10 disappointments of 2007

Because top 10 lists are cool and trollworthy.

10. Me buying Andrew Keen’s Cult Of The Amateur: What a waste of money. If I wanted corporate propoganda, I’d have watched some TV.

9. Japan to censor the Internet: Since China censoring the Internet isn’t bad enough…

8.  Drama and me (it’s a two-way tie for 8th place! OMFG!): Always disappointing,

6. ANN: From Justin Sevakis’ letter to Zac Berwhatshisname, it’s evident that the good folks of ANN can’t hold a decent, levelheaded view on things. Even if they do being a service to the people.
5. RIUVA: For a cool place, it has fallen so hard. Except for Lian.

4.  Owen S : Sorry pal, but if you can’t act like a decent person on IRC, you blow your credibility out of the water.

And for first place, a three-way tie:

1. ODEX, DarkMirage, and tsubaki: To keep this short, the first is a failure of morals, the second is a failure of humanity, and the third is a failure of responsibility.

And that’s it. 2007 was highly disappointing.And 2008 isn’t going to be much better.

(The Son Of) I did not see this coming and I am shocked. Shocked at the news.

Japan tries to censor the Internet. Unverified and obviously crazy sources say that the Japanese were threatened with OVER 9000 Gaijin Smashes if they did not do so.

I’m so shocked and disgusted at the news, I can’t even form an opinion.

I could talk about the events, unrelated as they were, leading up to this turn of events even M Night Shymalan would not have seen coming, and about whaling, and how cramming one quarter of 40+ million people into a land mass slightly bigger than 15 or so Singapores is bad for everyone, but I’m just as shocked at this (and at Benzair Bhutto being assassinated) to even form a coherent amateur opinion.

However, unless there is a change to the Japanese Constitution regarding TV, your plunder is safe. Unless I read it wrong (and I may have).

Worst. Christmas. Ever.

Post says it all. Spent half the day in Bangkok, then a roadtrip, then a 2-hour flight back home.

Needless to say, this is the worst Christmas, ever.

Ah well, there’s always next year.

PS: Fuuko is behind you Also, I’m back.

Animu! It printz monayz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111111oneoneone

Just one more before I hit the road…

Dying? Srsly, you jest.

For the naysayers out there, the numbers rarely lie. Even without the supposed money from outside, the industry in Japan will still survive. At least in the short run.

This also proves a pet saying of mine: People are stupid.

INVISIBLE BLOGGER

blahblahblah goingonaholidaynowgitoffamahlawn.

INVISIBLE FUUKO

AND

INVISIBLE BLOGGER

We can has community?

Dorama tl;dr: Owen becomes a gigantic badass hivemind overlord belt (ala The Borg Collective (7 of 9) or Queen Kerrigan, only not female), Mike goes “LOL NO U OWEN SI TEH HITLER LOLOLOL“ and everyone goes “Noez we si not teh Zerg/Borg”. And then, out of nowhere, someone mutters “Resistance is useless!” Or “INVISIBLE COMMUNITY”, or something.

I don’t know. I didn’t write the drama. The darned writers are on strike. I had to hire kittehs to write the darned drama LOL. At least they work for tummy rubs and love, and not cold hard cash

On the issue of Owen taking on multiple personalities, well, I’ll just say this. The Internet reveals what people truly are. I’m not being judgemental or anything, but even all the wars in the world put together could not rival the sheer intense hate that lurks on the Internet. From bastions of elitism like the gated community better known as SomethingAwful, to the depreciated slums known as 4chan, the only similarity between the two is the sheer amount of hate and evil contained within. Blog postings don’t reveal the true nature of the individual. It’s only when you put the individual into a different environment when he or she shows his true colors. I get flak from Owen for being the same kind of person on my blog as well as on IRC, well, I say it’s far better to be honest to yourself and others, rather than put on a mask and let others see that instead of the person inside. It’s got something to do with the issue of self, but that’ll take too long, and that’s not the point.

With that said, I think Owen has pushed out a rather fine idea. While I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of the collective, it does seem that at least they have something in common. Community-building is something we all must learn. That, and learning how to gracefully take criticism, something even I have to learn.

Unfortunately, while I do applaud the efforts of Owen and his Borg Collective, I won’t be taking part in it, or be a part of it. I, uh, am not a socialite. And I have issues with some of it’s members.

But the question remains: Is Owen truly a visionary, or is he just a petty tyrant? Only time will tell, and so far, he’s looking like a famous Chinese Man whose shares his English name with a rather popular boy wizard in fiction (who is also ripped, from my personal Intertubes).

planetarian: 2 years on, changes, recollections, and hope.

Everyone knows I’ve been somewhat zealous with the promotion of this game, and it’s personal benefits (to me mostly), so instead of asking people to get the game, I will simply say this:

Ever since I played that game all the way back on that October day, I have found my life changed beyond comparison. Long story short, I became a Christian, and accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, yaddayaddayadda. Even though it did take me a year to finally do it.

While I felt really horrible inside the third playthrough, no tears were shed. While this could be attributed to the fact I was playing it this time round at a late hour and was kinda rushing through it (1.5 hours instead of 3) and that I had already played the game twice and listened to the soundtrack incessantly, still…

I feel that the game has done it’s job. It does not matter if I cry or not.

But enough about my newfound zeal.

The year that preceded this playthrough was a harsh one. Threats of lawsuits, general dissonance, pile after pile of unhappy events…

In no particular order:

• ODEX
• DarkMirage kicking up a ton of fuss over silly fansubs
• TH2 Patch Fiasco
• GipFace lashing out at Visualnews like a conceited Pharisee
• tsubaki taking a cheap shot at me
• Owen being an elitist mindless prick
• Justin Sevakis and ANN (who are so anti-fansub you’d think they were like Christian/Islamic fundamentalists instead of Americans) thinking they can eradicate fansubs by appealing to Japan in their letter
• Growing dissatisfaction with the whole thing, seeing as both sides have no righteous argument in which to lure me over
• Realizing that Singaporeans pretty much flat out do not care at all about ANTHING, as long as it is not relevant to their interests

And those are just what I can remember offhand. Of course, the year has not been a total loss.

• Mirror Moon has released the first of 3 Fate/Stay Night English Patches, with the second to follow
• Utawarerumono has been picked up and is now being proofread
• CLANNAD, Gurren Lagann, and ef
• An undying hope that humanity will pick up the pieces and get along (even though it will not be so, I’m naive like that)
• (insert something about religion here, I’m too lazy to put it in words)
• CLANNAD English translation project chugging along fine
• ~ONE~ English Patch

One might say these small things aren’t worth much cheer, but trust me, when things look bleak, it’s often the smallest rays of hope that can brighten an otherwise dreary, sad year. It is true, then, the words of the Teacher, when he said,

“it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.” – Ecclesiastes 5:18

Indeed, when the world seems to come apart at the seams, it is often the little things that make it seem not so bad.

As Christmas approaches, I wish you all a happy Christmas, in the hope that you will, one day, recognize Jesus as your personal Savior. I am not under compulsion to force this into anyone’s throat (though the thought of chucking down Bibles down people’s throats entertains me so sometimes), nor am I compelled to force anyone to convert. I am only a messenger, nothing more, nothing less. It is better for a man to come into the halls of the Lord with thanksgiving, rather than fear. It works much better, and people don’t grumble so much.

(Fun fact: Did ou know that Jesus was also born on the 6th of December, instead of the 25th? I know I’ll be lynched for this, I know, but the 25th is a rather convenient date, is it not?)

If animé is worthless, does that mean my life is worthless too?

Ok, so I read Justin Sevakis’ letter to the Japanese animé industry. I’ll say that it’s a pretty well-written, well thought-out piece that goes straight to the heart of the problem.

Unfortunately, the letter disturbed me. No, the facts are all there, I can verify those facts with some Google power and wikifaggery, or even pull examples from related events.

Don’t get me wrong, but I thought that he was blaming fansubs for driving the value of animé to zero, the American industry for not pulling it’s weight, Japan for not pulling their weight, and thus, driving the monetary value of animé to virtually nothing. Even if the article did not explicitly say so. (And given how anti-fansub the ANN crew is, well, even though they were originally fansubbers themselves, I’d say it falls pretty close to propaganda.)

Unfortunately, unlike most people, I have issues with anyone saying that anything is worthless.

I don’t care how you put it, the fact is, by saying the value of animé is practically worthless, you’re making a giant assumption. And that assumption is this: everything is practically worthless and that I should go jump off a cliff since my life amounts to nothing. Yes, while the Teacher who wrote Ecclesiastes found out that everything is meaningless, there are some upbeat things about life as well. (And that is a debate I will take on later, when I am old enough.)
I apologize for insulting the noble attempt of the writer to try to change things, but I cannot accept the fact that life is not worth living, since it is free. It’s degrading, to say the least.

And there’s another thing I am seriously disturbed about in the same article. What the writer suggests is that we all should adopt a consumerist attitude and bow down to our Japanese animanga-providing overlords, sing of their praises, and wait for the next drop of the digital manna that is animanga to drop from Japan. It’s a similar attitude I found in the employees of a company we all know so well.

As a free moral agent, I simply cannot accept this consumerist attitude some fans have adopted. For what good is that attitude, if it leaves you an empty husk of a man? (Yes, I heard that, working in a cubicle farm also leaves you an empty husk of a man, only the process is much slower and no fleeting happiness.) It’s so exceedingly prevalent in modern society, that such thoughts should have been banished from our minds when we bec-Waaaait.

Okay, so I was ranting a bit with that last bit. I’m still disturbed at the mere thought that money can save the industry. If anything, it’s a massive hindrance to adoption of new business models, and that’s something where that blasted letter got right.

…Forget it. No one wants to listen to me. They all would rather listen to people who think they care, but in actuality, the only thing they care about is themselves. And that’s why animé will die worldwide. Because everyone is too busy caring for themselves rather than for others.

(I think I may have read it wrong, but that’s how I feel. That letter is a Bad Idea.)