Sunday January 23 2005
I read `Hokkaido Highway Blues` by Will Ferguson over the last week or so.Going back and forward to work via train.I didnt find myself "laughing out loud in recognition".The author trots out every stereotype and chestnut in the book-literally.Towards the end I was trying to spot which tired cliche he'd drag out next um maybe it`ll be the pachinko parlor oh no its the xenophobic anti-American drunk businessman reading manga who fought in WW2 and wants to strike up a conversation using really bad English....yawn.
Maybe its because Ive been here the same length of time as Will-san.
Maybe its because it seems so unoriginal.
Maybe its because of his hypocritical attitude towards the locals generosity;on the one hand he decries their willingness to share yet on the other hand is quite willing to take full advantage of it....not so much a 'travel ferret` as a `travel rat`.
Maybe I could write something equally banal by merely thumbing through a travel guide(he mentions Lonely Planet) drop a few place names and invent a few one dimensional caricatures.
Maybe I could get Bill Bryson to call me 'gifted' too.'Gifted can to my mind include 'intellectually challenged'.
As for his so-called insights yeah they are deep"When you are pinned to the centre every journey is a circle" or even deeper,"One runs through ghosts in Japan and the past is always there.." wow
Random Thoughts
The new Secretary of Education in the States is a woman with the surname "Spellings".Somehow I cant see literacy rates rising.
Out of sheer boredom and a spasm of creativity I decorated another Japanese Tobacco Company cigarette vending machine.They are emblazoned with the stupid slogan "Taste Your Delight".With the aid of an indelible black marker this can be changed to the more honest "Taste Your Death".Its my personal program of revenge against a company that has bastardized an innocent Joni Mitchell song (among others) to coerce people to adopt cancer as a lifestyle.
"Your music collection is a little outdated"...sigh yes Im sorry I still play The Smiths and The Beatles and Godforbid the occasional Mozart on the basis that its not of this decade or century.
Can music age well or badly like wine or fashion?...now that Will Ferguson is an insight.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
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