Alright, we'll see if I can manage this. I don't think I've seen a customer in hours, though being here alone means that the instant I see one I'll get three, and they'll all want copies without knowing how to use the copier or packaging or speak English worse than most immigrants and take forever to ask what they want before I convince them to leave. Yesterday I didn't have a co-worker from when I showed up until about 75 minutes after I was supposed to be off the clock. But hey, I've forged my dedication in 6 years of service right? I get a $1 an hour raise, which would've been cool ... a few years ago. Now I'm faced with the prospect of cutting and running, since the ACS just asked for my application again and I seem to be told that they're going to make me an offer shortly. This leaves me sorta jaw-dropped, as I'm fairly certainly that I proved myself not only incapable but borderline incompetent with regards to the position I applied for, though I will say I was a pretty good conversationalist (but that doesn't really come as a suprise to me). Oh well, we'll see how things play out, and then figure out how the hell I adjust to night school and raiding (hint, I probably don't which will be uncool, but necessary) or just getting back into college in general (being out of HS ~4 year with over 50 credits is sorta a special case for most schools, and it's a pain in the ass to get them to be upfront about it so I can apply properly).
Ranting and mindblowing news aside, since the new season is practically at our feet I'm hoping I can get enough presence of self to talk about the few last seasons (and at this point, before that as well I guess). I've covered Ouran, and Eureka, and Haruhi already, which were 2 of the biggest hits and one of the nicer shows (should be very easy to pick which belongs in each category).
Well, mailman came, which was a distraction to my original actions. I'm sitting here holding a magazine (well, not a glossy cover, but still a magazine) entitled Mortuary Managment. On the back they advertise a "Death Care Web Store" with classic 1:18 scale 1920's and 1930's Hearses, Lapel Pins, Industry Books (Embalming: History, Theory, and Practice), and a few various other pieces. www.abbottandhast.com if you're morbidly curious (pardon the pun).
I checked back, seems that it's been awhile since I had a substancial post on the topic of anime (we're talking back to August here I think), but sadly thanks to the Hard Drive and Disc Space woes, not a ton has changed.
I have no clue how Coyote Ragtime ended, it got licensed and fell through the cracks. Ergo Proxy has stagnated to the point where I'm not certain I care how it ends anymore. GunXSword continues to impress me for insubstancial reasons, partially in amazement at how mundane and tripe things can be made into such annoyances, though they got literally 2 and a half casts worth of cliches running around the place, I don't really see any good way out of the mess.
Polished off the second season of Tsubasa. Gotta admit, for straying into wholly anime original territory they did great. Right up until "chaos". That name gets dragged through hell and back everytime someone parades it out. Nothing good has ever come out of it as far as I'm concerned, always just someone trying to pose an enigma and failing miserably. Kurogane's backstory was probably the highight of it all, hell he and Fye are really the only reason I keep watching, that and the glimses of Yuuko through the cracks. The Dimensional Witch is an amazing character on several levels, and honestly I'm just not comfortable with the idea of Syaoran surpassing either of them for some reason. Though I'll admit, for whatever reason, I can actually cope with Sakura being practically a god incarnate. It wasn't a bad season persay, there were some great moments, but eventually they just seemed to be leaning on them music way too heavily. Also, not enough Fye awesomeness.
(Picking back up a day later, having been waylaid by customers and plans)
I didn't manage to finish Zero no Tsukaima, nor watch the last run of Trinity Blood (which I think devolved into the exact same mess that befalls Trigun and probably GunXSword - too many villians and not enough time to flesh them out coupled with the addition of a random character with connection that was always subtly alluded to but never included). I watched all of School Rumble Season 2 that ended up getting subbed (for the love of god, someone finish this, I need more Eri), but got defrayed from N.H.K. before finishing it (that show just gets too ugly at times).
I did however finish Innocent Venus, though the less said about it the better. I could do everyone a favor and just spoil the single plot twist, but I'll do you one better and just spoil the whole series: stupid.
So let's talk Black Lagoon instead. The first season ended weak (thank god Legarch didn't get to stick around) and the second started about as bad (With the American ganster...), though once they got Greenback Jane out of the picture, especially using the Congress plot with the Church of Battle Sister, everything got good again. I'd have liked a bit more related to Rotten the Wizard and Shenhua, or at least more Shenhua in general, but we can't get everything we like. The whole epic battle in the Bowling Alley was incredible, as was the entirity of the subterfuge in the complete Japan arc.
To go more Lagoon, FMP:TSR, VVV, Tokyo Majin GK, Geass (In a future post though), and Otome: Zwei.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Boredom really kills the power to write.
Errata 1: Despite what the tutorial told me, Hammer Ons and Pull Offs in GH2 can occur on non-consecutive notes.
At long last I got together my skills and my reflexes and managed to play through the last 8 songs on Hard (Mostly 3'd with a few 4 star songs) only to be crushed by the madness that is Freebird. I can play everything but the Solo, which isn't really saying all that much, as everything before the solo is pretty amatuer level stuff. I can't do speed yet. You can throw pretty much any complexity at me, chorded or not, and I can decipher the pattern and play it, but getting speed where the tempo (aka the music) isn't easily listenable is my achille's heel. That and Orange -> Green runs because for whatever reason I mess up the double shift Red to Green, or I fail at Yellow if I focus too much on the Red to Green transition.
Errata 2: Not Kamisama Kazoku I was thinking of, I'll try and get a Radio Blog Club link to the song over there (on the left) so I can enlist some help in figuring out why the riff is so damn familiar.
On the musical front, I pushed forward to a reconstruction of my Pandora stations. I took Masterpiece and split in into 4 fragments, attempting to create 4 stations that rigidly maintain the songs I enjoyed on their parent, but in a way where I'm not sifting through the other 3 categories to get to them. Been good so far, though I find that age is very poor to stations, so we'll see how they're holding up after another few weeks.
On the video game front. Yay for the confirmation of a NIGHTs sequel, here's hoping they don't screw it up. SSX Blur not having a real song list = fail, so I won't be getting that one.
At long last I got together my skills and my reflexes and managed to play through the last 8 songs on Hard (Mostly 3'd with a few 4 star songs) only to be crushed by the madness that is Freebird. I can play everything but the Solo, which isn't really saying all that much, as everything before the solo is pretty amatuer level stuff. I can't do speed yet. You can throw pretty much any complexity at me, chorded or not, and I can decipher the pattern and play it, but getting speed where the tempo (aka the music) isn't easily listenable is my achille's heel. That and Orange -> Green runs because for whatever reason I mess up the double shift Red to Green, or I fail at Yellow if I focus too much on the Red to Green transition.
Errata 2: Not Kamisama Kazoku I was thinking of, I'll try and get a Radio Blog Club link to the song over there (on the left) so I can enlist some help in figuring out why the riff is so damn familiar.
On the musical front, I pushed forward to a reconstruction of my Pandora stations. I took Masterpiece and split in into 4 fragments, attempting to create 4 stations that rigidly maintain the songs I enjoyed on their parent, but in a way where I'm not sifting through the other 3 categories to get to them. Been good so far, though I find that age is very poor to stations, so we'll see how they're holding up after another few weeks.
On the video game front. Yay for the confirmation of a NIGHTs sequel, here's hoping they don't screw it up. SSX Blur not having a real song list = fail, so I won't be getting that one.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
In like a Lion...
Just a little something for the recent heat (though today has gone back to a much frostier temperature far departed from the 70's of the Ides of March)They're making a Live Action Speed Racer!? Why was I not informed of this atrocity against mankind earlier! And it's being produced by the Wachowski brothers?! How the hell do the makers of V for Vendetta and the Matrix Trilogy end up behind Live Action Speed Racer. May 9, 2008 US theater release date, I need to find some more info on this because the concept is really frightening.
The brother is off school for break this week. Which heralds the return of the PS2 and the 360. I'm back into the Guitar Hero 2, though admittedly progress is slow against the difficulty of the 7th song-set on Hard. Just like DDR I need to practice my running arpeggiation a bit and I should be fine. I think I'm getting good at Hammer-ons and Pull-Offs, though I haven't actually read about them so I can't be precisely sure. Having done the tutorial now, I think I'm just outpacing the motions, never would have noticed that they were restricted to adjacent notes on my own. That sort of thing just doesn't come up playing Bass, what with the whole 1 note at a time thing.
Played about 4 hours of Wario Woods against David last night. NES version via the Wii (wish it had been the SNES, the colors are better). Took a bit of getting used to the concept of immobile Crystals -- I'm fairly certain the SNES version let you move them all about. For those of you not familiar with the game, it's a fairly entertaining puzzle game, predating Tetris Attack (and about 10x more fun then Kirby's Avalanche, though that's a bit more colorful). Basically you have to make 3+ in a row of monsters plus at least 1 bomb to blow them up, triggering combos and whatnot.
In other news, I'm convinced that the opening riffs to 7 Minutes in Heaven (Fallout Boy's From Under the Cork Tree, Track 7) sounds exactly like the Kamisama Kazoku OP.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
The 5th Season
Before I get into it, let me just say - the weather here this week has been fantastic.
Titular Action
The title is a reference to a brewery in the area, where I went with the 'rents for lunch a few weeks back. We (mostly my father and I) spent awhile pondering what the name could mean, which was ruined when my mother actually asked our server. The answer was Monsoon season, which was a whole lot less fun than some of our suggestions.
Shade of Aran laid to rest.
So once again it seems my Virtual Life's progression is outpacing that of my Real Life, though that's not for lack of effort. Colleges are still a bit odd about where exactly I fit into the scheme of things with applications, and finding the right person to ask that question seems to be the key. Of course, at the heart of all of that is still the question of what precisely I want to be doing, but I look at those around me and I don't think I find anyone who's really working their love just yet. But I have to start somewhere. I find myself a bit quixotic, professing a love of computers and code, numbers and math, words and grammar, yet disliking the implementation and commenting, the complex and imaginary, the research and the documentation. Whatever, School first, dreams and aspirations later. Fun in the meantime.
The Musical Expansion
List of CDs that I need to borrow from David for the purpose of importing to iTunes:
Franz Ferdinand
Shiny Toy Guns
The Postal Service
Cowboy Bebop OSTS -- At bare minimum, Digging and disc 3 of the 4 disc set.
On-Demand Anime sideline
Popped into On-Demand again to see what was running. Mostly oddities and promos, or more episodes of shows that I don't really wanna watch to begin with. Utawarerumuno (Not a clue or a care if I spelled that right) episode 2, Jinki: Extend 7, FMP 23 (First season was just 24 I think? Not that I remember how the penultimate episode went).
Comical Musings (Somewhere there's a pun / irony in this)
Ian and Matt of Mac Hall have, my words not theirs, with a new comic -- Three Panel Soul http://www.threepanelsoul.com/. Up to a whole 9 strips, 3 per 2 weeks rotation atm as they decide how and what they wanna do with it. Looks great so far though, good to have them back in action.
Aerie has teamed up with the Artist of Stripstease for a new series, not alot there yet either, but since QoW was mostly a read for the occasional amusing quote, I don't think I'm going to both linking it. Suprisingly Lucky Googling Queen Wands Striptease will actually work. I figure leaving off the Wands might get you someplace else entirely though.
I can't help but feel that the latest arc of Sam and Fuzzy would've been better placed as those moments occured in the storyline, but the almost slapstick chaining of them isn't bad either. Questionable Content again expands the feminine field without testorone infusion, so the tension should continue to mount there.
OOTS is coming to another climax, and I figure that something major is going to have to occur, else we'll just be back where we were 200 strips ago except with one more character in the against column. At least everyone's speaking the same language again. Titanium Elemental were amusing, but I felt that strip could've had a bit more development to it.
Battle for Gobwin Knob is oscilating between a captivating story and some of the best groaner-jokes I've seen in quite awhile. I'm curious to see where this one goes.
And just to avoid droning on too much, LFG is practically genius at times, very thankful he's moved to a twice a week schedule.
All I've got for now. Gotta give some consideration to what Jiaz said. I'd probably be totally down for it if I could find a way to make it actually add something worthwhile to the site. The "being fun"part of it is already a given.
Titular Action
The title is a reference to a brewery in the area, where I went with the 'rents for lunch a few weeks back. We (mostly my father and I) spent awhile pondering what the name could mean, which was ruined when my mother actually asked our server. The answer was Monsoon season, which was a whole lot less fun than some of our suggestions.
Shade of Aran laid to rest.
So once again it seems my Virtual Life's progression is outpacing that of my Real Life, though that's not for lack of effort. Colleges are still a bit odd about where exactly I fit into the scheme of things with applications, and finding the right person to ask that question seems to be the key. Of course, at the heart of all of that is still the question of what precisely I want to be doing, but I look at those around me and I don't think I find anyone who's really working their love just yet. But I have to start somewhere. I find myself a bit quixotic, professing a love of computers and code, numbers and math, words and grammar, yet disliking the implementation and commenting, the complex and imaginary, the research and the documentation. Whatever, School first, dreams and aspirations later. Fun in the meantime.
The Musical Expansion
List of CDs that I need to borrow from David for the purpose of importing to iTunes:
Franz Ferdinand
Shiny Toy Guns
The Postal Service
Cowboy Bebop OSTS -- At bare minimum, Digging and disc 3 of the 4 disc set.
On-Demand Anime sideline
Popped into On-Demand again to see what was running. Mostly oddities and promos, or more episodes of shows that I don't really wanna watch to begin with. Utawarerumuno (Not a clue or a care if I spelled that right) episode 2, Jinki: Extend 7, FMP 23 (First season was just 24 I think? Not that I remember how the penultimate episode went).
Comical Musings (Somewhere there's a pun / irony in this)
Ian and Matt of Mac Hall have, my words not theirs, with a new comic -- Three Panel Soul http://www.threepanelsoul.com/. Up to a whole 9 strips, 3 per 2 weeks rotation atm as they decide how and what they wanna do with it. Looks great so far though, good to have them back in action.
Aerie has teamed up with the Artist of Stripstease for a new series, not alot there yet either, but since QoW was mostly a read for the occasional amusing quote, I don't think I'm going to both linking it. Suprisingly Lucky Googling Queen Wands Striptease will actually work. I figure leaving off the Wands might get you someplace else entirely though.
I can't help but feel that the latest arc of Sam and Fuzzy would've been better placed as those moments occured in the storyline, but the almost slapstick chaining of them isn't bad either. Questionable Content again expands the feminine field without testorone infusion, so the tension should continue to mount there.
OOTS is coming to another climax, and I figure that something major is going to have to occur, else we'll just be back where we were 200 strips ago except with one more character in the against column. At least everyone's speaking the same language again. Titanium Elemental were amusing, but I felt that strip could've had a bit more development to it.
Battle for Gobwin Knob is oscilating between a captivating story and some of the best groaner-jokes I've seen in quite awhile. I'm curious to see where this one goes.
And just to avoid droning on too much, LFG is practically genius at times, very thankful he's moved to a twice a week schedule.
All I've got for now. Gotta give some consideration to what Jiaz said. I'd probably be totally down for it if I could find a way to make it actually add something worthwhile to the site. The "being fun"part of it is already a given.
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