“Being a fake priest is big business in Japan – I’ve done a TV commercial for one company,” [Mark Kelly] added. “In Sapporo, there are five agencies employing about 20 fake priests. In a city like Tokyo, there must be hundreds.”
The fake Western priests are employed at Western-style weddings to give a performance and add to the atmosphere. These are not legal ceremonies – the couples also have to make a trip to the local registrar.
“In the past almost all weddings in Japan were Shinto, but in the last few years Western-style weddings have appeared and become very popular,” said one Japanese priest.
It is important for the bride and groom to have a proper wedding, and they are not getting it from these foreign priests. “People like the dress, the kiss and the image. Japanese Christians make up only 1% of the country, but now about 90% of weddings are in the Christian style.”
Without trying to be too controversial about this, who really gets to decide whether someone is a real priest, and what constitutes a real/proper wedding? The infrastructure and regulations seem to always be under some kind of challenge as denominations fracture and feud. As a famous anthropologist once said, “marriage is as relative as time has zones”. After all, how different is this than the infamous Vegas weddings and (Elvis) priests?
According to an interview with poet Michael Longley, “writing poetry gives him a better buzz than sex or booze”:
If you have nothing to say don’t force it. The trouble is, you do acquire a lot of skills over the years. It is possible without knowing it to produce forgeries. It is important not to do that. It is better to remain silent rather than fool yourself and others for a while by producing forgeries.
One of the problems is repeating yourself. That doesn’t necessarily mean with regards to subject matter. It is more doing the same trick, as it were, producing the same performance.
Is he talking about poetry or sex? Can’t tell. It seems he prefers the cerebral rush to the carnal, although he does admit to finding shortcuts, thanks to technology that allows him to repeat someone else’s performance:
I get as much pleasure out of music as poetry but I can’t do anything musical except put in the CD!
Microsoft announced late Thursday that it’s partnering with Novell Inc., its longtime rival in the market for computer operating system software, to support Novell’s version of Linux.
The two agreed to develop technology for computer systems that use both Linux and Microsoft’s Windows. Microsoft and Novell also agreed not to sue any customer who uses both operating systems, removing the legal uncertainty over mixing Linux and Windows.
“These are a set of agreements that will really help bridge the divide between open source and proprietary source software, and that will greatly enhance interoperability between Linux and Windows,” Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said during a press conference in San Francisco Thursday. “We see huge potential upside in these markets.”
Wow. Agreed not to sue any customer who uses both operating systems…? That sounds like Linux is a get out of jail free card for Windows users, or perhaps some kind of innoculation from Microsoft. Will this put Vista’s security into further doubt?
EDITED TO ADD (22 Dec 2006): Samba’s main man, Jeremy Allison, appears to be hopping mad over the deal and reportedly has resigned from Novell in protest.
While Internet companies elsewhere are desparate to market themselves well enough to drive traffic to their site, the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation of Perrysburg, Ohio might be experiencing a case of tunnel-vision (pun intended). They do not want YouTube users accidentally coming to their site, apparently because it is too much for their hosting provider to handle.
They complained a few weeks back that the site was being downed by heavy traffic as users looking for YouTube landed on their site instead, presumably by typing the wrong domain name. This downtime cost them a great deal of money in lost customers, they said. How big was the traffic spike? They claim unique visitors went from 1,500 to over 2 million per month. UTube has been forced to move hosts 5 times to cope with the traffic, with bandwidth bills increasing by a factor of 100, they claim. They registered the domain way back in 1996, so they have every claim to it – what’s more, they also argue that the UTube name is strongly tied to their identity.
I understand their concern about the site being down, but is that really the problem? What would the increase in sales/conversion be if the site were able to stay up? It just makes me wonder if they realize that they are being seen by a much larger potential customer base now? In fact, I was just looking for a tube to buy the other day…