Pleiades Rising

I find it harder and harder to stick some bands in certain genres, so I'll just throw some bands out there: Oasis, Sex Pistols, The Hives, Godflesh, Tori Amos, Loreena McKennitt, Public Enemy, Entombed, Primal Scream, Sickboy, Atari Teenage Riot, Air, Jesu, J.S. Bach, Richard Wagner, Kenji Kawai, Wu-Tang Clan, The Damned, Iron Maiden, Tommy february6, Perfume, Megadeth, In Mourning, Kate Bush, just to name a few (heh). Nevertheless, I tend to listen to more guitar based bands, especially the extremely heavy, loud, fast kind (see, Earache Records). I blame this on having older brothers, all of whom were metalheads.

I was just listening to [i]White Irises Blind[/i] by Scorn. I've been of fan of Scorn for years, but I finally got my own copy of this, so I know keep listening to it over and over. Also, I can't stay away from [i]Talkie Walkie [/i]by Air for too long. It's playing right now, actually.

I think that [i]Alien Nine[/i] should have more viewers. I watched it not that long ago, and I wondered why it took me so long to watch it. I'm a fan of Eva, and this is similar [i]in feel[/i] to it, but it also has that "slice of life" feeling to it. That is, until it goes haywire (in a good way!), and plays with your head and heart. It convincingly made its way into my all-time top 10 list of anime favorites.

Well, I currently finished re-reading a couple of Nietzsche's books: [i]The Birth of Tragedy (trans. by D. Smith), Untimely Meditations (trans. R.J. Hollingdale), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (trans. G. Parkes)[/i]. I've not read Parkes' translation for Oxford World's Classics, so I had to pick that one up. When I hit up the library, I'll probably do a search for Douglas Walton's [i]Media Argumentation[/i], which, in simple terms, explores how rhetoric plays a role in mass media.

When I first watched [spoiler]the Hansel and Gretel storyline[/spoiler] from [i]Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage, [/i]that was almost too much for me. I don't know why it had such an effect on me; maybe I'm getting old! I recently re-watched a scene towards the end of that arc [spoiler](when Gretel's singing, and you can see in a previous scene Hansel's lifeless body on the ground)[/spoiler] and my reaction was just as strong. I mean, [spoiler]when they were both alive, they went through absolute hell.[/spoiler] That one really shook me.

When I bought [i]GitS: S.A.C, 2nd Gig[/i] Volume 03, it was the special edition which came with Motoko and a Tachikoma! I liked my Tachikoma so much that I took a picture of it sitting on some of my books and made it into an intro for one of my Worlds over at theO. Also, I have two [i]Hello Kitty[/i] cell phone charms that I keep on my coats, instead. They identify me as an otaku.

I started [i]Mushi-shi[/i] not that long ago, so I'm still early into the series. I'll admit that I didn't really know what to expect from it, since I picked it up on a suggestion from a friend over at theO (thank you Shishou!). I can now see why she suggested it to me, since it is absolutely beautiful. Not only are the stories nicely self-contained (so far, since I've only watched up to ep.8), but it's just so darn aesthetically captivating - the music and art direction work so well together that's it's almost unfair to think of them as two elements, instead of a single entity. Also, I'm still waiting for my copies of the first two [i]Haibane Renmei[/i] DVDs to arrive. When they do (which will probably be this week) I'll add that to the watch-list.

Hello all! I'm new to the OB, but not to theO or myO for that matter. In any event, I decided that it was about time that I decided to join this forum, since I'm impressed with the quality of it (I'm a member of another forum which makes me wish that the internet would collapse and forever disappear). Hence, I decided to give it a try, and I suspect I won't be disappointed. My likes are simple: reading/studying philosophy books (e.g. Nietzsche, Chomsky), watching anime ([i]Evangelion[/i], [i]GitS[/i]) and browsing the sea of the 'net when I have time. On a good day when all three combine to create a new monster, I know I've spent my day well. And it's partly in my attempts to create such (if you'll excuse my pretentiousness!) "wonderful monsters" that I joined. Let's get on with it, then.