Remember this?

The translation is now complete and available in PDF or Word format. Jabberwock has a fascinating review (and overview of other "unusual perspective" takes on the Mahabharata) here.

Also, the 2009 Lulu Award winners were announced on Friday. So, um, is anybody else really, really, really happy that Gail Simone beat CLAMP for this year's Female Comic Creators Hall of Fame slot? I know I am, and I feel no shame about that.

I'm not dead. I've just been busy, particularly with a) school and b) work. I had to write three long, research-intensive papers last week, and I have to write three more this week. Yay, grad school! Also, I have an obscene amount of prep work to do before I start teaching my first TPR class next week, and now they want me to cross-train to teach ACT courses as well. Oh, and Finnegans Wake is still kicking my ass and ruining me for all future literature for the rest of my life.

GUYS I HAD A MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH. Finnegans Wake is like the early twentieth-century equivalent of all of those stoner shows on Adult Swim. It totally is!! Think about it: Created by a too-cool-for-you mentally ill alcoholic who was so caught up in how clever and funny his own intellectual masturbation sounded to him that he simply didn't care whether any of ended up as impenetrably stupid, asinine, and unfunny to anybody else. Except that Finnegans Wake IS awesomely clever and funny IF you're steeped enough in the pop culture of the time to "get" all of the jokes and references. But even if you "get" the jokes and references, however, the style of humor is very much Your Mileage May Vary, so unless you actually are a) James Joyce himself or b) stoned out of your mind, immortal lines like "All the world loves a gleaming jelly!" just may not actually strike you as terribly funny.

So basically, Finnegans Wake is the original Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

The difference being, once you cut through the dense impenetrability of the surface-level humor in Finnegans Wake, you uncover a truly epic work of fiction that is a universal story about true love, parent-child relationships for good and for ill, sibling rivalry, the inevitability of sin and the possibility of healing redemption, and the rise and fall of all human empires that ever were and ever will be. On the other hand, if you attempt to peel away the surface-level "humor" of something like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you're left with nothing, as the pop culture references and ironic non-sequitur humor are the entire point of the show.

So maybe Finnegans Wake is not so much like Adult Swim after.

Speaking of Adult Swim! Who here is FRICKIN' STOKED about the Metalocalypse premiere tonight?!?! And who here is still frickin' stoked about how unbelievably awesome the first three episodes of the new season of The Venture Brothers were?!

I know I am!

Oh, goddammit. As I was writing this entry, a little bird just told me that now Fanhistory.com is using a new bot to generate entries from archived Yuletide stories. (*siiiiiiigh*) Goddamit, FH. That is so many levels of stupid and annoying that I don't even know where to begin. Not like it's any less stupid or annoying than any other bot that FH has ever unleashed upon the interbutts, but still.

Bet you never thought you'd see that combination of words in a livejournal subject line!

( You spigotty anglease? )

So like, in case any of y'all were wondering what the heck's been happening to girl-wonder.org this past week or two:

Lately the site has been plagued by malware, the source of which is as yet unknown. After valiant effort at piecemeal destruction, the webmistress finally resorted to asteroid bombardment, and the destruction resulting is pretty extensive.

If any of you are experienced in CiviCRM, and could lend Betty a hand in putting everything back together, that would be excellent of you. Please contact her at sturdyandserviceable at gmail.

If you have as much idea of CiviCRM as I do (which is, it starts with a C) it would be great if you could signalboost this call for help.

BTW, I'm going to get Sequential Smarts back online next week-ish. And possibly be posting a long overdue review of Hikaru no Go, provided that Real Life stops bashing me over the head sooner rather than later.

Also, the Feminist-Friendly Comic Book Store Map is still online and still kicking, even if the submission form is temporarily kaputskies. I know that a lot of people rely on the link from the g-w.org website to find the map, but as the girl-wonder.org website is still temporarily resting and recovering, you can still use the normal Google Maps link to view the map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106823881653454526467.0004557e9f4ee44b6f1d0&z=2

Anywhoo, if anybody can help Betty fix up the rest of our website, that would be totally awesome and much appreciated!

1. John Deere fruit snacks.

They exist.

2. An actual headline on the front page of USA Today: "Democrats Push Opt-Out Public Option."

I was going to LOL at the redundancy in that headline, but then I realized that said redundancy is actually sorely needed. Especially when I live in a country where "medical counseling" somehow reads as "death panels" to a frighteningly large percentage of people.

Edited to add: Oh dear, I was very very very wrong about the meaning of the "opt-out" in that article headline. It is not, unfortunately, a redundancy. Rather, it is a stunning example of a completely asinine concession to the completely asinine states' rights advocates opposing the bill. Suddenly I am having flashbacks to NCLB. Oh dear Lord.

Who the hell holds a backyard barbecue party at 3:30 a.m. on a weekday?!

Tonight, I finally finished reading through page 316 of Finnegans Wake.

This calls for 80's hair rock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUSDS9pkA2Y (Booooo Universal Records and your stupid no-embedding rule!)

BTW, epic litfuck fic is halfway finished now, too.

And after an evening spent slooooowly uploading some doujinshi scans, there are now officially 42 files in the /soul directory in my Badongo account. (*snickers*)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have more Finnegan to plow through. Unfortunately I'm already done with my absolute favorite part (Book II.2 for over forty pages straight of Isabel being epic awesome and also hawt Shem/Shaun twincest action), and now I have to plow through the rest of Book II.3 and the torturous pub scene. Gaaaaaaaaaah.

Also, Joyce managed to pun "Cincinnati" on page 285. So I guess that nowhere is safe from Jimmy Joyce anymore.

the THEME SONG meme

Heck, why not.

Wonder Woman is

1) awesome, and

2) the only female comic book character to have had her monthly comic book series more-or-less uninterrupted since 1941.

That's a pretty big freakin' deal.

Not that most of us would know that, of course, since Wonder Woman has been re-numbered at least twice (possibly more than twice?) over the years. But anywhoo, the upcoming issue #45 of Wonder Woman is actually going to be the six hundredth issue of her series (!!!!). And, in recognition of this utterly-amazing-when-you-stop-and-think-about-it anniversary, some fans have asked Dan Didio to please re-number WW #45 as WW #600, in order to give Diana the recognition that she deserves. DC has repeatedly stated that they consider Wonder Woman an iconic character on the same level as Superman or Batman. And, well, Superman got his monthly Action Comics title re-numbered specifically to recognize his milestone anniversaries, so doesn't Wonder Woman deserve the same?

Thus Didio said, "Send me six hundred postcards, and I'll make it so."

And boy, did he get postcards. Here's the official weekly tally so far. But there aren't six hundred yet. We still need moar!

So if you have a postcard, a stamp, and thirty seconds of free time, please consider helping out. Send a postcard with "Wonder Woman issue #45 should be renumbered #600" or some similar message to:

WONDER WOMAN #600
c/o Dan DiDio
1700 Broadway
New York, NY, 10019

More information: Amazon Princess blog | Westfield Comics blog

(No, I don't have a Wonder Woman icon, so here's some Devi for y'all instead.)

Saying that this epilogue is "better" than last week's ending is like saying that Star Wars Episode II is "better" than Episode I. Trufax, yes, but an utterly meaningless comparison as well. Shit is still shit, even though it may seem preferable when compared to runny storytelling diarrhea. At the end of the day, it's still shit.

Right, so let's recap.

( Baby, you look hawt in that silly, silly hat. )

So like, I just heard that CLAMP got nominated for a Lulu award. I think they definitely deserve a spot in Lulu's Hall of Fame, if not for Cardcaptor Sakura alone, then at least for their phenomenal commercial success. However, I reeeaaaaally wish that the timing were different, as it's hard for me to root for CLAMP getting such an award at a time when they're basically at a creative nadir. It's kind of like Martin Scorsese getting his Best Director win for The Aviator. That movie didn't deserve the recognition, but Scorsese certainly did. The same could be said for CLAMP and the Lulus right now. Tsubasa is a pile of shit, xxxHolic is far from their best work, and Kobato is just silly fanpandering layered on top of silly fanpandering. At least Kobato is fun to read, though. Not like Tsubasa, which in its final hundred chapters wasn't fun to read at all. It was downright painful to read, actually. The final hundred chapters of Tsubasa are practically a literary colonoscopy.

Oh well. Here's hoping that CLAMP's next work will be better.

Edited to add: Once again, the master list of plot holes and critiques is here. Like, only one minor plot hole was actually resolved in this epilogue. Wow. That's pretty bad. I mean, wow.

Edited again: This is the most reasonable and intelligent defense of the series that I've seen yet. And of course, I waded in and disagreed. (*slaps self on wrist*)

Edit the third: Best. Summary. Ever. Seriously.

I am liquidating huge chunks of my personal anime/manga collection. Like, huge chunks. And I'll probably be doing this all year long. Because I have far, far too much crap for any one human being to own, so here we go. The first batch is up on ebay right now:

http://shop.ebay.com/artemisty29/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=25

That is a lot of really rare and really awesome shit, y'all. Code Geass, Evangelion, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fate/Stay Night, Hetalia, Kyou Kara Maou, Macross Frontier, Ouran High School Host Club, Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, Moyashimon, Sailor Moon, Soul Eater, Tsubasa Chronicle, and ton shitload more.

As of this posting not *quite* all of the items that I've listed are showing up either under my name or in keyword search results, but give it another couple hours or so, and everything should be there.

The adult-only listings, in case you can't view them, are entirely porno doujinshi from series like Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's, Ah! My Goddess, Fate/Stay Night, and Soul Eater.

I'll be honest and warn you up front, the Ah! My Goddess and Soul Eater doujin that I have listed are listed because I don't want them and I'm embarassed to have ever owned them and because these are the dregs of the dregs of the dregs of my collection. The notable exceptions being the Stein/Spirit doujin, which aren't actually *bad*, they're just too OOC for me to enjoy. (What's with all of the weepy!uke Spirit, people?!) But, uh, maybe my trash can be someone else's guilty pleasure treasure, so here's hoping.

And of course the blargh! warning only applies to the A!MG and Soul Eater doujin that I have listed. Everything else up on ebay at the moment is, if I do say so myself, incredibly awesome, and certainly worthy of y'all spending your hard-earned money on. :)

Here's a lovely, lusciously-illustrated storybook about Karna that I scanned as a gift for someone, so I figured that I might as well post and share it here. As you can tell from the scans, my own copy is extremely old and beat-up, but it's still readable. So here you go.

Download high-res version (66 MB)

Download low-res version (13 MB)

As the book has been out of print for years, I don't feel too guilty doing this. And it really is a lovely book.

I promised that I would post this final batch of scans once Tsubasa was finally finished. Well, Tsubasa isn't quite finished yet, but these have been sitting in my "to-upload" folder for far too long already, so here y'all go.

( Great paper dolls... or GREATEST paper dolls?! )

All right.

Okay.

I have never, ever read an ending to anything - ever - that more clearly screamed of the writers just throwing up their hands and giving up. It's clear that CLAMP doesn't give a flying fuck about this series any more, and they just wanted to end it already, so end it they did. It's really their own damn fault for writing themselves into a corner the moment that they started the whole Oedipal time travel plot twist, though. There was never going to be any way to resolve that without completely fucking over the storyline, so they just... well, didn't. They didn't really resolve anything. They just stopped.

( And HOW. )

Edited to add: Epilogue recap is GO. Have any of the plot holes listed above been addressed in the epilogue? The answer is: No, not really. But that's no surprise.

The final chapter of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle drops tomorrow. Heck, for all I know, it might have been leaked on the internets already. Thus tonight, I attempt to recap the next-to-last chapter of this travesty of a manga.

One down, one more to go. Let's get this over with.

( Please stand up, please stand up, please stand up. )

This is the coolest fucking thing ever.

Hat-tip: The Sanskrit Literature Blog, which I know that I've plugged before, but it probably can't be plugged enough.

Edited to add: The tweets are strongly inspired by this blog, apparently.

Two more chapters down. Let's go.

( Kurogane FTW. )

Next up: Chapter 231! Wait for it, guys. You're going to need to have some pretty strong liquor on hand to get through this next one. Or at least, I know that I will.

So tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Siiiiiiiigh. This used to be one of my favorite stupid nerd holidays. But then I saw John Baur, who invented the holiday, star in an episode of Wife Swap. Turns out, he's actually a loathsome douchebag. And now the TLaPD is permanently ruined for me. :(

Lifetime Television Network: ruining awesome stuff since 1984.