19 October 2015

Sometimes I Wonder if I Waste My Time

So, I'm a watcher of sorts. I've always felt my purpose in life was to observe and record, when possible, somehow elements of humanity. This can be in reading, watching things, listening to music, and hearing people's stories.

One if the most frustrating ones have been TV shows of late.

So, a brief, and probably incomplete, list of shows I've gotten into within the last 5 years is:

• Tyrant
• The Whispers
• Once Upon a Time
• Manhattan Love Story
• Selfie
• The Messengers
• The Tomorrow People 
• Reign
• The Returned
• Helix
• Archer
• American Horror Story
• Bates Motel
• Better Call Saul
• Dominion 
• Scream Queens
• Teen Wolf
• The 100
• The Librarians
• Stalker

That makes 45% of the shows I've gotten into of this list cancelled. And it seems it's getting more frequent than not that I pick up a show and they cancel it, within the season, shortly after the run, or by the next season.

A couple of them, I'd pretty much figured they'd cancel, but others I'd held out so much hope for.

Only for them to dash dem weh.

Forty-five percent is pretty bad. Hopefully my odds improve this season.

07 March 2015

Magnamon the Jihadist


So this is a throwback from my burgeoning adulthood, a card I'd seen from one of my all-time favorite series Digimon.

A little background for the unaware:
Digimon are digital monsters, creatures that exist in a virtual/computer world that have the ability to evolve into superior forms as their energy increases. In the case of this one, Magnamon, a specific lower-level digimon (often one called Veemon) takes hold of something called a digimental (an ancient power object, essentially) and evolves into Magnamon, one of the most powerful digimon in existence.

As a rule of anime in general, whenever there are named attacks, the attacker (often a good guy and often the leader-type) has 必殺技 (hissatsu waza, or a “sure-kill attack”), an attack that completely disarms, makes harmless, or destroys the target.

In the English versions of the cards (and in the anime dub), they've interpreted Magnamon's sure-kill attack to be "Magna Blast". For the record, though, I've included the image of an original Japanese card to show what the original name of the attack is, bringing me to the point of this post.

Anime has been a hot-button topic for a lot of people because the Japanese creators of these manga/shows often seem to have blissful ignorance of what the things they create might mean to audiences outside Japan, or how sensitive they might be to it (at least until the late 90's to early 2000's when it really took off internationally).

I mean, I don't think many Japanese had even thought about jihadism until the IS/ISIS/ISIL agent "Jihadi John" beheaded two of their citizens recently, so Magnamon's "Japanese-language" attack (even though it is, essentially, borrowed English) would barely phase them whereas the rest of the world would probably be in an uproar because of it.

Magnamon's sure-kill attack is エクストリーム・ジハード.

Literal translation into English is "Extreme Jihad."

Expansion: I have been remiss to mention the character of Magnamon is a holy warrior in the card mythology.

24 February 2015

RE: Google/Reddit Tightening Their Belts on The Explicit

Google and Reddit Tighten Their Policies Regarding Explicit Photos
http://petapixel.com/2015/02/24/google-and-reddit-tighten-their-policies-regarding-explicit-photos/

I suppose it had to happen sometime. People had long been abandoning their blogs on Blogger, or migrating them to Wordpress.
It might be partly the pornography community clamoring to the masses to stop infringing on their copyrights, sharing their "pay-for-play" content freely across the Internets. It might be partly just the users racking up immense amounts of bandwidth costs in sharing the content on these free services.
Either way, it's a "whoa boy" time for the Internet community, even though some like @cyberczar and the likes have long predicted this doom.

10 February 2015

Empirical Evidence

huffpostgay (@huffpostgay)
How a same-sex kiss could have derailed the new Fox hit "Empire" huff.to/17aercU

I would say this could have read "How a same-sex kiss may derail 'Empire'"… or perhaps it should if I base it on what the article seems to say.

They'd addressed inherent homophobic tendencies the audience may have because the test audience rejected the show outright with the kiss scene (which I have not seen; I've not watched the show because I just haven't felt like it). 
Stating they'd done the scene early in the series and the fact apparently the show is having splendid ratings together seem to indicate this is a test audience false positive.
I don't know. Maybe I'll try the show?

11 January 2015

Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!/美男高校地球防衛部LOVE!

L-R: Battle Lovers Sulfur, Vesta, Scarlet, Épinard, and Cerulean

So, in one of the most random things, one of my fraternity brothers posted a video of this on Facebook and I'd run with it.
A magical boy anime. With boys acting girly and in pastel-colored outfits with bows… and random attacks. It's enraptured me.
But I think I'm into Chevalier Argent more.