Archive for January, 2006

Don’t you wish that you had ever been part of something big?

Monday, January 30th, 2006

["Dreamland" is a club filled with American Marines,]
[civilians and south Vietnamese officers. The girls parade]
[around and get the crowd to buy raffle tickets:]
[the winner of the "beauty contest" will be the prize.]

[AMERICANS]
The heat is on in Saigon
The girls are hotter ‘n’ hell
One of these slits here will be Miss Saigon
God, the tension is high, not to mention the smell
The heat is on in Saigon
Is there a war going on?
Don’t ask, I ain’t gonna tell

[Two friends, CHRIS and JOHN, are among the Marines. JOHN is with one of the girls]

[ENGINEER]
Ah, Monsieur Chris! Monsieur John!
You’ve come to win Miss Saigon

[JOHN]
I gotta get my friend laid as a last souvenir

[CHRIS]
I love you, pal, but your bullshit
I’ve had up to here

[ENGINEER, CHRIS AND JOHN]
The heat is on in Saigon

[JOHN]
But ’til they tell us we’re gone
I’m gonna buy you a girl

[CHRIS]
You can buy me a beer

[The girls leave the men and move onto the stage]

[MIMI]
See my bikini, it’s just the right size

[YVETTE]
Don’t you enjoy how it rides up my thighs?
Look from behind, it’ll knock out your eyes

[YVONNE]
I’ll show you: my special trophy of war

[MIMI]
For a Marine, I’ll show more

[AMERICANS]
You won’t get up off the floor
The heat is on in Saigon
Don’t tell me I’m reassigned, all that chickenshit sucks
Tonight I’m out of my mind, not to mention ten bucks

[GIGI]
If I’m your pin-up, I’ll melt all your brass
Stuck on your wall, with a pin in my ass
If you get me, you will travel first class
I’ll show you, we will make magic, cheri

[ENGINEER]
You buy more tickets from me
The winner gets her for free

[CHRIS]
The meat is cheap in Saigon
I used to love getting stoned, waking up with some whore
I don’t know why I went dead, it’s not fun anymore

[KIM]
I’m seventeen, and I’m new here today
The village I come from seems so far away
All of the girls know much more what to say
But I know
I have a heart like the sea
A million dreams are in me

[CHRIS]
Good Jesus, John, who is she?

[AMERICANS (AND CROWD)]
The Cong is tight’ning the noose
Is it a week or a day or an hour that we got?
Tonight could be our last shot got to put it to use

[The GIRLS come off the stage and mingle with the men.]

[ALL, INCLUDING GIRLS]
Tonight I bet that you and I will get along
Forget about the threat, forget the Viet-Cong

[ALL MEN]
Mimi, Gigi, Yvette or Yvonne
Gonna buy me a beer, and elect Miss Saigon

[The ENGINEER holds the election by holding his hand over]
[each girl's head for applause. When KIM is judged, CHRIS]
[claps loudly, which makes her notice him.]

[ENGINEER]
Yvonne, Yvette, Mimi, Kim, Gigi

[GIGI wins]

[ENGINEER]
Attention, s’il vous plait!
By popular demand
Miss Gigi Van Tranh
Is elected Miss Saigon!

[The ENGINEER puts a cheap tiara on GIGI and a ribbon which says "Miss Saigon".]

[AMERICANS]
The heat is on in Saigon
And things are not going well
But still at midnight, the party goes on
A good-bye party in hell

[ENGINEER]
And now who wins this pussycat?

[The ENGINEER holds a bowl; GIGI picks up a ticket.]

[GIGI]
Number 66!

[It is one of the Marines. He cheers with his friends. The scene freezes.]

Server speed

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

I know it’s been slow. Pumped up the server a bit, so it should be a bit faster now.

Kicked it up to WP 2.0 while I was wasting hours messing around with fricking computers. Great.

Don’t you love it

Friday, January 20th, 2006

Don’t you love it when you happen to look down at your keyboard, and in doing so you notice that your hand is covered in blood from a wound you apparently gave it several minutes prior, but you don’t know when, where or how? And, as you look at it and register its existence, then and only then does it start to hurt?

I love that.

New TK Albums

Monday, January 16th, 2006

Bought 3 TK albums second-hand the other day, 3 for 1000¥. Just listening to them now. There’s still some to go, so the quest is not yet complete!

Favourite for now: Carol Part 1 from tk-trap. Strong shades of V2’s “Virginity”, especially in the ending, but in general a really good, epic song, as is TK’s speciality.

More to come as I acclimatise to the new material. It is my MISSION to collect every single song this man ever touched.

Lyrics in comments as usual. It’s even in english!

The new Honda Civic looks awesome

Monday, January 16th, 2006

Finally, I can feel like it’s 2006:
2006 Civic

Google Earth Mac

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

Nowhere near as good as the PC version, but at least it functions enough for me to update my “location” bookmark in the sidebar.

I’m now staying in Shimura San Chome (志村三丁目 ), about 20 minutes on foot (or 3 by bus) to kita-akabane railway station. Train access is not so good, but the bus access is brilliant (10 minutes to akabane, 30 to ikebukuro) so I just catch buses most of the time. I have to walk to the train station a lot anyway, though, as the supermarket there (Summit) closes at 1am, whereas the Life a block away from me closes at 10, the bastards!

If I get really desparate, I could walk to the 24-hour Life at kitaakabane, but it’s 25 minutes walk or so in these freezing temperatures.

On other mac-related issues, I’m using a modified 10.4.3 OSX for intel build full time now. Pretty much perfect, and I’ve only noticed one bug – mounted disk images occasionally do not unmount as expected, necessitating a restart to dismount fully. I can live with that. Typing this on an intel build of Firefox 1.5 (Safari does not work properly with wordpress) – the speed is great when you’re used to an 867MHz G4!

Jupiter

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

Wrote full english lyrics to the classic Holst theme from Jupiter. I’ll link the japanese version presently; I was reminded of its existence by seeing it on Kouhaku on New Year’s Eve.

Japanese adaptation – Jupiter by Hirahara Ayaka.

On another topic, the Song of the Month is “Twilight” by ELO. Hell, make it song of the year.

Lyrics in comments as usual.

New Year New Country

Sunday, January 1st, 2006

Finally in Japan for the alcohol-fuelled new year! Cold and windy in Tokyo, but still went to visit a local shrine at 2am as per the tradition. Paid 100¥ for my fortune – apparently it is good, but I doubt any of them are actually bad.