31 July 2001
Last year: (Hello? Anti-lock brakes? What happened?)
Ack! It's the end of July already! How did that happen?
I was SO tempted to call in sick today. Not that I'm actually sick, but I'm sleepy, and I'm anticipating another long, boring day.
But at least I remembered to bring in a movie to watch.
Yesterday, which was the slowest work day I've had in over a month, I finally got around to watching Princess Mononoke. It was pretty good, though I seem to remember being told that it wasn't more like a "regular" movie than anime, which turned out to be wrong in the extreme. It was better than most of the anime I've seen, but very distinctively anime. (And yes, I'm talking about the story, not the art. If it hadn't been anime-style art, then it wouldn't have been anime. Duh.)
I managed to get into an argument with Karen about it, which amuses me to no end. I made some comment about the proliferation of oozing tentacle-monsters in anime, and she got huffy. It took me a good fifteen minutes of discussion to realize that I'd inadvertently stumbled across a phrase ("tentacle monster") that's generally reserved for hentai (i.e., pornographic) anime. So no, the tentacles in this movie didn't molest any schoolgirls, but it did ooze, and it did have tentacles, and it was a monster. She seemed somewhat ameliorated when I told her I hadn't been thinking of hentai anime at all, but - specifically - the uncontrolled growths that Tetsuo sports in Akira. She was still mildly offended, I think, but admitted a certain level of comparison.
She'll just have to cope, though. I only watch anime once or twice a year, if that, and so my observations are those of an outsider, not an otaku. It's only because so many of my friends are anime fans that I know as much of the slang as I do.
What's really funny is that I'm the one who introduced some of them to anime in the first place. K.T. and Jeff, specifically, first got hooked on it watching my awful third- or fourth-generation copies of Bubblegum Crisis. But as their enthusiasm waxed, mine waned.
I do enjoy quite a bit of the silly stuff, and some of the movies are really lush and beautiful. There are a few pieces that I will always remember fondly from my first few years of anime enthusiasm. The manga art style has a certain beauty.
But between the price of anime - which is only now beginning to dip down from "ludicrously expensive" to merely "pricey" - and the sheer piles of utter drek out there, I don't really see myself becoming otaku any time in the near future.
I barely ever watch any of the movies I have anyway. Though that might change as work continues boring and I collect more DVDs.
Matt got confirmation from AFSA's website yesterday that his student loan has, at last, been paid in full. He sent me a screen-capture of his brower, circling in red that extremely satisfying "Balance: $0.00"
I asked him what he wanted to do to celebrate. When I paid off my student loan, I went out to dinner, and then I hired a cleaning service to come in every two weeks to clean the house for me. But Matt's been paying a lot more each month than I ever did. (Which only makes sense, since my loan was to cover only one year of in-state tuition, and Matt had loans all four years he was in school.)
He's got some ideas, but nothing is set yet. Me, I'm thinking we should throw a fancy "free from debt" party. And quick, before one of us needs a new car.
Word of the Day:
proliferate - to grow or increase in number rapidly
Currently Reading:
- nothing
Current Projects:
- drawing
- Hall stuff
- garden