At the end of the movie Sam's like yeah I'm home

We went to the apartment of some fellow geeks today to watch that most marathonish of movie marathons: Lord of the Rings Extended Edition, all three movies, one after another, with the briefest of breaks for changing disks and/or visiting the toilet.

You'd think we'd get bored, but we didn't. Watching them consecutively genuinely added something to the viewing experience, and if you have a chair you could bear sitting in for nigh on 12 hours, I'd thoroughly recommend it. (We sat on the floor, which was something of a problem.)

And if you can manage, leave out the guy who likes to maintain a running commentary bereft of all wit and imagination.

You know of whom I speak.

When Aragorn kicks someone's ass, he cries, "Yeah, kick his ass!" When Pippin does something idiotic (like knocking the corpse/bucket/chain down the pit in Balin's Tomb) he pipes up, "You idiot!" Immediately after that, at about the same time as Gandalf suggests that Pippin jump in the pit himself, he brings it to your attention that "Gandalf's like, why don't you jump in the pit!" When Denethor is being crazy and getting knocked out by Gandalf, he calls out (rather ironically), "Shut up!" And when Frodo is staring at the ring, and deciding to turn his back on the quest (a rather important moment, by the way) he makes sure that everyone realizes that "Frodo's like, maybe I'll keep the ring!"

You know, that guy. Let's be clear: I'm a lifetime member of the peanut gallery, but it is a position that requires some skill. Please, just don't invite that guy.

And be wary of ending up with people less obsessed with Middle Earth than you are. In particular, fake geeks. You know, they've watched some anime, maybe read Dragonlance, but thought LOTR was too boring to read. It's no fun facing questions like, "Hey, did they take this scene from Record of Lodoss War?" and being forced to bite your stupid nonconfrontational Canadian tongue. Or, you might complain about the various ways in which the movies diverge from the books, and be met with blank looks. Trust me, you don't want to be stuck in a geek-out session with someone who's never heard of Glorfindel, or responds to the appearance of the Mouth of Sauron with "He's icky, they should send out a diplomat."

About that whole flood thing

Apparently when this story came out it made the front page of Yahoo news.

Don't really have a point here, just thought I'd mention it.

I have also measured out my life with coffee spoons

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure we've only bought toilet paper 3 times here in Japan. Somehow that helps put everything in perspective.

As was heralded by a certain disreputable fellow in our Shoutbox, I was having a kind of reference letter thingy, due in part to my ongoing efforts to gain admission to graduate school next year. I'm interested in a few PhD programs in the USA (mostly because I'd really like a chance to live under Dubya's rule), most of which have deadlines around about, well, now. This recently led to some tense moments involving reference letters, but it seems All Good at the moment.

Work for the year has ended, and we spent our first day off doing not much in particular, apart from purchasing a discounted copy of 塊魂, which is one of the funnest games ever, but a little hard to describe.

On a current events note, the website for Médecins Sans Frontières is currently down, as is the one for Red Cross/Red Crescent, which I hope is a good sign.

On a lighter note, here's a borrowed internet distraction.

1. On your current playlist, hit shuffle and pick the first fifteen songs on the list (no matter how cheesy or embarrassing).
2. Write down one line of the song. Try to avoid putting the song title in the line.
3. Have your friends comment and see if they know the songs. (NO CHEATING! Please, don't google 'em.. 'cos it's just no fun that way. Also no more than 5 guesses per post.)
4. When someone guesses correctly, strike out the line and list the correct name of the song next to it.
5. If it's an instrumental, try to help with a good description, or skip it.

1. hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names: Peter Gabriel, Games without Frontiers
2. they send you down to war
3. there's nothing left but sorrow and a sense of overtime
4. diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt
5. and your mind is moving low
6. people writing songs that voices never share: S&G, Sounds of Silence
7. fish are jumping and the cotton is fine
8. let the anaesthetic cover it all
9. this terrible silence stops me
10. you cannot petition the lord with prayer
11. the trench is dug within our hearts: U2, Sunday Bloody Sunday
12. I want to fly waiting for sunrise
13. to hurt they try and try: Police, Don't Stand So Close To Me
14. it's cute small fits right in my pocket
15. dad they’re going to take me to task: Elvis Costello, Shipbuilding

None of these songs are particularly obscure, and I think the lines are relatively recognizable. So, Bonus Question: once you know the song, can you guess whether myself or Kate put it on the computer?

The snowman has forks for arms

Happy Chrishannukwaanzolstiday Season!



I must finally admit that I was missing something: turkey. This year we managed to have turkey dinner twice in a row (how authentic!), once at the Maple Leaf, which provided a pretty good just-like-back-home experience, and once at O'Carolan's, which provided a pretty good eating-Christmas-turkey-at-an-Irish-pub-run-by-Frenchmen experience--but who cares given that the fools made it an all you can eat buffet.

Let this much be known: A Canadian who's gone without turkey dinner for a year and is let loose at an all you can eat turkey dinner buffet is a terrifying thing. Arise, diners of Canuckistan! Fork shall be shaken, bone shall be splintered, a gorged night, a stuffed night, ere the belch rises!

It's that time of the year...

A series of really tacky christmas decorations seen around Tokyo. LEFT: Not even a real tree, this Christmas Cone (TM) sticks out like a sore thumb, especially given that it changes totally un-treelike colours like pink and red. RIGHT: This Santa is creepy. Enough said. BELOW: These are...?

International news is local

1. North Korea

One of the Japanese staff at my workplace asked me if I'd ever heard of Kim Jong-il, and I responded with the best Japanese facsimile I could manage of, "Yeah, do you think I'm an idiot or something?" I was met by consternation: North Korea was such a tiny country, so why should anyone hailing from halfway around the world care about it?

It was my turn to be confused, though I figured out what was going on in short order.

When North Korea gets into the news over here, it's typically related to the abduction issue. From the point of view of my Japanese staff, North Americans shouldn't be expected to care about this issue, and so they we shouldn't be expected to know much about North Korea. It never occurred to her that the news back home might have covered the issue of North Korea's nuclear capability (HEAD FOR THE HILLS!) in any depth, because in Japan people are not especially fixated on that issue. (Compare Chomsky on Iraq: "The only people afraid of the mushroom cloud are in the United States")

2. The United Nations

To the best of my knowledge no one in this country knows anything about the "oil for food scandal". Not even a little. Maybe some especially worldly Japanese peoeple have heard of someone somewhere caring about something related to the UN and Iraq. I mean, I'd imagine Koizumi has heard the phrase before. But, standing comfortably outside the American media cesspool, it's still a bit surprising to me to see someone online treat this as an important issue.

Suprnova

We'll miss you! :( :( :(

Strange...

There are people banging sticks and wailing outside our apartment. This is the second day in a row...

I want to be free. Let me be free! Also, freedom is important.

Here's a lovely article by Ursula K. Leguin about the predictably terrible things that were done to her work in its translation to the small-and-petty screen. I dig the term "McMagic", which can be used in all corners of geekdom: "McSpace", "McBot", "McVamp", etc.

And now for a practical application.

We downloaded and watched King Arthur, which was of course a real McSword yawner. Well, OK, we watched the first half. Then I previewed bits of the second half, including the climax; after that, we decided not to finish it.

I detected something in the movie, like they were trying to make the plot turn around a theme of some sort. See if you can pick it out from the following quotes.

"It's the natural state of any man to want to live free."

"And if in Your wisdom, You should determine that sacrifice must be my life for theirs; so that they can once again taste the freedom that is so long been denied to them, I will gladly make that covenant."

"No, I choose life! And freedom! For myself and the men!"

"Well now that we're free men, I'm gonna drink 'till I can't piss straight."

"Knights! The gift of freedom is yours by right. But the home we seek resides not in some distant land, it's in us, and in our actions on this day! If this be our destiny, then so be it. But let history remember, that as free men, we chose to make it so!"

"For two hundred years knights had fought and died for a land not their own, but on that day on Badon Hill all who fought put their lifes in service of a greater cause: freedom."

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect that the script used the words "free" and "freedom" more free-quently than a speech by George W. Bush. The scriptwriter is listed as David Franzoni, whom I picture to be a basically nondescript fellow wielding a great maul with the word "FREEDOM" stamped on the business end, which he uses to bang away at his keyboard when he's writing. IMDB lists his previous credits as Gladiator (2000) and, before that, Amistad (1997). I think that things got a little out of hand in his study in '97, and he ended up with some kind of writing-gimmick addiction.

At the very least, he could have used a thesaurus. What's wrong with "unfettered", for example? "Autonomy"? "Liberate"?

<nerd>Setting that aside, an obsession with freedom seems to me to be a fine feat for characters hailing from the Dark Ages. Franzoni attempted to lend some credibility to the anachronism by making the heretical monk Pelagius a character in the film, and a freedom-loving mentor to Arthur. Not a bad brainstorm: Pelagius hailed from the right part of the world, lived at about the right time, and did indeed say a thing or two about freedom. But anyone who knows that much about him would probably also know that he cared about freedom in the theological sense that (in his opinion) humans could freely will to do good without divine assistance. I rather doubt he had any touchy-feely concerns about the more worldly issue of Roman imperialism, or what happened to one Roman soldier (Arthur)--not to mention the rest of the protagonists, who were (Christ Almighty) a bunch of Godforsaken Pagans.</nerd>

Busy Day

A long roundabout trip today. First, to Shinjuku, to visit our main bank branch. Something which would take a few minutes in Canada is of course going to take a week for them to process here in Japan (gotta love the paperwork here). On the way to the bank we found this cool little alley:





Next, we trekked off to Ginza to visit the insurance company (fire insurance for our apartment) with the non-existent, or rather non-functional office. Before going in, I took these:









Finally, over to the Sofmap and Bic Camera stores for our Christmas pressie to ourselves: 160 Gb external hard drive for all our movie and tv (re: star trek) watching storage needs. Long day. More pics from this trip on deviantart, as usual.

"i-foot" is a stupid name. Try something with "mech" in it.

Oh my God, I damn near hyperventilated when I looked at this page.

IT'S made out of plants!

It has feet!

It's a walking fruit or something!

OK, look, give it some body armour and arm it with some particle-projection cannons and I will die of happiness.

Asakusa in Aut...Winter

Pictures from my shopping expedition. Andrea didn't have her camera so I'm sending her these. Notice the lovely fall leaves and warm atmosphere. About right for a 20 degree day. :) (I actually DID take this today, December 8th...)



The main temple in the complex.



Determined elderly shoppers walking the many alleys in the shopping district.

できた! I'm Finished! :D

3.5 hours, including lunch, two coffee breaks, two train rides and plenty of walking, and I'm finished all shopping to be shipped overseas for xmas. Plenty of thanks go to my friend Andrea, the queen of xmas solutions. I've never finished shopping so quickly for anything, usually takes me a while to find what I want and another few days to think about it. So relieved that I'm done!

SciFiDaily

So cool! There's a link to a video of Shatner singing at a Star Wars Christmas special (The Horror!!!) - and that page has all sorts of other strange/funny videos. Anyways, very funny blog.

In case Al Qaeda runs out of ideas

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned, warning as he left of a possible terror attack on the nation's food supply.

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," Thompson said as he announced his departure. "We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that.

"If I were in al Qaeda, I would totally do that. They should hire me as a consultant or something. Uh, except I'm giving them this advice for free over the internets."

Quote from here. Except for that last bit, I guess I kind of made that up.

Also, Rumsfeld is staying on. Now he can plan for the American troops to be welcomed by cheering crowds as they march through Tehran.