important updates...

[sanpaku_backup]

I have already seen small children wearing Krispy Kreme hats on the street... a new day has dawned in Dunkin-Donuts-land.



Also, the Mrs. is not having a good time on The Island. It was just a matter of time.

Comments

white under the eyes

[(Anonymous)]

I was recently in Europe (just home to Charlottesville, VA last night) and in the midst of a Belgian wedding reception, this guy goes, "Ah! You have sanpaku. White under your eyes." and I had only heard of it once before. He said it was a terrible curse. I searched on the internet when I got home. Yours was the first that came up. What do you know about this condition? He mentioned Marilyn Monroe. My name is Devon. Can you give me the code to start a live journal? Robotically yours, Devon. devon@devonsproule.com

It's a great story.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

That's pretty good. If you've searched the Internet you might have found this out already, but the story goes like this:

In 1964 a guy (pen-)named George Ohsawa wrote a book called You Are All Sanpaku. (My LJ user icon is from the cover.) In it he described how Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, and Ngo Dinh Diem, who had all died recently, had died because they were in spiritual imbalance. Their yin and yang were out of whack. What manifested this condition was the whites under their pupils -- "sanpaku" (Japanese for "three whites" -- the white to the left, right, and under your pupil). People with this condition are out of spiritual balance and headed for some serious cosmic trouble.

Ohsawa goes on in the rest of the book to explain that this condition is caused by the Western lifestyle, especially its food. He lived among Japanese monks who ate only brown rice and sea salt. He attacked processed sugars, meat, tomatoes, and a lot of other foods for being too yin (restrictive). We need more yang (the brown rice and sea salt, etc.) to achieve spiritual wholeness. This theory went on to inspire the "macrobiotic" ("expanded life") food movement, which you can find adhered to by any number of health-food-store clients today. My wife was raised as a macrobiotic vegetarian.

Sadly, of course, the entire theory is a hilarious pile of buncombe. I find it amusing that there's an entire food movement whose adherents know very little about the warmed-over Eastern pseudomysticism at its core. I made it my LJ moniker because I have an appreciation for popular delusions and swindles of all sorts. And because I do feel pretty sanpaku most of the time as well.

I would send you a code, but I need to figure out how to do that first.

Re: It's a great story.

[librarygrrl.livejournal.com]

ok, this is really weird, because a part of my personal mythology is: you could tell that my mother was crazy because you could see the whites all the way around her eyes. There must be something to this bit of folklore because when i stopped eating red meat in about 1984, I'm pretty sure it was the first time anyone in my family ever heard of the idea of being even remotely vegetarian.

Re: It's a great story.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Some other people look sanpaku a lot. Like Dan Rather on election eve 2000. Obviously that "fried-egg" look is weird and maybe has something to do with being stressed or on edge. I don't really notice it that much, though.

I just think it's great that the guy who came up with the theory picked three people, two of whom were definitely assasinated and one of whom was possibly murdered, and used that as evidence of "cosmic unwellness." Like being sanpaku isn't just unhealthy, it creates enemies for you. I wonder how many people eating sea salt and brown rice understand that part of the theory.