Nana's Everyday Life (Jeez, what a downer)

So earlier in the day I went through all 77 strips of the webcomic Nana's Everyday Life. I advise you to do the same, as its pretty good as far as webcomics go. The first twenty strips or so are kind of silly throwaway jokes obviously attempting to be edgy and obscene, which manages to be fairly funny, but nothing special. However, an actual story arch develops at around strip 20 and at around strip 40 it ups the ante and begins to build up to a memorable and heartbreaking ending. Suffice to say the whole thing put me in a bit of a sour mood.

The strip is about this little girl who lives in a lab and has envasive and abusive tests performed on her by "Papa," a sceintist who delights in sexually molesting her and causing her misery. Early in the strip she loses her limbs and becomes a paraplegic and is quickly disposed of by Papa in a dumpster. Then, in Homeword Bound inspired glory, she attempts to become reuinted with Papa while enduring all the indignities and ill-fated adventures. Ho ho ho!

Please to Enjoy

Hear ye hear ye!

I think storytelling is really cool. I think stories are really cool. I appreciate most mediums of storytelling. Narratives help us attempt to understand what it means to be human.

One form of storytelling which I think has not, for the most part received its fair share of artistic streed cred is television. This is, on the whole, due to the fact that television since inception has been incredibly market driven and tailor made for the masses; and the safest way to appeal to the majority of the masses (does that even make sense?) is to appeal to the common denominator. This has made for some really shitty television, considering that we live in a country where the number of designer A&E shirts in one’s closet is more cause to brag than the number of books one has read (I should make note about quality here; this week’s latest self help guru’s over-priced rags doesn’t count as much as, say, Milton’s Paradise Lost.) Still, shows such as MASH, Twin Peaks, and Lost have managed to show us that, yes, quality teleivison programming that doesn’t rely on ham-fisted writing and cheesy over the top zaniness can be done.

Anyway, that was a bit of a sidetrack. The point of this entry is to plug this really cool site I’ve come across, TVTropes.org.

A trope was originally used to describe a particular literary device found in various writings from various books through various ages. Such examples include The Mary Sue, a character of seeming invincibility who seems to have few flaws; the ones that exist existing solely so that he may overcome them (See Harry Potter) and the MacGuffin, A noun that needs to be found but only exists to advance the plot (See the X of Y in every Harry Potter title.)

This website is a pretty good list of tropes, some of my favorites being:

Book Dumb. Its good to know I’m not the only one who noticed that the fact that main characters being portrayed as “Street Smart” are usually on shows aimed to viewers not too likely to be ordering subscriptions to Popular Physics Monthly and more likely to lose their unemployment check in a bathroom at Arby’s.

Pet The Dog. I hate it when this happens, seeing a really cool character, like Dr. House, turn into Kenny the Badass mail clerk.

NGE. And of course, the incredibly accurate and inexplicably extensive Neon Genesis Evangelion article (Veronica Mars only has a quarter of a page but this gets whole sections dedicated to it) which I think gives the Wikipedia Article a good run for its money.

Okay its 11 am and I haven’t slept. You know what that means…BIG AMERICAN PARTY!

Heh heh heh

Your Score: Crackpot - INTJ

13% Extraversion, 73% Intuition, 93% Thinking, 53% Judging

People hate you.

Paris Hilton hates Nicole Richie. Lex Luther hates Superman. Garfield hates Mondays.
But none these even rates against the insurmountable hate, people have for you.

I mean, you're pretty damn clever and you know it. You love to flaunt your potential. Heard the word "arrogant" lately? How about "jerk?" Or perhaps they only say that behind your back.

That's right. I know I can say this cause you're not going to cry. You're not exactly the most emotional person. You'd rather spend time with your theoretical questions and abstract theories than with other people.

Ever been kissed? Ever even been on a date? Trust me, your inflated ego is a complete turnoff with the opposite sex and I am telling you, you're not that great with relationships as it is. You're never going to be a dude or chick magnet, purely because you're more concerned with yourself than others. Meh. They all hate you already anyway.

How about this- "stubborn?" Hrm? Heard that lately? All those facts which don't fit your theories must just be wrong, right? I mean, really, the vast amounts of time you spend with your head in the clouds...you're just plain strange.

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If you want to learn more about your personality type in a slightly less negative way, check out this.

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The other personality types are as follows...

Loner - Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving
Pushover - Introverted Sensing Feeling Judging
Criminal - Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving
Borefest - Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging
Almost Perfect - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving
Freak - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging
Loser - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving
Clown - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving
Sap - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Judging
Commander - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving
Do Gooder - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Judging
Scumbag - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving
Busybody - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging
Prick - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving
Dictator - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

Link: The Brutally Honest Personality Test written by UltimateMaster on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(UltimateMaster)

Huzzah

I'm back in Laredo. Its tolorable being in my house (except for the maid, gardener, plumber strangers that my parents hire to poke around the house and make me feel awkward,) but the minute I leave in my car I have to deal with the stupidest, most irritating vermin EVER. The sort of people who pay for 50+ groceries in the electronics section of Walmart. The sort of people who have rattails and mullets and are totally serious and non-ironic about it (not that, had it been ironic, it would have been better.)

I hate how, if I want to get anything done in this city, invariably the person in the service industry which I must deal with is a native Spanish speaker who does not understand more than 300 words of English. And its annoying. I can speak Spanish, I just dont like to. My communication skills are much more nuanced when I speak English.

I tried to get a hair cut today. They charged me $10 dollars for a shave along the sides; something a trained chimp could do. Typically, that sort of thing never runs more than five dollars. The lady behind the counter seemed not to know this social convention.

And the mall. Oh the mall. To call it a mall is being graciously liberal with the flexibility of the word. In reality, its truly something somewhere between a corporate owned flea-market and a bazaar in Kolkatta.

Enough complaining. Tomorrow I go out to eat with my grandmother. I'm looking forward to that. I might also play some raquetball at the Country Club.

Alright. I'm done. Toodles.

The Soldier and Death

There used to be this show I remember I would watch often when I was younger, like five or six I believe. It was on HBO and I would wake up really early in the morning to watch it (along with Tin-Tin.)
The set up was that there was this old man and his talking dog, and he would tell the viewer old fables. The fables would be the focus of the show and there would be puppets involved.

Well, muppets actually. As I learned about twenty minutes ago, the show was called Jim Henson's StoryTeller. I dont remember too much about it, except that there was one episode that scared the pants off of me, because of the bizzare nature of it which conflicted with what I had come to expect in stories (The goodguy loses at the end, Hell and demons are involved, so on.)

Anyway, something reminded me of it and I did some quick research and found the episode on Youtube.

Enjoy.

PS: For good measure.. I remember this show also giving me the creeps. Its a shame that my exposure to Grimm's Fairy Tales was through poorly funded Japanese anime. I would have loved to have read the original text when I was younger. I think that there is something really cool involved with myths and fables and their relationship to developmental psychology. Children ought to have their bedtime stories be tales of murder and deciet and family betrayal and powerhungry lust. Ancient Greek myths will do.

PSS: Anyone remember David the Gnome?

Oh wow

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~iav202/powers/powers.html
I havent laughed this hard in ages. Especially at the entries for Russel and Immanuel "The Virgin" Kant.

Almost done.

I've been listening to this one God Speed You Black Emporer song on repeat pretty much for the past two days straight. Hung Over as the Oven in Maida. Its really damn good and enjoyable and those of you who havent heard it should download it. Those of you who have heard it, there is a really cool monolouge in the middle of it. Does anyone know where its from?

One more exam. Then I get to go home.

I checked out a whole bunch of books on meta-ethics that I need to read for my thesis in Laredo. I'm starting with R.M. Hare's The Language of Morals. I also got a few books on the topic of Normativity (oughtness.)

Oh, and lest I forget, I also checked out Quine's Ontological Relativity and From a Logical Point of View. Now that my Epistemology and Philosophy of Science courses are over, I can finally get to studying them.

Hipsters

So I was going to write a post about how I hate hipsters and their stupid beards and cowboy shirts and how all the girls look the same but then I realized I might offended like half of my irl friends.

Instead, I will make a post about how I love hipsters and their totally non-shitty lifestyle choice.

Let it be known

I for one am tired of those Charmin bears and their affinity for poop.

Gosh, they way they act, you'd think they thought paper grew on trees.

...

...

It doesnt.

Sigh

Another night at the library. Gotta do this Epistemology paper by tomorrow.

Ugh.

Soon I will be home in Laredo.