十人十色 juu nin to iro

Obama's Victory Speech Vid (complete)

kinsugi — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:07:35 GMT

If you haven't heard Obama's election speech, it's on BBC video in its entirety. I was teary to begin with, but I began to cry when I saw Jesse Jackson in the audience. It's hard to believe; we can let go of our despair and cynicism. We can dare to hope again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7710079.stm

School Boards vs Intellectual Freedom

kinsugi — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:38:33 GMT

This is the kind of thing that makes me embarrassed to be an American. You'll note it's being reported in the foreign press. My local paper puts pro sports scores on the front page; international news and real issues barely exist.

"An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months."
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2288658,00.html

In the anime world, Toshokan Sensou is winding down its tale of censorship and resistance. Here's the Japan Library Association statement that was the inspiration for the original novels:
JLA Statement of Intellectual Freedom in Libraries

Thanks to tbll57 for the Brit news, and to haya5h1 for the link to the JLA's English translation!

Apple iPhone: The Music Video

kinsugi — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:57:27 GMT

Thanks to emungere for this hysterical link. I laughed so hard that my iBook fell out of my lap when I let go to applaud. (It's OK; I hang out on my futon.)

Apple iPhone: The Music Video
by David Pogue

Real Horrorshow... again

kinsugi — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:02:49 GMT

Warning: the true story is harsh and violent and difficult to read.
What Happened to Aaron Hall?
Paxnirvana said:
A group of men in a small town in Indiana brutally beat and tortured one of their friends to death. Their defense seems to boil down to "he was gay and he hit on us," so they beat him for 24 hours straight, and then shot him with a shotgun. Funny thing is, Aaron Hall wasn't gay, and everyone in his small town knew it. But the disgusting vermin who beat him to death seem to think that claiming "he hit on us" will let them get away with murder.

Sometimes I hate my country, when the dominant culture is arrogant and hurtful and so very horribly wrong. This is one of those times.

I can't speak more; I'm angry and upset and nauseated and full of hate myself right now. But I'm taking action to support the Human Rights Campaign... it takes only seconds to send an online letter if you live in the U.s.. I hope you'll take some kind of action of your own, whatever that may be.

Fun - and accurate! (via Viridian5)

kinsugi — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:38:55 GMT

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Northeastern.
You're probably from somewhere near New York City, possibly north Jersey, or Connecticut or Rhode Island. If you are from New York City you may be one of the types who people never believe when you say you're from New York.

Take this quiz now - it's easy!

The Monkey King and youkai, unlimited

kinsugi — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:31:35 GMT

I've been reading some of moonsilver's fun fics, and wanted to comment about the unlimited youkai forms of characters in Minekura's Saiyuki books.

I think of everyone's alter egos (or, more correctly, actual selves) as intelligent beings. I think the danger is that they may not remember their limited selves and lives and friends, in the heat of battle. In Minekura's world, the youkai were as smart or stupid as the humans, until the Minus Wave hit them, and the bad youkai were just thugs and gangs, aligned with the wrong side in this earthly war.

The Monkey King was a rebel, not an animal who couldn't communicate. He was mischievous, smart, powerful, and quite likeable; he reminds me of Raven in Pacific Northwest tales, or Coyote the trickster/creator in Southwest stories. Like several other fine Saiyuki characters, he went up against a nasty political structure that deserved opposition, and lost.

For another view of the Monkey King and the original story, check out
http://www.wku.edu/%7Eyuanh/China/tales/monkey.html.

cross-posted to saiyuki

WTF?

kinsugi — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 03:22:17 GMT

Kind of weird. I went from a LJ FAQ to the console to change my security level to Friends-Only for future entries, and now I can't get back to that link. The FAQ is still there, but the links to change security level and to add a banner saying "Friends Only" are dead now. I also can't find the console or the console commands again. WTF?

kinsugi — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:57:56 GMT

With apologies to anyone inconvenienced, I'm making many entries Friends Only because of concerns about the new corporate involvement in LJ. I know, they can still search our interests and groups, and I can't control them like I can my cookies. *sigh*

kinsugi — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:47:46 GMT

"There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably. These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie -- as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged."

LJ Privacy Petition comment and link

kinsugi — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 08:58:54 GMT

My comment when signing LJ Privacy Petition:

I agree completely, but I fear LJ is committed to becoming just another corporate mining tool. Thanks for your time researching the issues and lobbying to protect our privacy. I hope LJ takes appropriate action, and if they do not, I hope people are able to move our forums and activity to another blog that still holds to the early spirit of the Internet and the old LiveJournal.

kinsugi
---
Six Tips to Protect Your Online Search Privacy from EFF!

LiveJournal Privacy Petition

kinsugi — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 08:48:55 GMT

LiveJournal as corporate commodity

kinsugi — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:17:44 GMT

Posted to lj_biz

I'm sorry you are sensitive to the words "selling out" but that is how it does appear; you need the money, so LiveJournal, like television news and my local public schools, becomes just another commodity that will gradually be subsumed by corporate values. I suspected it was inevitable that this would happen once LJ was sold, because buying is usually associated with the idea that there's an opportunity to make a profit.

I don't blame you, I'm not mad at you, and really, when the fandoms eventually move to other journals, you'll be fine, making more money than ever from the corporate sponsors, and we'll be fine, somewhere else, at least for awhile. But the corporations will once again have won against individuals and our individual rights of expression and association in the Internet world will be eroded.

You can't control whether someone who works for a company goes "underground" to "friend" a journal without being labeled as an "associate account". During the Civil Rights movement and the VietNam War, and I'm sure still today, informants joined groups, and even took action from within to discredit or damage those groups. Our history is riddled with events in which ordinary citizens lost out against powerful corporations. Those whose values are different from the dominant culture are always at greater risk, and the dominant culture in the U.S. today is corporate and conservative.

I believe that the Internet, and the ability to speak and post freely across national boundaries, is a last bastion of the civil liberties promulgated by our American Revolution, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Free blogs provide an important channel to exercise those rights.

"You don't really know what you've got 'til it's gone."

Well, FWIW, I've made another donation to the EFF, and I'll go "friends-only" in the short term, while preparing for possible transitions to new journals elsewhere. I'll be happy if you prove me wrong.

Japanese troubles

kinsugi — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 01:15:27 GMT

Gods I'm frustrated. My new Japanese teacher speaks very FAST and pushes the class fast, and I'm having trouble. When I talked to her she acknowledged crowding and few help resources (a half hour tutoring session for 35 students?), but she feels Americans get stuck in habitually slow speech if they aren't forced to speed up. She said I could always take the second year class over again next year.

Without time pressure, I do a lot better, and I love working on reading and writing. But I'm really overwhelmed and considering dropping the class.

Books 'n' stuff

kinsugi — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 03:01:17 GMT

Rented a U-Haul to get my stuff, finally closing the storage space down after 10 years! Now my new, clean room is full of dusty old boxes, but I have bedding, warm clothes, anime and books again, including all my Japanese dictionaries. Just in time for 2nd-year Japanese.

My favorite new book is Making Sense of Japanese by Jay Rubin - great sense of humor!

Oddly, Amazon lumped Kodansha's fine grammar books with Kodansha's bilingual kids' stories as "Kodansha's Children's Classics" with whimsical children's titles like
-- All About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words
-- Handbook of Common Japanese Phrases
-- Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs
-- Japanese Verbs at a Glance.

A room of my own

kinsugi — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 01:21:14 GMT

I have a place to live! It was pretty grungy, but it's had a thorough cleaning and some paint, and it's looking pretty nice. My room is big and bright and empty.

Now I just have to figure out how to get what's left of my possessions out of storage in another city... futon! rain gear! winter clothes! anime! manga! Japanese dictionaries!

Back from the shadows - edit

kinsugi — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:07:43 GMT

I'm back from the shadows. I was hiding out for a year... health issues. I was living with family, which is hard to do for a brief reunion, let alone an extended stay. The town was hot, dry and dusty, my allergies were bad, and public transit was useless... just the main routes, weekdays 6AM to 6PM. People keep voting down bonds to expand transit; they love their cars and trucks.

But I've returned to the big city, where you can get anywhere via sane public transit. Right now I'm taking an intensive Japanese course, and living in hostels while looking for a room in a shared house. Anyway, I'm back.

LJ Bloggers Act Now

kinsugi — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 04:58:44 GMT

A friend sent this *must read* link:
"Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites".
My response:

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

Small town blues

kinsugi — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 17:26:49 GMT

I'm thinking about returning to the big city, maybe this summer after I finish a Japanese class at the local college. I'm an urban gal. Small towns kind of freak me out; sometimes people react oddly if you aren't like them, and I'm different in so many ways from the dominant culture, even if I don't have visible body art.

I have discovered a strong empathy with my mother and grandmother, both of whom left rural Oregon homes as teens, the latter leaving two kids behind. My mom went to New York, where I grew up, when she was 18, and never left. I'm grateful I grew up there, with the Met and Guggenheim and MOMA as my playgrounds, but I was happy to leave when I turned 18 and reversed the pattern, heading west again for a different kind of freedom.

Get a job....

kinsugi — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 06:33:09 GMT

Remember the old Coasters song, "Get a Job"? Well, I got one, at last! It's seasonal and the pay is low, but it's hopefully gonna be full-time. Inbound sales calls, for products I can support: catalog sales which began with Northwest pears but over the years have expanded to include a broad range of goodies. I'll be working swing shift.

Having an income again is a good thing. *nod, nod*

EDIT (Jan): Seasonal jobs do end with the season, but it was nice being able to buy holiday gifts!

Finally replaced the iBook!

kinsugi — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:49:39 GMT

Alive, kicking, and going to a job interview today. Finally replaced the broken iBook. So I'll be back on LJ soon, and catching up on friends and fiction!

Challenges... and sweltering heat...

kinsugi — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 15:23:04 GMT

Still no replacement laptop of my own, but I'm working on it.

Debt, health issues, unemployment. That's why I haven't been posting. I don't like to complain, and it's difficult to share tough times.

Hot, hot, hot! High '90's and into the 100's (Fahrenheit), likely to continue into September. Wonder how hot is it in Japan these days... is Hokkaido cooler than places further south in the summer?

Met a guy who's studying Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese, and wants to work for Interpol. Me, I just want to read my manga and understand my anime and chambara. Just got Mibu Gishi Den (When the Last Sword Is Drawn), an award-winning film about the Shinsengumi.
Mibu Gishi Den

Score! Amazing douga from Gundam Wing

kinsugi — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:21:48 GMT

Since returning from Japan, I've added sketches from Juuni Kokki (Taiki) and Gundam Wing (Wufei, Trowa) to my collection. (Also more anime and manga, as usual...)

Taiki is neat because there are four full sketches, which allow you to see the movement when combined in an animated gif.

I've only ever seen images for sale of a passive Trowa, just standing there, apathetic and still. This colorful, dynamic douga shows him at the moment of recovering his memory after an episode of amnesia. Gotta love it!

Taiki
Wufei
Trowa

I'm back... almost

kinsugi — Mon, 09 May 2005 16:39:30 GMT

I stayed healthy through grueling days of travel across the Pacific and an amazing month in Japan... but was not back for long before I was felled by the valley's spring mix of nasty bugs.

Sadly, my iBook, which I kept safely in my backpack for the entire journey, was also felled, by a curious two-year-old who pulled it to the floor, destroying the display.

All that lovely Buddhist meditation is being sorely tested; that's why the hermits stay up on the mountains! But I'm still feeling mellow and cheerful and happy.

bfn *coughing fit ensues*

Kyuu Shuu - Journey to Aso-san　火口

kinsugi — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 03:28:46 GMT

The land on the way to Aso-san, a live volcano, is old, harshly used, and dry. Perhaps it was once forested -- there are a few trees -- but now it's empty, sere, brown grassland, heavily eroded and badly overgrazed. Cow country. Here be Japan's cowboys. Here people eat meat, heavy sauces intriguingly influenced by Italian cooking, corn (you can even buy a can of corn juice in the everpresent coin machines), and few of the greens I've become accustomed to farther north.

Ads everywhere prove John Wayne movies are still popular here; he almost seems to be a local hero. I see a poster for Rio Bravo, one of my favorites when I was 13 and a Ricky Nelson fan.

Even the friendly bus driver is a wannabe cowboy. He tells me he has studied kendo and rides horses, as his white-gloved hands turn the wheel and we swing around Aso's steep curves with authority. I'm a cowboy, he says with a grin; the word, in Japanese, is "cowboy."

It's his last trip, and I'm his only passenger, having been forced to leave, with hundreds of others, on my first visit earlier today. [Just as I approached the crater, the winds changed, setting red lights flashing and klaxons beeping. Efficient, white-gloved guards guided us, quickly, back to the parking lots, saying "Gas." Half a dozen tour buses and thirty or so cars headed out. I began to hike down the trail with those who had walked up, but the couple who had given me a ride up the mountain stopped to pick me up before I'd even considered hitching again.]

Now I'm back, wanting to see Aso so I can leave in the morning.

My driver pulls in at the commercial area before the final trip to the top. Seven minutes, he tell me. Do I have a camera? He grabs it and assertively guides me to the railing. He takes two pictures of me with a gorgeous, dry mountain and clear sky behind me. I turn the tables and pressure him into letting me take his picture as well. Some Japanese workers are viewing the interchange with smiles and nods; I grin at them.

We climb back into the bus, the two of us, in a companionable mood. At the top he says he's the last bus and will leave at five; I tell him I understand and will go down with him.

Walking up to the crater, easily identified by a large white plume of steam, you are struck by the looming presence of half a dozen round concrete bunkers. If Aso suddenly spewed lava and ash, would we be directed to hide in those bunkers? Surely, if the mountain really began to go off again, everyone would rather flee down the mountain in terror than wait to be buried at the top in a concrete grave. I walk past the bunkers, noting the benches inside, inadequate even for this early spring crowd, and look over the wooden rail.

At the bottom of the crater is gray-brown mud, color-coordinated with much of the land around us. Not surprisingly, since Aso created this land. The earthy, pastel tones of the dusty walls remind me of Death Valley's subtle, austere beauty.

A small altar's flowers and bedecked Buddha provide a bright contrast to the muted volcanic colors.

Below the crater, a large concrete building houses a mountain of trinkets awaiting sale to summer tourists, but the tables are covered now and the building nearly empty. I prefer to await my bus in the cold evening wind outside. I huddle against the building, admiring another, more formal Buddha and small temple nearby. Looking at this second Buddha against the volcano's rising smoke, I enjoy the contradiction: Buddha's peace against the background of an unpredictable, sometimes violent mountain.

***

That night I watch a TV show about Yagyu with the women who run the hostel. I am mesmerized by the samurai on the large screen. It's riveting, fabulous, high quality, the fight scenes clearly influenced by Kurosawa's films fifty years ago. I don't need to understand the Japanese (though obaasan wants to tell me) as I watch the close-ups of the actors faces; Yagyu and his old sword teacher, talking about the political situation. I want Japanese TV, badly. NHK Channel 9, every Friday night, the adventures of Yagyu. I ask, and am told the Shinsengumi series was Monday nights, but it is over. I'll try to find videotapes in Tokyo.

I share an overheated dorm room with women from France, Germany, and Australia, and fall asleep to the hum of electrical wires outside.

I rise early, pack, and slip away to walk down to town. Nearby I find a small, lovely cemetery, carved stone columns freshly decorated with flowers even though it's early on a Sunday morning. Families have already been here to honor their dead, but I only see one woman now. It's a beautiful sight, these small monuments of stone covered with flowers, but I feel uncomfortable about intruding on the peace by taking out my camera. I simply walk by, breathing the fresh morning air, enjoying the moment.

All the way down to town, daffodils are pushing up through the grass at the side of the road, their cheerful yellow flowers just beginning to bloom.

Arrival in Tokyo

kinsugi — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 06:48:32 GMT

Flying from rainy PDX to sunny Narita was long, long, long.

Disoriented and dazed. Dreamlike. Floated, exhausted, automatically trying to sound out kana on big signs. Passport approved, luggage found, customs approved. Looking for where to get my JR Railpass, was directed to ticket counter; now I know how to read wall schedule and buy a ticket, but railpass was elsewhere. So tired I just sat for half an hour.

Challenges faced successfully:
-- bought 1000 yen ticket for limited express from human, and 160 yen ticket for subway from a wall of machines covered in japanese...
-- found correct trains, with just one trip to wrong side of platform. Lots and lots of stairs. Pretty crowded but fortunately missed rush hour!
-- found way out of station and trudged short two blocks to ryokan, and thanked all the neighborhood kami that my futon is on the first floor. Lovely old wooden building; sliding doors; more stairs; tatami. Friendly hosts. Left shoes at door, wore comfy bumpy slippers. Planned shower but fell asleep in my clothes as soon as I lay down.