diary of infinity

OK so a week ago I started to talk about the latest anime series I’ve been watching. Maybe a recipe for vanilla vodka doesn’t sound like a discussion about anime, but as they say, every journey begins with a single step, or failing that, a drink.

KimiKiss Pure Rouge is one of those series that I took one look at and then dumped for being cute and vacuous, it was a story about a couple of lads who are determined to get a girlfriend by the end of term, and find themselves faced by a bevvy of cute female stereotypes: the older sister figure, the younger sister figure, the shy girl, the sporty girl, the emotionless genius girl, the strict/cross girl, and the filthy rich girl (pictured right, cosplaying a fox spirit). I particularly loathe the pernicious stereotype of intelligent or scientific people being emotionless (and indeed I never did really warm to that character even after I changed my mind about the series).

But anyhow, several months later I decided to take another look at the one episode I'd downloaded before deleting it, and for some reason something clicked and I ended up downloading the whole 24 episodes over the course of a couple of days. It still looked lightweight, with its bouncy feelgood OP song, Aozora Loop (Blue sky loop), and the characters were still stereotypes, but somehow the interactions between them felt real, I could identify with the tribulations of trying to get somewhere with a person you think you like but actually don't even know.

But I was oh so wrong about what kind of story it was. Maybe the ED song should have tipped me off, since it has a completely different tone to the OP. After consulting Roget's Thesaurus, I have concluded that the term I am looking for (which isn't actually in Roget), is emofest. By mid-series, all the main characters have smoothly got the person they were after. But all it proves is that you can get what you want and still not be happy. All of a sudden, people are beginning to realise who it was they really likes all along. Yes, it's the classic romantic triangle or even quadrilateral. Since the series resolutely sticks to a realistic slice of life approach, it inevitably ends with a string of broken hearts as everything starts to unravel.

But I still haven't really described what actually happens or even who it happens to. I think I'll leave that until my next post.

The world is divided into two sorts of people: those who understand why I am posting this clipping; and those who don't.



And so the World Otakunisation Project inches forward, millimetre by millimetre.

I recently met a girl who has a fear of mirrors. She was at first diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder which is about self image, but she said in fact her fear is the reverse: when she looks in a mirror she’s scared that she won’t have a reflection! It sounds kind of weird but at the same time it seemed to make sense in a weird sort of way. (Luckily she’s not the type who wears much makeup!) She’s now been diagnosed with Eisoptrophobia, however this simply seems to mean “fear of mirrors”, so it doesn’t actually explain her condition.

I asked her if she’d ever found bite marks on her neck or experienced missing time, but she didn’t think so. She does have a certain sense of humour about it, but the dread she experiences on approaching a mirror seems very real, we were walking through a shopping arcade where there was a shopfront with a line of mirrored pillars, and she insisted on walking so that I was between her and the mirrors, and she clutched me the whole time and looked the other way until we were well past them.

I noticed though that she didn’t have this issue with reflections in windows, I think it’s that mirrors are like openings into other worlds whereas you can see through the reflections in normal glass. Looking the phobia up online I see that a fear of mirrors is surprisingly common, with the notion that the reflection is really of another parallel world being quite a dominant theme. But most people’s fear seems to be that some weird creature will look out at them rather than that they themselves won’t have a reflection.

I recall seeing a Dracula film once where this guy is shaving and Dracula comes up behind him. When the guy notices Dracula isn’t reflected in his shaving mirror, Dracula simply taps the mirror and says “unreliable things” and then tosses the mirror out of the window. From his casual air, he evidently he didn’t suffer from Eisoptrophobia!

It seems that come the year 2012 we’re all f*cked as we won’t be able to use the year in our blogs or indeed at all! (At least in the UK). According to this site about the 2*12 Olymp*cs the number “2012” (also “London 2012”) has become a "Games' Mark" and no-one may use it, punishable by summary execution or somesuch.

So not only are they filching my money via the Council Tax but they’re going to stop me writing the date any more! Hmm, I guess that means that during the Olymp*c year I won’t be able to write out any Council Tax cheques, so maybe the scoundrels won’t get their addict’s fix of cash from me that year....

Before this week’s rain it was sunny....
... so I went cycling along the canals...