masterofmidgets: (save me captain weasel)
This weekend, [livejournal.com profile] hanjuuluver came over for an afternoon of cookie baking and ridiculous j-dramas. I'm all caught up on Ouran, but when we checked dramacrazy we realized that there's a remake of the Korean drama You're Beautiful airing right now, so we decided to check it out.

That...may have been a mistake.

Guys, I don't have high standards for dramas. I don't care about plot holes or plausibility or acting ability, just give me some pretty boys and some wacky hijinks and I am set. I loved Princess Princess. I loved RH Plus. And Ikemen Desu Ne seems like it was made for me, since it hits a bunch of my narrative kinks for J-dramas - pretty boy band characters, mistaken identity, a defrosting ice queen hero, and a cute girl cross-dressing. But...oh my god, this is the most infuriating show I have seen in ages. Just thinking about it now is making me want to throw things.

The Premise: Miko is an orphan and a novice nun, about to leave for Rome for two years of study before she takes religious vows. However, one day she is unexpectedly approached by a man who, as it turns out, is the manager of her twin brother, an up and coming pop idol. Mio is about to sign a contract with A.N.Jell, a hugely popular boy band, but there's a problem - he broke his nose in a drunken fight and needs to recover from reconstructive surgery before he can be seen in public. So the manager asks (well, begs) Miko to pose as her brother, just long enough to sign off on his contract so the label doesn't find out he messed up his face. One thing leads to another, and although she doesn't really want to do it initially, by the middle of the first episode Miko commits to spending the next three months pretending to be a boy and sharing a house with her bandmates. They are: Yuki, the little blond one who is dumb as a rock; Shu, the little brown one who is supposed to be the nice guy; and Ren, the lead singer, who really, really does not want another singer in the band. But we'll talk more about him later. At this point, misunderstandings, drama, and romance ensue.

This is by far not an exhaustive list of my problems with this show, but it is my major issues:

emotional abuse and general grossness under the cut )

[personal profile] colourofsaying, who has been watching with me, also has a good post about the show up here.
masterofmidgets: (king of the geeks)
Given an open-ended choice of topics for my (short and informal) presentation this morning, I spent several minutes blathering on in Japanese about why Star Trek is awesome and I need to see the movie. I am kind of impressed with myself that I posess the grammar and vocabulary to even make this a vague possibility, even if it was rather muddled at times. (and so, so awkward, because I hate being put on the spot and thus stammer and hesitate to no end)

Still, I wear my Geek Hat with pride.
masterofmidgets: (heavy is the crown)
Well, as much as I wish I was able to take that poetry class, I can't say I am bothered by being done with classes on Tuesday/Thursday before lunch. It's nice to have a big chunk of time to relax before I have to go to work, rather than just 45 minutes or so. I guess I could have switched my work day - the schedule's pretty flexible as long as the shifts aren't full...but I've been working Thursday and Saturday for months! I know everybody I work with. It would be weird having a different supervisor. Mike and Rob are awesome guys. :D

Keigo will be the death of me, I swear. It's just so annoying to have all these words I've known for ages and ages and now I have to relearn them because the formal and modest expressions are completely different, unrecognizable words. I mean, orimasu=imasu=irasshaimashu? (to take a random example) WTF? What kind of language does that? (for non-Japanese speakers, those are all the same verb. Imasu is the dictionary form. I would use orimasu if I am talking about myself and being modest, and irasshaimasu if I was talking to someone above me, like a professor, and wanted to be respectful). I know we studied keigo last year, but it's like it all just fell out of my head. Gah.

Since I had Japanese today, you get a Japanese poem today! This is one of my favorite poems from the Man'yoshu. Which I really need to get a copy of.

by a frontier guard

I will think of you, love,
On evenings when the grey mist
Rises above the rushes
And chill sounds the voice
Of the wild ducks calling

 (Edited because I found my book with the translation I prefer :D)


masterofmidgets: (geek)

私は日本語で書けますよ。すごい!

So I may or not be ridiculously, painfully, embarrassing excited about being able to type in Japanese. It only took me two thirds of the school year to figure out! In my defense, I'm not as unbearably stupid as that makes me sound, it's just that all the information our teacher had on getting your computer to be able to do it was for XP, and Vista apparently works slightly differently, and...yeah, it was just complicated for some strange reason. But I can do it now! Yay! Now I just need to get to the point where my Japanese isn't really, really awful, and I'll be set! Note: that day may be very long in coming...

(also, for non-Japanese readers, all I wrote above was "I can write in Japanese. Awesome!")

And, because I'm bored and procrastinating on studying and just downloaded some cool stuff, here is a list of songs you probably haven't heard of, but should listen to.








masterofmidgets: (Default)
So, I spent an hour working on my Japanese homework - and got ludicrously excited over being able to write short, simple sentences in hiragana - only to realize that it was completely impossible for me to finish. Thanks for mentioning we needed a microphone, Okano-sensee. So tomorrow between fencing and lunch I shall have to stop by the bookstore and buy a microphone, oh joy, and I can get some more of my SLE books I suppose. So I can spend even /more/ money I don't really have, yay! 

Speaking of SLE, that is what I should be doing right now, really. Working on my SLE paper, in which I am comparing the methods and goals of Buddhism as seen in the Heart Sutra to the modern student-centered approach to college, and that is due Thursday. 

What am I doing instead? Pondering Canadian ninjas and Seifer Almasy's secret, life-long dream of some day being a ballet dancer. Which, by the way, I totally need to at least work into a drabble. Cause, come on. Seifer? In tights? And a leotard? So much for productivity. Oh well. That's what tomorrow is for.
masterofmidgets: (Default)
 Well. I have now had all my classes at least once (except for SLE section, but hey), so here are my first impressions. Cause it seems like the thing to do.

Fencing is fun. And hard. And full of grad students. Which yeah, was pretty weird. I felt short. Really really short and incompetent. Buuuut the coach seems nice - unlike some athletics teachers I've had who look at you like "you're not an Olympic level gymnast - in fact, you just tripped over air. I hate you." He was demanding and had a really thick accent, and I probably won't be best friends with him, but he seemed to be alright. I'm reeeeeeeeeally sore though, so I'm kind of worried about how I'll handle tomorrow. *is scared*

Japanese is made of win. Seriously. The teachers seem so awesome and incredibly enthusiastic and I think I'm going to like it a lot a lot a lot. Some of the pronunciations are a bit tricky - especially the words that have been integrated into the US but are pronounced differently, like sayonara and arigatoo. And I already hate learning hiragana, so kanji are probably going to be even worse, urgh. But I think I'm going to love it overall, I really do.

SLE strikes fear into my heart. We had our first Mark-lecture, and it was...well, indescribable. He is amazing. And passionate, and opinionated, and god, I'm becoming a Marksist, I swear. He was talking about education, and the purposes of a college education, and why the humanities are so important, and the things colleges don't do anymore but they should, and I felt so inspired and pissed off and like I could just sit and listen to him for hours. But I also felt really dumb and uninformed and useless and like I'll never have anything intelligent to say in section discussions and like Vasiliy - who is in my section - is going to rip all my arguments apart and laugh at me all the time. And I fear our essays. I'm thinking that we're going to get them back and it'll be like when I give an essay to my mom and all she tells me is "it sucks, do it over." I mean, I think I'm a pretty good writer - not brilliant, but decent at least - but that doesn't mean my profs are going to agree. I'm kind of freaked out. I'm still undecided at this point on whether SLE was a great opportunity or a huge mistake. 
masterofmidgets: (Default)

The class times for 2007-2008 autumn quarter were posted today, sending me flying into uber-geek, obsessive-compulsive mode. I immediately, of course, had to look up all the classes I wanted to take, when they were, if they would interfere with the other classes I want to ake, how many credit hours I would get, etc. The uber-geek part, however, comes from the fact that I am in the process of drawing up a completely theoretical weekly schedule for the classes I intend to sign up for, which is:


This all works out to exactly 15 credits - 9 for SLE, 5 for Japanese, and 1 for Fencing (a credit/no credit class), which is apparently about the average freshman credit load. This schedule, however, is causing me to somewhat freak out. Everyone else is talking about all the classes they want to take, and they're talking about math and science and lit and blah blah blah and I feel rather concerned that I'm only planning on taking three classes. Am I being a total wimp? Am I going to get incredibly far behind on my required credits and fuck myself over? Am I totally panicking over absolutely nothing?

*Goes into spaz mode and dies*

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