Eldrad must live

I'm currently playing reading the Umineko no Naku Koro ni visual novel, which is actually pretty awesome so far - except I really like a lot of the characters, especially Battler, Jessica and George, and I'm worrying because it's becoming pretty clear that, in true When They Cry fashion, the story is heading towards grisly end(s) for most of the characters. D: D: D:

For some reason I've really been into visual novels lately - I've played through Katawa Shoujo a few times, which is surprisingly sweet and sensitive for something engendered in the hellish pit that is 4chan, and am hoping to work my way through Fate/stay night once I finish Umineko. And I want to get the official release of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni once I finish those, because I really liked the anime and want to play the games that inspired it. (Even if the artist for both Higurashi and Umineko can't draw hands to save his life.)

Edit: Also, forgot to mention this before, but enkiae, you seriously need to play this; it's like Higurashi but with the killer-loli and scheming-frosty-ojousama ratio reversed! (And one of the two lolis has an encyclopedic knowledge of Western black magic, so...)

Finally sent off the prospectus for my dissertation to my committee, and will be going in later today to photocopy a hard copy for them. WOOHOO! It took a year to come to fruition, but it's finally here!

Now here's hoping that in that same amount of time that it took to conceive and write these 7 pages (plus bibliography), that I can manage...about 250 pages of actual dissertation. orz

IN OTHER NEWS my digital letterpress class is going swimmingly; I'm currently in the process of making photopolymer printing plates for my first (of two) multi-page book project, which is a short booklet about the Tamam Shud case. Creepy AND informative...the best of both worlds! Anyway, I spent about 3 hours yesterday evening making polymer plates, and I'll probably spend the same amount of time or a bit more today doing the same thing. Here's hoping the end result is awesome enough to justify all this work?

And in OTHER OTHER NEWS I am elated about the return of Glee (Madonna episode tonight, HELL YEAH, BITCHES...and I'm not even a Madonna fan, I just loved Sue Sylvester's Vogue video). Other newly discovered televisual enjoyments have included Spartacus: Blood and Sand (bloody as fuck, but totally awesome), 6teen (from the creators of the Total Drama series, conceived as a teen version of Friends set in a shopping mall SHUT UP I KNOW I'M LAME BUT IT'S KINDA AWESOME), and Ugly Americans (which is wrong but totally awesome, especially zombie roommate Randall; as I was telling jokersama, it's reminiscent to me of that bizarrely awesome mid-'90's MTV show The Head). And of course there is Doctor Who, which is delightful to have back on regularly (even if "The Merchandising Victory of the Daleks" was a bit lightweight and plot-holey, especially given the awesome premise of Daleks fighting for Britain in World War II).

Finally, I am currently teaching a Rambo novel to my students to round out the semester...how awesome is that? (Clearly we will have to end our discussion of it by viewing clips of all four Rambo films, natch.) Sometimes I love teaching.

I'd tend to favor whatever the wronged party wants, though I'd lean towards a split-up; certainly in the most recent case (Sandra Bullock and Jesse James) I kinda think she should dump his ass, as from all accounts she is super-nice and is adorable. But if she wants to stick it out, good for her...though if I were her, I would not take kindly to having my post-Oscar mellow harshed by infidelity rising to the surface, and would kick his ass to the curb. But I generally feel that Sandra Bullock is the kind of person you don't cheat on (ditto with, say, Kate Winslet - not that I think she's splitting with Sam Mendes because there was cheating, but similarly she's the kind of star whom pretty much everyone likes, and if you cheat on her you'll piss off a lot of people).

Anyway, I am finally getting around to doing the three fandoms meme nemissa gave me:

( Megaten )

( Suikoden )

( JoJo )

Today marks my return to blogging; I've been meaning to get back to it for ages, as I did feel more productive when I was doing it, but somehow I've gotten out of the habit (I blame my DVR). But I'm back and raring to go!

I'm not usually up this early in the morning (4:30 a.m.), but I took a quick nap of a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, and that combined with a bit of a toothache (leftover from my wisdom tooth surgery a week and change ago) kept me from being able to go to sleep. About 3 a.m., I gave up and started doing some long-overdue kitchen cleaning.

I like getting up early, much as I'm the opposite of a morning person; it always makes me feel productive to be able to get things done before I'd normally even be awake. For example, so far this morning I've washed a buttload of dishes, prepped the trash to be taken out once it's light out (and once I have clothes on), and graded some quizzes I gave my students on Friday (for which the results were about as dismal as I expected, overall). On a normal Monday I wouldn't be clawing my way out of sleep for another couple of hours, by which time I hope to have had a light workout, made breakfast and maybe showered.

So lack of sleep hath its privileges, though I'm sure I'll be hella sorry in my evening class when I have to avoid snoring during the instructor's Adobe Illustrator tutorial.

Anyway, I'm doing this through a new "unified" journaling program called viJournal, which lets you synchronize or semi-synchronize a computer journal with a LiveJournal or Blogger journal. It seems pretty cool so far, but I haven't done anything fancy with it yet; let's see if it works out.

Man, I love Simon Pegg...in addition to his awesome movies, his Twitter (simonpegg) is pretty awesome too. A few samples:

- Read the Twilight books on hols. Really enjoyed them in a sort of 'creepy old man reading delusional, horny, daughter's diary' way.

- I'm definitely team Jacob. I much rather have good abs and burst sneakers than liquid topaz eyes and a fear of hand jobs.

- Oh come on, the Cullens are so up themselves. Pretentious much? You're vamps for frick's sake, drink human blood and stop crying! (help).

Sorry I have been AWOL for so long...but I am making a triumphant return to LJ! (Mostly because this is one of the few things I've stuck with for years, and would like to keep it going.)

Basically I got off-track because I had lots of long posts I wanted to do and always felt I should be doing one of those instead of doing my usual semi-stream-of-consciousness posting...but no more! Now I will post what I feel like posting again, whether it is useful or not.

( What's new in my life )

That is all for now. More to follow at some point soon(ish).

Well, this is awkward - first entries always are, I've noticed. But I suppose I'd better get it out of the way so I can blog like a normal person (for fannish values of "normal").

So, a few statements about me:
- I'm Joseph, or Yosi. I'm a graduate student in the humanities, working on my Ph.D.
- I am a Whovian, a Whedonite, and a member of various other unsavory televisual cults.
- I love videogames, especially RPGs (the more weeaboo, the better).
- I enjoy reading comics, though my knowledge of such is relatively limited, I feel (or maybe it's just that most of the comic book geeks I know are even geekier than myself). I also read a lot of manga, primarily shoujo (girls') manga, and within that primarily cute romantic stuff.
- ...No, I'm not secretly a sixteen-year-old girl, honest.
- I have practiced every kind of craft at some point or other (well, except maybe tatting), though the only ones I've managed to keep up with for any length of time are knitting and rubber-stamping.
- ...No, I'm not secretly a forty-year-old housewife, either.
- I am whatever the British equivalent of a weeaboo is. (A Britaboo?) It is daily the bane of my life (well, to be honest, maybe weekly) that BBC America is not part of my cable package. I would like to live in England someday, though I don't see that happening anytime soon unfortunately.
- I like cheese, primarily white cheeses like farmer, Monterey Jack or mozzarella. However, I do not like melted cheese except on pizza. (In case you hadn't noticed, I am really really picky.)

Nice to meet you!

Now that comps is over and I've got a little breathing room, I finally made it back to Persona 4 for the first time in months; I'm reminded of how much I love this game, and I just maxed out Kanji's S.Link, and ARGHHHHHH SO ADORABLE

( Spoilers for various party members' S.Links, and generally through the end of August )

I am now yoshitsune, M.A., A.B.D. That is, I passed comps!

However, my committee didn't really think any of my (three) potential dissertation topics I was looking at were workable, so I'm now doing my dissertation on bigness. But at least I'm done with comps!