Osaka Cherokee

Finally somebody gets it right.

UK viewers: 'Homer for president'

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Doughnut-guzzling,
beer-quaffing Homer Simpson may not be the model
father but he has won the hearts of British television
fans who want the nuclear power plant worker to be
the next U.S. president.

Song of the Day: Pink Floyd- "Lost for Words"

I just got back from a basketball tournament two towns over. Today was the worst basketball day of my entire existence. Yes, even worse than the one time Juan "The Mexican Jumping Bean" blocked my shit, and yes even worse than getting constantly beaten at 21 by the Glavich's in their driveway with their make-shift basketball hoop made out of a piece of plywood and a discarded bike wheel. I missed at least ten breakaway layups tonight.

Of course I'm a fucking idiot and can't take shit like this so I lash out the only way I know how...unhinged violence. After I missed my eighth layup I punched a metal door as hard as I could. I'm 99% positive my middle finger is broken and at least three others are seriously fucked up. Typing this is extremely painful and blood is oozing out of a gash on my finger but this is how I'm punishing myself for being such a fucking idiot.

I think I know what's wrong with me and why I get so fucking pissed when I have a bad day at basketball. Its cuz I feel like I have to defend my Ameicaness out there. If somebody beats me I know for a fact they are gonna go home and tell all their friends how they schooled a big American and that is something I can't handle. Like I told a guy yesterday when he started getting a little huffy, "you may be better than me at basketball but you won't beat me in a street fight so I'd settle the fuck down if I were you.". For the record he did settle down.
So now I'm gonna try to drown my sorrows with a lethal dose of our ol' pal alcohol and call it a night. So I'm gonna raise high this bottle of Hida Takayama Brewing Agricultural Corporation Stout (I swear to god that's the name of this Japanese microbrew) and give a salute to all of you out there who can keep your emotions in check. Fuck it, to those of you who can't too.

Song of the Day: Pedro the Lion- "The Poison"

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japanese Empress Michiko has given her sympathy -- and possibly a veiled rebuke -- to her daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Masako, who has spent much of the last year in seclusion with a stress-related illness.

This is the first paragraph from Yahoo News talking about what the Japanese newspapers can't get enough of, the Crown Princess Masako's "stress-related illness".

Oh it must be so horrible to be rich and royal. All those responsibilities and formalities. Won't you all join in with me for a big "Kiss My Ass!" Maybe Masako should come back here to the economy class seats with the rest of us working stiffs and see what shit is really like.
By the way, her kid is ugly!

A hard day of work for the imperial couple.

Song of the Day: Motorhead- "We are the Road Crew"

I was a alpine guide this weekend up in Nagano Prefecture at a mountain called Mt. Ena (famous in Japanese lore because its the place where the sun goddess first came when she came down to earth). There were thirty five "customers" and four guides so we split them into two groups with two guides per group. They put me and my boy Nakamura-san in group two and made me the lead guy. It was fucking awesome. I was like, "See the badge grandma! You're in my world now! This isn't gonna be a nice leisurely hike through the flower patch. This is death march at the speed of a blitzkrieg. We're here to find spirituality through punishing the body (mi wo korosu jin wo nasu). If you can't hack it stay on the bus. If you can't pee in the woods, stay on the bus. We're just gonna scream out things in English as we pass it. TREE! ROCK! OTHER MOUNTAIN! I hope you didn't bring your camera cuz that's just extra weight that you're not gonna be using. No time to pick up the dead. We'll just roll 'em down during our descent."

One guy in my group came up to me afterwards and was told me he was a country singer and asked me if I liked country music. I told him I like some and that I really like Johnny Cash. He gave me one of those snort laughs and was like, "Johnny Cash? That's old!" What the...?! Japan is the last country on the planet that keeps Deep Purple CD's rolling off the shelves and he's deriding me for liking the man in black!?

Song of the Day: Morcheeba- "Shoulder Holster"

I got attacked by some old lady today as I was walking with my class to a field to pick sweet potatoes (god I love kindergarten). She didn't inflict any bodily harm on me. It was more of an "I'm a crazy lady and I see a foreigner so let's go speak English to him" attack. She came up to me and was like, "NAME!? WHAT'S YOUR NAME!?", and wouldn't let go of my hand. I was Mr. Niceguy and talked with her for a bit but it was obvious that she had no intention of letting me go. Of course all the other teachers just walked by and giggled instead of helping me out. I eventually had to break free and got away by walking at a pace her old legs couldn't keep up with. She sat near the field the entire time we were digging up sweet potatoes but didn't come at me again. My kids kept pointing at her and were like, "Why don't you go and talk to your old lady friend again?". Ugggh!

John Kerry's comment about "marrying up" was the funniest thing I've heard in these debates since Bush's "Wanna buy some wood?" comment. These two should go on the road as a comedy team. Bush would have to stop that evil smirk or somehow incoporate it into the act first.

Song of the Day: Led Zeppelin- "Tangerine"

I was watching the news this morning and they were commenting on Christopher Reeve's death. The entire time they never once mentioned him by name instead they insisted on calling him "Superman".
"Superman died last night from heart failure".
"Superman has been in a wheel chair since falling of a horse."
I wanted to karate kick the TV! I mean come on! He wasn't just Superman. He did that thing...um...with that guy. Well you know, he was in that one show...no that was Jason Bateman. Let's see here... well, he did fall off a horse damnit! And that makes him a hero. Well, let's just hope he's up in heaven with Rodney Dangerfield help to push him around in his wheel chair.

Remember Kerry said in the second debate that he was all for stem cell research and that he was gonna help Superman, oops I mean Christopher Reeve, walk again? Well, there's broken promise number one. That lying ass flip flopping Kerry. Well, at least he didn't need a wireless receiver/transmitter/earpiece like Bushy had during the debates.

Song of the Day: Interpol- "Narc"

I went and participated in some voice recognition recording thing today. Some company was looking for 300 Americans from different regions and 100 Australians to use for some voice recognition software or something or other. I received 70 bucks and all I had to do was sit in a chair and read whatever came up on a screen. At first it was all typical stuff like, "How much is the fare to Shinjuku?", and "I'd like to reserve a room for tomorrow for two people." But then in the middle it suddently switched to military stuff like, "This barn is in a good position for shooting marines in the street." etc. As soon as that part was over it switched to stuff you'd hear on Little House on the Prairie: "Aw shucks, that pretty girl ain't even lookin' my way." I shit you not!

What in god's name did I participate in? During one of the breaks I asked the lady in charge who was this for and she said the Japanese government. Wait a minute here! Why does the Japanese government need voice recognition software with this kind of content? Are they planning on invading rural Arkansas or something? I apologize to all you Arkansasians, or is it Akansasite, if I some how contributed to your future overthrow.

Song of the Day: Tom Waits- "How's It Gonna End?" from the new CD.

It seems that I have become the official jar-opener guy at the kindergarten. I'm not sure how the word got out but now anytime a teacher can't get something open they usually sulk on over to my room and I can tell by that half smile half pouty face that there's probably something for me to open. I suppose this is inevitable considering I'm the only male teacher in a school full of frail, young, female teachers. Of course this does afford me brief periods of chivalry and outright manliness.
Today one of the teachers didn't even come herself. I was just chilling in the class cutting up some papers for some doll things the kids are making and I hear from the direction the door "OPEN PLEASE!!". It was a pudgy rapscallion of boy donning a purple hat and holding a tub of blue paint. After a brief moment of confusion and the fact that he cleared up his intentions in Japanese I opened the jar for him and sent him on his way with a message to the teacher that a 3000 yen surcharge will be billed to her for future jar openings.

Song of the Moment: Aesop Rock- "Float"

"This fallen angel could stitch a wing with a shoestring"

Today I saw a lady with a cane run/waddle fast from the train station to the taxi cab stand. She was running like there was only one taxi left on the planet to catch. Maybe her cataracts were hazing out the line of forty cabs lying in wait or she might just have a case of acute Japanese-ness (A disease characterized by incessant hurrying to get nowhere.). Three business boys happened to catch the first cab in line before aforementioned old lady could get there. She had just enough time to let out a angry sigh before, low and behold, the next cab in line inched up to let her in. Those guys took a whole three and a half seconds off that lady's life and goddamnit she was pissed.

Song of the Day: Neutral Milk Hotel- "Headed Boy Part II"

Well I just got done watching the vice presidential debate and as much as I hate to admit it I think Dick Cheney won. Now it wasn't a trouncing like Kerry gave Bush but I think he just edged out a victory over Edwards.
Cheney is probably the most evil man in America and I'm assuming cannot fathom the meaning of the words 'true friend' or 'business ethics'. Not to mention I have never once seen the man smile (just like his partners in evil, Rice and Rumsfeld). Though they do smirk a lot.
Goddamnit! If that guy is in there again I'm not coming back to America. You know, if he would get hammered on even one of the myriad of crimes he's committed he'd be sitting in a cell right along side his buddy Saddam.

I think the most unbelievable thing I've read all week is the fact that Edwards is 51 years-old. Holy shit! I thought he was just over thirty or still in high school.

Song of the Day: Van Halen- "Running with the Devil"

I just find this mildly amusing.

Here's an article I just came across. I've heard about these things before but have never seen one. Probably because I don't spend a lot of time in the ladies room.

TOKYO - When Naoko Ito uses a public bathroom, she cringes in embarrassment at the thought that other patrons can hear the sounds coming from her stall. That's when she turns to the "Sound Princess."

Ito, like a rapidly growing number of Japanese women, presses a device installed in public toilets to simulate the sound of water flushing — and mask the cruder noises of nature.
"I usually use the flushing sound when I go to a public bathroom, such as at a department store, because I get a bit self-conscious," said Ito, a 60-year-old waitress.

The device — a curious mix of Japanese bashfulness and modern technology — is spreading rapidly through public buildings and has now become standard equipment for new construction.
Leading toilet producer Toto Ltd. has sold 500,000 of their "Sound Princess" — "Oto-Hime" in Japanese — since 1988, and the company says orders surged 125 percent in 2003 alone.
"The core of our clientele is schools and companies," Toto spokeswoman Kumi Goto said. "Japanese women are very embarrassed by the sounds they make in a toilet."

There's another reason behind the increase in the gadgets: ecology. Women in Japan have traditionally flushed several times to cover up their noises, so the Sound Princess is saving water and cutting down on public building operators' utility bills.

The Sound Princess is fairly simple. The user passes her hand over a sensor, and the convincing sound of a torrent of water comes from a speaker.

Such gadgets might seem a dainty, modern excess of a shame-obsessed society, but the Sound Princess has deep roots in Japanese culture.

The Japanese are notoriously fastidious: the daily bath is practiced with near-religious fervor, and walking inside with your shoes on is considered filthy. The Japanese word for clean — "kirei" — also means beautiful.

And what happens in a bathroom stall is, well, among the dirtiest things that humans do.
Going to the toilet has been considered embarrassing and even shameful for women since ancient times in Japan, said Noriji Suzuki, a parasitologist at Kochi University Medical School.
"Sometimes you see people talking to each other over a stall in Western countries, but that would never happen in our culture," he said.

The trend is not limited to women these days. Some schools have done away with urinals because boys are increasingly too embarrassed to use the stalls, since going there would tell onlookers exactly what's going to happen next.

Tadafumi Morioka, a spokesman for another Japanese toilet maker, INAX Corp., said his company also started selling a similar product in 1988 amid concerns of wasted water.
He said the installment rate of such devices in modern skyscrapers in Japan is 100 percent. INAX's sales increased 25 percent in 2003, Morioka said, although he refused to give precise numbers.

"Most of the demands for the device come from public facility owners and managers including department stores and elementary and junior high schools," he said.

But for now, "Oto-Hime" seems to likely to remain for women only.
"I still haven't heard of men who say they want 'Oto-hime' in men's rooms," said Goto.

Its a quiet night here on the outskirts of Osaka City and I can hear 'em killing cows and pigs and whatnot across the river in the local buraku. The air guns or whatever they use have been going off all evening. At least the hot summer is over and I don't have to smell the foul stench of decaying animal carcasses.

Song of the Moment: The Smiths- "Meat is Murder"

I started playing basketball on Saturday nights with some guys my boy introduced to me. You have to see these guys. They are all the biggest bunch of nerds I have ever seen assembled outside a Star Trek convention. They all have those big thick nerd glasses and they aren't wearing them to look chic. All but two of them suck at basketball. Its a great time. I just hope I don't catch nerdiness hanging out with these geeks.

Song of the Day: Patti Smith w/John Cale- "Space Monkey"

Its a very sad day. The U.S. has started to fingerprint everybody that enters the country. This sickens me!

I read an article a while back how this is going to really hurt the economy of states such as Hawaii and California because Japanese tourists are backing away from coming to America because they don't want to be fingerprinted.

I'm the 666,338,940 richest person in the world. Hell yeah! See where you stand here.


Song of the Moment: Thin Lizzy- "Jailbreak"

Woohoo! Its Friday and I'm not at work. They're having tests for the kids entering the kindergarten next year. I cannot believe I'm living in a country that has tests to enter kindergarten. What kind of test can you administer to a three year-old?
1. If you have to go dooty what do you do?
a) Go in your pants.
b) Go to the toilet.
c) Go on the floor and then pick it up and fling it at your friends.
Do the kids stay up late (8:00pm) cramming for these things?

Well, either way I don't really care as long as it gets me the day off work.

Here's another great website that somebody told me about called saintclinton.com

Song of the Day: Phil Lynott- "Ode to a Black Man"
This song was also included on the mix CD from Sean.