Category: general

From: Benavides Chester [mailto:irrespectively@atlas.cz]
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 4:24 PM
To: Bender Chi
Subject: Re[2]:

muttered in a sleepy voice but without malice : ‘ All right, then . . . but you’ll pay for it … I warned you, but if you want to … What interests me most now is Pontius Pilate . . . Pilate . . .’ And with that he closed his eyes.
‘Vanna, put him in No. 117 by himself and with someone to watch him.’
The doctor gave his instructions and replaced his spectacles. Then Ryukhin shuddered again : a pair of white doors opened without a sound and beyond them stretched a corridor lit by a row of blue night-bulbs. Out of the corridor rolled a couch on rubber wheels. The sleeping Ivan was lifted on to it, he was pushed off down the corridor and the doors closed after him.
‘Doctor,’ asked the shaken Ryukhin in a whisper, ‘ is he really ill?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied the doctor.
‘Then what’s the matter with him?’ enquired Rvukhin timidly.
The exhausted doctor looked at Ryukhin and answered wearily:
‘Overstimulation of the motor nerves and speech centres . .

Wow :D

A little Googling turns up that this is a copy and paste job from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Is this the new strategy? Rather than try to create realistic blocks of text, simply copy existing blocks?

Regardless, it’s funny.

(And who’s Bender Chi? That name is awesome. I may have to use it somewhere.)

Well, not dead so much as making a weird noise rather than, you know, starting. The engine seems like it’s going to start, but then it hangs and doesn’t catch.

Car’s on its way to the shop and I’m at work now. Here’s a silly audio post I made while I was waiting for Sean to come pick me up.

It was pretty cool. The Family Y (Wilson Branch) is huge. It’ll be a good place to work out. The pool is pretty nice. Its deepest point is only 7 feet, though. Still, it’s a decent size. I mainly played around in the open kiddie area because all the lap lanes were being used. Someday I hope to actually swim laps. I’ve never done it before ;P

That plus my walk during lunch give me some decent exercise for the day. I’m going to try not to overdo it. After work, I was starving, and had to force myself not to just go straight home and eat.

I did have hotdogs when I got home from the Y, though. Here’s hoping I can improve my eating habits.

I went for a 30-or-so minute walk during lunch today. Leaving the station, I first headed further east into the lovely little garden-filled neighborhood, then cut off to the right to hit Knox Avenue and finally head towards the river. At Martintown Road I turned right and headed up the big hill, and then I headed up the big hill on Georgia Avenue. By that time I was pooped, so I came back to work.

It was really pretty out. It has rained, and may in fact be raining right now, but I didn’t get rained on during my walk. There were all sorts of flowers blooming and bright green leaves poking out of the trees. With the rain, the tree trunks were dark, providing a nice stark background. The sky was overcast, meaning it would have been perfect for pictures, but since I was out for exercise, I hadn’t brought anything but my keys and phone.

There were two places in particular that I would have liked to have taken pictures. The first was on the road I took to get to Knox Avenue. On the left, there was a house with a No Trespassing sign–but I almost missed the sign because of the beautiful gardens practially pouring over the old brick walls and regular chain-link fence. There was a lot of wisteria, plus pink, red, and white flowers. Absolutely beautiful. The second spot was along Knox Avenue near a bank, where a stand of thick, dark-trunked trees was peppered with little bursts of bright green leaves. I saw the perfect angle for that shot, too…

But I’m glad I didn’t loiter around. The exercise was great. It was about 55 degrees out, and unthinkingly I’d worn a coat. I finally ended up carrying it back up Georgia Avenue. The coat and the exertion of walking uphill had me working up a sweat :>

Tonight after work I’m hoping to get over to the Family Y, where I have a free membership from work (!!!!), and do some swimming. I don’t think I will ask myself to do anything more advanced than that at this point. Besides, I need to get home in time to cook dinner.

I have been looking forward to swimming for a long, long time. I can’t wait!

Publishers Weekly: Harper, Tokyopop Ink Manga Deal (via the ever-awesome Japundit)

In a turnaround that highlights the sales potential of graphic novels and manga in the book trade, HarperCollins will take over the distribution of the Tokyopop manga list to the trade. In addition, Tokyopop and HarperCollins will collaborate on developing manga adaptations of HarperCollins authors beginning with the bestselling young adult novels of Meg Cabot.

We here in the West keep hearing conflicting things about manga in Japan. First it’s so popular that everyone grows up reading it; next it’s not really so mainstream, and people in Japan don’t understand our fascination with it. I think the real truth is somewhere in between: manga plays as big a role in Japanese life as the television does (did?) in American life, but like the television, it’s not something you obsess about. It’s just there.

I met a Japanese girl once who claimed strongly not to have any interest in anime and manga. Later, when I actually went to Japan, I met another Japanese girl who had some friends over, and they all watched an episode of One Piece. The girls obviously didn’t follow the show regularly; they were just interested to see what was up with it. These girls were not stereotypical Akiba nerds; nor were they concerned about seeming to be stereotypical Akiba nerds. They were just living, and enjoying their pop culture. I think that mentality also describes the general manga experience.

So the manga phenomenon here in the West is different, because it’s not already established, but I wouldn’t say that it is completely alien from the Japanese manga experience. What may be different is the number of people who will buy any title simply because it’s manga. It would be interesting to see how that number compares to the number of manga otaku in Japan.

Please, people, stop using that phrase. It wasn’t a particularly clever allusion before The Matrix, and it certainly isn’t one now, afterwards.

I’m not even kidding.

The best part is, it happened right behind our apartment.

You can see the blackened dirt where pine straw used to be extending to about three feet from where our patio starts.

The fire happened Sunday afternoon, in broad daylight. No one’s sure what caused it, but the firefighters got it put out very quickly. I wasn’t home when it happened, but Sean was, and he saw the fire. He says that the firemen looked at all the bystanders and were like, “Doesn’t anyone have a hose?” and the residents had to respond, “We’re not allowed to have hoses.”

It’s true. It’s in our leasing agreement.

Who is this?

Gunner may have competition for “Hottest Guy in Zap!“…

He kind of looks like Sasuke, except that he’s actually hot.

Did I mention he’s hot yet?

I almost couldn’t get out of bed this morning :> But moving around helps.

Right now I’m sitting on the floor next to the kitchen, reading webcomics and eating leftover Chinese food from the other day. The dishwasher is running, scouring the lovely dishes Aunt Carol gave us, along with one place setting of the beautiful dishes someone at Sean’s work gave us. He still needs to bring the rest of them from work.

I’ve got a few errands to run today. First, I need to take some stuff to Goodwill that we accumulated but ultimately decided we don’t want. Second, I need to get over to Wal-Mart and snag a few essentials that I somehow forgot–like dish towels. And finally, Sean and I are going to a furniture store to see about a dining room table, some end tables for the living room, a TV stand, and a bedroom suite. We have the bed Will gave us, but we decided we’d like a king-sized bed, and we need a chest of drawers anyway, so there you have it.

We’ll be using the kotatsu for a coffee table. With the shape of the room, using it as the dining room table wouldn’t quite work, but that’s okay. I don’t know that all my friends and family would be ecstatic about eating on the floor, anyway ;>

I’ll have more pictures later.

Update 1:25: More pictures start here. I’m off to run my errands!

I’ve been up since 7 and running hard all day, carrying things, unpacking things, sorting things, and putting things away, so I’m really too tired to give you all a debriefing. Suffice it to say that all of our possessions are now in our new apartment (though not necessarily in their permanent homes), and there are pictures.

I think I’ll go die now.

Today (March 25) is my bone marrow birthday! As of today, I have been cancer-free for eight years. Go me!

I usually go out to eat for dinner on my bone marrow birthday, but tomorrow will be different due to the move. Friends are invited to come over and hang out tomorrow night, so my thought is that we should all get Giuseppe’s pizza, since they’re right down the street, and oh-so-delicious.

(So yeah, Mari, Kelly, Chris, I haven’t been very organized with all this, but please come over and hang out if you have the time! Call me and I’ll tell you where we live now ;>)

After work I went straight over to the apartment and took all the stuff out of my car that has been sitting there waiting for us to have a place to put it. Then I came back to the in-laws’ and stocked my car full: all my clothes, paperwork, cooking supplies, and other random things I had lying around the house. I didn’t get everything, but I got quite a chunk.

As might be expected, I took pictures.

I think I need a step stool for that kitchen. But I have so much more space than I did at Springhouse! Very, very nice.

And oh yeah, there are other rooms too ;>

Tomorrow is the big moving day. I have to be up at 7 or so and out of the house by 7:40, because that’s when the guy who is giving us the sofa, chair, and china cabinet wants us to meet him and pick them up. I live to accomodate the man with all the furniture ;D At some point after that the washer and dryer will be delivered, and at some point after that we’ll head over to Will and Sarah’s and get the bed. After that I will just need to collect the TV from Audrey’s basement, and I think that will be everything that people have offered us.

It’s looking like I will need to buy a chest of drawers. Right now I just have my clothes in a laundry basket. I’m thinking Big Lots, but we’ll see.

WOO!

I clear my throat exactly the same way as my mom does.

Today I went for a walk along the riverfront Greeneway.

Note to self: wear sneakers next time. (Ow…)