January 31, 2005
Date-Based Archive
High Body Count / This is not helping my diet
Thanks to the miracle of livejournal, tracking diseases is easy! It works like this: Someone gets sick. They stay home from work and post on livejournal what all their symptoms are. You read their post on your Friends page. Then you read, over the next two weeks, dozens of other posts about people getting the same illness with the same symptoms. Then you hear about people at work getting sick. And you over-hear a conversation in the gym. Finally your boyfriend gets sick! Same symptoms! I guess he failed a con check.
The illness in question includes a lovely hacking cough, and flu-like symptoms, and slight fever on the first day. Word on the street is that it lays you up for an entire week. I hope I don't get it. I haven't been sick in quite some time, since before Christmas at least... I don't remember being sick in November, either. Nevertheless, the body count is piling up!
N.'s illness comes at a time when my roommates are out of town for two weeks, visiting Australia. That'd be fine, since we're mostly going to use that time to watch anime on the high-definition TV (and abuse bandwidth downloading more anime), but N. was pretty much bedridden all day Sunday. If he stays bedridden, I can finally finish watching Princess Tutu! (Trust me, it's a good show!)
Next I whine about dieting for a while:
I read somewhere that the average American gains 6 pounds over the holidays. I know I did! I'm trying to lose those 6-10 pounds, and have been since the beginning of January. But for some reason I'm having a really hard time sticking to the diet and counting calories. Like, I'll count calories for the first half of the day, but when I've hit my weight watcher's point limit for the day (around 4pm or 5pm) and I haven't eaten dinner yet, I stop counting, because f*ck, what's the point? It's demoralizing to find out exactly how much I've overshot my goal.
I've tried to give up drinking entirely in the time between N. and I's anniversary and Valentine's Day (both nights which I tend to drink on), but I had three drinks on Friday night. The trouble with drinking is that when I'm tipsy, I disregard any kind of dieting and start snacking like crazy. The more I eat, the more I can drink, because the food absorbs some of the alcohol. (As we all learned from the prom episode of 90210...) Beer and other alcoholic drinks are not exactly calorie free, and they also make you dehydrated. I usually have a spike in my weight a day or two after drinking - I assume it's my body taking on more water to make up for the dehydration. I have found that drinking one or two beers while sticking to the diet has a negligible effect, but the closer I am to my goal weight, the more adversely alcohol seems to effect me.
That said, just giving up alcohol isn't really enough to lose weight. Neither is just going to the gym enough for me to lose weight. I've found that going to the gym regularly helps keep me stay the same weight and not gain any - but I must stick to the diet if I actually want to lose weight (in addition to exercise). This is hardly the secret of the ages - dieting and exercise are the way to lose weight! Duh!! Auuugh! It's easy to do one or the other, but sticking to both is pretty hard. Going to the gym makes me hungry afterwards!
There's a problem to, where I have to feed N.. In a typical day I eat a lot at work, because I'm always hungry around lunchtime, but then I really screw up when I get hungry at 4pm and snack too much. That's it for my calories for the day! Then I go to the gym after work, which makes me hungry. Then I go home and have to cook dinner for N., and I'm not going to cook without eating any of it myself, so even if I eat a less than N., I still eat, and that's more calories.
When I worked at ISO I used to eat less for lunch and save up a lot of calories for dinner. Now that I work until 7pm, I find that a lot harder to do. I often feel that 6pm is a good time for dinner, so by the time I actually eat at 10pm, I've been waiting for dinner for quite a while. I probably shouldn't eat anything after 10pm, but I get home late often (not because I'm working, necessarily), so it's not unusual for me to fix dinner at 11pm.
It was a lot easier to lose weight when I was severely overweight and not just a little overweight. It was really hard to lose the last 10 pounds the first time (the first 40 pounds were much easier to lose!). In the end I know that's my problem - I can't mess up the diet at all in order to lose the last 10 pounds, and it's hard to work up the kind of motivation necessary in order not to slack off at all. I'd have to have a concrete goal in order to do it (like for Jen's wedding I was able to shape up long enough to drop a few more pounds), but I don't really want to wait for Maggie's wedding to get back to weight that I was at for most of last year. There's also the part where I'm not entirely unhappy with my current weight. I mean, one pair of jeans doesn't fit, but I don't feel like a giant fatass anymore.
Sure, it might be annoying to hear me whine about dieting, but you know what I'm not doing while I type this? Eating.
Posted by erin at 01:50 PM
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January 28, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Three Funny Things
Lately three very funny things have come up that are not really jokes, but somehow ought to be, or they should be skits, or comics, or something:
1. The first, thought of by Hal, is essentially "the tears of Cyclops". If Scott Summers (of the X-men) got really sad, a single tear would burn up a disintegrate as it fell from his laser eyes, leaving a trail of smoke.
2. The second, of my own making, is that I'd like to see the Mouth of Sauron (Return of the King extended edition) doing karaoke. I've always considered karaoke annoying and embarrassing for the person holding the mic, as well as the audience, and I'd really like to see the Mouth of Sauron as an obnoxious karaoke enthusiast. He shows up every Wednesday night, and you can't avoid him - he's like the troll of karaoke, horrifying to be in the same room with yet impossible to avoid.
3. This I came up with last night as Zoe described her parents as never having been hippies. When she once asked her mom if she'd been a hippy in the '60's, her mom said, "I used to kick hippies!" She said her dad probably did the same. I suggested that maybe they met because they were kicking the same hippy, and their eyes met. (The romantic music plays, perhaps Zoe's dad says "Get your own hippy to kick..." which trails off as he falls in love.)
Posted by erin at 02:22 PM
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January 27, 2005
Date-Based Archive
When did I get old?!
Holy god! I realized as I took this popular online quiz what recommends music that I have no idea what the hell an "emo kid" is, despite hearing one or two acquaintances mention it. In contexts referring to my office: "All those emo guys in the CG department look alike."
I pretended to know what they were talking about at the time. But this music quiz really flummoxed me with strange agree/disagree statements like the following:
Emo kids can get jet \'n\' get capped sucka\'s!
What could that possibly mean? And what's it got to do with music? Then there are statements like:
I want music that'd make me go well off the Jodrell Bank.
What bank?! And who is Alan Whickers, as in the following:
Music is just being made to get off a bird's Alan Whickers.
This question did make me laugh, however:
Music by machines!? These machines better be tractors!
The quiz decided that I would like "Indy" music, which was a different catergory than "Indy Rock" and recommended Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, ant the Polyphonic Spree, all bands that I'm very lukewarm about. I think the results were largely based on answers where I said that it was OK to include a variety of instruments, such as trombones, in my music.
I went on to look up what an emo kid is and found a variety of articles:
- a brief definition
- How Emo Kids dress (with pictures)
- How to dress and act like an emo kid
Apparently "Emo" comes from "Emotional Music", and emo kids are often called "scenesters". I call "scenesters" "hipsters" usually, and call the thick black-rimmed "art school glasses".
Posted by erin at 06:52 PM
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January 25, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Water that Remembered What It was Like to be Warm Long Ago
The hot water in our apartment has been on the fritz for exactly a week now. As soon as it got arctic-ly cold the hot water went away, particularly in the mornings. For a while you could take a shower at night and still have it be hot, but in the past couple of days the water's been either freezing or tepid.
Now I rant about city noise and roadkill for some reason...
In the two years that I've lived in our building the heat during the winter has always been phenomenal - too hot in fact - so much so that earlier this winter N. and I were turning on the A/C at night, right on into December, because otherwise it was too hot to sleep! If we opened the windows at night it would mean listening to the buses on the busy streets below with their wheelchair lifts going all night (every time I see a wheelchair lift on a bus in action I think of ET cursing it) or construction early in the morning, or idiots hanging out on the street, or the occasional car accident. It's a busy street, a major bus stop, and there are two new buildings going up across the street. Plus late at night you can hear the subway, particularly the train that N. and I call the "lie train" which is the big yellow non-passenger train that only comes when you're late getting home at night. Used to be the same car alarm went off every night at midnight. You know, until they tore the parking lot out.
I've seen three or four parking lots in NYC get torn out and replaced by high-rises. It's led me to believe that most parking lots are sitting ducks.
I mean, sure, I could complain about the street noise here, but back home on the farm where my parents live, leaving the windows open at night (without a fan going) means listening to crazy unidentifiable noises - like something crunching through the dead leaves in the back yard all night long. I assume cats, but aren't cats usually quiet? Well, except for cat fights, which sound like people dying or babies screaming or something crazy.
It's like, sure, I could complain that Penn Station smells like piss all the time, but is that anything compared to a field that has fresh manure spread on it for fertilizer? Or the smell wafting up from pigs in the morning? Or the smell of roadkill? Roadkill has such a distinct aroma. It's the smell of rotting death. Sometimes I can smell something that smells like roadkill in the Canal Street subway station, and that really is frightening, because in the city, dead things usually get cleaned up quickly.
Some time when I was at community college in Michigan the county road commission lost funding and roadkill started piling up. We're not just talking possums, which there are a lot of, no, I mean actual deer carcasses started collecting in the ditches. You might drive by a dozen dead raccoons and not even know it, thanks to some tall grass, but deer carcasses are impossible to miss.
Even going home for Christmas this year I spotted a half dozen or so dead deer, mostly on the side of the highway. Whizzing by at 70 mph doesn't prevent you from spotting an open ribcage and an anatomy lesson.
Roadkill when you're jogging is the worst. You can smell it from a long way off and jogging past it affords a much more horrific view than just driving by. It's always a thousand times more heartbreaking if it's a dog or a cat.
Some people hate the city, but you know what you know what you don't see when you jog through Central Park? Guts! Guts smeared on the road! That's what. Sure, there's that ever-present danger of being mugged, but you can't smell that coming, can you?
As gross as roadkill is, or as dangerous as mugging may be, I don't think I could ever live in a suburb. Seeing a dead deer or some smelly homeless guy is a reminder of mortality and a constant reminder of how fragile life is. What have suburbs got to remind you that at any minute you could bite the big one?
Meanwhile here's a good link to send to your friends who are thinking about visiting New York.
 | You scored as The White Rabbit. You're the white rabbit. 'Nuff said.
The White Rabbit | | 75% | The Cheshire Cat | | 63% | The Catapillar | | 56% | The Mad Hatter | | 31% | Alice | | 31% | The Red Queen | | 6% |
Could you survive Wonderland?
created with QuizFarm.com |
Posted by erin at 07:13 PM
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January 21, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Auuug! My Eyes!
Going to the optometrist on Thursday reminded me of my long history of hating optometrists based on several bad experiences. This visit ended badly - I can't wear my contacts for THREE WHOLE DAYS!!! I also had to buy new lenses for my glasses and from now on I have to change my contacts more often, which means more expense for me!
Before Thursday the last time I'd been to an optometrist was almost three years ago. I realized one day in 2002 as I was waiting for the subway, watching one of the lenses pop out of my glasses (for no reason) and skitter across the platform, stopping in the yellow zone just before the tracks, that although I had no health insurance, I had no choice, I had to get new glasses.
Why should the myopic be burdened with such additional health costs? Even if I only wore glasses, I'd still have to go in for an eye exam occasionally, and my experience with health insurance is that it almost never covers new glasses. My mom's health insurance had weird rules, like you could only get new glasses OR new contacts once a year, and you could only get new frames every 5 years, and new glass lenses every other year. So, when I started wearing contacts in 7th grade, I was stuck with the same pair of glasses for the next decade or so, since I had opted to keep updating my contacts instead.
Flashback to 1989/1990...
I'm in 5th grade and my parents notice I'm starting to squint a lot. My parents, who are both near-sighted, take me to an optometrist. The optometrist has me sit in a dark room for a long time, by myself, and I start to think, "They told me to wait here, but it's been a long time, and they shut off the light. I think they've forgotten I'm here."
I went out to the lobby to where my mom was waiting. "I think they forgot about me," I said, "they locked me a dark room."
"No no!" my mom explained, "They're trying to dilate your eyes."
That was the first I'd heard of such a thing! My parents and the doctor explained briefly why eye dilation is necessary for an exam, but I don't remember much of that conversation, only that I learned that's why old people wear those hideous gigantic disposable sunglasses over their regular glasses. (Old people wear them out of necessity, but Rick's friend Dave wears them to make a fashion statement. Or an anti-fashion statement, it's hard to say.)
They offered me some of the aforementioned world's ugliest sunglasses on the way out of the office, but I turned them down. My parents explained that things might look weird for a while, what with my eyes dilated. But things didn't look weird. And my eyes weren't sensitive to the sun. Everything looked normal. I assumed I had ruined the whole dilating thing by leaving the room too soon. Based on my internet research this morning I don't think it's possible that I ruined the procedure - they give you eye drops that relax the pupil's muscles. Maybe my eyes recovered very quickly, who knows?
Anyway, what kind of jerk optometrist doesn't explain to a fifth grader who's never been to an eye exam before what exactly is going on? Some kind of jack-ass, that's who. I never went back to that doctor because he made the snide remark as I was leaving with my first-ever pair of glasses that now I would "... be able to see the individual leaves on trees again!" He actually laughed at me with a coworker at the office. They thought his remark was pretty funny.
I didn't think it was funny, since at the time my vision really wasn't that bad. I COULD see the individual leaves on trees, and I could see the chalkboard just fine in class, even from the back row. Sometimes I had to squint a little, but I didn't see what the big deal was. I didn't wear my glasses all the time back then, and kept them in my desk most of the day.
We found a better optometrist after that, but I still can't believe what a jerk that guy was. I hold him in a similar kind of contempt as I do the dental hygienists who cleaned my teeth growing up.
I ALWAYS brushed my teeth as a kid, but the hygienists would always look at me disappointedly and tell me I had to do a better job of it. Meanwhile my brother would brush his teeth only twice a year, once before each dentist appointment. I could hear the hygienists in the next room saying to him, "Wow, Matt! This is 99% improvement since your last visit!" I swear to god they said this several years in a row.
My brother doesn't need glasses. He got the recessive genes.
(Speaking of dentists, I didn't get a cavity until I was 21. Matt got cavities at about 15 or 16, proving those hygienists were idiots.)
By sixth grade my eyes had worsened. I wore my glasses all the time. I also cam to the troubling realization that I was a horrible, horrible nerd, with or without glasses. You might think I'm a dork now, but a glance at my sixth grade yearbook picture will prove things were ten thousand times worse back in 1991. (We're talking Napoleon Dynamite bad. Even N. laughed out loud at it.) Setting off the picture is the nerdiest pair of glasses possible for that period of time. I chose the biggest frames I could so I wouldn't lose any peripheral vision. That was a tragic mistake for a junior high kid to make (middle school, junior high, whatever).
In a weird way, my dad was the early adaptor of our family and started wearing contacts in 1991 or 1992. I got contacts in 7th grade, which, in a horrifying way, immediately improved my nerdy social standing (it's hard to believe 7th graders are so petty). My mom got contacts a year or two later, ditching her librarian look for good. There's nothing wrong with being a librarian, but it's really annoying to have people think you are one every time you visit the library. Without the glasses, my mom stopped getting questions about where to find books.
The next time I went to an optometrist, they didn't dilate my eyes. In fact, I haven't had my eyes dilated since that first time, which was almost 15 years ago! I asked one optometrist I went to for a while if it was necessary, and he said something about new technology making it so you don't have to dilate eyes anymore.
Maybe that guy was smoking crack, I don't know. All of my research today has proved otherwise. One's eyes probably ought to be dilated once every other year or so for a more thorough exam.
The crack smoker was a guy running a very family-ish optometry office near my parent's place in Michigan. I went there for four years or so, whenever I went home for Christmas, for as long as my mom's insurance would cover it. That doctor was nice, but some of his equipment seemed a bit antiquated, and if you asked him a question he'd talk your ear off.
I don't know if other patients ask questions or what. But if someone's blowing puffs of air into my eyes with a crazy machine or putting in drops to make the stains on my eyes look florescent, I'd like to know what that test is for! I don't care to know on a cellular level what's happening, but I'd like to have some general idea. (Dr. Shovels would explain to the level of minutia, and relate anecdotes... you know, I'd also rather not spend all day at the optometrists, either.)
The optometrist I went to before the visit last Thursday was a guy on Avenue A. Well, the glasses shop was on Avenue A. I quickly discovered that the doctor was only in a couple times a week (I assumed he traveled to other shops on other days). When I went for an appointment it was really rushed. There were dozens of people in the small shop, and the doctor hurried through a series of appointments.
It wasn't all bad. My new prescription made my vision a little better than 20/20. It was maybe 20/15. Better still, my new lenses didn't pop out of my glasses and go flying into the subway tracks for no reason. The first new frames I'd had in a decade cost a chunk of change I really didn't have, but I could actually use them, since at last the prescription was up to date.
But I didn't like Doctor Rush-Job and I wasn't going to go back. That guy saw me for like five minutes. Plus Avenue A and 3rd Street was way more convenient back when I actually lived in the East Village.
From that visit in 2002 I got a renewed prescription for contacts, and I bought a year's supply of contacts that you switch out monthly. That is to say, you dispose of your current pair and break open a new pair of contacts each month. But from 2002 until basically now, I've been pretty broke, and even with health insurance I've never had vision coverage. So instead of changing my contacts once a month, I've changed them maybe once every other month to make them last longer.
I only threw them out when they started to hurt, or if I accidently ripped them. In the meantime I tried to keep them as clean as I could.
Turns out that was a big mistake. Those one-month contacts were more likely the popular two-week disposables. Not cleaning them and changing them often enough can lead to staining your eyes. You can read about it here:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/eyestain.htm
"The severity of staining seemed to depend on how often the subjects replaced their lenses with a new pair; if they wore conventional rather than disposable lenses; and how meticulous they were about cleaning their lenses."
So on Thursday my new optometrist from the LensCrafters on 8th street wasn't very pleased with what she found. She gave me a thorough exam, although I'd opted not to have my eyes dilated, assuming it wasn't really necessary. She checked for staining on the surface of my eyes and found some stains. Heck, maybe it was a lot... she told me to buy some specific eyedrops and use them four times a day for the next three or four days while I refrain from wearing my contacts. She also told me that the last guy had over-corrected my vision, which can be bad for you in the long run. So I've got a new, weaker prescription for my contacts and glasses. (Goodbye, 20/15 super-human vision!)
I think the last optometrist also f--ed up in giving me the same prescription for both eyes. One of my eyes is weaker than the other. It's always been that way. Apparently it was also that way for the last two years, I just didn't have the right prescription for it. (-4.0 in one eye, -3.75 in the other, in case you were wondering. And that's only moderate myopia, whereas in 5th grade, you can bet it was only mild.)
For a long-ass article on vision, check out the wikipedia.
I hate wearing my glasses all day long! From the time I started wearing contacts in 7th grade, I pretty much wore them all day every day unless I was sick, or if I ripped or lost a contact or I was too tired to put them in.
Any kind of nerdy aesthetics aside, I hate losing my peripheral vision. I hate it when it rains or snows and I'm wearing glasses and my vision is impaired. I hate even the tiniest smudge on the lens, but it's impossible to avoid! I hate that my new frames are small enough to look decent, but they're so small it's hard to make eye contact with people. I hate that it's harder to see things at night because of the reflections in my glasses. I hate it when you come in from the cold and your glasses fog up and you can't see for several minutes! Most of all I hate wearing glasses when I work out, because the sweat makes them slide down my nose. Then I go to wipe my face and forget I'm wearing them and horribly smear sweat-streaks across my glasses and then I can't see peripherally OR head-on! Gah!! Glasses suck!
I do have a new respect for glasses after reading Name of the Rose.
Posted by erin at 05:14 PM
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January 19, 2005
Date-Based Archive
The Story of the Story of Appleseed
Alright, fine, the story of seeing Appleseed.
Picture this: It's last Thursday, I'm pretty bored. My plans for after-work include going to the gym and going home. All of the sudden one of my coworkers emails me and asks if I know about this new Appleseed movie, and do I want to go? I reply and ask if it's free and if N. can go too and the answer is yes.
All I have to do is meet this coworker's husband, who I've heard of but never met, at his office at exactly 6pm. So I ask to get off work early and arrange to have N. meet me at this guy's office. N. shows up a little later than expected and a man who's been smoking outside while I waited for N. is like "Are you here to see Jeff?" We say yes.
The man leads us back through the bowels of an office that reminds me of the 4Kids offices, only cooler, and we end up in the very back, in the office of Jeff's small company. We have to wait for Jeff to take a phone call and for the other invitee to the movie to arrive, so Jeff hands us a book that has press clippings and stuff about his company in it.
N. and I skim through the book and learn about Jeff's company. Turns out Jeff's a long-time gamer. N. is all about that and strikes up a conversation with Jeff about D&D and Dragon magazine and all that.
When we get up to Asia Society the line for the free preview screening stretches around the block. We're not as early as we could've been, and things look grim. Word reaches the back of the line that Time Out magazine photocopied their movie passes, and that's why twice as many people as will fit in the theater have shown up!
Jeff goes up several times to investigate the front of the line. Jeff's coworker assures us that we'll get in, and that "Jeff has never failed us before." I am vaguely aware that Jeff has Connections" in the Industry, but I'm not sure to what extent.
We move to the front of the line to one side, where a conflict is taking place. The security-guard-looking fellow is locking the doors and yelling at people and telling them it's filled to capacity, but sometimes he looks over at Jeff in a friendly way. Things are looking bad. A Japanese woman who I recognize as the director of the Energy-Fest-NYC events is trying to usher in her Japanese guests, but the security guard is saying no. It's almost time for the movie to start. Free posters are being handed out as consolation prizes.
Suddenly the security guard talks to us privately. He introduces us to an old man, his father. Apparently Jeff worked with the guy's father for years and years in the comic book industry. The security guard leads his parents and our group (a total of eight people) around to the secret door in the back, where the Energy-Fest woman is arguing in broken English with a man who looks like a building manager who is complaining about fire codes. The building manager looks like he's on the verge of tears.
The security guard explains that it's OK, he has eight seats saved in the second row, and he has eight people here. We are ushered past the visiting Japanese dignitaries and into the theater.
Taking tickets is someone who I recognize from Metro Anime Society, not to mention every other asian event in the city, like the Subway Cinema Film Festival, and various meet-ups from meetup.com and Zoe's party, and several anime cons. He must be a member of Asia Society.
Just inside the theater is a guy I recognize from somewhere but can't place until sometime after the movie.
We take our seats, which have paper signs that say "Reserved" taped to them. Whenever I've been to other free preview screenings, I've always looked at the taped-off sections and wondered who the hell gets to sit there. This time it's me.
The rest of the audience is made of some of the big-time anime fans I recognize from various events, a lot of unwashed fanboys, some press-like people, and more Japanese dignitaries.
The event begins and someone from Asia Society introduces the freakin' president of Geneon Entertainment! Geneon is one of the big three or four anime distribution companies (the others being ADV, Funimation, Manga Entertainment, and Central Park Media). This is a bigwig from Japan! He's got a lot riding on the theatrical release of this movie in the states. He rattles off the list of cities the move opens in tomorrow in a memorized English speech. The last city, and he says, his favorite, is Honolulu.
Next the Energy-Fest chick gets on stage and introduces the director of the film, who's sitting in the audience. Then she thanks everyone again for coming and having this event and goes on to warn the audience not to think too hard about the picture we're about to see. "Please," she says, "Let your brain go transparent!"
The film plays to an audience who at once likes the cool scenes and laughs in a mixture of sarcasm and embarrassment at the bad scenes. My review is here.
At the end a lot of people leave during the credits, perhaps unable to face the director for the Q&A session to follow. There's also a simultaneous video game release party going on upstairs. Maybe they're going to that.
I realize the mystery man from when I walked in the door is a friend of Andrea's, from Central Park Media. I've hung out with him at least twice and met him more times than that, but he was still really hard to place.
The Q&A session goes surprisingly well. A very professional-looking older woman translates for the director. It can't be easy, since people want to know very technical and fannish answers to things. We learn that Briareos was coughing in that one scene because he's a cyborg, and not a total robot (although this seems to lead to more questions...), and that the production staff used Maya and Lightwave. We learn that from the time the director was hired, the film took only a year and a half to produce! It was shot almost entirely in Japan. The director is not allowed to reveal the budget.
Next there's a reception after the film with free snacks, and free wine. Jeff, his cohort, N. and I head over to the reception. N. talks to Jeff's cohort for a while. I recognize Steve from CPM and talk to him. Turns out these CPM people are working the event. At first I assume he means as a kind of second job, since CPM doesn't pay very well. But it's actually mandatory overtime, since CPM has ties to Asia Society.
Jeff goes off to talk to Industry types. Eventually he comes back and talks to N. and I about his experiences working with Joss Wheadon! Jeff helped with the Buffy mythology early on in the show, and later he was solicited to help write a Buffy movie that never happened. But what did happen was that some rich producers flew him to Japan, to visit this guy's house - built in a Buddhist monastery in the middle of a mountain! We marvel over what kind of idiot actually builds a mansion on an Indian burial ground for real.
A woman who claims to be from the "Kyoto News" or something implausible asks me my opinion of the film, since there are mostly guys around. She wants to hear a woman's point of view. I complain about this and that and that characters not looking human enough and she tends to agree. Then the Asia Society starts flashing the lights and kicking us out.
We talk with Jeff outside for a while before parting ways.
N. is wholly impressed to have met geeks in the Industry who someday want to put their D&D campaign into a really tastefully done high-budget movie. Isn't that every geek's dream?
I felt really lucky to get to go to such an event totally for free and at the last possible minute. It seems to me sometimes that the best things that happen in New York are almost totally random.
Posted by erin at 07:30 PM
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Date-Based Archive
Frodo's Bridesmaids Poll
Go on over to my livejournal and take the Frodo's Bridesmaids Poll.
Posted by erin at 12:15 AM
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January 18, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Appleseed in Ten Minutes
Here's my synopsis of the new Appleseed movie. Seeing it was a story unto itself, which I'll tell later. Meanwhile I'd like to point out that Appleseed was first a manga, then a 2-episode OVA, and now it's a 3-D movie.
Blah blah spoiler-warning.
The New Appleseed Movie in Ten Minutes:
The film opens on a shoot-out in a bombed-out city. "I can't wait to play this scene in the video game!" the viewers think giddily.
Later the protagonist (hot super-soldier of the future!) Deunan wakes up in the perfect utopian city. OR IS IT?! "Bioroid" robot-girl Hitomi explains the horrible, horrible tensions that we know will shake the city to its core and possibly destroy the human race by the end of the film, if not in the next 20 minutes.
Hitomi explains, "I'm an idiot, and a totally unsympathetic, poorly animated character. But actually you're supposed to care about my untimely death, because my fate is cheesily tied to the fate of the Ring, and to Middle Earth."
Hitomi ads: "Here in the future, our roads are made of glass, which leads to a lot of traction problems."
Deunan: "We're being followed! You be useless while I go kick ass!"
Then there's an awesome mono-whip battle scene! Only watch this scene, it's the only worthwhile thing in the film.
Some old guys in floating wheelchairs explain the mechanics of this soon-to-be-dystopian future world. Mostly, they tell you how robots can't have sex.
We also learn that Deunan's ex-boyfriend Briareos has had most of his man-parts replaced with robot parts. In fact, he's pretty much a robot. Is he a robot where it counts? Who knows! He and Deunan have sort of broken up.
Deunan starts training with the future-cops, and kicks all their asses at paintball. It's a good scene, but the scene after that is terrible. She and Briareos fight:
Briareos: "You could've gone easier on the rookies!"
Deunan: "Why are you acting like such a tool? We used to go out, you know!"
Briareos: "I can't handle my new robotic feelings. Also I'm played by a bad voice actor."
We're introduced to high-ranking bioroid Athena, who looks like a bad guy and is really poorly animated.
Athena: "Oh Deunan, if only I weren't so badly animated, you'd realize I was a good guy."
There's a scene where Deunan tries on some powered armor. Before she's had a chance to use it a siren goes off! There's a terrorist attack and Deunan takes off with the other powered-armor cops to go check it out, despite her, how shall we say, Gundam-esque lack of training in piloting powered armor.
OMG, the terrorists have blown up the bioroid factory and now all the robots-babies are dead and all the robot-adults will die in a couple of days!!! As well as Hitomi. But who cares!?
Deunan and her robot-ex-boyfriend Briareos go to Deunan's mother's lab, on a mission to find "Appleseed". A bunch of bad guys who you've never seen before show up and explain one by one what their backstory is and what their individual motivations are for wanting to kill Deunan. Example:
Pluto: "Deunan, I hated your super-scientist mother and super-soldier father and everything they stood for and were working towards. There's a little bit of your father's DNA in every bioroid in the city, so every time I kill a bioroid it's like getting a little bit of revenge on your [dead] dad! But now I'm going to kill you, and you share A LOT of DNA with your father! This is gonna be great!"
Naturally Deunan and Briareos escape and fall into the ocean.
At this point I should mention that Briareos is an 800-pound robot. That doesn't stop Deunan from carrying him to shore. Who knows? Maybe they walked along the bottom.
Briareos coughs (guess they didn't replace his lungs with robot parts) and is about to die.
Briareos: "Deunan, I have to tell you something."
Deunan: "Shut up, Briareos."
OH IF ONLY HE HAD LISTENED!! But instead, Briareos has a long death monologue that teaches us all a lesson in "on-the-nose dialog" and why screenwriters should never use it.
Fade to black. Oh wait, fade up to white because that mechanic guy from two scenes ago saves Briareos's life.
Deunan gives Athena that pendant she carries with her what has Appleseed in it.
Athena: "Thank you Deunan, now bioroids can have sex.... well, except me. For a robot chick I'm pretty ugly."
Deunan: "Don't worry Athena, you'll find someone. What about Hitomi? I think she's gay. And she's annoying as hell, so it's not like she has prospects, if you know what I mean."
Athena: "Are you nuts? Those floating wheelchairs guys are all over her! I can't stand up against the city Parliament."
Deunan: "Sure you can. Those guys are totally corrupt. In fact, they're trying to destroy the city right now by sending giant mobile fortress robots to unleash the plague that will kill us all.
Athena: "No shit! Really?"
Hitomi: "Cough! Cough! Hey guys, I know how to stop the mobile fortresses. Here's how! Psssst psssst pssssst [etc., whispering]."
Even though you thought the movie was over, there's a giant mobile-fortress battle scene. Briareos might die again, falling off the giant machine, but Deunan catches him, with one arm, even though he weighs 800 pounds.
If there was any justice in the universe Deunan's arm would rip off. But it doesn't. Instead we get to hear choice lines like:
Briareos: "Deunan, let go. You have to type the password to stop the fortress."
Deunan: "No, Briareos. I don't want to lose you again."
The keyboard on the mobile-fortress starts shorting out and Deunan can't get the "M" key to work to type the password.
Deunan: "Hey Briareos, this 'M' key is broke. Will you give me your 'M' key? You've probably got a keyboard in there somewhere, right?"
Briareos: "I don't remember this scene from the manga. Plus I don't think keyboards work that way, Deunan."
The movie ends with bioroid sex-orgies. OK, maybe not. But it seems like it probably ought to.
Posted by erin at 07:02 PM
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January 17, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Livejournally Goodness
Ha! Who knew paid livejournal accounts were so cheap? You'll be seeing a lot of polls in the next two months as I get my $5 out of Livejournal.
Here's the first one, Toy Story vs. The Incredibles.
Posted by erin at 06:40 PM
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January 14, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Something We Can All Enjoy!
Here's a complete list of funny LOTR animated gifs taked from BigBig Truck's livejournal. They were made by LOTR forum people or something. I highly recommend watching them all:
In order from the funniest first... actually I like them all,
except maybe "Use the Bushes".
An Azumanga Daioh
gif:
Posted by erin at 01:01 PM
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January 13, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Alison Returns from Japan
Holy crap! I gave Alison a list of stuff she might want to look for on my behalf in Japan (at her request), thinking maybe she'd find two or three of the things. She brought back, instead TONS OF SWAG! OMG:
  
I am now the proud owner of cool wooden sandels (not pictured above).
Alison=Awesome!!!
Posted by erin at 12:13 AM
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January 11, 2005
Date-Based Archive
New Additions to my site
First of all I finally scanned in the comic strips I was working on in November.
I added them into the old sequence, so the new ones start here.
The ones about our D&D game start here.
In addition I bought villagegoclub.org as a site for the Village Go Club. If you're reading this at random and are in NYC and want to learn more about Go Club (and can't wait for the site to be updated) email villagegoclub@gmail.com.
If you're interested in say, helping to design a logo for Village Go Club or you'd like to help design the site or have suggestions for conent (I have a pretty good idea of content I'd like to provide) also email me at villagegoclub@gmail.com.
I couldn't have set the site up without the generous support of Mariano, who helped make the DNS thingies work, and Ryan, who installed the blog and the robot-filter.
Posted by erin at 06:59 PM
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January 10, 2005
Date-Based Archive
bored bored bored
Herein I talk about Maggie getting married, N. joining Kung Fu, Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3, Our trip to the Container Store, And a word on personal space...
Lots of stuff has happened since my last entry and I never even really elaborated on the details of Christmas.
Maggie, for example, is getting married. So I get to be a bridesmaid again, for the third time in three years. I don't think it's a curse or anything, like "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," or something. It's just... weird I guess, to know so many people getting married. I'm glad I wasn't bridesmaid three times in the same year, though.
I used to be able to say, "Sure, all my friends from Michigan are getting married, but none of my New York friends are married (except Kerry, who's a freak)." And now I can't say that anymore, unless I tack on that Kerry and Maggie are crazy.
Kerry I didn't expect to get married, possibly ever, and he got married first. By this logic, others who I wouldn't expect to marry should also get hitched suddenly and unexpectedly. I guess it'd be rude to name names, so I'll give initials: Z., J., D.
With Maggie you could see it coming. Same with my other married friends (Lauren, Jen).
N. is annoyed because now he has to sit through nearly a year of more wedding preparation discussion. He's finally rid of one of the lawyers he worked for, who did nothing but plan her wedding the entire year last year (instead of working). My last year at my old company I would often put on headphones to drown out the sound of my manager and one of my coworkers in the department talking about weddings. The manager was getting married, and so was the coworker's daughter, so they kept comparing notes on photographers and flowers and crap.
Speaking of N., he has started taking Kung Fu with Ms. Maggie (soon to be Mrs. Maggie) in the building where I work. Let us all remember the way that Maggie started taking classes; I picked up a postcard dropped in the hallway of the building with a Shaolin monk on it to give to ET. Maggie looked at the postcard and decided to learn Kung Fu, based on her exhaustive research watching the movie Shaolin Soccer.
N. is also helping me out by unlocking every last character in Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 for the Gamecube. It's a two person fighting game (like Mortal Kombat) where up to 4 players can join. You can choose teams too, which is nice. On New Years we had three people vs. Adan, and his videogame badass. It wasn't easy to beat him either. The game isn't as much fun if you're not familiar with any Naruto characters, but N. and I have seen enough of the show that we get lots of satisfaction out of making certain characters win.
Naruto is just a shounen fighting show, like DragonBall Z. Except in DBZ, you're not left at the end of a fighting tournament thinking that the other guy should've clearly won, and that certain characters could be cool if the author wasn't such a chauvinist about the whole thing. (I guess if the show was written by KD-C, it could be even worse.) Watching DBZ doesn't make me want to play video games, but for some reason Naruto does.
When not playing video games I've been trying to do the impossible; clean me and N.'s room. It's really gotten to be a sty in the past several months and was becoming unbearable. I dragged N. to The Container Store on Saturday because I needed his help carrying stuff home. Otherwise I'd have never asked him to come. (Just like that Ikea trip where he threatened homicide before eating the meatballs...) N. complained the whole time, "Why can't we just keep all our stuff in a big pile on the floor?" And I tried to explain that that is the very root of the problem... then he persisted in making jokes like, "This store should be called 'Contain Yourself!' " which we discovered was written on the employees' shirts, and "Ask them if they have containment units for ghosts, like on Ghost Busters," to which I said no.
The store was crowded, but nothing like that holiday-weekend Ikea crowd. One guy said to an employee, "Bet you're glad Christmas is over!" which she was, but still, that implies the store could be a thousand times more crowded.
In New York you sort of get used to people being packed together in certain situations, like in restaurants, on the subway, in sold-out movies, in the grocery store, in elevators, and so forth, and your sense of personal space starts to shrink. Once on a trip to Michigan a guy said "Excuse me" even though he was standing several feet away and I was totally shocked. He had plenty of room! Good grief!
Posted by erin at 06:42 PM
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January 03, 2005
Date-Based Archive
Happy New Year
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, dear blog readers and livejournal friends!
As is the way with things, whenever lots of stuff actually happens in my life I have no time for blogging, and, inversely, great lulls are well documented.
I went home to Michigan for Christmas and saw many of my friends and family who are there.
I have the pictures to document it, since my company gave us all digital cameras as a sort of Christmas bonus. The camera is OK, but only holds about 12 pictures at a time, which seems weird. I hope to adjust the settings to maybe... take more, smaller pictures.
At hope the barn was being deconstructed and moved, well behind schedule. Coming soon; pictures of the skeletal barn, and then the empty foundation!
On the Monday before I went home I dyed my hair blue, much to the disappointment of my family who'd heard it was pink. Did I get made fun of less for blue hair? It's difficult to say.
Many of my friends around here say they like the blue better than the pink. I liked the pink better. Too bad I can't post polls, or I'd take a poll on it. Also, I'd take a poll on whether everyone thinks The Incredibles was better than Toy Story or not. I think The Incredibles was better.
Here is the exciting conclusion to my Secret Santa tale:
The Secret Santa Saga Continues!
On the fourth day I got a second calendar. This time it was a Japanese calendar with cute pictures of pets. Not exactly my thing, cute pets, but by god, it was Japanese, and that was a step in the right direction.
The next day I got a small stuffed sheep. The tag says "Russell the Sheep". It's very soft. Not a bad gift.
Then I got a "Dunce" toy figure... sounds weird, but it is just the sort of collectable toy that I like. You can get them at Kid Robot or Toy Tokyo, so I knew at last, at last my Secret Santa had figured me out.
By Monday it was like I had a new Secret Santa. I got something very specific and very weird - a dishtowel from an anime company. A "Production I.G." dishtowel. Production I.G. made "Ghost in the Shell". It's... very... very odd that they also make dishtowels... but also very Japanese.
That meant that my person new someone on the inside, someone who works with Fifth Floor Productions, who have an office in the city and promoted "Ghost in the Shell II" when it came out this fall.
The next day I got more Ghost in the Shell II stuff - a press pack. My santa totally works in marketing. Or they have great connections.
Today (Monday) I came in and got my final gift, a Gundam toy. It's not a bad one, but I don't know what series it's from. Attached was a note written in Wingdings that did not immediately decode. G---- told me who my Secret Santa was - someone pretty high up in the company. I thought it was a girl, but it wasn't, it's a guy. Apparently last year he gave free crap to his Secret person as well, but thanks to my calling him out on it, he's now reformed his ways. Or that's the word on the street.
Posted by erin at 07:14 PM
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