the post-defense work was more than i imagined, but i finally wrapped everything up thursday and have spent the rest of the days seeing people. people i've seen on this trip: fuyuhiko+jun, yamaguchi family+shonandai people, pol mahlow, hot troche+yoyo, sawako, jon appleton, terre thaemlitz, and pop biz.   ¶ 8:20 AM

  here is some good information on how women are presented in the media -- girls, women, + media. also, this article "who killed nick berg" from the Sydney Morning Herald raises a lot of question. i love a good conspiracy theory, especially when it sounds so believable. (i lost my stepometer!)  ¶ 4:55 AM

  last night when i was walking back from the Kamata station i walked passed this guy selling cds on the sidewalk. his setup covered 30 or so feet of walking space and he had 3 boomboxes (well one might have been a dvd player). anyway, combined with the street noise, the sounds of the supermarket behind him, and people talking, it created this amazing collage of sound. i would walk from one spot to another and find a nice location where you could hear at least a couple of the boomboxes and a good amount of ambient sound. amazing. i remember when we used to live he\re i always meant to record such things. i even bought some binaural mics to wear on my head, but then we left prematurely. some day i'll eventually come back to japan with equipment and capture the amazing soundscapes. (2.5)  ¶ 2:00 AM

  i had forgotten how amazing the sushi is here. it melts in your mouth it is so amazingly tender. basically if you haven't had sushi in Tokyo (and avoid the really cheap places), you really haven't had sushi. i've had plenty of good sushi in the states, but it just doesn't even come close. i won't go into detail on my pastry addiction here. oh, and i passed my defense with some minor provisions. hopefully it will all be over soon. (4, 4.5, 4)  ¶ 2:48 AM

  ok, i broke down, succumbed to the advertisements.. well, and we were just trapped, had to eat, and so i got a salad and one of those stepometers (at a fast food place i won't mention). so far.. TH-2.5, FR-3.0, ST-2.5, SN-5.0, MN-4.0 miles, assuming 2000 steps is a mile. of course it helps that i'm in Japan at the moment.  ¶ 7:01 PM

  get ready for the draft to come back.  ¶ 11:13 AM

  one of the best things i ever did on the IA site was turning the mp3 page over to guest curators. each month reflects a different angle, community, taste... . i really love the mp3 compilation this month. it may seem a little odd since it isn't music made from samples, but rather old records that sampling artists (or at least this month's curator, Ergo Phizmiz) tend to collect, plunder, etc. there seems to be an intriguing connection between samplephilia and collecting music.   ¶ 10:58 AM