April 11th, 2010
I’ve been in Japan for the past week and change now, and I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to post. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I hope to come back in the future.
A detective stopped me in the Akihabara police station and asked to see my identification, but he seemed to lose interest almost immediately once I took it out, and he only gave it a cursory glance-over. I couldn’t understand why he did that, until later when I was fishing around for my rail pass. If I have a particularly large load in my upper left pockets, I realized, my jacket makes it look a little like I’m wearing a shoulder holster. Handguns are highly illegal in Japan, so naturally I think he felt compelled to investigate. Really that was a very clever trick – he stood off to the side slightly while I did this, enough to get a look into my jacket and see that the bulge was just a pocket full of wallet, papers, and other random bits that tourists pick up. It stayed low-key, he was in full control the whole time, and I didn’t even realize he thought something was wrong until much afterwards.
A few days later, on a much lighter note, I visited an onsen bath, about an hour south of Tokyo proper. The hostess mistook me for a girl at first and nearly handed me a key to the women’s locker room. She caught herself in time. It’s not the first time that’s happened to me, and I’m used to laughing it off (really I think it’s a nice sort of compliment).
It’s been a little bit of a whirlwind overview tour, and I’m still a bit shocked that it’s coming to an end. Right now it’s some ungodly-o-clock and I’ve been traveling all day, so I’ll post more pictures when I get a chance.
March 19th, 2010
Life is still weird. It actually got weirder since the last time I posted. I’m getting used to it, though.
I haven’t done much writing in the past couple weeks, but I think I’m ready to start up again. One of the handwritten First and Last and Always pages got wet somehow, and I have to rewrite it. That should be a good place to start; it’ll be nice to build up some momentum. Some free time is coming up on my horizon, so here’s hoping everything will fall into place.
In the news: Last week, a high school in Mississippi decided to cancel their prom rather than allow a lesbian couple to attend. It plays straight into stereotype, unfair as it may be; another high school there held out until 2008 to hold its first racially-integrated prom. People can be stubborn like that, I guess.
Stepping up to the plate, supporters of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (a queer-youth advocacy group) have pledged enough money to hold a “second-chance” prom that would welcome all students, regardless of orientation. I hope it succeeds.
February 27th, 2010
I’m still around, if anyone’s wondering. Last week’s delay wasn’t my situation, per se. A friend of mine has been floating around in a bad roomie situation lately, so I made a one-night reservation at a hotel nearby and went up to visit. It got her out of the house for one night to destress and get her head on straight.
That was the idea, at least. In the grand scheme of things, I know, one night isn’t much.
When I got back, I cancelled my preorders for Assassin’s Creed II and Settlers VII. In case you haven’t heard the news, Ubisoft has developed a copy-protection system that requires a continuous connection to their servers. As interesting as the games are, that kind of disconnection yoyo is more trouble than it’s worth, and I don’t trust Ubisoft to keep their servers online once the game stops selling. There are plenty of other games to keep me occupied, and even when there aren’t, I should spend more time writing. Even with the weekend out, I shouldn’t be this far behind.
After I make myself some lunch, I’ll go work on First and Last and Always again. We’ll see. Given the complications that keep coming up, I’m going to stop announcing specific posting days. Right now, all I’ll say is “soon”. Poke me and see what I’m up to; I’ve pretty much been asking for it.
February 20th, 2010
I’ve finished First and Last and Always, but an unfortunate situation has come up and I haven’t transferred all of my handwritten bits to the computer yet. After that I have to code it up for the web, which will take a little bit longer.
Expect it Monday or Tuesday.
Sorry for the lateness.
February 12th, 2010
This post seems to have turned up a small technical glitch in the website. I’ve fixed it now, but it may have shown up twice somehow.
Usually I prefer to let people explore the Brain Food links unguided and draw their own conclusions, but I think Don Peck’s How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America over at The Atlantic is worth a particular mention. One in eight Californians is presently unemployed, nearly one in ten Americans, and things don’t seem to be in much rush to get better. I’m not sure if the long-term effects will be as bad as Peck projects, but the possibilities are definitely sobering.
It makes me a little bit grateful to say that I have a job to complain about. I have a few responsibilities there that will no doubt distract me over this long weekend, but I’ve finished dinner now and a few other chores, so I’m going to settle in for a weekend of writing now. The alarm clock is set for 7:30 AM tomorrow morning. At some point I will have to leave the apartment to do laundry and get some sunshine, but aside from that, after I finish this post I plan to reboot my laptop, open up First and Last and Always, and start writing.
Before I go, I found for you an upload of P!nk’s very awesome Grammy performance, and you can click through to a preview of my upcoming story.
