even monkeys fall from trees

now, for some characteristically japanese humility...

2008-03-20T16:40:00.004+09:00

I AM THE CHAMPION, PAGANS! BOW BEFORE ME AND BATHE IN THE GLOW OF MY GOLDEN LOCKS, WHICH SHIMMER LIKE A FIERCE WILDFIRE - ONE NOT UNLIKE THE BLAZE WHICH WILL SOON SWALLOW EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU! MY MIGHT KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

yes, that is right. after two years of grueling sitting, standing, and tilting of my head, i have earned my place on the throne of the hair modeling world. in japan, i mean. well, in tokyo. be it though a small step, it is nonetheless triumphant. the above picture was taken the day before the tournament - i am halfway through the hair coloring process. do not mistake it for my actual competition appearance, which is:

my artificially-carved out beard is my favorite part. along with the sequins.

my hairstylist deserves all the credit, though. all i really do is exist as my white self. i wonder if i'll receive any death threats from the militant anti-foreign-model coalition.

ok, now for some japanese.

末席を汚す
まっせきをけがす
masseki wo kegasu

the literal meaning of this phrase and the meaning of its actual usage are quite different. here are the words: 末席　is masseki, and it means the "last" or "lowest-ranking" seat at a table. 汚す　is kegasu, and that means to "pollute," to "contaminate," or to "dirty." it's kind of hard to pollute a chair, so it's better to consider "dishonor even the lowest rank" the literal meaning of this phrase. guess when this is used?

at meetings. this phrase is commonly used when one attends a gathering of some official sort and wants to express modesty. in such a setting, it basically means, "excuse me. i know i am not even worthy of being in attendance here, but here i am" or "forgive me for getting in the way of your important business." in america, i doubt people would even consider thinking such a thing. they would probably say something cool like "let's get down to work, comrades," or "mind if i go to the bathroom quick?" but that doesn't sound very cool. i think we could all benefit from a little more modesty. even presidential candidates. if obama started saying things like "please don't elect me. i would not even be worthy of being a white house janitor, let alone the leader of the free world," i guarantee you he'd get elected.

next time i win a hair competition, then, i'll say "pardon me for soiling your terrycloth." all the japanese babes will love it and start trying to bow lower than me. hott action, i tell you. hott.

shakin' booty, making sweet love all the night

2008-02-11T22:00:00.000+09:00

good evening! i am tom of blog-neglecting fame!

i have completed a new song: joe sery's title suggestion of "i'm with stupid and i'm alone."

i call it 80s disco, if there is such a thing. it's really simple, but hopefully it compels you to dance. i couldn't figure out how to fade out the whole song, so it just goes on and on. on. but i'm really proud of the synthesizer solo. and the synthesized horns. the lyrics make no sense whatsoever, but, hey, they've never been my strong point.

i have recreated my old, deleted, illegal myspace page, so you can download "take my pink slip" and "diabetes is diabolical," too. also, there's another new one called "anything for you," which i wrote for megu.

more later.

call me lazarus

2007-10-22T22:38:00.000+09:00

i'm pretty sure that's how moby dick starts. anyway, thanks to my brother jesus christ's miracle-working mojo juice, i'm back in action, shedding my grave-cloths, pumping my fist into the air, yelling "go, rockies," and finding my eternal resting place in bible verse (John 11:1).

it has been roughly sixteen epochs since my last post. if you look at previous entries, titled "fire discovered," "wheel crafted, millions cruise division," and "dick clark born," you can sense how long it's really been. well, i'm sitting here bored at my computer, devouring wonderful new posts from brian heilman's blog, feeling a little bit jealous and a lot bit motivated. thus i have surfed to blogger.com; thus i will bestow upon my tens of readers a long-awaited post.

i've decided to go back to the basics. a long time ago, i had the novel idea of explaining interesting japanese characters, and lately i've been reminded of two pretty fascinating words. one of them is basic, one of them is pretty advanced. let's start with the basic one, shall we?

新聞

しんぶん　(shinbun)
meaning: newspaper

given that this is one of the first kanji (chinese characters) that foreign learners of japanese encounter, it's nice that it's so thought-provoking. the character on the left is from the word 新しい (atarashii), meaning "new." simple enough. the second one is pretty interesting. it comes from 聞く (kiku), which means "to hear" and "to ask." i know it's kind of a weird double meaning, but bear with me. the character itself is made up of two elements: first, 門 (mon), which means "gate," and 耳 (mimi), "ear." the explanation in the dictionary is that "hearing" or "inquiring" about something is like things that were once hidden behind a gate finding their way into one's ears. pretty poetic; certainly much more imaginative than english's simple "hear."

put these two kanji togther, and we have, basically, "new hearing." if you think about it, it's pretty compelling. in english, "news" is essentially "new information," and "newspaper" is just "new information on paper." straightforward, i think. but to me the japanese is much cooler. not only is one encountering new information, but one's "hearing" is indeed informed by said information. thanks to this "new" stuff, one encounters, experiences, even senses the world around him in a different way. kind of makes the newspaper a little scarier, huh? but all of you are illiterate, so you're safe.

譲歩する
じょうほする　(jouhosuru)
meaning: to compromise

this one's neat. i'm getting sort of sick of typing, so i'll ratchet up the pace. in english, "compromise" is pretty by-the-letter: "to make a mutual promise." but it's boring and i hate it and it sucks, and japan dominates in every conceivable way whatever you white western folk could ever possibly dream up, so i am going to devote my energy to furthering the global flowering of its glorious, sacred language.

the first character here comes from the verb 譲る (yuzuru), which means to "hand over, relinquish, give up, etc." when people are trying to buy tickets standing outside of baseball games, their handmade signs read "チケット譲ってください!" - "please relinquish your ticket!" well, at least that's the way i like to translate it. you get the idea. the second one, if you remember from an aged post, 歩, means "step" and "to walk." put them together and you get "to give up a step." pretty cool, and again pretty poetic, and pretty pretty, i think. so next time you and your estranged lover are having an argument about the divorce proceedings, instead of yelling "i am willing to compromise on various points," please think back to this humble blog and proclaim "to you i relinquish steps in various directions." if you do, the holy japanese empire will smile on you and everything bad in your life will vanish like, well, this blog did for most of 2007.

four closing points, and future possible expanded blog topics:
1. i went to thailand and it was a very excellent time. i touched the fake breast of a cross dresser and drank coconut milk out of a real coconut. i am anxiously waiting for the moment these feats can be accomplished in st. cloud, minnesota. let us all commit whatever we can to achieve this noble goal.
2. i saw fountains of wayne last week and they did not disappoint. it was a full house, complete with joey gladstone, and we were all rocking. they played some unexpected songs (joe rey, sick day, and fire in the canyon), which absolutely delighted me. unlike last time, i was not able to meet them after the show, but i did manage to have a conversation with chris, the lead singer, during the show. i asked him "what are you doing after the show?", to which he responded "i don't know. know any good places?" i think i was the coolest person there. by far.
3. my girlfriend megu invented a really good word. i can't remember if she was trying to remember the word "nerd," mispronouncing "nervous," or trying to find the opposite of "rural," but she said "nurban," which should be entered into your respective word banks. think of a person who gets nervous in cities. i think of john kamman, who is notorious for bad city driving. "nurban john kamman."
4. i will be recording again very soon. the songs are almost finished. then i will set up a new, functioning myspace page and serve the musical feast to your starving ears.

i guess it's time to give myself a hand. welcome back, lazarus. my writing does not measure up to brian's thoughtful entries that really convey the fact that he's doing something genuinely important in a really cool place and having the time of his life, but at least i finally decided to put words together into sentences and put it on the interweb. grant me at least an ounce of pride. it'll probably be another 4 years before my next post, but at least by then i will be able to make some other kind of biblical reference. or i could just coordinate my posts with presidential elections.

OUT, HOES.

words that rhyme with month, things that taste better than peanut butter, reasons for the picture below, and other things that don't exist

2007-05-31T09:43:00.000+09:00

(above: me and my buddies getting ready for school!)

all,

it has been quite a long time since i last wrote on this blog. a lot has happened. let me give you the top five events of the past month and a half.

1. my computer broke (and apparently my comrade's did too), leaving me musicless, movieless, and essentially cut off from the world. taking a page from john kamman's book of computing, instead of trying to salvage my precious machine, i formatted it. then, i downloaded a free linux (open source) operating system called "ubuntu" and installed it. i think this change has put the days of mvp 2005 and civilization 4 behind me, but i've regained skype, all internet functions, and even have a free recording studio program. i had been a windows user my whole life, but i don't use windows anymore. my room is now very dark and poorly ventilated.

2. because of my switch to linux, i am able to tweak my internet connection and get around the mlb.tv broadcast blackout of japan, which means my beloved twins and i can share a few mornings of live baseball every week. this morning i saw johan strike out a few batters on the way to a 11-1 win. my prediction for the coming weeks: juan rincon and a prospect will be traded for ty wiggington.

3. i came within 10 feet of bruce willis. my friend won tickets to the red carpet ceremony for the opening of die hard 4 in tokyo, and, apparently because i'm white and thus must know and love every white-skinned actor man, she gave me one. i have never seen any of the die hard movies. the only time i'd ever seen mr. willis in a movie was pulp fiction. so when the visage of his smooth, sparkling scalp came into view, not knowing what else to say, i yelled "i loved you in pulp fiction! welcome to japan!" in my best american accent. he didn't respond, but i think one of his bodyguards may have looked my way. anyway, i got a free ticket to the movie out of the deal.

4. i am going to thailand. megu and i will be going to visit her dad (who has worked there for 3 years) for over a week in august. megu keeps telling me about the gay cross-dressers that will be courting me left and right. i still haven't exactly figured out why she keeps telling me, though, and that is a little unsettling. part of me thinks she wants me to fall into some kind of curry-fueled-mistaken-gender-life-altering-trauma experience. i'll make sure to post pictures.

5. my schoolwork, combined with a hectic work schedule, have made things pretty daunting. i've got to write one paper about a 1950s japanese modern art movement (i have never written anything about art), for which 90% of available background information is written in japanese. my second paper is about the development of the mormon church in okinawa (again, everything in japanese, including interviews i have to conduct). i've got book offers streaming in daily, i assure you. on top of schoolwork, i've got to pay the bills. to do that, i sell drugs and rap freestyle on the street. on top of that, i teach five separate people english lessons and work at the english chat lounge at bunkyo gakuin university. i am the english bodhisattva, leading the entangled towards enlightenment. englishtenment. englightenment.

transmission complete, suckaz.

a problem

2007-05-13T10:01:00.000+09:00

minions,

i had a problem with my computer. it wasn't responding and i pressed the power button to turn it off. it turns out that it was doing something important when i cut the power, because i was never able to get into windows again. not even safe mode.

so i reformatted my computer and installed a linux system. i think it's a good "fresh start." however, i've lost all of the music i recorded, not to mention everything else that was on my hard disk. i was almost done with "diabetes is diabolical" and "eating shit ain't as much fun as it used to be," but now i have to start over. it's going to be a challenge, but computer problems happen to everyone. i think.

so please keep listening to "take my pink slip." it'll be awhile before the next one comes out.

tom

download "take my pink slip"

2007-04-20T11:14:00.000+09:00

head over to http://www.myspace.com/makemeanalbum to download the full version of "take my pink slip."

wee!

the MAKE ME AN ALBUM project submissions are complete!

2007-04-16T21:25:00.000+09:00

it's true!

the last spot was secured by joe sacksteder a few days ago. his submission: "cathaholic." check out the album listing to the right (where the submission form used to be). here's a little celebration for us all: SUSHI!

well, now that this is all over, i guess i should release the data/awards/interesting information.

the top ten best song titles i wish i could have used:
1. CHECK OUT MY STATUS (casey peterson)
2. At The End of the Most Recent Harry Potter Book, Gandalf Dies (john kamman)
3. The Best Pentecost Ever (brian heilman)
4. Friendshipover.com (josh suckow)
5. Naked Megumi II (john kamman)
6. Seriously, I'm Really Excited For Breakfast (joe sery)
7. I'm A Cereal Man (chris nolan)
8. And That's Why I Hate the Cherokee (dan h.)
9. The Disadvantages of Chili (eric stinson)
10. Slip Her The Tongue (mitchell johnson)

the top five titles i'm glad i won't have to use
1. Worship My Asshole (joe sery)
2. An_l Ni_ger (joe sacksteder) <~ this one was one away from getting the last spot. you can fill in the blanks. i don't want to put it on the internet. 3. asdfjkl; (josh suckow) 4. Let's Make Out Like Stephen Hawking (dan h.) 5. Phallically Yours (dan h.)

total number of submitters: 34

most submissions: dan h.,, with 79 - or 25% of all submissions

most common "key" submission: f - 59 times, or 19% of all submissions

number of times a submission contained my name: 2 (both by mitch johnson: "tom kain and abel" and "tom kain's wetdream")

longest title submission: when I was a little kid, my older brother told me that i would turn into a girl at the age of 16. Years later, when I passed the age at which my gender was supposed to switch, I joined the hockey team and immortalized the number 16 by playing with it on my back every game. It is still my favorite number. (john kamman)

shortest title submission (tie): four characters (eric stinson's "S/He" and dan dooher's "guam")

number of times jesus was mentioned: 4
number of times porcupines were mentioned: 2

percentage of submissions made from outside the united states: 19%

percentage of submissions made by females: 17%

percentage of my family that made submissions: 60%

song titles suggested more than once by the same person: 1. pepper - the everyman spice (joe sery). 2. casual casualty (joe sacksteder). apparently they really wanted these to be song titles.

top five most depressing joe sery submissions:
1. I Wish I Could Forget About The Time You Destroyed My Life
2. Weddings Make Me Lonely
3. I Miss My Lice
4. I Love Girls Named Megan
5. I Hate Girls Named Megan

percentage of dan h.'s contributions that can be construed as sexual: 39%

percentage of dan h.'s contributions that are sacrilegious: 9%

percentage of dan h.'s contributions that insult minorities or the disadvantaged: 17%

well, that pretty much does it. if you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

i want to think everyone who participated. it was really fun getting these submissions every day, and now i have quite a challenge in getting all these songs done.

i don't really know what i'm going to do with the finished songs. it seems stupid just to keep you waiting for them; you might even forget about them. i'm considering just making everything available for download as soon as i'm finished. if i decide, i'll make a new post.

again, thanks.

tom

the MAKE ME AN ALBUM project update IV

2007-04-10T18:46:00.001+09:00

EARTHLINGS!

here are the important facts:
0. since i can't remember the email address/password for my old myspace account, go to http://www.myspace.com/makemeanalbum to hear a 30 second sample of.... (see #1)
1. "take my pink slip," the first track for the "make me an album" album, has been completed.
2. currently there are 279 song title submissions. if you want that last spot, number 315, you need to submit. and be lucky.
3. i plan on releasing the cd in the itunes store - but i think i will have to wait until all the songs are completed to do that. in the meantime, i'm going to try to make 30 second samples of the songs so you can whet your appetites and also start beating your chests in anticipation, because that's what people do when they're excited.
4. in order to put a cd in the itunes store, it needs a cover. so, for those of you with artistic inclinations, or those that submitted many titles but just weren't lucky enough to get the magic number, please give me ideas for an album cover. leave them in the comments, send me an email, anything.
5. the next song that will be completed, i think, is "eating shit ain't as much fun as it used to be" (casey peterson, submitter).
6. the twins are 4-2.

love,
tom

the MAKE ME AN ALBUM project update III

2007-04-03T23:19:00.000+09:00

the 4th golden ticket has been found! that's right, children, lucky Mike Teavee of Marble Falls, AZ was number 231. congrats, mike!

mike teavee, along with jackie nelson, dan h., and casey peterson, will be invited to my mysterious song factory to witness a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of whizzing whatzits, meandering melodies, rhapsodic recordings, and hypnotic harmonies! children all over the world have yearned for this opportunity. now it is yours!

(then the creepy slugworth dude steps in and mumbles something in mike teavee's ear)
"michael. michael teavee. going to tom kain's song factory may sound like a splendid affair, but i urge you to decline the invitation. inside that insidious factory, mr. kain employs miniature goblins, called "impy limpys," who do all his dirty work and give advice to greedy children in song! imagine the horror! mr. kain himself even stabs himself in the gut - in public - to deliver some mystery medication he calls "insulin." do you want to subject not only yourself, but also your precious parents, to such terror? i advise you to give your ticket away, to a much more wretched soul, one whose eyes deserve to behold such dreadful sights!"

"ok. i'll give it away."

"yes. good choice. who is the recipient? i will deliver it myself."

"joe sery."

"joseph sery, the minnesota lad. i know him."

(slugworth approaches joe sery)

"mr. sery. you have been selected to receive a golden ticket to mr. tom kain's song factory! you know how special this is, do you not?"

"TOM KAIN'S SONG FACTORY!?!?! I AM SOILING MY BRITCHES. I HAVE LOST ALL BODILY CONTR"

"now. you know that you must present the magical mr. kain with a song title that he will work into a sensational symphony of sound. do you have something ready?"

"YES. I HAVE SAVED THIS TITLE FOR 29 YEARS INCLUDING THE 5 I SPENT IN MY MOTHER'S SPACIOUS WOMB CAVITY."

"out with it, boy!"

"I'M WITH STUPID AND I'M ALONE!"

and, with that, the mysterious mr. kain was saddled with his project's fourth, most difficult challenge.

good thing that in the movie, mike teavee gets broken into millions of little bits and shrunk by the television chocolate camera. a similar fate awaits joe.

number 315 is still up for grabs. oh, by the way, i've recorded "take my pink slip!" it sounds like a mixture of old country, blues, and motown; three genres i've never really dabbled in. and i decided to dabble in them for the first time.... all at the same time. BOOM, BITCH.

the MAKE ME AN ALBUM project update II

2007-03-30T14:01:00.000+09:00

hello, good citizens!

well, thus far i have received over 150 song name suggestions. the list has grown much faster than i had anticipated. it's really delightful knowing that i won't have to come up with names for my songs. thank you.

i've decided to list my five favorite suggestions thus far. here they are in no particular order:
1. CHECK OUT MY STATUS
2. Naked Megumi II
3. I Love Girls Named Megan
4. At The End of the Most Recent Harry Potter Book, Gandalf Dies
5. Booby Vee

if your suggestion is listed above, you can claim it in the comments, or you can just pretend that you didn't suggest it, which might be a better idea.

when all the song titles have been chosen, i will post my top ten favorites. then, i will choose one of those ten to record as a bonus song. you know, it could just happen that nos. 231 and 315 are just awful titles, so i will need to compensate by choosing a real good one. it could be yours.

to recap, these song titles have already been chosen:
1. take my pink slip (jackie nelson)
2. diabetes is diabolical (dan h.)
3. eating shit ain't as much fun as it used to be (casey peterson)

some interesting tidbits:
- i was waiting at a train station in central saitama when the melody for the chorus of "take my pink slip" came to me. i didn't have anything to write with, so i pulled out my cell phone, dialed my own number, and left the melody as a message to myself.
- the second i read "diabetes is diabolical," i thought of E.L.O. (for some reason). it is quickly becoming a strange mixture of "don't bring me down" and pretty much every hard rock song by queen. begin your lip-licking..... now.
- "eating shit ain't as much fun as it used to be" is my most tenacious opponent now, as i struggle to maneuver my way around that difficult-to-put-to-melody title phrase. i was listening to gram parsons, the flaming burrito brothers and alison krauss a lot one day, so i think it will be a country-rock ballad.

the next winner is number 231. keep suggesting, and start coercing your friends and enemies to visit my site. some conspicuous absences from the tally so far:

brian heilman
joe sacksteder
ted godbout
aaron toussaint
barack obama
gina yeager (who i thought would be all over this. perhaps she doesn't know of my blog)
the members of fred savage and the unbeatables besides mitch johnson

these people are tarnishing the very principles of democracy. did someone say witch hunt?

the MAKE ME AN ALBUM project update

2007-03-25T20:50:00.000+09:00

hello, believers.

there have been so many great suggestions so far. so many, that, in fact, 3 titles have already been decided! here they are, listed with their respective submitter:

1. take my pink slip (jackie nelson)
2. diabetes is diabolical (dan h.)
3. eating shit isn't as much fun as it used to be (casey peterson)

i've got my work cut out for me. so far, i've got the chord structure all lined out for the first track, the chorus written for the second, and absolutely nothing yet for the third. thanks, casey. i think i'm going to try to make it into a country ballad. nice challenge, i think.

after all the titles have been compiled, i'll make a list of my top ten favorites. so even if yours isn't selected, you can still feel proud and embarrassed at the same time. congrats!

keep those submissions coming! tell your friends! numbers 231 and 315 will round out the new album, so if you want to have your name associated with musical glory forever and ever, SUBMIT NOOOOOOOOOOW!

unveiling tom kain's MAKE ME AN ALBUM project

2007-03-21T17:41:00.000+09:00

THE REASON: recently something has been brought to my attention. not just "brought" to my attention, i guess, but rammed into it repeatedly.

a while ago a friend told me that i should start making music again. i used to be quite a songwriter, they said. "you're wasting your talent, tom." who knows if what they're saying is true, but their advice certainly made me think. songwriting is fun, i thought. but i'm so lazy, and i have school. i also don't have a guitar. or a microphone. screw it.

fast forward to a brisk february evening in saitama, japan. you all there? good. i was with my girlfriend and her mother and we were singing cheesy japanese songs. i decided to sing the theme song to a show about a 14-year old mother and her tribulations. the program was called "14-year old mother." anyway, it's a pretty good song. my girlfriend and her mom looked at me and said "you're wasting your talent, tom." i thought what they were saying sounded pretty familiar, but i ended up just getting drunk on watered-down gin and tonics.

THE REALIZATION: fast forward another week. i get 2 messages on facebook saying "make some music." then i found out that john kamman released a cd, and brian heilman's having a cd-release show. i wish i could make it, but brian, just know that your show was the last straw for me. everyone is making something out of their talents except for me! i just sit around and play civilization on my computer! I MUST MAKE MUSIC!

however, i was pounded back into reality when i looked around my room and saw not one string of a guitar, not one cord of a microphone, not one hammer of a piano, not single shred of real music making machinery.

BUT THEN...

i went to the bathroom.

AND THERE...

i realized that my girlfriend's brother just bought a recording system! and i - i have the capability to illegally download recording software! i can make music! (that buildup was too dramatic).

THE SETBACK: however, i lack one really important thing: the very first strike of inspiration. as some of you know, fred savage and the unbeatables' "sloth man" would not have been written had it not been for jackie nelson's words of wisdom: "write a song called 'sloth man.'" basically, i can't write a song until someone makes me. i need your help, people. i need people to give me titles, and lots of them. give me something to work with.

THE RULES: i've created a little form in the sidebar of this page. it's under the title "THE MAKE ME AN ALBUM PROJECT." the titles of five songs will be taken from the submissions i receive. however, i won't select them, per se. i have chosen five important numbers. the first submission i receive will be number 1, and it will go up from there. the submissions that land on my chosen numbers will be the titles of my songs. also, the "letter from a to g" field will determine the keys of the songs. those will be chosen randomly.

the numbers:
1. 13 - the age at which i got my first electric guitar.
2. 65 - the number i won turkey bingo with when i was in grade school. in the "o" column, of course.
3. 91 - the year of the last twins world series championship.
4. 231 - the room in mary hall where "brian loves jackie nelson" (and many other songs) was conceived.
5. 315 - my blood sugar level the day i found out that i am diabetic (normal is 100).

so let's get those submissions rolling in, folks. after i have the first title, i'll write and record the song. stay tuned for more information.

if any of you think this is stupid and untrue to the creative process, well, screw you, because you're no fun.

PLEASE HELP ME, FOR I AM WEAK.

ご無沙汰しております

2007-02-22T15:11:00.000+09:00

there are many possible reasons one fails to keep his friends and family updated on his life. he might lose an arm, leg, or frontal lobe, which would hinder communication. he might have been exiled to a small island for treason and human-trafficking. he might have even been swallowed into the yawning caverns of hell.

but, i, my friends, i have been neglecting communication with you all for even more dire reasons:
i forgot i had a blog.

yes, it may sound silly, but when you're a busy little guy like me, baring your soul on the internet seems a bit trivial when you have things like hair modeling to tend to. more on that later.

in light of my cruel internet absence, i have titled today's post "ご無沙汰しております” (gobusata shiteorimasu), which is one of the most bizarre japanese phrases these crazy folks over here have ever devised. it means "neglecting to write," "a long silence," or "a lack of contact" - "i'm sorry for not having contacted you." there are three kanji here: 無, 沙, and 汰. the first one means "none" and "nothingness." it's a negator. not an alligator. HAHAHAHAHAHA! gotcha. the second one means sand. the last one is "luxury." interestingly, the two components of the last kanji are water and fat. so, instead of complimenting your friend like this:
"well, jerome, that is one luxurious automobile!"
you should say,
"well, jerome, that is one fat water vehicle! might i have a banana?"

i added the last part because it's always safe - and wise - to ask people named jerome for bananas.
anyway, for some reason, these two put together: 沙汰 mean "affair." so basically, the 3 together mean "no affairs," which makes sense. literally translated, the whole thing means "i am humbly neglecting our affairs." you get it. so i've just given you a long explanation of my sincerest apology.

since i last wrote, three - exactly 3 - funny things have happened to me. i will share them with you now.

1. my big debut. i went back to okinawa for 10 days to visit aaron toussaint, my former co-workers, and former students at okisho high school. it was a good time. i didn't do many exciting things except for one: i made my japanese mass media debut. i served as a tentacle of the okisho PR behemoth, giving an interview about the good points of the school. the interview was entirely in japanese, so i may have said something really bad, but that's why they have editors. anyway, the funniest part came at the end. we were each asked to record a 7-second station identification clip. of course it was in japanese. they handed me a script and told me to deliver my best. so i started:
"上智大学のトムです。。。泡盛乾杯！"
then everyone started laughing. i was ready to go all anime ninja on their asses, but i restrained myself. "what's wrong?" i said.
"your pronunciation is too good," they said. "you sound like a japanese person pretending to be some foreigner named 'tom.' sorry. we're done laughing. continue."
so i learned that my pronunciation is good and that some people may have mistaken me for a japanese person masquerading as a foreigner. if this happens again, all i have to do is whip out this little gem and all misunderstandings will be made nil:

no japanese person would ever defile the almighty winnie the pooh by donning his sacred flesh as a headpiece. ever.

2. additions to the menu. at a tutoring session (with the heavy metal dude), the guy's father came into the room and said "i have a treat for you. please eat it." then he told me that he had brought pig's ear salad and the tongue of a duck. i thought i had misinterpreted the japanese, but i double checked and was right. still, always open to new things, i tried the fried tongue. it was good, but i could actually visualize the whole tongue and where it fit into the mouth and stuff and kind of got a little queasy. the pig ear was fine, just like eating the fatty part of bacon. that's the best part, anyway.

3. egyptian god. as you all know, i am a hair model. on the 26th of this month i have been asked to appear in a hair show that will be attended by roughly 800 people, including celebrities and maybe a television camera or two. the cameras will be accompanied by cameramen as well. well, i went to the rehearsal, and had sensei cut my hair and do it up all funky. by the way, this sensei is the 1992 world champion of hair. his scissors are made of the bones of his vanquished opponents and a radiant golden glow emanates from his hands wherever he goes.

anyway, after i got all dolled up, they told me i would go to the real rehearsal. "um, ok." so all 8 of us models went over to this basement hair headquarters-type thing. i was under the impression that for the show on the 26th i would just be sitting in a chair, looking pretty as usual. but when i walked into the evil hair laboratory, some aged woman handed me my "costume" and told me to strip and get into it. it was an egyptian robe, a violet skirt, and a necklace. i was very confused. but everyone got into their getup, and surrounded by oppressive peer pressure (so common in japan) i suited up too. then they had us all do "runway walking practice," which i apparently excelled at and had us do sample poses. poses for a hair show? yep, that means i pose with my head pointed down and my head facing backwards. i regret that i have no pictures. but i think i will have a visual record of the real deal next monday, so i will share that with you.

you can all call me "ramesses III, the phollicle pharaoh" from now on, by the way.

WORDDDD.
トム

望郷の念

2007-01-21T20:06:00.000+09:00

it has been many a moon, faithful readers. i have been busy with many things - going home, celebrating christmas and new years, enjoying the idleness of home life, and studying for finals. so many things, in fact, that i haven't been able to tend to this little garden of blog. it is a neglected garden, but not for long.

the title of today's post reads boukyou no nen, which i think is beautiful sounding regardless of what it means. don't worry - it doesn't mean something vile. in english it means a feeling of homesickness or nostalgia, according to my dictionary. but what do "homesickness" and "nostalgia" mean, anyway?

well, first of all, "homesickness" is pretty straightforward. sick for home. a painful longing to be home. but the fact that the word "sick" is lurking in that meaning makes "homesick" a pretty negative word. basically, being sick means something's wrong; something's out of the ordinary and needs fixing. so being homesick is not a good thing. got it? if you have questions, i won't answer them, because this part is easy.

next, there's "nostalgia," a word that gets thrown around all the time. whenever i hear it, besides getting a little nostalgic myself, i think it's a pretty good word. sounds nice, at least better than homesick, and it can be used in so many ways. "i'm waxing nostalgic about the good old days" sounds much more poetic and emotive than "i'm homesick. give me mcdonald's" (a common phrase uttered by weary american souls wandering around japan). but when i looked deeper into "nostalgia," i was surprised. apparently the term was coined in 1678 by some guy named johannes, which is already a bad sign because that's a pretty stupid name. anyway, the word is made up of greek: "nostos" means "returning home" and "algos" means "pain and longing." it was used to describe "the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native land, and fears never to see it again," and originally referred to a serious medical condition. pretty scary, i think. now we'll know better than to say "eating turkey soup makes me nostalgic," unless that turkey soup is something fierce. fearing never again to see my native land? i guess watching "full house" doesn't make me feel that horrible.

now we come to our last word: boukyou no nen. if you look at the three kanji here, we have 望, 郷, and 念. the first one means "desire" and "wish," and it has a nuance of being distant; other words that use this character are telescope and watchtower. the second one means one's "native land," the place one comes from. the last one means "sense," "thought," and "feeling." to conjure up a relatively accurate english translation, it would be something like "the feeling of wishing for one's distant native land" or "the sense of desiring one's hometown, a place that seems far away." personally i like the japanese version better. there's nothing in the word about abnormality or irregularity. it's just an emotion, one that everyone feels. i especially like the fact that the first character 望 (bou) is connected with distance and with things one cannot touch. realizing that the things you miss from your past are getting more distant everyday and more difficult to grasp is kind of sad, but accurate.

the reason i'm writing about these words is that john kamman came to visit me in japan this past week. it was very unexpected and pretty surreal, but it was wonderful. as soon as he got here, we talked just like it was senior year in placid 107. it sounds cheesy, but we hadn't skipped a beat, it seemed. i felt like i was almost reliving college, that the reality of being surrounded by japan and japanese people completely vanished. it was our own little world for five days. and when we talked about st. john's and all of our friends, i started thinking of the snow, of my family, my band, the songs we used to sing, the stupid things we did. i thought of the people i'd hurt, the people we'd forgotten about, how much more i used to laugh. it was a veritable explosion of boukyou memories. and, as we all now know, there's nothing sick about that.

トムの祖国復帰

2006-12-02T20:26:00.000+09:00

tom: "we are gathered here today t- "

everyone else in tom's life: "shove it, windbag! we're here about the blog!"

tom: "yeah, ok. i'm sorry i haven't been updating it. you see, i've got so muc-"

everyone else in tom's life: "no more excuses, kain. we've surfed over to your miserable blog every day for like three weeks, and we get nothing. all of our hard work - it doesn't pay off. come on. life can't be so demanding that you can't even put a little message or two on this site. something to keep us up-to-date, at least."

tom: "you mean, like, 'today is december 2nd. you are now up-to-the-date.'?"

everyone else in tom's life: "yeah, exactly. silly us; we're always forgetting what the date is."

tom: "oh. ok. i'll be sure to do that more often."

everyone else in tom's life: "but more importantly, we want to know what you're up to! you're halfway around the world, probably doing things that are a lot more interesting than what we do every day..."

tom: "well, now that you mention it, i made an open-faced peanut butter sandwich today..."

everyone else in tom's life: /jaws drop in unison

everyone else in tom's life: "tell us more! this is the stuff we want to hear! PEANUT BUTTER IS THE BOMB DIGGITY! AND BECAUSE YOU MADE IT OPEN-FACE MAKES IT SATURATION BOMB DIGGITY!"

tom: "ok, and i bought a new winter coat, and i almost got tickets to a fountains of wayne show that i heard about really short notice, and i'm coming home to minnesota on the 21st and staying until the 7th of january, and my girlfriend bought a plant for me and i'm caring for it and it's growing green and strong, and-"

everyone else in tom's life: "you're lying."

tom: "no, i'm really coming home on the 21st and leav-"

everyone else in tom's life: "no. not that. the plant. you could never care for a plant - you would always be forgetting it. we weren't born yesterday, man. your botany blows."

tom: "fine. it's dying. you got me. but seriously - i am coming home on the 21st of december and leaving on the 7th of january. that's about 18 days of tom in minnesota!"

everyone else in tom's life: /jaws drop in unison

everyone else in tom's life: /some vomit

everyone else in tom's life: /joe sery pees own pants

fin

well, that's how the scene goes in my imagination. when i was writing the dialogue, i was thinking that everyone was standing inside some kind of old dude's study and i was sitting behind a desk smoking a pipe. and there was some singing and also some bowing. then i realized i was making myself the leader of a cult and i stopped thinking that way.

but it really is true. i will be coming home to minnesota on the 21st of december. i want to hang out with everybody. i'm really excited and thus i have little motivation for school right now. but i'll be fine. i will be at home during my 18 days, so you know where to find me.

if anyone was thinking about buying me an ipod for christmas, save your money. i bought myself one as a reward for getting a small scholarship. so basically i used scholarship money on something pretty trivial. oops. but it really keeps me happy during train rides. an hour on the train from 7:50 to 8:50 in the morning every day really sucks without music. i invite anyone to try it.

the title of today's post reads "tomu no sokokufukki," which means "tom's return to the fatherland." i could have used a simpler kanji and said "tom's homecoming," but i decided on the fatherland one because it sounded more nationalistic, and as everyone knows, i am the most nationalistic person in the world.

U --- S --- A!

take kare,
tom

働き蜂

2006-11-13T21:45:00.000+09:00

title translation: hataraki-bachi (worker bee). it means to be working all the time - to be a workaholic.
so. apparently everyone has been keeping a candlelight vigil, singing church songs with eyes closed, waiting for the return of my blog. well, here it is. the second coming.

you all know that i make the trek to school every day. well, it's 4 days - monday, tuesday, thursday and friday. there's no school on wednesday. but what you might not all know is what i'm doing for employment. at st. john's, all four years i was employed at the school of theology as a computer boy: easy job, good security, sitting on a computer. now, though, i'm in japan, and there's no more work like that. i have to use actual skills and stuff. but not just any skills. skills that i had no problem acquiring - i just have to speak my native language to people, and they throw money at me! i also use one more skill that is a little more exciting. see below.

so now i'm working three different "jobs." i will list them in order of bizarreness. (least to most bizarre.)

1. chat lounge assistant
mmhmm, i'm back at my old study abroad stomping grounds, bunkyo university - or shall we say BABEnkyo?!?! HAHAHAHAHA! wait, that's nearly impossible to say. nevermind. for this job, i earn a lot of money - seriously, more than i've ever made before - to sit in a room and wait for interested students to come by and listen to me talk about stuff. i often start talking about how cold it is in minnesota, or how much i like peanut butter. then most people smile awkwardly and sidestep out the door. but it's by far the best money i've ever made. thanks, bunkyo! they don't even know that i never passed the first grade! ah, to be white in japan.

2. one-on-one conversation partner
one of the students at the bunkyo chat lounge found me another little money-making morsel of fun: a private conversation buddy. but this is no normal person i'm conversing with, now. he's 27, has numerous piercings, wears all black, and writes death metal songs. i help translate them. he also wears his pants really low so i can see his butt. i honestly feel like dan holth is talking to me half the time. i'm just waiting for him to show me his "paintings" so i can be even more weirded out. still, good money. i can be goth for good money.

3. hair model
yes, everyone, the rumors are true. i was approached by a weak-looking little japanese man at school. he told me (in japanese) that he was looking for models. i asked why. he said he was the representative of the tokyo metropolitan area at the national hair tournament. HAIR? i said. i told him i have lots of gray hairs. he said not to worry - my hair was abundant and beautiful. basically, he needed to cut it. he offered to do it for free and pay for my transportation. "why not?" i thought. so i went and he made my hair look like this:

i look like a reject from west side story or something. all i need is a pack of cigarettes in my shirt sleeve. well, i got a little scared thinking he was going to leave my hair like this, so i told him to take it out. before he would, he explained that he wanted me to come to his salon once a week to have this done to me. to practice for the competition, he needs a live head, after all. every time he would do my hair up, maybe put some color in it, and then take it down. hmmm. i thought about it. i asked him how much i would be paid. he said about $10 each time i came. i told him to give me more. he caved, saying that because i was a "top-level model," he would give me $20 plus transportation. OK! i said. so now i am a hair model, and i make ridiculous amounts of money for sitting in a barber's chair, and i will have this done once a week for about 45 more weeks, and i will be a hair modeling star in magazines and stuff. and then all of you can begin to kiss my milky white feet.

so that's it for employment. i'll let you know if anything else comes my way, but my 3-odd-job lifestyle is paying the bills.

other news:
i went to a mlb vs. japan all star game at the tokyo dome. no twin made an appearance, which means that i saw the only game joe mauer didn't play. i think. i wept inside. but it was fun, because, for one, i got to see ryan howard hit a ball to china. here's a picture of the game:

i picked this one because you can catch a glimpse of those god-forsaken "rally sticks" or whatever the hell they're called. they kill me. every spectator got a pair of them. on the package it proclaimed that the sticks were "american style." i've never been more ashamed.

2. obsession
i am obsessed with "lost," the abc show. i downloaded the first season and i can't stop watching. right now i'm waiting for season 2 to arrive on my hard drive, and i'm having patience issues.

3. daisuke matsuzaka
i only wish the father of the gyroball could replace francisco liriano this season.

i will sign off now. keep it real, homies!
また来週！

tom

the twins on abbey road - side two

2006-10-21T17:38:00.000+09:00

it's been almost two weeks since i posted "the twins on abbey road - side one." a lot of people liked it, and i was super-duper excited to post the next side. but school is hard, work is hard, wooden boards are hard. but here i am, ready to take you down memory lane with some beatles, some twins, and some genius. if i'm lucky.

today's post will concern the magical journey on which the twins embarked at the beginning of june, when the flowers are abloom, little children are out of school, and, um, may has just finished. the boys took us on a wild ride; oh yes, they did. i now advise you to cue up your music playing device to abbey road's "here comes the sun" and follow me down the river of dreams.

7. here comes the sun
"little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely ~~winter~~ spring"
if i can take you back to the end of side one, you'll remember being enveloped by a storm of white noise, a smothering musical migraine that only john lennon's warped brain could bring you. you were sitting there, thinking, holy moses, i bought a piece of crap. abbey road - more like ASSY road - HA! the twins season ticket holders were thinking the same thing. but something very bizarre happened in june, something so transformational it brought to mind memories of alex mack. joe mauer started hitting the ball just about every time he came up, justin morneau decided that it was much more fun to hit home runs than strike out on sinkers down and away, and the pitching started to behave much less like giant sacks of poo. oh, and also, three wise men named ron, terry, and carl followed a bright shining star across the wilderness and found a big, black, intimidating baby jesus swaddled in a twins uniform way down in a.j. pierzynski trade land. his name was francisco, and he came to redeem the world. a new day had dawned in the northland. george harrison's second great song of this album pretty much sums up the early summer for the twins. "little darlings," he soothed us, "the smiles returning to your faces." oh, they were.

8. because
i must now invoke my creepy beatles knowledge. now, this "fact" is disputed, but apparently john lennon got the inspiration for this wacky little number while listening to yoko play beethoven's "moonlight sonata." he allegedly told her to play the piece in reverse - and there are basically the chords for "because." i'm making a stretch here, but i think the reversed chords are representative of the "back to basics" approach the twins adopted in june/july, shedding the heavy weight (in so many senses) of tony batista, returning juan castro to cincinatti, tossing out the RUBEN sierra sandwich (again, HA!), and flushing chief excrement sack kyle lohse down the toilet. this veteran extermination left a gaping crater in the twins lineup, filled with the likes of jason bartlett, jason tyner, josh rabe, jason kubel, and boof bonser. now, the real tie-in with the song comes in. for the line "because the world is round, it turns me oooooooooooooon," substitute "boof" in for "the world" and see if you don't pee your pants.

9. you never give me your money
my personal favorite of all the songs on abbey road, "you never give me your money" does not unfortunately correspond to my favorite time of the twins season. if you haven't heard it before, it's pretty weird. the lyrics don't make any sense at the beginning. most of the time, paul mccartney writes pretty straightforward songs, but on abbey road, with "maxwell's silver hammer," "she came in through the bathroom window" and "you never give me your money," paul was evidently very high on drugs. anyway, the song courses down schizophrenia lane, dabbling in honky tonk and paul's underused, um, fat billy joel voice. am i right? doesn't he sound like a fat billy joel in the middle part? ok, whatever. the most emotive part of the song comes when he says "oh, that magic feeling. nowhere to go..." and that's exactly how the hometown boys felt during late june. they won like 100% percent of the games that month but remained about 400 games behind the tigers. certainly we fans were euphoric, but it kind of gets old when your team doesn't move up in the standings. anyway, this is my favorite song on abbey road, and if you disagree, i will have to eliminate you.

10. sun king
well, the last song was the beginning of the suite of several connected songs that defines abbey road, and "sun king" is the second song. in my opinion, it sucks, and has no real relationship with the twins season, other than the fact that the quasi-italian the beatles sing in the song makes just about as much sense as the crazy success the twins enjoyed during the summer. "everybody's laughing, everybody's happy," indeed.

11. mean mr. mustard
i'd like to make this an ode to the twins bullpen, which pretty much blew away everyone during the course of the entire year. as the song's title indicates, it's about a mean mr. mustard who "sleeps in the park," "shaves in the dark," "sleeps in a hole in the road," "keeps a ten bob note up his nose," "always shouts out something obscene," and is generally a "dirty old man." let's look at each of these characteristics with respect to the twins 'pen. who sleeps in the park? hmm. a suspicious, poor sap does. why, that's got to be dennys reyes, who is fat, looks like he would probably be found laying on a park bench, and has a suspiciously low e.r.a.! who shaves in the dark? well, that could describe almost any twins reliever, but most obviously it's juan rincon, whose shaving skills, post-steroid use, suffered mightily as a patchy beard settled in over the course of the year. next. sleeping in a hole in the road. that's easy. someone who's small and hapless. answer: jesse crain, the smallish guy who had some troubles this year. done. then there's the guy with the bank note up his nose. this one's a little tougher, but i think i'll have to assign it to pat neshek, who clearly snorts/inserts something into his naval cavity to enable him to deliver the ball in that weird way. i'll also give it to matt guerrier, who looks the part of a chronic drug user. lastly, there's joe nathan, who on the mound has a habit of twitching uncontrollably and swearing. and they're all dirty old men, which is what makes them so awesome. including mike redmond, who, although not a reliever, is certainly a dirty old man and probably has a mysterious sister who takes him to see some kind of queen on the weekends.

12. polythene pam
i really, really wish the twins roster contained a female in drag who masqueraded as a twin. wait, what's this? perenially clean-shaven, full-hipped lew ford? wait. that's gross. this song's short enough that the image should be washed clean soon.

13. she came in through the bathroom window
i guess this song was written about an actual incident - apparently a fan crawled into paul's home. it's not about yoko, or linda eastman, or anyone special. i've really got nothing to say about this song. it's all saved up for the next few songs. i apologize. but there's a pretty interesting cover of this song by joe cocker.

14. golden slumbers
well, we were rolling along at high speed through tracks 10-13, and then this super mellow ballad stalls us. you know what this means. francisco liriano goes down for the count. everyone says our hopes are dashed as our big, black baby jesus drops his cross. (was that a really foolish thing to say?). then, brad radke, greasy, bearded, dependable pitcher for years, finally has his arm go kaput on him. the world sheds a tear. what to do, twins fans? paul mccartney is putting us to bed, here, with his "and i will sing a lullaby," and everybody thinks that we're all really going to bed? just because francisco blew out his elbow? just because rad badke (my invention, and i'll stand by it) stretched his arm to limit? just because jason kubel is a cripple? just because we all drank some warm milk and are under the covers? that means we're going to lay down and go off to sleepy land? well, i don't really th

15. carry that weight
holy hell, that came out of nowhere! a whole legion of encouraging beatles! when our 2 and 3 pitchers went down, who carried the weight? cy young candidate johan "gutenberg" santana did. matt garza did. ron"farmer in the"dell white did. torii "shinto gate" hunter did. justin "less yes" morneau did. carlos "nothing rhymes with orange, month, purple, or" silva did. boof "john" bonser did (by the way, i made up all of those nicknames, and they are hereby copyright). everyone carried the weight, and it was magnificent. at the end of the song, there's a little reprise of the "you never give me your money" intro, reminding us that although we played like the best team in baseball, we still weren't in first place; the tigers were still there, winning. and then, and then...

16. the end
something about the title of this song is so final - so conclusive, you know? this song pretty much rocks, no matter how you look at it. paul, john and george trade guitar solos in basically the most awesome way imaginable. they wail. johan and joe and justin and everyone with a first name beginning with j wailed on their baseball bat guitars. it all built up to the end, when the twins took over first place - "with a little help from my friends" - the royals (again, HA!). and that was awesome. i'm running out of funny, witty, or dry things to say, because really, that last day was so awesome. and paul left us with some metaphysical wisdom: "and, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." ah. so beautiful. i have absolutely no idea whatsoever what it means, but it sounds nice and i pretend it has some significance for me. the twins ruled, though. what a perfect ending.

17. her majesty
oh yeah, this song's just tacked on at the end, here, you know, so, uh, um. yeah. we can ignore it. it's not really a song, anyway, it's just misplaced tape. you know, meaningless. crap. well, we all know that that's not true. about 15 seconds after the majestic end of the abbey road suite, the perfect ending, we have this little 23 second dud. it really is misplaced tape, though, as the first huge chord is from the end of mean mr. mustard and the last chord leads into polythene pam. and then it's over. it's a throwaway. this song is the most perfect description of the end of the twins season that exists. trust me, i checked. the twins tasted the sweet milk of heaven on the last day of the season, and it really felt like nothing could stop them; they were going to the world series, dammit. but then some team from the west coast, of all places, comes in, thrashes us around, leaving us in a pitiful heap, and in about 23 seconds the season was over for the twins. it really felt like the whole series was originally meant for another part of the season - a sweep at the hands of the a's seemed like something that should have been stuck in the middle of may. but it came at the end, and like abbey road, we have to live with and acknowledge "her majesty" and the twins postseason fade as parts of greater wholes. after all, her majesty does make it kind of distinctive, in a way.

but the really great thing about how abbey road ends is that it's so anticlimactic that you want to listen to the whole thing again. the end of the twins season left us with so little closure that all we could do was relive the memories of the summer, game by game, song by song, and appreciate it for all the wonder it brought us. that's what i've tried to do here. it took me about 2 weeks to do this, and i really should be doing homework, but sometimes, when the powers of the beatles and the twins combine, ~~i am captain planet!~~ everything else can wait. thanks, twins, for a great year. love, tom (and a bunch of other people, i think).

the twins on abbey road - side one

2006-10-07T17:39:00.000+09:00

i am posting late again, and for that i apologize. school is busy. and when i had written almost all of this post, my computer locked up. ugh.

now that the twins season is finally over, it's time for some reflection. i was riding the train to megu's house today, depressed that an exhilirating twins season had come to a rather disheartening and swift end. i thought of the misery the team was muddling through at the beginning of the season. i remember not even wanting to check if the twins had won. then, in june, everything changed. it was sublime. it kept getting better, too. soon the tigers started losing, and the white sox, too, and we were merely inches from the division lead. and the last magical week of the season made me, for the first time in a long time, mad that i had come to japan, that i was missing this glorious ascent to the top of the division. then, after the champagne dried, we brought the a's to the dome, and all that joy, the raucous abandon with which the twins had rocketed to first place, was wrested cruelly away. and now we're already in the offseason, and that sucks.

so, on that train ride, looking back on the year, i was bumming. i needed a pick-me-up. so i did some cocaine. right. then i said, "hey. music's a good way to get my spirits up! i'll think of a good song." inside the bowels of my mind's vast musical library, i shuffled through to the everlasting stand-by, the glowing beacon of the beatles. "here we go," i thought, "abbey road. always a good listen." then it hit me. it hit me like a sock full of quarters hits you in the face. we all know that feeling. the twins season was exactly like the beatles' abbey road. one of the best albums of all time. everything came together, constellated around my two fiercest obsessions: the beatles and the twins. my mind, struck dead by a hectic week of school and the celebrating athletics, was now swirling with activity. now, i present to you: the twins on abbey road, side one. if you don't have a copy of the album, go download it or something, and listen. for the full experience, put songs 1-6 on repeat, go to mntwins.com, and read the news archives for the first two months of the season.

1. come together
the twins came together, all right, and it wasn't pretty. like the song, the earliest days of the twins 2006 season was gloomy, dirge-like, and filled with bizarre imagery. the beatles' "toejam football" and "spinal cracker" bear metaphorical likeness to the twins starting lineup at the beginning of the year, which featured gems like exile-from-japan tony batista, the eternally crippled shannon stewart, RUBEN SIERRA, for god's sake, and fidel castro's crazy uncle juan. who was toejam football and who was spinal cracker, i don't know, but it's funny to think about. little-known fact: at the beginning of this song, where it sounds like john says "shoop," it's actually him saying "shoot me," which is what many twins fans were saying early this year.

2. something
"i don't want to leave her now, you know i believe and how." replace "her" with "my group of washed-up veterans that were supposed to bring power to my lineup but pretty much blow" and you have the thought that must have been racing through terry ryan's mind for much of the spring. those guys stayed around well past their welcome. however, george harrison's beautiful ode to love reminded us fans of better things to come: "you stick around now, it may show. i don't know, iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii don't know." tears are welling in my eyes, my babies.

3. maxwell's silver hammer
much of the news regarding the first month of the season swarmed around the tigers, who began their annihilation of the central right away. "detroit's wooden hammers" "made sure that we were dead," laying waste to the preseason favorites (the twins, indians and white sox) and securing the lead for a long-ass time. if i had had my beatles-twins revelation back during the last weekend of april, when detroit devoured the twins by scores of 9-0, 18-1, and 6-0, i would have seen it all coming. in the beatles tune, maxwell, well, he kills a bunch of people. first, he kills the "quizzical" joan, much like the tigers disposed of the "quizzical" c.c. sabathia and fellow indians. then came the teacher (the twins, who had learned the lessons of winning division titles). finally, the surly judge, who fits ozzie guillen, a.j. pierzynski, and the rest of the pale hose to a t. maxwell exacted his carnage of carpentry on all these unsuspecting victims just as the tigers bludgeoned their way to the top. we should have heeded paul mccartney all along. but wait - PAUL IS DEAD!

4. oh! darling
consider this the ballad of johan santana. the 2005 campaign was a pretty good one for the twins pitching staff, with brad radke and carlos silva putting forth solid efforts. but then, when april 2006 rolled around, something downright dastardly happened. right under our noses, when we weren't looking, aliens replaced our formerly dependable 2 and 3 starters with giant sacks of poo. still, these bags outperformed kyle lohse, who we banished to cincinatti. this left johan santana cold and alone, feeling every pang of this song's heartache: "oh, darling, if you leave me, i'll never make it alone. believe me when i beg you, don't ever leave me alone." when paul mccartney was recording the vocal of this song, he only tried one take per day and practiced in the shower. johan santana only got to pitch once every five games, and i'm sure he practiced pitching in the shower, too.

5. octopus's garden
this is just insulting. ringo, by far the least talented of all the beatles, had the audacity to say "screw this. i'm going to write a song about how i was living with deep-sea creatures just to get away from my life of fame and fortune." that little b*tch. that's like jason kubel saying "trade me. this team sucks, and i need to save my career before it goes under." imagine that. don't be deceived by this song's nice, uplifting pop-country feel. it's about abandoning life on land to live with octopi just because you're not man enough to take a little hardship. depressed by the twins performance in the spring, i must admit i attempted to live with the fishes in okinawa once, but i got too hungry and just ended up eating my guppy roommate. i named him titus.

6. i want you (she's so heavy)
if you haven't heard this song, please listen to it now. it's probably one of the heaviest songs the beatles ever did, and it goes on for 7 minutes with just these lyrics: "i want you. i want you so bad. i want you so bad, it's driving me mad, it's driving me mad. she's so heavy." weird, huh? well, at the end of may, the twins were waaaaaaaaaay back in the division, and everyone was wanting something. replace "you" in this song's title with one of several options: alfonso soriano, carlos lee, a designated hitter, koko b. ware, kent hrbek and/or one of his air conditioners, kirby puckett, an entirely different, tom to come back from japan and beat some sense into the twins, methamphetamines, etc. anything but that twins team. i was ready to just call it quits on them and consider 2006 a rebuilding season. the season seemed like it would drag on until the end of time, just like this marathon of a song, and keep repeating the same line over and over: runners left on base, e.r.a.s over 6, fat old dudes swinging hopelessly at pitch after pitch. then a giant cloud of white noise would swallow the huge guitar solos while the beatles wailed on an aching three part harmony and john and george experimented with heavy distortion and the world ceased to make sense and and you wondered just where this song would go and then all of a sudden everything stopped. silence. and side one was over and you started thinking "holy god, what's happened to the beatles?" just as you thought "what in the world has happened to the twins i once knew?" had we been betrayed? were the sacks of poo here to stay? the only way to find out was to flip the record over. and we were all glad we did.

that's side one, folks. hope you enjoyed the recap. it's not the best side the beatles ever made, and it certainly wasn't the best first two months the twins ever had, either. neither was all that cohesive. they had their moments, but the best was yet to come. stay tuned, compadres, for glory awaits.

let's throw stuff at maur

2006-09-28T23:07:00.000+09:00

i'm late again. i feel terrible. i've been busy with getting ready for school and working as a "chat partner" in tokyo. yeah, i am a busy man. but i will not disappoint the millions waiting for my japanese tutelage. today i've selected a few very common japanese words that have kind of wacky kanji - and one that i just can't figure out.

1. 頑張る　がんばる　ganbaru. the first of these two kanji means "stubborn" and "firm." the second one means "to stretch out." putting them together gets you something like "stretching out one's stubbornness." the english equivalent, however, is "to try hard." now, in english, this is pretty simple. to give one's best. in japanese, though, it seems a lot more serious. to stretch out your stubbornness sounds like something pretty strenuous, but people are doing it all the time. if someone gets a job, they'll stretch it out. if someone is playing for the yankees, say, hideki matsui, he stretches out that stubbornness every at-bat. substitute in "firmness" for "stubbornness," and you get something that sounds somewhat like a vaguely sexual reference that might be overheard at a gymnasium (see left). let me assure you that that is not what the japanese mean when they use the word. at least i hope not.

2. 有難う　ありがとう　arigatou. thanks to styx, we all know that this means "thank you very much-o." duh. now, i've tried to convince my girlfriend that the kanji of this word really means something deep down, but she won't have any of it. she just spits in my face and makes me do the dishes. here's my theory. the first character, "ari," is a fundamental word that means "to exist," "to have," "to be," etc. it is. the second character is actually the root of muzukashii, which means "difficult." the last part, the ou section, kind of signifies an appreciation or a desire to express something. if you follow my train of thought, the straight translation would be something like "i wish to express how difficult it was for this thing to exist." translation: if someone cooks you dinner and you say arigatou, what you're really saying is that you "appreciate the difficulty involved in making this meal exist." a wordy way to say "thanks," but i think it conveys a very nice sentiment. so sery, next time you thank a girl for giving you her number, just spit out a little arigatou magic, and you'll be saying what we all know you really mean: "i appreciate the difficulty you experienced in allowing this number to exist in my cell phone." because, jesus christ, we know the pains these girls suffer every time you wrestle those digits away from her. you dog.

3. 流石　さすが　sasuga. i like this one, and i use it a lot. it's used to convey something along the lines of "i knew you could do it," "i expected you to do so well," "you're the man," or "just as i thought." for example, if st. john's wins the national football championship, you could say "sasuga st. john's" - we expect them to win, they fulfilled our expectations, and we want to congratulate them: "i knew you could do it, sju." however, it's much more fun to use it as sarcasm. take the case of kamman, a known cheapskate. he goes to a restaurant and orders something really expensive that he doesn't have the money to pay for. he thinks he'll just find $900 sitting underneath the table somewhere. the dish comes en flambe and kamman digs in. he finishes half the meal and declares the plate finished. he looks around nervously, hoping to find a wad of twenties stuffed in the napkin holder - but to no avail. that's when he pulls out three of his hairs, sticks them in the dish, calls the waitress, and demands a new meal and refuses to pay. of course, he succeeds. this is "sasuga kamman." we fully expect him to do such a thing, and we hate that he gets away with it, but we want to let him know just how much everyone expects him to do such a dastardly deed. am i right? of course i am.

the kanji are weird, though. the first one means "to flow" or "current" and the second one is just "stone." a stone in a current. figure that one out. all i can think of is thomas jefferson. i really don't think it means "we fully expect a rock to be flowing in a current and want to express congratulations for that." that would be so stupid.

ok brethren, that should keep your little tommy tummies full for another week. i promise never again to disappoint. i also promise to expose the plight of sery in every post from now on, because it's deliciously satisfying. oh, and i'm sorry that the title of this post had no relation to the post at all. i just fondly remember that night.

野球オタク

2006-09-21T20:24:00.000+09:00

greetings, and apologies for my tardiness. it won't happen again.

the title of the post today reads yakyuu otaku, which means "baseball freak." that's right. it's time to let my true baseball-loving colors shine through today. the twins are a half game out of the division lead and five and a half games in front for the wild card. oh, baby, baby, baby. i can smell the playoffs already. they kind of smell like dirty socks. wait. that's my room. whatever. i'm excited.

so, since baseball's on my brain these days, i thought, "hell, why not enlighten the starving masses to japanese baseball terms?" and when i acted upon this surging flash of brilliance, i was delighted to find a smorgasbord of juicy items that, in my opinion, would be good comedy material for the next time you and your friends/enemies are watching a baseball game together. you will either be complimented for being so worldly or be beaten for being the annoying kid who knows japanese words. good luck.

anyway, here we go. by recalling my days of watching the momentous high school baseball tournament and calling up "baseball" in my dictionary, i came up with some interesting findings (ordered in reverse order of hilarity):

1. ナイター (naitaa), which means a "night game." it's like americans calling a night game a "nighter." they don't have a special name for day games, but if they did, chances are it would sounds kind of stupid.

2. ストレート (sutore-to), fastball. the word is pronounced like english's "straight." i'm just waiting for the "gay" pitch to come out of the closet. sorry, that was lame.

3. 完封 (kanpuu), a shutout. this one's actually kind of cool. the first character means "perfect" or "complete" and the second one is "seal." in other contexts the word is used to mean "complete blockade," but in baseball, it's a shutout. i think it would be sweet if bert blyleven, at the end of a johan santana shutout, exclaimed "...and santana has imposed another complete blockade." very rad.

4. タイムリーヒット (taimuri- hitto), lit. "timely hit;" an rbi. this one just baffles me. instead of using the very pronounceable letters "R," "B," and "I," the japanese decide to get all subjective and deem a run-producing hit a "timely" one. isn't every hit "timely?" maybe it's just me. i think someone should start trying to get "untimely hits."

5. 死球 (shikyuu), a hit batsmen. now it gets ugly. the first character means "death" and the second one means "ball." THE DEATH BALL. that's what a HBP is in japan. now, what they really mean is a "dead ball," but reading the kanji literally is way more fun in this case. THE DEATH BALL.

6. 刺殺 (shisatsu), a putout. it gets uglier. that first character means "pierce" or "stab." the second character means "killing." so, in japanese baseball, a normal putout is actually a death by stabbing. so, when albert pujols pops up to second, he is actually being thrust mercilessly with a sword. a routine grounder to third results not only in an out, but also in a samurai slashfest. much more thrilling than the tamer "he's out" or "he's gone" used in america, japanese baseball's "he's been stabbed to death" or "a sword-brandishing murderer has rendered the batter lifeless" show us just how much the japanese appreciate violence. to the right, kaz matsui commits murder at second base.

7. ガッツポーズ (gattsu po-zu), lit. "guts pose;" hot-dogging, showboating. i guess this one is just wacky in english, too. how the hell did we get "hot-dogging?" whatever. it's just hilarious in japanese. if a guy hits a home run and flings his bat, watching the ball sail into the stands, that's his "guts pose." to the left, you see a young japanese lad diligently working on said "guts pose." to me, a child of 1990s nickelodeon programming, this word brings me back to the glory days of "guts," the show that pitted little kids competing in faux-sports against each other and culminating in a race up the aggro-crag. it's messed up. just think of barry bonds' "guts pose," and milk will shoot out of your nose. even if you're not drinking milk.

well, i hope you enjoyed those. i enjoyed writing them. here's a tom update:

tom
status: living
location: new apartment outside of tokyo
agenda: start school on oct. 2
inventory: everything except a washing machine.
hit points: 99 (diabetes prevents full health)
weapons: computer, insulin
condition: pleased as punch

take care, fools.

there is a house in new orleans

2006-09-13T20:49:00.000+09:00

it's wednesday, and that means i get to drop another little turd of japanese happiness on you. yee-haw!

well, today i thought i would let you know that japan's nickname, the "land of the rising sun," is actually a pretty good reading of the kanji for "japan." here's what it looks like:

日本
にほん
japan

the characters used in "japan" are extraordinarily common words by themselves:　日　(nichi, the sun, day) and 本　(hon, book, origin, main, current). the ni from nihon is just another way of reading　日 (it has many). so, if you put them together, you have "sun" and "origin": the origin of the sun, or, the land of the rising sun. pretty cool, huh? if you were a lousy translator, though, you could get "book day" or "main sun" from nihon, but then you'd just be stupid.

now, when you switch those two kanji around, you get a different word, with an entirely different meaning and a different reading, too. it becomes 本日, honjitsu, which means "today." but it makes sense, at least a little, because one of the meanings of hon is "current," so together the kanji couple births "current day" - "today." there will be a test, so please write that down.

i was watching tv the other day, and on came the japanese version of "who wants to be a millionaire," simply called クイズ＄ミリオネア (quiz $ millionaire). the top prize is 1 million yen, which amounts to a paltry $86,000. suckers. there have been 20 winners; the american version has had 11. i advise you to check out the other countries that have variants of the program here. anyhow, one of the last questions was:

what language did the word "japan" come from?
a. dutch
b. french
c. chinese
d. portuguese

the answer is c, chinese. turns out the chinese version of "japan" also means "origin of the sun." BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING!

i'm writing too much about one word.

2006-09-06T13:00:00.000+09:00

it's wednesday, people, and as promised, i'll deliver to you an interesting japanese word. it'll get you thinking and maybe offer a bit of insight into japanese culture.

ok, today's lesson involves a little word that looks like this:

家内
かない
kanai

now, i'm going to withhold the definition for a second here. i'll tell you what the kanji (chinese characters) mean first. the first one, 家, is read ie, uchi, ya, ke or ka in various cases. it's meaning, though, never changes. it means "house" or "home." the top of the character, with the little vertical line and the dealie with the horizontal line with the two little thingies hanging off the sides, um, ok, screw it. this: 宀. this signifies "roof." according to my dictionary, the thing under the roof is "pig." i'm not kidding. so, as we all certainly know, when there's a pig under a roof, you know you're home. to the right, you'll see a typical japanese house.

the second kanji means "inside" and is pronounced uchi at times and nai at others. upon consultation of my dictionary, the two elements of uchi/nai, 人 (person) and 冂 (enclosure), seem to make a lot more sense as "inside" than roof and pig do as "house." although in many cases i suppose this uchi could refer to your average mime.

putting these two kanji together, we get "house" and "inside." what could this mean? well, some good guesses would be "interior," "household," "indoors," or "video game-obsessed wimp loser," but, boy, those are so wrong. i can't believe how wrong they are. the real meaning is "my wife." interesting, huh? so when a husband introduces his wife, he says "this is my kanai," or, "this is the one who is inside my house." would americans say something like this? it surely seems sexist to me, an american who has been told that women and men are to aspire to similar goals and that women are not exclusively bound to household work. now, i know that 'home-dweller' is not necessarily what japanese people actually, intentionally mean when they use the word. after all, there are plenty of english words that we use unconscious of their origins. however, japanese is different because of its use of kanji. every japanese person knows that 家 means "house" and 内 means "inside." the meanings are right there in the pictures, and there's no way to misread them.

interested, i looked up the etymology of the english word "wife." apparently "wife" has no house-related connotations. in fact, it simply means "woman," although the ultimate source is unknown.

to me, as a learner of japanese, kanai, among other words, was a bit of a window into japanese culture. when i came to japan, i was alarmed at the invisibility of women. i was alarmed at the incapability of men to do just about anything at home; their apparent violent allergy to cleaning, cooking, or doing dishes. i've always heard that language is an illuminating window to a culture's character. turns out it's true.

the name game

2006-09-01T20:22:00.000+09:00

greetings.

first of all, a little cleanup. as a portion of my blog's churning throng of readers knows, i got my own apartment about 25 minutes outside of tokyo. i've moved about half of the stuff in. rent is about $450 a month, which is really good considering the location. mmhmm. here's the address:

Tom Kain
Sekizawa 3-7-27
Urban Terrace Apt. 206
Fujimi Saitama-ken JAPAN 354-0025

if you send me mail, i will be really happy, throw myself a party, and run naked around the neighborhood. there's your incentive. choose wisely.

warning: the picture is not of me and my new apartment. although people in coats will certainly come and worship me at my residence, and i will almost always adorn its walls in gay pride colors, the picture above was actually taken at a temple on new year's day, 2006.

speaking of this new apartment, it needs a name. my place in naha was dubbed "xanadu." as wikipedia notes, the name, much like the name "tom kain," is a "metaphor for opulence." what other great apartment names are there? i could fit famous residence names to my own, like changing thomas jefferson's "monticello" to "montiviolin," michael jackson's "neverland" to "alwaysland," or nathaniel hawthorne's "house of seven gables" to "house of seven tables," in which case i'd have way too many tables. yeah, these names suck. i'm open to suggestions. or i could take a page from brian heilman's book and use another language.

on a similarly selfish subject, if you're dying to know what i was doing from the ages of 16 to 20, go here: mmmtomkain.

my next post is fermenting in my head. it's going to be delicious.

this week's neat japanese word

2006-08-30T17:28:00.000+09:00

every wednesday i'll give you a little introduction to a cool japanese word. you might feel like you've learned something.

散歩
さんぽ
sanpo
a walk/stroll

sanpo is cool because of the kanji (chinese characters) it uses. the first character, 散 (pronounced san), comes from the verb chirasu, which means "to scatter." the second character, 歩 (pronounced po, in this case), comes from the verb aruku, which means "to walk." alone, 歩 means "step." so, putting these two kanji together gives you "scattered steps," which i think is quite a poetic way of describing "a walk."

i thought of posting this today during my daily walk. i wonder how that happened.

the distance fan

2006-08-27T12:50:00.000+09:00

i love the minnesota twins. i always have. a lot of people love them now, especially since they just took a 1.5 game lead on the white sox for the wild card lead. but my love affair with the twins has not always sailed such smooth waters. i was a die-hard fan during the days of pedro munoz and jeff reboulet - i have signed cards from both of them to prove it, too. i also consider myself one of the few people who know that one be-goggled alex cole caught the last out of scott erickson's no-hitter. rich becker and matt walbeck were in the starting lineup that day. shows you what a difference 12 years can make.

the picture you see here was taken at the last game i attended - july 2005, against the angels of southern california/san andreas (or whatever their name happens to be now). i think we won. by the way, yes, those are fish dancing in the infield waiting for a lucky contestant to catch them. anyway, as you all surely know, i live in japan now, and i can't just drive down I-94 to catch a twins game. i have to work a little harder.

being in japan has taught me how to be a distance fan. someone who follows the team desperately despite a 15-hour time difference and no access to televised games. i'll tell you my routine. every day i wake up late (since i haven't started school yet) and check the status of the game on my cell phone. i then start up my computer as fast as i can and try to see if mlb.tv will give me access to the game. nine times out of ten it's blacked out (international licensing problem), but i still try. if i can't watch it live, i turn on mlb.com gameday, which lets me visualize the game in my head by giving me the pictures of the current batter and pitcher, approximate location of each pitch, the result of each pitch, and vivid descriptions like "joe mauer singles on a line drive to center fielder brian anderson" or "rondell white strikes out on a meatball right down broadway." okay, not the last one. finally i consellate all the information in my head and try to imagine what the game really looks like. i try, and i try, and i try, but it doesn't work. but in this futile attempt i realize something: this is what being a sports fan is all about.

to me, it's not about knowing the OPS of each left handed national league first baseman in order of shoe size. it's about loving a team, living with their weaknesses and celebrating their strengths. it's about sacrificing potentially useful time from the day to read blog after blog after blog recapping the game, to go to espn.com and see if the twins made the front page, to wait on mntwins.com for the video highlights to be put up, to talk about the twins every time you call your parents halfway around the world. people here really don't get me. i tell my girlfriend "the twins won today," trying to sound nonchalant, trying to conceal all the enthusiasm i want to share with her. she doesn't care, though. why should she? the twins aren't special to her. she's got her own team, after all. everyone does. that's the beauty of it all.

i'll go on being a distance fan even if the twins can't keep a lid on the pale hose. i'll take comfort in the fact that i know there are more distance fans out there, living and dying with their beloved teams, lurking on hometown blogs and dreaming of that distant day when fan and team are finally reunited.