15 March 2003 CE 5:26pm
Je ne sais pas
Okay yeah, I'm writing this because I'm bored and I wanted to use the phrase "je ne sais pas". Stop looking like that, when have I ever made sense?

Moving along. My frequent trolling of the HnG section on ff.net has brought to light the horror that is Ogata yaoi. I'll be among the first to admit that Ogata is a pedophile, but that doesn't mean I want to read fic about him.

random distraction featuring Margaret Thatcher

Last night I made myself seven new wallpapers. I don't change wallpaper very often (once every six to twelve months, if that often), but I have this huge monitor set to 1152x864 and all my old wallpapers are 800x600 and don't resize too nicely. The problem is I'm kinda wishywashy on which image to use. I have the cowboy bebop one up, but my dad bitched about it being ugly (he always bitches about my wallpaper, I should be used to it by now), so maybe I'll change it.

I watched through ep 15 of Get Backers (which is all this site has available) and now I have no more. Go away now because I have no care for you not wanting spoilers. Anyways, everyone's going "OMG! makubex is making a nuclear bomb in the basement and one of us is Judas!" Okay, so it sounds funnier when I say it like that. Anyways, I've decided that Ban is far more educated than he ought to be (he can play violin, detect art forgeries and knows how to build a nuclear bomb) and I'm amused by Akabane causing Ginji so much panic. Um, in conclusion, I need a jingling Kadsuki plushie.

I'll shut up now.
14 March 2003 CE 4:38pm
Ah, the gullibility of society.
I found a special random popup today. Yes, you have to click on it to read what it says. Anyways, if my computer ISN'T doing all those things there is something really wrong with it and I'll be most upset (not to mention unable to post things here). How stupid do they think people are? On second thought, maybe people are really that stupid and shouldn't be allowed to use computers if they're alarmed by that ad.
13 March 2003 CE 7:40pm
I'm a bitchy lemming!
So everyone is ranting about Get Backers. Or at least a significantly large enough portion of everyone that I can't get online without hearing about it, either on IRC or blogs/livejournals. Now, given that puu is an evil wench and I have DSL finally, I've been downloading the anime in an act of major hypocrisy (in case you aren't sure, my stance on electronic piracy is "BAD, NO" and here I am pirating anime). Anyways, enough about my moral issues with my actions, and on with what I think about the show itself (in short poorly structured paragraphs!).

Thus far I have seen episodes 1 through 7 (I will see more if episode 8 ever downloads, if I'm lucky it might finish by oh...Saturday). It's uh...not bad, but I don't think it's a series I'd ever actively pursue on my own. The plot seems to be "everyone wants to kill Ban and molest Ginji" (molest doesn't just mean sex peoples).

It is impossible to address Get Backers without addressing the yaoitic overtones. Most of my friends have been all "OMG! Ginji and Ban are SOOOO GAY!" making it impossible for me to ignore this point. On the scale of "gay" in shounen stuff, they actually aren't as slashy as everyone would have you believe. The scale ranges from stuff like shounen love and violent fight stories (Love Hina and Fist of the Northstar) at the "straight" end of the scale to characters like Chou Koumei in Houshin Engi and Hanagata in Saber Marionnette J (huh, notice they're both voiced by Koyasu?) at the really gaygayGAY end of the scale. Ginji and Ban fall somewhere around Kayama (Koyasu again o_o;; ) and Oogami from Sakura Taisen. Gay if you want to read it that way, but still a large amount of plausible deniability. I for one am on the "plausible deniability" side of the fence for Get Backers and we'll just leave my thoughts on Kayama out of this.

Moving right along. Ginji annoys me. It's a combination of how he acts and the things he says and his voice. The only way I have resisted the urge to smack/kill/somehow eliminate him it to tell myself that Ginji is not really a guy. Ginji is either a girl in disguise or a pet. No real man would act like that. Hell, I can think of female characters that are more manly than Ginji. Ginji's like a puppy, he needs to be smacked with a newspaper and told "down!"

And the music is...not good. The bgm is cheesy in blatantly obvious ways I haven't dealt with in years. And the opening (Yuragu Koto Nai Ai) is painful. It's by Naomi Tamura, who wrote two openings for Magic Knight Rayearth that I really liked (Yuzurenai Negai the first opening and Hikari to Kage o Dakishimeta Mama the third opening). The song is...jarring is a good way to put it. The rhythm is too unpredictable for the song to be easy to listen to; the next beat is either sooner than anticipated or later than anticipated. (Also I think the cuts for tv length are too identifiable. There are places where it feels like a chunk of the song is missing. I'd have to hear the whole thing to know for sure that they cut where I think though.) The explanation for this discrepancy between Yuragu Koto Nai Ai and the Rayearth music that I come up with is that it is co-written and arranged by someone different than the earlier songs.

On the good side, I like Ban somewhat. Ban's hair is special of course. I'm going to blame the fact that it stands on end on Ginji for two reasons: prior to meeting Ginji, Ban's hair didn't stick up all over the place, and Ginji generates electricity, I would imagine there's a good deal of static in the air around him, and Ban's around him almost all the time. (One of these days I'll sucessfully blame everything on Ginji.) However, my favorite character in the show is...Paul. Paul doesn't have to do much except tell Ban and Ginji "No" or "Not until you pay your tab" and he has 1337 computers. Yes, I am aware that I'm an abberation, no, I don't care, Paul rocks.

Okay, I don't have a lot positive to say about Get Backers, mostly because everyone else will tell you how great it is (and it's more fun to bitch anyways).

And in closing: a very special comic featuring my special friend Akabane.
10 March 2003 CE 7:56pm
Karma's always waiting to bite me in the ass.
I have not done ANY SEWING because I burned my hand yesterday. I didn't even burn it ironing or anything productive, I burned it taking something out of the microwave. To this I say "FUCK YOU WORLD!" Okay, that will probably make my karma worse, but it's cathartic.

Also I need to talk to Ami about this outfit because it has one of of those mysterious space bending occurances where on one side it goes one way but on the other side it goes the other way. So full of hate.
8 March 2003 CE 9:30pm
It's wabbit season!
Today I declared sewing season to be officially open. There's only a few months until Fanime and I know because it's so close to AX nobody will be able to get anything done between the two this year. Well, that's only one reason; it applies to all of you who are planning on attending both cons in costume. My reasons are I'm doing some group stuff with Ami, playing around with some new construction materials, and we're going to have the house renovated. All of these are just cause for starting sewing now rather than later.

...and now for an Important Notice:
I will NOT be getting a hotel room for AX this year, I am staying with other people. If you suddenly decide at the last minute you need a place to stay, DON'T ASK ME.

Okay, moving on to happier stuff. At this point I only intend to complete two new costumes for the year: AX masquerade costume and a Five Star Stories costume. Anything else I do will be updates or modifications to current costumes, or completion of a few things I have laying around mostly finished. I have also agreed to help Stella and Kane with their masquerade costumes and Steph may or may not need a dress made (waiting for final word on that). There are two reasons for this: I'm lazy, and my funds are fairly severely limited.

So as today being the opening of sewing season Ami and I got out of bed before noon and went on the fabric hunt. Fabric is a common beastie, but we were hunting a rare family: we needed tawny dull satin. They used to have this at the local Hancocks, but alas, no, they no longer have it. We went to six fabric stores today. The Joanns in Fremont had something good but it was REALLY EXPENSIVE. So we went to SF. The place on 4th St had the perfect stuff, but it too was expensive, so we headed over to Haight and fought the parking and AGAIN DID NOT FIND ANYTHING. So we went back to 4th St and got the stuff there and to our immense joy it was not 60" wide as we had thought, but 112" wide, so in reality it was CHEAP! (Yay for upholstery fabric!). On the way back we stopped at a place in Oakland to see if they had what I wanted, but no, I am m0xx0red and will have to use the same stuff as the cuffs. Bugger. But am ecstatic about cheap fabric find. XD

So now I draw up a pattern and need to talk to Gina, Natalie, and Ami for various costume reasons. Wheee...

The picture this time is my Cthulhu plushie. I'm sure you all know I have a bad habit of putting things on the scanner to take pictures of them. Well that's what I did with him. The lid wouldn't stay on him however and popped off, so he has an ominous fade into the black background, which I think is entirely appropriate. His name is Ysbaddaden, which is the name of Olwen's father, who also happens to be a giant. He has an unpronounceable Welsh name because he was a gift to me from Matt, who lives in Cardiff (in Wales). Having been made in China, for a company in California, and purchased from a store in Wales, Ysbaddaden has seen more of the world than I have.
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