Spreading the disease.

It looks like my dad caught the flu I had last week, and it grew by a factor of 10. In all my years of growing up, I’ve never seen my dad this sick before. His fever was up, his bones were aching, the diarrhea wouldn’t stop, and his body would either be sweltering hot or freezing cold. He even professed to me that he’d never felt this way before in his entire life. Madness. So, I’ve been taking care of the WP for him in his absence. I have no choice in the matter, anyway. The firstborn son has responsibilities, and I am honor-bound to uphold them. When I was younger, I never thought much about it. I always wanted to live my own life, gallivanting across the universe with my omnipotent powers… but reality is always harsher to those who want to escape the most. What surprises me the most is the fact that I’ve silently, and without incident, accepted my fate. If I met my younger self and told him that it would happen to him, he’d probably run screaming for the hills in straight denial. How maturity changes things.

So, I’m in manga heaven now. I’m thinking of making another order. I might pre-order Yotsuba To! and Dark Moon Diary. I want to pick up xxxHOLiC and Tsubasa, as well as Hikaru No Go. Even though I didn’t like some of the changes ADV did to it, I’ll still order the last volumes of Azumanga Daiou.

I haven’t forgotten my J-Pop. I’ve got the latest Sonin and Kouda Kumi singles on the way, along with DANCE MAN’s AFRO Gunsou!! I also pre-ordered KOTOKO’s first live DVD, and it’s a rare release too! Whew! On a side note, I’m listening to Hitoto You and Arai Akino a lot, so I’ll probably end up getting their albums. Also, Hamasaki Ayumi’s MY STORY is extremely good; a huge improvement from the terribly awful RAINBOW. In my opinion, RAINBOW was missing some of that trademark Ayu sound, and she sang way too much in English, which totally killed her record for least English words sung in a Japanese album. Bad Ayu!

On a non-Japanese note, I woke up at 7:00 this morning and decided to start putting tracks together for my new Psycho Metal Mix CD… and it ended up becoming my new Slowboil Metal Mix CD. I told Ian about the idea for this CD a few months back – basically, it’s a bunch of songs by metal/nu-metal artists that are, well, the softer side of their music. Notice how I used Slowboil? It’s because I carefully handpicked each song so that the lyrics are grim, moody, and angsty. Now, the album starts out slow with a few soft songs, mostly acoustic or with no beat or electric guitar. Eventually, the tone of each new song changes until it erupts, and then calms back down, the last few songs hinting at a resolution. Interesting? Once I get it all tweaked out, I’ll post the track listing. To dissuade any further questions, yes, it’s all ENGLISH music. No tricks.

Damn. I need to put aside some time to migrate Mitake into my new acrylic case.