Friday, June 17, 2005

   Hey, guys...

...I'm graduated! XD Well, technically, the ceremony is on Sunday, but since today is my last day of high school, I'm officially counting myself as a college freshman. ... anyway... that's about everything at this point. I realize I haven't done Aurus-kun's Periodical Anime Reviews yet this month, and so far I have one show picked out for that. I'm browsing through a couple of others to try and find something really good, so hold tight! I'll try to get something written up by the end of next week. I cannot understate the value of suggestions! If you've been watching or reading an unlicensed and little-known anime or manga and you'd like to recommend it, please send me a PM with the title, where I can find it, and anything you think I should include in the review. Thanks, everyone! Love and peace!

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Tuesday, June 14, 2005

   ...

So... ... how about that, uh... that... Michael Jackson trial verdict? ... And in other news, my summer reading book from Willamette arrived. The Good War, by Studs Terkel. I haven't started it yet, but it's pretty thick... has anyone read it? Is it good? Love and peace, ladies and gents.

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Friday, June 10, 2005

   Mwee.

Hm... has anyone else been having trouble accessing the site? For the last couple days, I've been getting one of those "site could not be found" messages and it's evil... ... oh, well. So, I've been taking a karate class at BCC for a couple months, and today was my yellow-with-white-stripe belt test. I'm in pain. o_o; But it was fun, and I passed! So I actually have a rank now. XD I'm happy with that. I'll be taking it over the summer at Sensei's dojo, if all goes well, and I'll be picking my belt up there sometime next week. Yay. ^_^; In other news... my friend Nami is an incredible artist who shares my love of boy-love, and she drew a lovely sketch of two of my roleplaying characters. I decided it was necessary to color it, nerd-with-a-new-drawing-tablet that I am, and this is the result. Right. Lineart is Nami's. Coloring and characters are mine. Cool? Cool. Oh, and if you find two boys kissing to be distasteful or otherwise offensive... why the hell are you on my site, anyway, come to think of it? The background image is Loveless, for crying out loud, and just for the sake of squicking any homophobes lurking around, I may find something even more lovey than this. So get over it. XD ... Carrying on. If you find pretty samurai boy-love unappealing, you probably shouldn't click that link. ANYWAY, now that I'm done with that. (Oh, man, I just had a chai tea latte from Starbucks on the way home from my voice recital, and the caffeine is kicking in. As it's almost ten, that's probably bad.) The orange-haired one is Himitsu Katorou (older brother of Himitsu Kaida, my primary character in this RP), a captain in his clan's army. The blonde is Oumori Shiomaru, one of the men in Katorou's squad. They're both very sexy, and... have you ever noticed? There's a word for it... you know, when you add two things, and the ending value ends up being greater than the two amounts put together? OH! Synergy. Shounen-ai is the original source of synergy. Sexy on their own, but somehow, so much sexier together. ... Carrying on. Again. Uhm. I love Katorou. So. Much. He's such a sweet guy, and at the same time, he's so kickass that his father, a general, forbade him from using all of his strength when fighting, so the enemy would always be underestimating the army. So obviously, between those two, he's a much better swordsman, and he's not significantly more effeminate, but he's just too blushy and cute and romantically-awkward to be seme. It's too bad that he died six years prior to the "current time" in the RP. Makes me want to cry. Shiomaru's alive, though, and I think that he'll show up eventually for the sole purpose of harrassing the male members of the party. XDD And call Kaida "Kaida-chan" just enough to embarrass her completely. (That's what he called her when she was a kid, after all. She's nine years younger than Katorou and ten younger than Shiomaru, so back before Kaida joined the military and got all post-war-angsty, she'd do cute things like sit on their shoulders and hitting them with shinai XDD And she was a tiny little thing. At sixteen years old, she was maybe five feet tall, and probably not more than ninety pounds. So when she was actually young enough that Katorou and Shiomaru would see her at the Himitsu estate - around ten or eleven years - she probably wasn't above four feet, and I'd bet you she weighed less than most raccoons. And yet, at ten years old, she'd been studying kenjutsu for six years and could beat the crap out of most of her father's fifteen-year-old students [who probably weighed thrice as much as she did? Heheh.]) Okay. I am shutting up now. Much love! Edit: I'm sorry. My grammar went down the crap-hole. XD I'm both tired AND wired, thanks to that chai tea... *runs into a wall*

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Friday, June 3, 2005

   Miaow.

Well, it seems more or less official. I'll be going to Willamette University for at least my first year of college. I think I'd like to try and transfer to Reed if possible, but I'm quite happy with Willamette. Good school, excellent theatre program, and some nice connections with Japan. Anyway... happy June! I graduate in seventeen days. XD My Japanese final is all week next week (have to write and recite a two-minute speech about myself), and my karate final is essentially the test for my yellow-with-white-stripe belt. I desperately hope I pass. o_o Allergies are hitting me very, very hard. Kind of a hay fever sort of thing, but no actual fever that I know of... but I'm very congested and my eyes itch like a bastard. =_=;; I react to a lot of decongestants, so I can't take anything that would temporary clear it up... I can only take things like Claritin, which are slightly more long-term. CD burner is still not-working. I think it's on strike. Curses. In anime-related news, I got the first DVD of Weiss Kreuz for fifteen bucks at Half Price Books. It's funny... it makes me laugh for no apparent reason. XD It's so awful that I love it and intend to buy more, provided I can find them equally cheap. I've also picked up the first DVD of Gungrave at the same place for about ten bucks. Only watched the first episode so far, but it's incredibly kickass. Waiting for downloads... need them... I need more Loveless and Bleach and Trinity Blood... wah...

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Monday, May 30, 2005

   Whoosh.

Yay, pretty kitty boy love. ... Anyway, other than the new layout-ness... not much going on. I'm probably going to get to fixing the awful graininess in the background tomorrow, since it's Memorial Day, so no school and yes sleeping in and all that good stuff. Apologies. It's a quarter after midnight and my brain's melting. XD Anyway... I'd like to note that the background is from a screencap I took, and I made a more wallpaper-ish version of it (that's actually appropriately softened and smooth) that you can find here, should you like to see it. The wallpaper version took me ages, because I had to mess around with a bunch of different layer combinations to intensify the color and make it bright and happy. XD Anyway. I'm pretty proud of it, considering I scaled it up and uber-saturated it from a 640x350 crap-screenshot. Fwee. So, I'm listening to Tool, and about ready to go to sleep... Ja mata!

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Sunday, May 29, 2005

   Post of boredom

I kind of want to do a new layout... but I'm just not that motivated. It'd be Loveless-themed, because pretty-kitty-boy shounen-ai makes me inordinately happy. And I spelled that wrong, but I'm just lazy enough that I'm not going to try and fix it. Anyway. Filling out some housing stuff for Willamette University. Unless I hear back favorably from Reed College, I'll be going to WU... I'm looking forward to it. They're both very nice schools. I think I'm going to go out and buy more Saiyuki manga. I just got my allowance, and normally I'd be saving, but with the prospect of a job and the fact that I already have sixty bucks stored away for the Ren Faire in August, I'd rather keep reading Saiyuki than not. Heheh. Maybe I'll walk down to Anime Kingdom, since the weather is much cooler today. That sounds good. ... Signature thingy! Ahh, Loveless.

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Saturday, May 28, 2005

   Two follow-up reviews!

Konbanwa, and welcome back to Aurus-kun's Periodical Anime Recommendations. I don't have any new shows for you quite yet (though there are a couple that I've started to download and will review next month), but I wanted to give some quick follow-up comments on two anime that I have featured previously. These follow-up reviews (which I will try to do as often as possible) will be mostly just my own comments and anything noteworthy that I did not say in the initial review. I'll do my best to avoid spoiling anything! First of all, Sukisyo, which I featured in this month's segment. I've finally downloaded and watched it all, and overall, I enjoyed it. Gratuitous boy-love was never a bad thing. However, I should warn you that once you get past the initial fluff, things begin to get a little bizarre. Don't be fooled by the lighthearted opening, and don't think the weirdness will be a passing phase - it gets pretty strange and really intense, all the way up until the last minutes of the final episode. I enjoyed it, even though the bizarre moments and with the slightly-creepy characters whom I shall not mention, for those of you who haven't seen very far. XD Second follow-up review is for Air, which I featured in April's segment. I repeat, don't expect the light-hearted fluff to carry on through the whole series. Midway through, it jumps to a slightly-odd backstory, then flips forward again to a turn of events that will have you wondering who drugged your most recent meal. Trust me - the ending will shock you, but it's totally worth watching all the way through. Except for the last episode, which is a recap episode, and I didn't bother with it. XD That's all I have for you today. When Loveless (featured in April) ends, I'll have a follow-up review for that, as well. Arigatou gozaimashita!

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Friday, May 27, 2005

   EEH.

So... that job interview? *flutter* You know? For the environmental group thing? I got the job! I'm officially employed! Sure, I'll be canvasing, but it's still a job! And a decently-paying one, at that. Three to five hundred a week is the norm. Anyway... I've put all the LiveJournal (or other blog) icons that I've made in recent times up on my website. I post them in my LiveJournal whenever I make them, but I've never really compiled them all into one site before. Abide by the stated terms of use, and you're welcome to use them here or at whatever other journal/blog you have. That's all for now. I'm gonna go to sleep and dream of lovely things. Like paychecks. ... and Cho Hakkai.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

   YAA!

*flounces around, looking ridiculous* I have a job interview tomorrow! Aurus actually might land a summer job! Can't believe it! Full of JOY! ... *hem* It'll be a summer position with WashPIRG, a grass roots liberal political/environmental group. They're working this summer on cleaning up Puget Sound (and trust me, I've walked along the Seattle waterfronts plenty of times, and it fricking NEEDS it) and convincing the legislature to crack down on companies who churn out a lot of pollution. I'm pretty excited. That's all for now. Got a choir concert tonight and the year's second Black Box Show is coming up in about three weeks, so I've been busy. I'll try and get around to people's pages this weekend and say hello, since I've been pretty terrible about that. Much love!

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Saturday, May 21, 2005

   Wheeee.

Internet RETURNS! I have little else to say, other than the fact that the CD burner my friend Elise just installed has quit working. Can't play CDs. It's killing me. *weep* I'd forgotten how great Age of Empires 2 is... Now I go to download more Bleach and Loveless and Sukisyo.

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