Dec 30 2009
Putting a cup of water and a few teaspoons of Dr. Bronner’s in the steam cleaner soap reservoir kinda works, at least on recent stains. Though to test this properly, I should probably try filling the soap reservoir with just water.
Dec 27 2009
Not Manga
Bisexual Cinderella undergoes uninteresting torments, solves the primary plot problem too easily, and selects the sensible corner of her love triangle.
Someone named Moriarty thought it would be a good idea to cross Crystal Singer over with The Continuing Time, and they were right.
Also contains Cetagandans, physics, and a mostly non-white cast.
A funny and generally non-preachy YA novel about an Australian Muslim girl figuring out her cultural identity. There are a few clunky bits where the author’s desire to educate trumps her sense of how dialog works.
Oh, Suck Fairy, why must you visit so much of my library? I used to love these books.
Manga
Sweet, slickly-drawn short story collection. The title story, about a recently-divorced woman who finds her empty apartment invaded first by an angel, then by her ex-husband’s teenaged mistress, is the best.
Depressing, slickly-drawn story about dysfunctional people messing up each other and themselves, which Tokyopop shouldn’t really be marketing as gay-positive. None of the characters are particularly likable.
Osamu Tezuka punches you repeatedly in the stomach.
This manga follows the Shounen Jump formula so closely that, during the three years of its publication, it is written that Yoshihiro Togashi would frequently look over his shoulder in puzzlement and fear, wondering what ghost it was that he felt stepping on his heels. (If Togashi ever got out of bed then, I mean.)
Anzai’s first major work, which strays from the formula occasionally, with some good results and some bad. Compulsively readable up to the end of the tournament arc, but Anzai has major issues with women, and there’s way more fetish stuff than you want to see in a kids’ story.
Dec 22 2009
Mine are about:
50% - AIRPORTS
25% - Teaching classes I forgot I had and haven’t prepared for.
25% - Attending classes I forgot I had and haven’t prepared for.
It’s dumb how I pretty much fear airports more than anything else in the universe. I am going to be so bad at at it when I am a Lovecraft protagonist. My studies are going to lead me to the lost city of doomish things, and there are gonna be check-in kiosks in there.
Dec 22 2009
A professor I had described the difference between Western and Eastern culture this way: Western culture believes that history points forwards. It is bringing itself towards some end point, honing itself into something purer and in some way perfect - though perfection may mean destruction. Our world is a story, and we are certain that it will end, the way all stories do, with a new sort of equilibrium established.
History is different in Eastern culture, he said. Once there was a golden age, but it is over now; and things deteriorate. They are continuing to deteriorate, often gracefully, and beautiful things are found in the ruins, and at times some facsimile of the golden age is established for a while. But it always falls apart again, and each time it returns a little coarser. There is no endpoint in sight, only a constant tumbling of the pieces of that perfect civilization, thinning out. Time seems to be getting wider. It’s not going anywhere.
Continue reading “Why Bad Things Happen To Cute People: rambling Tezuka-Urasawa essay”
Dec 21 2009
Do you guys want to know how it ends? Okay, this is how it ends.
They wake up and it was all a dream, except for the parts that weren’t a dream.
I hear the next one’s going to be called “Professor Layton and Neon Genesis Evangelion.”
Dec 20 2009
I spent a lot of Flame of Recca going, “Man, I would be enjoying this fight scene so much more if Nobuyuki Anzai had not spilled his sexual hang-ups all over it.” Now I know what happens when he doesn’t spill his sexual hang-ups all over things! He makes manga that is kind of perfunctory, with characters he doesn’t really seem to care about. Okay, Anzai, you can have your sexual predators and dominatrices back.
(Not the pedophiles or the thing with the peeing, though. I’m drawing a line there.)
For me the main value of this manga is the knowledge that (spoilers for chapter 107, plus the end of Flame of Recca) Continue reading “Having completed MÄR.”
Dec 19 2009
Hey! Nobuyuki Anzai! Can we please go like two chapters in a row without your problems with women making themselves visible! Because that would be nice! Thank you!
Also, scanlators. Listen. You know I love you, but for the love of Christ. This guy’s name is Hamelin. You are making me very crazy.
Dec 19 2009
There are branches on the ground all over the place, and I can see a tree that’s fallen over in the park. I wonder if it’s been an unusually bad year for dead trees?
Dec 16 2009
Man, Kurei, no. You do not break the alternate dimension by punching it really hard.
I mean, there are narrative conventions that need to be observed here. When you are in the alternate dimension, you do metaphysical battle with your soul - or, you know, somebody’s soul, given as how there’s times you may not necessarily have a soul, due to reasons - while solving some kind of riddle. You don’t just punch. There’s a time and a place for punching, just like there’s a time and place for casually disposing of a complaining minion with a small gesture of one hand in the lower right-hand corner of an otherwise empty panel, and a time and place for unexpected shows of vulnerability under a tree branch or a source of thin light.
We’ve got standards in this community, Kurei. Uphold them.
<3,
Ichimaru Gin
Dec 15 2009
In late 1553 or 1554, Suleiman the Magnificent, the reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, issued a firman (royal decree) formally denouncing blood libels against the Jews.
The Catholic Church denounced blood libels in the 1960s.
- Wikipedia on Blood libel against Jews
(Okay, yeah, there were popes who weren’t happy about it much earlier than that - memorably Sixtus IV, and I do appreciate how there were at least four of Pope Sixtus - but I think the Church as a whole never paid much attention to papal policy on the matter. The blood libel was all local politics.)
Dec 13 2009
I’m reading Flame of Recca. It’s strangely addictive! Though the art, writing, and gender issues are all unbelievably terrible.
I think the Avatar guys must have read it, because villain #1, Kurei, is (minor spoilers for both)
Dec 08 2009
The drawback of naming your Pokemon after Georgette Heyer protagonists is that you end up splitting up couples, what with leaving Sophy in the box all the time once you get a better ground-type, while Stephen remains a useful grass-type until very late in the game.
Dec 08 2009
I got a huge package of stuff from Mee and Conan. Mee made a bunch of origami, and Conan made a heart and wrote a note on a paper snowman! (Switching between English, Japanese, and adorably katakana-ized English.)
There are also a whole bunch of little toys, some children’s books, a couple keychains, and like five things of origami paper. I’d promised to send them a letter when I left, and I sent some little stuff along with it - American Girl paper dolls for Mee, a thing of stickers for Conan, and a Dr. Seuss book - but even accounting for the fact that some of it probably came from the 100-yen shop, this is a lot of stuff. (Maybe I startled their parents by sending presents along with the letter?) I’ll take a picture of it all when it stops raining the light’s better.
Dec 03 2009
I just read On The Edge, and then reread the Kate Daniels books, and now I’m giving serious consideration to rereading that novella I didn’t really like again. These are just my ideal books for this moment in time, for some reason. They give me great joy.
The two individuals who comprise Andrews make clear in On The Edge that they read manga, but I’d already figured that out. Because Magic Burns is really obviously the result of the two of them sitting there watching Yu Yu Hakusho or something and going, “You know - we totally need to do a tournament arc.”
No, it is directly out of the Tournament Arc section of the shounen manga textbook.
And it’s a good tournament arc! Where it actually feels like people are in danger, and that it matters whether they win or lose! It’s glorious. There are all these scenes where they’re discussing their opponents and making strategy and describing what magical colors their opponents glow, and picking a name for their team, and talking about the tournament rules, and in general great stuff like that. There’s the apparently totally useless fighter who ends up laying waste to something terrifying, and is mildly puzzled when everyone else is shocked by this. There’s the self-absorbed coward who has to fight by him/herself.
Oh! And there’s one of those scenes where somebody gives away the identity of their martial arts master by using said master’s signature technique on one of his other students! (I love those.) This book is so awesome.
(On The Edge also references Girl Genius, incidentally! Girl Genius has not had a tournament arc; I kind of feel that this is something that needs remedied.)
Dec 02 2009
It’s back now. All my files seem to be okay.
I’m posting this as an experiment, to see if smoking starts curling out of the keyboard the moment I hit “publish.”
Dec 01 2009
I know because my computer is dead.
This means that EVERY PERSON IN THIS FAMILY’S COMPUTER HAS DIED WITHIN THE PAST THREE MONTHS. So maybe it’s the Three-Month Period of the Dead Computer. I guess I shouldn’t have brought the Chinese Zodiac into it; I apologize; the lunar calendar is clearly in no way responsible for the condition of these computers. More likely the problem relates to voodoo.
I have double-backups of everything because I’ve been obsessive about that recently - my last manual backup was the 27th, and I just checked and my Carbonite seems to have been working fine. I’m pretty sure that some kanji flashcards and MP3s are the only thing neither of them would have caught, and the MP3s are on my phone’s SD card. THANK GOD I AM ANAL-RETENTIVE.
Continue reading “It is Chinese Zodiac Year of the Dead Computer.”
Dec 01 2009
While we were out, someone had constructed a tiny labyrinth in the driveway, so we pulled in very carefully. The tops of the labyrinth were green with moss and tiny vines, and throughout it were interspersed little courtyards with delicate, exquisite gardens, buildings, or machines inside them - the buildings and machines had no obvious purpose. 
thegeekgene and I tried to step into a couple of the courtyards big enough to get our feet into without breaking anything, to see if doing so would shrink us down and allow us to investigate, but we just broke the walls. Disappointed, we went inside.
A few minutes later, going outside again, the labyrinth was gone - there was one strange room taking up the entire driveway, in a vaguely Sicilian style on the outside, with dark wood panels engraved with a maze on the inside. It didn’t look like the same maze.
The building had a basement. We went down into it and, looking up a second stairwell, saw that it led to someplace other than our yard. (I considered going to get my camera so I could post this on Flickr.) It was bright and sunny and contained butterflies and singing birds. Clearly it was one of the cheerier genre of magical labyrinths, like the kind you’d find in a book with a title like Jewel Princess Adventures #3: Princess Sapphire and the Secret Treasure. It would be perfectly safe provided I didn’t try to enter any of the places you’ve got to be pure of heart to enter.
Authoritatively, on the basis of my extensive knowledge of the taxonomy of YA novel labyrinths, I explained this tothegeekgene. She got a torch - the kind that burns, I mean; I don’t know where she got it - and we climbed the stairs. A dark metal gate slammed down behind us, and the birds all started singing.
elongated_tito pulled us out with a rope (I’m not sure how that worked, maybe it was an Escape Rope from Pokemon) and I said, Clearly it’s actually an ironic labyrinth, that mimics one of the happy ones, and later one we’ll find unkind parodies of archetypes like the helpful old man, who will probably have What 20-Something Jerks Think Alzheimers Looks Like, and the doofy monster that talks about itself in the third person, who will be in the middle of an unpleasant divorce. It’s fine, we’ll just need to bring some extra supplies.
thegeekgene got a frying pan and some pecan pie, and I got a big knife and a bag. Despite having nearly been trapped by it once, we were still too excited about our magic labyrinth to want to go any further than the kitchen for our supplies.
