Nestor's Cola

One thing I’ve been facepalming over (and over and over, etc) is people who see ‘Fight Club’ or some other … trendy fucking movie, they suddenly “see the light” and “wake up” and suddenly they’re this bleary-eyed basket case with half-boiled convictions and a head full of fucked-up wiring, determined to preach the fucking gospel to a bunch retards with brains the consistency of used oatmeal. They’re (usually) the first to preach about the injustice of it all, and complain about the intolerance of living in a society that gets off on a lack of personal accountability and encourages a false sense of entitlement. They’re also the last in line to realize that they’re just as at fault as the “sheep” and “tools” and “mindless drones” they castigate. They might not see it, but it’s simply another insurgence of the ‘I want’ mentality that they themselves claim to oppose. It’s the ‘have-nots’ complaining that they’re not getting what the ‘haves’ have. If there’s one thing I can’t fucking stand it’s the thought that these idealists scream about revolution but never fire a shot.

Listen: If you feel you are somehow ‘enlightened’, or you think that the other people around you are ‘mindless sheep’, ‘drones’, or ’slaves to the corporation/ government/ fire hydrant’ or if you’ve ever had the idea that people need to ‘wake up’, congrats. You’re part of the fucking problem.

Ever since “Equality Now” pulled their little stunt with Japan and sparked an international debate, I’ve been reading more and more about Japan’s histrionically paranoid, xenophobic and isolationist attitude towards the rest of the world. If something happens on an international level, Japan withdraws from the international scene that much more. A great case in point is the Equality Now issue: Someone from England bitched, and suddenly Japanese websites stopped allowing foreign traffic. Many businesses in Japan refuse to do overseas business. A little-reported but mentionable case is when the H1N1 flu started entering the public scene- Japanese people that were out in other countries were encouraged to return to Japan.

Ultimately it’s this attitude that has discouraged me from buying any more games or merchandise from Japan. If I’m not “good enough” because I’m not native, then I’ll spend my hard-earned and hard-saved money elsewhere. Though that won’t stop me from playing.

Being exposed to this attitude has in turn made me aware of it on a larger scale- it’s not exclusively Japanese, and this in turn has made me far more aware of what happens on the international scene. I was recently reading an article about a particular event in France where French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke up against Islamic isolationism in France.

See, here’s how it goes down: Paranoid hate-mongering Islamics immigrate to France. Rather than integrate into the society that has welcomed them in, they instead form isolated ghetto communities that stagnate and putrify. They don’t want help.
From an article I read: “At the heart of the identity crisis plaguing today’s France is a significant immigrant population that refuses to become French, and a multicultural left that has allowed them to live isolated in ghettoes for decades, where many have fallen prey to Muslim preachers of hate.”

This leads to poor, marginalized minorities constantly thinking that “hurr durr the white man is keeping us down” no matter what is done- constantly discouraging themselves to do anything constructive, praying Allah because their parents do, and getting turned into fanatics easily, and indulging themselves into all sorts of criminal activities, all based on “BAAAAW we’re so unhappy, if you don’t let us do whatever we want, you’re a fascist”.

All of this, of course, could be averted if they simply dropped their isolationist attitude and worked towards the idea of one world community.

“Although many have assimilated into French secular society, which Sarkozy applauded, others openly seek to transform France into a Muslim nation and have won allies in the multicultural left.
“France does not demand that you give up your history or your culture,” Sarkozy said. “But France demands of those who would link their fates to hers to also share her history and her culture. France is not hodgepodge of communities or individuals. . . Becoming French means accepting a form of civilization, values, and customs.”
Sarkozy’s definition of those values left no ambiguity from which direction he felt the danger was coming: “France is a country where women are free. France is a country where church is separate from state, and where the beliefs of each person are respected.
“But France is also a country where there is no room for the burka, and where there is no room for the subjugation of women under any circumstance or pretext.”
The French have debated for 25 years whether Muslim women should be allowed to veil themselves in public schools or in public workplaces, as radical Muslim preachers and their supporters on the left have demanded.
Sarkozy ended that debate scarcely one year after becoming president by outlawing the veil in public last year.
In announcing the reform at the time, Sarkozy said he was troubled by the “discriminatory and degrading” Islamist practice of veiling women.
“I don’t want certain neighborhoods to feel more like Kabul or Tehran than France,” he said.
The same day Sarkozy gave his speech on national identity, police turned away a group of women wearing Islamist veils as they attempted to enter the French National Assembly.
Sarkozy took direct aim at radical secularists as well. While calling on immigrants to share French values, he said French men and women have to believe in those values themselves.
“To open our doors to others, we have to have enough confidence in ourselves. We must be sure of our values and of our model,” he said.
“By giving in to moral equivalence that proclaims all values, behaviors and accomplishments to be the same, we strike a blow against the idea of civilization and against society itself,” he said.
And then he warned: “And it is for this reason, my fellow citizens, that anyone who comes to France to call for violence and hatred of the other will be deported.”
If France is having problems with integrating Muslims, “it is not our values that are at fault but our departure from them, at times even our denial of them,” Sarkozy said.”

I believe in this. I believe that there should not be any isolationism. I believe in a free and equitable exchange of ideas, beliefs, and information. I believe in liberation from outmoded and fear- and hate-driven ideologies. In this I express belief that it is not only our individuality, uniqueness and self-identity, but also our willingness to work together across cultural and social boundaries and barriers that gives us our true strength.”

These are the things in this world today. Where everyone tries to live. And here in this world are the things we want: sex and birth, votes and traits. money and guilt, television and teddy bears. But all we’ve actually got is each other.

DJ Nestor is… Live. I play allllll the hits.

To be more precise, Ebola Cola’s very own Gonzo Radio is back on the air, which means I’ll be making your ears bleed with my eclectic choice in musics. From Touhous to rock, from anime to techno, from metal to bizarre, mystifying and off-color rap, I’ll play it all.

Listen Now

I’d like to answer some questions and perhaps identify and discard some questions and doubts and maybe some repressed childhood fears that may have cropped up in the past week.

I noticed some crazy shit happen to your blog some time back! Am I going to die?! Unfortunately, you’re not going to die. Shaun, the crazy admin that manages my webspace and owner of http://ebolacola.org/ (shameless plug) decided to merge my database with the databases of http://ebolacola.org/ (did it again, fuckers!) in order to smooth out a certain number of things and begin The Great Blogging Project.
Will ‘The Great Blogging Project‘ give me cancer? No, but it probably will give you AIDS. The Great Blogging Project is an idea that we can create a blogging site that is amusing, whimsical, and fun. Also, we want to give you AIDS. So we’ve opened up the doors. Grab a Gravatar, create an account on the site, and start blogging. We got tools and toys and fun shit to play with.
What was your reaction to Shaun The Admin moving shit around? I about shit down both legs. Shat BRIX. Enough to build a brownstone. All sorts of shit happened. There were lots of “YOU BROKE IT!” and “FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU!” and “OGOD WHAT HAPPENED?!” and “OH FUCK IT ARE BORKEN JK LOL”. Actually, joking aside he did a great job putting up with my panic.
When will your blog be cool again? When your mother hoovers my cock. We’re not talking like, a lick, a wink and a tickle, but serious down on her knees back-of-the-throat hoovering.
Can you give me AIDS? Of course! Click here for AIDS.
I really like Fujiwara Mokou. Me too.

Chef Nestor here again with another panty-dropping, tasty fucking recipe you and yours can enjoy. I call this a lasagna.

• 2 cups uncooked penne pasta
• 1 pound ground Italian sausage
• 1 (26 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
• 1 cup cottage cheese
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

Directions:

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 2.5 quart baking dish.
2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Place pasta in the pot, cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until tender, and drain.
3. Cook and stir the Italian sausage in a large skillet over medium heat until browned, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the fat from the meat, pour the cooked pasta and spaghetti sauce into the skillet, and stir well to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil.
4. Pour half of the hot pasta-sausage mixture into the prepared baking dish, spread with the cottage cheese in an even layer, and sprinkle with half the mozzarella cheese. Spread the remaining pasta mixture over the cheese, and top with the remaining mozzarella cheese.
5. Cover with foil and bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, until the casserole is hot and the cheese is melted and bubbling. Let it stand 5 minutes to firm up before serving.

My alterations: I make 2 1/2 cups of pasta, I take the foil off the lasagna about ten minutes before taking it out of the oven so the cheese melts more evenly, and I of course make my own spaghetti sauce.

Yarrr.

I was first introduced to Cross†Channel when I started hanging out in one of TLWiki’s irc channels, and the introduction was less than descriptive. I was simply told that it was good and I should play it on that merit alone. What the hell, I’ve got nothing but time. I don’t know what sort of expectations I had when I started Cross†Channel. Well, it’d be safe to say I didn’t actually have any to begin with. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. In fact, it was only when I started the install process (what fun! haha!) that I realized it was the inspiration for that ridiculously insipid-yet-addicting flash game, Nanaca Crash.

Installation/ Patching:

Installation is a breeze, patching is easy, simply run the *.exe.

Menus/ interaction:

I found the hover bar at the top of the page to be a kiss-curse in a way: damned useful but fucking annoying. I feel that they handled the repetitive text the best they could.

My first impression was that the protagonist Taichi was a loon. Irrational, nonsensical, and ridiculously energetic. This is a huge step away from other protagonists I’ve played. The Junker was bluff and no nonsense, Fuminori was cold and calculating, Takumi was cowardly and introspective, Shirou was idealistic, etc. From the very start though, Taichi pointed out (and kept pointing out) that the Gunjou Institute was not a normal school and this was not a normal world.

I initially thought that this was going to be a simple progression of events with a bizarre protagonist, so after a brief assessment of the superficial facts, I chose a girl and moved forward with the expectation that I’d get her in the end. Well, that’s inaccurate. Each week I gain the option to pursue an additional girl, and the story is not linear.

The Girls:

I was presented with the option of pursuing a girl and when presented with that choice, I rejected her. Rejecting her introduced me to Misato, the beautiful sempai. Learning about Misato was like watching a rose bloom. Every layer of gorgeous petals simply opened the way to reveal yet more beautiful petals. I fell for her instantly, and I fell hard. She’s so wonderful, so cute, so amazing. Everything she did was amazing.

On the second iteration, I was once again presented with a choice, and this time I chose Touko. I was hesitant to pursue her in the beginning because she gave off a very strong Tsundere vibe. I’ve never been a fan of the tsundere archetype and was resistant. However, I was impressed. I was impressed and touched. Touko was amazing, regardless of whether it was her bizarre oral fixation or her naïveté, Touko touched me. She touched me in a way beyond what I thought possible; when her week ended I went back not once but several times in an effort to change certain things.

The third week I was given the chance to chase after Kiri Sakura, and so I did. She’s always been cool and displayed a certain animosity towards me, and with Touko’s end still ringing in my ears I could only jump at the chance. To be honest, I’m glad I did. She’s ridiculously fragile and complex, like a puzzle made out of spun glass. Playing through Sakura’s route was a little rough, but it was amazing. I fell so hard for her.

As each route progressed, I was eagerly looking forward to Miki. Miki was this little bundle of flat-chested cheerfulness in every other route. I expected something delightful, and I wasn’t in the least bit disappointed. Miki is indeed a flower, as much a flower as Kiri, and most definitely is Taichi’s pupil in every aspect. She’s also a delight. Her ending was more of a shock than Touko’s or Kiri’s, but so much more rewarding than either. Not only because it revealed so much more than any other route, but because from the beginning to the end everything was simply done in a way that was amazing.

After so much about Youko had been revealed in each route, I was finally given the option of pursuing her. Her route was short and brutal in its simplicity. There was no one else that understood her the same as me. There was no one that understood me the same as her. Everything else was irrelevant.

After each main route, everyone gets a mini-route that answers a lot of questions and concludes a lot of open-ended and ambiguous ends from the previous weeks. They must be completed in order. We get a proper ending and Taichi’s inevitable conclusions and resolution.  Afterwords, we get a credit roll and we finally understand what Cross†Channel is all about, what it really and truly means to cross paths with someone else.

The game touched me in a really amazing way. I haven’t felt this way in a very long time. I was initially going to give it a low score because I didn’t believe it was up to par with other games I’ve played, but ultimately that was wrong. The game is immediately elevated to the top ten. If I could give it a higher score I would. I leave you with several things. Taichi’s recipe for cooking rice, and Miki-Miki with Taichi.

The best way to cook delicious meals:
1. Believe in yourself.
2. Weigh the rice.
3. Each and every grain of rice contains a precious life.
4. With those innumerable lives, people can keep living.
5. But every life will eventually return to the earth.
6. The Earth is Life, just as Life is the Earth.
7. In order to someday bring about new life
8. Long Sci-fi novel “Gaia’s Journey” – Fin
9. Polish the rice and wash it for twenty minutes.
10. The summertime makes me want to eat some incredibly spicy curry.
11. Cook.
12. Stare long and hard at the fire, letting dangerous thoughts soak into your body OR remembering comrades-in-arms who gave their lives to protect you (Two choices)
13. Once cooked, steam upside down for ten minutes.
14. Super delicious rice is born.

Off and on I hear about our favorite anti-free speech, pro-censorship feminist group Equality Now attempting to do away with all sorts of things they arbitrarily deem offensive, all around the world. I don’t claim to have my thumb on the pulse of events, and most certainly I don’t have any sort of reputable information to present, but this is what I’ve heard:

First, we know that they forced japan to essentially fuck themselves in the ass. Well, the Japanese fucked themselves in the ass, because they bent over for the giant gaijin penis. err, vagina. Whatever. The Japanese should have told the histrionic feminist group to get fucked, get back to the kitchen, and then slapped them in the face with their constitutional rights. To climb on a moral LAWFUL GOOD soapbox here, it doesn’t matter if I find rape games to be disgusting or reprehensible, the constitutional law says they can be made and sold to the adults that want them and that right cannot be infringed upon. Period. Equality Now should have been told to fuck off.

Secondly, and apparently most recently, (no verifiable sources on this one, sorry) Equality Now has decided that what they’ve done simply is not enough. “Japan is a nation which accepts hentai. This encourages rape so hentai must be banned. Rapelay was withdrawn from sale, the EOCS banned all fetishes, and some companies have banned foreigners from their websites. This is not enough. The Japanese government must ban everything we object to and make it all illegal. The UN must tell the Japanese to do as we direct.” Of course, they also say, “Women should not have to resist sex to be able to call it rape.” which opens up a whole different direction of irrationality and misandric terrorism. I can see it now: “he raped me.” “no, it was consensual.” “I don’t have to say no, fight back, disagree, or otherwise express an unwillingness to have sex, I can simply decide that it was rape and it is so.”

Let’s sort of set that to the side here for a brief bit. One thing I can’t help but do is draw a parallel between this… ridiculous campaign and jack Thompson’s equally ridiculous campaign against violence in video games. Same medium of entertainment, same question of artistic expression, etc. But I will show you a couple of things I’ve picked up in my travels through the internet and I’d like to ask you to consider a few things.
First, rape has gone down since the early nineties.(Source) This roughly coincides with the increase of VCRs and VHS distribution of porn. There’s no direct correlation that says that as sales of porn videos have gone up, rape has gone down, but it’s damn suggestive.

Second, Violent crime has also gone down since the early nineties (Source) which again also roughly coincides with a larger market penetration of ‘violent’ console and PC games. Again, no direct correlation between violent crimes and violent games here, but as I said before, it’s suggestive.

So, putting two and two together, we can see the direction Equality Now is taking is a bad one. However, the Japanese have a bit of a passive-aggressive inferiority complex, which means that if a vocal histrionic and irrational minority like EN says something should be banned, they will willingly and happily legislate it out of existence without so much as a whimper of resistance- and then they’ll angrily mutter under their breaths about how it’s EN’s THE FILTHY GAIJIN’S fault. Simply put: Equality Now is a bunch of fucked-up and histrionic cunts, and the Japanese are servile spineless fags. What a great combination.

If there’s one particular franchise I’ve never quite had an interest in, it’s the Shuffle! Franchise. I watched the anime back in 2005 and up until the tail end when Kaede goes yandere. Suddenly it got a whole lot more interesting! Ahahaha~! Though if you were willing to sit through twenty-two episodes of doormat, tool, and generic, utilitarian plot with the consistency of runny eggs, then I suppose you deserve what you get. The anime ended as badly as you can imagine with a trite, cliché, and thoroughly un-enjoyable conclusion. This soured me on the series, on the game, and the franchise in general. That and it’s most vocal proponents are perhaps the most histrionic retards.

Mercifully, I forgot all about Shuffle. I picked up the translated game… I’m not sure why. I went on sabbatical from playing ren’ai and visual novels for a few months because I could no longer feel the magic. Anyway, I picked up the translated game the other day. I struggled with myself and decided to play it. No guts no glory, and sometimes you have to suffer so that you can ultimately appreciate something else even more.

Menus/ interface: First off, I don’t particularly like the default settings. The music was too loud, the text didn’t appear quick enough, and the menus were a bizarre and motley collection of nigh-incomprehensible sliding bars. The font was faint and barely visible. There was no cute game cursor. After spending more time than necessary configuring and customizing things to my liking, I started playing. (4/10)

Story: I want to say that the story is as bland as it was in the anime, but that would be wrong. Ultimately it’s worse. You find yourself going back over the same territory over and over again, rehashing the same plot details over and over and over, ad nauseum. Skipping text you’ve already read is a given, but I spent more time skimming through text I’d already read than actually getting to individual story. Ultimately a very bland and unrewarding experience, especially as the already-read text seems to multiply with each route completed. Whomever decided to “decensor” the game really, truly, and strongly needs to take a class on human anatomy. Barring that, they need to watch a porno. Things don’t work that way (or look that way). Story-wise, the world is flat and two-dimensional. I’ve played a variety of other games and if you took the characters away, you can see the world behind them. A strongly shining example of this is Planetarian. If you took the Junker and Hoshino Yumemi out of Planetarian, you could still see beyond them, see the city, and see the world as it was, but the world of Shuffle is simply a contrivance. Tripping flags is ridiculously easy and the choices available have no effect on the inevitable conclusion except that it locks you into a specific route. Once you’re locked in, you can skim the text, collect the ending, and move on to the next girl. Speaking of girls… (2/10)

Sia: I went through her route somewhat baffled that I was interacting more with Primula and Nerine and Kaede more than with her… up until the point that I bagged her. Her … plot twist was lackadaisical and didn’t seem to have any real tangibility. Ultimately, I didn’t like her. The only benefit to playing her route was that her voice was different than the anime and it didn’t grate as badly. I apparently didn’t have a lot to say about Sia during my playthrough; my notes seem to only mention her a few times. “Oh God Sia is stupid. She’s about as dumb as a sack of hammers. Hahaha, logic 1, girl 0.” Her ending is as baffling as it is insipid and destroyed any hope of redemption for her. (3/10)

Kaede: I played Kaede with some trepidation; To give fair credit where credit was due, I tried my best to like her, but I dislike her very strongly. My notes reflect this, at length. “She’s such a fucking tool. “I’m a gaping vagina that exists solely for the purpose of Rin-kun”  Oh fuck, there she goes again. “I have no self identity, I simply exist to be useful to you.” What the fuck girl. Oh for fucks sake girl, you’re fucking retarded. just kill yourself. God, Kaede’s obsequiesness is disgusting. Fuck, Kaede sounds a lot like Mikuru from Haruhi- Oh god, she is. No wonder I can’t stand her. I think Kaede-chan has sort of a persecution complex: she feels he should reject or punish her or take advantage of her, but he doesn’t. Of course Kaede is also a retard, so there’s that, too. I’m fairly certain that her childhood illness (lol) scrambled her brains and she was never actually able to grow up as a normal child. Maybe I’m a bit jaded and cyhnical, but she gets no sympathy or pity from me. She’s just a retard, herp derp. Oh, finally got some Kaede time. Wait, what the fuck is this shit? “I’ll hate you if you don’t”? She’s a fucking retard. And a slut. a trite, manipulative whore that needs her meatsocket to be filled in order to think she’s a verifiable human being. God, her ingratiating servility is disgusting. I want to puke twenty years of cigarette tar directly into her mouth. She’s the worst kind of woman. She takes away the entire valuation of being a man. How can a man feel like a man if he’s expected to do jack shit? “use my body, take advantage of my kindness, capitalize on my retardation but don’t love me.” God what a fucking piece of work. I was right about the persecution complex. “To serve Rin-kun is my life!” What fucking outrageous stupidity.” (1/10)

Asa: I remember I liked her in the anime, up to the end, when she just became repetitive and stupid. The game is a lot like this, but because of the story bloat and all the “skip previously read portions” I was simply marking time until I could read through her arc. She was awkward in her femininity and responded to certain inquiries like a tsundere. Certain elements of her arc (namely unnecessary bloat) kept me from liking her. When there wasn’t crap in the way of her story, her arc seemed contrived. There’s this block of time between “I’m interested in someone else” and my kiss with Asa that is completely devoid of interaction with her. From zero to hero in a couple weeks? I don’t fucking think so. Then things started balancing out and I was daring to hope, but no. crash and burn. In the final result, I was wanting a Kareha route more because she was far more entertaining. Ama and Kareha made this route shine, but unfortunately the route wasn’t about them. (4.5/10)

Nerine: Surprisingly, all throughout Sia, Kaede, and Asa’s routes, I was always sort of eyeing Nerine. When I played through her, though, my first thought was “Start a new route, skip through blue text.” The blue text being, of course, shit I’ve already read before. The blue text kept going and going and going. The game starts June 13th and her route-specific content doesn’t actually start until July 22nd, and that was a five-minute scene at the pool. Afterword she seems to display the same sniveling, cringing, eager-to-please meatsocket philosophy that Kaede seems to personify. However,  in the tiny amounts of story we get while sifting through the already-read bloat, you catch glimpses of a potentially decent character that doesn’t suffer Kaede’s crippling flaws- there’s a world of difference between sniveling servility and devotion. But because you don’t get anything you haven’t already seen until mid-august, she falls flat. Her ending drama is very much in tune with Sia’s, Kaede’s, and Asa’s- female irrationality heaped atop poor writing and straw logic. (4/10)

Primula: Throughout my playthroughs, I never once considered Primula’s route. I can appreciate judicious use of a token loli, but there was never anything through any other route that said Primula was worth pursuing in the slightest. She’s also the last route in my playthrough, so with that in mind, the deck has already been stacked against her. Primula in a school swimsuit is appropriate in her type of appeal, but it simply seems I’m being pandered to. “Here is a token loli. It’s expected you’d see her in these things and doing these things, so here she is, doing those things.” I feel patronized and insulted. She wants validation and affection, I respond by giving her penis. LOGICAL CHOICE. (2/10)