This is for Amy, incase for some reason she hasn't seen it yet!

http://www.eternalmoonwalk.com/

Hey guys, been a while. Sorry I've been a LOT more active on ADD-friendly platforms such as Facebook and Twitter lately.. a lot has gone on and I will elaborate eventually (working on blogs about Germany, slowly but surely).

My bestest buddy's mom is fighting a nasty infection. I hope she will be fine now that she's being treated for it, but it's still very stressful for my friend and her mom. I grew up with this family since middle school (some 12 years ago now) and wish them the best of healing and a speedy recovery.

Dave Gahan tore a calf muscle at a show on Thursday and DM have had to cancel the last two shows of the first European leg. Torn muscles can heal, but they are still excruciating. He still sang the last three songs at the concert despite the pain, and other than the fact that he was only moving the upper half of his body you'd never have known. Anyway, Dave and the band aren't having a very smooth tour thus far. I hesitate to say they are unlucky because Dave's Gastroenterisits in May revealed very early cancer that was successfully removed (but was a seriously scary couple of weeks). It seems that he/they are definitely in need of some well wishes and fortune.

With a bunch of shit coming to a head in different places (Iran, China, North Korea, and the ongoing issues in Iraq and Afghanistan) its not too hard to wonder about handbaskets and hell.

Whatever your spiritual practices may or may not be, say some blessings today. A lot of people could use the good vibes. (Though I guess this applies to every day...)

Hey Guys,

Here's a link to the blog my friends and I will be keeping while we are in Germany. Hopefully we'll get to post substantial things every few days as we hit an internet cafe. I'll post quick posts and tweets from my iPhone. You can find my and Tara's tweets on the left of the entries. :)

http://www.twilightillusion.net/botu/

I'll try to post things to LJ too, but with no C&P function on the iPhone, I'll probably wait until we're at internet cafes to cross post anything. :}

For those on my f-list who are fans of Fanime, check out DeviantArt Fanclub or the related thread on the Fanime forums to view and vote for our fanart contest! We're releasing an artbook to commemorate Fanime's 15th year, so to get fans involved we held a contest on DeviantArt and the Forums. Make sure to note us on DA or PM me on the forums to vote! We got a lot of great entries, I was/am so excited!

I've almost completed the artbook layout/design.. stayed up till 2am (with the help of a Jamba 3G boost) last night working on it. I'm really excited about the project and getting the final product into fan's hands. It will be on sale starting Friday at con in the artist alley, right next to me, as invidscrim will be selling it at his table. They are A4 size and eighty pages, full color except for a lovely short manga chapter created by porku. They will cost $25 and will be limited so get yours early!

Watching last night's episodes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as they made their own Tea Party commentary, I thought it was interesting they didn't go there with the tea bag jokes. I remarked to George, "Hmm, I guess they thought the tea bag jokes were low hanging fruit!"

...

ROFLMAO. Pun was totally not intended but hilarious none-the-less.

Sorry, sorry, more on tea bagging... it's too hilarious and punny not to post!

So it turns out my Dad has had his conservative fire fueled by Faux News and decided to attend the tea party held in Sacramento today. There was some family drama over this last week that consisted of my dad trying to send me to Glenn Beck's project912 site, me calling Glenn Beck a nutjob, and my dad telling me to "wake up" and be "open minded." Hmm.. ironic, isn't it? He also sent me a YouTube video calling for revolution by a guy dressed as a founding father, protesting the congress, rights being infringed upon and taxes, with the result being sending your congressman a tea bag. Sigh. Where were all these right-wing constituitionalists when Bush was in office?? Anyway.. I wrote him a long e-mail a couple of days later to explain how open minded I am, the various sources I use for news, and a few videos and articles that explained my views clearly. He didn't directly respond but when I talked to him next he was much kinder even though it didn't even come up. So. Guess he realizes though we may not agree I'm not a happless young person..

Because I love my family and still wanted to see them, I met up with my dad and my step mom, step sister and aunt for lunch despite my opposition to the tea party craziness. I instead embarked on a photojournalistic endeavor. Some of the signs were pretty whack, and the speeches made me want to bang me head into a wall at some points.. This had to be the crowning moment of douchebaggery that I witnessed in person:



More here.

Video here.

Thankfully my family was not militant.. they had anti-mainstream media shirts. Pretty tame considering the communist, socialist and religious signs that were there.

There are some conservatives and Republicans decrying so-called "cuts" to the Pentagon budget, proposed by Obama and Robert Gates. Except it's not a cut.. its a 4% increase.



This is strictly regarding the numbers and not where it's going, as talking heads have been crying about the cuts. A summary of the new budget and allocations. I'm not really educated enough to debate on military spending, but if they get more strict about contractors (maybe give the military itself those jobs?) then it seems to be a step in the right direction.

Finally the cable news picks up on the horribly funny misuse of the word "tea bag" as a verb, picked up by the right wing in recent months. No matter what side of the fence you're on, this video is too punny not to watch.

Rachel Maddow and Ann Marie Cox Discuss Teabagging at Length

So before I go to Germany in two months (omg) there are a lot of things I mostly want to do, with a couple I need to do. This is also to help me keep track of where things are online.

( Girly talk about clothes and make-up, oh my! )

Yay, steadily (ish) overcoming my horrible rusty artblock! Thank you, DM for bringing back my muse. mOm


Universe by =usaku on deviantART

So last weekend I hit up Kino and picked up a few vols of new manga.. what do I see inside? An ad for this! High School Musical, the Manga

Is nothing sacred?!

It's also sad that they made all the characters default anime race (whitish?). I'm no fan of HSM, but if Japan likes American stuff so much, thats likely why this was made, removing the diversity is kinda counterintuitive, is it not?

For kur0 and anyone else with a taste for awesome and epic electronica or anyone in need of new tunes.. my friend Tara, my concert travel buddy and Germany mecca cohort, recently shared a bunch of tracks from Mesh with me, after I've heard her sing their praises for years.. They are superb! I think this is my favorite so far... though I have much still to hear.



(Sorry for the shitty youtube compression.)

This is epically cool:

I just snagged my general admission ticket for Vegas! YES! It's at The Palms resort, bigger than The Joint, but there was still some risk of selling out FAST since the GA section is tiny (under 1000 for sure). I also picked up four tickets for Dallas for myself, nekoboy, merlekitty, and uzu_uzu as part of a fun trip to visit some of my bestest buds that I haven't seen in years! I got my eighth row single ticket for SF last week, nekoboy will chillax in 11th row , so now my ticket buying for DM is officially over. I know I'm probably going to regret missing Red Rocks, but money/vacation time are a premium.. I still have to buy Shoreline NIN tickets tomorrow and U2 if they add any dates anywhere near here... Thank god for my awesome tax return.. I <3 claiming zero!

To anyone who is low on funds but wants to see a show, I still seriously reccommend getting the 4-pack deal for grass seats at shoreline. I've done it twice and it was still a lot of fun (and better than not doing it at all). With the 4-pack deal, it's about 30 bucks after fees.

I HATE FEES. OY. I've paid up to $25 on top of my tickets (each) for fees. Ugh!

So with trepidation, I finally jumped on the Twitter bandwagon.. I blame bybyStarlight and Trent Reznor (hilarious tweets). However, as I'm finding it fun yet horribly distracting managing e-mail, forums, Live Journal, DeviantArt (mine AND Fanime's), Facebook and occasionally MySpace, I'm really weary about adding anymore social media outlets to manage. I'm strictly aiming to use this in conjunction with my DeviantArt page and art-related nonsense. For my fans (or something) to follow me, as well as for me to follow artists that inspire me. As such, I'm not following friends, family or other personal things as I have several mediums to do that already. Please don't be offended if I'm not following you - it's nothing personal. :}

That said, if you're interested in my latest art-related brain farts, you can find me at http://twitter.com/usaku or you can just check my DA page every once in a while, as I installed a module there.

Additionally, I don't remember if I ever announced that I have a facebook page, but yeah, I created one as it seemed to be the best way to keep up with my graduating class and professors, along with friends and family who aren't into more structured blogging, etc. Feel free to add me.. it's mostly daily ramblings and spam that aren't necessarily the most intellectually stimulating, but I do have fun with posting videos and amusing links as I do here. It so easy that I've found myself posting a lot more links and such there than here.

Bah, too many social networking sites to keep tabs on..

Man oh man, so many things to do, so little time. I need to get out some pen and paper and make a massive Covey-style list.

Today I went to the postoffice to apply for a new passport, put my tags on my car and paid some bills. Yay. :P I have a heap of Fanime stuff to do, both professional and personal. I swear I'm not gonna show up empty handed this year! Because I've had the attention span of a gnat I haven't really been posting much of substance (though I read my f-list a few times a day). I debuted my new brand, Pióro, over at my DA page. I also added the CSS and custom icons to my gallery. Hoping to have a website up at some point.. I'd like to create a new DevID too.. my current one was fun but it's HUGE. Anyway, for Fanime I'd like to have a new business card, 5 new prints and some buttons, bookmarks, keychains and/or stickers. So far I have art for buttons and stickers that I'm fairly happy with, but I need to just get them finished. Thankfully my sketchbook has at least been getting some love. I think I've cleaned off my rust as far as drawing chibis, but I'm still having some blocks with bigger pictures; mostly because of fear of not living up to my own expectations. Blarg.

Next weekend there's a Fanime meeting, and the weekend after that I'm hitting up ASAhi con with invidscrim to try to off some of my old anime and manga stuff I don't need anymore. I still need to go through a lot of stuff, too.. Most of my house is not fully unpacked and cleaned.. my office and the bedroom are left with boxes, dissaray and empty walls but I just can't find the motivation to work on them with all this other stuff going on.

Also, I neeeeed to study my German more. :/ Speaking of which, I finally got to watch Axis Powers Hetalia. Wow is that show cracktastic. It almost hurts - I think if it didn't have the horrible stereotypes (pastaaaa~!) and bizarre retellings of history enjoyed by geeks like me, it would be a show that would be too much. I was quite amused by it, though I feel fairly hypocritical since typically whacky, incoherent, random, pointless antics aren't my bag. I loved Azumanga (weird, but coherent at least) and was amused by Lucky Star. I think I feel the same way about Hetalia as Lucky Star. Cute and amusing to watch in small doses, except Hetalia has added bonus for having loverly bishounen (why does Austria have to be such a jerk? XD).