The Best Laid Plans Of Ducks And Men...

Well, I had planned to do intensive work on the first installment of HSOTD: The Episodic Review, but I got sidetracked.  Bad Wonderduck... and I've just realized that I can add words to Firefoxy's dictionary, so now I don't get the evil red squiggle under "Wonderduck" anymore.  That just made the night worthwhile.

Yes, it's that easy to make nights worthwhile here at Pond Central. 
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F1 Mini-MegaPr0n: The Little Sisters Of The Poor

Preseason testing is over.  Twelve days of (essentially) unlimited running is complete.  We're now less than two weeks away from the first race of the new F1 season... and the worst two teams on the grid, HRT and Marussia (the team formerly known as Virgin, or TTFKAV), have finally debuted their 2012 runners.  Just in time to pack 'em up and ship 'em out to Melbourne.  No testing, no practice time, no nothing... but hey, the cars are ready.  I guess.  Maybe.  Meh.  Both HRT and TTFKAV failed mandatory crash tests, keeping them off the track.  Not a good sign, but they're ready now.

Y'know, say what you want about the team, and lord knows I will, but HRT has a good sense of what livery colors look good.  I mean, last year there was the "begging livery", which pretty much captured the essence of every kid's idea of how a racecar should look.  This time, it's a bit of a cap-tip to Force India's first two paintjobs.  Appropriate, considering that Tata Motors is a major sponsor.  Oh, the car?  Well, the F112's nose seems weird.  Maybe it's the paint, with the gold outlining the underside, but it sure looks like it's higher than other teams'.  The platypus seems to be less pronounced, as well.  From there back, though, it kinda looks like the team put last year's chassis in an oven and let it get all melty.

Otherwise, it looks quite a bit like other team's cars... which is a good thing for HRT.  Means they are getting closer to the rest of the pack, design-wise... and with two season's worth of data under their belts, they should start getting results.  In theory, at least.

Now, onto the team that's been the worst on the grid for their entire life: TTFKAV!

If you had told me that Marussia/Virgin/TTFKAV would be the only other team to use McLaren's styling for the platypus, I would have laughed at you.  Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes couldn't/didn't, but Marussia did?  Pshaaaaah, right.  Except for the whole "technical partnership" between the two teams that I forgot about, but still, c'mon.

According to the team, the MR01 has very little in common with last year's VR-02.  That's undoubtedly a good thing, but it could also be a case of "starting over from scratch."  We'll find out soon enough.  I'm still stunned by the nose.  No shelf, no drop... just like the McLaren.  The rest of the chassis looks pretty conventional, at least by the 2012 definition of "conventional."  Just like HRT, they'll begin the season on the wrong foot, with no testing and no idea what problems are waiting to bite them in the butt.  A team like one of the big four?  They could maybe get away with no testing, but you know they'd hate it and they'd probably wind up flushing the season early.  If Marussia or HRT are smart, they'll be using this season as nothing more than a really long testing session for 2013.

It's almost back. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:32 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The Polls Are Now Closed

The votes are in.  The Pond Scum has spoken.  The next series that I'll be doing an episodic recap for is High School Of The Dead.

Considering that it was my favorite show in 2010, this will hardly be a chore.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the best anime series of 2010, just the one I enjoyed the most, the one I most looked forward to watching.  Considering that Season 3 of Hidamari Sketch ran that year, as did Amagami SS, Sora no Woto, Strike Witches S2 and Ikkitousen Xtreme Xecutor, all of which I greatly enjoyed, that's really saying something.  Heck, I'm even reading the manga for HSotD as well, and I don't read all that much manga.

However, I will say that this wasn't the show I hoped would win.  If I hadn't of opened the choice up to voting, I probably would have done Blood-C.  There's a lot more train-wreckage in that one, though it did all make sense... eventually.  I may even still do it sometime down the road.  Alas, only DiGiKerot and David voted for it.  I'll admit that I threw Library Wars into the mix because I actually enjoyed the show; yes, that's right, I was one of the few. 

Which brings me to Black Lagoon.  It's outstanding.  It's one of the best anime series I've ever seen.  It's also grimmer than the Warhammer 40K universe.  It takes a lot to make the Zombie Apocalypse seem light and fluffy, but in comparison to Black Lagoon, pretty much anything is cotton candy and unicorns farting rainbows.  Having said all that, it might have been interesting to recap, but all in all I think I'm glad it didn't win.  Though, it is a shame I won't get to say anything officially about this scene:

...because it's an Elco 80' PT boat firing two Mk8 torpedoes at a Mi-24 "Hind" helicopter, and you just don't get much of a chance to say things like that very often.

So the final counts were:
High School of the Dead - 9 votes
Black Lagoon - 5 votes
Blood C - 2 vote
Library Wars - just watching.

Stay tuned for the first recap of HSotD, coming awfully soon.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:53 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Voting Is Now Open

That's right, you read that correctly.  I have an urge.  I have a need.  I have an itch, which the doctor gave me an ointment for but never mind that now.  I have... a hunger.  I must do my annual episodic series recap.  Two years ago, it was Ga-Rei Zero.  Last year, Rio Rainbow Gate! was both my muse and my bane.  And now, it is time for me to strike whimper suck recap again... and I'm going to let YOU, my endearing readers that I lovingly call The Pond Scum, vote on what series I'll do.  Here are the candidates:

High School Of The Dead

Zombie Apocalypse meets Japanese High Schoolers in a fight to the death... undeath... whatever.  Great action, hideously top-heavy female character designs, comedy... what's not to like?

Toshokan Sensou (Library Wars)

In the not-too-distant future (next Sunday A.D.), the Government cracks down on books and magazines it deems offensive.  Naturally, the nation's librarians take up arms against the oppressors.  Or something like that.  Not terrible art, some fun times, action, romance... what's not to like?

Black Lagoon

The times are grim.  The times are dark.  Nuns and maids are heavily armed.  And everybody has a toothache.  Violence, awfully black humor, good art, and you see a helicopter shot down by a torpedo.  For what it's worth, the seiyuu for Revy, Megumi Toyoguchi, has a voice like liquid sex... not that you'll be able to hear it on here.

Blood-C

Schoolgirl is a little klutzy, a little dim, quite friendly, and able to kill everybody within a 50m radius using her sword without breaking a sweat.  Fortunately, she's just a demon hunter.  Or is she?  Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!  The most recent show of the four, it's got the best art and the worst hairstyle I've ever seen (see above).  Also: grim, dark, toothache.  Or is it?

So those are your choices.  Consider them wisely, for your mind may be at stake.  Mine is already forfeit.  Balloting is open until 1159pm Sunday, March 4th.  One vote per reader (unless you're from Chicago).  Leave your choice in the comments.  No write-ins.  The top rung is not to be used as a step.  Huh, will you look at that: "breach hull, all die."  I even had it underlined.  Make your picks, place your bets!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:27 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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Crowdsourcing

There are terms in this world that I really am not fond of.  For example, "drilling down" is one of them.  It's not good enough that we're discovering the sources of something, heavens no.  We have to drill down instead.  Corporate-speak in all its myriad forms is annoying to me to be honest, but "drilling down" just happened to be on my mind just now.  "Downsizing" and its more offensive derivative "rightsizing" are horrid enough to make my skin crawl.

Another of these cutesy fauxspeak words that's slowly crawled into the modern lexicon is "crowdsourcing".  Take any problem and send it out to the invisible masses on the far side of their computer monitors.  These masses will come back with possible solutions, perhaps quite ingenious ones.  Katawa Shoujo could sorta be considered a crowdsourced project, in a way.  The Oxford English Dictionary was, from the very start, crowdsourced.  I really don't like the term, but there you are. 

I recently stumbled over a great example of crowdsourcing, one that just couldn't occur at any time before now.

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:00 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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