I should've posted this a lot earlier, but I had a few things to add to it :p It's gotten really long, so you can read one per day or something.

Microwaves Can Be Used for Anything
I've heard some rather strange things about microwaves lately. I remember hearing once that an old lady tried to dry off her wet cat by putting it in the microwave, so apparently now there are warnings telling people not to put animals in their microwaves (I have no idea if it's true, though). My mother seems to think it's okay to do that, though, at least with stuffed animals. I wanted to move my stuffed animals to my bed again, but they tend to collect dust and make me sneeze. So, of course, my mom had to say, "Well, we can microwave them. I heard that'll get rid of the dust." NO THANK YOU!

People Who Attend Barbecues Make Offensive Comments
For some weird reason, I've attend 4 barbecues in the last two weeks - one of them was hosted by a club at my school, since they were trying to attract members; another one was my mom's company's "family day"; and the other two were parties hosted by my family's friends.

It was at these BBQ's of friends of my parents that I was insulted. At one of these parties, when the host saw my dad and me, she immediately told me, "You look so much like your dad!" And when I laughed, she said that I even laughed like him. Word to the wise: Do not compare me to my dad. I have heard it so many times that if I hear it again, I will smile politely at whoever says it, and when he/she turns around I will stuff his/her head into the barbecue grill.

Yesterday, at another BBQ, my mother told one of the other guests that I was in 10th grade. The lady looked at me and smiled, saying in Chinese, "You're rather small, aren't you?" Well, excuse me. I never asked to be short, so people, please stop pointing it out. There is nothing I can do about it at this point besides, oh, I don't know, wearing 12-inch-tall high heels?!

The Sims is Annoying Yet Fascinating
Well, at least the Sims Wiki is. Sometimes when I'm bored I just go and browse its pages, and I come across some rather entertaining and interesting things. What intrigued me in particular was the page about Mrs. Crumplebottom. She's one of the NPCs (non-player characters) in the Sims 2. I remember seeing her on the community lots in the game, and whenever one of my Sims wanted to go swimming, she'd come over and lecture them for wearing swimsuits, which she considered to be indecent clothing (gosh, what else do you swim in besides a swimsuit?). I learned plenty more interesting things about the wicked old lady in the Wiki article:

- If two Sims have a public display of affection, she will scold them or beat them with her purse.
- There are two whole sections in the Wiki article dedicated to avoiding the wrath of Mrs. Crumplebottom. Apparently, if your Sims go to a bowling alley, a place with a poker table, or a bar, then she won't bother you because she'll be busy bowling, playing poker, or drinking.
- If you have the Bon Voyage expansion pack, then if the Unsavory Charlatan (another NPC; he is a scam artist who has a top hat and a monocle) is on the same lot as Mrs. Crumplebottom, he will try to serenade her. But supposedly she beats him up when he does that. (Now I want to play the Sims 2 again just to see that happen.)
- If you try to add her to a family or turn her into a vampire, werewolf, or witch, your game will be corrupted.
- Even when she is bitten by a vampire, unlike normal Sims, she won't turn into a vampire herself.

And speaking of the Unsavory Charlatan I mentioned above, his Wiki page says that if he steals your Sim's money, then you can attack him to try and get it back. For some reason the Unsavory Charlatan likes to attack the Tourist Guide...? He's a master poker player (always wins because he always gets a Royal Flush, I wish I had that ind of luck), and he also knows how to play mahjong. o_o;;

Besides the NPCs, there are plenty of rather interesting stories for playable Sims; the Sims 2, for example, includes two families, the Caps and Monties, which are kind of like modern versions of the Capulets and the Montagues from Romeo&Juliet. There are also Sims who have been abducted by aliens and who have died in all sorts of ways (electrocution, starvation, drowning in a swimming pool, etc.) I think I read on several Sims' Wiki pages that if Story Progression was left on (meaning that other Sims' lives continue - they get married, have children, get promotions, make friends, die, and so on), some Sims will cheat on their spouses...I actually saw this happen one time. One of my Sims went to another Sims' house, and while she was there, the husband of that household was flirting with some other woman. The wife came and slapped the husband and everyone seemed upset. Sometimes the game actually does reflect what would happen in real life. o_o;;

Constant Reminders of Fullmetal Alchemist
I just watched this recently and it is now pretty much my all-time favorite series. Imagine my surprise when, just a day after I watched last episode, I saw that one of the recent popular deviations on DeviantArt was a fanart of FMA! And when I went over to one of my friends' houses just the other day, I noticed that she had pictures of FMA on her wall. Now I feel like decorating my room too (I just swapped bedrooms with my parents and I want to add a personal touch - in other words, posters of anime, video games, and Vocaloids all over the place. But I have to either buy some posters or try to make my own...)

In fact, even the SAT seems to know that I am obsessed with FMA. I was doing some reading comprehension practice problems, and the passage I was supposed to read was about alchemy! It even mentioned transmutation and the Philosopher's Stone, both of which are commonly heard in the anime.

Japanese Will Take Over the World
I'm not sure about the country, but its language, at least in a lot of anime, seems to be predicting that Japanese will become the universal language. I've recently been watching Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, and although in the beginning of the episode there is a narrator speaking French (I always find it funny, but actually, French people would find me funnier because of my horrible accent when I speak French), during the anime itself, the French people speak Japanese. What's even funnier is that Claude, a french guy who is supposedly speaking French, is talking about Yune, a girl who came from Japan who is standing next to him, and Claude says - in JAPANESE - "She won't understand what I'm saying anyways." And I was just thinking, "DUH, she understands, because you're SPEAKING JAPANESE." Oh well. I guess they just can't find good French voice actors in Japan or something, and that's why they speak Japanese when they're supposed to be speaking French.

And I remember when I was watching Kuroshitsuji, where all the people were supposedly in England but spoke Japanese. Even the characters from China and India spoke Japanese. I still think it's hilarious.

Science Teachers are Insane
Mine certainly seems to be.
- She's a psychic; one night my mom was talking about how my dad had eaten a huge amount of pistachios. The next day, on my chemistry quiz, there was a question asking how many pistachios someone could eat at one time. (If I calculated it correctly, it was more than 4000 pistachios... o_o;; )
- She cares about us, particularly our eyes, though in a bit of an odd way. She makes students sing some song that goes along the tune of I'm A Little Teapot (except it's "I'm A Little Chemist" or something like that) when they don't wear their goggles, as a sort of warning to them. That in itself is not strange, but she has a really freaky poster on her wall. It has a picture of a blind woman who has a cane and a guide dog. The caption says:
"Carol never wore her goggles.
Now she doesn't need them."
- She has a family of pyromaniacs. For one thing, the first day of class, she set a gummy bear on fire. The next day she showed us another demonstration with fire. One of our first labs in the class involved a lot of matches being lighted. And she said that her son really likes fire too...

Vocaran Knows What I'm Doing
There's something called the Weekly Vocaloid Ranking, or Vocaran for short, which basically uses logarithms and other thing-a-ma-bobs (I'm not too clear how it works) to come up with the 30 most popular Vocaloid songs that week. The Vocaran also briefly shows the 5 most popular Vocaloid songs from approximately the same time of year last year. I was listening to a song called "The Madness of Duke Venomania" and then I decided to check out the Vocaran. It was pretty weird for me to see that the #1 from the year before was that song.

And what's weirder is that around this time, I noticed that one of the Nico Nico singers, Panyo, had just sung a cover of "The Madness of Duke Venomania". o_o;;

Apparently even a Vocaloid producer knows me. Watch the first 20 seconds of this video. The video starts about with water, and then later on you see the song's name is "Kai Sou". Water is "mizu" in Japanese. Mizu...kaisou...Whose blog does this remind you of? :p

Labels: animals, anime, barbecue, family, fullmetal alchemist, height, japanese, microwave, mrs. crumplebottom, teacher, the madness of duke venomania, the sims, vocaloid, vocaran

I'll start off by wishing Gakupo a happy 3rd birthday! For those who haven't heard of him, Gakupo (or Gackpoid, as he is otherwise called) is a Vocaloid from Internet Co. His voice was provided by the singer Gackt. Gakupo doesn't get anywhere near the amount of attention that Miku does, which is a mighty shame. Doesn't seem like that's going to change anytime soon, though. D:


Image by もち＠マイピクｵﾅｼｬｽ on Pixiv

Anyways, to the topic I've been meaning to write about. These days I've gotten into jpop/jrock again... It's mostly because I've been watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (which is the 2009 FMA anime; unlike the 2003 one, it follows the manga's plotline, I believe). I was reluctant to watch it because it was long (64 episodes drives me insane if the anime isn't really good) and because I wasn't sure whether I'd like it, but nowadays I'm finding that I do enjoy shounen anime (a little unexpected considering that I only read shoujo manga). Then again, I am a big fan of the Ao no Exorcist anime, and now I've discovered that FMA:B may soon become one of my favorite animes too. I actually watched sixteen episodes of FMA:B without stopping at one point, which for me is really rare behavior. Now I understand why the FMA animes got such high ratings on MyAnimeList.

Anyhow, though, I do like some of the music in this anime - more specifically, the first and second endings.

"Uso" by the band SID:



"Let it All Out" by Miho Fukuhara:



I started seeking out some of the other Japanese bands and singers I like, and managed to find my favorite version of the song "Hemisphere", which is the opening to the anime RahXephon (which I've never actually watched, but if you have, let me know what you think of it). I used to have MAKI's version on my playlist, but it got removed by whoever put it up, so I don't have it anymore.

"Hemisphere" by MAKI:



The more famous version, "Hemisphere" by Maaya Sakamoto (I like this one too, but I'm more used to hearing the MAKI one because I heard it first)



I've also gotten really into Yuki Kajiura's projects lately. Yuki Kajiura is a composer who is in charge of the singing groups FictionJunction and Kalafina. (FictionJunction did the song "Parallel Hearts" for Pandora Hearts, if that rings a bell. And Kalafina sang songs for Kuroshitsuji, Kara no Kyoukai, and Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica)

"Magia" by Kalafina:



This came out more than a month ago and I kept forgetting to mention it, but I saw some artist called Nem's Garden had released an album called Moratorium on the Oricon charts one time (Generasia's wiki has the Oricon rankings on it). I decided to look it up on Youtube and discovered that Nem's Garden is actually comprised of many of the singers on Nico Nico Douga, such as Dasoku, Clear, Nero, Miichan, Amu, Gero, Faneru, Jack, and Asamaru. Here's a video that includes a preview of each song. You can probably find most of the full versions of the songs on Youtube.



And just a few days ago, Clear sang another song.



Nowadays, though, my favorite NND singer has got to be Hanatan. (I'm still a big fan of Valshe, of course, and Nero as well, but Hanatan is just amazing.) Back in June she released an album. Here's a PV of a song she sang.

"Bamboo Leaf Boat" by Hanatan:



That isn't my favorite song of hers, though. I love her cover of Imitation, which is originally one of Miku Hatsune's songs:



And also her cover of Aitai, which is originally a GUMI song:



I gotta say, no matter how much I like Vocaloids, they can't compare to real voices. This is the original version of Aitai by GUMI. It's not bad, but I definitely prefer Hanatan's cover.



She has sung other songs, like "Palette", "Cendrillon", and "Romeo and Cinderella", which you can find on Youtube.

Labels: birthday, cover, fma, fullmetal alchemist, fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood, gackpoid, gakupo, hanatan, japanese, music, nico nico douga, vocaloid, yuki kajiura

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