badmigraine
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Posts posted by badmigraine
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Tomorrow night is the Tokyo Perve party--rubber, leather, vinyl and PVC fetish party.
My costume is all set, including remote control electric dog shock collar. My friend Mistress Makiko has the remote control, and I am wearing the collar. And it is not around my neck.
Will Fatty's sponsor this type of event?
[This message has been edited by badmigraine (edited 30 March 2002).]
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Will Fatty's have a barber's chair for giving that special Owner's Cut to admiring customers?
If a nautical motif is planned, there are these antique diving suits, in good shape but with some brown streaking on the glass.
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Don't know too much about Fatty, he was always working...he seemed like just the sort who might go into hospital after trying a new trick to impress a gal.
Must be a family thing--we rode some with his Dad and he rips.
Not only that, but Dad opens the last beer of the evening but is still up before you in the morning.
And Fatty's got a nice stash of Weetabix and Vegemite.
Any questions?
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Look at me--I'm cool!!
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It's a bit odd that in these backcountry threads hardly anyone ever mentions what an exhausting chore it is to have to hump it through knee- or even hip-deep snow, up steep slopes, carrying a pack and your board or skis, a shovel, probe, all the safety gear...
On a cold mountain day in the thin air it sure feels nice to work up the same kind of sweat you'd get after jogging in a down parka for thirty minutes. All that sweat turns clammy and cold, or, if you have the correct expensive technical undergarments, quickly begins to stink like a gym locker room with no showers or running water.
FUN!!!
After half an hour or more of slogging through the snow, you get maybe 5 minutes of actual riding.
Then you have to hump up all over again...
If it were always like that, I would never have taken up skiing or snowboarding.
Give me lift-accessed powder every time.
I hate walking up, and I hate walking out.
I think even building a kicker would turn me off after 2-3 hikes back up.
I have strong legs, am in shape, and enjoy active sports.
But when it comes to snowboarding, make mine lift-accessed, or I'll see you on the couch over beers afterward.
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Hey Ocean
Up here making people wait on a small Net terminal, so I'll have to make this quick. Up here in Niseko, it rained/heavy wet snow and terrible visibility yesterday, today all lifts closed due to high winds!
About PowerLinks, there are 3 kinds, ranging from softer to stiffer: freestyle, regular and boardercross/carving. I have the regular ones and they are super. I just put the boardercross/carving ones on my shorter board with stiff bindings, and now it is like riding a razor knife...
I would say you should get the one that matches your riding style. It would be a mistake to try to alter or change the natural softness/stiffness characteristics of your boots and bindings by throwing a PowerLink of a different nature in there.
(I tried putting the stiff ones on my Supermodel and its flexy bindings, and it was awful...I hated it...then I put the stiff ones with my stiffest bindings and hardest-carving board, and it was like magic...)
Read the blurb on the box. They do exactly what they say they do, including the part that describes the tradeoff in stiffness for snow feel.
Have a good one!
badmigraine in Hokkaido.
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Hey Ocean
Up here making people wait on a small Net terminal, so I'll have to make this quick. Up here in Niseko, it rained/heavy wet snow and terrible visibility yesterday, today all lifts closed due to high winds!
About PowerLinks, there are 3 kinds, ranging from softer to stiffer: freestyle, regular and boardercross/carving. I have the regular ones and they are super. I just put the boardercross/carving ones on my shorter board with stiff bindings, and now it is like riding a razor knife...
I would say you should get the one that matches your riding style. It would be a mistake to try to alter or change the natural softness/stiffness characteristics of your boots and bindings by throwing a PowerLink of a different nature in there.
(I tried putting the stiff ones on my Supermodel and its flexy bindings, and it was awful...I hated it...then I put the stiff ones with my stiffest bindings and hardest-carving board, and it was like magic...)
Read the blurb on the box. They do exactly what they say they do, including the part that describes the tradeoff in stiffness for snow feel.
Have a good one!
badmigraine in Hokkaido.
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Ocean, I don't know about Fast bindings... Here is something totally irrelevant: I was interested in a stiff but quick setup earlier this season and I had a long look at Flow bindings, which seemed OK to me.
Insofar as you can find reviews on BBSs and in other Internet places, and then discount the usual 30% or so of shall we say "specially motivated posts" that say "GREAT! GREAT! THESE ARE THE BEST BINDINGS EVER!! DON'T EVEN CONSIDER ANY OTHER." or "I don't know why people even buy this trash...mine fell apart on the first day, screws came out, strap ripped in half etc. and they wouldn't do a warranty repair...and I was actually glad to throw them out because they HURT like HELL...", it seemed that the Net community judges that Flows work pretty well and give a quick in-out almost as fast and easy as a step-in.
But I ended up figuring I wanted a very stiff setup so I splurged on a pair of Salomon's stiffest strap bindings and lo and behold their toe strap is quicker than Clint Eastwood because it never really comes apart...you just kind of slide in there and ratchet it down.
The ankle strap is the same as any other though.
I screwed on a set of Palmer PowerLinks (which really work, and do exactly what the label says they do), and suddenly my board was like a razor knife on the snow...but only when I put it on edge. Otherwise, it was smooth as a Caddy, just like before.
An iron fist in a velvet glove.
And I, poorer but happy.
I see I have come very far away from Fast bindings, but there you have it. Mogski and I are off to Niseko for 7 days starting on Sunday, and we won't have Net access the entire time. I figured I better post something, anything, before absenting myself so rudely!
Have a good ride if you get up to Nozzle or Hacks this week. Full report when (if?) we come back.
Cowabunga!, and Merde!!
[This message has been edited by badmigraine (edited 16 February 2002).]
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Only too true berg.
That convenience, and the ability to send your board bag--fat and ready to explode with wet cold gear like a beef summer sausage bursting out of its casing--home by takkyubin for 2500 yen, is a great boon indeed.
I suppose I long for the impossible...not just when reading Penthouse, but also in the matter of living in a fun city only a short commute to fantastic snow-draped mountains.
Maybe a topic for another thread, but assuming that one prefers not to live in an isolated mountain cabin all winter, just to be near the slopes, what would be the ideal city/town next to a great resort in which to pass a jolly winter, skiing/riding only on the good days, and leaving bad weather/snow and crowded weekend days to hapless frantic tourists and the less fortunately situated?
For me, I'd have to be able to find a relatively cheap rental (this rules out living in places like Park City, Whistler Village, etc.), and if there is public transport to the mountains, that means I can have too many beers in the apres ski phase, yet still make it home alright.
I suppose Tahoe and Salt Lake City might pass muster in the US.
Any thoughts?
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I'll bring my Fabio Concato tapes and some other pezzi vecchi, my snowboard and some hangover pills, and let's do something hard to forget!!
YEAH!!!
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How does it compare to last year's aptly titled onslope smash by Yaida Hitomi, "I'm here, saying nothing"?
(Pronounced "I'm heel, saying nothing")
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If you are in the French/Italian part of Switzerland, then I recommend that all of us on the SJG forum visit your house with a load of chips and beer and wine, watch a bit of the TV coverage, then you can guide us through the secret runs on your favorite resort.
It would sure beat sitting here at a desk and eating the company cafeteria food.
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Simon, where in the heck are you?!
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Aside from Canada's spectacular, impartial, full-time coverage of everything and everyone at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games, I only know about the US Olympic coverage.
Sadly, it is the same thing we get here in Japan.
Watching the US coverage of the Olympics, you have the feeling that there are mostly only US athletes in the Olympics.
And there are lots of time-wasting interviews and "Up Close and Personal" stories about each US athlete, where we get to hear interviews with his elementary school teacher, see pictures of the family dog, etc.
Meanwhile, while forced to watch this pablum, we are missing exciting Olympic performances that are going on all day.
What an aggravating waste.
I'm in Japan this time, so I don't know how this year's US Olympic coverage is going. Perhaps someone living in the US can report on this.
I suppose the only differences between the US and Japanese coverage that I can think of offhand would be:
1. The US coverage shows mostly US athletes. The Japanese coverage shows mostly Japanese athletes.
2. The US coverage actually shows some full events, such as the entire ice skating final or the entire downhill racing competition...whereas Japanese coverage hardly ever does that.
3. The US reports usually show the top finishers' performances, even if no US athlete is involved, especially if they are noteworthy or record-breaking...whereas the Japanese coverage usually shows the non-medal Japanese performance again and again, while hardly even giving any view of the actual winners or record-breakers.
4. The US coverage continues at about the same daily length until the end of the Olympics...whereas the Japanese coverage seems to vanish as soon as Japanese athletes have finished.
But all things considered, the US coverage was always, to me at least, unsatisfying. I felt like I was being manipulated and my view of this giant sprawling international sports event called the Olympics was reduced, censored, packaged, dumbed-down and completely controlled by a TV company with a kind of simplistic, US-self-important, McDonaldized Time Magazine kind of redigested pablum broadcasting of the most uninteresting sterile predictable sort.
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When I attend rubber/leather SM fetish parties here in Tokyo, I usually go in black latex rubber stockings w/garter belt, black rubber women's tank-top with molded breasts, over-the-elbow length black rubber opera gloves, and a cheap red wig with straight, shoulder-length hair.
And, I am a boarder.
Does that count?
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Thanks for the info, Simon.
Sounds like you got to watch the whole thing! I am jealous!! Why I even have the feeling that if I got to see some tape of the men's halfpipe, Satoya would come busting through the pipe doing a reprise of her mogul run.
By the way, is it true that the method of judging halfpipe contests varies?
I've read that most riders prefer to keep the friendly "pipe jam" format, where they just ride for a couple hours and at the end rate each other. Like in skateboarding I guess...
But then there are all these "Official" contests where they have had to impose certain formalistic categories on the riders, e.g. "amplitude", and how they look doing certain required or recommended moves (which may not look so great to the public)...I read that the judging system is not consistent among all such contests.
Maybe that's for the best. If you fully standardized the judging across the board, I suppose you could end up with a situation like the one I read about where mogul judges don't appreciate Johnny Moseley's new "Dinner Roll" jump because it is off-axis and even though the crowd loves it, it gets no points.
He even had to petition the governing body (probably those stiff swollen old-world Euro geezers in the FIS?) just to be allowed to DO that jump.
Can you imagine that in snowboarding? Having to petition to be allowed to do a trick? (This may have already happened. I read that, for example, a few years ago the Michaelchuck, then a new trick that was generally only done by the guy who invented it, confused/disappointed the judges while thrilling the crowd and the other riders...)
Standardizing all judging in snowboarding could maybe give us competitions about as exciting to watch as compulsories in skating...watching somebody skate a backwards figure 8 is just not very gripping. Maybe they'll get out the rulers and measure exactly how high each person went, then figure that measurement into the score, etc. How stupid.
When I see the phrasing in newspaper articles that tries to gee-whiz sell these snowboard competitions to John Q. Public, lately it is the stock phrase "Official organizers were skeptical that a lifestyle-sport like snowboarding could be an Olympic sport..."
A "lifestyle sport"? I couldn't really figure what that means.
But when you think about the judging issues, and about riders such as Terje who have legendary or groundbreaking status in the sport, but refuse to even try to participate in the FIS-sponsored events and Olympics, that stock phrasing actually makes a kind of sense to me. A "lifestyle sport"...
Synchro swimming, OK. Get your judges and make a big deal out of it. I think Terje might even be ready to give synchro a try.
But snowboarding? Imposing formal strictures and judging methodology on it doesn't seem to match the spirit or practice of the sport. When I think about watching the pipe, I usually don't give a crap who wins. I just want to see the riders going off.
I don't know how to handle it, but the pipe jam format seems to be the best current answer.
[This message has been edited by badmigraine (edited 13 February 2002).]
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We may reasonably expect a post from Mogski on this thread, as he is one of very few humans alive who have cultivated the ability to burn laser holes through people's goggles and eye sockets right down to sizzling BBQ brain tissue...but it only works when people standing behind him in lift lines scrape their tips over the back of his brand-new Salomon Pocket Rockets.
Really something.
I feel sorry for those people.
First, because they keep stepping on his skis again and again while boistrously joking and laughing with their mates about this or that, totally oblivious to the fact that they are scratching up his topsheet.
And second, because in less than half a minute they will sport two eye-sized holes burned clean through their skulls thanks to Mogski's infra-angry murder laser vision beams.
Watch out for the lime green jacket, folks, and keep well clear of those Salomons.
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Simon, I'm willing to go with you a bit on this one as I, too, thought it seemed kind of patsy that the US team would sweep the pipe.
But what exactly are you saying?
You say most events are not judged. Is it really "most"? All the compulsory and singles and pairs figure skating, all the ski jumping, the mogul skiing, the freestyle ski jumping, the halfpipe...
In the one you mentioned, ice skating, the Americans "LOST" the gold to a Russian pair that some say wasn't as good and even had a stumble...where was the pro-US bias in this example?
Also, you said only 1 of the snowboard judges was from the US. What about all the others? Are you saying they were bribed? Or that it was fixed? This seems pretty unlikely to me.
Also, in an event where the final score of each rider is a mathematical combination of scores from many judges and the point margins separating the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. riders was so small, it hardly seems likely that this was some sort of planned result.
Mayby you are saying that all the judges felt sorry for the US and/or intimidated by the crowd's chanting of USA, USA, USA, so gave higher scores to the US riders?
Is that what you are saying?
My position would be that it sure seems a surprising coincidence, but as with Houdini you are kind of left wondering how in the world they could have done it that way...and if it were fixed or rigged or involved bribery or actual intimidation, the number of people required to be involved in order to produce those scores is so high that somebody would probably spill the beans...not to mention it's pretty hard to fix a result where only hundredths of a point separate the finishers.
So what exactly are you saying has happened?
Is there more to it than "seems strange, nudge nudge wink wink, this was set up, nudge nudge wink wink"?
If that's all there is, yours was still a fine post and got me thinking.
But if you have any specific theories or ideas about how this conspiracy could have been pulled off, then post them.
Because I badly need something to read or do tomorrow at work.
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Nothing to worry about at all. There'll be heaps of snow.
I suppose the average temp is a bit higher in March than in February, but the snow keeps on falling and you are working off a tremendous base.
Perhaps the latter part of March could be iffy, though not bad, but I would think the first 2 weeks will be great. Probably some huge dumps, and relatively uncrowded slopes...by then, the slope-clogger type of skier is already reserving trips to Bali and Thailand as Foreign Beach Vacation season has already set in.
Only people like you and me--sticks in the mud--would still be (ha--exCUSE ME?!) skiing or snowboarding in MARCH!
Sheesh.
I've followed the March snow conditions for Hokkaido for the last several years, and it dumps up there.
Nothing to worry about at all.
Enjoy.
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alferg, thanks for the props! I wasn't aiming anything at you, just trying to get a laugh while frittering away more work time until the bell goes off and we can all go home to watch the Olympix.
The Onion?! I don't write for anyone but you guys, and that for free!
But if the Onion is looking for contributors and pays in US$, then sign me up.
Maybe next I can fill you in on how after an entire day underwater in the onsen, I looked over to find Lama heroically trying pull out Paddy, who was wearing a rainbow-patterned Speedo and had been holding his breath under the surface the whole time...what a guy.
The only foreign guy I know who did more in Hirafu with the XX-chromosome set than just gape at them.
Cheers,
badmigraine in Tokyo.
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alferg, there are no mixed onsen per se, but I and Mogski were able to improvise one last year using only the following:
--2 antique diving bells with clear fishbowl bolt-on headpieces
--supply of rotten meat held by nylon net just in front of mouth area
Mogski, disguised as an oversized tanuki (a kind of bipedal Japanese badger that goes about the forests in old woodsman's clothes carrying a walking stick acting as a protective spirit), stood motionless on a snow hummock overlooking the women's side of a segregated onsen for two days and nights until the caretaker drained all the water.
Then, as the caretaker went inside to smoke a Mild Seven, he and I donned the diving bells, hopped the fence and lay unmoving on the bottom of the drained bath area while the caretaker puttered about.
Eventually the warm water flooded in, then we were in business.
I recall lying there for another 2 days, with a full, clear and unobstructed view of the hindquarters of every female bather who happened by.
Once in a lucky while, a bather would even perch her buttocks on the outside of the fishbowl helmet, affording us an up-close view of the fascinating changes that XX chromosomes can wreak in a human zygote.
The rotten meat fixed immediately in front of our jowls continuously dripped a nutritious mixture of suppurating juices and pulpy maggots into our eager mouths, as we lay raptly watching the underwater show like children in the Mysteries of the Deep aquarium at SeaWorld.
We occasionally communicated by tapping out morse code signals on the rocks, and thus it was that next time the caretaker drained the pool, we were able to rise in silent concert and make good our escape.
The next day found us riding powder over on Hanazono, with more than one bawdy tale to tell over a bowl of tonjiru around the heating fire in the alpine hut up there that is so well-known to some.
Sorry we'll be missing you in Niseko, as we are heading up next week, but have a good time and if you are game, try to budget an extra 4-5 days for the mixed onsen gig described above.
[This message has been edited by badmigraine (edited 12 February 2002).]
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I got up early this morning hoping to catch a report on the men's halfpipe and alpine skiing...
What I got was repeated shots of speed skater Shimizu's 500m run juxtaposed with slow-mo of his rival falling over in a different heat. What a triumph!
Then there was the 5th long report I've seen so far where the aerodynamic properties of speed skate suits are demonstrated in a wind tunnel.
Then there was the humorous piece showing the three amazing types of ice skates: figure, hockey and speed. This report ended up with a great laugh-getter: a housewife cutting veggies with a speed skate! Haw haw haw haw!!!
At this point I went into the shower.
When I came out, praise heaven, we were getting to some real news, it seemed. Someone had thumbtacked pages from several of today's newspapers to a bulletin board, and with a telescoping pointer was reading them out loud to all of us illiterate sods in TV land.
"OK," I thought, "as long as it is news about halfpipe and alpine skiing..."
But this was not to be. It was an expose on the rule change in ski jumping requiring a different ski length that implicitly disadvantages Japanese--this was proved beyond a doubt by listing the number of medals won by Japanese jumpers in the few years before the rule change, to the dearth of medals won by Japanese jumpers after the change.
I guess no other people on the planet could possibly be disadvantaged by the rule, which must selectively only apply to Japanese jumpers.
I guess, if we assume the rule change only affects Japanese jumpers, one could plya devil's advocate and postulate that it merely corrected an unfair advantage that Japanese jumpers had under the previous rule scheme, and now, with a dearth of medals, we are seeing a level playing field...
Then as I was knotting my tie and making that last mirror-check for dried bougars or errant eye crumbs, there was a short report on the halfpipe: a graphic showing the names of the 1-2-3 finishers, and underneath the name of the Japanese guy who came 5th. Then we were treated to his run...fine, but what about the 1-2-3 riders?
We don't get to see 'em.
Then there was Satoya partying with Morning Musume, there were interviews with Uemura and Satoya asking "what is your favorite music?" and then a clip of the offending band...
As my parents used to say to me, "I'm not angry...I'm just very disappointed..."
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I've been doing the peer-to-peer file swapping thing using iMesh (you can download it easily for free).
I really enjoy the mp3s, but I have to say that:
1. iMesh ends up crashing my system every time (this applies to search/download activitity only--after I GET the mp3 onto my system, I have no need to fire up iMesh, and can listen all day using an mp3 player, without crashing)
2. iMesh cobbles into your system a number of programs classified as "spyware" that continually pass information to advertisers and to iMesh. I read it even has the programs that can replace words on a website, which is the worst kind of censorship (example: it detects the word "vitamin" on a webpage...and so it throws in some ads from health supplement makers, that aren't actually a part of the site that you're looking at...but you never know that, all you see is the ad).
I spent some time on the Gibson Research site and other sites and found ways to deactivate some of this annoying stuff, but it somehow screwed up part of iMesh's functionality for me and I suspect that is one reason my computer crashes a lot when running iMesh.
Isn't there an easier way to steal things? So dirty, so messy!
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oo, did you find that your perception of the fun and functionality of the Net drastically changed once you got ADSL?
As for me, I'm downloading tons of MP3s, watching movie trailers, skate vids and streaming stuff all the time...fantastic.
Does anyone have Usen's 300Mbps fiber optic service? I wonder what that looks like.
Ishiuchi Maruyama - Pipe Still OK?
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
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I heard there was a great superpipe up at Ishiuchi Maruyama in Niigata this season. Mogski was afraid to go into it with his Pocket Rockets!
Well the Core Games were supposed to be up there this weekend. I wonder if they really actually happened with all this rain and warm weather..? Anybody know anything?
We were thinking of ditching work and heading up on Wednesday or Thursday this week, to spend the day riding and hiking the pipe...but only if it is open and viable, and not a kind of giant interactive sno-cone.
Anybody know anything?