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.