Happy Halloween!!

It's been quite a while since my last posting. Besides just being plain lazy I do have a good excuse though. Yep you guessed it, I've been busy. My linguistics course is careening to a halt in the next week and a half so I've been trying to finish up my work. I've got weddings up the ying yang as well as everything else going on in life. But I shouldn't complain.
The last few weeks have been pretty tough for Japan. A major typhoon swept through and quite a few people died. I was happy to get the day off from school but it was very scary to see a group of seniors huddled on top of a tour bus in order to stay out of flood waters. And then there have been the hundreds and hundreds of earthquakes to hit Niigata, north of Tokyo. It's below freezing there and people have been camped outside over a week now because of the all the aftershocks. I guess everyone around the world saw the pictures of that young boy being rescued from his car that had been buried in a rock slide caused by the quake. Unfortunately his mother and young sister didn't make it out. I think he's too young to understand what happened to them and maybe that's for the better.
Then there's the strange case of the 24 year old Japanese man that went to Iraq and was kidnapped. He went with no plans, no money; he was just curious to see what was happening first hand. Of course he was foolish to go but the reaction in Japan was just disgusting. Apparently people were phoning his parents and yelling at them for how stupid their son was and for making so much trouble. Isn't that awful?
When 3 Japanese were taken hostage earlier this year they also got reprimanded for being in Iraq because the gov't had advised all Japanese to leave the area. Luckily they were all released unharmed but the first thing they had to do when they returned to Japan was to apologize for making so much trouble for everyone. The next thing they had to do was to pay back the gov't some of the costs involved in freeing them. Now these 3 actually had good reasons to be there, 2 of them were aid volunteers and the 3rd was a journalist. You'd think that being taken hostage and having your life threatened would be punishment enough but the Japanese gov't wanted some of their money too.
On a lighter note yesterday was Halloween here. Yah! However, unlike years past, I couldn't dress up or go out or basically do anything. I had lots and lots of weddings in Tokushima over the weekend so I just watched a movie at the local theatre and went to bed early. If I could have dressed up I would have loved to have gone like this.When I was a kid the terrorists weren't all that tough.
And they wore nice flashy uniforms.

Yes when I was a kid I liked GI Joe. Not the big barbie-sized ones (although my brother Rob liked those) but the small, fully articulated action figures.
This Wednesday is also a holiday here in Japan, Culture Day, but I'll be heading back to Tokushima for the day to do 4 more weddings. Luckily I've ended up with a few days off from school this week because I'll need them to finish up all my linguistics projects.
The American election is coming up and unfortunately the choice seems to be the lesser of 2 evils. What about the other candidates though? Why are they never mentioned? They're a colourful bunch, you can read about them here. Hey, if the Personal Choice Party wins then former porn star Marilyn Chambers will be your new Vice President. And what about the Fascist party leader Jack Grimes? His write-up is very entertaining:

Jack Grimes -- who previously ran for President as a write-in candidate in 2000 -- bills himself as the "Leader and Director of the United Fascist Union." As for his use of the word "Fascist," Grimes explains he wants to restore a New World Order based upon the governmental style of Imperial Rome "to institute a military dictatorship form of government over the Earth." Grimes believes that "the psychic is the next great step in the evolution of humankind on this planet." And it gets more weird: Grimes wants to address "the dilemmas now facing America and the whole of Western civilization: Democracy, Christianity, International Capitalism, Earth Changes, U.F.O.'s, government cover-ups, and others." Citing to Cayce and Nostradamus, Grimes predicts that "the United States will be reduced from its present size to a small triangular-shaped land mass through the loss of many of its coastal states." While those quotes come from his old 2000 campaign site, his 2004 is equally entertaining. Be sure to visit the "Pictures" page to view Grimes and his girlfriend (presumably) posing in their homemade black uniforms ... and to view pictures of them eating at different local restaurants. Or visit the "Speeches" page to read Grimes' 1998 remarks delivered to the "Flying Saucer Society of Dover, DE." Best of all is the Discussion Boards section of his site, in which Grimes exalts his followers to worship Satan -- plus you can read about the problem he was having getting to a campaign event in another state (because Mom's car was broken, etc.). While Grimes failed to achieve ballot status in any states in 2000, he falsely boasts on his site that he was on the ballot in 45 states and placed 6th in the race.

Seriously, while I think Bush is the worst thing to happen to the world since Nixon, or at least Reagan, I'm not sure Kerry is much better. He vows to fight Terrorism more effectively than Bush will. I've got a feeling that will entail just dropping more bombs on innocent people in depressed third world countries and end up making more 'terrorists.'

PS - thanks to all the people who've pushed my site over the 600 hit mark!! Look out Google.