Museum fun

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Today I was at the Japanese American National Museum with the beauteous Rosa for extra credit for ML 400. It was pretty much how I remembered it from a year ago when I went with Chris and Mayumi... minus the Taiko drums, which I looked forward to seeing again.

There were students from Japan as well, and those girls were something else...

Note to self: ALWAYS bring the DS Lite whenever I go out! Sure, the battery light was showing red (during WiFi Tetris DS battles, anyway), but I could have used it as a makeshift PDA (or at least a notepad) by going into Pictochat and just chatting with myself. For about $150 I could get the ultimate accessory for my DS Lite and download an actual homebrew PDA program (DSOrganize), but I don't see why Nintendo doesn't just release actual PDA software for the DS. I don't really care for those Touch Generation "games," but at the end of the day, the DS's touch screen really does make the DS better than the PSP (widescreen LCD screen be damned).

Egogoogle: November

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I'm late again here, but between another disappointing birthday, school, and time-wasting YouTube projects, it slipped my mind.

Google and Yahoo say I'm on top via my Castlevania: SOTN manual, while MSN puts my J.S. Minnow site on top. How messed up does the world have to be for MSN to be the most preferred search engine?

Also, my cousin finally got a MySpace account. Well actually it looks like he got it quite a while ago, but he only started posting his blogs a few days ago. (And I thought I was the only cynical bastard around these parts!)

Egogoogle: October

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Still on top via my outdated Tekken 5 Story Battle Dialogues FAQ. Yahoo and MSN still have myJ.S. Minnow website on top, as they should.

Sorry I'm a day late; I got caught up listening to this debate ("Todd debates Dan Barker"). I was watching this video on YouTube and from there I tried to get a full, unedited video of the debate. I had to settle for the mp3.


Some of my favorite quotes:

- In any argument, there's a burden of proof on the affirmative.

- Salvation is the solution to the problem of its own making. If salvation is the cure... then atheism is the prevention.

- Ethical people will do what is right no matter what they are told; most religious people will do what they are told no matter what is right.

- Dan: If you had known what was going to happen on 9/11... in advance... and if you had the power with no risk to yourself to stop that from happening, would you have stopped those planes from flying into those buildings?
Todd: Oh, of course.
Dan: Well then you're nicer than God, aren't you?


And if there was any doubt that we'd all be better off without religion, let me bring this pic up again:

They might as well be holding swastikas.

And now thanks to these assholes imposing their religion on the rest of us (which all seems... I don't know... Taliban-ish), we have the worst president in the history of presidents.

And that's still an understatement.

The first (real) week of school

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Current mood:amused

2006.09.21 (Thursday)

My first class was ML 400 (Research Methods in Modern Languages), and at first I didn't recognize anyone except Chris #2 from that Japanese literature class. Most of the others were Spanish majors and a handful seemed to be Chinese majors. It seemed pretty boring, being a class all about learning how to write a paper (because apparently I totally didn't know how to write one for years), and it is. The substitute teacher also felt it was appropriate to speak in Spanish, even though we weren't ALL Spanish majors. Alienation FTW!!!

Next was JAPN 380 (Business Japanese). I didn't believe the teacher was actually the teacher at first (I almost said "wow"), but she's pretty good. I decided to pass on the offer to take JAPN 150 that day...


2006.09.25 (Monday)

JAPN 400A (Advanced Reading and Composition). The first one to enter the room (besides me) was "Heather" (who I certainly have never heard of before), followed by Hiro (who I always forget is in my class) and Ed. Then Chris #2 and two other girls (Naomi #2 - who lives in the same city as me - and "Nancy," I think). It's a new book but it doesn't seem to be any harder than anything in Koike-sensei's JAPN 300ABC classes, and Yokota-sensei seems to say more stuff in English. I was suckered into taking JAPN 150 (Contemporary Japan Through Pop Culture) that day. Yokota made a good point, though... it is free credits, it could help improve my translating skills, and Heather said it should be an easy "A." This late in the game I can't afford to get anything less.


2006.09.26 (Tuesday)

Now that I'm taking JAPN 150, I have to get to school several hours earlier for the first time in years. According to Yokota, I was the "key person" in keeping the class open (due to low enrollment), though when people were coming in, it didn't look like the class was in any danger of being cancelled. It seems fun, but it's still the same amount of work from Yokota's other literature classes.

ML 400: New room, and with people hilariously having no choice but to stand up or sit on the floor (since we ran out of chairs), we were forced to change rooms yet again. The "real" teacher seemed cool, until she said calling the USA "America" was "politically incorrect." Well, that's the first I've ever heard of it! Aren't there songs like "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America?" Wasn't there a movie in the 80's starring Eddie Murphy called "Coming to America?" Are Americans now "North Americans" (to say nothing of the folks up in Canada)? And that's just the top of my head. So fuck that. (At least I saw the back of a REALLY hot girl...)

JAPN 380: Lin-sensei recognized my Gackt pic on my sample Japanese resume. She also recognized my Nintendo DS Lite... neat. I also saw Jason, who I thought graduated.


2006.09.27 (Wednesday)

JAPN 400A: If there was any doubt that I am the class's - nay, the school's kanji master, I just removed it. I taught Nancy how to write the "TAI" in "JOUTAI" (and I loved how she described it: "mu-tsuki-hi-hi-kokoro"), and I corrected someone's "GO." I also met up with some guy who wanted me to merge the Anime Club with the Japan Club. At least he didn't seem like an anime otaku...


2006.09.28 (Thursday)

JAPN 150: I got a weird feeling today. While it's certainly true that I am the smartest guy in class, I feel pretty stupid. I just know there's an idiom for this...

ML 400: Got into a group with two very nice girls (in every way ), including this one girl who I seemed to recognize from ENGL 401 over a year ago. I hope that was taken as flattering and not "obsessive," because I'm pretty sure she wouldn't know who the hell I am. I think I hit it off with both of them... probably should have gotten their contact info, though. We were all told to sit in the same chairs so the politically-correct-to-a-fault professor could learn everyone's names. (Goddamn, I really should have gotten their contact info... )

JAPN 380: One look at my shirt (my "tachi shouben kinshi" shirt) and Lin-sensei was going off on NHK's Domo-kun and sumo wrestlers. And then we went over the surprisingly compicated task of exchanging business cards, Japanese style.


In sum, there's always something to look forward to at school, though I'd rather not have 3 classes in a day. And I don't know if it's just because I took the summer off, but there are some girls at school who are SERIOUSLY hot. Hottt, even. I'm not religious or anything, but JESUS CHRIST!!! I'm talking "heavenly / angelic / goddess-tier" hottt. There is no longer any point in ogling any pic or video (...er, not that I have before), because whatever she looks like, she won't match the incomprehensible good looks of the girls I've been seeing at school. And the other day there was this kinda-skinny, kinda-short, quiet, long-haired, twisty-turny fidgety girl at the bus stop taking my bus (267). Damn it, I love those fidgety types too, heh.

(And yeah, I suck, but reading and writing about how much I suck is always fun. I'd normally post this on my LiveJournal but they have a stupid post limit, and there's another reason why I won't post on my LJ but I won't go into that right now. These posts always take hours...)

Weird-ass dream (2006.09.18)

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The dream:

- My brother was developing his own version of Dance Dance Revolution.

- The guys from Mythbusters were making my ideal joystick for Tekken and shmups, not unlikethis one.


The day:

- I was watching an old Lewis Black clip on YouTube.

- I was on AIM asking if a guy could mod my X-Arcade stick with Sanwa sticks and Seimitsu buttons, not unlike theevilfunkster.

- I was up pretty late at night watching Mythbusters.


Funny, that.

Egogoogle: September

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Current mood:accomplished

Still on top, though why is my extremely old Castlevania: SotN instruction manual transcription #1? At least Yahoo! and MSN have my J.S. Minnow site on top, as they should.

Ordering from YesAsia.com

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I'm just going to document the two times I ordered from YesAsia.


Order #1: PS2 game "Ibara"
Payment method: money order
Shipping method: free shipping

2/23: PS2 game "Ibara" ordered; money order sent; received emails "Thank You For Your Order" and "Order process on hold"

2/27: received email "Mail Order Three day Notification"

2/28: received emails "Payment received for order" and "order has been approved"

3/7: received emails "Confirmation for Clearance of your Check/Money Order" and "Invoice"

3/14: arrival


Order #2: DS game "kanji sonomama rakubiki jiten"
Payment method: PayPal via bank account
Shipping method: free shipping

8/14: DS game "kanji sonomama rakubiki jiten" ordered; payment sent instantly via PayPal; received email "Order process on hold"

8/17: received emails "Payment Received For Order" and "Order has been approved"

8/20: received email "Invoice"

8/24: arrival


Move it along folks, nothing to see here...