There it is, Plain as Daylight

You’ll probably be surprised to see this here, since it is generally more related to the things I post at Manga Bookshelf. The truth is, though, it’s a bit too ranty for a post there nowadays, and it’s waaaay too long for a tweet. :) So here we go.

I keep hearing people say that Twilight fans are only Twilight fans, and that there is no basis for the hope that Yen Press’ upcoming graphic novel adaptation might bring a new demographic of readers to comics. And all I can think is, wow, I guess none of these people were ever… girls.

Sure, there may be readers who only read Twilight and aren’t into books in general. But there are a whole lot who are. Teen girls read. Teen girls read a lot. Continue Reading »

Hey all, whoever is left reading this thing. I’ve had a long day and it seems like the time to reinstate this space as a personal blog–the thing it started out as in the first place.

After a day like today I realize what I really miss in my life is old friends. This is not in any way a reflection on new friends; seriously, I love you all. What I miss, though, is that level of familiarity and mutual history that makes all explanation unnecessary. You know what I mean. As Ani Difranco once said, “There’s nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.” There’s a level of comfort to be found in people who know you–all your mistakes, fears, triumphs, dreams–and have known you so long they almost know you better than you know yourself. Continue Reading »

Just a couple of things for today. First the good news, PopCultureShock is having a Naruto giveaway, mainly to help jump-start our new discussion boards over there. Here’s the announcement from Manga Recon with links to the PCS announcement and the boards. It’s always tough getting new forums up and running, so I hope some of you will go join in!

Then for the bad… AmazonFail. Wow. Having just signed up this blog as an Amazon Associate maybe three days ago, I was pretty dismayed to discover that I was inadvertently promoting a corporation that would do something like this. For the three people left on the internet who don’t know, Amazon has stripped its sales rankings from what appears to be mainly LGBT-themed books, labeling them as “adult” content, despite the fact that many of the books contained little to no sexual content at all, and plenty of books with explicit (heterosexual) content remain ranked. What this means is that these unranked books do not come up through their search engine, and in fact, if you do an Amazon search for “homosexuality” now, most of what comes up are books on how to “cure” or prevent it. Amazon claims this was a “glitch,” despite the fact that people were initially told that this was new official policy.

Obviously this is disgusting and if they don’t turn this policy around very soon I’m going to remove every link to Amazon from this blog, because there is no way I’m going to support that. Fortunately, the entire internet is outraged, which may hopefully effect change. Over at AnimeVice, Gia has a post about how/if this affects the manga industry (ETA: check out Kuriousity’s as well). I also liked Danielle Leigh’s message to her students, EREC’s response to Information Week’s statement, “…it’s premature to blame Amazon” (thanks, gloss), and this article from Jezebel. ETA: Also, this is pretty interesting, and makes me think I’ll be switching away from being an Associate really soon. Sad.

For now I’ll say, don’t click those Amazon links. Hopefully I won’t need to say it for long.

I really should send myself notes during the day. I swear I thought of four or five things over the course of the day that I wanted to blog about, but I can’t remember a single one of them.

Human relations have been strained for me the last couple of weeks, and if I believed in things like astrology, I’d be looking for some kind of celestial reasoning for it all. I’ve managed to offend people at nearly every turn, and I’m only grateful to those who have had the kindness to allow me to learn and grow from the experience instead of just walking away. I’ll be glad when this tension eases, however, and I’m once again able to interact easily and peacefully with my fellow humans. Maybe I just need a really good nap.

Volume thirteen of xxxHolic was released yesterday, and I shockingly forgot to pick up a copy then. I finally managed this on the way home from work today, and I’ve had a really enjoyable evening with it. Expect coherent thoughts sometime in the next few days, when I can work my way past undignified squee. I also picked up volume 22 of Fruits Basket while I was there, since I’d intended to purchase it last week, so I have that to look forward to as well.

Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow with all those ideas that fled from me today. See you then!