Anime Continues to Blow, Despite Poorly Argued Comments!

FKM said

June 9, 2009 at 1:34 pm e

…You’ve never seen good anime. Watch some of the not kiddie shit that doesn’t air on TV. Specifically, watch Elfen Lied. We’ll see how bad anime blows after you see that.

That was a comment I received on my previous post, “Anime Still Blows.”  I hear these arguments all the time:
“Anime for kids sucks. Watch anime for adults.”

Uh, no. If I was talking about children’s programming I would have said so, and my post would have been about children. I am talking about adult-oriented anime, which is only adult because of the rating system we have. It’s immature, irrational, sophmoric, relentlessly and unapologetically inane, and even the stuff without tentacles has some masturbatory fantasy attached to it, in selfish idealism if not in overt sexuality.

“You only say that because you haven’t seen….”

I’ve heard this argument from people for years and years. It used to be Akira. Then it was Macross. Then it was Ghost in the Shell. Then Cowboy Bebop. Then Full Metal Alchemist. No. No more. I will not go tracking down another crap-fest just so I can argue the uninspired details of unimaginative sensationalism with someone who won’t listen to the argument, or understand it if they did.

And, just so I don’t hear about this again:
“Anime in America sucks. They keep the REAL GOOD STUFF over in Japan…”

This argument makes less sense than the others. The supporters believe there is some secret agenda designed to keep ignorant Americans out of the loop. Here’s the reality: Japan gears about 80% of its amime towards Americans. Because it makes money, and Japan desperately wishes it was America.  The rest is geared towards other Asian countries, like Southeast Asian islands, because their value system is less capitalist Christianity and more relaxed Muslim. They don’t send us that stuff because it would not go well with our culture, and especially would not go well with the value system that American anime-heads already have in place.

BONUS TRIVIA #1: Muslim dogma demands that the followers do not reproduce human forms, because only God can create human life. Anime, because it has so little regard for form and real anatomy, is allowed by even the strictest Muslim leaders.

BONUS TRIVIA #2: The term “manga” was coined by a Japanese calligraphy artist. Translated, it means “irresponsible art,” which is my whole argument against it.

Alien Artists

Just to remind people, the giant jellyfish crop circle is something that is completely within the ability of human beings to create.  As wonderful as it is to think that something out there beyond us creates crop circles or had some hand in the building of ancient tombs, I have to assume the simplest explanation is the most likely.  Human beings enjoy deviant behavior, especially when they get giggles out of watching other people go crazy over it.  People are perfectly capable of making crop circles, so why is it so hard for crop circle junkies to accept that they do?

There is an answer for that.  It’s the same reason that fundamental religions deny the basic tenets of natural laws.  They want desperately not to be alone in this postmodern isolated society so they reach out for something that they hope is there.  When groups of people get together with the same hopes, they convince each other that those hopes are reality, despite what a rational mind might tell them.

As a caveat, let me express that I do not believe that science and religion are mutually exclusive.  It takes compassion and humanity to apply the laws of nature that science has uncovered, for one thing.  For another, people absolutely need religion in their culture.  Individual results may vary, but the truth is that religion helps people abstract and transmit the ideas which that culture values.  These are the Big Ideas of Humanity that are directly approached through art and literature; religion allows them to be accessed intuitively and subconciously.  The beliefs themselves serve only as the dressing, the method of transmission.

The real TRUTHS that people glean from them are the big questions that religious followers have to go to their leaders for: how do I, as a member of this culture, deal with issues like revenge, betrayal, jealousy, economic distress, war, pride, love, etc?  What is the meaning of life?  Holy writ is investigated, studied, while the learner wades through confusing, sometimes contradictory, information in the hopes of finding something solid as an answer they can cope with.  That answer depends on who is investigating, what culture they are from, what the standards are for their particular religious sect.  The answer is almost always, “This is what our culture has come to understand about this issue.  This is what our religous group does to help eachother on this issue.  This is how we go on every day.”  This is helpful.  Religion is helpful and necessary.

BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF LEARNING ABOUT OUR WORLD!  There is no usefulness in ignoring new discoveries or understandings about the world.  Scientific study and rational thought need not be tossed out the window.  Think carefully.  Aliens have no motivation to create crop circles if they are advanced enough to travel AT LEAST 4.5 light-years across the galaxy to deliver us a message.  What the hell kind of message is a picture of a jellyfish?

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the joke.  The jellyfish is one of the strangest and goofiest things a person can think of, and symbolically is the epitome of oddball meaninglessness.  And there the believers are, out there in some farmer’s field, talking about what revelations can be found in it.  Just beautiful.

Welcome Home, Astronauts

Space shuttle Atlantis landed safely on May 24th at Edwards Air Force Base at 11:39 EDT (10:39 Central).  I wasn’t able to watch the landing because I was preparing for my 9 year-old cousin to spend the entire day with us.  I’m glad to see the mission was successful despite setbacks in landing since Friday.

Welcome home, lady and gentlemen.  It was a noble and daring risk to take in the name of scientific discovery and in the spirit of American exploration.  Kudos.

Sadly, this will be the final shuttle mission to the Hubble space telescope.  After updating the equipment there with cutting-edge technology (which should remain so for about two weeks), NASA has no more plans to bring any of their remaining space shuttles to the telescope.  Presumably, there will be more advanced spacecraft and/or space telescopes developed in the future.

Please visit the NASA homepage for more information on this shuttle mission, as well as info on previous and future missions.  There aren’t many left, (the final missions will be in 2010!) so watch them live on NASA video when you can.

Today, while my cousin was visiting, he found an old, heavy, die-cast metal space shuttle sitting on a shelf.  It’s actually a transformer rip-off (not even a Go-Bot), and despite how unlikely it is that a covert giant robot would choose a space shuttle as its ‘disguise’ form, it was always one of my favorite toys.

People forget how incredibly excited we all were to watch the Challenger mission.  Space shuttle mania had hit the brains of every middle-schooler in the nation.  In 1985, the year before Challenger exploded, NASA had nine shuttle missions, the most ever in one year.  In fact, considering how often these ships have gone up and back, it’s amazing to think of how few accidents there have been.  Out of 126 missions, there have been only two disasters.  That’s pretty incredible, considering we’re firing off 240,000 pounds into space at 17,000 miles per hour.

Ida know…

Talk of the fossil that was discovered in Germany a little while ago is incredibly important to scientific study, but calling it the ‘missing link’ is just a little unnerving.  The problem is that animals taks so very long to evolve from one distinct form into another, and there are many many many transitional forms between them that we just don’t have.  Because of the odds of finding such pristine preservation, the odds of finding each and every form between stages is astronomically small. I don’t have much of a problem with that, considering the forms we do have are remarkably similar and show the transitions nicely.

Here’s the problem: because so many fossils will not be found, fundamentalist groups that doubt the validity of scientific study, particularly evolution, will never be satisfied with the number of finds.  There are already pseudo-scientific creationists out there attacking the discovery of the century (granted, the century is only 9 years old…) in an effort to promote their agenda of spreading ignorance on behalf of their world view. But, maybe I’m just a pessimist, and the creationist community will understand the findings, and stop working against the rest of the human race.

At any rate, I found a creationist opinion on the find, located here, and I’d like to quote the main opposing points, and offer counter-points to them:

…rather than an apeman-like missing link that some media sources have irresponsibly implied, the real story is quite underwhelming and should in no way faze creationists. Let’s first review the facts:

–The well-preserved fossil (95 percent complete, including fossilized fur and more) is about the size of a raccoon and includes a long tail. It resembles the skeleton of a lemur (a small, tailed, tree-climbing primate). The fossildoes not resemble a human skeleton.

–The fossil was found in two parts by amateur fossil hunters in 1983. It eventually made its way through fossil dealers to the research team.

–Ida has opposable thumbs, which the ABC News article states are “similar to humans’ and unlike those found on other modern mammals” (i.e., implying that opposable thumbs are evidence of evolution). Yet lemurs today have opposable thumbs (like all primates). Likewise, Ida has nails, as do other primates. And the talus bone is described as “the same shape as in humans,” despite the fact that there are other differences in the ankle structure.³

–Unlike today’s lemurs (as far as scientists know), Ida lacks the “grooming claw” and a “toothcomb” (a fused row of teeth) In fact, its teeth are more similar to a monkey’s. These are minor differences easily explained by variation within a kind.

1. The skeleton resembles both a lemur and a human, suggesting that the human race evolved from primates much more like lemurs than monkeys.  A brief overview of skeletal and muscular anatomy would clearly show how human-like the fossil is.  To the uneducated, or the ignorant (not the same thing), the skeleton certainly doesn’t ‘look’ human.

2.  The fossil was found in two parts because they had to keep digging to find the rest of it.  But find it they did, and it fits together perfectly.

3. Humans are the only creatures that have OPPOSABLE thumbs.  Not all thumbs are opposable, though many animals (monkeys, raccoons, lemurs, gorillas) have semi-opposable thumbs.  Touch your thumb to the tip of your pinkie finger.  Now, quickly, touch your thumb to the tip of each finger rapidly.  Right.  Only humans can do that.  Fine manipulation is beyond the ability of any other primate.

4. Similar to a monkey’s and not consistent with the lemur group.  This is how we know animals are transitions between species.  Like the platypus.

More information about the fossil can found here, at the National Geographic website.  And here’s a Youtube video for you to enjoy:

Anime still blows

I just saw an ad on Adult Swim for their anime Saturdays and that 20 second hyper-flash clip collection they called a commercial reminded me, in just that brief amount of time, that anime is ridiculously asinine. I used to watch it back in the day because I thought the overblown emotional reactions of every character, and the total lack of consequences for them, was one of the most hilarious things I had ever seen. Why this shit-fest became something respected was beyond me. That is, until emo music got popular, then I realized that this concept is pretty attractive to repressed selfish assholes who only care about their own problems or how the problems of others directly affect them. Blame an internet society, or a lack of beauty and truth in art, or a media concerned with sensationalism over substance, or Joe Quesada for shitting on how comic books are interpreted, both contemporary and classic. I saw the last five minutes of the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon today, and in the end, Peter Parker almost missed a high school dance where he was supposed to meet Mary Jane, not his actual high-school sweetheart, Gwen Stacy, who Spider-Man accidentally killed later in their relationship. THAT’S RIGHT. Spider-Man killed her. People like to remember Green Goblin being to blame, but that’s only part of the story. It was Spidey’s own arrogance that did it, and HELLS BELLS that was an important part of Spider-Man’s history AS WELL AS comic history. Misunderstanding that, or ‘reinterpreting’ that idea misses the point entirely. We like to see heroes stomp in with no regard for anything other than winning the day, but there was a time when they actually gave a shit about innocent bystanders and BLAMED THEMSELVES when they failed. Add that complaint to the reasons why Batman Begins blew baboon balls, while we’re at it.

This Week in Paranormal Paranoia

While I was working on the computer last night, the TV was tuned to the National Geographic show “Is It Real?,” this one featuring Bigfoot. It was descent background noise and Nat Geo does fair debunking work on their show. Anyway, I decided to look up the idea of ‘dermal ridges’ found on plaster casts of Bigfoot prints (that is, the tiny lines on our hands and feet that create fingerprints, for example) and I came across a great website run by someone who has, for the most part, completely debunked the idea. Here’s the URL if anyone is interested, but I warn you that his site is screwed up and I wasn’t able to read the text without highlighting it. He’s also unhealthily obsessed with Bigfoot, even as he debunks it (I think he calls himself a ‘Bigfoot Agnostic’).

http://orgoneresearch.com

What was impressive was the amount of documentation of his experiments (recreating Bigfoot casts perfectly) and, in parts of his site, his accounts of confrontation with people in Bigfoot circles (”Bigfootery” he calls it).

http://orgoneresearch.com/sex.htm

In other news, another monster has washed up onto the shores of Suffolk County, New York – another Montauk Monster, if any of you have heard of that. It doesn’t matter if you have; same old crazy bullshit. What was frightening was this youtube clip I found. This dude, after scaring away some girl he was hitting on with his psychotic paranoia, rides his bicycle home while videotaping his ‘theories.’ Who travels around on bike with a video camera? People who expect to find monsters washed up on shore, or find government agents going through their trash. Watch this all the way through, set your speakers to ‘background wind noise while jackass on a bike films himself’, and listen very closely to the last lines of his diatribe. Frightening.

Reply – Dungeon Master’s Creed

I found a post on another wordpress blog I’d like to respond to, found here:


The Dungeon Master’s Creed

My response, point by point:

1. All very well and good, but I’ve noticed that people looking for rules systems that are clear and simple don’t care as much about what those rules represent.  I can tease through a complicated rule system as long as those rules reflect the world they represent.  I haven’t seen a good mechanics system that took that into consideration for years.  Instead, they rely on a ‘universal’ system that can supposedly be applied to anything.  That’s rarely the case, and instead we end up with a generic system that is inadequate for what any game needs.

2.  I disagree completely.  I want separate books for those who play the game and those who run it.  I don’t want players to think ‘what can I get,’ instead enjoying excitement and wonder.  When players know too many rules, especially monster or NPC statistics, where is the surprise value?  I have heard horror stories of players buying modules that their DMs are planning to run, just so they have a video game equivalent of ‘Insider’s Tips and Tricks’ rather than letting themselves imagine living through the adventures.

3.  Nothing is worse than a supplement that has a lot of ‘new’ things that detract from the spirit of the game, just to have something new to sell.  If there is no need for a new rule, don’t write one.  If a monster doesn’t fit with the style, scope, or spirit of the game, leave it out.  And, especially, ‘original’ ideas are too often irrational and idiotic.  Give me a supplement that gives me a better way to play the game, a new way to think about it, aspects that previous books didn’t consider, but do not throw new ideas at me just because they’re new.

4.  I agree with this to a point.  Adventures should be able to stand on their own without tying in with other published adventures, and be easily dropped into a campaign already in progress.  However, I also like it when they follow a theme or suggest a longer story that I can adapt and expand.  That’s what turns a string of small adventures into an exciting campaign.

5.  My experience has shown me that computers are antithetical to the overall role-playing experience.  There has been enough of a reliance on video games as the model for new tabletop games as it is.  When players think of the role-playing experience as a video game first, that’s a problem.  They let the DM dictate their next moves for them, assume that there is a ‘correct’ way to achieve goals, and generally lack ambition, assuming that the game will unveil all of the major plot points for them – just like playing computer RPGs.  That, and a face-to-face game night is always better than an online one.  Any game can be played online; don’t even worry about that.  And selling pdf files instead of actual books just asks for people to download torrents en mas and care even less about the content of the books, or lack an ability to put them all together conceptually as one single body of work.  Then they become rules and stats rather than a living, breathing world.

6.  I certainly want a combat system that works differently for one-on-one combat than it does for army-to-army combat.  Rules, again, represent something about the world, usually an abstraction.  In warfare-style combat, individual skirmishes are less important than the overall goal of the combat scenario, and the rules should represent this.  As a side note, ‘wargamers’ should seriously do their research.  Tactical warfare reenactment is much more exciting and rational than Warhammer nonsense.  And for a first-hand one-on-one combat experience, stop swinging foam swords and pick up a fencing weapon, and branch to historical reenactment from there.  Learn something that comes from generations of experience rather than pictures in a book and/or flashy anime garbage.

7.  I demand rationality over simplicity.  If the system makes sense, then modification is easy.  Just keep following sense rather than ‘cool and flashy.’  Anime is a terrible waste of time.

8.  I can agree to point 8 completely.  But that is because a stat block is something reserved for a support character.  Main antagonist NPCs should get their own Appendix in the back of the module.  With a nice long explanation of their motivation and tendencies.

9.  Flexible and unrestricted is only a problem for people with no imagination who can’t divorce themselves from abstract rules that never could and never should represent ALL the choices available.  Again, rationality.  A strict system is fine, fine, fine, as long as it makes sense.  I can change whatever I want if it all makes sense.

10.  I’m not sure I understand this point.  If the game only ‘reflects’ the genre, how can the genre grow?  If the game ‘redifines’ the genre, well so what?  Things that are new, interesting, and good tend to do that.  It’s called evolution.

11.  Game designers should pay attention to what players want while being able to guide the players to what they need.  Players, I’ve noticed, are notorious for wanting to know every little secret of every little corner of a campaign world.  They badger game designers relentlessly with questions that should be left unasked, or answered within the confines of a particular DM’s campaign somewhere.  This allows campaigns to become unique instead of replays of canonized material.  Canon is the death of creativity.  The answer to questions about canon should be ‘whatever you want it to be.’  Players should beg to their DMs, who in turn should sit themselves down and come up with something.

12.  They used to pass these out in game shops all the time.  Fast play rules on new and old systems to generate interest and, thus, sales.  Doing this in an electronic format is okay by me, but I’d like to have something physical I can hold.  Not only does it not give me headaches while I stare at it, but it shows me that a company cares about the hobby.  Just be prepared to sell me a real book with pages in it.  If someone else wants their pdf, by all means, sell it to them.

And in return, we will…

1. Sure. If the game is worthwhile.

2. Not sure what is meant by ‘our game.’  I hope that means the preferred game that ‘our group’ plays.  I don’t like seeing fanboys take over a product.  I hear a lot of people complain that Big Business has ruined the hobby, but they fail to note who’s doing the actual writing and artwork.  It’s usually some fan who’s ‘been playing the game for years!!1!’ but doesn’t know how to write a plot or motivate a character.  The Big Business doesn’t care who’s writing and doesn’t understand what a fanboy is.

3. We’re all restrictive to who we expose games to.  I make no promises, other than to do what I can to make the hobby better in and of itself.  I won’t include suckos that make the hobby any worse than it has gotten.

4.  The things in Greywulf’s post I’m responding to do not guarantee a good game.

5.  Again, I need stricter criteria than Greywulf.

UFO vs. Windmill: CNN’s expert reporting strikes again

Here we go again. CNN doing their damndest to avoid actual reporting in favor of promoting sensationalism, superstition and stupidity.

I found in a blog attached to CNN that a real explanation was given by authorities: the thing just snapped apart. I can’t find this guy’s source, but it sounds like these kinds of things happen all the time. Things break when under stressful conditions. Or, as John Bender would say “Screws fall out all the time. The world is an imperfect place.” But no, people jump to conclusions based on several factors:
1. Lack of reasoning skills, both deductive and inductive
2. Irrational faith in the physical products of mankind
3. Inexperience
4. Beliefs bordering on religious fervor, wanting to believe in ’something else out there’
5. Sheer ignorance

And CNN won’t report “oh, it wasn’t a UFO after all. It was just mechanical failure based on a faulty part and bad weather conditions.” No, they’ll let the UFO story stand and promote ignorance among the population. Thanks, CNN, for making everyone stupider.

…the season is upon us.

Eggnog done did me wrong, I tells ya. Them there milk chug 1 pint eggnogs ain’t meant to be drank all at once. I’m sick just in time for turkey day. Maybe it had something to do with it being ULTIMATE Egg Nog!! As in the last dose of eggnog I’ll drink this year. Somebody call a doctor. And tell him that when the word ‘ultimate’ shows up on eggnog cartons, it’s time to stop using that word.

Hipsters are douchebags

Appaling to all five senses (decency, style, humor, accomplishment, and ethics), I can no longer abide hipsters. Those who know me have heard my diatribes against modern hippies (useless, ignorant, selfish and an insult to the social movements of the 60s), but the modern hipster is quickly replacing them as Aardvark’s Hated Enemy #1.

My biggest pet peeve is the misuse of the word ‘ironic’. I’ll admit to being in high school and college during the 90s. I’ll admit to giving Alanis Morissete a few props. But that stopped with that “Ironic” song that didn’t include one irony in it. As for hipsters, every time I hear or see something done ‘ironically’ I throw up in my mouth a little. Doing something that makes you look like a jackass, even if you know you look like a jackass, does not make you trendy. It makes you a jackass. You see, irony requires a perspective from someone not directly involved in the ironic action, i.e. a viewer or audience. The only irony in someone doing something ‘ironically’ is from the perspective of someone like myself, who knows the definition, and can say ‘that guy wearing a trucker cap because he thinks truckers are jackasses is truly the jackass.’

Back when I was kicking heels at ska shows, as the scene was slowly dying from the inundation of pink-haired Gwen clones and kids who first saw the BossTones on MTV, those of us who were old enough to shave and remember better times would comment on the shittiness of people who adopted a cultural identity based on image alone. Much like the kids who bought their concert t-shirts online instead of at a concert (here’s a tip: neither Rancid nor the Misfits are together anymore – a sure sign of a trendy fuck), hipsters lack substance. Everything they have is appropriated from other scenes, and have been stripped of their meaning. Pre-faded t-shirts, Buddy Holly glasses, and fucking tweed indicate a lack of understanding of the world rivaled only their uselessness.

Back when ‘alternative’ was getting popular, I coined the phrase ‘conformity to nonconformity.’ I was struck by an advertisement in Spin magazine (the leaders in nonconformist conformity) with a giant picture of some guy with piercings all over his face. The caption read ‘EXPRESS YOUR INDIVIDUALITY.’ In other words, in order to be an indivvidual, you have to be just like this guy. So the idea of doing things just because they’re ‘different’ is absurd to me, especially when everyone is doing the same thing. These hipster assholes are the worse than corporate execs in their shallowness and image-based ethic.

All these things I can almost forgive. What I can’t forgive is how that attitude carries over into the rest of the culture. When a word like ‘meh’ finds its way into the dictionary, you can bet a hipster is the cause of it. They revel in finding things that are impractical, meaningless, or purposeless and trying to convince everyone else how important they are. Psychologically, this is just an extension of themselves. Filled with their own uselessness, they yearn for meaning. The only way they can find that meaning is by manufacturing it in other useless things. And those poor, pathetic bastards are the ones making their scratch online, so those are the inane views that make it into the news stories looking for something ‘cutting edge.’ Idiots.

(A side note: Because the above video is a short version of the commercial and left out the line about the beret, here’s another video…)