Talk about mind trip. Satoshi Kon just loves messing with your mind. His latest anime movie, Paprika has had a few showings in the U.S., hopefully in a film festival near you soon. If you’re familiar with his other works like Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, you probably already expect the mind melting that you will be in for. And the central subject of this film is dreams, so there’s no holds barred. It is quite a trip. And yes, that’s Megumi Hayashibara voicing the lead female. Gets to do both a serious and low emotion voice & the more familiar in one role. I’m not including any images, just do a search on Paprika and you’ll get tons of hits with images & trailers.
Monthly Archive for June, 2007
Page 2 of 3
Went out for a brief pedal on Wednesday after work to get everything moving after having sat around all Kamehameha Day weekend drawing for Showcase 2007. Didn’t really feel like ripping or burning, so just took it easy. The brakes are now dialed. Scotchbrited the glaze and contamination from the rotors and purged all the factory fluid with Valvoline synthetic last Thursday and muddled with the centering and adjustment on Friday. Saturday’s ride honed everything in and now they’re set.
6.81-miles, 38-minutes, Vavr = 10.6 mph
Memorial Day 2007 Kamp Part 2
Yawn. What time is it anyways? Drat its already starting to get hot. And what is that I hear?
So this past memorial day weekend was spent camping at Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden. We havnt been camping for a few years. My Blue Tarp that I used to use for ground cover turned into dust; so I meant to buy one that day; but forgot at the moment I remembered that I needed my floppy hat. So I ended up stopping back at the house to get some 6mil plastic sheet that happened to be lying around.
That turned out to be a preview of things to come. Continue reading ‘Kamp’
Ate at Islands Burgers this eve with the boys. I had the Hula with Bacon. Thats a mushroom burger with swiss cheese. Was okay, but I prefer the Bluenami (blue cheese stuffed burger with blue cheese crumbles) overall so far.
This past Saturday was chop day. 
Derek came by with his demolition saw. Tools of destruction are always fun. Anyway, to start cut the welds for the door skin with cute little Dremel. Derek’s got some skills, he was able to cut the two welds without that self-destructo cutting wheel exploding. That didn’t happen until after when I attempted a cut into the plastic door handle, whereupon it promptly shattered in two sending a piece flying into another dimension somewhere. The same place all spring clips go. That done it was time to graduate to the more serious tool.
Everyone’s favorite, the demolition saw. People call it sawzall, but that’s actually a tradename, like scotch tape. Continue reading ‘Cut! Cut! Cut!’
It was cooler than last Saturday, with overcast skies and a threat of rain, but still hot. There was a breeze to keep things cool, but it was also a headwind to fight at times. Chris was busy and Root didn’t respond to any of the ride mail during the week, so I thought it was going to be just Jeff, Sara, and myself again. Pulling into the parking lot, I saw that Paul and Danny were going to join us again! There was a brief discussion on the ride course, and we decided on the mystery hills since there was less climbing than the regular loop. Continue reading ’09 June 2007 Wailuna mystery hills’
Well that didn’t work. Tried to get the door off. Started with this:
Drilled a bunch o holes for the slide hammer dent puller. Have I mentioned for some odd reason I get a sense of satisfaction from this tool. I like using it.
Silly me didn’t take a pic of the actual hammer. Anyway, results were marginal and slow.
Not being very concerned with preserving the door, at least not the top part, things got down to yanking on it like a crazed monkey.
Which actually was fairly effective. Maybe body shops should keep a crew of chimps on hand. But if you didn’t give them all cake they’d go ape sh*t and gnaw on your genitals. That tends to make for bad crew morale, although if you watch any of those kustom car building shows, you gotta wonder. Anyway, this is how the door stands now.
In case you’re wondering, my objective here was to remove the door so I could install my old rusty crusty door. So what I was hoping was that by somewhat straightening the door & accessing the linkages, I could unlock & unlatch the door. No such luck. Although I was able to get things straight enough that the linkages moved, the latch itself is too messed up & out of alignment to open. I even resorted to climbing inside & kicking at the door from inside. Kind of eye opening that with damage of only this extent you can’t easily force a car door open. So it looks like it’s time to call in the big guns and bring in the boys with the demolition saws. I think we’re going to have to cut the door apart. I thought of attempting to unbolt the door hinges, but you need to remove the fender to access the bolts. And in order to remove the fender, you need to open the door to access one of those bolts. Besides, chopping the door up should be good for some entertainment value, and I think Dr. D hasn’t busted out the demo saw in a while.
Saturday was sunny and unbearably hot all over Oahu, except for Pearl City, which was cloudy and unbearably hot… Root and Chris were on the side due to car and baby issues (respectively), so Jeff, Sara, and I rode up to where Root and I had seen the little side trail a few weeks ago. Descending steeply, the trail turned right and went from the open grass to beneath tree cover. With a slight downward grade, it countoured the hillside, passing scratchy ferns and strawberry guava. A little ways in, the trail dropped down onto an old graded doubletrack. It was overgrown and had been continually disturbed by the piggies, so it was pretty uneven. It seemed to go both back uphill toward the houses, or ahead and down. We followed the doubletrack in and it narrowed to singletrack width with all the overgrowth. It was not unlike Bowling Pin at Mililani. Quickly, we reached a clearing at the valley bottom. The way ahead was open but without an obvious, worn path. There was, however, a very obvious swithcback to the left backtracking up out of the valley along the opposite wall. This path gently ascended to a grassy clearing, where the trail turned right around a head into the next little valley. The trail rose briefly, then descended to the valley bottom. There were some loose, pebbley sections and a lot of deadfall along the descent, but the course was wide and evident. Continue reading ’02 June 2007 Wailuna mystery hills ride’
I’m feeling sad right now. Poor little FX got smushed today. After finishing a job call, was waiting to pull out of Y Hata onto Sand Island Access Road. Big o Dodge Ram 2500 sitting to right of me on shoulder behind the cars that park along road fronting the Y Hata wall. Wondering what the heck he’s doing, is he waiting to pull into traffic? He’s not doing anything or signaling, so I finally pull forward to get ready to pull into traffic. Then he decides to back up. I lean on my pathetic little single stock horn as I watch the tailgate looming through the side window, get dark from the shadow cast, then the sickening crunch and the sudden whiteness as the safety glass crumbles into those little jewely cubes.
With 20/20 hindsight, I suppose I could have backed up, but I didn’t know if it was clear behind me and I know I didn’t want to go forward since I was sitting there because I was waiting for a hole in traffic. So all I could manage was to lean on horn and watch like a deer caught in the headlights.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen now. Got initial estimate from body shop. Verdict was its non repairable as they can’t get the part. I’m taking in my original FX door tomorrow, but pulling it off just a while ago, found it’s badly rusted.