Category: general

It has recently come to my attention that Connor can read.

Anyway:

Angry bishies rule!

I’ve seen this one around for awhile. I never did it myself; I found it to be irritating because usually I didn’t know the songs that people listed as their answers. Well, now the shoe is on the other foot! Enjoy the following list of songs that you don’t know, world.

(Quaisi made me do it.)

Put your music player on shuffle. Press forward for each question. Use the song title as the answer to the question. Post on your blog.

Will I get far in life?
Planet Dance (Kageyama Hironobu, from Macross: The Tribute)
I’m assuming this is a good sign, even if I don’t care for this remake of Planet Dance.

How do my friends see me?
Master of Flame (OC Remix by EvilHorde, from Mega Man 6)
I thought Sean was Hellfire…

Where will I get married?
Cat Blues (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop OST 1)
Swanky! Yeah, I dunno. I got married in a garden.

What is my best friend’s theme song?
Memory of Fanelia (Yoko Kanno, Escaflowne OST)
Hmm, I’ll have to let Brooke hear this and see what she thinks. It is pretty.

What is the story of my life?
Jingle Bells (midi)
…-_-;;;

What was high school like?
Ave Maria (as sung by Perry Como)
I don’t know about that :>

How can I get ahead in life?
Yuu (NoR, The Legend of Condor Hero OP)
Am I supposed to be taking the names of the songs as the answers, or the messages of the songs?

What is the best thing about me?
Car 24 (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop OST 1)
The best thing about me is my car? Or what?

How is today going to be?
Gemini Salsa (OC Remix by McVaffe, from Mega Man 3)
Hey, I can kick it!

What is in store for this weekend? (Uhh…this is the weekend?)
Tristram (Matt Uelmen, Diablo 2 OST)
So my weekend is going to be a creepy love story. Got it.

What song describes my parents?
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (midi)
Um.

My grandparents?
Aquadecadence (OC Remix by analoq, from Super Mario Bros. 3)
Which grandparents is this supposed to describe? All four of them?

How is my life going?
Rhythm Emotion Remix (Two-Mix, from Gundam Wing)
That’s pretty cool :)

What song will they play at my funeral?
7 Minutes (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door OST)
Wow, this song would make for a kind of goth-punk funeral. Or something.

How does the world see me?
No Money (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door OST)
…

Will I have a happy life?
Outcast, Unclean (Battlecry)
Great.

What do my friends really think of me?
Active Heart (Sakamoto Maaya)
When really my heart is quite inactive.

Do people secretly lust after me?
Opening Run (Hamasaki Ayumi)
That’s kind of funny.

How can I make myself happy?
White Reflection (Two-Mix, from Gundam Wing)
If the video is to be believed, I just need to get out of the house every once in awhile to restore my inspiration.

What should I do with my life?
Mystic Eyes (Escaflowne OST, not sure who sings it)
So I should become a psychic?

Will I ever have children?
Goodnight Julia (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door OST)
Okay, universe, I get the picture.

What is some good advice?
Battle Rocks (OC Remix by AmIEvil for Super Mario Bros. 3)
Hey, that is good advice! @_@

What is my signature dancing song?
Odd Ones (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop Vitaminless)
This actually would be a good song to dance to. Swingdance.

What do I think my current theme song is?
Airwolf Theme
ROFLMAO!

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Bowser is Pissed (OC Remix by PriZm for Super Mario Bros.)
Aw, come on guys…I still love you!

What type of men/women do you like?
Bubble Man (wants to get) Funked Up (OC Remix by Disco Dan for Mega Man 2)
So…are you saying I’m easy?

What did you think of this meme?
Hamduche (Yoko Kanno, Cowboy Bebop Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door OST)
I have no idea what that means.

Charles turned me on to Fate/stay night, which is an anime based on a videogame. I am really enjoying the series.

While the premise is similar to that of Kyou Kara Maou!–that is, there’s a hapless male main character with strong convictions about protecting people who wields powers he is unaware of–in Fate, the main character isn’t completely clueless. He already knows about magicians, so when he learns about the game he’s being forced to play, he is able to accept it pretty easily. It’s interesting to see a character understand what he’s getting into, and still hold on to his idealism.

Of course, lately I’ve been thinking of writing a parody of this sort of anime, with an idealistic main-type character who gets killed off instantly due to his naivete. :>

I’ve gotten through a few story arcs, and things have played out in ways I couldn’t have expected. Suddenly, Saber is conscious of herself as a woman. (By the way: intriguing rewriting of history there. I’m guessing the word 王 isn’t as gender-specific as it is in English…) I was (and still sort of am) rooting for Shirou and Rin to get together, but you know how it is…a guy’s always closest to the hero-warrior from the past he has summoned into present day.

Completely randomly–I was looking for something to do–I decided to try out The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. O. M. G. This show is too weird not to watch. I’m not even going to describe it; you just have to see it. I will say that the narrator is awesome. And it’s not often that I call a pushover who grouses to himself without trying to better his situation awesome. I don’t know; there’s just something about him that makes it work. It helps that his constant internal monologue is hilarious.

Actually, there are quite a few things in the series that would normally annoy me, like what Haruhi does to poor Mikuru-chan, and Mikuru-chan herself (she’s the stereotypical over-the-top cutesy-shy freaks-out-about-every-little-thing type), but somehow when they all come together, they’re not annoying. They’re just…mind-boggling.

It’s obviously not a show to take seriously.

I also recently watched the first episode of Gakuen Heaven, which is…a boys’ love anime. I don’t know why I did it! Obviously I was bored at the time…

The episode served to introduce a gaggle of male characters ranging from kawaii to sekushii. The main character, Ito Keita, is a new transfer to the elite boys’ school that is the setting for the series. He describes himself as fairly average and has no idea why he’s been chosen for the school. However, he’s pretty cute. Is the chairman a pervert?!

There’s also a “troublemaker” named Endo Kazuki…who happens to be voiced by the lovely and talented Sakurai Takahiro. If the OP is to be believed (and when isn’t it?) Kazuki and Keita are the couple to root for. The two hadn’t met by the end of episode 1, because of course they have to drag it out. It made me look forward to the inevitable meeting. When will they meet? How will they meet? Will they like each other right off?

Of course, there’s a chance that either the chairman or Kazuki is really Keita’s long-lost brother.

Also–there was a random motorcycle accident!

I found that the episode reminded me of Prince of Tennis…I suppose because there were quite a few guys with different personalities who were all likeable in their own way. (The guys who kept hacking each other’s computers were hilarious.) I’m not sure how far into the ecchi stuff the show is going to go, but I think it’s worth continuing. (Besides, I must find out if the King survived! ;P)

Hai told me to watch a show called Nana, so now I have three episodes and the live action movie, but I haven’t tried it out yet. We’ll see how that goes. I’ve also decided to check out Shinigami no Ballad, because I find the death god mythology pretty interesting.

I’m always open to additional recommendations!

If your blog’s RSS feed is filled with nothing but a bunch of old posts and republishes multiple times a day, I will unsubscribe from you!

;P

I’m the kind of exhausted where I might burst into tears at any moment. Every time I start to think too hard about anything, I get frustrated. I know it’s just because I’m tired. I’ve been this way all week. It’s Friday, and it’s almost over, and next week will be much better because I won’t be trying to get up at 6:00 (except on Monday). So I just have to get through it.

I’ve been eating like crazy the past few days to try to stay awake, which has destroyed my “plan”. Oh well.

The Iraqi blogger known as “Mama” says:

It is too hard to be afraid from the unknown.
What will happen? what shall I do? What is the proper way to guarantee my kids’ future? to leave or to stay? Leave?! Where to?! Does leaving mean that I am an escapist or just a scared mammy?
This is how I keep wondering; thinking and asking my self, but I can’t find the answers.

[…]

For the first time my Dad tells me that he is no more confident, and that there is nothing promising at all, I used to get my power from my dad but now ,what?!
PLEASE DON’T TELL ME TO STAND UP AND TO FIGHT FOR MY COUNTRY, I CAN’T TELL WHO MY ENEMY IS?. I am just an ordinary mom.

It turns out that organizers of the James Brown Soul of America Music Festival have chosen a weekend for their festival that was already taken by another local festival. Organizers for Birdie Stock 2006 are positively molting.

(Sorry.)

To me, Birdie Stock sounds much cooler (even if their name is horrible). For one thing, it’s an established festival; they’ve been having it on Memorial Day weekend for years now. For another, it’s for a good cause. It’s a fundraiser for Feathered Friends Forever, a group that provides sanctuary for birds in need.

At Feathered Friends Forever we provide a loving, life long, care home for tropical birds. We take in all types, for any reason the bird cannot be cared for, in any situation. Feathered Friends Forever Rescue/Refuge, Inc. is the largest privately owned rescue/refuge in Georgia and one of the largest in the nation. We are a 501(c) non-profit corporation.

Compare this to the JBMF. The “James Brown” Soul of America Music Festival is hilarious, first off, because James Brown himself is unavailable on the dates of the festival. Organizers claim he’s coming for the opening ceremony, and that they’re working on getting him to actually perform, but he’s already scheduled to perform in Virginia immediately before and after the festival. It seems a little rude to demand that your supposed guest of honor–who isn’t getting any younger, by the way–fly home from Virginia and then back again over the course of a weekend, and give a concert somewhere in there.

The JBMF is also hilarious because of this.

Then there’s the matter of where the money is going. Nobody seems to know. The organization in charge of the festival, the Heritage Crest Foundation, is kindasorta infamous for being founded by a former Georgia state senator who is now in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud. Here’s a description of what he was charged with from the Augusta Chronicle:

According to the indictment, between 1996 and 2003, Mr. Walker lost about $530,000 at casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., Las Vegas and Biloxi, Miss. Contained in the 66-page indictment are allegations Mr. Walker engaged in a pattern of deceit, covering up his personal ownership of businesses to sidestep mandatory financial disclosures, diving into his political donations for personal expenses and not disclosing that information.

His son’s in charge now, and to be fair, we shouldn’t punish the son for the sins of the father. But it does raise a few eyebrows.

I think people would feel a lot better about it if it seemed like the festival was being handled well. But the date’s been changed several times. Artists who were reportedly “confirmed acts” have said they never agreed to come (and I’m not just talking about Wil Wheaton ;>), and now the website doesn’t list any acts. Additionally, amateur performers are being asked to pay up to $600 for the right to play at the festival.

It gets a little hairy to say bad things about Heritage Crest and the JBMF, because Augusta is a racially-charged town. You can theoretically deflate someone’s argument simply by saying “You’re just being racist”. I personally don’t think it’s racist to point out organizational blunders, but there you have it.

In any case, given the controversy surrounding the JBMF and the fact that Birdie Stock was there first, I’d say forget Augusta that weekend and head over to Harlem.

Or just stay home and have a cookout.

MSN has a headline right now, “Americans Living Longer Lives.”

I stared and stared at it, unable to make any sense of it whatsoever…because mentally I kept adding a “No” before the word “Longer”.

(Which led me to thoughts like, “There’s no subject-verb agreement!” and “Wait, what does that even mean?”)

Tim and Kelly both won my little contest from the other day–by each getting one right. Seriously, people, you need to study my comics list. See it over there on the right? Gaze upon it, and be enlightened.

Anyway, ever since I announced the contest, I’ve been excited. I haven’t really drawn much in awhile–image manipulation in Photoshop doesn’t count. I’m interested to see what I’ll be asked to draw, and how well I’ll do.

Today Namiko Abe of Japanese.About.com answers the following question: “Why there are two ways to write “ji” and “zu” for hiragana and katakana?”

I was very interested in this, because I’ve noticed it too. One obvious example is Great Teacher Onizuka, which some romanize as Great Teacher Onidzuka.

I always assumed that there was a pronunciation difference between じ and ぢ and ず and づ; namely, /ji/ versus /dji/ and /zu/ versus /dzu/. (Note that that really isn’t a /d/. The difference is that of a fricative versus an affricate. The /d/ is just the easiest way to write it without using the IPA.)

There may be a difference, but apparently if there is it has no bearing whatsoever on the meaning of the word. Abe indicates that the alternate spellings occur as an artifact of assimilation. I therefore suspect that the Japanese don’t differentiate between the two sounds.

I wonder if this has always been the case, or if the writing system reveals a past difference?

Language Log in print!

Crazy.

And sooooo going in the Wish List. :D

This morning (oh, who am I kidding–it was actually around noon) I made a lovely breakfast for Sean and me: cheesy eggs, banana bread, and strawberry smoothies. I concocted the smoothies in the Magic Bullet. This time I just threw stuff in that sounded good, without consulting a recipe at all.

They turned out delightfully.

Strawberry Smoothie (serves 2)

8 oz vanilla yogurt (Dannon Light ‘n Fit)
2 cups fresh strawberries
2 cups ice
1 T sugar
splash skim milk

This whole yogurt thing really seems to work out well for making smoothies. The vanilla is better than the flavored ones, I think. I’ll have to remember that.

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the breakfast, because we ate it right away. But believe me when I say that it was pretty. Sean finally brought home the plates someone from work gave us; they’re kind of a pinky beige with soft pink and blue borders, and their rounded shapes are soothing, somehow. I put a wedge of banana bread, a glob of cheesy eggs, and a strawberry sliced in half on each plate, then served the smoothies in tall glasses. I thought wistfully that I wished I had some parsley with which to garnish the eggs, but oh well, nothing’s perfect ;>

Marie Mockett posted about kokeshi today, pointing out an awesome Hello Kitty doll and then briefly explaining what kokeshi are.

At the end of her post, she writes, “This post was specially for Heather!”

My natural reaction was, “She’s talking about me!” But there’s no link, so I can’t be sure. And as I continued to consider, I realized that surely it’s not about me. She probably just has a friend named Heather.

For this to be a reference to me, she would have to know that I have a kokeshi, or that I used to have one (although now I’m wondering if that one was actually a kokeshi or something else). This would mean she’d have to have been reading my blog, because I don’t think I’ve made a Japundit comment on the subject. And what are the chances of that?

Still…what if she does read my blog? What if that was a reference to me? The idea is so awesome, I can’t help but voice it.

But I’ll do so over here, where it’s less embarrassing if it wasn’t a reference to me…and hey, if she does read my blog, she can confirm/deny!

I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children today. (Finally.)

I can’t say I understood everything that went on–while I did watch AJ play VII, I don’t remember much about the story or the ending–but ultimately it was comprehensible enough. For a dead chick, Aeris sure does have a lot of lines. ;>

There were some crazy-cool fight scenes in this movie. The first scene was awesome because it featured the original battle music–and then the bad guy’s ringtone was the music they play when you win. That cracked me up.

But the two major battles at the end were the best–first with the creature, then with the main-bad-guy-who-I-won’t-reveal-but-you-can-probably-guess.

I was very happy when Cloud decided to stop feeling sorry for himself.

Cool thing: At one point, I thought to myself, “Cloud sounds like Yuuri.” Well, what do you know. I think Sakurai Takahiro is my favorite voice actor :>

Final note: Tifa kicks ass.

It seems like I’m always coming up with plans and then not following through on them. I think I make my plans too difficult, or too restrictive, or too demanding of time to organize. I like to be spontaneous, and I like to spend my free time doing things other than charting what I’ve eaten or developing menus or whatnot, which kind of defeats any plan I have that requires those things.

So I’m thinking of using a plan with more wiggle room. Instead of deciding that I will always know what I’m having for dinner every night of the week, I’ll make a deal with myself about what I can and can’t do for food each day.

During the week, I’ve decided that I must always have a Slim-Fast breakfast (this is the most convenient anyway) and a Healthy Choice lunch. I may also have up to three snacks, one of which should be a fruit. Once a week I will allow myself to eat out for lunch if I really want to.

Dinner can be a little looser–what I get to eat will depend on what kind of workout (if any) I had that day. So if I don’t work out at all, I need to be more careful: chicken or fish, veggies, not many carbs. If I walk during lunch, I can add in a starch like noodles. If I have even more of a workout, I can do a more filling, chunky dinner, like those dinners in a box, or I can eat out/order in.

On the weekend, I’m going to be less stringent: I can eat whatever I want as long as I do some form of exercise.

I’m also going to try to create a recipe organizational system so that I can plan ahead if I want to (for example, create a menu for Sean to cook on a day I don’t have much time).

I think this will be easier for me to stick to than trying to do up crazy exercise and meal menus every week. The Slim-Fast and Healthy Choice dinners are very convenient because I can just grab them and go, which gives me more time in the morning to piddle around before work (or go to the gym, or do some contract work). Having a general plan will help me make smarter decisions, too.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to try to use DietPower for this or not. Right now I’m thinking I don’t want to micromanage yet. I just want to start building some new, good habits. Once I have those in place, we’ll see if I need to push it further.