So I've got OS X now and I've been futzing around with Sherlock. The other night I discovered the "translate" function. I've been abusing it all night.
My favorite thing so far is the Japanese - English translation feature, because it makes for absolutely perfect production of quality Engrish (for your enjoying life!) if you translate something from English into Japanese and back again. If you're wondering just exactly what Engrish means, Engrish is the ubiquitous, unique and wonderful kind of English syntax that appears everywhere in Japan. And I do mean everywhere.
In my estimation, there are three distinct categories of Engrish.
There is Engrish used as a name that makes no sense whatsoever. Once, while going through Osaka in the back seat of Maki's car, I saw in one afternoon, and I shit you not, a hotel called "Come On My House", a convenience store called "GETTA FUN!!!", an auto shop called "Good Speed", and a restaurant - "Meatopia" - which apparently serves... meat. This photo is one I took at a mall in Kyoto. I still haven't figured that one out.
Then there's "lifestyle" Engrish. You see this all the time on Japanese consumer products like cosmetics and snack foods, describing a happy and fantastic lifestyle. It is Haiku-like in its structure, sometimes conversational, sometimes strangely poetic.
The third and most enormously frustrating is instruction Engrish. You know those awful directions you get printed in some nameless klunky typeface on a slip of paper wedged into the bottom of the box from your cheap-ass answering machine? That's it. It's hard for an English speaker to properly re-create because it requires such complete disregard for grammar and proper word choice (not to mention a letter or two). It's also what Sherlock, unburdened by any human notions of proper English, is exactly perfect for reproducing.
I immediately got to plugging in advertising copy. Out pops a perfect example of synthesized lifestyle Engrish:
Prepare the rush of refreshing taste? Rising Pucker lemony destruction intensity of excitation of the oranges includes mind pleasantly. The palm do the thirst and the taste for venturing the Coke of diet of the taste where the lemon is new tastily.
So of course I had to plug in some web-porn.
Suling it is slow, on the surface and front and back in next door of movement she clear played straw raincoat pleasantly in star cutting, therefore I reached, that my finger could be slipped easily in her cat, was simultaneously. Now I had done my share me presume harmony and truth writhing, mean thing!
One thing can at least be said for the Japanese, at least. I've never seen one of them getting a tattoo in English.
Q: I like your photos! I'm getting married in a few months, will you be my wedding photographer?
A: No.
Q: I like your photos! I'm in a band. Can we use your photo for free on the cover of our demo?
A: No.
Q: I like your photos! I'm an actor and I need free headshots. Would you like to photograph me?
A: No.
Q: I like your web design! I have a business and I want a website. I have clip art all picked out and everything!
A: No.
Q: I like your drawings. Will you do a drawing of my wife/Dungeons and Dragons character/dog?
A: No.
Q: I saw that thing you wrote about mutant toes. I have mutant toes! Do you know about any mutant toe support groups?
A: No.
Q: I like those pictures of you. Will you be my special internet friend?
A: No.
Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.
- French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat, who was assassinated in 1793.
For the past year, I've been feeling helpless about the sudden loss of my civil rights.
Today I joined the American Civil Liberties Union.
Maybe you should too.
We're still all still sitting around feeling scared. Maybe scared of the invisible terrorists with smallpox and dirty bombs, but also scared of speaking up. That, or maybe we just don't know what to say. It feels like nobody is listening when we say "What about Osama Bin Laden? Whatever happened to Afghanistan? What does Iraq have to do with this terrorism thing? And where did my civil liberties go?" I feel like we're all sitting around looking at each other waiting for somebody else to start the protests, we're waiting for somebody else to say something. Well, people are starting to protest. Speak up.
If everybody keeps on being complacent sheep resigned to the idea that Bush can do whatever he wants, we're going to war. We're going to send thousands of American men and women to Iraq to get killed because some greedy businessmen (one of whom happens to be the President of the United States of America) want to make some more money. We're going to let hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Iraqi people die because we want to make sure American corporations have access to Iraqi oil pipelines. We're going to become the enemy of the entire Muslim world and provoke further terrorist acts by fighting a bloody unilateral war against a nation that hasn't really done anything to provoke a war since the late eighties.
George Bush wants to convince us that Saddam Hussein is evil and must be overthrown. He says this is justification, expects us to nod and smile and be patriots and wave our little American flags as he sends tens of thousands of American teenagers to bomb the Iraqi people (again) so that we can ensure the continuous flow of our god-given right as Americans: $1-a-gallon gas.
Where is the outrage?
Why is everybody so fucking complacent?
Stop what you're doing right now. You're reading this, obviously you have some free time.
Find out who your congresspeople are and write them an email telling them you are against the invasion of Iraq. Can't think of what to say? "I vote and I am against an invasion of Iraq" is probably enough. This takes five minutes, they even give you a nice little web form. Ignore the credit card stuff at the end, you can send an email for free.
If you feel like sending a postcard, download this and mail it to the address you found on the Senate or House websites.
Are you reading this at work? Since you're already geeking on your employer's dime, take advantage of the fact you're not paying the phone bill and call your congressperson at 202-224-3121.
If you live in Texas (or even if you don't) sign the Voices for Peace Statement of Conscience for Peace. Five minutes. You don't even have to march anywhere. This is the least you can do.
See? That wasn't so hard. It was almost as easy as not voting in that last presidential election. Remember that one? The one between the two guys who were pretty equally uninteresting so it didn't matter who you voted for so you didn't?
Anyway. It's not hard to find out what else you can do to try and stop this war. Find out about the protests and peace vigils going on in your area. Get off the computer and spend five minutes to try and save the lives of a few thousand people you've never met.
Please?
Rob's latest blog-related obsession is combing through his referrer logs to see what strange searches have brought people to his website, so in a fit of enthusiastic procrastination this evening, I thought I'd take a look at mine.
Those of you who have ended up here because you were looking for the song from the new Kia car commercial, the busty Asian porn star Kia or her co-star Peter North, "penetrable gaze" lingerie, a Doors song called "Like My Fire" (light, it's light), pictures of hammer toes, Volkswagen camper horror stories, where to find Eggo waffles in San Jose, or, god forbid, Jimmy Stewart handsoap, I'm sorry. This must be terribly disappointing for you.
I've been getting some nifty catalogs lately from Veer, a bunch of people who appear to be one of the few remaining creative stock photo agencies that haven't been swallowed by Getty Images or the dreaded Corbis. I like the catalogs. They nail me in the forehead demographically. They are like the stock agency equivalent of a Jetta. They're giving away messenger bags. They have a swingin' hip logo that is refreshingly free of swooshes, dots or little jumping men. Their design is gorgeous, their type is clean, and they openly admit to not using Quark. So of course I like them.
I took a look at their website, and even though it is strangely completely lacking in any information about the company itself (please say they're not actually in Provo, Utah), it does have some neat features - not only can you download some free desktop pictures, they have a really spiffy "ideas" blog on the site.
Anybody know anything else about these people? I really want to like them, so don't tell me they're owned by Time Warner or something.
When I see this I want to cry.
I can't think of how to adequately express my dismay and fear. I'm more afraid of this than hijacked airplanes or dirty bombs or anthrax. This has more potential to ruin people's lives than any act of terrorism. Just the wording on the Citizen Corps website creeps me out.
Operation TIPS, involving 1 million workers in the pilot stage, will be a national reporting system that allows these workers, whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize unusual events, to report suspicious activity... Everywhere in America, a concerned worker can call a toll-free number and be connected directly to a hotline routing calls to the proper law enforcement agency or other responder organizations when appropriate.
One million people, people who we let in our houses - mail carriers, cable installers, the guy from the gas company, people who want to find "suspicious activity" and catch a terrorist so bad they can call the FBI and have your house torn apart and searched because you happen to speak Arabic or have a city map, or pictures of a certain building or happen to vocally disagree with The Way Things Are Going.
Doesn't anybody remember the people who lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their whole lives because they happened to speak Russian or think that communism was not that bad?
Where did my America go?
In another life, I went to UC Santa Cruz. I lived in a geek house. I went to Resort Parties. I went to raves (before they were called parties) that were disturbingly like Greg Harrison's Groove (the movie, that is). In fact, I even slept in Greg's garage. A lot. It was, dear readers, a time where there was (gasp) NO WORLDWIDE WEB. We had to team up to buy bandwidth from the university because there were no ISPs! I used a 2400 baud modem to dial in! Why, in my day, we used BEIGE PLASTIC TERMINALS WITH GREEN SCREENS to read our email! And we used GOPHER and cryptic COMMAND LINE INTERFACES! And we liked it! Attachments? Ha ha ha! What attachments! I'm ashamed to admit I still use unix "mail" to read my email. Don't send me attachments.
Anyway. I digress.
When I lived in Santa Cruz I had a friend by the name of David Van Brink. I should say, I still have this friend. He rules. He is not human. He is more like a being sent from planet Kraftwerk to teach humans about the value of sine waves, ominos and the varied uses of LEDs. I love him. Today he sent me a link to a revived piece of geek history, a silent 8mm black and white movie that Ford (who now goes by the name of Lawrence) and Doug made in the server room at SCO about seven years ago. David digitized it and added sound effects and music. It's now a totally different movie. It's a 12MB Quicktime. Watch it.
I came home after class this afternoon to pick up a notebook so I could go work on sketches for tomorrow. Somehow I ended up still here 6 hours later, sitting in front of my computer. Instead of actually getting anything useful done, my life has been enriched by Get Your War On, several months worth of Photoshop Phridays, and a whole lot of losers. I think my right arm is going to fall off from all the clicking.
What the hell happened to me? I don't have a TV so instead I roll out of bed and turn on the computer. I come home for lunch and three hours later I realize I'm running three different chat programs at once. I start working on a design project in Quark and realize an hour later I'm not in Quark, I'm in IE, and I'm looking at girls with guns.
Would you people stop making entertaining websites so I can actually get back to work? Please?