well, it looks like a few of the blogs i had linked to have died. so both neohomo and between a & b have been removed. i kept hoping that brent would start blogging as neohomo again, but now that even the page explaining that he is taking a break is no longer there that is looking a little doubtful. in their place i have added a link to scrubbles where i have been spending a lot of time. his january 30th entry has a call for people to comment on their favourite tv moments. ah television, the great binder of the world.

tomorrow peter and i fly to japan for our lunar new year holiday. so there'll be no new posts till we get back on the 5th.

a snapshot from the lost slide foundation. i love the images on this site, just wish there were more images from the slides they have found. why don't i find cool things like this on the street? via scrubbles.

do you have old books, dvds, cds that you'd like to get rid of? well, the answer is here: the swappingtons. i was surprised by some of the things i saw up for swap, things i'd pay money for if they weren't too expensive. i'm not sure how well it'll work for people outside north america, but after the lunar new year holidays i'll be giving it a shot. via the excitement machine.

yesterday afternoon i sat down and watched the dvd for krzysztof kieslowski's decalogue. this is a ten part series, each film based on one of the ten commandments. the confusing thing here is that i thought i had bought films one and two, as that is what the box says, the dvd itself says nine and ten, but the chinese menu says 3 and 4. i think it was really 3 and 4. i hope if i buy all the series, i'll have all ten, and not end up with any duplicates. something about these films, reminds me of raymond carver short stories. an attitude or something. they felt more or less like real people, not like actors or some glossed up daydream.

in the evening, peter and i went to sogo as he wanted to look for a new jacket and some shoes. in the end he couldn't find anything he wanted. but i of course couldn't get out of sogo without buying a toy(pictured above). there's no english title for whatever this series of toys are, aside from the fact that they are made by tomy. they reminded me of the adams family, so of course i had to pick one up. once again, it's a series where you don't know which one you'll end up with(the box gives no clue to which toy this box specifically contains, or if it does it's written in japanese so i wouldn't be able to tell anyway). the box pictures 9 possible toys, and a 10th which is a mystery toy.

when we got home we watched for a lost soldier, which peter had wanted to see. the box said it was in english, but it was mainly in languages i can't really understand(peter tranlslated certain scenes as we watched it with chinese subtitles not english ones). the film was ok, but neither of us felt it was outstanding.

at the time i bought for a lost soldier i also picked up a few more dvds:

• the mirror
  
• edward II
  
• idiots

these are mainly films i've been curious about or have been highly reccomended to me. now if i can only find the time to sit down and watch them.

as an offshoot to the bloggies, someone has put together the photobloggies. i didn't even hear about this until nominations were almost over. i quickly ran off a few nominations, but i'm not sure they made it in before the deadline. official voting should begin on feb. 1st. hopefully the photobloggies won't be riddled with the same problems as the bloggies have been.

there's a section in the perks of being a wallflower where the main character(charlie) is given ayn rand's the fountainhead to read by his teacher. the teacher tells him when you read this "be a filter, not a sponge". this reminds me of a story my brother told me. he was visiting some friends and when he told them he was reading ayn rand they were horrified. they hadn't read her, but had heard about her and already condemed her work based on what they had heard about the author's personality. it got me to thinking, are people these days unable to be a filter? are we unable to read something from a different point of view and learn something from it even if we don't agree with everything in it?

if this is the case, it seems to be a scary development. when i was in high school one thing my friends and i strove for was to be open minded. i'm sure we failed in a number of ways, but compared to the people we were surrounded by we were much more open minded. i remember reading ayn rand around this time or shortly after high school and i knew very little of ayn rand's philosophy aside from what is in her books. would of i felt differently if i had heard bad things about her philosophy? maybe, maybe not.

how related is a work(a painting, a film, a piece of music) to the creator's personality? if an artist does questionable things in their private life should it affect how i feel about their work? how related are the two? i think there is no blanket answer for those questions. there are situations where i won't want to support an artist because of their politics or what the money they make off me is being used for. but that seems to be a rarity these days, and i'm not certain it's the right way of going about things. is it just a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water? boycotting an artist is not the same thing as boycotting a corporation after all. i wouldn't condemn a person based on who their parents are so why do it with a work of art?

the weblog review has reviewed robot action boy. they gave me a 3 out of 5 which isn't that surprising as what they value in a weblog are often things that i don't care that much about. i'm not so concerned about how original a template is or the design, as long as it's easy to read and the font isn't too small. i rarely bother with people's about me information, and purposely left one off this site. the review did result in a few more hits than usual which is a little surprising as the review wasn't that positive. but then, when i read a review i'll usually check out the site regardless of the rating to see if i agree with the reviewer or not.

yesteday was thursday, which means i had to teach up in nei hu again. so once again i hit that toy shop and picked up a few inexpensive toys. some robot toys that look like they come from some show called nova's ark. never heard of it before, but i like the robot. it talks, and you can take apart the bodies and reassemble nova and sparky's bodies how you see fit. i also picked up this kaneda figure from akira. akira is the anime i compare all other anime too. i have yet to see any other japanese anime i like better than akira.

well, the bloggies finalists have been announced. whenever i see lists like this i can't help thinking of all the blogs that seem to be missing or that weren't even nominated that maybe should of been. the awards aren't without controversy of course. a nice rundown of the nominees can be found here, and accusation of the nominees being fixed can be found here. but in the end is it more than a popularity contest and does it matter? i don't know.

ever wanted to live your life over again? well now you can. go here to be reborn.

a scary article here about the riaa winning a court case forcing an isp to give them the name of a user that has allegedly shared hundreds of mp3s. makes me glad i'm not living in the states currently. the problem with things like this, is that the u.s. will often try to strongarm other governments into following their misguided notions. it doesn't help much when so called journalists take the riaa's words at face value without looking into their claims that file sharing=not buying cds without questioning it in the least.

last night after work i walked to eslite as i needed to pick up the hou hsiao-hsien dvd box for my friend ted. on the way, i passed this sign. the chinese just says mother fucker phonetically. if they had written a translation in chinese they probably would of gotten in a lot of trouble. i didn't go looking for the shop, but i suspect it may be a clothing store.

of course once at eslite i couldn't make it out of the shop without buying myself some cds. i picked up:

• educacion y descanso
  
• insensatez - lalo schifrin

educacion y descanso is another siesta compilation. lots of cool covers on here. including a momus cover and a cover of the japanese band les 5-4-3-2-1. the lalo schifrin disc is a japanese issue in mini vinyl packaging(a thin cardboard sleeve to imitate the original record jacket). the music is his take on some bossa nova tunes. the main instrument is the piano, i tend to prefer the tunes on here with strings though.

two very interesting pieces here and here(via daze reader) about the paul reubens child pornography case. makes me wonder what is not going to be considered child pornography? are we giving up our innocence by looking for child pornography in every photograph ? is all of art history to be searched for any signs of underage sexuality and deemed unfit for that reason? if this is the case, will aaron spelling be out of a job? scary times indeed.

you will go into space. that was the rallying cry of my childhood, or maybe just my dream. well, as of yet i have not made it into space, but the next best thing is this site. a collection of illustrations from various childrens books about space. i was especially happy to find illustrations from this book. as it was one of my favourite books, but i never knew what it was called or who wrote it till now.

thursdays i usually teach a company class up in nei hu. this last thursday before class i stopped by this shop i noticed was selling some toys. i wasn't expecting much to be in there. most of what i saw either i didn't want, or was just too expensive for me. but i found these robots. 3 for 100 nt(about 3 u.s. dollars). they wind up and walk, and their heads light up too i think. they have a battery in their backs, i haven't tried that out yet, so i'm not sure exactly how their heads light up.

after my class, i decided to stay on the bus a little longer and get off around section three of chungshan north road. i walked past the taipei film house spot. it looks like this place is screening local documentaries. i'm pretty certain they have no english subtitles which sucks for me of course. i'm hoping this may turn into a nice place for more independant cinema to be screened. but i'm not sure. they have a website here which i have yet to explore. anyway, on my way down chugnshan, i snapped a few pictures.

the christmas presents from my friends erin and david arrived in the mail a few days ago. i never have to give them ideas for presents as they always find wacky and cool things i would of never thought to ask for. this year was no exception. highlights include:

• the wasp woman dvd(i've never seen this movie so i'm looking forward to it)
  
  
• i capture the castle by dodie smith(i'd never heard of the book, but it's written by the author of 101 dalmations so i'm really curious as to what it will be like)
  
  
• pocahontas a little girl of james town (a chlidren's book from the 1970s it looks like, more interesting for when it was made, than for subject matter)

my friend ted, has started his own blog. you can see the afro ken soccer ball i gave him, as well as caption this scary picture of geroge bush. i'm still trying to think of a caption that isn't totally obscene. but maybe obscenity is a good thing.

i'm thinking about getting myself a lomo camera. anyone out there have one of these? i've read a few good and bad reviews about them. so i'm unsure. is it just a case of liking the cute compact look of it? or would it really be worth getting?

yesterday i went to the taipei fine arts museum to see the taipei biennial. however, i didn't see the video installation pictured above as i didn't realize the exhibit continued on the second floor. usually the second floor only contains selections from the permanent collection. i have seen that many many times, so skipped it yesterday. so now it looks like i'll have to go back to see that sometime. the piece that impressed me the most at the museum was a video installation triptych by chen chieh-jen called lingchi - echoes of a historical photograph. apparently he has been using historical photographs as a point of departure for his work.

this film, dealt with the punishment of a man. the film was shot like a period piece. meaning the people and sets looked like they could of come from an old kung-fu movie. the film mainly consisted of the man being washed. then tied up. then given something to drink(a drug of some sort to dull the pain?), then they get out some knives and one man starts to slowly carve lightly on the man's chest. the whole film is shot in black and white and there is a lot of slow motion. the film is also silent, which means you don't have anything to tell you how you should feel about this. how do you feel about the mob watching the punishment? how do you feel about the punished? this like the meaning of the piece is left for the viewer to decide for themselves.

yesterday me and a few of the other foreign teachers were talking about tattooing and piercing. they were saying how some of their students are surprised to find that they have tattoos or are pierced. there were four of us talking, and of the four everyone except for me had had their tongue pierced at one time or another. i was the only one tattooless and the only one pierceless. i think they are all a little younger than me, as i can remember when models would never get a tattoo or a piercing. not like today when you can go to the mall to get those things done.

since most of these teachers appear to be fairly new to taiwan, i don't think they realize how much things have changed here. i remember when i first arrived here i heard about a woman who this one school "let go" because she had dreadlocks and it freaked the students out. back then, to even see skater kids was unusual. not so now. now there are plenty of places you can get a tattoo done at. though i suspect it is only popular with the younger generations. the older generations may still associate it with gangsters.

yesterday i went to hsiminting hoping to find a copy of the lonley planet on osaka/kyoto as peter and i will be going there for lunar new year. but no real luck so of course i ended up at a toy shop. i picked up two more monkey toys. i've almost got the complete set of them now.

after hsiminting i found myself at the main eslite store, browsing in the cd shop and ended up leaving with four cds. over the rainbow by hunky dory, fantasiaa de navidad(a siesta chirstmas collection), a quixotic musical fantasy with the touch of don quijote, and infromacion y turismo. hunky dory wasn't quite what i was expecting. somehow i was expecting it to sound more like the partridge family. i'll have to give it a few more listens and decide how i feel about it. the other three are siesta compilations. don quijote and fantastia de navidad being the ones i am really enjoying. don quijote has a version of nature boy on it which is quite nice. nature boy is fast becoming one of my all time favourite songs.

via scrubbles i found this great site of vintage lesbian pulp novels.

today they are coming to clean or change the water tank on top of the building(it's where all the water in the building comes from). on top of this someone is supposed to come and replace the tile on the floor of our bathroom, and they may remove the bathtub but leave the shower(here, shower just means a hose with a drain, not a proper shower stall most of the time). they said they'd be here at 8:30 am, but no one showed up till after 9:30. i'm not looking forward to any of this as the bathroom they will be working on is located in our bedroom. i just hope they are able to complete it all in one day. but we'll see. i can hear them discussing things in the other room, but i've no idea what is really going on. maybe it's better that way.

yes, that is indeed mary tyler moore. in the days before she was a superstar she was a model, including these shots for record jackets.

i highly reccomend everyone head over to 365 days now and download the mp3 for january 9th. it's a french version of the beatle's help! like no other version of help! i have ever heard. when i listened to it i kept looking at my stereo in shock, surprise, amazement and enjoyment. listening to this and reading stephen chbosky's the perks of being a wallflower put me in such a great mood yesterday. as i suspected before i started reading this book, i am loving every page. i quite like the following line from the book:

Patrick actually used to be popular before Sam bought him some good music.

i don't know why i like that line so much. i guess it reminds me of my own high school experience and the overwhelming pressure to conform. so this idea of having good taste in music(or different taste in music) causing you to fall from grace with the popular kids amuses me for some reason.

an article here on rewards they are offering for ratting on manufacturers of pirated goods here in taiwan. articles like this always make me suspicious. especially when i read lines like these:

About half of all music CDs sold in Taiwan are pirated.

or

Taiwan is a major producer of CD duplicators and CD-Rs and nearly all of these are used by pirates.


both are attributed to robin lee(secretary general for the IFPI taiwan). but the first is not in quotes and the second is. when i see lines like these, i always wonder how do they know half of all music cds sold in taiwan are pirated? where are the statistics on this and how did they come to that conclusion? did they poll every shop and ask "what percentage of your cds are pirated, and how many did you sell?". i realize the paraphrase says "about", but i'd like to know what this is based on. and for the second quote, are they implying that anyone that buys a cdr is a pirate? that would make a large number of computer owners pirates.

granted, movie bootlegging is a problem here. but often the bootlegs are of rather low quality. i heard that the boot for the second harry potter film had really poor chinese subtitles. so bad in fact that it was like watching a completely different movie. the few times i've seen boots like these, it has been for a movie i didn't really want to see in the first place, or one i wasn't sure i wanted to see. more often than not it convinces me that it's not worth seeing in the first place. maybe if they lowered the prices on dvds, vcds and cds they wouldn't have such a huge pirating problem.

ever felt like flying? well, now you can with fly guy! initially, i thought this was just going to be a pleasant fly around the neighborhood, but it's more than that as you can fly up into space and interact with certain things flying around the sky, though some will send you crashing to the ground. so what are you waiting for? fly! be free! via portage.

last night i finally had the chance to watch tsukamoto shinya's bullet ballet. wow! what a film! it's been a long time since i've watched a film that has left such a deep impression on me. i'd forgotten how wonderful black and white film can be. the deep blacks, the instant abstraction from reality. there was something so refreshing, and as cheesy as it sounds, alive about this film compared to most films. in some ways the film reminded me of fight club, chunking express, and i want to say the french new wave. i'm not sure if the french new wave qualifies as a comparison as its been ages since i've seen any of those films. the film is much more accesible than tetsuo: the iron man but not in a bad way. it still plunges you into an alien world, but this time the reasoning behind that world is clearer. from the moment it started i was hooked and was scared to look away afraid i'd miss something. when it was over i just wanted to be somewhere alone and quiet to meditate on what i had just seen.

365 days. this is one of the coolest ideas i've seen in a long time. this site will put up an mp3 to download for every day of 2003. and these aren't just any mp3s, but obscure oddities from thrift stores and the outer fringers of humanity. well, that is how it is starting off at least. i'm enjoying the adventure so far.

and as an update to the rubble situation, all has been cleared away. i guess i can stop giving those workers evil looks now, not to mention the stupid owners of that apartment.

this is what is sitting outside the door of my apartment building. yesterday you couldn't even see the mailboxes, today they moved the pile so that it is hard to get in the door. is god trying to teach me patience by surrounding me with stupid and inconsiderate people? i'm afraid it's not going to work. this pile of rubble comes from some apartments in the building that are remodelling. as if their jack jammers at 9 am weren't bad enough they have to pile up the mess outside the building? there's another big pile of supplies in back of the mail boxes(where we open them to get our mail) so that you have to climb on them to get the mail. i've been known to go ballistic at people who think it's their right to park their scooters in front of my door, but this may top even that.

a nifty project here, called postcard x. the idea is you send some sort of random object or postcard or something you have created to the person(or people) you find listed on the site. everytime you go here you get a random address. it doesn't seem really clear if you are sent something if you are supposed to send something back or not. you can sign up to get goodies or just send stuff. i'm not sure how wise it really is to be putting your real home address on a site like this though. but regardless of that, i like the idea of sending a bit of randomness to strangers. via the yankee blogger.

yes, even the peanuts have their own tarot deck now. via bragadocchio.

recently, in some of my classes we have been discussing tourism. more specifically tourism to taiwan. in taipei the tourism offices are not very visible if they exist at all. not like in tokyo or seoul where they are very visible. i think tourists from the west to taiwan are a very small number. mainly because if someone is going to travel half around the world i think they are more likely to go to china, japan or korea. as these places have palaces and histoical sites that taiwan lacks.

i think taiwan may have more of an appeal within asia. i know japanese tourists come here as the goods are cheaper and it is close and they can get good chinese food. one of my students told me people from hk often come here for books. this surprsied me. are there no book stores in hk? apparently there are more book publishers in taiwan than in hk, and the book stores here are more comfortable and larger.

one of my students told me that about 6 years ago, one of his roomates had some friends visit from hk. he asked them what do you want to do? and the first thing they said was that they wanted to go to eslite bookstore. i was surprised, as was my student. how did they know about that place? back then the main bookstore wasn't even open 24 hours like it is now. apparently you can hear people speaking cantonese in that book store quite frequently. it also is a gay crusing spot, though i've never seen any of that. peter has told me about conversations he has heard there that were rather explicit. of course when i go into a bookstore or cd shop i tend to become oblivious to other people.

on new year's day peter and i went to guan hua. we needed to get a new printer. well, while we were there we did a little dvd shopping. we picked up the first season of sex and the city as well as the 4 disc set of fellowship of the ring. then i picked up this japanese film on dvd called bullet ballet. i'd been eyeing it for awhile, i'd see it and think don't i know this? i was sure i had read about it somewhere. then this last time i looked closer and on the back was a filmography, it's by the same guy who did tetsuo: the iron man! so when i realized that i picked it up right away. so far i've only had the chance to watch the fellowship of the ring. and disc one has a problem so today i returned it. when i was at the store they tested the bad disc and it worked on their player! but they still gave me a replacement disc anyway. so i was happy about that.

happy new year!

well, now that 2002 is over, i can safely put together a list of my favourite releases from this last year. while looking through my cds, i realized, that most of what i bought this year were re-issues, or things released in the last 20 years. a very small amount was actually new for this year. there were several releases that were ok, but not great. those you won't find on this list. just what i liked a lot. in no particular order:

• zap the world - death by chocolate
  
• hyper utesov - messer fur frau muller
  
• v - united future organization
  
• les hommes - les hommes
  
• luke vibert's further nuggets
  
• casa - ryuichi sakamoto/paula morelenbaum/jaques morelenbaum
  
• synesthesia - legendary pink dots
  
• a long weekend - hideki kaji
  
• sounds from the verve hi-fi(compiled by the thievery corporation)

ok, so the luke vibert disc is really a compilation of library music, and sounds from the verve hi-fi is a bossa nova comp. but they are so good i couldn't leave them off. i'm sure the new barry 7 compilation connectors 2 would be on this list if it is anything like volume one(i haven't been able to find it at any of the shops here yet).

for me a lot of people i expected or hoped good things from released lukewarm releases. the readymade international compilation the world is waiting was a disappointment, as was the latest cornelius. the new maki nomiya i liked more than those, but not enough to make my tops list. and i have my suspicion that the new fantastic plastic machine may end up being uneventful.

the best artist i discovered this year was the brazillian singer marcos valle. he did bossa nova in the 60s but moved on into other areas as well. unfortunately, most of his releases have only been re-issued in japan as far as i can tell. and i believe most of those have been deleted as well. however, verve in the states did re-issue the album that was supposed to break him in the states(not sure if it did or not) called samba '68 which i can't reccomend highly enough.