Latest Japanese spam email. This week’s pitch is for a BBS where runaway girls gather; that’s the from line. The subject is “Please become the God of needy girls” (lit: Kami-sama). They promise a community of 50,000 hungry, homeless, poor runaways all over Japan, and wouldn’t you like to help a cute runaway girl? Safe, easy to use (the site, that is), and free (until you actually find one to “help”, of course…).

From: 家出中の女性が集まる掲示板です。 
Subject: 貧しい少女達の神様となってください。
 
食事・宿泊場所・お金に困った全国5万人の家出中の女の子達が、
助けを求めるコミュニティ【家出中のかわいい女子を助けてあげてくれませんか？】です。
家出女子達の希望条件別の検索も可能なので使いやすさの抜群!!
参加の方も完全無料なので安心してご利用になられます。
 
(C) 家出中のかわいい女子を助けてあげてくれませんか？

[Update: and another one today, this one specifically identifying their runaways as high-school girls; it’s officially the new thing]

Why did this month’s Office patch for the Mac force me to re-enter my product activation key? As it happens, I had it available, but many people won’t.

The publishers are not looking good here, and in fact are looking exactly like corrupt racketeers. I love the quote from Steve Jobs:

"you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway"

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; lots of juicy quotes, and the DoJ is serious enough to have acquired the various CEOs’ phone records. Even without this investigation, though, the publishers are screwed in the long run, and they deserve to be. They think they’re pushing back at an uppity online discount bookstore, and have failed to notice that Amazon is not only far more popular than they are, but has become the best place to shop for damn near anything.

Where else can you get two-day free shipping for polearms, diesel generators, gym-grade fitness equipment, gourmet foods, and fishing boats? I was honestly surprised to find that they’re not selling cars and motorcycles yet, but that’s probably just because the red tape for title transfers is too much of a hassle to navigate.

Apparently Google’s web design team has been hijacked by rogue optometrists who are attempting to drive people into their offices by creating eyestrain.

Why else would they have decided that medium-gray text on a light-gray background is a good way to present all comments, especially the sort of long, detailed comment that contains information that's actually worth reading?

And of course they’re wasting acres of space on useless crap like chat, “trending” tags, “you may know” (but almost certainly don’t), and “you might like” (but definitely won’t) sections.

…was invented by unionized seamstresses who wanted to ensure there would always be hemming work.

Also, I’m short for my height.

[Update: Put on your gi jacket and obi normally. Measure from top of obi to ankle-bone. If inches, divide by 1.49; if centimeters, divide by 3.79. If you’re buying cotton, round up; if tetron (polyester/rayon), round down (half-sizes are sometimes available). This is your hakama size. If a store sizes them 0-6 or S,M,L,XL,etc, leave. Try E-Bogu instead.]

An online cosmetics shop in Japan has published the results of their survey of “where the boobs are” in Japan. Failure to publish their methodology and sample size has not interfered with their primary goal of attracting hits to their site.

Those interested in converting the claimed cup sizes into their local measurement system may use this helpful calculator.

(via the never-safe-for-work Sankaku Complex)

Two hours on the phone with Paypal, six password resets, three escalations, two different computers and four different browsers, and still they don’t have the slightest idea why I can’t log in to my account.

Ten days ago, I successfully paid for something through Paypal. Now, nothing that tier 1-3 support can come up will get me into my account.

…but they think that if they escalate even higher, they may have something for me in 24-48 hours.

[Update: Amusing; if I do a password-reset and try to give it the current password, it detects this and refuses to allow me to use it. But that same password didn’t work fifteen seconds earlier, so the problem can’t possibly be on my end, especially since I’m pasting it in each time rather than typing it from memory.]

[Update: it appears they don’t like my home IP address…]

Amazon Japan just sent me a notice that Okina Kamino has a new novel out,Tarot Knight. My first response was that AsoIku was dead for good, since he’s got three other series running now; my second thought was suddenly aborted when I clicked through and saw that the “customers who bought this also bought” linked to AsoIku book 15. And it’s not just a repackaging of the short stories that were included with the BDs; it looks like Aoi’s half-sister is coming back with marriage on her mind (ah, but who’s the lucky one…), and Chaika’s other two daughters are sneaking out to play on Earth.

Guess I should finally finish book 11 and catch up.

(as for Louie, well, I hit the first honest-to-gosh Stupid Thing and set it aside for a while; the worst part was that it wasn’t Louie’s bad idea, it was Merrill’s. It’s a bad plan, honey)