Bush Leagues

So, with only two weeks left in the year, I thought I’d take a look back and share some thoughts on how Everything is Oll Korrect! fared in 2012, and share some of what I consider the best, or at least most interesting, posts of the last year.

Overall, the blog fared pretty well. It is, by far, the most successful year yet for Everything. Post quality has evened out, at least in my admittedly biased but self-critical opinion, and for the first time I can claim with a straight face that I update regularly. There’s been a post every week except two, in late March and late November. A few weeks had two posts, making my average just above one update per week. I also had more views and comments than ever before, though this is still far from a popular blog.

<– Previous: Anime Autobiography - Into the Bowels of College

Sometimes, one discovers the right show at the right time. In high school, I found Azumanga Daioh, early at university I found Genshiken, and early in 2009, the second half of my junior year, I found Welcome to the NHK!, about a seemingly hopeless shut-in who dropped out of college. Having already noticed a pattern in the shows I watched, I thought, “Is this what I have to look forward to?”

<– Previous: Anime Autobiography: A Rental Hobby

I began university in Fall 2006, and lived on-campus the first semester. Very quickly, I joined two clubs - the Newman Club, where I’d spend most of my time, and of course the anime club. At the time, I don’t think I realised just how little anime I had actually seen, and though one of my roommates was also a fan, he was just a casual fan like me. So, now able to watch several different shows a week, my experience with anime would expand rapidly.

<– Previous: Anime Autobiography - Pokemon and Spirited Away

Though I had already seen Pokemon and Spirited Away, I would consider serial experiments lain my ‘first’ anime, because it was the first show I sought out because it was anime. In October 2004, I worked my first job as a one-week temporary employee, for which I received the seemingly massive sum of around $350. I don’t remember what else I purchased with that bounty, but one of my first priorities was lain, which I think I ordered from Half.com (and which, I learned a couple years later, was bootleg!).

Yep, back at Wordpress.com. I tried hosting this blog myself, but found that there really aren’t any features to Wordpress that I can’t get on wp.com, so I figured I’d go back to the free hosting option. The main site, itsollkorrect.com, is still there, though, for more permanent stuff.

I just finished watching Evangelion: Death and Rebirth, and have never felt so pissed off at a film. Yeah, I’d been warned by people I trust to just avoid this one, but like a cat curiosity got the better of me. After all, the main series was okay, and End of Evangelion may have hacked me off by trying too hard to integrate every philosophy it could think of, but at least it had high production values.

I am wrapping up my third year of university, and am consequently in a reflective mood regarding my collegiate experience so far. Looking back on the classes I’ve taken, I cannot help but be amazed at what a waste most of them are.

Now, it is better to know something than not know it, and there is much to be said about a broad-based education, but nonetheless of the thirty or so classes I have taken through this semester, only a handful are at all related to my field of study. Even including those, the classes that were worth the effort (and money) involved I could count on one hand.

A post for the “Ridiculous Assignments” file.

In the creative writing class I’m currently taking, our final project is to take a piece we’ve written during the semester, and translate it into a different medium.

In other words, for a creative writing class, the most important assignment of the year is to create something, anything, except what this course is supposed to be about. That’s great.

Theoretically, the purpose of this assignment is to… I suppose help me better understand my original piece by translating it to something else. However, I’m in this class to learn to write, and this assignment is, at best, only tangentially related.

You know something that should really be banned? Dual-sided DVDs.

Seriously, I can never tell which side is which. There’s usualy a label on one side saying something like “Widescreen” or “Side A.” What really makes these things so bush league is that there’s usually no way of telling whether the widescreen version is the side with the label, or the reverse, since that’s the side that’ll be read by the DVD player. Even worse, I encountered one disc today that had the label “Fullscreen” followed, on the same label, with “Widescreen (flipside).”