Welcome to Gaia! ::

A.D. :: Uh... Okay, Central America is an Isthmus, not a continent. That's true, but if it weren't for THAT little fact Mr. Amerigo Vespucci would have never figured out that South America was an all-new continent, ergo no "America" per se, ergo no "America" in the U.S. of A. nowadays. So yes, Central America IS relevant to this discussion.

and U.S. is the only country with "America" in it's name, because it was the people in THOSE countries both south and north of the U.S. that managed to make a consensus within the people that lived in those lands. Once they became independent from one another, the lands had names, not because the people that lived there "renamed" the lands, in some cases, those were the names of the lands which were given to those places by the early natives who once lived there. Others were a long and thorough process of revolutions before they proclaimed the name of their country. When the Spaniards came to South America, they didn't always rename places in order to honor the Queen or King of Spain.

And Colonists were amongst the first to coin the term "American" which is why it has endured throughout time. Which is why "Americans" are normally associated with "America" which is reciprocally associated with "United States of America" oh, and no. I'm perfectly fine that the U.S. is coined as "America" ... In fact, I'm gonna stick with a saying that one of our governors used often while he was in office, and was later taught to me by my grandpa :'D

"I am a citizen of this planet called Earth, but my home is in Puerto Rico."

axel :: sorry I got you lost. sweatdrop I guess I explained lots of back-argument and not much of the point itself, eh?

Wow. I've just had a map-licious adventure. xd

[geek moment]

So I'm taking what is essentially a Japanese literature class this semester, and we've begun reading Before the Dawn (aka. Yo-ake Mae) by Shimazaki Toson, which is essentially Japan's version of War and Peace in both difficulty of content and number of pages. It's heavily history-based, so it has a few maps in the book of the area in which it takes place, which is in the Kiso region in Nagano - coincidentally, very near to where I did a homestay a few years ago. (Remember I lived in a town named Shiojiri, whose name translates to "salt butt"?)

Well, I was flipping through a few maps in the front of the book, and I actually found Shiojiri on one of them! While it does seem a little dorky in retrospect, I actually got really excited that I found the town I did a homestay in on a map in this book. When I told my professor about this, he started asking me a bunch of questions about Magome (the town the book is set in, which is pretty much an eensy weensy little place - of course I knew absolutely nothing about it, since I didn't even know the book existed when I did my homestay) and said that he had never actually found a map outside of the book that had Magome on it, simply because it was so tiny.

Of course, I viewed this as some sort of challenge to go and find a map with Magome on it. xp So I headed on over to the Japanese version of google image search and wasted a good 45 minutes of my evening trying to make sense out of tourist guides, train maps, and other things that generally make poor substitutes for a good old-fashioned geographic map (which my searches did not produce). After finding a lot of maps that showed towns close to Magome but not the actual Magome, I decided to give up for the evening.

Just for shits and giggles, I decided to do one last search for the godforsaken little town on Google Maps, not expecting to find anything. xd Lo and behold, a mere three minutes after I started zooming in on Japan, I found it! Three minutes on Google Maps trumped what I had wasted nearly an hour on using image search. And for some reason, I find that extremely funny.

Now all of this probably seems pointless and insignificant to you, but long story short: I love you, Google Maps, and I want to have your children. Your ability to find little backwater villages in foreign countries is surprisingly amazing. mad P:

[/geek moment]

BLARGH! Death Note's been licensed, so Live-Evil isn't subbing it any longer! Blasted...legalities...keeping me from my anime.

Shiro - Central America is not relevant - not in the sense that some groups have been referred to by continent, which is the only support for the Western Hemisphere "American" argument. There are Europeans, Africans, Asians, etc. - but "North American" and "South American" aren't used, as some people like to think they can just shorten it to "American." As it is not a continent at all, "Central American" is out of the question, Vespucci notwithstanding.

Koji - "Mine"?! xd

Stop tormenting *****. It's just not a good idea.


Iyou - Phhwaa! whee I remember "salt butt"! And bravo to you for finding it on Google Maps. Google is all kinds of amazing.


Ashram - Welcome back! FFXII probably isn't worth flying across the globe for, though. (I'm still bitter.) Let us know what you think of it.

Ashram - Okami. O-KAM-I. $40 you will not regret spending.

I'll check those out, thanks. I'm down to following one anime now, and it's being updated so sporadically that I have anime dry spells for weeks. gonk

pumpkin scissors was interesting.

iyou: HAHA ISNT IT ADORABLE??
i drew this weird spirally thing with spikes coming out of the bottom.

one of my favorite activities is just barking a lot. my roommate is always like, "why are you barking? is something going on?" "NO! I just like barking! gonk "

WHO THE HELL INVENTED MIDNGHT TO 8 AY EM SHIFTS, ******** DEVILDAMMIT?!?! scream

okay, moving aloing >__>;

not to be a dead-horse kicker A.D. but as for the "American" thing, Central America wasn't even my main point being thrown across, so you were picking the wrong part of my argument. xd (I just used it to establish that through that isthmus, it was discovered as a "new continent" ... not that central Americans have any relevance being "Americans" per se)

what's sad though is that the world over knows "South Americans" as anything "south of the border" of the u.s. xd (for example: "Hi, my name is Paco. I'm from Mexico." "Oh, so you're a South American? surprised " ...."NO, PUTO! scream " then Paco proceeds to beat someone with a lead pipe upside the head xp )

and as for those stories about people asking you about songs, I have aplenty of them while I was at the music store...I'm just being a b*****d to everyone here and keeping said stories for myself. twisted

(okay okay, ONE story! xd ) So, it happens that one day a customer is browsing through our electronics section. He then comes up to me and says: "Say, what exactly is these things called Ipods?" ... the guy looked no older than 27. Obvious to say, I tried as hard as I could to suppress my disbelief, although I'm quite sure I failed at that (my face looked like so arrow eek ) then began explaining what an Ipod was. After the explanation, he pulls out one of these Ipod cases that has a small cardboard display mimicking the display an Ipod nano would show when enclosed in the plastic jail for Ipods, then said "For such nifty little devices, they sure seem rather cheap, don't you think?"

Needless to say, his face was red when I explained briefly what it was that he was holding, then said "OK, thanks." then promptly exited the store.

Oh this reminds me of one of those messages on t-shirts I sometimes see on Hot Topic...
"Every day I think people can't get any stupider... and every day I am proven horribly wrong" xd

Say...A.D. ... if I were to buy this shirt, would you wear it? xd

Koji :: seriously? WTF, MAN! D: online ***** aren't fuzzy like the *****! D: (okay, I'm not gonna go into details, but yes, ***** =/= ***** bear! D smile

Iyou :: hooray for geek moments! gonk exclaim ... I have my share, but yours was really good! whee heart

Ashram - It'd be well worth your investment. I agree with everything AD wrote in her review about it - it's awesome. whee

Shiro - ISN'T GOOGLE MAPS AWESOME. xd Even days after that little adventure, I'm still floored that it has that amount of detail. Although I was able to find an actual aerial picture of my house using the satellite feature a long time ago, so I should've figured it was so awesome long ago.

And just for people's general knowledge, my name is pronounced "Ee-yoh." (As in いよう - sorry to those people without Japanese text display support!) xd Although I guess you can pronounce it anyway you want - I can't really do much about it, now can I?