You know what? Saturnalia sucks. Screw Saturnalia. Saturnalia can go suck a big, fat, menthol and eucalyptus-flavored lozenge while it cools down the sore throat it got from making out with a tipsy coworker.
I don’t even know what being tipsy has to do with the symptoms.
I’ve had it with Saturnalia. I don’t even want to talk about Saturnalia. I don’t want to hear the word “Saturnalia” for the rest of my…at least for the rest of this year and almost all of next year. From now on, I’m not even going to the word “Saturnalia”; I officially retire this word.
You know what bugs me the most about holidays like Saturnalia? The commercialization. Saturnalia’s supposed to be about loving your family, kindness, socially endorsed gluttony and socially acceptable alcoholism. It’s supposed to be about Saturn.
Instead, all you have is people hawking their wares on the Internet. All these multicultural people who come into our country and try to sell us stuff with their sesquipedalian names and funny languages and smelly food and curly hair and ironic, rambling blog posts and their…well, especially with the blog posts.
They don’t even speak proper English. Well I’ve had it, people. Enough is enough. It’s time to stand up. It’s time to take back the holiday season.
So screw Saturnalia and everyone who bought anything on Saturnalia. You know all those people who joined AJATT Plus before Saturnalia? I don’t even like them. Screw ’em. I don’t even want to talk to them. As far as I’m concerned, they can crawl on back to where the Saturnalia don’t shine. 1
That’s right, I said it. There’s a new holiday in town. And its name is Kwanzaa. Yes, Kwanzaa. The true holiday of my ancestors. Its rich, ancient traditions passed down lovingly from generation to generation since the very dawn of 1967. Kwanzaa is a holiday’s holiday. A holiday unsullied by crass commercialism and electronic this and Japanese that. Kwanzaa is our holiday.
And now Kwanzaa is your holiday, too. Because this Kwanzaa, I, through my magical Kwanzaa powers 2, we here at AJATT Plus have take it upon ourselves to make you a miraculous offer you can’t kataa (← that’s Swahili for “refuse”…don’t hate me because I’m multilingual).
Hold on, I lost my train of thought in the fog of BS…I think there was supposed to a be a point to this whole post. Um…Crap…
Yes! Kwanzaa! Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa’s great. And Kwanzaa’s here. And Kwanzaa is now. That’s why, my dear little chillens, from today until Kwazaa festivities reach fever pitch and peter out into obscurity on the thirty-first day of December, you can get yourself a Free AJATT Plus Kifunguo Cha Dhahabu Yenye Kwanzaa Ya Uncommercialized Righteousness / AJATT Plus Golden Kwanzaa Key of Uncommercialized Righteousness.
That’s A Long Name. What’s In It For Me?
The AJATT Plus Kifunguo Cha Dhahabu Yenye Kwanzaa Ya Uncommercialized Righteousness gives you:
- 50% Off all digital products in the AJATT Store, as well as
50% Off John Fotheringham‘s brand, spanking new comprehensive guide: Master Japanese: Self-Guided Immersion for the Passionate Language Learner, and
50% Off Benny the Irish Polyglot‘s Language Hacking Guide: LHG
Yes, 50% off. Half plice. Keep your money!…50% of it. I don’t want it sullying Kwanzaa!
These discounts are not available anywhere else in the world. Scour the Internets, crawl through the tubes, you won’t find anything like this elsewhere. John and Benny don’t just wake up in the morning and give you half price. To my knowledge, they have never done anything on this scale, and they’re unlikely to ever do it again: they’re not fans of discounting. In fact, Benny’s prices are going up next year.
Truth be told, I mean, I don’t want to alarm you, but I actually had to kidnap Jon and Benny’s children to make this discount happen. That’s how tough a negotiator I am for you. That’s how much I care about keeping Kwanzaa pure for you. Let the kids take one for the team — Team You.
You’ll note that both John and Benny’s respective guides feature separate, exclusive interviews with me 😉 . These two interviews were done specifically for each guide, and can’t be found anywhere else. Exclamation mark.
Unclean! Why would AJATT do a tie-in with other people’s stuff? Isn’t AJATT the Supreme Truth?
Pragma over dogma. In language learning, there is no set of ideas so perfect that it can’t benefit from another set of ideas. Find out more here.
What Do I Have To Do To Get A AJATT Plus Kifunguo Cha Dhahabu Yenye Kwanzaa Ya Uncommercialized Righteousness?
All you have to do to get your AJATT Plus Kifunguo Cha Dhahabu Yenye Kwanzaa Ya Uncommercialized Righteousness is:
- Be yourself. You’re good enough. You’re not like those Saturnalia punks.
- Join AJATT Plus by day’s end on December 31 — the last day of Kwanzaa.
- Start saying “an” instead of “a” when the following word starts with vowel sound. That’s an good lifelong habit to cultivate right there.
But wait, right now you’re probably thinking: “hey, I want me some of that AJATT Plus Keefoo….Kifuu…Kifunguo Cha Dhahabu Yenye Kwanzaa Ya Uncommercialized Righteousness, but what is AJATT Plus?”
I’m offended that you would even ask that. Get with the times, homeslice! You do realize you’re like the only person in the world who doesn’t know what AJATT Plus is, right? But you know what? Just to be nice, I’m going to explain it one more time.
What is AJATT Plus, really?
AJATT Plus is happiness, refined to illegally high concentrations and then either injected into your bloodstream or sucked slowly as soothing, peppermint-flavored lozenge. So, yes, AJATT Plus is AJATT on steroids. It’s got:
- Stuff
- TOLFITWTAHYIAWPAANTY: The Only Language Forum In The World That Actually Helps You Immerse And Where People Are Actually Nice To You. We call it “panty” for short.
- The forum also features a tradespace, where you can buy/sell/trade/give away media
- AJATT Tactical articles: detailed, ground-level how-to information on immersion and SRS techniques
- Original Japanese Translations of Original AJATT articles. Lots of originality.
- Real life information — real Japanese email, AJATT.talk (raw recordings of real Japanese situations), the How To Get Into The Japanese Translation Industry series
- And then, like…other stuff
- And Cetera!
The AJATT Plus Kifunguo Cha Dhahabu Yenye Kwanzaa Ya Uncommercialized Righteousness. I want you to have it. And you can. Let me give it to you. Join AJATT Plus today. No, scratch that. Don’t join today. Take tonight to think and read more about it. Then join. And let me give you your golden key.
It begins now. It ends violently and abruptly on Dec 31. You’ve still got a couple of days. Give it a think or two.
Let’s take Kwanzaa back together, people. Let’s reclaim Kwanzaa from the jaws of commercialism. Join the fight. Join AJATT Plus.
Catch you on the Plus side,
Khatz
Annual subscription
$95.85
(26¢ per day = $7.99/month)
Click here to find out more about AJATT Plus before you subscribe.
Read the first impressions of a recent new member (Mikotoneko) here.
Six-monthly subscription
$59.95
(33¢ per day = $9.99/month)
Click here to find out more about AJATT Plus before you subscribe.
Read the first impressions of a recent new member (Mikotoneko) here.
Monthly subscription
$15.95
(53¢ per day)
Click here to find out more about AJATT Plus before you subscribe.
Read the first impressions of a recent new member (Mikotoneko) here.
PS: If you’re not sure about whether or not to join AJATT Plus…join anyway. Try it out. You can always get a refund (check out The Amazing AJATT Fo’ Shizzle 100% Refund Guarantee).
PPS: If you’re still not sure enough to even try…don’t. I mean, it’s good, but not “spend time worrying about it” good 😀 . All us hundreds of of AJATT Plusers will just have to enjoy ourselves without you.
PPPS: Seriously, if you’re not sure, don’t join. My aim is not to try to get you to do something you don’t want to do; that’s not what this is about; that’s not how I roll.
P4S: OK, that’s a lie — that is how I roll. That’s precisely how I roll. If you were to draw a map and label it “How Khatz Rolls: A Map”, you would inevitably come to the above conclusion.
Notes:
- Guys…guys…you know I didn’t mean that, right? No…I…I was trying to be funny; I thought it would just be…I’m sorry. Stay. Please? I cyare about yew, mmm kay? ↩
- You didn’t even know I had Kwanzaa powers, did you? I don’t like to talk about it much; it’s not the kind of thing I’d, say, tell as a flippant joke on my website. Anyway, the point is…my Kwanzaa powers are really special and not fake at all ↩
Hi Khatzumoto
Why would I need “John Fotheringham‘s brand, spanking new comprehensive guide: Master Japanese: Self-Guided Immersion for the Passionate Language Learner” – when I’ve got AJATT?
…….it does sound good though……
Not to burn either of these guys (John or Benny) down, but why would you promote anything other than your own method?
As a matter of fact: Benny’s method doesn’t line up with your method, or any input-focused method for that matter. If you’re against earning some money at the cost of a method, you shouldn’t promote stuff you don’t truly believe in.
Or your method has changed, that’s also possible. Just saying you should stay true to AJATT…
Khatzumoto is one of the people I interviewed in the Language Hacking Guide and he’ll tell you that it was almost an entire hour of pure agreement. How do you think that’s possible from people who “don’t truly believe” in the other’s methodology to spend an entire hour just agreeing with one another??
I promote this site all the time to readers who I know it would help and Khatzumoto here is clearly happy for his readers to check out the Language Hacking Guide. When you are stuck in this one magic solution mindset and stop focusing on having the right APPROACH and MENTALITY then you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Khatz isn’t about promoting “only” his method. You’ll find if you read some of his posts and tweets that he says that he doesn’t claim that his “method” is the do-all-end-all, and neither do I. But both of us do have ways of pointing people in the right direction.
The fact that you don’t see the vast amount we talk about that is exactly the same shows you simply are not familiar with one or both enough! If you see me as nothing but “anti input” after all our endless discussions, I might just have to give up arguing with you entirely. I don’t like talking to walls 😉
If I read both of your blogs, and especially Khatz’s old posts, I see him bash many of the things you promote. So why the sudden change, just to make some money? I’m not saying it is just to make money, but it at least looks like it.
I’d be happy check out your guide and the supposed agreement you have with Khatzumoto, but I don’t have the money to buy one. In other words: I can’t comment on the content of your guide.
Having said that, the content of your blogs is entirely different. I don’t believe in one magic method, but Khatz’s method more or less forbids early output, whereas you encourage people to produce early. Where’s the agreement in that? Also, you don’t believe in flashcards, Khatz does. You think studying grammar is ok, Khatz has said in more than one occasion that you shouldn’t even think about studying grammar.
About talking to a wall: because we disagree and because I stick to my method (and you stick to your method), doesn’t mean I’m like a brick wall. In that case the same could be said of you, but you don’t hear me say you don’t listen, even if I might think that…
If all I blogged about was “output good, input bad, ug. Where food?” then I wouldn’t have a blog. Same with Khatz. We talk about a lot, so it’s quite a sweeping statement to say our blogs are “entirely different”!! I’m sorry Ramses, but you are looking at our blogs with tainted vision. Seeing only one small aspect and focusing on that to make our “methods” as polar opposites.
Please read beyond your input gospel and you’ll see quite a bit more to both of our sites…
You’ve proven how little attention you pay to my site when you say I don’t believe in flashcards. I wrote a whole post about flashcards!!! This is why I feel like calling you Mr. Brick Wall. Call I shorten it to Mr. BW for short?
Vaya, ver a dos bloggers que admiro mucho discutir de esta manera… me entristeció. No les miento, me sentí triste al leer esto 🙁
Bien, yo en lo personal estoy de acuerdo con Benny. Es decir sí, es cierto que Khatz dice que “poder hablar es algo que ocurrirá naturalmente una vez se haya dado suficiente ‘input'”, mientras que Benny dice “es mejor practicar tu ‘speaking’ desde el primer día y encontrar una forma de recibir retroalimentación constante sobre lo que hablas para poder corregirlo rápido y así mejorar rapidamente” (si no me equivoco… estoy en lo correcto Benny?? :().
Si, ambos métodos tienen sus diferencias bien marcadas… y eso que significa? Que cuando tomas ambos métodos, experimentas cosas de ambos, te quedas con lo que más te sirve o te gusta, y desechas lo que no va contigo, entonces creas un método no solo más poderoso que los originales, sino que este nuevo método es perfecto para tí, ya que TU lo forjaste con lo que considerabas mejor de ambos métodos originales.
Es tal cual como dice Khatz: “quédate con una sola fuente de información y te estarás sometiendo a tiranía de información!” y “combina las diferentes perspectivas de dos libros sobre un mismo tema, y multiplicarás su poder!”. Mientras más diversas sean las fuentes de información que uno consulte, más perspectivas y herramientas uno puede tener.
Definitivamente no hay un único-método-mágico, pero uno definitivamente SI debe aferrarse a lo-que-funciona-para-UNO (como dice Ramses)! Hay que tener la mente abierta para decir “hey, vamos a leer esta guía que parece recomendar cosas diferentes a lo que yo de por sí hago”, pero también tener la mente bien cerrada en el sentido de “voy a experimentar con esta herramienta o método, y si definitivamente no funciona conmigo o no se me hace divertido queda AFUERA Y PUNTO!”
*sigh* I wish you guys could read this… and become friends again! xD
All these articles pimping sales are telling me Khatzumoto really needs the cash.
I was gonna donate, but now AJATT+ looks more likely. This website has really inspired me in my studies, and I’ve got the cash, so I’ll probably take Khatzumoto up on this offer. My only concern is all the time I spend on this website instead of studying!
Lol, a interestingly worded post. Good luck, Khatz. Christmas was expensive for me too! An beer for all! Merry Christmas!