For some reason, when you type in ‘happy new year’ in Google and hit the image search button, you get this picture of some ladies in thongs, showing off their backsides that appear to have red hand prints on them. I wasn’t curious enough to click on the picture and see what the hand prints actually are, though. Anyway, here [...]

So I went temporarily out of my mind a couple weeks ago and volunteered to run a panel at an anime convention. This is crazy because I HATE talking in front of people, and I don’t really have time to put a panel together. But they accepted, and Shapiro Keats is going to help, so that’s cool. It’s called “Unraveling [...]

Chinese FHM has discovered the winning combination of hot chicks and motorcycles, in this photo spread with pretty ladies and guns and bikes. China Has an FHM? The pics are pretty cool, except the second one. The position of the lady’s shirt and the cutout parts make it seem like you should see her nipples. But there are no nipples. [...]

Back in 1979, then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher visited Japan. The Japanese government offered her an escort of bodyguards – twenty karate ladies to protect her. She said no, thanks. WHAT? Who in their right mind says not to twenty ass-kicking karate ladies? Margaret Thatcher, that’s who. It continued: “The prime minister would like to be treated in exactly the [...]

I hope everyone had a great holiday! We did even if we had to drive all over the Midwest (because everyone had to see the baby OMG since no one has ever had a baby before…I was the first!). The grandparents actually listened when we told them not to buy Gohan a million toys. But he did receive a nice [...]

Another article in American media’s quest to make the Japanese look like huge freaks (I just watched this episode of Bones where a respected scientist was tarted up like a member of Malice Mizer, and the show’s resident psychologist tried to explain the Visual Kei thing, badly. This is not nearly as bad as the episode where they tried to [...]

I am going to be out of town doing family stuff from tomorrow to Sunday, so hopefully you won’t miss me too much (hopefully you have better things to do over the holidays than read my banality, anyway!). Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate or don’t celebrate! Here is an interesting article about a black girl in China; or, rather, [...]

So my mom got me hooked on watching DVDs of Bones and me and Shapiro Keats were watching one the other night. There was this episode where the main character, a very literal-minded science type, has to take care of a baby whose mom was murdered. Me: “All these shows have these kind of episodes, the really contrived ones where [...]

Off-topic: a few years ago, Jell-O put out a ‘limited edition’ pudding flavor around the holidays, Pumpkin Spice. It was like Heaven in a bowl, especially with some Cool Whip piled on top. We bought enough to sustain us for a year, about 6 boxes- one every other month, as a treat. The next year, we kept an eye out [...]

Hey – don’t forget…we atheists like Christmas too! (If you need reasons, here are some of mine: time off work, lots of great food, getting presents, giving presents, seeing lots of friends and family, watching my kids open gifts on Christmas morning, etc.) Here’s the lovely and talented Vienna Teng with ‘The Atheist Christmas Carol’.

Go Nagai has created approximately 8,000 popular manga series, half of them about giant robots and the other half with ‘Devil-’ in the title. In my mind, the fact that he created Devilman Lady means he is one of the Great Manga Creators, and should have his face carved into a mountain next to Tezuka and Urasawa (Shairo Keats agrees, [...]

I didn’t even know someone was making a Bastard! game, but now they’re not making it anymore I am sorry. No Ninja Master Gai For Me! Bastard! is one of my favorite anime, created well before all anime became aimed at 13-year-olds.  And it’s not just the endless heavy metal references; it’s actually funny too. It’s probably for the best, [...]

This is what mountains look like when they’re about to get all explode-y. (Full size version at the Nasa Earth Observatory)

(I recently started playing through Lost Odyssey, probably the first great Japanese RPG on the Xbox 360, again and was satisfied to note that the game is every bit as awesome as I remember. Then I recalled that I wrote a review of the game for my local game store’s newsletter back when the game was released. The review wasn’t [...]

I’m not usually into this touching, bittersweet, moving stuff, but a million years ago, when I was in school, I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. So when I saw this story on CNN today it really struck me. Sadako\’s Crane Goes to WTC Memorial Ironic, that a girl who died from the aftereffects of the [...]