charmianland

Daniel Waples - hang drum solo - HD (by Soniricall Recomienda)

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:51:01 -0400

Daniel Waples - hang drum solo - HD (by Soniricall Recomienda)

Sazaedo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:30:18 -0400

Sazaedo:

would like to go here someday

tofuist: 新形三十六怪撰「地獄太夫悟道の図」明治35年（1902）月岡芳年 Another image of...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:59:54 -0400

tofuist:

新形三十六怪撰「地獄太夫悟道の図」明治35年（1902）月岡芳年

Another image of Jigoku Taiyuu.

Courtesan of Hell by Kawanabe Kyosai, 1865 Some background on...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 08:58:40 -0400

Courtesan of Hell by Kawanabe Kyosai, 1865

Some background on the Courtesan of Hell, or Jigoku Taiyuu.

tomewing: Just started reading this - I wanted to read it...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 22:04:45 -0400

tomewing:

Just started reading this - I wanted to read it because it was highly recommended by the late Martin Skidmore, but was also slightly put off by its being, er, an 8-volume, several thousand page manga life of Buddha.

Anyway, 200 pages of sword-fights, tiger-fights, slave revolts, philosophy and betrayal later - and the Buddha hasn’t even been born yet! - and I’m adding all the other volumes to my wishlist. I’ve by no means read a lot of manga - five or six series, almost all quite modern - so this is my first exposure to an older series (and to the legendary Tezuka!) and his style is, for someone raised on Western comics, bewitchingly hard to parse. The hard-coding of the humour/cartoony and serious/detailed dichotomy in most Western comics from the 70s/80s onwards makes the tonal palette of Buddha come as a shock: wonderfully fluid, funny, kinetic cartooning in the service of a gripping, unflinching adventure story.

Photo

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:49:57 -0400

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict ‘massive implosion’ in film industry | The Verge

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:38:24 -0400

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict ‘massive implosion’ in film industry | The Verge:

“Bigger theaters, with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100. Maybe 150.” It will be more in line with sporting events, with films playing in these high-end cinemas for as long as a year. “And that’s going to be what we call ‘the movie business.’ But everything else is going to look more like cable television on TiVo.”

Later:

Today’s movies are in hotels two weeks after they hit theaters, he said. “There’s going to be eventually day and date with movies” — when films are available on demand at home the same day they hit theaters — “and eventually there’s going to be a price variance. You’re going to have to pay $25 to see the next Iron Man. And you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.”

Lucas jumped in: “I think eventually the Lincolns are going to go away and they’re going to be on television.”

Spielberg smiled, saying, “And mine almost was! This close. Ask HBO — this close!”

….I don’t want to pay $50 to see a movie >_> I guess they’re saying it’s going to be like going to the theater or an opera?

Reading over my old translations, I’m struck by how much they need editing for flow and...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:03:16 -0400

Reading over my old translations, I’m struck by how much they need editing for flow and smoothness. There’s quite a road ahead XD

king-in-yellow: whatmakespistachionuts: Coetzee’s comments on the current economic crisis are not...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:59:45 -0400

king-in-yellow:

whatmakespistachionuts:

Coetzee’s comments on the current economic crisis are not only wrongheaded but fatuous. Nothing has really happened to the world economy, he writes airily to Auster, other than a change of statistics. It is unlikely that the Bank of England, not to speak of those who have had their homes or livelihoods snatched from them by financial gangsters, would be over-impressed by this argument. Neither, judging from his circumspect reply, is Paul Auster, though he is too respectful of his renowned colleague to say so outright. Mysteriously, Coetzee goes on to suggest that putting this right requires an entirely new economic system, a piece of logic that his correspondent wisely leaves untouched. The truth is that neither man knows anything about economics, and there is no reason why being skilled in handling a metaphor should grant you such insight. Only those who have inherited a belief in the artist as sage, prophet and visionary are likely to feel discomfited by the fact that neither of these bien-pensant liberals has much that is profound or original to say about the body politic. Indeed, Coetzee’s most piercing insight into the subject is to realize that he ought to shut up. “At this point”, he announces, wryly comparing himself to the demented Ezra Pound, “I think I should quit my role as commentator on economic affairs.” Yet why then allow his absurd speculations to be published in the first place? Auster, too, finally concedes that “It is a subject I am ill qualified to talk about”, though not before talking about it rather too much.

[…] Like a good many writers, these two novelists share a predictable distaste for critics. The more eminent the author, the less accustomed he or she usually is to negative comment, and thus the more prickly and thin-skinned when it comes along. Auster remarks of a notoriously abrasive assault on his work by the critic James Wood that it felt like being mugged by a stranger, a simile which those who have been coshed over the head and robbed might well regard as a touch hyperbolic. (How many people are mugged by friends?) The critic, Coetzee grumbles, is “like the child lobbing pebbles at the gorilla in the zoo, knowing that he is protected by the bars”. Apart from being untrue – critics have actually been punched by irate writers, as Auster himself concedes, or savaged by their wrathful responses – the zoo image is unwittingly revealing. Are all critics really infantile, and all writers helpless, lumbering victims of their poisoned shafts? Auster himself isn’t averse to a spot of character assassination, deploring the “arrogance, self-importance, and single-minded, all-consuming vanity” of a deceased friend, though this, admittedly, is for private consumption only.

—Terry Eagleton on ‘Paul Auster and J. M. Coatzee, Letters 2008—2011’

I love Paul Auster, but that is a sick burn!

(read the entire article for full entertainment value, such as the opening line: “It is a Romantic delusion to suppose that writers are likely to have something of interest to say about race relations, nuclear weapons or economic crisis simply by virtue of being writers.”

"No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:33:07 -0400

““No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves.””

- George R.R. Martin [when asked if he was going to let any Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire characters live] (via vaginawoolf)

This man is my hero

(via rifa)

I do intend to read the series once he finishes. No idea when that will be though.

What's XIM?

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:33:46 -0400

It’s the messaging component of the xkit extension. See http://xkit-extension.tumblr.com/

Tetraphobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:49:14 -0400

Tetraphobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Fear of the #4. In Japanese, it is pronounced the same as death (although this is not the original Japanese word for four, but the Chinese numeral, imported with the kanji). In Chinese, the pronunciation is similar but not the same. (The superstition also exists in China, but I wonder if it is weaker due to this?)

vaganto: Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, two months after...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:31:30 -0400

vaganto:

Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, his family has said.

Banks, who was born in Dunfermline, Fife, revealed in April he had gall bladder cancer and was unlikely to live for more than a year.

He was best known for his novels The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road and Complicity.

In a statement, his publisher said he was “an irreplaceable part of the literary world”.

A message posted on Banksophilia, a website set up to provide fans with updates on the author, quoted his wife Adele saying: “Iain died in the early hours this morning. His death was calm and without pain.”

Publisher Little, Brown Book Group said the author was “one of the country’s best-loved novelists” for both his mainstream and science fiction books.

“Iain Banks’ ability to combine the most fertile of imaginations with his own highly distinctive brand of gothic humour made him unique,” it said.

After announcing his illness in April, Banks asked his publishers to bring forward the release date of his latest novel, The Quarry, so he could see it on the shelves.

On Sunday, it was revealed the book - to be released on 20 June - would detail the physical and emotional strain of cancer.

It describes the final weeks of the life of a man in his 40s who has terminal cancer.

Speaking to the BBC’s Kirsty Wark, Banks said he was some 87,000 words into writing the book when he was diagnosed with his own illness.

“I had no inkling. So it wasn’t as though this is a response to the disease or anything, the book had been kind of ready to go,” he said.

“And then 10,000 words from the end, as it turned out, I suddenly discovered that I had cancer.”

Little, Brown said the author was presented with finished copies of his last novel three weeks ago.

Banks’ first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984 and was ranked as one of the best 100 books of the 20th Century in a 1997 poll conducted by book chain Waterstones and Channel 4.

In 2008 he was named one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 in a list compiled by The Times.

The writer also penned sci-fi titles under the name Iain M Banks. His most recent book, The Hydrogen Sonata, was released last year.

Fellow Scottish author Ken MacLeod paid tribute to Banks, saying he had “left a large gap in the Scottish literary scene as well as the wider speaking English world”.

“He brought a wonderful combination of the dark and the light side of life and he explored them both without flinching,” he said.

“He brought the same degree of craft and skill and commitment to his science fiction as he did to his mainstream fiction and he never drew any distinction in terms of his pride in what he was doing.”

Another contemporary, Iain Rankin, told the BBC that Banks was “fascinating, curious and full of life”.

“He didn’t take things too seriously, and in a way I’m happy that he refused to take death too seriously - he could still joke about it,” he said. “I think we all thought he would have a bit longer than he got.

“What made him a great writer was that he was childlike; he had a curiosity about the world. He was restless, he wanted to transmit that in his work, and he treated the cancer with a certain amount of levity, the same that made him a great writer.

“You never knew what you were going to get, every book was different.”

Other authors to pay tribute included Irvine Welsh, who tweeted: “RIP Iain Banks. One of the finest writers and greatest imaginations ever.”

Sci-fi writer John-Paul Cleary also said: “Tragic news about Iain Banks, my hero and inspiration, a writer of incredible creativity and wit.”

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said: “Iain was an incredibly talented writer whose work, across all genres, has brought pleasure to readers for over 30 years.

“His determination not just to complete his final novel but also to reflect his illness in the pages of his work, will make that work all the more poignant and all the more significant.”

After announcing his illness, Banks had described being “hugely moved” by the public support for him through his website.

“Still knocked out by the love and the depth of feeling coming from so many people; thank you, all of you,” he wrote on Banksophilia last month.

(via BBC News - Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59)

I wonder if people are still using LJ. I still read a few comms via RSS or directly. In other news...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:59:07 -0400

I wonder if people are still using LJ. I still read a few comms via RSS or directly.

In other news I joined XIM under one of my other tumblrs. (Ask if you want the screenname)

(via Human chair offers comfort and relaxation, if it doesn’t...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:31:30 -0400

(via Human chair offers comfort and relaxation, if it doesn’t run away from you first | RocketNews24)

itswalky: publicineffectual: sylph-of-the-sepulchre: wednesday...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:36:52 -0400

itswalky:

publicineffectual:

sylph-of-the-sepulchre:

wednesday:

itswalky:

shit god wants peter to eat:

vulture

seal

eel

RACCOON???

owl

some other kind of vulture thing

MOTHERFUCKIN’ BEAR I GUESS, doesn’t even know why he’s there

hyena

turtle

PORCUPINE???

BAT???

ARMADILLO????

CEPHALOPOD???????

Peter all taking a nap because, yawn, cephalopod.

I wish my picture bible as a kid had been so cool. Mine had really pretty painted pictures, including actual scary biblical angels, but it wasn’t as funny XD

(But I will say that, as an adult, this is one of my favorite passages!)

GET UP, PETER, CUDDLE AND ADOPT

PETER, KILL AND EAT THIS BEAR

GOD WANTS YOU TO EAT AN OWL.

doing the meme for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:41:24 -0400

Gyahhhhh this is unfair. Actually IMO Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure should count as EIGHT DIFFERENT SERIES. (in fact feel free to ask separate parts XD)

Put in the name of a book/anime/movie/manga/tv show/game etc that I’ve seen/read in an Ask and I’ll tell you:

Favorite Male Character: This is like pulling teeth, honestly. Hold a gun to my head and I guess I will go with Joseph, but Jotaro and Johnny are also up there, as is Rohan.
Favorite Female Character: Jolyne
Least Favorite Character: I don’t really have one? Honestly I feel most of the time in a good series I won’t dislike characters enough to feel that I can make a designation. Maybe I should change this in the meme to “best antagonist/villain” If it’s that then it’s obviously Dio, but I also feel that Pucci should be highly rated as well.
Favorite Ship: TBH, I don’t have one.
Favorite Friendship: I would have to go with Johnny and Gyro in SBR, and the friendships between Passione in part 5.
Favorite Book/Season/Part: Tie between SBR and Part 3, with 3rd place going to part 5
Worst Character Death (if any): ALL OF THEM. Ok, I realize this is cheating (BUT THERE ARE SO MANY, SERIOUSLY THIS QUESTION IS UNFAIR), so I will put this under cut by parts. -_-
Favorite Location/Setting: TBH after part 2 the settings are all pretty awesome and often road-trip like, I will say that Italy is pretty cool.
Would I want to live in this world?: The world of Jojo is much like ours, except more dangerous, so no.
What I would recommend to people who liked it: I don’t know, honestly. Jojo is at once conventional battle shounen in its plots, yet also not. I guess if you want battle shounen I’d say maybe Houshin Engi, but not really at all (just mentioning a shounen series that is cleverer than most and also resolves neatly in a reasonable amount of time). Help me out here, people.

Worst deaths: Part 1 and 2 are obvious, I should think.

Part 3: Kakyouin. Also Araki dares to kill the dog. (although he started killing dogs in part 1 so we can say we were warned)

Part 5: ALL OF THEM. But Bruno’s was the worst for me.

Part 6: Yet in a way all of them died and then they didn’t so…

SBR: IT’S OBVIOUS. But I also was sad when Hot Pants died too.

doing the meme for ravages of time

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:22:00 -0400

(You can still ask more!)

Put in the name of a book/anime/movie/manga/tv show/game etc that I’ve seen/read in an Ask (go ahead and consult notesonleaves if you like) and I’ll tell you:

Favorite Male Character: TBH this is hard because the cast is mostly male, and I like most of the major characters. No seriously, I do. I guess I’d say Sima Yi, but also Xun Yu, Jia Xu, and Guo Jia. I am probably doing the meme wrong because that was five people.
Favorite Female Character: Shan Wuling
Least Favorite Character: I uh…. don’t really have one. (EDIT: Per my last post, I will change this to best antagonist/villain. Wait, that doesn’t really clarify matters because arguably everyone opposed to Liu Bei is a villain since he does seem to be more virtuous than the others so it might not end up being very different from favorite male character’s result XD However I will just define it as purely people who are opposed to Sima Yi (wait, most people are at one time or another so that doesn’t help much either): No, the only answer is LU BU and also Pang Tong.
Favorite Ship: Sima Yi/Shan Wuling
Favorite Friendship: Guo Jia and Jia Xu’s friendship
Favorite Book/Season/Part: The Xuzhou arc, but the arc where Sun Ce was introduced, the part where it inexplicably became a romance story, the first five volumes, and Pang Tong’s intro also rank highly!
Worst Character Death (if any): Ahahaha, this is SUCH SPOILERS that I need to put it under a cut.
Favorite Location/Setting: Well… there’s only one setting, really, China. Early ancient China (pre-Zhou, Zhou, Warring States, Han, Three Kingdoms) is one of my favorite settings.
Would I want to live in this world?: Absolutely not. Just how many people died during this period?
What I would recommend to people who liked it: This is a hard question. Obvious Romance of the Three Kingdoms itself, and the better historical fiction about that period. If what you like about it is the maybe… characterization and attitude, I’d say in some ways Shiba Ryoutarou’s Sekigahara is sort of like that (I’m talking about how the author takes each character seriously, sort of). But on the whole… if you know, tell me, actually!

Worst death? Probably Meng’s because it was harder to see coming. Probably also Yuan Fang, for a similar reason. The deaths you can see coming you are preparing for: tbh I think those ought to fall under the category of “best death” in a way.

no one will probably do this, so feel free to submit multiple things

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:31:00 -0400

Put in the name of a book/anime/movie/manga/tv show/game etc that I’ve seen/read in an Ask and I’ll tell you:
Favorite Male Character

Favorite Female Character

Least Favorite Character

Favorite Ship

Favorite Friendship

Favorite Book/Season/Part

Worst Character Death (if any)

Favorite Location/Setting

Would I want to live in this world?

What I would recommend to people who liked it.

Photo

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:17:04 -0400

charmianland

Daniel Waples - hang drum solo - HD (by Soniricall Recomienda)

Sazaedo

tofuist: 新形三十六怪撰「地獄太夫悟道の図」明治35年（1902）月岡 芳年 Another image of...

Courtesan of Hell by Kawanabe Kyosai, 1865 Some background on...

tomewing: Just started reading this - I wanted to read it...

Photo

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict ‘massive implosion’ in film industry | The Verge

Reading over my old translations, I’m struck by how much they need editing for flow and...

king-in-yellow: whatmakespistachionuts: Coetzee’s comments on the current economic crisis are not...

"No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be..."

What's XIM?

Tetraphobia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

vaganto: Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, two months after...

I wonder if people are still using LJ. I still read a few comms via RSS or directly. In other news...

(via Human chair offers comfort and relaxation, if it doesn’t...

itswalky: publicineffectual: sylph-of-the-sepulchre: wednesday...

doing the meme for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

doing the meme for ravages of time

no one will probably do this, so feel free to submit multiple things

Photo

tofuist: 新形三十六怪撰「地獄太夫悟道の図」明治35年（1902）月岡芳年 Another image of...