Monday, February 25, 2008

mcdonalds conversations

Sitting at McDonalds waiting to meet someone. On my left and right two young professionals are talking on their cell phones.

The man on the left, jeans and a stylish jacket.
"Dadadadon dada"
pause
"No at the end put another da."
pause
"Left right left right, like rhythm"
pause
"Yeah, next dandandan. No like the last one. Yeah."

I guess he was dictating music over the phone. The man on the right, expensive pin striped gray suit. Briefcase up on the counter where we are all sitting, phone charger plugged into a provided socket, wallet open revealing his company ID which boasts that his company is a "green printer" company.
He makes a lot of quick calls, in bursts.
First,
"hello? yes, we should check that Club Invaders is available. OK? Right. Have a good one."
Second,
No greeting at all simply "Find out? Ok. I'll check if we can do that."
Third,
Seems to be talking to an answering machine. "This is Omura. I know I've called a lot this month." His confidence seems to waiver, he takes a breath. "I was just wondering if you could call me back? Thanks, have a good night."
He fades in to silence for about 20 minutes fiddeling with a few forms on the counter. And then begins his fourth phone call,
"Sorry. Hello, sorry about calling this late at night. Sorry. Yeah. It's about this witness testimony...Yeah, I don't understand what I put on page 2, line 3, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand, yeah, yeah. I understand. That's ok right? Not in such a hurry. A fax would be OK? Well, for now I'll just write it. OK, if I dont understand again I'll call back. Right. Thanks. Goodnight."

Fifth,
"Hello,"
he laughs,
"Basterd. So what should we do? OK. Next time. See ya."
What was that second guy's conversations all about? A drop in the ocean of daily external noise. Take a moment to listen as it fades past.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

anti-anime & time travel

I have recently noticed that I am quite "anti-anime" in my thinking. I intentionally avoid watching Japanese cartoons, and when someone I really respect talked about watching some I started to think about why. I remembered my scary room mates in college that would non-stop watch anime all day, every day. When they went to class they would leave the TV on playing anime and if I changed channels or anything they would get mad, because they wanted to hear and see it the minute they walked in the door. I kid you not. But added to that, when ever my Japanese friends came over they would ignore them. You would think you would want to talk to people who come from the land that produced your desires, but I guess they were too busy watching anime. Too busy infact to even clean their dishes. Now I'm a dirty person, but when you share a kitchen with people I expect a little bit of cleanliness. No luck there. They would leave ALL their dishes in the sink, every last one. At first I would wash their dishes for them, but I finally had enough and said (while they were watching anime) "I'm not going to wash anymore of your dishes!" and one of the two really responded, verbatim, "It's OK, we'll just buy new plates next time we go shopping." Gong! What the heck. A final oddness was they would often watch really creepy almost porn-ish anime. And I'm liberally minded. But public cartoon porn is just weird. So basically these guys gave me psychological damage apparently, because I have always kind of avoided Japanese cartoons after that. Well, after being inspired by the blog post previously mentioned, I decided to check out something. A few days ago I had stumbled (literally) across a review of a Japanese anime movie titled (in English) "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and so I gave it a try. My first non-forced not super mainstream Japanese cartoon (i.e. not Akira, Princess Mononoke, etc) It was cool! It was childish (no more than an american G rating I'm sure) I guess, and few plot holes bugged me. But I saw an old school Indian Jones movie after that, and even that had some big plot holes, so I started thinking that movies can be kind of like watching a dream, they don't always make total sense when you scrutinize them, but we can have a lot of fun if we just let go and just enjoy it. The movie itself is based on a time travel story (no surprise, read the title!) but it is more than that, it explores relationships and life, like most good Japanese movies.
And continuing on that time-travel theme (must admit I have an interest in those kind of movies I guess) I saw an awesome independent film. If you like to think when you watch movies, please watch "Primer" And this film gives such inspiration to independent film makers everywhere, it was made for about US$7000 and its awesome. Makes you think, it looks cool, a bit of a geeky flavor, and had a nice complex but satisfying plot. Coolness. Big thumbs up on this one, if you can find it.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

sleepy eyes

Here I am thinking about silly things again. I really want to get back into making things, kind of like being the student, not the teacher, I guess. I want to create, to make, to experiment again. Creation is one of those things that some people desire and some people could care less about. I'm one of those "gotta make stuff!!" kind of people. So because of that, I'm thinking about buying a camera that is the new high quality ones, its cheap, its small, and maybe I can make some stuff with it. A movie? Who knows. This is like a rant, but with no energy, and directed to myself. Anyone else have that "must create" fire inside?

Speaking of which, I just realized I didn't blog about my digital camera passing away. And although I have some more archived and not uploaded yet, until I get a new camera there wont be too many more photos to share. Although there are quite a few up that I havent publicly mentioned before, and since I always seem to blabber on about new pictures... check out some new ones, if you haven't already.

Just click on the thumbnail above to jump on over and take a look.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

turn the page

Lets try to recapture the whispy fog that was my experience of last night...

I boil water. Pour some into a small cup of instant curry udon noodles. I pour the rest into my yutanpo (plastic hot water bottle to warm up my bed) I convince my self to cut short my Wikipedia editing spree. I gulp down the hot noodles, puffs of my breath visible in the cold room. Turn out the lights and curl my knees against the yutanpo. It feels like I'm in a bathtub. The heat is soothing, I'm alive. But I can't sleep. Its 3, but I cant sleep. I got work tomorrow. I want to sleep. Eventually sleep pulls me down to a room with crickets and celery...

The picture is the view out of the window at work today. Nice blue sky.

Friday, February 15, 2008

odd english

I have been really busy doing nothing, and I almost never update this blog. So this is an update from my cellphone in an attempt to start updating more often.
Since I am at work (having lunch) I'm thinking about the English language. It's such a strange language. "Take off" means to remove something like clothes but "take on" means to challenge something, NOT put some clothes on like you'd logically think. "Put on" is the choice of words used for wearing clothes, but oddly "put off" means to do something later, and so we have to use "take off" as that asymetrical pair in this case. And continuing along this chain of reasoning, shouldn't "stressed out" mean a reduction in stress... I mean, the stress is going out right? Why does it mean an increase in stress? Shouldn't that be "stressed in" or something? And don't even get me started on "catch up" to some one. How am I supposed to logically deduce that means to match speeds with you? Or on the other end of the spectrum, how about created words that are too simple? "Fireplace" used to annoy me that way, the place where you have fire. Genius, pure genius. Or how about the area in Canada n
amed "Newfoundland" ...oh! Don't tell me, was that land that was recently discovered? You don't say! Language is one of those things that if you start thinking about it long enough, nothing make sense and it all seems quite odd.

And in an unrelate random final note... did you know elephants have a 22 month pregnancy period and that the typical birth can last about 11 hours! Freaky cool.

 
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