JOURNAL: iserlohn

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  • Anecdotal Evidence 2003-02-22 21:06:28 Before I get into today's story, I would just like to comment that the second ending theme from One Piece is really frelling addictive.

    So anyways, post-con depression has definately set in, as has workload depression and frenetics. I really don't know what I'm doing anymore, both on the daily homework level as well as in my life in general. McGill emailed to say that they were moving me into the non-thesis applications since I couldn't tell them up front what I wanted my research to be on up front. This is fine with me, and if I get in on this, it may be a sign that going onwards really isn't in my future. This kind of thing happens, no reason it shouldn't here as well.

    Otherwise...Armada is NOT due on Monday, so I have tomorrow and Monday to go through Fussell again and try to refresh myself on what should have been a very cool book, but even got dull in the chapter on sex. And this was written by an American, ferchrissakes. Ami-Lit is not supposed to have that dull stiffness to it, but this certainly does, as well as enough worship to start a church of Northrup Frye. For those who don't know who that is, Frye wrote the defining book on analytical literary criticism - he's the one who made it standard to say that Fall = Melancholy, Green = Newness, etc. His book's an interesting read, but after a while enough is enough.

    Also due on Monday is, what else, German grammar. 2 chapters worth, I'll finish the reading after doing this update and do the workbook when I wake up in the morning. I've also got some readings to do, but those can wait a little bit. Due Wednesday is the first AMST segment, and I think I'm doing it right. I sure as hell hope so. If not, there's not much that I can do. I've got some time off before class, perhaps I'll visit Dr. Parks and talk to her for a little bit beforehand.

    It's still hard to believe that I'm only taking four classes this semester...they're just so damn time consuming.

    Anyways, the anecdote and lecture for today....

    I was talking with somebody at Katsucon, and for the life of me, I can't remember who it was (part of me is thinking Ashyukun, but I'm drawing a true blank). That is not the important part, though. The important part is that I was talking with them about music videos and what I was doing, etc. and at one point they said "You're your own worst critic, aren't you?"

    While I replied "yes" and the conversation continued, it's the way that they said it which made me remember this. The way that they said it was bordering between surprise and contempt - sort of like "quit your bitching and get over yourself because nobody will ever care or have sympathy for you, but on the other hand, I can't believe that someone would be that rough on their own work." Interesting, isn't it?

    I *am* my own toughest critic, and according to multiple professors, I'm supposed to be. The idea is that if you are rough on your own work and hold it to unbelievably high standards, then when other people come by (currently other creators and with assignments, professors, and later academic peers, supervisors, and people who are experts in the field who are proud to point out that they know a hell of a lot more than you do) and critique your work and try to knock it down that you can absorb the blows and refute their arguments properly. Otherwise you set yourself up for skewering in an incredibly competitive workplace - as in your job, reputation, and livelihood are on the line in a professional environment if your work can not hold up. By being hard on it yourself you will theoretically producer better quality work to live up to your own expectations.

    So how does this relate to AMV? Those who've talked to me about my work know how little I think of most of it. Crap is one of the nicer terms. I'm ruthless with my own stuff to the point where I'm probably turning people off from it more than what anyone else could say about it or the level of the work itself. People who are at least considered acquaintences know to either take these comments with a grain of salt or do their best to be more vicious than I am...being told that my best video was rescoring someone else's isn't exactly inspiring.

    On the other hand, it would be really nice if more creators took that stance with their work. Instead of "I'm the God of AMV and I R0XX0R", try to be a bit mean with your work. Be hard on your videos, it pays off. You'll find yourself going nuts, but when a breakthrough comes it can be highly rewarding. Just don't get as far as I have. I'm hard pressed to look back at any of my videos and say anything good about them, even if others can without hesitation. Being your own toughest critic makes hearing bad stuff easier, but it's hell when something good comes about.

    Case in point: When anyone overseas complemented me on my German, the only thing in my mind was my crappy exam grades and continuously refuted it, to the point where someone asked me if I was fishing for complements. Of course, he's the same one who saw me a week later and asked if I was alright because of how depressed I seemed. And truth is, I was.

    Speaking of Europe, I scanned more pictures on Friday. I'm working on getting them cropped, colour corrected (if the scanner was sucking), resized, and up on the FTP. Will do the pics from around Katsucon next, and then finish Europe eventually.

    VicBond007 is a fucking assclown when it comes to coding his website. Loading up the main page is forcing IE to close, so it's last minute entry and uploading time. If I have lost this entry he is a dead man. 
  • Katsucon forgotten? 2003-02-19 21:58:51 I don't think I've ever seen so little post-con commentary on this site as I have for this year's Katsucon. Weird.

    Anyhow, on the local front, classes reopen tomorrow, so I get to haul my ass out of bed at 9 and trudge up to Cole for ROTC. They're telling instructors to be lenient with students, but I think the fact that I live on campus is on the roster, so I'm not exactly good for an excuse for ditching. Besides, there's worse places to be going and I'll also be able to finish this roll of film and check my PO box (and drop the katsu pics off for developing).

    I need to stop spending money. Yeah I've got a little coming in from this and that, but otherwise I spent too much at the con and need to make some of it back. Still, getting pictures developed is important enough to me to justify the cost...so was finally getting to see They Might Be Giants in concert, which I picked up tickets for tonight. Never been to 9:30 club so it should be cool.

    Not much else going on around here. Went to the grocery today, have produce and citrus now (had a massive orange/lemon/lime craving, unsurprising with my diet at the con) as well as other things which are nice to have around the house.

    I'm very confused as to where I am homework-wise right now. Part of me wants to put everything for a weekly class on hold and part of me wants to just keep going at it just in case. Fucking bitch Moyer wants the whole week's german homework on Friday which just isn't going to happen. She'll get what I can give her, not getting the assignments until Tuesday and having real work to do before them. Which reminds me, I've only got a week left on my American Studies intro...fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

    OK, back to the Armada. 
  • Con Reports: Katsucon 9 and Katsucon 9.1 2003-02-17 18:07:12 Events first, opinions and notes later...

    Thursday:
    ------------------
    Vic, Rob, and SSG got here at around 7ish. We ordered pizza, hooked up his computer, watched Coupling, some Strongbad emails, and Earth Defense Family. Jeff (Gambitt) showed up around 9:45. More Coupling, Nate Gone Wild (VicBond has the tape and is lying if he says that he doesn't), We stayed up, planned directions, looked at the DVD from Newtype Japan's March issue (Evangelion remastered), and did other things to fill the time until about 2:30.

    Friday:
    ----------------
    So we got up after not nearly enough sleep and went to Plato's for breakfast. Had some waffles which were pretty good and a too-big bowl of homefries as well as some crappy tea (Why is it that nowhere short of a fancy coffeehouse has decent tea?). After a brief run to an ATM and Wawa for last minute supplies, we hit the road and after only getting lost at the last minute (and quickly correcting ourselves), we arrived at the con. Check-in went quickly, as did getting badges (although reg was slow as hell, but the advantage to getting a special badge is that reg is not an issue), got my press badge, and hit the con. Most of the time was just spent hanging around, the only events I really went to were the Opening Ceremonies (yay for press badges), which are always a balancing act between fun and annoyingly long when the american guests don't understand that we don't care about their speeches or giggling wives. Also picked up a Bandai 1/55 scale VF-1S in the dealer room.

    The AMV contest...I don't think that I can really comment on this fairly, as I've only seen about 25 of the 35 videos, and that missing segment is effectively the whole of the dramatic category. Yes folks, they put the comedy vids first (thank goodness), then action, and so o. While last year's contest seemed to just be mediocrity, this year's round felt incredibly retro - "this would've beena cool vid about 5 years ago".

    The AMV panel...I have never wanted to kill my fellow panelists before, but there has to be a first time for everything. Nate showed up plastered and brought everyone drunk and even remotely AMV related that he could find with him up to the front...which meant that they were being loud and obnoxious and socializing, etc. and leaving the three of us (Me, Vic, alan) who were trying to be useful in a very nasty position, namely that we were being drowned out by everyone else. CDs were given out, DVDs were sold, and the tip jar made $6.50, well below the target goal of $15 (which would have been donated to the org to help with the donut). Besides the forces within being against us, the AMV workshop/panel was scheduled opposite the Duel Jewel concert, so attendence was sparse. I also was a bit too mean towards a fanboy, even if he does annoy the crap out of us...on the other hand, he left all the AMV people alone after the panel, so maybe it was for the better.

    After the workshop, hanging out went down. Had a Warsteiner right after I got back up to the room, a flaming poof an hour later, and then a mike's hard lemonade at Anime 54. Despite pacing myself, it still hit noticably.

    Speaking of Anime 54, it was my first real con party. Fun time, stuck mostly to dealing with people I knew, although Chad Dietrichs was a very fun host, and was great during the great hentai giveaway, and even got a certain AMV contest ex-coordinator to cheer as loudly as everyone else when they gave out the live action DVD of La Blue Girl.

    Oh, and somewhere in the midst of all this, Ashyukun showed us Afro-Ken. AK rocks.

    Saturday:
    -------------------------
    Woke up hung over. Was not a fun person to deal with until after we had the AMV brunch. Still felt drunk and out of it despite sleeping for a few hours (Well, OK, 4, but I hadn't had a drink in 7...) and just felt generically crappy. Met another AMV creator at the rescreening, seemed like a nice guy, had sent in a pair of GTO vids. I left after the comedy vids to walk around, talk to Nik at the Tsunami table, and just do generic...stuff.

    The AMV brunch went OK, but would've been nice with more people...maybe. The attendees were me, Fungie 1/2, Ashyukun, Rob, SSG, Vic, Senta, and Waldo. The discussion was good, the food was good enough for the price, although I wanted a milkshake and couldn't get one because it was too early. IIRC they were around $5, for fans of Pulp Fiction (or was it more than that...can't remember). Vic really did get swamped by fangirls wanting to buy his DVD, which was entertaining enough. While it's a disappointment that some of the other folks didn't come, I don't know if things would have been better with them there. The number was still small enough that everyone could take part in conversation if they wanted to.

    After brunch/lunch was Mr. Inoue's autograph time (yay, got my Blue Gender LD signed!) and panel. Great information at the panel, got a burning question of mine answered (the process behind R20). Kevin Lillard was there for a little bit of it, his report's up on fansview. People were filing in for the AMV awards during half of it, and some of them were quite disrespectful, having conversations at normal voices while Mr. Inoue was trying to answer questions.

    The AMV awards were a bit nerve wracking, and I'm not sure why. I doubted that I'd win anything, and thought that I had the contest pretty well pegged for winners (and I did!). The big surprises were Gendo, Son of God taking Comedy (I thought it would be Senta's AMO vid), and Ashyukun's taking of Action for his very cool Dark Metropolis vid. No surprises about Vic and Hsien, but were there for anyone? Hell, I was glad enough to see that people weren't out to lynch me for the utterly shit video that I made...

    After the AMV awards, we did something or another. I can't really remember. I think that this is when we watched the second DDR project. Besides being an incredibly poor made DVD (Expert DV, my ass, nobody should give these people money or trust one of Pat's recommendations again), the project itself just seemed....boring.

    The big event for Saturday night was the cosplay. While this year was another great year for the cosplay, it lacked something that last year's did, although I can't say what. The Pac-Man sketch was great, as were the Dueling Gundam Fiddles and FSS pieces. Halftime was cool, but lacked the great tag-line (Rob somebody!) of the prior year. Then again Pocky was battling a respiratory ailment of some sort, so the pressure was on everyone else to keep the show up. They rose to the occasion splendidly, and delivered a hillarious show. The cosplay awards were kept short and sweet (and full of puppet love).

    After the Cosplay...

    I really can't remember too well, which is sad because I stayed sober the whole time. I wasn't able to get a ticket for Anime54 Saturday, and just kinda bummed around. I remember going with Gambitt and Clark to the preview screening of Puchi Puri Yuushi 20 (still unaired in Japan as of this writing) and being amazed by the huge line to get into the room for Takeshi's Castle, which I unfortunately didn't get to see for its last run at Katsucon. Also watched the season finale of Coupling when it aired since nothing else was going on...at least nothing else involving me. Hung out more in the hotel, talked to Taka for a while, went to bed kinda early and slept.

    Sunday:
    -------------------
    Got up around 10, and with the weather being how it was, nobody was sure if we would be leaving or not. I wanted to stay for closing ceremonies and had been waffling around on whether to stay at the hotel or not. By the time closing ceremonies finished, it was clear that getting home would be virtually impossible, and Katsucon 9.1 had been announced.


    Katsucon 9.1 report:

    Sunday:
    -----------------
    Following closing ceremonies, I got some dinner (hooray for knowing staff in the green room) and hung out for a bit (did a lot of that...). At around 8, Vic showed up at the room announcing that, if we could get everything together in time and agreed to help strike the video room, that we could run The Weakest Link afterwards. Despite a number of technical snafus, including the necessity of me having to go clear our prize with the con chair and Waldo and Gambitt writing every question from the computer down by hand, we were ready to go after Invader Zim. Unfortunately, I had wanted to see the unaired Zim episodes and didn't get to since we were trying to find a printer, as well as write an additional 20-30 questions to add to the ones we recycled from AnimeUSA.

    So how did it go? The crowd was small, but hostile, and despite everyone's desires to get home and rest, they loved it. TWL is most likely a sure thing for next year's Katsucon.

    After the show, there was more wandering around, a game of DDR at 3am, and sleeping in the adjoining hotel room which we had given up that morning but which housekeeping hadn't gone through, meaning that we could still use it without getting caught (we had adjoining rooms, got rid of one officially).

    Monday:
    -----------
    Hung out in con ops, watched AMVs with the Tidewater crowd, got a ride home at 3:30PM. Vic, Rob, SSG, Gambitt, Nightowl, and alan are still at the hotel. It is now 7PM and I'm totally wiped out and a day behind in all my work, which was not part of the plan. Classes were cancelled for today, though, and are already for tomorrow.

    Overall, the con rocked on the events side. The staffers were very cool with us and extremely helpful at all times, even during the weather, with the running of 9.1 events. The hotel was a typical hotel, not being great or otherwise. Socially, though...

    I had been making comparisons of my social issues before the con with the first Battle of the Somme in WW1 with people on AIM. This turned out to not be a proper analogy, as the people in the Somme had no idea of what was going to hit them - after seven days of firing artillery into the German line, they were sure that it would be an easy time taking the trenches instead of what really happened - 60,000 men getting mowed down by machine gun fire. Besides the fact that they were more hopeful than I was, they were just plain wrong. I expected to go into Katsucon feeling worse about social and "community" things than before, and I was damn right. It feels like I did more gofering work for people than carrying on actual conversation with them. That is, of course, when I could actually get in on the conversation. For the uninitiated, this is where I was at Katsucon 7 with the #animedvd crowd. It's nowhere pleasant, and in that case ended with me leaving them to little fanfare and nobody caring other than the people I saw IRL regularly. I can easily see that happening here as well. I rarely have time for editing anymore, and when I do it's just not as much fun as it used to be, and let's not get into cons and dealing with people.

    What the fuck is wrong with me? 
  • You fucking suck 2003-02-10 22:42:06 My readership has dropped. I'm sorry that I live such a boring life that my posts aren't worth reading anymore. I'm sorry that I have 500 pages of reading to do every week now, in addition to at least 2 hours of German homework for each session of class. It sucks, OK? What happened to my easy semester?

    I'll tell you actually, my net addiction. I need to unplug the computer from being online when I'm working or get the hell out of the room or SOMETHING. I mean, I should be working on a paper right now...fuck, now I'm guilt tripping myself. I hate you mother for teaching me this technique.

    619 kicked my ass hard tonight. I fucked up on every question I was asked, and contributed nothing to the session. What the hell made me think that I could make it in this class, let alone graduate school? Halfway through class I started thinking about my chef's knife...thank goodness for the con this weekend.

    Speaking of the con...if I'm not doing damn good mentally by Thursday night, bad shit's gonna go down. Corbo and that crowd are coming, and while I'm not anti-alcohol anymore, the thought of a group of bingers around, as well as the rest of the crowd from our room joining in...saying fish out of water would be a bad pun. While I was hoping not to, it's starting to look like I'll be sitting around reading at night at the con now...I'm definately bringing my book with me, if I can motivate myself to look at it. I need to finish this paper, too, but I'm just writing bullshit. It's true bullshit, but it's not really worthy work. I just don't want to tell this professor details of my life. Nevermind that I'm posting them here...maybe I should just footnote the paper (fuck american studies and their fucking in-text parathentical citations that are fucking impossible to read around) and tell her that if she wants details to read this. If nothing else she won't be able to get me for plagiarism.

    I've only got 6800 hits. Where the fuck did everyone from summer go? I could've sworn that I already hit this level of readership...am I *losing* counts now?

    Anyways, back to "why I'm suchandsuchalevel masculine and suchandsuchalevel feminine". 
  • Ugh... 2003-02-09 14:23:41 Sorry for not posting much lately. I may only be taking 12 credits, but the workload is kicking my ass all over the place. This may be harder than I thought it was going to be, but that's OK. I shall prevail and all that.

    Woke up this morning feeling like crap. Now just feeling a bit under the weather. I don't have a massive stomachache or a nasty cough or anything, I just feel weak and really tired. Like I don't want to move or start this next 375 page book tired. I haven't even really eaten today and I'm not even hungry, which is usually an "I'm sick" sign. Ah well, better to be feeling like crap now than on Thursday night.

    What's Thursday night? KATSUCON PRE-PARTY! w00t!!

    Although I'm getting angsty about my video, I really am looking forward to this weekend. Good stuff should be happening, provided that I can get all my work done in advance so that I'm only reading on the halls early Friday morning before the masses of friends and cool people show up and there's things to do other than watch blah anime (I don't think I've seen a worse video schedule in ages). The live events schedule still isn't up, so who knows when the panel is.

    I'm also still working on a name for my CD collection. I want it to sound cool, and a few names are bouncing around in my head (perhaps they caused this morning's headache), so it'll be interesting to see what I decide on Thursday afternoon when I'm running out of time and in need of something to write that doesn't involve inhaling too many sharpie fumes. I've got 50 CDs to give away, so make sure you take one if you're at the con.

    I'm tired, but I think I'm going to go to TAS anyways. We're starting new stuff tonight, and even if I've seen most if it, it'll get me out of the house for a few hours and I can see the beginning of Ai Yori Aoshi, the only thing I'm interested in on tonight's schedule that I haven't seen before (I'm supplying Detective Conan and Azumanga Daioh, and I hate fanservice so I could care less about Happy Lesson). I don't think I'm going to go to dinner afterwards, either. I'm probably going to be eating out three to five times next weekend (Thursday night, Friday breakfast, perhaps a meal on Saturday, and probably after-TAS on Sunday). OK, four so far...

    I've slacked a lot today, too. I wanted to start my German essay that's due on Wednesday, and have just had no energy. I did some of my American Studies paper (2.3 pages out of 5) and some prep work for the AMV panel at Katsucon, but that's about it. I'm going to take my next book for 619 to TAS with me, and if I feel like going out afterwards I'll read it during Happy Lesson, if not I'll come home and read it. The goal is to do everything up to skimming tonight, skim tomorrow, and read Tu, We, and Th. We'll see what happens, I may need to add Fr. and Mo. afternoon as well.

    This week's Book: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell.

    Anyhow, time to go and snack on something so that I have the energy to walk to the library. And I still owe someone an AMV review... 
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