First Post from Japan

Sorry for not updating since getting here a couple days ago. I've had sort of limited access. I'm in Tokyo right now, but tomorrow we head to our prefectures. I'll update retroactively, I suppose, when I have a connection in the apartment at Okuizumo-cho. Ok, so that's really all for now.

Pocket

It is with heavy heart that I inform you, readers, of the passing of my beloved hamster, Pocket. Tonight, as I went to feed him, I noticed he appeared to be sleeping, and attempts to wake him were unsuccessful. I can only conclude he went peacefully in his sleep. Lately, a growth, most likely a tumor had appeared on Pocket's underside, so his death was not wholly unexpected.
Pocket was not what one would call a typically "good" pet. From the first time I met him, when he was still being cared for by Laurie, he was an ornery hamster. He never liked being touched, a fact attributed to likely neglect. The only time one could reasonably pet him was when he was too busy eating to bite. At one point, he bit Kevbo's finger, leading Kevbo to claim that the hamster needed to be "dominated." This particular incident ended with a still ornery hamster and a bloody finger.
Early one morning, Pocket's water bottle slipped into his cage, giving him a route to freedom. Unbeknownst to me, he climbed out of his cage, somehow down a bookcase, across my room, under a closed (!) door, and down the hallway. Craftily eluding Biteface until I arrived, he managed to make his way about the entire upstairs of our house, foiled only by the gate that blocks the basement stairs. This adventure is still fresh in my mind.

Pocket was a good hamster. He will be missed.

Blah Blah

I feel like I am in the future using the internets. I was talking on a cell phone, video chatting, and reading a blog simultaneously. If you haven't yet, you should read the sweet blog that is in the links section. It details one girl's travails in the exotic land of Switzerland. She's coming back to the US (#1!!!!) soon though, about the time I am leaving for Japan. Less than a week till departure. Packing done: 0%.

Law & Order

Since I spend so much of my tv watching time watching Law & Order and its various spinoffs on tv, I figured I would update about it. Law & Order: Original Recipe has been on television for about a million years and the cast changes all the time, so one of my favorite things about the show is the chance to compare the various cast members and decide arbitrarily which ones are the best. You can really only compare people who are in the same roles; that is, you can only compare detectives to detectives, DAs to DAs, and Jack McCoy to the Batman or maybe Hugh Hefner. Seriously, how many beautiful women are signing up to play second chair in the New York City District Attorney's office? Comparing the female assistant DAs is therefore the best part of the show, so here's my list. Since I'm too lazy to make sure I haven't left any out, I may have left one out, obviously. Also, I'm not going to steal pictures of each, but I'll link to the IMDB pages and you can compare for yourself.

6. Carey Lowell

Carey Lowell played Jamie Ross. She was ok, I guess. Not exactly an uggo, anyway, but not really my cup of tea. Jamie generally agreed with Jack, but she always got all uppity when she had to go to court for custody of her child. The child custody thing was her character's recurring storyline. It worked alright, and I think it was pretty easy to sympathize with her against her lawyer ex-husband who used the custody battle to annoy her while she was working against him. As I recall, that's why her character left the show, but watching the episodes in syndication means you miss little things like why characters do anything, and character development was never that big a deal to the show, anyway. You can find it on IMDB, but Carey Lowell was also a Bond girl. She was in License to Kill, one of two Timothy Dalton Bond movies, and not the better of the two.

5. Angie Harmon

Angie Harmon played Abbie Carmichael for a while. She was almost surely the ADA that disagreed with Jack the most. She was particularly notable for her distinctive voice and desire to seek the death penalty whenever possible. McCoy isn't usually the most forgiving dude, so you know she has to be pretty hard. In terms of looks, well, she's good enough to do some kind of make-up ads, and I think she's alright. Loses points for that hardline death penalty stance, though.

4. Annie Parisse

Well, she seems like a nice enough girl. Annie Parisse played Alexandra Borgia, who was probably the most agreeable (or submissive) of Jack's partners. She's pretty decent looking to boot. Unfortunately, we only saw her for a little while before she (the character, not the actress) went and got herself kidnapped and murdered in a season finale. Really too bad, that.

3. Elisabeth Röhm

If you're wondering, it's Alt-148 to make an o with an umlaut. Smoking hot Elisabeth played Serena Southerlyn. Serena seemed to get along with Jack pretty well, and she had a nice sense of humor, so it was sad to see her ago. I just watched that episode tonight. Having argued with her one too many times, Arthur Branch fires her. Just one more reason not to vote for Fred Thompson. In a little twist, she asks if it has anything to do with her being a lesbian. At least I never saw that coming, but maybe they mentioned it at some point. Alas.

2. Alana De La Garza

Seriously, do they expect us to believe these women are NOT supermodels? Alana De La Garza plays Connie Rubirosa, the latest of Jack McCoy's second chairs. She's got short hair and weird eyebrows, which always make me think she is some kind of devious assistant district attorney robot. I like robots, though, so that's enough to get her the number two spot.

1. Jill Hennessy

Is she the hottest? No. BUT Claire Kincaid seems like you could actually get her, so that helps put her in the number one spot. I think this is due to the slight romance they were always implying between her and Jack. It's possible there was something more explicit, but, as I've said, I may have missed some episodes. In fact, I have no idea why Claire left the show. Too bad, though. Now she's on that Crossing Jordan show which I won't watch just because she's not Claire Kincaid anymore. :(

This coming season, Arthur Branch is out and Jack McCoy is in line for a promotion, or so I've read. This new guy might be alright, but we'll see. They all pretty much grow on you in time, which I think is a testament to the writing, which avoids focusing on characters, preventing you from getting too annoyed with any one player. Hopefully, if Claire's not dead she'll drop by to see Jack or something. Who knows? I smell massive reunion featuring zombie Alexandra.

Typical Blog Update 2

So, after a brief respite, I bring you the second half of my day. This update is coming via my Mac laptop. It's pretty decent and the Japanese language support was a breeze, so I can't complain about that. I would like to mention, however, that the claims of reliability that Apple makes seem a bit exaggerated. About one week after first getting the laptop, I shut it down one night, and it refused to turn on the next day. I checked the battery and all that nonsense, and there appeared to be no reason for the computer's refusal to work. I ended up having to take the battery out and reset the thing to its factory settings, which is, I think, the second to last recommended thing to do in the manual, short of sending the computer back. It's weird because there's really nothing I could have done to it at that point to make it stop working, it just up and quit. Weird. But it's all fine now.

So, anyway, when I get done eating lunch, which is generally a sandwich and maybe some fruit or something, I get to the hardcore television watching. There are a couple episodes of Law & Order on TNT in the afternoons, and I watch those unless I've seen those particular episodes recently enough that I remember all the details. I'm a big fan of Law & Order, especially original recipe as I call it, and I'll probably write an update all about it sometime. An alternative to Law & Order is whatever Spike TV is showing, which is generally Star Trek. They show DS9 at some point during the day, but I don't know when so I don't really watch it ever. Also, it is kind of like a big soap opera but with phasers and Cardassians, so it can be a little to whiny and not golden-agey enough in its science fiction aspects. In the afternoon, however, they generally show Voyager, which is an ok show. It's basically a knock off TNG with different aliens and a cast that is inferior in every way, but there are some decent plots. Actually, I take that back. The Doctor is an improvement over Crusher in that he has more personality than a cement block, which is weird since he is a hologram. Also, the two are about as attractive, which isn't saying much for Crusher. I'm sure I've lost everyone who reads this but possibly my dad at this point.

I like to watch Jeopardy. It is pretty much the only gameshow I can stand because it at least has informative or entertaining questions/answers. Everything else is guessing prices or filling in the blanks and just makes me want to shoot the contestants and hosts in the face.

After a while it is time for dinner, and then the schedule is varied. Lately, I've had to work a spotlight for a play here, but that's over now so I'll have to come up with something else to do. I also waste time playing keyboard or concertina sometimes throughout the day, and doing a little reading. Last night I just finished Tolkien's The Children of Hurin (there should be an aigu over the u, but I don't know how to make that), or Narn I Chin Hurin as he says in nerdish. It tells the tale of the children of Hurin and Morwen, unsurprisingly. It is set in the elder days or some such nonsense, which basically just means that the villain is Morgoth (Melkor) and not Sauron, and the map is different. Almost the whole story is about Turin, son of Hurin, wandering around from place to place and suffering tragedies all over, killing his friends accidentally, and changing his name. Oh, and he marries his sister, who jumps off a cliff. Then he stabs himself and his mom appears out of nowhere and dies. So, I just saved you a few hundred pages of Tolkien-style mythology-sounding blathering. It's actually pretty decent, just a little depressing, for obvious reasons.

I've also been trying to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, available free online at threekingdoms.com. I don't know why this isn't letting me choose a link option right now. I think blogger just doesn't like Macs. Anyway, if you haven't heard of it, Romance is an old Chinese novel-kind of thing. It is set at the fall of the Han dynasty and has a cast of presumably thousands. Many people just show up or are named for no apparent reason, and most people appear for only a couple seconds before getting beheaded. Seriously, there is so much beheading in this story it is incredible. Kind of interesting, but you will need a little Chinese history (provided on the site) to get some of it. It is also about 1500 pages long, spread out over 120 chapters, so it's a bit of a time commitment. Well, that's all for now.

Treasure Hunting Ship

As promised, here's an update detailing (sort of) the construction of a "Treasure Hunting Ship" from a cereal box. The box specifically calls it a "Treasure Hunting Ship," not a "Pirate Ship," even though it is pretty obvious that the bird on the box is a pirate. Or else he just has peculiar fashion sense. I think the naming is due to the cereal being named "Fruity Treasures." The front of the box features an unnamed Parrot in traditional pirate garb digging the cereal out of a treasure chest enthusiastically using what must be a comically small shovel. The cereal itself is a meijer Fruity Pebbles knock-off and pretty good, but only if you like that kind of thing. Some people don't like how the pieces of cereal get completely soggy in milk, forming some kind of vaguely fruity mush. I dig it, though. With a shovel.



On the back of the box, there are the pieces of the ship to be cut out. This is the worst step by far, and hurt my fingers. The cardboard used for cereal boxes seems to be at just the right thickness to be impossible to cut but still deform instead of folding properly. The design isn't helped by the fact that one of the pieces is on the side of the box, which is glued to the back of the box in such a way that it will never come apart cleanly, leaving me missing some of the tabs on the main piece of the ship. Also featured on the back is the same picture of the parrot, just flipped over and shrunk down. The parrot is also present in the crow's nest of the ship.

I've never really understood the point of generic cereal mascots. It's almost as if the store brands are required by some archaic law to put mascots on all their sugary cereals. They don't bother giving the mascots names or backstories or even proper drawings, so why bother with them at all? It's not as if kids would go to the store and decide to pick up bran flakes instead of Sugar Bombs if there wasn't some kind of bear on a unicycle or shark in sunglasses on the box.



Cutting out the pieces takes a while, and by the time I got through with that, I could see that this was going to be a bigger hassle than I had originally thought. The box clearly states that there are three pieces to cut out, but there are four, so that should have been a sign that this cereal box giveaway was not going to be all that well thought out. Once the pieces are cut out, they just need to be folded along dotted lines and then taped to make them stay together. The problems with this are numerous. First, the cardboard refuses to fold properly, as previously mentioned, but enough force will mash it into a sufficiently close approximation of the right shape. Second, one of the dotted lines is curved. How is this supposed to work? Again, mashing it worked in a fashion I was pleased with. The third problem is that one of the pieces is simply the wrong size. This was easily fixed by cutting off a useless part of it. Finally taping was a bit of hassle because I don't have tiny, tiny fingers, but I suppose this was designed for kids. Whatevs.

Anyway, it worked out alright. So, I give you the finished product:

Not exactly seaworthy, what with not even having a bottom, but worth the time when you are as busy as I am.

Typical Blog Update

In the interest of not letting my craptacular blog lie fallow, so to speak, here's an update about what I do every day.

I generally get up between 9 and 10 in the morning. Sometimes I eat sugary cereal for breakfast, but we are out of generic fruity pebbles now, so that will probably stop. I noticed tonight, though, that the box has a cut out pirate ship to construct on the back. It might be worth my time, so we'll see. The reason for the pirate ship is that the cereal is somehow pirate themed. If I decide to make this ship, there will be a whole update about it.

I generally turn on the tv after getting up to see what show SciFi is running a mini marathon of that day. Sometimes they show boring programs that I don't recognize, but there's always the chance it will be the classic Twilight Zone. Having seen all those, though, I keep hoping for some Dr. Who, which I've sort of recently come to enjoy. Mostly I like the strangeness of it all, especially the Daleks screaming, "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" Occasionally G4 or somebody else will show old Star Trek or Star Trek:TNG in the morning, and that's usually good, too. I especially like the terrible episodes of TOS where they go to a planet inhabited solely by gangsters or nazis or anything else that is poorly thought out.

There's always the chance I'll walk the dog in the morning, but generally it is too hot for that, and he mostly sleeps in the morning if you let him. If nothing's on the tv of interest, I usually read things on the internet. Every day, Something Awful has a new update, so I read that and whatever features are new. It's not exactly for interweb n00bs, so all three of my readers probably wouldn't enjoy it. Fark and Digg are both good time wasters. The threads are hilarious if you are into watching idiots flame each other. Fark tends to update a little slower, but most of the "stories" that make the front page of Digg are about Linux, Ubuntu, Mozilla, Apple, and internet president-to-be Ron Paul. Also not for the faint of heart.

Well, that gets you to about lunch and this update is getting sort of long, so we'll just leave it at that for now.

Politics

This is my contribution to the world of political blogs, which I stole from Fark.com
Shout out to my dawg Alex in all his indescribable horror.

The End?

Well, that's pretty much it for the imaginary trip to Japan. I'm out of pictures right now and can't think of much else to take pictures of in that vein. Also, it seems to have come to a happy ending, so the next post will probably be completely unrelated.

Imaginary Trip Part 5

Then it is time for relaxing.

Imaginary Trip Part 4

Now it is the beginning of a wonderful story. Intercultural communication.

Imaginary Trip Part 3

The trains can seem a little small...



...and crowded.

Imaginary Trip Part 2

But station workers are happy to help.

Imaginary Trip 1

The Tokyo train map looks intimidating at first, but it isn't bad at all to use.

Trip to Japan

Since I initially started this blog to detail my impending trip to Japan, and since I have nothing better to do than post pictures from my parents' digital camera, AND since nobody will read this regardless of what I post, I'm going to start posting pictures of an imaginary trip to Japan.

Hidoi

Since nobody reads this blog, I might as well make it incredibly lame. So here are some pictures of my pets, Biteface the dog and Pocket the hamster.

No Japanese Title Today

Nothing much happened today.