Home again, home again, diggity dig

Well, my travel luck seems to hold, which means there was a delay, but not immense insanity along the lines of forgetting my passport.

I.e. my flight was delayed for about an hour, and they wouldn't tell us how long it was delayed for, probably because they didn't know. This was particularly annoying because it only takes an hour to get from LA to SF! After that, we sat in the plane for another half an hour, and once we had reached SF, we were forced to circle in the air for yet another half hour. I was extremely disgruntled by the time I got off.

I was also worried, as the BART stops at 1am, and my car was parked there. Thankfully, I got my luggage and managed to get on the shuttle to the airport BART station around 12ish.

However, despite the fact that the schedule says that trains run till 1 in the morning from that station, the airport BART station closes at midnight.

I am really not certain how that makes sense.

I ended up taking a taxi to the BART station where my car was at, which lead to the most surreal occurence of the day. After getting out, handing the driver $10 and asking for a dollar in change, the driver gave me a look and said, "Give me fifteen cents and I'll get you the dollar."

Um, ok... I thought and just agreed.

As I was digging around in my wallet for the change, the driver ran from his cab to me and flung a dollar bill at me. As the dollar bill slowly fluttered to the ground, he sprinted back to the cab as if giant robots were chasing him, then tore off, wheels squealing.

I am still not quite sure what happened there. Possibly he thought I was a raving psychotic lunatic?

Earthquake of DOOM!

We had an earthquake! Everyone says 5.6 and I believe them without clicking the link because I am just that lazy.

Sadly, I had actually forgotten that it happened only twenty minutes after. I think I have lived on the Pacific Rim for too long. And my measure of Big Earthquake is "stuff falls off shelves and we have to hide in the car" from hearing reports of my family going through the big one in Taiwan in 1999.

Also, I think rachelmanija's flea infestation has come home with me.

In conclusion: DOOOOOOOOM

Kotobuki Tarako - Love Pistols, vol. 01-02 (Eng. trans.)

(originally published as Sex Pistols, but the title was changed as Blu didn't want a lawsuit here)

Um, so you know how I said After School Nightmare was the strangest thing I've read this year? I have found competition! ASN is still the strangest thing I have read all year, but Love Pistols is the most insane, and not in the good Yuki Kaori way.

Actually, I think Love Pistols will be the absolute worst thing I read all year that I was still compelled to finish (as opposed to the worst thing I read all year that I didn't finish because I chucked it at the wall in rage).

The thing is, I knew pretty much all of the cracktastic and insane bits in it, and it still does not compare to the real thing.

I will not give a plot summary, as there is no plot. Instead, there are zooman beings and womb worms (omg my brain will never be the same again) and "This is the first time I've had sex with you while you were conscious" (roughly). And lots of bodily liquids.

( Spoilers broke my brain )

In conclusion: my brain just broke again.

Yun Mi-Kyung - Bride of the Water God, vol. 01 (Eng. trans.)

Soah's village sacrifices her to be the bride of the water god Habaek for much-needed rain. When Soah wakes up after the ceremony, she finds she's in a different land with floating islands and the young child king. She doesn't realize that Habaek has a secret, though.

Now that I think about it, not much happens in volume one. On the other hand, I don't care because the art? It is gorgeous. Check out pages on Amazon. The entire volume is like that, and even if there had been much plot, I probably wouldn't have noticed among the gorgeous swirly hair, the costumes, and the landscapes.

That said, I do actually like the characters so far, and I particularly love that it’s a take on the usual animal bridegroom/Cupid and Psyche/Beauty and the Beast type story, which I’ve always been a sucker for. And I want to know if the older woman who comes in later is the Queen Mother of the West (Xi Wangmu) from Chinese mythology, since the Korean name sounds vaguely familiar. On the other hand, I could be completely making that up!

Also, now I want to know how much of the mythology the author is creating and how much is taken from traditional sources and what she’s doing to them. This goes a little back to my thing about common knowledge; one of the reasons why I’m so sad that Chinese mythology and story and legend isn’t as well known is because this means I get less stuff in English riffing off of it. Like most people, I learned the basic mythology of my culture via adaptations, not from the original source. Anyway, brief digression to note that I wish I knew more Korean mythology.

So far, I very much like this. Also, did I mention how gorgeous it is?