multiplicative | Recent Entries

This is old news, but Ai no Kusabi is scheduled for a 13 episode remake in the fall of 2009.

'Scuse me, I'll just be over here, not looking at Riki's nonexistent shirt.

(Keep in mind that the same company who did the original OVA (AIC) is the one who is running the remake. Which probably explains why it looks so similar, even down to the trailer, which seems to rehash some scenes that are close to identical to the nineties version, all the way down to the disturbing articulation of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF RIKI'S TORSO MUSCLES.)

There will probably not be a lot in this journal. I'm mostly using it to keep track of those who've either moved on from LiveJournal to Dreamwidth or are posting some things exclusively to Dreamwidth.

But never say never, and all the rest. ♥

Help me out, guys.

How many of you are switching over to Dreamwidth? If so, are you doing it exclusively, semi-exclusively, or just cross-posting?

♥,
-C.

"Over and above their rivalries and their ententes, for nearly a thousand years France and England have exercised upon each other a reciprocal attraction, almost a fascination. The evolution of their history, institutions and literature has been, for leading intellectuals of the two countries, a constant object of contemplation, of study, and if-- if one may say so-- of delight."

Excellent, Seven Ages of Paris. I see you and I shall be fast friends.

Digging through my bookshelf at home has been interesting, to say the least. I admit to having no fucking clue why I bought The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411-1785 by Konrad Eisenbichler (NO SERIOUSLY, WTF??). What cracks me up about this the most is reading this review of it by someone from the University of Glasgow:

"The long anticipated appearance of this work is greatly welcomed by those of us who have known Konrad Eisenbichler's work and earlier publications, especially on the contribution of the Archangel Raphael fraternity (and other youth confraternities) to Florentine theater. "

Er, of course. Long anticipated. Now if only I could remember what, exactly, I bought it for....

Lengthy, pointless, and amateurish research into things like late 19th century Chinese importation of English and WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THERE WAS A CHINESE SOVIET REPUBLIC and lololol 1950s English/American diplomacy has made me crack open the still unread books about history that I bought ages ago. While Understanding China: A Guide to China's Economy, History, and Political Culture by John Bryan Starr bored me to absolute tears (to the point where I never moved on from the first chapter, "Geographical Inequalities"), We Wrecked the Place by Jonathan Stevenson on the Troubles is fan-fucking-tastic (especially because it was written at a time when everyone believed the Troubles to be over during the ceasefire). I've yet to re-start The IRA by Tim Pat Coogan and reviews of Japan: A Reinterpretation by Patrick Smith lead me to believe I should only read the first two chapters.

I also realize that I apparently have the J. M. Cohen translation of Don Quixote but never bothered even cracking the spine, acquired Stephen Longstreet's We All Went to Paris: Americans in Paris 1776-1971 sometime somewhere, am trying to remember when exactly I stole The Call of the Wild and White Fang from my middle school library (which is especially odd because I loathe Jack London), and did I bother even opening How to Mutate and Take Over the World before I bought it? No? Then maybe that's why I bought a cheap rip-off of House of Leaves that reads like the discarded ramblings of Neal Stephenson after he's been clocked over the head with textfiles.com.

Your 'self' is no longer confined to your physical body. Rather, it's the interface between your mind, your PSY in cybernetic theory, and the outside world, the PHI. It's a morphing intersection, the points at which you process information from the outside world. For instance, thru telepresence your 'self' can be moved outside of your body and into a robotic apparatus, your sense located and extended thru wires and cameras. Cyberspace becomes a new sensorium, an array of inputs and outputs to and from your mind.

...

Date: Oct 7. 1998
From: stjude@root.bodhi.tree
To: rusirius@well.com
Subject: Ken, you fuckwit

o christ, ken, you've advanced from pomo to psycho. trudy will not buy this excrement shit. She's not an idiot. She's gonna tell you you're off your nut.

...this ain't post modernist. This is desperation!

Somehow I thought that a book co-written by "the first identified female hacker and the inventor of the term 'cypherpunk'" would be... less Fandom-Wank-wrote-a-book-with-Fark.com, more Cryptonomicon.

Gacked from going through

arboretum's older entries. ♥ I was trying to clean out my writing folder. Oh my god, so much random stuff.

Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations. No more than one sentence.

( a total of 21. )

Gizmodo linked to "Stand By Me", but Playing for Change: Song Around the World's rendition of "One Love" makes me cry the most. Apparently the CD is being sold at participating Starbucks, so if you feel like doing a little for the Playing for Change organization, here's an easy way to do it. The music is beautiful, and their message/purpose is even more so. I think my favorite musician from the video has to be the awesome drums Surrendra Shrestha in Kathmandu, Nepal, plays.

I bought the CD today, and the rest of the songs are just as enjoyable. I do wish they did some more non-American/English language songs, though I understand why Bob Marley is irresistible for a project like this. The one non-English language song is 'Chanda Mama' (which, according to the CD pamphlet, is a folk tune from Chennai, India) and I actually think it's my favorite off the CD. It starts off strangely like French bistro music and then journeys off into this wonderful mash of instruments and voices and guitars and choirs that is incredibly bright and sunny and welcoming.

Chanda Mama from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

Part of the profits of Playing for Change will go to the Playing for Change Foundation, which helps build and connect with music programs around the world. No, it's not entirely nonprofit or philanthropic. But it's a start. And the CD is pretty awesome, no lie.

Current Music: Playing for Change - Chanda Mama

Did I miss something, or did no one tell me that DAMON ALBARN AND JAMIE HEWLETT OF GORILLAZ FAME did a crazy "Monkey: Journey to the West" STAGE ADAPTATION. And that Damon Albarn then released an album full of BITS OF THE BEIJING OPERA VERSION MASHED UP?

DID I MISS THE ANNOUNCEMENT? BECAUSE THIS IS PRETTY FUCKING AWESOME. No seriously, guys, as a person who grew up loving every single bit of Journey to the West, the TV shows and the audiobooks for children and the mythology and the eight billion remakes, this is like the best thing that could have ever happened, especially since like, as far as I know, the only exposure most Western audiences has had is from Dragonball, which, yeah. (Unless you also read Saiyuki, which, while more accurate, is a very different feeling story.)

By the way, in case anyone doesn't know, the story in the above music video is that the monk and his disciples come across this volcano, I believe, and the only way they can cross it is to borrow this mythical fan from this princess who is also married to this ox demon (if I remember correctly, anyway). She refuses. So the monkey pretends to be an insect (I thought it was a fly, not a bee, when I head the story, but maybe I'm remembering wrong) and allows himself to be swallowed, and causes her so much pain that eventually she relents. Of course somehow in this short film zombie soldiers (!!!) are involved.

By the way, Albarn and Hewlett also did this cute promo for the Beijing Olympics, which also has an animated Pig and Friar Sand!

And a long trailer with snippets of the songs from the album! The inner fangirl in me really "ooooh"-ed over the concept art for the monk, because it's really... different. It's almost feminine, but somehow fitting, because in the story itself, the monk is always described as white and weak and naive and getting himself into situations where people try to eat him. That sounds weird but seriously it makes sense in the story okay, because apparently eating monks will give you immortal life. Of course like all of Hewlett's art, there's this faint edge of terrifying and craziness to the design, and it's definitely a change from the ~misty bamboo forests~ that I've come to associate with the story. Except, seeing how so many of the plots involved demons trying to eat the monk, it really is only fitting, isn't it?

While the album is a little too much IN YOUR FACE ELECTRONIC MANIPULATIONS AND KEYBOARD SOUNDS for me to truly truly love it, "Heavenly Peach Banquet" is incredible. I mean, so is "Monkey Bee" but wow. Wow. (ALSO I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY THAT THERE IS A MIDI-FIED VERSION OF MARCH OF THE VOLUNTEERS ON THE ALBUM AND I AM NOT REALLY SURE WHAT THAT MEANS, DAMON ALBARN. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN.)

Current Mood: amazed
Current Music: Monkey (Damon Albarn & Jamie Hewlett) - Heavenly Peach Banquet

I just finished watching Phil Mulloy's Intolerence I/II/III, a trilogy of animated shorts about how humans find a film from a planet called Zog populated by beings that are almost exactly like humans, except the heads and genitals have switched positions. It's an amusing enough film that's oddly enough like South Park gone wrong and black-and-white. If you ever come across it and have about an hour to waste, it's not a bad choice. While I don't think it's going to tell you anything you didn't already know about intolerance, it's still creepily biting about its delivery. At the very least, the story of the KKK redneck who is the only man to realize a Zog invasion is, while overly preachy, still relevant and funny.

But really, I just thought I'd share this.

A short four minute animated film about the concept of "evil" in Western history. Student-made, so it's not perfect, but the effects are quite clever and I have to say the deadpan delivery of "meanwhile, God died" made me laugh out loud. Literally.

---

Also last night we watched Dead Snow. You know. ( That Nazi zombie movie. )

I am struggling with how exactly to phrase what I feel, which is why this post is such a long time coming, despite how short it is.

Recent events on

rahmbamarama and subsequently elsewhere have resulted in me showing my ass in more ways than one, but especially in the "I am showing my privilege, my implicit racism, and my blatant ignorance of these issues" way. I apologize for my behavior and take responsibility for the fact that as a moderator of a community, as a member of a fandom focused on very important people of color, and as a human being, my actions and words were hasty, hurtful, and at times downright offensive. I am deeply sorry to the people I have hurt along the way.

There are also important discussions going on right now, more as a result of RaceFail (and AmazonFail) than this specific situation, though

deepad wrote an open letter addressed to the political fandom, about recognizing the systemic effects of racism and privilege on our lives and, more specifically, our writing. I'm not going to spend a lot of time linking out to all the specific discussions, because the truth is, you probably are the ones who gave me the links to those resources in the first place.

However, the fact that I was previously functioning under the assumption that I did not have to be aware or take part in those discussions is a failing on my part, one that I am trying to change.

As Mary Anne Mohanraj puts it, "The onus now on you isn’t to wallow in guilt — it’s to be aware of these deep-buried attitudes, and consciously try to avoid letting them dictate your choices in life." I am taking this to heart. I can't yet prove that I have fought my own racism and privilege, because I haven't yet. I'm still at the 'shut up and listen' phase, I am still at the 'learning about Racism 101' level, and I am still at the baby step of grappling with just how incredibly privileged I am. I am still trying to figure out what it is that I need to do. It's hard, but I have come to realize ultimately it is nothing compared to how difficult it must be to be a person of color trying to work against privilege and the system.

The racism discussion is not about my pain or how I feel, and this post was not an attempt to make it so. This post is merely an attempt to break my own silence on my own journal about this, because I don't want that silence to be a sign of approval of my past behavior. I don't expect anybody to give me the benefit of doubt when it comes to my future actions. But this is a promise that I am doing what I can to make it so hopefully, you won't have to doubt in the first place.

[A disclaimer. I know that as an Asian-American, I am a person of color as well. But I feel like that's a discussion for another day, because re: what I say above, my behavior is not excusable just because I happen to be Chinese and not white. In fact, it probably makes my previous disinterest in the topic worse.]

Mr. Law Professor: I beleive [sic: honestly, you'd think he'd know how to spell it by now] the opinion in arizona v gant came out today about auto exceptions

Me: AWESOME.

[--five minutes later--]

Me: FUCKING ALITO. Also what the hell, the judges are divided really weirdly. Ginsburg, Scalia, Thomas, and Souter?

Mr. Law Professor: Lol just when u think ur going 2 get an answer

Me: Shh let me finish reading first.

---

It's really sad that the highlight of my day is the SCOTUS decision on Arizona v. Gant. TAKE THAT, NEW YORK v. MOTHERFUCKING BELTON. Or, you know, not. :( Damn you, Supreme Court, for being so vague and specific at the same time.

( food babble, plus two more pictures )

---

I had a dream that Glenn Beck was my history teacher. It was... very traumatizing. Kind of like how the kids must have felt during that horrific YA novel, "The Wave", but with more tea party references and Constitution-destroying. Yeah.

Here, have more Utada Hikaru:

So of course Utada Hikaru makes an almost R&B song with a piano sample of the main melody from "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence". Far be it from me to judge, because I love that song too. I even like Utada's song (which is called, no joke, "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence FYI"). I like it enough that I won't even ask who thought the verse

NYC NYC what what
Tokyo Tokyo what what
Send it up from the streets to the highest
To the highest high
Mp3 mp3 players
Work it out, work it out hustlers
Om Mani Padme Hum

was a good idea. But you know the best part of this song? That it inspires absolutely serious YouTube comments like this:

"I'm chillin' and flossin" was used as a reference to Captain Picard from Star Trek while "Chingaling" was a song used in the film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

Okay. Maybe the lyrics really are "Like Captain Picard/ I'm chillin' and flossin'." And maybe the Ching-a-ling line really is followed with "Take me down to the fields where the grass is lime" could be squinty-eyed into being about "The Seed and the Sower", the original story Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence was based off of.

But guys. That doesn't make the references any less hilarious.

edit: p.s. the whole album. "on and on" is a flawless work of beautiful trash pop/r&b candy.

Current Music: Utada Hikaru - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence FYI

Friends of Dean Martin - Summertime

"Summertime" is not a particularly sexy song to begin with, but something about the Friends of Dean Martin version is so sensual and slow and uncomfortably intimate that I can only assume it was written with a Wong Kar Wai strip scene in mind, like you could refilm the PV for "Six Days" but using this song instead.

That's all I got.

---

School is busy and instead of doing my work I cleaned the bathroom yesterday. :? Yeah, I don't get it either.

So now I'm just sitting in the coffeehouse at our school and staring blankly at scholarly articles about the Red Scare and feeling absolutely no desire to translate them into Chinese.

I hope the rest of you are faring better than I am.

Current Music: Friends of Dean Martinez - Summertime

cross-posted to

bl_recs

As many of you are probably aware, most of the Miyamoto Kano output that was scanned by Liquid/Biblos falls under two universes: the Walker universe and the Rules universe. They are both vast and wandering, with characters and timelines everywhere, that each chapter starts with a breakdown of who is who and which story fits where. And this can be daunting for a casual and lazy leader, and annoying for people like me who are basically pack rats.

Long ago, I started organizing my Rules and Walker folders to be chronological in universe time, so that if I start with the very first file and load it on CDisplay, I can basically just CTRL + L my way through the entire series without needing to check whether or not I'm reading the right dj after the right series. And because I love you all deeply, I've decided to zip up these folders and upload them as well.

I think they are current-- I made a quick scan of the LP/BE scans right before I zipped them up-- Hydra 9 and 10 are included in the Rules folder. If there have been other groups recently scanlating bits from Walker/Rules, they are not in the folders, and it'd be great if you could give me a heads-up if there have been other groups scanlating the large-universe Miyamoto Kano stuff.

Folders that are empty mean that the particular chapter/dj/series has not been scanned. That way you can fill them in when/if they are.

So if you've been meaning to read Rules or anything from the Walker universe and were worried about being out of the loop, if you just like organization, or if you just have some space on your hard drive that's burning a hole, here it is-- the Walker universe and the Rules universe, as far as we know right now.

[WALKER]

{RULES}: [a] and [b] --> the file was too big to be uploaded together. When you've extracted them both, you should have folders number 00 to 10.

I HAVE A NEW LAPTOP :D

It is another Toshiba Satellite but a ~~16"~~ 15.4" this time which is, seriously, guys, way too large, but I wasn't going to shell out for a netbook when I know I'm going to need a real laptop by the end of next year and damn does it feel good to have a working battery again. And a sound system with an audio jack that isn't dying. And, you know, a computer that doesn't randomly overheat and shut itself down. Downside: I hate Vista with a passion, and since I'm a Vista 64 now, NOTHING WORKS. I'm so tempted to reformat back to XP (I know, I know, la~ame), that's how much I hate Vista. Hopefully when Windows 7 emerges, I will like it better. And I've forgotten how annoying the new Office suite set up is. OLD DOG NEW TRICKS WOW I AM ALREADY BECOMING CROTCHETY.

By the way, guys, I am 10 letters away from a full 26. If you have any suggestions for topics beginning with D, I, K, L, Q, T, U, V, Y, or Z, please throw them my way, or else I will just make some up and spend three pages talking about "y'all" and "quibbling".

GUESS WHO JUST KILLED HER LAPTOP.
OH WAIT. YEAH. ME.

Twitter has me in a navel-gazing mood, and I feel like talking about myself. WHAT BETTER WAY TO BE NARCISSISTIC THAN A MEME (maybe a photomeme. Done via Twitter. By 16 year olds.)

Seen somewhere, stolen from someone.

Alphabet Meme

1. It begins with a list of all 26 letters of the alphabet.

2. Comment with something for me to talk about that starts with one of those letters. Anything. Nothing is off the table.

3. One topic per letter. I will update the list with which topics/which letters have been requested.

4. A new post will be made with all 26 when all 26 topics are given to me.

( and now you know your ABCs )

photos by Toni Frissell.

( Late Spring, by Robert Hass. )

Current Music: Looper - I'd Fall at her Feet

@twoif: I keep writing "Stewart v. Cramer" when "Cramer v. Stewart" is more popular. But shouldn't Jon Stewart be the plaintiff...?

@paprikapink: I thnk it was Stewart v. Financial Networks, and then Cramer made 'plaints against Stewart.

@twoif: Hmmm, I thought it was just that Scarborough/Cramer filed for a motion to dismiss, which was denied. :)

This is kind of tl;dr wonkish but not related enough for RBR, so here it is instead: ( on stewart v. cramer )

TODAY:
An early morning, a drive to Austin, a rodeo. A cookie dough Blizzard from Dairy Queen. 1 calf jumping over the fence, 2 pig races, 3 sheep in a petting zoo, 4+ calf herding obstacle courses. No chuck wagon cook off in the end. Gray weather, six hour total road trip, raining all the way. Small, hysterical happinesses.

picture from katherine elizabeth.

JUST NOW:
"Oats We Sow", by Gregory and the Hawks. ( more )

Current Music: "Oats We Sow" - Gregory and the Hawks

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cathy pandathy

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Recent Entries

but will we still have cheesy techno music!!

this is the same way i feel about clean notebooks

KNOWING ME KNOWING YOU

meanwhile, la_foule, you have no idea how much i've missed you

"in progress" is a relative term.

one love, one heart

DAMON ALBARN IS OBSESSED WITH MONKEYS

intolerance; a history of evil; dead snow

one step at a time

this is what finals-period!Cathy is like.

burn it up like a gay parade

WORK IT OUT HUSTLERS.

but the living is so fucking easy.

miyamoto kano's gigantic universes

rah rah consumerism

(no subject)

26 letters, 25 days, 24 hours.

it made you glad for beauty like that

i am jon stewart's populist rage.

when it's leaning and careening

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May 2009

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