Lotusblog

The view from my front porch

Here’s what you see when you get out of the elevator, and stand with your back to my front door. The blue-striped building in the foreground is Osaka-ko subway station (here the subway is actually above ground), the orange building in the centre is a new apartment building and the bridge in the background is a massive double-decker bridge that links the “mainland” with the Nanko artificial islands. The land here, too, it should be pointed out is also reclaimed. Oh, and I should add that we are seven floors up.

I was cursing iBlog because it makes it such a pain to blog from two computers. My desktop (naturally) stays at home, while my iBook goes with me where ever I may be (usually it’s work!). I was wondering how to solve the problem when I thought about BlogSnaps…I remember it having been mentioned, but didn’t really know what it did. So I just signed up and now here I am, writing a test entry from a web browser. The blog-syncing and email blogging features are two things that I am particularly interested in.

Stay tuned.

Everyone knows who Howard Stern is. You probably haven’t heard him, but you have most definitely heard of him. He’s a pretty notorious guy. So why are many people’s knickers in a twist over his radio comments? So anal sex was discussed on his show… this is Howard Stern for goodness sake! He’s not going to be hosting a show on embroidery or recycling tips.
So if I understand correctly, he was fired and now his former employer is facing a 1.5 million dollar fine.

What an odd world we live in.

I am sitting on my balcony just finishing my breakfast and reading the news on my iBook. I just came across a classic quote :

“In 2002, Egyptians got 5.3 million tourists and we got 4.7 million,” says Marwan al-Marri, a junior executive at Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing. “They have the pyramids, and they do nothing with them. Can you imagine what we’d do with the pyramids?”

Can you imagine?
What would one do with them?

I can imagine an enormous glass geodesic dome encapsulating them and cutting them off from the desert, instantly transplanting the pyramids into a rain forest/shopping mall/casino complex/education centre. Hang on, has that already been done in Las Vegas?

Thursday afternoon. 34 degrees. A blue-skied rainy season afternoon. Osaka in summer. I once again successfully got up early enough to be able to ride to work and enjoy some quality jacuzzi time. However there were a few moments when I didn’t think I would make it.
Last night’s restaurant opening was fun- the champagne and beer flowed freely, pizzas were in abundance and I left around 1am. Since I was near a friend’s bar, I figured I should drop in and say hi, which I did, and then left around 02:30. Emboldened by the alcohol, and unhindered by traffic, I managed to make the 13 km journey home in 25 minutes.
I didn’t end up getting to bed until after 03:30, which meant getting up and hitting the saddle for another 30 minute morning bike ride didn’t seem too appealing. I forced myself to do it however, and boy am I glad I did.

Can’t wait for the ride home.

It’s just after midday, and I am about to leave home (for the usual; ride to the gym, swim, go to work, go to Dieci, hang out with friends, go to graf, go to the opening of a new restaurant, hang out and talk loudly with brash Osakans, and then ride home at 2am).
Anyway, I was compelled to blog this immediately since I was so moved. On my internet radio station of choice (what, you think I am going to tell you?) I just heard the most delightful song. “Blown” by the band Ephemera.

I know nothing about them. I have heard this song before, but I have no idea what their other works are like.

It’s a beautiful summer song.

So we have regular blogging and moblogging, but when is mindblogging going to come along? There are several situations each day where I am completely relaxed and I don’t have to think about self-preservation, working or the minutiae of daily life. One of those moments was today, when I was soaking in a hot jacuzzi. I was thinking about TV quiz shows and about all the TV I watched as a child. Compared to most children (of the day) I think I probably was either average or below average in terms of my hours of TV viewed each week (after all, I spent most afternoons playing CHiPs on my bike with Robert, going to sports training or watching Robert’s pedigree collie eat boondies)

Quite a fun childhood now, when I think about it.

Anyway… as I was saying… there seems to be a real thing for preserving human culture. As humans, we seem to be obsessed with finding out not only where we come from, but who our ancestors were, how they lived, loved, dined and entertained. I remember as a child going to a Viking museum where the smell of a viking village had been thoughtfully recreated to make our visit more authentic. How important is this though in the context of our modern, fucked up world?
Our modern, fucked up world, by virtue of it being a for-the-moment disposable society doesn’t plan on leaving much behind (other than garbage). Our “culture”, which has been reduced to the lowest common denominator of being broadcast-able, exists in the air all around us; hundreds of channels simultaneously providing enrichment, edification and entertainment. But those on the fringe, people who don’t or can’t view television, are excluded and sidelined. But does this really matter? I contend it doesn’t- I for one, actually feel better being left out.

But back to my thoughts in the jacuzzi (which would have been much more eloquently posted if mindblogging existed, rather than my patchy, brains-to-fingers mechanical method of blogging) what happens to the millions of hours of television broadcast in the 1970’s, for example? Sale of the Century, Wheel of Fortune, Here in the West, the daily news bulletins… they existed for the moment they were broadcast, and continue to exist in the minds of those who remember them, but the fact that they are hopelessly dated and irrelevant means they no longer have any “re-run value” so are doomed to rot (or decompose, or do whatever video tape does).

Sites like archive.org are probably not the right place for such TV shows- so what happens now? When I die, the memory (and “existence”) of these shows will die with me. Eventually, over time knowledge of this culture will be completely erased.

I guess when you think about it, it’s no different from me not knowing the many types of card games my great-grandparents played during dark WW2 nights, or the radio shows they listened to in the ’30’s, or the proper way to make a pie crust, or going back even further, the best way to hunt, trap and skin a rabbit.

Am I a better or worse person for the lack of this knowledge?

Just read a well-written and informative article here about dirty bombs. It’s nice to have a fairly objective and scientific response to the government’s scare campaign.
Anyway, I had better get back to cleaning my air filters, oiling my shotgun and testing my generator. Busy work, this armageddon preparation.

It’s already after 8pm on Saturday evening. What did I do today?

I slept in. I had a leisurely brunch. I read Adbusters in bed. I had a shower, stretched, put on some dirty clothes and rode my bike 10km to the gym. Took a one hour jacuzzi. Sauna, bath, shower and all that. Drank some protein jelly. Rode 10km back home. Cursed the fools who walk their dogs in the bicycle lane. Bought an enormous biscotti, a beef curry donut and a cheese-sausage roll from a tasty, yet tired and old, bakery called “Montpassant”. The bread was only 240 yen.

Speaking of money, that tired old report came up again the other day in which the most expensive cities in the world are ranked. How on earth could Osaka be the second most expensive city (after Tokyo)? What the hell are the criteria for this ranking? I guess if the criteria are things like the cost of energy, the cost of expat housing, and the cost of 5 star hotel French restaurant dinners, then, yeah, Osaka is pretty expensive. But for ordinary people, and ordinary living, Osaka (and Japan for that matter) is not such an expensive place to live. The last time I was in the UK I nearly had a heart attack when I saw how much the cost of transport, food, accommodation and utilities were. How people survive over there I will never know.

And I will leave you with this. Get hold of the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme song. You’ll be glad you did.

What if I put the CSS files and templates that I want to use into the appropriate iBlog folder, then do a “get info” on them and lock them. Then they won’t be able to be overwritten. Would this preserve my styles? Will anyone answer me?