SCHOOLGIRLS FOR CHRISTMAS!

Note: the following is a post which disappeared. Or so it seemed. Lets just say I put it in the wrong place. And feel somewhat foolish in consequence - not an unusual state of mind, I'm afraid. I re-discovered it by falling into the wrong hole. So I'm 'reposting' it here, with the original date, so that it is in the correct sequence.
------B.O.T.H. 01/10/2008

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Yesterday, in case you weren't aware, was kretchmutch. So around the Toad and Savage Kitten household, life was calm and peaceful.

Instead of singing insipid carols, stuffing our gobs with sugary goodies, endlessly chewing dry bits of the stupidest bird in the world, and frantically hugging ugly relatives we see only once a year, or watching THE WORST TELEVISION PROGRAMMING EVER ...
[ ... have you SEEN the selection of "Christmas Movies" that are shown ad-nauseum? Lawz-sakes, enough to turn any one into a Christian-hating Christmas-bashing Church-burning Crèche-overturning violent pinko revolutionary - they really ought to tone done their shmaltz and saccharine broadcast-vomit, if only to keep civilized people from wanting to see every single broad-cast executive lynched........ ]

But I digress.

So anyhow, instead of indulging in practices appropriate to a Wasp-trailer park at this festive time, the Toad and the Savage Kitten read all day.

Finished the entire collection of Azu Manga Daioh.
[Azu Manga Daioh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azumanga_Daioh It's a Japanese comic strip focusing on the lives of six Japanese high-school girls. Very funny, and quite charming.]

One of the characters at the fictional high-school which all the main characters attend is Ayumu Kasuga (春日歩, Kasuga Ayumu), about whom you would do well to read up in Wikipedia, if only for the absolute gibberish that some non-English-speaking gormling pasted into the biography of the character.

It's worth quoting in full (especially as it may get corrected really soon, and then you wouldn't know what I non-sequitoured into).

"She's back in when nerds collide She discover the talking cat that was killed by flippy so he told osaka that the do not speak man henry hale is controling david chadwick's hearing in the voice of tom spango osaka finds the suitcase of this plane but the breafcase knocks osaka down chyio-chion found it osaka meets chiyo-chion from azumanga daioh she takes chingy's car and drives they come in the vilage by the real don't no not or Nothing fear They've got captured they decided their fate Henry sherrif hale (Bill Pullman) Rule that osaka and chiyo stay but they may never leave but suddenly mayaa bites off henry's neck mayaa joins osaka and chyio so they all escape the village they have been takend by the tripods."

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayumu_Kasuga]

It's sorta zen, isn't it? By which I mean baffling as all git-out. Can someone please explain it? Thanks.

For a good introduction to both the characters, and insane Japanese teeny-bopper girlie-band music, watch the opening credits to the anime here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gawNjcnVfIM&feature=related.
[Pay attention to the lyrics - they make especially little sense: "Every day, the fluffy temptation of wheat".]

Here's Osaka-san in the best 'girl with a cleaver' scene ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv6IZHEIQwA&feature=related
[Osaka-san is given to periods of not being fully awake. She sleeps in class a lot - her dreams are often a basis for the humour of the show.]

And regarding everybody's favourite perverted high-school teacher, this compilation of the best of Kimura Sensei:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftAMtTH6mKQ
["Why did you become a teacher?" ... "Cuz I like high-school girls and stuff!!!!!"]

In addition to Azumanga Daioh, Savage Kitten also read some novella about a disastrous marriage - one of the characters tells another that as far as divorce and adultery are concerned, there's a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' somewhere in Mathew. Savage Kitten asked me about that, and if I ever find my copy of the New Testament, she's welcome to read all of it to find where and if it mentions that subject. I cannot remember Mathew saying anything about it, but it's been quite a while since I delved into the Christian Subsequentia.

One of my friends had what was probably the perfect Christmas Eve. He attended midnight mass at Notre Dame Des Victoires (the French eglise near Chinatown). Not because he's religious, or wanted to feed the side of his personality that yearns for meaning especially at Christmas time. His reason was much more understandable and prosaic.

In one word: French school girls wearing uniforms