Mumblings

  1. Melancholy

    So today is the twenty-first anniversary of my arrival in Japan. 42% of my life spent here, but who's counting and I'm just a little overwhelmed with it all. Paths not taken. Castaway, Lost in Translation, Sliding Doors and this fucking thing comes up and reduces me to tears. I noticed right off the misuse of "cool," but what I don't think the filmmakers would have spotted in their own work was the sounds of barking dogs and insects being not quite right. No, the dogs would be fine. A dog...
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  2. Olympians

    Unlike a lot of what I write, this is in no way tongue-in-cheek. A little bit late, but serious. Mrs. A and I watched a bit of the Tokyo Paralympics these last couple weeks. It was on directly after the news, and we seem to have reached that age where watching the news feels important. The progress of the pandemic and state(s) of emergency directly impact how and where I'll be working, so I like to keep abreast of things, but this post isn't about that. Fuck the Olympics. The IOC is an...
  3. Cast Away

    That was one of the last movies I saw before I self-exiled, but it's not the topic today. I took the bus to the center of town. Mid-day, not too crowded, so I was able to find an empty two-person seat towards the back. I dunno your public transport, but ours is pretty well endo-caged. Lots of padded bars at levels convenient to both sitting and standing riders of all heights, so the seatback in front of me had a handhold bar, covered in cushioning foam. And there was a person in the...
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  4. What New Word, or A Tale of Mt. Fuji

    This started out as a "What New Word Did You Learn Today" post but the Muse hit me and it got out of control. QC is low to non-existent as I'm slightly above the legal limit to drive but I'm pretty sure I've caught all the slurs and insults. Well this is odd. I have a new word that I unlearned today, or rather learned the correct meaning of, only to discover that what I thought it meant doesn't have a specific term. Early in my time here I climbed Mt. Fuji. Our bus took us to the fifth...
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  5. Things That Annoy Me But Shouldn't

    It's been over a year since I've spoken to any of my regular coworkers face to face. In the last ten months, I've had face to face conversations with only two other native speakers of English. The semester ends soon. I have never seen any of my students face to face. I haven't even seen many of them online. I don't know some of their genders. My mother had a serious stroke in October. She's not really connected to the world anymore. Sometimes I can get answers, often I can't. She...
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  6. Roche Limitations

    I accidentally put something mildly political onto my "safe for everyone" Facebook. Nothing like the howling I do on the other 18 identities I maintain (or is it more? Or less? I'll never tell), but it was spotted by.... ....my father, on one of his twice-annual visits to the page. My father and I aren't on the same page politically. We're not in the same chapter, nor the same book. Not even the same author. The libraries that carry his book wouldn't allow mine and vice versa. But we...
  7. Burnt Toast

    "I saw Duke go upstairs when Jill and I came downstairs, this morning when time to cook breakfast. " Mike added proudly, "I helped cooking. " "That was the last time you saw Duke? " "I am not see Duke since, Jubal. I proudly burned toast. " "I'll bet you did. You'll make some woman a fine husband yet, if you aren't careful. " "Oh, I burned it most carefully. " -Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land To look at things, all I have is a pile of burnt toast. And this isn't a writing...
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  8. You Did Not See This Anywhere

    So yesterday I awoke from this dream where I was in an East German prison, saw a moment when the guards accidentally left both gates of the sally port open, and simply slipped out and started running. The thing is, the production values were really bad and even though I was in a first-person mental POV, the camera angles and POVs kept changing. I ran into a nearby forest and up a hill, more of a small mountain really. It was nighttime, possibly rainy, but I was still trying to avoid...
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  9. Others: A COVID Meditation

    So I saw in the news that someone* did something* bad the other day and I could tell by their name that their grandmother didn't serve the same things for dinner that my grandmother did. Other. And I could make some guesses on what their grandmother might have served, based on that name, and the first thought that sprang to my mind was “Well, of course, what did you expect?” And the second thought that sprang to my mind was “Where the fuck did that come from?” But I know where it came...
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  10. Nothing More

    No idea where this is going, but I wanted to get a version of it down while it was fresh in my head. Names are changed, but the first couple bits are true. There were three of us in that Home Ec class, three guys that is. Kelly knew he was going to die soon anyway, so he hung himself in an attic in New Orleans, and last I heard Rick was downstate doing eight to ten for manslaughter. Me? I guess I'm the winner of the group, tending bar at dive in Hokkaido where we sell rotgut sake,...
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  11. The Weight of the Past

    I dunno. There's that video where the guy pauses his game, looks out the front door, and sees the steppe. Had the chance to take an overnight ferry recently. Standing on the observation deck past midnight, staring out at the darkened islands slipping slowly by, feeling the thrum of the engines and the wind on my face. Mrs. A said she could see my grandfather on me in that moment. He commanded a warship tasked with killing her grandfather. They both made it through, but they're both gone...
  12. ad Lucem

    The darkness is gone, in the light now. Fading. Limbs... Tired, so tired. Wings... Limbs don't connect. We danced, we danced and sang and sucked the sweet nectar, mated, flew through the air, the warm, bright air, after so long burrowing in the darkness, constriction, tightness and the dual emergence, first from the earth onto the Earth, and then emerging Self from self, new sensations, new abilities from a part so old it was there in the before. Will be there again. No more...
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  13. Participation Trophies

    The Baby Boom generation is generally defined as people born between 1946 and 1964. My generation, Generation X, is defined as people born between the early to mid-1960s to the early 80s. Millenials don't have as sharp of lines, but I've seen 81-96 when I looked around. So let's put that on the back of the envelope. So if we define childbearing age as between, say, 18 and 35 (yes, it is creeping upwards, and yes, creeps have managed to push it downwards since time immemorial, but let's...
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  14. Cruelty

    never, ever, follow the breadcrumbs when it comes to the internet. It will just lead to pain in agony oh, and the urge to commit genocide. LOL This started out as a "Not Happy" thread post that kinda got away from me. I hope @John-Wayne doesn't mind me using his quote as the epigraph, if it's a problem, let me know and I'll remove it. I've been watching a lot of restoration videos lately, where people buy old semi-junked machinery and tools at swap meets and flea markets and restore it to...
  15. Not Going There

    We'll never reach the stars. People have no concept of distance. Longest I ever walked in a day was around twenty miles, traveling at my own pace on paved sidewalks, with frequent opportunities to refresh myself. Teddy Roosevelt issued the first formal physical fitness test for US servicemen after seeing some fat officers. You had to do fifty miles on foot, or a hundred on horseback, with a three day time limit. A group of Marines set out and completed the test in a day, but they're like...
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