Rap is Dying

Just a few years ago names like 50 Cent and Eminem ruled the charts, but sales of hard rap have plummeted to pathetic new lows. Look at what rap has to show for itself on the charts this week-

Top 30 Album Sales - Hip Hop

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Total
11	Rick Ross	Trilla	26,735	443,114

That's about it for the top 30. Hip Hop DX tries to fluff up the numbers by including "R&B" such as Mariah Carey's new album, the manufactured pop groups Dannity Kane and Day 26 and the new Gnarles Barkley, which doesn't have a single rap on it anywhere (Gnarles Barkley's vocalist is a successful rapper-turned-singer).

Even the Top 30's sole entry Rick Ross isn't doing so well. His album has apparently peaked out, leaving the top 10 without even reaching Gold status, let alone platinum.

Rap did change pop music, and it's true that it has an influence on many other acts. For example, the new Madonna album is produced by Timbaland and the Neptunes, who flavor her usual pop with some new sounds (These producers seem to see the writing on the wall- all their latest high-profile clients have been singers). And rappers-turned-singers such as Cee-lo of Gnarles Barkley that have broken out of the standard mold and brought new sounds into their music have continued to see success. But the prototypical rapper going on about guns and selling crack seems to finally be going out of style.

Japan is running out of Food

Even "first world" nations are beginning to feel the global food shortage. I remember coming here and being surprised by the statistic that Japan imports 50% of its food. Apparently that statistic is dated; as Japanese turn to western food such as beef and bread, that figure has risen to 60-70%.

Apparently, Japan is now facing a major food shortage, and has completely run out of butter. I thought that this was an exaggeration, but looking at the supermarket today....sure enough, all gone.

The Kagoshima Shinkansen

So Japan Rail is building a high-speed bullet train from Fukuoka, which used to be the end of the line for the fast trains, down to Kagoshima, at the southernmost tip of Japan's main islands, deep into some of the country's most remote depths. Not a lot of people head down there on business, so all the advertising is based on the idea of escaping the city and exploring a quieter, purer stretch of the nation. All the ads feature the model above, enjoying the countryside and getting away from it all. One ad even had her having to stop for a crossing of baby ducks. She looked delighted.

Everytime I rush through Hakata station in Fukuoka city, weaving through the endless crowds and spinning my hamster wheel in the great rat-race, I see posters like the one above, with that model beckoning me to just leave the city and get away from it all by going to Kagoshima, where life is pure...good...the way it should be.

Finally, I actually did take the shinkansen down to Kagoshima, on the way to Yakushima with my dad. And on the way back, look who I saw in the train station.



Its the same model, only now she's standing in front of Fukuoka. Her hair is swept to one side, and she's wearing chic city clothes and cocking her head to one side defiantly. She is everything urban and cosmopolitan. The caption reads "meet the new me in Fukuoka, in just 2 hours and 17 minutes."

Actually, you know what? Fuck this one-horse town, come up to Fukuoka, you hick!

Make your Macbook a desktop, for still less than the cost of a Macbook Pro

What have I been up to? I'm just busy all the time. The new jobs are great, but its the beginning of the semester and there's a ton of planning to do. I go in to work 6 or 7 days a week. Even at home I'm on the job. Today is the only day of the week I won't go into the office, and I've got to submit a proposal for a conference presentation and plan tomorrows classes. I have to hurry up and get it all done to go out with my girlfriend for her birthday dinner.

Anyway, just a few quick words on the shiniest toy and single most interesting distraction in my new work life- My new Macbook.

Just one tip for people trying to decide between this or the considerably more expensive Macbook Pro- aside from the video card, the main difference is the screen size and the speakers. For this upgrade, you pay close to double the price. I suspect they deliberately kept the Macbook screens stuck at 13" to push people to go up a tier. Aside from that, there wasn't much difference as of when I bought it. Both had around 2.4 ghz dual core processor, give or take 0.2 Ghz.

My computer budget was about $2500, which was juuust under the cost of a low-end Macbook Pro (I know how expensive that is for the US...Apple gouges people with prices here). So instead, we bought Macbooks, and used the extra money for peripherals. Doing that, I think I found a combination I'm happier with anyway, for cheaper.

By buying the Macbook, you can afford to get 2 extra gigabytes of ram to compensate for the videocard, a full-size, 22" monitor (as low as $300 if you look around), a decent 2-button buffalo mouse for about $12, a decent pair of $30 computer speakers with a subwoofer, and a mac external keyboard for maybe $50. For an extra 70 you can even throw in an external hard drive to make up for the difference there.

At your desktop, hook up the mouse and the keyboard to the macbook and make the larger monitor your primary one, and you have an excellent desktop computer. If you have parallels, you can run windows on the macbook monitor, and OSX on the larger monitor, and switch between then effortlessly (Don't worry about a tax on performance, either...with 2.4 Ghz dual core and 4GB of Ram, the Macbook has power to spare for all of this). When you leave work, just unplug the macbook from the keyboard and monitor, and boom, your powerful desktop just turned into a laptop, which unlike the some of the larger pros, is small enough to fit in your briefcase. It's the best of both worlds.

Vending Machine Stuff in Japan

Hot read bean paste soup and corn soup, in heated cans.


Coffee in a can, very sweetened, very "whitened", and cold. Soft, watery fruit jelly. A custard drink. Vegetable juice.




Chips, in a can. The same custard drink as above, but this time in a bag that you suck on from a spout on the top. A big bottle of cold green tea.

Kyoto Trip

On with the many, many photos...Ali ran out of those little fujifilm disposable cameras, so I convinced her to let me be the photographer with my cell phone (who still takes real pictures, anyway?) It was interesting, because the things she wanted me to take pictures of were different than what would have occurred to me. You have a different eye for Japan when you first come.



"(Sigh) Do you really need me to take a photo of the toilet? All right, fine..."

Ooh, pretty...



Ali posing in front of San Ju San gen do. Her smile has a hint of terror because at any moment a monk was liable to run up, grab my camera and break up our attempt at a photo, so we had to do it on the fly. We weren't actually in the temple so we technically weren't doing anything wrong, but try telling that to them. They don't even want you to think about taking a photo anywhere near it. Which is a shame, because it would have made a great picture. Japan's greatest sights are unphotographable.





I call the big one bitey.


Sometimes these shots work out okay, sometimes not. This one came out okay I think.

Kiyomizu-dera and the people that love it.




The sun sets on Kyoto and its lustrous pinky white cherry trees. It is only now that we realize we are now stuck in Kyoto with no accomadation, and being the height of the cherry blossom season, there is none to be found. So we headed to Osaka.


Ali made me take this shot. An interesting blend of the old and the neo-sleazy.


This is the street view of Osaka she made me take.


This is the street view of Osaka I took and said would be better.





Osaka commemorative purikura. Party time! Excellent!

Up to Koya-san, a towering sacred mountain 2 hours train ride south of Osaka. Ali stayed at a monastery and meditated with the monks.

Once again, the best and most enchanting sights couldn't be photographed. We walked through a cemetery full of huge, elaborate ancient buddhist plots for 45 minutes until we came to this amazing shrine. I won't lay it on too thick, but even considering all of Nara and Kyoto, Himeji and all else it was one of the the best and most moving things I've seen in Japan.








Ali: You know, as pretty as these temples are, you don't really need to look inside them. The outside is the most interesting part.

Me: Oh yes, that makes sense. Well, off to Fukuoka for me.

(later, on the phone)

Ali: Um, yeah, I really wish I hadn't told you we shouldn't look at the inside of that temple.

Jeff: Damn, it was good? As good as the cemetery shrine? Because that was amazing.

Ali: Um...yeah.

Jeff: Better than that?

Ali: Um...yeah.

Jeff: Better than Sanjusangendou?

Ali: Well...it was different.

Jeff: What do you mean, "different"? Better "different"?

Ali: Um...well, yeah.

Me: GAAAHHH!!!

Rap Star on Obama

Got back from Kyoto and Koya-San last week, been pounding away at the new job ever since. I also have part-time hours at another university starting Monday, so that'll keep me busy through the weekend. Got a ton of photos to sift through but its a matter of finding the downtime.

At work I got a macbook, its great! I convinced a bunch of people there to order one this season under the argument that we could just run windows on it anyway if we didn't like it, and now we sit around ooing and awing at Leopard's features, and calling each other over when we find something new. One of my Japanese co-workers has Vista, and when he tried to show me something the other day it froze up. He told me he had to reboot his computer twice that day. No WAY am I going back to that.

Anyway, here's rap star DMX on Obama. I thought this was pretty funny.

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit. That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.