Osakatomebaby

A review (yes Justin it requires registration on the NYT site, not sure why you don't want to do that...) of what sounds like a very intresting exhibit on the history of Japanese postcards. "Early in the 20th century, the exhibition's wall text says, 'the postcard replaced the wood-block print as the primary graphic art form in Japan.'" Wish it was here not NYC.

Sarah Vowell has a very distinctive voice, it's true, (see any of her wonderful wry commentarries on This American Life), but I was surprised to see she is branching out into voicework for the next animated Disney movie. It's a long time since I enjoyed any of these, but it's always interesting to see the eclectic groups of actors in them. Seeing Wallace Shawn is there too, my interest is mildly piqued for a fleeting moment. Now if David Mamet wrote a Disney film...that I would see.

On an unrelated note, everyone go read Vowell's book "The Partly Cloudy Patriot". Funny and insightful on any number of things from dead presidents to Rosa Parks to watching "The New German Cinema" in a small town in Montana. She's sort of an old fogey trapped in a nerdy 30-something's life. I can relate to that.

I haven't had turkey in a long time. Darn. Oh well, have a read, Kurt Vonnegut, 81.

I didn't feel like writing. It's funny, I still don't think I'm a grown-up, or I'm too much of one. I'm sitting here tonight thinking I have to do this, have to do that, have to write part II and then I realized for the umpteenth million time, hey, I can do whatever I want. I don't have homework...well I do but not tonight.

So I scanned in a bunch of pictures which I'll post eventually, and then got sidetracked playing with filters...



A friend mentioned to me that Cat Power is playing in Osaka on June 1st. Of course I'll be teaching and can't go. ~Sigh~ I love having my mornings free, but I miss all the good shows.

Whoa. I have a number of random things I've downloaded over time and one just came up that I wasn't expecting. Elvis sang The Eyes Of Texas Are Upon You? There is a bootleg album of that name? Whaaaaaaa...

This is the part of the first part of something that may or may not be going somewhere and may or may not be loosely connected to the part of the following part in which I will probably say something about India and my reaction to it followed by or possibly preceded by something about my PLAN for the FUTURE, and, though it will likely be rife with vagaries, it will certainly be an indicator of THINGS TO COME.

Will I spill the beans about my long-term vision? Have I come up with a new philosophy for my life? Is this the beginning of The Life of Moi Part II? Did I finally turn from wanna-be-nouveau-radical-pinko-liberal-itarian to full-on hippie? Am I a total fruitcake?

Well, yes to the last, but as for the rest, only time and future posts will tell...

I wonder what the first guy who walked on burning coals was thinking. Was he being sacrificed or tortured and just managed to surprise everyone? Was he mad? Was he a hermit? Was he just bored? Ill? Or maybe he wasn't quite awake and just stumbled over them in the morning after a serious bender.

Of course it must have happened a bunch of different ways. Probably a lot of people in history who walked on fire for a lot of different reasons.

I went to a lecture at UT once hosted by the Plan II people (I didn't pick a major but I...) about transcendent experience. There were a number of speakers but the most interesting was a psychologist prof who discussed research on the possible physiological causes/manifestations (depending on your philosophical preference) of transcendental experience. Of course I have no data or names or anything, so I'm going to make a bunch of unsubstantiated claims and then proceed to dubitable conjectures. Three cheers for armchair pseudoscience (on my part, not hers) and reliance on memory. Here goes:

Theoretically, though it is difficult to prove, there are two varieties of transcendental experience, though actually they're more like two sides of the same coin. Your nervous system has two main channels, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic. The former responds to stress--raises your heartrate, increases breathing and perception. The latter brings you back down. So if you're walking on coals for example, you would probably activate your sympathetic nervous system, whereas if you were meditating that would be parasympathetic.

So the theory goes that you can max out in either direction and when you do the other system will compensate. Max out your sensory perception listening to loud drums, exalting and whirling like a dervish (if you're not one already) till you suddenly get a kick from the parasympathetic side and you start to get high and sort of float into ecstasy. Alternately this would happen under extreme stress to, say torture. Perhaps you wouldn't experienced ecstasy, but it would be release--the sort of thing that makes people able to withstand the unthinkable. Or you can sit and meditate to lower your breathing, heartrate, external awareness then the sympathetic kicks in and--badda bing--enlightenment. Well maybe not but some transcendent experience anyway.

The other things that happen along with this are your brain goes a little haywire what with all the mixed messages and you start interpreting this stuff through whatever filter you're familiar with--angels and demons, chakras, channeling, seeing through illusion, burning bushes. Whatever suits your cosmology. Oh and your pituitary gland gets zapped a lot so it's kind of orgasmic.

Wow...I didn't get very far at all with this and the ending is very unsatisfactory. Sorry, it's obscenely late and I likes my mornings. More soon.

The new blogger is buggy about posting but I am confident it'll get fixed up shortly. Too lazy to install MT...

It's raining and I'm eating salad and humming the May song from Camelot which usually strikes me at some point every year and I just realized I work at 12 today, not one. Good thing.

I'm also midway through a rather long post detailing some of the implications of my trip to India replete with nine degrees of pseudoscience regarding transcendental experience! Plus, coming soon, the GRAND SCHEME. That's where I've been the last couple of days so sorry no posts. Stay tuned.

Jim found a picture that I think looks kind of like me.

Hey look what I found. Hayseeds in Kyoto. How good! Stood around and listened to them playing bluegrass and singing (in Japanese). Not bad, not bad. I got the crowd clapping and did a lot of hooting and hollering. I guess I'm kind of wierd when I'm hanging out by myself (wandering slowly home from another late night with Aero, aka Chuck, and Marie). The pic's not great so you can't tell, but they've got everything but a fiddle and that's where I come in, they just don't know it yet. Now all I need is a fiddle...and lessons. The harp was fun and all, but I want to play something more practical, like an electric fiddle, yellow I think.

Would somebody in Texas please send me my boots (both pairs) and a new summer hat since Fredo sat on my old one. Thanks.