the stars at night are big & bright
Guess what? Guess what?! I hate this layout! Does anyone know where my Edit Tags icon went?
I'm just going to give up on LJ layouts for awhile, I think. They never come out right.
I went to a wedding in Texas. I survived the plane ride. Unhappily, but I survived it. I drove home with several of my loser cousins, which is why, instead of being gone nine days, like I'd planned, I was gone for fifteen. They kept wanting to stop and look at roadside attraction shit like the Biggest Hairball in the World and the Smallest Hairball in the World and the Largest Ball of Wax to Have Come Out of Someplace Other Than Someone's Ear, and one of them, the most odious loser, who is working on a severe case of Disaffected Non-white Doofus Indieitis, would only stop to eat at diners. And not just any diners, of course. Noooooo. Only the "authentic"-looking diners. The definition of "authentic" in this case is inclusive of "nine familial generations of baked-on, bacteria-riddled grime." So on day eleven of Wedding Survivor, I had to stop at a clinic to be treated for Texas Barbecue Ptomaine. I didn't win the million. I did, however, drink lots of Pedialyte, and I discovered the truth that the mothers of infants have known for centuries: If you don't eat anything, you can't barf anything. Oh, you can try. But it just doesn't work. We also got into an argument, on our second day of travel, about whether or not Texas has prairie dogs. I won't say puking hourly was a step up, but it wasn't a step down.
The wedding was nothing to talk about. It was a wedding. No offense to people getting married, but they look like nightmares. This one was even worse, because it had Texas people in it. Insofar as I was able to establish, every stereotype about Texas is true, only not bad enough. HIGHLIGHTS: a.) A chatty female guest, who had determined within three seconds of latching onto me, lamprey-like, that I was single, looked at the bride and said: "That's gonna be us someday soon, right, kid?" Me: "Oh God, I hope not! [*awkward*] Um." b.) All of my cousins are professional bums, like me, so we got sick of saying "I mooch off my parents" when people asked us what we did for a living, so we decided to hold a competition to see which of us could convince randomly selected reception attendees that we had the most unpleasant (legal) job possible. One of the losers (a female) could only come up with "hooker," which, to be honest, is not so terribly far afield from reality (and is also not legal, hi), but another cousin managed to convince the aunt and uncle of the groom that he had a job clubbing baby seals to death for the government. He achieved this by flashing what he told them was a federal identification card, but which was in fact his membership card for a gaming boutique in Virginia. Yes. I am assuming this is what is meant by "only in Texas." c.) I got drunk. I never get drunk. I never drink. I despise it. On a purely practical level, I don't understand how anyone could swallow enough liquor to get smashed, because it tastes like rubbing alcohol. But at the reception, there were these sugary things in glasses that only tasted faintly of booze, and there were all these people from Texas hanging around me, so. Down they went. The drinks, not the Texans. If it had been the Texans, I'd be on the news. I don't remember much about being lit, except that when I got dragged back to the Holiday Inn at two in the morning, I put my eye drops in my ears. Also, I was hung-over the next day. In Texas. Jesus take the wheel!
And. I want to say: Marriage looks okay, as long as you are actively fond of your spouse, but the actual mechanics of getting married are like a hazing. Or they seem like one to a non-enchanted outsider. Although. These specific newlyweds are some of the stupidest people I have ever met in my life, so that probably didn't help matters for anyone. Certainly not the brawny, teary, embittered bridesarmy, as we called them. They looked like a security detail in prom dresses. It was actually somewhat frightening just sitting in the audience. Is it an audience at a wedding? Look at me pretending to care!
Anyway. By the time I got home, I felt like Jimmy Buffett. I felt like I'd been gone for fourteen years, and had been blind drunk for nine of them. I felt like I'd visited Atlantis. It was amazing. The trip was terrifying, but coming home was great.
So that's the last tedious real-life update for at least the next four to nine weeks, promise.
STUFF I MISSED:
This is just fanstuff that I didn't get to comment on before I left, but I want to talk about it. I may go on at length about any of this stuff later, so...
---HOLiC ANIME:
I don't know what else to call this to stop the legions of dimwitted American CLAMP fans from referring to it as "triple ecks-a-holic." Will you join in my crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Um. As an anime, it's not beautiful or innovative or meaningful, nor does it share the manga's aura of subtle, light-handed literacy. I dislike all of the actors, and I'm sure tens of dollars were lavished on the opening and ending credits. However!! It's not bad! It's really not! Yuuko sounds like an 85-year-old woman, but she didn't get cheated out of CLAMP's valuable hot-mama characterization. Watanuki is pleasantly feminized, entertainingly wracked with his personalized version of PMS, and as sweet-faced as a Sumeragi in the summertime. Doumeki doesn't translate all that well into moving images (he didn't go over so smooth in the movie, either) but even a small fraction of his cool is enough to chill the distended metaphorical elements of the story. Also, the music, while awful and a decade out of date, is actually music, so I don't know what everyone is bitching and moaning about. Especially when you've got...
TSUBASA CHRONICLE ANIME:
Okay, so, in my initial return LJ-troll, I saw more than one person talk about how this season is, like, soooo much better than last season! Like rilly! No rilly!! To which I say: Perhaps we're watching different series? (I was actually worried that there was more than one when CLAMP's press release mentioned that FUNiMATION was screening "the highly anticipated Tsubasa Chronicle anime," because the one I saw could not possibly have been highly anticipated by anyone who is not fond of train wrecks.) I will say that the animation has progressed from "done by blind people" to "done by legally blind people," and that the music is at least different from last season, which is something, isn't it? Wouldn't you like to hear that hot mess in your ear over and over again this year? My God. It was like someone put Enya, some (classic) Oompa Loompas, and 1986 in a blender, tied down the lid, then set it to "pureé" and walked away. Anyway. Badthoughts. Although I have not been able to successfully sit through an entire episode, I will say that the opening credits feature a new wealth of head-scratchingly bizarre images and situations, which, while not "good" or "well-done" by any stretch of the imagination, at least suggest that this season, the producers are reading the manga. See how the protags are fighting ruthlessly with invisible intruders who have helpfully been colored in with vividly-hued crayons, there? It's almost as if the characters' greatest battles... are with themselves!! This strikes me as a sort of LADIES AND GENTLEMEN STOP THE PRESSES I BELIEVE WE HAVE TOMORROW'S HEADLINE style of revelation, but as they are finally making some, I would feel remiss in not acknowledging it. So yes, I suppose it's better this season, but it is still a living nightmare from which there is no escape except death. My overwhelming feeling, when watching it, is shame.
TOKYOPOOP'S LOVELESS:
Did you read Nokii's review of the American Loveless? If not, and if you're thinking of enriching the coffers of everyone's favorite genuine authentic manga vandals by buying it, the review is required reading. Because I said so. Speaking personally, I just sat down to read the comic a couple of days ago (I read it in-store, of course), and I would have only this to add: The translation is really weird. Really, really weird. I have been a manga fan for close to ten years, and I don't think I have ever read a weirder translation. It's? I? What? Okay. Here's what happened, I think: I think they were out to impress us, because Loveless has such a dedicated, built-in fanbase, and they wanted all our spoiled bourgeois whitegirl money. So, I think, instead of going for the traditional fencepost-stupid American-comic-book-style translation patterns, they decided to blind us with their all-encompassing grasp of the English language. I think they're trying to show us how sophisticated they are. So, instead of the Dummy the Cow Goes to Town treatments that we're used to from their RG Veda/ Wish/ Chobits/ Furuba/ [NAME OF TERRIBLE TOKYOPOOP MANGA SERIES OF YOUR CHOICE GOES HERE] releases, we've got theoretical dialogues happening between the SoubiBot and the Ritsuka 9000X. It's awkward, it's painful, and it's printed in melted Gummy Bears on recycled toilet paper. If you like the series, I would encourage you to buy the original Japanese tankoubon, between whose pages are immortalized the pen strokes of some of the most beautiful manga art ever, and suffer in silence for now. One day, perhaps we will be delivered. Until then, this King James version is for shredding into the catbox and nothing else.
Well. I saw lots of movies, including the first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia, but this is long and I'm sleepy, so I'll talk about that stuff later (after The Phantom of the Opera, which is up tomorrow). I also got a massive buttload of online work done while in the Lonestar State, so I'll start putting up those sites over the next few days. I also got all but two of my Fay desktops done, which means I'm almost ready to put BlueSkies back online. So. Oh, one more thing.
THE X/1999 ARC IN THE TRC MANGA:
ARE YOU @#!$^&% X JACKOFFS HAPPY NOW? HMMMMM? ARE YOU?! YOU HAVE INTRODUCED INTO AN ALREADY IDIOTIC MANGA THE MOST IDIOTIC PLOT DEVICE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!! DUNE REDUX SANDWORMS!!! IN A MANGA!!! $%#@$%$@ DUNE SANDWORMS?!?! I TOLD YOU X/1999 WAS AN IRREDEEMABLE PIECE OF GARBAGE, AND THAT ANY FURTHER WRITING IN ANY FORM OF THE X COSMOS WOULD BE AN INSULT TO THE ALREADY FATALLY-DAMAGED CANON!! BUT DID YOU BELIEVE ME?! NOOOO! YOU KEPT WHINING ABOUT HOW BAD YOU WANTED TO SEE KAMUI, OR FUUMA, OR WHATEVER OTHER WORTHLESS WASTE OF INK AND PAPER YOU LOOOOOVED SO MUUUUUCH, AND HOW MUCH YOU NEEEEEEDED AN ENDING, AND LOOK WHAT YOU GOT US!!! ^&@%#$ DUNE SANDWORMS!!!!! I HOPE YOU GET EATEN BY ONE YOU WHINY TWAT-FACED TWATS!!!!!!
[I'm kidding.]
[Sort of.]
I'm just going to give up on LJ layouts for awhile, I think. They never come out right.
I went to a wedding in Texas. I survived the plane ride. Unhappily, but I survived it. I drove home with several of my loser cousins, which is why, instead of being gone nine days, like I'd planned, I was gone for fifteen. They kept wanting to stop and look at roadside attraction shit like the Biggest Hairball in the World and the Smallest Hairball in the World and the Largest Ball of Wax to Have Come Out of Someplace Other Than Someone's Ear, and one of them, the most odious loser, who is working on a severe case of Disaffected Non-white Doofus Indieitis, would only stop to eat at diners. And not just any diners, of course. Noooooo. Only the "authentic"-looking diners. The definition of "authentic" in this case is inclusive of "nine familial generations of baked-on, bacteria-riddled grime." So on day eleven of Wedding Survivor, I had to stop at a clinic to be treated for Texas Barbecue Ptomaine. I didn't win the million. I did, however, drink lots of Pedialyte, and I discovered the truth that the mothers of infants have known for centuries: If you don't eat anything, you can't barf anything. Oh, you can try. But it just doesn't work. We also got into an argument, on our second day of travel, about whether or not Texas has prairie dogs. I won't say puking hourly was a step up, but it wasn't a step down.
The wedding was nothing to talk about. It was a wedding. No offense to people getting married, but they look like nightmares. This one was even worse, because it had Texas people in it. Insofar as I was able to establish, every stereotype about Texas is true, only not bad enough. HIGHLIGHTS: a.) A chatty female guest, who had determined within three seconds of latching onto me, lamprey-like, that I was single, looked at the bride and said: "That's gonna be us someday soon, right, kid?" Me: "Oh God, I hope not! [*awkward*] Um." b.) All of my cousins are professional bums, like me, so we got sick of saying "I mooch off my parents" when people asked us what we did for a living, so we decided to hold a competition to see which of us could convince randomly selected reception attendees that we had the most unpleasant (legal) job possible. One of the losers (a female) could only come up with "hooker," which, to be honest, is not so terribly far afield from reality (and is also not legal, hi), but another cousin managed to convince the aunt and uncle of the groom that he had a job clubbing baby seals to death for the government. He achieved this by flashing what he told them was a federal identification card, but which was in fact his membership card for a gaming boutique in Virginia. Yes. I am assuming this is what is meant by "only in Texas." c.) I got drunk. I never get drunk. I never drink. I despise it. On a purely practical level, I don't understand how anyone could swallow enough liquor to get smashed, because it tastes like rubbing alcohol. But at the reception, there were these sugary things in glasses that only tasted faintly of booze, and there were all these people from Texas hanging around me, so. Down they went. The drinks, not the Texans. If it had been the Texans, I'd be on the news. I don't remember much about being lit, except that when I got dragged back to the Holiday Inn at two in the morning, I put my eye drops in my ears. Also, I was hung-over the next day. In Texas. Jesus take the wheel!
And. I want to say: Marriage looks okay, as long as you are actively fond of your spouse, but the actual mechanics of getting married are like a hazing. Or they seem like one to a non-enchanted outsider. Although. These specific newlyweds are some of the stupidest people I have ever met in my life, so that probably didn't help matters for anyone. Certainly not the brawny, teary, embittered bridesarmy, as we called them. They looked like a security detail in prom dresses. It was actually somewhat frightening just sitting in the audience. Is it an audience at a wedding? Look at me pretending to care!
Anyway. By the time I got home, I felt like Jimmy Buffett. I felt like I'd been gone for fourteen years, and had been blind drunk for nine of them. I felt like I'd visited Atlantis. It was amazing. The trip was terrifying, but coming home was great.
So that's the last tedious real-life update for at least the next four to nine weeks, promise.
STUFF I MISSED:
This is just fanstuff that I didn't get to comment on before I left, but I want to talk about it. I may go on at length about any of this stuff later, so...
---HOLiC ANIME:
I don't know what else to call this to stop the legions of dimwitted American CLAMP fans from referring to it as "triple ecks-a-holic." Will you join in my crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Um. As an anime, it's not beautiful or innovative or meaningful, nor does it share the manga's aura of subtle, light-handed literacy. I dislike all of the actors, and I'm sure tens of dollars were lavished on the opening and ending credits. However!! It's not bad! It's really not! Yuuko sounds like an 85-year-old woman, but she didn't get cheated out of CLAMP's valuable hot-mama characterization. Watanuki is pleasantly feminized, entertainingly wracked with his personalized version of PMS, and as sweet-faced as a Sumeragi in the summertime. Doumeki doesn't translate all that well into moving images (he didn't go over so smooth in the movie, either) but even a small fraction of his cool is enough to chill the distended metaphorical elements of the story. Also, the music, while awful and a decade out of date, is actually music, so I don't know what everyone is bitching and moaning about. Especially when you've got...
TSUBASA CHRONICLE ANIME:
Okay, so, in my initial return LJ-troll, I saw more than one person talk about how this season is, like, soooo much better than last season! Like rilly! No rilly!! To which I say: Perhaps we're watching different series? (I was actually worried that there was more than one when CLAMP's press release mentioned that FUNiMATION was screening "the highly anticipated Tsubasa Chronicle anime," because the one I saw could not possibly have been highly anticipated by anyone who is not fond of train wrecks.) I will say that the animation has progressed from "done by blind people" to "done by legally blind people," and that the music is at least different from last season, which is something, isn't it? Wouldn't you like to hear that hot mess in your ear over and over again this year? My God. It was like someone put Enya, some (classic) Oompa Loompas, and 1986 in a blender, tied down the lid, then set it to "pureé" and walked away. Anyway. Badthoughts. Although I have not been able to successfully sit through an entire episode, I will say that the opening credits feature a new wealth of head-scratchingly bizarre images and situations, which, while not "good" or "well-done" by any stretch of the imagination, at least suggest that this season, the producers are reading the manga. See how the protags are fighting ruthlessly with invisible intruders who have helpfully been colored in with vividly-hued crayons, there? It's almost as if the characters' greatest battles... are with themselves!! This strikes me as a sort of LADIES AND GENTLEMEN STOP THE PRESSES I BELIEVE WE HAVE TOMORROW'S HEADLINE style of revelation, but as they are finally making some, I would feel remiss in not acknowledging it. So yes, I suppose it's better this season, but it is still a living nightmare from which there is no escape except death. My overwhelming feeling, when watching it, is shame.
TOKYOPOOP'S LOVELESS:
Did you read Nokii's review of the American Loveless? If not, and if you're thinking of enriching the coffers of everyone's favorite genuine authentic manga vandals by buying it, the review is required reading. Because I said so. Speaking personally, I just sat down to read the comic a couple of days ago (I read it in-store, of course), and I would have only this to add: The translation is really weird. Really, really weird. I have been a manga fan for close to ten years, and I don't think I have ever read a weirder translation. It's? I? What? Okay. Here's what happened, I think: I think they were out to impress us, because Loveless has such a dedicated, built-in fanbase, and they wanted all our spoiled bourgeois whitegirl money. So, I think, instead of going for the traditional fencepost-stupid American-comic-book-style translation patterns, they decided to blind us with their all-encompassing grasp of the English language. I think they're trying to show us how sophisticated they are. So, instead of the Dummy the Cow Goes to Town treatments that we're used to from their RG Veda/ Wish/ Chobits/ Furuba/ [NAME OF TERRIBLE TOKYOPOOP MANGA SERIES OF YOUR CHOICE GOES HERE] releases, we've got theoretical dialogues happening between the SoubiBot and the Ritsuka 9000X. It's awkward, it's painful, and it's printed in melted Gummy Bears on recycled toilet paper. If you like the series, I would encourage you to buy the original Japanese tankoubon, between whose pages are immortalized the pen strokes of some of the most beautiful manga art ever, and suffer in silence for now. One day, perhaps we will be delivered. Until then, this King James version is for shredding into the catbox and nothing else.
Well. I saw lots of movies, including the first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia, but this is long and I'm sleepy, so I'll talk about that stuff later (after The Phantom of the Opera, which is up tomorrow). I also got a massive buttload of online work done while in the Lonestar State, so I'll start putting up those sites over the next few days. I also got all but two of my Fay desktops done, which means I'm almost ready to put BlueSkies back online. So. Oh, one more thing.
THE X/1999 ARC IN THE TRC MANGA:
ARE YOU @#!$^&% X JACKOFFS HAPPY NOW? HMMMMM? ARE YOU?! YOU HAVE INTRODUCED INTO AN ALREADY IDIOTIC MANGA THE MOST IDIOTIC PLOT DEVICE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!! DUNE REDUX SANDWORMS!!! IN A MANGA!!! $%#@$%$@ DUNE SANDWORMS?!?! I TOLD YOU X/1999 WAS AN IRREDEEMABLE PIECE OF GARBAGE, AND THAT ANY FURTHER WRITING IN ANY FORM OF THE X COSMOS WOULD BE AN INSULT TO THE ALREADY FATALLY-DAMAGED CANON!! BUT DID YOU BELIEVE ME?! NOOOO! YOU KEPT WHINING ABOUT HOW BAD YOU WANTED TO SEE KAMUI, OR FUUMA, OR WHATEVER OTHER WORTHLESS WASTE OF INK AND PAPER YOU LOOOOOVED SO MUUUUUCH, AND HOW MUCH YOU NEEEEEEDED AN ENDING, AND LOOK WHAT YOU GOT US!!! ^&@%#$ DUNE SANDWORMS!!!!! I HOPE YOU GET EATEN BY ONE YOU WHINY TWAT-FACED TWATS!!!!!!
[I'm kidding.]
[Sort of.]