Build Date: Fri Oct 4 12:40:05 2024 UTC
As Americans, we reserve the right to mispronounce, misspell, fuck, or kill anything that crosses our path. This is why the French can't stand us.
-- The Compulsive Splicer
How Nature Points Up the Folly of Men
1999-05-27 13:11:59
Here's another one of those 'net phenomenon deals that just freaks my shit right out. It's a game. It's a cartoon. It's Hello Kitty with an attitude. It's Pokemon, and it's made for little babies, but ADULTS are all into this shit! Why?!? Please write me and tell me how come.
I mean, it's bad enough that there's the whole "white Japanese" rage in the first place. First it was Hello Kitty, and then Keroppi, and all down the line to Sailor Moon (which is all about pedophilia, come on; they dress in schoolgirl outfits and have superpowers: does anybody think the show would be popular if Sailor Moon and her friends were middle-aged nuns?)
Then it went back to Speed Racer. People love that bug-eyed shit with the grossly overstated occidental features and the ass-simple morality plays contained within ("Here is a bad man! We will fight him because he is evil! Now we are winning the race! Yaaaay!"). It's even understandable on some level that, say, the Japanese fetish for schoolgirl tentacle rape is not. Speed Racer = Fast Driver, and all Americans worship cars and the people who drive them. When Speed wins the race, even Jed Sanders can stand up and hoot because he understands the simpler things in life, like drivin' fast and kickin' ass. You just have to ignore the monkey, that's all. Get past the monkey in the ballcap, and Speed Racer is Seven Samurai for Trailer Parks. Whooo doggy!
But Pokemon is... what is it? It's puerile, it's super-cute, it's made for little babies. The little monsters are adorable. The human characters are generic and bland and overreact to situations in the classic Japanimation eye-popping way. It's mostly harmless, Barney on a Vivarin bender and extracted through a multi-cultural eyedropper. There's nothing to it at all. But it's FANTASTICALLY popular! AltaVista finds almost 300,000 hits on "Pokemon" (including a "Pokemon gangsta site for those who love rap.") This is taken more seriously than that Star Wars crap!
I'm not saying this obsession is bad. I'm just saying it's downright weird, and possibly unwholesome. if you don't believe me, look at some of these sites and then tell me you're not worried about stuff you hadn't even thought about before.
T O P S T O R I E S
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C L A S S I C P I G D O G
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Tastes like key lime pie, gets you hammered like nobody's business: Introducing the Key Lime Spocktail! (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
High Availability Guinness Stress Test
All too often we forget the incredible depth of technology behind the weekly ritual of TNiPN@*. We tend to only become aware of the strategy of High Available Guinness (HAG) when it rises to the forefront during a complete and utter venue failure. Yet we should all be super grateful that this system exists. (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
