Me like eat food. Yum.

I am a square.

Daddy-o, I've got the leet skillz in one of four crazy areas, y'dig it? My particular brand of funk ...can we start this again? Let's start this again. Okay. Sorry.

I am a square. It's become clear to me that really, there's four cornerpoints to the surface area of my mind, and I focus on those corners way more often than I should. They're gaming, anime, reading, and... the most recent point, which stretched this out of a tripod shape, cooking. I've become very interested in cooking, largely because the more I do it, the more I can see that alchemy isn't dead, so much as bled over into a different field. Mixing, heating, waiting for arcane blends to take shape and infuse with flavor... It's fun, drat it.

The problem here is that I have a small apartment kitchen, and that the woof prefers plainly flavored foods to anything else. (No condiments, sauces, spices, etc.) Which is a good thing, it keeps me humble. Tonight, if I can manage it, we'll be having bacon-wrapped chicken. It's my first time, and I can't wait to give it a try.

The thing is, I'm getting curious about elements of cooking theory that just aren't all that practical to do for just myself, or involve doing odd things to other odd things, or the like. Tempted as I may be to make a roast rubbed in seasonings and covered in drippings, if I have to eat it all myself, where's the fun in that?

So it's beginning to look like I might end up taking a job at a restaurant or fast food place ANYway just to have somewhere to cook and try to make it not suck. As a bonus, if working to make food for a living under crappy conditions doesn't make me want to give up cooking, then I've got an obsession that will linger and cement itself into the pillars of my mind, as opposed to one that will collapse and leave me a tripod once more.

Anime Nonreview - PlanetES

Remember I mentioned anime being a big thing with me? I'm gonna talk about that now. You folks who don't like it (I know at least two) can skip this one.

Okay, so the show I've been watching lately (by which I mean, I've seen two episodes, don't take me as a genius and/or fanboy yet, I don't know a thing beyond what I've seen) is called PlanetES, and it's a pretty plausible (I think) look at what the space program is going to be like in about fifty or sixty years. The thought of "Space program" got my attention, I am a space nut. The thought of "plausible" got even more of my attention. That's all I knew going in. I'm not sure this is quite what I was expecting though.

What we have here is the story of the Debris Division of a space corporation. Over time the sheer amount of crud fired up into space (derelict satellites, old fuel tanks from rockets, etc) has built up in the elliptical planes around the Earth. It's proving a hazard to shuttles and other space travel. (Fatally so in one case we see as the first episode opens.) The Debris division is the group who clear out this crap. They're basically space trash-men, and their morale is about as high as you'd expect from a name like that.

Without giving any spoilers, I'm really liking this show, but it's not what I'd expected. It feels as if the show doesn't quite know if it wants to be a comedy exploring the strange quirks of the workers in Debris division, or if it wants to be a serious space-based drama, showing how these workers pull together and get their job done under stress and strain and sometimes near-catastrophic conditions.

I think I may just have to settle in and accept that it's trying to pull off being a dramatic comedy, or a comedic drama. It's difficult, though. A plot point is made early on that these are not the kind of people you expect to be astronauts, not dignified or heroic or anything more than "average" people, certainly not highly trained. They're there because they're willing to go into space and do the crap no one else really wants to do, in some cases because they've dreamed of it for years (this, I can relate to), in some cases just for the pay.

So I'm really not sure how to react to this series. It hasn't got many likable characters, and the characters are the ones driving the plots. The science seems reasonably sound, but I'm always suspicious of television science no matter what the source. It's at least researched well enough to make me go "Well, okay, I'll buy that." at it.

I'll be watching more of PlanetES. I even offer a hesitant recommendation for it: If you like space and space anime and are tired of far-future science fiction and giant robots (although, really, how do you get tired of giant robots? I don't believe it's possible.) give this a try. It's in fansubbed form and you can find it listed under Series over on AnimeSuki. Just don't be surprised if it doesn't thrill you. Jury's still out on my take.