Tokyo’s Muslim

I was out bicycling around 1 AM to return a video before paying a late fee, and the only thing I could think was about how I could use the half crooked smile appearance of the moon as a literary allusion.  I blame the books I’ve been reading lately.  Ever since the “Classics” application on the iPhone was made free, I’ve read 4 books; this is in less than a week, and despite me being overwhelmed with work.

For record’s sake, the four were “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” by Edwin Abbott Abbott, “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling and “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll.  I gave up on Alice half way through, since it was too irritating to read it on the iPhone screen, but the other three were fantastic.  I think The Art of War worked quite well with the iphone, since the small parables seemed to flow well from page to page.

The iPad is the horrible Nintendo “Total lockdown” theory brought to proper computers.

I don’t look forward to a future where I can’t play around with my own machine.  Is it too much to ask for?

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After some more thinking, the device suddenly becomes far more interesting.  10 hours of constant use?  With a decent RSS reader app, it would be the perfect device to keep me up to date on the train.  Sign me up – potentially.

Watched Avatar yesterday with the gf in Shinjuku.  A few thoughts ran through my mind.

• Hayao Miyazaki is a hack. I’ve never seen any of the later’s movies that came close in any sense; any of his movies that are conceptually similar (Mononoke Hime, Nausicaa) suffer from muddled vision and the incapability of forming an opinion. None of Miyazaki’s movies have ever been entertaining AND thought-provoking – it’s usually one or the other.  (I think the difference between Mononoke Hime and Avatar represent the difference between Japan and America, but that’s another story).  Maybe it is just the fact that Miyazaki has never done anything but create, while Cameroon was a truck driver and a working man before he started his career.
• 2000 yen (24-25$) for a ticket?  Ouch.    My friend Usmaan reminded me that I could have purchased the tickets from one of those ticket re-sellers around Shinjuku, but what can you do?
• Being able to walk home from a late show in Shinjuku is one of the coolest benefits to living in Tokyo.
• The next 10 years will see movie producers concentrating on gimmicks like 3D to keep people coming to theaters.  That’s depressing.
• Isn’t the reasoning used for stripping Pandora the same as outsourcing manufacturing to countries without environmental laws?
• “Sent back to their dying world” – ouch.

Glad I saw it, too bad I had to pay almost 55$ (if we include popcorn, 2 tickets and a coke)