This was a proof of concept that I will never use
again (because I bought a fourth monitor).

I get the sense I wasn't exposed to a large portion of the shows that aired this season—an obvious consequence of not watching all that much compared to past seasons. Nevertheless, I'm not convinced I actually missed anything, although I do admit a curious fascination with Sword Art Online (despite the profoundly negative reactions to its cour-ending climax). I haven't yet watched a single minute of it, but I have read the first four volumes of the light novels (which I'm expecting the first two cours to cover). Learning that Kajiura Yuki is providing the music has put the show over the top, and I'll probably marathon the summer 2012 segment to catch up with the autumn 2012 episodes. Naturally, this will change my summer 2012 anime summary rankings, but it is late enough already and I can always reflect the addition with an update, so here goes:

Okay, so it's not a hat.

It's because it's December 4th.

The original plan was six monitors. Now it seems excessive.

There's a space because that's where I mounted the center speaker.

There's a Chihaya because I didn't have another suitable image of Yuuko handy, at least not in 1920x1200.

[Update 2: I hid the previous three-monitor setup so well I forgot about it.]

[Update 3: All four monitors are 24" 1920x1200 IPS panels. One Dell U2410 (good monitor, but I hate the control buttons so much), one HP ZR24w (which won't do 1:1 1080, by the way), and two Dell U2412.]

[Update 4: Minor adjustment.]

One of these is not like the other.

I continue to encourage people to buy Velvet Kiss because it's really good even though it features both sex and baseball. Volume two is out already. [Spoilers: It has "Pomf."] Volume 13 of the Evangelion manga is out also. The Eva manga continues to diverge from the television broadcasts and The End of Evangelion, but there's both good and bad there. On the plus side, Shinji is not a whiny little shitheel. But on the other hand, volume 13 invokes shounen jive superpowers. I'm not sure I'm okay with that.

Hell yeah.

Shipping took longer than I expected, but I received my 2013 Idolm@ster calendar, err...2013 THE iDOLM@STER c@lendar. The calendar is two months to each single-sided page, and you have to tear them off to change to the next sheet. I'm pretty sure the paper is A2-sized, so it should be pretty easy to get frames. The colors seem a little less saturated than the scans you may have seen, but I'm pretty happy with the calendar as a whole. I probably could have just gotten it from Kinokuniya, but I was ordering something else anyway.

OH, HELL YEAH.

I'm pretty stoked about this, although it's been ages since I put together any sort of model airplane. I'm probably going to practice first on some other kit (maybe a tank!) to get used to it again. I want to be more confident of not messing it up.

For some reason Nagato Yuki owns a tea set and I don't.

I'm not sure if this really counts as anime product placement, but I bought some Darjeeling tea because of GIRLS und PANZER. It's pretty good, but I don't know if it's fifty-dollars-a-pound good. I don't have any tea cups, so I had to use an espresso mug. I also had to measure the temperature of the water with a thermometer I normally use for meat. Close enough, right?

Noir DVDs and Blu-rays. Also pictured: Some random
swag that RightStuf was trying to unload.

I fuckin' love Noir. You'll know this if you've read some of my old ass blog posts on the series—ones I've been meaning to import into WordPress for like, years. You'll also know this if you follow me on The Twitter, as I recently completed my Bee Train girls-with-guns trilogy re-watching project. This was inspired by my acquisition of Noir Blu-rays which, conveniently, are a Hell of a bargain. I also had Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja DVDs which I had previously purchased but never got around to watching. As you can see from the picture above, I already had the Noir DVD box set (which came with a Kirika t-shirt), but the Blu-rays are still a great deal even for fans who already have the DVDs.

I probably should have used a picture of Elenore here instead.

I've already re-watched Noir at least twice in the past 12 years or so, but this was my first time re-watching Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja. Noir holds up if you're already okay with the incredible feats they pull off. For example, basically every shot Kirika ever fires results in an instant kill. She's shooting .380 ACP ball ammo for crying out loud. Of course, considering some of the feats she accomplishes during the course of the show, I'm reasonably certain Kirika could find a way to instantaneously kill a room full of Soldats flunkies using a package of Q-Tips. Neither Madlax nor El Cazador de la Bruja are quite as good as I remember though, and I didn't think they were that great to begin with. Madlax at least benefits from one of best anime maids of all time, but El Cazador is sort of dreadful to marathon.

I also cleaned my IBM Model M keyboard.

I bought this oppai mouse pad thanks to CliffyB's glowing review. (The review is sort of tsundere, so you have to read between the lines.) As for the boobie mouse pad itself, I'm just about certain that it's an unlicensed Chinese bootleg, but the quality is adequate for what it is. The underside is a solid flat non-slip surface. Once you peel off the protective plastic film, the mouse pad will stay firmly planted to your desk no matter how vigorously you mouse.