Three Days Off

This is the third time I've tried to publish a journal entry today. I'm wishing me luck...

Musically, the afternoon has progressed from 4hero, through Ellington, Mingus & Max Roach & now we're hearing a few Allman Brother's tunes. I've been alternately compiling a list of to do's & getting this post together.

After sending my neice Jen her graduation presents, I started to get newsletters from the site that her gifts were from. Jlist is a merchant that sells japanese products, like anime & toys - odd little japanese household products. The newsletters are really personable, though not signed. This weeks gem is below:

"Near our house, we can see the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty, and many other interesting wonders of world. These are pachinko parlors, a major source of entertainment for many Japanese men and women in Japan. An odd game which I don't pretend to understand, you basically buy a bucket of balls for $50, then sit for hours trying to hold a controller in just the right position to make most of the balls go into certain holes in the pachinko machine. Since "gambling" is illegal in Japan, except for certain events like horse, boat and bicycle racing, you don't win money if you get more balls than you started out with -- you get valuable prizes which you redeem for cash at a shady building next to the pachinko parlor. Pachinko is quite a competitive business to be in, and operators (who always seem to be getting involved with some crime or another) work very hard to bring in the newest machines in -- with little video screens or cute anime-style characters printed on them, for example. They have interesting names to attract customers, like one near us called Al Pacino. Despite the efforts of the pachinko industry to make the activity seem like a friendly and family-oriented thing to do, pachinko always seems to go hand in hand with the yakuza. Pachiko maker Sankyo is trying to change that image, and has hired Nicholas Cage to do its TV commercials."
(See them in quick time here:
http://www.tokyodv.com/feature/popmenNICKTHUMB.html)

Last week, I took a look at the webstats for this site. The service includes data on referring sites & links are provided for search results. That means I get to see the search terms minkett.com shows up under.

Search results for Minkett
Click the link above for one, look below for another



Right. Have a good Fourth of July, everybody.