The White Peril 白禍

Oh, great. One of those party game things. Well, since Eric is a good friend, I'll play along at least partially.

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

Just what the world needs--another excuse for people to share private details that no one really needed to know about. But okay, let's see....

1. My parents met when they were playing in a cover band together. My mother played drums and my father bass; when I was born, they named me after the Beatles' rhythm section. (My middle name is Richard, and Sean is, of course, the Irish form of John.)
   
2. Those who find my voluble Yank patriotism and devotion to the English side of my family annoying may be pleased to know that the gods of mischief have found a way to stick it to me: People I meet are constantly telling me I "look French."
   
3. Those who don't tell me I look French tell me I look like Matthew Fox on Lost. I take it as a compliment, as I know it's intended to be, but for the life of me I don't see the resemblance.
   
4. I was brought up in a very conservative Christian sect and, directly out of high school, went to the small Bible college it ran in the East Texas woods. The atmosphere was friendly and upbeat, but classical-liberal skepticism was verboten (unless trained on the theory of evolution and other such intellectual tools of Satan, of course). I lasted six weeks before I had to get the hell out of there for the sake of my sanity.
   
5. I don't seem to have the personality to succumb to the "addictive" allure of sites like Facebook. A friend invited me to sign up last week, so I did. Or tried to. It turned out I already had an account. Another friend had invited me to join some time before; I'd signed up and then not only not gone back but completely forgotten about it.
   
6. I grew up with parents who went to a local dairy farm to buy raw milk, went to another local farm to buy eggs, and had a vegetable garden most years. My mother baked all our bread. To this day, I find few things more irritating than food made with mediocre ingredients.
   
7. Well, okay--I do have a major weakness for Burger King.
   
8. For the love of Pete, one more? Uh, the first album I ever bought with my own money was Beauty and the Beat by the Go-go's.

As far as tagging other people goes, I'm with Connie. But if there are eight people reading who'd like to share eight facts about themselves, comments are open. Knock yourselves out.

Jane Galt wants to spread the word about Sony VAIO customer service, which is apparently as bad in the States as it is in Japan. Actually, I don't know that Sony customer service is considered all that bad here; it's just that everyone knows Sony products break down quickly. Hence the expression ソニー時間 (soni jikan: "Sony time"), which is...well, the (unusually low) amount of time it takes your Sony gizmo to conk out. A friend told me the expression started with an urban legend saying that Sony actually rigged its products to break down after a certain period of time, though I don't know that there's any way to verify that.

Of course, reputation doesn't tell you everything. Toshiba in Japan is known for having surly and unhelpful customer service, but when the CD-ROM drive on my laptop started having seizures, everyone I talked to was great. (And by "everyone," I'm referring to a half-dozen people. The drive would seem to be fixed at the end of each call and then start going on the blink a few days later. The last guy I talked to finally told me I'd just have to send my machine in.) I hope Jane finally gets some satisfaction out of Sony.

A close buddy, an Englishman, just sent me this article, with a note zeroing in, gay-ly, on the best one-liner:

He once asked Mick Jagger why his face was so wrinkled. "Laughter lines," the old rocker replied with a grin. Melly quipped: "Nothing's that funny."

Perfect.

A friend who read the post below about licensing fortunetellers reminded me that the classic protectionist-licensing story remains that of African braiders. For those who haven't seen it discussed on a news program or in Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies, the Institute for Justice website has a rundown.

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I'm still making my way through Brink Lindsey's most recent book, but he's revived his blog and has a bunch of terrific posts about advertisements. For me the standouts are the pre-PC Jello commercial, apparently narrated by Charlie Chan, and the compilation of TV cigarette commercials. I was born in '72; I don't remember cigarette advertising on television. But I do remember being a child when lots of people smoked--there were ashtrays everywhere to accommodate them, and it wasn't regarded as a big deal. Lindsey says, "Also, isn’t there a powerful illicit thrill--in our current age when smoking is the new leprosy--in watching these folks happily taking in big lungfuls of carcinogens?" Yes, there is. From our perspective now, the ads practically feel pornographic.

*******

Not surprisingly, Minister of Defense Fumio Kyuma has been brought sharply back into line by Prime Minister Abe:

During a meeting of about ten minutes, the prime minister told Kyuma, "Japan is the only country to suffer a nuclear strike, and we must think of the feelings of the bombing victims in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, who suffered horribly. We mustn't hurt their feelings."

Especially with an election coming up.