Friday 7 January 2005

Pic of the day: In this picture from the anime DearS however, I have no idea what the attire of the two alien girls is called. "Pantsu" probably... It is a sad fact that although I can discourse fluently on various meta-cosmological hypotheses, there are clothes (especially women's) for which I don't know the English name. (Occasionally not even the Norwegian name...)

Mixed bag

It is good to be back on the DSL. And not only good for me. There was quite some pent-up demand for fansubbed Pita Ten anime. Pita Ten needs to be shared, because it is the essence of happy goodness juice. (As opposed to the angsty black-and-white manga on which it is supposedly based. Go figure.) I have the Hikari no Kiseki translation up to episode 18. In retrospect I guess I should also have grabbed the next three episodes when they were new, because the series is poorly supported on BitTorrent.

Remember, if you download fansubbed anime, it is considered common decency to give something back to the creators of the series. You could buy the dubbed English version when it becomes available (at which time the fansub will no longer be in circulation). Barring that, you can buy the manga (comics), related music CDs and other related products. For Pita Ten I have the music and as much of the manga as is available on Amazon.com. I don't distribute those, of course. Sharing of fansub is a purely philanthropic cultural exchange project, making Japanese anime available to the vast majority of Westerners who don't understand Japanese. It is not intendes as a free replacement for buying or renting movies - or so I've been told. ^_^*

I wonder if Japanese have fansubbed American cartoons? Some of them are probably worth seeing, although I cannot think of any offhand...

***

A strange thing happened to one of my Sim families. Well, family may be too strong a word. Nathaniel Vrimoen, who lost all his memories and everyone lost their memories of him (long story, basically this comes from a bug before the patch), is now living with his twin sister (although they don't know that they are siblings). Ironically they get along a lot better than they did when they were kids and teens. Anyway, I sent the sister off to buy groceries in one of the shop. She did that, and grilled sausages and talked with people. She came home, and some weird glitch happened. The groceries are gone, and she has no memories of the trip, although the people she talked to have their relationship adjusted accordingly. Weird. I tried again, and the money was gone but the groceries did not appear. Perhaps it is an after-effect of the weirdness that happened to her brother. Or perhaps the move-in action does not entirely insert a person into the family the way marriage and birth does? Further study is required!

In related news, Nathaniel had the foresight to buy a double bed before his sister moved in. (He is still sleeping in the smaller bed in the corner, just so you know.) The first morning Norma woke up in the new bed, she had a new wish that I don't think I have seen before. It was a picture of a large bed and the text read "Woohoo in bed". Normally there is a picture of the person your Sim is in love with and the text "Woohoo with [person]". The idea that a double bed in itself can generate a desire for Woohoo (formerly called "play in bed") is a novel one. Is this really what we want to convey to the next generation?

On the other hand, the Sims cannot "play in bed" alone, unlike certain others. Well, they can actually jump on the beds, which is strongly discouraged by Your Mother, but not prohibited by holy scripture. Nor can they play in the shower, as I understand the Americans are wont to do. So it is isn't all bad.