change and diversity is good.
don't be a one trick pony.
kiss,
r.

btw, what kind of bike did you get?

I once gave r. a pretty yellow bike. When I asked him two weeks later if he was enjoying it, he said "Oh, it got stolen, unfortunately." Since I once left a bike unlocked on a Meguro street for three months and came back to find it still there, I consider this a major achievement. I think he probably drank too much rye and forgot where he'd parked it.

Click Opera is back to its usual pro-Japanese mysticism today, with an article all about how some Japanese-influenced Swedish Flash designer can "heal the Platonism of the West". Also, meet Barrie Greenbie, who believes that the Japanese "performance of an imaginative unification/synthesis between the affective self and the potentially alien qualities of inanimate objects and concepts" is achieved by "clearly bounding them according to a modular logic that controls proxemic domestic relations."

What you are riding through on your new bicycle, Marxy, is not "legitimately insane landscapes" but an organisation of public space built on a different conception of the relationships between thought and feeling, people and objects, the divine and the prosaic...

What you are riding through on your new bicycle, Marxy, is not "legitimately insane landscapes" but an organisation of public space built on a different conception of the relationships between thought and feeling, people and objects, the divine and the prosaic...

I wouldn't go so far. If Modernism was about rational ordering of the environment, the Japanese gov't certainly only go central planning when they need to pay off the construction industries to pave everything in site... but there's no rational organization of space, clearly.

However, I don't see the Japanese surburban mish-mash as intentionally Post-modern "feeling"-oriented design either. It's just the most natural, simple arrangement responding to the flow of capital and consumerism.

More on this later.

I thought the relative parsity of images here was intentional.

If you think central planning is about rationality, you've never seen a committee!

Nice use of the word 'site', marxy. Brings me back to my hard hat days...

Nice use of the word 'site', marxy.

I'll improve my spelling if you will curb the nit-picking.

(I'm probably more distrustful of Postmodernism than ever)

An American being distrustful of Postmodernism = America being the homeland of Rockism (philosophy that stands for very non postmodern values)? Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

By the way, enjoy your jitensha as much as you can, riding one is surely the way to explore Tokyo. After Japan, I became so pro-bicycle that I still ride them in cities that, even though have bike lanes in most of their roads, are meant for cars and everyone knows that it is dangerous to be a cyclist.

I'm also distrustful of Rockism. All isms are interesting guidelines to approach problems but lose value once embraced as dogma. Postmodernism has some valid critiques of Modernism, but there are also valid critiques of Postmodernism. Why throw out everything in the past just because a new 主義 moves into the neighborhood?

Riding in Tokyo is indeed a great way to experience the city. Marxy, unfortunately if you live way out in the wastelands near r I could never ride from where I live to there, but maybe we could meet up somewhere in the middle for a ride.

sparkling if you want images, please see my site, there are almost no words at all.

momus: ridden in Tokyo much?

An American being distrustful of Postmodernism = America being the homeland of Rockism (philosophy that stands for very non postmodern values)? Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

Ah ... but America is the biggest market for postmodern thinkers. Film studies, literature, cultural studies etc... etc... are filled with people who have fallen for Deleuze, Derrida et al. hook, line, and sinker. The Sokal affair took place in the USA for good reason.

nick said:

Since I once left a bike unlocked on a Meguro street for three months and came back to find it still there, I consider this a major achievement. I think he probably drank too much rye and forgot where he'd parked it.

and i say:

you man, are still sore about your bike?
that was SO gone!
i think meguro city claimed it or something.
i didn't drink too much rye anyway.
not enough.
your bike is here somehere.
anyway, if you are still sore,
i'll buy you a new one next time you are in tokyo.
game?
kiss,
r.

We all know that the real reason Momus could leave his bike unlocked for 3 months and not have it stolen is that Ishihara had issued 24/7 surveillance. Ishihara knows full well that Momus is Japan's last hope.

Now the we should all be asking ourselves is, what will happen to Momus the next he returns to Japan, given that it is unlikely Ishihara understands April Fool's Day humour?