superblog

Sputnik Sweetheart

So I finished this one, haven't started anything new yet 'cause my Kindle isn't cooperating with .pdfs for some reason at the moment. But yeah, like I said, I was pretty impressed with this one. A very unique sort of story, but still very restricted in scope. Or maybe “focused” is a more positive word but I find that seems too, uh, intense sounding. Basically when I talk about the scope of a novel I'm basically thinking about it on a scale with Gravity's Rainbow or Final Fantasy VII or One Piece, masterpieces of everything, on one end, and Through a Glass Darkly or The Dead or Hospice, masterpieces of one thing, on the other end. Of course it's a pretty wide open scale and there's room for great things anywhere on it, but I feel like a lot of stuff gets close to a really beautiful aesthetic on the latter end. This is what I think is fairly commonly known as “chamber art”, although there's no strict definition of that. You want a sense of wholeness, a sense of distance from any other world but not a sense of isolation, a sense of something very self-contained, something small. The idea of a brief but meaningful moment in someone's life. The idea of one special location. I dunno. Sort of hard to get into words. I think there's a lot of good examples in paintings. Also obviously chamber ensembles in music often have this sense very well. A good explainable example that comes to mind is Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. There's references to the larger world, to baseball, etc. There's a sense of perpetuity in the environment, events, characters, but you also get a sense that this specific event is very important and climatic. And of course there's a lot of allegorical implications as well. Not every one of these qualities is essential for this “chamber” feel, in fact, several of them I think create the opposite sense. However, I would rank it as a masterpiece of a “chamber novel”.

Wait was I supposed to talk about Sputnik Sweetheart? I'm getting to it trust.

The Old Man and the Sea takes place in a world of perfections and absolutes. All is established, all is known. The reader is presented a lifestyle, a character and a setting in a way that accepting them is as simple as accepting the colour of the sky. Furthermore, they're given in such a way that it isn't like you expect there to be a test on it afterwards. It is very clear that the plot will emerge from these circumstances naturally, not as the result of some non-trivial calculation of known or guessed facts. There is no mystery, and a sense of inevitability. And you might here be like “Hey man you listed Through a Glass Darkly and The Dead and Hospice as examples and I'm not seeing how any of this stuff applies to them” and geez, I dunno, that's a point. This sort of really vague aesthetic is sort of like, provable on a case-by-case method but harder to just define. I hope you (you most likely being me later) get a sense of, if not the thing I'm talking about, then at least the sort of thing that prevents me from talking about the thing I'm talking about in a reasonable way. It's a slippery “know it when you see it” sort of feeling.

Sputnik Sweetheart is, at times, a nice little chamber novel. The narrator and Surime have a lifestyle that seems intriguing but not unbelievable. Miu and Surime's relationship has the same qualities, but is like a separate chamber to use an easy metaphor. Another is the beautifully described Greek Isle. Yet another is the relationship between the narrator and his girlfriend and her husband and son and also his relationship with Surime. The ideas of art, love, passion, betrayal, and the pseudo-supernatural dual worlds all exist in overlapping but distinct chambers. Each of them contains a whole and interesting philosophy, characters, story, setting etc. Together they work together quite nicely, but the summed aesthetic is not as satisfyingly whole as the parts.

Am I being too general and vague here? I always end up regretting when I do that because it's like I'm more just using the book as an excuse to come up with some half-baked literary theory and then I end up forgetting if I even liked the book. Here's some specific stuff:

-I really liked all the characters, not just on a “this is a well formed character” level but on a personal “these are likable characters” level that usually is reserved for like, moe anime.

-Speaking of that, Murakami seems to like to do some real, um, lifestyle fanservice? I dunno how to describe that better, but like, when a character is living a certain way, he really likes to go out of his way to describe the minutia of that lifestyle to make it very imaginable and realistic. I think he did that really well here, really gave a nice slice of life. Better than Kafka on the Shore where it seemed less realistic, which I guess is fair, 'cause the plot is less realistic.

-The pacing of the plot was really nice, good level of suspense and variety. The more, like, “insert”-type chapters, Surime's two documents for example, were very well timed and just the right length. Special credit to the last episode with his student shoplifting. Maybe it was a bit too lengthy and “in the moment” to really give a sense of like, epiloguic-type contemplation instead of just “and then this stuff happened”, but it did still reflect nicely on the whole story before.

-The vaguely supernatural stuff was presented with a nice ambiguity and didn't have any of that disparity between surreal subject matter and plain prose that bothered me before. The symbolism of it was subtle without being riddle-y and it all added so much to the story that you had a sense of necessity instead of arbitrariness.

-Maybe it wasn't played as heavily as it was in Kafka on the Shore, but this also has an Ace of Wistfulness and at least the Queen of Nostalgia in its hand. The Ace of Artistic Opinion seems like it gets a lot of use by Murkami and it's gotten a bit ragged and blatant. Oh well.

-The pseudo love triangle was quite... sweet? I don't know the word for it, really. A fairly unique setup, and he had the sense to do it boldly without dully beating around the bush.

-His prose in general seems more graceful than it did in Kafka. I think this is due to the more limited scope. It isn't poetic by any means, but his descriptions are all very well done and some scenes are quite invoking without being out and out pixel-by-pixel Ulillillia-style descriptions. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that so long as it's executed gracefully, see: a lot, but not all, of dfw's stuff. Difference is that Murakami seems to be doing it reluctantly, as like, a last resort, when merely inspiring the image has failed. He doesn't fail too many times at that here at any rate, though.

-Some scenes were really, really well done and very memorable. The description of Miu in the Ferris wheel and the narrator being drawn by the music in the night come to mind as probably the best two.

So yeah, might have a few more things to say about it but that's basically the idea. Pleasant read. If I decide to go with another Murakami next I think it'll be Hard Boiled Wonderland. If I get pdfs working again though I'll probably try to tackle Proust.

Redline

Ah okay so apparently I should have been hyped for SEVEN HANDDRAWN YEARS NOW but I missed this one from under the rock and basically it wasn't until last year that I had even heard the name and not until a week ago when people really started fiending for dem rips that started to consider that this was gonna be something worth watching, although when people started actually watching it and reporting in my hype was like, platinum nitro acceleration.

So let me be the six thousand two hundred and eightieth to confirm the hype: Redline is probably the greatest pure action animated movie ever created and ranks high on the scale of visual spectacles, period. Pitching this thing is easy. It's like, F-Zero the Movie with like, THE BEST quality animation, and they do everything cool you can imagine and then some. The only things I feel right comparing it to in terms of adrenaline and animation quality are like, Rebuild, Akira, Laggan-Hen, I dunno, nothing really seems fair. This was SEVEN HANDDRAWN YEARS, folks. It is a straight up sensory overload. It will probably make you wet yourself.

Alright like consider the major speed mechanic the main dude uses, the nitro capsule thingies. This is so simple and yet so genius. I might have already spent a lot of words awhile ago gushing about that one scene in Rebuild 2.0 where they're racing to the angel and Shinji starts running EVEN FASTER and they raise all those blocks and slopes and stuff so he can run EVEN FASTER and at the end he runs REALLY REALLY FAST and there's a sonic boom and at the end he skids for awhile. That scene is the coolest thing in the movie for me and it's pretty stupid why, I mean all that's happening is that he's going fast and goes faster because of various things. But geez, if you can master that, master that sense of hitting barriers and then breaking them and then breaking into like, a whole new world of speed, that's just the coolest thing ever. And this movie is that feeling ALL THE TIME NON-STOP. When they're not doing it with literal speed, they're doing it with big guns or fight scenes or characters just being awesome or emotional breakthroughs or biological weapons regenerating. And what's more is that the way they “kick it up a notch” is just so INSANE. It really gives a sense of like, breaking apart at the seams, “final push”, all that good stuff. I mean JD super turbos and then like skips his car across the water spinning and upside down that is so sweet I have to go back to old high school adjectives like sweet to describe it.

BOTTOM LINE:

YOU SHOULD WATCH THIS MOVIE IF YOU LIKE HAVING FUN.

Statuses

Blog

So you may have noticed a slight design change on the blog. On the right there I have a “followers” thing where you can click “follow” to get “updates” on when my “blog” “updates”. This was motivated by me looking at some other blog that I wanted to get updates on and couldn't find anything to click. Then I found another blog that had a button like this and I clicked it and it was easy. I figured my blog ought to be in the latter category but

Hey what is up with this blog anyways?

Well it has 222 posts and is almost 4 years old! Hey so that isn't the most frequently updated blog ever but it wasn't abandoned as quickly as I thought it'd be at all. In fact it's at the point now where I'd be surprised if I stopped. You'd think something that lasted this long and has so many words dumped on it would have some sort of point but uh not really. It's sort of an “opinion archive”, also a place where I can “write when I don't want to try really hard at writing”, I dunno, various purposes like that. It isn't “informative” or anything like most people's blogs are. It has no target audience or anything, aside from myself. Yeah it would be neat to make money from it and not have to get a job, but bun I dunno that would require some sort of advertisement or promotion or whatever. I've posted the occasional thing I've done here on reddit, and those isolated incidents have actually constituted a large part of my traffic, I'll probably keep doing that when I have something that I think would go over well on reddit, but that isn't too often. Actually one thing I'm working on is a big post about everything I don't like about reddit these days, not sure how well that would fly.

Anyways though I think as far as this blog goes I might change my attitude again about what sort of stuff I'm posting. Lately I've been writing about anime and what books I'm reading, I might expand that to what music I'm listening to too. Dunno. I used to write about music a lot but then I found when I did like, year-end lists, that I'd mainly be repeating myself. So in 2010 I tried to not write about music and then when I tried to make the year-end list I found I'd forgotten why I liked various things or whatever and my opinion seemed dried out and worn, internally. So uh I guess I need to find some happy medium there.

But yeah I dunno, I'm not at all sure what people would like to see on this blog if anything. In the past I've also posted fiction I've written but I always feel weird after I do that, not entirely sure why. It seems really “personal” and “exposed”, strangely enough much more exposed etc than I feel when I write stuff about my personal life like

Hey JOBS!

Yesterday I got two pretty rare and sorta expensive (although I got a pretty good deal all things considered) Nendoroids in the mail, the Cirno and Marisa ones. Oh man they are adorable. I still feel sort of odd having “completely useless outside of fandom” products but I dunno they're always just pleasant to have and such. Cirno is really really well done, the icy clear plastic of her wings and ice shard are just perfect, Marisa also very detailed, especially on the hair okay no one cares this was supposed to transition into job talk.

I've always had a sort of controversial outlook on jobs, the wage system, etc. Basically I think payment for jobs should be inversely proportional to how much people in general want to do them, and I think that people should have more rights such that jobs aren't actually necessary. So you'd be set up with a place to live, decent food, clean water, internet, and then if you wanted anything more, you'd get a job. This would cause a lot of jobs to just up and disappear, and I think society would very rapidly adjust to not having them. I believe maybe 5% of the jobs people do today actually make a difference.

Yeah, I'm saying all sorts of crazy things here. And no, I'm not going to explain them very well. Since I'm just trying to motivate some news about my life all that is really necessary to know is that this is what I believe. Later I'll write about why hopefully.

So a lot of jobs would disappear or be consolidated, and the ones that everyone would stop wanting to do but absolutely had to get done would suddenly come with higher wages. The accessibility of jobs would be much higher, and would be set up for much more modular pay periods, like, you work for a few months cleaning up some spot 'cause you want to get a new TV, say. Career-type jobs and business owners and such would probably still exist, because the people who do those things either do it out of passion or because they want a lot of money to support a certain sort of lifestyle. I think the biggest change, though, is the idea that everyone would be working for luxury. I think this is a very motivating thing. If you have to work because you need to eat, or pay rent, or do something like that, you basically resent society itself. I'd agree with that. I think it's a very unnatural idea to give up the majority of your waking life to be able to live comfortably. However, if you choose to work because you want more money for Nendoroids or fancy foods or cars or vacations or whatever, you only have yourself to resent, and I'd be surprised if you did. I think people would be much more motivated to work hard and well if they knew they didn't have to, they chose to take on this challenge for a later reward. I know I'd be, at least.

And yeah, basically I operated under the ideology that one ought to be “the change they want to see in the world” to paraphrase regular-sized adult Gandhi (Big Baby Gandhi probably said something similar though) and that this sort of society would be better for everyone and also wholly possible with our infrastructure and resources. And actually that hasn't changed for the most part, what's changed is that I realized that, even in that situation, I'd be one of the ones going out to get a job. Because I need to buy premium Orange Juice and PVC figures of my favourite anime and shmup super-franchise characters. Yeah.

Anyways I have my first interview tomorrow, hopefully it will go well. The job will likely not be fun but it will give me money and make me want to make money without a job more. By like advertising my blog or something????

Unfortunately this interview also has an effect on:

Beard

So I have continued not shaving in August. This project was quite a bit easier than the exercise project, which I'll mention in a second. Honestly I kind of like the idea of a beard. A lot of famous folk I like have beards, but a lot of them don't too so that's really not an argument. As far as maintenance goes it seems like it eventually becomes more work than regular shaving but like right now obviously it doesn't. Would have been nice to go the whole month but it looks a bit hobo-y so I'll probably shave before the interview. All things considered I really don't care too much. I've talked about ideas of “self-image” and such before and I guess my stance really boils down to being as unremarkable as possible about the areas I don't understand, like fashion or appearance in general, and then being as honest and forthcoming as possible about aspects of my personality that actually make a difference in how I interact with people, e.g. hobbies. So that in turn boils down to wearing very plain things aside from like t-shirts with things I like on it, and having a room with a bunch of things from stuff I like in it.

Exercise

Running every day didn't pan out, but I'd say I did like... 3/4 days, really tried to not miss more than one day in a row, although some obligations got in the way and such. It hasn't gotten a whole lot easier, which is disappointing. I can't shake the idea that I'm doing something really fundamentally wrong, like I'm breathing wrong or my shoes are actually crippling me or something. I find I get “winded” really easily, it is primarily a stamina problem I think. This also has the same problem that I see in a lot of things I try, which is that in things where I can't very easily measure my progress, I start to assume I'm not making progress at all, which becomes a self-fulfilling and very frustrating prediction. My friend who is moving in brought his COBALT FLUX DDR DANCE PAD so I've started playing “IN THE GROOVE” which is pretty good exercise for me because I am terrible and clumsy and so paranoid about having my inputs recognized that I flail my limbs around and stomp as hard as possible.

Ten Desires

I think I might play Touhou and Tetris on the dance pad, that will also be interesting. Anyways just wanted to say quickly that this game rules but I am surprisingly terrible at it. I used to be okay at Touhou, but then I started playing Cave shooters a lot more and although I'd argue that those are actually tougher, they really give you the wrong sort of strategy with regards to Touhou. When I used to play Touhou, I was very calm and precise, I'd look at the pattern and think of a path and execute it with little extraneous movement. Now I frantically fly all over the screen shaking with tension. More than the Cave shooters I think it's the Tetris play that's putting me in some mode of “low APM=failure” and “press key = mash key”.

Anime Stuff

The roommate I typically watch anime with is in Peru, so I had to watch this stuff myself.

Usagi Drop episode 7

Wow this was pretty “adult”, like, only a few steps away from the sort of thing you'd see on a soap opera. Some development for the “romance” plotline that was handled pretty well, but aside from that, a very episodic episode. I'm fine with that. I'm also more than fine with the cousin and daughter characters being developed. Once again everything was done very nicely. The number of like, Rin-raising scenes is down this week which is worrying as that's the meat of the show. They've sort of worked themselves into a corner. They made “raising Rin” as a really plotline-y sort of thing, and now that they've started to “resolve” the various difficulties, they can't do scenes where it's like, man raising a kid is difficult without retreading. And if they try to escalate it, they'd have to do more plotline-y sorts of things, which would seem like they were just repeating themselves louder. The only solution is these semi-tangential plots that have an aspect of “dat raising”. Also any bets on how quickly this becomes a genre? Uhh what else I'm liking the cousin's kid more, has nicely transitioned from “brat you're supposed to hate” to “kid you feel bad about hating earlier”. And geez yeah, what a bleak subject matter for an episode, hopefully we'll see something lighter soon. Feeling like I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment and/or crying.

YuruYuri episode 8

Pretty fun. I missed Chinatsu. Weird that they'd leave out one of the biggest characters, and their most innovative one at that. The whole “I'm going to lie” scene seems very Nichijouish, sorta. One of those, like, social interaction experiment things. Of course, it wasn't taken to the extremes that Nichijou would go to, but it was pretty well executed. The “twist” is a pretty easy call but the way they brought in the ramifications of it was well paced and quite funny. The scene in the library went on a little long I think and I'm not sure if I like the idea of like a “hate/irritated”-type of relationship but it was good for introducing her character. Okay and the second half oh geez, twin moe is like way way too easy. The way they did this character as “counterpart to Chitose” is almost an insult to Chitose as it really simplifies the character down to one joke. They go so out of their way to do that one joke and then spend the rest of time undoing the damage that caused. But y'know they had to do that joke because all the fans would come up with it on their own and want to see it if they didn't, so oh well. The twin is like an advanced Rei model, or I guess like a quick update to last season's Tooru, she works well in the cast, should be fun times. This show continues to impress!

Idolmaster episode 7

So this was poor girl's episode but it had the same problem as last week's episode, supposedly blonde girl's, in that it didn't really feel like it was about them. The problem is reversed this time. Last time blonde girl had a little problem/resolution thing with a bit of character growth but little actual screentime and we didn't really learn a whole lot about her. Here, poor girl is all over the place, we get to see a bunch of her lifestyle and such, but nothing actually changes with her character. Rich girl and poor girl's brother and even the producer get involved and develop a bit but nothing really changes with poor girl. The big problem is spurred through no fault of her own and is resolved without her having to change. That's fine I mean, what could they change? She's a flawless character, which, honestly, is fine by me. In many mediums and genres I'd have major beef with this sort of character development, but here I'm more interested in being endeared than enthralled. It's obvious now why poor girl is Miura's favorite. But yeah she was more of a plot element than the focal point of the plot, oh well, at least she got the ED. More development of rich girl is alright in my book too, and I like the animal girl/poor girl/rich girl trio. And oh man poor girl's family so fun.

Nichijou 21

Really good episode, obviously. Seemed very thematically cohesive? I dunno too lazy to elaborate on that. Everything seemed “love” themed in some regard but uh not everything and not most of the latter half so screw it. First scene was cool, a straight-up exercise in limit-testing. This is something you see Tim and Eric do pretty often, and it's a good thing to know how far you can take a given joke. And wow holy cow the scene from the first OP finally actually happened pretty much! I really like seeing these characters. They all seem so well developed despite not showing up much, really gives a sense of this being a real world. Nano, Sakamoto, Mai and the chemistry teacher all had good little scenes. Yuuko was actually the one missing most from this episode, which is certainly a change of pace, sort of weird but whatever. The two big scenes were both fantastic. Takasaki and Sakurai's relationship has become one of the most adorable aspects of the show. His fantasy about the next day at school was especially well done, fantastic timing and atmosphere. And then oh man holy cow airship saga conclusion? Something? I dunno. Can't see where they can take this joke from here but I'm sure they'll find a way. And again their dedication to doing the scene properly even though the idea of the scene could be expressed so much more easily is very admirable. Five more episodes!!! What will happen??? I don't know!!!

Curb Your Enthusiasm s08e07

Wow this is so Seinfeldian. When Larry said he was going to New York to work with Jerry maybe he wasn't lying. This seems like an episode of Seinfeld that they wanted to pitch but ultimately found too offensive for prime time non-HBO TV. Jerry would get the competing with a lesbian/juicing plotline, complete with baseball metaphors and such. George would get the bag-securing/bowing plot. Kramer would uhhh geez they could even have something with Elaine not wanting to eat lunch with him and then the choking and such. But now they've all fused into Larry! Hilarious episode. So glad Leon is there. The thing about the roommate sounds like it'll be good. Rosie O'Donnell was pretty funny too.

New Music

Here I overlap pretty hard with my friend's blog and you should read his thoughts on them too because they are better informed than my thoughts about them.

NoYork

Blu has a new album called NoYork and it is really good. He does some pretty crazy beats and raps pretty cool. He does a spoof and a goof on Jay-Z's “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” that's pretty wacky. Looking forward to seeing the song with Edan. Yeah I haven't finished listening to it yet I'm listening to it now do you have a problem with that???

Hyphy Ballads

Kool AD has a new EP called Hyphy Ballads and it is really good. Big Baby Gandhi does some pretty crazy beats and these raps are like I've never heard before. He does a spoof and a goof on The Stooges' “Search and Destroy” that's pretty wacky. I have listened to this like many times and I am still finding new things to like about it. It samples Bjork a bunch which adds another level of cleverness to the title, like, “Hyperballad”, get it? “SO KOOL” is really cool and has some of the most efficient and stylish namedropping since Daft Punk's “Teachers”. “FUTURE PRIMITIVE LAW SCHOOL”'s beat is like nothing else. “STATE OF EMERGENCY” is even less like anything else. “HYPHY BALLAD” has two of Kool AD's best verses ever and that is saying a whole whole lot. He calls himself “young crossword” which is the best thing anyone has ever called themselves. This is a really really good EP. Almost infuriatingly clever, like, painfully so.

Black Up

Shabazz Palaces has an album called Black Up and it is really good. There is like almost some trend now of super mysterious rap groups all one-upping each other in terms of experimentalist styling and such. This is probably the reigning champion, dethroning Death Grips. This is like the coolest trend I have seen in a really long time and I heartily encourage it. This has sort of a “dark jazz” feel (not “darkjazz”, though, know that I will pay top dollar to hear darkjazz rap). It also sort of reminds me of p-funk, maybe that's due to the song titles more than anything, though. Flow varies nicely from relatively traditional to really next level rapdustrial machine beatdowns. Subject matter is on that ol' race business again sometimes which is actually sort of fresh again and they certainly have a fresh outlook and presentation. Fascinating stuff.

Bad Vibes

Shlohmo has a new album called Bad Vibes and it is really good. I tune in to Shlohmo for the wonkiest beats and remixes of the wackiest rappers. Here he goes like, post-wonky a lot. This is almost some sort of wonky chillwave synthesis with some like, really creepy atmospheric noise near the end that's really not much like anything else.

That's about all for now I guess.