Oaths and Curses

more :-)

2006-05-21T01:22:00.000-10:00

I've been painting again. :-)

Ignore the flashes on the last 2 paintings-- like any true artist, I'm too lazy to take them out of the glass before snapping the photo...

YES!!!!!!

2006-05-19T17:32:00.001-10:00

I passed the California Bar Exam!

God Bless Jackson Mumey, who is the best Bar Review Mentor anyone could ever have.

If you would like to avail yourself of his services, click here: http://www.celebration-bar-exam-review.com/

To describe the amount of work spent in law school is not easy. Especially if you do it working full time. Passing the California Bar Exam requires a very specific writing format and emphasis on studying very specific areas of law in a very particular manner. It has nothing to do with how bright you are or how well you know law in general. If you take the Celebration Bar Review, you will get the best grounding in the world about how to write and study for this format.

Or at least that's my opinion, and I'm on top of the world right now. :-)

some local TV

2006-04-12T21:59:00.000-10:00

The local Japanese channel has a feature each night about some interesting people in Japan. One day, they talked to a grandfather, son, and grandson who collected rocks from streams and then weathered them in sand and sun, spraying with water at appropriate intervals, to bring out the rocks' color and patterns to an aesthetic level. Another time, they interviewed two very young policemen who had a collection of vintage European sneakers from the 70s and 80s, some pairs of which they had paid as much as $750 for.

This time, they went to see a Tokyo textiles shopkeeper who had a fondness for tatami mats and used to work finishing the mats-- sewing dark strips of cloth around the edges. He added that of course handwoven tatami mats were the best. They asked him when he had last seen a handwoven tatami mat. He said, "Oh, thirty years ago."

Having learned that the best rushes for bingko omote (handwoven) tatami mats are grown in the area of Hiroshima, the crew went there. They went out to a rush grower's plot and learned that last year 5 families were growing rushes, but this year only 2 families were, because it's very labor-intensive and because the winter planting/summer harvesting growing schedule conflicts with crops that are now much more lucrative. They showed the guy scything off an armful of rushes at the ground, bundling them up, and heaving them over his shoulder.

Then, they take the rushes to a mud bath, so the rushes stay supple. This is a trough in the ground about the size of a sheep dip filled with liquid brown mud. They slosh the rushes in completely, one bundle at a time, bundle after bundle. Everybody was wearing long aprons like they were working in a slaughterhouse. Even so, they were all sitting around afterward totally covered in mud. The farmer, a skinny guy in his forties, had mud splashes all over his trucker hat and huge glasses. The grandpa was sitting there smoking, half his face plastered in a mud pattern like the rising sun.

After asking around, they found that only one person in Hiroshima still hand weaves tatami mats. They approached the house, which was dark brown old Japanese with weathered paper doors and looked very Alaskan with luminously bright flowers by the path, flowers in pots, a couple of dogs, and a bunch of interesting junk lying around in the yard that no doubt was incredibly useful.

They looked in through the open sliding paper doors. A little black-haired lady in a white traditional cotton top and dark Japanese trousers was sitting on an old stool at a tall, rickety loom made of what looked like driftwood, weaving rushes into the many, many strings on the loom and working two foot pedals. I would have guessed the lady's age as 60-65, and very spry at that. She's 83. Her name is Fumiko Teraoka, and she's been hand weaving tatami mats since 1940. Her husband died in 1950 of radiation poisoning. She is the last person in Japan who hand weaves tatami mats. She asked her wholesaler once where her mats went, these days, and was told, "You don't need to know." She later heard a rumor from a neighbor about handwoven tatami mats in Himeji Castle (an old samurai historical site, very famous) and went there to see. Her mats were on the floor of one of the princess's dressing rooms.

The crew hired her to make a tatami mat. When they went back later to get it, and entered the house, her bare feet were sticking out of the sleeping alcove. Several people rushed over to see if she was all right, and she looked up at them kind of strangely and said, "Well...I'm RESTING..."

Judging by her reaction, they paid her a very good price for the mat, the narrator remarking in tears that it was a shame that there are so many living National Treasures (people recognized for their unique arts in Japan), when the last living hand weaver of tatami mats, an integral symbol of Japanese culture, goes unrecognized.

She was bowing shyly in the sloping driveway as the crew drove away, a long-haired brown cat yawning beside her.

The crew took the mat to the Tokyo textiles shopkeeper, who looked absolutely floored, and then they showed him hand-finishing a handwoven tatami mat for the first time in 30 years.

Nothing is True in Literature

2006-03-12T23:02:00.000-10:00

The facts are briefly these. J.T.Leroy published his first novel, Sarah, at age 20, about a cross-dressing teenage prostitute at West Virginia truck stops. (Well, until he makes that ill-omened pilgrimage to Holy Jack's Jackalope and things start getting complicated.) His second book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (made into a film by Asia Argento), is a collection of stories, some published when he was 16, generally considered to be inspired by events in his own life. They concern the life of an abused child with a disturbed prostitute mother who is into drugs. Both books are stunning, if distinctly manipulative. Subsequently, he wrote pieces for The Face, Spin, I-D, and a host of hip magazines. He was an Associate Producer of Gus Van Sant's film "Elephant."

The books got great reviews from, among others, The New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Interview, Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzanne Vega, Kelly Osbourne, and Joel Rose, who opined, "Occasionally, very occasionally, a writer comes along who walks with God. I have known J.T. Leroy since he was sixteen years old. Not only does he walk with God, he writes like an angel."

Some people seem somehow upset to have learned last month that J.T. Leroy does not exist. He is the brainchild of Laura Albert, a 40-year-old ex-phone sex worker.

Tell me, what is art? Part of it, at least, is an illusion that achieves a psychic reality in its audience. There is no doubt that J.T.'s writing achieved a psychic reality in its audience, all the way to Number 10 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. The anger seems to be that the illusion extends beyond the art to the creator as a persona. If this logic is extended, you might as well get angry with Norma Jeane Baker for changing her name to Marilyn Monroe or with Walt Disney for publishing Carl Barks's stuff without a byline. Let alone male romance writers who write under women's names. Anybody who read J.T. Leroy's stories, which have never been billed as anything other than fiction, as factual pieces from a real life is either a very inattentive reader or a very naive one.

Literature is literature. It could be viewed as sad that it takes elaborate persona-shifting to get really good writing to be read and appreciated. It's sadder if all of a sudden it seems less like "literature" when discovered it's been created by a different person. This suggests somehow that no one knows how to read and assess what they read, if such a gorgeously clothed emperor can so quickly be vilified as having no clothes.

The Japanese are a bit wiser about this. The styles--and signatures--of famous Japanese woodblock printmakers have been so much forged over the centuries that ambiguity about provenance in a truly stellar print does not take away from its value. The logic seems to be, "If it's ~that~ good, it's ~that~ good."

As long as art is confused with religion, where what is wanted is not a great creation but a great "creator" or at least a great creative persona, disappointment will ensue, human beings being, well, human. A few decades ago, the bad blood at Harvey Comics reached the point of (if I remember correctly) litigation. Does that make Casper the Friendly Ghost less innocent? Should ballet-goers feel ethically wronged that the sylphs who smile and glide so ethereally across the stage are in reality wracked by severe bunions and muscle pain?

What would the Elizabethans, and their literary heirs, have done if they found out Shakespeare's sister wrote all those plays...?

I wonder who ~did~ paint the Mona Lisa. *bg*

It's Over...

2006-02-25T17:14:00.000-10:00

I'm back from Sacramento after taking the California Bar Exam. It was the most grueling three days of my life, but I think I did well. We'll have to see. The change in my attitude from the previous time I took the Bar was monumental, due to my Bar review mentor's preparation. Last time, my attitude was kind of like: "I spotted an issue. I'm ~so~ clever." This time it was, "HOLY SHIT HOW AM I GOING TO WRITE ABOUT ALL OF THIS STUFF IN ONE HOUR?!"

If you or your friends are planning to take a Bar exam in any jurisdiction, I strongly encourage you to contact Jackson Mumey at http://www.celebrationbarreview.com.

The exam was at the Sacramento Doubletree Inn, in the ballroom, which has elegant carpet and crystal chandeliers. The previous time, I took it at the San Mateo Convention Center, which was bare concrete inside and unheated. People can and do argue Nature or Nurture, but I'd be one of the first to say that environment counts.

My room looked out over a garden with a little stream. I was out on the balcony one night, staring at the stars, and heard a noise in the vines down on the ground. I looked down. A pair of mallards had staked it out for the night. The next day, they were in the swimming pool. They hopped out like they owned the place and headed for the hot tub. (If they had gotten in the hot tub, I *would* have found someone with a camera, so I could share.) Then they hopped back in the pool, instead, and started taking baths and bobbing around, enjoying themselves. (Please ~do not~ post comments making Bathtub Duckie jokes.)

There were ducks in the parking lot. Ducks in the garden. Ducks landing like fighter jets in the tiny stream. Hearing ducks quacking is a very soothing thing.

In the pool, there's a rope marking off the deep end, with three floats bunched together on it. One night, one of the mallard males went to sleep in the lighted swimming pool, right at the end of the floats. With his head tucked under his wing, he just looked like a bigger float. "Endearingly surreal" does not capture the atmosphere.

Anyway, it's great to be back home watching silly subtitled Japanese samurai movies and Korean soap operas. And eating decent sushi.

from here to eternity (or at least Sacramento)

2006-01-22T20:05:00.000-10:00

My entire attention at the moment is focused on passing the February California Bar Exam.

Accordingly, this blog is being suspended.

As a last blast, here is a photo of a blue orchid, for those of you who like Jack White. :-) Aloha!

riding that train...

2006-01-20T23:48:00.000-10:00

"The cyber guys can talk all they want about the cyber community, but they can't tell you the color of each other's eyes. What kind of community is that?"

--Bob Weir, Grateful Dead guitarist (as reported in Rolling Stone)

Well... I *can* tell you the color of everybody's eyes whose blogs I link to... :-)

pink elephants

2006-01-20T23:25:00.000-10:00

Small herds of elephants have been running slightly amok in northeast India tea plantations and farms recently. Locals are turning activist.

"They have created, for example, an educational puppet show, illustrating, among other horrors, the dangers of distilling alcohol when there are elephants about: they are boozers as well as gourmands."

--The Economist

news

2006-01-05T22:48:00.000-10:00

Well, there isn't much. The surf is great, but it's been cold. A guy in Mililani was complaining on TV that when he got home from work he had to put on long pants and a long-sleeved sweatshirt. They showed him actually wearing socks with his slippers, which I think is just being a total poseur.

Sadly, a 3yo kid, whom his father said enjoyed saying the word "pickle," was playing with his 4 1/2yo and 6yo siblings on an 8th floor Waikiki hotel lanai, in the absence of his parents, and fell to his death. The lanai railings were spaced 5" apart.

So tell me, those of you who have more contact with small children than I do-- Do you think the average 3yo can squeeze through a 5" wide space?

pirates

2005-12-29T20:44:00.000-10:00

Hawaii public beach is defined as the sand that doesn't have vegetation on it.

Naturally, beachfront homeowners would like more vegetation growing between their houses and the sand, so that they have more private land. If the greenery gets thick enough, the homeowners can file an application for accretion with the State Surveyor to add the land to their lots.

So what? Well, it leads to something really ugly.

~Surreptitious watering.~

Yes, some crazed-eyed overweight locals in Louis Vuitton sandals have been spotted donning ninja gear and dashing out in the dead of night with hoses to water the beach vegetation.

I believe it's the City & County who recently announced they were instituting a "task force" to patrol the beaches and watch for clandestine irrigation.

the sky is falling

2005-12-29T10:14:00.000-10:00

Monday was a holiday, so I was home, and I had the TV on in the background while I was reading. Family Feud came on.

The category was: Things A Chicken Does. 4 answers, total, on the board.

10 adults given 9 tries could not come up with all 4 answers. (Lay an egg, cluck, scratch, peck.)

It is no wonder that people eat factory-farmed eggs--produced by thousands of debeaked chickens kept in the dark in 1-foot square cages in warehouses--when they have become so removed from non-human society that they can't name 4 things done naturally by the birds who produce their daily breakfast food. (I could think of 15 more, just off the top of my head: crow [at least roosters], inspect the ground for insects, regard tall humans warily, brood, roost, fight, smell, shit, preen, molt, display affection, mate, flock, run around, drink water with decorous naivete.)

I'm not building an ark, but signs are fowl for humanity when it has become that detached from nature.

Daily Story #2 (okay, it's a feature-- as long as I keep reading interesting shit)

2005-12-28T21:18:00.000-10:00

Note by editor Louis P. Lochner to The Goebbels Diaries:

Xaver Schwartz was one of the oldest of the Nazis, and held the post of treasurer of the Party throughout. He was fond of distributing signed photographs of himself to deserving comrades and visitors.

No sooner had the Nazis come into their own than he "acquired" an estate on one of the enchanting lakes of Upper Bavaria and personally supervised the construction of a sumptuous residence which, it was generally rumored, was to cost 50,000 marks.

He proved such a slave driver, however, that the workers became incensed and one day put up a sign: "Xaver Schwarz! Where did you get the 50,000 marks?"

When Schwarz arrived on the premises he saw the sign and fell into a rage. He telephoned the Gestapo and had Himmler's minions put every worker "through the wringer." But nobody revealed who had painted and put up the sign.

Schwarz then decided to play upon human avarice. He put up a sign of his own: "Five thousand marks' reward to anyone who will reveal the perpetrators of the sign."

The response came promptly the next morning in the form of a new sign: "Xaver Schwarz! Where did you get the 55,000 marks?"

Daily Story. (I may make this a feature.)

2005-12-28T08:58:00.000-10:00

This is about the "odd monk" Ikkyu of the Daitokuji and the Tea Master Shuko.

"When Shuko went to study the Zen philosophy under him Ikkyu made tea for him, but when he took the bowl and was going to drink it, Ikkyu knocked it out of his hand with his iron Nyoi sceptre. This was too much for Shuko, who started up from his seat, whereupon Ikkyu shouted out 'Drink it up!' Shuko then saw the point and, quite equal to the occasion, retorted 'Willows are green and flowers red.' 'Good,' said Ikkyu, quite satisfied that the other understood. Which is, being interpreted, things must remain as they are, for the nature of phenomena cannot be changed any more than spilt tea can be drunk."

Cha-No-Yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony
by A.L. Sadler

~aloft~

2005-12-17T19:18:00.000-10:00

Seeking the elevation I knew in my last existence as an albatross, I drove up to the Pali Highway lookout this afternoon. Those unbelievably alpine trees in the middle of the pic are known locally as Norfolk pines, because people think they came from the Norfolk Islands, but actually they're Cook pines and came from New Caledonia. Genealogy in the Pacific is surreal.

From the lookout, you see the windward side of the island (the side opposite Honolulu). That's the pali (Hawaiian for "steep cliffs") and Kaneohe and Kaneohe Bay.

The tiny island in the middle of Kaneohe Bay is a UH Oceanography/Biology research station. Kids who forget their cigarettes or the beer are fond of swimming from the research island to the shore, where they buy their goodies in waterproof plastic bags. Sharks *have* been sighted occasionally in Kaneohe Bay, like most other harbors, but if you point this out to watery biology loving people, they look at you kind of strangely.

Behind that hill is Kailua and the very nice Kailua Beach Park at the edge of Lanikai, where reclusive movie stars live. And crowded, tropical Buzz's Steakhouse just across the street from the Beach Park, with its classic salad bar, orgiastic seafood, and killer desserts. Buzz's does not take credit cards, though they will take local checks. You have been warned.

The lookout was fine, but I wanted to hike the old highway a bit. Here it is.

A tree grows in Koolau. :-)

The gorge under this bridge is quite deep. I would like to have seen the graffiti artists who painted that beautiful stuff. I don't think it was done upside-down.

There's the new freeway, four lanes and separated. Incidentally, the Pali Highway is officially Highway 61. Like Bob Dylan said, "We'll put some bleachers out in the sun, and have it out on Highway 61." :-)

The pali.

I'm falling in love with this road at this point.

Ditto. That's an ironwood tree in the center of the photo.

And there's really Buzz's Steakhouse and ecstatic Kailua Beach Park and Lanikai, as well-- just to the left and right of, and encompassing, that gentle hill fronting the meditating Pacific Ocean. *bg*

The old highway. God Help Us All.

The new freeway, with tunnels, below the old highway, without. Having traveled both, I'm now happy. :-)

Albatross!

2005-12-11T21:20:00.000-10:00

I ~love~ albatross. They are large white birds, about the size of geese, with very big feet and very, very long wings, which are dark on top and patterned on the bottom. Albatross are built like gliders and spend months and months at sea, alone, just gliding up and down in arcs above the waves, occasionally eating squid.

For a couple of months each year, however, they land on an island to nest. This is where my trek out to Kaena Point comes in.

Kaeana Point is the northwestern tip of Oahu. The paved road stops a couple of miles away, and then there's a very bumpy and dipping track for heavy-duty pick-ups, Jeeps, mountain bikes, and four-wheelers. I walked. Looking back from the first rise, I saw that my neighbor, an olive Toyota truck with gigantic tires, dissatisfied with the parking lot, had parked with both front wheels up on a three-foot tall volcanic rock. I thought about going back--a 10-minute hike--and then figured, "Hell, if he damages my car, he'll be easy to find."

After a mile or so, I began to lose heart, when I saw something far-off arc into the sky and down below the horizon. It could have been an eyelash. I knew it wasn't. I know an albatross from a figment of my imagination.

After a couple of miles of this, you come to a huge and immovable "fence" made of piles of volcanic boulders and the large, serious notice: "KAENA POINT NATURE SANCUTARY. DISTURBING BIRDS OR PLANTS IN ANY MANNER PUNISHABLE BY LAW. MOUNTAIN BIKERS: ALL MOTORIZED VEHICLES STRICTLY PROHIBITED BEYOND THIS POINT. OUT." (Okay, so maybe that wasn't the notice verbatim, but that sure was the impression.)

In the "fence," there's a small and narrow gate of metal posts that you have to squeeze through, kind of like the mediaeval entrance to a castle keep. On the other side, I met a dark-tanned guy walking beside a non-motorized bike. "Hi," I said. "Did you see any albatross?"
"Yeah," he answered. Realizing there was only one direction to point, but still wanting to be helpful, he pointed toward the end of the island. "That way."

"Thanks." I pressed onward, through a trail that soon melted into orgasmically soft beach sand meandering through the beach vegetation. I took off my slippers. (Yes, I hike in slippers.) NWS had thoughtfully pounded delicate gray iron standards into the sand by the path and strung a narrow wire between them--like a tropical version of a red carpet rope--with small pieces of blue survey tape at intervals, to make the wire visible to the birds. Along with the signs pointing out that it's against the law to disturb albatross, this was a hint to stay on the path. The hint was pretty laidback, since farther on they'd gotten as far as pounding the standards but hadn't strung the wire. It's incredibly difficult to disturb an albatross, anyway. They are quite curious in a quiet way and are extremely friendly. If you approach one calmly and pleasantly without exaggerated movements--in other words, like any housebroken guest at a civilized party--it will be happy to let you sit beside it, probably even let you touch its beautiful feathers with your fingertip, and it may even take your finger gently into into its graceful, narrow, serrated beak-- which is a way of discouraging you from becoming too familiar but uses a means that is considered a sign of affection in the albatross world.

Albatross!

This is the Kaena Point lighthouse:

Albatross were named "gooney birds" by 19th century British sailors, because they are not afraid of people. I should be so gooney as to be able to get a bunch of humans to block off the entire end of a gorgeous tropical isle for my exclusive nesting use and to expend considerable efforts making sure I'm not disturbed.

That's the Leeward Coast in those photos. I walked from the other direction, the North Shore side.

Land's end-- the ocean at the tip of Kaena Point.

A nesting albatross 8 feet from the path.

To the right is an adult albatross. To the left are three young adults, who were attempting to perfect the mating dance. Actual mating, nesting, raising the check, being paired happily for life, finding the same tropical island at the same time of year every year to meet up with your life mate, all of those are no-brainers for these birds. What MATTERS is the mating ritual dance. It involves high-pitched whinnying, very rapid beak clicking, and wings being spread open in an elegant, impossible manner. These activities must be engaged in with your partner with the precision timing and execution of Jerry Robbins's choreography.

At this point, a male flew over about 10 feet above my head at about 35mph. They *are* curious. No, he wasn't trying to land-- An albatross landing is unmistakable. Arched back, head intent, wings concave, huge feet splayed out and ready to Hit The Ground. Landing is a very active type of activity for an albatross.

Here are three more young adults, just nattering with each other. They aren't ready for the Ritual Mating Dance this year. The wind was strong enough here that a fourth albatross only needed about 10' of runoff before lift-off. That was nice. Incidentally, albatross (Laysan Albatross-- These are Laysan Albatross) live 40-50 years. (The Great Wandering Albatross of the southern hemisphere, which has the longest wingspan of any bird on the planet, lives 80-100 years.)

And after a 2-mile hike back, here's the gate by my car. Which was untouched.

random bat quotes

2005-12-08T20:05:00.000-10:00

Lately, I've been watching tapes of the 60s Batman TV series.

Some favorite moments:

Egghead: "Get ready for an eggquisite eggsperience. Eggspletives will get you nowhere, my caped crimebuster."

(later)
"I guess I laid an egg."

Catwoman: "Tsk, tsk, and another tsk."

King Tut: "O, horror of horrors! My queen is unfaithful, my handmaiden is a traitor, and everybody's being mean to me!"

Robin: "You're going to feed that alphabet soup to the Batcomputer?!"
Batman: "It's made of noodles-- Easily digestible."

(Ma Parker)
Batman: "Come on, Robin. Let's help a little old lady across the street-- and into the penitentiary!"

The Great Hunt

2005-12-06T09:14:00.000-10:00

Whatever you think about hunting, Nightmare loves it and writes really well about it. I'm a vegetarian who grew up in rural Alaska, where everybody hunts--except those of us who are vegetarians--so naturally I got inspired to write my own Wild Animal Kingdom story about holiday subsistence. Here it is, bound in faux bison leather with a cameo of Teddy Roosevelt on the front cover:

I knew I was taking my chances, but this year for Thanksgiving I set my sights on the world-class Unturkey-- and that prime rack of gluten, soy, and vegetable stuffing. Couldn't get a guide for love or money; none would take the risk when they learned where I was headed. So I let them all out of the car and drove on, through the ponderous night, with my lights off. Gave the finger to 3 Samoans in an SUV who almost hit me. Rattled a machete at a damned pedestrian. Slogged through the Heart of Darkness of the co-op market, cursing God and Joseph Conrad. Avoided a stampeding herd of wild hippies buying acidophilus by diving behind an isolated stand of Annie's Rabbit Pasta. Then, I made my mistake. Followed a trail into the organic produce section and got lost to high hell among the lettuces. The mosquitoes. My God, the mosquitoes. And the mud. My God, the mud. The leeches almost drained me-- I found myself out on the asphalt dripping blood and not a decent bag of sea salt in sight. Felt the sickening sweats of malaria, but it was too late to go back for Chinese herbals-- Through my clouded, feverish eyeballs, I caught the silhouette of the Unturkey baying in the moonlight up on Koolau ridge, like a wet dream to be seized, a Grail to be found, a boss at the end of a level of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones.

Crawled--wearing camouflage--in through the gourmet section of Foodland. Fought an almost overwhelming urge to do a Hemingway Big Two-Hearted River maneuver with a fly pole and snag a fine jar of caviar, one of the last remaining in the country. Almost froze my ass off staking out the frozen food section. It was so quiet you could hear a rutabaga scream. Caliber, you ask? Not a 30.06, a .270, an elephant rifle, or still less a shotgun or a bow or a big phallic bastard of a knife. I BAGGED THAT UNTURKEY WITH MY BARE HANDS.

Holiday Meme

2005-12-02T16:50:00.000-10:00

Courtesy of Pratt.

Year of the first Christmas you can remember- 1966.

An early Christmas memory? A drum and a pomegranate.

Ever in a holiday play? When? I wrote the lower grades (grades 1-3) play when I was 7.

Did you play a role? What was it? The Angel who announced the meaning of the Star to the Three Wise Men. I was quite charming.

Favorite holiday ornament (Past and present)Past: A 60s clear glass ball with frosted white lush snow and a decoration inside that looked like a striped surfboard. Present: My framed picture of Kuan Yin standing in a lotus leaf, hanging beneath a purple-and-white lace/organdy lei.

Decoration you dread seeing every year: One or two of the giant decorations in front of Honolulu Hale. The others are really cute.

Classic Christmas song you never get tired of: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Classic Christmas song you loathe: Do You Hear What I Hear

Modern Christmas song you never get tired of: The Keith Richards cover of "Run, Run Rudolph" by Chuck Berry

Modern Christmas song you loathe: "Jingle Bells Rock"

Naughty or Nice? Naughty.

If you have a Christmas tree, real or artificial? Don't have one. Enjoy the giant community one (a real tree) the City puts up in front of Honolulu Hale every year.

Any holiday traditions unique to your family you'd like to share? I usually like the World Arts Bazaar at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

If you were an elf what would your elf name be? Elvira.

Favorite Christmas Movie: "1941," with John Belushi.

Best Scrooge Ever: Carl Barks's Uncle Scrooge.

Favorite Christmas Special: "Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer" (1964)

Favorite Misfit Toy: Mr. Potato Head.

Have you ever re-gifted? No.

Do you still rush out and shop on the 24th? No.

Can you wrap presents well? Yes, thank you.

What's one thing you know will always be in your Christmas stocking? A subsctiption to "Private Eye" (U.K.).

Spill a holiday secret- Occasionally, I wait to buy presents until they're on sale. :-)

Started on your Christmas Cards yet? Manana, amigo.

Do you bake Christmas cookies? No.

You find yourself under the mistletoe with Pratt. What do you do? Wonder why the hell I'm in greater Philadelphia without a guy on a skateboard in sight.

Do you leave cookies out for Santa? No. For his own sake, he should be on a diet.

Can I refill your egg nog? Sante!

psycho drama

2005-11-29T20:26:00.000-10:00

All Noh plots are transcendental, and many are complicated, but this one is just surreally great:

Saigyo Zakura

"It is spring. A group of people come to enjoy the blossoms of a cherry tree near the priest-poet Saigyo's hermitage. He writes a poem in which he blames the cherry tree for the intrusion. That night, the spirit of the cherry tree appears to Saigyo, denies that it was at fault, and dances in celebration of spring, till the morning sun begins to tint the horizon."

--Noh, by Daiji Maruoka & Tatsuo Yoshikoshi

Now, if only those idiots in the big building next door who set off their car alarms at quaint hours would come over and dance in celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven, the Deaf Musician...

I always knew it

2005-11-14T11:30:00.000-10:00

Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.

20 Questions

2005-11-14T10:51:00.000-10:00

Having been presented with a totally straightforward meme by Pratt, amazingly I'm posting again:

1. What's for breakfast? Grapefruit juice, coffee, and a bean and cheese burrito.

2. Do you read a newspaper daily? No. I glance at several online ones (local and around the world) for items of interest and/or mirth.

3. What do you do when you can't sleep? This never happens to me.

4. Say a word that sums up your mood. Banzai.

5. Do you remember your dreams? Yep.

6. Name something from your dream last night? A gray rabbit in a pink-and-grey Dumbo clown suit with a backpack shaped like an orange Big Mac with razor-sharp teeth for the backpack zipper.

7. Name a food that describes you. Rum torte of many, many layers.

8. Today you are wearing...Black-and-white tie-dyed mesh skirt, black mesh 3/4 sleeve shirt, orange-and-yellow short-sleeved ruffled mesh shirt, black rubber slippers.

9. What's in your pockets? Don't have pockets. I hate pockets.

10.Did you sing in the shower today? What did you sing? I do not sing in the shower.

11.What's the last song you heard? "Time Is Running Out" by Muse.

12.Looking forward to the holidays? Yes.

13. Where do you want to be this instant- Where I am, but with a luxury condo and money to live at leisure with my significant other.

14.What's for lunch? Mineral water and E.E.Cummings.

15. What's something you would like to do soon? Walk home up the Queen Emma overpass in the twilight.

16. Reading anything now? What is it? Love of Izayoi and Seishin by Mokuami.

17.What's for dinner? Soy bacon, organic Big Island eggs, and a coleslaw salad. And Turkish Delight.

18. A Favorite part of the day is...The evening, when it's very humid and dark and tropical.

19.Are you happy? Sure.

20. Will your friends do this meme? I do hope so.

quelle surprise

2005-09-26T16:21:00.000-10:00

I'm a cottontail.

What kind of animal are you?

Thanks, Nitemare! :-)

my world and welcome to it

2005-09-22T08:22:00.000-10:00

What have I been doing lately?

A lot. All my blog update time is spent playing Sims 2 (Nightlife expansion pack). I have over 200 houses, 500 Sims, and more custom objects than FAO Schwartz. My current project is trying to set up Richard X--who is a doll (well, he's a Freshman tattooed punk kid who wears a Viking helmet)--with a decent girlfriend, and so far the fortune teller is a lying, cheating bitch who keeps sending him women he's totally incompatible with, even though I always pay her $5000 because I use the Motherload cheat. I should just create another Sim for Richard, but it's fun to see who the fortune teller thinks he should go out with. Actually, it's getting less amusing. I'm ~so~ much better at playing God than she is that I should just Do It. One cool thing the game engine has done for Richard is get him involved in serious fights with a dorm mate. I didn't realize these things could actually be lethal, but since one of Richard's wants is now "See Mark's ghost," I guess they can be.

I'm also taking a Bar Exam review course and learning Japanese.

Thanks for stopping by! :-)

R.I.P.

2005-09-06T01:54:00.000-10:00

Nitemare started this. Blame him.

FRANKYSBRIDE.
1964-2005.

Frankysbride's body was found floating early this morning in a sea of Japanese textbooks, cause of death apparent drowning by oversaturation in kanji dictionaries, Tokyo guidebooks, and a fatal tsunami of manga filled with saucer-eyed girls and boys with funny names.

She leaves behind one much-beloved significant other, a nice car, and a totally killer collection of Hara Tetsuo's work in Raijin Comics.

"We've seen this before," Detective C. Chan of the Honolulu Police Department stated. "People start out buying a week tour of Japan, and they say, 'Oh, I just want to learn a few phrases to get around with,' but before you know it they're hooked and then it's just too late. They've got Ghost in the Shell 2 playing 24 hours a day while listening to Shonen Knife and surfing the Harajuku website, and it keeps growing and growing until they're playing computer shogi and have hiragana workbooks stashed under the bed. Ice is nothing compared to this problem."

Frankysbride was an affectionate if dreamy, perhaps somewhat aloof, person, whose favorite phrase was What The Fuck.

The ashes will be scattered at 2:00 p.m. at an inaccessible mountain location with invocations by a Shinto priest, to be followed immediately by the wake, which will take place at someplace really expensive like Chef Mavro's and will continue until the deceased's line of credit runs out. Music provided by former co-worker Kevin Chang.

Why Not A Magazine?

2005-08-25T12:06:00.000-10:00

Pratt shared this utility from Flickr.

My contribution to publishing: