» I don't understand the attraction

Grown adults
...fawning over Japanese cartoons.

They're CARTOONS. They're not "anime", or fifteen other pretentious Martian ways to say it, they're ANIMATED PICTURES! Forms of entertainment! They're not insights into mysterious Oriental (god, I hate that word too) culture for you obnoxious fuckers to gnaw at like a bunch of lions fighting over a deceased antelope in a race to see which of you can think up the most hackneyed explanation for why there are women in leather bras and spiked green hair carrying automatic weapons and space robots. They keep children entertained so they bug their parents to go buy them plastic toys. That's all!

The international media spends hours and rivers of ink to ooh and aah over this mass-produced crap and people can't get enough of it. I don't get it. What is the appeal? Is it because of the exotic squiggly writing? Is it because cartoon women are more approachable than the real ones? Does it make you feel unique and underground?

Someone please point me in the right direction -- preferably toward a running wood chipper -- because if I hear one more word about Naruto Yayoi Hentai Bukkake Pokemon the 3rd, I'm going to start stabbing kittens. I mean it.
(Fri 16th Oct 2009, 5:21, More)

» Tramps

I wasn't expecting that.
Despite the prevalent image of Japan being a squeaky clean utopia of clean-shaven, impeccably-dressed men and women marching in neat rows and columns to and from their office jobs at the space robot construction companies every day, in all metropolitan areas you will inevitably see the shanty towns of cardboard and blue tarpaulin. Go to any train station and you'll see human beings slumped in doorways and alcoves, most unconscious due to the usual forms of chemical enhancement. Some are sitting cross-legged on the ground moaning at no one in particular. These are the homeless that are easy to spot.

However, there are a few that you never suspect of being those whom have fallen through the cracks, until it is far too late.

A few years back I was standing outside Shibuya Station -- one of the busiest, hysterically crowded mass-transit facilities in the entire solar system -- on a Tuesday morning in full businessman suited regalia, briefcase in hand, waiting for a coworker to show up before heading to a meeting with a client. I'm standing there amongst an endless sea of flowing humanity, in and out of the station and across the intersection opposite the front gates. Off to the side was a little waiting area with a fountain where you might expect a multitude of pigeons and various homeless people to congregate.

Presently I saw a middle-aged lady sitting on the marble facade of the fountain, calmly reading a tabloid newspaper. Her clothing, while weathered, didn't scream "tramp!" at me, and neither did her demeanor. She wasn't wobbly drunk, nor was she having animated conversations with alien beings from the planet Zoombak. She was just sitting there, reading a paper. There were no other people in the immediate vicinity. Just this one lady and her paper.

And then, as I was looking in her general direction, she looked up from her paper, and leaned a bit over to one side as if to peer at something on the ground.

At which point, without any warning, without any pre-heave, without any signal whatsoever, she proceeded to explode forth with the longest, most horribly sickening Mr. Creosote-style projectile vomit I have ever seen. Making a noise that sounded very much like RAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGH, she managed to achieve a spew distance reaching nearly five feet.

Keep in mind that throughout all this, there are hundreds and hundreds of people behind me walking to and fro, minding their own business, no one stopping or even looking in the direction of Mt. Vesuvius over there on the water fountain. It was just her, and me. A decidedly odd personal moment between us.

When she finished her nuclear vomitocaust, she slowly sat back upright again, and turned to the next page of her newspaper. Nobody acted as if anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

To this day I wonder if she was even a homeless person at all.
(Tue 7th Jul 2009, 8:19, More)

» Accidental animal cruelty

Accidentally pureed hamster
I must have been 9 years old at the time. I was at a day-care center with other hyperactive children in a play area that included a) a small portable see-saw sort of thing made from metal tubing, b) piles of nondescript, broken toys, and c) a cage with a hamster in it. Two kids were on both seats of the see-saw, swaying back and forth like some sort of mutant rocking chair.

Someone ran over and let the hamster out of the cage, playing with it on the floor. The hamster, likely driven insane by being surrounded by (from its point of view) 50-foot-tall screaming giants, darted about the room evading their hands as they attempted to grab it.

I have no idea where the caretaker was during this episode.

At this point I was on one of the seats of the see-saw as it rocked back and forth on the carpet. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and CRUNCH.

I looked down. The curved metal foot of the see-saw had nailed the hamster across the hindquarters, crushing it flat.

I leaped off the see-saw in horror as the hamster ran off as fast as its forelegs could drag it. It only made it about ten feet before stopping. The other kids in the room were behaving in a manner I wouldn't witness until the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed 21 years later.

The vision of that poor little bugger vainly attempting to flee despite its entire lower body pulverised... I will take it with me to my grave.
(Wed 12th Dec 2007, 11:19, More)

» Spoooky Coincidence

If only I'd had a phone to NORAD
One night I had a rather intense dream that I was in a car that was going through an intersection, when it was promptly T-boned in the right back quarter by another car at a high rate of speed. Smoke started pouring from the rear end. Just as I was recovering from the shock of this, another car came from the opposite direction, slamming into the front left fender with even more ferocious force. Smoke billowed out of the front of the car. I was debating whether to break a window and jump out the driver's side when I snapped awake.

Two cars hitting me sideways at high speed from opposite directions.

My wife, lying next to me, immediately related the story of her own dream that she had just had, of being on some form of mass transit that was out of control, with everyone screaming in fear but unable to do anything.

I thought nothing more of it until I went downstairs, turned on the television, and was greeted by the sight of...

...the burning, collapsing World Trade Center towers in New York, that had been hit broadside by two airplanes from opposite directions at a high rate of speed.

It was September 11, 2001.

I swear to $SUPREME_BEING. 100% true.
(Fri 9th Feb 2007, 11:15, More)

» Embarrassing Injuries

Sports Injuries that Never Occurred
I was a complete and utter non-sports-oriented geekazoid in junior high school. Despite this, in the 7th grade I found myself a bench-warmer on a 3-on-3 school basketball team.

Most of the time, I stood on the sidelines and went apeshit insane when my team scored, since such things were a rarity. And since I contained several megawatthours worth of energy that belied my disinterest in organized sports, I was usually jumping up and down like a complete loon.

On this particular occasion, our team was in the lead, and I was being my usual weird self on the sidelines, jumping up and down at various angles while babbling. At one certain climactic moment, about thirty seconds before I was scheduled to take someone's place on the actual court and play actual basketball, I came down wrong on my right foot during a spastic sort of jumping cheer.

It hurt more than anything I'd ever experienced before. Yet, now I was being ordered onto the court. I had to make my move. My fleeting seconds of fame hung in the balance.

I limped, badly, out onto the court, and made a feeble attempt at a shot off my left foot. The ball didn't even make the backboard.

A visit to the doctor later that afternoon confirmed that my energetic cheering had resulted in a broken fifth metatarsal. I had broken my foot while doing essentially nothing. I had to wear a flamingly gay-looking foot brace sandal thingie for the next two weeks.

To this day I tell people I broke my foot "playing basketball". I neglect to tell them that I wasn't even in play when it occurred.
(Wed 8th Sep 2004, 4:14, More)