This is a backup of my Livejournal, and as such is sporadically updated and may or may not be up-to-date. Find me at LJ as: http://telophase.livejournal.com

Hello! If you've come here looking for essays on manga layout and art and links to other sites that talk about it, you're in the right place. I write a weekly manga column for Tokyopop, and these are the essays that started me out in this strange business of being a Web pundit.

Feel free to add me to your friendslist without asking - I don't get offended by that. :D Please excuse me if I don't add you back - it's not because of you, it's because I've got too many journals on my friendslist to keep up with right now and adding more would completely overwhelm me (I do try to at least go and look at your LJ occasionally). You're perfectly welcome to come in, hang out, read, and comment as you choose.

One request: if you comment and you're not a Livejournal member and don't have an OpenID to identify yourself with, please leave a name. I get lots of anonymice making comments on these, and some sort of name or nickname separates your anonymous comment from all the other anonymous comments and makes all of us take you a bit more seriously. You may also want to come back and check for replies - I, and the other people who comment here, do tend to reply to comments because we're interested in talking about manga with other people, and presumably you are also.

( Click here for the manga analyses and other links )


I'm willing to listen to suggestions for future essay topics, but you'll have a better chance if you ask a question about the process or techniques involved instead of asking for a particular series, since I tend to pick a series that serves as a good example for the subject and not the other way around.


 

(Crossposted from my LJ. The numbers refer to mj LJ numbers.)


As I posted in my previous entry, SixApart is issuing $30 gift certificates to use at DonorsChoose.org as long as you email them by 5 PM Pacific on Monday.

On this LJ, I have 226 mutual friends and 192 others who have friended me*. That makes 418 people. If all of you - or even half of you - managed to email SixApart and get the $30 gift certificate, that would be a huge chunk o'change to give.

Bearing that in mind, I've just created the Manga Matsuri Challenge on DonorsChoose ("matsuri" means "festival"). I found three proposals to purchase manga for the classroom, to tempt reluctant readers and to help kids who are desperate to read more manga but can't afford it, and put them all on the challenge. The total amount of money needed is a hair over $1200, but anything you can donate will help. If the half of you I mentioned above only donate $10 - one-third - of your gift certificate to this challenge, we will raise all the money needed.

You can choose what projects you want your SixApart's money to go to (help SixApart fund future fans! XD), and you don't have to donate all or even part of yours through this challenge, but I hope you consider it. And if you have a hankering to donate some of your own money in addition; why, that's even better!

And please publicize this! Far and wide, on LJ or off. Link to this entry or to the challenge's page, but I think I did a better job of pleading the case here. :)

Back home from the (grand)parental visit, where I ended up staying in a hotel for three nights. As soon as I reached Mom's house on Friday, Mom came out of the house and told me not to even bother with unloading the car, as the septic tank had finally backed up so we were going to a hotel that night. We did so, then Saturday drove down to Victoria for a visit with the grandparents, then back to Mom's place on Sunday and another night in a local hotel, then I drove back up to Fort Worth today as the septic-tank guy came out to dig up Mom's yard and find the thing. (He'd found it as I left.)

That's a hell of a lot of driving - 3.5 hours Friday and Monday, 3 hour each Saturday and Sunday. I just want to NOT MOVE for a while.

Will eventually catch up on LJ. Eventually.

( And now, the LJ meme everyone's doing )

I'm not going to be leaving Livejournal for the forseeable future - the same sort of thing that's going on here will inevitably go on at other journal sites eventually, and the vast majority of my f-list isn't decamping, anyway.

I've got an InsaneJournal (as telophase, natch) that I'm going to be using to store an online backup of my LJ - I'd use my Journalfen account for that, but JF has that over-18 rule and I know that at least some of my readers are under 18. I'll probably archive art over there or something. Or just continue to use it for nothing but commenting on the wank communities. At any rate, I also have an LJArchive archive that's got all the posts and comments from my LJ archived on my FTP server, because if you don't have at least two different backups stored in two different places, you don't have a backup.

Not on GreatestJournal because some bastard took the name telophase over there and never used the account, so its deleted and the GJ admins don't clear them out and don't want you asking to clear them out. I thought said bastard might have been me, reserving the name and forgetting the password, but using the Lost Password function produces no mail in any of my inboxes, so I suppose it's some other bastard.


P.S. If you do happen to want to decamp to Journalfen, as a paid user over there (name: telophase) I can request that a journal be made for someone. I can't abuse the privilege, though, so not too many at once. :) If you want one, give me the name you want, an email address, and a solemn pledge that you are (a) at least 18 years old and (b) not an asshat.

There's some sort of problem going on at Dreamhost that's affecting everything running off of magatsu.net at the moment. They're aware of it and are working on it; that's all I know. With luck, it'll be resolved soon. :) You can still FTP into your accounts, you just can't see the webserver.

I'm going to my grandparents' house this weekend, so I may not be reachable too easily, but I'll be back by Monday.

I have watched yet more Melody of Oblivion and I have seen...

BOCCA'S GLOWING BANANA!!

( The facial-recognition meme again )

rachelmanija is looking for a portable DVD player that can play home-burned DVDs and VCDs, in order not to have to lug her heavy laptop around. Bonus if it's region-free or can be hacked to be so. Any suggestions from the A/V geeks lurking around here?

-- Figure out what the heck I'm going to do with my cat for three weeks while I'm gone
( cut for more )

...of the first half of episode 14 of Melody of Oblivion, just to show you guys what I'm talking about.

Screencaps. No spoilers.

( Read more... )

This is, I think, the one screencap that will convince everyone reading this who hasn't seen Melody of Oblivion to run out and rent it.
( Here it comes! )

Now. Doesn't that make you want to watch it when I point out that this is a typical episode, not at all out of character from the series? Maybe a little more action-filled than usual.

*checks weather radar*

*sees huge line of storms headed this way, hears thunder*

OH NO INTERNET DON'T LEAVE ME! I only have two surge suppressors and one is protecting the TV, TiVo, DVD player, cable box, and Playstation, while the other one is protecting all the computer equipment! The cable modem is high and dry because I haven't gotten out to get another one yet!*





* I happen to be in possession of a $27 Office Depot gift card thanks to all the money I spent on stuff for A-Kon, and now I think I know what I'm going to spend it on.

( In no particular order )

And so what did I get with my Amazon.com gift certificate?

( Well... )

Chomiji: Wfnesday between 8 and 5. I WILL HAVE MY FIX TOMORROW!!!

It's amazing how many things you want to look up online when you cant.

Fine. Since you yahoos all prefer my polls to just trying to guess the answer to a completley wide-open question, I've made it into a poll. :P

( cut for pollage )

Woo, the four creatures I created at the Technosphere have been loaded! If you want to check on them, you can go to the Creature Tools section of the website and drop in these ID numbers:

3188341
3188344
3188345
3188346

You can see what I named them there, too. :)

In other news, my hand hurts because my new upstairs neighbor was apparently hanging pictures in his/her bedroom at MIDNIGHT. When they started hammering the third nail in, I banged hard on the wall. No bruising, but it hurt like hell then, and is still sore now. :) But at least they STOPPED HAMMERING AT MIDNIGHT.

20 min. 3.5 mi (estimated).

...I'm off to my WOEFULLY INTERNET-FREE APARTMENT.* Have fun, y'all.





* with a list of addresses dumped from my inbox, although I need to prioritize cleaning the area where the computer is and the area where the modem is over that, so the internet tech guy who will eventually come out can FIND the computer and modem...