I think this should be free to all TextFugu forever members. I mean WTF? TextFugu isn’t complete and now they are putting out a book… One thing at the time please – remember your promises of 1 lesson a week? Yeah…

Me too.

Maybe koichi has been over-milked and his creative juices have run dry. Maybe we should be focussing on how we can continue to milk koichi whilst leaving enough juice so we can milk him later.

We could also think about how we could increase koichi’s juiciness and juice creation so we could milk him more often.

I know I’m super lousy at doing anything, so I guess maybe other people sometimes have problems. So how about trying to inspire koichi.

I can appreciate when you pay for something you expect to get it, it would be nice if you could carve a slot in koichi’s head and plop in a coin and he writes stuff. But in reality he’s a meat bag with complex chemical interactions in his brain that needs to be stroked occasionally to be stimulated.

Here’s a story about a boy, his name is Ichigo. (Who later grew up to become an astronaut). Before then however he worked in a lot of the worst jobs ever. One of his jobs was as phone support, the worst part of the job was his miserable co-workers who bitched and complained all day, they would bitch and complain saying things like, the office is too hot, its too cold, there isn’t enough oxygen in here. The bosses would listen and then do nothing because they were idiots, and the office building was shit, and seriously not enough oxygen WTF?. What a bunch of whiners thought the bosses. Anyway one day a new boss rode into town, he was super awesome and told people to just speak to him if they had any problems, but he also said I don’t wanna hear no jibba jabba you hear, you got a problem sure tell me about it but tell me how to solve it.

Naturally everyone ignores this because he’s a boss, seriously like i’m going to just walk your your office and talk to you, ha ha ha.

Until one day Ichigo is given a task, and he can’t complete it because something is wrong, and the people who usually deal with it are no help, the bosses of them are no help, and the further he goes up the more people can’t help, despite this being a problem that’s been around for over 6 months. But Ichigo has no choice he has to sort this shit out, or he gets fired, and he feel kinda like doing a good job is important.

So he thinks and he writes a long email to the new boss, it outlined the problem, the steps taken to resolve it, the problems in trying to resolve it that way, and it outlined solutions, and reasons why it should be done.

Ichigo fires off this email.

Anyway the long and short of it was within a week the issue was sorted, new tools were created to deal with this problem so it wouldn’t be a problem in the future, and also these tools solved other issues, and could be extended. Ichigo was thanked by the super big kahuna boss and the other super big kahuna boss who owned a baseball team, and the new boss in town guy too.

For once Ichigo felt that he could make a difference, that he could do some good work.

The moral of the story is that, bitching and complaining is pointless, it doesn’t help anyone. If I was someone who wrote an online text book for Japanese, it wouldn’t motivate me.

On the other hand someone who points out the problem, but then tells me what is needed to improve, what is required, gives me ideas, solutions and inspiration. Shows me that there are people who care more than just getting their monies worth, it would make me feel that maybe I’m wrong, maybe the world isn’t just a figment of my deranged godly imagination. Maybe one day I’ll get a hug, maybe from a girl, and I’d be all, hell yeah I’m going to write a lesson for TextFUGU.

Doing other projects can be a way for koichi to inspire himself, maybe he feels he’s not getting the inspiration to create more text fugu and so is exploring to find new inspirations and ideas.

Maybe its not working well, maybe its spreading his juices around even as it creates more. What can you do?

You need to stimulate the koichi, make him turn his juices towards textfugu, give him more reward for his work there, instead of making it a chore, make it a pleasure.

How to do this?

Well you could think about whats gone before whats coming now, and think up ideas for new lessons, look for new ways to learn stuff, and maybe create your own lessons for others, email them to koichi, post in the forums. It’ll help you, it’ll help the k-man, and others.

You could think “its work, and thats not why I pay for textfugu.”

Thats the way we would like things to work, aka coin slot in koichi’s head, but there is the way things actually work, meatbags need hugs and food and obscene things whispered into their ears at in-appropriate moments.

You could hope things will start to work the way we would like, but hope is the last bastion of the pathetic, nothing changes on its own, you can wait for someone else to change things (good luck, hope you’re patient), or you need to change things yourself.

So you, yes you, need to think about what you want, what you need what the next lesson is, hell write a review of the last chapter or something, give some good feedback and ideas, make him feel engaged with his audience, make him feel motivated and inspired to do text fugu and when his juices start to run freely, when he’s so stimulated that they won’t stop and they runneth over, the world will drown in his juices.

Alternatively you could just say something like, sometimes late at night I wake up and wish I could nibble on his nipples. That might make him smile, or he might grimace but he’s secretly smiling inside. And sometimes making someone smile is all it takes. (Best to do both though, sometimes you can’t over beat the horse.)

A pictar of koichi driving a nissan glide.

Dear Andrew

あなたの書き込みがきっと深い意味があるのでしょう。ただ、長すぎるので、読まないことにしました。全く後悔していません。

Sounds like you guys are combining to unrelated things into one argument. The TextFugu membership when you sign up doesn’t mention anything about receiving anything else beyond what’s listed on the textfugu site itself.

If it was stated in the membership that you would receive stuff like e-books, then that would be a fair complaint. However, I don’t think it applies here. :)