I'll talk about Belgium in a minute. First, other business. Recently, I went on Youtube and watched two things I haven't seen in a while: Dragonball Z and Samurai Jack. Dragonball Z was so much like itself it was hilarious. I watched some bits of the Goku/Freiza battle, and the way they'd have a bout and then talk about it ("That was pretty good--too bad I'm using only 50% of my power!" "Yeah, well I have some in reserve myself!") was so ridiculously typical of what Dragonball Z is known for that I couldn't help but laugh. I haven't seen that stuff since Toonami, man. And it's still exactly the same. As for Samurai Jack, that show is a lot better than I remembered. It's actually pretty freaking awesome. It's not very prolific on Youtube, probably due to the fact that it's actively copyrighted by a big corporation who actually patrols Youtube for illegal copies of its intellectual property. Nevertheless, I had a great time watching bits and peices here and there, and I was impressed by it. It really did a lot more than I remember.
As for Belgium, things are fine. Autumn has finally arrived here: the trees are starting to turn, but not all at once, so there's an interesting green-orange thing going on around the hills here. I associate Autumn with cool weather--I think about it as "windbreaker weather," because it's not too cold, but there's plenty wind, so if you hae a windbreaker, that provides the protection from the wind and slight insulaiton that renders one perfectly comfortable. Here, things are a bit different. It's mostly the same, bu tthat Autumn here is very gray. Illinois Autumns were always mostly clear, but chilly and brisk. Here, things are chilly, but kind of damp and gray. There's like a permanent big gray cloud covering the sky, so the sun itself is not often directly seen. I've also discovered that Belgians (at least the Belgians at my school) are weather-wimps. It was not-that-cold the other day during PE when we were outside running, and everybody was griping about how cold it was. I've marched in worse weather. It was fine.
Unfortunately, there's no French equivalent for the word "wimp." I'm discovering more and more phrases that you can't just talk around, but you have to think around. Foremost in my mind is "I don't care." There's no one way to say "I don't care" in French because there's no equivalent for the verb "to care." The closest it gets is "soigner," which is more like "to take care of." so you have to say "That doesn't interest me" or "They're the same to me" or something like that. I also miss all my prepositions. English has a good few more propositions than French, and they're very useful. "Of," "from," and "about" are all the same word ("de"), there's no good expression for "across," and "away" just plain doesn't exist. I use those prepositions! Where did they go?
Edit Oct. 9: For legibility purposes, the paragraph pertaining to French obscenity has been moved here. I got a complaint that highlighted text is hard to read.
Also, I've discovered the Francophone author J.-H. Rosny Ainé, who apparently is one of the giants of Francophone science fiction. He was contemporrary with H.G. Wells and wrote in kind of the same format, with short to mid-length stories. He can be kind of hard to read sometimes just because sometimes his stuff is really boring. He wrote this story about the first mission to Mars which discovers a sentient race and helps it drive off a different race that's edging in on its territory, and I just didn't care. He just spent a lot of time on stuff that wasn't really important. But it's still really good to have some stuff id French written originally in French. When I was reading Sturgeon or Phillip K Dick in French, I could see how the translator translated certain English expressions. Now, I feel like I'm learning the language better. Once I started looking up French words in a French dictionary, I feel like my French has grown by leaps. Oral comprehension is still my biggest problem, but that's getting better every day, as well as my speech. I was talking to this kid in French, describing to him the American educational system and whatnot, when Joey the Dutch kid comes up and starts listening. After a while he said, "Dude, your French sucks," which actaully made me happy. Everybody is always telling me how good my French is, but I don't belive it. I can't express myself like I want to, I have to stop and think about what to say before I say it a lot, and I know I don't have the vocabulary I want to have. My French is just not where I want it to be, and having all these people telling me how good my French is just gets on my berves because I don't agree. I met this one French guy who was gushing about my French because he said it was so rare to find an American who spoke French so well. Yeah, great, but I still can't do with it what I want to. It would probably take me more than just one year in order to really get where I want to in French, but I do know that at the end of this year, I'll probably be pretty hot stuff. I'm learning every day. My French isn't where I want it to be, but it's getting there.
Over and out.
First of all, the news. Ireland is now a member of the European Union, ever since the third. This seems somehow foreboding to me, but I can't tell for the life of me why. Also, as most of you probably know by now, President Barack Obama was today awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I think this is ridiculous. He hasn't done anything! I actually learned this during History class, from my History teacher who I think learned it off his cell phone. I'm actually just translating his words. He said, "Barack Obama a gagner le prix Nobel pour la paix. Il n'a rien fait!" As far as I can tell, he was awarded this prize for his "vision." I have no problem with his international vision, it's all well and good, but "vision" is not "action." I have to say, I heard it all from my history teacher first. He said, "He hasn't stopped the war in Afghanistann, he hasn't stopped the Isreali-Palistinian conflict..." I watched the news on Obama tonight, and I guess the two things that he's done so far are close Guantanamo Bay and try to open negotiations with Muslims. I'm still not sure that the Muslims have talked back. What I learned from the news was the "vision" part of it; his "vision" seems to be carrying him pretty far. It's won him the presidency of the United States and the Nobel Peace Prize so far, two things which are by no means meager. I say, he's got at least three years and three months to actually earn this thing. Give it to him then! Don't use the Nobel PEace Prize as a vote of confidence. I think it's absurd to award the prize to someone for something he or she might do some time in the future. My host father seems to think he deserves it for being such a substantial improvement over W. To be honest, I don't think it takes much to garner that accolade, and there are plenty of theoretical presidents who could have been elected in Obama's place and not won the Nobel Peace Prize for "being better than the last guy." I guess the real reason I'm as upset as I am is that I feel that the Nobel Peace Prize, in doing this, is a portent that it might go the way of Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" award. I want the Nobel Peace Prize to be a meaningful award for things accomplished. I say, If Barack Obabma earns the Nobel Peace Prize, that's great! I'd love that! But he hasn't yet.
I still can't figure out that Ireland thing. Why shouldn't it belong to the European Union? It's in Europe, too.
but let's not talk about Polotics. Let's talk about the Scouts. I've attended a few Scouting functions, and it's good. It's definately different, though. For one event, I was a director of a Croquet game for young childeren. They came up with their own way of playing the game, pushing the ball along with the club instead of striking it like a billiard ball, but hey, it's their game, and they enjoyed themselves. I'm not gonna impose my rules. That was fun. The other one was a fund-raising event: we stuck flyers for either a barber shop or something like a hair-removal salon (I'm not sure which) under the winsheild wipers of parked cars. Apparently, the salon paid us to do it, and we'll send the money to charity, or something like that. The other scouts told me, "Yeah, it's not really the Scout image, but we're doing good things with the money." Afterwarsd, we all went to the clubhouse/scout hut/whatever you want to call it and did nothing for a long time, then made and ate spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner (supper). That was all good. Apparently, this was the firs time these scouts used this clubhouse, and somebody else had rented it before us; the first thing we did (well, after serving drinks [they had like only 1% alchohol]) was decide by majority vote to take down the pictures of topless women hanging here and there in the room. There were two or three. It was kind of funny, actually. So Scouts is good. Here are the systemic differences: In Belgium, there are no ranks. All Scouts are equal, as it were. Also, there are no merit badges. There's no division between girls and boys, everybody's in the same place. The scouts are divided into four or five different groups by age, and I think the highest level is just supervisory, making sure all the others run smoothly. I think I'm in the second-to-oldest group, which still does its own stuff instead of just taking care of the other groups. I haven't yet encountered what would be called "scout activities" by the American Scouts by that I mean stuff relating to making fire, wilderness survival, knots, rank advancement, or camping. There was a chimeny in the clubhouse in which some stuff was burning (it was a bit chilly and we were glad to have it), but people kept putting cardboard and newspapers and pictures of topless women in it instead of wood, which was admittedly not present. But there's a big wood just behind the clubhouse, and I was able to go find some stuff and get that stove roaring. In spite of what I told the Belgian Scouts, they said that Belgian Scouts did know how to make fores, I havne't seen it yet. Admittedly, I havne't seen much, mostly just "welcome back" events (apparently, the Scout year takes a break, like school), so it very well could be there some place. We have yet to see. Another difference is that beer is not commonplace in American scouting events, wheras it is extremely commonplace at Belgian Scouting events, as it is like everywhere in Belgium. And that's been my experience with the Scouts so far.
Once, Connor Foli's dad told me, "Yeah, I was in France this one time, and they brought out this cheese, but there was all this mold on it." I have discovered that that's like saying, "Yeah, they brought out this bread, but there was all this grain in it." The mold is not in the cheese, it is the cheese. Every once in a while, the Pirards (and me along with them) will eat cheese and bread for dinner (supper). That's the meal: cheese, and bread, maybe with some wine. apparently, that's not very common here, it's far more common in France, but there you have it. It's a bit of a role reversal; in the US, cheese is used to make bread more interesting. It's a flavor that you add, like salt or barbeque sauce. Here, the bread is no more than a cheese delivery system. It's there to compliment the cheese, to give it some texture and a medium of transportation to your mouth. I still haven't gotten used to some of those mold flavors. We don't eat it all that often.
Ah, yes! this past Sunday, there was an event at my school called the "Ralley Pedestre," which I guess translates to "pedestrain rally," but is more like "organized walking for fun." There were some prescribed routes that people walked through with intermittant activity stations. I showed up not knowing what to excpect, and I ended up working the "capitals of the world" station. We asked people to give us the capitals of countries we chose at semi-random, changing the approximate difficulty depending on how well they were doing. People are more likely to know the capital of say, Ireland or France than Togo. Yeah, we used Togo. If the team managed to anwer the first four correctly, we'd ask them to name the capital of one of the united States, as I was there to verify. There were maybe two or three teams out of about thirty or forty that aced the whole thing, American State included. If somebody missed a question, we gave them the oppourtunity to recoup some points by finding an Action Man that was hidded in the woods. A good time was had by all. My station partner couldn't stop talking about his girlfriend, whom he can't wait to see because she lives in France and they haven't seen each other in so long. I could tell he was very attatched to this Girlfriend of his, becaue, as I say, he couldn;t stop talking about her. I learned how they met, that they have two or three songs (you know, "our song"s), what he plans to do when he sees her again, his hopes for their future together...
but I'm getting ahead of myself. The first day of school, everyone in sixth year, myself included, wrote down three careers they're interested in and gave the list up to the administration. I didn't really know what to put, so I put: 1) Composer of music (for video games) 2)Comics Author 3) I don't remember what I put for this. Anyway, the reason this was done was because there's an annual career fair for the sixth-years and they want to know what manner of professional to invite. They feetched a comics illustrater for me, and we were able to talk a bit and it was great. It's true that in Europe, a sole writer/illustrater is rare; the what far more common is to have a writer who writes and scripts the story, and an illustrater who draws it. This is the most common thing, but Europes most famous comics works are probably solo efforts, like the Tintin books, Moebius's stuff, and the Association authors like David B. and Marjane Satrapi, these last who are essentially writing American Underground comics in Europe ("Maus" has had a global impact). Still, as far as that goes, Europe is the opposite of Japan in that in Japan, solo works (plus assistants, of course) are by far the norm, and writer/illustrater works (like "Death Note") are the exception. So anyway, this guy is an illustrater, and he gave me some dirt of the European comics industry. He said the first thing to do to present your idea to the publisher is to make a dossier. It's a simple portfolio (he had some there to show me); you summarize the whole story in a few paragraphs, present the principal characters, provide some pencil pages and some inked pages, and if you want to, some colored pages, though those aren't necessary. If your dossier's too thick, the editor won't read it. An editor recieves about 100 dossiers a day, so he or she can't afford to waste time. He said, the way to really get into the business is to go to comics conventions. Comics conventions, in Europe, are a lot different that comics conventions in the US. Take, for example, San Diego Comic-Con, which is probably the largest comics convention in the US. It's purpose is too asesmble a whole bunch of people who love comics of all types; it's used as a way of finding hard-to-find comics and merchandise, to show off the extent of your fanatacism, to wait in lines, to give the authors and other craftsmen a chance to talk to the people, and to have an all-around good time and to wait in lines. I hear that there are some lines for which you have to wait in a line before waiting in that line. Apparently in Europe, Comics conventions are more or less for display; people show off what they've done, there will be some panel discussions, maybe an expose on a particular author or group of authors, all the big publishing houses and maybe some of the smaller ones will have a table there...It seems like an altogether calmer event than comic-Con. It's true that I've experienced this only through hearsay, so I can't be sure, but a Comics convention in Europe seems more like a museum exposition plus a business mixer. At any rate, going to these conventions is key for artists trying to work their way into the medium. Even if, after the first couple of times, you come up empty-handed, you'll start to build a network of contacts and publishers will start saying, "Hey, I remember you from last year." This will lead to jobs. Maybe not many, but it's something, and then you have a work history. This guy wasn't big-time, but he was getting jobs, and that's the proof. He says that it's also important to get a degree in teaching so you have some way to put bread on the table. That what he did; he went to graduate school, got his teaching diploma, and now he teaches comics at some place somewhere. That's the job you'll live off of, he says, not actual comics production. But the hours are good, you have three months of vacation, and so plenty of time to work on comics creation on the side. He says that he gets a lot of students who come into his classes full of dreams, so they forget about things like eating or protecting their intellectual property. He gave me some tips on protecting intellectual property that might come in handy some day, we'll see. He also says that the writer of a comic gets 30% (after the publisher takes a cut, I'm assuming); the illustrater gets 70%. This is because all the writer has to do is write it, and then he's finished. The illustrater has to draw it, maybe ink it, too, and maybe even color it on top of that. That's hard work! BUT: The wirter retains the rights to the story, so if it spins off into other media, he's the one that gets most of the royalaties there. So the Illustrater gets a bigger cut of the pie because the writer has more potential to make money outside of the comic. One last thing: The funamental unit of European comics is the "album." This is just one vollume, about the size of a Tintin book, if you've ever seen one. Herge had a pretty strict 62-page limit, but that's not standard. Most albums go longer than 62 pages in my experience. These are published whenever the artists get finished with it, after being pressured considerably by the publisher to get it done (doubtless there's a deadline). In contrast, the traditional unit of American comics has been the "issue," which is smaller both in page dimensions and length, but published with a greater frequency, typically weekly or monthly (sometimes quartely, as it the case with the famous "Drawn and Quarterly"). Publishers these days are looking for stories that go for three albums. If they sell well, the story keeps on keepin on, but if it flops, then it's kaput. Or so says Patrick Cortez. He also gave me some information on a manga festival in Liege comming up. I'll have to see if I can make it there. He says there's Cosplay and everything. Ah! I musn't forget: he told me, "and here's one book I make sure all of my students read:" he pulled a book out of his bag entitled "l'Art Invisible," which was actually "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud. That was so cool! I've gotta get me a copy of that so I can figure out what all the comics vocabulary is in French. I've just gotta get my hands on that. That and the other three vollumes of the Moebius story I currently own two vollumes of. Dang, man. I've gotta get to Liege, they have a killer cmics store or two. Also, Fullmetal Alchemist volume 22 is comming out in November, so I'll have to buy that sometime.
Oh, yeah! I got a different trumpet, and it's awesome. It's an Amati; isn't that like a huge-name brand? They're known for violins, aren't they? Whatever. this thing is great. It hasn't been played in years, so it needs a bit of lovve, but it's actually cleaner inside than some of my own trumpets have, at times, been. The valves need more oil than I have, but that'll work itself out.