Easy Peasy Literary Wall Art

Behold. Wall art for the study, inspired by the handmadesilhouettes shop on Etsy. I googled silhouettes of fictional characters, copy and pasted them into MS Word, re-sized to my heart's content, added the pencil artistic effect, printed on cotton paper that happened to be lying around, trimmed and placed images in 8 x 10 frames that cost me $4.99 each at Michael's, and then the fiancé broke out the picture hooks and laser level to hang them. If you ignore how our walls are unlevel, making it impossible to ever hang anything in a straight line, I think they look pretty good. Plus, the project killed an afternoon and resulted in more of our immense empty wall space getting covered. So. Good times.

Tiny Little Full-Blown Obsession

So. Yesterday I received my New Every Two® phone from Verizon (the LG Cosmos). Naturally, one of the first things I did was start looking for Naruto ringtones. While randomly perusing the internet for said ringtones, I came across "Itachi's theme" here.

My initial reaction went something like, Holy crap, this is awesome, how in the world have I never noticed this before? Once the excitement faded a tad—I admit, that took a while—logic kicked in and I thought, Wait, if this really is Itachi's theme, why don't I remember it?

1.) He is one of my favorite characters in all of Naruto. If he had a theme song, I would remember it (I know Sasuke's when I hear it, and his is pretty lame).

2.) This tune's style doesn't sound like the rest of the show's music. Don't get me wrong, I love some of the songs in Naruto—just to name a few, "Sadness and Sorrow," "Main Theme," "Kakuzu," "Orochimaru's Theme," "Akatsuki's Theme," and practically all the opening and closing songs are very good. But if "Itachi's theme" were part of the show's repertoire, it would definitely stand out, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.

3.) This song doesn't fit with the show thematically. This is cowboy music. And while that makes sense for Itachi—he is undoubtedly a bad man who has done bad things (albeit for good reasons), a wanderer, a loner, arrogant, skilled, and in search of atonement—it doesn't make sense for a show set in a ninja universe. Again, I feel confident I would have noticed such discordance.

So. I did some digging. Many people on the internet feel very strongly about the fact that this is really Itachi's theme (for evidence, see YouTube). Some people say it appears in the anime. Like in episode 114 or 121 or 140. Some people say that this is Itachi's theme, it just isn't used in the show. Some people say this song appears on one of the show's official soundtracks. Some people say this is Itachi's theme in the Naruto PlayStation games. Having watched and re-watched relevant episodes and looked up (and re-looked up and re-re-looked up) the playlists for the Naruto CDs and games, I feel fairly confident in saying that these people are suffering under some grand, viral, internet delusion.

In reality, this song is "Thunder Cloud" from the album Theme From Shaft & The Horse by The Ventures. Before it was known as "Thunder Cloud," it appeared under the title (and perhaps here is the origin of the mass confusion) "Naruto" on Golden Pops/Pops in Japan '71. 

So. There you go. Mystery solved. And I was not at all obsessive about it and it only consumed five to seven hours of my life. Go me.

Sasuke, Sasuke, On the Wall

(Note: This is a primarily knitting-related post. Read at your own risk. Dashful cannot be held liable for any massive yawns or bouts of drowsiness that may occur.)

Now that "stripy" is out of the way, meet "razory":

"Razory" is a lacy tank top that took me about a month to knit. It was based on the Razor Cami and was my first lace project. I'm really pleased with the result. It's a good length, fits well, and I like the way it looks on. I may have screwed up the pattern a couple of times at the beginning (bottom), but I decided to follow a rule I read online: If you make a mistake, put your project down, then go do something else for five minutes. Come back, stand a few feet away from your knitting, and if you can't see the mistake, ignore it and carry on. So I did, and probably no one will ever notice the errors but me.

In terms of modifications to the pattern, I added some length and ribbing to the top front for a more symmetrical and finished look. I also decided to clasp the straps together in the back for a make-shift halter top, because I knit the front and back straps too close together and didn't feel like frogging them and re-knitting.

While I enjoyed working on "razory," toward the end it was mostly guilt driving me on. I really wanted to begin a new project, but felt like I had to finish this one first. That new project is the Sasuke Shirt.

As anyone who knows even the tiniest bit about me is aware, I adore Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke in particular. So, I've decided I would like a little piece of Sasuke with me at all times. (Well, not all times. I would wear other shirts sometimes. Probably.) Thus, the idea of the Sasuke Shirt was born. It will entail making "stripy" shorter, smaller, in black, with a really high neck, and the Uchiha crest (which I have charted myself) intarsia-ed onto the back between the shoulder blades. I've never done intarsia, let alone in the round, but I think I've done the research to make it happen, so hopefully this shirt will be awesome and not a disaster.  

Kai (Release—From Genjutsu, Which Is What This Must Be, No?)

So, I was watching Naruto on Hulu yesterday, and I saw an advertisement for the Shippuden Collectible Card Game. It's turn based, a la Magic: The Gathering. I had no idea such a thing existed, but it makes sense: there is a wealth of characters, attacks, defenses, etc. in Naruto. What I found strange though, was that the two cards used to promote the game were student Naruto and Sasuke:

                                            

Don't get me wrong. It's not at all surprising that these are the two characters that would be used to promote the game; everyone knows their intense, angsty, twisted rival-friend-brother relationship thing is what the show is really all about. However, student Sasuke and Naruto do not exist. They're alternate universe characters that only ever appeared in the show's closing credits. Granted, that ending was one of my favorite ones (right behind samurai Naruto and Sasuke). I mean, who doesn't love Naruto in that Yondaime-esque jacket? But still, these two seem out of place in a deck of battle cards to me.

Bad ass jutsu:

Makes sense.

Scary ninjas:

Of course.

Deadly situations:

Duh.

But student Naruto and Sasuke? What are their powers? Charm? Excellent penmanship? Proficiency at school yard brawls?

And one other thing: what's up with Naruto's power being lightning instead of wind? Perhaps when the game was released Naruto's wind affinity hadn't yet been revealed, so they just assigned him a random element? Hm, mayhaps this warrants further investigation. But no, no, I have no interest in playing. Because these sorts of games are for ten-year-old boys and crazy fanatics, neither of which I am, of course. Not solely because the instruction manual for the game is 25 pages long. It's not like I'd be dying to play if the learning curve were even slightly less steep or anything...