Gettin back to basics

Ya, know something, I am an asshole. A bastard or maybe even a mutha fucker. I sometimes go out of my way to get you to think so. I don't really care which nomenclaure you lable me with just so long as it disassociates me from the regular run of the mill hoi polloi (yes, I realize a redundancy has raised it's ugly head).

You see I gotta be different or at the very least least feel like I'm special. I even burned my membership card to Steve Martin's non-conformists union.
This might sound like the start of a diatribe upon the ills of socialism, communism or possibly embolism.

It's not.

It's an echo of what I have been seeing, reading and feeling from folks all around me.
I might just be more than a little presumptuous and it wouldn't be the first time that I opened my mouth wide enought to fit more than a pair of EEE Doc Martin's into the amazing maw of misinterpretation, but I believe that we are all trying so hard to keep our heads above water in very rough seas that we are missing a really important distinction in what is happening to the world economy and it's effect on our lives and the actual world that we live in.

I am inlined to make an analogy of Orson Well's famous, or rather infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
Some of us are running in panic when there really isn't anything to panic about. At the very least there isn't anything we can do about the issues that are causing the anxiety.

The aliens have landed and you've got to find a course of action to take. (I ain't talkin about immigration issues here.)
1.Put your head in the sand and let the world pass you by.
2.Continue to live like you have without consequense or responsibility and let others pick up the slack.
3.Get off your duff and make some changes in your attitude and actions that will make a difference to the world around you. Yes, I realize that this is open to a lot of interpretation, but that is exactly how I mean it to be. I want to open the Wall-Mart can of worms and let us all wrangle the idea of doing the right thing until we figure out all the different ways we can make the sand castle better. The tide will keep us on our toes and constantly at vigil, but that is , as I see it, a good thing.
4. fill in your own particular opinion.

I can see the obvious objections to my ideas: I am using a blog- That's kinda mainstream these days.
I live in Japan - Rich, Hi Tech and without financial worries since the Honda civic was born.
Education- The backbone of my business and livleyhood- is always steady in good times and bad.
I have been sneaking off and indulging in my wife's cold medicine so I am totaly high and about as coherent as spooky Mulder chasing his sister's abductors.


If you've made it this far I truly congratulate you. It must have been harder to read through that bull crap then it was for me to write it (not really). some of it must have been fairly interestin, yeah?

Get rid of all the sillines that people will try to sell you and make sure your govt. officials aren't full of self interest, read: shit. Then get busy making you little part of the world work well for you and your neighbors. No matter who they are.

Don't sweat the big stuff. The small things count.


Have a nice day!

Head in the sand

I often think that I am just a leeettle bit stupid.
I have to. I don't possess enough ego to allow me to believe that I know more than the entire world and all it's inhabitants.
Well, it's not really like that. What I'm tryin to say is, that if you reach the point where you feel that you just know more and can do more and have achieved more than the common shmoe sitting next to you and there is nothing left to learn- well you are dead!
I am getting tired of encountering people who know and understand everything better than I do, than everyone does.
It's tiresome and boooring.
I understand that, because I am a teacher, I feel the urge to impart knowledge to people, but if you really want to know the truth; I spend a lot more time listening to other folks espousing their ideas of the world rather than blabbering about my thoughts. It keeps me steady, balanced and in touch with the common folk.
Here on the net and especially in bloggovision it's nice to let your guard down and allow various ideas to slide into your thoughts and rattle around the old noggin for a couple of hours every now and again. It's just unfortunate to encounter the foolish know-it-alls who are more interested in their own popularity than any new or differentiating opinion. The same goes for my day to day encounters on the streets, pubs and cafes where I live.

The question, "Why do you Blog?" often comes up in roasts and memterviews and although I always read the answers, I never understand them.
Why do you Blog?
You could ask, why do you fart?
Or even better why do you fuck?
Getting your pipes cleaned is a basic human need. It doesn't matter which of the alimentary avenues it travels.
Getting my voice out, being heard receiving some kind of response to my day to day thoughts, allows me to continue with this ridiculous and occasionally tedious life that I lead.
Without the blog I would only be tiny and ineffectual. Thank god for the Internet!
I can share my most innermost thoughts with people I don't know, have never met and really don't care about. I can pretend to laugh at endeavors I wouldn't pay to see and concede importance to facts and issues I've never heard about before.

I would love to go on about the problems with the internet and blogs for at least another seven paragraphs and write some Haiku that Wouldn't be considered poetry by third year students in the worst of schools here, but I have to go shopping for some porn. Actually I am going to watch TV on the net and forget about all the hairy bullshit thats going on in the world.

Oh, by the way. North Korean missiles did not land on my head over the weekend , so I could publish this ridiculous post.

Fence sitting.

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be, how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg.
Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there
were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?"

Have you had your morning coffee yet? I hope so....


Those words are an excerpt of a speech from one of my favorite authors upon accepting the Jerusalem Prize, an award for literary excellence.

It must have been difficult to stand in front of Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Shimon Peres and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and say what he had to say about the recent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians who occupy the west bank.

The metaphor of egg and wall is one we can apply to many situations and for me it states simply that individual life and spirit must never be crushed by the unfeeling wheels and gears of governments and large corporations.

But what of the burden incurred by the egg?
Although we do not ask for it we are all born into this world bound to our particular culture with an obligation to live with consideration and courtesy and to eradicate any unfairness and discrimination that infects society. Yet when deadly violence is used to force ones views of propriety upon the populace or coerce others it is wrong. It is wrong for the individual as it is wrong for the state. This we already know. We have all known it since childhood when we were told to share our toys and not fight over them, so why do we insist on ignoring the rules that worked for us so well in kindergarten. If you believe that I am oversimplifying things and that the dynamics of international trade and politics is much more complex, then you haven't truly watched children at play.
Their world is a microcosm of the global situation. It might be more factual to say that theirs are the roots from which our garden grows.

No I am not a communist, socialist, liberal or a hippie who smells of patchouli spreading the word of love and peace from my VW micro bus. I am just a misplaced man wondering why the world is caught up in a self destructive spiral. We really need to put things into their proper perspective. There are some who are boo hoo hooing about the economy and how they can't afford the things they used to.
If you have a home, you're OK.
If you have a job, you're OK.
If you have clean water to drink, you're OK.
If you have safe food to eat, you're OK.
If you are reading this then you're OK.

What I cannot fathom is the things people will do to make money and the things people spend money on. Where is the justification in selling arms to countries and people who we are absolutely certain that they will be using them in a malicious way? America is the greatest manufacturer and exporter of military weponry in the world today.
Many of the countries that purchase or develop weapons would be better off spending that money to feed and educate their own people instead of worrying about racial cleansing or saber rattling with their neighbors

How can we voluntarily purchase drugs (I support the homegrown movement if there is one.)that do nothing but make us stupid and support the efforts of those who would like nothing more than for you to be complacent and ignorant.

Why is there support for industrial practices that pollute and poison us or abuse and sometimes maim and kill laborers; often children. I am not suggesting that we should all start riding bicycles, wearing hemp clothes and go hunting with bows and arrows for our food.
The main problem, as I see it, is with our present global economy and the structure on which it is based. The free market system is geared towards accumulating personal wealth with very little concern for the development or benefit to society as a whole. This allows, even with government controls and legislation, the greedy and unscrupulous to extort and influence the market in an attempt to increase their power base and wealth.

There will always be walls for eggs to break upon.
As long as the individual does nothing but think and act sefishly there will be no end to the strenghtening and propagation of the walls that surround us.
Be most wary of those who profess to have your best interests at heart when they only seek to fatten their own coffers for they will be the first to lob eggs at the walls and sacrifice our progeny on the altar of avarice.

Thirty three and a third

My, my, my. How time does fly when you're doin mostly nothing but work and watching mindless TV. I can't believe it's been more than ten days since I last entertained you all with the inanity of my life in Japan. Now that my Memeterview with Lime is over I have to rely on my own devices and imagination, so in the immortal words of Jackie Gleason, AKA Ralph Kramden the Gotham city bus driver... "And awaaay we go!"

Goood! You decided to push the magic button and read the rest of this post. I thank you for your sense of adventure. There aren't many people who would do what you have done. Go ahead, put a gold star somewhere on your computer. You deserve it.

There isn't a day that goes by where I don't think about why the world is so darned wacky.
It's possible that you do too.
Recently, well maybe not so recently, I have noticed that I am from a different time of thinking. I'm not saying that I am out of date, I just think about time differently.
I seem to run on a different speed than other folks. Yeah, I use a computer and digital playware, but my roots are founded in vinyl when it comes to music, glass when it comes to Coke bottles and Scrabble when it comes to playing games. That makes me a bit anachronistic and thoroughly recidivist for I am unrepentant. I do not want to change anything that still keeps my boat afloat especially when the craft is sound.

Even though there have been many wondrous technological advancements that have occurred in my lifetime I really do believe that we have lost the ability to slow down and move at, what I consider to be, a reasonable pace. Everywhere I go and most of the people I see have very little free time and instead of trying to appreciate one thing in particular, they scramble and strain to get everything done at the same time-and are perplexed when it all becomes a mess.

Living in what must be one of the most time conscious countries in the world makes matters even worse. I have seen people so obsessed with time that they are completely ruled by the nefarious wristwatch. I haven't worn a watch, except for use as sartorial accoutrement. in over 25 years. Ialso almost never use an alarm clock. I loath them.

I reckon it would be kinda cool to roam the earth like Kwai Chang Caine. After all I already have the haircut. The idea of doing good without realizing it, only taking up as much space as the width of my body demanded and learning more about myself with each and every adventure is alluring. That would be awesome, but these days I might just want to be more like Jules Winnfield. I wonder where I could get ahold of them sideburns.

I guess I am just itching for the warm weather to arrive. It's tough trying to get out of the house when the world is frozen and forbidding.

What are you jonesing for these days?

Sheeeeet! There's a great big world out here.

Look, I got to get this outta my head and be rid of it once and for all, so if you have lost your sense of humor or never had one in the first place then this is a good time to go visit a friend, psychologist or support group member.


I don't live in America.
For thousands of Blogger folks who don't either, this is an important point.
How many times must we be inundated with the American point of view only to be told that it was the only truth out there?
Truth is elusive. Nobody has been able to nail it down and describe it to me. Many have said they know it, yet it remains capricious for at another time and in a different circumstance one will be able to witness the fickleness it displays.

Right now President-Elect Barak Obama is the golden child of the press and for much of the American public. I find this somewhat disturbing because even though Sen. Obama soundly defeated Sen. McCain in electoral votes, he only garnered 53% of the popular vote, hardly the landslide victory the press would have us believe- seeing how he ran against an unpopular party, a doddering candidate whose foreign policy smacked of dangerous cold war ideologies and a running mate... well, I'll leave Sarah Palin out of this.

This is NOT sour grapes here, folks.
I like the fact that Barak Obama will be the Next president of the United States, but is it fair to call him the "Man of the Year" Winning an election is not a justified accomplishment. A presidential campaign is not won by a single warrior. Look up the word campaign. This election, like all of it's predecessors was won due to a combined effort of thousands of individuals.

Shall we determine this award by race? Has PEBO been awarded the title because of his ethnicity? That would be insulting to any intelligent human and, I believe, Barak Obama as well.
It is quite possible that even if the president-elect has demolished a racial barrier, he does not want to be known as a "black" president. Many people (not necessarily Americans) were hoping TIME would select someone that has actually contributed to society, world society instead of tossing it's integrity out the window in exchange for the ability to cash in on the entire farce. The list of potential candidates is not limited to Americans. Ought we appoint Michelle Obama Woman of the Year for becoming the First Lady? She too overcame considerable difficulties on the road to the white house.
Despite the premature actions of TIME, I do hope Obama graces the magazine's cover next year for exceptional leadership and statesmanship in these perilous times.
I also believe that Obama will do his very best to steer the great ship, America, on a true course, but to award him a title for something he has not yet accomplished is quite the same as putting the cart before the horse.

You have got to be kidding!

Can anybody explain to me how President-elect Obama became Time's Man of the year?

He hasn't done a fucking thing yet!
Get ready for more bread and circuses, America!

First amendment rules!

"ish"&"ness" &"kinda"

It's happening again.
It started about three days ago. Well, it might not have actually begun then, but that's when I first realized something was going on. The sound of my motorcycle engine was somewhat hollow. No that's not quite right. It wasn't just the sound. It was also the feel of the machine; the way it handled. My initial reaction was to blame it on the frostiness of the winter morning air and a little too much to drink the night before. Later on, after a miserable lecture where I was certain that every student was either half asleep or thoroughly confused, I found myself, coffee cup in hand, in front of my computer when the full force of the realization hit me. The shadow days had returned.
Like Robin Williams in Deconstructing Harry I had become fuzzy or somehow not altogether there. The kind of person who casts a faded shadow.
I wonder if you have experienced or can possible imagine what I am talking about?
The air around you is thin yet when you walk through it it covers and smothers like an old, scratchy wool blanket. The cup of coffee in my hand had the acrid flavor and bitterness yet was missing the aroma that makes a Cuban breakfast so appealing.The bristles on my toothbrush have lost their resiliency because they are eradicating plaque on a different existential plane.
I can't explain the way it feels to be standing in a room with other people and to not be able to smell them, feel their presence or hear their words. Voices now have that distant tinny sound like a radio with a damaged speaker.
There is no other way to describe it other than to say that I feel as if I am only half here. So I have to wonder, where is the other half? How did it steal the vibrancy of colors and the tartness of the apple. How do I entice it to return and stay? Tom Robbins once asked a similar question and his answer was to tempt the damned thing with Juniors cheesecake. I am no where near Brooklyn so I am in a bit of a fix.
Time to go for a walk.

Loving my bird

I rarely find myself wrestling with a topic for a post. My difficulty runs more along the lines of how to say a thing rather than actually finding something to talk about. As I have mentioned in the recent past, this web log is the only outlet I have to let my thoughts run free. In a way it's kind of similar to the casual conversations you have during the day with your neighbors, co- workers or the complete strangers you might happen to meet at the bus stop or train platform.
So I have to consider something:

How much of myself do I want to expose to the world?

There are limits to how much truth one is willing to tell and occasionally there are even stricter limits as to how much someone wants to hear. I have to occasionally remind students that when most folks ask, "How are you, today?" they are just being polite. They really don't want to hear about your stomach virus or erythrodermic psoriasis. Well, maybe they would, but only if you were Will Smith or Jenna Jameson.

On the other hand the truth can often be a harsh mistress, demanding from us acceptance or understanding of things we'd rather not hear. At the moment I don't want to get into an epistemological discussion of what exactly truth is nor is it germane to deduce whether or not subjectivity vs. objectivity influences the outcome of what we think. Yet if you believe that is an important point and feel uncomfortable with the nonclementure, you can substitute the word 'opinion' for 'truth' and save us all a lot of trouble.

Where does one draw the line of how much one ought to say to others and how much can we believe of what is being told to us everyday.

If you read the Misplaced Man then you must realize that I avoid almost all things political. I have my views, but I usually keep them to myself.
Unless you have been living in a cave you might have noticed the the world is having a slight monetary problem (That's right America your economic fuck up has affected more people than you realize.) it also is having a major problem with unchecked violence and a maelstrom of troubles that on the surface seem incurable.

Here in Japan, I viewed the presidential campaign with no small amount of mirth.
I think that many Japanese also sought relief from the hum drum of everyday life with the spectacle that American politics has become.

You now have a fabulous new president (elect) and he got there on a platform that advocated change. He is now paraphrasing FDR and looking less original and almost less sure of himself. This is what President-elect Obama said, when asked during an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes, what voters expect of him when he takes office.

'You know, they're not expecting miracles.'

From the sound of things I was thinking that not only was the American republic not only expecting miracles, they were praying for them. I hope that most of you are open to new cultures (not talking about yogurt, here) because the people who are bailing you out are looking like the folks you have loved to hate. I give you, Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud.
I ain't passing judgement. I am just telling you the facts. My truth. He owns five percent of Citibank because Americans can't afford to invest in their own country.

You ask for too much and you give too little.
You have all the best of everything and you toss it away for trinkets. The accumulated debt of American households is larger than that of many countries- 13 trillion dollars. That's a lot of moolah.

When you give thanks this year take the time to think about something more than cranberry sauce. Even when you got it bad, you still got it pretty good.

Guard, protect and cherish your land,
for there is no afterlife for a place that started out as Heaven.

Charles M. Russell, Montana, 1929.