Category: General

Everyone in our family has been trying to get the recipe for Mom’s pumpkin custard pie. Everyone says it’s the best pumpkin pie they ever tasted, that’s because it’s pumpkin custard pie, not just pumpkin pie. I managed to get ahold of her original recipe, so I scanned it and put it up for the whole world to try.





Note that there are two recipes on this page, the leftmost column is a multiplied recipe for 3 pies, although there is some dispute as to whether this actually makes 4 pies. There is also considerable dispute over the quantity of pumpkin, the recipe calls for 2 one pound cans of pumpkin. But nowadays, pumpkin comes in small 15 oz cans and big 1lb 13 oz cans. Mom insists she uses 2 of the big cans, but we made it with just two small cans and it came out fine, although we used two 9 inch pie shells, not the 12 inch as called for in the recipe. My sister was a professional baker and she says that 12 inch shells take the same amount of filling as 9 inch shells, it just makes a thinner pie, so it shouldn’t make any difference.

For clarity, I’ll type out the basic recipe here.

Pumpkin Custard Pie


6 eggs

2 one pound cans pumpkin

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground clove

1 1/2 cup milk

1 cup heavy cream


Pour into two 12 inch pie crusts, bake at 350 for 75 minutes.

My gardener is out in my yard right now, trying to cut down a tree. I have a terrible problem with “volunteer trees,” which are fast growing weed trees that spring up where you don’t want them. This particular tree grew to a diameter of 8 inches and at least 20 feet in height before I even noticed it was there. As we pondered how bring down the tree without destroying all the neighboring trees, I suddenly flashed back to a tree-cutting experience of my youth.

When I was about 12 years old and a Boy Scout, one of the more prized Merit Badges was the Paul Bunyan Woodsman badge.





To win the badge, you had to cut down a tree at least 4 inches in diameter, and cut it into 2 foot lengths using only a hatchet. Since we were just little kids wielding dangerously sharp tools, this could only be done under adult supervision at the annual Boy Scout summer camp. Much of our camping experience involved training with axes and hatchets, to learn the proper safety procedures.

I waited and waited for my turn to ravage the forest with my hatchet, which I always kept keenly sharpened with a whetstone. But the boy whose turn came before mine was even more impatient, when his turn approached, he ran off into the woods, without adult supervision, and started cutting down a tree.

He managed to fell the tree without difficulty, and began cutting the 2 foot long segments. But his safety training was obviously inadequate. Ignoring everything he had been taught, he held the tree trunk in position with his left hand, his hatchet missed the mark, and he chopped off his thumb!

Well, that was the end of the Paul Bunyan program at summer camp. I never got a chance to earn my Merit Badge. Recently the Boy Scouts completely revised the Paul Bunyan requirements, no more cutting down trees, you just clear brush for a couple of hours.

My blog has been blank for months. I was on a roll in May, I had just returned from a trip to Japan, I was loaded with stories to tell and photos to publish. But since that time, I have only posted two articles, and nothing within the last two months. My friends, my readers, and even some complete strangers have inquired about what happened to me, so I guess I should explain. I have ambivalent feelings about doing this, my blog is full of my personal stories, but there is a line I usually don’t cross, I don’t like to get too personal. But it is time to get this off my chest.


I usually have some trouble readjusting back to life in the US after a stay in Japan, but I was totally unprepared for what happened to me this time. My troubles started small. I injured my foot from walking all over Tokyo, and I had to have foot surgery, which is about the most intensely painful surgery you can have. Even the anaesthetic injection before the surgery hurts like you wouldn’t believe. And the surgery failed, so I have to go back for another painful operation in a few weeks.

But of course, someone always has to add insult to injury. And of course, it has to be the one person who is closest to you, who can inflict more pain than anyone else. I should have known something was wrong when I returned from my trip and my girlfriend would not return my emails and phone calls. Finally, weeks after I returned, I received a drunken phone call from her at 1AM, confessing she had betrayed me, she found a new boyfriend the moment I left town, and in fact, she was calling me from his bed at that very moment. I was angry at myself for ever having loved a person who could do something so deceitful, someone who could turn my deepest feelings of love into pure bitterness. I was depressed and in a fog for weeks, I would never again speak to the one person I most loved to tell my stories to, the one person who most loved hearing my crazy tales. I completely lost interest in telling my stories to the world through my blog.

But just when I thought my life could not become any bleaker, of course, it did. My mother went into the hospital and nearly died. The doctors were completely incompetent, to the level of malpractice. It was difficult to get the doctors to give her proper care, she lost so much weight she nearly died. But she pulled through. And then yet another shock came. I took her to a different, competent hospital for followup treatment, where she was diagnosed with advanced ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease. So my mother was saved from wasting away and dying, only to be condemned to waste away and die from something else, something far more horrible and tragic than anyone should have to endure.

Life began to look pretty bleak. I could do nothing but sit in front of my altar, and pray to Buddha for enlightenment. But Buddha does not magically grant our wishes, it is all up to me to find a way through my woes, Buddha can only show us the path. And then I remembered some advice from an old buddhist friend, when you encounter troubles, consider how a totally enlightened man would handle the situation. What would Buddha do? He would understand that these troubles are sansho shima, the “three obstacles and four devils” that conspire to undermine our faith and our works, and prevents us from moving ever towards enlightenment.

So I came to a realization. I am an artist and a writer, and if I do not express myself, I might as well be dead. I will not let obstacles, no matter how tragic, deter me from saying what I must say, from doing what I must do. My life will become harder than it has ever been, but this is not a time to wallow in my troubles, it is a time to overcome them. So I must rededicate myself to my work, and resume my blogging.

But some things must be sacrificed in order to focus on the really important things in life. It is at a time like this when we can see what things are really important to us, and what is a waste of time. I decided to completely sever my relationship with the one online community I have participated in most heavily, for over a decade, a forum for discussing Japanese language learning. It was my belief that I owed a debt of gratitude to those who helped me learn the language, and I could only repay that debt by helping those students that came after me. But I finally came to the realization that the forum was no longer useful to students, it was full of ridiculous idiots and flamers; Australian bigots, demented otaku, SCA/Renaissance Faire rejects, agoraphobics, alcoholic expatriates, pathological liars, self-important high-school teachers, and worst of all, law students that treat Usenet flamefests as if they were win-at-all-costs Moot Courts. It is not worth wasting any more of my time on these people, there is nothing to be gained by casting pearls before swine. They need me more than I need them. Separating from this group is their loss, and my gain.

So now that I have more time to devote to what is really important, I will have to figure out how to proceed. Perhaps this confessional message is the first step, I felt I could not resume posting even short, trivial messages to my blog after such a long absence without some sort of explanation. So now that I have this off my chest, I will rededicate myself to the work I enjoy so much. Of course, there will be terrible obstacles here too, the first obstacle will be to upgrade to the new Movable Type 3 system. I need to upgrade my blog’s templates. I need to fix my BlogTV processing system, which all fell apart due to OS upgrades. Oh there is so much work to be done. But I can shirk my duties no longer.

Perhaps this unplanned hiatus is best viewed in light of one of my crackpot philosophies. It is my opinion that the best workers are shirkers. I myself am a shirker. No, a shirker is not someone who merely avoids doing their duties. A true shirker is someone who takes a job so seriously, they avoid taking on a job unless they are convinced they can deal with it as seriously as it deserves. I have shirked long enough, now I am convinced that I can again deal with my blog in the manner it deserves. So I must get back to work. I don’t know how long it will be until my next update, I will have to completely rework my server and infrastructure. But I promise that sooner rather than later, I will be posting new work that will be better than anything I have ever done before.

Swiped from a hospital reading room, vintage 1958 Ace novel, 35 cents. I couldn’t possibly try to read this book, the cheap pulp paper would fall to pieces.

I have only recently realized that a dear friend read something I wrote and completely misunderstood, inspiring that person to do something that has destroyed our friendship forever. I just want to make it absolutely clear what happened: I got on the wrong train and wasted a couple of hours going the wrong direction. Now you should feel really stupid over what you did, and what you thought I did.

I think I’m going to die. Perhaps this is appropriate, I just found out I’m living near the old Yoshiwara. No, not the area that was infamous for the mizushobai, the OLD Yoshiwara where they dumped the bones of the condemned and untouchables.

Just as I arrived in Japan, I threw my back out from hauling my luggage around. I’ve been taking Alleve to reduce the pain, it helps a lot, and I when it runs out my back isn’t so painful as it was, so I must be healing well. But now, my legs are going bad. Two days ago, I noticed I had a few red spots on my skin below my ankles, it didn’t seem like anything to worry about. Then yesterday it was up to my ankles. Today it’s up to the top of my socks, with faint streaks up to my right knee. It looks like little subcutaneous hemorrhages, but it could just be a bad rash. I’m worried that it’s something serious. I can only speculate at what’s causing it, there are many possible reasons I can think of.

1. I’m walking too much. I live a sedentary life and now suddenly I’m spending 5 hours a day walking.

2. The ofuro is too hot. I’ve been soaking my legs to relax, perhaps I should cut out the long soak.

3. I’ve been eating cheap, crappy food like salty instant ramen, maybe it’s a reaction to MSG or maybe all that salt has shot my blood pressure to hell. That one could be serious.

4. I have a Pocari Sweat deficiency.

5. My shoes and socks are too tight.

6. I need to wash my trousers.

7. It’s a simple heat rash.

8. That ridiculous old Japanese legend is true, sleeping under the breeze of a fan will suck away your life force, and if you do it long enough, you will die in your sleep.

Well, anyway, I decided that I need to take it easier. I was already taking it easier due to my sore back, but then I went out to the Ginza and realized what a crappy neighborhood I’m living in, so I decided I needed to get out to some other area of town at least once a day. But after walking for 5 hours around Shinjuku, an area I actually know rather well, I must have overtaxed myself. Before I left, I knew my health wasn’t so great, and I decided that I had enough time here so that if I had to spend one full day of rest for each day on the town, it wouldn’t be a huge tragedy. So tomorrow I’m going to rest all day, and see how things go. Otherwise I’ll probably have to visit a doctor and have my legs checked out, and that is my absolute worst-case-scenario for a visit to Japan, dealing with a Japanese hospital. I’ve done that before, and it’s a nightmare.

When you are operating beyond the limits of blood, bone, and brain, and you’re trying to convince yourself that your well laid plans are all working out perfectly despite sudden and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and when you’ve had one drink too many, that is when mistakes will happen. But there are no accidents, everything happens for a purpose, perhaps everything turned out for the best. Let us call it an adventure, and never speak of it again.

In a few short days, I will depart on a trip to Japan. It’s been a long time since I traveled overseas, but now one of my good friends is getting married in Tokyo, so this seems like a good enough excuse to travel.

Preparing for a trip is always troublesome. Some people like to travel light, I like to travel heavy, packing for every possible contingency. I always feel like I will forget something, and no doubt I will. There’s an old rule of thumb for travelers, “take half the clothes you’ll need, and twice as much money.” This works well in every place I’ve traveled except Japan. The premise is that you can always buy clothes in an emergency. But in Japan, it is impossible for me to buy clothing my size. Everything is too small. For example, every lodging in Japan provides a yukata (bathrobe) that is supposed to come down to your ankles, but they barely cover my knees. There’s an old Japanese idiom ashi ga deru (your feet stick out) that means something that’s more trouble than it’s worth. So a too-short yukata is an embarassment, everyone wags their finger at your feet sticking out. I went to some trouble to purchase an extra long yukata at a shop in San Francisco that carries sizes more suitable for tall Americans, but it is still at least 6 inches too short.

So due to my 6’2″ stature, I could never possibly buy clothes in Japan, I have to bring everything I might possibly want to wear under any circumstance. And it can be hard to predict those circumstances, since I have absolutely no plan whatsoever. The last time I was in Japan, my best item of clothing was a Versace T-shirt. I was surprised to discover that it was widely pirated in Japan, I saw quite a few people wearing shirts with the exact same design, except they all said “Vivace.” It was especially hilarious seeing the looks on the faces of people wearing the fake shirt when they saw my real one.

Shoes are especially troublesome, I usually carry a separate bag just for shoes, since they never fit in my suitcase. And my shoes are huge, size 13EEE. Fortunately, I can pack a lot of spare odds and ends in my shoe bag, since shoes are hollow.

And of course I have to bring my favorite gadgets. I’m going to bring my old beat up laptop, which is in absolutely terrible condition and locks up intermittently. I wouldn’t bring it at all, but I need somewhere to dump the pictures from my digital camera. I guess I’ll bring my CD player, I wish I had an iPod. There’s a lot of wasted time spent on the subways so some nice music is always vital.

But the most essential ingredient for travel is a good book to read. Last time I went to Japan, I brought “Roughing It” by Mark Twain. I decided that humor would be the best remedy for frustrating, tiresome travel delays, and this book was absolutely perfect. But the strangest thing happened as I read the book, each and every disaster that befell Twain in his travels seemed to happen to me in a similar way. I recall reading the part where Twain gets stuck for weeks in Nevada, just as I was stuck in the DFW airport for 3 days waiting for a standby seat.

This time I decided to pick up Twain’s “Innocents Abroad.” It’s one of his famous travelogues, I haven’t read it before so I have no idea what to expect. But surely this book will set the tone for my travels, just as the previous book did. I tend to get into a literary mode when I travel, I scribble in notebooks constantly, recording my impressions, and there’s no better inspiration than Twain’s travel episodes. And when traveling, you need to keep your sense of humor at the forefront, or you’ll go crazy.

I hope to be able to write a few blog entries during my trip, but it’s unlikely I’ll have adequate internet access. So if I don’t write anything in the next 2 weeks or so, I’ll surely be bursting with stories and photos when I get back.

Lately everyone is writing up their embarassing Courtney Love stories, and there sure seems to be an awful lot of them. Courtney is undergoing a full meltdown, which doesn’t surprise me one bit, since I personally witnessed the beginning of it all. And therein hangs a tale.

Back in 1987 at the height of my Los Angeles clubgoing days, a friend of mine, who I will merely call “J” so as to spare him embarassment, called me up with an invitation. He said we should get together tonight and go to dinner with Zander Schloss from The Circle Jerks, a good time would be had by all. Since I had a new car, I was driving (that’s usually how these invitations worked). So J and I set off for Lucy’s El Adobe to meet Zander. Lucy’s is a strange little place, it’s right across from Paramount Studios, and furnished with the typical trappings of any cheap Mexican restaurant, except that the walls are covered with photographs of Gov. Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt. Every time I saw the photos, I always thought of a remark by Phillip K. Dick, he said he wanted his epitaph to read “he discovered Linda Ronstadt, and signed her up.” I’m sure I’m the only person who ever thought this particular thought at Lucy’s.

J and I arrived at Lucy’s and met Zander, who had a woman in tow, a chubby bottle-blonde wearing a dumpy thrift-store dress, he introduced her as Courtney Love. The four of us were seated in a booth and I sat right across from Courtney. At the time, I had no idea who Courtney was (and neither did anyone else), but she was determined to let us know exactly how important she was. She blabbed endlessly about all the trivialities of the club scene, who was seen where and with who, which bored me to no end, since I’d been at all those clubs too, and gossip about club stars had no interest for me. Courtney delivered her nonstop commentary while shoveling massive quantities of chips and salsa into her mouth in a most unattractive manner. Just as I thought my level of annoyance could not rise any higher, Courtney announced she had “arrived” as a club star, she appeared in “La Dee Da,” the LA Weekly club scene column. I had heard this sort of claim to “fame” from other club star wannabees, so I decided to deliver a retort, “oh, did they mention you by name, or did they just mention the club you were at?” My remark was met with an icy stare, and Courtney just sat there and silently glared at me.

The focus of conversation shifted due to the sudden silence, which was a relief to everyone. Now Zander started expressing his upset at the release of Stanley Kubrick’s new movie “Full Metal Jacket.” Zander explained that he had auditioned for a major role in the movie but was rejected, and now that the movie was released, he was convinced that his performance would have been far better than the actor who got the part. He decided to prove his assertion by loudly performing his audition monologue straight from the FMJ script. This brought nervous glances from other frightened restaurant patrons, who heard an obviously crazy man yelling about killing gooks, and wondered if they should flee. I had no such doubts, I was determined to flee at the first possible opportunity.

After the meal wound down and several more beers were consumed, Xander and Courtney now admitted they were short of cash and the bill was higher than they planned, so could we cover their tab? J said he’d cover them, which meant that he had to borrow cash from me, since I was the only person in this foursome that had a real job. I knew J wouldn’t pay me back, but I figured that forking over a few bucks was the shortest path to the exit.

As we left Lucy’s, we stood outside in the damp, cool LA evening air, but Zander and Courtney weren’t quite ready to let us go. Courtney’s demeanor towards me changed and she turned on the charm, which repulsed me even more than anything she had done so far. She said that she was going out with Zander to score some heroin, but she didn’t have any cash left, so I should come along with her and if I bought, we could do some heroin together and party all night long. Even unto today, I have never heard such an unappealing proposition, and I have no inclination whatsoever to do needle drugs, so I pondered how to decline politely, or even whether politeness was desirable under the circumstances. I just said “no thanks, I don’t do that shit.” Zander and Courtney decided they had no further use for us, so they slinked off into the night, and J and I went back to my car. Once inside, J turned to me and asked, “what was that all about?”

Today I went to my local pharmacy, it took me a minute before I could park because a UPS truck was making a wide turn through the parking lot. And to my astonishment, he backed into a handicapped-only parking spot. I walked past the UPS driver as he exited his truck, and said, “Do you realize you’re parked in a handicapped parking spot?” His response was “OK” and he walked into the store carrying his package. I shot back, “what do you mean, ‘OK,’ you mean it’s OK for you to park here?” He ignored me and continued into the store to make his delivery.

Mr. UPS Driver, you are a professional and are well aware you are not permitted to park in that spot. I use this pharmacy often, and I know the FedEx and USPO drivers don’t park in the handicapped spot. These parking spots are for disabled people coming to the store for their medicine, they are not for the convenience of agile deliverymen. I suppose I wouldn’t be so outraged except this UPS guy illegally parked in front of a pharmacy a few blocks from the largest hospital in the state, surely this is one of the most vital handicapped parking spots in the city.

So I decided to take a little trip out to the UPS depot and register a complaint with their manager. I asked him if it was UPS policy to condone illegal parking in this manner. He said it was not, and if anyone got a ticket, they pay for it themselves, UPS wouldn’t pay it. I never heard of a deliveryman ever getting a ticket, and if I called the local cops on an illegally parked UPS truck, they couldn’t get there before it left. And I told the manager, that is what is so infuriating. These drivers think that since they’ll only be in the spot for a couple of minutes, they can get away with it. It never occurs to them that during those few minutes, someone might arrive who is legally entitled to that spot, and can’t use it. The manager told me he’d look up the route and find out who the offending driver was, and tell him not to do this anymore, and issue a reminder at the next morning’s drivers’ meeting. And the drivers will walk away from the meeting laughing at the manager’s directive.

Sometimes I get so outraged at people’s stupidity over handicapped access. I remember one incident at my local bank, coincidentally it is right next to this pharmacy. I was outside smoking a cigarette on a blazing hot summer day after doing my business inside the bank, watching some employees of an auto dealership parking a new car on the sidewalk for a promotion. They parked the car right in the middle of the wheelchair ramp, it was so convenient to drive the car up the ramp, it was a few feet from the bank’s main entrance where everyone would walk past it. Just as they stopped to admire their work and were about to leave, an old man exited the bank pushing his wife in a wheelchair, now they were trapped and could not exit down the ramp they had just used a few minutes ago. They were stuck in the hot summer sun as they begged the auto dealer to move the car so they could leave the bank. The auto dealer had difficulty repositioning the car, after a few minutes the elderly couple had to retreat back inside the bank due to the heat. Eventually the car was relocated so it was only partially blocking the ramp, and the couple edged their wheelchair around the car and down the ramp. I wonder what would have happened if the auto dealer had left before the handicapped woman, she might have been stuck there until they could come back to move the car.