Blahgorrhea

The toilet paper at worked is branded “Marathon,” which I can only assume was meant to warn the user that wiping one’s rear with it would result in chafing as if having run a marathon without proper protection.

Japan is a crowded country. They do use just about every inch of their land for some functional purpose (except for the thousands of acres of imperial parkland, but people rarely mention that). Of the space they have left available to build buildings, the Japanese cram their cities with tall buildings with stores, restaurants and offices up to every level. This means that some famous soba noodle joint that the guidebook recommends could be up on the third floor of an office building. Not exactly what you would expect, but given a good guide, some help from the locals, and good luck, you might be able to find the place in time for dinner. [Continue reading…]

For a country that is literally religiously fanatical about cleanliness (Shintoism is obsessed with purity), there is a serious lack of napkins at your disposal. Granted, I am an awkward Westerner and thus tend to make a mess of myself while slurping goopy slimy fermented vegetables with chopsticks, but because there were never napkins at the restaurants, I ended up wiping my face with my hand and then my hand on my pants. Wouldn’t a napkin be easier and cleaner? Our tour guide one day told us the Japanese are paranoid about trash and that we should never throw our trash in someone else’s garbage can. Given that, and the lack of napkins, I envision millions of Japanese walking around with pockets full of soiled handkerchiefs, tissues and towels. Wouldn’t it be cleaner just to throw those all out in public trash cans?

And while we’re talking about toilets, Japan has public bathrooms all over the place. It is an excellent service. They were for the most part clean, but there was one drastic flaw. Most of the bathrooms offered no way to dry your hands after washing. So you end up in the middle of winter walking out of a public bathroom onto a cold street with cold wet hands (no hot water in these bathrooms). Then again, the ones that offered automatic hand drying machines featured a high powered dryer that you stuck your hands down into and slowly raised as the water was blown off them. Worked like a charm.

What a fun adventure going to the post office can be. I had to go to a counter agent, since the self-service machine doesn’t sell international stamps, so I got in line and watched as the fun began.

There was a guy two people in front of me who had a dog with him. When he was approached by a postal worker who told him dogs weren’t allowed, he barked about how he had had this problem before, that the dog was a service dog and he had the service tag on it. Now, this was not a seeing-eye dog, and the man was not blind. On a close inspection I was able to make out a silver dollar-sized medallion on the dog’s leash that must have been the service tag. Other than that, there is no way anyone would know this was a service dog, especially since the man had no discernible handicap, other than a bad attitude. After the postal worker went away, the man turned to the man in line behind him to tell him a joke: “You know how they slowed down the speed of light? They shot the beam through a post office.” Argh, great joke, man. Finally the guy was called up to the counter and was reminded by that postal worker that the dog was not allowed in the post office. He remarked that it is, because it is a service dog. The woman behind me snickered, having heard the previous banter about the dog. “Service for bad jokes, as far as I can tell,” I said. [Continue reading…]

In New York City, I can get a good bagel with cream cheese and lox for $1.95. In San Francisco, I pay $1.99 for a Noah’s bagel with “shmear,” and if I want smoked salmon spread (not lox, mind you), I pay $2.49. Bah!

the site is secure we promise. i don’t know why the little padlock doesn’t come up (i’m assuming thats what you are referring to) you are more than welcome to call and place an order if you would like. 212-414-4533. ask for Joe or Steve. you can just give them your credit card info and then email your order to this email with mailing addy, etc.
thanks for your support of frenchkiss.

That was the response I received from French Kiss Records when I sent them a somewhat angry email about trying to sell records on the Internet without a secure server (read about Insecure Purchases). [Continue reading…]

It sounds like a great promise, to have all Internet shopping occur over secure channels. I was fairly certain that it all was (not because of any grand experiment that checked out every point of purchase on the web, but through a vast assumption). I was all primed and ready to buy both of The Hold Steady’s albums direct from their record company when I noticed that I was about to submit my credit card number over an insecure form. In all likelihood, no one would happen to be capturing packets as I placed my order, thus stealing my credit card number, but I am sufficiently paranoid in this regard that I decided to instead send them a somewhat angry email, after finding no way to contact them by phone. Too bad. I really would like to support them directly.

Tonight I saw The Constantines play at the Great American Music Hall. The band consists of Screech playing keyboards, his older brother singing in the style of Tom Waits, Ricky Schroeder’s way geekier cousin playing guitar, a one-note bassist and a drummer. Their music was really pretty good, and I would have fully enjoyed the show had it not been quite so obvious that they had taken correspondence classes from the publishers of the “… for Dummies” series of books — classes such as “An Uplifted Fist: Rock Power to the People,” “Guitar for Rockers: Move the Neck, Make the Sound,” and “Bass Note: Fast and Above Your Head.” It is not so egregious that they were doing these things on stage, but just that they looked uncomfortable doing them. Be natural, guys, and enjoy playing your music.

I have a 4-year-old cell phone. It still works (my theory on why it still works is that it does not have non-cell-phone features that get in the way of the quality of the phone itself, but that is a post for another time), but it is loosing steam, having more and more problems keeping a signal. So I figured I would look into getting a new phone. [Continue reading…]