It's been exactly a year since I posted here. Anyone remember crazy old me? Is everyone well?

Since I work near a Barnes and Noble, I tend to go in there on the off chance I get an hour lunch, or I open the store and get off at around 6 pm. Technically, I could go into Barnes and Noble after I finish closing the store at about 9:45, but yeah... hellz noe.

I've picked up a manga series that I read ages and ages ago. It was probably the first scanlated thing I ever read on the internet. You might have heard of it; it's called Houshin Engi. I advise against the anime, by the way.

Seriously, this manga is pretty damn old now. But, wow... I think I have this thing for sort of odd, yet aesthetically pleasing, styles. Rui Araizumi's style is one, but Ryu Fujisaki's style is... "Holy crap, I never noticed how neat this was." The style itself is really solid and consistent, not to mention clean and crisp. The guy is also surprisingly good at making his characters attractive, while making their faces and figures very different. When I read this as a 7th grader, I don't think I really came to appreciate it. But, I believe that this guy actually had quite a bit of influence on my art, and I never really realized it.

But, to get to the title of this entry... Houshin Engi is kind of... morbid. Okay, so we see people get eaten alive in a pit of snakes, the main villainess eating an intestine, we can deal with that. Our generation has been so desensitized, it doesn't even phase us. But, what I'm getting at is the first chapter of book 4.

The chapter title is "Dakki and Kibi's Three-Minute Cooking." Dakki, by the way, is the main villainess I mentioned before. Kibi is her younger sister, but that doesn't really matter. Pretty much, Dakki, an evil fox spirit possessing the body of a beautiful woman, has taken over the Yin Dynasty by tempting the emperor and is causing havoc. At one point, she imprisoned the governor of the western region. His eldest son came to the palace to rescue his father, and after his talking monkey injures Dakki, he is killed (though it is not shown on screen, Dakki walks towards him with a huge knife.)

The next page flips to Dakki and Kibi making hamburgers, gleefully describing how to prepare them correctly and cook them.

Then, the governor of the western region is served some hamburger's. Apparently, he loves hamburgers, which he says out loud to the person giving him the food. Then, the guy is like "Is that so? /smirk" And the governor starts crying as the guy leaves and says his son's name.

OMFGWTF. D8

Honestly, I'm not sure if it was his son, or just the monkey (Dakki thought it "looked delicious" before it injured her,) or if it was BOTH of them that got ground up into hamburgers.

I think what's actually weird is that I saw Sweeney Todd last week, and was less disturbed by that than this little thing in Houshin Engi. I MEAN DEAR GOD. SQUICK. /cowers in a corner.

Alright, now you all should go read it.

There's a strange noise coming from the basement. I can't really figure out what it is, but the glass light covers in the bathroom are audibly rattling. My step-dad is insane. I think he has his flight simulation game thing's volume turned up way high.

Yes, yes, I do really, truly, suck at coming back. Mostly because I've been working my ass off, and I probably will not be returning to school next semester. I am totally burned out and go into little depressive bouts. But, I'm getting a kick out of the some things. Josei knows what I'm talking about.

Really, I miss you guys. But, I kinda don't feel like I could possibly write interesting things in my LJ enough. Because, well, I have no life. 8D I'm getting behind in a lot of anime and manga, too. /sigh

So, how was everyone's holidays? I hope you got some good swag and had some fun.

Personally, I had a lot of fun. We did a gift exchange at work, and I got some manga and gift cards. Boowahaha. Not to mention that I finally brought this comic to show all my fellow Claire's (The Evil Empire's) employees:



Needless to say, they really got a kick out of it, because we all know the pain of the Claire's store music. That night was horrible, too. Very cold, icy, and WINDY. We all went to see if Sweeny Todd was playing, but alas, there were no more showings for the night. That wind and snow just went on and on, for what must have been more than 24 HOURS. My god.

I got a Daniel Merriam artbook, some money and gift cards, a Zune (which is named Azzie ♥) and an awesome set of Saint Seiya figurines (also known as The Army of Tight Pants) from red_raveness . C: Myep. So, that was my Christmas. Went to my grandmother's, as usual. Oh, yeah, and my uncle Keith and his family did not show up. Again. Last time, we were going to have Thanksgiving at my Grandma's place, where we normally have it at Keith's, but they didn't show. Why? Because, apparently, Ian (my cousin, whom I have become quite fond of /tear,) had some kind of sports thing to do. ON THANKSGIVING? I think not.

There have been a lot of problems with Keith for a long time. He has asked my grandmother for money a lot over the years, even though he is the most well off in our entire family. They just moved to a new, fancy ass neighborhood, they have a maid who comes and cleans their house, and all that shit. Last year, right before the school year started, he asked my grandmother for money to pay for the fees to send his kids to regular school. I MEAN WHAT? They are squandering their money!

Anyway, enough about that. Snow and ice are my new enemies. This is the first time I've really had to deal with driving in snow and ice on a regular basis. Frankly, I think someone needs to invent something to get rid of this crap, at least on the roads. I'm probably not going to be able to head over to red_raveness 's house tonight, because I was fishtailing the whole way home. Sure, it was fine on the big roads, but in town and neighborhoods... no plows have been through AT ALL. There's snow everywhere! D8

SO HAY GUYS TALK TO ME. /hump

OH YEAH. I bought Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I like it so far. Without the voices.

OH JEEZUS CHRONO CROSS KICK


*Hot* guy playing the Chrono Cross theme (with all the works) on some freaky organ thingymabob.

I suck at coming back. Seriously. My dearest friendslist, I read all your wonderful comments from that extremely old post, and I plan to give you some delayed replies. I also miss you all, and I really am going to try to be on here more, at the very least. Messenger programs... maybe not until holiday break, where I will likely be working a lot, but much less dead from school AND work.

I've pretty much been drowning myself in school, skipping school, and console video games. I finally got around to beating .hack//G.U. Been drawing some things, working on mah commission for Shannon, stuff like that. Not doing well in school at all. I just don't have the motivation at all. And I hate doing speeches.

But, hey, I've finally got Azure Kite in my party... so all is well with the world. 8D Well, not really. I don't know how I'm going to pull myself out of this school slump, for reals. As long as I don't get Ds or fail, I'll be okay, but... Hahahaha.

Most pointless post ever... END.

P.S.
Zelkova is creepy. Therefore, he can't NOT be Helba.

P.S.#2
Luckily, Mona Marshal somehow made Azure Kite sound like a man with his battle grunts.

P.S.#3
FEEEEEEEDDD MEEEEEEE

Hey there guys. Sorry that I haven't been posting lately. I've been somewhat cut off from anything social besides icky school, so... there you have it. I'm going to work a lot next week and the week after, since my manager is taking her vacation during the week of Halloween. I need to get together with red_raveness  so I can get my pseudo-modern Azure Kite costume ready for that. I have all the parts, I just need help with the fun fun sewing and what not because I suck. C:

So, how are you guys?! I wanna know! Yes, I am too lazy to go back and read weeks of posts. Yes, it's okay if you hate me for it. I just want to hear from you all, especially those of you who are enjoying your first semester at college. Stressful?! LOLARIOUS?

Come on, I missed you guys. D:

Also also, I was invited to this weird art community by one of the ladies who run the ACTUAL SITE. I was like "LOLWHUT?" because much of the art here is (really amazing) photography. You can see the website here: http://www.artlimited.net/ I did join, and added a few pieces, but this place has kind of inspired me and I'm working on not just my art trades and commissions, but some more personal pieces as well. 8D;;

And btw, empezar, your commission is coming along. Slowly. But Naruto looks hawt so far. ♥

So, I've been thinking about getting a new MP3 player. red_raveness recently got a shiny new silver iPod, whose name is Allen Walker. Kyahaha.

My old one is tired and dying, and I really want a new fancy thing to show off, truthfully. But, the problem is that I don't really know what kind of mp3 player to get. I am wary of getting an iPod, mostly because I really, really abhor iTunes. This fact was emphasized as red_raveness and I struggled to transfer music from the iPod to my computer and vice versa. iTunes is so "user friendly" it's painful. I am not interested in buying things off the iTunes website either, because if I'm going to pay money for it, I'd rather at least have an official CD that I can hold in my hands. I've thought about a Zune, but it has gotten some mixed reviews, mostly for its transfer program and so forth.

So. I know a few of you have iPods on the good old flist, but I want to know what other mp3 players anyone owns, or if there are any opinions/suggestions you can throw out there for me. I personally want an mp3 player that can hold a lot of music. I don't need a tiny mp3 player that can hold about 20 songs and is only the size of my thumb.

P.S. There will be a post today at sometime in carminagadelica. Tori Amos songs galore! Also, I have almost everything I need for my Halloween costume. I pretty much only need a good pair of teeth! Bwahahaha. Now if only my eyes were blue. /sob

Ahem. Yes.

So, the new .hack//G.U. OVA... looking forward to that. Like, hardcore. 8D Hoping and praying they'll actually animate the fight between the Azure Knights and Ovan! RAWR. Everyone wants to see the Knights get chopped up into tiny bits, right? Right?

First off, I have been running into Chrono Cross stuff lately. ashura_sama  's post on the horrible mistranslations of the tracks from the CC soundtrack, my buddy Grey on deviantArt posting his WIP for the art trade we started, me finally starting on the Kidd tattoo design he requested... and THIS.



If that isn't reason enough for anyone to play the game, I don't know what to do. Karsh does not want Pierre in his room! Non, mon ami!


I just want you guys to watch Serge swinging his weapon around. 8D And this video has both Serge and Kidd's level 7 Tech Skills, AND has Pip as the third party member, so therefore, wins. I wanted to add another video, but LJ is of course going to be difficult because it does not know how to write its own HTML... so. Yeah. If you want to see a neat dub (I never thought I would use the words "neat" and "dub" in the same sentence ever,) of one of my favorite scenes from Chrono Cross... go here: Serge, mon puce! <3

And on the last dorky note, rainbowshell on DA has inspired me to draw a picture of the Azure Knights from .hack//G.U. as a rival band to Jem and The Holograms, from that old 80s cartoon "Jem." It all started when she commented on this picture that it reminded her of the '80s and Jem. HAHAHA.

SNEAK PEAAAKKKSS


They are a glam rock revival band of some kind, it would seem.


My speech class was actually really funny today. We don't have speeches at the moment right now, but... yeah. The people in this class are insane. There were so many things that people said that were funny it just... I can't even think of everything that was said. We had to do group projects today, and those always prove... interesting. There was a group that somehow integrated melanoma into their presentation and showed this disturbing picture. We also got a google image of a random Asian lady when they put in melanoma. Whut?



AGGGHHHHH.

I am also thinking of changing my LJ layout. To what, I don't know... but I'm getting a definite Chrono Cross feel at the moment. Or maybe some super Haseo x Azure Kite action? I'm going to draw my ass off this weekend, since I don't have to work.

I'm really sorry that my entries have been so sporadic and incoherent lately. D: My writing is... sucky, for some reason.

Ahem. So, I'm gonna show off all the SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME™ .hack cosplay that I have collected at the Cure Cosplay Website. (You have to have an account to view the cosplay, and it isn't easy to register because you have to provide a Japanese area code and crap. Good luck if you want to join, because it took me a little while to figure it out.) There's a TON of really, truly, wonderful cosplayers on that site. I mean, so much of it is quality, it's absolutely mind-boggling. Anyhow, here's the .hack cosplay I promised. 8D This entry has been cut quite a lot. Click whichever character/group you would like to view first. You fucking asked for it, Oki. ): WARNING: OVER 130 IMAGES. It'll probably crash your freaking browser.

Hey! I need to stop doing this, seriously. I let time fly by and I don't post for ages. Hmph, I'm not cool at all, huh?

I'll try to keep this light and quick, so you guys don't like... stop reading halfway through.

A couple of weeks ago, I pierced a little girl's ears around 8:30 at night (half hour before we close.) I'm helping some other last minute customers for a while, and then I start ringing the pierced girl's mom up at the register. The little girl then promptly throws up near the register we don't use. I was extremely tired and out of it, but my horror could be summed up by what her aunt said:

"Oh, there's that garlic bread..."

Luckily, mom wasn't a moron and cleaned up the worst of the vomit. That was NASTY vomit. I still had to break out the stain remover and spray the living hell out of the area, but my god... worst at experience at work yet. Closing was such a bitch, because by the time I had cleaned up what remained of the vomit, it was already past 9 pm. GRARGH!

I've started plans to do a pseudo cosplay of Azure Kite for Halloween. Pretty much, it will be a "modern" version of him... complete with an orange hoodie, the perfect wig I found on Ebay, this neat orange newsboy cap... and some other stuff I have yet to get. I'm gonna have white face paint all over my face, with red underlining my eyes, and blood coming out of my mouth and have scar make up on my neeeecck. Cuz Azure Kite gets his head cut off and fun times. 8D BAHAHA. /NERDDDD

Last week, I became very sick. It was some kind of freak cold; I had a fever, and my nose was clogged and I just... overall felt like utter shit. I ended up having to work last Wednesday, which was really hell. My brain was just frazzled, and my body was screaming at me to rest. But, I couldn't. I also missed our first speech in Speech class, and pretty much all my classes last week. The only thing I could force myself to do was to work, because I can't afford to lose my job. I had not felt that disgustingly sick in a LONG time. It was even worse than the thing I got last winter. But, I'm alright now, and I've sorted some things out with my teachers. I'm back in business!

Even though, I still have to take that test by midnight tonight for Child Psych. I don't think it will be too hard, but... URGH. I am still burned out and not quite 100% with it. That stupid hybrid class demands a lot of attention be brought to the online lessons and discussions... it's kind of annoying. I get distracted a lot on the computer, so... it's frustrating. I'm gonna study at 6 pm and then give the test a shot at maybe 7 or 7:30 pm, depending.

OH OH. Other exciting news. The pump in our well broke and we had to have it replaced. We didn't have water for a full day. And now, we've found that because of a rust problem, we're going to have to pretty much get a new well made? LOL? 8D All I know is that all this shit is gonna cost somewhere between $3000 and $7000. My mom is going to start working a normal job again, maybe even two. Not so much because of this, but also because, well... we all want more money coming into the household. HAHA~ Maybe we can fucking get normal cable back?! LAW AND ORDER KTHX BAI?

Yeah, that post was really fragmented and incoherent. Just wanted to say what's been up... and I miss you guys. ): I need to get my ass on messenger programs more. I'll keep saying that until the end of time, I swear.


P.S. I really liked chapter 166 of Tsubasa. BLOOOODDD. And I'm finally picking up on Reborn! again. Hohoho. Gokudera is seeeexxxx.

EDIT: I also want to say thanks for all you guys who commented on my last entry. I LOVE UUUUU. 8D For serious. <3