The Asinine World

moving right along

I moved to LiveJournal. I've been considering the move for quite some time--let's hope it's for the better. Hooray!

go go fullmetal

Taken from the Adult Swim boards:

I do believe that's a record high for FMA. I like Futurama very much too, but it's not like we haven't seen each episode around six times already. Maybe someday Fullmetal will be #1 for Saturday. Added bonus of GitS being in third place!

P.S. I'm dying in agony for Adult Swim to show the last Inuyasha episode. This is mostly because I want to hear the screams of the fangirls who adore this show when they find out that basically nothing really happens after 169 episodes.

New World

New L'Arc~en~Ciel single "New World" is suppose to be out in early April. I heard a tiny snippet of it. Not super great, but it's plenty better than "Killing Me," that's for sure. Curious that "New World" is a Yuki-penned song--usually those sound all weirdly electronica and stuff. His work sounds down-right mainstream here. All the Laruku singles released post-Reunion with the exception of "Hitomi no Jyuunin" strike me as terribly bland and forgettable. Well, maybe "Ready Steady Go" was okay too because it had that energetic, break-neck speed feel to it. But, yeah, other than those, it's been meh....

You know, this blog makes me sound like the most brain-dead fangirl on the planet. Or rather, maybe I ought to be worried that I really am the most brain-dead fan-girl on the planet. Ah well, just to enforce that notion, last week I bought two handbags at Marshalls: one black houndstooth print with fuschia leather trim and one fuschia houndstoothe print with black leather trim. I justified it by saying that they were totally different, one being a true HANDbag with cute short handles and the other being a short shoulder bag. Not that I ever use handbags.......I blame this all on my mother's recent attempts to "de-butch" me ("How come you never wear dress? Don't wear sneakers all the time!")

Adult Swim Saturday Ratings

Taken from the Adult Swim boards:

Alllyeaahhh.....in your face, Inuyasha.

...

...

/feeling dreadfully foolish putting down cartoons.

drain bamage

Unfortunately school and research work leaves me absolutely drained of all mental capacity at the end of the day. I can barely write coherent sentences anymore. Pitas is a barebones sort of blogging tool and thus no built in spellcheck either. Anyho, I pity those who comes here hoping to read intellectually stimulating matter. In my off hours, I tend to indulge in the most mindless drivel to save on brain power. Enter the super brainless shoujo manga scanlations:

Love Monster: Dumb@$$ heroine enters a boarding high school for monsters (who all conveniently enough look like beautiful people with innoculous fox ears or wings or cat eyes instead of.....looking like Clayface or Sabertooth or something) . The school president announces that she, in fact, is his betrothed and has her living in his (quite spacious) closet much to her dismay. The ensuing plot devices are so cliche and the heroine is so typically stupid yet has that innate "super special quality" which makes all the other characters coo over her and which makes me roll my eyes. The beginning couple of chapters are somewhat pervy, But the art is really nice--the mangaka draws young men really well. I like the way she draws in the irises of the eyes.

Merupuri (The Marchen Prince/The Fairy-Tale Prince): A somewhat bratty and spoiled but cute 7-year old prince from a magical land repeatedly comes through a 15-year old school girl's antique mirror to freeload and watch anime at her house. He also turns into a 17 year-old (physically not mentally) when placed in darkness (like a closet) but turns back to normal after getting a princess's kiss. Now there were about 84 ways that sort of situation could have been made really pervy and so utterly WRONG, but thankfully the mangaka chose "sweet and sincere" as her M.O. Unfortunately, the so called "plot" is just a string of the typical "something-gets-in-the-way" situations (like memory loss) which are so ubitiquous to shoujo manga. That's kind of a pity considering the characters were so well realized. But since the manga is short (4 volumes), and the art is very nice, it won me over. So unbashedly romantic (a royal will _die_ if someone besides their love kisses them over their heart **swoon**), the fact that I actually rather like it is really quite mortifying and disturbing to my darkly, cynical self. Man, my brain really has turned into mush.

RIE FU!

Whee...Rie Fu! I was initially struck by the ending song for the Bleach anime: a really nice, reflective, kind of folksy acoustic guitar sort of song. And the English was pronounced so well--no discernable accent at all. After some googling, I've found Rie Fu! She spent part of her childhood in Maryland and now goes to college in London. Her first cd came out last month and it's really worth a listen. It's a bit like Lisa Loeb or maybe a really modern take on the Carpenters or Carol King. She's a singer-songwriter so none of that crappy, soul-less dance/fake r&b junk (BoA, Nami Tamaki, etc). She also doesn't have one of those really shrilly, annoying voices some Japanese female artists seem to like to use (Ayumi Hamasaki). And she's only 20 years old (I feel like an old hag, really). Her website is both in English and Japanese (clicky the E and J buttons on the upper right corner). She also keeps an online diary in both J and E. Could she be the first highly successful Asian crossover artist and make it in America? Utada's debut hardly made a peep. Laruku better shake a leg because they ain't getting any younger. Rie Fu is really very nice all around. I normally don't like a lot of pop music, but it's an awfully nice cd she put out.

decay (English version): one of the nicer ones on the cd. "Life is Like a Boat" is probably the best, but that one is easier to find because it's the ending to Bleach. Link expires in 1 week.

more anime

'Tis a pity that Bleach is going to one of those long-running shonen anime series which I loathe so very much. It has a lot of interesting elements, and I like Rukia a lot for many obvious reasons (why can't shoujo have such cool, strong, kickbutt FEMALE characters? Main shoujo female characters who aren't wishy-washy and naive to the point of being stupid are rare birds indeed). I also like how her eyes are drawn. Normally, I'm not a fan of huge eyes, but here they have pointed, intelligent, cat-like look to them. Unfortunately, I dislike how the current arc places her in a damsel in distress type position, though. It also doesn't leave much room for character interaction. I wonder, why she was chosen to be adopted. Also, using an Orange Range song as the opening was inspired. The mangaka (male) is very young--around 22 or so.

I think I pinpoint what's been bugging me about the art style of many new anime series: use of oversaturated pastels (Pretera, Peach Girl, that one Fushigi Yugi ripoff, and probably a whole lot of others. It just makes things look cheesy and cheap.

I'm a bit worried that FMA has been moved from midnight to 11:30pm on Saturdays. There's a lot of competing shows during that time. It first I didn't really like Ghost in the Shell SAC because the technobabble was rather off-putting and some of the violence was really quite gratuitous, but I'm starting warm up to it now that I understand what they're doing.

go ether go

I've been bonding with my ethernet lately, so here's some anime quick reviews:

Ah! My Goddess (TV): the art lacks "warmth." All anime is done on computers these days but the "look" can come across as being cheap and flat if the art director is not careful. I guess I was spoiled by the art quality of the original OAV production so I was dissappointed with the look of this series. Also, the characters' eyes are placed way too closely together in many of the close-up frames. I find it terribly irritating. While cute and sweet, the series gets a bit tiresome for me because it won't really go anywhere plotwise (if the manga series is any indication).

Bleach: hmmm...it has potential to be quite good, but it might also just end up being another long-running, point-less soap-opera....with swordfights **coughInuyashacough**. I like Rukia, but I've always been partial to kickbutt coolly distant girls. The only gripe is that the animation must have been put through some sort of filter to make the action scenes really "soft" and fuzzy looking. It hurst my eyes. Somehow, I like the obvious RukiaxIchigo pairing too.

Peach Girl: Cookie cutter art and animation. It tries to look like Miwa Ueda's manga style but just ends up looking like the characters have weird puffy lips. Kiley wasn't drawn as nearly as pretty as he needed to be. High school soap opera drivel. But least the manga didn't drag on forever. It had a REAL ending. And the heroine actually wound up with the RIGHT guy instead of the predictable choice. I'm willing to watch the last one or two episodes just to see that part.

I'm not watching the Poirot and Miss Marple anime series because I don't want to get spoiled before I read the Agatha Christie books. I already got spoiled for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when I watched the tv movie with David Suchet. That one you really have to read to book to appreciate the impact of the "suprise" :(

Heard the studio which did Pretear is also animating the new Tsubasa Chronicle anime. CLAMP, you cheap fools, why didn't you entrust it to Madhouse or something. It's most likely going to look like crap.

anime boston

Hmmm...Yoko Ishida was announced as a guest at Anime Boston. I've only heard her do the Pretear opening theme which wasn't anything stand-out to me--it sounded pretty much like any other brightly chirpy Jpop song with a female singer ('sides I rather dislike singers who don't write their own music unless they have absolutely remarkable voices). The direct consequence of her presence at Anime Boston, however, means that the rest of the guests will be pretty second-rate since it isn't a huge con and I highly doubt they have enough money to get anyone else semi-decent.

/looking forward to the new Tsubasa Chronicle anime

/haven't seen the new Ah! Megamisama TV series yet

/too tired to stay up to watch dubbed FMA.

/otherwise, don't have a clue about the new series that are airing.

Chinese TV

Some Chinese (Mainland CCTV-4) TV observations:

Most talk shows and celebrity interview shows have a live piano player in the background providing musical emphasis on whatever is being said.

If a celebrity is being interviewed, they have to tell some sad story about their childhood or parents and cry on camera.

If there are non-Asian people in the audience, the camera zooms in on them repeatedly.

They run the same 6 commercials all day.

Half of those commercials are public service commercials emphasizing filial obedience or good citizenship. While not a bad idea at all, the fact that these commercials are rerun so often gets a bit grating.

On a related note, I heard the Internation Channel is switching to an All-Asian format in the second quarter of this year.

vitamins

Mom: Why are you so grumpy all the time? You lacking in vitamins. I put vitamins on your desk and you never remember to take!
coriolis: I take my vitamins every day!
Mom: Oh yeah? Every one of them?
coriolis:...............(Note that there are about 20 different bottles of supplements on my desk)
Mom: Making that frown face again--you are going to get wrinkes. You lack iron. I was like that when I was your age. But didn't have vitamins in China to take....hey, where you running off to?

Update: Got my blood test results back. Apparently I'm a tad bit anemic. Arrgghh--she's right! She's always right, dagnabbit!

Heya

Hmmm...haven't updated for a while. Been busy with research and messing around with Ma during the off hours. Thai food was kind of a bust for us. Tried both the super authentic Thai place and the Americanized Thai place. I'm not sure if it was the fault of the restaurants or not but it was terribly "meh.." to us.

Went to a after-wedding party for one of the post-docs here. Wore my winter tweed suit and knee-high boots at the insistence of Ma who likes to take every opportunity to dress up to the nines. Nearly froze my butt off walking to their place because I couldn't very well zoom along on account that the boots had 3-inch heels. I tried explaining to her that a pair of black slacks, comfy black oxfords, and a nice sweater would have been plenty dressy enough but Ma would have none of that. When I got to the party, guess what the bride was wearing? Black slacks, comfy shoes, and a nice sweater. Arrgghh!

I've been eating a lot of nian gao lately. I find the chewy, sticky texture inexplicably addictive. For those who don't know, the stuff is made from glutinous rice flour mixed with water and sometimes flavorings and then steamed. If you make it sweet and steam it in a round cake pan, you get new year's cake. (You could also bake it, but then the recipe usually includes lots of butter which never tasted right to me). If you leave it plain and steam it in long strips which are cut after cooking, you get the little white coins which can be put into stir fry. If you make it into little balls (with or without fillings) and cook them by boiling, you get tang yuan which is a whole other animal.

fud

After dining at the Boston branch of Penang, Mom has decided that she really likes Malaysian food and is slightly peeved that I didn't bring her to this restaurant sooner. Man, that Char Kway Teow is like Chow Foon on steroids. ("If it tastes good, it has to be authentic!" says she)

Tomorrow we're going to supposedly the best and most authentic Thai restaurant in Boston metro. She complained that the one she went to back home used too much coconut milk and overpowered all the other flavors. I get kind of nervous trying new places to eat with her because the meal doesn't impress her, I feel I've let her down in my food research abilities even though she tells me not to feel that way.

yakkity smakkity

I've missed all the FMA episodes aired since Christmas since Mom has the craaaazy notion that people ought to go to bed at 10:30pm. I don't necessarily mind going to bed early because then I can rise earlier to get more things done during the day. But she has a habit of talking REALLY LOUDLY (yelling?) while asleep so I rarely wake up before 9am.

I ought to be sleeping more soundly though, since she's been making me go to the gym for an hour before breakfast each morning. I used to be more regular in my gym visits, but then I became busy. I got doughy kind of quickly. Or as Mom puts it, I have a lot of "puffy meat" (I swear that phrase makes more sense in Chinese)

SPORKS

So after my visit with my primary care physician, I've got myself an appointment with the surgeon on Monday. Not sure if they'll do it right then or if it's only an consultation. MIT has its own team of surgeons, apparently. Today wasn't totally pain-free either: they did take out three vials of blood from me to check for vitamin deficiencies and thyroid hormones. Right afterwards, I was grumbling to Mom that there better be some kind of treat waiting for me back home to make up for it.

Good lord, I really am turning into my mother considering the way I bore people to death with the minute details of my health.

I feel mighty proud that I didn't get suckered into buying FMA character goods this past year. Of course, that might change this May when I attend Anime Boston where the most interesting thing is the dealer's room. Still hankering for rare, beautiful CLAMP shitajiki, though. Some things never change. I also decided that Volks Superdollfies are not for me even when I get out of school and have pocket money. Too high maintenance what with trying to get special clothes, wigs, and makeup for them. (Some of those owners are quite freaky in their obsessiveness) I'd rather get some clothes and shoes for me so I look less like a bag lady and maybe some piano, guitar, and violin lessons (I used to play!). Mom says I should spend less time surfing the web and more time cooking and taking care of myself instead of living off of cold cereal and turkey jerky all the time. And of course, she's right....sigh.

A new year, a new you

Updated the sidebar a tiny bit. Someday, I'll make the trek to NYC and get me one of those Beard Papa Cream Puffs....unless they open up a shop here first. Food obsession of the moment: Mozartkugeln (Mozart balls), a Salzburg specialty. Mom and I developed a taste of them when an Austrian couple visited our home many years ago and brought over a box. Marzipan, pistachio praline, and dark chocolate--what's not to like?

Saw the new L'Arc PV (music video) for "Killing Me." What a dreadfully dull, wholly unimaginative song. I didn't think much of their last single, but this is even worse. Also hyde looks like he's going through some mid-life crisis by revisting his old Jersey girl hair style. Slap a white gown on him and you'd think it was 1992 again.

After some nagging by Mom, I booked a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to do an initial checkup before getting some minor subdermis level surgery on my back. Only local anesthesia--not general--so I'll be awake. But still, it's awfully scary. Mom thinks I'm being chicken, of course. I don't even have pierced ears because I'm not comfortable with the thought of hurting myself.

I'd have to sleep on my stomach for a while while it heals. I hate sleeping on my stomach! Man, I almost feel like when I step out of the O.R., somebody better give me a reward for all this trouble--like how little kids get ice cream after getting shots or something. Not that I would know first hand--I usually got yelled at for crying.

soaps

This is the 11th day Mom has been with me. The nagging has gotten irksome a few times. Of course, then she sees me sulking a bit and tells me that doing that will make wrinkles on my forehead. I can never win. Naturally, she's only trying to help me and lord knows I need all the help I can get.

Mom's also totally enrapt with this....Chinese soap opera about pre-WWII Taiwan. It airs on CCTV, dubbed in Mandarin. I think it was originally in Fukianese which is rather unusual. Anyway, talk about your over-the-top, melodramatic overacting! The characters were more caricatures than anything else: the poor but noble servant woman, the rich but noble guy, the buffoon, the crazy grandma, the evil policeman. I know soap operas are hardly the paragon of fine acting, but wow!--this even outranks those telenovelas on the Spanish stations in unbelievability.

The somewhat embarassing thing is that Mom kept commenting on how very well acted it was. I think the taste for that type of protrayal must be a vestige of Chinese Opera where the acting was all very stylized and grandiose to project well into the audience. I don't think subtlety would have worked too well back then.

12312004

Almost midnight. This was a bloomin' miserable year in many ways. But I'm still here, and my near and dear are all in good health. I whine and complain a lot, but there's a lot to be thankful for.

RIP lenny

Found out Jerry Orbach died yesterday from prostate cancer. Most people know him as Lenny Briscoe from "Law and Order," but he was a Broadway musical old-timer--you should see clips of him performing in 42nd street ("Come on along and listen to the lullaby of Broadway....") He was also Lumiere in "Beauty and the Best." 'Tis very sad, indeed. His character was my third most favorite cop character after David Suchet's Hercule Poirot and Richard Belzer's John Munch (Homicide version, naturally). I also liked Andre Braugher's Pembleton, but I was kind of young when I last watched it and may not be able to fully appreciate his acting abilities. Reminders of one's mortality always get to me....

loads of cache

I've noticed that my browser tends to cache this page so I have to reload to see the newest version. So, you might have been looking at the old version of this page when, in fact, there are new outcroppings of asininity or insanity yearning to be read...or not. So I've put in new meta tags to prevent caching....hopefully it'll work. (I'm not too sure it will)

Mom's back in my room cooking up a storm and rearranging everything. I'm stuck in my office doing work and waiting for my supervisor to get here. I'm going home if he isn't here by 10:30pm. I already have a headache. Well, at least I ought to be grateful that my new program is converging on the correct solution. Genetic algorthims are so hit-or-miss. As I sit all alone in my desolate office, I sometimes wonder what kind of masochist I really am.

I've been too worn out and stressed lately. I know buried deep in me are some artistic urges that have been wholly unaddressed for several years. I believe within everyone there are stories to be told, whether through art, or writing, or dance, or music. I think whenever anyone creates anything like that for people to see or hear or read, they are putting a little piece of themselves on display: "This is a bit of me--touching the very core of me. I hope you like it--that little part of me." And although writing code and doing research is very fine, and very much life-saving and dare I say noble work (I help detect landmines among other things), there's something incredibly lovely about how artistic endeavors can touch a perfect stranger's heart so directly and personably. **Sigh**

Aw poop

Apparently internet chatter was wrong this time. They played the same song they played last year, lazy dopes. At least last year they played two songs. Also the video quality was really quite awful, the aspect ratio was all wrong, and the sound was quite out of sync. hyde looked pretty bad with the hair extensions--he's really way too old to pull that off convincingly. This is now one of the big contenders for my "most worthless download ever" award. You know, none of this crazy stuff would have happened to me if I had just stuck with listening to Rachmaninoff and Puccini like a good little girl.

I did manage to hear a LQ snippet of the new single. It's hard to tell through all that distortion, but it has potential to be quite a spiffy song. It actually sounds kinda happy for something entitled "Killing Me." Their last single wasn't really and truly "single-worthy" at all which was dissappointing. I think "Pieces" and "Anemone" are the only other single I found lacking: such dull ballads when something like "Anata" or "Farewell" do more justice to that format.

Okay, enough with the fan girl drivel. I went to Harvard Square with Mom and ordered some groovy rimless eyeglasses. I heard about how all the hipsters rock musicians like to go to that boutique to get their unique frames. Any way, it was rather nice to have people tell me exactly what shape of frame would suit my weirdly shaped face and head. Usually places like LensCrafters just have people who nod and say, "Oh, that's nice." for every frame you try on. I already have contact lenses but they're kind of troublesome to put in and they make my eyes dry and tired pretty easily. I'm also so incredibly near-sighted and astigmatic that my vision can never be corrected all the way to 20/20. You know that awful feeling you get when you take a test and can't answer most of the questions and are pretty certain of your impending doom? I get that whenever the optometrist asks me over and over to try reading the next to the bottom line and I can't at all, no matter how much he fiddles with the lenses.

go Ether go

Everyone have a nice and safe Christmas or holiday of preference? Getting to see Mom was the best Christmas present I could ask for. We watched the Julia Child PBS marathon all day. She was a laugh riot--best comedy ever. And she did her cooking with such great gusto.

Music Station Super Live 2004 is uploaded on the Lucia tracker now. In four parts. And about 900 MB per each part >_<. Only getting the third part because it's the one with Nakashima Mika, Gackt,......and L'Arc of course--heh, I'm so predictable. Internet gossip says they performed their new single on the show. But 900 MB is terribly trying through bittorrent even with ethernet.

Anticipation....

Mommy will arrive here on Christmas morning. A very nice present for me indeed. I do feel kind of inadequate having my mom come by and look after me so often when others around me are so independent. I plan on cooking for her on Christmas Day since she will undoubtedly be tired from the trip. I think I went a little overboard in my menu planning--I sort of want to prove that I can be just as great of a cook as she is although I lack her impressive ability to improvise with seemingly meager and random ingredients. I also need to use up some stuff in my cupboards so I settled on a rather odd assortment of dishes:

• Pancakes
• Irish Soda Bread
• Tofu Brownies
• Seaweed Soup
• Tofu Dengaku
• Pasta Puttanesca
• Quinoa Pilaf
• Pumpkin Custard
• Gingerbread

I might leave out the Irish Soda Bread--seems a bit redundant with the gingerbread and the pasta...and the pancakes (I have a whole bunch of flour I need to use up). Also everyone's Italian Nonna is probably rolling in her grave, but I like to cook pasta in the sauce. That is, I don't boil the pasta separately. By the time the sauce has thickened up, the pasta is cooked through. I think the flavors get absorbed better this way. I least I resisted my inner Martha Stewart and don't plan on making fresh pasta from semolina flour which was on sale. Anyway, I hope to bring peace of mind to my Mom and help her believe me when I say that I can cook, but just am too busy and tired t o do so.

The bunko torrent site is going to be down for a while. A pity. I was looking forward to getting the Music Station Super Live 2004 after their Christmas Day broadcast. I would be more alarmed if there weren't other dedicated Jpop trackers that should have that show too. I wonder what kind of song the new L'Arc single will be--it could be anything from guitar smashing metal all the way to a soft ballad with a full string section. They're also doing the opening and ending of the Fullmetal Alchemist movie due out this summer. Sony sure knows its marketing. Not that they don't deserve the opportunity. Everytime I try to convince myself that they're overhyped, too slickly commercialized, and whatnot, I always end up hearing something that reminds me of why I even bothered to investigated the folks behind that interesting DNA^2 theme song on that fateful day in freshman year.

Just suddenly I realized my folly of leaving my recently purchased bags of garlic powder and curry powder in my room which now smells like REALLY GREAT Indian restaurant--a good scent for a place to get food, a bad scent for one's dwelling.

Photobucket

Playing around with Photobucket image hosting service...Here's some old fanart I dug up from the depths of my HD.

Van and Hitomi from Escaflowne: her arms aren't in a natural position. He can't possibly support her with just one arm.
Sakura and Syaoran from Tsubasa RC: lighting looks odd. Wanted a vibrant, adventurous, exciting feel but it looks so bland.
Yuki from Fruits Basket: Aiyah, I don't even like this manga that much any more, but I worked for quite a long while on this sucker. Also this one was drawn in ink and then scanned versus being penned in with a graphic tablet like the other two. The difference in line quality really shows.

People rag on fruitcake so much. There's lots of really good fruit cake out there, but if it has neon green cherries, it's probably a bad sign. I also happen to like mincemeat pie. Never had one of those English Christmas puddings though: you cook it for 6 hours and let it sit around outside for a year to get "mature." Supposedly it tastes better that way. coriolis will try anything at least once!

sweet potatoes

I bought a ton of sweet potatoes when they were on sale about two months ago and left them in a cardboard box. I happened to look into the box today......o_O.....white stalks coming out like tentacles! But I figured since they were less than 6 inches long, it was still okay to eat. So, taking a big gulp, I ripped off the stems, scrubbed the skin and tossed all of them into the oven. In about an hour, I'll be up to my ears in baked sweet potatoes.

Cartoon Network

Episode 7 of Fullmetal Alchemist will be shown on Saturday. The Saturday after that is Christmas, and Adult Swim will be showing "Read or Die" and the "Animatrix" instead of their usual fare. I can't wait to see the reaction of n00bs after they see Episode 7 and get a taste of the true nature of FMA and the level of quality that distinguishes great anime from merely passably entertaining ones. And they will have to contend with having to wait two weeks for episode 8.

A lot of fans bristle when dubs change some of the dialogue when translating. But it is really quite well done for this series. "I just hope the dog doesn't mistake him for a fire hydrant"--bwahahaha! It wasn't in the original but it just worked so well in that scene. The only thing jarring is that Al keeps calling Ed "brother"--it just sounds kind of awkward in English. I think it would have worked better if they Americanized that little bit there.

I saw both RoD and the Animatrix long before they were aired on Adult Swim and didn't really like either of them all that much. I found the characters on the former to be irritating. And I found the format of the latter to be somewhat lacking. When I saw it in theaters (for free, of course), I found myself looking at my watch more than a few times because of how certain segments seemed to drag on.

Oh, and the Adult Swim message boards have fully convinced me that almost everyone out there on the internet is a 'tard, a 14 year old, or a 14 year old 'tard.

Andy Rooney

I seem to be in an Andy Rooney mode lately. Sorry about that. I found some old floppy disks of mine from high school. They were filled with excruciatingly bad unfinished short stories obviously written by a very different person--someone I haven't seen for a long time. And the stories weren't the least bit original--most of them were written in response to stories which didn't end the way I had wished. For instance, there was the beginning of one story about a mysterious rich guy who moves into a town filled with flakey, superficial women. It was so obviously written right after I read "The Great Gatsby." And there were pieces of fan fiction in which I made no pretense of even trying to do anything original. Again, all written because I didn't like the ending of a book or movie or whatnot. I guess I get too emotional over stories. That's why I go out of my way to find spoilers so nothing would catch me off guard. I suppose it's a way for me to always be in control. I'm sure this habit of mine would irk a lot of people. but I don't want to wind up writing bad fan faction for two months over something that, in retrospect, wasn't even all that great.

I keep my perfume collection in my sock drawer (cool dark places help perfumes stay fresh). I have the best smelling socks in the world!!!!

Anime Boston made its first announcement about guests a week ago. B-list voice actors. I never quite understood the draw of B-list voice actors even though they are a staple of every American con. The voice actors are not going to actually entertain you a whole lot at the panel or anything. Not like having the Simpsons cast perform an episode live like they did at some comedy festival in Canada--now that is something worth going to see. Anime Boston did not get a single Japanese guest last year so I'm not getting my hopes up about who they manage to scrounge up this time. I seem to have entered into my Andy Rooney mode once again so I will stop here.

handbag cult

Why are Louis Vuitton handbags so horribly ugly and so horridly lacking in functionality? I guess it's all a big status thing because they're ridiculously expensive. And the leather is untreated so it supposedly gets a darker color as it ages. Huh, untreated leather will also get stained by water--hope you don't need to carry your handbag out in the rain. And even their print ads look rather bad with a bizarre looking model.

Asian Rap

I'll never understand Asian rap music. I see it and I hear it, and it's just so very bizarre (and most of the time it's really bad--some of the hip hop performances they show on CCTV make me want to scream in horror). I guess listeners in their native countries don't think anything is odd. I guess Americans all kind of grow up questioning the legitimacy of any non-black rappers--especially those without street cred. I mean, um...Vanilla Ice.....

uh...

Mammas, don't let your children grow up to be career grad students or else they won't have any brainpower left after their research work to do much else but complain about everything, fixate on strange things or people or shows, and be really clingy to their Mammas. Or maybe that's what you want.....

I'll never admit to being a fangirl

Hmmm....new L'Arc single was announced today:

「Killing Me」 2005.1.19 ON SALE

Oy! For freaking 1020 yen which is around $10.....for a single. I guess I shouldn't be so stunned that those dolls I keep ranting about cost nearly $1000.

What uh...strong title for a song! Rumor has it that it's a hyde penned song and I never like those except for "flower," "evergreen," and sometimes "honey." A lot of his songs are kind of boring sounding--especially his hard, heavy rock songs sound horribly dull to me. ken writes the most technically advanced and beautiful songs, and tetsu writes the really catchy, poppy songs. yukihiro does the odd techno stuff. That leaves hyde with all the crappy songs. And a messed up voice.

Mreowww! Yeah, yeah, I know. I'll never be a fan-girl because the more I like something, the more brutal my criticism becomes.

International SUPAH-STAR!!

I learned that I might go to Hangzhou, China for a science conference next summer. That is, if my research work is worth presenting by that time. Hooray. Must work harder. Although I was kind of hoping they'd hold it in Shanghai (xiaolongbao I must eat!).....or Osaka because the food is suppose to be good there too. Hangzhou is known for three things: silk, dragon well tea, and painted fans.

Muarrggghhh!

I feel my precious remaining sanity crumbling away with every minute. For one thing, I'm still fixated on Asian ball-jointed dolls (bjd)--not the vinyl ones but the huge, heavy resin ones. Specifically I like the boy dolls because the female dolls have headmolds that are too cutesy in an anime way--not that I'm a misogynist because my favorite boy headmold looks quite stunning when painted and done as a girl. I'm most charmed by a quiet, gentle natural beauty instead of an in-your-face cutesy-ness or even worse, looking like those pretty girls who were mean to you in high school. Not to say that every boy head looks nice to me--some sure look like they were hit with the ugly stick. Hmmmm....that was kind of harsh....I guess I ought to apologize for being mean and catty here since beauty is all subjective, after all.

I must be watching too much "America's Next Top Model."

But despite how tickled I get whenever I see lovely photographs of these dolls, I can't seem to decide if I adore them for their stunning beauty or if I abhore them for their celebration of conspicuous consumption and waste. Perhaps a mixture of both. If you follow up on the whole bjd fandom long enough, you find out exactly how...uh...obsessed some owners can be. It's really kind of clique-ish too: "Are you one of us?--The cool kiddies with the super exclusive limited edition doll that was only on sale for half a day in Japan or are you one of the boring "standard" doll types?" Having a beautifully painted, well dressed, exclusive super limited doll is sort of a status symbol the way a $2000 Louis Vuitton bag is even though a $20 one from Marshall's functions just as well. Sometimes humans crave things all that more when they're super expensive--we're kind of dumb like that. I don't have the male perspective on this, but it's so very true for most girls. Like the whole obscenely expensive hand-bag cult or how $25 Chanel Glossimer lip glosses fly off the shelves faster than the $2.50 ones from the corner drugstore even though they don't perform all that differently. They even make limited edition lip glosses and a lot of women go kind of nuts trying to get them each season. I'm sure the design and sculpting on the original ball-jointed dolls took a good deal of skill and talent. But afterwards, does it really cost $600 to dump resin into the mold, unmold the parts, and chuck them into a padded box? Any type of finishing work like sanding the seams, stringing the body, or painting the face always cost extra. The dolls usually don't come with wigs and never come with clothes. I'm also irked at how companies really artificially inflate the prices of the dolls. For example, boy dolls always cost more than girl dolls even though no more actual work is done to prepare boy dolls. And then there are those "limited edition" dolls which sell for higher prices and bjd fans are willing to bend over backwards to acquire them because they're more exclusive. At those prices, I'm almost tempted to sculpt a doll from scratch myself.

I guess I'm still a complete tightwad and find it hard to justify spending a lot of money on unnecessary things. I still sometimes do, of course, (anime collectibles + perfume) but I tend to dwell rather long on trying to get the cheapest price for everything and most of the time I usually convince myself buying anything at all would be unwise (have not bought any Fullmetal Alchemist stuff! Also, shitajiki appreciate in value so I always semi-fantasize about selling off my collection on ebay 20 years from now for big money). Even my own mom yells at me to stop being so cheap. (She's got her own thing going on with buying shoes, clothes, and I think the people at the Swarowski crystal store know her name by now). I guess it had a lot to do with my upbringing since we had very little when came to this country. I quickly learned that buying a Barbie might mean the difference between making or not making the rent payment that month. And that pretty Barbie outfit was the equivalent of three hours of my mom doing mind-numbing and back-breaking semi-dangerous work. Things are different now of course (learning English, higher education, divorce, remarriage, etc), but childhood memories are strong.

I've owned only one Barbie doll as a child and was always insanely jealous of the classmates who had around 20 with Ken, Skipper, Midge and the Barbie Corvette and mansion. Maybe that's why I'm a bit fixated on dolls now. Sometimes I catch myself day-dreaming about how carefully I'll would glue in a doll's dark brown eyelashes and about how I would airbrush the paint around the eyes and cheeks--a doll completely done by myself and belonging completely to me. A doll whom I can make up stories about and pose in gorgeous backdrops and costumes for all the admire. But at other times, I read some of the bjd sites and want to shriek, "Y'all are insane!--spending all your time with your dolls like they were alive! Ain't no way I'm getting suckered into paying close to $1000 for a doll unless it also vacuums my carpet and washes the dishes while I'm away." But also, interesting enough, a few times I think, "Hmm...doll clothes cost as much as real human clothes. When Mom retires, she can make doll clothes and we can sell them on ebay for big big big profit!"

At any rate, I don't think I would be comfortable ever buying a doll until I get a real job and make a good salary. I guess in a way I'm lucky that the particular doll head mold I like is so exclusive (not limited though--you have to attend a special Volks doll painting class first because it's a completely unpainted head and aptly nammed the Volks "School Head." I much prefer doing the paint job myself.) There's no temption to buy one now because I basically cannot (I refuse to use Yahoo!Japan Auctions). And that face mold has so captivated my feeble mind that I wouldn't want to buy another other mold from Volks or any other company. (Although I do think Tender Bee-A and Too from Dream of Doll, a Korean company, are quite nice as well. As much as I want to be one of those bad-@ss black-clad hacker types, I'm just a sucker for pink...sigh.) Maybe four years from now when I'm no longer in school, bjd's will have become popular enough for Volks to start holding classes internationally and offer that head here. It could happen. Four years ago who would have thought manga would take up a giant section of every Border's and Barnes & Noble.

In case any of you want to learn more about Asian ball-jointed dolls (bjd): Den of Angels is the main messageboard and is part of Aimee's Dolls which houses the big FAQ and extensive information. I also like Jujube's site and the Daughters website. Of course, there are too many Japanese and Korean sites to name, but I still think the dolls on Caress of Venus (see right hand column) are the most lovely.

Did I just write one long essay all about dolls? I sound like a moron even to myself.

Entertainment Industry

I dl-ed the Music Station Super Live 2003 special that aired during Christmas. They had the 12 Girls Band which was cool. Also had L'Arc but hyde wasn't in good voice even though they played only harder rock songs which are easier to sing--stop smoking, dammit!** For those of you who don't know, Music Station is Japanese program that showcases a couple of different musical acts each week. The Super Live Special is a longer (4 hours?) and grander (big auditorium instead of a studio) yearly thing with performances by 42 different groups. (It reminds me of those big-@$$ Chinese New Year specials that CCTV airs which Chinese people always watch and always complain about--yet they keep watching it year after year!) I wish we had shows with a big grand cavalcade of performers like that on American TV. Something like Ed Sullivan. Is the American entertainment industry presently so devoid of enough at least mediocre talent that a show like that could never get produced? Or is it that successful American entertainers are big hams who aren't humble enough to agree to appear on a show with lots of other stars? It's kind of true that if an artist is big in America, they're pretty much known all over the world. But the biggest Asian stars are virtual nobodies here. I've griped about how very commercialized the Asian entertainment industry is (ever seen L'Arc instant ramen?) where it's considered a privilege for a star to hawk canned coffee on TV and where Jackie Chan releases music CDs. But that level of commercialization allows for lots of nifty things for the fans too.

This post doesn't make much sense. I'm just some random retard who's cranky because there's nothing good on TV.

**I know I sound like a damn crazy freak complaining about this so often, but it is honestly heart-breaking to hear someone who had such a naturally beautiful voice--a voice unique enough to lure away this lifelong opera listener--to hear him smoke himself hoarse. I can only imagine how lovely "Hitomi no Jyuunin" would have sounded like if he had the voice he had in the "ark+ray" period. By "REAL" it was already getting scratchy. It's all almost tragic enough to make me want to listen to opera exclusively since they guard their voices with their lives ;_; Sumi Jo, Bryn Terfel, where are you?

hello, stranger

During our visit, I learned that Mom:

• Bought a Jack Russell terrier boy puppy from a coworker. It's of the most rambunctious and high energy breeds. Lawdy, I don't know how she's going to cope when the doggie becomes an adult and is able to jump over the fence in one bound. It doesn't get along with the cat at all so it's an outdoor dog. She decided she prefers cats since dogs smell bad.
• LOOOOVVVVEEES to watch the Apprentice on NBC. I guess that's way more classy than my dirty little secret of watching "America's Next Top Model" on UPN....sometimes....Law and Order just isn't the same without Jerry Orbach.

Posted by coriolis at 01:03 p.m.
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