WEIRD SEARCH REQUESTS
untalkative bunny TV ontario
Untalkative Bunny doesn't air on TVO... while it's certainly not a violent cartoon or anything, there's nothing exactly educational about it. Just a bunch of inconsequential silliness with mute but well-defined characters.
It airs on
Teletoon weekdays at 3:30 a.m. (well, it's an ideal time for me) and weekends at 12:30 p.m.
I am happy to add that I have finally found
a proper fansite for Untalkative Bunny... there isn't that much there, but it covers the basics and there's a pic for every sub-episode, which is great. And it shows you
how to make Emu with your hands.
"Wherein, Ataru eats Lum's magical lolipop"
That was a quote I used in
this piece I wrote about the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties merging into one big Conservative party, using an obscure
Urusei Yatsura analogy to the episode wherein Ataru was split in two to illustrate the way the Canadian conservative vote was split... okay, that analogy was a real stretch, but I liked having a weak excuse to promote
Urusei Yatsura since so few people have heard of it.
"In other words, the situation of the conservatives in Canada was like... umm... that episode of Urusei Yatsura, "Duel! Ataru vs. Ataru", wherein Ataru eats Lum's magical lolipop and splits into two Atarus, one serious, polite and well-mannered, perfect for Shinobu, and one casual, uncouth, and fun-loving, perfect for Lum. The exasperation Canadian conservatives grew to feel over the split vote is represented by Ataru's father, Mr. Moroboshi, unable to deal with having two versions of his son, and the remedy is the process of reunification, as represented by the tincture Cherry gives Mrs. Moroboshi to feed to her "sons" hidden in the food during the uncouth Ataru's celebratory "final meal on Earth", the dinner representing the long, boring process of votes and deliberation I didn't feel like writing about, or paying attention to all that much. The bleatings of unreformed leftist Tory David Orchard against the merger are represented by the fingers of the two Atarus digging into the carpet to try and resist, rather futilely, the magnetic pull of reattraction towards each other, and the final vote this past weekend was the two Atarus forming into a ball and reuniting. Yes, that's all that happened in that Urusei Yatsura story, nothing else, really. (That's the ticket...) Okay, Lum zapped the ball with her electric powers to keep her version of her "Darling" for reuniting, and the result was two identical versions of the original Ataru before he split. But they eventually merged, in an unexplained manner, after the story was over but before the next story in the episode."
Evidently, someone who calls himself (or herself)
Korak saw the piece and liked the quote and used it in his/her signature at some board called
The Corporation at Corpnews.com, which I initially thought was a board about that leftist anti-corporate hit piece documentary
The Corporation that screened at Sundance, the one that proposes that all corporations are clinically psycopathic in nature, but, upon further examination, it's just a page about computer games. I'm glad you liked the quote but,
"Sacré bleu!", I don't think there should be a comma after "Wherein" (and there wasn't in the original piece).
Speaking of
Urusei Yatsura, I got my quarter-annual GST/PST sales tax rebate cheque for $54 Canadian the other day, so I shall buy, at last, the DVD of
Urusei Yatsura: Only You, the only other
Urusei Yatsura theatrical film besides
Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer directed by
Ghost in the Shell's Mamoru Oshii and about the only animated film devoid of any deep subtext that Oshii has ever done. It's not quite as good as
Beautiful Dreamer, my favourite anime film, but it's like comparing
Kiki's Delivery Service to
My Neighbor Totoro... they're both great. I like the songs and the reference to the movie
The Graduate, which is something I wasn't expected to see referenced in a Japanese cartoon. Maybe I'll also pick up volume 4 of
You're Under Arrest, since AnimEigo DVDs are so cheap... only about $22 Canadian.
By the way, I'm not ignoring the big story in Montreal on Monday, the awful, hateful, criminal
arson at the United Talmud Torah school in Saint Laurent, which more or less destroyed the library, but, in all honesty, with the media being too pussy to tell us which organization wrote the note claiming responsibility, I really don't have much to say about this for the time being besides "tut tut" (and
Sacré Bleu!), though CTV news does have
this:
"Anti-Semitic notes were also taped to the school.
The notes denounced recent attacks against Palestinians, including the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Islamic Hamas movement, and threatened further attacks.
"Our goal was only to sound the alarm without causing deaths. . .but this is just a beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue,'' the letter reads."
If it's Jewish and in Montreal, I don't think there's anywhere better to go for
information on this criminal vandalism than Sari Stein (also
here), and
Little Green Footballs has picked up the story.
OKAY, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT... YOU DON'T THINK MIKE FRICKING BOONE IS POLITICALLY CORRECT ENOUGH?
The Montreal
Gazette's
Mike Boone is about the most liberal, politically correct columnist in this city, at least on the English side of things. On Saturday,
he actually wrote a very good column against the Pink Panthers, a bunch of communist vandals who play the gay "identity politics" card in an attempt to justify their criminal behaviour, as though there is some sort of correlation between loving the cock and loving the Marx. (
Not always.) The column was written in response to the Pink Panthers' defacing of the statue of Scottish poet Robert Burns in Dominion Square... pardon me, "Dorchester Square" (No, Dorchester should be the name of a street, Dominion is the name of the square.)
"Is this any way to get ready for Tartan Day?
On Tuesday, Quebec will celebrate the Scots as one of the province's great founding peoples. Late last year, Geoff Kelley, MNA for Jacques Cartier riding, introduced and successfully pushed for the adoption of Bill 190, designating April 6 as Tartan Day.
Revellers might want to avoid visiting Dorchester Square, where cretins have spray-painted graffiti on the statue of Robert Burns.
The concrete base of the bronze sculpture has been defaced with drawings of two cat paws, an anarchist "A" inside a stylized heart and a one-word epithet: "QUEERS!" It's done in pink paint, as is a message scrawled on the entrance of a nearby subterranean parking garage: "Vive les panthères roses."
Based in Paris, the Pink Panthers describe themselves as "radical queers." In February, the Montreal chapter mounted Operation Pepto-Bismol against the commercialism of Valentine's Day.
The Pink Panthers deposited fake pink vomit outside 10 businesses in the Gay Village."
Boone later goes on to wonder what is the Pink Panthers' problem with Robbie Burns exactly, and, in doing so, makes the tamest of gay jokes based on the mildest of stereotypes (emphasis mine).
"The Pink Panthers are committed to "creative and controversial" political protest - which is cool, but what's their problem with Robbie Burns?
Beneath the statue of the pensive-looking poet is an excerpt from Burns's A Man's a Man for a' That:
"It's comin' yet for a' that
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that."
Lovely sentiment, no? An idealistic vision of universal brotherhood: Who could have a political problem with those verses or the man who wrote them?
The Pink Panthers are a shadowy group that doesn't have a phone number - at least not one Inspector Clouseau or I could find. My contacts in the gay community have dried up (despite constantly urging one another to moisturize), so the basis of their anti-Burns bias remains a mystery."
OH NOEZ! Mike Boone committed a "thought crime" by implying that...
Sacré bleu!... a lot of gay men take pride in their appearance by using moisturizer. We must send Mike Boone to the Re-education Camp for some brainwashing... erm, I mean, "sensitivity training", because, even though taking pride in one's appearance would be a positive stereotype, remember what the
South Park episode
"The Deathcamp of Tolerance" taught us about stereotypes?
Tour Guide:[leads them into the Hall of Stereotypes] We are now entering the Hall of Stereotypes. These wax figures represent how some intolerant people have labled minorities. [leads them to the first exhibit] Here we see a black person eating chicken and watermelon, a stereotype that hurts the African-American community. What other stereotypes do you see here? [the stereotypes are exhibits, each one with its own spotlight]
Randy:[walks up to another exhibit with Stan and Kyle] Ah, here's the Arab as a terrorist. [the Arab is holding a Kalishnikov rifle]
Tour Guide:That's right. But of course, we know that all Arabs are terrorirsts, don we, kids?
Butters:[sees a third exhibit] W-w-well there's an Asian over there with a calculator. [walks over to it. The others follow]
Tour Guide:That's right. Not all stereotypes are negative. But even a positive one like "All Asians are good at math" is harmful to society.
Cartman:[over at a fourth exhibit, a man cowering over a bag of money] Look, a covetous Jew!
Tour Guide:[arrives with the others] Very good, young man. The idea that Jews are only interested in money is very old indeed.
Randy:[notices a fifth spotlight and walks to it] Ah, here's a good one. [Stan walks up next to him] It's the stereotypical "sleepy Mexican." [a man sleeps under the spotlight sitting up next to a mop and bucket]
Janitor:[wakes up] Wai-what? Oh man, what time is it? [stands up and rubs the back of his neck]
Randy:[in a low voice] Oh I'm sorry. I thought you were a wax sculpture.
Janitor:Naw, man. I'm the janitor. I'm s'pose to be cleaning but I'm so tire. Ongh, so sleepy. [walks off with the mop and bucket]
Though the woman from the "Museum of Tolerance" was just a joke, right? ...right?
Here's a letter by J*hn W**lfrey
("o"s removed so I don't get him whining at me should he do a vanity search, and, no, "vanity search" isn't a gay joke, even if it did make me chuckle when the double entendre occured to me) from Monday morning's
Gazette regarding Boone's column.
"I didn't really find Mike Boone's "moisturizer" joke ("My contacts in the gay community have dried up despite constant urging one another to moisturize") offensive in itself, nor, as with most of his jokes, did I find it funny."
Ah, this is more or less the old preface "I have a great sense of humor, but...", a sure sign that you're dealing with someone who's humourless, shrill-voiced, and ultra-P.C., just it's rephrased slightly differently. Idiot. If you didn't find it offensive, why did you fricking
send him an e-mail taking him to task for his joke? Wouldn't want to break a nail with unnecessary keystrokes, since I know how expensive those manicures are.
"But I did find that it irked me. "Fem" jokes about gays seem to be still acceptable, though jokes based on stereotypes have long been considered verboten."
Hmm... funny, I don't recall getting that memo. I guess you're flaming... mad that is, even if a great deal of gay culture celebrates the "Fem" (I thought it was "Femme") stereotype. I can't identify with it, as someone who is mildly bi, but I don't have a problem with it.
"I wondered if the columnist makes similar jokes based on the stereotypes of other minorities. I doubt it."
Oh, geez... what other groups does Mike Boone poke fun at on a semi-regular basis? Two words: "Bush Supporters". Two-more words (well, one word and a prefix): "Pro-Lifers". Three more words: "Conservatives in general." He certainly doesn't go limp-wristed there with his stereotypes. Believe you me, I wish he was just saying those groups like to use moisturizer a lot as a semi-amusing segue.
"I suggest that Boone, like members of all minority groups, contain his stereotype joke to his own group: boring, untalented columnists with glasses and bushy grey beards."
See, I'd make the opposite proposal and suggest that Mike Boone go wild with the stereotypes,
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog style, to take the piss out of the politically correct, but, really, he can make the tamest stereotype jokes in the world like he did on Saturday and those guys'es heads still explode with outrage, and, in a way, that's actually a lot more amusing, in more or less the same way that I found those Bell High-Speed Internet ads with the older kid demonstrating things using his younger brother as a test subject to illustrate aspects of the Internet service annoying at first, me being not a huge fan of kids in commercials in general, but then some politically correct pussy wrote in to the
Gazette saying that those commercials promote "bullying", so now I crack up whenever I see those ads, knowing that there's someone else out there who is taking that commercial far more seriously than it should ever be taken.
(That guy would probably have a coronary over my Snagglepuss the tiger joke yesterday, even if I wrote it very, very carefully so as not to imply that Snagglepuss is attracted to any male that is too young for him.)
Not that this has anything to do with the rest of my entry here, but I just wanted to add that, for no particular reason, I just want to go on record as saying that I too think some of the amateur yaoi manga I've seen, like that found on this site or this site (people under 18 and those whom don't appreciate seeing two cartoon guys "together", do not click on those links) , has some of the best quality artwork I've ever seen from non-professional mangaka.
Ooh, the first reviews of the British zombie comedy
Shaun of the Dead are beginning to creep in, and they're all good, though,
Kim Newman of Empire UK warns us, though, that "It may not exactly be Ealing, but it’s funny for long stretches."
Sacré bleu! Here I was hoping so much that this film would indeed be
Ealing, but it turns out to be only
Hounslow or Colindale.
Aww...
RottenTomatoes.com forum poster greenman set me straight.. It's
Ealing as in
the studio which made such postwar comedies as Passport to Pimlico and the original Ladykillers. (I've heard of
Passport to Pimlico as that was the film that was going to be the basis for
Wayne's World 2, but Mike Myers and Paramount couldn't get the remake rights.)
I'm not deterred. I don't care if I didn't know "Ealing" referred to a studio... I think using the names of London suburbs as adjectives should be the new hip... or, should I say, the new "Merton" thing to do.
Sacré Bleu! Thomas Carder of CAPAlert.com fame has submitted his own reviews of
Dawn of the Dead, both the very cool
2004 remake from Zack Synder, and the, still superior (though, obviously less graphic),
original 1978 Dawn of the Dead from George Romero.
Wanton Violence/Crime (W)
- gore, repeatedly, frequent, dense
- graphic pedestrian death
- mayhem,repeatedly
- flashes of gore, repeatedly
- shotgun to face by PD
- gunfire to kill, repeatedly
- bloody attacks, repeatedly
- firearm threats, repeatedly
- gunfire gore, repeatedly, frequent with tops/backs of heads blown off
- firearm to face
- traffic carnage, repeatedly
- killing for sport
- cannibalism
- murder by consumption
- defensive killing by incineration
- impalement through head
- action violence, repeatedly
- chainsaw gore
"In spite of the saturation with raw gore and the language and sexual filth, there were some demonstrations of courage and character. But all was embedded in a display of rampant carnage and killing, Indiscriminately and with joy. Granted, the plot was kill or be killed but such demonstration serves more to desensitize than entertain."
Your moral objections are fair enough, but, Mr. Carder, let's not forget that this situation is controllable. People must come to grips with this concept. It’s extremely difficult...with friends... with family... but a dead body must be deactivated by either destroying the brain or severing the brain from the rest of the body! The situation must be controlled...before it’s too late... they are multiplying too rapidly... Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them! It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill! They kill for one reason. They kill for food. They eat their victims, do you understand that, Mr. Carder? That’s what keeps them going.
I always wanted to write that. :P
(Here's the
Dawn of the Dead script, by the way.)
For the original movie, Carder objected to the scene at the beginning with a SWAT team attacking a religious compund full of blacks and Latinos, most of whom are not zombies, and a rogue cop killing them anyway. Yeah, that scene might be a little puzzling, but it's about
the problems the radical black "back to nature" cult MOVE had with Philadelphia cops in the 1970s (which, ultimately led to a major conflaguration in 1985, though that was seven years after the film came out).
Eh, even though I'm not exactly the best Christian in the world, since there's a lot of stuff I would like to believe but can't, unlike a lot of pages, I don't begrudge the existence of CAPAlert.com, since, look at it this way, it's a site that helps keep a lot of the people you don't want seeing your favourite movies away from your favourite movies and keeps them at home, watching those dodgy
Left Behind movies, with Kirk Cameron and also the Toronto City Hall version of the "United Nations".
EDIT: For people that missed it,
my review of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead film, also with some comparisons to the original.
Ah, mining this blog once again tonight, are we? Amusingly, I used to think Al Kahn was a "Jr.", but I can't find the "Jr." mentioned anywhere but my page, so I guess I was mistaken. (That one wasn't bait or an intentional false clue, just an honest mistake.) Also, I found Oogi's page, which I won't link to but it's not that hard to find, and, damn, Gen must hire people to come up with all these false identities, because,
sacré bleu!, I'm convinced that Angelo is indeed a real person, and, if the
Wonder Boy series on the Sega Master System is indeed one of his favourite game series, we know that the guy has good taste. (Damn, I wish that series had been on the Nintendo Entertainment System, because they could have made some pretty good merchandise from that. Or, better yet, that game should have been on the Colecovision. (wink wink).)
J'AIME JACKASS, ALORS JE CASSE BEAUCOUP DES FENÊTRES!*
After a Jackass stage show wherein large quantities of alcohol were imbibed, small-scale rioting by a couple of fans broke out near le Spectrum, and a reporter was peed on.
"Members of MTV's shock stunt group "Jackass" raised a ruckus this week when they brought their "Don't Try This At Home" tour to Quebec City, leading to one arrest and one injury.
The pranksters performed in front of a packed house at a local bar. The show began with a flood of beer and group leader Steve-O crushing cans against his chest. As the night wore on, a number of the people became severely drunk and vomited on the premises.
One woman was hit by a beer bottle and another person was arrested.
Authorities say the show featured excessive drinking and nudity. But the group's promoter isn't apologizing.
"The more publicity the show gets, the more parents get ired by it, the more popular they're gonna get with the kids," says Keith Rubuliak of Def Star Promotions."
I dunno... I actually found the
Jackass series and movie pretty neat, especially when they rented the car and then used it in a demolition derby and Johnny Knoxville almost got decapitated by that other car's tire through the winshield and then they returned it and we got to see the bemused reaction of the car rental guy, or when they were racing around the golf carts (and getting thrown from them), and everything in Japan was brilliant, especially the panda suits, but what exactly can Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and Weeman do on stage that can possibly compare? I get the idea that this is almost like a stage hypnosis show, except, instead of having a hypnotist induce an altered state in volunteers through a progressive relaxation hypnotic induction, we have Steve-O induce an altered state in volunteers through massive consumption of alcoholic beverages. Chug-a-lug! Chug-a-lug!
Sacré bleu! Now that I described it that way, it sounds like something I want to see. Damn, I should have bought tickets.
Eh, I don't condone the vanadlism and rioting and the golden shower, obviously, though it was cool seeing that one police officer bodyslam the guy, but, if consenting adults want to pay to see a bunch of people get drunk, I don't have a problem with that, and I bet the guys that rioted weren't even on stage, as the guys on stage were probably too disoriented to walk out of the club.
*Sacré bleu! I made a successful pun in French! "Jackass" sounds a bit like "Je casse", which means "I break", and the entire sentence means "I like Jackass, so I'm breaking lots of windows!" See, French is useful for more than just reading French translations of manga unlicensed in English.
THE WONDERFUL THING ABOUT TIGGERS IS THAT TIGGERS HAVE WANDERING HANDS!
(Or "When Cartoon Tigers Attack"!)
What's the deal with Tigger's wandering hands at Disney World?
"Orange County Sheriff's Office investigators have arrested a Walt Disney World employee who worked as the character "Tigger" and charged him with molesting a 13-year-old girl and her mother while posing with them for pictures in February.
Michael Chartrand, 36, was charged with one count of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child between 12 and 15 years old and one count of simple battery.
He was booked into the Orange County Jail today on a $2,500 bond.
A Disney spokeswoman said Chartrand has been suspended without pay.
The sheriff's office received a complaint that a costumed character at Disney World had touched a girl and her mother inappropriately while their pictures were being taken with the character Feb. 21. According to an incident report, Chartrand fondled the breasts of the girl and the mother while posing for pictures at the Magic Kingdom's Toon Town.
"As the photo was being taken, [the victim] claims that Tigger moved his right hand up to her right breast and started massaging it several times," the incident report states. [The victim] became very embarrassed and ashamed of the incident and claims that she did not say anything to her mother until they left the park.""
Ben "Greasnin" Platt has written an amusing spoof article about this incident at SomethingAwful.com.
"Oh, it's all just so damn clear now! How long were our eyes closed to the blinding truth? "Their tops are made out of rubbers?" Good lord, of course this beast is a sex offender, he's got prophylactics for a brain! Tigger's song is basically an admission of his deviant sexual practices. For years, this creature has been mouthing off about how much he enjoys his nights of "bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN." With lyrics like that as his motto, can we even act surprised that Tigger is groping breasts left and right? That sounds like bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun to me! And I think a certain few West Coast governors would have to agree with me on that point. The fact that Tigger considered his genetic solitude to be a good thing is only further damning evidence. If a being cannot reproduce, what sort of attitude toward sexuality can we expect it to have? Why, if your next door neighbor told you that he was impotent, but that he loved to have bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun, you'd just assume he was a child molester on basic principle! Why did we wait so long to hold Tigger to the same standard? That's right, I said "we." I blame you for this, society! It's your fault that Tigger's obviously sexually predatory nature went ignored for so long. The signs have been there the whole time. We all are guilty of ignoring them."
Sacré bleu! I have an obvious solution. If you want to take your daughter to see a guy in a costume dressed up as a popular tiger cartoon character, skip Orlando and Disney World entirely, and take her to Toronto, or, more specifically, the "Hanna-Barbera Land" area of
Paramount Canada's Wonderland, where she can see
Snagglepuss, a tiger cartoon character I can personally guarantee will not touch your barely-pubescent daughter, or any other female, in an inappropriate matter, or any other manner, if you catch my drift.
(C'mon, he's a pink tiger into theatre who talks with a lisp... can it be any more obvious? Exit stage left!)
Also, I was browsing the forums at
F*ckin' Otaku, and I found
this thread responding to
this "Ask John" column at Anime Nation regarding whether devoting your life to anime is a "good thing". Now I like anime, and I respect John Oppliger, but...
sacré bleu! So many, if not most, of the anime I like to watch are just silly cartoons I like to watch for fun and nothing more. It's nothing worth "devoting your life" to, and there is no single thing, at least outside of religion (and I'm not giving an opinion there one way or the other), country, and family, worth that level of devotion. Even when I was at my most fannish, when I was in my early twenties in the mid-90s before the onset of "jaded-itus" set in and I got some perspective, I still had a handful of other interests, like videogames, and American politics, and penpals. (Gah! Did I alienate the total Japanese babe Azusa K. by coming across as too much of a fanboy?)
Some of the thread gets a little too personal about John, and, to be fair, John did use qualifiers this time, saying that he "has devoted a lot of his life to anime", which is a world of a difference from saying that he has devoted his
entire life to anime, which he didn't quite say (though the title of the piece would give someone that impression), but I agree with Incisivis's post:
"This quote got to me:
"On the other hand, as an extension of my appreciation for Japanese art, I'm rather disappointed by Western artists that perceive only the most superficial aspects of manga and anime and fail to comprehend that it's the unique Japanese culture and artistic perspective behind anime that makes anime what it is. Speed lines and big eyes, cat girls and guns, unusual hair colors and monochrome comics don't constitute real manga and anime to me. These characteristics reflect only a pale imitation of manga and anime based on a lack of understanding and appreciation of the true culture of manga and anime."
Okay, so it was a big quote. :/
I've been a reader of John's column for a year now. It provides a good service to fans wanting to know more about anime, and makes an interesting read, but I think John gets very pretentious when it comes to the "artistic" value of anime. That's my biggest concern.
Anyway, I can't imagine anime as my only hobby. Scary."
(By the way, Amanda, I'm assuming you meant to say "big quote" instead of "bit quote".)
MORE APRIL FOOL'S DAY JOKES
This
"review" of Fat Girls' Club, a fat-girl fetish hentai anime, at
F*ckin' Otaku, had me going for a while until I read the article a bit more carefully and noticed that it was from "Studio DEBU", "debu" being slang for fat.
Still very well-done, though, in one of the screenshots, why is there a (non-fat) character whom looks exactly like Kiyone in
Tenchi Universe, with sea green hair, the orange bandana, and a turquoise nightgown?
Sacré bleu!
IT'S "SACRÉ BLEU!" WEEK!
I just realized that people might have trouble believing I live in Montreal (well... Pincourt) since I never use any charming French expressions. That would be because I'm a Quebec anglophone, and, also, if I used the charming local French-language expressions here, I'd be saying "maudite", "chalice", "merde", and "tabernacle" a lot. However, if there are people reading this whom might suspect that I am not the random anglophone Montrealer I claim to be* and am in fact some other person, say, Al Kahn of 4Kids Entertainment, I'll use a French expression in every entry I post this week to allay any doubts. Of course, if I used actual expressions French Quebecers say besides the swears, people unfamiliar with French Quebecers might not recognize them as being "French", so, for the benefit of people who assume that everyone in a given country (or, in this case, province) talk exactly like the stereotypical portrayals of them as seen in 1970s era Hanna-Barbera cartoons like
Laff-A-Lympics when cartoon characters visit that country (i.e. British people say "chap", Australians say "mate"), I'll say "Sacré Bleu", the expression constantly uttered by Chef Pierre in
Richie Rich.
(Yes, I'm aware that
Richie Rich was a Harvey comic before it was made into a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in 1980, and that the more recent
Richie Rich cartoon from 1996 wasn't done by Hanna-Barbera at all, so no one send me any angry e-mail. Ooh, those Harvey comics purist fanboys shall be the death of me yet!)
Sample entry: Oh, it's already April 4th, yet it's snowing outside.
Sacré Bleu!
*Of course, if one were to ask one of the editors at AnimeNewsNetwork.com about where Tenchi's IP address is from, 90% of the time, I post using Sympatico.ca, and the other 10% of the time, I post from the school library, so it's Concordia.ca.
I HATE, HATE, HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!!!
Oh, geez, it's almost 4 a.m. even if it feels like only 3 a.m. thanks to the
accursed practice of Daylight Savings Time, which I think should be abolished completely as the switchover is Hell for us insomniacs whom already get sleepy too late. Saskatchewan has the right idea.
ABOUT THE DRAGONBALL AF APRIL FOOL'S DAY JOKE
As tempting as it may be to have certain specific readers think I am in the loop with the
Daizenshuu EX website, since I correctly predicted on Wednesday that there would be some sort of phony announcement about
Dragonball Z made on Thursday (April Fool's Day), the straight truth is that, in late February, I told Jonathan Mays of AnimeNewsNetwork.com my idea for an April Fool's Day joke, which would be a "news story" which would have confirmed as "true" many of the bogus rumours regarding FOX's live-action
Dragonball Z film, which seems to be stalled in pre-production limbo, with Roland Emmerich shooting several other films including
King Tut.
As I wrote on the
AnimeNewsNetwork.com board:
Oh, I knew that there would be an article related to Dragonball today, since I was the one whom suggested it to one of the editors in the first place, though I was hoping it would be about the live-action DBZ, movie, "confirming" all the stupid Internet rumours about how the first film has all been shot in total secrecy by Roland Emmerich, with most of the cast list being a "surprise" (though we know that Hugh Jackman was fired for holding up production), and that there's going to be at least four movies and each movie is going to be three or four hours long*, and the first film is still being released in May despite there not being a lick of publicity (WELL, FOX IS INTENSHUNALLY NOT TELLING US ANYTHING TO BUILD UP ANTISIPASHUN ON OUR MESSEJ BOARD).
But it's close enough to the joke I wanted, "confirming" a baseless rumour still spread around a lot of Dragonball pages.
*Box office poison, at least for movies largely aimed at children, since they can only schedule half the normal number of screenings per screen per day.
Michael LaBrie of Daizenshuu EX had a similar idea, since a certain portion of
Dragonball Z fans are rather gullible. But it was close enough to the joke I was expecting that I didn't look foolish.
By the way, speaking of ANN and Jonathan Mays (Miagi), I was talking to him earlier about the "Steventheeunuch is Gen Fukunaga" conspiracy theory, and he tells me that Steven(-with-an-N)'s IP address is indeed from Australia, so, either Gen is really good at masking his IP, or Jonathan Mays is in on the conspiracy and lying (and ask him if you don't believe me), or Ockham's Razor comes into effect.
Oh yes, conspiracy tidbit of the week: I like Kiyone from the alternate-reality Tenchi Muyo series, and I like Fruits Basket, and I often use the word "wuss" to describe myself. Hmmm.....
HANS OFF OUR ISLAND, DENMARK!
There's a diplomatic row between Canada and Denmark over
which country owns tiny Hans Island, a 1.3 square kilometre piece of rock in the Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere Island (Canada) and Greenland (Denmark). This is an island that can only be reached during mild summers when there is less ice (what about helicopters?), which Denmark did in 2002 and 2003, raising the flag. A maritime border between Canada and Denmark was drawn in 1973, but the question as to which islands are Canadian sovereign and which are Danish sovereign territory was left open, since they did not have the same sort of precise satellite mapping techology we have today. The Canadian military is planning on
"flexing its muscles, by running patrols over most of Canada's arctic territory, but,
unfortunately, our two nations are not going to go to war over this,
preferring to settle this diplomatically.
Wusses!.
"Peter Taksoe-Jensen, head of international public law with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the issue is not in danger of becoming an international incident. "The solution of the dispute over Hans Island is not going to be a military solution in the sense that Denmark is going to post military on the island or anything of that kind," Mr. Taksoe-Jensen said from Copenhagen.
"It is going to be a negotiated solution where Canada and Denmark sit together at the table at some stage when we come to this issue and find a solution."
Although he played down the presence of a Danish warship -- which has made repeated visits to the island with its sailors occupying the island and even unfurling the red and white flag of Denmark over it -- Mr. Taksoe-Jensen could not rule out further visits.
"Since we think of it as part of Danish territory, we feel officials have that right. It is only natural that Danish officials go there from time to time."
He said Copenhagen would take issue if Canada also landed soldiers on the island."
Why don't they just impose the lame sitcom solution: paint a white line down the middle of Hans Island, passing through the island's living room and over the couch (and if Hans Island doesn't have a living room, ship one up there), and the Canadians can stay on "this side of the line", and the Danes can stay on "that side of the line"? If we do that, then hilarity can ensue.
I visited Copenhagen, Denmark once, for one weekend in the summer of 1998. There was a cool maritime approach into Kastrup Airport, where I could see the shadow of the British Midlands 737 (which was flying that route for SAS that day, for some reason) in the turquoise water. Kastrup airport had this relaxed atmosphere I found unique, and the airport had a lot of wood panelling, and parts of it reminded me of a shopping centre. We stayed at the Radisson-SAS Scandinavia hotel, which was about the tallest building I noticed in Denmark, even if it was only 25 storeys. I was on the elevator there, and there was this Japanese couple whom somehow missed their floor, so, when they talked to each other, in Japanese, about how they wanted to go to the sixth floor, and they were surprised when I pressed the button to the sixth floor and then they said something to me in Japanese, but it was too complicated so I had to just smile and nod. The McDonald's in Denmark tastes more or less the same as everywhere else, but, for some reason, I thought the fries I had tasted a little sugary. I visited the Palads Teatret (Palace Theatre), a rather pleasant multi-screen cinema, where I watched The Wedding Singer and Deep Impact in English with Danish subtitles. That's right, in Europe, Adam Sandler movies are subtitled and get much bigger laughs from the audience than at any Sandler movie I've attended in North America. After I saw one of the movies, it was the night of a big World Cup match between Denmark and some African country, so, since Denmark won, there was this mob tossing around a life-sized black doll wearing the uniform of the opposing team, so they stripped it naked and beat it to a pulp. I also went to the Danmarks Akvarium, but I wrote about my experience there last September.
"In June 1998, I watched the Aqua Diary video, and either Klaus or Soren mentioned that they named the band after the Danmarks Akvarium (Denmark Aquarium) and, coincidentally, I was going to Copenhagen the day after with my parents and my youngest brother, John, so the Denmark Aquarium was one of the places I decided to go to, though it's actually a fair bit north of central Copenhagen, so I remember that I had to take a bus quite a ways up the coast of Sj�lland (Zealand) island. I don't actually remember all that much in the aquarium itself; just this blueish looking fish, an octopus and a preserved specimen of a coelacanth, but I do remember having a gorgeous view of Helsinborg, Sweden, in the distance across the Oresund strait, from the park across the street from the aquarium, and I remember that I lost the equivalent of $20 somehow... something to do with buying a poster for my brother, I think, and they charged me too much, but I'm not sure and I don't want to libel myself. Wow, that story was fairly pointless, but it's my blog, suckers, so I write what I please. :P"
Copenhagen's a nice little city for wandering around, feeling more like a big village than a city, and that's mainly what I did. My brother, John, was there too, and he snapped a picture of a pornography store which also had a copy of Bill Cosby's Picturepages in the window, for some reason, which was very odd. I wish I could find the picture.
