See what I mean about the girl:guy ratio?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

The Anime Fans decamp onto the lawn as flames fail to engulf the building.

Batgirl! Her costume was fetchingly low-cut at the back, with little bat wings... Which I utterly failed to get a picture of.

The Fire Brigade arrives! We are saved!

Cosplay Contest

A rather good Vash the Stampede from Trigun, complete with cat.

Our bat-girl, showing off for the crowd.

Left to right: Umi, Hikaru and Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth do their famous Dance Dance Revolution routine.

Miyu (right) and Larva (left) from Vampire Princess Miyu.

You need Yu-Gi-Oats!

Four girls and a guy from Gravitation.

Alucard from Hellsing.

One of the girls from Martian Successor Nadesico... I forget which one. A "bridge bunny".

Two of the girls from Azumanga Daioh sing Chiyo-chan's song. Aaaah! Cuteness attack!

Hey, we're on the big screen!

Um... Dejiko and Rabi-en-Rose from Digi Charat. Management takes no responsibility for any side-effects that may ensue.

The boy and girl (whose names I have utterly forgotten) from Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Really nice costumes, these, simple but effective.

Just another random Yuna.

San from Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

Day two to follow...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:50 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 201 words, total size 3 kb.

It also depends on the population being essentially homogenous; that there is no large group that truly votes as a bloc. This seems to be becoming more the case rather than less; labour, for example, long the bastion of the left-wing parties, has become rather less of a certainty now that a majority of the public have become shareholders in large corporations.

Marx wanted to resolve the class war by reducing the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Capitalism has achieved the same end by raising the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. Today, we are all capitalist fat cats, and proud of it. (Except for the self-hating LLLs, who nobody cares about anyway.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:40 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 164 words, total size 1 kb.

Two things have always struck me as slightly odd about American elections: first, the very public primary elections (particularly with respect to the current line-up of Democrat candidates). In Australia, the leaders of the various political parties are decided by the party members, and the leader of winning party becomes Prime Minister. (With the Liberals in coalition with the Country Party, the leader of the Country Party traditionally becomes Deputy Prime Minister).

Interestingly enough, the debate about Australia becoming a republic (instead of a constitutional monarchy as it is today) was squashed some years ago when a referendum showed that a majority of Australians rejected the idea. In fact, this was largely because the pollies (politicians) wanted to choose the President themselves, while the people wanted a popularly elected President. So for now, we still have a queen (Queen Elizabeth is Queen of Australia quite independently of being Elizabeth II of UKoGBaNI).

The other confusing thing is the apparent rag-bag of policies that make up the Democrat and Republican party platforms. For either party, half the items seem to bear little relation to, well, anything. This is explained by the fact that the parties are de facto coalitions of numerous unnamed smaller parties, whose policies and goals are far from uniform. So the Republicans have the NeoCons and the economic conservatives, who I largely agree with, and the Religious Right, who from an Australian perspective appear to be completely bonkers, but who remain something of a political force in America. The closest thing we have here is Fred Nile's Christian Democrats, who have pretty much zero influence in anything. (And are viewed as being completely bonkers by most Australians.)

The other big - but more subtle - difference is that voting in Australia is preferential rather than a simple "first past the post". This means that if you want to vote for a fringe candidate - say Ted, who supports model rocketry but has little chance of winning - you can direct your preferences to another candidate - say, Susie. All the votes are tallied, and if Ted comes last, the preferences on those votes are then distributed. If most of Ted's fans are also Susie fans, then Susie picks up most of Ted's votes. Which means that a third-party candidate like Perot or Nader would not have the effect of splitting support for their nearest political allies.

Whether this is good or bad is too complicated a question for me to ponder during my lunch break.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:40 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 438 words, total size 3 kb.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:51 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

News and pictures once I'm dry and have had dinner and maybe a nap and caught up on blogging elsewhere and such.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:53 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 54 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:47 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.

Well, and Street Fighter and Dance Dance Revolution... But we'll ignore that for the moment.

I missed the first couple of hours, since today was a Saturday, and I never get up on Saturday mornings if I can help it, and because Animania is being held this year at the University of New South Wales* which is miles from anywhere and rather a nuisance to get to.**

But I did get there in time to see Haibane Renmei, which I was quite enjoying, right up until the Bavarian Fire Drill. Complete with real fire engines! If you want to see what an anime convention looks like decamped onto the lawn outside the Scientia*** at UNSW, I've got pictures and will be posting them tomorrow.

Then, after the building spectacularly failed to burn down, back inside for a rather good panel on model making from an artist who's worked on the recent Star Wars and Matrix films, and then the Cosplay (costume) competition, the highlight of any anime convention.

One of the nice things about anime, as opposed to my other hobbies such as programming, computer and role-playing games, and science fiction, is that it is very popular with the other half of the species - you know, girls. In fact, the audience looked to me like about a 60:40 girl:guy ratio. Lots of cute girls, and even better, lots of cute girls in anime costumes.

Lots of photos of the cosplay contest, of course, and I'll post the best ones after the second round tomorrow. My favourite of the day was the girls from Magic Knight Rayearth doing their DDR routine. Cool!

The day ended with Who's Line is it Anime, a series of improvisational comic skits with an anime theme. It was during this that I started wondering why so many of the female contingent kept referring to yowies... Until I realised that I had never heard the word yaoi spoken before.

Anime... Truly something in it for everyone.

* A.k.a. Kenso Kindy, yes.
** I studied there for three years. Trust me on this.
*** That wasn't there fifteen years ago!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 401 words, total size 3 kb.

Well, normal. Except for a greater than usual number of people sporting bright yellow hair, if you didn't know the World Cup was on, you wouldn't... Know it was on.

Carn' the [Who's our side, again? The Wallabies. — Ed.] Carn' the Wobblies!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:00 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.

But that's because you're a moron, easily distracted by sparkly lights and shiny objects. You were really voting to let small, inherently undemocratic groups run your state all the time, forever. The fact that you thought you were doing the former when in fact you were doing the latter suggests that you would have been more helpful in the governance of your state by hurling yourself off the Golden Gate Bridge and smacking into the bay below with a nice, bone-powdering swack. In addition to clearing out four million bottom-feeders from an already-overpopulated state, California might still have a government still nominally beholden to voters, instead of through special-interest control by mob rule proxy.

Tell me again how Gray Davis was our last bastion against the pernicious influence of special-interest groups?

Meanwhile, closer to (my) home, Tim Blair points us to this:

I sometimes think that people should be obliged to pass an examination in economics, history, geography, social science, current affairs and politics in order to earn the right to vote. Nothing against our friend Arnie, of course, who is a very worthy gentleman and probably not guilty of all the scurrilous things of which he has been accused. Yes, a minimum 50 per cent pass in the afore-mentioned subjects should be required for anyone to be given the title voter.

At least it's nice to see a couple of lefties with a basic grasp of spelling and grammar for a change.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:52 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 285 words, total size 2 kb.