Take a look at my best selling product:

My Stormybird Obama T-Shirt

Interested? You can by the T-Shirt HERE, or come to www.cafepress.com/stormybird for more designs like this and many more.

Wow, I actually have visitors!

Ni hao!

So I have some information I don’t know if anyone wants to hear, but I’m giving it anyway. The Chinese for Obama is 奧巴馬, pronounced ào bā mǎ, which, translated literally, means “mysterious Palestinian horse.” Hmmm…THIS MUST MEAN OBAMA IS A MUSLIM! LOL, just kidding. It’s just a transliteration, it doesn’t mean anything. If you can’t see the characters, but want to, check them out here on several products from Stormybird’s Store. While you’re at *ahem* my store, make sure to look at all the T-shirts, mugs, stickers, buttons, women’s apparel, junior’s apparel, mens apparel, etc, etc.

While you’re there, check out the other designs too. Whether you’re looking for a dragon with the character for luck (of course, you are lucky to be born under such a strong sign in the Chinese zodiac), Japanese origami paper designs with Kanji, Oriental paper cutting inspired designs with cranes or rabbits, or I “Heart” products with the Chinese character for “love,” I’m sure you can find something of interest.

Yes, I admit, I’m trying to sell you stuff. But really, I’m just trying to SEO my Cafepress.com site. At this point, just getting any hits is an excitement. I’ll let you know my success. And trust me. If I didn’t like my own designs, I wouldn’t have the guts to try to sell them.

But please. I’m a poor college student. Have mercy.

I like dogs. I really like dogs. All of them, no matter how ugly, loud, and misbehaved. Currently I’m in the possession of one Germain Shepherd Dog.

She’s not very photogenic, unfortunately, but she is a really pretty girl. I used to have a yellow lab-

-who was more photogenic but prone to biting small children. He was the sweetest dog ever, but sometimes jealous, overly so. Yeah, we put him down last year, and we still miss him.

I miss having a dog around when I’m away for school. I’d probably smuggle one into my dorm room if there wasn’t such a high certainty of getting caught. There is a loophole, however: if you have an anxiety disorder, and your doctor says you need a service dog. I’m anxious! All the time! Doctor, I need a dog!

This may sound terrible, but sometimes I wish I was blind or otherwise disabled so I can have a very obedient dog with me at all times. It’s probably not really worth it, though, is it?

Wow, I just realized this post is not very interesting. I’m not even going to read this. Geez. OK, well, to make it up to anyone who has read through this, I’m going to give you a song (song a day maybe? hmmm..). So here is it, “Haunt You Everyday” by Weezer.
Here!

Without further ado, I will begin with the first thing I like.

Chinese

Mandarin Chinese, to be precise. Currently I am working on a Bachelor’s degree in the subject, and to be frank, I tremble for the future. This past semester, we had to struggle with about 70 characters per lesson. Now to be fair, Chinese is not as hard as the uninitiated might think. But at this point, I’m really beginning to realize just how damn nice an alphabet is. I mean, you can look at a word and know what it sounds like! And if you know what a word sounds like, you can write it down on a piece of paper! Amazing!

I mean, I swear: I learn 20 characters and 20 fly out of my head. I’ve heard it gets better–let’s see if I can retain my sanity until then.

But I do like learning Chinese. Really. It’s a challenge, and while it can be the most frustrating thing to can ever do, you find after awhile that you are actually learning something. And it looks really good on your professional and social resume.

Chinese characters fascinate me as well. I can understand why so many people get tattoos of Chinese characters (hanzi, in mandarin, kanji, in Japanese). Ill-advised sometimes, perhaps, but understandable. And many characters tell a story, have a history, all by themselves. Take the character for “love”:

I don’t feel like going into the whole explanation of the character, but in the middle you can see the character xin, (please excuse the weird formatting) which means heart. This is more evident in the older version of the character, found on oracle bones from the Shang dynasty, about 2000 BC-That middle thing looks like a heart doesn’t it? And this illustrates another cool thing: the characters used in Chinese today are direct decedents of the very first known Chinese written script, which is very old. Because I have a picture on hand, the oracle bones, which these characters were first found on, look like this: Turtle shells, written on and heated-the resultant cracks used for divination.

OK, so I think that’s enough for today. Thanks for reading my first, awkward post, and next up: something else I like!