Author Archives: Raizen

YouTube Channel Review: AngryAussie

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What YouTube angrymen become in a decade.

Suppose you’re in the mood for some righteous indignation. Some frequent, scheduled YouTube content where some guy shouts at the camera about random topics. Then you stumble across an old channel called “AngryAussie”. You watch a few videos and say, “No thanks”, then you keep searching.

That’s pretty much the entire AngryAussie experience.

However, suppose you were to stick around and poke about his archives. That’s when things really start to get interesting.

For one thing, you find out that the channel is old. Really old. Some of his videos have been around for over a decade, so he got into YouTube shortly after it got started.

You also notice something else: there was a time in which the guy was skinnier. Much, much skinnier. He does take his efforts to hide it. His avatar is of himself from back when he was skinnier, and his newer content shows him from the chest up, whereas the content from when he was much skinnier showed him from the waist up. While he’s going to these pains to make a better image for himself, he’s apparently not taking the effort to lay off the donuts.

Why does it matter? When you spend time in front of the camera, your image is part of what you’re doing; your face is how you make your living. And, as it would seem, time has not been kind to AngryAussie.

This is true in more than one sense. While his older content from shortly after he got started had viewcounts numbering in the thousands and even tens of thousands, his newer content only has viewcounts numbering in the hundreds. Yet, he keeps going, with a certain persistence that one would only have if it didn’t matter to them that no one is interested in their content any longer.

And that brings us to the main problem with AngryAussie’s channel: the content.

AngryAussie’s videos can best be described as going on angry tangents about whatever is newsworthy or whatever random topics just happen to catch his ire. When I say “angry”, I don’t mean “angry” as in “tee-hee he’s an internet comedian with his fair share of clever zingers”. I mean “angry” as in “aggressively beats you over the head with whatever point he’s trying to make”.

Unless your opinion is completely in lock-step with whatever point he’s trying to make, you’re bound to come away feeling at least a little condescended. This already does plenty to limit AngryAussie’s appeal. But it gets worse: if you leave a comment telling him that you disagree with him at all, prepare to see your comment deleted, and your account possibly being banned from his channel.

AngryAussie seems pretty sincere in the belief that freedom of expression should belong to him, but not to the people who frequent his channel. One could argue that this made him very early to the SJW movement. However, when your content has very limited appeal to begin with, it’s a bad idea to block whatever few viewers that you have over petty disagreements.

Want evidence of this? Go back to his earlier videos. At one point in time, he replied to most people who commented, and it’s interesting to sort them by date to see him replying to comments that are no longer there. Of course, it would be much easier for him to respond to each commenter now, seeing as he has so few. The fact that he blocks those who argue back likely has something to do with how few viewers he has.

If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out to begin with. In fact, critical feedback is a good thing, as it provides insight on how to improve. It’s not unusual to run into criticism that has no purpose other than to tear you down, but the solution to that is to carry on unfazed, and grow some thicker skin, if need be.

Let’s take an example of his content to see just what we’re dealing with. The following video is titled “WAINGAFAT? Koran quoting bigots!”

Your first question may be “What is a WAINGAFAT? Some kind of Australian slang?” No, it’s an acronym which is short for “What Am I Not Giving A Fuck About Today”.

His choice of topic is one that I agree with, because I too get tired of seeing bigots use the Koran to advance their sordid agenda. Let’s examine what he has to say.

INTRO WARNING: Content starts at 0:17

“Who am I not giving a fuck about today? Random losers who go around online and prove that Islam is evil,”

Wow, there goes my expectations! As it turns out, the people who he thinks are losers are those who are critical of a religion. This happens to be something that AngryAussie himself does, by the way.

INTERNAL CONTRADICTION WARNING: He does it in this very same video.

“putting out random, out-of-context quotes from the Koran, saying ‘THAT PROVES IT!'”

It does prove it. If a fanatical ideology that kills people has a proclamation calling for the death of non-believers in it’s very charter, that is proof that it is a violent ideology. QED.

“…A quote from the Koran doesn’t prove a fucking thing.”

This would get quite a response if it were instead directed at Muslims. They’d wonder just who this man is that he thinks that he’s in a position to tell them what their religion is all about. They’d call him a religiouly-ignorant rattling cap. And they’d be right.

“Something is lost on you because you’re not capable of a logical sequence of thought.”

Apparently it’s not logical thinking to point out what a book says as the reason behind the behavior of those who take it seriously. Also, it’s apparently not logical to look for reasons why a particular ideology turns out a disproportionately high number of violent fanatics.

“You do not actually LISTEN to other people. Listening involves understanding what the other person says. Not just waiting for your next turn to spout some shit.”

From 0:55 to 1:07. That’s the point in the video in which he completely demolishes everything that he’s ever done on YouTube. Go ahead, watch it. If you’ve seen any of his other videos, or just this one for that matter, you’re going to laugh so hard.

In just 12 seconds, he destroyed his entire YouTube career.

“I can give you quotes from both the New and Old Testament that justify murder, rape, and slavery. Does that mean that all Christians and Jews are terrorists too?”

No, you can’t. Murder and rape are endorsed nowhere in the Bible. In the Old Testament, slavery was merely tolerated, and heavily regulated to the point that it wouldn’t have been considered attractive to practice. The New Testament discouraged slavery in favor of a brotherly relationship between believers, which was the entire point of the book of Philemon. The Christian world would eventually use New Testament reasoning to call for the abolition of slavery in the western world altogether.
Source: Every reputable theologian and Bible scholar ever.

On the other hand, Muslim countries still practice slavery, and some are actively involved in the African slave trade to this day.

“Um, Atheists, don’t bother answering that, because I know what your answer will be.”

AngryAussie himself is an Atheist, and therefore assumes their response. I don’t, but that’s because I believe that most Atheists are better people than AngryAussie.

“But where they do start to shit me a bit is when they say ‘you should read the Koran, then you’d know’ as if they’d read the Koran. And they will bald-faced lie and say that they’ve read the Koran.”

What really starts to “shit him a bit” is when someone not only presents evidence, but invites him to see the evidence for himself. It’s easier for him to just say that they’ve never read the Koran, and then never bother to look into it. This is called, “being lazy.”

As an aside, I’ve read the Koran. Extensively. In fact, I’ve spent thousands of hours researching Islamic ideology to see just why Muslims do what they do, and whether the desire of their fanatics is actually supported by the Koran. And it is. It didn’t even take a few hours to arrive at that determination; the reason why I’ve researched it so much is because Islamic theology is fascinating. Muhammad was the Chris-Chan of the 7th century.

That fact isn’t preventing AngryAussie from doing no research whatsoever and then acting like he has any idea what’s going on.

“This is the same kind of moron who pulls a quote out and says ‘this proves gay marriage is evil and wrong, homosexuality is bad’ because it’s described in the Bible as ‘an abomination’. Yeah, in Leviticus, the Jewish book of law. So, if your using that, saying ‘ooh, that’s God’s word, that’s absolutely it’, Leviticus also talks about keeping Kosher! Do you keep Kosher, right along with saying that man-on-man sex is an abomination?”

It’s amazing how, with every word, AngryAussie proves that he doesn’t understand a thing about Christian or Jewish ideology. For one thing, homosexuality wasn’t just denounced in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, it was also denounced in the New Testament book of Romans. There is New Testament justification for the Christian position on homosexuality. The key difference is that the NT doesn’t call for stoning people for being gay. The reason for that is because the command to stone them is understood to be limited to Israeli national law, which is why Christians and Jews don’t practice stoning.
Source: Every reputable theologian and Biblical scholar ever.

Incidentally, Islam not only actively teaches that homosexuality is wrong, but actively calls for the death penalty for those who practice it. If you think that they’re wrong, find the Koran passage that tells them that they’re wrong, go over to ISIS, and show them. They claim to take the Koran seriously, so let’s see how they take it. It would probably be an eye-opening experience for them.

“And, Orthodox Jews? You don’t have to answer that, because I know what your answer will be.”

I suspect that it would sound something like, “You just mocked what we stood for. Don’t act like we’re friends.”

In the end of the video, he does admit that some “dodgy” things are done in the name of Islam, so by that point, he’ll have insulted every religion that he mentioned in his video. He wraps up by saying that he isn’t interested in any resultant backlash that may result from touching on this topic, which is what you’d expect from an internet angry man who can’t take it as well as he dishes it out. Want proof? Scroll down and try finding the comments of the commenters he insults. Can’t do it? That’s because he deleted them.

Of course, that regrettable pile of crap was from 8 years ago. What’s AngryAussie up to today? If you answered making fun of Donald Trump and calling right-wingers Nazis, then that groan of “Of course. Another one of those.” probably came from you.

So yeah, AngryAussie is currently competing directly with the corporate mainstream information media, and pushing the SJW narrative at a time when the SJW movement is going through its backlash phase, during which it’s seriously not cool to be an SJW. And if the SJW movement is anything like the punk or hippie movements that preceded it (it is), the whole thing is only going downhill from here on out, and in just a short while, the dead-enders will be the only ones left.

I’m getting tired of this guy, so it’s about time to give his channel it’s score, which is censorship out of ten.

berlin book burning out of ten

Which is a zero. That’s what you get when you get on a platform that gives you a voice, call everyone else stupid for not having your worldview, then delete the comments from those who respond in kind. Enjoy having a platform that YouTube grants you totally free of charge, while denying that same platform for your fellow users.

The right way to play Pokemon Gold and Silver

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pokemon gold silver

With Pokemon Gold and Silver being released to Virtual Console today, there will be many players out there that will look up teambuilding guides, considering that the Gold and Silver versions were hard.

Some would look up things like “Best Team For (Pokemon game or region)”. While these guides seem well-thought-out and comprehensive, they are flawed and are generally terrible for making in-game teams. The reason for this is because these guides usually suggest full teams of six pokemon with the idea being to be prepared for what the game throws at you, but these guides are terrible for the late game, when you face much higher-level opponents, and the EXP you get from battle doesn’t spread as well among six pokemon, leaving you underleveled and struggling against the later, more powerful opponents. This can be overcome with grinding, but it’s a serious chore to level up six pokemon one-at-a-time.

A better way to play the game is to focus on a core of three or four pokemon of different types, so you’ll have that balance of team diversity, and be on par with most opponents you face. The other two team members can be there for HMs so you can overcome the numerous obstacles that these games throw your way.

So, on to the team:

Your starter should be Cyndaquil. It’s hands-down the best Johto starter, and is well-equipped to take on many of the game’s challenges. It’s a fire type in a region where it’s great to be a fire type, having an advantage against gym leaders such as Bugsy and Jasmine, and against the common Grass and Bug types that you see many trainers use. Fire types are hard to come across in Johto, but this one is available to you at the start of the game.

Not only that, Typlosion rocks. It can learn Thunderpunch and Earthquake, which gives it excellent coverage against pokemon it would normally struggle against.

Cyndaquil can solo the game until you get to Goldenrod City, but it’s not a bad idea to get it a Pidgey companion until then. For one thing, Cyndaquil is weak to Mud Slap, which is spammed by Falkner, and lowers its accuracy. Pidgey is immune to the move, and gives you another pokemon to switch into to bring Cyndaquil’s accuracy back to normal. Also, later in the game, you can have Pidgey use Fly to get you around. You can instead get yourself a Hoothoot to do the same thing, if you think Pidgey is too mainstream. Also, Hoothoot can learn Flash, so it’s actually better in that regard.

Once you make it all the way to Route 34, you can catch yourself two pokemon that do your team big favors. One is Abra. Abra only knows Teleport, so catching it mostly involves chucking Pokeballs at it right off the bat and hoping they work. Once you catch an Abra, it doesn’t do much of anything until it reaches level 16. But when it does, it evolves to a superstrong Kadabra, and immediately gains a useful attack move. Not only that, Kadabra tends to learn strong moves sooner than it really needs to. Its defensive stats are low, but with the kind of speed and special attack stats it has, it might not matter very often. Glass cannon.

If you know someone else with Gold or Silver, you can evolve it to Alakazam through trading. This makes an already great pokemon even better, but still isn’t necessary because Kadabra can still get you through the game.

The second pokemon you want to catch on Route 34 is Drowzee. Not to raise, but to trade to someone in the Goldenrod Dept. Store for a Machop. Machop is great for a number of reasons. For one thing, it can just about solo Goldenrod’s Gym. Not only that, it can beat the many Normal and Rock types that you run into with ease. It learns strong moves that match its type by itself, has a high attack stat, and stays useful throughout the game. The fact that it levels up faster due to being a traded pokemon is the cherry on top.

Now, some might wonder about how to handle Whitney herself. She has a reputation for having a Miltank that’s so strong, that it brings many playthroughs to an end by discouraging players from continuing any further.

While Stomp and Milk Drink are moves to watch out for, the main concern with Miltank is its move Rollout, which starts out weak but gets to the point of wiping out teams as it’s used consecutively. However, this can be easily beaten by lowering Miltank’s accuracy. Cyndaquil might be weak to Rollout, but it starts out as a weak enough move that Cyndaquil might get a few uses of Smokescreen in. If Rollout can’t hit consecutively, it doesn’t gain in strength. After that, Machop can clean up with ease. With this strategy, Whitney will be crying away in no time. For those who never beat her, that literally happens. Be ready for it. Oh Whitney, why do you have to make things hard for us, every step of the way?

For your next team member, you have a pick between two equally-good choices. One is Gyarados from the Lake of Rage. It’s convenient in that you get it as part of a scripted event, so you can’t miss it (though you can fail to catch it, so save the game before battling it). Once you catch it, it can clear through most opponents just using Thrash, which it can use several times in a row with just one PP. It can also learn Surf, Waterfall, and Strength, which are good as attack moves or to use Gyarados as an HM slave. The drawback for Gyarados is that it doesn’t learn any moves that both match its type and utilizes its outstanding attack stat. All Water moves are special attacks in gen 2, and Gyarados doesn’t learn any Flying moves.

It’s more inconvenient, but Lapras is an excellent alternative. It can only be found in Union Cave on Friday after having beaten Morty (Surf is needed to get to it), but it’s well worth the effort. It’s a little on the slow side, but it has high HP and its stats are otherwise balanced, and it’s a Water/Ice type that can learn Ice Beam by itself. You’d have Surf at that point, so you’ll have a strong move for it already, and you can teach it Thunder if you want.

The other two pokemon on your team can be HM slaves, which can include things like Pidgey/Hoothoot to fly you around, something that can use Whirlpool if you prefer not to teach it to Lapras, or if you’re going with Lapras, you can still keep Gyarados around for HMs.

You can use either Lugia or Ho-oh on your team, depending on which version you’re playing. If so, it might be better to use it as a substitution for another pokemon on your team, if to avoid type redundancy. Lugia might make a good replacement for Lapras/Gyarados or Kadabra, to avoid having too many weaknesses to Electric or Dark. Players might be a little squeamish about subbing out their starter, but Ho-oh can replace Cyndaquil/Quilava/Typhlosion pretty well. It might add another weakness to electricity to your team, but Ho-oh’s special defense is very high, so Electric attacks might not do much damage, anyway.

So, there you have it. With this team, Pokemon Gold and Silver will be much easier. Certain opponents such as Lance and Red still won’t be a cakewalk, but this can get you through much of the game, without having to power-level too much. If you want a challenge, the Gold and Silver versions don’t have a Hard Mode. But you can go with Chikorita as your starter. That would make the game plenty hard.

Disagree with some of my team choices? Comments section.

Soup sucks.

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If sadness had an official food, that food would be soup. That’s because soup is almost entirely insubstantial. There’s a few chunks of meat or vegetables or whatever, but the vast majority of it is broth. What is broth made of? It’s water, flavored by whatever else is in the soup. Therefore, soup is mostly water. Does water make a good meal? Of course not.

In just a few bites, you’ll have eaten the substance out of the soup, and be left with flavored water. So, what do you do? Leave the table, of course. You’re done. But no, not if you happen to share the table with a Pharisee. The busybody will come after you for not finishing your “meal”.

So, how do you finish your “meal”? By lifting the bowl up to your face and drinking your water. But no, you’re not being miserable enough for Mrs. Manners. She’ll want you to lift that water up to your face one spoonful at a time, and sip it with the kind of dignified elegance you’d only see in an old oriental painting.

Is it okay if I’m at least a little indelicate? I’m a man, after all. My idea of repairing an old motor is to hit it with a comically large hammer and seeing whether that makes it start.

You know what’s better for dinner than soup? Just about anything, really. Like stew. If you’d take the water out of soup, what you’d be left with is stew. Stew is great because it’s not watered down and insubstantial. Soup is stew, cut with water.

Also, curry. Curry is great. That’s some good eating, right there. Most people complain about it because it’s super spicy, but that’s the great thing about it. Their problem is that they’re being wimps. Spicy food rocks.

Do you know anyone who actually likes soup? I thought not. Therefore, argument over. I win. I know about the famous “Soup Nazi” that was marketed using an episode of Seinfeld. If it weren’t for Seinfeld, no one would care that there was a restaurant in New York City that sells soup. There are a bunch of other restaurants in New York City. Why anyone would stand in line for soup, then pay for it, I have no idea.

Your man card is lame.

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Out of curiosity, I looked up man cards using Google image search. This one caught my attention:

7996199156_57370e5b72_z

The fact that it was made on an existing template wasn’t really new. It’s another symptom of meme culture, and can be likened to another 13 year old DeviantArt artist that thinks that they’re making something of their own by tracing/vectoring someone else’s work.

The reason why this “man card” is lame is because the feats listed are lame. I suspected that maybe the creator was aiming for something ironic, and I was ready to hammer on it anyway on the claim that I was taking it at face value. However, I found the blog entry that featured it prominently, used in a non-ironic manner. At least I didn’t have to go out of my way to credit the author, considering that the watermark was so huge. The fact that he was willing to go so far out of his way to take credit for it led me to the conclusion that he was really serious about this.

The problem with his man card is the same problem that I see with so many other man cards: the feats aren’t really feats, which leads me to suspect that the author is keeping expectations within his own ability to fulfill them.

In fact, here is a list of each of these accomplishments with me making fun of them one at a time:

Grow Mustaache (sic)
Stop for a moment and let it sink in that a spelling error is in the very first feat on his card. That’s the level of ineptitude we are dealing with here. Not only that, there’s the fact that he has growing a mustache listed as a feat. Growing a mustache isn’t a challenge. Your body does it by itself if you let it. Unless you live under some fanatical oppressive government that is cracking down on mustaches, growing one is no more an accomplishment than drinking beer.

Drink Beer
The simple consumption of a grown-up beverage. I’m sure your daddy is real impressed. If you’re one of those guys that avoids alcohol for whatever reason, then I suppose drinking barley juice would suffice.

Rescue kitten from tree
I’m giving the author this one, even though it’s another task that one can accomplish without leaving their back yard. After all, it’s the closest thing on his wimpy little man card that bears any resemblance to a real accomplishment. But somehow, I get the idea that he was so eager to put it on his card because it was the most exciting thing that he had ever done.

Survive a snake bite
Lame. For one thing, why would you want to give snakes a chance? What’s more, 90% of snakes are non-venomous and therefore surviving a bite from one is not an accomplishment in which you can take true pride. Unless it’s from something hardcore like an anaconda, there’s not much to brag about in surviving a snake bite.

Eat Bacon
Oh yeah, because we all know how much of a challenge it is to go to the supermarket, spend a few dollars on something, then prepare it for consumption after taking it home. By the way, everyone can get over bacon, already. Edward Bernays is dead, so let’s just move on.

Bait your own hook
If he wanted something on here about fishing, he could have made it something like catching a trout then killing, cooking, and eating it. Instead, he wants to brag about baiting the hook. At this point, he wouldn’t surprise me if one of these feats was “wiping from front to back”.

Wear spandex without looking fruity
That’s right, he wants you to wear spandex. Also, it matters to him whether you look “fruity” while doing so.

Adjust your own derailleur
That’s right, he literally listed changing gears on your bicycle. Something that can be done with levers mounted on handlebars for that very purpose. Notice the use of the word “own”, because adjusting someone else’s gears would not be satisfactory.

Fix your own bike
This is almost an accomplishment, but it’s not as though bikes are mechanically complex. Seeing as the author writes for a mountain biking blog, it’s strange that he’d list it as being a true feat. Obviously, he wanted to take the opportunity to elevate his own hobby by elevating a mundane task thereof to the status of manliness. It’s easy to see through.

Wear pink, confidently
No.

Kill Spiders
Did the author’s girlfriend write this? This isn’t exactly a feat of daring. Men are much bigger than spiders. Much, much bigger. The spiders wouldn’t stand a chance.

Drink Espresso
I’m sure that the guy who listed “Eat Bacon” as a manly deed would find just as much fulfillment by going to Starbucks, ordering one of their espressos, then drinking it. What kind of sheltered life does this person live if he’s listing such modern conveniences on his man card?

Ride a motorcycle
The reason why motorcycles are considered manly is by association with the manly men that ride them. When we see someone ride a motorcycle, we imagine that the rider does gutsy things, such as punching rattlesnakes. Now we know that there’s one biker out there that wants a gold star for eating bacon.

Shoot Guns
I suppose that BB guns count, and those tin cans in his back yard didn’t stand much of a chance. For the two or three communist-sympathizing net cafe refugees that read this, no, shooting a gun isn’t hard.

Work on any car
It doesn’t say “get it working again”, so you can be completely inept and claim full credit just for trying. Yay for participation trophies!

Grill Meat
When I came to this one, I decided to go back and make a tally of how many feats on this card involve food. It’s four. Great work, He Man. You can eat things.

Smoke Cigars
Smoking is one of the stupidest things that people today do. You know you’re dealing with something special when people willingly consume a product that tells you that it causes cancer on the label. If someone tells you that he doesn’t consider you manly unless you smoke, you don’t need his respect.

That’s it? That’s a relief. If he kept going, he’d probably have suggested walking the dog or eating ham. What a lame-o man card. I’d be embarrassed to carry something like that around.

While looking, I found a man card that I actually liked, and it was posted in a Wikia about manliness, of all things:

Man_Card_-_Manly_Wiki

Now that’s what I call a Man Card. The fonts, the pic of Mike Conley, and the fact that the feats are actual feats, it’s great. I haven’t even done all the things listed on that card. That’s what a real man card is all about: challenging yourself to do things that you have to come out of your comfort zone to do. If more people carried man cards like this, and accomplished its feats, women would spend less time wondering where the real men went.

But if you’re wondering where the round-faced Nancy-boys are, they’re the ones that are at home giving themselves check marks for eating bacon.

The Emoji Movie is proof that film makers think we’re stupid.

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Have you noticed how theater staff treats you like you’re stupid? They’ll either roll their eyes as you tell them your movie selection, or they’ll be passive-aggressive about whatever snack you’re ordering.

It could be because they’re yet another teenager that’s upset about having a job that they don’t like which they themselves applied for and underwent the interview process for, and made the decision to leave the house that day to do, just as they did the day before. But I think there’s more to it than that.

Personally, I suspect that theater staff really thinks we’re stupid. And when you consider the kind of dreck that theaters show and people pay to watch, it’s hard to blame them.

Consider The Emoji Movie. Yep, they really made that.

the emoji movie stupid

Predictably enough, many reviewers think that they’re being clever by saying that the poop emoji is fitting to describe it. Everyone needs to get over the poop emoji, already. I get it. They made an emoticon that appeals to all the mouth-breathers that think that poop is funny. There’s even a poop emoji pillow, and you can buy it at Target using your Capital One credit card and enjoy a tall Starbucks S’mores Frappuccino on location, in case what you’re doing isn’t corporate enough.

I found out about The Emoji Movie at a theater when I went to see Transformers: The Last Knight. I didn’t read any reviews or plot summaries, so I didn’t know what to expect outside of what the previous Michael Bay Transformers movies were like. Speaking of, I find it hilarious when reviewers act disappointed when Transformers movies by Michael Bay are filled with gratuitous explosions and fighting. Michael Bay directed four other Transformers movies before this one, so I’m wondering just what it was that they were expecting at this point.

What I wasn’t expecting from The Last Knight was that it would be a Transformers movie incorporating Authurian legend into the plot. I’m not kidding, there was a Transformers movie with a plot that involved King Arthur, Merlin the wizard, and the knights of the round table.

What flies in the face of this whole film (aside from the fact that the tales about Arthur and Excalibur are a ripoff of the legends surrounding King Charlemagne and his sword, the Joyeuse) is Optimus Prime’s so-called moral that states that there’s some truth to every legend:

“At the heart of every legend, there is truth: a few brave souls unite to save the world. We can be heroes in our own lives, every one of us, if we only have the courage to try.”
Optimus Prime, in a movie where the main character is a stereotypical “chosen one”.

It’s like they wanted to go with that moral, regardless of what actually happened in the narrative. Not everyone is selected by destiny to do something extraordinary. Most people actually are completely ordinary, and you probably are, too. Besides, not every legend has “some truth” to it. Some of them are complete boloney.

No wonder theater staff thinks we’re stupid. They’re merely reflecting the sentiments of the film industry. How else does one explain how a movie about emojis goes from being a script to a full-length film shown in theaters nationwide? It doesn’t help that we’re paying $12 to see a movie once at a certain time when, if we were to wait a couple months, we can download it for about the same price and then watch it whenever we want, as many times as we want. If waiting for that isn’t a big deal, do we really need theaters?

Beware the Fist-Cough Cult

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There’s this weird thing where if a person feels a cough coming on, they put their fist in front of their mouth and cough on it. I don’t know who started it, but I know it has to stop.

You know what I mean, because everyone knows someone who does it. When they feel a cough coming on they make a fist and expel their germs all over it, entirely unaware that air can flow around an object or to the side because of it, which can get the people next to them sick. Yeah, simple physics applies to the air displaced by coughing, as well.

Then they proceed to get their freshly germ-covered sausage fingers all over utensils, door handles, and just about anything else that they can touch.

The reason why these people upset me is because I don’t want to get sick too. Slowing the spread of disease is a community effort, requiring the cooperation of everyone. If one person holds on to some health myth that results in the spread of a communicable disease, that could be all it takes to get the rest of the people around them sick, even if everyone else exercises the proper precautions. For example, it was believed that the measles was wiped out, but it resurfaced, thanks to the anti-vaxxers for stubbornly clinging to the false notion that vaccines cause autism. A few people decided to fail in their human duty to use their brains to the benefit of society, and the whole collective was punished for it. Thanks, pinheads.

It’s almost as though there’s some weird cult out there that believes in ritualistically forming a fist and placing it in front of their mouths when coughing as a means to make themselves better and gain the approval of some magic coughing leprechauns. Who knows? Maybe there is some weird fist-coughing cult. Notice how people do this as though conditioned to do so from childhood? There’s the evidence of a cult, right there.

And if there is such a cult, it probably holds to other tenets, as well. They probably invented this whole “small talk” thing, which conditions people into feeling as though they need acknowledgement of their existence from everyone that they see, including random strangers that they pass in hallways. Or it could be that that stems from being conceited. I don’t know. But if it is some weird cult, that would give me another group to beat up in my fantasies. Such as Emos.

Now that I went and posted this, some people from this cult are going to read it, and then get so angry about it, that they gather together in one of their assemblies to discuss what to do about it. Then they decide on some weird kind of sorcery that bears a striking resemblance to square dancing. It doesn’t have any effect on anything, but they convince themselves that it does, then they go on to play some shuffleboard, and they’ll go right on coughing on their fists, not aware of how ridiculous it makes them look.

Webcomic Review: Rain LGBT

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not cleverNo, it’s not.

We have yet another one of those. By now, you should know what I mean; yet another wannabe non-Japanese manga artist attempting the manga style.

This one has a very obvious agenda. And no, I didn’t pick this one out just to hammer on something with its subject material. It just happened to be a webcomic that caught my attention.

Rain stars a boy named Ryan, and the story picks up with his first day in high school in which he dresses up as a girl and starts going by the name “Rain”. By the way, I’m referring to Rain with pronouns corresponding to his biological gender, because it’s easier to touch on issues such as this with at least one foot in reality. Because science wins.

And speaking of reality, no, science cannot change a person’s biological gender. The most that a person can do in that regard is have their body butchered to closely resemble a person of the opposite gender. This means that the legend of the “sex change” operation is only a myth. Most trans people who learn of this get discouraged and settle for wearing a dress and accusing those who use their biological pronouns of hate speech.

But hey, this is a webcomic, so there’s pretty much no such thing as too fantastic. They’re expressions of someone’s fantasies, so they can be about any made up thing they want. The author’s fantasy in Rain is that a cross-dressing high school boy happens to find some of the most supportive friends he can happen across, all in one place. In fact, almost the entire cast encompasses the wide range of diversity in sexuality, which would be pretty amazing in real life considering that the school setting for Rain is an American school, where anyone can be picked on at any time for any petty thing.

Because this is the fantasy of someone with an agenda, it should come as no surprise that there are straw men for the heroes to ideologically trounce. And in Rain, the main one is Gavin, who is initially depicted as being a cisgender bundle of toxic masculinity. Gavin was Rain’s childhood friend who finds out that Ryan is going by Rain and dressing as a girl, and he does not take it well. No prize for guessing that we’re allowed to think that he’s a jerk, but he does get over it. There is also the principal himself, who can be called an old stuffy suit.

The conflict in Rain comes mainly in verbal interaction between the characters, rather than physical action. Considering this, special care must be taken to prevent the comic from descending into a collection of talking heads. Care to guess whether this happens? Sometimes, large portions of the comic are dominated by large walls of text, such as this particularly egregious offender.

This is certainly the worst one in the series, though the next page is also pretty bad. When writing a webcomic, it’s best to keep in mind that what you’re authoring isn’t a light novel, it’s a visual novel, and one of the main rules for writing for visual media is “show, don’t tell”. The potential to engage the audience by conveying plot development visually is wasted with walls of exposition. And it comes off as lazy. Even if you take the effort to redraw your characters in each panel, the talking heads approach to storytelling is just bland. Check out this example.

There’s pretty much nothing exciting about it. And it’s the kind of thing that you can look forward to in each exciting installment of Rain.

And speaking of lazy, let’s talk about Rain’s artistic style. As mentioned already, Rain is done with an attempt at manga style. All the tropes associated with manga style are there: oversized eyes, tiny mouths, pointed chins, etc. It comes off as a cheap shortcut, because it pretty much is.

When you criticize someone for using the manga style as a crutch, they usually go on the defensive, and claim that it’s their style. Which it isn’t. The manga style has evolved over the course of decades at the hands of countless professionals including animators, mangaka, and freelance artists. They did not do this just so someone can claim it as their own. And for that matter, why anime or manga style? Why not the style that Jim Davis uses for Garfield? Or the style that Berke Breathed used for Outland? Why do so many people think that they’re being cutting edge for using a style that has been used in Japanese cartoons for the better part of a century? For that matter, why not use the Disney style that inspired it?

I do want to make it clear that I like the manga style, and you’re welcome to try it if you can do it justice. LittleLynn84 doesn’t do it justice. It’s hard to choose one stylistic mistake to pick out as the worst. Such as that the eyes seem just a tad too close together for how big they are. Or how the faces look too elongated, despite having little forehead (note: manga style characters usually have large foreheads, even if they’re covered mostly by bangs). Or the fact that LittleLynn84 doesn’t seem to like to shade. It all adds up.

Ironically, the people most likely to be offended by Rain would be trans people themselves. This is because Rain referred to his condition as “dysphoria”, a word that is used by opponents of the trans movement to point out that “gender dysphoria” is officially recognized as a mental illness by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a disease that usually runs its course in just a few years. And yes, I actually recalled the name of that book from memory. Go figure.

Of course, it doesn’t help the trans cause that it’s being championed by such an insipid webcomic. Because as it is, even a trans person would find very little to enjoy. In fact, I admit that I didn’t even read the whole thing. I got 150 pages in, and after that, I flit about to look for signs of stylistic improvement and to see whether the story picks up. The author uses a different tool for drawing, but that’s about it. Usually, when a webcomic continues for nearly 1000 pages, there’s some sign of improvement somewhere, but in Rain, there is none. Even the storytelling remains just as dull and uninspired. There was so much potential and so much unbroken ground in the subject matter, but it was largely squandered.

Don’t believe me? The last several issues were spent leading up to a prom that still seems far off. If you’re going to build up to something, then the build-up itself has to be entertaining. Otherwise, it’s going to seem like there’s nothing going on in your comic. And that’s Rain in a nutshell. It’s a long, painful, ugly comic where nothing happens.

Oh, by the way, here’s a picture of Kagura from Azumanga Daioh, for some reason:

woe indeed

Oh, hold on. That’s not Kagura. My mistake. Here’s the real Kagura:

kagura azumanga

Now to give Rain it’s score:

3.2 / 10

Yeah that’s right, nothing cute this time. Just a number. As I see it, if LittleLynn84 doesn’t want to make a halfway-decent webcomic, then I’m under no obligation to give it a cute score, as I’ve done with the others up to this point.

By the way, the fan art looks awful, too. But considering the source material, the fan artists didn’t really have much to work with. The very fact that something like Rain resulted in such a volume of fan art is sobering in its own sense.

Body sprays are cheap, and so are the people that use them.

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throw that stuff outResist the marketing.

You may have noticed that the people who use body spray are slow-witted knuckle-draggers. This is not a coincidence, because these are the people that this garbage is marketed toward.

They think that they are so cute for spraying this stuff all over themselves, as the rest of us are left gasping for air and actually tasting cheap perfume on our tongues as we attempt to breathe through our mouths in places such as shopping malls, trying to find bread that isn’t ruined by the fragrance in grocery stores, and filling up our cars with caution at gas stations as their body sprays pose a greater ignition hazard than the gasoline itself. In some cases, you can literally smell them coming from hundreds of feet away.

As amazing and tragic as it may sound, they have no idea. The reason for this is due to a phenomenon known as olfactory fatigue.

Olfactory fatigue is what’s happening when you become so used to a smell that you lose the ability to notice it. When someone uses a new kind of body spray on themselves, usually they stop with a brief spray. But after about a week of wearing it, they’ll start to go heavy on it, thinking that the spray is somehow getting weaker.

To make matters worse for the rest of us, body spray manufacturers encourage douchebags everywhere to nearly bathe in the stuff. One brand even encourages users to spray it on their clothes. Some canisters even have a diagram showing a person spraying it all around them. Isn’t that a marketer’s dream come true? Consumers that grossly over-apply their products so they’ll head back out to the store to buy more of it.

body spray

Using body spray comes off as a cheap substitution for taking a shower. Stop telling the world that you take cheap shortcuts and instead practice proper hygiene. I know that some that use body spray will attempt to justify it by saying “But Raizen, I do shower.” Whether you shower or not, the perception that people who use body sprays don’t shower still exists. If you apply body sprays after showering, people will think you didn’t shower. Stop defeating your own endeavors.

And while you’re at it, throw out all your body sprays. You don’t need them, marketers convinced you that you do. Prove to them and everyone else that you can think for yourself by throwing out all your body spray, and don’t buy any more.

Further reading: When I got into writing this article, I did some research, and was surprised at just how dangerous body fragrances can be. For one thing, there’s the fact that fragrances used in body sprays have been linked to a decrease in virility and fertility, which I’m pretty sure is the exact opposite of what the people that use these things are going for.

Then there’s the fact that there are thousands of ingredients that give body fragrances their smell, some of which are carcinogenic and can cause organ damage. These ingredients don’t have to be individually listed on labels, either. They can simply be referred to as “parfum” or “fragrance”.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find cancer sexy.

They can even be the cause of your inexplicable headaches, as explained by this article written from a more personal perspective. Then there’s the obvious problem with chemical sensitivity, which may be less of an allergy in the traditional sense and more of a survival mechanism that your body uses to inform you that something is not right with your environment.

When it comes right down to it, humans are not supposed to smell like aerosol and diluted industrial waste. If you want to smell like a field of flowers, go buy some flowers. What’s that? That’s expensive? Yeah, it is. But the things that are worth having sometimes are. But as for those cheap cans of body fragrance, just get rid of it.

Metroid Prime 4: The logo that won E3

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metroid-prime-4 pwnage

A while back, I told someone I knew that if Nintendo would make a Metroid game for Nintendo Switch, I’d buy one. Metroid Prime 4 was announced at E3, and in less than a week, I responded to this announcement by going out and ordering a Switch bundle at Gamestop.

I know that I said before that buying a game when all you know about it is the title isn’t a good thing for the games industry, but there are exceptions. Games developed by Nintendo and Pokemon games are the safest bets out there. Of course, there are also games like Metroid Prime Federation Force, a game that I only recently started playing, and I’m disappointed with it all over again.

I kind of feel bad for Microsoft. They’ve worked so hard on a new console with 4K resolution (a technical spec which, if you didn’t know about it, you wouldn’t care about because all current-gen consoles look graphically identical). Then, on the day of their big announcement, Nintendo comes along and steals all of their thunder just by announcing a game and showing nothing more than its logo.

I remember when the first Metroid Prime was announced. People dissed it because they didn’t think it would turn out well as a first-person shooter developed by an American company. As it was being developed, I remember reading stories about drama involving the developer itself. Retro Studios was working on four games when they started on Metroid Prime, and by the time they were done, the team was down to half the size that it was when they started on it, with each one of them focused on Metroid Prime. Also, at some point along the way, Nintendo acquired Retro as a second party developer. As it turned out, Metroid Prime blew nearly everything released that year out of the water.

When Metroid Prime 2 was announced, there was doubt as to whether it could outdo the first one. But not only did it do that, it was actually better. And a third one was released for Wii, and it’s one of the best games on that system.

Considering the track record of the main Metroid Prime games up until this point, it might not be a bad idea to invest in some fresh boxer shorts. Because when Metroid Prime 4 drops, it’s going to demolish every pair within a 10 mile radius of it, and every child far enough from a game store to avoid it is going to run outside to catch the fallout on their tongues like snowflakes.

And it gets better. A 3DS Metroid game has been announced as well, with a trailer to go with it. Apparently, this is going to be a souped up remake of Metroid 2: Return of Samus. The new one is going to simply be titled, Metroid: Samus Returns. I went out and preordered the special edition, and completely paid it off. So yeah, if I haven’t gotten it across already, I want to play it.

This makes Nintendo’s move of going after AM2R make a little more sense, considering that they may not have wanted their game to compete with a similar fan game.

And yeah, there’s going to be new Metroid Amiibos, as well. I only recently gotten my first Amiibo, and it’s of Samus. I’m not really a huge fan of Amiibos, but I went and got one, and used it with Federation Force. It gives the mech a Samus-themed color, which aesthetically makes the game more bearable as well as give a missile bonus.

Metroid fans, lean times are nearly over. As you wait, perhaps you can give a classic Metroid game a go. The first three are on 3DS virtual console. Yes, even Super Metroid. Or, if you can find a copy, Metroid Fusion or Metroid Zero Mission. Or you can play any of the first three Metroid Prime games, if you want to catch up. Other M actually isn’t the complete unmitigated disaster it’s been made out to be. Or you can try Federation Force on the low likelihood that you’d find something to like. Not that I strongly suggest that one.

metroid fusion awesome video gameMetroid Fusion. This is what an awesome video game looks like. No 4K required.