After surviving yet another semester, I have returned to the sleepy hamlet of Boston, Massachusetts.

Done with finals!

Also I finished The Pillow Book so I need something new to read. Suggestions?

Science has finally gone TOO FAR

A charming look back at the opening credits of the television shows of our childhood:

The amazing and helpful richips has set up an LJ feed for the comic at heliothaumic, so I don't need to flood my personal journal with comic posts anymore. Thanks, richips! <3

My comic has a brand new site! Hooray!

Also there's a couple of new pages I forgot to post in this LJ whoops

Heliothaumic 52

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/03/21

While trying to find an empty sketchbook here in Boston, I stumbled upon the journal I kept on my high school exchange trip to Japan.

I now present JAPAN BY THE NUMBERS, as written by me in the summer of 2005, around the midpoint of the trip:

六月二十八日
水曜日

JAPAN by the numbers:
Gifts given: 8
Gifts received: 10
English homework edited: 2
Books read: 1.5
Things I am embarrassingly bad at: a million
Meals consumed: 13
Meals retained: 12
Hearts broken by volleyball: 1
Doraeomons in journal: 5 1/2
Evidence that people are basically the same everywhere: ∞
Times I've been asked my age: 11
People surprised by my age: 11 (in both directions)

Heliothaumic 51:

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/03/17

Lydia's familiar isn't as fancy as Kaonthil Telith's.

I am in Boston for spring break!

Mostly I will be doing classwork though.

Boo hiss

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/03/10

Page 50!

Thank you for reading so far. :)

Heliothaumic 49:

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/03/08

I was cleaning out my images directory and found this:



My images directory is a strange and unaccountable thing.

Dear God I'm so sick of the fucking primaries

Page 48 of Heliothaumic:

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/03/03

On the off chance anybody cares, I just put up a whole bunch of new drawings on my deviantArt gallery.

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/02/29

Probably only Tamayo will care and/or know what I'm jabbering about, but I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, so I'm finally reading the thing all the way through, instead of just the snips and snatches that were drifting around the internet. What little I'd already seen was impressive enough that I ended up using the name "Kiyohara" (which was the name of Sei Shōnagon's family) rather prominently in this comic. :V But actually reading the thing– my god. It's pretty astonishing to think that it was written a thousand years ago, since Sei Shōnagon's personality comes across so vividly in her writing.

Anyway, with all that in mind, a selection from The Pillow Blog of Kiyohara Takako

53. Hateful things

When one reaches the Underground turnstile and, seeing a train waiting by the platform, frantically swipe oneself in and run through the station in most undignified manner, only to have the doors slam in one's face and the train thunder off into the tunnels.

In the course of one's commute on the Underground, the train's conductor announces that the train is switching to express service, and if one wishes to get off on the intervening stations, one should alight at the next stop and await for a new train right behind the present one. One disembarks and waits patiently, yet a new train does not arrive for fifteen minutes. How hateful!

A politician who talks around pointed questions during a streamcasted debate, and is declared the winner by the pundits who come on after-wards.

A snowstorm which changes into a freezing rain whilst one is walking down the street.

Snow, picturesque when fresh and illuminated by moonlight at night, which has turned to a foul grey sludge by morning.

Westerners who keep dogs as pets, and dote upon them like children.

When a lover, in the midst of a conversation with oneself, finds his Timepiece to be ringing. Instead of ignoring the call, he accepts the call, and speaks at length with some old friend. Hateful!

When the ring-tone of a friend's Timepiece is a song one enjoys, and thereafter upon hearing the enjoyable song one finds oneself thinking one's friend has a phone call, and quite incapable of one's former pleasure at hearing the familiar tune.

Equally hateful is when a song one has placed sentimental value in is appropriated for an ad for a faceless corporation such as a bank or a motorcar manufacturer.

Ordering Kyokanese or Beiguese food in a restaurant in a Western country, and being given a fork to eat it with.

Finding a hair in one's food, and being quite unable to identify its original owner.

When one's undergraduate students accost one with questions regarding their marks on an certain assignment, when those marks were given by one's T.A.s and therefore unknown to you.

Clip-art used on a poster designed within the last 35 years.

When my fucking Ilthmiri Archmagess bitch mother calls goddess damn what is the deal with that seriously

This Deerhoof album is seriously pretty great





pagodas kimonos cars

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/02/25

Page 46

http://themidlands.net/archive/2008/02/23

The International Pound (i£) is the shared currency of a number of Core Economic Zone countries. Currently, Akan, Kyokan, Beiguo, Chartannia, and the Coastland use it, with the rest of the CEZ retaining their native currencies or grouped into smaller monetary unions. The i£ was named after the pound used for centuries by Chartannia. Commentators generally agree that this was because Kyokan and Beiguo wanted to throw a bone to the West.