Koshien(ivy')s Journal est.2001 - moved from ElJay

Hyper-huge-mega-declutter.  Half of the clothes in the house have been washed/dried and given away, a quarter washed and put in the cabinet and the other quarter washed/dried and put away for occasionals and hot/super cold days.

I found some amazing old pirated Japanese DVDs that I forgot I owned.  Back in the day it was nigh on impossible to work out what you wanted from websites even though Mandrake Root guys emailed in English - it was a very slow process and dropping £100 on a preorder DVD/VHS that might be crap was wayyyy too risky for me.  So I used to buy what were described as "used" Japanese DVDs from e-bay which were official releases (so I thought at the time - the whole "officially released shrink-wrapped item" spiel seemed legit).  I played them to death, but with the expansion of the internet and actual Japanese websites with pictures and serial numbers to check - I realised I had been duped and in time bought real copies of nearly all of the pirate ones that I still enjoy now.  The quality was pretty horrendous, but it got me dropping hell of a lot more than £100 at a time on Japanese music *___*.

One of my friends is asking me to go back on to tumblr because they miss my posts and the comics blog.  Well, I feel much better being away from tumblr actually.  I got fed up curating the comic blog because the release lists are easily available now, there are good legal download sites and I got fed up of having endless requests for illegal download site addresses in my inbox.  Hilarious when so many fanart makers get butthurt that I won't send them other artists work for free!  I've mailed spare comics to people, got them sent previews/free comic book day things, scanned a few pages etc but when people ask me for an entire run of a character from 1965 until today (literally thousands of pages) l think it's taking the piss.  I don't even have that much stuff!  Paid or not, comic writers are rarely rich people (I know I am related to one who has been drawing for a weekly UK comic for 8 years and still can't afford a mortgage).  Samples and a few downloads to work out what you like is okay, but having no intention of ever buying and wanting everything, nope not going to enable you there buddy.

Personally though, I don't engage in fandom, I don't post art or create anything to share (apart from an odd post now and then) so apart from that it's politics, mostly US politics that I don't feel like participating in or have enough reliable information to base an opinion on.  I do my SJ stuff in RL the way it suits me which is practical stuff, not reposting on a website which is basically singing to the choir.  Plus a fair amount of stuff from my friends and followers are opinions or political stances that I do not agree with.  Seriously, people who I have known for years would freak the fuck out if they knew some of my ethical stances and opinions even if we agree on 90% of issues, the other 10% that I hold dear would probably be unforgivable.  The amount of shit I got for the panda post was an eye-opener to say the least!

Bought this amongst other books to go on the hospital library trolley today.

Not EVERYONE wants a bloody romance/spy novel, sometimes they just want to look at some good art and fantasy stuff.  

The new DC Rebirth titles so far are brilliant.  A bit of humour, Batman has a new sidekick who he treats as an equal, lighter storylines with real adventure.

Two thumbs up!

I have a break next week so I'm going to Carol's place next week.  I love visiting her and seeing what new book illustration she is working on.  Apparently she is putting together a series of pieces which link between her old work for children's books and her newer work for adult books.

Apparently the best thing to not say to an artist is to say "Don't you have enough pens/pencils/paints" because the answer will be a resounding NO, even if they have a literal wall-rack full of pencils, boxes of pens all over the place and so many pots of ink that they take up at least half of the food cupboard space.

Right ho, I have been educated.

I bought more books today. Hooray for charity shop 50p sales!

Ready for the start of school tomorrow.

I have a day off, well for a couple of hours anyhow.  Hope it all goes okay.


Found this for sale on CD Japan, I had the 1987 tape demo from this Japanese band a long time ago and wondered if they were still going.  Apparently YES! This CD was only released last week! after a huge break.  I am going to probably save up for it when I can ^__^  In short, they are some of the very earliest kind of visual kei.  Their demo can be found here

while here is a vid of their song "Lorelei".



I got into VK originally through the goth and rock scene, so it's great to know the original music is still rolling nicely, Morrie, Buck-Tick, Rolly and D'erlanger...(okay none really are VK anymore but they all came through the scene back in the day) are still doing good so that's cool.  I don't know what has happened to most VK, everything started to go very much unlikable for me as soon as Mana decided he wanted to put thrash-metal drumming (super fast and aggressive) into pretty music, then Kamijo followed....and then the move to do screaming vocals in EVERYTHING, no I do not blame the Nagoya scene...screaming was always pretty tasteful like Kuroyume, 9goats etc.  So in short it's harder to find anything I like anymore, although D (Hiroki is fantastic) is still old-schooly and a couple of newer bands are promising, strangely enough, several oshare scene bands produce music that is much closer to the old kote-kei music than a lot of the modern VK which is now just sounding like western metal with Japanese lyrics. Do not want.


They are back, after a break because their awesome lead singer was kicking the shit out of and defeating cancer.  I adore them.  Steam-punk with extra punk.  Clever lyrics, lots of fun and amazingly fun music. Listen here Love the fact that they are proud feminists too!


Love this lady, Beatrice (Coeur de Pirate) sings in both French and English so you can choose which you prefer.  I am not a huge person for lyrics, but her words really touch me which is very rare. Love her aesthetics, just love love love.

Just that,

finals due 1st October

I'm going into town to negotiate a new mobile phone contract.

LOL

Just seen the entire program for Penzance Literary Festival.  It gets bigger every year! So many writers workshops going at the same time my dear torment2romance is writing again!

EVENTS SCHEDULE FOR PZ LITFEST

I only received the booklet because I have forgotten to renew my Morrab Library membership.