It’s a two for one today.
Has anyone noticed how the Xbox logo looks like some kind of space avocado?
Also, it occurred to me that in all my time on the Internet, using this handle, nobody’s ever tried to use “dephrost” as a burn. Not that it’s a good one, but considering the overall lack of quality on the Internet in general (just read a few YouTube comments if you don’t see what I mean), I just would have expected it by now.
This isn’t technically a “Nealogism” as it’s not mine, but like a wide-eyed orphan child I am adopting it and sending it out into the world for the betterment of society. It actually came from this thread on my politics/society discussion forum. And like the unstated but undeniable goal (though rarely achieved) of raising any child a particular way, I’m defining it for my own purposes.
A Ninjacon is a conservative who may feel it prudent to conceal his or her political views due to their perceived unpopularity with their peers. This term might also describe a self-loathing conservative, or someone who refuses to discuss politics entirely but holds conservative views.
Situations in which being a ninjacon might be convenient or socially expedient include:
One of the best things about working from home, aside from the 50′ morning commute, is the ability to watch shitty daytime television while you’re working from your couch.
Like, for example, an episode of Magnum, p.i. where Thomas Magnum and his killer fuckin’ moustache are in London, and he’s somehow developed psychic powers.
Hell yeah.
I usually sit here and have Napster running in the background, playing random tracks while I write crap. It’s got this cool quick playlist thing that lets you add all songs from an album with a single click and is pretty useful as a digital jukebox.
Anyway, I load it up and notice one of the featured artists is Ice Cube, who I guess has a new album out or something. I click that, it adds it to my playlist.
After a few seconds I’m not really into it and notice the swanky icons for Presidential playlists with Obama and McCain, songs from their campaign and personal favorites. Obviously I click the McCain one and go back to posting. It ran through some very middle-of-the road crap including the Beach Boys, Sinatra, and Neil Diamond. Whatever, I’m ok with them.
After about an hour it’s run through and I decide to click on the Obama list, thinking I added it onto my queue.
Some U2 song with pseudointellectual lyrics that make no fucking sense, but could easily be spun against Obama (“The more you see, the less you know…). In fact I think I heard Limbaugh clowning on that a few weeks ago.
The song was over, and this came up:
And for a split second before I realized what was going on, Obama had earned my vote for being the coolest motherfucker on the planet. I guess I’d clicked on the U2 song by itself instead of the whole list though, because the rest of Obama’s list was just as boring as McCain’s.
Damn. Now if Obama really had the nuts to put Ice Cube on his soundtrack, I might vote for his gun grabbing ass.
At least according to this website which calculates the value of websites:
Somehow I think this is just a tiny bit off
I wrote this almost two years ago, for Sociocide, but figured I should put it here. I recently came across a discussion thread on the Toonami forums which referenced it.
Let’s face it folks, kid’s television shows today are a festering cesspool of mind-rotting garbage. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to flip over to the Disney Channel and catch “That’s So Raven”, or “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”, for example, you know what I’m talking about. The plots regularly feature unrealistic kids getting into all kinds of trouble, with minimal if any consequences for their zany hijinks, while their parents are clueless idiots who can be easily manipulated.
Now I realize that when entertaining a child, you probably don’t want to club them over the head with the realities of how rough life really is, and a good amount of fantasy is healthy. Heck sometimes showing a kid-hero getting away with something harmless can be empowering for kids. But the idea that the world is a great big playground, free of painful consequences, is a dangerous one to teach our children; especially in an age where the children of our enemies are being indoctrinated with a desire to kill us while they’re barely out of their diapers.
This brings us to a cartoon called Naruto, based on a manga (Japanese comic book) by Masashi Kishimoto. Now I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Anime. I don’t own a collection of Katanas, nor do I have a burning desire to run off to Japan and marry a Japanese woman who still wears a school girl outfit. I’ve watched Akira twice, Ninja Scroll three times, and most of the Dragonball Z show when it was on Cartoon Network a few years back. But about a year ago I started noticing posts on the Bullshido forums about this anime/manga and recently I decided to see what all the talk was about.
The story
13 years ago, a massive, nine-tailed demon fox of legend attacked the hidden leaf ninja village of Konoha, one of several “hidden” ninja villages around the world of Naruto. The village’s ninja fought valiantly against the monster but to no avail until the Fourth Hokage (head ninja) showed up and sacrificed himself, sealing the demon in the body of an infant.
That boy was Naruto Uzumaki. Naruto grew up alone and unwanted. The Fourth Hokage had ordered that no one in the village was to speak about the demon fox, but that did not prevent them from shunning the boy. In his desperation for attention, Naruto had become the class clown at the ninja academy, and was generally a poor student.
This is where the story begins. I’ll admit that I had to force myself to watch the first few episodes of the show. I found them to be annoying, almost as if this were a version of Harry Potter, but with Ninjas. But as Naruto learns the secret of why everyone in the village seems to hate him, the story opens up and you get introduced to the amazing depth with which Kishimoto has developed not just the main character, but almost all of the supporting characters as well.
However, well fleshed-out characters aren’t the main reason why your kids should watch this show. As the story progresses, Naruto’s squad of four including his instructor, Kakashi, his rival, Sasuke, and the target of his affection, Sakura, go on their first “real mission” and the author takes this opportunity to introduce them to the realities of their chosen life as ninjas. These realities of life, presented in the context of fantasy, are what make the show perfect for children who are just starting to grasp the nature of how the world works.
Through the course of the story, Naruto and the other characters come to understand what it is to pursue a dream, to come to terms with the realities of death, and perhaps the foremost lesson or theme taught by the show: true strength is gained when you fight for your dreams or to defend those who are important to you.
In Naruto, even the “bad guys” have their own dreams to pursue, and people they care about. Instead of being stereotypical children’s show villains, the foes in Naruto come into conflict with the heroes through pursuing their own goals, which though contrary, are not always portrayed as “evil”. The rejection of a simplistic duality of good and evil enriches this show and provides an excellent opportunity for parents to discuss morality and conscience with their children. In one scene, a rival ninja fights not to kill, but to disable Naruto and his friends in order to protect his master. And when it becomes apparent that he cannot fulfill his purpose of protecting his master, he sacrifices his life for him. In another scene, Naruto struggles against a near-perfect ninja with a fatalist view on life, to prove that you do not have to be born with great talent to do great things.
As a parent, I am always thinking about what my child is learning about the world on a daily basis. I try my best to answer questions about things in a way that promotes independent thinking and allows her to come to her own conclusions based on facts and reason. If I do not let her watch a particular show, I make sure she understands why and give her the opportunity to provide justifications for why she should watch it, if there are any.
Life is complicated, and it doesn’t get any less complicated as a child approaches adulthood. Some parents, in a selfish desire to relive their childhood, seek to keep their kids innocent (ignorant) of the world around them. Instead of creating another generation of man-children, I believe in spoon-feeding small doses of reality to a child based on a well-intentioned assessment of how much that child can process and understand.
Childhood is not a magical time in and of itself. The very reason childhood is magical is because a child’s senses are on fire to take in everything about the world around them. But the magic is not meant to last forever and those who seek to selfishly prolong this state by keeping their children ignorant of the realities of life, are negligent and undeserving of the right to be called parents.
The best thing you can do for your child is to send them into the world ready to be an adult; a rational, thinking being with a broad understanding of the complexity of life and their role in it. And a show like Naruto, where things are not black and white, where dreams are pursued through effort, and where conflict is not avoided for the sake of preserving peace, is one of the best things you can expose your child to in this age where we seem to have lost the fortitude of our own identity.
I was going to write this up as a post here, but then I realized it was a bit too newsworthy to be relegated to this dark corner of the Internet and put it on Sociocide. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote though, with a link at the end:
Smuggling our crappy Panera lattes past the apathetic ticket-tearer-guy was a breeze. And I suppose that if it wasn’t for my senses being heightened from implementing this nefarious scheme to avoid even worse (and more overpriced) coffee, I wouldn’t have noticed the two gentlemen dressed in all black purposefully walking off towards one of the theaters just to the right of the straw dispensers and arcade games.
Oooh, SWAT was here, I thought, with hopes of seeing someone get tased or covered in bear mace or something.
No such luck, as one returned to his seemingly self-appointed post near Ticket Ripper Man, I noticed the back of his uniform/shirt. It didn’t read FBI, or SWAT, or S.H.I.E.L.D. It read MPAA.
Yeah, that’s right. MPAA, as in The Motion Picture Association of America. As an ex-coworker of mine would have put it, with a smile on her face to hide her unconscious, burning hatred of humanity*: “What the french, toast?”
The MPAA apparently has a “force” that’s uniformed up to look like an official Federal police agency, and they’d decended on little old Lee’s Summit, Misery, to fight the scurvy pirates who would record the latest Batman on handi-cam for the purposes of, well, making money off someone else’s Intellectual Property. At least that’s the story I got out of Mr. MPAA Cop Guy #2.
Also, The Dark Knight wasn’t that good. That’s my review
I’ve probably coined hundreds of words over the years; most of which were of dubious utility. But some (ok, two) have become commonly used such as “bullshido” and “fucktard”, both coined sometime in the early-mid 90’s. I’m not sure if I should be overly proud of the latter, but I’ll take credit for it nonetheless.
Having forgotten many of these ‘neologisms’ or terms I figured I should use this blog as a repository for them going forward, as they pop into my head. This category will serve as part dictionary, part repository, part shameful reminder as I’ll probably regret having posted many of these as they’ll be of little use and only apply to Internet culture in many cases.
Douchebagwork describes the videos people post on Internet sites such as YouTube, etc, in which they demonstrate horrible striking “skills” (in quotes because it barely applies most of the time) on a heavybag, pads, focus mits, or more idiotic things such as trees and wooden posts.
I’d coined the term earlier but applied it to this video of former Bullshido forums poster “Omar” who was essentially laughed off the site after backing down from a challenge by kickboxer Kat Johnson:
The term can also be used as “douche bagwork” or “douchebag work” depending on the context.
Yarr…
300 mg of caffeine, a chest workout, and listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack will do crazy things to a man.
