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Moving Sale: Anime/Manga/Jpop Stuff

Moving has completed and it’s all gone now!

Here’s a list of all my Japanese-ish stuff I’m currently getting rid of, which my friend Sin talked me in to posting. So – buy my crap! Reasonable rates! This will all go away in a couple of weeks.

This is how it will work:
1) Tell me what you want off of the list via comment or e-mail (katsuhiro at gmail). Prices are listed per item for each category so you should know how much it’ll be. Shipping costs will be for flat-rate priority boxes, so you can eyeball rates at the US Postal service site. I would rather not ship internationally.
2) Send me money for items and shipping (paypal is best).
3) I mail you your stuff, probably the same day I receive the money.

English Language Manga ($3/volume)
Hikaru no Go 1-2
Trigun Maximum 1-5
Trigun 1-2
Saikano 1-4
Samurai Deeper Kyo 1-10
X/1999 1-6
Deathnote 1
Battle Angel Alita 4, 8, 9
Firefighter Daigo of Company M 1-5, 7-10, 17
Skyscrapers of Oz [18+ only]
Fake 1-7 [18+ only]
Finder Series 1: Target the Finder [18+ only]
I Can’t Stop Loving You! [18+ only]
Black Knight 1-2 [18+ only]
Hayate the Combat Butler 1-2
Godchild 1
Zombie Powder 1-2, 4
Ouran High School Host Club 1, 9, 14
Vampire Hunter D Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane (novel)
Vampire Hunter D the Stuff of Dreams (novel)
Vampire Hunter D Raiser of Gales (novel)
Vampire Hunter D (novel)
Descendants of Darkness 1-6
Hana Kimi 1-2 (slight damage to back cover of #2)
Rurouni Kenshin 1-20
Kekkaishi 1-4
Appleseed 3-4
Appleseed Data Book
Black Magic
Vampire Hunter D Manga 1
Versus [Keiko Yamada] 1
Blood Sucker 1-3

English/Japanese Bilingual Manga ($3/volume)
GTO 1-3

Japanese Manga/Novels ($3/volume)
Clamp Duklyon 1-2
Megumi no Daigo 1, 2, 6
Erementer Gerad (blue) 1-3
Erementer Gerad (red) 1-3
Koucha Ouji 1
Akitsuki 1
Kamikaze Kaitou Jean 1-5
Imadoki (Watase Yuu) 1-5
Nanako (Watase Yuu) 1-5
D. Gray-man 1
Artonelico 1
Clamp Campus Detectives 1-3
Gun Blaze West 1-3
Watashi no Suki na Hito (Clamp)
Wild Rock [18+ only] (hilariously weepy uke alert)
Level E 1-2
Ayashi no Ceres 1-14 (Also have the three novels)
Yu Yu Hakusho 2-19
Koko ha Greenwood 1-6
Bleach 2-19
Reisei no Moribito (novel)
IQ84 (novel)
Yakumo Tatsu 1-10

Doujinshi ($3 each)
Full Metal Alchemist – Hellhound (Roy x Ed)
Hikaru no Go – Kisikaga no Hon (Kishimoto x Kaga) [18+]
KareKano – Kanojo ha… (het) [18+]
Digimon – Hot Apple Cider
X/1999 – X Motion
Harry Potter – Kaeru Choko (Harry and Ron)

Yu Yu Hakusho
Adamasu
Yume Bakari, Miteita (Hiei x Kurama)
A! (Hiei x Kurama)
Sekai de Ichiban Kimi ga Suki (Hiei x Kurama)
1993 Winter Special (private label) (Kurama x Hiei)
Swordsman
Crystal Silence

Senkaiden Houshin Engi
Mebiusu (Youzen x Taikoubou)
Treaumerei (Youzen x Taikoubou)

Megumi no Daigo
Rescue Guys Team A
Dogfight

Bleach
2006 Pekora Bleach Fan Book #6 (Ichigo x Orihime) [18+]
Unbalance
Cynicism
Mixture
Byakutou

Final Fantasy VII
Kachou Fugetsu (Cloud and Aerith, Tifa) [18+]
Peccato (Reno x Cloud) [18+]
The End of Childhood (Sephiroth x Cloud) [18+]

Gundam Wing
System H Second (Duo x Heero)
Snow Garden (Duo x Heero)
Dangun-Hero One (this involves Trowa stabbing someone with his bangs. No really.)
Tristan (DJ is bent)
4 x DJ that I am too lazy to translate the titles but they’re all humor ones

Rurouni Kenshin
Tenku (focuses on Aoshi)
Rokinshia
Saikyou Combi (Saitou x Aoshi)
Crimson Revenge

Trigun
Trouble Gift (Wolfwood x Vash) [18+]
Bite the Bullet
Calling You (Wolfwood x Vash) [18+]

Region 1 DVDs ($8 each)
Samurai Champloo 1-4 (with box)
Ceres Celestial Legend 1-8
Wolf’s Rain Complete Collection 1-2
Excel Saga 1-6
Petshop of Horrors Special Edition
Onmyoji

Region 2 DVDs (no subtitles) ($8 each)
Two-Mix Vision Formula 2000
Move Super Tune DVD
The Hakkenden OVA 2 DVD box set
Studio 4C Collection

CD ($3 each for singles, $6 each for CDs)
Ring/One, Two Step single
Dame! single
Houkiboshi – Yunna (single)
Asterix – Orange Range (single)
Fushigi Yuugi special CD single box
Try This Shoot (single) – Globe
Shima Uta (single) – the Boom
Super Eurobeat Initial D Millenium Box (5 CDs)
Violation of the Rules – Hal
I am… – Hamasaki Ayumi
Ayu Trance – Hamasaki Ayumi
Elegant Fish – Hayashibara Megumi
Move Super Tune – Move
Gold – Ijima Mari
B’z the “Mixture” – B’z
Eleven – B’z
Rurouni Kenshin OST1
Princess Mononoke OST (American release)
4 Pieces of Memories
Please Save My Earth OST1
Maho Tsukai Tai! OST
Lights 1&2 box set – Globe
Excel Saga OST1
Bubblegum Crisis As Sekira
Love Will Grow Final Fantasy vocal collection
Pray Final Fantasy vocal collection
Para Para Max 1-3
Boom Boom Satellites 8-track CD sampler
Grapefruit – Sakamoto Maya
Vampire Hunter D movie soundtrack
Animage 1-2
Fushigi Yuugi Eikoden OST
Wolf’s Rain OST
Fushigi Yuugi Best Vocal Collection
Restoration Level 3 – TM Revolution
Ghost in the Shell movie OST
La. La. La. – Ohguro Maki
The Vision of Escaflowne OST

Art Books ($10 each)
Devil May Cry Graphic Edition
Neon Genesis Evangelion Photo File 02 Adam
Serial Experiments Lain Ultimate Fan Guide
CG coloring technique vol. 7 illustrations/explanations by Yoshitoshi Abe (2007, painter and photoshop)
Marmalade Boy
Hana Yori Dango Yoko Kamio Illustrations
Intron Depo 1
Soul Driver 2000 (this is a two art book set which will be sold together for $24; the first art book is all Weiss Kreuz)

Other
Weiss Kreuz Gluhen Tour 1998 VHS ($5)
Fushigi Yuugi trading card sets 1&2 (all commons) ($20)
Yu Yu Hakusho trading card sets 1&2 (all commons) ($20)

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Achievement unlocked: haggis

So this happened:

It may not be immediately evident, but that’s haggis, which exploded (with flavor?) from its sheep stomach container whilst cooking. My verdict? Tastes a lot like Bremer knipp, which tastes a lot like scrapple, which is a thing I grew up eating and still like when I’m not thinking too hard about my daily fat intake.

I feel like there was some expectation I’d be appalled by the entire haggis thing when it was given to Mike and I for Christmas. Look, one of the few soups I like is menudo and I grew up eating chicken hearts and gizzards and thinking they were a special treat. (Spoiler: I still do think that, actually. Mmm, hearts and gizzards and dumplings.) I’ll basically try anything once unless it (a) still has the head attached because I have this thing about my food looking at me or (b) is something I’m ethically opposed to such as whale meat. I may think the jelly on top of a pork pie is utterly disgusting, but it’s an informed sort of utterly disgusting since I actually did eat it in order to draw that conclusion. (The only exception I’ve made to this rule is for natto, because I literally can’t get past the smell in order to even get it close to my food hole.)

Haggis is something a lot of American pop culture likes to freak out about since it involves sheep tripe that’s cooked in a sheep stomach. Because I don’t know, it’s un-American to use the less glamorous bits of the animal. Personally, I think a culture that consumes that many hot dogs per capita and invented the Twinkie should probably just shut the hell up and quietly slink away.

So anyway, haggis: solid thumbs up, a good addition to the ground up tripe with beef fat repertoire of scrapple-lovers everywhere.

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politics Uncategorized

Wayne LaPierre is an awful person, no one is surprised.

“More guns, you’ll claim, are the N.R.A.’s answer to everything,” he said. “Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the gun automatically become a bad word?” (source) 

Note please, Mr. LaPierre, that the headlines will claim that the NRA’s solution to everything is more guns because that is what you fucking said.

I watched the majority of the NRA press conference on Sky News in the empty bar of a hotel in London at oh my god in the morning. It was not the full press conference, mostly because every thirty seconds, the newscaster would break in and say something that roughly translated out to, “Are you fucking kidding me?” (But you know. It sounded more cultured because British accents do that.)

Which is basically how I felt.

Apparently the Sandy Hook shooting is the fault of video games and violent movies. The same video games and movies that are seen in countries throughout the world that don’t have our problem with gun violence.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Seriously, are you five? Have you forgotten that good guys with guns, that good cops, good federal agents, good soldiers get killed every fucking day with guns?

I didn’t expect anything good out of the NRA on this. But I expected better than the hostile call for more guns in schools, the angry finger pointing at the easy scapegoat of video games and the mentally ill, and the logic that we’d normally expect to see out of a kindergartner who hasn’t quite figured out how cause and effect work yet.

In a brief aside at a press conference this morning, the NRA’s chief executive officer blamed elementary school shootings in Newton, Conn, in part on the “nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill.” (source)

National registries of gun owners are a violation of civil liberties, but it’s okay to do that to people who are or have been mentally ill. Right. Because it’s not okay to stigmatize gun ownership, but we should stigmatize the hell out of mental illness because it’s not difficult enough yet for people to get treatment.

There’s that old joke about the doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result being the definition of insanity. Well have we not been trying, over and over again, more guns as a country? More power for the NRA?

Though part of me that hopes this awful, pathetic, angry finger-shaking on the part of the NRA is because they know this time a line has been crossed. It’s the tantrum of an organization that knows things have gone to far and that there’s no going back from this. At least I can hope. Time will tell.

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A little AGU story

Here’s a little story from AGU, or rather from on the way to AGU. The airplane was apparently full of geologists, because there were a ridiculous number of us with poster tubes. We’re like a weird little clan and that’s our totem. There were so many of us with tubes they had two bins reserved just for poster tubes.
Anyway, I had a poster of my own, and thus a big poster tube I had to carry with me. My life was in that tube, my entire reason for going to AGU at all. So of course I forgot it in the bathroom near the gate and then walked merrily out of the security checkpoint so I couldn’t even go back and get it.
I spent the next fifteen minutes running from counter to counter, security to the airlines to the information desk, trying to get someone to help me. I was nearly in tears. There wasn’t time to get a new version of the poster printed out without it costing a lot of money I didn’t have.
Thankfully I ran into a group of three police officers while I was running through the terminal. I explained the situation to them and they agreed to go check the bathroom for me since they thankfully had a female officer with them. They strolled away, and I waited by the security checkpoint and wrung my hands for about five minutes.
Then they walked back. No poster tube. They shook their heads and shrugged.
I wondered if it was all right to faint over a stupid poster. Or as a mature and responsibility thirty-two-year-old grad student, burst into massive, sobbing tears.
Then the tallest of the three officers pulled a poster tube from behind his back and grinned at me.
Such relief, I have not often felt. And we all laughed.
I’m very grateful to those police officers for being so nice to me and helping me out. I’m grateful even now that they found my poster and saved me a world of trouble. And I’m grateful to them for messing with me, as weird as that sounds. It felt great to laugh. And back when I was an EMT, that was kind of the rule – if the cops don’t mess with you, it means they don’t like you.  
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Ninjabread Men

In honor of the awesome little boy with the pink shoes, who pointed out ninjas can be pink if they darn well want:

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to decorate cookies. I had a ton of fun with this. My mom baked the cookies and made the icing and then Mike helped me decorate.

The pink ninja clan versus the green ninja clan. Because as Mike pointed out, ninja can be any color they darn well want. It’s not like you know. They’re fucking ninja.

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Signing leases and moving dates

Well, now it’s official, we have a lease in Houston. Not that it wasn’t official before, but this just feels more final, somehow. We’ve got a place that’s about 3 miles from my office by side streets, so I should be able to commute via bicycle unless it’s raining!

Mike and I are both pretty excited about this apartment – we looked at a lot of website, and this one jumped out at us as perfect. And we got lucky, getting in. It’s a relatively small number of apartments, and apparently people don’t tend to leave very often. We snapped up the perfect place, and it’s got a garage and comes with all the appliances (including washer and dryer). We’re getting a two bedroom apartment, so we’ll have a guest room so people can visit us!

Oh, and it has a huge bathtub. I’m even more excited by that – finally, I can take proper baths!

The closets are ridiculously huge closet. Mike is standing in it with me for scale.

The move in date is the first weekend in February. Mike will hopefully have a job to get in to by then. For me it’s unfortunately a little more complicated. I originally wanted to start work the first week of February, but I’ve had to push my thesis defense to February 21. That means we’ll be moving to Houston, but then I’ll probably fly home to Denver and haunt my parents’ house until I’m done with my thesis. 
But we’re a step closer. 
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New desk!

I bought myself a new desk to celebrate turning in Zeno’s Grant Proposal (not because I was happy with it but because I could no longer pick at it any more like a scab) and today it arrived! It’s super pretty.

The butcher blog surfacing is really lovely. And see the little control pad on the right? It does, indeed, make the desk go up and down! So I can finally have a desk that’s low enough for my short little torso.

And even more exciting, I can raise it up so I can work while standing, or even better:

Yes, I am excited indeed. It also gave me incentive to clean out my old desk, and I was able to cut down on the amount of stuff so it could fit in that three drawer plastic organizer. I have the packrat gene badly, so I have to fight against it every day. Having incentive to get rid of things (like the move coming up) really helps.

This is also one of the quietest sit/stand desks I’ve ever had. It was kind of a pain in the ass to assemble (and I am so very, very glad that my dad helped me) because it didn’t come with any of the correct holes for screws pre-drilled. And they actually send a cordless drill with it (really?) but it was, according to my dad, a very wimpy cordless drill. Now that it’s together, though, I’m very happy with it. It’s definitely the quietest sit/stand desk I’ve ever had.

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Boo.

And then I worked on editing my thesis. So that’s been my day.
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I’m still at AGU

And I have many stories of my adventures here which I will type up at some point. Because I’m certain you can’t wait to know what the hell it is we geology grads do in our natural habitat. (Spoiler: Look for free internet and suck down as much free beer as we can get our grubby little hands on.)

But here. I bitched about Suzanne Venker’s ridiculous editorial about women not being women any more before. There’s a much better examination of why it’s bullshit on CNN now, which is incidentally written by a guy. I only mention this because apparently there’s at least one guy out there that thinks women haven’t become houseplants: The mythical ‘war on men’

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Turkey day and blog note

So, happy turkey day to my fellow Americans. Happy Thursday to everyone else in the world who is probably once again sighing over the fact that the damn Americans think everything revolves around our holidays. I speak to you from the depths of food torpor to say, hey man, if you were around I would have totally given you a piece of pecan pie because that seems a good way to end a Thursday no matter what.

It was a good, relaxing day and at least I got to put in a 20 mile bike ride before the feasting started, so I’ll pretend that counts for something. On the way home from that, wind at my back, I tried to think about what I would say for the traditional Things I Am Thankful For.Thanksgiving thing can be trite at times, but it is good to have a day where you feel obligated to sit down and think about what is good in your life and your world.

Best I can come up with is this:

NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise

I am thankful for that blue marble we see there, and the human ingenuity that enabled us to take such a breathtaking picture, and the incredible things we can do with this one life we have. I get all teary-eyed when I look at things like this because I need the reminder that maybe I’m having a shitty day here and there, maybe I’m stressed out, but humanity has fucking walked on the Moon, and put robots on Mars. Even when I wonder if we’re going to make it because people are so intent on hurting each other every day, we can still do amazing and beautiful and unimaginable things. And every second when someone out there decides that they would rather love than hate, that we’re all in this together on our little blue marble in space, I’m thankful for that too.

On a less serious note, don’t forget that I will be watching a Ray Comfort DVD for you guys tomorrow and liveblogging it. Let’s say I’ll do it at 13:00 MST. Apologies in advance, the DVD is only 33 minutes long, so if I don’t get enough snark out of that I’ll see if I can grab something else short and do that too.