Noguchi Hideyo

After years of idly wondering what I was remembering, I stumbled onto a detail from a trip I made once in Japan.

I was backpacking in the early 1990s around Aizuwakamatsu, to visit the castle there. Since my trip was planned by the very helpful people at the Tokyo office of the JTB, they had scheduled all kinds of crazy stops whose purpose I had very little idea.

One of the stops was a country home of some national hero, a famous scientist or other. All the signs were in Japanese and I hadn’t heard of him before, but the guides assured me he was very famous!

Now, years later, this turns out to be the childhood home of scientist Noguchi Hideyo, who discovered the cause of syphilis in 1913, and now has his face on the 1000 yen note.

Mystery solved, almost 20 years later!

Captain and Tennille

I dreamt I saw the lost pornographic episode of Captain and Tennille. Most of the episode was them on stage, singing, like they always did, but naked. It was even worse than the show usually was.

Daryl’s penis was very long and he swung it around during the songs while Tennille showed her ass to the camera while on all fours.

Another weird detail in my dream: Tennille was 5′ 11″, and Daryl was 5′ 6″ or something. While I cannot remember Daryl’s exact height, I remember people mentioning Tennille’s… looking up her bio on IMDB, that turns out to be her actual height. Did I just get lucky? Or did somehow I remember that? I don’t remember remembering Tennille’s exact height!

Later in the dream it may have turned out to be a porn spoof of Captain and Tennille, because Tennille was played by Dana DeArmond, who wikipedia says is 5′ 8″.

Accident at Samovar

On Sunday I was walking to meet some people at Indian burrito place “Kasa,” from the Women’s Building where we just had a Scary Cow pitch meeting. It’s about a half mile walk. It was a sunny Sunday, and tons of people were out drinking and having a good time.

About a block away from Kasa I realized I had left my sunglasses at the meeting! I ran back, passing Sara and Susanne on the way. Once I got to the Women’s Building I found my sunglasses… in my pack I had been carrying the whole time.

I ran back. This time about a block from Kasa I saw Sara and Susanne stopped… There was an SUV embedded in Samovar Tea Lounge.

So I had walked by this accident just before and just after it happened! People were milling around in shock at witnessing the accident. All the windows in Samovar were broken, and the police were closing down the street. Susanne said she and Sara had seen a man dive out of the way of the car, and then after the event had ended, they saw a woman who HADN’T jumped clear.

5 people injured, including the girl we saw under the car has a broken pelvis and fractured ribs.

The thing I keep wondering about is: did people finish their tea?