A recent post on Sushicam has inspired quite a few comments that have, in some cases, escalated into flames. The owner of the site, Jeff Laitila, wrote a story about how he gave some food to a homeless woman while visiting Kamakura. Many people wrote in to say that they found this action noble and inspiring. However, one person has popped up presenting an alternate view. While this person’s posts are relatively well-written, there is a tone of condescension in them that has enraged more than a few of the other posters. I took a crack at calming some of the ire; since I thought what I wrote was fairly interesting, I figured I’d reproduce it here for you guys. (Am I egotistical or what?)

Well, I think it’s okay for someone to disagree with the “general concensus” concerning the homeless, picking up stray cats, etc. I do think it could be done more politely, but that’s just a personal preference.

I don’t think continuing to respond to perceived insults is productive, however. Some of the responses to these opinions have been downright rude! I think we should all concentrate on the meat of the posts and ignore, for the most part, the manner in which they are written. Sushicam doesn’t particularly need a flame war.

Jeff has made it obvious that informed, insightful discussion is welcome here. Jumping all over someone for offering a different outlook doesn’t provide a conducive environment for that kind of discussion.

So, to that end, I will respond to the meat of the issues instead of the tone.

I have only been to Japan twice, once for five weeks and once for ten days. As such, my breadth of knowledge is slim, although I did travel quite a bit and see many different areas. Based on my experience, I would have to agree that Tokyo feels very unfriendly when compared to the rural parts of Japan.

For example, when I was in (I believe) Akita, I was walking along a little road when I saw an elderly gentleman slowly–so slowly it was almost surreal–fall to the ground. I wasn’t sure if I should pretend I hadn’t seen it, in order to protect his pride, or if I should try to help him. As I stood there trying not to stare at the man in embarrassed indecision, a little old woman moved towards him and asked him if he was all right. He thanked her and said he was fine. So, obviously, helping him would not have been a bad thing.

Based on Jeff’s stories about people making mistakes and taking tumbles in Tokyo, and on my own unwelcome feelings in that city, I’m not sure this would have happened the same way there. I think a case could be made for the rural vs. urban argument–although, again, we are in danger of propagating a stereotype.

As far as helping the homeless, I’ve always been from the “help them help themselves” camp–so I tend not to give money to a beggar who is sitting on a street lined with bars, and if I could I would offer to buy a meal or two in exchange for some sort of work (whatever they were able to do). I’d rather do that and give them a sense of pride than throw them a handout. This of course means I haven’t helped many homeless people, because I don’t have a lot of odd jobs around for them to do…that and I don’t routinely bump into homeless people where I live. But yeah, I would rather help them get a job or help them do something that would give them a sense that they are worth something and can achieve things. I realize this isn’t always the case…the job market might be terrible in that area, or there might be other problems…but I think that the moment you lose pride in yourself and give up on trying is the moment you become a burden to others. And the longer you are a burden to others, the more you feel worthless and hate yourself. It’s a downward spiral. Helping someone break out of that would be awesome.

However, just because I believe that doesn’t mean I’m right. And I think that any attempt to help someone in need is noble. That is why I praised Jeff for his offering to the old woman.

As for picking up stray animals, I think that takes a certain amount of selflessness that a lot of people don’t have. It’s a lot of trouble to take care of an animal. If you’re in the survival of the fittest camp, I imagine that doing something like this–and also, for that matter, giving handouts to the homeless–seems like supporting the low end of the spectrum, when those people/animals should just die, or at least raise themselves up and stop being burdens. (After all, if they aren’t fit enough to survive, then why should they survive?)

However, survival of the fittest hasn’t been the rule of life for as long as we’ve had medicine, so I think that is a fairly simplistic way of evaluating the world. If anything, we can say “survival of the richest”, but with social programs and other projects/charities to help those in need, even this is a misnomer.

I don’t think any economic system is perfect–or natural, for that matter. People are failed by the system and therefore need assistance…it isn’t that they are unfit or not ideal for something that is perfectly natural and that everyone should conform to. They exist–that is what is natural. I believe that it has been humanity’s goal for some time now to figure out how we are supposed to live. We don’t know it yet. We don’t know how to take care of ourselves properly. If we did, no one would starve. Social programs and charities are bandaids that at least partially cover the wounds, but they don’t heal them, and we keep having to reapply the bandage.

I don’t know what the solution is, mind you :) I’m just saying that no one is perfect, no human construction is infallible, and all we can do is all we can do. We have to evaluate what is important to us in the long run and work towards that sort of goal as best we can. And we have to revise our plans along the way :)

Sorry, I had to post it…especially since Paul kept talking like Zathras yesterday.

John Sheridan



An experienced survivor who has maneuvered around many obstacles, you are looked up to by those who rely on your good judgment.

In the last few years, we’ve stumbled. We stumbled at the death of the president, the war, and on and on. When you stumble a lot you tend to look at your feet. Now we have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon and see the line of ancestors behind us saying, “Make my life have meaning,” and to our inheritors before us saying, “create the world we will live in.”

John is a character in the Babylon 5 universe. You can read his biography at the Worlds of JMS fansite.

“Not the one,” eh? I beg to differ!

Anne’s story comes to a close in this final installment. Anne and her husband Gilbert move to New York so that they can focus on their writing an medical careers, respectively. After a lengthy stay there, they move back to wartime Avonlea, where Gilbert feels compelled to join the military. He does, and is soon missing in action– spurring Anne to travel to the battlefields of Europe in search of him.

Uh…err…yeah…erm…huh?

Yesterday outside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) building in Jalan Bukit Petaling, Malaysia, a man set himself on fire. He died nine hours later at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital. (Link – careful, there’s a picture.)

I mention this only because the UNHCR is where Dawn works. Truthfully, I’m only writing because of the picture in that news article. You don’t normally see pictures of people on fire. It made the event more real to me.

Regardless, I feel emotionally detached from the whole thing. I don’t know much about the man, but there are plenty of people more desperate than him who did not feel the need to set themselves ablaze. I suppose my take on this is the following: he had the one thing we truly possess in this world, a life, and he chose to throw it away. He’s not worth any further consideration.

I must, at some point, write a double dactyl. It looks like so much fun. :D

One of the things I definitely want to do is revamp my website. I would like a nice dynamic site with comment options directly available, plus other things like “what I’m reading” features, polls, and all that other stuff that you find on nice websites. I would install PHP-Nuke or something similar, but my current hosting plan doesn’t allow for that. I’m going to be seriously thinking about upgrading my service plan or switching hosts in the near future. (More webspace for photos and the like would be nice…)

In the meantime, I wanted to post up some links that I’ve found interesting lately. A lot of these came to me through BoingBoing, a blog I’ve been reading a lot the past few months.

The History of the DeCSS Haiku – until today I had no idea what the DeCSS Haiku–or the DeCSS, for that matter–even was. A great read.

A Call for the Complete Elimination of Joke Haiku Production on the Internet – This topic is very near and dear to the heart of this writing and Japan geek. For I don’t know how long I’ve bemoaned the English adaptation of the haiku. It’s impossible to write a 17 syllable poem in English and pack in the sheer amount of meaning in a 17 syllable poem in Japanese, due partially to the differences in units of language and partially to the fact that Japanese kanji (Chinese characters) can carry many meanings, a phenomenon that is impossible to replicate in English.

Confessions of a Car Salesman at Edmunds.com – I truly enjoyed reading this article yesterday. It was interesting to read about how another shy, “invisible” person translated himself into one of the most outgoing and aggressive personalities I can think of. It made me start to wonder if I, too, couldn’t make this leap, and sell cars like a pro.

My senses returned to me a few hours later.

Joel on Software: Getting Your Resume Read – L. O. L. I’ve been reading a lot of sites (mostly linked from MSN or Yahoo!) on how to write a good resume, get hired, etc. This one covers the basics. As a bonus, it’s funny.

Eventually, when I get around to redoing my website, I’m going to link to all the blogs and things that I read daily. Until then, I thought I’d mention Sushicam again, just ’cause.

I’ll add one final link for now. Zuma is controlling my life. (Damn you, Tycho!)

(…okay, so that was two links…)

I’ve been thinking about the purpose of this blog. Originally I just wanted a space to record my thoughts and experiences, and maybe eventually start posting photography and short stories. In the meantime, I’ve basically just rambled about silly things and taken online personality tests. While some of the things I’ve written about have merit, ultimately I don’t feel that I’m growing in any measurable way.

Part of this is because my life is at a standstill. I don’t have a job, or at least not a challenging job that broadens my horizons or even takes up much of my time. I’m not attending school. And instead of making good use of all my free time, I spend my days puttering around the Internet, reading blogs and forums, chatting, playing games, watching anime, and otherwise wasting time. I haven’t even seriously read a novel in a long time (though I have started on Master and Commander–just made it to Chapter Three today). The most I can claim is that I keep the apartment clean, and even that seems to be a struggle some days.

There are things I want to accomplish. I want to increase my Japanese vocabulary, kanji included. I want to be a voracious reader, like I used to be. I want to write short stories. I want to take photos. I want to try my hand at drawing again. But recently, I’ve come to realize that I have another wish, something that has been churning just beneath the surface for years.

I want to have opinions.

I am, much to the dismay of friends and family, a career fence-straddler. This is partially because I don’t like to make decisions without getting as much information as possible, and partially because I never bother to get the information. The second bit is what I’m concerned about.

For years, I’ve believed, or thought I believed, that I didn’t have to learn certain things. That I could focus my attention on fun stuff and get along just fine. I didn’t despair too much over bad grades in college, because I figured those subjects just weren’t my calling. I thought that if I really wanted to do something, I would do it, so if I found myself failing somewhere, it was just because I didn’t feel like doing it. Somehow that made it okay.

But it’s becoming evident that I’m not even doing the things I want to do. This isn’t a matter of not having the desire. It’s something else. Fear of failure? Short attention span? Lack of organizational skills? (I used to believe I was a good organizer. The truth is that I am good at organizing. They are two very different things. One involves having the ability to organize, and one involves actually doing it.)

I keep thinking that I need someone else to tell me where to go. That I need to go back to school so that I’ll have a hard and fast direction for my studies. That I need a job in my field so that I can improve along a set course. But I know that even if I did these things, I would be unhappy. No one can decide the right road for me but me. Instead of waiting for someone to come along and tell me what to do, I need to start setting goals for myself, and then actually working to achieve them.

Watching my brothers work towards their goal of being signed musicians and reading the daily testimonials and essays from FlyLady have made me start to think that I can actually do things on my own. FlyLady is concerned primarily with keeping a house in order, but the methods–breaking tasks into smaller parts, establishing routines, babysteps, limiting–can all be extrapolated to anything else. The big thing I have to keep in mind, the monkey on the back that FlyLady preaches against over and over, is

I DON’T HAVE TO DO IT PERFECT THE FIRST TIME.

I don’t even have to do it all the first time. In fact, it’s better if I don’t. It’s best if I start small, get used to the new routine, and then add more things.

The first thing I am going to need to do is create my own Control Journal–a FlyLady staple. All it is is a binder with my daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routines that I build slowly over time, expanding as necessary. I have procrastinated about putting it together for far too long.

Once I have the Control Journal, I need to establish morning and evening routines for myself. Then…I just work to stick to the routines for a month. No adding. No fretting about all the work that isn’t getting done, because it hasn’t been getting done for years now. I just need to get used to a routine. That is my biggest hangup.

I can do this. I want to improve myself. I want to be happy. I want to be moving forward.

Here I go.

Honor: You are an honorable person who is firm with his/her beliefs and treats others as you are treated. People would consider you humble at times and very respectful, and someone to definitely respect back. Which Characteristic From the Samurai Code Matches You Best? (You may find out your best trait) brought to you by Quizilla

Hmm. Think it’s true?

Vertigo said something interesting to me last night.

[20:04:36] <Vertigo_V3> now that I think of it, maybe making you Admin might not have been the best for you. You sound more like you want to create (in this case, write) storyline, more than enforce storyline and continuity

I can agree that half of that is true. Enforcing storyline and continuity has been annoying. Not because I hate organizing–I love organizing!–but because it seems that whenever I suggest an opinion, everyone assumes it is law and the discussion ends. I don’t know if it is my position that causes that, or laziness on the part of the other GMs.

They are lazy. We all are. And this is another sticking point for me. I hate coming up with a plan of action only to have it fail because I’m the only one working on it.

The second part of Vertigo’s comment, though, is not entirely correct. At this point, I can’t imagine wanting to write story. I think it’s because I can’t stand working in a system that can be improved. It grates on me, little by little, until it is fixed.

That is really why and how I became Admin in the first place. It wasn’t that someone decided I should have the job. It was that I was already doing the job.

I started out as a mere player, but as I branched out and learned more about how the system worked, I became a part of the system. And as I grew and continued to learn as a player and GM, I started to suggest changes. In time I was a Head GM, and by that point I was updating the website and adding content and trying to figure out ways to make the RP easier for everyone. It was belatedly decided that I was another Admin, and that’s fine. I can understand needing a title to demonstrate that I have the authority–beyond just being Hellfire’s girlfriend/wife–to make the changes I want to. I did not have this position thrust upon me. I took it, because I saw things that needed to be done and I wanted to jump in and do them.

Now, I look at the AMRN and all I see is what is wrong with it. My efforts have improved things, no doubt. But there are so many other things that are flawed. The system as a whole is not a well-oiled machine. It is a gaggle of people who do what they can (and want to) randomly. There is no consistency. I sometimes think the place only functions because I am there to hold it together. (It would go on without me, but questions would go unanswered, GMs would be unsure of their territory/ability, and there would likely be either lots of uprisings or lots of quitting. Having a single person watch over and take care of everything seems to add stability.)

With the state the AMRN is in, I don’t think I could just go back to writing story and not administrating. I need to be there to keep the place civil and functional. But that task completely turns me off to writing plots or even just to playing. I’m tired of things not working, and I don’t feel like subjecting myself to it anymore. The AMRN needs an overhaul that I am not capable of implementing alone. There are people who have offered to help, but everything goes so slowly in a volunteer/hobby community. I think continuing to GM or even play in this state would drive me nuts.

I guess it could be argued that I should try to relax and enjoy myself so that I don’t give myself a heart attack stressing about the game…but to be honest, other than a few spurts and fizzles here and there, I haven’t found writing for the AMRN fun in a long time. Posting seems like a big hassle now. I think it’s because I know that with the current system, my posts probably won’t lead anywhere unless I force them to. I would have to hijack the game and bend it to my own will to get anything meaningful accomplished. That may be why I clung to GMing for so long…because I didn’t want to go back to a point where my writing had no effect whatsoever on the overall story.

And so for now, I think I’ll just content myself with patching holes in the dam while I wait for the others to help me build a newer, better one.