Supermeow!

A new skill set acquired in the past few months is the ability to make WordPress templates. This knowledge has alluded me for a couple of years due to my dwindling patience for learning new technical things (especially things that also involve me being able to get down with PHP). Anyhow, since the start, I wanted a really cat-centric design for this stupid blog and I think I am close to achieving that.

Supermeow in progress

Cats from istockphoto.com because I do things all legal-style. Still a bunch of stuff left to do; need to style comments template, search results page, a zillion other things. Need to make bullets for unordered lists. So yeah, this is taking a while to finish. I took a few days not this coming week but next, and I think I may use my vacation time to work on this.

Also in the pipeline for me is making some table cards for my friends’ wedding in three weeks, so yeah, I need to get on that. I have like eighty cards to design.

It is no secret that I have dolls on the brain. I still have every Barbie, Jem, Maxie, and a zillion other fashion dolls from my childhood and I have tons of dolls accumulated during this, my adult-childhood. After years of dismissal, I have finally come around to Pullip.

Pullip as Audrey Hepburn

She's simply strawberry-inspired.

Their giant heads turned me off for a long time, but who’s going to say no to a doll that pays homage to Audrey Hepburn? Not me! Sometimes, they’re just cute.

Even more intriguing to me than Pullip is Dal. She looks pissed off, and I adore that. She’s got a great petulant little face. I am the owner of one and only one Dal at the moment.

Dal Dotori

However, I am crazy about:

• Dotori
• Sakura
• Maretti
• Chanti (who was a limited edition of 300, i.e. fat chance)
• Milch (who is gorgeous in person)
• Charlotte
• Hanaayame (wish I’d got her when I had a chance)
• Hangry (also cute in person; wish I’d got her when I had a chance, too)
• Furara AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
• Sooni slightly less enthusiastic AAAAAAH

Not to be neglected is Pullip’s BFF Byul, coming at you in such cute editions as Hermine.

You can keep Pullip’s boyfriend/Dal’s big brother Taeyang, though. Zero interest. Here’s the full Pullip Family Profile.

As for the Little Pullips I own:

• Cheshire Cat
• Swan
• Aggonya

Also, all of these Pullip family members were obtained from Animadness in beautiful Waltham, MA. Animadness: for all your anime goods and doll needs.

In closing, this is a much cheaper interest than Super Dollfies.

I heard today that Sasuga Japanese Bookstore will be closing down as of tomorrow. This bums me out to no end.

Back in my senior year of high school in 1995-1996, my interest in Sailor Moon had reached fever-pitch and I would literally buy anything that bore the mark of Sailor Moon. Looking at the yellow pages (because there wasn’t easily-accessed internet for me in those days; it was my buddies with computers and AOL/Prodigy who got to go online and look at stuff), I discovered that there was a Japanese bookstore right over in Cambridge. Excited, I headed out there alone after school one day in the winter. Not knowing how to read Japanese, I asked someone if they had Sailor Moon comics and where they might be. They showed me and I was overwhelmed: twelve volumes of comics?!? Who knew?!!? Not me! I bought volume 12. I’d return back to fill in the gaps; I think nearly all of my Sailor Moon manga (save volume 2; I bought that at Million Year Picnic) came from Sasuga. I’ve bought a lot of comics from them over the past 14 years, mostly when they had a brick-and-mortar store in Cambridge (and their short-lived store in Brookline; I bought Codename wa Sailor V volume 2 there). When I’d see them at anime conventions, the fellow who runs their booth and co-owns the store would always recognize me and wave. I mean, hey, I’d been buying books from him and his wife since I was 17.

Anyhow, I’m pretty sad to hear this. Granted, the Boston area’s been without a brick-and-mortar Japanese bookstore for a few years (they shut down their store to concentrate on online sales and sales at anime conventions as the nerds became their main customer base- like me!), but I always knew that if I wanted to find Dolly Dolly or artbooks at an anime convention, I knew where to look. Man, this sucks. Their prices were pretty god, they had good selections, they would special-order for you (this is how I acquired all of The Big O comics in Japanese, plus The Big O novelization) and they were just overall pretty great. Keep your Kinokuniya: I and many other nerds and native Japanese speakers in this area had Sasuga. Now we don’t have them after July 5.

Sasuga, you were great, and I will miss you. I feel very guilty for not buying stuff from you at Anime Boston this year. Thank you for making it easy for nerds who don’t know a word of Japanese to acquire Japanese comics easily!