April 29, 2012 by vinylpanx
My friend Skully sends the best packages.
… of course the ridiculous thing is, I received this in December and I’m only now, in Skully’s house, finally getting around to post it.
Remembering why I left Japan…
April 14, 2012 by vinylpanx
I just got back to Tokyo a little over a day ago.
I … well, I never really wrote about why I left in the first place. The reasons were numerous, but my friend who I’m staying with jokes about how I ghosted out of Japan without really saying goodbye to most people. And its true, because leaving Japan was probably one of the hardest decisions I ever made and at the time I felt in a way my hand had been forced, for a lot of reasons, and I just couldn’t bear the reality of the decision. Even sometimes now, a year on nearly I wake up with a longing for the home I had scraped and worked so hard to carve out for myself.
I don’t though, wake up any more wondering why I am wasting my life.
Tokyo never hurt me. I think that perspective is important. Newcomers to Japan, tourists visiting never quite understand the bitterness that can set in with long term expats. This is partly just based on the cultural politics at work: outsiders are supposed to only see the best side, with expats usually occupying this narrow strip of land between in-group (Japanese) and outsiders where they’re never quite accepted but know enough to know that the politeness Japan is so often praised for can often be the cold shoulder. But as bitter, and I did get very bitter toward the end, as it all was, Tokyo was not abusive to any degree but distance. I’m a lot luckier in many respects that all Tokyo ever wanted of me was that I get the fuck out. I’ve got plenty of friends who were born here who are not nearly that lucky.
TLDR. I don’t really want to hate Japan anymore, but my first day back I’m reminded of all of this. The first task is to get a cell phone. As I’m not living here, I need a pre-paid, and as I’m staying a longer length of time than “normal” it is not cost effective to rent one at the airport. As Japan is somehow stuck to me like a tattoo, deep under skin and incredibly painful to remove, I know I’ll be back so purchasing a pre-paid that I can renew is cost effective.
Now, years ago this was no big deal. You could get them at the convenience store, it took a little paperwork and it was done. Drug dealers picked up on this. So restrictions were applied. These restrictions now include sanctions that make it impossible to get a prepaid as a foreigner unless you have a visa with 3 months left on it or longer. Blah blah blah. I don’t think most of the people abusing cell phones were foreigners, though this all caused me to drunkenly spout off loudly in the middle of the station what a great big drug dealer I am. Obviously.
So this joke starts, a Korean Japanese and two white girls walk into a cell phone place. There is one in Japan that has prepaids with plentiful information in English saying they are available at every location, etc. We go there, where my friends have graciously offered to purchase a prepaid for me as I cannot do anything with my visa. Our Japanese friend asks the attendant about prepaids and she sort of curtly (well, as curtly as you get in keigo) says they have no prepaids at the store, and other locations probably won’t either and maybe you could web order them and leaves it. We want to know, of course, as we know they need to see documentation so web ordering is probably not gonna do it, which locations have them. Does the next station? Does Shinjuku? This is information they should have, and it will cost us each 150yen one direction to find out for ourselves. She excuses herself eventually, goes to the back for a minute, comes back and tells us that no, the next station does not have them nor do any of the others.
Well, we leave. We go to the other cell phone providers and while one has a prepaid and are very nice about it their phone is very expensive and severely limited (basically calling only) and if I’m desperate it will do but we all find it really strange that these urban Tokyo shops from the other place don’t have any at all. We leave and discuss it and decide, well, we’ll go to the next station and order the phone to pick up. It’ll be a day or two but so what?
We get over to the other store and not only do they have the phone they have MANY choices of phone. Loads of them. And received no such phone call asking.
We’re punks, we’re heavily tattooed and we’re all minorities in Japan so we’re not totally sure why the gal was a jerk, but what a way to come back. The location of this cell phone shop especially makes the attitude totally unwarranted, whereas the other location we went to is kind of the opposite…
![sacraments:
unaguerrasinfondo:
one of my many not well loved assertions about ‘punk’ fashion is that people of color were influencing punk fashion well before the movement defined itself in the bowery/NYC and later in the UK. photo on the right is from 1970 (new haven, black panthers) and one of the women is wearing a bullet belt - which I’ve heard was solely an invention of punk subculture… I’ve looked over hundreds of photos taken during the late 60s - the early 1970s of Puerto Rican youth subculture in NYC and seen many of the same bricolage/punky fashions that were worn by punks in the late 70s and throughout the 1980s. I can’t really imagine that the art school kids that took credit for conceiving punk were not somehow influenced by the Black and Puerto Rican youths that they were living side by side with.
YES, I was actually talking to my aunt a few weeks ago and she was showing me pics of my puerto rican/afro cuban relatives from nyc back in the day, and they totally looked like this!
I wouldn’t disagree with this, but I think it’s a bit deceptive to look at what we consider “punk styling” now and cite influence from x culture to New York 70’s punk culture, does that make sense? Bullet belts weren’t really a thing until later 80’s strains of hardcore punk, and as THEY stole the idea from militant groups it certainly was not their invention. 70’s New York punk was more about 50’s rock and roll pastiche (as with the Ramones) or simple, essentialist symbols of working class leisure torn to shreds (like Richard Hell famously, as Malcolm Mclaren all but stole the British “punk look” from him). I do think it’s wrong and arrogantly silly for punks to ever say “we invented that” because punk is not subculturally a community of invention, but of co-optation vis a vis these traits of bricolage, jouissance, and subversion. That said, this interestingly correlates to a quote that I stumbled across from Jon Stratton in The Subcultures Reader the other day that I’ve been kind of picking apart in my brain:“The two commodity-oriented subcultures [Surfies and Bikies] represented two different ways of living the American Dream of consumerism from outside of the American social structure. By contrast mods and rockers presented spectacular solutions to British upper working-class aspirations. While mods signified an upward mobility, rockers acted out an assertion of working-class values and life-style which I shall discuss below.The crucial distinction is that in spectacular youth subcultures, aspects of the culture of one or more socio-cultural groups, in the case of Britain, West Indian blacks or women, are appropriated whilst those groups are themselves excluded from the youth subculure. Using the term in a general sense we may then suggest that spectacular subcultures are built on repression whilst commodity-oriented subcultures are the acting out of fantastic extrapolations of specific ideological tropes.”I find Stratton to be biased against what he dubs “spectacular youth subculture,” especially from the type within his home country of Britain, but the appropriation and then exclusion of socio-cultural groups is also something one sees within these cultures (and I think within surfie culture as well, if Stratton is actually digging into the origins of appropriated culture within them and not just turning a loving eye to the good consumers of ol’ America). It’s hard for me to make such a blanket statement, however, across spectacular youth subculture, and harder for me to say within punk as I come from a punk community of radical inclusion and am biased to the overly idealistic project therein. Of course, certainly in my years in the Japanese punk scene and in visiting other punk communities I understand that is not the case across the board, but this is also where I think tracing out these origins and influences are fascinating.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0yol3GOjr1qbrt62o1_1280.jpg)
March 19, 2012 Reblogged from organization by vinylpanx
YES, I was actually talking to my aunt a few weeks ago and she was showing me pics of my puerto rican/afro cuban relatives from nyc back in the day, and they totally looked like this!one of my many not well loved assertions about ‘punk’ fashion is that people of color were influencing punk fashion well before the movement defined itself in the bowery/NYC and later in the UK. photo on the right is from 1970 (new haven, black panthers) and one of the women is wearing a bullet belt - which I’ve heard was solely an invention of punk subculture… I’ve looked over hundreds of photos taken during the late 60s - the early 1970s of Puerto Rican youth subculture in NYC and seen many of the same bricolage/punky fashions that were worn by punks in the late 70s and throughout the 1980s. I can’t really imagine that the art school kids that took credit for conceiving punk were not somehow influenced by the Black and Puerto Rican youths that they were living side by side with.
I wouldn’t disagree with this, but I think it’s a bit deceptive to look at what we consider “punk styling” now and cite influence from x culture to New York 70’s punk culture, does that make sense? Bullet belts weren’t really a thing until later 80’s strains of hardcore punk, and as THEY stole the idea from militant groups it certainly was not their invention. 70’s New York punk was more about 50’s rock and roll pastiche (as with the Ramones) or simple, essentialist symbols of working class leisure torn to shreds (like Richard Hell famously, as Malcolm Mclaren all but stole the British “punk look” from him). I do think it’s wrong and arrogantly silly for punks to ever say “we invented that” because punk is not subculturally a community of invention, but of co-optation vis a vis these traits of bricolage, jouissance, and subversion.
That said, this interestingly correlates to a quote that I stumbled across from Jon Stratton in The Subcultures Reader the other day that I’ve been kind of picking apart in my brain:
“The two commodity-oriented subcultures [Surfies and Bikies] represented two different ways of living the American Dream of consumerism from outside of the American social structure. By contrast mods and rockers presented spectacular solutions to British upper working-class aspirations. While mods signified an upward mobility, rockers acted out an assertion of working-class values and life-style which I shall discuss below.
The crucial distinction is that in spectacular youth subcultures, aspects of the culture of one or more socio-cultural groups, in the case of Britain, West Indian blacks or women, are appropriated whilst those groups are themselves excluded from the youth subculure. Using the term in a general sense we may then suggest that spectacular subcultures are built on repression whilst commodity-oriented subcultures are the acting out of fantastic extrapolations of specific ideological tropes.”
I find Stratton to be biased against what he dubs “spectacular youth subculture,” especially from the type within his home country of Britain, but the appropriation and then exclusion of socio-cultural groups is also something one sees within these cultures (and I think within surfie culture as well, if Stratton is actually digging into the origins of appropriated culture within them and not just turning a loving eye to the good consumers of ol’ America).
It’s hard for me to make such a blanket statement, however, across spectacular youth subculture, and harder for me to say within punk as I come from a punk community of radical inclusion and am biased to the overly idealistic project therein. Of course, certainly in my years in the Japanese punk scene and in visiting other punk communities I understand that is not the case across the board, but this is also where I think tracing out these origins and influences are fascinating.
(Source: biencafre)
March 16, 2012 Reblogged from tokyotips by vinylpanx
YOYOGI PARK ROCKABILLIES
These guys are cool as fuck, and a lot of fun to watch. Probably not the best photo example of how tough these dudes look (I couldn’t help myself, these boys look so sweet playing hairdressers!) but rest assured you will probably feel intimidated when you see them in all their tight leather glory.
When I went to see these bad boys, I couldn’t help but shyly approach the Godfather for some photo ops. Immediately, they turned into kittens and started playing nice guys. I even took a swig of whiskey from his hip flask! Heart eyes, heart eyes, heart eyes.
Yoyogi Park on a Sunday is where you will find them. Right near Harajuku Station!
WARNING: Do not mock them! I watched them almost beat up on some goofy looking dude. Dreamy sigh.
Photos where they look tougher:
(Photo via Everyone Associates)
It really, really bothers me that date rapists and wife beaters are getting glorified as a Tokyo Tip to go girlishly swoon over.
At least they put a “warning: they bite” on the bottom.
February 13, 2012 by vinylpanx
Passing this on — please spread the word. This is a wonderful contest and a great opportunity!
Third Annual Imagining Indigenous Futurisms
Science Fiction Writing Contest
$1000 Award
Open to Native, First Nations, Indigenous, and Aboriginal students currently enrolled part-time or full-time in any accredited university, college, or high school.
This year’s Judge: Acclaimed SF, experimental fiction, and horror writer Stephen Graham Jones. http://www.demontheory.net/
Entrants should submit a personal statement (one paragraph) containing affiliation or descent, student status (the where, the when, the why, and the how much more), and goals for their sf writing, along with the previously unpublished writing sample.
Contest Deadline: November 1, 2012
Winner announced in December.
Send personal statement and
previously unpublished sf story (up to 4,000 words)
to Professor Grace L. Dillon (Anishinaabe)
dillong@pdx.edu.
Sponsored by the Indigenous Nations Studies Program
Portland State University
2011 WINNER ANNOUNCED!
The winner of the 2011 Imagining Indigenous Futurisms writing contest is Jeanette Weaskus (Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho) for her short story “Children of the Basalt.”
Visit Jeanette at
http://nativeliteratures.com/author/jeanette-weaskus1
Judge Stephen Graham Jones has this to say about the winner:
The best science fiction is both completely alien and wholly familiar, and feels so little like a mirror that, when it shows our reflection at last, we’re surprised by our own faces. This is how Jeanette Weaskus’s “Children of the Basalt” works. It gives us a post-apocalyptic setting in which the ‘real people’ begin again, unencumbered by the immediate past, as if that could all be scratched away. And there’s cats, and giant snakes, and quests and underdogs and love interests — all within the scope of a short story — and these wonderfully out-of-place pyramids anchoring it all. Just when we think we know the story, then, it turns back on itself, looks to the sky for what we assume are three ships that have sailed all this way looking for what they’re going to call Eden. Except this time we’re ready, and in a way that gives heart to us, reading the story. That we too can be ready, and should be. The best science fiction are the stories that lodge in your head as a detailed memory of the future, and change the way you act today. That’s “Children of the Basalt.”
“selling out”
January 20, 2012 by vinylpanx
Here’s what pisses me off.
About punk I think mainly, but you could call it across borders of music just the underground dilemma —
Right, so authenticity as the logic sort of hands itself down in so many pithy speeches by musicians (mostly guys, lets not lie) and so becomes the law of this land is that to “go commercial” or to play music for profit is to “sell out” or lose one’s authenticity.
Now, the rhetoric spirals a few ways but this does not normally direct at people who happen to land into a rare position where their music, in the raw underground state it is in, finds itself some degree of commercial success, though there have been groups where this is a sort of mortal sin. No, this whole logic applies itself to when one has to buff out the kinks or make something pop to sell records to fuel that revenue the record companies so want.
The insidious logic in this spirals a little but goes like this. I will not speak across all bands and all genres, but you take punk and you read the history of punk and it glorifies all these bands as innovators and mad geniuses and oh drugs and oh this and that. It skips over the part, which funnily the guys IN these bands seem to remember and actively talk about more, of how the guys in these bands survived before there was any ability to “sell out” to begin with: a great number of these great band guys survived off of the earnings of their then-girlfriends, who supported them and their dreams (and their drug habits). Now, if you look into this further at certain points in this whole game a lot of these women were sex workers.
Obviously my point in this is not to cry foul at their being sex workers, but does it not seem kind of sick for these musicians to cry foul at “selling out” and corporate whoredom and selling out being akin to prostitution, blah fucking dah, when their success rides on the backs of women who literally did that to get them to a point where they can talk of such things figuratively?
And I say this with a lot of respect for bands who parts of this could be said to be true of, but logic like this is I think why I’ve distanced myself more and more from music in the past few years. And women in punk, it amazes me… I’ve talked to a lot of women, amazing women, about their experiences in the scene(s) at different points in time. And yet so little of that is what ends up in histories. Stories about punk focus on the ‘heroes’ with a few notable women and books about women in punk focus on the bands with no discussion of all the women behind the scenes who got shit done.
January 12, 2012 Reblogged from custerdiedforyoursins by Gwen
Gwen asked: Yo, this photo is from a dessert place in Portland, Oregon advertising an event called “Dim Sum Yum Yum” where you sample a bunch of different desserts. Leaving aside the stupid name (the connection to dim sum is tenuous at best; there’s not even a cart!) this is ridiculously racist. So yes, I know the answer already, but I want the satisfaction of reading your response. P.S. U CUTE
INT BREAK ROOM, THE STAFF IS GATHERED FOR A MEETING
MANAGER
Ok, so we’re agreed then, we’ll go with Dim Sum Yum Yum.
* General buzz of approval from the employees. Slowly, one hand goes up near the back of the room *
WAITER
Sir?
MANAGER
Great job everyone. Dim Sum Yum Yum, ha!
WAITER
Sir?
MANAGER
Oh, yes?
WAITER
Are you sure Dim Sum Yum Yum is… chinky enough?
* Amused snickering throughout the room *
MANAGER
What are you talking about, of course it’s chinky enough! What more could we possibly do?!?!
WAITER
Well… it’s just that I got this hat…I live in Portland and most of the time I love it, but then I remember for a supposedly progressive city, racist shit like this happens way too fucking often. I’m going to blame it on the fact that the city is populated by predominately white folks (like me), many of whom believe we live in a post-racial and colorblind world (not like me, I hope), which for the record I just want to state is not true. For all you Portlanders that are thinking this is artsy or whatever and we just want to share and experience other cultures, no this is racist. To experience other cultures you have to respect and appreciate that culture, not appropriate and make a mockery of it. This is just plain essentialism, with a big helping of cultural appropriation. If you need a refresher, go read some Said. I will gladly let you borrow my copy of his work.
This is fucked. This is Pix Pâtisserie in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been and probably won’t again. Economic activism. Here is the past events that gives you an idea of how the event was framed. And here is their contact info if you want to send an email like I intend to, to let them know they have lost a customer (unless there is clear accountability).
…. way sad Pix Patisserie went and fucked up this bad.
FYI Portland friends. I won’t be going there again. :(
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A vanity tumblr. I never end up posting my records. but sometimes I might (hint: they're glorious). SEE ALSO -- slapmefascist.tumblr.com
