Who Sucks

Orgasm lifters. Those guys at the gym who sound like they're really enjoying every rep. I call them orgasm lifters.

In Pumping Iron Arnold Schwarzenegger is talking about the "pump" or the feeling he gets in his muscles when he's lifting. He says something like, well, here's the video:



Maybe they do have it figured out after all.

New Programs

I don't have much of a winter break. My last final exam was on this past Saturday, and my winter session class starts on January 5.

Next semester, I will be taking 2 high-level Japanese classes for the first time ever. I'm a bit nervous. I was asking the kids in the lower-level classes about their tests and quizzes, and, while I'm pretty set on the grammar, the kanji and vocabulary quizzes are seriously hard. Write out kanji characters? You must be joking! No? Oh... I had gotten used to simply typing them.

Starting today, I will be regimenting myself. I will build up to approximately four hours of straight Japanese studying per day. I'll probably track my progress on my long-silent Japanese blog, http://sokasoka.blogspot.com.

The other new program I will be starting is a program of frugality. Starting January 1, I will make an effort not to buy food at restaurants for the entire month (with the exception of possible Language Exchange meals, which fall under the Japanese-studying program). I'll have to learn new recipes. I foresee a lot more casseroles in my future.

If these two programs can get started easily, I might add a third (an exercise regimen), but I don't want to get too ambitious too fast.

じゃー、はじめよ！

What Unites Districted and Hatandcoat? In a Word: Manblogitude.

One of my favorite word blogs is called "Wordlustitude." Unlike many word blogs (including my own), it's short, funny, and unpretentious. The author finds real instances of made-up neologisms, defines them, gives a real citation, and then makes up a citation.

Here's today's word:

manblogitude

noun. What you'll find, if you dare to look, deep inside the pants of all testosterone-marinated blogs such as this.

Real citation: "I’m not sure I can take a calendar full of steaming hot manblogitude…"
(Dec. 3, 2008, The Comics Curmudgeon, http://joshreads.com/?p=1809)

Made-up citation: "Women love me for my manblogitude. Men hate me for it. Man-blogs admire me. Woman-blogs are curious. Woodland critters are just afraid."

I read that and thought of my little project here with my coblogger.

Please remember, whenever you add "man-" to a word, it makes it not gay and more stereo-hetero. See mancrushish, man-flab, man-fume , man-slutitude , man-strumpet, and mantourage. But I guess that's not a hard and fast rule: see happy man-loaf, man-chete, etc.

Celebratory French Toast

As I drove my rental car back from College Park, finally free of my most-hated class of all time (ANTH 260), I realized I had a car. And I thought, wouldn't it be lovely to go over to Hinata and have some celebratory chirasi-zushi? Yes, yes it would, I thought, and I began plotting my course.

And then I thought, but wait! I have no money. And the $15.00 bowl of rice with fish overtop is the best deal out there, but 15 bucks is still 15 bucks. So I decided to go home and make myself french toast instead.

Celebratory French Toast

• 3 eggs
• some milk (enough to make it a good mix of egg and milk, not just milky eggs or eggy milk)
• bourbon vanilla extract (a glug or two)
• cinnamon (a heavy dusting)
• sugar (a pinch)
  
• bread (I had wheat)

Beat eggs. Add milk. Glug vanilla. Dust cinnamon. Pinch sugar. Drown bread, one slice at a time. Fry. Enjoy celebratorily, with syrup or whatever.

Freedom Is Just Another Word...

As of about fifteen minutes ago my semester's over and I'm now writing stuff on the web again. Unfortunately my subject of study doesn't lend itself very well to long blog posts.

You know what, maybe it could. In retrospect I totally could've tried to explain what I'm learning. It's absolutely true that explaining helps to understand, so now I regret missing an opportunity. But I'm psyched to try it in the future. So five or six months from now when I have more reader-chasing-away fight posts behind me I can break that stream with some talk of greek symbols.

Oh yeah, that's a warning of more fight posts to come. Have you people seen the stuff in store for this month and next?

During my study period, this past Sunday, I have implemented a trial for the following month. This is part of my ongoing efforts to become more personally productive. I am now writing down a weekly schedule and sticking to it. This is revolutionary. Time is blocked out on a piece of paper (screw online calendars), longer term goals are written down and broken into doable chunks, lesser goals are getting triaged and then nixed or postponed. It is only a trial to see how I like the process. Next month I'll try catching squirrels with my bare hands.

Studying: Mongolian Impact on China, Japan, and Korea

The last question specifically focusing on the Mongolian Empire asks how it impacted the histories of the three countries above. This has elements that lead me to suspect that I'll need to know it for the exam: it's open-ended, vague, and has to do with a nomadic people's interaction with settled agrarians (which my professor really likes to dwell upon). But I'm a little tired of talking about the Mongols, so I'll keep this in outline form.

The Mongols in China:

• Unified the north and south for first time in a long time
  
• Militarized China. We see the Chinese arming themselves (Mongols had banned weapons) as control loosened. The countryside fell into chaos. Multiple warlords cropped up in microeconomic regions, and the eventual victor (Zhu Yuanzhang) was in the richest of these regions (Jiangnan).
• Encouraged interchange of ideas, arts, culture (see culture post).
• Prohibited Chinese scholars from getting positions, so they turned to writing dramas and operas.

The Mongols in Japan:

Okay, I need to tell this story. You know the word "kamikaze," right? But originally it did not mean a suicide-missioned pilot; it meant "divine wind" and referred to the storm that saved Japan from a Mongol invasion. Twice.

The Mongols had Korea and China, and Kublai wanted to enter into friendly relations with Japan. He wanted to send Japan a letter. Korea didn't want to send it; they had been suffering from "Japanese" pirate attacks for years. But Kublai knew how to twist Korea's arm, so they ended up sending the letter in 1266. The letter called for peace, saying ominously "nobody would wish to resort to arms." The Korean king appended the letter, saying that submitting would lead to prestige.

Japan said nothing but began fortifying defenses.

In 1268, Kublai sent another envoy. In 1269, he sent two more. 1271 and 1272, one each year. Nothing from Japan. The Japanese court was pretty terrified and wanted to surrender, but it was out of the emperor's impotent hands; the Kamakura shogunate (Tokimune) was in charge and ordered forces to be stationed at the most probable point of Mongol entry: Kyushu.

When the Mongols came in 1274, they landed on Kyushu a few times and just wiped the floor with the Japanese warriors. The Mongols were soldiers used to fighting in units; the Japanese had a tradition of one-on-one combat, even on a battlefield. Picture a lone samurai, expecting to fight just one Mongol at a time, yelling at the enemy--and getting shot by 10 arrows from all directions.

Then a storm came, and Mongol leaders told their troops to get in their boats (which had been made by Korean hands) so as not to be marooned. Smart move, that; about 200 ships were lost in what would later be called the Kamikaze, the storm that defended Japan. Japanese boats, which were better maneuverers, quickly finished off the remaining Mongol fleet. (wiki)

You'd expect the Khan to go back right away. Well, maybe he wanted to, but his navy had just been destroyed by wind. He needed time to build it up again. In the meantime, he sent embassies to Japan, telling them not to leave until they got a response. The shogun, after a while, decided to behead the ambassadors. Kublai, showing remarkable restraint for a Mongol whose ambassadors had just been killed, sent a few more. Same result; five heads came back.

In 1279, Kublai had conquered the Song (finally) and now had possession of their formidable navy. (Unfortunately, they picked riverboats to go to Japan in, and the Korean boats they commissioned were also unsuitable on the high seas.) In 1281, the Mongols landed once on Japan, but this time the samurai were much better trained to deal with them; the Mongols were forced back to their ships. All along the coast, they were repulsed, until finally, the second Kamikaze wiped out between 69-90% of the army.

Kublai was seriously put out, and he nearly planned another invasion, but didn't go through with it. Still, his historical impact on Japan was tremendous, even though the Mongols didn't actually succeed in invading.

• The shogun had no money to reward both the samurai he used and the priests (who claimed the Kamikaze was due to their prayers). He gave what little he had to the priests. The samurai, who were used to getting land after fighting, were discontent. They would stay dissatisfied with the Kamakura bakufu.
  
• This was a signal of the shift in power from the kuge (landed aristocrats) to the buke (the warriors, like those who had fought the Mongols).
• Kamakura became further unpopular due to the extra taxes it charged people for more defenses against a future invasion.
  
• The Hojo lineage used the occasion of the invasions to expand their power. They did this by promising more land to warriors, but they could not follow through. This was even more unpopular, and their power decreased.
• Pirates had taken advantage of the invasions to raid the countryside--people took this as further proof that the Kamakura bakufu couldn't do anything right.
• All in all, the invasions paved the way for Emperor Go-Daigo to make a play for power in 1333-1334, beginning the middle ages of Japan.

The Mongols in Korea:

• Neo-Confucianized Korea. They invited Korean successors and scholars to Beijing, where they could meet Neo-Confucians from China and eventually take the ethos back. This changed Korean society from partly matriarchal to very patriarchal.
  
• Bad economic situation. Big landowners became bigger, especially if they allied themselves with the Mongols. Land was snatched away.
• as they militarized China, Korea also became more reliant on military. The next leader, Yi Songgye, rode to power in 1392. He was from a military family and he was a yangban. His goal was to strengthen the monarchy, a direct result of the Mongol vassalship that Korea had been in.
  
• Yeah, I really don't know much else about the effect of the Mongols on Korea. I should ask the TA.
  

Interlude: More Mongol Destruction

The Mongol Empire didn't just spread culture, art, and ideas. It also spread the Black Death. All these people going around, low sanitary standards... yeah, it was likely to happen.

They've traced the Black Death to rodents in Central Asia. It was spread through the trade routes that the Mongols protected as well as through maritime trade on the Mediterranean Sea. But it didn't reach Europe until the Mongols reached Kaffa.

Kaffa was a city in what is now the Crimea, in the Ukraine, on the coast of the Black Sea. The Mongols were besieging it, like they were wont to do, but their army was not doing well. They were infested with the plague. So what's a Mongol army to do in a pinch but innovate?

They catapulted the dead bodies of the afflicted over the walls of Kaffa.

Whether or not this story accounts for the spread of the disease in Europe (Kaffa was full of maritime traders, who would've sailed west after the Mongols gave up and the siege was over) is far from proved. I'm not sure that the dead bodies were even contagious. But dude, flinging the dead over to the other side in a primitive attempt at biological warfare? Genius.