I fucking love anime. This is a picture of Section 9 from Ghost in the Shell, they are part of a fictional governmental agency in the distant future of Japan. The art is pretty cool, and the characters are sometimes brilliant and usually good. But what really makes me love it is how it all ties together in an utterly foreign world. Everything in it was carefully designed, and most of it is extremely unlike anything we know. It makes me happy people can imagine things like this. I love the political espionage and technology-heavy plot, and I love how it’s all actually futuristic, not stupid George Lucas blasters that are worse than modern firearms. But I fear parts of it as well. The manga artist and writer of it, Massamune Shirow, also writes “erotic art” according to Wikipedia. The female protagonist’s body certainly shows this to some extent. I worry, is this just more young male pandering? I like to think it holds some real value, but what if it’s just meaningless badassery with impossibly attractive women? Certainly it explores some deep themes throughout the whole show, but does that justify the Major’s appearance? I worry I have not grown at all, that I still pursue violence and sex and that’s why I like this.
Goodbye kiss for a British soldier at a London rail station. He’s on his way- via ship- to join stranded BEF in Belgium
-WW2 Tweets from 1940
An essay I wrote on feminism.
Born into the city’s light
our dark, private gestation ends.
into last night’s primal fight
to the strange crowd we ascend.
(anonymity of this sort
gives you comfort.)
Tentatively I walk next to you.
-but now I know it cannot last long
our relationship we now eschew-
but despite all this, I hum your song.
(Oh, bother
do I even know another?)
prior I did not fear
leaving you and the dark
but now my flesh is seared
by that very light as we embark
In your wake the city I remember sprouts up,
it is tearing itself out of that feared light,
I am looking to your black past to usurp
my future, my past, all else is too bright
Suddenly you take
my hand from me
you hold it, for my sake
and leave. Where? I cannot see.
I hear your whisper
-in all this chaos
drawing me hither and thither-
Your mockery belates us:
“Let there be light.”
(via inkandivory)
I made this today. It took too long.
(via pabloley)
It is rare you will find me arguing against dissent and debate, but here I believe it it the moral thing to defend. Trayvon Martin has been killed, and it seems his judge, juror, and executioner in the American public. I do not care if he was shot because he was black, or if it was out of self-defense, because that is not my function in our justice system. As amusingly happens, the media, rather incestuously I might add, decides to report on the media:
“But his [Martin’s] death has taken on a whole new meaning here, where media outlets from around the world have descended, to figure out just what happened more than a month ago when neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed Martin.”*
But what function does the media have in this? What do our opinions matter in the subject? Have we considered the evidence carefully, or even heard the arguments of the lawyers? It would be one thing, if the case was already closed and new evidence was being brought forward that justice was not served. That would be a story, if the public was interested in actual stories. I’m sure that this happens all the time and is much too boring for modern audiences. Race war, on the other hand, is marginally more interesting than whatever other opportunistic subject CNN was considering. But no, this is impossible:
“This once-quiet and quaint town is now the center of a controversy that has put residents in the position of examining just what the racial undertones of the case say about their hometown. And it makes them wonder whether they will forever be known as the a place where an unarmed black kid heading home from the store with Skittles and tea was killed by a Hispanic man claiming self-defense.”*
Such irrelevant details serve only to appeal to the mob’s emotional sense of justice. Even if this was a purely racial attack, and I don’t believe it was, what would the Skittles matter but to humanize someone no one thinks is inhuman?
I don’t trust the justice system any more than I trust my disgusting fellow man, but I trust the people’s voice even less. How about we leave this criminal case to the criminal justice system, and start arguing about it when we won’t be simply distracting the professionals?
*John Couwels, (CNN: 29 March 2012) http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/us/florida-teen-shooting-sanford-divided/index.html
