February 20, 2008

Kimikiss Pure Rouge

For all my disappointment with H2O, I've been comforted recently by the excellence of Kimikiss Pure Rouge.  Mao-neesan's really taking things hard, and I've been getting flashbacks of School Days, though I'm sure that's not in the cards here...


Posted by: mparker762 at 07:59 PM
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

February 18, 2008

Spice and Wolf

"Spice" in the title would be Craft Lawrence, an itinerate spice/fur/whatever trader.  "Wolf" in the title would be Horo, aka Horo the Wise, a Wolf kami (animistic spirit) who's previous occupation was guardian of the fields and guarantor of good crops.  But when the church moves in, and brings with it farming technology, then the villagers no longer believe in Horo and she decides to move on.  In her human form, of course, because wolves don't have the T&A that humans do.

Horo from the intro...
Spice_and_Wolf_Horo.jpg

Villagers worshipper her in her salad days...
Spice_and_Wolf_1_1.jpg

Horo hitchhiking, and a very surprised Craft Lawrence...
Spice_and_Wolf_1_2.jpg

How the villagers can disbelieve such an attractive young wolf-girl is beyond me...
Spice_and_Wolf_1_3.jpg

Horo dressed decently.  And pretty happy by the looks of her.  I've never figured out why a wolf spirit has fox ears and tail though...  They don't have phones in this era, so we don't know if she can say "moshi".
Spice_and_Wolf_2_1.jpg

There are a lot of gorgeous scenes in this show.
Spice_and_Wolf_2_2.jpg

Horo, happy again.  Once again food is involved.
Spice_and_Wolf_3_1.jpg

The Trading Game.  This is actually the episode that got me interested in this show - in this scene they're trying to figure out if the silver content in a particular coin is trending up or down.  Horo's wolf ears help tremendously here, listening to the clinking sound they make.
Spice_and_Wolf_3_2.jpg

Posted by: mparker762 at 07:42 PM
Post contains 226 words, total size 2 kb.

H2O - Footprints in the Sand

So the big secret evil that that gets her called "Roach"? The one that causes her to get beaten to a pulp by the schoolkids?  The one that so inflamed the villagers that they came out out with torches and pitchforks to burn her ancestral home and kill her grandparents and parents?  The one they've been building up to for five episodes now?

Turns out her grandparents weren't sufficiently charitable towards the villagers.

Barf.

I'm washing my hands of this one.  Anime can be wierd and still be good (and the correlation is surprisingly high), but this is just stupid.

On the other hand, Spice and Wolf is turning out to be a lot more than just a T&A vehicle.  Episode 3 with the trading intrigues and currency manipulation really hooked me.  Hopefully it won't jump the shark like H2O did.

Posted by: mparker762 at 06:38 PM
Post contains 147 words, total size 1 kb.

February 02, 2008

Stropping is king

It's easy to forget when you've got a closetful of hones for dealing with those old ebay razors, but the guys in the old days frequently made do with just their strop.  The linen on the back is a slow polishing hone, but is sufficient to keep a razor sharp if you use it enough.  How much is "enough" depends on a number of factors, like the coarseness of your beard, the pH of your water, and the quality of your preparation, but somewhere between 20 and 50 laps should do it.  Just keep a light touch, since as with all honing the lighter the touch the finer the edge will be.  The coarse linen bangs the edge around, so after sharpening the razor on the linen be sure to follow it up with 20 laps or so on the leather to straighten the edge back out.

Another option I've been playing with is denim, which is also a very fine slow abrasive, but because it's a finer weave than linen it doesn't seem to knock the edge off kilter as much.  I've had great success stropping on the denim and going directly to the shave.  Unfortunately denim is much flimsier than the linen used for strops, so I put it on a paddle strop. 

denim paddle

Posted by: mparker762 at 09:18 PM
Post contains 218 words, total size 1 kb.

TI Worked Back 6/8, with barber's notch and thumb notch

I've been shaving with this razor for the last few months straight.  The Trumper's Violet soap was the lather of choice this morning.

TI Worked Back

Posted by: mparker762 at 08:01 PM
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

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