Being a Man

I've been thinking the last few days about the word "man", and how I've been reticent to use it when taking about myself. Sex-wise, I'm a male. Gender-wise, I suppose that's the only time I may use the word "man" since it's clinical: "I'm a cisgender man." It may be because I use cisgender with it.

Otherwise, I'm a guy. I very rarely call myself a man, and O wonder why that is.

Is it a lifetime thus far of seeing images of what Western society sees as a man and somehow not feeling I'm up to that level? Is it because I tend to be very non-committal in language because there's "always something that could undo it". I tend to be rather careful with absolutes, and I suppose I may view "man" as absolute. It's rigid. It's hard.

"Guy", that's flexible enough. It evokes some sense of softness that I definitely do have.

And I suppose, Daniel Jackson, you have your answer.

Stereotypical Names

I was listening to a podcast when I heard the name René Müller, and the fact he was from Luxembourg. I was, like, that name pretty much sums up Luxembourg, doesn't it?

I'd thought about stereotypical names before, like how László Kovács is just about as Hungarian as you can get, or how during the London 2012 Olympics some commentators had opined that Bradley Wiggins was such a British name.

Sometimes at work stereotypically Jamaican names would arise, like Pauline, Angella, Claude, and Erroll.

On my way home I was trying to run some more iterations of what a stereotypical name would be for where, like, "Oh yeah, s/he's definitely *blank*.

France - Didier Dupont
Germany - Andreas Pfeiffer
India - Ranjeeta Mote
Bangladesh - Nazrul Chowdhury
Vietnam - Khanh Nguyen
Korea - JinHwa Kim
Japan - Jun Takahashi

Then there are just first names or last names I can think of that would typify a place (or, at least, I'd immediately think this person was from that place or of that place.

Iran - Azadeh
Indonesia - Wariyanto
Wales - Ioan
Ireland - Fionnula
Netherlands - Jeroen
Ethiopia - Teklemariam

Then there are places that have such common names (John Smith, Mohammad Jaffar) that one can peg it down to a language, but not necessarily a place. Then there are some, like Khan, that I'd hazard a guess to say (Pakistan), but I might not necessarily 100% hit it.

I kind of wish I knew more than I do, though. But I guess I might know enough, some might say.

It never is.

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.

Literally

I'd just had a dream where we were discussing literal versus figurative speech and it was actually pretty funny.

One character was saying, “I've known people who've never said anything literally. One day I said to one of them, ‘Go sit on your dick and take a picture , 'cause *fuck you*.’ And he comes the next day like, ‘I'm really sorry, I'd tried but I just couldn't get it up there.’ And then he hands me a picture of him trying it.”

[WTF face]

My dreams are weird, I know.

Grab Your Big Pouch

http://youtu.be/_-fOJgsUEPU

I had seen this commercial on live TV maybe only twice, but on Internet streaming it's popped up a little more. 

Every time I see it, I think a few things:

1) This Big Pouch Man character is quirky and pretty attractive. When he's upside-down you don't see it, but the moment he uprights himself in the back seat, you can see it, especially in the eyes.

2) His character is also kind of creepy. It almost seems they're making double-entendres with the product. This is fine, and I'd giggled. Simultaneously, is the character of the driving test guy supposed to be a teenager or an adult still living with mum? Perhaps it's that California's driving test age is

18, in which case it's "fine"?

3) The creepiness is kind of hot. 

Because the commercial is just barely kind of edgy, that might be why it's not gotten as much airtime, seemingly, on live television, but I'm glad for the Internet and it's archival of human creation, destruction, and weirdness.