This month was a bit stressful but things seem to be working out. I got extremely sick and bottomed out my bank account, and credit. (Not in that order.) It’s not really important, except as an excuse for not getting anything done. But I’m feeling better, and I did my taxes way early so I just got my rebate. Just in time for my insurance to be raised again. But shouldn’t I get another job anyway? I should. Somewhere in there I found out I almost passed the JLPT, which is a big improvement over totally bombing it, but still not something you can put on a job application. A bigger failure is not being able to keep up a regular blog in Japanese. Definitely said I was going to that. Sleep and keeping up with everything else has gotten priority. Altho getting sick has kinda hit the ol’ reset button in the ol’ brainpan. Maybe not all of those things I have been keeping up with are worth the constant hyper-caffeinated hyper-vigilance. Yes, I could even exclude things I have no interest in. Wow, what a concept.

Big news:

MBV vs. AKB

Two things happened early this month I’m glad to have had a few weeks to think about before commenting on. First, My Bloody Valentine announced after 20 years their new album was suddenly done and was being self-released immediately. That was a shock. But I wasn’t as excited as other fans of the group because I still hadn’t gotten their other albums. It’s this problem I have with focus—sometimes, for years at a time. It’s why I require so much caffeine. (But not so much as I thought, right.) So with my rebate money, in a generic DayQuil haze, I bought the new album (download and vinyl, being shipped to me as we speak) and a copy of that Loveless album I’ve been hearing about and meaning to pick up for two entire decades. So yeah…it’s good. Pretty good group. Make great music.

Then a member of girl group AKB48 revealed that it sucks to a member of AKB48, which was not so much of a shock. They are not a pretty good group and they do not make great music. It’s a little more complicated than the usual “guilty pleasure” and “showbiz is hard, big deal” arguments. AKB is, one commenter bluntly put it, “the most cynically formed group in pop”. (In part of a series of posts debating idol culture on the Clear and Refreshing blog.) The fact that the group has ridiculous rules and makes ridiculous music is not so much the issue for me, it’s the underlying shittiness of it all. This head-shaving video—which, it’s gotta be stressed, is not her walking into a barbershop and saying “gimmie a 1”; she looks like a crazy person or a P.O.W.—was posted of the official management youtube channel. It wasn’t even a scandal that leaked out, it was presented as part of the entertainment package. When you consider instances in obvious parallel group Hello Project which has the same dumb rules, the girls get simply dropped and in some cases product was actually pulled from the shelves. There’s no appeal process and they even choose to lose money rather than benefit from the negative publicity. (New AKB single out now!) This is almost too principled a stance but at least it’s based in some kind of principle. I believe the people behind AKB are so warped this was their attempt at trying to look “better” than other agencies by giving the girl another chance. Just has to go through a standard Yakuza punishment, I mean, she’s still got all her fingers guys, it could be worse! That’s before any of the feminist or other political arguments that makes this event generally disturbing that other people have already covered better. I was kinda joking in the past about this group vs. Hello Project because of course they’re superficially very similar and I really don’t give the music any chance but life is too short to give everything a chance, and I was right. Let us never speak of of this group again, until they put them on an island to kill each other or wherever you can possibly go to after this.

Small news:

Site changes

Since I registered in a fit of paranoia, jimhaku.com has redirected to this blog of indeterminate purpose. I’ve been meaning to make a decent front page for a while, but instead I just pointed it at my main tumblr, which then links here. It makes a kind of sense that way. And it gives you something decent to look at from a phone because I’m not changing this blog layout for that. The design is almost more the point than the writing. I don’t think writing is ever gonna be my main gig.

Also I got rid of that old last.fm “quilt” thing:

But I just couldn’t let it go entirely you see. It’s no longer supported by the site anyway. It keeps on working but the code is a trainwreck by current standards. And it’s silly but it just feels like something should go there on the page so I put a mixcloud widget there instead:

Follow jimhaku on Mixcloud

While I’m embedding a bunch of nonsense, why don’t I try out this new gallery feature. Here are some other obsolete last.fm chart thingys (that I designed):

Well, that’s a mess. You have to click on these to see the whole thing and read the caption. This random list of bands would have been a generated RSS of whatever last.fm data, like a personal or group top artists or tracks. It was kinda cool until it stopped working. If you found a good spot for it. It’s pretty limited really. Most people used them for really obnoxious sig files.

What else

I had something I started about the decline of music coverage in the Village Voice but I’m gonna save it until it gets worse cause there might to a way to make it funny instead of just sad.

But former editor Maura Johnston has her own thing now. You’ve probably heard about that already if it’s the kind of thing you care about but I’m going to risk it.

Also there’s a new Marc and Tom show, similar deal.

And while I’m mentioning some things and not mentioning other things ever again I have a suggestion: if you cover the culture of another race of people, maybe you should not make racist jokes. Like, not as in I’m the PC police or something, but maybe as if your audience might possibly include people of that race and the whole world is not just a bunch of white people laughin’ it up at that other planet over there that can’t even see or hear us? Cause that ain’t true. Just a thought. Happy Black History Month. Listen to En Vogue. They are good at singing.

Oh, I said something like “politics should be more like the internet” which was a joke.

But there is
this and this. TTFN. %