Phantom Tokyo- The Other Side |
|
Archives |
Fuck me. Fuck me. (Insert three lines of scatalogical/ blasphemous/ pornographic overlap indicative of extreme amazement and delight.) She's read Antonia Forest. That's why she writes like she does. (Well, one why.) No-one in the world but me has read Antonia Forest. My well-kept little secret. No-one but me and her and the editor of The Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. So now I know. (Greer, you were right. Beware that first ML post with the automatic signature and the blog link. And I would never have known if I hadn't gone through my archive looking for more examples for you. Doumo, o-sewa ni natte...) (Ten minutes later) Howl. Howl howl howl howl howl. And Silverlock!!!!
She writes better than you do.
You don't mind, of course.
That's not quite true, is it?
So of course you don't mind?
How nice.
Whatever you say. Enjoy your peace then. Though I wonder why I'm reminded of St.Jerome?
Fled to the desert
In a mighty prose
'But he filled men's minds Thank you. I intend to. I hurt. And I'm really tired of it. Go feed the cat. (That's weird. That's very weird. The bald unknown releases the fact, which I knew perfectly well at 15, that Ramses I's body was found in that second cache of stored-for-safe-keeping mummies along with Horemhab's and a few others. Hm. How'd he get to Niagara Falls? And how'd they figure it was him? Almost wish I'd bought that paper now.) Must be some malign conjunction of the stars. Everyone in blogdom is feeling lousy today, from people I wish well (like Harpy) to those I wish every possible ill and a few that haven't been invented. Continue to whine, D. It makes me very happy to know how very unhappy you are.
Oh, she says. Oh. Oh. Oh *but*. Oh. But. *But.* Yes, well... Northstar's rhapsodizing about what a kindly concerned place lj is would sound more convincing had we been spared the recent catfight between ('I'm no angel') Tenshi and Our Lady of Perpetual Scowl. (To say nothing of their devoted minions and toadies.) Kind? Concerned? For the news of a stranger's death, yes maybe, but not when people who actually know each other take off the gloves and start weighing in. I too have discovered some marvellous people in lj, but I won't quarrel with its blanket inclusion in Something Awful. Not to mention that the 'we few, we happy few' noises it makes convinces me I'm better off here in good ol' unpretentious working-class blogdom, than out in the manicured lj suburbs. Has to be said- later Choushimaro is *wet*. I grant you he looks good wet, especially in juxtaposition to Umayado (who nearly breaks his arm at one point) and I grant you it's one of the duties of a sympathetic shounen ai character (Emishi has his drenched moments too) but still. We have the Good (Emishi, Choushimaro), the Bad (ohh- the Emperor, his older brother, the Empress Dowager, Moriya-- all them), and the Morally Complicated (Umayado, Tansui.) I'd prefer Choushimaro (*and* Emishi) to be Morally Complicated myself. This is partly a function of me being no longer 15, and partly a function of having access to the French collective unconscious. Oh the poor bay-bee no longer cuts it for me. And within the MC subset, please note that while Umayado suffers hideously from his demons while being satisfyingly demonic himself, Tansui does not. Need to read more shounen ai, but vague memories of what I have read suggests there's always one morally less-than-pure type who gets away with it, redeemed by style. I can only say that Choushimaro next to Tansui looks like Murasaki Shikibu ('oh my poor *nerves*') next to Sei Shonagon. One rather prefers the self-absorbed and self-confident latter, who was probably as unlikable as Suze in real life. At least she wasn't-- wet. Finding that an acquainatance has blogged at Pitas in the same hour as you and turns up on the 'last 50 entries' list, occurs about as often as accidentally running into someone you know in Tokyo. But I did run into people I knew, years after I knew them, in parts of Tokyo I rarely went to. Gary from classical Japanese class walking down Mejiro-doori near Kudanshita, I think, a place I had no reason to go to usually. Nunoi-sensei, my second year Japanese prof at UofT, on a platform of the Den-en-toshi line, was it? one of those confusing lines out of Meguro or Gotanda that I never take. Akemi from the Ikebukuro ryokan, met on the Takadanobaba stairs. That same week, Ron met in a Yamanote train, who invited me to his birthday party at the French restaurant in Roppongi where he worked. It does happen. So today, Voidstar and Keieru appear on the pitas member pages list. Just the flow. Back to pointless blogging after silence because I've been listening to Choushimaro and Tansui talking for the last few days and I didn't want to interrupt them before I'd had the chance to write it down. Am now in the section of Choushimaro and Umayado talking. There are fifteen things they might say which they probably won't get around to saying now; there's a toss-a-coin decision to be made about what happens (does he or doesn't he, in a word) both of which are possible, neither of which is 'but exactly!', either of which will give a completely different story from the other. I feel I should read more to get a better grip on the possibilities, except the more one reads the more one knows and the less one can treat the characters as unknowable facts, seen from the outside only. Should have written the character I saw in vol 2, not the one from vol 6. Short translation: this story is probably fucked already, might as well blog. Hot out there, but the window fan draws in the smell of woodsmoke. Don't know what it is (the Quebec forest fires only added a tinge of silver November light to Sunday's overcast- no smells attached) but it works faster than Bengay to clear away my headache. The smell of happiness. There is absolutely no excuse for this...
WHAT'S ON YOUR BEDSIDE TABLE?
WHAT'S THE GEEKIEST PART OF YOUR MUSIC COLLECTION?
WHAT DO YOU EAT WHEN YOU RAID THE FRIDGE AT NIGHT?
WHAT IS YOUR SECRET GUARANTEED CRYING MOVIE?
IF YOU COULD HAVE PLASTIC SURGERY, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
DO YOU HAVE A COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL FEAR?
WHAT IS THE LITTLE PHYSICAL HABIT THAT GIVES AWAY YOUR INSECURE MOMENTS?
DO YOU EVER HAVE TO BEG?
DO YOU HAVE TOO MANY LOVE INTERESTS
DO YOU KNOW ANYONE FAMOUS?
DESCRIBE YOUR BED.
SPONTANEOUS OR PLAN
WHO SHOULD PLAY YOU IN A MOVIE ABOUT YOUR LIFE?
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO PLAY POKER?
WHAT DO YOU CARRY WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES?
HOW DO YOU DRIVE?
WHAT DO YOU MISS ABOUT BEING LITTLE?
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR GIVEN NAME?
WHAT COLOUR IS YOUR BEDROOM?
WHAT WAS THE LAST SONG YOU WERE LISTENING TO?
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A SCHOOL PLAY?
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE?
DO YOU LIKE YOURSELF AND BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
HAVE YOU EVER DONE ANY ILLEGAL DRUGS?
DO YOU THINK YOU'RE CUTE?
DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A NICE PERSON? (What's blooming now to make me sneeze like this?) And right in the middle of the Hi Izuru... action we get thrown a little curveball that even 'never explain never apologize' Yamagishi has to take a few panels to unpack, so we know it's a curveball in the first place. Umayado's mother and Umayado's father (later the Emperor) are half-sibs by different mothers. Both these mothers, incidentally, were Soga daughters and Emishi's aunts. Umayado's father had an affair with yet another Soga daughter, his mother's half-sister and so his aunt, and had a child. Never recognized the child formally, so though he's called Prince for some reason and takes rank over Emishi, he's not in line for anything. The current emperor decides on a whim that Umayado's widowed mother should marry this man, her previous husband (and half-brother's) son, saying it's perfectly OK because he was never acknowledged and could be anybody. (His grandmother was a *servant* after all, a servant's daughter would screw anyone and probably did, blah blah blah.) Everyone has fits. And I'm sitting here wondering *Why*? Yes I know- what constitutes incest is non disputandum est in any culture, but that one has me puzzled. Marrying your brother is fine. Marrying your nephew is not, or not if you were married to your brother before. But this particular proviso has ramifications for my Koreans. Since they'rehalf-brothers by the same mother do they fall within the forbidden degrees? Can I only write yaoi if they're half-brothers by different mothers? There are drawbacks to matrilinear remnants, she muses. Does it make a difference to them? So far it does, evidently, because I can't see why else Choushimaro would continue to talk to someone who, by the looks of the obscure references, betrayed Choushimaro's trust and Choushimaro's country simultaneously. Or maybe he doesn't get a choice. Tansui is the brazen type and dead to shame. (No- he's serving A Higher Cause.) He'll go on showing up to see if Umayado is alright and Choushimaro is looking after him properly, no matter what Choushimaro thinks. On another note- since my hormones are raging, and may be expected to go on raging for up to another ten years nonstop no down time, I think I'll start a vitriol blog for saying all the things I want to say regardless of self-respect and who's reading. (You didn't think I'd been holding back? Oi, have *you* got the wrong femme d'un certain age.) Called The Menstruation Hut, maybe. *I*'ll stop when *it* does. Back to being me. The *relief*, dear god, you can't imagine. Over a certain temperature and I start to go snake. And sort of know it's happening but can't quite get a mental grip on the phenomenon because the analytical functions have gone snake too. Weather perfect yesterday and today. Still wrung out by the heat so that I have very little memory of what happened yesterday and today, but the blue skies and green leaves and big white clouds tickle the memory of much the same sort of thing in Japanese Augusts, only hotter of course. Leapfrogged about Hi Izuru... yesterday (I told you I would) and got a few more details on where my Koreans come from and what they're up to, and I now know their relationship- they'rehalf-brothers- which is helpful. But I wonder if Yamagishi will ever give us the whole story or if her style with these secondary characters is indeed to do dribs and drabs and leave you to put the pieces together. Such a War and Peace-ish manga this manga is. But it doesn't matter how much I futz about with vols 5-9, because I discover there are actually eleven volumes in the set. Something kept aside to cheer future lacks, which is the way I like it. (There are times I can't read a newly bought manga even, because *I might need it more* later on, and if I read it now I don't have it to read then. If you follow.) And ohh but Umayado is getting madder by the moment. Quite revolting at times. Hell hath no fury like a bishounen scorned, especially *that* bishounen. One wants to write a PWP with him and Emishi just as a way of satisfying the manga character's vengeful and tormented ghost. 'Oh, fuss fuss fuss. Really, it's so simple. You're out of the shounen ai world and into the yaoi one where guys *naturally* love guys and screw them mightily because that's what guys do. Now get your clothes off. He's waiting.' The mug blew away in the morning breeze. The babies' AC is installed, and the university is having shitfits because we *installed it ourselves* instead of putting in a requisition for the University maintenance guys to install it which they would have done about next March. PSoH 10 arrived this morning (bless Mimi's mother) and K's box arrived this afternoon (bless K) and now all I want is for everyone to just *go away and leave me alone* for the next three days please and thank you and fat chance. (Happy Boot Out the Brits day, you guys down there.) Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. It's as hot today as yesterday when it was supposed to have cooled off overnight and be 80 instead of 95. I'll spare you the A/C saga at the daycare. The upshot of it is that as of yesterday everyone's was installed but ours and we were hitting 90 in our airless room. My Hi Izuru....5 came yesterday from K, and I was going to sit in the AC at home and read it happily. Instead I found myself skipping around looking for my Koreans, which is what happens when you're deprived of an obsession for too long and feeling stinted of positive reinforcement. Commonsense tells me that when the rest of the series comes I should just put it aside till September when I've returned to my rational cool-weather self. Won't, of course. And I really want to strangle Matt Thorne for spoilering a major plot point for me. I suppose the happy ditz assumed that none of his readers would ever (or could ever) actually *read* the thing. Oh well, enough of that. Harpy by the by just goes on getting cooler and cooler. Must be nice to be her, or at least to write like her. And the Wilbur poem I was quoting back a ways is actually about the 4th of July, which was coincidentally the day that Lewis Carroll went boating with the Liddell daughters and told them the beginnings of Alice in Wonderland. At that time of course the States were in the middle of their civil war.
The sun is not a concept but a star Just an odd conjunction of two worlds one never thinks of as having anything to do with each other, and which maybe don't.
And honor to these States Natsukashii ryouri Used to cook this in Japan when I got homesick for western food, and also to look after that 'leafy green vegetable' part of the diet that doesn't get attended to very well in Tokyo. Now I cook it here when I'm homesick for Japan, and because it's even cheaper to make here than there. You start with baby spinach. Baby spinach is the only thing close to Japanese hourensou, which is tender and pale green, or at least paler than the brilliant emerald wrinkly stuff we have here. Then you cook up some couscous, in chicken or beef broth if you want. Put the spinach in a bowl. Cover with the just-cooked couscous, and put a lid on the bowl if you like. Thing is that you have to cook spinach to get the nutrients in it, but you only want to cook it the bare minimum or it goes to slush; and while I like spinach well enough, I need something starchy to pad it or it gives me indigestion. After a minute or so when spinach is beginning to wilt, add a tin of chickpeas. Season to taste with salt and pepper, or cumin and coriander if you've got it. Lemon juice for the acid fanciers. Can substitute boiled eggs or tofu for the chickpeas. I could eat this every day, and always eat too much of it. My own comfort food. I suppose I should be grateful that my scanner at least talks to my computer. I just wish it would say something besides 'I hate your guts.' Keeps trying to save jpgs into areas already in use. Why? It's got quite enough disk space free. It never does that with colour jpgs, an interesting point. But use the descreen function and try for anything over 450 pixels and it crashes one time out of three. And Mimi says Well you shouldn't need to *use* the descreen function, cause *her* scanner now no longer in production gives you nice sharp clear scans without it. Yes well. Some people are cursed by the Thing gods, and I'm one of them. Whatever I buy (stoves, CD players, and bicycles in the last instances) will be a lemon because I'm the one buying it. For things to work (watches, washing machines, driers in the last instance) someone else has to buy them. My washing machine and drier came with my first house, 15 years ago, and have needed one repairman each in that time, not because they broke down but because they considerately gave notice of requiring maintenance before they could. Come back, Frosty! Odd. When I turn down the heat in the winter, the house stays warm all night, unless there's a strong wind blowing from the direction of whichever room I'm in. But still- the back room may be cold but the bedroom is just fine thank you. If I turn down the AC in summer, the whole upstairs becomes uncomfortable inside 30 minutes. Yes, I've locked the windows so drafts can't get in. Heat is just sneakier than cold in its ninja attacks. (somewhat later) Today's accomplishment was to figure out how to change font colours, font sizes and font faces in the entries. Go me. Except that I don't *like* any of the font faces available.
Send Antipatra naked Fragment of Greek poetry that floated to the top of my head. Known it forever, at least since I was 14 because my best friend then was much tickled by it. Comes from an anthology of Greek poetry in translation that I always had kicking about somewhere. Cannot remember for the life of me which one it was. Can see the page. Can see the epitaph of whatever merchant it was ('I came here on business/ Not to die!') Can see the section from Anacreon. Cannot see the book's title, and it's not one downstairs. Argh.
Martians on earth??!! Canada Day weekend, on a weekend for once and not, as is the Government's ketchi habit, on whatever singleton day July 1 happens to be. Screw the history. At this time of year it's the government's duty to bend over backwards to ensure that those with cottages get to have a weekend up at them. Have Canada Day on June 30, if you must, but have it on a Monday. We, of course, have a cottage but I, of course, don't have a car or a driver's licence any more. So as ever, next-door brother and extended family by marriage all go up to enjoy the cool breezes while I sit alone (snerf) in the hot dirty garbage-filled city (there's a strike on) (sniffle) because noooo-one will give me a ride and they want my bedroom for the grandkids (tears roll down cheeks as she pours herself a large tumbler of sis-in-law's best whiskey from next door.) And of course because someone has to feed the cat. Take Molly to the cottage and Molly vanishes for days into the marvellous undergrowth so now Molly doesn't go to the cottage, any more than I do. So I feed Molly and let her out and lock door. Next morning no Molly comes to yowl on my front porch about the lack of breakfast. Odd. I go next door and Molly walks out from the kitchen to greet me. This happens two days running. I've checked every window in the place and they're all closed and locked (and the interior temperature of the house is close to 40 degrees, I note, as I help myself to the pate and camembert in the fridge. Plus a glass of that nice bottle of French white cause it's so hot in here.) I don't know how she's getting inside, unless it's Lois' son coming over for whatever and letting her in, but I haven't heard anything. So- dahdahdah dahdah dah- Twilight Zone time. (And their supply of cashews is running low. Hope they come back soon and replace them.) (Later update on the Cat Who Walks Through Walls, if anyone reads it down here. Molly has learned to open the French door onto the balcony, which can be opened even though locked, apparently, if you do it from outside. It then swings shut behind her and so looks closed to the casual eye. It also traps her in the house, rather to her annoyance. So there we are. No Martians. Sorry.) What'd I say? June. Blink and you miss it. What'd I do in the last two weeks? Uhh... Pipes. Update. Maybe 20 pages of translation. That's it. |