While writing a review of a webcomic today, I noticed something strange concerning the grammar in a sentence I wrote. I had written this sentence as I would have said it to someone I was talking to:

North uses images of three dinosaurs: a Tyrannosaurus, a Dromeciomimus, and a Utahraptor…

And MSWord immediately highlighted the “a” I put right before Utahraptor as a grammatical error. Now, I realize that to maintain the flow of speech, we use “an” as the article before a word which begins with a vowel, but in the case of “Utahraptor” (YOU-TAH-raptor), it seems to make more sense to use “a” instead of “an”. For example, we would say and write “a yodeler”, not “an yodeler”, right?

Am I wrong? This is going to keep me up at night.

This is terrible. Jack Chick creates some silly comics.

Because She-Ra had the cooler villians.

Yes, that’s a Slipknot reference.

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You all may not know this, but the release of the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii a mere week or so ago was punctuated with horrible violence. People were trampled, punched, and shot in the conflicts that arose during the release of the Playstation 3. Youths had their systems stolen from them, and people bought as many as three units, keeping one and selling the others on Ebay for upwards of $2000 (the system has an MSRP of ~$700). Anecdotal accounts of the Wii release seem to be more subdued. However, there were still people camping out in front of their local Best Buys and Toys R’ Us stores to buy the latest Nintendo console.

These people are nimrods. Why? Because unlike movies, concerts, or some sort of other commodity in short or limited supply, video game consoles will still be sold after their release date. If you want to avoid all of this bullshit then you can simply wait a month or two (or even a few weeks!) and buy one then.

Another reason that these people are ignoramuses (especially the ones buying the systems from Ebay) is that these first generation Playstation and Nintendo systems will be plagued with all sorts of problems. Anyone who is even mildly interested in gaming knows that the first batch of systems tends to have defects and materials which are inferior to the later versions of the same system which come out even 3 or 4 months down the line. It hurts my brain to think about all these people wasting their time waiting in lines for their systems. I love gaming as much as the next internet addicted underweight nerd, but even I have my scruples.

This one’s kind of personal, so if you don’t like personal blog posts then you should probably leave. If you DO like personal blog posts, then head over to livejournal after you’re done reading this, or something.

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These days, the only things I have to look forward to are Wednesdays (new comic book day), and playing World of Warcraft every night. And I’m perfectly happy doing these things. I think I’m in my geek renaissance; the things that comforted me as I grew up are once again relevant parts of my life.

It wasn’t always this way. There were times where I ignored the geek side of myself, and tried to be something else. I’m not sure what I was trying to be, but I do know that it wasn’t really who I am; I never felt secure in what I was becoming. I guess I was more concerned with what people thought of me than with what I really wanted.

This revelation scares me for a few reasons. The first reason is that I thought trying to “fit in” or change myself was something that I left behind after high school. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, it’s something you need to watch out for for the rest of your life.

The second thing that scares me about this is how the change was almost imperceptible. It happened gradually, and as such, I’m unable to point out exactly when it all started. What I do know now though, is that in some respects I’m happier now than I’ve been in years. I feel like I actually know myself, and that I’m able to be myself. Sure, I may be the oddball who thinks differently, says strange things, or has different hobbies. But those are all part of who I am.

left there to burn in their arrogance

Ok. OK! I just had ANOTHER Danone Peach “Creamy” brand yogurt that had only one piece of peach in it. This is fucking ridiculous

there’s beauty in those tears

This country is nuts. insane. ridiculous. crazy. incredible. unbelievable. weird. awesome.

I left Canada on Friday, Oct 27 and arrived in Osaka, Japan on Saturday, Oct 28. It was just under 5 hours to fly from Toronto to Vancouver then another 14 and some hours to Japan. I came here with a karate team which consists of about 20 of us including my dad and my sister. We’re competing at the S.K.I.F. (my karate federation) world championships and there’s apparently a couple thousand competitors from almost 100 countries.

We spent about 3 days in Osaka during which we also travelled to Kyoto and Nara for some site-seeing and we visited a bunch of temples and such.

I’m now in Tokyo and we’ll be competing on Nov 3-5. The rest of the team is leaving on the 7th but my sister and I are staying for an extra 5 days and leaving Japan on the 12th. We’ll be visiting some friends around Tokyo and Kobe and go visit our relatives in Nara as well.

So far, some cool/weird things I’ve noticed so far in Japan:

The bidet-toilet is the coolest thing ever. My ass has never been so clean after a number 2. To simply call it a bidet-toilet however, is to do it injustice. They are much more than that. The toilets here can range from the cool to super-cool. Although the standard feature of almost every non-public toilet is the bidet (with adjustable pressure settings no less), they also come with seat warmers, deodorizers, camo-sounds (either a flushing sound effect or actual flushing water to mask any embarrassing sounds) and countless other features that I have yet to figure out since I can’t read Japanese.

The fogless mirror. So I was having a shower the other day in my hotel and I pull the curtains aside and look in the mirror. I stood there for a second trying to figure out the situtation as I stared at the mirror and there was a big square patch without any fog where I could see myself clearly. Seriously, every mirror in every bathroom in the mirror should be like this.

The no-sliding tray. I had breakfast yesterday at the hotel and noticed that as I carried around my tray, none of my plates were sliding. They were coated in like a saran-wrap type material and everything stayed in place. Maybe not unique to Japan but so cool.

Cashierless Japanese fast-food. There’s a million Japan fast-food shops. They’re fast-food in the sense that you get your food within 2 minutes but not fast-food as in the greasy burger kind. They’re delicious Japanese lunch type foods ranging from noodles to rice with some meat. Anyway, most of them don’t have cashiers. They simply have a vending machine where you pay for your food and then bring your stub to the counter where they take your order and serve you your food.

Street-advertisers. Almost every other store has employees out on the sidewalk either advertising their goods or simply calling people into their stores. You can also get tons of free kleenexes walking down a street.

Cleanliness. It is so clean here. There is barely any litter and the only place I’ve seen graffiti so far is under a bridge. The trains are all pristine, unlike the graffiti-covered filth I’ve seen in Europe. The ironic thing is that garbage cans are just as rare. You usually have to hang on to garbage for a while before you can find a place to throw it out. I’m thinking it might be since nobody litters, they don’t need to bother with much public garbage cans.

The fashion here (in the big cities) is absolutely incredible. In a good way. Everyone must spend an hour or more to get ready to go out. Almost every guy is pimpin a nice suit or something nice, while the girls are absolutely amazingly dressed. Some things that are really in with the girls include huge boots, half-pants (not quite capris, not quite shorts) and lots of tweed. All the guys have big hairdos. I’ve seen only a handful of guys with short hair like me.

It’s a whole different world over here. It’s rather a strange experience for me because for the most part, I blend right in yet the environment feels so alien to me because I can’t read Japanese. Something that needs to be remedied sometime in the near-future.

In any case, I’m loving every minute. I love the food, I love the culture, I love the smells, I love the language and well, maybe (just maybe) I love the girls too.