Midaregami

There’s a Dashboard widget for posting to Blogger.

There’s a Dashboard widget for posting to LiveJournal. More than one, actually.

So why isn’t there one for Movable Type? C’mon, guys. This should be easy. I guess I could use QuickPost, but that’s not very… snazzy. As a Mac user, I thrive on golden trinkets. Give me my shinies.

I just kind of felt like putting this song up.

• Kahimi Karie, Dilly Dally Dolly

I finally got around to revising the Japan Hierarchy and created a short FAQ to go along with its new place in my static pages.

The days when our people could themselves consume the sacred offering-cakes have long passed.

We know¹ that long ago, in the distant past, our ancestors must have been able to make and ingest the offering-cake, else why would they have left the manner of its making so clearly writ in their recorded past? Yes, we are forced to assume that long before we came to this world,² before the pollen of the great zhuu-aa continent-trees changed us and found for us a place here, our bodies could metabolize the strange constituents of the offering-cake.

After laboring on and off for a few weeks with Garageband and the Roland, I present to you all my first “completed” song: An Abyss Too Bright.

This song started out with a bass line that Mark laid down for me this past summer. It is a minor tragedy that we’re not in the same town to get up to such musical shenanigans more often, since he’s both technically adroit and melodically creative. Everything I did in this song stems from the little phrase he played for me in July.

I’m happy with this one. I only used canned loops for the two drum beats; everything else I recorded or sequenced myself. I am humbled by the tools I used to create this tune; shit works together too well, too well by far. This is what I bought the computer for, and I am not disappointed in the least.

A couple of people may have heard earlier versions of this piece, so if you’re one of those people, it’s worth downloading again.

I want these very badly.

So… expensive…

The amount of schoolwork I have to do this weekend is somewhere in the range of 800 milliflunks, where 1000 milliflunks is the amount of work that, left undone, will cause me to fail a class.

But hey, at least the weather’s nice.¹

¹Yes, I know I stole the idea of posting a screenshot of a weather widget from you, Fluffy. That’s because it’s a good idea.

I spend a good portion of my time being intimidated, here at the august University of The Archipelago. Let me illustrate this, via the introductions of a couple of professors that instruct at this particular institution of learning:

• Dr. John Haig. Teaches my Japanese 451: Structure of Japanese class. You might know him for his work editing the Nelson’s Kanji Dictionary.
• The real sockdolager today, Dr. Valdo Viglielmo. This retired UH professor was a guest lecturer in my Meiji-Taisho literature class. He spoke chiefly (and enthusiastically) on his great literary love for Natsume Soseki, but also related amusing tidbits about his relationship with the Tale of Genji in translation, such as his meeting of Arthur Waley, his close friendship with Edward Seidensticker, and the fact that “the most recent translation of Genji was done by a student of mine at Harvard.” Also, (and quite innocently, I might add) name-dropped as friends of his were Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio.

Man, what am I even doing here?