I’m going to take a break from my usual breezyness to be grumpy and annoyed at the world. And after posting it I’ll probably feel like I shouldn’t have bothered whining about it and get all self conscious about it, but I just need to get it out. Please take with a slight grain of salt.

The last two weeks at the club have been kind of dead. I blame it on it raining both nights, but I’m also kind of annoyed because so few of my friends come out to it. I know some have to work, but lots of others rarely if ever make it out (or say they will then don’t). Heck, even some of the residents sometimes just don’t show up without a word to anyone.

Mr. Ellis is always great throughout all this. He’s always there, always willing to lend a hand. And that somewhat special Pete is at least considerate enough to drop a line when he can’t make it. Bah, I’m just overtired and grumpy I think. Maybe today I’ll just set up a perminant link to that post generator from yesterday.

I always thought these commercials were some of the worst. Thankfully:

WHITE HOUSE TO END DRUGS & TERROR ADS
Also Stops Study That Found Campaign Wasn’t Working

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — The White House anti-drug office will end its controversial drugs-and-terror advertising campaign and, in a reversal, shift more of its $150 million budget toward children’s media as it fights for Congress to extend the program another five years.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy will also cease a polarizing $8 million annual study that found the ads aimed at youth were not working and that pitted the drug office against the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. [AdAge.com]

I really didn’t like those commercials at all. I’m so glad they are gone.

Found via blog I just started reading recently:

‘War’ singer Edwin Starr, 61, dies

LONDON, England (Reuters) — U.S.-born soul singer Edwin Starr — best known for his anti-conflict song “War” — has died at the age of 61, his manager Lilian Kyle said on Thursday.

In a statement on Starr’s official Web site, Kyle said the singer had died following a heart attack at his home near Nottingham, central England. []

I’ve more or less been doing nothing. Pretty much nothing noteworthy going on to speak of, but oh well. I just don’t have anything to say right now. I haven’t gotten much done these days. Not much on my mind , but that’s how it is.

Current Mood: dispassionate

(This entry brought to you by the The Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator.)

Boston-Online mentions the new Super DMCA bills that are showing up in various states, including MA. For more information, check out Freedom to Tinker’s Super-DMCA site. The interesting thing is that the MPAA seems to be the one behind this horribly stupid bill. Bastards.

It has come to my attention that I have not been using this group blog for its intended purpose (talking about what anime I’m watching), but instead as a sort of digital soapbox to spew grand essays about anime fandom in general or (as was recently the case) some personal information without much relevance to anyone other than me. And this isn’t even taking into account my tendancy to spew out pages of dialogue sporadically instead of regular updates of a paragraph or two.

In short: sorry if you don’t like it, but I’m not likely to change.

Now that human stupidity day is nominally over, I figure it’s okay to come out a bit. Well, not really, I just want to talk for a bit. I tend to get extremely talkative after exercising my brain intensely for a few hours (although only about unimportant fun things like games and anime), such as during a prelim. Guess what I just did?

Anyway, now that my intro is over (my intro is bigger than most other people’s entire posts… *sob*), I’ll start the actual meat. First up is the dissapointing Weiss Kreuz Gluhen. I say “dissapointing” not because the first one was any good, but rather because it was most emphatically the opposite. In an era of serious, intensive Cowboy Bebops and Triguns, the first Weiss Kreuz was a seiryu vanity project that can best be described as Noir meets Power Rangers. It was every bit as laughably dumb as it sounds, and provided many hours of entertainment, albiet not the kind the creators were shooting for (if you’re into making fun of stupid people doing stupid things and sounding utterly pretentious (ie, an MST3K fan like me)). Gluhen, on the other hand, is just bland and unoriginal without being hillariously overwrought. You can see the change best in their jobs: in the original, their day job was running a flower shop. In Gluhen, they’re “ordinary” teachers and students. It’s a lot less funny, but not much better (thanks Lyn!).

Feeling good about yourself, the world, and our chances for survival? Glad I could help!

While I’m on the subject of things not related to anime, I’ll take a minute to plug Neal Stephenson’s (of “Snow Crash” fame (coincidentally, that book has the best main character name ever: Hiro Protagonist)) book “Cryptonomicon,” which gets serious bonus points for being clear and easy to understand despite telling a story nonlinearly in two separate time periods (WWII and about 1998) with a host of main characters and delving into mildly heady math (cryptoanalysis, or the study of codes; for those who don’t know, WWII was won entirely because the Allies were better at this than the Axis). I’d go into more depth about why it’s such a great book, but I should probably get back to anime before I’m lynched.

After a few months of waiting, the first Noir DVD arrived. This was an odd series for me, as it was one of the few shows I’ve watched that, after I finished it, I started liking less and less. It’s mired in slow pacing and constant flashbacks and lacking in thematic structure other than a sort of “life sucks, everyone dies” (wow, that sounded like I actually know what I’m talking about, huh? Go me the film critic!). The combat alternates between awsome (especially Kirika’s stunts) and abysmal (Kirika running up a wide, open with two guns, making no effort to even dodge, and effortlessly mowing down about thiry suits, and that’s not even talking about the random people equipped with knives and swords), and by the end it almost completely gives up on establishing character motivations (especially for Kirika and Althena (yes, everyone pronounces it Artena, but come on, you know what it’s supposed to be)). That said, it still has its moments (the tea fork scene in particular) and more than its fair share of really cool fights (in an interesting piece of polarity, they tended to be either really crappy or really cool, and there weren’t that many bad ones). And I suppose the ludicrously unsubtle lesbian undertones are worth a few points. Overall, it’s really a pretty decent show. It’s just a little sad that the best part of a show about two female assassins of ambiguous sexual orientation is the music.

Then again, it is REALLY GOOD music.

Broadcast message out to my friends (and anyone else in the area). This Sunday I’m planning on going to see the Cowboy Bebop movie at the theatre in Harvard Square (it’s at the Loew’s there). I’ll be hitting the 7pm showing. If anyone wants to meet up let me know. I’m not buying tickets for people or worrying if anyone is there though. It’s too much work ^_^. If you say you’ll be there I’ll try and hold a seat if I’m there before you. The movie is pretty good. I saw a subtitled version a while ago and it definitely has the feel of the show down perfectly. It also doesn’t require you to have really seen the show. I think it would work pretty well standalone.

I was inspired by seeing this over on another blog, I decided to put up a list of what’s now playing in iTunes on my web site. There’s also a link to recently played tracks. The program I use for this is called Kung-Tunes, and works specificly with iTunes. I like!

The hardest part was getting japanese characters to display, but I think I handled it right by changing the character set to Shift_JIS. Any web types out there know if there is a better way to do it than this?

Hey wow, I have shares available on Blogshares. Pretty cool! You can view my site’s page here (where you can also ‘buy’ shares).

I’ve heard it said that one way to survive in business is to concentrate on one thing and do it better than anyone else. Ellen (there, satisfied?) sent me a link to a story titled The Store sells rice pudding. Nothing Else

Mr. Moceo, who said he once owned a restaurant called Bally-hoo’s in Smithtown, N.Y., originally wanted to open a sit-down restaurant featuring only rice dishes. After struggling with the concept for months, he said, he flew to Italy to relax. As he ate intensely flavored desserts in Florence’s stylish gelaterias, inspiration struck.

But when he got back to New York and began researching rice pudding recipes, he said, “my friends didn’t understand where I was going with this.”

Worse, “landlords refused to rent to me, because they didn’t see how I could pay the rent selling rice pudding.” Mr. Moceo, who declined to say how much he has spent on the project, said it was “less than you’d think — I did most of the work myself.” He had “no partners, no investors.” [New York Times]

I’m not a huge fan of rice pudding myself, but this article makes me want to give it a try.