Another week down

I decided to take a well deserved break from writing on my site yesterday. Instead, I hung out with Brian and his friend who were back in Tokyo to catch their flight to China. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, in addition to spending a month's worth of my entertainment budget, I found two great restraints within a five minute walk from my apartment. I have lived here almost three years and had no idea they were there. Later on, I wound up spending more money as Dr. JJ and Kazuyo stopped by so I bought some fish and chicken to grill on my indoor BBQ. That lasted for about 10 minutes before it got moved outside. I had done it inside once before with little problem, but the wind seems to have changed since then.

I took another look at my drawings and how I did them to isolate what made them so crapish. I think I figured it out, so I spent much of the day practicing my "new method" so that next Friday I don't have to hide my drawings from everyone. I am relieved that I saw an enormous improvement. You can check out my progress. Obviously I don't have women lining up outside my apartment to pose nude for me, so (un?)fortunately, I was forced to hit the online porno sites for models.

Here's a preview...

Once again there are hours worth of interviews and stories that I would like to share from NPR's site. I'm pretty sure no one has listened to any of these stories I recommend (unless you happened to catch it on the radio), but I will keep recommending them. If one of my cult-member / dedicated followers listens to one of the stories, my work will be done.

( I received a comment from a reader who happened across Car Talk on the radio for the first time last week by chance. Only then did she see my posts about Car Talk on the Bastish Net. Since Car Talk is more for entertainment than things that people in society should know, I wont say I hope she listens to it more often, but then again, it is not bad for the world to have more happy-smiley people... so I hope she starts listening to it regularly. )

Anyway, today's recommendations:
Fresh Air with Stan Lee If you don't know who Stan Lee is, you will think you can not be interested in the interview. You are wrong. Stan Lee is the creator of The Fantastic Four and Spider Man and countless other comic book characters. Although I have a lot of books with his characters stuck up in my closet in Bay City, I never knew how they where conceived of, and actually the impact that they had on the comic book industry as a whole. The greatest story he tells is of how Sergeant Fury was invented. I'll be checking Amazon for any auto-biography about Stan Lee.

Fresh Air with writer Michael Pollan He writes about pot mostly, but gives an interesting theory that the reason certain plants (such as marijuana) survive is that they "know" (not his words) what will make people and animals protect and even try t o cultivate more of them. In the case of cannabis, it is the chemicals that make people high.

He also notes that the chemicals people like in pot are also naturally occurring in our bodies. It is found in pregnant women, and is also produced by our brains. Why? because it is a chemical that helps us forget... such as the pain of giving birth, or simply allowing us to go home at night and not remember every single face we saw on the sub-way.

Fresh Air with photographer and reporter Scott Peterson talks about what it is like for reporters to cover war zones, and other such dangers. One interesting part is when he talks about the war-zone training they receive.

I don't know if it's true, but I heard on this talk from NPR's The Connection about bankruptcy in America, that US Credit card companies approached Mattel about marketing a "Credit Card Barbie" that, when the string is pulled, says such things as "Charge it please", and "It doesn't matter what it costs, I have my credit-card".*
*I am not a journalist. I do not verify or guarantee the accuracy of anything on this site.