Musical May:

I should be playing Star Ocean, but I prefer to listen to my new Octopath Traveler II soundtrack 100 times and get it ready for inclusion into my music hall of fame.  Frankly Octopath's music is better than Star Ocean's gameplay.

This plan was pretty simple but it's been complicated by another influx of music -- new tunes from Heaven Burns Red, Jun Maeda's latest work.  Now I'm listening to both soundtracks 100 times, which is going to take quite a while.  In general I'd say Yasunori Nishiki's music is the better of the two.  I don't want to say anything negative about Jun Maeda, but he is old and struggling with heart failure, so maybe he can't compose like he used to.  Another theory is he's tired of 'conventional' music and prefers adventurous, artistic stuff that only he actually likes listening to, leaving the audience in the lurch.  In any case the Heaven Burns Red stuff is like channeling Saidin.  There is some primeval beauty and glory to the music, but to reach it you have to endure a layer of dark tainted heavy metal or whatever, making for a very mixed bag.  Octopath, on the other hand, is perfect fantasy music that fulfils every archetype of what you would want in a song.  My only complaint is a lot of the songs are overly simplistic and repetitive, but even these simple and repetitive songs are quite catchy.

I also downloaded the ending theme to the second season of Tokyo Mewmew New, 'Can-do Dreamer,' the latest anime theme to impress.  Plus I took the opportunity to enjoy 'Idol', the opening to Oshi no Ko, the phenom currently sweeping Japan with over 100 million streams.  I don't think it's that good but it is good and definitely deserves a shot at my music hall of fame.  To round things out I also downloaded the opening to Idolm@ster U149, 'Shine in the Sky.'  I love the upbeat, happy-go-lucky feel to this song, it's better than most Idolm@ster music.

All in all we're talking about 63 songs to review and try to reach 100 listens.  It's a major investment of time and energy but with what should be a great return -- no more weak songs anywhere in my music hall of fame.  I'll be able to replace them all with a haul like this.

Generally speaking when you're listening to music that means you're also reading a book, otherwise you're not spending your time efficiently.  For now I can keep rereading Xanth, but there's also an alluring prospect of Index GT 8, which is currently being translated.  I'd love to read the last two chapters of Hills of Silver Ruins but they're still not translated either.

In July a couple more important books are getting released, Hai to Gensou no Grimgar 19 and a new Full Metal Panic book talking about Sosuke and Kaname's married life together.  Of course, who knows when the new FMP book will get an English translation, so Grimgar will have to suffice for us.  Japan has already been enjoying the latest No Game No Life 12 volume for a while now, but still no timetable for when we might be getting it.  Everything from Japan is translated at a snail's pace in America, we're lucky to see it ten years later.  (Hello, Aiyoku no Eustia?)

On a sidenote, this marks my 3,000th post, since that one post got taken down.  (Otherwise it would be my 3001st).  I don't have any new ideas, I haven't had any new ideas or opinions in years, though sometimes I try to rephrase them in a more persuasive manner than before, so most of my new posts concentrate on new events.  These new events tend to be artistic releases, because everything else about Earth is completely frozen and unchanging.  It's amazing how little news there is in any other field.  No scientific progress, no progress on the warfront, no factual dispute is ever resolved, etc.  The only news inevitably ends up being about music, anime, video games, manga or books, because those are the only new things on Earth.  If not for our artistic creators this world would grind to a halt of endless tedium.

Supposedly Russia will take Bakhmut in a couple days now.  I predicted the fall of Bakhmut months ago and finally my prediction will prove true.  But it's taken far too long.  Everything about Ukraine is taking way too long.  It's like watching molasses.  I was right about Bakhmut, but I'm done with predictions because it obviously takes way too long for anything to happen even when I am right.  It's better not to worry about or anticipate anything happening because it never does.

We're no closer to going back to the moon or Mars, the Starship rocket blew up in midair, it's obviously not going to be ready any time soon.  There are still no self-driving cars.

On the bright side, because nothing ever changes on Earth, my opinions from fourteen years ago, at the beginning of my 3000 posts, are just as timely and relevant now as they were then.  Nothing has changed, so none of my opinions have had to change either, they were true then and they're still true now.  It's just as profitable to read them now as it was back then.

I try to keep all my best posts within reach of the front page of this blog, so that no one has to scour back through all 3000 to see what I really want them to see.  These permaposts sum up everything I really wanted to say to the world, the rest is just fluff that can be ignored.  Which means all 3000 posts can be compressed into a normal length opinion book no different from, say, Montaigne's essays.  From that point of view they're well worth the read.