For those of you who’ve been asking, I’ve posted a bit of my (old) short fiction under “about” (upper right). At some point, I also hope to gather up my language and identity politics posts and place in them their own category.
But not today I’m afraid. Because today was made for snowboarding. Or, if you’re me, for watching TV and eating chips while everyone else in Colorado is out snowboarding.
Incidentally, there you’ll also find mention of the community colleges I attended in my quest to become the failed academic I am today.
Oh, and those blurred pixels you see? Those are the spots where I blotted away my virtual tears of regret with a disposable diaper.
I tried to be a failed academic. But, best I could do was an incomplete.
I get to claim DeVry (Pomona) as my alma mater.
I guess that makes me a failed subatomic physicist. Good thing I found a career in keeping the internet running, instead of splitting atoms and the like.
Cripes, I wonder what they would think of me, being a graduate of the Command and General Staff Officer College? Probably a “failed Ghengis Khan”.
The link to “Graduation” doesn’t work. Just saying.
Should work now.
As a fellow stay-at-home dad, I can vouch for the fact that they are VERY absorbent. Spaceage technology and whatnot.
Also, Russ, Raging Waters is just up the freeway. You know, for days with a light class schedule.
Well, I’m embarrassed for you Jeff. Most of those colleges you mentioned don’t even advertise on tv.
I’d appreciate it if you’d put your language and identity politics posts in podcast/book-on-tape form. Though, it’s probably best if you read once through slowly, and then repeat each paragraph twice or so, gaining more confidence and conviction with each successive read-through. I find that works for me.
Any academic worth his salt knows it takes a village to raise a child, not a father.
Also FAILED:
Yep, Jeff. Thanks!
BoZ —
Should be fixed now, as well.
Hmmm.
The school I went to went out of business about 9 months after I graduated and then the owners were investigated by state authorities.
As you can thinks I gots a *quality* edumacation!
MY stolen kitten pictures are much cuter.
Your stories don’t have enough car chases. I like car chases.
Muslihoon,
Would you please do me the kindness of having a look at this and commenting, preferably by email?
(Others’ comments also welcome, of course)
If I had an email for muslihoon I wouldn’t have posted this, but I didn’t find one on the web site. Sorry, Jeff.
Regards,
Ric
Before I graduated from Cal State Sacramento, I couldn’t even spell “dialectical interlocutor,” and now I are one.
Craig C  Did they teach you why you might want to?
i snoboarded today.
it was habinar.
jeff, a teensey crit–say boarding or snoboarding– snowboarding makes you look like a tourist.
arigato for the fiction feed–are you going to just make the poorman burst with envy or what?
“Damn! Eight years of college down the drain!”
— Bluto Blutarsky
I watched “Crash” tonight instead of snowboarding. So I don’t know what to think anymore. Except that the feline pictured above was a sympathetic character in the movie, but still, she hijacked a Lincoln Navigator and later murdered a St. Christopher medal. She was a racist too, but then that goes without saying.
Why I might want to what, spell it, or be one?
Nishisan:
Why are you there and I’m here?
An ACLU lawyer who graduated last in a class of 5000
What is a…..
Alex Trebek, uh, Trebeck, Trebeque, oh HELL – ALEX
Nishi-chan, Forest, not –san.
I’m with you on missing the snow and ice stuff – here in the deepest of the Deep South, we’ve come to doubt that they even exist, apart from a token sprinkling every ten years or so.
Why -chan? I never call anybody anything-chan.
XX chromosomes versus XY chromosomes. Using the suffix –san would be like referring to “Mr. Demi Moore.”
Unless, I suppose, you were speaking about Ashton Kutcher – “Mr. Demi Moore” would probably work there.
Dude, there’s something wrong with your cat.
My bad! Is there a chan ce for forgiving huntersan? Yosh Yosh Yosh!
You guys are staring to scare me, cause there really is something wrong with Necochan! There I nailed it! I see your chan and raise you say…
So what was the answer in the form of a question smarty pants?
Actually, -san is a gender neutral suffix. It’s too polite for this this message board context, however.
You’ve got better eyes than I have if you can tell whether that’s a picture of a neko-chan or a neko-san.
Sumimasen deshita, Alan-san. The –kun suffix would, of course, be more gender-specific to a male, and you’re right that –san (deriving from sama, I think) works in a gender-netural context when used as an honorific. I gotta say, though, that those Nihongo-speakers of my acquaintance tend in practice to use –san in relation to male subjects, and the honorific –chan in relation to female subjects.
Which brings up some interesting points of descriptive versus prescriptive grammar and how far anecdotal evidence could address that. But I’ve hijacked this thread way too far already.
Thanks Alan, I can fix that shit!
I was talking about mine RS. My eyes are good as long as what ever I’m looking at’s in the next room.
Nishi-chan, we natives know that sno(w)boarding and skiing are things we have tourists do so we can laugh at them falling down in the snow.
Now, give us another $86 for the lift ticket, and it’ll be $12.50 for that coffee and danish.
Nihongo lesson: -chan is an (affectionate) diminutive suffix. Like -san, genderless, but onew adult male using it to another one had better be related, and older. And armed.
Oh, and -sama is the formal (upward) honorific. Verb forms aren’t inflected by gender in Japanese, they’re inflected by social status.
“In Tokyo I like to visit the Kannon-sama temple.” Kannon-bosatsu (Kuanyin, Avalokitesvara) as a nearly-enlightened being, gets additional respect, and thus is addressed as ‘-sama’, not ‘-san.’
Use those disposable diapers while you can, Jeff, cuz either you’ll have Satchel potty trained in the next 6 months or so, or an unholy alliance between the Greens and the Natural infant training advocates will pry them from your grief-clenched fingers, letting your tears fall free.
That “free” thing being a provincial assumption unsupported by empirical proof.
I dunno. When speaking to my Japanese friends, if they’re older than me, I don’t call them -chan or -kun. (And they’re all older than me, so it’s kind of disappointing.)
Some of the usual patrons at the restaurant I work at call me -chan – I’ve never been called Alan-kun because I’m too young (not quite a Japanese adult). That, and -chan is friendier, more “uchi”.
At any rate, none of the suffixes are gender-specific. A woman working at a company can be called -kun, but I would not expect her to be called -chan. I also suspect only a man would call a woman -kun.
I finished my degree at my last school, because I couldn’t afford transcript fees anymore.
One should have something to put on the wall with over 150 undergraduate credits from four schools. I did pay for it all myself, without any student loans. (I did get some help from the grateful American taxpayer – I consider it deferred compensation for the $128.50 per month from Uncle Sam.) Life, being the b*tch that she is, made sure I ended up owing in six figures to pay for my kids schools.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the money is in owning a college.
If I’m a failed mobile home builder that’s managed to make a respectable living in rocket science, is that so wrong?
Sorry to have hijacked the thread.
But yes, as someone who has been stuck on the first 6 lessons of conversational Japanese for a year now, and can only understand a marginal number of words people are saying to me as I run my daily errands around Tokyo– I have learned when in doubt, go with -san.
I’m -san, my husband’s young female assistant is -san, everybody is -san.
I am a failed Japanese linguist, and my English isn’t so hot either.
Maybee, you are only starting. have heart.
japanese honorifics are very status and context dependent, and subtle, i think.
RS-san and I use -chan for me because one meaning is young lady, and my posting style is unfeminine at best. Plus the original Nishi was masculine, altho it can take anyform in the later manga. -chan counters that.
my sempai i call -sama in public, but in private email when i flirt with him i say -kun.
DESHO!
And to my questions….that started all this, when I mistook you for a non-miss. Uh oh! Here we go again!