RIPENINGS 

                                                                                                  [from unposted archives]

Here in the Japanese countryside there aren't any movie theaters or entertainment districts, like they have in the big cities. I don't know how we survive out here with just trees and flowers, rivers, lakes, wild animals, genuine weather and distant neighbors-- the most exciting event right now where I live is the plums ripening. Nothing like standing under the plum tree in the cool of the morning and having a couple of sweet ones for breakfast. 

We saved a lot of plums from the ravages of the scoundrelly simians in the historical Battle of the Big Plum Job a few days ago, our victory thanks to the advanced rock-propulsion system we've developed during the million years of struggle between sapience and simiance, a struggle still ongoing in politics and finance. 

Right after that engagement I picked a couple of basketfuls of ripening plums, just in case the furry marauders returned, but I couldn't reach the purplings high up, which are now hanging there ripening in the sun, like the finest rubies in perfectly complementary leaf greenness. Beautiful. 

Whoever designed plum trees sure knew what she was doing.

CUCUMBERS AND POLITICS

      (from unposted archives)

Gardeners, like leaders of nations and global corporations (who, however, have clean fingernails) are continuously confronted with key decisions involving allocation of territory, life and death, choices dependent upon time, weather, experience and myriad other background factors of infinite combination and no possible resolution, like the mind of a US president earlier in this century. 

With succulents, as with legumes and drupes, there is no going back. Ask the guy who ran Enron, ask W, ask Bill Gates, ask anyone making key decisions and they’ll tell you, as soon as they have a minute, that yes-- tomatoes, snap peas and squashes, like honest auditors, software and Afghanistan, can be unforgiving. But that’s part of life in the fast lane, just as it is with backup cucumbers: you have to move on. Like time, markets and battle theaters, Cucumbers wait for no man.  

It is just such a dilemma that I’m facing at the moment, now that the hurricane has passed on by, the goodgod rain has stopped and the sun is shining, in between intense downpours: I have to do something about the backup cucumbers I got because the extended sunlessness was not what the early cukes desired, any more than the early tomatoes had. I got backup tomatoes, too, but tomatoes are more demanding and less patient, sort of like Afghanistan, so I had to deal with them first, but that was a no-brainer, since tomatoes give up quickest; but cucumbers, as fragile as they appear, can and will hold on to their last yellowing minileaf. 

It’s like Ron Lay with honesty, Gates with Netscape Navigator, or Obama with the Bush legacy: what do you do? In the former case, where there’s big money involved and stockholders matter, so you turn on a dime is what you do. You get on your gardening clothes and you go out there: get your tools and dig in, get to work, make the hard-nosed decisions, get it done: WHAM: backup cukes in the ground, in the form of Internet Explorer built into Windows, thriving in new atmosphere. Or you can take the traditional political course and largesse the money gardens of your buddies with another 600 billion or so early cukes, but not at your friends’ expense; distant low-and mid-income residents of no connection will cover the cost of the extended mistake a second time (see gardening records of earlier presidents, governors, mayors). More a matter of inner circles than money.

So I guess I’ll plant the backup cukes where the snow peas were, when it’s politically safe. At least I don’t have stockholders or a misguided electorate or a Federal Reserve Bank that’s not Federal or Reserve or a Bank.

Vegetables never lie like that.

THE SUPERGREAT WEEDWHACKING ADVENTURE

The portion of the road below our house has been steadily narrowing over the past month as the roadside bamboo, saplings and weeds overgrow. The gleaming polish of the autos that travel up and down here are under increasing threat from those reaching woody arms - many with thorns - all owing to local community politics.

In the past, every year at about this time, as I’ve chronicled herein, the village below and we up here get together in a big, well-organized roadside weedwhacking work party, in which dozens of husbands and wives et al. clear both sides of the entire road up the mountain in a morning. Always an impressive event. This year, though, the whacking didn’t go this far up; it stopped down around the school at the bottom of our road, because our water co-op drilled a well and was no longer getting water from the village, severing a strong obligatory tie between us.

Henceforth, due to local village mountain-water politics we are on our own, weedwhackingwise. I waited and watched and asked and listened, but it appeared that no one in our upper community was going to do anything about it (or organize to do so, which situation is likely to change at the next couple of community meetings, since all these folks drive nice shiny cars).

Along the southern roadside the weeds had by this point narrowed the road nearly by half. Immediate emergency squad action was the only viable solution. So it was that I summoned my work crew, the Trio of Brio (motto “Sudorem delectatio est,” “Sweat is Fun”), to help me do something about it. We got out the best new big green wheelbarrow with banana-yellow handles in the world, rakes large and small, clippers, shovels, buckets, hand scythes, a big scoop basket, I got out the new high-powered weedwhacker, put on the bamboo-cutting blade and we assembled at the target area not too long after dawn, figuring to finish half the work today.

An interesting thing happens when you give brief, unadorned instructions to kids regarding tasks, like “separate the few hard woody stems and throw those back onto the cut overgrowth, wheelbarrow the rest up the mountain road to the compost strip behind the garden, then clean up the leftovers on the road.” One of the twins (Miasa, I think) took that latter instruction to near nanolevel and crafted a fine tool out of some whacked bamboo, got down on her knees and with her face close to the road used the tool to scrape particles of leaf dust into little piles, which she shoved into the dustpan pile by pile using another spontaneously crafted tool, and thence into the wheelbarrow. Interesting little devices and procedure for finely detailed cleanup, but soon her sweating, hauling sisters, wrestling with thorny reality, got on her case and once again the effort went into full forward mode.

At one point, while attempting to toss a big thorny bale of hard-stemmed whackstuff back onto the overgrowth, I couldn’t see the also-overgrown culvert, so stepped in it with my left foot just as I tossed the unwieldy armful and instantly hit the road, so to speak, toppling backward downhill onto the road, my old aikido lessons (from 40 years ago!) reflexively kicking in as I struck not flat on my back, but curled and ready to roll, my feet flying up into the air as my body rocked onto its shoulders, easily dissipating the force as per the old “aikido roll” (plus even older football knowledge) as the trio watched from uproad, slackjawed.  They had never seen an adult accidentally freefall and roll till his feet were up in the air before. After returning to earth I got up with only a few scratches on one forearm and shoulder from re-entry, some woody weeds getting a bit of their own back. We continued on.

Neighborly autofolks who throughout the day drove by along the steadily widening road in their unscratched shiny cars, seeing this act of communal kindness by a foreigner and three young girls sweating in the hot sun cutting, raking and hauling, all rolled down their windows to smile Good Morning... Good afternoon... The girls smiled back, proud of what they were accomplishing. Our system and my hardy crew worked so well that we finished the job in a day.

A whole new road.

THE NEANDERTHAL SEQUENCE

When I was a teenager I was often called a Neanderthal by Mr. Rapazzardi, who generally sat on his front stoop keeping an eye on that nice front lawn of his that I used as a shortcut. For my part, I felt that Mr. Rapazzardi was the Neanderthal. Turns out we were both right.

Later, in my college years, I smirked at the academic puzzlement over whether or not the noble Cro-Magnon, crafter of superb arrowheads, pure high-browed ancestor of those strong-jawed subjects of highest nobility, known as "us," had ever, ever deigned to couple with the bestial, low-browed hairy chipper of nothing but hand axes: the Neanderthals next door! I smirked because, well, I was in a fraternity; we were much closer to how reality actually worked.

So all these decades later I was not shocked when the scientists announced that, like all non-Africans, I am part Neanderthal, and so was Mr. Rapazzardi. There have always been certain ancient cave-dwelling propensities, have there not, certain primal feelings in taking a risk, hefting a stone, sighting a wild animal, gathering around a fire, spotting an untrod lawn...

So what does this mean for us modern human folk, this Neanderthal quality so many of us share, even without reference to certain reality tv programming? It could explain some major anomalies, such as creationists, Wall Street financiers and certain folksy politicians, who are torn between the progressive abilities of one ancestral line and the inviting stolidity of the other, between malignant greed and staunch integrity, complexity, simplicity, pride, humility, the list can be found in any "holy" book, whichever from wherever. Familiar mixes that are especially stressful to politicians and financiers, for example, who as a way of life must appear one way while acting the opposite.

No real need at this point in these exciting revelations to mention that I am also very likely a descendant of King Tut, who was probably also part Neanderthal, as are you, maybe you have the Tut part too, all of which means more to me, such as it is, than the Adam and Eve agenda I was heir to, but there you are-- people are impressionable are they not, yearning as they do for admittedly mythical roots, even as they carry the actuals in their very genes, with far more lineage than any mere king.

So now, thanks to science, we mongrels can at last perhaps begin admitting who we all really are, begin finding, studying, facing and accepting the many gifts and glitches we have inherited from the Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals and Denisovans, among all our uncounted forebears - including King Tut, where applicable - and so get past the dark sides of politics, finance, other bipolar activities and evolve at last into the beings that have been trying for so long to be.

Citizens go

$2,400,000,000,000

deeper into trillions of debt -

politicians applaud

A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion

DEEP ITCH

Since it's the first time it ever happened, I can't fully express the pleasure it gives me to see the Spending Review Committee sessions the new Minshuto government is holding as they investigate the worthiness of every last local regional and national spending program (as per the whaling program posted on below) and the public gets to watch the gravel-voiced bigwigs come in and try to defend their shadowy fiefdoms against young, intelligent and fully informed reps of the people asking pointed questions (How many amakudari do you have in your organization? How much did that highway cost? How many people a year visit your countryside tractor museum? How many equestrians use your village Horse Park?) It's a lot like I imagined actual democracy might be, if it's not an illusion after all. (Cynicism is a lot older than democracy.)

This is not the mocked lone wolf in the elected body trying to effect a smidgeon of democracy in the face of slavering jowls beside pork barrels; this is a new government actually trying to straighten things out, get things in the open, shed some light, identify the airheads, the conmen, the traitors to honesty, the black holes of integrity, guys who used to run the scams, put up bridges to nowhere, dam the valleys, pave the rivers, the guys who used to pull the strings, the guys with the daimyo houses and the limousines. Watching it in action, seeing public representatives peering into dark corners and asking hard questions in the public interest, is like scratching an itch so deep that it has never even been called an itch, let alone been scratched.

The Japanese people are historically used to an itch so chronic that it's more like a way of life, but now there are slimeballs actually sweating on TV, looking embarrassed at their now public dishonesty; there are godfathers grousing about fairness on camera in the lobbies. What a lesson this could be to other countries I could mention. Here's hoping the scratching doesn't end too soon; there's a lot more to this itch.

JAPAN MORTIFIED BY US CONSERVATIVE REACTION TO OBAMA'S BOW

To fill in a bit about the previous post, in the everywhere photos of "The Bow," all you see is the low point, and from the worst perspective. When you see the entire 'performance,' from Obama's entrance to the finish, it happens quickly and gracefully, with details a blur. As mixed and awkward as it may be in its elements, however, it is elegantly executed overall, and there is no sense of submissiveness. Obama is in control (though spontaneously, not practicedly) of his part of the situation. America need not be upset, apart from the salaried media phobiacs.

Also, it should in fairness be noted that one can, in presumably less formal situations, shake hands while giving a shallow (20-30 degree) bow, though in the bowvideo I saw on tv here yesterday evening (the only one I've seen), as he approaches the Emperor Obama clearly intends to shake hands, then while doing so executes a deep, quick and rather unexpected bow, which is not as awkward looking as when frozen in the ubiquitous still shot.

In the press here, the main news point now, and primary reference to the whole affair, is the strange reaction of the conservative press in the US, that Obama has submitted to the Emperor and so on (Japanese Mortified by Obama's Bow, for example, when the reality is now more like the header of this post). Puzzled looks follow on the tv anchors' faces, as in Japan there is no commensurately gloating reaction to the bow; the general feeling is more like gratitude for the effort at cultural politeness, a characteristic alien to the mentally isolated.

HOPING FOR CHOCOLATE

I've posted herein on Japan's Vanilla Syndrome before; I suspect that the radical results of yesterday's election will be a political example thereof. After 50 years of political vanilla, with no real suggestion of change regarding all-out public works on concretized rivers, dams up the wazoo and bridges to nowhere; no complaint about politicians being scions of wartime zaibatsu; no sense of impropriety at the revolving door of descendants of prime ministers becoming prime ministers, the Japanese public has by a wide majority selected chocolate, an apparently new political flavor where there was none before.

But is it really a different? Is it truly chocolate? Or is it just dyed vanilla? Mightn't it be like the standard Japanese chocolate cake, i.e., pretty much flavorless cakiness colored brown and declared deliciously chocolate? Japanese ice cream as well has made a skeptic of me; I suspect this will be another political example of the Vanilla Syndrome, to wit:

Taro Aso, the vanilla prime minister, is the grandson of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who co-founded the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Aso's wife's father was the late Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki; his sister married into the royal family.

Yukio Hatoyama, the chocolate prime minister and head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is the grandson of Ichiro Hatoyama, who was prime minister from 1954-1956 and a co-founder of the LDP. Yukio's father Iichiro served as foreign minister; his younger brother Kunio has served in several ministerial posts in the Aso government.

I wouldn't bet on this being chocolate. It may be called chocolate, it may even look like chocolate; but to an old genuine choice-lover like me it looks a lot like it could be the same old vanilla with just a little coloring.

Let's have a taste and see... any hint of chocolate in there?

+

Things are already changing: Japan's new first lady has traveled on a UFO to Venus!

Funny that didn't come up during the campaign... You have to wonder, though,
about the effect this will have on the nation's extraplanetary policy...

+

She also eats the sun,
and knew Tom Cruise when he was Japanese...


Chocolate is beginning to look like the Rock of Ages...

LET US RESOLVE OUR PROBLEMS OVER DRINKS

Here at the depths of the economic depression brought on by the major financial entities who were subsequently rescued by the taxpayers, said financial entities and taxpayers met over drinks last night in a welcome attempt to discuss and resolve the economic crisis vis-a-vis the vast profits and bonuses recently accrued by those entities, who at the event paid for their champagne with IOUs against rumored equity at 0.01% non-compounding that mature in 2050 if not later, to be backed by several generations of taxpayers, who drank from plastic cups of water from a well surrounded by economic cesspools; but upon seeing the tailored silk suits, breast pockets holding million-dollar bonus checks, the Grand Cru, the crystal goblets, Cuban cigars, $500 haircuts, $2000 eyeglasses, $1000 shoes, easy laughter and waiting chauffeurs, the greasy work-clothed taxpayers took their work tools in calloused hands and charged, throwing the financiers into the cesspools, reclaimed their own money and country, then walked home.

Looks like it's already beginning...

+

NY AG: Banks Paid Bonuses That Were
Substantially Greater Than Their Net Income

"...combined, these three firms earned $9.6 billion,
paid bonuses of nearly $18 billion,
and received TARP taxpayer funds worth $45 billion.

+

Five Firms Hold 80% of Derivatives Risk, Fitch Report Finds

+

Goldman's new 'American Socialism Manifesto'

+

THE ROYAL SCAM

"WHATEVER," INSIST JAPANESE YOUTH

If you live here in Japan this might not be that big a surprise, but to folks in the politically active world abroad it's probably shocking to learn that political activism among today's Japanese youth is about the same as it is among teddy bears.

The contrast is even greater to one from a country like the US, where folks of all ages are active in pursuing their rights. I remember debating for the 18-year-old vote back in high school in NY in the 1950s; the 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on July 1, 1971, lowering the US voting age to 18.

All the same, despite J-youths' apparent apathy regarding political empowerment (Will you put down the manga/joystick, take out your earbuds and just listen for a minute?), a Japanese student newspaper conducted a survey among high schoolers to find out whether they had any interest in lowering the voting age from 20 to 18, in a country with the dinosauriest government in the world (McCain's a young whippersnapper compared to some of these LDP lifetimers), but most of the kids who were willing to take out their earbuds said they'd rather not have the vote as they put the buds back in.

In fact, 32% of those who let go of the joystick for a sec said they actually OPPOSED voting rights for 18- and 19-year-olds; in other words, they felt something like: "What a ridiculous idea, giving matters of choice to people our age!" (Like Groucho and that club he would never think of joining), while an underwhelming 20% thought having the vote so soon would be kewl. About 40% said 'whatever...' and turned the volume back up.

Interestingly, female students particularly opposed the idea of giving the vote to such as they would soon be; only 16 percent said they approved of having the vote at that age, while 34 percent said "No way!" and resumed their eyelining.

Hard to believe, in times like these; maybe it won't be true, one day, and Japanese high school students won't have Jurassic leaders...

HANDI-BARF

Do you find yourself among the growing number of perceptive individuals suffering the onslaughts of modern life who don't want to cause dangerously slippery carpets, sidewalks and stairwells, yet are experiencing a steadily intensifying need to barf your guts out right on the spot, several times a day?

Well here's the solution to that nagging problem: new Handi-Barf, a compact, portable place to toss your cookies pretty close to spontaneously, anywhere irrepressible nausea is generated.

Handi-Barf is just what the intelligent and tasteful modern-day individual needs to keep in social trim without losing any throwup time from the metaphysical rollercoaster of modern living. Carried in purse, slipped into a pocket, hooked onto your tie, placed on your desk or suspended from the person in front of you on the subway, Handi-Barf affords civilized relief in a flash-- with no muss, no fuss and no apologies.

Bring Handi-Barf with you to bureaucracies, financial houses, art openings, fashion shows, political gatherings–- anywhere that old metaphoric finger can slip down your throat. And while you're reading the latest best-seller, just clip your Handi-Barf to the bottom of the book, so you can upchuck as you read; could anything be more convenient?

And if you have to watch the tube, simply suspend your Handi-Barf from the patented Handi-Barf headgear as you experience an evening of typical programming, and you won't have to stop watching, even during commercials, to ralph your tv dinner.

Or should you be unavoidably exposed to the fundamentally righteous, simply whip out your Handi-Barf and let your soul experience the truth and light afforded only by the joy that surpasseth the surrender of understanding.

No more waiting, hand over mouth! No more scrambling for a door handle, racing for a toilet bowl, groping for a wastebasket, searching for an open window, hassling with a coat pocket or wrestling with a handbag! No more panic at the surging of all those existential cookies that so urgently need tossing in these times of potentially non-stop nausea!

Handi-Barf, Inc.: pioneers in metaphysical hardware.

BUT THEN THERE'S AMERICAN POLITICS...

And only a heartbeat away...

Yeah-- too right on to be true, this image is photoshopped
(apart from the backyard swimming pool in Alaska problem),
but it captures so well the sophomoric sniping
("No solutions. No real content. No anything.")
that has now entered US politics, I figure I'll keep it up there
as a political cartoon... For those who are interested,
the actual source photo can be found at snopes.com, w/thanks to Jim...

+

And now you can hear her not parroting a script,
but speaking her own thoughts
straight from her own mind,
that one day may be
the mind of the US president,

finger hovering over the red button...

"PRIME MINISTER FUKUDA RESIGNS"

How can they tell?

TALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Yesterday evening, in that short spell of quiet buildup that precedes the starry magnificence of night, the silence broken only by occasional finales from the manic warbler, a slight wafting of breeze now and then ruffling the cedar tops, I was cleaning the tools after working in the garden, using in this instance the planting trowel to scrape dirt off the spade. I scraped once and immediately a frog sounded once from beneath the porch. I scraped again. Frog again. I scraped twice. Scrape scrape; frog, frog. I scraped faster, frog frogged faster, I scraped rapidly, frog frogged rapidly; I scraped fast and extendedly, frog emitted a pointed silence. Who did I think I was, anyway.

We were holding a conversation, but my Frog is rudimentary at best, and apparently I had made a froggy faux pas. Did he think me a usurping male? A comely female? Were we talking froggy politics? The latest amphibian news? Tree frog gossip? To change the subject I tried scraping the hoe, and then the rake, to see if the frog appreciated dialect, but there was no response. Didn't like my tone of voice, or the direction the conversation was taking, or perhaps he found such talk too small.

To get back to the original gist I resumed the shovelish tone, and as we conversed, lo and behold another frog joined us from up in a cedar; and then another and another joined in, and before too long I found myself part of a large froggy committee discussing various amphibian topics; I listened for the most part, now and then shoveling in an interjection, and did my best to understand, but they spoke awfully quickly; at one point I ventured to point out in my clumsy croakery that I was not amphibian, but they seemed to think it was ok.

I began to think that perhaps they were conversing with a human via a shovel because they were lonely, dying out so such and all as the scientists were saying; and as soon as I had that thought the more talkative frog asked me how long we humans have been around; I scraped out "a few million years"; the frogs chuckled among themselves, croaked they'd been around a hell of a lot longer than that, and had seen a lot worse, and were far more adaptable than we who are causing the 'frog' problem. We humans hadn't seen the worst yet, though, and are a lot less adaptable than frogs. "Can't even lay eggs in water for goodness sake." Maybe we'd make it, maybe we wouldn't. The frogs would, though.

I asked what they thought our chances were, and an unsettling silence followed. We quickly went on to talk of other things, very earnestly and apparently to great depth, discussing a number of interspecial topics for some time and at various tempos until the shovel was clean, but I have no true idea what we were talking about. Our little gathering reminded me of the UN in many ways, but unlike that august body at the close of session I had at least a clean shovel. I then put the shovel away and went in to dinner and a bath, but we must have started something, because the frogs went on talking all night. If you ever want to talk to one of my amphibian neighbors, I'll let you borrow my shovel.

MONKEY POLITICS

I am pleased to announce that the monkeys - whom I haven't actually seen in my garden since they hired a shrewd new PR manager - came by some time during the last couple of days while I was at the office (the PR guy has my schedule on his Blueberry), sampled my radishes, went Ptah! Ptooey!, pulled up some more and threw them around to register their disgust and disappointment, as well as their puzzlement over why one of their generally reliable providers would purposely plant such a revolting item in blatant violation of our unspoken contract their ancestors drew up unilaterally about a million years ago, when we humans left the beastly path and began climbing the precipitous road to higher intelligence and its attendant burdens of honesty, integrity etc., qualities still too heavy for monkeys and politics.

When I went out this morning to get some radishes and saw the mini-chaos the disappointed absentee landlords had left, I noted with satisfaction that the token radishes they had pulled up and bitten bitterly to register their extreme disapproval of my gardening behavior were mostly small ones (strike one against the new manager), leaving the larger and ready-to-eat ones for me to harvest (strike two) and making room for the smaller ones to grow. They had helped thin out my radishes! (Strike three.) I think the axe is about to fall, and a new PR manager soon to be hired from among those who answer the ad in Monkey BusinessWatch. There are mental rumors that the ousted PR guy will go into politics.

Next year I'll plant some red peppers where this year's radishes were, see what happens to the new guy.

SHADOW OF ICE

I have to laugh when I read US 'news' like I read this morning, where it said that "Republicans fear public has lost confidence" following another surprise congressional loss in Mississippi - after surprise losses in other special elections in Illinois and Louisiana - the well-spun headline indicating only a vague suspicion that there might be shreds of evidence here and there suggesting the possibility that perhaps some sort of negative change could be on the verge of occurring in a small way, or not... No hint of the Shadow of Ice that resides in the White House, of the deep voter revulsion that has been evident and growing to the full heave for some years now...

But then those media are heavily pwned, are they not...

image via

TOTEM POLE OF THE SENSES

Pate de foi gras? You can have it. Caviar? It's all yours. Filet mignon? Sauce remoulade? You can have those, too. Take 'em away. Just pass me the red beans and rice or the chile or goulash or ramen or minestrone or salad or sandwich with maybe a pickle. I've always been a one-dish man, and a simple dish at that. Nothing fancy, please; go to no pains.

Food has never meant that much to me; it's meant nothing, in fact, other than the asap assuagement of hunger with the sauce of simplicity. It's a bother to eat, a mere necessity after all, no need to make a fuss about it, certainly not spend much on it, of either time or money, and so it has been all my life. Same as it's a bother to sleep, but I have to do that too, or I'll collapse into my goulash.

I'm one of those guys who (at least when I prepare my own lunch) generally eats over the sink, to minimize the time needed for all the de facto pointless trappings, from plate (who needs a plate?) to utensils (what's better than fingers?) to napkin (ridiculous!) to cleanup (BIG waste of right-now time!), and I can get quickly back to whatever important it was I happened to be doing when this evolutionally spoiled body interrupted and said FEED ME.

Everything is more important than eating. Animals eat. And that's pretty much all they do, except find things to eat. In between, they sleep. Gustatory interests are probably lowermost on my totem pole of the senses. I even find politics more interesting. Well, that may be overstating the value of politics, but what the hell, it's my totem pole.

WHAT IS THE REST OF THE WORLD?

Speaking of hunting, I just read an article in the Japan Times-- to which I would link, but the paper's website contains only yesterday's issue, as dead trees continue to fall unheard in forests of electrons, so I'll just refer to the article and you'll have to trust me until the JT gets off its duff and onto the edge where news is and you can see their words instantaneously wherever in the world you are, though that will be yesterday compared to the nanopinpoint of the neonow-- anyway, where was I before I had to struggle against the undertow of ago?

Oh yes, speaking of hunting... Japan is going whale hunting again, maintaining its recent tradition while rejecting the ancient tradition argument put forth by the Ainu, who wish to hunt salmon in what is a genuine tradition (Genuine tradition requisite #42: "A genuine tradition cannot be made up by politicians.")

This fresh round of traditional whale killing, like the hidden dolphin slaughter of last week, will be in the face of world opposition, and this time will also include the explosive harpooning of humpback whales, there is such a craving among Japanese politicians for whale autopsy results. Mr. Splashy Pants will perhaps be among the slain (see post below).

In response to strong criticism from the rest of the world regarding the hunt, Joji Morishita, Director of what are not laughingly described as 'international negotiations,' says "When we hear that the rest of the world is against Japan, we say: 'Wait, wait. What is the rest of the world?'" Some folks still miss the Dark Ages.

Dinosaur hunting, anyone?

[Update: The Significance of Mr. Splashy Pants]

[Another update: Turns out this was my 3000th post!]

THE DEPTHS OF HIGH OFFICE,
or
EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A BOTTOM

In looking at some of the electoids currently holding high office here and there in the world under the rubric of democracy, it's often difficult to credit the contention that a presumably educated, presumably discerning, presumably informed electorate actually searched among themselves, looked into their souls, culled out certain especially able individuals, carefully assessed them, then voted to elect them - over others of equivalent caliber - to serve as the governmental representatives of all.

I sense I'm giving far too much credit to the electorate concept, but what the hell. Even so, that such a process could result in certain of the leaders currently bulling in the world china shop is quite a distance beyond comprehension. Could any first-world polity truly be that uneducated, that undiscerning, that uninformed? (Or that misled?)

Of course, since strictly local representatives reflect their local electorate, it's understandable that some local officials could be far below par; such examples come easily to mind when considering the US congress, for example. As Honest Abe was aware, there are some people you can fool all of the time. But If Darwin's evolution really works, those folks would never grow to comprise a national majority, so how can the basement floor become the ceiling? If Abe and Chuck are wrong about this, the world is in big trouble.

But even though the world as we know it may be ending, let me pause here to point out how nonetheless astonishing it is that, once elected to congresses, senates, parliaments and whatnot, these electoids further select from among themselves some of their number to serve in even higher positions of important public trust, such as speaker of the house, minister of justice, minister of defense etc., who in fact are no such things. This phenomenon goes by the name democracy, but surely it must be something else. Cryptosomnolence, perhaps?

On the other hand, if every cycle must have a bottom, and if the present depth determines the subsequent peak, then the world has a few Everests in the offing, so maybe we should appreciate this current crop of electoids for the breathtaking heights (tsunamis?) they're about to beget.

So if history is any guide, I think I'll just leave this beaten path and head on up into these sparsely inhabited mountains for an unspecified duration...

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, ME OR YOUR OWN EYES?

So Abe has abruptly decided to resign as Prime Minister-- some weeks too late, but in time to keep things on a bizarro-Marx Brothers trajectory.

The big question now is: which crony will replace him? Back-room money is on the scion of a formerly war-slave-employing company who has already made enough gaffes to script a dark version of The Cocoanuts, and will likely work even harder at instilling zealous patriotism in the populace, getting the emperor to visit Yasukuni and changing the constitution so as to create a good-sized army that can be used offensively. Nothing quite so satisfying to certain people as a good-sized army. The burgeoning of actual democracy here in Japan might interfere with this plan, however, so the future may be quite interesting, in a 'Why a duck?' kind of way.

I know that this may seem unfair to the Marx Brothers, but they were surrealistically funny by intention.

[Update Sept 14: In a scene out of Duck Soup, the LDP suddenly begins backing Zeppo.]