Japanese TV Antics

Japanese TV can be very strange at times. While it brings me beloved dramas and animes, I sometimes come across really, really weird stuff. I first came across this "Hard Gay" character in a TV special for the Hana Yori Dango drama last fall. I found him quirky and kinda disturbing... I recently found out that he was a little more popular (well-known is a better word here) than I had imagined. From here on, I shall refer to him as HG so that this blog doesn't get bombarded by unintended audience. =)

I was able to find quite a few videos of his various stunts and exploits, but few have been translated. Here are some of the more popular ones that have English subtitles. For the viewers that aren't familiar with Japanese media/pop culture, or even Asian media in general, you're going to find this weird. It is perhaps even slightly disturbing for those who are homophobic, or dislike watching people in tight leather clothing performing pelvis thrusts. Japanese TV obviously have less censorship than American TV. It makes for great entertainment. =)

On a related note, while there is no nudity, I'm not sure if these videos are safe for work. You'll need Flash-enabled browser to view these videos.

HG Yahoo Japan Special -- I don't know how he ever got permission to do this on national TV. Yahoo PR must be crying over this.

HG Father's Day Special -- Creatively encouraging the younger generation to appreciate fathers.

HG Ramen Special -- Helping out a ramen shop in distress. Can't agree with the method, but gotta love the effort.

For those who are fluent in Japanese, you can find many more video clips on Google Video. Most of those clips aren't subtitled, so some understanding of the language is required; but then you also don't really need to understand anything to watch this guy run around town shocking everyone he comes across.

Fantasy Basketball

I guess I was feeling bored or something, but I somehow signed up for 4 fantasy basketball leagues on Yahoo last fall. I didn't spend as much time on them as I did last year, but I still managed pretty well.

It's the day before the league ended, and my teams are ranked 1, 1, 1, 3. Not too shabby at all! I don't think this is going to last though, since one of the 1st place teams is in a really tight race.

We'll see tomorrow when all the scores update and I get the final results. =)

Cameras

After 4 years of service, I'm about ready to say good-bye to my dinosaur-of-a-camera and send it off into retirement. For some strange reason, my Sony DSC-S70 cannot be charged up properly anymore. When I plug in the charger, the number of minutes left in the battery refuses to increase. The battery indicator tells me that there are only 22 minutes left (the last time I checked was 2 weeks ago), and when I turn the camera on, I'll just decrease its life further. Sigh

I think the problem is due to either the battery or the camera itself. Replacing or fixing either one will definitely cost over $60. Since it's such an old camera, and the newer cameras are so much better and cheaper these days, there's really no point in investing any more money into this beast. The last time I forked over money for this baby was back in 2002, when I bought a 128MB Memory Stick for a whopping $100. These days, you can't even fit one decently-encoded episode of anime or drama on 128MB.

I've been researching the camera market for quite some time, in search for the heir apparent. The imminent death of my camera has hastened that search in the recent weeks, but so far I haven't found "the one". For those of you who know me, you'll know that I like to think about all my options carefully. Even though it's good to be thorough, I do feel that I tend to think too much sometimes and over-analyze things. Instead of taking action, I'd just sit there and confuse myself some more with more analysis of the pros and cons of my options.

Anyway, I finally narrowed my choices down to the 3 cameras announced by Panasonic this year. Even though Panasonic isn't as established as your Sonys and Canons in the area of digital photography, they have improved upon their designs greatly in the recent years and now offer some serious contenders in the crowded market. I picked Panasonic because -- (1) they use Leica lenses (which are supposed to be very, very good); (2) they are very user-friendly with their menus and options; (3) they come with image-stabilization to help compensate for blurriness in darker settings. My final choices are:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01: This ultracompact is only 24mm thick -- about the size of a deck of cards. While its appearance isn't as stylish as the Casio Exilims or even the Canon Digital Elphs, it has a few features not found on the other ultracompact cameras. One, it has image stabilization. I hate it when my pictures turn out blurry because there wasn't enough lighting. With image stabilization, this will alleviate the blurriness a bit, so that the resulting pictures are more usable. The other killer feature on this camera is the awesome wide-angle zoom. Most other cameras have 38mm-114mm zoom range, but the 28mm-102mm range on this camera will allow for the user to fit more of the scene into the frame -- useful for landscape and group shots. This is basically your typical compact point-and-shoot. The current street price is about $330.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7: With 12x optical zoom (38mm-432mm), this ain't your mama's camera. The FZ7 offers the full range of automatic and manual controls over most aspects of picture-taking. If you don't know what you're doing, the camera will take good care of you; and if you do know what you're doing, this camera will help you take even better pictures. At about 310g, it's still 1/4 lighter than my current camera, and at around the same size. Plus, I think it looks sweet. The current street price is about $330.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1: This camera is like the boring middle sibling. It isn't quite small enough to fix in my pocket, yet it's not nearly as big as the ultra-zoom cameras like the Panasonic FZ7 or the Canon S2IS. Its 10x zoom will put most ultracompacts and mid-size cameras to shame. Throw in the image stabilization that's standard on all of the recent Panasonic cameras, and you're looking at some nice, clear, zoomed-in shots of wildlife (or unsuspecting *cough* victims *cough* friends). While the zooming abilities in a 40ish mm-thick package is attactive, this camera lacks the manual controls offered by the FZ7. Still, it's one of the most anticipated cameras in the recent years due to its size and zooming abilities. The current street price is about $320.

Anyhoo, I'm darn proud of myself for being able to narrow down to these three choices. While I kinda want something small that I can put in my pocket and take with me everywhere, I also want something with good zooming capabilities that will allow me to take some awesome pictures. If I can't fit it in my pocket, then I might as well go all out and get something that can zoom, right? Or is it better to compromise and get something in-between? So many choices.... =(

Star Wars Spoof

For fans of Star Wars and vegetables, I present to you "Store Wars" (courtesy of Mel's blog)

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html (requires Flash)

Pop Music -> Formula -> APUSH

Okay, I know that people talk about all these pop songs conforming to the same old formula(s), but I never noticed how blatant this was until I heard Britney Spears' "Stronger" on the radio yesterday. At first I thought it was someone doing a cover of "Oops I Did It Again", but I didn't think the lyrics was the same. However, the structure of the song and the notes seemed eerily similar.

I confirmed it this morning after downloading the music. Well, the tempo of "Stronger" is a little faster, and both songs are in different keys, but if you listen to both songs, you'll notice that the melodic/rhythmic patterns and even the overall structure/style are very much similar. If I actually paid money for her CDs, then I would feel I've been scammed. Heck, as a fan of pop music (I know it's watered down, but still very catchy!), I feel scammed for having to put up with this crap of recycling your old music.

I went and looked up the credits for these two songs. Lo and behold, they're both by Max Martin, the Swedish pop-hit machine. No freaking wonder! It's like they took one song and altered the contents a bit to make it seem like there were two different songs. This reminds me of how we used to do some of our meaningless APUSH homework before, but that's just another aside.* =)

* Aside: Basically, we were made to outline each chapter in the textbook. Keep in mind that this was a history textbook, so it was really long and tedious. I found out that you can pretty much outline the first and last sentence of each section, and your outline would still make sense, but it was still a lot of work. After a while, some of us felt like it was just a waste of our time to do this busywork when we have tons of other more-relevant homework and activities to take care of. We pooled our resources and would divy up the sections amongst a few people, have each person outline his/her own sections in a very rough format, and then compile the final product. The thing is, each person still has to go through these rough drafts of the outline and tweak the wording/formatting/style. In the end, we each have seemingly different outlines and saved a lot of time from doing menial work. =) This is not entirely ethical, but there really was no point in doing the work. I learn more by writing down my own notes and outlines as I study, not by having to type up some fancy outline to turn in, and this was already proven by my test scores.

Life

Hahaha.. Saw this today. Just had to post it, since it's so true. And cute. =) 'Tis the year of change.

Diamonds

I came across an article (from 1982) some time back that provided a fairly detailed account of the rise of the De Beers group and how its successful marketing over the past 60-some years resulted in our current notion of "diamonds are forever". It was a really interesting read.

(Warning. Long articles!)

Have You Ever Tried To Sell A Diamond?
This is the article that I read originally.

A Diamond Invention
This is a mini-book with a TON of information, written by the same author as the article above. The article above is essentially a summary of this book. I came across this site while going through the Wikipedia.

Wikipedia entry on Diamonds

Wikipedia entry on De Beers

On Idiots That Kill Themselves

Now that I check the news on a somewhat regular basis, I've been noticing a lot of headlines dealing with some deranged lunatic popping up at some populated area and killing/injuring a number of people before taking his own life. There was the incident up in Washington a few weeks ago, and the other one in Pismo Beach the week before that. Let's not even get started with all the suicide bombings going on all over the place. I*cough*raq*cough**cough*.

Police: Seattle Gunman Meant to Kill Many
Denny's Restaurant Shooter Identified

Really... If someone wants to kill himself, I don't think I have any right to force him to do otherwise. It's his own life, and he should be able to do whatever he wants with it. Of course, aside from extreme medical cases where I think there *might* be a justifiable reason for doing so (and even then it could be highly debatable), I don't see why people have to resort to suicide. It's just the cheap way out. Really, if anything, they can make themselves more useful by doing volunteer work to help others if they have nothing else to live for.

And then there are the idiots that commit suicides AFTER some homicidal rampage. Take your own life because of whatever ideology/belief/religion you happen to follow, but don't drag innocent people into this. It takes more guts to own up to the issues and problems and try to fix them than to just put a bullet through one's head. That's just weak, man. You want to die? Fine, go die. But leave people out of this. Only a coward would open fire on an unsuspecting crowd, or to blow himself up in a busy public place. Want to get people's attention? Buy ads. Online, in the papers, on TV... wherever. Graffiti if you must. Scrawl your message in blood (your own of course). Streak in the Superbowl, and then kill yourself on national TV. And if your message must involve some sort of destruction, at least let the people evacuate so that only those who want to die are involved.

The Power of Prayer

One of the health-related headlines last week was about how some study showed that prayer doesn't really help with healing.

Link to article

Basically, they did a study on 1800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery. They were separated into three groups: (1) those who were told that they may or may not be prayed for, and were prayed for; (2) those who were told that they may or may not be prayed for, and were NOT prayed for; and (3) those who were told that they were prayed for, and were prayed for. The prayers were performed by three Christian groups. Afterwards, the patients from groups (1) and (2) had about 51-52% rate for post-surgical complications, while group (3) had 59% rate of complications.

I couldn't help but think that maybe they were praying to the wrong god? ;) Harhar... gotta flex my comedic muscles from time to time.

Anyway, this experiment is obviously flawed. They need to add the following cases as well:
- those who were told that they were not prayed for, and were not prayed for
- those who were told that they were not prayed for, and were prayed for
- those who were told that they were prayed for, and were not prayed for
- those who were not told that they were prayed for, but were prayed for
And, with these 7 cases, they need to test against the other major religions.

The authors of this study didn't think about this problem that critically. I think I shall pray for them tonight.