Useless?

I’m feeling more and more like this blog does not have a raison d’etre. That could be partially my fault. It has no focus, no theme, no defined audience (save the two people that read it because I read theirs), and I’m getting awfully low traffic here. Solutions? (Well, for one, how ‘bout a few more comments, people? Not that I haven’t overanalyzed everything and left nothing to be said, or posted about something completely inane, but recognition is nice)

1. A theme. Yes, it was supposed to be this language stuff I guess, but I seem to have lost that now that I’m focused on Chinese. I’m also going to be taking a Japanese class occasionally (read: as often as I want or have time), but none too intensely. So that means there’s very little Hungarian, Romanian, Swahili, Farsi, Aramaic, Punjabi, or Xhosa experiences anymore, which is fine, because they were a diversion from my focus languages at the time: Russian and German (the former being my favorite, the latter being far easier), but since I’ve moved to Chinese, that’s it (and Japanese because it sounds prettier).
2. (almost like #1) updates on a hobby: do I have a hobby? The clear answer here is: no. Unless it’s wikipedia-ing (we need a noun like ‘to google’ for wikipedia; is it to wiki? And what’s the past tense?) arbitrary grammatical constructions of anamorphic languages… yeah, that’s a real creative outlet. So I’ve decided I need a creative outlet of some kind. I have few of those talents. I’d like to spend more time with photography, and I think I got some good captures from this weekend. They’re on Flickr. I would also like to spend more time on the piano. I’m familiar with very little, but that takes time time time (and it’s time...) So I dunno about that. If I had enough time, I’d really like to get back into writing stuff and posting it in installments here, but I haven’t written in a while. I’ve got some good stuff on hold and all, but haven’t felt right about progressing with it, since I don’t feel in the correct frame of mind to keep it true to what it should be.
3. Something having to do with the ‘there needs to be a word for that,’ project. A collaborative effort seems nice, but it also seems at the expense of quality and usefulness, no? We’ll see how Eric feels, but I’m leaning toward an online equivalent to my Moleskine where a few of us can work on or edit current entries and stuff, as opposed to everyone and their brother submitting words that already exist or are based on their own names and mean “supercoolawesomeness,” as there’s a lot of that on Addictionary.

In short (not), I need to come up with something to do with this thing, salvage it somehow, so without anything definitive to write about regularly (it’s okay to write about unremarkable things knowing that someone’s reading them. This is the html version of talking to a brick wall, and if I’m gonna do that, I’ll talk to a REAL brick wall so I can at least hear myself), it's been difficult, and has become somewhat of a vestige. It seems, however, that the blog has become a necessary part of an individual’s identity, non? Well, let’s see what happens here, as the future of ForeignWords ever hangs in the balance.

Adieu.

Imperial

I know it's already on My Flickr, but it was a nice introduction to this post, I thought.
Yesterday was a very long day. Very long. Tiring. Stressful. I sat in traffic for nearly two hours to go about 16 miles. Chinese group meeting at 6, and I got there about twenty minutes early, so did I work on a presentation? Did I clean out my car or go get something to eat (since I hadn't had anything but a smoothie in the past 6 hours)? NO! I went to the piano dealer I called earlier in traffic to go play the Bösendorfer Imperial concert grand piano. Check out the notes on my Flickr pix about it. It's nothing shy of the best in the world, and it was 15 seconds off the tuning fork when I came in to play, and had been pitched and all. Yay.
I had very little time to do what I needed to do there, and sat down to play a few things, and tinker w/ chords and whatever, and it just feels so good. I wish I could actually play a few things and be expressive with them, but it's amazing.
I also listened to great music. I had tons of new tracks queued up on my fauxPod (the photo of which makes it look far cheaper and less sturdy than it really is), and I set it to shuffle. Boy, did she pick out some great tunes, and it came out being a great playlist, so I've got a smattering of about twenty tracks I'm going to put together that work for yesterday's happenings. It soundtracked my day.

Chick rock

So apparently I listen to way too many female artists (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, PJ Harvey, Bjork, Rachael Yamagata, Sarah McLachlan, Emily Haines, Joanna Newsom, Regina Spektor, Charlotte Martin [jibblies], and somebody told me to listen to Kate Bush yesterday, [some of these are new forays for me, too]). That's what I'm told anyway. The music library (aside from Amos) probably isn't overwhelmingly female, but whatever. I've really been getting into more PJ Harvey lately, and got two or three more of her albums and they're excellent. I've also been influenced into listening to Bjork, and she's growing on me, although she's less straightforward musically than what I'm used to. Anyway, I found this interesting [read: incredible] and thought I'd share.


PJ plays guitar in her typical grunge/bluesy style, but I've never heard Bjork sing like this before, and it's awesome.

In her defense...

Interesting. Where’s The Beekeeper when you need her? I still like it, but this new one is awesome!!!

Seems everyone is harping (not like Joanna Newsom though) on how awful the last album was, and I saw the above story on my iGoogle today, and snickered…

Unstuck in Time

What's new, you ask? Well, just who do you think you are?

The New Album comes out tomorrow, and my copy is being two-day'ed to my house, so it should get here either Wednesday or Thursday, because it's apparently already shipped. So that's exciting. Been very busy, very busy.
I was also doing some research on vowel harmony and consonant mutation. That's exciting.
I had a smoothie for breakfast yesterday.
I need to make some more rice.
Played Nintendo Wii (waay awesome) for hours yesterday.
I hope to get a cool new pen this weekend.
(just hitting the high points.... more later, maybehaps.)