Archive for the 'Slice of Life' Category

Venish

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Jamie Spong in the field of Anime and Slice of Life.

“It wasn’t as wet as I was anticipating.”

This time a few days ago, I was in Venice. (The one in Italy.)

I was told about a month earlier that I’d be taking an Easter holiday in Venice. Unlike previous Easter holidays, this excited me. Last year’s trip to Pisa was well-received, but a severely late flight on the way back was an experience that I would not want to repeat. The holiday a year prior to that took place in Amsterdam. It’s probably a lovely place if the weather’s not torrentially snowy. And if you’re a pothead.

So when I heard that we would be visiting Venice, I thought that this time we’d got it right. I only knew Pisa for its leaning tower and Amsterdam because it was a lyric in that song about a little mouse with clogs on. Venice, on the other hand, is a place that I had been made all too aware of through my exposure to anime.

I was warned before I went that it would be packed with tourists, possibly Japanese. It’s possible that Japan has some fascination with the city, but it’s likely that it’s a worldwide thing. Whether or not the Japanese in particular have a fascination with the Venetian city of Venice (it could well be universal – Brother told me that authors who have been to Venice generally write about Venice), there are several notable Japanese things with Venice in them. And while I could dedicate a blog post to the heart-wrenching, life-changing experience that is Pokémon Heroes (set in the sunny city of “Altomare” – like Venice but with Pokémon and CGI excessives), I will instead focus on Aria.

It goes like this: In a post-apocalyptic world, mankind is forced to abandon mother Earth and colonise new planets through the ~~magic~~ science of terraforming. One such planet to’ve undergone this operation is Mars (probably because it was the closest one that they could find), now renamed Aqua (presumably because it’s got water on it now). It’s important to note that this backstory is only alluded to in the show itself; Aria is actually a slice-of-life story about a group of young, modestly-attractive female gondolier operators living in the city of New Venice¹, Aqua. They live their lives. They wander the city. Sometimes they discover things. Everyone’s happy all of the time.

It’s very relaxing.

Aria has the odd distinction of being both underexposed and overrated, but it’s by no means a bad show. Providing, of course, that you are not driven insane from the constant annoyances of the repetitive, repetitive, repetitive catchphrases (“No sappy lines allowed!” “Ehh?” “My, my! Ehehe!” AT LEAST TWICE PER EPISODE) and the awkward antics of series mascot ‘President Aria’, a disturbingly personic cat-thing that looks more like a dog-thing who spends most of his time being as “cute” as possible. It’s a jolly good thing that the rest of the show makes up for these potential blood-pressure-raising shortcomings with its gentle pacing, charming soundtrack and general lack of plot. If nothing else, Aria proves that filler is not always a bad thing.

But there is a problem. Aria is set in New Venice. Not Regular Venice. Neither is Pokémon Heroes. In fact, very few of these Venice-based fictions are actually set in Venice itself. They’re always some idyllic utopian place based on Venice, liberties taken as the story requires. In short, these stories take place in what Venice should be like.

And even though I knew all of this, I had set my expectations unreasonably high. I had managed to convince myself that Venice was a place where miracles actually happen. A soul-cleansing place of purity, untainted by the progress of humanity.

This, as you must be aware, was not the case. Rather than an escape from reality, Venice was just another facet of it. I didn’t mind so much about the thousands of tourists piled into the scaffolding-enrobed St. Mark’s Square everyday, but even the quieter residential areas recommended by the guidebook had people there. Brother said that he doesn’t like being away from humanity for too long; I’m the opposite. I suppose that complaining about the level of tourism during the first major holiday of the year is just being picky.

As it turns out, Aria is more a depiction of what Japanese life, rather than Venezian life, embodies. New Venice celebrates the same holidays as the Japanese; they have the same customs, the same expressions, the same language (although the latter’s justifiable). In the second series, they dedicated a whole episode to New Venice’s postal service (far more efficient than Italy’s postal service) that appeared to be based directly on the Japanese post office, even down to the logo. Must be great if you’re Japanese. Familiarity with Aria does not equal familiarity with Venice.

Aria aside, Venice wasn’t as wet as I was anticipating. The weather forecast predicted a wide range of rains throughout the holiday, but this didn’t happen, making the weather, at least, correlate with the more idyllic depictions of the city (if dangerously high sun levels are your idea of idyllic weather). But I pictured Venice as being almost entirely laced with canals. I imagined paths at sea level. I imagined the impossibility of getting around on foot. I imagined not being able to find a large patch of land without a significant body of water a couple of metres away. Once again, I had set my expectations too high. I found Venice to be a highly walkable city, clocking up over 30,000 steps on one day. (Step counts brought to you by the Pokéwalker device. I’m not a Pokémon fan, by the way.) After a poor night’s sleep upon arrival, I strove to thoroughly tire myself out during the day to ensure peaceful sleep on subsequent nights. I set myself the goal of walking to each “corner” of Venice, but my enthusiasm was significantly diminished after a distressing discovery in the north-west corner of the island: an industrial district complete with train station, sky shuttle and car park. Cars on Venice‽ This is madness!

I won’t say that I was disappointed. Like I said, I knew what to expect. It wasn’t the first time that I’d been to Italy. Even so, it wasn’t the same. One thing that impressed me in Pisa was the ubiquity of anime and comics. One channel (we had satellite television in the hotel) was showing GTO at 11 in the morning. If I was familiar with GTO, I’m sure that I’d've been impressed. In Venice, however, we only had analogue. (We didn’t watch much TV.) At the airport newsagents last year, I was impressed to see a wide variety of graphic novels on sale alongside the newspapers; at Venice Marco Polo’s newsagency, I was disappointed to see a much smaller selection hidden away in a corner. Okay, so maybe I was a little disappointed this year.

But I don’t regret going. Venice isn’t a magical place in either the literal or the figurative sense, but if you’ve the money (like all good tourist traps, prices are significantly higher in Venice than in Tesco) I’m not going to ruin your fun.

Just don’t expect a miracle.

Incidentally, I found out that Aria is Italian for Air. I walked past a sign that said “Air conditioning” in both languages. ㋼

The subtitles use the transliteration Neo-Venezia. The “Neo-” prefix appears to be the Japanese equivalent of the English “New” suffix, and Venezia means Venice, so New Venice is the way that it should be written. Probably. Ignore me. [↩]

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The Potential Iguanodon and the Onion

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Jonny Spong in the field of Life goals, Random Thoughts, Short Stories and Slice of Life.

“ROOOOOAAAAAAAAR! I am the Potential Iguanodon!” said the Potential Iguanodon to the Onion. Such was his usual form of introduction. “Hey, Onion, I wrote another short story. Wanna read it?” This was not a so much question as it was an order.

The Onion, rightly sceptical based on the Iguanodon’s previous attempts, made a point of ignoring this. “What’s it about?”

“You’ll find out,” the Iguanodon persisted, so that the Onion was obliged to take the still-warm sheet of printer paper. The story went as follows:

“A pane of glass separates me from Them. It’s probably not enough to hold Them for long. Glass is like the heart; eventually, it will be broken. Trying hard to ignore my reflection – each time our eyes meet, I feel it judging me – I perceive in the dark of night a shape moving. A monster. Slinking along the garden path to get me, mumbling incomprehensibly to itself all the way. Cold-hearted with fear, I flick the switch for the outdoor lights. “Darn it!” I hear the monster shout, and then, remembering its status as a monster, a torrent of language inadvisable for anyone – of this world or otherwise. Noticing the rate at which it is decomposing in the light, the monster makes a hasty getaway. I will leave the lights on, I think, but watch in silent horror as the bulbs flicker and die, one by one, and the darkness outside brings back my reflection. “Darn it,” I whisper, restraining my more monster-like tendencies. My heart is a block of ice in my chest, able only to smash or melt away completely as more shapes pile into the garden. Perhaps time will stop if I grow colder and colder, freeze up through and through. It’s a case of sinking into my own darkness or theirs. The glass breaks, and so do I.”

The Onion carefully lowered the sheet to see the Iguanodon’s big toothy grin. “So, whaddaya think? Is it good? Deep, ain’t it?” The Onion had to admit, the quality of writing had improved since the days of “Tom And His Big Elephant That Wants To Be A Pilot But Couldn’t Because It’s Is Big And Was Heavy,” but still…

“There’s one thing I’ll never understand,” the Onion explained. “People like being depressed. They have this strange idea that depressing things are profound and that profound things must be, by nature, depressing. They think that, if you look hard enough, you’ll always end up sad. They think that naivety is being happy, and being happy is naive. That attitude is just lazy. It’s the easy way of getting through life. Don’t achieve anything, don’t strive for the good things in life. Just wave them away, saying they’re superficial and untrue.” She sighed deeply. “People want to be happy, right? You’ve got to look past all the sad things. Learn from them, but don’t let them crowd your vision. You have to actually try, to learn how to really see. Maybe it’s just easier for me, being an Onion.” She looked right at the Iguanodon and his beady eyes. “Let me tell you something deeply personal. When I’m older, I want to have lots of wrinkles. Deep ones, smile lines on either side of my mouth. Until then, I’ve just got to keep on smiling. I’ll be able to point to each one and say “This is from the time I saw a dog in a car smile at me,” and “This is from the time we saw that film and couldn’t stop laughing for hours,” and “This is from the time we walked through that restaurant dressed as pirates.” I’ll be able to point to each one and say “These make a life worth living.””

The Potential Iguanodon was stunned. “So… Does that mean you don’t like it?”

The Onion laughed, not at him, or with him, but for him. “You’ve got potential, I’ll tell you that. But for the moment, put those big teeth of yours to use and give me a smile.”

The Iguanodon did. “Onion? I want to have wrinkles too.”

“We’ll have wrinkles together.”

Quite forgetting about glass and monsters and the night, they both started laughing. “Whoa,” said the Iguanodon. “The sky sure is huge.”

“Yeah,” said the Onion. “I bet that if we tried hard enough, we could fall right into it.”

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Best Summer Ever: Weeks 3 & 4 (and 5)

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Jamie Spong in the field of Ice Cream and Slice of Life.

In the first episode of the flash-in-the-pan Lucky☆Star anime, the girls discuss, among other foodstuffs, soft serve ice cream, noting in particular that one is always left with an amount of creamless cone to munch upon at the end. They reach the consensus that the disproportionate ratio of the frozen treat to the wafer cone diminishes one’s ice cream experience.

Konata demonstrates a workaround. “While I eat, I do a push-and-shove thing.”

The main thing that I learned from this episode is that the ice cream technology that us Yorkshire folk have enjoyed for years is far more advanced than that of Japan. And it’s thoughts like this that make me feel really good about living here.

As an example, observe this standard-issue regular rolled cone. (This week's flavour was Strawberry, by the way.)

As you can see, unlike other brands, even when you've cleared the top…

…the ice cream just keeps going…

…and going…

…all the way down to the very last bite. No push-and-shove things required.

As Brother neatly put it, “what you see above the cone is only the tip of the ice cream berg”. No, I do not work for Ripley Ice Cream, nor do they sponsor me.

I had a dream about Lucky☆Star a night or two ago. I was back at college, and I’d just discovered that all this time I’d had accommodation available to me as part of my package and I hadn’t been using it at all (or even aware of it). It was a shared room with Konata, Tsukasa and Kagami also living in it. So I checked it out. Kagami (who appeared to me in this form) was the only one there. We had a discussion. That’s all that I remember.

And I don’t even like Kagami.

In further anime news, it seems that I’m not the only one out there determined to have the best summer ever. Haruhi Suzumiya, whose on-again-off-again anishow recently restarted with repeats interspersed with a seemingly random splattering of new episodes every so often, has been doing her bit by enlisting the assistance of her ever-so-loyal SOS Brigade in their latest episode, Endless Eight. Much like my mental to-do list (the completion of which these Best Summer Ever posts seek to log), Haruhi brainstorms a series of events and activities (such as hitting baseballs with baseball bats, going fishing and appreciating fireworks) to do within the final two weeks of their holiday together.

If any of this seems familiar to you, it’s because Haruhi’s latest arc invokes what TV Tropes calls the Groundhog Day Loop. Due to my rudimentary knowledge of the Endless Eight storyline, I put up a brief episode review with the intent of repeating the episode review in next week’s post in order to confuse the masses. However, next week’s post never happened. For one reason and another, I couldn’t be bothered to finish this update in time last week. And so the blog went over two weeks without an update. If I could go back and do it all over again, like in Haruhi (incidentally, there have been four episodes of Endless Eight so far, in which almost exactly the same events take place — Brother expressed concern that eight episodes of Endless Eight would be produced), nothing’d change. This is what I do in the summer. I put things off in favour of other things. And although I have done a wide range of blog-worthy activities over the past two weeks, I barely remember any of them. So this post’s going to seem a little uneven as I try and recall all the major events over the past fortnight. Okay. Here goes.

Better get the week before last out of the way first, as I remember it the least. It didn’t get off to a very good start. Monday (which started out with fog÷mist) was focused on writing the previous week’s Best Summer Ever update and filling in my student loan application. And waiting for the post to arrive. (It didn’t.) I don’t remember exactly what I was waiting for, though.

After biding my time, I finally selected the best day to leave the house and go to Harewood House using that membership card that I purchased way back when to encourage me to leave the house more often. Unfortunately, the best day also happened to be one of the hottest days of the year so far. Normally I’d go to Harewood’s on-site planetarium (which I’d really like to do a post about in the future) to get out of the heat but, as it is still term-time for many of the good boys and girls of the world, it was booked out for a school visit. So I had a walk around. The Harewood grounds weren’t as big as the map implied — I felt slightly ripped off, in fact — and I completed a circuit without too much trouble despite the torrential sun. I really should’ve made the most of it (or come back on a slightly less temperate day); not only has the average temperature dipped now, but my bus pass has run out. A day’s bus fare, incidentally, is over £6.

As I may not have already mentioned, I am a subscriber to Popular Video Rental Service. I first signed up after being impressed with the selection of anime titles on offer, and have continued to work my way through several decades’ worth of cinema history. My most recent rentals from the past couple of weeks include The Castle of Cagliostro (which hadn’t aged well, particularly in the soundtrack department. If the Japanese soundtrack of Laputa was anything like that, I’m not surprised that they fixed it for the American release), Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis (a fantastic retro-futuristic spectacle that I highly recommend), The Big Sleep (the original version, apparently famous for not making sense. It made about as much sense to me as anything else I watch) and The Karate Kid (which left me quoting many of its lines. “Show me sand-o floor” indeed).

Overrated developer Telltale Games released the first of a series of all-new Monkey Island games. After initial disappointment at the control system (hint: use WASD), I really got into the game — and then I got stuck. Then I got unstuck, and I continued playing until Brother booted me off his computer so that he could have a go.

After much waiting around, Gurren Lagann (the first nine episodes, at least) is being released in the UK. Four episodes in, and it’s really little more than a standard shōnen anime (albeit with faster pacing and robots). Still, time will tell.

I went to a music concert. The band that played was The Orchestra (previously known as ELO Part II), a band based on the Electric Light Orchestra. Most of the songs that they played were ELO songs.

I only managed to fit in one round of Ripley Ice Cream this fortnight, and that was mainly so that I could take those photos at the top. I’ve been inactive a lot of the time, and am now obsessing over my weight and overall health, so I expect to eat less junk food in the coming weeks. Incidentally, Japan’s annual Soft Cream Day (which commemorates the introduction of the frozen delight to Japanese audiences inspired by Independence Day-celebrating North American people occupying the nation at the time) was held the day before I purchased my latest ice cream. According to Wikipedia.

I played Wii Sports again for the first time in several months. My arm has hurt ever since. I think that I have damaged it somehow.

Me and Brother went to York in order for him to pick up a top hat. Apparently, Brother now cares about what he wears. Personally, I see clothes as a necessary evil, and don’t spend much time worrying about them. We had lunch at Little Bettys, which cost £24.35. Normally, I wouldn’t spend more than one tenth of that amount on lunch, but it’s Bettys. You’re paying for quality.

Over the past couple of weeks, I ate fish and chips a combined total of two times.

And that’s pretty much all that I can remember. I tried looking at my recent photographs (which are on Flickr; I’ll think of names for them later), but they didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. Most of this week, the fifth week, was spent working on or thinking about working on this very post, and preparing for the summer holiday. Really, just me in bed browsing the Internet, getting up only to eat, use the lavatory and watch Top Gear. I’d normally say something like “don’t expect any updates for the next week”, but seeing as it’s taken me nearly three weeks to finish this post, you wouldn’t be expecting one anyway. Yes, like everything else in my life, these posts have become a chore. I no longer wish to continue these “weekly” updates, and will instead switch to a “just update whenever the heck I can be bothered to” régime. I dunno. Maybe I just need a week away from the Internet to truly relax. There’s still a chance to save this summer. The rain is over (for now) and with a week in Northumberland, hopefully I’ll be able to turn this around.

Wish me luck.

Oh yeah, and I got my results from college. I won. ㋼

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Best Summer Ever: Week 2

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Jamie Spong in the field of Ice Cream and Slice of Life.

It seems that I’m not the only one out there determined to have the best summer ever. Haruhi Suzumiya, whose on-again-off-again anishow recently restarted with repeats interspersed with a seemingly random splattering of new episodes every so often,¹ has been doing her bit by enlisting the assistance of her ever-so-loyal SOS Brigade in their latest episode, Endless Eight. Much like my mental to-do list (the completion of which these Best Summer Ever posts seek to log), Haruhi brainstorms a series of events and activities (such as hitting baseballs with baseball bats, going fishing and appreciating fireworks) to do within the final two weeks of their holiday together.

I'm sure that this is a reference to something, but I'm not sure what.

This week’s adventure proved to be one of Haruhi’s less supernatural endeavours, providing a refreshingly down-to-earth episode with nothing out-of-the-ordinary to be found. No idea why they called it Endless Eight, though.

Watching Haruhi and her merry friends get up to all kinds of vaguely summer-related antics (in the space of only two weeks!) has made me realise that I haven’t been making the most of my time. This week did NOT live up to last week and I didn’t manage to do everything that I’d planned. Also, I forgot to bring my camera, so don’t expect any further images for the time being.

I became curious as to whether the flavour of the week at the Ripley Ice Cream parlour at the Valley Gardens in Harrogate was the same as the flavour of the week at the Ripley Ice Cream parlour at Ripley. So I walked down to the one at the Valley Gardens. This week’s flavour: Lemon. Hmm. So I walked on until I found a bus stop and a bus on its way to Ripley. I found them both, and after a short journey on a busy bus, I arrived just outside Ripley’s flagship “world-famous” ice creamery. I thought that I’d just pop in and pop out again, as the bus back’d only be a couple of minutes away. This week’s flavour: CHEESECAKE. Cheesecake flavoured ice cream!!! I had stumbled upon The Greatest Known To Man. Without thinking, I immediately ordered a handmade rolled cone with a fudge stick and a hot chocolate dip. (I’ll go into the ice cream extras in a later post.) They wouldn’t let me on the bus with the ice cream (yes, I tried), but it was worth it. Or so I had thought. Maybe they pulled the wrong handle, maybe it was just a poor flavour. Either way, I couldn’t distinguish it from vanilla. Probably serves me right for something. I’d better stick to mixtures of the two flavours in future to be on the safe side.

Then I went to Knaresborough. I saw some wonderful things. I forgot to take my camera. Maybe I’ll go back with my camera and take photographs of wonderful things.

Every so often, I eat fast food to remind myself why I don’t eat fast food. It was for this reason that I stopped off at the only KFC in the area on the way back and treated myself to what they call the “Fully Loaded Meal“: one piece of fried chicken, one fried chicken burger, one side dish (I chose corn), chips and one drink (I chose Diet Pepsi). I’m used to having my chicken roasted, so the fried chicken surprised me with the tenderness of the bones. I was able to chew and swallow them with almost no problems. The corn was incredibly hot, the chips were distressingly plain and the burger had too much mayonnaise. Whatever my opinion about the meal itself, I’ve had cravings for fast food ever since. Next time I’m in Leeds, fast food’ll be on the agenda. Oh dearie me.

The only other times I left the house this week were to pay in a cheque and to visit Newby Hall with Father. These times, I did remember to bring my camera. But I didn’t take that many photographs. They’re on Flickr, but they’re in the wrong order because Flickr Uploader is rubbish.

I finally got around to playing those Wallace & Gromit games I got ages ago. I was disappointed that a British license was being developed by an American developer — Telltale Games, famous for the Strong Bad point-an’-click-em’-ups and the recent Sam & Max serieses — and, sure enough, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees {gasps for breath} paints what is unmistakably a foreigner’s view of England. It didn’t help that, with my experiences with their games, Telltale is notorious for releasing bug-riddled glitchfests. In this case, I managed to unwittingly trigger a game-breaking bug in the very final scene, meaning that I had to go back to my last save point and sit through several minutes of unskippable cut-scenes. Employ better testers, Telltale. Hopefully you’ll’ve learned your lesson before the release of Tales of Monkey Island.

I started watching Kiddy Grade again. Now that they’ve got all of the character introductions out of the way, ~~the plot is the focus~~ the focus is on the plot. And, for the sake of said plot, the series has taken the radical direction of firing Lumière and Eh! Claire from their GOTT jobs. I’m not sure what the economic climate is like within their expanded universe, but it’ll be interesting to see whether or not they find employment. Missing the point aside, I’ve ~~really been~~ been really enjoying this series. I’d do a full post on it, but there’s nothing I can really say about it that’s much more substantial than “standard science-fiction (but that’s okay)”.

I now have copies of the only four volumes of the Corrector Yui anime ever released in English. I may never watch them.

I flicked through the first few lines of Ever17 again. That racoon-dog haunts me. Never played it? Fix that. It’s less than £20.

Brother made a new blog post. Read it.

Uh… That’ll do. The upcoming weather forecast looks good enough. Maybe some rain. I welcome it. ㋼

The original Japanese broadcast of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was out-of-order. This new episode order sorts them out chronologically, meaning that any new episodes that take place in between the older episodes have to fill in the gaps. [↩]

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On Queuing, Family, and the Nintendo DS.

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Jonny Spong in the field of Slice of Life.

So there was this one time me and my dad were waiting in the barbers.

There was a guy already having his hair cut, and two kids sat waiting. They looked like brothers.

Each had a Nintendo DS, the focus of their full attention. Any conversation was directed at their own set of screens.

The elder was apparently winning. Things looked comparatively bleak for the younger sibling, who cast his tear-filled eyes around the room in search of support, since none was forthcoming from his brother.

I gave him a look to say “I know your pain,” but it wasn’t very effective.

Salvation came for the boys in the form of their father, his hair-cut complete. The consoles were snapped shut, and the spell was broken by the subject of sweets.

The two boys asked the barber if there were any lollies.

The barber laughed and said they were fresh out.

A brief conference between the brothers, finally united by their task, resulted in asking the barber if he had any more lollies.

The father laughed and said that if they’re out, they’re out.

I noticed my own father smiling at this spectacle. He must have seen this scene before. I think that maybe there is a universal recognition between fathers, a shared feeling, an understanding.

To know what it means to truly be a father.

There was this other time me and my dad were queuing at Betty’s Tea Rooms.

In front of us was a tall black-haired man with stubble, a scarf, and a long black coat.

And his Nintendo DS.

Also black.

It seemed his whole family was there. With silver hair and a warm yellow jumper was the man’s father, to whom he was demonstrating the wonders of Nintendo’s hand-held console.

The scene was perfect; like something out of an advert. Only more genuine. The expressions on the faces of those men were ones of true, real joy, like you don’t often see.

It was then that it struck me.

The power of the Nintendo DS.

Such power is subtle, yet immense.

To be able to tear families apart, and to bring them together again. With that power, you could control the world.

Let us hope our fate is in good hands.

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Best Summer Ever: Week 1

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Jamie Spong in the field of Ice Cream and Slice of Life.

First update. I don’t know exactly what form these posts are going to take, so I’m just going to start typing and see what happens.

A couple of years ago, the ice cream parlour at Ripley (just a few minutes away by bus) went through an extensive rebranding process, giving itself an overhaul — calling itself “World Famous Ripley Ice Cream” — and opened up a parlour right here in the Valley Gardens of Harrogate (just a few minutes away by foot).

Unlike other ice cream parlours and their simply staggering selection of flavours, Ripley Ice Cream keeps things relatively simple. There are three options: Vanilla, the Flavour of the Week or a mixture of the two. I almost always go for the mixture. This week’s flavour was a new one to me: Turkish delight, of all things. An overly sweet flavour that’d've been a challenge for me to eat on its own (without the counterpoint of vanilla).¹

We went to see a suitably epic two-part theatrical production of His Dark Materials in Leeds. It was far superior to the big-budget film adaptation (which didn’t even make it to the end of the first book). I really liked the production techniques; in particular, the dæmons, realised through the magic of puppets operated by actors in inconspicuous clothing — echoing the Japanese tradition of bunraku. Isn’t it great how I’m able to tie anything and everything into my interests?

Just days before my summer began, I had been working hard to finish my assignments. This put me under an amount of stress, and my health suffered for it. This week, I was still feeling the effects; I had a headache and an upset stomach nearly all week, and found myself falling asleep at hilariously inappropriate moments. Although I got better over the weekend, this made it hard for me to get into the summer spirit. I do not intend to do any further work for the remainder of the summer months.

I have a new personal goal: get a new MacBook Pro. However, this takes money, and I need to work to earn money, and I do not intend to do any further work for the remainder of the summer months. So I have set my sights significantly lower: I intend to go back to the aforementioned ice cream parlour every week and try out each flavour that they have on offer. Kinda like Super Size Me, only not really anything like it at all. Fun! This is a manageable goal for me and will give me something to talk about week after week.

Wednesday was wet, so I took the liberty of watching a few of those anime series that I hadn’t watched yet. Just an episode here or there. I started off with Air, which was sad. Then there was Str.A.In (which was underwhelming), Abenobashi (which was awkward), The Big O (which was cool), Kiddy Grade (which was awesome) and My-Otome Zwei (which was better than TV Tropes said that it was). I should probably do a better job of paying attention next time. I can’t really forgive myself for using “cool” and “awesome” as adequate descriptions. I mustn’t let my mind go numb. I’ve watched one Michael Bay film too many this week.

On Friday, me and Brother went on a pilgrimage to the National Media Museum at Bradford to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in glorious, £8-per-ticket IMAX format. It was big and loud. Even with earplugs in place, the noise system produced a bass so deep that it made my whole skeleton vibrate. Luckily, we’d seen the original The Transformers: The Movie the day beforehand in preparation, so we were able to pick up on some of the film’s mythology shout-outs. It didn’t leave much of an impact on me, however. (Physically or otherwise.) If you’re in the area, though, I heartily recommend a visit to the museum itself.

The weekend was spent catching up with Scrubs season 8. I was greatly surprised by the high quality of the episodes after all these years, despite the constant re-use of running jokes.

I purchased a Crabble because Dr Ashen didn’t hate it.

Brother says that he’s going to work on a blog post “soon”.

And I think that that’s just about everything that happened to me last week.

This week’s weather forecast: Sunny spells. Top temp: 21℃.

See you soon. ㋼

On a side note, eating a chocolate-covered Turkish delight bar is an excellent (and delicious) way to stay awake and alert through lectures and seminars that would otherwise send one to sleep. As they’re so small, I recommend carrying a bar or two should one require a pick-me-up. [↩]

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Best Summer Ever 2009: Week 0

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Jamie Spong in the field of Slice of Life.

“Work is over / If you want it”

I’m done.

After all these months, I finally have all of my assignments handed in.

And I don’t feel particularly good about it.

But now I have two-and-a-half months free. And, as with every summer, I’m going to attempt to make this one the Best Summer Ever. In order to gauge my progress this year, I’ll be making weekly updates on this blog in order to encourage myself. “What have I done this past week in order to make this the best summer ever?” or something like that.

I’ve already got tons of stuff planned. For instance: As anyone who has read the About page will know, I like anime. Over the past few months, I have amassed several stacks worth of anime that I haven’t watched much of due to all of that work that I eventually did. I’ll have to watch no less than one episode a day if I’m going to get through even half of it. Instead of making just one blog post for each thing, I’ll be collecting everything together into the weekly roundup. It’ll give me greater freedom than Twitter whilst not overwhelming myself.

So that’ll do. I’ll figure out the specifics later. Just know that I intend to have the Best Summer Ever and let you people know about it with weekly updates starting this weekend. There’s got to be someone out there who cares enough to read. ㋼

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