Sounds nice, Ozone. Summer is a distant memory. I'm dealing with freaking blizzards here every other day. But it's not as bad as previous years. Thank you very much global warming.

In my case its gone up and down between icy and mild over here. I hope and prey that we can have a summer this year because last year we had next to non, nothing but cloudy days and rain for most of the season. But I did manage to get a dip in the lake at were my parents live by the end of that summer. It was chilly, but I had to do it! It just feels wrong to me to have a year where you never bathe outside even just once.

We've barely had any cloudy and/or rainy days from August through November, it's like we turned into the desert around here.

And personally, I'm glad that summer was below average (well, Climate Change average, that is) this year: it made the season a lot less intolerable as opposed to being over 90 degrees for weeks on in with no relief in sight.

Summary of my winter so far:
Snow, lots of snow, thaw and extreme rainfall, flood caused by overflowing river (I live on a hill, so it didn't bother me directly, but still…), black ice, freezing fog, more black ice, snow again. Also, I bruised my ribs, possibly even partially fractured one, having failed to see a large sheet of ice directly in front of my doorstep.

I'm really enjoying this winter even so! Must be some previously unknown self-destructive streak of mine.

Or it's because the colder weather is a nice change from normal years, when winter around here is almost exclusively gloom and drizzle and the kind of damp chill that may be technically above freezing but creeps right into every bone.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
And personally, I'm glad that summer was below average (well, Climate Change average, that is) this year: it made the season a lot less intolerable as opposed to being over 90 degrees for weeks on in with no relief in sight.

Me too! We had some weeks of non-stop heavy rain last summer, but the way it helped cool everything down for the rest of the time made it totally worth it.

Here we have a Japanses love song called “Sukiyaki”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F284iB65-QU

This song has absolutely nothing to do with sukiyaki. But apparently, American record labels gave it the title “Sukiyaki” just to listeners would know it's Japanese.

I guess that would be like naming a Mexican love song “Enchilada” just so listeners would know it's Mexican.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Here we have a Japanses love song called “Sukiyaki”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F284iB65-QU

This song has absolutely nothing to do with sukiyaki. But apparently, American record labels gave it the title “Sukiyaki” just to listeners would know it's Japanese.

I guess that would be like naming a Mexican love song “Enchilada” just so listeners would know it's Mexican.

Akin to releasing “Moon River” in Japan as “ Beef Stew” as one critic said at the time. It made it into the Billboard Top 100 in 1961.

Beef river

Well, I have no idea what happened, but it would seem that for the first time in almost two months, my computer is finally back to normal: MSE hasn't detected that trojan in a few days, it's not slow to boot up, Chrome doesn't take forever to launch, the internet doesn't become randomly sluggish, and the fan doesn't whir like mad. Again, I don't know how and why, I'm just glad this trojan nightmare seems to finally be over.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Here we have a Japanses love song called “Sukiyaki”:

Sukiyaki is an old classic. There are lots of different versions :)
Mainly it's either in the original Japanese or in English with Sukiyaki as the title and the woman's name in the song.

The English version (most often sung by a Japanese person anyway), was a standard love song. It had lines like “in old Nagasaki” which I though was pretty ironic since the Americans dropped a nuke on that place only a few years before that song was recorded… It's still a pretty nice song though.

The original Japanese version is better of course but it's WAY more tragic and sad, which fits with that culture. It's about a man pining for his lost love. He wishes he could be back with her but he has to go away and leave her in order to work (or something). He holds his head up high to try and keep his tears from falling from his eyes and hide his sadness.

I have soooo many versions on my regular playlist XD
I love it.

I hate ROCK PAPER SCISSORS already. I really thought we were finally moving past this tired old CalArts style.

Ozoneocean wrote:

Sukiyaki is an old classic. There are lots of different versions :)
Mainly it's either in the original Japanese or in English with Sukiyaki as the title and the woman's name in the song.

The English version (most often sung by a Japanese person anyway), was a standard love song. It had lines like “in old Nagasaki” which I though was pretty ironic since the Americans dropped a nuke on that place only a few years before that song was recorded… It's still a pretty nice song though.

There's the Tin Pan Alley hit Nagasaki from 1928 of course, which gives us an insight into what old Nagasaki was like:

In Fujiama you get a mama,
Then your troubles increase.
In some pagoda she orders soda,
Earth-shake milk shakes, ten cents a piece.
They kissy and huggy nice,
Oh by jingo it's worth the price.
Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tobaccy,
And the women wicky wacky woo.

Fujiama must have been in Nagasaki at that time. Sadly nobody sings this song anymore.

Ironscarf wrote:

Ozoneocean wrote:

Sukiyaki is an old classic. There are lots of different versions :)
Mainly it's either in the original Japanese or in English with Sukiyaki as the title and the woman's name in the song.

The English version (most often sung by a Japanese person anyway), was a standard love song. It had lines like “in old Nagasaki” which I though was pretty ironic since the Americans dropped a nuke on that place only a few years before that song was recorded… It's still a pretty nice song though.

There's the Tin Pan Alley hit Nagasaki from 1928 of course, which gives us an insight into what old Nagasaki was like:

In Fujiama you get a mama,
Then your troubles increase.
In some pagoda she orders soda,
Earth-shake milk shakes, ten cents a piece.
They kissy and huggy nice,
Oh by jingo it's worth the price.
Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tobaccy,
And the women wicky wacky woo.

Fujiama must have been in Nagasaki at that time. Sadly nobody sings this song anymore.

Oh dear! o_o
That's VERY 1920s! XD
HA! A very good insight

Ironscarf wrote:

Ozoneocean wrote:

Sukiyaki is an old classic. There are lots of different versions :)
Mainly it's either in the original Japanese or in English with Sukiyaki as the title and the woman's name in the song.

The English version (most often sung by a Japanese person anyway), was a standard love song. It had lines like “in old Nagasaki” which I though was pretty ironic since the Americans dropped a nuke on that place only a few years before that song was recorded… It's still a pretty nice song though.

There's the Tin Pan Alley hit Nagasaki from 1928 of course, which gives us an insight into what old Nagasaki was like:

In Fujiama you get a mama,
Then your troubles increase.
In some pagoda she orders soda,
Earth-shake milk shakes, ten cents a piece.
They kissy and huggy nice,
Oh by jingo it's worth the price.
Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tobaccy,
And the women wicky wacky woo.

Fujiama must have been in Nagasaki at that time. Sadly nobody sings this song anymore.

Pretty sure that song showed up in a few WW2 movies and maybe even a Road picture with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

bravo1102 wrote:

Pretty sure that song showed up in a few WW2 movies and maybe even a Road picture with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

That makes sense. It was also popular with jazz bands back back then, so you'd often get the tune but not the lyrics.
Hugh Laurie had a go at it in the 90s Jeeves and Wooster series, which was fun. My favourite is the Cab Calloway version, where he sings it like a cartoon cat who's ramped up on goof butts.

Cab Calloway was a treasure for the ages. I still can't believe he sang Minnie the Moocher on Sesame Street though. Very naughty song 😳

——–

I had a very interesting talk with my mum over lunch today, about all the people she grew up with who died in the Vietnam war, and I remembered a friend's dad I knew who everyone knew has bad PTSD from it and we were all very carwu around back then…
Apparently injuries my dad got in training when he was conscripted to serve back then are acting up again very badly and he tried to get compensation for it from the veterans affairs seevice here but they denied him because they lost his records.
Some of his fingers were chopped off in an accident with the hatch on a ferret armoured car… He got them reattached but they were never quite the same 😅

War is a horrible thing. It really messed up that generation.

Trying to learn guitar this year… hopefully by end of the year I'll have some progress…! >•<

Spooky Kitsune wrote:
Trying to learn guitar this year… hopefully by end of the year I'll have some progress…! >•<

Good luck - stick with it and you'll never be without a friend. That plank of wood has seen me through some difficult times.

Ironscarf wrote:

Spooky Kitsune wrote:
Trying to learn guitar this year… hopefully by end of the year I'll have some progress…! >•<

Good luck - stick with it and you'll never be without a friend. That plank of wood has seen me through some difficult times.

Yup, right now I'm trying to learn some cords and b minor is giving me a bit of trouble but I think I'm getting the hang of it, thanks for your kind words :oD

After discovering I had acid reflux I stopped drinking coffee. I like my green tea. Fast forward we get a brand new Keurig machine at work and I decide “one cup can't hurt.”

And it doesn't. So I can enjoy one cup of coffee a day. I actually like the stuff and discovered that I had missed it. Yeah, caffeine addiction or something.

bravo1102 wrote:
And it doesn't. So I can enjoy one cup of coffee a day. I actually like the stuff and discovered that I had missed it. Yeah, caffeine addiction or something.

Caffeine addiction XD
It really does have a physical component. When I gave it up in a bid to fix my sleep schedule and to help prevent migraines it took two weeks to get over it. It was hard initially because I'd been drinking so much so there was a lot of habit behind it, plus the tiredness hit me like a tidal wave. That was super hard to cope with.
Your body becomes used to counteracting the caffeine with more tiredness impulses and without the caffeine to balance that, the tiredness is extreme.

Though I DO still have the occasional cup in an emergency bid to combat a migraine (ironically caffeine can help combat them just as it can help cause them). Though I find I don't really crave the taste or the smell anymore.

Sometimes I'll have a coffee when I'm out with friends because cafes are bad at making good tea. While I enjoy it, it doesn't lead to me wanting more.
I've always been very good with anything addictive.

Crazy coffee nuts say “Ah, but tea has more caffeine!”. Not true. Tea leaves have more caffeine but it's never IN tea because the leaves are not heated long enough to make it biologically available. Coffee beans are roasted, tea is raw.

bravo1102 wrote:
Fast forward we get a brand new Keurig machine at work and I decide “one cup can't hurt.”

Isn't that exactly what smokers say when they're trying to quit? “One cigarette can't hurt”?

For various reasons I'm on a host of medications that all warn of drowsiness and dizziness. Caffeine helps fight my usual fog. There are days where I literally can't focus the eyes and the tea helps.
I used depend on coffee a lot to just survive in a sort of zombie sleep walking that is a lot of Military training. Train how you fight and that means you don't sleep. Coffee was called “tanker juice” We also drank Mountain Dew and Jolt cola for the even more Caffeine and sugar rush. I have lots of experience with these stimulants and well aware of the downsides.

You want Caffeine try real Brazilian coffee. It's thick, rich flavorful amd at least twice the Caffeine of US coffee. In fact US coffee is weak compared to how Europeans drink it. That's why the US has big mugs and they have shot glasses. When I was in Italy they said American coffee was flavored water and hardly deserved to be called coffee.

Then there's Brazilian soft drinks. Their idea of soda tastes like a carbonated energy drink with pretty much the same list of contents.

It's like comparing smoking a cigarette to smoking crack cocaine.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Isn't that exactly what smokers say when they're trying to quit? “One cigarette can't hurt”?

Smoking is way more addictive XD
—————–

Coffee is different all over the world. In Japan it's mainly associated with soft drinks. Or “sodas” as you call them.
In Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand it's made with sweetened condensed milk. It's not bad.

Italian styles of coffee are what Australians are used to since those have always been our main sorts of coffee due to Italian immigrants in the 40s and 50s setting up cafes in all the big cities.

The strongest regular coffees I've had is the “Turkish coffee”, it's a legacy from the Ottoman Empire. In the Balkans they call it Turkish coffee, except in Greece where they call it “Greek coffee”. It's very strong, very dark, and usually gritty.
In Turkey though I almost exclusively drank tea. Tea is more popular there… It's a standard drink. There are so many little road side tea places, just set up in the open air. The tea is served in little shot glasses, it's sweet and flavourful, like drinking juice.

I wasn't a fan of coffee in America. It's mainly brewed in pots… I just don't like the watery, burnt taste of it. And it's the same in Mexico. It wasn't till I visited Hyena Hell in New Orleans at the cafe she was working at, Zotz, that I had god coffee. Traditional Italian style.

Coffee is all that keeps me from trying to eat somebody's brains in the morning, snapping out of sleepwalking zombie mode, you know.

This is of course a fallacy, and a slight exaggeration on my part, but what the hey - I stand by my bad habits!

PaulEberhardt wrote:
Coffee is all that keeps me from trying to eat somebody's brains in the morning, snapping out of sleepwalking zombie mode, you know.

This is of course a fallacy, and a slight exaggeration on my part, but what the hey - I stand by my bad habits!

I shared a house with a couple of people like that. Barely out of bed lurching around moaning “coffee”. And there I was awake, dressed for work pouring it into their cup.

PaulEberhardt wrote:
Coffee is all that keeps me from trying to eat somebody's brains in the morning, snapping out of sleepwalking zombie mode, you know.

The irony is that it's coffee that is 100% the cause of that state XD

Oh joy, that trojan came back again . . . but this time, I think I've figured out where it came from, and why it keeps infecting my webcam even though I never use it . . . let's just say, I won't be visiting certain websites anymore (even though you would think that multiple adblockers, Ghostery, and other similar browser extensions would keep me protected from that stuff).

Now, if I could just figure out how, exactly, it was finally eradicated from my computer a couple of weeks ago so I can get rid of it again, because like last time, it just keeps coming back and coming back.

Ozoneocean wrote:

PaulEberhardt wrote:
Coffee is all that keeps me from trying to eat somebody's brains in the morning, snapping out of sleepwalking zombie mode, you know.

The irony is that it's coffee that is 100% the cause of that state XD

I know! 😆

The current fashion for young men in Australia (and maybe he rest of the world, I don't know), is to have long hair and a thin, crappy moustache.
These are what we used to call “pedo-staches” for obvious reasons.

I'm not talking the classic 1930s “pencil” moustache. No, this is the sad, thin moustache of a person who's never had one before and can barely support it.

We used to laugh at the American sailors and marines on shore leave with moustaches like that back in the 90s. These were young guys on their very first outing into the wider world, trying soooooo desperately to look grown up. the crappy thin moustaches were a combo of their young age and the US navy regulations which also gave them all stupid haircuts. Whatever senior officer came up with those regulations was probably a sad mental case. I've seen a few of the hair charts from their ship hair dressers and they're so dumb.

Aaaaaanyway, Australian youth have now been infected with that trend. It resembles a milk moustache actually.


————–

Bit extra- Those guys on shore leave. The poor buggers. XD
Their clothes were all sooooo neat. Jeans with creases. Shoes that had never been worn before. They could never fit in. They were so much better off in uniform, they didn't look as odd then. When they wore normal clothes they looked like aliens trying to blend in with the normal humans.
Then you'd get the occasional Texan with a huge white Stetson hat, big belt buckle, perfectly ironed pale jeans, cowboy boots and bright orange cowboy shirt. Those guys… There was a clownishness to that but you also felt sorry for that person and a bit protective, like they're a “fool” you know?

As Paul, George, John, and Ringo all went their separate ways, it was clear that each of their solo music still retained much of that distinct Beatles sound, but if there's one song in particular that really sounds like the kind of song we would've gotten from The Beatles in the 60s, it would be George Harrison's “I've Got My Mind Set on You” from the 80s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuJuJA5k44Y