HOLY FUCKING CRAP. There's a Scots Wikipedia. Not "Scottish English," the actual, modern English dialect. It's the Scots' own weird pseudo-English language. Check out their 9/11 and George W. Bush articles. They're so surreal. Awesome.

Anyway, it's a hobby of mine, if you couldn't tell. Looking longingly or in awe at foreign languages. I visited the 9/11 Wikipedia article today on a whim… and I've got to tell you.. that thing is a world language treasure trove. So is the Bush page, now that I think about it. On the left where the corresponding articles in other languages are listed, I found a bunch that blew me away. Like the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) page for Bush? The Cherokee page for 9/11? (ᏚᎵᏍᏗ 11, 2001 ᏗᎦᏘᎸᏍᏗ!) The Gan page (a variant of the Chinese language family)? Welsh? (Cyfres o bedair cyrch terfysgol ar yr Unol Daleithiau oedd ymosodiadau 11 Medi 2001…) The Kölsch page? (Man, I'm so good… I knew it was Germanic.) Then, of course, there were the obligatory entries in Esperanto and Ido, my two favorite constructed/international auxiliary languages. And then there were some links that I didn't get time to investigate, yet intrigued me nonetheless… like Eesti and Euskara. Oh, and Swahili and Latin! Then the series of L's: Lëtzebuergesch, Limburgs, Lietuvių, and Latviešu. I think the last one might be Latvian. My wrists hurt after copying and pasting all those URLs.

Anyway, one might suppose it sacrilegious, linking to a dozen articles on 9/11… but isn't it amazing? So many different ways to say the same thing. And yet so many problems. It's this kind of cultural misunderstanding that created this article in the first place, wasn't it? I sincerely wish more people could see the truth… and stop destroying each other over silly matters of contention.

Follow your common sense
You cannot hide yourself behind a fairytale forever and ever
Only by revealing the whole truth can we disclose
The soul of this sick bulwark forever and ever
Forever and ever…

"Seif al Din"… couldn't say it better.

The rudiments have always been misinterpreted during history, despite the good intentions of many disciples whose faithful believe was strong and unswayed. Most leaders interpret the old words to their advantage in the attempt of gaining leadership and power over those unfortunate enough to fall under their maliciousness and manipulative ways. This misuse of trust will forever stain the pages of history, echoing the exploitation and the frailty of decent men carried away by nurtured rancour…

In other news: Today's Sarah Connor Chronicles was practically a filler episode. But I can't wait for the story on Cameron's origins. I've always thought she was modeled on a real human. I think all Terminators are.

I can't eat anything nowadays. Y'see, roughly two weeks ago, I suddenly lost interest in food. Now my primary motivation in stuffing consumables down my throat is just to stave off the ill-effects of malnutrition.

Among the foods I can't stomach anymore:

• dumplings
• man tou (饅頭) or any kind of bao zi (包子)
• tofu
• rice
• bread
• most vegetables (including broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, green beans, peas… anything green…)
• most fruits (strawberries, cantaloupes, honey dew melons, grapes, bananas, peaches, apples…)

I can still eat pasta with pesto sauce without resorting to force-feeding to some degree, as well as some varieties of breakfast cereal with soy milk (as long as it's in moderation). But I'm afraid my only legitimate solace now is nonfat yogurt. I'm still fond of fruit yogurt, strangely enough.

No pun intended, by the way.

You know what? I would love to be a classically-trained singer. The greatest auditory pleasure in the world, in my opinion, consists of operatic female vocals layered on top of fast percussion and the thrumming and screeching of gloriously distorted electric guitars. There really is no other more epic, more beautiful, or more transcendent sound in the world. And groups like Nightwish did that (until their lead vocalist was fired, and replaced with a non-operatic singer, as evidenced by their latest studio album).

Master!
Apprentice!
Heartborne, 7th Seeker
Warrior!
Disciple!
In me the Wishmaster…

Please keep in mind: the sole purpose of this entry was to bring my scant readership up to speed on several of my deservedly un-fascinating vagaries, not to serve as anyone's entertainment. I can be infuriatingly dreary sometimes, too.

And I'll punish myself later, just you wait.

Addendum: Joe Biden? Way to follow the status quo, Obama.

Haha. I recall nearly killing myself last year with the overweening complexity and the 40+ classes I had to code for my AP Computer Science final project. Overkill, yes? The final product was quite amusing, however. It was a rudimentary text adventure-type game (where the player inputs commands in a text console to explore some imaginary game world), and it all revolved around the highly mindless slaughter of Korean boy band members.

A sample session might include the following output (user inputs in bold):

:: Dungeon Cell ::
The light emanating from the torches on the walls dance across your surroundings, casting a sinister glow upon the stone. With the aid of the light, you can just barely make out the old, dark stains on the walls and floor. The place bears the unmistakable signs of death and prolonged torment. Who knows what you'll find in this godforsaken place...
Obvious exits: north south east west
        Micky Yoochun is standing here.
        A cantaloupe lies on the ground.

HP: 100/100 > kill micky
You charge at Micky Yoochun!

HP: 100/100 > <*****> jab
You jab at Micky Yoochun, causing 13 damage!

HP: 100/100 > <**** >
Micky Yoochun girly-slaps your face with all of his strength, but misses!

Anyway, I implemented a truly kick-ass battle system. With multiple threading. Those DBSK members can move around freely in the dungeon, ambush the unsuspecting player, initiate pointless small-talk with the player (when they're feeling slightly less hostile), and of course, engage in real-time combat. They drop their possessions when they perish, and the player can pick them up, scavenger-like (although as of yet I've not made them usable). Oh yeah, and interspersed throughout each confrontation with a Korean nancy-boy are classic battle quotes like "Your love is all I need…" and "Will you be my girlfriend?"

Sadly, I was a bit harried at the time, so I was only able to create five Korean boy band characters, more specifically the members of that odious group DBSK. I was thinking of expanding the dungeon and putting all thirteen members of Super Junior in there as well, and knowing nearly zilch about them, I browsed the Web today for their names and some basic biographical illumination.

Silly Super Juniors

Shindong — Shin-dong??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What an unfortunate lad…
Donghae — I think any Korean who calls himself "dong" should merit our wholehearted empathy.
Ryeowook — Ru-yeh-wook? Ru-ye-oh-wook? Doesn't that sound like the perfect appellation for a Wookie?
Kibum — I nearly thought this was a name for some body part. Like coccyx. "He rubbed her coccyx and she cooed with pleasure." "I kissed her on her kibum." I've been reading far too much Vladimir Nabokov…
Eunhyuk — "Hyuk" is the sound I make when I hiccup. Hyuk, hyuk. Hy-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk-uweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegh-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh…

Basically, if mispronounced the right way, any one of those Korean misnomers could cause me to laugh my head off. Silly Koreans. Silly nancy-boys.

So, uh, what does my dear reader think? (Bonus points if you mention Koreans in your angry comment!)

Well, it's back to music reviews — for the moment, anyway.

J-Pop wonder Hikaru Utada released her fifth Japanese studio album, entitled HEART STATION, earlier this year on March 19. Long before that time, I had officially shed all interest and ties to the few pop artists I had formerly enjoyed (finally realizing the stupidity and vapidity of the genre), so I did not exactly salivate at the news of Hikaru's release. Which is why I'm reviewing the thing now, roughly three months later, as opposed to being extremely slow on the uptake.

A telling tidbit, at any rate, since an admirable or merely respectable musical endeavor would not have prompted any sort of mention here.

Why do I dislike HEART STATION?

Continue reading »

I took a three-hour nap right after school today. That in itself isn't very unusual (I usually average three to four nowadays). However, for the first time in memory, my nap exceeded the length of time I spent sleeping last night… which was two hours.

Nap > sleepy time = not good.

We had an annoying English assignment where we had to develop a character in a two-page piece of fiction. My friends, like the n00bs that they deny they are, spent the entire day asking one another in a tone of atrocious presumption, "So what did you write about in your short story?" And then waited for a response like someone waiting for a butler to serve them breakfast. Which was infinitely irritating. So I rejoined with varying hedges, alternating between the likes of "A hamster that ate a mutation-inducing marshmallow" and "A magical watermelon which endows the bearer with powers of flight." My story really isn't so horrible as to warrant concealment, but to tell the truth, there are a small number of little "problems" I keep finding in the manuscript… like factual inaccuracies, clichéd descriptions, oversimplistic characterizations. I almost want to cover my draft with little snide comments. Like, in the masterfully produced sci-fi action film Ultraviolet (this is relevant… just wait and see), the protagonist lives in a country controlled by a totalitarian government, and in the beginning when she's infiltrating some government facility, she addresses some guy (whose ass she later kicks) as "Comrade Doctor." Even though, as I privately ruminated later, the government is not communist. So when writing that piece of dreamlike shit, I tried to emulate a different, otherworldly setting by having everyone address each other as "Comrade." But the location was based on stuff I've seen in our suburban town in our oh-so-capitalistic nation, so I'm not so sure whether my depiction was valid…

This is the first post I've written since my WordPress 2.5 upgrade, by the way. I really like what they did with the admin interface.

Musical update: We now bid adieu to the aristocratic Versailles and welcome a lesser-known indie band, a visual kei anomaly consisting entirely of females. Say hello to exist†trace and their most recent mini-album, Annunciation -the heretic elegy- (accessible through the "Currently Playing" link above).

Unfortunately, there aren't many high-resolution promotional photos of exist†trace, and the group shot I obtained for this rotation is unpleasantly grainy… although I did my best to touch it up with despeckle filters.