Lobster

I'm back from California land. I don't have time to write right now, but I will later, so know that. Take care, all~

Lost Words of the Telephone Music Foreigners

Yesterday I spent an hour writing a nice long post. I hit the 'publish' button and a "page not found" screen came up. All my words were lost forever. So I am apologizing on behalf of the damn Blogger site.

I don't feel like trying to remember what I wrote about yesterday, so I don't really know what to talk about. I've been making some beautifully strange music on the Music-Generator, and I'm recording all my experiments onto an "experiment tape" so that I can listen to it and share it with you people. I wonder if anybody else in the world uses the MG as much as I do. I wonder if anyone else bought the damn thing. I guess all the "real" musicians use computer software nowadays, but until I have a state-of-the-art laptop and the money left over to buy that friggin software I am content with my little lo-fi recordings. You could say I'm being an original, for better or for worse.

My phone company is all fuckin with me and my phone line is fucked and all the line shit stuff. So I can't connect to the internet from my apartment at the moment. I must brave the harsh weather and trek to the library to conduct my web business. Oh well; it's an excuse to get out.

Oh yeah- I went to the bon-voyage parties, and now all of my 'temp' friends have gone back to the land of the rising sun. So I would like to give a shout-out to Makiko, Mari, Setsuko, Kanako, Shiori, Naoko, Akiko, the other Akiko, Yukari(?), Mayu, Risa, Aiko, Kanoko, the other Kanoko, Yuko, Yukiko, Seiko, that guy I mixed drinks with, that guy I tried to juggle with, all the Megumis that left, Naomi, the disheveled guy, and Kenske...no, wait, Kenske's still here. Fare thee all well in thine homeland.

Finito!

I finished my last final about 5 minutes ago. I thought it really cheap that my Japanese instructors included questions over the particle words "wa", "ga", and "o" on the exam, considering NO ONE in that class knows how to use them, but none of you know or care what I'm talking about, so I'll move on.

So let's see; estimated grades for each of my tests:
World Religions- C
Psychology- C
Music- D (hopefully)
Japanese- B

There you have it, my predictions. Captain's Claws Damage Boats.

I considered yesterday writing a whole thing about how failing the music course may forever smash my confidence in that subject, as that is what happened with photography those years ago, but I decided not to. I'm trying not to think about that course. I'm trying to accept the fact that music theory is my enemy, hanging on to my confidence that I could write an entire opera without ever taking a blind shot at how may flats a diminished triad has. I've been making some very pleasing sounds with my beloved music-generator lately, and that's reassuring me that I need not worry about the 6th letter of the alphabet. Of course, maybe I'm just bitter, and maybe I'm just trying desperately to prepare myself in case I am impaled with a big sharp F. After all, it is my PARENTS who will ensure that I percieve it as a personal failure rather than just academic. I, truthfully, couldn't care less...

But anyway, fuck school. I won't let it win. Today and tomorrow I will be spending time with all the wonderful friends I have met over the past few months who must travel back to the land of the rising sun. There, more stories will be told about the "okasii" American who taught forgotten English and drunkenly tried to decipher engrish t-shirts. And even more pictures of me will be floating around Japan. There must be over a hundred by now, pictures of me looking confused, pictures of me looking white, pictures of me holding up one finger as opposed to the traditional Japanese two (heh heh). Aah, but my friends! I will miss them. I've learned- and laughed -so much while hanging out with them. Hopefully I will keep in touch with all of them; they certainly were diligent in collecting every bit of contact information I could give.

So yeah. I see a lot of people here in the library waiting to use a computer, so I guess I will let them. I will try to write whenever I get the chance over this Christmas vacation, which may be often or not at all, but damned if the metal machines don't do that the way Joseph did on his birthday yaught. Biznatch!

I'll tell you about Coffee World later

Being finals week, I've been a bit busy these last few days. I finally completed that damn story; I dressed that corpse up reeeal nice and left him on my instructor's doorstep. Really. Well, it wasn't really a corpse, but I went to this bastard's house at 8:00AM on Sunday and left my story in front of his door. I knocked twice, honest.

Taking a cue from both Joel and Momus, this year I have begun carrying a pocket composition which I have dubbed "my idea book". So I thought this time I'd post some excerpts from it, things that I (must've) felt were important enough to write down at the time:

-In coffee world, most people wear thick rimmed glasses. All plant life is potted or enclosed. Always dawn or dusk.
-rap-rock/metal rivals Disney on Ice as the stupidest, most repulsive form of entertainment man has ever created.
-Talking to a bee on a Saturday morning
-Slrig Etuc
-Question of the Day: how does one know if he is ugly?
-copacetic=fine & dandy
-fat girl probably thinks I'm cute
-Libraries are hospitals in the off-season
-cream-coloured pants
-"What, you don't spay grey that anyway?"
-Work: helped blind guy get his breakfast. My conscience is clean. STILL NO NAPKINS
-stapler suppliers were a bunch of assholes
-Song about boyish girls to the tune of "M.A.S.H."
-Early 80s sci class videos
-I'm the captain of a robot-pirate ship
-save changes to love!?
-I am a soapbox derby racer/ winning the races in front of the drugstore
-I wonder if middle aged men discuss their pony tails with each other
-the grass is always greener on the other side of the Pacific
-what is evolve backwards?
-in the line of fire- NOW NOW NOW!
-Mon: today, write 2 pages of story, get around to reading woman's religion book, Tell Chad about Tommy
-Elvis can't go up stairs
-Yahweh's gone and stolen my name, now I can't get no respect
-"They (the friars) are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely"

Just a note, I do actually write ideas in the book. This is just what comes in between them.

It is 8:31AM, and I am in the library. At approximately 8:06AM I entered a room with two Japanese instructors for my little oral test/interrogation. The format was like this: Situation 1, the instructor has just gotten back from a trip, and we talk about the trip. Situation 2, there is a magazine on the table, and we talk about the magazine. The whole thing lasts about 5 minutes. Not so bad, right?

I will liken my performance to a game on the Super NES called Pilotwings. In this game, there are missions that involve maneuvering an airplane through a series of colored rings in the sky. This morning it was like I dropped the controller at the very beginning of the exercise and my airplane proceeded to fly in a straight line, gliding right past most of the rings and every once in a while clearing one with luck. Or maybe I could just explain it like this: the plain flies straight into the ground and explodes in a ball of fire.

Situation 1 was a complete disaster. She says "I went to Paris." I say "How was it?" She says "It was fun." Then silence, utter silence, as I try to think up something else to ask. When did you go? No, I don't know the word for 'when'. Do you have friends there? No, I don't know how to ask the location of the friends. Did you buy anything? No, I don't know the word for 'anything'. Finally I blurt out a butchering of "Do you understand French?" And she says "No, not at all." I say "Oh, really?" She says "That's right." Then more silence. It goes on like this; I fail to keep the conversation going, and every now and then she impatiently places a ring directly in front of my airplane by saying something like "I bought these pants"(to which I responded with a misusing of the word "expensive"). At least they know I am fluent in using the phrases "I'm sorry" and "excuse me".

Situation 2 wasn't so bad, except looking back I realize I neglected to use any of the sentence particles that we supposedly learned last week, so I probably sounded like a 3-year-old. But get this; last night I studied Japanese for 3 hours with a real Japanese person, and not even she knew how to properly use those sentence particles. So I am hoping that all the other students do as bad or worse than I did. That way the instructors will just give up on the lot of us and give everybody an 'A'.

Anyway, I hope this post was humorous. It's kind of hard for me to joke about it considering I'm pretty pissed-off and stressed-out over all of my fucking classes, but one must keep a sense of humor, all the way to the gallows.

This happened this morning: I found out that our short stories were due today in final draft form, contrary to my belief that they are due NEXT Thursday. So I have until Sunday morning to throw together some kind of ending to my pile of words, then I have to go find the instructor's house and deliver my story to his front door, and then resist the temptation to torch the place before I leave.

I gave a little performance in Japanese today. No problem. The shit will hit the fan tomorrow morning at 8:00AM, when I must have a one-on-one Japanese conversation with my instructor. Or, if you will; I will be fucked tomorrow morning when I perform orally for my instructor (okay, okay. Bad taste).

Ladies and gentleman, I am sick. Right now I feel like someone vaccumed out all of my insides and filled me up with hot water. There is a strange squeezing sensation on my head, and my nose burns every time I inhale. Natsuki, don't worry about it. You didn't do it on purpose...I don't think...and it's only a cold. I will be fine. Nothin' to go sleepin' in the Mississippi over!

Today in my Japanese drill the instructor (we get to say 'sensei') took out a small motorized massager to incorporate into the class conversation. She was trying to explain what it was and said "You use it on your neck and head and it gives you..." Not thinking, I blurted out "cancer," to which everybody laughed with their hands over their mouths. This is proof that the cancer joke is not dead, and it is alive and well for anyone daring enough to use it.

Harry Potter and the Chocolat Jesus

I'm back, in Corvallis, after a busy few days. Thanksgiving was good; I ate food and dicked around at home. I was unable to play Excitebike because the plug for the Nintendo was here in my apartment. Fiddlesticks.

On Friday I saw the new Harry Potter movie. The movie is very entertaining, but for those of you who haven't yet seen it, take heed: before you can view the picture you must sit through 20 minutes of the stupidest commercials and previews for the most idiotic movies you have ever seen. I guess it's all for balance. Before you can watch this masterpiece of family entertainment, you must be reminded that Hollywood corporations still enjoy writing, filming, producing, and marketing utterly terrible shit for you and your kids to watch. After a CGI kangaroo had jerked around the screen for 30 seconds rapping in an Australian accent, I was afraid I wasn't going to make it to Harry Potter. One more preview like this and I knew I would be killed by the physical, tangible force of stupidity. Of course, before you get to see these warnings of impending crap coming to a theater near you, you get to watch commercials. That's right, you thought you could escape those tacky, schizophrenic advertisements for safer SUVs and obscene childrens' entertainment by turning off you TV? Wrong! They pop up on the big screen as if to say "Aha! I found you! Now, don't you want to buy this??" Once the movie finally started I tried to let the delightful little English boys push all these painful images out of my head. However, on my way home from the theater I briefly recalled the plot for a coming attraction called "What a Girl Wants," and I shook my head violently until my mind went completely cloudy.

Oh yeah; last night I sat through the film "Chocolat" with my friend Henry Weinhard. It wasn't bad for a sacreligious movie about a chocolate maker slipping drugs into her products (Oh, come on. You know she was doing it).