Unsought Input

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Recently I have been trying to plan my second trip to Japan and i am finding it incredibly hard. We had even considered just going to Europe to save a little bit of money, you know, by not traveling all around the globe. Usually I plan everything and do everything myself, but this year I wanted to do something “all inclusive” so I could actually enjoy and relax on my vacation instead of stressing out over whether everything was going as planned. You know, so I could have fun on my vacation?

So, anyway, I decided to go to a travel agent. My husband and I were thinking about a trip to Europe, with a few places we might want to travel in mind but no where set in stone (see, we wanted to see what the deals were), maybe a cruise or something tour bus-y. So, having never gone to a travel agent before, I set aside my pride and walked into the office. I told the woman what I have told you here, and she laughed in my face. Well, I also told her how much I wanted to spend. I think that is what made her laugh. It was only a thousand dollars less that what we spent to go to Japan before but she laughed in my face and told me that the cheapest two people could do all inclusive in Europe was $7000.00 before plane fare.

Somehow I don’t believe this. She wouldn’t tell me if they had any specials going on, she told me I had to know where I wanted to go. That was not the point, I said. We were flexible, we wanted to go somewhere that was running a special. Travel Agent 007 told me that that is not how it works. I was left in wonder how all these people got great deals to go abroad and how it doesn’t work for me. I guess the bottom line is don’t get a 007 Agent to tell you where to go on your vacation. Oh, and use the internet. I just was trying the small business support and stuff, and of course as with most human interactions, it backfired in my face. Don’t mind me if I sound a little jaded, I was just hoping she would have been nicer, since the internet is taking her job away.

Anyway, you don’t care about that, you are reading to find out cheaper ways to travel. Now, mind you these are not all going to be luxury five star hotels, but if you can afford that, why are you reading this? (more…)

Here’s my unsought input for you today. I live on a street with a lot of duplexes. It’s a nice neighborhood, the houses are in good shape, and generally speaking it looks like the sort of place you would like to live.

But not all the houses are owner-occupied like ours, and some owners are out-of-state investors who maybe care a little less about upkeep. Some of the residents are elderly and have a hard time with gardening and yard work. And with the huge subprime mortgage problem looming over the country, houses here and there are going into default and sitting neglected.

You’ve probably seen all the dramatic headlines about the Dow decline today, in part because of the weak housing market. Well, I’ve got an idea that will get the market up and running again. Okay, probably not, because I’m not a financial genius and I know relatively little about real estate. Still, I have an idea and thought I would share.

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Just like for Harry Potter, here are some fun videos for the release of the Simpsons Movie on Friday.

Two guitars at once, playing the Simpsons theme. Very Nice.

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I know this is a little lazy, but the following link was the first site that I stumbled upon this morning which was totally awesome. My personal favorite is a tie between “The Handless Organist” and “The Turntable Slave”, both wrong on so many levels.

http://www.stevecarter.com/albumcovers.htm

In celebration (lamentation?) of the newest and final Harry Potter Book coming out, I thought I would post some Harry Potter spoofs up for some fun.

This one is just ridiculous. (more…)

Takashi Miike is one of the most prolific directions today who you probably have never heard off. He is most know for using extreme graphic violence and taboo subject matter in his films. Audition and Ichi the Killer feature some of the most extreme imagery put to film. However, Miike is not all shock and he is an accomplished film maker and story teller. He has directed around 14 productions covering a wide variety of subjects and genres. In the movie One Missed Call, Miike tackles the genre of J-Horror and applies his own unique vision to it.

The plot of the movie is that college students begin to receive strange ringtones on their phones and they find messages left from a few days in the future that feature themselves saying something and then screaming. The students then at the time of the message die do to some bizarre circumstances. The first falls off a bridge onto a train, then next down an elevator shaft. All of the characters that die have a piece of candy in their mouths afterwards.

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In keeping with the theme that D Wallz started with his article on Tin Tin, I thought I would mention a few banned books that I have read and appreciated and why they were banned. I do encourage people to comment about their favorite banned books as well in the comment section below if they feel so obliged.

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. This might be one of my favorite books of all time. I don’t know what it is about this book but I cry at the end every time. The part where our main character takes his kid sister Phoebe to the marry-go-round and he is narrating, he says that he wishes he could catch all of the kids before they went over the edge; that he would be the catcher in the rye. I don’t even know why but I almost cry every time I get to that part of the book.
This book was banned mostly in school libraries because of it’s themes of impropriety and scenes of sexual situations. I must have bought about seven copies of this book because each time I meet someone who hasn’t read this novel, I force a copy on them. Honestly, this novel is about growing up. Growing up is about themes of impropriety and sexual situations. I really feel that when books like this get banned, the adults who are banning them have just forgotten what it was like to grow up and be a confused and upset teenager.

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Borders Stores in the UK are removing the Tintin Graphic Novel “Tintin in the Congo” after a customer complained the book was racist. The book does contain racist depictions of Africans as subhuman savages who come to worship Tintin and his dog Snowy as gods. The book as been widely referred to as racist and has not been available in an unedited version until 2005, which featured a disclaimer explaining about the colonial period in which it took place. The customer was not fully happy with Borders decision and wanted the book removed from the store like other racist material.

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A student group of Atheists at University of Texas, San Antonio, have started a campaign which allows people to trade their bibles for pornographic magazines, such as Playboy and Penthouse. Their logic being that the bible is a very negative force in world history and porn would be more beneficial. They came up with this campaign as a creative way to exercise their freedom of speech. Obviously religious groups on campus were less than pleased with the idea. There are similarities here to my previous article in which a local church tried to use less conventional methods to attract new people. However, what the atheist group is doing is a little different.

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This morning as I was getting ready for work I saw this little tidbit: Money Found In Toilets Across Japan on my personal yahoo page.  Go and read it, it’s pretty short.  Or if not, here is the gist.  Someone put 10000 yen bills in the bathrooms that were all wrapped up very nicely and in a very Japanese style.  That is about $82 for those of you who don’t know the currency exchange.  They had a nice note attached to them that said something about using it towards self-enrichment and that there was only one per person.  It is speculated that there was about 2 million yen found (about $16,000.00 and some change) in fifteen different prefectures around Japan.

What would have happened if this anonymous fiscal do-gooder had done such a thing in the US?  I think it’s something to wonder, especially since the Japanese one said “take one per person” and they actually did. Would Americans follow the rules? Or would they suck and ruin it for everyone?  I think that goes to say a lot about a culture.

What would you do?  Would you just take one, or would you take a fist full?  When there are free samples/handouts do you just take one or do you take 5, 10, 15?  I think it’s time for you to consider this question and leave a response.

Why our generation, or anyone who enjoys music, shouldn’t enjoy being a pirate and how to change the industry:a comic.

http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-6/icst-6-full.html

A response to the above comment about the folly of micropayment.

http://www.nothings.org/writing/upay.html

And, I heard that this is terrific:

http://b3ta.hnldesign.nl/beta309.gif