… and I could use a little silliness right now.
When I read Dusty Sage’s comments on Equestria Girls, it occurred to me that there might be another bipedal variation on the Pony theme extant. And indeed there is. Is there ever.
Author: Don
The words of the Affirmation Creep
Remember “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies“? Here it is again, this time with illuminating captions. (But where’s Voltron?)
Notes, musical and otherwise
There is an anime music tournament in the works, and the organizers seek your nominations. The following are what I came up with during breakfast this morning. There’s a lot of Susumu Hirasawa, Masumi Itou, Yuki Kajiura and Yoko Kanno. It’s not by accident.
Haibane Renmei — “Free Bird”
Paprika — “Mediational Field”
Azumanga Daioh — “Soramimi Cake”
Noir — “Salva Nos”
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica — “Sis Puella Magica”
Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita — “Yume no Naka no Watashi no Yume”
Macross Plus — “Voices”
Paranoia Agent — “Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen”
Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto — “Kouya Ruten”
Ghost in the Shell SAC — “Lithium Flower”
Shin Sekai Yori — “Wareta Ringo”
Ghost in the Shell SAC — “Inner Universe”
Paranoia Agent — “Shiroi Oka – Maromi no Theme”
Pumpkin Scissors — “Mercury Go”
Level E — “Cold Finger Girl”
Inevitably, I forgot a favorite: “Poltergeist,” from Ghost Hound.
***
No one ever visits my photo gallery. I decided to open a Flickr account, so even more people can ignore my pictures. It seems I timed it just right — the Flickr page sure looks pretty, but I have to wait for it to load completely twice before I can do anything there. I joined a few Flickr groups and, again, I timed it just right. It seems that Wichita photographers hang out at Facebook nowadays. Although I do have a Facebook account to keep tabs on family and friends, as a policy I post virtually nothing there. That’s not going to change.
***
Satsuma-jima, not far from Kyushu, has been a bit feisty lately. I grabbed the picture above from the JMA webcam (third from the bottom of the list) this morning.
From the chariot boudoir
If you can’t find the video you want on YouTube, look elsewhere. (This is the complete recording of the song, not just the excerpt included in the eighth episode of Girls und Panzer (and censored on Crunchyroll). The missing section of the anime begins around 1:50.) ((Though the censored section is back on Youtube for now.))
So we’ve had girls with guns, girls as guns (or is that guns as girls?), girls with mecha, girls as combat aircraft, and now with girls with tanks. ((It’s actually not that new. See Those Who Hunt Elves — on second thought, don’t. It’s lousy; not even Kotono Mitsuishi could redeem it.)) It’s probably all just pandering to otaku, but perhaps there is something more sinister going on. If anime reflects reality, Japanese young men generally are either hapless dweebs or sparkly bishies and crossdressers. If you want to form an army, they’d be useless. You’d be better off drafting young women, who in Japan have talent for using the tools of war, and often magic, too. Girls und Panzer may be just the latest in a series of entertainments designed to accustom the Japanese to the idea of women as warriors.
At least one Chinese writer sees “evil intent militarism” in Girls und Panzer, though it’s difficult to follow the argument as interpreted by Giggle Translate. ((Giggle Translate insisted that the original language of the linked page was Irish.))
Spines and fuzz
A few pictures from yesterday evening’s expedition. This time I used only the 50mm lens (effectively 75mm on my camera).
Cultural notes
For those who remember Leonard Pinth-Garnell.
*****
Norman Lebrecht says that The Rite of Spring was “a glorification of primitivism that challenged the values of modern society. Its response was reciprocal violence.” My own theory is that the riot at its premiere was caused by time-traveling aesthetes happy for an opportunity to get rowdy.
*****
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation bought the rights to R.A. Lafferty‘s writing a couple years ago and is planning to reprint his complete short stories. The first volume is due out early next year, in time for the centenary of his birth. Twenty or so years ago I tried to collect every book by Lafferty in print. Although I found numerous chapbooks and small-press editions, most of his writing was out of reach. The new edition is very welcome, even though the first volume costs $66.
If you’ve never read Lafferty, there are a handful of his stories online:
I’m pleased to observe that I am not the only R.A. Lafferty obsessive around. Andrew Ferguson is reading his way though Lafferty’s stories in order and commenting on them at Continued on Next Rock. See also The Ants of God Are Queer Fish.
Readers of Lafferty are often readers of Gene Wolfe as well. I recently found a couple of weblogs devoted to Wolfe, Silk for Caldé and The Silk and Horn Heresy.
Advisory
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception III in Wichita
I’m preoccupied with cameras and keyboards these days. Posting will continue to be sporadic.
Memo to Steven
Art and other eyesores
Some fisheye views from this morning’s ride. Above is James Rosati‘s “Tripodal” in downtown Wichita.
Danger: time-waster ahead
Don’t click here if you have anything to do. Incidentally, it’s amazing how much parts of Australia look like Oklahoma.
Inaction photo
A couple of Wonderduck’s relatives dropped by the botanical garden yesterday.
The usual pretty pictures are below the fold.
Notes from Nineveh
The bishop administered Confirmation this Pentecost Sunday at the Cathedral this morning. While he was annointing the confirmandi, a string quartet in the choir loft played the “nocturne” from Borodin’s quartet. I would have enjoyed it under other circumstances, but this was the wrong place and time for the music. I suppose I should grateful that it wasn’t Marty Haugen or the St. Louis Jesuits.
Chicken emergency
Miscellaneous notes:
• I’m mostly taking pictures these days in my available time. Wichita, perhaps the least interesting place visually in North America — it’s not even ugly — is as photogenic as it ever gets right now. Although it’s already summer (spring lasted most of one morning last week), temperatures haven’t yet hit 100°, and I can ride around town without risking heatstroke.
• My route home from work yesterday was more circuitous than usual, with one intersection closed off by the police. I missed the excitement, but that may be just as well.
• I watched several more episodes of some current series but ended up dropping them all. I probably will eventually watch the rest of Suisei no Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. The first three episodes showed more thought than any of the other shows I sampled, and the art looked good, too. The Brickmuppet and Steven both praise what they’ve seen so far. Valvrave the Liberator features not just mecha, but vampires, too (and in recent episodes, I gather, boys and girls trading bodies). It might be of interest to Wonderduck when he’s recovered from the horrors of Vividred, but I’ve had enough.
Instead, I’ve been rewatching some older favorites, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, Mouretsu Pirates (for the third time) and Shingu (I’ve lost count).
• You can download the materials to make a paper model of a tank at the Girls und Panzer website here. Also, Brave Combo has worked its magic, or whatever it is, on “Katyusha.”
• It’s been a while since I mentioned ponies. Here’s a list of several with their Civil War general counterparts. (Via Dusty Sage.)
• The title of this post is from Looking for Bobowicz, which I listened to earlier this evening. You can download it here.
This is not going to end well
Some years back, one of the local Walmarts stocked rhododendrons in their gardening department, and I saw a number prominently planted in yards around town. Every single one was dead by midsummer. I spotted these for sale this past weekend. (It is possible to keep some species of rhododendron alive in Kansas in the right spot, but it’s not easy, and they don’t flourish.)
Binary bonsai and hyberbolic chanterelles
Discovered while looking for something else: Botanica Mathematica: a textile taxonomy of mathematical plant forms. See also the associated Flickr page here. (The photos at the latter link remind me of Karl Blossfeldt.)
Observation
All good things come to an end, but meetings go on forever.
Just because
Is it really spring now?
I suppose I should explain why I’ve dropped every show of the spring season and have instead been re-watching Shingu and reading Alan Coren, but I think I’ll just post a few more pictures instead.
Update: A climatological footnote from this morning’s forecast.
… Coldest April since 1997 across the area…
Wichita… the average April temperature was 51.3 degrees… which was
the 7th coolest April on record since 1889. The normal April average
is 56.1 degrees.
It might snow tomorrow.
Old-time kawaii
(Via Kansas City Old Time Music.)
Quote of the day
Oh for the days when primitive transportation delayed communication such that one could go years without having to speak to another human being! The silence. The isolation. The peace.
While we’re at it, this explains a lot.