Prozzäk

I first came across Prozzäk in late 2003, when a friend edited a Fake anime music video using the song Infatuation. Later down the road, he, a friend of his, and I were at Anime Mid-Atlantic 2004. We went out and got lost looking for a Wendy's of something, and we rocked out to Prozzäk the entire time. I don't remember which album it was, all I can remember was that it was catchy. Three years later, and for some inexplicable reason, I was reminded of all of this, and decided to take to Bittorrent and hunt down the artist and explore. I was surprised to find that I already knew several of their songs, such as Strange Disease, Sucks To Be You, and Be As. They're not going to be remembered as musical giants, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I enjoy their music in all its cheesy cartoon pop goodness. And it wouldn't be the first guilty pleasure to get rubbed off on me.

World War Z

World War Z is a fictional novel by Max Brooks that details a world wide zombie crisis in a convincingly realistic fasion. The book is structured as a series of interviews that detail the progression of the zombie war, which gives it a very non-fiction feel, as if this sort of event had occured in real life. The author, Brooks, is also known as the author of the Zombie Survival Guide. While the Zombie Survival Guide can be considered the humourous and lighthearted side of the coin, World War Z is the darker, more serious and tragic side of the coin. It is not completely without humour, however what humour it has takes the form of irony and situational humour.

I'm currently about half way through the book. It's been a fairly easy, albeit interesting and thoughtful read thus far. I haven't read very much in the past few years, so I've been overdue to sit down and actually read a book for no other reason than pleasure. I think my favorite section thus far has been in the section entitled Home Front USA in which a filmmaker named Roy Elliot uses propagandistic filmmaking to combat ADS (Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome, aka Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome), a condition where people simply lose the will to live and die in their sleep. Being an aspiring film student, it resonated with me, one of those testaments to the power and impact that the medium is capable of. It was an insightful detail that I was glad to see incorporated.

Moral Kombat

Not really. But seriously, what's up with that? And why is Jack Thompson such a fucking killjoy?

I saw today's Penny Arcade comic entitled "I See What You Did There", and it just tore open old angers towards this stupid shit about video games being the reason behind violence. Nevermind the fact that violence has been present in the world since before ordered society even existed. Let's also ignore the fact that explicit violence has existed in music, movies, and literature long before interactive entertainment was realized.

After reading the comic, I watched the trailer for the ludicrously entitled documentary "Moral Kombat", and read a bit about Spencer Halpin's desire to create an unbiased look at both sides of the issue. And if the trailer is any indication of the sheer amount of bias and anti-game sentiment that will be in this documentary, I'm going to go ape-shit. For something supposedly unbiased in nature, the trailer certainly seems to feature an awful lot of people notorious amongst gamers. And with the exception of Oddworld, every game featured in the trailer is one of explicit violence, which fails to represent the vast spectrum of games created over the last several decades.

I'm really just appalled by the sheer amount of ignorance of people who "righteously" wage against the "evils" of the gaming industry that are supposedly out to pervert children for a living.

I played Doom, Quake, and Mortal Kombat. I watched violent anime. I listened to explicit grunge rock. I was neglected and tormented by my peers. I didn't go out and express that violently. I was taught to be better than that. If anything, games gave me an outlet. And for that I'm certainly grateful. It just unnerves me to see people like Jack Thompson ignore violence in games as part of an over-arching social issue. It exists throughout popular culture, and always has. What he should wage against is trends in society, rather than trying to get such and such a developer shut down. A developer like Rock Star is the product of the trends of society, not the cause of it. What is needed in this society is greater emphasis on proper and positive parenting. That's where the real issue is. Don't want kids playing violent games? See to it that parents play an involved part in the upbringing of their children. To me, a parent who doesn't know the type of culture their child consumes is more appalling than the fact that children play violent video games.

The Pretender

I love DVD. I really do. It's amazing being able to go back and revisit television shows I was addicted to when they were on the air. I was really into The Pretender back when I was in high school. I got into it around the second season, and I eventually fell out of it, mostly due to the fact that I ended up missing the show a lot because of school and work. But now that it's on DVD I've been able to go through and watch it episode by episode. I got the first season last Christmas, and I got the second this Christmas, so I've been devouring the episodes two or three at a time over the last week. If I wasn't so broke, I would go out and get the third season after finishing the second. Unfortunately, I'm broke, and have more important things to spend my money on. Torrenting is out of the question, because I want to own this series. At the very least, my birthday is three months away, and I can always ask for it then.

Aim for the Top 2: Diebuster

When I saw the first episode back in October of 2004, I was taken aback by it. I had really liked the first Gunbuster, and Diebuster looked like a perversion at first. I watched the second episode, and it seemed like a bit of an improvement, and I can't remember if I even took the time to watch the third episode. I downloaded the episodes as they came out with the intention of watching the whole series in one sitting, because I couldn't stand to watch it at the pace it was going.

It finished up at the beginning of the semester, so naturally I didn't get around to watching it. But with school out, I was able to give it a go, and I have to say, it was awesome. I didn't like it initially because it seemed like a perversion, but as the series progresses, the parallels and themes become much more apparent, and by the end, the two series really connect. I was very pleased with it, and I have to say that Gainax once again produced magic. I had to go back and watch the original Gunbuster, and that series hasn't lost a bit of its charm. And with the addition of Diebuster, I think I appreciate Gunbuster a little bit more.