radiopeter

パンティストッキングが剥がした。近い衣料品店が？
pantisutokingu ga hagashita. chikai iryohinten ga?
My pantyhose ripped. Is there a clothing store nearby?

I looked back at all of the Useful Japanese Phrases of the Day and giggled my way back in time. Some of them are embedded in posts, so scroll down.

I need to keep these up.

臭いが悪いな！糞か？
nioi ga warui na! kuso ka?
Oh my that’s an awful smell! Is that shit?

When http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ meets http://icanhascheezburger.com/..

…you get http://lolsecretz.blogspot.com/

このジーパンはMサイズが有るか？沢山食べたよ！
kono jinzu wa M sizu ga aru ka ? takusan tabeta yo.
Do you have these jeans in medium size? I ate too much!

I’m actually playing a guitar. It amazes me every time I pick it up, tune it, and strum some chords that indeed, I’m playing the guitar. I SERIOUSLY didn’t think it would go this quickly. Not that I’m a virtuoso or anything, but a few chords under your belt opens a wide range of tunes.

I can’t say I dislike folks music. But am I passionate about it? Not really. Frankly, I keep thinking in the Gospel vein of things, which I suspect will involve far more diminished chords than I know. But I’ll get there.

Last weekend at the 2nd half, the big jam session after class, one of the instructors asked for requests from the crowd. One guy jokingly yelled “Freebird” the über ubiquitous guitar request of the masses. Well no shit, the teacher taught us the six chord circle of the song and voila, an entire room full of people were playing it.

Well, the room minus the Guitar 1 students. I have no clue how the hell an F chord is supposed to work. Apparently pterodactyls and creatures with extended claw-like phalanges can manage to stretch that far. I can’t. Yet.

One of the teachers has been playing bass in the room while we’re jamming together during the 2nd half. Methinks bass *might* just be what I want to do next. Assuming I have no Bouzouki yet. We’ll see.

In other news, I might be going to Toronto for Halloween to do some massive coverage for Windy City. I don’t think I’m gonna have to pay for it either, which is sort of fabulous right?

And, ANTM has began. My Wednesday night addiction surfaces once again. Check out my Chicagoist posting on the subject. I’m on the Television beat now over at Cist and I’m pleased as punch about it.

Finally, I think I need to resurrect the Japanese Phrase of the Day. Stay tuned for one later on…

So because I’m sick, I can’t start fasting. It’s never good to stop eating when your body isn’t ready for it.

Ugh.

I’m not happy about this but it means that I’ll start next weekend then. A week isn’t so bad, but I suspect we’re starting Rudolph rehearsal around the 15th and I can’t see myself off food for much of the beginnings of that.

So in prep, I’m going to lay off processed foods all this week. Whole meats only, whole veggies, and unprocessed grains. Salads, steamed veggies, a piece of fish here and there, perhaps some oatmeal (I don’t eat instant) and that should do me for the week.

I’m hungry…

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with purpose”

-Michel de Montaigne

I’m here on a training course and I have a chest cold.

Ugh.

I hate being sick, but I hate being sick away from home even more. I’m
away from my cats who tend to stay even closer than usual when I’m
feeling bad. Even Obi gets more friendly when I’m sick.

I miss ‘em.

I spent last night wheezing in my room with Vicks on my chest. SO much
fun.

When I return from my business trip I’m going to fast. It’s back to the Master Cleanse for me this fall. I’ve been slowly purging all of the perishable food in my refrigerator except for lemons and maple syrup.

The weekend following my trip is pretty empty to give me enough time to tool around the house and do as little as possible. Those first two or three days are the toughest, but I’ve arranged everything so it’ll be quiet and I’ll have tons of movies to watch. Plus the first episodes of America’s Next Top Model. Pithy, I know, but I love fashion shoots. What can I say?

A friend asked me why I fast the other day. I still really don’t know how to answer the question except to say I feel loads better afterward. There’s a point when it becomes very spiritual, somewhere usually in the middle of it. My body first quiets down, then becomes very alert of everything around it. In a weird way, I’ve often thought the feeling must be how a spider sees in many directions at once; they don’t have great vision but they can see the world all around them passively. I obviously don’t have eyes in the back of my head but my senses are heightened.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to bike to work during the weeks I’m fasting. I wasn’t a big bike person the last time I fasted, so I honestly don’t know how my body will cope. The only real thing I can do it try it and see what happens. But I’m erring on the side of caution. No need to pass out on Lincoln Avenue in traffic.

That would not be cute.

I had a super busy weekend, but you know I love busy, so it was amazingly good. But the high point, aside from much drunken kinship with my sister, her boyfriend, and a smattering of the bike posse at Oktoberfest, was my first guitar lesson at Old Town.

Wow. If anyone told me it would hurt this much I might have backed down. But I’m in for the long haul here, so I gotta take it in stride. I’m not talking about aches here, I’m talking about red-hot searing fingertip pain.

I consider myself, from time to time, a cross between a delicate flower and a concrete wall. I have my soft parts and my hard parts (you dirty minded person, get your mind outta the gutter) but my hands are always kept soft. I like manicures.

Well, that will mostly have to go by the roadside going forward. Playing guitar requires calluses. I have none and thus was in a world of P A I N during our first class. The whole experience went a little something like this:

We met in a big auditorium, they tuned our guitars, then we headed to our classroom. My teacher is Shelly Miller who is a delight to work with. She really wanted to get us playing as quickly as possible as a group, so we learned our first two chords, a D7 and an A, and played our first song called Jambalaya by Hank Williams.

There I was, playing the guitar. Not fast, not too slow, but I was playing a guitar. And let me tell you. It HURT.

I’ve rented a guitar from Different Strummer, the store in the school, and the strings are steel. They say this is a good thing, but the pain is immense. But I’m not mad about it. You must develop calluses and I’m going to work my fingers every day in order to get them. After just two days (I practiced for two 15 minute sessions yesterday until it hurt too much) my first and second finger on my left hand feel funny when I type. Hopefully this will continue on until it doesn’t hurt. But until then, ouch.

I have this business trip coming up. I think I need to bring my guitar with to practice in the hotel. This will be an experience…

It’s been many days and I’ve spent hours and hours playing around with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It’s really, and I mean REALLY good. The graphics are stellar and the soundtrack really feels apropos of the game.

Much like the way Doom (or Halo or fill-in-the-blank new-ish first person shooter) works, you are running around in a world with a pointer to direct you and a joystick to make you walk. Oddly enough, even though Link in Twilight Princess was so completely controllable, Corruption seems much more so.

You basically use the Wiimote to point in whatever direction you want to go, and the joystick on the nunchuck to move. Firing is done on the Wiimote, as is jumping. Once you get a grappling hook, the throw and pulling are done by flicking the nunchuck. Missles are down on the D-Pad, and multi missles happen by holding down on the pad.

I hadn’t played any of the other games in the Prime series, but Corruption has such an amazing landscape of color, sound, and skin that I’m seriously considering purchasing an HD television just to see this game really shine. The technical worlds are simply stunning with details, and the biologic worlds are simply incredible. The whole time I was playing in a town called Skytown (which is duh, up in the air) I was terrified of coming too close to an edge and falling into the abyss.

The boss fights so far, I’ve had three major and two minor, aren’t horribly complex, but they aren’t fast either. Something in their programming seems to make them the most eerie characters I’ve ever dealt with. Their body language is so very human it’s spooky. But it makes for a really great play experience.

I was expecting a FPS that is all hack and slash. But instead, there are so many puzzles you need to solve going back and forth with your morph ball state. Plus, your visor has several states which are used to scan things and help solve puzzles. The gameplay is much more involved than I expected.

So in two words: buy it. It’s thrilling and exciting and gorgeous.

So as you have no doubt heard, the iPhone is now only $399. Many people, in many places, in many different ways, are asking me if I’m mad about the price change.

Mad about what exactly?

I bought mine on July 11th. I paid the $599 plus tax and stuff for it. I was, and still am, blissfully happy with the phone. It helps me do the things I need to do. It sticks with me when I need my music fix, and most of all, it helps me organize my life.

Back to the question at hand.

Everyone wants to know if I’m upset that the phone, the same phone I’ve purchased, is now $200 cheaper. Well folks, I only ever tell the truth on this blog. It is my therapist and quite a good friend. And I’m not mad. Not mad at all.

But why?

I’ve been enjoying this gizmo more than just about any other gadget I’ve purchased in a very long time. And getting it when I did, using it for the things that I’ve used it for, are worth far more than $200. So no, I ain’t mad ’bout it. I suspect quite a few other people aren’t mad either.

But then I saw this everywhere in the blogosphere just now. I can get a $100 credit in the store? That ROCKS. That ROCKS HARD. That ROCKS SO HARD that I’m pleased as punch.

As far as I’m concerned, I bought a great phone, and I’m getting $100 to play with. Who wouldn’t be happy?

There are certain weekends where I don’t particularly notice how much I’ve eaten. And then other weekends I feel like I’ve come out the other side bigger than a beached whale.

This past weekend was one of the latter.

Somewhere between baking jalapeño cornbread and a large pan of lemon bars, I realized that not only do I love baking, I’m happier when my oven is on. It’s true. There is something mystical about sliding a pan of something-or-other into a hot oven and peeking through the window every so often to watch it start changing.

Said cornbread started as a quiet pool of green-flecked pale yellow batter that began to bubble and rise in the pan until it turned into a smooth golden-domed loaf. It made me smile.

Even the lemon bars, which began with sandy colored crust that melted and puffed into a golden crisp shortbread, and the pudding like filling that gelled into a shiny yellow lake of tart made me giggle.

Baking is kind of magical. Mix A with B, fold in C, and bake at 375 for 20 minutes until a skewer inserted into the center of D comes out clean. That formula isn’t always used, but a similar pattern can be found in many a cookbook.

But it’s not the science or the art of baking that is my favorite. It’s the taste of good home cooked food that I live for. Real food, prepared with love and a wise hand, always beats store bought.

Always.