Kid Ethnic: 103 Days At Sea: article

And I Am Now Officially On A Boat Trip Around the World · 31 December 09

Yes, I am working on a boat, a circumnavigating boat.

If you are unsure of what a boat looks like, do not worry. For even you will know that our boat is a boat. It is clearly marked as such:

The boat departed from Yokohama, and it is large, too large for my camera:

The ticket takes me from Yokohama, Japan, to Yokohama, Japan, by way of the Southern Hemisphere. Highlights include Namibia, Kenya, Tierra Del Fuego, Easter Island, and a ride along the coast of Antarctica. I am very happy to be a part of all this.

You may be wondering to yourself, “Self, how should I express my emotions upon embarking on such a journey? How should I show my happiness?”

I would like to suggest that you copy the emotions of this man:

Let that be the mood for all which shall be documented here.

NEXT UP: Taiwan.

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Father and Sign: A Flyer Design · 16 November 09

The fruits of an afternoon spent arranging furniture and directing my father around the living room below:

… a flyer for Onika’s Art ShO event in NYC.

Incidentally, I am in America for the next while, back to Japan at the end of the month. Next up, if all goes well, a 4-month stint working on a ship…

—— – MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE PACIFIC:

h_a_n_a attempts to make cameras out of cakes, mere blocks from my old house:

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IN CHICAGO: Little Brother, Full of Light · 13 October 09

In Chicago, the light hit my brother and shone straight through:

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We walked among construction, bright like twin suns.

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Bricks towered and blurred and unblurred.

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Things fell in unexpected ways.

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Little Brother tried to understand it all.

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But the sidewalk symbols were no use.

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No, seriously, the blue caduceus on the sidewalk in the night? It confused me. But overall, our blue and orange day made me love Chicago plenty. In America for the next month, and then back to Japan and then on to the ship…

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AT THE ZOO: The Greatest Thing Was Not the Rhino · 12 September 09

I wrote it because it is true. The proof is at 1:10 (feel free to skip ahead).

All at the Kumamoto Zoo, kindly filmed by manafilm .

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The Place Where Pretty Girls Think You’re Smart And Funny · 7 August 09

The story is true, it takes place in a Japanese hostess bar, and it starts like this:

The woman who is being paid to flirt with me is very good.

She’s sitting in front of me, batting her eyelashes and playing with the translucent boa that hangs around her neck. She wears a form-fitting, purplish-red dress that looks like a prom outfit from a sultry alternate reality. Her eyelashes reach up and out, exaggerating her blinks and laughs. Those eyelashes can’t be real.

“You’re very handsome,” she says, leaning slightly toward me. I’m not inclined to argue. At that exact moment in time, I certainly feel very handsome.

But there are complications.

You should totally click here to read the rest on Glimpse’s site.

Because it turned into a pretty dang weird night, in which I am either A) kind of neat or B) a total clown.

Up to you.

Photo taken on the streets of Kumamoto while working for Glimpse.org . Show them love for they have paid me to attempt to make wonderful things for you.

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An INVENTION: Anti-Twitter (aka The Status Game) · 3 August 09

PERFECT FOR A LAZY DAY!

For 2 or MORE players (who enjoy each other’s company, but are kind of bored)

Object of Anti-Twitter:
Without using a computer or cell phone, contestants attempt to guess what friendly-non-contestants are currently doing.

The person with the most correct guesses is the winner.

BONUS: In doing so, contestants often fish out invitations to do interesting things with people they may not usually do interesting things with.

Required Materials:
Gameplay Phase: Pen and paper, and perhaps a timekeeping device

Scoring Phase: A phone

Game Preparation:
The contestants make a list a list of friendly local folks who are not playing the game (aka Friendly Non-Contestants, henceforth FNCs).

Each player copies the list onto their own paper, leaving a space of, oh I don’t know, approximately 140 characters open to the right of each name.

Game Play:
A timer is set for some reasonable amount of time.

Each player writes in what they think each FNC is currently doing.

When the timer buzzes, players stop writing.

Scoring Phase:
The players go through the list, calling or texting each FNC. Suggested opening line, “Hey, I was just hanging out with [name of most popular other player], and we were wondering what you were up to.”

Each correct written answer receives 1 point. At the end, the person with the most points wins.

VERY IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATION:
If, at any point, an FNC invites you to engage in something other than the Anti-Twitter Game, please do so.

My friend Lloyd and I invented this game by accident. Actual game sheet photographed above. Please let me know if you try it. NOTE: I’m not anti-Twitter, that’s just the name of the game. “Anti-” like “anti-matter,” you know, the opposite of.

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PHOTO: My Classy Friend, Please Bring No Clouds, PLUS: A Video Experiment · 19 June 09

Rock that bowler cap.
Rock that ‘stachey ‘stache.
Rock them ‘burns.
Rock that cane.

…but do not come in here with a cartoony micro-weather system following you. My people need sun.

Spotted in front of the Yachiyoza Theater in Yamaga, Kumamoto.
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BONUS WEB FRIENDLINESS EXPERIMENT:

Last year, my siblings and I made a ridiculous bit of puppetry and music for Father’s Day and put it on vimeo.com . This resulted in kind and friendly comments.

As an experiment, this year I’m Youtubing it.

I’m guessing this will result in comments fiercely mocking my (long-gone) beard.

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An Open Letter From The Children, RE: Vegetable Chocolate · 25 May 09

Dear Adults of the World,

You must answer for this thing:

It is understood that we are in struggle.

That you are as determined to make us eat our vegetables as we are determined to shove them under our napkins.

Or feed them to our pet rabbits.

Such is our nature, and the more intelligent among us understand that it is for the best.

Given a button that would wipe all adults from the face of the earth, we would not push this button. In some strange and twisted way, we need you as much as you need us.

We are in, a manner, of speaking, of the same kind. The same beings, merely temporally displaced.

We understand that we are doomed to become you.

And still we must fight.
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Among the most vicious of our confrontations have concerned when and in what quantities we might eat chocolate. It is perhaps the only one of our dietary desires that approaches our wish to cease ingesting vegetables.

And we are happy to engage in screaming matches on either topic.

But you, our gigantic, freakish, arch-enemies, you must understand that we can’t make things.

We can perhaps sneak chocolate, we might, in dire circumstances, steal chocolate. But the MAKING of chocolate, this is against our nature. We have not the resources.

Traditionally, the battle has been over resource allocation.

We did not expect from you, this asymmetrical warfare, this burning and pillaging of our sustenance before it has reached our eyes, much less melted in our mouths and hands.

This is the stuff of nightmares: the mythical razor in our holiday candy, the organ thief in the night, the rats fried among chicken.

The vegetables in our chocolate.
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While we do not wish to threaten, we would like to remind you that we, especially in the developing nations, decidedly outnumber you.

We have not resorted to such techniques as mass coordinated biting, which, due to new technologies, those at the upper-bound of our designation (but not yet in those guerilla tween years), have the technological know-how to organize.

And we do not wish to resort to such tactics.

We are just saying.

We are hereby officially asking you to cease these tactics. If we must fight, and we are willing to allow that we must, let us fight clean.

Your future,
The Children
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Over the top, admittedly. But I saw this vegetable chocolate in the discount rack (surprising?) at the local convenience store and had to buy it. The taste was not a sensation that a child would enjoy.

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