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| 2016-09-14: Educational Experiences |
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-25-2025, 11:09 AM - Forum: Stories
- No Replies
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Educational Experiences
By current and past members of the KanriKyara Project
The Masaki residence, Coquitlam, BC, Canada
September 14, 2016, 8:55 am PT
"If you'll come to order, class..." Garnett announced with a grin.
Everyone else looked up from their desks. Washuu-chan had pulled her classroom furniture out of storage where it had been since the Masu incident, and provided a room for Garnett and the younger residents to handle the necessary chore they had scheduled for today and the remainder of the week... and then she decided to take part in the lessons, as a student.
"Hai, sensei!" Sasami chirped in reply.
Garnett smiled at Sasami's eagerness to begin. "Let's start by reviewing the course syllabus. We won't cover everything that's likely to be on the high school equivalency exam, just the subjects that aren't focused on in Japan. Which means Canadian history and geography, and conversational English."
"But we all speak English now," Tenchi pointed out.
"You might have the skill, but do you know all of the technical terms? For example, do you know the difference between a noun and a gerund?"
"What is a gerund?"
"We'll cover that during the lessons, Aeka-hime. What we're going to review for the rest of this week and next Monday is what you would need to know in order to pass the immigration exam."
"That much?"
Simply by hearing that comment, Garnett knew that Ryoko was going to be her problem student.
5:27 pm PT
Just as Garnett was finishing up grading the practice tests that she had given to the people who were displaced to Coquitlam, a piercing scream cut through the evening air.
Garnett dropped her pen and made it to the source of the scream – the laundry room – in under fifteen seconds. "What's wrong?"
Inside, she found Mihoshi, teary-eyed and blubbering. With her was Aeka, her face ashen and her gaze vacant as she held up what look like a pair of panties... if a pair of panties had been attacked by voracious moths. And noxious chlorine fumes wafted out of the space.
"Oh, dear," said Garnett.
"What happened?" asked a voice behind her. She turned around to find Ryoko looking worried.
"Somebody asked Mihoshi to handle the laundry."
"It was her turn. Why?"
"She washed all of our underwear. And with far too much bleach."
Ryoko's expression changed from worried to annoyed. "How bad is it?"
Garnett sighed deeply. "Let me put it this way: how many clean changes of underwear do any of us have left in our closets?"
"Not enough for regular use."
"That was a rhetorical question... Well, it looks like we're going shopping after dinner."
Coquitlam Centre
7:09 pm PT
"Why are we going to the shop where we buy food?"
"There's more than just T&T in this mall, Aeka-neesan," Sasami replied.
"Think of the Coquitlam Centre as a shopping arcade and you'll have the right idea," added Garnett as the ladies walked past the bank at the mall's eastern entrance and made their way into the mall itself.
"And why are we not going to an actual shopping arcade?"
"The mall is still open, princess," Ryoko pointed out. With a salacious grin, she added, "Unless you were planning on going commando tomorrow..."
"You have made your point," Aeka said primly and quickly. Then she turned to Garnett, and as they continued walking, Aeka said, "These do not appear to be shops."
"You're right," Garnett admitted. She saw no reason to upset somebody who she had been hired to help. "The businesses in this corridor are all service providers. You'll see some shops once we're at the end of this row."
A few minutes later, they reached the end of the hallway and turned to the right. "We aren't going to that larger store?" Aeka gestured to the Sears that was now behind them.
Garnett shook her head. "You and Ryoko could probably find something that fit you there, but Sasami and Washuu-chan could only get what they call 'training bras' at Sears, and they wouldn't look good on them. And Mihoshi and I would have trouble finding anything that we could squeeze into."
"It is hard to find pretty clothes that fit women like us, isn't it?" Mihoshi commented innocently, causing both Ryoko and Aeka to glare at her. "And you're even bigger than I am." The glares shifted target from Mihoshi to Garnett.
"I don't know about that," Garnett said quickly, "but I do know that I'm wearing underwear that fits me properly. And here we are!" She stopped in front of a store that was simply named "Change".
"Oh, those are so pretty!" Sasami said while looking at the store's display.
"And it looks like they come in my size, too," added Washuu.
"Both your sizes," Garnett confirmed, trusting that anyone who overheard the comment would think she was referring to the two young-looking girls in the group instead of to Washuu's two forms. "I don't know anybody who needs an M cup, but they sell those here, too."
"An M cup?" Ryoko was amazed. "Is that really how big you humans grow?"
Garnett laughed quietly. "That's the far end of the size curve," she pointed out, "and most women who need that size have had cosmetic surgery."
The Juraians and other aliens looked at her in amazement. "Why?"
"Don't ask me," Garnett replied, not wanting to be glared at again by people who might be insecure about their self-images. That was another reason why she had brought her housemates to Change; the staff encouraged their customers to wear underclothes that both fit and made them look good, no matter what their body shapes were. "Let's just go in, get measured, and re-stock our underwear drawers."
The Masaki residence
September 15, 2016, 9:13 am PT
"Sorry I'm late," Washuu said as she hurriedly walked into the classroom. "I had to make some IDs for a group of displaced people in Ottawa."
"I thought that the girls from Academy City already had IDs."
Washuu nodded as she sat down. "You're right, Aeka-dono. But this set was for a new group of people from another reality altogether, who just moved into the Ottawa residence."
"We don't have room for anyone else here," Tenchi said quickly, not wanting to throw the harmony of the house out of balance.
Sasami gigged. "They aren't moving in here, Tenchi-niisan!" Then she turned back to Washuu. "Who are they?"
"Well, I could tell you before they're ready to be known to the rest of us," Washuu replied, "but then I'd be punished in the name of the Moon."
Sasami squeed in happiness. "I want to meet them!"
"Later," Garnett insisted. "After you've written the entrance exam, and after they're ready to meet other people who have been displaced here."
"Haiiiii..."
"So, what did I miss?" Washuu asked while sitting at her school desk.
"Iwasaki-sensei was telling us about the 1931 Statute of Westminster. There's something that I'm puzzled about, though. You asked the British Parliament for control of your own laws, except for your constitution?"
Garnett smiled at Tenchi referring to her by her family name; that put a bit of much-needed social distance between them. She nodded as she replied, "We couldn't agree on how to amend the constitution back in 1931. It took another fifty years before we came up with a system that both the federal and provincial governments could live with."
"A half-century?" Tenchi was very surprised. "Now I see why MacArthur insisted on writing the Sengo-Kenpō for Japan."
"That wasn't the only reason he wrote Japan's constitution, but it is one of them."
September 17, 2016, 8:03 am PT
"Tenchi!"
"Yes, grandpa?"
"Do you have classes today?"
The younger Masaki shook his head. "Iwasaki-san says they don't hold classes on Saturdays in Canada."
"Good." Katsuhito stood up... and abruptly threw a magazine at his grandson, who caught it easily. "You've been neglecting your physical training while you've been studying. It's time to correct that state of affairs."
Tenchi looked at the article that the magazine was opened to. "It looks interesting," he said after a moment, "but this says there are two sets of stairs so it isn't an uninterrupted climb, and the steps look to be gentler than the steps from the house to the shrine back home."
"You'll just have to jog up the stairs instead of walking, then. Go climb the Coquitlam Crunch. And climb it at least once a week while we're in this universe."
"Sure, grandpa," Tenchi replied, happy to get away from the women in his life for a couple of hours. "But where is it?"
"Have you forgotten how to read a map, grandson?"
"Oh, right. I'll go do that now."
False Creek, Vancouver, BC
September 18, 2016, 10:15 am PT
"I'll be honest with you," Garnett had told them. "I majored in business, not science. The only way I know to let you know what science we do and don't know is to show it to you."
So they spent an hour on the SkyTrain and went to Science World in downtown Vancouver.
"Yes, I know this wasn't the best choice if you're looking for a college-level introduction to science," Garnett admitted to Aeka while they watched as Sasami walked onto a stage at the museum. "But that isn't what we're here for. You already know most of this, and a lot more besides. What you need this week is an overview of what Earth doesn't know. Hang on, Sasami-chan finally has her hair loose and one hand on the Van de Graff generator."
Garnett got her cellphone out and started recording Sasami... just before the museum's staffer turned on the electricity and Sasami's ankle-length hair stood up on its own.
Aeka quickly moved her hand up to her mouth. It was only polite to hide her teeth, after all.
"That's the first time I've ever heard you giggle, Aeka-hime," Garnett said with a smile of her own, which she couldn't hide because she was too busy with the camera.
"We have the same kind of device back home," Aeka replied, "so I knew what to expect. Although of course we have a different name for them."
"It's an elementary application of electrostatic principles," Washuu added. "And Sasami looks like she's enjoying herself." Just then, they cut the power and Sasami's hair dropped back to behind her... and in front of her. Garnett was reminded of Cousin Itt from The Addams Family... but Sasami was cuter.
A moment later, Sasami was back with the rest of the group and Aeka was helping her put her hair ties back on. "That was fun! I wonder what I looked like, though."
"I got a video of you," Garnett told her. "Do you want to see it?"
"Sure!"
It took them a couple of hours to see all of the exhibits, at which it was just past lunch time. "Hey, have you ever had Cambodian food?"
"I don't think so," Sasami replied.
"I know that I haven't," Tenchi added.
Ryoko shrugged her shoulders. "Food is food. It's not like I care what it tastes like. Somebody forgot to give me taste buds."
"I didn't think you'd need them," Washuu admitted.
Garnett ignored the byplay that had become a recurring part of her life. "There's a Cambodian restaurant a couple of blocks away, and they make the best chicken wings in town. Want to see whether the lineup at Phnom Penh is around the block?"
"I suppose we could do that," Tenchi replied, at which point everyone else stifled their objections.
So they did, and the lineup was only a few dozen people long.
After they finally got a table, the Masakis agreed that the chicken wings were good, but so was the Thit Bo, one of the Vietnamese dishes on the menu.
"I see why this place had a lineup," Tenchi said. "Is this going to be on the test?"
"Probably not," Garnett replied as she reached for another chicken wing. "I just wanted to give Sasami a break from needing to cook a big meal today."
"Thank you, Garnett-neesan!"
The Masaki residence
September 20, 2016, 9:30 am PT
And then it was time for the newcomers to write their tests, either for their Adult Graduation Diplomas or their high-school placements.
All Garnett could do was wait... and hope she'd done a good job on her first big project.
September 22, 2016 3:49 pm PT
As everybody expected, Aeka, Sasami, and Tenchi were admitted into good schools and everyone else passed the Adult Graduation high school equivalency examination with flying colours.
As Garnett passed out the documents that had been couriered to her at lunchtime, she noticed one entry on Washuu's certificate. "You went with the Christmas Cake joke?"
"Why not? Don't I look the part?" Washuu grinned as everybody else sighed or rolled their eyes.
Garnett's reply was a simple, "Tenchi, here's yours."
"Thanks. Does this mean I'm an adult now?"
Garnett shook her head. "Sorry, but you don't legally become an adult until you're 19. Or 18 if you move east. Until then, Nobuyuki-san still has the final say over your life."
Ryoko teleported over to Tenchi and smiled seductively as she caressed his cheek. "You should have said you were 20, Tenchi. Then the two of us could have been adults together."
"Tenchi-dono would never lie about something like that," Aeka rebutted as she pulled Ryoko away from Tenchi. "Besides, I'm sure that he would be much happier if he wasn't dating an older woman."
"Three years isn't that much older! Not like some people..." With that, Ryoko glared at Garnett.
"You are certainly correct there." Aeka joined Ryoko in her glare.
Sasami stood on tiptoe and whispered to Garnett, "Haven't you told them yet that you aren't interested in Tenchi-niisan that way?"
"Twice to each of them and once to both of them, in addition to the times that you've heard," the redhead whispered back with a bemused grin. "I don't think they're listening."
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| Meta notes |
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-18-2025, 01:52 PM - Forum: My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character
- Replies (5)
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A thread devoted to talking about telling the story, instead of to telling the story.
Deconstructions can be time-consuming to write. I just spent a half-hour researching the real-world answer to a question I had about a story element that's so inconsequential that it'll probably go unnoticed by the readers... unless, of course, we got it wrong.
The answer, by the way, is "Yes".
(Okay, okay... "Yes, five hours of "BD Pure Audio" lossless-format 7.1 channel audio will fit on a single Blu-ray audio disc or a single 50 GB SSD, so we can do a studio-quality master of the entire concert." At this point, I'm not going to say which concert, because there are at least three points in the devfiles where we might want to do this.)
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| 2016-11-22: A Little Lovebird Told Me |
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-18-2025, 12:43 PM - Forum: Stories
- No Replies
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A Little Lovebird Told Me
by Rob Kelk, based on ideas by current and past members of the KanriKyara Project
Welcome to the Displacees.yggdrasil message boards
Forum: Specifically General
Subforum: Juicy Gossip
Subject: They're in love!
Ruiko Saten (ruiko.saten@blossom) ![[Image: 12px-Gray_Light_Icon.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Gray_Light_Icon.svg/12px-Gray_Light_Icon.svg.png)
2016-11-22 11:55 PM UTC
OMG! They finally told everybody! Rob-ojisan and Mii-san and Ami-san are in love! With each other! I've known for weeks but couldn't say anything, but now I can!
Ruiko Saten
Just a normal girl
Ruiko Saten (ruiko.saten@blossom)
2016-11-22 11:56 PM UTC
Oh, drat - they just told me to keep it secret from everybody else. I can't figure out how to delete a post here...  Don't let anybody off the board know, okay?
Ruiko Saten
Just a normal girl
Skuld (skuld@yggdrasil) (Moderator)
2016-11-23, 12:04 AM UTC
>I can't figure out how to delete a post here...
You can't. And I won't, because Donaldson-san is already receiving person-to-person text replies to it.
Consider this to be a learning experience. Rumo(u)rs spread faster than you expect, especially in this world's Internet.
Skuld Ravenhair
Norn of the Future
Leader of the Valkyries
Sysop and moderator
Sasami Masaki (sasami.masaki@masakihome)
2016-11-23, 12:08 AM UTC
> OMG! They finally told everybody! Rob-ojisan and Mii-san and Ami-san are in love! With each other! I've known for weeks but couldn't say anything, but now I can!
Oh my gosh! I'm so happy for them!
... Oh... but the laws here in Canada though...
Rob Donaldson (rob.donaldson@blossom)
2016-11-23, 12:11 AM UTC
Which is why we weren't going to say anything. Mii and Ami are still in university; they can't afford any "scandal". (Me? I've finished my first career, and almost everybody involved in my new career has access to this forum anyway. I'll be fine.)
We haven't made any formal promises to each other in front of a priest or a judge, but that doesn't matter. They already know that I fully intend to stand by them for better or for worse. If people outside our circle want to try making legal trouble for my loves, they'll need to go through me.
Rob Donaldson
"Dont let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."
- Rare Earth, "The Giants You Can't See from the Ground"
Epsilon (epsilon@antigonish)
2016-11-23 12:15 AM UTC
> Rob-ojisan and Mii-san and Ami-san are in love! With each other!
I wrote three different replies to this offline, but I decided against posting any of them.
Rob, since when were you an iconoclast? You're not acting like yourself.
Rob Donaldson (rob.donaldson@blossom)
2016-11-23 12:15 AM UTC
Normally, I'm not. But this just feels right, for some reason.
Rob Donaldson
"Dont let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."
- Rare Earth, "The Giants You Can't See from the Ground"
Epsilon (epsilon@antigonish)
2016-11-23 12:15 AM UTC
> Normally, I'm not. But this just feels right, for some reason.
As long as you're happy. You are happy about this, right?
Sakura Matou (sakura.matou@appartements-mont-royal-sud)
2016-11-23 12:16 AM UTC
Sorry to interrupt, but the pizza place directly across the road from us is on fire.
Rob Donaldson (rob.donaldson@blossom)
2016-11-23 12:16 AM UTC
Don't apologize; that takes priority. We'll send you some help.
Rob Donaldson
"Dont let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."
- Rare Earth, "The Giants You Can't See from the Ground"
New Reply
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| 2016-11-22: Matinée Ojou-san |
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Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 05-04-2025, 07:45 PM - Forum: Stories
- No Replies
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Matinée Ojou-sama
by Brent Laabs
November 22, 2016
Venice Beach, California
Akari stopped by the common room looking quite confused, and asked Alicia, "So I took a reservation just now, and the customer said he had heard about us from our video advertising. I still don't understand. What videos? Did he watch our anime or something?"
Overhearing this, Tomoyo declared, "Oh, that's wonderful! I'm so happy my video is helping your company."
"What kind of video?" Alicia asked.
"Well, maybe you should ask Brent-san and Tomo-san."
Tomoyo stood at the door of Tomo and Yomi's apartment, where I was hanging out. "Brent-san," she said, "I was trying to explain the advertisement you made for Aria Company, and well, I thought maybe you'd better explain it?"
"Ano..." Tomo mumbled.
I said, "Maybe it would be better if the video explained itself?"
"Just what have you two been up to?" Yomi got up off the couch, with a look of interest in her face, and followed us all down to the common room.
Tomoyo Daidouji, our resident AV technician, plugged her laptop into the projector, and navigated to YouTube.
"Are all the videos on your channel of Sakura-chan?" Yomi asked.
"Unfortunately not," Tomoyo replied. "Ah, here it is."
"Whoa! Four thousand views! I'm a celebrity!" Tomo exploded her fist into the air.
I snarked, "That and a dollar bill will buy you a cup of coffee."
And then the video started.
"Hi, Art Fern here!" I voiced with a distinct nasal tone and fast talking. "This is your Tea Time Movie program, just in time for after school tea time!" I wore a thrift-store red suit, an oily-looking short black wig, and a fake mustache. "Friends, I'm here to introduce the greatest products from around the world while you wait for your video. But first, let me introduce the lovely, the talented, the eye-candy: Matinée Lady!"
Tomo walked into the frame, wearing a goofy grin, a shirt tied above her midriff, and a pair of Daisy Dukes. "Hi everyone, hi Art, hi cameraman!"
"Friends, let me introduce you to a new service that you're going to wonder how you ever lived without it. It's an amazing European import that you're going to love, guaranteed. I'm talking about..."
I stepped over to the easel with a stack of printed cards, and removed the top one from the stack, revealing my sales topic. "Gondola Rides!" I read off the sign.
"Oh wow, I love rides," Tomo prattled.
"Believe me honey, I know," I remarked, then continued, "We'll take you on a beautiful tour of the canals of Venice, California -- now newly expanded! Turn our freak accident of water into a freaking amazing day on the water.
"Friends, that's right, you can try out one of the gondolas at L.A.'s premiere transit company," I pulled out the next card, "Aria Company! Take a ride with one of our smooth gondolas and it'll be smooth sailing. You'll be floating on cloud nine, while still floating in the best canals in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. I mean, just take a look at our lovely gondoliers."
I paged through 8x10 glossies on the easel of Alicia, Akira, and Athena, showing them in casual yet beautiful poses atop gondolas. "Wowza. Maybe I should have asked one of these beautiful women to be my Matinée Lady instead."
"Now come on, Art," Tomo pouted, "This is the twenty-first century. An actress isn't just valued for her pretty face these days."
"Oh really?"
"For sure. Harvey Weinstein told me that I gave the best performance he's had in a long time!"[1]
"Honey, I bet that's how he always couches his reviews." Damn, my fake accent slipped in that part.
Tomo wore a broad grin, somewhere between acting proud and trying really hard not to corpse.
I took a small boat anchor out from under the desk. "Friends, these gondolas don't need anchors!" I threw it behind me.
"Anchors away!" Tomo said, bubbly.
I pulled out a propeller, said, "These gondolas don't need props," and chucked it back.
"But you do."
"Friends, Aria Company gondoliers use a good old-fashioned oars to propel your gondola through the most beautiful canals on this side of the La Brea Tar Pits. It's time to show you some footage of the Aria Company, hard at work."
Thirty seconds of B-roll played, showing the undines looking pretty snappy on their gondolas. Most of the footage was taken as an establishing shot for Sakura films by Tomoyo, but there was enough there to make the gondoliers look damn fine at their jobs.
And then the feed abruptly cut back to Tomo and I, locked in an embrace.
"Oh, and we're back already!" I said as we quickly tore ourselves away from each other. As Matinée Lady straightened out her shirt, I asked her, "So, what did you think?"
Tomo took a deep breath, "Well, baby." She smiled.
"About the gondolas."
"Oh, that. You know, I'm going to take a gondola ride. And then, while I'm riding, I'm going to call all of my friends and family, and say 'Look at me, I'm on a boat!'"
"Really?"
"Yeah, I'm on a boat, Mother–"
"Okay! Someone here really loves her family," I interrupted. "And why wouldn't you want to bring your family along for this beautiful ride. It's fun for the whole family, and good for them too. Because Friends, I'm offering an all-natural, 100% organic, top shelf, prime cut, bona fide, crème de la corn gondola service.
"We'll take you from the ghetto to the traghetto. Even if you're a menace, we'll take you in Venice. You'd have to be be lazy, you'd have to be crazy, you'd have to be Patrick Swayze to pass up this offer."
"Oooh, spooooky." Tomo held up her hands in front of her limply and slowly swayed back and forth, in the classic Japanese "I'm a ghost" maneuver.
With a nasal twang, I continued, "Each ride with Aria Company comes with real Venetian gondoliers, real Venetian boats, and real Venetian blinds. Not like that fake Vegas Venice, this is all the real deal!"
"I don't like fake things," Tomo blurted out.
I glanced down toward her flat bust, before saying "I think we can all tell."
"Really?" Tomo asked blithely.
"If you're heavy, we don't care. If you're tall, we don't care. If you're flat as a pancake," I nodded in Matinée Lady's direction, "we don't care. If you've kneecapped a figure skater, we still don't care. If you don't pay —" I slammed my wooden pointer down on the table with a snap "— that's when we do care! We take dollars, we take euros, and we Venetians even take dogecoin."
"Such payment. Wow!"
"Now, you might be wondering, just how do I get there?" I revealed a chart of swirling lines that looked like a hybrid between a freeway map and the Yellow Sign, and pointed out the way with my stick. "Just take the Ventura Freeway to the Golden State Freeway through the East L.A. Interchange to the Santa Monica Freeway, then swing down to the San Diego Freeway. Then take the Slauson Cutoff..."2
"Get out of the car, and cut off your Slauson!" Tomo elaborated.
"And then get back in the car, and continue on to the fork in the road."
Tomo brandished a dinner fork in front of her, as if she was fending off an amorous Nyarlathotepian.3
"Take a left on Washington Boulevard, and our offices are right there in Venice Beach! Come to Aria Company today! We'll keep our oars open!"
I segued, "Now, on to your feature YouTube video, starring Pepe the Frog, Pepe le Pew, PewDiePie, Ajit Pai, and a jeep with a Popeye in the film Make the Pie Higher."
Tomo and I embrace, and right as it looks like we're about to start a passionate kiss, the video abruptly stops.
"What the heck was that?" Akari asked, slack-jawed.
"It's called advertising!" Tomo enthused.
Yomi remarked, "Pretty good, Tomo. You stayed in-character and kept the timing tight."
Tomo blushed, "Praise me, praise me more!"
"You've obviously put in a lot of practice as a total airhead," Yomi 'praised'.
I chortled, while Tomoyo giggled. She critiqued herself, "I do need to work on the lighting a little bit more. And I still think I could have made better costumes."
"No, no," I explained, making the incomplete pass signal. "The cheap costumes are part of the gag."
Alicia asked, "Can someone please explain... what that was?"
I said, "It's an old bit from a Johnny Carson routine."4
"He's an American comedian from like thirty years ago." Tomo continued.
"He played this guy, Art Fern, always selling stupid products in movie theatre ads."
"And I was his bimbo starlet assistant, Matinée Lady!"
"And he always gave weird L.A. freeway directions, involving the Slauson Cutoff..."
"But we live next to the Slauson Cutoff," Tomo elaborated. "So we got to talking about it..."
"And then we saw Tomoyo with a camera."
Tomoyo inserted, "And that was when things got a little out of hand."
All three of us started laughing, then. Yomi, a little, too.
But Alicia's face was still puzzled. "So, do I have to worry about this? There are lots of promises, and the image is a little..."
"Nah, no way." Yomi declared. "Everyone can tell that it's a comedy routine, even if they don't get the references."
I guessed, "It's probably because they've heard about you on the news, and they want to find out more. And then we stole all of your views." Tomo gave me a high-five for this; I have no idea why.
"Would you like me to take some real videos of you? Tomoyo offered. "Like a documentary, or an advertisement, or something in between? I think what you do on a gondola looks really romantic. And then, if you got a beautiful passenger to appear, like Sakura-chan, everyone would want to watch!" She covered her cheeks with her hands.
"Actually, that sounds like a great idea for business," declared Alicia.
"I can't believe you two did this without me," Yomi warned.
"Oh, like, sorry." Tomo made a peace offering, "Maybe you could be Matinée Girl next time, an 'American' like you would play that better."
"No way. You're much, much better at pretending to be brainless."
Tomo's mouth opened wide for a second, then closed. And in a flash, Tomo glomped on to her best friend with a big grin. "Yoooomiii!!"
- BL: Note that in 2016, Harvey Weinstein being a serial perv was not yet common knowledge, but it certainly wasn't a secret in the industry. I have at least one friend who was subjected to an inappropriate encounter with him, and I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't the only one.
- BL: These are actually the real directions from the Tonight Show studios in Burbank to the canals in Venice. Numbered freeways were invented after all of the L.A. freeways were named.
- BL: Forks are Mahiro's weapon of choice in Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, which is basically what you'd get if you took Urusei Yatsura and swapped Japanese mythology for the Cthulhu Mythos.
- BL: If you're unfamiliar with the sketches, go search for "Art Fern" on YouTube, the comedy holds up very well despite some dated references. I wrote this after watching a few of the "Movie Tea Time" skits, since I was a bit too young to have stayed up late for the Tonight Show back when Johnny hosted.
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| Observation of the day |
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Posted by: robkelk - 05-04-2025, 07:27 AM - Forum: General Chatter
- Replies (8)
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Usually, something that has an attribute can be described with the adjective form of the name of that attribute.
But it's stories that don't have pathos that are pathetic.
Linguistic drift can do some funny things.
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