Wow two weeks in a row! Amazing! I hope I'm not spoiling you all by attempting to update on something resembling an actual schedule...

We're quickly approaching the end of book 1, and I'm still deciding what to do. Most likely there will be a significant break in between. It's still a little ways off so we'll see how it turns out.

I finally have time to watch anime again, and so I've been watching Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou. It's a pretty ridiculous action series, and by ridiculous I'm referring to the quality. The animation and art are top notch every episode, and the fighting hasn't been a let down at all. I was (and kind of still am) expecting it to go downhill soon, as I have bad memories of a certain other series *looks at Tenjou Tenge* but every episode so far proves me wrong. I'm happy about this of course, I'd love for the entire series to rock all the way through, but we're only on episode six, so there's a lot that remains to be seen.

Speaking of anime that's too early to tell, Naruto is on pretty thin ice here with me. I don't want to turn all of you who don't watch the subbed version off to it already, but I'm watching this expecting a certain level of quality - at least on par with "pre-filler" Naruto. What I've seen so far, 5 episodes, isn't exactly filling me with hope. Sure episode 1 and 2 we're wonderful, especially that scenes-to-come section in the beginning of episode 1, but those scenes aren't here yet, and won't be for a very long time. The animation quality has already begun to drop off, though honestly pre-filler Naruto gets like that often, it's just that now it's harder for them to get away with it. Scenes have been extended with an amazing amount of filler, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. And perhaps most annoyingly at the moment, is that they're basically on a bi-weekly schedule. Every episode preview it's no Naruto next week, with some excuse or another (you'd think I was running it or something <<). I don't care if there's one hour specials every 2 episodes or something, they've had like 2 years to prep this thing, 2 years of really really crap Naruto to come back and redeem themselves, and right now, it just doesn't hold up. I haven't given up hope yet, because its only episode 5 after all, and there's some real good stuff (in the manga at least) that will be happening in Naruto by mid or end season or so, so there's still things to look forward to, but right now my opinion isn't exactly high. I really hope it turns around though, because Naruto is pretty much the only series I watch regularly and without fail, and will make time to see it if need be. Shame to let that go if it comes down to it.

I'm finally done with the near insurmountable....mountain that is finals. No picnic, but the relief when they're over is like no other. Now that they're through I can get some things on this site done that I've been meaning to for a while. In the meantime I put up a sketch, this time of Vern. He's kind of a little younger looking here, maybe it's him in the workshop a couple of years ago or something.

Enjoying my break now, I started watching this show called "The Whitest Kids U Know" on Fuse. Don't worry if you don't know what station Fuse is, most people don't (it's some music channel around the mtv/vh1 area if you cable/satellite), but the show is hilarious. It's a sketch comedy show, not like SNL or MAD TV, but more like Kids in the Hall. Coincidentally, they're both Canadian, as far as I know (and also coincidentally you probably haven't heard of this show either). It's seriously funny, and I find the humor has this vague touch of Monty Python to it, in the style of sketches and type of jokes (but more modernized and usually more crass). I should also mention that it's not really for kids, but if you're not like 10 or something it's funny stuff.

So anyways, next week most likely I'll have some kind of site update (probably just another template color thing, while I figure out what else I want to make). Green anyone?

As in Genghis Khan, or KHAAAAAAANNN!! That's how you say Ran's name, fyi.

Issue 13 is now up, and things are looking good for next week's issue to come out, actually making this a weekly comic for once. Not much else to say right now, I have one last final on Tuesday, so I'll probably celebrate by putting up something either that day or the following day.

I don't really have anything to say with this post, other than I made a quick sketch and put it up. Kind of a wasted post really, but we don't really have an rss feed for the art updates yet, so just a necessary evil for now I guess.

It just occured to me that I haven't posted this week yet. Remember there's no comic this week. I was going to post Sunday night but the site was moving extremely slow, as it tends to around 1am or so. Anyways I'm posting now, with a final exam tommorow as well as the day after, and a project due on Friday. That's why there's no comic btw.

This weekend I did find time in the morning to go watch 300 though. If you haven't seen it, you must see it. It's extremely extremely violent though, so don't take little kids or whatever. Other than that, there's no choice, there's no excuse, this movie is too full of awesome to not go through your eyeballs into your brain.

I've put up some more artwork on my deviantArt page, unrelated to Portals. I'll probably have a couple of other things up there by the end of the week too. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have something to put on here as well.

Now it's back to studying while ignoring that whirring sound my head is making (akin to hard drive failure).

Before I forget, for all the pi-ous, happy pi day.  Be sure to grab your pi" of the pie (which is not very much on an 8" pie).  If your local mathematics clubs or math department doesn't at least mention pi day, then it's not really a math department.

(Edit: It turns out the words I'm looking for is self-conciousness and that self-concious is not the same thing, keep that in mind; I don't think it changes the meaning all that much).
To begin, let me all take you back to one post ago.
I think somewhere in the middle I told you something about being self-conscious, I don't really remember, as long as you know what the heck I'm talking about.  Then I got to thinking, self-conscious, in a way, does mean the same thing as being self-aware.  Self-awareness makes us humans able to realize the fact that we know something as opposed to just simply knowing something and not being able to question that which we know.  You've probably heard this term somewhere near where people discuss things like Artificial Intelligence and robots who will eventually kill all the humans on the planet, right after we've destroyed 95% of the planet and now rely on the robots to restore the planet to more healthy conditions, because only robots can survive the 300 year time jump without a time-machine like that...ne, Robo?

Anyway, why do robots always tend to go berserk right after they figure out that they know that they know things? I think it's an oddity.  Even if we logically should be wiped out, if they are really self-aware, then they shouldn't contend to simply use their logic and be done with it.  A self-aware being would use logic to consider their logic before doing something drastic.  What we have going berserk is a bunch of robots using their logical instincts, which we programmed into them yesterday to totally go berserk on us because we are totally illogical as a species.  In any case, we would probably eventually be ruled out as a surviving species anyway because, you know, we just destroyed 95% of the planet, and the robots probably aren't too happy about the mess they have to clean up on aisles 7 through 98.

In any case, self-aware robots are one thing, but would a self-aware robot eventually be self-aware enough to be self-conscious?  Would a robot eventually be as shy as any boy or girl, would they become paranoid against all their logic? (Remember that song Paranoid Android by Radiohead?)  Would their eventually be a robot like HMX-12?  Well...no, I suppose the last one would be too hopeful.  Only someone like Hideki or Hideyoshi could make something like that.  Not that they would.
Anyway, I have no reasoning for this line of questioning other than to mention that self-aware is a lot like self-conscious.  Go write a book about it sometime.

Now, after all that techno-psycho-babble, I bring you my second thoughts on pseudo-sucking things that may or may not be sucking back.  Today's bounty is that known by the shortened-by-one-syllable-in-english name, precure, also known as, Pretty Cure, (and fully by Futari wa Pretty Cure).  Now keep in mind that Pretty Cure has spawned children in recent times, and I haven't caught the more recent incarnations of the show, so maybe, my thoughts don't totally coincide with yours.  Even then, my thoughts probably don't coincide with yours anyway.

Here's the deal: Pretty Cure is one of those Fighting Mahou Shoujo shows.  I make this distinction of fighting because most of the time, in magical girl shows, you see a bunch of magic been thrown around and they fly through the sky shooting at each other like airplanes in WW1 with no targeting and bombs that are actually thrown out of the plane by the guy in the back (the 'bombardier')...and sometimes you just see them standing around, posing and talking and then using some special move that kills everything.
That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things that are within the realms: they certainly still use sure-kill moves as often as every episode, sometimes many times in one episode;  there's still like some random moral that is tossed around in every episode, be it friendship or being yourself, or gathering confidence or something; they still play a transformation sequence every episode; they utter lots of lines that one would never say normally; they call themselves by their 'special' names when transformed (at least 90% of the time); they have cute mascot animals that they use to transform; I'm sure there's more I'm missing here.
But I guarantee you don't see too much fighting like this in these kind of shows.  Heck, the animation for their fight scenes is pretty damn good in Pretty Cure, one of the higher forms of animation in recent times.  And they actually fight.  I mean, they are throwing punches and kicks in rapid succession, doing spin moves in the air that Dhalsim would be jealous of.  You know why they have frills on their battle costumes?  Air Control, bitch.  (That's my reasoning, by the way, not theirs.)  The fighting alone would give this show the edge over many.
The show features some nice plot points and details as well: besides the classic "the evil people aren't really evil" thing, there is also the fact that there is no "Handsome guy" who comes and saves them every once in a while, weilding some kind of object that somewhere means beauty that is of destined relationship to one of the girls.  The two girls have to transform together to becomes their alter ego forms, and they also use attacks that only work if they are in proximity, something the bad guys actually took advantage of once or twice.  The girls have realistic recoil on their attacks, and no one becomes sporadically overpowered (not even the baddies).  There is lots of punnage in the dialogue and the ending songs are good (they remix classical music...totally awesome for me).  The morals that they throw around in the show very rarely actually affect the fighting scenes (like, the evil people won't be specifically targeting that one moral that episode to prove a point).
I mean, it's not like there's nothing wrong with the show.  There are problems with some of it being a bit too dumb sometimes, but I mean, it is for little girls after all.  Give them a break. If you can't handle shows that are made with little girls in mind, I advise you to stay away from this one probably. This one I will say is a choker.  So choke it down, and enjoy.

Oh, by the way, thanks to pi day, I really don't feel like making sure I make something for St. Patrick's (which is also coming soon).  So, if you were expecting something then (and even I was expecting it--I have a mini-joke ready) you can go blame the mathematicians.  You know you want to.

I'd just like to say for what it's worth, Thenayrbia is practice too.  Yeah...practice...(Stop glaring at me.)

There's nothing that pains me more than saying to myself, "Hey, I should post about that..." only to have forgotten about it by the time I actually do want to post.  And yet, this occurs frequently, on the order of several times a day now.
Okay, I lied.  My stomach pains me more than that, but that's completely besides the point and beyond meaning of the expression. 

Now considering that I post at about the frequency that a mammoth moves whilest frozen in a block of ice multiplied by the chance that I essentially have 22 hours in a day to post (remember that whole 1 hour per sentence thing), this means that you, the wonderful viewers, see approximately 3% of what I actually wanted to write in a post.  Maybe 5% if you are lucky and it was something that had happened that day and my brain gets enough nutrition to remember what I had wanted to write during the post.

Otherwise you get one of these; a message so chock full of odd strung together sentences that happen in a randomized context within range of meaning without loss of definition and surprises.  Yeah, one of those. 

In any case, after you've time to purge the introductory paragraphs of the introductory paragraph (which I suppose is this paragraph) from your mind, I suppose you await the beef of the post, only to find out that it's not beef but lightly seasoned lemon chicken.  Or fried Tofu.  Or Inari sushi.  Or maybe just the rice.  In any case, the major portion of this post will be my description of somethings that I've had the pleasure of enjoying in my mind for the last week or two.  So enjoy my enjoyment of the weeks behind, or at least, what I can remember of them.

For one thing, I still have trouble believing that I'm inconsequential to the people that I pass by everyday.
I know it's not in their minds to do or say anthing about me, especially when I'm passing by, but for some reason I have extremely self-concious thoughts.  Im that much closer to being a hermit.  Already on the first step to paranoia.

Number 2, can you believe that there was an American Anime Awards?  Apparently it happened last Saturday, and I happened to catch the news on Japanator.  It's not like it's a bad thing that it happened (despite the poor choices of nominations that people will be quick to point out and burn at the anime cross), but it's a questionable result.  Some of the awards are inconsequential to me, but the categories themselves are confusing: Best Actor and Best Actress, then Best Actor and Actress in a Comedy?  I know they make similar distinctions in the Academy, but why only Best and then Best in Comedy?  They don't give special consideration to other things like action or drama, so why make the disitinction only for comedy?  Maybe it's because the comedy section is distinctly lacking?
Akira should've totally won best movie.  Because it's like 20 years old and it still looks awesome.  It is unforgiveable that they would not have something better to put in the slot besides a Pokemon movie and a Inuyasha movie (burn me all you want, that opinion isn't gonna change), but I'm sure they would've gotten a Miyazaki in there if they could've.  I'm sure there's some legal nonsense of why they couldn't.  Certainly, at least, good ol' Jean-Luc would've pwned the Best Actor category (he was in Nausicaa).
Maybe it's a bit impertinous for me to be like this -- they are trying after all -- but maybe, they need better nominators?

Third, check out fricking Google SketchUp.  It's so fricking awesomely simple for a 3D modeler, I barely know what I'm doing and I'm getting decent results.  After looking at other modelers, I can safely say that SketchUp is probably the fastest and easiest way to get a model made, though that's to say nothing for real applications of models; I'm sure other things are much better at doing stuff like animations and otherwise...but for me, a user of the glorious MSPaint, and a man who adores simplicity in getting started, this is right up my alley.

Fourth, this post was amazingly long, so I'm gonna stop it here.  I was gonna bring you some more review of things that become of paradoxical anomalies due to counterance of sucking, but I'll leave it here for now.