My last final was Thursday--collecting papers from students for the proseminar course. Now, all I have left to do is grade, but at home there are too many distractions. During my sabbatical, I went to the local library to read, research and write, otherwise I'd end up watching Cesar calming down a dog on the Dog Whisperer, or reading an old issue of Nodame Cantabile, or procrastinating on facebook. So yesterday, Friday, I went to the local library to grade.

And as planned, I was able to finish off two courses--the Bungo exam, the annotated biliobgraphies for the proseminar, and I calculated final grades. Woo hoo!

Just before the library closed, Musubichan came to pick me up, and we went to the local Giant and there were lines out the door. Holy moly, what the heck is happening. M reminded me that there's a snow storm in the forecast and people are probably stocking up. Yeah, right. They said that last time. We finished our shopping and went down the block to our watering hole on Route 123. We had a few beers, shared a salad and fries, and talked with our drinking buddies at the bar. Dude, Brian Kelly! I bet Notre Dame is in the BCS mix in two years.

Around 9 o'clock we decided to mosey along home, and when we opened the door and stepped out, the parking lot was blanketed in an inch of snow. I was a little nervous--beer and snow do not make for optimal driving conditions--but fortunately, we got home safely and went to sleep.

Well, this morning, I woke up and looked outside and saw this:

Brrrr...

According to weather.com it will snow for the rest of the day and night, but the forecast is for clear and sunny skies on Sunday. Which means I have about 24 hours to hide the snow shovel and practice my "What shovel?" look.  

Thank goodness I haven't exhibited flu-like symptoms like many of my students have--or claim to have: "Sensei, I am exhibiting flu-like symptoms and am unable to attend class today." Hmmm... sounds like a cut and paste job from an email sent by the dean. Oh well, what can you do? I have yet to exhibit anything–knock on wood–but you never know. So I got my seasonal flu shot and am anxiously waiting for the H1N1 vaccine. Of course, if I catch something, then maybe I can take off and rest for a week or so. I'm sure some of my students would appreciate a reprieve from my weekly quizzes and writing assignments.

Anyway, I got an email from President Obama asking me personally to spread the word about their new Flu.gov website. Yes, I get an email from him often, like everyday, sometimes three times a day. Of course, much of it goes something like, "with your tax deductable support we can..." But seriously, the email comes directly from him...

Anyway, everyone, check out the site for the latest info on H1Ni, and please stay healthy and germ free. And always wash those hands!

I began the sabbatical by focusing on collecting further examples of the application of the aesthetic/poetic principle, yūgen (幽玄 lit. mystery and depth), by Fujiwara Shunzei in poetry matches by going through matches he judged starting from the Shigeie Poetry Match of 1166 to the Sengohyakuban Poetry Match of 1201. I have identified thirteen—and I believe all—instances of yūgen in extant documents. Previously, I have determined that this principle—unlike the anachronistic interpretation by many previous scholars who believed that yūgen was applied to “mysterious” content—was applied in reference to poems that manifested an unstable text, poems that had more than one meaning. This instability was based on the poems reference to archaic elements that were somehow sensed but not readily explained. The noted Japanese scholar, Kubota Jun, reached a similar conclusion but makes reference to archaic grammatical patterns.  My research, on the other hand, suggests that this is an overly convenient conclusion; analysis of Shunzei’s application of the term does not refer to just any archaic element—would the phrase “thou hast” in a modern English poem render it “mysterious and deep”?—but rather specifically to older texts with which the connection is not obvious.

The absence of an obvious and direct association with other texts is in contradistinction with another poetic technique of the same era known as honkadori. A crucial prescription for this compositional technique was to borrow more than one poetic segment (ku) from a source poem and incorporating it into your own poem. Moreover, the borrowing must be an obvious reference to a previous poem. As the leading poet of the early 13th century, Fujiwara Teika, noted in his poetic treatise, Maigetsushō, “[borrowing] should be done in such a way that it is clear that the older poem has been used.”   While all scholars of premodern Japanese literature recognize the distinction between yūgen and honkadori, there seems to be a misconception when analyzing their role in critical method. David Bialock indicates that Teika was “deeply committed to the concept of the text as a stable, fixed entity,” but then indicates that the Shinkokinshū “conceals a vertical depth reaching back or down into the intertextual space of the tradition, an intertextual space which it in fact generates out of its own textual practice.”  While I agree that Teika’s approach suggests a commitment to a “stable, fixed entity,” this seems to contradict his idea that the Shinkokinshū—the eighth Imperial Anthology of which Teika was one of the compilers—reached into an “intertextual space” which “generates out of its own textual practice.” His comment suggests that honkadori—with its clear relationship with older poems—was a form of intertextuality. This is, in my opinion, far from correct. Intertextuality as defined by Julia Kristeva or Roland Barthes promotes quite the opposite: the text is an unstable, unfixed entity.

Still, Bialock’s assertion is understandable to the degree that honkadori is intertextual in nature. A poem that incorporates this technique can technically have more than one meaning—the straight-forward meaning suggested by the original text itself and the alternative meanings rendered when the source poem is also taken into consideration. However, the fact that the prescription for honkadori requires that it be “clear that the older poem has been used” strips away any pretense to the instability of the text. This is not intertextuality. It is contextuality.

So ultimately, what this means is that I kind of departed from my original plan and began researching something else.

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Last week, I dropped by the Apple Store in Tyson's Corner to ask about the "heat" in my Macbook Pro (MBP) and they told me to make an appointment with the techs at the store. Of course, they were too busy for a walk in, so I went home and made the appointment online to meet a tech at the "Genius Bar."

On Tuesday late afternoon, I went to my appointment to talk to one of these so-called geniuses. He asked me a few questions and checked a page that apparently recorded what exactly happened when my computer froze on me. He said that the report suggested that the CPU was "burning out" and that it might need to be replaced. He also wanted to run a diagnostic on the fans since that is probably the reason why the CPUs were burning up in the first place. But the fans were not in stock and if he needed to replace the fan, he wanted to do it all at onece so once they got the parts, they would contact me. The order probably went out the next day, Wednesday, and they got the part Thursday, and they promptly contact me. I went in on Friday to turn in my MBP and they told me that they'd work on it over the weekend. So far so good.

On Saturday I got a call. Wow, that was fast, I thought. But the guy working on my computer ran a diagnostic and told me that he found nothing wrong with it. The CPU looked fine and the fans were working within normal parameters. (I knew all those years watching ST:TNG would come in handy.) He asked me what I run and I told him that I use Parallels and often burn DVDs which, of course, requires video conversions. These are, he said, jobs that require a lot a juice and so make the Intel CPUs work harder and hotter. It's unavoidable. But the Mac conked out on me, I protested. Are you saying that's unavoidable? I tried very hard not to sound like a whining college professor, but he seemed pretty adamant about his position, reminding me that MBPs are known to run "very warm."

Okay, fine. I huff internally. I'll pick up my computer tomorrow.

In the mean time, I decided to take things into my own hands and do some research. Now there is a lot of stuff out on the Internet and a lot of it is not very reliable, so I read and read, checked and confirmed what others had written, and came to one conclusion.

Macs need to do work out some bugs in their operating system, hopefully when 10.6 comes out in a few months.

In the meantime, I have figure out a way to keep my computer cool by patching together the different thoughts that different people have written on the Internet and trying some things on my own.

1. I downloaded smcFan Control which provides my with a current reading of the heat of my fan. When the computer is working like a horse, temperatures surpasses 190 degrees F. Very hot. Like I said previously, you could fry an egg. Since I'm a nerd, I also downloaded the iStat widget which will load onto the Dashboard. It gives me all kinds of info including CPU temps, RAM usage and disk volumes, but most of it is incomprehensible to me, but it looks cool anyway.

2. I then began to pay attention to the Activity Monitor when the computer ran hot--as many people mentioned in their Internet posts--and saw some things that freaked me out. My Brother printer was using over 40% of my CPU, even though I wasn't printing anything. I turned it off and the CPU usage went down as well as the core temperature. My printer usually goes into hibernation when I'm not printing or making copies, which is copacetic with Windows, but not with the Mac OS. I Googled around a bit and learned that the Mac often tries to communcate with USB hardware sometimes unnecessarily and raises the temperature. Oooooooh. So I also unplugged my external DVD player and disconnected my external hard drive, and temps went down rather dramatically.

3. As I researched, I learned a little about kernal_tasks which also seemed to spike when I had these external devices plugged in. But I also learned that it also goes into action when other internal devices are turned on, such as the Mac firewall, Bluetooth and wireless connection Airport. I set the firewall to default settings and just turned off Bluetooth and Airport--which I kept on even though I am plugged in with ethernet.

4. Finally, I also make sure that I quit any application I am not using.

As a result, my Macbook Pro is at a cool 133 degrees. It used to be around 145 degrees even when I wasn't doing anything except type in MSWord and surf the Net. Now, the surface area around the speakers and keyboard isn't even warm. 

Next project: I think my battery's dead. What is the lifespan of a computer battery? Does it go kaput if I keep the computer plugged in? Should I just disengage the battery so it won't keep recharging unecessarily? Any thoughts?

My Macbook looks hot: All aluminum casing, nice keyboard, nice size. But it also runs hot. The CPU can get so hot that the mouse malfunctions. Yesterday, I got the Mac version of the Blue Screen of Death: Mac's OS 10.5 version is charcoal gray. When it gets this hot, I can't even touch the casing.

What gives?

I know a CPU runs hot when converting videos, but still. When it shut down yesterday, I was transferring files from one external HD to another--yes, a lot of files for backing up. And I was running Parallels as well (to run Windows). Is Parallels also a CPU killer? Hmmmm. This is very frustrating. I used to use Bootcamp, but I got tired of re-booting every time I wanted to use a Windows program--specifically MS Word because the Mac version of Word cannot write Japanese vertically (although it can read it--go figure). Also, I came to the conclusion that Windows run through Bootcamp also makes the computer super hot.

Is my Macbook broken? Do I need to unplug my USB external devices? Any advice from Mac afficionados? Am I simply abusing my machine?

For the past year and a half, there has been a steady stream of J-doramas focusing on special police forces and terrorism: Special Police, Koushounin, Kiina, Bloody Monday, BOSS, Mr. Brain. They were interesting at first, but they started to get into a rut. By the time they got to Mr. Brain with KimuTaku of SMAP fame, I was getting tired of all their tech gadgets and super intelligent heroes. This summer season, they have another one. Karei naru spy 華麗なるスパイ--The Splendid Spy.

It stars Nagase Tomoya's, but that's not what makes it interesting--although M will watch anything he's in.  It's actually a spoof of the spy genre. It has all this funky music from old spy movies, some of it sounding like James Bond background music, some similar to the riff of the bongo drums when the tension is high (like Mission Impossible). The opening credits seem to come to come straight out of a 60s Japanese gangster flick with a steel guitar playing in pseudo-Hawaiian mode and the sound of bullets firing--pthew!--every time an actor's name appears on the screen, a la I Spy.

The main character, Yoroi Kyousuke (Nagase), is a convicted con artist, but his government calls on him to help the badly dressed special terrorism force--well except for Dorothy played by the always delectable Fukada Kyouko--fight terrorism across Japan, especially against Mr. Takumi (Mr. Scheming), who has oily black hair and a short comb-tooth moustache like Hitler. Hmmm. He even wears a khaki shirt. On his first day, Kyousuke wakes up to the ring of the phone and is surprised to find that the phone is in the sole of a shoe--sound familiar, Chief? Then he goes to the office but first needs to step into a locker that promptly drops through the floor, hits the bottom, after which he enters a hallway with sliding double doors in which, of course, he gets his foot stuck--Missed it by that much. As you might imagine, I am paying attention as to not miss any references to the spy genre.

The first episode centers on a lackey of Mr. Takumi who attempts to kidnap the Prime Minister's granddaughter, played by Inoue Mao, and Kyousuke's con-artist talents help rescue her. But this is when I begin to think that this 90 minute first episode should have been edited more aggressively: The last half hour dragged out just a bit too long. There were were some funny jokes, but the pace slowed to a crawl.

Still, for a summer season in which I have yet to see a single interesting drama--Oh nooooooo! What am I to do?--I will keep my hopes up that the following 46-minute episodes will by as sharp and witty as it promises to be.

God love the Japanese. They come up with the craziest inventions, such as the Head Stabilizer for those who fall asleep on the train, or the Cuddle Pillow for the lonely among us. But I read that the toy company, Takara Tomy, is reintroducing its dog interpreter, the Bowlingual. This contraption claims to analyze a dog's bark and interpret its emotional state. This is rather ridiculous, as it would seem to me that most people can read the emotions of man's best friend relatively easily. A wagging tail is a happy dog, flattened ears is fear/aggression, a whimper suggests pain.

But then, you never know. I'm wondering if this electronic translator can interpret an elevated level of stress, such as in a lie detector. As an instructor, I come across my share of students who forget to do their home assignments. Indeed, I had one student who came home from Thanksgiving break swearing that the paper he wrote on his parents' computer--suggesting he didn't have the file to print--was destroyed by his dog. He even presented me with the shredded remnants of the paper he somehow saved from the jaws of his pet. 

This old and tired excuse--my dog ate it--is seemingly effective because the only other witness to the crime is the perpetrator who cannot communicate the truth. But if this Bowlingual could somehow interpret Spot's emotions when confronted with the now unreadable shreds of evidence, well, Takara Tomy might have something that I might buy. 

Happy Fourth of July!

I was supposed to go to the National Mall with Musubichan to watch Barry Manilow and Aretha Franklin, but she changed our plans--I should feel lucky, actually. Instead we are having her friends over for a BBQ. While it means more work, it also means less walking around the Mall, which can be quite strenuous.And, of course, less Mandy, too.

Wow, I haven't been here in about three months. This is not a good thing as this is THE place where I keep up my writing skills, meager as they are...

Anyway, I've come to realize that I must have an eating disorder with regard to timing. Last night at dinner, I was eating some stir-fried that Musubichan cooked up. It was good and I was hungry, so I was eating rather vigorously. I am pretty dexterous with chopsticks and can convey food to my mouth rather quickly, but it seems I have a timing issue these days. At one point, I failed to pull out the chopsticks from my mouth quick enough and ended up biting into its tip, cracking not only my favorite pair of chopsticks, but also a small portion of my front tooth (right incisor).

How stupid of me. I should relax while I eat and concentrate on taking the chopsticks out of my mouth before I start chewing. But concentrating on the mechanics of eating would distract me from the pleasure of eating, and that would make meals uninteresting. Of course, the upside would be that I might eat less and lose weight, and save myself the agony of going to the dentist to repair my teeth, let alone losing my favorite set of chopsticks.

Hope everyone in Xangaland is well and healthy this summer.

My thoughts for today:

• Dear Mr. President. Hah! So there! UCLA 65, VCU 64... okay, so it was close...
• I am even more livid with AIG and the economic crisis after reading an article on Rolling Stone Magazine that outlines how it started, how we got here, what the mind set of Wall Street is, and ultimately how screwed we all are. Must read The Big Takeover.
• Today is the Vernal Equinox--actually it was 7:44 this morning. Happy First Day of Spring everyone! Well, as happy as one can be given our current situation.