Tippi Hedren tells Jackson tigers of his death

Nothing to add.

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In fact, 1992 was no particularly bad year unless you were a male heir to the throne of Britain with marital problems or minor royalty with a taste for topless frolicking…

In 1992, the world at large was not doing much worse than usual. Western Europe was entering a decade of economic prosperity, things were starting to look up on the eastern side and the US was taking a breather in between two Bushes. Bloody coups, genocides and paramilitary dictatorship seemed to be ever so slowly becoming less of a common occurrence in South America and Asia, and while Africa was not doing so great, one could at least hope that, with old age, an entire generation of Western-backed dictators would eventually come to pass. Not such a bad era for music either: in 1992, Nirvana had just released Nevermind and Black Eyed Peas had not yet been spawned from the darkest recess of stale junk pop marketing.

It is nigh-impossible for one person to give an objective appraisal for such a scale as the entire world, particularly without the hindsight of a couple decades: the year Sally broke your heart or you lost your pinkie to a freak juice-blending accident will always overshadow that year where 10,000 people died in an earthquake in some remote country you have never heard of.

Yet, I cannot help but feel rather depressed by what seems to be happening in the world these days. And I am not talking about broad general issues and the no-doubt very fucked-up things in store for the future, 40ºC English Winter days included. I am talking about today’s factual state of the world.

Let’s Have a Look, Shall We?

Even after filtering out the usual event-starved media angle, there is little to rejoice about in world news these days:

We are finally seeing the result of the past 10 years of aggressively stupid Western policies toward the Middle-East (following countless decades of thoughtless meddling) blooming into a thousand potential islamic revolutions in countries ravaged by war, endemic corruption and self-serving Western interventions. Quite a success, this “War on Terror” has been.

Iran, a country that was once helmed by a democratically elected reformist president when the US had theirs handed down to them by a Supreme Court, is now looking at a slow descent back into a military dictatorship. At its helm, a diminutive puppet of a fundamentalist leader who owes much of the relative success of his populist diatribes to the fertile ground left to him by a century of Western meddling (equally populist “axis of evil” rhetoric included).

Meanwhile, Middle-East’s one and only truly democratic state, Israel, decided to do away completely with the underdog image of a surviving nation amongst mortal ennemies, in favour of the much less appealing status of minority-oppressing bully. What should have been a parenthesis in conservative national politics is now extending to a quasi-perpetual state of belligerent populism, more concerned with pleasing a strident fundamentalist minority at home and focusing on their equally hateful counterparts on the other side, rather than really trying to solve things. As an aside, those people who drape themselves in the memory of the Holocaust and call “antisemitism” on any hint of distaste toward current Israeli politics deserve to be stoned: they are a shame to the memory of the millions actual victims of nazi barbary.

After twenty years of steadily building what could have been a pretty impressive form of federation, ensuring both cultural identity and socio-economical prosperity of its members, European nations are seizing the opportunity of the last few crises to retreat to their old isolationist, nationalistic ways (nothing to the point of the US yet, but slowly heading there). This rollback is in large part fuelled by a wave of political populism across the continent. France has got the ever-yapping Sarkozy, UK Labour is about to get a well-deserved kick out of power that will lead to yet another era of backward people-crushing Tory policies, Italy has long stopped trying and voted Berlusconi back in last year…

Eastern Europe is busy molding its new post-communist brand of putrid nationalism, with dashes of populism and healthy doses of religious zealotry thrown in for good measure, while preparing the next regional conflict and mandatory ensuing genocides through “ethnic cleansing”.

Quickly closing a tentative experiment in democracy, Russia is heading back toward its old totalitarian ways, with a twist: this time it’s military nationalism with ethnic undertones, soft totalitarism with ultra-liberal leanings and McDonald’s on every street corner to appease the masses. At this, they are in a close race with China for smallest compounded period of democratic history. Things haven’t changed much since the 60’s, but who cares: now, they support free trade… In fact, they are more than happy to purchase all the censorship technologies and crowd-pacifying junk culture that the West will obligingly sell them. Sure, China is not as scary a country as it may have been in the past: lifetime imprisonment is often favoured over bullet in the back of the head as a way to deal with political dissent… But that regime is also much closer to becoming your new economic overlord as it ever was before.

Thanks to the threatening shadows of Soviets Russia and People’s China, the rest of Asia has always looked quaintly peaceful, with its bunch of quietly self-contained authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Outside of nutty North Korea and its convenient straw man appeal to nationalists on both side of the Sino-Japanese sea riff, I bet your news outlets do not bother you too often with tales of uneventful sham elections routinely taking place and unsurprisingly backing up whatever local military junta or conservative elite has been in power so far…

I guess something could be said for South America enduring much less bloody civil wars and rightwing CIA-backed dictatorships than during the glorious Carter-Reagan years… hell there has even been a couple democratically-elected leaders with apparently genuine intent to help their people. Things could be worse. Let’s just not look too closely toward Honduras or Venezuela.

And as for the US of A? Well, it is probably not a good sign that the most (and possibly only) positive thing going for it nowadays is that it is no longer headed by a bunch of religious nutjobs and war criminals.

Feel Free To Go Hang Yourself Now…

Pessimistic and biased, you say? Most definitely. Also: I am no Nostradamus and world politics have a knack for going in erratic directions and suddenly picking up speed, so I lay no claims on what the current situation might lead to, as soon as next year. I just can’t help thinking that it is not a lot better than 10 or 20 years ago.

PS: and you know what the funny thing is? Despite this incredibly gloomy outlook on world events, my personal current mood is not particularly bad. In fact, I am pretty happy and content with where I am with my life at this moment.
Just imagine how upbeat I must be when I am truly depressed.

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I briefly mentioned her on this blog, four years ago…

Back then, she was such a spry and quick-witted little lady that it was hard imagining her otherwise. But her years finally caught up with her all at once, with a vengeance. It was obvious when I last saw her that she felt she had her time and was ready to go. Rather than mournful I am relieved knowing she left without too much suffering.

I am basically writing this as a reminder to myself of what an exceptional woman she was and that I should be lucky to ever live a life half as extraordinary as hers was.

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Only a dozen kilometers on bike, walk and train between the two.

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Insulin I – by Rattus Norvegicus

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Under all the math formulae, the slide featured a small box with Pearson’s full name, photography, dates and, in an even smaller font, this sole additional comment:

He was a marxist.

Only in Japan.

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This 48 hour stint in Tokyo was much more compact than last week’s but we still managed to fit a couple funandhappythings.

Saturday, Ken and Shizu drove us to Design Festa where we spent the afternoon looking for those elusive two or three pearls of awesome/weird/crazy, usually lost in a sea of homemade flea-market t-shirts and Tokyu Hands-style jewelry (hey, starving art students need to eat too). To be honest, nothing mind-blowing (and not even that much of the usual WTF shock stock that people tend to expect from Design Festa)… but some entertaining live shows:
Dora video played drums while random bits of video samples (including at some point, a strident Japanese CM for toilet air freshener) played in the back. The result sounded at times not quite unlike a Death Metal band, from which you’d remove everyone save for the drummer: loud, energetic and quite funny.
Somewhere on the main stage, three butt-naked guys covered in gold paint and sporting massive fully-erect fake penises (also covered in gold) were executing some sort of butoh-like contemporary dance involving a chain and the music from William Tell overture. Somehow, Design Festa always seem to feature a few naked guys doing strange contemporary dances. Never twice the same guys.
The last act we caught before leaving, Crazy Angel Company wasn’t breaking new grounds, comparatively, but did a nice job of livening the venue a bit with their energetic Japanese-style brass band music and accompanying choreography. They closed with their own rendition of the Soran Bushi, a famous Japanese folk classic with an infectious back-and-forth chorus, of which H. eventually grew very tired, after a weekend of constant humming from my part.

On the way back and after running a couple errands for the following day, we lucked out in grabbing a table at Chacha Yufudachi on a saturday night with no reservation (strange, I know, to be going to a Kyoto-cuisine place while on a trip to Tokyo, but both Chacha branches are among my favourite restaurants in Shinjuku, both for the food and the atmosphere). We capped the night with a few drinks at Albatross’ brand new extension in Golden Gai: in fact, merely the first floor of their previous location, which has been added as a semi-independent branch to the second-floor’s bar. Same familiar faces and friendly crowd as usual, although we unfortunately had to make it home for last train in order to be fresh and rested for the next day.

And next day was awesome, indeed: lovely people, gorgeous groom and bride, delicious food, excellent wine (of course) and charming surroundings… But I won’t bore you with the details of my gorgeous friends’ happiness: after all, if you are of those who care, you were probably there (and if you weren’t, you know where to find much better reports than my own very incomplete remembrances of that wonderful day).

One (short) night and a nozomi ride later, I am back at plotting world domination, one DNA strand at a time… Which reminds me I might finally get to that piece about the why’s and how’s of Bioinformatics this week, if I can escape the tempting embrace of procrastination long enough…

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Yes, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that you are better off staying at home during Golden Week and wait until pretty much any of the remaining 51 weeks in the year to take your vacation at half the price and half the crowds.

Unfortunately, things being what they are (and my days off being what they are), Golden Week vacation or no vacation, were my only options.

After securing two extra days to make it an actual week (Golden it may be, but that “week” ends on a Wednesday night), I took a rest from the deadly boring lovely Kansai countryside and headed back for my hometown: Tokyo.

Although I would have been just happy sharing my time between sitting on the grass in Yoyogi and drinking under the bar in Shinjuku, relationship diplomacy dictated that a compromise be found with the traditional holiday activities and a 2-day trip to nearby Choshi was on the program. Considering its proximity to Tokyo (about 2h by train from Tokyo station), Choshi peninsula is a pleasant enough destination for a weekend, provided you do not stay anywhere close to the main city (your usual ugly mix of generic concrete jungle and urban decay that make 99.9% of all Japanese cities in rural areas) and head out for the smaller villages along the coast. Although the sea still wasn’t warm enough for bathing, we kept busy with a couple walks around the coast (cue obligatory lighthouse, seaside temples etc.) as well as inland crossing through countless patches of cabbage (a local specialty, apparently). Among the locales accessed through the picturesque Choshi Dentetsu railway line, Choshi boasts of Inubō, a station whose name literrally means “Woof” (or, in a less vivid translation, “Dog’s Bark”).

Most of Wednesday and Thursday were spent watching rain pouring outside, safely tucked under a warm comforter, only getting up to make a batch of soba crêpes (Galettes, for our friends in Brittany)…

Saturday was Sunset Freedom party in Enoshima and, as expected, was awesome beyond words: sun, blue skies and a small island covered in green… is just what you want as a backdrop to your soulful house beats and live house performances.
It didn’t hurt either that the last set closed to Frankie Knuckles’ ever awesome Whistle Song: an underground classic you would have to be dead not to dance along to. The encore song was an hommage to recently passed away Japanese singer Kiyoshiro Imawano: his famous cover of Daydream Believer, which took a sad undertone in that context. Discussing with friends then made me realise how universally loved Iwamano was: across the entire spectrum of age, fashion and music tastes, everybody seemed deeply touched by his death, despite his relative obscurity from mainstream media and modern pop music…

Sunday was another lovely day in Tokyo and perhaps one of the first truly hot day of the year (meaning warm evening too). We spent the afternoon strolling around Omotessando and Harajuku. Hitting Design Festa gallery along the way, we caught Venom Palette’s exhibit there. You should go check him out before the end of the week: he does cool stuff.
Weeklong holidays were capped by outdoor drinks and nachos at Las Chicas, which definitely doesn’t feel anywhere near as nice as it used to be (talking many years ago, before the whole block was remodelled) but is unfortunately one of the very few places in Tokyo where one can eat and drink while enjoying the evening’s warm breeze (a cookie to anybody with an original recommendation for good outdoor places in Tokyo or Kyoto that isn’t part of the usual bunch).

In other news, I am now back to my peaceful Kyoto countryside, busy working making breakthrough in bioinformatics (following Jon Stewart’s wise advice, I am going directly for the next big thing and focussing on Tanuki Flu)…

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My shirts look like they’ve been gang-raped by a pack of fluffy teddy bears.

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• Our lab building is one of the more modern on campus (remind me one day to capture some of the cool derelict buildings that sit on the edge of the campus: I swear, on sunny days they look straight from some Dr Moreau’s Island movie). The architecture is somewhat reminiscent of California-style 60’s: think John Lautner’s Desert Modern with more wood or Lloyd Wright with more glass… At any rate, it’s considerably nicer (and in better shape) than my last place of work.
• I spend my days at work barefoot (and I love it). Like most Japanese research labs, ours is a shoe-free zone: you are required to leave your outside-shoes in a locker by the door.
• Another typical Japanese tradition: food omiyage. Mix this with the fact that, out of a dozen researchers, there will always be one or two freshly returning from a trip abroad and you have a kitchen corner that looks like an international food court, all year round.
• We have, I kid you not, twelve different recycling bins in our lab. That’s not counting special items like batteries, pens, electronic parts etc., which all have their specific recycling deposit box in another building. Every friday afternoon, all the lab’s researchers have a giant round of Jan-ken-pon to pick who has to bring it all out to the campus’ recycling center.
• My morning commute from Kyodai’s international residence to the lab is approximately 10 minutes by foot (on a leisurely stroll). I believe this is the closest I’ve ever lived from work to date. Also: since the residence is all the way to the top of a small hill, while Kyodai’s campus is at the very bottom, I could ride my bike the entire way and not have to hit the pedals once (and possibly end up smashed by the Kyoto-Nara express train while crossing the tracks, but beside that). The hike back is way less fun.
• Beside the ever-impressive Entrance Ceremony and half a dozen redundant mandatory lectures on miscellaneous research-related topics, I am finally getting to the good part of huge layer-cake bureaucratic administrations: welcoming parties! Five of them, to be exact: one for each level of subdivision of each faculty or research institute I officially depend on. Free food (and booze): yay!

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Mother, should I run for President? Roger Waters

Hearing this album for perhaps the billionth time since I turned 12, I just realised tonight that this particular piece of lyrics just doesn’t make any sense, being sung by an Englishman.

[...]

Class president, maybe?

[...]

I have way too much free time (not really).

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… Which would all be very useful if, you know, I ever worked with anything else than my computer and a blackboard.

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Hanami season is officially on.

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