Midaregami

Pure autumn weather on the day before my birthday.

Over the last week or so, It’s been cloudy, rainy, and windy, but the last two days have seen brilliantly clear weather with huge cumulus clouds and a sky so blue you can hear it. I took it upon myself to capture what of that rapidly-changing beauty I could. More resolution would be nice, but this is a cell phone we’re talking about.

Saturday night at Maeva’s house, it was perfectly clear. The night sky was amazing—the Milky Way was clearly visible, and Mars dominated its corner of the cosmos.

The night before last I indulged in that rarest of pleasures, the late-night geek-out.

Yes, I brought my role-playing book and my dice to Maeva’s house, where her, Jake, and I set up characters for our upcoming Pulp Action campaign. Wait, no, this is a White Wolf game, so it’s a chronicle. Right.

It’s going to be a fun whatever-it-is, though. Two players is definitely on the small side for a game, but it’s doable. Jake is playing “Eugene Sheldon ‘Ace’ Hoofnagle,” an unhinged rich kid driven to archeological oneupmanship by a rival from his college years (with a kind of Hunter S. Thompson desperation about him), while Maeva is playing “Frederique Ferrere,”¹ a tall, handsome half-indochinese woman right out of Takarazuka—we consulted a Jun Sena photobook for cues to her character. They’re going to be great, those two.

I, of course, now have to think of something for them to do. Uh…

Hmm. Huh. That could work. Heh. Ha ha. Mwahaha. MUAHAHAHAHAHAAAA.

¹She’s going to make me pronounce that in Parisian French, too.

A local Aussie ALT by the name of Andrew paid me a visit a few days ago. I’d met him at Maeva’s welcome-back dinner, and although we didn’t have a lot in common, he had a razor wit and a ready smile.

Apparently word got around to him that I play the drums, and I got a call from him wondering if he could come over and talk some shop. “Heck yes,” I believe I said.

So he did, and we did. He’s a rock guy, looking to get back into the game. I suggested that my buddy Tanaka’s music shop might have some Roland V-Drums we could look at, although they’re damn expensive—thus I disclaimed. “You’re looking at 300,000 yen for a good set of V-Drums.”

Well, we get down to the music store, and Tanaka-san immediately almost halves the asking price on a nice set of used V-Drums from 300KYen to 170 or so, and I’m floored. Good god, man, if I’d known I could have picked up a set of the finest electronic drums made right now for such a steal, they’d be in my bedroom right now! I told Andrew to for the love of Buddha and all things holy let me know if he decides not to buy ‘em.

I’m such a fool.

You just have to watch the trailer for, I dunno, Underworld or something (you pathetic dork), but you’re at your insane hacker friend’s house and he doesn’t have anything but ancient DEC workstations running some godawful lovecraftian mutation of X11—What’s a geek to do?

SSH to your home Mac and run ASCIIMoviePlayer—no sound, but hey, it’s not like the dialogue matters anyway. Make sure to make your terminal window real big, and use a suitably teensy font.

(Mike pointed the gizmo out to me, because he is much cooler than I am.)

A couple more bleak limericks. I should try a funny one, or a dirty one.

“So why did you learn Japanese”?
Well-meaning friends ask me to please
explain my sad pout
but as it turns out
There ain’t no cure for this disease

“Don’t try this at home” is fair warning
‘Though home’s so far there it’s now morning
The differing times
The long-distance dimes
I spend seem to worsen the mourning

I’d rhymed myself into a corner on that last one, and couldn’t think my way out of it, hence the “mourning” cop-out.

Yeah, I need to skip the rant and go straight to the poetastery. I always forget that.

O friend despair, o pall well-known
O lonely day, o night’s fell tone
Pray tarry, pause, illuminate
your fey design’s concealed fate
I full admit my ignorance
of abstract plans, of dull romance
No fire here, no burning breast,
All passion kept in locked chest
Restrained in manner, checked in bloom
In action, quiet, hope entombed
In autumn’s blazing crimson trees,
In autumn’s chill, in winter’s freeze
No season mars your dreaded, cloaked wrath
Nor sways your machinations from their path

The first published image from my new phone was taken on the bus between Himeji station and Shounishiguchi.

It was an origami crane flawlessly folded out of a discarded candy wrapper, laid on the edge of the window-frame in the bus. It was no more than two centimeters long.

I left it there.

I finally caved. I’d been lusting, irrationally, after a new cell phone for some weeks now. I wanted one with a camera, you see. My buddy Masayuki (bassist for the Joy Division cover band) manages a DoCoMo shop in Toyooka and had promised to give me a good deal on one, so I went in on Saturday after the nikyuu class and picked up one of the cheaper models, which is nonetheless much nicer than my previous one.

I’m really happy with it. It’s not one of the new megapixel-camera phones (nor does it have biometric fingerprint-scanning security, I am not making that up) but it’s pretty darned cool anyway. I downloaded Ringo Shena’s “Remote Controller” to use as my mail ring tone.

The next day, however, I decided that it was time to take my parents up on their offer to buy me a really nice birthday present. This involved several steps, none of which involved English:

My copy of Adventure! arrived about a week ago, well ahead of Amazon’s pessimistic estimate. This is good news: Finally, finally, I’ll be able to get my gaming fix. Or at least I’ll have a fighting chance.

Y’see, I’ve coerced Maeva and Jake into going along with this enterprise. I’m going to be running the game for the two of them. Admittedly, that’s not much of a party, but given my 14-month RPG drought, I am so ready for this.

Well, or am I? I have no experience running an ongoing RPG, and this is a system (specifically, a modified version of White Wolf’s Storyteller system) which which I am only passingly familiar. The game is pure pulp, set between the world wars, featuring super-scientific wackyness (stemming from “telluric energy”—what a great name!) and all sorts of whip-cracking, relic-hunting, zeppeling-riding seat-of-the-pants damnfoolery. I’m really taken with the setting and think it’s going to be fun…

…If I’m up to the challenge of the hot seat. Stay tuned. Character creation is scheduled for this coming Saturday.

I ran across an article by Kevin Smith about superheroes, and he talked about The Matrix, suggesting Neo was a Superman for a more modern age.

I think this comparison is right goddamn on.

It’s fun, and it’s entertaining, but it’s a comic book. I don’t mean it’s Sequential Art, or that hoity-toitiest of comicdom’s oeuvre, a Graphic Novel; I mean it’s a four-color beat-’em-up comic book told in a slicker, more modern idiom.

X-Men might have, in between its stories of Dark Phoenix and Weapon X, serious things to say about liminality and adolescence. Similarly, The Matrix occasionally find something vaguely interesting to say about causality or ontology.

But make no mistake: the action always comes first, and will always be the method by which any philosphical tension is dealt with.

I think, therefore my kung-fu is stronger than yours.