Checking in

Use the force ...

Life is busier than usual right now, and it will be a week or two before I have time for a proper post. Until then, here are a few odds and ends.

• The true and proper words to the traditional Christmas carol:

Boston Charlie

• Some more silly stuff I’ve come across recently:

Flute season

Great ...

• If Kyousougiga ends well as well as it began, it likely will be the second-best show of 2013 (I don’t expect any current series to top the second half of Shin Sekai Yori). Here’s a tune from the OST that illustrates one aspect of the show. If Carl Stalling wrote anime music, it might sound something like this:

• Kill la Kill is currently in the middle of a tournament arc. Once that’s resolved, I expect that the show will shift gears, and then we’ll see just how good it really is.

• Arpeggio of Blue Steel, when it isn’t annoyingly silly, has been a surprisingly good series. Ubu has more to say about it. See Jusuchin for episode-by-episode discussions, with plentiful spoilers.

• Despite my better judgement, I’m still watching I couldn’t, so, etc. The creators can’t decide whether it’s a comedy, a fanservice vehicle, an action story or a romance; too often, it’s none of the above. Still, it’s just interesting enough that I want to see what happens. I wish Fino were in a better show with better writers.

• Today’s quote:

History is satire, and histories that are simply serious are simply false.

Continue reading “Checking in”

The other singing nun

Fire

Something I came across this morning: Christian “popular” music that isn’t embarrassing. ((Although there are many good musicians who are seriously religious, the only one marketed as a “Christian” performer whom I enjoy listening to is Phil Keaggy, a superb guitarist and pretty good singer and songwriter.)) In 1976, Sister Irene O’Connor, a Franciscan nun in Australia, recorded the album Fire of God’s Love, playing every instrument and singing every vocal part. It wasn’t exactly a runaway hit in its day, and the vinyl now is a fabulous rarity. Here’s the reverb-drenched “Fire (Luke 12:49)” from the album:

Far more listenable than anything the St. Louis Jesuits and their ilk ever produced (faint praise, yes). You can listen to two more tracks here, but apparently that’s all there is of the album that’s online.

Sister O’Connor is still around and making music. There’s an interview with her here, and she has a facebook page.

Racism, sexism, colonialism, and even feudalism

Nintendo games are hopelessly sexist and racist. Fortunately, the Diversity Chronicle is here to call them out:

Invariably in virtually all of these Mario games Mario rescues the princess. In other words the old sexist staple tale plays out. The weak, docile, insecure woman is captured and kidnapped. Unable to defend herself or rescue herself, she invariably waits for a man, in this case Mario. This is nothing but sexist gender-stereotyping for children.

My life-partner is a very resourceful woman. I would like to think that if she were ever kidnapped she could even rescue herself. She wouldn’t have to wait around for some man to do it! That’s not her style, she’s a strong, intelligent and independent woman! I would never try to demean the woman I love by attempting to rescue her. Nor would I dishonour her by asking violent racially-profiling reactionaries like the police to go out and try to find her!

The Zelda games are no better:

Zelda and Link are depicted as Nordic Aryans, albeit with dwarf like ears, reminiscent of something out of old Nordic Viking mythology. If Richard Wagner, that old Anti-Semitic Nordic supremacist had been alive today he would probably be creating video games like Zelda. In fact the latest Zelda game features music recorded from an actual orchestra. How many people of colour do you think there are in a typical orchestra? The conductors are invariably old white men, it never fails! Haven’t we had enough of this tired old white man music? Why can’t Nintendo adopt vibrant African or Rastafarian music? Maybe some Bob Marley?

Submarine with duckie

Submarine with duck

Episode seven of Arpeggio of Blue Steel was mostly just plain silly, with the “mental models” of the warships behaving like infatuated adolescents. The show is partly about about artificial (or alien) intelligence, as embodied by the models, acquiring human-like emotions and behavior, but this was ridiculous. Oh, yeah, it was a beach episode, too. It was set on Iwoto/Iwo Jima, and, as I anticipated, there was no indication that the writers had any awareness of the geological nature of the island.

Episode seven of Kill la Kill was also subpar. All the absurd invention and energy couldn’t redeem the trite moral: wealth isn’t necessarily a blessing. (I would like to verify that for myself, though. Would anyone care to subsidize a few months of luxury for me?) It’s still worth watching, but I expected something better.

Incidentally, I recently discovered that Kazuki Nakashima, the “series composition” guy for Kill la Kill, also wrote the play that Oh! Edo Rocket was based on.

800 tons of mercury

Just another weekend at Mt. Etna.

Man-made vs. natural disasters:

During the last year or so I have had reason to study Sweden’s largest environmental disaster, the Nautanen Mining field. The Nautanen mines where active from 1902 until 1909 and in comparison to other Swedish mines the Nautanen field is puny. Still it releases more heavy metals into the surrounding waters than all other Swedish mines, historic and present, put together. It is estimated that if Nautanen is left without any measures taken somewhere in the range of 50 to 100 tons of heavy metals (mainly copper) will be released into the surrounding waters….

Let us go through what was released during [Pinatubo’s] VEI-6 eruption. While reading the numbers keep in mind the Nautanen maximum figure of 100 tons of heavy metals. Pinatubo produced 800 000 tons of zinc, 600 000 tons of copper, 550 000 tons of chromium, 300 000 tons of nickel, 100 000 tons of lead, 10 000 tons of arsenic, 1 000 tons of cadmium and 800 tons of mercury. All of it in the form of ash that was spread not only locally in layers tens of meters thick, it was also dispersed across the globe.

The concentration of heavy metals is so high that it causes birth defects, cancer, neurological disorders, liver and renal failure, heart and lung deceases and the list just goes on and on. It has been estimated that Pinatubo has shortened the lifespan on the island of Luzon by as much as a decade. That equates to 7 000 000 people in mortality if we recount the lost life years into average human life expectancy in the Philippines.

What about giant sea sparrows?

Quote of the week:

“In an article on Saturday headlined ‘Flying saucers over British Scientology HQ’, we stated ‘two flat silver discs’ were seen ‘above the Church of Scientology HQ’. Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologise to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists.”

Bonus quote:

I’d suggest harvesting organs from legislators, but that brain-death issue would still be a factor.

Maybe they can pixelate them out

What is going to give American critics more problems with Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie? This:

Although “The Wind Rises” has a strong pacifist message, it is essentially a biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautical engineer whose contribution to the world was a killing machine. His designs led to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter, which was used to devastating effect during World War II.

or this:

Mr. Miyazaki’s film, which is aimed at adults, also features at least eight scenes in which characters smoke cigarettes….

It’s just a matter of time before Haibane Renmei is rated “NC-17” for Reki’s horrifying habit.

Something stinks

Iwoto?

Okay, for the sake of a story, I can suspend my disbelief in sentient submarines and ships. I can accept “mental models” of these vessels that look like adolescent girls. I can even believe that stuffed bears eat carrots. But I cannot believe that any military would store vital materials on Iwo Jima . “Sulphur Island” is the tip of a rapidly-inflating volcanic resurgent dome, and it’s rising out of the sea at an average rate of about eight inches a year, rendering any harbor or dock temporary. Soon, geologically speaking, magma is going to meet seawater, catastrophically. The creators of Arpeggio of Blue Steel need to do better research.

*****

Shin Sekai Yori depicts a future in which adults are frightened of children. We’re already there. (Via Ace.)

Love, Labrador

The Kousanji family

Five episodes in, the story in Kyousougiga is taking shape, and it looks like that underneath the Carrollian whimsey and name games, it is exactly what it purports to be, a fairy tale of love and rebirth in the Kousanji family. It’s difficult to encapsulate the show beyond that. ((Crunchyroll’s description of the show is “Enter a description.”)) Instead, here are a bunch of screen caps from the second episode, “Episode 1,” to give you an idea of the flavor of this willfully eccentric series.

Continue reading “Love, Labrador”

Time, crime and princesses

The government finally returned the hour they confiscated from me back in March. Let me offer a small suggestion to whoever is in charge of clocks in this country: how about making daylight “savings” time a local option? DST might make sense in the eastern regions of a time zone. However, I live near the western border of the central time zone, where the clock is already ahead of the sun, and turning the clock forward an hour in spring leaves me sleepy and irritable.

A related, depressing factoid:

Research based on time use surveys found Americans’ schedules are determined by television more than daylight.

*****

Guess the offense:

The flashing lights of the park ranger vehicle were on, another vehicle as well, and four rangers were there in case I attempted to flee after the dastardly crime of _______.

*****

Even if I should someday visit Japan, manifold orthopedic problems make it unlikely that I will ever climb Mt. Fuji. Fortunately, Google Maps street view has already done so. (Enter “Mount Fuji, Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan” in the Google Maps search box to get there.)

*****

We need more princesses, not more lawyers.

(Here’s a tune named for the Irish pirate queen: Grace O’Malley.)

*****

All hail Captain Justice. (Via Dustbury)

*****

Some good free music I recently found:

Dudeldrum — a low-budget, energetic Russian Corvus Corax.

Los Jekes — something like Chilean gypsy jazz.

Also, if you haven’t yet downloaded the first Diablo Swing Orchestra album, what are you waiting for?