Nestor's Cola

Now that we can bring Clannad and Clannad After Story to a close, I can only feel a sense of relief. As much as I like Key, I can’t help but feel a bit resentful of their formula. “Here is something cute but ultimately useless. You love it. Watch it do cute things. You love it. Now watch us do bad things to the cute thing. Feel sad. Next week, we’ll introduce a newer, even cuter, even more useless thing that you’ll love. (uguu~)” It’s something I became only viscerally cognizant of with AIR and playing through Planetarian, It became clear to me during Kanon, and the same formula was applied to Clannad as well. Don’t get me wrong, I think Clannad would have been great if I’d never seen anything else by Key before.

In a lot of different tangental aspects, I enjoyed each series for what it was, but the main underlying formula destroyed them for me. Unfortunately by the time Clannad came around I had become calloused and cynical- their attempts to elicit an emotional response from me fell on deaf ears, and I simply watched as a dispassionate observer. There were plot elements I could appreciate and enjoy, but the foreknowledge of the inevitable result left only a tired sort of acceptance.

Final notes:

Tomoyo is fucking hot.

Nestor Anime, Quick Post, Rant

Twenty-five years ago, if I had been asked about romance, I probably would have replied “That’s icky stuff, girls are gross.” Twenty years ago, I would have said, “cards, candy, flowers” …essentially the staples of any Valentine’s Day.Fifteen years ago, I would have said the previous, but added in secluded dinners for two, fireplaces, getaways, etc.

When you get older you understand it’s not just a matter of giving of material gifts, but it’s also to a certain extent ‘being thoughtful’ and paying attention to the complex, bizarre, mostly contradictory and irrational wants and desires of your partner. And then satisfying those desires with material objects and emotional validation. Women need to be reassured that they’re still attractive. Women need to be reassured that they’re still sexy. Women need to be reassured that they’re still appreciated. Women need to be reassured that they’re still women.

You see it all in contemporary television, and if you look at it with a scrutinizing eye, you see the ever-popular scene: man forgets anniversary or birthday or valentines day or whatever, and becomes a nervous wreck buying a last-minute present that he hopes will appease the woman. Maybe my chauvinism is showing a little, but I can see that scene in dozens of different dramas and sitcoms and errata- women are being programmed to expect unnecessary amounts of gifts. Women are idols that must be sacrificed unto. Men are stupid, bumbling idiots that have to be reminded of their place: which is to say sacrificing hard-earned money and groveling at the feet of the woman in the hopes that she deigns to grant him the use of her vagina.

There are solutions, though. By not buying into the shallow, materialistic ideas of romance perpetuated by the misandric feminist movement, by not collapsing into complacency and pursuing your girl consistently, by consistently providing attention, affection and appreciation, you can avoid emasculating yourself (and your wallet) for the sake of the almighty vagina. Alternatively, the Japanese have come up with a unique solution: simply abandoning women in totality.

The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

Nestor Dissertation, Rant, Sociology

I have to say, since watching the Evangelion series ten or more years ago, I really hated it. Couldn’t stand it.

A random bowl of bullshit and sophistry and pseudo-psychological and pseudo-religious babble revolving around a simple story of people that are ultimately and fundamentally broken? What’s to like, right? I think listening to TEN YEARS of rabid and histrionic prepubescent fanboys (and post-pubescent too!) slavering and masturbating to something that was mediocre at best has got to be the worst part of Eva- the second being the almost auto-cannibalistic release and re-release and re-re-release of “new versions”. Who here remembers the collector’s series white VHS tapes? ($30 each!) The black box DVD set? The metal black box DVD set? The White DVD pack? Gold Edition? Deluxe Edition? Deluxe edition with 30 second more footage? Deluxe Edition with Director’s cut? Platinum? Platinum thinpack? Those two things made me hate Evangelion the most. It’s an average story, overhyped and overmarketed. But in all honestly, I think that the first and second movies have redeemed the show in ways that may not necessarily be readily apparent.

I think there are certain things you can’t look at directly, at least not at first. You must first glance sideways, examine things laterally. Look at the edges. Examine principles of effect and causalities. Find trends and values and from all of the outlying data begin to coalesce the fundamental core of what you are seeking. Look at footprints, fingertips and strands of hair, only then can you dare lift your eyes and truly understand all of it. So it’s with that that I watched Evangelion 01 You are (not) alone and Evangelion 02: You can (not) advance.

There are certain things that one must think of as “necessary” when you think of the series of Rebuild movies; and most specifically, the second one.  The expectations have already been set with previews, promos and hype:

• First, that there’s a new pilot we never saw in the series. Mari. We’ve got that, and it’s fine.
• Second, that Asuka shows up, and accordingly, so does Unit 02. She has, and that’s fine.
• Angels will show up and die. Okay, we’ve got that covered.
• Gendo’s keikaku doori.
• Bizarre insertions of random religious symbology.

The lesser-known but still necessary elements, though, are the things that bring home to us the realization that while it may be done with new technology, better animation, smoother transitions, amazing music, and such and so forth, this is still, irrevocably an evangelion movie. Like Asuka’s ubiquitous ‘Anta, baka?‘. Or, perhaps Misato’s enthusiastic beer-chugging and self-satisfying war-whoop at it’s completion- I believe that details like this flesh out and draw up the phenomenon known as Evangelion.

I’m going to admit it, I’m a slut for the almost…. pornographic level of detail that goes on in the background. Buildings raising and lowering, solar panels turning to catch the rays, cars moving, clouds shifting, escalators churning away. Even in this badly captured cam, you can still see beyond the mundane and appreciate the less obvious. One of the things that’s only hinted at, viscerally, throughout the eva franchise, is just how big the complex that houses NERV and the EVAs really is. If you’re not specifically looking for it, you will miss the important detail- it’s huge. Staggeringly huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. And that’s something you can clearly grasp in the second movie.

Another detail that we’ve got to learn before we can raise our eyes to the sightline, is not something we can see, but instead we have to hear it. The music. A large part of the pacing and overall mood of all iterations of the movies and the series and such has been the music. Prior to watching Evangelion back before I got married, I had never heard so much ‘brass’ in a show. Blaring trumpets and trombones and tubas and such; Rebuild brings in new iterations of these same tracks with different instruments to create a heartfelt similar yet audibly different, experience.  That’s not to disregard the strings. Most certainly not. There are string movements in the movie that awe-inspiringly dramatic and only serve to apply elements to the story we may not immediately see if we were to look at the movie straight on.

If watching the series, simply look straight at it. There is nothing beyond the obvious. There are no magic suppositions or deeper meanings except the ones that you yourself impose. Ray Bradbury once said, “My stories are often open-ended so that the reader can draw his own conclusions.” and while you have the freedom and encouragement to seek a deeper meaning, there really isn’t. If you’re watching the Rebuild movies, don’t look at them straight on. The story hasn’t changed in new or dramatic ways- you’re not missing anything. Instead pay attention to the things you wouldn’t normally think of, and ultimately the true reward will present itself: the redemption of an otherwise shit franchise.

Nestor Anime, Dissertation, Rant

When Tinfoil mentioned that he was looking for QC’ers for the Chaos;head RC2 patch, I went ahead and jumped on it. hanging out with them on their irc channel and listening to them talk about various problems and searching for workarounds, it really helps cement in your mind tha tthis isn’t as loose and as disorganized as many people seem to believe.

Some time ago, someone affiliated with a game translation group mentioned that wiki-driven and community-driven projects were doomed to failure, and that only dedicated groups with staff would be able to turn out any sort of … product. He went on to castigate everyone at TLWiki, wretched hive of scum and villainy, so on and so forth. Now, admittedly, I haven’t spent but one day with TLWiki, but there doesn’t seem to be the sort of disorganization, chaos, or what-have-you that he predicted.

Anyway, getting back to the central part, I’m QC’ing the RC2 with the expectation that I’ll be grammar-nazi-ing the text. this means I’ll be playing through it again, something I’ve been hesitant about doing. To be frank, I’ve been hesitant about playing any game, I’ve reached a point where a sabbatical is necessary. I love the game though, and I want to help, so it’s time I leave Elba and get back into it. I can only hope that I don’t end up returning to St. Helena to complete my exile, hahaha.

Coming back to the ren’ai/ visual novel/ eroge genre, the big thing that’s on the lips and hearts of the entire community is the rather … dramatic actions that have been going down. I can’t summarize very well- No, I can, but this sums it up succinctly, taken from sankaku complex.

An Irish rag on a slow news day picks up the story that importers have been selling Rapelay via Amazon. The theme is that the game encourages rape and is child pornography.

Amazon completely drops the product, including in Japan. Other retailers soon follow suit.

Feminist busybody group “Equality Now”, which organises spam campaigns to keep its members busy without actually having to deal with problems directly, targets the game, accusing it of human rights violations and telling the Japanese government it should be banning this sort of thing, like low crime paradises such as the UK.

The developers tell the foreign feminists to get lost.

Soon after the Rapelay developers cave in and completely remove the game from distribution.

Equality Now’s Japanese lawyer (the group has no presence in Japan) drums up anti-eroge media attention.

A Japanese diet member, an avowed feminist, picks up on the scandal and starts calling for a ban. Objections start with the opposition and minor parties and soon the ruling party jumps onto the bandwagon.

A “study group” is organised to decide how best to ban the games.

Broadcaster TBS falsely reports that the EOCS has banned the games.

The EOCS bans the games.

Personally, I think it’s a bunch of bullshit from a bunch of histrionic women that have nothing better to do than meddle in other peoples’ lives. I have low opinions of feminists as it is: a vocal group of women looking to work at cross-purposes to any other suggestion excepting their own agenda, namely that of the bitterly vengeful subjugation of the evil opressive patriarchy. A shame they can’t channel that energy towards more positive, constructive pursuits- after all, that sammich won’t make itself.

Getting back to it, though, my view is this: a woman in britainland arbitrarily decides that a fictitious game is the root of all evil, and campaigns for its removal. Any sane society would have told ‘Equality Now’ to get fucked. I’d like to point out the rough parallel Jack Thompson made with his (equally ridiculous) hate-parades on violent video games being the source of all the world’s sores. Unfortunately, Eroge makers have pretended to be good little dead goldfish and have shown their bellies, resulting in regulation and censorship on more or less, an unregulated industry. Now where will I find a game that lets me whip a pooping catgirl? Without caving to hysteria or running off the deep end, this sort of sets a dangerous precedent. After all, we’re talking about the censorship of fiction and fantasy. This is something to be concerned with.

The result of this censorship has been less than stellar. A few companies have started blocking non-japanese IP addresses. This is the wrong thing to do. It was japanese legislation, it was japanese politics, it was japanese corporate interest that censored them- however foreign fans feel the brunt. The Japanese should have told Equality Now to get fucked, get back to the kitchen, and then slapped them in the face with their right to freedom of speech. Foreign fans should not be punished because of local ineptitude. Instead, we get xenophobic statements like

Some foreigners seem to be having an antipathy against EROGE.
Therefore, We prohibited the access from foreign countries, to defend our culture.

And let’s not forget,

PLEASE PLAY THE GAME OF YOUR COUNTRY IF YOU PRAY FOR THE WORLD PEACE!:-)?

So the conclusion that can be drawn from this is… Gobots suck.

Nestor Adult Games, Dissertation, Games, Japanese Games, Rant, Sociology

I guess I’m not really the smartest chipmunk on the block, because I’ve just taken it upon myself to translate a doujin.  See, the first time I did this, it wasn’t so bad; I had to translate maybe four words. Not rocket science. This time, however, it’s different- Not like, one or two or whatever pages, but four chapters, 25 pages each. It’s slow going, because I have to reference a lot. “Didn’t I see that one before?” I have to do my own editing and typesetting. I also have had some problems running across characters and words I’ve never seen before. Google helps, I’ve gotten help from Wikipedia in a couple of instances (my charts don’t have all the hirigana/ katakana, apparently) but one character, ?  “mu” drove me to distraction because I couldn’t fucking find it anywhere. Oh my fucking Christ, I banged my head on the walls for forever until I found it. Well, I guess that shows how moronic I am. ??? ???.

Two complaints:

Firstly, whomever scanned these pages was a bit of an asshat; tiny res is tiny. I mean, I can resize after all the typesetting and editing and shit, but, you know… typing in 5pt font is pretty shitty.

Secondly, LOL ENGRISH. I swear, I’ve racked my brains over stupid, asinine shit like “fighto~” unnecessarily and decrypting shit like that (fu ai to? What’s that? fu ai to? … oh. goddamnit.) is mind-breaking.

Well, if I feel like it, when I’m done, I’ll link chapters 2-5  (the first was done by someone else) and you all can shock and amaze at how terrible a person I am.

…why did I fucking decide to do this..?

Nestor Manga, Quick Post, Rant

I don’t … particularly have a singular “stance” on piracy. On the one side, Piracy is stealing, stealing is morally and legally reprehensible, ergo we must not pirate. On the other hand, Piracy is not stealing, it’s duplication and transmission of data, nothing is actually “stolen” and so, by that definition, it’s perfectly fine. Either side of the argument is just as valid.

I think a large part of what we consider piracy stems from an antiquated business model, coupled with an almost… stubborn resistance to change. Updating the business model to the twenty-first century without invasive and intrusive methods like DRM, creating a more modern content distribution system… there are other things, I’m sure, that this uneducated man is unaware of, things that they could do to ensure their business but without making unreasonable demands on the consumers.

Attacking systems like peer-to-peer networks doesn’t do anything at all except encourage piracy- It’s a mythological hydra with amazing restoritive powers. Cut off the head of Napster, and services like Bearshare, Morpheus, WinMX, Kazaa, etc spring up to take its place. Likewise attacking the Bittorrent community- taking down super-sites like SuprNova and The Pirate Bay only encourages others to take their place. Taking a quote from isohunt, a torrent indexing site;

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into five types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn’t make it available for free. Most probably wouldn’t have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he’s not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend “recalling” old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero–the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

E. Those who use sharing networks to download what they already bought in another digital form. Aka. format shifting, for various reasons including DRM or for backup purposes. Examples include:

* You bought a copy-protected CD, and you can’t conveniently transfer the songs to your iPod or MP3 player.
* Games that are so crippled by copy protection that you had trouble running the game you bought, but a downloaded copy would be free of such crippling DRM. 2649 1/5 stars offers amusing insight.
* Your HDDVD player stopped working, no player is sold anymore, and you want Bluray versions of HDDVD movies you bought.
* Software/games where the CD/DVD they came on have been too scratched up to play (by your children or whatever reason). Case of downloading a backup copy of digital goods you bought.

I myself fall into categories B and C,  and most recently D and E. I’ll use music as an example, though for this discussion, music, movies, software, and essentially most digital media.

Type B: I “try before I buy” because it’s simply more convenient. You don’t purchase a car without test-driving; likewise you don’t buy an album without listening to a couple of tracks first. I’ll listen to a particular band I favor, or a band I’ve never heard of before and from that sample, i’ll decide if I should go down to the store and shell out the $20-$30 necessary to pick up their CD.

Type C: There is a lot of music I used to listen to as a child that simply is no longer available through the typical brick-and-mortar stores. Gaining access to these older musics fulfills a need. It’s also somewhat viral- I’ll remember one song, listen to it, and that will trigger another, which in turn will trigger another.

Type D: There are bands that refuse the antiquated, outmoded, and restrictive copyright policies and release their music online through torrent, p2p, or ddl. Recently, I’ve been perusing unliscensed music for use in an upcoming project with a friend in the Philippines.

Type E: As I become more mobile, I can no longer afford to lug around a brick of fifty, a hundred, whatever CDs. Digital copies work for me.

Likewise, I may find a book I’m interested in, but want to sample it first. Or the book I want to read is out of print, impossible to find otherwise. Or I want a book that isn’t “protected” by invasive copyrights. I can’t lug a stack of books with me, but i still want to read, so a digital copy of a book I have at home saved on my laptop makes reading anywhere more efficient.

Likewise I may find a game I’m interested in, but i want to try it before I buy it. Or the game is archaic, or obscure, or foreign in origin. (I buy my japanese games, after all) Or the game is free for download, free for use, or I  don’t want to be caught under a “You’ve paid $60 for this game, so that means you’re entitled to a maximum of five installs/uninstalls, at which point you’ll have to shell out another $60 for the right to install the software that you already purchased.” license. If I could purchase a game without the oppressive weight of Big Brother scrutinizing my actions at every turn, data mining my usage, intrusivlely controlling how many times I install, etc I would.

One argument that’s been put forward is that it robs artists, authors, programmers, etc of their livlihood. Counterpoint to that argument is that every CD that costs $25-$30, the artist recieves around $0.20 USD. CD manufacturing cost something like $0.15 per CD. where does the rest of the money go? The corporate interest invested in the artist. Several Artists I’ve spoken to have said that when you sign a record deal, you’re no longer an artist, but instead a product. One said to me, “You know you’re getting fucked. You know what you’re getting into. You know it’s a crooked game when you sign a contract, but like the man said, it’s the only game in town.”

It doesn’t matter what stance you take in the digital piracy arena: Either you’re a corporate tool, whoring out your hard-earned money for a bit of “product”, or you’re a vilified rogue, scandalously scamming millions of dollars out of hungry mouths with each mouseclick. You can’t win on either side.

Nestor Rant, Tech

In a joint project with DJ Gonzo and Ebola Cola, Gonzo Radio has gone live, streaming music from DJs scattered across the oceans. I myself, DJ Nestor, shall broadcasting some spinnin’ tunes from my humble abode.

It’s still very much incomplete and buggy, but as we move forward to completion, bear with us.

Nestor Music, Rant, Tech

You know, I never actually got around to playing this game until just yesterday. i mean, it’s been sitting there for years, mute and staring at me with somewhat accusing eyes. I mean, it’s a classic, right? I got around to it last night while waiting for another game to download.

So, I tried it out. I really like the menus; they were intuitive and easy to move around. the choices were a little silly. No, they were really silly. Not quite a throwback to the older menus that were time consuming to navigate through, (I’m looking at you, Three Sister’s Story) but … a half-step to the easy to follow menus I love and am familiar with. The stor4y was ridiculous. I’m supposed to care about a violent nutcase? She’s totally not my type! I’ll tell you who was my type, though, and I really was disappointed with her ending: Rika Shiraki.

Even though Rika was wholly under your magic, there was a certain sweetness to her behavior that the anime failed to deliver. In the anime, she was mindless, a lust-powered fuck puppet. In the game, there’s a certain amount of innocent sweetness. She’s kind, devoted (of course) she’s sweet, attentive, and altogether a desirable woman- completely different than the anime portrays. If I wasn’t in love with her when I cast the spell in the game, I was in love with her later. The game failed to deliver; a mediocre and unrewarding ending was all I got.

I feel a better usage of Rika-chan would have been to keep her as an alternative girl to Imari, outside the scope of magic. By avoiding the temptation of magic, you gain the opportunity to pursue her. Bah.

As I stated before, Imari was wholly unlikable. In the anime she had some sweet qualities; in the game she was violent, rude, petulant, pushy, and totally undesirable. After I hooked up with Rika and she walked in, she went ballistic. It’s ridiculous how inept and jeuvenile her responses were- if she wasn’t at all interested in me (and there was never any sort of ‘dere’ vibe from her) or, alternatively, if she wanted to remain my friend, she should have been more accepting of my relationship and accepted the fact that I only saw Imari as a friend and not as a desirable woman.

I haven’t yet completed the game, but I don’t really want to. the one girl I desired had a … mediocre and unrewarding ending; the others can rot in shit for all I care.

Nestor Adult Games, Games, Japanese Games, Rant

“Why is it that a weaker person has to attach themselves to someone stronger?”

I’m not talking about the deferrence that comes from a Dom/ sup relationship, I’m talking about the … fuck-stupid and godawful parasites you see shmoozing up to anything that seems remotely stronger than them. You see them here and there, fundamentally broken people who don’t understand the concept of independent action and the value of self-worth.

I recently found myself in a debate with one of these people about the nature of their issue. What follows is portions of the debate that i had with them.

Read more…

Nestor Dissertation, Imported piece, Rant

The line went something like,
“Why is it that a weaker person has to attach themselves to someone stronger?” And the question (while rude) for just a moment, crystalized for me. okay, well, to be honest, it’s actually been on my mind for a while, let’s not hedge our bets, i mean, come on, this is me. I’m not talking about the deference that comes from a Dom/ sup relationship, I’m talking about the … fuck-stupid and godawful parasites you see schmoozing up to anything that seems remotely stronger than them.

You know what? I’m going to post portions of a debate I had with someone.

Mr Insensitive (we’ll call him Nestor, for the sake of argument) likes things to go His Way. To any other person, his motivations might be completely incomprehensible, but for the most part, it really boils down to he likes things to go His Way. To that end, he pursues education, employment, and sociological interactions that all ultimately benefit no one else but him. When he meets someone else, his initial priority is to determine whether this person is a friend, an ally, someone who can ultimately assist him on his walk through life; or instead someone to (at best) ignore or (at worst) actively pursue complete and utter subjugation or physical/ psychological destruction. He’s not necessarily an evil or bad person, but his priority is to himself and his successes and adventures in life. Along the way he has friends, enemies, and whatever. Hi-jinks ensue.

Along the way he meets Mr Nice. (we’ll call him Spineless Bob for the sake of argument) Spineless Bob has gone through his life, effectively at the mercy of other people. for some reason, he feels that he needs to be completely selfless, to the point of ego-abdication. Because he has no central core of independent thought, no spine that can hold and support him, he has to mold himself to suit other people’s needs. Molding himself to suit other people carries a burden, though. He has to cling to them to get a shape, to become a complementary piece. So he’ll wander through his life, clinging to people he feels can give him a shape, a definition of self. All the while he tells himself he’s helping them, while in fact he’s simply leeching off them for a sense of identity. A shapeless, sycophantic leech of a man. He’s a “good Guy” because he gives and gives and gives, but at the same time, there’s a growing resentment within him. Can’t anyone see the amount of effort it’s taken him to give to everyone else? Can’t anyone see/ acknowledge his suffering? The sacrifices he’s made to be what he things people expect of him? “Goddammit, people need to wake the fuck up and see how fucking awesome I really am! I’m like… Yes. I can authoritatively say, I am the New Messiah for the Twenty First Century. I care for these worthless shits, even if they don’t deserve it.” Now, rather than actually benefit himself or his fellow man, what he’s done at this point is he’s latched onto The Stick of Self-Righteousness and jammed it up his ass.

So now if anyone wants help from Stick-ass Bob, they’ve got to run a gauntlet of bitterness, resentment, self-loathing, and unresolved teenage angst. that Stick up his ass hurts, but at least people don’t fucking walk on him now, do they? Now he can afford to help them… but only if they can survive the gauntlet.

Suddenly, the two of them meet. Nestor, meet Stick-ass. Stick-ass, meet Nestor.

Nestor’s first priority: Ally or enemy? The guy’s emotionally unstable, socially retarded, and incapable of interacting with the opposite sex with any degree of success. This guy is a problem. Self-righteous and sycophantic at the same time, desperately hoping, not only for attention, but acceptance and adulation.

This person is a danger. Instead of being capable of assisting Nestor on his walk through life (that’s what friends do, they watch your back, make your days pleasant, and help you when you’re struggling) this person would instead hinder him. So he tells Stick-ass to fuck off in no uncertain terms. He wants to keep a buffer of distance between himself and this odoriferous human waste that’s seeped in.

Stickass hates and loves Nestor, because he sees Nestor’s independence, self-assuredness, self-confidence, competence, and individual clarity of thought, and feels that sinking feeling in his gut. He is simultaneously the best and worst thing he’s wanted in his own life. He loves those things in Nestor’s character, but hates them as well because, after all, he’s sacrificed so much for ther people, right? He’s far more deserving of Nestor’s success, girlfriends, money, and popularity than Nestor is, right? Wrong.

So, there they are, face to face, a button between them.

“This button will remove the selfish and ultimately useless people in this room. When I hit this button, the person that has caused the most unhappiness in the world will disappear without a trace. In fact, it’d be like he never existed in the first place.

So now I ask you. Who disappears?

To which he replied,

Molding himself to suit other people carries a burden, though. He has to cling to them to get a shape, to become a complementary piece. So he’ll wander through his life, clinging to people he feels can give him a shape, a definition of self. All the while he tells himself he’s helping them, while in fact he’s simply leeching off them for a sense of identity.

Okay, that’s selfish. But if someone’s form of selfishness is helping people, then that’s not a shabby display of selfishness, I’d say. I think Bob’d help far more people than Nestor ever would. Nestor basically uses people as tools, and doesn’t care about them very much. Bob does care about people, and unconsciously uses them as tools by helping as many people as he can. Nestor’s obviously showing a far larger display of selfishness here.

(This went on for a while)
My response:
You assume that selfish = bad. You assume wrong. When you go to school, you go so that you can get a diploma. No ‘ifs’, or ‘buts’ about it. After High School, there’s College. You don’t go for little 12 year old Billy, you go to get a degree. Not for Sisterfucking Jimbo down the hall from you, but you. You want the degree, you put in the time and effort, you buy the books, you sacrifice time, effort, money, friends, and Life Experiences so that you can get the degree and hang it up on your wall.

You get a job so that you can take care of your bills. So that you can buy food. So that you can pay your phone, your cable, your MMO, your fucking video game systems, and pay off the family down the street to keep from going to the police after you accidentally sleep with their 12 year old daughter.

None of these things is selfish. You’re putting forth effort to (at least) break even. The better career you get, the more you can afford to get ahead.

Lessee… Work, School, friends… Ah. Friends. You pick the people you hang out with, because you don’t want some cockshit fucktube stealing your shit, fucking your girlfriend, breaking into your house, your parents’ house, or anyone’s house, for that matter. You say, “This person and I get along. I’m going to make an investment into interacting with this person above others because we have like-minded interests and I don’t with say, Jimbo Sisterfucker down the hall from me.”

Still not being selfish.

Sycophantic behavior is incredibly selfish, because it does not reward anyone but the person exhibiting said behavior. Clinging to people to form a shape, to define ones’ self, is only beneficial to the one being molded, not the one he is molding to. in addition, it burdens everyone around the person that has been adhered to, as they no longer have any capability for independent action, seeing as there’s a very large, yet shapeless mass entangling them, restricting their ability to move.

So we can derive the following values from said example: Heavy, incapacitating things drag down the individual. This incapacitation can inconvenience other people who also have a certain reliance upon that person. So the one being adhered to cannot function in society (work, home, out with friends, etc) as well as they should be capable of, simply because they’ve got something preventing them. I.E. Spineless Bob. Therefore, in conclusion, a self-sufficient and determined individual will never equate the same level of societal damage that a sycophantic, needy, and spineless dependent like Bob causes.

It went on and on, until this guy popped out with,

If someone is doing a mean thing, but they THINK they’re doing a nice thing, does that make them a mean person? No, just misguided.

To which I responded with this quote from Chris Blake:

I’m holding in my hand a 1976 press kit containing newspaper clippings, photos, and testimonials from a remarkable church, one of the largest Protestant churches in the United States. This Interracial urban church carried on an extensive ministry of impressive humanitarian aid. It had already rehabilitated more than two hundred people from drug habits, and financed the education of more than a hundred students in medicine, law, teaching, and other human service fields, and many students lived in dormitories provided by the church. Moreover, the church provided care in its own facilities for senior citizens, medical convalescents, orphans, and disabled children. Several clippings included testimonials from the president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, Congressional Record, San Fransisco Chronicle, Washington Post and a former CBS-TV affiliate News Bureau Chief, who after working on a Documentary on the church had been so touched by the “magnificent example” of the pastor in working to “stand courageously against all forms of injustice, to relieve human suffering of every kind, and to establish brotherhood among peoples of wide-ranging backgrounds” that the bureau chief had quit his job at CBS to work full time for the church. Never have I seen such a more impressive church press kit. (To be fair, not many churches have a press kit.)

The pastor was a member of a 1.4 million member Christian denomination, and by 1976 had been pastoring twenty five years. He had also served as a public school teacher and for two full years as a foreign missionary, establishing programs for orphans. More recently he had begun a foreign agricultural mission on thousands of acres to produce food for distribution to critical hunger regions. He had recieved numerous awards, including one from the Los Angeles Herald for “Humanitarian of the Year”. In 1976 he was appointed chair of the San Fransisco Housing Authority. With his wife, he had adopted at least nine impoverished children of different racial backgrounds. They lived next to one of the churches large animal refuge centers, where they took in and cared for sick and abandoned animals.

You’ve probably head of the People’s Temple Christian Church. Rev Jim Jones, Pastor.

As an addendum, I added,

Don’t give me shallow, dogmatic crap about how those people who do evil with the best of intentions aren’t ‘mean’. Even the most sinister of people have the ‘best intentions’ at heart, and that’s what makes it so sad- there IS no true good or evil, only snotnosed peckerwoods like yourself who believe something is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ based on some cobbled together dogma stemming from badly interpreted scripture and Disney. I’ve read published journals of oven operators in Auschwitz who actually felt that they were benefiting the whole world with the ritual and systematic extermination of the jews in Germany. Seriously dude. You’ve (still) got no relevant high ground to stand on.

You’d think that in the face of my debate he’d cave like a house of cards, but this debate spanned months, leading to it’s dramatic conclusion:

And the cream of the crop is that Nestor idiot. Check this out. He’s stated that nothing gives him more pleasure than hurting other people. HE’S A SICK SADISTIC PSYCHOPATH. This guy is screwed in the head. He is evil – literally evil. You hear that word said a lot for funny or dramatic reasons, but I am dead fucking serious here. Nestor is evil and does not dreserve to draw breath. Just start asking him questions about morality and whatnot, you’ll see how deep the rabbit hole goes. He’s not just a poster whose funny gimmick is to act like he’s an asshole, this guy truly is one mentally fucked-up psycho.

In conclusion, I like to debate, I’m a A SICK SADISTIC PSYCHOPATH, and being spineless rules.

Nestor Dissertation, Imported piece, Quick Post, Rant, Sociology