Sachiko Updates

It seems my previous What Can Be Done About Israel post was a real blockbuster - 60 comments and counting, many of them quite (very!) lengthy. A lot of the comments were really enlightening as well, as is often the case with my very well informed readership. Which has led me to ponder an idea: what if some of my readers were allowed to submit guest posts for my blog? On the one hand, this is supposed to be my personal blog, which would normally mean that I should be the author of all the articles. On the other hand though, the point of a blog is to allow everyone to have their say, and to foster a community - guest posts would seem like the next logical step in this direction. So what do my readers think? Should I allow guest posts here, or should it really just be my personal soapbox?

I should mention that I won’t necessarily have to agree with absolutely everything my guest posters say. However, they will have to have what I would consider to be a well informed opinion, worthy of respect. For example, if you can make a good case for libertarianism - which I respect in principle but don’t think would actually work in the real world - then I may publish your article. However, if you try to say that George Bush was a good President, I will simply delete your submission immediately.

The day so many of us have been waiting for has finally arrived! And here’s how I celebrated the end of the Bush administration - we originally tried to follow Loverboy’s idea of using balloons, but they kept exploding whenever we tried to do anything with them! So we decided to shoot me tearing up images of Rice, Cheney and Bush instead, which fortunately worked pretty well I think. As promised, we’ve also posted an extended, extra naughty version for my web site members, and I blow a kiss to everyone who entered my win a kiss from me for Christmas competition. I received emails from a few people who said they were trying to think of a winning entry, but didn’t end up posting any! So I guess a lot of people were so intent on winning that they didn’t enter at all if they didn’t think they could. But as I ended up blowing a kiss to every entrant, I would have given you a kiss anyway. (As with all of our videos, it is in MPEG4 format, so you’ll need either QuickTime or 3ivx to view it.)

On a more serious note, I would sincerely like to wish President Obama all the best for his term in the White House - let’s hope he is able to achieve at least some of the things he has set out to do.

Well I must say I really enjoyed all the entries in my win a kiss from me for Christmas competition - my readers certainly are a very witty bunch! So much so in fact that I haven’t been able to pick a clear winner. So I’ve decided to blow a kiss to everyone who entered! I must say though, I do think Loverboy’s entry will make for a nice, simple, yet entertaining video, so I’ve decided to act out his suggestion in the clip - I have the perfect, cute and sexy little party dress for the occasion! And for my web site members, I will post an extended, R-rated version as well!

I was originally intending to post this video on New Year’s Day, but given the subject matter, I think it will actually be more appropriate to post it on Inauguration Day. So look out for it on January 20!

Oh, and merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and happy holidays to everyone who is lucky enough to be having them now.

Given my ethnicity, I’m sure there must be a few Japanophiles amongst my readership. And even if you aren’t one, it’s hard not to find a lot of the weird and wonderful things that go on there interesting to say the least! Hence the Planet Japan Podcast, which has a feature on your’s truly in their latest episode (my segment starts at 18:37). I suspect their regular “Religion Corner” segment would be of interest to my readers as well. In the present episode, co-host Doug has a rather interesting(!) hypothesis as to why John McCain lost the US election too. He has also written several articles for Blogcritics magazine, including some very topical Reflections on God and Santa (I’ve sometimes wondered about the idea he puts forward here as well!).

BTW, sorry for the less substantial posts recently, but with all the doom and gloom around at the moment, I feel I would like to write about less weighty issues for now. But rest assured I will be returning to my favorite topics of religion and politics (and the environment as well) next month!

While we’re on the subject of Christmas, I couldn’t resist posting this absolutely hilarious spoof of R. Kelly’s “hip hopera” Trapped in the Closet, which has got to be the funniest and most creative (not to mention sick, twisted and blasphemous!) Christmas video I’ve ever seen - not for the faint of heart.

Talking about funny and creative Christmas videos, remember there’s only three weeks left to win a kiss from me for Christmas. Even if you don’t win, at least by entering you can give me a good laugh!

Also, if you were intending to buy something for yourself from my online store for Christmas, you’d better hurry, as it will usually take about two weeks for orders from outside Australia to reach you. We’ve also become aware of some intermittent mail server problems at our ISP, which means there is a small chance we may not have received your order. If you’ve tried to place an order with us and haven’t received a response, please try again now. We are 100% confident the issue has been fixed.

This is just another quick post to let you all know that we’ve just posted a promo video for my DVDs on YouTube - check it out! It is also available at my online store as two higher quality promo clips.

This is just a quick post to let everyone know that my new online store has just been launched!

Also, as negotiations with publishers for my health and beauty book have taken far longer than we ever anticipated, we have decided to release the Exercise and Yoga DVD we shot to accompany it as a separate product. Because this DVD is intended for the general market, it is non-nude, but I wear some very sexy, exposing outfits, and get into some remarkable poses! Plus of course, it is a great guide to healthy and sustainable exercise that will keep you slim and fit, yet is also very low impact. In addition, I demonstrate the full range of yoga poses I perform, from simple and basic to quite extreme and advanced (of course, you don’t need to perform all of these poses yourself to stay fit - you only need to do what you feel comfortable to do). Although we still aren’t sure at this stage what the publishing arangements for my book will be, if it turns out that we do end up packaging the Exercise and Yoga DVD with the book, then we will give anyone who has already purchased the DVD a credit toward the book and DVD package. So you can but it now and enjoy it in the mean time!

Wow! After eight long years, the reign of the neo-cons is finally ending! And with a college vote of over 2:1, a popular margin of 6 points, and more total votes than any other Presidential candidate in US history(!), it may even be emphatic enough for the Republicans to re-think their position, and get rid of the religious right and neo-conservative cancers upon their party. Sadly however, I doubt it - early signs are that they may go even further to the right. If they do, I can only imagine they will lose by an even bigger margin the next time around, and maybe that will do it. We can only hope.

Although Obama’s victory speech was quite impressive, I was if anything even more impressed with John McCain’s very gracious concession speech. It’s almost as if he secretly wanted Obama to win - perhaps after butting heads with the religious right throughout his campaign, he really did think it would be for the best! I now understand why he didn’t try to use Pastor Wright in his Obama smear campaign (which surprised me): it seems he really is sincerely anti-racist, unlike much of his party.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to come up with an appropriate way to celebrate the win, and I’ve also been wondering what I can bitch about now that the neo-cons are gone. Actually, not really - I still have plenty of things I want to write about! But I thought some funny and creative answers to these two questions would make for a good, fun competition for my readers and fans, so I’ve decided to do the following: whoever can come up with best answer to one or both of these questions wins a kiss from me! That’s right - I will do a video where I blow a kiss to you with your name on it, which I will publish here. And if you’re a member of my main web site, I will do an adult version for you as well! Read the rest of this entry »

So what did everyone think of the final Presidential debate? I see McCain is still desperately trying to whip up a controversy over Obama’s “relationship” with William Ayers, even though (as this video shows) he has a perfectly good explanation for it. It’s just so typical of the Republicans to base their campaign on negative mud slinging, while at the same time their own Vice Presidential candidate is actually convicted of breaking her state’s law by violating the public trust. I’ve been impressed that Obama hasn’t stooped to slinging mud back, even though Palin would have made it very easy for him to do. And even better, the American public seems to be responding very positively to his approach.

In other news, we’ve taken the opportunity today to do some upgrades to the navigation of my blog, which have become necessary as it’s grown. We now list my tags in the lefthand column, so you can more easily find articles on the particular topics that interest you. We’ve also upgraded the archives listing, so you can now go straight to a particular article. Plus we’ve added a related posts feature to each entry, so you can easily go to other articles like the one you’re reading. On top of that, we’ve started using excerpts of the longer posts on the home and archive pages, to make it easier to go through everything and get to want you want to read.

October 28 Update: We have now added an extra “Comments” section in the lefthand column, where you can go to the last 40 comments and subscribe to a comments feed for the entire blog, instead of just individual posts. Of course, you can still subscribe only to specific posts if you want to as well!

Although I am still trying to get my thoughts together regarding the current financial crisis, I know that most of you want to see my photos and videos as well, so here is a brand new video for you. (As with all of our videos, it is in MPEG4 format, so you’ll need either QuickTime or 3ivx to view it.)

This is the introduction to my soon to be released Exercise & Yoga video, where I outline what I will be demonstrating in it. Like all the photos and videos we’ve done so far, it is largely improvised, and shot in one take with minimal editing. This inevitably means that I stumble over the odd word - and there is the occasional awkward pause - but like all of our material, we prefer to do things this way, as we believe it feels more natural and personal than all the heavily produced stuff you get these days. We want to give you the feeling that I’m talking to you personally - I hope we have succeeded!