Jenn

Recent Actions

• Commented on State Department apparat asks Clinton to let him use Firefox
  Speaking as someone who works for a university where we're allowed Firefox.. there's the tiny matter of all of our payment processing and purchasing programs (and lord knows what else) having been designed years ago for IE and nothing but...
• Commented on Reviving American chestnuts may mitigate climate change
  I first heard of the chestnut blight from James Thurber (of Walter Mitty fame) in The Night the Bed Fell, who claims that his great uncle Zeke was the only person to have gotten it, and the first time a...
• Commented on Jokes from the Cultural Revolution
  If you are able to find a copy, I can't recommend the film "Chronicle of My Cultural Revolution" by Chinese writer and filmmaker Xu Xing. I run film series on Asia as part of my work, and a faculty member...
• Favorited The International Association of Turtles on Boing Boing
• Commented on No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford
  We gave out the T-Mas cards for Christmas this year and they were a huge hit. Order them early as they get harder to get/more expensive around the holidays!...
• Commented on Permission for Persimmons, please
  One of my favorite tongue twisters in Japanese is about persimmons: "Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kuu kyaku da." (The guest next door eats a lot of persimmons.) Doesn't look like much to read it, but try saying it...
• Commented on Is the death of landlines a reflection on the economy?
  Or you can not have a landline for the reason my husband and I don't - Verizon repeatedly refused to come and fix our landline when it would go dead for 4 days to 2 weeks EVERY TIME IT RAINED...
• Commented on Comics about China earthquake
  These made me cry at work. Despite that, they're absolutely beautiful and touching even though they make me realize that no matter how far we think we've come, it just takes one day to tear it all apart....
• Commented on We Are The World remade by impersonators on Japanese pop show (video)
  Just to clarify a little - this is a particular genre of TV known as "monomane" - impersonations of celebrities. The networks there do see it as pure entertainment, but it's done seriously - they really go all out with...
• Commented on Pictures of guys in clubs with spray tans
  The Something Awful forums had an amazing Guido megathread going for awhile, and it lead to a lot of reminiscing with a friend from NYC - the girlfriends of guidos are called "guidettes," by the way....
• Commented on Taxonomy of regional pizza styles
  Oh man, they included Old Forge style pizza - it never fails to amaze me when my little hometown makes it on the web. :) Since the author admits to knowing the least about it, I direct you to a...
• Commented on <i>Furoshiki</i>: Elegant Japanese Wrapping Technique
  I learned from a tv show that furoshiki actually were traditionally used as towels to spread on the floor when you got out of the bath tub (furo = bath, shiki = to spread). It's kinda neat how they've outgrown...
• Commented on Asian Kung-Fu Generation's freaky business-model
  Ajikan has been my favorite band for about 5 years now, and through shameless promotion, I've managed to get multiple friends (not only age 24 and up, but not even particular fans of Japanese culture or anime to begin with)...
• Commented on Sony Ericsson's Flip-and-Snif Phone
  The scents are listed on the Wikipedia page for the phone. My translations/spelling might be a little off, but: * Aqua（爽やかなベルガモットミントの香り) A light Bergamot mint scent * Marble（あまいミルキーフローラルの香り） A sweet milky floral scent * Exotic（気ままなトロピカルソルベの香り） A willful tropical sorbet scent...
• Commented on Chronicles of a Japanese funeral
  I remember that at a discussion session about culture shock in Japan that we had at a conference for the Japan Exchange & Teaching Program, we were talking about things that Japanese do or say that foreigners find annoying, like...
• Commented on Terry Pratchett's "Making Money" -- economic comedy
  Gah! I don't know how I missed the release of this one already, I am definitely off to the bookstore today. As an aside, if you're entirely new to Discworld, my starter book was Night Watch, which I found tremendously...
• Commented on Japanese Arcade Game Blamed for Rise in Illegal Stag Beetle Imports
  As an elementary school English teacher in Japan for the past 2 years, I can tell you that collecting beetles is a huge pasttime for 6-10-year-old kids there, definitely in large part because Mushiking got them interested in bug stats...