ARRRRR

Well, it's looking like we're gonna have near 90-degree days and thunderstormy nights the rest of the week and weekend. Bleah. Since we don't have UPS for our computers, you may not see me online much in the evening. Stupid midwestern weather.

Anyway, some news stories. On the blech! front, plane drops leg in woman's yard (courtesy of jantalaimon). On a lighter note, here's an article about Cambodian thieves who attack wearing only underwear.

...After searching forever for a new copy of Tactics Ogre for any kind of reasonable price (after my copy was stolen), I finally decided to bite the bullet and download an ISO. After all, I did buy it, and since it was stolen property I'm still the legal owner of it wherever it is, right? Right?

And then, of course, I got on Torrent Reactor and found all the other ones that had been stolen. (Well, most of them, anyway.) So now I've got those set to download as well and it's all I can do not to start downloading all the nifty ones that I don't actually legally own (even by the above tenuous rationale). Which would be bad.*

* I don't really have any objections to music piracy, given the way they ream you and the way CD prices are kept artificially inflated, but even then I'll buy a CD if I really like the artist and his/her/their music. I'll download fansubbed anime, but once it's released I'll generally buy the retail version if I like the series enough. And I'll download 16-bit and earlier ROMs because, well, no one's making any money on those anyway (except for FuncoLand, which reams you up the ass on used SNES prices). I also don't have problems downloading TV shows if I can't watch them on TV (i.e., my time in England, when we didn't get the new Buffy and Angel episodes), and I generally buy them on DVD later if I like them enough. But downloading current shows/games/etc. that are still mildly financially viable, for things I'm probably not going to buy? I'm not quite comfortable with that...to me it's kind of like pirated manga or anime, which I'm also not a fan of.

And from gedrean:

Not because you have to, but because you WANT to! Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal... and then tag 5 friends and ask them to post it to theirs.

1. Listening to music
2. Baking
3. Reading a new book by one of my favorite authors
4. Translating - as best I can - things from Japanese to English (even though I haven't done much of that lately)
5. Making lists

Tag, you're it: vaulted_eel, eikitty, jokersama, angrybabble, and ahebert (assuming none of you have already done this meme).

one, two, three, quatro

Well, my mom and I finished up Marmalade Boy today. The ending was so sweet, in a completely expected, everyone pairing up sort of way...awww. I actually knew pretty much what was going to happen, because I'd read the manga; I wasn't expecting the anime's ending to be more - impactful? I dunno - but it was, if for no other reason than after 70+ episodes with these characters you feel very attached to them, even if at times you don't like them very much (Yuu, I'm looking at you and your martyr complex).

Tokyopop is very smart though. See, after the final episode they have the Marmalade Boy "movie," which is basically a bonus episode of the anime that was released theatrically and tells the story of the first episode from Yuu's point of view. It's kind of sweet, and of course after watching it you want to watch the first episode again, which means you start all over again. Quite fiendish, really. (And my mom hadn't seen the first few episodes anyway.)

So when we started over, we decided to watch with the dub on. And oh my Jesusu, what a different experience it is. ( comments about the dub )

...While I generally think the memegen-type quizzes are kinda crappy and just good for a faint laugh, I like this one simply because of its completely fubar friendslist choices. XD

( cut to spare your flist )

Edit: Also, an interesting article on depression and the mistaken perception of its role in genius from jokersama. It's salon.com, so you might have to watch a short ad before you can read the whole article, but it's seriously no biggie.