Lace makers move into G-strings

Artisans who used to create gowns and altar cloths for customers such as the late Pope now craft G-strings and other lingerie for sale all over the world.
They say the underwear is quicker to make and easier to sell than traditional goods such as tablecloths.
But not everyone in the deeply Catholic village is happy with the changes to the 200-year old industry.
"Our lace is well known in Poland," Mieczyslaw Kamieniarz, whose family has made lace for five generations, told the French news agency AFP.
"We have made it for John Paul II, for the Queen of England, for church altars. It's shameful and humiliating for Koniakow that this very same lace is being worn on people's backsides," he said.

And some craftswomen apparently had doubts about the change.
"The priest told me that a woman came to confession and asked him if it was a sin to make G-strings," said Anna Barska, a 47-year-old lace maker.

taken from BBC.com

Superpost 9/7/06

Here is something that has come up on several occasions, which I assume demonstrates the depth of my daily conversations. How does Superman fly.Sure, a lot of people are willing to just chalk it up to ‘super powers’ but that doesn’t explain the mechanics behind it. This started because I was basically wondering how he controls his flight. He often sticks his hands out in front of him, but they obviously do not propel him as he often carries things. Perhaps his hands act as stabilizers when they are free, but little else.The propulsion must come, then, from his hind quarters, perhaps his legs. I would like to point out that Superman often hovers and moves his legs around which, if they were keeping him in the air, would disturb his position. I think from this we can conclude that it is not his legs which actually keep him in the air.What’s left? Unfortunately, his butt. I conclude that Superman propels himself through the air with his butt. Perhaps using his butt like a jet engine he releases controlled bursts, focusing his sphincter to increase speed etc, using the rest of his body for pitch and attitude control.This theory does work quite well, it takes into account the fact that Superman is free to use his limbs while flying and gives him the ability to increase speed at will.Does Superman have unlimited fart power? Well, he can blow really hard with his mouth, so I am assuming he has enough control over his body to take in air through his nose or mouth and divert it to the appropriate areas for use as needed.You may be crass enough to think that this would then lead to a super stink, but being Superman he may be able to control the smell, thus leaving the world smelling minty fresh as he flies past, or even the chemical that is released, like something that repairs the ozone layer.He is Superman, so I figure that is possible.There are a lot of refuting theories, because people don’t like to think about Superman farting his way across the globe, but every other theory I have heard has been a real stretch.

taken from NinjaLicker.com

Damn you Winter!! Damn you overheated trains!!

Among my friends I am probably best known for my unbearably dry skin and my lackidasical attitude torwards lotion. It would see m that Japan in working hard on making me change my ways.
Every time I step onto a train or into a building I am blasted by an almost ubearable wall of heat. The heat alone is terrible, but when it is coupled with my dry skin it sends me into itchy convulsions. My face, neck, back, hands, chest, even my fucking ass all becomes alive with this itchy....hell.
Now, I for the ife of me can't decide if itching flls under pain or simple discomfort. I mean when it isn't confined to one area has a line been crossed? I think so.
Anyway, starting today I will start a moisturizing regiment. I will not continue to look like a crazy gaijin every time I step onto a train.
Once I even had a cute little kid comment on my dry skin. He looked so concerned s he pointed to my draw knuckles and rambled on in incomprehensible kiddy japanese.
My itching and the cute little kid are not the true catalyst for my sudden interest in moisturizing. The true reason wold be the realization that my face is peeling. It looks like I have dandruff on my fucking face. This is not right. I look crazy. I don't allow dandruff on my fucking head let alone my face.
That brings me to another point. Possibly an even bigger issue than my dry skin. I'm almost out of oil for my hair. The supply that I brough from home lasted for a full ten months an now I NEED more. The last time that I didn't use anything on my hair for a prolonged amount of time my scalp became really sensitive and my hair started to break and fall out. It was horrible. I felt like I was shedding or something. The lightest touch would make me demand your head. Until I can find more oil or some substitute I will have to decide what I can do with my hair.

I wonder what bitches in Africa use. I don't have any damn juice or berries here.

I am a creature of after thought . A few events in my life pass easily, but most come, go, and leave me wondering. This breakup went well. No crying, no screaming, and a slight getting off of the chest, but then why am I unsatisfied. I've seen this coming for no less than three weeks, but I just couldn't bring myself to bring it to an end.

Am I weak? Probably. Afraid of being alone? Without a doubt. A bad person? Some would argue yes. But I think this goes a little deeper than that.

Japan is a small country that specializes in packing a lot of people into incredibly small spaces. In the larger cities there are people who's only job is to shove people into the subway trains. You would think that with all this apparent closeness Japan would be an incredibly social society. You would be wrong. In this society where people spend hour upon hour bumping shoulders with strangers and you can often walk down a street and see families huddled together eating dinner around a small you table people are incredibly distant.

I think this is a problem of Japan and to some extent the world (as I know it). People are really distant. We are all aware of it and on some level disatisfied with it. That is why we seek out relationship. To put an end to the distance that exist between us and the world. We seek out a person that we can open up to completley. A person with which we can look across the distance to other people with. (halelujah)

That is why I couldn't break it off with Robert. I had to know if I had found that person. I didn't. Maybe from what he says he was distancing himself from purposefully. In effect he was hiding himself from me. He distanced himself to make me not like him... to not like the him he was projecting.

A charicature for me to deal with. Is this common? Does it happen everyday? Do we all have a charicature an ideal self that we send out to other people. I do . My ideal self is snappy, intelligent, funny, and above all fun. This person is my ambassador. I send him out to deal with life and report back to me the things that I should know.

This person isn't real. Our ideal selves never are. But then if all we see is each other's ideal selves how do we know if we ever reach a real person. When do we know if the ideal steps aside for the real?

How do we reach the real people?

from the train

It is sunny and as always quiet. From the window the world goes rolling quickly by. At every stop the doors open onto a new and interesting picture. A woman running through the shadow of a building as if the cold held captive there will reach out and snatch her oversized Louis Vitton bag away; two bikes long rusted from lack of use being nuzzled gently by a small dog; a boy or girl picking at their carefully gelled hair continously...

It is done. I am single. Last night, my boy.... Robert and I ended our relationship. It was a mutual agreement?

We met at Starbucks. I had a short Tazo Chai Tea Latte (I thought only coffee could be a latte.) and he had a grande White Chocolate something and then he showed me these two books on corporate warrior (oxymoron?) philosophy. Then we made small talk for about twenty minutes. This small talk was actually me gettting ready to some comlletly clean but then changing the subject quickly. After I had finished my tea and he had finished his chocolate and cinnamon roll (he got that too) I blurted out that we should walk and so we did.

We walked to Central Park and with tower looming behind us and an oasis before us we ended our relationship.

It went smoothly. A lot of laughing and a few apologies. I laughed he apologized. He admitted that he had been purposefully becoming more distant because he sense that he might be getting this new job very soon. I told him that I figured as much and that he had been making me very angry. Actually I said livid. Three times and then stomped. He apologized and then I told him that his one word text message response had been driving me crazy for the last month. He apologized again. Then we walked some more, laughed, hugged, and then in walked away in different directions. I towards the oasis and he to the city.

There was no bad blood there. Notice that I refrained from telling him of my "wanderings." Now it seems that I have a friend. We agreed to be that way. I'll see if I can.

funny and weird

Is this how u were taught??

A few simple realizations

This is gonna have to be really short. I'm really tired for some reason.

1. Sweetie are decent. Only decent.

A "sweetie" is the strangest sweet grapefruit I've ever seen. Apparently sweeties are a mix between grapefruit and pomelo. To me they are just sweet grapefruits trapped in green straight jackets. I spent 40 minutes trying to simply peel one this morning. It was good though.

2. Every farewell is different.

This is probably the most sensible thing I've thought all week. I'm learning, quicker than I would like, that life in Japan for a foreigner is very transient. Either you are coming or going or every one around you is. Today I just said goodbye to my friend Jordan. He is returning to Australia. On February 5th... possibly sooner I will be saying goodbye to my boyfriend. And, in March, a whole heap of the people I've come to know and like are going to be leaving Japan to return to their respective countries.

Each time the farewell will be different. With my friend Jordan I could only laugh and hug his drunk ass. That boy really can't hold his liquor. With my boyfriend... I don't know. Maybe I'll dance away from him or go power walking to the train station to hide my uncontrollable tears. (I assure you I would not be crying for him. I just hate to see anything come to an end and I really hate to feel like people are walking out of my life. I cried when my friend Eddie left, but I think that was just some thing I had to get out. I was also a wee bit hungover.) When the heap of people leave I think I'll just read a new book or something. I won't feel much of anything.

3. I am horribly dishonest...

...and my guilt about it will one day get me in trouble. I'm cheating on my boyfriend and I halfway want to tell him. Only half. I'm dishonest and guilt, but not stupid. Besides, I am his first boyfriend and I have a creeping sensation that I will be his is only for a while. He has got a job as an electrical engineer in Iowa, and I just don't see him trying to connect with anyone in Iowa any time soon.

4. What is remorse if not regret over being caught?

I think that one is self explanatory.

Tommie's Sexy Name

Get Your Sexy Name

Cute

Just some random pics of me around town with one of my friends.

You know and while I seem to be in a writing flurry tonight I have a question:

WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH MY BILLS?!?!?!

My rent makes sense. My power makes sense. It it cold as Dante's Hell outside so the heating bill will be high. But why exactly is my cell phone bill over 10,000 yen ($83)? Why is my internet bill just 500 yen short of 10000? What is going on? Something has to change and soon. This is just to much money.

And what the hell is up with my credit card not working. I pay those bitches every damn month. Hell they take their money before I see my damn pay check.

I got to make some phone calls tomorrow. *sigh* And spend an hour trying to make them understand that I don't speak Japanese.

I never knew that bills would make me want to go back to the states.

Hiragana in 7 days

I have 7 days to teach myself hiragana. Today was my first day back in my Japanese class since winter vacation and because of my unusually "lucky" year I sat at the wrong table. I saw my teacher from last year and just assumed he would be teaching the same class.

I was wrong. Very wrong. I was a mediocre student in the previous class and this class, which is just one step above the last one, is not really catering to my mediocre nature. My teacher refused from the beginning of class to write anything in romaji (in English letters). He would only write in hiragana and at one point even broke off into a few kanji (satanic characters from china). To say that I was confused would be an understatement. I only know the kana (symbols) for my name and a few other really common kana. I thought I would die, but within myself I decided a couple of things:

1. Although I was at the wrong table I would not allow my classmates to view me as a quitter so I refused to get up and wander over to the much easier lesson that was taking place about 2 meters from me.

2. I must decode this fucking language immediately. Preferably by the next class. 7 days.

So starting tomorrow after karaoke with my friends I will clean my apartment and endeavor to commit at least twelve of the hiragana kana to memory. Saturday will be another twelve and I will go on like that until I have mastered all 50 and then I will spend the last few days reviewing the vocabulary from last year and all of the kana.

***I am the king of making sensible plans, but never sticking to them. So this little sermon I'm giving is probably just attracting an earthquake to me right now.***

Oh yeah. I don't think my teacher is that good. For starters he only has basic, very basic, English skills. Now I know that is not really necessary for teaching Japanese, but I have questions and until I can develop enough skill to ask them in Japanese I will continue to rattle on in English. I need him to keep up with me, because his razzy-worthy acting is leaving me in the dark.

And his little teaching aid lady sucks. In class today he was trying to make the example for this crazy sentence as simple as possible and this floozy... nice woman seemed determined to muck it up by throwing in names and what not. I mean I understood what she meant, but I was focusing so hard on the really dumbed down example that Oguwa-sensei was giving us that I had to stop and stare at her for a moment just to understand. I don't like her. I wish the aid from last year was there. She was cute and spoke English.

Yakudoshi

You know my company has an annoying habit of making you think that you are in for a nice and relaxing Wednesday filled with the joys of folding paper and stuffing it gently into little packages of tissue paper stamped with the company logo and then dashing this poorly formed fantasy against the ground minutes after you have found your personal paper folding rhythm. It is really annoying. But with this company that is all that you can expect from a Wednesday. Wednesday is the one day of the week when that the company has set aside to send me to whatever school I am needed in usually because a teacher has fallen "ill." Basically some bitch wanted a day off.

So I am currently sitting in a class giving a test. All I have to do to give this test is pass out a few papers, pop a tape into a tape player, and read a magazine for 70 minutes. I finished the magazine about 35 minutes ago. I even flipped through the back and found a few leads on some English-Japanese exchanges and some apartments that might be fun to go and look at. About 20 minutes after finishing the magazine I finally finished the test. I took it just for shits and giggles along with the students. Actually I blew passed them. The test is really easy... if you are a native speaker....

10 minutes. You know in the next ten minutes I expect my boredom and test induced drowsiness to peak sharply. Actually I think they peaked about 10 minutes ago when I was taking the test which would explain me writing this...

ha! I just stopped myself from waxing poetic about he therapeutic values of writing in my life. Lucky me.

My life. Perhaps i should wax poetic about that. ((I have always liked that expression: "wax poetic" or "wax lyrical." It almost seems like I'm about to say something meaningful even though we all know that that is seldom the case.))

Recently, I was informed by one of my students that 24 is is a "dangerous year." I asked him to explain further, but he wasn't able to really do it well so I decided to do some research. You see I'm 24 now and this last year has me more than a little curious.

Bad luck ages are referred to as yakudoshi, with yaku meaning “calamity” or “calamitous” and doshi signifying “year(s).” These years are considered critical or dangerous because they are believed to bring bad luck or disaster.

For men, the ages 24 and 41 (or 25 and 42 in Japan) are deemed critical years, with 41 being especially critical. It is customary in these unlucky years to visit temples and shrines to provide divine protection from harm. In Hawaii, it has become a widespread tradition among men of Japanese ancestry to celebrate the 41st birthday with a festive yakudoshi party or gathering to ward off the bad luck or disaster that may strike. The birthday person should wear red to bring good health, vitality and long life.

The equivalent yakudoshi ages for women are 18 and 32 (19 and 33 in Japan), with 32 thought to be a particularly hard, terrible or disastrous year. Like the age 41 for men, precautions are taken to ward off bad luck, and some women in Hawaii celebrate their 32nd birthday with a special yakudoshi party.

Notice how they keep saying "blah, blah, blah in Japan." I'm in fucking Japan and even though it is not my habit to apply special meaning to life's more precarious moments while in the heat... of... the... moment... I must say it is becoming my habit more and more to do so in retrospect.

This last year has been shit for me. About 18 days after turning 24 I lost my job and my apartment. I spent the following month sleeping on my friends floor while looking for new work. I found a part time job, but the pay was shitty and I had to leave quickly. That guy refused to pay me. I found a new job, but was so low on money that for the first month while waiting for pay day I lived off of ramen noodles mostly and don't even forget the fact that I didn't have the money to buy a bed, curtains, deodorant, towels, TOILET PAPER, etc. (Yes, you can live without toilet paper. You just have to organize your poops around your showers.) There have been other bad things this last year but there are simply to many things to list. Now don't get me wrong I've had a ton of good things. I've seen new places, got new jobs, made several good friends, ended my four year drought, and other things like that.

But that still doesn't take away from the fact that this has been a rough year. Because of all of these good things I am thinking about going to a temple somewhere and praying for some protection or something. I just have to get one of my students to teach me how to pray. Apparently their is some combination of clapping, bowing, ringing of bells, and throwing of money. I'll have to get someone to write it down for me. One thing is certain I will not be sad to see this year finally come to a close. Maybe I can begin 25 with something extremely positive like someone proposing to me.

There are african creatures on tv.
Casino Royale was a good movie. I have only one complaint though. Although poker has suddenly grown dramatically in popularity over the last 3 years I don't think that it should be highlighted for at least 45 minutes in a movie. I don't know a damn thing about poker and I'm sure there are other people in the world who scratched their heads in unison when James Bond (who is incredibly sexy) won the poker game... somehow.

I lkke howler monkeys.

slap tommie

first of all you wished a mormon guy happy christmas...not sure if thats a faux-pa or not. but saying happy christmas definitely should be. i made the pilgrimage to oxford yesterday, hung out with brenda in the WC and shamlessly hit on japanese chics in the library. the "O" just aint what it used to be though. i got all excited about my blog...the fitness blog. 10 weeks to perfect abs. i was gonna start the documentation take the pictures devise the work out plan when my AC adapter started smoking. i tried to duck tape it...no avail. couldnt get a replacement had to call Toshiba. they want a Man...as in 10000 yen not a person and itll take 3 weeks for them to ship it. thats when it dawned on me that the japanese are sytematically and methodically fucking me. where as you got fucked very hard and quick (of course leaving you sore for quite some time) they have managed to extend my fucking into its 3rd year!

BISHOP!!! Holy crap! You are:

With the power to absorb and redirect energy, you are practically invulnerable to anyone who isn't physically stronger than you. Bishop is pretty kick ass, unfortunately he will only exist in a world where Professor X has been assassinated. So go fuck something up!

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 80% on Mutations

Link: The Which X-Man Are You Test written by alexium on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

This is for you TOmmie..lol

When I woke up this morning it was snowing. It is probably the first noticeable snow of the year in Nagoya and I for some reason am not excited. Well not just for some unknown reason. I know the reason and I guess it keeps me from viewing the snow with the same amount of excitement that I would have had back in the States. (When did it become the States to me.)

It feels like somehing is burning in the distance. That is what I think of when I see the snow.... ash in the wind. I don't think this thing with James is gonna work. In the almost 2 weeks he was gone to the U.S. he only contacted me once... through myspace after I put a small message wishing him a happy christmas and new year. I'm angry about it but I don't know how to or if I should say it. He says that for most of his vacation he didn't have access to a computer, but in my mind I just wonder why he didn't just give me a 30 second phone call. Are phones taboo at the beach?


Before he left he said I wouldn't miss him, but I could help but think about him every day. Not always with love in my heart. I missed him.

I want to know what he thinks of this relaionship. Like where is it going. Is it going anywhere? His contract is up in April and I know he isn't going to renew. Should I continue to put myself into this relationship.



I called my older sister last night. She knows that i'm gay, and generaly accepts that I will only talk to her about something if it is really bothering me. I told her about the contact thing and the contract thing and she says I shouldn't let him just treat me any old way. But I don't feel like he is just treatiing me anyway. Truthfully I don't want to be alone again.

Only a month ago I was saying his name with a big smile on my face and now I'm thinking about trying to drink him out of my mind.

Happy New Year

does any one care that i am here?