Hunkabutta Archives
05.23.04

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Some great news: A kaiten sushi restaurant (sushi on a conveyor belt) just opened in the new mall up the street from our house. I can't wait to go and gorge myself. I can see it now: tuna sushi in one hand, salmon sushi in the other, and an enormous stack of plates spread before me like the scattered bodies of soldiers after a battle. Maybe they'll just let the conveyor belt run directly into my mouth,... sometimes I feel I could really go for that.

Recently I have become a raw tuna maniac. I snack on it at home with beer. I have it for lunch when I'm out about town, and I have it as a side dish when I go for dinner. I don't know what it is about the stuff, it's like marine crack for me.

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05.18.04

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People often write to me and ask me questions about working in Japan. They want to know about things like visas and language skills, working hours and taxes. I usually just give them some general advice, point them in the right direction, and wish them luck because, quite honestly, I'm not much of an expert on working in Japan.

However, the next time that someone asks me about what kind of work they can do here, I'll just have to tell them about a new type of job I discovered--virgin deflowering. Unfortunately, it doesn't pay anything, but man would it ever look great on your resume.

Sometimes people want to know about office culture and work life. My advice is usually just to be yourself, that is unless you're a loud talker who is prone to excessive gesticulation, in which case, try to be somebody else. You may get away with being a brute in the office, but whatever you do, don't strip down naked while dancing and singing karaoke at a get-to-know-you party for the company's clients.

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05.14.04

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The recent Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal has really impressed upon me the power of photography. It has made me want to be a photojournalist. The now infamous photographs--like the one of the hooded man standing on the box with electrical wires clipped to his fingers; or of the naked man cowering from attack dogs--allow you to empathized so strongly with the victims that the whole idea of torture and abuse is understood in a new way. The photographs turned the abuse from something that had previously been intellectualized into something that was 'emotionalized', i.e., understood in an emotional way rather than an rational one.

For a long time before the scandal unfolded, I think that it was more or less known, or at least suspected, by people on both sides that prisoners were being abused, mistreated, and tortured, but we all accepted it with a shrug and a sigh and an "oh well, war is nasty like that..hmm, that sucks eh...Oh! Hey! Check it out! American Idol is on." We accepted it, that is, until the photographs surfaced. After that, everything seemed to change. Suddenly, somehow, the torture and abuse became more 'real'. The issue had to be addressed. It was now unavoidable.

Let's be clear here, I'm not pointing fingers, I went through this process of realization myself.
I mean, there has always been a lot of reportage on the abuse, but it never registered emotionally until I saw the photographs. I somehow managed to rationalize all of the guilt and feelings of complicity away.

All along the Iraqis and Afghans have been clamoring about being abused, I would think to myself, but that's to be expected, right? The alternative press has been reporting the abuse and torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq since the initial invasion of Afghanistan, but somehow I always kind of got the feeling, or at least hoped, that the alternative press might be exaggerating. Even when I read about it in the mainstream press, in big-name papers and magazines like Newsweek and Time, about how American intelligence personnel/law enforcement were taking suspected terrorists to allied countries, like Thailand and Egypt, where they could be tortured legally, it didn't seem like quite the horrific thing that it was. Even blatant admission in the mainstream press like this didn't really make me feel bad, not like the photographs did. After seeing the pictures, I felt ashamed for not becoming upset and indignant earlier when I had first read about the torture and abuse. But somehow, just reading about it wasn't enough.

Now, I don't want to get a flood of emails and comments regarding the politics of the war. That's not what this site or this post is about. I think that we all get enough of the here-is-my-opinion-on-the-war-news thing everywhere else we turn, and I generally try to give people a reprieve from it here on Hunkabutta. To hear more depressing opinionated crap about the war is not why you come here. What I'm talking about right now is photography, and the power that is has over the human mind, not about the morality of the war or of prisoner treatment. We can save that for another day.

On a related note, I do recall one other torture story that did make an impression on me, I think because it was told to me by the torturer himself, and he was a young man like me.

I was in Jerusalem for a few weeks back in 1991, not too long after the first Gulf War. While staying at a cheap hostel I became acquainted with a young man who, like most young men in Israel, used to be in the army. He had seen a lot of combat in Lebanon in the 1980s. When I knew him he was a gardener. He told me it was his dream to one day be the gardener at the new Temple that would be built if they could ever manage to tear down the Dome of the Rock (Islam's second holiest site, I believe, built on the remains of Judaism's holiest site).

Anyway, he once told me that when they would capture enemy soldiers during a battle they would torture them on the spot to get information.

"It's not like you see in the movies," he said, "where you take the guy back to the base, and lock him up, and shine a light in his face while you scream questions at him. That kind of shit is pointless. When you're in the middle of a battle, you need to know the location of the enemy, where his weapons are, right then and there, you can't wait three or four days to find out."

So, he told me, what they used to do was interrogate the prisoners in pairs. They'd take the first guy, tie him up, lay him on the ground, and then drive a tank over him and slowly crush him to death. Then they'd turn to the second guy, who almost invariably had shit and pissed his pants by this point, and say to him, "If you don't tell us what we want to know right fucking now you're going to be next under that tank." He said they always talked, he never saw it fail.

This story made a big impression on me. I was only 21 at the time. I was horrified, but I never really empathized with the poor Lebanese or Palestinian guys who got run over by tanks. I mean, how could I? I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be them, let alone to die in that way.

However, now I'm thinking that if I had only seen a picture of the tank crushing the prisoner maybe I'd feel a lot different about it right now. Maybe I would have been inspired to become an activist, who knows. But I doubt it. More than likely, I would have simply felt ten times as disgusted and depressed about the whole thing. And that is where the wonder and mystery of photography lies.

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05.10.04

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Today's pictures are a belated Mother's Day tribute.

As I've grown older and become a father, Mother's Day has taken on a new meaning for me. It used to be about showing appreciation to my mother for all of the hard work that she did for me, now its about showing appreciation to my wife, Karen, for all of the hard work that she does for our son Jack.

Mother's day really is a great idea, because hey, when you stop to think about it, where would we be without the women in our life who nurture and support us.

Thanks to you all. I love you.

And on a related note, this seems like the ideal time to make an announcement: Karen and I are going to have another baby. The little guy is due the first week of December.

I guess those romantic Thai beaches worked their magic after all.

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