Sunday, April 17, 2005

Life is hard... Death is harder.
I was browsing the forums at modthesims2.com and found a thread called "My best friend died!" Feeling worried, I took a look, and here's what it said:

"Friday 15th April.
He tripped up a fence and smacked his head on the brick wall. He survived that, but then fell over onto a wooden spike...............

We only just found out that he died.
He died at 3:29 PM (GMT+1), and I only just found out............
And he was only 11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please.......... help me.........."

Please keep this person and his friend in your thoughts. Even though none of us know him, I know I was shocked to see this and my heart went right out to those people involved. To die at age 11 because of tripping over a fence... And to lose your friend at the same age. I hope you all can offer a little time to pray for them or do whatever you see fit.
It's not the big, over-discussed tragedies that get to me... It's the little ones that happen every day. People are constantly going through hard times and mourning for lost loved ones, not just after say the Holocaust, or 9/11, or the effects of the recent tsunami. Yeah, they're sad, but so are these little losses happening every moment. So remember all of them, and keep them in your thoughts. Life is hard, and that's why we have people around us who care.
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Sunday, April 10, 2005

Ah! :D I finally got Devil May Cry 3! And I played it for about ten minutes and discovered that I am really really really bad at video games. Heh, well, I still like them.

Went to see my school's performance of Noises Off, a really funny British comedy. It was lots of fun, I recommend seeing it somewhere if you can (there's a movie of it, but it's just so much better to see on the stage).

I'm temporarily trading Star Ocean EX DVD 1 for Star Ocean 2, so I can try and pair up Claude and Ashton... *looks around* What? It's okay if Ashton gets paired with someone nice... *squeezes barrel-boy*

And in other news...The cherry blossoms are blooming! Even though we live close to DC, we didn't go down there for the Sakura Matsuri, because last year it kinda sucked... It was like an American take on Japanese culture, blech. We just drove through a neighborhood near us to see the blossoms there. They really are absolutely gorgeous. I keep thinking this time of year it must be great to live in Japan so you can laugh at all the foreigners who have so few cherry trees in comparison...
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Friday, April 8, 2005

"Occupation
• shiroikarasu's yami. my dear little hikari toasty..."

...
*cries quietly*
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Thursday, April 7, 2005

I've been typing my posts in pink for over a year... And no one's ever said anything. *wonders briefly*
Anyway. I have a yucky ol' history test today. Stupid class. Thankfully, it's partly on the Meiji Restoration (but not the revolution, poo), but this also means that whenever I see the word "Meiji" I get lost in daydreams about lovely Kenshin. Oh well. I think I'll make it.
I just got a new printer/scanner! It rocks my world. It's got a gajillion buttons and it's front-feeding and shiny and has a little flip-up screen. It's so cute! ^.^
New band recommendation: Malice Mizer. They're a great J-rock band, and... well... it's hard to explain.
Whatever happened to summer?! We got a good two days of spring weather and poof, right into summer. Eighty degrees of Hell. Mou. T_T
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Thursday, March 31, 2005

Breaking news!! O_o
I stepped on a fly.

Oh, and I just realized that really, the first anime I ever saw was... drumroll please... uh, please... onegai? DRUMROLL, DAMMIT! *drumroll* That's better. My first anime was My Neighbor Totoro. So I'm changing my sidebar a teensy bit. Just 'splainin' maself.

Stupid fly.
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   I heart NYC. ^____^ I especially heart K-- Bookstore (censored because I'm possessive like that) and LAN (not the computer term, the restaurant). Oh, it was heaven, pure heaven.

We saw two shows, Forbidden Broadway (very fun) and Spamalot (even more fun, of course). And the raving reviews of Spamalot are correct in their judgment--it was a great show. I'd try to explain it to you since tickets are hard to come by now, but I just can't. T_T It was beautiful. ...Except we got sucky balcony seats so we could barely see anything downstage. Oh well.

K-- is a wonderful place where the otaku in the know go to achieve their wildest dreams... Or at least it should be. Except then people would buy everything before I could get to it. I'm a greedy little bitch, jeez. But wow... It was big, and clean, and chock full of very organized Japanese books and manga, translated and import, and stationary on the second floor and art books and CDs toward the back. I could go on and on for days about how much I love that place, but... >_> We actually spent almost $300 there on just books and CDs. Lordy.

And LAN is a really great little restaurant kind of hidden in the less interesting part of New York that serves incredible shabu shabu (hot pot, sort of--I'll explain). Shabu shabu is where they bring you a pot of boiling water on a portable stove and you dip raw foods into it to cook them. We had *gasp* Kobe beef since we were splurging on everything on this trip (and don't be surprised if I end up living on ramen for the next few months...) and it was incredibly good. If you ever have the money or want to show off, Kobe beef is the way to go. That is some freaking good beef.

And we took the train there and back, so I should probably push Amtrak too. If you're going up the East coast, train is definitely the best way to go. Quicker then driving and less stressful, and much more comfortable than plane travel--and don't even think about the bus from DC. Even the cheap trains are quite nice. We had a peaceful journey there and back.

All in all, the days went by in a flash, like a dream, but they were loads of fun and very worth it. I didn't even miss home, since it felt like I'd hardly been away. The dogs apparently missed us though (ha ha!). I'm starting to write like a manga-ka in the side panel space...
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Saturday, March 26, 2005

Hmm, maybe it isn't such a good idea to post important things after I've already said something that day... No one can tell I've updated.
Oh well. Consider this a bump of the last post. And since I'm too lazy to do the extra clicking to send a PM (that really is lazy), Exo-chan, I'll actually be in your state Tue-Thur this coming week. ^-^ Just some food for thought.
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Monday, March 21, 2005

Rare Manga Hunting and Scanlations
If anyone has some suggestions of manga that's hard to find, please please please please please onegaishimasu tell me about it. I'm going to NYC over spring break, and there are some really nice Japanese bookstores there, and I REALLY want to get some new reading material (nothing's been quite the same since PSoH ended TT) and I'd like to spend as little money as possible (hence little import stores).
Also, I'm thinking of maybe doing scanlations if I can get some decent import manga--it'd be extremely slow work, of course, since I'd be looking everything up in the dictionary, but I'd like to give back to the community a little, y'know? (Well, that and most scanlations have terrible grammar and it makes me cry.) Plus there are way too few shounen-ai manga being translated right now--Gravi, EQ, FAKE, and Yami No Matsuei don't quite sate the hunger.
*stops herself from going into rant about why there's so little Kaori Yuki work translated, since it's soooo good and she's already popular with Angel Sanctuary...*
So, please give suggestions if you have any. Also, if you know of any sites pertaining to rare manga I would be very happy. ^-^ (Also, anyone wanna give me a hand scanlating...? I mean, if you've got a really good kanji dictionary or something, or you know of some desired series, any information and aid will be greatly appreciated.)
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All right, folks, I hate to be the one to tell you, but if it's from me then you know it's got to be true. The game Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel sucks. People have said it doesn't provide enough of a challenge, but I've found that it's the exact opposite--you're thrown into really difficult stuff too early on. I'm not even used to the fighting system yet and I'm fighting this freakish crab chimera that I have to somehow flip over? Oh, gee, thanks.
But my caffeine will save me. It always does.
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Sunday, March 20, 2005

I've found a new and creative form of entertainment. ^_^ On our TV out in the living room, when you turn on the DVD/VCR it first shows C-SPAN (which, if you have never seen it, is your basic channel 03 and shows a lot of old important ugly people making political speeches at each other), and you have to change it to DVD and back to VCR to show actual television--but the sound is that of whatever channel the TV was last on. So dialogue from, say, Lilo and Stitch is playing over C-SPAN footage. And this is absolutely hilarious to watch. My favorite is with soundtrack from Teen Titans, or other crazy silly shows like that. You really have to be there though...
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