I Am Completely Serious

Text of the sign I came up with for my door:

エホバの証人になりたくない。

(”I don’t want to become a Jehovah’s Witness.”)

チーズをたべることができない。　ピザショップのチラシが必要ない。

(”I can’t eat cheese. I don’t need an ad for a pizza place.”)

日本に住んでいるから、　携帯をもう持っているよ。 買うわけがない。

(”I live in Japan, so I already have a cell phone. I’m not buying another one.”)

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I just thought of this because Jehovah’s Witnesses actually showed up at the house a couple days ago, which never happens because we live in a place sufficiently nowhere-like as to have at one time had ostrich farmers. Mom possesses the ultimate weapon for repelling Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is, being somebody who used to be a Jehovah’s Witness. She can’t be converted a second time, so they’re not supposed to talk to her.

She held her hand, and just told them, “I’m not interested.” It’s sort of like how Battle Angel Alita doesn’t pull out the solenoid quench gun for every little thing. Being an ex-Jehovah’s Witness is too dreadful a power to be used lightly.

Several months late, I reveal to you Tokyo’s very soul!

It’s basically a grumpy cat in a chair.

I hope you’re not too disappointed.

Continue reading “The most Tokyo place in all of Tokyo.”

^ TV! I have lived mainly in places without TVs for about six years, so I’m frequently startled by the stuff that’s on there when I’m home.

My 15-year-old cat has been creating obstacles to foot traffic forcefully and with great conviction in many inappropriate places. The vet put her on a special prescription diet, which has thus far only caused her to space out her intestinal comments a little bit. I don’t think this is entirely due to a lack of bladder control, because she seems to be particularly interested in modifying the surface texture of bathmats, towels temporarily serving as bathmats due to actual bathmats all being in the washer, and a long carpet remnant we put in the hall.

What is her objection to movable floor covering? Is this what she has been trying to communicate with the campaign of plaintive meowing she began around her thirteenth birthday? Have we ignored her arguments for so long that she has chosen this politically-charged moment to take her movement to the streets? Maybe I should have said “movements” in that sentence, but it seemed forced. I have seriously been sitting here Googling phrases like “pants for cats.”

I think I was at least six inches shorter the last time I went swimming in the ocean. The experience hasn’t changed: there are many different sizes of waves, and some of them can knock me over, and some of them cannot; and some of them make me go under if they come when I’m floating, and some of them just rock me slightly; and after a few minutes of floating they will drag me out to a depth at which my feet cannot touch the sand. I do not think there is any human large or small enough that their experience would be much different. Maybe I will make a diagram.

The ridiculous moral imperative associated with copyright law in the minds of western men, women, and otherwise (and those others whose cultures have been affected by us in this respect, and those whose cultures have affected us), and the manner in which the indignation which this alleged imperative generates impedes legal progress in an era whose technology has long since rendered much of said law nonfunctional and at times dangerous to civil liberties, particularly when said law inconveniences me personally.

I say this because the Shounen Jump-style exercise’s magical battle system (I would hope that no one would doubt the presence of a special magical battle system in a thing I call “the Shounen Jump-style exercise”) is mainly about quoting poetry at your enemy. There is an End Boss character called Death in whose name one group of guys fight, while the other group of guys are rebelling against her. So obviously I am thinking that it would be ideal if I could employ the works of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

But I think they’re still under copyright, and I don’t know how her estate would feel about such a business if I ever tried to publish it.

I’d also like to use the New Pornographers.

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(How would this harm the sales of poetry anthologies, or MP3s? It would not! The only argument for forbidding me from doing this to people is a belief that they have a right not to be made ridiculous by association with my bad ideas, which right I deny to all men, women, and otherwise, living or dead! Nowhere among the universal rights of humankind is “the right not to have our art look silly or cheap!” If it was in there then we couldn’t have an internet or televangelists, and Baen books wouldn’t be allowed covers.)

Dr. Balthasar Hearne and his wife Telmaine Hearne are Darkborn, a blind people who are cursed to die if they come into contact with light, and navigate via sonar, which they call “sonning.” Their roughly Victorian-era world is populated half by their own people, and half by the Lightborn, who are vulnerable to darkness in the same way the Darkborn are to light. One night Tercelle Amberley, a woman Balthasar once knew, comes to him about to give birth - and her children, incredibly, are born sighted. Meanwhile, Telmaine meets the battle-scarred, traumatized wizard Ishmael de Studier, and finds for the first time that she may have met someone from whom she can’t hide her darkest secret - that she is a powerful wizard, something shunned in Darkborn society.

The setting of the book was interesting, particularly the strange ways the Darkborn and Lightborn find to communicate. I appreciated that Telmaine, who in this sort of story would usually end up staying at home cheerleading, was by far the most active of the main characters, and the driving force of the action for most of the last part of the book.

I liked the idea of a race of people who using sonar, but had a lot of issues with the execution, when Sinclair made it just a little bit too much like sight. For instance, there’s a scene where one character sonns another character’s face “framed in the open window.” …what, exactly, are all these blind people likely to be framing? It’s nitpicky, yeah, but little details like that make or break a book’s ability to convince you of its world’s reality. I was never convinced of this one.

The characterization suffers a similar problem with consistency - except for me, this one is much worse. Cut for a spoiler: Continue reading “Darkborn, by Alison Sinclair”

I’m at the beach with Papaw. The beachhouse we’re in ticks me off every time I go into the bathroom.

Continue reading “BeachhouseFail”

And I Have Just Picked You Up From The Vet.

1) Have a huge open wound on your neck where the vet drained an abscess. Also, a pathetic expression.

2) Run outside the moment I get the carrier open.

3) Stay outside even when it starts pouring rain, running away in a panic when I open the door to let you in.

4) Eventually come in and let me pet you for a second, leaving me with the sinking knowledge that I still have to get antibiotics down your throat later.

There is something beeping loudly at random intervals in the living room, and I can’t figure out what. The dog feels that this may have very serious consequences - every time there’s a beep, she comes to my door and scratches.

I played Yume Nikki for fifteen minutes before dinner, and I still feel weird.

In between then and now I reread Fire Logic. This book is very convinced of itself and its own aesthetic and moral completeness, so it’s usually good for the purpose of frightening off stubborn bits of other systems of internal logic. Unfortunately, Yume Nikki seems to be too tough for it. I had a few moments of panic around midnight upon glancing up and, noticing that my bedroom door was closed, realizing that I had no way of determining whether I was awake or asleep.

I got an invite for a Google Voice account a few minutes ago, which I think means I have voicemail for the first time since my answering machine in college. It’s an alarming prospect.