You’ve left Hello!Project behind. You’ve got a new manager, a contract with a real record label, and tens of thousands of fans had idolgasms just seeing cellphone camera pictures of your recent training trip to LA. You’re positioned to take over the world.

Could you at least pick up a decent dress on the way to the show?

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Amazon Japan just informed me that the third volume of Makino and Tsutsui (A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar) is now in stock. I’ll put it in my next order, because now that I’m fumbling through light novels, I’m running into things not covered by the previous two volumes.

While I was there, of course, I went through their recommendation list. I can’t imagine anyone who’d be interested in something like this…

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A friend just called to tell me I might not want to start my drive home just yet, since there’s a big fire near Watsonville. Checking in with Google News, I see these headlines:

Fireworks sales OK in Watsonville despite fire danger
Watsonville Fire Grows To 1000 Acres
Blaze Closes 6-Mile Stretch of Highway 1

[Update: over a thousand acres burned, smoke you can smell from 101, and some nitwit down the street from me is setting off fireworks.]

…Sekirei trailers (Windows drm-laden-player only) and the announcement that the Mahoromatic manga artist’s current step-incest comedy, subtly titled kissXsis, will be animated soon.

I know, I thought there really wasn’t anything left to say about the horrible outfits you daily inflict on the girls of Tsunku’s army, but this is different. It’s a safety issue.

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View from the wing provides a handy piece of information (via Marginal Revolution):

Regardless of what you pay and what fare class you’re booking in, your travel on United between San Francisco and Nagoya, Japan is going to have almost no effect whatsoever on United’s decision-making. They’ve got a very large contract with Toyota and they fill up their 747 with cargo and the flight goes out with very low load factors yet is still profitable for them to operate. That’s why the single easiest flight in the entire United system on which to score an international premium class award ticket on is San Francisco- Nagoya...

I couldn’t resist linking to this one. Eeeeeevil.

ANN says Queen’s Blade TV anime series. I expect well-rounded character designs with paper-thin personalities, bound together by fate in a by-the-numbers plot.