Day of the Dinosaur, by John Man

Waldenbooks LOL I'm old

Goodwill find. It's likely that I read this book at some point when I was small, but I don't remember. Its chief points of interest are being old (1978) and having a lot of Neave Parker illustrations.

This is my favorite of the non-Parker illustrations. For the record, most of those are merely serviceable. There are however a lot of photos, vintage art and such, and even a profile of Franz Nopcsa, all-around total badass superhero of paleontology, espionage, and awesomeness and, if there is any justice, future subject of an epic movie (also, gay. Seriously, read about him.)

badass retro


Things were... slimier in the '60's,apparently .




What's a paleo book without a timeline...?

Unusually for a book this old (I think?) the text assumes birds to have descended from dinosaurs and has quite a bit about Archaeopteryx. At least, I don't remember this being a mainstream thing in books from that time, but I could be wrong. I was still a baby when this book was written, and don't remember the dinosaur-t0-bird descent being a given in all books of my time, either.

_______


RIP Luna, my sweet little budgie. She died of a mysterious illness that showed itself too late for the vet to do any real good and I'm so sorry. I've been pretty upset for a few days. Since Loki has never been kept alone, I was afraid of him getting lonely and stressed out, so I got a new friend. Her (?) name is Okuu (お空.)

空　or 'sora' (Chinese reading 'kuu') is the character for sky. I didn't actually have a name in mind, but it was suggested in comments. Only because she is sky blue, and not because she has anything in common with the namesake Okuu/Reiuji Utsuho, the nuclear fusion powered hell raven from Chireiden:At least two differences: she's missing the arm cannon and Chernobyl elephant's foot (not pictured here)

More Touhou vocal trance arrange, by Sound Online (Tsukasa)


Eternal Rite
Nostalgia
Cosmos Glide
,
Tsukasa contributes to East New Sound, with which I'm also obsessed.

Heavens to Margatroid

I don't feel very well today, but wanted to post something since I've been too busy to do so for a while.

Outing again as a nerd, random sketch I did of Alice Margatroid from Touhou Project, while I was waiting on a job interview. Alice is a youkai magician who primarily uses dolls in her attacks. Her name comes from Miss Murgatroyd of Agatha Christie novels...

Alice Margatroid and Shanghai doll (c) Team Shanghai Alice :)

Yoeko Kurahashi

Ugliest Dinosaur 2010 WORLD CHAMPION

GOOD LORD!!



Not only that, but its entire 'family' is pictured below. I don't think I've ever seen a more hideous bunch. I want them....

I have discovered that Sega makes Dinosaur King figures, and they are actually pretty cute.

Icky dinosaur 2010: Safari Apatosaurus
I saw this figure a couple weeks ago when I dropped by a local hobby shop. It looks really nice at first until I realized the neck is totally ****ed up. I guess it's supposed to be saggy wrinkled skin. I don't know what in hell possessed someone to dream this up, but for some reason it gives me a sensation of visceral disgust, like shivers in my gut as if it reminds me of something really gross that I can't remember. It's just really... repulsive somehow, and I can't get OVER IT enough to consider buying this otherwise nice figure.

I wonder if anyone else feels the same, or if there's something wrong with me.




Bought this on sale at my work place, out of the boys' clothing section. That is awesome.

UPDATE!!! I found out what those weird ceramic figures I bought were based on: Sinclair World's Fair figures (See the third photo) As a kid I actually had one of these figures that came out of a machine, but it was from the St. Louis Zoo and was an elephant. You put your money in and it molds the figure right there. Very weird... Anyway, you can see the fugly Trachodon and the fairly cute Stego here. I wonder if someone made a mold from the original figures and used them to make ceramic ones, or what...


Music that isn't actually Touhou this time


The animation they put to it is Touhou, but the music is totally unrelated. I really like this music and I don't know why.

Black Mountain - Queens Will Play This is not even Japanese. I heard it playing in the coffee shop I go to, and looked up the lyrics. It turns out some of their songs are really good. For all I know however, this is the most popular band in the universe and I'm the last person to hear them, so don't laugh at me if this is the case. All I listen to lately is freakin video game vocal trance remixes, Lithuanian neo-folk and random symphonic metal so I wouldn't know. (It wasn't always this way, for years it was chiefly indie rock and alternative and seeing lots of shows at tiny clubs, but I can't be arsed lately to pay attention and vocal trance/etc is more suited to what I'm creating at the moment)



I'm not sure what this is, but it's pretty much the best thing ever


In other news, I have to go to work at 4:00 AM this Friday because people are insane consumerist zombies... Well I suppose that's one way to have an adventure. Or screw up your sleep quality even more for a whole week, whichever. I foresee total physical collapse around noon when I get home

Holy.

Craziest f***ing thing I've ever seen*

My God. There are no words for this level of crazy.


WOW!!

Imagine being the sort of person who would like this. Sweet dreams!


UMM
What on God's green earth is wrong with this guy. Every single clip I've ever seen is like a chronicle of some paranoid/histronic's nervous breakdown.


To recover from the crazy, a good song recommended to me

Yano Junko - Terotero (note: another person tagged her name as Akiko, so I can't say I'm 100% sure of the proper on-reading in her given name)
I'm not into this sort of music lately, in a general sense, but I like this one. It's very organic sounding, simple, and spontaneous, and her voice has a lovely rawness on the edges.



*at least since Orly Taitz

Illustrated Roger Zelazny 1979

Found this in the Goodwill last week, for 99 cents because it was with the kid's books. The illustrations are amazingly 60's like and garish, but fascinating. A little sample.. (I'll edit and add the artist's name when I get back home)

Sweet horses.

Now it's time for your Daily Touhou Arrange; this one is threefold for the price of one.
Byakuren's theme (boss of UFO and savior/Jesus to all youkai, forever may her purest name be honored and stuff.) Let's see what happens when two vastly different arrangements take on the original game music!
Emotional Skyscraper - Cosmic Mind: original flavor
Star River - kind of pop-style vocal arrange by IOSYS
Fractal Cage - techno by East New Sound.

Can you find the similarity? It was difficult for me.

Trading Card Reviews: Bella Sara "Moonfairies" and "Sunflowers"

Those who know me already know that I collect some trading cards, strictly for the art and to amuse my OCD. Bella Sara is really the only one I collect semi-completely; it's a world populated mainly by magical shiny horses (and some pretty creepy, chimeric and mythical ones) that I would have loved when I was a child. By my quick mental reckoning, I'm guessing Moonfairies is the 12th series. Oddly if not frustratingly, it was only last week that I finally found the previous set (Sunflowers) in stores. So I'm not sure what's going on with that distribution, but in any case I'd like to review and critique a trading card game aimed at 8-year old girls. Let's see what magic and irritating human additions await...

Sunflowers

Actually, I'm going to c/p my review from DeviantArt, because it pretty much says it all.

1. Now 5 cards and a sticker, no fake tattoos, and they put the point vouchers on plain paper instead of shiny cards which was stupid. The package was 2 card pack and the lenticular card thingy, which does have nice art of 2 horses.
2. Well, they have leeway for more creative art than "Bella's Ball" which was just a bunch of horses and girls in fancy dress standing around in the same environment for the most part
3. overall art looks better than last time but I always have complaints
4. Dryads and Wolf Riders? OK I guess thats cool.
5. Foxglove horse looks nice.
6. I GOT A SHINEY
7. 'Story' cards that don't make sense to me and I guess you go online and read about them. Also there is no online code for the horses anymore but whatever, i just like the pictures.

Moonfairies

This one is a bit wordier, I suppose. Firstly I should note that human characters were introduced in, IIRC, the Royalty series-- technically I think it was only "Sara, Goddess of Horses", but it was the start. Humans came out in full force for Bella's Ball, which also introduced 'story cards.'

Being not quite human and a misanthropist, I was not pleased, but can put up with it if they remain more on the sidelines (i.e., if most of the cards feature only horses.) As it turns out some of the humans aren't that bad: consider Twig and Deru or Ivenna the wolf rider. Twig is some sort of forest fairy, that's cool. She's pretty cute and refreshingly non-Caucasian (no offense, but a little variety is nice.) Ivenna seems pretty badass, I mean check out her cards. She has a super cool wolf and looks somewhat Slavic, Nordic, or something, and the art is nice. Predictably however, the story cards I pulled in Moonfairies tell us she is a villain, apparently one of those awesome villains who is just randomly evil for plot purposes... although I guess there could always be a heel-turn or Tragic Past that will come out later. But it's a bit sad. I thought wolves were all cool now? Go onto DeviantArt and just search 'wolf' -- you'll put up innumerable accounts belonging to 14-year old girls who draw nothing but their wolf roleplay characters and wolf versions of the My Chemical Romance guys. Why the evil? Maybe 8-year olds haven't reached the shadow acceptance stage or something.

All in all the art is cute this time, with the usual complaints (Minty's card has a beautiful background, but the horse is lazily rendered... WTH? I love the totally ambiguous joint of the wing. Uh, it just kinda... comes out of there... somewhere. I DUNNO LOL.) The usual suspects from past series return, including Moonsprite from Babies, whose original card had beautiful art by Stephanie Pui-mun Law.

New horse: Gherkin, steed of the fairy king. Hmm I have to say... I find this name very questionable, for a male horse. Isn't a gherkin one of those tiny cutesy pickles? Forget that though, he's a noble unicorn stallion named after a freakin' pickle. 8-year olds probably won't care, but there is something very wrong here. Run out of names much?

The Ivenna card is lovely, in any case.

That's my review. To finish up I think I'll post a Daily Touhou Arrange:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaQOnc5H_x8
This one is from East New Sound circle, who pretty much do electronica/vocal trance stuff. I've been listening to them a lot because I like that style of music anyway-- it's neutral enough to have in the background while doing art or writing, but still emotional enough to really get into and space out with. This is a vocal arrange of Eirin's stage 6 theme from Imperishable Night, already a lovely song in the game that lends itself really well to arranges.

Honestly it will be really hard for me to restrain myself from posting multiple songs. It's not even a conscious choice to get deeper and deeper into this stuff-- it starts with randomly hearing one song you like, then you link and link and find more, and you're in a hole from which you can never escape. It helps that I'm already into this style of music, but the music from these games is truly awesome.

Jaa, mata and hasta la vista.