So, yesterday I went out to Riverside for a Thanksgiving celebration with one of my friends out there. We ate a lot, played a bunch of boardgames, and generally had a good time. At then end of the day, I went out to my car and found that it had been robbed.

The thief had taken both my GPS device (bought almost exactly a year ago) and my cellphone (the n900 that I've had for about 9 months). I used one of my friends cell phone to attempt to negotiate with the thief for the return of the device by text messaging my phone, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The thief considered any return attempt to be "too risking" which is probably a reasonable assessment on his part. He did agree to clear the device; however, I had no way of confirming such a thing. Robbing people during Thanksgiving: the new American pasttime.

I suppose I was lucky that the thief was apparently rushing. S/He managed to miss the $100 in quarters that was in the front passenger seat (covered by a magazine), my iPod that was in the front center console (covered up by various papers, and my DSiXL which was in the center console pocket.

I've written off both devices as simply gone and have already made steps to replace them. Amazon had several Black Friday deals on GPS devices, so I picked up a TomTom from one. I then went to the Pasadena T-Mobile store and signed a new contract to get a new phone. This time, I've gone with a G2 which is an Android phone with a flip out keyboard. My hope is that it is mostly on feature parity with my old phone. It was rather difficult to get T-Mobile to let me get a new phone, with a contract discount, with my old number. They seemed to be convinced that this was impossible, but when I made the argument that I could simply walk one block down to ATT and get a new phone, with my old number, under a contract if they were unwilling to help, then it suddenly became possible.

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Over the weekend, I went to the Caltech Anime Society showings like I usually do. This weekend, there was a feature being shown that I'd never even heard of: Dead Leaves. To set things up, this is an hour-long OVA animated by Production I.G. (the same people who did Eden of the East and Ghost in the Shell: SAC) and directed by Imaishi Hiroyuki (director of RE: Cutey Honey (at least the first episode) and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann).

This made it clear that it had some pedigree going in, but I was completely blown away but what I actually found. The movie was 60 solid minutes of action, over-the-top violence, and sexualization. The film throws so much at the viewer so quickly that it is almost impossible to take in the amount of visual input being offered. It is almost a wonder to behold that so much can be going on for so long without much of any real break. It was so strong that one of the attendees who is slightly more sensitive to high-motion video couldn't even watch it. Nevertheless, even with this, the OVA managed to have a plot that mostly held together--even if it didn't bother to explain itself much.

I would certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Gurren Lagann or RE: Cutey Honey as it seems to be channelling them.

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