For my random thoughts... despite how this stuff probably belongs more on cattle mutilation... oh well.
Kraftwerk lied to me! This calculator can't fit in my pocket at all.
2026-01-07
If you have ever listened to the band Kraftwerk, the Japanese-language release of their song about little calculators that play a little melody when you press a special key may have taught you the Japanese word dentaku. Language learning can be fun!
Just one thing, though: most words starting with den, which means electricity make perfect sense. A utility pole is den-chuu, an "electric pole". A train is den-sha, an "electric vehicle". A telephone is den-wa, for "electric speech". But den-taku means "electric table". What on earth does a pocket calculator have to do with the idea of an electricity-powered table?
It all comes down to how, in 1964, a Japanese business owner had a choice: he could buy a brand new car and drive his family across the country for a lavish getaway, or he could buy one contraption as large as your kitchen microwave so his accountant could stop using a little wooden abacus.
I started an oekaki BBS site and you should post here!
2026-01-05
Have you ever used an oekaki/tegaki site? The're websites where you draw in a teeny-tiny canvas using an online application, and then post that artwork on the site for other people to see. I think they're super cute and cool, and I wanted to start using one that wasn't Tegaki Draw & Tweet.
Logically, I set up my own imageboard using the Petit Note software with Tegaki as the art program. I disabled image uploads so you can't post anything that isn't your own art made on the website itself. With my newfound powers I have drawn such beautiful artwork as this:
I'm probably the only one who cares abut Shimizu's evil fucking Sonic mask in 2026.
Lately there's been magpies hanging around in my yard. They don't mind me despite my human-ness.
I feed them mixed nuts and sultanas when I hear them outside. Often I'll hear them chirping and whining and squealing! I think, what on earth?!
It turns out that it's a mother and a child, and as I discovered today, one fat bully who deliberately attacks the child! I hate him. Well, not really, and I even still try to feed him, but I hate him for being like that.
Being a linguistics major is just dandy, but I'm stuck at a crossroads of sorts when it comes to the mandatory language learning: I want to study Mandarin Chinese for personal reasons and I want to study Japanese for music reasons. For a long time I've been in this stasis where I've avoided even drilling characters with either language in mind.
I'm allowed to study both as long as I keep my spirits up, but I feel like I can't do any preparation until I know my situation, so I'm still in stasis. I want to hurry and study hard. I can't study hard when I feel so anxious about studying. It's a horrible cycle. I'm really not getting good experience with either language right now.
Japanese is hard when it's not the same three words used in my sparse online communications. I barely know a Chinese sentence aside from what I picked up before I dropped out of high school. I don't speak either language.
This is all fluff which has led to a stranger thought in my restless mind: what kind of name do I go by in a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet?
