Κυνόσαργες

Nobody tells you THIS about 'culture shock':

2012-02-03T22:59:00.000+09:00

If you're open-minded, you'll learn to hate your own people as much as the ones you went to live with.

It's my British (father), Japanese (residence) and Canadian (birth and most of life) experience that makes me despise most people of each; why does nobody love me?

Every international organization, from the UN to JET to the deracinated couplings in Roppongi, professional and freelance, put it out in their copy that the experience is a melodious choir of 'kumbaya'. Lies. The problem isn't that there aren't an equal number of good and thoughtful people in all cultures: there probably are so few in each. It's not because there aren't beautiful women, or men, to fall in love with wherever you go: there are (but obesity doesn't help, N.America). No. There's just two nagging problems that nobody wants to address: most people are ugly inside and out no matter where you go, and often that ugliness is manifested in ways unique to their culture.

I'm not going to enumerate the sins of assholes from the cultures I know well, because those of you who know these cultures know the sins as well as I do; if you don't you should learn on your own rather than let me bias you. The reason I put up this post is not because I feel guilty about some of what I have written about Japan, because I have written worse about Canada (and I feel no guilt at all for what I have said about the French fleeing Tokyo). Yet this post is motivated by guilt, atheist lapsed-Catholic that I am. I have linked an interesting blogger on my blog roll: a Japanese guy blogging in English, which I'll never have 'the stones' to do in his language. If he came to see my blog he'd think I hate Japanese people, unless he read further along to see I hate most Canadians. You see...

I'm not bigoted or racist: I just hate the idiots in each culture I've known.

Japan, fucking get over it.

2012-01-30T09:25:00.000+09:00

You have to learn English, or get left behind by every nation that gets this: S.Korea, China, India... Doesn't matter if it is 'hard' or 'difficult' or even unfair: English is the de facto international language and is going to be for a couple of generations, no matter what happens to America in the near term. Just about nobody's going to lean Japanese anymore unless they have family connections... or want to play at making them.

When this many kids don't want to learn English you need to get the birch out and start beating from the Amakudari down to the parents responsible.

More bad news, for Japan.

Whither Québec?

2012-01-28T14:57:00.002+09:00

Québec's separatist party, 'Le Parti Québécois', has finally got to what I have been saying in my posts linked in this clause: make separation about keeping Québec a state livable for the 99%. If only it weren't 'too little too late'. The PQ is finished, and any hope of getting Anglophone and Allophone, or even tolerant Francophone, votes is finished. No ethnic massacres happened in modern Québéc, and that is a grand success; however, there was once enough nationalism for many of Montréal's Jews to remove themselves to Toronto - for which you cannot blame anyone after an experience of 1940s Europe... It would also have been a fine thing if bigoted opinions were not easily heard from the areas where the PQ is strongest.

Besides, for the PQ to transition to post-nationalist, but keep the social-democratic flavour, would be disingenuous or impossible. It was founded more to sustain a Québécois identity than a Francophone one, and that transition looked disingenuous enough: to gain some immigrant votes. It also didn't work.

For Québec to retain its Francophone identity no longer looks difficult; for it to retain a semi-socialist one in a Neo-Con N.America does. My fantasy? A popular and separatist Québec NDP.

Quote of the day: 'Anzen Dai-Ichi!'

2012-01-24T08:04:00.002+09:00

“Please rest assured, and don’t flee Tokyo.”

"Japan is finished."

"And so it goes..."

Quote of the Day: Japanese TV and food.

2012-01-23T09:14:00.000+09:00

...colour and brightness turned up to 11, where all the guests have been given amphetamines, the screen is peppered with random subtitles, and every 10 seconds it cuts to a close-up shot of a bowl of noodles for no apparent reason. That's 90% of Japanese TV right there.

Me? I think Japanese 'talents' act drunk: the only time anyone's allowed to be or to have fun here.

Tatami Bullshit

2012-01-17T13:33:00.000+09:00

Stupid article on modern tatami (found here), is a fine example of the BS Japanese accept in their garden-shed housing. Everything is always about the 'special conditions' of the Japanese 'four seasons' as an excuse to have neither insulation nor adequate climate control. The 'Native-Wife', who's lived abroad and should know better, tries to feed me the line on Japanese humidity needing drafty buildings to avoid mold, to which I have a one-word answer: "Vancouver."

Back to the article's idiocy:

Some of these new types of tatami are even washable...

Imagine: a floor you can wash. It only took two-thousand years on these islands.

Material used for the core part of the tatami is not the usual straw but a plate made of wooden chips.

That would be particle-board. In Japan: walls, ceilings, roofs, floors, and now broadloom.

...excels at absorbing and retaining moisture as well as offering strong insulation benefits.

Let's see: making mold, and they considered insulation?!

“Kirari” washable tatami... are made entirely of synthetic resin...

'Resin' means plastic, you understand.

Lower-priced Chinese-made rush grass spreading in the market, cultivating rush grass is no longer as profitable for farmers.

Those evil Chinese again, trying to make a living without LDP vote-buying agricultural subsidies.

Consumers are paying closer attention to tatami, which keep rooms cool in summer and warm in winter.

Ha! Only if you heavily use your heating and air-conditioning, as most comfort escapes out the uninsulated roof, or the single-pane windows.

"Japan Probe, self-appointed lapdog of the Japanese establishment"

2012-01-14T20:36:00.003+09:00

Thank you, Ourmani, for that one, and 'Kamo', for reminding me. I could also go with, Japan Probe: the 'Charisma Man' of Japan-blogs.

The silly gits blocked me from making comments!

"The site has blocked you from posting new comments."

I can't see why. Well I can, but not for any reason that does them credit. Instead of jumping onside to defend the 'tradition' of Japanese whaling,* against the Sea Shepherd, I pointed out the latter's tactics were clever, whatever you thought of Sea Shepherd.

This site has become the Japan-apologist site, hasn't it? It ain't all sakura and maiko, you know. Look, from the point of view of the Sea Shepherd members, this is pure win. They don't care what you think; they don't care what I think; they don't care what Japan or Oz thinks; they care what people who will donate to them think, and doing it inside Australian waters was no accident.

To clarify the last part: so they would be subject to Australian laws, not Japanese, and if there is a legal case against them it would be in English, watched by English-language media.

Much was made of it being in international waters, which may be true, but I went with what the reports at the time said: Australian waters. It has fuck all to do with my point: like them or not, they got the media attention they want, and Japanese whaling doesn't. You can look up the thread if you want - I won't deign to give them a link - but those are the only two posts I made, and neither can be called flaming or trolling (maybe the part about being apologists, except it's true...). Because the Probe can only handle a love-in, or because I am moderating comments on this site so the twerp coming from there can't post drivel, I am blocked.

Well Probe, and twerp coming here to troll (who it's a good chance are one and the same), I know you love Japan because you finally got your pole waxed, but never forget:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. - Proverbs 17:28

'Yen for Living' just posted a great story about how Japanese whaling costs the government more than it earns. The meat's not popular, it makes you look archaic, it's just pork-barreling: see 'Japanese Razor' at the top of the blog.

*Don't think they were sailing factory-whaling fleets to Antarctica, and selling it to school lunches, pre-Meiji; nor had MacArthur then to organize it.

Quote of the Day: anything by Guthrie

2012-01-14T11:09:00.002+09:00

As through this life you travel, you meet some funny men
Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen
As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam
You'll never see an outlaw take a family from their home.

"Pretty Boy Floyd" - Woodie Guthrie

A good Bill Moyers article, with some good comments in the thread.

Conservatives view with suspicion anyone who doesn't cash in at every opportunity.
Come to think of it, they have the same problem with Christ.

It breaks my heart to see a state that produced Will Rogers and Woody Gutherie become corporatist (nearly every small business in the state is gone, especially local grocery stores)... It's discouraging to watch the state which produced the most astronauts become so anti-science. It's become a state of privileged and spoiled right wing yuppies in the suburbs, resentful racists in the working class parts of cities (the Aryan Youth Movement, Aryan Nation, and several major groups of skinheads all started in OKC and Tulsa), and ignorant know-nothingness and meth addictions in small towns.
Watch out America. Oklahoma is your future.

Something connected from my morning reading: the 'Occupy Movement' has fatally wounded the 'class warfare' taboo, and that is a fine thing.

"I am [Gaijin], God of Sex"

2012-01-12T15:34:00.000+09:00

Skip the first 55 seconds, if you choose.

In the movie, it works; in Japan, it works. Sometimes you are a "God of Sex", "just on the wrong continent, that's all." You see, nobody is a "God of Sex", until there's someone who makes you one... or a few who do... Nothing wrong with that, so long as everyone's consenting, and gets what they need. There are a few things to keep in mind, to keep you honest, whether you are a pale-face in Japan, or a European in N.America (this is especially addressed to the former):

- Japan is not a mystical Kurosawa-chambara wonderland, just because you're finally getting some
- You do not have to defend the factory-ship whaling 'tradition' (reinvigorated by MacArthur during the Occupation), because it's not traditional. Defend it or attack it on its merits, not because you got lucky last night.
- Don't pretend you love Sumo, Kabuki, or J-Pop (especially J-Pop), unless you really do, just because somebody Japanese got you off.
- If you are into anime, you've swallowed a corporate product, not 'the soul of Japan'.
- If you are into 'cute', and school girls, you are as sick here as there.
- Just because it doesn't take more than two dates here, doesn't mean 'Japan has a healthier attitude towards sex'. They have their own issues: Google "Japan sex", at your own risk.
- Although you are a "God of Sex" for some, they are not all into Gaijin; not all N.Americans are into Europeans, but enough to annoy me in my youth. Japanese who are not attracted to you are not '^%$#es' or '*&^%s' or 'racist': they just don't like you.
- Most of all, if you have become unusually sexually satisfied since you came to Japan, be thankful to your Japanese partner(s): you don't have to suck-up to everyone who shares their nationality.

Quote of the Day: National Infantilism

2012-01-10T21:06:00.000+09:00

"Mickey, Minnie greet new adults at Tokyo Disneyland"

Let me repeat: Mickey and Minnie fucking Mouse, great new 'adults' at Tokyo Disneyland. All you needed to know about modern urban Japan.

Poor sweetheart second from the left: her parents should have had her eyes looked at years ago...

Digressing, I figured out what puts me off about young Japanese men's hair.

It's not homophobia, because I'd be less bothered if they were out of the closet... Or I mean, less bothered if they looked like 'twinks' on purpose, not that there's anything wrong with 'twinks'...* It's not because I think anything more than a minute in front a mirror for a man, unless shaving or getting rid of blackheads, is grievous vanity, because they're as welcome to their vanity as I am to call them sissy. No, it's because they look like Phil Spector.

Not a look anyone should go for. (And 'Let it be... Naked' was a huge improvement over that 'Wall of Sound' shite.)

Addendum: more 'cute' alienating robot shite.

*Read it properly: it's not homophobia. Unfair to extreme 'metrosexuals'? Probably.

Republican Primaries

2012-01-08T18:08:00.000+09:00

Same can be said for members of Canada's 'Conservative Party'. Hell... all political parties: they have politicians in them.

Fuck Keigo

2012-01-03T12:28:00.000+09:00

Went to Tesco/Tsurukame to buy milk, coffee, eggs and yoghurt. Then realized they don't take credit card, and I had little cash. Fuck. That Japan's barely joined the civilized world with inconsistent ability to purchase by card is not even what annoyed me most with the clerk's answer:

ご利用頂けないんです...

Usage is not a potentiality...*

I'm a 6' white guy, who mumbled the question to the clerk "can I use this?" in the simplest Japanese, so the way he answers me is to use the arch and vague 'keigo' his managers require him to, because the Japanese find it polite, but a Gaijin has high odds of not understanding? It's not like there're a lot of Gaijin JSL speakers in my part of Tokyo, or anything? There are. He must deal with a dozen in a shift. Morons who speak 'keigo' to non-fluent Gaijin, politeness is not about honorific speech, it is about putting people at their ease: with second language speakers that is by making yourself easily understood, without patronizing them. It's this lack of cosmopolitanism that puts me off bothering to learn more Japanese (older post on same). Maybe it's just a case of something I've read elsewhere:

In Japan the people act like robots, and the robots like people.

Bear in mind this is Tokyo, not 'the sticks'. I've had better luck in 'the sticks'! Not with getting English, which I don't need**, but with getting straightforward Japanese. For the most part people will switch to 'Standard Japanese' for me, which they might scorn doing for a Kanto native, and good for them.

*I know there's no subject or object. Welcome to Japanese.
**Two years of university Japanese in my twenties, four years in Japan over two decades, level three in the proficiency test, if you must know. BFD.

How the 'yellow-fevered' see Japan

2012-01-02T18:01:00.000+09:00

I don't know where this is from, but this is how the 'yellow-fevered' see Japan.

Well buddy, just don't get married...

Kamogawa Sea World: Boso Concrete

2012-01-01T15:02:00.000+09:00

It's not possible to write this post without coming off as a précis of a 'Spike Japan' article, so I'll note the debt, and explain it away by the fact that posting about a visit to a Bubble-era resort could have no other outcome.

`Kamogawa Sea World' is not in such bad shape. It seems to get the trade to pay for upkeep that so many `haikyo' lacked. Credit has to be given for the location: an aquarium not only placed by the ocean, rather than something more Bubble-icious, but also in a town accessible from Tokyo and already with a summer surfing trade, on the Boso-Hanto. It makes you think the `business plan' mightn't have been lubricated with maiko gyrating on amakudari laps.

They've had the money to keep up with the paint, but don't let yourself think that everything is not made of reinforced concrete. This country uses so much, that although I do not know the names of any but the most common varieties of wood in Japanese, and certainly not of tile, gypsum-board, or insulation (does Japan have any?), the construction material I first learned vocabulary for was 鉄筋コンクリート: reinforced concrete. If most N.Americans should not be trusted with guns or their opinions, most Japanese should never be left unsupervised with concrete or loudspeakers.

PETA members may leave off criticism. Yes, there were dolphins and orca, penguins and seals, all in smaller environments more bland than I felt comfortable with; have you seen Japanese homes? Glib? Perhaps not. The Native-Wife can't stand-in for the psyche of her entire nation, but she's the most convenient for me to base my heuristics on. We did not agree on the trip, but with the macro view that my going or not wouldn't change the Japanese attitude to animal confinement, and the micro view that I have to live with this woman or pay far too much, I folded like a cheap newspaper. Though an admitted loser, I learned something from the confrontation: Japanese logic doesn't separate humans from the animal kingdom based on sentience, and often hardly at all. Pardon me? I tried to convince the Native-Wife that sentient animals should not be poorly confined, as it amounts to torture for them, as it does for a human. I do not mind the idea of eating animals for the most part, if not endangered, but confinement is an ongoing horror, and cannot be abided. She considered that differentiation of the animal kingdom speciesist, and wrapped up her justification at that. My `staircase wit' that we can also put humans in zoos in Japan would have been funnier, if an American airman had not been put on display, naked, in the Ueno Zoo...

Continuing the animal-confinement tour, we went to `Mother Farm'. This too gets lots of trade from the city, and has the money for keep-up. If you asked me why it bothers me less to have farm animals confined than wild, I have justifications that avoid mere custom or cuteness:
- they're long bred for it
- they don't survive wild
- the conditions at `Mother Farm', at least, far exceed those at the aquarium, or our apartment
- the steak was very good
No arguments, but the last, impressed the Native-Wife. Knowing their target-market, shopkeepers sell whale throughout the Boso-Hanto.

Boso does not get the trade that the other side of Tokyo gets: Hakone and Izu. It shares many of the Pacific charms of Izu, but has the disadvantage of being on the wrong side of Tokyo. Tokyo, like most northern hemisphere cities, has its money on its west side, because pollution blows to the hapless poor on its east (where we live). Hakone and Izu were destined to have more tourist trade, because more people with money could get to them without adding half a day traversing the city with the unwashed. Perhaps because it is cheaper, but certainly because it has decent breaks, Boso is well frequented by the Japanese surfer. Other than that it seems to survive by the inshore fishery, Japan's heavily subsidized and aging agricultural sector, and tourist attractions chosen by various Native-Wives.

Do I recommend a visit? The southern half of Boso is more treed and scenic than most of Kanto, and the eye needs a break from life in Tokyo, to keep any mental health. So yes, but only for the long-term resident. However, skip the tourist-attractions, and focus on visiting scenic spots by car, bicycle or motorbike. The trains stick to the coast, except for a dying streetcar line through the middle; and I know nothing about the buses. I do recommend the large Buddha at Nokogiriyama, or rather use it as an excuse to get a good view of the whole peninsula, Tokyo Bay, and the Miura-Hanto... on a better day than we had. The lost view redeemed by a sighting of three inoshishi.

New find: Japanese urban realism (fugly)

2011-12-28T12:00:00.000+09:00

I found a very cool Japan blog today. I have a great blog roll in my right-hand column, and recommend a look at each item on it: with the caveat that some should not be opened at work, or by the moralistic, because I believe you're adult enough to do your own censorship, or not. I won't say the blog is the best, or better than others, but will say it's an original.

FIXES

A lot like the excellent 'Spike Japan', minus the essays: Japanese decay of the built-environment. Lots of windblown concrete, rebar, and rust.

I'm interested in real-world urbanism, and you-and-I-who've-lived-here know that is what most of what we've lived in here looks like. Not like this.

Bite me, JNTO.

No, I will not meet your friend visiting Tokyo...

2011-12-26T14:14:00.001+09:00

... unless they are Japanese.

No, my story's not as interesting as the one in the picture, which would at least give me something to 'dine out on' for the decades I've got left. I wouldn't even tell the story if it was not so common: Gaijin wastes my time.

A mutual friend of twenty years asks me to meet up with this compatriot when he visits here. As a favour to her, of course, but it's not like most people are interesting, so I do not especially anticipate it. However, he asks for some advice travelling here and there, by email, and I am glad to spend some time giving him what information and opinions I have so he can make the best of it.

This morning, Boxing Day, we were meant to meet in Shimokitazawa just before lunch, which is a fifty minute ride from where I live. I get there; he's not. I text him, because it's not hard for a noob to get lost in a Japanese train station, and I get a response that he's slept in, and an apology. I have no time for apologies, giving them or receiving them. They are something both Japanese and Canadians do more often than brush their teeth. And as a 'lapsed Catholic', I don't believe in forgiveness... but I still believe in penance: 'Rem non spem querit amicus'*. If I'd done it to him, I'd be telling him dinner was on my tab. If not for his sake, but for the value of the friendship with our mutual friend.

So I can tell him all of that. I can tell him that a Japanese person would have made the appointment hung-over or not, which he likely was. I could point out that Japanese do not forget appointments, which is another possibility for him, and this largely endears their other compulsive behaviours. Except, I'm never going to see this guy again, and westerners will never listen to anything that attacks the myth of their own self-importance. He asked if we can meet later, at the end of his rambling apology. My answer: 'no'.

I'm a married guy with a kid, been sick for two days, and not in a mood to be dicked around. I don't know if he got the laconic answer because I couldn't be bothered (except I am writing all this...), I want to keep the mutual friend, or I'm just too tired, but better he got the short than the long answer.

*Deeds, not promises, make friendship. - Seneca
That is the full value of a year of university Latin.

'Peak oil': so what?

2011-12-18T18:24:00.000+09:00

You ever heard that canard that 'peak oil' would save us from ourselves? It won't. No, I'm here to wipe that smug off your bike-riding face.
- climate change is real, and even if you do not believe it is (like my 'bad-faith' oil-company relative) it still makes no sense to shit in your own sandbox
- speaking of sandboxes, that's why the ~~Albertan~~ Canadian Government has ditched the 'Kyoto Accord', that even China's committed to
- if oil is worth more, you're going to do more and more stupid things to get it, like drill in the Russian Arctic
- there's lots of coal to burn yet, or to turn into gasoline like Britain resorted to in WWII
- humans will burn anything: even the mud under their feet when they've used up the trees.

No, there are only a few ways to get us out of destroying the only biosphere we'll ever get:
- our extinction, from which surviving species will diversify and renew a different biosphere
- our near extinction, from any of many human threats, from war to disease
- much cheaper clean fuels, and better use of water, and of land (the least likely to work)
- much more expensive use of resources by having all 'externalities' built into the price (no, this is the least likely)
It should also be said that if we did not fight wars (40% of world GDP) nor allow our rentier classes to hold most of the wealth, we'd have much less than half the problem we have now. I know what we should burn!

The most likely scenario is the one that has faced all high-input empires: structural collapse due to resource depletion, followed by a collapse of population, followed by a millennial delay for forests and soils to rebound, followed by a repeat of the cycle.

Addendum: the Alberta scum ~~ruining~~ running my country ~~into the ground~~ have got even more stupid - they want Canadians to boycott Chiquita Bananas for boycotting tar-sand oil. The 'astroturf' oil-industry organization behind this is called 'EthicalOil.org', of course.

Blog-splitting: 'Everybody Hates a Tourist'.

2011-12-17T20:54:00.000+09:00

Not removing any posts from this blog, but I am going to split my output: this blog, and one better focused on cycling. Left and right columns are still under construction. There's nothing new on it: just the posts from this blog that have 'cycling' as a label. That way when I comment on cycling blogs, readers don't get traumatized by coming here; and instead of posting reasonable cycling information here to get ignored, I can put it over there... to be ignored.

A hell of a way to exercise 'sovereignty'.

2011-12-13T21:04:00.000+09:00

Canada the first nation to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol.

Hmmm... You think it's because 'our' government was bought and sold in Alberta?

Well done Canada, for making these two countries look classy!

China (what could the grey be?)

USA

So you think Japanese are conformist.

2011-12-09T21:40:00.001+09:00

What makes you think your culture's not?

I came home early from a party tonight, because I was enervated by the predictability of the foreign staff, who outnumber the local Japanese. In fact, the most interesting staff were those from a certain SE Asian Catholic archipelago-nation, who try much less hard to be 'individual' and come off the better for it.

The Anglophone staff are going to talk about: how much they drank, or where they are going on vacation, or (if women) how nobody will date them in Tokyo, or how crazy the Japanese are (matter of perspective). Not a tenth of them have an idea of their own, or even from a book rather than a TV show.

Walked out on good drink and food, and much younger women of various complexions, and am having more fun typing this. God, I am turning into a curmudgeon.

Bike lighting, with emphasis on winter and tail lights

2011-12-08T11:34:00.001+09:00

'Biking in a Big City' has put up a great post comparing AAA taillights. I have comments below that post, but I'll expend on them here. Note that all good lights now are LED, since they are bright and use little power; HID, incandescent and halogen are finished.

There are several questions that want answering about your bike lighting needs:
- urban or rural riding (city needs brighter)?
- how much night-riding are you really going to do?
- what are you willing to spend?
- what are the coldest temperatures you're going to ride in?

If you are an urban, fair-weather, short trip cyclist, your needs are simple: get a Planet Bike Turbo for the rear, and something with a white LED for the front. The PB Turbo even shows in sunlight, so run it if your route takes you through shadow or bad drivers: that is, anywhere. This set-up is cheap, reliable and removable: to avoid theft or to use on more than one bike. How bright is the Turbo? Bright! View the pictures and video at 'Biking in a Big City' to see.

I use both PB lights shown on the post at 'Biking in a Big City' on steady for urban night riding: flash is too annoying. Also nice the two PB lights use the same mount, which is nearly the same mount that the PB Sport Spot headlight uses. A very interchangeable system. The Sport Spot can also be headband or helmet mounted, but it is a be-seen light, so not bright enough to light up a road.

But what are you going to do about winter, if you ride in it? My experience matches the classic handbook, “Mountaineering, the Freedom of the Hills”: alkaline batteries crap out before 0C, and NiMH rechargeables not much later. I have run regular batteries, NiCd and NiMH rechargeables, and lithium, down to -30C. Lithium have the best tolerance to cold, then in order of best to worst: NiMH, NiCd and regular. At -30C you can only rely on lithium for taillights, but I have had a headlight lithium power pack mounted on my frame get too cold to put out power. Flashing also works better than steady in that cold. Perhaps because the batteries cannot put out the power for steady. More money than lithium batteries, a dynamo, or batteries kept inside your clothing (usually a headlamp), is the best set up for winter. A good dynamo, like the Schmidt SON shown below, or the cheaper Shimano ones, can drive about 300 lumens at speed. Both dynamos, and keeping working batteries in pockets, are impractical for tail lights, but practical for front lights.

For randonneuring or other rural night riding, any tail light on flash should be good enough to be seen, or on steady not to dazzle other cyclists. I’d use the Turbo for randonneuring, because a pair of AAA lithium batteries would get you through the night.

Then there is Reelight. No batteries. A ghetto-dynamo: powered off of spoke-mounted magnets. Only a be-seen light, but clever. Never tried them myself. Hmm... wonder why nobody's made a more powerful version so you could just use one of these to drive a front light, rather than have to use a dynamo hub? Oh, they have, but even the manky 'Magtenlight' is putting out only 100 lumens. I want triple.

*With 'HID' on this post I kept getting spam commercial comments. Comments on this post closed because of it. Not even about bike HID, but for cars. Damn, design a better spam-bot, assholes.

Ignorance is 'blue-balls'.

2011-12-07T12:16:00.001+09:00

Hey religious bigots, the 'separation of church and state' stops the state taking your gay children from homes where you victimize them, even by them having to hide their identity. It also allows you to say to them that all the accurate sex-education they get is wrong, and to try to keep your children from being sexual adolescents and to try to stop them having sex: instead leading to a higher teen pregnancy rate among American evangelicals than the rest of the American population; and higher than the lowest rate, in sex-positive Holland. It should not allow you to fuck up the education my kid gets in school, but though politicians and the public are pussies and give in to you, it will not fuck up the education he'll get in my home.

You haven't done enough damage to my HS years you need to mess with my kid's? Catholic girls that would let you do anything at all to them, except what would help a poor teenage boy get off? I admit life-long issues with trusting females' coupling motives, kilts and stockings, thanks to you freaks.

Just because you've no idea how to get each other off is no reason to make the rest of us as miserable.

'SAD' Kenyan runner in Alaska

2011-12-07T10:13:00.001+09:00

Sounds like this poor bastard got Seasonal Affective Disorder, and went out for the fateful run to help it, consciously or not. Anyone else think it's a dumbassed idea to give a scholarship to someone from the 1st parallel at the 61st parallel? Maybe someone should have thought about the consequences of that after his buddy committed suicide? You wouldn't look into contributing factors? A few lamps couldn't have hurt.

As for me, it's only my morning bike rides that gets me out of bed through the winter, at the 43rd and 35th parallels.

Japan: wise the fuck up.

2011-12-06T19:46:00.000+09:00

So little has changed since I first visited Japan in '93, except it's shabbier. I like the place, but fuck...

My brother tried to shop for a gift for the hybrid using Amazon Japan's and Rakuten's English pages, on my following advice:

You can use Amazon Japan, or the J. equivalent: Rakuten. Both have English websites, though they do tend to give you a J. page before billing.

Which prompted the reply I expected:

So, we looked at Amazon and Rakuten, in a vain attempt to buy him something locally, but gave up quickly...

To which I answered:

I don't know what it is with Japan's English customer service and marketing... They mean well, but have the wrong people at the front desk, or IT. The fluent staff member who was abroad in school or university is never put there, instead someone who took some English classes within Japan. Little better in twenty years. Why should they have a seamless English website for Amazon or Rakuten? It's only millions of dollars lost when people sign out in frustration. It's not like English is the international default language...

But if you want to hear me go on how lame Japan is at ESL, for its economic status, look at those links in this sentence. Too bad they have not realized twenty years after 'The Bubble' that: those days are never coming back, and nobody will do business on your peculiar terms anymore.

This post is about what has not changed in the eighteen years since I first came:
- The status of women is still the worst in modern nations, apart from Korea (but they do everything like Japan, a few decades later). Not like Japanese women take it anymore, nor will they rebel openly: instead they screw foreigners or nobody at all (see marriage and birth rates). We wouldn't want to accuse Japanese society of passive-aggression, of course.
- Pedestrians still can't walk. How can a whole society not know how to walk?! How do they even get to work doddering around in shoes sized for an older sibling? You're not going to grow into them, at fifty.
- Middle aged men still care more about their cars than their daughter's virtue. I've seen Japanese men go apeshit after cutting me off, when I punched a body panel. Found inside their daughter's wet groin? They'd just leave the room or take video.
- More subway lines in Tokyo; no more room than before. Despite a job shortage. Don't understand this. Are people dressing for work and riding aimlessly?
- Absurd real estate prices have still not collapsed enough from 'The Bubble'. Business centre or not, given the size, shite economy and (lack of) quality, prices should be lower than even a third-tier city like Toronto.
- Domestic hotels cannot get their act together for native or foreign guests, even after half of them have gone bankrupt since 'The Bubble', as it is a better deal to go to Hawaii, Whistler or Guam. Pricing per person? Still?
- Still cannot get a decent breakfast (read British or American), even in a proper hotel.
- Still surprised that non-Japanese can speak it. Even if they have lived here a decade. Even if they speak it as poorly as me. Even though they watch 'pet-Gaijin' on TV every night.
- Still hire from 'elite universities'. Even though all Japanese know nobody studies at university, and the only way to give up life enough to get in is be autistic. Even though no research comes out of Japan unless it is related to sex-bots. Even though the rest of the world is kicking your ass.
- Spend a fortune on the sex trade, but no time on how to date each other. It's not hard to make a Japanese girlfriend happy (a wife on the other hand...).
- Men still look like girls, and yet are homophobic.

I could do this all day.

Do not fuck with my coffee, or my right of way.

2011-12-04T15:00:00.000+09:00

Go here for endless archives of similar.

Masao Yoshida, stone-cold hero.

2011-12-01T16:26:00.000+09:00

The head of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant... told workers to disregard Tepco's order to stop injecting seawater into a reactor soon after the crisis erupted in March [saving Japan's ass!], according to government and other sources.

Read the rest here.

PM Kan admitted in an interview that the discussion about a full evacuation of Tokyo had begun. Yoshida and the Tokyo Hyper Rescue Squad (with balls that big, you can call yourself whatever the fuck you want!) made this avoidable. Tokyo is Japan: the rest are regions. The rest can be nice, but government, business, entertainment... all of it is centred in Tokyo. After a two-decade recession this country could not have picked itself up after that kind of a beat down. Japan would have a N.Korean economy, because everyone with options would get out, leaving only the monolingual and ancient.

Here's the subtext:
- most Japanese cannot crisis-manage even if their own life is on the line (Fukushima, not changing their codes or tactics for all of WWII...)
- Japan elevates the most studied, not the most capable
- there is no sense of civic-responsibility individually, corporately, or in bureaucracies
- the power company did not communicate accurately to the bureaucracy, which did not communicate accurately to the Prime Minister's Office
- the power company was willing to put all of Tohoku and Kanto (Tokyo) at risk to try to save one plant already near the end of its working life, already damaged beyond repair
- none of the brass were on sight, at risk, or to asses the situation
- the power company CEO was missing for the first several days of the crisis
- personal connections are how anything gets done (Yoshida was a graduate of the same university as then PM Kan)
- the power company is all over the place about what kind of ~~radiation~~ sickness he has
- the tool in charge of the power company's nuclear plants is taking over for Yoshida ~~instead of gouging out his own eyes~~

Yoshida stood against all of that and did the right thing. Whether or not his illness is related to radiation, there is no reward large enough. In jest, Socrates wanted Athens to pay for his meals. I'd be happy for my taxes to go towards a sinecure for him, and every single member of his family, for a few generations. After all, how many centuries would it have taken for ten prefectures to become inhabitable again?

Favourite Posts

2011-12-01T09:28:00.000+09:00

I'd be flattered if readers would look at my favourite posts, 'Read my best', in the left column. Most recent are at the top, but the earlier ones at the bottom have had the fewest readers, from when this blog had an even smaller following than now. I'll be adding more to this later, with more recent at the top once more.

Excuse my insanity.

2011-11-30T17:22:00.000+09:00

This blog is under resurrection/facelift. I appreciate the comments I have recently got, and I have given it better thought. I am not closing the blog, but the renovation is going to be messy. Bear with me, please.

Have I mentioned the amount of bi-polar disorder in my family?

As for the Ancient Greek and Latin: sure it's pretentious, but I have to do something with my long-ago BA, 'Major in Philosophy', or it was a complete waste of time... (!). If you care, there's Google. If not, I think unknown script looks cool: my favourite is Korean, which no, I can't read.

Thank you, and goodbye.

2011-11-29T16:37:00.000+09:00

The year this blog has been active has been an interesting experience, and I have had some great communication, but alas... the blog doesn't do what I want it to do anymore. I wanted to play with writing about the things I know and the thoughts I have, and now that I have done that for a year, I want to write more seriously, and in longer format. My longer format pieces have got less readership than the shorter, so this will be blog-suicide. I've had a naive dream of being a 'writer': trying to start online should soon kill that.

I'd love to tell you more about my plans, but since my new blog may include my full identity, whereas this one does not, I am going to be more judicious in how I use my identity: here I have not, and need to disassociate from it. 'Mr.S.' may also no longer be commenting on your blog. Thank you for that opportunity. I'll still be reading yours, if I have before, and I may comment under a new name. I will not admit any connection between the two names, of course.

Thank you to all of my readers, and especially to those who have commented with their blog linked. The latter are, in no preferential order:
- Will
- Chris
- BiggerInJapan
- kamo
- Derek
- angrygaijin
- Medea
- Brian
- sixmats
- octopus
- Martin
- jay@newzjapan
- Blue Shoe
- Our Man in Abiko
- loneleeplanet
- Robbie

Keep writing.

'What's old is new', or not?

2011-11-24T15:58:00.000+09:00

Old: Brooks Titanium Swallow, 307g, $400 US. More expensive, requires upkeep, weather-sensitive, heavier; time-tested and classic.

New: Fizik Kurve, 220g, over $200 US. Cheaper, low-maintenance, weather-resistant, lighter; unproven and soon dated.

I own the top one*, but have never had my hands on the bottom. The Fizik has copied the rail-suspension system of Brooks et al. but in aluminum and plastic (... carbon-composite). It may be great, or not, but the points of comparison above stand. It's certainly clever, but I am a fan of proven and older technologies, as in an earlier post.

*Went to get a Brooks for my road bike a few years back. Was looking at a $200 CAD 'Professional' at Curbside. Shop-dude brings down the $500 CAD 'Swallow' to ask me if I'm interested. I tell him that's what I want, but there's no way I can afford to spend that while saving for a wedding ring.

It's on sale for half-price.

Here's my credit card...

Quote of the Day (naïve version): "Why do police use pepper spray?"

2011-11-23T16:50:00.000+09:00

From Wired.

Departmental recommendations against using pepper spray on nonviolent arrestees may be needed.

Ya think?

UC Davis Chancellor Katehi's Walk of Shame.

2011-11-22T22:47:00.000+09:00

Hundreds of silent students make UC Davis chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi take the 'walk of shame' to her car. Powerful.

I'd feel pity for her being the scapegoat*, until I read her self-justification for letting lose the campus pigs with pepper-spray. Read it if you'd like, but I can paraphrase: it's not my fault, the kids brought it on themselves, some of them weren't even 'one of us'.

We have to scorn the cops, as I already posted. Also filth like her. The first message we give the rest of the 99% is that the cops, and the 1% who run them, do not rule by our consent, but by violence. The cops and the 'elites' don't care, but we care, and they'll care when too few of us believe in them to run their system. Violent or peaceful, that's how a revolution is won. She ought to thank whatever she believes in that no kid suffocated on that spray. It will happen yet, and people are pissed-off already. Going to be ugly.

Quite a number of people are cancelling employment, or lectures at UC Davis, or speaking out as faculty about their own abuse by her cops, and putting it on her. Hope the door doesn't hit her too hard in the ass on her way out, because the university board's going to scapegoat her to try to keep it from sticking to them. Good luck with that, cowards.

*No, no pity. Seems like this is in character (link sent in comments below). %$#@ deserves whatever she gets.

"Bad decisions make great stories."

2011-11-22T13:31:00.000+09:00

Most of the following links from Treadly, whose blog has risen from the dead.

Seattle Randonneurs Trailer from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

Ha, I think that should be the motto for Chris' blog. Has nothing to do with bicycling, but will tell you more things about the Japanese and Gaijin than you expected to learn.

Returning to the theme of the video, I have just about got my ride set up for randonneuring, which I will display when done, explain, etc. 100km rides tend to start in January here in Kanto, then move on to 200km, then 400, 600, and the 1200km ride in Hokkaido... There's an elegance in long distance riding, which I don't see in racing or in mountain biking; those sports have their own pleasures, but competing against strangers and hopping logs is not elegant - if otherwise cool.

I have my own take on this, but here's another good one on staying alive riding in traffic. It would help if drivers would put the fucking phone down, and the Blackberry outage proves it. And if you don't like red-light cameras, maybe it's because you're too stupid to slow the fuck down! Racing is cool, on a track.

Back to the title, I've had a few bad decisions turn into great stories (but nothing on Chris!):
- hiking in a typhoon
- hiking at night in the mountains without any light, in clouds, during a new moon, along a cliff
- riding over two 1500m passes, over 160km, on a crap bike
- taking a dart on the bridge of my nose
- putting a few cars in ditches in my youth (which is how I know fast drivers are immature)
- winter camping, several times, in Canada
- winter riding in Toronto
- crossing 5km of very bad water on Georgian Bay in the cold, without a wet or dry-suit, alone in a kayak, with a leaky spray-skirt, without anyone to rescue me from hypothermia if I had fallen over... and I still don't know how to roll (this probably the most stupid and luckiest to survive)
- a loud, unintentional full chiropractic adjustment in a bad landing during Aikido that made three dozen people look to see if I'd ever walk again. Never felt better
- unprotected sex with an ovulating nutter... Wait, that's my wife!

Yeah, pretty mild. What have you got?

Blog Anniversary: 30 240 views; 180 posts, big and small.

2011-11-21T15:43:00.000+09:00

More for my own sake, because I don't know how many readers I have: this is what my blog has got in a year.

Most popular posts: I should hate-on Canada more.

Referring sites and keywords: Google hits mean shit, but thank you to the others; Canada makes people angry as fuck.

Overview: wish my popularity did not spike with tragedy.

Some day someone's going to ask...

2011-11-20T20:31:00.000+09:00

why they've been taking 'a knife to a gun fight.' Just saying.

You want a link to ten scenes of gratuitous police violence, for which none of the fucks will be charged? Kind of makes you wonder if they've not been paid to terrorize...

Or a mercenary.

東大 Blows

2011-11-20T18:09:00.000+09:00

Went out with the native-wife and two older friends of hers last night for bits of endangered fish: no whale. The husband of the pair is mid-fifties, speaks English pretty well,* and is the VP for a couple of countries of a Japanese automobile-related company you've never heard of. He went to a mid-tier university, from a middle-class family, and worked his way to where he is.

A couple of tokkuri in#, he asks me about education. Well, I am a teacher: I've taught elementary in Canada, and been a body in a Japanese JHS: AET. He asks me what I think of Japan compared to Canada. Now I'm in the position of being critical of my host's country, but since he'd lived in mine for a few years, and he's damned smart, I can't dick around with him either. So what do I do? I told him that my opinion may not match his, and it certainly doesn't match my own wife's, but here it is anyway.

Your elementary is better, but your junior and high school doesn't cut it. You teach your kids far more information in elementary than we do, but you don't teach them to think later on. That's no problem in elementary, because kids don't know anything yet, so how can they have a real opinion, and we're wrong about that in the West. In JHS and HS, they need to think, not memorize. Especially now that you can get information immediately, why bother to memorize: learn to find it and use it.

He smiled at me and said, "That's what I think, too." He also told me that their Tokyo University and Waseda graduates were smart enough, but useless: always asking what they should do - never thinking on their own. I have said this plenty on my blog; I have said this plenty to my native-wife; damn it was good to have him tell her this! She has to listen to him, the husband of her senpai. Japan's problem is those 'elite-university' idiots run the country, but that is little different than the 'Ivy League.'

*... a lot better than my Japanese, so I'm no position to criticize.
# I will always recommend good sake/nihon-shu over anything else for a less painful hangover, and warn you off bad sake for the worst. Do not even consider shochu, and nobody but Okinawans will drink awamori.

Scorn the Collaborators: Start with 'The Filth'

2011-11-20T11:07:00.000+09:00

My best friend from my twenties in Japan became the top-spook for CSIS (Canada's low-rent branch of the CIA/NSA) in a Muslim country. I won't speak with him anymore. I gave him the courtesy of telling him that it wasn't possible that his position accords with any understanding of democracy or decency, or even Canadian sovereignty or good state-craft, but I blocked him from making any response. In his position, what would he be allowed to say that wasn't part of the script, and even if he were allowed, how could he square the cognitive dissonance considering himself decent and having any part in getting people sent for torture?*

I have offended mutual friends, but that says more about them than me. This article points to some better information on the Milgram Experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment, which everyone needs to be aware of if they have to live among humans: in short, your 'neighbour' would send you to Dachau. It's self-serving for me to quote this, but it's no less correct:

In “When Groups are Wrong and Deviants are Right,” published last year in The European Journal of Social Psychology, Australian academics argue that group members are often hostile to people who buck conformity, even if the members later agree with the dissenter.

Even when, say, a whistle-blower may prove to be correct, she is not always admired or accepted back into the fold, the academics found. Rather, the group may still feel angry that the whistle-blower damaged its cohesion.

Yes, high school never ends.

It often seems there's nothing to do about the injustice in the world: your power is too small, and there are too few who would join you. It's still true, for the most part, though the 'Occupy' movement has some traction. Even if it gets bigger, expect it to be co-opted by the same people who brought our society to this, or taken over by the usual manqué-elite. Who else has the time and the influence? No, there are two things we can do right now, no matter what your opinions are on 'a diversity of tactics': not collaborate, and scorn the collaborators you know. In the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, as well as popular revolt, the first step is to refuse to collaborate, and it is a powerful one: the machine requires collaboration. It's also the message of the Gospels.** It is also the basis of the best question I heard a priest ask his congregation: we all 'know' we would have protected Jews and fought the Nazis - what have you done to 'know' you are better than the majority of Germans?

I'm fully aware you can't be absolute about it. I know I am enmeshed with some people who've made choices I am wary of, such as family members who worked for Wall Street companies, and that it's not possible to live in our economy without being fouled; however, aim for the biggest 'low-hanging fruit'. I have. It's nearly useless to scorn 'the 1%', because you can't reach them. Scorn their agents, because they are nothing without the dupes who work for them, against their own larger interests. Remember Europe, 1989.

As a start, we should scorn all police. If you have a friend or family member who is a cop, cut them out of your life. Extreme? Not at all. You may think that only 'a few bad apples' pepper spray (torture) non-violent demonstrators, including 84 year old women, and in a limited way you are correct. But let me ask you this, when such 'bad apples' remove their badges and put on masks to get away with violence on unarmed people, or run their own drug and prostitution rings, how many of their colleagues will testify against them? Eh? Fuck them all.

Maybe not fuck them all. There are a couple of cops who grew a conscience after they retired, and now speak up (how much nicer if they had done so before). The onus is on any cop you know to prove himself. By virtue of association, they are guilty, until proven innocent.

*I am against torture, capital punishment and extra-judicial sentencing for various reasons, but the most important come in this order:
- States have shown they cannot be trusted with these powers
- agents of the State too often nab the wrong person, especially if their complexion is darker than the agents'
- torture and capital punishment demean the perpetrators of it, even should the subject have earned it
- if someone's guilty, charge them on the evidence; if you won't (Bin Laden) it's because you are afraid of what they may say
- torture gets bad intelligence
- I am happy to pay to quarantine murderers, rapists, etc. for the entirety of their lives - I see no reason to sink to their level
- the expense argument is BS - it's far cheaper to incarcerate someone for life than to put them on death row

**I am no Christian, but was raised a Catholic: a church so twisted to operate in contradiction to the message of its messiah.

Quote of the Day: I couldn't resist this.

2011-11-18T16:13:00.000+09:00

New Kate Bush album! And she's having sex with a snowman? Sounds like Christmas to me!

- organicprankster on guardian.co.uk

Oh, look! Another Fucking 'Chicken-Hawk'!

2011-11-15T13:17:00.000+09:00

What an ass Frank Miller is. Read 'The Guardian' piece on how he slandered the Occupy movement, and consider that his blood-soaked homoerotic comic strips are uninformed by any risk or sacrifice on his part.

In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas' basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft. Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.

Despite all the acclaim he got for 'Sin City' and '300', I thought that they were pretty typical 'torture porn'. 'The Dark Knight Returns' I'll give him credit for, but... some people are corrupted by success, aren't they? He ain't no Alan Moore, in politics or in talent.

Guardian has commented well.

Benediction

2011-11-13T20:49:00.000+09:00

I don't know if the word is meaningful to me as an aetheist-Catholic*, or it's more scathing use in Lu Xun's 'Benediction', which left me a lasting impression. However little I believe in god+, there are moments where you are blessed. Since we have so much to complain about, I'll share one of mine. One of them that keeps me from jumping in front of a train (the main one, my wife and child). Be forewarned of sappiness. You look at the world differently with a kid.

I'm waiting for the native-wife to come out of an Ueno Starbucks with our coffees, but there must be a line, because I'm spending about ten minutes keeping the kid happy by tickling him, and acting like an ass. He's a year-and-a-half, but he belly-laughs. He's also cute, or I should say: Japanese think he's cute because he's a fair, big-eyed, half; I think he's cute because he's mine. A well-presented Japanese couple comes out of the same shop: she's close to forty, him more to fifty. She's as big as the picture. She looks down at us where I'm crouched with him and smiles, and reflexively puts her hand on her belly; he smiles at her, and puts his hand on her back to help her down the stairs.

For once, I did not feel like a Gaijin with a cute half, getting attention. I felt their happiness at their late, unexpected, chance for a baby.

*Because like Judaism, you never really leave.
+Not at all.

Quote of the Day: Veteran at Occupy

2011-11-13T14:09:00.000+09:00

I went and fought for capitalism and that's why I'm now a Marxist.
- Army Specialist Jerry Bordeleau

Fucking the vets might turn out to be the biggest mistake the 1% made. Politicizing them would be the biggest success the Occupy movement can make. I'm no Marxist, though that dude's earned the right to his opinion. Enjoying reading about 'Wobblies' pamphlets assailable there: one union versus all the corporations is the way to punch above your individual weight class.

Quote of the Day: you can't do violence to an object - that's vandalism.

2011-11-10T13:24:00.000+09:00

Property damage is not violence... The reality was, no cops got hurt. It looks like more than it was. They were just burning shit in the street. - 'Spencer'

Sorry this blog is going political (and losing the Japan and bicycle posts),

2011-11-09T14:18:00.000+09:00

but times are fucked up.

Good god, just days ago I wrote this comment:

Is this crap about Iran the new distraction? Well-timed to distract against a citizen's movement? Iran, at best, is Iraq's problem. They are a nuisance, but not an existential threat, to countries without a shared border: Israel.

If we are lucky, the 1% has lost the plot; if we are unlucky they'll resort to fascism to get it back. At a certain point they may decide if they don't enslave us, they'll lose it all. If they make that choice... the rest of us have all the authority we need

And so it comes to this:

Yet alarmingly, the assumption that Obama would never be so dumb as to start another Middle East war [Iran] is questioned.

Just what American money, military, or public consensus is still up to fighting strength to do that? And 'nuclear proliferation'... how is it the purview of the old nuclear states under international law to have the authority to police emerging nuclear states? Besides, we're looking at it the wrong way round. MAD works (until it doesn't...)! America never directly went to war with the USSR, China, or North Korea. Hmm... Not my preferred version of peace, but in this world I'll take what I can get.

Quote of the Day: 'self-attribution fallacy'.

2011-11-08T09:46:00.000+09:00

Been saying this for years...

If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.

documentary website

And in Oakland it looks like the police have been instructed to bring in les agents provocateurs.

Quote of the Day: Tiabbi on Wall Street's 'Noble Lie'

2011-11-05T19:06:00.000+09:00

Noble Lie?

Were there a lot of people who wouldn’t have gotten homes twenty or thirty years ago who are now in foreclosure thanks to government efforts to make mortgages more available? Sure – no question.

But did any of that have anything at all to do with the explosion of subprime home lending that caused the gigantic speculative bubble of the mid-2000s, or the crash that followed?

Not even slightly. The whole premise is preposterous. And Mike Bloomberg knows it.

In order for this vision of history to be true, one would have to imagine that all of these banks were dragged, kicking and screaming, to the altar of home lending, forced against their will to create huge volumes of home loans for unqualified borrowers.

In fact, just the opposite was true. This was an orgiastic stampede of lending, undertaken with something very like bloodlust. Far from being dragged into poor neighborhoods and forced to give out home loans to jobless black folk, companies like Countrywide and New Century charged into suburbs and exurbs from coast to coast with the enthusiasm of Rwandan machete mobs, looking to create as many loans as they could.

Sleep now in the fire- Wall Street - Rage Against the Machine
- Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

Quote of the Day II: pissed off, weapons-trained, 99%ers

2011-11-02T22:17:00.000+09:00

Here's a thoughtful quotation:

2nd time I’ve fought for my country. 1st time I’ve known my enemy.

Throwing grenades at a vet... really fucking stupid. Now there's a group called "US Veterans of the 99%".

Addendum: fucking cops busted the spleen of another vet in Oakland, and left him on the floor of a cell for hours. Lucky he's not dead, for the vet and their legal department. Wait... 'the filth' never get charged. You'd need a pig to tell the truth about another.

Been a long time coming...

2011-11-02T21:49:00.000+09:00

Fuck yes.

And it looks like the mercenaries are getting ready to switch sides.

Quote of the Day: Glen Greenwald on Washington.

2011-11-02T20:46:00.000+09:00

"In this world, it is perfectly fine to say that a president is inept or even somewhat corrupt. A titillating, tawdry sex scandal, such as the Bill Clinton brouhaha, can be fun, even desirable as a way of keeping entertainment levels high. Such revelations are all just part of the political cycle. But to acknowledge that our highest political officials are felons (which is what people are, by definition, who break our laws) or war criminals (which is what people are, by definition, who violate the laws of war) is to threaten the system of power, and that is unthinkable. Above all else, media figures are desperate to maintain the current power structure, as it is their role within it that provides them with prominence, wealth, and self-esteem. Their prime mandate then becomes protecting and defending Washington, which means attacking anyone who would dare suggest that the government has been criminal at its core." (my bolds and underlines - Mr.S.)

DRASTIC THE BAGGAGE

2011-11-01T20:36:00.000+09:00

That's how I feel most days.

Link Dump: "the importance of protests".

2011-10-31T21:09:00.000+09:00

The importance of protests is to put fear back in the oligarchy, which we'd forgotten. However, as Vollman pointed out in his work, 'Rising Up and Rising Down', which you really had better read*, the oligarchy turns to your non-violent wing when they fear your violent wing: IRA, Sinn Fein;Weathermen and the Panthers, Civil Rights Movement; Ghandi was better than another 'Black Hole of Calcutta'.

Am I advocating violence? I wonder.** We'd be stupid not to be thinking hard. After all, the '1%' already perpetrated a coup on our backs. Here's another non-violent step to put it on their backs. Here's a working 'Declaration of Independence'. Here's an aging veteran of the same sort of thing in the sixties we should even listen to, despite being a boomer, as he owns up to the greater seriousness of these occupiers. The '1%' have perpetrated incalculable violence. It's their responsibility to find a way to avert it.

Interesting times. Can't say I could join the camp, but if I were in a politically engaged country, unlike Borg-Japan, I'd be taking down supplies. Then again, their disparity is nothing on ours. Maybe I'll double check someone isn't doing something in Tokyo...

*Yes, I read the abridged version.
**Unlike Derek Jensen's interminable 'Endgame', I won't coyly hint people should, say, blow up dams for me (in his case), unless I too am prepared to put myself on the line.

Quote of the Day: 'Occupy London' at St. Paul's II

2011-10-30T22:15:00.000+09:00

"I'd like to see the bishops go out and wash the feet of the protestors. I mean, imagine if they actually fucking did that. What a fucking story that would be." - blinkyblinkyblinky

Me, a lapsed-Catholic, son of an Anglican to Catholic convert, is just loving this shit.

These links show this is getting better, and better and better and better!

Canada has the highest social justice of English countries: thanks to the province that's not English.

2011-10-30T20:45:00.000+09:00

Why would I claim both that Canada has the highest social justice of English countries, and that it is thanks to Quebec? What does it have to do with this picture of what our '1%' did to the Royal Ontario Museum? Bear with me.

Salon had an article which discussed a study done comparing 'wealthy' states around the world. Of the five English countries, they come out in this order: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Britain and... "America, Fuck yeah!" I won't bother to pile on the US. Too easy. All of the English countries come out poorly against Western and Northern Europe, and not even that well compared to some countries that got out of the 'Iron Curtain' just twenty-odd years ago.

What's so great about Canada? Er, what makes Canada mediocre, making it so much better than the other English countries? Quebec. Name a progressive issue that makes Canada look good in its neighbourhood, and it's not thanks to the Anglos: thank Quebec. Gay tolerance? A decade ahead. Turning away from religion? Maybe two decades. Subsidized daycare? Can't say, as Quebec's has had it for a while, and the rest of us are waiting. Here in Tokyo I just read they're still at it: fighting our conservative national gov't to get guns registered. What ever you think about guns, only an ass thinks they're better not registered, or can imagine going the way of the worst fly-over States on guns will have any other result than the same it has had there: more dead. It strikes a real nerve in Quebec, as this happened during the years I was at McGill.

You see, when you are a minority, as the French are even in Canada, you believe your society has some meaning: you believe in society at all. In the English countries, we don't. Well, many of us do, but none of us have power, or get to be heard, until just recently: Occupy Wall Street, and the other cities. Toronto is still run by its '1%', and badly!

A few years back the toffs on the board of the main museum got it into their heads that what would make Toronto a 'destination-city', and like NY (please.. and please fuck off and die, Toronto) would be to get a 'star architect' to do a piece of stunt-architecture, which Liebeskind was only too happy to dial-in. It reminds me of nothing less than Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil', but there's no accounting for taste.

Not only did many people hate it as much as me; but 'the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal' is named after a member of the '1%' who got his money in some... manner; the damn thing had to be made out of siding instead of glass (you know like a fucking crystal might be) because they couldn't engineer it, not to mention it would have cooked the exhibits; the spaces inside are full of unusable acute angles; they had a fight with the city because they did not account for it extending into the airspace over the public sidewalk; and finally, they had to double the entrance fees to this public museum, because it cost a fortune. Did the '1%', even Mr. Lee-Chin, have to swallow the costs? Of course not, that's not how corporate naming works. It doesn't pay for much more than the stationery.

Sure, tying the themes of this post together is a bit of a stretch, but so was the idea they could hose Torontonians and the visitors to the museum with this carbuncle at a premium, and still have a customer base. They just had to slash the prices, after a couple of years. And by the way, Toronto still ain't no NY (bloody hell).

Every ruling class gets faced with a choice:

2011-10-28T16:45:00.000+09:00

Negotiate, or be given terms that are final.

You see, '1%', you fucked up badly. You had the people drugged by the media you control, and you bought them off with shiny electronics and Internet distractions, and seduced them with ~~oil wars~~ 'just wars', but you should have considered that once they saw Arab peoples use these toys to communicate and engage, your 99% would use them against you also. No cops can be sent to assault a crowd without getting posted. No 'mainstream' pundit in a suit that costs my month's gross can plausibly belittle the People anymore. Nobody's going to turn off Twitter, Google, Facebook and the like, much less the whole Internet, because that's when you show you have lost. And more of the '99%' are beginning to learn what the 99% in E.Europe learned in 1989: state power doesn't exist if we say so.

So, here's what you don't do: move jacked-up cops against the protesters. Most of them are white, and young (you know, like voters' kids and grandkids...), and some are even war vets who've risked far more 'for their country' than any 'chicken-hawk' pundit or politician: get well, Scott Olsen. Mayor Quan, you tool, you just pissed off the Marine Corps! Sadly, you might still get away with treating Black Americans this way... Never mind, you've rigged the game so their economic position is worse than before the Civil Rights Movement, as is their incarceration rate.

What you do, '1%', after you've drawn first blood, is you negotiate. Fuck your pride, vampires; stow your vanity, parasites. You know you are filth, even if you're sociopathic enough to not care. You negotiate because there are only two other ways this can go: somebody's head on pikes - theirs or yours. I wouldn't smirk: you are badly outnumbered. Sure, you've bought Washington, the media, the police and the military... but mercenaries have an uncanny ease with switching sides, and people can be very odd about having flash-bangs thrown at their children. FDR knew it, and he was no 'bleeding heart'. Not many are who are born with a 'silver spoon'. Back then they called it, 'The New Deal'.

I'm not sure I have faith that, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice", but I do know people can hold grudges for generations, as the 20th century taught. '1%', you can pay for social-justice or you can pay for security. You won't care that security costs more and is evil, but you should care social-justice just works better, and will longer keep your neck in its present condition. Remember, you '1%' need 'the Rule of Law' more than we do...

"Wall Street isn't Winning - It's Cheating" - Tiabbi

"How the Legal System Favours the 1 Percent" - Greenwald

"Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters in Tax-Funded Center" - Martens

"Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed" - Scheer

Quote of the Day: 'Occupy London' at St. Paul's

2011-10-28T09:12:00.000+09:00

"Money is the number one moral issue in the Bible and the way the Church of England goes on you would think it was sex," he says. "It's easily the number one issue in the Bible … but how many sermons do you get about that? Very few."

"my red line was about using violence in the name of the church to clear people on. It has been very peaceful, the camp, and I feel that the church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence".

- Giles Fraser, the Canon of St. Paul's: a rare 'man of the cloth' who understands the Jesus of the Gospels did not equivocate on his ultimatums about wealth for all 'Christians', unlike the "the continuing silence of the senior clergy on such matters as greed, avarice, inequality and social justice – just a few of Jesus' favourite topics."

I am an atheist, but know the best words come from The Man, Himself:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?'

And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'"
(Matthew 25.35-40)

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
(Matthew 6.31-34)

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Matthew 5.3-12)

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
(Matthew 6:24)

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?
(Mark 8.34-36)

Jesus wasn't a god before Paul of Tarsus' Hellenic crap, but there was once a man who had the best lines ever.

Take the waste out of your commuting time.

2011-10-25T16:08:00.000+09:00

Cascade Bicycle Club - Vision 2011 from Punch Drunk on Vimeo.
From this website.

Commutes suck. If you spend forty-five minutes commuting, you're probably wasting an hour and a half of every workday: something like four-hundred hours of every year, or twenty-five days of working hours! Yes, that's more than three extra weeks of holiday hours your boss won't give you if you can find a better way to spend them.

Never mind. GM has advice for you.

Longer commutes mean higher divorce rates, greater obesity, and a higher financial burden (look it up yourself). For what? Your suburban home that won't hold its value after peak-oil, and even now has slid in the States? Even if that weren't true, how much energy do you have left to enjoy the dubious pleasures of the 'burbs after driving away so many hours of the week?

(Actually unfair to Ford, which was not bailed out like the others, and correctly cried 'unfair competition'). Imagine if the auto bailouts had been done for the good of the employees, and the society they live in (fuck the shareholders - investing is risk). In WWII they retooled industries, so why couldn't the bailouts have been tied to transit vehicles, which at least gets the public something built for their money, rather than encouraging a company to continue building cars as badly as made them bankrupt? Ever driven a GM? I inherited one. Utter shit.

I ride to work about half the days of the week, and should more: 12km in Tokyo. Every time I bail on riding and take the train I regret it (I have a poor memory). I'd love to live closer, but this apartment is cheap, and like the link below the video talks about, it makes me get out and ride. In fact, I rather miss walking to work/school, as nothing beats the striding motion for tidying up cluttered thoughts, but I'd need to live a lot closer, and in a prettier town than Tokyo. Montreal was ideal for walking.

"One of these things is not like the other one." Redux

2011-10-23T23:20:00.000+09:00

Reposting this because I'm adding one more.

Four of the most beautiful women in Japanese media, IMHO. One is semi-retired, and the picture is of her fifteen years ago. Each has characteristics unlike the others. Can you identify what they are? Try to keep it relatively clean.

Kuroki Meisa

Otsuka Nene

Takigawa Christel

Hasegawa Jun

So how do they differ? Well, I like me some miscegenation. Grrrrrrr!
- only one is 100% Japanese, whatever that means
- one's half-French
- one's a quarter Brazilian
- one's a quarter Caucasian and a quarter S.Asian

Google all you want, but to the best of my knowledge you won't find a picture of any of them more unclothed than this, more's the pity...

Tesla Roadster!

2011-10-22T14:01:00.000+09:00

Saw a Tesla Roadster outside my station today, on display by the Tokyo Automobile University School. Very cool.

Do I think this is the future? Not really. Gasoline is such a good fucking energy-storage medium that a wack of batteries don't beat it, and won't for some time. Even this premium car has only a 200-400km range, and refuelling is not as simple as for gas, yet if ever. Your average car will get 500km highway, and refuelling is simple. Were I doing high-mileage I'd go for a good hybrid, maybe plug-in. That way you can always refuel. Anything less than high-mileage though, you're still better off with an efficient all gasoline car. Do your own research if you don't buy it. Most of all, since a huge portion of a car's footprint is in its manufacture, don't get an electric or a hybrid as a replacement unless it is to save money on gasoline.

The idea of high-mileage hybrid car, or low-mileage efficient gasoline car, makes sense from a financial and environmental point of view. Electric-car boosters forget that: batteries are very dirty to make and dispose of, wear out in five years, and you probably charge your car with carbon fuel via the power plant*. The best thing to do is buy a hybrid if you commute by car, and buy none if you do not commute by car. You can rent a newer car every weekend and still have extra money for beer, not to mention saving the costs of building another car.

On the other hand, in a perfect world... which could not include personal vehicles, but never mind... an all-electric car would be the most efficient, financially and environmentally, because all of the externalities** of oil would be factored into the cost of gas. Gas would be several times as expensive as it is. Electric cars wouldn't be any cheaper. Commuting by car sucks anyway, as it does on bad transit.

Regardless, the Tesla is highly impractical, but it is fucking cool that someone's making it. Anything that challenges the status quo is a good thing. Sure, I'd love to try outrunning Japan's 'keystone cops' with it! Fast cars are cool I cannot deny, even though I don't think the coolness is anything close to worth the costs financially, environmentally and socially (they ruined many N.America cities, lives, and asses). I'd see nothing wrong with a world where you didn't have to spend a third of your money on transportation, or gum up the atmosphere doing so, but you could be a member of a racing club where members co-owned and drove the hell out of a few fast cars on closed tracks.

*Yes, night-charging tends to include a far higher percentage of hydroelectric and nuclear (problematic itself).
**Pollution; collisions; pavements' effects on drainage, farmland, suburbanization; oil-wars and foreign policy...

Ferber-Fascists

2011-10-21T20:55:00.000+09:00

If you don't care about babies or human instincts, you can skip this post.

The Ferber fascists are strident. They're also wrong. Their explanation is you are training the baby, by gradually lengthened crying, to sleep through the night by themselves. However, this is a baby, not an adult human. They're giving the baby a lot more credit for understanding the message they are trying to impart (more on that later) than most adults would deserve. You know why a baby cries when it is left alone? Same reason a baby bird or dog does, it's afraid it's going to be abandoned forever.

And why the hell do they think it is so important for an infant to sleep alone? You get some Freudian explanations from most of them: Freudian justifications tend to give you more, unwanted, insight into the person using one than the subject. Do any of our primate relatives make their babies sleep alone? What about mammals in general? Oh, but we are different. No, we really aren't, least of all for an infant. It's worth noting that most cultures do not have such stupid parenting ideas, and their kids are better served by them. Ferberizing your baby gives the baby the same message as buying them a nanny while you stay at work, and sending her - the kid's real mother from the kid's experience - back to the Philippines when you're done with her: the kid is not a high priority.

Trust me, putting the kid in another room is not going to get you more sleep: you have to get out of bed and go down the hall to feed him. Mind you, if you have him completely traumatized so that he's learned to stay silent all night so no predator gets him during his abandonment... You think you're going to get to have sex with your wife sooner? Nope, he'll cry in the middle of the few times you are both not too tired to be in the mood. You're better off having him asleep in your bed and going off to the living room couch while he lets you.

It's actually nice to have the little one in bed with you. You learn a lot more about him, as well as being able to do your duties as a parent during the night, rather than leave him to his fate. Roll onto him and smother him? Just how drunk, obese or stoned do you think you'd have to be? Well... that does account for about half of N.Americans, but you might want to do something about your lifestyle rather than cast off your issue.

%$#@. It's only in the West, the same place that took the story of an empathetic man of integrity and made it into a magic-ridden, anti-sexual, justification for the authoritarianism of boy-diddling eunuchs, that anyone'd even listen to Ferber's $#!+.

Coltish Sure Beats Rubenesque (NSFW)

2011-10-21T11:44:00.000+09:00

Ben Watts - Issue 2 - Part 1 from www.treatsmagazine.com on Vimeo.

And none are even Asian. That %$#@ing music has to go.

"JUMP! You Fuckers!"

2011-10-16T21:09:00.003+09:00

'How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down [in Toronto]? (After They've [Lived in Tokyo])'

2011-10-15T20:22:00.000+09:00

Oh Tokyo -- I never can sleep in your arms
Mind keeps on ringing like a fire alarm
Me and all these other dice bouncing around in the cup
Did you have to show me that accident scene
Didn't I get enough shaking up?
Still I'm gonna miss you...

In a year or two I am supposed to go back to my 'real' career in Canada, a country that has a better future by most indicators, especially demographic and financial: Japan is old, without resources, and has moved its manufacturing off-shore.

So what's better about Toronto?
- I have an 'iron rice-bowl' there, if some future provincial government doesn't find a way to %$#@ teachers
- summer is livable; winter's not
- I have family there, who do not help to raise my kid unlike my J-mother-in-law
- I can buy a house bigger than I need, further out in a part of town I don't like
- parking is cheaper, for the cars I'll need to own
- I can read the menus, in the restaurants that cost more for much less
- I speak the same language, as its poorly spoken and unattractive residents

So what's better about Tokyo?
- everything else

O'Rourke is a tired old whore.

2011-10-14T14:06:00.000+09:00

Link Dump: 2011/10/13

2011-10-13T11:48:00.000+09:00

Rage Against The Machine - Sleep Now In The Fire... 投稿者 LeBoulanger04

Democrats do not represent their left wing.
US State is Orwellian, of course.
Politics is evil, of course.
Carlin nailed this years ago.

Hockey is still for thugs.

No Conservative trifecta in Ontario: I can go home to teach.
Though the RC boards haven't a leg to stand on, and I have this BS to return to.

Housing will crash in Canada, too.
Doesn't help that Toronto doesn't work.

Yes, the Japanese speak quickly, though they don't say much...
Which is why this crap can happen.

As any idiot should know this, I gave that crap up years ago and lost the weight of an infant.

'Ware-ware Nihonjin'-tte kankei-nai, kisama!

2011-09-30T08:17:00.000+09:00

I am the paragon of 'internationalization': the cliché of my Japanese alma mater, the JET programme.

I made a traffic error* on the way to school this morning by bike, and had a charming conversation with the driver who almost clipped me. I was nominally in the wrong#, but I didn't feel apologetic when:
- I saw it was a BMW (please...)
- the tool pulled over and started yelling out of his window (but would never have had the balls to get out)
- given the car and the feudalism in this country, you know he's a doctor or lawyer (corrupt, incompetent as he's never studied since he got into his university, expects a hand-job from strangers)

Still, I was nominally in the wrong, so I was happy to ignore him and continue on my way, until he said just what you'd expect that type to say:

Nihon-dakara... (This is Japan, so...)

Could I be expected to help myself? No, I didn't think so either:

Hai-hai-hai, 'ware-ware Nihonjin'-tte kankei-nai, kisama! (Whatever. This has nothing to do with Japan, asshat).

I didn't waste my time to see his reaction, but I'll bet he hasn't had anyone tell him what he is for twenty years. Do him good.

*That is to say, I jumped the light, while a car rocketed through the intersection at twice the posted limit after approaching the same intersection blind from behind a hill.
#Most Japanese cyclists do the same.

The 'two solitudes': 'international school' edition.

2011-09-27T17:05:00.000+09:00

Well, maybe three solitudes: Japanese staff, foreign staff and kikokushijo (帰国子女) staff, who have the toughest row to hoe. It gets even more complicated when you get into other castes: halfu, and Japanese staff (usually female) married to foreigners. It's not important to consider the foreign staff married to Japanese (usually foreign men to Japanese women), because the foreign and local staff don't exclude them: that's a Japanese specialty kept for their own...

No, the picture has nothing to do with the school where I work, which shall remain secret.

These places are all the same. There is an office where the financial work and the quartermastering goes on. Then there is the foreign teachers' administrators, also foreign, to whom the teachers answer. There is not a lot of communication between the two, on the clock or after. Do not imagine this is because of language barrier: most of the Japanese staff speaks decent or better English, and some of the foreign staff speaks middling or better Japanese.

What foreign staff do not realize from the beginning is that the Japanese work longer hours, though not efficiently; and that many Japanese staff resent our shorter hours, no matter how busily pursued. It goes a long way to throw around: 'otsukaresama-desu'. Foreign staff also do not realize that they will never date the Japanese staff, because the latter are too smart to get themselves ostracized for doing so. Never mind that better than half of the young Japanese women on staff have, or have had several, foreign lovers - how do you think they learned conversational English? - they are too wise to 'shit where they eat'.

The kikokushijo (帰国子女)? If 'halfu' they are counted as foreign staff by the locals (how nice). If Japanese... they put the Japanese off of their ease, since they do not quite know which hole to put that peg in. The Japanese like nothing less than not having a concrete answer to a social situation. On the other hand, we 'Westerners' have our issues: some assume that the foreign educated are 'westernized', and subconsciously assume that this is a good thing. Well, ours is a proselyting culture.

Borges

2011-09-17T21:26:00.000+09:00

If you have never read any Borges, this is why you should.

Folding Fixed Gear?

2011-09-12T16:29:00.000+09:00

So let's say you want a folding fixed gear. What are your options? Well, so far as I know, only one is made stock. Why would you trouble yourself?
- taking on transit and travel
- keeping it safe inside at home, work and play, without a heavy and unreliable lock
- fewer parts to buy or maintain
- the pleasure of fixed riding

You could take a Dahon Mu Uno and have the rear wheel rebuilt and some brakes put on*, but I don't think the quality is worth the trouble, especially as it is too small for me, a 6'er.

You could just buy the Montague Boston, which is ready to ride as a fixed, though it does not fold small, and fenders would be a PITA.** Two sizes, so not too small.

You could do something with a Brompton or a Moulton, but if you have the money for one of those conversions, you pay people to do it for you, not read blogs for information. You could deal with Bike Friday's execrable website, and negotiate with them for a build, but that's a pain, isn't it? Last I heard you're looking at about $1200US for the fixie, which is not terrible, but Bike Friday's prices always seem about 20% higher than makes any sense. BF does have many sizes, which is ideal.

A far more reasonable option is the Swift Folder, which doesn't seem to focus so much on selling their own anymore, but have licensed to Xootr. Xootr sells a singlespeed for $700, but it is not 'fixable', so you're going to spend another $200 on a hub and wheel rebuild, and larger chainring. You may be best off going $500 for the frame and basic parts, and spend the extra money on just the build you want. Xootr is aluminum, as are the rest, but it is possible to get the Swift in steel, if you think the ride will be better. Not sure if it matters in this design. Various sources of Swift sell it in several sizes. You can have a build made at either of these two.

My idea? Bike Friday or Swift fixed, possibly with drop, track, bullhorn or Friday's H-bars. Yes, fenders too. If I am feeling eccentric, get it built with a Sturmey-Archer S3X!

*If you think you can skid-stop with a 700c wheel, you're an optimist; if you think you can with 20" wheels, you're... SMACK!
**I like fenders and brakes: yes I am old, but I am uninjured and I am dry.

She goes to eleven

2011-09-09T20:37:00.000+09:00

There is an expression, 八文目, in Japanese which denotes the right amount to eat: eight-tenths of full. Tonight I was reminded of one of the main チャームポイントof my native-wife: she has no self-control - she goes to eleven.

No shower bicycle commuting. %$#@!

2011-09-09T15:41:00.000+09:00

If you have a shower at work, you're gold. All you need to do is keep some toiletries and clothing at work, and decide how you'll get your change of clothing back and forth. Leave your lock at work too, with one key on your key chain, and one hidden somewhere.

The rest of us are not so lucky, and are stuck with a modified 'Navy shower'. Since none of these are ideal, I'll explain methods later, you are best off making sure you won't be too filthy in the first place.
- keep hair to a minimum, because it stinks, which means shaving or clipping... throughout
- shower in the morning before your ride, as overnight sweat on top of riding will be hard to be rid of
- you cannot ride at any speed and decently wear the same clothing all day
- cycling wear is designed for its purpose: find a place it will dry for the ride home

Not a true 'Navy shower', but a course of wet-towel/dry-towel usually does the job. Pay special attention to noisome spots. If you do not have a convenient water source, do as soldiers in the desert and use over-sized baby wipes, but anything under 40x60cm is useless, and you'll need several. Some of the cycling-specific ones may be better, but those in Japan are not wet enough. Use a spray bottle of water to augment. If you do not find cycling-specific ones, look for those for bed-bound patients... A camping-shower (bag and hose on a hook) might work, but it has to be somewhere drainage's not a problem.

Having a place to keep some clothing at work is key. For getting it back and forth, here are a few hints:
- keep some belts and shoes at work
- pants last more than one wearing
- have bags for the bike
- or take clothes in/back on days you do not ride
- be certain you will have everything for an outfit, to avoid embarrassment

Yeah Gaijin-Rage!

2011-09-08T16:11:00.000+09:00

I had... not my first... over the top Gaijin-Rage, last night. Where else? Why else? On the train, reacting to some dick's %$#@ed behaviour. This Gaijin-Rage was unique, because it was 'out of body'. It happened on its own and so without any of my own volition that I was as much a spectator as the locals. I had been riding the train after three beer for a few stops, standing among the drunks who had not bathed since the night before, as is the custom despite sleeping without air-conditioning in the awful humidity. I wasn't in a mood to take $#!+, and I might add that I do not give $#!+ to anyone myself, because I'm not a dick. Even if I were a dick I would avoid giving it to someone larger than me, and better at fighting: from a 'salaryman's' perspective that is most any Gaijin (white, 6' and Canadian, unlike the picture).

@$$hat tries to steal my seat! A seat came up empty, and no $#!+head had shoved aside a pregnant or ancient woman to steal it, so it stood empty for a few seconds. I grabbed my bag, stood immediately in front of it, and put my bag above the seat. Such a clear message, I gave it no more thought. No more thought until some あほ君 tried to jump, Matrix-like, into my seat from somewhere off to the side. Typically, he had on his J-blinders and tunnel vision, and his J-robot empathy-void. Last thing I remember thinking before I reacted was, "There's no %$#@ing way this will pass!" I had a book in my right, but with the back of my fist I shoved him back no less than a metre, and hollered,

%$#@ you @$$hole! That's my %$#@ing seat!

I don't know which is more relevant: I wouldn't do that for just myself in Toronto, because the fight wouldn't be worth the seat; I'd never need to do it in Toronto, because people may be frigid, but not utter tools!

After all, what was the %$#@wit going to do about it? Fight? Call his wife to rescue him? Too many Tokyo 'men' don't have a hint of iron in them. They've also not learned the first rule of the school yard: don't start $#!+ you can't finish. He gave me a red-faced, slack-jawed, accusatory look. I gave him a 'Gallic Shrug', as if to say, "just what do you imagine you're going to do?" The answer, of course, was skulk off somewhere to imagine that he'd been done a wrong by a violent Gaijin. Now that I think about it, I had a lot more sitting room given me than I usually get...

Stupid dates, fused-vertebrae cyclists and zombie pedestrians.

2011-08-30T22:39:00.000+09:00

I went on a date once with a girl I rock climbed with. She was even white! I should have been warned off when the girl, a university graduate, didn't know the word 'idiosyncratic'. I let that go, and the fact she was from Alberta, because I thought her climber's figure was worth a ride... I guess. However, once she began complaining about "how bad Chinese drivers are", I knew that the duration of the relationship post-consummation would be very short. Couldn't she stop there? No, she made it impossible to do anything but send her home alone, once she said,

"They're bad drivers because their eyes are so narrow."

Not horizontally they're not! Maybe, just maybe, it is possible that Zhang Ziyi is less likely to see a threat approaching from above (though without Caucasian brows, unlikely), or from below, but I'd wager a lot that her peripheral vision is fine, not to mention she is better able to see across the bridge of her own nose than the red-neck from Alberta.

So I met a girl too dumb to %$#@, though my standards were not always so high. What does that have to do with anything? Some days I have to remind myself that she was wrong, despite the lunacy of Japanese cyclists and pedestrians.

Japanese cyclists ride right into traffic without a shoulder-check, past blind corners the same way, and will randomly swerve into your path, whether or not they are texting (a behaviour needing more attention for Japanese' three-scripts than for English!). The head doesn't ever turn on the neck. The Japanese pedestrian does the same, with a few more stunned behaviours in the mix. Don't get me started about how there is no consistency to whether cyclists should be on the road or on the sidewalk, and that the police neither know nor enforce the law on this. There is also complete lawlessness as to the side that a cyclist or pedestrian will use, even though Japanese drivers will faithfully keep left. Even when the side to take is marked in a subway stairwell, it is an even chance your path will be marked on either side, and that nobody will be following the sign.

I am happier with this, though. If someone ever does cause a 'loss of separation' the advantage in mass is mine, and they are going down. I will not be stopping, if I am not the cause, as the law is quite punitive, and there is no 'justice' system in this country. That drivers behave with more intelligence and care is just because the law is so punitive, whereas it is not in Toronto against drivers, and that is why I am more likely to be killed by a car there.

The Alberta red-neck has not understood that though there are physiological differences between the pale-faces of her inbreeding and the people of East Asia, they are not ones that do her any credit. It's no accident that 'rice kings' are created by intimate exposure. A red-neck can only appreciate the most pneumatic feminine secondary-sexual characteristics, none of which defy gravity far into the twenties. Just about every other of the feminine secondary-sexual characteristics is preferable on women who are less voluminous, and lack of volume is itself one of the charms.*

*Though I did have once have a 95lb girlfriend in Japan I referred to as 'The TARDIS', behind the poor woman's narrow back.

My hybrid is 'big in Japan!'

2011-08-27T16:24:00.000+09:00

Somebody's life in Japan is going better, sooner than mine. The native-wife was at a friend's house with half a dozen J-mothers and their mono-ethnic one-year olds, and our hybrid was getting a diaper changed.

"What the... ?! That's huge! Look everybody."

"It's not just long, it's thick!"

"Look how tiny my boy's is..."

And the mothers of girls sat and blushed.

I'm not bragging. Who knows? The hybrid's Japanese male-ancestors might have been hung. It's nice for we pale-faces that the J-mothers presume it's from the European side; and good for the hybrid that he got a... head start. Not to mention that the only time his father has been able to get naked with more than one woman at a time was in an onsen... and most of them were not an appealing age.

Here's to also hoping the kid got my gene for alcohol, and not his mother's.

Toronto: the misses just keep on coming!

2011-08-25T21:21:00.000+09:00

Montreal is on an island; Vancouver's on a bunch of peninsulas; Toronto is neither and has Canada's longest commutes: sprawl and little investment in transit in three decades. The happiest Toronto commuters are cyclists, and the least are transit users. Drivers are only slightly happier than TTC riders. Cyclists are the happiest though Toronto drivers are witless morons. In other words, it is worth risking your neck because the roads are far beyond automobile capacity, and the transit is horrid.

Does that look like a subway system for a city of 2.5 million? 5.5 million for 'Greater Toronto'? You can get a better idea from this N. America to-scale subway system comparison (commuter rail not included?) The worldwide comparison to-scale is also cool.

Toronto

Tokyo

Think the Tokyo one is a half dozen lines out of date.

UK Riots, Horseshit and Education

2011-08-21T10:55:00.000+09:00

There's so much horseshit being spewed about the riots in England, and all of it serves the purposes of the political point of view of its author. This is no surprise. To get past the cant a little reductionism clarifies.

What is it in UK society that is different enough from the other Anglophone societies that has let the riots get this far out of hand. Or to look at it another way, what are the conditions behind these riots, shared by American race riots like Watts and the Rodney King Riots, but not yet found in places like my native Toronto?

I'd argue its not about race and immigration, because those have not sparked riots in Canada (hockey does), and in most American, NZ and Australian locations. I'd argue its not about police brutality, because it is a ubiquitous minority of officers in all locations who behave this way, and a riotous reaction is far from ubiquitous. I'd even argue the proximate cause was not class and income disparity, though the ultimate cause certainly is. Most people are neither politically aware, nor aware to their own place in the hierarchy: denial reduces anxiety, at the cost of bad faith.

It's the schooling. Look at any riot in Anglophone countries, and you'll find their schooling is segregated. The real segregation is 'haves' and 'have nots', though who these groups are can often be denoted by colour, accent, or other signifier. To a greater extent in the US than in Canada, 'inner-city' schools are underfunded and broken, causing the middle class to flee to areas with better schools, and the wealthy to private schools. Guess where the riots are. In the UK the situation is far worse: even most of the middle class will pay to send their children to private schools, in order to have a chance. And the riots were worse, weren't they? When I was a child, a bright kid from any neighbourhood had a chance of 'getting out' (those chances getting eroded now); that's always been harder in the US and the UK.

What 'conservatives' don't get is that a 'social welfare state' is cheaper than a 'security state', never mind the morality of the thing. People will put up with a lot of shit if they think their kids will improve themselves: look at how much most immigrants sacrifice. But if you put people in a situation where they have nothing to lose, can you be surprised when they make the choice to lose nothing more? 'The New Deal' was not about bleeding heart liberals, it was about saving capitalism from all of the radical labour movements that sprang up in reaction to a cruel work and social environment.

I'm a teacher, of course. If you want a stable society there are many fields you need to make open to all people: health, law, education... I can tell you this: you should ban private schools, and distribute classes in every school. The reasoning behind this is simple: wealthy parents advocate powerfully, poor can't. When you have rich kids in a school, that school will be as good as the parents demand, which will also serve the rest of the kids; if you don't... So yes, I am advocating taking wealthy families hostage, but it is also for their own good: they can spend less on personal, home and domestic security.

Tokyo Cycling and Hiking Information and Shopping

2011-08-16T14:55:00.000+09:00

These links will give you details you can keep or use (or ignore, if they are not useful for you). I am also happy to answer any questions you may have in the comments, to the best of my ability.

Bicycling in Tokyo will be different than where you've been. A few notes:
- despite all of the bicycling you see on sidewalks, you are legally supposed to be on the road
- police do not enforce this, and may not know themselves (!) so use your own judgment
- there are no mandatory helmet laws
- drivers signal decently here, and the hazard signal means pulling over to park
- taxi drivers are as usual the main menace
- its safer than it looks (four times safer than N.American cities)
- you have to pay about 100y to park in busy places: train stations
- there are bike shops everywhere, but most are limited (but fix flats for peanuts)
- bike theft of cheap bicycles is common, when people have had a few too many or missed a train (umbrellas too)
- ironically, a middling lock is enough deterrent, in most cases

Here's how to register your bicycle, which every resident in Japan is supposed to do (I have not...). It is useful for getting it returned if stolen, or to prove you own it if asked for proof by an officer (my bikes are gigantic, so this has never happened to me). This link tells you to go to the local police-box (koban) to do it, if it is second-hand, or have it done when you purchase a new bike in a store (more information).

If you are over 5'9" you're going to have a hard time getting a bicycle in your size. I brought two from home for that reason. You rarely find something big enough online in Japan. Some overseas retailers will ship to Japan, but you will get dinged for duties. If you are going to get one of the utility charinko/mamachari you see all around you, they come in two sizes based on a 26" or 700c wheel. Folding bikes are not allowed on the trains in rush hour, of course. You can take any bicycle on trains outside of rush hour, but they must be bagged in a rinkou-bukuro. 3000y cheap bags work well enough, but be sure your bike will fit. If you would like more information about bike touring in Japan, we can talk in person.

You can buy a basic utility bike for 10000y and up anywhere, but for something a little better, here is a link to a cycling club's list of bike shops. I am partial to Seo-Cycle and Y's Road. Both have many locations around Tokyo. For Y's, I prefer the locations in Ueno (map), and the bigger one in Shinjuku (map). Both, like many sporting goods stores here, have different departments on different floors or nearby buildings, so please ask them. For Seo-Cycle, there are two locations in the same Funabashi mall that has Ikea, as well as this location in Kotu-ku I have not been to (map). If you want something specific (fixed gear, touring bike, etc.) I can tell you where I have seen these sold.

As for where to bike longer distances, you are in some luck in Tokyo. Your first recourse are the 'cycling roads' along the levées by the Arakawa and Edogawa rivers on both sides of each (link to bike routes around Tokyo). The Tokyo/Saitama side of the Edogawa is the best, as it has fewer gate-obstacles to slow down your training. If you are more competitive than I, this group may be your cup of tea. Or this one if less competitive. Trains to the seaside or mountains get you into much better scenery. You may want to get a GPS, or a waterproof mount on your bike to use the GPS with your smart-phone, as you may have noticed it is simple to get lost in Japan.

Hiking
I do a lot of hiking in the mountains here, especially the taller ones in Chubu. Again, please 'pick my brain' if you have any questions, but I'll give you these links:
- 'Hiking in Japan'
- Lonely Planet's 'Hiking in Japan' book
- Japan's '100 Famous Mountains'
- my favourite shops: Koujitsu-Sanso in Shinjuku or in Ginza; Kamoshika Sports in Takadanobaba.

Outdoor Clubs
I have not joined these, so can't endorse them, but here you are:
- Tokyo Gaijins (for profit)
- Outdoor Club Japan
- International Adventure Club, Tokyo

And bear in mind that Fuji is the worst mountain in Japan! It's the tallest, but it's a pile of cinders with overpriced and smelly huts strung up its side. Plus, you may be fogged in for the sunrise. Fuji 'looks good from far, but far from good'.

All-Weathers Fixed Gear in Japan.

2011-08-14T11:39:00.000+09:00

Here's the original post I made on getting an all-weathers fixed gear for Japan. In the end, I brought mine back from Canada to Japan this summer. It's a modified '09 Kona Paddywagon. This is what it looks like in real life.

The following post is an updated version of the posting at the first link.

The 2009 Kona Paddy Wagon I am mostly happy with, but that's because I'd already experimented fixed gear on what's become my 'retro-cross', so I knew what I wanted. I compromised on my ideal, because I got this bike 25% off. I love fixed for the interval training it forces upon me, for the quick acceleration, and the low maintenance. I run both brakes. I am not a hipster: this bike is set up for real-world commuting, and bad weather riding on imperfect urban asphalt.

What I did to it was put a riser stem at the front, as I wanted my bars just below the saddle, not at my knees. I changed it from fixed/free to fixed/fixed, because I didn't need the free and the two-teeth bigger freewheel seemed as much work to push as the smaller cog, without the flywheel advantage of fixed gear. It is presently with 32mm tires, a 44 chainring and 16 and 18 teeth cogs: 74" and 66". Put a Brooks B17N on, shellacked cotton tape on the bars, which have been replaced for more regular road bars. Lost the chainguard. Have two-sided spd pedals. To have lots of room for the 32mm tires I chopped a pair of Planet Bike fenders* in half, fabricated some hardware, and attached them to the bike on Sheldon Fender Nuts. Love those.

I brought it here, rather than buy one here, because I'll use it here for a year and then sell it. I'll buy something more optimal when I go home. It really has too much toe-overlap, and not enough fender clearance. Were I to buy one in Japan, the only bike available in my size with the right geometry for a fendered fixie is the All City Nature Boy. I might get that when I go home, unless I come across something better. There is always the semi-disposable 'Windsor Timeline' from BikesDirect.

Tokyo's issue is relentless prevailing winds along the riverside bike paths, so I need two different fixed gear ratios for down and up-wind: the 74" and 66". I could set up a Sturmey-Archer S3X, though it has a lot of lash, with a 44t chainring and 15t cog: 80", 60" and 50". With 44t and 46t chainrings, a 17/20t Surly Dingle Cog, and an 18t freewheel, I'd get the following: 73 and 59" fixed without flipping the wheel, and 66 or 69" free, depending on how chain-line works out. We'll see. A lot of trouble for dubious benefit.

As for the baggage, I don't carry $#!+ on my back. The tool kit is under the saddle, and a simpler version of this: I have a Park Tool Fixed Gear Tool in the frame bag. That bag will also hold a shell, or another water bottle, wallet, keys, cell... It's a nothing rack on the front, but it holds part of the fender, weighs nothing, attaches without hardware, and let's me throw a bag on when I need to. Uncool? Whatever. I leave shoes and toiletries at school, but I can take a change of clothes back and forth on the front. Ideal. If I got really stuck, I could lash a bag to my Viva Saddle Bag Loop.

Lights? Same as on my randonneur-hack: a Planet Bike Sport Spot on the handlebar, a Planet Bike Superflash on one seat-stay, and/or a Planet Bike Superflash Turbo on the other seat-stay. Such visibility is not as direly necessary in Tokyo as Toronto, but it can't hurt. And yes, I do use the GPS mentioned in this link, which is uncool for a fixie, but you try not to get lost in Tokyo! More commentary on bottles and cages here: this bike has an Arundel Stainless, which I like well enough.

*Make sure to bend any protruding hardware on front fenders downwards. Toe-overlap on these bikes is bad enough without fender-stays catching on your footwear and bringing you down in an intersection. Didn't get run over, but it still hurt.

Quote of the day: another reason Toronto blows.

2011-08-13T09:49:00.000+09:00

"The critical difference in the UK is that drivers are skilled."

As I have said plenty of times in this blog, that's what makes cycling in Japan better also.

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun..."

2011-08-11T13:59:00.000+09:00

Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages...

It's stupid-hot in Tokyo right now. No, 'it's not the heat, it's the humidity.' A stupid cliché, except when it is true! The native-wife, the hybrid and me spent a month outside of Toronto in July, and though we had some days above 30C, it was nothing on the same temperatures in Tokyo. The one consolation is that the humidity makes the sun feel less strong, but it also means shade does little good. When I linked this weather data on Tokyo, and on Toronto, here were the telling differences.

For Tokyo:

- though the highest temperature may only be 34C, the lowest is 26C

- the humidity starts at 53% and ranges to 94%!

For Toronto, on the other hand... It's been an unusually rainy and cool August week, so the data is all off. Still, our humidity does not often go to 94%, otherwise known as liquid. Toronto's nights go below 20C, giving you a chance to rejuvenate. Without a/c, and many Japanese believe it is healthier to sleep without it, there is no relief here. It doesn't help that most people are living in concrete buildings.

Do not ever go to Tokyo in July or August, nor June's rainy season; go in mid to late September under advisement that it will be hotter than you think; all other months are preferable to the previous. October, April and May are best. If you teach here and have the summer off: bail. There's nothing a human can do outside under 2000m, south of Wakkanai, or outside of 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. As for the Shakespeare which starts this post: fear both, if you live in shite Japanese housing. Fear it also if you are a kid on a Japanese sports team, or even an adult on a professional team. They don't respect heatstroke here. Japanese Razor: if there's a smarter way to do it (like not at midday!), 'it is not Japanese culture'. Funny thread here.

The one consolation, and the picture alludes to it, is young Japanese women looking %$#@ing great at matsuri in this heat. Nothing like a young woman aglow in her bathrobe. Sure, the humidity is good for their skin and all, but I believe there is a subconscious effect here: she looks as she would if you had just %$#@ed her.

Back in Tokyo, from Toronto.

2011-08-08T10:40:00.000+09:00

The few followers of this blog may have noticed that there were few posts in July. It's a dangerous thing to do to a blog, if you like to be read. I know I follow few blogs with that few postings in a month, and those with fewer than a posting a month not at all. I was abroad/home, but I had just as much Internet access. No excuses to offer.

Continuing the themes from July, looking at Toronto and Montréal from native and non-native points of view, I want to wrap up from my present vantage point: sitting on the floor of my well air-conditioned Tokyo apartment on one of the hottest days of the year. So brace yourself.

Canada, you're obese, lazy, petulant, and your political and personal opinions have precious little to do with reality. Few of you are 'individuals'; few of you are 'entitled to your opinions'; few of you do any of your own thinking. At best, you get your ideas from your social milleu; at worst from mass-media. The Japanese, to give them some credit, know they get their ideas from such poor sources, and few presume their ideas are intrinsically valid, coming from the same places as everyone else.

Dear Canadians, much of Canada is very beautiful, but if you give it a passing thought, the more beautiful places are that way when they have fewer of you on it! The places that were beautiful have been 'loved to death' by those of you who think that there's nothing a monster-second-home, jet-skis, and ashphalt for an SUV that will never touch gravel, can't improve: Muskoka, Niagara Falls, Canmore, Whistler... It's a real shame, because it is only your natural destinations that can bring in the tourists. Do you imagine that your cities do? You have a couple of bits of pretty cities, all of them doughnutted by big-box stores and drive-through vomitoria.

Destination cities in Canada? I can make short work of that:
- Vancouver? Pretty for the few months it doesn't rain, and you cannot afford to live there if you've lived an honest life.
- Toronto? American second-tier city. Bugger off, I've lived there more than elsewhere. Sadly.
- Quebec? Yes, worth a two-day visit.
- Montréal? Je t'aime!
- There are no other cities in Canada.
- There are towns, and a few are pretty, but no other 'destination cities'.

What bothers me the most about Canada, is what bothers me most about Pan-Anglo society, is what bothers me about most of 'Western' society: profound hypocrisy. There is a book in that, certainly not a blog posting, so I am not going to justify it. Only this: I can handle vice and weakness, but I cannot abide the excuses people come up with. I do not care if you smoke, eat crap, drink too much, and are an obese, wheezy and smelly specimen because of it. Just don't lie to yourself, or me. You made yourself that way. No, it's not your DNA (unless you are that one-percent or fewer for whom that is true). Did your grandparents let themselves go as badly? I thought not.

That's just the physical. I can't even begin to go after the intellectual and psychological. It's no more pretty. The sight of a Canadian crowd is a waddling abomination. To speak with them is no different. I did not despise my trip to Canada, in no small part because I spent little time talking to Canadians who were not vetted: my own friends mainly.

Visiting Montréal, from Toronto, from Tokyo.

2011-07-29T05:44:00.000+09:00

This is a follow-up to my re-impressions of Toronto, sadly as close to a home-city as I have, after I went to Montréal for a few days, which is where I spent five university years. Talking about these cities, I mean the oldest parts of the city: within 5km of their city-halls. Everything else is just a fucking suburb.

Toronto is an American city. Torontonians aren't going to like to hear it, but there is nothing in Toronto you cannot find in a dozen American cities, including right-wing populism in the inner and outer 'burbs, no idea how to pursue 'city-building' and a focus on car traffic to the expense of anything intelligent. I take that back: I should not slander American cities, many of which are fixing those things and passing Toronto by.

Montréal is called 'European', but it isn't: but it isn't American. It isn't ROC ('rest of Canada'). Neither is it 'Québécois': it is what happened when Anglophones, Québécois, Natives and Allophones spend a few hundred years as the gateway to the interior of Canada, layering the palimpest. A reason Toronto is boring is that the palimpest is thin. When you say Montréal is 'European', you mean it is interesting, long inhabited and worth knowing. Can you think of a novel where Toronto is a character? New York, sure. LA, if it is dystopian. Montréal? Yes, in both French and English.

This time out, I am going to look at Montréal in light of Toronto, but also of Tokyo. "I will not get into the politics or planning, which most visitors are happily ignorant of."

- Montréal looks about as messy on the street as Toronto, but it does not stink of garbage as badly, probably because they do not collect the garbage on the curb. The best thing is that the urbane areas of 'Atwater' through downtown, 'the old city', 'the Plateau' and 'Mile End' are contiguous, along with 'the Mountain'. Toronto, no: a frustrating drive, dangerous bike ride, or unreliable streetcar ride.

- The streets are as poorly paved and full of parked cars as in Toronto, but there are more people on foot and on bicycles. This, more to do with the fact that Montréal drivers are not as incapable and selfish, than with infrastructure. However, most cyclists are riding very old bicycles, which leads me to think there is a theft problem, so nobody wants to invest in a newer bike.

- I only took transit once, the Métro. I had forgotten how dark the stations are, how rattletrap and narrow the cars. I never used it for the daily commute, so I cannot say much. And yet, the ticket takers gave us no help at all with our baby carriage, and closed up the booth when I approached: similar to Toronto...

- It ain't Tokyo, but food is cheaper and less pretentious than in Toronto. Plus you can get a decent freaking bagel. The line to Schwartz's is too long to bother now. The coffee in Montréal is not so much better, so much as more rarely poor.

- There is far more street life. It is a city where people look alive to serendipity. Nobody in Toronto makes new friends on the street, or in a bar: work, church or university is it. The people I know who have moved to Toronto often complain about this; coming back from Tokyo I have made a few friends: 'friends of friends' who I knew from school... In Toronto, you can tell everything about a person's character by their complexion, the way they dress, what they drive and where they are found. These signifiers only take you so far in Montréal, because people are individuals. In Toronto, even the 'inter-marriages' never deviate by class, education, wage or age. I was uplifted by the odd-couples I saw in Montréal: guys with older women, younger Francophone women with older Jewish men, homely women with metrosexuals. You just never could tell. Makes you think they might be in love.

So yes, I regret leaving Montréal for Toronto at all. It was a poorer, more linguistically divided, Montréal then, and you can never tell the future. Alas.

Visiting Toronto, from Tokyo.

2011-07-21T00:04:00.000+09:00

I am resident in Tokyo, but am visiting my childhood home outside of Toronto for the month of July; so I am a Canadian, but my eyes are a bit different to Toronto, since I now view it as a Tokyo resident. I want to point out what many visitors will notice strongly, that locals take for granted: I will not get into the politics or planning, which most visitors are happily ignorant of. I will alternate good with bad, and see if I can keep it balanced.

- Toronto is full of tree cover and parks
- the streets are full of overhead wires
- there are garbage receptacles on the street, which are vanishingly rare in Tokyo
- and yet there is more trash on the street in Toronto
- the streets stink of garbage in the pedestrian shopping streets

- it is easier and cheaper to find parking

- half of the lanes are full of parked cars, which remain free to traffic, in Tokyo
- the roads are full of holes
- repairs must take forever, as there are blocked lanes with nobody at work in them

- transit is quite cheap
- there are only two subway lines (OK, 2.3); there are many places to go that subways do not
- trains are not as crowded
- trains are not as frequent, or reliable
- streetcars look cool!
- streetcars are hot and unreliable
- streetcars, buses, trains, and even taxis, are much filthier in Toronto

- people do not ride all over the sidewalks, as in Tokyo
- it is dangerous to cycle here, sometimes even to walk, and yes even to drive, statistically

- servers can be more creatively helpful
- servers are less professional and reliable
- portions are bigger
- adults should not eat that much
- meals costs much more, after the 30% for taxes and tip
- some cafés are very good
- most coffee is very bad

- people may be more friendly to strangers, than in Tokyo
- people may be more rude to anyone, than in Tokyo
- there are a lot of ethnicities in Toronto, and mixed families
- not all of them seem to integrate
- people are more casual and relaxed
- people dress like crap, or like children
- far more people are obese, even some Asians!

Just a few initial impressions. Your experience may differ. I clearly have little love for Toronto... because I know Tokyo, and Montréal.

'Steel is real': bottle cages.

2011-07-03T14:17:00.000+09:00

I had another bit break on my bike today.

That is a Planet Bike Button Cage, made from aluminum. I have spent money on bottle cages in plastic and aluminum, which have either: broken, or rattled against my Kleen Kanteen bottles. One of the biggest disappointments was the Kleen Kanteen bottle cage, which though it fit well, was ugly, and snapped in the cold. Like anything else in cycling, aluminum and plastic (carbon fibre) are not dependable, and steel is. So is titanium, but the premium...

The ideal bottle cage for a steel bottle is steel (I won't drink from plastic): won't break, is quiet, looks decent and doesn't cost a fortune. The type that best does this is long, as the Kleen Kanteens are, bends to fit, is not open to the frame between the mounting bolts, and grips in a hug, as opposed to this type, which rattles plenty.

Leaving out the stupid options that cost a fortune, my choices are few: Arundel stainless, Iris King Cage, Bontrager Angel, Velo Orange Moderniste or Retro Bottle Cages and Salsa Nickless Cage.

I think it will be the second-last one: simple, not heavy, quiet, adjustable, and won't catch trouser legs (not that I ride in normal wear much).

P.S. Yes, I know I should not have attached a frame-bag under the bottle cage, but it works well, and I'm going to do it again. The cage should be over-designed enough to take the minimal lateral force of a frame bag.

Off to the city that fun forgot (Toronto).

2011-06-26T21:46:00.000+09:00

I have to think about what I am going to do with a month there. What's worse, a month in one of its outer suburbs: more boring than boring itself. (If you care to know what I think of Toronto...) If you think this blog has been bitchy lately, wait for the posts in July! I will be temporarily trading in my Tokyo life for a suburban Toronto one. Just because I spent too much time there, doesn't mean I miss it: quite the contrary. Still, the weather's better, and sunset is 21:30.

On a question from my wife, I cannot think of a thing I need to do in Toronto. There are things I won't mind doing:
- some friends to see who'd be improved if they lived in Tokyo (none of whom drink as much, or have as much going on in a week to talk about, as my Tokyo acquaintances)
- a deli I'd go to (not as good as Montréal)
- there's a brewpub I like
- a Vietnamese place we went to often
- ...

That's all I can give you. Toronto's teams suck, but I'm not a joiner anyway. Its tourist attractions are out of town, or found in any city. The mood in the city is antisocial, in person and in election results. Canadians hate Toronto, and Torontonians hate each other. Now Montréal is not Tokyo, but Montréal has the personality of the hot but dodgy girl at the party you have a fair chance of taking home. Sure beats Toronto's LUG thing. Let me put it another way. I have a decent teaching position at an international school in Tokyo, but the contract's only two years, the pay is middling, and there is no pension plan or job security. I have an iron rice bowl with my school board just outside of Toronto, but I've just about decided to throw it away to stay in Tokyo.

Here's unsolicited advice to Japanese, and others, planning on a visit to Canada:
- Vancouver and area is beautiful, outside of the pissy winters
- Banff and Jasper are amazing at any time of year, but the hot springs are cold
- Montreal is always great, but winter is hard
- Quebec City is quaint, but there's nothing they don't have more of in Europe
- the Maritimes are pretty in the summer, and the people can drink!
- Prairies: skip
- Toronto: skip
- Niagara Falls: might have been pretty once

Fuck you Canada! Fuck you Toronto! Fuck you Ontario?

2011-06-24T11:41:00.000+09:00

How is this for cheap and destructive political theatre: in one week Toronto has exposed itself as homophobic and anti-urban, via its bloated avatar.

I have already written a few posts about my disgust with the Reform Party, and the electorate of Canada. I think no better of the creature who is mayor of Toronto, and the suburban homophobia that got him elected. There is a lot I could say about the successful 'conservative' plot to kill the liberal voice of downtown with Toronto's amalgamation, but the link explains that well enough. Do not imagine Toronto to be what it was: the home of Jane Jacobs, or "New York run by the Swiss".

So if you went to the links in the first paragraph you could read that in one week Toronto's mayor has: said 'fuck you' to anyone who doesn't go everywhere by car, and said 'fuck you' to everyone who is not entirely 'straight'. The latter includes me who only has had heterosexual encounters, but finds the company of many 'queers' more interesting than most 'breeders', 'breeder' though I am. So what? The mayor is still a high-school jock and a meathead. 'So what?' indeed. The majority of the electorate, in most of Toronto apart from the urban portion, knew this guy's infamy and that is why he was elected. The 'Ford Campaign' did not use race-baiting, as they wanted the part of the 'minority vote' this is homophobic: they sure did use 'queer'-baiting. And though I was no great fan of Smitherman (certainly a lesser evil) he lost half from incompetent campaigning, and he lost the other half from being gay.

Regarding the title: Canada's and Toronto's voters are full of hate. Usually 'the other shoe' only drops the second time, but there is going to be an autumn Ontario provincial election. I expect a 'hate-on'-trifecta: the 'conservatives' will win this too. Glad to be abroad, where I may just stay

Pussy-Nation.

2011-06-19T17:57:00.000+09:00

I have met cool Japanese guys. I make them my friends. I have a few who could even win a fight with me. And it has to be said there are men at home, who aren't men. As for 'twinks' who are effeminate, I have no trouble with that. Finally, individuals are real, and nationalities are abstractions. And yet: Japan is a nation of pussies.

Coming to that conclusion is because:
- I saw three different men on the Edogawa cycling road today, letting their woman lead into the wind
- men make their women carry more baggage
- the men pluck their eyebrows as much as women back home (trimming vs. plucking is an important distinction)
- men do not get up for women pregnant, with infants, or the infirm
- 20% of the people in the women-only car are men, and nobody will do anything about it
- nobody will do anything about subway-gropers, except Gaijin
- when a driver is mad at me on the road, he honks only if he can flee from my bike
- when a hiker wants to tell me I am camping in the wrong spot, he'll first hike halfway up the next mountain
- they always back down to China and America, or should I say, bend over
- they do not know how to deal with the guy who leaked the Senkaku video, or who ignored orders not to flood the Fukushima reactors (real men)
- they are shit-scared of white women, though want them badly
- they are scared of Japanese women... which makes them wiser than 'Charisma' men

The Conflicted Samaritan.

2011-06-15T20:30:00.000+09:00

The other day I am walking through the Tokyo neighbourhood of the school that employs me. I come across a young white guy talking to two Yakult women. They're giving directions in rapid Japanese, and he's not getting it. Not sure how much he'd got out of that, I asked him if he knew where he was going. He admits his Japanese is basic, and he knows no more than to go left, and that he's looking for a particular embassy.

I know where that embassy is; one day lost I came across its fortified compound, incongruously in the middle of our quiet neighbourhood. I also knew he would not find it unaided. I told him I had some time, and I'd been in his shoes often enough in Tokyo: lost. I'd walk him there. I didn't think much about his business-casual outfit, or why he'd be going to that embassy, but I should have. I assumed he was an English teacher looking to get a visa for some discount R&R travel, though he did not look like a pot-smoker... He could pass for a child-molester, so let that be a clue to the embassy.

In our short walk he asks me more questions than I ask him, but I am vain enough not to wonder why he's leaving the talk to me. It's only after I let him go that a few things become clear to me: he's lived in Japan exactly one year, he's going to a disadvantaged country, he's likely not an English teacher, not an expat nor international school teacher, he looks like he's never had a real drink, and he has a Hollywood-Western accent. He's a fucking Mormon! These people, like all missionaries I have met, find the vulnerable and prey on them. Why have I, a Gaijin, been bothered by more Mormons, Mahikari and Soka-Gakkai than the Japanese are in Japan? Why is my wife similarly harassed in Canada? Lonely foreigners are vulnerable, as are the poor, which explains his destination.

If I'd known he was a Mormon I would have told him, "You're on your own." I'd help a missionary find medical-aid, the train station, or a koban, but I'll have no part in proselytisation. Eighteen years in an RC house has made me a tolerant atheist, but an outspoken enemy of 'righteousness' (hypocrisy). So you may say I have done a 'good deed', but given the subject, it wasn't.

Commuting: stupidity and malice are universal.

2011-06-11T21:43:00.000+09:00

The last time Steve Martin was funny.

Even though I am a misanthrope, Japanese and Canadians both are stupid or malicious, and the same should be said about both drivers and 'strap-hangers'. I have not found religion, education or nationality to furnish a better set of people in one group than another: a quarter are angels, a quarter are bastards, and half are sheep with no character of their own. What differs is the expression of this: to the benefit of Japan, nobody expects you to listen to their uninformed opinions; to the benefit of Anglophones, nobody expects to get away with voicing the bigoted ideas they vote and act upon.

So whether you are commuting among the Japanese or Canadians, in traffic or by train, people suck and wear you down. Human suckage in transit may have much to do with long commutes increasing the chance of divorce, or it may be that long commutes take you to the suburbs, and that drives you to divorce. Cause, effect and coincidental factors are all mixed up, but for me it is simple: rush hour driving sucks, rush hour trains blow, and people are stupid and malicious. I bike.

But in N.America, most drive. 'I have to drive'; 'the roads are too crowded with other drivers'; 'I can't give up my car because transit is bad'; 'we need to put more money into the crowded roads, so there's no money for transit'; 'I am good at driving, but everyone else is terrible/crazy/selfish'; ad absurdum. The same will tell you the city is too expensive, though it's cheaper than living in the 'burbs and paying for a fleet of cars. They'll tell you they enjoy the space and lawns and parks, though they have an hour less each day to enjoy them, or two if you count the extra maintenance. They'll tell you they like to able to go for a walk, though its statistically proven urbanites walk far more, and proven by the fact Canadians urban residents weigh fifteen pounds fewer. Here's the truth of N.American car commuting: it seems easier to sit on your @$$, but it catches up with your health, and soon; and people move to the suburbs to get away from other ethnicities.

Transit advocates would love you to think that the experience of the Tokyo train commuter is better. It isn't, and I know it to be dire on Toronto's, pathetically few, subway lines and commuter rail services. You may be safer than in a car, but you are packed cheek-by-jowl with strangers, some of whom are objectionable in unique or tedious ways. It is also exhausting, and enervating. The virus load has to be high**, and the potential for mass panic terrifying. Your average Tokyo 'strap-hanger' makes his choice as poorly as a N.American driver, even if it costs him less money and the Earth a smaller carbon footprint. Though car parking is prohibitive, if I was less interested in my exercise I'd buy a motorbike to commute in Tokyo sooner than rely on the trains. It is not unsafe to ride, unlike N.America.

There are a lot of ways of getting around the misery of trains or traffic for commuting, but they all require a rare option: thought. My favourite is the bicycle. Another option is living much closer to work. On the contrary, living much further away and paying for an upgraded and reserved seat on a train may work*: rather than living closer and finding no seats remaining. Telecommuting is becoming more accepted even in Japan, which has a more inane culture of being present for long hours, no matter how little you achieve. Flexible commuting hours to avoid the rush, and there may be other options I have not considered. Five options: no excuses. If you choose to sit in a car or stand in a train, you either like it or lack imagination. I hear so many excuses that 'people have no choice', because of disability or finances, but the funny thing is that I never hear the excuses from the people from whom this might be true.

*Facilitated in Japan, contrary to all common sense in human resources and containing urban sprawl, by 15000 to 50000 yen/month transit subsidies. These people are stuck downtown in an earthquake, typhoon, Aum attack... Yes, a few do take the shinkansen to work.
**Face masks in Tokyo are not for radiation, despite TV's uninformed reporting (their 'journalists' here do not speak Japanese even as poorly as me), but to avoid other people's diseases in public, or to control their pollen allergies.

Hate to rain on your parade, but...

2011-06-07T21:18:00.000+09:00

This ain't nature, and you won't get to see the sunrise in a humid country outside of autumn or winter.

So why the fuck did you need to wake me up, again, at three in the morning at the top of your lungs laughing and carrying on in your preparations to get to the summit for sunrise? And you know what? I'm glad it was cloudy all day, dimwits. Just how many times do you need to be disappointed in your goal of climbing to a summit for a beautiful sunrise to learn that you are an asshat?

I have got up at three-thirty to climb a mountain. It's called an 'alpine start', except the difference is that in mountaineering it is not done on the minuscule chance that it won't be so humid that the haze will block the sunrise, but so we don't die. Glaciers are safer to cross using crampons on a frozen surface. We also do not wake up everyone in the camp, or mountain hut, both because we are not fucking assholes, and because we do not want to be beaten the shit out of. Lucky you outnumbered me... I am supposed to be open minded and even handed, but you wouldn't give a seat to my pregnant wife, step into the path of my baby carriage exiting the train, and this: fuck you, Japan! Of course, not all Japanese are this stupid: the friend I was hiking with was as pissed as me. That's why he's my friend, and you are dickheads.

So do you know what you can do about the rule to camp in designated areas? Fuck it, since I won't get a night's sleep there. Neither will camping on the summits be the solution, as I have done, since you'll still wake me up at four-thirty. Get daylight saving for Christ's sake.

Flake or not, she's doing what we all should:

2011-06-07T20:52:00.000+09:00

Living by her convictions.

Not working with my hands: regrets.

2011-05-29T20:00:00.000+09:00

Came across a couple of interesting articles by, or about, Mathew B. Crawford. A more intellectual, less spiritual, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance": the way I like it. Funny how I have been having a few conversations with people lately about youthful academic choices being in some ways regrettable. Most of us in these conversations are teachers. We've agreed that we might rather do something more tangible.

What's a teacher got to complain about? Surely not the vacations, the job security or pension.* Not working with kids, if you like them. Whether you do is something you learn in the first month of your B.Ed., not that those who learn otherwise always leave.** But there are things alienating in the job, that get more alienating over the years. These are simple: more paperwork, more politics, less responsibility from the parents and students, and more for the teacher even though there is no way to make the kid study or read in his home - and not too many in the classroom when most consequences have been removed. I spent a decade paying off my student loans to be able to have ennui about my career. Great.

I took my B.Ed over ten years ago, and four 'additional qualifications' since. I also took a basic bicycle repair course. I learned something in that. There is no living in bicycle repair, unless you own a shop or weld them bespoke, and even then... Motorcycles are a better way to go. I really want a motorbike, as much for the liberation from a cage and the ability to 'filter' through traffic in Japan,*** as for the possibility of tinkering with one. I love to tinker with my three bicycles, and am guilty of doing more tinkering than the number of hours I ride justify. Well, better than drink or women, I tell my wife.

I had an argument with my mother and aunt about my cousin. A smart kid, but not an academic, though great with his hands. They were pushing him at an Arts degree, but he wanted to take a cabinet-making apprenticeship. I made it clear he would earn more than me, have fewer debts, and be less likely to quit halfway through from frustration. Were I to do it again I might still get that Arts degree, though I am unsure the university experience now meets even that at McGill in the 90s. You can read by yourself, but if nothing else an Arts degree puts you among other some people who want to read the same things. I never had a choice about going to university. It was assumed. My father was not able to, so that was something all of us were going to do. He had quite a few issues, coming from somewhere between the working and middle classes in the north of England, growing up during and after 'the war'. There was no question that head work was more important than body work, though he was good with his hands. But then, all men of that generation were, of his class. He was a poor teacher. His sons were given the repetitive physical chores that had none of the rewards: weeding, lawn-mowing,^ hammering in nails. Our motivations were limited to avoiding 'the stick', and 'carrots' in the form of praise were few. What he taught me was to loathe physical work, home ownership and him. I have gotten over the former.

It was only once I was on my own, in run-down Montreal apartments with unreliable custodians that I took to working with my hands. That and tree-planting and road-work for university summer jobs. There was also the kayak I built in my teens with 'Venturers'. It is amazing that what I consider to be a very modest skill-set is not a bad skill-set among my peers:
- replacing electical fixtures
- soldering electronics
- replacing faucets and washers
- hanging curtain rails, and lighting strips, using a hammer-drill
- repacking my own bicycle hubs and bottom brackets, as well as more minor work
- general outdoor goods repair, including tying my own webbing for climbing gear
- sewing my own buttons and tears
- things too mundane to remember right now
All of these are problem-solving exercises, and little more. Rewarding for that reason.

Hard to say I would not go into teaching if I could live my life over, since that's just about the only way that I am able to live in Japan and make a living. In my more whimsical moments I would have welded bicycles, built wooden boats, been a tree doctor, or a firefighter. The last one is a living, and one of the few unarguably righteous vocations. You die a decade young from cancer. Teaching begins to look better.

*If you are in a public union, not in the States and Britain where these are under attack, or during one of the once-a-decade attacks on it in Ontario, where I am registered. Not to mention that I have had these conversations with teachers in 'international schools' in Tokyo, who are far less secure.
**We had a few drop out of our class in my B.Ed. for just such reasons. Some student-teachers scorned them; I respect them for not sharing their unhappiness with the career with students.
***'Filtering' is not legal and would get you killed in Ontario. I wouldn't ride a motorbike in Canada: more than twice the fatality rate. I would in Japan, but training and licensing would put me out the cost of a used bike, before I got the used bike.
^One of many reasons I will never buy a suburban house.

僕は東京自転車ツーキニスト！

2011-05-27T20:48:00.000+09:00

I finally rode to work, 23km diagonally through the heart of Tokyo, without the option to avail myself of any riverside paths. Now that is 23km, most of it as busy as the busiest 2km through the centre of Toronto. Good god is Toronto spread thinly: 10km gets me from Ryogoku to Shinjuku and everything in between, the same gets me from Queen's Quay to Lawrence with only Toronto in between. 23km of exposure to Toronto's thickest traffic would never be worth risking (and would take some real masochism to reproduce, no offence to working messengers). In Tokyo? I had to keep my wits about me, and my hands near the brake hoods, but nobody but the taxi drivers were a real threat.

What has happened to the age (upwards) and quality (downwards) of taxi drivers here since the 90s? Kazuhide is the best reference. The lights are too damned long. It's like the lights in the suburbs of N.American cities: you can listen to an entire song on your car radio. It's an odd thing that cyclists in Tokyo ignore as many lights as they can get away with, yet pedestrians and drivers won't much, yet these are the same people, as most Japanese use all three modes in their lifestyles.

It's a good way to get to know any city, if it is safe enough to do. It is especially revelatory in Tokyo, because you don't travel through it much at street level. The most efficient way to get around is underground, or on elevated rail. The Tokyo commuting experience I liken to travelling by submarine: you pop up into a neighbourhood, and you go down again and emerge in the next location. If you do make a point of taking a look at a map, then walking or driving between areas, it is a surprisingly small city in the centre (within reach of the Yamanote-line). Get off the trains and you might find you could walk between two points faster, much less bicycle. This is heightened because Tokyo neighbourhoods turn their backs on their noisome avenues, and their faces to their stations, so you never know two 'hot-spots' may be across just one avenue. You'll want a really good map of Tokyo, though. Moving on a bike, a GPS is much better: just about every car has one. Japanese drivers do not deign to puzzle out a map.

Tokyo is veined with multi-lane roads and expressways, which chop up the city just as violently as other cities. Although these are safer to cross than in N.America, they are not any more pleasant to walk along. Each major, or minor, neighbourhood is pleasant to walk around closer to its central station, even though there may be few sidewalks and mixed foot and wheeled traffic, because cars cannot dominate. Further out the proportions are reversed, but still cars cannot bully, because the legal consequences of a collision are very dire to drivers. It's no Copenhagen (not least because they have a domestic automobile making lobby), but it is a huge improvement on 'home'.

Japan, you're doing it %$#@ing wrong.

2011-05-25T15:25:00.000+09:00

You can see why your average Japanese ESL student is alienated from anything like natural English. This is the norm in Japan's English materials: little use of international pronunciation symbols; less appreciation that the first thing to master is decent pronunciation of the host language's phonemes; and less understanding that the katakana-approximations will not be understood by any English speakers except those who already speak Japanese. Guess what. It's just as bad for other languages! I saw some salaryman using a made in Japan text to study Korean, and the hangul had furigana under it, too. $&@%! You don't make yourself understood in another language by applying the phonemes of your own.

If only I could convince the native-wife that 'oudoburu' is not French.

Whither hence?

2011-05-25T10:12:00.000+09:00

My blog has no focus at all! It's become an untidy place to keep rants and ruminations, and I wanted better from it. I think I will be splitting it into two blogs, and I would like some feedback. Here's my thoughts.

"Hanlon's Razor": focused on pointing out human malice and stupidity.
A cycling blog: which will keep the relevant cycling, and urban posts.

Japan posts could go on either, depending. So can the urban posts, for that matter.

"Japanese do not love their children."

2011-05-22T14:06:00.000+09:00

Humourless Women 'of Letters'

2011-05-20T09:13:00.000+09:00

Some virago* thinks she is in a position to judge Philip Roth! She's no match on him: few are. Most people are humble enough to know, whether or not Roth is to their taste, they are wildly out-classed. People will be reading Roth a hundred years, or more, into the future. Who the hell is Carmen Callil?

It reminds me of an interview I read (in Granta) of the interminable Mavis Gallant running down more talented Mordechai Richler.

I remember one of the people around in that winter of 1950-51, and who I moved to the Right Bank to get away from, was Mordecai Richler. He was a bit of a brat. He was much younger. I’d met him in Montreal.

That winter everyone in the world was around Paris that I knew, practically. And I realized he didn’t like it at all. For one thing, he couldn’t speak any French. Though he came from Montreal, he couldn’t say, “Pass the salt.” He couldn’t say anything.

One day Mordecai came drifting over and he sat down and he grabbed the book out of my hand that I was reading. It was The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen’s great novel.

And he read some in a mocking voice. A mocking English voice that he didn’t do very well. And he said, “You know, if you go on reading this crap you’re never going to get anywhere.” So I just took the book back.

Mavis and Carmin, what you wanted to say is, "kyke!"

There are some few women writers I have enjoyed. Lionel Shriver and Laura Kipness I did. Perhaps I enjoyed both more than most women writers becuase they have a pitiless sense of humour. There are few reads more funny than the list in the centre of "Against Love"; and "We have to Talk about Kevin" is quite funny in even the more vicious parts. A sense of humour is not a characteristic of many women writers, especially the priestesses of Can-Lit.

Now I have no sisters, two brothers, come from an unsentimental family, and do not like to talk about my, or read about someone else's feelings and ruminations, so I am outside the market for the sort of book stereotypical women's writers make. These books are not funny. Most of all, their work is excrutiating, because they take themselves so damnably serious. Well I am very sorry, but that's not attractive at all. A woman might get away with being very pretty; even better, she should be quick-witted and funny as hell.

*'Virago' is the apt name of her 'feminist publishing house'.

Universal Bike Commuting Rules (nsfw)

2011-05-14T21:21:00.000+09:00

There are any number of web pages about the 'right way' to ride, but all those I have seen make the mistake of assuming you ride in their city, the same way they ride. I won't. I also won't tell you to wear a helmet, or talk further about 'vehicular cycling', except to call its advocates dogmatic. Any discussion on either topic will be deleted from the comments, because both tend towards 'Godwin's Law'.

Cover your ass.

Don't get hurt, hurt others, damage property or get caught for flouting the law; on a decreasing scale your responsibilities are to people's lives, person, and property. The letter of the law comes long after any of these, as the letter of the law is not written to prioritize these appropriately, in N.America. It is written and enforced far better in Holland, Denmark and Japan, and there are far more adult cyclists. 'Chicken'? 'Egg'?

Never mind the drivers who talk about cyclists riding in a way that 'scares' them. Excuse me? You in your steel cocoon are scared of me on my bicycle? Give your head a shake. Even if I were self-destructive enough to throw myself at your bodywork to bloody it out of spite, you are in no danger. Get over yourself. Be aware of the traffic rules and location of the agents of the state, but getting a fine for a badly written law is only the cost of doing business, and far less than the cost of gas, insurance, parking or car payments in a month.

Visibility

Drivers are often blind, lazy, stupid or some combination. Make them see you. Yellow triangles, very bright lights and positioning are things I use night and day. Getting seen is half the battle. If the excuse is you weren't seen, but your bike looks like a disco, you have a better case with the police and the court.

Understand the local traffic

I ride like a dick in Toronto, because it is the only way not to get killed, and to get anywhere fast enough not to give up bicycling. Your average Toronto driver will say I am 'one of those' cyclists, but the truth is they hate everybody out of a car, and would have us all become more obese 'cagers'; in fact they just hate everybody. I dominate the lane, curse and gesticulate, and on the rare occasion a driver does something thoughtful I make a wave, smile or bow - just so I don't faint from surprise. Being this aggressive, or defensive, I make sure I have a place to bail to in case of driver idiocy or rage.

I do not ride like that in Tokyo, because drivers in Tokyo aren't dicks. Your experience may vary. Two words for those of you who think that we should try to explain how vulnerable we are, and befriend drivers: 'Uncle Tom'.

Know the crime rate
There are American locations you should not ride in, because you might get shot. There are N.American and Canadian locations not to ride in, because you may get forced off the road. Find out. That's what the Internet is for. You want to avoid trouble, not rely on the police, for God's sake. It will also help you choose if your odds are better on a busy street at night, or an isolated bike path. If you are a girl, try not to look like one.

A more important crime rate is the collision rate, though few N.Americans consider it a crime: and no cops. You are more likely to be struck than assaulted. You will be verbally assaulted often, but the best way to put an end to this is ride away, or challenge the fatso to get out of his car. They rarely will, and if they have you can ride away faster than they can waddle, or get back in their car and chase you. If your city has a terrible rate, let that inform how little to trust drivers. I trust none. Yes, taxis and BMW drivers are fuckers. Truck and bus drivers are more decent than other drivers, but have good reason not to be able to see you. Mini-van drivers drive more blind, with less reason. They don't see your kind in the 'burbs.

As for theft, most of N.America is a joke: your bike is gone, and nobody cares. There are only a few good ways to avoid this. If you cannot bring a full-sized bike inside your place of work and lock it to something (I could), I would suggest you get a folder and lock it to something where you can keep an eye on it. As for running errands, I will only use bike-share in N.America, or a complete beater, or use a good bike nervously. How is that? Lock it in a high-visibility location with redundant locks, including through a saddle worth anything. Do not leave it for more than an hour. Do not do this at night: it is easier to get stolen in the dark, or the wheels stomped by some jilted drunk.

Your route
I neither advocate for nor against bike lanes and pathways. Tokyo has far fewer than Toronto's few, yet is a far safer city to ride. But I would still like Tokyo to have more than just those along its river embankments. Pathways have the advantage of few traffic lights, no cars, less pollution and noise, but may be nowhere near your route. Lanes have not been proven to be any safer than a regular street, and are no solution for not protecting cyclists and pedestrians in the courts. Witness take-out parking.

Use online mapping to choose a route that will get you to work as safely and efficiently as possible: aim for fewer cars, lights, cops, streetcar tracks and pot holes.

What to wear and ride

That's going to depend on several things: distance, speed, climate and money. As for money, spend some if the ride is long, but don't spend like a poseur. Start with a good saddle and tires. There is both good reason people use drop bars for long distances, and city bikes for short. Research friends and online. If you find a shop that tells you the same as online, buy there. The rest will up-sell. Wear what matches the bike: riding shorts for road bikes, and regular wear for city bikes, suited for the distance that you ride. Unless you live in LA, you need fenders: rain happens, and so does shit. Goose shit in Toronto.

Dealing with the ignorant
Your work should provide a place to shower, not lock it up as a storage room. Fat suburban administrators don't ride bikes in Ontario, I guess. No, I could not convince my principal to unlock it. Long story, big blow-up (hers), still pissed. 'You can't fight city hall', so if persuasion doesn't work, find another way to get clean if your ride is long. Amazing what you can do with two towels and a bathroom sink. Short hair everywhere expedites this.

Noli nothis permittere te terere
The cagers make this much harder than it has to be, but look at it this way: "Living well is the best revenge." They act miserable, and they are. Sloth, obesity, fear and hate does that to a person. Every day you ride a bike makes you less like them.

Bitter about Toronto 'baristas'

2011-05-14T12:14:00.000+09:00

Because you can never tell them how to make what you want, and relying on luck rarely works.

Never mind the variable quality of beans, wrong temperature of the water, and pomposity of 'baristas' in Toronto: I have had just one cup of coffee made how I like (Linux Cafe, and only by the owner). This in a city with tip-jars by the register, and an attitude to tipping which is, shall I say, presumptuous.

I can describe the coffee I want in a short sentence, in one of several ways, but that doesn't mean I am likely to get it.

Long dry double macchiato.
Dry double-shot macchiato allongée.

The longer version: put an amount of hot water in the bottom of a glass equal to the double espresso you pull on top of it, to keep the crema; then mark it with not more than two tablespoons of milk foam - no milk!

Is that so hard? Even when I am polite and apologetic, and the puller is not busy, apparently yes. There is more than one cognitive dissidence. First, the puller thinks he knows better than me. He/She is wrong, of course. Even if they are right about what is a better cup of coffee (they are not), I am paying. It is my right to be wrong, but I am not. Why do they keep putting milk in my macchiato? Did I ask for a latte? A cappucino? No! Macchiato is the one without milk, which is why it is a separate term. Second, nobody listens in Toronto. Nobody listens to anyone about how to drive, why we need better transit, the fact that more bikes and transit means there are fewer cars so you have more room for your bus. Nobody listens to the fact that decent physical and mental health care and elementary education are far cheaper than jails, policing and 'family services'. Nobody listens that voting for 'conservatives' can only be argued on hate; not financial policy as 'conservatives' have done more financial damage than 'the left'.

Sorry about that. But it is a very narcissistic city, which is unaccountable for such a provincial and obese population.

Most of the pulled coffees in Toronto are milky desserts, a la Starbucks' polysyllabic abominations. One of the more absurd things I have seen is a Starbucks in Lisbon: talk about faint hope. Bear in mind that in one week in Lisbon I had just one cup of coffee that was not good, and even that was not terrible. I would expect an inverse result, in Toronto. Having just finished a bica at the venerable Pastéis de Belém, when leaving we saw a Starbucks just down the street. I do not want to know if it has survived. I enjoyed Lisbon and its people too much to want to know that.

Coffee should taste like coffee. If you do not like its complex shibumi, drink a milkshake. What I more often do is order a very regular coffee when out, as there is less to go wrong, though it not rarely does. Eschewing the elusive foam, sans milk, I have just about given up ordering americano, as I believe an americano should have just double the volume of the espresso in it, not the quintupling I am more often handed. You see, I like coffee more than milk, or water. My elusive macchiato achieves all of the shibumi of coffee, with that bit of foam only polishing the sharper edges, and a bit of warm water to extend the stimulant into a beverage. Milk foam is caramelized, giving the coffee all of the sweetness it needs from lactose, without destroying it with sucrose. I make it at home. On the left, a stove-top 'moka' espresso maker, and on the right a stove-top milk steamer and frother. All that I need, but a bit of a production unless I have guests. I usually skip the milk foam in that case. If you want a counter-top espresso maker, spend not less than $500, or don't bother: you get better coffee from the machines, below.

I cannot share in 'coffee culture', such as it is, in Toronto. I do not drink double-double, both because I like coffee, and do not share in the infantile N.American taste for unrelenting cheap fats and sugar. I also do not care for the N.American figure, which is the result of same, and physical sloth.