Japan is weird part 760,825

My the chickens are coming home to roast: After years of me making fun of the Japanese for their weirdness, the very essence of what makes them so mockable -- their wacky and humiliating TV game shows -- are coming to the United States.

Now it is Americans who will be forced to negotiate obstacles courses dressed as bugs, attempt to eat marshmallows dangled from fishing lines as their face is forcibly restrained by bungee chords, and subject themselves to a "ball slapping machine" -- which does exactly what it sounds like it would do

Of course there will also be farting -- sometimes competitively -- and a fair share of indeterminate goo. If the Americanized versions can also replicate the samurai-like war cries of the host, and the spastic high-pitched squeals of the studio audience I will be very impressed indeed.

Two Japanese-style game shows are premiering on ABC tonight, and a third is scheduled for this fall.

Stuart Krasnow, a producer of one the new shows, believes the motivations are different for American and Japanese contestants.

Americans, Krasnow says, "are in it for the cash and prizes" while for the Japanese it's "true escapism."

In others words Americans will let you pummel their balls with a springy mechanical arm as long as you pay them enough, but the Japanese do it just because it feels right.

A-ha, I knew it! Japan is still weird.

Michael Jackson's dream is slowly coming true

Weird day today in racial classifications. First we learned of a leaked voice mail message in which Charlie Sheen viciously attacks his ex-wife Denise Richards with perhaps the two most controversial slurs in American English. The first is one John McCain allegedly likes to use when his wife points out his thinning hair, and the second is one generally not associated with those who look like Denise Richards.

In other news of racial confusion, we turn to the South African government, which was once so precise in their racial classifications that they ended up creating whole new races. But post-apartheid South Africa has decided that race isn't something that can be decided by a pencil through the hair, or even the color of a person's skin. In fact the standards have gotten so loose in Pretoria that they have now gone and officially declared Chinese people as black.

Which has led to "In South Africa Chinese is The New Black" headlines all over the Internet. I would have titled this post as such if I hadn't wasted today's "blank is the new blank" share of in my last post.

South Koreans beef with mad cow

Today in Seoul, 200,000 South Koreans took to the streets to protest their government's decision to resume imports of US beef. Or, for some perspective, that would be the equivalent of 1.2 million Americans flooding the mall in DC to protest our government's decision to resume the imports of Mexican nachos.

The ban on US beef was instituted four and a half years ago after the discovery of Mad Cow disease in a holstein on a Washington state farm. Ostensibly, Mad Cow is why the ban is still in place, but no American or American cow has been infected with Mad Cow (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopath) since. In fact, in the recorded history of the world, only 193 humans have ever contracted the deadly infection, and the overwhelming majority of the victims have been in England.

South Korea takes great pride in their own local cattle industry, and it is possible the protesters have beef nationalism on the mind as much as they do BSE. And it is also true the secretive manner in which South Korea's new government reworked a free trade agreement with the US has irked the Korean public.

In response to the protest South Korea's entire cabinet and Prime Minister have offered their resignation.

I can't help but thinking that none of this would have ever happened if the press had named the extremely rare Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy "woozy" or "drunken" cow disease.

The world is a funny place

Not only does this clip contain the kind of hopelessly stupid criminal antics you've come to expect from embedded videos on this space, but it allows you the opportunity to laugh at a foreigner who is laughing at foreigner as you laugh at the foreigner the foreigner is laughing at.

A whole new kind of monkey business

When you think public works employment programs you probably think building roads or damming up a river in Tennessee. Things are a little different in India, where improvements to the infrastructure will have to wait until the nation's growing monkey problem is addressed.

Because Hindus believe our furry cousins to be manifestations of the god Hanuman, monkeys are feed and coddled by the devout. But that hasn't been enough for the ungrateful beasts, who have organized into gangs which terrorize both the city and the countryside.

You may remember that couple months ago the Deputy Mayor of New Delhi fell to his death after being attacked by group of Rhesus macaques. What you may not know is, just this year, dozens of other Indians have been bullied and harassed by wilding primates.

Well Prem Kumar Dhumal, the chief minister of the northern Indian state of Himachel Pradesh, is all too familiar with this phenomena. And that's where the public works project comes in. His government will now pay the unemployed to sterilize the over-aggressive monkeys.

Critics of this plan call it "unscientific," and add if you think the monkeys are angry now, you've never seen simian fury after a half-assed castration attempt.

Sadly, this clip contains no karate

People are always complaining about Congress. It's all earmark this and Iraq that, but nobody ever focuses on the good. Like how well-behaved our members of congress are. I'm not suggesting the typical representative hasn't smoked Constitution-leaf cigars with an agripharmacco industry lobbyist or two. That goes without saying. But our Congress does excel in keeping their hands to themselves in the classic kindergarten sense. In other words they never get angry at their political rivals and throw down. It is a governance style born from the death of Alexander Hamilton. South Korea has yet to have their Alexander Hamilton.

Thai still got it

To update a story I reported on last year, Thailand remains the undisputed world champion of penis slashing. Consequently, Thailand's surgeons are also becoming the team to beat when it comes to penis re-attachment surgery.

Japan is weird part 1,987,592

The great number of posts I've done on how weird the Japaneses are sometimes gives me pause because I've never been to Japan or had a conversation with a full-blooded Japanese person -- so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge their national weirdness on these pages. I also worry that I could be unnaturally obsessed with Nipponese kookiness and that, perhaps, this obsession says more about me than having air sex contests or engaging in creative farting says about those peculiar Japs.

Then I see this on the website of the International Herald Tribune:
If you want to read the article, here it is. Suffice to say it is all about Japanese men being rexy and wearing girly clothes, while the chicks of Japan wear utilitarian outfits, drink a lot of beer and slap the scrawny men around if that's what it comes to. The article is authored by someone with a Japanese name, so it may even be true.

Thanks to the emailing readers of the IHT, I feel a whole lot better about singling out the Japanese for the unending source of inexplicable oddity that they continue to be.

Idle threat of the week

During America's industrial revolution we practically built entire cities from dangerous lead. Which is why it wasn't so surprising when we learned that many of rapidly industrializing China's exports contain the toxic malleable metal.

The news that the Chinese have been lacing bite-sized children's toys with GHB, aka "the date rape drug," has been a little harder swallow.

Although the method behind this seeming madness should become clear to the astute student of history. In the distant past empires (as China aspires to be) which had female shortages (as China does) would simply invade their neighbors and use brute force to steal away the most desirable women.

Because of a pesky little thing called modernity, literal rape and pillage is strictly off limits to the aspiring empire with a demographic hole to fill.

But what if there was another way? What if there was a way for a nation to get their surplus male population laid by combining the violence of ancient Rome with the more subtle but still battle tested techniques of today's frosted tipped, fake tanned club goer?

I think you can see where I am going with this. Fortunately (or unfortunately), despite all this talk of Chinese efficiency, something got supremely screwed up in central planning and China mistakenly tested the potency of their new weaponized exports on children in Australia and the United States.

Since a couple woozy Western five year olds equals a well-publicized international incident, the cat is now out of the bag on China's ultimate intention to drug neighboring countries such as Nepal and Vietnam and then sneak in to purloin their most child-bearingest females.

If China had kept the whole thing on their own continent they may have been able to again use their seductive marketplace to convince the other world powers to avert all eyes from this audicious plot. But because of their snafu we can no longer feign ignorance, and China's attempt to put a new spin on an old empire building technique has become the Idle Threat of the Week for November 5th through 11th.

It's all Australia all day on the JSB

This morning I posted on Australian Prime Ministerial candidate Kevin Rudd, who was caught on film eating his own earwax. I want to make clear that I'm not trying to single out Australian politicians as earwax eaters. I'm sure there are many American politicians with a similar taste for ear cheese. It's just, due to Americans coming from Puritans and Australians coming from felons, we don't have in this country a prison yard sense of openness, and are more likely to do our unsavory feasting shamefully behind closed doors.

Likewise, you would be a fool to even suggest that American politicians don't enjoy taking photographs of their penises -- I'd be willing to bet there is at least one member of Congress doing so right now. But, as of yet, none of these portraits have ended up all over the Internet. A fate which has befallen Andrew Quah, a now-former Australian parliamentary candidate.

Quah, a music teacher when he's not running for office or taking pictures of his penis, represented Sydney for the Christian values Family First Party. Which is why it is no surprise the photos were first spotted on a gay website. (Considering how susceptible and sensitive religiously conservative groups are to accusations of hypocritical behavior, you would think they would stay away from running male music teachers in elections. Maybe that's just me. . .)

Quah doesn't deny that the pictures are of him, but maintains the penises in question are not his, and have been nefariously photoshopped in.

A last ditch attempt to salvage his relationship with the Family First party? Maybe. But more likely his dick denial is in response to his new nickname, which is, in a parody of a popular Aussie television show, "Australia's Smallest Loser."

Sometimes parliamentarians get hungry

Last night I was minding my own business, checking my Yahoo! homepage, when I can across this unsettling link:
And no, sad is it is, I'm not referring to the passing of "Washoe."

The unsavory snacker is Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, who, until recently, was the heavy favorite to unseat three-term incumbent John Howard as Prime Minister when Australians go to the polls on November 24.

The video -- which is six years old -- reemerged on Youtube about two weeks ago. While Rudd is still favored to win, the race has tightened considerably since.

According to papers more likely to cover elections in Australia than the ones I typical read, no one is denying the ear wax video could be contributing to this trend.

Is an ear wax eater fit to rule the world's largest former penal colony? View the video and decide:

As for me, I'll leave it up to the Australians. I will note that here in America things turned rather quickly on supposed Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz once Youtube outed him as a comb licker. Meaning Rudd's fate may rest on whether Australians find ear wax eating more or less objectionable than comb licking. Not the best way to chose a leader. But not the worst either.

Japan is weird part 2304

It has always been suspected that the Japanese are, by human standards, highly unusual.

These suspicions have only been confirmed by the sudden ubiquity of video-sharing websites: Now we are all just a click away from witnessing the latest Japanese insanity concerning things such as competitive farting and air sex.

But has this all left us gullible to falling for exaggerations and misinterpretations of Japan's national bizarreness? I can't help thinking that might be the case when I read this article in The New York Times about Japan's new trend in wearable hiding places.

Here is an excerpt:

Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.

As if. The simple laws of physics prevent any item of woman's clothing from quickly morphing into a credible looking vending machine. The only chance such a disguise could possibly have of being successful is if the pursuant had poor vision, and the pursued found herself chased into an area containing vending machines that, for some reason, look like sheets painted to look like a vending machine. Given there is barely any street crime in Japan to begin with, this isn't a likely enough scenario for the article to make any sense.

Which is not to say I think the story was completely cooked up. I'm sure wearable hiding places are gaining popularity in Japan. Just not for personal safety. More likely there is a new craze in Japan in which people dress up like vending machines and simulate sex with each other. Or something else which would crack us up in a short Youtube clip, and allow us to ruminate upon how darn strange the Japanese are.

Today in the Spanish Armada

In the summer of 1588, England was able to hold off, with little loss of ship or man, an attack from the vaunted Spanish Armada. During the Armada's retreat home a good chunk of the fleet, having miscalculated their position, crashed disastrously into the coast of Ireland. Thus began England's rise and Spain's long national decline.

The Spanish Armada does still exist. A continuity fueled largely by the Spanish word for Navy more or less being Armada.

Well today was the biggest day the Spanish Armada has had in decades -- if not centuries -- as its warships engaged the Odyssey Explorer, a privately owned American treasure hunting ship.

Back in May, the Odyssey Explorer discovered 500 million dollars worth of sunken treasure. A booty which may partially belong to Democratic presidential candidate and humble country lawyer John Edwards.

The Spanish government has always suspected -- and the treasure hunters don't deny -- the silver coins are of Spanish origin. For that reason Spain claims the coins, although it is unclear what nation possessed them when the ship sank. Odyssey Maritime Exploration has contributed to this mystery by refusing to reveal the location of the find -- further enraging the Spanish government.

Spain was finally able to catch the Odyssey Explorer in Spanish waters, boarding the ship under the threat of deadly force. The ship was searched and the captain briefly detained, but there isn't a whole lot more the Spanish can do since, obviously, the coins weren't hidden in the ship. And, obviously, Spain can't inflict old-fashioned maritime justice onto the crew of an American owned vessel.

While it appears the Odyssey Explorer has effectively stood its ground against the once proud Spanish Armada, the treasure hunters should consider this: After England's glorious and seemingly painless victory in that fateful summer of 1588, most of its sailors ended up dying of typhus and dysentery.

Politician defeats Youtube

As a general rule, when a politician is filmed dropping 16 f-bombs and threatening multiple acts of violence onto folks in close proximity, it is not good for the career.

But in this clip New York City Councilman James Oddo charges into that lion's den and emerges unscathed. Oddo's ire was drawn by a Norwegian television interviewer who, in the spirit of Steven Colbert or Ali G, expressed surprise that African Americans were constitutionally permitted to run for president, before slandering Hillary Clinton by confusing the details of the famous Bill Clinton/Monica Lewisinky cigar encounter.

In a show of bipartisanship rare these days, Oddo, a Republican from Staten Island, mounts a volatile and colorful defense of the former first lady's honor.

While the councilman says he regrets his mother had to hear him use such language, political analysts seem to think this will only help his standing with the rest of his home constituency.

Which isn't to say the popular Norwegian comedy show didn't get exactly what it wanted. Oddo probably didn't teach Norway any new words, but he certainly showed the Scandinavian nation how to say them properly.

Soccer players are tough

If you've ever wondered whether the rub-some-dirt-in-it machismo of the American athlete is indicative of the type of personality that excels at competitive athletic endeavors, or is instead a social construct that should probably be over-analyzed and denounced at our finer institutions of learning, look no further than the foreign soccer player.

He is much easier to find these days, since his exploits have increasingly come to dominate the "most viewed" list on Youtube.

Sometimes these "highlights" are of the soccer goal -- that rarest of happenstance. And sometimes they depict a player writhing on the pitch for no discernible reason. The latter proving once and for all that if the world class athlete is not reared on a steady diet of Kirk Gibson and Willis Reed his psyche is no different from that of a spoilt attention-craving six-year old girl.

This video depicts both the former and the latter. Thereby allowing you to view, in slow motion and real time, the reaction of a soccer player who has suffered the double indignity of allowing the game winning goal and being tapped lightly.

Further proof that we are losing Europe

It's been a while since Europeans have involved themselves in that time honored tradition of procreation. And their attitude towards the nation state has also gone blase, with Belgians reacting to their country's increasing likelihood of extinction not by raging against the dying of the light, but by offering up their nation on Ebay -- like you would any old junk that has outlived its usefulness and is about to break anyway.

Still, whenever I worry Europe might just give it all up and become a continent of stateless, childless, carbon neutral, cave-dwelling bicyclists, I remember Europeans really love soccer. You have to really, really love soccer to actually watch it, right? And it stands to reason soccer is more exciting when played between nations and with younger people.

But what if Europeans stopped loving soccer? What if they took the lead of the Austrians, who are currently circulating a petition to request their national soccer team be removed from the prestigious European Championship. Austria qualified on account of hosting the event, but their team has been lousy lately, and the Austrians are worried the squad will embarrass their nation.

Wait a minute. Since when was soccer just about winning? I thought part of the fun was embarrassing your nation. Usually by jamming into stadiums so crowded and drunk that everyone is forced to pee on each other and directing nasty chants towards foreigners. Doesn't that all work best when your team is losing?

As they did with the birthing of children, are the overly-civilized Europeans losing their will to be proper soccer fans?

Because then I could see the whole thing crumbling. And it's not fair. We had a deal. They called us arrogant and stupid. We called them odorous and sexually questionable. Everybody had a good time.

So come on Europe. Put on your favorite "football" jersey and hit someone over the head with a bottle. It will keep you young and vibrant. If not for yourselves, do it for us.

What would be the point of even having an axis of weasels if it was made up Chile, Indonesia and Kenya?

Death Watch: Belgium

I was shocked and bothered when I saw that last week British magazine The Economist called on Belgium to "call it a day," and pull its own plug as a nation state. As someone who gets annoyed when foreign publications offer too much critical commentary on the internal affairs of the United States, I could relate to the outrage the country of 10 million must have felt after such an existential assault by such a respected, but foreign, magazine.

I think my favorite thing about Belgium is how, on the extraordinarily rare occasion the proper adjective to describe a person from Belgium was required (A Belgium or Belgiumesse doesn't roll off the tongue), I would quickly offer up the term as "Flemish" and sound cultured.

Apparently I was only about 58 percent as cultured as I thought because Belgium also has Walloons -- who are neither Flemish nor from the planet Tatooine. Rather they are French speakers who inhibit the south.

Ever since Belgium went to a federalist system in 1993, Wallonia has enjoyed a fairly high level of autonomy. Which seemed to suit everyone, as the Flanders and the Walloon have almost nothing in common culturally or linguistically.

Now it's been three months since the last general election, but disagreements between the two groups have prevented a new national government from forming, and there seems to be a growing consensus that this is for the best.

If Belgium were to leave this world, it will be remembered for its chocolates, its beer and its controversial businessman/king Leopold II, who once told imperial Europe, aging and going soft, that it's still OK to completely brutalize your colonial subjects.

Belgium will be best remembered here in the United States by the bump on the forehead of Jean-Claude Van Damme, the diminutive action hero and "mussels from Brussels" whose incessant kicking made improbable box office noise in 1990 and 1991.

As for the Economist's intrusion into Belgium's affairs. . . well it turns out England was pretty instrumental in creating Belgium in 1831, so to really stretch and rearrange that famous Pottery Barn analogy, it might actually be the responsibility of the English to tell Belgium it's time to swallow the old cyanide pill.

I guess it will be sad to see Belgium go, but, you know, not too sad. It's just Belgium.

This video is not in English

To most basketball fans Darko Milicic is a relative bust of a high first round draft pick and the guy who, during the Pistons' run to the 2004 NBA Championship, infected himself trying to pierce his ears and had to wear embarrassing bandages on both lobes as he cheered his team from the bench.

But there have alway been rumors of something far less ineffectual stirring beneath Darko's placid eyes.

No less than Rashad Wallace has hinted the Serbian national had killed many a man back in his European homeland.

Thus launched the legend of Darko the Gangster. Which was all sort of silly until yesterday when, between sips of Powerade, Darko Milicic threatened to murder the referees Milicic feels jobbed his Serbian national team during their FIBA loss to Greece and then rape their daughters. (And does so in his native tongue.)

A blogger quicker than me pointed out that any true blooded Serb would know, to maximize effect, you rape the daughter before murdering the referee. But I'm just going to chalk that up to a bad translation and give Darko the benefit of the doubt.

Come on, everybody roots for the bulls

The creeping predominance of fantasy sports has made rooting interests confusing. For example, if my favorite baseball team is going against a pitcher on my fantasy baseball team I have absolutely no clue who to pull for. Since karma hates indecision (and my brain activity is featured prominently in the design of the universe) this inevitably means the team with my fantasy pitcher will end up beating my favorite team 9 to 8 in 10 innings.

That is why I am such a fan of the running of the bulls. In this confusing modern world -- with its blurred lines between fantasy and reality, and good and evil, and plucky underdog and media manipulator-- it's reassuring to know there is a team I can always feel good about unabashedly rooting for.

Well my bulls had a great day yesterday, sending 13 runners to the hospital -- including seven by vicious goring. The key to the bulls' success was in their crafty decision to break pack mid-run. In the footage above, not only are there a few top notch gorings, but you can actually see the blood stains on the cobblestone streets of Pamplona.

Unfortunately the bulls are still working on a 12 year streak of not inflicting a fatal casualty. But with two days left in the festival, and three critical injuries hanging in the balance, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Badgers? Badgers!

It hasn't gone unnoticed that the parts of Iraq controlled by the British tend to be calmer than the American controlled sections. While the most ardent Anglophile would probably attribute this to English efficiency, and those not so fond of America would claim it was because of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, I think most experts agree this is because the native population of the British zone is such that sectarian strife is less likely.

What if there was another explanation for this discrepancy? And what if it involved badgers?

Not just any badger, but giant man-eating badgers with ill-tempered dispositions. Since I've been fortunate enough never to have come across such a horrifying beast, I will use the words of Basra housewife Suad Hassan, who was assaulted by the creature as she slept -- and displays, in her description of the attack's aftermath, a charming and versatile knowledge of the mammalian class of vertebrate:

My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer. It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey.

The residents of Basra seem to agree that the super badgers were released upon the city by the British military for the purpose of intimidation. And who wouldn't refrain from strapping an IED under a truck when faced with requital from such a talented chimera? Suddenly that Sunni over there -- the one whose lower jaw isn't articulated to his upper jaw in a manner which makes it virtually impossible to loosen his oral clasp once he hungrily bites down -- doesn't looks so bad.

Of course the British deny employing souped-up badger enforcers, and even got a military spokesman, a Major Mike Shearer, to declare: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

A likely story, indeed. The Brits, who have been in the colonization game for as long and hard as anyone, surely know that the badger, aside from the human and the polar bear, is the only animal known to attack without provocation. And, unlike the polar bear, the badger is compact and can be introduced into most climates. The badger's sinister burrowing skills alone are likely to strike fear and compliance into the hearts of any a superstitious third world populous.

It's just too bad our Pentagon is still throwing its time and money at a gay bomb.