The Observer's Blog

Of Contraband and Atomic Bombs

My officemate just got back from a conference in Japan. In his jet-lagged state he began to tell me and my other officemate about the trip. By way of introduction, he pointed out that he went literally everywhere on the island of Honshu. I asked him if he went to Hokkaido (the site of an 11-episode Japanese soap opera I recently got caught up in), but apparently that was the only place he didn't go. The first thing he actually started talking about was pornography: its ubiquity and its many manifestations in Japan. In addition to manga books, it apparently also appears randomly in mainstream magazines; this is the form which he naively described as "women just looking for a good man." He also pointed out that its a common practice for teenage boys to go to convenience stores after school to peruse magazines with these pictures in them. (This observation implies something sort of disturbing if you notice.)

After he told us everything he could think to tell us about the pornography (oh yes, apparently its illegal to bring foreign pornography into the U.S.), he started talking about the atomic bomb. There are apparently some interesting "artifacts" left over from the exploding of the bomb over Hiroshima, including the shadow of a seated man imprinted on a rock (he absorbed the rock-color-altering radiation) and a building that stood directly below the blast. The building wasn't destroyed because it was apparently only pushed downward instead of being hit by a largely horizontal shockwave like all the surrounding buildings. He talked about the bomb some more and then went home.

Coming soon . . . "Design My Office" with a prize to be awarded.

Where Have I Been?

I haven't posted an entry in a while, at least by the standards of the current "I post more often than I used to" era of this blog. And instead of laziness, or what have you, I'm going to fall back on some much more interesting possible explanations, in itemized list format.

- I have been listening to "The Best One for Me" on repeat, after appropriately editing the ID3 and ID4 tags to be compatible with the rest of my Bess Jankowski mp3 collection.

- I've been compiling the ultimate mix CD for L. E. Hanson (I've actually been working on this for months, but in the last month it's received a lot of attention, finally achieving completion).

- I spent about a week visiting, freaking out over, and spending time with other friends of a friend of mine who had to go to the emergency room with a blood clot in her brain. They were uncertain times, but she can pretty much read now, and hasn't blanked out on recalling any nouns in a while.

- I tried to sell my old dining room table on Craigslist twice, and failed both times. This was motivated by making room for a papasan chair I also from Craiglist in the time since I last posted. The papasan is awesome, by the way.

- I've been watching all the episodes of Scientific American Frontiers recorded on my DVR. Did you know that chimp males eat monkey meat, which they don't share with the females?

- I got a cold twice. I started wearing my long underwear to bed, and have been fine since.

- I cleaned my cubicle, by which I mean terminating all the interesting science experiments I had going on. My main area of interest is the ability of Mountain Dew to destroy substances its left in contact with over long periods (e.g., wax paper).

- I went to a pho restuarant in Chinatown and they took forever to serve us (order taking and food bringing), and they didn't even bother to tell us they weren't going to bring out my friend's avacado shake (they were out of avacados). Mira Furlan was also eating at this place, which was super exciting.

Well that's it. You can hope this marks a return to more frequent posting; you can hope.