Shiny. || Not-so-shiny. || Super-shiny.

[ltgmars]

There it is, folks. Last semester I got KenKen in (with the janken clip). Today, I successfully worked Arashi into my Japanese presentation. I was talking about the history of Japanese dialects (as mentioned in an earlier post) and focused on Touhoku-ben, which gave me the perfect excuse to have a show-and-tell clip from Shukudai-kun 130 (the already-infamous Oppai Bakuhatsu Game episode) in which Ogura reads aloud some Akita-ben, and everyone's like, "No one knows what you're saying, bud." And then the quiz question I asked the class was which of the Arashi members is my favorite. Tanaka-sensei laughed, 「発表と関係ないよ！」("This isn't even related to your presentation!"), to which I responded, 「関係ありますよ。」 ("It is related.")

It was probably the best Japanese presentation I've had to date, or at the very least the most fun to deliver. I owe more than a little to the fact that I practiced diligently for hours, late into the night, until I could recite it half-asleep while I was lying on RFHG (Really Fucking Huge Bear, the giant teddy bear that Harrison and I found in a dumpster at the end of freshman year). Beyond that, I think everyone was able to contribute to the discussion and had fun talking about accents and dialects and such. So yay. For once I don't feel like weeping silently into my pillow the night after a failed presentation.


Meanwhile, my Development of Modern Japanese Nationhood presentation did not go as smoothly, which is fine because it was supposed to be a report on my "work-in-progress" (that is to say, "have-yet-to-write-a-word-of-it") research paper. My points were all over the place and I had no idea how to respond to any of the questions my classmates asked me, but it did give me a chance to see some holes (of the magnitude of a discontinuity in space-time) in my argument. So hopefully I'll be able to get that, along with the other research paper that I haven't written a word of, done and taken care of this week.


And mostly for Cami (because you're a whore for this song already), but other interested parties are welcome: Have you seen the Utaban performance of "Crazy Moon" yet? The dancing makes my heart go pitter-patter. They did mention at some point that it's been a while since they danced this much for a song, and it seems that this'll probably be the choreography for the PV. I especially like the crazy spazz-hand choreography after the two-minute mark, but that might be my bias talking. So. Yeah.

Comments

[rebecka-jo.livejournal.com]

oh my god, ily. you're so charming, i'm dying, cutest presentation ever! i was so intrigued by ogura-san speaking the dialect, and totally didn't understand why the boys were having trouble. then i remembered that they're a boyband, and i understood.

(y) kan pei! i'm sure the other was good as well. or it was awful, feel ashamed. :Dv kidding.

i have awesome fresh off the presses news as well, SQUEALING, INEZ GUESS WHAT?

i just finished my huge final paper on the social construction of the AIDS epidemic and the rise of identity politics.

D: my still being alive is a miracle, let us pray.

SCREAMING. (ahaha, i am like this irl, it's very annoying. sorry, from now on know to not excite me):

the utaban performance! i watched it with my girl yesterday and she mocked them the entire time, except for sho, who she thought was pretty and - ohno satoshi is freaking perfect, but how amazing does kazu look? i couldn't take my eyes off of his awful flaily limp-wristed dancing.

and how could anyone not like that song. Miss Crazy. . . it's about me! [wild eyes]

and aiba randomly slutty dancing - what is that? and sho velicorapper (haha) stance is back, it's official. and neen bean squinting and emoting all over the place.

and jun. . . sigh, someone always has to keep the boys from perfection.

as you can see. i was just waiting to spazz with you.

also: notice the new icon. based on the comments kristen made about that photoshoot, which is my desktop currently. she also called him a creepy fatty, to which i desperately tried to find the clip where nino verifies that he is as thin as a plasma tv sideways. to no avail.

[ltgmars.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, all boy band jokes aside, my professor (and the visiting Japanese Lady who came to listen in) both said that they didn't understand a word Ogura was saying. So I felt slightly better for the boys, but then I remembered the time when Aiba asked a spectacularly stupid question before answering himself, and the guest asked if the stupid self-exchange had been done on purpose, and Ogura was like, "... nope."

(y) I'm looking forward to cruising through the rest of my Japanese classes until I have to cram for the final. I'm blissfully ignoring the existence of my three other classes.

YAY AIDS paper! What class is that for? (Moment of dorky academic wonder: Throughout the semester, I've been finding myself more and more interested in social systems and constructions, much more so than I had been in the past. Maybe it's because my Japanese Nationhood course is the first legitimate sociology course I've taken, but I just recently realized that everything affects freaking everything, and there are so many personal and political and social implications of even the smallest events and ideas. You can't talk about gender politics without talking about the business world without talking about pop culture... It's wild. I was so naive before.)

Also, can I fangirl you for a moment? You used a possessive pronoun before a gerund! So few people do that, but it's so much nicer and more correct than what the majority of stupid Americans say. ♥ ♥ ♥

Oh. Japanese manboys. Yeah.

Aiba does the slut dance more often than I would peg him for, I think. It wasn't that jarring, and I only tilted my head in confusion for a fraction of a second. (By that time, I was back to looking at Nino.)

No matter how much you deny it, you know Sho's pretty.

Ohno moves like a dream. Additionally, I love how his pinky doesn't curve all the way around the mic. It just draws more attention to his amazing hands.

And Nino. Ninoninonino. ♥

Speaking of limp-wrist syndrome... I'm wondering what would happen if we attached wooden planks to Jun's arms for a concert. I think it'd be pretty fantastic. I mean, he'd do so much less damage. Though then he'd probably be putting it all in the squirmy leg-bend or wag his tongue like the air around him tasted like happiness or something. So wooden planks for his legs, too. Maybe a posse of wrestlers to push from all directions against his head to keep it from wobbling so much. Oh, oh! And a timed taser that gives him a shock if he winks for more than the time necessary to blink. (Unfortunately, I've got nothing for his tongue, the most offensive of his arsenal. I'm told it's necessary for singing. Help?)

Plasma Riida (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PUVCqBAE4U) (no subtitles, though). You show that girl what's the haps. He's only a creepy fatty in his cheeks, and that's not even creepy. It's just fatty.

WALL OF TEXT.

[rebecka-jo.livejournal.com]

Ogura is my hero. I remember when the show first started and he was like >( fuck my life, ahaha. He seemed so unhappy ~ but eventually he came around, eh. And now I think he quite likes the boys.

Stop it! I speak strangely, and my written words are an exact transcription of my speech. :x I'm awkward.

(*Notice my proper capitals here. This is not my doing and it’s literally pissing me off. I’m using Microsoft word to type this up in (I’m at work, and want to look like I’m doing homework, at the least). Capitalization is an instrument of the patriarchy! Radical grammar reassignment!

What other classes of yours? Loose as a goose - that’s the ticket. Today I spent an hour doing meditation and cardio in the library basement when I was supposed to be shelving. It's end of term, let go~ (gives bad advice).

AIDS / Identity Politics paper was for my male homosexuality in the united states class. The professor is my mentor as well; really an amazing experience.

Let’s see. . . social constructions of sexuality. Truly a fine line, Queer Theory. Honestly, I feel like so much of the gay male construction theories are so very hedonistic, and it does little but ghettoize gay men; the whole goes full circle until these men are oppressing themselves by exclusion and early death from risky behavior.

I would say that while so much of it is worthwhile, stand up to your professors and the material provided, political correctness or no. So much of this field (GenSex) is stiflingly P.C.

On the other hand, the construction of gender is very interesting to me. For me, sexuality in men seems to be an intrinsic happening. But for women? Oh (wo)man. Radical feminism, anti-feminism lesbians, and womyn. Oh, womyn - I’m currently getting an academic kick out of these ladies. They identify as lesbians and have a deep, unbending hatred of MTF trans. people, because many have expressed a desire to become heteronormative housewives, basically. But, that's another topic.

Er, yeah, so. Avoid these classes at all cost or you’ll become like myself. How dreadful.

B-but if you ever want to, uh, talk about these things. We will talk. Long. And hard.

Sho needs to cut his hair, because the weird thing it’s doing now is messing up my two minutes hate (i.e. j/o and crying while thinking about him). Ahahaha, I have the worst sense of humor ever, sorry.

I’ve noticed something about Ohno. He – we know he primps like a little cheerleader – but he also has the most amazing secret bitchfaces. Jaysus, I wish I were at home; I have several amazing .gifs of the other guys interacting and in the background of each one, there is ohno, lips pursed, ignoring the fanservice – playing with his hair, shrinking away from the others’ horseplay, and generally being me the week before Aunt Dot visits.
I love him so deeply. He is my Bodhisattva, my spiritual guide. Never change, tiny, enigmatic, moody Japanese man.

IGNORING YOUR JUN HATE LALALALA. Although I loll’ed muchly. I’m sure getting rid of the tongue would make Arashi sound better, but we’d have to deal with an angry Oguri Shun. And he's quite big.

YES THE CLIP. I have to show it to her before she leaves for France D: but if I don’t get the chance, I have already trained her to identify Nino on sight, with instructions to keep her eyes peeled for him around Paris. I just – I just have this feeling, in my gut, that Nino often visits Paris for trysts – smoking in a café, performing sweaty mediocre magic tricks with his hamburger hands for various modern lovers. Nee-noh, they all whisper, throatily, as he shuffles the deck. And he? Always a closed-mouth smirk when they awaken in the dark; go back to sleep, okay? And they do, knowing the little boy will not be there when their eyes next open.

And berets. And black clothes. And tears, bitter salty tears that prompt the dramatic line You taste like the ocean. To which Nee-noh replies, The ocean tastes like Japan (ahaha I am laughing out loud right now, I think my brain has cracked).

. . . Wow, as you can tell work is awful slow today. Sorry. I’ll stop now. Uh. <3

I LOVE YOU.

[ltgmars.livejournal.com]

(I'm going to work backwards just to mess with you. I try to be innovative every once in a while.)

Current status: Trying so hard not to laugh right now. Failing miserably. Convulsing in a corner at work and hoping my boss doesn't notice. I think I may develop a smoky-French!Nino fetish. He'll be so much more squeaky and compact than the rest of the debonair Frenchmen.

I thought about this all night (sad, but actually true), and I figured out what to do about Jun's tongue! We'd have him eat something highly adhesive right before the concert so that his tongue can't move from his mouth (there's got to be something that sticky... like a jar of rubber cement or something), and he'd lip-sync everything and Ohno would sing all of his parts. (After the concert, most of his biggest fans would remark that he'd improved greatly, but they're a lost cause anyway so I'll let them have their misconceptions. But if I'm lucky, people who find him "charming" during concerts will be turned off by his sudden lack of enthusiasm, and they'll go on to become big fans of one of the others instead.)

What are these primping-Ohno gifs you speak of? I must see them.

Jacking off and crying? Sweetie, there's a word for that -- "crasturbate". Utilize.

My Japanese Nationhood paper is (eventually) about male cross-dressing in Japan, and my argument is that it's much harder for man to come out as a transgendered/transsexual individual in his private life because of the way it's portrayed in the public sector (television and print media, etc.), that the increasing visibility and acceptance of those transgendered celebrities is a hindrance to people who have that identity but aren't gendered and don't express themselves in the way that Japanese society expects of them. It's along the lines of oppression and risky behavior, but possibly more to do with the strict-'n'-rigid nature of gender roles in Japan, and how -- and this is true in any country -- for many people, "radical" gender expression and gender non-conformity is an automatic indication of homosexuality.

As far as Japan goes, I haven't much explored female sexuality, but there's an element of "tradition" in looking at male sexuality (male cross-dressers in kabuki, historical records of homosexual relationships, etc.) that I think retards the process of looking at female sexuality.

d00d, I definitely need to take at least one more GenSex course next year. This stuff is interesting.

As for my current classes, it's Japanese (third-year), Chinese (first-year), the aforementioned Japanese Nationhood class, and a Chinese Revolution class, which is interesting in its own right. For that research paper I'm hoping to look at the political and military role of women during the cultural revolution, which, lo and behold, includes the ways in which femininity and androgyny were developed after the Chinese Communist Party came into power and up through the cultural revolution.

My thesis (with research starting this summer) is probably going to go back to transsexuals in Japan, though I'm not yet sure what I want to focus on.

Yay, it's fun to have someone to talk to about these things. Aside from the conversations in class, I don't really get to talk about stuff like this. My real-life friends are so lame.

crasturbate I HATE YOU D:

[rebecka-jo.livejournal.com]

OH GOD. i am writing this fic and making you read it. you'll read it and you'll like it.

perhaps you can teach me to be more understanding of transgender issues. i am unfortunately not very sympathetic, because i often see mtf women as being, yes, regressive. and, unfortunately, i am holding a grudge over the ENDA debacle. i know that trans. people deserve protection, and they are attacked because they do not maintain proper gender roles, which is the same reason gay people are attacked, but. i don't know - being so close to complete federal protection and having it snatched away by a group of people i do not identify with at all stung, a lot.

emo, etc. i was speaking to another lj friend, trying to defend my position that when/if so-and-so japanese (male) idol gets married, it's over for me being a fan. she's a professor who taught queer theory this semester, so she prodded me for the truth. i admitted that i am sensitive because i am recently out (after . . . too many relationships with men), and i assume that all 'straight' men are anti-gay bigots. this isn't a problem for u.s. / western celebrities because they get asked their position, but in japan/korea/china? no way. it can be kind of deduced from their treatment of the new half women, but that is different. so, yeah. my name is cami and i'm a bigot (y)! help?

shit. exam in 30 minutes. ~ancient near east~ i.e., crazy biblical peoples. sigh, so many names and dates. . . a truly traditional history course. your courses sound amazing, except for chinese. STOP TAKING IT NOW. causes not a thing but pain, and misery, and pain, and confusion, and pain. xiexie, fuck you. when does school let out for you (for summer break)?

these papers. i will want to read them, jsyk. k. my thesis? right now i'm planning on writing about the gay men who contributed to the great american songbook, especially cole porter (i.e., god) - focusing on religion (they were almost all jews), and social class as well as sexuality as contributing factors to their lasting fame and songwriting style.

so. D: lame. my whole life is lame right now. my friends are having a big dinner and i have bible class exam. (gets out razor). irl friends, who needs them (bitter). :Dv get to work!

BUT IT'S SUCH A HANDY WORD (HANDY. HAH.)

[ltgmars.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to this fic. I'll print it out, read it, and burn it next to my Ohmiya shrine.

As far as being "understanding" goes, I think that's kind of my default position as an ally. While I have a good deal of really close friends who identify as something outside of the heteronorm, I'm not personally invested in one kind of queerness over another. With ENDA, more than anything else it's a matter of queerness of any kind being denied rights and much less about one kind of queerness making it more difficult for another to have those rights. I completely understand your standpoint, though, and I can't and don't blame you for how you feel about it. If I were in your position, I'd be peeved for sure; it's just that I'm not. I'm less tied to your frustration so I can see the transsexual community's frustration as well, and I look at it holistically.

(That sounded ridiculously condescending, so I apologize. I'm just trying to logistically step through (for my sake as much as for yours, I think) why I'm able to have the kind of sympathy you claim to lack. In the end, though, you're probably more sympathetic than you realize -- you seem like a humanist who just happens to have a certain experiential bias.)

Unrelated, I... actually... love Chinese. The tones and the noises are completely distinct from anything I've ever done before. I think another part of the fun for me is the rewarding process of a first-year intensive class, in which you start with zero talent and end with being able to say such useful phrases as, "I want to order some beef before I borrow a book from the library."

I'm an awful writer. I leave holes all over the place and the arguments I make are like colanders. But if in the end you do want to read them, I'll send them to you. I demand papers in return, though. And then I can cower in your persuasive greatness and you can be like, "I'm friends with an idiot", and we can become a manzai duo and be invited as guests to Shukudai-kun and do the headphone-mask thing and rub up against Nino and Ohno respectively. Sound like a plan, y/y?

[rebecka-jo.livejournal.com]

. . . what an awful exam that was.

quickly,

this is the song nino inspires in the hearts of his french lovers:

A bossa nova instrumental cover ~ me, japanese boy, i love you (http://www.imeem.com/people/d-k4XyG/music/Oyltjx-9/naomi-goro-me-japanese-boy-i-love-you/)

and one of the .gifs i could find immediately, nice and slow for your observation~ (jun is also a bitch toward the the end, but who cares, he's always like that):



and this is unrelated, but come on.



ok, i'll stop stalking you. for now.

[ltgmars.livejournal.com]

Amazing. Amazing.

And I'm sure the exam went fine. (If all else fails, bribery and sexual favors are your friends.)