All right, already. I'm not going to start writing to other people's specifications, but if the post titles are looking self-consciously cryptic, I'll knock it off. It's not as if I were aiming to drive people crazy. : )

I wish I were able to come up with succinct and germane headings the way everyone else is, but...see, I've only got, like, three subjects, and I can't very well start calling things "Japan Post privatization, Part the 1045th," right? The problem is, whenever I try to squeeze in a little distinguishing information, I end up with something unwieldy: "Koizumi says Japan Post privatization must proceed despite old-guard ninnyism he's been up against since taking office." Yes, we learned to write snappy headlines in journalism class in high school. No, the lessons clearly didn't take. Besides, what I'm doing here isn't journalism. I also toyed with the idea of using random but faux-profound Japanophile stuff ("A lone crane cries in silhouette against a midnight sky") to see whether people would get the joke, but there's no point in getting a joke that's not very funny, anyway.

So if I feel stuck, I go with whatever comes into my head that I'll be able to recognize when I'm looking at an MT list later; usually, what comes into my head is some line from a pop song, contrived as they are to stick in the memory.

Oh, yeah, on a different but related issue: I do understand that not everyone reads Japanese. I have a few readers who are studying it, though. When I put a post title in Japanese (always an uninteresting reference to the main topic), it's usually in the hope that they'll look up the meaning and reading and then be able to associate it with the post content in their memory. When you're studying Japanese, every little bit of memory aid helps, trust you me. Anyway, no one has written to say that that's getting on his nerves, but if it's helpful, I can...I don't know, put the English in a roll-over link, or something. I'm not going out of my way to be obscurantist.

Added in the early hours of 2 February: It seems I can't even leave the title off a post in a way that makes people happy. (Just kidding, Amritas. Glad you've got your energy back.)

Weird week. Atsushi was here for a belated anniversary celebration, which was the highlight; of course, it meant I was keyed up before that. Friend's birthday last Sunday...Monday? Anyway, uncharacteristic work-night carousing. Made for some odd communing between self and current project. Probably odd posts, too.

Somewhere in there, a friend--not a birthday boy--asked me what he was doing wrong. You know, to find a boyfriend worth making a life with. It's not the sort of question you can respond to with, "Just about everything," even if that's pretty much the answer. This is one of those guys who...his way of showing a man he's interested is to be all effusive and touchy. Not touchy in a caddish way, where you have to glare at him and be like, "Sorry, bro, that's my knee"--just with the flirtatious-hand-on-shoulder thing. And he giggles and blushes. A lot.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being jolly and boyish, but if you're too jolly and boyish...and you go for big Australian guys...and you have a tendency to act shocked and affronted when they get the idea they're going to score with you, you are asking for trouble. Talking to my friend about this stuff reminds me of those dead-end discussions we had in college about whether a woman is being "provocative" if she goes around in an eyelet camisole and micromini and can't talk to a man without flipping her hair.

[CNN-related aside: Speaking of clothing choices, who the hell told Dianne Feinstein that the pale-green jade beads were a good idea with the black jacket? She looks as if she were about to show Princess Aurora something in the way of a nice, new spinning wheel.]

My friend fails, in the by-the-book way, to see where the problem might lie. I mean that he hasn't made the basic connection between, on the one hand, behavior that attracts men and gives you the thrill of being admired and, on the other, behavior that signals you're eager to provide a different kind of thrill in return later. You don't have to subscribe to the revolting belief that you owe a guy sex if you let him buy you a drink in order to believe that it's dishonest and manipulative to push his buttons to shore up your ego. My friend is well-intentioned and really doesn't seem to see it that way, and (at least where I usually run into him) the guys behind the bar as well as his buddies know how to keep an eye on him. It's just frustrating when someone asks you something important and doesn't want to hear the answer.

[Is Jane Harman the most annoying person in the world, or what? Sweetie, it's okay to choke out a single sentence without taking a dig at the President, sometimes. No, really--we'll be able to remember you hate him even if we go 30 seconds without hearing about it.]

In better news, since Atsushi was home for the weekend, I was able to pass along my parents' Christmas present to him, which arrived in the mail after he'd gone home from the New Year. He'd given them a figurine for the Year of the Rooster, so they gave him one back: a cat, probably because he played so easily with my parents' two (real ones, not figurines) when I brought him home two years ago. They're Siamese, so suffering themselves to be played with is not a habit.

The weather is supposed to turn cold today in his part of Japan--actually, along the Sea of Japan coast overall, I think. It's windier and colder than last week here in Tokyo, too, but it's still clear. I probably ought to air the rugs while I can. Now that Aaron Brown is on television, I probably ought to change the channel, too. Criminy.

Wow. Blizzard in the Northeast, huh? (It's probably kind of stupid for me to be linking a Japanese article to tell you about a snowstorm you already know about in our native tongue--I'm only doing so because that's where I first learned of it.) They actually had to close Philadelphia International Airport--and this time, not just de facto because of US Air's fable-worthy incompetence. Stay safe, everyone.

Happy fourth anniversary, Atsushi.

Since Atsushi will see this site before I talk to him tomorrow, and since we won't actually get to see each other until next week, I'm going to put a picture up, temporarily. Of me, I mean. I mean, the picture will be of me until I age to the point that it doesn't resemble me, but it'll be up temporarily. For reasons that will be clear from the next post.

I thought I might go a full year without a single troll or piece of hate mail, but it wasn't to be. The feedback I get through comments and e-mails generally ranges from (rare) vigorous but civil opposition to (more frequent) praise, sometimes bordering on fulsome, so I'm not complaining. It was not because I was a world-class diplomat that I attracted only thoughtful folks before, and it's not because I'm a valiant, uncompromising truth-teller that I've attracted a few ne'er-do-wells now. I've been reading blogs long enough to know that these things happen basically on schedule; they're part of the life cycle.

With that in mind, I'd like to make my policies clear before the need to do so becomes exigent. I won't tell you what civilized behavior is because you already know. If you're seriously hesitating to send/publish something because you're afraid you'll cross some kind of line, you're probably right and should find another way to get your point across. If you decide to live on the edge...well, we all have our lapses. Being very fallible myself, I don't plan to pursue a one-strike-and-you're-out line unless pushed, which seems unlikely with my traffic.

But a lapse is forgivable because it's an aberration. One's overall record is supposed to show a desire to hear other points of view out, make arguments rather than screeds, and accept joshing with a good grace. Consistent troublemakers will be banned without remorse. This is partially inclination on my part--if I can make my dirty jokes and dishy comments in private where they belong, you can, too. There is also a practical reason: I am the public face of my company to a sector of our client base, and it's my responsibility to err on the side of discretion.

Some people are inclined toward dissing, and I'm not green enough to assume that I can dissuade them by appealing to their sense of honor. I will only point out that I was egotistical enough to start this site, give it a soi-disant danger-boy name, and expect that at least a few strangers would be interested in what I have to say. Considering that, the probability that I will be crushed by a single sentence that says I'm an idiot, a traitor, or a heartless jerk is very low. Just a thought.

Added at 22:33: Okay, fine. This needed serious de-purple-ing. It's fixed. Michael has commented on a particularly bad sentence, and it remains for those who want to see what this looked like before trimming.

I almost never read something at Eric's and think, "Oh, no, no, no, no, man--what were you thinking?" Even in this case, it's just a short passage, but I think it's significant to what he's saying in this (otherwise excellent) post:

Much as I abhor thinking the thoughts of other people (one of my favorite gripes), I like to think of the blogosphere as being above groupthink, identity politics, and the herd mentality. Ideas here should stand or fall on their own.

Those who are easily manipulated or misled, in my view, don't belong in the blogosphere,....

Eric is too kind. "Those who are easily manipulated or misled" shouldn't be running about loose in a free society; taking specific pains to exclude them from the blogosphere is redundant.

But a big, open group of people is a big, open group of people. I sometimes have a nagging feeling I'm not a very good blogger because I don't have the sense of belonging to a special -osphere. As I see it, people act like themselves. The medium makes parts of their personality come out that you might not usually see if dealing with them face-to-face, or in real-time phone conversations, or by letter. And given the clicking-through-links way of getting around, it's easier to avoid the boors than it would be if we were all physically in one big room. However, I don't think it's all that realistic to expect less total boorishness than you get in real life. (I'm not pretending the nature of on-line correspondence doesn't bring out some of my own character flaws, BTW; I've been known to fire off an uncharitable comment or e-mail in a fit of temper and have to apologize abjectly later.)

Dean has been dealing with this sort of issue also, with interesting results. I can't read his mind, but I suspect he was thinking about what impression it makes when you open a comment thread and scroll through 50 people named things like Stevie Nicks's Demon Luvr. It probably does suggest that people are not having the most serious, adult-level discussion and that you can loosen your own standards accordingly.

Actually, I just called the results of Dean's new rules "interesting," and I don't know why--the discussion in fact quickly reached near-transcendent levels of tedium. The interesting part was from the tiny minority of commenters who addressed the underlying issue: Is there a way to make people behave when they're not naturally inclined to do so? Can you do it by forcing them to use their own names or, failing that, names that sound as if they were attached to real people with their integrity at stake?

I doubt it. Granted, credulousness and honor aren't exactly the same issue, so maybe yoking Eric's and Dean's posts together will only make sense to me. My point just is that whatever revolutionary character the blogging phenomenon may have, it's not in how it channels human nature. Once you've gotten used to the variations on them that the medium itself requires, the rules that apply are the standard injunctions to avoid shooting your mouth off and not take strangers at face value.

Among my search keyphrases so far this month:

"can people ever be berated and bashed into good health?"

I hope I'm in time to attend to that one for whoever was asking. The answer is:

NO!

Please, please, please, stop trying, please-oh-please. And tell all your friends.

Added while taking prim but lusty gulps from a very large glass of Coke: I'm aware that my tendency toward parentheticals and long modifiers can sometimes obscure my main point. With that in mind, I would like to make sure the above is absolutely clear.

NO, YOU CANNOT--

CANNOT

--BROWBEAT PEOPLE

INTO BEING HEALTHIER!

What you can do is be charming and warmly appreciative of those around you with all their idiosyncrasies. This will lead them to think that your way of life makes you a secure, happy person and encourage them to emulate it. Or maybe it won't, but at least you won't give yourself a stroke worrying about what they're doing to themselves.

Can we please call a moratorium on asking other adults, "Why are you so quiet?" That kind of question is just--just barely--passable when addressed to a five-year-old you're trying to encourage not to be shy about joining a conversation with all the adults.

When the person you're addressing is 32, it's inane. I mean, what answer are you expecting, pray tell? "Well, the truth is, I'm painfully shy, and I was just waiting for a big, strong busybody like you to come over here and bring me right out of it"? Maybe next time, I should make my eyes swim dangerously and say, "I'm trying out my Jeffrey Dahmer act," just to see how that goes over.

I know I sound obnoxious here. There genuinely are painfully shy gay guys who just wish people would come up to them and flirt when they go out, and here I am bitching that guys are talking to me and asking questions that don't suit me. But that's not my point. My point is, if you want to start a conversation, start a conversation. I have no objection to being asked where I'm from, how long I've been in Japan, do I like Tokyo. Those are the obvious points of departure, but you're supposed to use them to depart somewhere. I'm flattered when someone takes an interest in me, but I don't consider it a proper conversation if I'm just being called upon to hold forth on the details of my personality, particularly when my interlocutor then feels at liberty to pass judgment on whether I'm too this or not enough that.

Anyway, regarding quietness: I can't speak for anyone else, but I, for one, am capable of loudly and gratingly monopolizing conversations when I'm in one of my moods. If I'm not doing so, I'm not in one of my moods. Be grateful for lack of bounty. It's nice of you to reassure me that I don't need to feel all abashed in front of the grown-ups, but it's also unnecessary. (The first time, I mean--to say nothing of the next ten repetitions.)