I’m a material girrrrr…uy.

I love making lists of things I don’t have but want. Current top-three wishlist:

A Lenovo Thinkpad X60/61 convertible laptop. I hear only good things about Thinkpads, so go with the best, right? The ability to write all over your screen is just too cool to pass up. I might just wait for the Dell version to come out because you can always get nicer deals with the via searching around for coupons, but it’s not that much better I guess.

A 30-something inch monitor/tv to meld into a home entertainment system. Along with a speaker system that has a lot of speakers and such (I actually know nothing about this shit, lawls!), and the quietest desktop computer, evar. I’ve gotten tired of my ABS case keeping me up at night. Okay, it’s not that bad (mostly white noise?) but it’s definitely quite white noisy. Actually, since I use laptops more than desktops these days another laptop would probably be just as good, or a docking station for my X60/61.

A phone that doesn’t suck ass. My phone’s model is literally older than some of the little sisters my friends have. Like when I went to Atlanta to visit Shelley, this was the conversation that ensued:

Shelley: “Dude, your phone does suck.”
Me: “Yeah I know.”
Shelley’s BF: “Yeah they (Funnce and Yilin) have Chocolates and you have… that?”

So yeah, I think I’m due for an upgrade. Soon. When I have money.

Oh yeah and I could probably use more clothes because the last time I bought some was seriously like years ago.

I sorta feel bad for wanting these things because like, I don’t have a job or anything. Since I entered college more or less I’ve had the fortune of being showered with scholarships and I’ve generally not been a consumer for most things besides a new computer every now and then, so I never really felt the need for extra cash. I really wonder about half those scholarships too – I mean there were some I didn’t even actively apply for that gave me quite a lot of dough. I guess I’m just really, really lucky. Hope that luck doesn’t wear out.

That and I’m a social recluse – me social recluse! need not spend money on extra shit! like going out and having fun with friends! ya! – so it kinda just ended up that way with my upkeep being relatively little for parental funding.

But now that I’m kinda past that phase the j-word has become an necessity, I suppose. I’ve noticed my spending go up considerably this last year or so, after I actually start seeing the sun every now and then, so work seems to be something I have to work (lol!, get it?!) on getting. I just hope I don’t get some nightmarish job like Shelley’s.

Oh well, this has to come after I deplete the last of my savings and then some in Taiwan. Ohohoho…

Why I think Bleach, Naruto, and stuff sucks.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the occasional shounen bash because they’re violent and visceral, but seriously, series like Naruto and Bleach suck.

My theory is that in part, the model for shounen manga/anime creations like Bleach and Naruto are not necessarily story-driven. Naruto and Bleach are completely self-sustaining as long as there’s enough people to watch it, so I doubt there is an actual end in site as long as they sell. This reduces their structure to a “hero fights, loses (or gets weaker somehow), gets stronger, fights again and wins” deal, which can propagate infinitely, not a joke, until sales start to dwindle. It feels like that is the only reason that these series have to end (or the author gets burned out on his own increasingly shitty material…) and there is no way that as a whole something like this can be superior to a story that is conceived as a whole with an ending to write toward.

Dragonball is the prime example of this, I think. Although interesting in fast forward, the only reason Goku can beat the continuously stronger enemies is the fact that he basically gets new Super Saiyan abilities with every new one, nevermind his determination and crap. I mean, they get to Super Saiyan fucking FIVE at the end of GT (although I guess that wasn’t related to the manga). If they made a new series there would have been six, seven and eight for sure, but the falling fervor for Dragonball and the fact that Akira Toriyama had nothing to do with GT kinda dampened the necessity for new continuations.

If you’re still not convinced, then answer why Naruto had a fucking year and a half of fillers and Bleach had some crappy Bounto arc that they now have to write random references to despite them not existing in the original manga. It wasn’t so that the source material could get ahead – if they wanted to stay focused they could have just stopped the series and then continued after a season. Unfortunately, the primary point of these series is to sell, not to tell a story, and we get a half-assed arc (or a year-long one) whose quality pales in comparison to the already-diminished status of the actual thing. And that equals money, but it definitely won’t equal quality.