I'm both ecstatic and amazed. Normally the media and news seems to greatly buy in to these people, even when they're hilariously obvious frauds. That even the LDC news is getting sick of these conman and is telling them to stuff it is a good sign. Well, I'm sure they'll get back to their main goal of accusing patriots of being unamerican and publicizing the name of rape victims soon enough.
I was going to write later on on, the criticisms of William Shakespeare's authoriships of Shakespeare's works. But Michael Shermer has beaten me to the punch and summed up just about all I was going to say.
Read it. Especially if you doubt Willy's creds as he addressed the common "reasons" why the writer of Shakespeare could not be a commoner. All I can add is that this 'debate' is a great example of conventional wisdom that is in reality total nonsense.
Once again it seems that life will indeed imitate art...or rather art will prove to me that life is a chaotic malestrom without rhyme nor reason. For this example, open up your nostalgia bibles and turn to the book of the Burton verse 1989.
We cant' stop here, this is bat country!
Tim Burton and John Peters released the first serious adaptation of Batman the general non-comicy public became aware of; though really full credit for returning batman his lost dignity goes to Frank Miller, Allan Moore, and of course Denny O'Neil (or as I call him, Jesus). While over all a decent movie florishing under Burton's stylistic German expressionist slant, it did have a bit of a campy feel. Lacking the gritty realism of the later Dark Knight franchise, Burton's Batman had the feel of a Carnival of the Soul. The focus wasn't on presenting a story as it might actually occur...but basically putting on a giant Cirque du Soleil show.
Quick to the bat trapeze!
Anyway... one of the biggest problems I had with the movie, the single thing that broke my suspension of disbelief in a film involving Jack Nicholson poisoning people with laughing gas and Michael Keton dressing up as a homicidal fury, was the third act in which the Joker lures the entire city of Gotham like lambs to a slaughter. The Joker throws a parade flinging fists full of money out to the crowd, which successfully draws them out into the streets. Of course he plans to just poison the fuckers. And everyone should have known that because he'd spent the whole movie...poisoning people. His motives were transparently clear! Imagine if you will that Osama Bin Ladin comes on TV announces he's throwing a parade and giving away money and invites everyone to gather themselves into a crowded street to grab their share. What the frak do you THINK will happen if anyone is dumb enough to show up? This was so stupid, that I couldn't buy it. Surely people had enough self interest NOT to do something transparently deleterious to themselves.
""It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it,""
How Malians Picture Intellectuals
Really, how can you get more anti-intellectual than this? Here we have women fighting FOR the right to be treated as property (as suggested by the Koran). Sweet Raptor Jesus... Ladies...just down a bottle of Smilex it'll be quicker! At least with the Joker Parade of Peril there was an immediate gain to be had. Here people are going against a proposal to give them shit, rejecting a gift horse by punching it straight in the mouth.
EMANCIPATION?
YOU PUT US BACK IN SHACKLES THIS INSTANT, DAMN IT!
Time for some liberal rage! Grab your commie socialist decoder rings and sing along!
Kurt in the above clip sums it up perfectly well. These people are super villians.
They lack the snappy duds and absurd gimicks but their mentality is taken right out of a jerkass handbook
Cajuns care to be bred and SLAUGHTERED!
It's not about politics. It's about right and wrong. I have to admit it's frustrating how more and more life proves that even the most over the top super villain is well represented by flesh and blood individuals. As brutal and horrific as Norman Osborn or Red Skull or the like are you can find real people like them. In many ways our world is at a disadvantage...our monsters don't have the decency to wear masks.
Most people believe health care reform myths. So nice that good christian folk like Palin and Beck are working so hard to keep people like me and my girlfriend from getting health treatments. Granted it looks like both of us will be starting new careers so we're safe, but I'm not happy just because it looks like I got mine! It is a damn good possibility that Beck and Palin will leave a lasting legacy of shooting down this health care bill. Their impact on the world will be preventing many people from getting treatment they need. The world will be objectively a worse place because they were a part of it. Christianity is claimed to be all about the charity, but this is as far from charity as you can get. This is Anti-Charity, it supports an anti-life agenda and is anti-compassionate.
What could a Japanese medieval Fantasy comic known for it's insane nihilism and ultra-violence POSSIBLY have to do with secular humanism? Quite...a lot actually.
The Meat:
Written and illustrated by Kentarō Miura, Beserk is a fairly long ongoing manga epic. It is fairly popular and is known for both it's fairly blatant, unsubtle sexual and violent content. The series spun off a video game for the now defunked sega Dreamcast, and a short lived, but highly received Anime.
Prepare for gore chunks
Berserk follows the exploits of anti-hero Gutts, a swordsman fueled by endless rage and animalistic savagery, as he cuts his way across a craptacular dark-ages setting seeking revenge. The story contains elements of both fantasy and horror, as it explores both the best and worst of human nature.
...damn O~o
The Anime actually details the backstory behind Gutts , an orphaned mercenary warrior, and Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band called the Band of the Hawk whose mentoring helps Gutts grow from a solitary boy into a man who realizes the value of camaraderie. I highly recommend watching it before diving into the Manga. Be warned though it's...dark. Dear lord is it dark.
Not at all compensating for anything
So yeah, without giving too much away what we appear to have on the surface is your typical Japanese pornographic gore fest with a nasty tough as nails Chuck-Noris esq badass killing everything in his path with an absurdly over sized Freudian Phallic Sword.
~the ambiguously gay duo!~
So, why do I bring it up? Despite the immature first impression some may take of it, there is a surprising amount of complexity to Beserk and the setting. Most of the Anime actually focuses on character interaction and motivation. The characters and plots explore the spectrum of morality, psychological motivations, humanity's inhumanity, sexual motivations, and existentialism. However, it's the backstory to Beserk that draws my attention to it's over all Secular Humanism message.
I've avoided spoilers so far, but from now on I'm going to talk about recent revelations in the Manga, just FYI
we can't stop here this is bat country!
Recently, the Manga has revealed the origin of why every thing sucks so much in Berserk World. To summarize, the world was always a nasty brutish place. People were assholes to each other. However, to explain the suffering primitive humanity went through they imagined up a God. The explanation became that they suffered because it was God's Will. This belief gave birth to that god, known as The Idea of Evil. The Idea of Evil's purpose was to make Berserk-World a living hell....and damn if the fucker isn't good at his job. The Idea's MO has typically been to offer humans in moments of great despair the chance to become his acolyte demons, and thus use them to spread more chaos and misery. Gutt's surrogate family was sacrificed in such a ritual. Against the odds Gutts survived despite being marked for death by GOD himself. In berserk-world the pessimism about the world became a self fulfilling prophecy. Gutts is the hero because despite his flaws, he doesn't whine and bitch when things go wrong for him (and believe me...they do. The whole universe loves to take dumps on the guy), he goes out and tries to fix the problem. Typically through breaking things.
The moral of the story: Don't be pessimistic because you're negative vibes will give birth to a monstrous deity who'll spend the rest of eternity collectively sodomizing all that is good and decent.
What we can take from this:
Theism and God leads to misery. The fatalism makes people accept their lot in life and creates more suffering through The Idea of Evil. Instead of sacrificing your free will and lamenting your lot, you should go out and fix the problem. Evil doesn't only triumph because good men do nothing...it is spawned from just that. Beserk at it's core is a Heavy Metal-esq exploration of the nature of morality and the savagery of the "divine". Despite it's bleakness there is an ultimate message of hope that is derived not from any divine authority, but from humanity's own determination.
At last it's becoming clear that Beck does not have the huge throngs of supporters and drooling fan boys he's purported to. He has every right to make outrageous statements sure, but equally damn right companies are correct in jumping ship. I'm going to make the prediction hat now that it's hitting his pocket he'll offer an "explanation/apology" to try to court back the sponsors. Nice to see people waking up and ending their support of his make-believe journalism career.
~Ing
All images taken/edited from screen shots of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hello, and welcome to the Freethinking Media Junkie blog. Our goal is to examine and geek out on all sorts of cinema and nerdism, finding what nuggets of wisdom can be found in literature/cinema. Hopefully, this project will help to expand the shared experiences and provide a good source of works to point to for the sake of analogy. Comments are welcome and encouraged.
Note that this blog will have a pro-science, pro-reason, pro-geek culture slant.
