“I was conscious, even when I laid aside restraint and plunged with headlong eagerness into the sea of liberty, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to evil. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck.”

Robert Louis Stevenson. (1886). The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Standard Ebooks. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-louis-stevenson/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde

I chose this passage because it shows complex English writing with rich vocabulary and long, detailed sentences. It helps me work toward my goal of improving English eloquence by exposing me to more sophisticated ways of expressing ideas.

New word learned from this excerpt: propensity – natural tendency or inclination towards certain behavior

Uhh, I mean I didn’t have any difficulty reading it, so I guess it went well? Great book, although misunderstood by many. Probably because of other media adaptations. Jekyll didn’t make a potion that gave him split personality, it simply changed his appearance and he took advantage of that to do fucked up shit. He literally refers to Hyde as “I” when he’s Jekyll, and wrote his full statement (as Jekyll) while he had the appearance of Hyde.

“It is a fearful thing to read the play of The King in Yellow, for those who have once ventured beyond the threshold of its opening act are said to return with minds disordered and imaginations inflamed by grotesque and ineffable visions, as though some malign intelligence had whispered secrets of an unearthly realm.”

Chambers, R. W. (2017). The king in yellow. Standard Ebooks. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-w-chambers/the-king-in-yellow

I selected this passage because it uses highly descriptive language and creates a strong atmosphere mainly through vocabulary and sentence structure. It supports my goal of improving expressive ability in English.

New word learned from this excerpt: ineffable – impossible to describe in words

This one was a slower read because of the way some of the sentences were structured, but other than that, I had no issues reading it. Great short story collection that inspired many pieces of media.

English shit I read this semester:

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The King in Yellow – Robert W. Chambers
Murder by the Clock – Rufus King
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Mistborn: The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn: The Well of Ascension – Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn: The Hero of Ages – Brandon Sanderson
Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes
Poetic Gems – Jean Ingelow

TITS

At first glance, the phrase “Japanese tits” seems like nothing more than a slightly silly coincidence in English, one of those accidental overlaps that might prompt a quick chuckle and little else. But if you linger on it a bit longer, the pairing of a small East Asian bird with a casual term for human anatomy opens up a surprisingly thoughtful line of reflection.

The Japanese tit (the bird) is a small but striking creature, known for its neat proportions, subtle coloring, and lively, precise movements. It shifts easily between stillness and quick bursts of motion, giving it a kind of quiet energy. In a different context, the human breast has also been widely considered in terms of shape, balance, and movement, especially in art and design. Across sculpture, painting, and literature, it is often treated not just as anatomy, but as a form that invites attention and interpretation.

In that sense, both can be seen as sitting somewhere between function and form. The bird’s body is shaped by practical needs: flight, warmth, survival, yet it also draws admiration for its appearance. Similarly, the human breast has clear biological role, but has long been viewed through aesthetic and cultural lenses that extend far beyond its function.

There is also an interesting parallel in how each is perceived. The Japanese tit moves through branches and leaves, appearing only in glimpses. The human breast, depending on cultural context, is often partially concealed, its visibility shaped by clothing, norms, and changing ideas of modesty. In both cases, what is seen is often incomplete, and that partial visibility can make the perception more compelling.

So, while the phrase might start as a simple bit of wordplay, it can just as easily lead into a broader reflection on how we notice the forms around us.

Sources:

Haukka, A., Lehikoinen, A., Mammola, S., Morris, W., & Santangeli, A. (2023). The iratebirds Citizen Science Project: a Dataset on Birds’ Visual Aesthetic Attractiveness to Humans. Scientific Data, 10(1), 297. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02169-0

Grammar, K., Fink, B., Miller, A. P., & Thornhill, R. (2003). Darwinian aesthetics: sexual selection and the biology of beauty. Biological Reviews, 78(3), 385–407. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1464793102006085

Hwang, K., Park, J. Y., & Hwang, S. W. (2015). A Consideration of Breast Imagery in Art as Depicted through Western Painting. Archives of Plastic Surgery, 42(02), 226–231. https://doi.org/10.5999/aps.2015.42.2.226

Wikipedia Contributors. (2025, November 8). Cinereous tit. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation.

This was written explicitly to showcase my vocab and written expression, so it directly relates to my goal.

This is what made me switch to a more casual tone. While writing this was fucking hilarious, having to read that back was just painful. On another note, writing in academic style is something I’ll never get used to. The fact, that I’m supposed to stay objective and professional makes me want to write everything with a tone of sarcasm.

A very serious review of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a game often hailed by old-school gamers as one of the best of all time. I have no nostalgic connection to this game, as this game came out 7 years before I was born, but that is not to say that I don’t have a taste for old-school games. My first console was the NES, with the classic SMB and Duck Hunt cartridge, and I’ve played all kinds of classic on an emulator. So listen to me when I say this: this game is absolutely fucking GOATED, bro.

From the second you boot it up, you can tell the people who made it knew what they were doing. You get woken up by a fairy in Kokiri Forest, where you get told to meet with the Deku Tree. So you enter this giant tree’s mouth, the camera pans down showing you this huge interior of the Deku Tree, covered in cobwebs and moss, accompanied by somber music in the background and a realization that this sacred, centuries old tree is dying slowly creeps in. That is how you establish atmosphere in a videogame, and Ocarina of Time continues to do this over and over again, bringing these environments to life. The atmosphere in this game is seriously unmatched, even by modern standards.

A lot of this is undeniably owed to Koji Kondo’s musical score. Holy. Fucking. Shit. Saying this man was cooking would be an understatement. He went fucko mode on this bitch. From the upbeat, adventurous jam of Hyrule Field, to the chilled out, reassuring tune of Lon Lon Ranch. From the evil, depressing cries of a ruined world, to the light-hearted, silly tune of Lost Woods. This man can do no wrong. There will never be a time when I don’t bop my head to the Gerudo Valley song. And somehow, the gameplay actually backs all of this up instead of just coasting on vibes. Which is insane, because this game came out in 1998 and still feels better designed than half of the slop coming out today.

The dungeon design in this game is ridiculously good. Every dungeon has its own identity, mechanics, and atmosphere. The Forest Temple feels like a haunted mansion abandoned by God himself. The Fire Temple has this oppressive sense of danger the entire time, like the walls themselves want you dead. The Shadow Temple is basically Nintendo looking at the ESRB and saying “watch this” (like seriously, how is this game rated E lol). Even the Water Temple is way more clever than people give it credit for. It’s confusing, absolutely, but it’s confusing in the way an actual ancient labyrinth should be confusing. The game expects you to pay attention, remember locations, and think spatially instead of dangling objective markers in your face every twelve seconds.

Then there’s the story, which lowkey hits harder than I expected. Underneath all the goofy sound effects and early 3D jank, there’s this weirdly melancholic feeling hanging over the whole game. The entire child-to-adult transition genuinely feels tragic. You spend the first part of the game exploring this colorful fantasy world as a kid, and then suddenly you wake up seven years later to find everything ruined. Castle Town is full of zombies, the market music is gone, people are dead or miserable, and the sense of innocence is completely shattered. That tonal shift is still insanely effective.

Obviously, the game has aged in some ways. The camera can be awkward, the Iron Boots menuing in the original version is actual psychological torture (ifykyk), and Navi has approximately three voice lines before you start contemplating committing a racially motivated genocide. But honestly, those flaws almost add to the charm at this point. It feels like playing a foundational piece of gaming history that somehow still stands on its own instead of just surviving off nostalgia fumes.

Because that’s the thing, this game is not “good for an old game”. It’s just good. Period.

This shows of more what I normally write like and how I tend to structure my sentences.

Normally, I have to do quite a bit of editing after I write something, because I try to just spew out everything onto a page to combat my perfectionist self. But this one was pretty much looking exactly the same when it was written as it looks here. It might be because it’s something I’m passionate about, so it’s easier to talk about.

I don’t listen to podcasts, but I listen to other stuff as if they were podcasts. For example having https://www.twitch.tv/northernlion playing in the background while I’m doing some menial tasks.

He’s a native Canadian speaker always talking about some unhinged shit while playing videogames for children. He’s been a strong influence on me, since I’ve watched him for almost 10 years. This mainly supports my goal of expressing myself better, as I strive to be as good at banter as this self-proclaimed “most neurotypical man”.

I don’t think there’s much to reflect on. I guess I could up my game in movie trivia, so I could understand all of his references to 80 year old movies a total of 7 people have seen.

Recently I’ve been learning more about rap. As a purebred classical musician I’ve been avoiding a lot of there genres, but one day I’ve decided to just take the plunge. This brings me to the GOAT: MF DOOM. Although he’s British (yuck), this man has some insane songwriting and rhyming skills and thus, became one of my favorites.

Listening to his albums expanded my vocab by quite a bit, but the most interesting part was simply figuring out what he’s saying, not even the meaning, just the words.

Normally I rely heavily on context to figure out what someone’s saying, but that simply isn’t possible in the case of MF DOOM. I could at best figure out like 85% of it before opening up the lyrics. Of course, the fact that the pronunciation of some words is often altered in songs to make them rhyme better made it a little more difficult.

Phonetics and Phonology portfolio shit. DO NOT WATCH IT IT’S COMPLETE ASS I JUST MADE IT TO COMPLETE THE PORTFOLIO TASK FOR PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY LAST SEMESTER IN LIKE 10 MINUTES IT SUCK COMPLETE DICK BUT I GUESS IT SHOWCASES MY PRONUNCIATION (COMPLETE ASS) SO I MEAN HERE IT IS

Yeah, I mean this perfectly shows how bad my pronunciation is when I don’t deliberately focus on it. That’s it.

Doing shit like this at home is akin to being flayed alive. I swear to god, if there’s more of these to come I will fuckin’ do it, and by it, I mean cry. Also being on camera = -50 to all language skills.

My PL1b presentation.

You were there, you’ve seen it, you’ve heard it, summon forth the memory of it from deep within your neocortex.

I chose this not only because it’s relevant to my smart goal, but also because it showcases one of the most important skills for teachers, standing in front of a class and talking. I think it displays well my current skill level of talking without a script with just slides to fall back on, as I didn’t prepare one, having finished the presentation like 15 minutes before the class started.

The biggest issue was obviously my pronunciation. My pronunciation is lags behind compared to the other areas of my English skills, but having to talk off the dome makes it currently very difficult for me to focus on it, causing me to slip into my bad habits. The reappearing feedback seems to be about the “Czech R”, which is something easy to fix in theory, but hard to implement after 11 years of saying it incorrectly.

uhhhhhhhhhhhh