ghoststrider

So yeah, that Nara trip I went to three days ago. That was fun and interesting; its the first time I've ever been to an explicitly sexual religious festival before. I had no idea what to expect, but it was rather tame compared to my expectations. (Nobody was actually naked, for instance, and there was no massive phallus to see.) It was a small festival, taking place in a shrine not much larger than the courtyard at school (in fact, depending on which courtyard we're talking about, it was smaller) and there were only a few vendors there selling snacks and souvenirs. We got there literally as it was beginning (nobody at fault for that), seeing the priest deliver prayers and offer up the sacrifice (some plants, rice, and food; no, we're not skewering Icelanders, here.) Then there was a sort of dance, where one guy, dressed up as a bull, plowed a field, and two others, dressed up as tengu, pushed the bull around and I think they started fighting each other. They then left, hitting people with bamboo sticks as they went (for good luck, apparently) and we were treated to another dance by a rather beautiful Japanese woman. Although, being a Shinto dance, it was slow; like, on geological timescales. That's Shinto for you. Then the tengu came back with a female one, pretended to kiss a few times, got shrugged off, and then there was mock sex and the bigger tengu mock ejaculated into the crowd while waving around a bamboo stick connected to his crotch.

Yeah.

After much tissues and candy were thrown, the festival was over and the crowd dispersed, going down to the vendors area and getting smacked by the tengus' bamboo poles for good luck. One girl got hit so hard it echoed down the streets, and maybe even gave her a welt. Forget this year, she's going to have good luck for the next 20. I got hit three times, although the first two were rather light.

So that was largely a good day...except for two things which happened that really bothered me, and made it impossible to write this post within even a 24-hour period. They had nothing to do with the Japanese, and everything to do with the international students that had gone (there were a considerable number who came in various groups.) To avoid mutilating your f-lists, I'll cut them.

( Biotch, I will LJ-Cut you! )

So I'm going to Nara in about half an hour to see a fertility festival. According to my roommate's teacher, we should all wear "thick pants."

Umm...okay.

In any case, a number of international students are going, and it seems like it'll be fun. Moreover, I can use it for my field report for my religion class, which really isn't due until May but if I get it done now it'll be just one less headache later.

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Firefox sucks balls. Look, I know the Internet connection here in Japan is slower than molasses. I get that. But Firefox is really, really bad. It is constantly hiccuping, giving me "Not Responding" messages, and just giving me an unreasonably hard time. When writing this entry, for example, I have to type for about a minute or two without actually seeing my words on the screen, because Firefox is just that slow. IE, downstairs in the computer lab, doesn't seem to give me that problem. I switched to Firefox from Google Chrome a few months back because I wanted the "leechblock" feature to keep me off time-wasting websites, but I've since learned how to better control myself. It's no longer necessary. I think I'll go back to another minimalist web browser, perhaps Chrome, perhaps something else. I just want something lightweight without the baggage.

Firefox was good at one time, and back in the states it will probably be good again, but here...it's just problematic.

So I took my other classes this week and have developed opinions about them. Strange, I know, for me to have opinions. Anyhoo, the first, essentially a class on the historical foreign relations of Japan, is a pretty sweet class. The professor says he'll even give us our bibliography when we get the idea for our term paper. I mean, can you say good grade on a plate? Well, it probably isn't, but it'll at least make my life a helluva lot easier. It's also just an intriguing topic, to boot.

The other class is an economics class, and already I'm thinking of dropping. First, it seems a bit too basic for me; although it does recommend that you have at least one intro class under your belt, perhaps its from my almost daily perusal of Mish's Global Economic Analysis and other sites I have a fairly good handle on basic economics. I'm obviously not an expert, but I can understand the basics, and this course isn't going to help me with any of that. Second, it has a terrible time placement. And third, which is the real thing: the teacher rambles.

It's not even the sort of rambling that's somewhat related to the topic at hand and is interesting and meaningful; no, its complete random rambling that goes on for 20-30 minutes. I think in a 90-minute class period we used something like 40 minutes to actually talk about the "Ten Basic Principles of Economics" (one of which I have a disagreement with.) I'm okay with people talking, but I'm really not okay with people wasting my time, which is what this class feels like.

I don't really want to quit, because there's only two gaijin in a class of about eight or nine, but I hate the time slot and I don't want to sit there and listen to something that has very little bearing whatsoever on the topic at hand. My lord, if I'm going to sit still for an hour and a half you better be on topic!

I'm really not sure what I'm going to replace it with, but that's what I have this weekend for. Speaking of weekend, I'll be heading to Nara tomorrow to attend a fertility festival, which I hope will make good material for my field report for the Japanese religion class. Apparently, my roommate's teacher, who suggested this, warned everyone to wear "thick pants." I...kinda don't want to know that means.

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I really want to vent about how terrible the Internet is here, but that would be too long. Suffice to say, it is the slowest I have ever experienced in my life, and moreover in many cases a page will "finish loading" and just be a blank white screen. Sometimes you have to refresh three or four times before you get anything. If this connection was a song, "Done, but with errors on the page" would be its chorus. Facebook? Forget it, it gets outrun by a snail. The most hilarious is when I get the "Internet connection error" from Windows, when it says there isn't a connection at all and yet there are still three other tabs open with pages. It's maddening.

Don't come to Japan expecting such wonderful levels of technology. Its quite the contrary--aside from their lovely, or maybe not so lovely, cars and video games, Japan is a bit more backward than the US.

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Also, writing continues! Almost done typing up first draft of a story for a magazine! Okay, so its a small `zine, about Savage Worlds, but hey! It's something! What I find most interesting about this peice is that it's the shortest I've ever written--it'll definitely come in at less than 2,500 words, probably less than 2,000. I was told to write up 2-4 pages, which in industry standard means ~1000 words, so there is a hefty amount of cutting, but I dunno how much I can get. Plus, the magazine can probably use columns to shrink it, can't they?

I never know why I'm defriended. Honestly. No one ever tells me why. I just don't get it. Was there something I said? Something I did? Something I didn't say/did? I usually never get an answer.

Last semester, one of the guys in my dorm defriended me on Facebook. I never figured out why. I knew there was something off; nobody really seemed to like me last semester. I wasn't sure why about that, either. Was it merely the damage I did to the table in the bar? Was it just our personalities didn't mesh? I do remember being a shy guy last semester and not interacting as much as I should have been, but is that really a reason to dislike me?

I've recently been defriended on Facebook, without explanation. I won't name names; that's simply bad form. I just don't know how to react. Should I be upset? Should I reform my behavior? Where did I go wrong? In short: why? That's all I want to know.

I know I don't spend that much time reading friends' journals. It's one of my faults. I try, but I fail it routinely. Kinda the same failure when calling my parents (although that's slightly different.) If that's the reason, I apologize, and will redouble my efforts. I'll set aside two days a week to read friends' journals.

Again, I'm sorry, for whatever reason. I don't know why. I would like an answer, but don't expect one.

Grrggg....ararrgghh....

My insomnia has been something I've dealt with since I was a child. It's always been hard for me to get to sleep. I've just come to accept it and moved on. Recently, however, it's taken a turn for the worse.

My new roommate goes to bed at insane hours--at least insane for college students, especially those studying here. One night he went to bed at 8PM! Usually he goes to bed around 10-10:30. Because he goes to bed so early, I usually turn in early too so as to not keep him up, being a nice guy and all. The downside is now I'm waking up really fucking early. I think I've woken up at 4AM three or four times this past week; I know I've woken up at 6AM at least four times. According to Wikipedia, this is called "terminal insomnia," or "early morning waking." (God, that first term is a real killer.)

The craziest part is that I'm not really sure if I dislike it.

On the one hand, its annoying in that I'm waking up pretty damn early and being tired. On the other, however, I've been wanting to wake up earlier. With my insomnia and late night haits, I used to wake up around 10AM, and miss a good chunk of the morning. It felt like part of my day, everyday, was being wasted, and I was missing out on something. Now that I'm getting up and actually being active at 8:30AM without being a horrible monster, I feel kinda better. First, I don't have to rush for class (which will be a real boon for my 9AM Friday Japanese lesson), and second, I have the time to write stuff before I do anything else, which is time I really could use.

If I could somehow turn this completely around--make it easy to fall asleep at night and wake up early in the morning, even "terminally" early (say, around 6AM)--I could really, really get used to this. I mean, really.

Amazongate: new evidence of the IPCC's failures - Telegraph

I just wanted to post this, almost but not quite in glee. The more light we shed on things, the more and more we see how corrupted and screwed up this entire matter is. What is so great about it is that it is finally coming to an end; this perverted freak show and global scam is now stuttering to a complete halt. The IPCC is no longer credible, and coupled with the revelations of the Anglia Letters, the entire "movement" has largely blown up.

Hopefully this will end a disastrous era, and give us one less piece of crap to worry about. Now, can we focus on our economy the right way, please?

ALSO: The IPCC fails to use non-peer-reviewed papers as sources for its 2007 report. Hmm, where have I heard that criticism before?

I really like this "slapdash" "series." I might have to make a new tag.

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Had my first day of classes today. There was only one, my morning speaking Japanese class. The professor seems to be a nice guy, from Sapporo. What got me was that, even though it was very difficult Japanese, I still seemed to get most of it. (And according to a friend, each level here is supposed to equate to a year of studying Japanese overseas, so according to the university, I have studied Japanese for roughly 5 years. Huh? How did I get so damn proficient?) The only thing I don't seemed to get was how and when we would get our study materials. We don't have textbooks, but rather just a binder full of papers.

I'm really stoked about it. Although I didn't speak much in today's class and probably made myself look like an idiot during the partner introduction thingy (his pencil broke so we wasted time fixing that) I think I'll do fairly well. Hopefully I can figure on being ready to tackle the JLPT when I go back to America. Even if I only got JLPT-3, that would be pretty awesome. Considering this class is intended to get you ready for it anyways...sweet. (Of course, I'm thinking of the older version, although if I could get the new N3 certification, that would also be cool. N2 would be the goal, though.)

My other classes start tomorrow. I'm taking "Religion in Japan," "Basics of Economics with Applications to the Japanese Economy," and "Japan and its World to 1860." I've always been interested in Japanese religion, so that was a nobrainer. I'm taking the economics course because I've been talking about economics a lot lately and reading a great deal, and I'm interested. I could see myself dropping it, though. The last class, a history class, I see myself dropping quite readily. I took it because I'm a history buff, but I'm not sure I really want to take a history class. Then again, I could love it. I dunno.

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So in more RPG news, there's a very interesting conversation going on on the Holonet regarding the demise of Wizards' license. I'm "Smugglerjedi." I'm a little bothered by it, but I was kinda ticked by Wizards' policy of having an abbreviated product cycle making us buy all new books right after we bought all new books. I know that they have to make money but that policy was really pushing sanity. So whatever. Maybe it'll be better now that Wizards' isn't doing anything with it (or won't be.) BTW, Rodney, if you're reading this, I have nothing against you; you make fine products, man. I was upset at the business department, not the creative one.

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So the clubs and circles thing on campus is today. I'm waiting until about 3 so I can go to it with my friends (right now I'm playing Scrabble on Facebook with a few other friends.) I'm thinking about joining the aikido club, even though I'm not fit whatsoever and have very little experience with martial arts. I want something that I could learn for practical self-defense. While there is judo available, I dunno how practical that really is. Then again, how practical is anything?

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So I finished writing up that Tokyo weekend report; now I have to type it up and add videos and pictures. Once I finish that this afternoon--provided I actually get to it--I'll start writing right away (I made a pun, whee...) on that fiction project, which is due around Feb. 12th. With only a thousand words and about 50 already written, that shouldn't be too difficult. I already know what I want to do with it anyways, its just that the draft of the first page wasn't executed properly. So I'm not going to panic.

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As a writer, I am finding that I suck at Scrabble considerably. I can do small words, but anything longer than four letters and I'm screwed. Although, when you have 3 "R's," 2 "N's," an "I" and a "T," what the hell can you put down? Oh well, I probably sealed my fate when my first word was "FATAL."

So I spent much of today in downtown Osaka, or at least close to it. After picking up my schedule in the morning and grabbing a bento (boxed "lunch") for breakfast, I headed with two friends down to Moriguchishi, where one of my friends got in on the new Magic: The Gathering release event...with seven Japanese guy. Yeah, he was the only one who wasn't Japanese and couldn't read the language, at least not perfectly. Still ended up in the middle of the pack, though, so that's cool.

Me and the other friend taunted him a bit, but as I was planning on going to Den Den Town to pick up that point-and-shoot, we left after awhile (the clerk was eyeing us anyways.) For roughly $98 I got this little cutie, so I saved about $30 buying it here. It's not the greatest, but all I wanted was a cheap point-and-shoot, and having 5X optical zoom and 10 megapixels is really not that bad for a budget peashooter backup. Of course, it's not this, but that may be asking for a bit too much. It's fine for my purposes.

I then ended up going with this friend to Yellow Submarine (I know where it is now! Yay!) and not only bought a $5 copy of Big Eyes Small Mouth: Space Fantasy (which, physically, is a small book; I wish more gaming books were like that) and played several hours of an awesome cooperative boardgame called Pandemic. That is the second of two board games I now wish to own when I return to the states, the other being Formula D.

That was largely the extent of my day.

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My roommate is actually a pretty cool guy. He's a music education major and wants to specialize in music theory, which I find interesting as it's quite different from most majors I've encountered so far (business, computer science, math, biology/chemistry/physics, sociology/psychology, etc.), and has a really nice selection of music on iTunes, including Cthulhu Christmas carols. He wrote a 30-second song to Euler's number as well. That, my friends, is impressive.

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Speaking of Den Den Town and my roommate, when I took him to visit yesterday, we went to see Osaka Gundams. Now, I'm not really a Gundam guy. I think the storyline is tired, repetitive, and quite frankly just sucks overall. I do like the designs, however, and especially some of the artwork like on the Gundam Sentinel artbook, which makes it look like a NASA photo from a century in the future. But one of the Gundams I was looking at was a small model with about six laser swords--one in each hand, two coming out of shoulder "hands," and two coming out of knee "hands." The day before I had seen Star Wars: Backstroke to the West (side note: you must watch it, just as long as there are no children around) and immediately my brain made a connection between this Gundam and General Grevious, in that they both have more than two lightsabers and neither have access to the Force or Jedi training.

Which made my brain make another leap.

Gundam-piloting Jedi. A whole setting where the fantastic space warriors pilot giant mecha that wield lightsabers. Yeah. Just wanted to let you know I'm thinking about that.

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My roommates are going to bed so I'm going to stop writing here. I think I have more to write about, but I keep forgetting. Oh well.

So I'm just going to ramble on for a bit, since I haven't written a decent LJ post in awhile. I think I'll break it up into small sections for easier readibility.

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So I started playing RPGs over the winter break with a few friends. We're playing Deadlands: Hell on Earth and Deadlands: Lost Colony using the Savage Worlds system by Pinnacle Entertainment, and its been fun. I really like the SW system because its so fast and easy, and there isn't a large list of "feats" and "skills" like in older systems (which got very tiring after a while.) I'm not that big a fan of the setting, but I like the mechanics, since they're simple (and the company has genre toolkits for just about everything, which is always a good thing.)

I did end up running an adventure with a different group using a different system, called True20. I really like True20, because while its based on the OGL I've come to know and love, its much faster. Using only one d20 makes it a helluva lot easier to run, and its lack of any points to keep track of--hit points, mana points, experience points, what-have-you--also make combat more cinematic and take away needless number crunching. (There are, of course, conviction points, but they weren't used too much, and the combat did get a bit complicated at points when figuring out the sliding damage scale, but otherwise I felt it was better than 3.5 D&D.) It's also so simple that you can kind of, pun intended, roll with just about anything and not give a damn about the rules. This backfired on me when my players completely buttfucked the adventure, but, oh well. That happens.

I did end up playing some D&D 4E, and, to be honest, I don't like it. It feels way too combat oriented, as if real roleplaying and storyline is just an afterthought. It's too simple, too much hack-and-slash. I wanted to play a fighter who is reincarted in a younger but not so strong body, so he has weak physical attributes and relatively strong mental attributes. You could have pulled that off in 3.5 or True20 or any number of OGL games. In 4E? Not bloody likely; all your abilities derive from your single most important ability, meaning you absolutely can't do anything. Worse, you can see it evident in Wizards' breakup of the classes into their four "roles," which are--guess what!--completely beholden to combat. It really is World of Warcraft brought to the tabletop, and I'm sorry, but White Wolf did a better job of that when they used the d20 OGL. This 4E system is just utter nonsense.

Also in roleplaying news, I donated $20 to Doctors Without Borders for the Haiti effort, via RPGNow.com...and got about $1000 worth of RPG books. It's fairly awesome, especially since it features a number of generic systems, like QAGS and Cortex (plus Karma, which I wanted to look at for awhile.) Oh, and uh, Classic Spycraft and the Firefly RPG. I'd say that's the price of admission.

Den Den Town has a number of roleplaying stuff, but most of it is centered in one store called "Yellow Submarine." Over winter break, I took some of the 4E guys down there to pick up some gaming dice. The only problem is, I've never really gotten the hang of Den Den Town, and so in the end, they took me there! It was embarrassing--and today, when I took my new roommate to see the area (since I was going anyways to look for a point and shoot camera) I nearly got lost again. So, to remember, I'm writing two different ways down now:

• When you see Melonbooks, walk towards it, then turn right.
  
• Just past Taito Station, go to the guitar store, then turn right.
  

There. Hopefully I'll remember.

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All my paperwork is now in order for the semester, although to be honest I really feel the university was being lazy and unprofessional today. First, I went in at 9:15am to get my registration sheet, but they were still putting them in the mailboxes and so we couldn't get to them--which is funny, since they told us to be there at 9am to get them. How funny. It gets better. The CIE--Center for International Education, the foreign students' headquarters--told me I didn't have to go through the verifying my insurance process again since I'm an extension student, but when I got my registration sheet, it said I needed to submit it. So, I dutifully trudged upstairs, signed it, figuring that was all they needed (I mean, the sheet already has my insurance on file at the bottom under "Office Use Only.") I didn't write down how much coverage my plan has since I don't know it off the top of my head, although in the time it took for them to set up the room which was supposed to be ready by 9:30am I might have been able to check online. But I didn't, of course, and so when I handed in the form, the lady was confused. I told her, and she conferred with a colleague, who said, "Oh yeah, we have that," (in Japanese, of course) and stamped it CLEAR, then told me to go and collect my ID. Of course, when I got there, and handed in my form, the student assistants were completely bewildered and didn't know what to do. "お待ち下さい," although I'm not sure if it was that polite. They had to consult with another guy behind him, who had to consult with another woman, and here I am going "That guy over there just told me to get my new ID!" Eventually, it got sorted out, but it was completely unnecessary in the first place.

Unprofessional. Nobody had any idea what they were doing. Communication was virtually nonexistent. And this is supposed to be goddamn Japan. How does that bode for the rest of the world?

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I'm doing some writing projects after a long hiatus. I started working on a short story not too long ago, one set in a superhero setting but with an ordinary as the protagonist, trying to still feel important next to all his superhero friends. I've also, from a Savage Worlds friend, got an opportunity to write a roughly 1000 word short story for a Savage Worlds magazine, which he'll turn into stats. Nifty, and hopefully should get me some writing credits. I also have to finish up my Tokyo write up, which is almost done. Almost. Seriously. Just a little more, you know? At the very least, I'm busy, and I like it.

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I was going to write more, but I'm tired and hungry. Maybe later.

Man, I am such a douche. I tell you I'll let you know when I get to Tokyo, but now I'm letting you know I'm getting ready to leave Tokyo! Such is the insanity of this place, although since my bus leaves at 11pm, I still kinda have a full day to explore. Not that exploration was really my goal here; my goal for this weekend was just to escape the insanity of the dorms as they get ready for the next semester, chill out, be alone. I think I did that.

My first day was kinda miserable, since I arrived at 7am in Shinjuku, then got to my hotel in Ikebukuro about half an hour later (I honestly thought the trains would take longer), but couldn't check into my hotel room until 3pm! Since I didn't want to leave my computer and valuables in the hotel's luggage room, I carried them around on my back as I walked around for, oh, seven hours, approximately. Yeah. "Pain in the back," doesn't even begin to describe it. That day I just spent walking, which was a bad idea; I figured that having a giant backpack would be a bigger pain on the cramped Tokyo trains, but as it turns out, they're not that cramped. (Yeah, that whole "they have attendants cram you into the train cars like sardines?" That's bull. I went through Shinjuku and Ikebukuro stations, the two busiest stations in Japan and thus probably the world, and I didn't see any of that. The trains weren't even that crammed. Somebody is making up crap to sell travel books.) That day I thought I walked through Shinjuku, although that turned out to be incorrect, I was just on the fringes of Shinjuku ward. Whatever.

When I finally got back to my hotel room, I rested for a couple hours, checking email and whatnot, and then headed back out into the world. My destination? Akihabara, of course. The place is absolutely nuts, with girls in anime costume passing out tissues with ads in them in the cold (man, I really felt for them.) There was a lot of anime stuff, like box trucks whose only purpose seemed to have their boxes decorated with garish anime pictures and drive around with the theme song blaring, plus building advertisements and figurines and DVDs and art books galore, but surprisingly, since I've come to Japan, I've been less interested in anime. Now, cameras, that's a different story: although I have a nice Fujifilm 2000HD, the problem is that its kinda large and bulky. I've been wanting a smaller one, but unfortunately, the prices in Akihabara (as well as Nipponbashi in Osaka) just aren't as cheap as I would like. I did, however, find a place that was selling some older, circa 1997-2002 digital cameras for around $20, and curses, I did not buy one then because I wanted to look around some more. Well, what do you know--when I couldn't find others, I tried to find this shop again and couldn't. And when I think I did...it was already closed. Damn you Akihabara!

I did visit Shibuya and Shinjuku again on Sunday, properly, but while I was there I didn't get the sense of anything to do. Okay, so there are tall buildings. Um...cool, I guess? Nothing held my interest very well. So I ended up just going back to Akihabara in the evening (this is the actual time I failed to find that store again. Oh woe is me.) The morning was spent either sleeping or getting lost in a residential district. No, I don't know why I was there. I never do. Today, before I leave, I'm going to visit Kamakura, and make sure my backpack is properly balanced so I don't hurt my back again. But if I'm going to do that, I need to get everything ready so I can check out at 10am...and its 9:10 already! So, gonna go. I'll write a fuller report once I return to Osaka.

Peggy Noonan: The New Political Rumbling - WSJ.com

"The Nuts vs. the Creeps." Thank you for perfectly summing up American politics, Ms. Noonan.

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In other news, my bus leaves in about two hours, so I'm finishing packing (i.e., wasting as much time as I can.) I'll let you know when I arrive in Tokyo.

One of my problems is that it takes two days to write a Livejournal post, since I try to condense a lot of stuff into it. I won't do that today; I want to make some quick observations, be done with it, then start cleaning my room and getting ready for a weekend trip to Tokyo. So, without further ado...

Scott Brown wins the Mass. Senate seat special election. (I feel like putting in all those words in order to differentiate it from the Massachusetts State Senate, which might need a special election to fill Mr. Brown's now-empty state senate seat. Good god!) I'm honestly a bit shocked; I figured Coakley would eke out a win in the last few hours, somewhere less then 10 points, probably less than 5, but a win nonetheless. But no; Brown has apparently won, in of the bluest--if not The bluest--state(s) in the nation. Now what begins are the political dirty tricks; I have no doubt that the Democrats will try and stall his seating (as evidenced by Reid saying in the above article, "as soon as all the proper paperwork is received.") That will be entertaining to watch, as well as political suicide for the Democrats; if they think that their fall chances are bad now, just wait until the people realize that they're blocking the duly elected Senator from Massachusetts from taking his rightful seat. I can't wait to hear what delirious, unhinged rant Olbermann will have about this process. In the end, I don't think anything will matter; the Democrats will hurriedly pass this abomination of legislation before the midterm elections using reconciliation or what have you. But the election does show one thing: the American public is fed up with the government taking it for granted. They are fed up with taxes rising, spending increasing, freedoms going out the door, and no end in sight. Granted, I don't think Brown is necessarily the answer, but that's the only real way to express dissatisfaction in this screwed up party system. Also, remember the youth, that amazing demographic that turned out in force for Obama and the Democrats in 2008? Yeah--turns out they now came out for Brown. I guess those in my age bracket realized they were going to get screwed with this health care debacle and decided to do something about it. To which I say: good! This bill being shoved through Congress (and without C-SPAN's eye watching it, I might add) will hurt young adults more than anybody, and its time we stood up and said "Hey, we have a voice too!" Again, in the end, I think it will still get passed, but Brown's historic victory is heralding something new in American politics.

In my home state, my state is going bankrupt. It's not as bad as California or Illinois, but its still pretty bad. Governor Paterson, a Democrat, is proposing massive--well, relatively--spending cuts in order to balance the budget. Of course, I don't expect said cuts will actually occur, since neither party is interested in actually doing that, but lately Paterson has been impressing me with his insistence on cutting spending and getting the budget under control. I'm not keen on his tax increases, but the "cut spending" mantra is pretty cool to hear from a New York governor. However, spending cuts will only be a temporary solution; in the end, spending will increase again. I blame this largely on NYC, a giant parasite that takes millions of dollars from Albany and tries to push forward legislation that benefits itself to the detriment to the rest of the state. Upstate New York has not been in control of its own economy for years, with everything being run by NYC politicians who love to tax, spend, and regulate the hell out of everything. The Governor's mansion, Attorney General office, office of Comptroller, and all the major legislative officers are from NYC.

One guy is saying something that really needs to be said: We need a divorce. I've been saying it for years; Upstate New York needs to become its own state, go its own way, without stupid NYC pols passing business regulations that hurt everybody Upstate. Let me tell you something: there are no jobs in Upstate New York. Especially if you're a teenager, finding employment is damn near-impossible. One reason is that the minimum wage is too high; another is that regulation makes working in Upstate New York cost-prohibitive. Then add on all the fees for selling tobacco and fishing licenses (which some people use to feed themselves) and whatnot, and it becomes an absolute disaster. Our NYC-dominated leadership has no idea what's going on in Upstate New York, and frankly, they don't give a damn. The only way to fix this, IMO, is for Upstate New York to become a new state. Long Island can join if they want, New Jersey can get Staten Island, and the other four boroughs of NYC can be their own city-state. (Long Island could also join NYC, though, and that state may extend as far north as Rockland.) This new state, formed from Upstate--let's call it Adirondack, after the major mountain range up here--would not be the Republican powerhouse you would automatically expect it to be, with Democratic strongholds in the cities (Syracuse, Utica, and Albany all come to mind) but it would definitely be a helluva lot more conservative. I daresay it would actually be libertarian, since "Upstaters" really don't care who you fuck as long as they can put food on the table. (We do have a small anti-abortion movement, but most people regard them as loonies, or at the very least find their methods distasteful.) This is honestly the only way to fix the problems facing Upstate New York, and perhaps give NYC some "tough love."

Whoo boy, I wrote a lot, didn't I? Well, I have to clean. I'll come back here later and show you what the "countryside" of Japan looks like.

"Mommy, why is the sky blue?" "Because it is, honey."

On par with virtually any answer that includes the words "Beacuse I said so:"

"Q: Why is alcohol flammable?

A: alcohol has a chemical in it that makes it flammable.
alcohol is created when friuts, vegetables, and grains
are mixed with yeast or bacteria and this process is
called fermentation."

And you wonder why this country has been going to pot for so damn long.

I've been trying to remain cheerful lately, focusing on escaping my parents after graduation, possibly getting an internship in the media biz out in SoCal after that, getting back into writing science fiction after an unreasonably long hiatus, and the possibility of me making a Japanese girlfriend. (Yes, yes, that is in the cards, but no one wants to hear about my pathetic dating life.) Unfortunately, despite all this, I cannot help but feel like one giant pile of biological waste products squeezed from the posterior orifice of a certain disagreeable mammal.

It really boils down to college. I feel college has been a complete and utter waste of nearly four years for me (it'll come to 3½ when I finally graduate) with virtually nothing learned, aside from Japanese, the utility of which is debatable in this economy. First off, all of my classes were largely a joke in one form or another; I listened more to professors ranting about their personal theories on why the Gulag was a form of liberation, not oppression, then I did anything about journalism, Japanese, or more general education. But moreover, I choose the wrong major. I was an idiot. I am an introverted person; even though I do talk to people in meatspace on a regular basis and I'm not completely withdrawn, I'm still fairly introverted. It's difficult for me to talk to new people, and it sure as hell is difficult to go and interview them! I chose Journalism over English for rather stupid reasons: one, I did not want to go and redo high school English all over again (which probably wasn't that stupid of a reason) and especially wanted to avoid Shakespeare, whom I positively hate. (Okay, that's borderline stupid.) But mostly it was because I didn't see there being any creative writing option, and that it was merely dusty literature review crap. Now, part of this is because my university doesn't really advertise it (no really, go to the site and take a look). Another university I was thinking of, SUNY New Paltz (same system) does, but I was not able to go there because my mother had heard from one of her friends that it was "inhabited by drug dealers" and thus was too dangerous. (As an aside, said friend later got into a big fight with my mother over control of the local "spinning guild," and now said friend is now dirt. Hmm.) However, as much as I want to, I can't really blame my mother for this; I should have looked into it more; in fact, it was mentioned before I enrolled at a luncheon that there was a creative writing segment, but for some reason I dismissed it, since there was still a lot of "musty literature review." I justified it in my mind by saying that the Journalism major was "diversing my intellectual portfolio," and while it is good, I cannot help but feel it was a mistake.

Oh, but it gets worse. I was inducted into the Honors College when I came to my university, which required that I write a thesis project--something I didn't really want to do as an undergraduate. (Graduate? Fine. Undergraduate? Um...why?) Now, I could have said no and not joined the Honors College, but both of my parents were really looking forward to me joining it, and it would have been suicide to say no. The fault still lies with me, ultimately, because I could have said no, but the pressure and expectations meant it didn't really cross my mind.

Of course, I also chose a topic that was nigh-impossible to do: find out why Japanese newspapers have higher circulation rates than American ones. I chose so I could kick myself into doing something well, and possibly transcend my introvertedness in the process. Sadly, it hasn't worked out; I've found out nothing, I can't really push myself to go talk to potential new sources...it's been an abject failure.

To top it all off, I have to go back to UAlbany in the fall and meet with these professors who I suckered into thinking that I was going to do a great thesis. How do I go and see these people? "Sorry, I epically failed and didn't write my thesis--BTW, can you give me a letter of recommendation for grad school so I can study screenwriting?" Oh yeah, like that will ever pass muster. I can take solace only in that I still have a semester left here in Japan, so I still have time...likely to waste.

I really am a big bag of crap-o-la. I've made a series of bad decisions, and I don't really see myself getting out of them, unless I happen to write a great screenplay or novel and get an income that way.

Well, I'm going to go cook dinner now and not kill myself out of sheer depression. Then I'll likely either go see Avatar later or go drinking. Or maybe both.

Almost like a response to my latest post, David Paul Kuhn of Real Clear Politics writes about "Conservative Libertarianism's Comeback." Notice the "conservative" there; DPK argues this is not really traditional libertaranism, but rather a more right-wing libertarianism that is not terribly enthused with abortions and gay marriage; 53% believe the state should promote "traditional values," something a "real" libertarian would be completely against. DPK claims this is just limited libertarianism, and may also not really help anybody.

Sadly, I agree.

Many of the people I've talked to don't seem all that enthused about social issues, at least not towards liberating people, and as DPK writes, they wouldn't mind stronger regulatory agencies cracking down on big banks. Moreover, if you go by any Internet comments (which I have said to others is not really indicative of anything, nor will help debate in this country) you start to find out that, while they are against massive government spending, they're really just really conservative people. (Wow, that's some terrible English.)

And I've even given in to the "teabagger" term. No, seriously, we have to take this in a mature fashion: the Tea Party movement, originally began as ordinary Americans upset over government spending, which included spending for war, was taken over by right-wing movement conservatives with little understanding of libertarianism. Even today, people pin it as the "grass roots," which may be true, but the "Tea Party" movement isn't really libertarian. (If it started talking about not giving a crap about gay marriage and abortion, we'd be getting somewhere, maybe...)

Perhaps I shouldn't say its not libertarianism. It is a form of libertarianism, just one I'm not really a fan of. I think this may be considered paleolibertarianism, although some disagree. In any case, what we're seeing is not really helpful. It's only muddying the field, and worst, it's starting to push out anyone who may be seen to be a moderate Republican--even those who really aren't. On the one hand, I don't really give two cents whether or not the GOP survives, but on the other their behavior is making them look less like libertarians and more like far-right wingnuts. Quite a difference, there.

This doesn't totally diminish my hope. It makes me a bit cautious, but I'm still hopeful for the future. Libertarianism in general is making a surge, and even though many are joining the right-wing camp, they are still in a position to get more educated about libertarianism in general, and we can still make gains. Both Pauls and Peter Schiff aren't really part of this right-wing bunch (although Schiff, apparently, thinks that we should executive a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if we have intel that they're close to setting us up the bomb) and I daresay there are many others out there who feel the same way. This isn't even including Gary Johnson, who I bet will be running for president in 2012 and may, with this undercurrent, actually win. So I'm still hopeful about the future; I'm just putting some jade into my rose-colored glasses, that's all.

I wanted to make a post talking about my epic failures at cooking--something I've only recently started to do again after years of no experience whatsoever--but I just can't help myself. There are some good politics to talk about in this day and age. As a libertarian, I often feel real gloomy; there's always another large government program on the horizon, our freedoms are consistently contracted, our wallets are pilfered for the benefit of fat cat corporate bankers, and the public continues to vote in the politicians who steal from us every day. There's not much to look hopeful for.

At least, not until 2010.

( A very shallow overview of several articles I've discovered that make me feel good to be a libertarian. )

So here it is, New Year's Day, 2010. The start of the decade where science fiction begins, since most science fiction I know of (and that was written after the 1960s) takes place after 2010, usually starting around 2012. Thus, I hereby declare this to be the "Decade of Science Fiction." (I expect a similar declaration sometime around New Year's Day 2020.)

Just as an aside, although it hasn't been completely sorted out, the bank problem is on its way to being sorted out. Card was deactivated; a new card and PIN have been assigned and I should get those soon; meanwhile the parents are disputing all these charges at the bank. Ugh. Now with that out of the way...

New Year's Day in Japan is only slightly more noticeable than Christmas Day in Japan. Noticeable in that EVERYTHING BLOODY WELL CLOSED. I'm not kidding: the 24hr supermarket closed at 8:45PM last night, nearly every restaurant and every other store shut down, trains stopped at 10 (which is really early, although the buses, owned by the same company, kept running), and to top this all off, I had no food. However, I was very fortunate: Lawson's, one of the three major convenience stores, was going to open during this holiday break (which, according to one friend, who informed me of this yesterday, was 3 days long). And more importantly, Lawson's operates a version of its normal convenience store which is more like the illegitimate child of a 24hr full service supermarket and your local gas station, so I was able to buy groceries and everything even though the entire planet seemed to shut down. (Moreover, aside from the 5kg bag of uncooked rice, which was $20 but came with two free pairs of chopsticks, everything was $1. Score.) So I will survive this holiday-within-a-holiday, and not starve like I earnestly worried last night. This also meant I didn't go out for New Year's Eve drinks, and spent the time grocery shopping. I did have a drink, though--a can of corn soup, which I originally got to keep my hands warm. It was actually good, until you got down to the part where all the kernels were, and then it was kinda gross. (Don't ask me why the Japanese are so in love with corn. They put it on pizza, make soup out of it...I guess it's just exotic from their point-of-view, much like sushi is to Americans.)

I didn't really do much on New Year's Eve, except play a really cool board game with friends called Formula De (the old version). I am seriously getting this game when I go back to the States. Normally I'm not all that much of a board game fan--I prefer traditional card games (none of this Yu-Gi-Oh! pussy crap) and roleplaying games--but this is simply amazing. The hilarity that ensues when you miss a corner or go too fast or just cockblock the other player by ending your turn right in front of your car is ridiculous. I also happened to win the race, by the way, although my other car was next-to-last.

So, even though this time last year I said resolutions are stupid, I'm going to do them again. First, let's review last year's resolutions and see what happened:

1. Communications Officer: I believe I did this one and more, considering the near-complete breakdown of the club last year.
   
2. More writing: Ehh, yes and no; I didn't get any more fiction written, but I did do a hell of a lot of RPG setting creation, and that technically counts as writing...let's just put this one into the "failed" column and leave it at that.
   
3. Don't dawdle: Oh yeah. Failed.
   

Okay, well, 1 out of 3 ain't bad, I guess...well let's ignore that and get on to this year's resolutions, of which I believe I might have an easier time resolving. From least important to most important:

1. I resolve to successfully GM an RPG adventure (not a campaign!)
   
2. I resolve to become more sociable (without defining what "more sociable" means in this context)
   
3. I resolve to graduate this fall semester and receive my B.A. in whatever the hell my degree is supposed to be.
   
4. I resolve to escape my parents' clutches and become a free man, even if it means I move out of New York State.
   

So yeah, there are my resolutions for this New Year's. I'll likely fail at at least one of them (although it's not likely it'll be either of the bottom two) but them's the breaks. See you again at New Year's, 2011!

PS: You gotta listen to the Yoshida Brothers if you're into any Japanese music. It's two guys on shamisen, and HOLY CRAP they are awesome. Unfortunately, I cannot get a copy of one of their albums at this point in time, but I plan on buying one when I can.

From Japan!

So it is the end of the year, December 23rd*, 2009. It feels quite lonely here, with most, if not all, of the semester house residents having already left. It's practically a ghost town, and I can go for almost an hour without running into anyone (aside from お父さん and お母さん, the seminar house "administrators.") When the bulk of the people left earlier this week, some of the Japanese students were crying. Well, crying is inadequate: they were sobbing. Their bodies literally wracked with their emotions. They were many tissues used, even by some of the international students. It was emotional all around, but I couldn't help but feel it was too...melodramatic. This is a really lame and trite phrase I'm about to use, but I'm going to because its true: I cry on the inside. I can't see getting all that worked up over something like this. Sure, they're leaving, and most aren't coming back, but when you compare something like this to, say, having your best friend blow his head off with a shotgun, well, I just can't see the point. Maybe I'm stone cold heartless, but I can't cry. It's not in me.

In any case, the Internet is working really fast with everyone gone now. The school has this strange policy of making everyone go through the same proxy server, slowing things down considerably. Speaking of technology, I've done really good for Christmas in getting things--not for others, but for myself. This is a necessity, since sending gifts back and forth from New York to Japan and vice versa would be time-consuming and unnecessarily expensive. So instead my family just deposited around $300 in my checking account. Great deal, huh? With that, I took advantage of the student discount offer to get an upgrade copy of Windows 7 Home Premium for my laptop for only $30, and then got a blue Nintendo DS for roughly $60. First-generation, but that's okay, I wanted it cheap. (It still fits in my pocket anyhow.) I'm using it to study kanji, since there's a lot of "games" that exist to teach young Japanese how to write those strange and mystical symbols. Of course, being a foreigner, I'm slow, but I've already learned some new ones, like 虫, which is "bug," and 音, which is "sound." There's a couple of others, but I usually forget them and so have to do it all over again, which is good because it reinforces them. On the Windows side, I haven't had any problems (other than having Internet Exploder lock up when I visited the Mozilla Firefox site) but I haven't been using my laptop lately, since I've been busy cleaning.

Oh what a bitch that is, honestly. Inspections, from what I've heard, are incredibly strict, so much so I had to scrub every nook and cranny to get out the dust. The main worry is that they'll find some tiny imperfection and then I'll lose the $150 housing deposit (meaning I'll have to pay it again next semester instead of having it roll over.) That would be a pain and not something I want right now, especially because of it's complete unnecessity. Hopefully it'll all work out, though. It seems that お父さん and お母さん "like" me, or at least aren't upset at me for anything. That should be helpful.

I'm also supposed to write letters, but I'm being lazy on that front. I typed out drafts for three of my five letters, though those will have to be slimmed down. I have to write them in cursive and in pen, since I know if I do it any other way Mom will get upset (or at least bothered, and neither are good.) So to avoid the whining I've decided to do it, even though I've forgotten cursive writing over the many years I've not used it. And, of course, these letters won't get there in time for Christmas or probably even New Year's. This is a lamentable but ultimately unavoidable tragedy.

I did get a letter of sorts, though, a few days ago, from a member of the talk_politics community, who wanted to know why "we"--as in the, the mods of said community--were leaving abomvubuso with all the mod work. I was made a mod about six or eight months ago, if I recall correctly, and had a mini-scandal when I banned one disruptive and immature member (who was later reinstated by other mod.) In the past few months, notably over this stupid health reform debate, I've grown very tired of politics and took a break, as I believe I noted in this journal. Everyone has just gotten stupid, and there is no way to debate anything with anyone anymore, as they completely jettison reason and embrace lazy partisan thinking. This hiatus from political discussion also meant I took a hiatus from moderator duties (and school was another factor.) Unfortunately, this letter sort of dragged me back into politics, and I started reading political stuff again, which drew me to this: Democrats Risk Another Jacksonian Moment. I think this is a perfect assessment of what's going on. There is tremendous backlash against the health reform proposals, and Democrats are risking a lot for a rather bad bill. OTOH, the Republicans have nothing to offer, and may be stupider than the Democrats in many ways (especially since Parker Griffith defected; that might not have been smart politically.) There is a growing left-right bipartisan outrage at what is going on, and I think its going to change the party system as we know it today. Democrats and Republicans? Pfft--they're going to move aside soon if they don't straighten up.

But I really don't want to talk politics. It makes me angry, and I don't want to be angry. I'm still thinking of running for local office when I return to the states, but other than that I want to keep politics far from my mind and focus more on what I'll be doing in Japan. So far, its not my college thesis--which is officially dead in the water--but maybe something else. I would like to visit Tokyo and maybe Hiroshima over winter break, and perhaps go back to working on my novel, which I haven't yet.

Tis quite strange here, considering its only two days until Christmas: there is nary a flake of snow to be seen, and the temperature is regularly in the mid-fifties. We had rain today, instead of that magical white stuff. Nobody is running around in a mad dash to buy presents (at least not that I've seen.) And the music the city is playing over the loudspeakers is in English.

As one of the former seminar house residents would say: おかしいだなあ。

*Just passed the midnight mark here in Japan. Man I'm staying up late.

TIME Magazine officially sucks.

The TIME Person of the Year for 2009 is...Ben Bernanke. Ben fucking Bernanke.

I missed it because I usually don't give a whit who is or isn't TIME's Person of the Year, considering my continual process of "waking up" and realizing these rags for what they are...but seriously?

But Bernanke also knows the economy would be much, much worse if the Fed had not taken such extreme measures to stop the panic. There's a vast difference between 10% and 25% unemployment, between anemic and negative growth. He wishes Americans understood that he helped save the irresponsible giants of Wall Street only to protect ordinary folks on Main Street. He knows better than anyone how financial crises spiral into global disasters, how the grass gets crushed when elephants fall. "We came very, very close to a depression ... The markets were in anaphylactic shock," he told TIME during one of three extended interviews. "I'm not happy with where we are, but it's a lot better than where we could be."

Yeah right. As if anything else needs to be said, I turn only to the first page of Mish's Global Economic Analysis, which reads: "Seven Banks Fail, 140 YTD total, Sheila Bair 'prepared to handle an ever-larger number of bank failures next year'".

Uh-huh.

I have no idea what to say, other than the obvious: the editors of TIME are twats.