Tag: otakusphere

The Tao of Scientism

Daniel Dare is one of those web personalities you come across who you might initially think is a crank, but after integrating over time you see that they have a subtle depth. He’s largely hostile to belief and subscribes to the Dawkins ultra-rationalist condescension of spiritualism. I haven’t asked him directly but I suspect he would strenously disagree with the inconvenient truth that rationality itself is flawed. At any rate, he’s got a blog and it’s worth subscribing to on RSS.

I think he’d be one of the most interesting people in Twitter if he were to get the Zen. In the meantime, I’ll settle for his Tao.

vengeance upon den Beste

you know the reason I started this blog was because a certain someone got me addicted – and I mean ADDICTED – to Haibane Renmei. Steven wasn’t content to hit me with that alone, though – I also got a triple bolus of Sugar Snow Fairy and Someday’s Dreamers to course like crack through my fledgling otaku mind.

Now he has done it again. I was actually done with Ranma. I suffered through the first disc and swore off it for good. Then along comes SDB, reviews a few episodes, and i decide well, maybe, just maybe I should give it another chance.

Behold what his machinations have wrought. I actually enjoyed the Martial Arts Figure Skating arc. I thought Asuza was hilarious. I thought the plot of the Ramen / Delivery Martial Arts episode was clever and was genuinely surprised when (and this is no spoiler) Ranma has to step in for Akane. I am 5 minutes into the Cat Phobia episode, and realized I was enjoying it far too much for any reasonable standard of sanity. All of this, while SDB actually claims burnout! Diabolical fiend!

What the hell. I’m going to find some manner of revenge. I’m going to get Steven to watch Robotech. You’ve been duly warned, old man.

trailers

Mark has a brilliant idea – instead of movie reviews, he is reviewing movie trailers.

If you think about it, the name “trailer” seems to be a misnomer. After all, they come before the film, right? It turns out that the reason they are called trailers though is because they are appended to the movie reels, which are then fed backwards into the projector. That, and the complete lyrics to “Can you feel the love tonight”, are the sum total of knowledge retained from my brief career in the movie business. And by movie business, I mean working in a theater.

Though I do have quite a good collection of movie trailers, on actual movie film stock, salvaged from the theater, in a box somewhere in my parents’ house. Including The Lion King. Brian, if ever I can find it, it’s yours man.

goodbye, Astronomicon

Astro has formally closed up shop:

Over the years I’ve had a lot of fun with the Astronomicon. Via the discussions here I’ve met quite a few people whom I’ve never met face to face, yet I consider good friends. Several have emailed me to ask what was up with this site, so I decided to write this last post rather than just fade away. It is pretty clear that I have poor impulse control and will certainly be writing again sometime in the future. Just not here. I imagine that people who were interested in what I had to say will find me again eventually.

Our web community is small enough that any blog departure is a noticeable one. Astro/John is a good guy and I hope to see him here and elsewhere in comments from time to time. And the next anime blog he starts has a reserved slot on my blogroll.

Day of Flight