Salutations! Someone says, saturnine’s submerged in subterfuge, surreptitiously silent. Stuff that! You sing, “He’s shot down, shown out, that sacrilegious simpleton! Sic him!” Simple simians! Short on sight, your supplementary smarm spent, I spit on your simpering similes! Separate the slinging of mud, the unsightly spat that sears the ABC from the spick-and-span ABA, spotless and sinless in sobriquet and skill!

Stupidity soars! Satisfyingly servile, your shallow sense of substance and slurs of sexism are secondary. My statement stands! Sentence me not to a slothful and static status! Silence! Stroke not yourself senseless with sordid servings of your shameful and sleazy sweet-talk, but soften up! Stop slobbering over your selves, you sickening sapiens! Study what I am about to submit, and snicker at your superficial sharpness.

Surely, to set this off I stewed it over with my syndicate of staunch and steadfast subordinates who suggested and sanctioned this scheme. We set a stage, a span where I would be slandered for a spell, and spurred each other to simulate a sketch of staggering shock and suppressed sadness. A straightforward and self-explanatory soap that successfully swindled. Softly I swore, “Sufferin’ succotash! The saps were spoon-fed!” We shouted with satisfaction.

So as I slowly scrawl these scribbles to solemnize strife long set in satire, so do I sanctify the salient sense of the savvy jpmeyer. Smug as he simpered in his sanitary sanctuary, he smiled at the silly sarcasm, signalling in a suppressed shot that he saw with sensitivity. Was it a stretch of your supposition to speculate that it was sheer shenanigans? Seemingly. Was it a stock standard, a stale stereotype? I suppose.

Speaking as a seemingly spiteful and sinister superstar whose stature was once sullied, I smirk as I script this. Sob as you seize the societies you once snubbed, and shriek in shame! I’ll sum it up in a singular, succinct and sharp word: Suckers. Substantial sneering aside, I’ll shut the sermon for now, and save you the spiel… you may call me S.

Owen S. Happy April Fools!

P.S.: If you didn’t get it and/or fail at the English language, all the blog drama was a joke.

P.P.S.: Feel enraged, amused, vindicated, cheated, exalted, used, relieved, or any combination of the above? Feel free to leave a comment.

P.P.P.S.: Yes, I did have a nice good laugh. GIGO.

P.P.P.P.S.: A hearty thanks to everyone involved, especially those like NovaJinx, Extrange, mellow and IcyStorm who had so much faith in me. Much thanks goes to the ABC, and more importantly CJ for being the one to cast the first stone. Special mention goes out to all the attention whores and two-faced cretins of lesser intelligence who took this occasion to unwittingly bash me, and the ABC by association, doing what this Chinese proverb calls “adding oil to fire”. Best Xanatos-gambit-cum-idiot-pogrom ever.

P.P.P.P.P.S.: I got told. Twice.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S.: Other noteworthy posts include Mike’s and CCY’s.

some might consider not getting this to be a good thing, but I beg to differ

While I was cropping, rotating, and resizing headers for the new layout I thought to myself, “How can I make this interesting?” CCY had the idea of incorporating the relevant taglines into his rotating headers, but they weren’t funny. Kabitzin had an equally great idea of inserting a witty, self-referential line into his layout that he occasionally changes, but it didn’t coincide with his headers, and sometimes barely made sense unless he explained it. Then I had a flash of inspiration. Why not use both?

This is a test of otaku knowledge that isn’t as balanced or fair as I’d have liked (because they include Touhou references, even if they’re not particularly hard), but I’m curious to see how far my in-jokes go — popular memes, literary references, medical anatomy jargon and song lyrics among them — they’re all relevant to the image on which the text’s located, and I’m wondering if my readers ever pay attention to them. The filenames may or may not be helpful. Two of them require a dictionary (unless you’re a medical student), and another two require Google (or a decent knowledge of post-/prog-rock song titles). How many did you get, and can you explain the connection between the image and tagline? Answers after the cut.

Happy Remembrance Day to those who even know what this is. To be honest, neither did I until I decided to look up November 11 on Wikipedia, having heard it being mentioned once in the Incubus song “A Kiss To Send Us Off”, and then later in Darker than Black as a character name. Apparently today is the end of what was World War I, and Tensai Okamura, the creator of DtB, decided to name a chain-smoking blonde with freezing powers after it.

So I found the Incubus song to mirror DtB’s story very well. In case you’re one of those humourless science students who have problems with lateral thinking, the lyrics basically parallel DtB through the usage of imagery like kisses (Brita), electricity/clouds (Hei), and mention of November 11.

While I personally have no problems making the connection, I thought screencaps would illustrate this point of mine better, so here it is. YouTube of the Incubus song after the cut. Source of the lyrics is here, track #2, which is Incubus’ official site so they’re guaranteed to be accurate.

Numerous spoilers after the cut.

You knew this was coming. Come on. Come on. Only the weak chicken out after a few episodes of “boring” training. I don’t know, maybe the Time-Space Administration Bureau could have invented something called the Amplifying Rapid Growth Hormone during the 10 year timeskip, thus enabling the possibility of an epic battle like Nanoha A’s in the second episode?! The first episode, obviously, would have our four young ones being injected with said ARGH.

It would’ve been lame, though, to see battle after battle at the beginning without any reason to care for the characters’ beam spam and transformation scenes. As a result of the especially long and, according to some quarters, difficult episodes where NOTHING HAPPENS, people began to whine. The only other feasible option would have to be putting the training scenes in flashbacks during the battles, but who wants to see Teana thinking about the time she got her ass kicked by Nanoha for fudging up a battle session right in the middle of war when you can see it first-hand?

I know I wouldn’t. As a result of all that getting to know the new cast during the 10-odd episodes so far, the few battles so far have been gripping. It says something when you cheer silently or burst into loud exclamations at what’s happening on-screen, not because you’re being noisy, but because you care about the characters and what might or might not happen to them. This is also why the battles in Harry Potter 7 were the best ever — it wasn’t so much the writing as it was what was at stake. Anyone could die and faced a very real possibility of being snuffed out as you turned the page.

Seeing how Impz’s post made him sound like he had cancer (to ease the pain of not being able to finish the Spring season he wanted to spend his last days writing editorials), I wanted to make a post painting him as a tragic victim, torn between his desire to live and his desire to drool over moe Konata.

replace America with Singapore, and Cirno with Drmchsr0, etc

But he linked to Riuva’s post so he ruined everything. The bastard. My condolences to the neighbours down south, things will be a lot more dull around here without you guys. Suppose there’s always #animeblogger, but meh. Best wishes to everyone.

Ninja edit for bj0rn, who doesn’t want me mentioning where I got this news from someone who doesn’t want to�be mentioned either,�since he won’t stop whining in the comments, jeez. Since I’m not under the rule of 1984- I mean, Singapore, I’m mirroring the list of anime that’s licensed, which they apparently don’t want you to see, nevermind how 5 seconds in Google with “AVPAS Singapore” gets you the same bloody thing.

List of licensed anime after the cut, and since I’ve used up my quota of words for the day I’m going to keep this short — you morons. Trying to censor the internet is stupidity and futility, they tried it over here and it didn’t work. Watch as a Malaysian who’s using Tor and has a German IP, posts on a blog hosted on American servers, spreading what you didn’t want them to see. Oh, and FYAD.

this screencap is justice, like Light

So after watching the entire season, let’s talk about what I think of Azumanga Daioh. It didn’t improve after the first episode, but considering the pathetic waste of time that was most of the series, I guess that was to be expected.

Azumanga Daioh is, at best, an average show. At worst, it’s like Charlie Chaplin trying to cheer up a little girl post-rape with his legendary slapstick humour, which is technically funny, but really sad when you look at the bigger picture.