Cyde Weys Musings

Recently, some Republicans thought it would be a brilliant idea to distribute a CD to members of the Republican National Convention containing a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro”. The general response was about as predictable as the sunset, and rightly consisted of outright condemnation over such disgusting and overt racism. But get this: the excuse of the Republican who distributed the song was that it was a parody.

Really? A song sung to the same tune as the pop hit “Puff the Magic Dragon” is parody? Anyone with two neurons to rub together can figure that out. Yes, “Barack the Magic Negro” is parody. Racist parody. Racism and parody are not mutually exclusive, so asserting that it’s parody isn’t a defense against the actual charge. The rebuttal thus rings completely hollow. The idiot should’ve just apologized instead of offering this pathetic attempt at an excuse, thus digging the hole even deeper.

If the Republican Party wants to recover from the doldrums they’re currently languishing in, they might want to stop being openly racist. Most people don’t like that. Just saying.

You may or may not be aware of Garfield Minus Garfield, a mash-up of the comic strip Garfield that simply removes Garfield from all frames, leaving John Arbuckle as a lonely, psychotic man. I bring it up because it serves as a useful analogy to discuss the film The Dark Knight, which I finally saw last week after friends’ insistence. While I did enjoy the film, I felt that it would’ve been better as Batman Minus Batman.

Yes, I found Batman himself to be completely superfluous to the better themes of the movie. Apparently that’s the secret to making a good Batman movie: make him irrelevant. The Joker was the most interesting character in the movie (a tip of my hate to Heath Ledger for that), followed closely by Arthur Dent and the police commissioner. Batman and his to-be girlfriend were unconvincing, uncompelling, and, dare I say, out of place.

The story of the Joker as anarchist terrorizing a large city is what made the film good. It would have been better if it had just focused on this subplot, especially the civilian and police response to a city under siege by a non-rational villain. Instead, a significant amount of screen time is devoted to a billionaire moonlighting as a crime fighter with incredibly high-tech gear who nevertheless beats up his opponents with ham-fisted punches. It’s hard to fathom, but Batman really was the worst part of this Batman movie. Without him, the city would’ve had to deal with the threat from the Joker on its own (perhaps with some highly risky SWAT missions), instead of the deus ex machina solution provided by Batman.

The Batman series seems to have evolved beyond the need for its title character. It’s an unusual position for a film series to find itself in, but there it is.

My mother is plugged into the independent arthouse movie scene, so she’s always seeing (and raving about) movies that I’ve never heard about. Yesterday, my cousin from New York City was in town, so we took the opportunity to see Slumdog Millionaire at the artsy movie theater in Bethesda, Maryland. I knew precisely nothing about it going in. Since I’m kind of short on blogging ideas at the moment, I think I’ll write up a little review of it.

Slumdog Millionaire is about a boy rising from abject poverty in the slums of Mumbai to become a hero of the people through his unexpected success on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?”. Shots of the high-tension proceedings at the game show are interspersed with scenes of previous experiences from the main character’s life showing the unlikely experiences he lived through that left him knowing all of the answers to the questions on the game show. The game show is actually a nifty plot element that sounds like it could come off corny, but doesn’t.

Overall, Slumdog Millionaire is a good movie. It tugs all of the requisite emotional heartstrings, and it proceeds at a pace that never left me wondering “When is this thing going to end?” (which I find to be the hallmark of a bad movie). It uses lots of tropes you’ve seen many times before in cinema: poverty, destiny, karma, love, evil, manipulation of children, religious warfare, a look at how a man turns evil and then redeems himself with his dying moment, etc., but doesn’t feel like a stale retread. I dare say some of it was even slightly cliché, or at least nonsensical, like when two hitmen are subduing their boss’s wife — who isn’t even putting up much of a fight — and nevertheless manage to give her a good slice on the cheek while fumbling around with a knife, solely with the apparent purpose of having a symbolic scar for the main character to dismiss in one of the final scenes of the movie.

The movie’s tone is quite sad, with scene after scene of crushing poverty, slum life, religious warfare, criminality, police corruption, abuse of orphans, and life on the run. It has a few humorous moments, but it’s overwhelmingly sorrowful, and despite concluding on a somewhat happy note, I was still feeling very downbeat upon leaving the theater. In this regard it was much like The Pursuit of Happyness. So if you don’t handle sad movies well, you might want to give it a pass. Otherwise, I’d recommend it.

Oh, and the Bollywood-style dancing during the credits (despite the movie not being a musical whatsoever) was unexpected and awesome.

I just stumbled across a perfect example of rule 34 (if it exists, there is a porno/fetish of it) while performing an unrelated Google search. It’s way too weird not to share it, so I present to you: Inflated anime and videogame characters. Surprisingly, it’s work-safe, because all of the characters are wearing their normal clothing; their bodies are just inflated like balloons to the point that they approximate spheres with small stubs for limbs.

And then if you venture even further into the site, you begin to discover the *shudder* obese fan-fiction.

Seriously, can anyone possibly explain this to me?

It is one of the conceits of our race that we are quite full of our own intelligence. Hopefully, one day we’ll run across a vastly more intelligent species and be put in our collective place. But until then, we’ll keep on calling our own intelligence the best thing since sliced bread — something, I should point out, that our intelligence invented, and still thinks itself mighty clever for having come up with.

In nearly every fantasy universe, humans are the smartest creatures around. Even elves, the high variety of which are frequently portrayed as wiser than people, are really just humans with pointy ears. If you don’t believe me, just ask a half-elf, or a quarter-elf, or a third-elf. Now compare that against all of the stupid races in fantasy universes: goblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, etc. They’re all so dumb one wonders how they even manage to put their armor on in the morning.

To make up for their incredible stupidity, these creatures are also given incredible strength. The human protagonists in the story must therefore rely on their cunning, their wit, and their intelligence to triumph over the enemies. Even magic is nothing more than a form of intelligence made physically manifest — the art of spellcasting is portrayed as an academic endeavor, in which the most studious become the most powerful. The concept of fantasy magic is the ultimate in human intelligence navel-gazing.

Even in non-fantasy media, the protagonists typically defeat their human rivals by outsmarting them. The movies in which the protagonist defeats his nemesis simply by beating on him more powerfully are few and far between — and of those that do exist, most of them involve sport, an activity so frequently fetishized by commentators that all connections to reality are lost. You simply can’t have a compelling story without a triumph of the mind. It’s understandable, really: while our eyes merely gaze at the movie screen, it’s our own mind that is truly watching it, and minds do harbor sympathies for other minds.

We value human intelligence so greatly because we are the only beings on the planet who possess anything close to it. When we triumph over a lion, a bear, or a hippopotamus in nature, we do so not by brute force, but through our intelligence. In one-on-one hand-to-hand combat, a fight against an elephant isn’t remotely fair. Allow the human use of a simple hand-held weapon such as a spear and the odds tighten considerably. Now give him a modern weapon that represents the apex of human intelligence — say, an F-22 joint strike fighter — and the elephant is easily reduced to a cloud of pink mist that has no chance whatsoever of retaliating against the human roaring away at Mach 2 a couple miles above it.

It is no surprise, then, that our fantasy worlds mimic very much the real world. Even though we make our villain fantasy races anthropomorphic (an orc is frequently portrayed as being a human with prominent boar features, for instance), even though we give them the ability to speak language, they represent nothing more than the animals of our own world, which we are used to accustomed to dominating completely. Are the fantasy creatures more intelligent? Certainly. It’s not a fair fight if the man-sized enemies don’t use weapons. But ultimately all that they really are is animals. No wonder fantasy story lines follow the races of player characters: humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and others — all of which are pretty much the same as humans, sharing the same relative physical weaknesses, but possessing the same mental prowesses.

So it makes sense that human intelligences are most entertained by the dealings of other human intelligences, and that is thus what our fictions focus upon. It makes sense that in our fantasies we conduct battle against either humans or animals, because that is all we really know about fighting against in our own world — except in fantasy even the animals frequently look like humans because we really are that obsessed with ourselves. Yes, we humans really are quite full of ourselves, but seeing the complete lack of alternatives, who can blame us?

Now this is a slightly unexpected, yet nevertheless entirely awesome, bit of news. Stephen Fry, famous British comedian of Fry & Laurie fame (that’s Hugh Laurie, the actor who plays Dr. House on House), has released a celebratory message to GNU on its 25th anniversary. It contains a good bit of background on GNU and Linux, though nothing that should be new to you if you’ve been involved in the Free Software community for awhile.

Still, it’s a nice video, and it’s cool to see someone so, well, famous extolling the virtues of Free Software. Check it out! Unfortunately, it’ll work a lot better in the United Kingdom than here in the United States, since they actually know who he is. We just need to get an American equivalent to tape something equally praising of GNU/Linux. How about … Scarlett Johannson?

Men’s gymnastics is better than women’s gymnastics (not that either is even close to my favorite sport, mind you). Here’s why.

In addition to having events that focus on grace, flexibility, tumbling, vaulting, etc., men’s gymnastics has at least two events that focus mainly on strength: pommel horse and rings. And why is a focus on strength important? Because then you can’t have fricking 12-year-olds with forged passports from a host country illegally competing in a gymnastics event (can you tell that I’m bitter?).

Look at all of the male gymnasts. They’re built. You’re not going to see that kind of muscle strength on a twelve year old. In men’s gymnastics, there is no temptation to try to skirt the rules and run a gymnast who’s under sixteen because any gymnast under sixteen would be utterly trounced. There’s simply no way they’d be strong enough to handle some of the events. By comparison, there is a big impetus in women’s gymnastics to try to sneak in under-agers because there’s nothing other than the rules that would make them unable to compete.

Besides my bitterness over the United States getting beat by a team of way-underaged Chinese gymnast cheaters, there’s another reason for preferring men’s gymnastics: Since the competitors are older, they frequently start later in life, allowing them a couple more years of unfettered childhood before they’re shipped off to gymnastics camp gulags. There’s no way in hell what’s happening to these girls who start training at the age of 4 is healthy.

So after spending most of today decompressing from Otakon by mindlessly watching the Olympics, I’m ready to relate my impressions about the event, which I promised on Thursday.

Despite never having been to an anime convention, Otakon didn’t overwhelm me at all. It was pretty much exactly like what I expected. Going to Wizard World East (a comic convention in Philadelphia) a few years back definitely gave me a feel for what it’d be like. Plus, I know many people who’ve been to these things before, and I’ve heard all sorts of stories. The experience wasn’t as transporting as when I went to a local renaissance festival, mainly because while everyone was also in costume there, they also kept in character the whole time. The cosplayers at anime conventions pretty much only stay in character for photo shoots and the masquerade.

Overall, the people at the convention were very friendly. Although I didn’t meet up with my friend from work until later in the day, I wasn’t alone while waiting in the entrance line on Saturday, as the girls behind me in line were very chatty and approachable. They were also from Canada, which kind of made my complaint about having to drive a whole forty miles from DC fall on deaf ears.

Later on during the convention, I struck up many conversations with random attendees, some of whom I was photographing, others of whom were just hanging around, and I never so much as had a rude interaction. No one ever turned down a request for a photograph, which I guess makes sense because anyone willing to go through the effort to make an elaborate costume certainly wants to be seen in it. It was really easy to strike up conversations and find things to talk about, because everyone there shared a rich appreciation of anime and knew a lot about it. I was surprised to find that I was pretty much the least knowledgeable anime fan I ran into.

I was also quite surprised at the sheer abundance of videogame cosplay, which came in a close second behind anime cosplay, with general Japanese fashions (such as gothic lolita) and non-anime TV shows and movies bringing up the rear. I wouldn’t even bill Otakon as an anime convention — I would bill it as an anime and videogame convention. There was a huge videogaming hall that was packed the entire convention. Amongst the videogame cosplayers, the Final Fantasy series was the most popular (with cosplay from the Final Fantasy Tactics subseries surprisingly common). I also saw a lot of Kingdom Hearts and Team Fortress 2 (red team only though). On the anime front, it was the usual suspects (basically, whatever anime is obscenely popular either at the moment or in the near past, such as Gurren Lagann and Naruto), but there was also a surprising number of Trigun cosplayers considering the age of that series. Not that I’m complaining, given how awesome Trigun is.

The only sour moment of the whole convention was when we attempted to attend a panel called “Welcome to Touhou”, which was supposed to be an introduction to a very specific Japanese subgenre of shmup (rail shooter), but were instead greeted with a panel-troller who spouted off bullshit on the “Psychology of Cosplayers” for a good half-hour before Otakon staff shut him down. Our best guess is that the original people leading the panel never arrived, and this asshole seized the moment. He kept babbling on and on, stopping occasionally to curse out the audience members that were leaving or calling him out, and took “questions” only to ignore them and continue spouting bullshit. The volunteer that he had found to walk around the microphone for him quickly grew exasperated and walked off, so it was a solo show. I don’t know why in the hell this guy did this or what he found fun about it, but it was incredibly lame.

On the first day of the convention neither I nor my friend cosplayed. It actually left me feeling a bit out of place (just like being one of the few “normals” at the renaissance festival), so I decided to wear my cloak to accompany my friend who was going as the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who. Yes, I have a cloak, which I made for renaissance festivals but haven’t yet had a chance to attend one with. My basic plan was to go along with whatever the first person “recognized” me as being, and since one of the first events of the day was a Doctor Who cosplay shoot, I was quickly pegged as one of the older iterations of “The Master”, the Doctor’s Time Lord nemesis.

All right, and now for those promised pictures! And if these leave you feeling disappointed, just know that these pictures don’t really represent the complete lengths that some of the females at the con went to to show off some skin. In particular, there were a few ladies there flashing a lot of ass, but I don’t know of any polite way to ask someone to turn around and present their backside for the purposes of taking a photograph, and I’m not about to be that creepy dude sneakily taking pictures of girls. All of the photographs were taken with consent.

View the Photographs (Woohoo, I installed gallery2 just for this.)

This weekend I’m attending Otakon, which is an anime convention in Baltimore, MD. Yes, stop making those faces. I’m going with a coworker (Drinian, who comments on this blog occasionally). The closest thing to an anime convention I’ve ever been to was Wizard World East in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania some years ago. That was a comic convention so it can’t be too different, right? Not that I was there for the comics, mind you, but rather for a national competition of the MechWarrior miniatures tabletop game, which I suspect is at least as nerdy.

I imagine I’ll have all sorts of crazy stories to relate here on the blog on Sunday from Otakon, but in the meantime, all of my time is going to be occupied with … whatever goes on at anime conventions? I gather there’s a lot of anime-watching that goes on at these events, along with the cosplaying. I kind of feel like I’m going to be a bad con-goer, because I haven’t even watched any anime in months, and I haven’t watched it a lot in over a year. So, either fanatical reintroduction or event that turns me off anime forever, here I come!

And yes, I know the majority of my readers will probably only be interested in the results of this if I come back with pictures of hot female cosplayers. To this I say: I’ll try not to disappoint.

This past Friday, I took the Metro into DC to attend a birthday party for one of my coworkers. Sitting directly across from me was a group of three girls — they looked rather young, but I’ll be charitable and say they were eighteen. They were definitely dressed up for a night on the town, so I’m going to guess they were headed to one of those clubs that lets eighteen-year-olds in. The one right across from me was a slightly chubby blond wearing clothes sexier than she was (not in a good way) with a mouth that was open obnoxiously often.

Not having anything else to do, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation. This blond was talking about her taste in men. Specifically, she was discussing what she considered to be “husband material”. And it was an earful, let me tell you. Her number one qualification was that the guy has to be Jewish. Not because that’s what she was, mind you (I would wager at least even odds that she was), but because she wanted a rich husband. Yes, that’s right, Jew=Rich to her, and so she wanted a Jew. She doesn’t want to reap the benefits of hard labor, oh no — she just wants to marry rich and have everything taken care of for her. And apparently that’s what Jewish men are for?

I was floored enough at this line as it was, but it was the next thing she said that really flabbergasted me. She said, and I quote, “And you know I’m too much of a fan of Coach handbags not to marry rich.” Her friends nodded along in agreement, as if being able to provide voluminous quantities of over-priced portable containers was a standard metric for assessing husband potential. I nearly spoke up right then and there, and perhaps I should have — I love a good argument — but I did manage to keep the resultant yelling strictly inside my own head.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? How is owning a certain brand of bag so important? Is this the Sex and the City culture that we’re living in now? I almost reminded this girl that there are people in Africa who don’t even own anything to carry around in a bag, and that the cost of a single high-end handbag could feed a person for life. But I didn’t feel the need to — she wasn’t attractive enough to make a good trophy wife, so sometime in the near future, when her mommy and daddy finally cut her loose and stop buying her expensive accessories — she’ll finally realize how inconsequential her worries over purses were. Real world, meet spoiled average-looking brat.