All Men Must Die

With the turning of the year, as with the turning of the tide, one’s thoughts are inevitably drawn towards the cyclical nature of life. This arbitrarily designated point on our terrestrial orb’s procession around the solar sphere fittingly provokes consideration of where one has come from and where one is heading; while we may appear as if we are endlessly retreading the same repeating path around our own personal orreries there are nonetheless perturbations; the precession of our equinoxes are far from regular as we pirouette about whatever attractor is placed at the centre of our worldly existence. This time, then, as we literally turn the page on the ledger of our years, allows us a pause, a moment, in which to take stock to consider, to reconsider, what we have come to understand; to wonder what it is we have learned and what it may befit us to unlearn.

  

From the Mouth of the Whale

Sjón, 2008 [Victoria Cribb, 2011]

(September 2013)

Difficult to pigeonhole, this one. That’s good; books that are difficult to pigeonhole generally promise to be much more interesting than those that neatly slot in the middle of your main genres. But convention demands some sort of slotting should occur, so let’s say magical realism and move on, shall we?

Epistemologically Unsound Conclusions Concerning Japan and the Japanese, Based on Japanese Television

Number seven in a series of some

“Japanese people suffer from a uniquely severe form
of Stress Incontinence”

To ‘piss yourself laughing’ is a common enough expression. On occasion it’s literally true, a simultaneous loosening of the urethral sphincter and tightening of the abdominal muscles results in unfortunate humour-instigated excretion.

It’s even worse in Japan, as a regrettable genetic trait means laughter causes not just abdominal tightness, but the entire lower half of the body to contract. If the sufferer is sitting, this will propel them bodily out of their chair while simultaneously propelling other fluids out of those self-same bodies. Look at this. And this. Also this.

If something’s worth laughing at, it’s worth standing and pointing at as well. I’d hate to see their dry cleaning bills.

Cat Shit Coffee

Once again proving that somehow, improbably, extraordinarily, I fluked out massively when I found my wife, she bought me shit for christmas.

It’s worth pointing out at this point that my wife doesn’t drink coffee at all, yet she managed to do the research and nail the perfect gift (fit for a prince, almost). The last year has been pretty testing at times, what with the birth of our first child, a month long intercontinental trip with said child, and buying and moving into a new house almost immediately after. We’ve had more arguments in the last 12 months than in the other 8 years of our relationship combined. Yet she consistently comes up with stuff like this. I hope I deserve her, though I’m not sure I always do.

But enough real emotion and slush. I know there are a couple of caféophiles in what passes for my readership, so on with the details you really want. On with the poo tasting.

Back In The Day

The New Year's party season is almost upon us. Unless you live in Japan in which case the New Year's cleaning, eating cold food, and humouring aged relatives season is upon us. Anyhow, it seems an appropriate time to talk about why, while I still drink, I very, very rarely actually get drunk any more.

That sounds fairly dramatic, doesn't it? Don't get your hopes up, it involves very little in the way of humiliation or bodily fluid. At least on my part.

Leviathan

Call me cynical. Go on, I won’t mind. I’d prefer ‘sceptical’ but it’s all good. Regardless, when I saw a segment on the news the other day it did prompt a couple of less than generous thoughts. The first is that Japanese curry is pretty special, and not the good special either. I'm no foodie purist, insisting that my food must at all times be ‘authentic’; that it ‘just tastes so much better when you’re actually there.’ I love Thai food, but some of the most disappointing I've ever eaten was in Bangkok.

In fact this assumption that “authentic=good and inauthentic=bad” extends across all spheres, and is frequently wrong. There’s a real question as to whether pizzas are better in Italy or America, and I’d happily put Baltis up against almost anything India has to offer. And that’s before we’ve even gotten on to Chicken Tikka Masala.

Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum

The Horror, The Horror

I’ve never really been a huge fan of Horror. I saw one of the Child’s Play movies when I was obviously too young, and I can’t really remember much of it, except Dad stopping it halfway through and taking it back to the video rental shop. I think I’d convinced him that it was a cartoon, based on the picture of Chucky on the box, and in his mind cartoons were inherently childish. An animatronic doll possessed by the soul of a dead serial-killer probably wasn’t what he was expecting for his Sunday evening family viewing. Narnia it was not.