Cause or symptom?

Felt rather ill and unable to work today.

I must be hallucinating or something...

I've been asked to try and make my classes "more fun and less serious" by the Japanese teachers who feel completely incapable of approaching me in English, Japanese, crude pictograms, or interpretive dance. Given that I have no actual curriculum, and am prohibited from using things like phonics or written materials (in English or Japanese as some of the kids are scared of reading), all I really can do is try to play games in English that the students will make no effort to understand as their teachers will, if they deign to show up, immediately translate everything into Japanese for them, and encourage them to pronounce words like Charlie fucking Chan.

So I'm left to "teach" these kids something in 35 minutes that they'll remember for six weeks so I can try and build on it for next time and still make it "a fun chance to experience English while lessening the fear of a foreign language and increasing international understanding."

I feel like I'm trying to build a wall out of pickled eggs. It's a pointless mess that just winds up making your eyes sting from all the vinegar fumes.

But replace "vinegar fumes" with "mind-bending incompetency of my managers and inattainable goals of the Minstry of education" and "your eyes sting" with "the bile rise in your gorge."

Everything old is new again...

Or at least recycled. Like from memepool. Or the fond memories of our childhoods.

Well, my childhood, anyway.

From (the internet via) me to you, happy birthday to me.

Now, start the music! Let the dancing begin!

Another carnivorous robot? Ahem. "YAAAAAHHH!"

Sure, this seems like a good idea now. It isn't that long ago some clever fellows gave us the Slug-bot, another little doozy of an automaton.

Really, what disturbs me the most is the thought that by the time the robots are well designed enough to weed out the slower, weaker, stupider parts of the human race I'll probably be one of those old, slow members of the herd.

Which is not to say that I'm really in favor of eugenics as much as I want to go on record as saying "meat-eating is generally pretty cool, but it becomes scary when you remember that people can be meat too."