I suppose for the Mancunians it’s no suprise that the A666 goes to Salford…

While over in the UK last week, my girlfriend took me to see Antony Gormley’s “Another Place” art installation on Crosby Beach.  No, that guy standing in the picture above is not really a guy, but a six foot tall rusted cast iron figure, complete with rusted cast iron penis, and is one of about a hundred or so figures stretching over two miles and looking out into the Irish Sea.  Apparently it’s proven effective, as Irish migration to the UK has slowed recently, although I’d like to think this is probably the result of the Irish economy eclipsing the British one.

As you can see in this photo, the figures aren’t entirely attractive, and taken all together as they face the sea, the installation leaves you with a desolate feeling, no doubt helped by the autumn sun low in the sky, the clouds overhead, and the 60 mph winds picking up sand and blasting you in the face so that at least a few layers of skin were stripped away during our visit.

I suppose you can always bring up the question of what art is, and whether or not this is art (my rule with visual art is that if I could have made it, it’s not art).  The statues serve primarily as a tourist attraction these days or as dangerous obstructions for people who’d actually prefer to use the beach for water sports recreation. If nothing else, the damn things are just a wee bit creepy.

Leaving for the UK about a week and a half ago, I stood at Budapest Ferihegy Airport’s Terminal 2B and looked at the departure table, and saw that this had to be the most depressing departure table I’ve seen in a long time.  I hear Odessa’s not so bad though.

Hopefully this post-victory haze will wear off sooner rather than later and we’ll be back to complaining. It can’t be too long, we don’t even live in that country anymore…

The danger of showing pieces of episodes of The (American) Office to students is that they fit way too many stereotypes Japanese folks often have about how Americans (don’t) work… it’s just barely worth it.

If they had a version of The Office for Japan, I can’t see how it could read as anything but depressing. It would also have to be 3 times as long but have the same or less content. And no one below management could use the confessional. And no one would watch it until a member of SMAP took over as the boss in a totally unironic hero role.

There have been various rumors that John McCain is such a maverick that he deliberately is running a bad campaign to make sure Barack Obama wins.  Kind of loony conspiracy chatter, but nonetheless amusing.

But after reading some other stuff online, about how McCain wanted Joe Lieberman as his VP candidate and the Republican National Committee wouldn’t go for it, he perhaps picked Sarah Palin because he knew the RNC would accept her, but the majority of American people wouldn’t, kind of in a “if I can’t run my own campaign to win how I want to, I’ll make sure to take you down with me” plan.

Or maybe I’m just beginning to join the tinfoil crowd too…

Much like Japan and English, the problem with Japan and “foreigners” isn’t just that there’s a dearth of real education about them, but that people are educated incorrectly about them.

“Foreigner” here is not a blank waiting to be written on with information about someone’s background, interests, language, etc. unknown and somewhat apprehensively and slowly being filled in. It’s a vast swath of misunderstandings and misapprehensions about what everyone outside Japan is and does which are roughly equal in consistency and unity to what everyone inside Japan is and does.

Japanese people eat fish, while foreigners eat meat. Japanese people speak Japanese, while foreigners speak English. Japanese people are shy and reserved, while foreigners are rude and bombastic. There is very little of the idea that the 98% of the world that is not Japanese might actually have 98% of its diversity as well. Actually, probably more than that, since Japan has a particularly strong sense of ethnic identity (and hence unity and uniformity) for a nation its size.

Educating people about anything outside Japan, at least once they get past 2nd grade and have been more or less officially inducted into the Japan Club, is as much erasing false information as it is imparting true information. This would be less frustrating if the TV didn’t so reliably act like a massive misinformation coordinating machine, giving everyone identical and identically wrong ideas about how the rest of the world is.

Today I popped out to grab some milk and since it was just one or two things, I went in to the local Plus, which is something of a black hole when it comes to customer service. Although I’ve not seen the woman cashier who’s got more testosterone than most guys and is a real bitch to everyone in a while, I can’t exactly say the service has improved much.

An example of that was how today, when one of the employees was going to go on her break and wanted to buy some smokes and a thing of juice, she cut through the line of people and was rung up by the other cashier. Okay, she’s an employee, but I know from my wonderful days in retail that that’s just something you don’t do, like yell at the customer and say “You’ll forget and be back soon enough!” Yes, I’ve seen that.

That’s part of the reason I go shopping at Tesco. While I’d prefer to support a Hungarian chain, Tesco just has a better range of products (being a hypermarket) and the customer service there is indifferent, not rude. I know that’s hardly an endorsement, because it’s not meant to be, but given how so frequently the employees of a store make it seem like they’re doing you a favor (no asshole, my coming in and spending money there is what keeps you employed) it just gets frustrating.

What’s quite rare is the occasional friendly person, which is quite jarring, to the point that you’re almost thinking if you’re on a hidden camera or something. It’s rare, and I always try to be friendlier in the hopes that the person stays that way instead of morphing into a ball of hate, which quite a few are.

Things are improving, and I’ve found a few places where the customer service people are actually quite friendly, but those places are still not found frequently enough.

“I have read about him, and he’s not… he’s not… he’s an Arab.”

“No ma’am.  He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

Am I the only one who sees the problem with this juxtaposition?  What if his name were Ahmed Hussein and he were in fact a Muslim instead of Barack Hussein Obama the Christian – would that render McCain completely unable to defend him as decent, a family man or a citizen?