I Am Completely Serious

- wait, what the hell is that green shirt doing in there?

I was wearing my single blue shirt when I took this, and there are some jeans and two inexplicably green pairs of socks in the other side of the closet. (The jeans don’t fit.) Otherwise, yes, I’m pretty sure the only actual color I ever wear is red.

I bought a blue fleece when I first realized this a couple weeks ago, but I can’t wear it to work, so it’s just kind of sitting here. Maybe it’s a sign I should embrace the monomania.

Anyway - Shibata!

Continue reading “Pictures!”

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If you haven’t seen that Fox video, you need to watch it right now. I didn’t believe it was real until the announcer’s name showed up at the bottom and I paused the thing to Google it - he actually does work for Fox.

I haven’t seen a transcript yet, so I made one myself. You will thank me.

( They call themselves Anonymous. )

Continue reading “The hacker organization known as Anonymous”

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( Spoiler-cut )

Continue reading “Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle ch. 156-158″

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Now with moderate coherency and rampant guessing!

( Volumes 1 - 8: Many Monsters-of-the-Day )

( Volumes 9 - 12: Syaoran Gets Slightly Spooky )

( Volumes 13 - 14: Everyone Gets Seriously Spooky )

( Volumes 15 - 17: Okay So This Time It’s These Guys OH MY GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED )

( Volume 18 - current (ch. 155): I Mean JESUS People What NOW )

Continue reading “Big Tsubasa Re-Read”

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Commentary typed while reading chapters 120-150 of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle:

( Spoiler Cut )

Continue reading “I went to great effort to get caught up on my CLAMP today.”

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I am going to start a new book-reading tradition for, when I remember it. Whenever I am on page 128 of a book that has, uhh, substantially more than 128 pages, I will make a prediction about it.

Because there are spoilers from the first 128 pages in here (and also because I’m a genius and assume I must be right), I’m putting it behind a cut.

( The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner )

Continue reading “[Brilliant Idea Goes Here]“

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The last class of my college career was Wednesday. ( Here are my notes in full. )

Continue reading “Studious”

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I appear to have thwarted a book-thief all by myself last night.

( The story. )

( How to rob me without being thwarted. )

Continue reading “How To Rob The Library”

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(What, is it the Feast of Boris again yet?)

In honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, I give you a thingie. It’s presumably not publishable-quality, seeing as no one’s published me yet, but I’m posting it anyway because I think I’m done with it for a while, and it’s distracting me from working on other things.

It’s the prologue to The Nebulous Video Game In My Head, “The Ashdocks”, which is kind of a puzzle-RPG - the plot involves boats, ghosts, swamps, fairies, and people being political, and the gameplay involves a few standard turn-based battles, and a lot of puzzles where you manipulate plants and fungi in various ways to affect the environment, hurt people, heal them, and create new items. You get a limited number of certain types of seeds/roots/etc per stage, and can buy more of others, and all that good video-game-economics stuff.

Because this isn’t Harvest Moon, you can also manipulate the passage of time to get the plants to grow immediately, though there are sometimes side-effects to doing that - grow too many explosive mushrooms in a certain place in such-and-such a space of real-time, and you wear out your soil so that it’s only fit for growing zombies for a while. Which you may or may not want, depending on who you’ve killed recently and what level you are.

(Except that I don’t know how this system works yet, hence the word “nebulous.” This is why I’m never actually going to be a video game designer. The “game” part kind of stumps me.)

( If this hasn’t all scared you away, the script is behind the cut. )

I hope you found that a nice, macabre way to start your Monday!

Continue reading “Happy Made-Up Internet Holiday!”

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For the last few months, when I type a new kanji into the RTF files I’m doing my translation projects in, 90% of the time it comes out pointing left. My kanji do not know which way is up.

I thought at first that the problem was only with @SimSun, which is apparently intended mostly for Chinese, not Japanese, but switching to MS PGothic, which actually has “Japanese” as a language option, doesn’t fix it. Anyway, they both used to work. And I’ve saved and restarted and reopened trying to right them, but nothing changes. This isn’t disabling, since I’m lazy and I either romanize or kana-ize everything before I start the actual translation (the kana work properly), but it’s really irritating.

Since I haven’t installed any new Japan\China\Korea\etc.-related software or fonts during this time, I’m going to assume this is something one of the Windows updates did.

( Image behind cut )

(Edit: And if anyone reading this can tell me what the spine of the book in this image says, and what that title would probably be in English, I would be extremely happy. From the context it’s obviously a children’s book involving talking animals, and Charles Perrault’s name is on the cover, and there’s the phrase “boy(s) and girl(s)” in there.

Edit again: Okay, yeah, the book is “Puss in Boots,” so the spine is probably a series name. (This is important, okay?!)

)

Continue reading “Microsoft!”

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“Designed to help parents and caregivers of all achievements and backgrounds make informed decisions about which new products are right for their children, the Parents’ Choice Awards is the nation’s oldest nonprofit program created to recognize quality children’s media.”

.

“If a product does receive a level of commendation, it is eligible to license the seals. But that is neither a prerequisite nor condition of award.”

?

( Image 3 )

( Image 4 )

( Image 5 (NWS) )

(Does anyone actually know anything about these guys? Or about Dark Horse having any history of certain types of bad behavior?)

(And incidentally, even though Otomo didn’t do the art himself, his influence shines clearly through in this classic Otomo image. Grimy wrinkly people staring blank-eyed and dazed at tragedy = KATSUHIRO OTOMO’S VERY SOUL. Or, in my head, anyway.)

Continue reading “The Legend of Mother Sarah: Tunnel Town - two links and five images”

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I started reading the Lymond books again. I say “started again,” because I read the first two last year, and then decided I did not have the patience for the plot and the shenanigans and Lymond never, you know, stuttering, or conjugating a Latin verb wrong, or anything.

But recently my body has started physically rejecting books where someone has to save the whole universe by being nicer than everyone. By this I mean that I toss the books down on the floor and sit irritatedly fiddling with my hat for twenty minutes, without any conscious awareness of my own actions. Perhaps sleep deprivation and job applications are to blame. Perhaps soy cheese.

But this criteria, in any case, appears to disqualify most of my to-read pile, which due to my own emotional immaturity is saturated with just this type of scenario. Some people on my LiveJournal list are reading the Lymond series, and I thought that perhaps my system could handle a book about someone who only partly succeeds at saving relatively small numbers of people by being bitchier than everyone else. So I requested the rest of the series off of ILL to take home with me on break.

In summary: Lymond is a tool. It is a good thing he gets beat up so often, or no one would be able to stand him.

Also in summary: I keep staying up all night reading these -ing things.

( Disconnected spoiler-ridden thoughts for The Disorderly Knights )

( And for Pawn in Frankincense )

( The first half or so of The Ringed Castle )

Continue reading “[back at school]“

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…was that the ending? Really? That was the ending?

Well, I mean, okay, but…

( Spoilers )

Anyway. The first half or so was awesome, and vocabulary was abused, so, I liked it anyway. But I would have liked it a lot more if the focus of the ending had been different.

Continue reading “One For The Morning Glory, John Barnes”

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( ANTONIO: I know not why I am so sad. *is so sad* )

Continue reading “The Merchant of Venice In Brief”

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I am writing a short story to submit to this anthology! I have had a poor attention span all this semester due to stress and death and panic and self-castigation over my failure to get at least fifty pages of the Worst Cleric Ever book finished by the end of February despite my vow to do so two months previously!

Thus I am posting my unfinished short story here! Here on this Livejournal! Its presence in public where other people can see it will, it is hoped, cause me to immediately see every single one of its flaws in glaring detail (as has been the case with my senior research), allowing me to correct them and understand in a blinding flash of semi-competence how it should be structured! And then I will hurt myself banging my head against the wall but at least I will have finished the stupid short story!

Please do not attempt to tell me things about it! That is not the point of this exercise! The comments are turned off! If you wish you may insult me in two weeks about my discomfort with the first-person POV and its result which is my heroine’s over-the-top “salty”-as-it-is-called language, because in two weeks there will be two weeks left before the first deadline!

Do not tell me I am wrong about things about Sweden! That is also not the point!

( ‘IN THE SNOW’ )

GRRRRAHHH ALL SHORT STORIES END IN A ROAR OF EXISTENTIAL RAGE YES YES I SEE IT

(It probably will not actually end in a roar of existential rage!)

This entry may disappear at some point!

Continue reading “THE SACRED ACT OF CREATION FILLS ME WITH HATE AND EXCLAMATION POINTS”

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Sodexho has generously given me a light pink plastic tumbler that turns darker pink when it gets cold, in an obvious and completely inappropriate reference to nipples. I wonder if they’re going to email me telling me to deposit it in a box someplace on campus, because I am not on the meal plan anymore and am not therefore entitled to a plastic tumbler.

Printed on it in very small type is a schedule of what I assume someone considers to be the school’s “feminist events” for the next three months. The schedule gives dates but no times, and is badly spaced and punctuated.

I mean, this isn’t a disposable cup or anything. It must have been expensive to get these things custom-made. Isn’t it kind of weird to give out a reusable item with your February-March-April 2007 schedule on it? Am I supposed to treasure it forever as a memento of “Love Your Body Day” (which is apparently on Valentines Day)? Is there going to be a whole series of collectible 2007 color-change cups?

Oh, wait, the year’s not on there.

Actually, the schedule itself is even more bizarre than its presence on a cup. Here it is (formatting, punctuation, etc. all theirs):

( commentary, or, This Plastic Tumbler Is A Story About Rape )

Edited deep in the night because my own formatting was somewhat sketchy.

Continue reading “I Like My Women Like I Like My Coffee”

O I am ill, laid low by such a foul imbalance of the humors as to make me dirty up all my new hankies in one day, and re-read books.

But then I watched the last few episodes of Ouran and my nose wasn’t stopped up anymore. It’s a miracle! A piracy miracle!

I’m still all dizzy, though. I hate being dizzy. I don’t even get to get intoxicated or go into a berserker rage first. It’s totally unfair.

For some reason being sick always makes it a little easier to concentrate in class. And also apparently makes me write in real short paragraphs.

…Kyouya. Sigh. (cut for spoilers) Continue reading “Must! ‘Tis somewhat hard when Tamaki must go!”

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1) Went to Barenaked Ladies concert with Mom, Dad, and thegeekgene. This is exactly the third concert I’ve been to in my life, if you count Sesame Street on Ice.

I will never again attend a concert without earplugs. I still hear roaring.

Mom says it wasn’t really that loud.

1a) There was a Yelling Shithead (TM) behind us. He was a middle-aged man who was balding and had chosen to grow his hair long to in some way disguise this. He screamed constantly and derided the intelligence of his companions (”‘Mediocre’ - oh, do you know what ‘mediocre’ means?”), whose responses we could not hear. (Or, actually, I’m not totally sure those poor people were actually with him.)

He yelled “Nutshelllll!” at regular intervals throughout the concert. I was pleased that they never played it.

2) Dad owns a t-shirt with the election results printed on it.

3) Okay, I’m going to have to make my family buy a new monitor. This one is going to kill their eyes. I guess it’s been kind of blurry for a while, but it was actually painful for me to read through my friends list just now. Urrrgh.

4) Joseph Beth in Lexington was having a huge manga sale. $2 a volume. I mean, the stuff that this applied to was 90% crap or random high-numbered volumes of series no one wants to buy all of - to give you an idea, I think about a fifth of the selection was comprised of volume 4 of Shaolin Sisters: Reborn and volume 18 of Samurai Deeper Kyo. But I still found eight things I wanted enough to buy, and I didn’t even realize there was a second tableful downstairs until after I’d checked out. ( The haul. )

5) Mom and thegeekgene are watching the Sci-Fi channel.

Mom: “It’s - what are they doing now? Why are they running through a field?”

6) This seriously is hurting my eyes, I’m going go cook something in the properly-equipped kitchen I have access to.

Continue reading “At home.”

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Apparently, Yukito Kishiro is taking some time off the main Last Order plotline to start a series called GUNNM Gaiden/write some side stories? Or something? You’re not helpful today, internet.

I’d actually be kind of okay with that. I feel like Last Order is moving really slow. Over the first seven volumes of the original GUNNM, we had like six plot arcs spanning about fifteen years. That was one of the things I liked so much about it. It was a fighting manga with no filler! No monsters-of-the-day! A new, absurdly melodramatic plotline that completely breaks Alita’s heart almost every volume! This was awesome.

But at seven volumes of Last Order, we’ve only covered a few months of time - the past three volumes have just been a couple of days. And they haven’t really been eventful days, by Kishiro’s usual standards. An eventful day for Alita used to be:

( cut for massive spoilers for first series, minor spoilers for Last Order )

Continue reading “(I am never, ever going to get to sleep.)”

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I’ve been going through the library catalog requesting volume one of random manga. The easiest way to find manga in the catalog is just to do a keyword search for a manga publisher, so this the CMX batch. Also known as the WTF batch. I will now review them. While sleepy.

These are going to be kind of grumpy reviews, by the way.

Musashi #9, Takahashi Miyuki

There exists a secret organization called “Ultimate Blue,” unfortunately and frequently abbreviated “UB”, whose nine super-elite top operatives vigilantly protect the innocent, punish the guilty, and defuse delicate diplomatic situations that could lead to World War III, by means of the delicate diplomatic application of explosives controlled by big remotes with exactly two buttons.

(I feel safe!)

And of these most elite nine operatives, of this most elite secret organization, the most elite of all… is known only by his codename, Musashi #9. And he’s actually a sixteen-year-old girl!

(Spoiler for the end of chapter one and, like, the back cover. I don’t think it really matters, but I’m being nice and hiding it anyway.)

This is your basic shounen manga that knows the names of approximately seventeen thousand guns, and approximately three foreign countries. Each of the chapters in this volume is a self-contained story, and each is basically the same story - rebellious teenagers get inadvertently involved in ridiculous international political intrigue, get rescued by Musashi, and learn valuable life lessons.

Many of which are kind of covertly about Japan’s very important position within the world community, and how you can help, teenagers. This manga gives me nervous Saburo Ienaga flashbacks. It might be, like, federally approved for human consumption or something.

( the spoiler is also behind the darn cut )

Totally Representative Scan: Musashi’s vocabulary = SOPHISTICATED. (has that darn spoiler in it again)

Swan, by Ariyoshi Kyoko

Masumi is a young ballerina who is recruited into the first national ballet school of Japan due to her great natural talent, but is handicapped by being years behind the others in terms of practical experience and by the intense disapproval of her peers who feel that she was admitted due to the favoritism of the Russian dancer Alexei Sergeiev who is so handsome and whose dancing she adores but who is cruel and inconsistent as a teacher and who makes her cry and will she be able to achieve her dreams???

(See, I’ve reviewed these last two in a format intended to evoke their style! I hope that isn’t completely annoying italics.)

( Read more… )

Totally Representative Scan: You were born to be a statistician, Headband Guy.

Pieces of a Spiral, by Tachibana Kaimu

Three very different young men find that their fates are linked by shared experiences in their past lives, and wait-a-second they’re not having sex.

This is one of those manga that is in the closet about being shounen-ai. The characters are hot guys who keep talking about how beautiful the others are, and who keep swearing vows to protect each other and having sad flashbacks while the others look on worriedly and the like - y’know. But there is no chemistry whatsoever between any of them. It’s like they’re just kind of in the same room a lot.

Part of it is probably the art and page design are kind of crap - there are a lot of places where characters who are supposed to be looking at each other instead seem to be looking at a chair, or where an unimportant panel is given too much space and disrupts the flow of a conversation. The pacing is bad enough that you sometimes can’t even tell where the artist is trying to make a joke.

( Read more… )

Totally Representative Scan: Panel four on the second page? That’s supposed to be funny. (Bonus Alternate Subtitle!: “Plot? I tell you, man, plot. All kinds of plot. Plot? Plot.”)

Land of the Blindfolded, Tsukuba Sakura

High school kids with psychic powers have pleasant, boring relationships.

I just read this manga, and I don’t remember anything that happened.

Totally Representative Scan: I, personally, care deeply about Eri and Ezawa’s relationship.

Continue reading “Four manga reviews”