Fanzines Plethora

In part two of our Q&A series with Tokyo Vice author Jake Adelstein, we'll answer some basic questions about the yakuza: why people join, how they operate, and how much influence they have on mainstream Japanese culture. You will also find out why some parents might voluntarily send their kids to mobsters and how landing an innocent-seeming IT job could accidentally spiral you into a lifetime of crime.

If you haven't read part one, which is a more intimate look at Adelstein's own experience as a crime beat reporter in Japan, it's here.

Why do people join the yakuza?

They're usually misfits from Japanese society. The word yakuza itself comes from a losing hand in gambling. 893 (ya-ku-za). It's the worst hand you can have. So when they refer to themselves as yakuza, they're referring to themselves as losers. It's a very self-deprecating term.

In western Japan, there's still a lot of discrimination against burakumin, the outcast class. If you come from certain parts of the country, they might think you're inferior, dirty, and unclean. There are also a lot of Korean-Japanese yakuza because of the discrimination against them. It's getting better, but in the past, the job choices for Korean-Japanese were pretty much pachinko parlor, barbeque restaurant operator, sex club operator, or the yakuza.

Some of them are just normal people who are basically running a very small home security business. They collect money from bars and clubs in the neighborhood and in turn provide a service. If there's an unruly customer, they'll beat the shit out of him without calling the cops. If someone doesn't pay the tab, the yakuza will go to their door and politely ask for the money.

Do they come from broken families?

Not necessarily. A lot of them are from wealthy families — sons of cops, bureaucrats. [My bodyguard and ex-yakuza boss] Mochizuki-san's grandfather was a cop, and his father worked for a government institution his whole life.

Sometimes, if parents were worried about their kid's drug use, they would take him to the local yakuza and be like, beat some sense into this kid, get him off drugs, make him a man. And they would do it. And then the kid would join the yakuza afterwards.

But I'm sure that's not what the parents wanted!

Well at least their kid's not on drugs, right? And he has a job. In fact, lots of normal people go to the yakuza to solve problems. In Japan, civil lawsuits take forever to get resolved, and even if you win the lawsuit nobody will enforce it — if a guy owes you money but won't pay up, police officers aren't going to go out there to seize his assets. If someone owes you money or you're in a civil dispute, the yakuza will take half of whatever they can get out of the person who wronged you. But at last you get half, and it's fast.

Are there any misconceptions we have about the yakuza?

Mochizuki-san is a wonderful father to his child. He's incredibly patient and never yells at him. Some yakuza parents make sure their children don't become yakuza. Some of them actually do charity work and contribute funds to orphanages and things. It's rare, but it always surprises me.

The other thing that surprises me is that on their days off they're at home wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts and sweatpants, and I'm like, wow. I never would have pictured you like this when you're off the job. I know one yakuza boss who is really into akachan play, where he gets diapered like a baby and sucks on a lactating woman's tits. I'm like, this is what this fearsome guy does for pleasure?

From what you've told me about him, he seems like a perfectly decent guy. What made him join the yakuza?

Excitement, thrills, the promise of women. He racked up huge debts in a Soapland — Japan's legal brothels. He kept putting it on his tab until he couldn't pay it back. He was trying to raise money when the yakuza Soapland owners were like, why don't you work for these guys and you can pay me back?

What happens a lot now is that people graduate college and go work for some IT startup, and then they realize it's being bankrolled by the yakuza. The yakuza go, hey, this guy's smart. He earns money. We could use him. So they'll say to him: how would you like to become a member? We'll make you a corporate associate so you don't have to spend two years cleaning the office and answering the phone. It's employment for life! Because of the reputation of the yakuza, most people would be scared and hesitant to refuse. When you're privy to knowledge of how a large front company works, it's kind of hard to back out.

Do yakuza kill random people?

The traditional yakuza value is: katagi ni meiwaku wo kakenai. We do not bother ordinary citizens. You can come to us for gambling, drugs, or sex, and that's our business. But we're going to leave ordinary citizens alone. We're not involved in robberies, thefts, or muggings, and we don't rape people. This doesn't hold true anymore. Now it's all about money. The ideals that held up the traditional system of meritocracy are gone. You can buy your way into power. The classic yakuza life scheme used to be that you started at the bottom doing whatever enterprises, loan-sharking or prostituion or drug-running or extortion blackmail, pretty standard yakuza stuff. Eventually there would be a gang war and you'd shoot up a member of a rival gang, go to jail, and come out after 10 years to a higher position with a better salary. But as gang wars have declined and the organizations have moved into financial crimes like stock market manipulation or running front companies that are listed companies, capital has become more valuable than honor. There used to be a premium paid on upholding codes of what was proper yakuza living, but nobody pays attention to them anymore.

How involved are the yakuza in the way business in Japan is run today?

In the financial markets, I'd say about 20% of listed companies are heavily connected to the yakuza. There's a hell of a lot more money to be made moving a million shares of stock than a hundred bags of speed on the streets.

How about in politics?

The Liberal Democratic Party was founded on yakuza money. Former prime minister Koizumi's grandfather was a member of the Inagawa-kai; he was tattooed all the way down to his wrists. According to magazine articles written in the nineties, the current minister of finance Kamei Shizuka received $400,000 from a yakuza stock speculator and certainly received donations from the emperor of loan sharks.

What about in pop culture?

A huge part of the entertainment industry is run by the yakuza. When a rather dumb cop accidentally leaked all the Metropolitan Police Department files on Goto-gumi in 2007, a company called Burning Productions — one of the most powerful production companies in the country — was listed as an organized crime front company. Nobody in the Japanese media will that, though, because they'll lose have access to their stars. It's like Hollywood in the 50s when the mafia had a big share in everything.

Do you think that will ever change? Will Japan ever run as a non-yakuza society?

For this to happen, Japan needs a few things. There would have to be a criminal conspiracy law so you can prosecute people at the top for crimes committed by people below them. There would have to be plea bargaining so people at the bottom would rat out people above them, and a witness protection program so that the people who make plea bargains aren't killed as soon as they get out of jail. You need wiretapping laws that allow you to wiretap — the laws are so stringent now that they're almost never used. If you put all those things into place, then Japan could get rid of the yakuza groups. They'd probably go underground but they would never be this powerful again.

Part of the reason they are so powerful now is that they're so out in the open. You can look at the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters on Google Maps. The Inagawa-kai office is across from the Ritz Carlton. Every year, the NPA releases a list of the 22 organized crime groups with their names and addresses. It's not a mystery who they are or where they are.

What's preventing change from taking place?

Polticians. They don't want a criminal conspiracy law in the books. I don't think there are any politicians who don't have any dirt of them. And if any politician starts coming down hard on organized crime — if they don't physcially kill him like they did the mayor of Nagasaki — they'll ruin his reputation.

Here's the thing: Japanese people kind of like the yakuza. They admire them. There are movies about them, comic books about them, there are fan magazines... they're part of the culture. They promote traditional values.

One of the reasons Japan has low street crime rates is because these guys are very good enforcers. In the neighborhoods where they're running businesses or collecting protection money, you won't see people getting mugged because the yakuza don't want people to be afraid to come there and spend money. They are a second police force and in that sense, and perform a valuable role in Japanese society.

Over the next few months, we'll be collaborating with Jake Adelstein to bring you a series of Boing Boing exclusive yakuza stories. In a few weeks, we'll go behind-the-scenes with Adelstein and his yakuza buddies to watch how they do ordinary things like play video games, use the computer, and chop off body parts. Stay tuned!

Photo by Ania Przeplasko; Model Lu Nagata, aerial performance artist and instructor

In that sleep of death, what pageviews may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil? A beautiful piece of experimental prose by our former colleague Joel Johnson, formerly of Boing Boing Gadgets and now of Gizmodo, about ghosts in the cloud: mortality and connectivity, and how internet permanence might change memory of those who pass, after they're gone. Snip:

Chances are we'll each be lost to time. 100 billion people have been born before us. Most of them no longer exist as individuals in our memories. No names. Faces only reflected in our own and not in any way that really matters.

But not us. We might be remembered forever. All our Twitter updates, our email, our Vimeo movies, our Xbox Live profiles, our wormy FourSquare maps. They won't be important. Not to most people, anyway. But they'll be there if the sysadmins take care of us, if the corporations and machines to whom we've entrusted our records do not fail or are not destroyed.

We won't matter to most. But our memories will be cataloged, indexed, made available along with our stories, our names. $viewcount++.

Raiding Eternity (Gizmodo)

Mark Dery has another wonderful essay on True/Slant, called "Dead Man Walking: What Do Zombies Mean?"

The zombie is a polyvalent revenant, a bloating signifier that has given shape, alternately, to repressed memories of slavery's horrors; white alienation from the darker Other; Cold War nightmares of mushroom clouds and megadeaths; the post-traumatic fallout of the AIDS pandemic; and free-floating anxieties about viral plagues and bioengineered outbreaks (as in 28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead, troubled dreams for an age of Avian flu and H1N1, when viruses leap the species barrier and spread, via jet travel, into global pandemics seemingly overnight. Which may be why the Infected, as they're called in both the film and the game, move at terrifying, jump-cut speed, unlike their lumbering, stuporous predecessors.)

On his blog, Mark provides Attention-Conservation Highlights: "Karl Marx's goth-iness; cultural historian of horror David J. Skal's take on zombies as poster children for the econopocalypse; Haitian zombies and post-colonial trauma; white supremacists' Turner Diaries dreams of circling the wagons and holding off the "golden horde" of multiculti urbanites with "boomsticks"; Nazi zombies. Oh, and braaains."

Dead Man Walking: What Do Zombies Mean?

 The Wild Maned Welsh Marvel himself!

Terry:I really,really hate to break with tradition so I’ll scrape the mould off this question one more time: Jason,where and when were you born?

Jason:Hi Terry, I was born in Port Talbot (South Wales, UK) in November 1977, as Star Wars was being released I believe!

It’s a small town on the coastline being the hometown of Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, Michael Sheen & Rob Brydon. In fact, Christian Bale and Catherine Zeta Jones were also born just round the corner. I wish I could say that I’ve met at least one of them, if they happen to be reading this- why don’t you answer my emails, eh?

Terry:Were you drawing as a youngster –I assume that you must have been reading comics; which ones?

Jason: I still am a youngster! (denial)

Yes, I loved art throughout school and no piece of paper was left unscathed. I used to regularly stay behind after school hours to get more practice in the art rooms and stare bewilderingly at the flashing magic box they had in the corner - it was an Acorn Arcimedes… and you could PAINT with it…!

I used to read a lot of ’80s UK Marvel stuff or anything that could be found in cornershop newsagent shelves at the time. Thundercats, Zoids, Turtles, Spidey but my favourite of the bunch was Transformers, to a young boy Cars + Robots = WIN.

Terry:Can you tell us a little about your educational background and whether at any point you managed to work in comics?

Jason:In arts college and university I considered myself more of a designer than artist. Perhaps I didn’t have a lot of faith in my drawing ability but I enjoyed giving something a ‘look’ or creating an eye-pleasing layout.

I studied Technical Illustration, Graphic Design and Multimedia in the late 90’s as I longed to find out more about art in technology, but not really seeing the potential at the time to combine the two to create comic art. Mind you, this was before graphics tablets were readily available!

Terry:Nuts.  That was another “jump ahead” question!  Did you ever think,as a young lad,that you might like to give comics a go?

Jason:During my education I don’t think I had any ambition to work in comics in a professional capacity. I used comicbook-style characters or sequential illustrations in my projects and assignments in college but anything beyond that was just a hobby.

I was still interested in comics but I had swung away from the West and was fascinated by the East as the

UK went a bit anime crazy in the mid-90s after Akira was released. There was a magazine which came out over here called “Manga Mania” and I loved it!

However, I associated such things as ‘fun’, didn’t think of comics as a viable option for employment and didn’t look into it. I imagined that I’d end up in some design studio somewhere and, for a number of years, I did. I got a job designing electronic information systems for Hilton Hotels and Travelex bureau d’change (for airports) amongst other things before moving to a print design studio where I produced work for Lloyds TSB, Citroen and the Open University.

I guess at that point I thought these were the kind of things one does with an art degree in a real working environment. I thought producing comicbooks was a profession for the select few and had convinced myself that I didn’t have the artistic talent required to do something like that.

This pic got me the TF cover drawing gigs. I drew it to take to Auto Assembly 08 to gauge reaction to my interpretation of the movie-style Transfornmers. It’s my most popular piece so far both at conventions and on my devianart page. 

Terry:Big question then..at what point did you decide 100% that you really wanted to work in comics and on announcing this did your parents faint?

Jason:It was quite literally a gradual transition between a full-time graphic design job with a little bit of comicbook work on the side, to 50% of each job, and then to mostly comic work with very little design. This happened over a period of a few years. There was a point when I decided to quit my full-time design job to concentrate more on comics, which was a big step. However, my social life and bank balance haven’t quite been the same since!

At the time my parents were more concerned about the freelance aspect of doing comics, my dad’s a self-employed plumber and my mum would’ve preferred it if I was in a more secure working environment!

Terry:So did you formulate a plan on how to get into comics or did you get involved in anything like the Small Press first to find out more?

Jason:I was very, very fortunate to have most of my breaks fall into my lap. Like I said, I didn’t consider doing it as a profession until I was getting enough work in to realise that I could. I guess it was all about the right place and time.

My career in comics started in 2004 when a great friend of mine, Simon Williams, who was drawing Marvel

UK comics for Panini suggested that I coloured up a picture he drew of Transformers Armada Optimus Prime. I had studied in art college with Simon and he had always thought that I had a good eye for colour. He submitted the piece to them and they immediately wanted me to colour some work for their Transformers Armada title.

Unfortunately the title was cancelled before any of the work was published but Tom O’Malley at Panini wanted me to work on Spectacular Spiderman instead, which I wasn’t going to turn down! I coloured a few covers and then moved onto strips. I was fortunate to be involved with a lot of work that Simon drew.

I am grateful to both Simon and Tom through whom I was able start my career on very high-profile comics in the

UK industry, which has helped get a lot of other jobs since then.

Seasoned pro Jon Haward had always liked my colouring (I got to work with him on a few occasions) and recommended me to Clive Bryant, editor of Classical Comics, with whom Kat I have had a good working relationship. Big thanks go out to both of them for all the projects that has come our way.

After having worked as a colourist for about 4years I wanted to challenge myself and attempt to get artwork that I had DRAWN and coloured published! So to date, my original artwork has been published in 4 titles, and I’m currently working on the (very large) fifth in the form of a graphic novel for Classical Comics.

 

This was the cover I drew & coloured for Transformers UK:Revenge Of The Fallen #10. This is how it looked on the mag,cropped,with logo. 

Terry:I forgot to ask Kat this –at what point did the two of you meet?

Jason:A chance meeting in Forbidden Planet in Cardiff back in 2005. I was there with Simon and we knew a guy who worked there. Kat was a friend of his who was visiting.

Later that month Simon had invited Kat to the Bristol Comics Expo and she wanted to go on the Sunday but she couldn’t get there. I was going on the Sunday too so offered to give her a lift. Unfortunately, I then accidentally put diesel in my petrol car which broke it, we then tried catching a train but they were all cancelled so had to catch a coach which took forever to get from Cardiff to Bristol. We managed to catch the last HOUR of a 2 day convention but managed to have a good long chat about life, the universe and everything!

Terry:Ohhhh,the,uh,’accidental’ diesel in the engine one.  Right. Did you team up on comic work then or was that to come later on?

Jason:I was working as a colourist on Spectacular Spiderman UK at the time and wanted someone to assist me with basic colour “flatting” to free me up to do more work. I asked if Kat if she knew anyone that could assist me. I thought flatting would be far below her capabilities but secretly hoped she do it! It was mutually beneficial for both of us and has led to much bigger and better things.

Terry:What was your first published work –Small Press/Pro?

Jason:My first commissioned published work as an illustrator was a cover for Transformers UK #21 (published 2009). As a colourist, it was a poster for Spectacular Spiderman UK #96 (published 2004).

 

 

 This was the cover I drew & coloured for Transformers UK#22

Terry:Did the comic industry turn out to be as you imagined when younger –at what point [if ever] did you reach the “I’ve got to starve to be in comics??!” phase?

Jason:I didn’t have any preconceptions of the industry before I joined and my impressions are in a constant state of flux but maybe the recent economic climate has something to do with that.

So far I’ve not had to “starve” to be in comics (thank God) but I suppose when I decided to quit my full-time job was when I realised the difference in lifestyle. When your name is attached to a piece of work, when you care about your work and want to make constant strides to improving it, then you are going to spend more time on it. The more time you spend on it the less beneficial it becomes financially. You find yourself re-evaluating where you spend your time and what you actually need to spend money on.

Something that really helps us keep things in perspective is a sketch charity Kat & I orginise for underprivileged children (handed down to us from legendary artist Andrew Wildman). It’s a constant reminder that we never really have to “starve” to do this job and we are extremely fortunate to be able to do something we enjoy, regardless of crazy deadlines or tight pockets.

Terry:With the paucity of info on the net about you I want to find out more about how you work.  Do you have set hours that you work in or do you tend to work into the early morning on work?

Jason:Yeah, the internet & I have fallen out and not talking to each other!

Not really, I find I’m so busy I hardly have time to tell people what I’m up to or try to promote myself online, which is why I stay clear from facebook even though I signed up about 5 years ago! (good thing Kat makes up for both of us!)

I try to work from around 9am til early / late evening but I suppose it depends on deadlines or mood- if you’re in the zone sometimes it’s harder to stop. I used to work into the night, but you become less and less productive plus it become harder to start again in the morning. Unfortunately, the amount of work still to go on our current project means free-time is minimal at the mo.

 Page 33 from Classical Comics Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

Terry:Are you a “uses computer only” artist or do you use computer and conventional media –perhaps you can tell us the equipment and how you get to work on a project?

Jason:I predominantly use my computer since I can be far more accurate and precise with it. I obviously use paper for sketches at conventions but I prefer using my Mac because I find it easier to recreate the image I see in my mind’s eye. If part of an illustration is not quite right it is so easy to fix. I suppose I’m better at knowing what something should look like as opposed to being gifted enough to be able to pull it out of the bag straight away. However, it means that I have difficulty curbing the perfectionist side of me that wants to tweak something until it’s right (or my arm falls off)!

At the moment, I’m using a duo-core Mac-Mini, 4G of Ram with a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet using Photoshop as my primary weapon.

Terry:Off the top of my balding head question:Kat’s secret identity is Chun-Li so,Mr.Cardy…do you have a secret identity??

Jason:Yeah. It’s actually ‘Kat’.

Just kidding- this IS my secret identity. I’m actually someone else…

Terry:Going back to how you work; how do you and Kat work on joint projects –you are both working on A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream,right?

Jason:That’s right.

It depends on the project, but more often than not I ‘finish off’ pages. When I started in the biz, I got a lot of work because of the overall ‘look’ I gave a page so, to keep that consistency, the joint projects go via me to the client. I was recently brought in as a colour ‘editor’ on one book published by Classical Comics to make sure the look and feel was consistent thought the book.

As far as MSND goes, we best describe our method as ‘Art Tennis’, constantly hitting a page back and forth until it’s done. We both discuss what should go on the page in terms of layout, angles and content before I draw them up as roughs for approval. Kat then draws the characters from the roughs then I tweak them and clean them up (equivalent of the ‘inking’ stage but keeping the thin grey pencil lines instead).

Once they are approved, we discuss lighting and rendering then Kat will go to work on the characters while I paint the backgrounds. She then gives me the characters and I merge them all together to create a balanced whole! Or that’s the idea anyway!

We know it’s not quite traditional or conventional but it somehow seems to work!!!

page 36 from Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

Terry:I’m old and my gums ache but I’m sure you’ve worked on Transformers? If I’m right,how did this come about –can you tell me what work you’ve had published so far?

Jason:Yep, amazingly the work I’ve had on Transformers has grown and grown over the years but my life seems intwined with them!

As mentioned, my colour work was first spotted on a TF sample piece after which I worked with Simon Williams on DVD box sets, 6ft standees and magazine illustrations. A few years ago I met Steve White at Titan as they were launching the UK Transformers comic, he loved my colouring style and got me colouring quite a few strips in the

UK comic starting with a Guido Guidi strip.

I started attending the ‘Auto Assembly’ Transformers convention as a guest (with Simon) through my work on the franchise. For the 2008 conventions I decided to draw some of the movie-design Transformers, but in a style that would look like a high-budget cartoon / anime, to gauge reaction. It was overwhelmingly positive at the con and on my deviantart page (online), with my ‘Mikaela & Bumblebee’ pic being extremely popular. I submitted them to Steve White and he liked them, letting me originate some covers for the TFUK comic.

I’ve also done some drawing guides in the Terminator Salvation comic and had artwork published in Udon’s “Darkstalkers Tribute” book in the US. The Midsummer Night’s Dream book that Kat & I are working on at the moment is by far the most challenging, it’s a big step up from drawing & colouring big splash pages of shiny robots to 130 pages of sequential illustrations set in a forest in ancient

Greece!

As a colourist, I am grateful to the many people who have let me work on 1000+ comicbook pages & covers that have included Spec Spidey, Actionman (ATOM), Various Transformers titles, Marvel (Rampage, Pocketbooks & Annuals), Death’s Head, Dragonclaws, Dreamworks Tales, SFX magazine, Scooby Doo, and the Frankenstein, Henry V (both co-coloured with Kat) and Great Expectations graphic novels books for Classical Comics.

Terry:Comic-wise is everything going to your plan and where would you like to see yourself in 10 years –what books would you give your teeth to work on?

Jason:My teeth are incapable of doing the work, otherwise I’d let them get on with it as I sleep!

I don’t suppose I have much of a plan, just to keep broadening my horizons and, hopefully, keep improving! It will be interesting to see what form comics take in 10 years time, it’s difficult to predict how it will effect us all.

I can say that I’m happy with my progress as a comicbook professional so far. Every now and again I attempt to step out of my comfort zone and the latest of which, originating sequential art for a large-scale story, requires a whole different attitude and approach than my previous work.

Ideally, I’d like to write stories based on some original concepts I’ve come up with (and draw and colour them), as I feel I have a small something to bring to the industry in that regard. I hope to find the time to realise these ideas but balance it with client’s demands and the important things in life.

I think the greatest challenge to a professional artist is finding that balance.

page 39 from Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

Terry:You’ll be getting bored soon so I’ll give you the opportunity to wax-lyrical on whatever you want –why people should buy A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream,thank yous or whatever!

Jason:One thing I’d like to raise again (and something that Kat has already mentioned too) is the charity we organise. It’s called “Draw the World Together” and we’re trying to get as many artists (Pro or not) and art enthusiasts as possible  involved to help raise money for underprivileged children in developing countries through art.

We attend several conventions a year to sketch (anything!) for attendees in order to raise money for this. If anyone reading is interested in helping out or like to know more, please lease visit  ‘drawtheworldtogether.ning.com’  for more info about what we do and conventions we will appear at.

Other than that I’d like to give a BIG THANK YOU to Kat for putting up with me, Clive at Classical Comics for giving us the chance to do MSND, my friends and family (especially my Parents, Nanna, KJ and Simon) for the continued support and God who makes all things possible.

Also, thanks to anyone who has picked up a book that Kat & I have been been involved with and to anyone who is still reading! I hope people will like the look of MSND- when we finish it towards the end of the year we hope it will provide an entertaining and unique interpretation of the play that the Bard would be happy with!

Oh, and please visit my deviantart page for occasional news updates and new piccies!

jasoncardy.devinatrt.com

Terry:Jason,thanks a lot for answering the questions and here’s to your future projects!

Jason:And thank you Terry, for giving me the opportunity to graffiti on your newly-painted wall!

If you've never seen anyone handle their instrument like Charlie Patton might have, this musician from Botswana is incredible--I think I can safely say I've never really seen anyone play a guitar before:

Youtube user Bokete7, (who shot the video), told me he is: "Ronnie Moipolai from Kopong village in the Kweneng district 50 km west of the capitol Gaborone. He is 29 years old and goes around the shebeens selling and playing his songs for 5Pula each (80dollarcents). He learned guitar from his now late father, has 3 brothers that also play guitar (KB is one of them), has also a big sister and plenty of kids in the yard. Nobody has a formal job and his mother sells Chibuku beer and firewood they get from the bush trying to make ends meet."

Bioacoustician Bernie Krause has recorded the amazingly rhythmic vascular systems of thirsty trees: 

He discovered that the cells in the xylem and phloem of the tree fill with air to try to maintain the osmotic pressure that's usually produced by the sucking of water up through the roots.  At a certain point the cells burst. Krause adds "When they pop, they make a noise: we can't hear it, but insects can. And when insects hear multiple cells popping, they're drawn to the tree because certain ones are programmed to expect sap. And when the insects are drawn to the tree, the birds are drawn to the tree to eat. it's all a microhabitat formed by sound: The sound of popping cells."  (Incidentally, when the xylem cells pop, they die and form the rings of the tree).  Recordings are made at their natural high frequency (about 47 kHz!) with a hydrophone and then slowed down by about a factor of seven. 

Bernie's done some fascinating work in the field of "biophony", which is based around the idea that every animal in an eco-system has its own acoustic territory, or bandwidth of sound that it vocalizes in. If something comes in and takes over a certain bandwidth (like the regular route of a noisy airplane) entire populations can suffer, or be forced to adapt.

You can find more of his recordings here

Jessi Buchanan is a Georgia artist who takes all the normal obsessions of an average American boy -- lawn ornaments, corn dogs, giant mutant koalas with laser-beam eyes -- and gives them back to the world in colorful, cartoony canvases. Other than his work, not much is known about Buchanan. Some say he doesn't really exist. Some say he's never been spotted in the company of the much more successful Jeff Cohen; others say nothing at all. Most mysteriously, Buchanan seems to have abandoned an ambitious cycle of paintings called The Jessi Buchanan Alphabet at the letter "M" (for "mullet"), sometime in 2006. Will he ever re-surface?

I haven't paid much attention to Lego kits for the last 20 years or so. But a new book, Lego Minifigure Ultimate Sticker Collection, was a fun way for me to appreciate the cleverness, artistry, and humor of the little characters that people the kits. This DK book has over 1000 "reusable" stickers of characters ranging from Plankton (the little one-eyed jackass in SpongeBob SquarePants) to Slave Leia from Star Wars. I'm not much of a collector of anything, so this book was an excellent way to admire these fun figurines with the expense and clutter of buying and keeping them. I just gave the book to my six-year-old daughter and she is enraptured.

Lego Minifigure Ultimate Sticker Collection

A British soldier blinded by a grenade can now "see" using his tongue. A prototype system called the BrainPort converts images to electrical signals which are sent to a plastic "lolly pop" that the user puts in their mouth. The learning curve—users have to be taught to translate an electric "pins and needles" sensation into meaningful information—sounds a bit rough, and you can't use the BrainPort while eating or talking. But the soldier can now locate and pick up objects without help or fumbling.

Joann Bruso, author of Baby Bites - Transforming A Picky Eater Into A Healthy Eater Book, a book on getting kids to overcome picky eating habits, has been blogging the half-life of a McDonald's Happy Meal that she bought a year ago. In the intervening year, the box of delight, plastic toys and food-like substances has experienced virtually no decay.

NOPE, no worries at all. My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. The food did NOT decompose. It did NOT get moldy, at all.

This morning, I took it off my shelf to take a birthday photo. The first year is always a milestone. I gave it one of my world famous nonna hugs as we've been office mates for a year now! (Okay, maybe my sanity is in question.)

Happy Birthday to My Happy Meal (via Consumerist)