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So I see there's been a few changes in the Vox interface.  I like that the compose post button is just there now, whereas before I had to fight with the My Vox \/ menu.  I don't like that there's no links to my actual page anymore, so if I want to see, I have to type it in manually.

So, a brief review of things.

At the hospital yesterday, I saw a woman wearing the following shirt:

Loneliness is part of
BEINGE
beinge human.

Beinge, doncha know.

If you take the kanji for god (神) and add the kanji for Buddhist sutra (経) and then toss on 科, meaning department or section, what do you get?  If you guessed neurology, you win the prize!

At 6pm on Fox and Lala, they just stop showing actual shows, and show infomercials. Whereas in North America, infomercials are reserved for 1-5am, not so in Japan.  Anyway, they often have infomercials for Proactiv acne cream stuff.  There's ones with Lindsay Lohan (apparently before she melted down), some Japanese chick who whines and tries to make you feel sad that she had a few pimples when she was younger, BUT LOOK AT ME NOW I'M PRETTY OH SO PRETTY, and Jessica Simpson before she turned into a man.  I just flip by these usually, but yesterday, I was on Lala right at 6pm, and was waiting to see what would come on (I'd lost track of time, and did not expect infomercials). 

Jessica Simpson fades in, with a kinda-creepy staring-right-into-the-camera glare of great concentration.  I cocked my head to one side, curious what was about to happen.  She then opened her mouth and loudly proclaimed:

KOH NEE CHEE WAH!!
JESSICA SIMPSON DESSOOOO!

:O!  I screamed like a little girl.

Apparently the second graders are doing something called "Wa ni natte odorou" at Sports Day.  I dunno what that is, other than a V6 song, sooo (shrug)

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In April, they installed a third phone in the staff room, which was located directly in front of my desk. I don't answer the phone as my Japanese isn't good enough to speak to people that I don't know what they want before hand. Also, I just don't want to.  A pad of paper and a pencil were put there for people to take messages. The paper stays, but people are STUPID STUPID STUPID and wander off with the pen/pencil all the time.  People would get to the phone, try to take a message, find no pen, and then take one from my pen bucket thing on my desk.  This wouldn't bother me if they'd put it back afterwards, but they wouldn't. At first, I'd go looking for a pen, and find out it had been moved to beside the phone.  Soon, they were just disappearing completely, until I'd see people walking by with my pen in their pocket.  Fuck you!

I wrote a note and put it right by the phone and notepad, which basically said, "Hey, I know my pens are convenient, so please feel free to use them. Just return them afterwards, okay? Thanks."  It worked, and for a while people just wouldn't use my pens. After I had made my point, I removed the note, and things were okay for a few months.  Then it started up again, with two pens disappearing in the course of a single day. I went on a hunt and retrieved them.  I decided that if they were going to be such inconsiderate fucks, I was done being civil.

I took all my writing instruments from my pen bucket and hid them in a desk drawer, and replaced them with a note that basically says, "Hey jerkface, no pens for you. Now fuck off away from my desk."  Today, sitting at my desk, I was idly watching one of the teachers on the phone.  She started talking about taking a message and grabbed the pad of paper and then searched for a pen.  Not finding one near the phone, she reached for my pen bucket.  She then saw the note and froze, made a bit of a face, and then asked the other party to hang on a moment, and she ran to her desk to acquire a pen.  I smiled.

Later in the day, a someone's pencil (not mine) had migrated to the phone table.  Someone appeared at one point and spoke at length to someone, with lots of near-orgasm noises, as Japanese women make only when they're on the phone and never when they're doing anything sexual, and then decided she had to take a message.  She did so, and then returned the pencil not to where she found it, but rather to my pen bucket.  She hung up and left, and I just sort of stared at the pencil for a moment.  It was the total opposite of anything that had ever happened. Up was down, black was white, Japanese fisherman were having sex with manta rays and conger eels. It was madness.

I took the pencil and put it with the rest of my writing tools, hidden in my desk.  It's payback time, bitches!

First person to make a red swingline stapler comment wins a mudkip.

My moleskines came today.  With the full-size journal, it's really great, and I look forward to using it (only 2.2 other books to fill first!)  With the info book, I'm trying to work out a system of organizing it so that I can add things, but still find them later.  The book is broken up into like, food, bed, sights, facilities and... something else tabs.  Now, I could just write things down in there, but say I put down a restaurant in Tonami, one in Toronto, and one in Hanoi, one in Matsuzaka, one in Tokyo, one in Beijing, one in Shanghai and two in Seoul -- how am I going to be able to find them without searching the entire food section?  Perhaps if I try to keep it roughly organized by city, which is easy to do for cities I've been to and that I'm not returning to in the near future, and then make some sort of rough index in the back, (eg. Food: Hanoi: F1a, F5b), that would work.

I don't understand, though, why everyone gets all worked up about the paper in a moleskine.  It seems fairly... unimpressive, to me.  Maybe it's only (1) fountain pen enthusiasts, (2) the people who stroke the paper lovingly because they're sexually attracted to the moleskine or (3) fountain pen enthusiasts who stroke the paper lovingly because they're sexually attracted to the moleskine that do it.  I just really like the cover, the size, and the elastic band. (shrug).

Man, I've been on FIRE today, with the awesome and the witty. Yes, it is difficult to get through doors, with my colossal head and whatnot, thank you for noticing.

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