Well, this was it. Allegra started her first day of middle school today. Parents are invited to attend the first day of school and, not wanting to have both of us embarrassing her in front of her peers, she asked Jay to come as he had apparently not had as many opportunities at it as I. (Of course he was perfectly nice!) Which meant that I didn't have to get up. The important thing to note here is that I'm currently on vacataion. You know what I've done on this vacation so far? I've gone up two PvP ranks in World of Warcraft and hit Revered (almost exalted rep) for Frostmaw - so, some could easily argue the productiveness of time left for me to idle away (oh yeah, I also wrote a few chapters on a new thingy).
So, I didn't exactly get up, make a huge "special" breakfast, do her hair or anything. However, Allegra is my kid and she knows that my groggy, "....knock 'em deadzzzzzzzzzzz" was a declaration of motherly love.
Well, here I am. Sitting at the desk at the library. I've been working steadily since 5 clearing up and out my desk for next week when I finally take a week away from the library for a bit of relaxing and taking it easy and regenerating. *sigh* I am really looking forward to it!
In the meantime, I'm listening in to the DM game at the library. DM, of course, being the Dungeon Masters, aka the brave, creative, thoughtful individuals that come up with the games that the rest of the players enjoy every other week. In my own game, my character enjoys encouraging other players to do inevitably bad things for her own chaotic-neutral amusement (not seriously bad, just mildly-grazed-bad). Hence a nickname Jess gave me (based in Avenue Q) the Bad Advice Bear. I've found myself listening to the DM game and thinking of what my character would suggest to help liven things up over there. I mean, they're so serious. They really could use a little bad advice. On the other hand, Jay is the DMs' DM and I don't think he could take me in another group of his without suffering a breakdown.
They're pretending to be pirates - it's so cute.
Earlier in the week I made Jay watch Donnie Darko. I so heart this movie - I also recommend this website whether or not you've seen the movie; if you've seen it you'll remember parts fondly if you haven't hopefully you'll be intrigued enough to seek it out on your own.
Well, as you lot head back to school things continue here in that way that things have of continuing here. "Lot" being in the more general sense rather than specific. Yeah, it's pre-work on a Tuesday am, which means that World of Warcraft is temporarily down for their regular Tuesday am maintenance and I've decided to give some pre-work thinking a chance. It's wild, I know, but it just might work. Regardless, you get treated to a stream-of-consciousness blog entry from moi.
We watched a brilliant anime yesterday. I mean - BRILLIANT! It's called "Kino's Journey" or "Kino no tabi" if you're l33t - or "The Beautiful World" if you just want to be different, difficult, or misunderstood. The story is very clever and quite original: On a different world a young girl, named Kino, and her Motorrad, named Hermes, travel from country to country. Each country is nearly perfectly self-contained and so each has it's own bizarre customs and traditions, about which Kino endeavors to learn. Some are sweet, some are bizarre, but each has a story. For example, there is this one country that was so scientifically advanced they thought they could end all fighting by using a machine to give them the ability to read each other's minds (the idea that if you knew what hurt someone and could feel their pain, you wouldn't do it), instead after they ingested the telepathy machine, their useful machines run the town for travelers and the people live completely alone and far enough away from each other to not hear what anyone else is thinking. I love the way that each episode plays out, with the story of the country being told. The anime is quiet, the dialogue is very smart and well-paced, although there isn't hugely graphic violence, the little bit that there is becomes very pronounced against the quiet, reasoned story - and it's justifiable (shooting the bunnies for food in the middle of a winter travel, for example, or the man that saved a child by jumping in front of her .... oh, that was a sad episode). Anyway, we watched the first volume yesterday and then afterwards we all talked about how amazing an anime it was. This has to be the quietest, calmest, best-storytelling anime we've watched that kept the whole group in rapt attention the entire time. The dub is rather good - they did a fine job of translating the Japanese colloquialisms with perfectly relevant English phrases so as to preserve the meaning if not a literal translation; the voice acting is superb, and the voice quality is far from annoying.
And to prove it's awesomeness, a Modest Mouse/Kino no Tabi amv.
Then, we watched the first episode of "Gun Sword". Now, I watched all of these Sunday night, late (LATE) Sunday night. What I did wrong was watch this following Kino's Journey, because I took this too seriously. It wasn't until I watched it with the group that I figured out that this pretty good Trigun-meets-mechas anime was actually a fabulously awesome spoof on the western/sci-fi genre! I mean, this anime is hilarious!! You can watch the first part of it here (they disabled embedding).
I do think this is rather funny; a comparison of the PS3 and the Wii; whether or not it's accurate remains to be seen. Nintendo has their own opinions of that. The best quote: I'm cheap AND fun!
There have been a lot of stories in the news about blogs including Facebook and I would be completely negligent if I failed to mention them. This one about kids embarrasing their parents is, surprisingly, nothing new - just the same old in a new form. This one, though, seems like something that should be obvious, but since schools apparently aren't telling kids this, perhaps it isn't: What you post on your blog can come back and hurt you. Ok, public service message over.
And now, I have storytime and a wireless router to go prep.
Happy Tuesday. Oh yeah, go watch Ze Frank, on Monday he began giving college advice.
I am home. Sick. On what the news is calling one of 2 of the hottest days this year. Me? I've got an ear infection and a case of thrush. THIS SUCKS!!!!!! I'm miserable. I can't do anything about it except wait it out. WHine, whine, whin, bitch, AND complain.
This little toon is brilliant, Mr. Gaiman posted it on his blog today and since I can't make you visit his blog (though I do highly recommend it), I can post the video here for you to just hit play. Enjoy fellow Neil Gaiman fans.
