Category: Culture and anti-culture

Pigs can fly

Here’s some nonsense to amuse you while I’m busy not writing.

Missing link discovered: Magical girls perform functions in Japanese society similar to those of superheroes in America. I’ve wondered whether if this is an example of parallel evolution or if there is a common ancestor. A recent discovery suggests that the latter may be the case. The protagonist of Ai to Yuuki no Pig Girl Tonde Buurin is essentially a superhero. However, she has a henshin sequence that is unmistakably that of a mahou shoujo. (The show is on the border between silly and dumb, and I don’t recommend it except as a curiosity.)

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Um, no comment.

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European history, according to freshman papers:

The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man’s quest for ressurection above thenot-just-social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.

I spent ninth grade at a Jesuit high school. Either I’m older than I had realized, or I was educated by zombies.

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Let’s intellect: Is this a parody, or for real?

A community where all angst struggling writers and poets can intellect. We are not only spiritual and constructive in our writing. We are serious, hardworking writers. We have given perspiration to inspiration; We have strived in our thrivations. We have lived to build our living characters, penciled through every constructive detail in our realms filled in sorrow, death, birth, hardship, and pain. Our imaginations entwined to unfurl past a world of hope, a universe of dreams, fairies, trolls, gas- breathing dragons or three-warped witches, tales of Heros, and stories of legend all capsized into an outlined story draft. Words strumming onto a page of pure magic; and it is magic. Our work is engraved in our names, stitched into our bloods, ravenous through our ink-coursed veins that defines the artistic process. Join us and forever hold your peace in The Ambitious Writers, The Children Writers, The Erotics, The Romances, The Horrors, The Fictitious, The Poets, The Westerns, The Adventures, The Mystery, THE STRUGGLING WRITERS

Oh, yeah: Rule #1 is “No negative critiquing.”

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Would you buy it for a quarter?

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Fear the clown.

Odds and ends

I noticed recently that Funimation is now streaming a couple of essential anime series, Serial Experiments Lain and Haibane Renmei. The latter will finally be available again on DVD next month, and for a very good price, but as far as I know, there are no plans to reissue Lain.

Update: As Mikeski mentions in his comment, Lain will be available again in November, possibly in much higher quality than the original release.

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Quotes of the week:

… I do wish the media would stop calling Leonardo da Vinci just “da Vinci.” It’s like calling St. Francis just “Assisi” or me just “New Jersey.”

Pro tip: when framing your opponents as intolerant hate-filled bigots, try not to showcase your own hatred, intolerance, and bigotry.

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Hollywood is the wrong place to look for heroes worth emulating. Try anime, instead. Seirei no Moribito is a good place to start.

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Jack Vance’s novel The Chasch is free for the downloading during August. (Via Aliens in This World.)

Piano mysteries and more

Here’s about two week’s worth of accumulated trivia.

I lost patience with radio years ago. The only time I listen nowadays is during storm warnings. Consequently, I never knew the Piano Puzzler existed until Angela at Mommy Bytes recently mentioned its tenth anniversary. Each week, pianist Bruce Adolphe arranges a “familiar” tune in the style of another composer, and the contestant’s task is to identify both the composer and the melody. I can usually identify the composer right off, but naming the tune is often difficult. What makes the segments memorable is Adolphe’s fantastic ingenuity in devising his arrangments, which must be heard to be believed. He does things like combine Schubert with Gershwin, Gershwin with Copland, The Fantasticks with Berg, spirituals with Handel, “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” with Brahms, etc., and makes each combination, no matter how unlikely, work. You can stream the programs or download them here. My favorite so far is the April 6, 2011 program.

Continue reading “Piano mysteries and more”

Not drowning, just waving

Blogging is low priority right now. I’ll be back eventually. Until then, here are a few links.

Mouretsu Pirates is the only current show I’m following. (I’ll eventually watch Sakamichi no Apollon, and I might finish Tsuritama, but it will be a while before I get to either. The soundtrack for the former is worth tracking down.) One advantage space pirates have over their earthbound predecessors: the cuisine is better.

Everyone who ever writes a review needs to pay attention to Steven Greydanus’s thoughts on spoilers. Once Kirika and Mireille are done with the perpetrators of comment spam, I’ll ask them to pay a visit to the bloggers who announced a certain event in the eleventh episode of Katanagatari, sometimes in the titles of their posts as they appeared at Anime Nano.

Eve Tushnet writes about three of my favorite writers: Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes is my favorite of his books, too); John Bellairs (who wrote about shufflies); and, Diana Wynne Jones. (Memo to web designers: Black type on a white background is easy to read. Light grey type on a white background isn’t.)

I don’t do politics here beyond the occasional sarcastic aside. Ace touches on one reason why. Elizabeth Scalia writes about another, related reason.

Winter wear for the physicists among you: emission spectra scarves. (Via Fillyjonk.)

John C. Wright, proponent of Space Princess Science Fiction, reprints his research on the Catwoman Equation.

Although Yellowstone is a superdupervolcano, it doesn’t really pose an immediate, immense threat. There might be enough oomph left for one more VEI8 eruption, but there will be plenty of warning and probably thousands of years before that happens. If you own land in Wyoming, you don’t need to be in a hurry to unload it. The vicinity of Mt. Ranier is far more dangerous. It wouldn’t take a large eruption to generate lahars that would reach Puget Sound. However, the most nightmarish city to live, from a vulcanologist’s point of view, is Naples in Italy. Vesuvius is its best-known neighbor, but it’s only one of three. Update: Let’s not forget Auckland, built on a volcanic field and liable to experience a Parícutin-type episode at any time.

Here are the true lyrics to “O Fortuna.”

(Via Darwin Catholic.)

Girls (mostly) with guns
Girls (mostly) with guns

I’m generally in favor of girls with guns, but this batch could use a few lessons in gun-handling.

The Brickmuppet hasn’t scheduled a trip to Tokyo, has he?

Politics, grammar and velcro

A few recently-spotted items worth quoting:

Being politically correct does not trump being grammatically correct…please fix.

— Dr. J’s Gothic Literature teacher

But these days the wages of sin is boredom.

— Res Studiorum et Ludorum

Well, I could argue that a proper understanding of punk and its inherent rebellion would have everyone becoming a libertarian or principled conservative …

— Mollie Hemingway (in the comments)

The last is from a thread about the “Weirdest Band You Love.” It’s hard to pick the strangest of my many musical enthusiasms, but the Sons of Rayon might be the most obscure. The inventors of velco tap dancing (fiddler/guitarist Kelly Werts glued velcro hooks on the soles and heels of his shoes and danced on a patch of tightly-woven carpet, which was miced, creating sound when his feet left the platform), the Bill Monroe-meets-Robert Fripp trio was active in Wichita for several years around 1980. They released one cassette, No Velcro, which was one of the first items I digitized when I hooked up my computer to the stereo. Here is perhaps their loveliest song, written and sung by banjoist Paul Elwood and featuring Intergalactic Yodeling Champion Randy Erwin, “UFOs Over New Zealand.”

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/UFOs Over New Zealand.mp3]

Continue reading “Politics, grammar and velcro”

Dear Howie

Odds and ends:

I didn’t get very far into Haiyore! Nyaruko-san the first time I sampled it. Sticking a fork into a little girl is not amusing, even if the girl is actually Nyarlathotep. However, both Steven and Ken the Brickmuppet found the first two episodes not entirely worthless. So I gritted my teeth, put my feet firmly on the floor, gripped the armrests of my chair, and grimly stuck it out through the rest of the first episode. Well, it is an improvement over the wretched flash shorts of two years ago, and the forking is not quite as offensive. ((Kirika Yumera remains the only person in anime licensed to use the fork as an offensive weapon.)) Still, I found it more irritating than funny, and I doubt that I’ll watch more.

By the way, Howard Phillips Lovecraft for a brief period was a Miss Lonelyhearts, answering questions such as this:

I am Xah’gnui, who has long delved into the annals of subterranean lore, conducting forbidden researches into the unknown, with a view to resurrecting aeon-silent interplanetary necromancer-lizards. Why is it so hard for me to get a date?

(Via Lynn.)

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I see there is an “aniblog” tournament underway. The candidates were drawn primarily from AnimeNano, if I’m interpreting the rules correctly. Unfortunately, this leaves out some of the most interesting weblogs that deal with anime. For instance:

Aliens in This World

Brickmuppet Blog

Chizumatic

Fun Blog

Mahou Meido Meganekko

Wonderduck’s Pond

All of these are worth a visit.

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Allegedly, the more subtle your mind, the more difficult you’ll find this puzzle. I got it in about 30 seconds.

(Via AoSHQ.)

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Mahou shoujo anime is pornographic. So is anime set in high schools. In fact, probably every anime produced this century is pure pornography.

(Via Dustbury.)

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Quote of the week, sobering thought division:

The greatest legacy of the internet may wind up being Cute Overload.

(God and the Machine.)

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Quote of the week, anime division:

If I had a daughter, I’d want her to watch this.

(The Brickmuppet on Mouretsu Pirates.)

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Memo to Trek Bicycle Corporation: I see that your factory is in Waterloo, Wisconsin. There is a good chance that you can find literate native speakers of English there. Please hire one, and have him write directions for mounting your luggage rack on a bicycle, so customers don’t have to puzzle over the cryptic diagrams that come with the rack. By the way, it would be thoughful to note on the outside of the packaging that installing the rack requires a hacksaw and file, where customers can see it before buying the rack.

While at the bike shop earlier this week, I discovered that Trek bicycles include a line called “Neko.” Surprisingly, there is no suggestion of anything feline on the bike or on the Trek website. The Neko does feature “Women’s disc brakes.”

Light, fantasy and physics

“… an exceptionally talented artist with excruciatingly bad taste” died yesterday. While discussing Kinkade’s significance, McDonald mentioned Roger Dean, who in turn reminded me of the Studio Ghibli curiosity, Iblard Jikan. The entire 30 minutes is now available online, and I’ve embedded it below. Whose fantasies do you prefer, Kinkade’s or Naohise Inoue’s?


Iblard Jikan by lostfiles

Let’s Artist

The majority of the magazines in Richard’s box are Mangajin, Dragon and Newtype. The former two are perfect-bound, which makes it difficult to scan entire pages without breaking the spine. Consequently, I’ll be focusing on the Newtype issues. (I’m sure Steven is disappointed, since the Dragon Half manga was running in Dragon’s back pages.)

Before I start on Newtype, here’s a look at Vversion ((Or V Version, or Wersion, depending on how you interpret the flag.)), devoted primarily to OVAs. It’s 132 pages, including the covers, and roughly half of it is glossy color.

Continue reading “Let’s Artist”

Historical documents

My friend Richard has been following anime since the mid-1980s, when he was stationed in Okinawa. This past weekend he brought by a box of a magazines, many 20 years old or older. Most of them are Japanese-only, and I can’t read a word. However, I can look at the pictures, and there are lots of pictures.

Continue reading “Historical documents”

Birthday present

Johann Sebastian Bach was born 327 years ago today (or on March 31, depending on which calendar you use). To celebrate the occasion, Amazon.com is selling nine hours of his music for 99¢ for a few days. I recognized a few of the performers, such as Joseph Szigeti and Andras Schiff, but most I’m not familiar with. I expect that the Amazon offering is mainly good older recordings and recent recordings by lesser-known artists. It’s probably worth gambling a dollar on.

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I know what I want for Christmas:

Ducks and religion

I recently came across this graphic. It’s a nice thought, but there seems to be something missing.

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Daniel Pinkwater has made a number of his books available for free download, including this odd little story, “Ducks!”

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/ducks.mp3]

Other books include Lizard Music, about lizards, pod people and a chicken; Borgel, a journey through space and time in search of the Great Popsicle; Slaves of Spiegel, about very fat space pirates; and, Young Adult Novel, about the avant-garde and fascism.

Sunday morning miscellany

Suppose the translators responsible for The New American Bible took on Shakespeare:

Existence or its opposite? That’s what I am asking myself.
Whether it be more or less dignified to put up with
The barbs and darts of brash Luck, or to use weapons
Against distress’s oceans, to stop them from happening.

More Shakespeare, sorta: What is the connection between Interstella 5555 and the House of Percy?

There supposedly is a genre of iyashikei, or “healing,” anime, such as Aria or Ikoku Meiro no Croisee. I find most such productions irritatingly bland, rather than soothing or refreshing. ((The only example of the genre I find rewatchable is Someday’s Dreamers, which has a serious story underlying all the niceness.)) If you seek therapeutic anime, the works of Tatsuo Sato are much more effective:

A rewatch of Nadesico helped me get through the first few days of living with a broken arm, and Shingu was good for a flu and high fever.

Update: I just watched the second episode of Mouretsu Pirates. It looks like it’s going to be at least as good as Nadesico. Whether it approaches the level of Shingu remains to be seen.

“You don’t have to rely on a healthy body image or self-respect any more”:

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Hmm. I have Adobé, but I’m as ugly as ever.

You’d think it’s obvious that creativity requires solitude, but evidentally the fact periodically needs to be restated.

Nyamulagira continues to challenge Etna for the title of The Greatest Show on Earth:

Cooking with gas is passé. Let’s cook with lava. ((Hey, Erik.)) Here’s a recipe for pahoehoe game hen. Prefer a steak?

I don’t know if you can “cook a tasty chicken on lava”, but I know you can cook a steak of meat on an Hawaiian lava flow! I did it! You just lay a sheet of aluminium on the lava; you spread some some oil on the steak, possibly with some herbs. Then, you put the steak on the aluminium sheet and let it broil a few tens of seconds on each side. I can assure you it is delicious, all the more with a glass of Californian wine! I’m French; I know what good cooking means!!

See this for the Icelandic version.

The triumph of dullness

Here’s a list.

Who’s missing? Here’s a name: Yes. Here are some other names: King Crimson, John Mayall, the Pogues, Deep Purple, Fairport Convention, ELP, Joe Satriani and Weird Al. I can add many more, and so can you. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame claims that “… musical excellence shall be the essential qualification of induction,” but are the Sex Pistols really better musicians than the band that recorded Fragile? In my lexicon, “critic” is a synonym for “idiot.” It’s nice that someone remembers the Small Faces, but induction into the R&RHoF is as meaningless an honor as the Nobel Peace Prize.

Not entirely unrelated: Twelve extremely disappointing facts about popular music.

(Via Professor Mondo.)

Bonus stupidity: Pearl Harbor? It was all America’s fault.