I didn’t get a few pages reading before I figured out something that I need to fix.
I’m heading to Minnesota in the next 12 hours, I should be sleeping, really, but I can’t. All the M:tG keeps me up, searching through cards, websites, boxes and boxes, and sleeving decks, editing decks, and more of the same for the next week or so.
And at the same time, I’m drawn out to travel for a few hours, so I can go to Minnesota, play Magic, edit decks, trade, that sort of thing.
The intervening miles have been through a special area for me ever since I first traveled through at the end of my first semester here in Madison. I don’t think I’ve taken the same way to Minnesota more than once. I’ve taken the same way back a handful of times, more out of necessity, one unique path out of necessity as well, but the beauty of it all, is that there is so much to explore between Here and There. I’ve been known the past few times to be extremely tardy, occasionally several hours past where I thought I would arrive. But really, I’ve taken just about every route there and back:
94 to La Crosse,
14 to La Crosse,
myriad back roads ending up at the river, just to skip over at Ferryville and bypass La Crosse entirely
spend a night at Wyalusing State Park overlooking the Prairie Du Chien Wal-Mart
nearly getting a speeding ticket in Viroqua
nearly getting a ticket for busted tail light outside of Fennimore
nearly getting a ticket for having my high beams on in a residential area two miles outside of New Ulm
running into a deer not ten miles after leaving Owatonna
snow the day before Thanksgiving
fog a few days before Christmas
glorious summer days around what I have called “Freebird Road” just on the other side of the river from Arena
driving down Shooting Star Byway — yes, it exists — and imagining how special it would be in the spring when the wildflowers would be in bloom
hiding from the semis and crazed tourists on I-90/94 by taking US-12, then winding up in The Dells, where no family leaves without an empty wallet or breathing room on their credit cards — but I managed to escape unscathed
head off as far west as I can go before I-35 sweeps me off my feet and drags me kicking and screaming to Owatonna
most recently, WIS-33 through numerous small towns and the serpentine roads around Wildcat Mountain, and through what’s left of Rock Springs
or maybe for once, I’ll eschew the back roads and just take US-12 up to I-90, ride that to Rochester and show up early.
I should write a chapter on that someday. Maybe two.
Nevertheless, I still feel caged in whenever I go from Here to There. There are several highways that I cannot cross except for a brief visit before returning to my fated direction: US-18, US-14 (west of the River), I-90 (east of the River), and I-35. I would love to explore the woods of northern Wisconsin, or wander the lonely expanses of the eastern edge of the Great Plains, but my commitments push me in the other direction.
What I’m searching for is solitude, or a great expanse of loneliness. It’s something I’ve read about that occurs up in northern outposts or western expanses. It’s impossible in this quadrangle that has been artificially set up for me. Every nook and cranny (and there are a lot of nook and crannies in SW Wisconsin) has been filled with Amish farmers, German brewers, English apple pickers, and all breeds of llamas. Nowhere can someone take an ill-advised left or right turn off the main drag and end up where no one has an reason to go outside of harvesting crops or idly exploring the world minus civilization. Every creek bed has been tilled, every ridge top has been cultivated, and despite what looks like uninhabited wooded hilltops, they’re all a part of some grand process of melding civilization with nature.
I’ve always loved this area for that, but I want to crank the slider even further, to where I get wilderness. Wyalusing is probably the closest I have to that; the county roads along the Wisconsin River are gorgeous, well-maintained, and utterly empty of traffic.
Still, all the trees and hills can get claustrophobic. What about bare open mountain tops? You won’t find that around here. You can’t even see the stars outside of a very few remote pockets, which aren’t really all that remote. What I need to do is go past the Black Stump, namely, I-29. That’s waaaay outside of I-35, and even further than I can reasonably drive in a day, presuming that I wake up early enough. But it’s a goal, right?
Past I-29, which for us Midwesterners, is definitely “out there,” they have: fewer trees which mean bigger skies, drastically lower population density, in turn much less light pollution, and if you go a few hundred miles or so, maybe some fancy mountains you can sit on and watch nobody do nothing. Sounds like a summer vacation to me.

If I put this in my actual Firefox bookmarks, I’m going to spend the next five days going through it.
And it’s I’ve related.
Kind of:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrowningMusicOfAwesomeVideoGames

My first LJ-esque post. It won’t be my last, but it won’t be frequent either:

Off of ESPN’s own U Rank ‘Em Halloween Candy 2008, by plenty of readers who obviously never had a Whatchamacallit.

My Rankings:

# 1.Nestle Crunch Bar
# 2.Twix
# 3.M & M’s
# 4.Hershey Bar
# 5.Kit Kat
# 6.Almond Joy
# 7.Carmello
# 8.Whatchamacallits
# 9.Milky Way
# 10.Reese’s Pieces
# 11.Mr. Goodbar
# 12.100 Grand
# 13.Snickers
# 14.Rolo
# 15.Hershey Kisses
# 16.Reese’s Cups
# 17.Payday
# 18.Baby Ruth
# 19.Swedish Fish
# 20.Butterfingers
# 21.Twizzlers
# 22.Sour Patch Kids
# 23.Skittles
# 24.3 Musketeers
# 25.Air Heads
# 26.Sweet Tarts
# 27.Starburst
# 28.Gummi Bears
# 29.Junior Mints
# 30.Milk Duds
# 31.Smarties
# 32.Tootsie Rolls
# 33.Heath Bar
# 34.Nerds
# 35.Jolly Ranchers
# 36.Hot Tamales
# 37.Pixy Stix
# 38.Dots
# 39.Blow Pops
# 40.Whoppers

I’ve had enough drama this week.  Difficulties with people (and not just those reading this blog who know who you are), a long string of very early mornings at a job I really shouldn’t be at, and a general fall funk.  Then I turn on my favorite radio station at 93.1 FM which I believed like it had been every day I had been in Madison that it was my favorite Classic Rock station anywhere.  Instead, I got Madison’s #1 place for Hip Hop, which I swore was way at the other end of the dial.
The fuck?  The fucking hell? My favorite radio station that 95% of the time plays songs that don’t make me want to extract my eardrums and at least a third of the time makes me glad I have eardrums suddenly turned into a station that made me want to veer into oncoming traffic. I had to go through the whole day in goddamn Rockford* under this gloom that Madison lost something so special that I felt like a Packers’ fan when Brett Favre retired.
So after work, after I finally made it off of work, I went to my local used book/music store and binged:
Led Zeppelin IV- Led Zeppelin; Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse of Reason; Pink Floyd – DSotM; Jackson Browne – Running on Empty; Reo Speedwagon – The Hits; The Doors – The Doors.
Plus a couple other clearance titles. Pretty sure I already had at least half of those on my computer already, but it didn’t matter. A part of me was lost and I had to do something to fill the gap.

And then, I came home, and read the news:
(Copy and pasted from the website of the best fucking classic rock station that ever was.)
Last night just before midnight “The End” began. The Doors classic had haunted The Lake’s airwaves many times over the past five some odd years. This time though it carried with it a message. It was truly marking the end of 93.1 The Lake.

The premise of The Lake was always to try and create a unique radio experience for fans of classic rock. From our formative years of no contesting to our playing 93 album sides ON VINYL this past Labor Day weekend. Playing vinyl in the age HD. How dare us!

What a long strange trip it’s been, and we thank you taking it with us. Supporting The Lake, our clients, and our different approach. This is the point where we could try and explain why this did not work. We could blame the suits, the fact that no fewer than five radio stations in the Madison area are now playing Classic Rock. [HH note: Bullshit. Only one other station is classic rock themed and Bob & Tom in the mornings does not make a good radio station. I've also heard too much new shit on there, the on-air personalities (those that aren't syndicated) don't give two shits about the music and the music they play is far too heavily into glam rock and hair metal.] We could even try and find a way to blame the economy. That seems to be the trendy thing to do these days. If your passion for The Lake is as strong as ours though, than no one excuse or list of excuses will truly satisfy.

So rather than offer up empty explanations we will simply again say thank you. The Lake is gone. The parts that have made machine known as The Lake go are not. You will be able to hear all of us through out the Madison area. Greg and Kurt will both return to 94.1 WJJO. [HH: Still the best fucking new rock station in the country.] Greg in mornings [HH: Mild-mannered Greg teaming up with Johnny Danger? That's like having your beigeocractic uncle sit in on your weed session.] and Kurt hosting the cities only local music show Sunday nights at nine. [HH: Awesome] Sara, Sue and Jim can all be heard on Madison’s legendary Magic 98. [HH: YOU LIKE JOHN MAYER? YOU LIKE JASON MRAZ? You'll love this station. I got pulled over by cops while listening to "When Smokey Sings" on this station. 'Nuf said.] And Sly does what only Sly can do every weekday from 10a to 2p on 1670 WTDY AM.

Please tune in and join us.

[/quote]

There are many, many huge changes I knew were coming this year, and quite a few I didn’t. This came out of nowhere and hit me like a fucking bus. I don’t know what I can do anymore except adapt. And I don’t even know how to do that anymore. At least these CDs will keep me sane for a few hours.

*Cues up The Doors -The End*

Addendum: In retrospect, I should have got these CDs a long time ago. Zeppelin IV alone is not only a find, but a treasure, despite having at least a thousand times the print run as Stokesia and about ten or fifty thousand copies of this album to every copy of Dear Feeling. Yet, just having these CDs physically mean so much for some reason. Dirt from the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium to use a timely sports analogy, but more like air from Yankee Stadium. I don’t know, I have too much of an attachment to physical things anyway. I’m listening to DSotM right now.
Check out my last.fm profile. Apart from the Homestar Runner sound clips, my tastes are almost confined to two kinds of artists, one consisting of I’ve and artists very closely associated with I’ve (Haruka Shimotsuki, etc), and the other consisting of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, with a little Metallica and NIN to round it out.
I listen to I’ve, etc., on my iPod, previously my CD player. I listened to the classic rock bands more often on the radio than anywhere else. My car doesn’t have a CD player, and my FM transmitter doesn’t work in the part of the city where I spend most of my time. So I have to listen to the radio.
Now what.
I feel so abandoned, really. Something that connected me with the rest of the city in some superficial manner. It was about the music. It was about the music that I liked, and those who know me should know how much music effects me. They should know now anyway. To be connected by music with someone or some culture is more important than nearly any other connection to me. I really feel my connection has been cut off, like Madison said “You know what, you’re not one of us any more. We don’t like long guitar solos, we don’t like lyrics that never mention sex or even love, we don’t like lyrics that take a backseat to the band, we don’t like bands that are just as important as the front men, we don’t like experimentation, we don’t tolerate innovation, and we are so urban we can’t see the forest for the trees because there are no trees where wish we were. We don’t like you, there aren’t enough of you to care about you, so we have nothing to say to you any more. We’ve passed on. This is the new world, this is the new shit, adapt or get the fuck out.”

*Rockford is a hellhole of a city, don’t ever live there. In fact, except for a few isolated parts of Chicago stay out of Illinois altogether, you’ll thank me.

Last night, while idly browsing through the blogroll on Aibublog, I came across Ruki’s multi-part trip report of his pilgrimage to Venice. It took me a bit, but I eventually realized that the primary reason he went to Venice was to visit the same sites as his favorite anime, Aria. I thought to myself “What lovely inspiration!” and planned on writing a post today explaining how going to Budokan and possibly Comic Market would be a pilgrimage of my own, even though I highly doubt I’d be able to make my own anime pilgrimage to the sites where Onegai Teacher was based off of.
But sleep took over, and after work today, I took another nap because I knew I’d need it, and when I woke up, the mail had come:


I can’t make this stuff up. For those who don’t know, the cover of the RightStuf catalog on the right is, in fact, Aria. There is no way that could be a coincidence. Talk about beating a point home, the point being, you really do want/need to go to Japan. And for the record, Marimite was on the back cover.
For further reinforcement, there are the two live DVDs I bought off ebay a couple weeks ago which I’ll probably end up watching tonight. I passed on getting the Starlight Symphony DVD for a while because I knew that there was no way I would get the full $70 worth out of it, and I wouldn’t settle for the regular edition, either. Then I saw the price of it go up past $40 on Yahoo Japan, and the auctions on ebay that were at $25 evaporated. Then I actually watched my downloaded copy and realized “wait a sec, this is WAY cooler than I had imagined” and knew I had to snatch it up next time it showed. It finally did for $35 (it’s still up there, by the way). I also got Mami’s live DVD because, hey, Mami’s been great recently and it was $25. The case of that DVD is a little beat-up (thank you Taiwan resellers :/), however it has the mini-pamphlet which was out of stock at CDJapan. So wins all around.
And as I look in the mini-pamphlet, I find under the heading “LIFE” the following:
アーティスト
(artist)
川田まみの誕生
(Mami Kawada’s birth)
忘れられない大切な日ー
I’ve in BUDOKAN
(The important day I am unable to forget – I’ve in Budokan)
川田まみ X 北海道
(Mami Kawada X Hokkaido)
川田まみ X 横浜BLITZ
(Mami Kawada X Yokohama Blitz)
川田まみ X I’VEの仲間達
(Mami Kawada X I’ve partners)

The I’ve in Budokan part is what hit me. Wasurerarenai taisetsuna hi is so much more poetic than the translation, but the message is clear. Budokan was a big, BIG part of her career, as well as everyone else who performed there that night. I should not underestimate the effect it will have on a poor gaijin fan the second time around.

…shattered? Not quite.
I did have a desire to go to Japan, though, and I had about $800-$1000 saved up already, as well as about $200-$300 of stuff I figured I could sell on ebay, so the $2000 or so necessary to attend I’ve in Budokan was definitely attainable. Only problem is, in order to do this properly, I’d have to arrive in Japan on January 1st and see if the bazaar on the Budokan grounds were worth staying awake for, see some sights on the 2nd, beat the crowds to the Imperial Palace (what a rare stroll THAT would be) and then stick around for some sort of spot inside Budokan and watch C.G mix attempt to croon. Then maybe do some shopping on the 3rd if any shops are open.
First off, flying on December 31/January 1st? Am I crazy? I don’t flying to begin with (not for a fear of heights) but flying on a holiday seems absolutely ludicrous. Then everything is pretty much closed on the 1st, so there isn’t anything really left to do, same goes for the second, and the third is a Saturday, if I’m not flying out that day anyway. The only benefit I can see is that I’m probably not working that day. I don’t want to even go through why January 2nd is a horrible day for a trip for reasons related to I’ve.
Though if I really landed into some good luck I could stay Dec 28-Jan 3 and hit Comiket. That’s only um… six nights worth of lodging, food and a few billion things I could spend my money before hitting Budokan proper. Oh man, I think I might have just found new life into this whole adventure…

More later…..

Thanks to the incredible time machine known as Google 2001 I’ve found again the very first website that I downloaded music from:
Little Washu’s Media Archive. The song I downloaded was Dimension of Love, which I had heard earlier that day on Tenchi Muyo (on Toonami no less, R.I.P.). I didn’t even know what an MP3 was back then in July 2001, let alone how to save it to the computer. So I chose a .wav file that I knew would save to the computer, which is what Washu had there. I listened to it on the default “Sound Recorder” because at that time, there was no Windows Media Player pre-installed on everything (the computer had Windows 95). It probably took an hour or so to download, too, whereas today, I can probably download it in less time than it did to write this sentence. Half of it.

Now all I need is to find Phoe-chan’s site…

FOUND IT
Archives of the FIRST English-speaking I’ve fan!
Not even joking.
Don’t believe me?
Take a look at that Fav MP3s list.
Now if I can only get the MP3 page to not auto-redirect. Thing is, I never downloaded Shooting Star from this site. It was from another music trading site that put the theme up not long after it premiered in January 2002.

Another early I’ve fan. I recognize the site name, but I’m not sure if I got Last Regrets and Wing My Way (pre-Disintegration!) from there. Evidently it still exists.

Cycling Anime the first I’ve fan outside of Japan that actually owned a few of the CDs. Not sure if he owned Dear Feeling and G-mix, but he did sell some off ebay in January 2004 (archive on that was blocked :/) Quote from about that time: “My CD of Fiasse Crystela arrived yesterday as well as other I’ve CDs released during the Comiket 65 event from last december. ” [/jealous rage even though it was just Ozone]
This MIGHT be where I first got Shooting Star, since he did have it up, but web.archive doesn’t have it, and this doesn’t feel like the right one either.

And finally, a site I’m not sure I even went to, but it’s an early fan site that never really got fleshed out (the language barrier was KILLER back in 2002).

That’s enough for now, maybe a full-fledged history post later.

Part of a recurring theme!
Three days in a row I’ve dreamt about something I’ve related, just a few moments ago was no different. My dreams are just as disorganized as my mind, so anything pretty much makes sense, even if none of it does in retrospect. I can also rarely keep my mind on any one subject for more than a couple minutes, so these dreams are both short and random. Thankfully, whenever I have an interesting dream, I wake up very shortly after.
So here we go, dream journal in reverse order:

This one was all about KOTOKO. Due to my horrible memory while I’m sleeping (or awake for that matter) I don’t know exactly how it started. KOTOKO became very popular, I think almost too popular, and she was beginning to fade out, and what I ended up spying on was some sort of video conference call between her and her agent or something. In quick succession, I saw the next six or so projects that KOTOKO would be working on, the first three seemed live action oriented, (Budokan, Album, movie?) and the other three were definitely anime, with the last one I sort of recognized as Slayers (which is absurd, as Slayers is Megumi Hayashibara territory). Probably a few other things happened that I don’t recall, but I ended with the feeling that I had been witness to something behind-the-scenes in the career of KOTOKO. Also as an odd result, I ended up with a check from KOTOKO for $10 which caused my chin to drop to the floor (didn’t occur to me at the time that “KOTOKO Williams Smith” was in the “Pay order to” part and my signature was in the signature part, so again, I don’t get it.
I wish I could have remembered more, and I desperately tried to save whatever log file was being created in my dream, since I knew I wouldn’t remember it later (this is still in my dream) and after being chided by my dad for tracking dirt into his bedroom (where I ogled the KOTOKO check) I woke up with the song with this post’s title ringing in my ears.

Previous night: I was walking outside of some store which seems sort of like the B&N around where I grew up in the middle of the night when I see two figures in the distance. I instantly recognize them as Eric Mouquet and some guy from G.M.S. I know this because the Frenchman had sort-of-blond hair, a long face and a lanky body, and the GMS guy looked like a slightly more rotund and Western version of (fill-in-I’ve arranger here). I asked them how working with the I’ve girls was. They both agreed it was “long,” as in, it took GMS 8 hours to finish working on Red Fraction, and it took them both 5 and a half hours to work on the rest of their tracks. They didn’t seem too honored, more like “we do this for a paycheck” than anything. GMS guy said the girls wouldn’t let them change the lyrics, either, which didn’t make much sense in the parking lot or after I woke up.

And the night before that: Me and Aibu are (supposedly) at Budokan, but it looks like some sort of ballroom with plastic chairs set up and a big projection behind the stage. C.G Mix is in the back of the room toying either with some background music before the concert or the sound equipment. Either way, we let him be. In fact, the whole atmosphere seemed like a school assembly. The first few rows were completely empty and unreserved, so we walk up there and sit down. And that’s pretty much it for that. I rarely have the actual concerts in my dreams, just the lead-up.

(disclaimer: I am not some bible-thumping Christian. I just call it like I see it.)
This shit happens all the time:
I ran an inventory tonight, just a few departments at Wally World, and I’m not doing so confident. The two others working with me don’t exactly know what they’re doing and I’m doing my best to act like I do. And I am just counting, wondering how the heck I keep getting wrangled into these stupid jobs that I don’t know how to do properly when one of the managers comes up to me and asks “in the area by the door, there are those Pecan Bars, did your guy count it.” And I respond “No, they’re not part of the bakery, I didn’t place an area tag there so he probably didn’t count it.” “Good, thank you.”
What? It takes a bunch of experience working these inventories to know what to count and what not to count, and I know what not to count. So I do know what I’m doing. It’s that sort of completely coincidental (???) thing that gives me confidence boosters right when I need it.
Now to try not to despair over a lack of real job….

A couple weeks ago (more or less) I had a dream that I was in Taiwan. I don’t know what I was doing there, all I know is that it was raining (unusual for my dreams) gas was in three-digits Yuan, and that I was in Taiwan. I think I saw a large outdoor swimming pool, empty of people (it was raining, I suppose). And that’s it. Though I do recall trying to get it into my head that I was really in Taiwan.

And then last night. For some reason I was in Manhattan, evidently in some tour group (as shown later) and first I was in a bus going to go somewhere to eat supper. I remember that the bus was free because I took a Greyhound into New York (no, that doesn’t make any sense). I got off and followed my group (?) into this very very fancy restaurant. I could feel the carpet and the table linens and they all felt like the softest fur. I took a short glance at a menu and saw something around $274 or $247 somewhere in that range and thought “no way can I fit this into my budget.” And a girl in our group said that she had always had her eye on me and would love to eat dinner… I’m not really sure, that whole dialogue was crushed into my brain. Then I reached out and… gave her a pat on the back, and I could tell she was wearing a leather jacket.

So when I finally decide to actually go to Washington for my GIS certificate, perhaps it isn’t the fault of the dream I chronicled a couple months ago.