Website: the mad aristocrat
For the love of Bob, sign the guestbook!
Hangs around:
Bounce magazine, !SuperCat Online, Sekai Seifuku, Passion Fruit, Crimson Tears, The Japanese Flannel, Bleeding Hearts, windward, Sequential Tart, HTH,
Diagon Alley, Shiroi Heya
Posted elsewhere:
Fanfiction.net, Photo.net
Follows:
Jamie, Michael, Melanie, Diana, Haru, N, Andre, Jun, Lex, Covielle, Twig, Bridget, Lisa, Sabina, Homasse, Sarah, Violaine
Drools over:
Isamu Noguchi, Chanel, Gackt Camui, Sony Japan, Style.com, Heath Ledger, Aiwa, European Furniture Importers, anything covered in toile, matcha, fried okra, Hemmings Photography, yakisoba
Comics:
Nine Stitches, megatokyo, Bite Me!, Boy Meets Boy, Sinfest, Spades
Reads:
Hanazakari no Kimitachi e, X, WISH, ElfQuest, Transformers, Ah! My Goddess!, You're Under Arrest!, Bakuretsu Hunter, Rurouni Kenshin, Slayers, Weiss: An Assassin and White Shaman, Gravitation, Gouhou Drug
Watches:
Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin, Cardcaptor Sakura, Inu Yasha, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, The Last Unicorn, Notting Hill, any Gackt or Glay videos I can get my hands on, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ed, Edd, & Eddie, Just Shoot Me!, Metropolis, Samurai Jack, X Men: Evolution, Invader Zim
Listens to:
Dreams Come True, Ryuichi Kawamura, Hikaru Utada, Natalie Imbruglia, Gackt, Sarah Brightman, GLAY, Enya, The Goo Goo Dolls, Jimmy Buffett, Travis, Judy and Mary, L'Arc-en-Ciel, Hyde, Chihiro Onitsuka, Garbage, John Mellencamp, REM, Melissa Etheridge, K.D. Lang, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Sophie B. Hawkins
Spends paychecks at:
EXPRESS, YesAsia, J. Crew, L.L. Bean, Target, Amazon.com
Archives:
7/31/02-10/3/02(Natalie)
6/12/02-7/27/02(Debauchery)
5/3/02-6/12/02(Fun with mochi)
3/24/02-4/28/02(X pretentiousness)
1/10/02-2/27/02(Home again)
12/1/01-1/3/02(Nara III)
10/9/01-11/27/01(Nara II)
9/3/01-9/29/01(Nara I)
UPDATE: READ THIS. Especially if you go by the name of Steph. *cackles*
Katy-- you rock, your staff rocks. Hurry up with the October issue!
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current music: Deep Forest, 'Boheme'
秋が大好きよ〜！ I changed my main system fonts to Japanese (can you tell? If not, change your character prefs momentarily.) Oddly enough, my browser seems to behave better even with Western fonts this way. Excellent. ^_^
*is fascinated* Now /that/ is one talented guy... and dividing time between London, Milan, and Tokyo? I had to stop myself from drooling before I ruined my keyboard.
I should have new art up by now, but let's just say I extended the occasion to include All Saints' Day, shall we? Yah. I'm gonna be mostly MIA for a couple of weeks, anyway, barring really crazy discoveries or rant-worthy reading material. Halloween was very anticlimactic, which was a little sad (because I really like having it /feel/ like October and creepy and everything) but at least I got some work done. God. Last year-- yeah, here we go again Jamie-- I stayed up till five AM with most of the girls on the 2nd and 3rd floors of our dorm, eating and talking and having a blast. And then two days later it was shopping in Kyoto and a weekend in Yokohama. At least now it's just as cold here as it ought to be in Tokyo, finally. I even got to wear a scarf!
I'm sure I had more to say, but once again I'm too wrapped up in trying to remember more important things. There just aren't enough hours in the day, I swear... but the trees are turning color and losing their leaves all at once now, and the sky finally has fall clouds and cold wind and it's cold at night... I love it! Now I must dash and see about giving this sucker a new look.
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current music: Anastasia OST, 'In The Dark Of The Night'
Urgh. What a weekend... movie on Friday fell through, Saturday ended up being spent in orientation for next spring, the evening and most of Sunday spent at the house for purposes of Halloween partying and subsequent recovery. We saw Lilo & Stitch at the dollar theater, though... such wonderful fluffiness, mmmm.
Now I have to be productive so that I may see the first disc of GTO after dinner-- I'm sure I have more to say, but I can't for the life of me think what it is... only, I did move the webpage last night! The link works again, and it's got a new name, which is actually Cat's fault. All that Gackt goodness-- I laughed myself stupid reading the latest '100 Questions' translation. As much as I wonder, most of the time I find I'd rather believe that the boy's just got a really bizarre, undying sense of humor when it comes to his public persona. I mean... well, just /read/ it! XD
Okay, okay. Work now. Play later.
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Update: About that fire drill... it was a malfunctioning alarm in the basement, apparently. So. No blaming humans. However, I checked my voicemail just before getting ready to hop in the shower--
There's a gas leak down the street, and they've turned off our hot water.
Is it just me, or are forces conspiring today?
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I have to type this up, before I forget about it. What with all the commenting/ranting about WISH lately... it was just too funny to leave untold.
Okay. So it's yesterday morning, and I'm at work with two hours of boredom ahead of me... but I came prepared! I brought the first volume of WISH to read, because homework makes me sleepy and I have been in dire need of something happy anyway. I'm sitting in my chair, skimming through and grinning to myself, and my co-worker is periodically asking me questions about Japanese, because she wants to take it for her language requirement.
Since I seem so amused, Sam asks me what the book is about. I give her the quick-and-dirty opening: 'And then all sorts of other people show up at the house-- including the devil's son and the chief archangel in Heaven, who have eloped.'
Sam: *cackles* That's NUTS.
Then, she professed an interest in reading the books herself... I told her about the translation, and explained the gender issue (because I couldn't resist). Her exact words, upon hearing that the angels were translated as female: 'Dude, that's so gay.'
I think they heard my laughter on the other side of the Atrium.
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First things first:
Dear Whoever:
So yeah, thanks a lot. It was great fun.
Now that THAT'S out of my system...
My brain has been pretty productive today. Not only do I have a great idea for my next design project, I'm still thinking like mad about AF... and in a linear manner, no less! That's the key thing, you see... me having a PLOT to work with. So far, I've got a really good base laid out, and I've been fine-tuning characters' relationships to each other. I can't control them much once I start typing, so I kind of want to form an idea in my head that I can at least use as a jumping-off point. Something that I'm really curious about, mostly for shits and giggles, is what kinds of reactions I'd get from pairing characters off... I don't write romance, and I don't particularly care to 'hook up' certain characters just because that's the way it ought to be. I do, however, love to screw with people.
On a totally unrelated note: NCOM is online! Not only that... we RULE, baby. Spontaneous problems are the whole reason I can come up with the craziest shit at the last minute. Literally. And have the most fun doing it!
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The world really is small, sometimes... I mean, FREAKISHLY so. And the internet can, against all odds and other piles o' crap, be a very amazingly cool thing.
And I was in the world's worst mood a few minutes ago, until I opened the package from Mom and found the Nara Joshidaigaku international student directory inside! Naini, Suchinda, Sveta, Vero, Cynthia, ME *insert ridiculous snort of laughter here* and everyone else who left last school-year-- it's so cool!
Must... apply... to AEON....
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HOW. I. ACHE. The pain, it HURTS somehow! *snicks*
I was at the State Fair in Raleigh yesterday. From two till eleven PM, to be exact. I ate thirty dollars' worth of food. I walked until my feet felt like they'd been pummelled. I rode on rides that made my sinuses feel like they were going to flatten my brain against the top of my skull. My ears and eyes throbbed from the fireworks display.
It was a BLAST! ^_^
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IT LIVES! (Thanks for the link, Cat!)
This lovely little chunk of the bizarre has just provided me with ten solid minutes of hilarity. I managed to get: Dilandau x Hakkai (talk about sister complexes... *snrk*), Treize x Seishirou (can you IMAGINE the conversations they'd have? oO ), Ken x Quatre, Treize x Ken, Schuldich x Wufei (wow, mind games) --the generator seemed to be very fond of GW/WK pairs, can you tell?; Tatsuha x Farfarello, Shuichi x Homura, Yuki (Kaikan Phrase) x Hiro (Gravitation), and last but not least, Yohji x Aya. Wheee!
In other news, I got off my ass and posted the rewritten first chunk of Alternate Fantasy. GAH. Tseng is so effing hard to write... I hope Reno and Rude feel like showing up more in the second piece. Little boogers, sneaking off like that.... I think it's time I finish the X bit o' fun, now-- that's something that doesn't need to be coherent by a long shot. Bring on the crack!
Must go now... more reading to be done. Bleah.
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Thank heaven for small favors.
And as much as I do wish CoJ could be finished-- how can I not understand completely? Hell, I've nearly left mine for dead for a few of the same reasons. I'm just glad it's still there for me to visit occasionally.
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Argh. Argh argh argh argh ARGH. >_< *beats head against wall* ...I just spent an entire afternoon re-formatting our computer's hard drive, and re-installing each and every driver/program/whateverthehell that previously resided therein. The monitor refuses to be anything other than 800x600 in all its 16-bit glory, but the cable connection WORKS, dammit, and that's enough for now.
The gods must have seen fit to placate me, however, because what do I find after slogging through a weekend of backed-up email? *drumroll* A whopping NINE concluding chapters of ETS, with two more chunks of ALTC to wash it down. Fanfic heaven, this is. I've spent the better part of three hours with a silly grin on my face, stuffing my shirtsleeve in my mouth to stifle mad laughter over the things that Aoe's Yohji says. 'Perverted panty thief', indeed. But the best thing about all those pages and pages of lovely non-canon characterization? Aoe's Omi. Oh my yes... this particular version, I must say, is my favorite. I didn't want the story to end mostly because she'd only begun to really show him off, and he's amazing. Freaky and sneaky and 100% in-control and still managing to be cute and loveable-- that's Omi, all right. HA! (Thank goodness for epilogues!)
...And for the other 99.9% of you who couldn't possibly care less, I'll ramble about, er, other things. Like the fact that I now own a coat that looks like it cost several stuffed animals their pelts-- in the most stylish way possible, of course. It's long and denim with fox-like fur trimming at the edges, and looks better on me than it ought. I also have my very own copy of Beauty and the Beast on DVD, at long last; and since we pre-ordered Lilo & Stitch at the same time, there's an adorable print of Stitch in his bra headgear sitting on my dresser. That sequence is too cute to be handled, I swear. XD
It's off to bed for me... I need to photograph my various pieces tomorrow, and hope that someone nearby has a computer whose monitor can handle more colors than a basic Crayola box. And read polysci. And clean my room. My lovely, clean, airy and comfy room... oh, how nice to be home and be lazy.
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Because everyone else did it first...
Heee. Oi, Diana... You're gonna KEEP those WK tapes, right??? And you have no idea how homesick I got when I read your blog today. Kasuya-sensei telling you to skip class... *speechless with joy*
I said it before, I'll say it again. Kindest, most /wonderful/ sensei in the world. (If any of you are Cardcaptor Sakura- knowledgeable, here's the deal: Kasuya-sensei IS Fujitaka Kinomoto. In professor-mode, at any rate. He's just that unbelieveably nice, and adorable-- yup, glasses, smile and all.) XD
Want sleep now. Saw The Barber Shop tonight-- enjoyed the hell out of it. Very funny, very good, and it's about damn time I liked a movie that had a happy ending. Buffy last night rocked my socks... it was a constant litany of 'EW!' for the last half hour (and me glad I'd already finished my bacon pizza) but wow, it was so much fun. I'm gonna miss it in the spring... maybe someone can send me tapes.
God, this polysci paper is gonna eat my brain... I feel like I've scoured every single shelf on all nine floors of the library. Of course, finding the Japanese history texts didn't help... giant coffee-table sized book on Ainu history and culture... NO! Must research industrialization of Turkey FIRST! Must... resist... *Zzzzzzzzzz*
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current music: 'Through The Night', Outlaw Star OP
This has been keeping me happily chained to the monitor for a good forty-five minutes each day-- I say that only because trying to read more than one chapter at a time would cause my brain to cramp. It's not often one finds a fic that requires this much concentration (rarer still, when it deserves such). Snarky, intelligent and very, very refreshing. Hurray for Neville!
I get to go home this weekend! I went home last weekend, too, although for less than 48 hours it was well worth the trip just to see my parents' faces when I walked into the kitchen. And NEXT weekend, on to the State Fair! If there's one thing as good as home (every once in a while), it's going home with one of your best friends. And Tuck Everlasting opens this weekend, only I've not been able to locate my copy of the book for a re-read... but we saw The Four Feathers on Saturday, and I spent the better part of three hours happily reaffirming that yes, Heath Ledger /does/ look positively delicious with dark, longish hair and a bit of eyeliner. Good movie, although I thought it was rather vague about a lot of things that seemed to be important to the plot... it felt confused, near the end. But that won't stop me seeing it a second time, in case I merely missed things here and there... ^_~
We are absolutely HORRID for each other, you know?! We really, really are. It's so much /fun/, though, isn't it? Heaven forbid we ever actually meet up someday, here or abroad. XD Kind of like me and Steph loose in Kyoto, only not /quite/ so insane.... Which reminds me, O Master of Wizzy Cheez, how was The Brotherhood of the Wolf? Was the puppy ugly-- er, evil enough for you?
I actually have several viable ideas for Halloween costumes this year... sadly, they all involve persons that none of my university friends (well, except for maybe you) know anything about. *sigh* And I'd make such a /good/ Yohji, too... *snrk* Of course, height and uber-cuteness aside, I'd have made a really good Mizuki before my hair grew longer, as well. Now, I look more like Namba.
The fashion world is torturing me this fall. Between Lagerfeld's new Chanel line and the stuff Express has been filling their stores with of late, it's all just one giant conspiracy to get me into wool skirts and smart-looking winter coats. Or to get me drawing them, at any rate. Even some of the Bill Blass ensembles managed to give me the sweater-buying itch. GAH. And the Hemmings photography homepage? Sheer Nara nostalgia, half of it. Freaky that I could even TELL, the way some of those photos were composed. I'd wish I could afford a print or two, but that would feel like cheating, somehow. Oh, to be in Gion in the spring.... and now, as I'm sure you can tell, it's well past sessha's bedtime.
My roommate never came back to eat the pizza I split with her. Hope she likes it refrigerated.
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...Whoops. Almost forgot. ^^; I noticed Kevin tinkering with our undergrad homepage yesterday, and I also noticed that all of our icons were gone. Suffice to say, I figured the eventual demise of our Design II project-pages had finally come about-- only just now remembered to actually CHECK the link, though.
So. I'm not all broken up about it, because I have duplicates of the entire site on disks and hard drives all OVER the place. As soon as I untangle my student webspace and get my online portfolio sorted out, everything will be back up and running... with lots of additions and a new look, even. Shweee.
Lesson learned: A shot of espresso at nine AM does a damn good job of keeping me alert... possibly a bit too good. I'll need another one before I go to class.
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Weiss: Gluhen (or, Thank Heaven For Digital Animation)
...and to be honest, it looks quite delicious-- but two things: No Schwartz, and Aya sporting a Duo-esque braid. AUGH! (Other than that, yummy.) Er, except for the giant red cross. Poor Yotan.
I want fansubs. This promises to be less visually traumatic but just as hilarious as the previous incarnation. Better yet... got any blank VHS tapes on you, Diana? ^_~
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current music: Mr. Children, 'NOT FOUND'
I think I waited entirely too long to do this. ^^;
Technomancy is no more... it makes me unreasonably sad. Mostly because that means no more 'Conscience'... but still. I'd hoped that was something that would stick around, yanno? *shrugs* Everyone has their reasons, though.
GLAY's gonna be performing in Beijing on October 13th! That's Drew's birthday! (we were at Todai-ji last year, with the Gaidai architecture class, and you were at TGS, right Steph?) If only I had a thousand dollars and a concert ticket... XD Man oh man. But I'm gonna be HOME this time around, and we're going up to Boone. I get to embarrass you in front of your friends, Drew! Yay!
Holy crap, my list of Things To Do tomorrow just keeps growing. I better cut this short and write them down before I forget.
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I really appreciated being rudely evicted from the building in my sleepshirt and boxer shorts at nine this morning, in the cold damp fog. Nothing like the ear-bleeding shriek of the fire alarm to wake me up in the morning, no sirree! What's more, waiting fifteen minutes for the fire trucks to show up and leave again was a lovely bonus. I even got to skip my shower, throw on some old clothes, and race to Mythology class just in time to see everyone else handing in a pop quiz on material I actually f*cking READ ON TIME.
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Which Subaru are you?
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