guided by a new era

- I hit another Zingerman's truck in the parking lot today. This one left a mark on my bumper, too. I was backing out of a spot and thought I had room to back up just a liiiiitle bit more. I didn't. Oops.

- I am *so* proud of myself. I wrote my essay for Angela's Ashes in two days. All it needs is a bit of editing and a title and it will be done. Senioritis, my ass.

- I have completely, irrevocably fallen in love with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I'm a little more than halfway through 2nd gig and it makes me sad to know that after 2nd gig is just the movie Solid State Society and then it's over. :( It's soooo awesome. As per usual, I've latched onto one of the minor characters who will never get more than one or two quick appearances each episode as one of my favorites. I have to watch most of the episodes twice to understand them completely, but aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh it's so awesome.

- Yesterday I discovered Pandora. It's amazing. I've found so much awesome music on it, and besides that it's good background noise for when I'm working. I have a relatively small collection of music (~600 songs, compared to most of my friends who have ~10,000) and sometimes I get sick of hearing the same songs over and over again.

These past three days, I have fallen in love with three things:

LA Ink
Tegan and Sara
Strawberry Panic!

I has new things to do yayz. But I can't find a downloadable MP3 of the opening to Strawberry Panic and it makes me sad. :(

The past couple days, Cartoon Network has been having a Naruto marathon. I guess I'm being an anime-traitor when I say that I haven't really been all that interested in Naruto, mostly because I'm too lazy to download the subtitled episodes. The dub makes my ears cry, so I don't watch it. And there's SO MUCH of it. A few hundred manga chapters, a few hundred episodes. Jesus Christ. And of course, I could have caught up over the summer, but I missed my chance. I've read the first chapter of the manga and that's it. The only time my interest really spiked was when word got out of that incredibly slashy part in one of the new chapters. XD

I've also been hesitant to start watching lots of it because I've seen bits and pieces of episodes that just reminded me a lot of Dragonball Z. You know, a couple of the characters are fighting, but most of the episode is spent with other characters talking about it on the sidelines. And that kind of thing bugs the hell out of me. I don't want to listen to them jabber about stuff I can figure out on my own, I want to watch the awesome-amazing action. I don't like info dumps.

Does anyone know of a way I can get my hands on the subtitled version without buying the whole series? I know there's a Naruto fansite that makes you pay something like 39 cents a month so you can download episodes, but that takes forever.

And the only things I can think of to ask my parents for as presents for my birthday are: an Appa plushies and a lunch tin, vintage-style. D: I FAIL AT LIFE.