On Vocabulary

From How to Speak and Write Correctly [Joseph Devlin]:

There are upwards of 200,000 words in the recent editions of the large dictionaries, but the one-hundredth part of this number will suffice for all your wants. Of course you may think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and old friends are always good friends.

To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars and writers and polite speakers use simple words.

 

Punch-out.

I’ve had a few humorous moments in teaching Japanese elementary children.  Today, however, was a reminder that danger lurks behind an easily scaled wall.  I’ve avoided the dreaded kancho; I’ve even managed not to be full on groped[I've heard horror stories of male teachers getting the fondle of a lifetime by a curious child].  Today stuck me firmly in the camp of the violated, the hurt, and the sad.

Today was my first time with the first graders.  I had had a fun and uneventful first three periods when I approached the fourth class.  The first graders, though limited in language ability, were digging Halloween and the coloring activities.  They would ramble on in Japanese before realizing that I probably didn’t understand and instead smile and seek a high five.  In between periods, the little tikes bordered on swarming, but fluttered off in the natural nature of a easily distracted child.  The fourth group came upon me like an avalanche.  I was their new jungle gym, my buttocks a drum set, the hair on my arm a wondrous blanket to be touched.  My efforts to raise my arms just made me a tree to be climbed and my strength beckoned to be tested by tiny hanging bodies.

Though I’m uncomfortable with this, it’s fairly standard. By letting them have their few minutes of touch and climb, they seem to settle quickly and we move back to normal body boundaries and English.  This class, however, decided it wasn’t enough.  Like a date gone horribly wrong, my rear became to object of pinches and whoops.  While I was attempting to fend off this new game of ass grabbery and a child was dangling from the other arm – the attack came.  From within the swarm, one mighty child stepped up, squared forward and punched me in the nethers.

I haven’t been punched in the boys since grade school.  So, it seems mildly fitting that the next time was when I was with first graders.  The moment is surreal.  Your eyes deliver warning message to your brain, which refuses to recognize it.  Surely what you think you saw didn’t happen.  Then, the pain telegraph comes in.  Somehow, I managed to not crumple on the spot.  I’ve found reactions are crucial to children – overreact and you might simply encourage it, but ignore it and you are simply inviting more.  Yet, a terroristic attack assaulted my boys.  What is an overreaction?  Through the urge to vomit and throttle the child, I managed to retain some composure.  Thankfully, the bell rang which sent the little demons to the desks and me to the front of the class to teach.

The damage was done, however.  Like a puppy who has been hit, every motion toward  me was met with a jerk and slight fear.  Riding my bike home, I literally expressed my disbelief out-loud numerous times.  So then, I was a crazy man riding a bike.

Children: 2.  Bryan: -40

That’s some bull…

Last weekend, we headed up to Uruma for some bull fights.  Awing and terrifying, I had [and still have] some mixed feelings about the event.  Having nearly a 100 year history, the bull fights are, in some ways, traditional.  It can’t be denied, the battle of the bulls is intense and exhilarating.   Two massive creatures are brought into a ring, who then lock horns in an epic version of ‘chicken.’  They push and groan, goaded by owners who loudly overpower the cries of the crowd.

The painful moment comes when a bull backs down and the winning bull decides to continue pushing and attacking.  The fight before we arrived ended with a bull deeply gouged in the leg.  I myself saw a massive bull shoved into the metal barriers, repeatedly battered by his opponent.  The owners and event staff do their best at the end to keep the bulls separate, but in truth there is little they can do to stop a 1000 lb beast.  At the end of the fight, the bull is paraded around the ring, children ride it, dancers dance.  The bulls, oddly, are placid and calmly enjoy the attention and people.  Here are some photographs for you:

FWD: FWD:

In my digital treasure trove was a copy of this FWD email that I received sometime in college.  While I sincerely doubt its premise, the entire situation humors me still.  I share it [typos and all] in the hope it makes you smile:

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington 
chemistry mid term. The answer was so “profound” that the professor shared 
it with colleagues, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as 
well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs 
heat)? 

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law, (gas 
cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some 
variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need 
to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are 
leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, 
it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls 
are entering Hell, lets look at the different Religions that exist in the 
world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of 
their religion, you will go to Hell.

 Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not 
belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. 
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in 
Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law 
states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the 
same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter 
Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell 
breaks loose.
2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of 
souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell 
freezes over.
So, which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms Teresa Banyan during my 
Freshman year, that “…it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with 
you.”, and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in 
having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am 
sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.    

A+

A paying off digital hoard…

Those who know me know I am a mild pack rat who strangely keeps papers, receipts, tokens, and other oddities.  My digital savings are even more random and less organized.  Every few years I purge my physical life of possessions to help me maintain manageability.  Strangely, this habit does not extend to my digital storage.

The result is a weird labyrinth of folders of digital memories.  Here is a snapshot:

• A excel file sheet for a budget from 2004.
• No less than 15 different versions of my resume from secondary school to the present. Even stranger, several of them are in the same folder.
• A word doc of riddles spanning 42 pages in a 10 pt font.
• An entire folder of random photographs [flowers, benches, etc] that I used as source material when I drew more.

Still, I’m not deleting any of it.  Why, you ask.  Because I recently found a treasure trove of PDF files on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King that I downloaded years ago with the intention of revising a summer essay.  In my current location, materials are a little hard to come by – so they are a heaven send in my revisions for a writing sample for graduate school applications.  I literally let out a squeal of glee when I found them.  Digital joys…

spoooky

And a preview of things to come:

Picashiki Toka

As promised [though late], here are pictures of our weekend in Tokashiki:

Trippy Dreaming

I used to dream a lot. I’ve had what seem to be an abnormal number of lucid dreams, where one can stop the dream, fly or be strong controlling, change sceneries and people, etc.  When they weren’t lucid, I’d always be aware that they were dreams.  When I came to Hong Kong,  I had one really good one:

I am at a wedding for an ETA [keep in mind, I just met them the week before].  Everyone seems surprised that the person is getting married. The wedding is an enormous festival with fire breathers, circus acts, bright banners and colors, the works.  Most noticeably are these clown type guys walking on giant stilts.  Suddenly, the wedding comes under attack by explosions and fire.  People are running around, elephants, craziness.  Then, I realize it’s the men on stilts.  They are attacking the wedding.  One of the masks comes off and I realize it’s Klaus Kinski, the insane German actor.  Somehow, I fly up to Klaus on top of the stilts to ask him why he is attacking the wedding.  Of course, I don’t understand a word of his rambling or frothing.  He bounds off to the chaos and my dream fades away.

Then, they just stopped.  I stopped having any dreams.  So, some of you are probably thinking, ‘What’s the problem?  You missed those dreams?’  Yes.  I miss out on the weirdness.  I miss wondering what the heck is going on up there in that grey matter.  Well, they have returned.  Steadily, I have begun dreaming again and they are getting increasingly weirder.

I don’t know if it is a result of reading [too much Wallace or PDK?], something I ate, or personal contemplation time, but this last one was a bit weird:

I’m in a house with large windows.  It is spacious but fairly empty.  I look down and there are words and phrases on a multi colored notepad.  I’ve been writing and doodling on the pad.  I see a giant ‘Hello’ scribbled over several times and some other colloquial phrases. Then, I notice a couple is outside the house.  A man is sitting reading a newspaper while a woman cleans the windows.  I realize that this isn’t my house. I’m not sure if they know I’m here, so I make some noise and fiddle with the blinds.  The woman looks a little annoyed but seems to not care.  Idly, she complains to her husband that ‘the ghost is back.’  I, flustered, say I’m not a ghost.  I know that the couple and I have some time of relationship so I’m irked they write me off as a ‘ghost.’  So, I go to talk to the newspaper man.  I realize, he can’t see me for some reason.  I realize that he only sees the notepad and that we must be in different dimensions [of course this is the answer]. So, I point the the scribbled ‘HELLO’ on the pad, and the newspaper man says hello. The couple seems bemused by the spectacle.  I’m confused why they are so impressed.  So, I start to write ‘I’M IN ANOTHER DIMENSION’ but I get a type of writing block.  I’m not sure if that is what I should write.  Should I write something else?  So, I sit down to write a message to him.  As soon as I start writing, my sister barrels out of the white house grabbing me by the arm screaming ‘what do you think you are doing’ and pulling me away.  At that moment, I woke up in a startled confusion.

While this might not seem odd to you, the feeling during the entire dream was eerie.  Also, it’s probably just a precursor to weirder dreams.  Happy sleeping.

Grill-o-Kababa

I haven’t gotten to BBQ in the truest sense in over a year.  Sure, some restaurant stove Korean BBQ and a sort of outing with a C&I class, but none of the true charcoal and covered in smoke manly man manness.  Our apartment has a small balcony, so we decided to fire up the mini grill to cook up some kebabs.  After a difficult start getting the coals up to snuff, the rest of the night went off without a hitch.  Grilled lamb, mushrooms, peppers and onions – deliciousness! I don’t know if it is the addition of carcinogens or what that makes grilled food so tasty but it was a yummy night.  Pics below:

Rent-a-date via Craigslist?

A friend of mine recently messaged me saying that she responded to this advertistment on Craigslist.  The advert isn’t long, so here it is:

Looking for someone (female) to pretend to be my date for a wedding.

I just have wanted for the longest time to hire someone to pretend to be a significant other. I think it’d be fun and funny.

This is not for sex, friendship, or whatever. This is a straight-up consultancy where you’re the independent contractor and I’m the employer.

You:
1. Female
2. At least 21 years old
3. Does not abuse substance
4. Acting skill

Since this is a job–albeit for a few hours–professionalism and presentation count. That means I’m paying attention to your grammar.

I suppose this would be good for an actor of some sort, but I think anyone with the proper motivation could pull something like this off.

So if you’ve ever wanted to do some crazy crap like this, feel free to reply.

She [perhaps unfortunately?] was unavailable for the specific date.   Frankly, I was surprised she even responded to it.   She feels it was a normalish advertisement and that it might make for an interesting story.  I prefer to think it is probably some dude who is going to a ‘wedding’ where the bride is a Ms. Piggy doll and the groom a Buzz Lightyear with flashing light action and the entire thing is presided over by Winnie the Poo or a my little pony.  I’m sure the imaginary tea would have been great.

In any case, if there was no danger, we both agree it would have been an interesting adventure.