THE BIG DARK

One of the very fine things about having grandkids is that they take you back in time to the great moments in your own childhood and you live them all over again through new eyes, all the great adventures, as when Kaya and I late last night (for her), at just about her bed time, instead of her going to bed we got out the flashlights and went for the first time (for her) out into the big dark to look for frogs and bugs and whatever we could find that lives in the night, and see what goes on there while Kaya is usually sleeping.

How she jumped and squealed at the prospect, and bounced out the door with all the excitement that bides in a child (I recalled that kind of excitement, it was still my own) as we entered the night with our little lights to find what we could at the end of the shine: miracles we saw, like the salamander sitting there under the paddy water for so-o-o-o long not breathing, not moving, until Kaya shone her brighter light on him and he backed away... Kaya remarked loudly on the amazing fact of that, then lit up a big flashlight-bright green frog swimming far off through the clear brown-bottomed water out to a good spot to begin singing loudly for all his friends, who were already singing loudly in fine voices from everywhere in the night.

Another frog came swimming right to the bank where we squatted, and sat there staring up into our lights with his golden eyes; then when we turned off our lights and were in as dark as it could get there was Venus up there like a star X 100, just above the lip of the mountain we were on, and the night and its dark were no longer fearful things, when we got home they fit just right around Kaya's dreams.

PRIME MINISTER KOIZUMI DIDN'T PAY HIS PENSION PREMIUMS FOR MORE THAN 6 YEARS!!!

I've coughed up my pension payment every month for nearly 25 years, and I'm still paying. Guess it pays more to be a politician.

THE THEFT THAT KEEPS ON THIEVING

"In my mind, when the politicians finally start to understand what is happening they will discover that the failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocols was one of the most heinously irresponsible omissions in the history of Mankind. Ratification of these protocols would have given rise to a raft of technologies which would have fast tracked the reduction of our dependence on oil as the primary source of energy."

From
Inflection Point?
by Brian Bloom

IS NOTHING SACRED??

Bet they're tasty, though.

YO, TROY!!

"Brad Pitt is the exquisitely contoured Achilles, a highly-strung thoroughbred of a warrior who resents answering to the conceited Greek King Agamemnon, played by Brian Cox, part of the raft of Brit character actors who, according to ancient Hollywood law, play venerable small parts...

In the Trojan camp, Orlando Bloom is Paris, handsome son of King Priam. While on a diplomatic mission with his brother Hector (Eric Bana) to the Spartan King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), Paris falls in love with Menelaus's queen Helen (Diane Kruger) and spirits her away back to Troy as a stowaway, to the horror of Hector who knows that it can mean only one thing: war, and plenty of it. The thousand ships are launched to reclaim Helen and the honour of the Greeks, and the bloody slaughter begins with Achilles sulking in and out of his tent..."

It's a good thing Homer didn't live to not see this.

VONNEGUT GOES COLD TURKEY.

SEARCH FOR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Go to www.google.com and enter "weapons of mass destruction" in the search box. Click "I'm feeling lucky" and look at what comes up. Follow the links, too. At least you'll get somewhere.

MY HEART WILL GO ON

To my knowledge this is the first recorded mention of the apocalypse of dental background music, the psychic threat that such music can present to the dentally supine. Forget about elevators, laundromats, banks. This was apocalyptic not because it was background music, nor because it was in a dentist's office, nor yet a country dentist's office, nor yet in Japan, it was because the background music consisted of only one song, repeated over and over and over, and because that song was My Heart Will Go On, and because not only was the version played not sung by Celine Dion, which would have been apocalyptic enough, but because this version was performed on the panpipe, unceasingly, not stopping even long enough to allow one to confirm one's place in the scheme of things, panpipe whispery and throaty as lips are stretched and needles jab, panpipe piercing and shrill as masked faces loom, gloved thumbs are shoved in gums, drills whine My Heart Will Go On, shrill, shrill, as the anesthetic takes hold near, far, wherever you are, there are no words when the panpipe plays, but you know the words don't you, whether you know it or not, over and over, and unceasing pipes without words, like the drills, shrill on and on, like My Heart, like the minutes seconds hours must be days in the chair as things go numb all things except My Heart, which Will Go On, it's no wonder the Titanic went down, My Heart Will Go On but my teeth won't

I PAID MY PENSION FEES, KAN SHOULD TOO.

Japan's pension system is a growing shambles anyway, like the US system is about to be with the onslaught of retiree boomers, but Kan shouldn't have to resign, just pay his fees! Japan is now going to edge further into uncertainty without an organized and well led opposition party... America could use one of those too...

BOTH OF HER

Those of you who have been following these humble chronicles even only vaguely may recall my continued puzzlement at the fact that although my twin granddaughters Mitsuki and Miasa had appeared to share only one placenta, the two little beasties looked very different, Mitsuki being rounder of face, heavier and quieter, Miasa being narrower and longer of face, lighter and more energetic, with differently patterned and slightly protruding ears. Everyone, including the midwife, deemed them fraternal twins.

You could therefore have knocked me over with a pacifier yesterday after mama Kasumi came over and walked into the house with Kaya the proud older daughter and the new Miasa herself (while Mitsuki slept on in the car) and I was not surprised to see that Kaya had grown quite a bit, or that Miasa looked very much like Miasa, when after Kaya and I went for a radish-picking and general examination-of-the-countryside-in-the-rain walk, we returned and I saw that Kasumi was still holding Miasa, who was now dressed differently yet was also crawling around on the floor in the same clothes as before, looking exactly like she had looked moments ago, for she actually was Miasa, whom Kasumi appeared to be holding, though that was revealed to be Mitsuki, who had become identical to her sister, who also had become identical to her sister.

It turns out that she is identical, after all, whichever she is. Both of her. Which, apart from the fact that I now can't tell her apart, is a great relief to me, twin puzzlementwise. Not to mention that both of her are cute as either one, crawling around on the floor exactly like whichever she isn't. It is quite a common thing in life, after all, for one puzzle to lead to another, it keeps us on our toes, whichever we are, and I'm sure this pronoun problem will pass.

look at these rubies
fresh from the earth
handful of radishes

JAPAN AS ECO-TOUR DESTINATION? BETTER GET HERE FAST!

It would be a belly laugh if it weren't so politically pathetic, hearing Japan's Environment Ministry tossing about ecobuzz phrases as though they were public works contracts, phrases like "unspoiled natural beauty," "preserve the environment," "minimalist approach," "contribute to conservation and environmental education," getting all gushy about the environment even as local construction companies under said public works contracts dam the rivers, pave the mountain streams and reorganize the mountainsides, as power and phone companies string their new thick yellow and black bumblebee cables through the skies of "protected" national forests. It's like listening to the Son Of Bush talk about "compassion."


Maybe those imaginary ecotourists can tour the huge industrial gasification incinerator the very same government is manipulatively planning to build in a national forest preserve (actual location shown in photo)

right above Lake Biwa, water and air source for the 20 million people of the Kansai area (mostly oblivious regarding this), and I guess those tours won't go near the dozens of oceanside nuclear power plants and the nuclear reprocessing plant and the world's only plutonium-powered plant and likely more coming, so there won't be that much of Japan left to eco-tour. And since many of those radioactive facilities are on earthquake faults, if one of them goes there won't be eco- or any other kind of tourism in Japan for a half-life of maybe 25,000 years. But who really cares, the Environment Ministry? Maybe they'll all just tour the Big Incinerator Parking Lot of Tomorrow, with excellent mobile phone reception if you don't breathe too much.

Story in all seriousness here.

(Also note greatly detailed comments hereto, from butuki, with thanks.)

MAYBE IT'S TIME TO BUY THAT HONDA CUB

"What is involved here is nothing short of an imminent peaking out of production of crude oil on a global basis -- known by energy industry insiders as 'Hubbert's Peak' -- which would turn a cyclical supply/demand crisis into a structural energy crisis of unprecedented proportions."

From: The looming oil crisis will dwarf 1973

"The first in a series of articles dealing with this pending crisis and its potential impact on our economy and financial markets" --- By Paul Erdman

FUNAZUSHIKIRI

Yesterday afternoon on the last day of Golden week we headed across the Lake to Moriyama, on a quest to locate another renowned local festival that I vaguely understood to be of great antiquity, involving sushi of some length. You know how it is when you're on the move between traditions. I misunderstood only slightly.

Having started early so we wouldn't be too late, our mapless path only partly resembled chaos as depicted by a two-year-old left alone for an hour in a large white room with a big black crayon. We knew we were at last in the vicinity when we saw a number of young Japanese men clustered by the roadside, some with waist-length bright red hair, others in colorful knee-length skirts. More like sarongs, actually, fashioned of kimono-type fabric, but the sight was nonetheless startling. For a shy populace, the Japanese have a quite number of double-take traditions.

Yes, the young men assured us, this was Shimoniikawa Shrine and this was the Sushikiri Matsuri (Sushi-Cutting Festival). The Sushikiri involves one of Japan's oldest surviving dishes, practically a world cultural asset: funazushi, a foot-long, carefully and lengthily pickled fish that nowadays in its highest gourmet form can cost up to 600 dollars per fish. Thought by many to be the original sushi, funazushi is the result of fermenting the female Nigoro Buna (crucian carp) for 4 years in salt, rice and select bacteria till it takes on the qualities of blue cheese. Renowned for its pungency, these days funazushi is only found around Lake Biwa, where the traditions are still as strong as the pickles.

In the Sushikiri ceremony in front of the shrine steps, two select young men, with slow, elaborate ritual, each slice up 10 funazushi, remaining unruffled as their elders shout humorous advice at them from their seats on the steps. The result of all this sacred slicing is then fed to the gods, and the village is set for another year of prosperity. And the ritual certainly seems to work; they've been doing it for over a thousand years.

LAST FRIDAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE ROSE GARDEN

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

The leader of the world's only remaining superpower has given the skin-color (we're white)/democracy linkage thing some thought, but it hasn't helped. Maybe America could do better in November.

PIECES OF FAME

It wasn't all that far into the future; a couple of light years, a couple of dark years maybe, from where Earth is now in its flight through space. On the implant screens you could see ads for the bones and muscles of galactic celebrities, the hair, eyes, noses, cheekbones, teeth, chins etc. of top mentavision stars now discontinued who had sold their bodies prehumously for vast sums, the precious corpses now reduced to their marketable components and cloned by the great body merchants for sale to those wealthy enough to want the precise nose or other organ that had been so famous and still was, thanks to the ads that showed those renowned body parts in settings like the most precious jewels: famous eyes on silk, famous chins on velvet, famous teeth in jaws of solid gold---and in those days, nearly everyone was rich enough to have at least a piece of some celebrity, for there weren't that many nonclones left, and all wanted to be famous, at least in part; for the wealthiest, though, it was possible, even rather common, to be a total pastiche of fame; to be, as some of the merely upper class so snidely put it, completely who you were not, as so many were.

I wrote that sci-fi flash nearly 20 years ago, never thought I'd actually live to see it begin:

"He and Ms Jackson picked different aspects of famous faces to mould him into Ken, settling on Tom Cruise's eyes, Brad Pitt's nose, George Clooney's lips, Russell Crowe's chin, Johnny Depp's cheekbones and Jude Law's teeth."

and

"A male Jennifer Lopez fan has been transformed into his idol on MTV's I Want A Famous Face."

From a news item on NEWS.com.au.

RAINHAPPY

We were planning on going to the annual open-air beach flea market at Omimaiko, where all sorts of countryside treasures are to be found (there's also a big antique market ongoing at Hieizan-Sakamoto May 2~5), which latter town and temple amazingly STILL have no decent website or netphotos to show even a fraction of their beauty!!

We wanted to go to both events, but yesterday was too busy, then the rain set in during the night and now has its long wet legs planted firmly on the earth and taking very small strides, doesn't look like it's about to move on anytime soon, busy sending up big ragged gouts of clouds from the streamvales.

As for where we are right now, though, the beans are happy, as are the radishes, lettuce, ginger and mushrooms; the plum, cherry and peach are bouncing in glee, the ducks in the paddies are quacking in joyous syncopation with the froggy chorus and the monkeys are miserable, so I'm really happy.

GET YOUR $30,000 CELL PHONE HERE.

"The Signature CollectionPlatinumWith its deep cool lustre and distinctive weight, platinum exudes substance and style. Rarity and beauty matched by strength; there is simply no substitute for the ultimate in precious metals. Featuring solid platinum parts and a highly polished finish this product has a strong, distinguished look. The phone is hallmarked by the Swiss Assay office."

These are said to be all the rage in nouveau Asia. Reminds me of the swank that flashed in the US up until about 1928.

From the Vertu Signature Collection

THE STORY OF KENNY RICHEY

I first heard of Kenny Richey, the Scots-born former marine now on death row in America, because his father served in my my unit in Okinawa back at the beginning of the Vietnam war. The judicial historyof this case has grown steadily in notoriety. To quote from Scotland on Sunday: "Susan Sarandon and Robbie Coltrane have recently joined the Archbishop of Westminster, representatives from the British legal profession, Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and Members of the European Parliament in writing to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeal in Cincinnati on behalf of Briton Kenny Richey, who has spent over 16 years on Death Row in Ohio despite having 'one of the most compelling cases of innocence human rights campaigners have ever seen.'" The case is an atrocity.

For more headline detail, search "Kenny Richey" at Scotland on Sunday.

ok warbler

since you sing like that

you can have my garden

~~~~~~~


SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!

As the Bush Family war in Iraq crawls through exploding Fallujah alleyways toward its successful conclusion a year and counting since the loquacious one turned a carrier around to declare the war ended in Baghdad streets strewn with rose petals upon which Iraqis are still dancing in the embrace of democracy at the hands of their purely altruistic liberators, we take pause to note that many in big money are disappointed that a few small unsavory and quite irrelevant truths have been revealed, such as the mistreating of Iraqi prisoners by systematically desensitized US military personnel (surprise!!), and the fact that US personnel who have been killed in action can not only be blatantly enumerated on television-- which is bad enough-- they also have names that can be treacherously enunciated and even photographs that can be unpatriotically shown (surprise!!) (get 'em off the air, Sinclair!!), in patent disregard of all the fundamental truths the Bush family is gunning for in Iraq, such as that, well, Dubya really cares about people, especially the Iraqians, just like his father did (pay no attention to those numbers and names, those flag-draped coffins, those naked Iraqi prisoners etc.); also there are an awful lot of gas-hungry SUVs in the US, then there's patriotism under God and the second amendment-- Hell, can't we just buy our way out of this? We're trying, but there' s nowhere to send the money yet; would you believe it, there are fanatics out there who are convinced that some things are more important?

Like the upcoming US presidential election.

With thanks to Ron Andrews.