The Illiterate

Have you ever wondered what it is like to be illiterate? I have. Especially since I met a guy last summer who was. What kinds of pain in the ass problems does it cause? Jealousy? Frustration?

Well, it's really not so bad.

I'm not really literate in Japanese. My reading level is somewhere in the mid-elementary-school range. This has become so painfully obvious since I joined the drama club because we're reading a bunch of different scripts in preparation for picking a play to show this semester. I must say, there's a reason so many peasants never learned to read -- it's very useful, but not absolutely necessary. If you really need to know something, someone can tell you.

I'm getting a lot of literacy studying in this way though. :D

The kendo class I signed up for turned out to be a class on martial arts in general, and their place as sports and in education. I misread the kanji. It IS taught by a guy who does kendo, though, so much of the examples given use it as a base. It's really a very interesting class. And yesterday we got to see a litter of foxes playing under their mother's supervision through the window.

Harmonics class is friggin' awesome. I never realized figuring out chord progressions could be such a pain in the ass, though. We have only had homework once, which was last week, due this past monday. He gave us eight bars of a base line to turn into a harmonic chord progression. It was like the excercises he gives us in class, only longer and a bit more complex.

There were a couple of spots in there that didn't fit how I thought it was supposed to work; I spent a grand total of 5-6 hours pouring over it over the course of three days, then checking my work for mistakes, then trying to figure out how to make it work the way I wanted to. I learned a lot in my experimenting, and when I took it to class I was one of a few people who had no mistakes. YAY! The rest of the class was him giving us problems of similar complexity (I seriously think he makes these up as he goes) and checking over our work. I had no mistakes on any of those either. The 6 hours of hmm-ing over 8 bars of music really paid off.

I'm pretty sure I am screwed in the history class. But I'm gonna keep trying anyway.

While I have nothing in common with the Russian exchange students, I am gonna get along with the Australians just fine. Thomas is a gaming/computer/anime/sci-fi nerd who (like me) misses having two monitors and a trackball. Matt isn't a huge nerd like Thomas and I, but it's obvious he gets along just fine with huge nerds. Both guys like Family Guy and the like, too. :D I got to sit down and actually chat with them this afternoon. ( :O Like, wow, man!)

Taste-O-Meter!

Takoyaki: 5
Chopped up octopus mixed in with other ingredients that are kind of like turkey stuffing (only with a taste more suited to octopus) and fried into the shape of a ball. I got to see these being made, and it was crazy. They had a grill that looked like a mancala board without the big end holes, and guys were sitting there poking piles of food into perfect spheres with only a pair of what looked like woodworking picks for tools. It was insane. And tasty.

Realizations of the Period

1) There is an anime called The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. You must watch it. It's brilliant (and has good animation, a rare combo). They managed to make a sci-fi/comedy that excels at both and is FAR from generic, in spite of its deceiving start. Even if you don't want to watch the whole series, you should watch the first episode, as it stands on its own as great entertainment, being made like a crappy (possibly the crappiest) student film ever. Bit torrent file can be found here. If you don't like BT (*cough*Kenneth! */cough*), then I am very, very sorry for you. See if you can get it some other way, because this is quite possibly the best anime (and vying for best cartoon on either side of the ocean) I have ever seen. [STEALTH EDIT: Someone else who doesn't like BT pointed me to this site with direct downloads for Haruhi. Get it! Get it now! You have no excuse.]
2) You would think midi files of classical arias would be easy to find online. WRONG! Damn them all to hell.