Midaregami

I believe I’ve sung the praises of the first two Flight books already. Book 3 has been out for some time—since June, actually. Lacking, as I do, a regular comic store at which I can obtain this sort of geek paraphernalia in a timely fashion, I only remembered to get Flight 3 a week or so ago, and am only now managing to write about it.

I said “geek paraphernalia,” and it is an inescapable fact that Flight 3 is what most would call a “comic book.” But this collection of stories is something that transcends such a lable, shedding the raiment of the nerd ghetto somewhere on the way to the house of High Art.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, go out and buy this book right goddamn now. It will make you want to do something beautiful.

Today I picked up:

• The Five Fists of Science
• Demo
• Flight 3

It was a good day for comics.

In the middle of a bizarre allergic reaction to (apparently) air, that remains unfazed by—indeed, laughs at—my puny earth “antihistamines,” I have been unable to do much so far this weekend. Apparently, though, I found it within myself to finish off the latest ditty, number, song, what-have-you.

It is called A Strange Ostinato Echoes Across the Tharsis Bulge and Through Valles Marineris.

And to preemptively answer a question: Yes, the hand-claps were a great deal of fun to record.

Sometimes—no, often, for music dorks—an album or artist will become inescapably associated with a particular time or place in a listener’s life. This has happened to me quite a bit; The Brilliant Green’s Terra 2001 with a visit to the Bay Area, Orange Pekoe’s Organic Plastic Music with Toyooka in November, the Casshern soundtrack and Brian Wilson’s Smile with the 3 AM commute to Target in Missoula, Montana—these are not thematic or semantic associations, but rather experiential ones.

Alright, I’m delinquent. There are a variety of topics I could be discussing here, now that the semester’s over and vacation’s started, but haven’t been very… proactive about it.

I have been proactive about other things. Tuneful things. For example, it has occurred to me that The Second Line Dances Even When Dead. You may or may not agree.

I have also heard things, things about Youth and Transience—but I have not finished transcribing the message. Rest assured that it will be here when it is ready.

Some of these would be hilarious. Some would just be awesome. Others would destroy you.

• Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Shinji with Feist’s “Secret Heart”

• Spike and Julia from Cowboy Bebop with MC Solaar’s “La Belle et le Bad Boy.”

• Golden Boy’s Kintaro with Momus’s “Born to be Adored By Women”

• Omoide Poroporo, just in general, with Spitz’s “Countryside Life”

• Arima from His and Her Circumstances with the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” especially around episodes 18 and 19

• Chii from Chobits with The Flaming Lips’ “One More Robot/Symphony 3000-21.”

• Miyu from Vampire Princess Miyu with Blonde Redhead’s “Melody.”

• I will be god-damned if I can think of a good Kimagure Orange Road music video. I just can’t think of the right combination.

• Finally, they need to do a Nana anime, and Shena Ringo needs to cover The Killers’ “Indie Rock & Roll,” so that somebody can do the video and make me weep openly, sobbing great sobs for a past that never was.

Okay, I think I got that out of my system. Also, comments are back on. Thanks, Fluffy.

So, I know Full Metal Alchemist is supposed to be great, but I saw a couple of episodes, and here were a couple of my thoughts.

“The older brother is a stoic-yet-idealistic fighter trying to atone for his wrongs?! NO SHIT REALLY?”

“And there’s a supportive girl who’s secretly in love with him? OKAY THAT’S JUST CRAZY TALK.”

Ah, anime. No wonder I don’t watch as much of you anymore.

After laboring on and off for a few weeks with Garageband and the Roland, I present to you all my first “completed” song: An Abyss Too Bright.

This song started out with a bass line that Mark laid down for me this past summer. It is a minor tragedy that we’re not in the same town to get up to such musical shenanigans more often, since he’s both technically adroit and melodically creative. Everything I did in this song stems from the little phrase he played for me in July.

I’m happy with this one. I only used canned loops for the two drum beats; everything else I recorded or sequenced myself. I am humbled by the tools I used to create this tune; shit works together too well, too well by far. This is what I bought the computer for, and I am not disappointed in the least.

A couple of people may have heard earlier versions of this piece, so if you’re one of those people, it’s worth downloading again.

It’s something like a week after the fact, but it bears mentioning that I very much enjoyed my birthday. The festivities were spread out over the weekend, but here are the highlights. I:

1. Saw Serenity.
2. Made and ate spaghetti from scratch.
3. Received some excellent presents.

Regarding Serenity. The same graduate student colleague who turned me on to “Settlers of Catan” lent me the Firefly box set, and despite a few complaints I have with some quirks of the show, it was ridiculously, gloriously good. And, thanks to my late appreciation of it, I only had to wait a few weeks for the release of the movie, “Serenity,” that promised to conclude the series (whose run was tragically cut short). The movie was good, damn good. I am a leaf on the wind.

About the spaghetti. A huge shipment of boxes from home arrived, and among the books and DVDs that define my identity as a dork was my beloved spaghetti maker. We made a batch that very night, homemade noodles and sauce, which, with the nice Chianti Jake bought, combined to make a meal that was, in his words, “retardedly good.” Retardedly. I need to do it again soon.

And finally, a word on presents. I got excellent, unexpected presents that I will enjoy for months or years to come. And flowers. That’s pretty much all that needs saying—that and the fact that I have shockingly cool friends.

More posts are coming—big, meaty discourses on classical Japanese and the nature of suffering, among others—but in the meantime Fluffy asks that I translate the sentences from the previously-posted homework assignment into English, so here they are. Warning: They are not funny. Seriously. They were just random sentences I came up with to fit a particular tree-structure.

Things are going well.

To wit:

• A discussion with Jake about note-taking led me to set up a locally-hosted Wiki to organize and cross-reference notes. It was supposed to be hard, but setting up MySQL and MediaWiki was almost trivial. I’ve set up categories for class notes, authors, primary sources, secondary sources, themes, and faculty. Those are just guesses at how I might need to organize it, but I’m hoping that the ability to hyperlink everything together quickly and easily will make the knowledge more accessible and studying more efficient. Ultimately, it should be barely more effort than taking notes in a text file.

• I got a box to ship my bike in, and a great honking case to pack my keyboard in. It’s huge.

• Accelerando is everything I hoped it would be. Oh, didn’t I mention Accelerando? I’m sorry, I was busy daydreaming about hyperintelligent lobsters. The daydream also included interstellar ships the size of a deck of cards crewed by the uploaded intelligences of posthuman revolutionaries. You can download the whole novel from Amazon for free. For free.

• The fourth volume of Samurai Champloo is excellent.