The White Peril 白禍

Japan has ream upon ream of exquisite poems about spring and autumn; by contrast, there are comparatively few about summer, possibly because the prevailing feeling during that season in most of the archipelago ("how the hell am I going to keep from dying in this heat?!") does not exactly lend itself to sublimeness of expression. However, one of the early summer tropes--and summer according to the lunar calendar begins during the first week of May--is the return of the cuckoo as certain seasonal flowers begin to bloom.

夏草は茂りにけれど郭公などわが宿に一声もせぬ

延喜御歌

natsu kusa ha/shigerinikeredo/hototogisu/nado waga yado ni/hitokoe mo senu

engi no oon'uta

The summer grasses
have come up in abundance,
but why, O cuckoo,
do you not favor my home
with even a single cry?

Engi no Oon'uta

Ick. That translation came out very precious. On the bright side, I was able to go pretty much line by line without having to shuffle things around much; the Japanese for "cuckoo" is five syllables in and of itself, so in a 5-7-5-7-7 verse it takes up a lot of real estate and tends to force you to use filler if you want to try to adhere to the original as much as you can when translating.

The return of the cuckoo when the grasses grow lush and the orange blossoms and deutzia bloom is considered very moving. The poet sees the thickened grass and purports to wonder whether the cuckoo is somehow shunning him. (If it has any sense, it's probably just decided to summer in Alaska this year.)

It should be obvious by this point that I just kind of stop posting for weeks now and then, but I'm still grateful to those who've dropped a line to ask what's up. Nothing in particular--except, perhaps, that my currently working as a translator considerably lowers the motivation to use free time to search out interesting Japanese news and translate it. And now that cherry blossom season is over there's kind of a dead space for seasonal poetry.

There's never a dead space for political idiocy, however, and Sweden resident Michael Moynihan pounces on some from a recent episode of The Daily Show:

Not a particularly funny bit, considering the available material, but a few points about the total awesomeness of Swedish social democracy and the show's but-we're-only-joking case for the Swedish model. (They are, after all, making a serious political point in an unserious way.) Cenac's interview with ex-Abba frontman Björn Ulvaeus, during which he attempts to get him to admit that the song "Money, Money, Money" is a paean to American capitalism, leaves one with the impression that the millionaire songwriter is rather pleased with his country's glorious socialist history. Well, no.

In 2007, the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported that governent "authorities claim[ed] Ulvaeus, using the services of a tax haven company, concealed millions in music production income to avoid paying taxes." DN points out that "Since 1990 Ulvaeus royalties have been collected in a Dutch company, now known as Fintage. The company made a deal with the tax haven company Stanove, on the Dutch Antilles, to transfer 95% of [Abba's] royalties there." And avoid giving it to a mother desperately in need of a second year of maternity leave.

Nor is this a new issue for Ulvaeus. In 1982, before the Social Democratic Party returned to power on promises of soaking the rich, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Abba's manager Stig Anderson was "deeply concerned by the threat of a Socialist takeover of his [business] empire. 'If we had had these funds today, we would have been forced this year to part with about $US2.16 million...Why should I continue to work 14-15 hours a day to give money away like this?...We don't want to leave Sweden. Our roots are here. We have our friends here. I intend to stay here and fight these funds even if the Social Democrats are elected. But if it becomes impossible, of course it would be very easy for us to move out.'"

All of this is, of course, just an excuse to indulge my recent ABBA jag. Here the four are performing the song from which I've snagged the title for this post:



Some child-of-the-'70s observations: Agnetha looks like a Cheryl Ladd who might actually pull a gun and waste you if need be. And Benny has exactly the same mannerisms at the piano as Christine McVie--from the little smile to the way the hair moves. And look at how tiny those microphones are! They were cutting edge, they were. And tell me you've every seen anyone look as fierce in a quilted jacket as Frida.

Bjorn doesn't seem to be doing much; he just kind of reminds me of Dana Carvey.

Lest you think I've forgotten about Japan, here's another performance for Japanese TV from the same period:



Can you imagine any production getting away with such a static set and nonexistent choreography today--especially when there's not even any pretense that the band is performing live? Nowadays, poor Agnetha and Frida would have been rehearsed to within an inch of their lives, and there'd have to be something projected on the wall behind that arc-balloon thing.

Added later: Oops--I think Moynihan has permanent residency in Sweden but now lives in DC. At least, he does if his bio at Reason.com is updated.

I'm a fan of Miss Manners, so people sometimes assume I must be one of those people who seek out copies of old etiquette books; but I'm really not. To me, writers who lack her Lewis Carroll sense of mischief about human interaction are kind of dull, if improving in an anthropological sense.

The anthropology itself can be fun, though. I wandered into the 1922 Emily Post on Bartleby a few days ago, and just about every chapter has some sort of surprise.

There's the section on how a gentleman asks a lady to dance at a ball, which contains this paragraph:

When a gentleman is introduced to a lady he says, "May I have some of this?" or "Would you care to dance?"

I don't hang out at hetero clubs much anymore, most of my friends being safely paired off by now, but I'm pretty sure if a guy walks up to a woman in a dance place and says, "May I have some of this?" he'd better be staring directly at the plate of sliders parked next to her margarita if he doesn't want serious trouble.

The language can be surprising, too. The association of diamonds with ice is pretty obvious and primal, but I wasn't aware people like Emily Post were throwing it around back then.

In your jewelry let diamonds be conspicuous by their absence. Nothing is more vulgar than a display of "ice" on a man's shirt front, or on his fingers.

It's also somehow comforting to know that elegant was being pretentiously overused even then:

There are certain words which have been singled out and misused by the undiscriminating until their value is destroyed. Long ago "elegant" was turned from a word denoting the essence of refinement and beauty, into gaudy trumpery.

Yes. It's really annoying that you can't actually use elegant to mean "simple and uncluttered" and expect people to know what you mean. A shame that that started so long ago.

I'm not sure what to make of her chapter on traveling abroad. Perhaps at that point, Americans really were the only group that had a tendency toward coarsely loud merriment that wouldn't leave other travelers in peace and a high-handed attitude toward servitors. That crowd seems to have expanded since then, though, if my experience in Asia is any indication.

OUCH. I love to see Kylie looking fabulous, and I'm glad the girls at Go Fug Yourself noticed, but that last line is so true it's painful. (The poll results are, too, at least at this point.)

Spring according to the lunar calendar adopted by Japan from China begins in the first week of February.

春といへばかすみにけりな昨日まで波間に見えし淡路島山

俊恵法師

haru to ieba/kasumi ni keri na/kinou made/namima ni mieshi/awadjishimayama

shun'e houshi

They say spring is here.
There is a shroud of mist
where just yesterday
I saw it between the waves--
Awaji Island peak

The Priest Shun'e

Winter air is cold and clear; with spring comes warmer, moister air, bringing haze and lower visibility. Shun'e the poet draws a pat distinction between yesterday, when Awaji Island was clearly visible some distance from the shoreline, and today, the first day of spring, when mist has risen around it. The poignancy of the poem comes from the unstated recognition, by Shun'e the person and by us, that things don't actually change quite that cleanly. Today's mist would have no meaning if yesterday's clear weather didn't linger in his mind. And even in literal terms, the cold winter air is probably not gone for the year yet.

Added later: In completely unrelated news, Inauguration Day may not have changed as many things as it first seemed, either.

My blog friend Sarah Hoyt is a sci-fi author, so she does a lot of thinking about social issues and the evolution of institutions. She has a post up about her support for gay marriage that takes what is, I think, the best tack possible: arguing that institutions such as marriage exist at least partially to push people toward beneficial behavior and away from destructive behavior that other around them may end up picking up after. I don't know that I'm entirely convinced, but she goes far beyond the soundbites along the lines of "But my partner and I love each other just as much as straight couples do" or "Well, gee, why shouldn't our gay friends have the same rights as my wife and I do?"

Sarah also brings the perspective of someone reared in a country that was not the States:

A law might be able to institute a system like the one in Portugal – and please, those of you who know me, engrave this in stone, because it’s the one time in my life where I’ll say something is better in Portugal – where you have to get a "legal" marriage before the religious one. The legal one is a right, (though I don't think they have gay marriage, before anyone jumps on me) the religious one isn't. In fact, the religious one isn't needed. It is between you and your G-d. The legal is usually done quietly and not celebrated by those people who intend to have a religious ceremony later. (In Dan’s and my case we had our civil ceremony in South Carolina in July, then went to Portugal for the religious wedding in December after I got my green card. It gives us two anniversaries.) At any rate a law could spell out that no religion will be forced to perform unions that offend its tenets or beliefs.

I know at this point my gay friends – or their sympathizers – reading this are groaning and saying that the law will never come because look at all the defense of marriage stuff going on. Well... a properly written law might have a better chance. It might calm a lot of the fears.

She may be right about that, though one of the problems is that so many of the most voluble proponents of gay marriage are too wrapped up in using it to get approval from all quarters. I'm not so sure they could be trusted to lay off the churches in exchange for marriage performed by a justice of the peace.

*******

Speaking of fabulously opinionated pro-SSM blog friends, Virginia Postrel appeared on PJTV to discuss the problems that Obama's glamour might pose when he actually tries to carry out his duties as president. It turns out that her chemotherapy, in addition to helping beat her cancer into remission, has given her a Marcel wave. Do we live in an age of wonders, or what?

Well, I was all set to post a translation of an autumn poem; then I did a search on a hunch and--naturally--I'd already posted it a few years ago. Darn. Guess I'll just have to hunt high and low for some other Japanese poem about autumn.

Okay, I've put up a bunch of poems by Saigyō, but I don't think I've gotten around to this one. When I was in grad school and we got to this one, Donald Keene (whose Shinkokin-shu seminar I was fortunate enough to be able to take) broke into a broad, frank grin: "It's rare and moving to see Saigyō write a poem with such warmth and humor."

小山田の庵近く鳴く鹿の音におどろかされておどろかすかな

西行法師

oyamada no/iho chikaku naku/shika no ne ni/odorokasarete/odorokasu kana

saigyou houshi

Just outside my hut
nestled in a mountain field
the cry of a deer
has jolted me right awake
I think I'll jolt him right back

The Priest Saigyō

"See how he likes it!" the sleepy Saigyō seems to say. The notes from my edition say that his plan is likely to use a clapper or noisemaker, rather than to lean out the door and tell the deer to shut up already so decent folk can get some sleep. Deer make disconsolate noises that are considered fundamental to the lonely, aching beauty of autumn.

Added on 25 October: I think I'm a moron, but (unusually) it's not entirely certain. I took 小山田 as a place name and had in some shadowy, inaccessible synapse a memory of having been instructed to render it thus twelve years ago; however, the edition I use almost invariably gives a note for each place referred to that tells where it would be in contemporary Japan, and there's nothing like that here. Also, 山田 can just mean "mountain paddy," anyway. So I'm playing Ministry of Truth (真実省? But at this point it probably would have merged with the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in the 2001 restructuring, so maybe...okay, focus, Sean) and changing it above.

Virginia thinks Sarah Palin is working a cowgirl-glamour persona. (My use of working doesn't mean it's necessarily insincere, only that she's consciously capitalizing on it for effect.) Years ago, she (Virginia, that is) also wrote an article in Reason about our obsession with politicians' looks:

Righteously upholding the idea that looks don't matter, these watchdogs all studiously ignored the embarrassing truth: Not only do human beings make judgments about how other people look, we enjoy doing so. We're not going to stop just because ombudsmen of various sorts tell us it's bad manners. And in an age where we see more and more good-looking people, either directly or through the media, we're getting more and more judgmental. When it comes to looks, double standards - of whatever variety - are disappearing.

...

Pretending we don't care how people look doesn't make us stop caring. It simply encourages us to equate good looks with other qualifications. Instead of treating beauty as one value among many, we come to treat it as the greatest value of all. It may not seem fair to treat looks as important. But it's far more fair than treating appearance as something more.

Of course, Sarah Palin’s look is being trashed by her detractors on the left and swooned over by her new fans on the right, but those reactions hardly say anything about either end of the political spectrum. Remember the years of torturous obsession with Hillary Clinton’s hair and clothing styles? The sort of Americanized Anna Lindh look she eventually settled on actually suits her very well, I thought; and (who knows?) maybe that actually had something to do with her having found her voice and identity as a public figure.

Margaret Thatcher was a conservative woman who went for the old-guard look: hats and pearls and silk and heels. The high-maquillage thing worked for her, both because it flattered her physical entity (ramrod-straight carriage and stern expression) and because it enhanced the image she wanted to project (upholding standards in the face of destabilization). Palin very wisely didn’t try to go for the updated American version of that look, because she doesn’t represent Thatcher’s imperious, unbending stability.

I think Palin’s sexy librarian look works for her very well, in that she inhabits it convincingly; it seems to be an extension of her real self. The American sporty style of dressing up allows her to project authority and respect for the occasion but also look ready for physical action. She seems feminine without seeming girlie.
How much truth there is to her image is hard to judge at this point, but it’s working very well for the people the McCain campaign was trying to court, and it will be interesting to see whether the Obama campaign draws useful lessons from it.

Added later: As my final thought before the weekend, here's a weirdly apposite Olivia Newton-John video. For one thing, this has to be the best song about obsessive lust ever built around an election metaphor. For another, in 1982 or so, she was the public figure who embodied athletic, can-do, feminine glamour.

Over the weekend, Deep Glamour posted a Q&A with the girls from Go Fug Yourself. Too bad they weren't asked to put their claws into Madge, which they're notably good at doing--and they also apparently think Daniel Craig is hotter than Sean Connery?!--but it's a fun interview nonetheless. Interesting that they both see Grand Central as glamourous. I love the place--don't get me wrong--but I've spent all my time in New York living five blocks from it, so I tend to associate it more with weaving through people walking through the main concourse or vying with other customers for cheese at the market than with thrilling rendezvous.

Virginia Postrel and her collaborators' new blog is now live for real. Interestingly, if not surprisingly, they chose a purple color scheme. (I wonder what cemented purple in the imaginations of so many world cultures as the color of royal exclusivity and aspiration.) For some reason, the blog reminded me of this Kylie video:



The video isn't dominated by purple--though it is shocking pink + blue, so it's one shade of purple split into its components. But it does have a female aviator suspended in glamourous unattainability, and it has dreamy wisps of smoke in the external shots of the spaceship. And it's an excuse to post about Kylie, which I can never resist anyway.

Time to leave for dinner, but I can't let the day go by without saying...

Happy birthday, Madge. You drive us all bonkers, but we still love you anyway.

Madonna's frequently been dismissed as someone who couldn't have gotten attention without frantically courting controversy, but many of her best songs have actually been unassuming and warmly casual.

I'm such a fag I still listen to the Who's That Girl? soundtrack:



There was more to American Life than goofy rhymes about Pilates and hotties:



Romeo and Juliet / They never felt this way, I bet:



And if I were exiled to a desert island and only allowed one pop song, it would be...

Virginia Postrel has started a new blog about glamour, in cooperation with L.A.-based journalist Kate Coe. Virginia has an excerpt from her forthcoming book in the first post.

Title reference:

So I was waiting for the train and saw on the BBC that Olympics fans the world over had apparently gotten themselves Ashlee Simpsoned by the PRC:

A pretty girl who won national fame after singing at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was only miming.

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of "Ode to the Motherland".

But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as "flawless" as nine-year-old Lin.

*******

This is the second "fake" story about the opening ceremony

Viewers around the world saw a display in which 29 firework "footprints" travelled across Beijing from south to north.

But a senior official from the Beijing organising committee (Bocog) confirmed on Tuesday that footage of the display had been produced before the big night.

This was provided to broadcasters for "convenience and theatrical effects", according to Wang Wei, Bocog's executive vice-president.

"Because of poor visibility, some previously recorded footage may have been used," he told a daily press conference.

I realize that the birthrate in China is not what it once was, but could a country with 1.3 billion people seriously not find a little girl with both a world-captivating voice and teeth that exceeded bureaucratic standards?

The picture is from a few weeks ago and thus (major sin in Japan) is no longer really seasonal, but Atsushi and I used to see the irises in bloom every June at the Meiji Shrine, and he was sweet enough to send me a few shots from when he went. Note the woman holding photographic equipment in the background, which is a component of just about every natural scene nowadays:



I always forget my camera when I go to the park or gardens, so I don't have any snaps of my own from New York to post; however, it occurs to me that I haven't posted any poems in a good, long while.

The one that first came to mind, it turns out, I'd written about a few summers ago. Darn.

Luckily, there are more where that came from. It's been something of a hot summer, so even though this isn't one of Saigyo's most arresting poems, it seems appropriate:

よられつる野もせの草のかげろひて涼しく曇る夕立の空

西行法師

yoraretsuru / nomosenokusano / kagerohite / suzushikukumoru / yuudachinosora

Saigyō Hōshi

Enervated grass
over the expanse of field
is receiving shade
as clouds slide coolly over
the sky while dusk approaches

The Priest Saigyo

Saigyo seems to sense the grass's own relief as the glaring sun begins to set and clouds roll in to block its light.

It's amazing what you can learn from American television.

The Discovery Channel has a show called A Haunting. At first when I was flipping through the on-screen cable guide, I thought it was The Haunting, the wonderful '60s horror movie based on the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House.

It was not. Instead, it's a running program in which couples relate how they were nearly driven from their dream houses by weird (in the original sense of the word) noises, apparitions, movements, and feelings of dread.

This show makes me feel very inadequate. At the end, the victims always bring in some medium/paranormal investigator type who goes into the attic bedroom and senses the presence of souls trapped there, usually after some grisly death long ago. Imagine! I'm so dense I can't even sense a mood of tension when I walk into a crowded room after an argument, and these people can pick up on the presence of invisible restless spirits.

They also use sage a lot. They tie it in bunches and burn it and walk through the house because, apparently, sage has spiritual cleansing properties. Or maybe hostile spirits are calmer after some nice aromatherapy--I'm not sure. It makes me wonder, though: Suppose you don't have sage on hand? Can you just substitute thyme and rosemary the way you do when you're making chicken, or do the ghosts get all angry at being faked out?

Eric doesn't like being labeled, and not for the usual tiresome I'm-too-free-spirited-to-be-defined reasons:

While I can say what I think about most things, experience shows that adopting any label invites conformity to it. (Especially criticism from those who claim it.)

Once you say what you are, some a**hole will come along and say that you're not, because he is.

Similarly, once you say what you aren't, some a**hole will come along and say that you are, because he isn't.

It's convenient that (small-l) "libertarian" suits me fine, because it tends not to set people off. I like "classical liberal," but (today's left) liberals often seem to think you're trying to dress up as one of them while being a closet fascist. ("Yeah, you're a liberal in the sense that, like, Mill would have meant it," someone sneered at me once.) And while my positions on many issues align with what we now consider "conservatism," I'm not fundamentally a conservative. (Well, I am when some gross guy is hitting on me. Then I identify myself as a "conservative" in a clear, forceful tone and mention that I'm a registered Republican. You movement conservatives don't mind the fib, do you? It's to the end of preventing casual homosexual intercourse, after all. And I really am a registered Republican.)

The only problem with calling yourself a libertarian--besides, as Eric alludes to, being invited by supposed fellow travelers to engage in poker-faced debates over the most inane hypothetical situations imaginable--is that a lot of people don't understand that it doesn't mean "libertine" or "anarchist." I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, I don't think all governing bodies should be dissolved so we can frolic naked in meadows all day and subsist on game and wild berries. In general, though, even those who conclude I'm just a closet right-winger seem to give me a fair hearing without rancor.

*******

My buddy grabbed my arm the other night and asked whether I'd seen Julie Burchill's inevitable column about the new Madonna album yet. He summarized it as "If I spent four hours a day at the gym, I'd look better than that bitch!" Not too far wide of the mark:

Madonna is everywhere, reigning over the just and the unjust, friend and foe alike; loving her or hating her is as futile as loving or hating the rain, wind or snow - it'll happen anyway.

...

If Madonna didn't devote her life to harassing us, what would she do with herself all day? Remember, this is a woman with so much time on her hands that she can spend four hours a day working out. I know I'm fat, but I have to say that if I spent four hours a day working out, I'd want to look a damn sight hotter than Madonna does; those vile veiny hands, that sad stringy neck - yuck!

Madonna has the sort of body that tends toward the plump/luscious side; you can see it in her early videos. Endomorphs like that who diet and exercise themselves into having no body fat often end up with skin that has a weird stretched look.

The rest of the column is the exact same thing Burchill writes whenever a Madonna record comes out, and it's as funny (and bawdy) as usual.

*******

Surprise! Hillary Clinton once said something nasty behind closed doors about white, working-class Southerners (via Ann Althouse):

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

And since some things never change, Clinton's spokesman responds with contempt when asked about the authenticity of the quotation:

A spokesperson for Clinton said the quote was taken out of context and did not reflect her true political philosophy. "This quote differs from the recollection of others who were in the room at the time this comment was allegedly made," said Jay Carson. "To be clear, that's not how she felt then and it's not how she feels now, and the proof is in how she has lived her life, the work she has done and the policies she has pushed and pursued over the last 35 years."

Asked to produce a witness who would say that Clinton had been misquoted, Carson wrote: "So, you've got two guys we've barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?... Sounds totally and completely reliable."

Remember the Clinton administration, when we were subjected to that kind of smear-and-spin routine almost daily when something or other threatened to blow up in the happy couple's faces? We could be mere months from going back to it!

Eric also noticed this story. (He didn't say much about it, but, then, he had to go to New Jersey, so he had plenty of pain to contend with already.)

*******

I don't think this post has enough parentheses.

Does anyone out there know where my evening shirt is?

Well, what good are you?

I thought I always kept it inside the dinner jacket on the same hanger, but unless it's invisible, it's not there. I hope I didn't leave it in Atsushi's closet when I moved out.

*******

How is it possible for one man to have so many vases? If there were ever any doubt that I'm gay, it's been dispelled by the four boxes of decorative housewares I've just packed. Mind you, they don't include anything you could eat off or store something in.

*******

It's time for me to break a pair of sunglasses. Or maybe lose them. I can feel it. The weather keeps going from sunny to cloudy, so you need them sometimes and then not others. They end up in a pocket or dangling by one slender arm from my bag. I seem to have a thing for dropping them in cabs or putting them down on tables and putting something heavy on them. I school myself resolutely to keep them in their little crush-proof cases, but it never works.

*******

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have The Descent in the DVD player, and I'm finding it oddly comforting to have it playing while I'm packing. Given the increasing claustrophic-cave-like-ness of my apartment, you'd think it would make me afraid of confronting a throat-biting humanoid in the bathroom or something, but I actually find it rather cozy. And I used to be of those people who were completely unable to handle horror movies. (When I was growing up, all the talk of demons waiting to getcha we got in church affected my over-active imagination a good deal.)

BTW, if you like suspense and have a strong stomach, The Descent is a great little movie. It's bloody and seriously scary at times, but you don't leave it feeling cynically worked over. It's thoughtful and raises interesting questions without being pretentious, and the cave scenes are very persuasive even though they were all shot on a soundstage. I love hypertrophied old Hollywood glamour-orgy productions as much as the next gay man, but there's a lot to be said for a movie made by people who relied on ingenuity, skill, and conviction rather than piles of money.

I would have bought the lime green, Janis, for the wood sprite effect when out gardening. Then, too, if you garden in earnest (and why would you not?), the mud and earth are likely to dull the color in short order.

I wore a lime-green T-shirt to lunch with Atsushi yesterday. We went to a putatively Moroccan restaurant, which turned out to be a French bistro-ish place (including the ham that came with the asparagus salad) in just about every respect except the figurines of camels and the baskets everywhere. Anyway, the color comes into the story because we both got pea soup--chilled fresh pea soup that looked like bright-green vichyssoise. When it arrived, Atsushi looked from my plate to my shirt to the (green) cushions and said, "You've certainly dressed for the place." Then the waitress came to do something with the cutlery and started giggling. "Same color," she said in English, looking at my place setting and me.

Unlike Janis, I can't wear most V-necks. I'm not worried about bra straps, obviously; it's just that when you have as much chest hair as I do, a deep V looks sleazy (in gay terms) or just plain wrong.

The story's a good week old, but considering what old news it is anyway, I don't feel all that dumb linking to it now. R.E.M. has a new album out soon, and the hype-o-rator has been on full-blast for weeks. Who knows? Maybe it really is the band's best album in over a decade, and old fans should be getting all spazzy with anticipation. (Personally, I dropped away after Automatic for the People, which to me is about as melodious and ear-pleasing as the reaction of a cat when you throw a bucket of ice water over it. I'm clearly in the minority on that one, though.)

Anyway, there's a usual flurry of interviews and photo shoots and magazine covers. GayNews reports that Michael Stipe has finally just cut the crap and identified himself as gay:

This week he told Spin magazine, "I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there."

Although Stipe has never felt the need to discuss his sexuality before, he informed the magazine that he now felt that it was important to be open and honest in order to provide understanding and hope for the younger generation.

"It was super complicated for me in the '80s. I was totally open with the band and my family and my friends and certainly the people I was sleeping with. I thought it was pretty obvious."

Stipe stated that in the past he didn't see that being out could be so important for others. "I didn't always see that. But I see now, of course that's the case, of course that's needed."

Considering how fervently Stipe embraced everything else on the leftist checklist, it's kind of funny that he didn't see coming out of the closet, of all things, as being important. But I see no reason not to take him at his word. He did, after all, make a point of being uncategorizable and enigmatic about his private life--and why not?--and he's been open about being bisexual for years. If he's decided he is, in fact, gay, then sure, no reason he shouldn't be up-front about it with the public if he likes.

I'm not sure the announcement will have the effect of "helping some kid out there," though. Gay kids already know that it's possible to be an open homosexual if, like Stipe, you're constantly going to be pushing what a "transgressive" weirdo you are. Especially if you've also already made a pile and aren't risking much in the way of money and career trajectory. I'm not faulting Stipe for waiting until he was ready to reveal this or that about himself; I'm only saying that it's a bit late to be all public-spirited about it in the way he seems to want to be.

BTW, before anyone tries to call me on it: Yes, the joke of the post title is that "Superman" was neither written by R.E.M. nor sung by Michael Stipe.

Overheard at the bar the other night, spoken between two always-loud friends from the same part of the British Isles:

"Well, I get both CNN and the BBC, you know, and I always think--well, let me put it this way: CNN is entertainment, and the BBC is news."

"Oh, very much so. By the way, isn't that weather guy...Rob Mar...Mar...."

"Marciano! A real hottie!"

"Can't get enough of him!"

To impress upon his mate (and, I'm fairly certain, everyone within earshot--he's that type) the seriousness of the distinction, Speaker 1 drew out the word news with suitable fake-RP/genuine-gasbag portentousness: nee-yeeewwwwwz.

I'm usually very good about not chortling audibly in such situations, but I happened to be sitting with my English buddy, with whom I e-mail news stories and things back and forth frequently through the day. I made the mistake of catching his eye. At that point, it was over.

Of course, it wasn't the novelty of the opinions expressed that I found funny. I've heard that kind of nonsense many times before. But it's still nonsense.

I have little objection to the characterization of CNN as a source of mere entertainment, given that its "in-depth coverage" is like World Book Encyclopedia come to life: all cutesy-poo visuals and repellantly chipper presentation, presumably calibrated to reassure the mass audience that it will not be confronted with anything too complicated, taxing to the intellect, or challenging to existing assumptions.

I just don't see how the BBC--especially BBC World, which has notably CNN-ified itself over the years--can be thought to bring anything more elevated to the mix. It's not that the BBC is worse. For one thing, the reporters don't do as much of that gruesome, would-be-matey joshing with one another as they do on American channels. (Is there no way to make them cut that out?) But you get the same pat, preconception-confirming reporting on stories that you get everywhere else. You get the same "heartwarming" human interest pieces, which I sometimes think are purposefully contrived to make any civilized person's flesh crawl. You get the same asinine patter made necessary by being on the air all day. And you get the same unilluminating Q&A shows. Even the Hard Talk guy, whatever his name is (if he were cuter I'd make more of an effort to remember), is more known for his confrontational-jerk style of delivering questions than for actually, you know, drawing better information out of his subjects than other interviewers do.

At times I prefer the BBC because I find the cool composure of the newsreaders welcome. Just spit out the story already. At other times it's kind of nice the way CNN (as well as MSNBC) is populated by people who appear frankly aware that they're feeding you Spam on Wonder smeared with Miracle Whip Lite. That probably says something about my native Yank preference for forthrightness.

Just to end on a suitable note of (North) American frivolity: Rondi thinks Silda (Mrs. Eliot) Spitzer looks like Jennifer Aniston. There's totally a Hollywood angle on everything if you just look hard enough!

Occasionally, the thought flits through my head that maybe Go Fug Yourself isn't quite as funny as I think it is. Then I start guffawing again and forget all about it. This is Heather's riff on one of the photo-op photos from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions last night:

MADONNA: And the arms, they work, right? Young people have great arms. Justin probably has awesome arms. He's kind of my inspiration, actually. God, I just want to use my fearsome guns to tear off his young flesh and eat it.

JUSTIN: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly afraid that Madonna is going to use her fearsome guns to tear off my young flesh and eat it.

IGGY: I wonder what it'd taste like if I used Madonna's fearsome guns to tear off that kid's young flesh and eat it.

I'm still not sure how much of Madonna's strangeness of appearance is due to getting work done; a lot of it could be all the dieting and working out. No question, though, that she's bringing the same determination to staying "youthful" that she did to becoming a star. And (to bring up Taylor Dayne for the second time in a week) M. at least is working with her facial structure rather than against it.

To see Madonna's continued ability to polarize people in action, refer to this comment thread at Ann Althouse's.

The staff at my office here in Taipei have given me two different nicknames. I was designated "Evil Pink Guy" (by one of the fags, naturally--we're such bitches) the day I showed up in a lavender T-shirt and sat behind my desk with the lights off, apparently looking malign. The girls up front, on the other hand, have decided I'm 型男. No clue how to pronounce that in Chinese, but apparently it means "well-dressed man."

I'm honestly not sure which one I prefer. Being known as the Evil Pink Guy could, it seems to me, have its advantages.

*******

Hokkaido Diet member Muneo Suzuki, an uncommonly proficient glad-hander even by Japanese standards, has had one of his sentences upheld:

The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday upheld a two-year prison sentence against Lower House member Muneo Suzuki, a once-powerful politician convicted of accepting 11 million yen in bribes and other crimes.

...

Although prosecutors can incarcerate Suzuki, his lawyers have requested his release on bail, meaning the lawmaker will likely be able to continue his political activities.

Under the Diet Law, lawmakers accused of bribery while in office lose their seats only when a guilty verdict is finalized.

Suzuki, a former member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, once wielded enormous influence over the Foreign Ministry, particularly on Russian affairs, and publicly clashed with then Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka during the Junichiro Koizumi administration.

But his power eroded after he became embroiled in a series of money scandals.

The lawmaker was found guilty of collecting 6 million yen from Shimada Kensetsu Co., a contractor based in Abashiri, Hokkaido, for his influence in gaining the company preferential treatment for a contract in a large-scale port construction project.

*******

A town in Saga Prefecture has a different (ahem) incentive plan in mind:

The Karatsu Municipal Government will from April start providing special bonuses to any citizens 75 or over who have not needed medical treatment or special health care over the previous 12 months.

Healthy elderly Karatsu citizens will be able to receive a special 10,000 yen payment provided they are on the list the city draws up for entitled recipients and they decide to apply for it themselves.

Karatsu's move to reward healthy older citizens is the first such step for a Japanese municipality.

Karatsu is hoping the idea will catch on and encourage older people to look after their health to cut potential rises in medical costs as the city's population ages.

The original Japanese for the program is ご長寿健康手当 (go-chouju kenkou teate: "payment for health in [exalted] longevity"), but it sounds to me more patronizing than respectful. Those who are already over 75 (or will be hitting 75 in the foreseeable future) are at a point at which there's not a whole lot they're likely to be able to do to affect which ailments they're prone to. They can be extra careful not to fall and break fragile bones, I suppose, but their range of choices is going to be kind of limited.

*******

The new Janet is okay. By which I mean the album. The new Janet herself appears to have gone further toward Michael/LaToya-fying her nose. Kind of spooky.

This morning, for just about the first time in ten years, I got my hair cut by someone who's not my regular guy in Tokyo. He made me feel right at home by putting gunk in my hair despite my telling him that I didn't need any. He also had this idea that he was going to convince me to style it--there was this whole thing about using more gel on the sides than on the top and pushing it foward and down. I think there was a blow-dryer involved somewhere. Since he was recommended by a friend of mine down here (and had given me a good cut), I thought, but did not say, "Honey, I know we're Family, but you have to understand something: I use the best degreasing shampoo I can get my hands on. Then I towel my hair dry. Then, if anything looks out of place, I finger comb it, kind of. Once. Anything more complicated than that, including applications of goo, is not happening."

Speaking of high-maintenance hair, can you believe Dusty's been dead for almost a full decade? Shelby Lynne has an album out now of covers of her songs. (Songs Dusty sang, of course, since she wasn't known for her songwriting.) I'm trying to decide whether to buy it. I like Lynne's voice, and though I tend to run headlong in the opposite direction from anything peddled as "alt-something," I recognize that it's probably not her fault that she gets icky marketing. She also had the good taste to pick two of the best songs from Dusty in Memphis to cover, along with a third, without going for the obvious attention-getting gambit of making a beeline for "Son of a Preacher Man."

Oh, why not? I have one more long-ish commute to work tomorrow before Chinese New Year, and if it sucks, I can always recover my spirits by listening to the real thing.

Work, busy, wontons, Chiang Kai-shek, blah-blah-blah. Will have more to report soon. Two quick notes on the latest (though now several days old) Camille column at Salon.

First, Jeff of Beautiful Atrocities got a letter published and answered. At least, you don't think there could be another Jeff Percifield who would begin with "Longtime fan here. As a Reaganite homo, couldn't disagree with you more on politics, but who cares?" and then go on to write about a Ukrainian drag queen, right? Me, neither.

Then there's this beyond-satire letter about the Iraq occupation:

Thank you for giving us a voice of reason before and during the Iraq war. At a time when many people resorted to clichés or did not speak out openly against the war, you made a strong case for peace. I also commend you for continuing to speak out against this pointless war.

My thoughts about our world, expressed in Haiku form:

War afflicts our world
Random murder and bloodshed
The scourge of our time

No armies in ranks
Just sporadic explosions
Maiming and killing

Serving no purpose
Ending lives before their time.
When will peace arrive?

Again, thank you on behalf of the Peace Party.

I'm not Japanese, so maybe it's not my place to say this, but on behalf of grown-ups everywhere...please don't say things in haiku that are better said in normal prose. Please. If you've had some kind of epiphanic experience in nature and feel stirred to write a haiku, fine. That's right in line with the tradition. In fact, that is the tradition.

We use haiku in elementary school to teach second-graders about poetry because...well, it helps reinforce the concept of the syllable, it's a less confusing way to teach discipline and rules in composition than the sonnet, it introduces the idea that non-Western countries have very different poetic traditions, and most kids can find something about nature that they think it would be fun to write about.

However, it is a mistake to believe in something one might call the Haiku Effect, that (it is assumed) simply expressing something in seventeen syllables on three lines somehow imbues it with major big-time profundity. Pointless line breaks actually come off kind of kitschy, which presumably was not the intention here.

Virginia Postrel links to a true story with the kind of happy ending that can literally make you cry: Afghans get a new industry that provides environmentally-sustainable work and brings cash into the economy...and affluent Americans get access to a broader array of fabulous beauty products!

Anyone who writes to ask which part moved me more will be ignored.

Of course, every narrative like this needs a villain to add drama and make our heroine's eventual triumph sweeter, and this story has a great one:

The letter I received from him a few days later confirmed my premonition. It requested a ream of further documentation, such as a breakdown of the raw-materials cost of a bar of soap and our financial accounts from previous years. “Maybe even more importantly,” the letter went on,

we need to show the real raison d'etre for all of this. It's because there's real demand for your products. Demand is not your problem, Sarah, satisfying it is. You've already established a vibe in the market. You're selling in Manhattan and sundry other swanky places. You've had plenty of free publicity in media with the appropriate reach to capture the attention of the chattering class whose hands you're washing. The wind is now behind you and you've an opportunity to make a significant contribution to establishing Afghanistan as something other than a squalid state exporting only smack and terror. This is what USAID wants to hear.

Peppering this and subsequent communications were colloquialisms like "the first thing we've gotta make plain ..."

I replied, providing the requested information, but also a statement of frustration. I was swiftly scolded for my tone: "unbusinesslike, unmannerly, and just plain unaesthetic."

Ick. No one who uses gotta in a business context--who would, indeed, use gotta for any purpose other than transcribing soul lyrics--should be passing judgments on the aesthetic value of someone else's prose. Especially when he himself appears never to have met a cliché he didn't like. Guy should be sentenced to wash with Duane Reade soap ("Compare to Irish Spring!") for the rest of his life.

Anyway, seriously, Sarah Chayes's piece confirms what you hear elsewhere about funding provided by big-guns organizations for entrepreneurship in developing countries--namely, that it has a way of vaporizing in the pipeline from the West to the target population. It's a very good read.