Foreign Dispatches

Test Your Vocabulary

How many words do you know? Take this test and you'll receive an estimate, the value of which will be directly proportional to how honest you're willing to be with yourself about the limits of your knowledge ...

My own results are visible here - not surprising in the least, and certainly a decent indicator that the test isn't entirely without merit. Still, there's a legitimate question as to whether the percentile estimates provided with the test results really are on the mark, as the discussion here makes clear. I imagine most of the survey respondents would actually rank in the top 30% or so of the general population, vocabulary-wise.

Issues of ranking aside, I think that the primary point to take away from this test is just how vital reading - and, to be specific, reading "high literature" -  is to vocabulary acquisition. Most of the rarer and more obscure words are of the sort one would never be exposed to in a verbal or everyday literary context, and my experience is that much the same sort of thing is true in other languages, including German and Japanese. To illustrate, although I am able to handle German TV shows and newspaper articles just fine, I find my assumptions of fluency completely undermined by reading Thomas Mann's "Der Zauberberg", whose pages I cannot manage to get through without frequent consultation of a dictionary.

PS: I've actually touched on this language/vocabulary issue before - 5 years ago, in fact ...

Visual Kei: Behind the Music

It's been ages since I last read a blog post by W. David Marx, but this examination of Japan's Visual Kei music business is a good reminder of why I used to be such an avid reader of Neomarxisme (and no, it's not because I have a fondness for "Das Kapital" ...). Anyway, getting back to the Visual Kei post, let's just say that all those kids who've latched on to "Dir en Grey", "X Japan" and co. as representative of some sort of "edgy", "alternative" counterculture are just as deluded as the millions who fail to realize that "Lady Gaga" is the product of the most soulless and calculating corporate focus-testing. Seeing young people express their "rebellion" and "individuality" against "The Man" by collectively blaring his music and wearing his clothes provides endless fodder for amusement to cynics such as myself; at least the "J Crew" and "Abercrombie" clones know that they're mindless conformists!

Tim Rogers Doesn't Like Japan

And he's written a mega-rant explaining precisely why he doesn't like the country. I can't say I entirely agree with Tim Rogers' arguments (though on certain points, e.g. the rampant smoking, and the invariable "oishii/umai" uttered by talentless "talento" on variety shows, I think he hits the target dead center), but I'll give the guy credit for something very important: Rogers - unlike many an anime nerd disillusioned to discover that life in Japan isn't just an unending sequence of Dragon-Ball Z episodes - actually happens to know something about the country he's writing about.

PS: The (mostly negative) responses on Metafilter are also interesting to read. The gist of the criticism directed at Rogers is that he's a whiny b*st*rd who would obviously be unhappy anywhere, but while this is very probably true, and the guy also seems to be suffering from a severe case of delayed culture shock, not everything he complains about can be dismissed as mere whining: for instance, office life in Japan really is incredibly stifling and conformist, much of Japanese TV really is rubbish (though in my opinion British TV is even worse), and the impunity with which Yakuza affiliated types pollute people's eardrums with their loudspeakers really is infuriating. Japan does have plenty of good points which go entirely unmentioned in Tim Rogers' long rant - it is an extremely safe, clean and orderly society in which a keen appreciation for hard work and aesthetics plays a prominent role - but it doesn't hurt to have the occasional reminder that the Land of the Rising Sun is not some sort of paradise exempt from the usual foibles of human societies, a fact often overlooked in the breathless reporting done by uncritical Japanophiles.

No Talking in the Men's Room!

And no standing next to someone when there's a free urinal available further away. The very fabric of society depends on your adherence to these rules.

Sir Ridley Scott is Brilliant

If you've ever wondered how it is that Sir Ridley Scott has managed so consistently to make awe-inspiring movies - Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, etc. - wonder no more: the man is quite simply brilliant, as this interview with Wired magazine reveals. Not only does Scott display a wide-ranging knowledge and understanding of both the history of  (and the contemporary developments in) architecture and the various arts, but his in-depth explanations of the rationale behind some of his directorial decisions serves to convince you that virtually nothing is left to chance with a Ridley Scott film: if something in a movie of his happens to strike one as particularly clever or subtle, it's nearly certainly the case that this is because Ridley Scott wanted it so, not merely because a happy accident occurred. Think I'm exaggerating? Just read the article in full and see for yourself.

Even Better than the Real Thing

If you have 15 minutes to spare, I suggest you sit down and watch this short film: if possible, click through to the Vimeo site to watch it in HD resolution.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The Best Reason to Watch French TV

I present to you "Les rouleaux de Fort Boyard"! (Warning: Probably NSFW)

To be honest, I'm surprised a show like this is allowed to air in France; this is the kind of thing I'd imagined was relegated to Berlusconi's RAI network in Italy. Certainly this show would never stand a chance in the UK, where joyless, Daily-Mail and Guardian  reading schoolmarm types would guarantee its stillbirth in the name of "morals" or "equality".

PS: For illustrative purposes, let me show you a (relatively very tame) clip from an Italian show. The Italians even have a special term for beautiful women who act as ornaments on TV shows: "Veline".

More risque examples of Italian TV programming can be found here, here and here. All links are NSFW: don't say I didn't warn you.

Michael Bay Delivers

The director all wannabe film-critics love to hate takes some time out from making movies about robots to shooting a commercial for Victoria's Secret. Needless to say, it has all off the expected Michael Bay ingredients, brought to you in glorious HD video format. (PS: Don't play this one at work, folks!)

I dare anyone to tell me that wasn't awesome.

The Ultimate Site for (Straight) Men

What do you get when you combine two of the things straight guys love to look at most? A site like this.  Doesn't Michael Bay have a patent on this already?

PS: While we're at it, let me take this opportunity to say that I love Michael Bay's movies, and I do mean that in an entirely un-ironic way. Sometimes one wants to take a break from thinking about Malliavin calculus, the narrative structure of "The Guermantes Way", mereological essentialism or some other such bit of intellectual heavy lifting, and on such occasions there are few things quite as diverting as watching mammarily well-endowed women running in slow motion from huge explosions. Pseudo-intellectual film critics and  pretentious wannabe "auteurs" may not like Michael Bay's stuff, but they're precisely the sorts of people for whom the likes of Lars "von" [sic] Trier make unwatchable tripe; car chases, fireballs and scantily-clad women do a fine job for the remaining 99.9% of humanity (or its straight male portion, at any rate). Michael Bay is no hack!

Where the Beautiful People (Are)n't

If you keep your ear out for weird news, you may have heard a thing or two about a dating site meant exclusively for the "beautiful people", and called, naturally enough, BeautifulPeople. Well, the site does indeed seem to take its exclusivity seriously, at least if judged by the number of rejections handed out to date: 1.8 million of them, as opposed to 360,000 new approvals, and this in an already self-selected pool of applicants.