Reileen van Kaile

Y'know, it can be really hard to tag things appropriately. I'm finding this problem with both LJ and with trying to bookmark stuff on my Delicious account again. How specific should I get? Should I be general, or should I name as many specific details as possible? Do I tag by subject matter? Sub-subject matter? Source website? Do I tag with some witty phrase of my thoughts on the matter (i.e., "stupid things")? Should I do all of 'em? Would that be overkill? Am I overthinking this? (Probably.)

I think there's two generally different approaches to tagging that aren't necessarily exclusive to each other. One is to help yourself find things; one is to help other people find things. The difference is that with the former, you can tag things in a slightly obscurish manner, or in a haphazard manner, and most of the time (when you remember) you know why you tagged it the way you tagged it. When trying to tag things to help other people find those things, though, you have to be a little more objective/factual/whatever about it, and probably stick to the basics. Here on LJ, I waver between the first approach to tagging and the second approach. My Delicious account is private, though, so there's not too much of an issue there.

Still, one area where I'm personally running into tagging issues is when I'm trying to tag things about various kinds of Serious Business, i.e. politics, economics, racism, anti-oppression/anti-prejudice in general. I'll probably be able to work out some sort of personal system as I continue wading through these things and making sense of them, but at the moment it's pretty overwhelming. (I am also going cross-eyed at the thought of trying to tag all of my imported Firefox bookmarks, some of which were left untagged from the last time I substantially used Delicious about a year or so ago. Eep.)

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"Moe: The Cult of the Child" is an evenhanded analysis of the moe phenomenon in otaku culture, where there is a lot of focus on the cutesy antics of young, adolescent girls who sometimes look like they've got girls' heads pasted onto women's bodies. The author discusses the appeal of the genre and what that appeal means for society as a whole.

This is an informative but depressing interview about the crap-covered state of the U.S. insurance industry by Bill Moyers with Wendell Potter, the former Head of Public Relations of Cigna, one of America's largest health insurers.

An A-to-Z Smorgasbord of Overused Graphic Concepts and Resources.

cupcake_goth, a.k.a. Jillian Venters, a.k.a. the Lady of the Manners, recently posted about plans for a book-promoting picnic at a large graveyard. She was apparently berated by a fan who thought she was disrespecting the dead in doing so. However, in the comments to the entry, one learns that the big public/non-churchyard cemeteries and graveyards were, to some extent, intended as large public parks, to be freely enjoyed by anyone who wanted to hang out there for whatever reason (whether it was just to sit down and read or to take a walk or even to have weddings). There's an interesting discussion about the intersection of life and death with regards to that particular context. Myself, I remember visiting this one pretty large cemetery up on the North Side (I think it was off the Addison Red Line stop?) back in my freshman year of college, and being both haunted and fascinated by the history in it. I've always wanted to go back and wander around some more, especially in nicer weather (since when I went it was cold and rainy; wouldn't mind the rain so much if it hadn't also been chilly).

Two instances of HELL FUCKING YES for the Reileen! First off, Dead Fantasy III has gone live, focusing on a one-on-one fight between Tifa from FF7 and Hitomi from DoA. I cannot tell you how much I love the Dead Fantasy series for its absolutely ri-cock-ulous Physics Does Not Work That Way fight scenes. It's absurdly beautiful and beautifully absurd. And as impossibly beautiful as all the women are, I'm glad that the creator seems to be focusing more on the amount of ass they can kick instead of the amount of ass they've got exposed. I can't wait for the next few installments, particularly in light of the ending scene for DF3.

Secondly, remember or not how I was blabbering about Jeeja Yanin starring in a new film? Raging Phoenix's trailer has also hopped onto the webz. It's short and with no indication of the plot, but the bits we see of the action scenes seem promising.

AvatarFail continues with four headshots of the four main characters. Leaving aside the obvious racial problems, what the fuck is up with Zuko's "scar"? It looks like the makeup artist smeared clay on the side of his face and then called it a day. And I know that this is only one headshot, but Aang just looks so RAWR and sulky and I'm like WHERE DID MY SEAL-SLEDDING AVATAR GO NOOOOO. As a bit of an antidote to this clusterfuck, here's a survey in three parts about the many ways that A:TLA subverts the status quo (and some of the ways that it doesn't!).

Cool nature thing of the day: watermelon snow, which is snow that is not only pink but also, indeed, smells faintly of watermelons! Look but don't taste.

While soldiering through the archives of The Straight Dope (I actually got through all 57 pages! Though I didn't read all the columns, obviously), I found that they had addressed how the word "gay" came to mean "homosexual". I'm particularly fascinated by the fact that "to gay it" once meant "to copulate", and am now imagining the word "gay" in place of another certain word that also means "to copulate." For example: "Well, gay you to hell and back!", or "GAY THIS GAYING SHIT!" or "That's gaying awesome." Certainly "mothergayer" would have interesting implications. In a situation where things have just gone to shit, I think the mood would be lightened considerably if someone uttered "We're totally gayed." (This totally puts Jade Curtiss' "A Definition of the Word 'Fuck'" in an entirely new light. WHY DON'T YOU PLAY HIDE AND GO GAY YOURSELF???)

Nine reasons the economy is not getting better.

From Lifehacker (that name is epic), how to bake cookies on your dashboard harnessing the heat accumulated inside your car on a steamy summer day. WIN.

Finally, this entry is one that I swear everyone needs to be smacked with at least once in their life: jimhines discusses why it's even more important to dissect pop culture for problematic themes and attitudes than it is to do the same for more "literary" works. The very accessibility of pop culture is exactly why problems with the culture need to be examined and brought out into the open. It sends a message to people, hey, look, these problems haven't gone away. They're not hiding under the dustbunnies of history and obfuscated academia; they're in the center of the room, flailing their hands and dancing. (IN UR ROOM, FLAILING THEIR HANDZ)

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Also watched Police Story 4: First Strike recently. This is one of Jackie Chan's American/English films. Long story short, Chan plays an HK police officer who gets whored out by his superior to the CIA in order to track down a suitcase nuke. His job takes him first to Ukraine, then all the way down under to Australia. The version of the movie I was watching was all English-dubbed, but apparently in the original cut, there were instances where some of the characters were speaking either Cantonese, Ukrainian, Russian, etc. Anyway, plot is kind of silly, the fight scenes were slightly disappointing until the end, where not only did you have Jackie fighting for a couple of minutes while on stilts, but then you also had underwater kung-fu in a tank with a man-eating shark. I shit you not. I also liked this scene, set inside what looks like a large warehouse - among other things, Jackie performs some seriously amazing stunts with what looks like a 12-foot-tall ladder or thereabouts.

*looks back over this entry* ...RAWR, how am I going to tag this thing?

-Reileen
or am I just wasting time?

Because it's not like I already have a messed-up sleeping schedule, last night I ended up staying up into the wee mornings hours watching some of the martial arts flicks that I borrowed from my brother's rather substantive collection while sketching. The problem with having a brother who shares similar tastes in movies and games is that I can easily borrow that stuff while I'm still at home, but once I'm out of the house I'll have to get my own copies... Let me tell you, it was a pretty bloody night.

Ong Bak was first into the ring. Prior to this, I'd seen Tony Jaa in Tom Yum Goong (known as The Protector in the US, which I really liked) and Spirited Killer (which I, uh, didn't), so I had some idea of what to expect in terms of fighting style. Ong Bak is a good introduction to Jaa, but it may not be for those who get squicked by film violence real easily, because Ong Bak is far bloodier than either Spirited Killer or Tom Yum Goong. I'm mostly inured to that stuff by now, and even I cringed at some of the scenes. The film's been described as an unabashed "look what I can do!" demonstration, but seriously, when you can pull off all the crazy shit that Jaa can, why wouldn't you want to show that off?

In the movie, Jaa's character, Ting, is a devout young man from a tiny village in Thailand whose most precious possession is a statue of the Buddha called "Ong Bak". One day, the head gets stolen by a low-level mafia thug, and Ting vows to get the head back even if it costs him his life. With only the donations from the villagers and his own determination to live on, Ting travels to urban Bangkok to hunt down the perpetrator, eventually getting entangled with an elderly mob kingpin who speaks through an electrolarynx but otherwise is a pretty boring character. This is a remarkably similar plot to the later film Tom Yum Goong, so it's no wonder that TYG was sometimes mistakenly referred to as Ong Bak 2. It's a pretty straightforward plot, so all you have to do is just sit back and watch Jaa kick ass and take names. Interestingly, though, my favorite action sequence from the film isn't any of the actual combat scenes against the big baddies like the obnoxious Australian(?) guy and the Japanese guy in a schoolboy uniform with the quasi-Spike Spiegal hair, but instead a chase scene through the alley markets (is that what they are?) of Bangkok, when he and another character Humlae (played by Thai comedian Mum Jokmok, who also appears in a comedic sidekick role in The Protector) are being pursued by a gang of thugs that they pissed off. I guess it's because it injected some humor into a deathly serious movie with a ridiculous plotline? That's fairly early on in the movie, though, and it only gets darker from there, although the ending is relatively "happy."

Kill Zone (originally titled SPL) is even worse in terms of the graphic nature of the violence. In particular, the various death scenes involving the character played by Wu Jing (who is kind of a little bit awesome in his white-clad knife-wielding crazy assassin role) were pretty much the most expensive meal you could get on the Menu of Death: a Whopper-sized Knuckle Sandwich with a side of Supersized Pain and a Big Gulp of Agony. I'm hungry, I haven't eaten breakfast or lunch. I think it all served the plot well, though. I'm not sure what I would peg as my favorite action sequence - maybe the fight between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing? And certainly the smackdown between Yen and Sammo Hung is a thing of Much Awesome.

The movie is, at first glance, a standard cops versus the mafia kind of story, but there's a lot of nuances involved in the portraiture of the characters and the climax and resolution of the storyline that make it stand out to me. (Not that I've necessarily viewed a lot of cops vs. mafia movies, never mind movies in general...) I found myself developing empathy with both sides of the law here (barring Wu Jing's assassin - he had no development at all, but I liked him anyway 'cause he was crazy style like damn), and I think that Kill Zone, outside of being a really badass-looking flick starring a showdown between two of the world's greatest martial arts legends, is also a good study in how to potentially handle nuanced characters. Which is a pretty mean feat, considering that a lot of martial arts flicks, even some of my favorites, aren't exactly huge on either coherent, deep stories or 3-dimensional characters. So Kill Zone is definitely up there with one of my favorite martial arts flicks of all time, with a pretty damn good drama to boot. (Spoiler: Too bad nearly everyone dies in the end. The last scene is pretty depressing, although because I'd read some spoilers a while back, I knew that it was intended to symbolize Simon Yam's character finally dying from the brain tumor he was diagnosed with three years ago. But the movie doesn't really remind you of that fact throughout, so by the time you get to this scene you may have forgotten about it.)

At some point last week, I also watched Invisible Target, which is yet another "cops versus the bad guys!" flick, although this time the cops - played by Nicholas Tse, Shawn Yue, and Jaycee Chan - are chasing after a mercenary group that's wreaking havoc in Hong Kong. Crazy-ass Wu Jing returns as the leader of the mercenaries. Jaycee Chan's father Jackie Chan makes a small cameo near the beginning of the film, as a guard for an armored truck that's being looted by the mercenaries. (He gets shot ded, lulz. It's one of those "blink and you'll miss it moments".)

Invisible Target, similar to Kill Zone, also makes attempts at drawing out nuanced characters and a deeper storyline, but for some reason it didn't resonate with me as strongly as Kill Zone's did. The heroes are all pretty distinct in terms of their backstory and personality: Tse's a rather impulsive officer who lost his fiancee to the mercs (she was collateral damage in their rampage), Yue's an effective but arrogant detective who seriously got served by the mercs' leader early on in the film, and Chan's an earnest and idealistic beat cop whose older brother (an undercover cop) may have gotten inextricably entangled with the mercs. All of them are generally likeable.

On the other hand, the mercs' portrait is a bit more...muddled. They were apparently all orphans raised together in a...military...training...camp...thing? And they hate all cops because of...something-or-other that I'm not even sure the movie knows what it is. THEY JUST HATE ALL COPS, OKAY. AND THEY BE TIGHT WITH EACH OTHER, YO, THEY BE TIGHT. LIKE LEATHER PANTS ON A WELL-CHISELED ASS. Probably the only interesting thing about the mercs (besides the intimidating presence of Wu Jing, who once again doesn't get much development - although it's certainly more than what he got in Kill Zone) is that we actually get a female merc (no development, but she can kick some ass well enough) and we get a merc who seems to have some sort of conscience and is probably the most well-characterized of the mercenaries...for a certain value of the term "well-characterized". (Spoiler: When Chan and this guy finally get to talk, Chan makes the comment to him that "you act like my brother, but you don't look like him". It turns out this guy was responsible for killing Chan's older brother. Echoes of BMJ, anyone?)

All in all, despite the narrative deficiencies, Invisible Target is still well worth a watch for martial arts or action junkies, especially for the bar brawl scene where we get to see Jaycee Chan kick some ass with Tse and Yue (although this only happens after a series of events with Chan that pegged my embarrassment squick liekwhoah). Actually, though, my favorite scene in the movie isn't an action sequence at all: it's a conversation early on between Chan's character and his grandmother, where Chan is describing what his day was like.

Wai King Ho: So, I kissed someone today.
Grandmother: (serenely filling out a sudoku sheet) That's nice. Bring her over for dinner.
Wai King Ho: It was a guy.
Grandmother: Guys have to eat too.

Chan was referring to the fact that he had to give a homeless guy CPR.

Invisible Target also taught me that you can throw a bottle of booze at a lightbulb and break it, and the resulting sparks mixed with the alcohol will cause a nice kaboom! Awesome. [/tongue-in-cheek]

Meanwhile, I found out a while back that Jeeja Yanin (Chocolate) is set to star in another movie, currently called Raging Phoenix (original Thai title Du Suay Doo, meaning "stubborn, beautiful, and fierce"). It's apparently going to revolve around a romantic storyline, and hip-hop elements and moves will be incorporated into the movie somehow. Me, I'm just glad that Jeeja no longer has that fugly haircut from Chocolate. She's a cute girl, but her costumes from that movie were just so damn ugly. Look, she might've been playing an autistic girl, but autistic girls deserve to dress cute too! *eyes her younger sister's closet full of bright cheery outfits* I know some people weren't impressed with Chocolate and they're not overly impressed with what they're hearing about Raging Phoenix, but any movie that stars a gal who can pull off this pose in those shoes has to be worth watching.

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I changed the color scheme of my LJ layout to something green, in honor of what's going on with Iran right now. I'm not informed enough or smart enough to write anything particularly insightful about this, but I can link y'all to some pages that I personally found well worth reading, for various reasons.

one_hoopy_frood talks about ways to help out and provides other helpful links. ciderpress on Dreamwidth has a pretty short entry on the entire thing, but I'm gonna quote these two lines from it here for Big Fucking Truth:

There are mass protests, students, adults, young and old, and the heavy cost of a revolution, one that has never been required of me to live this good life I have, is being paid. I'm not sure were I asked whether I would be able to pay it.

yasaman briefly argues why the absolute worst thing for the US to do right now is to get involved.

Here's a post on a forum compiling several confirmed happenings in Iran, based on tweets.

And someone - I can't remember who it was, but I saw the entry on my flist somewhere - was talking about the implications of Iranians using Twitter and other social networking services to fight this out and to get the news out about what was happening in their country. As if we didn't already know that we had entered a new information age, this just clinches it, and it's amazing that something so seemingly innocuous and insipid like Twitter could be used in such a world-changing way. It's really mind-boggling.

Also, appropriate icon is actually kind of appropriate. I originally made it from a joke or something during LJ Strikethrough, I think, but honestly, it's better fitting for the people over in Iran right now.

-Reileen
regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all

Visit foc_u for more details.

In light of the most recent instance of RaceFail in fandom (now called MammothFail to distinguish it from RaceFail '09, which happened earlier this year), I thought I should, at least, step up and say that, o hai, i r fan of color.

However...I am also a Clueless Fan of Color.

I have lived a life in which my numerous other privileges - class and education being the most obvious ones, but there are probably others that I'm not aware of - have allowed me to live a fairly colorblind existence up until recently. It wasn't that I never thought of myself as not being Filipino-American; it's that I never, never experienced something that made me attach negative connotations to that identity, and in fact I view it primarily as a badge of pride, as a mark of ~*~specialness~*~ (sometimes to the point of exoticness, I fear). There's a lot of layers of colored sand that's being shifted around here in my experience of racial identity as a second-gen Filipino-American, but I don't have the words or energy (...or courage) to put them out there for others to read just yet. But in short, I have never consciously experienced anything (yet) that made me hate being different. Being Other.

But I know that many, many other fen of color don't have that same privilege. So this short entry, this posting of a shiny banner and a link to a helpful community, is for those fen who are being silenced, who are being made to fade into the background, who are being ignored.

***

In more mundane news, I have been sick since Friday and it doesn't look like things are getting better. Mommykins wants me to stay home tomorrow if my fever gets any worse (it was hovering around 100*F for the past few days, then I took it today and I was at, like 101.4*F or something).

-Reileen
what would you go wild for?

Haha, looking back on my previous entry at the icon and the moodpic, I'm reminded of how Gintama has amazing "WHAT THE EVERLOVING RATFUCKING SHIT" expressions. I really want to collect the English manga, but I have no money and no job yet. And I wish someone would license the anime so I could buy that too with money that I don't have.

Speaking of anime, I really gotta get caught up on Michiko to Hatchin. It's almost ending soon and I want to be able to write a review thingy of it.

And speaking of "ending soon", the Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro will be doing just that. It's currently on chapter 197 or something, and I'm not sure how many more chapters Matsui's got planned. It would be clean and neat if he ended it at 200, but given the events of 197, that would make things seem a little rushed. (Though it's not like no mangaka has ever done a rushed ending before.)

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Finished reading Naomi. Brief thoughts: I wanted to smack Joji, I felt bad for Hamada, and Naomi was a hell of a piece of work. The entire story is much more palatable if you read it as an extended allegory of Japan's relationship to the West, instead of as two actual, living characters. I think overall, I prefer Lolita. Let me tell you - as creepy as it is (and it is creepy), Humbert Humbert did one thing right in going for them super young, because if you wait too long, then they apparently turn out like Naomi. Lord and Lady on a pair of skiis...

I'm going to tackle Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto next. Er, well, maybe I should start reading some of the library books I have first. Decisions, decisions.

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In honor of Mario Day on March 10 (because March 10 = Mar10 = Mario, hur hur), someone made SMB-themed cookies.

While we're on the topic on themed food, apparently a restaurant in D.C. is now offering Obama-shaped sushi. Er...phwee?

I present to you the best cosplay photo ever. ("THIS WAS NO ORDINARY CHICKEN CUCCO. THIS WAS EVIL MANIFEST.")

Miley Cyrus and Kanye West got snubbed by Radiohead. I love Miley's claim that she's going to "ruin" Radiohead. Yeah, I'd like to see her try! (For the lulz.)

OMG YES, I WANT THE TWILIGHT DVD JUST FOR THIS: Twilight movie commentary with the director Catherine Hardwicke and stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison. BRB LOLING TOO HARD.

Gonna end this link-o-llection with a couple of SRS BSNS links...

This article takes a deep look at the status of the female sexual submissive in the BDSM community and in greater society, and how it connects to feminist issues regarding informed choice. (It also happens to be written by a woman who identifies as a feminist and as a female sexual submissive.) mia_noire, I don't believe you're into BDSM (and if you are, make sure you play safe and sane, aight? :D!), but I believe this article is relevant to your interests anyway with regards to the parts on female images of sexuality in society.

These two articles discuss the issue of being sexy as a Muslim woman.

The Japan Times Online has a rather grim article on the future of the anime industry. Here's a blog commentary on that article.

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Gospel of the Shadow is up on YouTube now. I also have vids for "Almost" and "Sphinx" recorded, but, uh, I think I might want to re-record them.

-Reileen
I never wanna act my age, what's my age again?

From Kotaku: Suspect arrested for threatening to blow up Hudson

Metropolitan Police have arrested a 29-year-old man for threatening to blow up Japanese game maker Hudson. The suspect, Takao Ike of Kanagawa Prefecture, was apparently dissatisfied with the quality of Hudson's games.

From October 2008 to January 16 of this year, the suspect threatened Hudson 11 times, sending emails that said things like he was sending a bomb to the company that would kill everyone or demanding that 80 trillion yen be brought to JR Takamatsu Station.

JR Takamatsu Station is in Kanagawa Prefecture. The suspect worked part-time as a courier.

In a signed affidavit, the suspect admitted, "I did it because I posted my demands concerning the games, but the games didn't improve."

This is seriously too perfect to be real. I have to admit, I'm torn between "Protesting: URE DOIN IT RONG" and "Yeah, YOU GIVE THOSE LAZY SONS-OF-BITCHES AT HUDSON THE WHAT FOR!"

(Thanks to blackryuomega4 for bringing this to my attention!)

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In other (less amusing) news, there's been some changes to the whitewashed casting of the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie! Dev Patel is slated to star as Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. Okay, so, great, we've got an Actor of Color...but he has to play the villain? When all of the heroes are white and the "ethnics" are only okay to show on-screen as background scenery? No. Just no. You fail at multiculturalism, Hollywood. I suppose it's just coincidence that Mr. Patel had the lead role on a little film called Slumdog Millionaire, right?

Also, Jessica Jade Andres (who?) is, according to this article, supposed to play "the Earth Kingdom's representative, Suki." Say what? She's going to play this chick?! (Also, what's up with that "Earth Kingdom's representative" deal? Kyoshi Island is considered Earth Kingdom, yes, but they didn't really have much connection to the big Earth Kingdom powerhouses of Omashu and Ba Sing Se.) (Also also, that article states that Shyamalan is planning a three-movie story arc. Oh my Gods, I weep to think of how he's going to end up butchering Toph's character. OH M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN NOOOOOOO) Just...ARGH.

Anyone who comes up to me and goes "Geez, there's just no pleasing you people, is there?" is going to get hexed nine times to Hades and back. Seriously, is it too much to ask for some fair - note the qualifier! - representation of people who look like me in popular media in this supposedly enlightened age that elected a black man to the office POTUS? It's not an issue of "political correctness" (STABBITY STAB I HATE THAT TERM, IT NEEDS TO DIE IN A FIRE AND THEN BE FROZEN IN ETERNITY IN JUDECCA) - it's an issue of respecting the diversity present in the world, and in the United States in particular since that's where this fuckover is happening.

-Reileen
I want everything back but you