George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
16d ago
Men will bitch about their wives, but these same men would be eating a take-out sandwich over the sink without them.
I don't know, sure, some wives certainly make some men miserable. Any man with children (except in very rare circumstances) will say it's easier to have a wife.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
24d ago
I'm for the dual-pricing system in Japan-- one for Japanese (or local residents) and a different, higher price for tourists, who are almost always disruptive and are seemingly everywhere in Osaka now. This could be charged to me unless I initiated some negotiating tactic, which would itself be disruptive.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I have some life advice that will work wonders for you, perhaps phrased poorly by me, but its essence has been passed from father to adolescent son for generations, to excellent effect: Stop being lazy, and grab the goddam reins. Because no one else is going to.
I say that, but it actually seems to me that you do a lot, and are not one of the perpetually unmotivated. Your substack is active, and mine has only one lonely post, so you're way ahead of me there. You mod here. You're a friggin' doctor.
Gym time will ultimately make you feel good. I am sure there is a physiological reason and I am equally sure that you know what this reason is probably better than I do, but perhaps haven't reached that point of that good feeling, and you perhaps doubt that it is a point you will likely reach.
Have you read the studies suggesting there could be a relationship between macular degeneration and regular use of semaglutide? Admittedly there are many caveats by the authors (admirably so) regarding the design of the study and how it was not designed to establish causality. But still. How are the peepers?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
What's with beards these days? I feel like beards came back hard over the last 10-15 years.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
It's here. Do not have high expectations.
As for the important part, the banana bread: All you need is one perhaps over ripe banana. Also flour, sugar (brown or granulated white), an egg, some vanilla essence, butter, baking powder or soda or both, an oven, and a thing to hold it in that is bread-shaped. Throw in some chocolate chips. It's good. All sorts of quality ways to make it. I have to watch my potassium due to dubious kidneys, but I recommend making it and eating it. Maybe in the winter when it's cooler. With some coffee. Invite your latest complication over and while chatting, make that bread and serve it. Then the sweet sweet romance. Or something.
My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.
I take all your points. I was drinking cognac when I wrote my previous reply, which is itself pretty pretentious but I want a new thing and I think a cognac before bed is it. But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
dubai portapotty slattern
(adds to motteword list)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
If memory serves your particular experience may not mirror that of the usual heterosexual dude.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
26d ago
This second one? Not. Fun.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
there is no future for me
This sounds foreboding and if I were less American I wouldn't ask you about it, but I am still rather very American and often poorly mannered, so what do you mean by this?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I haven't seen any of those except the first few episodes of Breaking Bad.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20d ago
This is not at all unbelievable to me, though it mounts, frames, and hangs the idea that the modern era is as corrupt and depraved as any that has come before it, just in different ways. I wonder how common it is.
Anecdotally I know at least one extremely (to me at least) physically attractive girl (a dancer) who has had similar offers (though not from Arabs, or not to my knowledge) but has refused them (so far.) Once her currency as a burlesque "star" begins to go down as her age goes up, I wonder how it will all play out. She's a lovely person, actually, in her way. At one point in my life I would have been quite taken with her. I suspect large swaths of girls in Japan at least would be reluctant to be flown to wherever simply because of the language barrier. Very wealthy men in Japan aren't as desperate for sex as someone in a more sexually repressed culture such as those in the mid-East, but I suppose they could be training their kept-women up to Tokyo.
Tangentially related, but have you or anyone else heard the term "misyar marriage"? I hit the trending button and possibly because I am in Asia I was bombarded by a lot of tweets in Arabic. Because why not I had them translated by my phone, and they were mostly masked women advertising themselves for these arrangements.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
21d ago
Two points
I tried not to be overly aggressive
and
I probably let her get it in a little deeper before we started than I would have let a man.
seem to be illustrative here. Now I know nothing about BJJ and I expect I'd be out squatted by Mrs. 5hr. But in my experience, at least in cases where there is clearly a size difference (as you describe), the woman gets the advantage from the tenderheartedness (for lack of a better term) on the part of the man. There's no way around that I think unless you just turn that off (which I don't know how to do short of rage, which is unhelpful). Closing your eyes is probably instructive in a sort of Obi Wan way, but I suspect hobbles you as you lose an important sense. Interesting though.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
26d ago
During COVID I had my hair cut really short, like a buzz cutt even in front, just because. I thought it was cool enough but then looking at pictures of the cool guy buzz cuts it seemed my own buzz cut was considerably higher up the forehead. I proceeded to have a moment where I was sure I was beginning the downturn and my hairline was receding at an accelerated pace. Began growing it out a bit. Now I find I still have a pretty full head of hair, even in front, but I probably just have always had a fairly high hairline. Old photos suggest this is true.
Hair is weird for men. You can lose the beer gut, you can build your arms and legs and abs. But you can't diet or exercise yourself more hair.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7d ago
Or you could just attempt The Hock, I guess?
Chuckled. Anyone have updates on Skookum? I feel a lot of time has passed. If he were going to Hock it now is prime Hock time.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23d ago
I'm sure you've seen the recent stories about tourists being squirted with water guns in Barcelona. As I was reading that story I could understand the locals' frustration (though were I to go to Spain again I would certainly be the one getting squirted).
The downturn of the yen, the very modern era attraction of live streaming from an exotic locale, the now-happening Osaka Expo, and perhaps a general interest in Japan fueled by anime/manga and Shogun and whatever else, have combined into a perfect storm where currently large areas of Osaka are bereft of Japanese people, though they are still full of people. At an outdoor bar by the river in Namba recently (I know, what did I expect?) the bartender didn't understand my Japanese (he was from Vietnam.) The shopping arcades are thronged with tourists. At least in such places one can adopt a sense of free-for-all and just push through. My commute, however, takes me through a hub on the way to an international airport, so the subway cars are routinely filled with giant suitcases rolling on casters and you see a lot of behavior that is notably non-Japqnese.
Yesterday at 5:50 am three British travelers were so loud on the train (just having a good time, but annoyingly so) that I could see the Japanese passengers were disturbed (though the British group probably had no idea they were causing any disturbance...maybe). A Thai woman was speaking extremely loudly into her phone while standing in a crowded, moving subway car. One group of New Zealand kids on some school tour made a crack about my suit (which I heard and then began to discuss with them).
Most behavior is very benign. Probably even just reading my descriptions of what I've seen as faux pas seems absurd, as if I am fretting over the most insignificant nothings in a world where bombs are falling. And this is true of course. But it reminds me how Japanese people probably regularly expect me to behave like an unschooled savage most of the time (and honestly, because I am always learning new Japanese I realize I probably screw up a lot still.)
The kicker is that generally no Japanese will ever say a word about this. The very first rule of 和 is that you don't talk about 和. I have been intending to write an effortpost about this but life keeps getting in the way.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
23d ago
Kyoto during COVID and just after was as it should probably best be experienced. Only Japanese, no tourists whatsoever. It is currently a kind of hellhole.
What makes you trust the stress score rather than your own feeling? I sense a loop here, as if you are feeling stressed not from stress, but from this score. While ironic, this is the very nature of so-called biofeedback. Just a thought.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
29d ago
Thank you for the response. Just to press the point, is the worst that would happen to a hypothetical child that he or she would end up like you? Is that so bad?
Thank you for the response. Just to press the point, is the worst that would happen to a hypothetical child that he or she would end up like you? Is that so bad?
Posted in the wrong place.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
Interesting. My own parents' home, the home of my birth, was the only house in a three block radius not damaged or destroyed by those tornadoes. I remember the photos from my dad. Houses left and right had been obliterated. Trees--the forest surrounding our house--had fallen like pick-up sticks in angles all around the house--but the house still stood. When I visited months later, the shade trees of my youth were all gone and our front and back yards were getting the sunlight of a golf course. I remember people really admiring James Spann (weather man on the NBC channel). It certainly gave the town a facelift.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
This sounds similar to the armchair "war filter" theory that current day eastern european women are mostly attractive due to the fact that so many men were slaughtered in the 20th century that those who remained could choose only the most attractive as mates. I'm not sure evolution works that fast.
As @ZanarkandAbesFan suggests, there may not be a clear consensus on whether the median European (white?) woman is more attractive on the whole (and I'll use your phenotype term, meaning basically clear skin, facial symmetry, good straight teeth, healthy hair, etc but correct me if you mean something else) than her counterparts in other ethnicities. I assume we're talking about women of a certain age range?
It's the 5th here but enjoy the 4th.
We usually do barbecue or mashed potatoes or black-eyed peas or something close to my roots, and hang the US flag out. This year the boys were going to be at sports clubs and wifey was going to be late, so I detoured through Osaka and headed in instead of out, and went alone and caught the Mission Impossible film before it leaves theaters.
It's always odd going to a movie alone. For me at least. Sitting through previews I am reminded of the banality of Japanese films. I think some Japanese actors and actresses are actually capable of amazing range, but most Japanese directors are hamfisted hacks.
Cruise had recorded a message for the Japanese audience in preview. He has a massively loyal following here, though obviously he's not as young and current as he used to be (I can relate).I came up watching his movies (he is only a few years older than I) and he's always reminded me of my best friend back home.
Watching the film I was, as usual, floored by his stunt skills. I've enjoyed the whole franchise (except MI:2, which remains for me unwatchable) and felt this ended it well. The plot itself took what had been caricature-like of AI in the immediate prequel and dialed the absurdity up to 11. But I didn't mind turning off my brain for that. It was a welcome relief to not have to ask myself how realistic the plot might be (answer: not) in our current AI-ubiquitous age.
I finished and walked out into the crowds in Shinsaibashi, mostly Chinese or Korean or other Asians, a few European couples or families, maybe some Americans with tattoos and blue hair. No one seemed to take any notice of me whatsoever. I took the elevator down with a dozen Chinese and on 1F wended my way through short shorts and miniskirts out into a warm wave of humid air and trees done up in purple LED lights lining Midosiji boulevard. I walked. Stayed on the surface and street briefly, then descended again into the underground, walked past more Chinese pulling roller bags, past Starbucks where inside the lonely hearts read at individual tables their little paperback books with plain paper slip covers to keep the title anonymous. Walked the walking escalator through to the Yotsubashi line. So many people staring at phones, or holding out their phones to selfie themselves, or live stream--I imagine I will be digitally removed as a background figure from many photos.
Walk more, walk through the subway turnstile that doesn't turn, down another escalator, wait, wait, the slightly overweight American girls in very tight clothing drag their luggage past. Soon I'm on a subway. There's a pretty blonde Japanese girl showing her midriff wearing these striped socks pulled to her knees She taps the pads of her fingers on her phone, long green fingernails on her index, middle and ring fingers. On her bag is a plastic tab with the black and white face of what's probably a boyfriend --he looks like he belongs on a wanted poster. Across from her through the thick of other riders is a beautiful young woman stepped out of a different movie, wearing a very nice dress you'd expect Audrey Hepburn would have approved of. But then we're near Kitashinchi.
An hour later and the surface train has thinned of people and it's just me and an old man who seems quite asleep. I disembark, take the up then down escalator, passing a high school couple who appear to be breaking up--he's looking at her, she's looking straight ahead. They're both very pretty.
The night is still warm and I forego the bus, which will not arrive for another ten minutes anyway, and walk the 20 minutes and 2225 steps home, where my family is finished eating and watching a music show where they all know this music that I've never heard sung by these groups I don't know. I eat some leftovers of steak rice I made the day before--no barbecue or peas, and I had forgotten to hang the flag in the morning -- and it's not nearly as good as I had felt it was when making it.
I'm asleep by 11. And now it's tomorrow. Hope your 4th there in your timeline and other dimension is more festive, but as equally peaceful as mine.
Edit: A fortuneteller predicted a massive earthquake today. So, hope that doesn't happen.
Edit 2: It didn't happen.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
17d ago
You are not wildly off, but this is an exaggeration. There are many private schools at the secondary level in Japan. They cost more and in general may have a higher academic standard. Their accreditation is only relevant in terms of what they may prepare students to expect in the college entrance exam. In some cases these private high schools have International Baccalaureate programs, etc. As for university, the highest ranked schools are public (Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, etc.) But any kid from any high school, public or private, who can pass the entrance exam can get in. This, as you say, is the purpose of cram schools at the high school level.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
21d ago
I'm only conversant in aikido, which is more like action yoga or something. In that, I've been thrown (usually into a subsequent roll) by guys who were very skilled, and also brutally slammed into the mat by guys who seemed to be channeling a different martial art. At my size (about 177cm, 73 kg) there are women who are both taller and heavier (fewer in Japan) of course. The very skilled akiidoka can move you (me) even if I resist, male or female. The regular rando is like an unbalanced sack of oranges. Reading your updates makes me want to try BJJ though the prospect of abject humiliation is always mildly daunting.
Riddle me this, Doc Wonder: If you want to keep trim and build muscle, why rely on Ozempic and why not eat clean or at least eat something besides junk food 90% of the time?
Use the bananas for banana bread.
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