That Burma thing...

I made this on Friday night. It is a little late for the blog, but here you go; my take on people that take the effort... to report that they won't take effort.


Also, a Japanese photojournalist was killed, and Mutant Frog has a good assessment of the Japanese reaction.

And Steve, who worked right on the border (the place in Thailand where I volunteered) and so has a good perspective on things in that region, has a good post about things too.

It's under 9000!

Almost forgot to embed this one. But you would know that if you were subscribed.
BTW, are internet friends too lazy to leave a simple "happy birthday" comment these days? I don't even expect a real one... My shallow facebook profile got more messages. *grumble grumble*

Thank you for not rhyming Clay with gay

There was a while where I thought people in the English speaking world where horribly selfish and bad. But Colin and Cassie restored my faith in people without ever really knowing it. Thank you guys. One of the best presents since childhood, when I could get really excited about a Ghost Buster action figure.

Oh and thanks for the cookies, Zara!

More test stuff

Chinese pirates are awesome. They get all the best stuff online these days. Okay, maybe the questions from previous years' JLPT tests isn't outright piracy, but it is on a Chinese website. Yes, this is in my shared items right now; I hope people look at that thing.

Anyhoo, it helped me fine-tune my studying a bit. A while back, Alex introduced me to the program Anki, which has improved my vocabulary tons. Well, I am currently deleting the English (production) side of most of the cards; only grammar points have been deemed important enough to keep bilingual. Also, I am not worrying about simpler words; I don't even have to really comprehend what I am reading, but rather I have to know how to read my 2kyu kanji and the words they make (lower vocab won't be tested outright). Besides, at this point I can guess pretty accurately/already know about the lower vocabulary. Finally, I'm not so sure the lists at renshuu.org are complete, so I will be perusing my other resources.

If you are interested in taking the JLPT, get Anki and go look through my links on the far right column of this blog. Good luck to us all.

Anyone know where to buy a decent rang in Japan?

I miss ranging. I was fairly good at it the few times I tried, and these empty mountain parks are begging me to go to them. I consulted Linus, but then I realized that the sizes were much smaller than I thought.
For instance:

Looks good, but it's only 20 inches, and that is the biggest on the site.

罪と罰

Well, Sin and Punishment finally showed up on the wii shopping channel, so I bought it quickly. But I already finished it! I remember back in the day that game took me a month to get through; it was the most brain-reflex-intensive game, and still is, but I guess gaming brains like mine have moved on to bigger 3D world comprehension challenges. Still, it is cool as anything to fly around on a piece of concrete destroying an entire navy. Next I will try hard mode, if I can find it in those horrendously dim katakana menus. Other than those, things look a lot better than I remember.
In case you are wondering, I had the Japanese connection when I was in America, that's how I got to play this.



Reminds me, when I visited America, Benny had a NES and we played Mario bros. I was dying left and right; the controls just didn't feel natural.

Semicolon

I am really addicted to semicolons; they pop up everywhere in my writing. Sometimes I even substitute them for commas; and I've really got to watch that (parentheses are another thing I use a ton--this one was supposed to be about how semicolons don't go before "and").

I feel really bad for non-native English speakers who try to read the blog; this entry will probably do more harm than good.

WHY?

you know the drill; another English teacher putting his kid's writing up cause it's funny and cute. This kid expressed my feelings about summer quite well.

I won

Disclamer: there are lyrics in a song in the vid. I can't be held responsible for the swears in it, as I didn't make this video.

Remember the kanji tester

Back then (old post has a link to the test you can take too) I was in the 540 to 560 range. Now I am 790 to 830. Well, that means I only learned about 300 kanji since February. This is less than I expected, and I gotta step it up if I am gonna get to 2kyu level by December. On the plus side, I finally bested past Deas and Alex, so with the help of future Alex (he has a time machine), I could go into the past and gloat, but I am sure they are still ahead of me in the present.

If English had it's own "kanji"...

It might look something like this link. The next page shows how "It was a dark and stormy night" translates to symbols.

Cute girls always get their requests answered

I try--nay succed to make Vanawesome laugh

yes, I do take off clothes for money

Unwashed masses need not apply

Have you ever noticed that when you have cleaned and organized something--like your desk at work for instance-- you don't feel as productive as you thought you would and you start to procrastinate by, say, writing blog posts about nothing?

Disconnect

It is one of the sad things about life that in any human-to-human relationship you are in, chances are one of you is more invested than the other. And when you realize this imbalance, there is little happiness to be gained.