Context: I’m in Taiwan, now.

In William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, the main character is supersensitive to brands and logos. She has immediate, visceral reactions to corporate branding and PR campaigns, making her highly valuable to companies about to spend millions on a new rollout. Somewhat interestingly, Japanese character goods totally fail to “register” with her sixth sense–despite (or perhaps because of) their hyper-artificiality, they act as white noise, leaving her feeling nothing.

Tonight, I went to the Shilin Night Market in Taipei, and after about 30 minutes started to feel actually physically ill. I think the major cause was the different stalls selling the same two dozen bootlegged shirts, purses, and wallets; copy-pasted every 50 feet like a bad FPS map. Mentally, these unlicensed anti-brands started to coalesce into new, faux brands in my mind, and the whole thing got twisted up into a mental Mobius strip. Combined with the stinky food stalls and run-down carnival games, the whole thing felt like an unfunny parody of a Japanese matsuri.

I had thought that the market would be like Japan, only more so; instead, it gave me weird, Lovecraftian heebie jeebies; a low pressure behind the eyes due to things being slightly askew from expectations. I think I have a bad case of reverse reverse culture shock; of expecting all foreign countries to map onto the Japanese template. This is clearly not the case.

The trip’s not all howling fantods, though; I also went up the tallest building in the world this afternoon and learned about “Damper Baby,” a Sanrio-created anthropomorphization of a 760-ton suspended steel sphere that passively reduces wind shear. Like most overdesigned character goods, he leaves me feeling nothing.

My stuff has all been moved over to my new place in Costa Mesa. I hit up Home Depot and Target for a few supplies and tools this afternoon, but I don’t think I have it in me for a few more weeks yet to visit IKEA. It’ll take more than the sweet siren call of lingonberries to lure me back into that maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

I installed a new light fixture in my closet this afternoon–with a pull chain, so I can place a bookcase over the exterior switch. The installation involved a flathead screwdriver, a wire stripper, UL-listed wireclips, and a whole bunch of ceiling paint chips landing in my hair. Not to mention circuit breaking the entire apartment beforehand so as not to, well, die.

At the risk of sounding like a terrible Japanophile, I thought I would point out that Japanese light fixtures attach to ceiling points using the luminous equivalent of HDMI: a single cable with a turn-lock plug that connects all the wires, grounds the circuit, and even keeps the fixture attached to the ceiling. No screws or wires or circuit breakers–just plug in the cord, adjust the fixture to its desired height, and you’re in business.

I suppose it might be too much to ask the U.S. electric manufacturing cartel to reorganize itself according to my whims. But I find it fascinating how two cultures came up with two extremely different solutions to the problem of making light.

Q: How many art directors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Does it have to be a light bulb?

Q: How many copyeditors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The last time this question was asked it involved art directors. Is the difference intentional? Should one or the other instance be changed? It seems inconsistent.

I need a GPS for my car. The kind you stick on top of the dashboard, not in it.

Any recommendations?

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy beyond imagination at work, and I’m moving to a new apartment on Friday.

I am declaring this post’s comment section an Officially Sanctioned ASK ANDREW A STUPID QUESTION zone. I will try to turn the more interesting questions into inevitably less interesting blog entries.

Little Spoon wrote me back!

Thank you for giving e-mail.
It turned out also abroad that our curry is in a favorite person.
It is very glad!
Aiming at overseas expansion, it becomes a big company.
We do our best.

Given the Japanese penchant for anthropomorphizing foodstuffs, I easily believe that the curry is happy.

Any readers I might still have deserve to know about the greatest tool since Prometheus stole fire from the gods: iConcertCal. This is an iTunes “visualizer” that automagically propogates a calendar with live shows by bands in your iTunes library within a specified radius from your location. That is to say: if you install this plugin, you will ALWAYS know when a show you want to see is coming to town, without ANY extra work on your part. I’ve wanted something like this for years, and now at last I have it. And now you do too.