russkideutsch

2005.06.05
Head a farewell-to-Sawer's FoKN'A (Friends of Kirk's Nintendo Association, the goofy name for my video game get-together group) yesterday....Sawers and Cordelia were there, Andy and my cousin Ivan, Rick showed up as well. A fun group and we had a lot of laughs and played a lot of games and ate a lot of strawberries and other great stuff.

I'm really wanting to try to revive the group, or even expand it a bit especially since some people are gonna be leaving. 4 player games are just the bomb-diggity, though sometimes if its only like 4 or 5 people you don't have quite enough because someone doesn't like that game's genre. I don't know how to expand it properly though...I guess I should make sure it's open to any gamer friends I can think of before doing something weird like posting on Craig's List.

Forgot to haul out the new "Star Fox" before everyone but Ivan left...it was a good head to head deathmatch, might've been tons of fun for four.


Anecdote of the Moment
The other week I was over at Ksenia's family's friend. At one point the TV was on a Russian cable station. At one point I saw a dubbed show which was odd for two reasons...one was I think it was a German show, some 70s detective or action drama (taking place at a small amusement park, I think part of the plot was about sabotage or poor maintenence of a small roller coaster leading to one of its cars being thrown into a concession stand with a guy in it.) And of course it was being dubbed into Russian. The other thing was the dubbing method...it wasn't subtitles or attempted lip-synching...instead, the original audio track was on low (which is how I knew it was in German) and a guy repeated what the actors just said in in Russian, and I think did any other needed translations, like of onscreen text. It wasn't quite as simple as one guy acting as the translator/narrator, they also had a woman who would repeat the women's dialog in the show...but besides that there was no attempt for the translators to switch voicees.

I know I'm horribly conditioned to think of English as a default, either for translation to or from for media, but still there's something odd in hearing two different languages you don't understand piled on top of each other on TV.


Videos of the Moment
Kind of like porn for people who are into car accidents, Crash Test Videos from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. If you're in a hurry (and using Windows, I guess) check out 2005 VW Beetle Side Impact...multiple camera angles and everything!