[T]his beautiful Easter Ikebana creation captures the aesthetic of Unique Japan and the spirit of mindfulness that I encourage at this blog.

UJ is a place where you can buy Japanese items traditional and modern and was featured on NHK TV in January and the Yomiuri Shimbun in March. It’s been running a campaign called We Love Daruma, described at UJ’s website as follows:

Unlike any other Daruma doll, each We Love Daruma doll features a trademark hand-painted heart on its back. Users may inscribe their goal or wish in this special spot (before or after the goal is achieved). Most importantly, the heart symbolizes charity and goodwill as a portion from each Daruma doll sale will benefit both the Children’s HeartLink and the Children’s Make-A-Wish Foundation.

While the Daruma tradition is deep-rooted in Japan, it is still not well-known outside of it. We created the We Love Daruma brand and website to spread Daruma’s optimistic and inspiring energy around the world. The timing, we feel, could not be more pertinent. Daruma’s positive force is just as valuable in good times as in difficult ones, but our current economic climate has made the need to focus our energies all the more essential. The tools of success are within all of us, but as we go about our hectic lives, we could all use a little encouragement and support.

Daruma urges us to remain determined, to never give up on our dreams, and to achieve what we’ve set out to do.

The Daruma dolls come in these colors: red, for luck and good fortune; purple, for health and longevity; yellow, for security and protection; gold, for wealth and prosperity; and white, for love and harmony. Each one is handmade in Takasaki, Japan, known for centuries as the home of Daruma.

I’ve created a new blog for Gary Mawyer’s anime reviews. They are too good to be subsumed here. Please see Anima House for his latest.

Cats Against Clay proclaims, with restrained feline fury, that clay litter is bad:

I would like to formally introduce the inaugural member of Canines Against Clay – Cedar Dog!!!! That’s right, with enormous support from Cedar, we have successfully crossed over what used to be “enemy lines” to join together for our cause! With the help of his feline friend, Hillary, Cedar has been spreading the word about the injustices of clay litter on his own. When he learned of our revolt and the Cats Against Clay, he quickly stepped up to show his support on his blog, Pets Gone Green – check out his blog here: http://petsgonegreen.com/cedar-news/will-humans-ever-get-it-cats-are-fed-up-they-finally-put-their-paws-down/.

And let me tell you, he gets it. He knows it’s bad – and he doesn’t even have to use it! In fact, Cedar is such an advocate for healthier animal living – he even has written books about it! We here at Cats Against Clay fully endorse Cedar’s books, Doggone Green and Doggone Clean and Green. For your human enlightenment – please view here: http://petsgonegreen.com/book-release/. Be sure to keep your eye out for the entire chapter devoted to (well, actually, against) clay litter!

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Cedar had been around the litter box a few times himself. This pup is one cool cat.

Let this be a lesson to you humans, if we dogs and cats can put aside our differences for a common cause – it’s time you join in too. Some of you are getting wise to the idea, but we will not rest until everyone hears our growing meows (and barks now too)!!! Welcome to the CAC, Cedar, we look forward to a day when man, cat and dog can walk together – ten legs at a time.

Why Cats Paint is a beautiful book that I came across many years ago. It’s a classic, withstanding art trends and other transitory creations of man (and woman). Of it, The Freddie Street Cats say

This is a must for all art lovers. It’s our favourite book and comes as highly recommended as we can make it. It’s a superbly photographed record of the artistic cat at work. Encourage your humans to go out and buy it today.

Lavishly illustrated and thoroughly researched, it outlines the many different aspects of feline creativity and offers a detailed examination of representative works from some of the best-known cat artists around the world. Twelve major painters, from spontaneous reductionist to neo-synthesist are covered in depth. Other art forms including sculptural works with furniture, nocturnal installations using rodents and scratch markings using litter and sand.

More information about the book can be found at The Museum of Non-Primate Art (a delight in itself).

Fumoffu is an anime oddity, a parody of its own franchise. The second season of Full Metal Panic! dispenses with the dramatic settings and concentrates on the absurdist school hijinks played for laughs in the first season. In Fumoffu, Sgt. Sousuke Sagara maintains his utterly implausible cover as a Japanese high school student to protect, or endanger, the sprightly Chidori Kaname (even though there seems to be no further use for any secret technologies she may be subconsciously harboring). Sagara’s school gym bag is a Pandora’s Box of destructive devices, and his acute paranoia and hair-trigger reflexes repeatedly cast Chidori in the role of “comically offended normal person” in the wake of his spontaneous violent reactions to completely unpredictable nonexistent threats. Fortunately, Sagara has a lovely personality for a sociopath, so all’s well that ends well in one episode after another as the smoke clears and the scale of the damage turns out to be less than it might have been.

These jokes are old. Still, to put the comic devices of Fumoffu in perspective, more people would read The Iliad if Homer had not opted to play the Fall of Troy straight. There may, in fact, be no such thing as a new joke. However, Sagara disguising himself in a Bunta-Kun suit—to become a deranged and heavily armed amusement park mascot who can only speak in muffled tones—comes perilously close. As Calvin Coolidge once remarked, “It was all I could do to keep from smiling.”

Is there any reason to watch Fumoffu? Other than your personality development program as an anime completist, I mean? There may be. Fumoffu is much slyer than its hyper-cute surface appearance. In addition to being pepperminty, Fumoffu also has a certain pointedness and never wanders far from its points.

Full Metal Panic! was partly an anime commentary on the Global War on Terror (GWT for short). Fumoffu is too, with a much sharper wit, though it does not aim to be uncomfortable. Real-world threats have been transmogrified to vague, distant, generic threats. Jindai High School is not really under attack—except by its defender, Sgt. Sagara. Of course Jindai High could be attacked at any moment, just like New York, Buenos Aires or Timbuktu, but in the post-GWT Homeland Securitized world the average citizen is a million times more likely to be Sgt. Sagara’d in the name of defense than to meet a terrorist. And of course the real Black Technology is not something arcane—it is just a sneak with a cheap bomb, an anti-Sagara in fact, who can scarcely be detected because there is scarcely anything to detect. Under its risible surface, Fumoffu is quietly constructed around just these few points.

We have here a series of parables about a ton of prevention being worth an ounce of cure. A few square blocks of suburban Tokyo can be protected from nearly anyone except the man assigned to do the defending. There is only a little more to say. The source of Fumoffu’s charm is the secret longing to be innocent, and to be protected. For all the wry wit about whether anti-terrorist protection prevents insecurity or causes it, Fumoffu reflects the old paradox that innocence cannot exist without protection—not just physical protection, but protection from knowledge about the fallen world beyond the charmed circle. In the end there can be no defense from sudden awareness, any more than from Sagara’s utterly ridiculous weaponized virus in the last episode of Fumoffu. Once the inhabitants realize Eden has walls, the charmed circle must and will fall. This is the flash of tragedy, the slip of the actor’s mask that distinguishes art, and Fumoffu would be nothing without it.

SO who is this Sarah Palin anyway? Seems like there has been a lot of talk about her in the press. I get most of my news from 5 minutes of the Today show every morning, so my information may be a tad limited. I understand she is a woman who looks a bit like Tina Fey. I hear she likes leather hooker jackets covered in extraneous zippers, especially over the “breast area.” My understanding is she really enjoys a piping hot mug of tea but that she only holds it and doesn’t actually drink. I know I have seen pictures of her in a desert hangin out with a zombie who, it appears, can’t lift his arms high enough to comb the remains of his fading hair (but in the zombie’s defense, hair is less important than brains). I think an anagram of her name is Alan Liprash. Someone told me she has very good vision and that her favorite song is that one where she can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles (the Who?). Oh, and a guy at work told me she was the devil and was attempting to destroy the world, but that seems WAY less likely than the hooker zippers thing.

Ahh. But i kid. I made all of that stuff up based on my left-wing agenda. Just like Hitler did. The truth is she is just a hardworking decent American who is constantly undermined by the Nazi Press. She is a fan of dentists (Drill baby drill). She loves clearing brush and hunting and snowmobiling like any loyal American. We should be so lucky as to have her assume a role in our fledgling Socialist state. Why, just look at Alaska. I think the only thing more beautiful than its rolling hills and warm beaches is its newborn children.

It is true that rumors follow her around like McCain on an autumn day. Why, just yesterday I heard that she was the father of her own grandchild. Now that is a neat trick. I also heard that she can put her whole fist in her mouth at once. Oh, and that she really enjoys gum. Also, I heard that she was running for president. President? Preposterous! She is not black!

In conclusion, I can ask of Palin the same question I once asked of Ross Perot. Would she make a good politician? Perhaps. Would she make a good throw rug? Definitely.

At this time it is readily apparent that the explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst environmental disaster in history. It has been estimated that more oil gushes from the well every eight days than was released by the grounding of the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

The current oil release will seriously impact the Gulf fishery if not wipe it out altogether. Beaches will be fouled by oil, impacting the tourism industries of Gulf States.

There remains a fear that oil will be picked up by the Gulf Stream and carried out into the Atlantic.

On top of all that, hurricane season begins on June 1, and while early season storms are not common, they do occur.

Speculation prevails that offshore oil drilling is all but a dead issue. And the prospect of drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge never will be an issue again.

Adding to the bleak outlook in the Gulf, it has been revealed that the Exxon Valdez spill never was entirely cleaned up. Fisheries in Prince William Sound never have recovered.

If that spill could not be put right in 21 years, the prospect of recovering from the Gulf spill is even bleaker.

Twenty one years is a long time when we talk about the economics of a fishery. While factory trawlers account for much of the catch, many operations are much smaller in scale, perhaps a fisherman and his boat with maybe a few hands.

For those kinds of operations, selling off the boat and finding a new line of work is the only option.

The Gulf disaster points up the futility of allowing unregulated operations. In the case of the Gulf rig, there was either no failsafe shut-off provision that would have closed off the well, or it did not operate if there was.

Meanwhile, a report commissioned during the Bush Administration on the cancer risk posed by environmental toxins was recently delivered to President Barak Obama. The report states that the risk is “grossly underestimated.”

Besides cancer, there is a risk that many of these toxins are a factor in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD) and autism.

There are also serious concerns over toxins released by surface coal mining and Marcellus shale drilling.

Image from www.treehugger.com.

What is happening is our quest for power is having unintended consequences. At some point we either need to deal seriously with the risks encountered in resource extraction or suffer the consequences.

Possible solutions are costly at best, non-existent at worst. And the prospect of instituting safeguards is not helped by the denial of the industries that a problem even exists.

We are assured that offshore drilling is safe, Marcellus shale drilling is safe, surface coal mining is safe, and the release of toxins into ground water is not an issue.

It’s all safe until something goes wrong, and then the industry shrugs its collective shoulders and informs us that this disaster was not foreseen and therefore unavoidable.

Yet environmentalists and scientists warned us about these issues. We chose to ignore their warnings and take industry claims to heart.

It will be a long time until the final cost of the Gulf oil spill is apparent. If and when that time comes, it will be too late for aquatic and avian life, too late for the fishery, too late for beach communities, and too late for humans who will suffer health issues because of ancillary issues.

In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, military technologies of all sorts fell into the hands of newly spawned rogue republics governed by ruthless dictatorships throughout Central Asia. In addition to nuclear weapons, these included remarkable experimental technologies and the laboratories that were developing them, collectively known as Black Technology. In the post-Soviet turmoil of civil and ethnic wars and insurrections, an underground market in technologies of mass destruction sprang up, and in this market nothing was more valuable than Black Technology.

In addition to the multinational arms-trading network between terrorists and rogue states, there also arose a multinational Black Technology counterforce, of unknown but presumably corporate origins, calling itself “Mithril” after the super-hard precious metal in Lord of the Rings. Mithril’s many goals include protecting democracies from black technology attacks, defusing or destroying black technologies in the hands of rogue states, and preventing the further development or exploitation of black technology by terrorists. Based deep in the South Pacific, and for the most part operating underwater from its flagship submarine Tuatha dé Danaan, Mithril has always been careful to disguise itself as a United Nations Peacekeeping Force whenever it conducts its military operations in the world’s most dangerous places. And that is where the Black Helicopters, the UFOs, and many other unexplained things actually come from.

Have I been watching Glen Beck again? No, I have been watching Gonzo’s 2002 release, Season One of Full Metal Panic! for what may well be the fourth time. And as sober as the storyline above may sound, there is no real mystery where black technology comes from—it comes from schoolgirls, and they are darned cute too, and get into the most delightful slapstick romantic situations with their hard-boiled military protectors. Maybe Mithril’s single most important task is to keep amazingly perky schoolgirls from being abducted and subjected to chemical hypnosis to get the black technology out of them. The future of civilization quite plainly depends on it. And while we are at it, it might as well be made clear from the outset that nothing is more central to black technology than 30-story-tall piloted humanoid robots armed with everything from on-board rockets to 20-foot-long bowie knives. Full Metal Panic! also obeys the familiar anime laws of physics by which literally everything is ultimately explosive, and everything that explodes then burns furiously, and the heavier an object is the faster it flies.

To keep all this in perspective, even educated critics with analytical skills honed at the finest universities sometimes forget that if artists had any shame, we would have no art. Marc Chagall never stepped back and said, “This is garbage, violinists don’t float!” Byron never threw down his quill and said, “This stuff rhymes but that’s about all. I wish I’d joined the Navy like Grandpa Jack.” No doubt there was a sane normal person watching Michelangelo work who said, “Are you seriously going to carve some bloke’s privates?”

FMP! is a crossover anime with one heavily armored foot planted in the mecha-combat genre and the other in the high- school-romantic-farce genre. Effortless, not to say motiveless, genre crossover is one of the strengths of anime, and the story lines are adroitly woven though unsurprising. The visual quality is generally quite high. More interesting is the 2002 setting of the story. FMP! is a post-911 fiction based on the increased political value of terrorism in the wake of the seeming collapse of the Soviet empire, and the series never wanders far from this point. The relative paralysis of conventional militaries faced with widespread terrorist threats, however ordinary, is the real Black Technology. In the developed world it is extremely difficult for the public to learn this and it is in no one’s interest to teach it; and yet of all possible targets the ordinary uninformed civilian is the target of choice. And yet I hate to write such a thing, because it sounds didactic and FMP! is never didactic.

Never didactic, but possibly more serious than it looks. On this level FMP! is rich with odd little features, including subplots set in Afghanistan. It would be most tedious to make me list all the quirks and curiosities embedded in this 24-episode series, so I would propose, for your anime consideration, watching it yourself. As a further enticement, the parodical sequel Fumoffu (Kyoto TV, 2003) is unintelligible unless you have seen FMP! Delightful as FMP! often is, the utterly hilarious and poignant sequel featuring Bunta-Kun, the deranged rodentine amusement park mascot, is the real jewel in the franchise.

NEXT WEEK: Fumoffu

I watch very little horror anime, but the rap on Hell Girl (Jigoku Shoujo) is so strong I started watching it. I’ve seen very few animes as stylish or visually sophisticated as Hell Girl. It starts off somewhat mildly but rapidly progresses to shocking and appalling crimes and perversions–and delineates a very curious and complex moral vision.

Hell Girl is a vengeful ghost turned professional, and her minions have more tengu-like features than Western demons or whatever the equivalent would be. They are not omniscient nor omnipotent; Hell Girl’s abilities are confined to retribution and retribution alone, and the crew must haunt the  precincts (supernaturally) to determine what they can find out. I have only watched the first of four discs containing the first season, and season two was only just released. It is a bit shocking (in general Japanese horror seems to be really very horrible indeed). This show, which appears simply episodic on the surface, obviously has a deep and complex novelistic substructure and is aimed at topics of considerable human interest. It is also successfully creepy in the “not best viewed late an night” sense unless you actually want nightmares. After setting up its founding premises, the Hell Girl fiction is promptly used to start exploring the whole moral spiderweb: what is guilt and culpability; when is revenge wrong; is retribution the same thing as revenge; where are the edges of normalcy versus evil acts; and much more.

Very interesting. An Episcopalian, let us say, would tackle this question with a complex architecture establishing a more holistic vision of right and wrong and then trying to bring everything into the cathedral, so to speak, where acts could be assigned proper ethical weights. For 2000 years or more, the West has tried to organize crime and punishment into a rhetoric of good and evil, even while recognizing that evil is too mild a word for quite a lot of crime, and for quite a lot of acts that are not considered crime. And that punishment is often too late and too irrelevant to actually do much good–when punishment occurs at all. Jigoku Shoujo has a very different assumption: the structure of the world is magical, and humans will never have access to the complete set of rules, if there even is a complete set. Things rather occur by tendencies, and all moral judgments are surrounded by something like the fog of war.

Again I find myself asking, “How do Japanese artists get away with this?” and in fact, what is there in the Japanese corporate media structure that allows this kind of talent and/or level of sophistication to be put on public display? It could never happen here in the U.S. There is a trans-cultural appreciation that in a sense “all art is subversive,” and some recognition that maybe “all morality is subversive” too. Americans seem to know it, so we will have no U.S. Jigoku Shoujos and are very lucky to get to see Japan’s.

Figuring out how to get to your little treasures is half the fun! Hand-carved in Bali, these zoological delights are a happy hiding place for jewelry, stamps, coins, and beyond.
Butterfly 2.25″ H x 4.5″ W x 3″ D (5.7 x 11.4 x 7.6 cm)
Fish 2.25″ H x 5.5″ W x 3″ D (5.7 x 14 x 7.6 cm)
Sustainably-harvested Indonesian soft woods
Single interior compartment
Handmade in and fairly traded from Bali, Indonesia

manufacture:

Handmade in Nepal

materials:

100% natural boiled wool

dimensions:

Small: approx. 8″ long, including tail
Large: approx. 20″ long, including tail

about:

While these are designed as chew-toys for dogs, we love them as toys or décor for a kids’ room. These sting rays look great hanging on the wall, and are adorable with “faces” on both sides.

This is an all-natural product, made from 100% renewable wool. It’s also manufactured fair-trade, which provides employment to craftswomen in Nepal.

Sold individually or as a set of one large and one small.

quantity/price:

Small: $12.00
Large: $24.00
Both (one of each): $32.00 (save $4)

Read about Branch’s mission and philosophy.