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aion-rsa · 3 years

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What Went Wrong With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze?

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The story of how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went from underground comic book to the highest grossing independent film of all time is the stuff of Hollywood legend. But ask producer Tom Gray about the sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, and you are likely to hear an altogether different tale. One of a frantically rushed production, censorship backlash and a change of director and direction. Actors were replaced, there were clashes with the comic book creators and a series of strange and unusual characters were added to the mix – including Vanilla Ice.

Gray was head of production at Golden Harvest, the Hong Kong studio behind martial arts classics like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, when comedian-turned screenwriter Bobby Herbeck first approached him about a live-action film adaptation of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s cult comics.

It’s fair to say he took some convincing.

“I hated the idea. I thought it was stupid,” Gray tells Den of Geek. Undeterred, Herbeck pestered Gray for months until the Golden Harvest chief had a sudden change of heart.

“I had an epiphany and thought we could just put stunt guys in turtle suits and make all our money in Japan. That was why I was interested; making it low budget. It escalated when Steve Barron came onboard.”

Barron had made his name with groundbreaking music videos for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and A-Ha’s “Take on Me” and sold Gray and TMNT creators Eastman and Laird on his vision for the movie.

More importantly, he enlisted the late Jim Henson and his legendary Creature Shop to bring the Turtles to life using state-of-the-art animatronics, which came at no small expense.

Even so, Gray found the project was a hard sell when it came to finding a major studio willing to distribute the movie.

“George Lucas’s Howard the Duck had just come out and bombed,” he recalls. “When I went around people would say ‘oh no I’m not going to put my name on the next Howard the Duck. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, how absurd.’ Nobody wanted to step up in the major studios.”

Undaunted by the mass rejection (“Hollywood is always the last to know”) Gray eventually secured a deal with New Line Cinema, then best known for A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The rest, as they say, is history.

That first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came from nowhere in the spring of 1990 to make an astonishing $135 million, becoming a cultural phenomenon in the process. A sequel was inevitable but the results were anything but.

“It was rushed,” Gray says when asked for his overriding feelings about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. “Once the first film opened, we figured we had to get another one out as quickly as possible because this whole thing could fade away very quickly if we didn’t come back.”

Incredibly, a release date for the sequel was set for almost exactly a year on from the original. That seems crazy to think now, in the era where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is carefully plotted out years in advance, but this was 1990 and New Line Cinema. At this point the production company which was working on its sixth Nightmare on Elm Street Movie in the space of just seven years. The quality of those films had varied wildly but one thing had remained consistent: the quick turnaround.

“New Line wanted it out on pretty much the same date, maybe a week earlier in fact. So, we rushed into the production, got a script together. The overarching thing was speed. We had to get it out,” Gray remembers. “I think that’s probably the reason why it doesn’t top many people’s list of the best Turtles movies.”

A Change in Tone

One of the first challenges facing Gray was a tonal one. While the first TMNT film had garnered praise for maintaining the dark and dangerous feel of the original comics, not everyone was happy.

“We started getting some pressure from parental groups. They felt it was a little too dark and a little too frightening for children,” Gray says.

In the US, there were reports of Turtles toys and merchandise being banned in schools over worries they encouraged aggressive behavior in kids. In the UK, the characters were even rebranded the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles amid concern among censors that the word “ninja” promoted violence. Michelangelo’s nunchucks were also banned. It wasn’t just the censors who expressed concern either.

“The toy company was also telling us that maybe we shouldn’t be too dark,” Gray said. “And then, of course, then there was Jim Henson himself, who died while we were making the first film. His whole thing from the beginning was that he didn’t want to make a really dark film. Steve [Barron] was able to convince him it was the way to go even though it was different from the Muppets and everything he had done before. They had a great relationship. Jim trusted Steve.”

The decision was made to approach the material with a lighter tone, with Todd Langen’s original script undergoing a major rewrite to address the change. Despite the change Gray insists an attempt was made to retain some of the darker elements.

“We tried to get somewhere in between but probably didn’t succeed.”

Ultimately, however, the looming deadline left little room for nuance.

“If you sit down and think about this thing too much, you’re never going to get underway,” he reasons.

A New Director

In another notable shift that fans have questioned down the years, Barron did not return for the sequel.

The Irish filmmaker told Flickering Myth that the shift in sensibilities was the deciding factor.

“[It was] lighter, and all the instructions that had gone on from the first film were coming from the producers about keeping the color and lightness and getting away from the dark edge in number two,” he said. “For me it was poppy, and that wasn’t my sensibility.”

Gray tells Den of Geek Barron didn’t come back “for reasons that I won’t go into” but during the interview paints a picture of difficulties during their work together on the first film.

“I fought with the crew every single day but they did a hell of a job. Budgets were not adhered to but I’ve always given them credit because of their vision,” Gray says.

The producer also revealed that the first film was re-edited from Barron’s original version after his bosses were left unhappy with the director’s cut.

“The studio did edit the film in the end to come up with a different version. It was felt it was cut so you didn’t get to see the roundhouse kicks and fighting which was the hallmark of Golden Harvest. When the bosses saw it in Hong Kong, they complained that they couldn’t tell what the turtles were doing. They wanted to see these guys kicking and fighting. Steve’s style was good but we wanted another look.”

Despite Gray’s diplomatic tone, it’s not difficult to imagine such developments might have created tension. In Barron’s place came American filmmaker Michael Pressman, who Gray knew from his days at United Artists.

“What I liked about Michael was that he was a disciplined director. Having gone through the problems with the first picture I wanted someone who shot fast and stayed on budget. That was my main motivation,” the producer says.

A capable director who has gone on to enjoy a long and varied career in television, little of the blame for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2’s failing can fall at Pressman’s feet though it’s undeniable that some of the creative spark of the first film was lost with Barron’s exit.

So was much of the original’s violence, with the Turtles rarely shown using their weapons in the finished film while the action set pieces were also significantly watered down.

Eastman and Laird

Despite the criticism levelled at the sequel for failing to retain the tone of the comics, all of what went into the movie was greenlit by the TMNT creators. Part of the deal inked by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman saw them retain final approval on anything in the film. But that created other issues both at script and production level, as Gray recalls.

“Kevin was certainly more malleable with going along with things because of the budget but Peter was very difficult to get things by because he would say ‘Oh, well Michelangelo would never say that’. So, it was very hard from the point of view of the writer trying to figure it all out.”

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With Barron no longer around to mediate and sell them on the plans and with time ticking on, the pair’s reluctance to sign off on ideas led to increased tensions.

“We argued a little bit,” Gray says. “These things are never sweet or nice. It gets down to what we can do and, in the time provided. It’s about compromise. In the end they approved Langren’s changed script. Maybe it was reluctantly but we weren’t going to meet the demand and get this out if they kept changing things.”

Tokka and Rahzar

One of the most noted criticisms of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 concerned the decision to introduce two new sidekicks alongside returning villain Shredder, rather than draw on the wild array of mutant animals that had featured in the comics and TV series.

Many fans had expected to see Bebop and Rocksteady, the mutant warthog and rhinoceros supervillains made famous in the cartoon, feature. However, that cartoon outing proved both a blessing and a curse.

“I didn’t want them in any of the movies,” Laird later revealed on his personal blog. “It’s not so much that I disliked the characters so intensely, but more that I found their constant one-note shtick in the first animated series to be extremely annoying and silly to the point of being stupid.”

Gray’s version of events differs slightly.

“We wanted new villains because we would get a piece of the royalty, which we didn’t have with the first movie. We figured if we created something they didn’t come up with we would get a piece of the pie. It was a business decision.”

Together with the creatives at Henson’s Creature Shop, they “threw together” Tokka and Rahzar, a mutant Alligator Snapping Turtle and wolf respectively, based on pretty much whatever was available.

“Those things were basically the Henson Creature Shop’s ideas, because they had to figure out, technically, what they could do, how big they were going to be and how they could move,” Gray says. “They had to design all this stuff, put someone in the suit and then wire them up or get the animatronics going to make it work. So, we just went to them and said we need a couple of villains.”

Indeed, the resulting animatronics proved less complex and less compelling than the heroes in a half shell – and it showed on screen.

“They were just big models,” Gray admits. “We cut corners, there’s no question about it.”

Sweaty and Claustrophobic

Meanwhile, the turtle suits themselves had undergone little in the way of upgrades since the first film, when the actors playing the four leads experienced any number of issues. Not the least of which being the claustrophobia and sweating that comes with wearing up to 70lbs worth of turtle suit.

The animatronics also, despite being state-of-the-art, continued to suffer their fair share of glitches.

“We knew what the difficulties were and they were unbelievable,” Gray says. “There were days when we couldn’t even get these things set up. We were filming right near the Wilmington Airport. We set up a shot and when it came time for action the Turtles would not speak. We realized they were on the same frequency as the airport.”

Gray blames the lack of a major upgrade, in part, on the lack of additional budget.

“The budget didn’t exponentially go through the roof, because of the speed,” he explains. “I have read things saying it was $20 million. It wasn’t, it was $16.5 million.”

A New April O’Neil

Away from the animatronic issues, the human cast of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 proved a mixed bag. Corey Feldman didn’t return to voice Donatello after pleading no contest to a drug possession charge while, more notably still, Judith Hoag was replaced by Paige Turco as April O’Neil.

Hoag later told Variety she was never approached about the sequel, claiming her omission was a result of the fact she complained about the level of violence in the first movie and the six-days-a-week shooting schedule.

“Everybody was beating everybody up,” Hoag said. “I thought the movie suffered because of that. It was something I spoke to the producers about, I think they thought I was too demanding, and moved on.”

Not that Gray felt the production suffered as a result of either changes.

“No, not at all,” he says. “Certainly not with Corey Feldman because it’s a voice. Remember when you play that movie around the world it will be in 40 or 50 different languages and subtitled anyway. It makes no difference and nobody overseas even knew Corey Feldman was doing a voice…With Judith, we thought it might be of concern but then again it’s all about the Turtles. People aren’t showing up for Judith – though she did a fabulous job – it was really all about the Turtles.”

Elias Koteas also failed to return as the ice hockey stick-wielding vigilante and ally Casey Jones – though that was more down to the film’s shift away from adult themes and one of the more violent human characters.

“Casey was discussed but the reason he dropped out – and I don’t think this was a major issue – was the direction we wanted to take the film,” Gray says. “We wanted to go lighter. That was part of cleaning up the act.”

In his place came Ernie Reyes Jr, a rising martial arts star who had served as a stuntman on the first film and was introduced as Keno, a pizza delivery boy who befriends the turtles. It was a stark departure from Koteas’s character but, once again, it was one Gray says came with the backing of the TMNT hierarchy.

“If Peter and Kevin had wanted Elias back, he would have been back. So, either we were able to convince them that we wanted to go with Ernie and they went along with it.”

Vanilla Ice

Quite how they were convinced to include rapper Vanilla Ice in the proceedings is anyone’s guess, with the rapper turning up in a mid-film nightclub scene to perform new single “Ninja Rap.” His cameo continues to delight and horrify fans to this day. Few will be surprised by the commercially-minded circumstances that led to his appearance.

“SBK the record label producing the soundtrack album said ‘You gotta have Vanilla Ice in this, he’s hot’ so we put him in…We had a good album out of it. Sometimes you don’t make the movie for the reason of art you make it because the thing could go away in a heartbeat. I’ve always been fairly honest and upfront about our motives. It is a business.”

While others might disagree, Gray stands by the inclusion of Vanilla Ice in the film.

“He actually did a very good job. He’s a very cool operative and he loved doing it.”

Shredder or Krang?

Looking back on the sequel, as much as anything, the most disappointing aspect was the decision to resurrect Shredder rather than explore different villains in the way other comic book franchises have.

While Shredder has always been the main antagonist, as with Bebop and Rocksteady, there remained a plethora of colorful villain characters that could have been plucked from the pages of the original comic or the animated series. But the decision to stick with Shredder was not one takem lightly by anyone, and others were discussed.

“We went through the whole catalogue of villains and certainly Krang and all these other characters were in play,” Gray says. “We thought of them but we stayed with what works and that’s what you do in these situations. Don’t try and get too clever.”

As much as anything he blames the Hollywood system and a refusal to take risks. New Line too, would have no doubt been happy to press ahead with a Shredder-oriented sequel, seeing him as the TMNT’s very own Freddy Kreuger of sorts.

“Nobody trusts their instincts,” Gray says. “You go with what worked before and try to modify it a little bit. If it works [and the plethora of Freddy sequels suggests it did] then you are justified in using the same thing over and over again.”

Once again though the decision to stick with Shredder and avoid the kind of time and expense required to create something like Krang, a brain-shaped alien carried around in the waist of a robot man, was influenced by that release date.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze opened in theaters on March 22, 1991, less than a year on from the original. It went on to make over $78 million to become the second most successful independent film of all time.

Despite turning a profit, the film garnered mixed reviews and left Gray and others disappointed.

“It didn’t deliver on what we had hoped because there was this race against time to get it out one year after the first one. When you do that, you really have to compromise.”

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

After the rush to make a second film, it was decided that they would take more time over the third one.

But anyone hoping for a return to form was left disappointed by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in TIme, which saw the gang head to 17th century Japan.

“With number three, we were aiming something at the Japanese market, which was the number one market for foreign films,” Gray explains. “That’s why we had the time travel storyline with the samurais. That was definitely one of the motivations.”

There was just one problem though.

“We hoped it would get the film released in Japan. To this day, it has not been released in Japan.”

Though Gray returned to produce an animated fourth film in the 2000s box office returns diminished with every film. By the time Michael Bay got involved in the franchise, Gray was long gone. He now considers himself “out of the turtle game” with this being one of the last interviews on the subject. But despite the highs and lows endured on the second film, Gray remains proud of what was achieved.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“These movies were made by committee. It’s amazing they turned out so well.”

The post What Went Wrong With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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iamcayc · 3 years

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The Sounds of Gojo - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Exchange Rating: SFW Word Count: 4292 Relationships: Gojo x OC (Kaya)

read here on Ao3

To say that you’re going to murder your cousin would be a vast understatement. Not only did you explicitly tell him to come pick you up after work promptly at 3:30 PM, but you also reiterated that you had zero interest in putting up with Gojo’s shit when you’re still feeling like you ran a marathon after being squashed by an elephant. It was a very reasonable request, and you had worded it very clearly to avoid any potential miscommunication.

So, one could imagine your immense disappointment and rage at the sight of white hair... and that smug-ass grin?

Kento Nanami is dead to you.

“Hey there, teach.” He’s wearing Ray-Bans today, his hair framing his face in a way that makes him look more youthful—and much to your chagrin, more attractive.

“Heard you could use a ride to collect your bike from the school, so I generously offered my services.” You notice that some of the girls are staring at him unabashedly, making you roll your eyes. Sexually-repressed teenage girls around Gojo is a terrifying thought, so you quickly usher him off the grounds and towards the front gate.

“What’s the rush?” he asks amiably. “It’s a nice day, after all. Wanna go get some donuts? There’s a new shop around here that I was thinking about trying.”

Your arms are folded across your chest as you glower at him. “Why are you really here?”

He pouts prettily at you. “Huh? Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Why on earth would that be my reaction to you showing up unannounced at my work, again?”

“Well, I still owe you compensation for helping me out last night.” He shrugs as he faces you. “Plus, I thought we had some chemistry going, but maybe I misread the banter. I mean, you brought up my dick the other night—”

Knowing full well that you won’t make actual contact, you cover his mouth with your hand anyway.

“Take me to get my bike so I can be rid of you sooner rather than later,” you hiss. His mouth stays covered until he nods, but your hands don’t make it away unscathed. No, just before you can yank your hand back, Gojo grabs hold of your wrist and you freeze. Not because he grabbed your wrist, but because you can actually feel his skin against yours.

He’s dropped Infinity, just long enough to stroke his thumb across the sensitive patch of skin inside your wrist. He makes actual contact just long enough to brush his surprisingly-soft lips against the back of your hand, all the while maintaining unwavering eye contact.

If you aren’t so stunned, you know your panties would be soaking wet at the intimacy of the moment.

But you are stunned, so you wrench your hand out of his as if burned.

Gojo simply smiles at you before gesturing at the sleek black car parked behind him. “Figured you’d want a ride, rather than warp.”

You sigh and head towards the car, shooting Kento a text.

You 3:30 PM What the actual fuck, Kento

kento-bro 🥐 3:31 PM I did NOT tell him to pick you up. I explicitly told him that the idea was a terrible one and would likely end with me dead. You can imagine his reaction to that.

You could, and you tried not to glare at Gojo as he held the door to his car open for you. The vehicle interior is surprisingly spotless; with his lackadaisical attitude, you expected random junk stuffed into the center console, at the very least.

It also smells just like him, sending a traitorous tingle down your spine.

“Are you cold?” Gojo asks as he slides into the driver’s seat. “I can turn on the heat, if that’ll make you more comfortable.”

You shake your head, tucking a few lavender locks behind your ear. “I’m fine, just a random cold chill. I’m surprised you even both to drive.”

Gojo shrugs as he starts up the car. “No reason not to learn. I’m more than just my techniques, you know?”

It isn’t as if you only saw him as a sorcerer.

Based on the flood of pure heat that you nearly drown in as he shifts the car into reverse and immediately places his right hand on your headrest, looking over his shoulder to pull out of the parking spot, you see him as a red-blooded man just like any other.

And that is something you intend to keep to yourself.

“So, have you decided?” he asks conversationally. Your irritation with him clearly doesn’t matter in the slightest, which only makes you exhale slowly. Traffic is touch and go as you try to make it out of Shibuya, so might as well make the most of the drive.

“You didn’t trigger an asthma attack, and me nearly passing out was due to my own idiocy, so I guess I’ll settle for a bottle of a decent red blend,” you reply as you settle into the passenger seat. Chill EDM and instrumental music hums its way through the car’s speakers from whatever satellite radio station he’s tuned into, your finger absently tapping along with the beat against your thigh.

“Hmm.” You feel his gaze on you for the briefest moment as he continues to drive. “I think I can make that happen. Seems like a pretty lackluster request, considering I practically gave you a blank check.”

You roll your eyes. “What did you think I was going to ask for?”

“I don’t know. Something more exciting, like a date, or even a kiss.”

“Sure you aren’t projecting a bit?” You cock your head a bit as you look at him. He’s got one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the shifter. Your brain tries to reconcile the tall, charming, sexy as fuck man sitting next to you with the arrogant, pain-in-the-ass sorcerer that grated your nerves like no other. You can’t say why he rubs you the wrong way; it could be his carefree attitude towards absolutely everything, or maybe his continuous assumption that he can charm the pants off you, literally and figuratively.

Either way, it boils down to the simple fact that you don’t trust if and when he’s ever being genuine with you, or anyone, really.

“Would it really be so bad for you to admit you find me attractive?” he wonders aloud.

“I have no problem admitting you’re attractive,” you reply with a half-sigh. “It’s honestly a little disorienting, but then you start talking and all the allure just gets sucked right out, like a nasty little vacuum.”

“Why are you and Nanamin so mean to me?” Gojo whines. He makes the turn onto the campus, easing his way towards the parking lot where you had left your bike the night before. “Here I am, just trying to be nice...”

He parks the car right next to your Triumph, turning to face you with a pout. You simply stare at him, trying to decide how to best to inform him that he once again lost his head in his own asshole.

“Maybe if you tried to just be sincere instead of nice, people would stop being so ‘mean’ to you,” you point out. He pushes his sunglasses up and into his hair, regarding you with somber blue eyes.

“Would that work on you?”

You can tell he’s asking you seriously. The pitch of his voice has dropped, abandoning the air of frivolity and slipping into a velvet soft baritone that sends warmth through your center. It’s a tone you haven’t heard from him before.

“Yes.” Your mouth is spitting words faster than you can censor them. “I’d trust you, at the very least.”

Gojo leans towards you, his expression painfully neutral. “That’s important to you, isn’t it? Trust.”

His proximity to you, speaking to you in that lower pitch… it makes your heart thunder in your chest. You know there’s absolutely no way Gojo can’t hear it—it’s practically pushing out of your chest. What had been basic attraction is suddenly inching its way out of that easy to manage category and into dangerous territory.

Your brain doesn’t get the memo.

“Yes, it is,” you reply, your voice barely a murmur. “When you get fucked over enough times, trust issues develop. A basic psychological fact, as far as I’m concerned.”

He turns this information over in his mind. You can see the thoughts sinking into the vault behind his eyes. Gojo can be a brat on a good day, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t brilliant or observant.

“Can I have your number?”

You blink, reeling from the whiplash of his question. You fully process the moment and realize his charmer’s grin and bubbly tenor are back. The moment of honesty is gone.

A scoff is forming in your mind when you catch Gojo’s eyes again. The dissonance between the honesty swimming in the azure blues of his eyes and the mask he’s presenting is so clear, it takes you a second to quell your retort and hold out your hand.

His mask softens just a fraction as he gives you his phone, but his eyes never waver. You only break the stare to glance at his phone while you enter in your number, calling your own phone to save his number before handing the device back.

You’re typing out his name when you see a text come through from that number.

Unknown Number 4:18 PM this is Satoru, fyi 🤗

The use of his name feels intentional. You focus your energy and let your aura slip along the edges of his, luring it out for you to see. It’s a halo of cerulean blue, humming softly to you.

Your fingers hover over your keyboard for a moment before you save the number under just Satoru.

“I’ll text you when your bottle of wine’s ready,” Gojo says brightly. “But you have to promise that you’ll follow the instructions I send, too.”

That sounds like a trap and you immediately narrow your eyes as you start to exit the car. He just drops his shades with a too-innocent smile. Bickering with him wouldn’t end up being productive, so you just shake your head.

“Thanks for the ride, Gojo.” You step out of the car and unlock your bike, the tiny bit of anxiety you have about leaving it unattended somewhere unfamiliar easing away as you zip up your leather jacket and pick up your helmet.

“Hey, teach.” You see that Gojo’s window has rolled down as you swing your leg over the bike. “Ride safe, alright? Let me know when you get home, too.”

You can’t help but smile a little. “What are you, my dad?”

His smile turns feline. “Why, feel like calling me ‘daddy?’”

Your eyes can’t roll harder than they do right then. Refusing to deign that with a response, you snap your visor shut and take off back towards your apartment in Yoyogi.

The moment he let you past his Infinity replays in your thoughts the entire ride home. The feel of his skin against yours felt so… nice. The internal cringe at the lackluster adjective is unavoidable. It hasn’t been that long since you’ve had sex, for fuck’s sake. Are you really that starved for attention that you’re willing to play with the giant bonfire of fuck-boy that is Gojo just to satisfy your curiosity — among other things?

You ease your bike into your garage and head back into your safe space. Shedding your jacket, you glance at your phone before you move into the kitchen to start dinner.

Satoru 4:53 PM what perfume do you wear??

Satoru 4:53 PM also, have you made it home yet??? 😰😰😰

Your brows knit at his first question as you pour yourself a glass of wine while last night’s takeout reheats.

You 5:09 PM Just got home. Why do you want to know about my perfume?

Satoru 5:10 PM whew, i was worried!!

Satoru 5:10 PM it smells lovely in my car, the same way you did when i carried you into your place last night. call me curious 🤔

Suspicious, that’s what you’d call him. You let the text sit while you stir your leftovers, distracted by the sense of a blush forming on your cheeks at the thought of him enjoying your perfume in his car as much as you enjoyed his scent.

“And those are the thoughts of a complete weirdo,” you mumble as you stick your leftovers into the microwave for another minute.

You 5:12 PM It’s called Wisteria Blue by Nest

Ordinarily, you’d have silenced your phone and left it somewhere beyond reach to completely disconnect while you unwind from the day. And ordinarily, you’d have your attention focused on some murder docuseries instead of thoroughly grading assignments.

Yet, your phone remains face up and on ringer as it stares at you from the coffee table. You’re half-paying attention to the new show on a crazy cult in the States during the 1980s while nibbling on leftover fried chicken and rice, your peripheral honed in on the screen of your phone and diverting your focus like a fucking teenager.

And, just like a teenager, your stomach flips when your phone chimes and lights up again.

Satoru 5:22 PM do you trust me now?

You 5:23 PM Not completely, no. but I am more inclined to try and trust you

You 5:23 PM Besides, not all of us have Infinity to ward off folks we don’t want hurting us

When he doesn’t immediately reply, you attempt to refocus on your dinner. It’s not like you think Satoru plans on hurting you; that moment in the car before you left gives you a tiny bit of peace of mind there. No, your reactions are purely automatic defense mechanisms, ingrained into you after years of gaslighting and emotional manipulation.

Nope, not going to think about all that. You turn up the television to drown out your own thoughts, just as your phone lights up again.

Satoru 5:31 PM got any good stories about nanamin? 😈

The cackle that bubbles up is pure petty bitch. Boy, oh boy, do you have stories? Since you steadfastly believe that the white-haired demon’s appearance in your life is all Kento’s fault, you feel absolutely no guilt in arming his friend with some solid ammunition.

You 5:33 PM Did you know that he’s terrified of moths? Not like, ew that’s gross, but little girl screaming terrified. He’s even had nightmares that they suck his face off if one lands on him

Satoru 5:35 PM you’re my new favorite person 🤣🤣

----

“It’s getting there, you just need to pay attention to your tempo, Ichigo.”

The third year frowns at her hands, as if their lagging is under someone else’s control. You smile at her, squeezing her shoulder gently.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” you tell her kindly. “It’s easy to get wrapped up in how your music makes you feel that you lose sight of little things like your speed or technique.”

“Does that happen to you, when you play, Ms. Nissen?”

An iron curtain drops on the memories of performing that her question pokes at. Instead, you just keep smiling, though it’s lost a little bit of its warmth.

“I don’t play too much anymore, but yes. If my heart is driving me to play, even I lose sight of my tempo,” you reply as you stand up from your perch by her keyboard station. You glance around the room, pleased to see that some of the girls have started to get a head start on cleaning the room after their check-in.

“Great job, all of you,” you say loudly over the low cacophony of music. “Don’t forget that your reports on your chosen pieces are due tomorrow at the start of class.”

With that, the girls go about their daily chore while you collect your things from the podium in the corner. As expected, you see that you have a string of messages from Satoru, which makes you smile a little, despite your best efforts.

Satoru 2:02 PM what made you want to be a music teacher?

Satoru 2:03 PM and why do you have sound proofing in your apartment?

Satoru 2:10 PM i’ve been to the states a few times. where did you live while you were there??

The last few days followed this pattern of intermittent texts from a perpetually curious Satoru, his questions rarely relating to each other as he fires them off during school hours. You understand his students’ dismissive attitude about his authority over them, especially if he’s on his phone most of the time.

You 3:11 PM I’m surprised you haven’t coerced Kento to tell you all of that 🙄

Your warning shot of the moth story did its job, bringing your cousin to his knees for forgiveness after Satoru released a few dozen moths in one of the classrooms while locking Kento inside. The pair of you reached a truce, agreeing to have dinner again this Saturday, without Satoru.

Satoru 3:12 PM he’s still not talking to me 😅

You 3:13 PM I always had a thing for music, since I was really little. My parents decided to capitalize on it and got me all kinds of private lessons… piano, cello, violin, voice, etc. When I decided to stop performing, I didn’t want to leave it totally behind, so I decided to teach.

Satoru 3:16 PM how did you avoid using your technique? it had to have shown up by then

You 3:17 PM Kento would teach me bits and pieces of jujutsu when I visited over the summers, but before he even started going to Jujutsu Tech, all my feelings and intentions were directed inward, rather than to my audience

You slip your phone into your backpack and put on your helmet. There is plenty about jujutsu that you don’t understand, and you wonder if anyone truly does, but you’re still grateful for Kento and Yaga. Without either of them, you’d have drowned in your own self-loathing.

It occurs to you that you haven’t seen Yaga in awhile, so you decide to pay your respects soon. Maybe he would have some tips on how to manage a certain snowy-topped idiot.

After locking up your bike, you drop your things on the couch and head straight upstairs to your bathroom. A hot shower sounds blissful, as opposed to finding out what other questions Satoru has in store for you.

The steaming spray soothes your tense shoulders as you consider the chessboard of conversation in your head. You’re used to answering personal questions with the bare minimum information needed, but Satoru isn’t your average pedestrian poking around. Besides, it doesn’t escape you that you’ve played the trust card, only to be a perfect hypocrite in terms of honesty.

You sigh as you work shampoo into your hair. The simplest solution is to acknowledge that there are things you aren’t ready to talk about, which is always so much easier said than done. A coil of anxiety tightens in your stomach but you dismiss it.

As you dry off, you make a mental note to dye your hair again soon. The color is fading a little too close to silver for your liking, and the last thing you need is for Satoru to start saying that you’re trying to steal his look.

Dressed in only boybriefs and an oversized sweater, you pad back down the stairs to fish your phone out of your backpack.

Satoru 3:29 PM what’s with the sound proofing then?

Satoru 3:43 PM did you die? do i need to come do a wellness check? 😱

You roll your eyes as you plop onto your sofa.

You 4:03 PM I didn’t die. I got home and showered, and didn’t feel like bringing my phone along

You 4:03 PM I put up the tiles to dampen any sounds I might accidentally make at home. Sometimes I start singing along to my Spotify, or hum while I bake. It’s just for my neighbors, really.

Checking work emails keeps you from watching his typing bubble from bouncing. There’s an upcoming faculty meeting that you pray has nothing to do with the school festival that’s coming up in a couple months. Last year, the girls in your class tried to convince you to perform in their faculty talent show — to the point that you had to dodge them in the halls in case they tried to use the power of their puppy-dog eyes.

Satoru 4:06 PM ooo… i bet you smell amazing. should have invited me to join 😏😏

You 4:06 PM Why’s that?

Satoru 4:07 PM i could have helped you wash up the hard to reach spots! instead, i’m just daydreaming about it instead of training the kids

You 4:08 PM Somehow I doubt me in the shower is what’s really preventing you from doing your job

Satoru 4:09 PM why are you so mean to me??? 😭

You 4:09 PM I’m not mean. I’m honest 😇

Satoru 4:10 PM i don’t believe you’re an angel for one second. no self-respecting angel rides around in tight pants and a leather jacket on a motorcycle, especially not one with a voice as pretty as yours

You 4:11 PM Please stop before you dig yourself into a deep chauvinistic hole that you have no hope of getting out of

Satoru 4:13 PM siiiiigh. fair point. so, where in the states did you live?

You 4:14 PM New York City. My dad works on Wall Street at an investment firm. Have you ever been?

Satoru 4:15 PM nah, i’ve only been to California and Hawaii. nyc seems cool though. did you like it?

You 4:15 PM I guess… I was a kid when I lived there. I moved to Japan when I was 15, so I think I missed out on all the really cool things that New York has to offer

Satoru 4:16 PM we should go together then!! you can show me around 🤗

The idea of playing tour guide to Satoru makes you smile but also makes you shudder. He strikes you as the kind of sucker who goes to all the tourist traps purely because that’s where everyone goes. Him in Times Square? Fuck that.

You 4:21 PM Hmm. I don’t come cheap, you know.

Satoru 4:22 PM name your price 😘

You 4:22 PM Do you always offer up blank checks to people you barely know?

Satoru 4:23 PM no, only the breathtakingly beautiful ones

You choke on rice, coughing roughly as you recoil from such a bold compliment.

You 4:26 PM Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you? How do I know that you aren’t just treating me like another conquest?

Satoru 4:29 PM who says you’re a conquest?

You 4:30 PM Don’t act like you don’t literally charm the pants off women whenever you feel the need. There’s no way a man like you doesn’t have a string of fuck-buddies

Satoru 4:31 PM i’m not, i’m asking why you think i see you as a conquest

Satoru 4:31 PM because if you were, i’d have already hit it and quit it

You honestly can’t decide if you’re flattered or more affronted at his honesty. To let yourself cool off, you finish up your dinner and go pour yourself the last of your favorite red blend.

It’s hard to disagree with his logic, the more you let it roll around in your head. You’re just as guilty of doing the same thing, when the dry spells go a little too long for your liking. And you’ve definitely gotten your share of lectures from Kento about being “so reckless” with strangers.

You 4:40 PM That’s fair. I apologize for making assumptions.

Satoru 4:43 PM wow, didn’t expect you to own up to that so quickly 😳

You 4:44 PM Why?

Satoru 4:44 PM getting nanamin to admit he’s wrong is like pulling teeth!!

You smile, knowing how utterly true that statement is.

You 4:46 PM Well, I’m not my cousin… besides, it’s wrong to shame someone for casually hooking up with people when I do the same thing. I’m not interested in being a hypocrite 💁🏻‍♀️

Satoru 4:48 PM glad i’m not flirting with nanamin. that’d be awkward 😳😳

Satoru 4:48 PM ughhh. gotta run and kill some curses.

Satoru 4:49 PM before i forget, your wine is ready! so be set for dinner at 7pm tomorrow night. dress to impress 😉

Beg your pardon? How did getting a nice bottle of wine turn into a dinner date?

You 4:50 PM What the fuck? Can’t you just give me a bottle of wine, like a normal person?

He doesn’t respond, likely because he’s actually doing work, for once. You glare at your phone for another minute before you drain the last of your wine and start updating grades to keep yourself from texting a string of extremely rude curses to the subject of your ire.

It doesn’t escape your notice how he conveniently had to disappear and exorcise curses after dropping that bomb on you, either.

Huffing, you stomp upstairs and into your bedroom. Because, despite it all, you refuse to show up to dinner looking anything less than your best. As the thought settles, a little grin lifts the corners of your lips while you open your walk-in closet and survey the options.

“Time to fight fire with fire.”

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk fanfic #gojo x oc #gojo satoru #oc #nanami kento #flirting #gojo loves emojis #also on ao3 #ao3

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mytalkingraccoon · 4 years

Text

movies i wanna watch soon list

y’all already know my taste, don’t judge me

1) eyes without a mask (1960)

Professor Genessier is guilt-stricken after his daughter's face is disfigured in a car accident. He intends to rebuild his daughter's face via grafting skin tissue; he only needs a supply of donors to experiment on. I think the movie is in french? Idk but you’re going to have to make sure to get a english subbed version.

Freaks (1932)

It follows a trapeze artist who joins a group of carnival sideshow performers with a plan to seduce and murder a dwarf in the troupe to gain his inheritance, but her plot proves to have dangerous consequences. Apparently in multiple countries it was banned for being too unsettling despite having to cut a ton of scenes to be not censored. The director is also the dude that made the classic Dracula in the 1930s.

The innocents (1961)

Literally just a nanny being freaked out about the haunted house she’s staying out. Not a big deal lol

Eraserhead (1977)

This is really pushing it with the time-frame it was made but I’ll deal with it. In a post-apocalyptic society, Henry Spencer works in a factory and has a girlfriend, Mary. When she gets pregnant, she moves to his apartment and delivers a mutant baby, who cries all the time. She can not bear the screams of the child, leaving Henry, who is on vacation, taking care of the newborn child and driving him insane. Geez, bro, that’s rough. Maybe use a condom next time.

Hour of the wolf (1968)

Johan Borg and his pregnant wife Alma arrive on a remote island to spend the summer. Johan, an artist by profession, is uninspired and restless of late. One day an old woman approaches Alma telling her to read Johan's diary, which he keeps in a black bag under the bed. As Johan's mental state continues to deteriorate, Alma becomes increasingly frightened. Unable to sleep at night for some time now, Johann tells Alma of events from his youth and eventually of Veronica, the woman he lived with for 5 years. I have a feeling this movie is going to be messed-up since it says it a psychological horror.

Strait-jacket (1964)

I’ve actually seen this on MeTV. There’s this dude named Svengoolie that shows vintage horror movies and I would enjoy it if he wasn’t a fucking moron. Either way, if you enjoy psycho, you’ll enjoy this (i do warn you though they show the lady in an asylum in a strait-jacket.) Its about a woman who murdered her husband and the woman he was sleeping with using an ax in front of her 4-year-old daughter. When the daughter is all grown-up she decides to take care of her mother who was finally getting released from the asylum.

I’ve also seen House of Wax by Andre DeToth. Highly recommend.

Dementia 13

Shocked by the death of her spouse, a scheming widow hatches a bold plan to get her hands on the inheritance, unaware that she is targeted by an axe-wielding murderer (again with the axes? are they fun or something?) who lurks in the family's estate. Oh wow, this was directed by the dude who made the outsiders (hear that, @blognotfound (¬‿¬)?)

House on haunted hill (1959)

if you’re wondering why the skeleton is holding a black box i edited the photo because there was a woman hanging and i didn’t want to trigger people with suicidal thoughts. A millionaire offers $10,000 to five people who agree to be locked in a large, spooky, rented house overnight with him and his wife. How much you wanna bet one person is going to be a monster fucker at the end?

Dead of night (1945)

Im getting bored of researching im just stealing shit i find on any site. Dead of Night is anchored by the déjà vu had by an architect at a party whose recurring nightmare seems to be bleeding over into reality. Over the course of the night, he and the other party guests, who have all starred in his dream, take turns swapping disturbing and unhinged ghost stories—until, of course, the suspense is capped off with a stellar twist ending.

L’Inferno (1911)

yes, guys, its silent, get over yourself. Its basically “the tour to the circle of hell.” I don’t need a tour, i am the tour guide (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

#vintage movies #horror #movie list #watch it peasants

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theculturedmarxist · 4 years

Link

ROBERT SCHEER: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case Max Blumenthal, who I must say is one of the gutsiest journalists we have in the United States, and have had for the last five years or so. He’s, in addition to having considerable courage and [going] out on these third-rail issues — like Israel, being one of the more prominent ones — and challenging some of the major conceits of even liberal politics in the United States about our virtue, our constant virtue, he’s done just great journalism. I really loved his book, “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,” which came out in 2013, because it was based on just good, solid journalism of interviewing people and trying to figure out what’s going on.

I’d done something a half century earlier, or not quite that long ago, during the Six-Day War in Israel, where I went over when I was the editor of Ramparts. And I know how difficult it is to deal with that issue, because I put Ramparts into bankruptcy over the controversy about it. [Laughter] So maybe that’s a good place to begin. You know, you dared touch this issue of Israel, and it didn’t help that you are Jewish. I guess you are Jewish, right? Do you have a background, did you practice any aspect of Judaism? Literature, culture, religion?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I’m a Jew who had a bar mitzvah, and I even had a bris.

RS: Oh. [Laughs]

MB: And you know, I’ve continued to pop in in synagogues here and there on High Holy Days. I guess you could say, you know, when the rabbi asked, you know, asked me to join the army of God, I tell him I’m in the Secret Service. But I’m definitely Jewish, you know, and it’s a big part of who I am and why I do what I do.

RS: Well, and I thought your writing on that, and your journalism, was informed by that. Because after all, a very important part of the whole experience of Jewish people as victims, as people forced into refugee status, living in the diaspora, was to develop a sense of universal values, and of decency and obligation to the other. And I think your reporting reflected that. However, my goodness, you got a lot of heat over it. And it’s the heat I want to talk about. I want to talk about the difficulty, in this post-Cold War world, of actually writing about the U.S. imperial presence, or writing critically about what our government does, and some of its allies.

And I think Israel is a really good case in point, because we have one narrative that said in the last election we had foreign interference, mostly coming from Russia. And we talk about Russia as if it’s the old communist Soviet Union, with a top-down, big, organized party — forgetting that [Vladimir] Putin actually defeated the Communist Party, and even though he had been in the KGB, and most Russians had been in some kind of official connection with society or another. Nonetheless, Russia really has gotten very little out of whatever interference it did. Israel, that is very rarely talked about, interfered in the election in a very open, blatant way in the presence of Netanyahu, who denounced Barack Obama’s major foreign policy achievement, the deal with Iran, and has focused U.S. policy mostly against the enemy being Iran, and ignoring Saudi Arabia and everything else.

And the interesting thing is that Israel’s interference in the election, and Netanyahu, has been rewarded over and over — the embassy got shifted, the settlers got more validation, now there’s a big peace plan that gives the hawks in Israel everything they want. So why don’t we begin with that, and your own writing about U.S.-Israel relations. It’s kind of odd that there’s — or maybe not odd, maybe it’s just because it is the third rail — that there’s been so little discussion about Donald Trump’s relation to Israel and his payoff to Netanyahu.

MB: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to chew on there. I would first start with just an observation, because you mentioned that we’re in a post-Cold War world — well, we’re not in a post-Cold War world anymore, we’re in a new Cold War. And for all the attacks I got over Israel, which were absolutely vicious, personalized, you know, framed through emotional blackmail, attacking my identity as a Jew, calling me a Jewish anti-Semite — the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is this right-wing racket over there in L.A., made me the No. 4 anti-Semite of 2015. You know, I was right behind Ayatollah Khomeini. But you know, the worst attacks, the most vicious attacks I’ve received have actually been from centrists and liberal elements over my criticism of the Russiagate narrative that they foisted on the American public starting in 2016, and also on the dirty war that the U.S. has been waging on Syria, and how we at the site that I edit, the Grayzone, started unpacking a lot of the deceptions and lies that were used to try to stimulate support among middle-class liberals in the west for this proxy war on Syria, for regime change in Syria. This was absolutely forbidden, and that attack actually turned out to be more vicious and is ongoing.

With Israel, you have a situation where you have, not maybe a plurality, but maybe a majority of secular Jewish Americans, progressive Jews, who have completely turned their back on the whole Zionist project. And it has a lot to do with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is someone who came out of the American — out of American life. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia, he went to MIT, he was at Boston Consulting with Mitt Romney. His father ended his life in upstate New York as Jabotinsky’s press secretary, the press secretary for the revisionist wing of the Zionist movement that inspired the Likud party. So Netanyahu is really kind of an American figure, number one; number two, he’s a Republican figure. He’s like a card-carrying neoconservative Republican.

So a lot of Jews who’ve historically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, who see being a Democrat as almost synonymous with being Jewish in American life, just absolutely revile Netanyahu. And here he is, basically the longest-serving prime minister in Israel; he’s completely redefined the face of Israel and what it is. And he’s provoked — I wouldn’t say provoked, but he’s accelerated the civil war in American Jewish life over Zionism. And what I did was come in at a time when it wasn’t entirely popular, to not just challenge Israel as a kind of occupying entity, but to actually challenge it at its core, to challenge the entire philosophy of Zionism, and to analyze the Israeli occupation as the byproduct of a system of apartheid which has been in place from the beginning, since 1948, which was a product of a settler colonial movement.

That really upset a lot of people who kind of reflect the same elements that I’m getting, who are attacking me on Syria or Russia. People like Eric Alterman at The Nation. He wrote 11 very personal attack pieces on me when my book “Goliath” came out in 2013. Truthdig, you, Chris Hedges, it was a great source of support. And you, you know, you opened up the debate at Truthdig, you allowed people to come in and criticize the book, but kind of in a principled, constructive way. Whereas Eric Alterman was demanding that The Nation censor me, blacklist me, ban me for life, and was comparing me to a neo-Nazi by the end, and claiming I was secretly in league with David Duke. And that was because he had simply no response to my reporting and my analysis of the kind of, the inner contradictions of Zionism.

And so to me, it was really a sign of the success of the book, that someone like Alterman was sort of dispatched, or took it upon himself to wage this really self-destructive attack. And in the end, he really had nothing to show for himself; he wasn’t arguing on the merits. And that’s just what I find time and again with my reporting is, you know, you get these personal attacks and people try to dissuade you from going and touching these third-rail issues, but ultimately there’s no substance to the attacks. I mean, if they really wanted to nail me and take me down, they would address the facts, and they really haven’t been able to do that.

RS: Right. But Max, if I can, let’s focus on the power of your analysis in that book, which is that it is a settler colonialism. And Netanyahu actually is — we can talk about the old labor Zionists, you know, and what was meant by progressive Zionism and so forth. Even at the time of the Six-Day War when I interviewed people like Moshe Dayan and Ya’alon and these people, they all were against a full occupation of the West Bank. They didn’t act on that, unfortunately. But they were aware of the dangers of a colonial model. But right now you have a figure in Israel in Netanyahu, who is, very clearly embodies a racialized view, a jingoistic view of the other, which is really, you know, very troubling. And he’s embraced by this troubling American figure.

And so what your book really predicted is that the settler colonialism was a rot at the center of the Israeli enterprise — and historically, one could justify that enterprise. I don’t know if you would agree. But even the old Soviet Union, I think, was the second, if not the first country to recognize Israel. There was vast worldwide support for some sort of refuge for the Jewish people after such horrible, you know, genocidal policies visited upon them. But what we’re really talking about now is something very different. And that is whether political leadership, and interference and so forth comes mainly for Democrats, very often; obviously, for republicans and Bible-belters and all that, who seem to like this image of the end of time coming in Israel. But really what’s happening — and it’s not discussed in this election, except to attack Bernie Sanders, who dared make some criticisms of Israel in some of these debates — you have a very weird notion of the Jewish experience, as identified with a very hardline, as you say, sort of South African settler colonialist mentality.

And so I want to ask you the question as someone–and we’ll get to it later — you grew up sort of within the Democratic liberal establishment in Washington. Your parents both worked for the Clinton administration, were close to it. How do you explain this blind eye toward Trump’s relationship to Netanyahu? And ironically, for all the Russia-bashing, Netanyahu and Putin seem to get along splendidly, you know. And that doesn’t bother people as far as criticizing Netanyahu. So why don’t we visit that a little bit, and forget about Eric Alterman for a while.

MB: [Laughs] Well, he’s already forgotten, so we don’t have much work to do there. But there’s a lot, again, a lot to chew on, a lot of questions packed into that. You know, just starting with your mention of Moshe Dayan — who is a seminal figure in the Nakba, the initial ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in 1948 to establish Israel — he was the southern commander of the Israeli military. And he later kind of became a kind of schizophrenic figure in Israeli politics; he would sometimes offer some kind of left-wing opinions, and then be extremely militaristic. But you know, when it came down to it, Moshe Dayan — like every other member of the Israeli Labor Party — was absolutely opposed to a viable Palestinian state. He even said that we cannot have a Palestinian state because it will connect psychologically, in the minds of the Palestinian public who are citizens of Israel — that 20% of Israel who are indigenous Palestinians — it will connect them to Nablus in the West Bank, and it will provide them with a basis for rebelling against the Israeli state to expand the Palestinian state.

The other labor leaders spoke in terms of the kind of, with the racist language of the demographic time bomb that, you know, we need to give Palestinians a state, otherwise we will be overwhelmed demographically. And so the state that they were proposed was what Yitzhak Rabin, in his final address before the Israeli Knesset, the Israeli parliament, called “less than a state.” He promised Israel that at Oslo, he would deliver the Palestinians less than a state. And if you look at the actual plan that the Palestinians were handed at Oslo — which Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority chairman, didn’t even review before signing — the map was not that different from the map that Donald Trump has offered with the “ultimate deal.” And they’d say, oh, you get 97% of what was, you know, offered in U.N. Resolution 242 in 1967. But it really just isn’t the case when you get down to the details. What the strategy has been with the Labor Party, and with successive Israeli administrations — and with Netanyahu until he got Trump in — was to kind of kick the can down the road with the so-called peace process, so that Israel could keep putting more facts on the ground.

So it was actually Ehud Barak of the Labor Party, Yitzhak Rabin’s successor, who moved more settlers into the West Bank, by a landslide, than Netanyahu did. Ehud Barak actually campaigned on his connection to the settlers. And then Netanyahu capitalizes on the strength of the settlement movement to build this kind of Titanic rock of a right-wing coalition that’s kept him in power for so long. And if you look at who the leading figures are in Israeli life — Naftali Bennett, who was from the Jewish Home Party, he comes out of the Likud party and he’s someone who was an assistant to Netanyahu. Avigdor Lieberman, who was for a long time the leader of the Russian Party. Yisrael Beiteinu, this is someone who came out of the Likud Party, who helped Netanyahu rustle up Russian votes. It’s a Likud one-party state — but then you have, culturally, a dynamic where starting with 1967, the public just becomes more infused with religious Messianism.

The West Bank is the site of the real, emotionally potent Jewish historical sites, particularly in a city like Hebron. And the public becomes attached to it and attains its dynamism through this expansionist project, and the public changes. A lot of people from the kind of liberal labor wing became religious Messianists, started wearing kippot, wearing yarmulkes, the kind of cloth yarmulkes that the modern orthodox settlers where.

RS: OK, but —

MB: Today you not only have that, you have a new movement called the temple movement, which aims to actually replace Jewish prayer at the Western Wall with animal sacrifice, as Jews supposedly practiced thousands of years ago, and to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque, and practice Jewish prayer there. This is not just a messianic movement, but an apocalyptic movement that is actually gaining strength in the Likud party. So when you mentioned Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal,” there’s one detail that everyone seems to have missed there, which is prayer for all at the Dome of the Rock, at Al-Aqsa. That means there will be Jewish prayer there, officially, that Palestinians must be forced to accept that and destroy the status quo, which has prevailed since 1967.

RS: I know, but Max, before I lose this whole interview here — because I think that’s all really interesting; people should read your book, “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.” That’s not the focus of this discussion I want to have with you.

MB: OK.

RS: And I want to discuss, in this aspect, the whole idea of Israel as a third-rail issue for American politics.

MB: Yeah.

RS: American politics. And the reason I want to do that is there’s obviously a contradiction in the Jewish experience, because Jews — as much or more so than any other group of people in the world — understand what settler colonialism does. They understand what oppression does, they’ve been under the thumb of oppressors. And so I would argue the major part of the Jewish experience was one of revolt against oppression, and recognition of the danger of unbridled power. And that represents a very important force in liberal politics in the United States: a fear of coercive power, a desire for tolerance, and so forth. And we know that Jews have, in the United States and elsewhere in the world, been a source of concern for the other, and tolerance, and criticism of power.

And the reason I’m bringing that up is it seems to me it’s a real contradiction for the Democratic Party, which you know quite a bit about. And in this Democratic Party, there’s this great loathsome feeling about Donald Trump. And many of these people don’t really like Netanyahu. You know, the polling data shows that Jews are, you know, just about as open to the concern for the Palestinians as any other group. And Bernie Sanders, the one Jewish candidate, is the one who dared to bring up the Palestinians — that they have rights also, that they’re human beings. He’s being attacked for it as, like you, a self-hating Jew. And so I want to get at that contradiction. And, you know, full confession, as a Jewish person I believe it’s an honorable tradition of dissent, and concern for the others, and respect for individual freedom. And I think it’s sullied by the identification of the Jewish experience with a colonialist experience. It is a reality that we have to deal with, but that’s not the whole tradition. And I daresay your own family, whatever your contradiction — and I should mention here your father and mother both were quite active in the Clinton administration, right.

And your father, a well-known journalist, Sidney Blumenthal, and your mother, Jacqueline Blumenthal, was I think a White House fellow or something in the Clinton administration? I forget what her job was, but has been active. And they certainly come out of a more liberal Jewish experience, as do most well-known Jewish writers and journalists in the United States. That’s the contradiction that I don’t see being dealt with here. Because after all, it’s easy to blast Putin and his interference, but as I say, Netanyahu interfered very openly, but in a really unseemly way, in the American election by attacking a sitting American president in an appearance before the Congress, and attacking his major foreign-policy initiative. And there’s hardly a word ever said about it. It doesn’t come up in the democratic debates. You know, and the — as I say, there was this incredible moment where Netanyahu, after coming over here and praising Trump for his peace deal, as did his opponent, then he goes off and meets with Putin. And so suddenly it’s OK, and yet the Democrats who want to blast Putin don’t mention Netanyahu, and they don’t mention his relation to Trump.

MB: Well, yeah, I was trying to illustrate kind of the reality of Israel, which just, it’s gotten so extreme that it repels people who even come out of the kind of Democratic Party mainstream. And the Democratic Party was the original bastion in the U.S. for supporting Israel. So my father actually held a book party for my book, “Goliath,” back in 2013. It’s the kind of thing that, you know, a parent who had been a journalist would do for a son or daughter who’s a journalist. And he was harshly attacked when word got out that he had held that party in a neoconservative publication called the Free Beacon, which is kind of part of Netanyahu’s PR operation in D.C. You know, it was like my father had supported, provided material support for terrorism by having a book party for his son.

But the interesting part about that party was who showed up. I didn’t actually know what it was going to be like, and it was absolutely packed. I mean, they live in a pretty small townhouse in D.C, and there just was nowhere to walk, there was nowhere to move. And I found myself in the corner of their dining room shouting through the house to kind of explain what my book was about and answer questions. And a lot of the people there were people who were in or around Hillary’s State Department, people who worked for kind of Democratic Party-linked organizations — just a lot of mainstream Democrat people. And they were giving me a wink and a nod, shaking my hand, giving me a pat on the back, and saying thank you, thank God you did this. Because they cannot stand the Israel lobby, they despise Netanyahu, and they’re disgusted with what Israel’s become.

And we had reached a point by 2013 where it was pretty obvious there was not going to be a two-state solution, and that whole project, the liberal Zionist project, wasn’t going to work out. You know, and the fact that they just could give me a wink and a nod shows also how cowardly a lot of people are in Washington. They weren’t even stepping up to the level my father had, where when his emails with Hillary Clinton were exposed, it became clear that he was sending her my work. And he was actually trying to move people within the State Department toward a more, maybe you could say a more humanistic view, but also a more realistic view of Israel, Palestine and the Netanyahu operation in Washington. Working through [Sheldon] Adelson, using this fraud hack of a rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, has kind of their front man. They ran like a full-page ad in the New York Times painting me and my father as Hillary Clinton’s secret Middle East advisers.

And then one day in the middle of the campaign, Elie Wiesel died. You know, someone who is supposed to be this patron saint of Judaism and the kind of secular theology of Auschwitz, who had spent the last years of his life as part of Sheldon Adelson’s political network. Basically, he had lost all his money to Bernie Madoff, and so he was getting paid off by Adelson. He got half a million dollars from this Christian Zionist, apocalyptic, rapture-ready fanatic, Pastor John Hagee. He was going around with Ted Cruz giving talks. And so when he died, I went on Twitter and tweeted a few photos of Elie Wiesel with these extremist characters.

And I said, you know, here are photos of Elie Wiesel palling around with fascists. And the kind of Netanyahu-Adelson network activated to attack me. And ultimately it led — I actually, within a matter of a few days, it led to Hillary Clinton’s campaign officially denouncing me and demanding that I cease and desist. And so, you know, I looked at the debate on Twitter, and a lot of people were actually supporting me. And it was clear Elie Wiesel, this person who was supposed to be a saint, was actually no longer seen as stainless, that the whole debate had been opened up by 2016.

And now when we look at the Democratic Party and we look at the Democratic field, you know, Bernie Sanders — he’s better than most of the other candidates, or the other candidates, on this issue. After we put a lot of pressure on him in the left wing-grassroots — I mean, I personally protested him at a 2016 event for his position on Palestinians, and we shamed him until he took at least a slightly better position, where you acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians. But what we’re hearing, even from Bernie Sanders, doesn’t even reflect where the grassroots of the Democratic Party — particularly all those young people who are coming out and delivering him a landslide victory tonight in Iowa — are. The Democratic Party is not democratic on Israel, but it’s no longer a third-rail issue. You can talk about it, and the only way that you can be stopped is through legislation, like the legislation we see in statehouses to actually outlaw people who support the Palestinian boycott of Israel. So we’re just in an amazing time where all of the contradictions are completely out in the open.

RS: OK, let me just take a quick break so public radio stations like KCRW that make this available can stick in some advertisements for themselves, which is a good cause. And we’ll be right back with Max Blumenthal. Back with Max Blumenthal, who has written — I mean, I only mentioned one of his books. He wrote a very important book on the right wing in America that was a bestseller; he has been honored in many ways, and yet is a source of great controversy. And I must say, I respect your ability to create this controversy, because it’s controversy about issues people don’t want to deal with. You know, they want to deal with them in sort of feel-good slogans, and it doesn’t work, because people get hurt. And including Jewish people, in the case of Israel. If you develop a settler, colonialist society, and that stands for the Jewish position, and you’re oppressing large numbers of people, be they Palestinian or others, that’s hardly an advertisement for what has been really great about the Jewish experience, which I will argue until my death.

It was represented by people like my mother, who were in the Jewish socialist bund, and two of her sisters were killed by the Czar’s police in Russia. And they believed in Universalist values, an idea of being Jewish as standing for the values of the oppressed, and concern for the oppressed. And most of their experience in the shtetls, and out there in the diaspora, had been being oppressed.

And so I don’t want to lose that there. But I wanted to get now to the last part of this, to what I think is the hypocrisy of the liberal wing of American politics, or so-called. And now they call themselves more progressive. And it really kind of centers around Hillary Clinton. And whatever you want to say about Bernie Sanders — you know, Hillary Clinton’s recent attack on Bernie Sanders, that no one likes him and he stands for nothing and he gets nothing done. And I think this is a, you know, a person that I thought, you know, at one point — despite her starting out as a Goldwater girl and being quite conservative — I thought was, you know, somewhat decent.

And I’m going to make this personal now. I was brought to a more favorable view of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in considerable measure, by your father, as a journalist at the Washington Post, and then working in the administration. And I respect your father and mother, you know, and Sidney Blumenthal and Jacqueline Blumenthal, I think are intelligent people. And I once, you know, went through a White House dinner; I think I only got in because your father put me on the list, and Hillary Clinton said I was her favorite columnist in America — no, the whole world — and it was very flattering. But I look back on it now — Hillary Clinton has really represented a kind of loathsome, interventionist, aggressive, America-first politics that in some ways is even more offensive than Trump. When Trump said he’s going to make America great again, Hillary Clinton said, America’s always been great. What?

MB: Yeah.

RS: What? Slavery, segregation, killing the Native Americans — always been great? You grew up with these people, right? You were in that world. What — so yes, they can come up to you at a book party and say, yes, it’s about time somebody said that. But what are they really about? That they — you know, you mentioned Syria. You know, their great achievement, they created a mess of that society. And she’s the one who went to, said about Libya, oh, we came, we saw, and he’s dead. You know, sodomized to death. So take me into the heart of the so-called liberal experience.

MB: Well, first of all, since you invoke Sidney Blumenthal so frequently, he has a — I think his fourth book in a five-part series on Abraham Lincoln out. And you know, these books address Lincoln almost as if he were a contemporary politician. It’s a completely new contribution to the history of Lincoln, and if you invite him on, be sure —

RS: I’m familiar with it, and I’ll endorse it —

MB: If you invite him on, you can ask him, I would love to hear that debate —

RS: I certainly would, and I have — as I said, I have a lot of respect for your father and mother. I’m asking a different question. Why do good people look the other way? Or how does it work? Just, you know, to the degree you can, take me inside that Washington culture. And where there’s a certain arrogance in it, that they are always, even when they do the wrong things, they’re just always accidents. They’re always mistakes. You know, it never comes out of their ideology, their aggression. So I want to know more about that.

MB: I mean, I saw all these — so many different sides of Washington. And so — and I was always supported by my parents, no matter what view I took. So I don’t feel like I have to live in my father’s shadow or something like that. They remain really supportive of me. I have a new book out — it’s not really new, it came out last April. It’s called “The Management of Savagery,” and it deals substantially with my view of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, but particularly the Hillary State Department, the Obama foreign policy team, and the destruction they wrought in Libya and Syria. So, you know, I put everything I knew about Washington and foreign policy into that book. And so I really would recommend that as well.

But, you know, how does it work with the Clintons? They were — they set up a machine that was really a juggernaut with all this corporate money they brought in through the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Committee. It was a very different structure than we’d seen with previous Democratic candidates who built — who relied heavily on unions and, you know, the civil rights coalition. And that machine never went away. It kept growing like this — kind of like this amoeba that began to engulf the party and politics itself. So that when Bill Clinton was out of power, the machine was passed to Hillary Clinton, and the machine followed her into the Senate. And the machine grew into the Clinton Global Initiative, which was this giant influence-peddling scam that just cashed in on disasters in Haiti, brought in tons of money, tens of millions of dollars from Gulf monarchies, and big oil and the arms industry — everything that funds all the repulsive think tanks on K Street through the Clinton Foundation.

And everyone who was trying to get close to the Clinton Foundation, whether they were in Clinton’s inner circle or not, was just trying to gather influence. That’s why you saw at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, behind her, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was basically Jeffrey Epstein’s personal child sex trafficker, just trying to cultivate influence with people who have this gigantic political machine.

So that’s why so many people, I think, have stayed loyal to this odious project, and have looked the other way as entire countries were destroyed under the direct watch of Hillary Clinton. Libya today — where Hillary Clinton took personal credit for destroying this country, which was at the time before its destruction, I think the wealthiest African nation with the highest quality of life — is now in, still in civil war. We’ve seen footage of open-air slave auctions taking place, and large parts of the country for years were occupied by affiliates of Al Qaeda or ISIS, including Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. It was immediately transformed into a haven for the Islamic State.

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton. There would have been no Benghazi scandal if she hadn’t gone into Libya to come, see, and kill, as she bragged that she did. And in Syria, she attempted the same thing; fortunately failed, thanks to assistance from Iran and Russia. But this was, it consisted of a billion dollars, multibillion-dollar operation to arm and equip some of the most dangerous, psychotic fanatics on the face of the planet in Al Qaeda and 31 flavors of Salafi jihadi. Hillary Clinton said we can’t be negotiating with the Syrian government; the hard men with guns will solve this problem. She said that in an interview, and that’s her legacy.

Beyond that, you know, I in Washington grew up in a very complex situation. I don’t know what view people have of me, but I grew up in what was – D.C. when D.C. was known as C.C., or Chocolate City. It was a mostly black city, run by a local black power structure with a strong black middle class, and I grew up in a black neighborhood. And I kind of saw apartheid firsthand, where I saw how a small white minority actually controlled the city from behind the scenes. And then, you know, and I saw that reality, and then I went to school across town in the one white ward to a private school, and I got to know some of the children of the kind of mostly Democratic Party elite. And so I saw both sides of the city. And it was through that other side, and also my parents’ connection to the Clintons, that I — I mean, I barely interacted with the Clintons. I’ve had very minimal interaction with them ever.

But I did get to meet Chelsea Clinton once. And you know, for all my reservations about the Clintons or what they were, I thought you know, she was kind of an admirable figure at that time. She was a — she was a kid, she was an adolescent who was being mocked on “Saturday Night Live” because she was going through an awkward phase. She went to school down the street at Sidwell Friends, and I met her at a White House Christmas party; she was really friendly and personable. And you know, since then, I’ve watched her grow into adulthood and become a complete kind of replication of the monstrous political apparatus that her family has set up, without really charting her own path. She just basically inherited the reign of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. She does paid talks for Israel. Her husband Marc Mezvinsky, he gambled on Greece’s debt along with Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. You know, the squid fish. I mean, there’s just — I mean, as a young person, seeing someone of my generation grow up and follow that path, do nothing to carve out her own space — it just absolutely disgusts me.

And now Hillary Clinton is still there! She won’t go away! She’s not only helped fuel this Russiagate hysteria that’s plunged us into a new Cold War, but she’s trying to destroy the hopes and dreams of millions of young people who are saddled with endless debt by destroying Bernie Sanders. And it’s because she sees her own legacy being smashed to pieces, not by any right-wing, vast conspiracy, but by the electorate, the new electorate of the Democratic Party. And I absolutely welcome that. I think, you know, tonight in Iowa, a landslide Bernie victory, one of the takeaways is this will be the end of Clintonism. It’s time to move on and hand things over to a new generation. They had their chance, and they not only failed, they caused disasters across the world.

RS: So this is — we’re going to wind this up, but I think we’ve hit a really important subject. And I want to take a little bit more time on it. And I thought you expressed it quite powerfully. But the error, if you’ll permit me, is to center it on the personality, or the family. And I don’t think Clintonism is going to go away. Because what it represents — and I know you —

MB: It could be become Bloombergism, you know?

RS: Well, that’s where I’m going. I think what Clintonism represents is this triangulation, this new Democrat. And I interviewed him when he was governor, just when he was campaigning. And I did a lot of writing on the Financial Services Modernization Act and on welfare reform, and all of these ingredients of this policy. And what it really represents — no wonder they’re rewarded by the super wealthy. But the Democratic Party lost its organizational base with the destruction of the labor movement and weakening of other sources of progressive class-based politics, concern about working people and ordinary people.

And what Clinton did is he came along, and he had a sort of variation of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, how he got the Republicans to be so important in the South. And it was this new politics, this redefinition. And it’s not going away, because it’s the cover for Wall Street. It’s the cover for exploitation. And the main thing that happened from when you were young — or born, actually; you’re 42 years — it’s 42 years of, since Clinton really, and you can blame Reagan, you can blame the first President Bush, you can blame other people, and certainly blame the whole bloody Republican Party. I’m not going to give them a pass.

But the fact is, what the Clinton revolution did was it made class warfare for the rich fashionable, in a way that no one else was able to do it, no other movement. And it said these thieves on Wall Street, these people who are going to rip you off 20 different ways to Sunday — they’re good people, and they support good causes. And you mentioned Lloyd Blankfein, you know; “government” Goldman Sachs, you know. Robert Rubin came from Goldman Sachs; he was Clinton’s treasury secretary. And the whole thing of unleashing Wall Street and getting, destroying the New Deal — that was a serious program to basically betray the average American and betray their interest. And that’s why we’ve had this growing income inequality since that time. That’s the Clinton legacy in this world, really, is the billionaire coup, the billionaire culture.

MB: Yep, the oligarchy was put on fast-forward by the new politics of the Clintons. What they promised wasn’t, you know, a break from Reaganism, although there was certainly a cultural difference. They promised continuity, and that’s what we saw through the Obama administration. Obama presided over the biggest decline in black home ownership in the United States since, I think, prior to World War II. You mentioned Glass-Steagall; this set the stage for the financial crisis; NAFTA, destroyed the unions, shipped American jobs first to Mexico and then to China, and destabilized northern Mexico along with the drug war that Clinton put on overdrive, creating the immigration crisis that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump.

Welfare reform — all of these policies were just, were odious to me and so many people at the time, but there was just this desire to just beat the Republicans and out-triangulate them. Now that we’ve seen the effects on them and so many people have felt the effects, you have an entire generation that sees no future, that realizes they’re living in an oligarchy, realizes that the alternative to Bernie Sanders is a literal oligarch, this miniature Scrooge McDuck in Mike Bloomberg, and they’re just not having it.

I don’t know if Hillary Clinton understands this history; I don’t think she sees it in context. She just blames Russian boogeyman and fake news for everything. But the rest of us who’ve lived through it really do, and it’s the continuity that is so dangerous, especially on foreign policy. I mean, the Libya proxy war and the Syria proxy war, the stage was set in Yugoslavia with NATO’s war that destroyed a socialist country and unleashed hell on a large part of its population. And we still don’t debate that war. The stage for the Iraq invasion was set in 1998 with Bill Clinton passing the Iraqi Liberation Act, which sent $90 million into the pocket of the con-man Ahmed Chalabi and made regime change the official policy of the United States.

It’s tragic that Bernie Sanders voted for that. But we have to see the cause and the effect to understand why so many people are in open revolt against that legacy. And you’re right, it goes well beyond the Clintons. It’s a program that markets right-wing economics and a right-wing foreign policy in a sort of progressive bottle. Now what they’re trying to do with the label on that progressive bottle, the way they’re trying to preserve it — we see it a lot through the [Elizabeth] Warren campaign — is through a kind of neoliberal identity politics that divorces class from race and gender, and attempts to basically distract people with needless arguments about Bernie Sanders saying a woman couldn’t have gotten elected in a private conversation that only Elizabeth Warren was party to.

So I’m really encouraged, I guess, by the results that we’re seeing. We’re talking tonight on the eve of the Iowa caucus. I’m encouraged by those results, just because I see them as a repudiation of the politics that have just dominated my life as a 42-year-old, and just been so absolutely cynical and destructive at their core. But I would just remind anyone who is supporting Bernie Sanders and listening to this — he’s not just running for president. He’s running for the next target of a deep state coup, and the deep state exists, and will respond with more force and viciousness than it did to Donald Trump, who actually has much more in common with them than Bernie Sanders.

RS: I didn’t quite get the grammar of that last paragraph, not any fault of yours. You said he’s not just running — can you —

MB: He’s running for the next target of a deep state coup, the forces of Wall Street. You know, the —

RS: Oh, you mean he will be the target.

MB: He will be the target.

RS: Yeah, you know, it’s — you just said something really — OK, I know we have to wrap this up, but it’s actually just getting interesting for me. [Laughs]

MB: Sorry about that.

RS: No, no, no, come on, come on. [Laughter] What I mean is, I do these things because I learn, and I think, and you know, my selfish interests. And really the question right now, I did a wonderful interview with Chomsky on this podcast, and he took me to school for not appreciating the importance of the lesser evil. And I’ve lost sleep over it since. You know, well — and we always fall for that, you know. On the other hand, some of the things you’ve been talking about, you know — and this is going to get me in big trouble — but you know, Trump is so blatant. He’s so out there in favor of greed and corruption.

He’s so obnoxious. And actually, in terms of his policy impact — not his rhetoric, but his policy impact — is he really that much worse? Well, for instance, you mentioned NAFTA. The rewrite of NAFTA, even before, you know, some progressives got involved in it, it was a substantially better trade agreement than the first NAFTA. You know, he hasn’t gotten us into Syria-type, Iraq-type wars.

He actually — so I’m not — you know, yes, I consider him a neofascist; rhetoric can be very dangerous. He’s obviously spread very evil, poisonous ideas about immigrants and what have you, you know, I can go down the list. But the people that you’ve been talking about, that–you know, and I voted for all of them, and I’ve supported them — are they really the lesser evil? You know, or are they a more effective form of evil?

MB: I mean, to understand Trump, we just have to see him as the apotheosis of an oligarchy. In its most unsheathed, unvarnished form, he’s just lifted the mask off the corruption, the legal corruption that’s prevailed, and been completely unabashed about it. Donald Trump was targeted with this kind of Russiagate campaign, which was partly run by Clintonite dead-enders who wanted to blame Russia for her loss, and to attack Donald Trump with this kind of McCarthyite rhetoric. But it was also being influenced by the intelligence services — figures like John Brennan and James Comey, and neoconservative hardliners who could easily jump back into the Democratic Party. And they were just seeking a new Cold War, to justify the budgets of the intelligence services, and the defense budget and so on.

But at his core, Donald Trump, what he’s actually done, especially domestically, I think outside of the immigration stuff, is he’s been kind of a traditional Republican. And he won a lot of consent from Republicans in Congress when he passed a trillion-dollar tax cut. He’s given corporate America everything he wanted after kind of campaigning with this populist, Bannonite tone. So in a lot of ways, Donald Trump does share more in common with the Democratic Party elite — with a lot of the figures who’ve been nominated to serve on the DNC platform committee, who are just from the Beltway blob and the Beltway bandits — than they do with Bernie Sanders.

And I think that if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, there will be an effort to McGovern him. To just kind of turn him — turn this whole process into McGovern ’72, hope that Bernie Sanders gets destroyed by Donald Trump, and then wag their fingers at the left for the next 20 years until they get another Bill Clinton. I think that they don’t know how to stop him at this point, but they’re willing to let him be the nominee and go down to Donald Trump, because Bernie Sanders threatens their interests, and the movement behind him particularly, more than Donald Trump does.

RS: You know, they will stop Bernie Sanders, and they will do it by the argument of lesser evilism. And you see the line developing —

MB: But who is the lesser evil, Bob? I mean, Joe Biden is like this doddering wreck. There is no other candidate who seems even remotely viable against Trump.

RS: No, no, no — I understand that. I’m telling you what — well, it seems to me there’s — you know, you want to talk about fake news, the, misreporting of Bernie Sanders — in fact, the misreporting of what democratic socialism is. I mean, he’s now branded in the mainstream media as some hopeless fanatic because he dared to defend democratic socialism. Democratic socialism has been the norm for the most successful economies in the world, even to a degree when we’ve been successful. That was the legacy of Roosevelt, after all, is to try to save capitalism from itself. That’s why you had some enlightened government programs, you know, right down the list, and that’s what saved Germany after the war, and that’s what France and England and so forth, that’s why they have health care systems.

But the mainstream media has actually taken a very moderate figure, Bernie Sanders, and demonized him as some kind of hopeless ideologue, right? And as you point out, Bernie Sanders is hardly a radical thinker on issues — particularly, as you mentioned, about the Mideast and so forth. What he is, is somebody who actually is honoring the best side of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: you can’t let these greed merchants control everything, you have to worry about some compensation for ordinary people. That’s what Bernie Sanders is all about. And it should be an argument that has great appeal to people of power, otherwise they’re going to come after you with the pitchforks. Instead the mainstream media, in its hysteria, you know, has taken this word “democratic socialist” and used it to vilify him.

But the point that I want — and we will end on this, but I’d like to get your reaction — that came up in my discussion with Chomsky, who I have great admiration for. But it is this lesser evilism. And I think while, yes, people in their vote can think about that, they can vote that way — I’ve done it much of my life; I’ve voted for all sorts of evil people because they were lesser. But as a journalist — and I want to end about your journalism — as a journalist, I think we have to get that idea out of our head. And it means being able to be objective about a Donald Trump when he comes up with his NAFTA rewrite, and say hey, there are some good things in it, including the fact that you have to pay $16 an hour to people in Mexico who are working on cars that are going to be sold in the United States, OK. And what the liberal community has been able to do in the mainstream media, MSNBC, is Trumpwash everything.

Which brings us back to your critique. They’ve been able to say — they’ve made warmongering liberal and fashionable. They’ve taken the — they’ve made the CIA now a wonderful institution, the FBI a wonderful institution, [John] Bolton a wonderful hero. And I want to take my hat off to your journalism, because you have — and I do recommend that people go to your website, the Grayzone. Because you have had the courage to say, wait a minute, what’s called a lesser evil can’t be given a pass. Because in fact, maybe in some ways, or in many ways, it’s a more effective evil. We know what Trump is; he stands exposed every hour of every day.

But you know, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton — and I’m not trying to pick on them, but you know, they represented this embrace of the Wall Street center — they were much more effective in redistributing income to the rich. You know, you can talk about Trump’s tax break, but the real redistribution came with letting Wall Street do its collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that caused the destruction of 70% of black wealth in America, 60% of brown wealth in America, according to the Federal Reserve. So really, in this election, people have to think — you know, yes, I’ll hold my nose and I’ll vote for the lesser evil. But what’s that going to get us? Does it get us a more effective evil, a better-packaged evil? Last word from you?

MB: Well, I mean, one of the things that we do at the Grayzone.com, our mission is to oppose this policy of regime change that the U.S. imposes across the world against any state that seeks some independence from the U.S. sphere of influence that wants to craft its own economic policies in a socialist way, like Venezuela, Nicaragua. We, you know, we exposed a lot of the deceptions that were trying to stimulate public support for regime change in Syria, that would have been absolutely disastrous. And in all of these situations, we don’t stand alone, but we stand among a really, really small group of alternative outlets who don’t play the lesser-evil game on regime change.

Where we say, well, this leader or that leader are horrible, and they are evil dictators, but we should also be kind of suspicious of the, you know, of the war that the U.S. might wage. Or we should be critical of these brutal economic sanctions that have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans through excess deaths. We say — we actually look at the alternative to the current government and show that there actually isn’t the lesser evil, that the alternative is far worse. In Syria it was Al Qaeda and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood; in Venezuela it’s Juan Guaidó’s right-wing, white collar mafia, which is a front for Exxon Mobil. Same thing in Nicaragua.

And you know, as much as I respect and I’ve learned from Noam Chomsky, he plays that lesser-evil game on regime change. He’s trashed all of the, all of these governments. He celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we saw what happened to Russia after that. So it’s important to look at lesser evilism through a historical context, and then we can apply it to the United States as well. Look at who’s been sold to us as the lesser evil that we had to support. Well, we’ve been talking about them, Bob, for the last half hour, and they’ve subjected Americans to the same evil the Republican Party has, for the most part. Maybe they’ve limited it to some degree. But now there’s actually an option for something that I’d say is moderate in the United States.

You’re right — Bernie Sanders does nothing, and proposes nothing, outside the framework of the New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. I don’t even think he’s a democratic socialist. I don’t know what that term really means. He’s a social democrat. And he is someone who at least offers a change from the consensus where the government actually starts to intervene to prevent people from dying excess deaths across the country, from the opioid crisis, from poverty, from homelessness. Eighty percent of new homes that have been built in the U.S. in the past two years are luxury housing. And you know who else is supporting Bernie Sanders besides all these debt-saddled youth? Active duty U.S. military veterans who are sick of permanent war. $160,000 in campaign contributions have been given to Bernie by active duty vets. That’s something like eight times more than have gone to Joe Biden, who is involved at the forefront of almost every American war since Gulf War I.

And we’re really capitalizing on that at the Grayzone. We understand the American public and the western public are sick of being lied into war, and they’re sick of being pushed into lesser evilism, whether it’s abroad in countries that are targeted by the U.S., or at home. And so we’re just there providing balance and exposing whatever the lie is of the day.

RS: Let me, as an older person, end with a little editorial about what — and I agree with the thrust of what you’ve been saying — but why I think this word “democratic socialism” is important, not just social democrat. Because it acknowledges the vast harm that has been done by the left in human history. It’s not just the right, it’s not just the corporate elite, and it’s not just the oligarchs. That people got hold of a message of concern for the ordinary person. It happened in religion too, after all, you know; structures were developed, people who claimed they were following the message of Christ, and they ended up building edifices to the exploitation of ordinary people.

I think what Bernie Sanders represents — and I’ll ask your response, but what I think he represents, the reason he’s so authentic — he actually believes in the grassroots. He actually believes that an ordinary person in Vermont can make intelligent decisions about the human condition, and about justice and freedom. And I think the reason Bernie Sanders can survive the rhetorical assaults on his leftism or his socialism, is that what people of power in the capitalist world have managed to do is identify this cause of social justice, a notion of democratic socialism with totalitarianism, with elitism. And Bernie Sanders — and this is a good night to celebrate Bernie Sanders, if it’s true; I hadn’t caught up with the news, but if he’s really doing that well in Iowa. Because I thought he would get 1% of the vote four years ago when he started; I never thought this would happen.

I think what makes Bernie Sanders authentic is his respect for the ordinary person. He is the opposite of that leftist elitist–and you have them as well as rightist elitists — who thinks they have to distort history to protect the average person from reality. And Bernie Sanders is — he speaks truth about what’s going on. And at a time when people on the right and the left have nothing but contempt for most of the politicians, and journalistic leaders and everything else, for having betrayed them. So I think Bernie Sanders is a ray of hope. I wish he would be around a lot longer, but then again, I wish I’d be around a lot longer. But it’s nice to run into Max Blumenthal, who’s half my age and has all of that spirit that I’d like to see in journalism. So thanks, Max, for doing this.

MB: Thank you, Bob. It’s a real honor.

RS: And by the way, I ignored that last book of yours. Could you give the title again and how people get it?

MB: It’s called “The Management of Savagery.” And let me pull it off the shelf so I can actually read the subheader. You can edit this. It’s called “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump.” And it’s really kind of my look at the, sort of how the politics of my lifetime and my generation has been shaped by foreign policy disasters that an unelected foreign-policy establishment has subjected us to.

RS: Full disclosure, I actually have not read it, and I will get it as soon as I can.

MB: I’ll send you a copy —

RS: No, no, no, you got — it’s hard enough to make a living as a writer. I don’t think you should give these things away for nothing. I’ll get myself a copy. And I want to thank you again. I’ve been talking to Max Blumenthal, check out his work, check out the Grayzone. These podcasts are done basically for KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, where Christopher Ho is the engineer who gets it up on the air.

At Truthdig, Natasha Hakimi Zapata writes the brilliant intros and overview of these things and posts them up there. Here at USC, Sebastian Grubaugh, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, really gets the whole thing going and hooks up everyone, thanks to him. And finally, there’d be no “Scheer Intelligence” without the main Scheer, Joshua Scheer, who’s the show’s producer. And we’ll see you next week with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence.”

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everydayisaphilosophyday · 4 years

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The Untold Story of Fahrenheit 451

Those who know me know I’m a little obsessed with dystopian fiction. Yet I often find people are surprised when I say Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favourite books of all time. For many this book was either a little boring or not that great. The biggest complaint is one that, in my opinion, is highly reductive: ‘the only message of the book is that censorship is wrong’.

So many of Fahrenheit 451’s messages sadly remain untold stories. It’s rich in astute observations and couched in a beautiful language that sprawls across what is actually a rather enthralling plot. There’s so much more than simply burning books.

If 1984 warns against militant jingoism, Fahrenheit 451 warns against that one might call ‘jingleism’. There’s no better way to convey what I mean than with the ending of a speech from our antagonist, Captain Beatty:

“‘Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.’

‘Snap ending.’ Mildred nodded.’”

The inhabitants of this society have very limited attention spans where all they care about is the snap ending. And as if to prove his point, the wife (Mildred) of our protagonist (Montag) repeats only his last two words. Mildred—along with everyone else in society— lives in a world of jingles: a world of catchy expressions, of short sharp snap endings.

Beatty acknowledges that boiling everything down to the gag results from the proliferation of entertainment and the population boom. With more people and more entertainment, time pressures squeeze entertainment to a pulp. From the pulped pile of books emerged attention-grabbing, simplistic jingles. What’s disturbing is less the abstract potentialities this represents, but the concrete realities it mirrors: this is hardly an unfamiliar story. In Australia, one immigration policy was simply the three word slogan, “Stop the boats”. What makes this so dangerous is that it is presented without any nuance or rational argumentation.

People often don’t follow leaders or policies because they’re good—but because their jingle rouses up a mob mentality. In an analysis of Trump’s speech, linguists have found a particular prevalence of repetition and polarisation—out with external discussion and nuance, in with forceful catchphrases and divisive black-or-white viewpoints.

Bradbury warns against a populace cognitively incapable of tuning in for anything longer than the snap ending—for the catchphrases. They haven’t the ability to hear nuanced arguments, they can only hear the jingle.

Politically, poisoning its inhabitants with jingleism allows the society to be utterly repressed. As Beatty goes on to explain in his characteristically wonderful way, one need only “whirl man’s mind around so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought”. And with thought out of the way, Beatty and the rest of the leadership becomes unaccountable— people are not only unable to think for themselves, but they’re incapable of engaging with anything which isn’t catchy.

Everyone in the society becomes reduced to the mental capacity of an infant, and the rulers can do what they want. The extremely stupid population simply don’t engage with politics—they have no awareness, never mind any say.

It’s tempting, as with much dystopian fiction, to frame this in Orwellian terms—the big bad oppressive authorities reduce the population to shrivelled wrecks to cement their power. But there’s no explicit authoritarian or morally flawed goal underlying all of this. Bradbury himself claims it’s “less about Big Brother and more about Little Sister”. Contrary to the reductionist claims I so often hear, this isn’t really a story of the political elite exploiting the masses via censorship. In fact, this is a story where the masses subjugate themselves in the name of happiness— something we, as much as they, value. And that is the real reason this is so scary.

Bradbury’s society is full of people who have corroded their own mental capacities, stopped thinking, and thrown themselves into chains. This regression, of course, is symbolised by the banning and burning of books; books, after all, are a symbol of thought and of patience. Most disturbingly of all, we learn that “‘the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.’” Authoritarian oppression is not required—society represses itself.

Total annihilation is the ending to this particular tale. Sadly, such an ending doesn’t seem so far from reality. Lockdown is our own dystopia and has shown us how dangerous ignorance can be. But again, people wrongly appropriate the military themes of 1984 to Fahrenheit 451. In 1984, war was a constant, purposefully forced upon the cultural consciousness. But in Fahrenheit 451, we barely see the war. The people are like pacified babies—incapable of thought and emotion, they are utterly ignorant of the threat.

The most powerful message is the problem with jingleism on a personal scale. What is humanity worth if not for thought and emotion? The characters of Fahrenheit 451—with the exception of the charming Clarisse, discerning Beatty and a few others—are utterly vapid. When presented with poetry, Mildred’s wife and her friends burst into tears. They sit all day in a room with 4 massive TV screens for walls, and at night they use “little Seashells” in their ears. Bradbury would be rolling in his grave at the development of earphones, iPhones, and virtual reality.

Television, for Bradbury, represented the short-term anaesthetic pleasure that leads to an inescapable unhappiness. It’s the easy way out; the choice not to love. Partially from a fear of pain and partially from the evolutionary need to pay attention to the loud and the bright, we choose to bury ourselves in click-bait YouTube, mind-numbing TV series, and attention-grabbing headlines. Beatty—as we’ve come to expect— summarises nicely: “‘Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang, boff, and wow!’”

Soon, people lose the ability to sit down for a few hours to read a good book. As we fill our lives with more and more ostentatious entertainment, we neurologically lose the ability to engage in less stimulating activities—our brain either wants brazen vulgarity, or it goes to sleep.

For me, Fahrenheit 451 cautions us not to lose our humanity in the name of happiness. It cautions us not to subjugate ourselves by becoming intellectually infantile. There’s an underlying smugness to the allegation that the book is just about censorship—'we don’t censor, we don’t burn books’. Even many who claim to love it “fail to notice it’s we TV watchers who are the villains”, as Steve West notes. Maybe my fear is confirmed by the fact that so many have such a superficial reading of Fahrenheit 451. That’s why I think it’s a story worth telling

#Fahrenheit 451 #untold stories #dystopia #dystopian fiction #speculative fiction #fiction #1984 #oppression #repression #humanity #OC

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blizzweirdo · 5 years

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Blizzard and Hong Kong

I feel like I should address this issue since everyone else seems to be weighing in. To be honest, I find the surprise at Blizzard’s reaction to the incident somewhat naive, and the subsequent boycotting as ineffectual as well as incendiary, with the people who live in permanent outrage coming out of the woodwork to fan the flames. People, as they say, just want to watch the world burn, and, also, this is why we can’t have nice things.

First, Blizzard has never been pro-Democracy (at least in its current form). There was some political posturing in the early days of SC1, but by SC2, the democratic Confederacy had been replaced by the bellicose dictatorship-turned-monarchy of the Dominion–and this was seen as an improvement. There was no democracy to come in, only Valerian, a more benevolent dictator. WoW largely ignores the issue as does Diablo. “But wait! What about the novels!? The short stories!?” you may be saying. Yes, sometimes democracy is mentioned there, but none of those end up overseas in their full English versions. And, if there is some controversy, it can be blamed on a single author. There’s also just not as wide an audience, and those sorts of things go under the radar. The same, if you notice, goes for OW. Yes, there are gay characters, but their homosexuality only appears in the expanded universe fiction. Blizzard wants diversity, but can’t put it in the game because of China–or Russia for that matter. Because therein lies the problem: do you make a stand and maybe get blocked and none of you content ever makes it to China or Russia again, or do you err on the side of caution and be more discrete about your messages of coexistence without mentioning homosexuality or democracy explicitly? American values are still being exported, but watered down–but at least they get there.

You would be surprised (or not) by how many times game companies are threatened in this way. “Cover your characters more, or we will not allow you to release in China”–this is not something they just say to American companies; it’s what they say to Korean, Japanese, and European companies as well. Being rated mature means you are practically banned, and real bans do happen. Of course, we also censor content here in the US. Our rating system is a problem especially for Korean devs who have different ideas of propriety and what constitutes a “mature” theme. Localization teams are often tasked with scrubbing a game of adult content as well as flagging things like sexualized children or homophobic dialogue. Is that blocking free speech and freedom of expression? In the widest sense of the concept, most likely yes. But we engage in it as well.

Which brings me to my point. What happened with Blitzchung was going to happen to SOME company, it just happened to happen to Blizzard–and at a bad time. Blizzard brought the hammer down because of the context which made it seem like his comments on the stream were maliciously trying to force Blizzard’s hand and make them take a political stance. They went too far, but reneged in an expected way to something that I think is reasonable–reinstatement of his winnings and a halving of the suspension. He had a contract, and he violated it. It sucks, but Blizzard doesn’t want to be a part of an international diplomatic incident. If China censored Blizzard and decided to shut them out, all Chinese players would lose their connection to Blizzard and ALL its games–so would Hong Kong, and so would Taiwan. Their American voice in the market would be totally silenced. That’s not serving those customers, and it’s not serving the US diplomatically.

“I still want Blizzard to make a stand,” you’re probably saying. “They need to protect free speech!” Okay, but where does it end? Let’s say that it wasn’t a pro-Hong Kong sentiment that was expressed on the stream. Let’s say it was pro-Trump or pro-Putin. Blizzard brings the hammer down. What would people say? “Yas, Blizzard. Burn the MFers!” because of COURSE they would. No one wants that shit on their streams or in their games. And the more Blizzard ban-hammered them, the more people would rejoice. And it’s not the same. I don’t think it’s the same! The travesty of Hong Kong’s plight is self-evident and how China’s government is treating them is objectively wrong. I sympathize. But you can’t stop banning one and keep banning another.

And the truth is, if not Blizzard, than it would have been another company. Like Riot. And if you want to hate a company, hate them. Riot sucks. There are logs and logs of HR proceedings that document this. They are also WAY deeper in the pocket of Tencent than Blizzard is. If you’re pro-Hong Kong, you’re being hypocritical if you buy ANYTHING from Riot. But even then, Tencent is a multinational company with firms in the US. Tencent is not a terrible company. All communication that I have received from them has been congenial. They are largely sympathetic to the plight of American companies that want to do business in China and are helpful. They are also pretty good about responding to American concerns for Chinese games debuting in the US–and I cannot say that about any of the Korean companies I’ve worked for (not to single them out, but they have a problematic work culture).

But it does all really, really suck. There are people that work at Blizzard that are unhappy and there are fans that are of course unhappy. I’m unhappy as well, but for a different reason. Having to tiptoe around China and Russia dilutes video games’ artistic value. Not being able to have a message of ANY kind on ANY controversial topic renders games artistically inert. Art is supposed to make you feel something, and one of those feeling is unease when your worldview is threatened. Art makes you think, and there’s no reason why games shouldn’t do this, and not making art right now that alludes to the riots in Hong Kong will keep it from being recorded as part of history. We are shortchanging ourselves as a gaming culture if we aren’t appalled by what the international gaming ecosystem has done to American-made AAA games. And if it continues, the story and content within the media will keep getting more and more anemic and copycat–like all those Chinese cloned games. And boycotting is most likely not effective. Just crippling Blizzard won’t help, but not buying Chinese products and boycotting Tencent will. Make a stand by saying that you will not support a company that is majority funded by a Chinese investor. Wean companies like Blizzard and Riot off of Chinese money by shrinking Chinese market share in the US.

Protest for Hong Kong. Protest against China. But boycott where the boycott makes sense and don’t burn Blizzard at the stake for something that was inevitably going to happen to an American AAA game studio at some point.

#blizzard entertainment

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

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The Extremist #3

I'm disappointed that this half picture doesn't match up exactly with the half picture from Issue #2.

It's probably good I didn't post any of the blurbs that tried to bribe him with a handjob in the backroom of the Portland Comic-con.

Anyway, let's see what happened in "July, Nineteen Ninety-Three"! I'll try to baby it up so Tumblr doesn't shit its diapers.

Peter Milligan begins this issue all Peter Milligany.

Remember that this was written in 1993 when Peter Milligan makes mention of how a person could, at some point, be alone in anything. But also imagine now how the death of an intimate would go in 2019. Back in 1993, Judy is surprised to find that she's whisked away from her grief for long interludes by the bureaucratic machinations of a death in a capitalist democracy. This same kind of thing probably still happens except with more texts and emails and less phone conversations and driving to speak to people in person. But also imagine the non-bureaucratic side of death. We probably have far less close intimate contacts in our physical space now than we had in 1993, at least by percentage when compared with all people we would consider contacts (intimates who now live in another part of the world, people we know only from online, friends of friends we've maybe met once but now sometimes interact with over social media). In 1993. it would be phone calls and personal visits with flowers and cake or cookies. In 2019, you probably receive a deluge of crying emojis and people replying "*hugs*" to your post about your world crumbling beneath you as you try to stagger on with your remaining years bereft of the person you thought you could never live without. I suppose there are plenty of apps where people could send you cakes and cookies so I suppose it wouldn't be too terrible. Should I create an app that sends cakes and cookies to people when they've lost a loved one? It wouldn't cost anything. You'd just have to send me a small cake and some cookies with every use of the app! I can't wait to get extraordinarily fat! The journey is going to be so worth it!

Grief is a savory, selfish feast.

Peter Milligan has a way of expressing potent, terrible truths in such a casual manner that most people probably don't even notice them. There's an almost expressible power in believing you're experiencing something that nobody else has or will ever experience. Or just in knowing that you lived a part of your life unknown to your closest friends and family. I cherish, greedily, the moments of my life spent alone and far from those closest to me and I parcel them out as stories in only the most meager of manners. Hell, I've probably told more about myself and my experiences here on this blog exactly because I know my friends and family don't read it. I might say this every commentary until this series is over but I still don't know if I understand the point of the overall plot. But I do understand that the plot is a way for Peter Milligan to be Peter Milligan. I understand the need for a framework to say things you want to say. Or to just put scenes out there that you don't want to bother encasing in some kind of larger whole that you're less interested in. So here's another scene Peter Milligan had to have thought about and then needed a place to mention it:

Of course people still get horny for their dead partner! But how often does anybody talk about it?! Maybe it's common and I'm just consuming the wrong kinds of media. Alex Trebek never once asked a contestant if they jerk off thinking about their dead spouse!

Netflix's Dead to Me has some pretty frank discussions about the loss of a spouse but while Christina Applegate talks about being horny and wanting to fuck somebody, I don't think she ever says she masturbates thinking about her dead husband. If the point of this story is about dealing with loss, I'm beginning to get it. And that would completely explain why I missed it at twenty-one. I'm only three pages into this issue and it's kicking me in the face with existential issues. Was I too dumb at twenty-one to understand any of this or just too sheltered to really feel it? Maybe I was just too fucking young. Judy finds the key to Jack's Extremist apartment. After looking around the place, she thinks, "It was like having Jack die all over again, but this death seemed more profound. 'I never knew you,' I thought." It's an easy statement to point out that nobody ever really knows anybody. But once, because Jim Starling wrote a terrible run on Stormwatch, I wrote an entire rant about how we all hide our innermost dark secrets from even the greatest loves of our lives. I was essentially asking how can we know anyone if we won't even let those closest to us know our most vulnerable thoughts and terrible crimes (I don't mean crimes in the law and order sense! I just mean like that time you put your finger in your ass and then made sandwiches for your friends and they all got sick and you didn't do it on purpose but you made the connection and nobody must ever fucking know! You know, those kinds of crimes. But not that specific one! I totally just made that one up for effect). So I could repeat myself or just link to the rant or just (and — Spoiler! — this is the choice I'm going with!) move on to page five of this comic book. Judy discovers an old diary written by The Extremist (but not Jack!). Then she finds some of the tapes he burned and salvages a few. She hears Jack speaking about murder and getting pissed on and, most appallingly, calling her "poor dull dead little Judy." She smashes the place up, finds The Extremist's gimp suit, and tries it on thinking, "What the fuck?! Maybe I'll feel sexy and start speaking in sex metaphors!" Then the phone rings. And I suppose the rest is history! And by history, I mean Issue #1! Except I'm only on page seven so maybe I'm jumping the gun. I guess we need to learn how Judy met Patrick and why she decided her life would be better by going out at night murdering people until she comes hard in a leather suit. Oh, I hope that last sentence wasn't too adult for Tumblr! A bunch of pages are taken up by the plot stuff that I apparently paid the most attention to in 1993 and which is the least interesting part of the story (so far!). Patrick "accidentally" runs into Judy and he pretends he doesn't know who killed Jack. He offers to help her find out if she'll pose as The Extremist and do murders and blow jobs for him. Judy is all, "What the hell! Maybe I'll understand Jack a little more! Maybe I'll know why he needed a boring piece of shit like me when he was having such fantastic fuck and murder adventures!" No wait. That's what I would say. Judy just wants to find out who killed Jack and to, maybe, feel a little closer to him. I don't think she's as amped up as I would be about the loads of indiscriminate sex and murdering of the most perverse perverts. The main story ends with Judy making her first kill. She learns that her problem was that she was always living in the past and the future. So even if she had wanted to kill somebody in the moment before, she'd be all tangled up in the past and whether the person deserved it and maybe some of it was her fault and perhaps she's been too hasty with her murder decision. And she'd also be lost in the future like how the person will stop existing and how she might wind up in prison and how the victim's guts are going to be hell to clean up off the floor. But in the moment, she can just satisfy the need without consequence or conscience! She discovers it's a thrill! Well, I could have told her that! I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was ten! Never worry about what the orc did or if it deserved it or if it has family or if you're actually the asshole raiding its lovely home! The actual issue ends with Tony, the black guy on the stoop, sitting in The Extremist's apartment listening to Judy's tapes. He's just finished the last one where she says she's going off to kill Patrick and he's completely caught up in the drama. He wants to know who killed who just as badly as, well, not me but I'm sure some readers were on the edge of their seat at this point. The Extremist #3 Rating: B. I don't find myself caring about the framework. But Peter Milligan has thoughts and those thoughts are well worth the admission price to this story. In a way, this is just an extension of his run on Shade the Changing Man. It's almost the same story if you squint your eyes and unfocus your vision and punch yourself in the genitals. Patrick is the guy on Meta who was pulling the strings to get Shade to go into the Area of Madness and eventually Earth (I forget his name! I bet it was Patrick!) And The Extremist is Shade and Kathy too (they both have similarities to both Judy and Jack, so I don't mean to say either Shade or Kathy is essentially one or the other). The Extremist has crazy missions where they kill and fuck just like Shade and Kathy had! I think. I mean, probably! And Tony is just Lenny in someway that I haven't spent any time thinking about but they were the only characters left!

#The Extremist #Peter Milligan #Ted McKeever #DC Comics #DC #Vertigo

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cartoonessays · 6 years

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The Problem With The Simpsons

As of this writing, the most recent episode of The Simpsons is “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, in which they briefly offered a response to comedian Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu. The documentary used the Apu character as a jump-off point to discuss the marginalization and the extremely reductive view of South Asians in popular media, particularly drawing on his experience as an Indian-American forced to reckon with a greater population who didn’t view his cultural heritage beyond Apu behind the checkout counter at the Kwik-E-Mart saying “thank you, come again”.

In “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, the B-plot involves Marge rediscovering a beloved book from her childhood called The Princess in the Garden, only to realize how racist and imperialistic it was in an attempt to read it to Lisa. Marge later attempts to make edits to the book in order for it to fit current-day sensibilities, or in Marge’s words, “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”. Lisa quickly recognizes that Marge’s changes to the story sanitize the whole plot and calls it out, leaving a frustrated Marge to ask what she’s supposed to do. Lisa breaks the fourth wall and replies:

Something that started decades ago, and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?

As she says this, the camera pans down to a portrait of Apu with the caption “don’t have a cow!”. Marge responds by saying “Some things will be dealt with at a later date,” with Lisa quipping “If at all” as they both stare directly in the camera.

A lot of the response The Simpsons has gotten to this has been negative.

And for good fucking reason too.

This response to The Problem With Apu is bullshit; I’m not gonna mince words. These writers are better than this and these writers know they’re better than this. Pulling out the banal “PC gone mad” canard is the refuge of a comedic hack.

First of all, The Problem With Apu highlights how Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s conception as a character is based off of various South Asian stereotypes that include but aren’t limited to his voice being performed by a white man (Hank Azaria) doing an impression of another white man (Peter Sellers) doing an Indian accent, his job being at a 7-Eleven type of convenience store, and the fact that his name “Nahasapeemapetilon” is just foreign sounding gibberish and not actually a name. Kondabolu and various other South Asian actors and comedians discuss how growing up they were bullied and picked on by being called “Apu” and his catchphrase “thank you, come again” was used against them as a slur. They also talked about how the roles they get offered for shows and movies hardly go beyond stereotypes and cliches that draw a lot of parallels to Apu. And the Simpsons writers responded to all of this with a dismissive and tired ass whine about political correctness.

It’s particularly disingenuous of them to use Lisa as their mouthpiece to voice this response, considering her statement is a dismissive retort of her whole existence as a character.

The season 5 episode “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy” is all about Lisa taking the makers of Malibu Stacy dolls to task over its reinforcement of sexist stereotypes, noting how popular and influential the dolls are to girls around the world. A lot of striking parallels to Kondabolu’s documentary about Apu, aren’t there? The show didn’t treat Lisa’s concerns about Malibu Stacy’s sexism as trivial or a non-issue; she was framed as the hero in this episode. Lisa’s statement in “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” is a complete 180-turn from “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy”.

Most of the negative critiques that have been written about “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” have focused specifically on moments where Lisa and Marge break the fourth wall. But I want to discuss the framing around that moment in the episode more because it is also terrible and makes that particular moment even worse in context. In Marge’s changes to the book she grew up with, she changed the protagonist from a little girl who happily revels in Britain’s colonization of South America to a “cisgender girl who fights for wild horse rescue and net neutrality”. Let’s see how many liberal strawmen are in this sentence. There’s a strawman related to the language used by transgender rights activists and allies, another strawman related to animal rights, and are they seriously framing net neutrality as something you can write off as some shallow identifier of politically correct liberals? Are there a lot of people who brush off the net neutrality issue as political correctness?

And once Marge began telling her re-edited story, Lisa was quick to point out that all the re-edits stripped the story of the emotional journey the protagonist goes through. First of all, how the hell would Lisa know about the protagonist’s emotional journey or how the racial stereotypes play into it? She hasn’t read the damn book! Second of all, this is a false dichotomy the episode sets up to give weight to its dismissal of The Problem With Apu. Indulgence in racist stereotypes aren’t an inherent function of character arcs in stories. Why does Marge specifically say “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”? Her objection in the first place was the book’s racism, not that it had spirit and character. Why are they now framing racism and pro-colonialism as “spirit and character”? Perhaps The Princess in the Garden is some kind of allusion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and controversy surrounding its banning/censoring in various schools and libraries? If that is the case, the rest of the episode does not make that clear.

In fact, when I watched the full episode, I was surprised to see the rest of B-plot actually admonished the book’s racist stereotyping. The first part of this plot sets up its racial and ethnic stereotyping as really over-the-top and mean-spirited (and giving no allusions of how it related to an emotional arc later in the story). The last part of this plot mocks historians of The Princess in the Garden’s author who act as apologists for her racism through ridiculous reasoning that they don’t even really believe (they call her racism “self-consciously ironic protest against [the author’s] own oppression” due to her being a lesbian). So on top of this episode’s response to The Problem With Apu being built from various strawmen, dishonestly framing a dichotomy between creating a character with an emotional arc and not promoting racial stereotypes, and just being really heavy-handed (they both stare directly at the viewers for crying out loud), it was completely in contrast with the rest of the plot.

I can’t read this as anything else but a petty “fuck you” to Hari Kondabolu. And that is really sad. These writers are better than this.

Or maybe they’re not better than this.

The Simpsons has always been an overwhelmingly white show with very little representation of people of color. In fact, the only characters of color I can think of that has been explored beyond their on-the-surface personality quirks in the show’s almost thirty year tenure are Apu and Carl in only one episode. This show hasn’t really grappled with racism in any of their episodes outside a character making a small quip about it once in a blue moon or “Much Apu About Nothing” (although that was more about xenophobia than racism). It seems to be an issue the writers of the show have never been comfortable in tackling. They nonetheless open themselves up to scrutiny by ignoring it, especially when they conceive a foreign character based on stereotypes they find funny (Simpsons writer Dana Gould admitted to that in Kondabolu’s documentary).

I’m not even necessarily saying that they should kill off Apu or something like that. I like Apu and I personally wouldn’t want to see him go (but hey, I’m not Indian). But I would have liked to see the writers honestly reckon with the stereotypical character they created and how the decades-long ubiquity of the show has helped shape the broader collective view of South Asians in media.

Instead they chose to respond like this:

youtube

And it’s not only beneath them, it’s pathetic.

P.S. This episode offers much better insight on the debate between artistic freedom vs. calling out objectionable content in media anyway.

#the simpsons #apu #hari kondabolu #the problem with apu #racism #stereotypes #political correctness #cartoon essays #just my thoughts

67 notes · View notes

courage-a-word-of-justice · 6 years

Text

Yotsuiro Biyori 1

I memorised this show’s name as being “Rokuhoudou”, so I almost didn’t recognise it at first when CR got it! I’m only taking it on because of the SoL aspect, which I’m normally not too sold on. However, there was a lot of slice of life this past winter, so I can see this being moved to the on hold pile already…

Mitarashi (dango).

Why do I get the feeling there was something fishy (time travel, a death or something) that happened to make the Rokuhoudou the way it is? I say “time travel” because of what I read about this show on ANN.

Is it just me, or does the background around this woman look kind of flat? The bins seem pretty flat, at the very least…

I can see what the woman means when she goes “This is a café?” It sure don’t look like one, it’s more like a temple or something.

I almost expected the woman to mangle the name of the café and go “Shika-kaede-tou” or something. How do the Japanese manage to get all these kanji combo pronunciations right???

“Don’t dodge my question, you king of BS.” – Just another quotable, alongside “Just Google it, asshole.” (Boueibu HK)

I thought the latte art was a dog at first, but yeah, if I look at it differently, it’s a bunny!

Kusamochi. By the way, I was thinking this show is really charming. Sure, I had more than enough Cute Boys Doing Cute Things in the winter, but these guys have quite the rapport. Now if only I could figure out what their names are (properly)…

Wait, so did that board/sheet/whatever inside that inspired Redhead refer to Kinako (cat) or kinako?

Lemme get this straight – black hair is Tokitaka, brown hair (latte) is Gure, desserts boy is…shoot, I don’t know…Update: Gure has black hair, not brown. It’s just shorter than Tokitaka’s.

I got no Google hits for Koubai pink, but Yurushiiro pink I did…so here you go. Yurushiiro pink was a pink that wasn’t banned by the emperor of Japan back in the day where he had more power. It seems to be a shade somewhat similar to cherry blossoms.

Tokiiro pink = rose gold and Yoshino cherry white = a pinkish-white.

Nerikiri is a type of wagashi.

Some of the subs got cut off! Grr, CR! So, here’s my attempt to translate what they have on that board of Redhead’s: after “butterflies”, there’s “plum” (ume), “bamboo shoots” (take no ko) and “new leaves” (wakaba). CR definitely used a longer word combo in place of “new leaves” though, so I could be wrong. That writing’s pretty scribbly, after all.

Redhead is Tsubaki (see? I have a horrendous memory when it comes to learning things for the first time)…so who am I missing?

Sakuramochi. It’s that grainy sort of pink, leaf-bound mochi you often see in shows like this.

Gure seems to like his Italian, doesn’t he? Is he half-foreign or is this just being a fan of the language of pasta?

“…think about the spring sunshine.” – So why the cat background?

Okay, I’ve found whose name I’ve forgotten. Sui (brunette).

Tokishirazu salmon. LOL, that salmon’s perfect for Tokitaka!

I don’t think they showed the chopstick holder earlier, but it’s a heart. It really is cute!

Interestingly, this woman brings to mind the idea of meiwaku when she says that it was her fault.

Oh, they weren’t heart shaped, they were cherry blossom shaped! That makes a lot more sense! (The shapes are similar though…)

Makunouchi bento…that sounds familiar, for some reason.

Hanami dango. I’m sure you know them, even if you’re not familiar with the name...so long as you’ve watched enough anime to see them at least once.

Ah, I bet Gure is a happy drunk, LOL.

Hah? There’s Sui (when he was younger)? Not in this episode, no…There was also a Tsubasa Fujita who was voiced by Hibiku Yamamura. I assume that’s the woman we were following today, but it might’ve been her friend or someone in a later episode…

Manjyu chazuke. I had to use the Japanese words to get some hits (as opposed to the romaji I just used), but whoever said that thing about Ougai seems to be correct.

Omusubi seems to be another name for onigiri.

Sencha.

That seems like less of a drop than I first thought...it’s going to be tough to cut down on all these shows. I’m clearly being affected by how much I opened up my watchlist, because remember those days where I’d only take on two shows a season?

Kakuriyo 2

Wow, the oni really has it in for her now...or is it really that hard to get a true read of him?

I somehow wagered the tengu was going to remind Aoi of her old man a few seconds before she did just that. That’s a bad sign...

Would a tengu have been too heavy to fly if it were drowning?

Seriously, this tengu never thinks of flying. I’m laughing, but I’ve realised this show’s strength seems to be its humour more than anything.

The airship has the kanji for “Ten” (from Tenjinya).

The pace of this show goes like molasses, so I think I’ll put it on hold here.

Lupin III Pt V 2

“Did you finally start caring about the environment?”

Holy helicopters, Batman! The AW609...exists!

“...Lupin used to escape!”

They’re being chased and yet still have time for hotpot, LOL. Never change, Lupin. Never change.

I never thought Iâd see the day where a situation like the one Amiâs in could ever be talked out of in anime. Normally a scenario like that one is played for drama...

I guess even Lupin has a moe instinct, LOL.

That social media service looks a lot like Twitter, eh?

Apparently Shinpei Mayama is new this episode...Keep watching.

The Flea? He looks more like a hikikomori monster to me, LOL. (Boueibu reference, don’t mind me...)

I get the feeling I should know these people that are all showing up, but I feel like I don’t need to know about their backstories to appreciate them going forward. Thus, I will keep this show. Once again though, it’s a tentative keeper.

Saredo 2

I’m zoning out...I need to drop this show, don’t I?...

Soleil? Is that Gayus’s surname? (Basically, I got roped back into watching it with one reveal, LOL. I’m such a finicky person.)

One Hundred Ways to Train Your Dragon, more like it, LOL.

Oh great. Every time they have a religious figure, the show always seems to go downhill...(thinks back to Vatican Miracle Examiner)

Wow, “pessimistically optimistic”. That’s quite the paradox!

The power of politics is to back up one voice with lots of voices, so...uh...about that, Cardinal Mouldeen...

“Come on, you slaves of authority.” - LOL. What a name.

“[Gigina’s] a sword dancer...” - Oh, so that’s why sinners dance with the dragons! A “dancer” is a magician in this world.

Okay, seriously. How did I not see how bad this show was in the first episode? If your side characters are more developed than your main ones, you’ve got a problem.

I’ve never seen a man more dedicated to fantasy-style IKEA than Gigina, LOL. At least that’s fresh.

I don’t think I even want to document this for later, but who the heck is Diorg?

I completely regret praising the rapport between Gayus and Gigina now. You can have some great convos when one member of the convo’s drunk, but this is a bit of a mess of a convo, tbh.

Even without the big names, I suspected the woman was connected to the black dragon...

This is a show where property damage counts, right? Gayus’ll throw a fit later, eh?

Okay, I think I’ve complained about this show way too much. Once I start seeing something in a negative light I start to sound really critical, and a lot of the time it’s actually not as rewarding as hatewatches should be, which is why I haven’t tackled anything for hatewatch purposes yet. It’s just a fun-sucker, if that’s the case, and that was definitely the case with this show.

BnHA 40

Wait, why is the camera-oh, it’s just Mineta. Get off the audience’s case, Mineta.

Is it just me, or is it that every time I read “Wild, Wild Pussycats” I get this song in my head?

I love how the Pussycats are basically magical girls with those poses!

How did they not censor Dragon Quest??? (LOL)

Aizawa likes cats? That’s new, but it’s also very in line with what we know of him already.

Oh, I see. She’s a Christmas cake!

What does GG stand for in that context, huh? “you GG bastard”, hmm...

Between BnHA and Tiramisu, you’re definitely in luck if you like muscular boys!

I feel like Kota’s a hypocrite. After all, he’s at his aunt’s and his aunt is a rescue hero...

Kota is very much like Midoriya in a few ways, don’tcha think?

Kota’s name has a lot of water in it, doesn’t it? (Both kanji in his name have water radicals.)

Boueibu HK 2

For some reason, Wakura actually seems happy about his outfit...even though he criticises it.

I’m kind of confused about that “hammer and pigeon” thing myself, although hato = pigeon which you can vaguely hear in Furanui’s sentence.

I love Wakura’s serious face...seriously, I need to figure out who best boy is soon, eh?

LOL, I said platypus was kamonohashi, yeah? Kamo can mean duck and it can be short for “maybe” (kamoshirenai).

Wahey, Binanshi Contest! Was it no. 1704 last ep as well?

Well, spoilers beat me on this one, but Tawarayama was a principal after the other guy...but then what are the HK DC gonna do about an advisor?

Ehhhhhhh? This I didn’t see! Shuzenji calls Ata by that name!

The student council room hasn’t changed at all, I see.

“Get fat!” - Wow...(LOL)

Calling it now - Unazuki is a yes man. Very Arima-like...

Strangely, Maasa’s sentence doesn’t specify Furanui is “shrimpy” at all. He just calls Furanui “this thing” (konna).

Does this mean Maasa has a thing for cool belly dancer guys? Hmm? Or is it just the magic he’s impressed with?

That board on the wall of the student council room hasnât changed at all, which is what tipped me off to my earlier comment.

Ritter = knight. So our ES are Diamond, Rose Quartz and Amethyst. There’s not as much of a pattern going through these guys as there was with the CA, but it’ll have to do.

Oh wow, that summary took almost half an episode! No wonder the DC ran off!

The massage thing really calls to mind the manga...

108 is a Buddhist number. I wonder if thereâs any significance to that...

July 18th? Boy, another July baby (thnks back to En)...

Getanha are cakes from Kagoshima, where the Kirishima onsen is.

Lorbeerprinz says ”druck” is pressure...but...well, I never thought I’d see the day I regretted not learning German, that’s all. Sorry. I got nothing on this.

This shabu shabu stuff reminds me of the chikuwabu talk in LOVE! s1 ep 1. (nostalgia washes over everyone)

They definitely upped their 4th walling this season, eh? First the layout artist thing, now this “cut off by the frameâ” thing.

The river I’d assume is the Sanzu (river you have to cross before you die) and I guess the flowerbed has to do with that. Kyotaro is Fiore Kiss though...which seems somewhat ironic.

At least they’re fully clothed prior to this transformation...but I didn’t mind seeing them transform from their birthday suits last episode, either...

What is that? *squints* It appears to be Taiju’s phone. Atsushi’s last season was green so I can see why this one’s plum.

Applying self destruct boosters is a lot easier than it looks. (thinks to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, where cake makes a character explode)

There’s a list of ground rules, including “let’s protect morals and manner”...whatever “manner” is. I guess the Furanui Knights, who aren’t actually on the ground, wouldn’t be subjected to “ground rules”, eh?

This one was clearly a case of “didn’t think of something for himself”, huh...

Do they have hot baths in Honyara Land???

Kamopapa’s VA was someone with the surname “Nishimura”...gotta look this guy up later, I guess. Seeing the actual visuals of the ED for once is so exciting, though!

The statement on the scroll in the back means “scholarship and the martial arts”, which is just another way of saying Ata’s a perfect student and is continually striving to be one.

Maasa’s hair antenna is a heart in the ED. That’ll get him charm points for sure.

Lookit them badass swords! They even have corresponding gems on them!

A-ha! I thought the final defeat song was Happy Ready. These marketing guys are too predictable...

For some reason, this ED is a lot more Detective Conan than the last one. I can’t quite put my finger on why though...

This next ep preview’s the best! I wanna quote it! “You know how there are things you see every day, but you don’t actually know what they’re called, so you just say “the thing” or “the whatever-it-is”? The next episode’s about that sort of stuff.” Update: It really is about that sort of stuff, this preview’s just uber-vague...

Mahou Shoujo Ore 3

Wow, they’re really leaning on the 4th wall this week, aren’t they?

The lyrics by and large really don’t make sense, so I feel quite thankful I’m not listening to the audio track right now, LOL.

(at “This way, squirrel!”) What in animals’ name is this Pokemon? (LOL)

Hey, uh...is it just me or did both magical boy shows opt for the flashbacks this week, too?

What’s the age difference between Sakuyo and Mohiro? Kid!Mohiro doesn’t look older than 12 here.

“Thus concludes Sakuyo’s Thrilling First Love.”

One thing I’ve noticed with lots of magical girls is that they have earrings. Arima (Boueibu) had them, but these guys do too.

“...looks so much like Mohiro-chan...” - Now that I look at Sakuyo’s magical boy form, he does kinda look like Mohiro eyes-wise...

God of Conquests? That refers to the main character of The World ____ Only ______, right?...Yup, I think so!

Have we been watching the same fight scene for almost an episode? Geez, flashbacks.

Can I like Mohiro-chan too? Because this eyecatch completely sold me!

The pixelation’s probably going to give me motion sickness one of these days (exaggerating), but if they overuse it, I’m definitely gonna go on about it.

Max Heart? I wonder if Astral’ll get it? I sure do, but I don’t know if he will.

I think I spotted a chick design on Mohiro’s jumper...?

Wow! Self-deprecation, much? (somewhat sarcastic) (The magazine this series ran in deals with BL, according to the blog header here. Mahou Shoujo Ore flip flops over that boundary, so you can see how it got into it...)

”Wherever there’s a magical girl, that’s where you’ll find me!” (Or should that be plural?)

Oh no, don’t even try going there, Sakuyo (laughing as I type this)...thank goodness they didn’t compare their...uh, hand grip. Yeah, the strength of their hand grip! (sweat sweat)

What was Saki drinking, wine? (somewhat sarcastic, somewhat skeptical)

Asano Shinbun is a parody of the Asahi Shinbun, one of the 5 biggest publications in Japan in regards to newspapers.

If you don’t remember from Mob Psycho 100, “mob” in this case means “just another face in the crowd”. Like the name ”Jane Doe” in English. The henohenomoheji style is a distinctive touch, though.

They’re being serious about the TV appearance thing? Never would’ve thought that, considering how that was a parody of Superman changing outfits in a telephone booth. Either that or some other superhero...

Golden Kamuy 2

Those pinecones sure look like prawns to me...

Ooh! OP! much hype, such wow. Also, a Man With a Mission OP is definitely something to keep an ear out for.

(in the OP) The letterboxing effect is cool here.

Sugimoto’s asking about tattoos because people with tatts wouldn’t be allowed into baths. At least, that’s the rule nowadays...

Karafuto.

This guy reminds me of Kaiji...or Akagi...or whatever the guy’s name is.

Gah, enough with the fire! This isn’t Blingee, for gold diggers’ sake!

Well, at least Sugimoto and Asirpa can take the skin nowâ...

The Ainu cooking show strikes again. Not that I’m complaining about it, it’s strangely interesting in an odd way. Not to mention the action mitigates any weirdness these parts might give the show.

Squirrel brain. Never in my life would I have dared to type thatâ¦until now. (Or eat it, but please don’t make me harm cute squirrels...)

I think Iâ’ve seen so many Shokugeki no Souma parodies/variations, I kind of expect every (pseudo-?)cooking show to do something like it. The fact Golden Kamuy didn’t do it surprised me in that way.

This guy! He did a Valentine’s promo for the show! His nameâ’s Shiraishi!

What a regular Houdini, eh?

This show is so comical in such a way you’d never see in another show. I love it.

Shiraishi with a raccoon on his head, LOL.

#simulcast commentary #boueibu #boueibu hk #binan koukou chikyuu boueibu happy kiss!#binan koukou chikyuu boueibu happy kiss #golden kamuy #mahou shoujo ore #rokuhoudou yotsuiro biyori #saredo tsumibito wa ryuu to odoru #dances with the dragons #Lupin III #kakuriyo no yadomeshi #boku no hero academia #Chesarka watches BnHA #Chesarka watches Yotsuiro Biyori #Chesarka watches MSO #Happy Kiss anime #Chesarka watches the Lupin series Pt 5

1 note · View note

led123123 · 4 years

Text

https://youtu.be/LJOKAHGZLs0?t=414

damn.. I gotta sell my old cpu too..

I should sell it

I’m gonna.. stick the sticker.. with transparent tape.. and.. like.. I need pendrive for printer..

wait.. I have wifi in laptop.. so I can try printing with wifi..

I never used this printer

I can do that over wifi with laptop.

but I guess the printer needs to be turned on.. because I can’t see it on my laptop

I guess it’s turned off

I need to test the printer

https://youtu.be/jz5UbEjR9Ys?t=74

I told you.. I was thinking about.. “investing”.. in amd.. jesus..

their.. share value is probably rising a lot now again..

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALqlly1c3x_R_JaV2YA7U_SBDEumtiABVa3vZhprk0izxN4yMZGCIxeTsa_Q5yecnhyuC3lNlo41sYc84EpDPmDx3l7HcVG1XmPWUacDE9Hb-tUq7HPHHe0hQEBeSsIm7v7kK9bpkdic0XL7vmygC6lzpjzM0YTbS-ZcV4QNtvVH

lol.. they knew about this 3 months ago already?? last time it was 50 now it’s 80

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC60YCQKHFyySHLRt0vPKdjg/videos

she lost like.. a lot of money on bitcoin.. xD

so like. my.. guess was right.. to invest in amd..

I mean.. relatively a lot.. because she said that she lost her job and has money for like.. 6 months or something

so it sounded bad

https://youtu.be/QWQxTK52uOU?t=115

https://youtu.be/QWQxTK52uOU?t=101

https://youtu.be/QWQxTK52uOU?t=128

she must have bought it late

https://youtu.be/QWQxTK52uOU?t=209

I don’t have any experience.. but.. to me.. like.. charts like.. I think that they don’t say much about company. it’s more important if the company has good products and how well it’s doing against competition

supermarket chain built a 2nd supermarket in my town.. and.. like.. they have a another supermarket near.. so they’re competing with them.. and.. like.. all the smaller shops.. won’t have as much profit I guess.. I woke up yesterday.. and their car.. was playing music at 9 am and announcing their 20% discount day.. it was so annoying

I don’t mind this as much when it’s not as early.. jesus..

https://youtu.be/jwzn3-8zfq8?t=83

so like.. my amd call was good

https://youtu.be/vHwZQp166UM?t=35

kayley was a “freelancer”

https://youtu.be/vHwZQp166UM?t=59

https://youtu.be/vHwZQp166UM?t=66

https://youtu.be/vHwZQp166UM?t=261

cryptocurrency..

she didn’t buy low..

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34?t=71

I dont know how people can made decissions based primarily on charts.. I think that everyone is just buying based on charts..

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34?t=233

https://youtu.be/EbhgjbjY3IY?t=40

https://youtu.be/EbhgjbjY3IY?t=224

https://youtu.be/EbhgjbjY3IY?t=320

https://youtu.be/EbhgjbjY3IY?t=516

she’s casting spells to keep the evil stock goblins away

one like a day keep the evil stock goblins away

omg.. that’s a new update..

it’s taking a lot of time

50 minutes..

https://youtu.be/q4FwKFk658c

https://youtu.be/Cq_tZbkr3N4

https://youtu.be/Cq_tZbkr3N4?t=67

https://youtu.be/Cq_tZbkr3N4?t=78

https://youtu.be/52hFeYzoeXU?t=17

https://youtu.be/xG2JDB34rzE?t=65

https://youtu.be/Ygw7xlgeJr8?t=1365

https://youtu.be/Ygw7xlgeJr8?t=2016

what the heck.. this is the mode where you can have same heroes on both teams

no that’s an illusion

https://youtu.be/Ygw7xlgeJr8?t=2059

https://youtu.be/Ygw7xlgeJr8?t=359

https://youtu.be/Ygw7xlgeJr8?t=475

australia, bulgaria

I had time to clean dishes and cook pasta..

now I’m back and there’s 1 minute and 30 seconds left

I was hungry so I grabbed red prince.. it feels.. like.. the taste I mean.. feels.. like it’s still not ready to eat.. it feels green..

I should wait like.. more time.. like few more weeks

why are they selling them.. why wants to buy these apples..

it feels like this one still needs like.. 3 weeks

it’s green under the skin.. and has like.. green color.. like.. it shouldn’t have that much green color.. that just means that it’s not ready

this one was too green.. maybe the next would be better..

the next one.. also is a bit green under the skin. but.. not as much.. and the center.. looks like it’s more ready to eating

it’s not as green inside as the previous one

I would say.. that they need like.. 3 more weeks..

that’s like.. I don’t know if picking up apples early makes any sense.. like.. they won’t get attacked by bugs.. but.. they’re not gonna.. like.. grow..

so like the apples has.. like.. this thing that is attached to the tree.. and it’s like.. kinda dry and thin.. and it gets all the substances it needs though that??

https://images.app.goo.gl/nciP64Pu11KiryEN9

https://images.app.goo.gl/eactHx1vqBKv8Srb9

stem

https://youtu.be/HDE2O7PVaWY?t=29

I don’t think I would ever eat a green apple.. never tried.. like..

they become yellow later right??

I used to eat yellow apples.

who would eat a green apple..

https://youtu.be/HDE2O7PVaWY?t=73

doesn’t look that bad

this one

https://youtu.be/XAu-fobaL7g

apple parts

https://youtu.be/XAu-fobaL7g?t=133

https://youtu.be/w9kI1_i6cpE?t=60

ok lets watch this trash

https://youtu.be/-VFED66ljVs?t=128

https://images.app.goo.gl/tJ9W7VomdtbdxYJN8

I didn’t see the loba voice actress before

https://youtu.be/hwNjJLxIHMA?t=362

jumpu

more voice actors for other languages

https://youtu.be/-q1MCeWH0Lo?t=67

https://youtu.be/-q1MCeWH0Lo?t=104

it looks like he either has anti aliasing maxed out.. or he’s playing on 1440p or something I don’t know

https://youtu.be/-q1MCeWH0Lo?t=181

that’s her real accent?? she’s from scotland??

https://youtu.be/-q1MCeWH0Lo?t=36

she’s is

https://www.youtube.com/c/RagTagg/videos

he is from scottland too

https://youtu.be/JAKSn5nD-EY?t=473

https://youtu.be/JAKSn5nD-EY?t=519

this doesn’t look like.. I don’t know.. like.. anti aliasing looks kinda.. I think

https://youtu.be/JAKSn5nD-EY?t=552

I mean.. the other video looks smoother.. maybe because scaling from 1440p

https://youtu.be/-q1MCeWH0Lo?t=89

looks a lot smoother

I could like.. up the settings.. maybe.. maybe I need to set higher settings..

https://youtu.be/8JJ65HQ_rT8?t=867

it looks the same

is it better to play on 1440p scaled to 1080p??

https://youtu.be/ltnlX3xMTOs?t=44

baka.. = ...

https://www.rd.com/article/supermarket-apples-10-months-old/

https://youtu.be/-q1MCeWH0Lo?t=249

I’m actually.. replacing phoenix kits for battery cells.. because I don’t really get to use the kit.. and I need cells to keep my shield full.. I’m not gonna keep trading with less than 150 hp..

because that makes me vulnerable for a very long time because of low hp.. and if I get third partied then I have no time to heal up..

if I get third partied.. it leaves me like.. caught with my pants down.. if I keep poking with like.. 115 hp.. and I get shot once.. for 47 hp lets say.. then I’m left with.. eee.... like.. 70 hp.. and I hear other squad being right next to us.. I don’t even have 1 second to pop a phoenix kit..

https://youtu.be/pa8ybvIvebM?t=19

another old video??...

https://youtu.be/GKFPSS4yc2s?t=87

r99 is back??

https://youtu.be/GKFPSS4yc2s?t=96

wtf

I still didn’t get banned.. I’m gonna get banned next time they check my text chat logs.. do they only save the logs from the game that I get reported??

why can’t they just.. like.. mute the.. censored words.. f*cking idiots..

instead of banning me

https://youtu.be/GKFPSS4yc2s?t=429

what’s its hitbox..

https://youtu.be/GKFPSS4yc2s?t=456

she’s not very short

almost like pathfinder. so like.. big hitbox

https://youtu.be/GKFPSS4yc2s?t=616

this map looks trash af

a car.. the map isn’t even big.. this car was the worst idea

r99 is back.. they already had.. new smg.. hemlok out.. 2 smgs.. now.. but it’s easier to find light ammo.. but it shoots faster.. so uses more ammo so takes more space in inventory..

but ammo is a lot easier to find

https://youtu.be/-VFED66ljVs?t=130

https://youtu.be/5EqSQetCTug?t=136

https://youtu.be/CfZSf3mUu3M

https://youtu.be/CfZSf3mUu3M?t=28

map looks the worst

https://youtu.be/CfZSf3mUu3M?t=98

damn

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=20

they’re trying to make the characters too realistic..

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=27

she looks weird in this suit..

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=78

that’s a big deal

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=162

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=225

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=488

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=634

hemlok was supposed to be removed

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1015

that one dude.. headshot me with whole burst one time..

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1116

it’s not good map for a car.. it’s too small and there’s too many obstacles..

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1169

it wasn’t bad.. I mean.. yes.. tbh.. in early game.. people have like.. usually like blue shields.. 75 hp.. so.. yes.. in lategame sentinel is not a good weapon to have..

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1253

wingman hop up is useless

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1272

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1309

omg thank god..

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1320

omg. they finally made this game playable

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1322

omfg

https://youtu.be/7wAxp6aqa9o?t=1328

omg..

why are they set that high damage per tick before..

https://youtu.be/4b8_q9eMcJ0?t=27

it looks disgusting..

I’m getting back to different game

that’s a lot of damage for evo 4 shield

https://youtu.be/4b8_q9eMcJ0?t=329

maybe I increase mouse sensitivity.. it looks like he has really high sensitivity

maybe I just.. increase.. I mean.. I could try.. increasing sensitivity and reducing ads sensitivity

https://youtu.be/4b8_q9eMcJ0?t=498

lvl 3 ring.. only 5% damage

https://youtu.be/4b8_q9eMcJ0?t=584

his sensitivity seems pretty high

https://images.app.goo.gl/hMwm3pC9janz3uJC8

https://youtu.be/r3QjNv9K36k?t=165

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs?t=68

lol

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs?t=175

not reloaded

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs?t=230

these last 3 shots were good

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs?t=277

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs?t=176

no reloaded.. xD

https://youtu.be/FkXf-kd2aos

https://youtu.be/V84YY9VVCiE?t=101

I still have no idea where he is.. lol..

https://youtu.be/lyeyG8VXxOs?t=237

https://youtu.be/PgedopvFPwI?t=114

https://youtu.be/PgedopvFPwI?t=128

https://youtu.be/PgedopvFPwI?t=666

https://youtu.be/PgedopvFPwI?t=681

his edges also look really smooth..

is this because he’s playing on 1440p or.. because of high anti aliasing settings

no.. my image quality doesn’t look that bad.. it looks worse when I’m moving.. lol.. when I’m not moving then it looks good

that must be the settings

“radeon boost - reduces resolution during motion.. to increase performance”

but I don’t have this option on..

omg I really had my sensitivity so low?? I increased it a lot higher now.. and it feels normal

previous was slow

this one feels a lot more of what is should be

I had lower resolution before.. so like.. when I switched to higher.. it needs to be adjusted again..

I increased again because it didn’t feel that fast

https://youtu.be/FkXf-kd2aos

this was on lower resolution

chrome crashed on me.. too much ram used

lol stray.. lol.. he also.. was like.. “it’s lagging..” people were saying that he had too many tabs on chrome opened..

his computer was lagging..

I had too many tabs opened..

but it was working fine.. I just opened too many tabs.. it was working fine with hard drive page file so page file on hard drive works normal

my mouse sensitivity was really slow.. I increased it like.. 3 or more times.. I don’t remember exactly.. before it was really slow..

https://youtu.be/XcmojY2vxJM?t=13

https://youtu.be/-dtS76NxmPg?t=103

never seen like.. people say that

https://youtu.be/-dtS76NxmPg?t=204

she has nice skin color and.. I like how her skin color and her hair look together

that was like.. good lighting.. it’s usually the lighting playing a big role how everything looks

https://youtu.be/-dtS76NxmPg?t=234

lighting changed

https://youtu.be/hwNjJLxIHMA?t=34

I can flick faster with faster sensitivity. it feels a lot better for controlling.. aim

it’s not like.. slow so I don’t need to drag mouse across entire mousepad.. and faster

I used to have high sensitivity on low resolution too.. but.. I changed resolution.. and.. I didn’t know what sensitivity to set.. what value

https://youtu.be/hwNjJLxIHMA?t=77

he has good sensitivity. I increased mine.. like.. 3 or more times.. and now I realize that it was really slow

https://youtu.be/hwNjJLxIHMA?t=86

his sensitivity is pretty fast

I don’t know how I could play on a lot lower sensitivty..

I need to sell this cpu.. it was a mistake.. I didn’t realize that I need more threads..

https://youtu.be/hwNjJLxIHMA?t=290

these maps looked really good.. the new one.. it’s just..

it looks like this.. other map.. from different game.. something.. like..

hyper scape

https://youtu.be/94RCi3bKggQ?t=210

catapulting is stupid

paladins is better

https://youtu.be/94RCi3bKggQ?t=245

super tall buildings are stupid.. pubg maps are really good

https://youtu.be/hwNjJLxIHMA?t=422

this is kinda.. the sensitivity that.. I had before changing resolution

but mine was like.. actually higher.. I guess.. but it was too high

or I had mouse acceleration on I don’t know

because idk how old that that clip

https://youtu.be/litHbKaFMN4

https://youtu.be/litHbKaFMN4?t=13

this one was actually not bad sensitivity.. but ads sensitivity feels.. maybe a bit too.. high.. I think I had like.. I set higher ads sensitivity.. then I think

instead of 1 I had like.. 1.2 or 1.3 maybe even

https://youtu.be/litHbKaFMN4?t=14

but this one looks quite fast

it looks quite correct speed

https://youtu.be/litHbKaFMN4?t=41

ads maybe was too fast.. maybe I set ads too fast.. I don’t know

I think that they were changing these options few times

https://youtu.be/q4FwKFk658c?t=75

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs?t=39

this mouse sensitivity also seems good

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs?t=51

this one feels really natural

like. correct speed value

and ads is not as fast as before

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs?t=114

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs?t=178

it’s fast but not impossible to control ( the ads speed)

https://youtu.be/BN5me-2CZWw

https://youtu.be/Ob3-aNX5pUQ?t=221

https://youtu.be/Ob3-aNX5pUQ?t=283

https://youtu.be/TfzPzMi2M6g?t=31

https://youtu.be/o-OrWu4KFrw

https://youtu.be/o-OrWu4KFrw?t=52

https://youtu.be/o-OrWu4KFrw?t=182

https://youtu.be/zoJ4kDanGCY?t=1170

wr also died.

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs?t=46

this sensitivity is good.. I still don’t know if I need to set is higher or is this one enough

https://youtu.be/t3xrS3ojTDs?t=148

lol

https://youtu.be/YM7nJvnNnzQ

that’s also.. hebrew right??

https://youtu.be/wJVPLGNSSJ0

I’m alone..

https://youtu.be/8FQkEm_XTy8

https://youtu.be/i5PJ6Cwy7mQ

omg what a crazy game..

this sensitivity is so easy

but I was playing music so I can’t upload..

r-99.. loba.. infinite ammo

omg. this program broke again..

what the hell

omg it’s so much fun playing

f*ck my game didn’t record again.. why.. is this garbage not working normal

why the f*ck is it not recording..

what a f*cking trash..

I don’t know.. maybe.. it was because of this.. crash.. because I ran out of ram I really don’t know.. maybe it was because I was using too much ram.. I guess..

jesus..

with chrome 32GB is like.. 64 is minimum..

imagine having 64 on laptop..

I had to much fun playing first time.. but it didn’t record.. I’m gonna kill these idiots.. it happens all the time.. it’s because of ram.. I think

when was the last time this happened to me.. I don’t know..

I won.. 2nd game.. wait.. first game.. I had rambo teammates too.. but.. we didn’t win..

oh. nice skin of the new hero

I need to rank up again

some teams are really bad

it’s fun

good that it’s not too cold

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34?t=14

“decent red day” xD

I though red can only be bad

it can be good if you wanna buy

I’m bad at controlling r99 recoil

damn this was so much fun.. playing.. and this car.. is just.. xD such a.. it’s so funny.. especially with giblartar as driver.. this giblartar makes me laugh he’s funny..

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34?t=63

red day means... like.. I don’t understand.. like.. a lot of market violatility?? but if it’s red.. then... like.. you can’t make a profit.. unless you.. buy low sell high

if you buy low.. that’s an opportunity maybe that’s what she meant

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34?t=87

I don’t understand buying “stocks” based on charts.. that’s a russian roulette.. I guess..

how much she lost??

6k?? omg..

https://youtu.be/Th6AfCWdK34?t=234

6k. xD

she must have bought a lot of shares

I feel kinda.. “detached”..

from real world.. I don’t how else to call it

https://youtu.be/pDhTrvq3Oog?t=18

she sounds like a kid who is learning how to talk

https://youtu.be/pDhTrvq3Oog?t=75

invented english

https://youtu.be/pDhTrvq3Oog?t=92

https://youtu.be/pDhTrvq3Oog?t=154

if I’m alone.. and.. I play game.. then I feel detached.. and..

https://youtu.be/VT5n6ipGGyA?list=PLjzSBgd8kSOV5TM60Vq2jHeSeH2hbikay&t=328

princess lia?? that’s from star trek right??

why so many people subscribed to her.. like.. she doesn’t make like.. she’s not making.. like.. colaboration videos with anybody on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/c/SSSniperWolf/videos

she’s just a reactor.. she’s just over reacting

all she’s doing is making reaction videos

that’s so f*cking.. all she does is making reactions

she doesn’t make videos with.. anyone new..

and only reaction videos.. reaction after reaction after reaction chain reaction

https://youtu.be/hOC-lSVlF9s?t=5

and like.. I was watching on low resolution.. I guess.. maybe.. I don’t know.

or she just has.. like.. too much lighting.. or too blurry camera..

because her videos... look blurry.. they don’t look sharp..

https://youtu.be/BJpUSd6OBiM?t=31

blurry

https://youtu.be/BJpUSd6OBiM?t=113

she’s like.. recording in like.. 1080p or something.. and.. scaling.. so it looks blurry.. after scaling..

her background has too much light..

there’s too much light..

and my eyes are just.. like.. I’m wondering if I’m going blind when I look at how blurry her video is

https://youtu.be/BJpUSd6OBiM?t=173

too much light too white background.. and.. blurry

https://youtu.be/VT5n6ipGGyA?list=PLjzSBgd8kSOV5TM60Vq2jHeSeH2hbikay&t=898

she was talking about her anxiety in this video.. when she was playing.. I was like.. that’s like.. similar to how I was feeling.. and I’m.. still feeling like that

https://youtu.be/QJ87793QXes

https://youtu.be/QJ87793QXes?t=46

https://youtu.be/QJ87793QXes?t=115

there’s nothing else to do

https://youtu.be/xG2JDB34rzE?t=36

omg.. not a giblartar.. it randomed giblartar..

“club”?? xD lol

gay clubs in apex legends.. new feature

“gay club”

https://youtu.be/8FEHZDGp2Nk

fucking trash..

I’m starting to feel better.

maybe I had to open window.. for more air..

I needed to just open window maybe..

one dude did 3k damage in my game

damn.. I died.. million times..

3k damage..

https://youtu.be/8FEHZDGp2Nk?t=794

I’m feeling.. not as bad.. because I opened window.. I guess

I don’t know.. I guess it’s because I opened window

it was because I had closed window..

0 notes

martins163163 · 4 years

Link

The Untold Story of Fahrenheit 451

“‘Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.’

‘Snap ending.’ Mildred nodded.’”

#Fahrenheit 451 #untold stories #dystopia #dystopian fiction #fiction #speculative fiction #1984 #oppression #repression #humanity #OC

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brianruhe · 4 years

Text

Testimonials

apollonian Jan. 9, 2020Don’t under-estimate Brian–he’s extremely clever. And Brian is actually a brilliant historian, understands Western Christian culture and philosophy, only coming at it all from his amazing Buddhist point of view–which absolutely throws those dumb kikes who hardly know what to say, think about it all. Most and best of all, Brian values and respects the Christian TRUTH ideal (= Christ, Gosp. JOHN 14:6)–see above notes by me. Only criticism I’d have of Buddhism is its too easy endorsement of non-existent “free” will which couldn’t exist in an objective, hence determined reality, which objectivity is agreed for both Christianity and Buddhism.Poet Samuel • Jan. 7, 2020What I notice about Brian’s work – He will inquire and investigate everything for himself in pursuit of his own personal / empirical insights and conclusions. And he will happily weather everyone’s judgement and scolding for doing so – Left, right, up, down, nobody can stop or correct a born truth-seeker from annoyingly examining every stone (lol). Keep on waltzing through the tidal waves of scorn and judgement from all alliances, Brian. Truth is king.

The Brian Ruhe Show Poet Samuel • You nailed my view, Poet Samuel! Thank you dearly. My Dresden survivor advisor describes me as a true intellectual. I just want to know the truth!

The Outsider

My Friend Brian Ruhe by American Buddhist monk, Venerable Paññobhāsa Mahathera Posted: 16 Oct 2019 01:17 PM PDTThe purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge. —Adolf HitlerIt is better to make a mistake than to do nothing. —Adolf Hitler My Friend Brian RuhePosted: 16 Oct 2019 01:17 PM PDT No doubt some of you have noticed that I’ve begun doing weekly Skype interviews with the notorious Brian Ruhe, the “Nazi Buddhist,” president of the Thule Society (an organization that endorses the worship of a deified Adolf Hitler), and lord and master of the Brian Ruhe show, recently censored and banned from YouTube but still available on Bitchute. In fact some of you have started reading this blog because of seeing me on Brian’s show—after all, Herr Ruhe evidently has a larger following than I do, though that’s not saying very much. So I suppose I should explain why I am associating with such a notorious fellow, what I have learned from this association, and why I now consider him to be my friend. Our first contact was back in 2011 or 12, and was brief and uneventful. I think in those days neither of us was fully red-pilled, so to speak, and we were more or less “normie” western Buddhists, though still rather unorthodox and weird by mainstream standards. Anyway, upon returning to the USA after many years in Asia I sent out emails to many of the teachers and Dhamma organizations in the general area (mainly the state of Washington and southern British Columbia in Canada), and in those days Brian Ruhe was a reputable, more or less mainstream Dhamma teacher. Anyway, after offering my services to any Dhamma society that was interested, Herr Ruhe wrote back saying that he was pretty much a subsistence Dhamma instructor and lacked the resources to support outside teachers, and that was that. Several years later, after both of us had been “radicalized” by the Information Age and the Internet, a supporter of both of us suggested to Herr Ruhe that he should interview me for his show (the Brian Ruhe show, then still on YouTube), and so he contacted me. Not only did he ask me to be on his show but he further asked me to be the spiritual director of the Thule Society, which latter honor I declined for reasons laid out in a previous post. But we did the show, and it went rather well, and so we have continued with it. No doubt there are some people out there who think that a Buddhist monk associating with a devout Nazi—or National Socialist, as Herr Ruhe prefers to call himself—is somehow necessarily inherently wrong and reprehensible. On the contrary, I don’t think so at all. Some of Brian’s views are very different from mine, with regard to politics, the heroism of Adolf Hitler, the origin, ancient history, and current state of the human race, and also with regard to Theravada Buddhism—though ironically he is more of a scriptural fundamentalist than I am, at least with regard to cosmology and his belief in the texts’ authenticity and authority in general. So although I know the texts rather better than he does, I am also more skeptical, while Brian, bless his heart, is endowed with more of the Will to Believe. (In other words, going with the terms of Buddhist philosophy, he is more faith-oriented and I am more reason-oriented.) Regarding politics, I am not a Nazi or a fascist by any sane, non-hysterical reckoning. I see myself as more or less of a classical liberal, and consider the libertarian system set up by the founding fathers of the USA to be about the best so far devised and put to the test. The farthest I would concede to the fascists would be to say that, at this stage in the game, if I were required to choose between Marxism/socialism and some form of not-particularly-violent fascism, I’d almost certainly go with the fascists. Socialism sucks, and Marxism is historically, objectively worse than Nazism or small-f fascism in general, going with such objective criteria as numbers of corpses generated by each system. So, although I’ve been called a Nazi sympathizer, my Nazi sympathies are very limited and conditional. I do have sympathy for Brian Ruhe though, mainly because he’s a nice guy, and a sincere one. For that matter I am willing to hold a discussion in good faith with anyone capable of a sincere and more or less courteous exchange of views. Hell, I’m even willing to have a discussion or reasoned debate with a neo-Marxist, though most of them seem too hysterical or ignorant to discuss their views rationally, especially if there is feedback from someone who disagrees with them. (Objective rationality is, after all, a tool of white patriarchal oppression.) I have been hoping to have a discussion with some advocate of politically correct Social Justice on this blog, but again, most of them are adverse to having their views challenged. But I am willing, just as Herr Ruhe also is willing. So, a primary reason why I do weekly Skype sessions with Brian is that he is willing to converse and exchange views in good faith, even though we don’t agree on all points. We’re not overly concerned with changing each other’s views, either. And I must say that the conversations can be interesting, for us at least. Also of course the videos have increased the readership of this blog. I mentioned that Brian is more orthodox than I am in his Buddhism, at least sometimes. He’s literally a devout Buddhist Nazi, or rather a devout Buddhist National Socialist—“Nazi” was originally a derogatory slur, and Herr Ruhe tends to avoid the term. (I persist in using the term “Nazi” simply because it’s shorter and easier, and National Socialists ought to be tough enough to hear words they don’t like very much. Besides, it’s used so much that it’s hardly any more of a slur than “National Socialist.” It’s sort of like the term “Pagan,” which also began as a slur but was later reclaimed, and even accepted with pride by faithful Pagans.) Anyway, with regard to Brian’s devout Buddhism, it is interesting that he was actually ordained as a Theravada Buddhist monk for several months back in the 90’s, in Thailand, I’m pretty sure. Later he was a more or less mainstream teacher of Buddhism and meditation in the general area of Vancouver BC, until he was red-pilled and then ostracized by intolerant or fearful leftists. So Brian is a Buddhist first and a Nazi second. He takes Buddhist ethics very seriously, including the stuff about compassion and nonviolence. He understands Dhamma better than do most western Buddhists, and probably practices it better as well. Some people might assume, and reasonably too, that a Nazi would necessarily endorse militarism and even genocide. Nope! Brian simply denies all of it. Not only does he not endorse genocide, he firmly disbelieves the very idea that Hitler’s Nazis favored or perpetrated it; all that stuff is just propagandist lies promulgated to vilify the Führer. The Nazis were the good guys, even by Buddhist standards, according to him—there was no genocide of “subhuman” races, and Hitler was a peace-loving man, an inspired visionary who preferred designing buildings to bombing them, and who was forced into WW2 against his will by establishment warmongers spurred on by globalist Jews. Thus, among other things, Brian Ruhe is a sincere Holocaust denier. (Personally, I feel that although many of the stories against Hitler are probably exaggerated to some extent—just consider the stories against Trump lately—Hitler’s notion of Lebensraum pretty much implied an eastward invasion sooner or later, and I very much doubt that the Slavs were simply going to donate their territory to him. Also, preemptively dividing up Poland with Stalin’s USSR was certainly not persuasive evidence of his peaceful intentions, and his annexation of Czechoslovakia was an arguably predatory and shitty thing to do. But I suppose the “Hitler did nothing wrong” folks have their own explanations for all of this.) Ironically and maybe counterintuitively, as anyone who watches his videos can see, Herr Ruhe in his actual conduct is morally superior to the hysterical leftists freaking out at him on the streets of Vancouver. Most people who walk past Brian as he peacefully holds up a sign bearing a pro-Hitler slogan (or something equally politically incorrect) just ignore him, or glance at him and continue on their way; but some people curse him to his face repeatedly, bellow at him in a state of outraged anger, hatred, and self-righteousness, and sometimes even physically assault him. No doubt they feel perfectly justified and virtuous while doing so. Brian is almost saintly in his potentially self-destructive desire to peacefully wave Nazi signs in the midst of crowds of leftist activists. It is peculiar that the lefties going hysterical at Brian are literally more intolerant and more hateful than a Nazi. Let that sink in for a moment. But not only that: I would go even farther and assert that many Social Justice leftists, possibly even most of them, are more intolerant and more hateful than a Nazi, at least this Nazi. In a recent video of Brian’s one guy actually observes that Brian Ruhe isn’t a “real” Nazi simply because he isn’t hateful enough. Again, I assert that I am not a Nazi or a National Socialist, or even a run of the mill fascist, and I do not agree with a lot of what Brian promulgates, even though he is a nice guy and we have some interesting conversations. A good example of ideological disagreement would be our respective attitudes towards Jewish influence on western civilization. Adolf Hitler once said,The art of leadership…consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention….The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belong to one category.It seems plausible to me that the Führer walked his talk in this case by using Jews as the unifying adversary. No doubt he really loathed them, but still it does seem plausible that they were also a convenient political tool for unifying the militant righteous indignation of the German people. Nevertheless, Jewish influence on western civilization is much more profound than most people realize; and anyone who reads Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique is bound to become at least a little antisemitic (which is why it’s the only academic work banned by Amazon.com). Some Jews really are behind much if not most of the pernicious social phenomena running rampant throughout the postmodern west, including multiculturalism and the various forms of Marxism. The Holocaust may very well have been exaggerated (for propaganda purposes) for all I know; and with regard to Herr Ruhe’s theories about reptilian space aliens collaborating with powerful Jews, I suppose the less said the better. It seems to me that the greatest Jewish influence on western civilization was the advent of Christianity, originally a Jewish reform movement, although relatively few Goy Rights Activists place much emphasis on that particular point. So, Brian and I disagree on some things and agree, more or less, on others. Considering that we are both Theravada Buddhists, there is naturally quite a lot of agreement on basic doctrines of Buddhism and Buddhist ethics, and I even happen to share some of his weird ideas derived from ancient Indian Buddhist cosmology. Regardless of the objective truth or falsehood of his beliefs, Brian Ruhe’s conduct is morally superior to most of the people publicly bashing Nazism, including the outrageous hypocrites virtue signaling on cable news outlets. News announcers and commentators on pretty much all of the mainstream media pose as moral guides to the masses, yet they, unlike Brian Ruhe, are certainly not operating in good faith. These people are calmly, self-righteously, and cynically attempting to destroy anyone who threatens the narrative that they are paid to disseminate (and yes, they are paid by globalist Jews), regardless of actual guilt or innocence. For me, the mainstream leftist/globalist media’s ruthless, cynical attacks on Brett Kavanaugh were the absolute last straw; the guy is a totally vanilla, nerdy Christian white rich guy who obviously has never been a sexual predator, yet almost the entire political left in the USA were declaring him a serial rapist based on nothing but unsubstantiated accusations made by leftist activists. When he became upset and indignant at such sleazy attacks these same people cynically attacked him for being emotionally unstable. Their conduct towards the Covington High School kids, or for that matter towards President Trump, have been no better. Such “moral guides” are vastly morally inferior to the likes of Brian Ruhe the “Nazi Buddhist.” If I were ever to be interviewed by someone like Morning Joe, or Cathy Newman in the UK, they would certainly not be conducting the interview in good faith as Brian does, intent upon an actual exchange of views, and I would feel contaminated by the process. Not that they’d ever want to interview me. As it turns out, I am one of the only monastics of Brian’s own professed religion who is willing to associate with him in public since he publicly began endorsing National Socialism. A few others are willing to communicate with him privately, but otherwise keep their distance. This is understandable, but whether this avoidance of Brian is based on missionary diplomacy, cowardice, or something else would depend on their own mental states, which I surely don’t know. Anyway, I’m no Jesus of course, but even the Christian Messiah was criticized during his lifetime for hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other unsavory riffraff. And so, to sum it all up, Herr Brian Ruhe has got some very weird ideas (some of which may be true for all I know), but he’s a genuinely good guy, as far as I can tell. I suppose his girlfriend could describe a side of him that I haven’t seen, but then again she’s his willing consort and presumably loves him—but of course that’s none of our business. Thus far I have enjoyed our Skype interviews, and I don’t give a damn about political correctness hysteria, so I’ll keep going with them for the foreseeable future. Brian’s Bitchute channel is here. The website for the Thule Society is here. (insert 30s-era German military music here)P.S. At Brian’s request I am including here a short video of Brian characteristically offering up a Nazi salute in the midst of a crowd of protesting lefties, while fortunately being protected by a few police officers: https://www.bitchute.com/video/Fg7mLXklitO8/?list=jAwYD9IBVY8E&randomize=false

(insert 30s-era German military music here) You are subscribed to email updates from The Outsider. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.Email delivery powered by GoogleGoogle, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States Previous Next Sept. 22, 2019 Dear BrianJust wanted to shoot you a quick email to let you know how I appreciate you posting your views and interviews on “alt” dhamma. You’ve revealed to me that there are people who can benefit from sharing encouragement to strive on in this wilderness. the internet truly has great potential to reorient ourselves and bring our existing culture into focus by use of right view.After holding my own intentions under the microscope for some time, your example has encouraged me to make my own mini contribution in the spirit of friendship. So I decided to create a Bitchute channel and share the videos I’ve created for myself to encourage and inspire energy and devotion in my own practice.If you get a chance, please take a look. I am always very pleased to receive constructive criticism, thoughts and feelings by my elders in the dhamma. Please show me no mercy :).My hope in creating this channel is that we fellow wanderers can find some encouragement and inspiration to follow the buddha’s “pali line”, not the “party line” of present sectarian (special interests) dhamma.I believe it is our responsibility to implement the buddhadhamma as perfectly as possible in our individual, cultural, social and historical context. And I’ve found it helpful to start with what we have now (Western culture) and to “train” it in line with the dhamma. So I’ve been gradually “culturally appropriating” our popular movies, poetry etc and using it to develop propaganda to inspire pursuit of the dhamma. Here’s the link if you get a chance (Ministry of Cultural Appropriation)Anyway, thanks again. Your gifts, your offerings, your sacrifices, all appreciated as ever, my friend.Hope you are well! 2019-09-19 6:06 a.m., Hugo wrote:You are one of our heroes, Brian.Hugo o-d-i-n.net Molo_Tulo The Fuhuer sits in Valhalla with Wotan. He was the greatest man to walk upon Midgard! You rock, Brian! Keep up the cause!***Great video Brian! I posted the following comment…If you were wrong, someone would have debated you at length instead of people just repeatedly rejecting you and swearing like sailors. It’s very good to hear you explain the existence of the Transfer Agreement, AKA the Haavara Agreement that Hitler had with the Zionists. The Jewish author Edwin Black was one of the first to explain this in detail, and concludes that there should be a statue of Adolf Hitler in Tel Aviv because without him, no Jews would have been safely transferred to Palestine prior to the outbreak of war at the hands of the British and French.***Wow! They sure are triggered. There is no crime in standing on the street. If they can’t articulate an injured party (person) or (property), then there is no crime. Here’s some of what I’ve discovered in my search to expose the truth. In a Gallop poll in 1941, 83% of the USA was against blowing up Germany. Stay safe and thanks for the links! Peace,Robert Hiker1 Patex321 As an fellow Germanic i like to salute you for being/becoming awake!Patex321 As a german I thank you for your courage.RemelRemel Bloody hell. Good on you Brian for daring to tell the truth to the public. The guys complaining is just your typical brainwashed idiot. They can’t debate, just (((shut it down))). Funny how this idiot said you’re racist too. What a complete moron. Hitler was NOT racist.whitey333 The balls on you are enormous. Best Video I seen in forever.https://www.bitchute.com/video/sVJhWQ38k6O5/JimB Brian, you’ve got more courage than most of the big, puffed-up he-men “pumping iron” in all the gyms around the world. And patience! You’re a prime example of Buddhist tenacity.Bloody hell. Good on you Brian for daring to tell the truth to the public. The guys complaining is just your typical brainwashed idiot. They can’t debate, just (((shut it down))). Funny how this idiot said you’re racist too. What a complete moron. Hitler was NOT racist.Seekerofsanity Brian: I am new to you but really like what I have read so far. Saw the ridiculous shit that the renegade tribune wrote about you in march; pathetic slanderous lies if you ask me. Total cowardice. Look forward to more of your work!Western-Celt-UK More people need to do more of these vox pop billboard discussions in public in the big cities across the World and upload them, what a great way of getting truth across.Re_World I respect you brother, keep doing what you are doing.TheWestIsBeingDestroyed You are a patient man, Brian.aboutthetruthmedia TheWestIsBeingDestroyedHe seems like a friendly, approachable guy.anarchore Brian needs a volunteer security detail. Maybe with matching shirts. 😀rambetterIt’s about time that people learned the Truth about Adolf Hitler. Brian, thanks for having balls.Handsome Truth 6 MILLION POINTS IN STREET CRED BRO!!!CarlSyerforest Brian Ruhe…King of Cool

Kid_Dynamite If you keep displaying that sign I’m going to “try” to take it from you. Even that guy isn’t sure he can do it.CarlSyerforest • 4 days agoBrian Ruhe…King of CoolKid_Dynamite • 5 days agoIf you keep displaying that sign im going to “try” to take it from you. Even that guy isnt sure he can do it.−

The Brian Ruhe Show Kid_DynamiteI told him I was taller than he was

aboutthetruthmedia Very brave, very approachable Brian! It was good to watch. gingerj the brain washed sheep , this guy just refuses to listen and i think brian keeps his cool well, if it was me i think he would be on his way to a and e room.anarchore You rock Brian! Thanks for being a truth beacon.Jeffrey88 • 3 days agoWow! Great work standing your ground to that white knighters! That’s why I support the Brian Ruhe Show!Charley Howard I have to tell you, Brian you’re a considerably braver individual than I could ever be so hats off to you. If you wouldn’t mind a suggestion perhaps you could gently tell people about the slaughter of the Ukrainian people at the hands of the Jewish commissars prior to the outbreak of the second world war in the Soviet Union. I think they be quite interested to hear that the Jews had slaughtered far, far more Christians at the hands of their barbaric socialist system than ever were presumably killed in any kind of death camp. I doubt they’ll believe you, but perhaps in a light a fire in their mind and that will make them more inquisitive as to what the TRUE HISTORY is compared to what the Hollywood version of history that we have been fed. Once again, kudos to you for your efforts, stay safe! longdistancerunna We should be out there with Brian. Just imagine even 100 people walking alongside these men with similar signs against 2 jew defending “heroes”. It would be very interesting to see what would happen. Do you think something similar to the Munich Police shootings of the NSDAP’s march in 1924 that landed Adolf Hitler in jail for a year? Keep in mind that is what really caught the eyes of the German people who came to realize that they were being lied to about Communism. The Nazi parties election seats grew enormously after Herr Hitler was released a year later.

whitershadeofpale longdistancerunna • 4 days agoFair point, but I think if it got to the stage of 100 more people,standing side by side,would get attention from the authorities. A better approach would be to have smaller break-off groups working incognito. This is a very inspiring work from Brian though all the same.Sept. 18, 2019Hi Brian,these interviews were very interesting. To his credit, Armin at least approached the discourse with some semblance of balance and was far more restrained in denying you a chance to express yourself. The other guy…not so much. These guys are either incredibly naive (and/or ignorant of factual history) or they’re willingly denying the truth, so as to fit their Marxist dogma. I believe that many Euro-Canadians, Euro-Australians, Euro-Americans etc are coming to the stark realization that the fifth column Marxists have so corrupted our media and education, that they’ve damaged our young people, way more than we care to accept. If Trump’s presidency achieves nothing else, the exposure of the true size of the Zionist inspired Communist threat, will be achievement enough.Well done with your recently published David Duke interview. Dr Duke is one of the best around at exposing criminality of the Sabbatean/Frankist “death cult” that is Rothschild Zionism.– Chaz the Advocate On 2019-08-30 5:17 a.m., wrote:Hi Mr RuheI just wanted to let you know I really appreciate your courage to share your views and to take the initiative to interview Ven. Pannobhasa.The interviews on corruption in the sangha, alt-buddhism in the West and Mind Control I found really intriguing.Very encouraging to hear your friendly voices in this wilderness!Wishing good things for you.Thank you kindly Tristan,I am passing your message on to Venerable Pannobhasa. “Wilderness” is an excellent word to describe this world, eh?Hi Brian Amen, brother. An encouraging thought that the Wilderness is the most honest place to learn the true value of friendship. Feel free to share my gratitude, but not my name or contact details, as I am trying to tread lightly. There are snakes. 🙂 From YouTube commentsNov. 12, 2017And Roid 20 hours ago (edited)Hi Brian I’ve turned my attention to doing mediation more regularly and learning Buddhist teachings due to your influence. I think there’s a lot of suffering and lack of mindfulness among the truther community so you may be a person who’s in the right place at the right time. I honestly would probably never have heard of Ajahn Brahm and Ajahn Sona (let alone listened to Dhamma talks) for an indeterminate amount of time had I not been drawn to your interviews (I think it was the ones with Andrew Carrington Hitchcock and Dennis Fetcho that pushed me over the edge into looking into your work further). For people who love to learn and become a better person I think Buddhist teachings/practices are a great way to relieve the monotony of the “doom and gloom” content the majority of alternative media (or our personal lives even) seems to consist of. And if we feel like modern life is too much, some knowledge of existing support structures (such as forest monasteries) could be useful information.Brian Ruhe 9 hours agoWhat a testimonial, And Roid!! May I copy and paste this for others? I deeply appreciate your specific story, thanks! You make my job worth it.Oct. 2017 Alex Seferiades2 weeks agoBrian, your reverence for the German soldier brings warmth and happiness to my heart. Greetings from Ontario!! You are doing a great job covering what many are afraid to talk about but know in their innermost core to be the truth. It is most likely that you are a reincarnated official or soldier from the Third Reich era. Only you would really know that for sure though. You have my best wishes… Keep fighting the good fight! Brian Ruhe1 second agoThanks Alex! That makes my day. I was a Luftwaffe pilot killed in a crash about fall of 1944. I have discussed this in a few videos. My current girlfriend was my 13 year old daughter at that time and with her hypnosis session, she remembers far more about me than I remember. Read the full article

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lumisequence · 4 years

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Week 4 - REPRESENTATION

When should games be banned or censored, if at all? Empathise with the different perspectives of this game and its promotion.

Subjective. What one may claim as “censorship” is someone else’s idea of “censored for good reason”. For example, a game featuring blatant cruelty may generally be considered as one of these “censored for good reason” games, however there would definitely be someone out there who thinks the game is perfectly fine and has been unfairly censored.

For Cannon Fodder it declares its anti-war message by being extremely blatant about war is unforgiving and futile. Soldiers die in one hit, and upon death they sit there choking on blood before they finally collapse; at the end of a round the fallen are purposely named, driving home the fact that each solider was their own person, not just a number in the death toll.

I definitely agree with the game’s message, but on the other hand releasing the game right on London’s Remembrance Day was perhaps a bit too much. The day is meant for honouring the dead and the move was perhaps a bit on the nose and maybe even disrespectful for potentially taking the attention away from those who have served - especially how as the review noted some people missed the point and saw Cannon Fodder as another one of those mindlessly violent wargames.

Choose one of molleindustria’s games to play. Describe your experience and how the designers have used the game mechanics to get their point across.

I played Free Culture, a game about the struggle between copyright and commons. The game takes place on a white circle, representing the common, where knowledge is created and shared; and an outer grey circle that represents the market, where knowledge is commodified and sold.

The distributor (the cursor) distributes knowledge-dots to the people in the common

The vectoralist sucks the knowledge-dots into the market to create scarcity.

People who can’t access knowledge in the common stop producing ideas and become passive consumers in the market

Consumers who don’t receive commodified knowledge will return to the common

The distributor works in a herding, “repel” mechanic, where it scatters the knowledge-dots in all directions and makes it impossible to be accurate with. The people in the commons also will only absorb knowledge through a certain direction on their head, meaning the player has to go to quite the length to even distribute one knowledge dot. Meanwhile the vectoralist moves fast, freely, and with extreme accuracy, sucking up 4 dots in one go and moving right above each consumer to ensure the sold knowledge reaches them directly. It’s a struggle to even defend the dots against the vectoralist, as the only way to click rapidly to counter the vectoralist’s magnetic field with the cursor’s own deflector. This was possibly intended to give a sense of desperation and struggle.

The answer to “winning” the game turns out to just sit back and not interfere and let the game play out itself. Eventually all the people turn into consumers and the Vectoralist sucks up all the knowledge. With no one left to produce ideas and the Vectoralist unable to give all these consumers their commodified knowledge, all the consumers return to the common again to produce ideas themselves.

However this is no true end state - very quickly the Vectorialist takes away this new knowledge in the commons and the people revert back to consumers as they cannot access the knowledge. An endless cycle of struggle.

Consider the attributes and intentions of the Eurogame genre, and compare these to Loring-Albright’s assessment of the Settlers of Catan.

In Eurogames players compete for resources, have social initiatives such as negotiation, require long-term planning, and are usually won by whoever racks up a certain amount of one thing. Intention-wise this seems to have manifested as storylines where the player exploits or profits from the system. Unfortunately while fine(?) with a game like Monopoly (whose controversy is another whole can of worms), combined with story elements that concern historical events like in the game Puerto Rico where the aim of the game is to run a plantation, this make them concerning in the way that they glorify western settlement and exploitation of people of colour. Such is Loring-Albright’s assessment of Settlers of Catan. Quote: “It became clear, at least to me, (...) Settlers of Catan re-tells the American myth of White European settlers stumbling upon a fertile land that was theirs by right, encountering no meaningful resistance, and acting on behalf of God and Country to develop economies, settlements, and cities in this “New World.”

Apply this author’s line of thinking to other playful situations: video games, sports, etc. Do you see your values and your personality more clearly when you play? Provide an anecdote if you can.

Mostly yes, but depends on the person and the game. While I think narrative and NPCs have an influence on this, I never really played board games myself, so I don’t think I have the experience to talk about. Hence I’ll be taking Animal Crossing and Undertale as examples instead.

I personally always choose the nicer option or choice no matter if the consequences are serious or not simply because I feel bad if I do anything that would upset the characters - I would say this reflects how I am in real life as well. However one friend who is extremely shy and non confrontational in real life would purposely choose provoking responses in AC just to see how the character would react. Though in Undertale she did not do an all-kill run because she felt bad.

Notably, AC is a very kind game where even if a villager does get upset with you they forget it by the afternoon, whereas in Undertale killing even one monster alters the dialogue from the main cast, and if a player insists on going ahead with killing every monster they meet, the game makes a point to drive home how the player is a coldhearted murderer.

So while there’s the net of “it’s just a game”, how “telling” it is of how someone plays a game depends on how seriously the game makes an issue - while UT puts a big emphasis on death, games like FPSes where the whole point to slaughter enemies do not. This isn’t to say that people who play an all kill run of UT are actually murderers, but I do think it says something about their level of empathy.

Following this line of thinking I’d say games like sports and Monopoly where you interact with other people rather than NPCs would alter how people act as well. The magic circle would come into play - acting on motivation to win, sportsmen are more aggressive on the playing field and Monopoly sends otherwise good relations into utter chaos.

(Problem Attic) Attempt to understand what the game designer is trying to communicate with the symbolism and mechanics.

Seeing how the game describes itself as “a game about prisons, both real and imagined”, I imagine the clash of colours, faked barriers and invisible ones alike, and general confusion are all on purpose to simulate the feeling of one being trapped and trying to navigate their own mind - in extremely abstract levels, there are no instructions other than the instinctual movement rules, and mechanics are learned by trying again and again and again, much like how navigating inner troubles might be like: you know you have a problem, but how the problem works exactly you have no idea, and you can only get yourself out of it by trying repeatedly (or seeking outside help, ie, google). Following this, I’d guess that the crosses represent traumatic experiences, seeing how it chases the player and causes the camera to convulse when it collides, and at times completely immobilises.

Frustration seems to be a core part of this game, such as slippery controls, platforms moving out right beneath you - one of the levels even has a purposely coded “fail”, in which every third or fourth time the player hit the jump button it would fail to activate, hindering the player especially as you’re trying to outrun a cross on this level. I’d think this represents trying to navigate life with all of these “prisons” weighing down on the player’s mind.

(Seeing how the game’s name can also be read as “problematic” I wonder if the game could also be about unhealthy coping mechanisms?)

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morganrecapsthings-blog · 7 years

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YouTube Recap: Wizard Swears

Yep. I’m doing this.

If you don’t know what this video is, go watch it here and throw yourself into the 21st century. This is a video from the YouTube Golden Era (I consider this to be 2008-2011 when I was in high school and spent lots of boarding school free time escaping reality by watching great YouTube). Also, I believe a lot of “classics” came out during this time so let’s just roll with it.

I would have started with recapping Mysterious Ticking Noise, the essential PPP short. But what would I say? “Snape says his name in a catchy manner, then Dumbledore joins in, and Ron, and Hermione, and Harry. Then Voldemort blows everyone up and says his name in a catchy manner too.” Well there ya go.

In true PPP fashion, each character’s traits are exaggerated to the extreme. That’s what makes the series work so well…they’re based off the originals (for the most part…sometimes they seem OOC but that’s for a later recap). If they were acting totally off-character, they’d just be random people dressed like characters and the series would have flopped on its face. For this thing to work, you have to have some element of normal character, which the series does. So here’s a rundown:

Harry= angsty adolescent

Ron= Wacky, sometimes airheaded sidekick

Hermione= responsible best friend who isn’t above breaking rules

Dumbledore= eccentric wizard who may or not be responsible enough to lead a school

Snape= grouchy authority figure

Neville= goody goody with a potato face*

Voldemort= villain who pretends to be evil but is really just the cranky old guy from down the street

On with the recap!

Ron and Hermione are happily bouncing around as puppets do when Harry arrives with a very important announcement. Dumbledore, in a rare moment of maturity, has posted a list of swear words banned from Hogwarts, but these aren’t ordinary swear words! They’re stuff like: “cauldron bum,” “son of a banshee,” and “swish and flicker.” So the gang spews them off randomly, which obviously upsets Snape, who takes 500,000 points from Gryffindor. (This obviously is not taking place in Book One where everyone cared up and down about house points and where Harry got shunned for weeks after breaking some rules until he got the points back. Harry couldn’t care less here.) Snape sighs and does nothing else.

*Then the gang runs into Neville, who is a SQUASH. Yeah, I like calling him a potato as much as the next guy, and I did it all the time. Apparently so did many other people. So if you want to call him a potato, be my guest. But for reals, he is a squash. I mean, when I was at the farmers’ market the other day and saw the baskets full of squash all I could think of was Neville. Just so we’re aware:

So Neville the androgynous vegetable (let’s be politically correct here) gets upset when he sees them cursing and threatens to tell Dumbledore, especially when Harry maintains that he means everything he ever says, ever. Neville says something like, “this is against da ROOLES! *british accent:* oh, noew! noew noew! I don’t want tuh sweah my grandmother doesn’t like me tuh sweah!” Honestly Neville is such a great and even likeable character in the books, but this is just fantastic. For character exaggeration, Neville is probably the most well done. Maybe this takes place in Book One after all before his character development happened? This guy IS Book One Neville.

So Harry shows the Neville the list of swears and peer pressures him to say something. Neville is a Gryffindor, after all, so he goes along with “Hagrid’s butt crack!” Ron and Hermione cheer, but Harry tells him off and says that Hagrid will be ten times the man Neville will ever be. Okay, so I don’t really like Harry here. I get he’s supposed to be angsty but this is kind of over the top. Then Ron and Hermione cheer when Neville walks away…even though they were the ones egging him on before? I guess they were afraid of what angsty Harry would do if they weren’t supporting him. I guess I can see that. Ron also says that Harry is rife with boyish attitude. Okay no, this video definitely takes place in Book Five. It’s official.

So then they make a phone call…to Voldemort! They say a phrase and Voldemort gets angry. He threatens to send them to “wizard jail” (not Azkaban) and kill them (because he’s Voldemort). Funny how a villain like that manages to make himself readily available by installing a phone in wherever the heck he lives. But that just adds to the corny part of what makes PPP so great. It’s like those cheap gags in Patchy the Pirate segments in Spongebob SquarePants, where the parrot is a puppet on strings and the sets are made to look cheap.

So Dumbledore randomly has a mature moment again and says that Snape wants to speak to them. He gets all serious and proper, going on about how he wants Hogwarts’ traditions to be upheld once Hermione says a wizard swear. Unfortunately for Snape, Dumbledore is back to his true immature PPP self and doesn’t even remember five minutes ago, so why would he remember banning any swear words? Snape skulks off.

Snape is much too professional for this. He’s going to go away now.

Dumbledore does one better for the kids and tells them a really old swear once they beg him for it. What’s interesting is that he might actually have done something like this before he caught himself. There’s an instance in one of the books where Dumbledore almost starts a joke exchange with the Weasley twins after everyone’s arrived in the Great Hall when McGonagall stops him that everyone seems to forget. This moment is like that.

It’s called the Elder Swear and it’s filled with presumably real swear words as a lot of it is bleeped out. But in between the long censoring bleeps, we get words like “Daniel Radcliffe,” “Republican,” “in a castle far far away where no one can hear you,” etc. The gang watches as Dumbledore moves himself around wildly, because apparently it takes a lot of physical effort to say the whole swear. He only promises them to never repeat it to anyone, so we all know what that means…they do, to poor Neville. The poor guy gets stuck in between the trio, who is moving around rapidly like Dumbledore had done, doomed to hearing swears contaminate his sensitive squash ears.

Characterization: 8/10 (mild obnoxious flanderization, esp. with Harry, but otherwise great, especially Neville and Dumbledore)

Gags: 10/10 (it’s all good from Neville the squash/potato to Voldemort’s lines + phone and building up to the Elder Swear)

Storyline: 9/10 ( Not much of a plot but still an unexpected way for the gang to spend their day.)

Quotes: 9/10 (I mean, the Elder Swear. And Ron. And Neville. The dialects make this what it is too)

Final score= 36/40

Basically, watch it. You are missing out.

#harry potter #hogwarts #potter puppet pals #youtube #recaps

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savemestucky · 7 years

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Gairaigo: Happy Birthday Steve Rogers (1942)

Here’s a bitty chapter of Gairaigo for Steve Roger’s birthday~ Depending on my workload this week, I’m hoping to have another birthday chapter written from Steve’s POV. NOTE: The sections in italics are in English but represent them speaking Japanese.

Gairaigo [formerly Poppies Growing In Cartoons, the link leads to an almost full chapter]: James Bukawa doesn’t know that he and Steve Rogers went to the same elementary school or grammar school- until he’s 14 years old and he’s carrying 60 pounds of laundry to the tenement past the gas station. Steve/Bucky/Jim AU, Japanese-American Bucky Barnes

Shout out to @literaryartisan for their wild enthusiasm for this AU and for asking me real good questions that push me to keep writing!! and to @seasirpent who loves my writing even if they’re not into Marvel <3

Bucky’s staring at the ceiling of the barrack when Yamaguchi John starts padding around and rifling through his footlocker.

“You gotta light?” John speaks with an even weirder accent than his Kyushu-Ben, John’s from Osaka and Bucky still isn’t 100% sure where he fits in with the universal rivalry against Tokyo. When Bucky doesn’t answer right away, he knocks on the wall and Nakamura Ben comes through the door flap and sleepily passes a book of matches over. Bucky’s busy wondering about whether or not Mrs. Watanabe had time to fix Steve a cake with the money he wired and decides he’ll finally roll out of his cot when he smells John and Ben brewing coffee [from the god damn can of coffee he got at the general store].

“Rise and shine, Jamie, they’re not gunna take beauty rest as a good reason to skip out on work” John gives him a crooked grin as he blows smoke out the cracked window.

“And- God Bless America!” he can’t tell whether or not Ben’s being sarcastic as he raises his tin mug of coffee in a toast, Ben’s only 19 [really too young to be housed with the other bachelors] and all kinds of snarky, but Bucky would put down money on him joining the service if they’d let in Japs.

“Yeah, happy fourth Jamie,” John says way too cheerily.

Bucky rubs his eyes and mindlessly accepts the coffee they pass him, “unnn, fuck off John, at least I get beauty sleep- you look like you could do with some for that mug.”

John snorts into his coffee and Ben gives him a little grimace- Bucky ought to be nicer to him, Ben’s parents didn’t want him to learn Japanese growing up so he barely speaks Tokyo-ben [never mind trying to figure out what the heck John and Bucky say]. They bicker a little bit about the heat: John says this is nothing to August in Osaka and Ben says you could fry an egg on the pavement in San Fransisco, Bucky silently figures the internment camp is the hottest place they’ll ever be because the water comes out of the ground warm and there’s no protection from the dust storms or the god damn lizards. He thinks about going to the mess hall and starts pulling on his trousers and realizes John’s been holding out his suspenders and saying “Jamie” for a hot second.

“Thanks man,” he mumbles as he takes them and buttons them on to the top of his pants, fiddling a bit with the clasps so they sit nicely (just like Mrs. Watanabe always told him to. he just wishes his pants were nicely pressed and misses the dry cleaners and steve so badly right then). After a long second, he realizes he ought to apologize for not answering sooner, “Sorry, got a head in the clouds today.”

“S’no problem,” John says across the room as he shaves in the little mirror they have pinned up, “you’ve always been slow with Jamie anyway.”

“I’ll never call you James,” Ben shouts through the wall, “Bukawa, maybe- you’re not that respectable.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, combing a dab of pomade into his hair, “No one calls me Jamie back home.”

“Okay, what are you then?” John quips back and Bucky thinks that for all John acts like a fast-car-bachelor and sees more than he should to get a good dig at ya’, he’s considerate in the ways that count.

Bucky dies in his throat, only Steve calls him that really. The dry cleaning gang call him that when they speak English, but Steve gave him that name and the idea of sharing any part of Steve with them seems especially hard on his birthday when all Bucky has of him right now is a single censored letter and a little water color of the back alley. He frowns at his comb for a second, “My ma’ calls me Jeimu.”

“I can do that,” Ben strolls through the doorway, all high-school cocky with his hair sticking up and a cotton plaid shirt on. It’s easy to forget that they’ve only been living together since May: he’s already used to the sounds of the other bachelors in their barrack moving around, it’s not that different from Shizumbe’s complex morning rituals or the Watanabe’s intense hanafuda nights. He’s not sure he’d finish a fist fight for John or Ben (maybe Ben) but he’d drag them home after and help with the iodine: so far, most of what they’ve shared were long nights playing koi-koi with the creased deck of hanafuda cards that Mr. Watanabe gave him and griping about the camp.

It’s-

it’s not that Bucky doesn’t understand people here. He gets the people that say they need to keep their heads down, they need to be good American citizens- and if locking them up ‘till the war is over is the only way to win it then- then. Then gaman. Persevere. Enduring. Maybe that’s where he stands; he’d walk by and clench his fist when the neighborhood starting having “No Japs” signs- but Steve-

Steve got banned from the local barber too when he cussed them out for refusing Bucky a haircut. The letter he got from Steve was short (censored) and merely told him that all was well at the dry cleaners and that he was doing his best to stop the vandalism at the shop (which, sounds like, isn’t nearly so bad for Japs in Brooklyn. John’s office building was almost burned down in Anaheim) and Bucky- I’m with you till the end of the line. He’s almost positive that Steve would be joining in the meetings down the gangway where the Yoshida brothers were trying to organize people, to demand better wages, to join the service, to protest and get the fuck out of the California badlands. But he’s not positive: Steve so strongly believes in duty to his country, a country that has turned its back on Bucky. He wishes he could just call Steve now and ask him directly: wants to know if Steve would be ashamed he wasn’t doing more to get out of here or if Steve wants him to keep his head down and survive and come home safe.

Ben looks a little like Steve slouched in the doorway; his complexion is a little lighter than theirs (he’s still finishing high school and doesn’t have a job yet, he had to stop going when the neighbors started throwing rocks at his parent’s shop) and he’s still a little lanky and his grin is painfully (young) daring and rebellious (afraid). “Jay-mu” he tries out, and Bucky realizes he couldn’t stand it if Ben called him Bucky.

“Jeimu,” John absently corrects as Bucky tosses him a clean handkerchief to put in his pocket, “ready?”

Bucky checks his watch, “we don’t get to stand in the mess hall for another 5-”

Ben clucks his tongue, “I doubt those soldiers are gunna stop us from lining up early to get grub.”

John gives him a sharp look, “they beat old men for less.”

“Oh yeah?” Ben huffed, and Bucky uneasily looked out the window to see if there were any other neighbors listening in, “bet you know all about the cold world, huh?”

John stepped forward and grabbed Ben’s arm, “Yeah, Nakamura, I know a thing or two about how this shit works. My pa’ wants me to go back to Osaka because when he came to visit- two days in the U.S. an’ he got fucking beaten by the neighbors for not minding the butcher’s wife on the street. So yeah, I know how white people can be. We’re stuck here ‘til they decide yellow people are worth a cent- you’ll fucking keep your head down ‘til they point the guns elsewhere or you won’t have one at all.” John shook him firmly for a second, “you understand me? You parents aren’t here-” his voice softened, “eh? someone needs to look out for you a little so you can go home safe.”

Ben looked at his shoes mulishly, “I don’t need anyone to take care of me... ‘n ‘sides, it’s easy for you to say, you had a fancy life before this. You got something to go back to.”

“-Is that what you’re getting out of this, Ben? We had lives? We all lost those-” Bucky breathed, sagging against the wall, Bucky felt the air getting punched out of him; in his mind, Ben and Steve snapped apart forever. Bucky didn’t need to ask anyone to take care of Steve- he knew the moment he left that Mrs. Watanabe would keep him in line as she always did, and he knew that Steve would keep doing his best to earn his keep. Steve might not know when to get out of a fight- but at least he knew what family meant. “Jesus fucking Christ- Ben-”

“- you little spoiled, Shit,” John hissed, “do you think I can go back to that? They had me in Tule Lake Ben, they took me right after Pearl Harbor- y’know why? Because I was born over there, I went to school there, because I write my mom every damn week. And now? Now I can’t hold a damn camera straight anymore, I can’t keep my hands steady enough. I can’t even go back to Osaka to suffer with my family. Yeah,” John’s voice turned snide, strangely cruel for the man who had taken Ben under his wing for the last months, Bucky suspected this outburst was a long time in coming, “your parents might be in another camp, but they’re not in Tule Lake. And they’ve made sure people are minding you, do you think it’s coincidence those Honda-s keep dropping by once a week?” He finally let go of Ben’s arm, his voice was hoarse “we can’t make sure you’re safe if you don’t help us. They want an excuse to make an example of a Jap.”

Ben looked guiltily at Bucky, John had started aimlessly (angrily) rifling through his ruck sack and they were both at a loss after that outburst. Bucky looked at his watch, “the line started a few minutes ago.”

They wordlessly left the barrack and walked over to the mess hall, ignoring the flags their neighbors had put out over their doorways. Ben lamely waved at the people who came by to chat with him (now he knew that Mrs. Ito and Doy were checking in on him). Ben and Bucky poked at their beans and rice, John scarfed it down, pulled out a book, and pointedly looked away.

“I’m sorry Jeimu,” Ben said quietly, pushing the last bit of food around his plate.

Bucky gave him a sidelong look, “I don’t think I’m the one you’re supposed to apologize to. But thanks anyway. ‘s mighty decent of you.”

“I- I know that,” Ben seemed much younger then, unsure of himself and a little afraid, he turned more towards John who kept his eyes trained on his book, “but my parents raised me better. I’m not doing anyone favors- I’ll do my best to clean up my act. I’m sorry, John. I- we don’t have many friends here. You ‘n me ‘n John, we gotta stick together, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said through a pull of water, “yeah, that’s right.”

“You got anyone waiting for you back home?” Ben asked timidly, Bucky saw John tilt his ear a bit.

He licked his lips, “Not a dame.” He started shoveling in the rest of his food, trying to dodge the questions about his real life- about Steve (he wanted to keep Steve to himself, try to tuck him away in an envelope to look at before he went to bed so he wouldn’t worry about his asthma in the summer humidity).

“But?” John looked up and leveled his eyes at Bucky, “what’s in Brooklyn? You got a lotta family?”

“You could say that,” Bucky hedged, “ma kicked me out in high school, but the dry cleaners took me in.”

“The Watanabes?” John prompted him, Bucky fought the urge to give him a dirty look- trust John to remember the one time he really mentioned working for them.

“Yeah, they took in the stray kids like me and my buddy Steve.”

“Steve?” Ben looked at the clock and John started putting away his book while they all tidied up their trays to take up to get washed. “Don’t know many Japs named Steve.”

“That’s ‘cause he ain’t Japanese, he’s a whitie.” Bucky stood up, piled his dishes in the bin, and left the mess hall. Back at the table, Ben tried to follow him and pester Bucky with a million questions- but John kept him back.

Bucky spent the day loading up the storage room for the kitchen: mostly bringing in sacks of rice with a few other guys as the ladies bustled around prepping vegetables for lunch and then dinner. A few women chatted with him about the night’s dance in the gym and around 3pm. his aunt dropped by to check in on him. He ducked out for a minute to check the mail and got a letter from Mrs. Watanabe (he didn’t get a chance to read it, but the envelope had a scrawled message about a fruitcake for Steve’s birthday). He ended up helping the kitchen move around pots of stew as they portioned it out and got a generous second helping in exchange. He got back to the barrack after dark: the way lit by some too-widely-spaced street lights and sparklers lighting up in the guard towers, the curfew had been lengthened for the night and he passed more than a few couples covertly making out. John was smoking a cigarette on the front step.

Bucky briefly considered trying to slip past him, but John lit up a cigarette for him and Bucky ended up sitting down next to him.

“There’s more to that Steve, isn’t there?” John said casually, stretching out his legs.

“He’s my best pal,” Bucky took a long drag of his cigarette, peering out into the other barracks and idly looking at the folks dressed up to dance, “he’s a little thing, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. He’s gunna go places.”

“No,” John said bluntly, “there’s more than that- he's something special to you.” Bucky almost choked and John gave him a compassionate look out of the corner of his eyes, there was a long pause and then “y’know, it’d be harder for me to hide it back in Osaka. In front of my parents? They kept showing me off to nice girls, I picked up photography so I could get away. Maybe this place isn’t the best for me, but there’s others like us in Anaheim.“ He pushed his shoulder against Bucky, “tell me about this Steve.”

Bucky stubbed out his cigarette, “It’s his birthday.”

“No shit?” they shared a crooked grin.

“Nah,” Bucky snorted, “he’s a tough son of a bitch, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, but- he’d got a good heart and won’t let other people start shit. Last year on his birthday I took him out to Coney Island and we were almost banned after he busted a guy’s lip,” he thought for a sec, “he wasn’t too riled up when the fella was just teasing a little pussy-cat, but then that shit called me Jap and he lost it. Started hollering about America bein’ a place for everyone.”

John barked out a harsh laugh.

“I know, I know-” Bucky let out a long breath, “but my best guy, since we were in grammar school. He even learned Japanese, he’s working at the dry cleaners now.” He looked at his watch, “well, with any luck, now he’s having a slice of cake and a cuppa coffee.”

John gave him a fond look as he ashed his cigarette, they both stood up, “I was thinking of just bailin’ on this dance, I get the feeling it’s teenagers and married folk, how about you and I have a drink?” he snagged a flask from inside his jacket.

Bucky took a long pull and the two went in for a long night of cards.

#Gairaigo #Stucky #Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #James Bukawa #my work #fan fiction #happy birthday steve

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