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Apologies for the lack of posting recently; selling things on eBay is keeping me quite busy, and the job’s starting a new project Any Day Now, which means I’m busy researching/preparing for the upcoming project.

Would people prefer a short, pithy, perhaps plagarized update to total silence? Let me know…

Please buy my stuff.

For the past hour or so I’ve been cyberstalking people I knew in elementary and middle school; mostly girls I had crushes on years before I had thought about doing anything close to dating. It’s fun to see what you can learn: someone went to this college, wrote this paper, dated this guy, found that old time religion. If you’re lucky, you may even find a recent photo, the holy grail of any cyberstalker. Some people have become all but unreachable, but even then you can usually find a datum or two. I wonder if any of my stalkees read this blog? …unlikely.

After a while I got bored and stalked myself, returning this stunningly accurate webpage.

Sparse updates over the next few days as I finally finish tweaking Yukihime’s layout and bring the static content back online.

As I mentioned earlier, thanks to my fabulous friend Joe I ended up with a copy of the World of Warcraft Limited Edition. Not just a regular Limited Edition, but one which had been signed, for-real signed not just pretend-printed-on-the-box signed, by the entire design team. WOW indeed. Thanks again, Joe! With unsigned copies going for $150+, I can only imagine what my super-rare signedy one is worth. Not that I’m ever selling.

In any case, the signed box was a gorgeous piece of geekery, signed as it was in three different paint pen colors, but international weight limits and a dormant sense of practicality kept me from lugging it back to my Tokyo apartment. What’s a self-respecting dork to do? In the end, I hauled the box over to Kinkos, made a full-sized color copy of the front, and brought the copy to Japan, where an A3-sized frame and textured piece of backing make for a wonderful display. Behold my glory and my shame.

I bought a bike pump today. For years, I filched off the generosity of Kiritaka; since more or less all students bike to school, the staff room had a communal pump for deflated tires. So I just used that. Not so lucky here in Tokyo, so I went to Tokyu Hands today and purchased an incredibly functional, horrifically ugly yellow foot pump with built-in pressure gauge.

I have an unfortunate tendency to let my tires deflate almost completely before refilling them; it’s only after a few weeks of ka-thunking my rims around the neighborhood I start to feel I should put some air in my tires. Every time I do it’s an epiphany, as I glide around the neighborhood with half the previous effort. “Aha!” I think. “So this is why wheels are round. It’s so much more efficient.”

Well, I promised an accounting of everything I smuggled into the country in two suitcases, and by God if you won’t get it. Almost all of these games, books etc. were picked up used or at cutthroat remaindered prices. I do have some sense. Also, most of the girly books were forced upon me thoughtfully suggested to me by Janice.

Comments & suggestions about anything on this list are welcome.

Somewhat Respectable Books

• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
• The Complete Japanese Expression Guide by Mizue Sasaki (an interesting English-language compendium outlining Japanese idiomatic expressions)
• Crash by J.G. Ballard (can I be the first to make an auto-erotica pun? no? oh.)
• The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
• Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco (because I can’t bring myself to read The Da Vinci Code)
• A Gentleman’s Game: A Queen and Country Novel by Greg Rucka (with signed bookplate)
• Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams by M.J. Simpson (not only do I like Adams, it’s supposed to be quite a good biography)
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham (I feel like such a woman)
• Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (pitched to me as “Calvin and Hobbes on a boat”)
• The Waste Land: Norton Critical Edition by T.S. Eliot (lots of the original sources Eliot alludes to in the poem, plus more than 60 critical essays)

Sci-Fi Trash

• Slan by A.E. Van Vogt
• The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford
• The Voices of Time by J.G. Ballard
• The Terminal Beach by J.G. Ballard
• Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
• Sword & Citadel by Gene Wolfe
• The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
• The Wizard by Gene Wolfe

Comics

• Bone by Jeff Smith
• Queen & Country: Operation: Dandelion by Greg Rucka

Hot Gamez

• Activision Anthology (PS2) (Pitfall, River Raid, and possibly some other games)
• Amplitude (PS2) (probably sucks but was $3)
• Darkened Skye (PC) (Skittles-based magic system! yesssss)
• Gradius V (PS2)
• Half-Life 2 (PC) (sucks!)
• The Nightmare of Druaga (PS2) ($18 helps put the “like” in roguelike)
• No One Lives Forever 2 (PC)
• Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door (GC) (it will be a thousand years before I play this likely)
• Taiko Drum Master (PS2) (U.S. pop schlock > anime OP themes. suck on it, Japanophiles)
• Technic Beat (PS2)
• Way of the Samurai (PS2) (supposedly short and extremely replayable, which sounds like my kind of game)
• World of Warcraft Limited Edition (PC) (much to my surprise, this was signed-for-real by the entire design team. the front is covered in gold and silver paint pen and looks gorgeous!)

Cinematic Masterworks

• Cyndi Lauper: Twelve Deadly Sins (this is totally awesome SHUT UP SHUT UP)
• The Iron Giant: Special Edition
• Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
• The Office Special
• Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Extended Edition
• Strange Days

Music

• Funeral by The Arcade Fire

PC Hardware

• GeForce 6600GT AGP
• Turtle Beach Catalina Soundcard

I am a consumer whore – and how!

Back in Japan after a lovely extended vacation in America. Any trip where you eat fajitas five times in three weeks is a success in my book. Oh, and when I wasn’t O.D.ing on Mexican food, I got to see some friends and family, too.

As part of my “do better in 2005″ initiative I am going to try to be better about updating Yukihime, and to finally get goviolet off the ground. I figure if I cut obsessively checking the Gaming Age Forums out of my schedule, I’ll have three more hours of free time a day. I plan to adjust the amount I play World of Warcraft, as well, but I should still have 15 minutes leftover to whip up an entry here and there.

I smuggled all sorts of things through customs on the way back this year. If the baggage forwarding service successfully delivers my bags this afternoon, I’ll provide a full accounting.

Every time I arrive in Narita, I’m tickled by the signs before customs: the English says “Welcome to Japan,” but the Japanese says “okaeri nasai” – “welcome home.” I always feel this is highly representative of the dichotomy of thinking required by foreigners living in Japan.