I'm reading Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday, a book about traditional societies (mostly hunter-gatherer) and how they compare to our modern world. Diamond makes an ambivalent stance, pointing out the benefits (how children are raised to be more inventive and creative) and the drawbacks (lack of medical care). It's the negatives that I want to focus on: I've mentioned this off and on for the past few years, but this book really sums up my feelings toward them: Earlier societies sucked. A lot. It's not idyllic, you can die at any moment, and it's bloody as shit. Diamond explains how until Europeans came New Guineans didn't know anything outside of a five-mile radius because if they attempted to leave their home base, they'd be killed instantly by other tribes. Whole generations of people weren't aware of the ocean even though they lived a three hours' walk away. It's a constantly murderous environment where fathers teach their six-year-old sons to kill other six-year-olds from neighboring tribe.

I just bring this up often because I'm trying to fight against the perception that civilization ruined everything. It didn't. I'll admit there are things we've lost that Diamond thoroughly details in his book, and he provides a good case against people who think traditional societies are uneducated, or dumb. They're not, and they're capable of many things that we've lost. But simultaneously I would never, ever give up what I have for that. The amount of homicide, rape, theft, and prejudice is astonishing. Many New Guineans appreciated the Australian policeman who patrolled on their land because it finally gave them a sense of security: They could go out to take a piss without having to worry about being murdered. I really don't want to live like that. So when I hear shit was better in the old days, I just laugh and laugh and laugh. Trust me, even with two world wars, it's nothing, nothing compared to before. If we compare the total population and ratio of people killed, traditional societies are much higher.

If we could just combine our security with their prudence, we'd probably have the greatest society ever, but that's not gonna happen. I recommend you read this book, along with his others Germs, Guns, and Steel and Collapse. Whether you agree with him or not, they're still interesting reads.

I watched the Macross movie, Do You Remember Love? It solved the problem that I complained about the last time by ending on the climatic battle with the Zentradi. As with any movie, they had to cut out large portions of the series, such as Max and Milia's romance, although on the whole I'm satisfied with it. It's not as full of a plot, but the way they managed it in medias res still ultimately worked out to create a coherent story. However I think I would've preferred to watch this first instead of the whole series to understand what it's like for a person who doesn't know the whole back story because that may have helped me along.

This time around I disapprove of two changes: For one, the Zentradi really look like aliens. If we're supposed to originate from the same being except they went on to become war machines whilst we stayed as protoculture, it doesn't make sense for them to look completely different. For two, and this is the biggest one, they didn't have time to develop Keifun and Minmay's relationship. It starts out with them already knowing each other, and although Keifun is somewhat possessive of her, there isn't the true love triangle that appeared in the original series. Because of this, it makes less sense for Hikaru to turn to Misa instead: He left Minmay because he felt she was leaving him for her cousin, and even though she returned to him at the end he already had established a relationship with Misa. Here, he and Minmay actually become a couple (remember in the 1982 show she kept on denying anything was between them), gets trapped on Earth briefly with Misa, and then for some reason just decides to ditch Minmay. It makes no fucking sense.

The production level is definitely higher, but I actually miss the shitty animation. That was half the fun. It's like watching the original Gundam. What the fuck am I supposed to do now that I have to take this shit seriously?

But that is the overall tone: Seriousness. The movie lost all of the comedic moments — the Zentradi spies making fools of themselves, the awkwardness of the kiss scene, Max kicking a Zentradi in the balls with his Valkyrie — probably due to time constraints, so watching it is a completely different ride. I definitely recommend this though because I found it quite enjoyable on its own.

The Steam game Huniepop is an attempt to take a Japanese hentai game and westernize it. So instead of copious amounts of text and dialogue, you basically have Candy Crush. It's kinda hilarious having to match up shit in order to get a woman horny and then have successful sex with her, although I can imagine the game getting old pretty quickly, especially since it's not that graphic. Either way I watched it being played at Wong's house, which created this situation in French class:

Teacher: What did you do this weekend?
Me: Oh, I went to see my friend.
Teacher: What did you do?
Me: We baked some chocolate brownies, and they were really delicious. I don't really know how to bake, and she's teaching me.
Teacher: That's really fun. Did you do anything else?
Me: We played a lot of video games.
Teacher: What did you play?
Me: ............................

Two things he also taught us: "Mayday," the phrase you should as your plane crashes, is actually French for m'aider (pronounced like... well... "mayday") or "help me!" Also, "denim" is from de Nîmes (pronounced "deh-Neem") or "from Nîmes."

Iruka remained at #4 or #5 for a long time, which I never understood considering after the chuunin exam he dropped out of the series for years.

Are we never going to address that Konoha has a forest filled with giant centipedes in the middle of their town? Or are we just going to ignore that?

What was Iruka doing this entire time? Was he just standing in a room, bored, as he waited for five days to be summoned? You can't start jerking off to porn or anything because you don't know when this kids'll arrive.

You can easily tell Kishimoto later retconned Kabuto. In the early days he was always talking about his old blood boiling and such, which makes me think Kishimoto had other plans for him. This whole thing about wanting blood and the death of his mentor definitely was added much later.

I'm most impressed that Kakashi can remember all the fucking characters needed for this seal. I can barely memorize a Shakespearean soliloquy, never mind god knows what's necessary for containing an evil seal.

Oh fuck, this scene is so much cooler in the manga since they didn't have his arms shoot off in the anime. I'm kinda sad Shino stepped out of the limelight later in the series because he always does cool shit.

Tenten also seemed to have a lot of potential but never followed through with it. Admittedly she's outshone by Neji and Lee's back story, but I still would've liked to see more of her.

God almighty, I'm telling you Naruto had some of the best fucking plans in the early part of the series. I'd say next to Shkamaru he came up with some of the best ideas because he was an unskilled idiot who had to resort to trickery. Which is hilarious because he also came up with some of the worst fucking plans too.

I'm adding this for Greene's benefit.

I send out about thirty packages during the holiday season as presents, and this year there were some problems since several people failed to inform me they moved, and over a month later the returned boxes are starting to trickle in. USPS, I have to commend you for examining the parcel, figuring out the worst possible place to slap the "RETURN" sticker on, and then proceeding to do it. It's literally right over the address. And they put on not just one but two so the address can't be seen through the thin paper of the sticker. I'm sitting here trying to figure out which gift this belongs to and can't because you've removed any information related to the intended location. And I can't rip this shit off because I know the adhesive will take the address with it. Complete and utter bullshit.

I was thinking about what I said yesterday, and perhaps Cuomo felt burned after criticism over his handling of the blizzard in Buffalo and how people were stranded on the freeway, so perhaps that's why he enacted that travel ban. Still, I feel that was too much.

After Sandy, I told my friend that the NYC subway system has only shut down thrice in my life: After September 11th, during Hurricane Irene, and during Hurricane Sandy. For me, that was three too many. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard not only was mass transit shuttered, but also all non-emergency vehicles were banned from driving. My first thought was, "When the hell did we become such pussies?" Do you remember back in 2006 or so we had a sudden blizzard of 26"? What happened then? Some above ground trains went out, yeah, but the system was still on. We just shoveled ourselves out and went to work the following day.

I vaguely recall reading an article in The New York Times exploring the spike in "state of emergencies" in the past decade as a bid to acquire more federal aid for things as minor as a sewage pipe breaking. (Unfortunately I can't find the article.) I don't think this is the case now considering the predictions are so severe that it's even appearing on international news like the BBC or Le Monde, but more than anything I'm surprised about the driving ban since I've never heard it before. I know it's better to err on the side of caution, but this blizzard better be fucking huge news if the state is going to require a curfew, something that didn't happen even in Sandy.

After it was rebuilt, many people comment on the fireplace in my room. I always had one; it just was hidden behind the bed. Mom and dad attempted to light a fire in there shortly after moving in, but it was so smoky that they never did so again. When we rebuilt the house we had it fixed up as best as possible, so now we're trying them out not only here but also in the living room. First, we discovered we have no fucking idea how to start a fire. All these years my uncles were the ones to handle everything and would spend any family gathering sitting in a semi-circle and poking at the flames for hours. Second, we have no idea how to let it continue. It burns brightly for about an hour and a half and then fizzles out. I'm trying to figure out if we should throw in another log — of course you need to put in more fuel once one burns out — but two logs being completely immolated in an hour and a half seems pretty insane, not counting all the smaller pieces of wood we throw in to help start the fire. Well, this gives me an excuse to have more fires in my room as I experiment.

What surprises me the most is this thing is not generating any heat. If you're within six inches of the hearth it's pretty warm, but after that nada. Even when I'm sitting at my desk I feel nothing.

[00:09:34] Dun 4 Hire: Yo son.
[00:09:40] Dun 4 Hire: We're older than Kakashi.
[00:25:53] gattsu456: Fuck you.
[00:25:57] gattsu456: Okay?
[00:26:03] gattsu456: There were things I wanted to hear.
[00:26:08] gattsu456: And that was not one of them.

I was talking with Greene and we did the math together: If I read twenty chapters a week instead of the ~5 I've been doing, I should be finished with the series in a year. Well, here's chapters 40-60.

I never fucking understood how TenTen did this. She would have to throw up two kunai with a mirror attached into that light fixture somehow without anyone in the room noticing. Fucking impossible.

Also, no one notices this one kid suddenly pop veins out of his eyes like he's having some sort of seizure? Especially in a room full of Leaf ninjas for proctors, who regularly work with Hyuugas?

This is Anko's grand entrance after the written exam. I really hope she paid for that window.

Man, remember when the series' main antagonist was Orochimaru? God, I miss those days.

I always wondered what happened to Kabuto and Orochimaru's teammates here. Zaku, Dosu, and Kin were killed and their bodies were used to summon the hokages later, but as far as I can tell nothing happened to these dudes. Actually, I think this is literally the only shot you get of Orochimaru's "grass" teammates. Who the fuck were they?

I was initially really impressed at Sasuke's foresight here, but then I realized this plan only works if it's Naruto's who's separated from the group. You have a 50% chance of success. If Orochimaru came in impersonating Sakura and said the password correctly, you wouldn't have any idea.

In retrospect when you look at scenes like this, you wonder how the fuck Orochimaru didn't recognize who Naruto was from the start. He's a fucking spitting image of the dude who took over the job you wanted.

I thought Sakura was going to do something amazing here, but instead all she did was bite a guy on the arm and get punched in the face a lot.

This scene was confusing as shit in the anime and I don't think the manga makes it any better. I thought Sasuke ripped Zaku's arms off, but in reality he just broke them. It made this disgusting crunching noise in the anime too. I must've rewound those five seconds at least a dozen times trying to figure out what happened.

Technology in the Naruto universe is pretty interesting for me. They have TVs and VHS, but they don't have cars or trains. They have telephone poles, but I've never seen a telephone. I wonder how Kishimoto decided on stuff.

Last night I watched the State of the Union on the White House website. Initially before Obama appeared and everyone was milling about, they had the regular 16:9 ratio. But once the speech began, I saw this:

I sat there trying to figure out if something happened to their cameras to prevent them from showing a full screen and they hastily covered it with the title until the problem was resolved. But no, they meant to use that space for shit like this:

Okay, I know it's really not necessary to show the entire area surrounding Obama because it's just him, the vice president, and the speaker — although it is hilarious to watch Biden sometimes — but it looks ridiculously tacky if you don't. This shit on the side should not be there. I do not need a map to pop up to show me where Russia is. I just want the president, not a goddamn Powerpoint presentation. I'm being distracted by all the text and crap instead of focusing on what I'm here for, the goddamned speech.

You may have remembered last year I was busy compiling shit for the insurance company, but they haven't really sent us the money yet. It turns out the instructions we were given are incorrect, and now they're asking us to redo it all. So if you're wondering why I'm busy as hell for the next month, this is why. Fuck everything.

I should've mentioned this in the last post, but shows made decades ago that talk about the future are really fascinating because they demonstrate how they think technology will go. Macross takes place in 2009, and wow they missed a lot. For example, no one has cellphones and they go to great lengths to accommodate this. If you know someone's in the city, you can call a robot that will physically give the phone to the person. It's kinda the opposite in real life: We have phones on our person, but we're still working on that robot technology.

Star Trek is another great example. I was laughing my head off watching Kirk, Spock, and McCoy walking around this "futuristic" world filled with cathode TVs, walkie-talkies as big as your arm, and computers larger than my entire room.

There's the oft-quoted Back to the Future, but more of what we're lacking than what we have: We don't have the flying cars or skateboards, nor do we have the machine that can create a large pizza from a tiny one in an instant.

Shinji won't stop listening to his cassette tape in Evangelion, which I always found weird since the series came out in the 90s, long after CDs at least were introduced. Considering how much he rewinds that shit, I'm certain he would've loved an mp3 player that does auto repeat. Did we ever find out what he's listening to?

It always makes me wonder what we'll laugh about when look at the movies we're making today. What will we inaccurately think we'll develop? Every series I've seen missed a really important thing: The internet. They never realized the "internet culture" that would develop and only imagined an extension of what they already knew: basically just video-chat instead of telephones, email or texting but in a manner similar to the paper documents they sent out back then. We're probably doing the same thing within our own context. I wonder though who'll be more spot on than others?

I watched the original 1982 Macross in its entirety, which I had already seen in its Robotech incarnation. That series had an effect on this family, so much that our server was called the SDF1 and the computers were named "Roy," "Minmay," and "Lisa." I remembered vague parts of the series, like how Rick wanted to be with Minmay and later became a soldier but couldn't be with her since she was busy as an idol, and eventually he got with Lisa. Surprisingly I did not remember the aliens. You'd think considering the entire fucking series is about fighting aliens that I would recall that, but nope. That completely slipped my mind.

Now that I've seen its original version and am no longer five, I can say it's actually a pretty solid show. The idea of using culture to battle fighting machines is a pretty interesting take. There are of course flaws, like how the entire ship is run by a bunch of gossiping college girls and no one seems to think this is an issue. Thank god Claudia is there to keep shit together. I'd say the most glaring fault of the series is its structure. The climax battle between the humans and the aliens took place about two-thirds in, and it was fucking amazing. I did not expect anything of that magnitude and I'm grateful that I completely forgot it so I could reexperience it anew. But then the series continued for awhile, and although the storyline isn't lacking — it's cool to see how people try to pick themselves up after such a destructive war — nothing can compare to what happened before, so it just feels like we're waiting for the end. I don't think the producers know exactly how the denouement of a plot is supposed to work: It's just a little bit after the climax, maybe an episode or two max. Not a whole third of the series. Imagine for a moment in Harry Potter if Harry defeated Voldemort in book five, and then book six and seven was about him coming to terms with his feelings for Ginny as well as picking off the remnants of the Death Eaters. That would not be nearly as interesting as before. That is the equivalent here.

Now back to Gundam. Actually, I should probably watch Do You Remember Love first whilst I still have Macross fresh in my head.

I discovered that I somehow managed to download two unrelated animes about gay mermans. I don't even remember searching for them; I just found them randomly on my computer. How the hell do I do this?

I know this is supposed to be a musical piece and everything, but all I can think when I see him is, "God, he needs to work on those typing skills."

I oftentimes find it really jarring when people who initially started out as villains became friends. If you think later in the series, can you imagine Kankurou saying this ever? You can say it's him maturing from a child into an adult, but honestly I think Kishimoto wanted to make Gaara's team seem like the fucking crazy-ass one. It's like when Ichigo initially went into Soul Society and realized how fucked up it was. There were pits where they made prisoners fight Hollows. Are we suddenly supposed to forget that shit now that Aizen is the bad guy? This is why Varia was awesome from Katekyou Hitman Reborn! They remained crazy fuckers all the way to the very end.

Man, I forgot how Temari started off wanting the cock.

Really, the moment you take off that green vest, the jounin/chuunin outfit looks like something I'd spend the day lounging around in and doing nothing.

Whenever I see this scene, I now only think about that conversation I had with Moham:

[13:35:14] Dun 4 Hire: Also, this ingraining Ezio's skills into Desmond thing doesn't make much sense.
[13:36:12] Dun 4 Hire: He can mentally have the skills, but I doubt he has the physical ability to climb up shit like Ezio and Altaïr have.
[13:36:21] Dun 4 Hire: 'Cause he's been a bartender who hasn't been training.
[13:36:33] Dun 4 Hire: It's like when Sasuke used the sharingan on Lee.
[13:36:40] Dun 4 Hire: He could see the moves coming, but he wasn't physically fast enough to stop it.
[13:36:59] gattsu456: I like how you're using Naruto in a logical argument.
[13:37:09] gattsu456: And Naruto's the one that got it right.
[13:39:50] Dun 4 Hire: Well, it was either that or a Harry Potter reference.
[13:39:53] Dun 4 Hire: And I couldn't think of one there.

Is this the only time the turtle shows up? I can't remember anymore. I fucking love this turtle, although admittedly only because he's on my favorite manga cover. Also, I'm glad the scanlations have gotten a better typesetter. Can they now get one who can spell?

Whoa whoa whoa, when did Polly Pocket stop coming in those self-contained doll houses? That's why she's called that; it's a goddamned doll house set that fits right in your pocket. What the hell is the point of her now?

As I watched The Hobbit over the years, I could see Hollywood's footprints all over it. I already knew there had to be heavy editing considering it's a 275-page book and they spit out just as many movies as The Lord of the Rings, over 1000 pages, and oftentimes I could easily sense the additions since they were not of the same caliber as Tolkien's original writings. I read The Hobbit over the weekend and... wow, that was a very different adventure. That's not to say The Lord of the Rings wasn't different from the books — clearly they cut a ton of shit out to pile that epic into a couple of hours — but this was virtually unrecognizable from the original.

Let's begin with additions. You know who didn't show up in the book?

Yeah, him! They literally only mentioned him once in passing. Imagine all those times they were fleeing from him. None of that shit happened. He actually died in the battle of Moria that they mentioned in the first movie. In the book, the first time goblins pop up... Oh wait, first, let me explain that. There is no difference between goblins and orcs; It's just hobbits refer to them as "orcs" and everyone else says "goblins." So remember those crazy goblins that they met in the first movie where Bilbo fell and got the ring? Those are the fuckers in the final battle. That whole thing with armies coming out of the Necromancer's keep, that shit didn't happen either. Actually, the Necromancer never makes an appearance. It's literally just those goblins they met in the cave that are still pissed off about the whole incident coming to attack, led by this fucker Bolg:

I barely fucking remembered this dude, and he's the top dog! Unlike other additions that increase the total time, this one doesn't make any sense to me. Why replace Bolg with Azog when you already have a good story right there? Bolg is pissed that his father was killed Azog was killed at Moria; you can turn his story into a revenge quest against Thorin instead of Azog's revenge quest for his lost arm.

Here're other people who didn't show up:

Yeah, these two fuckers. Right away when watching this I knew they weren't in the book. The way they were just jammed in felt just like Mari in Evangelion: unnatural and forced. That is amazing considering what an important part they played in the movies, with Tauriel's love interest with Kili, their defense of Lake Town (since Azog doesn't exist, no one was bothering following the dwarves), and their scouting of the fortress of Gundabad. You can tell they were thrown in because of Legolas love (goddamn, he looks a lot older) and to make some sort of godawful Hollywood love story.

And here's another fucker who doesn't appear:

Yeah, what the hell. Mentioned only once in passing. See, that whole attack on the Necromancer didn't happen in The Hobbit proper, so there was no need for him to make an appearance because that subplot wasn't happening... kinda. Remember when Gandalf just leaves them right before Mirkwood to go up to the mountains and saw that the Ringwraiths had broken out? Actually he's going to attend that conference with Elrond, Saruman, and Galadriel, and they decide together to attack the Necromancer then and there. There's none of this doubt from Saruman. I actually didn't know about this — Gandalf just literally leaves them without mentioning why and randomly shows up again — and had to read it elsewhere. I'm actually somewhat happy about this. Although not in the actual The Hobbit, it nevertheless was happening and was a cool addition. Still, it had nothing to do with Bolg's attack.

Thorin himself was actually the craziest change for me. In the movies he's depicted as a brooding deposed prince, wanting to take his rightful place as king. In the books he can't shut the fuck up, doesn't have that animosity toward the elves, and is at times indecisive. That whole part about the prophecy Bard knew about Thorin bringing ruin and the gold having an averse effect on people didn't happen either. Actually that last statement I found to be particularly jarring in the movies; he wasn't like that in the earlier installment and suddenly he appeared crazy in the latter two. It was like in Order of the Phoenix when Harry began to randomly scream at people, something he never did before. It felt like a complete roundabout with no bridge in between.

Not being a fan of the books, I wasn't aware of this level of butchery. I can say as a Harry Potter lover the movies incensed me, although none of them (except maybe Prisoner of Azkaban) fucked it up to this extent. I'm not displeased if a movie deviates from a book because some things cannot be moved between media, and sometimes things that may be exciting in words will be boring as shit on screen, so something needs to be spiced up. The Hobbit wasn't one of them. We all know The Hobbit underwent these changes to milk as much money as possible and not to help the transition onto the big screen, which is probably why people are so upset. As a person who saw the movies before the reading the book, they provided a coherent storyline, but I could immediately figure out this is not close to the source material. If they wrote the script better, I should not have been able to perceive that.

If you can recall during the 2004 John Kerry made a reference to Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, and the then-vice president's stance on gay marriage. That move backfired on him because Mary was completely behind her father's campaign and resented being used as a political tool for the Democratic party to take a jab at Republican policies. It's hard to seem like a defender of the gay community when your example is speaking out against you.

This incident came to mind when I read about Ahmed Merebet, one of the police officers who were shot during the attack on Charlie Hebdo. In the days afterward "Je suis Charlie" (I'm Charlie) became the phrase that people used to rally in support of the magazine and the people who died. But there also circulated the phrase "I am Ahmed" by people who were offended by some of the statements Charlie Hebdo made about Islam. I personally didn't know about this magazine's existence until a few days ago, so I'm not going to enter that argument.

But I feel use of a person's death to push an agenda is kinda like what happened with Mary Cheney. People don't know Merebet, initially they had no idea if he was a practicing Muslim or not, or if he was offended by Charlie Hebdo, but they latched onto his name because they felt it represented their viewpoint. The only difference is Cheney is still alive so she could still voice her own opinions, which differed from what Kerry was expecting. It's very possible that Merebet would completely agree with Muslims who want to point out the problems with the magazine — if people are willing to kill over it, surely it's gotta be offensive on some level — but I feel bad commandeering someone's image when they no longer are capable of having a voice of their own. For example, if I died in a KKK raid and people used my death as a protest against racism/antisemitism/anti-Catholicism, I'd actually be kinda pissed off. Although I think those are good things to protest against, I don't identify myself as Filipino nor am I practicing Jew or Catholic, so I'd rather not be the representative of such a movement. Again, Merebet may be proud of his death being used to show that extremists kill everyone, including Muslims. Or maybe he would've stood alongside those saying, "Je suis Ahmed." But I'm not gonna say that for him.

I've been told that quotation marks in German are „like this” and French ones are « like this ». However I've found that to be the case about 50% of the time. The other 50% they just basically copy English "like this," and on occasion I see French pulling weird shit with —. For example, here's a dialogue in English:

"Nice dog, Harry," called a tall boy with dreadlocks.
"Thanks, Lee," said Harry, grinning, as Sirius wagged his tail frantically.
"Oh good," said Mrs. Weasley, sounding relieved, "here's Alastor with the luggage, look..."

And this is how they'd do it in French:

—Nice dog, Harry, called a tall boy with dreadlocks.
—Thanks Lee, said Harry, grinning, as Sirius wagged his tail frantically.
—Oh good, said Mrs. Weasley, sounding relieved, here's Alastor with the luggage, look...

Let me tell you, that last one is hard to read sometimes.

Anyway, I'm really confused about this lack of standards. That's not to say in English we are a little fuzzy on the rules — especially with apostrophes and commas — but at least we can all agree on its function. Like, even a person who doesn't know the difference between who's and whose still would know that who›s is wrong. If the Germans and French have their own punctuation systems, that's fine. I'm totally cool with that. It's their language, they can do what they want. It just seems bizarre to me that they couldn't decide on a single punctuation mark for quotations whereas English could.

I use a desktop calendar that you rip off daily, usually so that I can write my tasks for that day and check them off as I complete them. This year I bought one with Latin phrases to practice vocabulary and basic grammar, ad for the past week it's been relatively normal — ego fidem meam malo quam thesauros (I prefer my faith over treasures) or maximus novator tempus time is the greatest innovator) — and then I got this today:

Remember, I'm looking at the Latin, which just says, "Day of the Camel." My eyes then go down a bit and read what they're aiming for. In my confused state I didn't connect "hump day" with "Wednesday." Instead there was a horrible, terrible moment of me picturing either people humping camels or vice versa, and me trying to remember if this was an integral part of ancient Rome.

This was one of the coolest fucking 10-second fights ever. Wait, did I say fight? I mean beatdown. From a guy with broken arms and only fighting with a fucking knife in his mouth.

You know, for such an important moment in Naruto's development, they could've drawn that face better.

Unfortunately Sakura does nothing to remedy this until the end of the first part. I'm still trying to figure out why Kakashi recommended her for the chuunin exam.

For years and years and years the second most popular gay pairing after Sasuke and Naruto was Kakashi and Iruka. I just simply couldn't understand it because the only time these two interacted was this one scene. I guess people saw Kakashi and Iruka blushing and went crazy with it, but I think it was also a desire to want an older couple that had actually gone through puberty. It's just there's so little material to work with that basically everything was fan speculation, which you know gets insane really quick.

Oh Jesus, this is the first time we see Kankurou?

The more I learn about it, the more I've come to appreciate World War I, and now feel it's actually more influential on our modern world than its successor. Which is a shame because as I said before on xanga, it's completely shadowed by the intense personalities of the second World War. Seriously, if you compare Wilhelm II, von Moltke, Ludendorff, Lloyd George, Haig, Joffre, Nicholas II, Pershing, Poincaré, and Wilson with Stalin, Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini, Patton, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Rommel, or Gudarian, there's no way WWI can win. The only real person who sticks out is Rasputin, and he wasn't even a real part of the war, just a component of Russia's decline.

But I like it because I feel it's the final nail on the coffin of Old Europe, the period I study. Generals who fought in this war had titles like "prince," the French still wore breastplates, and initially when people surrendered generals offered up their sword, which was symbolically returned to them. The Great War forcefully dragged everyone into the twentieth century. First off, it completely changed battle tactics. It's not that nations didn't own cannons, machine guns, battleships, and airplanes before the war; it's just that they were never used on anther nation that also had it. Up until this point, people were fighting natives like the Zulu who didn't have much besides spears and bows and arrows. The only glimpses the world had at what was to come was our Civil War and the Russo-Japanese War, but the weapons back then were not nearly as deadly as in 1914. When we hear about the thousands of people dying uselessly in WWI, it's because the generals literally didn't know what to do and were using Old World tactics. Things like the cavalry charge followed up with the infantry, which is the standard for thousands of years, now just gets your troops mowed down by machine guns. It took about three years for military leaders to finally adjust to the new reality, but unfortunately whilst they were experimenting whole armies of men died in the process.

Then there was the complete breakdown of nations. Before the war, people held titles like "emperor," "caesar," or "king." Royalty in Europe literally held absolute power in some places, just like the kings of old. That was gone by the end of the war as crowns fell into the gutter, and the systems we know today began to rise: Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia all lost their imperial families and the first two became democratic, the last turned to totalitarian communism.

And it's not just those three countries. The leaders of the winners, Wilson of the US, Lloyd George of the UK, and Clemenceau of France just basically sat in a room together for six months and literally hammered out the fate of the world, consequences that we still face today. Pretty much all of our problems in Europe and the Middle East (and even parts of Asia) can be traced back to these six months. Half the time these three didn't know the geography or the cultural impact as they drew lines and the other half they didn't give a shit. Oh wait, Iraq is placed literally on the dividing line between Sunni and Shiite? Fuck that, we need a country there for oil. Where the hell is Czechoslovakia again? Do the Czechs even like the Slovaks? Eh, just smash 'em together. Whole countries were remade into the way we think of them today.

WWI is fascinating for a historian because it's a transition period, but unlike other similar moments of history this is fast, definite, and easily traceable. For example, when you ask when does the Renaissance begins and ends, you get something from the 1300s to the 1500s, sometimes as early as the 1200s, and no two people provide the same dates. Here people can point and say, "1914 to 1918. Here's how, here's why, and this is exactly what happened." Although WWII was game changer, don't get me wrong, we had already stepped into the modern era by this point. It was just a continuation of the game.

Source

This literally is one of my favorite things ever.

Now that winter is upon us, dad wants to try out the fireplaces and see if they're working properly, but he couldn't really set up a fire properly without it burning out. Years ago we used to have a fire annually, so I asked him why he suddenly couldn't remember how to set one up and it turns out my uncles for years were doing it because they were bored at parties. Still, at the moment I'd like to see if the one in the basement is functioning. Wouldn't it be cool to have a roaring fire to keep yourself warm?

Nintendo: You need to stop adding levels to Adventure Mode in Hyrule Warriors. I can't fucking keep up. I haven't even beaten the first map yet, never mind the ridiculous ones you put in afterward. Please stop, for the sake of my soul.