'nite
12 May 2008 @ 09:53 pm
an small update of sorts  
In a month my first Mba year will be *over*; I have to submit two history papers (one of them about the Hazaras tribe of Afganistan and it's making me hurt inside every time I do research on the internet as well as getting so fucking pissed-amazed-ashamed about how *little* we know about what's going on and how fucking manipulative are the media...), another about Kenzaburo Oé (and study for the final!), I'm sure the teachers of Intro of Xina will ambush us with a "surprise" (some kind of commentary or something...) AND the CPE examinations are in June. Last sprint!

Which is to say, I haven't been much around and I suppose I'll be even less and there's a few things I want to post and share (music and the like) and TALK to all of you, which I miss a lot, but...

Also *raisesfinger* I would like to note that we reach the *ooops* moment in fandom when not only we can sing parts of Laruku's Niji but we also can do it with Nino's Niji... and without the music...  but that's not happening to me or anything, no sir, *shakes head* I DENY IT!!

.... *pointsatsongplaying*... dammit....
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Current Music: Arashi (Nino) - Gimmick Game
 
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'nite
05 April 2008 @ 09:19 pm
a boy and a girl drenched by the rain...  
Three things:

1. I've been seriously thinking about quitting making icons but for some reason I keep finding things I want to icon. God knows I'm not a professional designer, so, what the hell do I know about designing? next to nothing save for what I like to see in an icon or a wallie or a banner... so, in between writing a report in a short korean tale that I should finish tomorrow I decided to wander [info]pickmybest, maybe thinking about receiving a bit of input from others icon makers because my latest batches have been a little 'ble' on comments, which I suppose is signal that I need to improve or change something in my designs... and then I notice that one of my icons is on the sidebar!!
( banner! )

2. I added a Shiina Junpei's single (Shiina Ringo's brother) here, that I found in a store in Tokyo. R&B, girls and boys, not something you are used seeing of me but, well, so many years living with my brother, the R&B and obssessed and Blue Note fan weren't for nothing...

3. Yamada Taro Monagatori aka Sho the fanboy is a thing to keep watching for... O. M. G.

EDIT: html sorta fixed... what the hell went wrong?
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'nite
19 March 2008 @ 08:12 pm
Three days wandering the internet shamessly...  
I've been doing jack shit after work this past days, except observe various fandoms and laugh like crazy over them because we are all seriously silly over them:
  • It started with The Gazette (of course >_>) and a certain Uruha picture and the reactions of the fangirls over the world. Some of the comments in this entry are seriously making me wonder about the relation between fandom and stupidity... again  *shackeshead* XD
  • Then, seeing as nothing more conflicting was going on I switched to the pop side and watched a few Cartoon KAT-TUN episodes and laughed a lot at the Okinawa's Special because my mind is a diiiirty place and we all know what else was filmed in Okinawa, right? *cough*IdolBeach*cough* or the boys *obvious* drooling over the ViVi Models in another of the episodes (... and Jin's fake translation of what the girls are saying in english might well have been said with a smirk XD Oh, Jin, you have all the potential to be a Real Queen, please keep it going!)
  • Still on the pop side of the force Arashi's Happiness PV (don't look at the comments or your brain will bleed btw) is the cutest thing I've seen in a while... and this recap (which I suppose everybody and their mother have already read... if not GO NOW!) the BEST RECAP EVER! I still laugh while reading it. Talking about PV's, I also watched their Step and Go and now I have the song stuck in my head... and in my Photoshop because I went a *bit* overboard yesterday with the icon making.
  • Also, Nodame Cantabile pwns my soul I swear, yesterday I saw the episode where the S-Oke plays their *own* rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue... and I'm still laughing because I love that song to bits and the performance they do is... *laughs*
  • And today the jrock side of the force reared it's head back as if saying "mmm, so you can't go to Paris or Osaka to see L'Arc, right? well, how can the gods compensate you somehow? I KNOW! Miyavi's European Tour will include your city! That way you'll only have to buy the ticket and maybe something for the metro (if you are in the mood, because if it ends early you still can use the bikes) and if you have something saved maybe a tour t-shirt and enjoy a summer concert because it will be in June!" Yeah, baby, praise the gods!
Man, it feels awesome to be SO thoroughly unproductive for a few days!!

NOTE: I believe I've been tagged! and it's a happy meme... so working on it!
NOTE2: for those interested, I updated [info]bottledicons with two posts, one of them a Matsuda Ryuhei challenge I did for [info]asian10
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'nite
10 March 2008 @ 12:09 pm
help...?  
mmm, err, I know some of you don't care about it that much, but I'm looking for something ARASHI related, well, Nino related in any case and if any of you could help it would be *great*: so, there was this photoshoot for a cinema magazine of Nino and Yuu Aoi a while ago, for the promotion of Tekkon Kinkreet, where he was dressed all in black and sorta acting like Kuro and Yuu Aoi was doing the same and acting like Shiro, you know where I can find it?


ETA: this the mag I was looking for!! I think I have it! cool...

Oh! and I finished A Wild Sheep Chase and I think it has become one of my Murakami's favorite books. The construction is, in my opinion, flawless, more planned and worked on, like a long short fiction. I know that the "unknown" and the "random" are a great part of his narrative style but seeing a book where despite the absurd everything falls into a plan... awesome. I loved it.
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'nite
03 March 2008 @ 11:27 am
Tekkon Kinkreet  


So, Tekkon Kinkreet? Completely blowed my mind. It's way better than I thought it would be, seriously. I bought Paprika a few months ago and, if I have to be truthful it was a bit disappointing (even if I liked it well enough). This one? *points at the shamesly stolen pic from the wiki monster* is a better film. Yes it can be seen as a kids film because the main charas are kids... but they are not *just* kids. It can be seen as the clever brother taking care of the dumb one... but it's so much more than that, because one is not as clever as he thinks and the other not as dumb as we may think. And yes, it has this deep symbolism that for someone can be tiresome, but that I think it gives the movie a whole new meaning: is not simple coincidence that they are called Kuro and Shiro.

I love films with complex urban settings and this one deals with that really well, making the city a new whole character with a big presence all through the story. A changing and unforgivable character. Impossible to control even if we may think so for a while.

Btw, Nino's voice does *wonders* for Kuro so if you have it dubbed, turn it off and put on the subbing just to listen to the original voices (and here I thought I would control the JE feeding *lesigh*... it's impossible).

NOTE: and for those interested in living in Japan for a while, the documentary about the director, an american living in Japan, is pretty interesting to see a bit of input of a resident gaijin.
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'nite
25 February 2008 @ 09:08 pm
 
Tilda Swinton has just won the Oscar for actress in a supporting role. I LOVE her to bits, I still remember her from the Orlando adaptation (when I was a teenager and discovering Virginia Woolf). Not a fan of the Oscar to begin with I have to say that I'm pretty happy for this one because she's an AMAZING actress.
 
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'nite
19 February 2008 @ 12:32 am
Every little thing  


Today I was ordered to write some silly thing about the fact that [info]din_84 and [info]bleuparfait are in Barcelona with me (rieeeeeeeeeeeke!! we miss you tons! you should be here too!) and the stuff we've been doing, which basically amounts to fantastic failing at giving me the correct days for the hotel, naked men on parks, smoking again, getting lost on airports, taking too much caffeine, amazing failing on my part about knowing essential shit about my own city, looking constantly for japanese restaurants (and following japanese boys around), perverted pics .... and constant, incessant, unstopable fangirling about L'Arc~en~Ciel and Tokyo. It's like we aren't able to talk about anything else, therefore... the results! go and read the First of the Shibuya 4 Days Concert Report!

I'm going back to my homework XD
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'nite
14 February 2008 @ 10:18 am
Obi-wan you are my only hope!  
Ok, so I need a bit of help from those who know more japanese than I do (Rosa? you there? it has a relation with what we talked about before one of the concerts!): there's some relation between 見栄 (as in vanity) and 見得 (the kabuki pose) conceptually speaking?

Also, I lost my bookmarks about Gals, Hosts, Harajuku and Shibuya tribes in one of those random moments Mozilla has... mmm, help? ([info]passepartout! ;___;)
 
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'nite
29 January 2008 @ 12:43 am
feel like dancing........  
NOT SEKRIT MESSAGE TO: [info]muirin ? [info]din_84 ? Loot at what you made me do!! LOOOK! I couldn't stop until I finished... and I had to do paperwork for an sponsorship and other academic shit! But noooooooooo!!
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'nite
27 January 2008 @ 01:17 pm
Variations on a theme.  
I failed to buy Tora! Tora! Tora! when they had it on sale at FNAC but I was completely broke at the moment and now I feel like this need to watch movies about the Pacific War (I have a few novels already).

Do you know where I can find a list (or reviews) about films and/or novels about it?

Also, because I'm obsessive about things, I decided to work on my icons and practice coloring and cropping (the latest is like one of my nightmares because I always have the impression that there's a better crop in the picture not matter how hard I try at finding it...) with Clint Eastwood's movie, Letters From Iwo Jima.



the rest are here, what do you think?

EDIT: ow, I didn't notice that that supload had decided to just erase the wallpapers I made a while ago. I changed the file format (to .jpg because I forgot to do it the first time around) and hosted it at imagesack. Hopefuly they won't diseappear randomly again. Hopefuly. Se them here!

EDIT2: whatever they use on magazines for the pictures... I'm starting to hate it, seriously, give me caps *anytime* for icon making. Is like no matter what I do, they never look focused enough, and I know a few ways to make it sharper... but then it looks to pixelated, even if the scan I'm starting from is huge. With screencaps is *never* an issue, argh!
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'nite
25 January 2008 @ 11:22 am
Last thing of this world  
Today I have a test about Chinese History and I have to submit two papers about Japanese History (one about ambassador Nomura, the other about the political stand of Emperor Hirohito before the Pacific War). I've finished the small paper about Norbu's book (I only have to edit it a bit) but the teacher is ill and, suddenly, I have more time to do it. I have to work more on my paper about India but I have an extension because my teacher is actually *in* India (well, that and the fact he's a love *smoosheshim*). I've still have to work on my last piece of homework for South-East Asia but that's easily doable in two afternoons.

Classes are also finished until the 11th. So, on the whole I think that by tonight I'll be *mostly* finished with this semester. Last sprint, here I go! If I make it and I'm not dead by tonight I hope I can go an see Atonement once and for all. I've been wanting to see it for weeks!

I would LOVE LOVE to see CAVALIA too, but I'm a bit afraid of the ticket's price *arg*!

Mmm, and I've noticed that my skinny jeans are not all that skinny anymore O_O. I think that between the flu spree I had this christmas and the stress of this month, I've lost weight, and it's not like I have all that much to spare.
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'nite
22 January 2008 @ 10:41 pm
Non asian tale  
A quick one so I don't lose the link (again). So, one day this man called Lou Reed wrote a song and said "this is good", had a reunion with this boys called The Killers and said "you are going to sing this for me" (my mom's cheeky version). And they did, and it was better than good.

/Out*

EDIT: the same goes for the awesome weirdness that is マボロシ.
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'nite
03 January 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Icon Review  
Hi! mmm, Pick my Best? Pretty please, (btw, there's a template voting sheet you *should* use fo it XP).


NOTE: I'm also contemplating making something similar to what [info]blindcottonlove is planning for this year. I feel like a copycat somehow *LOL* but it looks fun to do.
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'nite
02 January 2008 @ 06:51 pm
Imma geek!  
I have the control of a five year old when it comes to books, I swear. After going to change one of my Christmas gifts I went to The British Council to ask for info about the CPE exam and there's this little english bookstore in front... I had to enter and browse, of course. I was originally looking for the new translation of Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Akutagawa (with an introduction written by Murakami) but they didn't have it, so, instead of going back home without purchasing anything I couldn't stop myself when I saw The Face of Another by Kobo Abe, and bought it... not taking into account the fact that I've already ordered the spanish translation this morning at work. The thing is that I shouldn't have bought it because the stack of books to read that I have at home is *BIG*:
  1. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is giving me hell and I have to finish it and make a paper on it *pronto*.
  2. I have to finish and also make an small review of Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Jamyang Norbu for this next month... and I'm still only half way through.
  3. I'm dying to finish the 100 last pages of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, which is frustrating as hell because is like I'm this close to finishing it but I just can't.
  4. I've ordered the spanish version of A Wild Sheep Chase because I have this urge to read Murakami non-stop. I've also ordered Banana Yoshimoto's Amrita, Kenzaburo Oe's Somersault and M/T and the Narrative about the Marvels of the Forest.
  5. AND I've still have Letters for Nostalgic Years, Confessions of a Mask and Spring Snow at home waiting for me... (and I'm not counting the non-fiction books I have to browse through).
Do you know some of those books? what do you think about them? and do you have any other recomendation? I have a little list of japanese authors I know I want to read (Masuji Ibuse, Shohei Ooka) but I would really appreciate some outside input.
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'nite
30 December 2007 @ 10:12 pm
Busy girl till the end  
Yesterday night I received an strange call from Germany and I could hear *Alice Nine* from the other side so you can all guess who it was: I laughed like crazy, my grandparents thought I was nuts. Apparently, it was a nice concert(s) so I'm happy for all those who could go... I would have liked to be there, but February in Tokyo is kinda my main worry now. I want to be there now XD!!

Seeing as this year is ending and that I suppose tomorrow I'll end up drunk of my ass...

( recollect )

PS: and I have to take a decision about [info]hyde_stillness and I'm not really sure *which*... and It's killing me a bit.
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'nite
25 December 2007 @ 09:46 pm
FELIZ NAVIDAD!  

Nursing my pretty self back to healthyness at my parents home in one of the more quiet Christmas of my life, with my new coat and skirt and Clinique goods *happysigh*... well, until tomorrow because ermm, well, I'm catalan and we catalans are a greedy bunch: we like to celebrate St Esteban too (Boxing Day for the non-catholics) with all the food that we couldn't eat on Christmas... what? you want us to throw away all that!! NOWAI!! So, tomorrow I have to brave the masses of a part of my quite BIG ass posh family. And eat moar *yum yum*

I hope you all had a really good day, despite families and other animals *kissus* 

Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Bon Nadal! Zorionak!

(you have cookies if you guess in which idiom was the last one *evillaugh*)

 
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'nite
20 December 2007 @ 11:50 am
 
I think I'm going to drop a few people from my flist, not because I don't like you anymore or something like that, mostly because we don't talk and it seems sort of pointless to have you in it if we don't. It's not as if I have an overly large flist  but I would like to be able to concentrate in those who want to talk back to me XP... and this *not* an ego stroking post btw, I just wanted to tell you I was going to do that. EDIT: I said "I think" but I've already done it *bows*

There's a few Aoi "distractions" at [info]bottledicons btw.
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'nite
17 December 2007 @ 05:44 pm
Vices for the Win  
I woke up a little bit queasy this morning from yesterday's hangover... my tolerance for hangovers, usually quite high I must add, is deminishing with age;__; I see it now, from here is all rolling down *cries*. And I'm THIS close to smoking again, I just can't resist anymore... to make matters worse, the student lounge at my college is usually filled with all kinds of smoke (despite the signs of NOT SMOKING of course). It's silly but I kinda want to wait until I'm in Tokyo to light a cig again (mostly because of Hyde and various jrockers and the "not-aging" japanese cigarettes) *notice the icons I'm using to demonstrate my theory*

HEhe! yeah, stupid procrastinating post because I have to reduce the history of formation of Indonesia in four fucking lines and I'm stuck stuck stuck... btw, where in the flying f**** hell didn't the British Empire own land? *_*

Oh! I updated [info]bottledicons with a few icons and because I'm obnoxious about them, Aoi preview for you *pets him*:



PS: I know I owe [info]din_84 a layout, I PROMISE you I'm working on it... but I have an idea about it and I want to do it right and not give you a half arsed thing.
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'nite
29 November 2007 @ 08:26 pm
Sharing Post  
This is mostly for someone (you know who you areeee) who asked me for new music, but you are *all* welcome to try anything from here, just say hello, please. What I updated is not your usual VK or mainstream jpop, which I also like by the way, but albums and singles of those bands and singers that are difficult to "label" or are not very famous, even when they really deserve to be:

GO!GO! 7188
Yumi Nakashima
Chirinuruwowaka
ACIDMAN
Tokyo Jihen
Shiina Ringo
Shiina Junpei


Most of the uploads here are mine, but a few of them I found around the 'net from now defunct sites, so the credit goes to them. Those albums are in my shopping list and that's why I took the liberty of upping them. Once I have them I will post my own rips.

ENJOY

UPDATE: 04/05/08 - Added  世界 Sekai (World) by Shiina Junpei
UPDATE: 12/09/07 - Added Goraku (Variety) by Tokyo Jihen.

NOTE: this entry is going to be updated with new additions when they arrive to my greedy little hands. The entry is open at the moment, I just hope it can stay that way. AND remember kids BUY THE ALBUMS, SUPPORT THE ARTIST.

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'nite
29 November 2007 @ 11:25 am
Icons  
err, yesterday I posted a few simple icons on [info]bottledicons;

 
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