“Hey, that’s a really cool 45K JPG that’s perfect for the front page of our manga review site! I bet this guy will really appreciate the traffic he’ll get when we link directly to it!”

…

“Hey, why is the picture now upside down, backwards, grayscale, and low-resolution? And why did it disappear when I reloaded the page? And why can’t I see his website at all any more? It’s almost like he’s completely rejecting any traffic from anyone who ever viewed that picture on our site! I can’t even ping his server!”

[Update: “Hmmm, I can reach his site from a different machine, but when I try to load our home page that still has the link to his copy of the picture, I get this funny error code. I don’t speak any English, so can someone tell me what ‘403 some bozo deeplinked’ means?”]

Every time I think about Aya Matsuura’s new single “Chocolate Soul”, which attempts to fuse her newer adult-contemporary style with a less-manic version of her early goofiness, I hear a completely different song.

First, here’s Aya:

The problem is, the word for soul is “damashii”, making the song “chokoreeto damashii” チョコレート魂, and you know what that means…

more...

I’m reading Kanna’s mind here, and she’s thinking, “I’ll kill them later, but y’know, I think I can actually work this outfit.”

more...

This time, Our Favorite Monster Girls are releasing a cover album of well-known idol songs. And, yes, they’re singing them in character.

(note that the second season had seven CD singles)

[Yes, I’m chasing Aya this week. In my defense, she’s A) talented, B) gorgeous, C) funny as hell, and D) an adult (well, now…).]

In addition to her CDs, concerts, commercials, and action-packed ass-kicking delinquent-detective yo-yo movie, she has a regular gig on late-night radio. In one of her shows, she played a song that she wrote herself, that hasn’t appeared anywhere else. Since I generally buy licensed products rather than download, I didn’t hear about it until it made Henkka’s list of underrated H!P songs.

He had no idea what it was about, he just thought it was quirky and cool and way too much fun. I agreed, and gave him a quick rough translation of one of the verses. This, of course, made the song even cooler.

His embedded Flash player didn’t work well on my machine, so if you can’t hear the song clearly, here’s a download site that has it (with the usual warning about popups and flash ads).

Danger: it’s an earbug.

My translation is necessarily very rough, because there’s almost no grammar, and a whole bunch of mimetic expressions to suggest the sights and sounds of… a washing machine: pashi-pashi, suton, tsurun, buku-buku-buku.

[note to Henkka: this transcript is slightly different from the one I put in your comments; I just caught another line that Mattthecat misheard while transcribing the lyrics (“suichuu” (underwater) should be “sui, kyuu” (the water, suddenly))]

お洗濯

Laundry

パシパシっと　いい形
すとん　つるんっと　いい心地
パシパシっと　いい形
すとん　つるんっと　いい心地
こんな気持ちになれるから
やはり　大好き　お洗濯

“Swish-swish”, we’re in good shape. “Thump, slide”, it’s a good sensation. “Swish-swish”, we’re in good shape. “Thump, slide”, it’s a good sensation. Because of how this can make me feel, Of course, I love laundry!

白　黒　色　分けきっちりと
ポッケにゴミはナイナイナ～イ
しみぬき、漂白　しっかりと
準備ＯＫ！ ＧＯ、ＧＯ、ＧＯ、ＧＯ！
ＧＯ、ＧＯ、ＧＯ、ＧＯ！

Whites, darks, colors, carefully separated; Trash in pockets, none-none-none; Spot remover and bleach, firmly applied; Preparations OK! Go, go, go, go! Go, go, go, go!

パシパシっと　いい形
すとん　つるんっと　いい心地
パシパシっと　いい形
すとん　つるんっと　いい心地
こんな気持ちになれるから
やはり　大好き　お洗濯

“Swish-swish”, we’re in good shape. “Thump, slide”, it’s a good sensation. “Swish-swish”, we’re in good shape. “Thump, slide”, it’s a good sensation. Because of how this can make me feel, Of course, I love laundry!

まずは水　急ぶくぶくぶく
左右　右左　踊ります
ぎゅ　ぎゅ　ぎゅ　ぎゅっと　しぼられて
お日さま　今日も　ヨロシクね　ヨロシクね

Now, in the water, suddenly bubbles-bubbles-bubbles, left-right, right-left, dancing. Firm-firm-firm-firmly wrung out, then Mr. Sun, today again, take care of me, okay? Take care of me, okay?

パシパシっと　いい形
すとん　つるんっと　いい心地
パシパシっと　いい形
すとん　つるんっと　いい心地
こんな気持ちになれるから
やはり　大好き　お洗濯

“Swish-swish”, we’re in good shape. “Thump, slide”, it’s a good sensation. “Swish-swish”, we’re in good shape. “Thump, slide”, it’s a good sensation. Because of how this can make me feel, Of course, I love laundry!

こんな気持ちになれるから
やはり　大好き　お洗濯

Because of how this can make me feel, Of course, I love laundry!

After we finished translating the story about the goblin’s invisibility cloak, we didn’t have much time left in class this week, so I quickly handed out the lyrics and vocabulary sheet for “Oo-Edo no Hikeshi”, the kabuki-orchestra cover of “Smoke on the Water”.

We worked through it quite seriously, with the teacher interjecting cultural notes and correcting translations, and then I played the video. It had exactly the effect I had anticipated, with almost everyone catching on quickly.

One surprising exception was the fiftyish American woman who made it all the way through the song without even a vague hint of recognition. None, nada, zilch, zippo. I can understand not being a Deep Purple fan, or avoiding classic rock in general, but how on Earth did she manage to never hear one of the most famous guitar riffs in rock? The song has a frickin’ monument!

Cuba is creating its own Linux distribution. Everything’s backwards-compatible and memory is free, but there are no drivers, and everyone has to share the same library.

Networking support, is, of course, limited to the CCCP protocol.

Thank you.

Selecting the option Optimize for Mac OS application performance has no effect on performance
This issue is resolved in VMware Fusion 2.0.2. VMware Fusion now uses significantly less memory when the performance option is selected. This fix applies only to Mac OS X versions 10.5.5 and later.