I'm only taking a couple dozen CDs with me to Ann Arbor. I'm packing away most of the, what, 175 or so CDs that I own. Including my modest Pizzicato Five collection. But since they come in beautiful boxes, I've kept them out to store in a special place. Right now I'm listening to P5's Happy End of the World. I had almost forgotten how much I like Pizzicato Five. Good memories? good music? It matters not. Good feeling.

The perils of living in Michigan: peeing on scarves. (via Tiger Cafe)

I just finished reading the entire Journey to the West story, about 2300 pages in all. Now, I read two kinds of books: books that are for education/edification, and books for fun. Fun books tend to be short, while education/edification books are long and dense. Well, this long book -- actually four volumes -- turned out to be a fun book. The characters are amusing and not real deep, and the plot is predictable and yet full of twists. I did read it in translation; my Chinese ain't that good. The translator's note, or introduction, happened to be at the end of the book, and I was happy to have noticed about 75% of the things he felt needed noting. For example, Novice Sun's power comes from both his strength and powers of transformation, and also from his connections in Heaven and the Underworld. The only part I found disappointing was that the translator didn't give Friar Sand much credit for being a rock of sensibility and conciliation in the group; for some reason, I connected with Friar Sand: not incredibly strong or endowed with magical powers, but dependable and level-headed. Being one of the Chinese classics, this book is sorta like the Bible in that it is often alluded to in other later works. For example, I had fun picking out all of the elements that Dragon Ball borrowed from this story: monkeys, strength-restoring pills, lecherous pigs, mountains of fire, the Bull King, flying on magical clouds, giant turtles... and others. Amazon is selling it for forty bucks, but I got mine through an Amazon affiliate for about twenty five.

Speaking of the Monkey King, this is a pretty cool page.