Current Ramblings
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Now we know The DaVinci Code is too popular: there's a Christian rebuttal.
posted@12:57 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, February 26, 2004
I totally bought Anniversary Prime.
posted@1:32 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, February 23, 2004
It's late. I'm tired. I should really go to bed. I'm not going to.
I finally finished watching the entirety of Chobits, which is an impressive feat for me. I just never sit down and watch DVDs, which is sad, since I have so many of them. You might say to me, "Jenni (or Trix), I didn't realize you liked Chobits." And I would say to you, "It's an anime/manga series about an adorable, naive computer's search for her true love. How could I not like it?" And then you would remember that I'm some kind of weird freak and you'd back away slowly. I have to say I liked the ending to the anime a bit more than the manga, simply because it made a little more sense. It seems almost like the anime was how they would have ended it if they had had time to think it through a little better. The manga was all, "Chi is a chobit, but 'chobits' was just the cutesy nickname we gave Elda and Freya and they aren't actually special, that was an internet rumor," and while it seemed a logical extension that Chi's "special program" was to give all other persocoms the ability to love, it didn't seem to actually happen. In the anime there wasn't any of that, "Oh, they aren't special, never mind," and it was clearly implied that Chi's special program did actually allow them to love. Well, Dita blushed.
Only Windy will understand any of the preceeding paragraph.
I keep wanting to write an essay on the possible emerging character of the first decade of the century, but it always digresses in my mind into an argument on how vastly, incomprehensibly more artistic an approach to the subject of paternal abandonment Pearl Jam's "Daughter" is to anything Linkin Park or Staind have had to say on the matter. I blame this on Walky, who loves to accuse me of nostalgia blindness in comparing to 90s grunge and current hard rock while he himself has heard extremely little of either. I will also, just for the moment, cite the aggressive, blatant, and disgusting mysogyny in current hard rock that's a massive departure from the deep respect the grunge scene in general had for women. Garbage can do a song called "Stupid Girl". Cold cannot. It's like how you can only get away with using "nigga" in a song if you're actually of African-American descent. The "angsty" music of the 90s had a much darker, dirgier, harsher sound that anything we were used to, with poetic lyrical metaphors. Current "angsty" music is just fucking whiney, with lyrics that read like a shunned middle schooler's LiveJournal.
I think the real cultural impact of this decade is technology. While things like the internet and the cell phone and digital recording media have been around for a decade or two, we're seeing a level of accessable high technology that is leading to the age of the connected consumer. We are becoming more like the Japanese not just in our choice of animation, but in our embracing of new gadgets and devices. Just like in the 1950s, consumer-level technology is taking such dramatic leaps that it is changing our lives before our eyes. But at the same time, corporations are taking over more and more. The concept of corporate radio was unheard of until the last few years. Lionel Richie recently said that something like "We Are the World" couldn't be accomplished now because, by the time all the test groups and marketing hurdles were successfully jumped, the problem would no longer be relevant. Maybe later I'll have more thoughts on the emerging decade.
And maybe I'll sleep. After Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
posted@2:52 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, February 16, 2004
I haven't really had it in me to post lately. I had a bit of a ramble worked up about Mission Hill and how it reminds me of the 90s in a good way, but I can't congeal my thoughts well enough right now. I really need to put some interview questions together for Simon, but I'm too busy worrying about whether I've had enough Gatorade today. I can't wait until my life doesn't revolve around bowel movements. You have no idea. I want 20th Prime so much it hurts right now, but I've spent that $80 and more on doctor visits and medicine that didn't actually work and a large assortment of food I hoped maybe I could eat. And now you know why I haven't posted lately - because all I can do is whine.
So in the meantime, have this:
Are you Addicted to the Internet?
The Are you Addicted to the Internet? Quiz at Quiz Me! |
(I would have gotten a higher score if I had based my answers on when I worked at GTSI.)
posted@10:45 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, February 09, 2004
Is it just me, or are the reports about the Mars rovers really adorable? I bet they beep like Mini-Cons.
If anybody really wants an update on me: Last night I dreamed about getting together with friends to go eat at Charley's, and then I had a dream involving a breakfast buffet that included some extraordinary sliced chicken. In real life, I ate a small McDonald's hamburger today and was ill within the hour.
posted@11:38 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, February 07, 2004
No, I haven't been around much lately.
I've been feeling terrible. Really, really terrible. Worse than I have ever felt. I've been sick for the last, oh, week and a half, and yesterday I went to the emergency room. I guess I just let myself get a little too dehydrated, because once they put a couple bags of of IV fluid in me I felt worlds better. But I'd like to actually be better at some point. I can't eat much without it triggering another round of diarrhea. I try to eat little things all the time, but I haven't had an actual meal in days. The other night I dreamed about eating the best hamburger in the world. I'm on antibiotics in case it's an infection, but if it doesn't get better this weekend (and I really don't think it will) I'll have to call the hospital first thing Monday to set up a colonoscopy. I've missed too much work for this already, I pretty much have to drink water constantly to keep up, and I'm just tired of the whole thing. I hate being sick.
Okay, I'll let you all go back to your regularly scheduled lives. Nobody wants to hear about me being sick, but I felt I needed to update with something, and I don't have it in me to talk about anything else.
posted@8:28 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
posted@1:45 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, February 01, 2004
A great number of things happened today after I stopped gazing lovingly at my GBA SP and actually left the apartment. It's been bone-chillingly cold here the last couple days, and gas has been expensive, so I wanted to limit my toy-hunting. So after one more in a long series of disappointing Wal-Mart trips, Graham and I decided to hit our closest TRU and next-closest Target before heading to Walky's for the Energon premere. That was the jackpot. TRU had the wave-2 Energon basics, Alternators Sideswipe, and two My Little Pony TRU exclusives that I had been looking for. I picked up the ponies and all the basics but Cruellock, who there was only one of. Graham got Sideswipe, but I skipped him because I was already spending so much. Spending so much, in fact, that I knew I was just going to have to put off Anniversary Prime until the next paycheck if I found him. So naturally, that's exactly what I found at Target. Right there on the shelf, the masterpiece, the toy that left me simply moved looking at him in ToyFare, the figure I wanted more than anything...and I really couldn't justify the $70. And he had the grey gun, and I wanted to wait for the black gun anyway...*sigh* But all was not lost, and a quick justification of the purchase of my cell phone later and I was picking him up for Walky. Once we made it to his place I could still spend the evening making lewd comments about it! Yay!
Energon was...really, really good. I might spoil a little here, so you Canucks and those waiting for copies should skip this paragraph. I always expect the first episode of a series like this to have above-average animation, but this was absolutely stunning. If the rest of the series can be even half this good, it will be spectacular. The CG used for the robots not only gives them a proper "other" feel, but it saves them from inconsistant art. Not that that seems to be a real issue, as even the cel-drawn humans were well animated. There are some elements that will clearly have to be explained later, like why Primus has become The Voice in Prime's Head and where he came from, anyway, and what the deal is with the apparently both sentient and generic Omnicons, but nothing leaves me thinking those won't be explained. (Unlike Armada, where a number of things were never satisfactorily explained.) Kicker was immediately recognizable as my beloved Brad Swaile, and he was certainly an interestingly different "kid" character. I loved the flashback to his first visit to Cybertron, with the Autobots as horrifying giant monsters. I see actual development in the future here. Also, I could never tell if Hot Shot was supposed to sound gruffer or if it was just him being really pissed at Kicker. Though if he doesn't start with the character development sometime soon he might start getting on my nerves. He's pretty obnoxious, but in an understandable 16-year-old way. I was floored by their flaunting of Ironhide's vehicle-mode head, at least until I remembered Robots in Disguise's fondness for that sort of thing. That's Japan for you. Strongarm's voice is one I haven't heard before from Scott, which is cool. All in all, it's got a very promising start, and I look forward to next week's episode.
Divebomb is love.
posted@1:22 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments