...I read (in an f-locked LJ) a post on gender politics that reminded me of a snippet I heard on NPR this morning shortly after my clock radio came on. I don't remember the context because I was barely awake, only that the speaker was Middle Eastern - Iraqi or Iranian - and he was talking about, I think, some sort of violence (well, that's pretty much a given in the area these days). The quote was something like "All the people were killed, and their wives and children."

Reminds me of the passage from an ethnography that one of my anthro professors was fond of quoting: "The entire village rowed away in canoes, and I stayed on the riverbank with the women and children."

Wow, yeah, that auto-transcription was a thing of beauty. Yeah, the basic point is that a thunderstorm took out the ethernet port on my modem, so while my modem thinks that it's getting signal, it's not sending any of that signal to my computer. And that also means that I will probably be a couple of days on getting net access back at home, because I can't take today or Tuesday off of work. :) And I'm not looking forward to getting on the phone with the cable company and doing all the cable swapping that I did last night again. I know that they need to go through the full script with everyone, because so many people who claim they have technical know-how really don't, but aarg! My apartment's cable outlets and plugs and lights are arranged in the least efficient manner ever, so cable-swapping involves a hell of a lot of work.

I had scheduled yesterday to sit down and mail out all the various things that I am way the hell behind on mailing out, so naturally all my bloody addreses are in my email account. I'll be pulling those out today and getting them on my thumb drive, yes. :)

And now I'm all emo because nobody answered the quiz I texted to LJ. :(:(:(

Quiz!
1) I'm watching my fave movie on the Tivo now. What is it?
2) Whither Sanzo?

I can't reply to texts from lj by text, so the person who had a Q: i'll have to answer here. :)

Withdrawal symptoms setting in!!

I may have no net but lj friends can text from my profile!

20 min. 3.5 mi. (estimated) Total: 505.3 mi. From Rivendell: 42.8 mi. Camped in a hollow, still mooching along through empty country.


I gotta say, having headaches or migraines for four days in a row doesn't do much for your exercise record. :P

Round 3 of Battle for the Emo is up! Go vote!

By Sunday morning I'll be up to the latest volume out, having mainlined half the series in 24 hours. I'm enjoying it a lot despite my complaints in the comments a post or two back.

I am very tempted to scan in a bunch of Yuya's :O faces and title it "The Many Expressions of Yuya."


(Spoilers might be in comments; read at yer own risk.)

ETA: chomiji - just remembered your review of Blade of the Immortal 4 & 5, and your mention of Rin in it - and she's pretty much playing the exact same role as Yuya, only done right, I think.

...Melody of Oblivion, now that I've watched the other two episodes on the DVD. I think I just really failed to impart the sheer insanity of the show in the previous post. It's made even more cracktastic by the mood of the show being reasonably quiet and enigmatic. Yes, despite the MECHANICAL FIGHTING SOCK MONKEYS being pitted against the heroes at one point, it's low-key and enigmatic.

I think the best comparison would be Revolutionary Girl Utena, really, for the odd combinations of elements, weirdly literary references, and repetitive segments when the Warriors of Melos activate their weapons.

The story arc - they're rarely more than 3 episodes long - that's starting with the last ep on the disc is so far a somewhat straight retelling of the Theseus and the Labyrinth story. Well, if you consider it to involve giant robot wildcats operated by leather daddies, kids in coffins, pornographic Egyptian wall paintings, and a school bus tour. Did I mention it being quiet and enigmatic?

Back when Melody of Oblivion was first being broadcast and fansubbed several years ago, I watched several episodes, and liked them quite a bit. But it's the sort of series you really need to be in the mood for and at some point I never got around to downloading more of it. I recently noticed that it was available on Netflix, and popped disc 3 onto my queue, guessing at about which episode I'd stopped at. I guessed correctly - episode 9 was the last I'd watched, and this disc started with ep 9.

How to describe it? It's a Gainax WTF?! series, and that should tell you quite a lot. It follows a young man named Bocca and his possibly sentient motorcycle-looking Aibar machine around a futuristic Japan that is controlled by creatures called Monsters, after the Monster-Human War. Bocca is searching for the Melody of Oblivion, someone or something hidden away that could be the savior of humankind.

I remember only vague, chaotic, confusing elements from the first eight episodes and discovered as I was watching episodes 9 and 10 that I wasn't actually crazy and that the episodes were just like that. rachelmanija and oyceter, you'll be happy to note that there is a Fowl of DOOOOM! in it, in the form of a parrot or cockatiel-type thing that flies around screeching "Truth or lies!" and then delivering messages to people. No heads in jars. So far. There are references to mythology and fairy tales. I vaguely remember a bus growing horns and turning into an analogue of the Minotaur in one of the early episodes, and there was one short story arc that dealt with a boy sticking his finger in a hole in a dam, like the story of the Dutch boy and the dike, and the most recent story arc has a villain that fights inside a giant robot suit that looks like a monkey and uses a giant extendible monkey wrench, like Monkey/Son Goku's staff. The Warriors of Melos, who are the only ones that can hear the Melody of Oblivion, activate their powers by drawing an arrow across a glowing tattoo on some part of their body, and they release the arrow with a cry that's taken from poker: "Flush!" "Four Card!" etc. There's a small group of freedom fighters that may not be as human as they seem that are also a theatrical company.

And those are the parts that make sense. I'd love to watch this with someone else in the room who can truly appreciate anime crack, just because.

ETA: Have also obtained and read volumes 11-22 of Samurai Deeper Kyo in the past 24 hours, and will be reading vol 23 later on tonight. I gotta say, that is way too much shounen fighty scenes to mainline in that short a time, and yet I. CAN'T. STOP. READING. Damn you, chomiji! (Honestly - how many times can a character almost get killed, then stand up and say "This time I'll stop holding back!" and kick his opponent's ass ... and then ten minutes later fight another opponent who's even tougher, go even more all out, and then SAY IT AGAIN? Aaaagh! There's gotta be an upper limit here somewhere!)

Favorite character: currently Hotaru. YOU ARE SO CUTE WHEN YOU'RE WEIRD! Also am tired of Yuya's primary purpose in the story being the one to whom the other characters explain patently obvious things that I'd already figured out from context. The audience for this is obviously way younger than me. :) Also also am tired of the expression she wears 90% of the time being: 8O Want to yell at her to shut her mouth before a bug flies into it.

I used to play around a lot on the Technosphere, where you can make creatures and release them into the simulated wild and follow them to see if they live or die. (They mostly die.) It vanished from the intarwebs back in 2001 or so, but earlier this year they resurrected it, and I jsut got an email from them. Woo!

I just made four new creatures. Will let you know what they are when they get released - they keep a cap on the total number of creatures active at any one time, so you have to wait until others die before yours get loaded. It's been anywhere from a few hours to a couple of weeks in my experience.

Round 2 of rilina's Most Emo Character contest is up! Go vote!

I don't think I am ever falling asleep ever again. I went home from work early with a migraine, which got somewhat better after meds, then worsened overnight. Stayed home from work, but slept about nine hours. Another dose of meds took care of the migraine but left me extra-sleepy and somewhat dizzy, and I ended up sleeping another 2 hours in the afternoon. Good thing tomorrow's Friday because I'll probably be getting about three hours of sleep tonight. :D

I have nothing of consequence to say, hence why I'm updating you all on my sleep schedule. I'm sure y'all find it fascinating.

rilina has the first two parts of Round 1 of the Emo Awards Voting up. Go vote!

rilina is still taking nominations for your most emo anime/manga characters!

A camera collector often finds old film still in the cameras he buys, so he develops it and posts the lost pictures.




Icon in honor of developing migraine. May go home from work after 1:30 meeting. :P

Wow, gas explosion in downtown Dallas. 45 minutes away from me, and I don't think anyone I know is working that close to the area, although traffic in Dallas is going to be hell for hours, since two major freeways are shut down.

Utilities explosions in New York, San Francisco, Dallas. You'd think someone had something against infrastructure. :)

...and naturally I found some really nifty stuff to tell ALL OF YOU shortly after LJ vanished.

( Nifty places in or near Kyoto plus a cool photo blog of Kyoto )

Plus, Hellsing brings the CRACK. I mean come on VATICAN SUICIDE BOMBERS. How could you not read a manga that offered that?