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So, there's some exciting news today.

If you live in the UK, and would like to watch the new series of the mighty boosh (beginning in a week! Series 2 woo!), but don't have access to BBC3 (looks at Steve), then don't fear...
...because you can watch online! And the first episode is up already!
However, if you don't live in the UK, then you can't watch online and must shake your fist at your computer screen in a futile manner while shouting expletives.
*cries* *woe* Why can't I watch it here?! *wail* 's not fair! *mope*

But...I was able to console myself with something, maybe not better but, different. The xxxHolic movie trailer is out! And I have to say, it has gotten me all excited to see the movie now. It seems to be well done (which it should be, considering it's a movie rather than a TV series). I looks dreamlike/trippy which is intriguing and should make for a similar tone to the manga. Yet I can't get over the fact that Yuuko doesn't really sound like Yuuko should sound. Her voice is just much higher than I imagined...although I kind of imagine her to sound like Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in LOTR only better, so...
But I am very happy with the fact that Watanuki is voiced by the same person as Albert in Gankutsuou, because he was very good in that.
My favourite part of the trailer though, has to be Watanuki acting like, well, Watanuki. Everything sounds serious and spooky and we just see clips of Watanuki spazzing out in the background <3 I really have high hopes for this film now. There wasn't much of the Tsubasa film in the trailer, so I can't judge that, but hopefully it'll be good too.
Ahh, I really hope someone subs it, and soon after it's been released. I'll die if I have to wait for it to be licensed and released on DVD. (hopefully I'll be home, or close enough to going home that I don't care, when the sub (if there is one) comes out, because then I won't be under my self-imposed ban on downloading anime and music).

And...my parents are flying in tomorrow to visit me! I can't wait! It's the longest I've been without seeing them in my whole life, even though it's only been a few months. Wheee!

Clematis has been updated.

Although it is a rather poor update, but lets not dwell on that now shall we?

And what on Earth am I doing today?! For heaven's sake! This is my third post! *mutters*

And then you find out that one of the suicide bombers in London last week came from your home town, and that a guy that your Dad works with knows a guy whose sister was married to this terrorist and that she is 8 months pregnant, and that they used to live down the same road as your friend's nan from when you were little.

And oh my god. That kind of brings it home. Far too close to home.

I did nothing yesterday except eat, sleep and jaff on the internet. ^________^

But today I will be useful and do stuff that needs doing! *determined*

I really can't stop listening to Coldplay at the moment.

[/post]

I started writing my (50 page) placement report today. I should feel good that I finally started it, because the time to write it is running out. But instead all I could think about was that from now on, there will probably not be a gap in between pieces of coursework until I graduate in June next year.

My oh my.

I've been feeling weird all day. I don't think my brain woke up properly this morning. When I'm doing something manual I'm fine, but when I have to think about something, that's when things get hazy. My mind is just swimming, or should I say, floating just blow the surface while gasping for air.
I need to stop being paranoid that this has something to do with the bacteria I was growing at work yesterday. Last time I heard, E. coli did not make you go wonky in the head.
Weeooooo *dizzy*

I seem to be posting here a lot lately, I think it is because I'm procrastinating. The thing is; you know you've been procrastinating for too long when you can't remember what it is that you're prcrastinating from.
(I think it's because I now have a report on my work placement to write. I have months to write it, but it's close enough to the deadline that I've got that familiar feeling of guilt for not working hanging over my head.)

Anyway, I took a xxxHolic quiz:

You are Kimihiro Watanuki.
A highly emotional person, you would rather fight
than talk things over- yet, you often shield
yourself with your ignorance, starting quite a
few conflicts.
You're good with your hands, and often work for
other people- willingly or not, who knows.
The plights of others move you strongly, and you
almost always try to fix things for them.

Which xxxHOLiC character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

So it seems I'm Watanuki. I've no idea how, I think I am possibly the exact opposite of the description. But I think it's because I have a nervous disposition and I can see spirits. Haha, I lie so much! I'm quite glad that I can't see spirits, because I have noticed recently that there are hydrangeas growing outside the building I work in (they are pink, but luckily not bright red)...
Which reminds me, I have to go to work for a bit now (maybe that's why I feel like procrastinating). *takes a hair ribbon just in case, too bad there's not a Doumeki on the other end to save me if things get a bit hairy, ah well*

So I decided to post that picture of Fai, that I talked about in my previous post. During the drawing of this picture I realised that it is entirely possible to like Fai (and his gloves) too much. Far too much (nb: this is the 4th picture of Fai in my gallery, and God knows how many are in there with long black gloves).

Warning: this picture contains undue amounts of saliva (I said saliva!). Click for big.

I never really intended to ink this and post it here, but it came out so well that I just had to show it off. (note to self: using references for Fai's hair really makes it turn out better)

I'll admit it, I have an uhealthy amount of love for Fai's gloves (maybe I can get help for that somewhere), but maaaan are they nice gloves! I like to see this picture as a natural progression from this one, but with better execution and more bodily fluids. I wonder how many more pictures of Fai and his gloves I'm going to have to draw before I get this out of my system?

So...I suppose I'd better talk about my 4th July weekend then. I was going to write earlier today, although; how blogging about my weekend as soon as I got back from work turned into drawing another picture of Fai, I don't know.
I'm quite pleased with the picture as it is, but I'm not sure if I'll put it up here or not. It's a bit, you see, well, *coughs* you know, isn't it. I'll give it some thought.

So Philadelphia was nice. It was odd, in that it's similar to NYC but different. Overall, it's prettier than new york, because it's older I suppose. The style of the buildings gives it the feel of a nice old town (one you'd find back in the UK), but all the buildings are bigger than anything you'd find in a little old town, so it has this wierd feel to it. Apparently it's not a very safe place..I wouldn't know, I only saw the nice bits.
Shilpa lives in the centre of the city, which seems jolly convenient, and I'm a little jealous of her. But she does have to pay through the teeth for her appartment, so perhaps I'm not that jealous.

We met up with some more people from my course (which was a nice surprise for me) who'd flown in from North Carolina. We all went to the live8 concert together, which was jolly nice. It was also jolly hot and jolly full of people and had jolly disgusting porta-loos. Seriously, there were a lot of people there. I didn't count them all, but there were a lot. It reminded me of the crowds of people that I saw swarming around Trafalgar Square when I went to London for new year's eve. On second thoughts though, there were a lot more people at live8 than I saw at new year's.
As a consequence of all the people, I couldn't see a thing. I mean, no-one but a rare few could see the stage, but I couldn't even see a screen. You see, when the music starts, everyone stands up so they can see better, and in the standing up race, it is the short person (ie. me) who loses. But I didn't mind so much. I still got to see the Kaiser chiefs on the screen, because it was right at the beginning and nobody cared because they didn't know who they were :D
I also saw a bit of stuff (like Will Smith, who was very good) when Shilpa and I decided to try to make our way forwards a little. Man, and what a scary journey that was. So many people! And all glaring at you for trying to push past, I have no idea how we ever made it out of the crowd. At the end the crowds had died down a little so we could get quite close to the stage (still couldn't see it though). We saw Stevie Wonder then, he was on last, and that was good, we also saw one of the events staff dancing on some scaffolding at the crowd like the whole show was just for him, which wasn't good, but it was funny.

Later that evening as we were walking around, Shilpa found a $20 bill on the floor. I don't know what amused me more; the fact that Shilpa decided to ask a random guy who was parking his car if it was his, or that the guy said it wasn't his and then tried to change his mind when he found out it was a 20. Obviously, the rules of the world state that if you ask one person if the money that you've found belongs to them, and it doesn't belong to them, then that's as much as you can do and that money now belongs to you. And so it was dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant for us that evening.
The restaurant was nice, they had live jazz with a man playing a double bass. Live jazz with a double bass makes me a happy person.

We did more touristy stuff, which seemed to include walking around where there wasn't any shade in the intolerable heat. But we went to an eat as much as you like ice-cream festival which I think made up for that. It was nice to be in such a historical place for independence day. I saw liberty bell and all that stuff. It was quite interesting.
What interested me more was when I realised that the William Penn who founded Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and has lots of stuff named after him there, was the son of Sir William Penn who worked with Samuel Pepys. Wow, I like it when stuff like that comes together and makes sense. Yay Pepys! *punches air*

There was another concert, also free, this one had Elton John in it. It seemed less crowded than live8 and was in the evening, so it was more pleasant. Mr. John did give the crowd a long wait before he turned up though, so much so that the crowd started booing. Bad news Mr. John, bad news. I think I only recognised one of the songs he played...I am rubbish. After the music there was a fireworks display. It was the most impressive fireworks display I'd seen in my life, although coming from the girl who thinks sparklers are impressive, that's not much. But they were good, and loud, and long (I thought they might not end).
On the way home amongst the heaving crowds there were lots of police sirens. This was worrying seing as how we all had to rush out of the road because the police were coming right towards us. I heard later that there were quite a few shootings in the neighbourhoods that night...did I mention about Philly not being that safe a place?

Among other things I also went to the museum of art, which was good, perhaps not as good as the Met, but still nice and airconditioned interesting. We also saw War of the Worlds. I was expecting it to be a bit rubbish, I was wrong. For some reason I got really caught up in the film and therefore thought it was very good. It is very good. (I even started crying at one point, and I never cry in films) As it is based on old school sci-fi, it doesn't feel much like sci-fi at all, which is good, because sci-fi bores me due to overexposure to it as a child. In fact, it felt much more like a horror film and it was very easy to empathise with the characters I found. Sci-fi films that feel like horror films are good, just look at Alien for an example. So that was an exciting ride of a film...with the worst possible ending for a film ever. Seriously, it is because the film is so good that the ending seems so bad. I just don't understand it, it's almost like they got bored of filming half-way through and threw something together. I shall seek courage in the fact that its probably too good and clever and symbolic for me to understand, or something. Still, I would recommend going to see it because the rest of the film is awesome.
I know I started to read the book way back when I was 13 or so. But I stopped reading it either because I ran out of time (I was reading it in our reading class at school) or because I got bored. Either way, I'd like to try to read it again, and see if I can give it a better go this time.

So I think that's about it for Philadelphia. When I got home, I had my new mouse waiting for me (at which I was very happy), and fruits basket volume 4, which I'm currently beasting through.

Toodle pip *salutes*

It kind of brings the whole danger of terrorism home when you spend the whole morning worrying because you don't know whether to count some of your friends among the injured or not.

Luckily, no-one I know was involved in any of the London attacks...

We live in strange times, my friends. Strange times indeed.

I will write about my trip to Philadelphia later, but right now I need to go to bed.

Another new page of Clematis!

*triumphant pose*
Man, I'm just feeling that creativity at the moment.
Although of course I won't be able to do anything about it because I'm not going to be here for the weekend.
I'm going to see Shilpa in Philadelphia, which is a nice historical place to spend 4th July (although I do feel a little hypocritical celebrating independence day, what with me being English and all. But lets let the past stay in the past eh? Of course if we ignored everything in the past then we wouldn't be celebrating 4th July at all...and so the whole fetid cycle continues)

Hopefully, when I'm in Philly (as I like to call it) I'm going to see a concert. I found out the other day that this was one of them live8 concerts that everyone was going on about, and then felt stupid that I didn't realise before. Anyway, it should be good if we can go, the Kaiser Chiefs will be there *puts on her happy face, you know the one*

Arrrrr!

Well due to a public outcry *looks warily at the spoon of internet rebuttal*
...due to a...
*looks warily at the spoon of internet rebuttal*
...er...
*looks again*

Moo is back everyone!
Hello.
I thought that, seeing as it's hard for me to always fit Moo into what I'm talking about (she always gets in the way), I would give Moo her own posts where she can go on about whatever she wants.
*pushes Janine out of the way* I do not always get in the way! So this is the new place is it? It's nice to see it finally. Seriously though, I look rubbish in this layout! I mean, look! I've got a green on white thing going on...it's all wrong! It's ugly! I'm ruined! *weeps*
Yeah whatever, don't worry about it.
Well of course you wouldn't care would you? After what you did to me.
What? I did nothing!
EXACTLY! You left me! Ignored me! Like I was some rotting...otter or something!
A rotting otter?
Yes a rotting otter, five of them. Anyway, you decided that you were too good for me and just tossed me aside like I was nothing more than a piece of burnt toast. TOAST!
Well I might have done that, yes. But you're back now though! Due to popular demand I might add.
*glares* I will never forgive you. I'm not speaking to you unless strictly necessary, I'm going to eat up all of your cream cheese in the fridge after you've just bought it, and I'm always going to picture your face when I go to the toilet.
Man...I don't remember you being so bitter before.
Well I wasn't! But it's hard not to be bitter against someone who betrayed you. Just look! Look at what you've done to me! I've got emotional baggage now! Just look at it!
Er...that's not emotional baggage, you've just tied one of my jumpers around your waist.
And I'm not taking it off either! Even though I hate it because it reminds me of you!

*claps*
Did you like it?
Yes I did, it was very convincing.
Really? I like to call it; Moo version 2 - angst where it matters.
That's nice. You're a good actor.
I know. I can do all the genres me, not just angst. There's horror, pathos, happiness, regicide, a whole bunch of genres.
So many genres, you should get an index so you can easily find the one you want.
I already have one, here.
No wait, that's my jumper around your waist again.
...
So...you're not angry with me are you? I was young and foolish, I didn't know what I was doing...
No, I'm not angry.
That's good but, how do I know that you're not acting that you're not angry?
Hahahahahahaha!
...
Hahahaha!
Hahahaha
Hahaha, you'd know if I was angry...hahahaha!
Hahahahahahaha!
*serious*Because if I was angry I would cut you.
Ah I see, Hahahahaha!
*runs away as fast as she can*

First things first; Clematis has been updated, woo! Yup, I got my copy of Paint Shop Pro through the post the other day so I could finish off my page (although I had to do it with only my touchpad mouse because I don't have a proper one yet *tears of frustration*). It's about time! I always seem to have some setbacks, like buying a new computer and, this week, being worked to death. Seriously, when you go into work at 9:30am and don't finish until midnight, you know something's not right. Next week, I'm going to take it easy on purpose.

Along with PSP, my parents sent me a copy of my chemical brothers album, which I was missing very much (I'd left it at home). They also sent me the Hives which is nice shouty music for me to dance to. Speaking of music, X&Y by Coldplay has being growing on me like a fine moss, I'm really enjoying it.

I'm feeling in an arty mood at the moment, although I don't really have the time to do anything about it, coursework is creeping up on me again. But I drew a new picture last week, for my Dad for father's day.

I realise that this is now the fourth picture in my gallery to contain long black gloves...I think maybe I have some sort of disease. Anyway, it's my Dad's birthday tomorrow, but I haven't drawn him anything for that, I'm bad. I'd quite like to draw Silmarillion elves again, especially Maeglin, but I should really draw more Clematis if anything.

Change of subject. Now that I have paint shop pro, I could make myself a background to fit my weird size screen (1280x800)! I did not make a wallpaper featuring Ashura, I did not...but mainly I did. You can see it here. Hmmmm....can you say messy? Never mind, the making of wallpapers has never been my speciality. Before I forget, all images come from the scanlations by Be With You Scans. Feel free to use this wallpaper if you'd like for yourself, although I doubt anyone will want to.
Ahh...Ashura is so pretty! That's what you get if you don't have a specific gender I suppose. I really need to read RG Veda, if there's one thing I'll concede about the Tsubasa version, is that there doesn't seem to be enough blood about *likes the RG Veda pictures with lots of blood in* >_>

Having been inspired by making that wallpaper, I am now currently listening to BBC Asian Network *dances*
I love my new computer, I can listen to internet radio again! I've missed it, especially Zane Lowe...

Now to go draw Maeglin more Clematis! Rawr!

Bon! I am now writing to you from my new laptop! Yes, it didn't take me long to get one...

It's great, it's beautiful, it's better than beautiful, it's beauteous.

It's not top of the range, and it has some quirks. But it doesn't shut down on me, not once! (I thought it did, but it turns out it was just on screensaver).
Have a rubbishy picture:

I need to get over the fact that windows XP irks me to my core. Don't panda to me damn you! I don't need your 'help' and friendly organisation (well, maybe I do, but I don't want it). Consider if you will; being forced to drive an automatic car after you've been driving in a manual for years. Sure it's easier, but is it better? Well maybe yes...but it's not as satisfying!

Random: I have just realised that in one of the songs on my new White Stripes album, there is the sound of the doorbell. This is the first time I have realised this, all the previous times I have heard this song, I have gotten up to answer the door...
...and it doesn't even sound like our doorbell!

Back to the computer, it's widescreen, which is all well and good, but none of my desktop wallpapers fit any more! Maybe I'll have to start making my own (once I get a copy of PSP7 from my Dad), but what of? Ashura! Ashura! Ashura! I don't know.

Now back to procrastinating from all and sundry.

Note: Clematis will update when I get my copy of PSP.

This computer is lame. And like a lame horse; it's going to the knacker's yard and I'm going to buy myself a new one.

Yay! *has no money* ¬_¬

Well I've got a lot to say so I'd better get cracking (I was going to post yesterday but my computer's been struggling against the new anti-virus I installed).

So, last week I had a visitor in the form of Steve...at least it looked like him (of course one can never tell if you're going to go meeting people willy-nilly at airports). We had a very enjoyable time (by that I mean I had an enjoyable time...Steve probably hated it or something...)
Ahhh! It's so nice to see friends! I mean, I don't really have any really good friends out here, and it's one of the things I miss most. I should get used to it, I'm sure you're not allowed to have friends (or fun) once you graduate.

We did lots of stuff, you know, the usual touristy business. In the heat. We mainly did the touristy stuff in the heat....it is so hot here at the moment! You just hate being outside because it's too hot (I'm English, I'm not used to extreme weather...yes 32 degrees Celcius does count as extreme for me). Sometimes there are big thunder and lightning storms, and sometimes you decide that that would be the ideal time to go up the Empire State Tower. Luckily though the weather had cleared by the time we got there, so no death waited for us at the top. It was, however, still a little misty around so we couldn't see too far, but I realised that this actually made for some nice photos. Such as this:

It was taken looking north, towards central park, not that you can tell from the picture. I like it, the whole thing looks really desolate. It looks like a really lonely place (although in reality it's bustling with people).

We went to go see some films for ourselves, and a broadway show. Although my advice is that it's probably best to find out what the show is about before you buy tickets...I felt a little out of place and it wasn't even on Broadway dammit! But I shall say no more about that because it's a tad embarrassing...

Soo films. We saw Madagascar which was actually better than I thought it would be (I assumed that it would be rubbish). Some of the humour was heavy handed, but then, it is a children's film. But it was quite funny over all and even better because it was set in New York and we could recognise all the places they went to.

We also saw Sin City. All I knew about it beforehand was that it was based on a graphic novel which my Dad reads. It's a very very stylised film, and while stylised is cool, I'm not sure if maybe they took it a bit too far. It's probably good, but I get the feeling that I wasn't the target audience. I'm not really interested in guns and girls and violence (well OK, maybe I do like a bit of violence in my films, but this seemed uncomfortably violent to me, and did the people doing the fighting have to be so ugly?). And I'm sure that the thing is supposed to be a barrel of cliches and that's why it's cool, but it seemed to be a bit devoid of plot, or anything to keep me interested.

And then we saw a film that I was very excited to see...Howl's Moving Castle! On the first day it was out too (it's funny the people you see in the cinema on the first day...). So yes, it seemed similar to the other two studio Ghibli films that I've seen, in that it was really weird, but in a charming way. And also like the other Ghibli films, it seemed to have an ending at a random point that was kind of pulled out from nowhere (in my opinion), the whole cinema laughed at the ending...I'm sure they weren't supposed to laugh. It has funny bits (especially the witch of the west; 'what a lovely fire') and exciting bits and bits that looked great. And it had Howl in it. I'd heard people fangirling about Howl beforehand although I couldn't really see why, he seems bishounen for Ghibli, but not super bishounen. And then I saw the film for myself, and it's all in the way he was animated...I can't really put my finger on how, but he came across as very charming, and vain, but mostly charming. Although his English voice did not suit him at all (I get put off when anime characters have American accents, because it's not set in America and I don't have one myself). Steve and I were not sure if Sophie's voice actor was actually English or not...I'm too lazy to look it up.

If you think I'm done then you're in for a nasty surprise. There's more!

I bought some new CDs for myself. I got 'Demon Days' by Gorillaz, 'X&Y' by Coldplay and 'Get Behind Me Satan' by the White Stripes (which came with a free T-shirt, which would fit someone three times my size). Out of all of them, the one I've been enjoying the most is Gorillaz, and I would go as far as to say that it's better than their first album. It's got a sound that I can't really put my finger on, but I really like it. At this current point in time, I'm really feeling the track 'Dare', it seems to strike some kind of raw nerve in me, I have no idea why.
The White Stripes needs some more listening to, I think. It may have been the only track I'd heard before, but the first song 'Blue Orchid' seems to be the best on the album. It's always a bit of a shame when the first song is the best because there is no more to look forward to, but it is an awesome song, I'd play it really loud if I wasn't worried about the people in the apartment below me.
The new Coldplay album also needs more listening to, so I can't really give an opinion. My first thoughts are that it sounds a tad more lively than their previous stuff, but then you listen harder and realise that you can still hear the Coldplay in there. Listening to Coldplay makes me feel sad.

I sit back and think about the music I like. I used to really love Coldplay; I listened to 'Parachutes' almost non-stop for months after I bought it. Along with people like Travis and Badly Drawn Boy, I really liked music that was calm and sweet and melancholy but with a beautiful tune. And now I seem to prefer music which is more upbeat (eg. Franz Ferdinand, the Bravery, Kaiser Chiefs, Killers), something I can get really excited about, music that makes me want to dance. And I wonder if this is a change in the music industry or rather a change in me as a person.

To sum it up; new Gorillaz - yes yes yes!
new White Stripes and Coldplay - no comment as of yet

Annnd, I bought more things! This time, mainly manga, yes, my Amazon parcel came through. I now own, Tokyo Babylon volume 7, Fruits Basket volume 3 and xxxHolic volume 5. I've finished reading them all already >_>
I've talked about the new volume of xxxHolic in other places and I'm too tired to say everthing twice so I'll be brief. In this volume it stood out to me how much of a good person Doumeki is. He just seems to be someone who is genuinely good and will do the right things, and that makes me respect him. The pipe fox spirit is really really cute (really really!). There were some particularly nice chapter covers in this volume, especially the ones with Yuuko and Watanuki dressed up all Indian-like.

I don't have anything particular to say about Fruits Basket, I just enjoyed it is all. I like Hatsuharu more than I thought I would, and I like his coat with the furry collar (in a very roundabout way, this reminds me that I should continue reading Loveless). Shigure gets more interesting (smiles all the time but no-one can tell what he's thinking? Sounds familiar...) and I like the way he deals with his editor.

This brings me around to the final volume of Tokyo Babylon. I can't talk about this without loads of spoilers, so I'm going to try to cut it. Click on the read more at the end of the post to read it.

And thats almost all I want to say. But to truly turn this post into bishounen-u-like; I've been reading chapters 58-64 of Tsubasa, and I have to say..........Ashura *o*
I've always been tempted to read RG Veda purely because Ashura is so pretty, even better in the Tsubasa style. In my cheapo CLAMP artbook the Ashura pictures are the best ones, especially the ones with lots of blood in >_>
I am sorely tempted to make this blog a new Ashura layout with the pictures from Tsubasa, but I really can't be bothered to fiddle with all that php again TT_TT

Tokyo Babylon volume 7 spoilers ahead

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