I’m a bit surprised that FHM’s streaming video feature, Webtv, hasn’t gotten them in trouble with the folks at WebTV. Sure, they stopped calling the product that well before I left, but the trademarks are still out there, scattering little motes of mindshare.

To the best of my knowledge, there are still several hundred thousand people in the US with WebTV-branded boxes attached to their television sets, vigorously navigating through email, ebay, chat, and porn.

Prologue

Sometimes I love this job, he thought, drinking in the sight of the full moon hanging in front of him, eclipsing the stars. He reached out with a gloved hand. So close I can almost touch it…

“Grab that ass and you’re a dead man, Guri.”

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A common complaint among older generations is that the youth of today has no respect for culture and history. I’m pleased to see that this is not an issue in Japan.

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…while walking to the restroom in search of relief, you:

1. spot a printer with a paper jam,
2. fix the jam,
3. wait to see if it's fixed,
4. clear the second jam,
5. diagnose the problem,
6. solve the problem,
7. reload the paper tray,
8. verify that it's printing correctly.

Then you resume your trip to the restroom.

Later, I’ll be making a major revision of my translation of the Dirty Pair theme song Russian Roulette, but there’s something I want to get in writing before I forget it.

When I started going through the lyrics, I felt very strongly that the omitted pronouns should be “I”. Discussing it last night with my teacher, we disagreed on a few of them, but I still believed that I was right.

While working out this morning, I realized why: the singer is speaking for Kei and Yuri; she’s a woman pursuing a man romantically, but the life she leads forces her to describe the chase in terms of a secret agent hunting an enemy. Everything in the song is about her; her life, her risk, her heart, expressed to him the only way she knows how.

He’s the listener, addressed directly – “anata” – but never the subject.

In future, when you advertise a beverage container as having a half-gallon capacity, would you be so kind as to test it with precisely one half gallon of liquid? This would prevent sudden demonstrations of the hydraulic power of iced tea.

Update: PS: please design a spout that doesn’t leak as much as it pours after a few days of light usage.

It would be polite understatement to say that most of my friends do not understand my affection for such things as anime and Morning Musume. Yea, though I walk through the hallway in the shadow of Chacarron, I shall fear no evil, for kawaii art with me; Mini Strawberry Pie and fan-service comedies, they comfort me.

That said, I think this goes too far. Click on the streaming audio of track number 3.

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seeker of wisdom
finds inside fortune cookie
cheap bumper sticker