Parents get upset at me sometimes for my candy ranking system. Usually I give one piece, but if I really like your costume I'll give more. And I'll announce it: "For having such an awesome Creature from the Black Lagoon costume, you get three!" And then I'll turn to this unoriginal princess and say, "...Here's your one." And the parent who was monitoring from a distance will frown at the unfairness of the situation. Listen, if you were a good parent, you'd dress your kid in something more interesting.

Actually, I've noticed the parents have the best costumes. It's a shame few of the come up to the door because I'd like to give them something too.

Also, kids need to learn physics. I can't open my screen door if all of you are literally standing in front of it. When I push it open an inch and then stop, it's probably because I don't want to shove you down my steps. It's a signal that you need to back the fuck up. Babies, I can understand. They don't know what the hell is going on. But teenagers? You should've already figured out how doors work.

And also, teenagers: You guys down the line have the worst costumes. You need to step it up.

Mom really hates my pumpkins. I've done Pacman, the Prince rolling a katamari, a cactaur, a Mario mushroom, and this year it's Finn and Jake. Each time I proudly present the fruit of my labors, her expression as she gazes upon it clearly says, "What the fuck did she create?" Well, she was never a mother who could fake enthusiasm for the sake of her children.

I've been out of the house for a while, and back in the apartment we never got any guests for Halloween. I was talking with my neighbor to ask what the situation was like last year to prepare the proper amount of candy, and he said we should expect 350+. Jesus Christ. Friday is sabbath, and there is no way we're going to get through the prayers.

Literally the day after I wrote this post, an example arose in my French class. In that language, afin de and pour mean "in order to" or "to" (I slept eight hours last night to be well-rested today). Our textbook pulled the exact shit I'm talking about to demonstrate the similarities in usage and meaning for these two phrases. First they gave us a reading about emigrants from France using the phrase afin de all over the place, and many students had no fucking idea what that meant. The following exercise asked us questions about each of the people discussed in the article and then this happened:

Observez ces phrases (Look at these sentences)
Ils ont tout quitté pour vivre une expérience internationale. (They all left to experience an international life.)
Erwan et Stéphanie sont partis en Nouvelle-Zélande afin de devenir agriculteurs. (Erwan and Stephanie left for New Zealand to become farmers.)

a. Pour quoi est-ce qu'ils ont tout quitté ? Et Erwan et Stéphanie ? (Why did they all leave? And Erwan and Stephanie?)
b. D'après vous, est-ce que afin de et pour veulent dire la même chose ? (In your opinion, are afin de and pour the same thing?)

As a teacher, I see what the book was getting at. The first set of questions about each person is to evaluate reading comprehension. Then these are to bring our attention to the grammatical point of the lesson. It quotes two sentences from the reading so that we understand you can use both afin de and pour to create the construction I mentioned above. However most students don't know why books are formatted this way. They answered a set of questions asking why people were leaving France, and then were stuck on question A because it's literally the same one all over again: "Why are they all leaving?" Well, the answer is right there in the quotation. Do I just write the quotation again? Do I take information from the questions asked before from reading comprehension? What the point of this question considering we just answered it? And then they never moved on. It's shit like this that drives me nuts about language textbooks nowadays.

Have you ever heard of a Thomasson? It's basically a useless vestige of an urban environment — a pipe connected to nothing, a telephone pole that hangs no wires — that is still maintained. The idea came from artist Akasegawa Genpei, who in the 1980s was walking past a flight of stairs that led to nowhere, and yet he could see its rails were recently painted. Even though there's no point, its still retained its upkeep. Akasegawa started a column in a magazine describing Thomassons he found around town, and eventually readers would send in examples of their own. In 1985 he published a book compilation, and eventually in 2010 this was translated into English. To generate interest, the publisher had the translator start a blog about Thomassons he found in San Francisco, and like Akasegawa he too received reader's submissions. However one day he got an image of a middle finger along with a note that said, "Thanks for making my family famous." It as from Gary Thomasson's daughter.

You probably wondered from the beginning of this post why the hell these are called that. Akasegawa was a rabid baseball fan, and in the 1980s an American baseball player named Gary Thomasson was signed onto the Yomiuri Giants. In America he had a splendid career, playing for both the Yankees and San Francisco Giants before heading to Japan. However once there he couldn't perform, almost set the record for the highest rate of strike outs, and was usually benched. Akasegawa saw him similar to these urban remainders: completely useless but being "maintained" through his exorbitant contract. When his book was being translated, Akasegawa expressed fear that the actual baseball player would learn of it and become insulted — regardless of his Japanese records, Akasegawa was still a fan of Thoamsson — and it seems this was realized.

Then why the hell did you name this after him? Imagine for a moment you're a big fan of Dick Cheney, but then you coin a term for any hunting accident involving shooting your friend in the face a "Cheney." And then later you fret about whether Cheney would be upset at what you've done. Well, yeah. It's pretty insulting and humiliating. Maybe you shouldn't've fucking done it in the first place. I myself wouldn't have the balls to do something like that, even if I didn't like the guy. It's just too disrespectful. And this became a movement in Japan in the late 1980s. Everyone was in on calling this guy completely useless.

In light of recent events, Harlan and mom had this deep exchange:

Harlan: Don't get Ebola
Mom: Ok

Pure poetry.

After being trained in ESL, I've learned the reasons why textbooks do things. Let me give give an example from my German class. Usually chapters are about a theme: going on vacation, discussing hobbies, describing your daily routine. On one about families, it starts off with a woman's photo of hers. Students are supposed to discuss the picture to get them into a German mood as well as work on their vocabulary. Afterward they read a paragraph of the woman talking about her family and from the information derived from it, figure out where she and each relation is in the picture. This is for reading comprehension. Finally, students are told to underline words ending in -er and -ste. This is because, like English, the comparative ends in -er and the superlative in -st. So the woman says, "My brother Uwe is taller than my brother Günter. My sister Marianne is the oldest in the family." By underlining the endings, students can notice the pattern and the grammar for the chapter is linked with the theme. Then there are exercises on the comparative and superlative.

As my trainers were teaching this, I remember thinking, "Wow, you guys need to take a foreign language class with this method because this is exactly the crap they pull in my French and German classes and I don't get jack shit half the time." Let me break down what happens from a student's point of view: The teacher is assuming you know the vocabulary for family members, but you don't so when you're called on you can't answer anything. In my French and German class, at least my teacher knows English so I can ask, "What is 'father-in-law' in German/French?" If I'm teaching ESL with a dozen students from different countries, I can't answer that question so they'll be stuck in the dark. Also, I was taught to discourage dictionary use because students have to learn from context. I'm sorry, there's no fucking way to tell from context what the fuck "brother," "grandmother," or "nephew" is unless you know the fucking definition.

After feeling discouraged from the first exercise, you're then put into hell by reading this paragraph because not only are half the words incomprehensible because the first exercise didn't help, you're now given new grammar with no explanation and are expected to unravel it yourself. My trainer said this was called "test-teach-test," i.e. the teacher tests the class with new grammar and sees who's weak and where, actually fucking teaches what he's supposed to, and then tests the class again to assess the improvement. I've found by personal experience you enter this state of confusion because you've never seen this construction before, the teacher explains in the language you're studying so you still don't understand, and then there are exercises you can't answer because you're still bewildered by it all. And then after the class you go home and look up on the internet what you were supposed to learn in class.

Supposedly this approach to teaching works, but personally it just freaks me the fuck out. I feel earlier stages of language learning should be more structured and less open with vocab lists (when did those become non grata?) and more concrete explanations instead of hoping the students get it. Once they have a better grasp on the language, then we can start this bullshit. Because as a student half the time I couldn't comprehend why the textbook was making me do this.

I have no idea whether this is a real article or not, and quite frankly I don't care. All I know is "using her fists in a scientific fashion" is one of my favorite things ever.

Man, this year's fall really sucked. I think because it stayed relatively warm for a long period of time, so instead of having all the nice autumn colors it went straight from green to brown. I've been putting off going to the NYBG chrysanthemum show because I wanted take pictures of the forest, but it's ending soon. Oh well, next year.

Greene started and beat Bioshock Infinite at my house the other day. I wrote about this on my xanga, but I do prefer series that are based in an alternate universe because the creators can play around more. It's easier for me to suspend disbelief because subconsciously I think, "Well, that's how the politics work in this world." Or "I guess their physics are different than ours." Or whatever. If a story takes place here, then I'm going to start nitpicking because I've experienced this reality and I know how it works. Considering Bioshock Infinite happens on a floating island in 1912, clearly they have technology we don't. I'd be willing to let that slide if not for the fact they have plenty of things that they shouldn't. Like a PA system. Or CCTV. Or machine guns that were small enough to carry by hand and didn't require a tripod. My favorite part of the game is when you teleport to the future — probably 1960s or 70s — and you see New York being taken down by fucking zeppelins, as if we didn't have the jets with missiles to fight back with. At some point you have to wonder why make the game in 1912 at all. If you're going to have all this futuristic technology, it can be in, you know, the future. Don't give me this half-assed steampunk shit.

Now I'm beginning the Wave Country arc. Nowadays we complain about how long fights take, but holy shit that qualification exam with Kakashi took about four chapters. That's nothing compared to nowadays, but I swore to god it was one or two. It's weird how the memory works.

I like how Naruto decisively defeated Sasuke here and no one remembers this.

When I first read this I was confused and I still am today: Why are they so surprised by this fact? If it has a 66% rate of failure, that meant there should be tons of kids in the Ninja Academy who failed and are hoping for another shot. Why don't Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto know about them?

I've been thinking about this for a while. Considering Naruto's still a genin, does that mean after all this is done, he'll go back to missions of walking people's dogs?

People forgot about this. When the daimyou showed up later and were protected when the Ninja War started up, everyone was like, "Who are these guys??" I kinda wish Kishimoto explored the exact relationship between the ninja villages and the actual government of their respective countries more because it could've provided interesting plot points, but oh well.

[11:15:47] Dun 4 Hire: Yo.
[11:15:56] Dun 4 Hire: So after registering Hyrule Warriors, they made me take a survey
[11:16:11] Dun 4 Hire: And the last question was, "When you purchased this, did you know about the downloadable Ganondorf costume offer?"
[11:16:17] Dun 4 Hire: And I'm like, ".....No."
[11:16:21] Dun 4 Hire: And then it said, "Thanks for taking the survey!"
[11:16:24] Dun 4 Hire: What the fuck??
[11:16:30] Dun 4 Hire: Tell me about this fucking offer, you son of a bitch!
[11:18:36] gattsu456: ..... What.
[11:18:46] gattsu456: They just said, "Aight."
[11:18:48] gattsu456: And that was it?
[11:19:19] Dun 4 Hire: Yeah!
[11:19:20] Dun 4 Hire: Yo!
[11:19:25] Dun 4 Hire: They did the same for SSB!
[11:19:28] Dun 4 Hire: I just did it now!
[11:19:39] Dun 4 Hire: "Did you know about the soundtrack offer? No? Thanks for filling out the survey!"
[11:19:43] Dun 4 Hire: You little shits!
[11:20:33] Dun 4 Hire: " Here’s a nice offer involving a (usually) not-so-nice guy: if you buy Hyrule Warriors for Wii U and register the game with Club Nintendo between 9/26/14 and 10/23/14, you can receive a free download code for the Demon King Costume Set DLC: two costumes for Ganondorf that you can use in-game. "
[11:20:34] Dun 4 Hire: JEsus Christ.
[11:20:36] Dun 4 Hire: Thanks for telling me!
[11:34:36] gattsu456: You know, I think Nintendo's the worst at advertising.
[11:34:54] gattsu456: I feel like I only know about their shit because I look video game shit up online.
[11:35:10] gattsu456: And if I didn't, I probably wouldn't know about half the shit they release.

I'm still a little confused how to get that soundtrack!

harukami.tumblr.com/post/95609393103/unlockaflockofwords-felixlovesyou

Mmmmm... You know, I'm gonna have to side with the person defending Rowling on this one. Although I agree that minorities, gays, and women have under representation in media, I don't think Rowling is obliged to fulfill any sort of agenda. It's a fucking coming-of-age kids book about a boy attending wizarding school and fighting a hyperbolically evil man. Takealookatyourlife is right: "We are not told about any of the Hogwarts professors love lives, other than Snape," frankly because Harry isn't interested. I never would've known McGonagall was a widow and also briefly engaged to a Muggle in her youth if I hadn't read it on Pottermore. It's just not appropriate for professors to be discussing their personal lives like that with students, and none of them really did.

You could argue that it'd be out there, like knowledge that Barney Frank is gay. I'm not certain if people knew; given there's never any mention of Dumbledore in a relationship, even with information Rowling's provided outside of the books, it's possible he kept his sexuality a secret. He grew up in the 1880s for fuck's sake and was attracted to Grindelwald in the 1890s. That's not exactly a gay-friendly time. Only toward the end of his life was society becoming accepting.

The only time in the books I think would've been the opportune moment for Dumbledore to tell Harry would be the chapter King's Cross from the seventh book, after Voldemort "kills" Harry in the forest. It's when Dumbledore explains everything about his past to him. Except revealing his sexuality would've totally fucked up the flow of that chapter. I know as a reader, we would be too focused on the shock of learning Dumbledore's gay to really pay attention to the important issues: Dumbledore's guilt over his sister's death and how Harry can move forward after this.

Although I understand the frustration of felixlovesyou, the person who's so upset at Rowling, at lack of prominent homosexual characters, Rowling not overtly disclosing Dumbledore's homosexuality keeps in tune with the book. Only relationships relevant to Harry — Bill and Fleur, Lupin and Tonks, Snape and Lily, etc. — are the ones explored. It may provide an interesting insight into Dumbledore's psst and ambitions, but it doesn't expand the story in a meaningful way. Considering how many scenes she cut out of each book because they were already so goddamned long, this is just a minor issue.

Honestly my favorite line from felixlovesyou is this: "Including canonically queer characters in this most beloved and formative series of books would have LITERALLY changed - and quite probably saved - some queer kids’ lives." If your life hinges on whether or not it's mentioned in the Harry Potter books that Dumbledore is gay, you must not value it so much.

You know Easter Island? The place with the huge stone heads? When James Cook first arrived in 1774, he found an island with plenty of pasture and a population of only 700 with a few canoes created from driftwood. That is completely different from when people first settled there a few centuries earlier. It was originally full of trees and plenty of wildlife. However the people who first populated it introduced rats, which killed off plenty of the native fauna, and they themselves practiced a form of slash-and-burn agriculture, which destroyed all the trees until there were none left. From that day they had no firewood, no method to create canoes and leave the island, and even more of the animal population left or died out thanks to the forest disappearing. From then on, society collapsed and there was plenty of warfare as people fought for whatever few resources that were left. That's why there were only a few hundred left when Cook arrived even though there were thousands previously; they were killed and the population couldn't rise to its previous levels without the resources.

I use Easter Island as an example of how we're all ecologically destructive, not just modern civilization. Although I agree industrialization and advanced agricultural techniques are able to increase the speed of devastation, even the most primitive societies were environmentally ruinous. Occasionally I hear how it's better to return to a simpler time, but how much simpler can you get than a bunch of Stone Age people on canoes landing on an island? They managed to fuck it up too. And I can list plenty of Native American societies who did similar things — annihilation of species, desertification of land — regardless of what Pocahontas tried to say about them. Every animal on earth is like this: horses graze until the land is bare, rabbits just fuck everything up, rats will consume everything in their path. Rather than sneer at our own shortcomings, it's amazing that we humans are the only ones on earth who realize the consequences of our actions.

Me: Greene's playing a game with me and the main antagonist's name is Comstock, but whenever people mention his name, I hear Cumshot.
Peguero: That's.....maybe a bit of a stretch.
Me: Occasionally I hear Cumsluts.
Peguero: This is like those ink blot test but with words, and all you hear is sex.

Moham and I may have been a little too excited about Mario's new outfit in Smash:

[22:48:43] Dun 4 Hire: YO SON
[22:48:49] gattsu456: YO
[22:48:51] Dun 4 Hire: CAN WE ADDRESS MARIO'S UNITED STATES OUTFIT IN SMASH
[22:48:55] Dun 4 Hire: BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS AWESOME.
[22:49:04] gattsu456: YES.
[22:49:06] gattsu456: FUCK YES.
[22:50:24] Dun 4 Hire: NINTENDO HAS FUCKING DID IT AGAIN
[22:50:28] Dun 4 Hire: I FUCKING LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT
[22:50:35] gattsu456: NINTENDO ALWAYS FUCKING DELIVERS.
[22:50:37] gattsu456: ALWAYS.
[22:50:38] Dun 4 Hire: IF MARIO ISN'T IN THAT COSTUME, I JUST RESTART THE LEVEL
[22:50:40] Dun 4 Hire: US OR GO HOME
[22:51:20] Dun 4 Hire: WHO THE FUCK AT NINTENDO THOUGHT OF THAT?
[22:51:27] Dun 4 Hire: WE NEED TO GIVE HIM MONEY.
[22:52:05] gattsu456: HIS BRAIN MUST BE PRESERVED FOR WHEN THE COUNTRY NEEDS GENIUS OF HIS LEVEL AT A CRITICAL POINT IN THE FUTURE.
[22:57:28] Dun 4 Hire: HE IS JAPAN'S... NO, THE WORLD'S LAST CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL.
[23:01:31] gattsu456: HE IS THE ONE THAT WILL GUIDE US INTO A NEW GOLDEN AGE.
[23:09:15] Dun 4 Hire: WITHOUT HIM, ALL OF US ARE LOST. LOST TO THE ABYSS.

I'm up to chapter four now of Naruto, so at the rate I'm going I should be done perhaps six years from now.

Man, I forgot about this. I wonder if he still uses this picture on his ninja ID. Like, assassins from other countries look up his information and this picture comes up. Oh crap, if Kishimoto referenced this late in the series, I think I'd forgive him for a lot.

I kinda miss Inner Sakura (I remember she was pretty much the only special Sakura had in the early days of the video game series), but lack of appearances is more to Sakura's development: She's now more comfortable with herself, so she doesn't have to put up a front anymore and no longer is such a shallow person. Or so I say, but I think Kishimoto just couldn't think of any more interesting scenes with her and dropped it as a concept.

How the fuck did I forget about this???

And thus without much ceremony a team of legend was created.

I was listening to NBC's original radio report of the 1945 crash into the Empire State Building. They laid out what they knew — a plane had collided into the building on a foggy day — what they didn't know — how many casualties there were — and interviewed a couple of survivors. What astounded me the most about the entire thing is at the end the announcer said, "This is the National Broadcasting Company. We return you now to the music of the first piano quartet." And then the slowest classical music begins.

This is completely different to what we would do today. First off, NBC waited until they had some facts before even putting it on the air. They even waited until office workers were saved and could interview them, and god knows how many hours that took. Nowadays reporters would be on the scene within ten minutes, shit would be on the air, and you'd just see an endless amount of raw videos of the incident. And they would never leave the story. Ever. The only thing that could stop them is if Russia started bombing us.

I think it's great that we have the capabilities to see incidents as they're happening, but simultaneously I really appreciate this old 1945 report. I watched the Newtown shootings as it occurred, and after a while I had to turn away from the television because I was becoming so disgusted. First off, nothing was fucking happening most of the time. It was just shots of police officers standing around or a news helicopter filming the scene from high above. And the pundits, oh Christ the pundits. They were saying absolutely nothing useful and literally speaking whatever the fuck came to their heads at the moment. It was a never-ending litany of idiocy and emptiness.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether I watched the shooting in real time or read about it later the following day. The immediateness doesn't really give me more information. In fact, it's worse because to fill up the vacuum of nothing happening, news just blabs stuff that's pointless or even worse, wrong. And after fourteen hours just spent on one story, you missed out everything else in the world. On the day of the Newtown Shooting, a man stabbed 22 children in China and Israeli soldiers beat up Reuters reporters. They sure as hell didn't cover any of that. In a way that's why I appreciate news that takes a breath and tries to figure stuff out before reporting, shows like Nightline or magazines like Newsweek. Although it's slower, they're at least not running at the mouth.

Still, NBC, at least you learned how to work on your segues. It's difficult to go from fire billowing out of the Empire State Building to a piano quartet without something transitioning it: "And that is when the rapist clubbed his victims to death with a dildo. That's our report, and now back to our previously scheduled program, Debussy's Clair de Lune."

An auxiliary verb doesn't really have any meaning by itself in an sentence but rather adds mood, aspect, or modality. For example, in English we add a "do" in questions: "Do you eat often?" German uses them too, but they fucked it up. The auxiliary verb is often really close to the verb it's helping in English because that's what makes fucking sense. It's like having an adjective right before or behind the noun it modifies. It'd be weird to have the noun ten words later. In English the perfect tense is subject + to have + past participle then you follow with the rest of the sentence. Sometimes you throw an adverb in there, but any more and it gets confusing. The Germans don't give a shit. They go subject + to have + past participle, but then they throw EVERYTHING in between to have and the past participle. So in English we'd say, "I've gone to the festival in Brooklyn with my friends every year," but in German they say, "I've to the festival in Brooklyn with my friends every year went." Why do that ever? I can understand languages sometimes put the verb at the end of the sentence like Latin or Japanese, or put it at the beginning like in Tagalog, but why ever separate the auxiliary verb and main verb like that? And you know the Germans also have problems with it because there have been studies that show when they read, they often flick their eyes to the end of the sentence to figure out what the hell is going on. It's your own fucking language and you can't handle this shit!

Another thing is they ONLY use the perfect form. Oh they have the simple past, but apparently no one says it aloud, only in writing. So while we'll say, "I went to the store in Brooklyn yesterday with my friends," they'll say, "I've to the store yesterday in Brooklyn with my friends gone."^* Why. Why. Why. You have a much simpler form and this entire construction isn't necessary, but you decided to make it longer just for the hell of it.

^* Actually, like with French some verbs involving movement use "to be" instead of "to have." So they'll say, "I am to the store gone." So weird.

I have no idea why I'm so into playing Hyrule Warriors. I've never played a single Dynasty Warriors game, but I get the feeling this is a watered-down version with a Zelda theme. And I'm loving almost every second of it. I didn't expect this.

I do have one complaint, and it's the addition of two characters, Lana and Cia. Because it's a crossover of several Zelda games, they created these two characters to push to explain how all these characters are together in one universe and to move the plot along. Honestly I think they weren't necessary, and each time I'm forced to play as Lana I get pissed because I'd rather use a character I know and love. Cia serves as the antagonist until Ganon comes along, but there are so many people to choose from in the Zelda series that could've replaced her. Zant and Ghirahim are already there, but there's also Vaati, Malladus, or Demise. You don't need to go deep into it; the plot as is isn't that amazing, and Zelda isn't plot-driven anyway. So instead of annoying me, throw in more people I know.

Speaking of that, who the hell is Wizzro? I know there's Wizzrobe, but it looks nothing like them and they were never important enough to be in such a prominent position. Also, Volga? That one boss from Ocarina? When did he become important?

I got Touch My Katamari but I don't own a Vita. What the hell is wrong with me.

In the 700s and 600s B.C., the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were invaded by the Assyrian and Babylonian kingdoms and ultimately conquered. Much of their population was deported to Mesopotamia, which was not an uncommon action for the Assyrians and Babylonians to take. When Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated and annexed the Babylonians, he allowed the Jews to return back to their homeland. This period away from the Holy Land is known as the Babylonian captivity. It's an important moment in Jewish history because not only does it provide the materials from the prophets, but also solidified the Jewish mentality on worshiping one god: Until that point, many had ignored that rule and sacrificed to other deities. Perceiving the Babylonian captivity as punishment for their lack of faith, upon their return the Jews decided they were going to do things right this time and cast off the other gods.

Supposedly the identities of the twelve tribes were lost during this period because no one could remember who belonged to which family anymore by the time of their return. And this is where I get pissed off. The kingdom of Israel fell in 722 B.C. and Judah in 601 B.C. According to the Bible itself, the captivity ended in 538 B.C. They can't fucking remember for about a century or even seventy years in the case of Judah what your fucking family is? Jews are all over the fucking world, some groups haven't even entered Israel for over a millennium, but they still remember their goddamned name. Are you seriously telling me the Jews lived in Egypt, became their slaves, wandered in the desert for forty years, and after all that remembered which tribe is which, but give them a century in Babylon and they forget everything?

I really regret playing Hyrule Warriors at Wong's place because now I wanna buy it and play it. I mean, I was going to anyway, but I could wait a bit until I was finished with other stuff. No more.

As I watched Greene play Naruto Ninja Storm Revolution, I realized I forgot a lot of shit in the series, particularly toward the end as I stopped paying as close attention. So I'm rereading it from the beginning, and now a lot of things seem weird in retrospect. So about once a week I'll write a post with comments.

This confused me for a long time because I thought that he was the fox, and later during the chuunin exams they talked as if it was inside of him (which it is). Perhaps it's a translation problem? Mizuki says, "ナルトの正体がガケ狐だと口にしない掟だ," although every version I've seen has Mizuki proclaiming he's Kyuubi itself. I've read websites explaining this away by saying he was saying the prejudice of the village, but part of me wonders whether Kishimoto's original intention was for Naruto to be the fox itself. If you read the pilot chapter, he is a transforming fox and perhaps Kishimoto wanted to continue that but changed his mind later.

Let's think about this. Some shithead who couldn't even pass the Ninja Academy exam, never mind the genin exam, somehow managed to slip past security, defeat the hokage, and get his hands on this super secret scroll? How fucking crappy is their security if Mizuki thought this useless kid had a decent chance of success? Also, what the fuck else was in that scroll? Naruto only managed to learn the first thing before Mizuki and Iruka caught up with him. We know there's kage bunshin no jutsu and shiki fuujin, but what else? The way everyone was phrasing it, there's jutsu in there that could topple the whole world.

Is that Chouji's dad right there getting pumped up to murder Naruto? Christ, he seems so fucking nice later.

Man, I miss this crystal ball. Maybe if someone else knew how to use it, Jiraiya wouldn't've had to enter Amegakure on a fact-finding mission and he'd be alive today.

New link. Thanks for the heads up Devin.
*update* Goddammit, taken down again already.