I was listening to some music today and my playlist stumbled on some music by so-called Indie Gods Belle and Sebastian. I guess I will never get what makes something "Indie" and therefore better than everything else on the planet (according to Indieheads). For the life of me, I can't make out any real differences between these guys and Blur. Yeah, I said it. Your music sounds like britpop! Except I guess it sounds a little more gay ... or should I say ... fruity?
Someone please explain to me yet again what makes Indie so great?
CNN.com - Stewart's 'stoned slackers'? Not quite - Sep 28, 2004
While I can see why Bill O'Reilly made the statement he did, seeing as I know a lot of stoners (though hardly slackers) who watch the daily show, yet again I must shake my head at the stupidity of conservatives. Take a look, this is a short and rather amusing articles. Basically O'Reilly said watchers of The Daily Show are a bunch of morons. Turns out, the morons are the ones watching O'Reilly on Fox. Go figure.
Choice quote of the day:
"So if Stewart's audience is comprised of stoned slackers, how would Herzog describe O'Reilly's audience?
'I'm not getting into that game,' he said."
Oh I can answer that one: "Fucking morons."
Well, I'm sorry it's been a long time. Things have been rather busy and disruptive.
Anyway, here's a traditional Japanese dance festival I stumbled across in Tokyo the other day. Make sure you download the newest version of Quicktime (Get it here) to be able to view the movies.
NOTE: Turn the volume down on your speakers. The sound is very loud and crappy courtesy of my phone camera.
Yeah I know I haven't done this in a long time. It's busy! But I received an email with this little link and I just had to say something about it. When will Americans learn to quit blaming others for our own stupidity? Not any time soon, I imagine. Weep!
... if they died off anyway!
As much as people claim that I am a whiner, I can't stand them. For the amount of shit that the average human goes through on a daily basis, I like to think I am on the low end of the scale when it comes to bitching about stuff. There's some saying I heard recently that it's human nature to complain, regardless of the situation. I heartily believe this. It's human nature to whine like a four-year-old. Witness:
Whiners complain about negligence at WTC cleanup
I suppose this was eventually going to happen. It's really only a matter of time before every American man, woman, child, cat, dog, and indescribable creature is somehow connected to spurious litigation. This one particularly gets my goat, however, considering I worked down there. Hell, my very job was to get these people to put their gear on. Guess what? They didn't.
I love how suddenly the "negligence" becomes the responsibility of the supervisory company. My job specifically was to trudge around the Staten Island site where all of the debris was brought to be searched for Identification, remains, and contraband. Whilst trudging, I had to visit every sorting station and take stock of how many of "NYC's finest" (it was NYC's cops who were doing the sleeping ... er ... sorting) were wearing their gear correctly. Every new worker to the site was given ample instruction on how to use the Teflon space suit, air filter, and goggles. Everyone was given a fitting for their protective equipment. No suprise, it was still uncomfortable and no one wore it. Does that make it the fault of the supervisory entity that individuals are too lazy and whiney to wear protective gear? Some may say "but obviously yes, because you weren't doing your job getting them to wear it." Alas, since the NYPD is a prickly bunch, I nor any of my fellow "safety monitors" had jurisdiction. We could just politely ask people to try to use their stuff next time. If you were more strict about it, you were fired because you stepped on too many toes.
Fast forward 3 years (almost 4, wow), and the workers are moaning about how they have problems. Here's a pointer for you, numnutz: Now you know to wear your gear, don't you? Unfortunately, this suit won't go away, I'm sure. It's really too bad, because I hate to see lazy grumbly can't-do-a-simple-task bitches get rewarded for their own mistakes.
In parting: You may wonder how I can rant about this, seeing as the article is about Ground Zero and obviously I was not there. I was privy to a visitation of Ground Zero, thanks to our ID badges. I remember thinking while I was there "man this is the ritz." Their equipment was twice as good as ours, it seems, and the degree of protection available to the workers was amazing. Yet ... nobody wore it. Similar accounts of the quality of care at the site came in from others who visited. So if the workers are just too "cool" or lazy or whatever to wear their gear, whose fault is it if they're now seeing the consequence of their stupidity?
Hey America, wake up! I'm sorry to be the weenie to report this to you, but it is you who is responsible for your own actions, and no other. It's about time that changed and the government stops taking responsibility for the stupidity of its people. After all, a country is only as smart as its dumbest person. I shudder to think just how stupid we really are.
Enjoy some more pictures courtesy of the Keitai camera. I guess eventually I'll get a real camera...
Note the pictures in the electronics shop...of the mechanical horses. Yes, this is the newest exercise trend. While America has that bullshit Atkins diet sweeping across the nation, Japan has mechanical horses. Just wait, it'll reach a store in the states probably 3 years from now ...
I think this gallery was posted by Peter or maybe Nichole. Check it out, it's our "ground crew."
Last Monday, I visited Gyoda Joshi Girls' High School. I'll be the assistant English teacher for two classes there. It was a rather depressing occasion. Let me fill you in. Forgive me if I get a little fruity-sounding; this place gives me a strange feeling.
Gyoda Joshi feels to me like an old man. He is all-too aware of his mortality, and waits for the final moment with both trepidation and anticipation. He knows that death is near, and perhaps he even knows when it will arrive at his bed. Joshi feels the same way. A school that was designed to hold almost a thousand girls now houses sixty students, ten teachers, four staff-members, and myself (but only on Mondays). The building is a shell, a shadow that too quickly reminds you of the aging population in Japan and the shrinking numbers of the younger generations.
Joshi will be closed at the end of this academic year. New admissions ceased in 2001 I believe, such that this year there are only third grade students. The sixty students await graduation with intense anticipation, I feel. For the teachers, it is a different story. They try so hard to engage the students, to participate in a job that has a very definite termination date. A future that seems exciting for students surely is something to bring worry in the factulty. How can you actively engage your students every day, knowing the end is coming and surely you will move on either to retirement or to (hopefully) a greener pasture? Thus, the entire grounds of Joshi smell of decay to me.
This isn't to say that there aren't bright students or dedicated teachers. I did feel that some of the students were interested in English, and certainly the teachers still cared very much for their jobs. But a certain sadness infuses their motions it seems to me, some kind of futility. But I hope I am just imagining it. I do hope that Saitama prefecture will be able to relocate them to a more lively location. I hope their next schools will be filled with the laughter of new students rather than the slow slither of spiderwebs and the creep of mildew. I hope they will find a place where nearly every seat is full, rather than a place where whole wings have been closed off.
I commend the staff at Joshi for their (outwardly) positive attitudes and approach to their situation. Many lesser workers would simply shrink away from the not-so-simple task of finishing out the year at a doomed institution, much as many faced with death will simply wither away willingly.
がんばて！！
Good Luck.
I told you I'd come up with some pictures. I apologize that they are small and blurry, but I hadn't had the foresight to figure out what size they were in. I guess my keitai camera isn't so good with motion either. But it's still handy as hell to have! Check out the 10 year old girls. So cute! And they could dance too ... This was at a small club called Fiesta in the nearby city of Kumagaya. Fun place, really. I guess you just have to know where to go around here to have fun .
I had the privilege today of watching a most interesting event at the school here. Four times every year, all of the students are gathered by grade (there are only 3 grades in Japanese high schools) in giant gyms to ... be inspected. It reminded me of way back in the day as kids in elementary school when we sat quietly at our desks while the school nurse picked through our hair looking for lice. The teachers weren't looking for lice this time. They were inspecting hair color, earrings, hair length, skirt length, and a variety of other things.
In Japan, it turns out one way to judge the quality of your school is to look at the kids. If they have multicolored asian dyejobs and pierced ears, you have a bunch of delinquents. I guess the higher quality the school, the more they look the same. It reminds me of my dad's story about catholic school, when a golfball would have to roll down the inside of your pant legs, otherwise they were too tight (this being when tight-ass pants were in, I imagine). So I watched as a bevy of teachers sifted through an entire grade of students, 280 in all, looking closely at hair color, earrings, fingernail length, even traces of makeup. Girls aren't allowed to wear makeup here, though it seems to me every single one does. I guess right before this thing (at least it wasn't a surprise inspection) there were fleets of girls in the bathroom wiping off their faces and hiking down their skirts.
I don't know as there is much disciplinary action available for kids who are "delinquent" and end up getting a checkmark for hair color or holes in their ears (guess that means I'll fail the test ...), but there's some sort of routine in the whole thing. I can't see how it is very effective due to this lack of disciplinary action (there doesn't seem to be anything like detention, and suspension happens very rarely), though the students do still follow the rules to a certain extent. I'm glad at some level for it, since I guess the asian mullet which appears so popular on young people in Japan would be rampant through the school. Sometimes I do find myself alarmed at the level of conformity that is expected, but of course my perspective derives from a very different culture. After all, per capita, how much violent crime do they have compared to the United States?
Nuff said. Maybe if my High School had a policy like this, I wouldn't have been driven to do something as stupid as grow my hair long and dye it black. Shudder.