噂又？有能来九舞飲栗酒？

Organamatronic

2008-06-30T21:22:23Z

So this guy I know from the session in Palo Alto, Michael, invited me to play with his band, Organamatronic, at their first live gig. It's all low-key ambient improv music, so we didn't rehearse or anything; I just showed up in Half Moon Bay Saturday morning with my fiddle, and once they were all set up we started with the rock-out.

The way they work, apparently, is Michael's got like 15 different instruments lying around, and he noodles around on them while Delaney mans the mixing software and picks out things to loop, slowly building a texture over time with instruments ranging from electric guitar to mandolin, kalimba, whistle, hang, bouzouki, electric bass, and on and on. It's a pretty impressive operation for just two people. I hung out in the back and dinked around when the mic wasn't otherwise occupied.

Annnyway, it turns out they recorded the gig, so take a listen if you like! I sucked on most of it, but tracks 2 and 5 I think turned out not too bad. I'll get better, I promise. Either way, fun!

oh hells yes

2008-06-19T22:12:46Z

I got a shoutout in GamesRadar! (And apparently in PC Zone UK? In print?) Cave Story topped their list of 50 freeware PC games, or something, and earned a mini-review.

The whole game’s been meticulously translated from the original Japanese too, so the story arrives unscathed and, as far as we can tell, just as beautifully written as the original.

Aww yeah! Work that East Asian Studies degree, baby!

Busking

2008-06-19T00:13:04Z

To play music or perform entertainment in a public place, usually while soliciting money.

So I've started playing fiddle in the streets like a bum! A friend of mine at the Irish folk session in Palo Alto invited me to give it a try with him. Total take in tips:

5/30, downtown Mountain View: $16
6/13, downtown Palo Alto: $52
6/14, Millbrae Farmers' Market: I don't know the total, but I wound up with $15.

It's loads of fun, and these silly Silicon Valley millionaires throw us cash for doing something we'd do anyway. I'll probably be doing more performing throughout the summer.

shihtzu @ 2008-06-12T08:49:00

2008-06-12T15:51:35Z

Happy Habeas Corpus Day!

発見

2008-04-05T23:35:39Z

The model name of my vacuum cleaner is "Discovery." It occurs to me that discovery is one of the last things you would hope for while vacuuming.

Mekuri Master

2008-04-01T00:12:16Z

Yeah, um.

So back when Rose & Camellia was making the rounds, I saw a few people actually saying the game was sexist. This was nonsense, of course, just as it was when my mom tried to tell me that it was sexist to hit the women in Double Dragon who, let's not forget, are beating you with whips, Mom.

But... crud. What am I supposed to say about Mekuri Master?

See, according to Japanese Wikipedia, flipping up girls' skirts, or skirt-mekuri, was a fad in Japanese schools among boys (and girls), particularly from the 1960s through the 1980s. This was supposedly Marilyn Monroe's fault, or something. The level of societal concern over this varied depending on the age on the perpetrators and the exact nature of the incidents.

Around the '70s and '80s, this began to seep into the popular culture as well, with skirt-flipping and panty shots becoming a staple of certain gag manga and TV shows like That's Our Sarutobi, Maitching! Machiko-sensei (NSFW), and Scandal Campus (NSFW). Lest we fall into the (sometimes valid!) Japan-is-so-weird trap, note that even in Japan these were considered controversial and racy; the article for Machiko-sensei helpfully points out that "generally the teacher's breasts were exposed at the end of every episode," which "prompted concern from PTAs and other groups."

As Japan entered the '90s, continues our entirely unsourced Wikipedia article, the skirt-flipping trend more or less died out; theorized causes include earlier maturation in girls, more latent sexuality in boys, trends toward less enticing undergarments such as bloomers and tight leggings, a move in school uniforms from long skirts to miniskirts, and even a shift from male to female dominance in schoolyard social hierarchy. However, an entire generation of Japanese youth grew up with this phenomenon, and I'd imagine the manga and anime of that era carry as much nostalgia as He-Man and the Smurfs do to me and my peers.

So what I'm saying is, my latest translation, NIGORO's Mekuri Master (probably NSFW) is a parody of and homage to these old cherished anime and the social context that spawned them. And also it's a game where you run through a school flipping up girls' skirts. Yes, Mom, it's sexist.

Eugénie is a lesbian, Part 1

2008-03-25T06:30:36Z

So as I mentioned, I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time. The translator's foreword had prepared me for the notion that (contrary to the anime) Eugénie, Albert's fiancée, was more into the femmes than the hommes, but even so, I wasn't expecting basically every reference to her to more or less amount to "Eugénie, the lesbian, said 'Hello, I am a lesbian,' as she sat quietly lesbianing."

Think I'm kidding? Let's start with Chapter LIII, "Robert Le Diable," where she first makes her appearance as most major characters engage in gossip at the opera.

    [Château-Renaud speaking to Albert] 'What, my dear fellow! They find you a fiancée built like Diana the Huntress, and you are not happy!'
    'Precisely. ... This Diana the Huntress, always surrounded by her nymphs, frightens me a little. I'm afraid she might treat me like Actaeon.' (599)

    As Château-Renaud said, she was Diana the Huntress, but with something even firmer and more muscular in her beauty. As for her upbringing, if there was anything to be said against it, it was that, like some traits of her physiognomy, it seemed more appropriate to the other sex. (600)

    [Of Monte Cristo's mistress Haydée] 'The woman, Monsieur Lucien,' said Eugénie; 'have you noticed how beautiful she is?'
    'Really, Mademoiselle, you are the only woman I know who is so generous in speaking about others of your own sex.' (605)

    [The baroness, speaking of Haydée again] 'But what makes a princess, my dear? Diamonds, and she's covered in them.'
    'Too much so, in fact,' said Eugénie. 'She would be more beautiful without them, because you could see her neck and her wrists, which are delightfully shapely.'
    'There speaks the artist!' said Mme Danglars. 'See what an enthusiast she is!'
    'I love everything beautiful,' said Eugénie.
    'So what do you think of the count?' said Debray. 'He strikes me as not too bad himself.'
    'The count?' said Eugénie, as if she had not previously considered looking at him. (606)

    [Albert] 'You know, Countess G--- claims [the count] is a vampire.'
    'Countess G---? Is she back, then?' asked the baroness.
    'In that side box,' Eugénie said. 'Look, mother, almost opposite us: she's that woman with the magnificent blonde hair.' (606)

    'Eugénie,' the baroness went on, turning to her daughter, 'the Count of Monte Cristo!'
    The count bowed and Mlle Danglars gave a slight nod of the head.
    'You are accompanied by a splendid young woman, Monsieur le Comte,' said Eugénie. 'Is she your daughter?' (609-610)

I'm not cherry-picking my quotes here, either; this is seriously close to the sum total of her presence in this chapter. In other words, sweet. I'm totally hoping that the hints I've read prove true and she winds up running off with her lady piano teacher. Book Albert (as opposed to anime Albert) is a douche anyway.

ドキドキわくわく

2008-03-21T00:13:30Z

It has arrived! My brand-new Casio XD-GP9700 electronic dictionary! With dual touch-screen action! (Awesome!) Backlight! (Intense!) Handwritten kanji lookup! (Hell yes!) A wine companion! (Huh?) Several basic English conversation primers! (I don't think I need that.) A TOEFL Test Perfect Vocabulary guide! (No thanks.) A guide to living and studying in America! (I paid how much for this?) A dictionary of Japanese counting terms! (Wait, that's actually useful.)

Yeah, it's got way too much stuff I'll never use, but it's also got tons of improvements over my old SII SR-T6700 (you know, the one that died half a year ago). I'll, uh, report back, then, once I've had a chance to break it in?

Man, I really need to get back into reading Japanese now. Except I still have 500 pages left in The Count of Monte Cristo! I am reading it because I adore the anime adaptation and I want to know what they changed, which is so far not actually too much! Apparently the novel has lesbians and the anime does not. This is not usually how the process works.

A Day With Suda 51

2008-03-03T09:32:30Z

For the first time in several months, I actually played a video game all the way through! This has not happened since Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Total time: 24:01.

That means that No More Heroes was roughly 12 hours of a fun, stylish, well-designed swordfighting action game with the most entertainingly incoherent storyline I've seen in years, and 12 hours of having to run around doing a bunch of dumb crap in an authentically ugly recreation of southern California urban blight. It's like Shadow of the Colossus (of all things) with an empty and hideous cityscape instead of an empty and meditative landscape serving to pad the time in between the awesome set pieces.

Would I recommend it? I cannot stress enough how lame the open-world segments are, but once I got over that disappointment and decided to blow through them as fast as possible to get to the parts that have, you know, actual content, things turned into a crazy good time. The actual slicing-dudes-up business is simple but satisfying, while the boss battles each have their own creative twist that requires more considered strategy. The plot, even by video game standards, is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, but what stylish, stylish fury, and what ludicrous, ludicrous nothing.

It's a flawed game. I found little (and big) things to hate and missed opportunities everywhere. And yet, every time I embarked on a new ranked assassination mission, I got this grin on my face, because the game is so damn messed up that I honestly had no clue what new weirdass stunt it was going to pull. As they say, there is good art and there is good trash, and if a game is not going to be art, then let it, like this one, be trash of the highest order.

Mom update

2008-02-01T05:02:23Z

Mom's out of the hospital and safe at home. She's feeling a lot better than she was the first couple days, and you can hear it in her voice.

She's got a temporary bed in the living room now because she doesn't dare use the stairs while wearing the halo. The next few months are going to be tough, but she's got the support of Dad and all her friends, so she sounds like she'll be fine. Bored, but fine. She says she'll be reading a lot of books.

Mom's fine

2008-01-28T08:44:45Z

So apparently my mom managed to take a wrong turn coming out of the bathroom and fell down the stairs at 3 AM Sunday morning. I think the story is she fractured a couple vertebrae and has to wear a Halo brace for the next three months, which I'm sure will be tons of fun, but they didn't have to operate and don't predict any lasting damage, so it could've been a lot worse. I got to talk to her and Dad today and she was fine, or at least as fine as can be expected when you're in pain, stuck in a brace and a hospital bed, and floating on morphine.

I know only a couple of people reading this know her, but anyway, um, fret not, I guess. Those of you with staircases in your homes may find it advisable to have them removed.

Man

2008-01-27T02:03:32Z

So on the way to the movie theater, what should I pull up behind but one of the Google Street View camera cars! Of all the days to forget my cell phone.

And then I saw Cloverfield! It was pretty neat, overall; none of the character interaction was anywhere near as captivating as The Blair Witch Project, but neither was it particularly odious, and it was still fun to see a generic city-blows-up monster movie spun through a home-movie gimmick. Also, I knocked off a few bucks by seeing the matinee, which is fair enough for a movie that seems to skip its last reel.

Edit: Also, even more than most recent disaster movies, the vast majority of the imagery in the movie owes its existence to 9/11 (skyscrapers crumbling, people running through streets, ducking away from dust clouds, racing through stairwells), and yet no one seems to be really giving a crap. It must no longer be Too Soon! This is surely good news for Uwe Boll.

隊長！体がなぜかしびれてきました！隊長！

2008-01-14T02:13:52Z

Wed. night: Ants all over bathroom and bedroom. Trap placed and within minutes they're all nom nom nom and fighting each other for that sweet, sweet arsenic.

Thu. night: Trail across bathroom floor and bedroom mostly gone. Ants partying under bathroom sink clustered around trap.

Fri. night: Party noticably quieter.

Sun. morning: Lone ant staggers out from behind the tile and clambers weakly up the side of the trap for another dose.

Grant's Kills Ants earns the coveted Video Smash Excellent seal of approval.

隊長！非常にうまいものを発見しました！

2008-01-10T07:11:20Z

Got some arsenic-flavored ant bait things on the way home from work; in theory, they should gobble it up, barf it back up for everyone in the nest, and kill their precious queen. The hungry ant is its own worst enemy. Slick!

They sure do seem to like the stuff.

隊長！侵入に成功しました！

2008-01-09T06:46:51Z

In retrospect, the months of ants marching across the front walk to and from under the house might reasonably have been construed as a cause for concern.

Wheeee~

2007-12-01T07:52:42Z

I can't believe I've lived in this apartment for a year and a half and haven't played the Walk-On-The-Ceiling Game!

The Walk-On-The-Ceiling Game is when you take a chair with wheels and no armrests (a rolling stool or footrest ought to work, too) and lie across it on your back, bent backward so that your feet are on the floor but your head is nearly upside-down. Then you can scoot with your legs and enjoy the resulting Bizarro World where your furniture is stuck to the ceiling, floors are vast white expanses, and doors all have funny bits to step over. Also everything is backwards!

It's a great way to explore familiar surroundings in a new light! It's also a great way to fall down the stairs, so don't do that, unless you're really really into the whole rolling-chair thing.

subliminable

2007-11-17T04:41:07Z

Ha! I needn't have worried. Not only does the retail box logo of Super Mario Galaxy still contain its brilliant hidden message, the sparkles in question actually animate on the title screen! This conspiracy goes deeper than we ever dreamed!

Incidentally, the free $25 Best Buy gift card with purchase thing really does work.

自信

2007-10-31T06:25:53Z

Whee, earthquake.

I experienced one or two in Japan, but this was the first one I've felt in California. I was at the Irish folk session I go to in Palo Alto, so we were a ways away, but it was still strong enough to derail conversation. Mostly it was a weird feeling of the ground being gently stirred.

Bookcase at home is still upright. I better secure that thing.

The Policeman's Diaper

2007-10-29T16:57:20Z

The Vulgar Maid

2007-10-29T08:03:19Z

Now in Spooooookyvision

2007-10-26T18:56:05Z

So I woke up last Saturday to find half of a disemboweled mouse in my patio. This meant that I got to scrape Mr. Whiskers (sans haunch) and several of his adorable little organs into a plastic bag, stick that bag in a bag, rush it out to the garbage bin, and count the days until pickup (Wednesday). This plan would have worked perfectly were it not for the small detail that pickup is Thursday, and I knew that, so why I put the bin out Wednesday morning and hauled it back (still full) that same evening is a mystery that can only be ascribed to membership in the I-D-ten-T Club.

The upshot of all this is that Mr. Whiskers is going to be my friend at least through Halloween now, and like most of my friends, he smells rank. Do I:

a) Wait another week, have him dumped out, and then try to reclaim use of the bin through some kind of lemony chemical spray

b) Hang him above the door to traumatize trick-or-treaters

c) Stick him in the neighbors' bin like a total jerkass

Note also that I missed the tail during cleanup and had to wash it into my garden later. I think legally this means he's allowed to haunt me.

shihtzu @ 2007-10-22T20:49:00

2007-10-23T03:52:19Z

O mother, the men are bad! They have knives and books also.

NOVA going nova

2007-09-20T01:28:08Z

This may not be particularly notable to non-nihongo types, but for those of you who've lived in Japan or done the eikaiwa (English conversation school) thing, you might be interested in the news that NOVA, easily the biggest and most inescapable chain in Japan, is completely falling apart in the wake of massive debt and a widely-reported scandal earlier this year that called attention to some of their shady business practices.

Gaijin forums are buzzing with reports and rumors of mass teacher resignations, schools closing, teachers and Japanese staff not getting paid, teachers getting evicted from NOVA-subsidized apartments after NOVA allegedly fails to contribute its share of the rent... It's looking pretty nasty.

I was never with NOVA, but I did do AEON (a rival eikaiwa school) a couple years ago, and... my feelings are mixed. It's never good when people are out of a job, especially if they're settled in with families and depend on it, but I can't say that the industry itself wasn't asking for this kind of thing to happen. AEON may not have been quite as notorious as NOVA among the gaijin crowd ("stands for NO-VAcations, har!"), but it's pretty much cut from the same sleazy cloth, with materials of questionable educational value and "individual counseling sessions" which teachers were ordered to use to sell extra CDs and more expensive classes to the students. And of course, none of the teachers actually have an education background (a fact all the schools cheerfully omit); applicants that do have one are actually much less likely to be accepted. People actually qualified to teach English wind up at universities instead.

So I wish the best for the thousands of employees, Japanese and otherwise, but honestly I hope this either improves the industry or destroys it. Does anyone reading this have any eikaiwa experiences? Zoe, you still around?

あらっ

2007-08-22T06:40:08Z

電子辞書ちゃん、ノォー！死んじゃダメー！ほんの少しのお水くらいで・・・

夢だよね？明日目覚めたらお前は元気のままね？

とほほ～。

The Game Chamber

2007-08-06T23:20:57Z

Are you tired of game storage devices that dispense your games wantonly and without restriction? Do you think seeing the label on your DS cartridge takes all the mystery out of life? The Game Chamber is the user-punishing product for you!

Only $14.95 stands between you and a valuable exercise in building character through hardship!