Mathangi Arulpragasam’s (aka M.I.A.) debut album turned out to be interesting. It blends in some fairly basic synth kit beats with stop n’ go rap lyrics.
Lyricaly it made me think Black Eyed Peas without the over-production.
A funky, multilingual old-school dance beat album with lilting rapping over it.
All in all, not bad. Check out some of the links to on the Wikipedia entry to get an idea of the sound.
Yea. That about sums it up. His three panel comic on how it went down is here.
Now, what bothers me here is the fact that he got fired for talking about it being hard to kill someone with a .22 rifle.
This is a conversation I’ve had before.
And oddly, the content of it wasn’t much different. Basically, the same context with a “yea, a .22 caliber rifle is great for target practice.. you’d have to really try to kill someone with it, not just accidentally misfire or something.”
I’m kinda shocked someone could mis-construe that, with the “have to shoot them in the face” added on, as being some kind of warning that you might be a psychopath. Psychopath’s *don’t* casually talk about the dangers of firearm ownership, they simply start shooting people with them.
This, folks, is why they’re psychopathic. Stating you picked out a target practice rifle based on it’s improbability of harming someone (yes, even with a colorful metaphor) shouldn’t raise any red flags here.
Is it just me, or are people starting to witch hunt because of a infinitesimally small number of deranged individuals?
So, driving home Sunday I noticed a Beer Stein sitting on a recycling bin out in Wolcott. I almost stopped to pick it up.. almost. It had some odd looking attachments at the bottom that made it look like some weird Beer Stein hookah cross-bread.
And I do have a love for the bizarre accouterments. Even though I don’t smoke.
But then I got to thinking.. what if it’s a beer stein for holding ashes from some weird culture? Or maybe a stein that’s cursed to make the beer therein taste like ash.
Deciding to firmly ere on the side of beer-related caution, I drove by.
Alright! Back from Katsucon 2007. Not too many pictures compared to some people… and a good portion of what we shot was of various friends and acquantences hanging out. You can find them at http://villa-strayligth.net/katsucon_2007.
Overall the con was a good time. Went down with old friends, met up with people I don’t see all that often (as they live a few states over) and then hung out with a great crowd on Sunday morning (in the early-*early* AM) who happened to alse be loitering neer the Connecticon booth.
After the fiftieth round of whatever that childrens show was with the pirates and a woman who, I’m pretty sure, was high on something singing “something something A PIRATE!!” it got a bit old. If only I had a projector and a pocket sized PC to hook it up to…
Coincindentally, people seem to think being asked “Pirates or Ninjas?” at 2AM is odd. At this simple query I ended up getting people that actually gave a sidelong glance and walked faster. I’m asking people, mostly drunk, at an *anime convention* this, mind.
Chilling with the Magfest crowd was a blast, I’ll have to actually make it down to the convention this year (if only it wasn’t right after New Years! 
)
So that’s about it for Katsucon 2007. I imagine there was anime being played, people dressed up in costumes, and various activities. The art room floor was fun, as was the merch cavern (which we noticed was really the parking lot, and the reason we had to drive around endlessly on Thursday looking for parking). Otakon’s coming up and we’re looking at it with a bit of skepticism. The venue wasn’t all that hot last year, but I might make it down.