So....  About two weeks ago I submitted panel ideas for Anime Usa.  I submitted three ideas, Lolita for the Uninitiated, Pure Evil (a panel about anime's greatest villains), and A Geezer's Tale: 11 Years of Con Hopping Glory.  I found out last Sunday the Lolita panel was accept, but when I checked me email a little bit ago it turns out that Pure Evil was accepted and the geezer's panel was accepted too.  Man, three panels...  I don't think I've done that many since Shoujoucon 2000 (I think I was on three back then), but I think I can do it.  Heck!  I'm going to have to, aren't I.

But I know a certain best friend who needs to be on at least two of these panels with me.  A certain best friend who lives in Oakland...  A best friend who has been with me for most of my con hopping adventures....  A buddy who helped me flush fig Newtons down the toliet!  A best friend who always, ALWAYS wanted to do a geezers panel...  HINT, HINT!  And before you ask Anime Usa is November 20th-22nd, so start getting that PTO together now!

But all my hinting aside, man, I have a lot of work to do.  I mean the Lolita panel is just a rehash of last year's panel, so that won't be so bad; I may have to try to resurrect Teveru to pull the information from that panel off of her.  But Pure Evil...  Man I know who I think are excellent villains, but I will need to do a little research.  Not to mention I'll have to get clips of the villains performing their dastardly deeds.  The geezer panel is pretty straightforward; its basically going to be con stories for a rainy day.  God knows I've got a lot of them.  Like when I was at Otakon 98 and met the creator of Macross on an elevator.  And accidently screamed at the poor man.  The night of I and J'aime's first cosplay win, in fact that entire AMA trip was kinda crazy.

Well anyway, there's a lot of preparation that will need to be done; thankfully Anime Usa is a little over four months away.  Everything should be set up and ready to go by then.  I can't wait!

I had a lot of fun today.  The barbeque over Maureen's house was good and I am happy she invited me over.  While I didn't get a chance to go to the fireworks, I did get to see some fireworks.  Pennypack Park near where Maureen lives had a fireworks display which was really nice.  So it was a good holiday.

Before I go to bed, I must remind you that while the holiday is over, fireworks will now be going on mega sale at your local retailer.   So please watch this video (from New York and the Consumer Product Safety Commission) about firework safety and hazards (1:22 is my favorite part of this video) and see what not to do (i.e. leaning over a lit explosive).

"Be Careful With Fireworks"

I'm an idiot, but that's ok.

All that whining I did to  myself (and on Facebook) about how I didn't feel like going to math class.  I get down to school and find out that school is closed today and there are no evening classes.  Sigh that was a waste of time.  Ugh, it's been yet another really sucky day.

But at least I wasn't the only one.  As I was waiting for my ride home, one of the ladies in my math class walked past me on her way to class, and I told her school was closed; she didn't know either.  So I'm not a total idiot at least.

Yeah as you can see I got those damn Neon Genesis Dvd's this week and thus is why I named my new computer Melchior.  In Neon Gen Melchior was part of the 3 bio-super computer system called the Magi for those of you who don't know or remember.  And it's the part of Ritsuko's mother's personality who was the scientist.  Pretty cool (and an anime fangirl kinda way), huh?  However, you can call Melchior by his full name or you can call him Mach-1 (Melchior was the 1st one).

I still have a lot of work to do on this computer.  I have to reinstall Office 2007 (I got a really good version of it from school).  Reinstall my MP3 player program, Winamp, the weather.com thing (Although I thought Vista came with its own weather thing?), Audacity (For the show on Monday)...  Then there's the rebuilding of my links...  That's going to take a few days to do.  I had an assload of links.  Ugh, setting all that back up is going to be ugly.

And of course I lost a lot of files that couldn't be transfered, like my Ebichu The Housekeeping Hampster episodes and three years worth of podcasts (they were all in ogg format and my mp3 player didn't support ogg; but mostly everything else I managed to squeeze onto my computer or forward it to myself in email messages.

Oh well let me go to bed now...  It's been a long and horrendous week.  I am going to spend tomorrow and Sunday getting so much deserved rest.  Well that and trying to set Melchior up.

I swear to God I can't stand my computer.  From the 1st day I got this hunk of crap, it's been nothing but one problem after another.  Now it's not keeping a charge and even better is I have my final paper due this week for computer class!  I'm so pissed and I'm mostly pissed cause I can't run out and buy a new computer (and I really need one right now).  School has this stupid refund policy where basically if you got more money then you needed for school you have to request a refund and it has to be for something necessary (I think having online classes and no computer would constitute as a necessity.)  But I missed the deadline of June 1st (Which I had no idea there was a deadline or that you had to request YOUR money from them!)... 

GRRRRRRRR!  This is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  They didn't even get the money until after June 15th, so how are you going to say you have until June 1st to request money you don't know you are going to have?!  What the fuck!?

Well anyway, I can't rant too long cause I need to figure out how to keep this stupid computer charged until I can get a new one.  I'm going to probably end up having to do all my homework assignments at school cause I don't know if I can get this crappy computer to power up for more then two seconds.  Ugh... Being broke sucks!

Observe why!

On Sunday Anime Next did a showing of Neon Genesis.  I love watching that anime, especially when I'm feeling depressed and dejected, something I've been feeling a lot lately (and it didn't help that Kellie's ashes arrived today).  However, while I was at the convention I decided that I wanted to look for the Neon Gen movies, but no one had them.  Then I said I'd just get the shows and then try to find the movies later.  Well they wanted like $75 bucks for the series and I'm like hell no!  So I said I would check my secret sources and see if I could find either the series for cheap or the movies for cheap.  Thankfully, one of my secret sources did have both the movies and the shows for a very reasonable price, so I ended up buying it.  Ahh the classics...  Ooh and I see they have the entire Utena series too.  Maybe in a little while I'll nab those too, then all I'll need is to collect all 200 episodes of Sailor Moon.  And my 90's anime collection will be complete.

Oh by the way, when I was at the con this weekend I saw someone had all three Sailor Moon movies.  And the set was going for $100 dollars!  Secret source here I come.  Hopefully you won't disappoint me.

So I kept my vow to myself and went to Anime Next for the first time.  Pretty much it was just ok, but it wasn't super terrible.  I mean Friday was kinda dead until I met up with Lisa, Saturday was a bit better cause I went and did a few things, and Sunday was ok.  I think I just caught time in an off year, which happens.  Especially when you move to a new location and are just feeling your way around. 

Oh and speaking of the locale, the con was split between three different locations; the expo center (Where main events, registration, and the dealers room were), the Doubletree hotel (where panels, workshops, artist alley, and the video game rooms were), and some training center a little ways down the road (Where table games and videos were).  Now when I first saw it was split like that I got flashbacks of that Crapsucon a few years back that was split between the two hotels and how much of a fiasco and a half that was.  What was that Zero Puntuation said once, "Its a bad idea and time has not sweetened it".  Yeah pretty much...  Basically, its only a good idea if everything is close, which the videos were about a 5 min. walk, or 10-15 mins if you were coming from the expo center.  And also if the weather is a team player, which it wasn't this weekend.

Its been rainning a lot here and then its been kinda cool (more like early spring weather as opposed to late spring early summer.  Not that I'm complaining or anything, I hope it stays this way!).  And both Friday night and Saturday it rained (and really heavily), so while I wasn't there for events Friday evening I know people didn't really go across to see things.  But you know what, I did kinda like that a lot of people didn't take the time to go over to the video rooms, cause it cut down on people cracking stupid jokes while you try to watch something seriously.  Well except for that Godzilla movie, but that needed some jokes.

I missed the cosplay (because I had to leave early).  The Lolita event, which is supposed to be one of the best convention Lolita events in the country was cancelled, which really blew, but some really nice ladies did have a really small and fun Lolita event, so it wasn't so bad.  Ah well, I think I want to give Anime Next a try again next year.  Actually there are a few cons I would like to go to next year because I think after that I'll be retiring from cons (I have a wedding to pay, plan, and prepare for and after that I'll be a wife and mother.  How'd that song go again?  No more shopping sprees!  No more VIP's!).

However next up on the 09 con roster is Anime Usa.  Yeah, I have officially cancelled Otakon this year.  1 I can't afford it and 2 it pissed me off last year so this will be another one of my sitting it out year's (much like I did in 2001 and 2003).  Depending on my money situation, I may try to hit New York Anime Fest for a day and/ or Zenkaikon (since its local).  But this year my con hopping roster is very limited.

Is anyone here going to Anime Next this weekend?

I'm determined to go especially since this will be my only summer con (I'm trying to get all my homework assignments in before tomorrow afternoon so I can go and enjoy the weekend without having to worry). 

So is anyone I know going?

I was looking around at On-Demand, you know seeing what was doing (and checking my horoscope for the week) when I looked and saw there was no longer an Anime Network selection!

Huh?!  I know the Anime Select option turned into (gag me) the Funimation Channel or whatever its called, but the Anime Network (which was ADV's thing) was gone!  Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but the anime industry is starting to fold like an origami penguin.  People, for whatever reasons, aren't buying as much anime as they were.  I had no idea any of this was going on until recently when I was reading Play Magazine any they said something about the anime industry folding. That kinda blew my socks off when I read that.  Then J'aime told me when she was at Fanime some panel she was at said pretty much ADV is a DVD away from folding (I guess the 2000th re-re-re-re-release of Neon Genesis Evangelion couldn't save them after all).  And we all remember the ugliness of Geneon folding away a few years back...

Ah well...  I can't say I feel particularly sorry for the anime industry cause I don't.  They caused their own demise in my opinion because they were shoveling all this cash in Japan's face to bring out whatever and it was mostly tripe and then the industry brought the tripe back here and shoveled it to those kids who would pretty much watch anything and declare themselves anime fans.  Sigh...  I'm sorry but one, I'm not spending $30 a dvd on tripe and 2 if you had been more decerning about what you were bringing out, Japan wouldn't have felt this need to create whatever tripe they were producing, and you all wouldn't be in the precarious predicament you're in right now.

Plus that and that stupid reasoning, "Oh well if you support fansubs, then you're just supporting bootlegging and animation studios in Japan will fail and then they'll be no more anime ever!"  You know what?!  Statements like that piss me off so much because I was on the ground floor of anime.  I remember when my brother would bring home blood raw 90th generation copies of anime on VHS tapes from comic book conventions.  I remember the tender days in the mid-90's of ordering tapes from fansub distributors.  Ah the salad years...  So for the anime industry to sit up there and blow smoke up people's ass by saying, "If you don't support us, then you'll never have your precious anime ever!" has and always will be a heaping steamy load of bullshit!  There was anime before there was an industry and they'll continue to be anime after Funimation releases its final dvd.

And you know what that would be a lot better.  Then Japan can go back to making unusual and unique shows and anime fandom will return to the true anime fans.  Not these sorry ass poser kids who only watch things that come on regular television.  That's enough of my ranting...  I'm not feeling too good today and I need to lay down.