TOKYOMANGO

Dog Poop Ashtray

If you want to smoke in my house, you better ash in this. And then at some point over the evening I'll make Ruby poop and replace the poop-looking ashtray with real poop, and then you'll wish you'd never smoked in my house.

Product page (Japanese)

Emergency Siren For Your Desktop

You never know when you're going to need to send warning signals from your desk...maybe there's a mass murderer hiding under your seat and he's threatening to chop off your legs before he slowly eats you from bottom up...so if you keep this emergency lamp thing on top of your monitor, all you gotta do is plug in the USB and the sirens will go off, alerting everyone that you're in trouble.

Multimillion Dollar Home Giveaway In Hawaii

What do you do when you're one of the richest guys in one of the richest countries in the world, and you have a reputation for spontaneously evicting residents from your mutimillion dollar real estate ventures so you can sell them, and you want to redeem yourself? Well, Genshiro Kawamoto was in this kinda situation, and his solution to bad karma was to lease 8 of his many Oahu mansions to poor, single Native Hawaiian mothers who were previously homeless or on welfare.

Pictured left is the Worley family, who received this 5 million dollar home in Kahala. Needless to say, they're psyched and grateful. Of course, the rich white neighbors in this neighborhood aren't happy with the arrangement. They don't want the ghetto natives from Waianae Coast (on the other side of the island, where homelessness is rampant) hanging out in Kahala (the posh 'hood behind Diamond Head where some of Kawamoto's homes are). Some apparently think that Kawamoto's venture is all strategy and zero philanthropy--an attempt to drive down real estate prices in these wealthy areas by bringing poverty directly in, so he could buy up more land and then kick the poor people out again once he's taken over.

Link (Thanks, KFC!)

Power Spots For Re-Energizing

Reika Akatsuki is a clairvoyant who believes there are  "power spots" all over Tokyo, where the earth's energies are particularly concentrated and powerful. By visiting these spots, you can rejuvenate your spirits instantly. She sounds like a nutcase, but her book, Tokyo Power Spot Guide, has created quite a buzz throughout the city.

Here are some tips from Akatsuki on how to detect a hot spot:

1. Think about what energies the people who frequent that location might be emitting. She says:

Some other power spots in Tokyo are, for example, Meiji Shrine, which has a lot of energy from the trees where gods live; Ginza, where the pride of people who sell and buy high-quality goods exerts positive power; and Omotesando, where the power to do creative things creates positive energy.

2. Look for "fire" spots--wet land or places with drainage problems usually have bad luck. But sometimes, positive influences can alter the energy of a water site.

Example: Tokyo Disneyland is built on landfill, which is traditionally a bad spot. But the Mickey-happy energy of the amusement park-goers has turned this into a power spot.

Example 2: Omotesando used to be a bad spot because of all the grave sites in the vicinity. But after Meiji Shrine was built in the 1920s, and tourists started frequenting the place, the power in this place changed. "Because foreigners have a stronger and more distinct spirit, they are not affected by Japan's negative spirit. And as more people began to frequent the area, its whole fortune rose."

3. Fact: The Imperial Palace has the highest active energy in Tokyo. Its energy reaches as much as 120 cm above ground, whereas the average spot in Tokyo only reaches up 5cm.

Link (Thanks, Mary!)

Bruceploitation On Wired.com

I spent a bunch of time last week putting together this WN article (with video clips) about Justin Lin's new movie, Finishing the Game, and all the fake Bruce Lees and the real Bruce Lee:

Bruce Lee died in 1973, midway through making Game of Death, the only film in which he was the writer, director, producer and lead. Rather than bag the project, Hollywood moviemakers continued filming with a cast of stand-ins -- Asian men with only a passing resemblance to Lee. The film led to an entire genre of Bruce Lee films (sans Bruce Lee). For the next 10 years, actors with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le and Lee Bruce starred in dozens of low-budget, badly dubbed kung fu flicks that mirrored many of Lee's original films.

There's supposed to be a video clip from Lin's movie embedded in the story, too, but for some reason it got omitted when it was published. Anyway, it's on YouTube, so I'm embedding here so you can see it here until they sort it out.

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