And I really couldn’t care less. Not because I don’t like baseball or Japan. In fact, if baseball were the only sport known to humankind, I’d be happy. Other sports are pretty much meaningless to mean. And, as you all probably know, I make a living studying and teaching about Japan and you should bite [...]

I had songs sung by females who use the word “fuck” up for too long on Goyatunes — kinda forgot about rotating ‘em. A fresh three from Freakwater who do not use the word “fuck” are up. Enjoy. Or not.

Here we are, three years, THREE YEARS, after the addled-brain bass-awkward hubris-driven U.S. invasion of Iraq and what do we have? Let’s take stock: as of today, we have 2,322 reported U.S. dead, probably about 35,000 dead Iraqi civilians, nearly a QUARTER TRILLION DOLLARS down the drain that could have been better spent (and NOT [...]

I finally got around to seeing Batman Begins, courtesy of the five million free DVDs I get from Blockbuster. I wish director Christopher Nolan (of Memento fame, one of my favorite movies) hadn’t ruined the beginning with all this bogus Tibetesque Shaolinesque Ninjaesque Secret Samurai Training in the Mountains Crap. Total crap. So crappy it [...]

Picked The Constant Gardener DVD up on a whim after knowing that Rachel Weisz got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it and reading “conspiracy” and “thriller” on the cover. I don’t know — I wasn’t so thrilled. It wasn’t bad, but I was kind of let down. And I didn’t see what was so [...]

So where can I sign up to campaign for Senator Russ Feingold for president in 2008? Mark my words: if he runs in the Democratic Primary, I will be actively campaigning for him. He has the straight-shooting bare-knuckle integrity and principle that attracted me to Howard Dean in the Recent Great Unpleasantness, but is taller. [...]

The best thing about chorizo — besides being heavenly with scrambled eggs — is that you needn’t use any butter or oil to fry it up. Just its own oily, lip-smacking fat does just fine, thank you very much. The batch I made for dinner tonight wasn’t gourmet but it was soooooooooooo tasty!

Well, today was the annual pond spring cleaning day. I spent 6 hours cleaning and replacing filter media (which entailed dismantling and then re-puzzling together the rocks that hide the filter; pic #1):

partially draining the pond and vacuuming sludge (pic #2):

and pulling out the pump and cleaning it (pic #3):

I also had to trim plants. [...]