insaneneko

On Saturday after leaving the (insanely busy) farmer's market filled with tourists, I decided I needed to eat malasadas. A malasada is Portuguese and is quite popular in Hawaii. It's deep fried dough rolled around in sugar. I foolishly decided not to look at a map but almost randomly drove down various streets in the right direction, hoping to hit the main thoroughfare that the bakery was on. I made lots of turns (LOTS), but eventually got there. Then I stood in line filled with tourists for my two malasadas and a weak cup of coffee.



Pure joy, I tell you. (I went to Whole Foods afterwards and ate the malasadas there instead of sitting in my hot car in the sun, and appropriated a napkin so that I didn't get sugar all over myself as I ate them.) I wish I'd bought coffee at Whole Foods, though. At least their coffee isn't weak.

I then ate tasty savory crepes with spinach, ham, and cheese for lunch, and went bowling. Bowling is so much fun, need to do it more. Too bad lots of alleys have shut down over the years.

It's been interesting seeing some posts on various communities about unexplained purging of members from some scanlation group. I hadn't realized some groups had not only become closed, but had become insanely asshole-ish. Including having rules about not talking about them anywhere (which I suppose is part of why I hadn't heard about all of this until now). There had always been asshole scanlation groups, but perhaps the level of asshole is greater now?

I'm a bit peeved at yet another case of scanlation groups thinking they own the titles they are working on. Vices and Devices had scanlated the first chapter of Yoneda Kou's Ore ni koishite dousunda, a manga I want to read more of but can only find Chinese scans for. No tankobon yet, either. They then didn't update for nine months. Three more chapters came out in Japan during the time. Fairly recently someone started scanlating the series at Manga Fox (unfortunately the English is a bit painful, but better than staring at gibberish....). She'd almost finished doing all the chapters when she got contacted by the scanlation group about their "claims" to the title (as she put it in her post here). God, I hate this stupid sense of ownership that scanlation groups have. I want to read the rest of the damned series, I don't give a crap who does it! Especially when the original group even does an update post with a title that claims they are posting the new chapter but say "just joking!" in the post itself. Thanks for fucking with the people who want the next chapter released already.

In conclusion, Vices and Devices sucks. Not as badly as some other groups, but they still suck.

Before I forget (again), Dangerous Pleasure has released the next chapter of "In the Walnut" by Kawai Toko. How I love this manga. It's really only peripherally BL, but I love the heart-tugging aspects and the art (as always). They have a zillion different ways to download the chapter at their site. On a side note, I became very annoyed at Kawai-sensei and her editor while translating the chapter. While doing research on the chapter, I initially searched online for "Paul Clay" because on a book in the background that was how the artist featured in the chapter was spelled. I found NOTHING and started wondering if he was even a real artist. When I searched under the Japanese katakana, I hit the jackpot. Paul KLEE. Hello, not that hard to find out the correct way to spell the name. >_< Translating becomes so much more difficult when the original material is just plain wrong.

It's amazing how cliched romance novels work or don't work. This latest crop I got this week I'm only lukewarm about. I'm going to try reading them again to see if I was missing something the first time around, but I feel somehow let down. At least the art is pretty nice, though.

From mirichan, it looks like Winter Cicada (Fuyu no Semi) from Haru wo Daiteita is going to be animated. Ah...lovely tragic love story. I've been trying to find some kind of official confirmation and failing. So far I found one reference to the OVA on a Japanese blog. *sighs*

Via arisuesei, the main NANA anime cast as announced in Cookie:

なな (Nana): 朴ろみ (Paku Romi)
奈奈 (Nana): KAORI
ヤス (Yasu)：川原慶久 (Yoshihisa Kawahara)
ノブ (Nobu):関智一 (Seki Tomokazu)
シン (Shin):石田彰 (Ishida Akira)
タクミ (Takumi):森川智之 (Morikawa Toshiyuki)
レン (Ren):木内秀信 (Kiuchi Hidenobu)
レイラ (Reira):平野綾 (Hirano Aya)

Paku Romi? My initial reaction was "Huh?" It'll be interesting to hear her as Nana. The others I'm not sure about, except for Seki. That one is too easy to imagine. ^^;

Damn, I feel...accomplished. I made a dent (albeit a small one) in the backlog of comments I haven't replied to. I am also doing laundry. I can't quite believe I'm this awake. And I'm going to get some tasty pancakes!!

In any case, someone recc'd bond(z) at bl_recs, and it made me go dig up my manga. Does anyone know if the other stories in that volume have been scanlated? Namely "Situation" and "Fairy Garden." I really like them, now that I've bothered to actually read them. The last one, "Sakura," is pretty good, but not as good as the others. ^_^ I like them enough that I'd love to translate them if they haven't been already...

Oh yes, before I forget, is there something that allows Windows Media Player to play .m4a music files?