IguanaScales

en^us

This user is a native speaker of (American) English.

es-1	Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español.

...But Eager to Learn:

This native English speaker is very motivated to learn other languages through wiki participation.

ja++	この英語話者は日本語を意欲満々ウィキで習いたがっています。.

de++

~~Diese englischer mutterspracher wird sehr angeregt, Deutsch durch Teilnahme in wiki zu lernen.~~ < -- schlecht deutsch!!!

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IguanaScales is my wikihandle...

A/K/A

138.88.161.142 (before I got this account)

The (Very Few) Pages I Have Helped Rehabilitate from Stubdom

( ...or at least elevate from Stubdom to Stubplusdom )

Half Japanese, the lovable bedroom band

Topiary — mainly because I like hedge mazes and Edward Scissorhands and topiary is kind of fun (if sort of tacky)

Photorealism — actually, I kind of created the first bona fide version of this page, since the existing page was not about the art movement but about (surprise) CGI

(BTW, I'm not a huge Photorealism fan or anything, but it definitely deserved a better entry than the original.)

Elizabeth Glaser — I fleshed this entry out a bit so I don't think it can be called a stub anymore. But any Wikipedian is free to disagree and re-label it a stub if they want.

Pages (Stubs) I've Started

Ways I'd Like to Contribute to Wikipedia

I'd be willing to make graphics/images that I find worthwhile or useful.

I could research topics of interest in more "conventional" sources.

(I live in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and I'm lucky to have ready access to the Library of Congress and the National Archives, among other venerable fonts of knowledge).)

I can be a nit-picky spell-checker and/or grammar cop since that's an itch that I have to scratch sometimes. Of course, some days I feel I could use a refresher course myself. But The Elements of Style is never far from my computer, for sure.

Interests and Miscellany

learning languages (as a person who has a bit trouble with language acquisition — I'm far better at formal and written language than colloquial and oral language acquisition)

I am ethnically half-Japanese but I was not taught Japanese as a child and I have barely a rudimentary grasp of it. Hence, I am very motivated to learn it since it is a part of my heritage and someday I would like to be able to converse with my maternal relatives in their native tongue. (If you read the section above you know that I also like the band Half Japanese but that's just a coincidence, I swear.)

translating articles from other languages of interest into English (a good exercise in learning a language in formal terms)

etymology — especially cross-pollination of words between cultures/subcultures

(a favorite Wiki section: the inventory of negative connotations associated with terms for left-handedness)

politics and society, but I try to resist the temptation to get caught up in things — too draining and people have a tendency to read each other wrong. A lot of politics are highly visceral and personal, too, which muddies the waters quickly

Links

For Me:

Wiki-related Meta References