Darylsurat

This is the meeting we have before the meeting just to meet and where we discover there is no fixed agenda. This is the committee for the committee where no is sure how all the money will be spent or who is going to split it. This is a drawing someone did of an idealized version of you that looks nothing like you because you only look like your makeup now. That was a free drink ticket you never threw away because you thought you might be going back but never did. The same holds now for a ten percent off discount coupon that has become emotionally unstable, here’s a sad little point card that feels unloved, a pile of yen coins in small denominations always feeling inferior to larger amounts. I can’t say why I secretly wish for all your collective failure, but yeah, I do.

It began with CNN's reporting as fact and spread like wildfire. But there's no evidence it's true.

When I get to Shinjuku to pick up Col. Baldwin’s kash, I know this will not be a good scene. The JR wifi burns my implant(s) from the inside out and offers relief only if I accept ‘yes’ to the terms and log in. Going to have to endure the pain a bit, which is not impossible, advanced futsukayoi training finally paying off. Still, weird dream state walk from the ticket gate to the underground bank. Have I been here before? Yes, over and over: past the elevators that lead to crowded cafes, the stairs up to station square bathing in perpetual AltaVision, girls in delicate clothes with smartphones fused at the cellular level into their faces.

At the bank, windows reveal some sort of security perimeter inside: a Small Angry Manager (who I know already smells like hair tonic and an ashtray), withered and 50-ish, and a goof guard in heavy black Sentai Enemy Armor.

Something is up. They knew I was coming before I even did. Fuck it and turn back to the ticket gate. Should be less heat down the Chuo-line. Instead, there is already a heavy police presence at Nakao Rachel station: some agitated moving fast from position to position, while others just stand around scanning with Heavy Vibration. I think I’m going to be stopped for sure and dragged into the bright room again, regardless of whether I am carrying Baldwin’s billions on me or not, but a Chinese woman in all-fake designer wear takes a bag check on the chin in front of me. A happy moment, but mine, mine, mine alone.

June is here, and we’re all ready to begin our rose-colored campus life with a look at The Tatami Galaxy, a 2010 anime with series direction by Masaaki Yuasa of Mind Game and Kick-Heart fame. CLICK HERE or on the poster above to download our review of the film, featuring guest host Daryl Surat of Anime World Order. The discussion includes topics such as the difficulties of finding artistic recognition and the power of mature story-telling in a medium dominated by a focus on youth and nostalgia. Spoilers abound, so listen with caution.

Final Thought:

“You complete me.”

She was always leaving. Leaving whenever shit got weird or stressful…and shit always got weird or stressful because hey, human beings. It was a system that didn’t make practical sense, but was totally reliable: You got about 6 months, about a year max if she moved into your place. No guarantees. Should have come with a user’s manual. A warning of some kind. User testimonials. Clearly visbale star rating like a laminated x-mas light halo around her head. Didn’t matter what was going with the other person; in their life, in their head, in their event horizon. Forecast delivers about a week of stormy weather, then a sudden bye. Broken hearts, ruined souls, dismembered bodies resulting, primarily in places where the exact opposite used to be. Smoking craters. Long nights. Waking up at odd hours. Support groups forming at the community level to let the motherfucking healing begin. Ok, that’s fine I guess. Your world. Your prerogative. Nobody owes anybody anything. Why stick around if you are the unhappy one? That’s always the real question, isn’t it? The rest of you just play with it and try it on pop songs and in the deeper subtext of what goes on in everyday life, but it’s not like anything really requires any obligation. Ok, fine. I see how it is now. You were only obeying your conscience, listening to your heart, but it would sorta help if you had either one in the first place. 

Oricon announced the top selling books for the first half of 2014 (from November 18, 2013, to May 18, 2014) on their website today on June 2. The top-selling manga series during the period was Hajime Isayama's mega hit Attack on Titan. Surprisingly (or not so?), the series sold 8,342,268 copies and finally defeated Eiichiro Oda's long-running One Piece (4,936,855 copies), which had kept the top spot since 2009, for the first time. Attack on Titan's highest position in the first half periods was a 4th in 2011 and 2013.

 

The author Isayama gives his joyful comments as follows: "If I only have one life to live, I have always wanted to take the Oricon No.1 spot. Everyone who gave me the Oricon No.1! Thank you very much for giving me the Oricon No.1!"  The latest 14th volume of the series is scheduled to be released on August 8, 2014.

 

 

Top 10 manga series:

1. "Attack on Titan" Hajime Isayama (8,342,268)

2. "One Piece"  Eiichiro Oda (4,936,855)

3. "Kuroko's Basketball" Tadatoshi Fujimaki　(4,616,040).

4. "NARUTO" Masashi Kishimoto (3,247,177)

5. "Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic" Shinobu Ohtaka　(3,085,177)

6. "Hozuki no Reitetsu" Natsumi Eguchi (3,060,694)

7. "Ace of Diamond" Yuji Terajima (2,914,977)

8. "Silver Spoon" Hiromu Arakawa (2,875,863)

9. "Ansatsu Kyoshitsu" Yusei Matsui (2,795,169)

10. "Nisekoi" Naosho Komi (2,418,041)

 

 

Top 10 manga volume:

 

1. "One Piece 73" (2,825,339)

2. "Attack on Titan 12" (1,770,746)

3. "Attack on Titan 13" (1,6665,561)

4. "NARUTO 67" (1,073,219)

5. "NARUTO 68" (1,039,390)

6. "Kimi ni Todoke 21" Karuho Shiina (934,335)

7. "Silver Spoon 11" (904,863)

8. "Silver Spoon 10" (836,790)

9. "NARUTO 69" (799,324)

10. "Sakamoto desu ga? 2" Nami Sano (775,315)

 

 

The image illustration for the "Attack on Titan "14th volume

 

 

Source: Oricon Style

 

"Attack on Titan" image (C) Hajime Isayama/Kodansha

 

Wither wherewithal. Seemingly always alone in a room on someone’s floor. The place to stay finds you when you need it; the rest is like another life buried deep in the hollow of a parallel world, but then what? It’s no Liquid Room. Fear of missing out at 10am Sunday morning, only a few hours sleep so the hangover creeps up from behind. Not clear where on the map of emotional calibration where this is at really: a tatami room growing humid as afternoon creeps in, neighborhood pathways filling up with running children, old people, the weird monster people still in their cages until when. ESPY always offers a time slip option, but it is not easy to navigate the electromagnetic waygates; static backwash from a million component stereo systems, hard particles of magnetic cassette and video tape debris. Digital is cleaner of course, but totally limitless, a world of nothing-but-outside. Who would want to come here to deal with overly complicated air conditioner controls?

Nagatacho. Hot seat event horizon of government of darkness HQ. I see weathered blue buses trailing each other, human silhouette shadows inside, forever condemned to circle the diet building for crimes dating back generations of uncertainties, misunderstand. GOD agents everywhere in identical whiteshirts and black slacks. Muppet dress shoes. Police on every street corner propped up by regulation hit-me stick. Beginning of the summer spiritual cook off and the feeling of having to ride it out. Humid vapor starting to hover in the empty halls and meeting rooms. The big revelation being that there's no one actually in the GOD, no one needs to be anymore. We are all complacent, political, and motion sick just sitting here, on a prison bus, on a corner, considering what to buy and breathe next.

Shepherded foreign journalists cowering under concrete embankment. Matching T-shirts and suits to sweat in. Minders in blue scanning the crowd for shutterbugs. Can’t allow that for sure. Subtitled sixties sitcom on hotel TV. I Dream of Jeanie, only she has dark hair this time, furious animus brow, preparing the perfect hamburger for me, assembling pieces one by one, slapping the bun into place. Trying to get home, but the subway station is under construction, looking like a map from a first person shooter. There is no end of the street anymore. Someone has walled it up. No 35mm prints left available, we have to screen it in 16.

 

Jet lag all the commiserating pain of a drug binge minus the fun part. The brain defilesd and squeezed of rightful chemistry. Jet lag is needed for accessing the overtones, so counterspy keeps the condition permament, like a face, like a heartache that won't go away. Counterspy pills in a foil tray handed over by immigration. Severe weather patterns keep them active, like a face, like a heartache. Caucasian, non Japanese x2. Standing in front of suidobashi station exit typing this, people wondering who he is, is he lost, dangerous, why no Unklo shirt or pants, what are you and what are you doing here scowling like that. Old ladies opening umbrellas tiny would be receptors of the mystery frequency. Other guy here stealing a bike in slow motion, every 5 min making another barely perceptible adjustment to the lock. Can't help but root for him, but the sound of fierce trains passing overhead would only drown it out.

It’s always hotel time here. It’s always time to check in. I’m forever lugging a 50lb suitcase from Mark City past the KFC, the ACP, the Gusto, the Koban. The Japanz. “Do you drink beer” female uniform behind the desk wearing braces asks with her big braces smile. Well, yeah, I respond, so why are you giving me a can of Highball? Just for checking in? Is every transaction now the potential domain of some weird promo now? What if I pop open the can and drink it here and now, a brain full of jetlag, a nervous system high and low on 11 hours of Xanax? The sun hangs high outside over Shibuya, long slow fade out into not-quite-LED-lit darkness. Television shifting through medium shots of the human body in action, the smiling faces you won’t see in the city streets happy to see other people. Future TV where even the folks on commercials are talking and texting on portable devices: maybe their hands, maybe the air.  

Look no further than the Concord51 PAC for your alpha male rape culture gang.

Some in the media reacted to the killing spree in Isla Vista, California that claimed the lives of six victims with offensive or bizarre commentary.

On May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed three people in his house with blunt or sharp objects before driving to a sorority house near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Outside that house he shot three women, killing two. He then shot to death a young man at a nearby convenience store. Rodger reportedly committed suicide with one of his guns, but not before killing six people and wounding 13 others.

Much attention has focused on a video uploaded by Rodger on YouTube where he describes his desire to kill women in a "day of retribution" against those who has refused his sexual advances and a 140-page manifesto that described his hatred towards the world and in particular women.

Media reactions to the killings included: A Fox News guest suggested the shooting was the result of "homosexual tendencies"; a Fox News contributor who blamed a "war on masculinity" for the killing spree; conservative commentators who lashed out at a victim's father who castigated the National Rifle Association during an emotional press conference; and a CNN reporter described Rodger's manifesto as "really well written" and compared it to a Dickens novel.

Fox's Erick Erickson: Blame Violence On "War On Masculinity"

Writing at RedState.com, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson claimed that Rodger "lived the very lifestyle the cultural left thinks men should live" and that his actions were a consequence of a "war on masculinity." One of the features of this "war," according to Erickson, is that "[i]nstead of men and women complimenting each other, they're supposed to be perfectly equal even if they are not."

Best we can tell, Elliot Rodger lived the very lifestyle the cultural left thinks men should live and that is regularly glorified on the silver screen. For all the talk of a "War on Women," there has actually been a war on masculinity for a few decades. And more and more twenty-something young men are getting lost and acting out while society tries to find something new to replace the tried and true.

Society used to expect men to open doors, protect their families, and be champions of modesty and virtue. But chivalry is dead. Instead of men and women complimenting each other, they're supposed to be perfectly equal even if they are not. The hook up culture, instant gratification, and selfishness pervade our culture.

Streaming begins July 5; Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Re-Edit, live-action Frenemy & No Dropping Out

After months of general unwillingness to record due to the difficulty of assembling a proper review without spoiling everything, we're back! Clarissa reviews the recently completed television series Samurai Flamenco. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

Conservative activist James O'Keefe suggested that in his new video he would show that "a lot" of environmental "propaganda" is funded by foreign oil interests. O'Keefe duped two small-time filmmakers into accepting funding from a man posing as an oil tycoon from the Middle East, but his attempts to broaden the scope of the sting to more prominent organizations and activists were based on deceptive edits.

O'Keefe hyped his latest YouTube video, titled "Expose: Hollywood's War On U.S. Energy," by suggesting in a fundraising email that it would expose "the darker side of how a lot of the feel-good environmentalist propaganda gets funded by international interests who jeopardize national security." In it, he convinces the filmmakers of FRACKED, an upcoming documentary about the risks of fracking, to accept funding from an actor posing as "Muhammed," an oil tycoon from the Middle East who is being represented by an ad executive. The filmmakers said in a statement that they agreed to this funding because "It was understood that the investor would have no control over the content of the film and that we, the directors, would have final cut. We thought to ourselves 'oh the irony! We'll use the funding from an oil company to make a film that promotes green energy!'" Encouraging reliance on green energy, rather than oil from domestic or foreign sources, is essential to national security and it's not clear how a real "Muhammed" would benefit from this.

The video suggested that not only would the filmmakers, Josh and Rachel Tickell, accept oil money but that larger environmental organizations may as well, by adding a false voiceover. The voiceover claimed that the Tickells named environmental groups "When asked if environmental partners would be willing to be paid off":

VOICEOVER: And when asked if environmental partners would be willing to be paid off...

"AD EXECUTIVE" REPRESENTING "MUHAMMED": Which ones? Which ones?

REBECCA TICKELL: Environment California and CodeBlue.

"AD EXECUTIVE": Would that be something that --

JOSH TICKELL: And the NRDC.

"AD EXECUTIVE": Like they accept donations and things like that too?

REBECCA: Absolutely. They would work with us on this film.

But the Tickells were actually stating that they could reach out to these groups to promote their film, not that these groups would accept oil funding - the parts in bold were in the unedited tape starting at 3:28:30 but not in the edited version:

JOSH TICKELL: What's our market reach? We essentially work with six verticals. And these are things that we have developed for the better part of two decades. Grassroots? We have a number of organizations that actively activate our grassroots base. [...] Universities -- as I said, we do a lot of work with universities. That builds credibility, it also allows you to do a back and forth when you're taking people from the university, putting them in the film, and then you're screening it. That university becomes part of your prestige of the film -- oh we have an MIT professor, oh we have this professor, we have that professor. NGOs --

REBECCA TICKELL (interrupting): Which these two organizations, their main focus is anti-fracking.

"AD EXECUTIVE": Which ones? Which ones?

REBECCA TICKELL: Environment California and CodeBlue.

"AD EXECUTIVE": Would that be something that --

JOSH TICKELL: And the NRDC.

"AD EXECUTIVE": Like they accept donations and things like that too? I want my client to --

REBECCA: Absolutely. They would work with us on this film. They would make sure that all of their members saw the film. They would speak at the screenings, they would send out email blasts.

Kate Kiely, a spokeswoman for The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement to Media Matters that "NRDC actually has very strict rules about donations. We have a hard and fast policy not to accept money from any fossil fuel industries. Nor do we accept money to advocate for projects. Our advocacy is always based on strong science, law and policy." When asked whether the organization had "ever accepted funding from foreign oil interests" or if they had any part in the upcoming film FRACKED, Kiely wrote that the answer to both was "a resounding 'NO.'"

Most environmental organizations and activists do not accept funding from special interests that contradict their values. As the Tickells stated during O'Keefe's video, public knowledge that they had agreed to accept Middle Eastern oil money would damage their credibility among environmentalists.

However, according to O'Keefe, his deceptive editing job has already convinced a Senate committee to investigate:

Wolfsmund is created by Mitsuhisa Kuji, translated by Ko Ransom, and published by Vertical. I’m talking about volume 3, but you should start with the first volume, assuming your stomach and soul can handle it. I waffle and wobble a bit, personally.

I’m not too squeamish when it comes to entertainment, but it’s really down to presentation. Flash beheadings, brutal beatings, none of that really moves the needle in terms of actual existential terror. It’s when things get too specific and personal that I start checking out. Eyeball trauma gets me good, even in garbage movies like 28 Weeks Later. Hannibal was gross from jump, but it didn’t gross me out until season two showed someone tearing themselves free from a sculpture they’d been stitched into.

Mitsuhisa Kuji’s Wolfsmund excels at the specific and personal, and I’m torn between being into it and hitting the emergency eject button. It’s set in the past, at a gateway between two lands governed by a man who specializes in educational cruelty. It is grim and difficult to read. I’m three volumes in and there’s no real hope in sight. Compelling characters are put to the sword or worse on a regular basis. The first volume lays out what to expect: there are people who die, there are people who escape, and there is the man who sits in judgment of all of them and doesn’t let anyone pass without taking skin off their back.

Volume two was exceedingly cruel, cruel enough to where I put the series to the side for a few months. Volume three, purchased on a whim relatively recently, still made me cringe. In movies, if someone’s getting their eyes stabbed out, I can look away. In comics, you gotta look before you turn the page. You have to register what you’re seeing before you realize it’s horrible.

I tried to read the torture scene in volume three a couple times, not willing to admit defeat, before I eventually just bit down and flipped past it. Kuji got me. She got me good. The fingernails, or the imaginings that come along with reading a scene of fingernail torture, put me down for the count and I lost a few panels. She followed it with a scene where a man offers a mother and son a chance. He will spare one of them. Whoever the sword points to when it falls will die. The sword is placed point-down, tips, falls, and:

A sword is for stabbing, you see. It’s cruel poetry. The pommel doesn’t matter. Starving dogs are set on the son. The mother rushes to his rescue. She fails.

Kuji played assistant for Kentaro Miura, creator of hyper-violent medieval tale Berserk, and Kaoru Mori, creator of the maid soap opera Emma. Wolfsmund doesn’t feel like a marriage of those influences, but you can feel both influences creeping into the work. The art in Wolfsmund is very well-rendered and detailed. I can’t speak to its period-appropriateness, but the costumes feel real. They’re full of details and accoutrements that feel like they make sense.

Wolfsmund is an easy book to fall into, to believe in, and that makes the trauma all the worse. It’s a creeping, personal kind of cruelty. The characters in the book and Kuji herself dedicate scads of time to showing us someone else’s pain in excruciating detail. It’s not like Gantz, which could never figure out if it wanted to terrify or titillate. It’s un-erotic in the extreme, so uncomfortable and dark that you wince at the art. (The actual instances of sex and nudity in Wolfsmund are often difficult. There’s no guarantee that either party will survive the scene, much less the book, and they’re often book-ended with skin-crawling horrors.)

Wolfsmund is feel-bad comics, the sort of book you read and swear off and come back to again after a few months have passed. It’s full of non-stop cruelty and horrors, definitely beyond what I personally prefer. But there’s something about it and the feelings it inspires that is compelling, too. It’s a difficult kind of pleasure, and probably not even pleasure at all.

I read the second volume of Tsutomu Nihei’s Knights of Sidonia and the third volume of Wolfsmund back-to-back one night, well after the sun went down. The treatment of death in both books captured my imagination. Where Knights of Sidonia had an incredible depiction of impersonal cruelty, Kuji indulges in indulgent and beautiful cruelty in almost every chapter. You either get the knife or the glint of it. It’s mean and it’s ugly, heartbreakingly ugly at times, but I keep coming back to it.Similar Posts:

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Marlo Lewis, senior fellow of the fossil fuel-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, argued that moving regions that will be affected by sea level rise is a better idea than taking efforts to mitigate climate change.

During the May 20 episode of NPR's On Point, Lewis was hosted alongside two climate experts to discuss the recent findings that the collapse of a West Antarctic ice sheet "appears unstoppable," and will cause global sea levels to rise of ten feet or higher in the next 200 to 1,000 years. Lewis dismissed taking action to reduce our carbon emissions, saying we could simply adapt to the effects of climate change.

Host Tom Ashbrook challenged him, saying, "So you're saying move New York, move Miami, move Southern Florida, move Boston?" Lewis responded, "Yeah." His reasoning: "The built environment from the studies I've seen, most building stock turns over in about 50 years. And so the markets adapt to this sort of phenomenon anyway."  

Lewis' argument doesn't make much economic sense. The flood damages from just five U.S. cities will cost nearly $8 billion per year by 2050, according to a recent study published in Nature Climate Change -- and this is before the 10 feet of sea level rise is expected. According to the study, taking adaptive action in coastal cities at risk could cost up to $50 billion per year globally -- much more expensive than simply preventing the worst damage from happening in the first place.

Lewis is listed as one of the National Journal's energy experts and contributes to FoxNews.com, National Review Online, and Forbes.com. Lewis has used his media platform to defend Fox News and the Wall Street Journal for their use of false balance in reporting on climate science.

These readers may be interested to know of Lewis' fossil fuel funding, as Ashbrook disclosed for NPR listeners:

ASHBROOK: What are your motivations here? We've got a lot of fossil fuel money in your organization. Does that mean you're speaking up to defend their interests? And how do we have confidence that you're not?

LEWIS: Well, Tom, I kind of make it a policy not to respond to ad hominem arguments.

ASHBROOK: Ad hominem? I mean I'm just looking at your funders. Isn't that fair?

LEWIS: I think, you know, if you can ever find an instance in which I've changed any position I've ever taken at any time in my professional life because of a contribution to an organization that I've worked for, I'll pay you a thousand dollars. So let's drop that subject.

ASHBROOK: I don't think it's ad hominem, Mr. Lewis, it's just an honest question. A tax on carbon would be tough for ExxonMobil and Texaco.

Listen to the entire 45-minute podcast below.

Image at the top from Flickr user stacyflower with a Creative Commons license.

After a week of victim-blaming and dismissing campus sexual assault statistics, the National Review Online has doubled down on dismissing sexual violence on college campuses.

In a May 19 piece, National Review Online contributor A.J. Delgado claimed that women are being "brainwash[ed] into believing they were raped." Delgado cited a personal anecdote to make her point, arguing that, for a friend, "convincing herself she had been raped was a way of saving her dignity and avoiding the hurtful reality" of  "regrettable sex." Delgado concluded by stating that "for every legitimate, actual rape claim there may be another that was not: a girl who cried rape."

From National Review Online (emphasis added):

Prominent scholars and activists now even define rape as including any sexual activity in which the woman is not sober, claiming that consent is never truly given if one has had a few drinks.

Admittedly, I am no scientist, but I am fairly certain that a statistically significant amount of sex -- including very enjoyable sex -- happens under the influence of alcohol. But by the liberal definition of my generation, I have been raped. Multiple times.

[...]

Are women themselves being taught to believe they were raped (the aforementioned "only sober consent is true consent!" notion)? Yes. And that, ironically enough, makes these women victims of liberal culture, too.

[...]

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and Amy ultimately decided against filing a report. (In case you're wondering, a week later she was still hunting down Steve -- the "rape" a far cry from her mind.) But how many Amys go through with it? And how many Steves have their reputations ruined, perhaps even their lives, with a false accusation? While it's easy to imagine Steve as a smirking, smug jerk, he was actually a hard-working guy from a poor family, at the university on a scholarship. Amy's accusation would have easily ruined his life.

For good reason, it is hard to forget Amy -- a reminder that, to the extent some in our society remain skeptical of rape claims, women themselves bear a share of the blame. After all, for every legitimate, actual rape claimm there may be another that was not: a girl who cried rape.

Previously:

NRO's Week Of Denialist, Victim-Blaming Sexual Assault Coverage

Fox News Ignores New Report On College Sexual Assault

Conservative Media Jump On Sexual Assault Truther Bandwagon, Cry Foul On White House Report

WSJ Editor: Intoxicated Sexual Assault Victims Are Just As Guilty As Their Attackers

Dinesh D'Souza, the right-wing media darling who conservatives had claimed was targeted for prosecution because he is a critic of the Obama administration, has pleaded guilty to charges of campaign finance fraud.

D'Souza, famous for producing an anti-Barack Obama film rife with lies and outlandish claims, was indicted by the FBI in January and accused of violating campaign finance laws by "arranging excessive campaign contributions to a candidate for the U.S. Senate," and allegedly reimbursing "people who he had directed to contribute $20,000" to the unnamed candidate. On May 20 D'Souza pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and making false statements. He will be sentenced in September and likely faces imprisonment of ten to 16 months.

Right-wing media figures -- many of whom went to bat for D'Souza's flawed film -- rallied to the filmmaker's defense following his initial indictment, claiming he was being prosecuted for his political beliefs. Fox News host Sean Hannity labeled D'Souza "the latest victim to be targeted by the Obama White House." Matt Drudge accused Attorney General Eric Holder of "unleashing the dog" on "Obama critics," and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones responded to the charges, saying, "This is like Nazi Germany ... once they're done with these guys, they're coming after you and I." Radio host Laura Ingraham characterized the indictment as being "more about stifling political dissent" than any serious allegations of wrongdoing, and Rush Limbaugh described it as an effort to "criminalize" conservatives.

Fox News repeatedly hosted D'Souza, providing a platform for the filmmaker to defend himself against the charges and issue baseless accusations at the Obama administration.

During one such interview in February, Fox host Megyn Kelly said the charges "raised red flags for some because D'Souza, who has pleaded not guilty, is behind the box office hit 2016: Obama's America, a film that is very critical of the president." D'Souza responded that he couldn't speak about the case specifically, but that he knows "for a fact" that Obama was personally unnerved by his film and said, "I am a public critic of the president, and I do recognize this has made me, to some degree, vulnerable to some forms of counter-attack."

This right-wing media defense was reportedly part of a deliberate plan by D'Souza. The New York Times reported in April that, in a conversation with one of his alleged straw donors, D'Souza said that if he were charged "he might plead guilty, but would initially plead not guilty because that 'gives him a window of opportunity to get his story out there.'"

Conservative pundits were more than happy to oblige this desire. Now will those who championed D'Souza's virtuousness finally condemn his crimes?

For her part, Ingraham will not. She responded immediately to news of the plea by downplaying the seriousness of the crime and doubling down on her claim that D'Souza was prosecuted for political reasons.

Knights of Sidonia, created by Tsutomu Nihei, translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian, published by Vertical. This is volume 2, there are several others, including ebooks on your preferred digital platform.

Set in a far-flung future after the destruction of Earth, Knights of Sidonia takes place in and around a spacecraft that contains the entirety—maybe so, maybe no—of humanity. They’re being hunted by powerful and utterly alien beings. One day, things go wrong and the ship must change course. Imagine being in a car taking a turn at 60mph. Now multiply it by several thousand orders of magnitude.

This happens:

None of these people are named. They aren’t characters, just bodies that transition from human to smears. They’re indicators of scale and trauma instead of people. Imagine you, your best friend, and your circle. Now imagine what happens when they hit God’s windshield at eighty thousand miles an hour.

This follows:

Nihei’s got a killer sense of scale and perspective. It made Blame! claustrophobic despite being full of open spaces and it made Biomega creepier than sin. Here, he goes from a long-distance shot to a close-up one, adding the remnants of human remains to the smears.

I keyed on the couple the first time I read this. They might not even be a couple—they might be two people caught by surprise in the moment. But under Nihei’s pen, they’re here and then they’re gone and that is the entirety of their existence.

The impersonal nature of these deaths, and this scene as a whole, struck me. These deaths happen because someone makes a decision to save the many at the expense of the…well, not few, as you can see. At the expense of those unfortunate enough to be away from safe areas at that specific moment in time.

Despite these deaths being utterly impersonal, they’re far from bloodless. Something about the way Nihei draws the splatters, the choice of sound effect, and the sheer number of them make the scene feel like one final upset and insult before the victims are sent on their way. It feels like a chill, an Act of God.

There was a person here. There’s not now.Similar Posts:

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After four and half years, a new collection of Rei Hiroe's violent action manga Black Lagoon finally hits Japan on May 19th. In commemoration of the long-awaited release of volume 10, Shooting Bar EA in Kichijoji, Tokyo, will hold a collaboration event with the manga from May 21 to June 16. The bar will provide foods and drinks inspired by the Black Lagoon characters. The customers will also be able to enjoy shooting with the airguns based on the real ones used in the story in the bar's 10m shooting range. 

 

There's now a preview of the drink, menu, and replica guns at will be at the event. 

 

Revy Cocktai

 

Cutlass Cocktail 

 

Balalaika Cocktail

Roberta Cocktail

Lagoon Company Steak

 Church of Violence's Grace Salad

Hansel and Gretel twin sausages

Blini ice cream

Roberta's medicine inspired mixed nuts

Spas12 Cocktail

"Colt Government cocktail"

Glock17 cocktail

Replica guns exhibited include

Cutlass

Spas12

M1918

Desert Eagle 

M1911

M712

Glock17

Hk69A1

minimiM249

M60

M82

Limited event targets

Volume 10 limited edition

Work featured in the art book includes

• Kara no Kyōkai
• Fate/zero
• Fate
• Zoku Satsuriku no Django -Jigoku no Shōkinkubi-
• Phantom
• Steins;Gate
• Yozakura Quartet 
• The Qwaser of Stigmata
• Jormungand
• Geo Breeders
• Hellsing
• When They Cry
• Kamen no Maid Guy
• Comic Market 81 Catalog
• Sengoku Taisen
• Blazblue
• and more

Limited edition art book

Limited edition bath poster

Standard edition

via Natalie

 

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

As far as revolutions go, Operation American Spring is a complete dud. It does feature some of the people that make up the Tea party. You know, militia members, anti-government freaks, NRA nuts, military fetishists, Confederate flaggers and everything in between. And the one central theme I see from Ustream is that everyone absolutely and categorically despises President Obama.

Arrest Obama!

You're complicit in the crime if you do nothing!!!

The Washington (Moonie) Times: Operation American Spring falls flat: ‘This is very disappointing,’ Texan says

read more

Picasso was dead and Warhol was on the Love Boat. So Giger was the Star Wars generation’s first taste of living, breathing fine art. Of course, we already loved Frazetta and the Hildebrand Brothers and lots of other fantasy illustrators, but they were physical, escapist, and fundamentally dumb. Giger’s psychosexual biomech was steeped in the Surrealist tradition and deeply rooted in your own unconscious mind and body. That he could continually connect his personal vision to mass produced pop culture was one of the great gifts of the 20th century (fox). Alien might have made him a Famous Monster, but he became a human being to anyone who read the text in the Necronomicon via tales of his childhood, the suicide of Li Tobler, and an unobscured explanation of his techniques and creative process. Plus, he just looked so cool in those scarves, open neck shirts, and all-black outfits. Even as a little kid, I knew that Giger was an Artist; maybe the only one I felt I knew.  And now, I just wish there were lots more like him.

Conservative media are touting a video from the right-wing Media Research Center purporting to show that vendors at gun shows always refuse to sell firearms to felons and other disqualified persons and that legislation to expand the background check system is unnecessary. But according to prior undercover reports, when private sellers at gun shows were not aware they were on camera, a substantial portion agreed to sell guns to people they believed could not legally possess them.

Vendors who have a Federal Firearms License are required to perform background checks on their customers, but so-called private sellers who say they are not "engaged in the business" of selling firearms have no such requirement at gun shows in 33 states. This discrepancy has been termed the "gun show loophole" and is the reason narco-terrorists, illegal gun traffickers and other dangerous individuals seek out unregulated sales at gun shows. The most infamous use of the loophole is the 1999 Columbine High School massacre where all four guns involved were passed through a local gun show by private sellers.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has estimated between 25 and 50 percent of vendors at gun shows sell without a background check. Adding sales over the Internet and through newspaper classified adverts, a substantial proportion of firearms are transferred without a background check in the United States. Federal legislation to expand the background check system to cover private sales failed in the Senate last year.

… or, as some prefer to call it, The Madness of Clements & McCarthy III…

Here is is, in all its gilded glory – or rather, here it will be at the end of 2014, just in time for your Christmas gift list. The weight is now so daunting that there’s an e-book version – we don’t want to give delivery staff all over the world back strain just before the holiday.

And yes, pedants everywhere, we know that so far the origins of anime can’t be conclusively dated before 1917. We were two consistent voices arguing for conservative, securely documented dating during that brief period when the discovery of the Matsumoto fragment led some to posit a date before 1907 for the first animation made in Japan. But “a century” is a fair subtitle tag for an industry that’s been around for at least 97 years.

 

A lot has changed in the anime world since the second edition. A lot has stayed the same, too.

This edition will have its serious, thoughtful critics. My co-author and I, and our publisher, like them a lot. They offer us alternative points of view. They challenge us to argue opinions with others who know what we’re about and care about it as much as we do. They pick up stray typos and factual errors and point them out so they can be corrected.  They’re amazing, and it’s gratifying to see so many of them dotted all over the globe.

This edition will also have its share of critical poseurs who self-define as too well-informed and up with the latest thing to need it. There were a few of those around for the first two editions as well. A number of websites will probably have a few untrumpeted changes after this “completely unnecessary” volume appears, because that’s what happened after our last two editions. (This happens with most reputable anime books. When it comes to being both a target and a goldmine for carpers, no researcher is alone.)

The Anime Encyclopedia has become part of the critical and scholarly landscape of anime. I won’t list all its “firsts” because blowing your own trumpet is a waste of breath, but I’m proud of it and I still care enough about it to spend hours trawling Japanese websites stretching my pidgin Japanese round vocabulary no polite old lady will ever be expected to use and imagery I’ve seen a million times before but that never fails to make me feel a little bit sad and soiled. (Why do so many apparently normal men despise the female half of the human race so much?)

I also see hidden gems, lost fragments of history, unsung beauty I want to share with the world. When you go mining, you accept that most of the time you’ll be moving dirt; but every now and then, you find a diamond.

So if, reading the new edition, you discover a hitherto unknown  treasure, let us know. And if you know of a treasure we’ve missed, let us know that too.

But first, of course, you have to buy the book.

 

After the Hello Kitty mech, Bandai continues to find interesting ways of celebrating the 40th anniversary of its Chogokin ("super alloy") die-cast metal figures with a transforming mecha version of the Tower of the Sun, artist Tarō Okamoto's iconic structure, built in Osaka for Expo '70. This figure, standing 28cm as the transformed humanoid, ships in September for 17,000 yen.

 

Check out their product page at http://tamashii.jp/special/tots_robo/

 

 

 

A bit of the real thing..

 

 

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.