Shameful Otaku Secret!

Japan cracks down on crack (plumber’s, not cocaine)

I was reading about Chocolate Underground, the upcoming online short series by Production I.G. and Prince of Tennis director Takayuki Hamana, when I remembered something I’d heard in the news recently, which might even be crazier than outlawed chocolate.

Japan, a country not known for its overweight people, has undertaken one of the most ambitious campaigns ever by a nation to slim down its citizenry

Japan of all places has imposed a national waistline standard for those 40 and up, and is enforcing that by penalizing companies and local governments who don’t comply.

Whether it’s just a a reactionary move by a society I don’t pretend to understand too well, or possibly a move to sneak health care into privatization (Japan’s economy hasn’t been in good shape for ages, and with the declining population, everyone’s gonna be old and using lots of public heathcare soon), it seems a bit on the scary side.

Besides sounding vaguely fascist, it gave me this thought: In the wake of the Akihabara murders, should Japan really be going through with new ways to (a) stress out and (b) ostracize more citizens? It’s ok, though, because they’re not called “fat” or “overweight.” It’s “metabo.” Ahhh. Well, carry the fuck on, then.

I’ll leave you with this picture from the article, which asks “Can you wear the same pants you wore when you were 20?”

Keep a lid on the hateorade for a minute

I’ve seen those people who lazily fill their blogs with their Twitter updates, and I’m not planning on becoming that. I have, however, been gone a lot and unable to blog, I’m in the middle of relocating, and to top it off I decided to start a podcast with people on the other side of the universe (more on that hopefully very soon).

I’m still watching cartoons, never fear, and I’ll come back with a vengeance soon I hope, but this is a stopgap and my Twitter updates are almost all about anime. You will not be reading what I ate, unless for some reason I ate it at a maid cafe. You can actually chronologically view my descent into madness as I watch a show about girls rowing boats and love it.

Here’s what’s going to happen:

1. Twitter updates will be in the sidebar.
2. The Twitter roundup posts will occur every (X Number I haven’t decided) days, or when there are something like 10 or more updates. It will depend on what I have the skill to hack in the plugin. If it’s neither, I’l uninstall it because I do not want the volume of twitter posts to ever surpass the number of regular posts.
3. It won’t be in the RSS feed. I haven’t figured out how to do this either, but I’m pretty sure 9rules will frown on it because they specifically request their sites don’t add del.icio.us feeds, and this is the same concept.

That way, those of you who already follow me on Twitter shouldn’t even have to pay attention if you don’t want to. The reason I’m doing this is to keep the content flowing, force myself to be a little entertaining on Twitter, and encourage myself to do something during this really hectic period.

Up next in regular blog posts: some more music stuff, a podcast status update, and a quick semi-review of Full Metal Panic! since I joined the 21st century by recently watching The Second Raid.

They listen to the rap music, and that’s what gives them the brain damage.

Like most of you, I got older this year. Also, my blog is turning right around 6 months old. So I’m taking some time to reflect on the nature of this beast. I think the internet is a great equalizer, as evidenced by the recent Gender Drama sweeping the aniblogosphere.

I initially started out trying to be an island, a Google magnet living on the long tail and providing a little insight for people who aren’t necessarily hardcore anime people. Frankly, I think what I was trying to avoid by isolating myself were pictures of Shin’s crotch (don’t click that), i.e. link-baiting, attention-whoring, and retinal-burning. No offense to the trap-in-training himself, I am more inclined to believe you than call you a link-baiter but you sure have talked a lot about it lately, and hey — you got my link.

But my digression actually strengthens my point: No one on the internet is an island if they want to get anywhere, and the community is the logical place to go. What I found were a lot of really interesting conversations, and people generally getting along better and expressing more entertaining opinions than on forums, my previous exposure to anime discussion on the web.

So, I got sucked into this world and now I probably provide very few resources for non-otaku, but it’s fun. And as for that great equalizer, I’m talking age too: I’ve found that other bloggers around these parts, aside from the old school Lawsons and Kabitzins, average about 7 years younger than me, some quite a bit younger — but they’re my “virtual senpais,” as it were, and have managed to teach me a little something by virtue of their blogs’ age.

Contributing to the echo chamber is a great way to get traffic in this space as well as the blogosphere as a whole, but I’m still holding out on too much participation. I just want to talk about anime. But it does seem like exciting things are happening, so, uh… yay! And thanks to everyone, the anime world has been a great place to blog so far.

It would take me back to those days sitting around a tiny crummy apartment in Pittsburgh watching Evangelion on VHS, except that apartment had a carbon monoxide leak and I lost most of those memories.