Unlike I told J-san, I'm still more or less happily ignoring everything involving my Elfwood gallery,
and this neglect is going to continue until I can summon up a picture that'd be EW-legal, so to speak.
I know that the pics I've been scribbling lately are not, for more reasons than one ^^;
The matter is also that if it isn't a gift picture like most of what I've actually drawn lately have been,
I don't put much effort in to what I'm doing, and I'd rather not bother people with half-hearted scribbles.
Duh. I'm annoyed with my inability.
But speaking of J-san, has any of you taken a look at what the guy's done to Destiny-chan's place
aka. the official TQFA-site?? The new layout is unbelievable, perhaps only rivalled by
the one on his own site for The Curse of Dragmoria, one gets an inferiority complex just by looking XD
Awesome!! XD
There was a japanese happening downtown today, presenting all kinds of things involving
japanese culture; fashion, food, martial arts, manga, calligraphy, ikebana (flower arrangements),
origami (they had at least two dozin different kinds of paper dragons on display! XD) chadou
(tea ceremony), literature, yadda yadda yadda.
I annoyed the hell out of the manga-society with my questions (where can I get this, where can I get that,
have you ever heard of...etc.etc.), got nostalgic over Aikido (I've been telling myself for the past five years that
I'll start doing it again one of these days), toyed with calligraphy for a bit --I would have
wanted to do more, but the instructor merely stood there and stared when I painted 20 pages full of 'sun'
and 'moon' and 'house' and 'wood', I tried to ask questions about japanese calligraphy but I got
one-sentence answers, so I eventually gave up and figured I could learn more from a textbook.
Well, she was finnish, I suppose that would explain something.
I attended a meeting involving chinese calligraphy a month back or so in an asian antique store. It was
a much more fascinating occasion, we were sitting on centuries old chinese furniture, listening to this
old chinese lady explaining the whole thing from the making of the ink to how to hold the paintbrush to
different ways of writing. Okay, so the rest of the people were painting chinese kanji and I was
painting japanese kanji, but at least the basic ones are about the same so what's the difference XD
Anyways.
I ate sushi today for the first time with the wonderful result that I now have the taste of raw fish
in my mouth that won't go away, and I don't even know what fish *g*
It looked like raw salmon. I think. The wasabi-paste I recognised, the flakes of something that appeared
to be fresh ginger, however, I did not. *chuckles* I swear, I'll never put something unidenfiable
in my mouth again, at least if I don't have a glass of water within my reach. The giant shrimp was
tolerable, the seaweed was funny but okay, then there were these rice rolls with something fishy in them
but I couldn't say for the life of me what it was.
And I should probably point out that I don't like fish in any form. I love shrimps and clams but
fish, no matter how it's cooked, is something I only eat if I have to ie. etiquette demands it or something.
Not to mention *raw* fish, all saints preserve me..^^;
Ick.
Gahh, I think I'm going home now. My roomie hitched back to her hometown for a week,
meaning that I actually have to cook for myself for a change *g* (something indian maybe, nothing like fish in it thanfully ^^)
Thursday, 25th of April :: 5.30 pm
Cleaned my lair a bit, changed the backgrounds white everywhere,
there shouldn't be one black corner left. ^^ It took an insane amount
of time and gave me a headache. I'm sure of this, nobody wastes as
much time and effort wrestling with a bunch of simple code on their
websites as much as I do.
Either you guys have things organised so well that you don't have to or
are simply wise enough not to give a damn (though I kind of wonder how
much not correct code I wrote just trying to fix it
--I wonder if not correct is even a proper expression to what I'm trying to say,
the only word I seem to have in mind is tadashikunai, but that's
just what you get when you mix a japanese exam and not enough sleep
...did well on the exam at least ^^)
Wednesday, 24th of April :: 8.25 pm
Guess who has her japanese final in the morning?
Heehee ^^
Tuesday, 23rd of April :: 9.00 pm
Mina-san, ohisashiburi da ne..? ^^;
I was here yesterday, I swear. I was typing a rather long but satisfactory rant about the ending
of Berserk, (love the anime, Shadowstep got it down in one: it kicks ass. the ending however..
fine, kill all the characters for all I care but could you at least do it in the same world than the rest of the show?
Why for the love of bob the friggin nightmareworld, as if the "reality" of the series wasn't bloody enough?
..Cripes almighty ^^)
and once I was through that I went on with the movie Time Machine I saw last Saturday
(not only has the plot dinosaur-sized holes in it, the badguys *and* their dwelling look like a
not-even-elaborate ripoff of Uruk-Hai and if you've seen the latest Tolkien-movie this one
offers the same by this time unimpressive spooks with less than one tenth of the plot) and that ended
up being somewhat lengthy as well, and by the time I was just about done my computer (that was
only running two or three Netscape windows simultaneously) decided to shut itself down.
Well, we've all had experiences of computers swallowing our work when all we want to do is hit the 'save' button, right?
*g* I have no actual proof of this, of course, but I'm not writing those reviews again despite the fact
I think they might have amused some of you --provided of course someone's still reading this after
my two weeks of absence. *kheh* ^^;
Instead of seeing me going on about bad movies and such,
look at the ridiculously cute pink quiz I found the link to from Gilda's log XD
More in the field of American modern classics, my roomie assigned me to read The Great Gatsby. John once described it boring as hell and even Janica (my roomie that is) admitted
that the text may be "a little heavy", but it's fairly understandable, it was written closer to a century ago
after all. Amusingly, the Tale of Genji was written closer to a millennium ago but the simplicity
of it all could well be due to translation (I'm reading the finnish translation by Martti Turunen
-apparently the same dude who's in the parliament in Japan nowadays)
Somewhere around episode 12 with Berserk.
I've had the gut feeling from the start that Griffith is evil XD (I still like Gatts best)
Gilda moved her weblog from deadjournal to livejournal
ages ago, about time for me to set my link straight ^_^
I'll clean up some of the other links as well when the mood strikes me.
Tuesday, 9th of April :: 5.16 pm
Finally finished reading The Catcher in the Rye (god knows it difficult to concentrate on
anything else with unwatched anime tapes around --I'm watching Berserk now, a series that's
first impression on me wasn't too high but that totally addicted me within two episodes, and damn,
the opening theme rocks! XD -literally. Can anyone tell I get a little too caught up in these
things sometimes..? ^^;)
The book was very very good, mr. Caulfield could be somewhat irritating sometimes but all in all
I found his thoughts interesting, and one of the most amusing parts were when he got started on things
like religion and war and everything. I think he hit right to the point on one of the religion-parts
when he wondered wheter Judas went to Hell after betraying Jesus (one of the very fundamental points
of Christianity; it even says in that description of Dante's Hell that the biggest sinners of all time,
Judas and Brutus and...some third guy was there? resided the deepest pit of Hell)
and some old schoolmate of his, as I'm sure half the Christian world, were of the opinion that
'whaddya mean, of course he went to Hell'
Sure, Holden Caulfield thought, that's where you would have sent him. That's where us people
would send him, but he didn't think that Jesus would have wanted to send him there.
Reminded me of the Ecce homo display that was on a world tour some years back with pictures of Jesus
walking in gay parades and hanging out with sexual minorities in general -the church objected to this furiously, but
back in Jesus's days he was said to do the exact same thing, wasn't it?
If Jesus appeared to the modern world, what do you think he'd do, go visit his excellency the pope
or some other stuck up old fundamental church administors?
He didn't hang out with priests even back in his old days, what he'd more likely do is help and encourage the
ones that are despised and stepped on today, I wouldn't be surprised to see him attending a gay parade,
for crying out loud.
This example is slightly off the point maybe, but what I'm trying to say here (and what mr. Caulfield was trying
to say in the book) is that we've gotten Jesus a bit wrong, haven't we?
Tolerance and forgiveness was one of the major things he was trying to get through our thick skulls, but no matter
what kind of thoughts the religion is based on it always seems to produce a fair number of narrow-minded misinterpretations. ^^
In any case, that's one of the things I liked about it, he made a lot of other amusing points in his casual,
'just wondering' -manner, but I guess religion is what irks me enough to blog about it *g* Sryshtikai, I remember you wanted to know about my thoughts on the book once I'd read it so
there you go. Do let me know what you thought about it, dearydear ^__^
(gee, I guess we should mail each other for some other reasons as well ^^)
Me found it most amusing.
I'm participating the student tutor -program (I'll be guiding freshmen around next semester and get paid for it)
and our first training session is at six, so I guess I'm off. After that I'll head back home and watch more of that
Berserk-guy Gatts whack monsters wielding a bigger sword than Cloud Strife XD
Heehee.
(I beat the flu over the weekend, obviously)
Wednesday, 3rd of April :: 5.40 pm
Referring to the previous entry, the guy's last name is Kamijyo, not Kamijou,
and it also occurred to me that in english cats say "meow" instead of "miaow" which is...
god, finglish I think, but everyone got the point, right? *g*
I spent yesterday in whole and most of the night before watching FY, and got it over with,
with the result that I now have withdrawal symptoms from having to get back to the real world
and that I'm unconsciously trying to speak japanese to everyone *groans* XD Gods, I'd so much
want to babble about it (and spoil the entire plot in the process ^^;;) but I have to head back to
my house before my roomie gets there and I think I'm running slight fever
--looks like the spring flu finally got me -_-
I've been feeling quite crappy ever since I got back from work this morning and it seems
to be getting worse, which is annoying since I really wouldn't bother being sick right now.
Nyah, we'll see ^^
(eepp, I'll try and send some email one of these days, honest...^^;)
Sunday, 31st of March :: 4.50 pm
Okay, at this rate I'll never get it done so I'll just put it up and fix it a bit afterwards *gheh*
I had it with the black so I went with complete opposite, not *quite* how I pictured it would
be, but all in all I'm happy ^^ The other half of the reason for this are the samurai pictures
I wanted to put up --they look so much better on white background. I meant to shove more
of them here, but lack of space turned out to be a problem; just how many extra decorational
pictures can an already cluttered layout handle? ^^;; And then there's my practically non-existent skills
in picture manipulation, no matter that PhotoShop does everything for you with click of a button.
Anyways, the black and white pictures/scenes on the frontpage and few other places are copies from
the samurai manga called Kyo -samurai deeper which is full of fantastically drawn bishounen
travelling in an ancient world of samurais and ninja magic, plotting and fighting each other in pursuit
of their own agendas XD
The one on the right is Ajira, absolutely one of my pets ^^!
He's supposed to be one of the protectors of Nobunaga, who is somewhat
the archenemy of the main character Kyo, who, btw, has lost his own body and currently possesses the body of a young samurai named Kyoshiro (hence the name samurai deeper,
I think, though it sounds a little odd to me still, I presume what the author must have
been getting at was samurai within but how would I know, it's not like I'm a native
English speaker either *g*), but Ajira seems more loyal to himself than his master.
The story belongs to Kamijou Akimine, and just guess if it's easy to find his work in as desolate
a place as Finland? ^^;;
I adore this manga, it's painful to try and read since it appears to be using the most ancient
and complicated kanji for every possible thing (though it kind of fits *gheh*) but well, a good half
of the book can be just awesomely drawn battles and the most common word used being kisama ("damn you") its not that hard to keep up with, really XD
Well, while I'm at it, I think I may as well say a word or two about Fushigi Yuugi ^_^
I've gotten to Chapter...um, 4 or 5 I think, somewhere around episode 20. When you gawk at the
show for seven hours straight you tend to lose track of those things -and the fact that I can watch
it that long should alone say something *gheehee* =P
I think the strongest point in the show are the supporting characters. The beginning was somewhat
slow and boring even, but the more characters are introduced the more addictive it gets.
The main characters don't impress me that much, quite frankly I once again find myself not liking
the main female character because she's...well, I think her role has been too clearly written for her,
as well as to her male counterpart Tamahome: they're just made the kind of dream couple that
were destined to each other since the first episode. The rest of the cast is much more human
(and drop-dead gorgeous XD), they have awesome personalities with their little faults and all.
I still love Nuriko and Hotohori best, Nuriko who's gay and jealous of Hotohori, Hotohori who's
-okay, in love with the main female character Miyaka, but I bet his own mirror image comes
close second *laughs* XD
The confusing point is that the heroes worship a phoenix named Suzaku while the enemy are the
servants of a dragon named Seiryuu, and I have this tendency to side with dragons, I wonder why..*g*
I'm hooked, hopelessly. Not because I'd be interested in seeing whether the two lovebirds get each other because I know they do and I don't particularly care for either one, but because the rest of the cast
in entirety makes me laugh and as pointed out already, are so damn good-looking I could just die ^^
I just wish I had something better to give Aquarina in return than Ranma 1/2
(not saying that Ranma is bad, just that it's not nearly as magical as FY) Ahem. Shimatta.
The ending theme of the FY went straight to my playing list ^__^
Currently listening:
from Fushigi Yuugi :: Tokimeki no Doukasen
"Miaow" XD
Wednesday, 27th of March :: 2.14 pm
Dee-chan sent me the link to this thing:
You're Spike. An English badass. At least you were until they put that stupid chip in your head.
And then you fell in love with the slayer... Snap out of it, man! Find your inner vampire.
*blinks* Spike fell for Buffy? Did I not watch the show enough or why don't I remember
such occurrence? Duhh, I have half-finished layout that I'd want to shove here, but I have
a lecture (that started two minutes ago actually *groans*) and then I'm meeting Kirsi.
The rest of the week also looks slightly booked since I'm trying to pay some kind of
social debt to my friends who haven't seen me all winter. I've been...ehh, absent. Busy.
One of my classmates nearly jumped down my throat when she saw me a couple of weeks back,
going like "Where have you been?". Ahem ^_^
Right, off to that lecture now...
Sunday, 24th of March :: 1.59 am
I'm not dead, I just thought I probably shouldn't blog until I can talk about something else than
my addiction to everything related to manga, anime, or japanese language. *g*
You don't want to see me post a page full of babble about how I'm planning to get my j-rock
out of my parents computer and to a CD that I could actually listen to --or how my brother's
doing it for me, rather XD I love my brother. He puts up with an awful lot, I say.
(you too, Sryshtikai, I know you offered to do the same thing ^__^)
Anyway, the most coherent thing I can do I think is give my first impressions on FY
once I get to the second or third tape, and scribble some Kyo -Samurai Deeper -characters
for you to view -the latter should be up sometime next week once I get to scanner and
toying with layouts *ghehe* Bishy samurais! Yum! =P
(geeze, it's my weblog, who cares what the heck I talk about here, and if it's not about myself
then what's the point in the first place? I'm usually selfish enough not to spend too much
time thinking whether anyone finds this interesting or not, but I suppose I have my weak moments.
I know I shouldn't read deathfics they put me on such self-esteemless moods *g*)
currently playing:
Gackt :: Secret Garden
(okay, not only do I lack spine but imagination as well, but damn I love this man's voice XD)
Wednesday, 20th of March :: 6.10 pm
Yep yep, like Sryshtikai said, I'm flying over to the States in July XDXD
Booked the plane tickets yesterday, so it's all official now, and now I somehow
have to manage three and a half months of waiting..!! ^^;;;
mood: anxious XD
Monday, 18th of March :: 5.25 pm
I left a similar fingerprint in Elfwood already, but heck:
Happy birthday, Aquarina! ^_^
I'm going home and start watching the Fushigi Yuugi -tapes.
If I'm not blogging for, say, for a week or two, you know where I am XD.
music: humming happily
Sunday, 17th of March :: 0.53 am
anou, shitsurei
Dee-chan, Jukka-san, 'Rina-chan and Risto-san, it was awesome seeing y'all ^__^
We gotta get together again some other time like this, ne? 'Rina-chan especially,
thanks for hosting us (and borrowing me the FY-tapes and all XD! )
Shadowstep, thank you for the lovely pics, I sure hope you keep drawing in the future! ^_^
I have been out of the net for a week, having come across some form of nasty spring tiredness
that baffled to no end all my friends who saw me during the past week, and the only explanation they
could think of is that I am most definitely not a springtime -type of person.
I'm on the way to adjusting to the incresing amount of daylight now, I think, since I spent a long
time out in the sun today and it didn't just completely knock me out *ghehe*
And it's the same friggin thing every spring anyway, hmm?
I'll be...*ghuh* fine.
I'm playing the song "White Reflection" from Gundam Wing: the Endless Waltz.
The first I heard it it hooked me on the spot. I swear, if it doesn't make you feel like flying,
I don't know what does. XD
"I feel love, reflection
mitsu me kae so hitomi
e ga ite, hagu kara,
neverending story..."
..I can't understand spoken japanese for shit. Wonder if anyone can point me to the *real* lyrics? =)
And speaking of which, gods, I have a bunch of j-rock sitting on my parents' harddrive that I can't take
with me to *my* house.
Mainly Gackt. I love Gackt ^_^
I may have rather a painful departure ahead of me tomorrow.
music:
from GW -the Endless Waltz :: White Reflection
from Final Fantasy VII :: One Winged Angel (can you believe it, I get nostalgic listening to this?)
Sunday, 10th of March :: 10.35 pm
I thought I'd come over to the uni just because I was bored out of mind after sitting at home
all day, just to get some fresh air on the way and sit in front of a computer and rant for a while,
then take a bus back home and...go to sleep or something. Or watch a movie.
I think they're showing Happiness by Todd Solontz tonight, which is probably
the most hysterically unhappy dark comedy I've ever seen coming from across the Atlantic.
The people in Helsinki loved it, they played it in the movie theatres here for two years,
--longer than any movie I've heard of before or since. I went to see it with my roomie something like,
18 months ago. I wouldn't mind seeing it again, but I'd have to go home for that.
Ahem, anyway as I was about to say I thought about ranting, but I pretty much went on about it all
with Sryshtikai on the phone just fifteen minutes ago, and now I'm wondering if repeating
would make me feel terribly silly or not.
It probably would.
*looks around*
I'm definitely getting a new layout soon. I've had this black-and-silver -thing for way over a year,
I wonder if I should switch to something else entirely for a while. I feel very little like drawing.
I've mainly been reading things on my free time, I'm still in the middle of the Catcher in the Rye,
which is okay, not exactly addictive or anything, but easy enough to read. Also started to read The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, the original story written in 10th century Japan.
(yes really) And then I'm all over the samurai-manga I got myself last week, drooling all over the bishy
samurai in it and doing inexplicably lousy translations to English ^^;;
Sheesh, but nobody wants to see me get started about this, honest. *g* I'm going back home,
I have to go to work tonight anyway, and it's a schoolday tomorrow *yawns* ^_^
Sunday, 28th of April :: 5.30 pm
