Today I partied to the nth degree, and by that I mean went to school and cooked salmon. But the salmon was ferocious and had to be wrestled into submission before I ate it. Or something. Anyway, for my first attempt ever at cooking non-stick fish, I think it turned out pretty well. My mother trained me from a young age that when cooking meat of any kind, the proper preparation method is always to apply salt and pepper liberally to both sides of the gross shank of flesh; following this school of thought, I did just that, adding onions and cayenne pepper to taste, and the result was surprisingly tasty. I'm not really sure how good the salmon was objectively speaking, but for dirt cheap sale salmon, it was great.
You may have noticed that the "return to page" link in the guestbook leads you into Nirvana, or a comparable state of nothingness. I believe this is a glitch in the guestbook program, and if it can be fixed from my end at all it would doubtless take superhuman HTML prowess.
Had another politics class today that consisted of me staring blankly at the professor while he talked to himself in complicated Japanese for an hour and a half. This class might devour my free time, but at least by the end of it I'll be able to read newspapers quite handily. At some point I'd like to start translating opinion articles and such both for the practice and so that you all can see what the Japanese are saying behind your backs. That probably won't be for a while, though, so don't hold your breath unless you want to pass out and see the disembodied head of Harrison Ford floating in your subconscious. If you haven't heard that one, ask Teresa about it.
I went shopping for can openers the other day, only to discover that Japan still uses the old manual poke-and-crank ones. What is with this country? What sort of culture develops electric toilets with more features than most VCRs before it develops a can opener that uses gears?
Amazon.co.jp is just as diabolical as its American counterpart, and has started to convince me to buy American products from it as well. I simply couldn't resist when I found out that Michelle Shocked's new label is reprinting "Short Sharp Shocked" with an additional disc featuring 21 more songs. This is big news, people!
Thanks for the recommendation, all those who have told me to see Kill Bill. It looks great, and I'll be sure to see it once it comes out on the 25th of this month. I'm glad that for once Tarantino could restrain his monstrous ego enough not to appear in his own movie as Man Who Can't Act.
The professor who believes that knowledge equals virtue was up to his old tricks again today, dropping the idea of speciesism totally irrelevantly into an argument with the self-satisfied air of a five-year-old boy who's just discovered that he can pick his nose all he wants when no one is looking. If he really believes that animals are no less important than people, what in the world is he doing teaching an international politics class? Shouldn't he be out lobbying for a UN seat for schnauzers?
I just heard a cover of Carole King's "Home Again" done by this really great Japanese singer, Hajime Chitose. Groovy.
