Life In Japan: Jennifer the Cat, Media Darling!

As an attention-starved author and overgrown baby, I of course am always trying to attract publicity.  Again, one of my kitties has humbled yours truly by being featured in our local newspaper.
 
Maybe I'm approaching this wrong.  Do I need to learn how to purr to get noticed around here?

Of course, the selection of local pets for cameos is not random.  And since our kitties are the most beautiful in the world, what choice is there but to run their photos and say a few complimentary, if inadequate words?  I'm frankly surprised they don't write them up on the front page with a huge eye-catching headline like . . .

JENNIFER THE CAT STEALS EVERYONE'S HEART IN SASAYAMA

. . . or create a special standalone section for them like the Arts & Culture Magazine of the New York Times.

You think I'm biased?  Check out these photos!

Which gets to the heart of the challenge for me personally.  At least in the cuteness department, I simply can't compete.  So I need to create my own separate niche.

I got it!  I'll write novels!  Incredibly cute novels.  With cute covers.  And cute characters.  Cute story lines.  Cute plot twists.

Novels that purr!

Hmm . . . I may have gotten off to a bad start. Politics?  Satire?  Human trafficking?  Growing up in Detroit?  The end of the world?  Drug smuggling?  Eating giraffes?

What's cute about any of that?



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Jennifer the Cat, Media Darling!

The Case For Female Circumcision

There is no case for female circumcision.

But we live in a very sick world.

We've come to expect the worst.

So here you are . . . reading this.

I’m not being judgmental. I would have clicked on the link too.

Curious . . . confused . . . offended . . . appalled . . . outraged . . . sickened!

I would absolutely have to see what some psychopathic individual had to say
about such an inhumane, degrading and completely offensive practice,
what twisted justification some misguided misanthrope was proposing for
perhaps the ultimate assault on the dignity of females __ the mutilation
of their genitals.

But isn’t that the way things work these days?

There’s always some outrageous headline, some teaser being dangled, some
grotesque manipulation of our reality using loaded phrases and
press-your-hot-buttons language.

It’s not just the sensational stuff either. It’s often fluff, feel good blather which
plays on sympathies or compassion, fantasy or nostalgia, offering
hearts-and-flowers stories or syrupy melodrama, maybe patriotic anthems
and tales of alleged bravery and heroism    __ which dramatically slant
and obscure the truth.

Anyway . . . here we are: “The case for female circumcision.” 

Yup . . . that’s how it reads.  Sucked you right in!  I do understand . . .

 

You wanted to see some demented asshole try to stick up for grotesque and degrading mutilation. What would he look like? Maybe you wanted to both disdain and savor his depravity?

Why?

So you could gag? Hate someone for being so pathologically and sadistically ignorant?

Then share it on Facebook? Send out indignant Tweets?

Really show that bastard!

Yes, letting people know how we feel gets the job done, and more importantly, establishes that we're morally superior . . . because you and I could never support something so foul and inhumane and repulsive, right?

How about these photos? You and I paid taxes and that money went toward this . . .
 
I rest my case.

We all live in a glass houses. I’m not going to pretend I’m any different.

But that’s not the end of the matter, is it?

I am confident that most of you __ like me __ would like to do better.

We’d each like to turn things around and become the person we always 
believed we could and would be.
But to do that, we must first answer this question . . .

How did we become so numb?


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Why feed the beast that feeds us nonsense?

 

I recognize that television is fun.

But it's more than that . . . and less.

The late cultural critic, educator, social scientist, and futurist Neil Postman,
a renowned professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at
NYU, wrote a book in 1985 that changed my life. This truly groundbreaking 
work, Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business 
I read  in 2000. I was so inspired, moved, appalled and frightened, that I turned off 
my TV. For good!

Postman argues that television presents us information as graphic-based
montages, as opposed to hierarchical conceptual ordering. Hierarchical
organization is the basis for language and literature, and has been
responsible for what we credit the progress of many centuries, producing
civilization, industrialization, modernity. Juxtaposition of imagery on
TV and computer screens is not necessarily a bad thing. Just different,
one offering not only a different world view but creating a totally new
untested mental environment for solving problems. We don't know what
kind of future associative image-based "reasoning" will produce, if it
becomes the prevalent vehicle for shaping our social and political
interactions, our economic relationships, our future. It's easy to be
pessimistic, considering how "uncritical" thinking is and how impotent
we as individuals seem to be now, in the deluge of pre-packaged
information and propagandistic blather.

But the more frightening prospects comes from a more sinister aspect of the medium.

Postman argues very persuasively __ enough to get me to turn my TV off forever
__ that television doesn't just feed the brain with a different menu of
highly delectable treats. It actually REWIRES the brain. Excessive
television changes the neurology of the human mind __ the way we process
ALL information, not just what we're viewing.

I don't want to carry on for another 800,000 words going into all of the
research that backs this up. I will say, this sure goes a long way
toward explaining why I can't carry on the most basic conversation with a
lot __ maybe the vast majority __ of people these days.

And by theway, his thesis would appear to apply to much of what is being weaved
into our lives as convenience, then necessity. Smart phone, iPads, Google Glasses, 
smart tablets __ note that these are all image-based technologies.

So it's not just television. But TV is the gateway drug. It is more addictive
than heroin, and if Dr. Postman is correct, more onerous.

By the way, I'm not a Luddite. I am not writing this blog on the back of a
shovel with a chunk of coal. I own three computers, sophisticated
electronic recording technology, and living in Japan am surrounded by
more gadgets and remotes than I know what to do with. And I truly love
the wondrous things that complex and powerful software applications are
capable of.

So I too have to fight it. This stuff can suck you in more thoroughly, more
bewitchingly than watching Angelina's lips on the big screen. I catch
myself checking my email too often, looking at the stat calculator on
this website more frequently than is necessary or healthy, just taking a
"quick peek" at FB way too much, scanning the news aggregator websites
with serious intentions but being subjected to a lot of celebrity gossip
and salacious pseudo-journalism, and generally tending to be more OCD
about all this marvelous gadgetry than I prefer. It's really really addictive 
stuff!

This hypnotic enslavement is a predictable side effect for all of this
flashing, dazzling junk. It's what is termed "contraindications" on
prescription drugs. I think they should print on the side of most of
these devices something to the effect of: May cause obsessive behavior
and other forms of neurosis, enslave unsuspecting individuals to living
life inside the tiny confines of a high-resolution screen, break up
relationships, decimate entire generations of families, encourage
delusional fantasies of epic escape into totally non-existent and
unproductive artificial worlds, and produce numbness in anterior parts
of the human anatomy and critical areas of the cerebral cortex.

Truth in advertising, even if the print is very very small.

So . . .


Turn off your television now!

Get out a sledgehammer!

You know what to do.




[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Telling It Like It Is

I heard that the LAPD raided an indoor nudist colony, killed everyone and drained the pool. What's going on here? If they weren't having sex with goats or filming child pornography, what's the harm? I mean, this was at a YMCA.

Another big problem these days.

Spreading unfounded rumors.

More on that after I check into a story about an Amish family in Lititz, PA who have been using their 7-year-old son as a human pin cushion.
 
Also looking into a hamster with a human-like face which apparently can say, "Have you read your Bible today?"

Thank god for the internet!

No one has an excuse for being poorly informed any more.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]