Pom Jo #2
Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 9:49 amConcerning Pom Jo, Castle Laputa and pirates, from my surrogate elder brother Geoff Maloney. Oddities, created and found, by Geoff and fellow writers Lee and Lyn Battersby and Paul Haines can be found at Jerry Jarvis’ Wig.
“Monday — bought Alchemy & Mysticism for Diana a wonderful Taschen book of illustrations from hermetical texts. There was one picture that I particularly liked — Laputa the Castle in the Air from Gulliver’s Travels.
Tuesday - Zoran sends me the cover for Fantasical Journeys — its central image is Laputa the Castle in the air — identical to the one in the book
Today — reading your blog came across Pom Jo from your dream — I’m kind of fasinated by found names, so I did an internet search
And found that “Pom Jo” exists in a Spanish online play called: Laputa Castle in the Air (Spanish translation of Miyazaki’s Laputa - ed.). Spanish site: http://www.nausicaa.net
After translating the site I found the play featured: DORA, Mrs. Capitana of the pirate airship, the Polilla of the Tiger. Trying to obtain the Levistone de Sheeta at the outset, She decides then to help Pazu and Sheeta. Which conincides with your blog entry about female pirates and the Vandermeers’ anthology.
Also in the search on Pom Jo there’s another site about POM updates maintained by Jo Vandermeeren
And the link directly above that one is about Bristish perfumer Jo Malone’s Pom Noir fragrance.”
And lastly - “Diana took Alex shopping for some material yesterday. She needed to make something for a school project, and she bought home a soft pink flannelette material with black Jolly Rogers all over it — just the sort of thing for the lady pirate!”
Thanks to Geoff for letting me post this. I love coincidences and am inclined to look for messages in them. The obvious one here is that I should get around to seeing Laputa. I checked out a review of the Pom (actually Pomegranate) Noir fragrance, in which the reviewer likens it to one of my favourite scents, Passage D’Enfer. Here’s the online shop. I probably won’t be buying a bottle as the exchange rate from pounds to other currency makes it rather expensive, but it does sound nice.
Addendum: last night I ordered a coconut shake in a bar. The owner made it an alcoholic version. On the bill it was listed as a “pirate’s lady”.
To Tim, who is sick of pirates, sorry…
March 12th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
It all ties together…
Clearly, the meaning to all this is that Pom Jo is the favored drink of Jewish sky pirates. Only the lady Jewish sky pirates favor a coconut flavored version.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Btw, I’ll have you know because of that link you posted recently, you got me reading the Trinity Blood manga again. And now I’m out of translated material and left in the lurch! (shakes fist) I blame you.
March 12th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Did Woody Allen ever make a pirate movie…?
Gomen ne! Did you check the TB Community website? They have some scanlations and links to scanlations there. (They may not be the best, but they give you an idea of what’s going on.) Where are you up to?
March 12th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
S’alright. I shall endure!
March 13th, 2007 at 5:10 am
I’m up to chapter 17 in volume 5, scanlated by Vampire Knights. Their grammar is strange but it’s better than not being able to understand it!
You don’t know of any past that point, do you?
March 13th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Laurie - check out what they’ve got here:
Does Aidan look like that?)
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Trinity_Blood/index.php?showforum=18
They’ve got scanlations up to chapter 21, it looks like, and a couple of later chapters, including 34 - in which Isaak appears to be calling Cain’s naked groin “My lord”. Btw I’m not sure I like what Kiyo is doing to Cain and Isaak’s characters. Neither of them would have bullied Dietrich like that in the original books. Still, they’re eye candy. (And damn me if Thores’ Isaak isn’t nearly the spitting image of Gwynn.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Sankyuu!
(And ahahaha yes, almost exactly like that. Biggest difference is Aidan usually wears his hair loosely braided, and has a very slight widow’s peak.)
March 13th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I hope the links still work.
Wow , heheh - then your boy and mine do look alike. Gwynn has a slight widow’s peak too, though his chibi version doesn’t for some reason.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Indeed they do! Downloaded them all, but I have to finish this infernal assignment before I can read them, sob. (Browsing blogs while working doesn’t count. Blog browsing is just security for my sanity.)
Aidan’s color scheme isn’t quite that dark either. Though he does wear rather a lot of black. Because, you know, black is stylish.
Isaak isn’t the only character that favors one of mine in Trinity Blood - Seth is just about the spitting image of my Chrome. Her personality is startlingly similar, as well. Coincidentally, she was my favorite female character, even though she didn’t get a whole lot of screen time.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Oh, good! Never mind, it’ll be something to look forward to when you’ve done the assignment. Think of it as a reward
Gwynn ditto, with the clothes. I keep thinking he’d look great in dark red, but he says that’s Beth’s colour. He’ll wear shades of purple and burgundy, though.
Wow! This just makes me think more and more that they’re out there, somewhere, for real… (I know, someone’s gonna straitjacket me.) Seth gets a bit more time in the manga than she did in the anime, if I remember. I like her too, because she’s managed to grow old yet stay young, and be playful yet responsible too. And she isn’t a bit angsty.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Actually, dark reds and burgundys are colors Aidan wears a lot of! How curious.
I loved how Seth’s brothers are so woeful and angsty and Seth is just all, “weeeee, life is fun…” Kind of reminds me of Death in Gaiman’s Sandman series.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Does Aidan ever wear blue? (I’m sure I’ve asked this, I’ve just forgotten.) Gwynn seems to feel most comfortable in the range between peacock blue and indigo. I do remember that your boy and mine have quite different colour preferences, which I somehow find interesting.
Yep - and she manages to be Empress at the same time, and they’re all needy and hopeless. Yoshida was going to have Cain kill her. Sorry as I am that Yoshida died, I’m glad that part of the story never happened. It would have seemed so wrong to me.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
He does, but not frequently. I usually see Gwynn in my head in blacks, greens, blues, and silvers; I usually see Aidan in blacks, rust and deep reds, and golds or silvers.
Yikes! That would’ve been awful. Seth seems kind of like Gwynn to me in that she’s one of those characters that has a really permanent feel, somehow; it doesn’t seem like her existence could ever end, and if she died, she’d just become something else. Of course, that could just be me reading my own preconceptions onto her, from the strong associations I have from my Chrome.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
That’s what Gwynn wears, mostly. Some of his other selves wear a red item, like a hair ribbon, but only as a signal of allegiance to Beth (her other self, that is). Aidan’s colours sound like Beth’s!
I thought the same as you about Seth. She had that eternal quality - like a fairy.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Like Beth’s, huh? That’s rather strange and intriguing…
Actually, TB has got me to thinking about what might happen if I put Aidan and Chrome together in a story… I’m guessing something really strange, lol.
March 13th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
‘Tis indeed. Black, deep or rusty red and gold are realy her colours - though I don’t think she wore them in the book. I wouldn’t like to try to slap any sort of facile symbolism on it (though it’s tempting to see an elemental theme there). Does Chrome favour certain colours?
I imagine…mayhem might ensue?
March 13th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Well, I did always feel a lot of fire from Beth. (I thought recently that if she had a perfume it should have cinnamon and sandalwood and amber, with a touch of myrrh - and of course the rose and carrion notes. :D) Though all things considered, she encompasses too many traits common to all the elements to pin her down as a single one…
Chrome does indeed favor certain colors - the same colors Seth is often pictured in. Lots of green and silver with a little black.
Mayhem does seem likely. For some reason I see her sitting in a rough-looking bar somewhere between worlds, drinking a sasparilla and swinging her legs as she waits for him to show up. She’s annoyed because he’s very late.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
meanwhile a rabbit in the corner keeps looking at it’s pocket watch in horror.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
..and something about a girl with very sad eyes and a fiddle. And three old men wearing a ring of smoke that may be laughing into their drinks if you don’t look too closely.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Laurie - I would say fire is her main element. Your idea for a perfume sounds perfect. Maybe it could have a little black pepper, too. Gwynn’s main element is air, I would say.
!! I think I’d like to know more about Chrome.
Now that makes me laugh, because Gwynn is sitting in a railway tearoom between worlds. He’s been there for at least a year and he’s utterly absorbed in the trivia of his surroundings. Where’s Aidan, while Chrome is waiting for him?
Dave - somehow I’m seeing Mashimaro in the role.(Because a white rabbit isn’t enough, it has to be a crazy, Korean white rabbit.)
March 13th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Dave - I’d like to hear that story…
March 13th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
I’ve tried talking to the old men, but they are too far gone to listen to me and the girl only smiles at me emptily before staring again into her fiddle. I’m not sure about the rabbit, he seems to have disappeared, along with a curly haired blond from the back who may have been a succubus, or at least dressed like one, and I don’t even know what that’s about.
March 14th, 2007 at 4:40 am
Black pepper would be excellent! I love black pepper in a perfume but it’s so rarely used.
Chrome, like Seth, has that child-like and playful yet wise air. Though, in the story I’m writing her in (which I’ve been working at on and off for years because I can’t seem to capture the essence of the dream she was in) she’s actually around 14 or so years old, so she really is essentially a child, at least in that incarnation. She has the ability to alter reality by altering her perceptions of reality. The rules tend to bend around her. Or rather - there is a concrete reality somewhere beneath all the illusions, and she has the ability to see through the illusions, and thus it looks like she is bending the rules when she’s really just discarding all the false ones.
I’m not sure where Aidan is. I can see him showing up in something like a military uniform - probably TB’s influence, lol. I’m not sure what’s holding him up, though.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Egan, bloody carnage, some cute little plaything of a human who looks like they may be amusing/special for the brief hick-up of time that they’re alive?
It would depend a lot on why they’re meeting, I would think.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Well, this Aidan isn’t necessarily the same incarnation of himself. Or Chrome, for that matter. In fact, I don’t think they are.
March 14th, 2007 at 6:05 am
In every lifetime I’m fairly sure that one will find someone for whom he will willingly get a tad to close to the river of death, didn’t you know?
^^
March 14th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Laurie - Chrome just sounds fascinating - a character with a lot of potential. I bet she could turn a few people’s worlds upside down. Please gambatte with her story.
Re the uniform, I wonder if Aidan’s been away at a war or something.
Dave - Aidan isn’t even my character, and I’m nodding my head at the last thing you wrote.