Stuff
Some firsts:
– Had laryngitis. It was exciting and I wished I could stay sounding like the Cookie Monster forever.
– Last week I hurt my foot, but being the American I am I figured going to the doctor would be frivolous and I’d just wait for it to get better and bandage it up and all that. Yeah. That was working well until today and I was expected to play volleyball in my school’s league and I was like, “No, sir. My foot is still yellow and purple from last week. There will be no volleyball for me.” And coach said, “You must go to Hospital.” So I did, and they were super super super nice and took x-rays and put me in this soft cast. All fun stuff, and the whole thing cost me 25USD and I’ll have a cast to hobble around in and keep myself from playing volleyball. Yay.
– My kindle died. It did that screendeath-fuxxored thing. I’m taking this better than I’d expect.
Some stuff:
– Been devouring these interviews over at the Paris Review site. Great stuff.
– Jin’s first translated book is out. It’s a Diablo 3 splat-book thing.
– Her second translated book, John Shirley’s BioShock tie-in novel Rapture, should be out next month. She had a great time working on that one… well… mostly. Sometimes people got their faces cut-off and stuff, but she thought it was a fun book and did a good job on it. However this 17 year old, who runs the “most popular” BioShock blog in the Korean Blogosphere, got hired as her proofreader. Jin’s boss, you know, wanted to get the “community” involved. So this kid made sure all the translations matched the fan-made patch for the videogame, which was a lousy “transliteration”. For example, Jin translates the train, “the Atlantic Express” as “the word for the Atlantic Ocean + the word for express train”, the patch simply transliterated it as “Ata-lan-tic-eh Exs-pre-ss-eh” and that’s the way it’ll likely be in the book. (The editor’s a bit miffed by this, but wants to keep the fan-base pleased.)
– Had another Vaults game over the weekend. I’ll wait for Dennis to write it up. No one died.
– There’s a Chinese restaurant near us that’s so f’n killer. Seriously. They do this spicy chicken that’s amazing.
Fields of It
Passed this on my walk this evening. Imagine if they all had been left-handed gloves.
A Doctor Visit
So I have this laryngitis-cold-thing and sound like Tom Waits. It’s cool. I hope it never ends, though if it didn’t I’d probably lose my job. Can’t teach English if you sound like the Cookie Monster. I went to the doctor’s this morning. Some details: they do stuff like take your blood pressure and temperature in the waiting room. So folks are all around you waiting while a nurse takes your blood pressure and looks in your ears and whatever. Then they have you go back to sitting down, while you wait for the doctor to see you. The doc was a youngish guy and wanted to know about my mucus and stuff. His English wasn’t great, but whatever. Between Jin and me, we could figure out what he was asking. He sprayed some stuff down my throat and some more stuff up my nose, then gave me a prescription. Easy peasy. The thing is I feel fine. I just sound like death.
Price for visit and three days of meds: less than 10USD. I pay into the National Health Care program about 60USD monthly, but damn, a five buck Doctor visit? Yeah. Not complaining.
5 For Friday
– My students have been pestering me for candy and it’s not even Halloween yet. I’ll likely make some blood and guts Samhain Neopagan powerpoint illustrated with Large Marge animated gifs (… or something) for Monday and we’ll make origami pumpkins (… or something). Chance of mayhem? High.
– Speaking of classroom mayhem, I had a dream Johnny Cash was in my class. He sat in the back, wore black, and was a shitty student, making fun of every word I said.
– Why’s it that when someone tells you a ghost story it’s always a rambly twitchy guy? I suspect it’s for the same reason my cousin who saw the banshee also saw snakes crawl out of his TV during an attack of the DTs.
– I started reading The Last Wish, the first of Andrezj Sapkowski’s Witcher novels. It’s more a collection of loosely framed short stories than an actual novel. My wife loves them and has wanted me to read them. This one works as a sword & sorcery Spaghetti Western with the occasional twisted fairy tale added into the mix. He just killed Snow White (after sleeping with her, of course).
– We have a home scanner now so I’m likely to make a heavily illustrated post about Andy-si.
Quotidian Pohang
Blue skies from school’s back window.
Yesterweird 