A Happy Song (alt: A Song of Hope and Joy)

 Just to prove that I'm not just sadposting and still have some linguistics content, here's a project I've been working on. And by working on, I mean put together in a couple hours this evening, instead of leaving it for next week like I originally planned to. 

So once I finish "Fishing for Birds" my next project is an EP called "Scandals from the Karaoke Booth" which is a bunch of covers. I did the first one/the opener a long time ago, a cover of Sparklehorse's "Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man." Which tells you a lot about what this project is like. Most people cover just Happy Man because it's a rocking song. But while it can be played alone, thematically it works best in conjunction with Chaos of the Galaxy. I took this a step further by focusing almost entirely on Chaos of the Galaxy with just hints of Happy Man, making it a cover but very much my own interpretation of it. 

That's not the point though. The next song I've been working on is "Lagu Bahagia" by Sisir Tanah. Now, I can sing this just fine in Indonesian but that doesn't fit the spirit of the album. So I decided to do my own translation of it. This blogpost is about the theory behind that (and will probably make it to reddit at some point). 

 

A piercing question

I was asked a question yesterday which can basically be paraphrased as "Is everything you say a troll?" Conversation was moving too fast to actually answer said question but I have been thinking about it a lot since then. The answer is no, but if the question was "Is everything you say a shitpost?" then it might be yes. But it is easily possible that 85-90% of what I say isn't really a true reflection of my beliefs, but my just saying shit. I'd also so that my level of shitposting is directly proportional with the size of my audience. Catch me one-on-one and I'm a lot more likely to be sincere, honest or forthright (though not entirely of course). Which is probably why I shitpost less on my blog, seeing as I have an audience of none.*

Another, more important dimension of this question is why. Why am I like this? Well, I'm contrarian by nature and so like taking the opposite views as everyone else.** It also factors into my love for a healthy (or toxic) debate. Sophistry is fun. So it's just something I enjoy. However, there's a lot more to it. I think that a decent sized part of it is that I use it as a defense mechanism. Defense against what? Good question.

Part of it is that I'm an extremely private person (he says on a public blog) and by always taking absurd positions, it's harder for others to know my true beliefs, my true feelings, my true opinions. So it acts as a smokescreen of doubt on everyone else. Hopefully so they don't pry but at the very least so they don't know without caring enough to ask. And maybe it's to protect my feelings from people who disagree. After all, they don't know if they are disagreeing with me personally or some absurd position I've taken for the lols. 

And maybe part of it is to hide my true feelings from myself. Is constantly joking about leaving a joke or am I treating it like a joke so that I don't quit my program? No one knows, not even me.

So yeah, I'm a proud shitposter. I'm a long time troll. And that's all fine in moderation.

*It's hilarious how hard it is to find this blog (minus looking at my facebook profile of course...though I just fixed a link I didn't realize was broken. oops, we'll see if I regret this). I can google my name + blogspot and it's easier to find a reference to the time I introduced a band at a random concert in Jakarta than it is to find this blog. I really am yelling into the void. For some SEO I might regret Jacob Bills blog blogspot conlangs Kikxo blogging (I've never done SEO before). 

**Some of my greatest hits include basically all of Šyþed Pyklez (especially "The Donkey Wants to Run" and "Eat Shamu"), the time I argued in a political science class at BYU that all laws about clothing are government oppression (including anti-nudity laws), writing to city council as a kid (for cub scouts?) to complain about us being a nuclear free zone, the time I wrote to a congressman (for scouts) to advocate for not banning/legalizing horse meat, and being Vatican City at MUN and giving a speech about how if this resolution was passed God would set the world on fire. There's a lot more of course and I have mellowed out since high school (apparently) though I still argue for sweatshops when around my leftier friends and against marriage as a government institution with rightier ones.

An update to: Melancholic Bitch (9/2017)

Still making the same joke about this being a band and not a self-description (though it is). Anyway, this post is now wrong. I can get NKKBS Bagian Pertama on bandcamp. Also they've changed their name to Majelis Lidah Berduri, which preserves the MLB theme but is a bit less offensive.

Bad Faith and Parties

Being the patron philosopher (and Saint, tbh) of melanchoic young wannabe christian men, it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of Søren Kierkegaard. All of his work is great but some of his best stuff comes from his journals because there's less pseudonyms and more authentic Kierkegaard. One of my favorite examples is the following:

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.

The imagery is fantastic. The ending is a great subversion of the beginning. It's so pithy. Going into it a bit more though, it's not just the OG sadboi being sad though. It's a look into what it means to be authentic, sort of like Sartre's idea of bad faith. He's depressed but masks it well and then feels even worse about it because he's presenting an inauthentic version of himself.

Anyway, I bring this up because I find it really relatable (and was at a party earlier). I may not be the life of the party, but I'm witty enough and people do seem to generally like me (or at least pretend like they do real well). When I choose to, I tend to hide my depression pretty well (same with my social anxiety for that matter. I doubt most people realize how socially anxious I am, especially since I am a decent public speaker; it's just interpersonal stuff I really don't like). Even when I don't, my extreme sarcasm works as a pretty effective mask. It's amazing what you can say and people just roll with it.

Since I've been particularly depressed this past week or so (tends to happen late february/early march) some cracks have been forming in my mask. A friend noted the other day that I looked happier than I had in a while (there was free pizza and I do love free pizza; also it was a mentoring event and mentoring is one of the few aspects of my job I enjoy). Another friend asked if I was okay after a particularly morbid remark. So we'll see if I get noticeably worse (or better) in the next little while. The whole fact that I'm self aware about the state I'm moving through is interesting for me too. Even if I'm eating less, I know why and can monitor my weight to make sure I'm losing a healthy amount (ie, no more than a kilo a week). It also makes it easier to force myself to do things I don't want to (like say, going to a party). Which in a way makes it harder to believe that I'm depressed. So we'll see. Spring break is coming up and I'm looking forward to that.

(And as a "legal" note, no I'm not suicidal or anything like that. Just feeling low, inauthentic, fatigued and maybe somewhat anhedonic)  

  

On Deuteronomy

I've been reading more of the bible than I tend to do recently. Mostly because we're covering New Testament. The Bible is not my strong suit, beginning with the fact that I don't see the point of trying to prove our doctrine using the Bible when other other sources explain it better (and are "purer" in a sense). In fact, I don't see the point of proving doctrine at all. 

That being said, I do have an interest in reading apologetics and people who do try to study this stuff. Recently, I've definitely become a Deuteronomy truther. Mostly because it aligns with my priors as a monolatrist and someone who's suspicious of the Bible. The alleged parallels of Israelite practice with Lehite teachings in the Books of Nephi are interesting though (even if possibly overstated). I definitely like trying to understand the humanity of the prophets and the contexts they live in. 

I'll get to my beliefs in another post, but things like this strengthen my beliefs really because recognizing things like the Bible are very much products of people helps move past issues with the text. Not to mention I find the whole insistence of claiming monotheism (rather than embracing the monolatrism of Abraham and his people) to be lowering our religion to fit with the ideals of the world. So seeing an example of this anciently is fun.

So yeah, there's a lot wrong with the Bible but the Gospels are decent at least (though still too politically motivated and greek)

 

 

This year

While this blog is nominally about conlanging (hence the title) it is also my general purpose thoughts blog (hence the title). Conlanging is a lonely art, even when shared. Ultimately the only person to please is yourself or as Tolkien said "Here were no base considerations of the 'practical', the easiest for the 'modern mind', or for the million – only a question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of fitness." There's a power to that, to play only for yourself. That's the other purpose of this blog: to yell what I want to the world in a very public way, with the pleasure of knowing that despite this blog's open connection to my name (and presence on my facebook page!), no one will look.

Grad school leaves little time for conlanging (I tend to fill what little time I have with mindless video games) but I do think a lot. My commute leaves me upwards of an hour a day for that. I'd like to put more of those thoughts on paper (or on the internet as it is). So maybe I'll actually engage with this blog this year.

I have many goals this year. I'd like to move to dissertator status and maybe even have a good draft of a paper by the end of it. I'd like to actually travel for once (preferably on someone else's dime). I'd like to finish "Fishing for Birds". I'd like to cast off my pride (or at least some of it) and truly submit my will to my faith. I'd like to move forward in life instead of spinning my wheels and maybe confront my anxiety, my fear, my angst. I'd like to be a happy man.

 I'd also like to learn how to replace a drivetrain but that's because I broke my bike this week. So more of a short term goal.

On tubers and how to translate them

 I've been playing a lot of xenoblade recently and have many thoughts about it, as can be seen on my reddit profile. As much as I like it, there's something extremely immersion breaking for me: taro is referred to as potatoes.

If I remember correctly, spongy spuds are first introduced around when the party's food gets stolen. At the very least I saw a bag full of them at some point in Maktha Wildwood and I recognized them right away as taro. Which was cool because taro is not a commonly seen plant, especially for westerners. It's only later on we get to the problematic part. See, Zeon's ascension quest is about growing crops, specifically "spongy spuds" for his colony. The name spongy spud itself is fine, it's a fictional world after all. However, they are also referred to as potatoes, taters and other less ambiguous names. This is despite both the tubers and the plants are clearly modeled after taro. Even the advice to harvest after the leaves start wilting is a taro trait (though potatoes do have similar advice. I wonder if cassava does as well, it might be a general root crop thing). So that was pretty frusterating.

Now, localizing taro as potato isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, most English speakers aren't going to be that familiar with taro. But it does become a lot worse when you're localizing something that has images along with the text, since even if you don't know what taro is it is pretty obvious that those aren't potatoes. It reminds me of the "jelly donut-onigiri" controversy from the Pokemon anime way back when. The idea of turning onigiri into jelly donuts to make it more relevant to the audience isn't a bad thing. Doing that when it is clearly referencing an image which is not a jelly donut is an issue. (Funnily enough, onigiri does play a minor role in Xenoblade 3 and its name is not translated). 

Anyway, I actually went to the Japanese version of the game to see what the original text called them. Spud, potato, tater, etc all seem to be used as translations for the same word imo "tuber". So while the original text doesn't seem to explicitly label it as taro (as far as I could tell), it doesn't explicitly call it potato either. Localizing this to a bunch of words for more variety is reasonable enough but again, the translators should've looked at what it was referring to before making some of these translations. 

You know what the worst part is? I seem to be the only person to notice this and care enough to complain! At least, I haven't encountered anyone else yet who was like "yep, that's clearly taro."

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In other farming related video game news Harvestella looks pretty awesome but I hope it doesn't neglect farming too much. And someone needs to make a farming sim that caters towards caters towards my desire for complex agronomy and agricultural markets while still maintaining the sort of whimsy often found in these games (that is, I want more realism but don't want to play John Deere Combine Simulator 2022: Deluxe Edition). Maybe I'll rant about that some day.