The soul cause of a man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Pascal, Pensées, 136

at one thirty the laundry was done, the film covering the last two weeks and last night's party dropped off, the tv watched, and the guitar played... now what do i do with my sunday afternoon.

i'm going crazy.

being a guy who doesn't actually sit down and read pascal, i found this quote towards the end of The Art of Travel. if you consider yourself an artist, i suggest reading this. eye opening in a lot of ways. also very wordy and you can only read a chapter at a time. but it educated and exposed me to a lot of areas of art and poetry that i'd previously been ignorant & sheltered to. for instance i'm fascinated by VanGogh now, more than "the ear incident". and i want to travel to Sinai now. so i give it a hearty thumbs up. [/promo]

last night was my boy dan's birthday party. it was off the hook. we, the local ALT posse spent all week recording a dope rap for a present. i've decided not to post it on the old blog because the sheer number of times i drop the f*bomb might overly surprise some of my passive lurking readers. also, there are a lot of inside jokes so you probably wouldn't understand (like the fresh prince's parents). however, for you howdy mr.hip-hop! addicts, if you simply hit me up on IM and say "Hook me up, Dawg!" i will give you the baddest rhyme to ever come outta my bedroom.

so back to today. i have books to read and things to finish writing but i'm not up to the task. i'm up to sitting around and wasting myself on DVDs. the dishes in the sink need to be washed as well, but it's at the point (we all know too well) where it's too rancid to stand there and wash them. it's a catch-22, if i can use that phrase incorrectly, but most certainly it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

i had a revelation about my task-orientedness this week but i forgot it because i didn't write it down. i think it was inspired by a combination of mars hill, king of the hill, and my list of things to do. i wanna say it was something like "the projects i make up are me trying to fill a void in my life" but that's way too cliché and weak. it was much more interesting. let the meditation begin.. until i go get curry.

next post: ska! ska! ska!

Saturday was met with much excitement and stomach-turning. My rock debut... er... not my debut, but my first shot at it in a long time.

the 5~6 song 30 minute set went well, i played well enough to my satisfaction and did so-so at handling the bilingual crowd. my friend ryohe~i provided me with fodder to banter at the crowd. some friends came and i will mention them here: makkusu-eru, roora, kiisu & yuki, dan, ma-chan & jeretto (who also played), john the greek, chie, meg, and a host of others. thanks for coming, it meant a lot.

maybe i'll have an mp3 of it someday. i feel good about it, but i'm not sure that i hit the audience well. most people i think are into listening to upbeat rock, not my sappy folk. i mean, i'm screaming over a guitar that i'm finger-picking, and i don't have a solo... in retrospect i probably should have done a cover... but we all know my Achilles' heel is that I can't play a cover song all the way thru...

now here's where i'm going to be too honest with you, my reader. I am -incredibly- insecure. gasp! i need nearly-constant encouragement. as much as i'd love to be an island unto myself, i've come to realize my neediness...

well. i think i'll continue to rock. makkusu-eru will join me (if and when) there's a next time and we'll touch it up with some keys and some melodic guitars. meedly meedly.

this one is ending on a down beat emotionally. i've watched too much TV in the past few days, and i blew my mind out watching and i'm a bit stir crazy. but, i do have my Gilligan's Island DVDs and i'm rather happy with them. gilligan, in color, better than sex (i imagine).

well, if i haven't been posting here, replying to your emails, chattin' wit you on IM, replying to your friendster comments (and not being cool and switching to myspace), posting my worth on the hot-ass BBS, and you've wondered where i've been, then the answer is probably W-O-R-K. allow me to expand...

the case of the furious names!

so, i approached my teachers at the beginning of the new school year (April) and said i wanted to give the students English names, since me learning 600 students names (written in kanji) was a lost cause. so i made a list of the top 100 most popular baby names for 2004 and added some oldies and goodies.

so now all my students previously known as Hosomi-san, Morimoto-san and KanjiKanji-san have become Leah and Sebastian. A few kids even wanted to pick their own names. A few of the best one's are: Edison (after Thomas A. Edison), Zeke (i didn't have the heart to explain the connotation of that name), JOKER (eh, at least it's English i thought), and my favorite, Morpheus. rad. then there was the worst kid at my school who, consistent to his behavior, wrote mannko (a word referring to a certain part of the female anatomy) on his name tag, scratching that out and writing "SEX". goodness. goodness.

but it's a rocking success really. and the kids seem to like it, at least some of them.

the case of the mysterious job title

a few weeks ago before daveL came to town i joined the art club because (also a new year's resolution) i have decided to start painting some. i took a quick lesson back in January from the Voss's roommate. talk being cheap, i started the end of last month. i decided the best place to learn would be to join the JHigh Art Club for a few afternoons and put acryllic to canvas for the first time ever.

it was beautiful when i first did it. i got almost got a nosebleed. i chose red. because it was hot.

at the end of my first meeting i was asked by the kids and the club sponsor (the Art Teacher) a series of questions in Japanese that went like this:

THEM: Blah Bler Bloo Blah bloo?
ME: Sure...
THEM: (i understand this part) So if Mr.ArtTeacher is gone, you'll be the substitute club sponsor!?!
ME: oh. um... yeah...

so, now i'm the substitute art club sponsor! yeah! i was involved in the Science Club last year. that was a total scene! all i can say is: the two midgets at the school who like to wrestle, a questionably homosexual boy who likes to touch and wrestle, a kid who had medical machines under his clothes (a cyborg), and a slew of boys whose best skill is video games; all weilding sharp knives and hammers. rad. i somehow seem to gravitate to the less-than-popular/socially-awkward kids club. perhaps that's because i'm ... well, you get the drift.

YAMAMOTO QUEST!

for class i was dealing with a dialogue that said:

MARK: Do you know this game?
YUMI: Of course! It's popular all over Japan! Can I borrow it?
MARK: Sure.

having done that a few times, i started on making a prop for class. with the creative help of my co-sensei Mr.Yamamoto, we crafted a cover for the new hit game "Yamamoto Quest!" it's going to be a smash hit. and it was a totally rad prop when stuck it in a DVD box and busted it out in class. r-a-d!

i built the hype up in my head so much that i decided to try my hand at Flash. and now Yamamoto Quest is becoming a reality. after about 10hrs of effort, i got a guy who walks around the screen in an NES Zelda like fashion. this could become a 3 year project. but it's exciting to be making an action game for English education. do people get paid for this? i see the headlines now, BAD-ASS SENSEI MAKES ENGLISH AWESOME!

around New Year's, when i told a girl she should cut her dog's throat, the Voss played a concert. she explained that she had decided to play out more at various venues. i too adopted this into my rockstar persona. having just "completed" an album (or so i thought). it seemed feasible.

so, in the spirit of the Voss, i'm playing a show this weekend. i'm one of three 30 minute sets this Saturday. I'm gonna try to rock out. i have no ideas how many songs that works out to be. i wrote down a set list with 11, but i think that it's only gonna be about 4 (with rock n' roll banter included). for my japanese fanbase (set your computer to unicode):

兵庫県丹波市柏原町のLIME GREEN CAFE
土曜日８時から。僕は９時頃に出るかなぁ。

so i don't want to make a huge deal of this, and i tend not to invite people because, well, i fear i'll jack up and be lame. but maybe this whole playing out will become a semi-regular event. if only playing your guitar with your computer wasn't so geeky, i'd have accompaniment, but as it is, i have me and my guitar. let's enjoying rock show!

i like books. it's more of an addiction than a hobby. for instance, i haven't eaten dinner because i've been carefully piecing this Amazon order together. i'm obsessing. you see. i only put forth about one or two Amazon orders a year. thanks to another "happy amazon.com birthday!" it's a big opportunity to get a nosebleeding load of books and TV series on DVD.

imagine having to buy your next year's load of reading and american TV in one go. that's what i have to deal with (more or less). i can go into the city and get the big things in the city, but not the more obscure ones.

so i gotta finish this soon or i'll die from my lack of Thurston Howell III in color. but... at the same time i want stuff, i have to imagine (not understand completely) how i'm going to get all these books and DVDs home.

problem.

i guess i'll buy and pawn my stuff off on new kids. because i'll be old when i leave. and they'll be young. and i won't tell my successor just how small my apartment is... ask dave or steve how small the place is... it rules. idiot successor.

well. i'm going to listen to TAL. take care. maybe i'll blog more.