(no subject)

So I get up, feeling tired and sick. Stare at the computer, not wanting to get in the shower yet. Check e-mail several times, check comics, check the P-I. Waste time until I'm almost late for work.

Go to work. I dunno what it was, I was feeling sick this morning but it wore off as the day progressed... but overall I was feeling really blah. I haven't been writing, I haven't been playing much Second Life, I haven't seen Inara but once in two weeks (someone has a new girlfriend, I can't fault anyone for placing Real Life above Second Life). I wasn't able to stream music the last two days which is what I like to do when I'm on Second Life and have nothing else to do. That kind of bummed me out. I really should be writing, when I'm writing I'm in the mood to write and I'm too busy to be bored or feel so blah... when I'm not writing I have too much time on my hands when I'm at home and then I go to work and can't wait to get off work so that I can go back to doing nothing. How depressing.

Not that I ever really get depressed mind you, but I haven't been feeling too up the last few days, and that's about as depressed as I ever get.

I have a hole in my tooth. I need to schedule a dentist appointment.

I've been watching Ranma 1/2. Well, I'm not writing anything but I've been watching the old tv series. Several years ago I bought the first four seasons on dvd and also the collected OAV's on dvd, all from E-Bay, all for cheap because I bought pirated knockoffs. I knew it at the time, I didn't care, I couldn't afford to buy the official releases. I hadn't watched them until recently... but the OAV discs are a disaster... the language tracks are waaay off for the first episode and a half, and after that the discs won't even play. I should have known better.

On the flip side the tv series is in great shape so far and that's the more expensive purchase so that's good. I got a bit confused, watching several episodes and then going back to read some of the comics, and then watching more episodes and thinking, hey, didn't I see this before? Because I'd just read the same story. They really screwed up that tv series, for some reason after Ranma's martial arts rhythmic gymnastics battle with Kodachi, they have a stupid "made up for the tv series" story about Dr. Tofu's mother coming to visit (a character that doesn't exist in the manga), and it's really bad, as are most of the written-for-television-not-in-the-manga stories. And after that they launch right into the story that introduces Shampoo. One notable thing about this is that it starts out with Ranma at an ice cream shop with Akane, where he (in girl form) eats a parfait, explaining that he's never been able to eat one before because a guy would just look silly eating something so girlish.

Just two days ago someone on the fanfiction mailing list asked a question about this whole idea, why is eating ice cream considered girlish? The first person to answer said that it was an example of "fanon" -- something made up by fans that was used so often that it was almost considered canon even though it doesn't really exist in the source material. BZZZZT! WRONG ANSWER! The next person contradicted this, saying that it WAS canon, and sited the above scene, but then had no real understanding of why the scene exisited (why is eating ice cream girlish? Dunno, they just did it because it's funny). BZZZZT! WRONG ANSWER AGAIN!

More people jumped in to say that this scene ONLY APPEARS IN THE ANIME, and is therefore not considered canon by a lot of writers. Oh my God people, doesn't anyone get it? Sure, it doesn't appear in the manga, but it's common for Japanese men -- especially if they want to be macho or manly -- to consider eating ice cream "girlish". Don't ask me why, but as proof I have Tom Milliorn and Tony Butterfield's stories of visiting the Japanese restaurant that used to be down near the old Uwajamaya. They had a sweet bean flavored ice cream that Tom and Tony liked but several of the male staff would refuse to serve it to guys. Usually they'd just pretend that they didn't have any, or laugh nervously and say no, they couldn't do that, or ignore the request. So it hardly matters if the scene is canon or not -- Ranma has been raised to be as manly as possible, it's no stretch of the imagination at all to think he, a Japanese man, would consider ice cream a girlish thing to eat, especially a decorative parfait.

So... where was I? Oh yeah. In the manga, the story that follows the Kodachi martial arts rhythmic gymnastics challenge is the Golden Pair martial arts ice skating challenge. This is immediately followed by the entrance of Shampoo who is out to kill Ranma. In the anime, after their stupid interlude story about Tofu's mother, they launch straight into the Shampoo story, and only afterwards get to the ice skating story. I dunno, I guess they thought two goofy martial arts/silly sports matchup challenges in a row was something to avoid. Whatever. But the thing is, two important events take place during the ice skating story. Ranma gets his first kiss (as a girl, from the male Mikado Sanzenin), and then later he declares in front of everyone (to the same Mikado) that "Akane is my fiance and if you lay a finger on her I'll kill you" which is about as close to a declaration of love as he makes for a good portion of the series.

And in the Shampoo story, Akane has a flashback to that declaration. And in the anime, she has the same flashback... to a scene that hasn't happened yet, because of how they've rearranged the storyline. Talk about stupid! I was so confused when I saw this that I had to stop and check my discs because I thought I'd missed a whole story arc somehow. But no, Akane is just remembering the future. Somehow. Or having a momentary cross-media syncronicity moment with the manga version of herself.

Well anyway, like that was worth ranting about. I think I was talking about how blah my life has been, but really I should just stop writing and go to bed, I got to help Chuck move in the morning and I'm sure I'm not going to be there as early as I'm supposed to be.

I've been exploring more metal these days. That kind of depresses me too because I know I've spent more money than I probably should have, and have more music to listen to than I really have the time to listen to at the moment... I'm an idiot plain and simple. But anyway, I was reading reviews of a few more bands on Amazon... and noting bands that I want to check out in the future, like Mezarkabul, Turkey's greatest metal band (who blend metal with Turkish folk melody). And I came across this review of a band called Immortal:

"These guys aren't your typical ooh look at me I'm mister satanist douchebag!!"

Really, that just says it all doesn't it?

(no subject)

Despite knowing that Chuck was moving Saturday, and despite not having anything really to do, I somehow stayed up until nearly 4:30 am. I mostly worked on the cds I'm assembling for my nephew, and posted messages on a message board. Doing nothing, in other words.

I was going to sleep in until Noon but jeffreycornish called, and after that I couldn't get back to sleep and anyway it was 11:30 and I realized I didn't really *need* more sleep. But by the time I really got going it was after 1:30 pm. I stopped to get gas and got to chuck_melville's old place before 2 pm, but nobody was there. I knocked on the door, stood around a while, sat in my car listening to music for a while.

Side note: I got a cd in the mail that I was listening to on the way over and in the car while I was waiting. It's Einherjer, "Odin Owns Ye All". It's out of print and I've had it on my wish list at Amazon (I use the wish list strictly to keep track of things I have some sort of interest in or don't want to forget) for 3+ years. It's supposed to be a classic example of early Viking metal. Recently as I was getting more into Viking metal, I tried to order it through Gemm.com, but the people offering it for a reasonable price didn't really have a copy on hand and of course couldn't back order it, although they tried to for about 4-6 weeks. In the meantime I contemplated just picking up one of the more recent Einherjer cds, which are likely better anyway, but I dunno, the fact that it was out of print and might never be in print again (the band doesn't exist anymore) and would therefore become more and more unattainable, combined with the title and cover art which just called out to me for some reason, made me decide to order it for a slightly unreasonable price. $31 -- which I've paid for imports before, it's not a completely unreasonable price, at various points I haven't been able to find this cd offered by anyone for less than $75.00 which was completely unreasonable.

So anyway, I ordered it last week, and it came today. The good news is it came quickly and now I have it. The bad news is, I dunno if it was really worth it. It's not bad, and lyrically interesting, but musically, nothing special really. Funny thing is, it's not as hard and heavy as typical Viking metal, and doesn't have the death growl vocals -- but I think I like some of the other stuff better, particularly my favorite Ensiferum. The melodies are better, and even the growling vocals are actually better than Einherjer's non-growly vocals.

(And as I said, their later cds are probably better, this was only their 2nd release.)

I wait in the car for nearly half an hour. Finally I drive down the street and around the parking lot of the apartment that I'm pretty sure is the one Chuck had pointed out to me as his new place, and I find Jeff's car. I park, get out, and determine that the ground floor apartment in front of me has lots of boxes and several people inside. And I remember Chuck saying he was on the ground floor this time. So I walk in and find everyone just as they're about to head back for another load (they'd been taking a break).

Lots of carrying boxes of books and comics up and down stairs followed. I was worried that I was showing up too late, but in fact I beat several people there, and each person that showed up was warmly welcomed because that made the work easier. Still, I'm very tired from the workout -- I am sooo out of shape -- C.D. didn't look so great at the end there either. Everyone got a good workout!

After it was over I drove up to Southcenter and went to B Dalton's. Or Waldenbooks, I forget which. I'd noticed recently after reading W Juliet #10 and Cheeky Angel #12 that I did not, in fact, yet own W Juliet #9 or Cheeky Angel #11 (no wonder that new character that had a grudge against Megumi kinda threw me -- I hadn't read the story that introduced her, so I had no idea why she hated Megumi, or who she was at all). I could, of course, have asked my comic dealer to order them for me, that's his job after all, he's fallen down on the job by failing to get them to me originally -- but he's way up in Seattle, I only go up there once or twice a month now, and he would probably take a month or more to back order them. So the plan was to pick them up at B Waldtonbooks, whatever it was called. And maybe see if there was something by Terry Pratchett that I didn't have, which was a long shot because if he had a knew book out I'd have heard about it already from genebreshears and kehf and geojlc.

And... oh, they have copies of Where's My Cow? Hey, I don't have that yet! *grab*.

I bought that, plus W Juliet 9, plus something else called Alichino that had very good artwork. VERY good artwork. They had #2 of that but I want to see if I really like it before getting the second one. Sadly, they didn't have my Cheeky Angel 11.

Then, despite my body saying to me that I just needed to go home and lie down, I headed over to Half Price Books. I found two $1 cds that I probably didn't need, and I picked up something that I had seen there before and thought about picking up. It's Nausicaa vol 5, in the original collected volumes with the dustcover. Now, I have the full set of these already, but my ex-roommate Tom never got the whole set... I dont' remember if he was missing more than one, or just the one, but I know for a fact that he was missing #5, and maybe that's all he needs to complete the set. Naturally they reprinted it in a different manner, so he was never able to complete the original set. I only hope he still has the other six (not that he would know at the moment with all of his stuff in storage).

Then I looked at movies. I wanted something to take home and watch, but I'm very picky about dvds actually, there's a lot that I don't feel the need to own, even at half price. I eventually settled on Toy Story 1 & 2, the only Pixar films I didn't already own. Pixar films are good to own, I can rewatch them many times. But I kept looking and finally came across something that REALLY fit the bill -- something I hadn't seen yet, wanted to see, and was happy to own on dvd: Narnia -- The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. When I got home I watched that immediately, it was really pretty good. I thought the girl who played Lucy carried the movie though -- aside from her and Edwin, a lot of the characters were pretty two-dimensional, including the Witch. A good evil witch might have spiced up the film more. But it was still pretty good.

I also picked up Hamlet, another step on my path to owning every major Shakespeare play on dvd, or at least a copy of every good movie adaptation of a Shakespeare play, or something like that. I looked for A Merchant of Venice but they didn't have it.

Then I drove to Taco Del Mar and got a yummy burrito. You know, I hadn't eaten anything the whole day, which is not reccomended for moving lots of boxes but it otherwise not at all uncommon for me to do on the weekends. I dunno why, when I have other things on my mind I forget about food. When I'm at work I think of food constantly.

There's a Borders across the street from Taco Del Mar, and although I wanted to head home by then (my tired body was begging to lay down and stop running around) I decided to stop in and see if they had my Cheeky Angel 11. And they did!

And they also had a way-cool Fruits Basket bookmark that I just had to have. It was cute, it was a waste of money, whatever, I like it.

And then I went home, ate my burrito, and watched Narnia. Not bad for a Saturday!

And then I watched Toy Story, because who goes to bed before Midnight anyway?