New song, true

This is probably the most honest I responded to the quiz, so this is me as a Cowboy Bebop theme song, most of the time. I might be the other two sometimes, though. People are complicated that way. Or I'm crazy, one or the other.

Not that this all means a damned thing. Still, better playing with this than reading more modern poetry, neh?

No, not really.

Today's song

Bear in mind, Cats On Mars was my theme song last time.

So what's your Cowboy Bebop theme song?

Measuring importance

Mom installed the Google toolbar to our Internet Explorer, mainly to block pop-ups, which it does quite handily. There are little handy items in the bar, like a space where we can type in what we might want to search on Google, an item to let us select where we want to seach in specific, an icon which let's me enter in a blog entry quickly, an icon which tells us how many pop-ups have been blocked so far (118), etc.

One interesting item is the PageRank bar. "PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of this page." This particular page, where I can edit my blog, is ranked 0/10, as I'm the only one who accesses it, I suppose. More interesting is the ranks given to blogs and sites I visit:

• Sam's blog: 5/10.
  
• ET's blog: 4/10.
  
• Maggie's blog: 3/10.
  
• JerkSquad!!: 4/10.
  
• Octopus Army: 3/10.
  ...and my blog?
  
• tmoltsk: 2/10.

Conclusion? No one likes me. I write a boring blog and nobody likes me and I have no friends.

Bwwaaaaa! sniffle

'Course, I could be wrong about that. I've been wrong before.

Whooosh!

The most we got of the rain today was a few hours of downpour in the morning. But since then, the wind has been strange. Strong, humid, swaying back and forth through the trees. It's driving the cats mad; they're running about the house, willy-nilly, meowing for nothing and everything, content to sit for only moments at a time, then leaping up and skt-skt-skt their back claws tap against the floor as they start the whole routine again, speeding into the next room and the next. Are they following the wind? Why do they respond so strongly to something outside the house which they can't even feel? I didn't feel like running until I stood out there early this afternoon, wondering why Mom would want to read the paper and do the puzzle in such strange, sticky wind, and then it was only to get indoors.

oh my fucking gawd

Follow the link and you shall see the one, the only, the dickhead.

A ribbon-like strip running around the back of the head bears an inscription, written in reverse, which translates as "every man looks at me as if I were a head of dicks".

Oh, lord, how full of wonder is the world.

Change in medication

Finally got to talk to my doctor today (well, yesterday evening at this point), after nearly two weeks of phone tag. While I didn't get to tell him about everything that's gone wrong since the weird bump in my taking my meds this past spring, he said, "Ah, yes," about halfway through the list of problems and quickly thought up a replacement pill for the one I'm taking and wrote up the 'script' to mail my way.

I'm so durned happy about this; I've been feeling gawdawful for months now. Here's hoping the switch in a couple of weeks will make for a big, happy, non-new-ailment-inducing change. Yay.

If not, well, he says I'll have to go in for a sonogram or MRI or something like that, which will be FUN! and expensive, and I'm without medical insurance right now, so it'll be even more FUN! trying to figure out how to pay for all of it. Yay.

Or, as Joelly-bear might put it, Ooh, ecstasy joy.

I just wish there was a pill I could take just once which would take care of this weird-arse condition once and for all. I'm sick of having to remember to take this stuff. And my freak-girl reactions. Bleh.

Frustrated Yankees fan rant

First there's Boomer and Moose getting screwed out of winning their 200th career games. They would have been #99 and #100 on the all-time 200-game winners. Or 100th and 101st, depending on whose records you believe. That's another story, though. Pre-1900 baseball history is a tad fuzzy. Anyway, so Boomer gets screwed out of his 200th by the Yankees not being able to get a frickin' hit with a man on base even though the pitcher they were facing has lost more games than he's won this year. They're the Orioles, for pete's sake. They've been out of the pennant race for ages. They should be able to hit the crap out of their pitching staff, but they can't buy a frickin' hit. Then there's poor, brilliant Moose, who was made to pitch on the day the hurricane hit Maryland. The game was a 1-1 tie when they had to cancel due to inclement weather. No shit, inclement weather. They'd closed the schools, the federal government, the trains, but they just had to make these guys play a ball game? Plus, why, why can't the current Yankees hit these lousy pitchers? What the heck is going on?

Even worse is the rumor that Joe Torre, my dad's hero, possibly my favorite man in the Yankees uniform, will walk come the off-season. If he isn't fired first. Steinbrenner has not hit one good note with his bitching, whining and complaining this season. Giambi's not been half the player we'd been sold when he bought him off of the A's. Weaver was a horrible trade acqusition from the beginning. The bullpen has been dead all season long. Aaron Boone, while a good player, hasn't hit a lick; I really can't see how his being on the team is an improvement, especially when he's barely hitting over 220.

Steinbrenner has been a whiny, interfering bitch since before the season started, blaming people who've done their best to help the team. I can't blame Torre for wanting to leave. It's amazing he's withstood that mock-turtleneck bastard as long as he has. But at least Steinbrenner had the decency to keep his fat mouth shut the previous years (for the most part). He just couldn't shut up this season. And it's most definitely not having the effect he wanted. Yeah, that's right, Steinbrenner, demoralize your team and coaching staff. That'll definitely lead to the World Series.

I understand the impetus behind the complaints. The team has not been what it was in the past. But that's because the team is not composed of the players it had in the past. Sure, you have Posada, Jeter and Williams up the middle, and Matsui has been one hell of a player, but the rest of the field has been more miss than hit. Except for Nick Johnson, who might have had a year to blow baseball away if it hadn't been for that broken hand. Giambi has sucked more often than not. Same to for that platoon in right, where we'd once had the rock-solid O'Neill. Third has been a question mark, though Robin Ventura obviously did a lot for the clubhouse attitude. And Soriano. Oh, lord, Soriano. Apparently he has swallowed every bit of hype printed about him in the past couple of years. Yeah, sure, he's 30-30, but his fielding is piss-poor and his bat is dead more often than not. He is the Yankee in best need of a bitch-slap. Or an entire bitch-slap therapy session.

There seems to be an element missing, the fire in thebelly, the need to win. While there is a core of hard-working players, the rest seem to be lost on the field, dozing, content simply to wear the pinstripes instead of earning them. It's beyond infuriating. I hate them for what they're doing to the team on the whole, the lackidasical players. They could do with another angry O'Neill, someone to smash the water cooler after every strikeout, someone with a visible passion for the game, someone with a temper aimed only at himself because he expects perfection every time out there. For a moment, when Boone nearly blew his top at a botched call a few weeks back, I thought he might be O'Neill's heir, the fire in the Yankee belly, the burning heart of the team. But he isn't. Close, but no O'Neill, just like Giambi doesn't have half the presence of a Tino, even though he has the better bat. There's no real team, though the core pitching, Boomer, Rocket, Pettitte and Moose, appear to have bonded through this rough season of spotty swinging and erruptions from the bullpen and their own inexplicable occasionally faltering arms. There are cliques instead of the well-oiled team of the late 90's. Few of the players then had banner years, but they played so well together as a team that it didn't matter. Their whole was greater than the sum of its parts, even with the future-hall-of-fame Jeters.

The fact that Torre has been able to get this mismatched collection to hold onto the top of the AL East is a tribute to his managing skills. The fact that Torre has not quit already in spite of Steinbrenner's behavior is another tribute to his managing skills. The man has had to manage management, team and coaches. It blows my mind what he must go through. I'd definitely say he's been worth every penny of that $5 mil. And I'm sure I won't be alone in missing him greatly if the rumors are true and Torre isn't sitting next to Zim on the bench in Tampa next year.

Update on the unnamed cat

We have the best vet. Shaker Veterinary Hospital. They're great with animals, they run an animal placement service, finding homes for strays and animals whose owners can't keep anymore, and they were quick to help us when we brought in the dead cat we found last night. They took the cat, box and all (what, I want to keep a box which had had a dead animal in it?), and told us they were going to put an ad in the paper about the cat. The head vet said he and his staff would also try to ID the cat. So they might be able to find the owner. They probably will.

So that's a big relief.

Only problem is, there's this cat, Dresselmeyer

who has been in the little animal placement service cages (they call the placement service Save-a-Pet) for a couple of weeks now. When I first saw him, I thought maybe my sister, E--, whose family had just lost their cat Mitzi (hit by a car), might like to take him. I got my heart set on finding a home for him. He was sweet natured for such a large cat stuck in such a small space (not fat, but tall--he could most definitely take on a lapdog and win, if he were so inclined). He was also good looking; with his sleek black coat and small white bib he looked like he was about to go to the opera. But my sister told me they were looking for a kitten, that my nephew J-- insisted on a kitten.

I was unreasonaly angered by her capitulating to J--'s request for a kitten. There are so many good cats who need homes, I thought. Why can't she at least give Dresselmeyer a chance? I'd even taken pictures of him hoping a peek at the cat would persuade her, but I never got the chance to e-mail it to her. Still, it's up to them to take on an animal. Why should they bow to my choice?

So, he's still there, a couple weeks later, waiting in that cage for someone to notice how good a cat he is and take him home. I don't know what to do, as there's no way I could persuade Mom to take on another, a third cat, especially now that Oscar is starting to cost a lot more with his blood tests and all. But I want to know Dresselmeyer's in a good home. So I'm posting a couple of pictures of him, not the best pictures but better than nothing, on my Fotolog and hoping for the best.

It looks like it's sleepingor, why you should always make sure your cat has an ID tag

Mom and I left the house at around 10:30 this morning. (Juu-ji han. ...I have to keep practicing.) It was a beautiful, sunny, totally-no-sign-of-rain day, with the requisite super-blue sky and puffy/wispy white clouds. I was in class or studying until 8:00, when Mom picked me up after a day spent at the doctor's in Connecticut checking out her foot (she won't need physical therapy anymore and she got drugs, which are always useful). We were joking around, talking about our day, admiring how beautiful the evening was. Traffic was a horror as they're busy putting in sidewalks. When we got to the house, Mom saw something fluffy by the side of the road in front of our driveway.

"Oh, my god, it's Floof."

"No!" Mostly 'cause it makes no sense that our indoor-only cat got out and got herself run over. Also 'cause I didn't want her dead. I figure she's healthy and should have some years left in her (she and Oscar turned fifteen this past May).

Mom made wide berth around the cat and stopped the car saying, "How did she get out? How did she get out?" while I kept saying "No! No!" Mom opened her door and peered at the cat in the orange-tinted road light as I leapt out of the car and ran around to see the cat.

It was dark and had a longer snout than a himalayan (our Floof is a blue-point himalayan). "It's not Floof," I said, only partially relieved.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. It's too dark. See?" It had the markings of a seal-point himalayan or siamese, the super-dark brown points (face, ears, legs, tail) with dark brown to light brown body. It looked like maybe a himalayan mix, as it had the coloration and the long fur, but not the super-long, super-fine fur Floof has nor the himalayan squat snout, inherited from the cross-breeding of persians with the siamese. It even seemed to have blue eyes, though I didn't look too closely. It was a beautiful cat.

It looked like it was just lying there sleeping. The only blood had come from the ear on the roadside and we didn't see that until Mom moved the cat onto the top of a carboard box which I'd brought from the garage. I couldn't bring myself to touch or move the cat, as I didn't want to feel the cat's body without any life in it.

Mom and I have no idea what to do with the cat. We've put it in a largish and solid file box with a removeable lid and put the box in the garage near the doors so it can stay a bit cooler. We don't have a freezer to put it into. We don't want to have this anonymous cat burned by the ASPCA/pound without the owner ever knowing what happened. But there's no tag on the collar. How can an owner put a collar on a cat they allow outdoors but not put a tag on it? We have no way of finding out who owns the cat to let them know where their cat is and that their cat is dead. We're hoping that the local vet's office will recognize it when we bring it in, which we can't do until they open tomorrow morning. But I can't help but feel for these people who used to have this cat sit on their laps and purr while they pet its soft, dark head and stroked its long fur. If the vet can't ID it, we'll have to bury it without the owners ever knowing what happened. They'll think it ran away.

Poor cat. Poor, stupid owners. Mostly, though, poor cat.

It was really lovely. It was still warm when Mom moved it to the box lid. It felt like it was simply very relaxed, maybe deep in sleep, when I moved it to the box. You couldn't tell what was wrong until you saw the eyes, which were starting to film over. I tried to put the cat in a position in the box like it was just sleeping, but it didn't quite work. The head hung funny. I tried to close the eyes, but I just mussed up the fur on the head. I hope it didn't suffer, but it's hard to tell. The bladder was still emptying when I put it in the box. What can we do? Whom do we tell? Someone's lost their lovely pet cat. I suppose, if we can't find the owner, we'll bury it tomorrow. I'll have to think of a name for the cat. I don't think I could bury it without a name.

When I finally got inside, the cats greeted me, wondering where we had been for so long and if they could please have some dinner, which was two hours late. I fed them and gave Oscar his medication and pet them and pet them and pet them. I just wanted to get the feeling of dead cat off of my hands, to have my hands remember what my warm, living, responsive, purring cats feel like when I pet them.

When I was petting Oscar, I thought, "I feel like I'm touching him with hands of death." Like somehow I'm spreading what happened to that anonymous cat to Oscar, who's been sick lately and making me nervous. I've death on my hands that needs a name. I wish that cat hadn't died, and I wish I could give it a more dignified end. I don't want my cats to somehow catch death from the death on my hands and the death in the box in the garage.

I just don't know what to do.

Unsmart, as in lacking in smartness or "smarts"

So, I got up early-early this morning to work on the interview questions and response paper for these two short story collections for my Writers at Work course. What do I do as soon as I sit at the computer? Mess around with my new blog template. For what? Is it that much improved from last night? Not really. (Well, some of my links are there.) Oy. This is beyond procrastination. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Auuuuugh! Where the hell is my e-mail?!

AOL sucks ass.

But then, you knew that already.

Still, the latest version sucks more ass than usual. It is a vast vortex of ass-sucking. Can you hear it? That horrid, slurping, phhhhhoit-phhhhhoit sound? That's AOL v.9.0. Suck, suck, suck, suck. Massive suckage.

AOL: now even suckier than before.

I Miss My Friends

I am sick and tired of being hundreds of miles from my friends. I want to go see movies and eat at restaurants and have strange and winding conversations about everything and nothing. Perhaps my memories are shinier and happier than the reality of what was and what would be if I were there now, but I don't care. (To be honest, considering the inconvenience of my living in CT the whole time back then, is this that much different?)

And if I'm this bad just being in Albany, a mere three-hour drive from friends in two cities (from NYC or Boston), I can just imagine how whiny I'd be if I were in Japan teaching English like I'm hoping to be in a couple years' time.

Under Construction

I got bored with my old template, which was a nice, pretty blue, but boring, boring boring and lacking in design, so I've loaded one of the standard templates now available from Blogger and am currently fixing it to my liking. Lord only knows how long that will take as I have to get used to how this person writes in html (not being literate in html, it's a constant adjustment for me to figure out what's going on in various templates). Things should be up and running by next Monday. I guess.

I mean, I've a lot of reading to do and a lot of memorization. You know, Japanese. Five is go. That sort of thing. I'm learning the alphabet (hiragana) and how to count (ichi, ni, san, yon, go...). I'm like a frickin' preschooler. A preschooler with boobies.

"For One 9/11 Family, Five Waves of Grief"

from today's New York Times
full article here. written by Dan Barry of the Times for the "About New York" column.

Professor Gurland of NYU's philosophy department once told my class that the true evil of the Holocaust or the Turkish genocide of the Armenians or any such act can only be measured if you consider what it would be like, how long it would take, to meet and shake the hand of every victim, to consider each individual affected, to turn the numbing numbers into individual people.

. . . . .

The other day Al and Ginger Petrocelli learned that some remains of their son, Mark, had been identified. Again. Which meant that it was time to visit the funeral home. Again. Time to cremate. Again.

This was the fifth time in the last two years that parts of Mark Petrocelli had been identified. Mark Petrocelli, 28: husband of Nicole, son of Al and Ginger, younger brother of Al Jr., uncle of Emily, friend of many. The fifth time.

[...]

"This time," the father said, "from his left knee down to the top of his foot. Right femur with right lower leg and kneecap. Some skin. A piece of skull bone. Soft tissue. Muscle."

[...]

The phrases we rely on to make sense of grief have always failed to convey the ache of the irreplaceable. But even with the grace of two years, the World Trade Center collapse continues to render meaningless such terms as "closure" and "moving on."

Acceptance may be a better word, acceptance of how the event has become incorporated in our everyday lives — in who we are. At least that is how your neighbors the Petrocellis see it. The Petrocellis, one wounded family among thousands.

[...]

Mark Petrocelli, a commodities trader for Carr Futures, was attending a meeting on the 92nd floor of the north tower, which says it all in the parlance of post-9/11.But the Petrocellis did not know this on that day. Al Petrocelli, a retired battalion chief with the Fire Department, and Al Jr., also a firefighter, raced to Lower Manhattan after the attack.

The father remembered feeling a can-do sense of mission, an echo from his days as a firefighter and as a soldier in Vietnam. "I thought that `I could go down there and I'll find Mark,' " he said. But reality set in with the rain that fell two days later, he said. "I came home and said, `No way.' "

[...]

On Sept. 25, 2001, the Petrocellis learned that Mark's death had been confirmed through dental records. On Oct. 26, they were told that his upper torso had been identified. On Nov. 11, some soft tissue and muscle. On March 21, 2002, four parts, including his heart.

"They found his heart," Mrs. Petrocelli said. "What do you say?"

. . . . .
for more on the two-year anniversary, visit "September 11, 2003" at The New York Times website.

Writer's Almanac

The Writer's Almanac is one of my favorite things on the radio. It never takes very long, maybe about ten minutes, but in that time, the quiet, calm, comforting voice of Garrison Keillor tells of a few writers, poets, publishers born on that particular day, with a short biography for each, as well as any literary events of historical import which may have happened way back when, then recites a poem or two, different each day. It's folksy, highly literate and educational in the best sense of all three. I'm always happy when I manage to catch it on NPR in the morning (or evening, depending upon the local station's programming schedule).

Battle Instructions

I am taking a tiny break from studying Japanese. I have most of the conversations from the section memorized (Hajimemashite. Mochizuki desu. Doozo yoroshiku. etc.), but the hiragami introduced on Thursday is escaping me. I keep mixing up shi and su, which is stupid, and I'm forgetting the stuff I'd already memorized, like ke and e and u, which is even stupider.

Anyway, to entertain myself, I decided to open up the Helm's Deep Battle Figures box I got on sale from Toys'R'Us when I was with my sister. (It was on sale! It had Legolas! I had to!) As I was removing the figures from an entanglement of plastic-coated security wires, I discovered a sheet in the box entitled "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Helm's Deep Battle Set Instruction Sheet." Turns out these action figures have their own Middle-Earth-type kung-fu action, as follows:

• Haldir (a.k.a., The Ugly Elf Who Was Sent To Die)
  ... "Bow Attack Action" : he shoots arrows!
  
• Legolas (a.k.a., The Pretty Elf With Mad Skillz Who Will Never, Ever Die)
  ... "Weapon Wielding Action" : uh, he holds his sword, bow, or daggers (like unto kung-fu action grip, only with weapons).
  ... "Weapon Storage" : well, you can store lots of weapons, like arrows and the two nifty, long daggers. not really action, is it, unless you're into sheathing swords, which has connotations of its own.
  (I suspect Gimli enjoys this particular "battle action.")
  (the excess of weaponry may explain why the Pretty Elf outlives the Ugly Elf, other than Legolas is Too Pretty To Die.)
  ... "Arrow-Launcing Action" : you can shoot arrows from Pretty Elf's bow while he holds the bow, permitting reenactments of the Helm's Deep Orc-killing Competition between Legolas and his life partner, Gimli.
  
• Gimli (a.k.a., The Pretty Elf's Life Partner)
  ... "Axe-Throwing Action" : entails "Axe-Loading," which is not unlike Legolas's Weapon Wielding Action, except Gimli then throws to axe when you squeeze his legs together. neat!
  (except for maybe the leg-squeezing, which is, ah, kinda, um, gay.)
  ... he also has a removeable helmet and lots of axes which he can toss like dw-, uh, mad. like mad.
  
• King Theoden (a.k.a., The King)
  ... "Sword-Slashing Action" : you stick the sword in his hand, press a button, and swoosh! a killer sword-swooshing move!
  ... he, too, has a removeable helmet, protecting that royal head until, um, later, and, like the others, has a nice sheath to hold his manly-type sword.
  
• Aragorn (a.k.a., Still Not King)
  ... "Sword-Slashing Action" : same as King Theoden's.
  ... he has the sheath for protection of man-sword, but no helmet. I guess 'cause he's not king yet.
  ... he does have a dagger hidden behind his left arm, so you know he's going to make it through all three films: the more weaponry, the more likely the character represented by the action figure is going to survive.

I shall now have the five of them introduce themselves to each other in Japanese.

Sumimasen. Legolas-san desu ka?
Hai, soo desu.
Gimli desu. Hajimemashite. Doozo yoroshiku.
Legolas desu. Hajimemashite. Doozo yoroshiku.

Ah, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. sniff

addendum
Please note Haldir also has a removeable helmet, but seeing as the orc got him in the back (bad form!), the helmet didn't do Ugly Elf much good. Maybe he should give it to Aragorn? Or maybe Aragorn took it after cradling Dead Haldir, knowing Ugly Elf wouldn't need it to protect his unattractive head anymore.

addendum-addendum
Also, I am fully aware it was mostly, if not all, uruk-hai attacking Helm's Deep. I'm just too lazy to type out "uruk-hai" when necessary.

Also, I forgot.

Maggie and the Cats

While waiting for the 61-page excerpt from Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy my professor wants us to read for Monday to print from its webpage, I poked through The Village Voice Best of New York 2002 Procurables section, when I found this:

Best Place To Buy a Kitty- KITTYKIND ADOPTION
Kittens are just so CUTE, aren't they? The way they crawl onto your lap, nose into grocery bags, and—oh!—join you in your soft, warm, comfortable . . . sleepy . . . bed . . . zzzzz. Wake up! It's morning, the sun is streaming through the window, and kitty wants to cuddle. Kitty, who wouldn't instantly fall in love with you? A meanie, that's who. Aren't kittens so snuggly and wonderful? Get one! Get a whole furry, writhing basketful! At KITTYKIND ADOPTION, inside of Petco. -Nick Catucci

Please note the person who wrote this ode to tiny felines is named Catucci.

This passage, naturally, made me think of Maggie. Well, it made me think of me, then Maggie, Queen of the Kittens, General of the Kitten Army. Mew!

(This made me think of Hal:

Best Place To Buy a Sloth- OBSCURA ANTIQUES & ODDITIES

. "An animal lover can take home her very own sloth, stuffed for posterity and posing on a tree segment, for $750. Conversely, a germophobe can confront his fears with a wax anatomical model of a face infected with lupus, rabies, or other diseases (prices vary). They also carry [...] decorative items made of human hair.")

Bookstore!! Bookstore!! Boooooooks!!!!

I have a weakness for books. I have slowly developed a resistance to the siren call of web-shopping, keeping my purchases on Amazon.com low-ish and infrequent-ish. However, when I get into a bookstore, an honest-to-goodness, in the flesh bookstore, my spine shatteres to bits and pieces. It wasn't so bad at first. First trip to shop for books this semester was at the campus bookstore, which is badly run and ill-stocked and over-priced. Resistance was easy. Next stop, however, my spine splintered within five minutes. I went to a local independent bookstore called Book House. It's a nifty store, the kind I like to wander in just to see what-all's on the shelves.

Lots was on the shelves. There's a little hallway between the grown-up bookstore and the kids bookstore (called The Little Book House) with really great cards for new babies and birthdays and random mailing. And there were displays. I broke first at the display for Neil Gaiman. I already had Coraline, which is super-good, yet I felt compelled to pick up a copy of Wolves in the Walls.

It's just one book, I told myself. One extra book won't kill me.

Thing is, this is like a disease. Like an addiciton. It starts with one book, yes, but quickly becomes seven more. This is me being restrained, though, as it could easily have been seventeen more, including the Pengiun edition of Alexander Dumas's The Black Tulip, which I even picked up, looked at, then placed back on the shelf. No, Sugar Kat. Baaad Sugar Kat, I told myself. (This was before the breakdown at the Gaiman display.)

Here is what I bought.

• Wolves in the Walls, Neil Gaiman
  illustrated by Dave McKean, natch
  
• Lullaby, Chuch Palahniuk
  
• Civil War Stories, Ambrose Bierce
  one of the books for another class which was just lying there in the campus bookstore this afternoon, costing only $1.50 and softly calling my name
  
• How To Be Good, Nick Hornby
  
• Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
  (translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
  
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. 1), Alan Moore, et al
  
• The Night in Question, Tobias Wolff
  one of the authors we're reading then meeting this semester in my Contemporary Writers at Work class; I bought this because we read one of his short stories from this collection in the first class and I really, really liked it
  
• Why We Can't Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr.
  this was one of the "recommended" books listed in my History of the Civil Rights Movement course syllabus

Not as bad as it could have been, but a heck a lot of money added to a couple of long book lists required by my professors.

I Got To Say sensei

I have a long break between classes on Tuesdays, so I thought I'd hang out at the computer lab until my next class. The writing professor I need to give me an SKN so I can get into my fourth class still hasn't returned any of my messages and he hasn't been in his office. Granted, his class doesn't start until, like, four, but I was hoping he'd be in so I could beg him (politely) to let me into this required course. I'm trying not to panic, as there's little I can do at this point. Focus on the positive, right?

Had my first Japanese class today. I was pursuaded to take Japanese instead of Chinese (Mandarin) by my friend, C--, who is from Taiwan and is a native speaker and essay and caligraphy contest winner back in Taiwan (Mandarin). He said I'd learn to read faster in Japanese. "You'll get frustrated," he said. "It would take you too long to learn to read Mandarin." Except that there's still memorization, right? I have to memorize the hiragama and kanji (the Chinese characters). Twenty-four this semester. That's all. Just twenty-four. Still, I'm hoping I'll learn to read Japanese and not have to rely on translators for my novels. I still want to learn Mandarin, as the translations appear to be even worse (very stilted, make the most exciting stories boring with crappy English), but I got scared. I'm not a spring chicken. Still, Japanese is going to be one hell of a challenge for a rapidly aging round-eye like myself. We shall see.

It was fun to sit in class. Most of the students appear to be Chinese, with a couple Korean and then the typical white suburban-with-urban-pretentions geeks. They have the uniform. The hair, the trenchcoat, the bags, the shoes/boots. They're kind of cute, these young 'uns. Kawaii-cute, not drool!-cute. Definitely not drool!-cute.

Today was mostly warning us how hard it will be to learn Japanese if you have a European background. We learned, in romanji, Nihongo ("Japanese language"), and she taught us to call her Kaya-sensei (though she wrote it "sensee" on the board, which would be pronounced very differently) and called us [family name]-san, and told us to respond "hai!" when called on during rollcall, the latter three of which I naturally knew already being the anime geek that I am. We were assigned Japanese family names which she'll use all semester. Little cards with the kanji in thick black marker, the romaji above in ballpoint and the hiragama (pronounciation guide) below the kanji in blue ballpoint, with translation into English in same. My new Japanese name is Mochizuki, which translates as hope moon (mochi being "hope" and zuki being "moon," apparently).

You can call me Mochizuki-san from now on.

She told us we could trade for another name if we didn't like ours. I was tempted to ask for a simpler name, but then I thought, "Hope is a good thing with which to start a new language and moon is the planet for Cancer, which is my sign. It should be okay."

I just hope my handwriting improves soon when writing the kanji and hiragama. Ugggggly. Seriously ugly. I'm so ashamed!

Anyway, when class was over and we were packing up our things, it took me a while to get my stuff together as I wanted to take a picture of the giant sliding ruler above the chalkboard, which was just too cool to ignore, and rearrange my backpack. I realized I wanted to ask the professor if she had ordered the textbook from the cheaper retailer downtown and actually called her Kaya-sensei to get her attention, which made her smile at me. I was so happy!

I love learning a new language. It's so cool. When I was a kid, one of my life goals was to learn as many languages as humanly possible. My goals have lessened a great deal since then, but I'd still like to learn a lot of languages, in spite of the difficulties. I'm lucky that my brother-in-law is French and my newphew is learning French so I can pick it up again from them, and I want to return to German eventually. It so comparatively easy to learn European languages, I'm ashamed I don't know the ones I learned better and haven't learned more. I'd like to get at least one Middle Eastern language under my belt and at least two Far Eastern, and all of the Celtic languages, dead and living, and Ancient Greek (I still don't like Latin, but I think I'll have to return to it to consider myself literate). We'll see. That's a lot of money and time, and I'm neither wealthy nor very young. At least I'm getting started on Japanese, though. It's taken me long enough to get up the gumption. We'll see how I do at the advanced age of thirty. (Old fart.)