On Repeat - Fever Ray, If I had a heart

Triple Meta Word Score

Bowie as Warhol as Basquiat

Affluenza

affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. (de Graaf [1])

affluenza, n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by the pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. (PBS [1])

Please do it

A new behavior campaign from Tokyo Metro


see the rest HERE

Things I learned about Pirate bay users

This week i was innocently cruising the top 100 downloads of the pirate bay audio book page. This journey offered a very honest and hilarious peek into the mind of the typical pirate bay-er.

#5 - worlds greatest marketer reveals his secrets
#10 - getting things done fast - the audio book
#13 - hypnotherapy - supreme self confidence
#19 - ultimate secrets of total self confidence
#26 - interviews with dating gurus (58 interviews)
#28 - accelerated learning techniques
#31 - self hypnosis - improving memory
#32 - brain sync super pack (meditation, super learning, attract love)
#51 - how to read a person like a book - audio book mp3 format*
#66 - the laws of success in sixteen lessons
#68 - erotic audio stories (over 30 hours)
#80 - 10 stupid things couples do to mess up their relationships
#83 - hypnosis super pack - 1 Gig of hypnotic led sessions
#88 - cocky comedy and other conversation skills
#95 - breakaway - by kelly clarkson

*my personal favorite for all the obvious reasons

Note to self; things to invent vol. 1

a firefox add-on to replace anything kanye west related in my browser with a picture of fresh lasagna, or a sound bite of 2 or more cats instigating a fight, either way.

Mad Dog Palin (state of affairs)

excerpts from "Mad Dog Palin"
-by Matt Taibbi

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

(...) The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters.

So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we're actually going to need in government if we're going to get out of this huge mess we're in.

Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.

The time Yuko read all the Jelly Belly flavors at Yoga Station

McPalin

Ducking out of America to avoid the final rough years of the Bush administration seemed like a good idea, but I'm beginning to feel like a McPalin white house wont just be an extension of the last misguided and senseless 8 years, but the second leg of a new era in neocolonialist American politics.

One Repeat - Passion Pit, Sleepyhead

Zeitgeist: Addendum

so look, HERE (or found below) is a link to a film that everybody (EVERYBODY!!) needs to be watching. i know you wont, because its (spoiler alert) 2 hours, and there is no car chase or sex scene or "shoot em ups". but i feel its my duty, as a responsible, informed person to pass this on to as many people as i can. this film is, in sort, a part 2 to the Zeitgeist film i posted last year, it gets a little fantastic in the middle, but really sets the story straight about the puppets and their masters. please, do yourself, and those around you, a favor and watch this film. there... the only thing i have ever asked of you, how did it go? what do you mean you dont have time? stop being assy, cancel that dumb thing you have planned, you can do it twice next week. after you watch it, tell a few people, it will make you feel better about the devastating state of the union (i promise, its already working for my hysteria)

ザイガイストの日本語字幕 (1),(2),(3) はここです。見てください。

Found Postcards vol. 4

Cologne, Germany, 1939, family of US Consul General practicing for a gas attack from the air

So then I said...

"the guys a sex addict"
"what?"
"he's addicted to sex"
"whats wrong with that?"

Shinjuku afternoon

Weekend Getaway

Yuko's boss went to Kyoto for a weekend getaway they would not allow her to check into the hotel alone because lone women traveling to Kyoto to kill themselves has become popular.

Tourism

Saw a ridiculous poster on boing boing today, went ahead and re-contextualized it, may not even notice. Full size HERE.

Found Postcards vol. 3

If Obama Loses

Racism is the only reason McCain might beat him

"What with the Bush legacy of reckless war and economic mismanagement, 2008 is a year that favors the generic Democratic candidate over the generic Republican one. Yet Barack Obama, with every natural and structural advantage in the presidential race, is running only neck-and-neck against John McCain, a sub-par Republican nominee with a list of liabilities longer than a Joe Biden monologue. Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums, and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, lacks clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the moment, the two of them appear to be tied. What gives?

If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama's missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let's be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn't ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election. That warning is written all over last month's CBS/New York Times poll, which is worth examining in detail if you want a quick grasp of white America's curious sense of racial grievance. In the poll, 26 percent of whites say they have been victims of discrimination. Twenty-seven percent say too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Twenty-four percent say the country isn't ready to elect a black president. Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.

Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn't vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that's what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.

Such prejudice usually comes coded in distortions about Obama and his background. To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an "elitist" who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn't one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We're just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.

Then there's the overt stuff. In May, Pat Buchanan, who writes books about the European-Americans losing control of their country, ranted on MSNBC in defense of white West Virginians voting on the basis of racial solidarity. The No. 1 best-seller in America, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., leeringly notes that Obama's white mother always preferred that her "mate" be "a man of color." John McCain has yet to get around to denouncing this vile book.

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Choosing John McCain, in particular, would herald the construction of a bridge to the 20^th century—and not necessarily the last part of it, either. McCain represents a Cold War style of nationalism that doesn't get the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics, the centrality of soft power in a multipolar world, or the transformative nature of digital technology. This is a matter of attitude as much as age. A lot of 71-year-olds are still learning and evolving. But in 2008, being flummoxed by that newfangled doodad, the personal computer, seems like a deal-breaker. At this hinge moment in human history, McCain's approach to our gravest problems is hawkish denial. I like and respect the man, but the maverick has become an ostrich: He wants to deal with the global energy crisis by drilling and our debt crisis by cutting taxes, and he responds to security challenges from Georgia to Iran with Bush-like belligerence and pique.

You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change. To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn't just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation's historical decline."

-by Jacob Weisberg (via slate.com)

When you are engulfed in flames

"As a child I once found an ant, running a crazy path across my family's basement. I meant to open the door and herd the thing out, but then I got a better idea, and dropped him through the ventilation grate on the back of our TV. What the ant saw then, and what I see now are likely very similar; a chaotic vision of the future. Heavy on marvels, but curiously devoid of charm. No lake, no parkland, no leafy avenues, and it stretches on forever."

- David Sedaris on Tokyo

Page of the Week

UPL8 Tv (mind the spacebar)

Found Postcards vol. 2

Bobby, 64'

Nerd alert

Bought a bag of Calbee brand potato chips today, went to their page, entered the purchase code, and found all kinds of info about my chips, even a profile of the family farm where the potatoes came from!

i want my money back - Summer lottery

my ticket was not one of the 1,112,214 tickets to win.

Found Postcards vol. 1

Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet, William Burroughs at the Democratic convention, Chicago 1968

Waits live

2 hours and 21 minutes of tom waits live in Atlanta. HERE is the entire show, set list, photos, more info.

Tropic of Cancer

A man who belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness.

-Henry Miller

On Repeat - Santogold, Get it up

i want my money back - iPhone "3G"

So finally, after waiting for what seems like multiple lifetimes, the "3G" iPhone arrives, with guns blazing. GPS, white or black, half price, 3 "G's", a touchy screen, third party applications, dangerously shiny, better battery life, and ...oh i don't know, lets say, a...can opener.
But lets take a deeper look here, whats under all that shiny touchiness? It may have 3 "G's", but how about a meat tenderizer? 12 gauge shotgun shell re loader? book binder? thumbtack sharpener? No. No it does not. You can put as many "G's" in a phone as you want, but without a laser pointer and a pasta strainer it means nothing to me, i want my money back.

Pop Quiz

Why did I get kicked out of the public pool today?

A. I was putting on sunscreen.

B. I have my ears pierced.

C. I was wearing sunglasses.

D. All of the above.



answer
ǝʌoqɐ ǝɥʇ ɟo 11ɐ .p

honestly

Movie Time

saw a kind of funny movie this weekend, it was like... seth rogen played this dude who got a high school girl with a funny name pregnant, she wanted an abortion but the baby had fingernails and she worked for E! and they didnt really know each other so they tried to get to know each other by eating lots of orange tic tacs and shrooms while at a cirque de soleil show. they were having money issues with their softcore porn site, so he started running on a track team which didnt really work out except for the sweet headband and the ball shorts. jason bateman and paul rudd were pretty funny as usual, decent music; velvet underground, sonic youth covered the carpenters, old dirty bastard, cat power covers waits, all in all in was nice to see a movie that makes random drunken single accidental teen pregnancy cool again!

Guilty Pleasure of the Week

Annie's dont stop megamix

夕立 (afternoon storm)

Page of the Week

Ara Patersons SITE.

He also has a SHOW UP now.

Christian Jihad

"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives ... It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerrilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.
We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force."

-hunter s. thompson
9/12/01

socks

lots of places in japan are no shoes. restaurants, all homes, most offices. snapped this picture just after yuko hung up our laundry, tells a lot about japan, and im sure some real depth about the inner workings of the two of us, but im not really sure what it is exactly? (hers are coincidentally all checked, and mine stripped)

im back

iv been away for a bit, physically and metaphorically. went to the usa for 10 days. ate lots of mexican, and bagels, cheese, sandwiches, got really sick and spent a few days in bed, went to baker beach, oakland, berkley, sausalito, reno and tahoe. walmart-ed, costco-ed, drove a dump truck, shot guns, garage saled, golfed, drank great beer, swam in 40 degree water, comic booked, lots of photos, lots of catching up. thanks to everybody who made an effort to see me (you know who you are), sorry to everybody i didnt see (its because i hate you), next time, i promise. (more pics HERE)

survival technician

there is no way i was passing up on the irony of this picture!

newsless

if I

just watched demetri martins stand up ish program "if i". it is an incredible autobiographical performance that ran on the BBC in 2004. great insight into his clever comic style. start watching HERE

Cycling

spent spring break this week on my bike. camping. photoing. saw a monkey. got really tired. kind of lost. had an early morning donnie darko riding moment. do enjoy the evidence. (more pics HERE)

beatles

i cant stop looking at the simplicity of this beatles photo. see the full size image HERE

The Long Photo

A series of “still” images from Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi(click to play)

Meta Machine

Space Junk

i love the idea of all this junk endlessly flying around above us

Heavy Typing

i love this photo of a medical transcriptionist key board. she had been using it for 8.5 years. who would of thought that M and N are so much more popular that B J and K

Ben Saunders Polar Trek

iv been following ben saunders blog the past week or so. it's a live tale of his trip on cross country skis from canada to the north pole. he will be the second ever human to go it alone. thus far he traveled 10.25 nautical miles, with 395 to go. HERE is a fascinating list of his gear, ranging from clothes and cookware to a shot gun and tech gadgets, most of which was custom built for his trip. i find it brilliant that in a truly life threatening -40 degrees all alone in an area the size of the entire USA he is updating a blog and interacting with his followers.

Yosuke Yamashita

Pianist by day, pyro by night

40 days

had some friends visit this weekend amidst their 40 day college spring break. they arrived in Tokyo via 30 hour train ride

domo kun attacks my desk

watches

came across this great pile of watches today.

Shibuya Legal Wall?

Kaws

if you know much about graffiti, i dont need to tell you why i was happy to take this photo, if not....uh...google it.

SX-70

How the polaroid SX-70 works, by Charles and Ray Eames

TOKYO

give me a T......"T"
give me an O......"O"
give me a KYO....."KYO"
whats that spell?......"TOKYO!"

well, its official, i have relocated to Tokyo, the Hub of Japan, and possibly the whole of Asia. I am all moved into a beautiful old apartment just outside of the epicenter. i thought to welcome myself, i would give some tips of moving to a new city....so without further adooo

Ian's Tips for Moving to a new city

1- establish land marks. they become great reference points when you exit the subway, or after being lead somewhere unfamiliar, or after becoming wildly lost.

2- dont just find, but understand the local restroom situation. (keep in mind this is coming from a victim of ulcerative colitis and a life long irritable bowel syndrome sufferer) where are the toilets in and around your neighborhood, place of work and or fun? what is the status of said bathrooms? clean? busy? decent toilet paper? size of stall? these may prove to be highly valuable details one day, or many days, depending on you and your personal guts.

3- what is the Indian curry situation? locations? cost? atmosphere? quality?

4- again, dont just use, but understand the transit system. what is the difference between an express and rapid train? are there alternate routes to the same location? oh, and time tables.

5- know and understand anything niche you have developed in your life. for me this means things that pertain to fresh coffee, bicycles, books, gadgets, toys and vegetarianish things to name a few.

6- i saved the most important thing for last: observe people, especially those who you see yourself as. where are the going? where are the eating? where are they drinking? where are the having coffee and buying music and seeing art and meeting one another. why are they dashing to that train and not the one you planned to get on? how are they behaving on the streets and in subway stations?

god speed

Nex-Medicom-Fox

Pepsi and 20th Century Fox have teamed up with Medicom toys to bring a promotional bearbrick series sold with 100ml pepsi nex. They offer a toy for fight club, alien, titanic, 24, prison break, die hard, the omen, planet of the apes, predator, day after tomorrow, devil wears prada and night at the museum. most of the fox projects are awful, but all the toys are great (and cheap, ¥１４７　for the toy and pepsi). The only problem now is I dont drink soda, so iv got a ton of cola to get rid of.

Lock Stitch

"OPEN LETTER TO THE YOUTH OF OUR NATION”

Young people of America, awake from your slumber of indolence and harken the call of the future! Do you realize that you are rapidly becoming a doomed generation? Do you realize that the fate of the world and of generations to come rests on your shoulders? Do you realize that at any time you may be called on to protect your country and the freedom of the world from the creeping scourge of Communism? How can you possibly laugh in the face of the disasters which face us from all sides? Oh ignorant youth, the world is not a joyous place. The time has come for you to dispense with the frivolous pleasures of childhood and get down to honest toil until you are 65. Then and only then can you relax and collect your social security and live happily until the time of your death. …

--Fearfully and disgustedly yours,
John J. Righteous-Hypocrite.
(by Hunter S. Thompson, 1955, Louisville, age 16)

top 40

just in case you needed hard evidence that mainstream music is a total train wreck, DJ earworm has done us all the favor of mashing up the top 25 songs of 2007 according to Billboard magazine into a 5 minute reel of just about everything you need to know about american pop culture.

Bearbrick series 15

medicom has released bearbrick series 15 (yes, the black and white one is from the warhol foundation!)

infobar 2

lost my phone this week. not cool. all numbers and addresses. if you think i should have your info please mail it to me. same number. inquire for new phone address.

Neo-Ruins

Hisaharu Motoda’s post-apocalyptic Tokyo

Terminus

Trevor Cawood's short tale of paranoia.
200 meg high res version available HERE (highly advised over the youtube version)

G.I.F.