AND NOW I WILL USE MY POWER TO... TURN KYLE INTO A CHICKEN!
Hmm... because of the lyrics to the song in the
South Park episode
"Good Times With Weapons" which I listed the other day, I'm now experiencing my biggest spike in page views* since, at the very least, I wrote about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visiting Quebec City (and the reaction afterwards). I'm getting a lot more hits per hour than I got when
I posted the lyrics from
"It's Christmas in Canada". I guess this episode went down well with
South Park fans, though maybe the added number of hits are because of the two or three different fandoms (
South Park, anime, and videogames) implicated into discussing this particular episode.
The always-reliable
South Park Scriptorium already has the script for
"Good Times With Weapons" up (technically a transcript), and also a
"Secrets" page which has the lyrics to the full song, which I shall blatantly steal.
Subarashii chinchin mono
Kintama no kame aru
Sore no oto ha sarubobo
Iie! Ninja ga imasu
Hey hey let's go kenka suru
Taisetsu no mono protect my balls!
Boku ga warui so let's fighting...
Let's fighting love!
Let's fighting love!
Kono uta chotto baka
Wake ga wakaranai
Eigo ga mechakucha
Daijobu? We do it all the time!
Hey hey let's go kenka suru... |
This wonderful penis thing
And golden balls' hair are here.
Is that the sound of a sarubobo? 1
No! It's the ninjas!
Hey hey let's go fight!
This is important: protect my balls!
I am evil, so let's fighting...
Let's fighting love!
Let's fighting love!
This song is a little stupid
It doesn't make sense
Its English is fucked up
Is that OK? We do it all the time!
Hey hey let's go fight... |
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper reviews the latest South Park episode in his "Test Pattern" column over at MSNBC. I actually mostly agree with him, the anime/videogame character part of the story did get tired after a while, though he slightly missed one tiny point.
"(Although thumbs up for a humorously captioned song -- "Let's fighting love" being one of the goofily translated lines.)"
Nitpicking: they weren't making fun of bad translations, they (meaning, presumably, Trey Parker, a Japanese major in college) were making fun of the bad
"Engrish" phrases (formerly known as "Japlish") found in all sorts of anime theme songs in the original Japanese versions, like
"Just Wild Beat Communication" in the Gundam Wing theme song,
"Take me to Summer Side" from the first Kimagure Orange Road theme,
"Missing truth and forever. Kissing love and true your heart." from the first Revolutionary Girl Utena closing theme, and
the double-Engrishy Martian Successor Nadesico theme, with the gems "You get to burning!" and "To be... Going your days! Grow Up!".
Also, I noticed some bloggers talking about how they downloaded the latest
South Park episode, and they give links to places you can download it, and one "gaijin" (foreigner) blogger in Japan actually has the entire episode, in RealVideo format, on his site. You mean you can download
South Park off the Internet? Shocked, shocked I am to find out that there are illegal downloads of
South Park episodes on the Internet! Well, you guys can risk the wrath of the entertainment industry lawyers if you like, but, as for me, an American friend told me everything (he does really, really good impressions of everyone) and I won't see it for myself until the Comedy Network airs it at least two months from now in Canada. Okay lawyers, got that?
*The "spikes" in page hits I've had, off the top of my head, were soon after:
- I wrote about Julie McBride-Wyatt writing the column critical of the anime FLCL (and how anime fanboys on message boards everywhere got far too hysterical about TEH EVIL CENSORSHIP which never materialized).
- I wrote about the tragic deaths of young Montreal actors Jaclyn Linetsky and Vadim Schnider in an auto accident on the way to the set of the YTV series 15/Love.
- I wrote about William Strier shooting his lawyer on camera (and mostly missing).
- I wrote about the suicide of Seaquest DSV actor Jonathan Brandis.
- When guilty Florida murder-man Joseph Smith kidnapped, raped, and killed Carlie Brucia.
- My bit about watching the Super Bowl when everyone was looking for the Janet Jackson nipple pictures.
- And, as I mentioned before, when I wrote about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog going to Quebec City and the outrage over a rubber dog puppet.
The biggest spike I ever got was for Jonathan Brandis, though that was a unique situation in that it was a celebrity death that mostly went unnoticed by the media until it got a lot of coverage in the blogs.
Needless to say, I'm happier when I get spikes which aren't related to anyone dying or getting murdered.
One thing I thought would be a spike but has totally fizzled was the one about Cleveland County Sheriff’s Capt. Bobby Steen warning parents not to buy the manga Love Hina for their children, but there doesn't seem to be the same level of "OH NOEZ! CENSORSHIP" outrage among anime fanboys as there was last summer over Julie McBride-Wyatt's column since I haven't gotten a single hit about this one yet...
KENT BROCKMAN LLOYD ROBERTSON UPDATE
(Honestly,
I'm not the only one out there whom thinks, and has thought since about 1990, that veteran CTV anchorman
Lloyd Robertson looks an awful lot like
Kent Brockman, veteran anchorman on Springfield's Channel 6 on
The Simpsons.)
On
CTV News this evening, Lloyd Robertson is reporting from a press gallery overlooking the
Conservative Leadership Convention, and, since this isn't the normal
CTV News studio, they don't have the normal boom mike or microphone hidden in the desk available for Lloyd, so he has to wear one of those near-invisible microphones attached to his earpiece, except it's not quite invisible, so it looks like there's a long, stiff, white hair sticking out of his left earlobe attached to a white zit on one of his jowls. (Same for the one that Craig Oliver is wearing. And Conservative MP Deborah Grey, from the angle she's being shot, looks like she has a long nose-hair with a white booger at the end.)
Really, those "invisible" microphones are honestly a lot more distracting then if they just had old telephone operator/Air Traffic Control/Maddona "Blonde Ambition" tour-era microphone headsets.
SORRY AGAIN, ERAMELINDA BOQUER
Oh,
that's why CJAD's
Eramelinda Boquer has been burbling on so much about the awful, AWFUL John Lennon dirge "Imagine" lately. She saw the documentary
Imagine IMAGINE (
official BBC site) by documentary producer/director Frederick Baker at the
22nd International Festival of Films on Art here in Montreal. Baker interviewed a bunch of people to see what they think of the song "Imagine", including the really cool
Robert Elms whom hates it as much as
I, and all those other people I listed last week, do, and, as such, is automatically above reproach. She has Baker on, and the two are getting really, really pretentious about the song, talking about it as though it's the equivalent of the 95 Theses which Martin Luther nailed on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg... because, it seems like a simple song at first, but, wow man, it's so deep. Meh, you can find deep, deep meanings in anything if you try hard enough... someone should try finding the deep subtext of a song I actually like, like... umm... "Super Trouper" by ABBA.
Here's the song "Imagine" as it
should have been, recorded by
Paul Silhan for Rush Limbaugh in 1993 (so the reference to Bush losing is about Bush 41, not Bush 43).
"Imagine there's no liberals,
It's easy if you try.
No feminazis, none of Billy's lies.
No environmental wackos, lying to our kids.
You may not like Bill Clinton,
Well, you're not the only one.
Imagine the truth about the 80s,
Even if you can.
High schools without condoms,
No brand new health plan.
Imagine all the people,
Paying their own way.
You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.
We should have listened to Rush Limbaugh.
And maybe George Bush might have won.
Imagine Hillary baking cookies,
I know it's very hard.
No lesbians playing soldier,
Jogging tracks in the yard.
What if Ronald Reagan . . . could have had more terms.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll read "See, I Told You So,"
And the world will live as one."
STUFF WITH PICTURES
Yesterday was the premiere of the eighth season of
South Park on Comedy Central, but, of course, being in Canada, there's absolutely no possible way I can watch this episode until it shows up on the Comedy Network at least two months from now. So, for any Comedy Network lawyers that might be reading this, I'll just give a couple of thoughts an American Friend told me because I didn't see this episode only about an hour or so after it aired in the States. How could I have done that?
Last night's episode was "Good Times With Weapons", which was a spoof of fighting anime, especially
Ninja Scroll and
Dragonball Z, and I think there's plenty of
Street Fighter II in there, and, outside chance (it did get a Region 1 release),
Fist of the North Star, and, apparently, Cartman's character, "Bulrog", was based on some character called Balmung in
:hack//. Some people are saying it was also spoofing
Naruto, but that's difficult since it hasn't been licensed in North America.
(Oh, please, please Al Kahn Jr. of 4Kids Entertainment Inc. license the bloody children's anime cartoon series Naruto. I don't personally care either way whether it gets a subtitled version or not, but I get a great deal of schadenfreude from anti-4Kids anime fanboys whining.) If you're not into anime, there's also a plot involving Butters getting something in his eye which I won't mention... oh, wait, the shuriken in his eye is in the picture. The scene with the dogs is especially disturbing. And the ending is a spoof of the reaction to Janet Jackson's unintentional "wardrobe malfunction" intentional breast flash at the Super Bowl.
All in all, my American friend thought it was the best season opener since Season 5's
"Scott Tenorman Must Die", though the disturbing Butter's subplot doesn't touch that episode. Also, my American friend, who, coincidentally, has the exact same tastes in anime as I do, isn't really in to the sort of anime they were spoofing... if they had been spoofing
Urusei Yatsura or
Kimagure Orange Road or
Super GALS!, that would have been piss your pants funny.
Perhaps the highlight of the episode was the faux-anime theme song, complete with "Engrish". The lyrics are somewhat dirty if you know what the words mean:
"Subarashii CHINCHIN* mono,
Kintama** no kami*** aru.
Sono**** oto wa SARUBOBO*****.
Iie! Ninja ga imasu!
"Hey Hey Let's Go!" Kenka suru!******
Taisetsu na mono "Protect my balls"
Boku ga warui "so let's fighting"
"Let's fighting love..."
"Let's fighting love..."
There's another verse, but it's not subtitled, so maybe my American friend will type the rest later once he figures it out.
Promotional posters for Dreamworks'
Shark Tale (formerly
Sharkslayer) are hitting the Internet.
Some people at RottenTomatoes.com seem to think that Don Lino, the shark played by Robert de Niro, is ugly, or looks too much like Shrek, but I think he looks okay. My problem is the Will Smith fish, Oscar; I'm not expecting the characters to look as cute and kid-friendly as those in
Finding Nemo, and that's fine, but, adding human-looking teeth and lips to a fish looks just... wrong. Sorry. Hopefully, Oscar won't look nearly as hideous in motion, as stills can sometimes be misleading; I thought the slightly alternate (compared to regular
Tenchi Muyo) character designs in
Tenchi Forever looked weird in the stills, but they looked fine in motion.
Shark Tale comes out the day before my 30th birthday... hopefully, I won't be ending my twenties on a sour note.
Finally, as critical as I was about
Ah! My Goddess! volume 26 the other day, I gotta admit, Belldandy playing the violin is one of my favourite covers yet.
(You can also order it from
Renaud-Bray.)
*CHINCHIN = penis
**Kintama = testicles
***kami = hair (but they used the wrong kanji for hair, the one for Mou/Ke, or, if it's not wrong, it's a non-standard reading)
****My American friend thought it sounded like he was saying "Sore" not "Sono".
***** "Sarubobo is a small red doll that represents, even though it doesn't resemble one, a monkey with a kerchief on its head. These dolls are specific to Gifu prefecture and are said to bring good luck."
****** Kenka suru = quarrel, though the way it's pronounced probably intentionally was used to make most people think they're saying "Kickass". For the Google searches: "Hey hey Let's Go! Kickassu" "Hey hey Let's Go! Kickass!" "Hey hey Let's Go! Kick Ass!"
WEIRD SEARCH REQUESTS
dear god i want to know if he's cheating
Answer: Yes he is. With your best friend. And pretty much everyone you know is in on it and is making fun of your not knowing behind your back.
Cheers,
God.
OH MY GODDESS!/AH! MY GODDESS!/AA MEGAMI-SAMA!
I was at
Renaud-Bray bookstore yesterday and I bought myself volume 26 of Kosuke Fujishima's long-running
Ah! My Goddess! manga in French, since it's literally years ahead of the English translation by Toren Smith and Dana Lewis from Dark Horse Comics/Studio Proteus.
For the benefit of those of you stuck with the English version whom haven't read that far, I won't give much detail, but, starting around the time
Hild is introduced, and, especially after
Rind shows up, the whole manga just gets a lot more serious, for some reason, like it's going from a
seinen story, with slow-paced character-driven plots, to a straight
shounen, with group battles between celestial beings. The stories now just don't have the same charm as the touching stories from earlier in the series, like the one where
Skuld learned how to ride a bike and made her first human friend her own "age" while her adult powers were about to manifest for the first time, and Keiichi thought that she was about to have her first period and bought her maxi pads, which Skuld did not know what to do with. I don't know if people were expecting more action after the movie came out or what, but the series seems to be changing character and I hope it changes back within the next couple of volumes. Then again, it has been going in Japan for nearly a decade-and-a-half, so it may be that it is beginning to run out of steam and shifting gears into it being a more action-oriented series is the only way to keep it fresh... I hope not.
In much better news, from
Natsume Maya:
"A new Oh! My Goddess anime in the works. Source: Moon Phase. Well, Afternoon magazine had said that there'd be an announcement regarding OMG in the May 2004 issue (on sale on 25 March 2004), so I assume that the announcement will relate to the new anime. I'd been half wondering if the news may be a new anime, but it's easy to say that after the fact :P Remember that the May issue is also the one which comes with the Skuld (flying version) figure. Let's just hope that the new anime is better than the movie was..."
I hope they start over from the beginning, because, while the old 5-episode OVA series had gorgeous production values and was a pleasant enough trifle on its own merits, the characterizations are just so shallow compared to the manga. You may also remember my
thoughts on the movie:
"#7 Overrated: Ah! My Goddess! The Movie is overrated. (This is more a anime board thing than a film critic thing.) The manga, by Kosuke Fujishima, is about my favourite manga. (I used to say it's my absolute favourite manga, but I think Fujishima's You're Under Arrest is underrated, and I've read a lot more of Hitoshi Ashinano's Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou/Yokohama Shopping Log so I think all 3 are about equal.) The anime that have been made from this series are wonderfully drawn, but the characterizations are very shallow compared to the manga. I didn't hate the movie, but I wasn't as thrilled by it as I had thought I would be, probably just because so little of Oh My Goddess! has been animated that I wanted just a normal story of Belldandy and Keiichi, not one where Belldandy isn't herself for most of the movie. I hope they do a Mara movie sometime. The movie was a little bit of a disappointment for me in that it had been the first new installment of the true OMG! anime in over half a decade, not counting Adventures of Mini-Goddess (which is a blast if you like silly, absurd humour), but they wasted much of the screen time on two characters not from the manga, Belldandy wasn't really "herself", in a certain way, for most of the film, and the characters I did want to see that hadn't appeared in the OVA series (either because they hadn't yet been introduced in the manga at the time, or just because the series got cut short at 5 episodes) either got too little screen time (Peorth) or didn't appear at all (Mara, again). Not that I hate the movie or anything (of course not), it's just, had the exact same movie followed a 26 episode (non-SuperDeformed) OMG! TV series, or even just another 5 or 6 epiosde OVA series, I'd probably think much, much higher of this film than I did. On the other hand, I far prefer the manga continuity to the OVA continuity (which has gorgeous animation but characters that are pretty much the Cliff's Notes versions of the manga characters), and, as far as I could tell, there's nothing in the movie that would be out of place in the manga continuity (okay, Belldandy was wearing a different costume in a certain scene than she wore in the first volume of the manga, but it's also not quite the costume she wore at the beginning of the first OVA either). ***1/2/*****
CONCORDIA ELECTIONS
Oh no! Evolution, not Revolution/New Evolution is starting to test my patience. They're taking steps to
make their platform closer to that of the leftist parties.
"With the year quickly coming to an end, this year's executive, Evolution not Revolution, has started up new awareness campaigns at the school. Some of these campaigns include maintaining the tuition freeze and promoting fair trade coffee around campus.
Students have hailed the executive for the impressive orientation it organized at the beginning of the year, as well as other events like the weekly movie nights and the Winter Carnival. It doesn't get any better than that, does it?"
No, it doesn't. Organizing events like the weekly movie nights and the Winter Carnival suits me just fine.
"Actually, it just might. The present CSU is offering hope in light of Charest's threat to end the tuition freeze. There was much ado about the fact that no CSU members were in attendance at the Feb. 17 Quebec City demonstration against the tuition hike, while Concordia students joined forces to support the cause. Recently hired campaign coordinators Cameron Stiff and Salma Ahmad are trying to rectify the absence of CSU members, who were unable to attend the rally due to midterms which were being held at the time. Many other Concordia students did attend the protest."
I was *happy* that no CSU members were at the rally organized by the ultra-Marxist Canadian Federation of Students-Quebec. I fully support ending the tuition freeze since Quebec taxpayers are already taking way too much up the rear. Don't "rectify" anything, stay the course.
""The major thing that we're working towards is a demonstration on April 14 with a number of different groups involved. The main focus is students and labor unions. It's a general assembly against the negative actions of the Jean Charest government. We're just raising awareness and making sure people know that this could turn into the same problem Mike Harris' government had in Ontario," Stiff said."
Well, if I was going to protest Charest, it would be for not doing enough to raise the ridiculously low tuitions we have in this province. And what's with the cheap shot against Mike Harris? He was a great premier... the problem was with Ernie Eves whom was quite the "Red Tory". As for the Quebec labor unions (DUMB-DUMB-DUMB-DUMB-DUMB)... let's just say that I have very few nice words to say about them.
"Another campaign the CSU is starting up is one covering fair trade coffee. The idea has been floating around campus for years, with Le Frigo Vert and Java U offering a fair trade coffee. Groups like the überCulture Collective have been promoting it on campus over the past year."
Oh, no, not the
Fair Trade scam, taking actual market value out of the pricing system in favour of some guy's idea of what a "decent" price should be. Though,
Katharine Winans argues that "Fair Trade" is really just another "brand" with a marketing scheme playing on liberal guilt.
""We're organizing a week of initiatives from March 24th to the 30th with different groups in and outside the school, including QPIRG, überCulture and Sustainable Concordia, among others," Stiff said. The purpose is to involve students in convincing local and campus business owners to sell fair trade coffee. March 30th will feature überCulture on the mezzanine handing out free, re-usable coffee traveler mugs with a voucher for a free cup of fair trade coffee at the Frigo Vert."
Gah! Look at those groups.
QPIRG? Like I always tell you,
"Public Interest Research Groups" are front organizations for leftist fringe activists with all sorts of wacky statist agendas. Look at
groups they link to on their link page.
La convergence des luttes anti-capitalistes (CLAC),
ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism - anti-war collective) (read Ion Mihai Pacepa's inside information on the group behind ANSWER, the Workers World party, a straight Soviet propaganda tool, as well as this LA Weekly article by David Corn),
Anarchist People of Color, and, of course,
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. Plus, there's something on the ballot this year about increasing the contribution to QPIRG in our student fees (vote NO! NO! NO!) and they have posters talking about other things QPIRG supports, like
Blood Sisters, the crazy women whom worship their own menstrual blood and make stinky artwork from it which they display at Dawson College (no, I'm not making that up).
überCulture is a group that shows documentaries with an ultra-leftist slant, like
The Corporation, which Terance Corcoran called an "anti-corporate snuff film" (wish I could find the review online).
And
Sustainable Concordia is a cornucopia of mostly bad ideas from Q-PIRG types, like making the vegan food collective The People's Potato the only food concession on campus.
I'll wait to hear some more official word from someone like Brent Farrington, since I really, really hope I'm reading this article wrong and these ideas aren't being endorsed by the Evolution executive, but, if this represents the platform of Evolution in the coming years, I may have no choice but to vote for one of the joke executive slates since it means all three of the main executive slates will be supporting platforms I can't vote for. (Next thing you know, they'll be building bridges with SPHR...)
I was browsing
Free Republic earlier, and I somehow missed
this article from January wherein Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder called Condoleeza Rice a "murderer" again and he offered the amusing quote, ""She's a murderer because I believe she's a murderer," to which,
dirtboy replied:
"And I believe that McGruder has three eyes and eight legs. And, since I believe it, it must be so.
At least McGruder is being honest in his depravity, most liberals don't reveal just how depraved their thought processes have become and try to put a fig leaf of manufactured facts over their opinions."
Anyhow, I mention this thread for two reasons... firstly, because discussion in the thread turned to the upcoming
Boondocks animated series which Sony is doing for Fox, and some people are already talking about boycotts and such. Well, I'm a big animation fan and I really do hope the
Boondocks series does get on the air on Fox
because my favourite American cartoon is King of the Hill, and, currently, Fox is airing it at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Sundays, which isn't a big deal in the winter and spring, but, if King of the Hill gets that timeslot next fall, it would usually be pre-empted by football, which is what felled Futurama before, so the animated Boondocks should be this coming season's "sacrificial lamb" to air in the "Sunday night time slot o' doom" because I feel that we do not get enough diversity and alternate political points of view in prime-time television, especially in cartoons.
Also, a couple of fellow conservative/libertarian (or, perhaps, just anti-Idiotarian) anime fans posted in the thread:
B-chan/Bruce the Psychic Guy, whom I noticed before for
this Boondocks parody strip, and
Chris a.k.a. "Section 9", whom is a big
Ghost in the Shell fan. As far as my own tastes in anime are concerned, right director (Mamoru Oshii), wrong film (
Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer is my favourite anime film), but, still, it's nice being in the same general fandom.
RECOMMENDED READING
Or stuff I would have linked to before in what I wrote over the weekend but forgot.
Regarding
Rachel Corrie,
Sari Stein commented on how disturbing it is that
The Link, in the intoduction for their annual Women-only issue, commemorated the deaths of
Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist beaten and killed by Iranian police and intelligence officials for photographing a pro-democracy demonstration, and Corrie, whom was an International Solidarity Movement dupe whom shielded terrorists, like the henchman in the first
Austin Powers who wouldn't get out of the way of the slowly-moving steamroller, got in the path of a slow-moving Israeli military bulldozer trying to clear bush around a terrorist supply tunnel in a war zone, as being moral equivalents. Umm... I say... No. One should be honoured as a hero, and one is just a cautionary tale for activists.
Also,
Mark Steyn has an excellent column in The Australian about how Al Qaida and the other Islamofascist pigs really don't care all that much as to whether or not you helped America in its War on Terror, they'll hate you anyway for being western. And he adds that Spain is just as much of a target to the Islamofascists because of their grudge over "The tragedy of Andalusia", when Muslim rule ended in Spain 512 years ago.
"Even if you'd avoided Iraq or Andalusia or British banks or Pilger or any other affront to Islamist sensibilities, you'd still be a target. As the PR guy for the Islamic Army of Aden said after blowing up that French tanker: "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels." Commissioner Keelty is confusing old-school terrorism – blowing the legs off grannies as a means to an end – with the new: blowing the legs off grannies is the end. Old-school terrorists have relatively viable goals: They want a Basque state or Northern Ireland removed from the UK. You might not agree with these goals, you might not think them negotiable, but at least they're not stark staring insane."
Sari added something along the same lines this morning.
"It doesn't matter if we make nice, and talk about "understanding" the motives of the terrorists. They'll kill us anyway.
It doesn't matter if we look for "root causes" or try to blame terrorist attacks on the actions and international policies of our governments. They'll kill us anyway.
It doesn't matter if we stand in the streets marching and chanting with the radical groups, holding signs equating Bush to Hitler or denouncing the United States. They'll kill us anyway.
It doesn't matter if we all flood classes about Islam to learn about the "religion of peace" and have long theological discussions about its true meanings. They'll kill us anyway.
It doesn't matter if we turn out in droves to throw out centrist governments at the polls and vote in socialists who are more inclined to appeasement in reaction to terror attacks. They'll kill us anyway.
It doesn't matter if we abstain from United Nations resolutions that would attempt to defend what's right, or if we bury our heads in the sand on an international scale and refuse to take any action, or even if we turn on our allies. They'll kill us anyway.
It doesn't matter if we denounce Israel or give millions in aid to the Palestinians. They'll kill us anyway."
And
Sari also reminded me that today, March 15th, is
Meryl Yourish's annual EAT AN ANIMAL FOR PETA DAY. This year, I think I'll celebrate it as
EAT A BIG MAC AT McDONALD'S FOR PETA AND MORGAN SPURLOCK DAY. (See the
SUPERSIZE ME UPDATE a couple of entries below for more information.)
SPAIN: ¿SOCIALISM? SI! ¿CAVING IN TO ISLAMOFASCIST SAVAGES? SI!
Terrible, terrible election outcome in Spain, where
Spanish voters elected the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, seemingly punishing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for the train attacks in Spain, instead of the Islamofascist savages whom are directly responsible, because of Aznar's support of Bush's War on Terrorism. Zapatero, who is an die-hard Idiotarian and an insult to anyone else with the great name "Jose Luis" (wink wink), will pull the 1 300 Spanish troops in Iraq. This is a signal to the Islamofascist pigs at Al Qaida (yes, they are all pigs. Oink oink!) that they may be able to sway the vote in any other country this year simply by murdering hundreds of citizens of that country just a few days short of the elections, duping citizens into voting against any party that favours a proactive, often pre-emptive "kill the terrorists and break their things" approach to the fight against terrorism in favour of a soft "phoney-baloney, plastic banana, good time rock n' roll" useless symbolic approach to dealing with terrorism, probably involving sanctions or some other such good intention-driven nonsens.
"Bomb the Vote" indeed.
Also, "Colin" in the Little Green Footballs comments section, suggests that, in 30 years time, Spain will be called "Hispanistan".
Sari Stein posted a great quote from
Damian Penny.
"If the Spanish people have ousted their government because of a major terrorist attack, I really fear we'll see an attack on the scale of 9/11 in the United States before the Presidential election. If the people of the West are going to blame their leaders for terror instead of the people actually committing the attacks, why wouldn't Al-Qaida try it again?"
The only silver lining is that the vile cartoon from the
Über-Idiotarian Brazilian communist cartoonist Latuff which strongly implies that
Aznar set up the bombings himself to coast to victory on a wave of sympathy was proved wrong, and that's only because it shows that Latuff is shit at guessing the future.
(And, since I got a
hit on Sunday from Brazlian Google looking for information on "Latuff", I presume this guy does a daily Google vanity search for himself, especially since I don't appear until after #300.)
SUPERSIZE ME UPDATE
Ebert & Roeper just reviewed the anti-McDonald's hit piece documentary (which is just a glorified "Stupid Human Trick"),
Supersize Me by Morgan Spurlock, giving it "two thumbs up"... well, I like
Roger Ebert as a guy* and respect him as a critic but, obviously, the guy is a liberal and this documentary plays well to his sensibilities, and I wouldn't be surprised if the guy does want big government to do "something" about McDonald's, presumably regulating the size of meals and the fat content, since some Americans cannot be trusted to make good food choices for themselves**, therefore, in the minds of liberals, the government has to legislate some of the bad choices away. The idea of a "nanny state" bothers me to no end.
I had an idea the other day for a documentary in the same vein: since "America" (not individuals) has an alcohol problem I think I should do a documentary called
Super-Proof Me where I drink only alcoholic beverages for a month, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (take note that I don't drive), and I only buy the biggest containers I see on the shelves (the equivalent of always having to super-size when asked) and I'll see what effect it has on me. I mean, the evil corporate "Big Beer" brewery conglomerates are specifically targetting the poor and those with an inability to stop drinking with malt liquor sold in 40-ounce bottles, so, hopefully, activists will take note of my experiment and "Mau Mau" the brewing companies into discontinuing the 40-ounce format, and, if that doesn't work, we need to pass laws outlawing beer bottles in that size, since who else buys them but alcoholics? Although some people can drink in moderation (maybe buying 40-ounce bottles to share amongst several people), since
some people can't control their drinking,
no one should have the option to buy 40-ounce bottles.
Anyhow, for anyone whom found this blog on Google looking for information on
Supersize Me (or, covering all Google bases,
Super-Size Me, or
Supersized Me, or
Super-Sized Me) because they saw
Ebert & Roeper (or as it's being rolled out at more festivals over the next two months and then released nationwide in May), I gave more of an opinion on what I've read about the film
here, and then again, when McDonald's announced that it was discontinuing the Super-size option,
here. Also, read this excellent
Tech Central Station column by Dr. Ruth Kava,
"A Supersized Distortion".
*Ebert's personally answered two of my "Answer Man" questions even if he didn't print them. They were one-line answers, but that's two more lines than I ever expected to hear back from him.
**No, I won't make the obvious joke about Ebert's weight since his weight is his own business and absolutely not anyone else's business, really, and he's lost a lot of weight recently, whether naturally or through gastric-bypass surgery (I have no idea), and he looks better than at any point in the nearly two decades that I've been watching him.
ENJOY BURNING IN HELL, 'SPLODEYDOPES NABIL IBRAHIM MASOUD AND MUHAMMAD ZAHIL SALEM
18 year old Palestinian 'splodeydopes Nabil Ibrahim Masoud and Muhammad Zahil Salem murdered 8 Israelis in a double homicide bombing in the Israeli port of Ashdod. Both Hamas and the Al-Aksa
Martyrs Murderer's Brigade claimed responsibility.
Bye bye, Nabil and Muhammad (you put the "mad" in "Muhammad").
Go directly to Hell.
Do not collect 72
white figs virgins.
(Your families) Do not collect $20 000 checks from Saddam.
As usual
savages partied in the streets (link from
Little Green Football's article "Palestinian Murder Party"). Fortunately,
the cool "kick ass and take names" Israeli Defense Force launched well-deserved reliatory strikes against weapons manufacturing facilities in the Gaza Strip.
Also, regarding Israel, at Concordia University, both
The Concordian and
The Link had articles
(too bad they weren't in a special fold-out section) commemorating the near anniversary of the
suicide accidental death of poor and deluded
and flat Rachel Corrie, whom was duped by the International Solidarity Movement into shielding terrorists and was run over by
a military bulldozer attempting to clear shrubbery obscuring the entrance of a terrorist supply tunnel from Egypt.
Rachel didn't win a Darwin for her trouble, but she did score an easy
Fiskie.
By the way, I recently fired up the DeLorean and went back in time a year to Gaza to speak to Rachel moments before she became two-dimensional. (Apologies to Douglas Adams.)
"Miss Corrie," I said.
"Hello? Yes?" said Rachel.
"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much sympathy I have for ISM dupes killed while shielding terrorists in a war zone?"
"How much?" said Rachel.
"None at all," said I."
By a curious coincidence,
None at all is exactly how much knowledge that Rachel's cousin
Elizabeth, regarding whom the following words were written in
The Concordian, "But the day Rachel died, people in Rafah honoured the American flag. They spray-painted stars and stripes draped over her coffin as the Palestinians paraded in the streets. "For the first time in the history of that region, an American came over to stand in solidarity with them...to witness their suffering and their right to freedom...and for this an American died," said Elizabeth.", seems to have about the existence of the following photo,
taken in Rafah in the Gaza Strip the month prior to Rachel's demise, showing how Rachel normally felt about her flag and country.
Hmm... I wonder why
The Concordian didn't use that photo on the cover?
>WEIRD SEARCH REQUESTS
garfield mails odie and jon to what country?
Answer: None.
You're thinking of
Nermal, the world's cutest "kitten" (kitten in quotation marks because he's only a little bit younger than Garfield), whom, if he annoys Garfield too much, Garfield sends to
Abu Dhabi, which, technically, isn't a country, it's a city which is the capital of the United Arab Emirates on the Arabian Peninsula.
I remember that, on
Garfield and Friends, one of the best songs was the "Abu Dhabi" song Garfield "sang"* to Nermal, trying to sell him on the idea that Abu Dhabi is a great place for cats to be. But I can't find this song anywhere on the Internet, not even just the lyrics. :'(
Speaking of songs performed by the voice of Garfield, the late
Lorenzo Music, whom died of cancer in August, 2001 (and I've been wanting to mention this for a while but never could work it in anywhere): I listen to
Rush Limbaugh over the Internet, since the closest station to Pincourt that has him is WYBG in Massena, New York, about 54 miles/88 kilometres away from my house**, and, in the daytime, the station is still just barely audible, but it's full of static, so I prefer the crystal clear sound I get being a Rush 24/7 subscriber.
(And, if you're wondering why someone in Pincourt, Quebec, Canada would listen to Rush Limbaugh... some 15% of Canadians prefer the Republicans. I'm one of them.) Anyhow, if you listen to Rush over the Internet, you hear the network feed, and, during the commercial breaks where most stations play local ads, he runs either his parodies, mainly performed by
Paul Shanklin, or he plays what he calls "Worthless PSAs" (public service announcements), which include pretty much every one of the old "Vince and Larry" Crash Test Dummies spots promoting seatbelt use, wherein Lorenzo Music was "Larry", whom is easy to identify because Lorenzo Music only ever used one voice for his characters, so Garfield sounds exactly like Peter Venkman on the first two seasons of
The Real Ghostbusters whom sounds exactly like Larry the Crash Test Dummy (his voice had a great sarcastic, sardonic, cynical quality; they never chose him for his range).
Anyhow, Rush isn't to know this since I doubt he knows much of anything about Lorenzo Music, having never had children (ergo, Rush probably didn't get much of a chance to see the
Garfield animated specials or series or
The Real Ghostbusters), but I find the one spot wherein Lorenzo Music, as Larry, sings the country music song just downright creepy, considering that Lorenzo Music has been dead going on three years:
"Do little angels have car seats in their chariots in Heaven?
If my little angel used his here on Earth,
Today he would be seven.
I didn't think to buckle him in,
Just goin' in to town.
(Chorus: He's on the highway up to heaven.)
I'm on the road that goes straight down.
(Chorus: Forget that safety seat, you're on the one way street, the one that goes straight down.)"
Sorry, every time "Larry" sings that he's on the road that goes straight down, I'm afraid I can't help but imagine Garfield in Hell... :'(
*Garfield sings, but only "telepathically", as Matt Caracappa put it... umm... somewhere (can't find the page searching X-Entertainment.com for "Garfield" and either "telepathic", "telepathically" or "telepathy"), but I'm sure I got it from Matt). That had never, ever occured to me before, but it's true, since Garfield doesn't technically speak so how else could he communicate a whole song to Nermal, unless cartoon cats are really, really good at body language?
**My house: 45º23'02"N 73º58'65"W, for those of you into "Geocaching", not that I have anything to give you.
OH NOEZ! THEY'RE COMING TO TAKE OUR LOVE HINA AWAY!
You know, there's a certain faction of anime fans that find the threat of
censorship each time anyone anywhere says something remotely critical of a Japanese cartoon or comic... criticism being "not" censorship, unless you dilute the word so much that it becomes meaningless ("propaganda" and "art" are other words that are largely useless because they became too broad). While true censorship of anime and manga, a ban on something enforced through the authority of the government, should always be opposed, if some self-proclaimed "guardians of the public morality" media watchdog group comes down hard on, say,
Tenchi Muyo! GXP, for whatever weird reason, and they organize mass boycotts of and protests outside Suncoast and Media Play stores (or, here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada,
Metro Video,
DVD Passion, and HMV)which sell the "filth" and the stores cave in to the protests, while I would probably have a few choice words, all of them nasty, to say to the protestors since I want to buy that particular series, it wouldn't be censorship since a private business is under no obligation to carry
Tenchi Muyo! GXP in its stores, and, if they feel that selling
Tenchi Muyo! GXP would be more an liability than an asset to them, they can take it off their shelves and... do whatever they want. Replace the entire DVD selection with
Veggie Tales videos, I guess. Same thing with Wal-Mart choosing not to sell hentai anime. Same thing with FUNimation having to edit
Dragonball Z for broadcast because certain things, like the word "Hell", are not kosher to show or say on American kiddy TV (for a great number of parents), since Cartoon Network and YTV are under no obligation to show
Dragonball Z.
In the real world, I don't need to worry about people making much of a fuss about
Tenchi Muyo! GXP for its slight nudity and cartoon violence since anime and manga, except for a small handful of merchandise tie-in series shown on kiddy TV programming blocks like
Pokémon and
Yu-Gi-Oh, is still very much a "niche" interest that isn't remotely as "mainstream" as
Friends,
C.S.I., or
Monday Night Football, so the moral guardian groups for the most part ignore anime and manga for more popular targets like
Harry Potter, since protesting
Harry Potter will get them on the local news. As such, anime fanboys that think mass bannings of Japanese cartoons are just around the corners have to scrape obscure media sources to find the elusive proof of TEH CENSORSHIP MENACE!
So, here's
an article from the North Carolina Shelby Star which represents TEH SINGLE GREATEST ANIME CENSORSHIP THREAT since... umm...
that Julie McBride-Wyatt woman wrote
a column!!! against FLCL in some medium-circulation newspaper somewhere, a column which led to... absolutely nothing happening (excluding anime fanboy whining), except for
a couple of letters correcting her on the rating FLCL received on the Cartoon Network (TV-14).
"Suggestive' comics marketed to teens
Emily Killian
Star Staff Writer
SHELBY — Watch what your children read.
That’s what Cleveland County Sheriff’s Capt. Bobby Steen is advising parents to do about comic books available to teens at area bookstores like Waldenbooks in the Cleveland Mall.
The books are part of a growing genre of graphic novels from Japan.
“Love Hina,” the series Steen is questioning, is by Ken Akamatsu, and has a publishers’ recommended age of 16 and up.
The books were brought to Steen’s attention after a local parent raised concerns.
“They need to know that this is out here. For $9.99 they can look about getting in a hot tub naked with a girl,” Steen said.
Teens as young as 14 are buying the books, he said.
Love Hina Books contain illustrations that are violent and contain sexual innuendoes and nudity.
However, the books contain no illustrations of explicit sexual activity.
Steen considers the books sexually suggestive, despite their non-pornographic classification, and he worries that the books may put ideas into teen-agers’ minds.
“I would not want my child reading it,” he said. “Teens have got so much peer pressure on them. This is very, very suggestive.”
The graphic texts are big sellers nationwide and although stores generally do not ban them, the Waldenbooks chain tries to adhere to community standards, said Emily Swan, a company representative. The company, which is owned by Borders, hasn’t heard any complaints from parents in the area about the books, she said.
“The various publishers determine the age recommendations that appear on the books’ covers. We make every effort to adhere to those recommendations,” said Ms. Swan. “Borders is very active with the vendors and sometimes we make suggestions as to how particular titles should be handled.”
But Steen just isn’t comfortable with the books.
“Is it OK to use cartoons to sell sex?” he said. “I think that’s wrong.
“Anything sexually suggestive is wrong for any minor. Nobody is going to convince me of anything else.”
However, responsibility falls on parents, said Matt Simpson, youth pastor at Elizabeth Baptist Church in Shelby.
“For a parent or for a merchant, you have to really be careful who it gets to,” he said.
Although his youth haven’t come to him with concerns about the books, he has many who have asked about movies and video games.
“What I saw is no worse than what you’d see on regular television or the Internet or the grocery aisle looking at magazines,” Simpson said.
The comics are not considered pornography because they’re cartoons, said Steen.
“What can be done? Legally? Nothing. Hopefully, morally, people will take these off the shelves,” Steen said.
If a student was caught reading material like “Love Hina” in school, would there be repercussions?
School officials would have to make the judgment call, said David Grose, spokesperson for the former Shelby school system.
The system’s policy gives principals leeway on how to handle students who bring sexually explicit material on campus.
Although the schools haven’t had any major problems with the comic books, Grose said punishment ranges from parent conferences to detention and in-school suspensions.
Shearra Miller, former chairwoman for the old Kings Mountain school board, and a current member of Cleveland County’s new board, said she wasn’t familiar with the comic books.
The old Kings Mountain district’s policy didn’t tolerate suggestive material, she said.
“I’m sure that we had a policy against any type of material like that. Even our dress code spoke to offensive or lewd or suggestive pictures on T-shirts,” she said.
Ms. Miller herself is the mother of a teen-ager.
“Kids are kids, and they’re going to have things that they shouldn’t have, or that their parents don’t approve of,” she said.
Get a grip, fanboys. This is just a warning... there's nothing about banning
Love Hina in the article anywhere. The guy happens to be a Sheriff's Captain (whatever that is), so he has a tiny bit of a bully pulpit locally in that the local newspaper will speak to him on a regular basis, but, otherwise, this is no different than me, Steve Brandon, telling you not to watch or read something here in my blog. You can heed my words or ignore them as you choose.
In this case, I think I might just find myself in agreement with Sheriff's Captain Steen in warning kids not to read
Love Hina, though that's since it's supposedly an inferior knock-off of
Tenchi Muyo, though I haven't read it or watched the anime myself*, but several people I speak to online, and
David Smith of IGN.com say it's a waste of money. I'll end this with a quote I liked from Justin A. Porter from
a post he did as Craeyst Raygal on the AnimeNewsNetwork.com board:
"And I certainly don't have any issue with anything that makes anyone think twice about purchasing anything related to Ken Akamatsu."
(Actually, no one on any of the anime boards I look at on a regular basis has been whining about this yet; I didn't know about this article until I saw it mentioned at
the weekly AICN Anime column over at Ain't It Cool News.)
*Though I have read a few of the hentai Love Hina doujins... kids under 18, do not click on this link.
