other people's farms

i started taking pictures of other people's crazy ass farms.

if these animals were dancing, they'd be in a Japanese dance club. everybody face the DJ! no one dance with a partner!


SS animals, ready for deployment:



what a farm looks like after crazy throws up all over it:


somebody likes quilting:


we know what this guy is growing on his farm:


taking it to a whole 'nother level, in 3D:



too much time on one's hands and an unhealthy obsession with media figures =






ok, maybe not that last one.

my sister says she's very selective about who she allows to be her "neighbor" in this game. in the whole christmas-in-august-good-will-towards-men vibe, i was accepting neighbor requests from everyone. you wanna be my neighbor? sure, no problem. and like a good neighbor, i spend a chunk of my daily life watering their farms (or in the case of city story -- this is the same as farm story but building a city -- cleaning their cities). my level 4 community activist status got me a lot of "neighbors," or so i thought.

what i have come to realize now, with my 40 farm neighbors and 90 city neighbors, is that alot of people are lazy bastards and don't actually make the effort to visit your farm or city to do the actual work. most of these assholes simply send you a "gift," a small crappy token that doesn't even deduct money from their account, so you will feel obliged to come visit their farm or city and do the work. THEY don't come clean/water your shit at all. and this has made me more than a little pissed off.

hence, this is the weekend of culling. after having cleaned out my cell phone of numbers i never call and don't call me, i made a list of every one of my goddamn "neighbors." i've started keeping tabs on who is, and who isn't cleaning/watering my shit. and come monday night, all those freeloading fuckers are getting the axe.

almost all of my friends on the face/space keep telling me to sign up for that shit and i continue to refuse. sure, i'm missing out on the photos of their kids, trips, boyfriends, etc. but i also know that it takes effort to maintain a friendship (or a neighbor-ship) and i am no longer putting in the effort for assholes who don't put in the effort for me. updating you status doesn't mean shit to me. either you have the courtesy to keep me informed yourself, or you don't. i used to keep a very strict 1 year policy with people (at least one personal method of contact once a year or you're culled -- that includes family and friends and business associates and students and everyone else); i've let it slide a bit for the past couple years but that all ends today.

it's time to drop the dead weight and get streamlined.

That's a Good Design!

i journeyed to Odaiba to check out the Good Design Expo featuring items from different companies from all over the world that have, well, a good design. The items at the expo are all in the finalist rounds in their categories.

there were heaps of people there:


it's a toilet! it's a urinal! it's a toilinal! depending on what your needs are, the unit turns. no more lifting of the seat dudes!


the single person car:


watches made from all recycled materials:


funky lamps:


bags made entirely from the discards from making beer:


golf, anyone?


that's a cup:


toe sox:


the world's tiniest lego like thingies:



these are bells:


wagashi shaped candles:


gum:


one of those cat perch thingies:


collapse-able cups:


recycled glass:


i love lamp:


the cabana lounger (this fellow was kind enough to model it for me, his wife was none too happy about that!):


i love lamp:


upside down chandelier LED bulbs:


shelf thingy:


look! it's iron man's mini arc reactor:


i love lamp:


i have no idea what these are but they're kinda fun:


textured natural wood paneling:


this was an architechtural firm:


grow your own tomato plant in a bag:


tree houses of the future:


the clean car:


assorted gadget accessories:


this was for a triathalon training gym:


various glass products:


touch sensitive egg lights:


lots of very cool stuff!

Japan's Crappiest Summer Festival

Japan has a lot of summer festivals. its supposed to distract us from the absurd heat but it really doesn't. anyway, they are generally kinda fun; food stalls, games, the japanese idea of line dancing, etc. it was in the paper so my roomie and i got all dolled traditional style and decided to check out a festival in Itabashi, a 3 minute train ride from out station.


when we got to the station, there were no visible signs of a festival ANYWHERE. i was flushed with momentary panic thinking i'd dragged us out there for no reason but we decided to walk around a bit to see if we can't find it. we searched for roughly 15-20 mins and finally found a small shotengai (shopping street) where the festival was.

the word "festival" was used very loosely here. we're talking a handful of kids and an old dude doing the same dance twice (its the equivalent of the japanese macarena but with far less booze and speed -- has the same catchyness factor though), 4 drums, one beer stand, and one yakisoba stand with the world's shittiest fried noodles.




cheech is ever the optimist though, and even a crap festival won't get her down (as long as there's beer). so we loaded up and decided to walk to Sugamo which i thought was closer than it was -- the blisters on my feet tell a very different story. Sugamo is old people town but they have a pretty rockin' shotengai and cheech was pretty sure they'd have a festival of some kind going on.

but they didn't. it was like walking though a ghost town.

having walked all that way, delirious from hunger and thirsty for beer, we decided to give a short prayer at togenuki jizo (the line for this is usually super long with olds -- you polish the parts of the stone statue that ails you and you're supposed to be cured)


cheech gives a prayer at the temple:




we decided to eat at this "asian" restaurant called kumasan (mr. bear) because she'd been there before. a friendly nepalese man gave us a window seat (the restaurant was so empty that we could have sat anywhere we wanted) next to a wall that looked like every stereotypical asian artifact had thrown up all over it.

SIDEBAR: never eat at an "asian"restaurant. in fact never eat at a restaurant touting the food of an entire continent. there's a reason my we have different restaurants for different foods of different countries.

between the sticky floor and table, salty clams, and over curious staff, i can't say i will be going back there again but the comedy of an utterly failed attempt at an evening out (plus beer!) assuaged my embarrassment a bit. cheech seemed to have had a splendid time of it all so i shall ride on the coattails of her joy and say, yep, it was a pretty good night.