2 beefs. or something fucking sucks in denmark.

"Babel" is not good. I think I can see why some people think it is, but it's not deep or profound, or any of that. It's just a 2 hour slog through people on the brink. My thought is that if you're going to go that route, you're gonna have to make us care about the movie or the characters before you start having them swept up in circumstances.
It felt like I was expected to enjoy the movie for changing the backdrop of a melodramtic soap opera. The Japan vignette wasn't bad tho.

anyway, beef number two is [redacted]

beef 2 is personal demons I have to slay one way or another.

all this time and all this money...

and no time and money to spend it!

Last week I made that list of things that I no longer really give a shit about. But now I got more shit to give than ever before! and I just don't know what to do with myself. So, in hopes of inspiring myself, here are a couple of things that I do care about (order intentionally incorrect).

my skin
my style
money
my health
learning to do things I can't now
fitness
my job
winning
my apartment
running
tidiness
sex
tea
food


italics indicate things I didnt care about two years ago.

a formerly important idea.

I'm stuck at home with the revenge of my last cold. It infiltrated my lungs, and is still romping around in whatever part of me it is that makes my legs, lower back and shoulders sore. I have just about enough energy to start cleaning something up, and get tired and frustrated at the size of the project before getting back into bed.

so of course I have the energy to be reflective at my blog!

I started this blog well over two years ago, and since then, lots and lots has changed. Here are some things that used to mean a lot to me that don't anymore:

the market theory of labor
video games
gadgets
vegetarianism
the categorical imperative
500yen
covering my hairy legs
being able to style my hair in under 2 minutes
liking music that other people don't
speaking better Japanese than other foreigners
one piece
witty t-shirts
german
being 100% honest all the time

sell out young, enjoy the rest of your life.

Today I had a really good day, and for the most mundane and vaguely pathetic reason. I was finally allowed to work. For the first time since school, I had a chance to feel like I was doing something that needed doing, and that I was uniquely qualified to do.

And I got a free sandwich for it!

The thing is, I started my new job on Monday, and a series of factors have made the first few days of my new job something of a drag. I hear that everyone goes through this stuff, but it's kind of humiliating being watched by a room full of people all day long while I try to look busy... despite being intentionally kept far away from work.

But tomorrow's supposed to be the last day of that stuff. Then I can get training from people who know what my job is.

Incidentally, I think they are sort of disappointed in my spoken Japanese. Hell, I would be. I've never been able to speak more than a few words before being interrupted. But on the bright side, I've seen papers, and heard conversations floating around that they are potentially contracting a teacher to get me some instruction in Japanese business language and etiquette. Maybe that can be the payback for the awkward week they've given me.... though payday will be a pretty good payback in itself.

timeslip!

Hey, I started my new job! And it feels like I got the benefit of some strange timeslip!

I've got two paydays this month, one from each job, and because my payday has moved to the other side of my rent's due date, I don't have to pay any bills on the last paycheck! instant savings totals about $2800.

However, it's pretty clear that I'm about to have a hell of a lot less free time. For now, the tradeoff is a no brainer. If I had free time, the best way to use it would be to study Japanese, and now I'm getting paid to do essentially that. And while, I hate to say it, I don't even have the time to waste the extra money I'm earning. I fear I won't always be able to be so positive about it though.

bigliketheskyinmontanaisbig.

There's a lot of work to do... and very little energy with which to do it.

on mixi

je suis ___
ich bin ___
watashi wa ____ desu.
I can only guess at spanish, but:
yo soy____

on mixi now.

idiot's sleep.

snow, river, originally uploaded by notnato.

indecisiveness is killing me.

I've made it to 28, and the worst mistake I've ever made involved a bumped head. Living slow and steady has served me well, but it's high time I got hasty.
I'm gonna win this game. And there aren't going to be any buzzer beaters.

anzen

anzen, originally uploaded by notnato.

ahem. I like this blue.

and that scoundrel with the eyepatch has gotten me thinking about how I spend my days... and nights. What's worse than writing this blog about how I'm writing a blog, and not doing something more fun?

Recently, I've been bouncing the numbers around, and thinking about what's going to change with the new job... except that that's a lie. I've been bouncing the numbers around for months and months, if not years, thinking that some new horizon will be open by this new trickle of cash. I imagine I'm not the only one who does it, but I'm pretty sure it's a symptom of a deeper anxiety about money. I earn plenty now, and I'll be earning more soon. I just need to really convince myself of that.
Until I do convince myself, I've been trying to trick myself into thinking around the money. So I asked myself a question. What if I had all the money I could use? How would I be spending my time?

Honestly, the only thing I could come up with was sex.

I'm not sure if I should be upset about that, and try to expand my horizons post-haste, or if it really is what I want.

If the latter is the case, why am I NOT out there doing something about that?

If the former, how do you even get interested in new things at this age?

the telos of the internet.

ok, I need to warn you. if you don't like having your mind blown, DO NOT CLICK PLAY.

something I was thinking about: I like some crazy things. even when it's not blaring through my tiny headphones, a part of my mind is humming dan deacon. Half of my mind is usually spinning around like a rainbow colored drill bit... so why am I so boring?

a thin sheet of plastic.

Just now, I thought to myself, "I'd like to listen to 'Roscoe' (from Midlake)". Except I was already listening to it.
Much of my life resembles this moment. and then posting it to a blog.

lunch =

4 eggs
3 potatoes (small)
1/2 onion
5 cherry tomatoes
salt
olive oil


(urp)

the balck fly in my chardonnay (whining and bitching presented in white on white)

so, I've got a brand new bag, right? I'm running down a little checklist in my mind, and I can't find a single way in which the new job won't be better than the old one.

but I'm feeling kind of bummered out over some other stuff. Because really, the better the overwhelming majority of my life goes, the more glaring the shortcomings are... and the more my internal excuses are revealed as hollow.
When you drill yourself with questions like "if not now, when?", and you still feebly produce worthless delay tactics, you begin to wonder. Am I even capable of doing what I want to? What on earth is holding me back?

Brother, I don't know. I haven't got a clue.

I'm being brainwashed. 不可抗力

What follows is a shocking expose of the powerful forces at play in the Japanese education system! (In a few half assed sentences)

I've always taken a practical approach to the language, and have stuck with whatever works. That meant half-hearted uni classes at first, then Heisig, then cram books for the JLPT, and now, it's cram books for the kanji kentei. Because of this pragmatic approach, I've always sort of mistrusted those archaic and old fashioned words that pop up on banners and the sides of black vans playing the marshal beats of the 30's and 40's.
Since I've started to cram for level 4 of the kanji kentei though, I've had to stand toe to toe with those 4 character beasts that agrammatically express some piece of traditional wisdom. And it feels like they're winning. They're cheesy. They're trite. and I have come to respect them.
Like a really clever bit of marketing from the "old values" PAC, they have found a peripheral, but important niche in the kanji education system. So I have to memorize them, and their definitions (which are standardized across dictionaries!). I have to read these things to myself over and over, inexorably absorbing a 300(0) year old system of justice and value. I can't help it. I'm entranced by phrases like 不言実行, 一意専心, and 油断大敵. (Just like I probably was by the spectre over europe, or the labor theory of value a decade or so ago.)

and I'm a damned fool if I think it's gonna get me a sniff of anything I really want.

case closed. good work detectives.

Have you heard? I got me a brand new job!


In a couple weeks I'll be starting my new job as a translator. And with that the cat is out of the bag.

the world before 6-7-07/ the world after 6-7-07

Hi!

Tomorrow is the "big day" for the mystery. I think I'll be able to spill the beans tomorrow evening, and we will enter the post 6-7 era, where everything changes. I say that as a joke, but in every joke there is some truth... (banana who?)

I'm a dude in his late 20's who is frustrated with the his life so far. Of course I mean to change. Those little goals*, moving to tokyo, the mystery, they're all parts of a whole. "The mysterious thing" just happens to be the 500lb gorilla riding the elephant in the room... a linchpin shaped gorilla.


*BTW, I managed another goal. 10k in 44:45 on a real, outdoor track.
remaining goals: back flip, body weight benchpress, save a certain amount of money, pass KanKen lvl 3.

self-indulgent crap.

caveat = I know the irony of tossing an epithet like "self-indulgent" around in a place like this.


the omnivore's dilemma started off pretty good. There was something to learn in the first however many chapters of it. About corn, and fast food, about the impact of some of our dietary choices, about "organic" food, about the polyface farm, and some of the possibilities for sustainable agriculture. Imagine my surprise when, immediately after leaving the farm, Pollan turns the whole thing into a stream of conscious blab fest. Any attempt at informing or even gratifying the reader is cast aside while he coughs out his hunting stories in some righteously smelly prose. He puts himself in the center of a world of people much more interesting than him, and unsurprisingly, insists on casting himself as the star. We're left with the wonderful conclusion that he had fun making this book. F you mister pollan.

an even steamier pile of self-indulgence is "fear and trembling", a film product of (quelle suprise) canal plus. If you think you'd enjoy watching an effectively racist portrayal of life inside a japanese company by a lady with a grudge, this movie will help you rethink that. The lady is a self-obsessed fudge-up. At the beginning of the film, she does something super, and gets in trouble, and she spends the rest of the film failing and failing and failing, and blaming it on her environment. She's so worthless by the end of the film that I feel like the good deed at the beginning was a out-of-charactrer flourish to convince us that she is lovable in some way. The author tries and tries to use this editorial authority to make her case, but the ridiculous japanese caricatures that she puts to celluloid are such 2-dimensional stereotypes that it reflects much worse on her. Also she's belgian.

why I haven't been blogging;

I wish I could tell you I have been falling in love, or involved in something spicy. I wish I could even tell you I had been studying. But as a blogger, I'm sworn to the truth!

My computer broke, and Apple repaired it promptly... just not promptly enough to keep me from busying up my life with other things. So I've been poking around doing those other things, and not blogging them, because they aren't actually interesting.
The only real points of interest in my life these days are the "mystery" (as always, soon to be resolved), and the kanji kentei coming up next weekend. I meant to be ready for level three, but now I'll be rushing to even make level four a safe bet. Both of these points require a bit of nose-to-the-grindstoning that I'm not doing like I should.

Although I haven't been able to make myself feel excited, or even a little interested, next week really is the final showdown for both. more news about it when I feel like sharing.

stakes is medium.

Still in limbo on "the mysterious mystery of the undivulgeable thing". As this goes on, I'm getting a little moody. Despite the fact that today was a day without a minute's struggle or hassle, I convinced myself that I was indeed being shat upon left and right.
It's amazing how slow people walk up/down the stairs in front of you, how often people congregate in bottlenecks, and how often people make mistakes at the ticket gates on days like this.

Actually, to say it was without struggle is an outright lie. I had a couple of unpleasant things to do at work today, and more overtime than I really wanted, but everything went so smoothly that I feel like an oaf for being so grumpy straight through.

I realize these days why I never tried to do anything big and worth doing in the past.

a long while.

I'm sorry ya'll. It's been a long long time since I wrote anything worth reading. I've just posted a couple things here and there, always either cryptic or lazy.

It's a bummer to admit, but I think I'm a pretty boring person lately. Work, work, work, and I've lost sight of any "big goals". The small goals, are going swimmingly, but I'm not doing anything actually constructive. In fact, I'm so UNconstructive that I don't even have anything worth writing about (save that mysterious thing).
At the same time, I'm like an overheated economy, somehow too energetic to sleep, too busy too cook, and too oriented toward the short short term to think about the future after July. After Friday, perhaps?