Post-Election LOL-a-thon
All those voters out there who gave Obama such a electoral victory that he got twice as much votes as McCain didn't need my help to do it, no siree. Judging by a couple conversations I overheard while on the bus, there were enough voters who supported him just to have a black man as President with not much of an idea of
what he's done. A week later after the election and I haven't heard anyone bring up details on Barack's past...or Michelle's for that matter. It wouldn't be so freakishly amusing in the latter case except I've heard so much more about Michelle Obama supposedly being a fashion savant or something to that effect. So, just what do I see when I finally hunt down a story about this famous red and black dress from election night?
It's a
bland if not ugly dress, and here I am wondering if maybe my sense of fashion is more fucked up than I think it is, since I am a straight guy and it's not a straight guy's job to be into what constitutes the latest in style. Maybe I'm biased since the only other fashionably dressed member of royalty I have for quick reference in the back of my head is Princess Natalia Luzu Kimlasca-Lanvaldear...
with a dress so pretty...
I don't care that this scene was added to the anime and not in the original game...because I didn't get to see it that much when I played.Whatever the reason, it could simply be yet another Obama-related pop-culture meme, like the
Joebama fanfic, the bastardization of
"What 'bout my star?" into
"Obama star", and other things I'm sure I have yet to see. Thankfully, I've not spotted any Obama-themed
"Motteke! Serafuku!" or
"Hare Hare Yukai" dances yet, so I have that much more sanity to hang on to...
Labels: anime, politics, posted in windows
Knock The Vote
Back when I turned 18 in 2000 and registered to vote for the first time, I had no idea that I would be as...jaded (is this the word I'm looking for here) toward the election process. Even back when my voting decisions were influenced by my grandparents and they made a habit of mocking campaign ads on television, I didn't think some negativity about the candidates would put me in the mind state that I've spent the last few months in. After eliminating "bitterness concerning the candidates I've voted for" and "expecting candidate X from Y for office Z to be a near-perfect person" as possible reasons, the conclusion that I've arrived at is that the presidential candidates and the scandals plaguing them are simply laughable when not outright scary.
What do I mean by that? Well, let's take the news that yet another high-ranking Republican was
revealed to be a fag. Incrementing the "outed gay Republicans" counter by one isn't as amusing as the fact that the people this guy runs with happen to not really like gays. What I find laughable about this is that it comes after Palin being picked as McCain's VP and everyone who's paid enough attention knows that she's been endorsed by
Focus on the Family some bunch of far-right crazies. If it weren't for the fact that I don't believe these bastards actually know biblical morality beyond anything that can be used to whip up sexual panics, I'd be flabbergasted that McCain still hasn't proven himself to be 'maverick' enough to renounce
his support for amnesty. Not even when the economy is definitely under pressure to the point of calling off his campaign for it.
While I'm sure Obama was supposed to be some great inspirational
black figure back when the primaries were the next big event, that's all but gone for me now. Though I didn't care about the "radical black preacher" crap from earlier this year, this whole
connection-to-a-terrorrist thing represents a new low. It's a low that may very well cast unfair suspicion toward any future black presidential candidates all because Obama didn't have the sense to consider this before taking that first direct step toward being the Democrats' choice for president. As for Biden, all my lazy ass needs to know about him for now is that he has given us proof that men and women will not be treated equally under law - otherwise know as
VAWA. Apparently it's okay to have mandatory minimums for drug use, very harsh sentences against men who batter women, and women receiving lighter sentences for violent crime, yet we need an unconstitutional law that serves as proof that equality is not what's really being sought?
I may just be unnecessarily negative about all this, and I do realize that some people in the past have risked a lot for people like me to be able to vote. Unfortunately, I fear they must be turning in their graves if not cursing us from purgatory for selecting lunatics to run for the highest and most important office in the country. Far from the 'hope' Obama tries so hard to symbolize, I hope looking back on this election, I'll wonder why I didn't beg a few
yaoi fangirls to make Ted Haggard x Karl Rove (for lack of a better couple)
doujins and mass mail the damned things to every Republican official everytime one of them is outed. After hoping I never see said doujins in my life, I'll wonder if the public gets the irony of thinking anime is a fad for kids and losers when the two women that have captured so much attention are essentially a
meganekko and a
tsundere even though those words will never be used to describe them in mainstream discussion. It sure would beat memories of a massive economic breakdown and catastrophic war against half of the Middle East going hand in hand. That and I wouldn't feel so...dirty knowing that October 4 sticks more in my mind as the day that the first
Tales of the Abyss animation episode will be out rather than the last day to register to vote according to a volunteer that I met on the way to work a few days ago.
Given a choice between rolling on the floor and laughing at the election proceedings and deciding who to vote for as the next President of the United States, I'm heavily inclined toward the former, since McCain and Obama just haven't convinced me enough that either of them are deserving of my vote, let alone that election politics is actually about trying to do what's best for the country and not just being a ruse meant to deceive the common voter.
Labels: anime, politics, posted in windows
Not Much To Talk About
You know, there should have been a post for last month, but I just couldn't get around to it, especially once those
Southern California Wildfires struck. At one point, I had half of my stuff packed into my car and was staying up all night ready to pack the other half if one of the fires had gotten any closer to the house. Even though the fire didn't come any closer, I still had my stuff in the car, and if I wasn't sleeping for a few hours at a time, I was slacking around when I should have been studying for a test or typing up a research paper. Not only was there no post for October, but no layout change either, and at this point, I'm even contemplating deleting this blog no later than the end of January if I can't make anything about it entertaining on a regular basis to the few visitors that drop by here, some of which are still searching for 'sixteen volts blog'.
In anticipation of some of the newer anime out this season, I recently finished
Nanoha StrikerS [while good, it doesn't beat season two, even with the battles against Cyb
organization XIII...I mean, the "
Numbers"],
Kanon (2006) [much better than the original from 2002, with happier endings all around], and
Ouran High School Host Club [way too cliche of an ending for me, and something of a chore to watch past one episode or another] to get some of the old stuff out of the way.
My PSP and DS have been somewhat neglected compared to World of Warcraft, though I have been getting back into
Phantom Hourglass (why I assumed I would need bombs to get into the second dungeon instead of just picking up the rocks on the way, I don't know, but it did keep me stuck for a while) and regularly playing
Tekken: Dark Resurrection (which doesn't help much if I still lose against nearly every human player).
One last thing to note here is that this is the first post in linux - specifically,
Ubuntu 7.10 - since the change from 'old' Blogger to 'new' Blogger almost a year ago. Though I did set up my system to dual boot with the master boot record on a floppy disk, this was replaced by installing a second hard drive.
Labels: anime, announcements, posted in linux, videogames
I Seem To Have Missed A Lot This Month
There's been too much that I've missed out on this month. "Like what?", you ask? We have the Spurs winning the NBA finals 4-0 over the Cavs (I'd have thought they'd win one game), some government plan about a 'gay bomb' (I'd love to see Focus on the Family or some group like them condemn that waste of thought as sinful and immoral), the death of Chris Benoit and his family (haven't watch WWE much since it was WWF, so I don't care as much as when Owen Hart fell and hit his head), Manhunt 2 getting an Adults Only rating (which is equivalent to an outright ban thanks to Nintendo's and Sony's policies), Paris Hilton acting like a damned fool over a 45-day sentence (let's face it...it's not that bad no matter how much she cried), and other assorted brouhaha.
Why didn't I cover any of it? For one, World of Warcraft has been eating up some of my free time. You see, first came the 14-day trial, then purchase of the Burning Crusade during a sale where it was $25, then finding out I needed an active account to play it after I broke the seal on the box, then a call to billing support in which a woman implied rather unclearly that I could use a game card instead of buying the retail version, then a 60-day game card purchase, then failure to activate the account using the card, and finally, purchase of the retail game with success at creating a new account. The past couple of nights has been spent guiding a Blood Elf Mage through the forest, shooting fire and ice at anything that can be attacked.
As if that weren't enough, I've gotten back into programming with the DirectX SDK and SDL.net, where recent experience suggests that the latter will be preferred over the former for the next few weeks.
Finally, there's the anime. Besides Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Lucky Star and Hayate no Gotoku are most of I've been watching (on my computer) thanks to a lack of cable TV in the house.
If I weren't so lazy upon coming home from work or waking up on my day off, there'd be more content here. Maybe I ought to dedicate 30 minutes a night to writing a blog topic or something...
Labels: anime, announcements, annoyances, posted in windows, videogames
Like The Last Post, Only For April
I know that not much has been happening here on this blog, and I've been a little too lazy to try to write new posts. I'm sure if I'd put as much energy into writing what I think as I did watching
Nanoha StrikerS (which, as of episode 3, is starting off rather slowly compared to the first two seasons) or playing lots of
ATV Offroad Fury on the PSP (in which the Enduro races are frustrating), there could have been a couple of posts on something or the other. After upgrading my installation of
Ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04, there may also be a few posts made in Linux as well.
Labels: anime, announcements, posted in windows, videogames
