Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 24

UPWARDLY MOBILE WITH OUR MAN

Our Man finally got round to updating his Linked-In profile. It now contains no out and out lies, although claiming a skill in Public Relations may be pushing it just a bit.*

Why bother? Why indeed. Our Man is too old and unsuccessful to be a Yuppie, and he has no intention of looking for another job, but he notices folk keep wanting to friend him (presumably it's called something more thrusting on Linked-In, maybe "acquaintancing" or some such). But you never know if his publishing lark takes off and then serious, non-Twitter people, who say things like "win-win situation"** might want to, er, win-win with him.

Anyway, it's not Our Man's place to tell folk how to contact him, but if Linked-In is your thing, Our Man is RIGHT THERE ON LINKED-IN. Do stop by and, er, compare business models?

* Also, GACOPS - the Greater Abiko Co-Prosperity Sphere is not strictly speaking a professional association, more a state of mind.
** Our Man once said "win-win situation" in an interview about QUAKEBOOK and had the piss mercilessly, and deservedly, taken out of him by his fellow Quakebookers.

STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND FORMALDEHYDE

Live in Japan long enough and you become immune to the cacophony of loudspeakers.
If it's not the old fellow hawking tofu around the neighbourhood, a woman screaming at the disenfranchised Our Man to vote Ta-ka-hashi vote Ta-ka-hashi, then it's a warning to look out for one of several dozen senile elderly who escape their handlers every other day, but invariably find their way back the old folks' home, coincidentally right next door to City Hall, in time for tea.
So it was that Our Man thought nothing of the loudspeaker van cutting through the hinterlands around his bunker at lunchtime Saturday repeating a brief, urgent announcement not to drink the water. For health reasons, don't drink the water. In fact, they were cutting the water supply to all homes in the area from 1:30 p.m.
It was 12:15 p.m.
They hadn't said anything about not using the water for cooking. Which Our Man decided to take as tacit approval since he'd just that moment finished cooking a pot of pasta for lunch. It would have been possible to find something else to eat for health reasons -- the five-teaspoon dose of pesto had yet to be administered after all -- but, really who cared? Like all the other garbled warnings from passing vans, they never had anything to do with Our Man.
But Our Woman wasn't so sure. After a phone call and extensive research, she had an explanation.
"It's got a really long, complicated name. It's the same stuff they put in little packets in our food to keep it from going off. But it gives you cancer."
"Perhaps they shouldn't put it in our food."
"They didn't. They put it in the Tonegawa."
The Tonegawa is Japan's longest river. It forms the northern boundary of Abiko. And apparently we drink its water. Or rather, we did until today.
"Who put it in the river?"
"I don't know."
"Somebody must."
"I don't."
"Is it safe to brush our teeth? To have a bath? To wash clothes?"
"I don't know."
"How long will they shut the water off?"
"They don't know."

Of course Our Man had been here before. We all had, all of us who were around on March 11th, 2011, when the big one hit, the shelves ran empty and the lights went out all over 7-Eleven. Our Woman knew exactly what to do.
She had already rustled up two four-litre water camping canteens and was busy filling the bath before Our Man had tasted his bowl of noodles. Our Man did have time to wonder at the point of all the excess water storage capacity. If the damn stuff was too toxic to drink, maybe we shouldn't be bathing the kids in it either. Could you wash the car with it? That would probably be OK.
Our Woman read Our Man's mind. "You can use it to flush the toilet. But we'll need water from the shops to drink."
"I'll put my shoes on."
He was out the house before you could Google translate "formaldehyde."
When he returned 15 minutes later, every vaguely three-dimensional object in the house was full of the potentially deadly, but flushable water.


They didn't have any drinkable water left in the shops, but Our Man did make it back with a case of green tea, a six-pack of beer and a bottle of red wine. Well, Our Man wasn't going to die of formaldehyde poisoning. Or green tea poisoning. Not today anyway, the all clear was sounded at 9:30 p.m.

OUR MAN'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FOR SELF-PUBLISHERS

Our Man got to thinking about self-publishing and came to the probably erroneous conclusion that despite all the talk of revolution in the publishing world, nobody had written a declaration, a rallying cry for self-publishers (Give me ebooks or give me death? - Ed.). Until now. This (CLICK HERE) is Our Man's attempt.

Yes, yes, the scribble by Our Man of the iconic pic isn't from the War of Independence (which one? - Ed.) but it was on Japanese soil, and er, it sort of is about freedom? Sacrifice? Working together on an ebook? Oh look over there, gay weddings at Tokyo Disneyland or something.

IT'S A NORK WORLD AFTER ALL

Our Man made it back in one ideological piece (as can be seen from his twitter feed) from the obligatory trip behind enemy lines of Tokyo Disneyland. It seems like only yesterday he had infiltrated the Magic Kingdom, IN FACT IT WAS  THREE YEARS AGO. This time, however, he took his notebook and he shall be fully baking his thoughts at a future date when he's got his novel finished.

Yes, it's a dream, but he's sure Dear Leader Walt would approve. Or probably not.

EMPEROR'S NEW INVISIBLE PLANES

Pity the student Our Man. He ain't so hot at mathematics, but he's passable at history. See, he remembers WAY BACK IN DECEMBER that Japan was going to buy 42 F-35 invisible planes from their Operation Tomodachi pals for ¥420 billion, give or take a couple of billion. Seems now the price tag has gone up to ¥802 billion ($10 billion) according to the US Defense Department, AS REPORTED by Kyodo in the Japan Times on Saturday. Gee, you'd think nearly doubling the price would raise a few red flags, if not white ones.

But as Our Man says, he's not so good with numbers. Sure, 42 is the meaning of life, according to Douglas Adams, but according to Our Man, that's not a lot of invisible planes. Let's see, a third of these will be in the shop getting new oil filters and printer cartridges at any one time, which leaves 28 to defend the nation. Presumably they will be operating a shift system to cover the 24 hours, so that would be nine planes in each eight hour shift. Probably less during Golden Week.

Given these austere times, Our Man could probably sell a couple of invisible planes for a lot less, if anyone asked him.

Pic lifted from here.

ABIKO'S FINEST: TOKYO IN THE UNDERBRUSH

Time to raise your glasses, the Abiko Free Press has a new book out... FROM RIGHT HERE.

MEDIA, YOU DESERVED THIS

Just got round to reviewing Brooke Gladstone's rather good comic book The Influencing Machine, all about the media, and how we get what we deserve (even Rupert Murdoch, fancy that!) Worth a read if you are the type of person who still buys print books. Our Man's review is HERE ON GOODREADS. (Capital letters mean click here, not that Our Man is shouting. Although, coincidentally, he was shouting at that moment when he typed those words, though by the end of this long, pointless sentence other than to fill space so that the thumbnail picture of the book has some text flowing around it, he has calmed down and is no longer shouting.)

OZAWA: 'MORE OF THE SHADOW, LESS OF THE SHOGUN'

Now would be a good time to read Michael Cucek's piece on the meaning of Japan's leading political reformer (that would be Ozawa) being not guilty of whatever the latest attempt to bog him down with litigation was. Whether it makes any difference is another matter, one that you should read his brief article RIGHT HERE to find out.

And, while you are at it, you really should read Cucek's insightful essay on Japanese politics and 3/11 - Politics: Kan won in RECONSTRUCTING 3/11.

Carry on.

Pic ripped off from the Japan Times. Sorry, lost the link now...

AMERICA AND JAPAN: THE BOOK SPINE POEM

Inspired by the eclectically excellent Brain Pickings latest BOOK SPINE POETRY, this is Our Man's attempt:

Under the Banner of Heaven
American Shogun
Presumed Innocent 

They are of course Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, American Shogun by Robert Harvey and Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow.

Can you do better?

(Yes, yes, Our Man is still working on his Half-Life novel. He got a bit sidetracked with RECONSTRUCTING 3/11 and an INTERVIEW of a self-pubbed authoressoress, but he is back on track now for the seventh draft of the novel. The plot's all done, but he's just perfecting the voice, killing exposition and the odd minor character or two).

SUM OF OUR MAN'S FEARS NOT NORK NUKES

Our Man is trying, but it's hard for him to give a damn about the Norks launching their satellite-ballistic-missile firecracker when, you know, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq are subject to daily death-by-droning, the British Prime Minister is in Japan to beg for pennies in exchange for British help re-arming Japan and decommissioning toxic nuke sites (keen students of English should note "decommissioning" is British English for "dumping in the Irish Sea") and all. No doubt the Yomiuri is salivating at the terror potential of the Nork rocket launch, but Our Man hasn't looked. In a land where 20,000 people have been swept to their deaths by tsunami, the Big One still hasn't hit Tokyo and the Abiko Burger King has been converted into a Lotteria, the North Koreans don't scare Our Man. Sorry.