badmigraine

Markie, it most certainly wasn't a Japanese accent!

I've always been bad at things that can be described as "After you _______, then you are expected to ______..."

Phoenix Frost! Google it if you must.

Ocean, as a Brit you are spoiled when it comes to finding good beer without really having to try. You hit the nail on the head. It's not easy to find the Good Stuff here. But that doesn't mean there is no Good Stuff. I think a combination of factors such as the huge geographical size of the US, the established and heavy volume-based trucking distribution system that favors giant crateloads of guaranteed peewater sales of Bud and Coors etc., the different liquor license laws in each state, and the fiscal/production volume impossibility of a local brewer mounting a national sales, marketin

Last night my wife and I went up to the Japanese video store here in Walled Lake, Michigan. They had a Fujiwara Norika movie with the typical lurid cover emphasizing breastage and leggage all packed into and busting out of shiny black leather. We rented it and found to our amazement that it is a kind of US/Hong Kong/Japan co-production done in English! Norika-chan doesn't speak English in the movie though, her lines are all dubbed in by a voice actress with a Chinese accent. Coolio appears as a kingpin drug dealer from south central L.A. making a big deal with a Chinese gang li

I recommend a "doorbell tax" placard on your front door. The placard will say in perfect polite Japanese, "50 yen charge for each ring of this doorbell. Ring doorbell to make payment. If doorbell tax collector is not available, please leave your home address and telephone number. Doorbell tax collector will visit you on Sunday evening around dinnertime. Thank you for your cooperation. Let's enjoy to cooperate in payment of taxes." Howzat? Not for nuthin' did I go to law school.

I ended up disconnecting the doorbell because I was so tired of those guys ding-donging all the time...especially on Sunday evenings when they think they'll trick you into answering the door expecting a friend at that hour... If there is no consequence to non-payment, then the tax is actually a voluntary tax. So you don't have to pay.

I beg to differ..."microbrews" is an artificial concept develop to contrast beers with mass-produced, national peewater lagers like Bud, Michelob, Pabst, Coors, Miller etc. In Europe, where beer is at its greatest, they don't really "get" the concept of microbrews...because it has always been that way over there. Lots of local breweries and famous local beers. Thousands of them, actually. There are plenty of great beers in the US but you have to live here to find out about them. Just like you have to live in Germany, say, to find out about all the great local German beers.

Kamoshika, you are onto something with the alcohol there! Sometimes it seemed I was floating in an ocean of it...I blame Mogski and also those shiny t-back g-strings I would sometimes see on the booted/miniskirted gals at the dance clubs. I blame society!!

Nice try kamoshika, but my 8 hour need doesn't come from something I read, it's what I find I need to function right! If I don't get about 7:45 or 8:00, then forget it. I am slow and tired and definitely need a nap! Believe me, I've tried all ways and combinations. Student, athlete, lawyer, loafer, company man, night work. After 40 years, I know. I need the 8! Now if this is going to shorten my life, that is even MORE unfair!!! NOTE: It is possible that I am sleeping badly, so the total bedroom time is 8 hours but the total sleep time is less. I snore pretty loudly

Oh please. Watching executions is something many people are interested in, even today. Some countries actually fill stadiums with people who come to view stonings and executions. You can view executions in the US and books and movies about them have been bestsellers. Check out Norman Mailer's prize-winning bestseller/movie "The Executioner's Song", about the murderer Gary Gilmore. Look at the popularity of the "Faces of Death" vid series in the US. There is a Japanese series that is basically the same. Throughout European history, hordes of people have gathered with gleeful or

I need to sleep about 8 hours per night or I am just dull and out of it. Other people I know only need 6 hours per night...more than that, they don't even want. It seems to me that this is unfair, because every day they get 2 hours more of waking life than I do. Do the math, and this is 30 days extra per year!! UNFAIR. They have a better quantity of life than I do...

"de wa, osaki ni..."

Leaving aside the "death penalty or not?" question, it has always amazed me that executions are carried out in such strangely complex and often ineptly painful ways. As said above, the electric chair? Come on. That is horrific!! Who thought up this one? Sheesh. Maybe the intent was to establish a horrible way of dying as a criminal deterrent, but I doubt that it works and you could never prove this anyway. The gas chamber? I heard that is horrible and not as quick or painless as you might imagine. I'm no expert, but aren't there lots of quick, painless and cheap ways to execute

Ender, you'll stumble on other places in Tokyo where you can get all that stuff and more, too. Your problem will change from "unable to find what I want" to "unable to afford all the things I found and now Must Have..." Check out the grocery store underneath Shibuya Station "Tokyo Food Show". There's a warren of stores down there, but for your reference this is the one located underneath the road separating the Mark City complex from Shibuya Station (look for the suspended glass bridge walkway...under the road below that). They have some stuff National Azabu doesn't, and it's pretty conve

In Tim Burton's original draft, when the astronaut fast-forwarded to the future, he found the entire planet was one big Japanese company and he was the guy who people asked to correct the English in the bosses faxes. He corrected the English and they thanked him and agreed with his changes. But the next day when he looked to confirm that the fax had been sent, he found that they had put it all back in the boss's original, terrible English, because nobody wanted to make the boss look bad.

When I first got to my J company in the mid-90s, you could still chainsmoke at your "desk" (just a giant open area of metal desks pushed together so everyone is basically sitting jammed up next to each other in one big room). Many, many people took advantage of the freedom to smoke and the place was a blue haze of stinking secondhand-smoke all day long, every day. I recall two amusing anecdotes from those days. 1. After a few months I saw workers erecting a partitioned area in the middle of the room with special fans and air cleaners over it. I asked my boss, "Is that goi

My latest Worst Hangover I Ever Had was just two Saturdays ago. But if you're like me, you've been a position to say "That was the worst hangover I've ever had!" more than once...possibly annually or even more frequently than that. I would say the essential elements of a good hangover are HEADACHE, NAUSEA, INTESTINAL DISTRESS, OVERALL MALAISE, and GODAWFUL REMORSE. Here's what I got on my latest one: 1. HEADACHE The site of the pain changes according to unknown factors, but lately it's hitting me at the base of my skull, where the spine goes into the brain...lately it's an agg

Yeh mogs is right...this grand-daddy lawyer had a good legal sense and loads of experience, but he couldn't use a computer and couldn't type either. In the negotiations he'd say "Let me take a stab at drafting that provision..." Then he'd sit at a table by the window with a pencil and a big yellow legal pad, slowly writing in longhand. The full negotiating teams would be on a break or just sitting around waiting for him to finish. Eventually, he would complete his masterpiece, then pass it to ME, a lawyer, to type up. His writing was almost illegible, it was notoriously har

Er, actually I just have a big mouth and drink too much coffee in the a.m., too much beer in the p.m.

Ta db! Good info. I am thinking my gal is right on the edge of OK vs. too small for Flows... We're definitely going to have to try them out in the store before buying. It would be madness to do otherwise!

Does the Infopop system allow admins to see who has posted the most characters? We've already got a handle on who has posted how many times, but we don't yet know who writes the most text!

Yes please db! And thanks Ray!!

Don't sweat it, danz. How about a nap in the bathroom to cool down? Just tell them you were "in a meeting".

You tell 'em Ocean...after almost 8 years at an old-line Japanese automaker, I had forgotten what a normal person did at work every day. It's amazing. Living here in Michigan, I see there are actually people who go to work and make decisions and get things done, then leave around 5:30 to go home for dinner and family. What selfish, arrogant bastards, eh? Inconceivable. PS - You forgot mandatory second-hand smoke inhalation and zero support from the much-vaunted "OL" gals who are so pitiably discriminated against. EXAMPLE: "Uh, this is the closing letter for the