Category: Announcements

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Where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Where have you been, darling Billy?

Dear god, I practiced that tune more times than I can remember on the piano. With the span of years separating me from those times, however, I’ve come to reconsider my grudging resignation to playing the piano and wouldn’t mind messing around on one again. However, now I don’t have a piano to practice on.  Isn’t that just how it goes?

Oh, and in answer to the question, I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption. Yes, I know it’s two years old. I don’t care. It’s new to me and it was a lot cheaper than when it was new to everyone else, plus it’s way more fun because a lot of the bugs have been fixed by now. The breadth of actions you can do in this game are astonishing. For example, you can tie a woman to some train tracks, but there won’t be any snivelling heroes to interfere and you can pretend to twirl your moustache while you watch a train run her over. You can also do that to anyone who tries to steal your horse, though it’s not as satisfying, but if you punish the no-good horse rustler more appropriately by lassoing them and dragging them to their death as you gallop over the plains you end up losing honour points. I think my favourite thing right now is to hogtie everyone in a saloon and stand around listening to them shout impotent threats at you, then calmly walking away to hunt some deer or something.

Also, when I’m not playing that I’m playing the beta for Dust 514. Also fun, but in a different, kill-other-players-who-are-trying-to-kill-you way. I’m not sure how much leeway the beta’s Non-Disclosure Agreement allows me to say so I’ll just leave it at that.

So yeah, video games. Yeehaw.

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The answer is blowing in the wind

On The Onion AV Club there is a discussion about the first film that participants have seen. I couldn’t contribute anything in my case because I honestly have no idea what my first movie is. I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of movies in my life and would be hard-pressed to tell you which specific movie was my first ever. I’m not even sure if it’s something I saw on video or at the movie theatre.

However, this realization also brought to light the fact that I have no idea how much media I consume beyond the vague estimate of “hundreds” in the case of movies. Therefore, I have a new project for myself: between now and the end of August of next year, I will count what and how many novels, movies, tv shows, and comic books I consume. I’ll even list what I’ve consumed in a given month.

Luckily August has only started so I still remember what I’ve consumed so far. Anyway, this project should be very instructive.

Books: Started reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Comic Books: Gokuko no Brynhildr #21, Sket Dance #204, Otogi no Machi no Rena #49, The World God Only Knows #197

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I exist

So I let sarapen.com expire in an extended bout of laziness last November. Then when I tried to get the domain back I discovered some Godaddy squatters had taken it for some reason – it can’t have been for any expectations of profit, there wasn’t enough traffic for that.

Obviously, I have registered sarapen.ca instead. I actually thought of making that my original domain but .com was like three dollars cheaper. Whatever, this is what I’ve got now. I’ve finished importing all of my old posts to this new site so it’s good to go, or rather, it’s good enough. I still need to tweak a few things, especially with the tags but that’s mostly for the back-end.

Enjoy, you anonymous millions.

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Work in Progress

Please note that I’m still setting up the website, I’ve imported most of my previous stuff but this blog still needs work. More to come anon.

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Mine at last

Magus Triumphant! Magus, blazing with power, raises the Infinity Gauntlet as Dr. Doom recoils in defeat.

Finally, all of the posts and comments from Sarapen II have been imported here. At last, my blog is whole once again. None shall stand before me!

Or not. Say, does anyone out there remember the Infinity War crossover mini-series from the 1980s? No? It was pretty fun as long as you checked your brain at the door. Man, check out how wordy comics were back then. Like a third of the picture is nothing but words, almost all of them unnecessary. Purple dude gets a magic glove, how many words does it take to describe that?

Magus there used to have a totally sweet afro, though, instead of that chasen-gami samurai topknot he has in the pic. And damn if he isn’t afraid of rocking the codpiece and the hot pants. Now that’s a man who deserves to be ruler of the universe. If you’re too much of a wussy to even wear short shorts in public, how could you be trusted to wield the Infinity Gauntlet responsibly?

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In the hizzouse

Hello, my name is Jesse de Leon and I’m new to these parts.  My old blog is over there and it’s about my Master’s research on Filipino bloggers.  Well, it’s kind of morphed into something else, now it’s mostly me holding forth on whatever I feel like.  I got sick of Edublogs and their not fun hosting (ask me if you want to know the boring details) and decided to move here to Anthroblogs.  Thanks again to John Norvell for giving me a new forum for my online musings.

So, I’m a 1.5 generation Filipino immigrant who’s working on his Master’s thesis in social anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  I’m planning on moving my old posts over to Anthroblogs, but that involves Perl and scripting and work, and (1) I suck at programming, (2) I’ve never used Perl before, and (3) I’m trying to finish a chapter of my thesis to include in applications to PhD schools, which all means that I won’t have time to properly set up my new blog anytime this year.  But if anyone is better at Perl than me, who only started learning it 2 days ago, I would dearly love to benefit from your expertise.  I’ve already found 2 scripts on the Internet that will mostly do what I want, which is migrating posts from my old blog to my new one.  Moving comments would also be nice, but moving the posts is essential.  But I’m having trouble figuring out what parameters to set and such, so I need help with that.

Anyway, I thought I’d just start blogging on the new site and worry about all that later.  I’m glad to join Anthroblogs and I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Parte segundo de la traducción

Remember when I tried to explain the meaning of Sarapen? Well, ice_of_dreams, who I encountered on LiveJournal through our mutual appreciation (or former appreciation) of Ranma 1/2 and fanfiction thereof, has offered a more complete translation. Following is the comment left on my LJ:

World keeps getting smaller. I am Filipino too. 🙂 And you’re fortunate I still live in the Philippines and can translate. (and let me tell you these words are deep and aren’t used in daily conversation so I have to ask my dad and helper who’re from the Tagalog region to make sense of some of the words)

I hope you’re ready for this, this is long Continue reading “Parte segundo de la traducción”

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August 25, 2006

Dear diary,

Today I changed something on my blog. I’m not sure if anyone will notice. Oh diary, will boys ever start paying attention to me? Or girls? Or genderqueers?

If it wasn’t for you, diary, I wouldn’t be able to get through my days. I know you’ll always be there for me.

XOXOX

Sarapen

PS

Metallica rules.

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I am the Gatekeeper

My application for a travel grant to New York was rejected. I was going to interview some New York bloggers, but apparently my trip was “poorly justified” in my application. I hadn’t discussed enough the importance of offline context, the everyday lived reality of identity, and of course my participants’ personal and local experiences of transnationalism. They (you know who they are) told me that I could reapply and explain these things more clearly. Plus I should include an abstract of my proposal and a letter from my supervisor corroborating my reasons for wanting face to face interviews. The good news is, they did approve $200 for research assistants and $100 for photocopying, even though the plane tickets were the point of the application and those other things were just in case I came in under budget and still had money to spare. Aaarrggh. This is probably going to set me back by two weeks. Good thing I can still do phone interviews and other research.

Bonus points if you remember what movie the title of my post is from. It’s very relevant to the topic.