5/26/2021 The local camera store was finally hit with film price increases, Ultramax and Colorplus went from $7 a roll to $11. I have 30 rolls in the fridge and at my usual pace in shooting that should last me 6 or 7 years. Bought two books on ethnic garb around the world, $3 each. I'm warming up to physical books again. there's something aspirational about having your own complete bookshelf. Still after photobooks and reference books on clothing, surreal artbooks are also on my mind. Holy grail would probably be a copy of Lovely Sweet Dream, they're unobtanium even in japan. Used the CD player, it's been a while. I really like the ritual of it, sifting through stacks of covers and looking at track orders. I'm sure anyone over the age of 4 will laugh my at suggestion that CD's are quirky tactile old tech at this point. Beats double-clicking a rectangle.

I'm in that groove writing, the same sensation when I'm sewing. Everything is shoved to the periphery, I can really hone in on what I'm doing.

5/27/2021 nothing is better than waking up laughing from a dream. The two books got here. One is your typical traditional dress illustration book in a nice small size. A coffee table book variant is also available for $12. The art can only be described as "classic," the veteran in a library that survives in circulation due to its lack of handling.

5/30/2021 Inhaling these milk bars.

飯豊山 in particular is really interesting being one of the few famous Japanese mountains whose surface isn't marred with jagged volcanic rocks. The landscape there looks a bit Swiss or Balkan, really beautiful. I doubt I'll make it to Hiroshima anytime soon but I'd love to be at that one scene in Tamayura.

I keep seeing your conventional landscape photobooks at Book-Off. They elicit the same reaction as macro photography to me. They're technically impressive photos in lighting and composition and all that, but I've seen rolling Hokkaido hills a million times. Close-ups of bugs rubbing their hands together like banker cariactures are practically burned into my brain. They can list the locations and dates and photographic gear but it all seems distant and artificially surreal. I can imagine the photographers toil, the hours spent hiking across snow or the long wait times in the same bodily position but ultimately I'm not really interested. The most it can coax out of me is "huh, that's pretty," a fleeting passing thought.

4/24/2021 The UMN/linux story is hilarious. Changed my curtains to the ebay canvas. Gave up on _. Chinese grenade pouch came in and it's smaller than I expected. Perfect for carrying 7 snickers bars. Been wearing the Russian Panamanka repro frequently and I really enjoy it. Brim length is just right, perfectly odd. Still under a dry spell when it comes to clothing ideas but I'm sure 30°C+ weather will get my mind wandering.

さよなら絶望先生 is 30 volumes. I really like 久米田康治's other works but 30 is pushing my childlike patience. Part 3 of PolyMatter's video series is finally up, I can't remember the last time I was this excited for a youtube video. It's on China's future economic projections, an intersection of finance, culture, geography, and governance. Also watching Maoujou, glad it's stuck to the artist's artstyle closely. What a great series, even if the magic isn't encapsulated perfectly by the anime.

No regrets in not pursuing a Minolta XD or XE seriously. The XE's meter is less intuitive than the OM-2 and they both seem to be plagued with desilvering prisms and electronic issues. Shame as I really like the shutter speed location. All the more praise to the OM-2.

4/25/2021 Watching a Fukushima Nuclear disaster documentary in an act of masochism, this time centering around the evacuees. The director travels back to his hometown, one of the surrounding areas that was evacuated following the earthquake. The population of Namie went from 20,000 to 1000 in the 10 years since the earthquake. Houses remain empty and the rolling hills are now marred with waste management facilities. The director grapples with the loss of his furusato, the stigma for evacuees of returning to somewhere that was irradiated, the financial implications of turning down aid, the stagnation since the early stages of the disaster. Above all he seems to want to confront his own alienation from his hometown. He lives in Tokyo with his family, working at a televion studio. He's an outsider now, just like the evacuees that opted not to move back to Namie.

It's just plain awful. Listening to schoolkids recall being bullied for being evacuees, called "tainted" or freeloaders by adults. While the silence hangs in the air you think to yourself how to play conversational catch-ball if you were in the filmmaker's shoes, throwing in some humor or dishing out paper-thin words of encouragement to try and unravel the heavy atmosphere. But I can't think of any. No words to offer. Nothing.

4/26/2021 The glass camera cover on my LG V20 shattered, it's finally showing its age. I have zero intention in replacing this phone and have been considering buying a backup.

4/27/2021 mmmmmmmmm eyueballs racing back and forth they're nimble. oh my god the people in my guestbook are so nice I can't even fathom what it's like to be part of someone's life like this. I made some soup with komatsuna mmmmmmit was good oh yeah

trying to ward off my demons with liquid fuel, spicy water. smells like a home imrpovement store, feels like a throat full of gravel. lucidity suckssssss

5/3/2021 # came by the apt. Mel's FE7's playthrough in the background, takes me back to coming home from high school. Resized the images on om2n.html so it doesn't take a bajillion years to load, still haven't done the captions. Lubricated the sewing machine for the first time. I've never had a machine that was this carefree. I've broken 1 needle and that's it. No bind-ups, no trouble with steel bobbins or thread tension. Dyed some linen with red onion skins. I was going for "tissue after a bloody nose" but grey turned into grey. Bought some more linen/rayon. ok price but the brown was just right.

I have always remembered something from the documentary that was said, almost in passing. A mention that Shackleton's mother had banned fairy tales from the home when he was growing up. She believed that the tropes reproduced in those stories - of perfect love, happily ever after - ruined the lives of young, impressionable readers who would then spend eternity searching for that idyllic, unattainable state.

I need to take a break from neocities. This site is a transparent reflection of my existence and my thoughts, the hesitation to write makes it feel like I'm out of "me."

I think this time around my situation is quite simple. There's no ambiguity to it, just a simple fact that I haven't resolved yet.

4/9/2021 My material transgression came in the mail. Instead of a bubblewrap bundle a rectangular leather bag showed up, not an uncommon sight for a hobby chasing spectres. The touch of previous owners is all over these things, of social security numbers and addresses hastily engraved on bottomplates. My beloved OM-4T has heavy wear patterns on the tripod mount, who knows where it's been and what it's seen. You see the same in military surplus, I've found breadcrumbs in Serbian rucksacks and cheesecracker wrappers in jacket pockets. Inside the bag was a frankly unneccesary speedlite and the Nikon F2. After fingerblasting the camera my attention turned to the bag. It was worn in the corners and undeniably thirsty for some lexol but everything was intact. It was made by Masumi, a small-scale leatherwork company specializing in camera bags. A google search turns up blog posts in Japanese by geriatric Ahabs reminiscing about their unrequited material lust, their whales.

Speaking of cameras I sold an AF-10 to a Chuo uni student a year ago. I had 2 and I sold it for $10 thinking someone else would enjoy it more than I would. Said it was his first time shooting film and I wished him well. Now he's a graduate student, his profile says he's looking for more photographer friends, and his main camera is a Nikon FM2/T.

4/10/2021 Finally got rid of the creamcheese container that held all my tools, found a metal pan at the 100 yen shop. Looks like it could catch a mouthful of puss by the operating theatre. Still need to replace the lamp on my sewing machine.

fuck me that's a good photo. I went grocery shopping and these 3 kids were slumped over a Switch in the middle of the street, not quite sitting or standing. They weren't that young maybe 9 or 10, the age when unhindered engrossment usually gets dampened by the embarrassment of playing on the ground. Both my hands were full so I couldn't take a picture, still kicking myself for that one. This blog occasionally posts rare cameras slung around customers' necks and you get the general sense of what the owner defines as a true hobbyist.

3/20/2021 Went off to Harajuku, my first visit to Tokyo in a year. I live 15 minutes from Tokyo. We wandered around Meiji Shrine and the main street for a bit. Revisiting the city for the first time in a year was like being struck in the head. What a difference from my sleepy suburban town. Which I knew and expected, I just didn't expect the difference to be so jarring after a bit of lockdown. Everyone is dressed to kill. Ribbon Obi kimonos, oversized Yohji blazers, pastel goth coords. Anyone over 40 is as rare as english fluency. As far as cameras I saw an M3, Df, X100, and half a dozen DSLRs.

Our main aim was the Kasamatsu Shiro exhibit, tucked away in a little brown brick 3-story museum (including the basement). Here's the thing. I enjoyed it, but I was surpised at just how bold the lines were when peering into the glass displays. It comes together in a hegemonic harmony once you're a meter out but I came away from the exhibit with a completely new sensation, always welcome as little life lessons, but probably to a detriment to earnestly enjoy the exhibit. It's hard-pressed to say my appreciation for Kasamatsu's art has grown. Or maybe woodblock as a whole.

We went to a Gyutan place and there was a pair of girls by the next booth, transitioning from a relentless staccato of chatter to silence. It's almost as if hunger was their only collective middleground, they become strangers the moment insulin was coursing through their veins.

3/21/2021 Overseas Olympics spectators have been banned, thank god. By current estimates new daily cases are expected to each 1300 again by May. I also saw some "Please wear masks before entering" signs written in English only, presumably for the Russian tourists (I hope)

The internet's favorite pair of conjoined twins Rhett and Link did a podcast a while back talking about their evolving relationship with Evangelical Christianity. It's an interesting look at someone's separation from religion because it's chock full of latent assumptions. If you're raised in Cleveland or London you probably assume that all rivers are festering streams that turn flammable on a whim. If you're evangelical it's impossible to envision a worldview without god at its center. And those topics are what they present, like trying to shake off judgement when meeting people or imagining their family role that's not the christian patriarch with all the answers. How those previous assumptions about the world and their place within it gets fundamentally uprooted by losing faith. It's interesting to see how people struggle. It's a useful assumption that, to assume that anyone, no matter how two-dimensional they like to present themselves is dealing with something. The issue for me is that it's always been a hazy assumption. This podcasts lays it out, listing specific dilemmas that I never would've thought of.

3/22/2021 Finished Admissions . Wow. It's almost uncomfortably intimate, dodging any sort of camp by the writing being paced exceptionally well. Marsh deals with the filial reverence for his father, the guilt of making mistakes during surgery, his conclusions on dying with dignity, the book is a stream of consciousness from a man who has had lots of time to reflect. And there's constant reminders that the narrator is as falliable and vulnerable as the patients he treats. Trivia about later life outcomes adorns anecdotes about his own maladaptive habits and work-related anxieties. The adversity of poverty during his trips to Nepal and Ukraine training native surgeons is contrasted with the frank humanity of his patients. Marsh listens to people, he can see beyond the revolving door of a patient-doctor relationship.

After a while, Salima, with my help, worked out that we were looking at a huge brain tumour – technically a petroclival meningioma. I had once had a similar case in London who also had the very rare symptom of uncontrollable, pathological laughter. I had operated, and had left her in a persistent vegetative state. It was one of the larger headstones in my inner cemetery.

3/23/2021 Off to Ueno for the Yoshida Hiroshi exhibit. It was surprisingly toiling going through all 3 floors. I'm a big fan and I've seen his art on India but I never knew he also traveled and painted scenes of the US, SE Asia, and China. To me his landscapes are defined by purple shadows, radiating sunlight during golden hour, and the contrast between the cold lines of traditional Shunga and the borderless fog and clouds that seem to hang over them.

There was a video showing the process of woodblock printing, delicately building layers of paint through repeated stampings. Yoshida is famous because of the greater range of color he used, up to 100 when the typical work is 6 to 10. His work is really stunning, in-person or not, and his delicate lines betrays your expectations of a pressed woodblock print. Glad I got to see Kameido Bridge and Rapids in-person but Iris Garden in Horikiri (right) wasn't on display, it's been my phone background for 5 years.

Ueno was nice, a solid session of rubbernecking around. To the Japanese it's a polished little dot on the map that projects the image of parks and museums. True to form there were great migrating colonies of schoolchildren in uniforms, probably making the most of an uncancelled graduation field trip. At Sensoji the women were again, dressed to kill. My French army boots were destroying my knees, I want to inject caulking silicone between my joints.

Handed off the Canon P to Hasegawa Seisakujo, a tiny little repair shop near Asakusa. It looked like a demonstration of how not to practice fire safety, stinking of Kerosene and glittered with wooden drawers. The repairman was a soft-spoken middle-aged man in a blue jinbei, his desk adorned with now-vintage hardware and a printer that screamed like an automatic embroidery machine. My heart skipped a beat when he touched the shutter curtain but I can only assume he knows more my internet-dredged wisdom. As always with the Canon P no promises in a happy ending but I'm hopeful. The two previous three shops I asked didn't take it. The repairman also recognized the 35SP around my neck.

3/24/2021 jerma's visceral cleanup stream oh my god talking about how veiny their hands are for like 7 minutes

Still playing FE Heroes, got Edelgard. God I want Eldigan to hammerthrow me into a river

Watching Meet the Natives, a Channel 4 show.

I got a very nice guestbook comment. It got me thinking exactly what kind of imagery I'm projecting through this website. Once in a while I go back to read articles and I'm pleasantly surprised yet uncertain about their presentation. Should a page of benign boot reviews really rub shoulders with me struggling with existentialism? I've considered multiple times to make this journal be the central focus of the site, scrapping or tucking away the others. The inability to revisit pages really gets to me, frozen little fragments of time where my thoughts happened to congeal together. Modifying or re-writing would betray my initial motivations and feelings. Stuck in a limbo. On the other hand I'm quite fond of my photos, yet they'll be inevitably be tied with a mathematical camera review. I feel like I'm not doing it justice. I guess like any author of any media it's hard to honestly assess your creations.

Tone is another issue. I love complaining about things. Anger is funny, it's the unruly sibling to passion. I find praise difficult. Not that it's impossible to slap together, I find it hard to slip in my "humor" when it's just a torrential stream of earnest eulogies.

3/25/2021 Got the OM-2 back after 5 months under someone else's care. She also gave me a photobook about cats, how nice. As always I'm struck at how good-looking the OM-2 is. I've been thinking lately about getting a photobook printed. In terms of photos my OM-2 and OM-4 pages are the most comprehensive, and they both symbolize two different periods of my time in Japan. The sharehouse, study abroad, then coronavirus and gran's.

2/22/2021 Read one of the worst articles in recent memory, a confessional about shopping addiction by Buzz Bissinger. Brilliantly written, it has a multi-dimensional unpleasantness about it that you can't quite distill in one word. Trawling through LACMA's online costume and textiles section. A zoot suit caught my eye even though I usually shun suits altogether. The drapey almost nipple-height pants are really something. all out of sewing ideasssssssssss

Mitsuboshi Colors' dry humor kills me.

2/23/2021 I made an account on spacehey, neo-myspace for zoomers who wil never own property. It's remarkably different from Neocities, with the majority of users slapping on their actual names and pictures in their profile. True to form there's plenty of bands and musicians. I have to say there's not much to do at the site current iteration. The HTML editor deliberately limits the use of certain tags and some profile elements like the "about me" are untouchable. Clearly there's a steady stream of new users but coming across them is a shot in the dark. Groups are apparently in the works and that should really kickstart things with fanpages and such. looking forward to it.

2/25/2021 Shikimori-san really is wonderful, reading through it brings a tightness in the chest like the preamble to a stroke. Despite being a saucy romance manga the author's latent idealism doesn't materialize in characters made sexy through mystique, of pants-wetting one-liners and grand gestures. All the characters are decidedly frank in presentation, romance isn't portrayed as a hazy mysterious journey but of a simple mutual attraction. It reminds me of 14sai no Koi, one of my all-time favorites.

2/26/2021 Bought 2m of linen on m*rcari, would've been double if I was in the US. Toying with the idea of making an oversized blazer. Never made something with lapels but I'm in a rut. Might as well try something novel. I think I am continually afraid of failure, wasting fabric or being left with something I'm not 100% satisfied with. Which is a strange mindset as you can recycle fabric multiple times and the most heistant-inducing garments and fabrics have turned out to me the most gratifing.

Finished Both Flesh and Not . I feel like I should stray away from such neurotic essays about essaying. The moment you bring any self-awareness in the act of smashing words together you start to hesitate. Am I elaborating my point well, is my tone too pretentious, am I coming across as too judgemental. I think it's also the reason why I've largely avoided fiction as well, you can't help but compare and weave doubts in your otherwise carefree creations.

I need to get off my ass and get things done again, with no end in sight this pandemic isn't an excuse for me to hibernate for 3 years. Lapses of furious lucidity and neuroticism intermissioned with cysts of apathy, of just floating around getting carried by the breeze. One of my persistent anxieties was for that to turn malignant, to have thinking about one's present condition be more overbearing than any of its fruits. Procrastinate a bit more. Handle it tomorrow. Let the problem fester.

I also need to sort through my relationship with "stuff." Finding a good deal is fun but the aftertaste is more analgous to harm reduction for me. There's a distinct undercurrent of guilt with any purchase. It makes me a responsible, measured consumer but I wonder how sustainable and sane this way of thinking is. Thanks dad.

2/27/2021 A seller's profile avatar was from a children's book I've forgotten about. It was about a anarcho-primitivist commune of sentient legumes who use their collective labor to make a bed. Finished Vodka Politics by Mark Lawrence Schrad, only took me like 4 months.

3/2/2021 Staying hydrated. I'm less of a man and more a piss generator. Watching _ paint has been really significant for me, I appreciate online artists' work a lot more. It's a very personal ordeal isn't it, presenting something you've made. In a The Moth talk Adam Gopnik described cooking as presenting a part of yourself on a plate. You are there, vulnerable, flawed, open to judgement and rejection. Posting your art for others to see is the same. And few people are completely satisfied with their creations, transitioning images and visions in your mind to a physical expression. Words lost in translation. We are our own worst critics and there's no population more self-critical and deprecating than artists.

Purchased a g*mer keyboard, as always pre-owned. Time will tell if blue switches grow on me, my gut tells me that browns would fit me better. Typing up manifestos while in my bed is now a possibility. Watching Jerma playing Dead Rising and it seems like the gratuitous gore of the 00's were a passing fad, almost like a reaction against the media circus around violent videogames. There's only a handful of AAA non-horror games today that compare, gore is a footnote.

Went out looking for new music. It was a solid 3 years revisiting my favorite artists, the same sort of nameless heistation that holds me back from movies and TV. 泉まくら would rap with no breaks like she's got lung extensions. Similar to other artists like 降神 it sounds like a priest reciting pure land sutras. ラブリーサマーちゃん's tracks sound bubbly, at other times lonely. Subject matter is similar to 泉まくら, think pastel goth or big city emo. She whispers lyrics at you. Her newer stuff is a sort of lethargic rock that chugs along. Not for me. Started watching Back in Time for Dinner , a BBC show where families live according to a certain historical period. The dad is a really sweet guy.

I have little self-restraint for snacks. When I was a kid we rarely stocked junk food at home and it was always a rare treat. Ever since living by myself it was a constant battle to stop myself from inhaling bags of popcorn. Roasted vegetables and baked chickpeas were great for college standards but I made sure to always have something extra, a perenially open bag of potato chips. Ever since moving to japan and (mosty) cutting out eating meat my cravings have largely disappeared. I can fill myself up with food that won't congregate in my arteries. Even my newly-found infatuation with Japanese rum is accompanied with mormon-levels of moderation.

[藤近小梅] 好きな子がめがねを忘れた/[すずゆき] ふたり明日もそれなりに/[雨隠ギド]ゆらゆらＱ/[住野よる×二駅ずい]か「」く「」し「」ご「」と「/[草香去来×灯まりも] 半助喰物帖

2/10/2021 These past 7 months of job applications made me think I was a year older than I actually am. I wonder how my relationship with clothing will change as I age. Transforming into an O3 in't particularly alluring.

Started reading ちちゃこい日記, a coming-of-life romance story. The snowy setting is rare and there's plenty of comfy potential. The tone of the whole thing is something I haven't gotten yet.

2/11/2021 Finished the buttpack, very happy with it. You carry a lot of shit in Japan. Most people walk and take trains, summers are boiling hot, and physical currency is still king. As a result your pockets are inundated with coins and rewards cards and sunscreen and water bottles and umbrellas and grocery bags. Tote bags and fannypacks are everywhere as a result. I wanted to carry groceries in a more conveient manner so I went with something around the waist. Doesn't get hot like a backpack, easy to throw things in.

Finished One Soldier's War. Predictably a punishing read from the hazing to the shooty tooty and all that. The first half is like a full-length novel about Harry Potter's downtrodden life prior to discovering his inherited royal blood and latent Übermensch talent. The book is remarkably well-written, the translation even getting terminology correct like taxiing aircraft or backblast. The physical descriptions about terror or anticipation reminded me a bit of old english literature where people would break into a fever from shock alone. The disparity in value systems between war and normal life is again present, the shopping cart scene in The Hurt Locker.

2/12/2021 There have been many links drawn between the marriage of rural america and prepping. A touch of religious doomsday doctrine, widespread economic decay under global capitalism, and paranoid libertarianism all point to people who have been left behind under globalization, preferring to fantasize about the end of the earth than any meaningful alternative. Scenarios where their agency is unquestioned, the conflict of living and dying is more more explicit than the slow economic withering of their rural town. Sure a world without other people would be exciting. Urban exploration every day, stealing things that would've never belonged to you, gleefully entering places because you couldn't, like a child on a chair reaching into an adult-height cupboard. No more commuting, wasted weekends, or after-work gatherings. All these sentiments are incapsulated in media, people growing virtual plants for no reason in Fallout or making their neighborhood in the Sims.

But in 2020 the apocalypse seemed a lot less desirable. I often joke that my life is directly tied to my hard drive: that our health is one. All the images, journals, and files contained within this metal box carries more meaning to me than it should. I can now say the same with other people. Yes people, the thousands of mechanical heads you used to see bobbing along in Ikebukuro, the kind that avoids your eyes on the sidewalk like they're magnetically incompatible, the black masses that approach the station every morning like hungry flies. I live for them, I live because of them. This epiphany didn't come after nervously watching the river swell on twitter during a hurricane or hunkering down for 6 months during a global outbreak. I'm not particularly concerned about my health, when it's time it's time. Instead it was the weekly runs to the store that suddenly shook me awake.

Every time I walk down my neighborhood I see the same views: the same grey buidlings, the same housewives on bikes, the same deliverymen, the same couples heading to the park. I'm transported back when I was visiting this country on holiday, dodging the tourist locations in favor of a back street or a placid neighborhood. I start to think about my life If I had lived here, the daily views, the grocery store routes, the secluded corners to take a deep breath. I wonder what the young couples' apartments look like, what interior arrangements they've acclimate themselves to. What kids are thinking as they walk home in uniforms, what concealed interests the anonymous salarymen look forward to, all these possibilities are racing through my mind as I head to the vegetable stand. These thoughts keep me sane because no matter how much I try, I can't excite myself into a frenzy indoors with trifling little hobbies or attention-grabbing TV shows. I need other people to stay well, especially in a scenario when meeting other people is discouraged.

And so can you imagine fantasizing for a solitary apocalypse? It just didn't make sense anymore. I don't live for just myself.

2/14/2021 Read Daily Life in the Middle Ages by Paul B. Newman. As an /r/askhistorians regular it's right up my alley, although rather generalist due to the broad topic. It offers a few typifing examples but more would've been nice. It does its best to dispell the grotty backwards image the post-roman empire period has carried with it. Most surprising was the use of grass carpets as even most castles had earth floors, as well as table manners/suggestions that were quite sensible.

There was a quite sobering thread on different countries' virus responses. The past year has been great advertising for repressive one-party governments.

2/15/2021 Reading Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia by Donald Raleigh.

I'm at a very odd place with my infatuation with clothes. I'm afraid of labeling anything "satiated" because hunger has always been neccessary for me to get motivated. I'm certainly happy with the clothes I've made. 2 years ago I said I was exicited for Japan's more extremem weather to shake up my wardrobe, and that rings true. A T-shirt and shorts would suffice year-round in California, and I found that impossibly boring. Yokohama is more temperate than I thought, and living somewhere mountainous and hellish like Kyoto would've probably induced more change. For now I can get away with wearing the same outfit year-round as long as I have scarves and inner layers ready. Wool is a material I haven't been able to explore fully yet. While I'm well-acquainted with linen, I'm under a dry spell when it comes to new ideas. I'd love to do some overlapping and doubled-breasted shirts but nothing concrete.

But what about purchasing clothes? Of course have a few Kapital outerwear that I've had by eyes on, but I always buckled at the prices even when used. I think that's for the best. They'll be an attainable yet distant desire. I'm still on the lookout for anoraks and parkas but that's even more of a vague search. The only real purchases I have done are used shirts and pants in the $10 price range to tailor and modify.

1/19/2021 Read Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town. As a proper ethnography it's a mindfuck of a read. Pharma companies dragging their hands over DEA proposals combatting illicit drug labs, ununionized meat workers doing meth to cover extra shifts after their pay was slashed by 60%, the author makes a very good case that its rise dovetails into and is an indicator of rural decay. But the writer isn't a sociologist, he's a writer. As an Iowan his illustrations of the rural landscape, the miasma that occupy the towns, the anxiety that fills their residents, all of it is beautifully laid out as written by an insider.

1/22/2021 I love showering but I hate to process leading up to it, the resignation of getting wet and cold afterwards. If humans didn't have any biological needs I'd spend all my time in the showers, my pruned flesh eventully withering away into nothing. You'd think we were derived from volcanic deep-sea lichen by how much we enjoy a slow bath, stewing in our own broth.

Read Working Stiff by Judy Melinek, a foresic pathologist's account of working at a New York coroner's office. Now this isn't a textbook like the last 2 about forensic anthroplogy I read, dry and distant in tone. Some non-academic books with rubbernecking titles really don't approach the subject matter with grace: many authors have intentions beyond Mary Roach's respectful curiosity. Thankfully Melinek's book straddles that line well. People are the fundamental focus and the author's charisma really seeps through the pages. From dealings with other pathologists to investigators and the families of the bereaved, she presents a sincere look into the human elements of her job. Despite the meat and potatoes being quite grim it doesn't feel like a heavy read.

Finished Watashi No Shounen , one of the few the manga series that elicits a fight-or-flight response. It opens as your typical cautionary tale about stranger danger but blossoms into a quite mature story about self-identity, parental obligations, etc. I won't hesitate to say the portrayal of relationships: romatic, familial, interpersonal, etc. is among the best I've seen. Everyone truly feels like a product of their environment, ruminating in their past actions without the overdone tropes of baggage and trauma. There are no self-destructive MC's or overt villans with well-traveled hands, the way the story is able to continuously challenge reader's assumptions about the characters is a testament to their depth.

1/23/2021 Finally reading American Psycho , everyone is endearingly repulsive. The conversations are so cryptic and heavy with pretext they might as well be sign language drawn on the pages. Also reading Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.

1/26/2021 looking seriously into a minolta XD. started writing the Nikon F review, might send it into 35mmc. Will be a few months in though, I got zero photos.

[あらた伊里]雨でも晴れでも/[三輪まこと]わるいあね/[高野ひと深]私の少年/[しでん]もいもいスイスイ/[真木蛍五]可愛いだけじゃない式守さん

I am reveling in this massive influx of romance manga for bottoms. Nagatoro, Takagisan, Shounen Sabotteko, Shikimorisan, not only is it well-needed reprieve from the sea of mid 2000's harems it actually adds more character to the usually faceless male cast. What a change from stories that shoot down any female depictions deviating from a sentient carton of eggs.

2/1/2021

A bit more writing on nostalgia, this time on artifical scarcity and the demands of adulthood. I find myself increasingly looking backwards when I'm bored. I've never been a terribly ambitious hunger for media, my massive backlog is evidence of that. But even then I've had this avoidance for anything new.

Desuchan is truly a portal back in time

2/7/2021 Jesus, a week already. Finished another hanten in vanilla fabric. Really happy with this one and it opens up outfits with more grey/white tones. Until now it's been browntown almost exclusively. Experimenting with pockets on another one. The buttpack is mostly done and the harness is on hold. Waiting for metal hardware in the post and some more 12oz cotton fabric.

For my physical existence I'd like to:

I really can't forecast anything for 2021, I have a completely blank slate. Cheru was churning out some ideas for their blog, the sort of introspection that is right up my alley. I'd like to write more but I don't want to force anything. I need to let it ferment into a fetid mass that's just too much to contain.

All in all, a pretty forgettable year.

1/5/2021 Didn't get it. I'm more surprised than anything else, but I guess that last session was that bad. Or was it the e-mail? my handwriting on the envelope? 12 hours in commuting, $50 in tickets, risking contracting the virus for a two-sentence rejection. I was thinking what I'd do with my gap year but I guess that got a lot longer. On new years I half-jokingly said 2020 was a shit-awful year and the family was a bit surprised. I didn't mean it then but its become a self-fulfilling prophecy, 2 days from conception to execution.

1/7/2021 I'm back. The apartment is dream-like in pacing. I can scarcely keep track of the time.

i can still vividly remember what the upstairs room used to smell like. Gran had a habit of obsessively throwing away anything, something that posed an issue for my mom's speaker combo. No doubt a great big material pogrom occured after grandad died. Journals, drafting papers, negatives.

After alpining the aggressively high japanese stairs you approach what used to be uncle's room, where he stayed until his graduation and after the first divorce. The upstairs room resembled a 70's American basement with veneer covering the walls and a floral-patterned ceiling. The sliding glass windows were voyeuristically big, but the room was always dark because of the sheet metal blinds. The hollow sounding floorboards were consistent with the rest of the arthritic house. Gran would joke that the fumes from the heater wouldn't kill her because of the panel gaps throughout the house. I remember that the desk drawers emmanted the smell of pencil lead and leaking battery acid, the legacy of grandad's bronze drafting compasses and iron needle files. Their contents were a mishmash of east and west, young and old, a reflection of my sporadic stays here.

1/11/2021 Found a blog after looking up shochus. the person i lent the om-2 reached out, said they've shot 2 rolls in a month and they're waiting to get their negatives back. Must've been a trip going from a half-frame 35mm EE2 to a 50mm SLR. Read a touch of manga.

[おかざきさと乃]異邦のオズワルド /[赤城あさひと]少年、ちょっとサボってこ？/[もちオーレ×majoccoid]イケメン女と箱入り娘/[フライ×竹岡 葉月]今日、小柴葵に会えたら。/[蝉川夏哉×碓井ツカサ]異世界居酒屋｢げん｣/[まにお]きたない君がいちばんかわいい

The Mitsuwa in Torrance apparently closed last year. I'll remember it fondly, I can still remember the trips after Japanese school on the weekends, buying groceries and coming home just in time to watch 黄金伝説 or あいのり. Watched a dream about the old house, the one that got foreclosed. I was laying down on the brown carpet in my room at the corner looking up at the paper-white ceiling painted with by the two windows. The floor was staggered like a library's carpet-lined steps. It was a nice dream, it was unequivocally happy. When i woke up the sun was beaming into the apartment and I was sweating even with the sheets loosely around me. The old house was representative of a lot, but I hesitate to firmly classify it as a positive location. I remember spending my time prior to owning a computer, blissfully ignorant. I remember watching Japanese TV beated from giant CRT's on foggy mornings while mom made breakfast. I'm amazed at how the isolation of suburbia didn't get to me back then.

1/15/2021 Struggling to decide what to shoot next. It takes me about 2 months to finish a roll if there's no family trips or special events. Surprised the Super G came out so well, Super G Plus was discontinued in 1998 so it was even older. Currently in the freezer I have:

Terrified to do anything with the undated Provia. Slide film just stops recording images once its off. Eventually settled on the Super 400, at the newest it probably expired around 2010. Threw it into the Nikon F just to try it out. Still waiting on my lab to re-open so I can develop the 5 rolls I have accumulated. Most excited for the Kodak Gold I found loaded in the 35DC, might be able to date the Provia by how it turns out. Remembered the library book I read 7+ years ago, Bone voyage: a journey in forensic anthropology . Read Case Studies in Forensic Anthropology - Bonified Skeletons.

1/17/2021 Got the 720ml bottle of_. I usually dislike spending money on consumables but zero regrets. Read Human Identification - Case Studies in Forensic Anthropology. Watching the four-part NHK documentary on Hayao Miyazaki. Part 1 goes over the making on Ponyo from 2006 onwards. The director is grumpy, brilliant, and insecure. It was remarkable to hear how the success of Totoro became a nightmare for Miyazaki, being the one project he could never exceed. These voyeuristic looks into someone else's creative process gets me excited, motivated. Obsessions get things done.

1/18/2021 2 rolls of Venus 400 got here, straight to the freezer. Read An Oral History of the Portuguese Colonial War a thorough ethnography of Portuguese veterans some 40 odd years after. Reminded me of post-war Japanese discourse about the perpetrator-victim binary. Fresh conscripts instantly disillusioned with empire-building after getting off their ships, conflicting feelings about enjoying and hating the war, understanding the insurgents' cause yet fighting out of neccesity. The permeating shame about being a disposable number to a dictatorship, yet not being accepted as a victim of war by their communities is a really interesting dynamic that I can't really think of any parallels to.