My friends Chris and Karen have launched a fabulous website dedicated to spreading the power and the glory of Japanese curry to us poor, deprived Americans. Their mascot is Ōtisu, minor god of Japanese curry. His creation myth is both inspirational, because it is beautiful, and instructional, because he ordered his curry with cheese topping.

I am working on getting Joe and myself set up as their Southern California “men on-the-street,” and by “on-the-street” I mean “in a curry restaurant,” and by “a curry restaurant” I mean “Hurry Curry, hopefully this weekend.” Mm, Hurry Curry.

Also, if anyone is thinking of posting that they like Indian curry better, they are about to step right into the dumbest Internet argument since “Japanese RPGs aren’t really RPGs.” So: don’t.

I finally joined last.fm. Four reasons: I want good music to stream at work, I want another way to learn about new music, I want to share my music with my friends, and – perhaps most of all – I want a strong record at the end of the year of what I actually listened to.

My most-listened artists are pretty representative. Sufjan hasn’t gotten much play outside of Christmas for the past 2 years. Also, last.fm is missing all my pre-2005 listens, which means that U2, Tori Amos, The Smiths, Talking Heads and Outkast are significantly undersampled.

If you scrobble, please post your username in the comments so I can add you. Thanks!

The election is tomorrow. I encourage you to vote for whoever you like (as long as it’s Barack Obama). And if you live in California, Vote NO on Proposition 8.

A distressing number of my Californian friends have no idea how close this proposition is to passing – they assume it will fail because, hey! We live in California! NO is fractionally ahead in polls, but within the margin of error – this proposition will be determined entirely by voter turnout.

Outside forces have spent $25 million dollars lying to Californians about what this divisive and hateful proposition means – Proposition 8 has seen the most advertising of any race or issue this cycle, outside the presidency. Unfortunately, this deluge of negative falsehoods means a 20-point advantage for common-sense decency has been slowly whittled away to little more than a rounding error. If Proposition 8 passes, gay rights will be set back by years, if not decades. The other side is treating this as the final battle of the culture war, and it’s up to us whose hearts aren’t ruled by hate to make sure that they don’t win.

I’m not going to tell you why Proposition 8 is wrong and must be defeated – you’re smart enough to figure that out for yourself. But you have to vote. I don’t care if MSNBC calls the election for Barack at 4 P.M. PST. Get your ass to the polls and vote. Vote.

Thank you.

I dressed up as Scott McCloud’s Zot! villain 9-Jack-9 for Halloween. This is the latest in my popular “awesome, yet unrecognizable” costume series. (Though, three people totally recognized me!) I’m extremely happy with how this turned out.

I learned a few important lessons from this costume, most importantly: don’t choose a costume that prevents you from drinking at a Halloween party. You will take your mask off twenty minutes into the party, and spend the rest of the evening explaining that no, you are not the Music Man, Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins, or Tucker Carlson.

Thanks to Joe for taking such nice photos.

gonna have a good time

It’s a well-known fact that Valentine’s Day was created by the American chocolate consortium as a way to sell more watered-down milk chocolate to harried males (and the harridans that love them).

Somewhat lesser known is White Day, a March 14 Japanese holiday, designed to spur sales of white chocolate. I have a very poor opinion of white “chocolate” to begin with, so my opinion of this manufactured holiday is even lower than might be expected.

But completely heretofore unknown to me was Black Day. an April 14 Korean holiday when poor single gentleman who did not receive chocolate of any color may drown their sorrows in noodles with black-bean sauce.

Which just goes to show: there’s no aspect of the human condition that can’t be turned into a marketing opportunity.

Happy Thanksgiving, or perhaps not; to me, it is all the same.

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.

I assembled four IKEA Billy bookcases last night. It took more than four hours.

Me: I feel like I’m grinding bookcase mobs.
Nich: Soon, you’ll reach Artisan Bookcase Maker.
Me: Three more, and I can start making tables.

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανειν θέλω.

I recently switched from Vodafone to DoCoMo (I can now choose to not play Before Crisis, far more satsifying than simply ignoring it by default). Anyways, I spent most of this evening copying over entries from the old phonebook into the new. (Of course my phone has USB, IR port, etc., but the phone manufacturers purposefully introduce address book data format incompatibilities to discourage you from switching carriers.) This is a disturbingly faster process than one might hope. One of the less pleasant realities of living overseas is an extremely high turnover in your circle of friends. Some people come for 6 months, others for a year or two, but there are very few “lifers” or otherwise long-term residents.

I’ve been here four years, now, and going through a phonebook full of names of people who’ve left Japan for good is making me feel like the soldier who wonders when his tour of duty will end, ’cause he’s seen too many of his comrades fall in battle. Probably a bit melodramatic, that. But a task like tonight’s really drives home how absent friends become once they leave the country. Tokyo’s great, but it’s not so geographically convenient.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently; there was E3, and then after E3, there was my brother’s wedding. My younger brother! And work, of course; always work.

In any case, congratulations are due to my brother and his wife on their recent marriage. The wedding itself was simple and beautiful, and the two of them are certainly thrilled. And who’s that handsome devil standing next to my brother in this one?

They’re honeymooning in Undisclosed Location X right now, but soon to head out to San Francisco to begin their new life together. *sniff* Congratulations once more!