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Hisashiburi da na.

(It's been a while, hasn't it?)

These are some things I have done since last writing:

-Cut my beer and desert consumption dramatically. My doctor says cutting these out altogether (along with wine and whiskey) allows most men to reach a healthy weight with very little effort beyond the massive will-power necessary to not enjoy these things. Apparently, women can't drop pounds quite so easily. There are trade-offs in life.

-Read the excellent chronicle of the early days of wildstyle, Hip Hop Family Tree. I remain convinced comics offer a unique and refreshing approach to history--even in the case of music, where one might expect the format to be at a loss. I am, however, biased.

-Watched the whole of Attack on Titan (a title dubiously adapted from its original Japanese, 'Shingeki no Kyoujin', or 'Advancing Giants'; a decision which requires the continuous mistranslation of 'kyoujin' ['giant' in English] as 'titan' throughout the series). It is essentially a zombie/post-apocalypse show, but instead of undead eating people for no reason but to do so, we get sexless giants with frozen expressions who do nothing but wander around and eat people (you know, like zombies). It would be too easy if their weak spot were the brain, as in the Romero style, so they are instead only killed by a strike to the nape of the neck (coupling the classical Japanese fetishization of clean, white neck nape, and the tradition of samurai washing the backs of their necks prior to battle or sepuku). Soldiers tasked with fighting the giants wear a pair of air-powered grappling devices which propel them though the air in segments which are at times spectacular and at others really quite silly--which is sort of the whole series in a nutshell.

-Seen my ridiculously happy son grow. He will be four in a couple days. I'm going to have to start lifting weights to be able to carry him.

-Not accomplished much of anything creatively, less a few sketches. I have wasted my free time in ephemeral contemplation, mostly.

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