| 20030523 - "I don't get it either" |
| p>I think there always have been a lot
of scifi movies out between Thanksgiving and Hannukah. Maybe it's because,
being on a lunar calendar, Hannukah slides back and forth in relation
to Thanksgiving. This year, because Hannukah's a little later than last
year, it just looks like there are more movies.
No. I will not conform. I said no, dammit!
I work for a rather largish corporation with 8,000 employees. A close
50% of these employees are what the Reverend Lovejoy would call "miscellaneous."
So naturally, there are three huge Jul trees outside the main
doors, and three near huge ones in the lobby. Complete with
Jul sacrifices neatly packaged beneath them.
Adam of Bremen wrote in the 11th century that in Uppsala, Sweden,
there was a tree upon which nine males of every animal (including
humans) was hung every ninth year for Jul.
So if your Christmas tree doesn't have nine fucking corpses hanging
on it, take it down! You're worthless.
There are also tales about the Oskerei (in Norwegian), or the Gotannes
Heer (in German), the "wild host." This wasn't eight tiny reindeer,
it was either Odinn or Satan with a mad host of zombies and demon
horses skidding over your roof around Jultide. If you were stirring,
even a mouse, when they were about, you did get a present.
Somebody's severed ear.
And you don't even want to know what the advent wreath might have
symbolized!!!
All Precious Moments (_T_M_) angels should be facing the wall.
|
|
| 20021122 - "Long Live the Maranathas!" |
When I was an undergraduate, I somehow ended
up becoming acquainted with one (of 32!!!!) the Christian groups on
campus (the Maranatha Christian Fellowship, if your obnoxious mind
cares to know). Mainly, I hung out there because they always had a
table at the Student Union where I could read, and they were reasonably
entertaining.
Somewhere along the line, they got the idea
that I was "born again."
Okay. *shrug* Aside from ending up on the "Jews
for Jesus" mailing list, the trauma doesn't seem to have been permanent.
The thing about extremists like this, though,
is that once they've accepted you, they will delude themselves to
no end into believing you are one of them. My favorite band at the
time was Deicide. Dei-as in deity, -cide as in homocide. They naturally
interpreted the logos on my t-shirts as "decide." As in, decide to
follow Jesus.
The album cover and accompanying shirt design
for the album "Once Upon the Cross" featured Jesus, post-crucifixion,
on an operating table with his abdomen incised and his entrails disgorged.
My Pentacostal friends said they liked it; it showed that Jesus was
not only the son of God, he was also human.
. . .
So many cliches juxtapositioning blindness
and religion could be said here . . . I'll just let you think them.
This was also the phase in which I had taken
to wearing an inverted cross. They never noticed it, even though it
hung around my neck quite openly. Later, I lost interest in that whole
"antichrist" thing and got a Thor's hammer pendant (which I still
wear, dammit!) As soon as I switched to Mjolnir, they started asking
me if I was wearing an inverted cross.
Wacky Christians. Can't live with 'em, and
if you burn them at the stake, you make martyrs out of 'em.
|
|
| 20021111 - "ENOUGH!!!" |
Enough with the chick magnet already!
Maybe this erroneous appelation (hee, big words,
hee) frustrates me so much because of my total inability to magnetize
those whom I would like to magnetize. It's completely random.
People I run across in the library. Or aquarium visitors at my last
job (a tour guide in an aquarium). But not people whom I've known
for a while and have had a growing interest in. Oh, no!
And Rini is forgetting to tell just how much
I enjoy other people invading my personal territory (most people have
personal space; I require a no-fly zone equal to that enforced
over a demilitarized zone). When I'm in a crowd, if someone jostles
against my shoulder, I react as though rabid weasels are devouring
my flesh. So I don't know quite where Rini gets that "cuddling" idea
. . .
She is right, though. Nijyo looks a lot like
his comic persona . . . Rini's bonded sex slave--er, husband, does,
too. Actually, he looks a lot like James Hetfield did back in those
days when he'd break his arm all the time doing skateboarding stunts.
Why didn't Metallica just have John Marshall fill in on bass for them,
instead of Bob Rock. Oh, nevermind. Rini doesn't look quite
like comic Rini; the real Rini has more inflatable hair. |
| 20021105 - "What really
gets me . . ." |
I have no idea what Nijyo means
about all this "chick magnet" business. I haven't even thought
about another relationship in the last year and a half. Besides,
I'm BEEFY.
I was just reading the new issue of a
magazine devoted to a week of news (I don't know if it's copyright
infringement or not to admit the title without paying them royalties
. . .) Ah, an ode to the tune of lazy ranting. There's a sidebar
to their article about children's television programming, about
a family whose child is not allowed to watch TV.
Let's hear it for promoting cultural
illiteracy.
Limiting a kid's TV watching is
fine, policing what they're watching is expected. But
prohibiting it entirely? That's because actually doing what
a parent is expected to is just too fucking hard. Make it easy
on yourself. Just pretend the problem isn't there.
What really pissed me off was this little
crow of triumph: the kid is not haunted by images of 9/11 because
(s)he didn't see any.
Sure. Avoid all the hard quesitons in
life by not letting your fucking kid live. When I was the same
age as the subject in this article, there were a few events
for which all the kids in the elementry school were rounded
up into the library, to huddle around the television: the space
shuttle launches. It was a serious occasion. Then, there was
that one where we were watching the shuttle go up . .. up. .
. and the EXPLODE!
The main difference between the Challenger
and 9/11 is the sense that it could happen to anyone, and any
time, was missing. It's not like too many of us were going to
be riding around in space shuttles. Still, seeing something
like that (and seeing the media replaying it over and over and
feeling it was our duty to watch every time) is the same experience
when you're this young. The scale difference (6 vs. 3,000) doesn't
penetrate most minds under 11.
So go ahead. You're trading one set of
mental scars for another. Face it. You're kid's gonna get fucked
up no matter what you do. Wanna be a good parent? Don't have
kids. That makes me the best father in the world. |
|
| 20021104 - "I'm as confused
as you guys" |
Today's strip is brought to you by
the Beefy Guy. I have no idea what it is about. Really, I don't.
So really, I can't tell you anything about it at all. He sends
these things via a dark conjuring and they appear as dripping
blood on my wall. I take digital photographs of them, and then
post them with a fancy title. That's the sort of outfit you're
dealin' with here, folks!
Well, alright, maybe its a little different
than that...
This whole Kunoichi bit really confuses
me, but as a part of another whole area of confusion. That is:
Beefy Guy is a chick magnet.
Why? I have no idea. He walks down the
street and has to scrape them off in order to fit throught
he door of his house. Why do I mention this? Cuz this is totally
making me jealous!
On another note: We're a small outfit.
This whole thing is produced on a budget of about $50 per month.
We're hosted by a little place called IonComix, run by the same
folks who run Megatokyo.
We've been around for about 3 months or so, and it looks like
people other than just myself and a few friends are reading
the comic on a somewhat regular basis. We'd love to hear
from you.
And, in case someone, for who knows
what reason, would want to actually advertise for us, I'll be
making up a link banner and a link button. I'll give a post
when they're available. |
|
| 20021026 - "Subs vs. Dubs" |
Y'know, it used to be that I could
watch just about anything, no matter what the audio format .
. . The original Japanese voice actors (with or without
subtitles!!), American actors, even sometimes a French language
track (that was that damn Kunoichi again, with some weird crap
from Malaysian television or something). It didn't matter. I
thought I was getting the full story pieced together from the
dialogue and the visual cues (isn't that how you normally watch
television anyway?!).
I was wrong
.
You've all heard about how Nijyo first saw Excel Saga.
A couple weeks ago I was grumbling about my silly DBZ fan friends.
We tried exposing them to Excel Saga last night. Experiment
. . . . failed.
Reading is a skill that one generally begins to work on in,
oh, first grade or so, right? So when you're in you mid-twenties,
you should have 20 years of reading experience behind you. If
you're in your mid twenties and you're a fan of a genre called
anime, you should be used to reading really, really fast,
right? I guess not
.
So, Nijyo and I (who are now obviously anime snobs because
we'd never watched any of the anime Nijyo owns in the dubbed
versions) had to suffer through the Barad-dur-esque excruciation
of the dub that is Excel Saga. Aside from the fact that Excel
was voiced by a guy, and that all of the macho male characters
(Nebashin, Tet-chan, Illpalatzzo himself!) sounded like Trigun's
Vash, it wasn't the same fucking show!!!! The dub changed
the dialogue. Not even for a sensible reason (like references
to 12th century Japanese mythology that no one would get), just
. . . um, because.
They even changed the voices of characters that just made noise!
But not even consistently, so sometimes Menchi would have his
Japanese whine, and sometimes he'd whine in American! And the
Pu-Chus . . . the whole point of the Pu-chus (or so I had erroneously
assumed) was that they said only "Pu chu." Um, no. The English
dub had them making EWOK noises!!!
See, rather than Chechen rebels gunning down hostages, or the
imminent assault on Iraq for no apparent reason, bad dubs
are the social injustices I get up in arms about.
|
|
| 20021018 - "Matsuko no
Kunoichi" |
A little context may be in order .
. .
About two years ago now, I started dating
this Japanese woman (mentioned already in my last rant, BTW).
About eight months after that, I stopped dating her. Or, to
more accurately explain things, she stopped dating me.
Naturally, I made her explode.
I actually can't remember where the screaming
"I am Japanese!!" part came from. It was from a conversation
I had with Nijyo about that time . . . Anyway, it's not supposed
to make sense, that's what non sequitor is all about!
Anyway . . . When we started going out,
there was some speculation that she and her sister were kunoichi
(female ninjas). Shelving books in the library four feet
off the floor--no normal human could accomplish such a feat.
Speaking of feet . . . She always wore
enormous shoes. See the shoes? I'm particularly proud of the
shoes.
Ah, the theraputic value of art. |
|
| 20021012 - "Head Explodey" |
Heh. Excel Saga. I was just trying
to explain that series to two of my friends. I don't know if
they'd be able to appreciate it. Fortunately, taste in anime
isn't the reason that we're friends. Half of my explanation
of the series was lost when they suddenly realized that Excel
Saga was an entirely different series and not just an arc from
Dragon Ball Z, to which they are sadly addicted.
Apparently, affixing "saga" to the title
of something when speaking to a DBZ fan will automatically eliminate
any reference to the lack of a DBZ relationship. Freeza saga,
Cell saga, Buu saga . . . Excel saga?
It made talking about my graduate study
really difficult, since I studied Medieval Icelandic sagas.
Actually, about two years ago I was dating
a Japanese girl who insisted I watch all of her anime with her,
in the same situation as Nijyo the first time he saw Excel Saga.
But we'd only watch episodes she hadn't seen. Which meant
I was thrown into Escaflowne and Inu-yasha midway through the
story, with no background, and absolustely no
knowledge of Japanese (she actually didn't want me to learn
Japanese; then I'd learn all the secrets she and her sister
were keeping from me--but that's another rant entirely). I learned
really quickly to pick up on visual cues, and to piece the story
together backwards.
Now that would make your head
explode.
Seeing Inu-Yasha on Adult Swim, consequently,
doesn't feel like I'm actually watching it. I don't care for
the dubbing, and the edited content is glaringly absent, It's
sort of like watching an edit of the series for a news program--like
a "highlights" reel that leaves out all the important parts
that might be "spoilers." Or line a Bandai trailer. I watched
the first episode thinking, "Well, that's sort of the
series I remember . . ."
Sad, really. |
|
| This page and all original works (that
means the comic, the logo, all that fun stuff except for, basically, the
link banners to other comics) is © Steve Walsh. Rants are ©
whoever wrote them and used here with permission. Permission is granted
for non-public display and copying of the comics themselves, permission
for display or reprint of the rants themselves must be obtained from the
respective authors. Use some common sense and we'll all be happy. Be bad
and we'll tell your mommy. "The call is coming from inside the house",
"back and to the left", and "where's my beer?" |
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