Well, i just got back from a fun weekend party filled with crazy DDR, Eurovision-ness, and almost every type of alcohol imaginable (altough, the congealed pina colada was rather unappealing when we woke up in the morning)!

The setting of the party was Northampton, which dispite the evil overlords tower (“it’s a land lighthouse” ……yeah right, we believe you), and slave prison (“it’s a flour mill” ……yeah right, we believe you) was actually quite a nice place, i wouldn’t mind visiting there again. It’s possibly the greenest town i’ve seen in England!

Anyway… the weekend was mostly filled with alcohol and DDR, and that’s where i discovered that wonderful song that i’m now addicted to. If a song could give you an orgasm, then CANDY? by Luv UNLIMITED would be it. Especially that part where it goes up in pitch halfway through the song… just so perfect!! I’d really like to know what that type of sound is called, is it just a synthesiser, or is there a specific name for that type of synthesiser sound, does anyone know? I’d also like to apologise in advance to the people i work with who will have to put up with this song coming out of my speakers on repeat for 32 hours next week.

The other sections of the party involved a couple of hours of music from my mp3 player, which the older guests seemed to approve of: “This is great, we’ve got a bunch of 19 year olds playing 70′s music”.

As for the Eurovision, i was kinda disappointed Romania didn’t win, but i guess 4th is a respectable position. And Lordi being presented with flowers for winning was just hilarious.

No doubt pictures of the party will be surfacing on various places on the internet shortly. -_-

After the party had ended on the Sunday i was whisked away to visit the Northampton and Milton Keynes Anime Club. Cake, more DDR, anime quiz (which our team won, rather convincingly if i may add), and i even won a rubber on the raffle! All of that added up to a rather enjoyable few hours.

Ahh… fun. Hmm… London Expo next weekend, time to make a fool of myself and laugh at the millions of n00bs!

Currently listening to:

• CANDY? by Luv UNLIMITED
• Several Smile.DK songs
• Several ParaPara albums
• Eurovision 2006 album

Yes, you guessed it, it’s that time of year again! Time for Terry Wogan to rip into the “best” singers Europe has to offer (i say “best”, well, it’s more like cheesiest/craziest).

For all you visitors outside Europe that have no idea what i’m on about, i guess this explains it well:

Running since 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual televised song contest with participants from numerous countries whose national television broadcasters are members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The Contest is broadcast on television and radio throughout Europe, in selected countries around the world, and on the Internet.

The structure of the Contest is as follows:

• Each country, through a variety of means, chooses an artist and song to represent them.
• Each song from every country is then performed once on the night, vocally live.
• After all songs have been performed, viewers have ten minutes to vote for their favourite song. Viewers can not vote for their own country e.g. voters in Ireland can not vote for the Irish entry.
• All the votes are added up per country (e.g. all of the votes from Irish televoters, from French voters etc.)
• Each country, via satellite link, reveals its votes. The top ten songs voted for in each country receive points, from 1-8, then 10 and 12 points. Points are announced per country in reverse order.
• In the end, the winner is the country with the most points. In a tie, it is the country with (any number of) points awarded from most countries that wins.
• The winning country receives the honour of hosting the next year’s Contest.

Anyway, it’s mostly a collection of cheesy europop songs, people in drag, and other misc insane asylum escapee’s. And the “voting” is little more than countries voting for their neighbors regardless of how good the songs were.
As for this year’s contest, after listening to the songs on the official website i can safely say that i predict Cyprus will win (for what it’s worth… i correctly predicted Greece would win last year, altough i didn’t want them to). As for who i want to win, then it’s a tough choice between Slovenia, Romania, and Cyprus.

And the obligatory “crazy country” of this years contest goes to Finland, with their group Lordi:

The UK won’t win again, and again i hope we get 0 points. Whose idea was it to have a bloody chav for our entry??! We need cheese, not burberry!

Small anime update: I won the Haruhi towel… $102.5. The Haruhi OP and ED singles i ordered arrived. The Haruhi ED single only made it to #5 on the weekly Oricon charts (if they’d included online sales and sales from anime shops in Akihabara, then i’m sure we’d have made it). There will be 3 Haruhi character singles (Yuki, Mikuru, and Haruhi) coming out in July according to an advert inside the CD’s i ordered. And i’d just like to say again… High School Girls is very good! The fanservice seems to have died down in the last episode.

EDIT: Well, seeing as neither Cyprus or Slovenia made it to the final, i guess my vote shall be going to Romania.

Sucked, sucked, they all sucked!!

Sony: Boring guys… showed a few unimpressive looking trailers (seriously… Gran Turismo HD… just GT4, but with a bigger resolution), announced the controller will be a ps2 controller they painted silver, and tacked on some gyroscopic sensors at the last minute, and also dropped the bomb about the price. Well i certainly won’t be getting this at launch. And as for their online thing….. the guy pretty much said they were inspired by myspace… lol….. great. -_-;

Microsoft: Slightly better, but still… showed more run of the mill FPS games in production (Liek OMGWTFBBQz0rz!!!11111 Halo 3 iz the c00lest game ev4r!!! lollers). I shall admit, the whole live integration with everything microsoft was kinda interesting…. all we need now is vista to be released eh? Oh, and the camera… adding your picture to your gamertag…. you just know it’s gonna be full of penis pictures. But by far the best announcement they made is that Defender will be available on Xbox Live Arcade soon….. that game rocks!!

No more news from them about Lost Odyssey though *sigh*, but at least we got to see Hironobu Sakaguchi in the crowd! ^_^

Nintendo: Well, what can i say… more of the same stuff, except with support for the new controller tacked on:

*another* mario game
*another* zelda game
*another* metroid game
*another* sonic game
*another* pokemon game
*many other* generic sports games
…and a load more.

*sigh* altough… that tennis game did look kinda fun, but who has that sort of space in their bedroom… i barely have enough room for a dancemat as it is. I guess at least the Wii will be cheap though.

More Haruhi news (can’t go a post without mentioning it now can i?), the novels i ordered arrived. I must say, they’re smaller than i was expecting, i thought they’d be at least manga sized, but they’re not, they’re like A6 size… all the photo’s are misleading, lol. It’s nice that you get a free sneaker bookmark with each one though, and the books look very nice underneath the dust covers.

Oh, and i can’t leave without quoting this…..

In A.D. 2006, someone was bored.
Kyon: What happen ?
Yuki: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Mikuru: We get signal.
Kyon: What !
Yuki: Main screen turn on.
Kyon: It’s you !!
Haruhi: How are you gentlemen !!
Haruhi: All your base are belong to Haruhi.
Haruhi: You are on the way to destruction.
Kyon: What you say !!
Haruhi: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Haruhi: Ha Ha Ha Ha ….
Mikuru: Captain !!

Thanks go to Itsuki Koizumi from the sos-dan.com forums for that.

Damn you Haruhi, why must you be so addictive!!! Haruhi… crack for the otaku generation.

I was requested, and so i shall post:

My guess is at least $100… but if it gets anywhere near that high, i’ll just buy it from yahoo jp auctions.

And finally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vgDkev9NVw

Apparantly they are all guys… yes all of them. Whatever they are… they rock, lol!

Let me just post that IRC log for laughs:

[20:23:07] [InsaneLampshade] is there a fullsize version of the one with the girls?
[20:23:16] [Shin_Getter] otoko only :p
[20:23:22] [zima] girls?
[20:23:33] [InsaneLampshade] …you mean to tell me they weren’t girls?
[20:23:37] [Shin_Getter] i don’t think girls watch haruhi :p
[20:24:12] [Ana] at least two of the “girls” are most definitely guys, if not all three
[20:24:19] [Shin_Getter] hahaha
[20:24:31] [InsaneLampshade] …but one of them has…. breasts
[20:24:42] [Shin_Getter] shaped inserts? :p
[20:24:47] [zima] you mean the DAISEI vid?
[20:24:50] [Ana] yeah
[20:25:01] [lchang] the one on the right looks feminine
[20:25:06] [zima] those were all-male cast

I think i’ve finally reached the limit of my one bookcase. No amount of creative stacking or re-arranging will magically create any extra room.

And there’s still more stuff i’m waiting for to arrive. God knows where i’m gonna put the new figures and those Haurhi novels. Ahh well… i guess i could sacrifice my bed for another bookcase.

About those magazines (my collection of Newtype and Neo) in one of the pictures above… i’ve since stopped buying either of those, because quite frankly they both suck. I already know pretty much everything printed in both of them, therefore their “news” is redundant (and in Neo’s case… several months out of date). I don’t bother reading reviews since i prefer to watch something and decide for myself. Both of those reasons remove a large chunk of those magazines, and what’s left isn’t any more interesting either. In the case of Newtype… a bunch of adverts for ADV stuff, and the same gundam and fma articles we’ve been reading for the past year. And in the case of Neo… a bunch of noob articles aimed at 10 year olds that have no idea what anime is (as reflected by the majority of their forum members, and the people running the place….. 10 year old noobs that have no idea what anime is).

And so, neither of you shall have my money. *sigh*

On the other hand, i shall be buying the June issue of Megami… because Haruhi commanded me to! (to be honest, i prefer catgirls myself *hopes for catgirl costumes later in the series*)

As a few of you may know, the Sci-fi London Anime-all-nighter thing was on saturday/sunday, i can’t be bothered to come up with something witty and interesting to write here, so i’ll just copy and paste what i wrote in a forum:

“Hmm… Karas made me fall asleep, GITS: Innocence made me fall asleep (for the 2nd time), Advent Children just sucked (altough i already knew that).

Oh well… at least The Place Promised in our Early Days and Voices of a Distant Star were excellent (altough i’ve already watched them several times before).”

So overall, nothing really that exciting there (i shall post a couple of pictures when the person that took them puts them on the internet). But getting to see more of Makoto Shinkai’s work on the big screen made up for it! And of course being around a few members of the newly established cult of Haruhi was rather entertaining (we even managed to hand out a few leaflets to complete strangers in London Victoria station! ).

Hehe! (i have no idea how accurate that translation is… the English was copied from the novel translation, and the Japanese from the official website)

Also, if anyone was actually looking forward to me talking about making birch sap wine, well… i failed. The birch trees finally started budding, but it seems they didn’t wanna give me any sap! I blame the dry weather. Oh well, i still have gooseberry wine to look forward to in Autumn.