20 Year Old Zinger

We were walking along Sherbrooke street, about five of us, headed out somewhere. My roommate Glen's girlfriend was with us. I remember her self-confidence was perhaps a little high in relation to her intelligence. She was quick (and loud) with an opinion but was often hurt and outraged if an opposing opinion was returned in her direction. I was probably shooting my mouth off, trying to be clever, as I was quite excitable in those days and never one to back away from attention and perhaps a chance to impress.

She was probably a little annoyed with my smart-ass routine and took it upon herself to take me down a notch.

" You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of humor!" (I know this makes little sense but that's what she said.)

I replied " Shut the fuck up!"

Uproarious laughter from everyone! "THAT'S the lowest form of humor." I said.

Tears of fury filled her eyes.

Man Rises from Death Bed to Save the World

Surprisingly, this is only my second post complaining about being sick. Seeing as, apart from working to earn money to sustain my existence, being sick is the activity that takes up the most amount of time in my life, I thought it would have received more ink. In February, much to my dismay, I discovered a new allergy. In addition to being allergic, with increasingly severe symptoms, to every mammal on God's green earth ( except humans, also known as the most dangerous game/allergen) I am now extremely allergic to the pollen from cedar trees. This stuff  hangs like fog in the Nagasaki air for about a month and is like breathing in an aerosol mist of battery acid.

The allergies left me open for a cold which lead to another cold and another and another culminating (knock on wood) with bronchitis last week. I missed a day of work and actually broke down and went to see a doctor. After a dose of antibiotics and five days and nights of hacking up green slime I seem to have finally pulled away from Death's outstretched hand, faked left and gone right, and am seeing some open field.

It seems this is my life now. Living between colds, flus, allergy attacks, and assorted headaches and stomach aches. I really should make a point of filling my healthy days with as much productive activity as my wandering mind and feeble body can endure. There are days when my mind feels sharp, I have no aches, pains, or minor (and I mean MINOR) ailments to distract me. On those days the sundry thoughts that have been fading in and out of tune in my mind finally come in loud and clear. Everything finally gathers together from a messy pile into a neat little stack ready to be pushed out of the slot in a perfect package. Unfortunately these days are often spent watching reruns of The Amazing Race.

Not his time! I'm back from the brink and I can't be stopped! 

(Except by a cold)

Greatest Thing Ever: The Sequel

"Hey! Remember that time you, me and the guys  __________ ?"

"Sure, that was the greatest night of my life!"

"I didn't even want to go at first but turned out to be awesome"

"I was really psyched but still it was better than I could've hoped for."

"Man! Good times!"

"Hey! Wanna do it again? "

"Hell yeah!"

Somethings happen and then they are done. They are complete even though they may not be resolved.Be glad you had the good fortune to experience something of that quality. Make sure you remain open to and on the look out for something of equal or perhaps greater quality in the future. Do not try to relive, recapture, revive a memory. You will be disappointed, sure, but what's worse is that disappointment will forever be tied to what was a great memory. You lose twice.

Everybody's done this. Whether it's getting back with that ex one more time or reconstructing that perfect night out. It never works out as planned and if we are honest with ourselves, we never really thought it would.

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Has it come to this? A blog post about an amusing misuse of English in Japan. I went back and forth on weather or not to write about this (as hilarious as it is) because it is surely well-trodden ground. In the end I took it as a challenge. Can I write something insightful about such a hackneyed subject. We shall see.

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On the one hand, it is amazing how much English has been absorbed into the Japanese language. Of course English is constantly pilfering words from other languages instead of creating their own and this is one of the language's great strengths. However, it seems to me, that the English usage usually coincides rather closely with the word's meaning in its original language (with some exceptions). In Japanese, often the word is twisted and shaped to fit the meaning they wish to express, the feeling they hope to convey. (for example, the word "gorgeous" is used to mean, not beautiful, but expensive or extravagant.) It's pretty impressive, really, how English is cut up, rearranged, and abbreviated to no end to create new words that often fall rather far from their English origins. English almost becomes a tool for creating words that strike the right mood or evoke an image that would be impossible to create if expressed in Japanese. In the end these English appropriations are not English at all. They are as Japanese as Japanese.

On the other hand, it is distressing at times how insular Japanese culture can seem. Absolutely no regard is paid to wether anyone outside of Japan will ever see anything that is produced within Japan. English, or any other language, can be used anyway one wishes because anyone who understands English will never see what you've done. The same holds true about how other races and ethnicities are portrayed with no thought about what these people might think about the way they are being portrayed. It's treated as a private conversation between 126 million people. Although I'm quite sure that these thoughts never rise above the subconscious level and are rarely considered outright. Japanese people are often shocked when any non-Japanese person knows anything at all about Japanese pop culture. They honestly can't imagine that anyone is paying attention to what they are doing, and therefore, pay no attention in return. In Canada, most thinking people ( tattoo artists are obviously not included in this group) would never throw together a magazine cover or ad with just some random Japanese phrases without doing at least a rough check to see if they don't accidentally mean " kindergarten masseuse" or " balls in mouth". For one thing, they don't want to offend, but more importantly they don't want to seem like ignorant asses. This doesn't seem to come up at editorial meetings in Japan.

Furthermore, J-off … tee hee!