Recursions and inversions that a time loop can reverse. Along various axes.

Sometimes, the levels of recursion are obvious: Bakuman is about the struggles of a pair of teenagers, a writer and illustrator, to become manga creators for Shonen Jump, the magazine that publishes Bakuman. The loop creates is short-lived -- to be replaced by interest in the struggle to become manga creators for Shonen Jump. The series is at its best with the nitty and gritty details of how the manga business works at the pressure cooker of the industry's largest magazine. Much of the rest is kinda meh, actually -- especially the boys' relationships with their girlfriends, which was almost the sole carrier of civilian drama until the recent hospital arc, which was as stupid as a bag of clown shoes. But the boys' creative lives as they learn the ropes, that's where it fascinates. Licensed edition coming soon from Viz, scans current.

For a better recursion, there's Omae ga Sekai o Kowaishitei nara ("If You Wanna Break Out of This World"). When an old vampire turns a teenage girl who turns out to be the reincarnation of the vampire who turned him, the power games make for interesting feedback loops. The story adds thematic texture with other reincarnation loops, and other short-circuits. Yes, in some ways it's just another vampire story, with very Western vampires, but I love that sketchy art style. Two volumes, unlicensed, scans complete.

Recursing in another direction, there's the time loops of The Girl Who Lept Through Time -- multiple and overlapping, most which ultimately get canceled out in one way or another. I'm not entirely sure it landed the conclusion, as the plot logic seems to have been overridden by emotional logic, but otherwise the plotting is tight -- as needed in a time travel story. The animators made good use of their feature film budget, too, without getting too flashy about it. (Though, am I the only one to get Azumanga Daioh flashbacks from some of the character designs?) Licensed DVD released and readily available.

So why do some recursions work better than others? Meta itself isn't necessarily the best sort, or Bakuman would work better, though when done well meta can be most excellent. Thoughts?

---L.

Offered without comment -- tyop of the day: "spearapting" for "separating".

Which looks like a good excuse for a link salad:

• Anyone up for a round of Noun: the Gerunding? (via)
  
  
• An analysis of the chatroom/forum problem as it applies to Facebook. (via)
  
  
• The Big Picture has had some good recent entries:
  1. First, it takes on the five-day camel-trading fair of Pushkar Mela, with bonus award-winning mustache. Warning: excellently camelicious.
     
  2. Then there's Mars seen from HiRISE, with bonus Google Mars links for every shot. I suggest a fresh cup of coffee or tea before starting this one.
• The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected antimatter in terrestrial lighting. (via)
  
  
• An alternate history of the Beatles. (via)
  
  
• A twitter feed that's exactly what it says on the tin: http://twitter.com/big_ben_clock. (via)
  
  
• A blog that's exactly what it says on the tin: how to write badly well. I'm especially fond of the object lesson in syllepsis. (via)

---L.

Oh look, the Ninja Replacement Score has gone mainstream contemporary.

That is all.

(hat tip)

---L.

Bad poetry fans, rejoice! I have found new depths of Japanese verse in translation.

Remember the rhyming haiku? I bring you something even worse: William N. Porter's 1909 translation of the classic anthology One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets. Take, for example, his version of #33 by Ki no Tomonori:

The spring has come, and once again
  The sun shines in the sky;
So gently smile the heavens, that
  It almost makes me cry,
  When blossoms droop and die.

I'll pause to let you stop shuddering.

Better now? Yes, it really is in iambics, 4-3-4-3-3, rhyming on the short lines -- rendering a tanka of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables unrhymed. But not only is it crashingly bad verse, Porter mangles the meaning: in the original, the unsettled heart belongs to the flowers, not the speaker, and grammatically it's a question of why do they fall.

But as awful as that is, I am very glad indeed that I did not meet his version of Ki no Tsuruyuki's #35 before drafting my translation, because ow did it require some brain bleach. As poetry it's not as bad, though it's bad enough:

The village of my youth is gone,
  New faces meet my gaze;
But still the blossoms at thy gate,
  Whose perfume scents the ways,
  Recall my childhood's days.

But it's even more inaccurate -- the words "village of my youth", "blossom", and "perfume" are correct, but that's about all. Poking a few others I know enough to judge the translation, Hitomaru's #3 is tolerable in a pedantic Edwardian sort of way, and aside from the gratuitously added smile and resting, Semimaru's #10 is close to correct, even if the rhyme is even more jangly than usual for him.

Although the love poems tend to come off particularly badly, the worst offense just might be #99, which turns Emperor Gotoba's graceful note of resignation into sub-Housmanian twaddle:

How I regret my fallen friends
  How I despise my foes!
And, tired of life, I only seek
  To reach my long day's close,
  And gain at last repose.

Truly, this is a remarkably bad piece of work. I will treasure this bookmark for a very long time indeed.

---L.

Back from WFC, and while I did write something of what happened, it's so small a slice as to misrepresent the whole -- making me dubious even of linking to that. Though I will say, in a fantasy context I found myself oddly reluctant to mention A Desert Year (to use the working title), and that because of a chance comment from someone, I opened the file of "Seven Myrmidons Against Thebes" and discovered that, indeed, the point the draft started going wrong was further back than I thought, and started making notes against the several stanzas to be junked or deferred.

So instead of con reportage, I have linkage.

• The newest world's largest web-spinning spider, with a leg-span of 5 inches (12 cm). (via)
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan comes along with a reminder that the United States was never a uniform, white society. (via)
  
  
• Another butler candidate for meteor that killed the dinosaurs has been identified. (via)
  
  
• Thank you, National Geographic. (via)
  
  
• Paul Krugman's scholarly science fiction. (via)
  
  
• Do not drink while reading: "A Regency Romance in 2 Minutes" (via)
  
  
• The death of teapot effect. As the writer says, "If this doesn't win these guys an IgNobel, I don't know what will." (via)
  
  
• Some light on the vexing question of what V signs mean in Japanese photographs, "victory" or "peace" or "take my photo".
  
  
• I like these animated color stereoviews of Meiji-era Japan, but if flickering animated GIFs give problems, you probably shouldn't click through. Not even for the stereoview of geishas looking at stereoviews.
  
  
• Useful tips on how to prolong your batteries' lives, be they laptop, phone, or autotrebuchet. (Not that I have a autotrebuchet, but if I did, it'd want to maximize its battery life youbetcha.) (via)
  
  
• An intriguing account of the "discovery" of the Afro-Latinosaurus Rex.
  
  
• A disquisition with footnote on how teenage girls become medieval nerds. (via all over)

Though for that last, contra the writer I think "fangirl" is the appropriate term in this case.

---L.

And in the department of awesomely bad poetry, I give you this. An appetizer:

One cup of sweet thoughts,
A few sprinkles of laughter,
A smattering of kisses,
A pinch of disaster,
A spoonfull of recovery,
A few pints of forgiveness,
A dash of damnation,
Another pint of forgiveness.

This is a recipe
For a love strong and true.
If you'll be my Iron Chef,
I'll be your surprise main ingredient.

No thanks necessary -- just knowing I have made your day is all I need.

Hat tip to idiomagic.

---L.

Six things about studying Japanese -- another installment in an occasional series. Feel free to skip these if they bore you. Feel free also to correct what get wrong.

1. As I come across useful words, I like using them to try translating classic dialogue: "Nanseki kyuujosen ka?" "Aranai." "Kazoeta ka?" "Nido." Which is probably an unidiomatic if not outright ungrammatical rendering of "How many lifeboats are there?" "None." "Did you count them?" "Twice."* But it still amuses me.
   
   
2. It's also fun to imagine the alternate universe in which sample sentences from language textbooks are normal and natural statements to make. Head 'splody, for it would be as weird a universe to live in as one where, say, phlogiston theory is correct, but fun.
   
   
3. Speaking of sentences from textbooks, this one has me puzzled: Fuyu wa kono heya wa samukarou. ("This room is probably cold in winter") I thought you could have only have one topic marker per simple sentence. What's happening here that I'm not grasping? Or should the second wa be ga, marking "room" as the subject?
   
   
4. My local megausedbookstore has a nicely large case of Japanese language books. Because of this, I now know it currently takes me several minutes with dictionary in hand to work through a page of a dumb shounen battle manga. This is a vast, if slow, improvement over a few months ago, when it would have taken me several more milliseconds to work out that, oh look, there's pictures.
   
   
5. OTOH, I've progressed enough to even think about attempting to write this. Lame and ungrammatical, but I wrote it.
   
   
6. As for those without-relative-pronouns-piled-up-in-front-like-a-phrasal-adjective relative clauses, I need to practice parsing. A lot of practice.

Also, I'll be at WFC this weekend. If I don't already know you'll be there too, give a holler and we can try to get together.


* For one thing, surely Zaphod would use a more emphatic particle than ka, though I don't know what's available -- ka zo maybe?

** Volume two of a Medabots spinoff that's unlicensed for a reason, if you really want to know. I have what appears to be a standard-issue one-volume older shoujo romance waiting in the wings when I run out of patience with this.

---L.

I am continually amazed at how pop lyrics can be striking one line and banal the next:

When the big world falls apart
and you think the feeling will linger
you need somewhere to start
and I will be here

I do like the middle-aged robodancing in the video for this song, and bonus points for uses of a dynamic Tokyo skyline. Still, it's prime example of the art of sinking.

Anyone have favorite examples of crashing lyrics?

---L.

You can never have enough linkspam, sez I. Especially when fried up with some diced potatoes and shallots. Pity this week I don't have shallots. Or potatoes. Or even spam, just links.

• Another excellent single-serving site: How Many People Are In Space Right Now? At posting time, the answer is 6. (via)
  
  
• Although Iceland has applied for EU membership, the decision remains controversial.
  
  
• Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet, on Roman Polanski. (via and all over)
  
  
• The Dos and Don'ts of being a Good Ally, be it racism or similar issue.
  
  
• An array of whimsical anatomic drawings of Japanese monsters, and details from an 18th century Hyakki Yakou ("Night Parade of One Hundred Demons") scroll. I can see why the latter would be a popular subject for artists -- talk about showing off variety and inventiveness.
  
  
• Review of what sounds like an entertaining scholar versus curmudgeon smackdown. I think I want this book. Correction: I know I want it -- I think I must have it.
  
  
• The conversion of suburbs to slums -- expensive slums, as there's no services nearby. (via)

And then Making Light details, by the numbers, the Angel Ranch sweatlodge fiasco.

Fasting, vision quests, and sweat lodges are all stressful, and they all produce altered mental states. Basically, they’re mind/body hacks. That’s why they’re so dangerous: they operate in an area where mind and body interact in strange ways, and normal judgement is suspended. Under those circumstances, someone trustworthy has to be there to exercise judgement for you.

---L.

So next month, I'll be on a local con panel on what's hot in SF/F/H in 2009. To say I'm not hip to what's hot in adult SF is as much understatement as it is painfully outdated slang. Thankfully, though, AKICOLJ -- so I ask you, got any recommendations?

Parameter: must be science fiction or fantasy published in the States in 2009. And be hot.

I have a sense of what's up in YA, but feel free to rec those too. And, yes, Catching Fire is on the top of my list.

---L.

I have just learned there is a moth called a chocolate looper. It's even almost native to the region.

This fills me with no end of glee.

That is all.

---L.

First, I should probably mention that between switching computers, I not only haven't managed to import my existing mail from the buggy computer but haven't remembered my mail server password. As such, I haven't been able to read new mail for going on a week now. If you've sent something and are waiting an answer, that would be why.

I expect regular mail service to resume in the next few days.

Second, a link salad lightly drizzled with balsamic vinagrette:

• Creative Japanese typography in city and town logos. Even with explanations, I can recognize the kana in only about half of these.
  
  
• "Galaxy viewer, engage ZOOOOOM!" (via)
  
  
• Oh what cute silk spiders! The extremely rare piece of cloth woven from their silk is pretty and important, of course, but really, you want to look at the cuties. (via)
  
  
• This year's rice-paddy art is being noticed around the world. (via)
  
  
• Gay American kids are increasingly coming out in middle school -- grades 6-8, that would be, ages 12-14. (via)
  
  
• The interesting question of the singularity or plurality of the United States.
  
  
• Concerning the relevance of letters to Capricorns.
  
  
• A day in the life of: Typhoon Nangka over Hong Kong harbor. (via)

Third, the relationship in Japanese between handakuten and dakuten* is not helping my continuing quest to avoid, in English, writing b for p and vice versa.

There is no fourth.

Fifth and last, I do believe it's time for a picture of a girl and her ice cream cone.


* Diacritical marks in the kana syllabary that change an h/f sound to p and b, respectively. That dakuten also change k to g, s to z, and t to d is irrelevant to this joke.

---L.