American Gaijin
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Dwight Armstrong was a Frigging Genius
Dwight Armstrong was the brother of the founder of the cult I grew up in. His contribution to the cult was very limited, but very influential. See, he wrote the hymnbook. It’s a very distinctive hymnbook with a purple cover. I have a copy. I bought it off of ebay. It’s the only thing I…
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Dreams
All my life, I have had dreams. The dreams have changed as I grew older, but they’ve always been there. And I’d all but given up on them. All of them. Until very recently, my life was nothing but trying to learn how to cope with the death of my dreams. You may think I’m…
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Why I Love JPop – as a Musician. Redux.
Recently (and yes, I’m always behind the curve on these things) I found a song by Momiro Clover Z called “Nippon Egao Hyakkei”. It’s a fun little song about laughing and might be one of the most Japanese things ever. Everything about it just reeks “Japan”, and I’m all about that. It’s the ending song…
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I Don’t Have Time for Anime Anymore
I started getting into anime about a year ago, and I found that I really liked it. Well, I really liked it sometimes, but I have posted before about how it pretty much changed my life in some concrete ways. “Hibike! Euphonium” pretty much kickstarted me into getting back into music, and now I’m taking…
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Serious Japanese Learners vs. Otaku
I guess it’s not much of a secret for anyone who’s read my previous posts (whether on this site or others) that I really don’t like western otaku. I mean, in one sense, great. You’ve found a passion and it doesn’t hurt anyone, so good on you, I suppose. And I don’t have any particular…
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Temple Otaku Street Market
Apparently, and I only found out about this by passing the mall and seeing big signs that said “Otaku”, they had an Otaku street market at Temple Mall today (only a few days after the mall was damaged by a tornado, so I guess the gods of capitalism are smiling down on us today). So…
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Bless Your Heart, Mrs. Scobie
When I was in elementary school somewhere around forty years ago, I was, ummm… gifted, I guess. I was very good at math and was probably several grade levels above everyone else. I was also dealing with some issues at home and had no real way to “read the room” or any kind of social…
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American Gaijin
On this site’s sister site, Gaijin Learning Japanese, I post about how I am, well, a gaijin (a mildly derogatory Japanese word meaning “foreigner”)*, and I’m learning Japanese. There are currently some (well, many) posts I moved to this site that are not about learning Japanese per se, but are about Japanese culture. I’m debating…
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Welcome to my new-ish site
This site is about all things NOT learning Japanese. For many years, I’ve posted on a site called Gaijin Learning Japanese. I originally made that site about, well, learning Japanese. It went off the rails, and I just started posting whatever. An argument could be made that I destroyed the site by doing that. That…
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Temple, TX EF-2 Tornado
I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I currently live in Temple, TX. On Wednesday, at around 6:50, an EF-2 tornado came tearing through town, and the circulation passed very close to my house. Usually I’m standing outside watching storms approach. I like storms and they’re pretty cool to watch. They have interesting…