Archived rants, update notices, and such things

January 8, 2005

Since I'm currently in a pretty lousy mood, I decided to cheer myself up a little by making additions to the minireviews over at T-Anime. This time some modern classics from the good old nineties. Oh, and a brand new one too (but with its roots in the seventies...).

/Johan

December 22, 2004 - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I break my silence to wish everyone that happens to visit here a very MERRY CHRISTMAS! Thank you for visiting and I hope I'll see you here again soon. I don't dare to make it a new year resolution, but I will try to be a little better when it comes to updating and such things. (Not a big promise, really, since it's kind of hard being much worse than my record for the last months.) I have, as usual, some big plans for 2005. If any of them will be realized is a different matter...

Last but not least, a very special "Merry Christmas" to Anders, Caroline, Christopher, Derrick, Julie, Laura, Maria, Michael, Niclas, and Sara for being around in different ways and making my days brighter! ^___^

/Johan

December 5, 2004

It is time for a new design on this page, and - in time - on the other pages adjacent to this one. This time my love for the Japanese animation art has made its way all the way to my root directory. See it as a kind of promotion for my Tonakai Anime subsite, or something along that line. ^^

In the process of changing design, the tagboard got an overhaul too. In other words - I have replaced it with a new one. This one is not run by a third-party and shouldn't have the annoying quirks that always come with such things. On the other hand, it's now all my own problem if it doesn't work properly.

The other subsite, Bit Alchemy Revolution, now actually has some contents! Sort of, anyway. It currently fulfills a role as fanficlet archive, which for the moment means that it contains one fanfic drabble and two song parodies; all associated with local Swedish traditions and recently posted in my LiveJournal.

/Johan

November 11, 2004

I'm a little too tired to accomplish anything real today, but Tonakai Anime got an update to the minireviews.

November 3, 2004

And then the world became a little more unsafe...

That's it. The presidential election of the USA seems to be over. And the US seem to continue this little habit of declaring the winner before the vote count is finished. While the normal procedure of democratic voting systems is that you vote, you count, and then you declare a winner. Is that a hard concept to understand?

Actually, I'm more appalled over this weird view of how a democracy works, than over the fact that the worser candidate seem to have "won". (I'm sorry, but as long as the outcome of an election depends on the fact that the main challenger technically withdraws his candidature before the final results are in, I can't take the outcome seriously.)

That said, this will end my personal US election coverage for now. After all, I'm not an US citizen, so it's not my place to tell the Americans how they like their country to be run, but for some reason I suspect that the rift in the nation hasn't exactly narrowed now. It is however fully my place to tell anyone what I think of the way the USA behaves in the world. And if the US wanted to be respected, understood, and listened to on the global arena, they sure chose the wrong government!

That's it. Basically, I refer back to my statement of October 29. I'm so glad I live in the other union!

October 29, 2004

Unity and justice and freedom - yes, I'm being political again

I am so glad I live in a union...

...where I can publicly state my dislike for the current government without being labeled unpatriotic and a traitor.
...where I can state in my blog that I hate the head of government or the head of state without having the security police come knocking at my door.
...where some citizens' right to vote in an election isn't questioned on the grounds of their believed political affiliation.
...where the news media at least tries to uphold an aura of objectivity.
...where doctors can perform fully legal abortions without being harassed by extremists or killed by them.
...where the main thing the gay movement has to fight for is the right to get married in a church.
...where small groups with extreme views doesn't have any impact on the policies of libraries and schools.
...where the parliament find the appointment of an arch-conservative homo- and gender-equality-skeptical as the highest ranking official for judicial affairs unacceptable.
...where the International Criminal Court is recognized, so that the member states have to follow the Geneva conventions - or at least have to face consequences if they don't.
...where religion and politics to a high degree are regarded as two separate things.
...where people need approval for having firearms.
...where no one risk to be executed on criminal charges that later turn out to be false.
...where the right to be tried in court is granted to all.
...where I don't have to swear allegiance to any political authority while in school.

Which union are you living in?

(Sure, I have more than a few objections toward the government and its policies in this country as well. Quite a lot, actually. But right now, they feel small in comparison.)

[Footnote: the phrase "unity and justice and freedom" is the title of the national anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany - which actually is the second verse of the old anthem - "Deutschland Deutschland über alles". Same song, different evocations. What will "E Pluribus Unum" - "Of many one" mean in the future? Will it be "Those who aren't with us are against us" or "We will work together" If you're American you can help to decide that on Tuesday.]

Or, to be blunt, I hereby endorse the Democratic candidate for president of the United States of America. Vote for John Kerry before the US have lost all international credibility and all its allies!

October 8, 2004

Why do I keep stating in the headline what year it is? Okay that my updates are rare, but not that rare!

Anyway, that's not why I'm writing. Not that the real reasons are much to write about either. The page for meaningless stuff has got a bunch of new test results added, and if anyone noticed - which I really doubt - the miniblog is now gone. The main reason for that was that it had started to attract spammers, and besides that I never got the time to write in it either. My LiveJournal is more fun, 'cause then I know that at least four persons actually read the stuff. Poor them! ^^

Oh, and the Bit Alchemy Revolution site got a new design the other day. Still not much when it comes to contents though...

September 3, 2004

The long promised minireview of Neon Genesis Evangelion is now added on the Tonakai Anime site together with some other new reviews. As usual, the Swedish version is still lagging behind, but I'll try to update that page too someday.

Apart from that, I have nothing new to report except the sudden addition of the Bit Alchemy link in the navigation at left. A whim of the moment made me try to do a page in a modern way, and thus was Bit Alchemy made public September 1. It doesn't have any contents though...

August 12, 2004

No, I haven't forgot I had this page. It's just... well, summer. And I have been lazy. And on vacation. And... OK, enough of trying to present a good reason for my lack of updates, answers and such. Now I'm here again!

For those interested, I have started to polish up the Anime & Manga site in English a little. For now, it's only the front page that's got the new look, but at least that's a start. Someday I'm going to make some more actual contents for it too...

Currently, I'm trying to make a minireview of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. The Evangelion mecha-psycho-drama isn't that easy to award a rating, not even one of my subjective ones. But I'll get around to do it any day now.