started off really well for me: I got a solid score on my GREs, which is the first baby step towards grad school.

I'm back at work, though the first two weeks are short so I can sort of ease my way back into the mix.

I guess the biggest thing for me is trying for grad school. The hardest thing I think will be that the schools I'm looking at want you to have a paper published already. That's fine if you're a college student and can talk to your professor about doing something, but if you've already graduated, then it's a bit difficult to write a paper, especially the necessary access to other works and research so you can develop your hypothesis without trying to reinvent the wheel. Spending lots of time creating your own study and writing it, only to find out it's been done to death already, doesn't make it likely you'd get your paper published at all. Yay. I got a lot of work cut out for me.

Batmobile State University

As some of you may know, I'm looking at graduate schools to apply to, though it won't be until the fall of 2009. Right now, it's looking like U of Wisconsin or one of the UCs. My grandmother's worried about me going to California, what with everyone there being hippies, so I found an alternative. I'm looking at a BA of Transhumanist Philosophy with minors in Ninjutsu and Socks.

Visiting the family

Last Sunday I headed to Yokohama to spend the day with Sayaka in her natural habitat - that of outer Yokohama. I got to see her house and meet her dog, an ancient little Pekingese named Dairi, or "Big Power." As a gift, I used a recipe sent to my by my aunt Kathy for buckeyes. Basically, I've discovered the recipe for reese's peanut butter cups, or an approximation anyway. It took rather longer than I'd hoped to make them, but I was able to make about 4 dozen sizable peanut butter balls and dip them in chocolate. They weren't salty, but I didn't have Chef's recipe on hand.

The Kosuges loved them, and as a thank you, her mom gave me the tupperware back with a couple apples, a pack of dried udon noodles and a package of dried squid. I think that one's for my folks. Sayaka's house is typically Japanese - more vertical than horizontal. It's footprint is probably the same as my apartment, or less, maybe 50 square meters, but it's three stories. And immaculately kept. Sayaka must think I live in a pigsty when she comes to my place.

Her sister and brother-in-law live about a block and a half away, so we wandered over there and partook in some Wii Sports. I got my butt kicked by her in-law, Toshi, at tennis, only to narrowly beat Sayaka at both tennis and bowling. I'll have to let her win next time, I guess.

In the evening, her folks took us all out for yakiniku, at a great restaurant. They're big fans of the raw beef liver. Me? Not so much.

J's Book Report: "First into Nagasaki"

I just finished a really good book loaned to me by my roommate. It's called "First Into Nagasaki," by George Weller. Basically, it's a bunch of news reports written by Weller, who was, literally, the first free Westerner to enter Nagasaki after the 2nd atomic bomb was dropped. The thing about these reports is that they were never published - General MacArthur had them all censored before they left Japan. Weller's son discovered them, half molding, in a box of his father's documents a few years ago.

I was expecting more of a book documenting the effects of the bomb on the city and its inhabitants. What I ended up with were essentially news reports - short stories and essays about the bomb, as well as a ton of statements from surviving POWs - American, British and Australian. The most disturbing part was reading the accounts of the 'hell ships.' These were ships used by the Japanese to transport Allied POWs, often unmarked by Red Cross or any other signifier, so some of them were attacked by Allied aircraft and sunk. The account discusses the depravities undertaken by the POWs, who were stuffed into the holds in such numbers that many asphyxiated or went insane.

One of the more interesting accounts was by a group of American prisoners who were directly beneath the blast, yet managed to survive by hiding in a shallow trench when the plane flew overhead. You have to wonder what people would've said had they known that 'the Bomb' had been dropped on their own countrymen.

Another interesting idea that can be gleaned from the book is the capacity for barbarism in the human soul. A lot of the prisoners were quoted as saying the Americans should drop more bombs just to clean up these 'animals,' as the Japanese were called. A rather understandable sentiment from someone who survived the Bataan death march and 2 1/2 years as slave labor in a deathtrap coal mine. But what strikes me is seeing the Japanese of today, and thinking how unlike the people I've met the Japanese of sixty years ago seem. It just goes to show that you, I or any other person is capable of the things done by the Japanese during WWII. "There, but for the grace of God, go I," and all that. It's only the rule of law and the mores of our society that prevent this, somehting that should be kept in mind when people try to tell you, 'waterboarding isn't torture.' It sure as hell is. The American POWs underwent it, as did they stress positions and being placed in rooms with vast temperature swings. They also suffered a million other atrocities, depths we have yet to plumb - but if a stand isn't taken here, I don't think it will take long for Americans' sense of decency to break down.

The book does an amazing job of recounting the Japanese response, essentially unchanged from now - "Oh, pity us poor Japanese, upon who was visited this most horrific of atrocities for no reason, none at all. What, war? I didn't see any war around here, did you?" Anyways, that's about all I'm going to rant about it. It's well worth your while to read about the semi-forgotten (at least in the American mind) other half of WWII.

(edited for title)

I'm special

Via Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic, the NYT has a report on the commonality of surnames in the US released by the Census Bureau. In addition to discussing the dramatic rise in Hispanic surnames from the 1990 census, they have a field you can use to look up your own surname. 'Eades' didn't make it into the top 5,000, but the alternate 'Eads' make 3682, up from 4803 in the 1990 census. 'Eades' turns out to be ranked #6,396 in between 'Shaner' and 'Ribeiro'.


The whole list can be found in an Excel document here (ZIP file). Incidentally, 'Featherson' is the
least common, coming in at #65,536. Sayaka's last name, 'Kosuge' (小菅), isn't even on there.

The return of Julian

My good friend from Manchester, Julian, came back for a 2-week visit with his girlfriend, and he graced his humble old stomping ground Hiratsuka with a couple of passes through the drinking establishments with yours truly.

His first time out, last Thursday, ended in typical (read: bad) form for any night out drinking - three of us slumped in a karaoke booth wailing away at hair metal music until 2:30am, with a 6:30am alarm to get to work.

Friday saw me somewhat loopy and extremely exhausted doing quiz games with 15-year-olds, and getting to bed early so I could be in some semblance of shape for the big meet-up on Saturday night.

Saturday saw the whole gang getting back together, complete with all available SO's and heading out to the nearest cheap izakaya. After that, it was a run to ye olde bar Sad Cafe, a place where Ju left a large portion of each month's salary, and then back to the old, back-alley karaoke bar. This place is really dodgy, in the more-or-less red-light district and right next to a cheap, seedy-looking love hotel. Utandamura, baby! I managed to hold it together that night, Sayaka and I winding down around 3:30am while the karaoke raged on.

It was good to see Ju again, he's always the life of whatever party you invite him to. He might end up back here, but not teaching English. I think he does enjoy his current job as a tree surgeon (basically a sap who climbs 150ft into the air and lops of tree limbs while trying not to lose any of his own). He doesn't seem to be getting much intellectual stimulation, not surprising considering his co-workers being rural yokels whose idea of a holiday is driving to the next town over and drinking. I don't know what he's got planned, I doubt he knows either, but his lady will be headed back next year, which will be good for him.

Julian heads off Friday, so I doubt I'll get to see him before he goes. Such is life, I guess. He's always talking about a motorbike trip somewhere, I'll have to try to get to Europe one of these days to do it.

School lunch

One of the things about teaching in elementary school is that you have to eat lunch with the kids. Usually it's not that bad - they ask questions if they're bold enough, and since you get the same questions over and over again, it's not bad Japanese practice (what? You thought they'd ask in English?). The food is average school food. Well, average for Japan. Quality is about what you'd find anywhere in the US, but the type of food you get is completely different. I'd thought the worst was the cold slab of squid covered in some tasteless 'sauce.' Then Monday happened.

I try to be adventurous, but some stuff you just can't choke down. And being from Indiana, I just have a revulsion for certain things. Like fish. Now, I love fish, but I prefer my fish cut up and easily eaten, without the difficult things like bones, tails, and heads. But Monday's lunch was whole fried fish, each about six inches long. And I mean whole - I don't think the thing was gutted, even. The idea of eating whatever said fish had lined up to be expelled while doing it's fishy business doesn't exactly appeal to me. And, because I'm a grown-up, the kids had decided I need extra nourishment and gave me two of the little buggers.

Fortunately, the lunch also included a hot dog bun-shaped roll, conveniently sliced down the center. The first-graders I was dining with tucked in, and after poking my fish for a bit, I stuffed one into the bread and bit down on the head. It'd been fried thoroughly so the bones weren't too bad, though the spinal column gave me some trouble. I chowed down, trying to avoid looking into the ever-shrinking cross section of the half-fish. I was starting to worry when I got to the entrails, and didn't look at all. Eventually I noticed a change in the flavor and glanced down. My stomach churned and I showed it to the little kid next to me, who'd been staring throughout the meal at my giant, freakishly blue eyes. "Oh, you're lucky, you got the pregnant one," he exclaimed (well, something to that effect, anyway).

And thus ended my appetite, looking at a fishbelly full of little white eggs. Yuck.

Nova's bankrupt

Well, it was to be expected. Nova Corp's going to shut down for a month while they try to find a sponsor to get them out of hock. Unfortunately, that means that the teachers, like my roommate, won't get paid for the work they did in September, nor for the work they've done so far in October. Their pay was delayed from the 15th to last Thursday, but it still didn't come through.

To hear Mike tell it, it's been rampant lawlessness there. Teachers just decide they don't feel like being there and leave, many of them have taken emergency leave and said, "until I get paid, I'm not coming back."

It all started a while ago when Nova got busted for deceptive advertising and strong-arm sales tactics. That got them a 6-month moratorium on signing new students. Their business model was always based on expansion, and their corporate structure was always too top-heavy, which meant they couldn't consolidate their gains in the marketplace. In addition, as part of their court settlement, they had to increase hiring of new teachers. Unfortunately, by the time they got it ramped up, it was September and they were in severe financial trouble. So now they had all sorts of financial problems. Like I said earlier, some teachers had been evicted from their company-run apartments, the Japanese staff was last paid in August, and now they're going to shut down all schools for a month.

The really sad part is that if the teachers pulled together, went to work and did their best, the students would probably stay happy and resign with the company, giving them new revenue. The problem with this is that Nova has never given its employees any reason to feel any loyalty towards it. They were notoriously micro-managing, they'd take any opportunity to take advantage of the teachers and the people who got promoted were the ones who could either kiss ass or stab others in the back best. The ideal area manager would be one who could do both. This sort of corporate environment never made me feel any sort of loyalty to them whatsoever.

While maybe they could've pulled out of it reduced in size but intact, like the clusterf*ck in Iraq, you can't really expect the fools who got themselves in the current situation to extricate themselves with any semblance of competency.

So Nova lied to and coerced students, and exploited foreign teachers who have little to no idea of how to operate in this culture. I guess you reap what you sow.

One interesting side effect I've discussed with a few people is what will happen to the general job market for English teachers here. Right now, there are 5000 people suddenly dumped into a small job market sector looking for work. Many of the ones who don't have ties to Japan and live in Nova housing will probably wind up leaving. The motivated ones are the guys who've been here 10 or 15 years, have families and a mortgage to pay. Right now it's nigh impossible to find a job. But many people are betting that after a few months, when people who are trying to stay despite not having a home or much in the way of resources start giving up and heading home, the job market will swing to the other direction. One niche Nova served very well was as a gateway for foreigners to come to Japan. Many of them would do like me: work for your first year (if that) with Nova to finish your contract, then look for other employment. Many jobs here require you to currently live in the country and have a valid work visa. Without this gateway, if no other major company steps in, there could be a severe shortage of teachers. This might not be all that bad, because the recent glut has led to a general stagnation of wages, which really sucks for most of us.

Keep your eyes on this story, it's only going to get more interesting. There are some unconfirmed rumors I want to see about, then I'll write more.

Culture Festival

Last Saturday was the Culture festival at the junior high schools. In addition, for one of the schools, this year is its 60th anniversary, so it was especially important. If I haven't mentioned it before, for the Japanese, junior high school has the same kind of emotional attachment that high school does for Americans - it's the end of your geographic-based schooling, where you've been with the same people for nine years. They even have reunions. My girlfriend went to her 15th this summer.

Culture day kicked off with a ceremony to commemorate the school. And as with any special occasion in Japan, there were speeches. Lots of speeches. Lots of very long speeches. Since I couldn't understand 80% of it anyway, I found myself dozing off. I started to feel bad, but then realized the gym teacher next to me was dozing as well, with a nice stream of saliva mucking up his shirt as well. So I went back to sleep. To make up for all the boringness, they'd hired a taiko group to come play. So I was jolted out of my nice dream by a shout and lots of banging on drums. The group was pretty awesome, really.

Afterwards, the booths and things opened up. The students had created a variety of activities and so on to entertain the family members and locals. A really cool one was called somen. I'd seen the ichinensei (first-years) building the setup earlier in the week, but didn't really understand what they were getting at. They'd taken lengths of thick bamboo and cut it in half lengthwise. These lengths were connected and made into a kind of ramp. A hose at the higher end spat out water and ran all the way down, winding up in a kiddie pool at the far end. People would buy tickets and sit alongside the ramp, with a pair of chopsticks and a bowl of tsuyu, a kind of weak soy sauce. The high end was obscured by a cloth, so you couldn't see the students behind there dropping noodles into the stream. They'd come down at a pretty good clip, and you had to be quick to stop the noodles and pick them up without letting too many continue down the chute. I was lucky, the two students next to me weren't very handy at snatching the somen, so I got a bit more than my fair share when half of a clump would slip out of their grasp. For 20 cents a go, you can't really argue with that.

Another group of ichinensei were running a small cafe, with a talent show scheduled. There was a demonstration of balloon animals, spinning pie tops on sticks, and my favorite, juggling. I'd brought my juggling balls along and jumped out to perform with the kids. Besides dropping the ball a couple times, it went pretty well, we got lots of applause.

The ninensei (second-years) had a haunted house going, which I was disappointed to have missed, and a reflexology room run by the tennis team (go figure). I got a nice little foot massage by a really embarrassed student. The poor lady next to me got one of the troublemakers, who decided to really dig his knuckles in. Everytime she'd gasp or yelp, he'd just glance at the diagram sheet and say something like, "That means you drink too much," or "That means you have to poo."

The sannensei (you probably know this one, by now) put on a couple plays and did some talent shows with dancing or drumming. You could tell which groups were the ones where the girls had chosen the music and the moves by the pained look on the boys' faces and their lackluster dance moves.

For some reason, the teachers at this school don't do much socializing, but fortunately, the teachers at the other junior high school invited me to their post-event drinking party, where it was fun to hang out with the old guys and drink beer.

The downside was that Sunday was my only day off that weekend, which I spent with Sayaka doing some shopping for a Halloween costume. More on that later.

Look, ma! I'm popular!

Not much new to report here, just going through the same routine every day. Saturday was a rare weekend day Sayaka had off, so we bicycled to Enoshima island and took a walk around. It's getting cooler and windier, but still warm enough for a bike ride on the beach.

In other news, I've been writing for the website Futurismic since mid-September, and while it's been tough finding time to post something every day, I've more or less managed to do it. The reinvigorated blog there seems to have prompted PC Magazine to include us in their list of the top 100 blogs. We're right up there (in alphabetic order, of course) with Gizmodo and one of my favorites, Ars Technica. Color me happy.

Interesting Soviet trivia

Did you know that the latrine in the Kremlin was kept secret because someone might find out and attack the Soviet leaders when they were 'vulnerable?'

(so says Nikita Kruschev's son Sergei in a radio interview with the BBC)

The bigger they are...

The easiest way to get to Japan and find a job is to go through an eikaiwa, or English conversation school. When I came, Ana and I got hired on with Nova, the largest of the eikaiwa, with roughly half of the private English-teaching market under its control. And while the books they used were quite outdated, and their managerial practices were absolute crap, the books and lessons got better. But because I couldn't learn or use Japanese there, I decided to leave and work in public schools.

Well, today I got clued in to this article in The Sydney Morning Herald about Nova's impending collapse. I'd known about their problems for a while, my roommate Mike works at the Nova here in Hiratsuka, and they were worried about not getting paid last month. Turns out the head teachers had their pay delayed for about a week, and the Japanese staff still haven't been paid. Now everyone's concerned if they'll be paid for September's work next week. And then there are the stories about people being evicted from their company-owned apartments for failure to pay rent (failure on Nova's part, they still deduct the rent from employees' paychecks). One story goes that a few new teachers arrived, only to be told by Nova a week later they had to move. Then after getting to the new apartment, they were evicted and Nova gave them a sheet with realtor info and told them to do it themselves. If you've ever heard my complaints about getting an apartment, you know it ain't easy

The article mentions the Fujisawa school being closed for not paying rent. That school is the largest in our area and I still know many teachers working there and at other branches. If Fujisawa went down, the others aren't far behind. Mike's looking for a job, but with so many teachers doing the same, finding one isn't going to be easy.

(image from autodafe0728)

DisneySea trip

Sayaka convinced me to go to Tokyo DisneySea last weekend, so we trekked out to Chiba (the prefecture on the other side of Tokyo from where I live) early Saturday morning. My idea of a weekend isn't necessarily getting up at 6am to get on a train for an hour and a half, especially when it's drizzling. See, the thing about Japan is that the people get so little time off that they'll be damned if a little rain or even a typhoon is going to stop them from going to Disneyland. Or DisneySea, as the case may be.

DisneySea is meant to be a little more adult than Disneyland. There aren't characters with big heads running about, and you can get booze there (although I found out they don't like you walking around the park with a bottle of beer - gotta keep it in the restaurant). The moment we got inside, Sayaka was running around to collect our FastPass tickets. You can go to a special ticket booth and get a ticket that lets you bypass much of the line for a ride, cutting down the waiting time from a couple hours to twenty minutes or so. Everyone gets this option, but once you get one ticket, you can't get another for 90 min or 2 hours, and you can't get one for the same ride until you use the one you currently have. The ticket you get has a time range on it, so you can't go right then. Talk about introducing an element of strategy to a theme park. Sayaka had her map out, figuring out how to maximize our time in the park, cutting down the time needed to get to each area. I think she missed her calling, although the makeup counter may require some organization, she should be doing consulting or something.

We managed to hit quite a few rides, the somewhat new Tower of Terror, a twisty roller coaster with a loop (and I didn't get any debilitating headaches - yay!), as well as a couple of funny cart rides, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and some Indiana Jones ride (or Indy-Jone-zu, as he's known here). In addition, we saw a couple music shows, which were surprisingly good. The first was a jungle-themed show called "Rhythm of the Jungle" or something like that, with people dressed as various animals dancing around on stage. It was really funny to see the few foreign dancers, as they really stood out. There were a couple guys onstage who were taller and more muscular than anyone else. Guess that's why they got the jungle voodoo doctor roles and not the flying water fairy part.

The one that impressed Sayaka and myself the most was called "Big Band Beats." It featured a 'big band' that was really just about 10 guys, but big enough, who played the swing music that was popular from the 20s to the 40s. There were quite a lot of foreigners in this one, and all of the talking as well as the music was done in English, which made me wonder what the Japanese thought of it. Sayaka didn't seem to care what they said, she just enjoyed the music. Unfortunately, the downside to this show was them having Disney characters come out and sing and dance, which really put a damper on things. Oh well.

A cool little aspect that I appreciated at the park was that most of the signs and billboards in the 'American Waterfront'-themed area were in English, and they were done with quite a bit of humor and wit. I also stuffed myself with food, the reuben sandwich I had was particularly good. It took a while to explain to Sayaka the difference between corned beef in the US and in Japan. The stuff in DisneySea was somewhere in between. It's nothing like what Mom makes.

So after our Saturday giving money to the Mouse, we went back to Tokyo and ended up staying in a love hotel in the Shibuya district. We'd had trouble getting a hotel in Tokyo - the one I wanted to go to that my friend Sam stayed at was booked for a weddding - and the closest one we could find was in Chiba city. So we paid the same price and stayed in a nice love hotel in downtown Tokyo. Sunday was rainy, which killed a lot of our interest in doing things, but we found a notice for an India-Japan friendship festival in Yoyogi park, so, rain or no, we headed out there for some Indian grub. And it was tasty. There were a bunch of booths set up, so I got some spices to make curry and pilafs, as well as a can of hemp beer I'm curious to try out. Strangely enough, there were some environmental booths set up. One was some type of composter that would take kitchen scraps and used bacteria to biodegrade them to basically nothing. I used some churning arms to aerate the soil and break up big pieces. They say it costs only about $2/month in electricity to run. Another small booth held a prototype for breaking down plastics into a type of kerosene for heaters and such (but not vehicles) at only a 20% cost. It's cool to see things like that around, but rather strange at an Indian festival.

After a long, exhausting weekend, I expected to go home and sleep, but Monday was Tracey's birthday, so I headed out for yakiniku with some people. So all this week I've been playing catch-up trying to get enough sleep not to fall over in class. Fortunately, I get today (Friday) off, although tomorrow is sports day at one of the elementary schools, so I'll be headed there to cheer the kids on. I heard them practicing a marching band routine, and those little kids can play rather well - for 10 year olds.

Friday Dinner Blogging

Chicken cutlet on rice with a bowl of soba, beer & green tea in the background. Oishikatta!

Phew! What a week!

Well, for a four-day week, this one has been rather busy. I'm supposed to write five posts a week (one per weekday) for Futurismic, which has turned out to be more challenging than I thought. I've gotta compete with the three other new guys, not to mention Paul Raven, the old hand. But it's been fun, and I guess this is what I gotta do to get better. Everyone I've ever heard talk about writing has said you have to set aside time to write, there's no other way to get better. And I guess they're right. Though I wish it weren't cutting into my sleep time. Teaching 5th graders tomorrow is gonna be fun.

Anyway, the author Tobias Buckell has also posted on the website, so writing at the same place as one of the author's whose next book I'm actively awaiting *swoon* is pretty cool.

In other news, you remember those two new bikes I got? Well, on Monday the little one got a flat tire, so I took it in an the guys fixed it for free. Gotta love the warranty. The Specialized bike, however, I managed to crash the second day I rode it. I'd just finished climbing and coasting down the big hill between me and the school when I decided my backpack was too hot and tried to find a new resting place for it. See, I hadn't gotten a basket or a carrier rack to bungee things onto, so I was stuck with it on my back, where I got all hot and sweaty and steamed everything I had in my pack. So I put it on the crossbar. A few seconds later, the belt strap got caught in the fork and I was scared something would get caught and bad things would happen. So I stopped. On brand-new V-brakes waayyy stronger than my old bike's. And proceeded to vault straight over the handlebars and faceplant on the pavement.

Fortunately, there weren't any cars behind me, so I came out in one piece, and the bike came out flawless - dunno how that happened. I managed quite a graceful roll, given the circumstances, slightly bruising my palms and my shoulder hurt a day later. But the worst damage was to my leg. I think the bike flipped with me, so when I rolled over, I think my leg landed on one of the tubes and gave me the mother of all charley horses, complete with a 6-inch scrape. At work that day I was lucky all my classes were on the first floor, because I couldn't climb stairs. Even a day after, it hurts to use the stairs and I can't kneel yet. Makes tomorrow's class with 10-year olds who like to vault onto my bike even more appetizing.

So anyways, last night I made it to the bike shop as they were closing and bought a basket. I should probably get a helmet too, so the next time they have something to scrape up what's left of me.

Money Comes In, Money Flows Out

We had a three-day weekend, and I decided to take that extra time to spend all my hard-earned money. Due to the sore back I've had for a few days, I went out and finally got the matress pad to go under my futon pad. I think I went a little overboard, most matresses you get are two or three centimeters thick. Mine's 7cm. I'm a lot higher up, but it's very comfortable.

Last week wasn't such a good week for me. On Monday I blew out the rear tire on my granny bike and the guy at the shop said the rear tire had to be entirely replaced. The cost of that, combined with the rusted chain, wobbly front tire and nearly complete lack of brakes prompted me to just get a new bike. Or two.

I blew quite a bit on a bike that will actually fit me, a nice Specialized bike. The only problem with it is that it doesn't have any fenders, so riding in the rain won't be fun, nor does it have a basket or rear rack to carry stuff on. So that's all gonna have to be paid for. Not to mention, I don't particularly like the thought of taking my nice, expensive bike down to the station where people can take off with it. So I bought a little folding bike as well. It looks cool, but evidently the quality leaves something to desire as last night I was riding back and realized that the rear tire was completely flat. So much for that. I'll take it back and make sure they fix it. The shop I got it from isn't known for selling quality bikes beyond the granny shoppers.

But this week is shaping up all right. It's a four-day week, as is next week. And after that I'm scheduled for a day at Tokyo DisneySea. At least there, unlike Tokyo DisneyLand, you can get booze.

Hey look everybody! I'm a blogger!

No, a real one, at someone else's website, albeit still unpaid. Oh well. I've just started blogging at Futurismic, a site devoted to science fiction and writing, as well as futurism and fun stuff like that. I think it'll get me better at writing, at least short bloggy posts. I still need to work on my magnum opus. It'll get out one of these days.

BOINCing for Science

You all remember SETI@Home? The program that would look for extraterrestrial intelligence using your idle computer? Well, the hippies at UC Berkeley have come up with a program that lets you do more: you can manage what projects you are interested in. If you're worried about the environment, help make climate models more accurate; if you like sudoku, there's one for that. It's cool stuff, and puts your extra cycles to good use.

Vonnegut Lives!

Well, at least in our memories. And nothing livens him up like rereading his stories. Here are some (very) short stories about books Kilgore Trout have written.

(thanks, Futurismic)

When It Rains, It Pours

Well, I'm finally getting caught back up. It's been crazy getting back into the swing of things, and though I haven't gotten quite all the way up to speed yet, I'm getting closer. This week has been rainy, the kind where it starts and stops without warning, so you can't go outside without an umbrella, though I usually do if it isn't raining when I leave home.

The other day with was sunny out and still raining. Last night, it poured down. This morning it rained, but then it kind of devolved into not really a rain, just more of a mist that defies and umbrella and still gets you in the face.

And Monday, of all days, my bicycle decided to blow out its back tire. I'll need a new tire, but the $40 or $50 for that would probably be better spent on a new bike, one whose chain isn't all rusty and whose frame can actually carry someone my height. This week I have to suffer the poorly scheduled (for me, at least) public transportation, until I can drag myself to the bike shop.

But dropping the cash for the kind of bike I want isn't something I do on a whim. Not until I've agonized over every little detail and mourned the loss of everything else that money could've gotten me. Hopefully I can get a decent one, though I'll have to take much better care of it when I ride in the rain.