Yearly Archives: 2013

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now

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I have been told that I have the soul of an engineer.

This was not intended as a compliment. But I couldn’t take it as an insult, either; ’tis a mere statement of fact. I do have the soul of an engineer.

As a kid, I would take radios and other small appliances apart, to see if I could figure out how they worked. Most electronic stuff, of course, I couldn’t, as rows of resisters and capacitors don’t tell you that much about their function. The more mechanical items, I at least got the gist of by examining the innards. And naturally being able to put them back together was very important, as certain family members would not be pleased by my rendering valuable items inoperable, even in the noble pursuit of knowledge.
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Fighting evil by moonlight

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After leaving anime behind shortly after the Dirty Pair days, I didn’t think too much about it. It was easy to not think about, after all; there was almost no way to run across any anime unless you were out there looking for it. And I was not.

I was driving somewhere in my car listening to the radio, sometime in late 1998 it must have been, when the barenaked ladies song One Week came on. I hadn’t heard it before, but they were a band I liked, so I paid attention to it.

Of course, the one line in there grabbed my attention: “gotta get in tune with Sailor Moon ’cause that cartoon has got the boom anime babies that make me think the wrong thing“.

Anime? A pop song is singing about anime?

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Bonus

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I was lucky enough to get the K-On History’s Music Box poster that was the limited bonus for the box. Behold, more bad photography:

out-of-focus image of poster

bonus poster

I suppose eventually my entire living space will be covered by anime posters, the majority of which will be K-On. That may or may not be a bad thing, but it probably is a mad thing. At least it’s a quiet madness.

I do have to get a better camera at some point, thought. I’m glad no one is actually reading this.

It all began with Dirty Pair

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Kei and Yuri of Dirty Pair

I have been watching anime a long time. Since about 1985 or so.

Despite the title above, the very very first anime I saw was not Dirty Pair. It was a butchered English-dub version of a Cream Lemon video. With the passage of time I honestly forget if I ordered that on a VHS tape via the mail, or picked it up while visiting a porn shop. Probably the former, as I’ve been in a porn store perhaps five times in my life; the atmosphere there is definitely not something I enjoy. Whatever the source, while watching that video I didn’t know that what I was watching was anime. So I don’t count it as The Beginning.
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K-On! Music History’s Box

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The K-On! Music History’s Box is my latest feverish addition to my ever-growing K-On collection. It purports to contain pretty much all the music that was ever released from the TV show, movie, character CDs, and game (except the instrumental-only versions of songs that were included on previous releases, I believe). But I might be inaccurate on that, so check other sources for confirmation about that.

What I can give you, though, is pictures of what precisely you get for your 19,800 yen (list price). I always wanted to do an ‘unboxing’ type thing. I’ll skip the plain brown shipping box though; everyone knows what those look like.

Here it is, still in it’s protective outer plastic cover. (if I’ve loaded the pics into this blog correctly, you should be able to click on all the following pics for a much larger version of each pic).

Music History's Box outer cover

K-On! Music History’s Box outer cover

As you can see, it’s the K-On girls dressed to continue the Alice in Wonderland theme. I thought the stuffed “white rabbit” with the watch (since the white rabbit was always running late), next to the tortoise on the bannister, was a really nice touch.
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While away the day

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Spending the whole day just downloading pictures of your favorite anime characters is a perfectly acceptable way to pass the time. Right?

I know objectively it makes little sense, but having a whole mass of pics right there on my hard drive is in some way quite pleasing to me. Like having a miniature art museum handy for perusing at any time.

Ah well. Like I was going to be able to hide for very long from the Mythical Readers the fact that I’m probably quite mad. Quite quietly mad, at least. Barking mad comes later, I suppose.

Different frame of mind

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I have quite a few pictures and posters hanging up on the walls of my humble abode. I dislike bare walls. Well, not so much dislike, as appreciate the opportunity to place something beautiful up on that bare surface.

My strategy in the past has been to put up the cheaper posters in equally cheap poster hangers, with little regard to how the poster fits inside the frame (as long as it actually does completely fit inside, of course). This has lent a certain “college dorm” feel to my domicile, but since I like to bring in new items and replace the ones I’ve tired of, this has made sense from an economic point of view.

As time goes on (and it certainly tends to do that), there are a few posters that have stayed up, while those around them have succumbed to my ever-changing tastes and ever-whimsical follies. I have started putting the survivors into frames sized specifically for them. They look so much better it’s astonishing.

So my appreciation for a good picture, print, or poster frame has been increasing. The right frame can vastly enhance an artwork, while a poor one can greatly distract from the piece. Framers have an art all their own. Consider this, framewrights, a simple note of appreciation for your work.