She thinks it's English

This Bulgarian woman thinks she's singing English, and it's obvious she's not. It's almost unbelievable--literally :D (I saw this at Arrogant Polyglot).

Artropolis

I got a VIP pass to Artropolis to do some posts at an art blog, so that's what I've been writing. I'm quite tired because Artropolis has like five shows going at the same time, and each show has hundreds of booths. I've decided to focus on just a few shows, but I've still looked at thousands of pieces of art. But getting a VIP pass ain't bad, and I wouldn't mind doing it again for another show.

Confession time!

I said I'd sign up for German classes, but due to some bizarre developments (ie, I actually have more radio work than before, in spite of increasing consolidation and syndication), I don't think I'll have the time to take the class and study for it.

I'm still taking Japanese once a week (went there tonight), and I'll keep going as long as the class exists, but sometimes we have to do homework, and I barely have enough time for that. Plus, I'm still translating French and Japanese, and I'm sort of behind. In addition to teaching ESL. So German will have to wait unless my schedule becomes more consistent.

Strange Closets

I know a nice guy here in Chicago who's interesting and smart, and he's created a design blog called Strange Closets. He's not a designer, but

In my dreams, I'm a world-renown taste-maker, sought after for public appearances and too busy with my successful blog to take on any new clients.

He's very enthusiastic about his new blog, so I wanted to mention it here.

Kipling online

I found an Australian site called Words that contains various writers' works, including Rudyard Kipling. It looks like all, or at least most of his writing is there, including fiction and non-fiction. His American Notes seems quite interesting to me, especially because it was written in the late 19th century.

You'd never see this on American TV

I'm not saying that British TV is more intelligent than American TV (I have no opinion on the subject since I haven't seen all of British TV), but I would never see, and have never seen, an extended grammar lesson on an American TV show. Sometimes I think that since Brits speak the "mother tongue" (since we started out as their colony), they tend to be more "aware" of language, so it's not surprising when such discussions show up in their mass media.

An interesting problem to have

I've never read any Harry Potter books, but I do know that JK Rowling has become very rich from writing them. I can see why she wants to sue a guy who wants to publish a book based on her creation, but if you're going to write such insanely popular books, you've gotta expect people to want to make something off them as well.

A lot of writers would love to make a fraction of the money she has, and many creative people are toiling in obscurity, and probably will continue that way until they die. So while her copyright is being threatened because she wants to protect her unique, hard work, this is an inevitable problem to have. Imagine being in such a position that all you care about is your copyright, and the money doesn't matter. She is worried about principles, and a lot of us out here are worried about getting our work noticed or even out of our drawers.

Life is pretty good when what you've strived for has been not only achieved but surpassed in a big way, and what you end up caring about are concepts of what creativity is, and what you are about. She's living in the abstract at this point because she can pay her bills many times over.

She's not annoying

PBS has been showing a lot of Jane Austen lately, and I tried to watch the various series, but I kept thinking they seemed so annoying. Actually, I tried reading the novels, but I didn't have the patience for the writing. Okay, I was an English major and I've read lots of stuff, but for some reason, Jane Austen's stories were too clever and wordy or something. I do recognize her talent and creative and historical importance, but for some reason, I never got into her work.

Well tonight I started watching Sense and Sensibility, and at first I found it annoying, so I started doing other stuff when it was on, but actually, it's quite good, so I've dropped the other stuff and am enjoying watching it :D

So maybe Jane Austen isn't so annoying after all.

Good accents

I've been watching King Kong, which I've never seen before, and it's directed by a New Zealander (Peter Jackson, who did one of my favorites, "The Lord of the Rings"), thus it shouldn't be surprising that he got an international cast. But I can't tell that some of the actors aren't American, and I didn't know who wasn't until I looked up their bios. So I'm impressed.

Taking German again

I haven't taken German in a while--maybe more than a few years. So whatever German I was able to speak and read has diminished to the point where I don't think I could even take a trip there and experience it in German (ie, I'd have to mix it with English). So since my work schedule is sort of consistent, I think I'm going to sign up for a German class. I can't live life much longer with just bare-bones language involvement, so I checked out the Goethe-Institut site, and saw that registration is less than a couple of weeks away. Which means I better brush up on my German to avoid being placed in too basic of a class :D

Taiwan pics

I've never been to Taiwan, but I'd like to visit sometime. Luckily, Mad Minerva has some pictures of Taiwan from her recent trip (her family is from there) to give me some idea of what that place is like.

I can see why it won an Oscar

I just saw the The Counterfeiters, which won an Academy Award for best foreign film this year. It was quite depressing, but it was really good and thought-provoking, so if you don't mind deep movies that contain despair and hardship and plenty of moral gray areas, you'll definitely like this one.

The movie was made in Austria, so it's in German (here's the German site) and I'm sure if my German wasn't so awful, I would've been able to figure out some of what they were saying. Which means I really need to resume studying German.

Last year's Oscar winner was also German: The Lives of Others, which I also saw. And I think I was thinking the same thing about learning German again. Obviously there's some good culture coming out of that area.

Japanese break

I never thought I'd say this, but I need a Japanese break (instead of the usual French one) because I've been out of the translating and language scene for a bit, due to recent radio bounty. So even though I've been awake since before 2 AM and haven't yet slept, I'm going to go to Japanese class because I need serious Japanese practice and input.

So I guess sometimes Japanese is my friend, after all :D

The joke's on us

I was trying to find information about the origin of April Fool's Day (which is today), but there doesn't seem to be a clear answer. A few sites, even About, say that "The origins of April Fools' Day are obscure."

WHY?

There's certainly no shortage of historical information about April Fool's hoaxes, so why can't we have some reliable info about why today is April Fool's Day?

(Yeah, I know, I can go to the library, but I have to go get food and sleep soon, and I was hoping I could find the info online.)

Busy having fun

I was going to post something here yesterday, but I had to teach and then I hung out with John Banas. I went there around 6 pm, so I figured I'd be back in time to do other stuff, including translating and posting stuff here. But I didn't leave until after 1 am, and since he lives two counties away from me, I didn't get home until after 2 in the morning.

But at least we got to talk about writing. He likes to write thrillers, I like to write non-thrillers. Right now I think I have a good enough idea to not want to discuss the details, even with him. Because, as "they" (whoever "they" is) say, if you talk about it, sometimes you won't write about it.

Is it still popular?

Whenever I see advice about learning kanji, I think about the book Remembering the Kanji. When I was living in Japan, it seemed like everyone who wanted to learn how to read Japanese had that book. I bought it, too, but I didn't finish reading it. I wonder how many people nowadays have that book, or if it's as popular as it used to be. It seems like a book that people buy, but don't finish.

Shocking news

Well, even though radio opportunities are shrinking due to consolidation and syndication, I miraculously got a production gig with a locally produced show. Even though I'm in the third largest market in one of the wealthiest and largest nations on earth, locally produced shows are very rare. Seriously--do an online search for media companies, and you'll see that very few companies own the media, which means very few opportunities to work in it.

Which means that I've achieved the impossible.

(btw--because the gig isn't full time, I'll still be able to do language stuff, so it seems like a shockingly good situation all around)

Had to resort to Spanish

I've been reading stuff about Pancho Villa, and wanted to know more about Don Luis Terrazas, who was a very rich landowner in Mexico during Villa's time. The English info I found online seemed to talk about his wealthy and powerful life, but not his origins, and I really wanted to know why he was so rich. So I gave in, and did a search in Spanish and found something that will help get me started: Breve Historia de la Ganadería en Chihuahua.

I didn't want to read stuff in Spanish because I'm lazy and don't know all the words, which means I'll have to look them up, but it couldn't be avoided because English just wasn't enough. (I could get an English book, but I'm already reading other books and don't want to add a huge history to my list.)

Sort of related: what's great about the New York Times is that they post old articles that you can read for free: I found one about Luis Terrazas II's release from Pancho Villa's torturous imprisonment and escape to the US. I was going to post the article as a pdf here, but it's copyrighted, and I don't want to get in trouble with them :D

What's the point

I was planning on working on the novel tonight after Japanese class, but I started feeling quite sick, and am not even well enough to do a decent blog post right now. But I thought, "Who cares if you can't write--that novel is never going to get published! Why waste your time?"

When I write, I know I'm doing the right thing. But when I'm not writing, I wonder what's the point. The point is to create something, but it might never see the light of day.

[whining is over]

The river really is green

Every year in honor of Saint Patrick's Day, the city dyes the Chicago River green--seriously. Here's a cute report about it by a TV pro who is now doing radio (lucky guy who's also really nice).