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Lyrics translations in Works
Since college, I’ve avoided using anything more complicated than Notepad for any offline writing whenever possible. Even if was trying to study a song I’d just set it up—kanji, romaji, english—in one long row and set it to print on 3 pages. Just lazy, and a waste of paper. Why can’t I stop being a dumbass and learn to use columns? I used to know things! I did. I’m sure of it. Yes, it was long ago…ok. So I’ve been doing (*not singing but “doing”) some Utada songs that had lessons on Smart.fm with Anki (more about that later). I started with Fight the Blues from Heart Station.
Sure enough some random Utada blog already had all 3 versions of the lyrics. After somehow crashing the program several times with some simple cutting & pasting and messing with the fonts I got it looking pretty good:
Can I get a blog post looking that good? I don’t know. This is just an quick example, I’m going to mess with this translation and do more from scratch now that I’ve got a formula. (Right away I see they’ve literally translated the idiom 「笑う門には福来る」 which Rikaichan has as “good fortune and happiness will come to the home of those that smile”. I’m sure there’s a way to make that…a little better.)
But the point is you can use this formula if you use Works for lyrics to get them in better order. Use ‘Meiro UI’ (which should be on there if you’ve got Asian fonts installed); set the kanji column to 10, the romaji column to 9, and the english to 8. (Get all the text in there first and adjust the sizes, then jiggle it around to fit in the columns.) Most songs should fit on one page like this, I’ve still got space on the bottom.
Well this was nice break. Going back to the decks, nearly only a week behind now. またね。
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Backlog
As you transglide the webcloud, do you tend to accumulate bookmarks to read later, then spend hours, categorizing them, sorting them into carefully labeled folders, arranging to folders into yet more folders, until all those folders go into one big folder that goes right into the trash can? Are you sure you want to delete this folder? Oh fuck yes, just get me away from this bullshit, oh god? Of course you do, you’re reading a blog with almost no useful information and possibly even less entertainment value. But we can’t always help ourselves. Binging is always easiest but I’ve had a problem with purging lately. I blame the earthquake. I’m going to do some more posts on/in Japanese and some Japan stuff, mostly music-related but not all…maybe I could write a record review or two (gosh!). Anyway, I’m a bastard with procrastination. (Like, hypothetically speaking, suppose I had to write some record reviews…with no deadlines, how can they be written at the last minute?) It’s shitty. I’ve never gotten freelance work cause I know I’d fuck it up. (Well, I’m trying to train myself out of it…)
Enough about me. Wait this whole post is about me. Me and my backlog. Yep, just keep tellin yourself that…no that’s it. It’s just that I was ok with letting crap pile up while I was studying, I had a really good momentum going. Then you figure, what’s the point learning to deal with a country that’s totally fucked. I know it’s not totally fucked, (on a scale on fucked, America’s not really much less) but it’s hard to focus in the same way. I think I’m over it, but I was so locked in to just reading every single news story, or anything else that would distract me from those news stories, it’s like I was going through every link like it was a study item. And there’s no next level on the internet. It’s just tubes that you…surf. Fuck! Whatever.
I realize the irony of writing about studying when I could be studying, but I’m trying to keep it on top. I already put in a couple hours today. I enjoy it. It seems like my most likely lead in life for making any kind of decent living and I need to really keep drilling that into my head. Been thinking about going back into retail lately. Retail sucks but it’s the easiest way to get a decent steady paycheck with a 39.75 hour week. (I currently only work about 12-20 hours a week, which was fine when I was doing side photo work, that work dried up so I’ve just been scraping by.) Then I could afford to get my Bachelor’s and pay off my credit cards.
Or I could have my eyeballs removed and do skullfucking porn. Depends on the hours.
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emails
If it matters (and it doesn’t) jimhaku@gmail.com is working again. I locked myself out of it about 2 years ago, about 2 years and 2 months after I made it. (My computer crashed, the recovery email was another dead address, and the secret recovery question has some inane non-answer I’m sure I thought was hilarious and unforgettable. I was wrong. First time.) I was more interested in what my answer to the question access to the mail itself at some point. Doesn’t tell you of course. It’s a professional sounding address tho, right? I thought so when I first told everyone about it. How many weird dangling conversations and questions that had gone unanswered? Zip. ゼロ。(Ahh…perfect.) Just a bunch of spam, dozens of dead password assists, and reminders that I am the worst. (Not really…3rd worst, maybe.)
If you have the other gmail address or another address, keep using that; they all get forwarded to the other gmail account. Except for the one that doesn’t. (That one no longer has an outgoing server.)
So.
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Me vs. Joe Strummer
I met Joe Strummer volunteering at WFMU. It was July 2001. I had just started working there stuffing envelopes, might have been the very first day. I had just my job at an art supply store and had not yet had to get another job in another art supply store, so I was already feeling pretty good that day. Strummer was taping a guest DJ spot. If it was live, I might have planned to be there that day to try to meet him, but there was no reason to expect the man who myself and fellow recent ex-bandmates nearly worshiped for the previous two years would walk through the open doorway I was standing next to and shake my hand. He wanted to meet the volunteers.
Naturally I was shocked, but didn’t miss a beat. Still grabbing his velvety palm I quickly headbutted and spat in his eye because
P U N K R O C K
…his eye immediately became infected since I, a Punk Rocker, am filled with disease. Not missing a trick, he pulled a dagger from his boot and stabbed me the thigh. We embraced and shared a hearty Punk laugh. Treating our wounds with cheap grain alcohol, we sat for a bit smoking butts from the large communal ash tray. WFMU volunteers routinely scavenge the Jersey City shore for smokables, collect them in an old oil drum, and just sit around all day enjoying urban nature’s bounty, stuffing envelopes and listening to old scavenge stories. It was pretty sweet. But after a few hours of this, he said he had to go tape his show. I spit in his other eye and called him a poseur. It was glorious. He laughed and gave me 20 quid “to piss off”. I asked what I was supposed to do with “quid” in America. He suggested I buy a new dagger. Bollocks! It was true, I had no dagger. It was I was was the poseur.
I went down to Quidley’s Dagger Shoppe, were they accept bollocks and bought that dagger, then I went home and thought about daggers. And Joe Strummer. Punk Rock.
No one knew it would be the upcoming Mescaleros shows would be the last. I remember missing them, but don’t remember why. Probably drunk.
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