In the cards

While I have little interest in most anime-related products, there are a couple of categories that I have found worth looking for. I’ve occasionally mentioned my annual searches for Japanese calendars. I also have a small collection of anime playing cards, which are much cheaper than figurines and more useful.

Unsurprisingly, the cards from Studio Ghibli are the best, both for the art and for the substance of the cards. Each card has a different picture, all printed at high resolution, and the cards are durable and easy to shuffle and deal. I have decks for Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, and I’ll add others when circumstances permit. Right-click the images and open in a new window to see at full resolution.

Continue reading “In the cards”

A quiet anniversary

A year ago this week I escaped from Wichita.

Overall, it was a good move. The neighborhood here is quiet. I can read without interruption, listen to music without competing noise, and sleep without being awakened by cruising subwoofers at 2 a.m. And I have an entire house to myself, with a real yard, an extraordinary luxury after years in a duplex. I don’t have to worry about my neighbors playing loud video games or bad music when I need to sleep.

Although where I now live is one of the larger cities in Kansas, it’s still much smaller than Wichita, and saner. In Wichita nearly everyone wore masks everywhere. It was common to see individuals driving alone with the car windows up wearing masks. When I weeded my tiny garden in front of the duplex, masked passers-by made ostentatiously large detours around me, sometimes walking into the street to avoid my malign aura. It was hard not to laugh. There’s been little of that silliness here. I’ve never seen any of my neighbors with masks. Some people still wear the stupid things at stores, generally either the very old or the compliant young and their unfortunate children, but they’re a minority.2

There are drawbacks, of course. I live literally on the wrong side of the tracks, and trains run frequently. I need to leave extra early for appointments lest I get stuck at a crossing. There are fewer stores of any kind, and those that are here generally don’t have selections as extensive as their big-city counterparts. I can find acceptable basic wines and bourbons at the best local liquor store, for instance, but not sherry or port, or Blanton’s. In general, if it’s not at Home Depot, Walmart or the local Kroger affiliate, I have to order it online. And I’m still in Kansas, where there is no such thing as normal weather.

Nevertheless, the inconveniences are more than compensated for by the quiet. I feel more at home here than I ever did in Wichita.

Housekeeping

Stuff salvaged from posts I never published.

Maus:

In the 21st century, we have reached the point where Pius X’s observation that modernism is the synthesis of all heresies is beyond dispute. We’ve got Arian’s denial of Christ’s divine nature (I’m spiritual, not religious); Pelegian’s salvation by human effort (CRT, taking the vaxx jab); gnosticism (trust the experts because they F*cking Love Science™); and a soupçon of Donatism (evil white cis-het men are evil just like those icky pedo priests). It’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

Continue reading “Housekeeping”

Poetry corner: in memoriam

Joyce Kilmer, updated by John Leo:

Versified and rhythmic non-prose verbal arrangements are fashioned by people of alternative intelligence such as myself, but only the divine entity, should he or she actually exist, can create a solar-shielding park structure from low-rise indigenous vegetative material.

John Leo, a very funny, very serious writer whose columns were among the few things worth reading in the newspaper3 before the turn of the century, died earlier this month. His collection Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police4 is fun to browse through.

(Via Kim Du Toit.)

More yellow

One of this year’s experiments started blooming this week. Mentzelia lindleyi is a hardy annual from California that I seeded outside in early March, along with poppies and Phacelia5. The flowers are about two inches in diameter. They’re supposed to open in the evening and close in the morning, but these have done the opposite — not that I’m complaining. The plants are about a foot tall and probably will grow taller, though I doubt that they’ll reach the three feet that some sources claim. The leaves are long, thin and deeply lobed; they look skeletal, and the plant overall is scrawny. Should you grow it in your garden, I suggest giving it leafier companions.

Mentzelia is a genus of the Loasaceae, a family known for fine flowers and stinging hairs.6 Mentzelias don’t bite, but they do have barbed hairs that can cling to fabric and fur. The stems and leaves feel like sandpaper.

Mentzelia lindleyi is supposed to be heat- and drought-tolerant and bloom for two months7. Summer is nearly here. We’ll see how it does in Kansas.

Four months in four days

Thursday it was March outdoors, chilly, windy and wet. Yesterday it was a much milder April. Today it’s May, warm and breezy. Tomorrow, if the weatherman is right, will be a hot June day.

Despite the meteorological shenanigans, the plants in my garden continue to thrive. The first California poppy opened today. Phacelia campanularia, probably the most intensely blue flower one can easily grow in Kansas, has been blooming for a week now. There’s much more coming soon.

Continue reading “Four months in four days”

The purple onion

The Allium christophii I found at Walmart last October are now blooming. The flower heads are supposed to get eight inches in diameter, but these look like they’ll max out at about five. They’ll be followed shortly by another variety of allium, and then peonies and an early lily. The phacelia, poppies and other annuals will start blooming shortly.

My lilac — something I haven’t been able to say since I was fourteen — put on a fine, fragrant show despite years of neglect.

When I lived in Wichita, I didn’t have a proper yard. There was a plot about the size of two postage stamps out front where I could grow a few things, plus a strip maybe eight inches wide along one side of the house. Now I have a quarter-acre lot. Mowing that much grass every week is tedious, but it’s worth it for the buffer zone between me and my neighbors (who are actually mostly nice people). The main garden south of the house alone gives me about four times as much room to work with as I had in Wichita. I’ve also established three small beds on the north and west sides. This year I’m relying on annuals for color, but over time the perennials I’m putting in will establish themselves and take over. In a few years, the gardens will need little maintenance beyond weeding, watering and occasional fertilizing.

Continue reading “The purple onion”

Lost years found

For quite a long time, the four years from April 2012 to April 2016 were missing from the archives of Pixy Misa’s mee.nu weblog ecosystem. A few days ago Pixy ran a script to restore the absent pages. At last one can once more read everything that the Brickmuppet, Wonderduck and similar eccentrics posted back then.

I am particularly pleased to be able to read all of Steven Den Beste’s Chizumatic again. Finally I can review his observations on Mouretsu Pirates, Girls und Panzer and Gate, as well as the frequently extensive discussions in the comments. There are also occasional trenchant remarks on the political clownshow mixed in with the anime cheesecake. The restored pages start here and run through here.