Ha. Haha. Hahahaha....HahahahHAhaHaHahaHahahaAHAHaAhAhaha!!!!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2010/apr/10/obama-interns-me-not-thee/

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/shlaes-by-targeting-unpaid-internships-the-obama-administration-535364.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/07/obama-eyes-interns/

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/04/08/barack-obama-bans-college-internships-but-only-in-free-enterprise/

I...I...I...

GRARAGHRGHG!!!!

ARE YOU SHITTING ME? I can't even fucking *think* right now. Worker abuse? THEY'RE INTERNS!!! THEY CAN LEAVE!!! I get that you feel sorry for these poor interns because they aren't getting paid and are asked to do a lot, BUT THEY'RE FUCKING INTERNSHIPS! THEY ARE A KEY STEPPING STONE TO DEVELOPING WORKING SKILLS!!!!! PUT DOWN THE FUCKING PEN, STOP WRITING RANDOM-AS-FUCK LEGISLATION, AND FOR ONCE THINK ABOUT WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE DOING! UNPAID INTERNSHIPS ARE DESIGNED TO GET PEOPLE WORK SKILLS!!!!!!!! WORK SKILLS THEY NEED TO GET REAL JOBS TO ACTUALLY GET PAID!!!! IF YOU CUT THEM THEN AN INCREDIBLY LARGE AMOUNT OF INTERNSHIPS WILL BE LOST AND WORKSKILLS WILL NOT DISSEMINATE INTO THE PUBLIC LIKE NORMAL!!! WHAT THE FUCK DUDE?!

WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.

OHBUTWAIT

You know who DOES get to give unpaid internships?!?!?!

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/sofaq/

HAHAHAHAHA. JOKE'S ON US AMERICA. LAUGH! LAUGH WITH ME! COME ON, YOU CAN DO IT! IT GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS!

It Makes Me Sad

The method in which the people in charge of my dorm distribute information tends to be through the tried and true method of putting up pieces of paper with the information on it every few feet in every hallway of the building. I usually only glance at them once to see if anything on it applies to me, and then ignore them until they are torn down and replaced by another set.

I came back from a race in Austin this weekend, and find a fresh new set of papers covering every available surface in the building. These have to do with the U.S. census. The message on them is simply a picture of Uncle Sam, with the caption "Attend the MANDATORY 8:00 PM Census meeting in the lobby! Or the US Government may fine you!"

*Sigh*
The Uncle Sam poster, that of the image they're using for their announcement, was used in World War 2 as a recruitment poster; the famous "I Want YOU! For U.S. Army!" It was meant to bring in volunteers, people who were choosing to fight in the army against the Axis. Yeah, the draft went and would grab most of the other people who didn't volunteer, but the purpose of the poster itself was to bring in people who were, under their own decision, choosing to join a very dangerous organization for some larger purpose.
To me, it really says a lot about our current mentality (or at least the mentality of college students) that an icon whose purpose was to inspire choice is now being used for the purpose of forcing compliance. "Do this or else!" is a far cry from "Do this because we believe it to be the right thing to do!" I would think that they would try and convince us by pointing out the benefits that the census brings, or the necessity for a large government to have a semi-accurate count of its population, but no. We fall back onto threats.

Surprisingly enough, I'm not holding the U.S. government to blame for this; they're not the ones who made those posters. It's both the belief that threats are what's needed to convince the people living in this dorm to fill out their census, along with the fact that, given how shortsightedly ignorant most of this building's inhabitants are to the potential benefits that come from an accurate census count, that disappoints me. Thankfully, I already held such a low opinion of humanity by this point, that my opinion can't drop any further just because of some little thing like this. Yay, cynicism!

I, For One, Will Welcome Our New Russian Overlord

Dear Vladimir Putin,

I hope this blog reaches you. I know you're busy plotting the demise of every enemy who dares oppose you, hiring squads of agents to set up bombs in hidden locations and plotting the assassination of key world leaders. Stuff like the Black Widow bombings are still being investigated and I am sure are taking up lots of your time. But I just wanted to write this letter to let you know that I am your biggest fan. I never really get to say this often enough. Your work is fantastic. Everything, from the time you threatened to castrate fundamental Islamic terrorists on national TV to blitzing Georgia so hard they didn't even know what was coming, makes me realize that you are a rare gift to the world. Mr. Putin, we need more people like you in charge.

I say this because recent events have once again got me thinking about you. Namely...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/asia/la-fg-polish-president-crash11-2010apr11,0,4409138.story

Let me just say this. There are, in my mind, two distinct and clear possibilities for this. One, that it was no accident. In which case, my hats off to you Mr. Putin. It's been a long time since anything of this caliber has been attempted, and you pulled it off magnificently. It looks and plays out exactly like a real accident, mist and all. The other possibility is that it was a truly legitimate accident. In which case, the world seems to have a fondness for you that almost matches my own.

I look forward to the day you end up ruling the world. Your ambition, your amoral cunning, your intolerance of human stupidity and the weak who defy and stand before you all build my admiration of your skill, technique, and poise. You are everything any decent, strong human being could ever want in a leader. So thank you, for standing out and shining in a world filled with mediocrity, weakness, and dull-witted unintelligent monkeys who are too scared to really make a difference in the world. Thank you for showing the rest of us who live out here, who are aspiring to make meaningful change in the world, that with enough ambition, strength, and courage, even we can rise through the ranks and do what the rest of the world is afraid to do.

In short, thank you for reminding us that we don't have to be mediocre just because the rest of the world is bland and stupid. It gives us hope that somehow our one strong action is measurable and can amount to something against the thousands of flailing ineptitudes we may face in our struggle to live as real people.

Thank you, Mr. Putin, for showing me that not all is lost.

-Damios

*Ahem* Squee

Let's add some appropriate music here.


English subtitles for the first episode of the Tethe'alla arc of the anime version of Tales of Symphonia is online now (almost in record time.... Usually whenever a new episode of something comes out in Japan, it takes several weeks before it's translated....)
And it has Yggdrasil in it.


Important enough for me to delay the post I was going to write on the Apache killing the two reporters. (Panel taken from Shortpacked)

The portrayal of Yggdrasil in the first arc of the animated version was always one of my major complaints about an otherwise wonderful adaptation; they reduced his part in the first arc from "Epic Fight Scene and Motive Speech" to "Brief, One Second Long Cameo Appearance Just Before the Credits Roll". However, they seem to have decided to just move his initial appearance and the fight back to a later point in time in the series than was done in the original game. And by later, I mean episode 2. He shows up, I get all excited, and.... Wait, why is the credits music starting to play? No! NOOOOOOOO!

Even though his appearance this time was only a bit longer than his cameo appearance in the first arc, I'm still happy to see one of my favorite video game characters animated. I also noticed that they changed his appearance slightly, so he resembles his game appearance a bit more than he did in the first arc. And looks less like Samael would now (I think that Damios, Riunin, and Ian are possibly the only ones who will understand what I mean by that....)

But I'd like to take this moment to nominate Mithos Yggdrasil as second most badass metaphor for the Demiurge (A very rare title, seeing as how qualities of badassness are so rarely associated with the Demiurge).

Yes. Yes. Oh my Gods yes.

http://www.xkcd.com/591/

I use my Hand

Damios has asked me to write a little something for the blog, an essay on the double standard that applies to masturbatory aids, and while I’m honestly honored to be the Extremists’ first guest writer I don’t know if I’m really worthy of the opportunity. Regardless I’ll take it; hopefully the mangled mess of commas and schizophrenic ideas that are sure to follow will at least be amusing for you, the audience.

The question here is why is it overlooked or even expected that a female have a dildo or a vibrator, yet if you were to hear that your bestest buddy Ted possessed a Fleshlight you would mock him mercilessly if not outright disown him? The answer as far as I can tell has a lot to do with another double standard, the one dealing with the number of sexual partners a person has had. If a woman sleeps with say ten guys in a 2 month period then she is clearly a slut, if a man has the same number of partners in say week he’s totally a player. Now why does this happen? Well this is much easier to answer, it’s due to a male’s pride in his sexuality and the fact women generally get to pick when sex happens. You see being a guy has gotten complicated since women have started to move forward in society; there are all these rules that keep us in our place, whereas before when women were just housewives men reigned free, at least in public. A woman has a great amount of control over a man, she has her natural looks, her innate deviousness, and she has the power to file sexual harassment charges whenever she chooses; this gives her a great deal of power, and it lets her choose her partners with much less opposition than a man, in a sense its easier for her. Now if a guy can somehow charm, con, or properly lubricate a moderate number of women to sleep with him the guy is a damn hero, because he fucking worked for that sex.

But back to the point, The Wankening. Women, so far as I know, are less concerned with their image sexually; sure they don’t want to look like a slut, but I rarely see them treating their number as a trophy. Guys on the other hand do, a lot. To guys the Oh Holy Number is a symbol of great pride or great shame, as a group we obsess over at and measure each other’s worth by it, when actually it is of very little importance. Males are very prideful in their sexual experience and that is why when you hear about someone owning a Vaginal Simulator or whatever else you just have to snicker.

When I read Damios’ post last week about digital pirates falling for a scam what stood out to me the most was the fact that an H-game had its release yanked back so it could be made compatible with a RoboticFapper, and the only thing I could think was, “Seriously? Are you too lazy you use your damn hand? Does selecting one of three responses require use of both arms nowadays?” In fact I honestly believe that suggesting that someone use such a device is the reigning insult against males, it’s rarely pulled but when it is I can almost guarantee much stuttering followed by a flying fist. But why is this so insulting, just about everyone who has discovered their genitals has masturbated at one point, and most have continued to masturbate throughout their lives, so why does using some aid matter at all? It doesn’t, and women have realized this, taken advantage of this and it has become a societal norm. Dildos and vibrators have become so commonplace that if you were to accidentally discover one in a female friend’s room you wouldn’t bat an eyelash, yeah you may be a little put off or tease her about it, but you certainly wouldn’t make a big deal of it. So while male possession implies inadequacy in the sexual arena, it only does so because of how our society sees the Mechanized Pleasure Machine.

So in closing, while there is no real reason to fear the Wankertron 9000 (save rare cases of penis severing malfunctions), but still I hope never to come into contact with one. I hope this meets the Extremist’s expectations, but regardless of their responses it’s been fun writing to you folks, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to do so again.

~ Riunin

Ongaku!

You know, between the music and the anime, hairstylists must be seen as Gods in Japan.

Kidding aside, I've been listening to J-Rock for a bit over a year now. In terms of fairly mainstream music its' actually pretty good. Probably because they found a way to take traditional rock'n'roll and make it uniquely their own. Of course, plenty of bands are cash-ins, just like anywhere else, but overall the music is enjoyable and interesting.

Of particular note is the Visual Kei genre, which has held my attention for quite some time. Visual Kei is I guess a subgroup? of J-Rock that deals with visual representation as well as music. In otherwords, the band members doll themselves up in interesting and unique ways. Though I'm a big fan of music coming first and substance over style, I do think that adding a sense of style ontop of good music does make a band more interesting and stand out more. The way I see it, if you focus on literally every aspect of the musical group you've formed, right down to the way you present yourself to the public, then it should reflect in your music. If you're only interested in looking cool and being in a band for the sake of being in a band, that too will reflect in your music. In the end, though, I think I'm a fan of Visual Kei to an extent.

Also worth noting is video-game music composers. Which may seem odd, I realize, but the video game industry in Japan, from what I've been led to believe by blogs such as Kotaku (who I regularly post about), is seen in a different light compared to the west. While Western cultures do have their fair share of talented musical composers (Frank Klepacki being one of my favorites), Japan knows how to take things and make them uniquely their own. Not only do you have classic video game music composers like Nobuo (wrote the famous "One-Winged Angel" of I believe FFVII and the soundtrack for Lord of Vermillion), but characters like Daisuke Ishiwatari (one of my all time favorite composers) or musicians like SSH (Saitama Saisyu Heiki) who take even the most simple of video game tunes like the mario song and turn it into an epic 500 beats-per-second in your face power metal onslaught.

And finally, there's anime music, which does deserve a pretty good mention. I do think in terms of television shows the Japanese have much, much better music than we do. As Omega posted before, the OSTs of some anime series' are even the highlights of a show, usually because the music is more experimental and interested. I myself am a big fan of Yuki Kajiura, who wrote the music for .hack//sign, Pandora Hearts, and plenty of other shows. And many anime have special tracks that are very well known for how brilliant and well done they are. "The Real Folk Blues" comes to mind as one of the best closing theme songs, if not one of the best written musical scores, of all time. The song was written by Yoko Kanno, who did great work in other animes, such as "Ghost In the Shell," "Visions of Escaflowne" (which I hope to see soon), and "Darker Than Black" (one of my all time favorite animes).

So here are just a few of my choice tracks of music brought to you from Japan. Feel free to poke around, the only real strong recommendation I'd give is that if you haven't heard "The Real Folk Blues," you've been missing out.

Visual Kei-

Deluhi: s[k]ape:goat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0n82kzJVb4

Deluhi is your more traditional Visual Kei band.

Matenrou Opera: Eternal Symphony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIqz5zclvUw

Matenrou Opera happens to be one of my favorite Visual Kei bands. They're pretty heavily influenced by a lot of metal bands.

Malice Mizer: Illuminati

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAFSqBGmllE

WARNING: Not safe for work. If you want the most bizarre experience Japanese music has to offer, this is probably it. Plenty of nudity, very little of it arousing (though your mileage will vary).

Video Game Music-

Daisuke Ishiwatari: So many tracks...

Shout & Burning (classic heavy metal)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EqsVYH-B-E

Holy Orders III (though really, just pick any Holy Orders version and it will be awesome)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Jredj3n7k

Lust SIN (much different song style)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MJxlfC1k8

SSH: Mario Theme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xx3mhFPi7o

The guy totally cranks it up to 11.

Nobuo: One-Winged Angel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftoV4CnOIls

Very classic theme, known by those who don't even play Final Fantasy (myself included)

Anime Music-

Yoko Kanno: The Real Folk Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quWmUJYQCU

One of the best written songs I've ever heard

Yoko Kanno: Sesshoku

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTldsgvmUt0

From Darker Than Black, good anime.

Yuki Kajiura: In the Land of Twilight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu8Rrt9bZ-A

From .hack//sign, a very good mystery play.

Yuki Kajiura: Bloody Rabbit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdYkB-DaQ7E

From "Pandora Hearts," previously reviewed by Omega and a bloody good track.

Yuki Kajiura: The Vision of Escaflowne and Dance of Curse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePIUm0iGSTI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1VFqsew26c

Two tracks from the critically-acclaimed and well-liked anime "The Vision of Escaflowne." Very different from her other work.

Yoshihiro: Ophelia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96mlKRgkWJ8

From Ergo Proxy, a show I never quite got to finish. Rather good.