Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Iranian Blog

Here's a blog entry I found on an Iranian blog site.


The purpose of the following survey was to find out
what issues/challenges Iranian immigrants had met
living outside Iran.

- 91% stated their biggest issue, is the difference
between running water & toilet paper.
- 87% percent of this group stated that it took them
more than two & half years to get used to paper.
- 74% of this group said that they still dream about
AAftAAbeh.
- Of this 74%, 61% sometimes during their stay, bought
either the authentic Aaftaabeh or the plastic garden
watering tool.
- Only 7.5% of this group were successfully able to
use the Aaftaabeh or the garden variety.
- Due to be sitting on the bowl, the other 92.5% had
difficulty pouring the water out near the correct
location.
- Many gave up after finding it too messy.
- The 7.5% successful people stated, squatting on the
bowl, as the reason for their success.
- 50% of these group had fallen off the bowl several
times, before mastering the art.
- 82% of the unlucky 92.5%, have been taking daily
showers to compensate.
- The other 18%, still taking weekly showers.
- 2% had once or twice brought in the garden hose to
the bathroom, but found it difficult to run outside to
shut the water down with their pants down.
- 1% declined comments.

Monday, January 21, 2008

META-TRIBES #1 FINAL DRAFT

Here it is.  My first completed script.
Thanks to everyone who helped it not to suck.

click the top right box to expand..................................................v


Read this doc on Scribd: META-TRIBES #1 'Justice'

Friday, January 18, 2008

Brian Geeks Out


Spider-Man and his wife Mary Jane made a deal with the devil to save his Aunt May at the price of erasing their marriage.
There are just too many things wrong with that for me to comment...
...who am I kidding.

1. Not a good idea
The marriage was good.  
MJ was good.  Heroes need strong support.
The marriage makes Peter a more realistic character.

2.  How it was done was not good.

A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL?!?!?!  AND THEY WERE WILLING?!?!?!

True love forsakes all others.  Peter and MJ were first in each others life, even before May.

May had Ben.  Her time was up.  May would have given her life to keep Peter and MJ together.

The ends don’t justify the means, there were a lot of different ways to get to their ends.


3.  The reasons were not good.

- Sales & press (progressive companies place customers, quality and integrity and their highest priorities)

- The misconception that a single spider-man is more interesting than a married Spider-Man (insulting)

- Reset continuity (disrespectful to the fans and previous creators)

- To make Spider-Man more accessible to younger readers (wrong way to do it)


Part of me thinks that this whole OMD/BND is a part an elaborate story that just starting out with the MJ/Mephisto drama.
I think they knew how readers were going to react and that they are using that to build towards something...else.
These Marvel guys put a lot of thought into how they present things to the readers, including the images they leak and the things they say on forums, blogs and panels.  All the things people are quoting Quesada saying a year ago (about how if he was EIC 20 years ago Spider-Man would have never been married) could have been scripted in anticipation of this event, YES A YEAR AGO.  They do these things.
And when they plan an event it's never about the initial drama, I don't think that this is just something as flippant as 'the way it's going to be.'
These guys think big and they think long term.

There are some interesting implications about how this relates to House of M and Secret Invasion
My best guess is that over the next year Mephisto is going to screw Peter over, May is still going to die and in the end we'll see some 'Power of Love' thing and Peter will be back with MJ.  And then we'll look back and say, "wow that was brilliant."


Well, it was great while they had it.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Here's a great source for internet culture...


I really like that band Bat for Lashes.  The video reminds me of one of the greatest films ever made, Donnie Darko




Thursday, January 10, 2008

Diversity incarnate


Japan, home of shintoism, Mt Fuji, raw fish, big eye'd cartoons, weird video games, radioactive dinosaurs, and affordable electronics...oh yea, and Japanese people.

But is that all there is to the land of the rising sun?

yup.












NOOOO!!!!! THAT'S NOT TRUE!!!
There's also this guy...


I'm half Japanese.  Which half? Well, I have a funny looking toe, but I'm pretty sure I get that from my dad, so I am Japanese on my mother's side.  Her toes are normal.

Japan is diversified by many of the usual criteria; economics, politics, and...prefecture?
There are a billion-zillion sub-cultures in Japan, sometimes called 'speed tribes'...whatever.
The obvious ones are made up of people obsessed with games, anime, music, food, sex, and fashion. 
But the more interesting ones are the breakdancing rockabillies or the bowling cowboys.
Now that's cool.
 
Less than 1% of Japanese are Christian.  Here are some Japanese Missionary blogs.
pretty interesting. 


The Japanese have a great sense of humor.  
They don't trash talk people as much as Americans.
I'm not trying to bash American,  but just hanging around campus, clubs, or watching comedians it seems like most humor here is based on mockery or sarcasm.  Maybe that's why I like Jackass. Instead of social/emotional abuse it's physical.

Japan facts
  • It's rude to blow your nose in public
  • Japan is made up of over 3000 islands
  • The density in some parts of Japan is over 2000 people per square kilometer
  • The "clothing" worn by sumo wrestlers is known as a mawashi
  • There are over 1.2 million single mother households in Japan
  • Japan is in one of the most earthquake-active areas of the world
  • There are over 100 active volcanos in Japan
  • Less than 13% of the land is suitable for farming
  • Over 80% of Japanese claim no personal religion, although most follow some religious rituals

  • The Japanese have awesome music.


    I'm American, it is my national and cultural identity and I love it.  I've been to several countries and America is where I want to live.  I think it's the best country in the world.  Although I am only half Japanese I really cherish those cultural roots and have worked to explore this part of my ethnic identity.  

    Why does this matter to me?  In Japan there are Japanese people, there is Japanese culture. In Japan, it is not very significant to be Japanese, the emphasis is on what you do for a living, who your family is, or maybe what you can do.  But for someone to be Japanese (or whatever) in America...it is significant.  It makes a difference in how you experience life, especially if you grew up in Ballwin Missouri in the early 70's (in Missouri no one can hear you scream).

    On my father's side...there are people from England, Denmark, Germany, Whales...and who knows what else.  So there's not much of a defined ethnic heritage explore.  My grandparents made a little family history DVD.  It was pretty cool.  They showed some really old photos and narrated with some interesting stories about how the Bowhay family immigrated to the states and made their way across the country.  In our childhood pictures, my brother and I stick out like yellow thumbs.  Sometimes I wonder if my Grandfather, who did not hide his prejudice of Mexicans, Native Americans, and African Americans, ever had negative thoughts about us.  I'd like to think that everything was fine.  It's weird sometimes how racism can be compartmentalized.  I remember on one special occasion both my mother's and my father's family were gathered together in St. Louis.  My brother leaned over and told me that there were two World War II veterans at the table that both fought in the South Pacific but on different sides.  I'm still amazed at that, only in America.

    ANYWAY, I'm as American as mexican pizza.  I love being a Japanese-America and I love America's diversity and I love that I am diverse in who I am.  But, I'd really love to see my not-very-diverse fellow christians take an interest in the amazing Japanese people.

    Japan has all the social concerns that any country has.  Here's some articles.

    Wednesday, January 9, 2008

    Too much TV

    I like to watch TV.  
    I think the medium has come a long way in a short time.  
    I used to want to watch a show to veg out, not think.  
    There was one dark period in my life when I would watch several episodes of The Nanny every night.  
    What was wrong with me you ask? 
    I don't like to talk about it.

    I don't want to veg out anymore.  I want to be provoked to thought and inspiration.  I want to be surprised, I don't want to be able to predict what is going happen.  And I like analyzing the message and style of a show.  I love seeing a dramatic conflict of values and ideals played out in a creative way.  
    But the fact still remains, I watch a lot of TV.

    Recently I have seen Rome, Deathnote, Dexter, and Veronica Mars.  
    Last year I was into Heroes, Battlestar, Doctor Who, and LOST.
    The year before that it was Alias, Angel, Gantz, Smallville, and Justice League
    Then there was Buffy, Father Ted, Arrested Development, and Band of Brothers
    And then it becomes a blur...Sealab...Mr. Show...The Nanny...



    So now I have to ask...is this healthy?
    Am I a better person for spending all this time in front of the idiot box?

    I still manage to get other things done.

    In the last four years I have gone on three foreign mission trips, helped organize a rally for Darfur, met the President of the United States, graduated college, held internships at a children's group home, a pre-school, a geriatric facility, and the Arlington Courthouse.  I've also been remodeling my house, learning digital painting and writing a short story. Then there is the whole husband, father, pastor thing.

    I like to use clips in messages that I present.  I try to use scenes from current shows.
    There a lot of themes that emerge in modern programming that are relevant our spiritual journey.  But at some point...it's all just The Nanny.

    BTW, Bladerunner is awesome in Blu-ray

    Sunday, January 6, 2008

    What if Gore won the 2000 Election?




    Hey, I haven't posted anything in a while so I figured...I'll just watch TV.
    Seriously, I just got an HDTV, full 1080p, I love it.  The HD channels are cool, but dude, playing my PS3 on an HD ROCKS (said with soprano metal voice).
    I don't what I like more, the crystal clarity of nature shows or the mesmerizing depth of my shooter games.  Even my babies weird 'Einstein' shows are cooler.  I try to do my work when she's having her TV snack and I find myself watching it with her and relearning my numbers, colors and shapes.

    I just watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' on one of the Hi-Def channels.  Wow.  That Gore dude is sooo much cooler with a Thomas Newman Score.
    But seriously, I don't have half the faith in humanity that Gore does, that people will actually put in the effort to change their selfish, lazy, materialistic, apathetic lives.  I should probably include wasteful and indulgent, but you get the point.  And here I am eating a pizza with a million electronic devices running.
    Is pizza bad for the environment?  I feel okay about my HDTV because Gore had a whole bunch of them for his presentation.  Besides, global warming looks awesome in HD.  But seriously, the guy makes a very good argument and I get the sense that he genuinely cares about people and wants to make the world a better place.  

    I'm going to start following some of his recommendations from his action page.
    You should to.

    I'm not a political person, but if Al wasn't married to Tipper I probably would have voted for him.  I remembered her in the 80's when she was doing her censorship campaign teamed up with the FCC.  She was going after all my punk rock heroes on the Phil Donahue Show.  I think the whole 'Rock the Vote' thing  in 2000 really back fired as far as trying to get generation-x voters, I couldn't stand the idea of one of Jello Biafra's enemys being in the White House (but secretly I thought she had a cool last name).  If the millenials had been old enough to vote they wouldn't have know who Tipper was and things may have turned out differently.

    **I couldn't find a clip from the legendary Tipper Gore appearance on Donahue, but I did find this...


    After looking back on this video I think maybe we should have been censored.