And Apparently They're Singing In Polish

One of the more disturbing things I've seen in a while:



That donkey thing disturbs me.

(What, you thought I was talking about the grotesque alien creatures? Don't be silly.)

-Signing off.

Subconscious Anthropomorphic Radical Character Team

I've recently been browsing through a particular website, and came upon a specific page where the webmaster makes the following remark:

"At the time, I thought a couple of pictures and one paragraph about an obscure toy line was a perfectly noteworthy addition to my sparse little corner of the internet, but little did I realize that these things were very thoroughly ingrained in my generation's subconscious, and that virtually nowhere else on the internet had ever so much as acknowledged them."

The thing about the subject, Snailiens (yes, really) is that it perfectly enmeshed itself in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles zeitgeist from roughly that era. It even took up the historical figure theme naming that so many other series dropped like a rock, though it dropped the whole food obsession thing.

It didn't so much tap into the collective subconscious of the Ninja Turtle generation so much as was the collective subconscious of that generation. That is to say, generally speaking, nobody thinks about it, but it's there.

On that note, here are some completely random links related to the subject that amuse me.

-Signing off.

Something Something Month

You know what my least favorite month of the year is?

It's February.

You know why?

It's not because it's generally the wintriest month-though that fact is trying my patience a bit right now. (Heavy snowfall is no longer more than a mild inconvenience to my household, ever since my dad bought himself a riding snowblower. We don't even have to rely on the neighbor bringing over his tractor with a snow plow anymore.)

First off, the name. "February" is an eternal source of frustration to young children, just like "library," and for the exact same reason.

Second off, and much more importantly, is that whenever somebody chooses a month for some kind of special cause-remembering black history, women's heart health, and who knows what the heck else-nothing comes to mind-it seems like it's always February that gets it.

Why? What's so darned special about February?

Is it because of St. Valentine's Day? Because that's a dumb reason. (Fun fact-Valentine's Day is a day not of celebration of romantic and other love in Japan-for them, that's Christmas-it's a day of personal sexual devotion.)

I hereby move that February be declared "Everything Ever Awareness Month." That'll save us all a lot of time, and it'll free up the other months to just be themselves again.

-Signing off.

Give Him His FACE

I'm not too likely to see much of the upcoming Transformers: Prime cartoon series, seeing as how I don't have cable.

I'm not the first person to make this comment, and surely won't be the last, but...



...please, please, Hasbro and cartoon designers, Optimus Prime is just better with a faceplate.

I'm not trying to be a geewunner, really (I'm one of the least likely people on the planet to do so), but the particular facial type that they're using for this version of Optimus just looks like a halfhearted, stupid compromise between a real mouth and a faceplate.

So I beg of you, GIVE HIM HIS FACE.

-Signing off.

500 Posts

500 posts? That can't be!

Is Blogger playing an April Fool's Day prank on me, or what?

(It isn't.)

-Signing off.

Spooky Day

Is it spooky when, mostly by coincidence, you read about multiple instances of something similar and spooky in the same day?

For instance, today I read about a movie with a killer possessed car.

Then, by complete coincidence, Chris's Invincible Super Blog mentions two possessed vehicles, Killdozer and Trull the Unhuman. (Also, by extension, one Marvin Heemeyer, who was far scarier than an ordinary possessed vehicle because he was a real person who went on a possessed-vehicle type rampage.)

Is the Internet conspiring to tell me something? Or is it just October working its ways...? Whatever.

-Signing off.

Laser Sword Attack

So my sister was at some con or another over the weekend. (Yes, that had to do with the company who interfered with me blogging on Friday.) And at the con, she apparently met a lot of people who wanted to play with ("fake") lightsabers-i.e., actually mock swordfight with them.

Sis remarks that she thinks "real" lightsaber dueling is mostly Flynning (i.e., swinging deliberately at the other dude's sword), because if you "score" (in the fencing sense), the fight's pretty much over, right?



Right.

-Signing off.

Theme Weeks

I've actually got a certain amount of content planned out at this point, but little of it is usable today.

What, exactly, do I mean?

I currently have two theme weeks (something I've only done once) planned out to a workable degree. Having no particular plans for when to do them, I'm probably going to do them over the next two weeks.

This kind of ties up my current plans for blogging content. And YouTube isn't working right now, so random video embeds are out.

But rest assured, ATT fans (all 4.7 of you), you'll get solid content for two weeks, give or take fifteen minutes. Lots of book reviews, actually (I've been going through a stack).

Also, stupid post scheduler still is not working. Was there an announcement that I missed or something? For crying out loud.

-Signing off.

Ruined

You know what gets my goat? (Actually, I don't have a goat, but that's not the point.)

People who complain that this or that "ruined [their] childhood." (This is invariably in the context of something which is a modern take on something that the speaker enjoyed in childhood; as we all know, whether the modern take is good or not, some of the people who enjoyed it as children will hate the modern take with a savagery unparalleled in civilized man. Except by Hitler.)

What the heck is that supposed to mean?

For that matter, how can anything "ruin [their] childhood?" The only way I can think of for someone to "ruin" the childhood of an adult is to get a time machine and steal every ice cream cone they've ever eaten before they eat them (or something similarly ridiculously petty).

And in that context, it makes the related phrase "raped [their] childhood," usually simply used in the exact same way, even worse than it already was, which was pretty bad.

Never say that something ruined your childhood to me. It will ruin my childhood.

-Signing off.

An Invention I Can't Live Without

Is there any tool created by all of Western civilization that is really as useful and important as the fork?

No, I'm totally freaking serious. Forks are awesome. For those of us who are chopstick-impaired (this does not include my sister, who made a snotty comment over my shoulder about doing without forks), the fork is perhaps the most efficient of all eating utensils. It can be used to cut (though only with effort and preferably against soft foods), stab, scoop, and tear. The reason sporks are so inconsistently used isn't because they are half-fork and half-spoon, it's because they're otherwise respectable spoons trying to pass themselves off as having the functionality of a fork. (They actually are a little more useful than spoons, in my opinion, but what's the point of making a tool that does what a fork does poorly when you have a fork already?)

But the usefulness of the fork is such that it travels beyond the dinner table. No, seriously. Have you ever tried to bale hay? I was shocked, truly shocked, to realize that not only is it really hard without a pitchfork, but incredibly light and easy with a pitchfork.

Then there's the trident, a cross between the fork and a spear. Let's be frank: Better luck next time, guys.

Why does no one validate forks? I don't get it.

-Signing off.

It's Thanksgiving...

...so don't be a turkey.

-Signing off.

Police Brutality

(If anyone notes a sudden drastic change in typical post time, it's not actually a change; it's just that, despite my settings, the blog was set to Pacific time [and I just corrected it]. WHAT THE HECK BLOGGER.)

No, I'm not talking about any incidents that were in the news. Forget Rodney King.

Behold the worst case of police brutality I've ever seen.



I have this suspicion that one difficulty people had watching the first Tekkaman series has mostly to do with scenes like this one. Subject A, "George" (apparently that was his Italian dub name or something), breaks into an enemy warship and then starts smashing stuff. This is horribly cruel. He could easily have cut the warship in half from outside, and then the guys inside would have been resigned to a quick decompression death or vaporization depending on what exploded.

But no, he had to kill them to their faces.

Et tu, ROM?

-Signing off.

That's A Sport I'd Watch

You know, it's probably pretty obvious from the fact that I don't really talk about sports at all here, but I'm not a sports fan. I'm really not a sports fan.

I mean, really.

Part of the reason I'm not a huge sports fan is because I've never been athletic enough to get involved in sports, and as a result, am relatively minimally aware of the mechanics of the games. (Exceptions to this include soccer, which I played [very badly] for a few years when I was a kid, basketball, which everyone asked if I played for years because I'm 6'3" barefoot [my answer was always "I hate basketball," primarily because everybody was always asking if I played it], and football, which is reasonably simple and watched religiously by my mother and very casually by my father. That, and I read an essay for a class that explained the difference between modern American football and its original incarnation. I don't get excited about football, but it was a fascinating essay.) Further, a lot of people call their particular sport "the GREAT AMERICAN GAME/PASTIME/FISHCAKES."

Excuse me, but I don't see what makes your sport the American game. There is only one sport that can truly claim that title, although I don't watch that one either: Stock car racing.

What qualifies stock car racing as the American sport? It's quite simple:

1. The game involves cars, the chosen form of transportation for Americans, even now.
2. The game is a race, meaning that the winners and the losers are determined by the speed of the competitors. Americans are always in a hurry, and racing is thus representative of their natures. (I, by the way, am rarely in a hurry, even though I'm nearly always on time, and that's one of the primary reasons I don't watch racing sports.)
3. The game is blatantly commercial. The participants' vehicles are positively slathered in advertising. How much more American could it get?

There's only two things the game is missing that could possibly make it more American than it is already:

1. Semi trucks, full of products associated with the sponsor companies, replacing the cars. (And there'd be a rule or something that they'd have to drive like actual semi truck drivers, who seem to think they're racecar drivers anway.)
2. Dilapidated highways upon which the races take place.

...Is it just me, or would that be totally awesome? I know that if nothing else, I'd watch/read a TV/comic series about something like that.

(Note: The commentary here is not meant to be criticism of American society. I'm simply stating facts. I'd rather live in America than just about anywhere else.)

(Further note: Yes, I know that there was at least one comic book series about racing semi trucks on highways, and that some people have probably treated semi truck racing as some kind of underground sport. I want to see an official, corporate sponsored one, where the semi trucks have great big NASCAR-style advertising covering them completely.)

(Final note: Obviously, I'm being rather frivolously silly with my commentary. I don't care.)

-Signing off.

A Different Kind of Robot Than I Usually Blog About

You know what makes me worry? Japan.

Why? They're teaching robots how to to fight.



Note that that red robot, King Kizer, was the dark horse candidate of the competition (well, the first year he was in it-I guess this wasn't the first year, though), especially since he was built by a guy in his home workshop. And after an apparent bad loss in an earlier competition, he schooled his way to the top during this event, the Robo-One, which is kind of like the Indianapolis 500 for robots or something.

You might say "Oh, that's harmless. All that those robots can do is swing at each other's faces ineptly." Oho, that's where you'd be wrong.

BEHOLD.



They taught King Kizer how to play baseball. Teach him hockey and he'll know how to knock out your teeth.

You might be thinking that these all are really just harmless sports. Wrong again.



They've taught them how to play "laser tag."

Soon, they'll be upgrading them to "death ray tag." Not long after that, they'll be wondering why the robots are burning the cities and taking over, and Japan will be under quarantine and/or a priority target for a nuclear strike.