Anne Graduates!

Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I watched our friend and Kouryou-chan's best babysitter, Anne Honeycutt, aka swirlgrrl, graduate from high school. We arrived at Nova High (which Anne jokingly referred to as No Other Viable Alternative High) and found "Anne's Village," the thirty or so people who have in one way or another helped Anne get to where she was today.

Nova is apparently the place where they let the kids who aren't active offenders and systemic misfits rattle around until they're eighteen in the hopes that the might find something worth doing. While we sat with people dressed in native garb, naive interpretations of native garb, casual clothing, and just plain silly stuff (including one young woman who wore a Catwoman hood the entire ceremony) on the green lawn before a run down, 1930's-era school with a peeling blue and white facade decked in surly vines someone imagined festive (although the place smelled wonderful, of ancient wood varnish and lead paint, reminding me of my own finishing school), I listened and wondered just how many of these students would be labeled among "the disconnected."

( Okay, I'm old and cynical, but... )

So I sat behind an exceptionally cute dyke in labrys earrings under brown hair held in a high ponytail, leather jacket smooth as vellum, librarian fetish spectacles, cheekbones that could cut glass and black hanky flagging from her right pocket, and her girlfriend in an older jacket and rainbow blond hair, and waited for Anne to graduate. Apparently, she's made herself the center of the school; nobody argued with the point. She was Nova's hamster in its wheel, pushing everything forward. Everyone was sad to see her go. But I'm glad she's got work already and has a personality that attracts opportunity; like everyone, she's going to need them. I'm pleased to have known her, and happy for her accomplishments thus far.

Congratulations, Anne! Don't let me forget: I still owe you your gift.

Fake Accents

So, I finished the first semester of Japanese and started in on the second set. And oh, goddess, can I tell that the voice actress in the second set of CDs sucks. All of the voices have changed: the instructor and both voice actors, and neither actor sounds like a native. I've watched enough anime, Japanese Broadcast News, J-pop video and miscellaneous japanese television to have a clue about at least standard media accents and the actress just does not have it. She over-pronounces several of the common plosives, has excessive pauses when separating time statements from the rest of the sentence, and doesn't do the Tokyo accent rise and falls properly.

I want to do the second semester, but I'm worried that my accent will get all messed up. I guess I'll just have to trust my own instincts. And try copying the dialogue on my favorite shows. Yeah, people don't really talk like that, but at least their accents will more or less be correct.