now, for some characteristically japanese humility...

I AM THE CHAMPION, PAGANS! BOW BEFORE ME AND BATHE IN THE GLOW OF MY GOLDEN LOCKS, WHICH SHIMMER LIKE A FIERCE WILDFIRE - ONE NOT UNLIKE THE BLAZE WHICH WILL SOON SWALLOW EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU! MY MIGHT KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

yes, that is right. after two years of grueling sitting, standing, and tilting of my head, i have earned my place on the throne of the hair modeling world. in japan, i mean. well, in tokyo. be it though a small step, it is nonetheless triumphant. the above picture was taken the day before the tournament - i am halfway through the hair coloring process. do not mistake it for my actual competition appearance, which is:

my artificially-carved out beard is my favorite part. along with the sequins.

my hairstylist deserves all the credit, though. all i really do is exist as my white self. i wonder if i'll receive any death threats from the militant anti-foreign-model coalition.

ok, now for some japanese.

末席を汚す
まっせきをけがす
masseki wo kegasu

the literal meaning of this phrase and the meaning of its actual usage are quite different. here are the words: 末席　is masseki, and it means the "last" or "lowest-ranking" seat at a table. 汚す　is kegasu, and that means to "pollute," to "contaminate," or to "dirty." it's kind of hard to pollute a chair, so it's better to consider "dishonor even the lowest rank" the literal meaning of this phrase. guess when this is used?

at meetings. this phrase is commonly used when one attends a gathering of some official sort and wants to express modesty. in such a setting, it basically means, "excuse me. i know i am not even worthy of being in attendance here, but here i am" or "forgive me for getting in the way of your important business." in america, i doubt people would even consider thinking such a thing. they would probably say something cool like "let's get down to work, comrades," or "mind if i go to the bathroom quick?" but that doesn't sound very cool. i think we could all benefit from a little more modesty. even presidential candidates. if obama started saying things like "please don't elect me. i would not even be worthy of being a white house janitor, let alone the leader of the free world," i guarantee you he'd get elected.

next time i win a hair competition, then, i'll say "pardon me for soiling your terrycloth." all the japanese babes will love it and start trying to bow lower than me. hott action, i tell you. hott.

shakin' booty, making sweet love all the night

good evening! i am tom of blog-neglecting fame!

i have completed a new song: joe sery's title suggestion of "i'm with stupid and i'm alone."

i call it 80s disco, if there is such a thing. it's really simple, but hopefully it compels you to dance. i couldn't figure out how to fade out the whole song, so it just goes on and on. on. but i'm really proud of the synthesizer solo. and the synthesized horns. the lyrics make no sense whatsoever, but, hey, they've never been my strong point.

i have recreated my old, deleted, illegal myspace page, so you can download "take my pink slip" and "diabetes is diabolical," too. also, there's another new one called "anything for you," which i wrote for megu.

more later.

call me lazarus

i'm pretty sure that's how moby dick starts. anyway, thanks to my brother jesus christ's miracle-working mojo juice, i'm back in action, shedding my grave-cloths, pumping my fist into the air, yelling "go, rockies," and finding my eternal resting place in bible verse (John 11:1).

it has been roughly sixteen epochs since my last post. if you look at previous entries, titled "fire discovered," "wheel crafted, millions cruise division," and "dick clark born," you can sense how long it's really been. well, i'm sitting here bored at my computer, devouring wonderful new posts from brian heilman's blog, feeling a little bit jealous and a lot bit motivated. thus i have surfed to blogger.com; thus i will bestow upon my tens of readers a long-awaited post.

i've decided to go back to the basics. a long time ago, i had the novel idea of explaining interesting japanese characters, and lately i've been reminded of two pretty fascinating words. one of them is basic, one of them is pretty advanced. let's start with the basic one, shall we?

新聞

しんぶん　(shinbun)
meaning: newspaper

given that this is one of the first kanji (chinese characters) that foreign learners of japanese encounter, it's nice that it's so thought-provoking. the character on the left is from the word 新しい (atarashii), meaning "new." simple enough. the second one is pretty interesting. it comes from 聞く (kiku), which means "to hear" and "to ask." i know it's kind of a weird double meaning, but bear with me. the character itself is made up of two elements: first, 門 (mon), which means "gate," and 耳 (mimi), "ear." the explanation in the dictionary is that "hearing" or "inquiring" about something is like things that were once hidden behind a gate finding their way into one's ears. pretty poetic; certainly much more imaginative than english's simple "hear."

put these two kanji togther, and we have, basically, "new hearing." if you think about it, it's pretty compelling. in english, "news" is essentially "new information," and "newspaper" is just "new information on paper." straightforward, i think. but to me the japanese is much cooler. not only is one encountering new information, but one's "hearing" is indeed informed by said information. thanks to this "new" stuff, one encounters, experiences, even senses the world around him in a different way. kind of makes the newspaper a little scarier, huh? but all of you are illiterate, so you're safe.

譲歩する
じょうほする　(jouhosuru)
meaning: to compromise

this one's neat. i'm getting sort of sick of typing, so i'll ratchet up the pace. in english, "compromise" is pretty by-the-letter: "to make a mutual promise." but it's boring and i hate it and it sucks, and japan dominates in every conceivable way whatever you white western folk could ever possibly dream up, so i am going to devote my energy to furthering the global flowering of its glorious, sacred language.

the first character here comes from the verb 譲る (yuzuru), which means to "hand over, relinquish, give up, etc." when people are trying to buy tickets standing outside of baseball games, their handmade signs read "チケット譲ってください!" - "please relinquish your ticket!" well, at least that's the way i like to translate it. you get the idea. the second one, if you remember from an aged post, 歩, means "step" and "to walk." put them together and you get "to give up a step." pretty cool, and again pretty poetic, and pretty pretty, i think. so next time you and your estranged lover are having an argument about the divorce proceedings, instead of yelling "i am willing to compromise on various points," please think back to this humble blog and proclaim "to you i relinquish steps in various directions." if you do, the holy japanese empire will smile on you and everything bad in your life will vanish like, well, this blog did for most of 2007.

four closing points, and future possible expanded blog topics:
1. i went to thailand and it was a very excellent time. i touched the fake breast of a cross dresser and drank coconut milk out of a real coconut. i am anxiously waiting for the moment these feats can be accomplished in st. cloud, minnesota. let us all commit whatever we can to achieve this noble goal.
2. i saw fountains of wayne last week and they did not disappoint. it was a full house, complete with joey gladstone, and we were all rocking. they played some unexpected songs (joe rey, sick day, and fire in the canyon), which absolutely delighted me. unlike last time, i was not able to meet them after the show, but i did manage to have a conversation with chris, the lead singer, during the show. i asked him "what are you doing after the show?", to which he responded "i don't know. know any good places?" i think i was the coolest person there. by far.
3. my girlfriend megu invented a really good word. i can't remember if she was trying to remember the word "nerd," mispronouncing "nervous," or trying to find the opposite of "rural," but she said "nurban," which should be entered into your respective word banks. think of a person who gets nervous in cities. i think of john kamman, who is notorious for bad city driving. "nurban john kamman."
4. i will be recording again very soon. the songs are almost finished. then i will set up a new, functioning myspace page and serve the musical feast to your starving ears.

i guess it's time to give myself a hand. welcome back, lazarus. my writing does not measure up to brian's thoughtful entries that really convey the fact that he's doing something genuinely important in a really cool place and having the time of his life, but at least i finally decided to put words together into sentences and put it on the interweb. grant me at least an ounce of pride. it'll probably be another 4 years before my next post, but at least by then i will be able to make some other kind of biblical reference. or i could just coordinate my posts with presidential elections.

OUT, HOES.

words that rhyme with month, things that taste better than peanut butter, reasons for the picture below, and other things that don't exist

(above: me and my buddies getting ready for school!)

all,

it has been quite a long time since i last wrote on this blog. a lot has happened. let me give you the top five events of the past month and a half.

1. my computer broke (and apparently my comrade's did too), leaving me musicless, movieless, and essentially cut off from the world. taking a page from john kamman's book of computing, instead of trying to salvage my precious machine, i formatted it. then, i downloaded a free linux (open source) operating system called "ubuntu" and installed it. i think this change has put the days of mvp 2005 and civilization 4 behind me, but i've regained skype, all internet functions, and even have a free recording studio program. i had been a windows user my whole life, but i don't use windows anymore. my room is now very dark and poorly ventilated.

2. because of my switch to linux, i am able to tweak my internet connection and get around the mlb.tv broadcast blackout of japan, which means my beloved twins and i can share a few mornings of live baseball every week. this morning i saw johan strike out a few batters on the way to a 11-1 win. my prediction for the coming weeks: juan rincon and a prospect will be traded for ty wiggington.

3. i came within 10 feet of bruce willis. my friend won tickets to the red carpet ceremony for the opening of die hard 4 in tokyo, and, apparently because i'm white and thus must know and love every white-skinned actor man, she gave me one. i have never seen any of the die hard movies. the only time i'd ever seen mr. willis in a movie was pulp fiction. so when the visage of his smooth, sparkling scalp came into view, not knowing what else to say, i yelled "i loved you in pulp fiction! welcome to japan!" in my best american accent. he didn't respond, but i think one of his bodyguards may have looked my way. anyway, i got a free ticket to the movie out of the deal.

4. i am going to thailand. megu and i will be going to visit her dad (who has worked there for 3 years) for over a week in august. megu keeps telling me about the gay cross-dressers that will be courting me left and right. i still haven't exactly figured out why she keeps telling me, though, and that is a little unsettling. part of me thinks she wants me to fall into some kind of curry-fueled-mistaken-gender-life-altering-trauma experience. i'll make sure to post pictures.

5. my schoolwork, combined with a hectic work schedule, have made things pretty daunting. i've got to write one paper about a 1950s japanese modern art movement (i have never written anything about art), for which 90% of available background information is written in japanese. my second paper is about the development of the mormon church in okinawa (again, everything in japanese, including interviews i have to conduct). i've got book offers streaming in daily, i assure you. on top of schoolwork, i've got to pay the bills. to do that, i sell drugs and rap freestyle on the street. on top of that, i teach five separate people english lessons and work at the english chat lounge at bunkyo gakuin university. i am the english bodhisattva, leading the entangled towards enlightenment. englishtenment. englightenment.

transmission complete, suckaz.

a problem

minions,

i had a problem with my computer. it wasn't responding and i pressed the power button to turn it off. it turns out that it was doing something important when i cut the power, because i was never able to get into windows again. not even safe mode.

so i reformatted my computer and installed a linux system. i think it's a good "fresh start." however, i've lost all of the music i recorded, not to mention everything else that was on my hard disk. i was almost done with "diabetes is diabolical" and "eating shit ain't as much fun as it used to be," but now i have to start over. it's going to be a challenge, but computer problems happen to everyone. i think.

so please keep listening to "take my pink slip." it'll be awhile before the next one comes out.

tom

download "take my pink slip"

head over to http://www.myspace.com/makemeanalbum to download the full version of "take my pink slip."

wee!

the MAKE ME AN ALBUM project submissions are complete!

it's true!

the last spot was secured by joe sacksteder a few days ago. his submission: "cathaholic." check out the album listing to the right (where the submission form used to be). here's a little celebration for us all: SUSHI!


well, now that this is all over, i guess i should release the data/awards/interesting information.

the top ten best song titles i wish i could have used:
1. CHECK OUT MY STATUS (casey peterson)
2. At The End of the Most Recent Harry Potter Book, Gandalf Dies (john kamman)
3. The Best Pentecost Ever (brian heilman)
4. Friendshipover.com (josh suckow)
5. Naked Megumi II (john kamman)
6. Seriously, I'm Really Excited For Breakfast (joe sery)
7. I'm A Cereal Man (chris nolan)
8. And That's Why I Hate the Cherokee (dan h.)
9. The Disadvantages of Chili (eric stinson)
10. Slip Her The Tongue (mitchell johnson)

total number of submitters: 34

most submissions: dan h.,, with 79 - or 25% of all submissions

most common "key" submission: f - 59 times, or 19% of all submissions

longest title submission: when I was a little kid, my older brother told me that i would turn into a girl at the age of 16. Years later, when I passed the age at which my gender was supposed to switch, I joined the hockey team and immortalized the number 16 by playing with it on my back every game. It is still my favorite number. (john kamman)

shortest title submission (tie): four characters (eric stinson's "S/He" and dan dooher's "guam")

number of times jesus was mentioned: 4
number of times porcupines were mentioned: 2

percentage of submissions made from outside the united states: 19%

percentage of submissions made by females: 17%

percentage of my family that made submissions: 60%

song titles suggested more than once by the same person: 1. pepper - the everyman spice (joe sery). 2. casual casualty (joe sacksteder). apparently they really wanted these to be song titles.

top five most depressing joe sery submissions:
1. I Wish I Could Forget About The Time You Destroyed My Life
2. Weddings Make Me Lonely
3. I Miss My Lice
4. I Love Girls Named Megan
5. I Hate Girls Named Megan

percentage of dan h.'s contributions that can be construed as sexual: 39%

percentage of dan h.'s contributions that are sacrilegious: 9%

percentage of dan h.'s contributions that insult minorities or the disadvantaged: 17%

well, that pretty much does it. if you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

i want to think everyone who participated. it was really fun getting these submissions every day, and now i have quite a challenge in getting all these songs done.

i don't really know what i'm going to do with the finished songs. it seems stupid just to keep you waiting for them; you might even forget about them. i'm considering just making everything available for download as soon as i'm finished. if i decide, i'll make a new post.

again, thanks.

tom