Random Thread ～Owaranai Insomnia '25 ver.～

[TotallyUncool]

I think you're probably right. And the truth is that I mostly identify strongly as German-American when it comes to Christmas cookies (hey, that's important!) - well, OK, pretty much any Winter food that involves a lot of sugar.

[erilaz]

My family did a lot of geneaological research years ago - for the most part, it came down to some early New England settlers (in Maine), and two separate lines of German immigrants, with a few ods and ends thrown in.

I seem to recall that you once said that your surname was an anglicization of a German surname. Am I remembering correctly? I ask because my (purported) great×10 grandfather, the son of one of the passengers on the Mayflower, married a woman with your last name in Plymouth in 1639.

Of my ethnic makeup, I identify most with the Armenian from my mother's side, since that's a solid 50% of my background and also the result of more recent immigration: my grandparents came over from the Old Country in 1911 and 1924. The ancestors I've been able to trace on my father's side were English, Scotch-Irish, and Swiss-German, and came to America during the colonial period. The fact that I majored in German has little or nothing to do with my strand of German ancestry.

[TotallyUncool]

My German ancestors with that name came over about a century later - they took the name because they settled in Pennsylvania around Lancaster, where it was common (and Kirschenmann sounded far too ethnic, I guess). So basically, they were Pennsylvania Dutch in Quaker clothing.

[Moh]

The only things I know about my "heritage" is that most of my ancestors (at least from my dad's side) came from Scotland and Ireland.
My great-grandmother (dad's maternal grandmother), who is also my namesake, was a Scottish immigrant. I got to hear her accent on tape once! I should tell the story of how she died sometime.

I have no interest in taking a DNA test, though.

[TotallyUncool]

My grandmother on my father's side was a Poe, and I suspect strongly that I've got far too much of that DNA.

[erilaz]

Here's something that TU might find interesting:

https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-exene ... -a-collins

[TotallyUncool]

That's interesting!
Sometimes I think that just about anything becomes the stuff of fiction and half-legend, given enough time - which means that eventually, you're likely to find yourself running into semi-mytholigized versions of things that you were involved in at various points in the past. And they will usually be situations that seemed at the time more like a bunch of people just trying to do something they found interesting, or simply trying to get by. As in Jpop idol fans/cosplayers/weaboos - currently flying under mainstream pop-culture in the West, but given a little time...

Incidentally, i've been sort-of-working on a slightly-post-YA fantasy/adventure novel with some contemporary Jpop tie-ins lately. I don't know if anything will ever come of it, but if it does, I'll probably publish it under a very anonymous-looking pseudonym largely so that I can get a running head start in case it ever gets enough notice to get me in trouble.

Last edited by TotallyUncool on Fri Sep 28, 2018 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Starra]

I had something happen I haven't had happen to me in a while: an extremely vivid dream about JPlop closing down . This time it was that Zunu deleted everything except for one thread and I was pissed because "how the fuck am I supposed to keep up with H!P news if there's only one thread to post everything in?!". I mean, it's not like I have Twitter and other, multiple sources for H!P news now, nor do I even post here that much anymore.

But I guess stress dreams about JPlop are like stress dreams about school: they never go away.

[TotallyUncool]

That does sound like something that could have happened at JPM, back in the days of forum chaos.

[Zunu]

Speaking of dreams, the other day I dreamt I was Yossi and I was in some kind of subterranean, vertically orientated grotto or cave system with slick, rocky photoluminescent walls and carved out stairsteps. I was trying to find a way out, but as I ascended, the width of the passages narrowed to the point where I couldn't even shimmy up through the openings, and it seemed there was no escape. I was softly singing to myself to comfort my fears, some unreleased solo album cut. I didn't have any thoughts whatsoever about the accident, but I felt very isolated and alone.