The Quiet Hangout: Recent Episodes

View Details

Email me: TheQuietHangout@gmail.com

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheQuietHangoutPodcast

Music:

Title: Whosi

Author: sawsquarenoise

Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/sawsquarenoise/~/Whosi_1120

License: CC by Attribution

Transcription:

Hello and welcome to The Quiet Hangout, I'm your host Mel and this week I wanted to talk about languages. I've always been someone who enjoys learning languages since I was small very often I would just pick up spare random vocabulary from a mixed bag of languages and kind of stuff them into my back pocket. Recently I've gone back to Duolingo the app that I think everyone uses at least once and then gets tired of it harassing you and you delete it off your phone maybe to go back maybe not. I usually invest a bunch of time and then delete it and then download it again and do more languages. I think on my app I have 12 languages or courses of study that I've been working on off and on for the last, I don't even know, several years. It's just something I've always enjoyed, originally when I was in school I was a double major in sociolinguistics and bio chemistry and I really enjoyed my linguistics courses studying language has always been fascinating to me and when you start getting into the sociolinguistic aspect of like how we use language and how we interact as a society in between people and how that impacts it was a very interesting course of study but I ended up switching to teaching later on.

So in high school I studied Japanese and in middle school I believe there was a compulsory course of Spanish for at least one semester in middle school either in seventh or eighth grade something like that but when I was small I did some studying in Latin and French and I was around Spanish a lot and my neighbors were Japanese so I was around Japanese a decent amount and I've just always enjoyed sort of absorbing language it's kind of funny at this point though Because I've just been kind of here and there and I have so many languages bouncing around my head and so many different types of grammar sometimes when I'm not thinking I'll just kind of combine everything there was one day a while ago where I was trying to see if we had any sugar in the house and I asked if we had sugar in Spanish and Japanese using Japanese grammar and not only do the other people around me only speak English but I was combining multiple languages into one just amalgam of random I guess wasn't quite gibberish but it kind of came out as gibberish I'm trying to remember what it was that I said I think I mean I know are used Azucar which is Spanish for sugar and then I ended with imasu ka? Which is is there or does it exist in Japanese

I think I might've used a connector phrase from Japanese with the Spanish and it was weird it just turned out really weird so right now what I've been working on is and trying to get my Spanish better because it's just kind of a useful language to have in Southern California I've been working on my Japanese here and there I kind of just pick it up and dabble I watch a decent amount of like Japanese dramas and I follow several Japanese YouTube channels so I get kind of my listening practice from that and then I've been working on Welsh because why not.

Everyone's like "why are you learning Welsh? There aren't even that many Welsh people who speak Welsh?" And I just, I enjoy it. I mean for goodness sake, I saw that Duolingo had a course in High Valyrean and started doing that cause why not? Made up language it's fine.

I've also dabbled in Esperanto which is not technically like a used language in the world it's literally a language that was created to be easy to pick up it's very regular there aren't any like super exceptions to the grammar or pronunciation it's just very straightforward.

my sister-in-law she speaks Korean which is fun my younger sibling did German in school I believe and can also speak circles around me in Greek my great grandmother was fluent in seven languages: English French Spanish Armenian Greek Turkish and German so she was an impressive lady y'know family history: She was born in Turkey as an Armenian and had to flee the genocide to Greece, met my great grandfather and then they left Greece to come to America and it just kind of all went from there

so she she was a very impressive lady and I think since I was a kid I've always kind of strived to like oh I want to be like her I want to speak like all the languages and here I am not particularly proficient in any of them. probably not even English especially since I have so many things bumping around my head I have occasionally forgotten my home language English there's sometimes I will forget a word in English and its like I know this word in four other languages but I can't remember it in the language I've spoken since birth thats great

So yeah, Welsh is there's a lot of W's and Y's and I keep messing up where a y goes and where an I goes when I'm spelling because the spelling is boggling my mind just a little bit. I can say I'm learning Welsh, I believe it's "Dw I dygau Cymraeg" Something like that my accent is probably horrible I'm still actively practicing I know my accent in Spanish is terrible too: "Yo halo espanol" I'm getting better at rolling my R's though that was always a struggle and then I start playing with the high valerian course and every R is rolled so I got lots of practice and I'm getting better at rolling my R's. Still not great but much better.

yeah my mother would always complain at me because she speaks Spanish and she would be like "just just don't just don't speak Spanish because you're speaking Spanish with a Japanese accent and it's just terrible and incomprehensible." So I can read and write fairly well but I am generally too shy to speak it to anyone

Cause I'm like oh no they're going to not understand me or anything like that.

That's another topic to talk about, like that shyness in speaking I don't know if other people have this problem Frequently I know some people are very shy about it and then you have others that will just charge ahead and speak the language as best they can accents be damned I if if it does not sound perfect to me I get really really shy about it and I don't want anyone to hear me and I don't want to mess up and then sometimes trying to generate words or phrases I'm like oh man, is my grammar wrong is my accent bad do I have the right word I can't I suddenly can't remember words like I know a bunch of words but then suddenly it goes out the window when I have to speak.

So generating sentences and things like that gets really difficult even when I'm writing. Like when I'm studying I can read sentences and translate them between English and my target language or vice versa but as far as generating ideas on my own very difficult I'm much better about that in Japanese but I've also been studying Japanese for 10 years so that might actually is it more than that now? It actually might be closer to 15 years actually but it's been a very long time that I've been studying Japanese and it was very useful when I went to Japan because I can actually generate some stuff to say and I could ask for directions and understand directions and I could order food and make reservations and things like that so it's always kind of that situation of Oh I know a lot more than I think I know but that shyness and that hesitancy to actually go and like try

I would mumble so much like I was there and so it would be like "Sumimasen, kanji onegaishimasu." And I was so shy about it that I would like whisper it and in Japan in order to get the attention of your server if they don't give you the check right away you have to like call them over so I would be like "ah, sumimasen" and then I would have to do it like three or four times before I would be loud enough for the server to hear me and come over and you know sometimes I had to ask for chopsticks or if we couldn't use chopsticks I'd have to ask for like a fork or silverware or spoon it wasn't very often but sometimes that would be the case especially when I went to like a beer... It wasn't like a bar, it was kind of like a tap room and we went...

The other problem would be that often we would show up and it's like oh a white girl here is an English menu which that's well and fine I kind of knew what things were but it made ordering much more difficult because I could read the Japanese but with an English only menu ordering was difficult because I didn't know how to translate the English words and phrases back into Japanese so that I can then order so I almost would have preferred to have a Japanese menu or maybe even have both so that I could've ordered but I get it I understand why they would do that because often I'm sure you get a lot of tourists who have no idea what they're doing and speak zero Japanese so the assumption is just give them an English menu and they can point to it and we go just based off of like number

Another one of my lowest points was when I was in a soba shop and the server was asking me if I wanted cold or hot noodles in English and my brain was in Japanese mode and I couldn't understand her. I could not understand what she was asking me because she was speaking to me in English. That was a very low point I think I was in Nara at the Deer Park and that was very... the person I was with said "she is speaking English I can understand her what's wrong with you?" And I'm just like my brain just can't trying to switch between those gears is not quick nor is it easy because the person I was with spoke no Japanese so it was kind of a constant trying to translate thing in between and asking what they wanted and like what do you want this is what's available ok and then like by the end of our trip they were like oh you ordered takoyaki from that stand but they said no and I'm like no no I said thank you and they said no as in like no problem it's one of those things

and another thing and I think English has this too where you where you use a negative phrase to connotate a positive response so kind of like in California English I don't know if this is just in American English or not but I know in California specifically where I live you'll negate something and then follow it up with a positive so if someone asked me oh do you want to go get some food I'll be like no yeah sure and kind of that last bit is the bit you need to pay attention to because yes I'm agreeing with you even though I started out with no or when someones like oh do you want this and I'll be like yeah no thanks and that is a negative response I started with yes but I mean no because that's what I said last and then I'm thanking you to be polite.

So there's a lot of that in Japanese as well and I'm sure it's probably another languages I just haven't delved as deeply into other languages is I have Japanese like Japanese I actually took formal courses most of my other languages it's been self study or learning through exposure rather than actually taking formal courses

but when it comes to Japanese I took it in high school and then I took it in college for a little bit to both satisfy the language requirements and because I thoroughly enjoyed it

I also did some American sign language as a kid but that was more like to specifically learn things for performances and things like that I really should get back into it because sign language is useful one for connecting with people who may be hard hearing and it should be a more common thing that people learn both in school and things like that for access and equity personally I believe as well as it's super useful for environments where you can't hear people. like if you're at a loud concert or you need to be quiet in the situation having the ability to communicate without making noise is useful. It's also useful when you're working in daycare's and you have children who may not be verbal yet or perhaps are just plain nonverbal. it's useful for communication in so many aspects so that's something I really need to get back into like picking up. but I also do the grabby hands thing of let's pick up all the languages and then I don't stick with one long enough to become competent I just have vaguely enough to kind of flail my way through different things like my Spanish just enough to flail my way through, or like the Welsh, all I know is like I and can and want I can't ask for things I can't ask for directions at least yet

I suppose with practice and if I actually stick with it, that will come in time but maybe I should try to focus on one thing ADHD brain says no let's do all the shiny things and let's do them all at once. I suppose that's how I ended up with 12 languages on my app. Let's see because I have: Welsh, Spanish, Irish, Greek, Japanese, High Valyrean, Chinese, Korean, Esperanto, Swedish, and French. Yeah. That's like 12. I haven't bothered with like Italian or Russian I only know one phrase in Russian and that's "Please excuse my terrible Russian." Norwegian would be good, Turkish, Turkish would be good to pick up, Hebrew, Danish, Hindi I mean I probably shouldn't be looking at new languages to pick up I should stick with the languages I already have on here and get actually proficient in something.

Probably starting with the Spanish and brushing up on my Japanese and keeping at least those two going strong language learning is fun, personally and I don't know if I have like a head for languages and that's why I enjoy it and other people are like no please don't make me at least in America I know other places in the world being bilingual and trilingual is by far more common and much more accepted. But for some reason it seems like in America there's a lot more resistance to learning a second language like you're only required to have one year of a language elective in high school and one semester of a language elective in college people aren't required to speak multiple languages which I think is very sad I feel like we should encourage people to speak multiple languages because I think it breeds understanding you know you start not only are you learning a new language which is useful for communication but you begin to unlock an understanding of the culture as well because in order to understand another language you really need to start understanding the culture that your target language is coming from because if you don't then you can't ever really become fluent I think.

Because in order to become fluent I think you need to start being able to understand idioms and phrases and slang and all of these things that become a dual meaning like you can say a simple phrase but it may have a different meaning than what you're really thinking or at least more commonly it may translate well but that may not be what you're actually saying. I'm trying to think of a good idiom in English that wouldn't translate well to another language probably something like a simile that I can't think of a simile off the top of my head something like something or something as something and another thing is when you start to learn another language you start to become even more proficient in your native language I think. Because you start recognizing much more heavily the parts of speech and how things go together especially I think when you learn a language that is very different from the language you speak.

I personally love learning subject object verb languages rather than subject verb object because it's so different from what I'm used to like: the girl subject runs verb to the store object versus it's hard, Japanese you can basically just say a verb and there you go it's a full sentence because if I say, like "benkyoushimasu" I'm studying that, like, there was no "I'm" in that sentence I can add I'm: "Watashi wa benkyoushimasu" there's really no object I'm just saying I'm studying. I could say that I'm studying Japanese "Watashi wa Nihongo wo benkyoushimasu." So I am "Watashi wa" Japanese "Nihongo wo" and then "benkyoushimasu" verb. So subject: I object: Japanese verb: "benkyoushimasu" at the end and that's just how Japanese is set up verbs go at the end and your subject goes at the beginning and your object is in the middle somewhere and that starts getting into the linguistics side of things. So English: subject verb object language, Japanese: Subject Object Verb language.

So having that difference for me personally makes it a little easier to parse because it's like an anchor point for me to anchor onto like OK this is different this is how it settles in.

Spanish actually gives me a lot of trouble because it's similar to English in the grammatical structure. So I actually have a hard time remembering how to put it together especially because it gets tricky in some situations because like for example the red dress vestido roja... vestido rojo sorry got my genders wrong I believe. Vestido... Is it El vestido? Is dress masculine? Thats the other thing, like, Japanese doesn't have really masculine feminine or neuter verbs and objects and things like that where and neither really does English there English doesn't really have any masculine or feminine so that's another easy thing for me because I don't have to try to figure out like are my connectors the correct gender for the words that I'm using.

Where as Spanish you have gender. Like the table, la mesa, is feminine so you have to use la and mesa and that one's kind of easy because usually in general terms if something ends in an a it's feminine if something ends in an o it's masculine but then there's a lot of exceptions like a pan, bread is masculine, so El pan and then El is the masculine the, but then mesa, table, is feminine so you have to say la mesa for the table so you have to use la which is the feminine the.

So anyways, I was talking about descriptors so in English you would say the red dress your descriptor your adjective comes first but then I've noticed in Spanish, let's use verde, green. Vestido verde the green dress, I think it's El, El vestido verde the green dress. Green comes last, the adjective is cached on to the end of the noun rather than coming before the noun. And then, Japanese I think you have to have a connector in there so like showing possession like something possesses something else but you don't always need that. I believe the adjective comes first in Japanese so I can say... what is dress in Japanese? I don't remember what dress is off the top of my head for some reason my brain is only remembering dressed in English and Spanish right now. But what is dress? I should look it up.

OK, so I looked it up and my old Japanese textbooks don't line up with what actually translates as dress anymore. That's the other fun thing about learning languages is when they change and evolve as languages morph, especially like Japanese has a lot of English loan words so I guess dress is just "doresu" now. I swear it was like one piece "uwanpisu" before but maybe that was a different time. Anyways yeah if you want to say like green dress I know the word for green is midori in Japanese, but when you type it into like Google translate it just says "gurin doresu". what's red, let's say the red dress because I know that's "akai". OK, "akai doresu" is like red dress so that's what I thought the adjective comes first in Japanese for a descriptor I think that's another reason why I'm shy to speak certain things like Spanish where there is an attached gender because it's just this extra layer of things to remember.

Like the nightmare as a language learner in Japanese is kind of a tossup between Kanji because you have three writing systems in Japanese you have hiragana, katakana, and kanji. And kind of you start with hiragana when you're learning and then you need to learn the kanji because not only is it kind of shorthanded but it gives you context for what you're talking about because you end up with words that are pronounced the same but depending on how they're depicted with the kanji, it completely changes the aspect of what you're talking about.

You also kind of have like stress on certain words and letters like I know hospital is "byoin" and then hair salon is "byooin" I believe, might be flipped, but yea. So you don't really want to confuse those two especially if you want to go to the hospital and you end up saying something along the lines of please take me to the salon.

Another one is like kami. Kami, depending on the kanji, can mean god, it can mean hair, there's also like a third something that kami means that I don't remember off the top of my head so learning the kanji becomes important down the line.

Another kind of a nightmare to deal with in Japanese counters. So depending on what you're counting will depend on what little suffix you kind of attached on to the end of a number. So if you're counting years (old) you have the counter "sai" at the end if you're counting minutes you have "fun" and or "pun" depending on what number you're using it changes.

You also have like a counter for thin, flat objects; you have a counter for animate objects and inanimate objects, you have... there's a general counter that you can use for everything but if there's a more specific counter for what you were trying to count you should really use that. So that can get a bit much because there are a lot of them. I'm sure native speakers would forgive learners of the language for using something more general or the wrong counter, they would still probably get an idea of what you're talking about but that can be tough.

And then with my Spanish learning at least personally trying to keep straight the gender of all of the parts of the sentence that I'm putting together so I don't start mixing genders together and then yes I'm sure people can still understand me but it's a lot more confusing if you're not using the right things together.

Greek I find difficult because the grammar structure is very, loose you can pretty much order words almost anyway you like and it means the same thing so that gets real confusing real fast and then you have on top of it gender as well and multiple words for kind of the same thing.

Welsh, my most difficult thing I've run into so far is the spelling and pronouncing things. Like I've found the dd, when there's 2 d's together it makes kind of a th sound, and then double L's are kind of like... I don't even know how to pronounce it. Sometimes it's kind of like a "sh" dillad... Yea, it's kind of... unintelligible noises I don't know. And then the vowel combinations like au is like an "I" sound at the end. Greek has some of that too and I know Korean also has some of that as well depending on like the words around it can change the pronunciation of your target word. Like that word by itself will be pronounced one way and then in the context of a sentence depending on how it's paired it'll change the pronunciation of that word so, or, even letter combinations. Certain vowels next to consonants are pronounced one way and then if there's a different vowel it's pronounced completely differently or if you have like double consonants paired with certain vowels it'll change. It gets a little confusing sometimes. I find if I don't think about it too hard I'm usually better off but if I give it any concrete thought while I'm trying to translate things or speak, no way, it starts getting real confusing.

Anyways that was a podcast on languages because I'm a nerd and I like learning languages. And with that I will say goodbye and talk to you guys next week please see the description below for a transcription of the podcast. If you would like me to talk about a specific topic or if you have feedback please email the quiet hang out at Gmail.com and if you like what I'm doing please see my Patreon link down below and feel free to donate and support it. With that, I will see you guys next week. Goodbye.

View Details

Email me: TheQuietHangout@gmail.com

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheQuietHangoutPodcast

Music:

Title: Whosi

Author: sawsquarenoise

Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/sawsquarenoise/~/Whosi_1120

License: CC by Attribution

Transcription:

Hello and welcome to The Quiet Hangout.

I am your host Mel and today I’m just going to talk about a bunch of random stuff like how this last weekend I went to downtown LA and I went to the Game Grumps garage sale which was a time.

I think they opened at 10 and having done the convention circuits and things like that when I was younger I should have known better and shown up a lot earlier than 9:30, but I was kind of hoping that it wouldn’t be too bad like, OK it’s gonna take a while to go in we’re going to be in line for several hours but I did not expect the sheer number of people who would be there.

I guess people started lining up around something like 6:30, 7 o’clock in the morning and the line wrapped around the entire block of buildings because you had like the location of the garage sale, you had a couple shops and then you had an apartment complex and the line wrapped around twice. I was really impressed with how respectful everyone was.

Everyone was just in line, nicely waiting there weren’t any big kerfuffles that I could see.

But I ended up waiting in line, let’s see, I got there at 9:30 and I got into the venue at 1:30 I believe? So that’s four hours? In line?

And I was a bit disappointed because they cut the line for the meet and greet at noon so I missed it by like an hour and a half so I ended up with just this kind of consolation at a distance photo because the security guard was like “Oh, do you want to take a photo?” And I’m like “oh can I?” And she’s like “yea, from here.” And I’m like “Oh, ok.”

But it wasn’t a total waste, I did end up getting a signed poster, y’know I didn’t get to meet them, but they were selling pre-signed things and also a T-shirt so that wasn’t too bad I guess?

I mean it was bad but, whatever it was a Saturday. So unfortunately they had to close down everything for the next day because the city was like “Hey, this is a bigger turn out than we expected and you’re basically holding a parade without a permit, so we’re shutting you guys down.”

And I felt bad for the people who travelled a long way, though that to me kind of didn’t make sense because why would you travel and get a hotel room and things like that when it’s a non-ticketed event and you have no guarantee of meeting the people that you want to meet. Though, I will say, Suzy was the real MVP because she was out at her booth I believe the whole time. So that was very impressive on her part. I felt, I just felt so bad for them with how it all went and the reaction they got from the majority of people.

Like I get disappointment, I was disappointed too, but they tried everything they could and they thought they would be OK with the venue because they had held other things there before but I don’t know maybe I’m just a different kind of person who doesn’t mind that sort of thing, or I’ve been involved in this sort of thing for so long that I just, ok its just another thing. Was worth a try because all you can do is try.

I very well could have not gone at all and then it’s like “oh well, I didn’t even try to go so it’s fine didn’t end up disappointed or blah blah blah.”

But I did appreciate that they walked the line at one point and gave out water and sunscreen and things like that. Like at least in that sense they were pretty well prepared as well as they could be for a situation like that. so overall it was a Saturday I’m glad I got something rather than nothing but that was that. And then I spent the next day recovering, maybe even this whole week, because I am not used to standing out in the sun in 85° weather for four hours with a backpack on. That was not so fun but, self imposed.

I have been working on a lot of crafting this week in lieu of standing out in line in LA. I’ve been working on a decent amount of things this week, mostly my garden has needed a lot of work, my roses unfortunately have a nasty case of black spot so I’ve been fighting that. I’ve been having to treat them with Neem oil, and keeping them well hydrated in the heat and I now have to trim them back and get rid of the damage on the leaves and the canes that are affected. So I’m hoping I can fight that back but we’ll see. It’s only one out of the three bushes that is really infected but we’ll see how it goes.

I have one tomato plant it’s gotten so monstrous that it’s taken over the entire raised bed that it’s in and has caused so much shade to go over the cucumbers that are underneath it that I’m unsure how well the cucumbers are doing because I have to dig through like 15 layers of tomato to get to them but at least I’m getting a fair amount of tomatoes to eat constantly probably have to make something like tomato jam or something like that because I have so many tomatoes.

I did make preserves last week my kumquat tree finally was to a point where it’s like ok I have to pick the kumquats otherwise they’re just going to rot on the tree. And I finally got around to that so I have some marmalade in the fridge from so much so much kumquat and I’ve been harvesting brussel sprouts constantly and having those, eggplant the garden is just kind of going nuts like I did not expect it to be this prosperous but I’m glad to have a little cottage garden because it means I can be somewhat self-sufficient or at least like my grocery bill goes down because I’m not buying fruit and veg all the time more often than not I have quite a bit at home that I have to eat. Peppers like mad, the strawberries have tapered off a little bit but I’m sure I’ll get a second wave of strawberries coming in probably by August but the strawberries might be done for the season. I had a huge amount of them, multiple pounds of strawberries from the yard and then a good half pound of blueberries from the yard as well.

I am waiting for, I have a Peach tree, and I’m waiting for the peaches to ripen because there are a bunch of peaches on the tree, but they’re not quite there yet and I don’t know if that’s because they take a long time or if its from not enough light or what have you just because like my peach tree, when I moved into the house, it was cut back so far that I didn’t think it survived. It was just a stump pretty much and it has grown back in such a way that it is now more like a peach bush rather than a peach tree it’s like having the entire tree top but on the ground.

So it’s kind of weird I have been consistently picking grasshoppers out of the tree like hey please stop eating my tree. so yeah, gardening, it’s fun.

I’ve also been working on several sewing projects I have a chiton that I’m working on and that’s basically like a Greek tunic kind of like a, I mean that’s the literal translation of it is tunic, but it’s like ancient Greek clothing and I just appreciate it because it’s very light and flowy which is very comfortable in the summer months having fabric that billows around you and keeps you covered but also keeps air circulation because there’s nothing more miserable in the summer then wearing close fitting clothing or tight fitting clothing and just boiling alive.

I am fairly certain that August/September in that range is going to be pretty miserable. It’s cool right now, it’s the beginning of July but I am definitely waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s going to get hot is last year and prior years are any indicator of how the later summer months go.

I’ve also been sewing some drawers, I have a couple skirts that need waistbands put on I’ve just not finished most of my work on these things mostly because I don’t want to run the iron because I am, I guess lazy is one and the other is that the iron is hot and I don’t like dealing with hot. But I’ll get around to it and I’ll have more clothes which is a good thing I guess, a passable thing as long as they get me through summer honestly.

Been spending a fair amount of time writing as well but I’ve kind of hit a wall because I’m having a hard time making the words go like I have gotten about 3500 words written on this fan fiction that I’m working on and I’m vacillating between: “oh I just want this to be over” and “how do I want this to end” because that will determine how many more words I have to put down on paper.

I’m, I’m thinking it’s gonna be probably at least a thousand more words, maybe 2000 more words depending on the direction I go and then I have to go back and do a reread and edit because I can almost guarantee that between coming and going I’ve messed up the tenses or used character names too frequently rather than just not using their names every other word? I don’t know, to be seen I still have to work on that.

Maybe I’ll share some of it another week or when it’s done or something like that but as it is now that’s just what it is.

Overall it’s really just been kind of a quiet week, been focusing a lot on crafting obviously and gardening, but also on cat introductions.

We are now to a point of having the door open without everyone freaking out quite as hard. Pia is still having a hard time dealing with the other cats being around so she’ll come up to the gate where the other two cats are sitting and then she’ll freak out, hiss, and run away. Which just makes me laugh because it’s like, you saw that they were there, you decided to come up to the gate and then you decided you didn’t like it so you hissed at them and then ran and hid. OK I don’t know that you quite know what you’re trying to do cat, but at least there is no growling there’s no overt aggression there’s no, any of that.

They were actually kind of playing yesterday. Smudge and Noodle were on one side of the gate, and Pia was hiding behind the door on the other side the gate and she would pop out and then run away and the other two were like “Oh my god, what’s going on?” So they were kind of playing? Kind of getting along?

We didn’t have too many instances of freaking out so I’m hopeful. It’s been a month since we got Pia, a little over a month. So I’m thinking it’ll probably take about three months to get her fully integrated to where we can take the gates down and let her wander the house and be with the other two cats cause I’m just nervous at this point that it’ll end up in a fight and I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I know there’s been a little bit of misplaced aggression that I’ve had to work on with Noodle because sometimes she’ll get all wound up and then take it out on Smudge and beat the ever loving tar out of Smudge so that’s one thing we’ve had to work on with her. Honestly it’s been a pretty quiet and boring week.

A lot of this week I spent at home just because they were doing more work on my street and it was closed so I couldn’t actually leave the house and go do anything. So I’ll probably call it a short one for this week next week, I’ll be talking about something I’m sure. With that I am going to go get a little something to nibble on and I will see you guys next week.

Thank you for joining me on this podcast, if you would like to support me, I have a Patreon linked below.

Also feel free to email at the quiet hang out at Gmail dot com if you have anything you would like me to discuss on the podcast, any topics and there is also a transcription available down below. And with that, I will see you guys next week. Bye Bye

View Details

Email me: TheQuietHangout@gmail.com

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheQuietHangoutPodcast

Music:

Title: Whosi

Author: sawsquarenoise

Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/sawsquarenoise/~/Whosi_1120

License: CC by Attribution

Transcription:

Hello and welcome to The Quiet Hangout. I am your host Mel, and this is just a new podcast for me to ramble into the voice about things I enjoy, such as fandom culture and things I’m reading or watching or have interest in.

I know I personally, when I listen to a podcast, really enjoy just having kind of the background ambient noise. It’s like having a friend sit with you while you’re doing other tasks to kind of help keep you engaged or your mind focused.

I know that’s something I definitely need when Im working on things. So welcome to the inaugural podcast. Apologies for the fact that there is constant beeping in the back of the podcast this time. They’re doing construction on my street and unfortunately even with closing the windows that beep is still quite pervasive in the background.

Today I’m just going to talk about random things that Ive been doing recently such as falling down a very dark hole back into fandom, which I haven’t really engaged with in the last maybe year? Having been too busy, but with the release of Good Omens on Amazon I have fallen head first back into everything and its amazing seeing a community start up again throughout all of these things.

Like the original Good Omens book came out in the 90s and I read it when I was younger but it had been a long time and then when I saw it released on Amazon and everyone just losing their collective minds over it I was so excited so I dove in and binge watched the entire thing.

Binge watched it a second time, and then I went and got the book from the library so that I could read it again.

Reread it which I hadn’t done in so long, so there were so many things that I didn’t quite remember but it was really nice kind of catching up.

It was like meeting an old friend again. Granted there are some things in the book that at this point Im like “oh, that’s a bit problematic” you can tell this book was written in the 90s but besides that its just so nice to see a community flooding and coming together to support something that’s been out so long and now there’s so much out there.

I don’t know if anyone out there has been in a very small or inactive fandom but you do reach a point where there is nothing to read anymore because you’ve read everything and then its like, ”ok now do I create what do I do oh no I don’t have the support of a large community dear lord what is going on” and to see it rise from the ashes after 30 years, -ish, its amazing and Ive been doing nothing but reading fan fiction and consuming fan art and just thoroughly having a field day.

Ive been writing again, Ive been drawing again It really helped to serve to kick start me back into really enjoying what I love doing which is creating, hence here I am creating a podcast which is something I’ve always wanted to do but really never had the wherewithal or like what do I do?

What do I talk about? and then it kind of came to me well what do you enjoy listening to?

Well I just enjoy listening to people talk. If someone has the right tone of voice I am all for it. They could be reading the phone book for all I care. It is just something to help keep my brain engaged while Im working on other things or on long drives just some sort of background color to the space. So I finally decided like ok lets just dive right in enjoy ourselves even if no one listens at this point its just something for me to enjoy doing and as a creative outlet basically this just gives me a space to be able to scream about things I enjoy and talk about them constantly because I don’t often have people around me who either engage in the same things I do or are probably quite tired of hearing me talk about it.

So I suppose this is more like an audiological journal or record of things I enjoy. Something I can go back to and listen so even if no one else joins me on this journey I figure I’ll go on it anyways.

So Good Omens really rekindled my absolute love of David Tennant and Michael Sheen because I was very into watching David Tennant in Doctor Who and then, y’know, consumed all of his other work that I could get my little mitts on at the time such as his roles in Shakespearian plays that were recorded and posted to the internet, interviews things like that.

And then Michael Sheen I dearly loved since seeing him in Wilde when I was in college. It was required watching for one of my literature courses I believe and I really enjoyed him in that. I dabbled in watching Masters of Sex when it originally was airing and now I’ve gone back and have started watching that again and have just been binge watching episode upon episode.

I’m figuring after I finish binging through the rest of Masters of Sex I will probably go back and watch Good Omens again.

It also rekindled my love of just sitting down with a book and reading and so after finishing reading the Good Omens book, I went back to the library and checked out a plethora of Discworld books by Terry Pratchett and also picking up, finally, a copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman and I have just been reading my little socks off.

Ive been wanting to read American Gods since I saw the series I watched it the first season of it on a flight from England several years ago. I just, it was a long flight so I binged the entire first season because it was on the in airline entertainment system and I could not sleep on that flight. I should have but I did not. Instead I watched all of American Gods and then I recently had access to being able to watch season two so I watched that as well and then the library was out of the book and the reason I haven’t purchased the book for myself is there is no more room in my home library at the moment for more books.

I have an entire room of books but I need more shelving because my garage is also filled with boxes of books that need to be shelved.

I may have a problem.

But most of the books in my library are my collectables that need to be in a more controlled environment than sitting in a garage for the summer months or the winter months when its cold. I have them well sealed but, y’know, just in case. Don’t want bugs getting into them and things like that.

So I do have to start reading because it was just yesterday I picked up American Gods and I’ll be diving into that probably tonight but its also splitting my time.

I want to be doing everything all at once. Which means that I want to be watching Masters of Sex, and I want to be reading books, and I want to be doing my other various hobbies such as drawing or writing or sewing or all of these things. So I always wish, its like can’t I just do 15 things at once and really manage my time down but that does not work out. That is probably from ADHD brain and just grabby hands at all the things and then ultimately doing none of it. I end up sitting on the couch and scrolling through social media and doing very little when it comes to actually creating.

When I finally do sit down and create it is as if the stars and the heavens have aligned to allow me to sit down and focus long enough to do something. Usually after a few coffees or a large amount of caffeine intake that kind of helps bring my brain into focus.

I will probably have to go through and edit this podcast heavily to put things in a logical order and make sense of things because I have a tendency to kind of bip around topics if I don’t have one focus thing I’m talking about. And even when I do have one focus thing I’m talking about I have a tendency to circle back to things multiple times as I’m sure you’ll see throughout this whole process and me just rambling about things I like.

Hopefully in the future if anyone does choose to listen to this I’ll have submitted topics from listeners to kind of focus myself on and speak about. I do have an email for this podcast listed down in the description that you can contact so that I can answer things and maybe have like a listeners corner where I focus on things or if there’s enough response for a particular topic then perhaps I’ll focus on a particular topic.

Research is kind of one of my big things. I enjoy looking into things and learning about new things I hyper focus on things for about a month and learn everything there is to learn or as much as my little brain can handle and then off I go to the next thing and then circle back years later. Probably. Or at the very least months later.

So with that let’s move on to music.

So I have recently been listening to quite a few broadway soundtracks because the Tony’s happened a few weeks ago here and I have absolutely fallen in love with Beetlejuice the musical. The musical score in that is just amazing. I have just thoroughly enjoyed the dynamics of it because you can really hear when you’re listening to it an integration of the music that was originally in the 90s kid’s show that I watched religiously as well as music from the movie.

I really wonder and I have to look this up if they worked with or consulted Danny Elfman for any of this since he did have a large hand in putting together the score for the movie. But it is so good and I really have enjoyed the cast recordings.

I’ve also been listening a lot to the Hadestown soundtrack. I am a big fan of Reeve Carney. Ive seen him perform live and its just amazing I love his music and I’ve also very much enjoyed starting to engage with the other things he’s done. I first saw him as Dorian Grey in Penny Dreadful forever ago and then when I realized he had been in Spiderman Turn Out the Dark.

Is that the name of that one?

Spiderman Turn Out the Dark?

The Spiderman Broadway musical.

And then I started listening to his music that he records and puts out himself. He’s on my Spotify loved it went and saw him live down in downtown and it was a magical night. Tiny little venue, held maybe 50 people, and it was like hanging out with a friend and just having a jam session which I haven’t done since I was a teenager.

But it was amazing and I just it

it was a bad time in the fact of I got home at like 3 in the morning and had work the next day but it was a wonderful time as in it was a magical experience just going and seeing and doing and I would love to do that again. Unfortunately he’s now in New York for a while due to Hadestown but maybe either Hadestown will tour and come out to the west coast or maybe one day Ill be able to get out to the east coast while its still on Broadway who knows the future will certainly show what holds for that.

What else should I scream about? I did recently go and see Detective Pikachu. I really enjoyed that for the most part. I’ve been a Pokemon fan since I was a child in the 90s. I remember when they first came out and I remember going to see the first big Pokemon movie in theaters which was absolutely insane. It was such a big deal, my mother took me and my younger sibling out of school to go see that on the day it released.

Which was back in I think, 2001?

Maybe?

2000?

It was it was a while ago I was

Or was there one before that?

I swear I was still in elementary school when I went and saw it but 2001 would have put me squarely into nearly going into high school so maybe it was longer ago than I’m thinking, but I did really enjoy Ryan Reynold’s Pikachu. I knew I would, he pretty much carried that movie otherwise I don’t know that it would have held much for me. I just really wanted to see Ryan Reynold’s as pikachu.

It was a very typical Pokemon storyline of family and triumph and unintelligible muttering.

So that was good, I also went and saw Rocketman in theaters which was an amazing story. I do enjoy Elton John and his music and its so nice to see a bioptic that ends happily especially because I know its going to end happily. Whereas when I went and saw Bohemian Rhapsody I was just a mess in the theater. I was crying very hard because even though I knew how it was going to end and even though I knew Freddie ultimately died of AIDs it just touched me in a way that I just was bawling my eyes out.

Not one of my finer moments.

I was very glad that the theater was dark and I could kind of compose myself before leaving. Definitely tend to watch things like that in the privacy of my own home.

Apologies if there’s any little odd noises in the background my cats like to hang out with me while I’m doing things in my craft and creativity room I guess you would call it? They’re both sleeping their little kitty beds back behind me which may or may not be making noises I can’t quite tell. I’m sure I’ll hear on the listen back. I know neither of them have been speaking much they do that quite a bit and my 3rd cat lives in the library at the moment because we’re still working on introducing her to the other 2. But she’s quite a talker as well.

But that’s on the other side of the house so yes, if you hear any strange noises that I haven’t edited out that would be the cats.

Speaking of the 3 cats, one is named Noodle, one named Smudge, and one named Pia. And they’re all girls and they’re all little stinkers.

I had to go through and baby gate off my closet because Noodle has decided that she desperately wants in the closet all of the time and it has sliding mirrored doors and she has figured out how to go through and open the sliding mirror door and she has managed to destroy one dress because she caught it with her claws and then freaked out and pulled back really hard and tore a hole in the bottom of it which was great. So last night when she was trying to get into the closet I baby gated off the closet because I was just tired of it and then she climbed on top of the baby gate and then fell over. She was fine but oh my goodness Noodle you absolute ridiculous little creature. I love her, she is my fuzzy child, but my goodness its like having a toddler who is awake all night and decides to cause chaos and mayhem wherever she chooses to go.

With that, I think I will be wrapping up this weeks podcast. For those who would like it there is a transcript in the description down below that you can read. I know I personally have some audio processing issues myself so having a transcript is definitely helpful.

Especially for anyone who may need it who is hard of hearing or perhaps has the same sort of audio processing issues as I do.

I know I personally tend to slur my words together, I blame the California accent for that one, but that will be available in the links down below. Additionally, if you would like to support me and making this podcast so that I can do it better, do it longer then please feel free to donate to my Patreon, link also down below in the description. And with that I will let you guys go from this inaugural podcast. I know it was a bit random a bit unfocused, a bit rambly. I promise next time I will have a topic to focus on and if you would like me to cover a particular topic please email the quiet hangout at gmail dot com, all one word, I know it run together and looks quite like nothing but that’s alright.

And with that I will see you guys next week.

View Details

Transcription:

Hello and welcome to The Quiet Hangout Podcast. I'm your host Mel and this is a podcast for people who want to listen to someone ramble about what they enjoy for background noise. From fandom to television and music, maybe something interesting I found on the internet that day or anecdotes from my life, I hope you'll come along for an audiological journaling experience. This will be a weekly podcast chronicling my thoughts and just a place for me to yell about my passions and if you like, somewhere for you to share your passions too.

Music:

Title: Whosi

Author: sawsquarenoise 

Source: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/sawsquarenoise/~/Whosi_1120 

License: CC by Attribution