Sunday, April 2, 2006

WELCOME TO THIS CRAZY TIME

WE ARE LIVIN'
LIVIN' THE NINETIES (NINETIES, NINETIES, NINETIES)
WE STILL FIGHT
FIGHT IN THE NINETIES (NINETIES, NINETIES, NINETIES)
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Sunday, March 26, 2006

cold and hot at the same time
I'm a little bit sick; I don't have a thermometer handy, but I'm guessing I have a fever of around 101-102, and also a little congestion that I just can't seem to clear out in any way. This will make things difficult for work tomorrow, I think. At the moment I'm curling a blanket around myself, drinking a lot of tea, and trying to make headway on the Kasimasi thing; as expected, it's basically turning into an uphill battle against the word "sexuality." I'm starting to see spots as I write sometimes, so I may have to stop in awhile (actually, they're not really spots at all; it's more like little bits of "unevenness" in the visual field that I can't really turn my focus on). But I think I finally know now what I have to say in this thing, which is probably good enough even if it has to wait until April. :(
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Sunday, March 19, 2006

Failure!
Finished about two paragraphs on the Kasimasi thing, neither of which I'm not happy about (I'll probably rewrite them - they're the summary section, and I don't think I'm describing the show very well). Then I got trapped watching Macross for most of the weekend. Well, maybe sometime in the next few days I can finally bear down on it.

And, total disclosure, yes I have fallen in love with Misa. We've now had what, two decades' worth of geeks falling for this here tough but sensitive girl in the uniform? At least I'm following the tradition, I guess.
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Saturday, March 18, 2006

LOOK AT ME
God, sometimes I can't tell whether I'm coming across as interesting and nuanced or just as a longwinded a**hole. I don't think anyone's reading anything I write, or if they are, they're not saying anything - I've killed a good half-dozen threads by now. If I'm not being totally ignored, I'll at least settle for being confusing, but I'm not sure if I'm even ranking there.

Hopefully I can get some work done this weekend. (I'm also going to try to finish up watching Macross, which I'm seeing for the first time. WOW, I should add)
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006

I am picky about words
Kasimasi article has been waylaid because I can't think of a good word to use as a substitute for "sexuality," which has itself been more or less nailed down. I have a few ideas for something appropriate, but they're somewhat unpoetic and it's going to take me a few days to tell if they work or not.

In other news, Black Cat 20 has officially topped Mai Otome 17 for the most sudden, most contrived, and worst mid-season plot gearshifting of the past year. Seriously folks, Eve was the best thing the show had going for it; is it REALLY a good idea to jettison that in favor of HEARTRENDING DRAMA when up until now your show has been noticibly spotty in terms of nearly everything else?
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Friday, March 10, 2006

YES
I've had my application to the grad school at the University of Chicago accepted - moreover, they've offered to pay for half of my tuition right off the bat. I don't think I have words for how happy I am right now, as this means nothing less than that I get to continue following my dream.

In other news, I've finally figured out more precisely why I wanted to write about Kashimashi (it has to do with clarifying how we currently think about sex, but I won't go into it more than that right now). Also, I've finally gotten around to reading Foucault seriously, and... god, it's fantastic. I feel a little guilty admitting this, probably for the same reasons that I feel slightly ashamed for digging Nine Inch Nails.
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Wednesday, March 8, 2006

WORK BEGINS SOON ON #3
I have an idea for a short (especially after the last one) article on Kashimashi - nothing too in-depth and nothing giving the main themes of the series (which, 8 episodes in, I [perhaps prematurely] take to be the necessary breaking down of sexual and relational norms in extreme circumstances) anything more than a glancing blow (just yet, anyways). I just want to see if I can center in on this one little bit in episode 5, which seems to me incredibly suggestive.

For the record, folks, I'm trying to keep myself to a schedule of writing at least one piece of reasonable length on anime every month. So far I've got two, and if this one goes well (and there's no reason it shouldn't) I'll have three. I got a little inspired by what Barthes did in Mythologies, writing a little bon-bon every month... of course, his pieces were only ever a couple of pages, and he had the advantage of holding clear contempt for his subject. If you also count his being French, Barthes already has a triple threat over me.

Huh, maybe I can publish these things if I ever get a whole bunch together. Anyone happen to know of any publishers who put out academic-style books devoted to anime?
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Thursday, March 2, 2006

Oh my god.
It fell deadborn from the press, as Hume would say.

I occasionally like to think that I don't care if not that many people are reading me. What a bunch of hooey.

Well, anyways, it's up here and here if anyone else wants to read the thing.
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

4:15 On Tuesday
It's possible to judge what I'm doing as silly, pretentious, totally out of touch, or at best vastly prone to overestimating what people are capable of hearing at once - I'd consider it more as crashing a party, or (quoting Hakuin) dropping a couple of rat turds into a nice hot pot of stew. Challenging, if it is to be genuine, has to toe the line of the respectable (but then again, the contemptible isn't always challenging).

It's possible to judge what I'm doing as a totally arbitrary "interpretation" or (even worse) "opinion" made on something which is apparently ravaged if we do anything beyond "enjoy" it from a distance and preface any remarks we make about it with, "I think that..." - I'd consider it more as going out and wrestling with things, rather than just standing far away and being "affected." I may be more or less accurate in my reading, but the question that is usually forgotten is how it matters.

I'm still not anywhere near the level that I should be in order to talk meaningfully about this stuff, and I'm only just beginning to get some sense of what that calls for. But I want to learn, and the best way I can think of to do that is to try and teach.
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Sunday, February 26, 2006

It's Done
12,307 words (~40 pages double spaced) on Saikano before editing, folks, and I STILL feel like I've cut some stuff off short. Now all that's required is a lot of adding and removing commas and coming up with an appropriate name for the thing.

It actually came out quite Nietzschian, which surprised me (I only realized what was being said towards the end). Assuming anyone actually reads this thing, I may get called on this in terms of how it treats morality (and rightly so). The question on my mind at the moment is: would it ever be possible to use something like Saikano, which is so singlemindedly monogamist, as a basis for establishing an ethical ontology? Levinas seems incredibly ambivalent on the whole "love" thing at the end of T&I, and if my work here is anywhere in the neighborhood, his fears are probably justified. But there has to be a way to think the relationship between love and ethical exteriority without demeaning either one in the process. I dare not oversimplify this.

Anyways, hopefully the article can get put up by the first or thereabouts. Then: time for a break!


EDIT: aaaaaand submitted! I decided that I hated myself enough to do a good couple of hours' worth of fixing up FORTY PAGES, and now it's been thrown to the lions. Hopefully I can pick something easier to write about next time, but for now... well, maybe someone can get something out of this thing. It's actually very, very good I think, though almost incomparably difficult next to most stuff written on anime.
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