Lately I've done nothing but drinking glass upon glass of water, and pissing it right out almost immediately after. Even now I'm still drinking water out of the green tumbler my grandma gave me---for God knows how many times already. At this rate I won't have any problems making the 64-ounce water requirement several times over.

I wonder why I'm doing this...probably best to think of it as detoxification therapy for all the excesses of the holidays.
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Speaking of holiday excesses, food was a big part of that. (When hasn't it been?) I've gotten my weight back up to the "dreaded" 170 lb. mark, although I got it at a slower rate than I thought.

At least people still think I lost weight...which is no small feat.

Strange, really...when I tell people I lost weight, they tell me I gained it. When I do gain a little weight people think I lost it. There's no winning people over I guess...
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I am disappointed with a lot of the new anime that's out nowadays. It seems anime has reduced itself into a convenient vehicle for introducing and selling stupid, useless toys to kids.

I suppose this trend started with "Let's and Go Mini 4WD," although I don't consider Mini-4WD car racing as totally useless. Let's face it, this is a good way to teach kids physics. I remember back in my last year of high school that our Physics teachers had an experiment for us that involved tuning Mini-4WD race cars, and it was a pretty good way of teaching us about gear ratios, acceleration, speed and other physics stuff. Besides, it's a good (but hideously expensive) hobby for any would-be armchair mechanics.

This "anime-to-sell-useless-toys" trend began in all honesty with "Beyblade." Seriously. The whole series is about competing with other players using fancy-shmancy high-speed tops. If that were the case kids could've just gotten a cheap, conventional wooden top and gotten on with it, as "beyblades" are (again) expensive. Besides there's no element of skill involved with so-called "beyblading." It's all a function of luck---and perhaps how quickly one can launch one's beyblade. Zero brain power involved, unlike Mini-4WD racing. And have I mentioned how easily these plastic beyblades can break? There goes your PhP1000...compare that expense to getting a wooden top.

And this morning I tuned in to a local TV channel only to watch "Super Yo-yo." Cripes. It's about doing tricks with fancy-shmancy yo-yos. I suppose this is the culprit of all those kids I see in the local malls playing with yo-yos with abandon.

The premise of the contests in the anime is pretty stupid: contestants come into this virtual-reality world, where they navigate and race in courses with virtual hoverboards, a la "Back to the Future." The way these players boost their speed is by performing yo-yo tricks. The faster and the wilder the trick performed, the more speed they get. I don't know about you guys but this sounds inane.

Granted, at least there's some element of physical skill involved in manipulating a yo-yo and doing tricks with it. God knows I never learned how to do any yo-yo tricks. But my point is that there are better things for anime to present to people than these stupid toy fads. It goes against my original brief of anime being something thought-provoking.

Maybe I should just switch off the TV and look for some other series with more "meat" into them...
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Speaking of "Super Yo-yo," the main protagonist's name is Shunichi.

At least I'm pretty sure now that my alias "Shunichi" is a proper Japanese name, after nigh-on 5 or 6 years. Now if I only knew how to write it in kanji and what the name really means...