Madonna the Otaku?

Okay, so, everyone knows of Madonna, fan or not of her music. The news is a bit old, and I've speculated over it for quite some time, but I just felt like finally posting a little random blurb on this.

There's been quite a few rumors about Madonna being an otaku-of course, an anime fan-particularly about Death Note. While there hasn't been any picture of her reading the manga or watching the anime or anything like that (at least to my knowledge), nor do I think that she has she confirmed or denied the rumors, she did come out with this music video called "Jump." I don't listen to her music a whole lot, but regardless of the rumors, I do find this song to be rather catchy, and the whole layout of the video overall is pretty sweet (freerunners for the win!) I think the song at least came out in 2005-2006...too lazy to do the research right now, but yeah. Here it is.



Set in Japan with signs all around written in hirigana, katakana, and kanji? And the outfit. The hair. All I can say is...'nuff said.

Looks pretty similar to another particular blond from the Death Note novels that lives on in the hearts of fans worldwide, ne? -_^ Now all she needs is a chocolate bar. XD There's even speculation that the car at 1:21 is a blue version of the red muscle car that Mello's partner Matt drives in his short but touching death scene towards the end of the anime, during the whole Takada kidnapping scene.

(And please excuse the posting of an entire video [no matter how short it is...believe it or not though, this and another clip that lasts for only a few seconds are the only times that Matt is seen in the anime, yet he has one of the biggest character fanbases...probably because gamers win XP] for something so minute, but I couldn't find the shot of where the whole car is shown right before he dies.)



But anywho! All of this being just a coincidence?

I think not. XD

I rest my case.

Sooo far behind! But Hetalia ftw and...PASTAAA!

Wow! I haven't posted in like...forever. I've got a lot of stuff to cover, so bear with me and I'll probably get things out gradually (if I'm not too distracted by World of Warcraft, NaNoWriMo, or just being plain lazy.)

Alright, first off! I'll start with the blog's usual dosage of anime. It would seem that Puppet-chan (among others) has gotten me into this new anime. It's kind of on the cute side, the episodes (with my experience) can only be found online, they're only an estimated five minutes long or so, and they're not dubbed yet. But it's pretty humorous and a fun way of seeing history and culture with countries of the world being literally personified, somewhat through history and culture and somewhat through stereotype. And along with friendships and rivals and siblings and such between countries, I believe there are even characters that are 'divorced' due to the countries having a history of dividing with each other.

This anime I speak of is called Hetalia.

I'll be honest, I haven't really gotten too far into it-only the first several episodes-but that's more so due to time constraints and such more than anything. I have seen amusing clips of later episodes. The series starts off with Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, and then sort of breezes through the first world war in the first few episodes and moves on to focus on the second (which I think is actually much longer than the first world war, partially due to so many different new countries [America! XD And Russia and Japan...] making their debut.

So anyway, I can give a link to the site that I've been watching them on, but I think I'll actually do that a bit later. For now (and at least as long as it's on before youtube takes it down -.-;; ), here is episode one!

Vocaloid-Crackish much?

So my Finnish friend Pain-chan introduced me to this thing called 'Vocaloid' this morning. While...I'm not entirely sure what this is, this is the gist of what I got from her:

"Vocaloid is basically just a computer program that allows you to make songs with with different voices but the Japanese thought, 'Hey lets make each voice a character.'...and so the fanbase went wild xD"

And what I got from Wikipedia...

"Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application software developed by the Yamaha Corporation that enables users to synthesize singing by just typing in lyrics and melody."

So while I'm a little unsure of what I'm posting here, it seemed to give the feel of something so crackish that I just had to put it up. ^^; Or maybe I'm just loopy from a lack of sleep (it's 8:21 in the morning and I still have to get some rest. ^^; ) I dunno. But anywho, without further ado...Vocaloid. (And I gotta admit, I am finding the music to this rather catchy. XD)

Happy Birthday to Me~

Wow! It's been a while since I last posted in this blog. So, yesterday was my birthday-I turned twenty-one (yay for the ability to purchase alcohol...not so much yay for mojitos. ^^; ) And of course, it involved trying some new things.

Kiki, Kathi, Roxanne, Brandon, Deion, my younger sister Elena and I all went to the Japanese Steakhouse called Eka. Normally people would do the hibachi grill, but we all did the sushi bar instead. We got the Eka rolls (eel...yum... ^^) and shrimp tempura (deep fried shrimp sushi), and the other group got some California rolls, too (we had split the group to mainly share off each other; Kiki, Brandon, Elena were on my group), but I think we accidentally ended up purchasing some spider rolls. ^^; While those sounded delicious, it seemed that they had added a new ingredient to the mix. I totally wish I had taken a picture.

They were like tiny orange beads that didn't seem to have much flavor, but more so served as decoration. We spent about twenty minutes debating on what it was, because we thought that they were fish eggs like what had been mentioned as the 'new ingredient.' Elena was freaking out about it because of simply what it was and that she had already eaten it. Finally we noticed the chef laughing at us and someone gained the nerve to ask him. XD He held up a huge carton of them and said, "Oh, these? They're fish eggs."

...And then Elena went to the bathroom to try and throw up, but couldn't get up the nerve. ^^; We all did get a pretty good laugh out of it though. XD

When we got home, after singing cake and gift-opening, we did some cosplay shots and overall general photography. We're hoping to maybe get some more done today, so...wish us luck! Hopefully we'll soon have more pictures to put up on this blog. ^^

Yay for New Projects~ (Occupation for over the Summer? Hm...)

...On an incredibly random note, chocolate Hello Panda cookies are awesome. XD

But oh. Right. Okay, so man, oh man. My friend over the internet (Puppet-chan) has recently started watching one of my favorite animes and drew me right back into watching it again. XD The series is called Higurashi (or at least, that's what I'm calling it right now since I'm too lazy to look up the full name of it), and it is sooo screwed up, but oh, so good. ^^ It's a really cute but suspenseful and even violent series, involving murder and plenty of paranoia. It will really mess with the mind...

But anyway, right. The project. There's a lot of flash parodies to the two openings, and while Puppet and I have never made a flash movie before (hell, I still have yet to make a movie period ^^; ), we want to make an attempt at this by using Death Note. We're hashing out the details of the casting and all that at the moment, but we're pretty sure we've come to all of our decisions. ^^

If anyone knows how to use flash that could give us a few pointers or suggestions to good flash programs and so on, that would be a huge help! As for the original...here it is.

The Last of the Cultural Events (Acrylics and DBZ-Odd Combination Much?)

Alrighty, I suppose I've procrastinated enough with the cultural events I actually turned in tickets and stuff to. For my first cultural event, I already have it posted here, where I did a two-in-one combo with my photo ops at Momocon. As for the other two...

The second cultural event I did was this acrylics lecture I went to at West Georgia, mentioned and suggested by the teacher. This was actually a pretty cool lecture. I've experimented with acrylics before, though without professional training. I suspect my stuff will turn out even better now, what with all the interesting new things I learned. Particularly some of the most interesting things I found in the lecture were the things on ingredients for old acrylic paints, all the different types, and storage/shipping/care need-to-knows on acrylic works. For instance, did you know that if an acrylic painting gets too cold, you can shatter it? Or if it gets too warm and/or placed on an odd texture such as bubble wrap, you'll be able to see the permanent imprint in the painting?

While we didn't get to do any real painting ourselves, there were plenty of examples and stuff passed around. My only issue with it is that not all the stuff got circulated to our side of the room, so we didn't get to see everything...but still a good deal of stuff. ^^; And best of all, we got our own set of free acrylic paints afterward! (A picture of this shall be coming soon.)

The third cultural event! The Dragonball Evolution movie-the horror!

...Okay, so I'll admit. It wasn't that bad. If a person that had never seen the series for it, it would probably be fairly decent (if not seeming vaguely reminiscent to...Power Rangers for some reason... o.O;; ). My dad went to see it with me, and not being a fan he mentioned that while it wasn't horrible, he wouldn't pay full movie price to go see it. Being a former fan of the series Dragonball/DragonballZ (yes, yes, I will admit to that...), again, I had to confess that it wasn't 'bullet-to-the-brain' bad like I'd heard another fan describe it, but...I just had to wonder where they got their ideas from, since not a whole lot of it seemed accurate with the series...at all. I'll rank it at maybe thirty percent accuracy (drop that to twenty-nine, because at the very least they could've given Piccolo antennae.)

Even so, it ranks with otaku culture and shows a bit of Japanese culture, what with their continuous references back to ki (which also tends to be known otherwise as chi, chakra, ect., and coincides with martial arts and Zen practices.) I don't quite have a picture of me at the movie to go with this on-hand at the moment, but...I'll see about getting one soon. It was taken with another camera, so yeah...

So those are my top three cultural events. *nodnod*

Yet Another Cultural Event! Renfest FTW~

I went to Renfest (or the renaissance festival) today... Good god it is overpriced. x.o;; Even more so-I heard they jacked up the prices this year, although I'm not certain. But even so, I tend to love it. I may have an anime/manga/Japan/gaming addiction, but medieval stuff and all that would probably be next in line. XD And of course, I dressed up as my SOLAR character Hoshi-a long, velvet black robe with flowing sleeves and a hood, and gold/red heart trim. I would've worn one of my cloaks too, but...meh, too hot, even now.

I went with my boyfriend Brandon and for the most part we browsed the shops; we're considering returning next weekend to fit in some shows, too. I'm quite happy with what I ended up getting too, and even got an ocarina as an early b-day present~ (I turn twenty-one on June twenty-second.) For those who wonder what an ocarina is...it's a clay flute, so to speak. Apparently it's used a lot in Legend of Zelda. And I got a basic four-hole one...I'll have a picture of it up towards the bottom, probably.

If anyone's ever noticed, I'm almost always wearing two necklaces that I got at Renfest a couple years ago, each on different years... One is a pewter rectangle hanging on a white string, the Celtic trinity engraved on it (I tend to call this as my 'good luck charm', if I ever had one), and the other is a pewter rectangle hanging on a black string with the Norse rune for 'strength' engraved on it. Well, the design wasn't quite the same this year-the pendant is circular rather than rectangular-but I ended up getting a new one all the same. This one has the Norse rune for 'knowledge' engraved on it...although I must say that I was quite tempted by the runes for 'destiny' and 'power'-they looked neat. XD

And finally, probably one of my favorite things~ (what I always look forward to when going to Renfest, in fact)... I'm working at putting together a blade collection so to speak-mainly swords and daggers-because honestly, who can deny that swords and stuff like that are pretty badass? But unfortunately, I normally can't afford the really pricy swords and stuff (like the $169 Exocath [I think that's what it was called] sword that Brandon got), so normally I go to the room next to the main sword shop where they have everything priced for a good ten bucks-probably particularly for the art. I was tempted by the Pharaoh blade but...heh, maybe next time. I'm just glad we went fairly early this year; last year we went on the last day and there wasn't much left in the selection. But anyway, right! Onto pictures.

I don't quite have a picture of me actually there yet-Brandon has those pictures on his phone, so I'll have to get them from him a bit later. And also, some of the pictures of the stuff I got are kinda sucky quality since they were taken on the cell... Bear with me on that. ^^;

My new (now-named) dagger Raine...and yes, that is a water droplet design on the sheath.

My new dagger unsheathed~

My three rune necklaces-the Celtic trinity (luck), knowledge, and strength from left to right. The one in the center is my new one.

Pictures of myself and the new ocarina are soon to come~