Mysterious Orientations

It has become a Japanese New Year’s Eve tradition for me to go on a celebratory bus tour with Saki and Masako (and fifty-odd other well-lubricated revelers). Typically we leave Tokyo in late afternoon or early evening, merge onto the crowded highway, en route to our first (and arguably most important) destination, the service area pee stop. There will be at least a couple of those along the way, as the median age of the group is well into the, um, golden years. By midnight or thereabouts, we arrive at a temple or shrine, to bow our heads in supplication to the pantheon of Japanese gods for a happy upcoming year, and to divest ourselves of five-yen coin offerings wherever an opportunity presents itself. At the appointed time, we make our way back to the bus, bound for the coast to freeze our butts off awaiting the first sunrise of the year.

This year we went to Ise Jingu, several hours drive south of Tokyo, near the bustling port city of Nagoya. It is said to be the home of Yata no Kagami, the Sacred Mirror, one of the holiest of Shinto relics. The mirror is not for mere mortals to see, however, as it reflects capital-T Truth, and as highly regarded Western Lama Jack Nicholson once observed, “You can’t handle the truth!” The shrine dates back at least fifteen hundred years (although some estimates place its beginnings as early as a couple of centuries BC), and it is faithfully reconstructed every twenty years. There are two building sites adjacent to one another, and the shrine alternates between the two; the new building is completed before the old one is torn down to ensure a seamless transition of the deity within. The next rebuilding will take place in 2013.

Note: if you click on the pictures, wait until they reload, and then click on them again, you can see quite a large high-res version, perhaps four times the size you see here.

Ritual washing of hands before prayer

Paper lanterns with Ise Jingu crest, or "mon"

Old World courtyard in purples and yellows

Awaiting their turn to pray

Sake casks, a part of the ritual that resonates with me...

The village adjacent to Ise Jingu stays open until the wee hours, offering food, incense, charms, and various handcrafts (thankfully, no cheesy T-shirts). One shop that caught my fancy had a selection of colored thread or string, intricately woven into watchbands, belts, toys and charms:

Where it begins...

Are these cute or what?

My personal favorite, the Puffer Fish

The food was pretty amazing as well, especially the fish. The happy guy pictured here is grilling smallish silvery fish in their entirety. You eat the head, the tail, the fins, even the bones. He cuts them into pieces with heavy-duty scissors, and puts them on a plate, upon which customers descend in a decidedly un-Japanese feeding frenzy:

1000 yen for a big box o' fish, about $12

Hung out to dry...

Those who live by the sword, dry by the sword...

Town Square Pavilion

Back across the wooden bridge to the bus...

In the morning, a cloud bank hung on the horizon, and it seemed unlikely that we would get to see the sunrise. But my luck held out (I am batting 1000 thus far), and the juxtaposing of sun and clouds made for a dramatic and auspicious beginning to the New Year:

Akemashita Omedeeto!

In the time-honored tradition of letting the pictures do the talking, here are some photos of this year’s (okay, technically last year’s) Tokyo Motor Show:

Tokyo Big Sight, Home of the Tokyo Motor Show

The Tokyo Big Sight saw sculpture

There are cars, and then there are CARS

Tokyo FM was on hand, or more to the point, "on ear"...

Cruising around the gymkhana area, note the cool blue Renault

My next car, if they make a convertible this color...

BMW makes eco sexy!

But they may have lost the thread with the new matte-finish paint...

The show's most anticipated vehicle, the Toyota FunVII

Time out

Count on tiny Daihatsu to bring some fun to the show...

This Daihatsu makes the Nissan Cube look positively spherical...

Suzuki channels its inner Citroen

Is it a really small car? Is it a really big CD player?

Honda steps up its game

R2D2 on steroids

Channel your inner hippie with VW's new microbus

Smart car, with optional cheese grater grille and roof

These colors just shouldn't work together, but somehow they do

I like this Nissan a lot; let's hope it sees production!

Possibly the prettiest (get ready for this...) Mazda (!) ever

And, if a new car is not on your horizon in the immediate future, perhaps I can interest you in a motorcycle, a scooter, or a push bike:

Vroom!

I spent most of this past Saturday taking in the classic car show in Aoyama Itchome, about an hour’s subway ride from my suburban Tokyo apartment. It was a sunny day, albeit with the chill of imminent winter in the air. The leaves strutted their autumn colors at close to 100%, according to the NHK news, which gives an update on these important matters nightly. The cars rolled past the clapping spectators, after which they were staged in a viewing area in preparation for setting off in stately fashion to the tony Ginza shopping district.  All manner of autos were on hand, from sleek sixties’ sports roadsters to regal European touring saloons; cartoonlike Japanese city cars, and rumbling 50s’ American finmobiles. What was surprising to me was how easy-going most of the owners were, allowing onlookers to open hoods, sit in driver’s seats, and dream for a moment or two of earlier, simpler times. Queues formed to sit in the navy blue Packard cabriolet, and in the fire-engine red ’59 Chevy Impala convertible (called “open-cah” in Japanese). Liveried staff members held doors open, took photos upon request, and kept the cars spotless all the while. Naturally, the wares of the Japanese auto industry were prominently featured: Datsun/Nissan; Toyota; Mazda; Daihatsu; Honda; and more. In fact, I have never seen quite such a gathering of Rising Sun Retro in one place before, and I walked away pretty impressed, I have to say. But hey, I may as well let the pictures do the talking, right? Enjoy…

A first-gen Corvette...

...complete with yellow steering wheel!

Dramatic Ryuko, Dramatic Lamborghini

Saki channels her inner Annette Funicello

One young cops directs traffic...

...while another takes off after the bad guys!

A resto-mod '58 Chevy Impala

Check out those taillights!

 

And the Mini-me doppelganger!

The Queen Mum of cars, a stately Rolls-Royce

The Spirit of Ecstasy spreads her wings atop the Rolls grille

 

My dad's first car, an Austin A40

The kid-size Subaru 360

...and its slightly larger Italian cousin, the Fiat 500

A brace of MGs

 

A Corvair-esque NSU from Germany

An oddity, a Messerschmitt, I believe

The driver's entrance to the tiny BMW 600

A minimalist Lotus 7

A MINI woody with real wood...

The return of Christine

The one I wanted to drive home, an Austin-Healey 100-6

Gorgeous Facel-Vega from France

This is a Daihatsu?!!

The delectable Nissan Silvia ca. 1966

Dinky Honda S800

The seriously rare Watanabe Griffon

A rotary-engined Mazda Cosmo

The high-style Nissan Cedric

Equally slick from the rear...

The highly sought-after Toyota 2000GT coming...

...and going.

 

The 2000GT's little sister, the tiny Toyota 800

...and again.

And, last but not least, the Old Guard.

Like everybody else, a lot of my favorite things (or people, or places) are well-established in the worldwide “favorites” continuum: Springsteen and the E-Street Band live; Paris in the tentative bloom of springtime; piping hot homemade chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven; Casablanca (the movie rather more than the city, as I have experienced both, and in my estimation it looks better in black and white); seminal hard-boiled detective fiction (Chandler, Hammett, et al); looking down over the twinkling evening lights of Los Angeles from the foot of the Hollywood sign; a fine merlot with a hint of raspberry in the finish; the humor of a Bill Bryson or a Steve Martin. There is little or nothing I can say about any of the above that hasn’t been said before, and probably better. It’s a fair bet that there are entire blogs devoted to each and every one.

So, I try to turn my pen (okay, keyboard) to slightly more obscure faves, in hopes of turning one or two of you on to someone, someplace, or something that has slipped under your radar thus far. So, here goes:

Sungha Jung: this Korean finger-style guitarist, whose videos began hitting YouTube several years back, has become one of the ‘Tube’s major stars, with some 350,000,000 views as of 2011, most of those from Korea and Japan. He began playing guitar at the tender age of nine; here, you can see a very early video, of the budding virtuoso taking a run at “Pachelbel’s Canon in D”, when he had been playing guitar for less than a year (this is enough to make me hang up my finger picks; sigh…):

Nowadays, he has grown both in stature and ability, and he plays concerts all over the world. And he is still only fifteen! Here you can see a recent video of him playing Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved”:

Oh, and get this: he learns his tunes straight from the music videos he likes, and he never took lessons!

Spanish Mike and Richard Shindell: there is a good likelihood that you are one of the 7,000,000-odd viewers of a major YouTube hit “The One Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song”, in which a crew-cut fellow who has come to be known as “Spanish Mike” extols his love for a comely senorita using his limited vocabulary of only one semester’s worth of Spanish lessons. If not, by all means check it out here; it’s hilarious:

Now, there is a sequel, “The Second Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song”, in which Mike enlists the aid of Erik Estrada to further his cause with the aforementioned comely senorita. Although Mike’s Spanish has improved, he fares no better with the girl, sad to say.

Anyway, all of this serves as a lead-in to a piece about one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Richard Shindell, who recently composed his first song in Spanish, “Cancion Sencilla”. Shindell, who has lived for a number of years in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, apparently felt some misgivings about writing in his adopted language, as noted in these lines (translated from the Spanish, which rhymes much better): “My love, I’m sorry not to have written you sooner. Even though I always wanted to, I could not. What can I say? I’m a little slow. It took me all these years to learn your beautiful language, and still not well enough…” He goes on to suggest “Let’s spend our nights whispering, conjugating your beautiful verbs; let’s begin, you have so many: I live, you live, we will live; I love, you love, we will love; to leave, to return, to stay, and of course, to whisper…”

You can check it out here, complete with the original text and its English translation; how cool is that!

Here’s a new item that falls into the category of “Answers to Questions Nobody Asked”: An American-born Japanese chef, Chase Kojima, working in Australia, has just released for public consumption—are you ready for this—Vegemite sashimi. And if Vegemite, which tastes like salty yeast with an ever-so slightly-regurgitative finish, isn’t enough to send you scurrying for the egress, then the source of protein may be: a local Aussie delicacy called Moreton Bay bugs. That part isn’t as bad as it sounds, actually; the “bug” is actually a species of lobster, thenus orientalis, native to the seas east of Africa and south of Japan. While the rest of the world tries to come up with names to make patently unpalatable things seem palatable (think: “sweetbreads”), the contrarian Antipodeans find hilarity in doing just the opposite. You have to love that. Still and all, I have never met a food that was improved by the addition of Vegemite, and I’m thinking sashimi isn’t going to be the one that turns the tide.

In other news, the Japanese were quite unhappy to discover that their homeland was not in the top ten of the world’s happiest countries, as determined by the United Nations Human Development Index. Norway edged out Australia for the top spot, with the Netherlands, USA, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland filling out the remainder of the top eleven. I don’t know about you, but when I think of smiling happy people, veritably bubbling over with good humor, Liechtenstein isn’t among the first few (hundred) places that jump to my mind. That said, I’ve never been there. It’s kinda easy to miss.

All in all, 2011 is a year that most Japanese will be happy to see in the rear view mirror. It was the year of the Tohoku earthquake, one of the strongest in planetary history; the cataclysmic tsunami that washed tens of thousands out to sea; and the reactor meltdown that triggered the world’s most serious nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. Said reactor provided some twenty percent of Tokyo’s power, so the city sweated through one of the hottest summers on record, with thermostats voluntarily set several degrees higher than normal or comfortable. There was remarkably little whining; people rolled up their sleeves, kept towels close at hand for surreptitious wiping of foreheads, and apart from a few cranky subway riders, pretty much got on with their business. Bosses cooperated by making every day casual day; it is only just now that suits and similar business attire are beginning to proliferate once again.

One thing that hasn’t changed, I am happy to report, is the weirdly wonderful assortment of Japanese products: soft drinks; t-shirts; fast foods, and so on. Many with mangled English (“Manglish”) ads to promote them. Consider:

Am I missing something here vis-a-vis the color?

The Fruit Burger...hamburger, ketchup, onions, and---mango...

Howzabout strawberry milk flavored Pepsi? Yikes-u...

What can anyone add to this?

Surphilosophy...

At the end of each of my blog posts is a small bit of hypertext that readers can click on to leave a comment. As site administrator, I have the final approval over which comments make the cut, and then may be read by anyone who stops by. Needless to say, there is a bunch of spam (about three examples of which show up for every one legitimate comment), stuff I don’t really want to include in the serious commentary files, but which I feel honor bound to share nonetheless, for its quirky humor value if for no other reason. (Note: all typos are as found; I simply cut and pasted, so don’t blame me!) So, here goes…

“Relogio Mesa” had this to stay about a post on New Brunswick singing duo The Sons of Maxwell, skirting specific issues while remaining undeniably upbeat throughout: “Thank you so much with regard to giving everyone an update on this matter on your website. Please be aware that if a completely new post appears or if any changes occur on the current publication, I would consider reading more and knowing how to make good using of those approaches you talk about. Thanks for your efforts and consideration of other individuals by making this site available.”

Correspondents “Elizabeth” and “Angel” had remarkably similar observations about a column I did entitled “Japanese Women on Walkabout”: “Such a great text! I have no clue how you were able to write this post..it’d take me weeks. Well worth it though, I’d suspect. Have you considered selling advertising space on your website?” (that was from Elizabeth); “What superb article! No idea how you were able to say this report..it’d take me long hours. Well worth it though, I’d suspect. Have you considered selling banners on your website?” (that was from Angel)

“Kladionice” was clearly coming from an English-as-a-second-language perspective, with this somewhat inscrutable offering, sure to make it onto a Japanese T-shirt in the near future: “I beloved up to you’ll receive performed proper here. The sketch is tasteful, your authored subject matter stylish. nevertheless, you command get bought an edginess over that you would like be turning in the following. in poor health for sure come further until now once more since precisely the similar just about a lot frequently within case you shield this increase.”

This one, from a long-lost and hitherto unknown family member, “best selling ebooks”, leaves me eagerly awaiting my next discovery of a distant cousin: “Hi my family member! I want to say that this post is awesome, nice written and include almost all significant infos. I?d like to look extra posts like this .”

“Garfield Wick” sent along this helpful hint on a little-known facet of digital camera usage, after perusing some of my travel photos of Bali: “Thanks for this glorious article. Also a thing is that nearly all digital cameras come equipped with any zoom lens that allows more or less of your scene to become included by ‘zooming’ in and out. All these changes in the aim length are reflected inside the viewfinder and on substantial display screen at the back of this camera.” Who knew?

“Josh Rogowicz” used the comment form to alert me to a valuable investment opportunity: “Any time you’re buying rare metal coinage, the swiss 20 franc stands out as a reliable asset.” This didn’t relate in any discernable manner to my blog post, but hey, an insider tip is always welcome.

Someone identified only with Chinese kanji characters (which I cannot read) offered this piece of helpful advice on matters of the heart: “His “affair”is a pain in your heart foreverAffair eventsAlthough the pieces of your heart,Although you love him, he does not value you,Although you pay so much, but did not return,” It appears even “much money” was not enough to keep him, whoever he may have been; I guess I will have to muddle through somehow.

And last but not least, “Gale Sandel” paid me a heartfelt compliment, I think: “This internet site is my breathing in…”

Folks who know me well regard me as something of a technophobe. I still have my stereo speakers from the 1970s (good ones, but seriously antique; I have eschewed digital quad setups, as I have only two analog ears), my regular car has a manual transmission (albeit with exactly twice as many gears as my first car), incandescent light bulbs still illuminate significant portions of my home (lending my evening visitors robust pink skin tones rather than the sickly bluish shade created by fluorescent tubes). My cell phone, I am told, can be used to watch network TV (complete with subtitles, where applicable), take clandestine high-resolution photos, locate my precise position on the surface of the planet, and place a last-second bid on eBay. I use it for two things only: to place and receive phone calls. I don’t always answer it when it rings, in fact, thanks to one bit of technology I have embraced, caller ID. When I do get a call from a number I don’t recognize, it is usually a wrong number, typically someone looking for “Kaneko-san”, who hasn’t had this number for at least six years that I can personally vouch for. My guess is that the people looking for Kaneko-san haven’t talked with him/her in some time. Perhaps they are debt collectors tracking down cold files. There sure are a bunch of them, though; I get calls for Kaneko-san at least once a week.

One major problem with technology is that it seems there is always somebody willing to pervert it to a use that the inventors did not intend (the atomic bomb jumps to mind). This no doubt explains why there is a warning label on electric paint strippers, which use super-heated air to melt old paint, “do not use this as a hair dryer.” As admonitions go, this one seems about as obvious as “do not use this toaster in the bathtub”, but probably there is someone out there who would do that as well, if not warned off by an non-removable “skull and crossbones” label. (Note: those labels are made from the strongest material known to man; try removing one sometime if you don’t believe me.)

The digital age has brought forth all sorts of new innovations just waiting to be corrupted, often by your friendly government agents. In Great Britain, digital cameras, which started out as a wonderful boon to photographers everywhere, record your every move—well, not yours particularly—but those of everyone in a given area of the city. It is said that GB has more of these silent monitors than all the rest of Europe put together, which is a good reason not to visit the Mother Country, in my estimation. It is not that I plan to do anything unlawful, but if I am picking my nose or scratching my bottom surreptitiously while walking down a seemingly deserted London street, I would prefer that it didn’t cause undue merriment at the local police station or, worse yet, show up on YouTube after I am famous.

There is a weird phenomenon that occurs typically in remote villages, rural enclaves and tiny islands, a kind of information sharing system that transcends all documented forms of communication. It is known in the tropics as the “Coconut Telegraph”, in the Sahara as “Le Vent de Desert”, and in Prince Edward Island as “The Spud Network”. It works something like this:

I was driving to PEI one spring not long ago. I had not told anyone I was coming, and I was at the helm of an anonymous car (my grey Honda Civic sedan, of which there are thousands just like it in both shape and color, plying the roads of eastern Canada). Before I get to my place, I have to pass right by the house of my cousin Florene. As it happened, she was gardening in the front yard that morning, so I thought I’d pull in her driveway and surprise her. After all, I hadn’t seen her in close to a year. She glanced up at me, registering not one iota of astonishment, and said “Hi Bruce, I heard you were here.” How the hell did she know that, I wondered. So I asked her. She shrugged, pulled a perplexed face and said “I guess Vel told me.” Except I hadn’t told Vel I was coming either. Hmm. Florene and I went inside for a cup of coffee, and I asked if I could use her phone, to call Vel, naturally. I identified myself, and Vel said “Oh hi Bruce, I heard you were here.” Who could have told her? “Must have been Florene,” Vel offered. Nobody ever ‘fessed up to being the source of the rumor, and there I let it lie, writing it off as another example of The Spud Network.

Fast forward a couple of years to this past weekend. I am on my way back from a short trip to Montreal, scheduled to arrive home around 3pm on Saturday. This will give me time to give the guest room an unhurried once over, as I have company arriving on Sunday. On the home stretch I see a handmade road sign I look forward to every autumn, a sign that wasn’t there when I left for Montreal: MacPhee’s U-Pick Apple Orchard is once again open for business. A small (4km) detour is in order, because Rick MacPhee, orchardeer extraordinaire, offers apples truly worthy of Snow White, starting in late September and finishing up six delicious weeks or so later. I can just about smell a home-baked apfelstrudel in my immediate future. I wave as I pull up, and Rick greets me with a grin and “Hi Bruce, when did you get back?” (How does he even know I was gone?) He follows up with “Did you find your friend?” Okay, now I am thoroughly puzzled. “What friend?” I ask. “George Campbell came by here yesterday afternoon looking for you,” Rick replies. Oh dear, I wasn’t expecting him until the following day. And why would he be looking for me at MacPhee’s orchard? “I brought him over to the house to see if we could track you down,” Rick continues, and offered him supper and a place to stay for the night, but he didn’t want to impose. He asked me if there were any B&Bs close by.” Okey-dokey, I’d better get home and hit the phone, and see if I can figure out where George might have gotten off to.

Not far, as it turns out; he is stretched out in his car in my driveway, seat comfortably reclined, catching some late afternoon rays through the sunroof as I pull up. “Hi George, I heard you were here,” I say nonchalantly, realizing that with those seven simple words I have just inadvertently become one small new synapse in the Spud Network.

I sometimes think the humble pig, or more specifically the meat of the humble pig, gets a bad rap in modern day parlance. It was not always thus, although it has been a topsy-turvy ride, to say the least. In Biblical times, despite the strict kosher laws, Noah (of “The Ark” fame) chose to name one of his sons Ham. Ham went on to fame (or notoriety, depending on your point of view) by walking in on his drunken naked father (who was sleeping off a heinous hangover in his tent; good thing he wasn’t driving the Ark at that point, we might have wound up with kangaroos in Denmark) and displaying the temerity to cover dad’s erstwhile exposed form with a garment. For this grievous error in judgement, Ham was roundly cursed by his father, and banished to the Land of Ham (what are the chances of that?), currently known as Egypt. He was apparently further afflicted with some dermatological condition (as if being sent to BC-era Cairo wasn’t enough), which, according to some Biblical and Talmudic scholars, turned his skin black. The phrase “the curse of Ham” made it down through the ages more or less intact, referenced by the Mormon leader Brigham Young in his reasoning that since black people were the then-modern-day recipients of the curse, they could not serve as Mormon priests. Thankfully, in 1978, Mormon church president Spencer Kimball received a revelation from God saying that all worthy males could serve, so the curse of Ham was cured, so to speak.

Ham can be found as the name of small towns in Belgium, France and England, and there are diminutives and variations of the name to be found worldwide (Eastham, Westham, Shoreham, Ham Lake, Hams, Hamburg, Hamamatsu, etc.). Big deal, you might say, but I would challenge you to find towns named Beef, Chicken, Goat, and so on. That is no doubt doable, but with a significantly greater degree of difficulty than with Ham.

The fortunes of Ham took a further downturn, sadly, when the name was applied to third-rate (and all rates below that) actors, who “hammed it up”, seriously overacting to draw attention to themselves (and by extrapolation, away from all the other actors on the stage at the same moment). This apparently has its etymological roots in the old actors’ tradition of using ham fat to remove stage makeup. Actors were referred to as “hamfatters”, later shortened to “ham.” This is by no means the only explanation floated, however, not by a long shot. Another suggests that the word “amateur” actually derives from the Cockney slang “hamateur”, although perhaps the other way ‘round is more likely.

Ham took its rightful (?) place in mathematical circles with the Stone-Tukey Theorem, better known as the Ham Sandwich Theorem, which basically states that you can cut a ham sandwich in half, such that each half has precisely the same amount of ham and bread, with but a single cut. The fact that this has been proven by countless housewives, more or less since the invention of bread, seems to have cut no mustard with the mathematics community, who heralded the 1942 theorem as groundbreaking.

On a (slight) plus note, while unwanted emails are widely known as “spam”, emails that one actually chooses to receive are much less widely known as “ham.” Here’s an idea: an email that you are really looking forward to could be a “HoneyBaked Ham”. Just a thought. I quite like HoneyBaked hams.

We have our movie watching down to a science nowadays, viewing Hollywood flicks while in Japan, and Japanese ones during the summers in Canada. This may seem counterintuitive, but it really makes quite a bit of sense. In Japan, all the English-language films are subtitled in Japanese, and there are lots of choices, so we rent those there; I follow along in English, and my Japanese friends can read the subtitles, laughing, crying, oohing and aahing in exactly the same places as I do. Prior to leaving for Canada each year, I order a couple of dozen cheap DVDs from Hong Kong, Japanese films with English subtitles, and we have our summer’s entertainment waiting in the mailbox upon our return. The Japanese folks who stream in and out of my place over the summer can watch them in their native language, and I can follow along with the subtitles.

Years of reviewing books has turned me into something of a turbo-reader, and for the most part I have no problems keeping up. I say “for the most part”, and therein lies the rub. Because every now and then, I get a Japanese movie that has clearly been subtitled by someone whose first language is, say, Urdu, and whose English skills border on the painful. Such was the case with the movie I watched last night, a sci-fi thriller entitled Senrigan.
The plot line followed the machinations of a religious splinter group called The Green Monkey, bent on world domination through mind control. They were apparently going to achieve this (or at least give it the old college try) by means of a magnetic force field of some sort, beamed from a huge statue of Buddha overlooking Tokyo Bay. The special effects were pretty good, if not on George Lucas’ level, and there were a couple of unexpected twists toward the end. Also, the heroine drove a red Alfa Romeo Spider; this would have endeared her to me even if she hadn’t been a major cutie, which she most certainly was.

I knew from early on that the subtitles were going to be an issue, though. First, they were not available from the “Menu” button on the DVD remote control, but only through the “Subtitles” button, always a bad sign. These have typically been added on at a later date, by somebody other than the studio’s hired guns, and the English skills often…well, have a look for yourself; these screen stills say it so much better than I ever could:

Apparently she felling on her back...

She BE the plum thin Si

Does her HMO cover that?

I couldn't begin to make this stuff up...

Red Alfa, cute girl(s), B-zar dialog!