reading

We went to Waldenbooks. We got the Harry Potter book for $20. Mommy said Hidek’s gonna read it first. Oh pooh. :b

Blegh, I already have loads of books to read … even though I complain that I have nothing to read. I’m reading The China Garden by Liz Berry right now. I also kinda started Count of Monte Cristo (wanna read it before I watch the movie again). And then there’s War and Peace which Mommy got for me a year and a half ago during Christmas. I think I’m on page 80 thereabouts. ^_^;;

I also yoinked Daddy’s copy of The Other some time last year because Mommy and Daddy were watching the movie (made by Disney o_o) and they were saying how good it was. I’m up to the part where the kid is talking about a big stain spot on his ceiling. Like a page after that. About 5–10 pages in. Ahaha. And I forget when Mommy gave it to me, but I also have The Haunting of Hill House.

And there’s these two books I’m thinking of giving away, but I want to reread them before I actually do, just to make sure I don’t want them. Plus I have Moll Flanders and The Diary of Anne Frank on my to read list. I’m also thinking about rereading A Tale of Two Cities. Just because I got about 1/5th out of it the first time around. ^_^;;;

Aaaand, for the finishing touch, I bought Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere today. Eeeee!!! :D:D I saw American Gods there, and I would have bought it, but the corner of the back cover was bent. :( And it wasn’t a nice crease, either. It looked like it had been folded one way (while being put back on the shelf, maybe), and someone folded it back, but in a slightly different area, so there’s this … thing in it. Yughy. I also saw The Sandman! :D But it was book two. So I no buy. I looked through it though. Looks so goood. *wants*

Oh yeah. The guy at the cash register said to me, “They say this is good,” when he scanned Neverwhere. XD Mommy asked me how I find out about these books. I said, “I dunno” ’cause I didn’t want to think. ^^;;; Well, I heard about this book … okay, I was at thefanlistings.org, and I saw that someone made a fanlisting for Coraline. I thought that sounded interesting, so I went to look, and it looked cool, so I went to the official site (and it is amaaaazing *.* go see!) and really got interested then went to Amazon.com to read more and found out it’s for kids. Hah.

I would read it, regardless, but I’m trying to improve my reading skills. >.> Or something. Oh yeah. Mommy said kids in Japan aren’t reading novels anymore. They’re reading nothing but manga now. I can’t believe that. I mean … sure, manga is uber cool, but still, it’s like … I don’t know. Not as good as books. Nowhere near good as books. Even Paradise Kiss, which I looove (and Waldenbooks didn’t have volume 4, grrr), it just doesn’t compare to, say, Sabriel (another book I’m thinking of reading again XP). I dunno. Anyway. Back to the story at hand.

People on Amazon were talking about how good Neil Gaiman’s other books were in reviews for Coraline so I went to look at his other books. Actually, I just clicked on his name and scrolled through all the titles he’s done and I noticed one called Death: The Time of Your Life, and it had a neat looking cover :b so I looked at it, and they said it was a substory of his Sandman series, so I went to look at that, and that looked cool, and then I went to look at the books he’s written (’cause I was really curious by then) and, yeah, that’s how I found out about it. ^__^ I also realized that he cowrote Good Omens, which I’d read about a while ago because someone was crowing over it in their blog. So … yeah. Hehehe.

*dies satisfied*

New layout. Purple. Yukari (from Paradise Kiss :b). Lots and lots of … mixed up coding. Mm. It took me the whole day to get this layout up. ^^; Actually, I worked on it yesterday, too. Yesterday I made most of the layout. Finished editing the image today, making little changes and stuff. I spent maybe 2–2.5 hours yesterday on it. Today I did the coding. That took me the whole day. And this is without slicing the image. Can you imagine how much later I’d be up if I’d sliced it? ^^;;; I don’t want to think about it.

Maybe 5–6 hours coding? ^^;; Yeah … Hopefully I won’t get too annoyed by this layout very soon. >.> ‘Cause even right now I see things that irk me. ._.; Auuugh … Can’t be good enough, can I? :b Hmm … oh well.

I noticed myself not minding rock music as much as I used to. It’s good, because I don’t get annoyed. But it’s bad, because … even though I’m starting to like harsher stuff, I still know it’s not that good, music-wise.

Auugh … lately I’ve been wishing I could be perfectly happy with Savage Garden and The Corrs and Lisa Loeb. Lisa Loeb used to be one of my faves. And for so long, too. ;-; Now I notice she’s a bit too soft for me. But I still like her first two albums. It’s like, first album, most liked, last album, least liked, second album, in between.

Well anyway. The point of all that is … I like my Chevelle album now. ^.^; When I first got it I thought, ‘yuck, this is no good.’ But then I thought, ‘I’ll get used to it.’ Just like I’ve gotten used to a lot of other music I bought but didn’t like much at first. And … now I have gotten used to it. The songs I like the most are Send The Pain Below, Closure, The Red, and One Lonely Visitor. ^_^

Oh. Here’s another thing I wanted to say. I’m looking into pMachine. ^^;; I don’t know what the requirements are for running it, I can’t seem to find anything about that on the site. I think it uses something I don’t have on fs.net. But I’m still tired of GM, and don’t have much of anything else to do … *hides huge to-do list behind her back* … so I’m looking into it. ^_^’ (Looking into it as in … downloading and looking at the files and attempting to upload it on fs.net.)

Ah! The title of this layout … I forget who sings the song. I forget what the song’s called. But I keep seeing the music video (not as often as Bring Me to Life, though, grrr) and I think it’s weird (in a good way) and I’m starting to enjoy the song (actually, I enjoy the song pretty well by now :b), and I can’t think of any other lyrics that would fit the layout, so there ya go.

books books books!

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Ahhhh!! *is in trouble* ‘Cause I know I want ParaKiss 2–4 (yaaay! Waldenbooks has 2 in finally! might not have 4 though … ¬_¬) so that’s three books. But they probably wouldn’t have Flower Drum Song. The one at Westside Pavilion didn’t. And … I just never really went in a book store looking for a specific book unless it was part of a series. ^^;; And I’m not reading any series right now. So … if I go in … ahh!! I spent all my money?!?!

Yeah. :x Or maybe I could buy Kare Kano. Or … that other manga I was looking at. *can’t remember* Or I could buy more X/1999. The publisher is selling a newer edition of that. I don’t really understand why. It’s all more uniform, though, I gotta admit.

Oh. On Tuesday I bought Sailor Moon volume 11 aaaand … Megatokyo volume 1! XD Ish sho cooool. :D I’ve already read that part online (haven’t read the rest though ^^;;), but the printed version has a commentary by Fred. Yaaay. :) Is very cool. ^_^

random: Simpsons, songs, Parakiss, Time Enough

It r hot, yo. (Forgot how to say very. Uhh … muy XD atsui.) Atsui, yo.

Wow. Trowa‘s usually quiet, so it must be a good idea.”

O_o Anyway. I’m being random. I’m in a random mood.

For some reason while watching Simpsons I started reciting the lines along with the characters. “Oh, I’ve created Lutherans!” “Must Kill Moe. Wheee! Must Kill Moe. Wheee!” XD *ahem*

“I’ve been taunting them, singing off key … mah mee my moe, mah moo my may— AGH!” Incorrect line. But you get the idea. Chief “Piggum.” I forget which episode. Apparently so do Hidek and Adam. Darn. Darn is a real word. I forget what it has to do with dragonflies, though.

I like this chorus. “I know you are wrong. Headstrong. Headstrong. I’ll take you on. I’ll take on anyone.” Or something.

I also like the chorus to Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter.” >.> Don’t tell anyone that. “Make me that much stronger. Makes me work a little bit harder.” Or … switch that around.

I also kinda like the music video. Don’t tell anyone that either. I don’t like the Asian-ness of her outfit, though. Adam says maybe it’s because I feel like people are wearing it as a fad, and they know nothing about the culture. Yeah. That makes sense, no? But I don’t like the rest of the song, funnily enough. It’s nothing special, and for the life of me I can’t remember what it sounds like. All I remember is the chorus and her smashing the glass and her fluttering her eyelashes and her black outfit melting away.

Anyway. I think I like weird indie stuff. Probably not, though. It’s still hot. Yo La Tengo is in my mind.

I bought the first volume of Megatokyo. Yaaay. No one has Paradise Kiss. Well … that BnN in Ventura had 3 and 4. The Waldenbooks here has 3. The Waldenbooks at the Westside Pavilion has none. Or maybe they have 1 and 4. BnN at WP has NONE. They have Abhorsen though. Hardback still. T-T There’re a lot of books I could possibly fall headfirst into.

Time Enough For Love has gotten kinda draggy lately. >.> Although it was rather funny how he said they wear clothes all the time, even while they sleep. Hah. Funnay. Yeah. And he said clothes say a lot about your social status and what you do and your education. He’s in 1916 right now.

Last I read, he was attracted to his mother, so he cut his trip short. Or … that’s what he told himself, anyway. Time paradoxes, either you have or you haven’t. And his mother hadn’t been unfaithful to his dad, and he hadn’t had an eighth sibing.

That commercial, I guess it’s a car commercial. For the Passat? Can’t recall. He called hmself from the future. But don’t you think, if he’s in the future calling himself, then he’s in a trillion other places at other times, and so would that time or whatever have to lead to himself calling from the future again? Bad wording. ._.

Um. “Regardless of warnings the future doesn’t scare me at all. Nothing’s like before.” Utada Hikaru

I also like Amy Lee when she sings, “Look, here she comes now. Bow down and stare in wonder.”

I wish I could sing. Mommy had this theory that tone-deafness influenced your music tastes. Tone-deaf equals heavy metal. Something like that. ‘Cause Mickey likes tuneful pop stuff and plays cornet, and Mommy likes tuneful stuff, and plays cornet … and other instruments, and Auntie G is tone-deaf, and always liked the harder stuff. That was interesting. But then I pointed out someone I know of online can sing and wanted to be an opera singer at one time, and she likes Evanescence. Then Adam says he can’t sing and he likes metal and classic rock, but he played trumpet before.

I’m bored now. I forget what I’ve said. My brain died. I can’t recall what I’ve done today. Major stuff, yeah, but not small stuff …

yearning for Yazawa

I am seriously starving for Ai Yazawa stuff. I wanna read Gokinjo Monogatari. Of course I wanna read Paradise Kiss. Nana also looks good. And if I ever really need Ai Yazawa work, I’d want to read Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai.

Right now I’ve got a Mikako Koda wallpaper. Saddish, dark (of course), but with touches of pink. Yay. Not candy pink though. It’s a reddish pink. Hah.