Sure is hot in these rhinos!

So my A/C is still broken and it's been really hot the past couple days. This is basically what I look like all day long...

My brother said he talked to a few of my neighbors and theirs are broken as well due to old age. So one can only assume that that's the problem with ours as well. The best part is that if that is indeed what is wrong according to our neighbors it will cost $9,000 to get a whole new A/C unit. Fucking brilliant!

I've been pretty lucky that this summer hasn't been all that hot. There's been about maybe 5 days where it was almost unbearable but that's about it. I think I'll be able to make it through August. I cannot wait til it's Fall/Winter again. I like my house to feel more like Hoth as opposed to Tatooine (ahthankyou).

In other news, I believe I was able to change the options for the comment box. Now you shouldn't have to be a member to post comments, it should be free to everyone. Also, for those who follow me on Twitter should checkout my page here. Someone was nice enough to make me a custom made anime Twitter background. It's pretty fucking slick! You can check out his blog here.

Speaking of anime, an old buddy from school messaged me on Facebook the other day. Apparently he was trying to get rid of a bunch of stuff and asked if I wanted to take his anime collection off his hands. Well I would be stupid to refuse such an offer! So a couple days later I get this huge box at my doorstep. Inside is about 450 discs of anime. I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty much set for life!

Animated clothing

There is something very interesting about anime and manga that most might take for granted but I always notice it. It's probably because I watch a lot of cartoons (gotta learn those voices!) and notice that cartoon characters almost always wear the same clothes. Which is fine! When we watch The Simpsons, we don't care that they don't age or that they only wear the same clothing everyday. That's the beauty of making a cartoon. Sure, every once and awhile on The Simpsons and Family Guy, they wear "church clothes" which is different.

But on a lot of anime and manga they have what I call the "Default outfit" which most cartoons have. But then a lot of anime I've seen they change their outfits a lot! And that's tough for animation.

For me it's just one of those things that I find very interesting and I get a lot out of it. It seems more real to me. I'm sure there are a lot of people who watch and don't even notice. Which is fine. But I love small touches like that in animation. Also, hair styles. They can change those a bit sometimes in anime.

It's the little thing that make me happy...

Here are some examples from the anime K-On of different clothes...


Til next time!

Cleaning the room

I am lucky enough to live in the top floor loft of my condo. It's like having my own little apartment for just me and my dog. Unfortunately since it's a much larger area than a normal room I tend to let things get cluttered a lot more.


I woke up today with the motivation to clean my room once I got back from work. I wasn't expecting to have my ass handed to me at work. So now my back is all out of whack and I really don't feel like moving. I just want to lay down and relax.

Technically I should make my dog do it since he's the main reason it's a mess. He's so pathetic when it comes to eating. He will eat anything that remotely smells like food. If I leave a small wadded up napkin on my computer desk, I will come home from work to find it either missing or torn up on the floor. A couple days ago I made the mistake of crumbling the wrapper of my Potbelly sandwich and leaving it on my desk. I stepped outside to check the mail and by the time I returned the wrapper was torn to hell and scattered all around my computer. My dog is standing there with a pathetic look on his face. He knows he did wrong!!

Speak of the devil. My dog is whining to go out so I must bend to his every whim, even if he does snatch my food when I'm not looking.

I'll probably post some picture of my loft once it's clean.

One last July post

I wanted to at least put out on last post for July. It ain't much, but it's something.

I've been fighting this sickness since yesterday and unfortunately I don't feel much better today. The fact that I had to work for 9 hours since no one could cover for me didn't really help matters. Tonight my friends are having a party to celebrate my one buddy's birthday. I haven't partied with them in a couple weeks but I feel so crappy I don't know if drinking is the best thing for me to do.

Guess I'm just gonna have to play it by ear.

Tomorrow is my day off and my main priority is finishing the last 5 episodes of Avatar. I really don't want it to end but alas, all good things must.

Well that's it for today. Gotta walk the dog and get dressed for the party (jeans and an anime t-shirt).

Adios

Worlds Collide!

Well I love comics and I love anime. I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner but I was just reading over at http://www.jamaipanese.com/ that they are making Iron Man and Wolverine into anime.

Sweet Jesus! Wolverine anime style??? I'm very interested to see how these are going to turn out. You can view the trailers here

Iron Man and Wolverine Anime trailers!

My worlds are colliding!

Reconstruction and Airbending

So for the past month or so the grocery store by my house has been doing some remodeling. I will give them credit because it is looking a lot nicer. It should be said that my family has been going to this grocery store pretty much my entire life. Since I was about 3. The look is really nice but when I went in the other day I realized that they changed A LOT more since the last time I was there. All the aisles were switched around!

I normally get my grocery shopping done extremely fast since I literally know where everything is located. Not any more. I was completely lost. I usually wouldn't think to much about it but it's changed so much I'm completely thrown off. Things have been placed on the exact opposite side of the store they used to be. I mean, there has to be some reason behind it but I'm just a bit miffed because after going there for 20 or so years (at least 10 of those years going by myself) my groove has been thrown off and now I have to establish a new one.

Establishing one self a new groove can be difficult.

I just had to throw that out there real quick. Not a big deal but the time I've spent in that store is uncanny so it's weird to see it change so dramatically.

I also wanted to make a quick post today but I don't have the time to finish my Otakon post and load more pictures. I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on my Netflix lately and I'm so hooked on this show it's ridiculous. For something that was airing on Nickelodeon I am surprised at how story driven and dark it is. I was always told it appealed to both kids and adults and now I see why. Also, the voice acting is really well done, which obviously appeals to me. It's nice seeing child actors actually playing children. It sounds more real and they do an amazing job! So after spending my day off work last Saturday pumping out 10 episodes, I couldn't wait for the next discs to arrive on Wednesday. So I found a site online and am downloading episodes right now. That's why I figured "Hey, I can do a quick post while these load"



Multitasking at it's finest!

Otakon Day 1

So as I've mentioned last weekend I attended the anime convention Otakon in Baltimore. I had only been one one other anime con before and that was the year before in Pittsburgh. While the Pittsburgh one was awesome it was probably only 1/3 of the size this one was. Otakon was held at the Baltimore Convention Center.

The first day of the convention I had to get up at 6am. Given that I am a night person I was extremely worried about this. Sometimes I don't even go to BED til 6am. But lucky for me I was able to pull it off, mainly because I basically just tossed and turned all night until my alarms went off. It was a strange site to go walking my dog that early only to find a bunch of my neighbors lying on towels in the grass doing exercises at this ungodly hour. Then I drove to my friends house and the four of us left from there and got into line at about 8:20. Here is a shot from the line. We were quite aways back but that lined stretched so far down I have no idea how far it went back...
3 hours later we finally got registered! What I liked about this convention unlike the Pittsburgh one was that you got to choose the image you wanted for your Name Badge. They had a series of picture from 10 different anime. I had lucked out and found the only one I was interested in was from the Lucky Star OVA of Kagami cosplaying as Miku. Since Kagami is my favorite character on Lucky Star I was very pleased. Here's what it looked like. So very, very cute...



The majority of our first day at Otakon was spent down in the Dealer's room. It was 4x bigger than the one I saw in Pittsburgh so I was completely taken aback with all the sweet shit I could buy. My main priorities were to buy Haruhi, Lucky Star, and Ranma stuff. I got some great Haruhi's for a shitload cheaper than I've ever seen them online which was awesome. I also like buying the little figurines that you assemble but it's a surprise as to which character you are going to get. Same with some Nendoroids. I was lucky since I couldn't find any decent Kagami stuff that I wanted that my Nendoroid turned out to be her. Lucky me. And even though it was very tiny I was able to get a tiny Ranma figure for dirt cheap. Since Ranma is so old there isn't a whole lot of stuff there besides pins and key chains but I liked the figure I found. What was really funny was while I was looking at the figure displays I was surrounded by a group of HUGE black guys who were in complete awe of the figures "Is that Ranma? Awesome! Oh man look at that Piccolo! Shit I want that Nami figure!" Just goes to show you can't judge a book by it's cover. They looked like giant football players but were naming characters I didn't even know about. Fun stuff! lol.

I also got a Lucky Star shirt with Akira mimicking a famous Andre the Giant poster from the 80's. A very obscure reference but funny nonetheless. At least to me...

After taking an hour break to sit down and relax I realized while reading the Otakon Convention book that the Funimation booth was right near where we were chilling and that at some point Mike McFarland and Sonny Strait were going to be doing autographs. For those unfamiliar they do the voices of Master Roshi and Krillin on DBZ. So I wandered over there and got in line for Autographs. Here they are...


Here is also the poster they signed for me. Sonny did a funny little Krillin drawing with his signature which was a nice touch...


Later on we met up with some friends to get some much needed nourishment. After that I think we went back to the dealer room again just perusing through the massive amount of stuff. I had decided that I was going to split from the group because there were some Panels that I wanted to see. Both of them ended up REALLY sucking. Since they weren't "Official" Panels like the Q&A's and autograph sessions, they were just run by a group of idiots who paid money to rent out a room. So I was kind disappointed by that. My other MAJOR disappointment was the Voice Over Dubbing session. I had read about it online and was excited to attend because I'd really love to pursue Voice Acting in my life. The problem was this Panel was for some ungodly reason scheduled for Midnight. It was already 7pm at this point and I could barely see straight I was so tired. The only thing getting me through the anger was that the next day I would be seeing a bunch of voice actors and the director of Haruhi.

To be continued...