This isn’t elegant, it’s not pretty, you don’t give it four stars because it’s got a beat and you can dance to it. It’s tasty, it’s cheap, and it doesn’t take too long to prepare. Got it? Good. Screw your brains back onto your neckpipes because here we go.

First off, Ingredients:

Linguine. You know what the fuck this is, go buy some.
Chicken breast tenderloins. You may not know what the fuck this is, so go to your goddamned store and look at labels with that retarded sheeps’ expression on your face until you find them.
Cream of Mushroom Soup. Okay, limpdicks, I’m not talking about the condensed add one can of water, I’m talking the real deal. If you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, get yourself a couple cans (that’s TWO, retards) of Progresso cream of mushroom soup. Om nom nom, bitches, yeah.

All right, now that you got your shit, let’s fucking cook.

Grab your cans o’ soup and dump em in a skillet. Rocket science, I know, but bear with me.

Dump your tenderloins in. Holy fuck, difficult as all hell. I have the utmost confidence in your skills though, so fucking do it. I choose a skillet because it’s easier to raise to a simmer and flip the chicken around in.
Simmer the chicken for an hour or so. Simmering is easy, and accomplishes three tasks: cooks the soup into the chicken, cooks the chicken, and boils off the excess moisture.

This gives you about 40 minutes to carve each letter of the alphabet into a cucumber, jam it up your ass, and then shit them out in fun phrases.

Cook your linguine. You DO know how to do that, right? Boom, we got cooked pasta. It takes about 12-20 minutes to cook linguine, so don’t get too absorbed in shitting cukes out your butt.

By now the soup has gone from a soup and turned itself into a sauce. God damn, this ain’t cooking, it’s SCIENCE. serve the pasta and hold the fucking phone, ladle the sauce and chicken over the goddamn pasta.

you’ve been learned.

You have translated into English without our permission and offered to the public our works [...] which is illegal with respect to both our Copyright act that was collectively ratified by other nations as well as our distribution rights. [...] The act of offering an independent functioning version of the software to countless people is a violation of the rights we have as producers, isn’t it?

In this, they’re absolutely 100% correct as far as legally and morally binding obligations. On the one hand it wouldn’t surprise me to see NNL stop production on their minori games, but at the same time, on the other side of the coin, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if NNL simply thumbed their nose at minori, called them a bunch of racist cunts, and kept going with what they were doing. I could care either way- I’m not losing anything.

A point I’d like to make is this line, which strikes me as hilarious:

???????????????

I read that as, “(we) risk our own lives to do so”, (the entirety of the statement being “We use enormous amounts of money and spend a long time to produce our games, and furthermore risk our own lives to do so.”) Isn’t that just the pinnacle of overdramatic posturing? Could they grandstand just a little more? Making a game is not a harrowing, life-threatening experience. You do not gush blood, internal organs do not rupture, your head will not explode. Well, I’m not sure of that, but I’ve done a little programming, a little scenario writing, etc and you know, I’m DOING JUST FINE. Maybe it’s with prolonged exposure?

This final bit is something that makes me a little upset.

If there are any amongst you who are truly fans of “minori”, and hope for us to carry on producing works in the future, please please stop illegal acts which our destroying our future.

Now they acknowledge foreign fans? Isn’t that a little backhanded? Well, wait. They don’t. You see, they still don’t sell to anyone overseas. Filthy gaijin dollars are filthy after all. You have to be Japanese and live in GRORIOUS NIPPON to buy and play their games. They’re not really losing money or livelihood because this (blatantly illegal) piracy is happening in a market they refuse to acknowledge. You can’t deny a market, and then complain you’re not making money off that market when you discover they’re using your product. I’m sorry, but that’s like refusing to believe that your car runs on gasoline and then bitching when the car no longer runs. Actually, a better analogy would be, “don’t lock the barn door after the horse has been stolen” You brought it on yourself. You had a damn good opportunity to expand into a decent market and you walled yourself up. You don’t have the right to complain that the world has passed you by.

If I were asked, “Nestor, What’s your official stance?” I’d say NNL is functionally in the wrong, but minori brought it on themselves, so they should acknowledge some responsibility too.

I’ve heard some interesting defense in favor of minori. That they’re in the right to block foreign business. In this context, they are. Here in the US, you’ll frequently see the signs “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” and generally speaking that’s perfectly okay to do. But this blocking of foreign business only started after Equality Now started their shit. This sophomoric reactionary stance is pretty fucking childish. Hello, it was your own fucking government that passed the goddamn regulations. The US didn’t do it. England didn’t do it. Zimbabwe didn’t fucking do it; It was your own goddamn politicians that couldn’t stand up for themselves, for the nation of Japan, for their rights, for anything. They’re the ones that said “You can’t do this.” End of line. Accept some goddamn personal fucking responsibility.

A second defense I’ve heard is that by blocking foreign IPs from visiting their site and purchasing/ using their games, they are defending their games against piracy. This is ALSO a crock of shit. It’s the Japanese that buy the games (IN JAPAN, LOLOLOL), it’s the Japanese that make digital copies, and upload them to P2P sites. Blocking foreign visitors from their website does nothing to “stem the tide against piracy” at all. Straw man defense: defeated.

So in any case, they’re taking out their impotent frustrations on the only people that can’t fight back: foreign fans. When you think about things like that, it’s not just insulting, it’s a brutal assault on your own humanity. You’re not worthy of playing their games by virtue of your birth- something you can no more control than the weather. Ultimately foreign fans have two (realistic) choices (I’m not even going to factor in minori’s outrageous idea of moving to another country just to play their games- let’s not be completely fucking stupid) when it comes to playing their games:

1. Give up on playing their games altogether. (no way!)
2. Get their games from another source, bypassing minori altogether. (Can do.)

In addition to that, my desire to play these games comes and goes in waves, and this was essentially ebb tide. Part of that is my completionist nature: I have to complete every game I play. I tried my hand at Clannad, and I ended up stopping after playing through the best route, simply because I have absolutely no desire for any of the other girls. Since I can’t start a new game because I haven’t finished Clannad (and won’t ever) I simply stopped playing altogether. Well, I got over that and soon I’ll have a good review of SWAN SONG up on the site. Maybe within the next couple of days. Look forward to it!

It’s been a long time since then. The world has moved on. My tastes in anime are bizarre and eclectic. A few years ago, I saw an advert for K-on. Because I don’t keep my thumb on the pulse of the anime community, because I don’t follow directors, studios, staff, seiyuus, I initially thought it was going to be a show about ENOZ from Haruhi. (In retrospect, i think it’d've been significantly better if it had.) The first season is arguably decent, if weak-watered. It’s a typical SoL that revolves around a “light music club”, sort of a school-sponsored garage band. I thought to myself, this is something I can relate to. Fourteen years ago I was teenager, all glazed eyes and gleaming reproductive organs, and I wanted to learn bass guitar. And I did. Our band lasted six months, we played a whopping three shows (only one of which we actually got paid for) and we wrote three songs and had parts and pieces of lyrics and riffs for another twelve. Although I only played bass for a school year and never looked back, being in a band leaves a mark on you. So forgive me if I wax a bit nostalgic while reviewing K-on.

Some of the trials and tribulations they went through I can relate to. Getting your band together, getting their equipment squared away, learning chords and riffs and trying to make money to pay for the gear, (which is terribly expensive) unplugging the amp while it’s still on, learning about your bandmates’ quirks and musical tastes, mysterious calls at 2am, lunatic drives all over the place to go to concerts, endless drinking and drugs and women of questionable moral value, and somewhere along the line you stop fucking off and music happens. When your fingers his the chords just right and you feel it all come together in a righteous glorious moment. You feel galvanized and you know that this is it. this is what it’s all about.

In a show like K-on there’s a certain leeway permitted; you can’t really have the expectation that a bunch of girls in japan are going to drive around at 2am looking for a party or discuss the merits of one guitarist over another while passing a j back and forth. Or all at the same time. No. Instead it’s a SoL moe-blob show about a bunch of cutesy girls in school (By the way, what the fuck man, This school can afford some high-tension gear. I about shit down both legs when I saw that set of zildjian drums.) who decide to set up a band. The animation goes from mediocre to terrible and back again, the plot is inconsistent but it tries to stay on track, and over the course of one school year they produce a whopping two(?) songs and the first season ends. While overall the entire first season was a piece of shit in terms of animation, direction, consistency and effort, there is an underlying thread that I could connect to, which was me in the garage band, relating to the girls in the club.

The second season is an utter failure in this regard. There’s nothing to relate to. Well, there was one episode where they hocked a guitar, which is something I remember our lead guitarist doing, but the rest of it is dumbfuck shit that no one gives a shriveled ratdick about. The season is about half over and they haven’t done anything worthwhile at all. When you think about how things fit together, you realize you’re simply marking time until something happens, hoping something happens and instead you get a bunch of bland dumbfuck shit about nothing. So, the second season is largely uninteresting and I suspect that when the season is over I will say to myself, “I can’t believe I watched that shit.”

“A Mississippi county school board announced Wednesday it would cancel its upcoming prom after a gay student petitioned to bring a same-sex date to the event.”

And at first I thought, “Well, that’s shitty.” But after i thought about it more and more, I realized there’s probably an element I neglected in the equation: She petitioned. See, there’s one thing I’ve always disliked and I’d like to take this opportunity to expound upon a certain aspect of my beliefs that is relevant to this situation.

I believe in a certain amount of what I would consider ‘universal rights’. (Setting aside the valid statement that it is governments, powers, and principalities that establish rights in the first place, I think it’s our obligation to establish a codified set of rights that every human has on the planet. It’s not surprising that there is a globally recognized system of rights that does exactly that, but this is outside the scope of my discussion.) I believe that everyone has the right to be treated equally. What this means is equal dispensation.For the most part this is something that is universally recognized and accepted. I don’t care if you’re black, brown, yellow, white or blue. You’re a human being and I’ll treat you exactly the same as any other human being. That’s it, that’s all there is to it.

What I hate though is that people capitalize on this sort of liberty that is handed to everyone. People that seek out special dispensation for the sake of attention. Not because they are being unfairly treated or mishandled or threatened, but because they have a false sense of entitlement- that is to say that they believe they are unique and precious and because they are unique and precious they deserve additional attention, dispensation, and consideration. This is a fundamental abuse of a system that we have struggled to maintain.

You watch the video and it’s all “me me me, I I I” it has absolutely nothing to do with rights being violated. The school district said that there was a distraction in the learning environment. Of course there would be a distraction if you’ve got a histrionic dyke that’s full of herself that has decided that she needs to take a stand in as public a way as possible. She started a petition, they made some changes in the hopes that she’d shut up and go away, and she decided to involve the press because that’s what needy attention-deprived people with self-esteem issues do when they don’t get their own way: they throw a public fit in the hopes that sooner or later someone will give them what they want.The result: The school canceled the prom. While I believe it was a bit heavy-handed, it’s also a fundamentally brilliant political maneuver. They are being quite fair to everyone.

In terms of personal experience, and keeping in mind that I haven’t been to a school dance in nearly two decades, I’m fairly certain that there actually were rules against same-sex couples going to prom. There were groups of girls and guys (both gay/ lesbian and straight) that went in couples and groups to the prom anyway, and while the rules forbade it, it happened, and I’m fairly certain that a blind eye was turned. The reason? Nobody made a big deal about it. There was no ‘petition’, there was no outcry, there was no big deal made. They simply went anyway. No great revolution, no media leakage, no reactionary fat girl sobbing hysterically on the evening news that she wasn’t getting her own way and it wasn’t fair.

Don’t get me wrong. There are legitimate violations of agreed-upon human rights all the time happening all over the world, every single day. Going to prom (or not going to prom) isn’t one of them.

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.
Any first-year revolutionary will tell you that the government is corrupt, society is weak and complacent, Mass Media and the infoglut are part of the problem.
Any first year punk rocker will tell you that revolution is coming and that the only way to avoid being sucked into the nine-to-five rat race is to fight the power.
Any first year sociology student will tell you that all of these things fit together to form the society as a whole. That it doesn’t matter at all where you stand or what you stand on, you’re simply fulfilling a role. Eat your fucking breakfast.

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 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.