my.bicycle

I have abandoned both rational thought, and budget simultaneously in my desire for this monitor .

Johnny Cash died of diabetes-related complications on September 12, 2003. I grew up listening to a lot of good country music. Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, ...it was already "old" when my parents played it for me. As the nature of country music turned ever more toward formulaic, predictable, and standardized formats, I discovered a whole different realm of music. I got into new wave music instead, later, "alternative" and techno-industrial. Still, I've always had a soft spot for the music of my childhood, which was actually the music of my parents' youth. Johnny Cash and Buddy Holly would have to be the two I heard the most. Recently Johnny Cash's American Recordings series of albums came to my attention because of his cover of Nine-Inch-Nails' (Trent Reznor's) " Hurt ." I think it's better than the original by leaps and bounds; an opinion that is reinforced by viewing the video . From recent personal experience, I can attest ...

I wasn't a fan of the Jerky Boys, but I have a hard time feeling sympathy for the RIAA being crank-called . Of course, I'd be happier if the callster had a direct line to some of the lawyers who are setting RIAA policy, instead of some poor lackey on the phone. Want to support the artists, but not the agency? Go see a concert . At least for now, the labels don't get diddly.

Can't tell if you are festooned with doubloons, or decked out in bling-bling? Use this Pirate2Gangsta conversion table . Also for Talk Like a Pirate Day , I appear to be called: Black Sam Flint - "Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!"

I live in Kishiwada, an hour or so south of Osaka by express train. It's a really nice town with just about everything a guy needs to get along. Every year, on September 14 and 15, the city holds the Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri. It's famous among the people that follow festivals in Japan! It has had documentaries written up about it, and frequently is covered on the national news. What happens is that each neighborhood has its own /danjiri/, a HUGE wooden parade float that is ornately carved. It's pulled by people manning a long rope that stretches out ahead of it. It's steered by a post that sticks out the back end of it, which people will jerk left or right, until it's facing the desired direction. It doesn't have a steering axle; the wheels only go straight, so jerking the steering pole around makes the wooden wheels skid on the street. This may give you the impression that several tons of ornately carved wood are careening around populated areas, rampaging ...

I'm a big fan of William Gibson's work, despite my love affair with Pattern Recognition lasting about 100 pages. I have a 10(or so)-year-old copy of Neuromancer that my Mom sent to me when I first moved to Japan in 1993. I read it on the train, going to and from Namba, Umeda, and Dotonboribashi. I felt like a character in that book. Unlike many people, I really enjoyed the Virtual Light series, probably because Gibson said he wanted to try something different, like Elmore Leonard doing SF. Boo ya; it rips. So, yeah, so what if Pattern Recognition's ending is the sort of anticlimax commonly experienced when finishing a candy bar? It was tasty enough. So I was excited as a cat with a ball of string to find that he has a weblog, with an RSS feed . Seeing as I only just started messing around with RSS in the last three or four weeks, it is with my typical late-to-the-ball timing that I greeted the news that today's post would be his last . Laika, come home!

The 11 strangest Star Wars figures ever made.