Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 67

New Levels of Fannishness

Yes, that's right. I took the time to make an Ichigo Kurosaki mini-figure. Amazingly, we had orange hair (though, clearly, it's not spiky enough). I painted Zangetsu, but we actually had a sword that was approximately the right shape and size. Pretty awesome, if I say so myself.

More Bleach Silliness

Yeah, so when I went off to watch the "Manly Dance" again, YouTube thought I'd appreciate this:



And I did. As one of the commentators said, "Wind. Senbonzakura's only weakness!"

OMG!

Oh. My. (Death-)God(s)! Shawn just pointed me to an i09 article that led me to this: WB to make a live-action BLEACH movie.

Given, however, how attached I am, this could spell the end of my fandom. I mean, how do you make a live-action Renji? Seriously? Or Byakuya? I mean, dude, I've seen that you can get some pretty good results with costuming in the Bleach musical:



But these actors are all speaking Japanese, which, frankly, makes the whole thing that much more... BELIEVABLE. I know, this may sound strange, but I accidentally watched a YouTube video of the dubbed clip from the show, and, frankly, the voices are WRONG, and the things they say about honor suddenly seem kind of dorky when said out loud and in English.

I mean: "Scatter. A Thousand Cherry Blossoms..." kind of okay in English, but WICKED awesome in Japanese.

I want to LIVE!!

Yesterday, Mason and I managed to "hit the slopes" for a little while in the afternoon. It actually snowed (and stayed,) so we had to venture out to attempt a little sledding. The hill at the Country Club is awesome because it's steep enough that I'm not sure how necessary snow really is... a slick piece of cardboard would probably work just was well in the summer time, if you know what I'm saying.

In the evening, we went to Kuk Sool Wan. That, as usual, was a lot of fun. I'm setting a couple of goals this year, and one of them is to finally really GET the tornado kick. Luckily, we worked on it last night. Then a couple of friends and I went out for coffee, which was a real treat. Grown-ups! Granted, they were the sort of grown-ups with which I could fannishly go on about Bleach with, but hey, that actually works for me.

Speaking of which, I'm planning on attending Anime Detour for the first time this year. Listen, when I jump into a fandom it's with both feet, damn it! Sadly, Bleach is really kind of old school for a lot of people, so I'm not sure what I'll have to talk to anyone about. Still, it should be fun to go. Perhaps I can try out my rude Japanese.

So, yeah, I've been meaning to post about the further adventures of "John Learner" the hero of my language tapes. I picked up these Japanese language tapes at Half Price Books, and started trying to learn polite Japanese while driving in the car (they're cassette tapes). The author of the tapes decided that it would be a good hook to have a kind of story happening in the background. John is in Toyko to meet up with his college chum Toro and to negotiate a business deal with his company. (This is 1984, everyone is in Japan on business). John has the sort of adventures you might expect on a language tape. He has to go through customs, take a taxi to the hotel, check in, etc. A long the way, he learns to say "hello (polite form)" and count to ten.

The other day, I'm driving and half-listening to some simple phrases, "I want coffee" and "I would like tea." And, then out of the BLUE, John says, "I want to live." I nearly swirved off the road! John!!! What's going on???

I suspect he's preparing to say something like, "I want to live in Toyko," but he never goes there. He just WANTS to LIVE.

So, now on my list of things that I really want to have on a language tape is a whole series of misadventures, because really, when you're in another country, especially one where you don't speak the language, things NEVER GO SMOOTHLY. The time when you're really desperate to know how to speak the local tongue is usually when your bag is missing or the hotel has lost your registration. So, I'd like to record a sort of "flip-side" to the John Learner tape in which poor John arrives in Tokyo and the first thing he hears from the airport officials is, "Could you step out of line, sir?"

And things go badly from there.

I was thinking it would even be fun to have a scene where the taxi driver dumps poor John in the crappy neighborhood and demands extra money before taking John to hotel. John, having wasted his money bribing officials to let him in the country, decides to tell the taxi drive to stuff it... this is where the tape will introduce the listener to all sorts of rude Japanese while John tries to get back to the hotel in one piece.

"Don't shoot! I want to LIVE!!"

You'd listen to a tape like that, wouldn't you?

In Need of a Man

Mason and I have signed up for the Kuk SoOlympics, our dojon's in-school competition, and I find myself in desperate need of a man. As part of competing in sparring, Mason needs a peice of sports equipment that is solely in the realm of man-things... something I have heard of, joked about, but never in my entire life (even as a straight girl in high school) have I ever seen or had ocassion to even observe in a store.

He needs a *cup.*

Luckily, I have a man on speed dial. I'm going to see if I can enlist his help on our shopping trip. This is one of the few times when neither Shawn nor I have even an iota of expertise. We're at a complete loss. :-)

Half-Naked Fan Art

And so... it has finally come to this:


*sigh*

What am I going to do with myself??

Situation Normal...

Having Mason off school this week has made concentrating on anything serious really difficult. At least, I made it to hula hooping last night. I didn't really want to go. Despite having a lovely time with the ladies at our usual Wednesday gathering, I had been in an off-kilter mood all day. I think it's because I still feel so very aimless, regarding my writing. I wanted to stay home and sulk. But, I decided to push through the feeling and go. I'm glad I did. Hula hooping remains somewhat elusive for me, but I find trying to do it a lot of fun.

Fun, for me, is the operative word, if I want to excercise. If it's not fun, I don't do it.

The downside to all this weirdness is that I need to spend sometime today and/or tomorrow working on my Loft class. As someone who is used to teaching off-the-cuff, the preparation required to do an on-line class frustrates me deeply. Oh, for the days when I could walk into a room full of fresh, eager faces and just start talking.... Alas! I must actually have things ready for these folks to read... AHEAD OF TIME. Gah. With Mason prancing around shouting at me in Japanese, making two words go together has been hard enough. I'm actually hiding in the bathroom at this moment in order to write this. For whatever reason, he's been much more needy this vacation and has been glommed on me from morning to night.

Well, I'm going to take him out to lunch. Hopefully, being out will help him burn off some energy. Then I just need to get him to focus on some PROJECT! I'd really hoped that yesterday, when we went to the library, and robbed them of almost every HARDY BOYS title they owned that would keep him occupied. It really hasn't. He's been picking through them rather than his usual plowing through...

I can't win.

Bleach Fan Art

As I posted on Facebook, I haz teh fans bad.

Mason and I went to HalfPrice books yesterday after sledding, and I picked up another issue of the Bleach Manga. This one had a lot of lovely pictures of Urahara Kisuke. One of my favorites, though I find him... not always likable, exactly. An intreguing fact about him is that he is on the run from the Soul Society -- not exactly a deserter, since I believe he was charged with a crime before he fled. However, as you know, Bob, most shinigami (Death gods/Soul Reapers) have special swords, called zanpakto, which are extentions of their spiritual energy and represent a part of the shinigami's soul.

Urahura's is female. She's named Benhime "Crimson Princess."







Here is our main character, Ichigo and his giantic sword...

Gerbil Health Report

XOXO (possibly being renamed "Bullet" as well,) made it through the night, much to everyone's surprise. She's even lurching a lot less.

Fingers crossed.

In other news, it snowed. This means that Mason would like to go sledding this afternoon for, and I quote, "As long as possible." I'm sure to get exercise today.

There's so much I should really be doing instead, but these are the days to enjoy, right?

Gerbils

My gerbil XOXO seems to have had a stroke. We had a gerbil in the past that suffered from epilepsy, so I suspect his sort of thing can happen as well. On the flip side, after I took her out of the cage and helped her eat, she's been foraging around on her own with a lot of lurching enthusiasm.

Mason is quite distraught, as she seemed pretty listless earlier. I actually have a bit of hope seeing her working really hard right now, flinging seeds around and finding a corner to prop herself up in. But, then, I'm always the hopeful one....

In other news, Mason and I decided to spend the first day of his winter intersession by completely wasting our minds on a Bleach marathon. We have now completed the Bount arc, and will have to order DVDs of the next series. We spent the entire day in front of the computer, and we fortified ourselves with raspberries, Japanese candies that I'd bought for the event at an import store, Doritos and cheese, and Izzy's pop. It was AWESOME. My brain felt pretty rotten by the end, but it was actually a lot of fun.

Mason and I went to kuk sool this evening, which was fun, even though I was the only adult. I think we burned off a bit of the Doritos and other junk. Then, I managed to miss a podcast call that was supposed to happen at 7:00 EST and I mistook that for 8:00 CST, instead of 6:00... but I wasn't the only author involved, so even though I feel dumber than a post, I didn't really inconvenience anyone but myself.

Gah.

Hope your Monday was as fun.