Mixtape!

I made this specifically for a friend, but you can have it too.

Megaupload

Tracklisting:

1.) So Nyeo Shi Dae “Gee”
2.) Zoot Woman “Just A Friend of Mine”
3.) Maskinen “Segertåget”
4.) Kino “Gruppa Krovi”
5.) Larry Levan “Change/Paradise”
6.) Virgin Prunes “Love Lasts Forever”
7.) Split Mirrors “I Give My Love To You”
8.) Soft Ballet “Obsession”
9.) Cosmicity “I Want You”
10.) Siouxsie and the Banshees “Dazzle”
11.) Secret Service “Let Us Dance Just A Little Bit More”
12.) Ami Suzuki “Super Music Make”
13.) Joyless “Why Should I Cry”
14.) Clan of Xymox “No Human Can Drown”
15.) Dannii Minogue “Push”
16.) Sisters of Mercy “Body and Soul”
17.) Robert Palmer “Johnny and Mary”
18.) Armoury Show “Glory of Love”
19.) Tom Tom Club “Genius of Love”
20.) Moodymann “M Traxx”

Pretty much all of them fall into the category of house, new romantic, post-punk/goth, or straight pop.

words of love

You have shown me greater beauty than I have ever known.

You have also opened the possibility that I can feel higher power, higher emotions, and perhaps even spirituality.

Through your darkness I have found light as well as catharsis, release, and the comfort to submit entirely unto you.

I will always love you and protect you from harm, shielding you from those foolish enough to try and attack your integrity and value as an entity.

I will never allow your enemies to soil the purity of my affections for you.

Your place in my heart, as part of my being, will never be threatened, and you may always rest safely in my arms and in the warmth of my love.

Calvin Harris

I HAVE TICKETS! I am so happy.

The unbelievable shallowness of my life

Look, a new dress which requires shorts underneath.

I don't ever claim to be doing anything meaningful, but I think I may have hit a new low this time around. My contributions to the world these days usually consist of polluting the air with noises and methane gas and teaching Japanese people words for anus-related byproducts and growths. Tonight I went to the mall, ate a fattening dinner (which was delicious - fried pork cutlets in miso sauce, tofu, miso soup and white rice), sent a bunch of inane text messages to my friends, laughed like twelve year olds about tasteless jokes, drank hot chocolate, and took a taxi home when I could have easily walked. On Sunday I went shopping with Miho for approximately 7 and a half hours, bought a bunch of clothes which I will probably end up wearing less than 30 times each, took vain photobooth pictures, and ate McDonalds fries well after 6 p.m.

Most days consist of sitting at work resenting the fact that I'm at work, co-teaching a class or two, posting unnecessary quibbles on an Internet message board, and spending money after work to socialize. Sometimes when I'm quite bored at home, I'll play dress-up and take pictures of my outfits.

I'd like to start reading things again, but I'm too lazy to go through the embarrassing procedure of either fumbling my way through an eye doctor appointment alone or feeling like a dumb idiot while a friend plays translator for me, all because I left my glasses in Brooklyn. I'd like to read something that has nothing to do with real life, maybe about cults in Inner Mongolia or Austrian subversive performance artists in the 1960s or fakirs or ayahuasca shamans or something. Isn't that silly, reading escapist nonfiction to feel more "cultured" or whatever?

My friend Oliver in Germany says that in a few years he's going to crack and eventually totally reject western civilization and go be some kind of shamanistic druid hermit in the rainforest forever. I kind of giggle when I think about that, but I see the appeal. Life sort of loses meaning once you fall into a pattern and you're not devouring information like you do in school. One finds all sorts of ways to justify self-wounding hedonism, e-snarkiness, and nihilism. Not like I actually understand nihilism for sure because I never bothered to read about it and the Wikipedia article was too verbose.

All that wank aside, I do have an abundance of love in my life. Loving relationships on three continents with friends, family, more friends, a few other friends, and a certain special someone who I've been in love with for almost three years. When it really boils down to it, I'm such a social person that this is more than enough to keep me happy.

Sports Day/Nuremberg Rallies II, Year Two

I can't believe how fast the past year went! I've been here about exactly one year now (I went away for a month) and this weekend was Sports Day which I (lovingly) refer to in terms of HJ rallies during the Third Reich due to all the marching, screaming and obsessive-compulsive MAN that happens. It is quite endearing to see 16 year old Japanese boys, most of them quite skinny and fond of brightly colored nu-rave sneakers, standing around shirtless grunting and screaming and flexing.

Sports Day combines the two fundamental athletic elements of American school events - pep rallies and field day - but all happens in a sandy pit where the grass has been (manually - though I was fortunate enough this year to have missed pulling weeds out of the sports field) painstakingly eradicated, and always on a hot day since it's awfully hot without fail here until October.

Irreverent Engrish at its finest?

Not only is this beast screen printed with "MUHAMMAD" a dozen times, but it was on super sale at Jusco for only 500 yen! While it doesn't flatter my head shape or match any of my clothes, its value as a cultural artifact of a nation which has no clue is probably at LEAST a 1,000 yen value. If not more.