dirty laundry

Okay guys, this 3D shit is getting out of hand.

If you haven’t heard already, cops bust Into Gizmodo editor, Jason Chen’s home and sieze a bunch of his shit. Because of, you know, the whole buying stolen property/quasi corporate espionage shit he posted last Monday. What really takes the cake is the photo that business insider used:

This is literally the last thing Gawker and Woz want to see… Jason’s doughy face next to the next-gen iPhone (Awesome branding, right? So much better than Justin Long), and a lovely reminder as to why one of Giz’s top editors could wind up in jail. Both Apple and Gizmodo are fucked to some extent… and the only thing I really have to say is this:

Usually I’m against the whole fetishization of Japan in Western culture- particularly in the US- because it takes what would otherwise be just a slightly different culture from our own into this ridiculous OMGZ SHIT IS SO AWESOME BECAUSE ITS FROM JAPAN AND JAPAN IS COOL AND I’M COOL TOO BECAUSE I LIKE/KNOW ABOUT/CAN MISPRONOUNCE SHIT FROM JAPAN. BONZAI! 

Attack of the Show set decorators, I’m looking at you.

But then I saw the newest Japanesesque brand mashup with Sephora… and I realized that maybe I was taking some stuff a little too seriously.

Tokidoki happened because some Italian guy got inspired by a visual culture that is, admittedly, pretty interesting. And Sephora is a company that I respect for making affordable, good quality products.

What’s not to like?

A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. She explained that it was a storeroom, and that it was out of bounds. She reminded him of this several times before allowing him upstairs. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed. However the insistence of the woman had piqued his curiosity, so the next night he walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye.

What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was incredibly pale. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while, was this a celebrity? The owners daughter? He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to. As he was still looking, the woman turned sharply and he jumped back from the door, hoping she would not suspect he had been spying on her. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red. He felt embarrassed that he had made the woman so uncomfortable, and hoped she had not made a complaint with the woman on the front desk.

At this point he decided to consult her for more information. After some gentle quizzing and the promise that the explanation would go no further than him she finally said “Well, I might as well tell you the story of what happened in that room. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in there, we find that even now, people get uncomfortable staying there. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red.”