A few years ago I had the opportunity to teach English in Japan through the JET Programme, and recently one of my friends from the program asked me to make a video for the JET participants returning home this summer. I was asked to address the following points in my video:
"Basically start by saying where you were in Akita and for how long, and then talk about the following questions:
1) How was the reverse culture shock when you moved back home? Did you feel any, and how did you deal with it? 2) What are you doing now, where are you living? 3) How did your JET experience help you professionally? 4) Do you have any regrets about not doing something on the JET Programme? 5) Do you have any message for the JETs leaving this year?"
These are the verses I wrote in response, entitled "JET Coaster":
hey everybody my name's JournalRhythm no I mean Eyjilla no I mean AJ these days I answer to the names of these three folks it's no joke what I spoke you we goin' for broke I had an overdose of flow and opened up to music paired it up with the daily news and infused it cruised in on the JET Programme and used it to build another library of words to choose imbuing myself with bicultural influence got no regrets. here's my summary and 2 cents:
ジェットコースターみたいにups and downs you feel kinda like a hero yet a sidekick somehow この乗り物は確か楽しい けど乗っているうちにwatch out for your calling
日本語flow now
現在住んでる場所はイリノイ州 帰国してもショックはある サービスは比較的に最低 たとえばマックの注文受ける相手 雰囲気だけでいらつくぐらい 何度もsigh「このバイト要らない」 と言ってるみたいに笑顔もない 「日本よかったな」と思わざるを得ない こんな時。that ain't no joke, see. that's my video... you can proceed.
I rarely shop at GameStop, but sometimes I forget why that is and wander in, false hopes high, only to be quickly reminded of how much they hate games and the people who play them. I did that at the mall this weekend, and almost bought a "new" game until I was informed by the employee that the sticker-covered case with no disc inside that I picked up off the shelf was the one I was about to take home. I put the game back and decided to write a song to remind myself why I should never set foot in there again.
I'm pissed right now, right I- I feel sick If you know this store would you please sing along?
Man I hate Gamestop They make me broke when they should be bankrupt Everytime I leave there I feel like I hate people and games both Sells "new" games post-opening Ugly stickers on everything Sold a game for free, bought it back for 10, feel used myself, then I do it again.
I wanna take the "stop" back out of "games" Put those same games back into their cases Give employees more than 5-cent raises Wipe smug smiles off managers' faces
Make a rule saying that reserved is reserved meaning not "accidentally" sold to people on the curb. Not bogus with the pre-order bonus meaning not pre-picked over by staff who don't know us.
Keep new games sealed I might pay more; you don't shelve cases like a video store. There's three classes of game: new, used, rental: Renting games to staff? You must be mental.
Man I hate Gamestop They make me broke when they should be bankrupt Everytime I leave there I feel like I hate people and games both Sells "new" games post-opening Ugly stickers on everything Sold a game for free, bought it back for 10, feel used myself, then I do it again.
Man I hate Gamestop I hate those stickers, edge cards, fake gamers. Man I hate Gamestop
Sad thing is the method actually works: a store ripping people off managed by jerks. That's how you make a multi-million dollar profit: Make people think they got no other option.
But trading used games is so damn easy: type in a google search "gametz" Input the game's you'll trade and the one's you want and you can trade most 1-to-1
Wanna buy a new game that hasn't been scratched on? Try Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, or Amazon A company offending every element of what they sell? Forget the bottom line: go straight to hell.
Man I hate Gamestop They make me broke when they should be bankrupt Everytime I leave there I feel like I hate people and games both Sells "new" games post-opening Ugly stickers on everything Sold a game for free, bought it back for 10, feel used myself, then I do it again.
Man I hate Gamestop I hate those stickers, edge cards, fake gamers. Man I hate Gamestop
Now, if everybody would please put their finger as high as they can, as high as they can, and repeat after me.
No more business: No more profit. No more business: No more profit.
Suck this! Suck this! Suck this! Suck this!
No more business: No more profit. No more business: No more profit.
GameStop games not. GameStop games not.
Man I hate GameStop. I hate it! Aiight everybody, we gotta put the smack down a little bit.
Man I hate Gamestop They make me broke when they should be bankrupt Everytime I leave there I feel like I hate people and games both Sells "new" games post-opening Ugly stickers on everything Sold a game for free, bought it back for 10 Feel used myself, won't do it again.
Frequent visitors of this blog may have noticed a few changes to the posts recently, and I'm here to let you know exactly what's changed and what it means. First, the most obvious update is the addition of embedded video to each post. This was at the request of perhaps my most dedicated listener, so I was happy to grant his request. This should make it easier to find everything in one place rather than making people check my blog as well as my youtube account if they enjoy both the audio and video portions.
Second, numbers have been appended to many of the mp3 files. Some people have noted that my voice is sometimes difficult to hear over the music, so when I attempt to rebalance the track volumes for a given song, I record the version number of the newest mix in the Comments field of the ID3 tag and append that number (minus the periods) to the end of the file for easy reference.
Those interested in listening to the songs in higher quality will be pleased to know that as of today, I've re-EQ'd almost all of the songs that were released this year, uniformly applying a new vocal filter customized to my voice for improved volume and clarity. The only songs that don't have updates are the Kusanagi Video Mix (because I saved over it when I made the Blog Mix) and the Swine Flu song (because it already had the new vocal filter applied). I will most likely not update them further, so there's no need to wait for a newer version to appear.
As for the 2008 tracks, they will have to remain as they are, because I lost all of the project files in a hard drive failure last year (thanks to a Western Digital MyBrick).
If you're not sure if you have the most up-to-date mp3, here's a guide:
1) mp3's with no version number are assumed to be v1.0 2) 1.2.1 is newer than 1.2, which is newer than 1.1.1, which is newer than 1.1
If you're not sure just how much better the new versions sound, play the embedded audio back-to-back against the embedded videos (which use the original v1.0 songs). If you can't tell the difference, either don't worry about it or try listening with headphones.
It's easy to think the apocalypse might be right around the corner when mass media gives you a daily count of people who've contracted a disease. This time they've picked a strain of flu virus that causes *gasp* the same symptoms as every other strain, including the possibility of death. So feel free to worry about something you've forgotten to worry about every year.
These days there's more articles about it in the news than people who have actually contracted swine flu and the more that you hear it the more you gon' fear it i've had enough of that so the air i'm clearin'
more people gonna die driving in their cars but that don't make news like new flus or SARS let me break you down just a few statistics amidst the paranoia you might have missed it
35,000 deaths occur every flu season we weren't concerned last year, what's the reason? SARS "epidemic" killed 774 out of the largest population in the world
i'm not saying that you shouldn't be worried but worry on the news gets bigger in a hurry surely a daily update on the state of any malaise will have you thinking crazy things in a hazy maze of amazingly vague information doomsday's days away but strangely patient
Feel like got it from all those promotin' it: It's been a few days and I'm already over it.
