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I hate to come back to the LJ with a Post of Sadness yet again, but here we are.

I checked my university e-mail today and discovered two things: I'm on academic probation for all of next semester, and I flunked one of my courses. And it wasn't the course I was dreading flunking, and busting my ass trying not to (which I still only managed a C+ in); no, it was a course I was doing very well in, one that was very likely crippled by the failing mark given to our final group project.

>_<

Of course, this occasion is bringing up more than its share of ugly thoughts I've been thinking on and off this semester: I'm questioning now if I really need a Masters' for a job that's meant to just pay the bills and provide some mental stimulation while I study hard at trying to become a fiction writer.

I entered this program because I felt that I would get no decent and long-term work with just my Bachelor's in English, and to an extent I still believe this. But it's still being said that Masters' students should be looking for management jobs, which I already know I don't want. I can get lower-level jobs with a Masters', but the notion of shooting for something else, for trying to just quit here and get a job right off the bat, or try for something smaller, like a Library Technician Diploma.

Those notions dancing in front of me could lead to unintentional sabotage, or a feeling of mild misery, though I know for certain that my pride won't let me go into this semester without trying to do better, and not discarding my plans to try to make a better life.

But I'm still feeling literally, physically ill right now.

Back in 2008, commanderteddog and I went to one of our favourite anime shops in Toronto: Kikiwai. Well, I don't know if you could call it a favourite of ours exactly but we did often enjoy our little trips to Chinatown to see what sort of character goods and other great imports we could find.

Well, when we got there, there was a note taped to the door dated at least 20 days prior to our visit, which meant the shop owners haven't been there in almost three weeks. We were confused to say the least and this is when the "mystery of Kikiwai" began for us.

See, even though that note was put up on the door, all of the merchandise remained untouched inside. I think even more shocking, for me at least, was how much the store had changed inside. The layout was a lot different and somehow more open... Thinking back on it, it's almost as if they had gotten rid of a lot of stock but I can't really say for sure, they might have just found a way to be more efficient with their floor space (that was always their biggest problem; it was always so cramped in there). The strange thing is that this person's blog entry states that the inside of the store looked fine -- I can only assume it looks exactly the same as it did when commanderteddog and I visited in December, and this entry was posted almost four months later. o_O

Of course, the first search result that comes up is from this other blog entry. They say the exact same thing that happened to us, happened to them, back when the sign was first posted. Apparently, some of the papers that were shoved under the door talk about a rodent infestation and how to treat it. I find this very peculiar, since I'm sure that Kikiwai couldn't possibly be the ONLY store in this corner of the mall to have a problem with rats. I guess the neighbouring stores were all empty but there were still a couple in that wing that were operating like normal from what I remember.

Also, their web site stopped operating in February, I think. It was a while after our visit, anyway, since I remember it still being operational like normal. (It's now a dead link.) One of the comments on this blog entry says that Kikiwai is now fully closed and doesn't exist anymore. I haven't been to that part of Chinatown in well over half a year so I can't confirm that but... if it's true, that's really sad. Kikiwai was a great place to go for anime and manga and other authentic merchandise. I wonder what REALLY happened to it?

Edit: One of the other commenters states that they talked to the owners and was told that they shut down and moved the shop to Hong Kong. o_O

Edit #2: I've seen some places where they've said that Kikiwai was sold to a new owner at some point (not sure when exactly, before it closed in Dec 2008 I think) and it seemed like they didn't even bother to really try to keep the place going. Seems more like a solid theory can be made here... The owners of Kikiwai wanted to move back to Hong Kong so they sold the store and the new owner barely even tried before it shut down. Seems the likeliest of situations.

It feels queasy to be back home, and with my low marks this semester, I'm having another crisis of conscience, wondering if I'm wasting my time and still won't be able to find a job after I get my Masters', and so continuing to stagnate in terms of work and emotion.

Which puts some stress on me this season, not to mention how Christmas usually goes at our house -- a short time to relax before preparing for the next Event and then it's all over but the cleaning.

Because of that, though I'm usually content to be alone, right now I'm having another crisis about it.

Some of the Stuff I got for Christmas:

*16" Domo-kun plush (available from the Sears catalogue, of all places)

*Be@rbrick Keychain -- Not sure if this is an official Medicom product or some kind of bootleg, but it's a Be@rbrick style vinyl keychain based on the early version of Unit-00 from Neon Genesis Evangelion

*Donnie Darko soundtrack -- I'm a fairly big DD fan, but never wanted to pay Amazon's prices to get this soundtrack. But I was lucky enough to find this at retail in a CD shop. It contains only the film's score and two versions of the Gary Jules cover of "Mad World", but it's a cinch to assemble the movie's playlist of 80s pop necessary to go alongside the official soundtrack, though I heard that in the UK, there's a two-disk set containing everything that was in the movie.

*Blue Oyster Cult 5-pack -- Funny story: I was bored one night, surfing the internet, and decided, "Hey, I like the handful of BOC singles I have on my iTunes: let's use Youtube as an impromptu jukebox to see if I like the rest of the bands' music. That turned out to be pretty successful, and this find was a perfect start to a BOC playlist: contains Blue Oyster Cult, Tyranny and Mutation, Secret Treaties, Agents of Fortune, and Mirrors. Not every song is a stand-out, but it's some good rock to put me through a night of writing.

*Secret Saturdays Cryptid Figures -- I honestly thought this was a crappy cartoon when I first saw it, and stand by the point -- a family superteam hunting down cryptozoological creatures sounds cool, but the family dynamics were too stereotypical for me to get into it. Still, when TRU put out two pterosaur figures (well, one, a pterosaur-like monster), my collection of pterosaur toys demanded this.

*Dino Snubbies Pterodactyl -- Super-deformed plush pteranodon. Honestly looks a little grotesque, like all overt attempts at "cute" animal plushes, but another must-have.

*Reptiles 2010 Calendar -- Yay for finally finding a calendar with animals I really like on it. Though could have done without the picture of two iguanas lying atop each other that looks rather suspect.

*Return to Macross issues #1 and #3 -- I've gone on record as sorta-hating these comics, but I can't help but want them anyway.

*Strangers in Paradise Pocketbook 2 -- I've already read this comic through a torrent, but now I must make up for my theivery. Expect a review of the series coming up soon, though the short version is that I liked it: though I'm disappointed that the pocket edition doesn't colourize the 90s superhero parody and eliminates its dialogue.

*The Ultimate Dragon -- Anthology of dragon short stories, written in 1995, somehow resurfacing in a discount book store. I'm in the mood for something draconian, and the utter dullness of Dragon Rule demands to be countered with something more spicy. Like most dragon anthologies, the actual dragon content in the stories may prove minimal, but hopefully there's some originality in there.

She who must not be named, I got your comics. Thank you again. :)

codyne gave me a snowflake cookie! Yay!

I have a sore throat, which might develop into a full-blown cold...dammit.

gregx, I have found my extra MoC Ani Swoop and will send it to you some time after Christmas.

I know I shouldn't look at toy-selling websites this close to Christmas, but the Toynami vinyl Battlepod is apparently a "go", at least enough to get a pre-order page w/ image on BBTS. I know that Toynami's toys are overpriced pieces of crap, but I'm telling myself...how hard is it to fuck up a piece of vinyl? I'll wait for some word regarding its quality upon the actual release, but as of right now, it feels like it'll be a must-buy for me in February.

Merry Christmas.

So I cleaned up my flist. I got rid of a bunch of people (may get rid of more) and left a lot of communities. Trying to kind of cut back on things. I think I spent a lot of time in the past trying to be popular on LJ and in the anime community but I just don't give a shit anymore. :X I'd like to post a bit more often and I'd like to keep up with friends, I think. If you're interested in being better friends or staying connected with me, let me know and I'll make sure to keep you on my flist. :3

Now that's said and done, I thought I'd post my favourite anime and manga series that I'm currently into! To see how some things have changed and how some things have stayed the same. In no real order:

1) One Piece
2) Slayers
3) Fairy Tail
4) Fullmetal Alchemist
5) Lucky Star
6) Yotsubato!
7) Naruto

I think I will make a separate post for each of these series, talking about why I [still] like it and how I feel about it. :3

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my first huge pop-culture love-affair as a child. Through osmosis, I gradually learned about the franchise's origins and breadth, but fell out of love with it come my teen years, and never felt the urge to revisit it.

But, dammit, I had to see Turtles Forever, the special crossing over the two major Turtles cartoons through some plot contrivance, plus showing a bunch of other stuff. I had only vague ideas about what the 2003 series had been up to, but the power of nostalgia compelled me to watch the special. That, and the fact that I would be watching something that probably would not have happened in a million years.

I have to say, knowing what I did, they managed to pull of that kind of blatant metafiction pretty well, and I'm at a stage where such notions make me cringe for some reason. The pacing was good and the storyline worked, even if sometimes it beat you over the head with the too obvious jokes, and the ending was something of a surprise.

I loved the cartoon growing up, and never realized, as apparently the denizens of the internet say, that it was intended as an actual comedy, rather than just a heavily-commodified action series that would look terminally goofy to an older kid.

But either way I never had a memory of the 80s cartoon as badass, so I didn't mind it being mocked to high heaven in Turtles Forever. The treatment of the 80s elements waffled between seeming like out-and-out meanness to there being some kind of "good but different" thing going on, which was felt most strongly when they encountered the 80s cartoon Splinter.

Splinter was always my favourite TMNT character...I've always had a thing for rats (though he often looked more like a wolf), and he remained largely unseen through the special, which was a little sad, but I know it's really all about the Turtles.

I'm left with no urge to re-enter the world of TMNT: it's had its day with me, but this was a fun thing to watch. The portrayal of the old cartoon 'verse did feel really right to me, like they'd gotten it spot on, and I wish the franchise the best in the future after its acquisition by Viacom.

These days, I have to be careful: I have plowed through so many Zentraedi-related topics that I might end up repeating myself if I start revisiting older ones. For instance, I recently wrote something about Richard Birler the Zentradi mogul in Macross Frontier, only to realize that I had made basically the same points in an older post about him. Being starved for new material, and having a tendency to keep repeating things because of my fixation on them, can be a deadly combination.

But sometimes, there is a point at which you can revisit an old topic and find you have more to say.

For some reason, I've lately been on a bit of a kick for Rico, Bron, and Konda, a.k.a. Rori, Warera, and Konda, the three Zentraedi spies from the Macross series. It might be because I was looking for a "definitive" picture of them for my essay, and ended up capping more than a few silly faces and macro-worthy images from the episode "Blue Wind", chuckling all the while, but the truth is that I've been attached to these characters for a while now.

It's been over a year since I decided that I liked the spy trio as, uh...individual beings. My previous entry about the characters was written in September of 2008, which surprises me, since I had thought it was my RAEG at finding out how the Macross universe decided to handle them which had clued me in to the fact that, "Hey, I like these guys".

(For those who don't remember, an old Macross publication revealed that the three of them had become bitter, burned-out alcoholics, with Rori married to Vanessa but refusing to work, and therefore leaching off her. I am totally not making this up and I really wish I was).

Like I've said before, I'm aware that the three characters are never really rendered distinct from one another and that their role is largely comic relief. Sure, you get moments were one's the ringleader, and one's the more conscientious one, etc., but such traits are never consistently followed up on, and for the most part, their reactions, opinions, and mannerisms are so similar that their lines seem almost interchangeable.

But there are reasons why I like them as a collective trio. It's another one of those things where my feelings about the characters seem to be at odds with the way most fans percieve them, but I can also back up those feelings with evidence from the show. Sometimes I feel a tad off-kilter for finding anything beyond lulz in these characters, but at the end of the day, it's what happens.

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Robotech Christmas by *EastCoastCanuck on deviantART

I've seen this drawing loads of times before, and it was always fun to try to see if I could name all the characters in it. It's a little hard at first, given the number of characters who are just slightly off-model (and that many seem to have the same body type).

However, I like that the characters are actually doing various things and interacting with each other rather than standing around, which is key to any good group shot.

Plus, Exedore dressed as an elf never fails to crack me up. XD