New Spamming Heights

Oh yes, this morning I checked my work email and was surprised to see that I was the recipient of Japanese spam. Oh yes, you heard--read--correctly. Japanese spam, complete with Japanese characters. Now, I'm a big fan of filtering and creating rules for dumping spam, but how in the world am I going to filter out Japense spam? Create a rule that lists every single Japanese character (since I don't know the characters for, ahem, "adult content" type words).

But anyway....

This weekend Jon and I braved the cold, cold wind (I'm a tough Midwesterner, and I'm saying it was cold) to visit the Boston MFA (Museum of Fine Arts for those of you not in the know). They had two exibits on cubism. Neither one was spectacular, and both were over-crowded, but still it was enjoyable. I think one of the highlights for me were the two drawings and sculpture by Kathe Kollwitz that I saw (the MFA website displays more, but I didn't see those). I've become really interested in her because she is one of the highlighted characters in Europe Central by William T. Vollman: the big sprawling--but fascinating--novel about the Third Reich and and Stalinest Russia.

I also have a new favorite jazz artist: Hiromi. She's a Japanese pianist and composer who attended the Berklee School of Music (in Boston), and with her trio memebers bassist Tony Grey and drummer Martin Valihora, she creates amazing music. Favorites of mine off her new release Spiral are the numbers "Reverse" and "Return of the Kung-Fu World Champion." Visit the website, you can download samples. If you're not blown away by her, than you're deaf!