shut up and let me see your jazz hands

hey
hi megchan! takuyachan here ,a request.can u trnslate mysong in romaji 4me? coz i wan2 per4m it

*

Hi,

Please tell me the artist name.

*

No no i hv written the song n want u 2 help me trnslate it

*

hey i hv written the song
i want u 2 help me translatin da song i've written ....well wat's ur cell no

*

Sorry, I can't do that.

*

but why?
but i promised my frenz ...that i'll get it trnslated 4m sum1 .canU atleast tellme where i can find

"But why?" indeed.

And then it was filter-to-trash time.

There's nothing worse than entitled assholes who request lyrics. (Well, there are, clearly, but you know what I mean.)

The other day I got an email from some kid who said he needed me to translate a song for a school assignment that he had to complete to be able to go to university. He needed it done within two weeks, so that he could work on his analysis of it or something.

I wrote back, politely at first, and said that I had too long of a requests list and wouldn't be able to do it, and why didn't he choose a song that had already been translated.

He wrote back again saying that this song had a mix of English and Japanese and loanwords, which is what he needed in a song (dude, this describes almost every single Japanese song), and could I at least have it done by the end of the year.

I wrote back again, saying, still no, and added "I'm not going to do your homework for you". Which is clearly what he was asking. Even if his assignment wasn't to translate the song itself (which I'm not even sure of), if he was supposed to find a song to analyse, then fuck if I'm going to find the song for him, you know? There are thousands of translated songs online, both on my site and on others.

So then tonight he writes back again, all angry and capslock in many places, insulting me and claiming I'm keeping him from going to university by not helping him, and saying that it's so hard to find people who will help you, or at least say no in a friendly manner (and again, I was very polite at first, and even in my second email, I was polite (I don't think saying "I'm not going to do your homework for you" is in any way impolite, and if it's unfriendly then whatever), and then he tops it off by suggesting that I take down the part on my site where it says I take requests. Whatever, kid, the world does not revolve around you. I do take requests, and many people are willing to wait their turn, even though it is currently a very, very long list.

So I wrote back again, told him there were thousands of songs to choose from, corrected him about the fact that just because I wasn't willing to bend myself out of shape taking his special request that didn't mean I wasn't taking requests from people who understand the meaning of first come, first served, and ended with telling him to fuck off (if you already think I'm impolite and unfriendly...), then filtered him into the trash in case he writes back.

Oh my WHAT.

There is going to be a live action movie (make that two, actually) of Akira.

STARRING WHITE PEOPLE.

Seriously. It is going to be moved to New York and Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are going to be playing the roles of Kaneda and Tetsuo. Who are not only, as you might guess from the names, supposed to be Japanese. But are also TEENAGERS. Leonardo DiCaprio is in his early '30s. I thought Gordon-Levitt was at least ten years younger than that, but no, apparently even he is 27. So WTF, man.

This is so much worse than the Dragonball or Speed Racer movies. Dragonball...I think is pretty wacked to be all white, but at least the story is set in some mythical land (the earthlings are named things like Bulma, Trunks, and Mr Satan, which are not exactly Japanese names, after all) and most characters are aliens anyway. And of course Speed Racer was made American when it was dubbed in the '60s or whenever, so you could say they're just making a live-action film of the already-American dub version.

But Akira. THE TITLE ALONE SUGGESTS VERY STRONGLY THAT IT SHOULD BE ABOUT JAPANESE PEOPLE.

And I really, really hope the characters are not still called Kaneda and Tetsuo while being played by some white guys, because that is fucked up. And yet, it is equally fucked up to make them all-new characters. There is just no way to escape the fail.

ARGH.

MASSIVE. FAIL.

Apparently my previous post is mocking and mean, and I've been told not to comment on the post itself. God forbid anyone have different opinions. And my horrible, offensive comments in the post? One of them was saying I found it sad that another commenter didn't trust people who wouldn't touch her. Oh no. So horrible of me to suggest someone shouldn't be prejudiced against people who don't like touching as much as she does.

ETA: Am not annoyed anymore, but I really wish people would label their posts in some way so as to make it obvious what kind of post they are, because I hate it when I'm reading something as "interesting discussion" and they meant it as something else entirely (in this case, perhaps "talk therapy" or something).

Okay, I've seen wank before about holiday exchanges and how they can't participate because they don't celebrate Christmas or whatever, but this takes the cake.

Someone accuses the Yuletide mods of an anti-Semitic conspiracy because signups opened on a Jewish holiday and thus she not only couldn't sign up right away, but didn't even hear about it for three! whole! days! Never mind that signups last two weeks or that if she'd bothered to friend the comm like anyone with a brain*, she'd see daily posts about signing up. No, she couldn't put on her persecution pants that way.

Also, this is actually funny (as opposed to much of the FW post, which consists of more religion wanking).



*Isn't that the first thing you do when there's a challenge or ficathon you want to participate in? I find that's generally the best way to keep on top of things.

Subtitle: God, why do I do this to myself?

I got an email yesterday asking for lyrics and translations of several Ellegarden songs.

All of which were already on my site.

So I emailed back, telling him so, and suggesting he might want to actually, you know, look at the site in future before making requests (less likely to annoy me and less likely to come off looking like a moron - two birds with one stone!).

He emailed back this evening, asking for Shounan Kaze. He made it sound like an Ellegarden song. I was pretty sure I had their entire discography, but I poked around Wikipedia just in case. Sure enough, no such song. So I checked to see if it's another artist. Yep. Sure is.

So I asked him if he meant the artist, explained there was no such Ellegarden song. He emailed back saying yes, he meant the band. Could I add "their song jurenka. And some of their other songs too". The song in question is actually Junrenka, but whatever. I told him to please be more specific if he wanted other songs. He said "all their albums". Which is, admittedly, more specific, but still annoying. He also complained that it was "a long time" when I said his request wouldn't be added til November (though now that he changed his request to albums, it's been bumped up to December 31st and January 6th).

And yet despite all this, I did in fact find and bookmark the songs for two of their albums (the third, I could only find half the lyrics for, so I told him I couldn't find any lyrics for it).

Did I mention Shounan Kaze are rap?

I think I deserve an award.

(PS. I don't know why I have tags for "lyrics" and "stupid" when the lyrics posts are inevitably about stupid requesters...)

Yash forwarded me this post today from one of her adoption groups. The title of the post was "My first bad racial experience...."

Before I begin, I would like to stress that this is in no way meant to offend anyone. I am simply expressing what happened to me today and how I handled the situation. I may have handled it totally wrong, but this is how I dealt with it. I would, however, like to hear if others have experienced this type of situation.

I went to day care to pick up my 20-month old daughter today only to find her and a little African-American girl as the last two children left in her class. What infuriated me was the fact that the teacher had put my daughter's hair in two ponytail holders on top of her head looking very much like what the African-American child was wearing.

Now, the "ponytails" were not centered in the front like most parents style their China babies' hair and were not on the sides like the typical "ponytails" that Caucasian girls wear. I fully suspect that they were styling her hair to match that of the other little girl. It certainly looked the same.

First of all, I have not given them permission to do anything with my child's hair. Second, if I had wanted her to look AA, I would have adopted an AA baby. Third, I do not know where the ponytail holders were before being placed in my daughter's hair. I was livid.

I told the director that I did not appreciate it one bit and made it
very clear that my child is Chinese (Asian-American) not AA. She claimed that she did not think it was racially motivated, but the teacher was not there to explain her actions. I told her that in no way was she to allow anything like that again.

When I told my mom about it, she totally understood. However, I told my sister, and she did not see the problem. Her daughters are fair, blond headed, and blue-eyed girls and could never be mistaken or otherwise accused of being AA. My daughter, on the other hand, has olive skin and black eyes. Granted she is not dark, but I have already had AAs think she is also AA (still don't understand why).

I am not asking for validation or telling me what I did was right or wrong, but I am looking for answers. Are people that stupid, or are they that cruel? I like to think that people are generally good, but this makes me wonder.

Me: LOL! OMG love the story about African-American ponytails. Somehow I think it's not the daycare who's racist.
Yash: someone posted
Yash: Yes, your daughter did have her first bad racial experience
Yash: and it was from mom
Yash: I was like ouch
Yash: but how right
Me: Hahaha
Yash: does she think her daughter is white?
Me: I don't know what she thinks, except she doesn't want her daughter mistaken for those blacks with their special ponytails.

SO MUCH WRONG I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START.

Do I have a "stupid" tag? If not, I should make one.

In other news, Yash and I are getting together with friends from elementary school on Sunday. Should be interesting.

Someone emailed me today asking for the lyrics to a Sailor Moon song. I was unable to find Japanese lyrics for it anywhere, so as a last resort, I looked to see if I could find romaji lyrics.

I found this. Wow. Really horrid romaji. I can tell what she means and could reconstruct it properly, but when it's that bad, I don't trust them not to have left something out completely, so I emailed the girl back and asked if she had an mp3 I could listen to.

She didn't have an mp3, but she linked me to this video on youtube. Apparently the song is from the live-action Sailor Moon. That clip kind of makes me scared of fansubs. The portion of the song that's translated is almost entirely wrong.

And yet, it's still miles better than the translation included on the site I linked to. That one is so painfully wrong, it's like that that girl with the really bad Arashi translation (which I see she's now taken down, though ahahaha, she's written a song in Japanese and it's wretched, plus wtf, she can't even romanise her own lyrics correctly? Did she just run it through babelfish to get it or what?).

I looked at the webmaster's profile and she's eighteen and has taken Japanese in high school and now is studying it in college, but she hasn't a clue. I mean, I'm not even sure where she got a lot of her translations. Obviously she has no concept of Japanese grammar and verb conjugations and such, but surely even just looking up words in the dictionary should have given better results than this.

Even though this should technically not be uploaded until Sunday's update, I've gone ahead and done so, just so you can compare. Here's the romaji and translation.

I think my favorite bits are:

"I have a little bit of bad cream to cover
your smiling face's shine"

which should be:

"I didn't really like whipped cream
But with your smile, I was able to eat it"

and:

"You say there's no special reason
Why is the wind around you warm?"

which should be:

"There's no special reason
But for some reason I could be myself with you"

There's not a single line in that song that's translated correctly. I'm not even talking possible alternate meanings or wordings. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong. And yet she has sixty-three "translations" up on her site, complete with a long rant about people stealing and how she'll be forced to take legal action.

Okay...this is possibly the weirdest and most annoying person I've ever had request lyrics.

( wtf... )

So there's your daily dose of wtf.

ETA: And here's the response...

oh....lol...actually the wild fang request is my younger brother...at
1st he ask me to ask u usin my mail, n then after he know the long
wait, he thought that by many wild fang request u will quicken the time
to add wild fang...i think its up to u....i think its better in
december...im really sorry 4 the inconvinence...