Saturday, July 01, 2006

hurray for modern living


Something you will encounter if you hang around in Japan is modern architecture, a nice counterargument to the nonsensical rot that people who wish the old times would live forever try to push on everyone.

My usual practice with weirdos is to accept them on their own terms, but for me cultural preservationists fall into the same category as creationists: unfixable.

Why? Well, think about it for .02 seconds. Remember the good ol' days, when mom and dad looked after you and life was wholesome? Yeah, well, that was the same time that black people couldn't drink from the same fountain, so forgive me for calling bullshit on people who think the past is better. Oddly, "people" includes Hagakure, who thought everything gets crappier as time goes by.

Of course, he also wrote this:

If you cut a face lengthwise, urinate on it, and trample on it with straw sandals, it is said that the skin will come off. This was heard by the priest Gyojaku when he was in Kyoto. It is information to be treasured.

Yegods. Maybe he shouldn't be the authority figure.

Anyway, if you think the good old days really were better, talk to me about polio.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I imagine that guy really did cut a few heads off and try that until he got the proper method down.
I usually cut my faces sideways, but that was the Julia Childs recipe.
Gentrification is crap. But you can't beat bonafide old. They don't make a lot of things like they used to.

Alasdair said...

True. I don't have a problem with old, I have a problem with keeping things the old way when the old way was crappy.

I'd expand on that idea, but I have to light my matchlock rifle because I think a pheasant might come by in a few minutes...