slr2moons

One of the things I do when I'm busy with work is sort of watch but mostly listen to a favorite film, and if I have it on DVD, I turn around and watch/listen again with the commentary. I just finished doing that with one of my all-time favorites, Donnie Darko director's cut.

( Disillusionment follows... )

There's something to be said for not seeking out the Word of God on your favorite pieces of fiction. Sometimes the window treatment is just the right shade of green, and not casting the shade of greed upon the characters as they talk in a key scene of a film. :|

Okay. Introspection over, back to work for me.

...and my (LJ) icon matches my expression. WTH did I just watch??

Alien franchise, I am disappointed in you. Plot holes you could drive trucks trough, no likable characters, dubious sequel setup, it was just a mess. Ugh. I suppose I should be grateful they didn't try to work one of Ripley's ancestors into the "plot" somewhere.

I'll give it three good ponts:

1. David the robot is a hottie. He can ride on my spaceship anytime.
2. The soundtrack is amazing.
3. Top-notch visual effects.

Otherwise? *points to "buh?" icon*

I'm back from the family reunion, which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. ^^ I reconnected with a distant daughter-of-mom's-cousin that I enjoyed spending time with aaaaages ago, when the first number of my age started with a 1. :B Also I've ended up the contact for my branch of the family, since my sister refused and we were the only grandchildren from my maternal grandmother's branch to go. There were 5 generations at the reunion, though none the 5th gen were in my branch.

I spent yesterday relaxing and recovering from the trip. I caught up with True Blood season 5, at least through ep 3. ^^ Lots of shirtless!Eric time, which I'm not going to complain about! :9 The focus this season is less on romance and more on plot. We'll see how it goes!

( I came SO VERY CLOSE to deleting my FB last night. )

I'm kind of a grump tonight. Please forgive me! I did my twice-yearly link check on my beloved ficrecs page, and I had to remove recs for two fics and two webcomics. T.T Both fics have vanished without mirrors or the promised pdf for one of them. One of the webcomics is no longer updating and the archive has been deleted. The other webcomic I chose to remove, as I am extremely disappointed with the artist. She had a fine webcomic of several years going, but she decided to chunk it all and redraw it from scratch. Last fall she removed her entire archive and started redrawing it from the beginning in a new--and IMO, far inferior--style. She also hasn't updated in half a year. I haven't enjoyed the webcomic since the change began, and my patience has officially run out. If I no longer like it, I'm not reccing it to others. *scowl* Oh look, my icon is VERY appropriate! the ~irony~!

But I did discover one of the fics I really enjoyed is no longer abandoned, and has been both updated and completed! I look forward to rereading the now-complete epic. ^^ It's a Twilight Jacob/Bella fic. Yes yes, laugh it up. ^^ That fic is amazing. Here's hoping the new stuff is just as good!!

The links-verified version of my recs page will go up with my next update in early July. ^^

On a prettier note (particularly when compared to the "new" artwork mentioned above. Humph!), I have to share this completely gorgeous flash-delivered webcomic: Knite by Wenqing Yan. SFW. It's worth a read for the art alone. I am completely humbled by this artist's digital painting skills. The story is good, too. Feast your eyes upon it!! Note each chapter won't load the first time for me, it stalls and I have to hit F5. That always works, though. ^^

I haven't been reading much webcomics these days, aside from the ones I actively read each week. I've been involved with my continuing manga catchup for the various titles available through Shonen Jump Alpha, as previously mentioned. Working on Toriko now. I'm liking it much better this 2nd round. Yay!

Oh yeah, and the new series in both SJ Alpha and Japanese Jump, Barrage by Horikoshi Kouhei, is quite enjoyable. The most promising start I've seen in Jump since Tegami Bachi debuted. Woot! XD

I saw Pixar's Brave this past weekend, with my family. It was enjoyable, but Finding Nemo still reigns unchallenged as my Pixar fave. The horse in Brave was very well done though, and my favorite part. But then, I'm biased. :3

There, that's a much more cheery note to end this post on. :D

I've been quite sociable the past two weeks! (Shocking, right?) Saturday the 19th I helped knastymike with the heavy lifting part of his move into a new apartment. It wasn't that bad...except the leather recliner. That thing was SO HEAVY OMG. >< I was sore for two days! Small price to pay for good company, though. And Mike boughtinkytwist (who tackled packing and unpacking the kitchen...YEEK!) and me food at Old Chicago Pizza (OM NOM NOM), and frozen yogurt after we saw the Avengers.

Speaking of which, fun film! Even with me not knowing much Avengers canon at all. :B I do know enough to want a Loki movie, where he can be badass and awesome and crack that smile and wear more tuxedos. :3

The next day, I drove down to Salem to meet up with one of my Sci-Fi book club buds, Acacia, and we went to see Battleship. It was fun! I liked it more than Avengers, too. *dodges tomatoes* It's true! Even if they killed off the actor we went to see the film for. :P~~~ At least he took his shirt off at one point. ^///^ And yes, he also appeared on-screen in uniform, which is what we bought our tickets for in the first place. This was Alexander Skaarsgard, BTW. Best-known as Eric Northman, sexy Viking vampire in True Blood. Rowr! We ate at an El Salvadorian place. It was very tasty. :9

After that, I scrambled like mad to finish Naruto 59 and Skip 29 on time, which I did manage. ^^ Skip is now completely in the can, still awaiting corrections on Naruto. Clay 21 is almost done, I'm waiting for either more corrections or the go-ahead to upload. Now I'm powering along with Natsume 13! And this volume is making my BL-loving heart just pitter-pat. *giggles like she's 14*

Then this weekend, I lost my beloved pocketknife on Friday morning, during my usual run. I didn't notice it was gone until I was emptying my pockets after finishing, and the knife wasn't there. I immediately retraced my entire 3.5 mile loop, and no knife. T.T As much foot traffic as this area has, it could have been on the ground as short as 20 seconds before someone scooped it up.

I've had that knife since 1998, when my Dad gave it to me before I headed off to art school. *cries* I keep telling myself it's just an object, and if someone decides to commit murder with it, that they'll wipe my fingerprints off it, too. >< My mom says Dad will have fun shopping for a replacement for me. This gives me something to anticipate, at least. I feel naked when I go outside without my knife. I alllways carried that knife with me everywhere. *sniffle*

On Friday evening, knastymike and inkytwist sent me an impromptu invite to Mongolian grill, after they finished cleaning up knastymike's old apartment. I'd just eaten dinner, so I had ice cream while they had real food. Good company and conversation!

And on Monday, it was saladbats' birthday! I headed out to a Doctor Who-themed room inside a fish-and-chips place in the NE of Portland. Only took me 15 minutes to drive! I could have ridden the Max, but by the time I realized how simple it would have been, it was already too late to make it that way. :P No matter, driving was fun! I made a new friend,winnett, sawsnottygirl again, and hope to hang out with all of them more, soon! We are all writers or appreciators of same, and the whole lot of us are complete geeks. FUN! XD Even if all the Doctor Who themed stuff was wasted on me. *makes flyby noise*

Oho, and I ordered a Scottish soda. "Irn Bru". Tastes like bubblegum. I liked it, though I couldn't drink it every day. Far too sweet!

One of the webcomics I enjoy every week, Candi, is asking for guest strips. I'm going for it! OMG SO EXCITING!! XD I'm going to try to finish it before the 1st. KYAAA!! It will be my first guest webcomic strip, the first of many I hope! :D

And finally, I have a dreamwidth account. Not sure how much I'll use it, but it's there if I need it! I'm slr2moons there too, of course. ^^ 

Script for Saiun 4 arrived last Monday, a week ago. The deadline is in a month, which means 8 pages a day. Wheee! I'm perfectly on schedule so far! *knocks on wood*

Thankfully I finished Skip 25 on Saturday, which reduced my daily page quota from 20 (8 Saiun plus 4 each for Clay, Natsume, and Skip) to 16, which is definitely more manageable. I'm hoping I can start running again, as I haven't had the time to leave my apartment for more than snail mail checks and one grocery trip for the past week. It hasn't been too long since my last run, though. I shouldn't have lost too much of my stamina. --;

( Things I watched and a manga review that makes me face a formerly unknown side of myself. Oh my! ).

Back to work for me. 14 more pages today to go!

I'm back from Montana, and it looks like the cold followed me home. *pained expression* Not only was the temperature somewhere in the teens when I stepped off the Max for the 3/4ths mile walk back to my apartment on Sunday night, but there was a strong wind blowing, too! Brrrrr! I ran a third of the distance, hauling 25 pounds of luggage between my backpack and roller suitcase. It was that cold. Guh.

( Much writing about cats, trip details, book club, reading, anime, manga, Utena2, and movies. Wheee! )

And finally, a brief shigoto update: Naruto 48's conversion is coming along nicely, I'll finish the first half in about a week. I do have script for Natsume 3.2, and am about 12 pages in. Script for Nana 21.1 and Skip 22 are supposed to arrive sometime in January. Prolly the same can be said for New Title 5. It's all going to hit at once, looks like! Kyaaa! =D

Oh yes, and for a bit of an ironic laugh, I lugged Anthy, the drawing tablet I use with Usagi, to Montana with the plan of doing some work on my trip. However...I forgot to take the drawing stylus. And you can't walk into Best Buy or somesuch and pick up a replacement. So I lugged Anthy all that way as sheer dead weight. OOPS. *headdesk* I won't make that mistake again!

And now, minna, work calls. *salutes* (If anyone actually reads this whole post, I will be very impressed!)

First up, there has been no repetition of unexplained knocks in my house, at least that I've heard. Though I haven't taken a nap on the floor since then, either. My grandmother always hated it when I was being "lazy". I would not put it above her to still be disapproving from beyond the grave. My parents and I will try to recreate the sounds, hopefully on Sunday. A large plastic empty detergent bucket IS on the roof, and apparently it WAS windy that day, though it would take one hell of a set of coincidences to make three repetitions of four evenly-spaced knocks caused by wind and a loose bucket. Not to mention how the bangs conveniently moved to the front window when I moved into the kitchen!!!  With the bucket remaining on the roof. Hmmmmmmmm. We'll see.

( tl;dr version: Sweeney Todd is good, manga shopping is fun, food is yummy )
( Just take me straight to the shiogoto update! :P~~~ )

You know, the bad thing about icy, cold weather is that it sucks out all my energy and always leaves me starving. Today, for example. I've barely finished my quota--not counting Clay--and it's already almost 1 AM. I haven't pre-lettered a single page of Skip or Nana b/c to keep myself going, I read manga or fanfic in spare moments while saving and printing. And of course, the English is supposed to begin arriving on Tuesday. So tonight, to take advantage of my blahness and what is left of my post-Clay-pre-English time, I began watching my Donnie Darko Director's Cut DVD.

Ahhh...Donnie Darko. This movie is amazing. It staggers the mind! I wish *I* had thought of it, and that's one of the highest complements I can give. I've seen the theatrical version 5 or 6 times. I've seen this director's cut once, at a Donnie Darko party at Kioko-nai's house. However, since the party consisted of about 12 women, 2 guys, and at least one dog crammed into Kioko-nai's room, I wasn't able to concentrate on the film all that much. But thanks to Rei-chan's Xmas gift to me, I can finally give this version of the film the attention it deserves. And I'm not merely talking about me ogling Jake Gyllenhaal's veiny bicep. Which I admit, I did do. Along with the rest of his upper-body when it isn't veiled by his clothing. It's been over a year, possibly two, since I last watch this film, so I look forward to rediscovering it. I stopped about 20 minutes in b/c I felt like writing here, which I haven't done in a few days. I could babble on quite a bit about this film, but I think I'll save my comments for after I finish watching it again. I remember Kioko-nai mentioned finding some very interesting theories about the film's meaning online, so I'll probably do some googling once the movie's finished.

If any of you noticed my last friends-only post and were unable to read it, it was the 2nd chapter of my fanfic. Fear not, once it's available for reading on fanfiction.net, I'll post the link here.

I'm hungry again. And it's only been an hour since I ate a bowl of yogurt with two cups of cereal stirred in. >< Cold weather always does this to me!

I'm a bit worried about the arrival of the English. It was originally supposed to be here the week of Thanksgiving, then it was pushed back to between Christmas and New Years, and now it's finally arriving in two days. Theoretically. Apparently, the penciller is the reason it's been so delayed. So the aforementioned artist is...what...two months late finishing his pages? Two and a half? And now, like before, it's up to me to finish ASAP. Bleague. I am so very glad this is the LAST issue. I think this time, I will not touch any pages of the English until my regular daily Clay-Nana-Skip quota is finished. I do have a huge buffer for Nana and Skip, but I need to keep as much of it as possible for when The New Title arrives.

But let's talk about more fun things! For example, the magnificent fanfic I've been reading!! As with almost all things fanfic that I read, it somehow ties into the lj community fanficrants, which I frequent for my own amusement. A few months back, someone mentioned a different lj community, ffnet_goodfic, which is where people can recommend good fanfictions they have found posted at fanfiction.net. This community has two or three posts a week, so it's rather low-traffic, but worth it!! A few days ago, a user rec'ed a Pride and Prejudice fanfic retelling set in the modern world, using rock starts and artists. Don't let that drive you away, it's very good!! Here's the link, for those who might want to try it: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2749813/1/ Ahhhh, an excellent story!! It would make one hell of a movie if they did it right. ^^V I'm in Chapter 9 myself. Lizzie is visiting at Pemberly and has seen Mr. Darcy's good side and met his sweet little sister. 

I really was looking forward to celebrating Kioko-nai's bday this evening, but she delayed it for a week b/c of the icy weather. So next Saturday I will finally eat sushi for the first time. I'm a bit leery, as I don't like fish and I don't like raw meat. But I do want to at least try it. Sushi is such a mainstay of Japanese culture, I need to at least be able to say I've attempted to eat it. X_x After the sushi, we will head to a karaoke place in Dallas that has jpop and jrock songs available!! Kioko-nai reserved a room for her party from 8-2. Wheee! 6 hours of singing fun! Heh! I'll be amazed if I know more than 4 or 5 songs, though. I only listen to my movie and anime soundtracks and mp3s, so modern songs--from any country--are only in my lexicon if they've been in something I've watched. X_x I suppose they'll have "classics" like "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. And perhaps some L'Arc classics, too. I have their "Ray" CD memorized, particularly "Hana Sou" and "Silver Shining". It will be most interesting...maybe they'll have the Naruto themes, as well. I do SO love "Harumonia/Harmony" and "Kanashimi o Yasashisa ni". In fact, I think I'll crank up that CD now. ^^V One of the best $35 I've ever spent!!

I suppose I either need to upgrade to the flash-me-with-advertisements versions of lj for more userpics, or go to the paid version. (It's what, $2 a month? Something like that?) Anyway, 6 pics isn't enough. :P

My copy of the Feb issue of Shojo Beat is still not here, as usual. The gripings at the Shojobeat jl comm are continuing without my help. It's rather scary how many people have said they only read the mag for Nana.  X_x The general consensus is the non-manga pages are pointless, and that when it comes to content, Shonen Jump is much better. The manga published in NA-Jump is published weekly in J-Jump, so they print several chapters each month in NA-Jump to match the J-Jump rate. The Shojo Beat titles were published monthly in Japan, and monthly here. So at first glance, it looks like the boys are getting more each month. Technically, they are... And Jump doesn't have all the fashion/beauty nonsense (or the male equivalent) that is foisted upon Shojo Beat readers. The Jump articles are apparently interviews, rewviews, cultural notes, and the stuff that Shojo Beat DID have when it first appeared. Once again, the boys get the good treatment. *sighs* Anyway, one of these days when the comm is quiet I intend to post a Skip Beat! plug. The series is so fun, and beautiful to gaze upon, and unpredictable, and DIFFERENT! I wish they would advertise it more. I see the occasional ad in the back of Shojo Beat books, and the odd blurb in an issue of the mag, and that's pretty much it. In the Dec issue they did give Skip a full-page write up, so I suppose all hope is not lost.

I was reading another one of the books Onee-chan gave me for Xmas, this time the first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, "The Color of Magic". For those who might not know, Terry Pratchett writes fantasy humor. It's British humor, but it really is FUNNY. But alas, I really AM addicted to manga. About 2/3rds of the way through Mr. Pratchett, I had the burning need to go read Tokyo Boys and Girls. Now that I have all 5 volumes, I can finish the series. XD So I'm in the middle of TB&G v4. Once I finish, I'll switch back to Mr. Pratchett. No offense, Mr. Pratchett, but if I had forced myself to finish you first, I'd have been so distracted by my need to read manga that I wouldn't have been able to give you the attention you deserve. It's better this way! Now I'll have it out of my system and will be able to grant your prose the proper respect. *nods*

La la la. My brain blanked. X_x Two last bits before I depart: 1. I had to send Uncle Sam a 4-digit check this week for taxes. Joy. This is one of the few drawbacks to being self-employed. 2. I'm tempted to get started on that catalogue of Shojo Beat non-manga content I've been debating for weeks. It might sound incredibly boring and wasteful of my time, but I want to be able to look at it laid out all nicely in a color-coded chart. AND it will perk me right up and help me get some Clay pages done today. Oh yes, I know how my mind works. 

And I'm still hungry. Ttaku mo!!! ><