#volume21

On to volume 21!

I passed by @booksandbooks to pick up an order and I ended getting an autographed copy of #WeHunttheFlame by @hafsahfaizal . The hardcover is beautiful in person and it's always a pleasure to support an #indiebookstore . I'm also super excited about reading #volume21 of #BlueExorcist . It's my current favorite manga and it's taken me forever to finally get this next volume, so I'm ecstatic. I already read the Remnant Chronicles by @maryepearson and she is touring right now, so might be able to get the series signed. I also ordered #DanceofThieves and pre-ordered #VowofThieves so I am ready! #books #reading #manga #bibliophile #bookstore #BooksandBooks https://www.instagram.com/p/B0TiuFIgPta/?igshid=fhtc76cvjq1r

🔫🧟😱🚶‍♂️ #thewalkingdead #thewalkingdeadlife #twd #thewalkingdeaduk #volume21 #alloutwarpart2 #fightthedeadfeartheliving #comics #robertkirkman #howmanywalkershaveyoukilled #howmanypeoplehaveyoukilled #why #rickgrimes #michonne #carlgrimes #maggierhee #kingezekiel #jesus #negan #dwight #littlepiglittlepigletmein #thisislucilleandsheisawesome #ijustslippedmydickdownyourthroatandyouthankedmeforit #iwillshutthatshitdown #angermakesyoustupidstupidgetsyoukilled #shiva #readingmaterial #lightreading #youkilloryoudieoryoudieandyoukill #wedontgivetwoshortcurlieswhatitlookslike #suckmynuts #jss #becauseyougotnoguts #ohhowembarrassingtheretheyare #theywereinsideyouthewholetime #metoatee https://www.instagram.com/p/BmcH2ymnt1G/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=12om39x62ui60

Shinichi’s First Case is outstanding, but the other cases are great as well. We have another Heiji case and finally some action for my Sato x Takagi heart.

   It was a casual Wednesday night while drinking questionable boxed Merlot when I first realized my cat had been inhabited by the spirit of the 35th President of the United States: John F. Kennedy. My housemate and I have a record of famous speeches by presidents, and as soon as his paw touched the radiant hair of a well to do Boston socialite family with a possibly dark criminal past, we knew.    The Ouija board was brought out and Benji began to sign that the spirit of John F. Kennedy had never found peace after his assassination by Rafael Cruz and had moved from cat to cat aimlessly. He also began to brag about how well he handled the Cuban Missile crisis which lead to a hour long debate over the success and failures of the policy of containment and ended with a double dose of catnip. Benji relayed that John F. Kennedy could not rest until he is able to come face to face with his killer.    Fortunately for Benji and the ghost of John F. Kennedy, we live in a glorious age of communication in which every prevailing thought and desire a politician has can be instantly broadcast to the entire voting populace. It was easy enough to contact Ted Cruz; we simply created a video of two cats from the same litter licking each other and posted it onto Twitter. This gained the attention of not only the incentous pussy loving Ted Cruz, but a variety of national news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the water tower, and Buzzfeed animals.    The next step was to break into the Cruz family compound. Under the guise of gaining a possible endorsement from the deceased John F Kennedy and to show forgiveness, the Cruz family was able to capitalize on the good natured president to gain more favorable poll numbers before the upcoming 2018 midterms. There was a meeting of the “You’re fired!” support group, with notable attendees such as Ted himself, Sean Spicer, Mitt Romney, and Anthony Scaramucci.     Much to my dismay, on our way up to the compound, Rafael Cruz and his truck barreled down the road of the Cruz Compound and hit my cat Benji. The headlines were around the world, “Cruz’s father kills JFK….again!”.

time’s pressing all this in depressed the words are etched into my skin I’m tricking myself into loving it you leave me opened in every single sense, but mostly on snapchat.

   I am taking a creative writing course this semester, and we’ve just turned in the first drafts of our memoir assignment.  I went a bit over the required 3-5 page minimum with what I thought was a pretty coherent, lucid, and dare I say competent first draft.  I had to print out a copy for everyone in the class, plus the professor, which worked out to around 110 pages, so that’s like $9.50 at the Davis Center.  Forget a cup of coffee that’s the price of a boutique farm-to-table-to-my-ass sandwich (with chips!).  Each of my peers then read my piece and came to the next class with markups on the physical paper as well as a one-page response and critique of the piece as a whole.    Now, I am all for crowd-sourced ideas.  In aggregate, I certainly got some good feedback about what parts need to be clarified, what people were most interested in hearing more about, and the clarity of the general theme.  But after reading all of these marked up drafts and short letters I came to the conclusion that these “critiques” predominantly demonstrated a lack of direction, poor prose style, and a general misunderstanding of the assignment.    One person’s main complaints against my piece of creative writing were: that I failed to indent properly, although what is proper indentation in a piece of creative writing, I don’t know (we just finished a memoir that was Entirely left justified); that it was not in 12-point font, which in fact it was; that it was not double-spaced, please forgive me for trying to reduce my printing costs by using 1.5-spacing line spacing; and that I put two spaces after each period.  This person actually felt the need to mark up my paper with these technical details, which are entirely up to the writer’s discretion, instead of providing any sort of critique about the actual text of the paper.  I’m flummoxed, but what can you expect from someone who thinks that, “second most biggest” is passable writing.    Some of my peers just failed to put any apparent effort into their critique.  One such person waited until the seventh page of a nine-page piece to mark anything, then circled a description in which I describe the Atlantic as seen from Morocco, and write that it “Sound like Rhode Island.”  No he did not use a period, or an s.    One person simply left a short handwritten note at the bottom of the last page saying things like, “MAYBE IT’S CUZ I READ IT FAST BUT IM HELLA CONFUSED,” and “I DON’T REALLY UNDERSTAND IF THERE’S AN OVERARCHING MEANING.  IDK IF THAT’S NECESSARY.”  Ok so that last one is kinda useful but, I mean how much effort did that really take?  And denying your own critique’s validity in the next sentence doesn’t exactly give it weight.  Also, who writes in only capitals?    One described my use of literary references to characterize my younger self as “kind of a copout,” but that seems like kind of a copout as far as critiques go.    I had one brilliant individual take a single word and completely misconstrue the entire enclosing paragraph in which I am describing what is clearly constructed memory of the day I was born.  The word was frame.  They wished that I had incorporated the video camera into the scene earlier to prevent confusion.  Are they complaining that I should have introduced a video camera metaphor earlier in the paragraph so that it would be less confusing when I wrote that everyone is looking at something which is “out of the frame?”  Or are they confused as to why I don’t mention that there is a literal camera walking around the room?  I don’t know because I never once mentioned a video camera.  Oh and for a kicker, after this paragraph describing the day I was born in vivid detail, I write that this was “a useful lie which helps me to place myself in the world.”  “What is a lie,” they ask?  Probably the whole part where I am describing the day I was born as if I was there, right?  Obviously does not do it justice.    I mean I wouldn’t call my peers idiots, or say that they have the reading comprehension skills of 8th graders, some of them are putting in the effort to actually understand and meaningfully criticize the text of the memoir.  Nor, however, would I accept much of their work as adequately living up to the standards of literary or critical integrity that one might hope for among one’s peers.  Mostly it just isn’t useful or little effort is put in.  I’m glad I got that out there.  Maybe I won’t lose my shit in class if someone tells me the whole thing was “kind of blah.”

   In a world of increasing globalization and interconnectedness, the sharing of culture and language has never been so in vogue. There is a particular joy to sharing the words and concepts you’ve known your whole life to another human being, and then there is the joy of teaching the most important, versatile word in your repertoire, “fuck.”    No word even comes close to the variability in the amount of uses than “fuck” does. It is simultaneously something that you can be, do, have done to, and do something to. It is both something that is incredibly enjoyable and inducing of extreme anger. The meaning of the word is not understood from hearing it, but more from the emotion and projecting of the person. So to explain the variety of uses and situations in which one says “fuck” to a foreign language speaker can be fucking annoying.    I first noticed this in action while in Japan last semester when my friends and I tried to explain “as fuck” to a Japanese college student. Our student then tried to compliment one of my friend’s hair as “cool as fuck,” but ended up saying that her hair “is fuck.” Or receiving multiple texts in the vein of “I’m tired, but as you would say I’m fucking tired” (these series of texts also suggest that I should maybe re-evaluate how often I swear). It also doesn’t help that the Japanese language doesn’t really have curse words in much the same way that English does, as the Japanese tend to avoid being straightforward.    This missing piece of translation can be seen much more broadly in every aspect of daily life while abroad. English is an in-style language, similar to how French was popular in the past with many learned Americans and Amélie-loving high school kids who went to Paris once with their class and who now say say “c’est la vie” more than three times a day unironically. Everything from shirts to signs to foreign words are often conveyed in some sort of English. But many of these translations are less than perfect. For instance, nine-year-old girls will wear a shirt that says “SLUT,” or knock-off Nike slogans like “I am always in the process of doing my best.”    Usually the best instances of these mix-ups are when you’re having a normal conversation with someone when they say something completely seriously that isn’t quite right. Like being asked by naive college students if American girls are “easy to lay on the bed” or if on a trip to Germany one person wants to try “street meat.”    I can’t be too harsh on the Japanese, though, considering the number of Americans that get tattoos of what they think is the Chinese symbol for “water”– the equivalent of inking “water” on your back in Times New Roman font and thinking you’re deeply spiritual and cultured. But in the end, all these shitty translations are just a product of a diverse world, and should be taken more as a funny coincidence than a sign of misunderstanding. If that means that I have to spend inordinate amounts of time instructing my Japanese peers on the usage of various “fuck”-eries, or explaining the meaning of the word “lit” (and then correcting their dabbing form) then it’s worth it.