jan-ken-pon, noun: Japanese rock-paper-scissors, usually shortened to "janken" in conversation
rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, noun: the version I will be making my kids play from this moment forward
February 25, 2009
February 24, 2009
Iko Iko
Taught my 2A girls the refrain from Sugar Boy Crawford's recording of "Jock-A-Mo" today in class. It was pretty much the highlight of my Fat Tuesday, since there is neither sassafras nor andouille sausage to be found in J-land, thus no way to make proper gumbo, and it was too rainy to have an impromptu parade with the Mardi Gras masks that we made :c
Today was mostly an I-don't-want-to-be-around-people day. Of course, an hour from now, I'm going to teach at the community center and get home just before 10. These phenomena seem to coincide a lot.
Be that as it may, here is something which makes me feel not-grumpy and less like a useless lump: Anteater stuffie pattern at last!
Click for make happy fun downloading time yes do
Rendered by the amazing Ku, with yours-may-look-like-this pic also from Ku!
Note: my firstborn arikui (Japanese for anteater) son's vestments look a little wonky because I hand-stitched them rather than using a solid piece of felt.
ALSO note: the tail is a mite bit tricky to reverse on account a' it's long 'n skinny. If you ttly rawk at edge-to-edge sewing I'd recommend that instead. Even if you don't, try it out!
Today was mostly an I-don't-want-to-be-around-people day. Of course, an hour from now, I'm going to teach at the community center and get home just before 10. These phenomena seem to coincide a lot.
Be that as it may, here is something which makes me feel not-grumpy and less like a useless lump: Anteater stuffie pattern at last!
Click for make happy fun downloading time yes do
Rendered by the amazing Ku, with yours-may-look-like-this pic also from Ku!
Note: my firstborn arikui (Japanese for anteater) son's vestments look a little wonky because I hand-stitched them rather than using a solid piece of felt.ALSO note: the tail is a mite bit tricky to reverse on account a' it's long 'n skinny. If you ttly rawk at edge-to-edge sewing I'd recommend that instead. Even if you don't, try it out!
February 17, 2009
Speaking of UNEXPECTED:
HOLY CRAP SNOW!!! LIKE, SNOW! Outside, in Isobe, this morning when I woke up, and blowing in my face as I walked to work and YES! Very yes!
This is snow outside my apartment!
This is snow ON A F***ING PALM TREE (circled for your convenience, because there's so much SNOW you might miss it!)
...This snow was all gone by 10:30 am D: The town was dry as a bone by noon o'clock. BUT, I still managed to make the best of it. I threw snowballs at the students I saw outside before I even got into the office, and after two minutes of sitting inside thinking "Wow, just...wow. SNOW," I got my butt back out there and constructed a wee-tiny totem to the snow gods, who made me the happiest snow-bunny this morning.
Here he is, the littlest snowman. Yes that is a flowerpot next to him. FULL OF SNOW. Love him, for he is fabuloooouuuus (I only noticed later, after he was but a puddle on the stairs, that the pictures I took made him look pretty flamboyant. Hip thrust out at a flirtatious angle, winking right atcha, arms thrown wide open to the skies going "Look at me, world, I'm spectacular!" Aaaawr ;__; I miss him already)
This is snow outside my apartment!
This is snow ON A F***ING PALM TREE (circled for your convenience, because there's so much SNOW you might miss it!)...This snow was all gone by 10:30 am D: The town was dry as a bone by noon o'clock. BUT, I still managed to make the best of it. I threw snowballs at the students I saw outside before I even got into the office, and after two minutes of sitting inside thinking "Wow, just...wow. SNOW," I got my butt back out there and constructed a wee-tiny totem to the snow gods, who made me the happiest snow-bunny this morning.
Here he is, the littlest snowman. Yes that is a flowerpot next to him. FULL OF SNOW. Love him, for he is fabuloooouuuus (I only noticed later, after he was but a puddle on the stairs, that the pictures I took made him look pretty flamboyant. Hip thrust out at a flirtatious angle, winking right atcha, arms thrown wide open to the skies going "Look at me, world, I'm spectacular!" Aaaawr ;__; I miss him already)February 16, 2009
Spider-brain, go!
The sky SPAT on me today as I walked up the hill to school after buying lunch. And the wind was one big raspberry in my face. All that was missing was that PBTHBSBTHPBP!!! noise.
...I find it no small tragedy to the English language that we have no way of codifying that wet-sloppy noise within our writing system such that our brains can actually interpret it as onomotapoeitic. There has to be some language out there that can. And I bet the people who speak it find it easier to laugh when the strung-out monkey of life flings some poo in their direction.
Do you ever have days when your head is just bursting with thoughts and you can barely track one partway as they fly out and spin away in all directions? Today's one of those days.
It started this morning. Well, it started long ago, but this particular day started this morning around 8, walking up the hillside road behind my apartment building. Some trees are flowering already, and though I could swear they were orange trees back in the fall, they bear a striking resemblance to sakura (cherry blossoms). I've been advised by many people in Isobe and elsewhere to go see the sakura blossoming in the spring. In fact I can remember being sorely disappointed about not staying in Nagoya for spring semester two years ago, partially because I would miss out on cherry-blossom-viewing. I didn't follow the thought any farther then, because that was then and I was a different person.
One thing I DID get to do in the fall, though, was go autumn-leaf-viewing in Kyoto and Nara. The leaves turn brilliant reds and golds and firery oranges and make the gloomiest, sunless day look like high noon in midsummer, such is the warmth of their colors. And in spring the cherry blossoms (among other trees which apparently feel compelled to imitation) appear and even after they've fallen, they're still magic because they blanket everything like pink snow or pixie dust.
This happens every year. And that was not only me talking just now; it was the collective wonder of the crowds. Every year, autumn and spring, they go to the same sites to witness the same transformations. Autumn and spring and leaves and flowers happen in many countries, but it's an institution here at a level that in some ways surpasses the religious significance of the shrines where most of the viewings take place.
I won't go into Shinto or cultural genealogies - I'd be sitting here all day - but all this made my brain jump to change and fluctuation and our fearful fascination with it. The nightly news mentions that some trees are blossoming earlier this year, and I sometimes get the distinct impression that this is an affront to decorum on the trees' part, or at least pointedly inconsiderate. If they change their flowering pattern, people may have to change their travel plans, change their traditional calendars, change their expectactions, and we won't have any of it.
I think it largely true that anticipated changes bring more satisfaction than unexpected ones. At the very least, for the large part we seem to have equipped ourselves to deal better with a totally predictable world. It says a lot about us as a species, that we have this need to be able to anticipate, to constrain, if only in our minds, the fluctuations that patterns of change are allowed to display to us.
Oftentimes it means we deliberately blind ourselves to larger-scale developments or refuse to place ourselves within a wider frame, a less centralized system. This occurs at all levels, from macro-economics to interpersonal relationships. I catch myself doing it a lot.
Of course the other side of the coin is that we still strive to understand, to know how all this great mess of STUFF works, even and especially when we realize just how futile a venture that really is. It means that all the silly nihilists can go terrorizing bowling enthusiasts with their ferrets, screaming that life has no meaning and you can't believe in anything, and the rest of us can still sit back and say "Yeah, alright, cheers. We'll figure something out then, shall we?"
...I like to imagine The Human Spirit as having a posh accent...given how pathologically dreary the upper-middle-class English population can be, I really have no idea why.
Um, anyway. Time for lunch. And then one more class and then I've gotta get some detail work done on the painting I started a couple weeks ago.
...I find it no small tragedy to the English language that we have no way of codifying that wet-sloppy noise within our writing system such that our brains can actually interpret it as onomotapoeitic. There has to be some language out there that can. And I bet the people who speak it find it easier to laugh when the strung-out monkey of life flings some poo in their direction.
Do you ever have days when your head is just bursting with thoughts and you can barely track one partway as they fly out and spin away in all directions? Today's one of those days.
It started this morning. Well, it started long ago, but this particular day started this morning around 8, walking up the hillside road behind my apartment building. Some trees are flowering already, and though I could swear they were orange trees back in the fall, they bear a striking resemblance to sakura (cherry blossoms). I've been advised by many people in Isobe and elsewhere to go see the sakura blossoming in the spring. In fact I can remember being sorely disappointed about not staying in Nagoya for spring semester two years ago, partially because I would miss out on cherry-blossom-viewing. I didn't follow the thought any farther then, because that was then and I was a different person.
One thing I DID get to do in the fall, though, was go autumn-leaf-viewing in Kyoto and Nara. The leaves turn brilliant reds and golds and firery oranges and make the gloomiest, sunless day look like high noon in midsummer, such is the warmth of their colors. And in spring the cherry blossoms (among other trees which apparently feel compelled to imitation) appear and even after they've fallen, they're still magic because they blanket everything like pink snow or pixie dust.
This happens every year. And that was not only me talking just now; it was the collective wonder of the crowds. Every year, autumn and spring, they go to the same sites to witness the same transformations. Autumn and spring and leaves and flowers happen in many countries, but it's an institution here at a level that in some ways surpasses the religious significance of the shrines where most of the viewings take place.
I won't go into Shinto or cultural genealogies - I'd be sitting here all day - but all this made my brain jump to change and fluctuation and our fearful fascination with it. The nightly news mentions that some trees are blossoming earlier this year, and I sometimes get the distinct impression that this is an affront to decorum on the trees' part, or at least pointedly inconsiderate. If they change their flowering pattern, people may have to change their travel plans, change their traditional calendars, change their expectactions, and we won't have any of it.
I think it largely true that anticipated changes bring more satisfaction than unexpected ones. At the very least, for the large part we seem to have equipped ourselves to deal better with a totally predictable world. It says a lot about us as a species, that we have this need to be able to anticipate, to constrain, if only in our minds, the fluctuations that patterns of change are allowed to display to us.
Oftentimes it means we deliberately blind ourselves to larger-scale developments or refuse to place ourselves within a wider frame, a less centralized system. This occurs at all levels, from macro-economics to interpersonal relationships. I catch myself doing it a lot.
Of course the other side of the coin is that we still strive to understand, to know how all this great mess of STUFF works, even and especially when we realize just how futile a venture that really is. It means that all the silly nihilists can go terrorizing bowling enthusiasts with their ferrets, screaming that life has no meaning and you can't believe in anything, and the rest of us can still sit back and say "Yeah, alright, cheers. We'll figure something out then, shall we?"
...I like to imagine The Human Spirit as having a posh accent...given how pathologically dreary the upper-middle-class English population can be, I really have no idea why.
Um, anyway. Time for lunch. And then one more class and then I've gotta get some detail work done on the painting I started a couple weeks ago.
February 7, 2009
Srsly, California...
and srsly, America. Stop sippin' on the Haterade:
"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
February 6, 2009
3 things
1: There need to be more women (ok and men) in the music industry and in all walks of life with that kinda attitude.
-2- Nabe (NAH-bay) is the bestest and healthiest lazy-man's dinner in the world and even though I had a big ol' clay pot fulla it last night I might just make it again.
3) A proposal for the Ministry of Education and any government body that oversees work being done in a shared office type environment: Anyone who pulls shit like sneezing into their hand and then using that hand to open a door or otherwise touch all over a piece of oft-touched office property should have 10% of ALL employee health costs docked from their current month's salary.
that last one wasn't AT ALL based on observation at my workplace, oh no of course not... (¬_¬)
-2- Nabe (NAH-bay) is the bestest and healthiest lazy-man's dinner in the world and even though I had a big ol' clay pot fulla it last night I might just make it again.
3) A proposal for the Ministry of Education and any government body that oversees work being done in a shared office type environment: Anyone who pulls shit like sneezing into their hand and then using that hand to open a door or otherwise touch all over a piece of oft-touched office property should have 10% of ALL employee health costs docked from their current month's salary.
that last one wasn't AT ALL based on observation at my workplace, oh no of course not... (¬_¬)
February 1, 2009
Wordcraft & Bakermancy
So today begins FeboWriMo, the perhaps ill-chosen 28-day month in which I attempt to make up for my failure at NaNoWriMo back in November. I'm at 2300 words and feelin' good. Let's hope I can continue this upward trend all week and build up a nice word-count buffer for over the weekend, 'cause it's nice to spend at least one day not being a slave to my laptop.
ALSO, today marks my third successful session of engaging in the dark arts of microven magic.
ALSO, today marks my third successful session of engaging in the dark arts of microven magic.
MICROWAVE BAKING PART THREE: This time, it's muffins!
here they are about to mount a brutal assault of chocolatey doom upon my poor computer. mmmmm...doom.
here they are about to mount a brutal assault of chocolatey doom upon my poor computer. mmmmm...doom.
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