It’s weird, but when Rob is away I have a hard time sleeping. Maybe it’s because my mind just won’t slow down. I eventually get to sleep, but much much later than usual.
I think I’ll be ok doing the gothic & lolita panel. I’ve got a so-far massive powerpoint, which I’m hoping can be covered in an hour. There are just so many topics! And I have to figure a way that all the topics flow together. I also figured out how to make a felt cream puff, so I’m pretty happy about being able to use that with my strawberries.
I just finished watching Paranoia Agent. It was pretty good, but still weird and confusing. Up until the last two or three episodes you can kinda understand what’s going on. Then suddenly the floor falls out and you have no idea what just happened. I’d rate it about the same as Perfect Blue on the WTF scale.
I’ve also been trying to watch Gilgamesh and boy, that series is kinda boring. Maybe it’ll pick up later, but at the moment a lot of time is spent creating suspense or tension in each episode. You get to the end of the episode and you think “Did anything actually happen?”. Too much time is wasted on shots between adversaries (similar to Kill Bill, but much more boring). The dubbing also seems to be off because there isn’t much dialog and it seems that words are lost trying to match Japanese to English lip movements. I don’t know about the subbing because at the moment I’m not much inclined to watch it.
Rob’s new website design is up and running. There are a few tweaks I still need to do, but for the most part it’s finished. I think I’m happy with it. Rob seems happy with it but he keeps coming to me with more ideas he wants to implement. :dead:
Last night we had a party for Eddie’s late birthday and Ken’s birthday. It was pretty fun. It’s nice when people you like come over to party. The party ended around 3 AM, and Ken and Cristine spent the night. One bad thing that happened was that the loveseat finally died. Rob’s trying to fix it right now, but I think it’s broken beyond repair. The seat support beam was made out of plywood and it’s splintered.
Rob bought me Paprika the other day. It’s directed by the same guy who did Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. So, it’s a mixture of “What the fuck is going on!?!?” and “Wow, that’s really beautiful and great plot!” It’s a little easier to follow than Perfect Blue, but with that same weirdness from Paranoia Agent. It is a lot like The Cell, in that it involves dream therapy and the dream world. This is a really top notch anime movie, but what else can you expect from Satoshi Kon? 
Things are pretty nice right now. I got a B on my French test! I’m so happy! And it’s not like a borderline B either, it’s an 85! w00t! The women in film class is going well to. We watched Antonia’s Line last week and the week before that we watched North Country. Still not sure what the final project is going to be, but I guess we’ll get there when we get there. Computer as Medium is… well… it’s there. I guess that’s about all there is to it.
Rob got his new laptop. It looks exactly like mine, except mine’s better. His is still nice of course. 
He’s being really nice since he got back. He bought me two DVDs, the second volume of Mushishi and the original OVA that Mononoke is based off of, Ayakashi Samurai Horror Tales: BakeNeko. I’m pretty excited to watch them! He says he’s trying to rack up some good karma with me. :heart:
So, I watched the English dub of Mushishi and I have to say, they did pretty well when choosing the voice actors. Usually the voice actor doesn’t feel right in the part. Or they did the voice of a different character in a different anime and it just doesn’t seem right when they do the new character. Or, what is most often the case, they just can’t get in the groove of the character and they just sound wrong. This was the case with Paradise Kiss when I tried to watch the English dub. But for Mushishi, it seems like they either put a lot of thought into who should do Ginko’s voice, or they just got lucky. I really don’t have a preference as to subs or dubs (omfg!11!!), as long as the voice fits the character and is done well, that’s the one I’ll prefer. They really need to get some new people into anime voice acting, it’s the same people over and over and over. Especially if it’s the main characters. Rob and I attended a voice acting panel at a convention, and learned just how they do the dubbing. Essentially they just throw the actor into the sound booth with the script and say “Oh, in this scene you’re angry. Go!” They get very little back story or time to get to know the script or the characters. That’s why sometimes the dubs sound like such crap.
