thoughts…

The now is a Paradise Kiss anime (from Ai Yazawa’s manga) and judging from the first episode, it looks good. It sometimes mixes real backgrounds, characters have facial expressions, and it’s got voice actors I haven’t already heard a hundred times. Which altogether make it feel fresh, so that alone is a reason to watch it (other than the good humour — they’ve managed to translate the manga well without losing its a bit more adult focus). The animation is not always great, but rather focused; i.e. the parts that actually matter are animeted very well.
Recommended.
Oh, and George is still my hero…

I’ve accidentally stumbled onto Pandora, a twisted combination of a subscription-paid custom-playlist radio station and music discovery service. You enter an artist or song name and it starts playing “similar” music; you can have several of these stations to which you can add more and more interests. The first 10 hours are free, and after that it’s either $12/quarter or $36/year, which IMO is rather fair. You can pause and skip tracks (skipping is limited to a certain number of songs per hour). On the technical side, it just needs flash player 7 and streams in 128kpbs.
Onto a few recommendations. For a few songs I’ve bothered adding iTunes Music Store links simply for convenience:

• Rosie Thomas - Death Came and Got Me (on of the reasons for crying in the previous post)
• Joe Purdy - Washed Away (from Hurley’s CD-player in “Lost”; both albums are good)
• Damien Rice - O (more folk music)
• M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (found the album via a song from the Nightwatch-trailer)
• Craig Armstong - Ruthless Gravity (synth-heavy strings; heard in “Layer Cake”, again the two albums are very good)
• Armin van Buuren - Shivers (Rising Star Mix)
• Anne Clark - Sleeper In Metropolis (Hardfloor ‘97 Version) and Our Darkness (Total Eclipse Remix)

I’ve been reading the more recent chapters of the Yokohama Shopping Log manga by Ashinano Hitoshi this evening. It made me cry (again!). Thus, I have to implore you — whoever you may be — to read it and be moved. Because it’s just that good. It isn’t for everyone, but you ought to have at least tried.
There is an excellent Wikipedia article that can give you an idea of the series. If you’re still interested in reading, start your journey here and then move here for the more recent chapters.