Georgia Pok Guy

Apparently, the dates on which a show is broadcast is a logic all unto itself.  Take for instance Avatar: The Last Airbender.  It is now in its third season, which started airing in September of last year.  After shuffling air dates around, seemingly at random (although in retrospect this occurred during the second season as well; I just wasn’t watching it on TV at the time), the show went into hibernation after the 13th episode was shown in January.  I can almost, almost, accept a show going on hiatus, so long as there remains that glimmer of hope that it shall return, more powerful than you can imagine.  What boggles my mind is that episodes 14 and 15 are available only through the 3rd DVD for the season, to be released May 6th (sorry for all the numbers).  Is this, or is this not, a television show?  You want to go straight to DVD either make an OVA or another Lion King sequel.  If this weren’t bad enough, the final episodes of the season won’t even air until July, another two months of waiting.  Honestly, I can’t tell if this is some ploy or not.  Reading /co/ recently indicates that there is a good deal of excitement about the season (and series) ending.  But, frankly, I’d like my episodes shown a little more consistently, please.  Also, I’m hoping Netflix has that 3rd DVD available right on May 6th, because I want to see those episodes, damnit!

I apologize for bitching about a show I’m 99.9999% (that’s six nines!) sure no one reading this (if you got this far) has seen or probably will see.  I promise I’ll make it up to you and buy you some waffles when I see you next…

Microsoft’s MSN division in China recently announced the completion of a new robot to field customer service related questions (as if the automated customer service phone systems weren’t bad enough).  All I can say is, you’d think that a nation with over a billion people wouldn’t be suffering from the kind of labor shortage that would justify building robots to answer mundane questions.  I mean, sure, who doesn’t love a cute little robot with cute little pigtails dressed in a cute little cheongsam that responds to the moniker “Xiao Mei” (which I’m assuming is written as 小美)?  My guess is you could find some country girl from Gansu, train her in the subtle art of customer service, and still be paying less money.  But I suppose helping to lift her family out of poverty isn’t as glitzy as a bunch of robots running around downtown Beijing during the Olympics…

Roman soldiers on the streets of Rome?  Count me in!  Now if only D.C. would do something like that to celebrate its founding.  I’m sure it would look a little like this…

Today at work I hit a mental block.  I was trying to solve this programming issue but was just having the damnedest time figuring it out.  It seemed like every way I looked at it I couldn’t find a pleasing answer.  On the verge of literally banging my head against my desk, I picked up a pencil and loose sheet of paper and just started writing random sentences in Japanese.  This was rather strange, even for me, since typically I’ll just write a half dozen random kanji and be done with it.  But instead I decided to go whole hog and wrote full sentences, plumbing the depths of my language center to remember my Japanese grammar.  I did a decent job, until I decided to write a few sentences in potential form; while I remembered it for ru verbs (such as 食べられます), I completely forgot it for u verbs (I wrote 書こえます when it is actually 書けます).  The exercise proved useful, if anything for relieving the stress I was feeling.  Eventually I broke the block and came up with what I consider an elegant solution.  Still, sort of weird that I just did it out of the blue…  I guess we all handle stress in our own little ways…

Why is there a wikipedia article on the phonological history of the digraph wh?  And why am I reading it and finding it interesting?

I have come across what I consider to be a rather interesting choice in the character ordering in my trusty kanji dictionary (the abridged Nelson’s; even with 3,000+ entries, I still wish I had the full version).  Under the fourth radical, 丿, we find two characters, 乏 (BŌ) and 之 (SHI).  This is fine and dandy, save for the fact that 乏 is listed as having fewer strokes than 之!  Unless I’m missing something, 乏, which is listed as having two more strokes than the radical, actually has more strokes than 之, which is listed as having three more strokes than the radical (which I can see).  So I am left confused, pondering the logic that goes into ordering the kanji (the ordering of which appears to be based after the hanzi).

This all came up because I was trying to look up the Chinese character for order, in contrast to chaos, which I already know is 亂 (Simplified:  乱).  While looking through the hanzi entries on Wiktionary I ran across 之, which I’ve seen before in Chinese texts but not in Japanese.  While in Chinese it indicates possession, in Japanese it means this, with the kun’yomi being これ (kore).

Some days you just gotta get the hell out of the office as soon as possible…

Dear YHWH I need a vacation… 

When I was living in Tokyo as a youth, I had the opportunity to travel to Hong Kong a number of times, it being a popular shopping destination for expats.  At the time Kai Tak was Hong Kong’s airport, a concrete strip jutting out from the middle of the hyper-crowded Kowloon into the fragrant harbor.  It was always an exciting experience since the planes had to fly really low over the tops of the neighboring buildings (at least, exciting for a young teenaged boy obsessed with airplanes).  To give you an idea of how low, I direct your attention to the attached video (and, yes, some of those are 747s):

Today I had the opportunity to catch up with the Honorable Bidyut during his hectic trip to the northwestern environs of the District.  We met in Bethesda, the infamous town where Space Ghost learned the true meaning of compromise.  It’s a nice part of the city, full of stores and restaurants aimed at the yuppie demographic.  We sauntered ’round the block, disclosing our recent wheelings and dealings (in the case of your humble author, not much) and stopping for a bit of ice cream, the first I’ve had in many a month.  The meeting concluded in front of the local Barnes & Noble, where a troop of gangly teens performed the songs of the Smashing Pumpkins in a ham handed fashion (I swear I could have sung a better rendition of “Cherub Rock”, and I haven’t heard that song in several years).  After parting I returned home, opening the windows and dozing as the sun set behind the distant clouds.  It truly is a pleasure seeing old friends.  Living in a distant city, far from friends and family, really makes one appreciate the company of others.

Dear Netflix,

How much longer must you torment me? How many more sleepless nights must I endure, tossing and turning, wondering when, when, will the second disc of the third volume arrive? How many more times must I watch the episodes on the first disc, which, if you must ask, I’ve already watched an average of 2.2 times? And, yes, I do have the 3 disc plan, so I am due. I beg of you: I need this. I need some sense of closure for the first five episodes. How many times, I ask, can I watch the scary guy who can blow things up with his mind blow things up with his mind before I am driven to the brink of madness, pondering the innumerable paths our heroes can take from there? For your metrics I will tell you that I returned a movie last Thursday, April the 3rd. Now, I am not an unreasonable man. I can accept that there would be a longer turn around due to the weekend. But even this day, Tuesday the 8th, I find no sign that you have sent the disc I so covet. And so I ask you, not as a customer asking a cold, heartless corporation, but as one human being asking of another, please, please send that second disc.

Sincerely,

ramapajama