Heat and Humidity

10 months in Akitakata WHOOOOO! And now it's summer. Seattle isn't very humid, so we're having some trouble coping. I can take the heat by itself (Rachel can't).

Not much has happened. Strongly considering looking for a new job. Teaching English isn't easy for me, since I'm not good with people at all, but it's pretty lucrative. I lose 3 hours per workday to the commute, and the stress of the job itself... I worry too much about whether they're learning or not, and if something goes even slightly wrong I feel it.

Also, I've begun to have some sort of physical reaction (nausea) to the teaching floor, which is bad. So after lunch I'm going to the local Hello Work (job placement - can't quite tell if it's gov't funded or not) to see what's available. Probably nothing. ("Probably" = "Probly", which is a fun point to teach. Heh.) I don't really have any skills aside from 10-key, touch-typing, and English. Worst-case, I suck it up and keep teaching English until next spring or so.

I wonder why our school has so few students now? We've had days where I get 8 one-student/man-to-man lessons. Bad as I am, I can't possibly be solely responsible for this. (This is, incidentally, related to my tendency to react more strongly to small mistakes than large ones. Small mistakes, one person is usually to blame, and they can add up faster than they can be fixed. Large ones, it's usually more obvious at first glace how possible they are to fix, and if they're broken beyond all recognition you throw up your hands and start over.)

Listening to Senaka Goshi ni Sentimental now, sung by the mysterious Miyasato Kumi.

A disturbing trend

http://www.angryzenmaster.com/2009/02/25/pentagon-wants-to-deploy-autonomous-death-bots/ and http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/127484/?page=entire

I posted a response on the first page, but decided to do so here as well. Yes, I'm "B.D" - a name lifted from "Megazone 23" 1 and 2. This is just one angle...


There are two things I’m worried about here - appearance, and jamming (interference as well, but that’s a completely separate post). I’m worried more about jamming. Let’s say that, to prevent hijacking, the signal is heavily encoded. Let’s say that each unit answers to a slightly different frequency - or, assuming they covered their bases, a completely different code. What happens when the signal is jammed? Do they explode, to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands (or competitors)? Or do they simply stop working, so as to avoid unintended deaths/collateral damage? More that likely the second. (A third, really stupid idea, would be to go into ‘Dalek-mode’, shooting anything that moves.)

As with drones, these machines are intended to penetrate, ideally with the operator within a certain distance. And if the operator dies/gets killed? Shouldn’t happen; that would defeat the point of the Unmanned Unit. So the operator would be some distance away, requiring some form of wireless/radio to communicate with the UU. And if there’s a distance without wired communication, there’s the possibility of jamming.

So let’s say the signal has been jammed. There is now an UU where it cannot be easily recovered (since the whole point is to not run the risk of combat losses, it’s alone), with at least $100,000 worth of parts that would be _very_ useful to the enemy for whatever reason. The enemy now has a usable frame, electronics (and code?), possibly armor, and (pick one) an M249/40mm GL/M202 that can be electronically fired - which this increasingly faceless entity can either convert for their own use or sell to their sponsors, should they have them.

And how to stop the UU itself? There’s probably two main ways to sell a box o’ fun like this - open (parts are replaceable) or closed (the robot is completely sealed from outside disturbances). Closed would be more profitable for the company, and would render the above situation less likely, but it would be freakin’ expensive. Open would be cheaper for the military, depending on the on-the-ground situation, but would make the UU accessible (easier to repair, easier to salvage). Stopping the UU might be as simple as ripping off the power source or cutting some wires, easily replaced.

So now we’re looking at a machine that can be stopped in at least one way. How about appearance? The one in the picture is a black tread-motivated death machine with at least two points of articulation above the body (the camera, and the main swivel), probably more. What happens if it is a) flipped over a la Robot Wars or b) surrounded by suddenly-appearing walls of metal? Or smoke/chaff?

I took one look at the article and came up with this; better countermeasures will crop up during actual use. UUs are a bad idea, in the many ways ED-209 (RoboCop) was a bad idea.

My Music

One thing I didn't want to do when I started this blog was insert my private life into it – this was supposed to be a semi-professional one.

Meh. Screw that.

So now I'm going to talk about music – what I like and suggest.

First, I like background music. BGMs. I also like Japanese hero-type songs, usually in the Sci-fi genre. This isn't to say that I don't like Western music at all, but it's close. I don't know how I got started in it, but I've always liked my genre. (A Japanese show will virtually always have enough music in it to put out a soundtrack – American ones don't, at least not at first. Example: the Power Rangers first season soundtrack is a joke, but one fans might buy for the nostalgia. The Zyuranger soundtrack is symphonic and runs the gamut from “heroic” to “tragic”. It could be run in a movie with little rescoring.)

So I finally got around to watching all three Megazone 23 OVAs. The music was pretty good for the first one, okay for the second, and not so much for the third. In particular, I like ROCK CAFE, which is the first thing you hear when you watch the first one – it's a natural “chase” theme – but not just because it's good. It has another context for me. See, Megazone 23 was also included in Super Robot Wars D for the GBA – and if you know anything about the SRW series, this a joke turned serious. But because the game focuses so much on dodging, the Garland is a surprisingly good unit – good dodge (it's not going to get hit on the ground, even before upgrading), cheap upgrades (it does good damage against anything with fully upgraded weapons, despite its SS size...), a cool pilot graphic (anime-hair dude on a bike, with a 'hisshou' bandanna...), and space for four upgrade parts (it's the smallest human-operated transforming mecha – where the HELL does it have space for four parts?!). But the best part is, the Megazone 23 unit theme is ROCK CAFE – or a GBA version of it – and this works out very well. There's a sort of desperation there that you can really only find in, say, “Gen ga Tobu” (the standard Ideon theme in the SRW series, Alpha 3 most recently).

And that's the sort of music I like – something you can battle to.

Ever see Gaoranger vs. Super Sentai? It's on YouTube, I think. You will not find a better explanation of the Sentai series anywhere else. It's basically a clip show in movie form – they got a couple of really good actors to do guest appearances, and a couple other actors as well, all in their original roles – but where the movie really shines is its hot-blooded approach to showing off 25 years of Sentai. They chose their clips well, but the accompanying music draws from previous shows are chosen carefully, to great effect. Thus, you have “Ore no Heart wa Yume-jikake” (“My Heart is a Dream-work” – 'work' here being like from 'clock-work', so “My Heart Runs on Dreams” might be better) playing over the 'power/strength fighters sequence', where it works to great effect. Red Falcon (from Liveman) gets the 'violins and brass duel theme' for his teaching duel, and Banba Soukichi (coolest character in Sentai history by the estimation of most fans, being played by the great Miyauchi Hiroshi) gets “Spade Ace, the Young Lion” (not written for his character, but suiting him VERY well) – that he also gets to throw off a disguise and beat down two commander-class enemies, WITHOUT transforming, is a plus. But as a mecha fan, the best moment comes when, after the enemy boss grows to giant size, he defeats the Gaoranger robo. Oh noes that can't be good. But wait... what's that on the horizon. It appears to be – yes, yes it is. A mecha from every prior Sentai show (with a little intro from Miyauchi's two other roles in the series – it's a younger version of him flying one of the planes), to the music-only version of “Itsutsu no Kokoro de Fiverobo” (“Five Hearts in Fiverobo”, with 'de' here giving a 'to make' implication). It's a bunch of strung-together clips, but it works – makes one wonder how good a Super Sentai Robot Wars game would be, in fact. (My favorite one, here, is the Denzi Tiger's 'really big missiles' – the boss turns to his right, and there's a giant tank sitting there. It aims and fires two huge herkin' missiles at him. They go boom, in a way CGs can't replace or replicate.) But yeah, that's it. I also like to imagine what if other Sentai characters came back for the movie – like, one of the women. Momoranger would have some bombs ready (“Are you ready? Here I go!” *boom* *BOOM* - most understated phrase ever), the Ohranger and Changeman ladies would bring artillery (or not bother with small potatoes, and just bring in their mechas), Ninja White would throw some shurikens and transform into a paper crane (while making Naruto characters look like pansies – yes, ALL of them), Houou-ranger would simply blow up a couple of ki-whirlwinds, etc. And Heart Queen? Remember Magneto, from Marvel Comics? Like him, but a cyborg with a cool phrase. Also, all the Sentai ladies get to show their stuff to two songs: “Hanasaku Goggle Pink” (a slower song, with hanasaku here meaning “flowering”) or “Sexual Lady” (from Bioman – a faster, dynamic song) – fun stuff.

But really, I like the older ones. Clarification: I like brassy or orchestral pieces. If they have an appropriate singer (Kushida Akira, Mizuki Ichiro, Kageyama Hironobu...), even better, but an instrumental works just fine. The best characters don't need lyrics to introduce them, and this applies in all cases. Superman (probably the best example - “dun daDAA”), Batman (the opening for The Animated Series doesn't just set up the show, it introduces the whole mythology!), Rocky (Gonna Fly Now and Eye of the Tiger are quintessential training montage themes now, even without the lyrics), Robocop (no other refrain better introduces a reborn cyborg), Captain Jack (the American version of Banba Soukichi), The Doctor (if everything has gone to hell and you hear the theme, you start looking for a Police Box...), the Powerpuff Girls (Dun dun dadada daa dun...), John Shaft (Theme from Shaft is great background music for everything. EVERYTHING!), and so on. If a ship can be a character, then the Star Trek theme/refrain counts. But yeah. Spider-man, oddly, doesn't have a memorable theme – several SONGS, yes, but not really a theme. The movie had an excellent soundtrack, but could you really put it on the radio and get a bunch of correct guesses about it? (Robocop – Rock Shop, specifically – is old enough to have died out as a leitmotif, but memorable enough to remember as a theme in general. Your crap has hit the fan, and then – Rock Shop – you hear footsteps. Heavy footsteps. You recall killing a cop way back when. Oh crap he's back from the dead. You are thrown through a window as he reads you your rights. ...Were there that many rights? You want your lawy- ow. This is tortu- ow. No, no it isn't... ow ow ow. Okay, you did it. ...Help?)

But a song is nice, too. It's hard to listen to Stan Bush's “The Touch” without imagining a certain Matrix of Leadership, and this is what a Opening Theme is supposed to do – the length not totally mattering. “Seinfeld” opened with a scat-like theme a few degrees above a cold open, and it worked better than the “Friends” theme in some respects – hard to duplicate, easy to identify, original even 15 years after the fact, and much more unlikely to annoy. A well-written original theme, of course, is meaningless if it is too much like everything else at the time – it should be ahead of its time and durable. Example: The Transformers theme, which was such that there were some 3 variations of it during its original run (not exactly par for the course at the time, and something quite a few long-running anime shows do nowadays), but beyond that is short and to the point. You know the show will involve robots and transforming (and likely Frank “voice o' God in the '80s” Welker *cough *).

But a show where an incidental piece works better than an OP Theme? How about... Big O. As a show, it looks like Batman with Giant Robots, with the sort of overarching mysteries that have only been emulated by the first few seasons of X-Files and Life over here. There actually were two OPs, one for each season. The first famously sounds like Queen's “Flash” (“He'll save every one of us!”), and the second was edited over in favor of the first when the show came over here (it was originally a homage to the theme from Gerry Anderson' UFO...). But it isn't a terribly heroic theme, and doesn't work too well as a battle theme – doesn't work at all, in fact, and they wisely never used it – but like the Transformers theme, introduces a Giant Robot and calls it good. In this respect, it works. After listening to it, no one will walk away thinking they heard the theme song to a cutesy girl's anime (to which something like . Instead, they came up with a track called “Sure Promise” that rounds the bases – perfect for a sudden heroic entrance (Big O is delivered to the scene through an underground/subway system, and crashes up from the ground upon arrival) of epic proportions with nigh-indestructible armor, while also pulling a second duty as the “final attack” theme in the last episode (“Final Stage” - as appropriate an ultimate attack to Big O as the Goldion Hammer was to GaoGaiGar). When it plays, you know Roger's gonna win.

As for overall memorable music, GaoGaiGar takes the cake among mecha fans. A number of the pieces were full-orchestra sorts – or rather, there are some pieces of music that only sound right when played by a small group, say a quartet, and the exact opposite is true with certain GaoGaiGar BGMs. Namely, there are some pieces of music in GGG that wouldn't sound right until a sports arena's worth of musicians played them in unison – scale is another thing, then. An epic movie score, in the space of a half-hour show, makes all kinds of difference. Anything else for GGG's final attacks – well, example: GaoGaiGar makes an appearance in SRW Alpha 2 and 3. He has a final attack called “Goldion Hammer”, and the unfortunate problem is, the accompanying theme had to be rewritten for the game, so it pretty much sounded like a MIDI. While it was a good enough BGM to work without the scale, not having it made a difference, robs it of some of its effect. It renders the attack not sounding like something that, unchecked, could easily destroy a planet, and more like a handy attack to use on boss units.

So what was I talking about in the beginning? Oh. Music. Um... The Megazone 23 soundtrack is good. There.