In the category of "This makes Mugen's head hurt"...

[telophase]

Apparently Japanese manga will never make it big in America because Americans don't eat rice, among other things.

I think my favorite bit is where he says that Americans don't like teenage angst. Now, please excuse me. I have to go eat sushi while reading Judy Blume and Sweet Valley High.

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Into the Dust

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Read no further if you don't want to be reminded, spoiled, or traumatized.

Billie Joe lives somewhere in the Dust Bowl during Dust Bowl times. Hard times. Her only happiness is in playing the piano. Her mother is pregnant. One day a bucket of kerosene in the kitchen catches fire. Billie Joe grabs it and flings it out the door-- just as her mother starts to run in. Her mother is covered in burning kerosene. Billie Joe's hands are horribly burned when she tries to put her mother out. Her mother is horribly burned and gives birth in horrifying agony. The father runs away and stays out getting drunk, leaving Billie Joe alone with her agonizingly burned hands, her dying, screaming mother, and no medicine or even water to quell their terrible thirst. The baby is premature and dies. The mother lingers in agony for days, then dies. Billie Joe's hands turn into useless clubs, and she thinks she killed her mother and brother and made her father an alcoholic and ruined her own life.

But there is a ray of fragile hope, for one day she forgives her father and attempts to play the piano again, with her hideous damaged hands. Of course, her mother and brother are still dead and her father's still an alcoholic bastard and she's still permanently scarred and it's still the Dust Bowl.

Like the cheery YA novel Crank, which is about crank, Into the Dust is written in blank verse.