Most importantly, I think, it’s good for giving access to things that we’re told we’re not allowed to see.

History is important and it’s relevant. Pretending things never happened doesn’t fix anything.

Also, art can be a product of its time and limited by the social constraints and ideas of its time and still be art. And art should never, ever be covered up.

Hey. What’s up?

You know…

I don’t care what anyone says. Sometimes… not very often, but sometimes… I put this song on… and like, it’s still pretty good. I mean, I’m not going to start menstruating or gonna get all Lillith Fair or anything, but like… it’s kind of a fun song. Cheesy as fuck, but fun. It’s like… Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls. Maybe I just like lesbian music. Just kind of like makes me nod my head back and forth. And think of He-Man.

Speaking of He-Man…

Ya know, I got on a small He-Man kick a while back (after finding those redesign concept drawings) and I still haven’t quite scratched my He-Man itch. I even own double DVD set of the best episodes of Masters of the Universe (someone traded it in to the store a few months back, it went out used for 7 bucks. I was like SNAG) and I haven’t watched it yet. I think I want to get completely baked before I put those DVDs in.

Anyway, my point is that I haven’t seen the Masters of the Universe movie since I saw it at the Victorville Drive-In (double featured with Dragnet, staring Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd REPRESENT) and I happened upon a clip of the climatic final batter between He-Man and Skeletor.

Was this movie really THIS bad? I remember it being somewhat awesome. I guess being nine years old puts a different perspective on things.

I like how in the middle of their sword fight it occasionally cuts to a shot of The Dolf just swinging his sword around for no apparent reason.

Hey… did you know that you can put &fmt=18 at the end of any youtube URL and get a higher quality version of the video? It doesn’t always work (if the video was originally shitty quality before it was uploaded) but it can make a pretty sizable difference sometimes.

Hey, speaking of gay shit (like that song and He-Man in general) I’ve been thinking about my usage of the word "gay" and whether or not it’s appropriate. I mean, I have gay friends. And when I’m around said gay friends, I generally automatically say things are "gay" far less. It’s not so much self censorship as it is just avoiding any conflicts or misinterpretations of my intentions. I think that, for the most part, people who know me know that I’m fairly pro-gayness in the literal sense. I mean, like, pro-homos and such. I don’t party at gay pride parades or hang out in gay bars, but that’s mostly because I don’t go to any parades or any bars.

I think the issue at hand is what has become the definition of this particular usage of the word "gay". I don’t know exactly how it started, or if it was ever really intended to be disparaging towards homosexuals, but there is definitely a meaning to the word that I don’t really know another word that works in the same way.

It’s not like that weird four of five years when people were saying that things were "jewish". I never really got that. It was interchangeable with "lame" and seemed to happen exclusively as a means to be controversial and un-PC. I always found it to be kind of a pathetic thing to say. Not because it was offensive (shit, I’m not Jewish, so whatever) but because it was such a childish thing to do. It was like "Yeah, I just said that! What’re you gonna do about it?!". My brother used to say it a lot, and I don’t think he even knew what being Jewish actually was.

But saying something is "gay" isn’t really the same thing.

Okay, here’s an example.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the cartoon I watched as a kid, is not "gay" in the way that we’re discussing. That being said, it IS gay, if you mean "gay" literally. That is, it’s incredibly homoerotic.

Pokemon is totally gay, in the context we’re discussing, while not actually having any particular homosexual overtones (that I’m aware of. I can’t watch it because it’s so gay).

I can’t really tell you WHY Pokemon is gay, because, well, gay is the only word I can think of to describe it. That’s why I still use the word "gay" even though there’s potential to offend people or give people the impression that I have a problem with gay people.

Here’s a list of 20 things that are Gay without actually having anything to do with homosexuality:

1. Fairy Magic (especially if you spell it "Faery Magick")
2. Anime
3. Giant trucks that are jacked up fifteen feet off the ground without actually being a monster truck. IE, a jacked up Ford F150 with huge tires.
4. Being a huge Tori Amos fan
5. Horses
6. Fanny packs
7. Second Life
8. Having a house that smells like cat pee
9. Men with pony tails
10. Mini carrot sticks
11. Most things Canadian (a few notable exceptions are Wolverine, Michael Ironside, Neil Young and… that’s about all I can come up with right now)
12. Dogs wearing clothes
13. Tattoos of Chinese characters (or any other foreign language you don’t speak for that matter)
14. Cats (the musical, though the animals themselves can be kind of gay sometimes as well)
15. Speaking French
16. Telling people that you’re saving trees by using your own fabric shopping bags
17. Adults sucking on pacifiers. In fact, pretty much anything done by anyone at a Rave. Also, anything neon.
18. Smart cars
19. Dolphins. At least, people who like dolphins. Dolphins themselves aren’t exactly gay. They’re too capable of killing the shit out of you to actually be gay.
20. Curling.

I could go on forever, but I’m going to leave it at that. Fairy Magic is #1 on the list because, to me, it’s the epitome of "Gay". It’s gayness at it’s most ubergay. You don’t get gayer than Fairy Magic, unless you start adding other things from the list to the equation. For instance, a man with a pony tail and a dolphin shirt and a tattoo in Chinese that means "Strong Spirit" on his ankle carrying his dog wearing a sweater into a Fairy Magic circle while listening to Tori Amos and eating mini carrot sticks out of his fanny pack. That’s even gayer. But, you know, it’s cumulative.

Now, one could argue that I’m simply using "gay" as interchangeable with "lame" but that’s not entirely true. You see, if you’re playing basketball and you throw the ball and miss horribly, that could be called "lame" but not "gay" necessarily. My car (the Ford Tempo, not the Acura) is fairly lame, but not at all gay. It’s way too standard issue and boring to be gay. If it had lots of bumper stickers for radio stations and telling people to "Free Tibet" and to "kill your TV" then it would be gay. But for now, it’s just lame.

I’m sorry, but "gay" is here to stay. It’s just one of the many words in the English language that means too many things.

If there was another word that meant the same thing as "gay" in the context I mean it, then I’d use it instead. But there just isn’t.

While we’re on the subject of nostalgic cartoons (or, in my case, comic books then cartoons) something just occurred to me about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…

Why did they wear masks? Those scarves with holes cut out for their eyes? I mean, it’s not like they’re hiding their identities. It’s not like there’s going to be a witness filing a police report going “I don’t know who they were! They were wearing masks! It could have been ANY five foot turtles with ninja gear!”

It’s a shame about the new CG animated movie. The shame is that, like the new Lion-O in that Thundercats thing, they’ve completely pussified Casey Jones, who was one of the most bad ass vigilante comic book characters in history. Freddy Prinze Jr my ass. (update… I received bad information. Freddy Prinze Jr isn’t playing Casey Jones, that dude that played Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four is. Sarah Michelle Gellar is playing April O’Neil. Barf)

In other news:

I totally got fired today. For real. Over the phone no less. F-I-R-E-D.

Fuck my ass.

I got that ice cream job though, making at least three bucks more an hour. Unfortunately that doesn’t start until March, which means that I have to come up with some sort of money to cover the next two months. It sucks because I don’t want to start a new job for only two months. The ice cream place is going to probably be full time and I don’t want to try and work two jobs. I gotta find some sort of job that I can do for like, two months, and then quit without feeling like an asshole.

I’m bitter today.

I’m bitter and I’m so sick of this shitty weather. Snow is such bullshit. This place is like gum that’s lost it’s flavor. But you keep chewing it anyone because it’s your last piece. But it’s making your jaw tired and your mouth all full of spit and your stomach nauseous and your teeth hurt. You want to get rid of it but there’s no where to put it and if you swallow it, it will fester in your stomach until the end of time.

current music: Radiohead-Creep (1993)

This picture represents everything that is wrong with cartoons today. Everything.

Look at the Lion-O on the left. He’s big and strong. He’s the picture of masculine power and authority. He’s got long flowing hair like an 80s porn star. His punchin’ fist is cocked and ready to fire knuckle sandwiches into the face of evil. He could crush walnuts with his thighs. He was so hardcore that he tanned UNDER his t-shirt while the exposed skin of his forearms fought the suns rays and refused to tan. He was all man.

This… thing… on the right… he’s a skinny little emo chump with hair elbows and monkey feet. He doesn’t even look strong enough to pick up that sword he’s pretending to hold up, muchless put Mumm-Ra’s teeth through the back of his head. He’s got spiky idiot hair and wears gloves like the biker dude in the Village people. He’s got a waist like Mary-Kate Olsen. And he’s grinning like a fucking goon. And he looks like he was drawn by a teenage kid that jerks off to Sailor Moon cartoons.

Sure, the original Lion-O was a flaming homosexual. But that’s okay, because you know what? ALL animated men in the 80s were gay. It came with the territory. He-Man and Man at Arms? Gay. Inspector Gadget? Gay. Heathcliff the cat? Gay. They were all gay and that was fine. The only ones who weren’t gay were the Transformers, and that’s because robots can’t have buttsex. Our cartoon heroes were gay and we liked them that way. We didn’t need a bunch of romantic lovey dovey bullshit getting in the way of badguy ass kicking. The only time it was ever a issue was on She-Ra with that dude Bow.

That guy was… a problem.

But that show was for girls and girl cartoons are stupid and I only watched it because it came on after He-Man and I liked to try and find that little purple dude who was always hiding somewhere in every episode.

So yeah, dudes in cartoons were gay… and this new Lion-O is no exception. He is gay as well. The difference between the two? The original Lion-O was gay, but you still wouldn’t want to fuck with him, because he could kick your ass ten different ways before you hit the ground. The original Lion-O could reach down your throat, grab your scrote, pull it up and out and then strangle you with your own inside-out ball bag. The original Lion-O was a bad motherfucker… who happened to like The Cock.

Where as this thing on the right is like… he’s a femme. A wussy gay dude. The kind of guy who makes home made hand bags for his girlfriends (that’s friends that are girls, not girls that he has sex with… fag hags… like She-Ra) and bedazzles his name onto his belt. He’s the kind of guy who would get his ass kicked by Ash from the Pokey Mans.  Essentially, he’s not the kind of guy you want defending the world from evil mummies and other nefarious beings. I’m not hating on extra femmey gay guys. I’m just saying that they aren’t badass sons of bitches who I want to watch fighting evil in a cartoon.

Let’s look at the breakdown here:

via Aint it Cool News

WB animation is remaking the Thundercats as an animated TV series.
The animation style is whimsical, Americanized-anime, along the lines of Teen Titans.
The setting is modern-day Earth, in a major city (possibly LA)
The Thundercats are all teenagers.
Their leader is Snarf (!) who is now a mystic with a “third” eye.
Each of the Thundercats has a weapon with an “Eye of Thunderra” and transformative powers (not just Lion-O)
When they aren’t fighting evil, the Thundercats play together as a rock band. That’s not a typo, or a joke. They are rockin’ cats in their present form.
Mum-Ra now has wings.

The Thundercats are now teenagers in a rock band. Shoot me in the fucking head.

No wonder kids today are retarded. This is what TV is giving them to eat.

current music: Alice In Chains-Rooster

ya know, funny enough, Bikini Bottom Soaker is my nickname!

found via livejournal 

The New Dr. Tran cartoon!