Anglo Saxon Linguistic Purism
Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:07:45 +0900
Anglo-Saxon Linguistic Purism is the attempt to avoid the use of foreign terms, primarily of Greek, Latin, and French origin, in English. According to Wikipedia, this first began (and failed) after the Norman Conquest. It rose again as an organized movement in Early Modern English, roughly the time of Shakespeare, as a response to perceived pretentiousness, and again in the nineteenth century and intermittently since then, attracting the support of figures like Dickens and Orwell.
More recently it has enjoyed use by fiction writers and Internet People. There is an Anglish Wiki which has purified versions of famous texts, including Darwin's Origin of Species (or Inlead to The Wellspring of Breedstocks):
When on board H.T.S. Beagle, as wildloreman, I was much struck with sundry truths in the fordealing of the lifefast beings bewoning Southamericksland, and in the earthkithy kinships of the andward to the beleeringly onerdands of that earthdeal. These deedsakes, as will be seen in the latter headstutches of this book, seemed to throw some light on the frumshaft of kins - that unknown of unknowns, as it has been called by one of our greatest outhwiten. On my edwhirft home, it came to me, in 1837, that something might well be made out on this frain by longmoodly heaping and bethinking on all kinds of deedsakes which could eath have any bearing on it. After five years' work I let myself huy on the underwarp, and drew up some short ontokenings; these I greatened in 1844 into an outline of the upshots, which then seemed to me likely: from that timestretch to the andward day have I steadily forfollowed the same goal. I hope that I may be forgiven for inputting on these my own selfly indelves, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a bychoice.
Further translations include portions of Hamlet, The Bible, and the works of HP Lovecraft. Ψ
Eternal Darkness Films
Sat, 26 Nov 2011 06:45:15 -0800
Eternal Darkness was a Lovecraftian horror game released in 2002 for the GameCube. Its most notable feature was a sanity system, in which the more you encountered otherwordly enemies or used magic the more strange things would happen. Examples included entering a room and appearing on the ceiling, statues turning to look at you, and in one instance a fake screen telling you to look forward to the rest of the story in the sequel.
An unusual touch is that a film contest was held accompanying the release of the game; out of five hundred proposals, ten shorts were produced and hosted on the game's web site. Since this was before YouTube and the game site is long gone (and unreachable on Archive.org due to an age verification wall), a lot of those shorts are lost. However, the winner has reappeared on YouTube, though with very low volume. Note it's pretty creepy.
The director of this film, Patrick Daughters, has gone on to direct a number of music videos, including several for Feist.
The viewer's choice film, The Cutting Room Floor, is also available on YouTube. A few others turned up in this forum thread, but the rest remain unaccounted for. Ψ
Kaleidoscope Table
Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:22:50 -0800
Looking around for furniture for a new apartment, a spark of inspiration and a Google search turned up this beauty:
The half-ton table is made of four stacked orbs of glass, each more than six feet in diameter. All four balance on a steel stem, and only the lowest orb, which is made of clear and crackled glass underlit by LEDs, is fixed in place.
Above the lighted plate, everything rotates. The second-to-the-bottom orb spins around to reveal rainbow-hued peacocks, ravens, rivers, fish, mountains, orchids and symbols. The third-level orb, which is divided into sections by three jeweled scepters; a detail of one of them is shown at the top of this post. This orb rotates across the two below, changing colors and flashing as its facets cross the lights.
Not exactly afforable, but an inspiration nonetheless. Ψ
Paper Theater
Sun, 30 Oct 2011 05:04:17 -0400
Paper theaters were a way of bringing the stage home with you in the nineteenth century. 50 Watts has some fine entries on the subject, but not much on the frames used for the flat performances. Below is a selection of prosceniums from the Memory of the Netherlands. Click for full-size.
That is all. Ψ
Immigration Woes
Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:39:24 -0400
Howdy, folks; if it's been a while it's because I've been on a strange journey through halls of paperwork.
Early last month I signed a contract to work at a fine company I'll write more about later. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to start work yet due to my visa situation in the country.
Visas work a bit differently in every country, and Japanese visas are quite different from what you'd expect in America. For one thing, what's generally thought of as a visa - the stamp in your passport - counts primarily as a landing permit and is not strictly related to your Status of Residence, which determines what you're allowed to do in the country (like work, own property, or vote). Thus, since I'm already in Japan, getting a visa isn't actually important - I want a change of my Status of Residence. Unfortunately, this requires special circumstances if you're inside the country.
The normal procedure for getting a Status of Residence that allows work is to apply for a Certificate of Eligibility from outside Japan and come in on a visa (landing permit) appropriate to your desired Status of Residence. It's not officially documented, but a Certificate of Eligibility may be used in lieu of special circumstances to apply for a change of Status of Residence inside the country - this is not some crazy loophole, it's just standard operating procedure at Immigration, despite not being mentioned on their site or in relevant laws (so far as I know).
The downside to this is that the application for the Certificate of Eligibility involves a background check to verify you have a four year degree appropriate to your field and that you are not a felon, which means it takes roughly six weeks for it to be issued, during which period your visa is not automatically extended.
What all this means for me is I get to be funemployed until the middle of Novemeber and I have to figure out a way to extend my current Status of Residence (short stay - tourist) before Halloween. Shouldn't be hard, and should actually result in a nice vacation, but three months is a long time to be unemployed.
Most of the information in this post I gleaned from this thread at the Gaijinpot forums; lots of the links to forms and laws are dead, but the correct ones aren't hard to find. A lot of this isn't documented outside government sources in Japanese because, well, Japanese people don't have to worry about Japanese visas.
In the meantime, since I'm done with paperwork for at least a month, hopefully I'll manage to be productive in any case. Watch this space for updates. Ψ