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ltgmarsThere 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.
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.
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BUT IT'S SUCH A HANDY WORD (HANDY. HAH.)
Date: 2009-04-29 01:13 (UTC)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?