Lunar Scribbles v2

Uh oh, why do they

Uh oh, why do they always tempt me? I got a letter today from Suncoast again, and they say that I earned another $10 dollar gift certificate for my Replay card. So now, I have $45 dollars of Suncoast/Sam Goody gift certificates sitting in my wallet. THE PROBLEM IS THAT I MADE A PLEDGE TO MYSELF TO NO LONGER BUY ANY MORE ANIME DVDS RELEASED IN THE US THAT I HAVEN'T ALREADY PLANNED FOR. And for the ones I did plan for, I'm just going to preorder them from Amazon or something where it's cheaper. But yes, I do have $45 dollars to blow before next April.

I believe I may have found another anime series that I might like. It's titled "Fruits Basket" and is currently pretty popular in Japan. I haven't looked at the summary yet, but it seems like another Fushigi Yugi. HOWEVER, it's the people who are in it that appeals to me. The director of the series is the same person as the one who directed Jubei-chan. The person who wrote the music is Ritsuko Okazaki, the same person who made the music for Love Hina (which, btw, I seem to like more and more after watching the concerts...more about her in the next paragraph). The two lead characters are voiced by Yui Horie (Narusegawa!), and a personal favorite of mine, Aya Hisakawa (Sailor Mercury, Kero-chan, among others). But it's only in Japan as of now and I'm really really tempted to import the DVDs. But...I may also just wait.

Speaking of Okazaki-san, I stopped by the Mitsuwa marketplace to browse yet again. I was in San Jose anyway, but I had to convince myself to go in. I was debating whether I should spend the money. But then I though, "Well, I'm going to get those CDs anyway (Love Hina CDs), so why not now than later?" So I went in. To my surprise, they had the Okazaki Collection for Love Hina. But what's more, it was the first pressing edition, so it came in a cardboard sleeve as well as a mini-booklet. That got snatched up pretty quickly. In this CD, she performs the songs that she wrote for Love Hina. While it isn't as cute as when the voice actors sing it, it's still very pleasant to listen to.

Must get started on front-web page today.

Procrastinating, procrastinating. I'm suppose to

Procrastinating, procrastinating. I'm suppose to create my main web page (you know, the one that shows up when you type "http://www.jupiterstar.com/") with automated news entries, displays the latest guestbook doodle/comments, and other stuff. However, that's been delayed due to the fact that I still like to tinker around with my anime pages. So much to do.

I was looking over my translations of the tracks for the Jubei-chan CD and discovered that they were HORRIBLY WRONG. Reason was that I was lazy when I first made the page, so I just copied them from somewhere. Bad idea. Never copy anything from the web (unless it's my page! ;-) ) without verifying it's validity first. I re-did the music and DVD pages for Jubei-chan to reflect the more correct translations.

Rather proud of myself this

Rather proud of myself this evening. I managed to translate two of my favorite songs from Love Hina. Of course, each song took me just 3 hours to translate, but it's alright. I actually enjoy doing it (with an internet connection of course...can't imagine myself flipping through a dictionary rather than just typing up the hiragana/katakana/kanji). Pretty fried. That's about it.

Finished watching the Love Hina

Finished watching the Love Hina Tokyo concert DVD in its entirety last night. Despite the DVD producers chopping off a few segments of the concert, such as the live dubbing of an episode (huge screen on stage while the voice actors read off the script) and the interview with the Love Hina creator, it was a very entertaining concert. But I do have to disagree with the cover of the DVD. Now, take a look at this:

It's a little too much in my opinion. Luckily the cover is reversible, so I'm using the other side when my DVD case is on the shelf.

That's messed up. On one

That's messed up. On one of the songs, they have the voice actor for Motoko, Yuu Asakawa, and the voice for Kitsune, Junko Noda standing side by side singing. On the face-on view of the stage, Junko is standing on the right of Yuu. However, on an angle shot of them two, Yuu is standing on the right of Junko. Looks like someone flipped the film backwards. On top of that, Yuu (the pretty one) messes up her routine and afterwards, you can see here singing through a smile of guilt. I wonder how many other mess-ups there are?

Finally got my package from

Finally got my package from CD Japan with the Love Live Hina Tokyo concert as well as the drama CD for Love Hina Again (OVA). This time, unlike my previous orders from Anime Jungle, the US Customs agents didn't molest my packages. With my Anime Jungle orders, they actually opened up the FedEx envelopes to see what I had inside. I bet they were surprised with the CD covers showing the Love Hina Girls in very revealing clothing/towels. =)

Anyway, I've just had the privilege of browsing through the concert. It makes the Osaka concert look like a high school production. Seriously. I think the budget they got to produce the show reflects the popularity that the anime accumulated during that time period. I'm going to spend some time tonight to watch the whole thing. While they include Yuji Ueda (voice of Keitaro), Megumi Hayashibara is surprisingly not present, so there's no singing of the intro and ending song. But that's okay.

Of course, on the other DVD, there's a summary movie of the whole TV series in length. Tempting, but maybe I'll just wait. Oh, and the drama CD has yet to be opened.

Speaking of drama CDs, yesterday, the Magic User's Club drama CD was spotted on Anime Jungle. It's now probably being opened by some customs inspection agent in San Francisco as it makes its way to the little town of Santa Cruz.

Got my delayed order from

Got my delayed order from Animenation.com which was the CD for Shidou Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth. It's actually an out of print CD, but they got it. Strange. Speaking of which, I'm expecting an order from CD Japan tomorrow with the Love Live Hina concert in Tokyo and the Drama CD from Love Hina Again (OVA). The good news is that I haven't stepped into a Fry's in a week to look at a DVD nor even gone to the local Suncoast despite having $35 bucks in replay dollars to blow. The 4 DVDs that I'm suppose to be getting will all get here sometime next week from Amazon.com.

I was actually a bit productive today. I reuploaded my Jubei-chan page as well as uploaded the new version of Kare Kano. Plus, I made some changes to the photos pages as well. Slow but surely, I'm going to rebuild the site.

Out of all my DVDs, I believe the one that I've played the most is the only import DVD that I have, Love Live Hina in Osaka. I usually keep it in the background as music though. It's actually nice to listen to (not to mention that Yuu Asakawa is kinda pretty, but I just hope that the attitude she exuded on stage was just her playing her character, Motoko, and not her real self. I couldn't get a read on her during the bonus interview footage either, but it would be shame if she was the same off-camera. It's also pretty funny that they show the voice actors chugging down beer during the credits where played video clips from a dinner that the cast attended). Anyway, that's why I'm pretty excited about getting the other concert DVD tomorrow. The Osaka one doesn't have my two favorite songs, but the Tokyo one does (the two songs are "Egao no Mirai e" and "Mirai no Okurimono" I believe). Can't wait.

But in looking for the track listing for Tokyo concert DVD, I realized how big this Son May piracy thing is. Not only does Son May do music CDs, they also do a lot of DVDs too. There's a Son May version of the concert DVD too. In my opinion, if I'm going to do some illegal pirating, might as well not do it half-assed and end up having to spend money, even if it's 15 bucks.

I believe my otaku-ness has

I believe my otaku-ness has just increased by 10% at least. Yesterday, I got a surprise in the mail. It was a postcard invitation to a movie. The Escaflowne movie. The following pictures are from the front and back side of the card scanned in from the new scanner I got today!

Hmm. Speaking of which, I should an automated image uploading functionality to the journal script that I'm using. Maybe another day.

The body is sometimes independent

The body is sometimes independent of the mind. This morning, I was awakened by my mom to go out to run on the beach at 6:30am. While I was still in bed, I was thinking that I should go outside and run because I believe I'm gaining too much weight, plus it's good to motivate my mom too. However, my body felt otherwise. It was like my body was telling me that it was SOOOO comfortable in bed and no matter how much I tried to convince myself, I would not move. I really ought to work on my will power some more. I promise, tomorrow, I will wake up at 6:30am and run again (I gave the excuse that this morning was my day off). But I know that it's going to be hard to do. Chris knew the pains of trying to get me to go work out freshman year by calling me at 7am in the morning. That workout routine maybe lasted a week for me before I just told Chris not to bug me.

How crazy. While flipping through

How crazy. While flipping through the channels, I hear the song "Rainbow Connection" on a show. For those of you that don't know, "Rainbow Connection" was sung my Kermit the Frog on Sesame Street a long time ago. So this grabbed my attention because instead of a raspy frog voice, it was sung by a female singer. And then the dialogue in the show continues and I hear the people speaking Japanese. Turns out it was a Japanese TV drama on the Internation channel. Very strange.

Oh, figures, they're Stanford students.

Oh, figures, they're Stanford students. If I had known earlier, I probably wouldn't have made such a fuss about it. I thought it was an opinion of your average Asian American, not some spoiled college student who actually would shop at an overpriced retailer such as A&F.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Movie

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Movie production company New Line Cinema is pulling a series of movies that triggered protests from Asian groups who said they reinforced negative stereotypes.

The movies, which show the Asian lead having black hair and using martial arts rather than using a conventional firearm, will be pulled from all rental shelves as well as various retailers in the 50 states, company spokesman Compton Harney said Thursday. These movies include the blockbuster hits, "Rush Hour" as well as its sequel, "Rush Hour 2."

"We're very, very, very sorry," Harney said. "It's never been our intention to offend anyone."

But more than 100 Asian-Americans protesting outside the New Line Cinema studio in Burbank Thursday said Harney's apology wasn't enough.

They read a list of demands including a public apology in four major newspapers, increased philanthropy and investment in the Asian community and the hiring of consultants to ensure sensitivity on Asian issues.

"It's unacceptable for them to smear and continue to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Asian-Americans," said Pac T. Lee, 28, an attorney. "They wouldn't do the same for any other ethnic groups."

Activists in other parts of the country urged people to call or write the company to complain.

"I am personally offended when I am confronted with people who, when they want to pick a fight, try to perform a karate kick and give the high pitched kung fu grunt." said George Chang, 23 of Santa Cruz, CA. "It's an insult to think that other people don't believe that I would carry a gun or a knife to defend myself."

In Minneapolis, Minn., Foo Bar, 28, was asking people to boycott New Line Cinema until it pledges that such stereotypical genres won't be repeated.

"The fact is, they've already made money out of our exploitation," Bar said.

"These action movies were designed with the sole purpose of adding action to our movies," Harney said. "Since some of our customers have been offended by their content, we are pulling these titles."

In one of the studio's movie, the Asian lead Jackie Chan is shown to run into a building without any weapons except for his fist. And in the whole film, there are no variations in hair color among the Asian cast.

Harney said the studio received about 60 phone calls Wednesday about the movies. The company makes fun of everyone, Harney said, noting its previous movies have included Ninja Turtles, 1960s British Spies seeking MoJo, and Hobbits.

Last year, women's organizations and conservative politicians rallied against the studio for its movies featuring young, barely clad models in sexually suggestive poses.

News today from pretty much

News today from pretty much everywhere was that Abercrombie made a 'racist' shirt. Even though I'm an Asian, I really don't think it's that big of a deal. Honestly, it's some cheap humor using traditional Asian stereotypes, but I think it's rather innocuous and all this hubub is pointless. So what if it portrays a few caricatures that wear straw hats (which is what Chinese wear in China), have intentionally misspellings (which is characteristic of standard difficulties that Asian immigrants have), and use those in some humor. Does it incite hate and violence? I don't feel it. Is it demeaning? Some may say so (not me). Again, I've never really like the superficial attitudes of Asian Americans, who seem to only look after themselves. A shirt design comes out that offends them...doesn't make them feel like they're "American" (whatever that means). Oops, gotta protest in the name of being "Asian." Where are those people protesting when Abercrombie is accused of using forced labor in some ASIAN-Pacific Islands? Nah, doesn't affect me. I won't protest.

In lighter news, I got my shipment again from Anime Jungle (yes, third time in three weeks) which included the Vocal Collection of Saber Marionette, Love Hina: I Love Hina Maxi Single, as well as the DVD to the Love Live Hina: Hinata Girls in Osaka concert. While the concert wasn't too bad, I think I'd prefer to just hear the voices when they've been acoustically altered by a mixer of some sort that makes it sound more pleasant. I've never really like live concerts anyway (same goes for Acapella), but it was fun attributing the non-anime face to the voice.

Very strange. The day after

Very strange. The day after I install the new email program, I haven't received any emails. And the emails I sent out (to confirm my order from animejungle.com) have not gotten a response. Coincidence?

Yeah! I got a total

Yeah! I got a total of $35 bucks in Suncoast Replay coupons. They were previously mailed to my old address, so I never got them. However, I gave them a ring and so they reprinted the coupons for me. I wonder what I'll spend it on. Tough decision to make.

My hands are numb. I

My hands are numb. I spent the last 3 hours converting all my email messages from Eudora to Becky! and making sure everything works. It seems like it does, so I should be able to send multi-lingual emails now! Plus, I can finally get HTML emails too. Eudora never did those well either.

I booked flights for the family to attend my sister's graduation. Using Expedia.com, I saved my flight info, but didn't purchase (so rates can change depending on how long I delay). For 6 people, it was $2,400 roundtrip to Yale from California. Today, the price went up to $11,000. That's crazy. Probably wrong too.

As much as I hate

As much as I hate to admit it, Eudora is a dying, if not already dead program. As a faithful Eudora user since version 2.2, which lasted me from before August of 1996 (earliest records of my emails), I have to switch to another program. If I only dealt with english emails, then I wouldn't need to change programs. However, Eudora is utterly unable to cope with sending and receiving emails in other langauges, namely Japanese and Chinese. Microsoft Outlook can do it, but is still a pain in the ass when you have to switch around. I'm currently looking at a program called Becky! (yeah, lousy name), and am testing it right now. It seems to fit the bill pretty well, however, I still have to do some more rigorous testing on it. It's not an easy task to let go of the program that I've used the longest in my computing career. The last time I had to do it was with Netscape to IE, however, I'm going to jump ship back to Mozilla once it hits 1.0.

In attempt to find something

In attempt to find something to write about, I might as well list the Anime series that I own in the order that I like them. Then, I'll go and explain each one in future journal entries, unless something in real life happens that seems to be more interesting (doubt it, the last eventful thing that happened was that some drunk guy chewed me out because I wouldn't sell him beer. After listening to his vociferous rant that was riddled with standard cliches such as "I'm an American. I fought for America in a war. You weren't even born in America [note: false], go back to your own country!" I replied with a "Have a nice day." Inebriety doesn't warrant more than 4 syllables.) Now the tenative and relative list:

1.Magic User's Club
2.Love Hina
3.Hand Maid May
4.Cardcaptor Sakura
5.Rurouni Kenshin
6.Oh My Goddess!
7.Fushigi Yuugi
8.Magic Knight Rayearth
9.Adventures of Mini-Goddess
10.Saber Marionette J
11.Sailor Moon
12.Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl
13.Escaflowne
14.Cowboy Bebop
15.Tenchi Muyo
16.Battle Athletes Victory
17.Evangelion
18.Macross Plus
19.Utena
20.Dual!

Went to San Jose for

Went to San Jose for some errands and of course, I visited the Japanese bookstore again. Bought myself volume 3,4,5 of Love Hina (out of 13) and then I found KareKano there too, so I bought the first three volumes of those too. Because there are volumes, Manga lends itself to being collectables and looking good on shelves. In addition to that, I also got a waee ziten (Japanese-English dictionary). So I go up to the counter, and the clerk speaks to me in Japanese. At the end of the transaction, she speaks English. I *wonder* what hinted to her than Japanese wasn't my primary language? Hmm.

Had a minor scare this

Had a minor scare this morning while driving my sister to the airport. Her flight is at 6 in the morning and because of daylight savings, we had to leave at the equivalent of 4am. So on highway 17, I kinda sped a bit because there's no one else on the the road and we were running a tad late. When I'm almost to the airport, I see in my rear view mirror, two cars that have their lights flashing. So I think, "CRAP." I slow down to the speed limit. It turns out that the cars that were coming were ambulances transporting a patient. I must say though that the ambulance driver was somewhat inept. He was driving in the middle of the two lane freeway, which means that he had to cross the center line where all those reflectors are on the ground, which meant that the passengers didn't get too smooth of a ride. It was only coming back that I saw the accident. Right after a sharp turn on the highway, there were flares, 2 firetrucks and 2 CHP cars surrounding an overturned and completely totalled car. I guess he was going fast too because he believed no one else was on the road. In a car, you don't need someone else to be around to get in an accident.

Strike one off my DVD list. I got the Mini-Goddess: Belldandy files today. Not supposed to be released until the 9th, but the Software Etc. in Santa Clara had it yesterday and for 5 bucks off full price (as 99% of their DVDs are), I couldn't resist. I also got the first 3 volumes of Love Hina manga (in Japanese!). Also found Mahou Tsukai Tai! manga too, but they only had volumes 3&4. Must have complete set.

My sister came back home

My sister came back home and will be going to UCSD tomorrow to visit the campus. My best friend from high school, Eric, also is at UCSD doing his Master's in Computer Science. So naturally, I gave him a ring to see if he could help out with picking up my sister (I went to see Blade 2 with him last week when he was in Santa Cruz). So I give him a call at his place, which is a house that he shares with someone else.

Person picking up: [unintelligible]
George: "Could I talk to Eric please?"
Person sounding like Eric: "Who's calling?" (at this point, I think it's Eric asking a rhetorical question)
George: "Your worst nightmare!"
Person sounding like Eric: "Oh, is this George?"
George: "OH! Mr. Hall! [Eric's dad]"
Eric's Dad: "Mr. Chang!"

And the conversation continues. Boy did I feel like an ass.

First step to recovery: remove

First step to recovery: remove any traces of what's bothering you. After looking at my DVD collection on the bookshelf and relapsing into contemplating whether I should sell my Escaflowne DVD collection on eBay so I can get a box and a toy in their "limited edition" box set, I decided that I needed to do something (please read journal entry from a few days ago). So what I did was remove ALL the box set boxes that I have and only have the DVD cases themselves on the shelf. The empty boxes got put into storage with my empty computer boxes and such. This includes the Cowboy Bebop, Magic Knight Rayearth Season I and II, and Love Hina boxes. Stuff that comes in foldout DVD cases such as Tenchi OVA, Fushigi Yuugi and such remain on my shelf because those aren't really collectible boxes. If things get really worse, then my whole DVD collection (empty cases) will be boxed up and stored. The discs themselves will remain in my DVD binders. No one ever said withdrawl would be easy.

If the opportunity arises, I will still buy box sets, but only because it's cheaper to buy it in bulk rather than a disc at a time. AND the DVDs will be extracted from the boxes and those boxes will then be stored yet again.

Add one more to the list (omitted last time):

Magic User's Club #7 (last one!) 4/30

Some D.F. tried using a

Some D.F. tried using a fake ID today to buy some hard liquor. The pretty-faced guy comes into the store and asks for a bottle of Schnapps we have behind the counter. Having my doubts already, I asked for the guy's ID before even starting to move to get the bottle. I look at it and it was obviously fake. All the fonts used on the ID were identical. On a real ID, the font for the ID number and the address are different. This guy's ID had the same fonts. I didn't even look at the birthday. Maybe it's because I'm just 23 and am more aware of all this crap that people near my age try to pull. That's why I caught the guys yesterday and this guy today. As this D.F. was leaving, I yelled, "Try harder next time!" I then ask my mom for a pair of scissors to put by the cash register for the next time I see one of these things. But she tells me that I should just let it be. Live and let live. Anyway, she didn't want those damn kids to vandalize our building. I suppose...

Damn kids. Two guys walk

Damn kids. Two guys walk into the store with one wanting to buy 5 24 oz. cans of Bud. Being the lawful sales clerk that I am, I ask for the ID of the guy buying and the ID of his friend. Of course the other guy didn't have ID and vehemently denied that he was going to drink, but I probably caught him off-guard with the question because he blurted out he was only 18, so of course he wouldn't drink. Uh huh. You have to wonder, a guy buying FIVE cans of beer, and not sharing it? Ha. So I deny them of the merchandise. The same guy then comes back 5 minutes later saying that his friend "ran off." Very funny. NOT. I tell him to go to the Boardwalk to get his booze. About 10 minutes later, another guy comes in. He goes and gets exactly 5 cans of 24 oz. Bud. Dumbass. This guy leaves the store cursing.

Epilogue: Another 10 minutes pass and this woman comes in and grabs a 12 pack of Bud Light. I had my suspicions about her, but she was 24 years old and wasn't as obvious as the other guy. They probably think they tricked the acute store clerk, but in my opinion, I don't care if they get ass drunk, become impotent, and die of green liver disease...I did everything I could to prevent breaking the law and hope they do the same.