Went to the riverside Greeneway for lunch today

Pictures forthcoming.

Things to bring next time:

1. Something to sit on
2. Rollerskates, so I don't spend all my time walking to the river and back

[Edit 11:24 pm:] Pictures are up, such as they are.

The lighting wasn't really conducive to photography, but I got a couple of decent shots.

There's too much news @_@

Whew, what a day.

It seemed like it was nonstop from the moment I arrived at work.

First I had to put up the videos I hadn't had time for on Friday. Then I had to do stories and videos for the weekend. There were other miscellaneous updates to do. I started amassing information for the 5 and 6 pm updates as early as possible, and ended up working through lunch. (I ate a turkey and Swiss sandwich, a yogurt, and a peanut butter and chocolate chunk granola bar while I worked.)

The news meeting at 2:30 was a nice reprieve, and, just like on Friday, I enjoyed hearing how the news got discussed and planned for dissemination. After the meeting I threw together the web content for 5 and managed to get it all done before the news aired. Then I was free to pay attention to recording the live broadcast, and then snagging clips from it. I put together the 6 o'clock news quickly too, but I had to wait for the encoded video to upload to the server, so I wasn't able to do clips until 6:45 or so. If I make shorter video encodes they upload faster, but I was busy with text stuff during the 6:00 broadcast and didn't stop the recording during the commercials.

Ultimately I did get pretty much everything done that I needed to. I also learned a few more things about the job and what I have to accomplish. There's kind of a schedule for certain kinds of content. It's not just the same thing every day. That's nice, as it keeps things new.

I realized today that I really have to have a good idea of what's going on in local news to do my job well. That's fine with me, though.

The most exciting part of my day was when a breaking news story came up at the meeting and I got to put it on the website. It was kind of thrilling to be one of the first ways people might have heard about the story.

'Horie email' a fake?

Mainichi: DPJ admits sender, recipient of 'Horie mail' may be same person

DPJ Secretary-General Yukio Hatoyama is set to hold a news conference Tuesday to announce the results of the party's investigations into whether the e-mail is genuine.

When asked about whether the sender of the e-mail is identical to its receiver, Hatoyama said, "There are such observations."

"If it's true, it raises questions about why the sender sent the e-mail to himself. We must look into the purpose of doing so," he told reporters.

Gee, I wonder what the purpose might have been? ;P

Will write fangirl posts for manga

Check out my new Wish List! It's over on Amazon.co.jp, and currently is filled with the Maru Ma manga. X) Shoji Kawamori Macross Design Works is still on there from several years ago, too...I wouldn't mind having that again, but my main priority is more Shibuya Yuuri.

Apparently there's a character in the manga/novels who wasn't in the anime. His name is Badwic, and you can see him at the bottom of this page. I don't have time to mess with a full translation right now, but my limited Japanese ability indicates that he has something to do with the study of women's fiction in Shin Makoku. Maybe he's the publisher of Anissina's books, I dunno.

Time for bed!

(P.S. 460 yen is, like, $3.96. Just so you know.)

Kyou Kara Maou Taizen Shuu

I watched the first four episodes of Kyou Kara Maou Taizen Shuu today, raw. It really is a quick summary of the series. Each episode covers an entire story arc. The first episode was Yuuri's arrival and decision to become the Maou. The second one was the retrieval of Morgif. The third one was the Stoffel civil war arc. And the fourth one was finding the Mateki. I'm not sure how it's going to go when they get to the longer arcs, but we'll see!

I was hoping since the DVD box art features chibis that there would be some chibi-fied stories, a la Prince of Tennis. It's still possible that might happen. You never know! For now, though, they're just using the original episodes, with Yuuri narrating. That's also fine with me :>

Uh, crap

So, H&R Block messed up their own taxes. There was apparently also some sort of glitch that messed up the taxes H&R Block did for people last month.

Sean and I use H&R Block every year.

Fortunately we haven't done our taxes yet, and H&R Block claims to have fixed the problem...but still, this doesn't give me a lot of confidence.

(via Slashdot)

Ice festivals

I've known for awhile that Hokkaido has ice festivals. (And I really want to go to them!)

Today, via HappyNews, I discovered that Alaska has one too!

John Leguizamo will arrive by dog sled at an ice-carving festival in Fairbanks to open a park with characters from the upcoming sequel to his film ''Ice Age,'' officials said.

[...]

Besides towering sculptures, the monthlong ice festival this year will feature huge carvings of Sid the sloth, voiced by Leguizamo, and other characters from the ''Ice Age'' movies. The sequel opens March 31.

The Hollywood visit means more attention to the yearly ice art festival, considered a world-class competition. The event matches teams racing to create intricate carvings than can be as tall as 30 feet and weigh more than 22 tons.

I would love to try my hand at photographing ice and snow sculptures.

Free pancakes at IHOP this Tuesday

In celebration of "International Pancake Day" (the day of the pancake race I mentioned last year), IHOP will give you a free short stack of pancakes between the hours of 7am and 2pm.

Here's the offer as listed on IHOP.com. I found out about this at Snopes.

Tuesday morning is kind of an inconvenient time for most people with jobs. I could actually go, though, because I don't have to be at work until 10am!

That's the only "plan" I have for Mardi Gras so far :>

Kyou Kara Maou 78 - FINAL

:)

Once again, I must say: I really wish I could screencap.

The resolution seemed to come quickly, and then all of a sudden the decision was made and it was not the decision I was expecting. "Wait...it can't end like that!" I protested.

And it didn't! XD

There could absolutely be another series, if someone were so inclined. This time it would have to be a new enemy as opposed to an ancient one, I think. Maybe something on Earth!

I'm very pleased with this series. The whole thing. That doesn't happen very often. Yay!

Now I will just have to wait for all the DVDs to come out here so I can see the episodes in widescreen...and, of course, hope for another series to be made in Japan.

Thanks, Kyou Kara Maou, Takabayashi Tomo, NHK, and the fansubbers, and Geneon, and the people who distribute raws, for giving me so much enjoyment over the past year. And a special thank you to Kevin for recommending the series in the first place!

P.S. I now know what maruma means.

Places in Japan I need to visit in order to replace things

First and foremost, I need to go back to Hirashimizu Pottery in Yamagata to get another beautiful hand-made tea set.

I got two decorated tins, a tea scoop and some green tea at a shopping street in Yatsushiro. My host mother also gave me some sencha. I can probably go to a tea shop anywhere to replace these items, or I can find them online.

I had a little wooden doll, a kokeshi. I think I bought it at a souvenir shop just outside Suizenji Park in Kumamoto City, but I could be mistaken. In any case, I know where I can get one online.

I'd like another charm from Todaiji in Nara. The one I got on our honeymoon contained a blessing for "gaining knowledge". We also need to get Sean another cute cat statue from there ;>

When we were in Yatsushiro we went to a warehouse that had lots of discounted home items. I got a coffee set (why? I don't drink coffee) that happened to match a set of dishes my host mother gave me. You can see some of the coffee cups to the left, as well as the creamer for my tea set and some coasters. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a picture of the teapot and cups :(

I also got one of those dolls that are usually displayed in glass cases from that warehouse. It was in somewhat bad shape, and only cost me 500 yen. The owner kept trying to convince me to buy the 1500 yen doll. I liked the face on this one, though.

This last thing is kind of silly, but I like it. It's a little stuffed animal I got out of a bear claw (or, as they call them in Japan, "UFO Catcher"). According to the tag he was a hamusutaa. A hamster in a raincoat! Genius.

There are probably other items, but these are the main ones I could think of today.

Zojirushi's Mr. Bento

This is the most awesome thing I have ever seen.

I must have it!

Floorplans!

I traced these (quickly and inaccurately) from the pamphlet given to me by the apartments we're going to hopefully move to April 11.

The one on the left is a normal unit, and the one on the right is a corner unit. Both have their advantages, and I don't know yet which one we're getting. I'll ask when I drop off the application.

(I don't know what kind of crack the person who drew these was smoking. You can tell that the living room on the right is bigger than the one on the left, but they didn't change the dimensions.)

All in all I like this design. It's shotgun, but it works. One nice feature is having the washer and dryer right in the clothes closet. How convenient is that? I also like that the second bedroom's bathroom is accessible both from the bedroom and the hallway.

The apartment they showed me was a normal one. It was sort of weird to have the kitchen right there as soon as I walked in, but I figure that could be softened maybe with a curtain or--dare I dream?--a noren. (I could have sworn I posted somewhere about noren before, but I guess not. Suffice it to say I've been drooling over them for years.)

I don't know if I want to hope for a corner unit. The kitchen is nice and compartmentalized, which I prefer to having two entrances, and technically it has the same amount of counter space, but there's less square footage and probably less cabinet space. That huge bedroom is neat, with plenty of closet space, but since we have zero possessions that's not really a huge selling point right now. Also, that coat closet stuck in the middle of the living room is kind of bizarre. I guess a couch or screen would have to go nearby to continue the illusion of a separate room.

Not having (m)any possessions is actually kind of a good thing, because rather than having to try to make various disparate pieces match each other, I get to start over essentially from scratch with my decorating.

Right now I'm checking out JapaneseGifts.com and other places that sell Japanese-style decor. Man, wouldn't a kotatsu be nice? So expensive though...

Speaking of expensive, check out this Complete Tatami Room Kit. いいな。。。

I'm not sure which room of this apartment I would do up in tatami, though. One of the bedrooms would make the most sense, but both bedrooms are already spoken for :> We already have a bed for the master bedroom, so no floor-futons. I don't know if Sean would go for that, anyway. And there's no way I would put a bed on top of tatami mats.

The second bedroom will be our office. We don't have any furniture for our office yet, but I imagine that room will be full of computer equipment, which wouldn't be conducive to a minimalist old-style Japanese room.

About the best solution I can come up with is to partition off an area in the living/dining room with screens. That would probably get awkward :>

Ah well, I'll probably need to save my dream of a tatami room for we get a house. But I can definitely put some Japanese touches in the apartment. Noren, screens, wall scrolls, ikebana-esque flower arrangements, zabuton...

...and maybe a kotatsu. I would sooooo love to have one :D We could use it as a coffee table!

Fantastic Mainichi headline: "Lust is all about having sex on the mind"

Really?!

(Honestly, I'm impressed with Dr. Kunio Kitamura and his efforts to raise awareness of sexual issues in Japan. But that title cracks me up!)

This translation wasn't as difficult as I thought it was

Here's my translation, with discussion, of the title of the last episode of Kyou Kara Maou, which aired today (and which I will hopefully see soon).

The title of the episode, as listed on NHK's Anime World website, is 「マた会う日まで」. My translation for this title is "Until the Day We Meet Again". Those of you with no interest in the Japanese language can stop reading now!

Laborious Pronunciation Discussion

In the preview at the end of episode 77, Yuuri pronounces the episode title mata au hi made. This is important to note, because his pronunciation can be a little confusing. At first I thought he was saying shima de, and this drove me bonkers because 日 is not pronounced shi, ever. After spending a good deal of time trying to figure out if this was one of those situations where they use a different kanji than normal in order to add meaning, I suddenly remembered that Yuuri's h is a fricative. (In other words, he pronounces it with friction, rather like a cat's hiss.)

The best evidence of Yuuri's fricative h comes in every episode featuring the kotsuhizoku, or "flying bone tribe". He gave them the nickname kohhi こっひ. Get it? kotsuhizoku. (That extra h is not something we do in English, and is somewhat hard to explain, though I'll be happy to try if anyone's interested.)

Back in the beginning when KKM wasn't on DVD, the fansubbers wrote this nickname as "Koshi". And indeed, it does sound like Yuuri's saying that. But he's not!

I had one other pronunciation difficulty when translating this episode title. For a time I was convinced he was saying hima de instead of hi made, which introduced quite a dilemma, as there is no word 日ま hima. I spent quite some time trying to figure out if it was a pun before I realized it had to be hi made. I think my Japanese word-break comprehension is still unfortunately informed by the English rules for same.

With the pronunciation understood, let's break the episode title down.

Laborious and Possibly Redundant/Unnecessary Ma Tangent

The ma in mata is written in katakana with a circle around it, just like the ma in Maou. (Note that this can't be replicated in standard Japanese encoding. The NHK website uses a graphic for the ma.)

The actual kanji for the ma in Maou is 魔, and it means "demon". So, mazoku 魔族 = "demon race/tribe/people", makoku 魔国 = "demon country", maken 魔剣 = "demon sword", mateki 魔笛 = "demon/magic flute" (which is interestingly enough how they write the name for Mozart's "The Magic Flute" in Japanese), majutsu 魔術 = "demon skill/technique" (demon magic), etc. The general word for "magic" in Japanese is mahou 魔法.

Obviously the ma in mata is not the same as the ma in Maou. It would normally be written in hiragana, thus: ま. Writing it in katakana (マ) and putting a circle around it is simply a reference to the title of the series and the "demonic" nature of the plot.

Translating the Title...Gee, That Was Easy

The word mata また means "again".

The next part, au 会う, is the verb for "to meet".

Hi made 日まで adds the meaning of "until [such-and-such] day".

Taken all together, the title might be translated as "Until the Day We Meet Again". A fitting title for an ending episode--especially given the episode's plot.

North by Northwest

I'm watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Cary Grant.

Is that awesome or what?

"You listen to me. I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent on me. And I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed."

I am seriously digging this movie.

An Affair to Remember was the first (and perhaps only until now) movie I ever saw Cary Grant in. His role in North by Northwest is pretty different from his role as Nicky Ferrante, although he's still a lady killer ;> Ah, I loves me some Cary Grant.

Netflix rules. I'm getting exposed to so many great movies I've never heard of ;> Next in my queue is the first DVD of an anime ADV just released called Diamond Daydreams. It's about six girls who come together through their heartbreak, or something. (It sounds like it's based on the type of game Shibuya Shori likes to play ;>) When I read about it in the ADV newsletter I thought it sounded like something I'd be interested in seeing, but not something I wanted to buy without knowing whether or not I liked it. Netflix to the rescue!

Well, since you asked

I had a great first day at work.

The first thing I did upon arrival was fill out scads of paperwork. Once I was done with that I met a producer who had had a little training in my position, and he showed me the ropes for most of the day. He was great, very laid back, and happy to go off and do his own thing when he saw I had a handle on things.

I spent most of the morning learning how to use the robust content management systems and the ancient application that they use to manage the news. Things sort of tapered off right around lunchtime.

I'd planned to go to a huge Chinese restaurant I pass on the way in, but instead I drove to downtown Augusta and got a huge hotdog off a vendor. It had mustard, ketchup, horseradish, cheese, and sauerkraut on it.

It was the best. Hotdog. Ever.

I took it, a bag of Cheetos, and an orange soda back to North Augusta and over to the golf course, where I sat in my car and ate and then took some pictures of the few bushes and flowers that were blooming along the road.

Then it was time to go back to work.

As soon as I arrived, my supervisor gave me a belated tour. Then I was given a key to the building and a code for making long distance calls. And then it was time for the news meeting, where all the producers get together and discuss the lineup for the evening news. I sit in on this so I know what's going on and have a handle on which stories are important for the website.

The meeting was really fun. I don't know if I'm more outgoing now or if this environment is just right for me or what, but I never felt awkward. And that is really saying something. Everybody just seemed to be my kinda people.

After the meeting I headed back to the office I share with the graphic designer to get to work on putting stories online. By this point my email address had been passed around and now reporters were sending me their stuff.

When it came time for the news, it was pretty hectic. I had to record the broadcasts digitally for video clips for the website, and upload text content at the same time. Since the text is written for TV, it usually doesn't flow very well for reading, and often includes special codes that mean things only to the directors/camera operators/on-air talent/etc. So I have to remove all the excess, clean up the prose, and finally publish the piece using the CMS. It's not difficult but it is time-consuming. Those last two hours of work were a little crazy.

All in all, I am very happy with how my first day went. I met a bazillion people, producers and reporters and others, whose names I hope to eventually learn ;> I learned a lot and feel comfortable with the job. My supervisor has already ordered me some business cards!

This job is really cool. I think I'm going to have fun :)

I couldn't help myself

First day

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I set my alarm for 7:45, but I was on my way out the door an hour early this morning! When I checked the time to make sure I wasn't late, I got very confused :> Having work that doesn't start until 10 is going to be an adjustment...

My tentative plan for the future is to 1) join the Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta; 2) purchase a car that is big enough to put my bicycle inside, like Mari's PT Cruiser. Then I will see about heading to North Augusta early to bike/work out, going to the Activities Center after work, or both.

I love that my new job is just down the street from the Activities Center :)

Sean and I have picked out a place to live; it's an apartment complex off Wheeler Road, close to the Augusta Exchange and pretty much as convenient to everything as Springhouse. The apartment we want will come available April 11. Here's hoping someone else doesn't snap it up before we get our application in ;P

And now I'm off to see about breakfast! I probably won't blog until I get home from work today (alas) because I plan to eat out for lunch. So I'll see you later!

I have a new job.

It's a full time web publishing position. My hours are 10am to 7pm. I start tomorrow.

I'll be making more money than I am currently, though not as much as I was in the too good to be true job I held for three weeks last year (;P).

It's something I know I can do, but it will still be challenging. I won't be trained; I have to teach myself how to do everything. It's pretty much right up my alley, since I'm the type of person to figure stuff out on my own rather than have someone show me.

I'll be working in an industry I haven't worked in before, which will be interesting.

When I wrote the other day about seeing my time in a new light, I was also thinking about the freedom I'd be giving up if I accepted the position. I decided that a steady paycheck was more important at this point. I'm going to keep doing design on the side (and lusting after Adobe's Creative Suite), but at this point I'm not prepared to depend on it for income.

Plus, I think this job is something that is varied enough to keep me interested, but not constantly demanding. I'm hoping it's something I can do for a long time.

IT'S HERE @_@

Wings on DVD!!!!!

Me so happy!

And it's 30% off right now...>_>

Handy!

Check out Google's new page creator. This is great for quick websites. I'm not usually a fan of WYSIWYG, but you can edit the HTML if you want, and the templates are pretty. Here's mine! (Of course, I'm not sure if I'll use it for anything ;>

[Unpublished--see comments.]

Via Slashdot.

Indian food

I ran out of Slim-Fast earlier this week, so I've been having unhealthy breakfasts of McGriddle sandwiches and chocolate muffins. Today I decided to go to Publix and pick up something more nutritious.

As I was heading back to the fruit salads, I passed through the organic foods section. The frozen dinners caught my eye: pot pies, shepherd pies, salisbury steak, plus Thai, Chinese, and Indian selections. I picked out some Chicken Tikka Masala for lunch, then snagged some veggie chips kettle-cooked french onion chips and my fruit bowl and went to check out.

The lady at the checkout, Jyoti, has checked me out many times. Today she said, "You like spicy Indian food?"

"Yeah, it's good," I replied.

"You know there's an Indian market where you can get ready-made dinners?"

"Really? Where?"

So now I know about Maharaja Foods & Imports on Washington Road (listed on this page). I'll have to check it out!

Japanese TV show hires sniper

They arranged to meet the guy in a park just a 10-minute drive from Red Square. After the crew stood around shivering in the cold of a Russian winter night for a few minutes, the sniper called them on a cell phone and told them to meet him in a deserted building on the outskirts of the city.

After they arrived, the crew and the translator wandered around the building for a while, trying to figure out what would happen next, and finally a man appeared wearing a pullover mask with holes for his eyes, nose, and mouth. He refused to give a last name and suggested they change the subject when they asked him about his reasons for wearing a mask. He claimed to have been trained as part of a special KGB unit.

Click here to see what happened...and why they needed a sniper.

Pluto has three moons!

Just so you know.

Reuters: Tiny, frozen Pluto adds to its moon family

Some three billion miles from the Sun, Pluto, the ninth planet, is the only one not yet to have been visited by a spacecraft.

Its first known satellite Charon was not discovered until 1978. With a diameter of 1,200 km, it is half that of Pluto -- abnormally large for a moon in relation to its primary.

But now, using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Southwest Research Institute and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology say they have found two more tiny orbiting satellites, P1 and P2.

Both are travelling outside the orbit of Charon and are tiny by comparison, the scientists wrote in the journal Nature.

I bet there are all kinds of tiny things orbiting Pluto. Would an object the size of a baseball still be considered a moon? ;>

A new way of looking at things

I haven't been a normal, full time employee since last April, but it's only been recently that I've booked full time contract work. The experience has really changed how I think about my time.

As a contractor I am paid solely for the work I do. This means that if I take a break to read webcomics or check out the news or write on my blog, I lose money. And so I've started to think about everything I do during the day as "billable time" and "non-billable time", and constantly asking myself, "Can I charge for what I'm doing right now?"

It's kind of thrilling to be completely responsible for my time. If I slack off, the consequences are different. For example, if a job takes me 20 hours, but I spread those 20 hours out over a week, then I'm only getting half as much money as I could be getting. I have to fill my time with projects in order to make a profit.

There are so many organizational things, like creating rate sheets and designing pricing packages, that I can't charge anyone for. And I don't charge for consultations and rough drafts on principle. So the more time I spend on those things, the more money I lose. (I may have to set a time limit for free consultations and drafts.)

Ultimately, this is all very interesting. The control freak in me is enjoying herself heartily, while the slacker is wondering if this sort of thing is too stress-inducing. A regular job is safer, providing steady income no matter if I'm moving slowly or tearing through my work.

The control freak has a response to that concern, though: I can't choose my projects in a regular job.

Those crazy United Kingdom...ites

Language Log likes to point out President Bush's verbal mistakes, likely for the same reason that news outlets have been rabidly piling onto the recent Cheney quail hunting accident. However, sometimes something interesting comes out, like this piece from my hero Mark Liberman:

In this case, I'd like to point out that our president has put his finger on a real problem. In the first place, the British Isles have got the most confusing nomenclature around. There are at least 15 names of major overlapping political and geographical entities here, ignoring all the counties and bailiwicks and islands and the like. But the real problem is the endemic shortage of adjectives. Of the 15 names, 8 have no adjectival form, as far as I can tell. One (Scotland) has three different adjectival forms: Scots for the language and (mostly) the people; Scotch for the local distilled liquor; Scottish for everything else, more or less. There are four other (ambiguous) adjectives, all irregular formations with -ish or similar endings: British, English, Irish, Welsh. But the large-scale formal political entities centered in London -- United Kingdom, Great Britain -- are entirely bereft of corresponding adjectives, except for the jokey UKish and the irregular, ambiguous and confusing pair British and Britannic.

Check out the crazy table included below this paragraph in the post, and the helpful Venn diagram from the Wikipedia.

Dude, I am all about crazy tables and Venn diagrams.

Plus, Liberman is teh funnay.

But over the past few centuries, the English have been creating a bewildering agglomeration of half-digested acquisitions and new organizational initiatives -- a sort of political Enron -- while completely neglecting their duty to supply these entities with adjectives. The NGOs are nowhere to be seen; U.S. unilateralism is out of style, so an adjectival Marshall Plan is not in the cards; this is clearly a case for U.N. intervention.

Top Japanese baby names of 2005

About.com has a cool feature on the top baby names in Japan for 2005. Here's the list of the top ten, and here's a discussion of things that affect name popularity.

I find it interesting that "Hinata" and "Sakura" are so popular. They are Naruto characters. Do you think that had any effect? :>

I also think the changes in name selection are interesting. For example:

In the past, it was very common and traditional to use the kanji character "ko (a child)" at the end of female names. Empress Michiko, Crown princess Masako, princess Kiko, and Yoko Ono, all end with "ko (子)". If you have a few female Japanese friends, you will probably notice this pattern. In fact, more than 80% of my female relatives and girlfriends have "ko" at the end of their names (including me!).

However, this might not be true for the next generation. There are only three names including "ko" in the recent 100 popular names for girls. They are Nanako (菜々子)and Riko (莉子, 理子).

Instead of "ko" at the end, using "ka" or "na" is the recent trend. Haruka, Hina, Honoka, Momoka, Ayaka, Yuuna and Haruna for example.

Here is a huge list of Japanese baby names.

Mainichi correspondent honored for covering previously censored Nagasaki journalism

Mainichi correspondent wins major Japan-U.S. journalism prize

Sumire Kunieda, the Mainichi's Los Angeles correspondent, has won the prestigious Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist Prize for 2005, organizers said Wednesday.

Kunieda receives the prize in recognition of her 2005 coverage of unpublished reports by American reporter George Weller on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. Her story on the reports was carried in the June 17, 2005, morning edition of the Mainichi Shimbun.

The unpublished reports were the first reports from a Western journalist following the U.S. nuclear attack, but Allied censorship prevented them from being published. They remained unpublished until Kunieda unearthed them.

"Her reports helped people both in Japan and abroad to recognize once again the misery of atomic bombs," the prize's selection commission said.

I heavily quoted Sid's remarks on the censored articles here.

Japanese lawmaker comparison website

Asahi: Yahoo Japan to establish lawmaker-comparison Web site

"Political manifestoes have grown in popularity and importance, but there are still not many criterion in which voters can compare the achievements of a policy submitted by each party or lawmaker," an official at Yahoo Japan's service management department said. "We'd like to establish an information infrastructure over the Internet that can serve as a reference for making decisions in future national elections."

The database can be accessed from a link called "Yahoo! Minna no seiji" (politics for everyone) on Yahoo Japan's site < http://www.yahoo.co.jp/ >, according to the officials.

The information includes the lawmakers' parties, posts held, as well as their backgrounds and constituencies. The lawmakers will also provide their own political activity reports, similar in form to Internet blogs, the officials said.

Such information is largely available on the Diet members' official Web sites managed by their political parties. But Yahoo Japan added a search function to enable users to compare several lawmakers' opinions on an issue in a single Web site.

I am, as always a n00b...do we have anything like this for the US? I guess we would have to trust 1) the portal to be balanced and 2) the politicians to provide accurate information...

Ah, headlines

These four headlines are in my CNN RSS feed right now:

Explosion destroys al Askariya 'Golden Mosque'

Explosion damages al Askariya 'Golden Mosque'

Explosion hits al Askariya 'Golden Mosque'

Explosion destroys golden dome

They all link to the same article on CNN, which is currently titled

Shiite 'Golden Mosque' heavily damaged

I like seeing how people revise their headlines, and thinking about why they might have done so. It's like being a part of the newsroom. Obviously, this process is transparent in print newspapers.

(I commented on Reuters headlines here.)

Exposure to the electromagnetic spectrum

From BoingBoing:

The president of Canada's Lakehead University, Fred Gilbert, has banned the use of WiFi on campus because he's worried that inconclusive studies have failed to show that chronic exposure to radio waves won't cause long term harm:

"All I'm saying is while the jury's out on this one, I'm not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students," he said. "Admittedly that's highest around the locations of the antenna sites and the wireless hotspots, but those are the places people tend to gravitate to because they get the best reception."

Um, how about mobile phones, 2.4GHz walkie-talkies and microwaves, dude?

Actually, I have wondered about that myself. I'm more worried about mobile phones than I am about microwaves, because you use microwaves infrequently while the mobile phone is always on and always right near your person. (When I was growing up I was taught to never stand right next to the microwave while it was cooking.)

I guess I'm a n00b, but how do we know that sending new signals through the electromagnetic spectrum isn't harmful to humans? Heck, I worry that just being around electronics in general (that generate electromagnetic fields) might be harmful.

It seems to be a pattern for humans to introduce something new into our environment and only later, after society is dependent on it, determine its effect. Is this the way the world will end?

:>

SitePal's dynamic talking characters will eat your children

Have you seen these things?

Scary!

I honestly don't know who would want a talking character on their website. According to this particular one (who has a British accent), talking characters are proven to boost sales on e-commerce sites. (After she said that, I made her say "I highly doubt that." Then she said something incomprehensible, so I had her say "What the fuck did I just say?"...but she said it with different intonation than I intended. She sounded like an angry, obscene schoolmarm.)

In any case...talking websites suck. So please, don't make your website talk to me. I will close the window instantly and curse you to a doom worse than having Shinou orchestrate your life down to the very last detail. (Which really sucks; just ask Conrad!)

Drool...

I want this.

If I end up sticking with freelance design, I guess I will need to invest in it, actually.

...'cause I eats me spinach

For some reason it occurred to me to check and see if the Robin Williams Popeye movie is available on DVD. It is--and there are zillions of cartoon DVDs as well.

But I also found these:

Saints preserve us.

Clazy

So I woke up to 480 new emails this morning @_@

At first I thought someone had gone crazy with my contact form, but it turns out that a spamming poker joker went crazy with smugmug. Here's a thread about it over on dgrin.

Thankfully, smugmug had all the spam comments deleted before I even saw them! Yay smugmug!

Okay, I couldn't stand it...

I was afraid that something horrible would happen, so I read the description for the last episode.

I'm so bad :>

But at least I know that the horrible thing does not happen. And actually, I like the resolution they chose. (Of course, I don't know how exactly it ends, but I have a good idea now.)

...what am I going to do without my Kyou Kara Maou to look forward to?

I guess I can look forward to the subs, and the DVDs, and hope for another OST, and look into the manga and novels...

But man, I'm going to miss it.

Just one episode left to complete my obsession.

Dude

Okay, so yeah, the next episode will be the last one.

Wow.

That was awesome.

I mean...Morgif!

And of course Murata...but I had a feeling about that.

I'm not sure how it's all going to be resolved, but I imagine it should be open-ended, so there could conceivably be more story...even if they're not going to make any :/

You know what would suck?

No, I'm not even going to go there :P

Not long now...

Soon, soon I will have Kyou Kara Maou 77!

Eeeeee!

They're crazy, I tell ya

I would hope they've told everyone by now, but if not the following announcement may come as a shock:

BROOKE AND DAVID ARE GETTING MARRIED

OMGWTFBBQ

Okay, now you're up to speed.

I mention this only because of an article I came across today:

Nearly half of [British] motorists regularly talk to their cars, giving words of encouragement ahead of a long trip and lavishing praise for a job well done at journey's end, according to research on Monday.

A survey of 2,000 owners also found 40 percent thought their car had a personality and was capable of being upset whilst 19 percent worried about how their car was feeling.

What has Brooke gotten herself into?!

;>

New (to you) pics

Today I uploaded a bunch of old pictures to smugmug...basically filling in some gaps, like what on earth I was doing before the year 2005. We got our first digital camera in July of 2000, just in time for Faye and AJ's wedding. This explains why the pictures generally start in 2000, even though none of the pictures currently in the 2000 subcategory were actually taken with the digital camera. :> Some of my other film pictures may yet exist at my parents' house, but if so I will have to find them and scan them in before I can put them up anywhere. (Many of them only existed at the apartment, and are gone for good.)

I stopped at the beginning of 2003 because I got tired. A lot of the pictures I saw had stuff I lost in the fire in them, which was irritating, but it didn't hurt as much as I thought it might. Even when I saw my complete collection of Japan souvenirs from the 2001 trip (and some other stuff, like my Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit children's tea set).

There aren't really any spectacular photographs in these albums; they're just life pictures, stuff I was doing at the time. You'll see my second-ever visit to Sean, the trip to Texas, Connor wrapped in a ratty orange towel (so cute!), a freak hailstorm (these pics used to be up elsewhere on pixelscribbles, but I moved them), my surprise birthday visit to Sean, my engagement ring, and a massive party held the first time I visited Kentucky from Georgia. Missing are Logan's birth in June 2003, Connor's birthday in November 2003, a few get-togethers at our apartment in 2003, and all of 2004. I'll put those up later ;P

Holy crap, it's a contact form!

Now you can like, contact me and stuff.

"Google error"

I'm not trying to dump on Google here; I just think this is cute. I went to my Gmail account today, only to see the following:

I guess they didn't use their graphical logo for bandwidth reasons. Seeing "Google" written in plain text is kinda funky!

What is even more amusing is the code for this page.

<html><head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<title>502 Server Error</title>
<style><!--
body {font-family: arial,sans-serif}
div.nav {margin-top: 1ex}
div.nav A {font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,sans-serif}
span.nav {font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-weight: bold}
div.nav A,span.big {font-size: 12pt; color: #0000cc}
div.nav A {font-size: 10pt; color: black}
A.l:link {color: #6f6f6f}
A.u:link {color: green}
//--></style>

</head>
<body text=#000000 bgcolor=#ffffff>
<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td rowspan=3 width=1% nowrap>
<b><font face=times color=#0039b6 size=10>G</font><font face=times color=#c41200 size=10>o</font><font face=times color=#f3c518 size=10>o</font><font face=times color=#0039b6 size=10>g</font><font face=times color=#30a72f size=10>l</font><font face=times color=#c41200 size=10>e</font>  </b>
<td> </td></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor=#3366cc><font face=arial,sans-serif color=#ffffff><b>Error</b></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr></table>
<blockquote>
<H1>Server Error</H1>
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.<p>Please try again in 30 seconds.

<p>
</blockquote>
<table width=100% cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=#3366cc><img alt="" width=1 height=4></td></tr></table>
</body></html>

Ah, mixed CSS and HTML styling. How do I love thee?

Kyou Kara Maou OST 2, where the hell are you?

There is all kinds of music in the show that isn't on the first OST. Like the creepy Shinou music, or the updated Maou-mode theme. I need music from episode 40 and beyond!!

(Hey look, character singles. Two songs, with karaoke versions, for 1200 yen! What a deal!)

In other news, I love the art on the Japanese DVDs! Here's Cheri-sama channeling Shibuya Miko:

Kyou Kara Maou 77, where the hell are you?

I was going to write "wherefore art thou", but then I remembered that "wherefore" does not mean "where". Duh.

In any case, I am very antsy.

I really wish I could screencap. I would have posted so many pictures from the last several episodes.

The Great Sage isn't very attractive to me, but Shinou...drool. (Are they an item? I can't tell with my rudimentary Japanese skills ;P) Lawrence Weller is also hot, but seeing as he's basically Conrad with a different haircut, that's not surprising.

(It's a little silly that everyone conveniently has ancestors that look almost exactly like them, and use the same voice actors. I was glad to see Cecilie representing the Spitzweg family instead of Stoffel, though.

(Still waiting for the BIG REVEAL of the Wincott descendant. God, I love big reveals.)

Gah. I wish I lived in Japan. I would have seen the episode already!

Breastfeeding indecent?

What a load of crap:

Melissa Kroener was in a grocery last June when her 3-month-old son, Luke, got fussy and hungry.

Kroener, a law student, thought it too hot to breast-feed her child in the car and considered the store's bathroom "too gross." An employee offered her a seat at the front of the store.

All went well until a customer noticed and accused Kroener of public indecency. Another employee told her to move.

When I imagine this scene I see in my mind's eye the old Winn Dixie on Main Street in Nicholasville, where the boys and I used to go hang out while we were visiting Dad. (He lived in an apartment nearby, and that's about all I want to say about that. It was a rough time, and it's long past.)

The storefront of that Winn-Dixie was nothing but windows and girders. There were black chairs lined up along the wall near the automatic doors, the toy vending machines and a vacuum/carpet shampooer you could rent. I'm imagining a woman sitting there with her breast exposed for all to see, both inside the store and out.

Even in that case, I don't think it's right to force her to move.

The film Tampopo, one of my favorites, is all about food. The end credits scroll past a baby who is breastfeeding. And this isn't your normal, American-style breastfeeding, where there's a blanket or something draped over. This is a bare breast, with a baby sucking on it, for the entirety of the credits.

When I first saw it, it was very disconcerting. The breastfeeding seemed to last forever. While intellectually I knew that this was a very natural thing, that the baby was eating, there was a core part of me that was uncomfortable seeing it.

Why?

It's natural to breastfeed. It's healthier for the baby. And in today's busy world, we can't guarantee that we will be in the privacy of our own home, or that we will have pumped breast milk handy, when the baby needs nourishment. We have things we need to do, and none of us is perfect.

I think this all comes down to the sexualization of the breast.

What, scientifically, does the breast have to do with the sexual act? Nothing. It's not necessary. It's very nice to include it, but we all know where the real action happens. Yet in our culture we have so sexualized breasts that we are shocked when we see them.

They're just breasts.

Is it impossible to see a breast and not be scandalized? Can't we agree that there are times when breasts are not sexy?

My website needs to go on a diet

I was poking around my website, deleting old stuff and updating the few static html pages to kindasorta match this design, and I realized that boy is this template chunky. Way too much code. Someday I'm going to have to rewrite this thing...

The old stories, poems, and photography sections are gone. The photos (except for the Rose Tour) are on smugmug. The stories suck and will not be published again. Well, except maybe for that one that wasn't fiction. But I'm not putting it up right now. The poems are okay and I might stick them up here as blog posts.

But right now I'm tired and want to go to bed!

New title graphic

What can I say, I really like that picture ;P

Maybe I should turn the whole blog pink!

Racism and sexism playing a part in search for missing student?

Mainichi: Japanese student missing in US draws little attention

MADISON, Wisconsin -- The last time a 20-year-old college student disappeared in this city, the police led a massive search that cost $100,000 and the national media converged to cover the story.

This time, two police detectives are assigned to the case. The media is paying little attention. And the investigation has yielded few clues three weeks after the student's disappearance.

Some observers say there is one main reason for the difference. The woman who disappeared two years ago was white and attractive. The student who is missing now is male and foreign.

"He's not female. He's not attractive. And that in part is what appears to often come up as a criteria in the way that news media attention gets directed," said Aly Col, who teaches about ethics and diversity at the Poynter Institute, a journalism training center in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The disappearance of Kenji Ohmi of Kyoto, Japan, who took a semester off to learn English in Madison, is drawing comparisons to the case of Audrey Seiler. She was the University of Wisconsin-Madison student who faked her own abduction two years ago. A four-day manhunt ended with investigators finding Seiler in a marsh.

Like Seiler, Ohmi was last seen on a surveillance camera leaving home. He vanished early Jan. 28 from the apartment he shared with two international students near the Capitol and has not been seen since.

Kind of mean to say that the poor guy isn't attractive ;P But I think it's a salient point. How many people go missing in this country? And how many do we hear about?

Wow

(For spoilers, highlight over the broken and probably incorrect Japanese for some incomplete and very possibly wrong rough translations!)

So.

I'm just kind of...overcome?

I'm caught up on Kyou Kara Maou, up until the one that aired last week. Hopefully I'll be able to see this week's episode soon.

It looks like the series is drawing to an intensely climactic close.

I don't know what to think about Murata. (I mean, 「この世界に太陽は二つは要らない。」て?! WTF?!)

When Conrad gazed up at the pictures of Shinou and the Great Sage, when he thought back on all the things that had happened that had been planned...I started crying. I couldn't help it. He's been through so much. Such cruelty. And for what?

The next episode might reveal it...

新王：俺がお前を魔王に選んだ理由を知りたくないか。

Also

Lawrence Weller has fantastic hair.

Unexpected plot twist!

Okay, so my Kyou Kara Maou predictions have been so totally off it's not even funny.

Man, this show is awesome.

BLOGGER IS WORKING NOW.

Feel free to post comments again.

Here's what they had to say about the issue:

This has been sorted out. We're continuing to investigate the root cause and why our monitoring didn't catch it sooner, but Blogger is back to functioning normally. Posts made from now on will be saved.

I'm very sorry to say that, if your blog was on this database, posts and template changes made in the last 18 hours or so were not saved. They may appear on your blog now, but will disappear if you republish. If you made a post between Friday afternoon and now, we suggest that you look at your list of posts ("Posting" tab, "Edit posts" sub-tab) and compare it with what is published on your blog. If posts are missing, copy them from your blog pages before you republish.

Major apologies to those of you who were affected. We work hard to maintain Blogger as a trustworthy place to keep your writing, and we really hate to let you down.

Big Brother's debut

Check out Somewhere on the Masthead--err, Somewhat of an Asshole. MM's big brother has taken control!

Here's a screenshot:

This is pretty damn funny.

However...

For this to have occurred, MM must have given BB his own Blogger username and password. Then, BB must have created his own Blogger account, logged in as MM and added himself as a contributor with admin access, then removed MM's admin access to the blog. (Since MM posted anonymously in the comments, it would appear that BB changed MM's password so he couldn't log in. He might have simply done this rather than removing MM's admin access.)

Afterwards, BB was free to wreak havoc on the blog template.

I suppose it is possible that this happened. But I'm finding myself fairly skeptical. I realize MM isn't as Web savvy as, say, me, but you would think he would know better than to simply give a guest blogger the password to his own account. There are a few possibilities:

1. MM severely underestimated his brother's blogging knowledge, and gave him his own account information so as to make the guest blogging as simple as possible.
   I don't believe this one for a second.
   
   
2. MM knew this would happen, and knew that in the end he'd get the keys to his castle back, so he figured it would be funny and allowed it to occur.
   This one is more likely. The control freak that is me would never do something like this, but it's possible that MM knows how far his brother is likely to go with his teasing and was willing to take the risk. (If that's the case I would hope he made backups of his blog template and posts.)
   
   
3. BB is not a real person, but is simply another character written by MM.
   I really believe that this could be the case. There are clues in BB's first post. While it is written in BB's established style, there are moments that feel very crafted. Crafted by, say, a very good writer. Only another writer would probably notice this.

I actually love the idea that BB might not be real. I see MM as a writer who wants to challenge himself. He's written from other perspectives in his posts, but everyone knew it was him doing it. Could he hoodwink people into thinking that the posts made by BB were from a different person?

So he tried it, first in the comments section. And as time passed and no one blew the whistle, he wanted to go further. So he casually introduced the idea of a guest blog by BB, and when everyone responded with excitement...he took the plunge.

I would not be so suspicious if MM had still been able to post with his own account, there in the comments. Because if BB is savvy enough to change a messy blog template, he would surely know that all he needed to do was "demote" MM's account, not change the password. This would allow MM to continue posting on the blog, but would not allow him to alter the template or edit any of BB's posts. The reason I think BB would have done this is simply that there is now a "Contributors" section on the blog. MM can hardly be a contributor if he doesn't have access to post, now can he?

I realize that this is all assuming a level of Blogger understanding. But to be honest, Blogger is not that difficult. And MM has blogger friends, like Shane Nickerson, who he could have consulted about how to add BB as a guest blogger.

So I really think that this is all an elaborate writing exercise.

And...

...I love it!

If not for the red flags I've noted, this would be perfect. And it is absolutely hilarious. Suspend your disbelief for a moment and just imagine that this guy's brother really did hijack his blog. Look at what he chose to put on there! It's awesome :D

Whether he's real or not, I'm looking forward to more BB posts. Or to whatever sort of drama MM has scripted :)

[Edit 2/19 11:55am]: Check it, BB put up a response to this post! I just have a few more points:

1. Pictures don't prove anything. It could be one person writing who has permission to use pictures of other family members while spinning his tales. It's the intarweb! We don't know that anything is real!
   
   
2. Note the two reactions from the Masthead/Asshole contributors: from MM, we get the requisite righteous indignation, sure to convince the people who feel sympathy for him that this is in fact a real hijacking; from BB, we get open acceptance of the "conspiracy theory"--and as we all know, one of the best ways to discredit something is to agree that it's an awesome "idea". (Implicature, folks.)

No matter what the reality of the situation is, it sure is fun :D

Testing

Saving posts to Draft and then Publishing them seems to work. Now I'm testing to see what happens if I just Publish Post.

Edit: This also worked. However, it seems that people have tried the Drafts thing and then had their posts vanish later. We'll have to see what happens. Still no word from Blogger Support. Until I'm confident this has been resolved, I'm saving all my posts in a text file. I also suggest that people not post comments :(, because Blogger has been eating them.

Blogger troubles; plus, yesterday

The Blogger problem is affecting more than just me. Here's a thread on Google Groups about it.

Apparently if you save a post to Drafts before publishing, it doesn't destroy the previous post. I'm going to try it with this one. If the previous post does disappear, I've got it saved as a text file.

I've done a lot of reading yesterday and today about Blogger support and how much it sucks. I hadn't realized before how bad it was. I've contacted them before, with template questions, but that was years ago. Nowadays it seems like nobody bothers to answer emails personally. There has never been a phone number to call for support, either.

I guess I'll go ahead and talk about my day yesterday.

I was feeling pretty casual so I wore jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. I also slept in a little; it was nice. As I mentioned, it was a beautiful day, and I had the windows open.

For lunch I met up with Brooke and David at the Boll Weevil. It was soooo good. I had the Cool Hand Luke (a turkey sandwich with tomatoes, cucumbers, and mayo). All of their sandwiches are served on this thick, sweet, honey bread. I could just sit and eat the bread by itself. Maybe with a little butter. Mmmm.

I had pasta salad with the sandwich. The pasta salad had black olives in it. I decided to see if I still hate olives. Surprisingly, they weren't bad. The flavor was an interesting counterpoint to the sweetness of the sandwich.

I ate my whole sandwich and most of the pasta salad. Then we all decided to have dessert! o_o

I had Kentucky Pie, because I figured I should find out what pie was representing my home state. It was chocolate, walnut, and coconut, and they warmed it up, and it was delicious. I'll have to have that again.

Brooke had some kind of cake/pie thing with alcohol in it. Bourbon? I forget :P I tried a little of it, and it was decent.

David had Grasshopper Cheesecake, which is chocolate and mint. I didn't try it, but it looked awesome. He had to scrape pieces off of it because it was a big hard chunk. :D

After lunch I went back to work and stayed there until around 7 pm. I got everything done that I needed to get done and headed home.

I was supposed to meet up with Brooke, David, Mari, and Kelly that evening for dinner and putt-putt, so I first turned on my laptop to continue some downloads (of course) and then fretted about what to wear. I have outgrown most of my pants. I guess I have been eating too much (duh). Finally I chose my work pants and my black shirt with blue flowers, and I grabbed a long sleeved shirt in case it got cold. Brooke called and I headed out to meet everyone at Kinja.

Alas, when we got there we found that they close at 8 pm. (How ridiculous is that?) So when Mari and Kelly arrived we all decided to go to Mikoto instead. It's practically right across the street, but I managed to overshoot it as usual (their sign is so invisible ;P) and had to turn around.

I was still pretty full from lunch, as you might imagine, so I didn't order crazy amounts of food. I had my old standby, unagidon (and boy was it good) and some maguro nigiri (which was delicious). I also ordered some shrimp tempura and sushi rolls for Sean to eat later.

We sat around BSing for a long time until finally we decided we should leave so the Mikoto people could clean up--they closed at 9. We headed out into the parking lot, where we realized it was getting cold, but still decided to go to Bruster's for ice cream.

I don't know why, but we went to the Bruster's in Evans. It seems like that's a lot farther from Mikoto than the Bruster's in Augusta Exchange, but maybe I'm on crack. It didn't really matter, because the Evans Bruster's is right down the street from Cheryl and Reid.

I didn't eat any ice cream. Mari got Cinnamon Bun. I'm not sure what Kelly got. Brooke and David both got Chocolate Marshmallow. Mari's parents came and had ice cream too: Bonnie had Coffee Oreo and Antonio had regular old Chocolate, which is informed us is the absolute best ice cream flavor, period.

We hung out for a long time after Mari's parents left, just talking. Sean was supposed to get off work at 10 and come meet up with us, but it was kind of cold to play putt-putt, so finally we all decided to just go home. I brought Sean's sushi back to the house and put it in the fridge.

He came home and ate the sushi while we watched an episode of Kyou Kara Maou and two episodes of Smallville.

I was interested to see Kyou Kara Maou 60 with subtitles. It was neat to see how much I had understood, and great to fill in the gaps of the things I hadn't quite caught. For example, I couldn't make out for the life of me what Bob was saying in his emails. His voice is deep, and they used a kind of reverb on it, I guess to show that it was email. Regardless, I couldn't pick out any words, so it was nice to see what he said. It was also great to see Yuuri's Maou speech translated. I had tried to translate it myself, and I'd done a fairly good job, but I couldn't understand it with just listening. I had to try to figure out the sounds he was making and then figure out what words they might be and then do a rough translation of the sentences. It was nice to see that I wasn't totally off-base.

I also have a better understanding of that scene now. Since they were all under the impression that they couldn't use majutsu on Earth, Yuuri was totally BSing. (Which brings up a question: when did he start remembering what he does as Maou? Unless someone quoted him one of his Maou speeches, I'm not sure how he knew to format the speech and say "seibai!" at the end.)

The Smallville eps were cool. I actually watched the one with Chloe and the ghost last week when it came on TV. The new one was neat, though. I knew right away that Lionel had sent the package, and it irritated me to no end. It sucks that Martha doesn't know Lionel knows, because then she might have seen through it. I guess she does know he had an inkling before...but she might think he's lost all that knowledge. At the end of the episode, Sean said, "I'm still not sure how much of him is Lionel and how much is Jor-El."

After we finished watching those eps, we went to bed. And that was yesterday!

Today Sean is supposed to go to a LAN party at William's. Before that, Brooke and David are supposed to stop by. Sean is still in bed...so I'm not sure how it's all going to work out.

Ah well.

Now, to see if this will post!

Blogger == teh fux0rzed

I made a post before I left for lunch about how I feel great today. When I got back, it wasn't there, and my computer had restarted so I didn't have it in my browser to repost. I recreated it from memory and posted it. Then I noticed that the original post was in my RSS feed...so I made a new post with the original time and posted that. Then I noticed that the other post was gone...Blogger seems to be eating the previous post and replacing it with whatever I put up.

So I'm going to put both posts in this post, and you can marvel at how accurately I recreated the original post. Or laugh at how different the posts are. Whichever.

Original post, 12:09 pm:

I got plenty of sleep last night, and the weather is gorgeous. I have the windows open in the office right now so I can look out on the hills and pine trees and enjoy the cool breeze. The sky is filled with puffy white clouds, and the sun is warm. I've got Cowboy Bebop remixes playing, and I'm getting plenty of work done. Even better, I'll be meeting Brooke and David for lunch at Boll Weevil!

Life is good. :)

When I was driving in to the office, I thought to myself that the morning felt wonderful. It was already warm, with a soft wind. It's the kind of air that makes me feel like something's going to happen. It's a traveling atmosphere. It's brisk and comforting and it promises a lovely day.

I get a similar feeling in the spring and fall in general, a feeling of change, of something new. It's my favorite feeling in the world :)

Recreated post, 2:42 pm:

I got plenty of sleep last night, and the weather is gorgeous. I have the windows open here in the office so I can look out at the pine trees and rolling hills and enjoy the cool breeze. The sky is filled with puffy white clouds, and the sun is warm.

As I was driving in this morning, I thought that mornings are great because they are filled with an air of anticipation. There's something about the cool of the morning, the feeling of the day warming up, just the general atmosphere that makes me feel like something exciting is going to happen. I feel the same way in spring and fall generally; it's my favorite feeling in the world.

But I when I went out to lunch today I realized that the feeling was still there; it wasn't confined to the morning. It's a spring day.

And I feel great :)

So, which one do you prefer? ;P

Here's hoping Blogger doesn't eat this post too.

This is why we all can't just get along

MSNBC: Cleric offers reward for killing cartoonist

"If the West can place a bounty on Osama bin Laden ... we can also announce reward for killing the man who has caused this sacrilege of the holy prophet," Qureshi told Reuters, referring to the $25 million U.S. bounty on the al-Qaida leader's head.

Scarily enough, I can almost-sort-of understand this point of view. We even see similar (though obviously not exact) things happening with Western church leaders. Blasphemy is a big deal, and people need to realize that.

Of course, I think there is a big difference between drawing a picture and killing thousands of people.

This just makes me wonder if we are ever going to get to a point where we can co-exist. I want to believe we can and will, but there are so many people out there willing to disregard other people's feelings, and so many people eager to take offense, that I'm pretty positive it won't happen in my lifetime.

(I was thinking about Kyou Kara Maou the whole time I wrote this post. Too bad we don't have a Shibuya Yuuri--someone who believes completely in the idea that people can understand each other, and who conveniently has the power to make it happen.)

Posts like this are the reason I love Language Log

I Didn't Write Shit Today

The sentence I didn't write shit today is ambiguous: the idiomatic meaning typically says you didn't write (or at best, you wrote essentially nothing); the literal meaning typically says that you did write, and what you wrote could not be described as shit. But, I just noticed today, the two roughly opposed meanings can both be true in the same situation! Consider someone who expects daily output to be between 15 and 20 pages, and today they wrote only a page and a half, though it was of high quality. Then on the idiomatic meaning, they didn't write shit (because a page and a half counts as approximately nothing). But on the literal meaning, they didn't write any shit: it was all good stuff, not excrement. Both meanings are true!

See, this is the sort of thing I think about. (Just ask Hai about my extended Sluggy Freelance "caca" joke...)

How's this for crazy?

Mainichi: Girl left dangling on outside of train for 1 kilometer

Company officials said the one-carriage train entered Hokkosha Station at about 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday. The driver saw a high school girl and boy on the platform, and departed from the station after thinking that the girl had stepped inside.

The girl, however, was still outside the carriage, and was left clutching onto a handrail on the outside of the door, using a 5-centimeter gap near the bottom of the door as a foothold, as the train traveled along the tracks.

About one minute later, the driver noticed the girl. He stopped the train and took her inside the carriage. The girl said a button to open the door of the train had failed.

"I pressed the 'open button,' but the doors didn't open and the train departed," the girl was quoted as saying. The high school boy on the platform had apparently been seeing her off.

We need to make it stop

More senseless murders in Iraq. Why?

How can we make it stop?

OMG

Hahahaha!

At least she didn't, say, fry up some eggs, causing a thin film to collect on the floor.

Or something.

;>

Pictures from Monday

On Monday I went to Riverwalk with Brooke and David. I finally have the pictures I took uploaded, and here they are.

This one's my favorite:

Batman to kick Osama bin Laden's ass

ABC News: Batman Takes Aim at Osama

At the WonderCon 2006 comic-book convention in San Francisco last weekend, legendary comics writer and artist Frank Miller revealed that Batman would hunt down bin Laden and al Qaeda in his next DC Comics graphic novel.

In "Holy Terror, Batman!" the Caped Crusader goes after the terror leader and his organization after Gotham City is attacked by terrorists. Though the graphic novel's title is a take on Robin the Boy Wonder's catchphrase, Miller said there was nothing campy about the story.

[...]

He said his anger over both the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and subsequent acts of terror worldwide had inspired his latest work.

"Emotionally, it's really raw," Miller told the WonderCon audience. "Imagine the powerful rage when someone crosses the passion between a man and a woman or a man and his city."

The graphic novel probably won't be available before 2007. Wouldn't it be cool if someone kicks Osama's ass before then? :>

Tired

Man, I stayed up too late last night :>

I feel better

My neckaches and wild emotional state are probably a result of stress. I spoke with my endocrinologist about my mood swings, and she had me take a pregnancy test. It was negative. Since I haven't had another period, I will be resuming progesterone. Hopefully that plus the knowledge that I have the power to control how I feel (to an extent) will balance me out.

I realized yesterday that I have been putting a lot of undue stress on myself. I wanted a house so badly that I was punishing myself for not being ready to buy one. While we are on the road to a good downpayment, we aren't financially stable enough to get into a mortgage. As Mom said last night, I shouldn't compare myself to other people. I should focus on what my situation is and work with that information only.

I had gotten to the point that I was trying to deny myself any creature comforts, like going places (too much gas money) or eating out. Removing the things that made my life bearable was not the correct solution. I am having a hard enough time as it is living with my in-laws. I need to let myself relax.

It all came to a head yesterday and the day before, but now I'm calm.

I want to thank everyone who was there for me. Em, your email made me feel so loved and understood. You were the first to tell me that it was okay to be upset. Thank you. AJ, thank you for commenting and lending me your support. I know it's tough to be my brother sometimes ;> But you have always stood by me and I know you always will. Thank you. Jered, your comment made me feel so much better. It's a little scary to be looked up to, but at the same time it gives me a nice healthy dose of reality. You're right, I'm not a loser. Thank you. Mom, you are so understanding, and yet so level-headed. Your wisdom and sympathy helped me gain some much-needed perspective. I feel like I can handle my life now. Thank you.

Too Damn Late

Why am I still up?!

Well, I watched Kyou Kara Maou 62-64 again, and paused them a lot to breen. I have a little better understanding of what went on, though Bob's reasoning in 62 is still foggy. I caught a little something in 64 that I didn't catch before, which was cool.

I'm kind of waiting for Sean to get home, but who knows when that'll be. He tends to stay late at work on his night shift. I should probably go to sleep.

However, bittorrent is teasing me...it claims there's only 26 minutes left on this download. Do I wait for it? Will it suddenly drop down to 0 k/s and drag on for eternity, like it's done since yesterday? Or will it actually finish?

Yay, I'm SG-1!

You scored as SG-1 (Stargate). You are versatile and diverse in your thinking. You have an open mind to that which seems highly unlikely and accept it with a bit of humor. Now if only aliens would stop trying to take over your body. SG-1 (Stargate) 94% Moya (Farscape) 88% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 81% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 81% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 69% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 63% Serenity (Firefly) 63% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 56% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 56% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 50% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 44% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 38% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

Via Kirkie.

Valentine's Day

Reuters has two stories up today about the modern tradition in Japan of women giving chocolate to the men in their lives on Valentine's Day. The first article discusses how tired women are growing of the time and expense involved.

According to an Internet survey, 70 percent of working women said they would be happy if there was no tradition of giving "obligatory chocolates" to their boyfriends or colleagues.

Nearly 60 percent said they felt unhappy as Valentine's Day approached, citing the cost and time it takes to shop for the gifts, which are finely calculated to express just the right emotions towards a boss, a colleague or a true boyfriend.

The custom has grown into a sweet 50 billion yen (245 million pound) market for Japan's chocolate makers, some of whom rake in 20 to 30 percent of annual profits in a few short weeks.

At the end of the article, it is mentioned that women are more and more starting to spend a lot of money buying chocolate for themselves. The second article goes into this phenomenon more deeply.

It used to be Japanese women gave men a gift of chocolates on Valentine's Day.

These days, they're more likely to buy pricey chocolates costing up to $200 (115 pounds) a box as a treat for themselves.

[...]

Until recently, most Japanese women bought cellophane-wrapped sweets in bulk from drugstores to give to colleagues or school friends as an "obligatory chocolate" on Valentine's Day.

[...]

Premium chocolates are often imported from countries like Belgium and France, with imports worth 36.8 billion yen in 2004/05, up about 36 percent from a decade ago, according to association estimates.

Chocolate aficionados are also beginning to favour high-quality sweets with a high cocoa content and complex tastes, achieved by blending bulk beans with prized flavour beans from countries like Venezuela and Ecuador.

The Japanese, however, are still modest chocolate consumers by global standards, swallowing about 4.85 pounds per person each year, compared to Switzerland's 24.9 pounds and Germany's 23.1 pounds.

As for me, I've been buying Sean chocolate regularly since Christmas (he favors dark chocolate and has especially enjoyed Hershey's Dark Kisses), so I'm not sure I really need to do anything :> (Besides, I haven't come across a dark chocolate Valentine's box.)

The Pink House

An anonymous reader points to this article at the Augusta Chronicle concerning my beloved North Augusta Pink House.

Peggy Simons loves being near the water.

She and her husband, Dr. James Simons, a semiretired dentist and developer, already owned a beach home at Fripp Island. S.C., when they decided to build a home on the Savannah River and move from the historic Ambrose Clark house in Aiken to North Augusta.

Mrs. Simons oversaw the construction.

"I picked out everything down to the doorknobs," she said.

We can assume this also includes the color of the house.

The following is listed in one of the informational boxes at the end of the article:

THE HOME: The three-story home, known as "The Pink House," has 8,000 square feet, five bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. It has two kitchens and a pool.

Damn straight it's known as "The Pink House". I named it that!!!!

(Really, "The Pink House" is not a hard name to come up with for a huge, highly visible pink house. But I can dream, can't I?!)

Kyou Kara Maou helps me study Japanese, sort of; plus, a new word is coined

I've been watching Kyou Kara Maou without subtitles. I'm up through episode 64. I watched 60 and 61 twice, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to translate Yuuri's Maou speech from 60. (I mean, hey, it was important! Once again the KKM "whoever thought we'd see that character again" factor comes into play.) For the most part, though, I've just been watching them straight, marveling at how much I actually understand and occasionally pausing to breen an unfamiliar word. ("WWWJDIC" doesn't quite roll off the tongue. ;>)

In any case, a lot of my comprehension comes from knowing the characters and the situations they're likely to encounter, and a lot of it comes from having some general "anime vocabulary", but still, I'm kind of pleased that I know what's going on. I am looking forward to seeing the episodes subbed, to see if my understanding is correct, and to fill in the gaps. But it appears that I can watch the episodes this way without too many problems, which is pretty damn cool.

Because there are 76 episodes out so far, so that means I have plenty to watch!

...

The minute my car door closed I was bawling. I wailed and sobbed and tears streamed down my face as I drove home. I thought what a loser I was that I couldn't deal with this and stay at work. I thought that the whole reason we're here in Sean's parents' house is my fault, because I don't make enough money for us to buy our own place. I thought that I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make more money. I don't know how to get a job that pays enough. I don't know how to get clients who will pay me enough.

When I got home I warmed up last night's leftovers and stood and ate them in the kitchen and thought that if Sean had never married me, he would be better off. He wouldn't have moved into that apartment. He wouldn't have lost all his stuff.

And if we hadn't gotten married I might have gotten a real job when I finished college. I might not be such a total fucking loser. And I wouldn't have lost all my stuff.

But I was selfish and stupid and wanted to get married right away.

Sean was in the shower. I wanted to hide from him. I didn't want him to know I was here instead of out working, getting the money we need. But I also wanted to apologize to him for not being a good enough wife. If I was stronger I could handle this. I could get the work I need to get. I could figure out a plan. I could deal with the setbacks in my life. But I'm a wimp who always wants to run away, who gets overwhelmed and can't even handle getting up in the morning and going to work. I'm so pathetic that all I want is to run home to my mom.

Cheryl said before that if we were going to stay here another six months that I had to get a job and that there would be "no more trips to Kentucky" that waste our money. I was mad at the time that she was treating me like a child, but maybe that's all I deserve.

There wasn't a good place to hide, and I didn't feel like I had the right to hide. I felt like I should come clean with Sean, that he should know what a horrible loser he married. So I curled up in the bed and waited for him.

I could hear him moving around the room as he got ready to go to work. Finally he pulled the covers back so he could see my face and give me a kiss, and he said, "Bye, baby."

"Bye," I said in a voice that shook too much.

"Are you gonna be okay?"

"I don't know," I said, and covered my eyes.

"Did you have a fight with Robert?"

"No," I sobbed, "I'm just stupid."

"You're having a mood swing?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, honey. Get some sleep. Next time you see your doctor, tell her you're having mood swings."

"Okay."

I reached up to him and he hugged me tight and then he left for work.

I wish I was good enough for him.

I feel so alone.

Ugh

I don't know if it's just because it's Monday or what, but I feel crappy.

I do know I ate too much last night. I got to go to Brooke's family's Sunday dinner with her and David. Her brother Blake and his wife Dorothy and their cute little two week old baby Allison were there, as well as Brooke's parents, Blair and Elaine. (They have a cute female dog named Edward[?] that Brooke's dad calls Pete. I don't get it!)

Anyway, my favorite part of the visit was getting to hold that baby. I held her for a very long time, rocking her and humming to her as she slept. She reached out with her tiny little hand and clung to my shirt, and I could feel her soft breathing on my face. Every now and then she'd blearily open her eyes, blinking sightlessly before falling back into her slumber. (And sometimes she'd fuss a little, then poot.)

That may have been my favorite part, but it was bittersweet. There were several times while I was gazing into that beautiful little face that I had to force myself not to cry. It was nice to think that I was over all that for awhile...oh well.

Brooke's dad (I can't think of her parents by their names!) brought up the apartment fire, which had the unfortunate effect of keeping me awake last night, my mind racing as I thought back to all the stuff I "could have saved" if I'd had my head together. Honestly, it really is best that we just got the hell out of there, but I keep thinking that I could have run back to the office and yanked my computer out, and picked up my purse and camera, and then snagged the tray with my tea set on it on my way out...and that I could have yelled up to the fireman I saw in the apartment the day after the fire and asked him if he could throw anything down. I tried to content myself with the thought of replacing our wedding memorabilia: the goblets and cake server with our names and the date engraved on them. But finally I had to just distract myself into sleep.

I am really happy that I went to dinner. I had a great time. Brooke's family is a trip and a half. They're awesome and really fun to hang out with.

But I did eat too much, and I felt nauseated for the rest of the evening, which sucked. That, plus the baby-envy, plus the futile apartment "if onlys" probably account for how I feel this morning.

I let myself sleep in a little, but I don't think that helped.

Right now I'm mildly nauseous, and my neck hurts. (I think I need a new pillow or something, because my neck always hurts.) I feel braindead and tired and cold.

Bleh.

A hotel for allergy sufferers

This is a neat idea.

Allergy-suffering guests checking in at the Tokyu Inn in the business district of Shinbashi, will step into a phone booth-style box to have the pollen blown off their clothes by a high-powered air shower before going to their rooms, the Mainichi Shimbun said on Sunday.

Windows on the allergy-sufferers' floor will be kept closed to keep the pollen out and peppermint tea, said to alleviate the symptoms, will be provided in each room, along with a special spray to prevent pollen sticking to clothing.

I don't recall Sean or myself suffering from allergies while we were in Japan. I'm not sure if our honeymoon is a good example, though, because we were there in March, which was probably too early for pollen. I may have had some allergies when I was in Kyushu in 2001, because I did fall under the weather with a "summer cold", but that could have been due to exhaustion from the trip just as easily as allergies.

I guess we'll have to find out in a future trip if the massive cedar tree reforestation mentioned in that article has an affect on us. (Joy!)

Denture dream

I had a bizarre dream last night about my teeth. They were really hurting, and then all of a sudden they started breaking apart. When I reached in to pull out the broken ones, the entire shelf of my teeth broke and came out in five parts. I discovered that my teeth were actually dentures.

I tugged out the broken dentures (the sensation was similar to what it felt like to take out my retainer, which I wore back in elementary school) and found that my real teeth were still there underneath. Some of them were horribly discolored--green--and others were covered up to the top by bizarre gum formations. My canines were long, splintery, and yellow, with strings of pink-red running through them. Still, I knew that these were my real teeth, and I hoped that if I brushed them regularly they'd go back to normal and be better than the dentures had been.

I wondered in the dream how long I'd had dentures and why they'd been glued in over my real teeth. This mystery was never solved.