On TV right now: The Japanese version...of Family Feud. Complete with Big Red X in a Box, and obnoxious buzzer.

Could be worse. Could be Live-Action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.

OH MY GOD! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!

SAUNDO OBU MYUUJIKKU (linkku)

Number One sign that it's gonna be a LONG afternoon:

When the husband of the adult English class student who invited you to their home for lunch suddenly says, "You know, times were tough back when I was in high school, just after World War II...."

The Strangest Thing I've Seen in the Last Week or So....

So, late at night, the local TV networks sometimes show educational programming. A lot of these are 30 minute foreign language lessons, including English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and German (as far as I've seen). There's also a selection of cooking shows, infomercials, beginning piano (they use fixed do, which bugs the hell out of me), and computer programs.

It's this last one which surprised the heck out of me. One show was a tutorial on using Microsoft Word. It had two teachers, three retiree-type students, and a large screen showing a Word window and toolbar.

Oh, wait, that's not a screen; it's a whiteboard. And the Word screen elements are cardboard pieces with magnets to stick them to the whiteboard. I kid you not. When one of the teachers would move the mouse cursor (attached to a pointer) around the "screen," the other would put up open menus, switch text to "highlighted" text, and put up dialog boxes.

LCD projectors aren't that expensive, people...

Hmm. I seem to have a dust accumulation problem with my computer keyboard....