Oddly enough, I think "Paranoia Agent" is a laser-sharked "Lain".
And, I like Paranoia Agent better, because of the laser-sharking.
Paranoia Agent is glorious.
A couple of the episodes edge towards preachy, but they are quickly
fixed by the strange surreality of the symbolism, and the general
inventiveness of the action.
Parania Agent is invited my birthday party. At my birthday party there will be laser tag, pizza, and cake.
I think it's funny that secularists are somehow organized enough to wage an ongoing war against not just one religion, but every single religion out there.
Indifference isn't a battle plan. I've sat through a couple homilies about how society hates religion, and I still roll my eyes.
It's not a war, or hatred. It's 'indifference'. I reckon that's about the most dangerous thing faith can face.
Hm. "Culture has become completely indifferent to religion!" seems to be less of a rallying cry. Also, when people stop caring about religion in culture, it's usually because of the religion, not because of the culture.
I hope Ron Paul wins the republican nomination, if only because he's going to guarantee a win for the Democratic candidate, and thusly America.
Wait, I have a great idea:
I will pray for your keyboards and T-shirts, fellow readers. But, do please pray for mine.
I've ruined enough keyboards and t-shirts reading around here to think we all even out in time.
And, who's Jim? I'm J M. (or Joe.)
True story about my Catholic High School religion teacher. (preface this by saying I am still Catholic, and HEY! I'm late to church... Must Type Fast!)
In one of her weekly rants about the evils of pop culture, one of my high school religion teachers decided to talk about sex in the advertisement media.
She whipped up the single most offensive cheesecake image of fleshly, sexy posingness that she could find. She pulled it out to show it to the class and ranted profusely about the way this was promoting negative body images of women, and violence against women, and society is evil, and we must burn *BURN* this magazine should we find it for this imagery.
One of the students interrupted her long enough to point out that the model was RuPaul.
It took a few minutes to explain why that was an important detail, but with ears deeply reddened, the teacher quietly put away the picture without any more ranting, and a befuddled look on her face.
Her world was *changed* that day.
True story, and off to church I go!
Millenium Actress!
How could I get Metropolis confused with Millenium Actress? Was it the "M"'s in the title? I don't know.
More importantly, where's my DVD player!
I think what is most interesting to me in all this, as an artist, is how the road to success is not in living in a cave and hoarding all my rights and never compromising. In fact, it seems that creativity feeds creativity feeds creativity. Compromise some rights and some artistic morals and unleash the threads into the world. Embracing rights loss leaders to promote one's business plan seems to be what's working most of the time in our new media age.
I see it elsewhere, too, with other artists and authors. Seems to be the way of things.
re #50:
If the harddrive was confiscated because it was commercial, why didn't they confiscate the tapes?
If the harddrive is "scary" and might contain dangerous data, why didn't anyone even try to play the tapes carried by the same courier, much less confiscate them?
If the record execs that would have wanted the hard drive back around call #1 say they didn't get the call, and the DHS guys trying to cover their butts in a minor media storm say they called three times and left a message...
Can anyone document that message? Where is the proof of those messages? Where is the record?
Nothing in this story makes any sense from a security standpoint, or from a fairness standpoint.
The border guys exerted authority in a meaningless and arbitrary way. And, if we don't point this out and raise a stink about it, their lackadaisical middle managers certainly aren't going to do the same.
Cowboy Bebop's gorgeous anti-heroic density is incredible. If you only watch one episode, make it "Toys in the Attic".
Paranoia Agent is awesome, too, if only because the subject matter veers wildly left-field of everything you expect Anime to be about! No robots! No samurai! The Only Super Hero is Completely Delusional! Parainoia Agent is from the same guy who did the amazing anime film Metropolis. The final episode with the dog always makes me choke up.
FLCL is an ecstatic explosion of creative awesomeness, and it has the great alt-rock band from Japan "The Pillows" doing so much great music.
Hey, what was this post originally about?
Um, oh... Apparenly Making Light readers really like Anime.
I could never get into Fullmetal Alchemist, though I've caught a couple episodes that were pretty good.
"Cowboy BeBop" is the best Anime I've seen, yet. There are episodes of that show that continue to blow me away every time I see them, and I've seen them so many times.
Also, the slash fan-fic with noam chomsky sent large cornbread crumbs across my keyboard in explosive laughter, and now my shift buttons are both jammed with cornbread.
totally worth it1
good job1
I wrote a lot of crap when I was getting my creative writing degree. A LOT of AWFUL AWFUL prose intended for an audience as typical as any academic creative writing workshop.
I recently dug through my old files for old novel ideas (this morning). The first "good" writing I did, and the best early short stories, were fan-fic for a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) I played in the days before MMORPGs.
The audience was out to support authors, not out to rip their prose apart, and I wasn't worried about being important. I was worried only about being entertaining, and being read.
It was what pushed me off the plateau of wannabe into that next level where I was selling stories and a book.
Just my three paragraphs to add to the discussion.
Just a note about the stroke issue.
I am not a medical professional. I am not qualified to judge whether this woman actually had a debilitating stroke or not, or whether this particular stroke had anything to do with her judgment (or lack thereof).
Whether it is used as an excuse or not, it is not something I feel worthy of further discussion without more and better documentation.
Others will likely disagree, but that's my buck-fifty.
That website has lots and lots of articles and just... lots of written stuff on it. Has anyone checked any of these others for plagiarism?
http://www.alongstoryshort.net/Archives.html
Woof. I don't envy the lawyers that task.
Judge Aiken was a woman, until she showed more balls than congress.
I hear the judge's first words when he stepped into his private office were spoken out loud, in an outdoor voice, to the bric-a-brac across the walls.
"Hello Federal wire-tappers! Glad to have you following me along, now. I'll be sure to start reading all my law journals out loud, because I know how much you could use the education!"
re:Cass R #19
Who is this Jim person? My name's actually Joe.
Ishmael actually did originally compose his epic in his native Pirate tongue, which Melville transcribed into English:
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--havin' little or no doubloons in me purse, and nothin' particular t' interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see t' watery part o' t' world. It be a way I have of drivin' off t' spleen and regulatin' t' circulation. Whenever I find meself growin' grim about t' mouth; whenever it be a damp, drizzly November in me soul; whenever I find meself involuntarily pausin' before coffin warehouses,and brin'in' up t' aft o' every funeral I meet; and especially whenever me grog gets such an upper hand o' me, that it requires a strong moral principle t' prevent me from deliberately steppin' into t' street,and methodically bustin' people's caps off with me cudgel--then, I account it high time t' get t' sea as soon as I can. This be me substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Captain Salty Cat-o-nine threw himself upon his cutlass; I quietly take t' t' ship. There be nothin' surprisin' in this. If they but knew it, almost all landlubbers in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly t' same feelin's towards t' ocean with me."
The big wheel o' the time be turnin', and captains come and go, leavin' t' memories that get fogged with lots of rum, wenching, fighting, and grog. Grog and head injuries fade the memories to myth, myth to legend, and even legend drowns in the deep sea of rum when the scurvy dog that birthed the bonny tale be comin' round again..."
I think it is a testament to his greatness as a story-teller that many young writers felt the urge to criticize his writing. Give us a couple months or a couple years after that criticism (like Scott Lynch, linked above), and we all felt like boobs for it, because the man could actually write extremely well, and he did actually earn every single one of his millions of fans.
We, younglings, all had to deal with him, though. Part of how we created an identity as fantasy writers was choosing to accept or reject the Wheel of Time in our own visions. This urge, I think, led to more criticism than was actually deserved.
The greatest tribute to the man, I think, is how every person in the fantasy genre had to respond to his books, his stories, his world - more so than any other author since Tolkein. No one could have no opinion.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 3 |
| 2007 | 36 |
| 2006 | 1 |
Total: 40 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by jmmcdermott:
Show all comments by jmmcdermott.