Steven found some Touhou/Peanuts crossovers. Here’s a selection.
Snoopy goes to Gensokyo
Author: Don
Coming attraction
It looks like tomorrow will be a good day for catching tigers.
Update:
Spring has sprung. We should hear the sirens any time now.
Update II: The tornadic storm fizzled out by the time it reached my neighborhood, and all we got was an hour or so of hail, none of it larger than half-dollar diameter.1 While this was undoubtedly a great disappointment to tornado aficionados, I have better things to do with the rest of the month than find a new place to live.
The greatest danger was inside the house. The only time I listen to traditional broadcast radio is during violent weather, when one of the local country stations intensively covers the meteorological events. They occasionally interrupt the descriptions of hail and flooding for commercials and public service announcements, the latter of which are mostly courtesy of the “Ad Council.” The mean sanctimony of these PSAs is sufficient to choke 2.65 SJWs and incalculably many people of normal sensibilities. They create a powerful temptation to punch the stereo speakers, which would hurt my hand.
First impressions, spring 2016
Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless — So listless, in fact, that his friend Ohta often picks him up and carries him over his shoulder. However lazy Tanaka is physically, though, his mind is active, at least until he falls asleep. It’s a one-joke show, but it has remained entertaining through three episodes with the introductions of Tanaka’s quirky classmates.
Um, okay
A couple of odd moments from current shows. The above is from Bakuon, which features the Queen of Tears in a non-angsty role as a motorcycle. Below is from Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless.
In case you were wondering …
… there really is such a thing as the hairy ball theorem.
Q & A
How can you tell that it’s early Sunday morning in Wichita?
The people next door are mowing and edging their lawn.
Useful phrases for the tourist
Level 6 dream
I ran one of my photographs through the Deep Dream Generator,2 over and over again, eventually yielding the above image. Can you identify what the subject was? (Click to enbiggen.)
Here’s an intermediate stage:
Spoiler
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and the original:
Spoiler
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A few more:
In the news today
• An explosive announcement concerning Yellowstone National Park
• A re-visioning of Mononoke Hime
• A history of “conceptual writing”
• An audio plugin to blend divine proportion into your music Update: now offline.
• Live tribble cam Update: now offline.
It’s possible that not all of the above news releases are related to today’s date.
Update:
More Kansas weather scheduled
We had a brown Christmas here this past winter. We’re going to make up for that with a white Easter tomorrow, or so the weatherman says, with one to three inches of anthropogenic global warming falling after midnight.
Today was the first time in nearly three weeks that the wind wasn’t furiously howling all day long. I was finally able to get out to the botanical garden to take some pictures.
Ursine melodies
Here’s a set of variations on a simple traditional tune, “The Bear.” Since this is played entirely on the white keys of the piano, the critter most likely is a polar bear. As usual, it’s my computer playing, not me.
Update: The score is here for the morbidly curious. You can right-click and download the mp3 here.
Black pawns matter
I’m rather preoccupied at the moment, but I’ll be back eventually. In the meantime, here’s a chess problem to amuse you. There is something wrong with this position. Find the problem, correct it, and then find a mate-in-one for white, no matter how you fix it. You can find solutions in the comments here.
Odder ends
Did you ever get the feeling that, if only you could figure out just what the hell was going on, you’d wish you hadn’t?
Solomon in all his glory couldn’t touch my coffee options!
Hillary Clinton or Cannibal Corpse: Easy Decision
(Via Ubu.)
Sakura, sakura
Here’s a handy schedule of expected cherry blossom bloom times, in case you should be heading to Japan during the next few months. If you can’t go to Japan, you can visit the botanical garden in Wichita, where the Okame cherry, above, has just started flowering.
The Japanese apricot is in full bloom now. Thanks to new construction and landscaping, it is no longer possible to get close to tree, but you don’t need to get close to appreciate its powerful fragrance.
A bunch of princesses
From tonight’s dress rehearsal of The Firebird.
Blue and black
I spent the evening photographing a tech rehearsal for a dance program. Here are three of the pictures. There are about 1600 more to go through. The dress rehearsal is Thursday, and I’ll probably take at least as many more then.
Mind your head
Some aspects of GATE are not well thought-out, e.g., the girls’ armor. What purpose do the pointed projections on the pauldrons serve? If one of the warrior maidens tilts her head to the side, she’s liable to pierce her ear or worse. Also, I don’t recall ever seeing any of the girls with helmets, even in the middle of battles. It may be that on the far side of the gate women’s skulls are so thick and dense that head protection is superfluous, but I am skeptical.
Hell has frozen over …
… and pigs are flying. Dennou Coil has finally been licensed for North America. The Mouretsu Pirates movie has also been licensed.
Comforting thought
Only one or two of the candidates are as bad as Mussolini. The others are, well, better than Mussolini. I think.
Moore notes also that “Many people have lead perfectly good lives under perfectly awful governments;” which is probably true but not particularly reassuring.
Fuzzy details
I did some preliminary spring cleaning in the tiny garden out front, and kept one of the plumes from the clump of ornamental grass (Miscanthus sinensis?) to give Helicon Focus a workout. The picture above was composed from 48 slices and has a depth of field of about three inches.