George Aar

Well, I'm not sure if I'm part of the windtunnel, but you might want to read this: http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/News/noni.html

Indeed, and one would hope they could do it without cruising the streets looking for a "date". I know this is standard procedure in the religion business, the local gospel mission offering free meals in exchange for attempted indoctrination and such like, but, like Shazdancer, I find the practice sleazy at best.

And just how warm and fuzzy would you feel about it if it were the Scientologists or the Moonies or the Branch Davidians or any of the more "fringe" religious groups doing it? Just because they represent a superstition that you share doesn't necessarily equate with performing a worthwhile deed...

I heard on the news yesterday that Duluth is having the warmest (uh, that's a relative term, I'm sure) winter in 160 years. How much snow have you been shoveling Dave?

I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb when I say that sexuality and human behavior in general hasn't changed much in that last few millenia. Yeah, introduction of "the pill" did a lot to loosen people up, but the desires (and willingness to act on them) were always there. And there will always be the odd number of those that will take anything to extremes. But the basic way we handle ourselves is not really all that unique today. I remember overhearing a conversation my grandmother was having with my (then pregnant) sister. It seems grandma had had FIVE abortions before she'd gotten married - and this would have been around 1900-1910. I also remember my other grandparents (paternal) being rather dedicated drinkers who thought nothing of getting drunk along with their children (when the kids were 6, 8, or 10) at holidays and such. And later on would have done the same with their grandkids, were it not for Mom's intervention. So, yeah, people can act peculiarly (and immorally?) at times, but it's sure nothing new. And no, I'm not advocating some sort of abdication of parenting, but I'm not going to get too alarmed that there's some kids somewhere that are acting in a lascivious manner. Basically, I think the article is simply alarmist nonsense, masquerading as news...

They would do that precisely ONCE to me or mine. I can't believe ANYBODY is dense enough to play that game. Not in the world we're living in currently. It's well beyond thoughtless and nigh unto irresponsible...

Yeah, Somehow I think that sexuality and humanity in general will survive, despite the latest handwringing, legwetting bit of doggerel that this reporter has come up with. My own sexuality OTOH, doesn't look as promising...

Hell, I don't eat anything anymore either. At least nothing that tastes good. I'm told (by somebody that ought to know) to either keep my weight down, or pick out a nice casket. So, it's salads and diet pop. Yeah, big thrills. Just call me Mr. Excitement...

And of course, for the Ayn Rand followers, "true altruism" is a sin all by itself...

Um, I guess I don't have the sports gene. I think I'm supposed to be worked up about this (I live near Seattle), but damned if I can manage any enthusiasm. As with most any professional sport, I just don't care. Well, except for Sumo, I get a kick out of that. But it doesn't get a lot of airplay around here...

Always having been fond of the first movie production (with Zero Mostel), I've got to wonder, why was the second one necessary? And gee, Matthew Broderick wasn't all that good, WOW, who'd a thunk, huh? And I like Nathan Lane, but after a bit, don't you wish he'd just tone it down a notch or two? Anyway, any opinions as to why this venture was even needed?

Having only heard a few of the interviews, I can't comment on the documentary, but what I heard from Skilling brings new meaning to the words "hubris" and "arrogance". It's incredible that his head didn't simply explode, it had swelled to such proportions...

Oh Gawd, Why don't they just get honest and change the name of the auditorium (yet again) to "Das Spankenhaus" and just let it all out? Am I the only one who finds this all to be just incredibly funny? All the years of slavish devotion to the Hallowed Ground of TWI Hdqtrs. and, when we finally find out what's REALLY been going on there, it turns out to be just a few overheated studs and some frustrated dykes? The irony is simply too rich. Laughing myself stupid...

Never had the lamb at Gunnison, but I make a mean leg-of-lamb on occasion. The main thing I've learned to make lamb taste great is to trim every tiny bit of fat off of it before cooking. Every bit (leg of lamb has a goodly amount of fat inside the leg that must be excised as well). Then use a dry marinade and cook to medium rare (I use a small rottiserie). Yum! Mint jelly is a must for me, though...

And in the non-fiction category my award goes to: GUNS, GERMS, & STEEL The best read I've had in a long time. Really interesting stuff...

Anyone care to illucidate as to why his views are so loathesome? Yeah, he's got nothing good to say about religion. I don't think he came by those views in a vacuum. Lordy people, the Twin towers weren't knocked down by crazed evolutionists or devious, god-rejecting secular humanists. A great deal of the earth-shattering destructiveness we deal with today is a DIRECT result of one bone-headed religious zealotry or another. Isn't it about time somebody tried to stem the tide of superstitious nonsense? Ah hell, let's just burn him as a witch...

Lindy, I'm just a nail bender. I do little remodeling jobs, kitchens, baths, and very ocassionally an addition. It just so happened that a client of mine lives in the area where I was going anyway, so I dropped by to show him the blueprints for his addition project, and he decided to write me a check for a downpayment. I didn't plan it that way, but it worked out well. The antiques and woodblock prints is just a hobby (that gets a little carried away at times). Sorry Evan, no pictures. I don't even own a camera anymore. About all you'd have seen of the schoolgirls though, would have been the look of terror on their faces as they were fleeing from the gaijin. I guess that's a reasonable reaction, considering... Oh, and the "fugu reaction" I mentioned was sort of a joke. "Fugu" is blowfish. Blowfish are considered a real delicacy in Japan. The entire fish (except for the liver) is served in a somewhat elaborate dinner. In the nicer restaurants they have tanks of live fugu in the lobby and they harvest them as the need arises for dinner. The skin is cooked, the fins and bones are fried, the flesh is served raw (cut into cut little paper-thin, porkchop-shaped slices and arranged in a decorative pattern with sliced onion, daikon (radish), and some pickled something or other (normally bright red or orange for a bit of color), and the internal organs are served raw as well, (the testes are supposed to be the "best" part but one has to be very careful as the liver and testes are quite similar in appearance and one fugu liver has enough toxin to kill off everybody in the resutoran). A lengthy schooling and government exam (and license) are required before anyone is allowed to prepare fugu for the public. The net result of all of that, though, is a really bland meal. Even my Nihonjin friend admitted that he cannot detect any flavor in fugu. The whole cachet surrounding it - I believe - is entirely due to the potential danger it poses. It gives new excitement to the dining experience if you're not sure you're going to live through it. But the actual flavor? ehh... But fugu wasn't what really got me in trouble. I had a sashimi dinner at "Gonko", a famous, 500 year-old restaurant and teahouse in the Gion district of Kyoto. It's a very good restaurant, but a few hours after eating there I wasn't feeling right, and it only got worse the next day. My friend thought I'd simply drunk too much at dinner (always a distinct possibility in Japan), but I'd only had a single glass of sake with dinner, so I know that wasn't it. Anyway, I felt a little better by evening and went out to dinner with all the execs of a furniture company and the head of the local chamber of commerce in Fuchu. An hour or so into dinner and I passed out and smacked my head on the floor. They got me to come to, and I assured everyone that I was "daijobu" - fine (only me and my friend spoke any English) and promptly passed out again. At that point they called the ahmburansu, and the evening sort of went down hill from there. But, I did get a snappy little credit-card-like thingy from the hospital with my name on it - Joji Aaa - (sorry, you're not allowed to have a name that ends in a consonant) for a souvenir.

The only thing I find remarkable about Dawkins is that his views can still cause such controversy. What I read of him just seems so sensible...

Sudo, Are you kidding? Not only do I remember the show. I had the official "Wyatt Earp" holster and gun set, complete with shirt and vest! I think I wore that set out just acting out along with the show. I was a dedicated fan... One of the biggest disillusionments of my life came along when I read a short bio. of Mr. Earp in my dad's "TRUE" magazine a year or two after the show ended. Gosh, I thought he was one of the good guys!

O.K., I'm safe back at home. Just got back from the airport a few minutes ago. I brought my mother some cheezu kaki from Kintai Kyo for her 86th birthday and dropped them off to her, caught up on my phone and email messages, looked through the mail. Damn, but I'm whupped. Jet lag is always the worst flying east, I don't know why. The flight's shorter, but, no, the adjustment takes forever, ugh. Anyway, a good trip. I got a sizeable downpayment check from a client in Osaka to start a remodel project on a home he owns near here (he owns several homes), met some good contacts in Fuchu in the furniture and home fixture manufacturing business (even if I did pass out at their dinner), and met with an antique dealer friend of mine in Kyoto and bought a No mask and a Makie-urushi tea caddy (a gold lacquered container for powered green tea). No hanga this time, but I did sort of make a commitment to buy a Momoyama period Kakejiku (a hanging scroll painting). It's a really stunning picture of a hawk on a snow-covered tree from the late 16th century. Cheap for what it is ($1600. U.S.). This is the sort of stuff I've dreamed of doing all my life, but now that I'm doing it, I dunno, it's odd. Maybe it's just the jetlag, but I'm feeling a little stressed and overwrought right now. I guess there's nothing in the U.S. news of the scandals in Japan. All that's on the news is about "ribu doa" (live door) and a few other scams. They do tend to be pretty internally fixated though. Not much in the way of international news makes it to the headlines. They're pretty *%^#*ed about the BSE scare with American beef again though. God, who's running THAT ship aground again? Well, on a lighter note, Mt. Fuji was beautiful this morning (yesterday morning? I dunno, time travel always confuses the hell outta me), and Tokyo was resplendant in a layer of freshly fallen snow, but as usual, takeoff wasn't until after sundown so I didn't get to see anything except the city lights from the air. The flight was uneventful and the movies extraordinarily poor, but, I made it back in one piece. Now if I could just get to sleep...

Ohayo gozaimasu! Been a full week, Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima, Fuchu. then went to the Kintai Kyo (a very famous bridge near Hiroshima), Miyajima, and back to Kobe. I spent Kayobi (Tuesday) looking for a guru. No, I wasn:t on a spiritual quest, I was looking for a particular adhesive at the hahdowayah no shoten (hardware store). Then Suiyobi (Wednesday) I got to use a few more words from my vocabulary - ahmburansu, byooin, sensei (ambulance, hospital, doctor), My firiend still thiinks I drank too much, but I:m pretty sure I had a fugu reaction. I passed out colder than a mackeral in a Sushiya. Big fun that. And for reasons totally understood only by the Japanese, the host of the dinner paid for my hospitcal bill and wouldn:t hear differentlyof it. Amazing hospitality. Anyway, kyo wa genki desu (today I feel fine). So today Ahmedika kaerimasu (I return to America). I*ll miss all the schoolgirls with their slavish addiction to absurd fashions, the scenery, but mostly my friends here. Tjey:re really sweet people. Sayonara, Joji BTW, Digi, you can get a good quality, silk kimono, used, at ANY flea marketo for about 1000 en (10 dollars U.S.)

Nihon yori, Omedeto mna sama ni. Kokorowokomete Joji Uh, that means *greetings from Japan from george* Anyway, weather is samui (cold), but tomodachi (friends) are warm (as usual). All sorts of scandals in the news. *Live Door* scam has claimed it:s first victim (suicide), local contractor has been caught building substandard apartments. Lots of that sort of stuff. Must be because the economy is good again. Not much else to say just now. Ja mata! Joji yori

"I wonder how Oprah got so popular." Well, it wasn't because of "fans" like me, of that much I'm certain. I don't get it at all. What's she got? A seriously lightweight intellect from what I can tell. I've read Faulkner. Don't care for him much, though he was obviously a talented writer. I think those are pretty safe recommendations for a reading list, no? Sorta like putting "Gone with the Wind" on a recommended movie list. Gosh, really, you think it's any good? I also read "Memoirs of a Geisha", though I'm a bit embarassed about it now. It was a good read for the first half, then sorta turned into a Harlequin Romance or something. He shoulda had somebody help him come up with an ending. The last half of the book was trash. Mostly I'm not much of a fiction reader at all. I'm just not into stories. I read history, technical journals, even auction and exhibition catalogs, but I hate to waste the reading time if I'm not going to learn something productive. Yeah, I know, I'm Mr. Excitement...

Socks, yeah, The advice (and the pity party) is wonderful, I guess. Sorta like telling the rancher to be sure to keep the barn door closed after his cow has been smashed on the highway, though. I'm not sure how much all this good advice is going to do me. In six or seven years I'll be just fine and ready to try it all again, huh? Gosh, that IS encouraging. But, on a more positive note, we'll all be dead before too much longer and it won't matter anyway.

Satori, Re:"I don't buy it, the deal where the lunk-headed guy just doesn't see it coming." I guess that's what I'm selling, and you certainly have no obligation to purchase, but it's how it happened, regardless. Should I have seen it coming? No question. But I didn't... And Rascal, My only concern would be that hubby is fully aware of just how seriously you view the problems. But, obviously you'd know that better than I...