Okay, this is the second time I’ve heard about a fake flushing-sound device installed in womens’ toilets in Japan.. You push the button when you’re having a bowel movement, and nobody hears the sound of what happens when you do what you’re doing. The reporter comments: Such gadgets might seem a dainty, modern excess of a shame-obsessed society, but the Sound Princess has deep roots in Japanese culture. The Japanese are notoriously fastidious: the daily bath is practiced with near-religious fervor, and walking inside with your shoes on is considered filthy. The Japanese word for clean —”kirei”—also means beautiful. And …
Category: PERSONAL
Urethra Friend of Mine Or Not
Yes, after two bouts of tonsilitis and a few rounds in the ring with a swollen area surrounding that pesky wisdom tooth that is still (since sometime last year) pushing its way out, I thought the old Rider on the Horse of Pestilence would leave for greener pastures, but no… he just picked a new spot to, well, pick at. So Lime and I got on a bus to Seoul Saturday morning. At the rest stop, about halfway there, I found that I really needed to pee. So I did. And it hurt. The rest of the way up was …
Polyphonic Spree Game
Whether or not you like the band Polyphonic Spree, this flash puzzle-game that is supposed to promote their most recent album is a good little distraction my friend Charlie passed over to me.
How One Man Dealt With a Shitty Work Environment
I wrote recently about the French approach to workplace resistance; here’s a rather different form, Texan style, called The Mad Shitter. I bet the Big Hairy Hominid‘s gonna love this. I found the link through Adam, who’s also mad… but it’s his crossbows you need to watch, not his rectum.
A summary of today
Woke early enough to have a decent breakfast and get my mind in order before going to teach my first class. Wrestled with a broken door before teaching second class. My office’s door is screwed, the hinge messed up. I’m hoping someone shows up sometime next week to fix it. Went downtown to the dentist’s office to see about getting my wisdom tooth pulled. Got a filling instead, as well as some amalgam stuffed into the space around the offending decayed tooth… stuffed in so raggedly I keep havign to fight the urge to pick out all the loose, jagged …
Lazy Eyes and Great Art
Digital Photo Contest!
Hey! JPG Magazine, a new publication which showcases the work of photographers who fall between the amateur and professional levels, is accepting photographic submissions for its premiere issue, themed “Origin.” Click the link for more info.
Get With The Program, People!
Have you read the latest Simon World :: Asia by Blog? Well, what are you waiting for?
Academic Dress Code?
Oh, the self-hate! Over at The Common Review you can sample this article, Why We Look So Bad, by Basically, she’s just an academic who thinks professors (to her credit, including herself) don’t dress well enough in general, and that they really aren’t keeping up with the rest of the professional world. Why they should bother, why they should care, seems beyond me. Young people, in droves, are giving up keeping up. After all, it’s all just a way of putting money into the pockets of whoever seems to be deciding this season’s fashions. I’m not saying we ought to …
New Agnosticism?
After a few hours of puttering about online, trying (somewhat futilely) to catch up on my blog subscriptions, I’ve found something quite worth a few minutes’ attention: an essay on “the new agnosticism” over at Killing the Buddha. Nose still a little running, head still a little cloudy, I still have the energy to disagree, but respectfully. My philosophical agnosticism is closer to Auguste Compte’s than anyone’s, in that I think taking a position on the “theist/atheist” question is simply taking a position on a rather closed, circular little binary of possibilities. Why would the universe be limited to just …