All posturing aside, the moral of The Odyssey is if you leave home you'll probably miss it and the moral of Dante's Inferno is often we punish ourselves harder than anything else. This is literally shit any 6 year old can tell you and yet if you're smart and well read you will consider these the pinnacle of storytelling.
Why is that?
COULD IT BE BECAUSE DANTE AND HOMER WEREN'T FUCKING HACKS?
Let's take another two pinnacles of storytelling: Gundam 0083 and Fist of the North Star.
Moral of Gundam 0083? Sometimes shit isn't quite what you expect it to be and sometimes responsibility is a lot less fun than you think it'll be. It's kind of a coming-of-age story wrapped up in political drama.
Fist of the North Star doesn't really have a moral outside of "inner strength is more important than physical strength" but that's a bit of a reach.
Were you to break the plots down it's basically "19 year old kid wants to pilot a Gundam, pilots a Gundam and finds a lot of responsibility and fighting comes with it" and Fist of the North Star is "Bruce Lee mixed with Clint Eastwood fights weirdos in postapocalyptic Japan."
WHY ARE MODERN PLOTS TO CHILDREN'S FICTION A TEN PAGE EPIC IN THEMSELVES?
If you couldn't tell from my previous rant, today's blogger is a writer.
Or a reader.
Anyway he's an asshole.
What is your biggest regret? Did you learn from it or does it still plague you?
Why did I buy into the hype of Spore at all?
What kind of fucking idiot am I?
I'm still going with not asking out the woman I met at the booksigning for Sea of Silver Light by Ted Williams in 2001.
THAT WAS TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO. GO OUTSIDE AND TALK TO A GIRL YOU RETARD.
Losers and faggots of the world, listen to me: go East.
Actually this is really unsound advice if you're still lamenting not asking a girl you saw in a bookstore out 10 years ago because if you go to some shithole all you'll learn is you're as much a loser there as you are here.
Hooray for New York, which last week became the eighth state to legalize gay marriage and sixth where marriage equality is the law of the land (California and Maine walked it back). And boo to this person, who gets to be Today's Asshat. Apparently, Barbara Something Or Other, the town clerk of East Shitbox, New York, doesn't want to sign marriage certificates for gay couples because it's against her religion. You know what, Babs? Tough shit.
Well luckily people who have trouble doing their jobs quickly find themselves looking for a new one.
Although she does work for the government so maybe not.
I'm sorry, but I'm tired of mollycoddling people who think their religious beliefs are an excuse not to do their fucking jobs. You're a pharmacist: fill the fucking prescriptions. You're a town clerk: Sign the fucking marriage certificates.
I must say it's somewhat refreshing to see a blogger with some conviction and enough balls to say "fuck you and do your fucking job."
Maybe you're not so bad after all, kid.
The bookbanners are at it again. Here's a lovely little article from The Wall Street Journal talking about how dark and ugly Young Adult fiction has become. I don't want to engage too much with the article except to say that I'm not sure that the author has ever met a teen, and to point out once again that your problems with what authors write and publishers publish is your problem and not theirs.
I see I have another one of these blogs that has what we in litfag circles call "logorrhea" or RUNNING YOUR GODDAMN HOLE TOO MUCH.
Also yes, young adult literature is complete and utter shit today. Anyone remember Animorphs? Yeah well that woman wrote another series called Everworld and those books were totally batshit.
They should bring those back.
They're just writing about what they see and what they think kids will relate to. You're clutching your pearls and freaking out about the fact that children might actually develop a point of view. So how about you take a chill pill and talk to your kids about what they read, instead of excoriating the publishing industry for doing it's job?
So I know I'm asking for the impossible but can you people please learn the difference between "it's" and "its" (hint: they work backwards). Even people who are seemingly semiliterate can't manage this grammatical acrobatic act.
"it's" is always a contraction and its is always possessive. Is that so fucking difficult? People who are shit at English always talk about how the rules are never consistent enough. Well there are two rules that are ALWAYS CONSISTENT and yet you fuckers still manage to shit it up.
Bang up fucking job all around.
Also, gotta love this comment. Homeschooling mom decides to avoid the horrors of modern YA by giving her kids the stuff she used to love, like the Pern books, which are basically a culture built on rape, the Xanth books, which are pretty much pro–sexual deviancy and develop disturbing pedophiliac undertones as they go along.
Is this literally a culture built on rape or is this pussy sensitivity "white men raped some Indian women in the 1600s so America is bad" culture of rape?
And she adds Watership Down, which is one of the most violent children's books ever, and features the line, "Eat shit, you stinking dictator," (Admittedly, in rabbit), and Where the Red Fern Grows which features dogs getting disemboweled and a teen falling on an ax. Oh, and she's pro–Harry Potter, a book series that begins with a double-murder.
I definitely would hesitate to put Harry Potter in the same sentence as Watership Down but you have a point I suppose.
My friend Charlie lent me the first three Guardians of the Flame books when I was about 15 or 16. They were standard D&D-kids-go-into-the-world-they're-playing-in books, except of course that they were anything but standard.
That sounds fucking horrible.
How old are you, anyway?Well the first one was published in 1983 and the last one was published in 2003, so-- anywhere from "older than you should be to talking about this shit" to "shut up you dumb punk kid" even though-- yeah even if you were 15 in 2003 you're at most a year younger than me.
One of the seven kids has muscular dystrophy, and Rosenberg wrote straight out about what it meant, and another dies within the first thirty or so pages. And the series' overarching theme is about freedom—the titular "Flame" being the flame of freedom and how freedom isn't free.
Even freedom isn't really freedom, maaaaaaaaan.
Some twat at the Atlantic wrote an article about how liberals are in love with endless war just like neocons that got all the dates right and all the details wrong.
War is profitable, all (successful) politicians are profiteers and opportunists--
Waiting for a successful rebuttal to to this logic.
I'm not going to link to that. Instead, I'm going throw out a random couple of paragraphs about War and related stuff that I really like.
Oh. So instead of keeping on topic, I'm going to counter-rant.
Makes sense to me~
This is from an intern at Wonkette, who is 23 and says, "Fuck war":
23 year old intern, huh.
I was recently one of those and I can honestly say we're full of shit.
And if you’re opposed to Endless War, you keep good company: Voltaire, Thoreau, Twain, Vonnegut, Heller, Trumbo, Orwell — etc. etc.
And if I'm pro-war I keep such company as Homer, Dante, Machiavelli and FDR.
I like how we're getting around the thorny situation of "sometimes you have to defend yourself" or "sometimes you have to take the offensive to prevent a drag out, knock down siege situation" by inventing the phrase "Endless War" (note the capitalization, this is a clever trick employed by hack philosophers the world over because specifically when it's capitalized it has a specific connotation that might be absent from literally interpreting the term, thereby ensuring if you ever back them into a corner they can weasel out).
I can't think of many people, save the most depraved of individuals, who are seriously "pro war" most people who are pro fighting a specific war only do so because they don't see any other realistically viable solution to the problem.
Even the titanically stupid Vietnam War was fought to prevent a perceived Communist takeover.
I'm sure we're about to argue the current war situation is fought exclusively over oil and economic reasons and while you're generally right I dare say you, a 23 year old intern with no world experience and no actual combat experience, is in no position to be making claims to this effect.
Lordy, even Helen Keller, who was dealt the shittiest hand, ever, and would have had every right to be a violent right-wing vengeful Bitter, was anti-war. She was actually a straight-up commie. Go figure.
I-- what?
Wasn't Helen Keller well known for being a lovely person?
Seriously, bro? You're seriously arguing she could have been bitter and nasty?
Anyone can be bitter and nasty.
And this is somehow supposed to prove liberals aren't pro-war? Are you fucking with me or are you just that dumb?
And a couple of generals. First William T. Sherman:
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
Sherman is someone you should be listening to on the subject of war but this guy is still a yahoo.
That said, I'm curious about something book related. I've just started Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey, and I already find myself enormously annoyed by the book's voice, which I would describe as "first-person pretentious," and even moreso by the setting.
Well you'd know about pretentious.
So I was going to write a long, philosophical post for my birthday, as I often do, and then I decided, fuck it, I don't need the hassle. Happy birthday to me; I am 40 years old today.
Just what I need more of from you: philosophy.
What the fuck is it with men on Livejournal? They're all armchair philosophers and politicians, and they all suck at it. No one wants to hear your juvenile opinion on war.
Also I thought you were a 23 year old intern? Was that, what, 17 years ago?
Uuuuuuuuuuuuh fuck it.
Got into an argument on a message board once. Someone had posted about the death of a member of the Dave Matthews Band and someone else gave him grief for his excessive reaction to the passing of someone he didn't know.
What has happened to you where you're arguing about Dave Matthews on the internet?
For as much as you people think about yourself don't you ever take a step back and say "wow, I'm an asshole"? Or is that sense not built in?
My response was that there are many different types of relationship and that a feeling of closeness that only went one way, like being a fan of someone's work, wasn't any less valid a relationship than any other kind
Everyone hates you on the message boards because you are the archetypal white knight. You will literally come to the rescue of anyone even if they should be obliterated for being stupid.
You care so much less about the point than how they make it that I bet if someone dressed up a Hitler speech in the right way you'd probably agree with it.
Oh my God to make a long, long, long story short: he liked this author who died.
I mean Jesus Christ, really?
Everyone has that story. "Gee I really liked a singer/writer/whatever and then they died so I'm a little bit sad about it." Fuck you keep moving.
Okay, I'm a good doobie and I applaud my Democratic president most of the time even when he buys into Republican frames and does shit that's just stupid or doesn't work to disassemble the national surveillance state we've been busy setting up for the last decade or three, but I gotta ask, "What the fuck does 'a time-limited, scope-limited military action' mean?"
Okay I know I'm probably going to come off really bad for saying this but you idiots need to be watched. You've clearly proven you can't handle freedoms without having your hand held along the way so we need a big brother set up. I'm sorry but until you chucklefucks can prove yourself not 100% inept in every important facet we need to tap your phones.
I know it's illegal and blah blah blah listen, it is for your protection.
I know everyone was up in arms about the new x-ray shit at airports that can see through clothing (no one really wants to see your giant belly rolls, saggy tits and/or your mediocre, flaccid penis anyway so don't flatter yourself) but I seriously imagine people have accidentally rigged up explosive devices to themselves when getting dressed in the morning.
It may seem like I'm kidding but I know for a fact people that dumb exist.
That's how President Obama describe our Libya adventure.
I'm not sure how I feel about Libya (except that he hasn't broken the law yet; read the War Powers Authorization of 1973),
Again with the breaking the law thing and war.
You're bombing a fucking country and you have to consult a book about whether or not it's a good idea?
Have we really departed from common sense that much that we have to ask ourselves whether it's a good idea to fight someone?
HINT: PROBABLY NOT.
Okay, the idea that a bill requiring school uniforms to prevent kids walking around in loose pants will help create jobs seems pretty fucking laughable to me, but hey, there are people who buy into the idea that uniformity and dress codes increase performance.
All right dipshit I'm here to tell you that it does create jobs (witnessed first hand) and it does sort of increase performance when done right.
What follow is so titanically stupid I'm going to go find something else to do and pretend I never saw it.
Fuck the internet.
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