Still sick. But I can’t complain; my garden is in full flush, I have a good job with fun co-workers, and I’m blessed with a huge amount of entertainment.

It’s worth the occasional cold.

Last week’s trip seems to have given me a touch of…something. I won’t describe the grotesque details, but safe to say I am sick. I hope it won’t last; I want to go to work tomorrow.

I comforted myself by watching Versus, a movie by the live-action Japanese director I saw last weekend, Ryuhei Kitamura. It’s a samurai zombie revenge film, and it was just wildly entertaining.

And I’m back. The trip was precisely fine: informative and uneventful. I didn’t have a great time—I never like changes to my comfortable life, and yes that worries me on occasion—but nothing remotely bad happened.

‘Twas strange, though, being in a company town. Cedar Rapids is mixed zoning, strip malls glaring at industrial plants that sit a block away from quiet neighborhoods. About half of the light industrial buildings I saw had Rockwell Collins signs out front. There’s no huge corporate complex, and all the buildings are flat and wide as a lake. I don’t think I saw a single three-story building anywhere outside of downtown.

If I headed a company like that, I’d want a campus. I’d build tall buildings with style, not a bunch of cookie-cutter industrial parks.

But then, I’m not heading a company like that. Perhaps it’s good that they don’t spend money on that sort of thing.

I’ll be travelling on business this week, so expect few updates to this site.

To completely change the subject, if you ever get the chance to watch the Taiwanese film The Puppetmaster, be prepared for an excruciating documentary style in which every shot lasts, on average, three minutes. And in which the theme appears to be “Look at my horrible relatives and tragic life.”

I’m back from an anime and manga panel discussion at the Smithsonian. I sat literally a few feet away from Monkey Punch (creator of Lupin III), Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (president of Production I.G.), and Ryuhei Kitamura (live-action movie director). A few random notes:

• In one month in 2007, 250 manga magazines are published in Japan, and 750 volumes of manga are published.
• The average manga reader can read two pages of manga in ten seconds. As a result, manga writers know how to write fast stories. This constrasts with typical slow Asian live-action films.
• Ishikawa: When I show violence, I show how it hurts.
• Monkey Punch: In manga, each panel is equivalent to one word in a sentence, so that many panels are strung together to form a complete thought. In Western comics, each panel is its own concept, which can be much more restrictive (and wordy).
• Ishikawa: Children want to experience a world that’s slightly beyond their own. So, fantasy, but not wild fantasy. This was a signature of Disney films pre-Katzenberg, but Pixar is bringing it back.
• Kitamura: I was asked about the best ten films of last year. My number one was Cars, because it was just such a solid movie.
• Monkey Punch went to the San Diego Comic Con in the 70′s, and found that Americans hated manga, especially the “weird glassy eyes.” So he got together about ten big names in manga—including Osamu Tezuka and Go Nagai—and they all went to the 1980 Comic Con. This made a big splash and was a major initial turning point in manga acceptance in America.
• Astro Boy (the character) is quite similar to Mickey Mouse.
• The best thing Japanese creators do is take many influences and harmonize them.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion was huge in Japan, while Ghost in the Shell (the first movie) was not so much. But they were both big in America, which fueled success back in Japan and led to the recent Ghost in the Shell projects.
• Sam Raimi has said that the flying sequences in the Spider-Man movies are based on the flying sequences in Nausicaa.
• Ishikawa: The hardest thing about his job is just not failing.

Interesting stuff.

Some of you may remember the cooking show that I made and posted on YouTube last winter. I’ve reposted the website, where you can browse and watch the videos.

I read half a dozen self-improvement blogs every day. This week, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with them.

Several of them focus on things to do to improve your life. Go to the gym. Get away from toxic people. Envision wild success and focus all your time on that.

But these are all external circumstances. Isn’t this all about self-improvement? The true goal of self-improvement should not be to improve one’s circumstances, for the best people thrive in all circumstance with any people.

After watching the first episode of an amazing BBC documentary, “The Secret Life of The Manic Depressive,” I’ve made a few key realizations.

1. Most of my major life decisions are driven by pride.
2. I crave fame.
3. My reach exceeds my grasp. I start many grandiose projects when I’m feeling great, only to feel overwhelmed when I’m feeling down.
4. I’m not manic depressive or bipolar, but I have some mild symptoms.

So, what am I going to do about it? It’s midnight and I’m laying in bed, typing this into my laptop. I’ve found no conclusions yet. Perhaps sleep will help.

This, I think, is why we all need productivity systems. We need some way to keep track of what we’ve agreed to do. Even if we’ve just agreed with ourselves to do it. Especially if we’ve agreed with ourselves.

Just finished watching Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress.

I like Kurosawa’s films, but I just don’t love them like many people do. This one’s no exception; it’s very good, but I’ve no interest in watching it again. Well, except for one spear fight halfway through. But he holds his shots for much longer than I feel necessary, and the story just drags on.

Ah well. Worth seeing. The included interview with George Lucas was enlightening, too.