The new anime season: Shining Tears X Wind

Someone recommended Shining Tears X Wind to me on the grounds that it would be perfect for me: "Bishii, Babes, and Furries." And sure enough, it's got all of the above: two cute guys who aren't aware they should be off somewhere else making out, two hot and busty high school senior chixxors who exist only to be demure damsels in distress, and so far at least one hyperactive catgirl.

It's too bad the best adjective I can come up with for this show is dorky. Because that's what it is. Disjunct, pointless writing, horrible art (the frame rate during the fight scenes is so bad it reminded me of 1980s American cartoons like Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors), characters that manifest new talents and bizarre behaviors totally out of character at the silliest moments, and poorly integrated and inappropriate CGI.

This show has a completely lack of respect for its audience: it's too mature for kids, and too stupid for adults.

Arrrgh! The Postscript is more fun than the Novel!

Yesterday I had a flash of insight about Misuko & Linia's ongoing angstfest over Shandy. And it occurred to me that there was a resolution to the whole thing. An obvious one, but still, a resolution.

And then I flashed on where and when that scene would happen.

There is a trend in anime that after a series is done, a few "shorts" will make their way onto the Internet and onto the DVD to keep the fans' interest piqued while the post-production merchandising rolls out. Now, I don't have merchandising but several stories do have postscripts, scenes where we see what the characters are like many months or years later. And now I've got one of these in my head.

Dammit, no, I can't write An Honest Woman until I've finished Honest Impulses. I just can't. I promised myself.

The Imus case made clear

I think jaylake turned me on to this explanation from Kung Fu Monkey, and it's the one that makes the most sense to me about why there's been such an uproar over the Don Imus case:

For all these years, Imus stayed, barely, on the right side of the power equation. Always gone after public figures, or his bosses ...

... but then he screwed up. He didn't steal power, he used it. Used it to say just shitty things about people who, in our minds, just didn't deserve it. He broke the power equation. And when he did, we balked, even if we don't quite understand why this one got under our skin. The wiring goes both ways. It's actually heartening, because it confirms one of the admirable things about American society at large:

America loves a rebel.

America loves a bad boy.

But America hates a fucking bully.

I don't think it's simply a matter of "gone too far," as William Buckley so desperately wants it to be. And I agree: what we've seen is one of the admirable things about the American mindset.

I could analogize this line of reasoning to why Americans have turned against the war in Iraq, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Sunday slides by

Tupperware!
Hosted on Flickr!.

Sunday came early, and everyone was up before 8:30. Weird. Usually Omaha and Yamaraashi-chan are late risers. After a breakfast of oatmeal we spent the morning with the usual chores: laundry and mopping the floors of the dining room and kitchen. Omaha has gone Tupperware crazy, and started to label and organize everything. On the one hand I could find the baking powder much more efficiently now than I could before, but on the other it lacks that wabi^[?], that humanizing touch that Christopher Alexander wrote about in his influential book A Pattern Language of Architecture. I suppose I'll learn to appreciate it eventually.

After all that, we took the kids to a birthday party at a friend's house, where we left them for a few hours. It was a pirate-themed house, so I taught the kids the three A's of piracy ("Ahoy!" "Avast!" "Arrrr!") before we left them. We got home, took a shower, did paperwork, played Quake, score 1:1. We are o-so-boring these days.

Geek!
Hosted on Flickr!.

To prove I'm really a Space: 1999 geek, I show you my vest, which I wear when it's nice out, which it was for the first time today. So nice, in fact, that the state troopers have set up on 509 into downtown, the straightaway that I've described as organ donor alley in the past because all the crazy motorcyclists like to pop wheelies on this. We also saw a kestrel carrying what looked like a dead sparrow. I really have to learn to whip out the camera quicker.

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Two quick news items:

Yum. The hottest music video of the week. Special thanks to Dakiwiboid and her friends for showing it to me.

Christina Ricci discusses her newest role: Trixie in Speed Racer. Two great tastes that will taste great together!