Okay, I've been studying my ass off for the past few days and I think I've finally got all the Hiragana memorized. Mind you, if someone asked me to write something like 'he' or 'ni', I'd have to think it through and work my way down a mental grid, but overall, I have the characters committed to memory. Now it's just a matter of turning them into a reflex action. Frankly, I think I may end up better with reading Hiragana rather than writing it in the beginning. And with my quiz today, I think what I might do is just write the entire basic Hiragana table on my quiz and then work from there. I mean, that's not cheating. I'm getting the characters from memory, it just organizes them in a way that's easier for me to work through.

On a side note, I just introduced Mike to Google Earth. Damn, that program's a hoot.

You guys remember Harvey Danger? The guys that did that song 'Flagpole Sitta'? Well, I still have a tendency to listen to their albums and was overjoyed to find out that they're offering their new album entitled Little By Little... for free on their website. Yes, that's right, free. Download the tracks from their site or by Bittorrent, all completely with Harvey Danger's blessing. It's about time bands started doing this. Yeah, they're releasing the album in stores as well with an extra 30-minute companion disc, but the main album itself...well, this is ingenious. Like I said, it's about damn time. I commend them for going this route. Check out the release here as to why they're doing this...

I've got a quiz on Hiragana in my Japanese class tomorrow and I've been cramming at work here all day, trying to stuff all the characters into my head. Thus far, I have the following ones memorized:

a i u e o
ka ki ku ke ko
sa shi su se so
ta chi tsu te to
na ni nu ne no
ha hi fu he ho

Left to memorize are the following:

ma mi mu me mo
ya yu yo
ra ri ru re ro
wa o n

After that, it's basically all the derivatives of those characters/sounds, such as ga (hiragana for ka, plus a 'tenten' diacritical mark that looks like a quotation mark), pa (hiragana for ha, plus a diacritical mark that looks like the sign for degrees), kya (hiragana combination of ki and ya), and gya (hiragana combination of ga and ya). Basically, once I memorize the a, ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, and wa...I'm good to go. I just have to remember the corresponding dulled sounds for each one (ka/ga, sa/za, ta/da, ha/ba/pa) and since I'll already have the basic hiragana for it memorized...blah blah blah.

Is anyone actually still reading this? I'm really rambling on, aren't I? Okay, fuck it, I'm back to practicing this stuff. I want to be able to have at least a few free moments to myself tonight to play We Love Katamari or NHL 06.

See for yourself.

He might be a loud-mouthed ass a lot of the time, but damn it if that guy isn't a true prize for the NHL!

Damn, I want this dude to make me some Wolverine claws...

I thought this was a rather intriguing article from the Times UK worthy of sharing:

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its "spiritual capital". But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: "Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

"The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so."

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world's only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from "uniquely high" adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: "The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America."

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. "I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states," he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

"The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

"The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted."

I love the weather at this time of year. As I was standing at the kitchen sink doing dishes, a nice cool breeze blasted through the window setting my wood wind chimes into motion. It's been raining lightly for the past few hours now and it's helped to cool things down, making the climate a hell of a lot more comfortable. It actually allows me to sit down and have a cup of coffee without burning up inside while I drink it. I could handle this kind of weather the entire year. Not too hot, not too cold - just right.

Watch this video and tell me what you think of it.

All this time I was thinking that all I had was a nasty cold. Now I've got the Bubonic Plague to worry about too? What the fuck?!

Looks like Britney finally popped out her kid, a bouncing baby boy. But egads! It was delivered by Caesarean section! Her hoochie dancing days are over...

Well, now I've done it. It started off with a sore throat last week and now it's turned into a full-blown cold. Sinus aches, coughing, and what feels like a fever (considering I'm drenched in sweat already today, which will result in my heading back home around maybe 1:00 to take another shower and change into some dry clothes before my Japanese language lab at 3:30). I managed to find a couple DayQuil pills in my medicine cabinet this morning and I think they're helping a little (hell if I know whether or not they were expired), but I still feel like garbage. I'm just going to try and concentrate on work today and see if I can distract myself sufficiently. It would figure that I'm working late tonight too, right?

That headache I had finally went away last night after three days of rattling inside my skull. Not fun at all. Of course, it's been replaced by new pain today - my left shoulder. I couldn't have slept on it wrong because I don't sleep on that side. It just started throbbing with pain today, whether I move it or keep it still. Very frustrating. I'm convinced that my body is plotting against me to keep my mood as unpleasant as possible. Still, I suppose this is better than the headache. When I went jogging after work on the track at the Rec. Center the other day, I couldn't do much more than a half-mile because the more I jogged, the more intense the hammering in my head became. Even a couple Excedrin weren't doing anything to stop it.

Okay, time to do more homework...

Read through these archives. They're brilliantly hilarious.

I've been noticing a rather large amount of these really ugly Al Pacino/Scarface on campus today, mainly on the gangsta style individuals. I guess I just don't get the fixation. I mean, these shirts are gaudy as hell for being screenprinted black t-shirts. Is this some new trend that I'm just not aware of? Come on, make me feel old and irrelevant.

Well, it looks like I won't be ditching any of my classes this semester. Surprised? After attending one session of each so far, my Japanese class appears to be the most difficult, but hopefully I'll be able to muddle through it. My Creative Writing class should be fun, I just need to make sure I keep up with the assignments and figure out some ways to spark my creativity. Maybe have a few drinks before I sit down to write? I dunno. My professor seemed to like one of my story ideas that I had proposed last class, even saying "You're the screenwriter, aren't you? I can tell..." in a good way. My Core class...meh...it'll be boring as hell, but at least it should be relatively simple. It's a Freshman level course and I've already completed all the other level Core classes, so logically, this one should be a cakewalk.

I've got a language lab for my Japanese class in about an hour and a half, but I've had this dull, nagging headache for the past couple days and I think I might run out to Dunkin Donuts to snag a coffee sometime before class and hope the caffeine takes care of it. Or a couple Excedrin from my laptop case. I hope this language lab helps a bit, I don't want to fall behind in that class at all. Mind you, I'd also do better without the pressure of having to do all that practice conversing with people in class, since that screws me up bigtime. I'll be fine with everything until, "Okay, converse with your neighbor" and then I'll stammer and forget everything. Not the best way for me to learn, really.

I can't believe I'm actually up this early. As I type this, it's 5:19am and I've actually been awake for about an hour. Already made myself some coffee, washed dishes, burned a DVD and now I'm just sitting here with CNN Headline News on. I've really got to stop watching the news, though. Just keeps getting me more and more pissed off at the ineptitude of this administration...

You know, I'm starting to think that Hugo Chavez isn't the bad guy that the U.S. Government (or Pat "Assassination" Robertson) has made him out to be.

"For four days there were warnings that (Katrina) was going to make a direct hit, and the king of vacations at his ranch only said 'you must flee.' He did not say how," Chavez said, charging that the United States had no evacuation plans. "It's the rancher mentality."