head #17

So, Glee was actually really good tonight, probably just because I said it sucked — although I think it should probably change its name to We Love You, Kurt, Because You Are So Very Adorable and Also Good at Acting. So, it is exactly like Buffy: The Crap Years: every fourth episode is great enough that you forget how bad the other three were, I adore exactly one character and I want to split-kick everybody else in the face, and imaginary gayness is still far more entertaining than imaginary straightness. Dude, I’d better go refill my Accutane prescription! Don’t wanna run out of that stuff :[

Here’s the always-awesome BTB on Glee’s use of the word "tranny." Glee is possibly the only show on television that enrages both fundamentalist Christians and vagina-necklace feminists in equal and constant measure, which is actually kind of comical, sadly enough; I don’t find it transgressive (usually), because it is almost impossible for me to be "offended" by anything that could be even generically classified as art. Also, I am pretty chill with the idea that all Americans — black Americans, gay Americans, Asian-Americans, whatever other kinds of Americans may be hiding out there who have yet to receive their convenient, easy-to-apply identity-politics labels in the mail — labor under stereotypes which can be fruitfully engaged and mocked in public, without hurting anybody. So if, say, Asian-Americans find themselves battling the deeply insulting notion that they all look alike and are indistinguishable from one another (which is just weird, anyway), and then someone on a popular teevee show (Glee, remember) refers to an Asian-American character as the "Other Asian," that doesn’t twist my knickers into an anchor knot at all. Not because I am a hipster racist! (I promise!) But because, you know, at least somebody finally noticed. I can understand why other people might be sort of put-off by it, though. This is America! A lot of brave men died in the cold at Valley Forge so that you could be offended by anything you like. But, I cannot understand why these already-angry people continue to get so het up about every possible 'controversial’ topic that ever appears on Glee, nor do I understand why they keep watching it if it’s so terribly, terribly abusive to their fragile psyches. Turn Glee off and find something else to do with your time, kids! It’s fun and easy. I turn the teevee off five or six times a day. Just, please don’t get all boycott-happy on me and start accusing me of being a bad feminist because I won’t stop watching Glee myself. That’s some Rush Limbaugh shit right there, is what that is. It’s only a teevee show! Just like Sarah Palin.

Anyway, my renaissance of Glee love is not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about this:



Or, I will want to talk about it (I’m sure) after I’ve read it. I am a little worried about it, quite frankly; Dream looks very muscular and competent and butch in this comic, as though he's the one who goes around opening all of the other Endless's pickle jars. Also, he is sporting a relatively restrained hairstyle, and he is wearing a very restrained (and incredibly un-Japanese) outfit. With a color on it! That is a little unfortunate for him, I think. Dream is engaged in a hot, highly-constested race for Biggest Hater of Colors on My Clothes with his bff/soulmate Angelina Jolie, and I would hate to see him lose just because of this one story. You know how Angelina gloats.

But, what I really wanted to talk about was this thing I found on Demonoid while I was futilely Googling Sandman comics as I waited for my copy of Dream Hunters to be shipped to me. It is called The Song of Orpheus, and boy, does it ever suck.

( Let me explain why, because I can tell by that look in your eyes that you care. )

Yes, yes, of course I will find this thing in the comics store and buy it. I am not like that. You know what I am like! I learned Japanese so that I could stop subjecting my precious, precious eyeballs to the illegitimate whore-bath that is scanlations. I will totally give Neil Gaiman his richly-deserved Orpheus money, because Gaiman is still kind of hot, and who wants to make hot people sad? I am a total masochist who likes it when Daddy hits me.

I am always having really bright ideas for blog posts while I’m sitting around in the backs of cabs staring out the window or painstakingly explaining to one of my students, yet again, what a preposition is and why we do not end sentences with them when we are writing research papers (MIDTERMS!!), and then I log into DreamWidth and my brain goes: RIBBIT.

Currently I am entertaining the dramz, which I will describe in loving detail once I’ve dealt with them, but I did learn a valuable lesson: Do not ever attempt to edit a freshly-made translation while you are having a panic attack. It does not end well for anybody (especially the commas).

Also I am translating five or eight different comics for The Heart Goes Nine, which I am hoping to have online sometime in the Christmas/New Year’s tunnel. I know I said exactly the same thing last Christmas, but luckily for me I am a prize-winning procrastinator: Last Christmas, I did not have any idea what the fuck I was doing. My concept of "の" as a nominalizer did not exist, for example. I did not know that から, when it shows up after a て-form verb, means "after," etc. (If you don’t give a shit about Japanese, you should know that these things are, like, super-elementary stuff a tiny Japanese child would be embarrassed to hear from a kindergarten teacher.)

But, I am much better now! Now, I am only surprised by things like the fact that "ってゆうか," which is one of Japan’s many exciting quotacular postpositions, can be shortened to "つーか," especially if you have animal ears.

I still want to babble about Sherlock, which I am going to watch for possibly the fifth time this weekend on PBS, and I also have a colossal post about the newer wave of "licensed" manga — but right now: RIGHT NOW YOU GET LINKS!

» This guy is going to be Dirk Gently! Which is a little odd, given that Dirk Gently is supposed to be a short, rotund, ethnically Scandinavian man, and also Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is utterly unfilmable, but don’t let that distract you from the fact that somebody is making a Dirk Gently movie!

» I was poking around Edroso’s archives last night because I was bored/flipping out, and I found this thing and loled for ten minutes.

» Benedict Cumberbatch said some words and then somebody wrote them down. This doesn’t happen enough.

» Google keeps taking The Song of Lunch off YouTube because, like the new Final Fantasy trailer, it is highly sought after by copyright-disregarding, record industry-bankrupting, adolescent digital pirates? Really? That’s an interesting idea, Google. I think you may have missed a memo somewhere. Anyway, here’s the trailer. NOTE: I downloaded The Song of Lunch off TPB, and it was horrible. Really horrible. Boring. Stupid. It wasn’t even a real poem, anyway; it didn’t rhyme and there were no shipwrecks or anything. Everyone is all, nobody has filmed a poem on teevee for like a million years! And I’m like, dude, there’s a reason for that. (And you know I would watch Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman stir spaghetti sauce for an hour with stars in my eyes, so it can’t be my fault.)

» We are T-minus 33 days until the deployment of something Susanna Clarke wrote into our mailboxes. Yes, it is an essay about Jane Austen novels, but desperation has lowered our standards considerably.

I also have a new, readable layout, which I got from here and did not edit like at all.

Next week, then?

Hakuouki was less boring this week, but still: too much history, not enough Toshi. Also, he could be nakeder, and maybe wearing lipstick. Also.

Okita made a pretty adorable zombie, even for him (Yamanami is the worst zombie ever). I am kind of loving the vague implication that an undead Shinsengumi stalks the streets of Kyoto (or maybe Tokyo) even today. Because, as ineffective as they were when they were alive, shit has gone downhill precipitously since they died :[

(Like, the whole siding-with-Nazis-in-WW2 thing? Way embarrassing.)





I have nothing else to say.

Oh no, wait, yes I do! I discovered that In a Grove had twelve extra pages that I didn’t see at first, and in grief and despair I abruptly stopped translating it. Hee! I’ll have it finished by this weekend, though. Because you care so, so much. (HI, MOM!)

SOME SEMI-NEWS:
» In the West, we call this magic super-health drink "whiskey."
» Because I have never lost my affection for the "world news as terrible Bruce Willis/Tom Cruise vehicle" conceit, I give you the exposition sequence from Contagion.
» More news from the Computers Have Taken Over Our Lives Through Voodoo & Intimidation Desk. I am getting really tired of the "let’s blame the monkeys!" approach to modern behavioral science. Addiction to technology has nothing to do with primal impulses. This asshole’s problem is that he doesn’t like his family and finds spending time with them anesthetizing (not that I don’t sympathize; I could barely get through the article). He just needs to stop blaming his iPad and fake his own death and disappear like a normal person.
» I love it that the scientist who discovered the York gladiator cemetery is named "Kurt Hunter-Mann."
» FUCKING BALLS.

I’m choosing not to link to the upsetting stuff. Because I’m an ADULT, and I CAN DO STUFF LIKE THAT.

Hakuouki has been super-boring lately; I’m waiting for TH ('Toshizou Hijikata' — I feel comfortable calling him that because we’ve been practically friends for, like, years now) to realize that the best way to protect the emperor and save the shougun is to tell the Gerbil how he really feels about her ("I — I — to you, I’ve always — "). Or for Okita to realize that the only way to cure his tuberculosis is to lick Saitou’s nipples over and over and over. And over. Haha, just kidding, they’ll all be cherry-pink wangst zombies by this time next month.

Only two more episodes! I think! So sad. If I didn’t like the show, it would run for 38 seasons. (Looking at you, Naruto.)

No good gif material in the last few shows, so here’s one from episode seven:


Maybe someone can tell me why everybody cares so much about this Avatar: The Fifth Airblanger movie? Which is, I will remind you, a live-action adaptation of a fake anime that ran on Nickelodeon. It’s not like this is some, you know, actual thing written by and for non-white people which has been coopted by racist Hollywood. Unless there is some new definition for "fake anime" that I am unaware of, it was a borderline offensive, racist construct in the first place. But, you know, I’m trying not to judge it too harshly (AHAHA). No, really, I’m not — lots of really smart people whose opinions I trust blindly seem to think it was unbearably great, and that this movie is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. I don’t get it. I guess I’ll just have to chalk it up to the Miyazaki Paradox and move on.

Lastly, because you care, I changed the addresses of my Tumblr account and my Formspring page. For the three people who think I’m fascinating. (HI, MOM!)

ETA: There is actually a movie called Contagion. Wow!

ETA 2: And now I know why everyone is mad at the Airblanger. Even if the original text was a chewing-gum commercial, nothing deserves that kind of treatment. Sorry. Better-informed cat is better informed. (h/t starburns)