You need wider aisles between your bookcases, then.

Looks to be the work of a designer named Hiroshi Sasagawa -- c'mon guys, you need to give credit where credit is due -- and I think I'll be looking for these the next time I go browsing through a design store.

Oh yeah, here's a bunch of pictures from their blog (in Japanese, but you can look at the pictures, at least):

http://igoogle-artcafe.blogspot.com/2008/04/igoogle-art-cafe_12.html

Yeah, Google even set up a space at Tokyo's Roppongi Hills development a couple of weeks ago to promote this, taking over a cafe space. Various glass cases displaying items associated with the artists/designers (like Tezuka Osamu, creator of Astro Boy; NIGO ®, creator of the A Bathing Ape streetwear brand; and Lily Franky, whom I don't know but whose designs are now on my iGoogle page) and big projection TV screening short videos promoting the designers. They had Google demonstrators wandering amongst the tables carrying laptops (in addition to the dedicated table of them) to show the diners, and if signed up a Google account, you got a free tchotke -- including, I believe, a Moleskine notebook with "Google" embossed on the cover. Kinda cool.

I'd say he needs to get his BS detector realigned somewhat.

Interesting notion, but I had to turn it off when he had his mouthpiece character say, "We occupied Saudi Arabia..."

Er, no. And wrong in a way that told me where the rest of this was going.

What Kyle said. I mean, geez, I passed by two such shops in Kawasaki every day on the way to work, and they had on display a Pokemon, a soccer ball, a beautiful rendition of (I believe) a parrot fish, and Mickey and Minnie Mouse -- the latter two being identical to the ones in the front garden of a house I also passed on the way to the office.

They're sculptures, and forcing them into the western "funereal-use-only" framework -- not to mention the old "whacky Japan" framework -- is limited thinking.

Besides, didn't you do this same thing a couple of years ago?

I don't have a copy (borrowed mine from the library), but hey, Google Books will let you take a look. Look up Laura Miller's "Beauty Up" (ISBN 052024509), starting at page 115 for the story.

Guy, you really need to read Laura Miller's "Beauty Up" before making pronouncements. It's not a "western-style" eyelid crease, for one thing.

The scary thing is, I stopped by an Outback yesterday, and the only reason I didn't go in was because there was a 40-minute wait. I might just have been tempted to order this thing.

#34: So where in America can a traveler find a meal?

Eat locally, and check out Roadfood.com, Jane & Michael Stern's site for such things.

#102: The only thing from Australia they use is some lingo and the import the lamb from New Zealand.

In Japan, at least, they import the beef from Australia, not least because the Japanese really don't trust U.S. beef because of the mad-cow scare. Hell, McDonald's in Japan was advertising their Australian beef at the height of the scare.

There's a game called "Yo! Yogi!"?

I wonder if you can buy it in a certain neighborhood of Tokyo?

then I choose the lab techs.

Except that you've done no such thing: you've chosen to mouth the message of the PR professionals, instead.

In the same vein be sure to look at the classic backgrounds in all of the Studio Ghibli Anime...

Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art just finished an show devoted to the work of Kazuo Oga, who did the backgrounds to "My Neighbor Totoro", Princess Mononoke, and "Spirited Away".

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/event/2007/A789

It occurs to me that this is unlikely to happen in Japan, because whenever I've bought an electronic item here -- even small, inexpensive ones -- the cashier:

1) opens the box
2) takes out the warranty card
3) stamps the card with the store's address
4) returns the card to the box and closes it.

meaning that there's always a minimal assurance that the item in question really is inside the box. Maybe US retailers should try that.

I can understand how you can feel alienated abroad and want some echoes of home...like Halloween.

Dude, Halloween is ALL OVER THE PLACE here in Tokyo.

Japanese people take holidays seriously.

Seriously commercial, perhaps, as the sales for Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, White Day, and now Halloween demonstrate.

Grrrr, sorry for the double posting.

Original idea: maybe funny.
Ringing the changes: lazy recycling of the same joke.

3.5 million tons, or 7 BILLION POUNDS is a fuckload of garbage.

Spread out over an area twice the size of Texas, you'll note. Which is roughly 1.6 trillion square yards. Doing the math:

1,600,000,000,000 square yards
/7,000,000,000 pounds =
------------------------------
1 pound every 228 square yards
or
21.2 pounds/acre

In metric units:
1,360,000,000,000 sq meters
/3,200,000,000 kilograms =
------------------------------
1 kilogram every 425 square meters
or
23.5 kilograms/hectare

A lot of garbage, but not dense enough to be mistaken for an island.

I'm pretty sure it's art, and art commenting on the fear-mongering caused by excessive media coverage of crime. The connection to Halloween probably doesn't hurt the publicity value.

And what's wrong with dried squid? It's tasty, and certainly no weirder than cut-up pieces of dried cow (aka beef jerky).

So, you ARE going to mark it as a parody to save people the trouble of having to figure it out, right?

Love the label:

EXTERMINATE!
No Artificial Colours,
Flavours or Preservatives!
No Hydrogenated Oils!

"This was an extraordinary act of truffle-squishing"

Quote of the week, for sure. Now I just have to figure out how to work into casual conversation.

Expressing disappointment in someone is out of bounds? Are loyalty oaths going to be required next?

I wouldn't call that disemvowelling "censorship", but it IS awfully petty -- and being petty on someone else's behalf, to boot.

thnk h's brd wth yr bsssn bcs trtng Jpn, cnstntly wd-yd, lk sm gnt frk shw S brng.

Yeah, but the chocolate-chip cookies you bake with it are GOOD for you.

Jennifer, did you have any of the comic strips by the guy whose grand idea was consolidating all the banks to make them more efficient? As I recall, he was arrested when he took over a bank in an attempt to publicize his idea.

Psst! Post #73 is spam!

I lived in Berkeley in the 80s, and that's where the "Stephen King killed John Lennon" hung out then, being very hard to miss as he passed out his flyers and stapled them to phone poles. The local alt-weekly (The East Bay Express) even did a big cover story on him.

I have to wonder how authentic that lifeguard photo is, given that she appears to be wearing jewelry, not something I associate with working lifeguards.

Nt t snd pcky, bt ths sn't my d f "wndrfl thngs".

The content is free for now:

"But NBC intends to transform the service into a model similar to iTunes by the middle of 2008 — that is, consumers will pay NBC directly to download episodes of the shows. “We did this to eliminate the middleman,” said Jeff Gaspin, the president of NBC’s digital division."

My guess is that the original post contained vowels, but they were deliberately removed by the moderator -- who happens to be famous for applying that technique to comments she disapproves of.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disemvoweling for details.

>n th thr hnd, frgnrs' nfttn wth vry "Jpn s wcky!" mm s nnyng nd slls fscntng, cmplctd cntry shrt

gr, nd t bgs m hw ftn Cry sms t fll nt tht mndst hr n Bng Bng.

In what universe do these constitute appropriate lyrics for children's music?

Maybe not in certain parts (like, say, Baptist day schools) but certainly appropriate in THIS universe.