flummery

And I apologize to those who are waiting to hear from me, in one way or another (you know who you are!). In the meantime... let me bribe you with Gmail Invites. I have
6,
5...
Thing 1 has made me add her 5 into the pot, so we're up to
10
8

Anyone?Take the freakin' invites!

So, I was cruising along with con reports, and posts were piling up for me to reply to, and all was going well and... then I fell into a post-con coma. And I'm not sure I'm out of it yet, but I apologize to everyone I haven't replied to, and this is why some of you may be getting seriously late replies. My lack of sleep over the last month, and during the con, has now put me on a schedule that looks sort of like... wake at 11am. Stagger downstairs. Feed very angry cats. Stare at wall. Shower. Ponder napping. Fall asleep on the sofa while thinking about walking to the bed. Wake up and search for food. Remember huge list of things that need to be done. Check email. Another nap. And so on....

So. Onward!

( The Hour After Anime - VividSection *and* Unexpected Levels )

( Literalism vs. Metaphor )

Next Up? The Premieres Show! More to follow....

The next post is a whole long thing on the Anime Vidshow, or Saturday Morning Cartoons, as it was named in the program. This was my show, and Murphy's Law not only came to visit, it set up house in a lawn chair with a bowl of popcorn and a can of soda and watched the goddamn vids *with* us. To say we had a few problems is an understatement.

I'm going to reproduce much of the handout from the anime show below, along with a little more information about the vids included in the show, and why they made the cut.

( The genesis of the anime show )

( Saturday Morning Disasters )

( The Anime Vids )

( The vids that *almost* made the cut )

( Things you need to know about the AMV – Anime Music Video Archive )

( Very Short Glossary of Anime Terms )

( PatrickD's Ten Commandments )

Finally, a word about the vids in general. I put as much info into this as I did, because not one of these vidders was at the con, or, for that matter, knows their vids were used. There's really not a lot of overlap between live action and anime vidders right now, and I figured some thanks, and recognition was due for this amazing set of vids. Hopefully, this will generate some interest in the subject matter, and feedback for the vidders in question.

Also, thank you again to the audience, for being so patient and putting up with so much during the show itself.

Comment: OMG, this is hard. So many vids to comment on. So little vocabulary, or ability to put thoughts into coherent form... Failing! To do vids! Justice! [/shatner]

( Audio Rarities )

( The Master Class )

( Nearly New. Most of it, anyway. )

I'll be trying to split these posts into sections, for those of you who are less interested in the social aspects, than just hearing about the vids. LJ cut tags will abound! Don't read if you don't want to be spoiled, and I'm going to be honest in my thoughts on the vids, so don't read if you don't want to hear it.

( Thursday Arrival (blitherings about the trip, no vids mentioned here )

Next Up. Friday, and Shows! And, you know. Hopefully a post that's more interesting than this one.

The vids are *done*. Completed, outputted, and uploaded. I was all ready to be celebratory and relieved and instead, I find I'm still too wired and wound up and stressed to come to grips with the fact that I now have a good solid ten days or so to get things together and *not* vid, and just focus on finalizing things for the anime show and preparing for Vividcon.

I'd even been putting off posting in LJ until everything was complete, for fear of jinxing something. Everything and anything has hovered, menacingly, as a potential jinx. Using the computer for something other than vidding. Turning the computer off. *Looking* at the computer the wrong way. This was the result of the computer completely melting down, for a second time, about two weeks ago, leaving me weeping and cursing and gnashing my teeth and convinced there was no way we could recover in time to get our act together, considering how far behind we were (halfway through one vid and... next to nowhere on the other). People around me tried frantically to appease and soothe me (thanks guys!) while I completely lost it. There's just nothing quite like turning on your computer and seeing "No OS found" on a black screen...

So, we've done literally nothing but vid since then. Thing 1 has been here basically every other night for the last month, and we're both sick of each other, and I won't let her back in the house, and she won't return my calls. Except when I really shout at her answering machine.

So now.. the vids are done! And I think I will collapse into post-vid coma state. And as soon as we get *back* from the con, I'm reformatting that entire damn computer, and starting fresh.

Here's hoping everyone else is done and ready!!

HELP! I find myself unexpectedly doing an Anime Vidshow for Vividcon this year. Since, you know, technically the deadline for creating your show playlist is already several days in the past, I could use a little help. Also? Since I'm mainly a dabbler in anime, and anime vids, it would probably be for the best if some kind soul could stop me from making a fool of myself.

Actually, I've already got several brilliant ones lined up, but I do need more. Suggestions? I'm finding multi-fandom vids to be very common, so I'd particularly love ones that focus on a single show, but really, it's not necessary, I just need good anime vids, and a location to download them from!

I am trying to do too much, basically simultaneously, and it's causing me to scatter. I can't even think straight these days for trying to just figure out what I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment, and I'm so far behind on everything, that if I think about it for more than 20 seconds, I panic. So, not very productive at the moment.

Things 1's computer decided to fry about a week after mine did. This meant about 2 1/2 weeks of just rebuilding computers. Mine, because WE MUST VID, and Thing 1's, because, you know, she'd have gone into withdrawal and battered me to death, or something violent. So Thing 1 brings over her Dell computer and the most challenging part of rebuilding it was... figuring out how to get the damn hard drive out. Dell clearly feels the need to have it's own little bizarre configuration, with screws where no screws should normally be. But after a lot of actual intense physical fighting to get parts into the machine (it always amazes me that with the yelling, and pushing, and squashing, and occasionally looking over and discovering the cat is sleeping on a vital part, that I never actually break the cards and chips and crap) the rest of the installation and OS upgrade went pretty smoothly. Thing 1 needed new harddrives and a new OS. I needed a new motherboard, so everything had to come out. Mine is still acting a little flaky at times, but I'm attributing it to Premiere's amazing abilities to crash anything that stands in its way.

Still, we're now so far behind in getting a vid ready for Vividcon, that I laugh scary little psycho laughs every few minutes. WE HAVE NO VID! AND WE ARE THE WORLD'S SLOWEST VIDDERS! PANIC!!!

And I owe 2,000 people feedback, and feel enormous random pangs of guilt all day long about this fact. Vid, stories, you name it.

And I'm absurdly far behind in projects for work, and freelance work. And most of the time, I can't gather the concentration to play spider solitaire.

And because I don't have enough to do, for some reason, I said "Hey, recapping Dead Zone sounds fun!" And it would be, I'm sure, if I had any idea what I was doing. Still, I love DZ too much to not try , and the reviews can be found over at Mediasharx. I wasn't at all thrilled with the first two, so I enlisted merryish on this last one as a beta, but she rewrote me so much she should probably be listed as co-author.

( Random thoughts on Dead Zone that were too slashy or wandering for the Mediasharx review )

Hey, Thing 1! Bring ice cream.

"You said I wasn't going to have to meet any of your friends of go out and be social during this visit."
"I lied."
"Can I read?"
"Not during dinner, no."
"Then I'm not going."

As you can tell from the above, not a lot has changed about the conversations I have with my Mom from my teenage years.

This weekend seems doomed to be a return to those teenage years, full of bickering, arguments, and temper tantrums (not all of them mine). Many of the problems have been a result of how they've been functioning with their computer all along. They'll view their actions as perfectly reasonable and I will inform them that in fact, they are psychotic.

This started when Mom proudly took me in to see her computer setup.

"What the hell is THAT?" was approximately what I said, although, possibly with more curse words.

"That's how I keep the dust off the monitor," she replied.

I wept for a while, and then I snarled, and then we fought. I can't really describe what she'd done in a way that does it justice. She had basically built a hutch around the computer monitor, using cardboard, styrofoam padding, duct tape, and a towel and sheet on top. It was as though she'd built a small house around the monitor -- one that was physically attached to the monitor with a whole lotta tape. The yelling ended when I finally had her put her hand inside the whole contraption to feel just how HOT a firetrap she had built. So then we spent a while ripping cardboard and tape off the monitor.

Then there was a lot of shopping and arguing and being misled by salemen at CompUSA, and purchasing of a new monitor and router, and forgetting to buy a new keyboard, and more bickering, and then finally unpacking and plugging in and testing, and reading of manuals and calling of support lines and by 2 am, I'm actually sort of impressed to say, we had the new computer up and running, the router talking to the dsl, and my laptop talking to the wireless router. Then, I went to turn on the old computer, to see what could be done with it, and remembered what we had discovered earlier... that we were short one keyboard.

Mom and Dad woke me up at 8:45 to tell me they were going to go buy the new keyboard. I gargled something terrible at them for waking me up, and they left. At 10:00 Mom called and let the phone ring and ring and ring and RING until I picked it up, and then asked me what KIND of keyboard they were supposed to be buying. By noon they had not yet returned, and I wondered how a keyboard buying trip could possibly have gone so terribly wrong. Half an hour later, they came back, and gave me food, which I fell upon and devoured like a hyena, and about as neatly.

All happy from the first protein I'd had in 36 hours, I returned to work on the old computer. And discovered that I could not reach the keyboard without sitting on my feet, because Mom has been using a chair that is so old it sits only a foot of the ground, has broken springs, and sags in the middle. I tried to cope with this for a while, and then just lost it. We spent the afternoon at office supply stores, and finally returned with a new chair which still is sitting in it's box in the living room. I can't feel bad about this, because no human being should be sitting that low to the ground while using a computer.

So now we have a keyboard, a new chair that hopefully, we will put together tomorrow, and I got the backup drive unpacked and cajoled it into talking to her crappy dying computer, which really, it turns out, was in pretty sorry shape. It's backing up like crazy now, and will be for a while, since it's having to make do with a USB connection. After a lot of discussion, we're giving serious thought to just junking the old dying machine, and using the second monitor as a dual monitor system on the new one. The usefulness of the evening, however, was mostly wiped out by the aforementioned mandatory-attendance social event. Hopefully we'll get more done tomorrow.

(mild spoilers below!)

Studio Ghibli/Disney are finally getting around to releasing, and in two cases, re-releasing, some of Miyazaki's movies this summer! Slated for August 31st (according to nausicaa.net) are My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Porco Rosso. All three are coming out as 2-dvd sets, which hopefully means extras, and that they really spent the time to do these right.

Totoro has been out on dvd in the U.S. for some time, but in crappy quality. Pan and scan, rather than wide screen, poor video and poor audio quality, and no extras. The new version will also have new voice actors. It has the youngest intended audience of the three movies being released, and yet somehow, I have no problem sitting down and watching it over and over (and forcing others around me to as well).

Nausicaa came out in the 80s, and was released in the U.S. at that time under the title Warriors of the Wind. The US version was basically butchered. You should not watch it. A half hour of the movie was cut out. Talking and explanations were cut, and actiony stuff was left in. Names were changed to cutesy cartoon names. Studio Ghibli has asked that you forget it exists. I watched this, as a result, off a very crummy tape version of the Japanese release, and I can't remember whether or not it was subtitled, or whether teenygozer actually just sat there translating for us, which is a very real possibility (she knows the movie line by line, and is a useful source of older anime info). It's set in a post-apocalyptic future, where a small village is under threat both from warring surrounding nations, and from the encroaching changes the apocalypse has brought to the environment.

The third out this summer is Porco Rosso, and I'm impressed. We watched this last summer off the *cough*hongkongboxset*cough* and at the time, I think I actually said "Wow. Disney is *never* going to bother to bring this out in America." It's set between WWI and WWII, and is the story of an Italian WWI pilot who survived when his friends were all killed. But then, he was turned into a pig. (Yes, that's right, just go with it, everyone else does.) It's set to a strange background of sky pirates and mobsters and fascist governments and good engineers. Miyazaki's love of flying is all through it, and it starts with a hysterical scene with many small children at the beginning -- but this one is not for children. The language is adult, the themes are complex. At the end, there's one of the best fight scenes ever, animated or otherwise. I'm not sure I completely understood this movie, but I liked it anyway.