Just finished watching ep.33 of Zeta Gundam. Damn, that show’s ace. I’m watching it in the original Japanese with subtitles, cos American voice actors drive me completely insane, but they needed to slap on big ol’ SPOILER ALERTS whenever the ‘next episode summary’ comes on. The subtitles will say something ambivalent about such-and-such character, but I’m listening to the audio, and I’ll hear ‘Such-and-such character shin da (dies)‘, and I’m like, GodDAMNIT!!@

Also — Patrick, you’ll dig this in particular — I don’t know if this is genius or madness, or mad genius, or genmadniusness. Witness: Pac-Mondrian.

‘Pac-Mondrian closes the perceptual distance between fine art and video games by combining Piet Mondrian’s Modernist masterpiece “Broadway Boogie Woogie” with Toru Iwatani’s classic video game Pac-Man.’

Well, if that isn’t the damnedest thing. Alright, now I want to see a version of DigDug filtered thru Warhol. Or better still, Street fighter in Lichtenstein-style… o, wait

Well, it should be plainly obvious when you scroll down this page and your eyes rest on that newly-filled conspicuous space between the Archives and my microbanners, that I’m digging adding apps and devices and other assorted crap to this Blog. Thanx to Rikai.com, now YOU can learn a new kanji per day! Or, at the very least, attempt to learn. Be sure to write them down, as there’s 1,850 of them to memorise!

Also, my non-Criterion copy of the Sid & Nancy DVD arrived today! Y’know how DVDs come with inserts indicating chapter stops or whatnot? My copy came with six. *blank stare*
Guess a few of my mates are gonna be getting some inserts for New years!

So I decided, what the hey, and grabbed twenty of the most recent walls that I’ve added to my folder and have uploaded them here, as a holiday present unto you. Although I think there might be a repost in there somewhere, but as they say, worse things happen at sea.
Remember, these will be up until 01 Jan, and then they’re GAWN! Heaux heaux heaux!

Okay, that really was the last set. No, honestly. (5.64 MB)

Seems like the Tri-county area of southeastern Michigan got its first genuine snowfall this morning. Which was great, cos I love nothing more than waking up to see my car buried in about five inches of the white stuff, you’ve no idea. :-\ And to think I want to move to Toronto, where this sort of thing probably occurs far more often. Maybe I should rethink that plan.. Granted, it’s not Christmas without snow, but that’s not the sort of thing you’d want to see when you’re up before 9am, and persuading yourself to go to work. It was all so incredibly disheartening that I took a brief five-minute nap that lasted for twenty minutes. Yeah, I left the house late, but the weather was going to make me late anyway, so it’s all academic, really..
After unearthing my car with the help of my dad’s snowthrower (and subsequently getting stuck in the unplowed part of the driveway) I headed out to work, like an idiot. I should’ve feckin’ called in. The roads were pretty dodgy throughout my neighbourhood, seeing as that Detroit’s DPW doesn’t get their shit together until noon-ish, but it wasn’t altogether bad; at least until I reached the Michigan Left that I needed to go the proper direction. Remember how I’d said that DPW was on holiday? Well, they hadn’t plowed the turn lane, so consequently, my car got stuck. For three minutes. I got out of it unassisted, but that delayed me more than it should’ve..

My musical accompaniment on my slog westward was ‘Non-stop erotic cabaret’ by Soft cell, and two self-burned Cds. One of the Cds contained a song by Ruins, that Japanese noise-rock duo that sings entirely in Kobaian. Kobaian, if you’re not familiar with it, is a ‘fictional’ language devised by French madman maestro Christian Vander, lead singer/despot of the prog rock band Magma. I thought to myself, you know, I don’t know enough Kobaian. I don’t know any Kobaian. Hrm. Perhaps I’ll get onto that after I’ve learned Japanese, German, French and Latin, in that order. And maybe Esperanto. That’s The Language of the Future, y’know.

Despite all the complications — when I attempted to slow down to make the right to enter the parking lot, I simply skidded past it instead — I arrived at work only about half an hour late. I worked dutifully, meaning that I tried, for the most part, to not sound noticeably sarcastic over the phone. I didn’t say I was successful, but I did try, for about twenty minutes..
Then at 11.30 we had our office potluck / Secret Santa Gift Exchange Extravaganza. When we all drew names last week, I picked someone that I’ve never spoken to before during their five weeks of employment at our office; all I had to go on is that her name was Cathy, she’s middle-aged, and her cell has an annoying ringtone. So last night, I rummaged thru mum’s ‘stock gifts’ selection (for occasions such as these) and chose a blank book with black sheets and a gold gel pen, as I thought it would be innocuous enough to pass as a decent gift. Wouldn’t you know it; the silly bint didn’t even show up for work today. 😛
Apparently Pam, our resident Paris Hilton lookalike, had gotten my name. Heh, funny story: About two days ago, I was in my cubicle when one of the supervisors-in-training approached me, saying that the person who drew my name for Secret Santa had absolutely no idea as to what I would like, as going by my appearance & demeanour, that what I’d be into is so out there that my Secret Santa would have no idea where to even start looking for something for me. I literally laughed out loud, as I’d pretty much expected that. I mean, come on. So my supervisor handed me a piece of paper and told me to write down five things I’d want.
1) Queen’s Greatest Hits Cd
2) BestBuy gift.cert
3) Borders gift.cert
4) Fight club by Chuck Palahniuk (book)
5) The bell jar by Sylvia Plath (book)
So I got a $15 BestBuy gift certificate. 🙂

Round 4pm, I jetted out of there, after getting a box of miniature KitKats and two (!) hugs from Dianna, our resident sexy receptionist. And that’s pretty much it!
O, and whilst I was waiting at a sushi bar for my order to be filled, some drunken Eastern European man wanted me to take my coat off cos he didn’t like wool. At least, that’s what I think he said. See, I knew I should’ve studied Kobaian before Japanese

Not much to report; I’ve been busy tearing thru my Zeta Gundam box set. I’m already up to ep.15. Damn, that’s a great show. Besides, it’s too feckin’ cold to be outside these days..

And like the Subj.title sez, this would be the last set of walls available from the Good People of ‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. Perhaps one day, in the far-flung future, I’ll offer them again, along with the recent additions to my collection (I’m sporting 123 walls now). Perhaps one day, I will use the term ‘far-flung’ again.

Set Five was enjoyed, for great justice. (3.37 MB)

I’m currently working on my ‘100 things’ list. It should be finished before 2005, he said, trying to sound confident

A couple of days ago, I finally got round to installing Firefox, and let me tell you, it’s very much a ‘why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?’ kind of thing. One of the coolest features it.. features.. would be the Extensions, which are applications you can download for the browser. My favourite? The on-the-fly translator. Highlight some Japanese text, right-click on it, and a translation pops up nearly instantly onscreen! It’s a literal translation — if you’ve ever used BabelFish you’ll know what I mean — but it’s still feckin’ impressive. *geek mode OFF*
Remember those microbuttons I mentioned two posts ago? Do yourself a favour and click the ‘Get Firefox’ one. Go on, I’ll wait.

Last night, Derek & I got round to Jeff’s digs for our usual week-end chicanery, and viewed Samurai fiction, which was a neat little fillum. Nothing I’d buy (well, I say that now), but definitely worth seeing. The thing that puzzled me was that it was listed as ‘Samurai Fiction: Episode One’, yet no-one’s heard hide nor hair of there being any additional films.. After Derek took off, Jeff & I watched Georges Franju’s Eyes without a face, which was rather messed-up, especially considering that it was released in the early Sixties. It’s your typical ‘scientist’s daughter gets involved in a horrible disfiguring accident, so he has his assistant abduct young women to take back to his mansion/lab, whereupon he surgically removes their faces so he can graft them onto his daughter’s skull’ film. I know, I know, that genre’s overdone, but Monsieur Franju makes a pretty good stab at it, ho ho ho. And upon coming home, I sat down and watched episodes six and seven of Mezzo. Have I mentioned that Yasuomi Umetsu is all kinds of ace? Not in the past five minutes, you say? Well, then.

The Mysterious Wallpapers of Davecat, Set Four, was available
right here, but alas, no longer. (2.92 MB)