Don't look at me like that...!

[redpbass]

Ok, I'll admit it...

I haven't written more than 500 NEW words for Still Waters 3 in all of November.

*hangs head in shame*

Instead, I've been on an anime binge, reading this Firefly fanfic, playing Gran Turismo 4 while pining away for Gran Turismo 5, and playing with my guitars and bass, while making this and working out how to play thisI'm

Comments

[redpbass]

Yeah, I hate rapidshare too. "Rapid"...yeah. Whatever. Those download sites...I hate 'em and avoid using them whenever I can.

NEEThood: one of us

6000 words: nice!

Firefly: yeah, definitely cult. It was a 'space western' that worked surprisingly well. Unfortunately, it was shown on Fox, which canceled it early in its run after tons of executive meddling, and only 11 episodes aired. They also made a movie a few years later. If it had been given a chance, it could have been a great long-runner show, and it's aggravating to think about what could have been.

I don't know much about woodwinds, but with electric guitars the sound is affected by EVERYTHING. The strings you use, the types of wood the various parts are made of, the quality and type of pickups installed, the weight of the guitar itself...and that's not even getting into all the stuff you can do with just the tone knobs, not to mention effects pedals and the type of amp you use and all that. And even within the same company the quality of sound can shift between otherwise identical guitars, usually (but not always) because of quality control problems. It's pretty obvious when you have a bunch of guitars with the same design from different companies. For example: in my house I have a Memphis brand strat clone, a Silvertone Strat, and a Squier strat, and none of them sound alike.

Anime binge: I've picked up more. Bakuman, Index, Hyakka Ryouran, Otome Youkai Zakuro, and Squid girl, in addition to older anime like Baccano (which I loved) and various anime movies. I've been trawling the online anime video archives over at animenewsnetwork.com. Speaking of which, I see several titles on there now that I've been wanting to see...

Song difficulty: yes. The speed and precision with which you must move your fingers to play the opening riff correctly is, in spite of what some guitarists will tell you, quite difficult. The vast majority of people who pick up a guitar will give up in frustration and quit guitar forever long before they get to the point where they can play that. However, any good or even decent guitar player who wants to play in a band should be able to do it fairly easily. It's not that complex, just fast. And awesome sounding; can't forget awesome sounding. If a guitarist can play something like that and knows their chords, they can be considered a pretty good player.

[redpbass]

Guitars: You can generally get any guitar to sound good if you play it right and don't use weird settings. But yes, even a novice can hear the difference between two different enough guitars when played back to back on 'clean' settings. To put it synesthesially, (I just made up a word!), the shape and weight of the sound is different. They're all similar enough to do whatever you want, but they are different. It's down to preference really, but you'll sometimes hear musicians talking about stuff like how a Les Paul is better for getting a certain sound than a Stratocaster. :p

Anime: Eh...the imperialist elements are annoying at best. In the case of Hyakka Ryouran, the generally pleasant to look at art style and character design (with a few exceptions) overrides it; and in the case of Otome Youkai Zakuro, it makes me roll my eyes. I ignore it though in favor of the whole youkai thing, which I find very interesting in most shows.

As for misogynist, I guess you're talking about Index? That took me by surprise when he started beating up little girls, even though they pretty much had it coming. Normally in anime that sort of thing is taken care of by the team girl, but not in this case I guess. Season 2 definitely has an edge on it, that's for sure.

As for watching anime on animenewsnetwork... http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/video/anime

Been watching Baccano, and I'm about to move on to some others I missed the first time around. Still not interested in MM though ;D

[redpbass]

ANN regional differences: probably. It's probably based on whats licensed in whatever country; they probably don't have the rights to show anime where you are. That's a lot of probablys.

guitars being awesome: it's 'cuz they're awesome. Not quite up to the sheer cool of a well-done walking bassline, but they're still pretty awesome.

anime: ink blots are definitely annoying. They've toned it down quite a bit from the first couple episodes, and the show is much better for the change.

Misogynist: Not my thing, really. I've heard of one of those you listed but never seen it, and that's probably for the best.

[redpbass]

ANN: It's got Baccano (like I said before), all three seasons of Full Metal Panic, Trigun, Trinity Blood, xxxHolic, Buxo Renkin, Gunslinger Girl, GunXsword, Gundam 00, Inuyasha...etc. etc. etc. etc. (lots of etc.s) It's got a lot of the more popular anime from the last eight or ten years, along with a few older ones. Too many to list right now, in any case. And its awesome :p