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Remember, that homeless painter I mentioned in one of my entries, last summer?

He used to sleep on or under his own canvases under Sarah’s window in Paris. Any cynical mind might have quickly pointed he was shooting for the Jean-Michel Basquiat theme. Whether wittingly or not. It had definitely not escaped the notice of hordes of bobos who now inhabits this neo-trendy chic neighbourhood: every other day, you could see neatly dressed young chaps congressing with the artist around a bottle of wine or a flask of whisky.

When I popped by in September, he was nowhere to be seen in the street and we simply assumed he’d been set-up in a fancy loft by one of his protector and on his way to become world-famous.

That was somewhat accurate, as it turns out he was the object of a few articles and documentaries on French TV around this time and even got an article in the Independent (free transcription here).

I learnt about all this in the last issue of Technikart my roommate brought home. But the article also mentioned that Joseph had recently died in a Paris hospital (possibly some liver disease or something else related to his insanely high daily consumption of alcohol)…

I bet all the two-bit modern-art snobs who rushed on the “down-and-out genius” wagon as soon as they smelled the possibility to cash in are jubilant: with our modern-time Basquiat dead, the legend is likely to thrive and the prices of all these paintings they traded for bottle of cheap whisky will soar to high heaven, at least for as long as the media hype lasts.

R.I.P. Mr. Joseph the Painter

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Though I cannot think of a more illogical, irrational, excruciatingly frustrating way to code a language than Japanese Kanji, I am slowly starting to realize how essential it is to its language structure…

OK, let me precise what I mean here: no matter how seducing the idea, there’s no way Japanese text could ever be written with a simpler character set (be it romaji transliteration or kanas).

This is no complete news to me: discussions with Japanese had already opened my eyes to the fact that it would be really tough for a native to quickly read a text without the immediate visual help that’s brought by the symbolic meaning of kanjis.

Today went a step further, after receiving a short mail on my phone from a japanese friend, who for some strange reason, exceptionally typed it in romaji: Despite my less than stellar kanji-reading abilities, I found myself having to ask him to resend it in kanjis, as there was just no way I could figure out the different possible meanings for every other combination of syllables (my very loose grasp of japanese verb conjugation associated with Japanese language’s love of short homonyms did not help). I know it sounds strange that a pathetically unskilled speaker like me might prefer undecipherable kanjis over easy-to-read phonetic characters… But believe me: it’s much easier to take a guess or use a dictionary to figure out the meaning of a particular kanji than take a guess by the pronunciation only.

That being said, kanji still sucks. Its constructions defies any attempt at using logic and escape any philological rule. I’m still waiting on valid sensible explanations as to why so many japanese words can be written with a choice of three or four radically different kanjis that all have the same meaning and the same pronunciation (if you don’t believe me, check out in a dictionary 帰る and 返る, both pronounced かえる – kaeru, both meaning “to go back”… But each using completely unrelated kanjis).

A workmate I was discussing with told me I was way too rational in my approach to kanji learning. She even suggested I tried zen meditation or something to create a sufficient void in my mind before taking on that task…
Me, too freakin’ rational??? Now come on…

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Shibuya crossing, on a Friday night. When the pedestrian light goes green (or blue, if you are Japanese), it’s thousands of people who start crossing in every directions filling an area roughly the size of a baseball field…

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If I hear one more mashed-up xmas carols mix-cd, I’m gonna puke all over your freakin’ hello-kitty-decorated christmas trees, OK?

Ah Joy of Christmas, this long awaited time of peace, harmony and crass commercialism…

But let’s not get overly negative. After all, I’ll take pachinko employees flyering in zebra-print santa uniforms any day over Walmart’s cheap plastic dancing santas and nauseating hallmark cards. And talking about Wal-Mart, I still have a hard time getting over this stupid news bit relating that walmart christmas sale’s stampede, about a week ago. Though the woman supposedly “badly injured” apparently turns out to be a serial-faker, I don’t think I could imagine a more degrading story to go with an injury. God: I’d sooner tell the medics how I accidentally burnt my nuts in a freak late-night naked arc-welding accident, rather than having to tell how I got trampled by a herd of middle-aged obese Floridian housewives while clutching at some discounted taiwanese DVD player, lying on the floor of the local walmart.

Well, according to the news, she recovered quickly and the gentle employees at walmart kept her one of the coveted discounted DVD player. I guess we all get the kind of heartwarming christmas stories we deserve…