hoshizora

My show, omg.

That was RAD.

( Unintelligent Thoughts! )

My niece sent this old shot of me at Easter one year during my "pervy antique collector who knew a guy who knew a guy who once bought Terry Thomas a drink" phase. As you can see, I was wearing an ascot. And a pocketsquare. And ankleboots. AND a waxed moustache. Not altogether convincing of course, but I might revisit this look when I'm old enough to pull it off. I'll say it was damn fun putting it through its paces at the time, though. Even grocery shopping was an adventure.

Another reason that I tried this look so prematurely is that it seemed a shame that my nieces didn't have a "funny" uncle around, so I decided to step in as a proxy. Seemed the decent thing to do.

When or if I do revisit this "look," I might rent myself out as the gay relation's "friend" at people's family holiday gatherings.

Someone recently commented that TJ's nose, in profile, looked like Spike Spiegel's. I replied that this was intentional (which is true) and then drew very stupid things in Photoshop:
( Click for mind-boggling inanity )

Also, A Year In Waiting #12 is up.

You know that Japanese Queen medley, "Jousama Monogatari," that's been floating around the net for ages?

I know who did it!



Pappara Kawai is the man behind it.

(I just put the mp3 here :))

It's from an album full of various anime voice actresses covering ... well, it says "legendary punk songs," but I don't think Blondie is punk (etc.). Songs include "Blitzkrieg Bop" (terrible--the most soulless singing ever!), "London's Burning," "Call Me" (not too bad), "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" (done in a deliberately super-cutesy childlike style--OMFG), "Search and Destroy," "God Save the Queen," "Basket Case," and "Ruby Soho" (which is not too bad).

so, belgatherial, did you feel it??? (I know it was far away :P)

Friends F and M grow a variety of milkweed species on their property, and hand-rear monarch butterflies. More photos here.

trinfortune and dungeonwriter, your fanmixes are done! I'll try to get to the others shortly. I'd forgotten how fun it was to geek out over music and media at the same time.




( ROBOTS!: a regene + tieria fanmix )


( Wolf Like Me: a Dexter Morgan fanmix )

Are you a nerd? Do you like free songs? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then you may want to head over here to make a request. I make no excuses for my poor photoshop skills, but I like to think that I have decent taste in mp3s.

oho!
A steampunk/neo-Victorian fair in Petaluma!

http://www.pankineticexpo.com/

April 2010. (I hope it doesn't conflict with the Cherry Blossom Festival.) Maybe I can come up with a costume by THEN!

Hey, bubble people: get outside. It makes you happy:

Some researchers have proposed that the sharp rise in asthma and allergy cases over the past century stems, unexpectedly, from living too clean. The idea is that routine exposure to harmless microorganisms in the environment—soil bacteria, for instance—trains our immune systems to ignore benign molecules like pollen or the dandruff on a neighbor’s dog. Taking this “hygiene hypothesis” in an even more surprising direction, recent studies indicate that treatment with a specific soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, may be able to alleviate depression. For example, lung cancer patients who were injected with killed M. vaccae reported better quality of life and less nausea and pain. Now a team of neuroscientists and immunologists may have figured out why this works. The bacteria, when injected into mice, activate a set of serotonin-releasing neurons in the brain—the same nerves targeted by Prozac.

and all their retro Margaret Keane glory! plus delicious photos of sweets--that's the fanciest version of "pudding" I've ever seen (it usually looks like flan), although it's the ugliest montblanc ever.

So, if people crazy enough to try translating this want to divide it up, please do so, and let me know if these scans are too small to read the kanji. Darned small Japanese type--it's hard to scan well!

Page One. Instructions and chart with years; chart with desserts and letters; random Keanesque chick with seashell. I doubt this needs translated, but for completeness, here it is.

Page Two. Shortcake, "roll cake" (Swiss roll), and "fruit jelly" (fruit gel?).

Page Three. Yes, it originally said *A*strology at the top. This insert is smaller than the magazine but still wider than my scanner. "Pudding" (flan/creme caramel), montblanc (I don't even know if those exist outside Japan), "tart" (fruit tart). Also includes the marriage sidebar from shirotama on page 4.

Page Four. "Choux creme" (cream puff/profiterole), chocolate cake (that looks more like a bombe to me), shirotama (mochi dumpling thing? I don't think I've ever eaten one of these), gelato.

Page Five. Years 2004-2006 are obviously irrelevant, but the key that explains the icons and concepts would be interesting. However, I don't know that the kanji are legible at all. If anyone is actually willing to translate this and years 2009-2015 for the letters that people have gotten, I'll rescan it.

Page Six. 2007-2011. (Obviously only 2009-2011 are relevant. I mean, inasmuch as ANY ASTROLOGY OR ~*~ CAKE-BASED ASTROLOGY~*~ is relevant, LOL.)

Page Seven. 2012-2015. THE FUTURE.

(There are no cupcakes here but I had to use this existing tag anyway.)

Story of a news story:
Akiba Station reports on ramen-making robot, shows image of ramen from some anime, credits Cnet for the story. I go to Cnet. Cnet's illustration is...wait for it...a random photo of udon (totally different); they credit the Mainichi for the story. I go to Mainichi appears to be the actual source, and YAY! They have a photo of the machine! Woohoo!

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20090704p2a00m0na013000c.html?inb=rs

"The ramen-making robot was built by 60-year-old shop owner Yoshihira Uchida, who spent about 20 million yen on its construction. Customers can place their orders on a computer in the shop, customizing various aspects such as the levels of soy sauce, salt, and richness of the soup. Uchida says there are 40 million different flavor permutations."

Other links I've posted to Facebook recently but neglected to post here, as far as I recall:

Over 95F outside? Bake cookies in your car. Oookay then! (I am indeed not convinced that they're not just being dehydrated/melted.)

"Cameras" improves the way Mac OS X deals with connected cameras, for the person who was having trouble with that--I've forgotten who she was.

This year's batch of rice paddy art in Japan.

huggingcats.com does what it says on the tin, in case you needed a little sugar in your day.