a real fun time with this one. we were talking in aim blast about trolling Gaia like in the old days, and so i came up with this, in that classic Gaia style, after realized that i could write the same way for those classically Gaia posters of SA’s GOONS IN PLATOONS forum. the plotline is inspired from that last episdoe of K-ON but of course y’all knew that, and also, set-up in the OP but mostly in the replies, fucks with the logic, in fact the stated agenda, of invading a country with overwhelming military force will somehow bring self-determination to the people of that country.  WE”RE FORCING YOU TO BE FREE!!! lmao

anyways, good reaction to this thread.  the mod, trying to be ever so helpful, even started probating people for trolling it, and classylassie flipped the fuck out over it on AIM for daring to pal around with Our Brave Men In Uniform. (who are otherwise indistinguishable from the 18 year olds on Gaia)

Guys, I have a problem. A big fugging problem. I don’t know if you guys can do counseling, but I figure that since you’re all soldiers, then what *can’t* you do? Ok, hope you’re not too bored by this, because I just found out and I am majorly freaking out here.

OK, here goes. My friend wants to join the Army… but I think for all the wrong reasons. I need advice from y’all on how to mentor her about this, because I think she’s just totally confused and messed up, but hold on (hold your horses, as my old Dad used to say) and lemme give a lil’ backstory…

Ok, well, so… how to explain my friend. Well, she’s just kind of a goof. As soon as the summer’s over, she’s about to start her senior year of high school. She hangs out with a nice group of friends, me included, and we all play in a light music band together, light Rock music, real nice. We’re a real fun bunch, if you know what I mean.

But, my friend, even though we’re always so nice around us, she’s kinda shy. A delicate and fragile creature. Because of that, I guess she’s always kinda felt like she doesn’t fit in as well. Kind of a fifth wheel, you know what I mean? Know what I’m saying? Not as intimate with us as the rest of us are. If you’re wondering while I’m bothering with all this fancy psychoanalysis, so to why you should give a “fugg,” I’ll get right to the point: we’ve messed her up, and now she wants to get hit.

More specifically, she wants to get “hit” in the Army. More specifically on top of that, she wants to drop out of high school and join the Army. Do I need to be more specific than that?. So my poor friend, here she was in front of the big kitten-piles of girls, girls horsing around and playin’ pranks and gettin’ in pillow fights, (you know how teenage girls are), and my poor delicate friend, she’s always been on the outside, looking in. Oh, its all our fault, and we’ve never noticed! Can you imagine how lonely she was? All these years she’s wanted to be in on it, rough n tumbling, and now she’s totally messed up with some kind of crazy neurosis and she wants to be HIT. Like just goofing around with isn’t enough to satisfy her anymore. She’s got to have the whole shebang. She even asked us to hit her, straight-up PUNCH her, but we can’t couldn’t do it. She’s just too nice. Just a fragile lil’ creature. Our other friend, who’s so nice for doing this, even tried to help her out by showing techniques she could use to trick us into hitting her, like by pulling pranks and saying mean snippy snaps and stuff like that… but even that didn’t work. She’d try to wear a goofy outfit, but then it would turn out to look totally fabulous. Or she’d try to say something totally inappropriate, and someone would thank her for her honesty and integrity for saying what everyone else was thinking anyways. One time she tried to eat the chestnut off the top of my big piece of German Chocolate Cake, all sneaky like right before I was about to bite in, and had such a smug look on her face. But as it turns out, I don’t even like chestnuts anyways. And the failure keeps going on and on.

But anyways, back to the point. So now my friend thinks that in the Army, this “Army of One” is gonna be her new group of friends who will want to hit her all the time. She thinks its gonna be a dream come true. And I’m just like AAAhhhh, Its not gonna be so easy! The Army just ain’t no laughing matter! They won’t be so easy to get along with!

Who knows what kind of crazy devil put this thought into her head! (Edit: musta been one of those TV commercials now that I think about it) No offense to you guys, but this little girl is gonna ruin her life if she joins the Army! I mean, she wants to DROP OUTTA HIGHSCHOOL over this!! Or maybe, who knows, it’ll be her dream come true. I’ve heard that lots of people these days go into the Army to toughen up and some come out strong, responsible, and with a big head on their shoulders. What do you guys think? What have your own experiences been like? And… What do you think I should I tell her?

Please advise.

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Brendle wrote a thing on Faulkner, and I wrote another response =] just some little itty bitty words this time, but they’re  here.

Great article as always, M. Brendle.  That last bit at the end there, though, has got me thinking a little bit about the nature of truth. If real writers want to express truth, as you say, then what does it mean when a writer presents truth as a multiplicity – contradictory and inconsistent? There must be no truth in truth! And, carried further, even if some  perspectives on truth align, unless each truth is exactly the same as, inside and out, every other truth, then there must be some critical elements of each individual truth missing from their union.  Truth can never be absolute and truth can never be complete. So what good is truth to anyone?  For Faulkner, I don’t think it was worth too much.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact I consider it a transcendent glory – for is this not, truly, the existentialist credo!

To me, these true views on truth are spelled out most explicitly in that desperate scene from Absalom, Absalom, that pitted Tom in a battle with his half-brother Charles over the latter’s quest to find truth in love.  In an attempt to insist on a defacto victory, Tom relates a conversation that he had during the Civil war with his commanding officer: that it is his very feeling of righteousness that lets him know that a fight is just and noble, ending with the immortal line: “General Lee, I think I know what ‘Truth’ is.” The part of the memory he leaves out, of course, is the General’s response, who utters in utter disgust: “Truth…  dreams… hope… Where did they come from? And where are they headed…? These things… I am going to destroy!”  Moments later, Charles dies. I guess the message is that Real Truth, then, can never exist outside of dying man’s final fantasy.

Original @ Jan 16 2010.  needless to say, pretty much murdered the thread… also, in related news. anyways back to the show.

It takes just a single song of Rock N Roll…

I’m so very glad that there’s finally an existentialism thread here in the LF cool forum. Existentialism is like, wow, just so cool. Yeah this, yeah, this is the place where its at, you got the hoppin’ crowd here, that there Fyador Postoevsky, Mr. Kirkegard of course, Jonathon Larson, Hidedigger, my fav lil Applehead, and of course the transcendent spiritual force behind that that epic anime adventure, Macross 7. Who could forget their magnum opus, A Voice Reaching Across the Galaxy, where our hero Basara confronts the all-consuming nihilism of The Other HEAD-ON with the full glory of the human spirit? Here, we have truely the artistic companion of Being and Time and Nothingness – the most beautiful depiction of the actualization of Dasein and the will to impose existence before essence in a superdouble catchphrase whammy-jammy for the ages!

http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/m…kyxRt2dhrFwxMpg

Lucky for you the link above is in high def and subbed beautifully… but here’s a youtube as not to break up the flow of this post…  jump to around 14:00 in the HD video or 5:00 in the embedded youtube and prepare to read some backstory…

Echoing away in-to the sky…

What we have here, oh dear oh dear, is quite a problem. Lord Geppelnich, leader of the a high-flying weaponoid aliens called protodevilin, has hatched a plot to absorb all Spiritia in the Macross region in order to use it to power a sort of biblical paradise for his people. (although they aren’t really people, but protodevilin) Sounds like a pretty evil plan, but, you see, like humans, the Protodevilin need to Spiritia Energy to live, the life force energy generated by human life, but not by protodevilin life.  sounds like quite a sticky pckle if you ask me.

Our wayward hero, the famous pacifist musician Basara, chart-topping hunk, is humanity’s greatest weapon. At the start of the series, a rich eccentric leaves him a giantic ultra-advanced battle gear piloted with an electric guitar-hero controller, well, just because he was such a big fan. Everyone was, like, WTF???? Why should this retard grasshat have control of one of mankind’s most powerful weapons?? But, it turns out, unbeknownst to all, that not only is Basara, like, the best pilot in the history of EVAR, but also that Basara’s music generates a Spirita energy so powerful and so pure that the protodevilin just can’t handle it.  …sorta like me when i get a big glass of chocolate weed milk.A nyways so there you have it.

Look off into the light of dawn…

here, we, at the climax. Basara and the human forces assault Geppelnich’s fortress (actually a fittingy MONSTEROUS transformation of Geppelnich himself.) They sing for the people… but something goes wrong… REALL WRONG. The spiritia absorbion has passed a critical limit, oh no – TOO MUCH SPIRITIA!!! – accidentally creating a sort of spiritia black hole that threatens to engulf the entire universe!  GEPPELNICH IS THE ALL-CONSUMING NIHILISM OF tHE oTHER MADE FLESH.

and soon all your troubles start to…

aahHH~h… so powerful… The humans cannot stand this ever more brutal assault. They sing, but they sing not just to sing, but because they see basara sing…. and then there’s basara too, but he sings not because he can see himself sing, but because the others see him singing. “Love will saaave, the world” – um ya right, just keep tellin yourself that sweetharts. Now slowly the singing fades away, melting away, you could say in fact, to that cackling madness of the awful horrible no-good inauthentic life, that “bad faith” of derived control of the Other’s Other…

MELT ALL AWAY…

The persona of Basara too melts all away. He is alone now, left with only his oldest, truest memory of his self – his oldest, truest desire. Here, severed from the universe and his physical body, he is confronted with the mountain, that gaddanged, ever-mountainous mountain, that which could be so large yet so fleeting.. what is it? what is this mountain?? why must i sing to the mountain?? why do i play my guitar! ahhhH~~ , alone with the mountain!  at last i understands! I SING TO THE MOUNTAIN BECAUSE ITS A MOUNTAIN AND I SING! I PLAY MY GUITAR TO MAKE IT MOVE! ITS GOTTA MOVE!!! BECAUSE BASARA! IS BECOMING! MOVEMENT!!!

<h1><font color={“rED”?>GTODAY IMG GONNA MAKE YOU MVOe !!!!!!!!![b?]

NOW LISTEN TO MHY SONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DASEIN LIVES~!!!~ A RESOUNDING GLORY AS SUNG BY THE EFFLORESCENT BLOOM ~!!!~ RE-EMERGING RECURSIVELY INTO ITSE ~!!! ~ELF IS AN EBULLIEN!~T AND PER~HAPS EVEN !!! VIOLENT BIRTH !!~~~!!!!~~!!! A  FULLY ENGAGED PERSPECTIVE oN DASEIN CAN ASSERT ITS DESIRE TO LIVE WITHIN THE UNIVERSE IN THE HERE AND NOW!!!~~!!!!! ONLY DASE!IN CAN LEAP PAST THE EM!PTINESS OF THE HUMAN CON!SCIOUSNESS BY HIS FREECHOICE ALONE!@!!!! BASARA HAS REMEMBE!RED WHO HE IS – HE IS BECOMING MOVE~MENT! AND SO HE MOVES! NOW LISTEN TO HIS SONG!

AaaHHHAHhhH~~~ NO!!! What’s this? Basara’s physical body was too far damaged from the previous attack! Now, But what’s this? We’re moving sofast now!We’re saved! Dasein expands to the whole of the environment, of course it cannot be bound by physical restraints! DASEIN IS BEING THERE, and by there, I mean where it is! A being is everywhere it is engaged, both the physical environment and the social mind. Sivil, a confused protodevilin fascinated with Basara’s joyful song, in an ephiphany, has finally understood this source of Basara’s power, and that she too can sing her own song, and that she too can create spiritia energy! So here she is! She arrives just in time! She will carry his body! He will sing his song! unstoppable! FLY AWAY~! FLY AWAY~! TAKE OFF INTO THE SKY~!!

But physical assault is impossible! Say, didn’t we just learn that Only the power of song CAN MAKE THAT MOUNTAIN MOVE!! so let’s keep trying until it moves! oh, move~ TRY AGAIN~! it sings~! TRY AGAIN~! at last, the joy spirita creation! BELIEVE WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT~!

this feeling running through me…

the! overwhelming, breathtaking, orgasmic! beauty of spirita creation!

It takes just a single song of Rock N Roll…

why our comic artists so obsessed with the dreary and mundane? while japan makes, again and again, super cool-ass, tyranasaurus awesome animes and mangas based on action and adventure, the american spirit is cursed to dwell forever in the pit of the dreary everyday dolldrums. we should fucking prosecute harvey pekar and his ilk for warcrimes, for terrorizing the best 2D artists of our american millenial generation.

the time to stand up is NOW! transcend oppression!

ramblin’ on, ramblin’ on, ramblin’ on. potpourri post here.  lotta different things going on, some new, some old.  just wrote this great troll of L&F (here ) its not interesting enough by itself to transcribe in its entirety, but the post that that i reference initially is really ownage, so check it out:

a brief summary:

the basic question is this: why does the tea party act the way it does, with all its insane rage and contradictory demands? its easy to see that they may be spooked by the economic slump and changing demographic shifts, but why then does it express itself as it does? the OPAA uses a hegelian dialectic to try to understand this rage and where it may be heading next.

d&d’s retarded response to the article, and the discussion i had with dm yesterday over hitler’s motivation for the holocaust, reminded me of that new atheism thread from a few months back: here is the article, and here are my posts. i cannot believe that i actually bothered to logically deconstruct that one dude’s Neo Atheist trash.  i’ll replicate it here:

in response to this rebuttal, in a thread about how Neo Atheism is actually devoid of logic and reason, i wrote (editing slightly to remove the  word filter that SA needs for google adsense):

that kinda shit is like what the first two dozen paragraphs of what hart’s essay is about, all this recent infantalized garbage without any substance. 3000 years of western tradition countered by “Of course God doesn’t exist. Don’t be stupid. You’re not stupid, are you? Do you think think there’s some sort of Flying Speghetti Monster up the the Sky? Don’t be stupid.”

like, here’s how the essay reads:

paragraph 1: I know You Are But What Am I

next we got a quote, which is then completely ignored except to attack Hart as if he were one of those God Damned Liberal Elites that ann coulter and sean hannity are always raving about. its an example of an ad-populist fallacy: “guh, he tried to write to his audience as if they were INTELLIGENT??? asshole didn’t dumb himself down even at the risk that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE might not get it? how offensive.” notice he doesn’t actually say what’s wrong with his quote, except that since Hart Wrote it, it Must Be Dumb. (ad hom)

then, another quote, which is also ignored, except to tl;dr it and to suggest that the reader tl;dr it as well. (an ad-ignorantium if there ever was one) why include a quote if you’re just gonna ignore it? because he isn’t interested in engaging the ideas in hart’s essay. the ad-ig is followed through doubly-so by suggesting that whatever aquinas (who isnt even mentioned in the OP essay at all) and nietzsche wrote are irrelevant to the discussion, and that hart is an asshole for even bringing them (him) up. then we have ANOTHER ad-pop attack, strengthened with appeal to authority (of dawkins and hitchens) that is also combined with a converse fallacy of accident: “people don’t see the way got hart does. they see it the way dawkins does,” by which he means as an image of God as The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

next he begs the question: “So: do the New Atheists recycle old arguments? Of course they do. But that’s not because they’re illiterate, it’s because those arguments have never been convincingly answered.” this is right after tl;dring four times, including one of the most famous atheists of all time, who tried to address some of them. notice again he doesn’t specifically give examples of questions that he doesn’t think have been convincingly answered, unlike hart, who does. he could have even specifically refuted the examples hart gives, or defended the arguments that hart attacks, but doesn’t.

i don’t really understand the point of the next paragraph. hart does not mention newton anywhere. and how does what a 400 year-dead man felt about the relative importance of his own life’s work have to do with anything? (and besides, the “christian mysticism” was deeply important to newton) the paragraph ends with a fallacy of composition in two different ways:  judging the worth of religion on the basis of one large Bad Thing against one Obvious Good Thing That Good People Would Do Anyways, and by then equating religion with oppressive class structure. notice that we’ve moved from faith in god to Organized Religion.
the whole thing reeks of a strawman built from misplaced concretion (e.g. replacing a defense of faith, which Hart wrote about, with Organized Religion).

we end as he begs the question: “To say merely that Christianity is comforting or practical — assuming you believe that — is hardly enough. You need to show that it’s true.” which imposes his own definition on the purpose of Christianity/Religion, that it must be true in the sense of empirically true: “And if you want to assert that something is true, the onus is on you to demonstrate it, not on the New Atheists to demonstrate conclusively that it isn’t.” of course, that *is* true – its not onus of the New Atheists to prove that religion is false – but that isn’t what Hart wrote about at all. (fallacy of affirming the consequent).

so this response is pathetic through and through. it does not cite any specific instances in the essay other than 2 quotes which are completely ignored, and furthermore does not address any claim about how the arguments propounded the New Atheist authors are logically and rationally unsound. which, of course, again, is the whole issue that hart had a problem with to begin with! that this movement thats supposedly built from logic and reason do not actually apply logic and reason to their arguments!

to address the OP as “content-less” while saying that this retarded response is anything worthwhile is just unbelievable (lol) to me. like it really does read like some big socratic manifesto, like as if this guy is adding all sorts of purposely contradictory shit and giggling to himself. (although, to that, i can relate…)

the best part of that thread was that i was able to troll this totally insane Neo Atheist dude named Sylph into trying to derive an empirical model for ethics.  insane as it sounds, here it is in its original form.  truly one of my greatest trolling accomplishments.  it is without a doubt one of the gooniest things ever written, and, as a bonus, totally implodes the neo athiest position with a far greater percussive force than anyone outside their dumb movement could ever write. i will preserve it here for all eternity:

Observed statistically significant number of people of different races to prove the experimental hypothesis “biological and potential mental differences between racial categories are negligible” The reason given for the Holocaust was contingent on the falsehood “Biological and mental differences between racial categories are significant.”

Behind the idea “equality” is the scientific fact “racial categories are spurious.” The equality of man is true. A Christian can hold the idea “All Men are Created Equal” which is a poor interpretation of an observation. “Men” exist, “Equal” is a strong approximation and “Created” is non sequitur “Jews should be killed” is a conclusion drawn upon a scientifically untrue statement, “The category ‘ethnic Jews’ is sufficiently biologically and neurologically different to permit moral judgements on the basis of race.”

“Racial categories are so biologically similar that the very idea is spurious” is Science, we know because men of science have met and examined other men. “All Men are Created Equal” is sentiment in part approximating reality and “Jews are a category of inferior men” is false.

I guess I’m defining “Science” and “True” in an ideological way. “Science” means “attempting strong approximations of reality through experiment” and Truth means “approximating reality.” Feynman’s “Science” and Dawkins’ “Truth” I suppose. Therefore to find a “Scientific Truth” is to approximate reality through reasonable conclusions drawn upon empirical observation.

I realise now I’ve been way too loose with those words and I really ought to have defined terms, also I’ve been taking the piss when I thought it might be funny, sooo yeah. Sorry everyone.

You CAN observe “a Jewish dude.” and disprove “Jews are inferior life”. That statement takes one good Jew to disprove. To disprove “Jews are inferior life” as an approximate, not a definite statement you would have to observe a statistically significant number of Jews.

Arbitrary meaning “Individually determined and divorced from reality”. I don’t have to define “Good” here except to say that “Good” necessarily approximates “true” in some sense whilst “Death” ends perception. “Good” is contingent on human experience of something while “brain death” precludes human experience of anything.

Causing death is not good because “good” pertains to human experience and a man’s murder entails the destruction of a capacity to experience. It cannot be “Good” to destroy “Good”.

“Pain”, when perceived, precludes a search for the good by limiting perspective. There are other vastly better ways of getting at the essence; “Pain is bad” but they all approximate in some way the truth “Pain is obscuring and obstructive.”

Nazi racial categorisations are not true because the biological differences do not correlate with the alleged categories. The differences are too superficial for the approximation “Jewish inferiority” to be in any way meaningful since “inferiority” is contingent on the falsehood “Jews are sufficiently biologically distinguishable from Aryans for a qualitative assessment based on an existing criteria to be possible”.

“Killing the ethnically Jewish is right” is factually wrong because killing prevents good and besides “ethnically Jewish” is a weak approximation. “Killing the ethnically Jewish is right” is not a matter of opinion because the men labelled Jews exist aside from the category as men biologically indistinguishable from non Jews and murder is a physical act, not a preference for one thing over another. A volitional act creates circumstances that exist as reality, not mental “software” simulations. Brain death is a factual and permanent state of thoughtlessness precluding all experience including whatever the good is.

Even if “Good” and “Right” are opinions, murder and torture are still “anti-good” because they are opinion annihilators. “thought” and “opinion” are at the least properties of the material arrangement called “the Brain”. Experimental observation confirms that “the Brain” is the arrangement of matter necessary for thought, because the empirical observation of neurological activity through machinery shows a factual correlation between brain damage and altered thought patterns.

If you believe that “the Good” is mere opinion, then on your own terms I reject your concept of “Good”.

I hope at least the loving hours this took to beat out of my aching head go some way to at least evidencing that Dawkins Atheists are not intellectually lazy.

he has a few other equally retarded posts in the original thread (i branched this into its own new thread because i was so wowed by it) which i quote in that other link above.

anyways, back to that first link i posted, it went over most ppls’ heads although Red Ken had this ownage response.  It looks like some d&d ppl just found it though, so we’ll see where it goes from here.

Update: ahahahaha a big retard d&d-er took my “Jesus, that was terribly written” thread seriously and tried to start flaming me as if i were a real mod imposing some draconian policy, and then started flustering after i said that i would ban him http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3318997&userid=16090

now this is one disjointed blog update!

one of my favourite stories, doncha know.  originally posted (here) on Feb 14 2010, although I actually wrote it for my girlfriend for Valentines Day cause she likes my stories. :~) the biggest influence for me on the style and tone was italo calvino’s big ass book of italian folk tales, which totally owns and y’all should get if you like this.  toby and i would read them out loud together :~)

i’ve made a few small edits just to make the text smoother.  i found the pictures in like, 60 seconds on GIS, and added them just to break up the text for the tl;dr crowd, so i ain’t adding them back here.

ole L&F sure didn’t know what to make of this sucker…

♪ Listen so kindly, cause if you do,
I’ll tell ya a tale straight from Xanadu! ♬

There once was a humble bakers man who was married to a princess, and they had a son named Stretchy Stroodle.  The baker had won the princess as his wife a long time ago in a great contest.  Every king and every prince in the whole wide world came to enter, bringing gifts of gold and diamonds. But the humble baker brought the best gift of all – the greatest treasure in all the land, they said! – one of his delicious apple pastries, named the Stroodle, after himself.  Not for all the gold and all the diamonds  of all the famous kings of all the world would that wise princess trade to give up even one bite of that wonderful Stroodle!  With the contest over, they were married at once.

The new couple’s happiness ended, however, on the night that Stretchy was born. At the exact moment that he took his first cry, two cats, one white and one black, meowed at once, followed by another exact moment where two bolts of lightning flashed and two chords of thunder crashed.  Papa Stroodle was so scared by all the commotion that he ran out screaming and never looked back.  The two cats became Stretchy’s godfathers.  His mother liked to say that a fiddle hummed for every step that Stretchy walked, played by none other than his black godfather, The Devil.  And, not to be outdone, mind you, his white godfather, The Lord, had the twinkle of a harp ride along for ever word that Stretchy talked.  Anyways they all lived together quite happily as a family until Stretchy came of age.

“My dear family, its time that I went out to make my fortune.  I will become the greatest singer and dancer in all the land! Goodbye!”
His mother hugged him tightly and his two godfathers gave their blessing.  “Goodbye, my son!” they all called after him, as Stretchy walked out towards the rising sun. And with that, he was off.

After walking for miles and miles, Stretchy Stroodle arrived at a great palace. A king, who also happened to be the President of the United States of America, greeted the traveler with open arms.  The king heard his story, and said, “Listen carefully.  You can stay here at the palace and do whatever you please, but you must do one thing for me in return.”
“Anything for you, Your Majesty!” Stretchy replied.
“As you might have heard, the fearsome Monster, who eats the body and souls of all those who dare enter his lair, has a great treasure. You must get it for me, or you’ll lose your head!”
“But you said the Monster eats the body and souls of all those who dare enter his lair.  You are condemning me to death!”
“That is none of my concern.  Think it over long and hard and I’m sure you’ll do your best.”
“Meowy Wowy!” Stretchy said, “As Sure as Stroodle, this is gonna be one tough cookie! But, I better try my best!”  And with that, he was off!

After once again walking for miles and miles, Stretchy came upon a great forest, which he thought might be a good place to take a rest.  As he was fixing a spot under a johnny apple tree, he heard, all of a sudden, a sweet, lyrical chirp. “Stretchy, why take a nap here, when you could go home to your mama?” a mysterious voice said.  “I know what you think: ‘Ooooh, I miss my mama, and I miss my warm, cozy bed.’”
Stretchy looked up to see the cutest little thing he ever did see.  It was a little baby bird with eyes opened wide.    “Stretchy, I’m super serious! You better turn back!” the bird said.  “That monster, I’ve seen him… he’s a, he’s a mean one, he is…!!”
“If you think I’m heading back now, then you’re just coo coo kaboodles!  Scary or not, I’ll beat that Monster if its the last thing I do!”
After hearing such an amazing display of confidence, that little babe bird hopped right on down and said, “Well then, I’ll show you just how to coo!”… and he wigged and jigged, up and down, just as birdies do! Seeing that funky chick shake his rump like that, well, ole’ Stretchy, he knew just what to do all right. He squatted his bum, plump as a pear, and *vrum, vrum, vrum* learned the birdie dance stepping along in snyc.  “Whenever you find trouble,” said the bird, “remember my moves, and you’ll do alright by me.”

A little time went by, and Stretchy traveled on and on. The thick overgrowth of this old forest obstructed much of the noontime sky. A cross-crossing of branches formed a sort of blanket that left little room for more than a few splotches and whiskers of the sunshine to slip on through.  Blanket… Stretchy was starting to wish he took that nap.  The forest was so still and quiet… the ambience was quite serene, one might say, if they had a loud mouth and were tryin to be funny. But before anyone even had a chance to think about that, the cool silence was broken when Stretchy, who certainly had a loud mouth, muttered allowed his realization that he was forgetting something important. “Oooooh, I’m so hungry…” he said. With all the commotion with that birdy, he had forgotten to eat his breakfast! And, just as suddenly as a forgotten memory, a banana peel came flying *SPLAT* right smack-dab in the middle of his face!
“Huh, what?  Whozzat?”
*SPLAT*  Another peel!  He couldn’t believe it!  And there wasn’t even any banana to eat!
“Oooooh, whoever you are, why I outta… well, you sure are a rascal, but I do love a good prank!”
At those words, a little babe chimp jumped right on out and said “Well I’ll show you just how to oooh!”… and he clapped and slapped, round and round, just as monkeys do!  Stretchy couldn’t help but clappin right along to the rhythm himself, *clap clap clap* hopping on every other foot. *hop hop hop* In this way he learned the monkey dance.  “Whenever you find trouble,” said the chimp, “remember my moves, and you’ll do alright by me.”  Then the monkey gave him a bushel of bananas and sent him on his way.

A little while later, Stretchy stopped by a pond by the side of the road to have drink…. but Yuck!
“Meowy Wowy, puddin’ and pie, this pond’s so salty that it makes me CRY!”  The pond had turned into a little sea, filled by so many tears of cowardly men on their way to face the Monster.
A little babe catfish, who had made the pond his home, lept right on up and said “Thanks for helping build my home.” The fish fell, but lept again to say “You’ll need my help,” and then “so I’ll show you just how to mew!”… and he flipped and flopped, side to side, just as fishies do!  This time Stretchy slunk down like a strand of spehettti, squrimin around on his tummy in the mud like that fish did in the salty water.  “Whenever you find trouble,” said the catfish, “remember my moves and you’ll do alright by me.”

At last Stretchy reached the lands of the Monster. He found himself before a great ravine.  “What am I to do?” he said.  The first thing to try, of course, was the birdie’s dance, and, with a light hop and a twice-tap of his feet, Stretchy was flying fast and free, as a gust of wind billowed up behind him and whisked him on across the valley.  “Well thats just alright by me,” Stretchy said.

Next, Stretchy came to a great moat, a hundred leagues wide, across which he could see the scary lair of the scary Monster.  “What am I to do here?” he pondered aloud.  “The monkey’s dance won’t help me here. Wait, wasn’t there some other moves I was supposed to try?” Thus, with the help of the fishie, Stretchy sped past the moat lickity-split. He never did reveal the secret of whether he danced on the water or under it, however.

Finally, Stretchy was face-to-face with the Monster himself. He was a huge gross thing, a mess of fur and thorns and teeth.  Tangled in the great beard under his chin were remnants of past meals partly eaten – the rancid, rotting bones and flesh of adventurers just like Stretchy himself. The Monster smelled about as mean as he looked, and worst of all, acted as mean as he smelled.  “I’ll swallow your ssssoul,” he shouted!  Well, with that Monster after him, what was poor Stretchy to do?  He took the whole bunch of bananas from his pack and threw them straight up into the air and *SPLAT* the whole lot fell right back down on his face.  Oh, how the Monster laughed and laughed and laughed!  Then Stretchy started hopping around on one foot, just like the monkey.  OOooH OOooH! And the Monster just laughed and laughed and laughed! Stretchy quickly grabbed the treasure with this distraction, and, with a light hop and a twice-tap of his shoes, did the last dance he knew – the Daddy Dance.  He ran out there as fast as he could, screaming “Wee Wee Wee!” all the way back home!

When Stretchy got back to the palace, the King lauded him with all the honours in the kingdom.  “As a reward, I shall give you my beautiful daughter for your bride, and one day you shall be the new President of the United States of America, and King of my Stroodle Kingdom!”
“But wait… I’m already a Stroodle! How did you know?”
“You’re a Stroodle too? Then you must be my son!”
Well how about that, it turned out the king was Papa Stroodle the whole time.  Stretchy and the princess got married in a lavish ceremony where they served steamed brocoli pudding, mincemeat casserole, and fried bananas. I was there, hiding under the tables.  But did anyone even think to say to me so much as “Have a glass of apple juice?”

♫ Happily from then on did they live,
But nothing to me did they ever give! ♩♬

Director’s DVD Commentary: originally written (here) on Jan 3, 2010, just after Avatar came out.  i thought that maybe i would write a much smaller thread? like 3-4 paragraphs, similar to my Maple Story (its your story; RIP story) hero monomyth threads that i posted in phiz? but as I kept writing I kept finding more and more and more correspondences far too direct and numerous to be accidental.  at some point it ceased to be an aggressive parody of l&f philosophy threads and became a much more subtle troll, something so bizarre as to be in default disbelief but at the same time so completely right as to be impossible to argue against.  i was giggling like crazy the whole time i was writing this. avatar owns so much.

anyways i still like this post so much that i edited this a bit in case anyone that isnt a goony goon wanted to read it, e.g. to make it so it doesn’t sound like something i wrote in a few hours while my gf was taking a nap, loaded with forums in-jokes.  i was giggling the whole time i was editing it too cause its still so funny to me.  love taht blessed blase-faire attitude.  NEway Plz enjoy.

Some things you can just see clearer through a second set of eyes.  I saw James Cameron’s Avatar for the second time just last night, and I was super surprised on how much more complex and subtle a movie can be when you’re not drunk and half drunk and half-asleep on Christmas Day. Meowy wowy, this is a clever film!  I started to pay closer attention after I noticed the insanely efficient  editing – none of the gratuitous fluffy fluff that you usually get in blockbuster sci-fi films.  No, this was a something that a someone put a lotta thought into.

My first impression of Avatar, like everybody elses’, was from all the peeps on the net bashing on it.  Everybody really really  wanted so badly to really really hate this film.  First ya had the yupping hippies goin on about the lack of militancy to its message, and then ya had whineo hipsters harping on its consumerist meta-irony.  Goony neckbeards sperged at the lack of implementation adherence to the canon of Sci-Fi icon Charles Darwin.  Film scholars stood on stumps in city parks brandishing printouts of the script to Dances with Wolves as if they were with Campus Crusade for Christ. And worst of all, Teapartiers and white-guilt anti-racists alike tried reducing Avatar to just yet another example of a white saivor coming in to lead the ignorant mud folks to true white values. If I ever said a dismissive comment to this truly genius film, I apologize.  Please forgive me.  In fact, just in case, I think I should still spiritually atone myself for my prior ignorance by talking through my thoughts on Avatar here in my cool blog. Also, here’s a picture so this wall of text doesnt look as huge.

In essence, I believe that Avatar is a complete, utter, total, comprehensive parody of Star Wars, James Cameron’s flying fuckin finger in the face of his bitter rival George Lucas. The two movies have been compared quite a bit since Avatar’s release on network news channels, but I think the comparison goes deeper than just ticket sales and special effects. In particular, Avatar parody’s the very soul of Star Wars, which is its use and subsequent popularization of Joseph Campbell’s Hero Monomyth. The very title “Avatar” suggests yet another implementation of the monomyth (JC has refered to specific instantiations of the monomyth as “avatars of the hero with 1000 faces”).
However, everything from star wars is backwards, from scene-by-scene comparisons to the very structure of the monomyth itself. I’ll use the simplified monomyth schema of David Adams, which i copy/pasted from wikipedia, to present my own flying finger-fuck of all you avatar haters:

1. Miraculous conception and birth

This occurs at the very last moments of Avatar. As i said above, the monomyth is completely inverted; the starting point of the hero’s journey is what closes the film, which is, obviously, jakesully’s true na’vi “birth.” Compare this victory scene with its equivalent in star wars, where the assembled mass stood in rigid order: in Avatar, the masses are moving wildly, yet oscillating; maintaining the same average position over time, but ultimately parodying a standing military formation.

2. Initiation of the hero-child

Again, this phase is an inversion. Here, jakesully’s initiation proves himself as one of the people by joining in them with battle of an enemy that is not naturally his own. And again, consider the inverted Star Wars parallel:  instead of the rebel fleet attacking the monolothic death star, the rebels are the monolith and the fleet is the empire. I’m sure there are some pretty close scene-by-scene comparisons, as the whole damn thing reminded me so much of the X-Wing/Y-Wing / Star Destroyer battles of Star Wars and its sequels, with the birds weaving through the ships like that (although maybe
Return of the Jedi, which had a much larger space battle and also that whole parallel business on the ground of Endor, is a better comparison), but I can’t remember well enough to describe them here. Oh well, maybe when it comes out on DVD.  (note that it is out on DVD now but I’ll probably not delve any deeper into this) At any rate, the whole ridiculous battle ends with a final showdown between Darth Vader and Luke, or in this case, Catlady vs Mecha-Lucas. (Yes, JC hates George Lucas so much as to portray him as the very reification of fascism, but more on that later.) However, with the help of a distraction from Han Solo, two shots are fired into the one universalweakpoint of evil men – the human heart. RIP georgey porgey.

An extremely important scene here is easily overlooked within the chaos : just before the battle, jakesully communes with that special glowing tree, i.e. the avatar of ewya or whatever that goddess’s name is. (sounds a lot like “ewok” if you ask me), begging her to directly help the Na’vi in their battle. He says that the humans “have killed their mother,” which, on the surface, sounds like standard hollywood treehugger-slimehippie fare, except that, in just the preceding scene with Grace, the “mother” is redefined from its usual connotation as the collective unconscious of the planet – the total biological ecosystem is just her body. So, when jakesully says that the humans have “killed their mother”, he means it not only in the literal sense of industrialization trampling on the green parts of his former world, but as both a perversion of the natural Oedipal order and as the death of humanity’s collective unconscious by the unshakable dominance of fascism. jakesully rejects this corrupted ethos by doing what he was born to do: kill his false father (George Lucas) and eventually “pass through the eye of Ewya.” (fuck his mother)

Its worth spending a paragraph on the depiction of mankind’s fascist civilization in the film. Athough there is no backstory,  which is a relief from a pacing perspective, it is clear that cameron has extrapolated mankind’s current path into the mid 22nd century, where corporate power and nationalist wars are the modus operandi of the day.  I guess Francis Fukuyama was right after all. Each facet of the pandorian operation is singular-minded in totality, and the corporate facet is in dominant control of all – note that the highest ranking military officer on pandora, Colonel George, is only a Colonel, not a General, and his direct superior is that corporate slimeball dude. A “survival-of-the-fittest”  ideology is pervasive in both internal and external interaction, and cognitive dissonance is apparent at extreme heights. Take slimeball dude, for instance. Profit is his God. He does not understand Pandora nor the technology he intends to use to subdue it (he cant even use the 3d computer monitor by himself) nor even how his own humanity can exist within it. (as seen by the parallels between his handling of Jake’s Na’vi evacuation plan, perhaps as a last-chance to redeem his humanity, his submission to the Colonel’s demand for all-out war, and his last final glance at Jake before boarding the spaceship at the end of the film. The purified resultant of Capitalism does not leave room for one’s humanity!)

3. Withdrawal from family or community for meditation and preparation

As the attack from the world tree has become a reality, jakesully’s alienation (lol) has reached a breaking point. Cut off from both  reality and simulation, he  is unable to determine which is which. Eventually simulation becomes true reality. Why?

This phase of Avatar is why I reject the white anti-racist interpretation. How different would this movie have  been had jakesully would have been an American POCman? First, I think the prevailing white guilt accusation would have been nonexistent, although nothing in the movie itself would not have been different at all.  Coulda been the same damn movie line for line for line, scene for goddamn scene. Consider the reality of the 22nd century by the makeup of the base: there are people of all shapes, colours, and sizes here. The average makeup suggest heavy racial mixing. There is no racial tension and all speak with one “American” voice.  El Luce binds a unity that cuts across all racial and gender boundaries though the elimination of the discord of discourse. In fact, the only outsider here is jakesully himself, rejected by all.  He’s shunned by the military aspect because of his disability; (the first we see of this is when he is mocked by a (black!) solider as soon as he leaves the plane!) it is even said that the military is not willing to spend the money to fix his back injury, despite the injury presumably due to some sort of combat. Thanks neoliberalism! He is also rejected by the scientists, because he does not have the education of his egghead twin brother. Poor ole’ Jake is treated like a piece of property. (the dragon of capital consumes all)  It is only the Na’vi who engage him as he truly is, as a free being. As a part of the Na’vi, Jake is finally Being-In-The-World – jakesully! – a warrior willing to risk both his human life (with the escape) and his Na’vi life (by connecting to that big ass bird) to prove it.

4. Trial and Quest

Luke’s trial was to prove that he has the spirit of a jedi; Jake’s trial is to prove that he has the spirit of a  Na’vi.  Duh. The trials in Avatar are more reminiscent of the Empire Strikes Back than A New Hope, but I guess thats fair as that equivalent scene is like a total of two minutes in SW and here it lasts like a quarter of the movie. The inversion here is that for Jake, the trial&quest do not transform the normal to an exception (superman), but rather from an exception to a part of the whole. The gift that he brings is not a supernatural force, but an outsider perspective and knowledge that allows the Na’vi to overcome the threat of the other outsiders – truly giving it in totality, not as like an “indian giver,” so to say, as we know he does not have “it” any more by the end of the film. Compare that to the human strategy of taking the na’vi perspective and knowledge by force – a strategy which fails.

Whatever, this part of the movie was IMHO the coolest, especially where he rapes the shit out of that flying duck thing, the beginnings of a proper oedipal stance that will culminate with his unholy matrimony with nature before the end of the film.  Ganbare, jakesully!  The sweet bliss of the catlady awaits!

5. Death

Luke is confronted with the tragedy of an entire planet’s death before he makes his first actions as a hero, felt not by himself, but by trusting the emotion generated indirectly by an intermediary (Obi Wan’s force connection). Jakesully, on the other hand, is confronted with the tragedy of the slaughter of those jackal dog things – felt not by himself, but by trusting the intermediary itself (catlady). Another twisted parallel (an orthogonal perhaps?) is seen in the visuals of those fairy jellyfish things, that represent the pure souls of the dead, that surround jake in order to help him win trust and respect from catlady; compare to star wars, where the rocky asteroids of a smashed and dead planet engulf the millennium falcon.

6. Descent into the Underworld

The initial foray into the jungles of pandora. Jake’s first impression is with whimsical, gentle, otherworldly fauna. Mos Eisley, where Luke first encounters alien beings, is in contrast repulsive and violent). Jake’s encounter with violence occurs only after he’s upset the natural order of things. Forced to defend himself against an avatar of Cerberus (that bigass dog thing with the multi-part head, I mean, come the fuck on, how much more blatent does it need to be?), he escapes through hyperspace, crossing the river Styx into the REAL underworld.  Also note the imagery of the torch, a handy lil tool that you usually use to creep through tombs…

7. Resurrection and Rebirth

Very obviously, Jake’s rebirth into his avatar body compares pretty close to Luke’s acceptance as Obi-Wans apprentice; Jake leaves behind the old, dessicated home of his broken body, while Luke leaves behind his literal home, full of dead family members.

It is here where jake submisses to his false father, Colonel Lucas. The oedipal complex is again perverted here – the “No of the Father” is instead transformed into a “Permission of the Father,” as the colonel promises the re-acceptance of Jake into the hierarchy, through the return of his true legs and thus sexual vitality, should he accede to his will. The Colonel himself is warped by a different kind of simulation than that of the Avatars, evident from his weight-lifting shortly before entering a total mechanical war machine. He, like the rest of the Pandorian Corporation, has his true essence hidden under the guise of Science. The scar on his face marks him as the enemy, but also makes him look totally wicked cool. That is, funnily enough, an inversion of the real life George Lucas, who looks totally Gay. (but still has a fucked up face)

8. Ascension, apotheosis, and atonement

Both films begin with a descension from the heavens. In Star Wars, what descends is the birth of a quest, but in Avatar, what descends is the hero himself, an inversion of the traditional final ascension to the gods. Whatever, I think you get the idea by this point.

god luck and god bles.s