I Am Completely Serious

A woman warned my mom and her colleagues that she had “written to Governor Sarah Palin” about her situation, so they’d better be on their best behavior with her. Inspired by this story, today I wrote a letter to Black and Decker.

I lost the cord to my rice cooker, see. I emailed them once before about buying a new one, and they responded saying it wasn’t “user replaceable.” (It’s a cord.) So today I wrote a vaguely threatening letter about how rice cookers were not easily recyclable, and President-Elect Obama was totally going to get on companies who behaved in such an environmentally-irresponsible manner, so they’d better sell me a friggin’ cord.

(This approach has actually worked for me in the past. In college I wrote a snippy email to Terra Chips about how there weren’t enough chips in the bag (there still aren’t), and they sent me, without comment, something like $10 or $15 worth of coupons.)

I am at the hotel in Nagoya, all prepared to leave in the morning. I am stressed out about this, so I may walk over to the airport (the hotel is attached, but far enough away from the tarmac that you can’t hear the planes) and buy chocolate in a while. I am American and female, this is what I do in these situations.

The hotel room came with an amusing striped nightshirt. I will probably actually wear it tonight, as I think I put my pajamas in the big huge suitcase I don’t want to reopen.

I ate oxtail porridge at a Korean place for dinner, because my one desire in this life is to HORRIFY MY FAMILY. (Apparently it’s actually beef.) Also because it looked good in the picture. It was okay, but kind of bland, so I dumped in the little bowl of spicy sauce they gave me. I don’t know if that’s what that was for? It didn’t really help all that much. I think I will google around for interesting-looking Korean foods, and then tomorrow see if they number among the amenities offered by the Incheon airport. (From looking around online, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably too risky for me to leave the airport unless my departing flight gets delayed at least an hour.)

There was a graduation ceremony yesterday, at which I wore a tiara and held a pink scepter with a little heart covered in fake pearls. We had to give speeches, and mine in its entirety was “The Princess has no need to give a speech!” (「姫様はスピーチをする必要がない！」) This was done largely at the instigation of Sensu-sensei and Kuma-sensei, who acquired these items for me at the 100-yen-shop last term, because I am The Princess. It did not appear that they had alerted any of the rest of the faculty to this.

Deeply unscientific survey! Here are links to a bunch of images of a Second Life avatar’s face, with different skin textures applied: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

I would be extremely happy if people who had time went through them and told me in the comments on the LiveJournal (rather than on the website, which is behaving badly) 1) what ethnicity each one “reads” as to you, as short or long or vague or specific as you want, 2) optionally, some kind of description of your own racial/cultural background (like, “white American,” “1/2-generation Taiwanese-Canadian”). This is for a Top-Secret Grumpy Research Project about Second Life skins.

Today I finally did my laundry and grocery shopping. I think it’s been three weeks since I did laundry? I had some really good green tea ice cream at a restaurant a few weeks ago, so I bought some at the store. It turns out that not all green tea ice creams are necessarily edible.

Image found on a mineral makeup company’s website:

“NATURAL” BECAUSE THE WOMAN’S FACE OBVIOUSLY HAS NOT BEEN PHOTOSHOPPED, NO NOT EVEN A LITTLE

You know, it wouldn’t even have stood out as much if they’d just gone ahead and smoothed her hand, too.

I needed a watch; there’s a store in Wing Town with pocket watches for 1000 yen; I always end up taking normal watches off and putting them in my pocket anyway. My course of action was clear.

It has a little magnifying lens in the cover in case I need to solve any crimes. I plan to wear my bowler hat if I go out today.

It has a camera. This is new stuff for me.

It doesn’t have a charger. Or, it has a charger base, but no cable for it. This appears to be standard procedure. I think I’ve actually seen the cables at the 100-yen store, but I’m too hot and grumpy to go get one tonight.

Talking to myself below cut: Continue reading “I have a cell phone now.”

I just spent five hours trying to get a cell phone, and failed. I will secure my disgust safely behind a cut so as not to add unnecessarily to the general toxicity of the internet.

Continue reading “I hope there’s a shounen manga about fighting evil cell phone conglomerates.”

My brain still hasn’t caught up with the thing about me now living five minutes from the 100 yen store.

I can just go buy a colander! For 100 yen! (105 incl. tax.)

I’m pretty sure today’s the hottest day of the year so far. I spent the last two hours of it walking heat-dazedly around town, trying to find a single frigging store that carried plumbing snakes and/or Zip-Its. At the fifth place (it would have been the sixth if the koi store had been open), I finally gave up and said to a clerk, “Sorry, I don’t know what this is called in Japanese, but I’m looking for the tool you use to clean out the bathtub drain?”

Because I’m a filthy hippie and didn’t want to use corrosive chemicals that will poison the water table, I made sure to say “tool,” and did the universal gesture for “plumbing snake,” which I had just then made up and which is very expressive. He showed me directly to the Corrosive Chemicals Aisle, and pointed out one that he felt was particularly nicely corrosive.

So I don’t think civilians are allowed to have plumbing snakes and Zip-Its here? Corrosive chemicals are fine, though. Damnit, Japan, and you’re usually really good about this stuff.

Almost immediately afterwards, I discovered that the same store carried Dr. Bronner’s.

My Flickr paid account expired, and it gives me inscrutable errors when I try to renew it.

If you have any domains registered at Yahoo, you might want to move them - as of tomorrow, they’re apparently upping their yearly fee to $35. This is just for a basic .com domain with no special features. And they’re being sneaky about it.

(I’m really glad now that I invaded Former Employer and insisted I move their site to a different host last time I was home. If Yahoo decided to raise hosting prices, too, they probably wouldn’t have noticed until they’d started getting charged. As it is, I’m going to email them and ask if I should go ahead transfer their domain, too.)

My iPod’s acting funny again.

And there’s this e-ink machine coming out called the Astak Mentor that might be less than $200, and if that is true I may have to buy it.

At least the camera’s been behaving.

Notes to self made during study of various Nintendo DS Slot-1 Evil Options.

This is not at all interesting unless you are also shopping for one of these, and maybe not even then.

Continue reading “Quest for a Nintendo DS slot-1 villainy card”

“Enchanting bamboo leaf and bird patterns,” it says.

HAHAHAHA

If it has never been my dream to own a Vulva Kimono, that is due only to a lack of imagination on my part.

(I will finish responding to email and comments and stuff Very Soon Now.)

Intangibles:

- plane tickets
- Mom and thegeekgene driving to Chicago to pick me up because several of those plane tickets were for planes that were not ever actually real
- totally inappropriate email from elongated_tito informing me that I am actually having the time of my life in Chicago O’Hare (she also killed me and ate me in Facebook Oregon Trail)
- Parents’ friend’s boyfriend in Chicago buying me lunch and taking me to parents’ friend’s mom’s apartment to sleep until they got there (United wouldn’t pay for a hotel or anything), plus bonus cultural education regarding the awesomeness of Chicago (particularly the hot dogs) and Mexico (particularly the peppers and papayas)
- services of Lawyer in demanding United pay up *
- services of Aerospace Engineer in replacing my iPod battery **
- large quantities of meat
- tuition

* Dad. Though I technically had not retained him as counsel in this matter. It also might have been more impressive if Mom had done it, since we have different last names.

** Uncle Tall. The battery and toolkit were only $15, but given how much it costs to hire Uncle Tall to take your stuff apart for you, his involvement puts the gross cost of the whole operation a lot higher than my initial estimates suggested. (It took like forty-five minutes to get the thing open. The YouTube videos are terribly misleading about the capabilities of those little plastic pry-bars.)

Tangibles:

Continue reading “The Haul”

The iPod problem appears to be the battery. I am pondering my options.

Continue reading “And then everyone dies of consumption.”

Today I went into a Sanrio Store. It was without a doubt the most harrowing experience of my life. You’d better appreciate it, sibling.

And now, a story about buying baking soda in Japan, recorded in detail,

1) for the benefit of others who might need to do this, and

2) in the hope that someone will someday explain to me why the vocabulary necessary to buy baking soda in Japan makes no damn sense.

For lo, though I have achieved my goal of buying a box of frigging baking soda, I am linguistically even more bewildered than I was when I first initiated the project.

Today, feeling for the first time mostly recovered from my jet lag, injured back, and hurt feet (self-inflicted wounds assisted by Tuesday and some hilariously perforated insoles), I went out in search of baking soda again, this time determined not to give up. I have been in at least one grocery store every day since I got here, but always ended up just getting whatever more immediately necessary thing I’d gone in for, and then, after a few minutes of vain searching for the baking soda, leaving in exhaustion.

So this morning, I consulted the internet, and went out armed with some notes on the identification of baking soda in Japanese stores. “Baking soda” can be either “juusou” (重曹) or “tansan” (タンサン), with the term “juusou” apparently (going by the respective Google image search results) being used more for baking soda that’s sold as a cleaning product, and “tansan” being used for baking soda being sold to cook with.

(Though the kanji for “tansan” is apparently 炭酸, which my dictionary defines as “carbonic acid,” and which, indeed, appears to be an ingredient in all those lovely beverages in which one expects to find carbonic acid. Unless I have been grievously deceived by my middle school science classes, baking soda is a base, and is definitely not carbonic acid, so apparently there’s a problem here. But, then again, judging by those Google image search results, “tansan”-as-baking-soda is always rendered in katakana, so maybe that carries some kind of obscure change in meaning with it. I don’t know the etymology, all right? I’m just looking for some baking soda for my filthy pagan rituals.)

I wrote all this down very carefully in my little notebook. Thus familiarized with the whole concept, I set out, prepared.

After examining every single non-refrigerator aisle in the store, I gave up and asked an employee.

I had to show her my written notes before she understood what I was looking for (I’m not sure whether this was my pronunciation, or whether the words just aren’t used much), and then she said, “baking powder?,” looked about wildly, and ran to ask someone else. Suspecting that baking soda would probably be in the same place as baking powder - even if this wasn’t just another exciting new name for the substance - I just followed them. The chain of consultation acquired a third link when a man who had been shelving in the appropriate aisle, hearing the exclamation of “baking powder” several aisles over, carefully removed a box from the bottom shelf it had been on and set it prominently on a higher shelf.

This is what my baking soda looks like:

“Home made CAKE” consists of two little packets, each containing maybe a tablespoon-and-a-half of baking soda. I could probably complain about this, except that it was 68 yen, which is not exactly exhorbitant.

The kanji on the front says “juusou.” The furigana, however, says “tansan.” So does the receipt.

So, except that I am definitely not supposed to call it “baking soda,” I still have no idea how to say “baking soda” in Japanese.

Gynecological exams teach one interesting things about one’s reactions to pain. Apparently, my default curse word is “shit;” once I get started, I do not feel the urge break up my rhythm with other, less-privileged terms; and when the source of pain disappears, I start giggling.

Nurse M clearly finds my low threshold of pain worrying. Doctor C is merely very deadpan. She holds the implements where I can’t see them and asks when my sisters are going to be coming in for their HPV vaccinations.

The past year or so, I have acquired a slight facial hair problem. To be extremely precise, I have acquired a goatee. It is a pretty respectable little goatee if I don’t shave it - all I need is a flannel shirt and a disgusted expression and I can major in cinema. My goatee was the main reason I went to the gynecologist. My testosterone levels have always been off a little, and this seemed like it might be turning into more than a little.

Doctor C didn’t think it was significant; she talked about someone who’d come in the other day with “worse hair than you,” and gave me a prescription for some cream. This is fascinating. Are there lots of female goatees out there? Should I leave it in place for some kind of empowerment purposes? Well, no, because I don’t like it and I’m breaking out underneath. But it’s useful information. I bet I can use it to make people I dislike uncomfortable.

I went online to research the cream when I got home - it’s called Vaniqa, though Doctor C’s handwriting is so bad I had to type a couple variations into Google to get what I wanted. Apparently the drug’s manufacturer at one point ceased production because its main use is in curing sleeping sickness, which mostly affects people without any money. People in Africa, specifically. But then, a miracle occurred, and it was discovered that it could be used in topical form to retard hair growth! And thus they restarted manufacturing. Us rich white women have saved Africa again.

I’m feeling kind of ambivalent about this.

AND FULL OF ANGST YES

I graduated Sunday, went to a job interview Monday (I’ll know by Monday next week), and have spent most of the past couple of days throwing things away. Not even primarily my things - I cleaned out the bathroom cabinets. I got rid of two bags of unsettling products intended for topical use only. I’m still not done, there’s still the closet left. After that I’ll start on my parents’ bathroom.

And then, having so mentally prepared myself - I will start getting rid of books. Both mine, which will never fit in my room unless I remove my dresser (which I am seriously considering, just to avoid doing this), and the General Family Library, which is large. The local public library was unable to absorb our excess the last time we did this.

I decided a while ago to stop using BookMooch, because I didn’t trust the people running it (they never did ban the scammer I caught, the design is really bad, there wasn’t much communication or indication that the site wouldn’t be abandoned by its creator(s) at any second), and didn’t want the system going down when I had a lot of points saved up. I’m thinking of starting up again now, just because I’ve discovered that Amazon Marketplace is a really crappy way to sell the sort of books I need to get rid of, and they seem to be actually working to improve the system recently.

I’m going to start culling my BPAL and ridiculously-hard-to-transport essential oil collections, too. I wonder if it’s poor form if your first post to bpalmarketplace is ten imps, one bottle, and thirty bottles of random essential oils? I’ve seen people do it, anyway… maybe I should just eBay all the really cheap stuff in one big lot, instead.

I have been thinking very hard about joining a commune and about Pokemon.