head #17

So, I waitedwaitedwaited patientlypatientlypatiently for Apple to squeeeeeze out that new Mac Mini, and then it finally appeared! Last month! Hooray! I ordered it like this: CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! FAINT! And then it came, and it was the worst computer I have ever seen in my life. It appeared to have been assembled by a committee of those weird, embittered Mac-haters who used to troll Daring Fireball back when it allowed comments. It has no optical drive! The specs are weird! The only included monitor cable is three inches long and 100% useless unless applied to Apple’s new $999 screen! It has four USB ports! It is pointlessly tiny! Why is it so fucking tiny! It’s not like I’m going to be carrying it around! It’s supposed to be a desktop computer, isn’t it! You know, if it were slightly less tiny, you could’ve maybe fit a fucking superdrive in there, couldn’t you! Speaking of which, it has no software component! It relies upon the Magic of the Internet to back stuff up/repair problems, in the event of an inevitable (if you’re me) catastrophe! So let’s imagine a scenario in which I attempt the upload of my 450GB of pure binary shit onto some fantastic ephemeral Apple Data Cloud in the middle of the night as my computer gently weeps, and think of the many exciting new dirty words I will accidentally invent! And what happens when the system wakes up cranky one happy Sunday morning when I am supposed to be vetting thesis topics and it can’t find its start-up disk! Those nakedly grasping brilliant Apple engineers! What a bunch of fucking cards! They should just start selling branded computer cases and let us put the parts in ourselves!

Also, ALSO, I bought the ($77! At Amazon!) Apple-approved optical drive that was supposed to complete the Mini, Cameron Crowe-style, but it had such a short cord I couldn’t even plug it in. Well, I mean, I could plug it in, but it looked like this, and obviously I couldn’t exactly sit the fucker on top of the computer itself. (The wifi antenna-thing is still in the top of the case, right?) Also it ate up one of my four (4) (IV) available USB ports, leaving me with three (3) (III) open USB interfaces and approximately nineteen USB devices, including hubs. Really amazing cool idea, you guys.

( MORE COMPUTER DRAMA: CUT FOR LENGTH )

Also, speaking of which, I have been trying to Write Something for the last nine days, and Things Are Not Exactly Going As Smoothly As Expected. So, rather than wangsting tenaciously over that (MY BRAIN CANNOT CONTINUE COCKBLOCKING ME FOREVER, CORRECT? I MEAN, EVENTUALLY AFTER MANY YEARS I WILL HAVE TO DIE OR SOMETHING?) I thought I would do that thing I do where I write strange long whiny ‘reviews’ of movies everybody else saw eighteen months ago. And that’s what I did: Ta-da!

( I WATCHED PRETTY MUCH ANY NON-ROMCOM MOVIE I COULD FIND ON MY TEEVEE LAST MONTH, BUT MY FAVORITE WAS, SPOILERS, INCEPTION, MOSTLY BECAUSE OF THE STARTLING VERISIMILITUDE THAT POWERS ITS NARRATIVE (LET’S ACT LIKE POST-HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION IS SOME KIND OF TERRIFYING LOGISTICALLY-IMPOSSIBLE SCI-FI MANEUVER THAT NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF BEFORE, IT’LL BE FUN), AND NOT BECAUSE IT FEATURED A SUGARY ASSORTMENT OF PIPING-HOT SLICES OF MANPIE. THAT IS A TRUE STORY. AND ALSO NOT BECAUSE I THOUGHT LEONARDO DICAPRIO’S PERSISTENTLY IRRITATING CHARACTER WAS NAMED ‘DUMB COB,’ FOR A WHILE. THAT’S A TRUE STORY TOO. NOTE: CONTAINS NSFL MANGU PORN. )

That was really long! Probably I should post more often, so there’s less chance of these huge tumescent word-monsters escaping unchecked into the unwary wilderness.

Lastly: CONGRATULATIONS YOUR THIRTEE WON TOO!

Now I am going to go address my e-mail situation. (“HELLOOOOOO, E-MAIL SITUATION!”)

† cf.

ETA: UGH THIS FUCKING POST. DID DREAMWIDTH'S HTML EDITOR SPONTANEOUSLY GROW SOME STANDARDS IN JULY OR SOMETHING?

I wrote this on Thursday evening, which is when I intended to post it, but then I got bukkaked by my archenemy the Weather — who only this morning released his strangle-hold on my internets.

People have been talking a lot about Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged lately, because some really stupid fans made a movie about the novel. And, I know, anybody who has ever read (or attempted to read) Atlas Shrugged is flabbergasted by this turn of events, because Atlas Shrugged has the philosophical weight and the narrative impetus of a Cabbage Patch Kids Birth Certificate. It is a monstrously lame book, and every last one of its premises is bland, inert, and facetiously incorrect. You might as well make a movie out of a Chinese take-out menu. At least it would have attractive, distracting subtitles.

But I keep accidentally scrolling into the comments on articles like this, or that one. Or this one. Or that one.

…Maladjusted dorkwad glibertarian say what?

( Jesus wept! )

Well, that was therapeutic!

I have three really busy days this week, and then shit gradually slows down to almost nothing for the rest of the summer. On that note, I have a couple of mind-blowingly awesome projects which I hope to share with you later in the season, and also I will get those fucking translations up soon wtf. I am also beginning to be gravely concerned by my treatment of Rashoumon, which, now I look at, it is really awful. Also I was somehow finagled into translating a light novel, which is so, so unbelievably gross, oh my god, you have no idea. All of those things will be making their way to a monitor near you sometime this summer.

Next post: Needs more Sherlock, and the Kindle, too — oops!

All right! So. Yes. Armageddon happened/is happening in Japan! That is/was pretty awful, is/wasn't it? Also, additionally, ew, America is now engaged in a fun new war with some profoundly unlucky Arabs who were no threat to our security in either the short term or the long term, and also, randomly, there's going to be a guaranteed-awful Buffy reboot appearing in a theater near you, so it looks like God or the Spaghetti Monster or Father Dis or Satan or whomever has a hand steering the tiller of fate really, really liked 2005. Um. I was following news of the inspiring uprisings in the Middle East & North Africa as closely as it is possible for someone like me to follow them, and then things started kind of turning to shit, with US-backed dictators & their armies turning on their own people or on people adjacent to their empires, Sarah Palin launching herself at India and talking in public, the American establishment ignoring/laughing at pro-democracy protestors all over the place because all the American establishment cares about is who will sell it oil and protect Israel's nutty interests, etc. and so I stopped. Also, I am not going to say anything about the horrors people have suffered/are suffering in Japan, because what would I say? Gee, bummer? Hope things turn around for you soon, Entire Nation of Japan? Nothing is the way to go there. If we went with a little more "nothing" in this horrible, horrible country, just in general, I think the world would really be a better place (no homo) (literally).

Also, speaking of which, I am not ever voting again*. I don't care who gets elected president next. I don't care if the sticky illiterate scooter-powered hordes elect John McCain, or Haley Barbour, or a genetic recombinant of Jefferson Davis and Ronald Reagan, or Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Fuck you, America. I hope the evil clown (by which I mean "Haley Barbour") eats every last one of you.

Anyway, so, watch as I change the topic with painful obviousness:

Sherlock
I still can't find my damn links, which I know are around here someplace, but let's give it a go anyway. As the official last person to comment on this series I will keep things really brief, because I love you. But, so: Firstly, I would like to draw a distinction here between Sherlock the show, which is a flashy, fun, showbiz extravaganza on the order of Doctor Who, which I find pleasantly mediocre but not terribly exciting, and Sherlock the Sherlock, who is an entirely separate order of awesomeness. I'm not sure Sherlock the show is really picking up what Conan Doyle put down in his stories (although I was impressed by the Victorian-appropriate characterization of Chinese mobsters -- AND WHAT, BY THE WAY? -- in The Blind Banker; spot-on, lads! tally-ho! view-halloo!), but I cannot say enough drooly things about Benedict Cumberbatch, whose theatrical, neurotic portrayal of the totally impossible title character is every bit as accurate and arresting as Jeremy Brett's iconic interpretation. I cannot wait until he is actually forced to play the violin on camera. Word. Secondly, I want to say that Martin Freeman's intolerably cute Watson is pretty much the reason the show is historical-grade teevee entertainment: Sherlock is a compelling but remote archetype, the antecedent of a long line of shadowed arbiters of chaos who stand between ourselves and darkness -- but Watson is the human lens through which Sherlock's abnormal brilliance is both refracted and magnified. To that end, Sherlock's Watson is somehow both perfectly ordinary and unique. His slate is blank enough that he can serve as a Mary Sue for fanfic authors all over the internet; simultaneously, though, he's so specifically calibrated that he's really difficult to write correctly. Freeman somehow communicates his epic, melancholy good-guyness by just wandering into a scene and standing in the background wearing a slightly worried expression -- this is pretty close to being a magic trick, actually -- and his obvious appreciation of Sherlock's talent comes off looking like a natural reaction, with no hint of fantardian, zeta-male creepiness. He and Sherlock, together, form a unbroken continuity of Victorian heroism. They could be horsed. It is adorable. Uh, there were things about the show itself that I liked a lot, too, including a really neat opening-episode montage that depicted Sherlock charting the streets of London on a backlit mental map while chasing a cab, the characters' pedestrian fondness for technology, and the improbable architecture of 222B Baker Street (← ETA: BAHAHA ♥). But honestly, I think that the actors, all the actors, could've been performing on a blank stage to similar effect. I find peculiar the idea that the series is 'derivative' -- the joke there, of course, is that the "detectives" of CSI, Law & Order, and NCIS et alia have been using Sherlock Holmes's magical, science-free backwards processes of deduction to solve crimes since their inception. In this case, the origin-story is merely taking back its own territory. (Haters gonna hate.) I give the series an A-, splitting the difference between the production's solid B and the actors' A+.
(Also, Lestrade is hot.)
Yes, that was "really brief."

Anybody hiding any good anime around here anyplace? I didn't even bother to finish Hakuouki; it was becoming dangerously historical. Apparently there are some OVAs coming out this summer. Yay?

I should stop announcing my web projects months in advance, I think. Probably nobody cares, but it takes me actual non-hyperbolic years to get shit online. Right now I'm having some trouble typing up scripts, for example. I do a couple of pages and then wander off to play Angry Birds for an hour.

Links
1. Check out "The Pen," by Veda, an era-appropriate Victorian gothic romance which is hot, sweet, and actually kind of creepy. Hard to hit all those targets at once, I imagine.
2. Anybody recognize the artist for this totally NSFW picture? Looks a little like Mentaiko, but sort of not. Maybe his style is evolving.
3. These sorts of things tend to annoy me -- I have to walk past Jonathan Safran Foer's idiot new book with my hands in my pockets to stop from punching myself in the head (something at which I am fairly practiced after more than a decade of bookstore-related exposure to TokyoPop's oeuvre) -- but I think this one is really, really pretty.
4. Crows: They're like people, only not completely worthless and full of shit!
5. I haven't actually watched this yet, but everybody seems to think it is amazing.

Haven't had one of these in ages:



Also, too:



Also, I am both Tumblring and Twittering again, because usually I don't have enough material for an actual post and I'm probably also preoccupied trying to figure out if that sentence-terminal て means "please do or don't do [verb]" or "I am a mangaka who likes run-on sentences."

The end.


* The Daily Beast is profoundly retarded, but in this case we're giving it a pass.

ETA: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUYYYYY!!!

the further a poem strays
  from the rigid, mannered conventions of antiquity —
with their obedient end-rhymes & colossal, world-girding installations of
        ceremonial metaphorical structure and formal language, the more
  likely     a
    p   o   e     m   isto
      be about
some fucking illiterate idiot/moron’s
  f         e     e     eeeeeeeeeeee
      e
    l
            i
      nnnnnnnnnnnng
          s.

Although watching this cretinous dipshit try to mope around while wearing bear legs would in fact be fairly entertaining.

This, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi ("World’s Best First Love"?) ("Gag Me In The Face"?), is the only BL anime this spring. Ew! I guess Nakamura Shungiku actually is the only BL mangaka working in Japan these days. No, really; Suzuki Tsuta lives in a wormhole in Denmark and sends all his her releases out through the coinslot in the Tardis as origami chickens. That’s why nobody can license any of his her works and animate them. I assume this is the case, anyway. It’s the only reasonable explanation I can think of.

MERRY CHECKER!!

ETA: My mom wins all of everything, because when I told her about the incipient Good Omens mini-series (FOUR HOURS LONG!!) she was like, "Oh. Only four?" And I was all, "But that’s at least two more than a movie! How many hours long do you think it should be?" And she said, "However many hours it takes to, um, act out every word in the book." Which is just rational, really.

It transpires that I was somewhat busy this week, so no Sherlock for you. (Also I lost my Sherlock links; I’m pretty sure they’re around here someplace, though, cough.) Next week!

Instead, I submit to you these articles of wank, which I’ve been saving for Valentine’s Season:











1. Ew. I am not judging the book, which looks just as stupid and boring as every other book on this topic — but, I am a little worried about the ad copy, which seems to think that I am romantically desperate, fourteen, and possessed of a very short attention span.
2. Double ew. I am choosing to believe that this one is guerilla satire.

So remember, girls: Stay away from obscenely over-processed, prepackaged junk food/poison and try to maintain a strong, healthy, and athletic physique so that you will be appealing to "boys." (What "boys"? Where are these "boys"? Who are they? Presumably they are Morris Chestnut and Thelma & Louise Brad Pitt.) Because on the fucking internet it’s 1954, and the greatest psychological wound a woman could ever receive is failing to be regarded by strangers as a sex symbol. I know that these people are probably teenagers or in their very early twenties, and therefore biologically obligated to be retarded, but I am kind of offended that their obvious and twatty desire to be fap-objects is being treated as though it is an up-with-diversity, feminist grievance. Ugh. UGH.

Also I am not completely sure that any little girl would ever independently decide that she had to look like Barbie, who resembles a barrel-chested, tanned praying mantis, in order to be loved. Nor am I convinced that little boys find Barbies sexually attractive, yuck. I think that, left to their own devices, most little kids would just want to chew on Barbie’s rubbery feet. That’s what I remember doing with Barbie, most of the time.

And you aren’t allowed to be upset when your nicotine-inflected, drunk boyfriend cheats on you anymore? Really? Like, really? Because that’s going to be #16 on my 'Why Couldn’t You Make Me A Lesbian Like I Wanted, God? You Couldn’t Just Do That One Thing, Could You?' list.

My links are pretty weak-assed, too:
1. A Wonkette Reagan Beans thing. I know, but the comments are pretty funny.
2. An inspiring D.L. Hughley quote, via constantly-hysterical, horny, semi-literate Australian drama queen Yimmy Yayo (he does post some great landscape/historical/animal photos, though).
3. A deeply pathetic NYT article about the "bias" that exists against "conservatives" in the humanities. HAHAHAHAHA.

I’ll do better next time, coach!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sum thots:
1. He looks a little bit like an actual Japanese person! Well, Gackt. But Gackt is technically a Japanese person! Technically!! TECHNICALLY!!
2. I am a little worried that we are headed into the Uncanny Valley with this shit.
3. It looks like maybe the silver-haired character is not a hyperfeminized ladyboy??
4. That music! :@
5. Where are Openly Gay Wolverine and Malibu River Phoenix?
6. That hair! :@
7. Was that David Thewlis driving the limo at the beginning?
8. The girl is pretty! So she is probably evil :<
9. Can you imagine how retarded the plot is going to be?
10. It sort of reminded me of the later, crappier Alien movies.
11. Oof.

I’m so bored! All my friends are too busy to play with me :[
I still haven’t sent out most people’s Christmas presents :]
Hmmmmm…

SUPER IMPORTANT ETA! ALSO, TOO. I am excited for this guy:



You know how I feel about imaginary men with long black hair and feathers. If he has a stupid accent, the site is already written.