Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I skipped my Zoom writing accountability meeting today because I need to watch all the things before we dump our Hulu subscription on the first. 

The truly hilarious part of this is that the only thing I really need to watch is the second season of the new Bleach arc (Thousand Year Blood War). And, I say this as a tried and true Bleach fan, but it is so dumb and so cringe (the jiggle physics are just... gods help us all) that I need an emotional support fan to be on Discord with me while I watch it.

Seriously, I tried this on my own several times before and I kept hitting cetain moments where I'd have to stop, yell, "THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, KUBO*" slam the off button, and then not watch for months. 

My dear longtime Bleach fan friend in Wales agreed to sit with me (on Discord and on a different streaming platform and in a different time zone) so that we could both get through this. I mean, there is part of me that would be fine if I never watched it to the end. I hate the ending with the fire of a thousand burning suns. However, I am such a completist for this fandom that it just doesn't feel right to give up, you know? I'm still writing fic in this universe from time to time (though my fervor has mostly died. I used to post something once a week. I just don't have that fire in my belly any more since Kubo killed all that is good and right in the world, by which I mostly mean Captain Ukitake but also my ships.) And, despite everything, some of the very best twists--some of which were signaled from the very begining--are in this arc. So, it's... worth it??

Plus, at this point I only have to put up with it for a couple of days. Then there's no more Hulu and no more Bleach. In the US, Hulu is the only place it's streaming; you can't even get it on Crunchyroll. So, I'm in it for the next however many days. And, we watched quite a few episodes today. Hopefully, we can just power through it. (We haven't even hit the awful transphobic scene yet. I can not watch that alone.)

So, that's part of what I'm watching and reading. Not that I would recommend it to anyone. Unless I HATED them.

The other media related thing I did recently was that I downloaded a whole bunch of audiobooks from Libby. Let me do an informal poll (not a real one, because I have never figured out how to embed them). Which of these should I listen to first:

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen
On Earth as It is on Television by Emily Jane
Queers Destroy Science Fiction! by Lightspeed, et. al
Amped by Daniel H. Wilson

I will eventually try to read them all in the time I have, and, if I'm honest, no matter what you all recommend I start with, I'll probaby start with whichever one is shortest (which is The Echo Wife, at 8 hours.)

Otherwise, I haven't been reading all that much. I did end up watching an anime (also on Hulu, since it was going away,) called Summer Time Rendering, which I liked for the cleverness of the time looping. It starts out seeming like it's going to be a murder mystery version of the movie Groundhog's Day (1993), but then the story veers into science fiction (and dark fantasy) kind of quickly. I will say that if you are not an anime or manga fan, this isn't a good one to start with, unfortunately. The manga it was based on is from a genre/publishing category called ecchi, which means that--speaking of jiggle physics--there is more than the typical amount of "fan service." Lots of panty shots and bouncing D-cup boobies. Heavy male gaze. And not nearly enough pretty. pretty men to make up for it. 

However, the mystery as it gets unraveled was pretty fascinating and by the time it turns into a battle/fighting anime (Summertime Render, the manga version, was a Monthly Shounen JUMP+ product, so becoming a fighting manga was inevitable, alas), the cleverness shifts to "how are they going to out run time and thwart the bad guy's ability to track them, this time." Which is a neat way to do it, for my money.  If you are cool with all the ecchi, I would recommend it. If not, yeah, there are a lot of uncomfortably large boobs bouncing around without nearly enough support. :-(

Otherwise, I will need to report soon on how my New Year's Resolution is going. I've heard back from nearly all 20 of the people who signed up to be my pen pal for a year. It's been really good for my mental health to have something to look foward to in my post box (gods know, my inbox is full of Democrats screaming for money and push articles from the NY Times and The Atlantic reminding me that the world is, in fact, on fire and democracy has died in darkness weeks ago.)

ANYWAY.

Oh, I forgot one other thing that I watched: The God of Ramen (2013). This a live-action documentary about a guy who makes ramen really, really well.  I am a member of Japanese Film Festival and so I get a lot of notifications when they run online "screenings" of various movies for international audiences. I have a couple more that I want to watch, but I also need to get though Bleach....

How are you all holding up? Reading (or watching) anything interesting lately? 


==

*Kubo Tite, Bleach's mangaka. A man I love to hate and hate to love. A ruiner of lives. A gifted genius and babbling dumb face.

 I finally moved a lamp in our bedroom so that I have decent light to read by at night, and so I started a non-fiction book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. The book appeared in our little free library, and I pulled it out because I am actually very interested in this subject. As I think I have reported here before, one of the reasons I returned to DW was because of a renewed interest in "long-form" communication. I'd been feeling especially scattered and burned out by the fast-pace, rock-skipping-over-the-water's-surface-ness of Facebook and Twitter.

So far, this book is pretty interesting. It's a bit old, having come out almost 10 years ago, but I'm still finding it interesting because it's explicitly not about content. The author is not trying to say "internet bad," which is often where these kinds of books start. Instead, the author is very clear that there are TONS of benefits to being online, and, that's kind of the point. We are here because we both want and need to be, now what? 

Anyway, that's what I've been reading. 

I also went on a really interesting, though not very visually stunning tour of Ueno's Ameyoko market. Ueno is one of those neighborhoods in Tokyo that I mostly know because Pimsleur decided I needed to know how to ask for the train station there. There is also a very famous, old zoo there, which Duolingo has used to teach me to talk about animals. So, it's kind of weird to suddenly be walking around in a place I think of as part of my language lessons and not much else. 

In fact, I took a picture of the Zoo, because I was so used to seeing it in my lessons, that I COULD ACTUALLY READ THE KANJI.


Image: the rather dull entrance to Ueno Zoo, only notable for Lyda's reading skills (yes, the name is also there in English.).

The tour was promoted as "Peculiar Tokyo," and the highlight was Ameyoko a street known for its history as a black market. What I found particularly fascinating about this was the tour guide's explanation of the history of the name of the street. As in the link referenced above, Kei told us that the street's name is a shortened form of "Ameya Yokocho" which means candy store alley, and the connection to the black market is that in Japan, as in most places during WWII, there were sugar rations. So, if you were a candy maker, you were probably also in it with the black market. Candy sellers still make their homes on this street, as well.

Another take is that "Ame" was a short form of American, since after the war, during the occupation, there was a brisk trade of American goods in this black market alley as well.


Ameyoko market entryway. 

This tour should not have been as exciting as it was for me, but it made a strange Bleach connection for me, because there is a very shady shopkeeper who happens to be the mentor to the hero, who owns, of all weird things, a candy store. It does, in fact, operate as a black market for people from the other side (the Soul Society,) but I have NO IDEA if the author intended this connection or not. I tend to think of Kubo-sensei as a kind of savant, so who knows. As a friend of mine wondered, is this a common enough connection to drop into a shounen manga?? Or did Kubo just have one of his strangely brilliant moments??  

As one writer to another, I say: both. Both is entirely possible. Gods know, I sometimes write stuff in that later I'm like, "OH, that's real thing? Right! Well, then I meant it that way!!" 

At any rate, Kei, our tour guide, was perky and interesting. He had apparently been hired by the tour company he was currently working for, specifically for the Olympics. In the end, of course, he said that he only managed to give a few tours to some athletes. His English was excellent, and he explained that he'd studied for several years in Canada. He kept begging us all to start travelling again soon, which was kind of sadlarious.

He worked really hard to engage with us across the miles, and, at one point, asked people to drop into the chat their favorite Japanese foods. I volunteered takoyaki, which are fried octopus balls (not testicles, which I'm not even sure octopuses have, but you know, like how hushpuppies are "balls"). At any rate, Kei was deeply surprised that anyone outside of Japan had had takoyaki and so when we were in the actual market street, he stopped to buy some to show everyone what they were like. I enjoyed that part a LOT because I got to see which condiments he chose to put on his--typically, here in the US, they're served with Japanese mayo, bonito flakes, and another kind of dark sauce, probably this takoyaki sauce that Wikipeida references. He had the dark sauce, no mayo, bonito flakes, and something I rarely get, which was a kind of seaweed sprinkle. 

It made me very much crave a trip to Zen Box. 

What was also surprising was the number of Americans who were like, "Wait, what? You can get takoyaki in St. Paul, MN??" and I was in the chat saying, "Yes, in more than one place." Google can find four places for me, two of which I've had the takoyaki at, Ishita Ramen and Zen Box. But, they are also common at the local Obon celebration at Como Park in the summer. I feel like I also picked them up at one of the night markets, in the days before the pandemic.

My point is, and I do have one, that I'm still learning things about Japan through these trips.

I noticed the silence, too, that fell when Kei asked us if anyone had been to Japan. No one. Some people had friends or family that lived somewhere in Japan, but none of us had travelled there. It makes me curious if part of the appeal of HeyGo for other people is the same as it is for me--a chance to go somewhere I will probably never be able to afford to go to in Real Life (tm).


Image: The market stalls in Ueno's Ameyoko Street

I did a few other tours last week, but I found most of them vaguely disappointing. For instance, I went to Shinjuku's Central Park with a French foreign national living in Japan, whom I suspect is one of the few guides who is not a professional tour guide. I say this because she said that she could not find much information on the park in English, which... I mean, she's not wrong. However, I feel like what the others have done in those cases is supplement with information about the neighborhood? I am probably being too judgmental. However, I have been considering trying to see if HeyGo would hire me, so I am always thinking about this sort of problem and trying to solve it for myself. Like, okay, if I took people to Como Park here in Saint Paul, maybe there isn't a huge amount of information about it, but that's when you supplement with information about architects of park buildings and other local historical or interesting facts.

Shinjuku itself is fascinating.

Moreover, I had previously never heard of the skyscraper district, Nishi-Shinjuku, which this park is located near.


Image: in the distance is a very fascinating cocoon shaped building, Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower.

Apparently, according to Wikipedia, the building was commissioned by Mode Gakuen (an educational firm) as a kind of contest, with the stipulation to its architects that the skyscraper could be anything other than a rectangle!  I only just learned that, however, our tour guide only mentioned all the various schools inside, which is interesting? Since it is also the second tallest educational building in the world.

I believe we are also looking at the cocoon building over the wall of the man-made water falls, which are known as "Shinjuku's Niagara Falls," which, "The Tokyo Weekender has described the water feature as 'generously named.'" Which cracks me up.

I will admit I bailed on this tour pretty early, and I probably missed the best part, which is the shrine at the far end of the park. Our guide had a very shaky cam, and sometimes I can roll with that and sometimes it makes me very queasy. This was a queasy time, unfortunately. I did sign-up to do another tour with this particular guide because she is headed to Shinjuku Park National Garden, which I BELIEVE is where one of my favorite anime is set, Midnight Occult Civil Servants had several episodes take place. (There are a lot of parks in Shinjuku, it turns out. I am hoping to see some locations I might recognize. I actually thought I recognized a place at the Central Park, but I'm not sure.)  At any rate, I am willing to give this particular guide a second chance.

This whole camera issue is currently the main thing stopping me from seeing if HeyGo would take me as a tour guide. I don't have a selfie stick, which a lot of the best guides seem to have (and it really seems to contribute to better sense of steadiness), and I really doubt my Tracfone service is going to be able to handle the bandwidth/streaming data required. However, it's a constant source of amusement for me to imagine what I would show off in St. Paul if I were a guide here.

It's Monday. I've been having a pretty decent day, perhaps DESPITE that fact?

It started out with a lovely chat withjiawen, which I had to unfortunately cut short because our internet at home gets throttled now and again and suddenly it couldn't handle both my convo and my wife's work Zoom meeting. Of course, I had to bow out because... work, but, dang it, we were right in the middle of SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS.

This is why we can't have nice things.

If women could just get to finish their conversations, all the answers would be made clear. ;-)

Then, I had to quick eat a little lunch (as we say here in Minnesota) because I had a telephone interview scheduled with a journalist in Montevideo, MN. I have an upcoming workshop there with a mentee of mine who is the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. (If you're curious about the event, it is here: https://mefullerwords.com/feedback-matters-workshop/)  We talked about my writing and about what I enjoy about mentoring. I will link to the article when it comes out, if people are at all curious. 

You know, when people talk about doing things "for the exposure," I mostly roll my eyes.  But, I am really hoping that an article in a local newspaper might actually cause one or two people to look me up and buy a few books. Sad, innit?

Otherwise, we are just back from a weekend up at our friends' cabin in Siren, Wisconsin. They have a lovely property and have worked extensively to naturalize the shoreline with native plants.  We, of course, have not seen them since the pandemic so there was a lot to catch-up on. We took a number of pontoon rides around Crooked Lake and, during one of them, we got to see an eagle snagging dinner right out of the lake.  Fairly majestic. The weather was rainy? But, we needed the rain so I am not complaining!



Image: Gerriann told me the name of this flower, but I have forgotten. It was in bloom all along the shore.

Of course, the other excitement in my life is that Kubo Tite just dropped a new one-shot chapter of Bleach in honor of the 20th anniversary. Here's a link both to my review of it (with SPOILERS) and a link to the pirate scanlators that have it up already: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2021/08/08/bleach-no-breathes-from-hell-by-kubo-tite/

This has required my return to Tumblr to see what people are saying! So, you know, busy! Busy!

How's you on this fine beginning of a week??

 Yesterday, Shawn and I made a trip to her work to pick up a laptop for use at home. She'd been using an old chromebook which was sort of working, but then suddenly decided that all this video conferencing was for fools. So, off we went to deserted building. 

We decided to drive down Grand Avenue, which is an area that's full of cute little shops and restaurants. We remarked to each other about all the handwritten/computer printed signed announcing various closures, and which places were still open: the fabric store! Hooray!  So, we decided that on the way back we should stop in an support a few of the businesses, particularly the bagel shop and the bakery.  

When I went into the bagel shop, the one other customer there visibly leaped away from me. This was only amusing since we were already easily a dozen feet from each other and he clearly had been at the counter telling the employees what kind of sandwich he wanted. The employees were also within six feet of each other because there really isn't room for them behind the counter to be anything other than elbow to elbow. This same guy also did the fast back-up when I headed to the counter to pay, which again, all I could do was eye roll, because, seriously, there is currently no other way for him or anyone else to pay without touching credit cards and standing a counter length apart. But, I guess some people figure that employees have some kind of immunity? Or maybe they don't actually EXIST other than to serve you and that the only people to be worried about are the other customers?  I wanted to tell him that I see far fewer people in my daily life than these poor employees (who probably have no sick time,) but then I am actually only one step removed from a confirmed case, so, the truth is, yeah, go ahead and keep your distance. It's just that he's being dumb to assume I'm the only worry he has in that place.

Otherwise, I had a nice chat with the people working at Breadsmith about their plans to try to stay open.

In other non-plague news, I got my cover art for Unjust Cause and it's AMAZING.  I can't wait to be able to show it off to you all. 

Oh, and Bleach is getting an animation of its final arc...

 I volunteered to be part of a pop-up library at Anime Detour this weekend, though MELSA, the over-arching library organization to which Ramsey County Libraries belong. The gig was short two-hour shifts, and I thought why not? If nothing else, it's essentially a free past to the con.  They encouraged cosplay, so I dug out my old Aizen cosplay. The picture is blurry because the only full length mirror we have in our house is behind a door that we almost never close and even though I washed centuries of dust off the surface, the glass is still wavy with age. But, I wanted to show a full length picture because frankly, the footwear is my best part. The tabi (the two toed socks are PERFECT). The rest is borrowed or thrift store finds.



Finding the convention was kind of trip. I had not gone last year when they moved venues, so finding the Hyatt on Nicollet Avenue was a lot of me cursing while making u-turns in downtown Minneapolis. I have long joked that since moving to St. Paul the directional faeries of Minneapolis have rejected me, because things I used to find with ease now completely baffle me.  So, I'm glad I left a half hour earlier than I normally would have given myself to get into downtown, because... yeah.

The pop-up library was fun. They had a tables set up with a bunch of different activities. There were, of course, manga to look through and read (but we weren't checking any out,) comfy spots to read, etc., but we were also hosting a raffle drawing and a button for a fact table. I ended up staffing the button table. The idea is, that if you write down a fact (any fact, doesn't have to be manga or anime related, it can be like, "I am attending Anime Detour") and in exchange you can pick up a fannish related button for FREE.



Somehow I look ten times fatter in this picture. Ah, well, such is life. You can at least see the table with the buttons on it.

I had to pick up Shawn right after my shift, so I didn't get much of a chance to wander around the con. I went into artist's alley, and glanced at stuff but decided I'd better get going, because rush hour. 

And then I couldn't remember where I parked my car.

Like, I was standing around in downtown Minneapolis thinking, "Oh my god, which one of these bazillion parking ramps is the one I went into???" I have a pretty good directional memory, so I knew approximately what street (turns out I had the right parking lot on the first guess, but I went in the wrong door so the interior looked different.) At one point I was thinking, what do I even do if I can never figure it out? Do I take the bus home and wait for them to impound it?? We only have the one car!  But, after much panicked searching, I did find it. I even SOMEHOW made it across town in time to pick up Shawn at the usual time.

So that was my day. I do it again tomorrow night.

Meanwhile, Mason is still roboting. He's got tomorrow, as well. I heard from Shawn that their team won a few rounds and seemed to generally have a good day. I won't probably head out to pick him up until after 6:30 pm. Long days for that kid. I'll have to post more of the pictures that they shared on their twitter feed.

 

You guys have no idea HOW LONG I have wanted a hat that mimics Renji's forehead tattoos and hair. I have met many knitters in my life and BEGGED all of them, bribed, cajoled, even attempted to seduce them to make me this hat. All to no avail.  Finally, my friend Anna in Canada took the plunge. She is also one of the last remaining Bleach fans in the world, so that might have helped matters.

Anyway, I think I look awesome and you can NOT convince me otherwise.

Yes, I wore this in public.

Also? The "hair" comes with a scrunchy, so it is fully play-with-able. I can braid his hair, or wear it down, or experiment with style, because, face it, my deeply jealous friends, this fancy-ass hat DEFINES style. (Not "defies," defines. This, my covetous friends, is the gold standard to which all style aspires.)

Yep. This is pretty much all I need to say today. Other than, ANNA, YOU ARE A GODDESS AMONG WOMEN, THE QUEEN OF KNITTERS.

I've been reading a lot of people's blogs lately. I don't know if this is a product of my pen-palling, but I find myself more and more drawn to the stories of people's lives and their various takes on things. This morning I ended up reading a mini-rant someone posted about a ship war in the Tokyo Ghoul fandom, and that inspired me to write my own mini-rant about the Trials and Tribulations of Being a Queer Otaku. I don't have anything particularly brilliant to say, but, what the heck, this is what blogs are for, right?

When I posted it to Facebook, a friend of mine came on and poked at the open wound that is my relationship to the ending of Bleach. She didn't do so intentionally, she just casually mentioned that she was find with Renji ending up with Rukia at the end because, for her, "it felt right." I don't even necessarily disagree, but in going back and forth with her, I realized that I might have been a lot better with that particular pairing (which absolutely had a foundation in canon, at least on Renji's part,) IF ANY queer couples had survived in tact. ( Read more... )

So, yeah, I might be less bitter about RenRuki--which I have always supported, even in my super gay fan fic--(I always make Renji bi), if the other queer characters in Bleach had not been so poorly treated.

But no one cares about that, but me.

In other, non-fannish news, Mason is expected home late tonight. I'm looking forward to hearing all the stories of Anaheim.  I did find out that their team did NOT place at the competition, but Mason had not expected them to, so he didn't seem the least bit disappointed. In fact, he kept say, "It was so much fun!"  I'm super-glad that we have somehow instilled in him this attitude.  It will serve him well all his life, IMHO.

We're packing to head off to LaCrosse tomorrow early.  Poor Mason will land sometime around midnight and then be bundled into a car around 7 or 8 am the next morning (or same morning, if it's after midnight, eh?)  But, as I told him, he can sleep in the car.

It's nice enough out that I mowed. I have to say that--knock on wood--the yard is looking half-decent this year.  Now I just have to keep it up, which is always the struggle, isn't it?

Okay so the publishing schedule is messing with our podcast YET AGAIN. However, Mason read everything when he came home from school (and me, after fighting the traffic back and forth to the vet's office to pick up my kitty), and we produced #24: Otaku in the Basement.
In this episode, our 24th podcast, we reviewed Bleach 596, One Piece 760, Toriko 292 and Hitogatana.

Today is Wednesday, and that means that the new chapters of various manga have come out. So Mason and I have done our thing. Feel free to check it out: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/sweet-sixteen/.

In this podcast, it's mostly me talking about SnK (Shingeki no Kyojin) and its various and sundry spin-offs. However, there was a very problematic section of Bleach today, which I'll discuss under the cut.

( Read more... )

Mason and I recorded our fifth MangaKast. It's here: http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/five-is-live/ (Remember the go button is easy to miss.)

This is another experiment that I could call failed, but I don't. I think the most ever hits our site got was 20 or so on the first day. We consistently get three now, I think (and I'm sure two of them are probably me.) But, this doesn't depress me in the least. Mason and I started this partly because I have podcast equipment around that was bought for the other failed podcast project and because, sometimes, he and I have really brilliant insights about the manga we're reading. Mostly, it turns out, at 5:45 am, we don't. (This is when I wake him to read the manga and get ready to podcast. I also usually and sipping down my VERY FIRST cup of coffee, and as people who have seen me at cons know, it takes me a while to warm up....) However, we never had grand plans for this. For me, it's a great bonding experience with Mason. For Mason, he gets to be making a show. How cool is that?

So no one has to feel pressurized to listen to us. This is totally a labor of love in the strictest sense... and it's really almost no labor. I edit almost nothing, only the most egregious gaffs or coughs or slurps of breakfast OJ.

I'm off in a few minutes to hang out with naomikritzer and Eleanor. We'll probably talk "Captain America: Winter Soldier" which I finally saw yesterday afternoon. If I have any thoughts that distill from that conversation, I'll probably write them up here.

Okay, that's it for today!