Andromeda

I'm back for another round of journal posting. I don't know how long it has been since the last time, probably like a month. Still better than the norm, which is way too long. I've been keeping pretty busy with one thing or another. And not busy enough with one thing or another. It is just sort of how it has been working out. I've sort of got sucked into Mugen Souls the last couple weeks. So I've been distracted a little by it. It's given me plenty of excuses not to do less pressing matters. Fortunately, it hasn't been so bad that I can't get anything done. Just really strong urges.

Besides that, I've got the new season of anime to keep me distracted as well. I've trimmed down the amount I'm watching this time. I didn't want a full line up like I had before. So I think I'm only juggling like eight or nine, I think. Yeah, that's trimmed down. >.>; Oh well, we'll see how I do in the next season, unfortunately there are some anime coming out then that I'm looking forward to seeing.

The news articles have been slowing down for me. Part of it is that I'm not finding all of stuff that are worth reporting and the other is managing time. Still dealing with the issue of screenshots and videos. I found sort of a medium for it. I also did some grouped stuff on individual pieces of news that were too small to actually feel they could be their own article. I'm glad I decided to do that since it gets more of it out there. I do want to ask Fuzz if he is noticing any up tick on hits for the site. I know a couple of the articles gets some discussions going. But I also understand that most of them are either ignored or not something someone feels like commenting on. But I'll keep it going forward.

Now I had sort of planned on trying out the silly rambles I did in my original journal. The rambles that would cause something simple to balloon out into something really too long. Rambles that were the reason that I stopped doing these, because I could not keep up doing two hour writings on a daily basis. But I sort of wanted to do one again. I was going to end up doing something forced because I wanted to do it. I had an idea on something I could easily ramble on, even forced. However, I don't even remember what it was anymore. I ended up figuring out what I was going to ramble on. It is not something as directly related to things happening now, like they normally were, but it was something that was spurred by what I was doing today. So I'm going with that. So strap in, get a snack, grab a drink and prepare for the long winding road that is never going to end until I figure out where it will end. If you last to the end congratulations, I didn't. However, you'll get to see old school me back in action doing what I do best. Writing something too long for something people likely don't want to read. But hey, motivation and quirks make you do strange things. So let's go diving into the terrible rabbit hole.

You might actually already know what I'm going to be rambling on about, because well it is in the title. I didn't know how clever I wanted to be. I went for something direct and didn't like it. I went for something indirect and felt it lost something. I went back to something direct and thought it was a little silly and portrayed things in the wrong way. So I ended up resulting on the current title. I don't know I waffled on it. And guess what, that was a waffle of like 30 seconds I think. The brain waffles fast. Eh, whatever, so this is about tears. And the jagged edges of something that you've ripped sort of tears. It is about tears. Yeah, I love English and its words. You can blame the fact that I'm writing an essay on why I should be an assistant teacher of English as a second language in Japan. >.> That is a little bit of a different story and not the source for the ramblings. No that was just a tangent and I do love those as well.

Anyway, tears, you know the wet, watery thing that comes from your eyes. The act of crying. The thing that shows weakness or happiness. The thing that is looked down upon or the thing that is the most meaningful act you can have. It is a complicated thing. Which is why I'm going to ramble about crying. We'll start at the beginning. This started from when I was writing today for Shift. As I usually do I write while listening to music. I use pandora for my music source. I don't have an iPod and I don't have a lot of music on my laptop, it's all on my PC and I don't feel like it really is good inspiration. Though the pandora music can be a little distracting at times, but it is good for inspiration. I have a couple of radio channels. One is purely any Japanese music I can get Pandora to locate in its randomization. So it is my Japanese music channel. I have spent years crafting into a channel that is 99% reliable about giving me only Japanese music, up to a certain amount of time. I think when I hit like 8 hours it has troubles and I tend to lose it, but I generally don't listen to Pandora for 8 hours straight. So I've only run into that problem a couple times. So I hold a really good feeling of it. I'll get nothing but Japanese music.

I have two other channels, but the one of focus is my J-Pop one or more specifically. It is J-Pop by only female singers. There is a lot of songs that I really like to listen to from female singers, but Pandora doesn't really have as much for that narrow of a selection. So it usually can only last for about 2 hours before it starts giving me stuff I don't want to listen to from the US, usually female singers that I really don't want to listen to. However, because I've got this channel for female Japanese singers, it eventually started pulling in Miku Hatsune into the mix. The digital pop idol of Japan, it actually surprised me a little that they would have her songs, but she does to live recordings. So I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. She is quite popular and the ones that can craft well done songs can make her almost not even sound like it is digital.

As of late, the channel has started to find more Miku Hatsune songs, which is not a problem. As long as it is from a female singer I'm not going to complain about it, even if she is not real. And they are very enjoyable songs. They work out well for writing to. Though it is probably a little weird that I'm writing to love songs for an action story. >.>; Though considering they are all in Japanese, I haven't the foggiest clue what they are saying. So it is pretty easy to write to a love song if I can't understand it. Still you'd think I'd do it for something like Twin Moons. But hey, after the one channel reaches its end, I switch over to the other which is a very wide range. So it actually ends up being better for writing action stories to. But I really enjoy starting out with this channel the most, I do love the songs quite a lot. It is in my nature I guess. I'd probably be even worse off knowing what they said, due to my nature.

Anyway, it was a Miku Hatsune song that started this all. The song Tell Your World was one I started to hear a few times in the last few weeks. I thought it was surprisingly well done more so than the others. There was a work put in where it even seems like she goes to end of her vocal range peaking with pretty high pitch voice. So I really felt impressed by it. Today while I was writing, I ended hearing it again. After I switched back to the other channel, when it ended I kept on writing. Because I looked at the name of the song this time and actually checked it out the song youtube, because I wanted to hear it again. I sort of thought about checking out if it was in a live performance, but I ended up not and I'm sort of glad I did and sort regretting it. Because now here I am writing about it.

The video I found I was also quite impressed with. I'm guessing it was likely amateur, though it might have been professional. It was very well done, making the song even better. And while I watched it I found myself crying for no explainable reason. I didn't understand the song, but watching the video just started to make me cry. For those that don't know me, I can be very easily emotional. But it still surprised me to know that it had actually affected me. Note, I'm listening to said video while I'm writing this entry. It seemed to only make sense. And I am fighting the tears every so often.

It was then that I knew I had my topic of ramblings. I was already starting to think about it. There are so many things about crying and tears. There are the good and bad things. The negative connotations it holds in society for some and the positive ones for others. But I'll start with myself first. It is weird thing for me. Being emotional, I can cry very easily things that are actually very sad. Heck, I've cried from my own writing while I was writing it. I say to myself when I want a good cry I go watch X the anime TV series, which does make me cry something awful, it is a very tragic and sad. But I'll cry at other things as well. I cried listening to the music during the climatic battle in the second Narina movie. I haven't a clue why, it just felt really emotional, even though I know it shouldn't be causing tears.

Tears are a complicated matter. They can happen at the right time. When something sad happens that connects you to it. It makes sense in those moments. It is the times when it doesn't make sense that I find interesting. The things that make one cry that aren't sad seem like they are even more impactful. Because they managed to bring up a response from material that isn't even considered emotional in a conventional sense. However, there is something that is still emotional about it sense it is drawing up emotions from the individual. At least for me, part of that I think is something that is really amazing or maybe heroic or something that just simply goes beyond the simple cynical rationales of the world that keep so many of us jaded. We have found something possibly so pure and true buried underneath all of the filth of humanity that just makes us believe that we actually could be something truly redeemable and shows the light of humanity. Yes, that is something both equally naive and cynical, something that is actually also possible.

I tend to be someone that is rational, odd for being emotional as well, but humans are complex things as well. So I can view the world in all of the grim and not be surprised by it. I find entertainment in the interactions people have on the internet. But at the same time, I'm naive and innocent enough to believe in true love and the wishful hope of something pure in such a gray world. A hopeless romantic that still so thoroughly enjoys something that would be considered children's dreams and entertainment. But it is because I'm old enough to see it all and be aware of it, that when it actually happens I think it makes me cry. It's an odd explanation that is to be sure. And I'm certainly sure that plenty of others have explanations as well. It is not something so simple as to be explanation. It is something meant for discussions that will never end. It is something that writers will continue to try to capture and only when you do it by accident do I think you really succeed on such a level as to create emotion from something that traditionally would not.

But it is also complicated societal thing. The norms of tears have positive and negative connotations behind it. Like with everything that fits into a terrible categories, I really don't like it. If you're a woman it is perfect normal to cry and in fact it is almost expected of them to do so. If they don't it is considered strange and some how makes you less of a woman. Yet the opposite side, if you're a man it is considered almost an even bigger societal stigma to cry. Men must be stoic and never cry about anything. Only when something truly tragic happens it is acceptable and then you know it is very serious. And it is not even just society, inner male circles will make fun of and bully someone that is too emotional. They are somehow less of a man. They don't belong. It's like what? Why do rigid bindings like that have to exist.

There is not anything wrong with it. It is totally based on who each person is. Because each person is different and each person does not fit neatly into a societal mold that is apparently necessary for a functioning society. Crying is something natural. But the trigger for everyone is going to be different. I would imagine that most people that go and watch the video I did won't be emotionally moved by it. Though in the comments, I do find that others there ask if they are the only one that cried. So I know I'm not alone. But I did not need to seek approval. It was just fascinating finding something like that to fall outside of the normal bounds. It is what makes tears so interesting and special. They can happen for something that is inexplicable.

We might know why they happen sometimes and we might not know why they happen sometimes. But every time that they happen they never lose any of their meaning or significance. It can be quite amazing to know that they are always special every time. It is almost important and always something that is meaningful. That is why they are so precious. Sometimes they might feel like they are overused, but I don't believe that to be case. They are never too often. They have a reason and without it the windows to the eyes might never open sometimes. They are such a signal and something necessary. And maybe they are the purest thing we have at times. They are very interesting.

Think I've rambled enough. It felt quite good to just run-on. It is quite tangential at times, but that shouldn't be too surprising coming from me. It is just my nature. I don't know how long this turned out or if this even like the old days. I think it has a pretty good feel for it though. So I'll sign off like the old days.

~~Andromeda the Kitty~~