Eco Sarasota 5

I saw my first lizard of spring today and i am excited like no other. It means the cold weather will finally be over soon! I dislike cold weather oh so very much, so i am beyond excited.

^^^ That was all i could think of a few weeks ago, and now that its finally warm enough to go places without a jacket, i am beyond ecstatic. I've been sitting out on the back porch lately and it just makes life a whole lot nicer having warm weather with a gentle breeze. I hope it will last. I tend to get more homework done out their any ways.
Warm weather is just like an instant rose tinted glass window for me. Plus it doesn't hurt that i've been watching Princess Tutu with Nicole when we do some graphic novel homework.
But i cannot wait for spring break. I will be at the beach. I will. I will brave the 50 billion and a half snow birds. I will fight them for the beach. End of story. haha!
Its just crazy that we live no more than 10 minutes up the road from the beaches but never get there. I refuse to let another semester like that go by me.

Eco Sarasota 4

So over the past semester i have been on various adventures around Sarasota to some interesting restaurants. And so this weeks blog is devoted to them.

Thailand is located just up US 41, from MLK you take a left on 41 ( i think its South?), and then just drive past the Borders and shopping centers. It may be a a bit of a drive, but the food is great. Its inexpensive and there are large portions, i don't think there has ever been a time that i've eaten there and not had enough to take home for another meal (and i eat a lot).
Yume Sushi, i believe, is the first place i ate at downtown freshmen year. It has great sushi; its sex on the beach roll is amazing. Its a nice place.
The Drunken Poet is another Asian restaurant downtown with good food. Its sushi is good, but not nearly as good as Yume's. But it has this roll, the Sexy Man Roll, which is reason enough to go there.
The Applebees downtown is a normal Applebees, Whoopie. But it also just happens to be one of the few restaurants that are open "late" in Sarasota.
There's this little restaurant down the opposite direction on 41 called Rico's and they will deliver. They are just your average Italian food place. And they are quite tastey.
Up University a ways, just about across the street from Target i think, is the most amazing sub shop ever. Mike's Jersey Subs. I don't usually like subs or sandwiches from any restaurant, but i love these guys. Sure there chain locations only have subs, but in New Jersey, where they are just know as Mike's subs, they also deliver pizza. I was so happy when i saw they opened shop here.

Eco Sarasota 3

On Valentines Day, i decided to make a trip to the Ringling Art Museum to get my Italian Renaissance paper about ancient sculptures done. Fernando offered to drive and we set off to the museum. And apparently the art museum is free on Mondays, on a side note. It was so nice and warm in the sculpture garden, so I took my time sketching sculptures and lounging in the sun. Then Fernando and i set off to wander through the galleries, and I don't know how well he enjoyed it.
Art museums in general, don't really excite me much, so I make up stories that are completely different from what the artist had ever intended. I find that to be great fun, and totally worth wandering the silent rooms full of paintings. Though i can't say the same for Fernando, who was carefully examining the pieces as some serious art student should. I would have to interject and ruin the serious moment with my stories. Then we walked around to the tree trails, and found someone's garden by an abandoned looking building. Oddly enough, the building had the exact same coloring and style of the buildings on the Ringling campus.
But we continued our walk around the sea wall, and up to Ca d'Zan, which is still gorgeous and blows my mind every time I see it. And then we walked up to Mable's Rose Garden. It reminded me so very much of the Disney Alice in Wonderland when Alice is in the Queen's rose garden. I really want to go back when all the roses are in bloom.

Eco Sarasota 2

My father was in town for a few days for business so he stopped by and we went out for a walk and dinner. One thing to know about my father is that he is quite insistent on the idea that I get myself to New College and get my self invited to parties, cause you know, parties are all what college is about. So when he said he was stopping by, I made sure to tease him about going to New College, which I now know was probably not the best idea. But anyway,  he showed up on campus right as my 12:30 class got out, which threw off my schedule a bit, but none-the-less, i hopped into the car with him and we headed off on an adventure. We decided to go get an early dinner, but we couldn't think of a place, so he decided just to drive. But when he drove past University, I was a bit confused. And then it dawned on me. New College.
We were driving to New College. I was flabbergasted. He was laughing, I was flailing. But he still drove to the back of the New College campus and we got out to walk around. And New College has a much nicer buildings than Ringling, and its right next to the Ringling Museum. What is up with that, really! But any ways, we walked along the sea wall area and onto the Museum grounds by Ca d'zan. It was ridiculously cold out, but nice.
Then we went over to St. Armands circle for dinner. We walked along the circle, got Starbucks, got dinner. Dad made fun of me for not knowing what a Corona tastes like, checked out an art gallery, made fun of the overpriced art. Went to a poster store, geeked out over a Speed Racer poster. Saw a lot of old people, made fun of said old people.

Ecology of Sarasota 1

This blog is now for Ecology of Sarasota and will document random adventures around the Sarasota area.


Nicole invited be on a quest and adventure with Paul, David, Denny and Adam. Paul needed a classy porno magazine for a photography project, and so they were going stop by Art & Frame as well. And since Paul's car has up to 8 seats (3 seat belts in the front and middle, and 2 in the trunk), they had room for me, and I'm always up for an adventure.
Our first stop was Art & Frame, and i have never been there so i was completely amazing that the store has 3 levels where it looks like a dinky little place from the outside. It was amazing, it was hard not to buy a lot of supplies. But I was able to limit my self to only what i needed for classes. After an hour there we were off to Giggles.
First off, Giggles has some amazing shoes. But if you're looking for a sex shop, it kind of fails. The man adamantly insisted that it was illegal to sell pornographic magazines in Sarasota, and we were quiet confused. We had bought a Euroboy mag as a joke for a friend from Zone d'Erotica, so we were very very taken back and decided to move on to the next place in hopes of better success.
At Borders we found more than we were expecting. They had books and comics and they also had the magazines for Paul. He had quite the hilarious conversation with the women at the counter who apparently didn't have a working gaydar at all.

Blade if the Immortal revisions

Samurais, assassins, violence, and exactly the manga I’ve been avoiding for years. It’s not that I don’t like the subject matter, rather, it’s the opposite; I always knew if I started reading it, I would be unable to stop until I read it all. And that’s exactly what happened. For two weeks, the bare minimum of class work was done, and Blade of the Immortal was always open in my computer. And it was almost worth it. Almost, because, you see, the series isn’t complete yet. The story of Rin’s revenge is not complete. And that’s mildly frustrating.

Speaking of mildly frustrating, the main character, Rin is very frustrating when she is first introduced. I understand that she wants to avenge her parents and all, and don’t get me wrong, I would probably do the same thing, but she can’t fight. She only has one attack that only would work once depending on the amount of daggers/kunai/needles she has hidden on her person. For a good long while I couldn’t stand her. And then she broke down, going on about how pathetic she was, and how she knew she was going to die. It added dimension to her character, like she was willing to die if it meant meeting her goal. But then, what would be the point of it all? But she wasn’t completely blinded by her goal; she was willing to let a man of the Itto-ryu live because he was taking care of his son, and she didn’t want the little boy to suffer as she did. As it ends up the man attacks her, and the boy lives on with hate and rage towards Manji. She also meets the leader of the Itto-ryu alone multiple times, and yet she understands that she is incapable of killing him. It saves us a few pointless battles for read through, and it shows that Rin wants to be able to kill him with her own hands in an honorable fight. Though it seems like if that time were to ever occur, she would lose.

Manji is a very interesting fellow. He’s known as the killer of a thousand men (before be became immortal), yet he has a soft side. He only kills “bad” men in order to atone for what happened to his sister, because it was all his fault and he knows it. That is also what ties him to Rin; she looks just like his older sister, and he feels the need to help her. When Rin address him about training to make her stronger, he doesn’t sugar coat the fact that she is pathetic and all the training she had done before was pretty much useless because she wasn’t fighting anyone. Manji though, honestly cares for people. A prime example is when Manji held captive under the palace for immortality experiments. The first man to be made immortal becomes the closet thing to a friend for Manji while they both are imprisoned. But when the man is needlessly sacrificed, Manji becomes enraged. And even as he escapes, he mentions how terrible a thing they did to the first patient. He though shares some of the same moral values as the Itto-ryu despite them being his “enemy”. And ironically enough, the Mugai-Ryu who he teams up with to defeat the Itto-ryu, has less in common with him and his values.

The Mugai-ryu, or the Assassins guild, is a group of very interesting individuals saved from death row. The members range from Hyakurin, who murdered her husband after he killed her 2 children, Shinriji, for theft, to Shira, the extremely sadistic and disgusting nasty fucker. Honestly, the members of the Mugai-ryu aren’t bad people, they just did what they needed to in order to get by. Shira is the exception. He is terrible. I’ve read many comic books, a lot of manga, and manwah, in all different genres ranging from shojo to shounen, yuri to yaoi, hentai to children’s comics. But never have I ever been so revolted by one character as I have been by Shira. And honestly, that’s saying a lot. He severs his victims legs so they can’t run away, then depending on their gender he either slowly kills them, or he cuts them up as he rapes them. I can’t wait until he dies. On the other hand, I really hope Hyakurin and Giichi stay together. He’s very sweet and caring and would function as a good stabilizing feature for Hyakurin after all that has happened to the poor girl.

As I wikipedia’d the sword schools, I landed a page about historical sword schools. And I was noticing that I recognized far too many of the names. I really need to layoff the samurai manga…

WebComics

I’ll be very upfront about this: I do not much care for the technological, nor it for me. If I find something I like, I will buy it to therefore support the artist. And I’m terrible at keeping up with web comics, or comics in general if I’m reading them online. They lost their tactile quality and it’s only appealing to one sense, and it’s losing my interest to one of my many other books on that shelf to the right.

So, needless to say the web comics listed bellow are those I can remember. Or have bookmarked and remember them. Or just found them among the bookmarks for times past.

MegaTokyo: http://megatokyo.com/ : This can be labeled the first webcomic I’ve ever read. And its been over 3 years at least since I’ve bothered to open the web page. Needless to say, I have no idea whats currently going on in the story, but it started out fun and very interesting. Two gamer friends hop on a plan to Japan, and broke and are trying to live life and get enough money to buy a plane ticket home. And then the romance started, and then it just dragged on. And I stopped reading. The art style is very simplistic, very anime, and over all cute.

Happiness and Cyanide: http://www.explosm.net/comics/1876/ : Its art style is very simplistic. People are reduced to basic shapes, and the images are flat. But the content is hilarious. Sometimes is violent and gory. Others its very politically incorrect. And then some are about relationships. They are always one page long, though the format varies.

Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/ : They parody video games. The two main guys are entertaining, and hilarious and rather likable. They incorporate everyday life with videogame discussions, and video games with even more videgames. Often they point out very blatant “issues” with video games.

xkcd: http://xkcd.com/ : As its title says, it’s a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

I.D. Fracture: http://idfracture.deviantart.com/ : The art style changes and improves as the story progresses and the artist gets better. It recently went from ink and toned and very “anime” to just the pencil sketches and a more mature manga style. The characters are very likable, each has their own story, personality and problems. Though it hasn’t updated in a long while, I’m addicted to it, and have reread it so many times.

Khaos Komix: http://www.khaoskomix.com/home.html : This comic has been redone multiple times, with each one dealing with the same characters just in a different way and situation. In the current version, and the sole one I’ve read, the story has been broken down into smaller segments, each told by a different character. It explores their relationship with their lover, themselves, and then their friends, which leads you on to the next story.

Brink: http://paperfangs.com/brink/ : I was reading this religiously for some time. The art style is very sketchy, done on the computer for the most part. I haven’t read it in a while… It deals with the main characters “insanity” and that of those he meets. It’s nowhere near as deep as it sounds. And that disappointed me. But it’s good enough.

Two Rooks: http://two-rooks.com/ : This comic is tied with ID Fracture for my most favorite on this list. The art is reminiscent of the film noir style, but uses limited color and gets a very strong impact. The story line is very complex and sometimes confusing, yet is still very beautiful. The characters are distinctly different from one another, in both personality and looks. And the entire website leads itself to the story. And I’m completely in love with the main character and well almost the entire cast.