Also, the Paprika soundtrack is as marvelous as one would expect from the movie. A very enjoyable mix of everything, it’s wonderfully all over the place.

Andy’s gift to me in the gift exchange was the anime film Paprika, which, despite having been directed by Satoshi Kon (whose Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress I love), managed to slip totally under my radar until the moment I saw the DVD.

The film is fantastic, both in terms of quality and its embrace of fantasy. The story was solid, the characters clever and amusing, and the overall concept, to state the obvious pun, a dream. It had been a long time since I’d seen any new anime, and this is certainly one that I had indeed missed. It’s pieces like these that I wish I could always find in new anime, unique and distinct gems that bring something new both to the medium and to me (yes, those who have suggested series to me, I have not forgotten you).

This was also the first movie for which I got the Dolby Digital of my sound card and speakers working, and I must say that it was a treat. Paprika is a perfect film to arouse the senses, even if it can only reach two of them.

Great gift, Andy.

I was poking around a couple sites and reminded of how much I loved BitlBee back when I used it for all (uh, six?) of my IM connections at the time. I only use Jabber now (via ejabberd running on Empty Matter), but I decided to give BitlBee another turn and emerged it, if for nothing else than old time’s sake.

Naturally, Jabber is a nice protocol, so I can continue having Psi act as the primary connection for my account (it connecting at a higher priority) while BitlBee’s connection hides there at a low priority, in case all of the other connections with higher precedence disconnect.

I also noticed that Irssi allows for server-specific away messages via

/away -one

(a detail I’m not sure how I missed all this time), so I threw up a little away message on BitlBee for all those half dozen or so people who have my Jabber account on their lists explaining the purpose and function of this new always-away connection.

Fun stuff.

Jump Ultimate Stars came today, and I started struggling through the menus, translating the Japanese at a snail’s pace, and probably not very accurately, either. I did, however, figure out enough to determine that I was erasing the data (it’s a used game) and yes, I really meant it. So that’s kind of exciting.

消す (kesu) - to erase