No justice

I took a couple minutes to watch some of my animini DVDs today, the ones I had corresponding manga for, anyway. All I can do is shake my head. I used to be such an anime fan, anything would please me. Now, everything disappoints me. Why is this? What am I expecting from these shows that is so glorious and foolproof that I'm not receiving? I guess I just feel that most of the anime created and shown today caters to the flybynight fans who heard anime is the new cool thing to like and plaster themselves in its merchandise, and it hurts me. It hurts me to see that there are fans; jerky, opinionated, social outcast fans who gobble up every little stupid tidbit of Japanese animation out there and call it utter brilliance simply because it's anime. I happen to be quite a bit more picky. Tenchi Muyo!, Love Hina, Hellsing, Inuyasha, Case Closed, Fooly Cooly are just a few of the anime I truly dislike. There are HUGE fanbases for all of these shows (maybe not case closed, but it was dumb enough to make the short list) and why? Tenchi Muyo and Love Hina are essentially the same show, but one has more scifi elements, and neither has any taste, tact or accuracy. Hellsing is crude, violent, and far too slow to be any bit interesting (Can't believe I bought this!). Inuyasha is one of Rumiko Takahashi's poorest storylines, in my opinion, but I've never been one for her action stories. I got really bored with Ranma 1/2, whereas everyone else praises it like the Bible. And Fooly Cooly. BAH! Fucking stupid show. I loved the soundtrack, and the animation and visuals were kind of neat...but STUPID! Argh.
Anyway...these manga are great reads: funny, consistently interesting and engaging. Their corresponding anime series, however, are utterly shoddy. Let's take Azumanga Daioh first. The manga is both painfully and thankfully short. I wish it couldve gone on for more misadventures, but as a reader, it's nice to know there's an end in sight. I'm sure Mr. Azuma has more manga tricks up his sleeve, so the end of Azumanga Daioh was only slightly wincing. It was quirky and the characters were of their own. When translated to the screen, however, they become stereotypical and boring. All the zaniness seems transcribed from anime predecessors, if not just thrown together and called funny.
All of the characters are watered down versions of their manga selves, their personalities thrown to you within the first thirty-minute episode, with explanation, leaving no imaginative questions about them to regard. Some of the greatest parts of the manga series were Sakaki's mysteriously cool nature and hidden love of all things cute; Kaorin's budding crush on Sakaki; Chiyo-chan's growing awareness of herself; Yomi's "I'm not one of them" attitude, while remaining just as silly; Yukari's constant foolishness; Tomo's attention-grabbing nature; and poor Osaka's personality is torn to shreds by a stupid accent. I guess I can't blame them too badly on Osaka. The translation to English can be interpreted in many different ways, but the voice acting on the first episode gives no hint of how spacy, silly, and unique Osaka really is. I hate that the anime has a feel that everyone has to be in her "proper place", like we have to have them all figured out. It's such a funny, well-done manga series. The anime just hacks into "Haha! Hey, you find this funny, right? Haha funny!"
Also on my list is Cromartie High School. Before I start raving about the manga, I'll say this of the anime: It is one of the laziest I've ever seen. Any good part of the manga is simply explained away in a marketing technique. "If you really want to hear that story so much, go read the manga." Fuck you! Show me the good stuff! If Azumanga Daioh's characters are watered-down and handed to you on a stupid platter, Cromartie High School's are liquified and sent speeding past the screen in a blaze of "Wait, didn't that happen differently...and more funnily in the manga?" The sequence of events is unecessarily out of order, the events shown are cut to ribbons, and the entire first volume of the manga is shown within minutes. 25 to be exact. What the hell? Space it out, fellas. It's funny that way.
Now I'll rave about it. Good lord, this is a funny manga. The style is so obscure and dated, like a manga from the 70's or something. The idea of a school full of punks is hilarious. I just love the little nonsequiter things, like the really bad thing Kamiyama did once, Freddie, etc. The anime really does this one no justice. It's meant to be played out, and utterly stupid, and overly complicated and foolish. I weep for this one, honestly. I'm looking quite forward to the next volume of the comic, but I won't be looking at the anime twice.

Enough about anime. Japan needs to get its act together.
I'm looking at Abba sites now and am just amazed. I wish so much that I could find more Abba records and merchandise (dolls or puzzles or magazines or something!) and feel a little bit like I hadn't missed out on the whole thing. To think, had I been born when my parents were married, I would have been of an age to enjoy ABBA. C'est la vie, I suppose. I love them now. I wish too, that I could meet them. There's such a different kind of glamor to them, as a group. They're not the club-hopping, chain-smoking groups of today. They made gloriously sugary music, took pictures in the sunshine outdoors, smiled at fans...I'm sure they wouldn't be the same kind of band today, what with all the nonsense behind fame and paparazzi, and vast, unearned wealth. But in their time, it seems they were awesome. I'll look for more records soon, and cherish them as I cherish all my records...pieces of a not too distant past. I know the technology isn't as good, but I like it all the same. It's very special to me, to have such an appreciation for things of days gone by, like records and magazines. Ahhh, ABBA...I love you guys.

Tonight's hot, lonely and indecisive. There. I posted.
Goodnight.

Fucking around with the details

Actual post later. Right now, I want to try a few things.

It's that denial, too, that leads people to bitch at women for 'playing games' when what they're doing is trying not to get hurt yet again. We're talking on the previous post about how men complain about women using sex as a weapon when in fact it's soemthing entirely different. This is one I don't get at all. Have a fight, then fuck? It doesn't work that way. Call her names, tell her she's awful--then expect her to fuck you? Who's playing games here or not? She feels awful, and you don't care. In fact, does her feeling awful make you feel better? More in control? And manipulating her is just icing on the cake. But then you get to turn around and she's the manipulative one. Not only are they good guys, but they're the victims of those game-playing women. None of them much seem to care that they're creating games and stacking the deck. There's that denial again. --from Ginmar's Livejournal, which has a great discussion on Rape Culture today.

Days without a post.

In knowing that no one reads this, I feel pretty comfortable not posting anything, just letting this blog rot in amongst the millions of blogs out there. Then I see my friends' blogs and all their stupid little posts, and I instinctively want to one-up them because it's no effort for me.

I'm a bitch not too deep down.

I've been reading this really fantastic blog lately, by a woman named Gin Marie. She's this brilliant militant feminist who just speaks her mind, makes a lot of sense, and doesn't put up with any shit. After that Women Studies course I took, it's really great to hear these arguments all around me for women's rights. So many women in the class didn't speak up, and they should have. I guess they were just worried about their answers not sounding feminist enough. (As if that should be a problem for them! Open up your mind a little bit and learn about these things you're throwing away to tradition.) I've actually been reading quite a few blogs lately, which is really odd, considering I never thought I would read blogs in this manner.
There's Esther, a girl I went to school with. She's quite the poser and I think she fears greatly that anyone find out she's faking it. Honey, we know. You can cut the shit now.
There's Will, a guy I met online. He's really infuriating sometimes. I hate his machismo attitude. He seems to think it's a really great quality, being all "manly" and such, when really, he just comes off as a braggart and a chauvenist(?){As if I forgot how to spell that and am too lazy to check! but i am.}pig who's totally full of himself. I really like him in person. We went to the movies once, and he came to see me in a play, and he was really genuinely nice and carried on a great conversation. But the way he conducts himself online, he makes it sound as though women serve only as potential sexual encounters to him, like unless he could fuck you, you're not really all worth the time. I wish he'd grow out of this. He's a really nice guy, especially without all the machismo. (I wish I knew a better way to say that)
There's James, another of my internet buddies. He hasn't posted in a long while...I wonder if he's okay. I miss him. He's been a really good friend for a long while, and I hope he knows I've always appreciated his kindness and willingness to listen. Last I knew, he'd found a girlfriend and was seeming pretty happy. Good for him! I just hope he comes back to writing his blog...
Everybody seems to have a Livejournal. I'm the only loser around using Blogger. It serves my purposes, though. Maybe not the only loser.
There is John Goldfine, my English 101 teacher at Eastern Maine Community College. I don't really agree with his philosophies all the time. I think I just read his blog because I enjoy that ability to basically stalk people I know. I like to get inside peoples' heads without them knowing I'm there. Like I said, a bitch not so deep down. Crazy.
I read the blog of Patton Oswalt, one of today's funniest comedians. I wrote an email to him once, and he wrote back personally. I thought that was fucking awesome. I think he is fucking awesome. I wish he'd come to my house and I could feed him cookies and fried food and hear him rant about geeky things. That'd get me all wet. Seriously, it would. I LOVE geeks, especially comic geeks. *swoon*
Finally, I pretty much read/stalk Stacy Pease, a girl I went to school with and didn't talk to for years. Will told me he was considering dating her, he'd met her online. I was taken aback. I couldn't believe she had an online life, or any at all. As I read her back posts, I began to feel for her a little bit. I recently saw her at my sister's graduation, and realized she hadn't actually changed any. Yikes, man. She thought I was avoiding her, but I really wasn't. I wanted to know if she'd changed. I don't think I'm better than her, I just think she's embarrassing sometimes. She really needs to grow up a bit. I'd like to think I could help her there. What I feel is so ungodly tragic is her self-image. I'd really like to show her that she's not as worthless as she lets herself believe she is. We, as women, don't need men to complete our lives, and it's perfectly okay. Is that such a hard conclusion to come to?

So, I'm a blog reader now. Weird. I always thought it was a little too, "Lookit me!" A lot of these blogs are just friends or people I know, but I find that some of these blogs I read bring up great discussions and the replies offer tremendously entertaining arguments. It gets me really fired up. The days of private journals as a trend are past. Now, everyone wants to be a sort of online Anne Frank and have their journals discovered (albeit without the horror, tragedy and death), and told their daily thoughts are deeply profound. I'm guilty of it too, I know I am, but I'm slowly facing the reality that nobody reads anything I put out there, and it's perfectly okay to be unseen among the internet masses. For every "Star Wars Kid" or "Sluggy Freelance", there's 10 million unseen gems. (And 9 billion posers wishing someone would say, "ur teh kewl!")

So Dave and I threw a huge housewarming party last weekend. 46 people came, out of the 50-60 we invited. A VERY nice turnout. We got a few nice gifts, a few questionable ones, and some money. I was glad to have a party again. Been so long, since I had one! All of my core friends showed up, especially since they saw "BYOB" on the invites. Absentees were Aurora and Dana, but their loss. It was a nice time to catch up with everyone. The Bogs and Mea even showed up! It meant so much to me for them to be there.
The party was a wild one. Just about everybody was drinking something. Crystal got pretty smashed and had to be carried in and set on the bed. Shane was adorable, if a bit standoffish. Julie was boisterous and fun. Alissa was...well, I didn't really talk with her a lot. Brandy and Ken were a lot of fun. Ken lamented his relationship troubles, and we all sneaked out to the mailbox to smoke so Alissa wouldn't see. It was great, just being out there with them. I wish we could more often. Esther hasn't changed any. She was the biggest bitch of the night. Congrats, Esther. That's quite a title to earn.

Come Together is coming together, slowly but surely. My comics are up, as well as a column I wrote in conjuction with the first comic. I really hope to get five comics done this next month, to be four months ahead, so I can plug at getting a job and writing more on Peter. Apparently, my comics are being well-received, but I see no indication of this. C'est la vie. I can't expect immediate results all the time, can I? Visit the site! Tell your friends!

Yeah right, nobody reads this fucking thing.

Ah, glorious summer. Hot, I love you.
Till next time.

Passing around the site address

My god, time passes so quickly.
I got my comics done well ahead of the site opening, go me. I even wrote a column piece for my premier. I wish I could make it a huge celebration, but I guess I'll just have to be proud of myself. Doing a porn comic isn't exactly something my parents would be ecstatic to discuss with the neighbors.
So the site is called Come Together. I think the title is fucking fantastic. Go Mea. The site design is so professional. And I love the emblem...with the hand and the apple. Fucking great! So iconic and crisp.
I'm totally proud of my column. I often get lost in my own train of thought, but I think I got a few important points across. I talked about mainstream pornography and its bad influences on our culture and sexual understanding. I really look forward to discussing this topic with readers. I'm excited about what I'll bring up in the future too. In a way, I want people to admire what I say, but in a much bigger way, I want people to change their perceptions of sexuality. I wonder how well I'll do that. What have I gotten myself into.
Party in 5 days. The house is looking great. I've been scrubbing my ass off. I hope Dave appreciates it.
I started writing again on Peter the Modern Vampire...now all I have to do is keep writing. I feel so bad for putting him aside while I worked on the sex comic, but it had to be done. And he's still there and still just as fresh.

It's hot.
I love it hot.
Till next time.
http://www.cometogether.be