Author Archives: Toph Beifong

anime, goodness, nerd

Spooky manga!

nothing like a creepy doll peeking through the window to keep you up at night

I showed Diminutive Roommate some manga the other night, specifically Mail of the horror genre, and let me tell you: she is freaked out.  It’s about a detective whose clients hire him to exorcise ghosts.  Spooky!  Diminutive Roommate is currently reading through the second issue in as many days.  She came into my room last night to sit on my bed with me while we both read our respective ghost stories because she didn’t want to read it alone.

One chapter involves a little girl who was stuck in an elevator.  As she climbed out, the elevator drops and chops off her legs.  At first, the ghost of just her legs is occasionally seen standing around in the elevator.  But the little girl dies a few years later, and a ghost of just her upper half can be seen dragging itself around the building in search of her legs.  Yikes.

Naturally, there was an article in the LA Times this morning about a woman who was in an elevator that got stuck between floors.  Apparently, she “climbed out of the elevator, but the car started moving again…The car dropped onto her, crushing her.”  She died.  I sent the article to Diminutive Roommate.  We may or may not be sleeping with the lights on tonight.

The Mail series is really excellent.  If you want to be spooked without too much gore, this is perfect.  There is, of course, death, and some murders, but the majority of the stories center around the mysterious circumstances surrounding the hauntings.  The author, Housui Yamazaki, is also the illustrator, so he gets to do exactly what he wants with each page.  The result is some of the scariest page-turns I’ve ever experienced.  Once, I was so spooked, I literally burst out laughing and had to put the book down for a minute while my heart hammered in my chest.  And it wasn’t gross or gory, it was just a well-done story arc that climaxed at a page turn and freaked me out.  Highly recommended.

heeeeere kitty kitty kitty

As long as we’re on the topic, I have to mention The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.  Housui Yamazaki illustrates this one, too, and it’s pretty great.  It has more gore than Mail, but there’s a surprising amount of humor in it.  I found myself laughing aloud at the dialog in every issue.  The premise is that a group of college graduates are having trouble finding work, so they group together to use their weird abilities (dowsing for bodies, speaking to the dead, etc.) to help the dead reach a place where their souls can rest, often resulting in shenanigans and various tom-foolery.  It’s a good, spooky time.

If you’re not into manga, I understand, really.  But these two are worth a shot.

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martial arts

Get dangerous

Since I have more fight training than the average person, I’m always looking for ways to teach people how to defend themselves.  I think it annoys my friends.  Sorry guys.

But what’s the point of having useful knowledge if you’re not going to share it?  Seriously.  It has to be shared.  So I’m going to post a few short lessons on how to fight without injuring yourself.

pictured: incoming ass-whooping

Basic tenants of fighting:
-Keep your eyes open, even when under attack.  Most people close their eyes when they see a hit coming.  Fight that reflex.  You need to see what’s going on.
-Keep your hands up.  Protect your face and head.
-Most people don’t know how to fight, but that doesn’t make them harmless.  Be cautious.  You never know who you’re up against, how much training they might have, how many friends they have with them, or if they’re carrying a knife (or worse).
-AVOID FIGHTS.  The best way to keep yourself from getting beaten up is to avoid fighting at all.  Keep an eye out for trouble before it happens.  Make friends, not enemies.  Be polite to the barkeep.  Don’t start anything.  Period.

Lesson 1: How to throw a punch
A lot of people (children and adults) instinctively hide their thumbs under the rest of their fingers when making a fist.  DON’T DO THAT.  All the pressure of the punch will travel straight to the first knuckle of your thumb and break it.  Which means that you just broke your own thumb, and you don’t get to brag/complain about it later.

Step One: Make a proper fist
Fold down all your fingers (excluding your thumb) until all your nails are hidden against the palm of your hand.  Place your thumb across them like ribbon on a present, making sure that when you throw your punch, your thumb will not make contact with the target.  Don’t clench your fingers; fold them into place.

yuri sakazaki has excellent form (no, really)

Step Two: Keep your wrist straight
The force of the punch should travel straight through your hand and wrist without any nasty snapping sounds.  Throwing a punch with a bent wrist is a great way to injure yourself, and make your opponent’s job all that much easier.

Step Three: Prepare your body
A solid punch starts in your feet.  Get in a solid, relaxed stance; left foot in front (if you’re a righty), both hands in fists near your face with elbows pointing to the ground.  Bend your knees a little.  Drop your shoulders.  Keep your eyes on your target.

Step Four: Crack the whip
I often liken throwing a good punch to cracking a whip.  The motion starts by pushing off from your back foot.  Next, swivel your hips so they turn to face your opponent.  Throw your right shoulder forward.  As you throw your fist toward your target, your elbow should be behind your fist, so that your forearm defines the trajectory of your punch.

Step Five: Obliterate your opponent
Contrary to what you see in movies, your fist should travel in a straight line, not in a curve across your opponent’s face.  Think of the target in front of you as an obstacle your fist needs to get through in order to reach your real goal.  Punch straight through your target to your imaginary goal.

Step Six: Repeat
My personal motto: If you’re going to hit him once, you might as well hit him twice.  If you’re in a position where you’re forced into physical confrontation, fight to win.  The first hit is to warn them that you’re not going to surrender.  The second one lets them know the first one wasn’t a fluke, and yes, you’re dedicated to winning the fight.

After all this, book it!  Your objective should be your safety, not making your opponent bleed as much as possible.  Once you’ve won, walk away.  Fast.  Long fights are the worst.  End it before you accidentally give them an opening to inflict some damage.  Even amateurs get lucky.

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badness, life

Raptor Jesus would be disappointed

I’m having a crisis.

amirite?

I love singing in a choir, being part of a group that creates beautiful, inspiring music.  So I joined the office choir that performs only at the office holiday party.  Notice it’s called the “holiday party” and not the “Christmas party” because it’s supposed to be non-denominational.  So I figured the holiday songs would be more about sleigh bells than Jesus and boy, I could not have been more wrong.  Every song we do it’s JESUS this and SAVIOR that.  What the hell?  I’ve gone to two of four practices, and I think I’m gonna have to bow out.  I sang in a choir for eleven years (age 10-21), in the children’s choir, then the girl’s choir, then the adult choir in the church associated with my elementary school.  Most of that time I was an atheist, but I loved the music because it was traditional, Latin, old-church perfection.  It was gorgeous!  And everyone loved doing their best, while this choir is sorta… casual.  Which isn’t a sin, but… *sigh*.  I miss it.  And I just can’t handle singing about Jesus if it’s gonna be this kitschy.  I object as an atheist, and as a human being with good taste.  I can’t go against my belief system that there is no god, and that We Need a Little Christmas is just awful.

Not looking forward to telling the co-workers about this one.  Most of them are Jewish, so that might make it a little less awkward.  Maybe.

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goodness, humor

Xmas: Always a hilarious semi-disaster

wait until there are presents!!

My hands smell like a pine tree!  We just bought, carried upstairs (via freight elevator), and decorated our 6-foot tree with white and red lights, and gold and red ornaments.  Also, little Gregory (a felt gingerbread man I bought at the fabric store) almost made it to the top of the tree this year, but was usurped by a cheap, glittery, plastic gold star we use every year, which really tops the whole thing off nicely.  We figured out how to punch a whole in it and wind some twine through it and thereby affix it to the top of the tree so we didn’t have to hot-glue it this year.  Yep.  Classy shit.

Diminutive Roommate’s cat, Calico, is fweaking out, as usual.  It’s an annual ritual: the tree comes up, she investigates, goes medieval on the white twine that was used to tie it down to the roof of the car, then tears around the house when we hiss at her for attacking the lights.  It’s quite a little show.

The first year we lived at the old place (2008), it seemed like everyone was out of town with family: all my friends, both my roommates, even Sister I think.  I was pretty alone at home, and a few days before Xmas, I decided to spruce the place up, and bought myself a tree.  It was pretty tiny, only three or four feet high.  I threw it on top of the Pontiac, grabbed a stand to put it on, bought some seriously discounted lights at the local grocery store, and went home.  The guys at the lot gave me one giant nail with which to secure said tree to the wooden pieces of the stand, plus a plastic bowl for water.  It’s a pretty simple formula:

simple enough... for some

And yet somehow I was so excited about putting the tree up that I forgot about the bowl, and nailed the ever-loving shit out of those boards onto the bottom of the tree.  I stood it up and immediately realized my problem: I had fucked it all up.  And I could not for the life of me get the nail out of the boards or the tree stump.  I had done a world class job of securing them together, and it was going to take some creativity and muscle to separate them.

First I tried using the other side of the hammer.  No dice.  I tried standing on the wooden stand and pulling.  Painful and fruitless.  I realized I would have to apply all the force I could muster against something with more resistance than my body was capable of.

I came up with a brilliant, obnoxious plan.

The rear door to the building was made of metal, and opened up on an alley.  I decided to place just the portion of the tree with the stand on it outside the door, then close the door just enough so that when I YANKED on the tree, the stand would be forced off.  It seemed like a simple, if absurd plan.  I was pretty sure it was going to work.  What I didn’t count on was the noise, and the number of times I would have to repeat this amazing strategy to get that fucking stand off my goddamn tree.

mad genius

It must have been 2am by the time I started hurling the stand against the door and its frame.  The alley provided for some horrifyingly efficient acoustics.  I pitied anyone who lived within fifty yards.  After the first ten or so swings, I really got the hang of it, and threw my whole body into it.  A few minutes in, I took a break to laugh hysterically at the sweaty absurdity of my situation, then got back to work.

Eventually I succeeded, and none of my neighbors complained about the racket I had made (maybe because they were CRAZY).  I affixed the stand properly, decorated the tree sparsely, and placed it in an empty corner where it sat, looking warm, yet lonely, which described that Xmas perfectly.

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badness, family, goodness, life, nerd

Thanksgiving grade: B+

I had a blast with my cousins over Thanksgiving.  I’ve come to discover that my mom and her siblings enjoy each other’s company while my cousins and I enjoy each other just as much, but for different reasons.  We got drunk a bunch while the adults stayed (mostly) sober for obvious reasons including Alcoholics Anonymous.  We had fun sober, too, and Chinese Friend from Office Job got to stay for two nights and experience a big American Thanksgiving before she leaves to go back to Shanghai.  She seemed to really enjoy herself, and everyone loved her.  She got invited back by everyone.  I hope she can make it, she’s pretty great.

Friday night with the cousins was epic.  I had four shots of Patron and a beer (Negro Modelo!) before promptly forgetting my phone in the bathroom where it was stolen before I realized it was gone a half-hour later.  So my iPhone 4 is totally gone.  Tragic.

We tracked it down via GPS the next day via iCloud and set off the alarm remotely after locking it, but the asshole who stole it (let’s call him Dirty Thief) turned it off, so we had to give up our search.  So sad.  I was bummed.  Now I have to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone.  Please help.  It’s the only reason this year wasn’t a solid A in my book.

WTF this couple should be neutered. seriously, of all the HP shit to get permanently affixed to your personhood... the killing curse? really? fail.

I’m optimistic this will turn out ok.  Maybe I’ll get the 4s!  Maybe something magical will happen.  Maybe Dumbledore will come flying out of my butt holding Dirty Thief so I can pummel him before we green-flashy Avada Kedavra his ass.

If only I could pour my molten nerd-dom into the shape of a dwarven hammer, and just pummel people with it.  But then, maybe that’s what it’s like to hear me talk at all.  Huh.

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goodness

Gingerbread massacre

DIE, COOKIEMAN

I’m not a cookie person, or even a sweets person in general.  I don’t crave chocolate, I don’t order sugary, fruity drinks.  But PUT A GINGERBREAD MAN IN FRONT OF ME AND HE WILL BE CONSUMED AND DIE IMMEDIATELY.  I like to eat the legs first to keep him from getting away, and as a lesson to the other gingerbread men who might be watching to demonstrate that escape is impossible.

Do you have any idea how much self-control it took to bring this cookie up to my desk so I could put it down and photograph it for this blog post?  Do you have.  ANY.  Idea.

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badness, goodness, humor

Ultimate internet thing

Diminutive Roommate was nice enough to show me this truly horrifying video: Welcome to Kitty City.  It has many cats.  And when I say cats, I don’t mean “Aww, so cute,” or “Wtf is that cat doing?  Weirdo.”  I mean I stared at the screen with a confused, I-can’t-look-away kind of face.

There are no cats getting eaten alive or anything horribly violent like that.  This video is what happens when the internet is focused by a giant magnifying glass, and that tiny point of concentrated interwebz hits your brain and makes it hurt.  That’s what this video is: dehydrated meme, force-fed into your eyeballs with terrifying efficiency and a hypnotizing broken-down carnival-ride soundtrack.

Here’s the creator’s website.

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goodness, humor, nerd

Everyone loves Cthulhu

I found myself in the strange position of explaining the Cthulhu phenomenon to my dad over the weekend.

STOP COMPLAINING AND EAT IT

It started with this hilarious-looking game, Miskatonic School for Girls, where members of the H. P. Lovecraft universe make up the staff.  The point of the game is to help your house’s students retain their sanity longer than your opponent.  The card that pushed me over the edge?  Cthulhu as the lunch lady.

First I explained what Kickstarter is; an online service that allows people to raise funds for independent projects for which there are too few/zero financial sponsors.  Then I told him about the game.  Then I tried to explain how Cthulhu has become an internet meme for some reason, but I’m not sure how, so I found myself saying stuff like, “He’s an underwater god from the Lovcraftian universe, but people online make fun of him by making him out to be emo or adorable.”  Which makes no sense of course, but it’s an internet meme, so all it has to do is entertain in the void to be a success.

how do I even begin to explain Cthulhu Spock...?

Cthulhu really is the perfect internet meme, now that I think about it.  He’s an obscure reference to a piece of literature at the root of sci-fi/fantasy nerd country that few people have actually read, but somehow everyone knows and loves enough to poke fun of and ironically turn into plushies.  He devours souls, people.  And now he’s a knitted baby toy.

YOU WIN, INTERNET.

I made this

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goodness, life

A simple meal

perfection

I’ve been making myself really delicious dinners recently.  It’s not that I don’t love ramen.  I do.  I love ramen.  But it was time for a change.

I’ve been eating these delicious sandwiches: olive bread, brie with herbs, rotisserie chicken, lettuce, tobasco sauce.  Toasted.  Eaten.  Amazing.

Last night was simpler.  Spicy sausage, fried egg, toasted hunk of olive bread with butter, wine.  A few weeks ago, dinner was spicy sausage, cheese, wine.  Hearty, simple, delicious.  I’m going to have to do this more often.

Boyfriend and I went to the Red Lion in Silverlake months ago, and had beer, sausage and potatoes.  It was one of the best meals we’ve had together.

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goodness

Hokusai, you are the BEST

if only this were real

I just found this print at Giant Robot, and I might have to add it to our wall of quirk (The Quall).  You can actually get the Hokusai wave as a wall sticker, too, because waking up without thinking JESUS A GIANT WAVE-oh fuck wait it’s just a sticker is a wasted morning.

And check this out, he did a study with cranes.  I always love looking at studies rather than just finished pieces.  The artist puts down shapes, and finds harmonious ways to compose a larger piece.  Studies are visually whispered insights on the the artist’s process, and they speak even after the artist dies, like he’s showing us what he was considering before that one painting made him famous.  Also known as magic.

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