Author: Heather Meadows

Xen Dolev mentions the Chinese New Year and links to a site explaining all the zodiac signs. I found the description of my sign, the Horse, pretty interesting:

Horses are very appealing people. They are warm and friendly and dearly love social atherings with plenty of people. They are perceptive and enjoy talking. They have a high spirited nature and are changeable. This makes them hot-tempered, rash, and headstrong. They are always falling in and out of love. Quick to warm to someone, they are just as quick to lose interest. Here today and gone tomorrow-these are the Horses. Then when you decide not to see them again, here they come ready to pick up where they left off!

Horses are adventurers at heart, but they do have sharp minds and good abilities for managing money. They are self-reliant and energetic. They love exercise, both mental and physical. Their movements are rapid, yet graceful; their speech is quick, yet elegant. Horses want things their way and they will become aggressive when all else fails. They value their freedom above all else. They are not possessive or jealous of others. Being moody creatures, Horses depend on the feel of things. They possess the ability to improvise while events are in motion and can handle several things at once. Horses find it difficult to unwind. They keep strange hours and suffer from insomnia. When they stop, it is usually from exhaustion. It is hard for them to follow a schedule for they have no respect for routine.They need to keep busy but do best when given a free hand.

Horses are full of new ideas to solve tricky problems. When they have an idea, they want to get right to it. They work around the clock until they finish. Horses want you to come to the point quickly since they don’t have time to spare. They will not care if you are blunt, just don’t waste their time.

Horses must be allowed to show their emotions. They are hot-blooded, hot-tempered, and impatient,and they will gladly demonstrate. In love, Horses are quite vulnerable. They give up everything for the object of their affections. This causes them trouble since they are such impulsive creatures! They must learn to use caution. If one has a Horse in their house, you can bet the Horse receives most of the attention. Horses like being the hub and have everything revolving about them. In return, they work hard and share with everyone.

Horses don’t mind starting over. They maintain their determination and enjoy new successes. They belong in careers where they are surrounded by people. They sway crowds and love being flattered. The willful Horses get into countless predicaments but they bail themselves out. They enjoy fighting their own battles. Colorful and lively, they make many friends. If they could be in several places at once,they would be delighted! Their spirit is restless and searching. Creativity is part of their being.They are talented writers and performers.

I’m not entirely sure about the whole “people person” aspect of the horse, but the impatience, the desire to get a project done in one sitting, the loving being flattered, the wanting to be in several places at once, the impulsiveness, the difficulty in following a schedule…lots of this stuff sounds familiar :> Check out what they have to say about Geminis, too:

Element: Air–View the world through thought.

Stone: Citrine, Amber, Tourmaline

Colors: yellow; light green.

Attractions: Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius

Motto: I Communicate

Notable people born under the sign of Gemini: Queen Victoria, John Wayne, Anne Frank, Henry Kissinger, Marilyn Monroe, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, ; Judy Garland, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Personality:

These people usually have nervous energy to burn.

Many forms of travel appeal to Gemini people.

Faced with demands of the long haul they may just give up or change direction.

They prefer to be part of a large group. They tend to liven up any social situation.

They are often accused of being fickle and/or superficial–their view is that it is not a crime to change ones mind.

They put great stock in non-attachment.

Apparently Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. have become quite good friends.

“That’s a good relationship. It’s a fun relationship to watch,” [George W.] Bush said in an interview with CBS News broadcast on Sunday.

While attending Pope John Paul’s funeral, Bush said, “It was fun to see the interplay between dad and Clinton. One of these days, I’ll be a member of the ex-president’s club. … I’ll be looking for something to do.”

He said ex-presidents share rare experiences that others cannot understand. “And so I can understand why ex-presidents are able to put aside old differences,” he said.

I only got around to watching the Kyou Kara Maou episode 60 preview today (I forgot about it yesterday!). This has given me much more information! Highlight for spoilers and speculation:

Now it seems like there was more than one reason for the Shinou to send the fourth box to Earth. It looks like he’s planned more training for Yuuri by sending Dr. Rodriguez to fight him. A new thought occurred to me today: what if the Shinou isn’t evil? What if he’s actually trying to piss Yuuri off enough with these tests and dangers and cruel tricks to finally go against the Shinou’s will? Maybe he’s tired of sitting around in the temple dictating for his country; maybe he (like Bob) wants to finally be able to rest. But he knows that his country is too dependent on him for him to just disappear on them…so he found the perfect Maou to set the country on a new course of independence, and is now just trying to get things to the point where there is no longer any need for the Shinou. Putting the Great Sage there, someone he doesn’t need to spoonfeed, would further that goal.

That would be cool ;> Although it seems kind of mean to do that to Murata, doesn’t it?

The Japan Times has an interesting historical roundup of Japan-China relations, with a smattering of Korea. (Via Japundit.) I thought the article ended rather abruptly, and would have liked to have continued the story into present day, but on the whole it’s pretty informative. Having taken two Japanese culture/history courses in college, I had heard most of this stuff before, but it was nice to get a refresher. I’d really like to know more from China and Korea’s perspective.

So sayeth TVShowsonDVD.com and SitcomsOnline. (Old news, apparently, but hey.) I’ve signed up to be informed by Amazon when the DVDs are available.

In other news, Steven Weber will be in a new series with Matthew Perry this year.

Big reveal episode! Lots of reveals! Lots of laughs! Very funny! And some drama too!

I’d like to see the next episode right now, please.

Well, now we’re caught up on Smallville.

Thanks to that spoiler I read earlier today, I knew what was going to happen, and I sat and waited through three episodes for it. As I waited I speculated about how it would happen, and it turned out I was right.

Not that it matters. There’s really nothing about this to be happy about.

Story-wise, it makes sense. It couldn’t have been the obvious choice, because it’s too obvious. They’re going to draw that out, milk it for everything it’s worth, I’m sure. And it couldn’t have been the one it should have been, because that would tinge Clark and Lois’ relationship with regret.

So yeah, it makes sense.

But it also sucks.

Jeff has switched Sushicam over to WordPress. There are still a few kinks to be worked out, but the site is live and ready to go.

The new site is going to be collaborative. Here’s what Jeff said when he first revealed his plans:

I have always said that one of the things that keeps me going is the feedback and sense of community that has developed here over the past 6 years. So in order to enhance that even further I have decided to expand upon the model that Sushicam currently operates under.

I’m grinding my way through the setup of a content management system (Drupal) now, having particular trouble with setting up the image management portion, but as soon as I get the kinks worked out I will be ready to start inviting select individuals to start posting to their own personal blogs here at Sushicam.

The idea behind this new direction is simple.

Over the years there has been tons of great material posted by viewers, both in the form of comments as well as forum postings, and I think it is only fair that this site officially become the community blog that it has been slowly been evolving into over the years.

I, your humble horribly egotistical host here at pixelscribbles, have been invited to be a contributor.

*insert happy dance here*

This is actually just the motivation I need to get my Japan memories out of my head and into text format. I lost my notes from both trips, and most of the photos from the honeymoon. But I still remember visiting Japan. And now I have reason besides personal gratification to bring those memories out and mold them into stories.

I mentioned yesterday that I tend to fail in either concept or execution whenever I write. Now I’ve got plenty of concept.

It’s time for some good execution practice.

And I am very unhappy!

The AP has a cool article today about “hooah”.

They shout hooah to get motivated, and they whisper it when they concur with something someone just said. Hooah means you understood something, or is the proper reply when someone says “thank you.” On the other hand, it may also be used to say “thank you.”

Hooah is a catchall phrase that will get you out of any situation, particularly when receiving a scolding from a higher-ranking officer.

“You use it when you’ve got a flame on your butt and you’re just trying to extinguish it,” said Capt. Brian Buckner, 30, of Sumter, S.C.

Take this conversation, overheard recently outside the mess hall at Camp Rustamiyah, on Baghdad’s eastern outskirts:

Soldier 1: How you doing?

Soldier 2: Fine. How you doing?

Soldier 1: Hooah.

This is one of those words where you just kind of know what it means, and you can’t quite define it :>

Slashdot links to this article by James Oberg about the myths surrounding the Challenger disaster.

1. Few people actually saw the Challenger tragedy unfold live on television.
2. The shuttle did not explode in the common definition of that word.
   The flight, and the astronauts’ lives, did not end at that point, 73 seconds after launch.
3. The design of the booster, while possessing flaws subject to improvement, was neither especially dangerous if operated properly, nor the result of political interference.
4. Replacement of the original asbestos-bearing putty in the booster seals was unrelated to the failure.
5. There were pressures on the flight schedule, but none of any recognizable political origin.
6. Claims that the disaster was the unavoidable price to be paid for pioneering a new frontier were self-serving rationalizations on the part of those responsible for incompetent engineering management — the disaster should have been avoidable.

It’s a really interesting read, especially to me, because I never saw anything about Challenger on TV at the time that it happened. The only memory I have from my youth about Challenger is from sixth grade. I had finally been put into some gifted classes. Most gifted students had been funneled over to Warner Elementary for special programs in fourth and fifth grade, but I had just transferred to public school in fourth grade, and no one suggested me for Warner’s program in fifth grade. I felt as though I had really missed out, especially since that year AJ entered fifth grade at Warner, but also because my classmates had so many shared experiences. I felt like an outsider.

One day, one of them said, “Remember when Challenger exploded?” And I had no idea what they were talking about.

Since then I’ve learned generally what happened, but I have never seen the footage or heard a thorough retelling, so this article was a good one for me to read.

At the end of the article there’s a link to this one: Deadly space lessons go unheeded. In it, Oberg draws parallels among Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia.

At the end of January, NASA faces a triple anniversary of space catastrophes: the three times that astronauts have been killed aboard space vehicles.

On Jan. 27, 1967, during a pre-launch test, an unexpectedly ferocious fire suffocated Grissom, White, and Chaffee. On Jan. 28, 1986, an unexpectedly brittle booster seal destroyed shuttle Challenger and killed Scobee, Smith, Resnik, Onizuka, McNair, Jarvis, and McAuliffe. And on Feb. 1, 2003, unexpectedly severe heat shield damage destroyed the shuttle Columbia and killed Husband, McCool, Chawla, Clark, Anderson, Brown, and Ramon.

As with the disasters themselves, this calendric coincidence was created by the confluence of independent trends and conditions that conspired to set the stage for disaster. But in each space case, these impersonal forces were merely backdrop to the human decisions that through their flaws were the immediate causes.

It was at this stage — the choices made or not made by human beings — that each of these three disasters could have been averted. That the NASA space team failed to do so not once or even twice but three times is the true disaster. None of these people needed to die; their deaths taught NASA nothing that it shouldn’t already have known. And that’s the true tragedy of these three events.

I would like to take a moment to totally pimp JapaneseGuestHouses.com, through whom Sean and I booked our ryokans for our honeymoon back in March of 2003. I wrote to them today and asked if they had any records of our reservations, so I could piece together the actual dates of our honeymoon, and they very kindly forwarded me our original reservation emails! With those and with the pictures I had on PhotoWorks (which, by the way, I was able to recover in full size today and upload to smugmug), I have been able to reconstruct our itinerary as follows:

March 6: Arrived in Japan, checked in at Narita U-City Hotel (not booked through JapaneseGuestHouses)
March 7: Got up early and explored Narita City; checked out of Narita U-City Hotel and took a train into Tokyo; hopped a shinkansen to Kyoto; checked into Heianbo Ryokan.
March 8: I woke up before Sean did and headed out to the lobby. A man was coming in from outside and I saw that it was snowing. “Yuki desu ka?” I said to the man. “Taihen!” We had a delicious breakfast in the ryokan, which prides itself on its tofu. Then we headed to Kyoto Station to get started on exploring Kyoto. First we took the bus to a shrine/temple complex and wandered from there to other shrine/temple complexes–we were really looking for Kiyomizu-dera, and we actually did get to the complex, but we never found the main building! It snowed while we were out there, which I thought was awesome and Sean hated. That afternoon we spent a lot of time trying and failing to find Gion, until we finally stumbled upon it. We also walked past Minamiza Theater twice before we realized where it was. Once we did find it, we reserved seats for the next day’s production of “Tale of Genji”, which I was hoping would be in a traditional theatrical style. In the evening I took a bath and then sat in the lobby in my yukata writing in my journal.
March 9: Explored Kyoto some more…I think this is the day we rode the bus around until it came to the end of the line and the driver yelled at us to get off. That afternoon we attended “Tale of Genji”, which lasted for hours and hours and was in a fairly Western theatrical style. There were two intermissions. During the first one we went to a cafe in the building and had keiki and soda. Ginger ale is green! It was 11 at night when we got out of there, so we stopped at McDonald’s (I think) for dinner and headed back to the ryokan.
March 10: Took a day trip from Kyoto to Nara to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha). It took us awhile of wandering back alleys to find the place. After we saw the buddha, I bought a good luck charm for gaining knowledge, which I tied to my backpack. Sean bought a cute little purple cat sitting on a cushion that he kept next to his computer. Those souvenirs are unfortunately gone, so the next time we go to Nara we’ll have to replace them. We left Todaiji and headed out and around it, only to get lost again. We asked some security guards for help and they called someone to drive us to the train station.
March 11: Left Kyoto and headed west, stopping in Himeji to explore the castle on our way to Hiroshima and Miyajima. Sean enjoyed reading all the history plaques, but did not enjoy having to take his shoes off at every castle building. We rode the ferry from Hiroshima to Miyajima and checked into Momijiso Ryokan that night, where we enjoyed a huge traditional Japanese feast (and satellite TV!).
March 12: Got up to a large Western style breakfast with huge pieces of toast. Walked down the hill, through the woods and away from the ryokan to the beach to catch a ferry to Hiroshima. Explored Hiroshima’s Peace Park and museum. Went through a shopping street on our way back to the ryokan. Stopped and ate at Cafe de Crie (soup and sandwiches) because we were starving. It was dark by the time we made it back to Miyajima–we were late, so we called the ryokan and someone picked us up in a van. On the way we stopped by the huge torii gates, all lit up beautifully in the dark, and like an idiot I didn’t get out to take a picture! :P Back at Momijiso, we had trouble eating the huge delicious meal prepared for us due to having eaten so recently :( Sean managed a few bites; I forced most of mine down :> It was really cold that night, so the Mama-san turned on the heating pad under our futons.
March 13: Got up to another huge delicious breakfast and then checked out of Momijiso. I really didn’t want to leave. I took pictures of the island from the ferry as we sailed away. Once we got back to the train station, we hopped the shinkansen back to Tokyo. We arrived that evening. Our taxi driver had trouble finding Yamanaka Ryokan, and when we finally got there our room was tiny and there were hardly any luxuries. I was so depressed! We got hungry at one point and headed off down the street to see if we could find food. We came across a Chinese place whose name ended with -hanten. I took a picture (which of course no longer exists) of the menu.
March 14: Explored Tokyo. We had no idea what to do so we went to Tokyo Station by subway and headed for the Imperial Palace. It was closed! We explored the area around the palace, looking at ducks and koi, and found a big statue of a general on a horse. Then we spotted Tokyo Tower in the distance, so we decided to walk there. After enjoying the view from both levels of the tower, we had lunch in the basement and then walked around a little more before finding a train station. At this point we went to Akihabara, which didn’t impress Sean at all (though to be fair we didn’t see much of the cool stuff). I was extraordinarily tired by the time we were through. We stopped at KFC for dinner but I couldn’t even eat. My feet were killing me. We went back to the ryokan and I fell unhappily into my futon.
March 15: I had planned for us to go to Nikko on this day, but we were both way too tired. We slept in and watched Japanese TV for a long time (including some weird TV movie about some parents who killed their son because he was violent, then met his girlfriend in prison and repented for their actions). When we finally ventured out, all we did was check out Ueno, have lunch at McDonald’s (where I had my very first ever Big Mac) and go to an Internet cafe. Dinner was a seafood pizza with white sauce, which was delicious.
March 16: We spent the morning in Ueno Park and the Tokyo National Museum, then hung out in the room and in the Internet cafe. Had Indian food (curry) for dinner, which I’ve decided has to be my tradition on the last night in Japan :)
March 17: Checked out of Yamanaka, rode trains to Narita Airport, and left Japan.

And that’s it, to the best of my memory. If I remember more, I’ll edit this post ;>

Did Cingular win a patent on emoticons? (via Slashdot)

O_o;;;;

:>

How, in today’s world, can you claim that “Nothing’s worse than paying too much for TV”?

MSN-Mainichi: Ken Watanabe defends casting choices in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’

Critics say the sight of Chinese actresses playing subservient geishas insults the memory of Chinese victims of Japanese atrocities during World War II.

But Watanabe, who plays a businessman in “Memoirs,” said the art of being a geisha should be universal.

“I thought a lot about the meaning of geisha in Japanese society, and during shooting it occurred to me that geisha has always been like opera — beautiful costumes and beautiful music and amazing dancing and maybe some love,” Watanabe said in an interview published in the February edition of the magazine Prestige Hong Kong.

“Opera is totally Italian. But sometimes German or English or Chinese or Japanese people play in the opera,” he said.

“The same thing with this movie. Talent is the most important thing. A beautiful soprano. A wonderful tenor. Not your nationality,” Watanabe argued.

It’s a pretty argument. Too bad it doesn’t make any sense!

Real reasons for the Geisha casting choices:

1. They wanted someone American audiences would recognize from other movies.
2. They figured American audiences wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

And they’re probably right. :>

I previously discussed this movie here and here.