Tuesday, October 23, 2001

Well, I didn’t write a diary entry yesterday, but that’s for two reasons: One, Pendragon refused to boot yesterday evening. The BeOS Tracker wouldn’t load, no matter how many times I rebooted or re-installed BeOS. I’ll deal with that tonight.

Two, I stayed up until 11:00 p.m. talking with my parents. We covered a whole bunch of topics, and had a pleasant time, but I went to bed feeling bone-tired.

I tried to wake up at 5:30 for Men’s Academy, but couldn’t keep my eyes open. Frustratingly, once I went back to bed, I couldn’t fall completely asleep. So, I dozed fitfully for about an hour, before turning on the news, and then checking some websites before getting ready for work.

And that’s been my day so far.

What else…oh, well, I tried to watch Night on the Galactic Railroad. The film is slow. Very slow. I can take slow, but not when it’s pointlessly slow. It takes the protagonist seventy-five seconds to climb a hill. There’s nothing particularly meaningful about the climb, either; any attempt to turn the scene into a deep metaphor would be stretching the imagery like old-fashioned taffy.

This disappointed me, because Night is a Kenji Miyazawa story, Miyazawa being a Japanese poet and writer for whom I have gained deep respect, thanks to Spring and Chaos. Perhaps I need a Japanese perspective to be able to enjoy Night on the Galactic Railroad.

I also watched episode seven of Gasaraki. It’s an impressive ending to the first two discs, which form a mini-arc within the main story itself. The protagonist, Yushiro, is beginning to break out of his shell a little bit, setting the stage for future character development. Interesting stuff.