I’m going back to old habits, trying to gather momentum, and so far so good, as the guy said, walking the plank…
It’s too wet to go into the garden this morning. We’ve kept the path bare earth and this has a certain drawback. We can’t afford the gravel or the concrete to do flagstones yet. So it can be a bit of a bog here and there. I had better go out and toss some fishfood, however, before our spoiled fish go walkabout trying to find some. As if they haven’t gotten fat on the worms and algae native to their pond. They’ve doubled in length and tripled in girth, I swear to you—at least Kenpachi has. He’s a horse.
Thus far the fish tank is staying in good balance, and the dreaded caulerpa weed is in retreat.
We need to go to Lowe’s and get a treatment for the front lawn, which has got a fungus, but, y’ know, writing comes first.
Jane’s working on her third cover for her own books. I have mine ready to go…except a Rusalka cover, which I think she might do after this one, or maybe not: she’s on a roll with the Groundties set covers and might just continue into the new book. You know (or not) that she’s done a prequel, which has never been published. Then…I’ve got to get Chernevog into shape: I think it was Philospher asked was I thinking of Chernebog (Russian myth) and the answer is ‘not unrelated.’
I’d dearly love to get out there and rip up that darn lawn. We don’t like lawn. We’d rather have no-care beds with evergreen trees. But that’s going to have to wait. If I get into that, it means we have to get weedcloth and mulch, etc, etc, and gravel, and all those are not in the current budget. We’re going to make one of those water features I described in the penultimate post, to provide a little oasis in our front yard, along with the roses and maybe an English-type garden in front, who knows? I like hollyhocks and daisies as well as our Japanese themed backyard.
We got OSG back home and through her front door. I hope she woke up enough to get to work today.
I am also contemplating ripping out my lawn, mostly because it takes way too much water in a near-desert environment. But I am eyeing some grass which I see planted along the roads out here, which has the advantage of looking absolutely gorgeous when it’s not mowed. It makes a lovely ripply effect because of how it grows. I think it may be buffalo grass, but am going to take pictures of it to my local garden guy and see if he can confirm it. If it is, then it’s a definite possibility for a low-maintenance, low-water yard. Of course, there is a huge difference in climate between southern California and where you are, so it might not work for you, but there might be an equivalent sort of ground cover that will give you the low-maintenance without having to do the weed cloth, mulch, etc.
It turns out that the pretty ripply grass is creeping red fescue. According to the nursery guy, it’s a very high water, high fertilizer grass, not at all what I am looking for. I am now contemplating pink myoporum, which has the distinct advantages of being low water and staying green year round, but has the distinct disadvantage of not being at all grass-like.
Bunch grass, buffalo grass. It grows south of us, in the Palouse. And in Oklahoma. But it is amazingly fragile. Once prairie is plowed, it’s hard to get it to grow. It’s an endangered species, as far as I know, but if you have a chance to plant it, it would be cool. Even in a low-water environment, the more you can encourage the desert crust and the compatible species, the better. And if that is an option for you, that is really beautiful stuff. I got so mad when a neighbor plowed a native-grass pasture to put in timothy. Arrgh.
There are lots and LOTS of grasses, once you get out of the English-manor-turf-grass-lawn-mowed-by centuries-of-sheep mode, a concept of genteel living that has done irreparable harm to our ecosystem. Buffalo grass, which is not actually a bunch grsss, but very low-growing, needs no mowing and no watering, is a good lawn IF you have the right environment and soil. Some bunch grasses make lovely ornamentals. Here is one interesting site http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07232.html but check with your local Agricultural Extension Agent, and see if there’s a state or local Native Plant Society, and look up xeriscape.
Carolyn, have you considered wood chips for the paths? In our town, the municipal landfill has a program that takes all the yard waste and builders’ trimmings and chips it all up for compost. You can buy raw wood chips, and also the larger bits screened out of the compost. Of course the same things are available commercially. I don’t know how the price compares with gravel, but I really like the surface. Paved walks, pleh!
Requiring replacement frequently, but LOVELY to bare feet, is a path-covering of autumn raked leaves, or stored bags thereof.
Cedar chips is definitely a possibility.
Not quite off topic: One of my favourite books is Sheri Tepper’s “Grass”.
😆
Jane’s been having real trouble staying awake. Her normal ‘office’ is the living room couch, and she starts out awake, sits down, and falls asleep…
A) we have huge patches of lawn fungus
b) Jane’s terribly allergic to mold spores
c) lawn fungus sporulates when it rains, and most any other time, too.
d) pollen clears out when it rains
e) jane’s situation doesn’t make any difference, rain or shine
d) the couch is with 4 feet of the front door, which is not well-sealed.
Hmmmm.
I suggested duct-taping the front door shut. We will see.
And I have both identified the lawn fungus down to 2 possibilities.
And Bayer makes a lawn fungicide that gets both of them. I think it’s time for a trip to Lowe’s.
What is it with science fiction writers and water features? Heinlein nearly killed himself doing his in 2 different houses.
Phil brown
Fractals.
Fractal sounds. I’d love a fireplace, but I’m allergic to ash and its molds. An open firepit, no problem. A hearth in a house, not so good.
Waterfalls. Running water.
Fractals, I think, enhance the creative process, by stimulating various areas of the brain to get together for tea.
What a great answer.
Phil Brown
Kenpachi — Bleach?
Kumagoro — Gravitation? (Although I suppose that one is used for many teddy bears, isn’t it, and not necessarily just Ryuichi’s bunny… 🙂
Oh, yes, we’re great anime fans. Bleach and Saiyuki are our favorites.
philbrown, if gravatar had given me your cool green floater with the shadow, I might actually have kept it, instoad of working to install my own.
SAIYUKI! Man, I love that show. Some friends got me addicted to Inuyasha 4 years ago, and life hasn’t been the same since. Just out of curiosity, are you sub or dub? I took up learning Japanese because of anime…
They’re just not the same in English, all respects to the dubbers, but the original voices are just better. I’m slowly acquiring enough vocabulary to understand often-repeated questions, and Jane has made a valiant effort at kanji and hiragana. We’re getting to where we can follow simple exchanges without resort to the subtitles. We laugh because one of us will say, “Turn up the volume,” though it’s quite clear we’re using subtitles. Same with Chinese: a little vocabulary, a lot of subtitles. Ever seen “Laughing in the Wind?” (Chinese live action series).
Laughing in the Wind… nope, but I just added the first discs to my Netflix queue. Thanks for the recommendation! I just finished Mushi-Shi and need a new series. The only live action I’ve really watched are the Onmyouji movies. I usually watch the subs, but there are a few series that are better in English — I think Ghost Stories is the most notable. It’s really boring and pedestrian in Japanese, but the English voice actors had — ahem — a whole lot of fun with the dubbing…
Original voices – YES. In Sweden only children’s shows are dubbed. I’ve watched (coincidentally; turning on the telly while on the road, abroad) ST-TNG film First Contact with the cast speaking german, italian and spanish (three different occasions, mind you). Weird experience.
I don’t even understand what is the problem with subtitles (other than that it gets very obvious that not everything is translatable, something that can be very funny in itself). It’s cheaper to employ voice actors than one translator, perhaps?
Busifer: same here in the Netherlands. And if you’re not used to dubbed movies it can be quite distracting to see the speaker’s mouth move out of sync with the spoken voice, more so than following a subtitle.
But I think hiring a cast of actors would cost more than a translator: that’s not a very well-paid job here.
I’ve wondered why some countries dub everything:
– is it a question of pride/nationalism (our audience only want to hear their own mother-tongue, and aren’t interested in anything babbled in foreign-speak;
– or of disdain for their audience (they can’t read fast enough to keep up with the subtitles), and if so, if that idea might be true and based on a different method of learning to read: I’ve heard that someone who’s learned to read letter-by-letter instead of syllable-by-syllable or word-at-a-glance often reads slower (but surer when reading new and unknown words);
– or is it something to do with their languages themselves: it seems to me that (for instance) in German it can take a lot of long words to say something that’s much more compactly said in English, so maybe the subtitles wouldn’t fit in a reasonable portion of the screen?
– or maybe it’s a way of ‘defending’ a small language under threat of dissapearing through dis-use?
Does anybody round here know?
I’ve never watched anime, never even tried, because I had the impression that it was very violent. I don’t like horror, too much violence, and things-ending-badly. Now I’ve heard about it fairly regularly here I’d like to try some of it: can anybody recommend a (relatively) mild example for a beginner?
Some anime is violent. Much isn’t, just as in the movies in general. Or the violence is somewhat sanitized—in Saiyuki, demons explode in a cloud of dust. In Kyo Kara Maoh, notoriously nobody gets seriously killed and mostly they just get really big owies and then everybody learns the right way to behave. There’s a lot geared toward pre-teens that is about growing up, like Fruits Basket (not a typo). There’s a lot that’s really just very, very good story. I dodge the blood-splashing sort myself, just not my cuppa. Well, in Bleach, there is blood, but tastefully done, and the recuperative powers of our heroes are, shall we say, miraculous. But since they’re all in spirit form, you can kind of understand it. If you want stand-up-and-cheer moments, Bleach, yes. A few animes end like Hamlet, but most don’t, particularly like Bleach, which is now nearly 220 episodes.
Best is to rent one, see if you like that series, and then buy. I’m sure others can name anime that is the sort you’ll like.
Hanneke28 – I was once told that in Germany the voice actors’ union had worked hard to prevent subtitling from becoming a norm. I don’t know how true this is, but certainly germans are as good at reading as the swedish or dutch …
I don’t know about the voice actors’ union, but in Germany we generally get told, that the masses don’t want to read subtitles and films have to be dubbed. So a DVD without a dub sells less than one with a dub (and no they couldn’t possible bring out only a subbed version for a bunch of fans).
Given todays global markets, despite companies efforts to keep them for the individual persons (region code anyone), dubbed vs subbed as become a real deal breaker to me. If a DVD doesn’t come with the original voice track, I won’t buy it (extreme must have case are an exception), because generally you can get them somewhere else with the original. I have DVDs from Japan, I have DVDs from the USA, I even have DVDs from Australia. If the publishers here can’t satisfy my interest, I’m shopping around.
I think part of it is convenience – it’s easier to watch pictures and listen to dialogue than to watch pictures, listen to dialogue (because you don’t want to eliminate it altogether) *and* read subtitles. Plus, some subtitling sucks.
However, I don’t know how widespread it still is in Germany, but at one point there was a fair amount of programming in ‘Zweikanalton’ – making use of stereo broadcasting to give you a choice of original and dubbed soundtracks. I *loved* that feature. Some experiences were pretty weird, though, because youd get used to one voice and then you’d be presented with a different one for the same face.
(One of the characters in Dallas had a deep, manly voice in line with his appearance. The actor had a little high squeaky one. Major whut? moment.)
Yeah, we still get Zweikanalton from time to time on the public channels, the private channels aren’t doing that and some people recently complained about the pay tv broadcaster Premiere-soon-to-be-Sky is stopping to do it.
Though we only get if via cable (still the most used method of getting TV in Germany), due to license issues the public broadcasters can’ transmit via satellite (they aren’t scrambled, someone not in Germany might be listening an).
Hanneke28: I think the reason for most dubbing is that they figure people can’t read the subtitles fast enough, or can’t be bothered to read the subtitles at all. (Although I find your other theories interesting as well.) I also have this theory that English speakers in general are less inclined to listen to a foreign language. I just discovered this wonderful Japanese rock band (Buck-Tick) who is unbelievably fabulous, but very few people in this country know about them. The Japanese seem willing to go to concerts sung in English by American rock bands, I can’t think of a single person I know who’d go to a concert that was sung in Japanese. We have this sort of “sure, come to our country and become an American” attitude, with a “give up your language and most of your culture” implication. (With the exception of food, I suppose. We’re big on food.) I think America adopts people, while Japan adopts culture, but this is a broad generalization, which will probably be shot down as soon as I post this. 🙂
As for recommendations, it’s difficult without knowing what sort of movies you like, but for movies rather than anime, my first recommendation would be Howl’s Moving Castle. (Many love My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away as well, but they don’t do much for me, and they’re geared more towards children.) Other possible low-key movies are Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns. This would give you a finite amount of time to devote to the spirit of anime without having to start a series that’s (in some cases) 30 discs long.
For anime: Kyou Kara Maou is great, although there are homosexual overtones here and there, so if you’re offended by that, be aware. If you’re not offended by that, and you like rock and pop, try Gravitation (largely off-screen homosexual relationship, great music, lots of goofball stuff going on). Again, if you’re not offended, Loveless, although that does have disturbing overtones as well, but it’s very beautifully animated, and everyone I know who’s watched it has loved it.
In the leaning a bit more toward violence arena: Saiyuki is a huge favorite, and it’s one of the few animes where the English voice actors are really good, at least for the first 12 discs. (It’s much funnier in English for the first 12 discs…) Inuyasha (feudal fantasy, modern Japanese girl sent back in time to the Warring States era where she meets up with a half-demon, wide emotional range from drama to comedy to tragedy — the series that started it all for me). Rurouni Kenshin (wandering samurai with a tragic past, you can skip the whole last season and not miss much though). Full Metal Panic: so far the only giant-fighting-robot-piloted-by-a-boy series that I’ve liked. Lots of humor (not slapstick), very little blood.
Edging more toward horror: (it all depends on your tolerance for horror. These are nothing like as horrific as, say, Akira, which I would very much recommend you stay away from) Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is very beautifully done, although there are some bloody bits. Ayakashi Samurai Horror Tales: Goblin Cat (there are three discs in the series; personally, I found the other two rather boring) Goblin Cat is done like a Japanese wood-block painting in terms of style: very beautiful to watch. They’ve extended this into a series called Mononoke, but it’s not out on disc. You have to grab it off the web to watch it.
Ghosty types, no horror at all: Ghost Stories (extremely entertaining in English), haunted schoolhouse story. Mushi-Shi for low-level, dreamy type animation, a guy who wanders around banishing or containing the odd little creatures called mushi who cause all sorts of difficulties for humans. Not a big favorite, but worth watching once. XXXHolic for an art deco weird-little-shop story. Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok if you’re intrigued by the idea of seeing Norse gods in modern Japan (Loki gets turned into an 8-yr-old and banished there by Odin). Shounen Onmyouji for a kid in feudal Japan learning to banish monsters with magic.
And for something completely different: If you’re watching with a little girl, try Princess Tutu. A duck (yes, a duck) gets turned into a little girl who’s learning ballet, and who has to save the prince by getting all the pieces of his heart back together again. Lots of storylines with ties to classic ballet pieces, especially the Nutcracker. Very low key, but I liked it a lot better than I thought I would.
There’s a lot of stuff out there, and most of it is geared toward teenagers, but a lot of the stories are really well done. These are just personal favorites, and ones that my friends also like. I don’t know if it helps at all…
Just wondering… why Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (which I admit is a very gorgeous anime), and not Vampire Hunter D (the first one… less polished art, but I think that the story is more interesting)? Although the gore factor is a bit high in both of these. (And the manga for Bloodlust is much squickier than the anime, I found out. Especially the bit about why the sister is out demon-hunting with her brothers.)
One that I like, although a lot of other people don’t, is Darkside Blues. A mysterious young man comes to the last remaining free city in the world to try and stop a faceless corporation from taking over. The fun for me in this one is trying to figure out exactly what’s going on. There are layers and layers in that show, and it takes several watchings to figure out why some things are happening and how things link together.
One that I like, except for the last 3 minutes or so, is A Wind Named Amnesia. The premise of this one is pretty simple… a wind has swept across the world, taking away everyone’s memory. Our protagonist sets out with a mysterious young woman to find out why, and what’s happened to humanity since then. As you might expect, it’s a bit bloody, since civilization has entirely collapsed, but it’s not random, meaningless violence, so I find it acceptable. The only problem is that the ending is rather abrupt. I don’t know if they intended a sequel or if that’s just something about the Japanese view of films and entertainment.
In a more science-fictional vein, there’s A Voice from a Distant Star. Two kids meet at school and become friends. One gets recruited to go fight aliens, and the other one stays on Earth. The rest of the story involves them sending messages by text, with the affects of traveling near light speed thrown in. He grows up, etc., in the what is a few months to her, and the time between messages gets longer and longer. It’s an interesting concept. The violence in this one is pretty much restricted to explosions, etc. while fighting the aliens.
And finally, one that is not for the faint of heart: Grave of the Fireflies. This is a story about two kids left orphaned and homeless during and after World War II, and their eventual fate. It’s a gritty and grim reminder that the affects of war are felt far beyond the battle lines.
And finally finally, if you are interested in trying out any of the suggestions, try Blockbuster, Netflix, or your local library. No point buying before you dip your toes in and see if you like it.
Oh… if you do try Voice from a Distant Star, it’s interesting to see the difference between the dubbed and subbed version. In one, the protagonist is a whiner complaining about the hand that life dealt him, and in the other, he is more noble, accepting that fate has decreed that he can’t go fight himself, and therefore he must do the best he can with what he has. It gives an entirely different feel to the story.
Thanks, mrgawe, CJ! This helps a lot. There’s clearly a much wider range of anime out there than I ever knew. I didn’t even know Howl’s moving castle had been turned into a movie, and it’s my favourite Diana Wynne Jones book, together with Deep Secret and the Pinhoe egg (for now).
My tolerance for horror is very low, it immediately turns up in nightmares, so knowing to stay away from that selection is also helpful.
I’ve printed your advice and I’ll take it with me when I go shopping, see what I can find around here. Or maybe order a few from the Internet, but then I worry about regions and if it’s legal and not full of viruses and such.
hanneke28, just so you know ahead of time, the anime movie Howl’s Moving Castle does not resemble the Diana Wynne Jones’ novel much at all. It’s beautiful, funny, and fascinating though, and well worth a watch.
Good point, skitterling: Howl the movie is quite different from the book, although I like them both. Re: buying anime — I get most of mine from Amazon.com and their affiliates. They tell you the region codes too. Good luck and we hope to welcome you to the Realm of Otaku soon! (roughly, Japanese for “anime geek.”)
One of the things that sometimes goes missing in a dubbed version of a film is the background music. I saw a dubbed version of Spirited Away that was without the most beautiful, pensive piece of piano music during Chihiro’s train ride across the flooded landscape. I have always preferred subtitles and this was only reinforced by the absence of that magnificent, haunting music and the voices that never quite seemed to match the characters.
Hmmm, it’s uncommon that music is missing from a Ghibli movie, as far as I remember Miyazaki is quite adamant that the only change that may be made to his films is the voice track.
I generally prefer the original voice track with subtitles, but in some instances the dub is superior to the original.
In my opinion “The Last Unicorn” is such a case, Mia Farrow is such a whiny and screechy unicorn, while the German one sounds all noble and with a quiet strength. We get Christopher Lee doing the King in German, too (^.^). And for the duets between Lir and Amalthea they choose an interesting conversion. Usually such songs are either dubbed, too, or left as is, in the Last Unicorn the songs stay in the original, but are spoken over with the translation.
In defense of dubbing: It lets the ears take care of the dialogue while the eyes follow the visuals or (in the case of casual viewing) look away from the screen entirely without losing track of things. I also wonder if there are people for whom watching the spoken word just doesn’t feel natural.
Fortunately, many (most?) DVDs seem to come with both dubbing and subtitles, so you can switch if you want. Although, once used to one set of voices I find it rather jarring to hear another.
Recommendations: InuYasha definitely.