Small plans of the past; Make me believe in our great plans for the future

Yes, I stole the idea to open with a Haiku from Rob. Oh well, it's mine now! So anyway, if you havn't noticed, my titles are attempts at English haikus, but again I have problems counting syllables in English, so I'm always up for critique. But before I give you today's Japanese haiku, I would like to respond to something Rob said on my last post: "You know what I like about Japanese? It's so straightforward..." The lack of directness is mostly my fault, I chose to only write it as you would hear it spoken, without the Chinese characters that let a person reading it know what's going on. But this was my intention, as I was trying to mimic the effect of listening to a song, so that it was a little less straightforward... and I thought this would go well with the concept of a Haiku. This time, I will give the pronunciation again, but also give the Chinese characters of the interpretation I am translating. But there still is some ambiguity because in a Japanese sentence, you do not need a subject or an object... they can be inferred. I try to use this trick a lot to give it "deeper meaning", but the practical upside of this for someone who doesn't read Japanese is that when I say me, he, or we it very well might mean me (as in you), you, us, them, Rob (in #1 in particular) et cetera. Oh well, without further adieu, I give you, haiku:

かきあげる
Kaki ageru
こといるつもり
Koto iru tsumori
かきなぐる
Kaki naguru

Interpretation #1 (or what I was actually going for):
書き上げる
To finish writing
事要る積もり
Is what we plan to do.
書きなぐる
But we write so very quickly.

Interpretation #2 (for the fans: another interpretation revolving around food)
牡蛎揚げる
To fry oysters
事要る積もり
Is what I plan to do.
牡蛎殴る
I will pulverize the oysters.

Interpretation #3 (From the guiney pigs)
火気上げる
The flaming guitar rises
事要る積もり
That is his intention
火気殴る
This flame strikes me.

Interpretation #4 (ironically, here actually is ambiguous as to if the city is shot or is doing the shooting, I suppose this is a glass is half empty or half full question... either way, I suppose this is a rather grim haiku)
火器挙げる
Guns will raise
古都射る積もり
This is the plan, an ancient city will shoot/ There is a plan that an ancient city be shot
火気殴る
and a fire will strike
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Yeah, poetry writing is good at stirring up the creative juices. Let's see, I'm still looking forward to Janelle's Harry Potter party. I just wish I was seeing more of her lately.


I saw a bumper sticker yesterday which pissed me off... so I'll share it with all of you. It said: "Remember 9/11, the left has already forgotten." While I agree that complacency is a mistake, these sorts of blanket statements piss me off to no end. In an addition to Rob's critique of "conservatives" I would add predjudice. Not racism, predjudice. The attitude that one already knows everything about everyone and everything and there is no need to investigate the matter further. This oversimplification is as dangerous if not more dangerous than complacency, and let us not forget there are people complacent about national security who are both "conservatives" and "liberals". But disagreement on national security or any other topic does not inherently equal complacency and being a hawk is not inherently the cure all for the nation's security woes.


In lighter news, Strong Bad has his own space program now; it was a long time coming. I wish I had my very own teh Cheat/ Strap Coopmore, then I'd have my very on space program too.

That's a good note to end with as any,
Peace out and word to your respective mothers!





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A post-post note: You know, reading back over my translations, it seems like I'm making Engrish of my very own.

The flaming guitar rises
That is his intention
This flame strikes me

Seriously, I need to start my own Japanese T-shirt company.