After shitting all over poor Voltron earlier this week as I dismantled some wingnut’s death-knell announcement of anime as a genre, I felt kinda bad. As bad as Voltron was (is), it provided me lots of after-school shits and giggles and was pretty much all we had to watch at the time, anime-wise.

Sorry Voltron - didn’t mean to be so harsh. Call me sometime. We’ll grab a pizza. Not this weekend, though, ’cause I got plans. Or next weekend - tell you what, why don’t I call you. ‘kay?

(via Boing Boing)

Being in the book trade has its advantages- if I don’t sometimes look at a copy of Publisher’s Weekly, I might have missed this interview with iconic artist Yoshitaka Amano:

Amano Interview

Amano is probably one of my very favorite artists. I really like the ethereal, unfinished quality of his work. In fact, in my first novel, one of the main characters is named Amano…and in my second novel, one of the main characters is named Yoshitaka. <–dork

Confession: I don’t like Sandman (I know, I know) except for the eleventh volume, The Dream Hunters…because Amano did all the artwork.

A curator at the Wu Wei City Museum in China was recently fired for breaking a 2,000 year old relic and then trying to repair it with off-the-shelf glue. Look, buddy - if Ms. Brady didn’t buy it, I doubt the museum will…

The antique, a wooden turtle dove more than 2,000 years old and dating from China’s Han Dynasty, had its peak broken when it was transported by museum staff to an antique storage cabinet a year ago, reports Xinhua News Network.

Yang Fu, the curator of Wu Wei City Museum, said he was instructed to exhibit the turtle dove to a group of visiting high-ranked officials, but later the day he was informed the visit was cancelled.

“During the process of transporting the turtle dove back, the bottom suddenly dropped out of the box containing the turtle dove and it dropped to the ground, breaking its peak,” said Yang.

The two staff members in charge of transportation immediately reported the incident to Yang, and he went with them to the storeroom and glued the broken part back together with ordinary glue.

Boing Boing notes that Japanese artist Nagi Noda, who directed the video for Yuki’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ (embedded below) died earlier this week. Noda apparently suffered ongoing complications from a car accident some time ago, but it’s not clear whether the accident was ultimately responsible for her demise.

A blind photographer? It sounds ludicrous - but stop to consider that Beethoven was deaf as a stone when he composed his greatest work, the mighty 9th Symphony. From that perspective, blind photography doesn’t seem that big a stretch.

Yutaka Meijo holds his breath to make sure his camera stays steady, carefully brings the object into focus and waits just a moment before clicking the shutter — relying only on his ears and a hunch.

“I take pictures relying on sound,” said the 18-year-old, who lost his sight when he was seven.

“But there’s just a feeling to it,” Yutaka said, as he took shots of his visually impaired friends playing table tennis, hitting a ping pong ball with a bell inside.

“I press the shutter button and don’t hesitate when I think the moment’s right. The moment can’t be brought back. That’s my secret for taking pictures,” he says.

Yutaka is among 23 youth photographers at a school for the blind in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, whose pictures are gradually drawing public attention.

“I can measure an object’s distance by ear,” blind 12-year-old Yuta Ueno said at a Tokyo exhibition of the children’s works where captions were written in both braille and traditional script.

Ok - this is a request to you, our readership. A work-related request, believe it or not. A client asked us to reproduce some artwork that was done in a particular lettering style known as hyuk pil, a sort of Korean calligraphic lettering that makes letters out of animal shapes. The lettering, which they obtained at the San Francisco Zoo, is pictured below (click for full-size). They would like another set of lettering (with a different name), but nobody here knows how to do it - and they didn’t get any contact info for the artist that did the lettering. So - do any of you know who does this lettering at the San Franciso Zoo? Post a comment if you have a lead.