Do You Fear Becoming Homeless? Need a Job? Make $400 ~ $1225 a Day With a Vacuum Car in Japan!

Down and out on your luck? Need a job? Do you fear that if you don't get a job soon then you could become homeless? Are you like me and willing to do anything to keep from having to sleep under the bridge? Really? Anything?... Well, welcome! You've come to the right place. Everything written in that headline is true... I know where you can get a part-time job that pays anywhere from about $400 up to $1200 a day with a "Vacuum Car." If you are willing to do anything, short of getting shot at or actual prostitution to make $1200 a day, part-time... Read on...

(Note: By "prostitution" I mean actual "sex services for money" - after all, practically speaking, we're all prostitutes in some fashion of the word!) 

Sometimes you read in the newspapers stories about workers getting paid awesome wages, right? $50, $75, even $100 dollars an hour or more. For example, it was exposed that organizations like Blackwater pay their "contractors" (mercenary soldiers) operating in Iraq $1000 one-thousand dollars a day! That's big bucks! Wow! This irks the typical US grunt (Be all that you can be!) who gets $98 dollars a week (pre-tax) with a bunk to sleep in and all-you-can-eat Spam sandwiches.


A $1000 dollars a day!!! For manual labor? Do you wish you could get a job like that? Well, you can. And I'm here to teach you how... For absolutely free, No emails to send in. No hidden catches, no gimmicks... Just free... All the information you need to know is right here...


Long ago, in Japan, teaching English was the gravy train job like those clowns who work for Blackwater who are now getting paid massive sums of money off the backs of the American taxpayer (they hate them for their freedoms don't you know?) I wrote about how English teachers in Japan were getting paid $50,000 a year and more in Tokyo in 1979, 1984 and Today:

... I know, there were English teachers at our company getting paid, I'd say, on average, ¥700,000 per month. Some were earning over ¥1,000,000 per month. ¥700,000 per month, in 1985, was "only" about $2,756 per month in USD. By 1989, that was about $5,512 per month... And that was for 20 hours a week of classroom time!

Think about that! English teachers were so rare in those days that they were earning, on average, more than $60,000 a year in 1989. People who couldn't get a job mowing lawns back home were pulling down $60 thousand dollars a year teaching part time and sleeping with their students! Since I was a measly liaison, I was only making $80,000 a year to babysit those dumb foreigners (maybe not so dumb, eh?) I even knew a few guys who were making twice that amount. (Read more on that crazy but true story here)

But now, English teaching in Japan has fallen by the wayside as a good income generating endeavor. I think it is still good to pay the bills all the while you learn Japanese and make connections... But English teaching as an ends unto itself? Nope.


Besides that, the entire Japanese economy is in the doldrums. Why, just yesterday I was talking with a friend who is a business owner and he agreed with me when I said that we all had to work twice as much as we did five or ten years ago but we only make half as much money... What to do?


Well, if you are like me, then you think about these things a lot. I know that if I think about them too much, sometimes they freak me out. I'm the nervous type about this sort of thing and there have been times when I've woken up in the morning in a near panic-attack state worrying about my job or whether or not we'll have a place to live and food to eat in six months...


How about you? Have you worried about these sorts of things too?

I also have another problem in that, since I have a family, I can't really just blow what little money money I have on booze and drugs in one last "Hurrah" then go sleep down by the river and become some homeless dude. What will the neighbors think? What would my son say to his friends on the first day at school?


Teacher: "Alright, I want each of you to stand up, introduce yourselves and say a little something about your family..."


First kid: "My dad is the Asia Managing Director for Delta-United Airlines. You might have seen him on Bloomberg TV before."


Second kid: "My dad is president of Amazon-Google Japan. You might have seen him on CNBC Asia TV before."


Third kid: "My dad owns all the Rolls Royce dealerships in Japan and East-Asia. You might have seen him on CNN before." 


My son: "My dad is old guy living under the bridge with the huge beard. If you've ever gone on a picnic down by the river, you might have seen him before."


Naw... I guess I can't do that...


So, anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah... I have a phobia about going homeless; I can't do it. No matter what, I'd have to find a job and it would have to be a good paying job... So, well, that's why I'm here... And, I reckon, that's why you're here too.


Funnily enough, I was thinking about this just this morning when I was driving my son to school when right in front of my car was a "Vacuum Car." 


"That's it!" I thought, "A Vacuum Car!" Bingo!


Get this folks, guys driving "Vacuum cars" get paid huge amounts of money yet the Vacuum Car companies can't get enough staff and retain them to do that job even though the economy is in a down market! In fact, everyone in Japan knows that operating a Vacuum Car is one of the highest paid part time jobs in the entire country!!!... It's been that way for decades! And they always have a shortage of workers!!!! It's a goldmine!


Now, folks, before you get all hot and bothered about the mere notion of part-time job vacuuming cars in Japan and getting a $1000 a day, let me explain that the Japanese have some pretty bizarre ideas on how they take English and bastardize it for use in their own language.

Vacuum Car is a vacuum car, but not exactly the image you probably have when you hear this word. When I first heard his term, I imagined the friendly guy at the full service gasoline station vacuuming out my car. But not so!  


I don't want to go into a long explanation, but modern words from English like, "Google," "Twitter," "Facebook," are said, with Japanese intonation, just like the English equivalents and mean the same thing. Older words like "helicopter," or "escalator," are the same too... But there's many words that the Japanese have adopted that mean something totally different from the original. One that I'll never forget is the word, "Glamor." Glamor to you and me (supposed native English speakers) means something like charm, romance, alluring or excitement. To the Japanese, "Glamor" means...Well, "big boobs"... I suppose, in a way, that is alluring and exciting (if you are a guy)...

I have a notion that this one photo is totally responsible for the Japanese changing the meaning of "glamorous" from one meaning "charm" to one meaning "massive chest of drawers."

  
So, you can guess, "Vacuum Car" is not "vacuuming cars at a gasoline station." "Vacuum car" is for vacuuming but not vacuuming cars... Vacuum Cars are for vacuuming sh*t. Literally. Vacuum Cars are used to vacuum sh*t. And I don't mean little piles of sh*t off the carpet. 


I mean massive Jacuzzi-sized pool sized pools of sh*t.


That's right. They are for vacuuming sh*t... Oh, and p*ss... Sh*t and P*... As well as vomit, toilet paper, used diapers, tampons, condoms, used cooking oil, rubber bands, toys, old magazines, whatever people throw or drop into a toilet.


Now, in a modern society, with modern plumbing, toilets all flush with water and then that water and refuse flows out through the underground plumbing and sewer system to a publicly owned water filtration plant whereby it is partially filtered and recycled as your drinking water. (Bon apetite!) But what do people out in the country do where there is no water running and no underground sewage system? What do people do where their water supply is a hand pump to a natural underground reservoir of water and their toilet is a huge hole dug into the ground under their house?


What do they do when that huge hole starts to fill up and get all stinky with excrement?


Oh, that's where you come in with your Vacuum Car. The Vacuum Car guy is called and he gets about ¥30,000 a pop to vacuum these holes in the ground out. On a good day, they will get called to do three or four jobs in the same locale so those are the days they really, er, "clean up" (pardon the pun).  


But don't think this such a bad job! It's not at all. The story about having to physically jump down into the sh*t holes in the ground after you've vacuumed them out and scrub the walls and floors spic and span on your hands and knees is just an urban myth. It's not true at all. Though a diligent and conscientious employee will stick their head down there to see if any coins were ever dropped and make the effort to pick them up. (Reward is 20% for all monies recovered!) 

Customers get a 5% discount if they call us before the toilets overflow!

Also, I've read the stories written by some satisfied Japanese guys who've done this job and there's all sorts of perks! One guy I read said that, 


"The smell was so overwhelming that it filled every pore of my body. No matter how much I washed, it wouldn't go away. I could still smell it a week later. I couldn't eat anything for an entire week either!" 


Say! Sounds like a great diet plan before the summer hits! Everyone wants to lose weight so they can look their best before they hit the beach in their bikini, right? Me too! Wow! Get paid and lose weight? What a great deal.* 


(*Make sure you scrub with something like Ammonium Chloride mixed with tomato juice and gargle with Lysol everyday for at least two weeks before heading to the beach you so don't smell like a turd!) 


Also, friends, I don't think it's fair to the toilet lover society of the world for people to always be "taking the piss" (pun intended) of the toilet industry. I think it gets a bad rap. Perhaps bodily functions like p*ssing and sh*tting are not as glamorous (oops!) as dance, drama, writing and singing, but trust me, there are times when they are just as important and, dare I say, urgent?

Japan now even has a robot toilet that will follow you around the 

house so that you really can, "Sh*t in the kitchen!"

So let's not poo-poo this great industry, friends... For who knows, the way things are going in this economy, you and I could riding in a Vacuum Car together any day now... 


Oh, and don't worry about me, I don't mind driving... I've always respected the quality of your work so you get to handle the most important duties!... You did say you'd do anything, right?




Toilets can be your friend! To learn more, here's a history of toilets in Japan!

Giving Away Things For Free is the Best Promotion and a Key to Making Money

Yesterday, I went to the barber for my once-every-six-months haircut. As I was talking to the girl who cut my hair, I was amazed that here was this 25-year-old woman, cutting hair, who understood more about the Internet and the new media than 90% of the company executives - especially at big media - that I meet. Perhaps it is because she was young that she can easily grasp simple concepts.

The first simple concept is that giving things away for free is the future of marketing and advertising. We see successful companies and people around us doing that all the time, but far too many organizations cannot make the logical connection in their heads and make the jump to that end in order to help their own company.


Giving away useful items or content for free is the best (and cheapest) form of promotion you could possibly get. When she had finished cutting my hair she gave me a freebie. It was a plastic business card carrying case that had her hair salons name imprinted on the top. Every time during the day that I give out a business card I see that name. Now, many people would think, "I wouldn't be caught dead with a plastic business card holder that had some other company name on it!" But not me. I find it wonderfully useful and smart.

Simple, cheap, effective. I look at it several times a day.

I went to a meeting at a huge television content, DVD sales, marketing and distribution company yesterday. I showed it to them. They were marveled at the simplicity and low-cost (and effectiveness) of this promotional concept (I mean, once I explained the logic).


Most company executives cannot get their heads around the concept of giving things away for free in order to make more money. But think about what I have always said, "Google is one of the most profitable companies in the entire world today and they give away everything for free! Now, how do they do that?"


Google is one of the most profitable companies in the world, right? So why don't you and your company emulate them?


I often go to TV stations (alas, they are all sinking ships!) and ask them why they don't monetize their web pages. Every single major broadcasting station in Japan still has a web page that looks like it was designed in 1999; it is just a digitized company brochure.


I have to explain to them the concept of Web 1.0: Digital brochure; Web 2.0 using blogging and two-way communication with bloggers and users; Web 3.0 user generated content like Facebook or Twitter.


Web 1.0 was popular between 1999~2003. From 2003, smart companies started instituting Web 2.0. From 2005~2006 very smart companies started instituting Web 3.0.


Today's major broadcasters in Japan? ALL of them are still using Web 1.0 concepts. They are losing money on their web pages. Seriously, it's all I can do to stop crying (or laughing).


Think about that Google quote again, folks; "Google is one of the most profitable companies in the entire world today and they give away everything for free!" Can you imagine for a second the massive advantage a TV station in Japan has over Google? Google didn't have a broadcasting arm that they can use that is already in the homes of over 130,000,000 people! The TV stations did! They do! But they don't use that to their advantage!


It is even more ridiculous when you consider that the initial phase of designing something like the basic Twitter platform probably cost in the neighborhood of $150,000 ~ $200,000 (USD) but to make and produce a 30 minute TV show for 6 months costs about $400,000! 


It is even more ridiculous when you realize that almost every old TV station  person you talk to thinks that if they give away free content on their webpage, no one will watch their TV shows anymore. Talk about not seeing the forest because of the trees! What in the hell are these TV people thinking about?


The real question could be, "Do these mass media people really understand the market as much as they like to claim they do?" I don't think so.


Here's a good example of a TV station (in the USA of course) that understands what I'm talking about and now 1/3 of their profits are derived from the Internet: http://espn.go.com/


The major broadcasters and media in Japan refuse to entertain the idea that their web pages can become a profit vehicle. They know their businesses are dying but they insist that, "We are a TV station" or "We are a magazine"... Why don't they realize that they are "media" and "consultation" to provide sponsors what the sponsors want to buy?


When, oh when, will these people open their eyes?


But I digress....


The other interesting thing this hair-stylist told me about was that she and her friends have come to stop looking at the very top results of a Google search. Why? Because everyone and their sister have figured out it's a paid advertisement at the top that's been highlighted and no one believes in paid advertising anymore!


I thought that was very telling about the way young people think and perceive. It was the same for us long ago with the Yellow Pages, right (remember them)? We knew that the paid ads were not from the best services or products but from the ones that had big budgets. Everyone knows that big budgets do not necessarily equal good products... Just look at General Motors cars for evidence of that!


As an aside, here's a funny example. Below is a screen capture of a Google search for "London Flight":

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

At the top of the page you'll see a paid ad for British Airways, Air France and Lufthansa. These paid ads cost about $15,000 (USD) a month (maybe more) average. British Airways pays more as they are at the top. Everyone who sees this page knows that those top three are not the cheapest, nor necessarily the best flights or deals... In fact, since they are paid ads, they are viewed with, for lack of a better term, suspicion by most people. People have become smart enough and sophisticated enough in 2012 to recognize that those top three are paid advertising. People today, no longer look at those. They will look lower down the page, to the top 5 or so after the paid ads.

In this case, who do we see? www.cheapflights.co.uk. Guess what? Cheap flights shows me that they are most probably the cheapest and best deal: they didn't spend a penny to get the true #1 rankings on a Google search! I won't tell you how they do this (I know - and you can find that information in this blog in many places as I have written about it extensively before)... But you can bet that a company, like British Airways that is spending, in Japan alone, a few hundred thousand dollars on this sort of advertising cannot be cheap (nor smart?)....

Oh, but you say, "What about people who want better service or flights?" Folks, don't misunderstand. I'd wager a donut that cheap flights also offers those and I'd like to point out that British Airways does not need to advertise to their existing customer base. Advertising to a new customer base and getting new customer is the Holy Grail and entire point of advertising.

Bad marketing campaign's don't only happen in real world

Oh, but I've gotten off the point here again. The point is giving things away for free in order to get new customers. Think about that. How many, especially Internet, companies offer free services then, once someone likes the product or service, the upgrade costs a bit of money and membership?

Aha! Those are everywhere! That's right. Google does that; Linkedin does that; there are too many to name.

Find a way, THINK of a way to give away free content and product or service in order to gain new customers. Actually make an effort with your team in doing that today! Get out of the old fashioned mold and the old fashioned way of doing things.

Find that FREE! and you might be finding a goldmine! 

Thanks to Ed Jones for the FREE blazing sun red with glitter Gibson air guitar! I will always cherish it, Ed!

Completely 100% Free Advice on How to Make Money Blogging

Bored with your job? Want to get out someday?

If you've ever wanted to quit your 9-5 job and make money by blogging, or you blog now, and want to, someday, use blogging to make money; or if you want to blog and use it as a vehicle to promote your work (and make money by your work), whether that work be book writing; business consulting; selling your art or paintings; getting people to know your music or films; or just to spread the word about you and promote yourself and what you do, then today's blog is for you.


Today I am going to tell you exactly how to make money blogging and how to start to get out of your regular job. There are no costs, books to buy, courses to study or gimmicks or catches at all. This is the simplest, and most direct, way to make money blogging. If you follow these short tips, then, within 2 ~ 3 years, you can start cutting down your regular job hours and start shifting over to the job you dream of doing and all because of dedication to blogging. All because of a desire to do with your life as you want.


And it's all 100% completely free.

Today's blog is especially for people who have a "regular" job yet they have a dream someday to escape that job and the rat race and to make enough money to do what they want with their life. Today's blog could also be for people who want to make a good amount of money by using blogging so that they can live well.

With blogging, as a vehicle to promote or market yourself or your work, that is possible. I, myself, do not do this as 100% of my income, yet; not even 50% of my income. But my teachers do. For myself, after study and effort (mostly effort), I can now see where this is possible very soon for me and am slowly climbing that mountain to where I can see from the top on exactly how to do that. 


I have very good teachers showing me how to do this - two of them are very famous people and, with their help, I am giving you this information.

If you do any sort of Social Media or Internet surfing (and, if you didn't, you wouldn't be here) then you've seen tons of messages and notes about how you can make money blogging. It's true. You can make money blogging. You can't make a lot of money blogging and using banner click-through advertising (unless you are FARK). 

Of course, the most widely used and understood way of making money blogging is by having click through banners on your blog. But I don't really want to talk about that at all. I don't think that is a good way to make money blogging. I mean, if Google asks you if they can use your blog to advertise then you know they are the ones making the money. 

But I will say that, in the last year, I been asked twice directly from companies in the USA and the UK to place banner ads on my site but have politely declined. Why? It was only for $150 a year (about ¥11,000 yen) and it looked like it might be a hassle. Also, why in the world would anyone pay $150 to Japan when the bank transfer fees are $70 dollars a transaction? I wouldn't. That made me figure that those folks, while meaning well, didn't really have any idea what they were talking about. 

One of my friends is a blogger well known all over the world and, while not telling me a dollar amount, he told me that the click through ads were nice but they only pay for dinner a few nights a month. You might think, "Wow! Free dinners a few night's a month?" But when you realize that my friend's blog gets 1.2 million hits per day, you realize that banner click-through advertising is not all its cracked up to be.  

He, by the way, makes well over a quarter million dollars a year as a financial advisor. Do you know how he gets his clients? You guessed it, people read his blog and then ask him for advice. That's how he makes money blogging. It is an advertising tool for his services. 

This is the way to use a blog that I want to talk about.

I have been asked to give advice five times in the last year too. That's where the money is. Even though I haven't made large amounts like $10,000 (USD) a month directly by blogging I can say that I have made over $1000 a month indirectly by blogging. I did this because, through blogging, I have been hired as an advisor (like my friend above) to companies who have jumped into the Social Media realm in order to market their products. In fact, as I mentioned above, I have been asked five times in the last year. I took four of those jobs and two of those were in the last month. 

Even though I averaged over $1000 a month in the last two years by use of blogging, one month - a year ago or so - I made $5000.


Like I said, you can do this too. 

There are three things that you must do in order to set yourself up for a situation whereby you can start to consider using blogging to make money. They are:


1) Consistent daily blogging
2) A focused topic
3) Interesting writing


That's it. Just those three. Now let me briefly talk about each one.


1) Consistent daily blogging: Yes. This is hard. But you must do it. You must make daily updating a habit just like brushing your teeth; you can't sleep until you do it. And not just any trash. Good, consistent, interesting writing (I'll talk about the interesting part below). Why constant writing and updating your blog is important is because you must understand how the Google search engine works. The (new 2010) Google search engine is called Caffeine. The old search engine gave priority to blogs and web sites that have many links. Caffeine does not. Caffeine gives priority to consistent and regular updating. Please read the link about Caffeine. But here's an example to show you that I do know what I am talking about. This blog is called "Modern Marketing Japan." That's not a generic title at all. But "Modern Marketing" is an extremely generic title. Do a Google search for "Modern Marketing" and you should see this blog listed in the Top 3 ~ 10 or so of 22,400,000 results for the entire world (the results change constantly with Google Caffeine). That's proof of the power of consistent blogging.


2) A focused topic: As far as the Internet is concerned, we are talking about Long Tail Marketing. Focus on your topic. In the Internet world it is better to be a big fish in a small pond. Read about the Long Tail here in A Primer on the Long Tail and Is the Long Tail all Junk? also read why the Long Tail is beneficial for you even against the Internet giants as it is, for example, damaging Google's own business by reading: Why Google Worries About its Own Future. 


Now, my blog is supposed to be about Japan; media; and marketing and sometimes it gets all over the place, but trust that I do always try to think of a Japan, media or marketing angle for everything I write.


3) Interesting writing: This is the hard one. All I can say are a few things. First, write with your own voice. Stop trying to write like you're Hemingway or writing a business prospective. You're not. If someone wants to read Hemingway, they'll buy the book. If they want to read a business prospective, they won't be 
looking at your blog. People read these things because they want real. They want to hear what real people think. Readers of blogs don't want bloviated nonsense. If they want that, they'll go to CNN's site.

Now, here's a hint on how to write with your own voice and to help yourself have good topics all the time. It's not 100% but it will definitely help you. It helps me immensely. How many times a day do you think about something and then think, "Wow! That's a great idea for a good blog post!" Only to, a few hours later or the next day, not remember what that good idea was? I used to do that all the time. But I've stopped recently. Now, I almost never forget good ideas (good ideas, remember, are money in your pocket!). How do I not forget? I use a notebook. I've written about the benefits of always using and keeping a dollar notebook in the back of my pocket in Pocket Notebooks: The Secret of Millionaires and People Won't Listen! I always have my notebook. So when I have a good idea - about anything - I write it down. It helps me greatly especially when I am stuck for an idea on what to write about. 

As with everything in life, practice makes perfect. If you think that you are going to just start writing one day and become a good writer than you are dreaming. Keep doing it consistently and you'll get better and better as you go.

Like I said, focus on what you are doing; do it consistently; do it well. If you keep doing these three things, for a period of 2 ~ 3 years, then you can start to use blogging to make money.

I know. I've done it. Anyone can. You can too.

NOTE: Please look over my May and June 2010 blog postings. There you will find many articles that will help you to do your blogging smarter and better and tips on how to make money. You might as well read those so that you can learn in a few minutes what it took me a few years to find out on my own. Good Luck.

Also read: Ways to make money from your blog for a pretty generic answer to the question.

This blog is dedicated to my friends Andrew, Peter, Ryu and Jimbo. It might seem tough guys. I know. Been there, done that. But never lose sight of why you do this in the first place. There is a reward down the road.

Dancing With the Stars, Spray Tans, Mindless American TV

Every morning, like clockwork, I turn on my computer to do work and to write this blog. Every morning I see something on the top page of Yahoo that just makes me roll my eyes. (Yes, I know everyone uses Google, but I use Yahoo to get the financial and stock market news).


Everyday, at the top of the page, Yahoo has their 5 "hot" stories. These are always incredibly stupid and useless. Usually it is about an unusual football play (when, upon clicking, you see that it is not so unusual at all)... Or it it about some idiocy involving some Hollywood person getting a divorce or the dress s/he is wearing or something else.

Here's what was at the top of Yahoo this morning: $2.5 million dollar bra, Wal-Mart's sales, Golfer gets angry, 10 strange sports venues, Billy Crystal hosts Oscars? Hoo hum...

In a few words, God! American society is stupid! 


You know this stuff is there because Yahoo is "giving people what they want"... There is never any news about anything that actually matters.


But sometimes, even Yahoo can have something so stupid, so asinine that it irritates me to hell. Yesterday had a link to the person who does the tanning for the people on "Dancing With the Stars"! Jesus! I just have to read about that! 


The article is just Hollywood fabulous. Let me quote:


Each season of "Dancing With the Stars" features a revolving line-up of contestants and professional dancers, but one thing remains the same: spray tans are a big part of the show. And that's where Julie Nostrand, the owner of South Seas Skin Care, comes in. All season long, she's spent every Sunday flying from Loveland, Colorado, to Los Angeles, to ensure celebs look luminous in the ballroom and in front of the camera. omg! caught up with Nostrand to find out more about what the stars do to get glam.


Isn't that just ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz......... Oh, where was I?


No wonder the USA is all f'ed up. Ask Anyone says the average American watches 6.7 hours of TV a day!!!!


Average American watches 6.7 hours a day of TV.


How, in the hell could anyone spend 1/3 of their waking time on TV?


But for more, er, "serious" info let's go to our Neilsen ratings: 

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.

The average child will watch 8,000 murders on TV before finishing elementary school. By age eighteen, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. At a meeting in Nashville, TN last July, Dr. John Nelson of the American Medical Association (an endorser of National TV-Turnoff Week) said that if 2,888 out of 3,000 studies show that TV violence is a casual factor in real-life mayhem, "it's a public health problem." The American Psychiatric Association addressed this problem in its endorsement of National TV-Turnoff Week, stating, "We have had a long-standing concern with the impact of television on behavior, especially among children."

Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist and TV-Free America board member Robert Kubey. Heavy TV viewers exhibit five dependency symptoms--two more than necessary to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse. These include: 1) using TV as a sedative; 2) indiscriminate viewing; 3) feeling loss of control while viewing; 4) feeling angry with oneself for watching too much; 5) inability to stop watching; and 6) feeling miserable when kept from watching.

OK, 4 hours a day or 6.7 hours a day of watching TV!? Are you kidding me? Don't these people work? How can anyone, in this day and age, have the time to watch that much TV? Why would anyone want to watch that much TV? These people are truly sick, especially when they feel miserable when they cannot watch enough TV!


What's to watch on TV? Nothing good.


I heard from my friend who works at NHK that recent surveys in Japan show that the average Japanese under 30-year-old watches an average 20 minutes of TV per day.


If these statistics are true then the USA is definitely done for. People in the USA no longer read books, they don't know their basic geography. They don't know the difference between John and Yoko staying in bed to protest the war or Lenin doing the same. They think Falafel is a political party in Pakistan and the people in Eye-rack had nooklar weapons.


They think Mexico is in Central America even though Central America doesn't exist... And, they think Napoleon is an ice-cream sundae at 31 Flavors. They couldn't pick out "Grease" on a map of Europe and don't care about "Cheese eating surrender monkeys" anyway. 


As Fred Reed writes in Dark Ages:



The night closes in. Read the surveys of what children know, what students in universities know. Approximately nothing. We have become wanton morons. As the intellectual shadows fall again, as literacy declines and minds grow dim in the new twilight, who will copy the parchments this time?


No longer are we a schooled people. Brash new peasants grin and peck at their iPods. Unknowing, incurious, they gaze at their screens and twiddle, twiddle. They will not preserve the works of five millenia. They cannot. They do not even know why.


Twilight really does come. Sales of books fall. Attention spans shorten. Music gives way to angry urban grunting. The young count on their fingers when they do not have a calculator, know less by the year. We have already seen the frist American generations less educated than their parents. College graduates do not know when World War One happened, or what the Raj was. They have read nothing except the nothing that they read, and little of that. Democracy was an interesting thought.


Ours will be a stranger Dark Age than the old one. Our peasants brush their teeth and wash, imagine themselves of the middle class, but their heads are empty.


We are witnessing the end times for the USA as we've known it for all these years.... It's too bad that, when the drunken giant in the room finally collapses, his fall is going to break everything on everyone else's tables.

Drinking Way Too Much and Touching a Computer is a Very Bad Combination

Having a blog is great. It is just like an online diary of life. When you blog, you get to record everything that happened in life. Like today. Today, I am going to write about getting drunk and acting like an idiot.

Last night was only the second time I got pretty drunk this year. I know that because I blogged about the last time I got drunk which was, dangerously, recently I see. I say "dangerously" because, you see, I have gout. People with gout shouldn't drink at all. So you might say that since I have gout not only did I get drunk and act like an idiot, I must be an idiot to drink in the first place!


If you said that then you'd have a pretty compelling argument. 


The time before that recent drinking episode, when I got too drunk was Dec. 27, 2010. I know that to be true because I blogged about that time also. (See? I have an online record of my booze escapades! Wonderful me!)


I used to really like getting drunk and, of course, I don't get drunk very often at all anymore. In fact, since I got Gout a few years ago, I basically stopped drinking.  


If you've ever wanted to stop drinking then I highly recommend Gout.


Gout will will stop your drinking forever. And, since I blog, I know that I got my first bad case of gout in Feb. of 2009 when I went to New Zealand and ate and drank like a king! I wrote about those adventures with gout in Gout Sufferers of the World Unite!:

The first time I had a Gout attack was in February of 2009. I was staying at a friend's ranch on the beach in New Zealand and, of course, I was eating and drinking to extreme excess every night. Then, one morning, I woke up and my foot hurt like it had been run over by a Sherman tank! I thought I was going to die! The pain was excruciating!

But, still, that didn't deter me from fishing. I hobbled down to the ocean and waded up to my waist (which really felt good on my foot) and I sucked it up like a real man every day. Caught my limit too! I mean, we have to consider what's more important here; is it my quickly deteriorating health or my heading down to the beach to catch fish?

Then the second time I had a gout attack was in early December of the same year. I had to fly up to northern Japan to meet some big shot executives from a Chinese Airlines and arrange their TV/newspaper promotion in Japan. By the time the promotion ended, my foot hurt so bad from gout attack that I could hardly walk. 

When I checked into the airlines, the girl at the check-in counter saw me noticeably having trouble not looking like a spastic. She then asked what was wrong and I whispered to her, so that no one else could hear, that I had gout. She looked genuinely concerned and said, "Oh, you poor dear! My father suffered gout too!"

So, instead of my flying back to Tokyo in Economy Class, that kind young lady put me in First Class. How lucky I was. I began thinking that maybe this gout thing isn't so bad after all.

Later on, I was trying to quietly enjoy the flight (though my foot was killing me) when I saw one of the flight attendants smiling and looking right at me. I straightened my tie and smiled back but then I figured that since I am near sighted, she was looking at someone else. I tried to get some shuteye and peeked at her to see if she was looking at me anymore. She was! After awhile, I noticed that she kept looking straight at me and smiling over and over again. My heart sang. I thought, "The old boy's still got that magic!" I gave her a mischievous grin and she smiled back.

Oh, stay my beating heart! I'm old enough to be her father… er, older brother, I surmised. Then while I was picturing holding hands with her and running madly in love up some faraway sandy beach laughing together, she started walking up to me.

I braced myself. I wondered if my breath was OK. Maybe she wanted my phone number. Maybe she'll be lonely tonight in Tokyo? Great, but what will I tell my wife?

She came directly to my seat, offered me a blanket and said, "Mr. Rogers?" I jumped a few feet in the air. How did she know my name? And her English was perfect! She continued, "Mr. Rogers, can I have your phone number?" I smiled knowingly at her as I pulled out a piece of paper from my pocket, wrote down my number and, with a half-wink, I handed it to her.

"What's this?" She said.

"Silly," I whispered while slowly flashing my bedtime eyes to her, "You asked for my phone number."

"Pardon me, Mr. Rogers," she replied, "There must be some misunderstanding. I didn't ask for your phone number, I asked, ‘Is your foot feeling better?' I'm sorry my English is so poor."

My face turned beet red. I told her that I was fine and acted like I was sleepy so she would leave me alone. She walked away, out of my life forever, and behind the curtains where the other stewardesses were… A minute later I could hear them giggling.

I'll bet they were giggling at my expense too. Talk about poor service! I'll never fly on that airline again! 

Later on, when I got home, I told this story to my wife (well, not all of it) and she accused me of trying to pick up the stewardess in First Class.

The article is a humor article but having gout is no laughing matter! Gout hurts like hell! Anyway, thanks to gout, I don't drink and I really don't miss drinking so much. I feel much better when I don't drink (even one beer makes you tired the next day... Really! Try it and see!) 


Anyway, last night I got too drunk. Since I've stopped drinking regularly (I used to drink every night!) I've become very weak when it comes to alcohol and it seems that I get really drunk really fast and very easy on a small amount of liquor. I guess even a few drinks is way too much for me anymore in my old age. But, that's OK because I really do think that drinking is bad because it makes me  stupid and lazy.


Since getting gout a few years ago (I also wear bifocals!) I eat at least 70% of my diet in only raw food. Eating raw food is great.  I want to feel young again and have lots of energy for work. Raw food works wonders for that! Raw food, though, does not go well with drinking alcohol. I love eating raw food. That's why I don't miss drinking too much and find it easy to avoid alcohol.


In the old days, I could down an entire 750 ml liter bottle of Korean liquor (25% alcohol) or two or three bottles of good wine all by myself at dinner time. I did that every night! Then I'd take a shower and still think "I better have a nightcap before bed." 


Now, since I don't really drink anymore, I have to be really careful because I get really drunk on just a little bit of drink. Seriously, last night I had two shots of Korean liquor and three 350 ml cans of beer (it was hot) and got way too drunk... Actually, I am surprised at how drunk I got! Of course, having an empty stomach plays a big part in how drunk one gets and I was very hungry when we started drinking. Also, since it was blazing hot, I think I guzzled those three beers quickly since I hate warm beer in cans. Yuck!


But I know I got way too drunk when my friend complains to me about emails that I sent when I was drunk (like an idiot) and I don't remember it at all... Nope. I remember writing and complaining about something, but do not remember writing so many emails on the same subject (sign of drunkenness) and, when I woke up this morning, I didn't feel so hungover.... At least not nearly as much as I did the last time I got drunk. So, not feeling hungover means that I didn't drink so much.... But not remembering means it hit me like a freight train.


As many people know, drinking and writing emails are usually a bad combination and I don't usually do that. But, I am so ashamed and embarrassed that I did that last night. Yikes! 


Once again, I feel ashamed of myself... When? Oh, when will I ever learn?


I have heard (and read about) others who were guilty of the same thing; drinking too much and writing emails. I didn't think well of them. Now it is me who is guilty of that (maybe not the first time?) and I feel like an idiot and feel very ashamed. I apologize to my friends who I sent stupid emails to and I also apologize to the people who wrote emails on a drink before and I thought poorly of them. 


How does the old saying go? "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!" The next time I hear about someone getting drunk and writing stupid emails I won't say, "That idiot!" I will say, "Oh? I hate it when that happens!"


I guess it is not stupidity (maybe it is) but a definite problem with drinking booze is that you loose good common sense and do stupid stuff like driving a car or sending emails.


I see where they have been developing new features on cars that won't allow the user to drive if they are drunk. Now, when Apple computers comes out with this device for MacBooks, I bet every person in the world who likes their drink, will buy one. 


Maybe my wife will buy me one for Christmas.... Which, if all goes to plan, will be  the next time, and last time, I drink booze and get drunk in 2011.