Woke up annoyingly early this morning after an unpleasant dream involving trying to convince someone who was replacing me at The Place of Evil (aka, my last job) that even though everyone is listening to his brillant suggestions now, 1) they won't listen forever, and 2) I came up with all those suggestions first. So, nyah. I woke up with a deep sense of irritation at life and the universe at large.

Hey, subconscious? I know I have Issues about my last job. I don't want them, I just want them all to Go. Away. I really don't appreciate your trying to bring up old gripes, and particularly not at something-mutter AM, Sunday. Now piss off.

I took my grudge at life out by lounging in bed for a couple of hours reading. I begin to see why people want to smack the main characters in MoB. Up until now ("now" = the Nikkou/Hakone story arc) I hadn't seen anything particularly smack-worthy. (Okay, other than Takaya's non-stop whining fest in the Sendai arc. That was highly smack-worthy. If it hadn't stopped, pain would ensue. Probably from me pounding my head against the wall. Make. *thud* The whining. *thud* Stop!!! *THUD*)

I have a chapter or so I will probably translate, if I get the time. I really liked the flow of it, and it made much more sense than the corresponding scene from the anime. (I suspect it would also make velvetpaws make Happy Yaoi Fangirl Noises (tm), which I found far too amusing.) Bits I particularly liked:

Ujiteru (to Takaya): Do you like history?

Takaya: I hate the Sengoku period.

*snicker*

/me is far too easily amused.

Takaya looking at the skyscrapers in Chiyoda and remembering the fire bombing of Tokyo struck a cord with me. "How could all this rise up again from such ruins," he thought. It matches my feelings after the first time I went through the Peace Museum at Hiroshima. It was quite a comparison, after seeing all the pictures and accounts of the destruction of the city, and then walk outside and see a booming metropolis...

Our Heros (well, one Hero, and one, um, relative) driving by the Tokyo Imperial Palace caused me to do some quick research to confirm that I remembered something correctly. (I did not.) As a side result, I ran into a site called Mega Essays. I don't know if anyone has heard of it before or uses it, but I gotta say, based on this essay I can't recommend the quality of their research. Essays that start with inaccuracies in their very first sentence give little confidence in their continuing accuracy. Particularly when they follow it up with more historical errors. *snotty historical accuracy freak pose* (Hey, that sounded cool. I should go find kanji for that and draw up signs!) Oh, and the writing quality? Let's just say it's not quite what I would expect out of college-level papers. Not quite mocking-worthy, but not pleasant to read nonetheless.

Our Heros make a stop off at Odawara Castle before heading on to Parts Of Japan I Have Never Been To Before. It was a lovely scene, full of pathos and a beautiful description of the sunset. And as I was savoring the mood, one thought floated through my head: "Too bad the castle closed two hours ago!" The castle closes for admission at 16:30. Sunset on September 1st is a good deal later in the day. Small problem. Nice scene. *kicks the little voice of geographic trivia* You're a real pain, you know that?

Fortunately for everyone's sanity (mine being at the top of that list), the stage will now move for a while to Hakone, where I have never been before.

The books want to eat my brain some more, but I'm resisting. Must... Finish... C#... Project!!!

To that end, since it's so hot today, I've relocated to the library. Thanks to my lovely Young Jedi Training Plum Tree (long story; young Jedi wishing to practice their telekinesis, please contact me by the end of May regarding training opportunities), the library gets no sun during the summer, and so is the coolest room in the house. I went to plug in my laptop, and remembered that I had moved the power strip that was used to plug in the DSL modem and wi-fi router. I couldn't remember why I had moved the power strip, just that I couldn't use it to plug the laptop in, and would need to use the wall outlet. Then it occured to me that this might be a problem, since the DSL modem and router would be using both plugs. I moved the couch so I could get to the outlets and stared in complete confusion when I saw absolutely nothing plugged in there.

"How is this possible??" I thought. "My internet radio is still playing, so I'm obviously still online. Where are the router and modem getting power from???" I stared stupidly at the wall outlet for a minute before turning my attention to the modem and router. Or, rather, where the modem and router used to be. Duh. We moved them into my roomie's room months ago. *feels dim*

Thoughts of downloading the live-action IniD movie prompted me to start trying to get some of the junk off of the download computer. (z107m, this is related to why I'm perfectly happy to wait until I can get a burn from you...) So I'm now trying to clear off some of the stuff I have on there.

Bleach... I wonder if I should just give up on downloading that, I'm so far behind. Particularly since I share seshat's snobby "the manga is so much better than the anime, and the changes they made are annoying and wrong" attitude. Checking to make sure that my burns worked correctly did remind me of why I liked the series to begin with. Sometime when I have more patience I should try and get caught up again. (Heck, by this point the anime may have caught up with where I was at in the manga. >.>) Maybe the non-stop Shounen Jump fights will annoy me less if my life is not blowing up in my face while I'm reading it. (I crashed through Bleach right around when I was told I was getting laid off. I was really not so with the patience then. Still am not, come to think of it...)

(And despite all that, Bleach is still on the list of things I'm thinking of showing Jan when she comes up to visit. Go figure. Though I suspect most of our time will probably be spent crashing through Batman Beyond.)

Watched the first episode of Speed Grapher. I'm sufficiently curious that I might download more. I'm sufficiently apathetic that I won't care if I forget to.

Finally got around to watching the first episode of Dagwon. Considering that my main exposure to the series is through doujinshi (particularly Narushima Yuri's), I shouldn't be too surprised that it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Still... Mmmm, it's some mighty fine cheese. It made me want to dig out my Kamen Rider stuff. *happy cheesy tokuzatsu thoughts* Oddly, it also made me feel nostalgic for Raideen. Maybe it's not so odd, since both of them are Yatate Hajime shows. Given that and the volume of doujinshi for the series, I hold out great hope that it will be Very, Very Good. And if not, at least it will be cheesy in all the right cheesy ways. Unfortunately, I have one more episode before I need to clear more space to download any more. *stares at junk on the computer* What are you, all you junk???

And now I must quit avoiding homework by babbling on my blog, and must go get some serious work done on this project.

For the local folks, after the class finishes up (in a little under two weeks), I'm going to work on being more social. I've spent waaaay too much time sitting around at home by myself, and it's started doing really unpleasant things to my head. If you suddenly notice me turning up more, that's why.