If I Had Prepared Twenty Years Ago . . .

Twitter Sonnet #227

Gatorade falls from an acid white sky.
Three bites of potato's short victory.
Punchy red eyelids revenge a black eye.
Salt crackers sink under the factory.
Tight abs swallow the man's belly button.
Garrotting scarves can stop a mean bird's fall.
Emergency air-dough smothers Muffin.
It's more than one sweet brick makes pastry wall.
Good blueberries vanquish the presumed bad.
Salty power dimmed the energy drink.
Dasani's effort at hydration's sad.
Some liquids stand just at the solid brink.
Smiling suns see steam trains flood acid track.
Tinker Bell shot Porky in iris black.

I did make it to class last night, the second day of Japanese II after I'd missed the first one on Monday. The teacher is a very nice Japanese woman who seemed very understanding when I explained to her what happened and she gave me a copy of the class syllabus. I'd only managed half a cup of coffee yesterday, and was still a bit hazy from lingering sick effects, and I hadn't taken Japanese I in around ten years, but I sat myself right down in the front and felt quite tranquil as information flew at me during class to find little purchase in my comprehension.

Though I think I remember Japanese II going like this at first the last time I took it before dropping it. I got a B in Japanese I, which was an extraordinarily good grade for me to get in anything, but the jump from Japanese I to II was pretty steep. The idea seems to be that Japanese II students get a Japanese teacher to whom they need to make more of an effort to reach across the language divide to. At least this time I understood most of what she was saying throughout the class, "Mite kudasai, sou desu . . ." Though it was all stuff I'd picked up from watching anime and Japanese movies. I don't remember learning any of those words in Japanese I. I remember the first day of Japanese II, last time I took it, consisted of me wondering what this, "kudasai" word was the teacher constantly used, with every breath it seemed. Now I know it means "please," and seems to permeate Japanese like crazy. I don't know how I didn't learn it at any point in Japanese I.

But I feel like I can do II this time. That might just be the chutzpah of a sick brain talking, but we'll see. To-night I have History and Anthropology, which I think'll be cake in comparison. Uck, I can't even think of cake without feeling nauseous. Or alcohol, for that matter. Or World of Warcraft.

Playing video games might seem a natural thing to do when you're sick. I know I got in a lot of Final Fantasy I when I'd have the stomach flu as a kid. But somehow the idea of WoW seemed daunting. Even listening to Howard Stern seemed to be complicated enough to make me feel vaguely panicked. I guess considering all this I should feel pretty good about getting, I'm pretty sure, around 80% of the hiragana right on the quiz at the end of class yesterday. Though this was after brushing up on it on the weekend and being refreshed on it throughout class beforehand yesterday.

I will persevere . . .

I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit with dinner last night. I hadn't remembered how grainy that newest DVD special edition print is. It's pretty annoying, as one longs to see the crisp, clean lines of that animation. There's a real feeling of a vast world in that movie, owing mainly, it seems to me, to the wonderful attention to characterisation, and also to that absolutely singular animation. I've gone on about this before already, but I never get tired of the beautiful, alien spectacle of painstaking, hand drawn 3D animation. It has so much life that cgi doesn't have--it hits something in the brain, I think, that recognises the mind of another living creature in the movements.