Mixed Messages

This has been a tough week for mirth. My brand of blogging is at its best when poking fun at myself or observing absurdity in others in their daily lives. Obviously the Japanese calendar has not been kind recently as both of my sources of ‘fuel’ have been, to say the least, in short supply. I mean even that dumb parrot from the Aladdin movie got fired (or is it ‘gott FRIED’) for being tasteless. Trust me, when frying up parrots, poor taste is not at all that unusual because it’s like the old adage, they DO taste just like ‘CRACKER’.

My first REAL job out of college was with Ricoh Corporation, a giant Japanese multinational corporation. Except for ‘inventory time’, I loved nearly every minute of that work and the people that made the company great. My cadre of ‘handlers’ took great pride in trying to temper my American-bred individualism, intuition, and wide-eyed youth with the methodically measured steel of a Ninja’s best business practice. Sadly my bosses failed miserably, because at the end of my tenure, my golf handicap was barely in the teens and even after two years of night school, my Japanese was still only ‘short bus’ worthy. At the end of the day however, my Japanese counterparts and I DID truly understand and value each other’s respective ways in dealing DIFFERENTLY, with the same problems.

So given my self-indulgent resume, you might now better appreciate my comfort in speaking with compassion, criticism, and comedy all about the same tragic set of circumstances in Japan. The sheer loss of life and family toil repeated a thousand-fold across the country would bring even the hardest boiled egg down to his over-easy knees. No, there is nothing funny about the futility of dropping thimbles of water or shooting a fire truck squirt gun on a raging wildfire. Is Japan not the country with the most robots per capita in the entire world? You would think if that obnoxious bald dude and his handlebar mustachioed Mythbuster buddy can rig ANYTHING with a remote control, then Japan’s best and brightest could do so with a pumper truck or two as well?

I think the whole water option thing has been well tried and tested though since in great measure after the shaking stopped, isn't that the stuff that started this whole mess? It’s time to move on to the serious fire extinguishing alternatives like Mentos and Diet Coke fountains or jello and whipped cream. It also snows quite often in Northern Japan, which rumor has it is just as icy cold and wet as good old fashioned North American snow. You would think we could just set-up a couple of big circus tarps and funnel the white stuff onto the hot parts just like powdered sugar on a fairground-fresh fried Twinkie.

So the moral of this story is in times of unimaginable stress, feel free to mix-up your messages. You can cry, grieve, pray, and try harder than you have ever tried before. You can curse bad luck and praise good fortune, but do what feels right for you regardless of convention. Rarely solutions and solitude are born of political correctness and self flagellation. The Japanese know first-hand that in life, bad things unexpectedly will happen and try to test you. No matter how dark the night seems or how cold the wind blows, sometimes you just have to reach deep, re-group, and throw down the gloves to simply LAUGH in the face of pain – no matter how much it hurts.

Compact High-Tech bathrooms make me blue!

I may tend toward the ‘lazy’ at times, and I will go out of my way to avoid manual work anytime an automated machine is available. Yes if an appliance or fancy invention is available to do the job better, in a smaller space, and save me time too – who can beat that? Some of my faith in technology comes from my keen interest in machine design and practical problem solving, but mostly my techno-love is because I was raised in the presence of robots.

No my parents were not literally robots, but compared to the generations before me, most of my time has been spent with technology helpers at every turn. I never had to wear overalls and use a washboard to wash clothes or crank a car engine by hand to get it to start. I have grown up with soft leather loafers, electronic calculators, word processors, microwaves, and everyone’s favorite in 49 states - indoor plumbing.

Now that I’m older, sadly it seems that I am destined to have difficulties in the bathroom. You see I had to replace the toilet in the master bathroom and I tried to get the wife to let me put in one of those automated Japanese toilets with the heated seat and automatic bidet, but she said ‘no’. I think she is either afraid of having a toilet that is harder to drive than our car, or concerned that my over-use of the thing would cost extra electricity and affect our ‘bottom dollar’ utility rates.

Quality time anywhere is hard to come-by, but these days it’s particularly difficult in these tiny but ultra-automated public restrooms. The dance goes something like this: I address the auto-soap spigot open-handed and my shoulder triggers the automatic towel dispenser to spit out a towel tongue for my pleasure. As I shift in response to a bevy of whirring gears in my ears, my hands activate the automatic water spigot. I quickly try to move my hands to get wet, but sensing the delay, the water turns off and the automatic soap makes a mess in the sink. Exasperated and off-balanced, I stand taller and somehow my backside lights up the automatic toilet valve, which releases the sound equivalent of Niagra Falls. As I whirl to dodge the overspray my shoulder catches the automatic towel dispenser, rolling off yet another foot or so of compacted dead trees.

This little circus chorus of circular mayhem goes on unimpeded until I either have exhausted all of the bathroom supplies, or am left whimpering, lonely and defeated, in a sticky corner of the ‘latrine’. I did not know there is so much exhaustive potty-training involved to join the ranks of the few, the brave, and the automated “Toileteer” these days. I’m glad my wife crushed my dream of a Japanese automated tidy bowl – because this is one piece of ‘white hot’ electric technology that always seems to make me ‘BLUE’!

Hot - Cold - Hot - Chile

When the weather turns hot and sticky, most of my energy is dedicated to running between an air conditioned car, house, or place of business. Yes I have perfected the ‘dart and sweat’ method like a seasoned prison escapee on the lamb, with mint jelly and just a hint of rosemary. As a thrifty sort that I am, I generally don’t mind the heat too much as long as I don’t HAVE to pay nature’s gas or fuel oil bill.

Now obviously I DO have to fork out truck loads of cash to try and cool off my family of froot loops and the air inside this cereal box we call home. I do it begrudgingly since I generally believe that suffering is good for the constitution; and moreover for the patriotic ‘green energy’ dweebs, because a cheap electric BILL is always right!

Most of the time nobody complains since I have installed fans in nearly every room of the house along with legions of Japanese Geisha to flap them ‘round the clock’. Obviously by name alone, I would have preferred to use historical Chinese ‘Coolies’ instead, but none were available. Clearly these days, the descendants of Central Asia prefer to knock off DVD’s and designer handbags to help plant a ‘Golden Spike’ in the heart of America’s myopic consumer economy.

Whew, I don’t know if it is all of this fiery commentary or just the weather, but it’s clear I am getting hot under the collar and in need of a jigger of antifreeze. I need to relax and quick. All this frosty talk is making me ‘snappy’ but that may be that I’m getting hungry too? With this weather and mood, I’m not sure if I want to eat something ‘hot’, ‘cold’, or how about a ‘forget all your troubles’ "liquid-lunch" instead? By golly I think I’ve got it; like the oil, I’ll have all '3 in 1' –a cup of “CHILLY”!

I love my MUG

Admit it … so now you think I’m vain don’t you - just like that stupid song . Has society become so judgmental these days, that a guy cannot spend a little face time staring at his mug in a mirror anymore? Well, I have it on good authority that Carly Simon might have been having some varicose vein issues when she wrote that tune, so I would not read too much into 70’s pop culture.

No the mug to which I am referring and truly love is my little Mikasa “Teddy” mug. I guess you could pollute its butterfly cavity with tea and milk and all kinds of homeopathic colonics. But when REAL work has to get done, I fill that bear to the broad-brim with some hot java and watch him and his little mouse friend sweat. Truly, I am such a supporter of this cup and it fits me so perfectly, that despite the obvious ribbing, if it had straps on it, I would use it at the gym too.

All kidding aside, other than the effeminate ‘berry picking’ animals, this is the greatest mug I have ever owned. There is something special about the gentle slope of the lip-ledge and its comfortable geometry. That along with the antique white coloring of the china helps hide my obligatory dribbles and unsightly lip-prints. Even as a weapon, this thing has the roomiest two-finger handle and perfectly sized thumb rest ever. If this mug shot hollow points, it would be the standard issue in every police precinct of San Francisco’s finest and most fabulous.

If you were to visit me at home, I maintain a special coded system of ‘mug-dom’ to denote your relative beverage status. For ugly guests, I have a closet filled with dark, heavy, and imposing stoneware mugs. You know the ones, with their ‘oh so macho’ manly missles and boy-toy icons emblazoned on the side. For beverage drinkers of the weaker sects, I offer up the virginal all-white mug with maybe a flower or two for their ‘special’ designer, non-caloric ‘kool-aid’. But for the truly honored and most special guest, I will begrudgingly surrender my treasured Mikasa mug for you to love and briefly lock-lips. You’ll soon discover, just as Carly did in her musical lament, when it comes to mugs “Nobody does it better” than my ‘Teddy’!

Pitch a Chip Fit

Maybe more than most people I like spicy snack chips. Yeah a lot of humans can’t get enough ice cream , cakes or cookies, but you can keep all that sweet stuff. I need my salted triangles, flat pepper crackers, and crunchy ‘hot’chips. But just because of that fact, the people at Doritos should not take advantage of my indiscriminate spicy-liking, yet ‘chipper’ nature with their clever packaging.

Now the problem is that the Frito Lay folks have decided to start marketing bags of all kinds of weird flavored chips. Most tend to be acceptable combinations of spicy salsa flavors like Habanero n’ Cheese or Chili and Lime and they all are in excitingly colorful red bags. However, I found a flavor variety this week with Japanese written on a yellow-green bag. The name on this new mystery chip was simply, “Doritos, Mr. Dragon’s Fire Chips”.

Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds PRETTY GOOD to me! I mean “fire chips” and a DRAGON on the SAME package? You cannot get a much better representation of a hot, spicy, and salty snack chip than that. It looked like a bag of fireworks so I fell instantly in true love! The only problem is that it has been more than 25 years since I studied Japanese, so I could not remember the meaning of the Japanese writing on the package. All I knew was since it was Katakana, it HAD to be a Japanese attempt at a phonetic translation of a foreign descriptive word like “Crunchy or Jumbo” – well you get the idea.

So I get this curious green Doritos bag home and of course I have to dive right into the contents. I was on a mission to see what rare flavor treat this “dragon fire chip” had in store for me. The smell alone wafting from the open package gave it away. But once that golden chip with the unique and very green flavor dust hit my tongue, I instantly remembered what the three syllable Katakana word on the packaging said – WA-SA-BI!

Yes that nasty and brutally hot sushi mustard, Wasabi had tainted my lips and worse yet the WHOLE 12 ounces of my $4 bag of chips! What have I done to Frito Lay to deserve such treatment? I am a loyal customer, willing to risk my own health and financial security to eat their pricey, heart-stopping products. Heck I am even dumb enough to fall in love with their pretty green packaging even if the critically important main flavor ingredient is written in a foreign language.

So needless to say I was not happy and half a mind to pitch a fit AND those chips to the wind. But a cool head prevailed and I thought better of it. Whatever my daughter’s friends won’t eat, I will RECYCLE the rest as organic ‘mustardy-mulch’ around the garden. Then, not only will I truly be going GREEN, but as soon as it gets dark, our pesky raccoon moochers will be too!

Canned MEAT

You name it, Roast Beef, Chicken, Tuna, Spam or Deviled Ham – whatever it is, as long as it is packed in a can, I love it. Now believe me I have taken a lot of ribbing over the years about this. Most people prefer their meat fresh cut and in a non-chunky or mashed pablum state.

Honestly I like all those meats in their natural condition too, but the truth is, fresh or frozen foods are kind of needy. They all NEED some kind of refrigeration, special handling, or fancy preparation to prevent you from getting sick. This is not true with the canned stuff. I can just open a rectangular ingot of canned Spam, scrape off that amber-colored gelatin goo, and eat it straight, happily bundled between two pieces of buttered bread.

Canned Tuna is great on crackers or mixed with a little mayo on a salad. But would you ever yank poor ol’ Charley the Tuna from his aquatic bliss and suck him down head-first like a seal? Yeah some of the old school Japanese folks might filet up a little tuna in the raw, but for the vast majority of us, we want our tuna dressed properly for dinner with a little salt and pepper.

Now I consider my uncanny canned meat obsession a by-product of my inherent need to survive. I can stock up on all my favorites and they will last for decades in the cupboard. Try that with that half a cow foil-wrapped meat puzzle that you have date-labeled in the freezer. You would think given all the obvious benefits, people like me should guard and protect their cans like gold. You are right – because aside from blogging, all I do is sit on my CAN all day and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands!

Pink, Black, and Blue

I was pondering society’s gender conventions that we all grow up with from our youth. You know the ones like all girls want to be cheerleaders and all boys want to play football. Probably the most common one still is that baby boys are relegated to blue hued clothing, and baby girls should wear pink. The problem though is that I like pink and I’m a male? I guess pale blue is ok too but I’ll be honest unless something is a really rich royal blue, I will still probably prefer pink. I know a lot of girls don’t even like pink because they think it is associated with being ‘too girly’. Many gun manufacturers don’t agree since they are now producing record numbers of rifles and pistols with pink grips and camo straps.

I do not remember playing with a lot of dolls as a kid but I did have a Major Matt Mason set. It was kind of a Space based version of GI JOE. I really loved some of the space accessories that little guy had, like a rover and the zip line that he could slide along from his home base to the lunar surface (our dining room floor). I may have had a GI JOE or two as a kid but other than the cool rifles, canteens, and miscellaneous gear, I never got too excited about the expensive dress up Army clothes. Years later, I remember a friend who was a girl that had a Barbie closet with tons of clothes in it. The two things that truly fascinated me with that toy was the tiny little hangars which worked EXACTLY like real hangars, and the colorful high heeled shoes. Oh god, what is WRONG with me?

I think as an adult, I simply liked pink because it was kind of an ‘anti-establishment’ position for men to take when I was first out in the work force. Since I worked for a traditional Japanese firm when I was young, it was an accepted practice that women made coffee. In those days I drank more coffee than anyone, so the rule seemed unfair. It took about 6 months, but once I began making coffee for myself or anyone (male or female) who drank it, then the gender specific rule was quickly abandoned. Eventually EVERYONE who drank coffee shared in making it – as is the CORRECT rule. In that same company, I was invited to play recreational golf, though spouses were not included for no other reason than gender. Again with a little prodding, my wife was allowed to eventually play in company golf outings, and even came in 2nd place in our tournament which permanently eliminated gender biased rules at our firm.

As a coach today, I am always particularly proud when our team celebrates another successful year of competition. The girls on the team this year gave me a pink cowboy hat and a signed shirt. The year before that, I received a pink pillow and a Flamingo drink cooler or something similar. It never really matters what it is, I always accept these ‘pink’ gifts with pride and cherish them for their deeper meaning that I’m just “one of the girls”. Don’t kid yourself though – I wouldn’t want these kids mad at me as they can be as tough as any guy athletes. They may proudly wear pink, but if you are on the field and in-between the goal - you had better get out of the way. Because no matter what gender you are, if you get hit hard, no matter what colors you prefer, you are turning black and blue!

Robot wedding

I will always remember my wedding day as one of the true highlights of my life. Ordinarily I am not overly driven by tradition but I kind of like that I know how a typical wedding is going to unfold. You’ve got the flowers, the fancy clothes, the music – the priest. Whoa , now hold up there, who needs a priest anymore when you can have a robot preside over your big day.

Yes a real honest to goodness robot performed the nuptials at a ceremony in Japan. Makes sense since the Japanese own over 400,000 of the world’s 800,000 or so industrial robots. What’s wrong with Japan’s robo-domination of automation extending to the long established wedding industry too? I have linked the video here of the happy couple and their ‘short’ but sweet mechanical minister. Be forewarned it is a touching ceremony so have a sheet of foil handy to blow your Roomba’s nose if it happens to be watching between vacuuming.

Actually this wedding went just fine and seemed oddly traditional with Sarah Brightman’s ‘Ave Maria’ providing the background music. I liked the ceremony despite the unusual child-voiced, blinking robo-vicar literally sitting at the helm. I was a little distracted by the bot’s ‘I-Fairy’ brand name though. I don’t mean to be insensitive but is this the BEST name for ANY priest right now, even if it is a robot? I think that particular name would be much more appropriate for a pillow-packing, tooth-extracting Tinker-BOT!

So a brave new world is apparently on the horizon. If weddings are falling to the wiles of heavy machinery then you know funerals will soon follow. And let’s not forget the babies. As the gears turn, it is a natural progression that with all those robo marriages, there is bound to be a bounty of baby ‘begatting’ going on too. I’m sure these new robots can handle the midwife process technically, but we’ll have to do something about those cold, metal-feeling hands. Not the robots mind you - they use space age plastics and silicone fingers. I’m referring to human doctors and their infamous icy touch!

My Hang Up

It’s been nearly 25 years since I worked in production control management at Ricoh, a Japanese mega corporation. I enjoyed working there and learned many things. I practiced and preached a lot of line scheduling, supply chain management, fancy schmancy ‘just in time’ production, and oh yeah, how to HANG things up!

Well more to the point, I got things up off the production floor and learned to make room for ONLY the stuff that our company really needed to become efficient. Interestingly, it is my wife who NOW practices more of what I preached in those early days. She loves hanging things up and making everything efficient and easy to get to. In fact any long handled tool or pole, if I don’t intercede, will find itself being subjected to perforation by my wife and hung up on some wall. For the most part I love the organization and the relative ease to find any tool at any time.

Recently however, my wife went too far. In the garage, she drilled a hole in a TOILET PLUNGER, and mounted it at eye level so it is the very first thing that greets you when you enter the house. Now I’m realistic about this tool. I know that it is necessary on occasion to have this thing handy for the random 4 inch pipe constriction, but GEEEZ, why must it be easier to reach than a flashlight or a fire extinguisher? What kind of emergency is my wife expecting that requires ‘gunslinger’ access to a stinking potty plunger?

I don’t really think I am going out on a limb crying ‘foul’ here. Who wants a wet- wand in your face when you are groping around in the dark for a light switch? Why can’t this crappy commode un-clogger find a happy home, in some distant corner recess on the garage floor with the spiders, and THEIR restroom utensils? What kind of bathroom mass production is my wife expecting that requires a throne-thruster just in time, or any time, in THAT much of a hurry? Yes I may pout for awhile but I won’t plunge into a porcelain depression over this issue. Don’t worry my wife is privy to my concerns, but even though this ‘hang up’ of mine ‘sucks’, I CAN learn to go with the flow!

When my "Thumb Drives" Wobble!

I have always had a fascination with earthquakes and geology even as a young lad. I lived in California over half of my life so I have personally experienced more than a few first-hand brushes with the relentless power that can be unleashed by nature. The interesting thing however, is only with the advent of the computer revolution and the rapid decline in cost of solid state storage and memory can ‘non geo-geeks’ actually start to grasp the true massive nature of recent quakes.

While Haiti’s earthquake was a powerful jolt, the problems there were exacerbated due to decades old poverty and largely unsuccessful governance. I could not tell for sure from a distance, but it appeared the damage was made worse with unreinforced concrete and poor construction, in addition to population density in Port Au Prince. Reports are that between 200,000 and 300,000 people died in the Haiti quake – a staggering number. The effective yield of the energy expended in this event would be equivalent to around a 32 megaton TNT explosion. That is about twice as much energy California’s Northridge earthquake in 1994 and about 1/30th the size of the devastating San Francisco quake of 1906.

Though adequate for a low resolution pictures, it probably has been some time since you associated a large capacity thumb drive with 30 megabytes, but a couple of years ago it was state of the art. Haiti, as bad as it was , in terms of energy dissipation is like a 30 Meg. thumb drive and the San Francisco quake of 1906 would be around the equivalency of a 1 Gigabyte SD card – still fairly small by modern computer portable storage standards.

Now fast forward to Concepcion, Chile and their massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake this week. A death toll has yet to be determined but no doubt even with all of Chile’s experience with earthquake preparedness and strict building standards, thousands will still perish. The effective TNT yield of this event would equate to the explosive power of approximately 16 gigatons. This gut-punch was so massive that the EARTH showed measurable “wobble” on its axis as two tectonic plates fought to occupy the same chunk of real estate 22 miles under ground. So back to our computer example, this would be equivalent to a 16 gig SDHC portable storage card – respectable by any standard, but hard to imagine that a seismic event of this size is literally capable of “Earth-shaking” the globe.

Even beyond Elvis, it was back in 1960 that another 'big shake' was felt in Chile and around the world. A modern record of a 9.5 magnitude or 178 gigaton yield quake was recorded that was an incredible 530 times more powerful than the power of the Nagasaki atomic bomb (32 kilotons). Even with our bloated, feature rich operating systems, most of the world’s computers, can function adequately with a 178 gigabyte hard drive on board.

Oddly I suddenly feel the need to run out to Micro Center and buy a 1 Terrabyte hard disk for my computer? Let's hope the earth never feels the urge to unleash a magnitude 10 (1 Terraton yield yet unrecorded by man)seismic event. Just thinking about that terrifyingly raw explosive power makes my knees, head, and yes even my Frisco-quake sized THUMB drives start to REALLY wobble!