politicians are like diapers

...and must be changed often for the same reasons. ^^

I read a funny article in the news the other day and couldn't help it. I drew a political cartoon!

Ok, to be fair, Jack Straw made a point of not ordering them to do anything, leaving the choice up to them. He just "strongly urged" them to stop wearing the full veil.
Not that I can talk, being from the US, whenever I hear 'daitoryo' (ie "president") I flinch and reach for the remote, hoping to surruptitiously change the channel before I see GW Bush totally embarrasing me in front of the entire nation of Japan. I think he sometimes gets on TV on purpose to personally embarrass me by saying everything with like 40 "ums" and "uhs" and my newest pet peeve: squinting at the teleprompter for his next line. Take a public speaking class man, you're President of the US, can you please at least *talk* like one??

From overseas we see a lot more of Condoleezza Rice than our dear GWB, which is fine by me. Fine enough that sometimes I wish she WERE the president. I mean, ok, she admittedly has the same agenda, and is most likely evil and sadistic. I've heard it before. But! At least she is a good enough public speaker that I don't run and hide when I can't reach the remote in time.
sighhhhh.

Ah, so for japanese politics, it's all getting boring now that Koizumi is out of office and no longer scandalizing the political community all over asia by going to the shrine that honors WW2 war criminals. Tch. Now what are we gonna watch on the news?!
by the way, Japanese news is a bit different. It has a lot of extremes. They show the very worst news from all around the world, and then they'll show something entirely non-vital/ non-interesting. "large litter of puppies born to Chuo Jr High school class! next at News 10!!" the news reporter says with an urgency you can tell they are thinking "crap we're about to lose half our viewers!" But on the whole I like Japanese TV. Drama acting here is *terrible* so I am having a constant need for american TV fix, but I am even starting to get the jokes on japanese comedy shows, which are actually pretty funny. My favorite show so far is Mecha mecha iketeru(Mecha-ike for short), and it is now celebrating its 10 year anniversary. I guess I'm not the only one that thinks it's a good show.

My new new favorite is Fountain of Trivia: a show where people write in with amusing trivia they've learned over the years, or wanted to know but didn't have the resources at their disposal to find out.
A sample trivia question: "How big of a fish will a stray cat be able to carry away?" SO random. They put, one after one, about thirty types of fish from a little anchovy all the way to a giant tuna, all measured and weighed, in a forresty area where lots of stray cats were. They hid in the bushes and videoed cat after cat dragging away larger and larger fish, and at the end, this big badass cat with a scar over one eye was struggling to get a hold on a 10-pound tuna. God I love that show. ^^

Here is a random trivia of my own: the slang for "comb-overs" (ie the embarrasing hairstyle of balding men) is called "ba-codo" here. (that is katakana pronunciation of "Bar code". It makes so much sense!! ^^)

I'm going back to the bay area for thanksgiving! I'll be there from wednesday night to monday morning, so if anyone wants to get together and swap stories...

*creepy old man voice from Family Guy* "Callll meh!"