Midaregami

For the past two years I’ve been living here in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I have had a largely excellent time. I have learned a lot, despite some rough spots, and both Herself and I have flourished here, initial misgivings notwithstanding. I think I could legitimately describe the two years here as the best in my life so far.

Thus, if asked about my plans a month ago, I would (with some effort, it bears saying) distanced myself from late-semester panic enough to say that I was in fact quite looking forward to Hawai’i Year Three, wherein I expected to write my MA thesis on the poetics of consumption in Tawara Machi’s Sarada Kinenbi, which I planned to translate as an appendix to the thesis proper. It was going to be grand.

But there has been a twist. A monumental, shocking twist.

That same late-semester panic, inspired largely by a certain graduate class on Edo-era Literature¹, spurred me to spend a couple of evenings doctoring up my resume and sending it into Newtype USA. I have engaged in similar folly before², but this time I had a couple of honest-to-god gonna-be-published notches on my freelancing pistol, so I wondered if my inquiry might have credibility it previously lacked.

Turns out it did. To compress the long and frequently agonizing process of interviews and indecision down to a few words: I got the job.

On Sunday I am flying to my ancestral home of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a week later I am driving to Houston, Texas. A week after that, hopefully after finding an apartment, I start my new job as a staff translator for Newtype USA.

At this point, all I can really think to say is: Holy Fucking Shit.

¹ It turned out that I received an (extremely generous) A-, and ultimately wrote a paper of which I am actually quite proud—in any case, my panic was unfounded. (“Like it always is,” Herself long-sufferingly points out.)  

² Amusingly, last year I sent my resume to ADV Films, Newtype USA’s parent company, in response to their job posting for a translator. They never replied, and the posting remains up even now, a year later. Maybe they forgot about it.

Grad student gets hit by truck, which runs over his head, then lives to tell about it.

I love the part where he says he hasn’t really stopped to think about the accident because quals are coming up.

Substantive updates coming soon.

I recognize that the Transformers movie is essentially a shameless ploy to wring money out of my childhood nostalgia, but after seeing this new trailer, I do not care.

It is going to be awesome.

Also there is big, big news on the horizon, which I will be discussing soon. Look forward to it.

I recorded some music a while ago. Recently I did some more. Now, I’m making what amounts to a full release, with the presentation of my first EP, entitled: “In Lieu of Talent: The Paul Starr Story.”

Six tracks, twenty minutes of catchy instrumental music, painstakingly hand-sequenced and mixed in the most underrated piece of software ever, Apple’s GarageBand. Three of these tracks are brand new, never before released songs. All of them have lengthy, ridiculous titles. What are they? You’ll just have to download and find out.

Grab the zip and do feel free to comment if you have any sort of reaction. I will be talking more about this “project” soon, but for now, download, listen, enjoy.