International traveller

Yay!  I got my passport in the mail today!  That was three whole days quicker than the passport office guy said it would be.  Soooo…. I can now buy my ticket to Japan and then go anywhere in the world that my heart desires.  Except I feel horribly guilty for squandering vacation days on doing anything but going to visit the nephews so I still won’t be jetting off anywhere very exciting.   (What am I saying??  Northern Ontario is an endless party!)

Ahem.

So the rather longish break from blogging rather coincidentally started on the day I applied for my passport.  I spent the whole morning relaxing on a plastic chair with some books and my headphones waiting for my number to come up (I got there at 9:00 am and there were already 100 people ahead of me) and I have to say the whole process was a lot less painless than I had feared it would be.  Then, since the office is in the same building as the place I buy my comics I got to do some shopping before heading off to work.  (I picked up the last volume of Kare Kano to read while I ate lunch.  I liked the series but am also grateful that it’s over.)

More manga was bought after work and then I headed over to the bookstore to order volumes 2 and 3 of Her Majesty’s Dog and Yoki Koto Kiku (cute but dark, with many flying axes) and popped up to my section to say hi to the guys before leaving.  Then I discovered to my horror that when they had done some rearranging they moved MY anime section right next to the kids movies.  Specifically, where the Disney dvds had been the day before.  I assumed that it was a mistake.  I assumed that they hadn’t realized what they had done.  But no, almost immediately after the move other anime people in the store started mentioning that it was a bad idea.   Didn’t matter.  The section was already moved.    arg!  I left the store after leaving a verbal message for my manager that it was a BAD IDEA!  (I think I didn’t use the phrase “you guys suck” until a few days later.) 

Hmm.  Thought I could write about this without doing the rant thing, but I just erased two rather long paragraphs when I meant to make this short and sweet.  So, long story (sort of) short – apparently the move will be “reevaluated” in a few weeks to see if sales are affected, or if we get complaints, or maybe if I sulk long enough about it.   sigh.  Oh yeah, and I guess the manager who does quick walk throughs has decided that only teens ever browse anime so it belongs next to kids because that’s where the teen books are upstairs.  And I am baffled as to where that came from because he’s actually an advocate of keeping ALL the manga downstairs in the regular graphic novel section.  Also, about 90% of the anime *I* sell is to adults.  Like teenagers can afford our too high prices.

My side of it?  The obvious of course – anime must be protected from people who can’t see past the “cartoon” to the subject matter.  And quite frankly, I’ve never been in a store that kept their anime next to the kids section that had anything other than a crappy selection.  (I’ve always assumed that if they didn’t know enough to separate the two they didn’t know enough to order in the good stuff.)  I’ve never cared much about the sales part of it, either.  My job was to try to build a section that people would 1) stop snickering at and 2) stop complaining that we’d have volumes 3 and 7 of a series and nothing else.  People now have a lot of titles to choose from if they want to pay the price and that’s good enough for me.  

I’m still trying to do the rant thing.  Gah.  Needless to say I don’t feel comfortable having unsuspecting parents walk down an animated aisle to get to the Spongebob stuff and coming across some of the more adult covers we have in our section.  Not to mention the innocent looking stuff that when watched has a supply of nudity, violence, blood sprays, too many hot spring scenes to count and… hmm.  Let’s not forget the incest titles people.  Oh yeah.  I love and adore anime but I can put an adult spin on any of it when I’m trying to convince people it’s not all Pokemon.  (Tho I’m okay with Pokemon – a couple of weeks ago I spent a delightful 15 minutes with some confused newbie grandparents who’s nine year old grandson just discovered the show.)  I also took great delight in telling my manager that we got Kizuna in on the weekend.   That’s what we want the kiddies watching!

Like I said – I’m not sure if the change is going to stick, but I’ve officially declared the anime section disowned as long as it is where it is.   No shelving, no ordering, no straightening.  

Okay, that’s it!  I’ve refrained from about 2/3 of what I would have written two weeks ago and kept out the many arguments/counterarguments and complaints that I had.  Be grateful.  One of my co-workers kept telling me not to get mad about this.  I wasn’t (my mads are unmistakable) but I was pissed off and disappointed that after working with me for so long they really don’t know any better.  At least when they sent us the anime sign with the accent on the ‘e’ it wasn’t anything anyone in the store did.  (snicker.  that was really embarrassing.)

So what about the week after I got over the urge to write mean things?  Hmm.  Reread a couple of series and assorted other books, slept a lot at weird times and my tv shows started to come back with new episodes.  I keep forgetting what a time suck watching more than two shows is.

At least it was free

A friend gave me a pass for a free preview of Blood and Chocolate, which I went to tonight.  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s the story of a werewolf-type girl who lives with her pack in Romania and falls in love with a charming American artist who is making a graphic novel about… werewolves (dun dunnnn!).  The leader of the pack creepily wants to mate with the young girl himself and so he and his equally creepy son try to drive the two apart.  Then there’s chasing and guns and… er… wolves… 

(Okay, I just checked out the trailer I linked to and that’s the ENTIRE movie!  In like, half a minute.  Ha!)

The good:
Hugh Dancy is very cute and has an adorable mop of hair.  I’ve never seen him in anything, but Melrose mentioned him in her blog this week, so when he came on screen all I could think of was “Hey!  It’s that dude Melrose likes!”  Also, I didn’t have to pay for the movie.

The bad:
Er… the acting, the plot, the bad dialogue, the cheese…. oh dear God the cheese….  Even the special effects (which weren’t that bad – the people would kind of leap and glow and then wolves would land on the ground) were made worse by a LOT of dramatic slowdowns, spinning in mid-air (I was reminded of the acrobatic tennis playing in the Prince of Tennis live action movie as a matter of fact…) and just… well, I could go on but that would entail reliving the movie and I don’t want to do that.  It didn’t make much sense, though.

There was a lot of spontaneous laughing in the theatre at moments that weren’t actually supposed to be funny.  I was both amused and horrified by the movie and was also entertained by my friend’s sighs and the way she would clutch her head in her hands on a regular basis.  (She’s read the book, I haven’t.  Supposedly that helps.)  Seriously, though.  Save your money on this one unless you want to rent it with a group of friends to heckle while drinking.

I could go on but then I’d be swinging off into unnecessarily harsh territory and hey – it’s not like I paid for it.  If I had wasted 12 bucks then I’d make more fun.  It was not, however, worth missing what was apparently a completely kick ass episode of Supernatural.  I’m now sad.

On a totally different note, when I got home this evening there was  a voter registration card waiting for me that had an interesting variation of my name on it.  I’m used to my last name getting mangled in both spelling and pronunciation, but not my first.  They actually wrote down Katherane.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen it spelled like that before.  For the record, I’m “Catharine” and do take note of that second “a” in the name, for it’s a total pain in the ass. 

Up until the age of 16, I had been just plain Catherine.  Then I went on a trip to Halifax and got a copy of my birth certificate from the hospital where I was born and we discovered that when my dad filled out my forms he spelled my name wrong.  Or spelled it right and then forgot.  Whatever.  He was pretty defensive about it and I never really did get a clear answer from him.  So now some of my ID has the “e” and some has the “a” and I always have to chase after people to spell it right.  I’m happy to report that my passport will have the correct name on it.  I made him double check. 

No, there was no real point to that.  I’m just breaking my blogging dry spell with random chatter before going to bed.  There was an actual reason I stopped for about a week, and I’m planning on sharing it.  Just not tonight.  :)

Five things

Hey!  I got tagged by TangognaT for one of the five things memes.  Okay, here’s five things about me that I’ve blogged about:

I’m going to Japan for two weeks in May. 

I’m almost finished paying off my student loans.  (I should just get some sort of button for this…)

I’m crocheting an afghan.  (I’m currently on my fourth massive square but took a break for Christmas.)

While I always knew I had impulse control problems when buying manga, unfortunately I now have numerical proof. 

I work full time in a medical library for my “job” and part time at a bookstore for “fun.”  Fun = awesome coworkers and a sweet sweet discount on books.

I think I’m supposed to tag another five people for this, but the only ones I can think of right now don’t have enough posts on their rather newish blogs.  (Write people, write!)  So, I’m going to just tag Melrose, who is worth five people all on her own, I’m sure.

Now I’m off to the passport office.  Wish me luck.

Sometimes I’d rather not know

I had stopped posting my monthly reading lists some time in the summer – I got too busy to keep it organized and then never really got back to it.  I *have* been keeping track of what I’ve read, so I do have my 2006 round up statistics for (most of) what I read last year.  The manga numbers are just scary.

So for the record:

Manga read: 503 (379 bought, 124 borrowed)
Books read: 96
Graphic novels: a mere 9 – I read more monthly comics than collections

Gah!  About a dozen of the books are rereads, but I didn’t bother keeping track of whatever manga I read more than once this year.  And I know there are more titles that I borrowed from friends, I just didn’t write them down and forgot the names.  I can’t believe I spent that much on manga, though…

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in a fetal position in the corner reminding myself over and over that job #2 is to PAY for my reading habits….

Since I was looking things up anyway…

Tonight I blew off working on the dvd’s at the bookstore for an hour or so to write up a Go! Comi/NETCOMICS manga list instead.  That kind of put me in the mood to look up manga, so I did an update for my Not Yet Published page.  I checked Amazon.ca this time since I had also been wanting to add titles to my Wish List there, in a (hopefully not vain) effort to improve the Your Recommendations page.  The one at Amazon.com lists tons of manga and anime, but the Canadian site kind of got stuck on about ten titles and never really adds muchelse.  Lets see what it does with the dozens of manga I added to my Wish List tonight.  :)

Things that popped up in my searching that I took special note of:

• Ouran volume 9 is coming out in July!  There’s also a title called Millennium Snow by the same author in April.
• Heaven!! doesn’t seem to be a Tokyopop exclusive anymore.  I wish they’d make up their minds!  I was vaguely considering lifting my boycott for Wild Adapter (by the author of Saiyuki!) because I’m weak, but I think I’m still going to just read Heaven!! at the bookstore instead of buying it right away.
• There’s a five page preview of the Buffy comic up at the Dark Horse website.  I don’t know about the army vibe, but it’s only five pages… I’ll reserve judgement.  :) 
• Lagoon Engine is finally putting out some new volumes this year!  I’d almost given up on this one.
• Fans of Fumi Yoshinaga (Antique Bakery) are going to have a really really good year.
• Expect the next two volumes of Fruits Basket in April and August.  I’m annoyed that Tokyopop is still keeping to this incredibly drawn out schedule when I can walk to Chinatown and buy up to volume 21 any time I’d like.  Maybe I should mail them some copies?  (sorry, sorry.  kind of snarky there…)

On a completely unrelated note, I read Air Gear #2 today at the store.  Oh, Del Rey.  Maybe if you would have kept the cover like this instead of colouring in the North American version people would be emotionally prepared for all the naked butt shots in the interior.  They didn’t even make note of the change in the translation notes.  Don’t you think art changes should rate a mention if they’re doing it for the sake of American audiences? 

And that’s all the energy I have left for tonight.
  

Beware Ghost Hunt 6!

Catherine quite rightly points out in a comment that anyone who hasn’t yet read Ghost Hunt #6 should STOP READING once the story finishes on a truly fantastic cliffhanger.  Seriously.  The preview for the next volume completely screws with the suspense.  Boo to the people who picked those pages!!

I wish I had known before I read it.  sigh.

That’s it for tonight, other than a quick remark to say that I’ve now read all of my new manga and Saiyuki Reload #6 (left to the last as a reward) has completely reaffirmed my love and adoration for this series.  Saiyuki was my favorite 2006 manga discovery.   I think I love it even more than Ouran, Fruits Basket and Hana Kimi (tho perhaps not all three put together). 

More later.  I’m going to bed now before I find myself awake at 4 am again… Going to work on two hours of sleep is NOT fun! 

Though sometimes it’s worth it.

Fun with updates

A multi post evening!  I’m just trying to clear some of the stuff I had been meaning to do as I anticipate more free time now that the holidays/travelling/traditional post Christmas cold is all done with.  Yes, I got sick right after arriving back in Toronto and have been sniffling since.  Didn’t have much energy for much besides sleeping and watching about 30 episodes of Avatar: the Last Airbender, a series I always liked but lost track of once I switched my weekend day at the bookstore to Saturdays. 

It’s surprisingly good for a “regular” cartoon, and yes, feel free to call me snobby.  I haven’t had much interest in the cartoons on tv since Teen Titans and Justice League were both cancelled.  Avatar is worth watching though.  There’s a serialized plot (which is part of why I stopped watching it once I started missing episodes), good voice acting, consistantly high quality animation… I particularly like the fight scenes which mix martial arts with bending (if you’re unfamiliar with the show, the characters can manipulate the four elements).   Even the villain has layers and moved past the “Grr! I must capture the Avatar!” stage.  Though now that he’s slowly moving towards being a more neutral character (or at least examining his motivations) they introduced his psycho sister.  heh.

Hmm.  I didn’t really mean for this to turn into a post about Avatar.  Oops!  Ah well.  In addition to the two manga updates, I’ve also been working on my master list of what I own, some of which was surprisingly out of date.  I also turned off the comments on that page.  I got tired of people asking me to upload manga, despite me repeatedly saying it was all “real” stuff.  sigh.  Does no one read anymore?  I also added a comment for the new December manga at the library last night.  Some of it is new, some of it has been on order for a while so was already on the list.

That’s it for tonight.   I’m back at work now (darn it!) and must sleep!  It’s always so sad when vacations must end.

First 2007 list!

Not quite worth the exclamation mark… but I had to try to make this more than boring somehow….  :P

A slow week this week, which was nice.  I’m still working my way through the rest of what I bought on New Year’s Eve.  And no, I didn’t spend the night reading manga.  I got manicure #2 (a pretty, sparkly red.  ooh!), went to dinner and spent an enjoyable evening watching a movie with friends (it took us five hours to watch the Da Vinci Code) and mocking music videos. 

The new stuff:

Whistle! 15
Vampire Knight 1
Saiyuki Reload 6
Tenshi Ja Nai! 5
Crossroad 5

And that’s a big Finally! for the last three on the list.  I’m saving Saiyuki as my reward for finishing the rest of the manga I have lying around.