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None of the velvet underground songs are as experimental or outstanding as 'European Son'.

Japanese is the Dark Souls of languages

A heads-up regarding LingoDeer: it's a pretty excellent app, but it's not suited for properly learning kanji (beyond the simplest ones) and thus how to read Japanese. It doesn't teach you about radicals or the different readings of kanji, and it doesn't feature any built-in services tailored for remembering kanji (beyond brute-force memorization by staring).

If you primarily use LingoDeer and maybe a bunch of other stuff on the side (I always recommend multiple sources), then learning how to understand and speak Japanese is a tangible goal and not actually that hard. Meaning you can look forward to watching anime without subs!!! I'm nowhere near at that level yet, but I pick up more and more individual bits when watching anime, which is quite stimulating. And even though I have no one to talk to in Japanese, it's still loads of fun just to practice for myself (and occasionally impress friends and relatives hohoho :p).

Being able to read, however, is a different beast entirely, since you properly need to learn kanji. An app like LingoDeer is only indirectly helpful, since it builds up your vocabulary and teaches you the grammar etc., which is a necessary but completely insufficient condition for being able to read Japanese. At the end of the day, you really need something like Kanji Study and, of course, a lot of commitment to learn how to read!

And while we're at it: writing in Japanese on a digital device is only marginally harder than being able to talk (since you just type shit out in rōmaji and then select the appropriate kanji from a list), whereas handwriting is maybe the hardest of all disciplines (but who still does that amirite).

Anyway, I hope I have not discouraged you. It's really fun, trust me! Especially for people who consume a lot of Japanese media. It opens up countless little possibilities all over the place. Apparently it also has health benefits. Et cetera. SUGOI DESU NE?? aka 凄いですね??????

Finished the second season of Love Live!. Some really awkward moments of melodrama in the first season and Nozomi's groping tendencies (that thankfully died down in this season) aside, this actually turned out to be a pretty pleasant surprise for me even if I wouldn't call it a favorite by any stretch. Not sure how soon I'll check out the film and Sunshine later on, but I like this series so far.

Also, I ended up starting a Lvl. 1 run in Kingdom Hearts II yesterday because I was curious. In the Land of Dragons at the moment, and as much as I dislike the "Dark Souls of [x]" meme, whoever called this the Dark Souls of Kingdom Hearts actually isn't way too far off TBH.

Alright, I finally watched a few episodes of Megalo Box and am just about at the end of Love Live. So far so good.

Next step on my "things I should actually do" list is opening up LingoDeer and start committing to learning Japanese (mostly been putting it off because I'm usually really exhausted after work and not in the right mindset to start actively learning things), especially since it's likely that scanlators most likely won't finish up Sora ga Haiiro dakara and Termina or start the other two manga by panpanya and I really want to finish the former two and read the latter two.

OK, time for my to-do list for getting back into anime-watching for maybe the rest of the year, not counting airing stuff in Summer and Fall (spoiler'd so this doesn't take up so much space):



TBH I'm not expecting to get through half of this because of other things but this is just my medium-to-high-priority list ATM.

Still on the Whose Line train and instead of moving on after going through the US Drew Carey run I've just simply gone to the UK Clive Anderson run. And watching some Season 10 episodes, seeing the common 3 UK regulars from North America (Colin, Ryan and Greg) on the set of the US run with Wayne Brady, Brad Sherwood and Laura Hall... but with Clive instead of Drew is so fucking bizarre. I'm just half-expecting Drew to pop out from under the desk to joke about controlling Ryan's paycheck.

...I need to take a break from this and just watch a bunch of anime instead of falling into the "I'll do it tomorrow" trap for the thousandth time.

I have to admit that I feel so damn happy right now because there was another power outage earlier today and my server is totally fine thanks to that UPS.

(why the hell is it that every power outage in my neighborhood in the past few years has been during bright sunny days with clear skies and never during actual incredibly heavy storms?)

Yes please hop back on it's lonely here

also what the fuck Megalo Box already has 7 episodes out

Time flies and I'm going to hop back on the anime train.

Alright, the UPS surge protector (why the fuck did I call this a CPU last week?) arrived! Now to just get that HTPC-ish server for the actual transcoding (probably going to go with an NVIDIA Shield TV since it's CPU seems to beat the hell out of my NAS', has support for being a Plex server and not just a client, and seems to easily be the cheapest good option) and my home media server will be good to go!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFxkSeQzD14
I WILL PROBABLY BUY 10 BLU-RAYS

Anyway, random movie thoughts:

The Jerk - I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked this. Incredibly silly comedies are the best when they know that they're silly, embrace it and run with it like the wind. While naked.

Wheels on Meals - First 2/3rds are fairly enjoyable if standard Sammo/Chan fare, but if there's one thing about Sammo Hung that's been consistent in what I've watched of his is that he certainly knows how to end a film because the castle sequence is fucking great.

The Thing - Not my favorite Carpenter film, but certainly in my Top 3 (followed by Big Trouble and In the Mouth of Madness) and this might have the best damn practical effects ever. And the transformation during the blood test scene actually made me audibly say "what the fuck" out loud (and I'm usually pretty quiet while watching films).

I don't normally like to get political but holy shit America put in some fucking gun regulations already. Thoughts and prayers aren't working, blaming games as usual is stupid, and turning schools into prisons won't work. If it means going against a piece of paper written by a bunch of guys who also thought that slavery was 100% a cool thing, so be it.

Fuck the NRA. Seriously. The whole Trump administration in general is making me ashamed to be living in this godforsaken country.

(and now back to my usual media-focused ramblings)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQBlSnsT5bc

What Remains of Edith Finch was a great two hours and I really need to get back into the swing of things in regards to games.

(also I just watched Antiporno and what the fuck even is Sion Sono?)

I feel like I've already gone full Prezbo with this comment box thing and I'm OK with that.