#odes'n verses

[schazardous]

I had a really good time yesterday playing @orbitaldropkick‘s Skull Wizard of the Chaos Caverns with my friends.

The best items I came up with were a +2 Ruby of Coveting, a cursed gem which compelled everyone who laid eyes on it to acquire it by any means necessary including murder, and (after one player couldn’t afford a +1 Firebox of Eternity from the shopkeep-with-a-permanently-aflame-storefront and asked for a cheaper item) the Torch of Two Hours.

The torch, thanks to a roll of 10 when used as a blunt weapon, inflicted two hours worth of bludgeoning damage to a monster with a single blow, and was finally used as a flashbang to stun the final boss of the dungeon.

10/10 great game would run again

[schazardous]

I told some of my kids that the movie they know as <Uncle Carl’s Flying House> is called “Up” in English and they didn’t believe me

When I showed them movie posters to prove it they lost their shit

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I think chimera are the best animal. Because, chimera has the head of a lion and a Goat's body, venomous tail. Chimera can vomit fire. But, it is a fictitious animal. That is OK because if they were real humans would die.

Extension English, “which animal is the best?”

[schazardous]

Conversation demonstrations

Second year students, getting to know someone: Our script starts with both students saying “nice to meet you”, then one person asks a bunch of questions to get to know someone and the other answers.

All pairs argued over who got the easy job of reading questions off the board and who got lumped with having to creatively use English. Most of them figured out their roles before they started, but then we got these two:

A: Nice to meet you. B: Nice to meet you. A: How are you? B: How are you? A: How are you? B: How are you?

The JTE intervenes at this point, they paper scissors rock it out.

A: Nice to meet you. B: Nice to meet you. A: How are you? B, with a deadpan expression: I’m angry.

[schazardous]

A student handed me back a used-up glue stick, struggling to find an English word for it. He went with "tired." Another student in response to "what did you do during spring break" answered "I battled flower powder" which has to be the second-best take I've heard, ever, on suffering from hayfever

[schazardous]

On a school outing to the local sports park, sitting on top of a climbing frame with some students. Another student climbs up to join us and she exclaims, "wow, the people look like bits of trash from way up here." Her friend: "isn't it usually 'ants'?" With conviction: "trash."

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If you had enough money, what would you buy?

I would buy many cats. I would buy a lion and two cats and two owls. I would buy a cow.

I would buy a supercar. I would buy a car and ship. I would buy a house and bike. I would buy a house and Toyota car. I would buy a Lexus and a puppy.

I would buy clothes and shoes and bags and makeup. I would buy at least three Master Balls. I would buy a pillow shaped like a tiger.

[schazardous]

If you had a time machine, what time period would you travel to? I would travel to the future, and I would see a robot. I would travel to the future, and I would meet friends. I would travel to the future and, I would take a picture. I would travel to ten years later and I would see myself. I would travel to the Sengoku period, and I would meet Date Masamune. I would travel to the Edo Period, and I would learn fighting moves. I would travel to the past, and I would be a samurai. I would travel to the parallel world, and I would talk to aliens. I would travel to the time I was two months old, and I would play tennis.

[schazardous]

I would travel to the time I was two months old, and I would play tennis.

Question 4: If you had a time machine, what time period would you travel to?

[schazardous]

I got handed a stack of “show and tell” speeches to proofread

Suffice to say I had no 🖐 in the classes where these got writ else I would’ve caught some of this stuff before it got committed to paper

[schazardous]

My first year students had to give short oral presentations on the topic of “my dream”, I was asked to help grade them and had to follow up each one with a question for the student

One student’s speech was about how she wants to be an illustrator, so my question for her was “What thing is difficult for you to draw?”

I was anticipating  “buildings” or “humans” or “animals” or somesuch, and reassured her if she didn’t know the word in English but understood the question she could answer in Japanese, but then she tells me

“People... looking right.”

I just sigh with the satisfaction of having glimpsed a universal truth and tell her “oh man, me too” and anyway that’s how I bonded with a student today

[schazardous]

Sailor/Robin

11/30I should? probably be logging the results of this experiment? Lmao it feels really weird calling it that. Like mad scientist territory or those weird guys modding magnets into their fingertipsWould also pay to keep track of how much I told the interns and the lab manager

ANyway uuuuuh

where to start well I just woke up there's that I guessThe cleaning staff really don't bother going into locked offices, which is great because APPARENTLY I've been passed out on the floor for three whole days? I swear this was one of my pipe dreams as an undergrad

huh

i mean

that sounds legit but now I'm not sure? I mean I checked the school records and best as i could tell nobody died here recently so interference is unlikely but what ifholy fuck that would suck if I finally proved anima arcanics because my soul returned from beyond my meat chassis with memories of the dead from arcanic contamination

So nbd but I might have errant bits of dead people up in my psyche, get that checked out, so what else

I feel physically fine, blood is pumping, neurons are firing, some muscle aches but I think that's the sleeping on the floor, it's probably not normal that I can hear my are those my kidneysnook well I can tell where my kidneys are that is definitely not normal

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Robin Pearson 1.0 Release Notes

Adrenal glands still where they belong, above kidneys

Hunger no longer detected

further testing necessary to see if starvation kicks in

Physiological functions now have manual override function 

(do not stress test this feature)

Now enrolled in distance-learning course for 1st year med school

You can't google every hormone in your body on the go so this is for your own good

Undergrads still intimidated in a manner consistent with professor and not walking corpse (sample size: 2)

Lab Manager Brent’s unrequited crush on me still a thing

Still requires peripherals to see ghosts+arcanic energy 

(good, not the aim of this project)

Still doesn't know jack about computers or how release notes are formatted

[schazardous]

jaberwok replied to your photo:Speech contest is heating up

I must know the saga of Peachboy. Dude sounds like he has rad adventures.

Ok so Peach Boy is a classic Japanese folktale about this dude called Momotaro (not to be confused with the classic Japanese folktale character Kintaro, notable fish wrestler and Indefatigably Strong Boy, or classic Japanese folktale character Urashimataro, Japanese Folklore’s Worst Time Traveller). We’re talking Goldilocks and the Three Bears level classic.

Peach Boy is a transliteration (Momo meaning peach and Taro being an ubiquitous boy’s name), so it’s probably for the best the kid in this contest I was judging had to tell us about Peach Boy and not something like Peachy Pete.

Momotaro was adopted by a childless elderly couple when Grandmama was washing clothes down by the river and giant peach just nbd cruises by. (This gives Japanese the inestimable honor of being the only language where there’s onomaetopia for giant fruit floating down a river.)

Grandmama takes the peach home and a baby pops out. In at least one retelling the baby says his first words there and they’re to  the tune of “hey we’re cool, the heavens sent me to you two nice childless folks. Promise I’m not a demon.”

The baby grows up big and strong, depending on the retelling he’s either the elderly couple’s pride and joy or a total mooch. Either way he sets off to Onigashima (Oni/ogres: The Island) to beat them up, armed with a pouch of pounded-millet dumplings (just like Grandmama used to make).

He hires on a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant and they all rout the ogres/demons/oni with raw martial prowess. Maybe I’m used to folk figures being cunning/tricky folks but nah Peach Boy is rough and tough and he will bruise you like a peach if you gotta fight him.

He then hauls all the ogres’ treasure home and ensures his parents live comfortably for the rest of their lives. The end! One adventure is apparently sufficient for this dude.

Other notable folk tales/myths shared by the speech contestants today: Urashimataro’s bro Urashimajiro, Echo and Narcissus, the guy who ate Eel Stank, the Sun Goddess is finally done with her bro’s bullshit, and Harry Potter.

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In Japan, typhoons are simply numbered in order of appearance. My coworkers (a social studies, Japanese, and commerce teacher) learned that other countries have premade lists for them and are having a great time finding out what other people have named these murderstorms

[schazardous]

This week in schoolzardous:

Newts!

Low-key nbd coating my hands in tetradotoxin

chiding these fool noodles into eating their damn worms

Having a really good chat with two students in the science club

Explaining to one of said students the rough meanings of no less than half a dozen less-than-acceptable phrases she’d picked up from the tv shows she's using as an English study aid

Imparting quality English banter like “stop, thief” “how dare you” and the difference between “I can’t” and “I won’t”

“We call ウーパールーパー axolotls, which is actually a word stolen from a completely different language. English does this all the time and it’s why all the verb tense+spelling+pronunciation is terrible and I’m so sorry”

further popularising the use of “fool” as a feelgood insult

Learning a student owns five guitars and eleven airsoft guns, but doesn’t know how to play bass guitar

“let’s vote to decide: do eggs count as animals”

Scattergories:

Five minutes of spirited debate about how “T!K!G!” (tamago-kake-gohan/raw egg on rice) is not a valid entry for “food that starts with T”

Vocal censure against listing “Teacher” as “something in a classroom” because calling a teacher a “thing” is rude

Valid answers for “ways to travel”: space shuttle, segway, sea turtle, cow, “crawl on all fours”

[schazardous]

dark schaz show us mammals

Ok so things you probably know about New Zealand ecology:

Lots of birds, many of which are too lazy to fly anymore

No snakes or other Australian murderbeasts

No koalas (less common knowledge among Japanese high schoolers, according to my own studies)

Fuckin Europeans fucked up everything forever

Slightly less-well known things about New Zealand ecology:

No terrestrial mammals before humans turned up

Well, ok, no “terrestrial” mammals

Terrestrial is a fuzzy term anyway all things considered like even birds and bugs have to be terrestrial once in a while

De-indenting! There were two kinds of mammals residing on New Zealand until the 13th/14th century AD when Polynesians settled the islands: seals and bats.

The seals are pretty self-explanatory - it’s the bats I want to talk about.

New Zealand has two species of bat/pekapeka - the New Zealand longtailed bat and the lesser short-tailed bat (the greater short-tailed bat probably went extinct in the 1960′s.) Both were blown across the sea from Australia and colonised our plucky little island chain.

The longtailed bat made landfall around 2 million years ago, and its closest evolutionary relatives are Australian/New Caledonian bats known as wattle bats, long-tailed bats, or vesper bats. Nothing too weird about these guys.

The short-tailed bat, meanwhile, stumbled upon New Zealand 16-28 million years ago, took a look at the abundant food and dearth of terrestrial predators, and decided flying was for chumps. They have unique evolutionary adaptations to foraging on the ground on their elbows, like little talons and a special sheath to tuck their wings into when plowing through leaf litter.

They’re also the only known bat that practices lek mating.

New Zealand: where it’s so chill birds and even bats give up flight