All the other stuff I haven't posted

A oneliner I have to work in somehow: thank you, Kubo Tite. You have made me happy.

The avian flu virus has reached Quebec. I am terrified of the avian flu, in the cheerful way of the natural paranoiac who's always had mental contingency plans in case of terrorist attacks on public transit and whatnot. I'm of the supposedly most vulnerable demographic, and my respiratory system has a history of rolling over and dying in a flood of phlegm at the least onslaught. If there is indeed a flu pandemic I will have to draw up a will. It's kind of a pity, I always expected to be taken by pneumonia at age 100.

On SSBB: you will note that December's theme is a t.A.T.u. song. t.A.T.u. is nutritious and ghei. I very nearly posted a tracklisting for a Pet Shop Boys mix CD and said "pick any one", but that would've required me to make a tracklisting.

My story is sort of rough. About 80% of it was written longhand in a notebook while barricaded in my room between 11PM and 2AM, brain-dead and tipsy on cold vodka - repeatedly, over the course of a week. I typed it up when I could but it's only very lightly edited. Unlike the people on ficcated who said they felt more perfectionist pressure when working on origfic, I'm actually sloppier with my origfic than my fanfic - what are you going to be measuring it against, after all? It doesn't have to make a point either with regard to the canon or the fandom. ^^; Thus my origfic is always kind of craptastic in comparison. In the case of this particular story I couldn't polish the prose to my usual standard even if I wanted, because no one speaks like "my usual standard", not even me, not even unrealistic first-person narrators out of Murakami or Conrad who blab on for hours with great attention to effect and not so much as a drink of water. Concept >>> execution, but at least it has the merit of an interesting concept.

Tania's I did beta, because it is her privilege to break my brain when she sees fit. I left most of the punctuation in, though, otherwise you don't get the full effect of the Special. XD

For extra fun and profit, guess which story was written by a guy! XD

Jay Chou has a way of working looped samples of easily recognizable sounds into the instrumentation of his tracks - there's one here that grows to sound like a sitar having a heated argument with a cellphone. Yeah it's a gimmick but not one anyone else's used to my knowledge, at least in such an unabashedly radio pop context. (joliefolie, this album is called November's Chopin. Is that not amusing. XD)

Movie and CD reviews to come. But first I have to get home, and it's raining again.

dot the fuckity dot dot

Squeenix shall never win the fanservice crown - no, not while Gainax lives!

I didn't hear about this until corneredangel's post today. Thanks a lot, flist! I thought I could trust you to serve the trauma up red hot! Actually, between the above and Yukikaze I am wondering what hot anime property should undergo the sekkrit chromosomal treatment next. My vote?

Deathscythe.

The new Ladytron album

Ladytron - High Rise
Ladytron - Beauty*2
Ladytron - All The Way...

(Edited next morning) I acquired the new Ladytron album at the same time as the Depeche Mode single and it's been on heavy rotation since (yes, once again we have a case of Sabina temporarily titling fic after what's in Winamp and not bothering to change it afterward). Reviews have generally been positive with a focus on how they "changed their sound", which amuses me because I don't think they did; not very much. The analog synths are buzzier, as befits current fashion, and many of the songs are backed by live guitars/bass/drums - just like how they sounded live on the Light and Magic tour back in 2002. Otherwise they are still writing the same kind of melodies, sung with the same sense of detached melancholy. I always felt their slower, bittersweet ballads were the draw, not the electroclash anthems like "Seventeen".

"High Rise" is representative of their new sound - Kristin, this is probably a better definition of "shoegaze" than I left you with last time. ^^; AFAIK the stylistic hallmarks of the shoegaze sound are "staticky" washes of feedback noise and echoey vocals buried in the mix for a dreamy effect, but it's very much a rock genre, guitars and drums and whatnot. So the Chara album sort of rode the edge between that and... dream pop I suppose.

I sort of wish I'd uploaded "Destroy Everything You Touch", but despite it being a single, my favorite and without a doubt the best song on the album, it's also the one that niggles at me the most. Helen Marnie's voice (which I love) is most suited to playing a kind of cocaine scenester girl heartbreak - as if she knows she's too cool and clever to be so terribly hurt, and the people around her are too ironic and remote to be expected to care. The act must work, or else Ladytron wouldn't be accused of "coldness" so often. But "Destroy Everything You Touch" is so driving and merciless it seems to demand vocals by someone more convincingly unhinged. ^^; I keep thinking how Shirley Manson would sell a line like "destroy everything you touch / today / destroy me / this way".

"Beauty*2" is my second favorite song on the album. I think Pitchfork compared it to Depeche Mode but really it sounds halfway between Orchestral Maneuvres in the Dark and t.A.T.u. (no, really, compare with tATu - We Shout). Meanwhile "Whitelightgenerator" sounds like Berlin's "Take My Breath Away", which is a comparison Pitchfork didn't make, but I suspect the Fork is not so advanced in popist consciousness that it could put a positive spin on that. XD They are right about it being a winter album, though. "All The Way..." is totally a !Christmas song.

1/2 of Ladytron is DJing at Parking next weekend, opening for David Morales. Isn't Parking a gay club? >_> Maybe I'll just wait until they come around on proper tour, which their official site with its creepy red millipedes assures me will take place sometime early next year.