Happy birthday, America!

May fireworks fill your skies and BBQ fill your people's tummies today!

And may your servicemen stay safe and enjoy their holidays, wherever they may be.

Call me one for simple pleasures, but I think one of the best things about my job is being part of consents and watching people sign their name. Of course, given the population we're studying, a large number of them are not-so-educated and very obviously spend little time writing and working on penmanship. However, you come across one every so often that is absolutely full of grace/character/whatever. How marvelous.

And what is it with chefs and alcoholism? I've probably screened at least 4 chefs who are raging alcoholics. Is it the job? High stress, flexible hours, easy access to alcohol, ability to be a minor deity lording over the kitchen?
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Finished HSM3 last night. I am sad to leave Troy and Gabriella behind. My life was so filled with innocent joy while they were still at East High. ;_;

You know what? I would've loved to be a Wildcat. How bitchin' would it be to have the entire cafeteria spontaneously burst out in inexplicably choreographed song and dance?
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I haven't really checked out the new season of weeaboo geekery yet.

Umineko is downloaded and waiting to be watched.

I've been meaning to check out the Saint Seiya franchise eventually, so what better chance to give Lost Canvas a shot? To put it shortly, it is the classic story of the forces of heaven versus the forces of hell, given a veneer of Greek mythology, with heaping helpings of bad TV/anime tropes, all run through Japanese interpretation. It sounds kinda lame, but you know what? The franchise is old enough that it can be lame and overdone and get away with it.

However, the tropes that it draws upon generally tend to be ones I like.
√ Hotblood
√ Overly gaudy armor
√ SYMBOLISM
√ Wings! (which is only natural, given the previous two items on this list) and...
√ Rose petals and feathers everywhere
√ Inseparable childhood threesome (Seriously, they wear friendship bracelets made of flowers.), which leads to...
√ Best friends doomed to fight each other (And yes, the HOMOLUST is strong with this one.)
√ "Evil lurks in the Catholic Church zomg!"
√ FABULOUS men
√ FABULOUS painting

Rather than capping the entire OP, have a trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzQtTwO-i-s&feature=related

Also, godly seiyuu cast is godly.

I'll give it a shot.

Despite the fact that we're obviously going to get an unexpected third episode to this Endless Eight arc, I am still highly satisfied with this episode.

Cynical narration from Kyon, FABULOUS exposition from Koizumi, FABULOUS hair-and-shirt-blowing-in-the-wind poses from Koizumi, FABULOUS bowling from Koizumi, and copious instances of FABULOUS invasions of Kyon's personal bubble by Koizumi. Add in gratuitous boob shots, anime boob physics, shirtless!Kyon (shirtless + jeans = A++), Kyon being tsun, and Kyon being moe for good measure. Excellent.

The episode sure was BLOOM, though. I'm reminded of this VGCats comic.

Jesus Christ, a lot of celebrities died recently... o_O

Godspeed, funny(wo)men.

So I watched HSM with dasmondschaf last night.

I like HSM. Actually truly like it. The same part of me that loves Macross Frontier loves HSM. Is there a problem that stands in your way? Sing and dance it out of existence! Is there questionable plot and hamhanded writing that tests your suspension of disbelief? Sing and dance it out of relevance!

I knew this was going to happen. Zefron has slowly been worming his way into my heart ever since I first saw "ZAC EFRON FOR KIRA". It only dug closer to the core with the FMP shenanigans and the whole "I like Death Note--Desu Noto, right?" thing. The fact that Zefron and Vanessa Hudgens first met on HSM, started going out, and are still going out is also adorably cute, and I can't keep from "d'awwwww :3"ing whenever I think about it.

What can I say? I am a sucker for cheesy choreographed song and dance. dasmondschaf and I have a date to watch HSM2 tonight and presumably HSM3 tomorrow night. There's no turning back now. :|

When I think about it, I have 4chan to thanks for this. If it wasn't for learning to say "screw you" to haters and coming to accept that it's okay to like highly entertaining but mediocre things, I would've never been able to appreciate such rollicking good fun and wackiness. Thanks, /a/! :Db
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Lol Tales of Graces.

It's a game where everyone went "...Suzaku?" when the first promo art came out. And then when the character descriptions came out, everyone went "...Suzaku?" again. And then when the promo trailer came out, once again, everyone went "...Suza--teehee he's spinning! Wait, is that who I think it is doing his voice?" And it seems that a little while ago, it was confirmed that, indeed, who else would be more appropriate to voice this role than Takahiro Sakurai.

Well, with Sakurai's proven trackrecord in my books as an emo dork of a fail!knight, I wish this Asbel character the best of luck in keeping his Love Interest: 1) alive, and 2) not a duck.

Dad was watching Chinese satellite TV out in the family room. Commercials come on. From my room, I suddenly hear the Gundam SEED OST start playing. (Finally found the right track today.) He could have been watching SEED, but as that is highly unlikely...

Oh, China. What won't you steal?

In other news, this is what the state of Texas pays me to do.

Damn you, charcoal! This has been far longer than "20-30 minutes". Stop being on fire, already! I wants my swordfish and grilled pineapple. ;_;

Also, it is way too fucking hard to find the right size grill grate. My grill looks all sorts of silly right now.

Lol grilling at midnight.

Related to this, sometimes I wonder what I'd do without the internet and its collective brain pool.

No geeky news, really. Wish I had a show that excited/touched me this season. Oh well.

It's actually kinda hilarious.

I get here at 9am, and there's no one here. It's 5pm, I'm sitting here finishing up a few articles, and everyone's left. And when I say "everyone", I mean everyone. This isn't to say that I've been working/reading hard the entire day because lolno. However, it's so bizarre to see an office so empty at 5pm, especially after working in molbio/cellbio/bioengineering labs previously, where you simply worked until your current experiment was done, and there was almost always someone in the lab between 7am and 7pm (at the earliest).

Yeah, part of it has to do with the patient-dependent nature of the work, but that can't possibly be all of it.

Actually, given that I'm paid on a set stipend instead of by the hour, why the hell am I even still here? Oh well. The state of Texas is more or less paying me to browse LJ right now, so I can't complain too much.

GUESS WHO NOW HAS A SMOKER? :D

BRISKET GET! \o/

Also, lolol Sunrise.

http://kotaku.com/5275653/tom-and-jerry-mmo-to-revolutionize-cat-vs-mouse-pvp

Tom and Jerry MMORPG. Yes, the cat and mouse. WTF?

In other news, work so far mostly comprises me reading a lot of literature while my boss and coworkers complain about the VA and flakey patients. Good times.

Stumbled upon this Japanese fanartist/ficcer's site and proceeded to check out her blog. Kept on clicking and all of a sudden paused as I saw Lelouch and Suzaku figmas standing around on my college campus.

So apparently, this person was on vacation in San Francisco for 11 days or so and went down to Stanford for part of it. And then decided that her pairing of choice needed to document her travels. She probably had to get up at an unspeakably early hour on a Saturday (by college standards) to take these pictures so that there were no other people in it. Mental image: Random Japanese girl walking around all over campus with two figmas, stopping every so often to put them in gay poses, and photographing them. Amazing. Possibly more amazing than actually bringing your figmas with you on vacation.

And now...
( A short picture tour of my alma mater, as presented by SuzaLulu figmas )

The figmas also took gay pictures in San Francisco. Here they are on the Embarcadero/Fisherman's Wharf. Hope they didn't get eaten by the sea lions. Also hope that they got spooked by the Bushman, but I think that may be a bit much to wish for.

The moral of the story is: Next time you see a mob of tourists on your college campus, it may just include a fellow weeaboo.

First, welcome, irene53, to my fannish journal where you will likely not understand most of my weeaboo ramblings! :P

So! Just got back from my big, grand, thoroughly unplanned trip back to the Bay Area. A quick rundown:

( fun and revelry )

Was a hell of a lotta fun, and now I miss those wacky California kids even more now. Oh, the halcyon days of undergrad... ;_;

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-17/2009-haruhi-tv-run-8th-episode-listed-as-new-episode
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-17/2009-haruhi-tv-run-8th-episode-listed-as-new-episode
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-17/2009-haruhi-tv-run-8th-episode-listed-as-new-episode
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-17/2009-haruhi-tv-run-8th-episode-listed-as-new-episode
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-17/2009-haruhi-tv-run-8th-episode-listed-as-new-episode

FFFFFFFFFFFUCK YEAH BAMBOO LEAF RHAPSODY!

YOU BEST NOT BE TROLLING ME, KYOANI. (oh god, please let this be true...)

OH SEASON 2. HOW LONG I HAVE WAITED FOR YOU, OH, EVER SO PATIENTLY. \;_;/

Do you think happy children singing is adorable? Do you like Coldplay? Do you want Viva la Vida to make you feel something else beyond "mai poor emperor~ ;_;"?

( NYC elementary school choir sings 'Viva la Vida' )

...or if embedding doesn't work for you because YouTube is being wonky, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_tcE4rWovI&fmt=18

Certainly an imperfect performance but still probably my favorite rendition of this song. Rock on, Mr. Inner City Public School Choir Teacher.

Courtesy of my link buddy dasmondschaf.

- Boy band music videos from the era of our youth (i.e. *N'Sync, BSB, etc.) are far more homoerotic than I remember them being.
- Wolverine is hilariously bad but still managed to be massively entertaining. Hooray for low expectations and shallow aesthetics.
- Finished SDF Macross and Do You Remember Love. Somewhat better characters than Frontier, but that's not saying much. Massively QUALITY at times, but still an enjoyable show. I wonder how it is that DYRL has greatly better animation than Macross 7, which was made 10 years after it. I know, one's a movie and one's a 49-episode series, but still.
- I am increasingly feeling that I am too harsh on CG R2. My opinions on it have changed so much in the past 7.5 months, lol.
- I need to write a mini-grant proposal. Awesome.
- I wish it would stop raining. Seriously, it's not even awesome batten-down-the-hatches rain. It's raining straight down. What's with this heretical Californian rain? :|
- Still haven't told my parents I'm going to California next week, ell oh ell.

As I was lamely watching old cartoon clips (Animaniacs, Histeria, etc.) on Youtube yesterday, I stumbled across this one...

( I can finally identify all these now! )

It is my opinion that more educational factoids ought to be conveyed through song and dance numbers.

$218 (well, $249 after taxes and fees) this late for a ticket spanning Memorial Day weekend? FUCK YEAH!

( details under cut )

eom. :3

I had my last Neuro test today. It was annoyingly comprehensive, so I had to use my powers of ~*IMAGINATION*~ quite a good amount. Oh well!

Suddenly, I'm tired as all hell. Time for some chores and mindless fun.

Final Fantasy music is coming to Dallas

I've hardly even played these games. How lame is it that I want to go? :|

Program:
FINAL FANTASY series: Main Theme, Swing de Chocobo
FINAL FANTASY I-III: Medley
FINAL FANTASY IV: Theme of Love
FINAL FANTASY V: Dear Friends
FINAL FANTASY VI: Opera "Maria and Draco"
FINAL FANTASY VII: One-Winged Angel, Opening - Bombing Mission, Aerith's Theme
FINAL FANTASY VIII: Liberi Fatali, Fisherman's Horizon, Love Grows, Don't be Afraid
FINAL FANTASY IX: Vamo' alla Flamenco
FINAL FANTASY X: To Zanarkand
FINAL FANTASY XI: Memoro de la Stono - Distant Worlds

I can't keep a straight face listening to One-Winged Angel or Liberi Fatali as it is. What are the chances I'd be able to during a live performance?

In unrelated news, I showed up at school to study today. Everyone's reaction was "holy crap, you're at school!" I don't not come to school...just not very often... >_>