Perfect Blue

Disclaimer: I’m a newbie when it comes to anime, so all you old hands can snort all you want.

I just saw “Perfect Blue,” a complete anime movie (in contrast to so much anime that is episodic in nature) by Satoshi Kon, based on a book by Yoshikazu Takeuchi.

For anyone who thinks Anime is all about giant robots and blue-haired sci-fi girls, Perfect Blue will change your mind.

It’s about Mima, a young girl who is part of a pop band, and decides to leave it to become an actress. Some of her fans aren’t happy with her decision, and eventually she stumbles upon a website, “Mima’s Room” which is like a diary of everything she did and everywhere she went. Except that she isn’t writing it. Or is she? She keeps having halucinations whereupon her old, pop-star self pops up and starts scolding her for leaving her former life.

When the show she is filming has her in a rape scene, things get ugly as her alter ego becomes somewhat enraged at her ‘filthy’ behavior. Soon after, the bodies start showing up…

Creepy stuff, with an ending that took me totally by surprise. Well worth watching, imo.

Again, not for the kids though. The rape scene, even though it is a scene being filmed, is still very much mature content.

Catching up

“OK, so where are all the fascinating posts?” you ask. I know, I know… you all live vicariously through me, don’t you?

Well, summer is here, and I’m trying not to be such an A/C whore this summer. Last summer, I don’t think I ever left the house, except to go to (air conditioned) work. So far, that means basically walks in the park.. heh, I have to ramp up to such radical things as *gulp* going somewhere.

Haven’t been doing any neat tech stuff, and the books I’ve been reading have all been shite, so no use in reporting on those.

I bought the g/f a new inkle loom for her birthday, and I bought myself a small one. Yes, I do have a penis. Yes, I do like doing textile stuff now and then. Actually, it’d probably only be US citizens that would even raise an eyebrow.

So anyway, I’ve been doing a bit of weaving, which I find incredibly soothing. Inkle looms have no moving parts and are only good for doing straps, which is both limiting, and sorta freeing. I don’t have to fret about taking on some huge project because the little inkle loom I’m using can’t do big projects.

But what was most fun about this, is that its spun off some satelite projects. There are some small wooden hand tools that make this kind of weaving easier. The g/f has a few she bought, but really they are *very* simple and it seemed silly to buy more, so she went out and bought a few thin-stock ebony and cocobolo (spelling?) boards and asked me to make more tools.

So yesterday, I dragged out all my tools and tried to remember what I used to know about woodworking. And found that dealing with these small items (the stock is only 1/8 inch thick) means that all my old knowledge is damned near useless. And living in an apartment doesn’t help… it ain’t like I got a table saw in here. 🙂

In the end, I went out and sat in the park with some roughed out stock, a carving knife, and some sandpapger, and made something at least in the ballpark of what we need. I gotta check it againt her originals before I put the finishing touches on.

But I tell ya, after all the time I’ve spent doing everything I do in cyberspace, sitting out in the park, the sun shining down, carving a piece of ebony into a tool… man, it was a damned near religious experience for me.

Go to Anime School

Found this rather fun page over at Amazon.Com:
So you’d like to … Become Anime Literate in 60 Days or Less

” So, you’re looking to join the secret society of the Otaku in sixty days or less, are you? We’re a small, sometimes elusive crowd, but we’re always looking for more recruits and are always accepting members. We won’t let any ole Joe Shmoe into our brightly colored world of robots and beautiful girls, however, without the proper introduction to anime. Being one of the most humble and beautiful Otakus around, I have decided to give you the advantage, to get you up and running and walk you through some of the prerequisite anime viewing. Come and be amazed.”

An amusing read and pretty useful, too!

Fetish Fiction

Time for another book rant, and don’t get all squirmy over the title of this one. For once in my decadent life I’m ranting against fetishism!

I’ve been reading Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind. This is the second book in his Sword of Truth series, the first being Wizard’s First Rule.

Now, in Wizards…, Goodkind had his protagonist tortured in graphic and extended fashion. I read that long enough ago that I don’t recall my reaction at the time, but I do know the author eventually made a point with it (the protagonist forgives and aids his torturer, thereby showing us what a swell and compassionate guy he is).

One of the details of his torture was that he was made to wear a collar and led around like an animal. His torturer was female. Eventually she forced him to be her partner in some sado-masochistic sex games. But again, in the end there was a point to all this, so I sorta let him get away with it.

Now, in book #2, there’s another band of women that want to put a collar on Our Hero. And Continue reading “Fetish Fiction”

Welcoming the Muse

Been pretty quiet around here, eh? Well, I’ve been busy doing a lot of mundane things, but with a goal. A wise woman once told me that in order to create, I needed to welcome my muse. If that’s a bit too touchy feely for you, another way of looking at it is, if you’re struggling with your environment, it’s hard to be creative. So, I’ve been spending some time carving out bits of sanity in the chaos that is my apartment. I started with my bed, oddly enough. I cleaned up the heaps and piles of scattered books and magazines that used to surround it, and got a nice bookshelf within easy reach where I can put the things I’m actively reading, plus room for a notepad and my iBook. And I’ve made a pledge to myself to make my bed every morning. Simple enough changes, but I find I’m reading a lot more now. I can flop down on the bed and grab a book without a second thought. It’s an inviting area to me now.

Yesterday, I rearranged my computer desk. I broke down a few systems I really don’t use (how often does one really *need* to use a Sun Ultra-5?) and cleared the desk of extraneous debris. I left the PC ready for gaming, but what I was really going for was easy access to the Mac (OS X being my preferred computing platform). I’m still getting things squared away (progs upgraded, stuff installed that wasn’t) but already I’m starting to mess with Real Basic which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a year. (Yeah, I know, I should be doing something more ‘serious’ than Real Basic, but right now my goal is fun and quick results.)

I’m not done with the mundane stuff… there’s the whole living room area, plus I wouldn’t mind getting the kitchen to where I don’t hate the idea of making food… but it’s really funny how doing these seemingly very simple things can really clear your head and motivate you.

I’m blogging all these thoughts for myself, really. When I’m down if I read through my archives, maybe this post will be the kick in the ass I need to pull myself out of a funk.

Dark Angel: RIP

This isn’t news, but I just found out. Fox has cancelled Dark Angel to make room for a Whedon show, Firefly.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Dark Angel, but this last season, with the show getting a kind of hip-hop feel to it and the whole ‘mutants vs mundanes’ thing taking off, I was starting to enjoy it. And the season finale was a real cliff hanger. Now we’ll never know…

Witchblade returns

Sunday night (June 16) TNT has a 2 hour season premier of Witchblade (8:00 pm ET/PT). This was a great series that was tragically overlooked when its first season ran.

Yancy Butler, who stars as Sara Pezzini, had to take some time off to go into rehab partway through the shooting of season 2. Let’s hope she comes back healthy and strong, and still kicking ass.

Perdido Street Station

Well, I finally finished China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. (Yes, I’m a damned slow reader… after staring at several monitors all day at work, these old eyes tend to get tired fast when I sit down with a book at the end of a day.) Regular readers of this blog (are there any?) might recall me ranting about the author’s fascination with shit and his pompous use of obscure words a few weeks back.

The bad news is, I haven’t changed my opinion about these aspects of the book. The good news is, it’s a damned fine story. In fact, when things get exciting, Mieville’s style becomes much more streamlined and enjoyable. You can imagine him writing faster and faster and not stopping to try and shoehorn in the subject of his most recent “Word of the day” email. Hopefully as he matures as a writer, his wonderful imagination will stay the same and he’ll realize his job is to tell a good story, not dazzle us with his vocabulary.

It’s a dark tale, no doubt, and the city it takes place in is old and grimy and corrupt. It can all get to be a bit much after a while (another reason it took me so long to read it… I had to keep stopping to take a shower so I could feel clean again). The technology is a wonderful spin on ‘steampunk’ and is way, way fun. None of the characters are particularly lovable, so if you’re into Real Heros you might want to pass on this one.

Otherwise, fascinating stuff. A twisty-turny story set in a downright weird world. Gets my thumbs up (I’m sure Mr. Mieville will let out a great sigh of relief when he hear’s about this! Heh.)

PayPal SUCKS

It all started innocently enough. I was placing an online order. When I went to check out, I noted, dimly, that the shopping cart was powered by PayPal.

Filled out a page of info, hit submit and was told that I already had a PayPal account, and to log in. Now, I think about 2 years ago when PayPal was new, I did create an account, and never used it.

So I can’t log in. And my email address from back then is long gone. They do have a way to deal with this: give them the old email address and complete the credit card number that you signed up with.

I no longer have that credit card. So now what?

I go to the help page and fill out a form explaining the situation. What do I get in reply? An email saying I should log into my account in order to update my credit card info.

Irritated, I go through the whole order again, this time using a different telephone number. They STILL flag me as having an account. They must be using my address. Now, my name is Peter Smith. If you go to any moderately large high rise apartment building in America, you’ll probably find that over the past few years 4 different “Peter Smiths” have lived there.

OK, back to square two. The email they sent me telling my to log in and change my credit card number has the URL of a help page. I click on that, and I’m told I must be logged in to get help. In the event I can’t log in, it gives me an email address to write to.

I explain my experience in an email and send it to the specified email address. And what happens? I get an auto-response saying that they don’t accept email at that address and that all correspondence should go to through the web site, and they include 2 links, one to the page I can’t go to because I’m not logged in, and one to the page that I started out on.

No where can I find a phone number or a person to talk to. All the choices on the help form are going to get me autoresponses. I’m totally fucked. My only resort is to contact the vendor and ask them if I can phone in an order….

PayPal… you totally SUCK.

A Tale in the Desert

A Tale in the Desert is a MMRPG that just crossed my radar for the first time. It seems to be a lot different than most of the incoming MM games (The Sims Online being the exception). There is no combat in the game; it seems to be more about politics and social constructs. GameSpy interviewed the Andrew Tepper, president of eGenesis, the developers of A Tale in the Desert. The article is worth a read.