It’s not too unusual for me to turn on the television in the morning and hear about something unpleasant that had developed while I wasn’t paying attention. It could be any number of things like someone may have been involved in a car wreck, someone was murdered, or someone’s home had burned down. I could go on. Basically, the world is a nasty place to live in sometimes and we tend to take it for granted when we live in relatively safe environments.

For instance, Los Angeles police aggressively dispersed a protest there the other day. I only found out about it last night. I guess all of this studying has been taking me away from my usual news gathering. As far as this event is concerned I believe there are some underlying issues that go beyond simple violent tendencies, but what I want to point out is the video footage on the internet. This stuff is gold on community news sites because people want to see the police beating down protesters; whether they agree with the action or not.

I cannot say much for other societies, but to some extent the US definitely has an overtly violent society. If you don’t believe me I’ll point you to some organizations that specialize in physically violent sports UFC, WWE, and WBA. With the exception of some purely athletic sports it would almost seem that everything else is watched with the hopes of seeing some carnage.

Of course, I’m harping on the US here because that’s what I know. I’m not the type that usually makes blanket observations about groups of people that I don’t understand or know anything about.

Then again, I do know a little something about basic human behavior. Let’s face it people seem to have a perverse interest in seeing other people hurt. It usually comes with a mixed bag of emotions depending on the distance between the individuals hurt and the individual observer, possibly an inverse relation. I’ll leave specifics to the imagination, but I would add no one at the current time would have a large amount of trouble finding a simple example to demonstrate this.

Anime and manga have plenty of genres and sub-genres that are prime examples of this topic. One finds the depictions of rape in anime of the Hentai genre to fit this mode. After all, what is rape but a form of violence and control? There are other aspects of Hentai rape in that regard, but we will leave them out of the discussion here. Guro is a sub-genre of Hentai, which takes the violent aspects of that to extremes. These two genre are probably the most extreme examples that I can think of.

Then there are the shows that fall into a simple mold of violence. They depict violence and death, but usually not for the sake of depicting violence or death. This is to advance the story. Still, the nature of the story is in-and-of itself a play to our violent human nature.

It isn’t really necessary to point out any shows in particular; still, here are some examples Seirei no Moribito, Code Geass, Noir, and Murder Princess. These are splendid current examples, with the exception of Noir. I pointed our Noir to prove a point. Many dislike Noir because it doesn’t depict blood. In Noir death is oddly clean. This simple avoidance is enough to turn many people off the show. That is for reasons that I have expressed here.

The classic question for this is, “Does life imitate art or does art imitate life?” I usually find myself in a bit of a quandary, as someone who believes that to an extent life is art. Maybe, I’m just playing with semantics.

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Edit: 1:05: I used harking when I meant harping: “To talk or write about to an excessive and tedious degree; dwell on.”

Finals week is coming up so I’m not totally sure how much time I’ll have for blogging. Since it has been a while I thought I would post something before I got too busy.

In Anime:

Rocket Girls seems to be fairly funny. It also has an interesting premise, but I’m not too sure if I’ll be following it.

Seirei no Moribito is looking like a dark horse candidate for best anime this season. The story is very good so far. The characters are intriguing and animation is excellent.

Sola is probably going to be so-so.

Les Miserables is still off to a slow start. Episode 5 sees Cosette being as miserably cute as ever. Valjean shows how much of a good guy he has become by saving an old man who somehow got crushed under his own horse drawn cart. Of course, Cosette’s mother is totally oblivious to all that is happening, but her coworkers are closing in on the truth.

In the news:

While Americans mourns the killings at Virginia Tech the internet has taken the opportunity to attack lax gun control laws and youth violence. The most often cited defense by pro-gun people, “it would have been different if another student had a gun.”

Reddit ticks-off xkcd.

In the weather:

It’s been raining for a few days in Austin, TX.

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Alright, off to school to give a presentation and meet with a prof.

Edit: 04/26/07: The presentation went well. I had to cut it from ~30 minutes to about ~20 minutes due to time constraints. It wasn’t about anime, sadly. My meeting with one of my professors ended with extra work over the summer, but that is what I had been expecting.

I watched episode 3 of sola…still so-so.

Love at first sight.
Love at second sight.
The thought of love.
Loving being in love.

Love love.

There is something about instance attraction that we find so appealing. Whether it be a glance, movement, or a conversation the things that draw us together are varied. The belief that in an instance all the play in the game of love can be set aside with a simple wanting, a wanting to be near someone, seems a little absurd to the wise (jaded) eye. Fore it takes a believer in fate, to fall for such notions, at least someone who understands the concept.

It’s just so easy to fall like that. It seems almost to be built into our being to trust something or someone that much. It often doesn’t turn out too well. One would think that negative behavioral reinforcement would come into play, in order to teach us a lesson about our actions.

It does.

Maybe that’s why ‘ol Willy decided to make them so young.

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It seems that the story will pit Romeo and Juliet against each other in a more concrete aspect than was done in the play. There already seems to be a rather large divergence between ambient stories; therefore, we can probably expect to see something rather original. As if you couldn’t tell already.

This is already one of my favorite scenes

The two’s first prolonged encounter is in this episode. Juliet is used to express the excitement each feels. We see her reaction and know that it is mirrored by Romeo.

We also get to see Juliet as a girl, which I particularly like. I just have a irrational bias toward Juliet as a guy. I don’t particularly mind any other characters that go around dressed like guys. It just irks me with this one. Anyhow, it appears we are going to get much more guy-Julieto in the coming episodes.

Romeo x Juliet is going to get a lot of attention simply because of the source material. I’m really interested to see where the story is taken.

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All the world is a stage, and the people…poorly paid players…

It has been a long while since I read Romeo and Juliet. It has also been a long time since I’ve watched any adaptations made into film. Romeo and Juliet is such a well known story that it has pervaded the essence of tragic love stories. Although, some may argue that it isn’t exactly a tragedy in the classical sense. Honestly, putting that much thought in to the whole thing isn’t my bag, man.

If you haven’t realized it yet, I am a sappy romantic who happens to really like tragic endings. So, I’ve already a bias for Romeo x Juliet.

Premise: One has to try to screw up the story of Romeo and Juliet.

I already really like the character designs. Look at Juliet. We spend a lot of time with Juliet during the first episode. I found that I enjoy the character portrayal here. I’m not all that pleased with Juliet being introduces as a girl masquerading as a guy. I mean we are talking about Juliet, the quintessential innocent feminine love interest of Romeo. Yet, they have her jumping all over the place and fighting. At least she seems fairly placid in girl form, and she doesn’t seem all that masculine as a guy either. So, we have two good points.

The animation is excellent. I say over and over that sub-par animation will not exactly kill a show for me. However, what I usually fail to mention is that good animation does give a show points. Romeo x Juliet seems to like using the background world a lot. There is a lot of panning and movement. The background scenes are rather detailed, they draw you in.

Hatred, sorrow, death…love. Everything necessary for a terrific story is present. I’m still on edge about the comedic aspect of the show. I may learn to live with it. Now all that is left is to build up the characters, and then tare everything down.

Sometimes love is a game, cruel and unjust. Is it worth all the sorrow?

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We know the source material for this story. Obviously, it will be changed because it’s anime. However, it is likely that the central meanings will stay that same. I have really high hopes for this show.

Edit: 04/18/2007 : “quintessential innocent feminine” – to avoid confusion in my wording, I meant that to mean “girly” or not deriving male characteristics. After all, she is just a teenage girl. Although, through the events in the play one could argue that her actions are less “girly,” more adult in an ignorant sense. Still, even though it has been a while since I’ve read/seen the play, I think the actions of Juliet could not be defined as masculine, which was my point to begin with. She shouldn’t be sword fighting and jumping around.

Lucky * Star was better than I thought it would be. The opening dance was fun, but it didn’t exactly sell the show. As I began to watch it I thought to myself that I would probably quit viewing it within the following few minutes. I decided to tough it out.

The first episode gets funnier as the show progresses. I laughed, but mostly it made me hungry.

1. Buy some Pringles. Make sure that you gently shake the can to ensure there are not many broken chips. The sound of broken chips is like a fingernails on a chalkboard, only worse.
2. Open the cap (this is very important)
3. Remove a single pringle, if there are no pringles goto step 1. Hold the chip at the end of one of the longer ends with your thumb and forefinger. You may be tempted to remove several pringles at the same time. This is a no-no. You risk damage to the individual pringle if you remove more than one.
4. Examine the pringle for defects. If you have removed more than one, there is a high probability that the pringle will be damaged. Damaged pringle units should be discarded as they have lost symmetry. If, by chance, the pringle was damaged in such a way to keep its symmetrical shape–for example, at the north or south poles of the pringle–it is safe to continue with that pringle. Dispose of damaged pringles in all other cases. Let some less discerning savage have the broken chips.
5. Examine the arc of both the interior and exterior of the chip. There should exist a point somewhere in the neighborhood of the center of mass (COM) of the chip. This point is call the saddle-point. Geometrically, this point should lay directly in the COM of the chip. Not all chips are perfect as we will get to in a moment.
6. Now that you are satisfied that the chip is of a suitable symmetry, you will examine the texture. The texture of the chip is what gives it a pleasing feel as you are devouring it. There should be a rough but even texture to the chip.
7. Discard chips with discoloration as these are defective chips.
8. The preceding steps should take roughly 5 to 10 minutes to complete. We can now begin eating the chip. First, lick the salt from the top of the chip. This is the the part in which the longer part of the chip arc is convex.
9. Step 8 prepares the chip for digestion and also softens the chip for this step. Now, we can begin actually performing the process of dismantling the chip. This is done by taking small bites (about 1/50 of the chip) from around the perimeter of the chip. It is okay to not bite the part of the chip near the place where your fingers are located.
10. Continue step 9 until you reach the last bit of chip under your thumb and forefinger. Notice, that if it were not for step 8 the chip would break into larger sections and prevent you from completing even one step 9.
11. You may finish the rest of the chip. Goto step 3.

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The sad thing is that I actually do this sometimes.