The Fuzz Academy will be at Anime Expo 2008 this year, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in the Artist Alley, from July 3 - 6! (We will be at tables C23 and C24 in the Artist Alley.) Come by to say hi, and maybe buy a thing or two. I will be selling some stuff that isn't available in the online store, (hopefully, if my shipment arrives) buttons and magnets and keychains. I will also be selling prints.

See you there!

So I've been reading a lot about Manchurians and Mongolians lately. I really want to learn the Manchurian language. Or the Mongolian language. Mongolian would be easier--there are more references out there to listen to......but with only 70 native speakers of Manchurian left in the world, and several thousand who speak it at all, I am having a damn hard time finding any references to listen to at all.

For those who are curious, I'm not fully Chinese (Han Chinese, that is). I'm 25% Manchurian, the ethnic group from Siberia/Russia/northeast China that ruled China's last dynasty. We don't look much different than the Han, but everything else was *very* different......the Han were the ones who did the foot-binding and the "small feet are beautiful" thing back in old Chinese times. Manchurians did not bind their feet. Han Chinese practiced polygamy and most nobility had a First Wife and several mistresses....Manchus practiced monogamy. Manchu imperial style (the last Chinese dynasty) had men with the half-shaved head and the long pigtail, and the women with the ornate headpieces covered with giant flowers and dangling jewels:



Yup, this style that everyone believes is Chinese attire was actually brought into China by the Manchus. Compare the above to the below, which is Han Chinese attire:



Pretty distinct--the Han men did not shave part of their hair and did not braid it. The women did not wear the enormous headpieces either. Also, the Manchus were the ones who adopted those enormous thick heeled sandals.

And the Manchurian language looks TOTALLY different from Chinese (Mandarin). It's actually very similar to Mongolian, being a language with similar origins:



Here, you can see that at the Forbidden City, all of the doorway signs are written in both Manchurian and Chinese (Mandarin):



My grandmother was 100% Manchurian and directly related to the imperial family of China's last emperor. (My great grand-aunt married into the royal family.) I never got to meet her, but I saw her photos--and we both have the same wavy, brownish hair (not typical of Chinese Han hair). Going through mother and grandmother, my last name would have been Aisin Gioro! (Another different.....Chinese Han last names are just 1 character, i.e. Chang, Jin, Lu, Lin, etc. But Manchurian last names have many characters....Aisin Gioro translates to 4 Chinese characters.)

But anyway. I'm just rambling. I'm determined to figure out at least how to write some basic Manchurian, and maybe I'll just listen to Mongolians talk on YouTube or something. I REALLY want to visit Mongolia. I feel more connected to Mongolia than I do to China, ethnically. Even though Manchus are a distinct ethnic group from Mongolians, they have similar genes being from the same part of the world. (I know this for a fact because I did a DNA genetic experiment in my college biology lab.....my genetic results came back with an 87% match for Mongolian genetics. W00t! Really interesting experiment--and apparently about 15% of my DNA matches Norwegians. Clearly some genes overlap here, otherwise it would add up to over 100%. )

And now, I leave you with counting from 1 to 10 in Manchurian:

emu, zuwe, ilan, duin, sunza, ninggun, nadan, zakun, uyun, zuwan. Yay!

Nani and Koa (my 2 corgis, who you may remember puppy pictures of) are now 1.5 years old and still adorable. However, in the process we've also accidentally gotten a chihuahua into our apartment. He's our rescue/foster dog. His family couldn't take care of him, and he would've gone to the pound, so we were like.......fine, we'll take him. (To be honest, I never thought I'd be one of those people with a chihuahua--I'm not a small dog fan--but he's grown on me. ) His name is Kahlua.

Anyway, here's a photo of Nani, looking way more innocent than she actually is:


Nani and Koa each have their own giant bed, but they both like the green one. So, they usually end up both squishing into it:


Aaaand here's the little one, the adopted son. Meet Kahlua!


He likes to wrestle with Nani and Koa....I swear, he gives me heart attacks every day because he is a little daredevil. Friggin' dog.

Oh, and I keep getting questions about working at Disney, etc.....anyway, I've left Disney to be a Lead Artist at a game company. Much more stressful job, and things move much more quickly (things at Disney always move slowly). But I love the people I work with, and am intimidated daily by how freakishly smart they are. I am such an idiot in comparison. ;__; Otherwise, I'm of course working on the Fuzz Academy [link] and am negotiating terms with an investor who is interested in pushing Fuzz Academy up to the big times. Fingers crossed!!

And I am going to Austria this Thanksgiving, and will be hitting up Vienna and Salzburg! This is partly as just a vacation, but also an excuse for me to do some hard-core research on Mozart since my current in-progress novel is about him. It'll be helpful to actually walk the Getreidegasse (where he grew up with his sister) and tour the apartment/flat where they lived. Excitement!

That's all, I think.......hope you're all doing well!

........

Oh, and I dyed my hair some funky colors, pinkish streaks and the like. I got bored. Picture *might* come....

OH, and my obsession with fighter jets continues! My boyfriend bought me Ace Combat 5. What can I say--he knows me. I've been watching a lot of the History Channel's "Dogfights" show, which features fighter pilots discussing some of the dogfights they've been in. They also show 3D reenactments. Fascinating. My favorite jets: the F15 (possibly the best jet design of its time), the F35 Lightning II (vector thrust!), and the F22 Raptor. I also have a fondness for the F6F Hellcat, which is the American plane designed to outdo the Japanese A6M Zero (another favorite) during World War 2. I looooooooove aviation.

Ok, that's it. For real this time.

Sorry for all the confusion--I know many of you are trying to go to my old website (which was at marie-lu.com), and finding that it is redirecting to a lingerie directory! My registration of it expired before I could renew it, so I had to start moving my files off of that and to a new domain. I'm hoping to get everything moved over to marielu.org soon, so that you guys can read The Glass Sonata again and see my old Flash movies, etc. Sorry about all the confusion! (And that weird lingerie site. Trust me--I'm not trying to be weird or anything with it, I did not intentionally post a link to a lingerie site. ) Apparently my name is also the name of a lingerie company. How depressing......

Wow, I didn't expect to get so many voice submissions--thank you all so much for your interest in the Fuzz Academy and for your help!

I've chosen a voice actor for Boboli, the main character for the Fuzz Academy's webisodes. Thank you all once again for your submissions! As some of you know in the emails I sent, I do need voices for the other characters that will appear in this mini-series, so I may be contacting some of you again for other voices.

The intro for the webisode is now in my DA gallery and displayed on the Fuzz Academy's main page.

Much love! I'm out. I leave you all with a photo of Nani and Koa, my 2 corgis, in all their grown-up and ridiculous glory.