... my good friend JethricOne, who is a moderate Christian himself, sent me the following email last night:

At [my daughter’s] confirmation class this evening, she drew a picture of an anime Jesus for an assignment.
When she told me, I couldn’t resist thinking about the song “Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life” (and it’s ilk of bad religious music) and was inspired to write the following:

Jesus is the hero of my anime
When reading right to left he’s going to show me the Way
It doesn’t matter if my friends are nasty, or rude
Cuz Jesus is my spike-haired holy ninja dude.

I was standing in a line, when someone pushed on ahead
It really made me mad, and I wished that he were dead.
But then a 2-D image flashed across my mind:
A smiling chibi spirit, that told me to be kind.

...refrain…

I saw a special toy, but I didn’t have the cash.
I thought I might just grab it, and then make a hasty dash.
But then that mighty warrior with his flame haze book of might.
Showed me 10 commandments and made me do what’s right.

...refrain…

I was worried about dying, with a lump inside my throat.
Somewhere’s a shinigami with my name upon a note.
But I thought about my Light, the one who came to me.
And by His side I’ll walk through life and he will set me free.

Having listened to more than my share of Christian pop music, I must say that the above is almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Being a long-time anime fan myself it’s doubly amusing.

Over the weekend we stopped into the local Target store and I was stunned to see huge advertising displays featuring the weirdly cute fuzzy Japanese monster-thingy known as Domo all over the place. That’s a pic of him over on the left. I’ve known about him for years and have a QuickTime movie file on my PC which contains every single one of the short animations he featured in used as station identification shorts for NHK TV in Japan. He’s been fairly popular among anime fans for years, but almost no one outside of the anime subculture knows who the hell he is.

Or at least I didn’t think they did. The fact that Target has licensed him to sell Halloween stuff seems to suggest he’s gone mainstream. Not only was I surprised to see Domo all over the place, but a little kid that walked in with us immediately knew who he was and started calling out his name, “Look mom! It’s Domo!“ According to his Wikipedia entry it seems Nickelodeon licensed him in 2006 for 26 two-minute shorts which they just started airing this year. If they were half as warm and fuzzy as the Japanese originals then they were probably a sensation with the kids, as the one child I saw this weekend would attest. And now Target has snapped him up.

Turns out I wasn’t the only person surprised by this as reporter Tom Horgen over at StarTribune.com wrote a big article about him:

In 2003, an American licensing company named Big Tent approached Goda and NHK about bringing Domo to the United States in a bigger way, a deal that eventually led to the Target campaign.

“No, no, no,“ Goda remembered saying at the time, hesitant about Domo’s American fate. Goda was unaware that Domo already had a following outside of Japan.

Today, Goda said he’s excited about Domo going mainstream in this country. But he understands why some of the character’s cult followers might be perturbed.

“It’s really difficult to balance the popularity and keeping the core fans,“ he said.

But after Goda finally saw Domo in his new American setting, he was pleased.

“When we saw the Target store in Portland and saw Domo surrounded by all that American stuff, I was so happy,“ he said.

In fact, Goda has been a fan of American pop-culture since he was a kid. His favorite character? That would be Snoopy, created by Minnesota’s own Charles Schulz.

Like Domo, Snoopy is a cuddly troublemaker and a man of few words. He’s also been a mainstream icon for decades, one that even anti-mass-market geeks like myself have loved.

Earlier in the article Tom brings up the possibility that early fans of Domo here in the states may feel he’s “sold-out” by becoming a mascot for Target:

When underground sensations like Domo hit the mainstream—he also has a deal with Nickelodeon—it can render the original uncool, or even result in cries of “sellout.“

That seems kind of stupid considering Domo was created to advertise a TV network, but I suppose some folks who don’t know his history may fall into that trap anyway. Still it’s kind of neat to see something I’ve been a fan of for years suddenly being popular in the United States. If it makes it a little easier (and not to mention cheaper) to finally pick up a Domo plushie then so much the better.

One of my favorite comedians has died:

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN)—Comedian-actor George Carlin, known for his raunchy but insightful humor, died of heart failure Sunday in Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 71.

Jeff Abraham says Carlin went into St. John’s Health Center on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain. Carlin died at 5:55 p.m. PDT, The Associated Press reported.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,“ Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told the AP.

Carlin was best known for his routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television,“ which appeared in 1972’s “Class Clown” album.

When Carlin uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested for disturbing the peace, the AP reported. The comedy sketch prompted a landmark indecency case after WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.

The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices ruled on a 5-to-4 vote that the sketch was “indecent but not obscene,“ giving the FCC broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.

“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,“ Carlin said. “In the context of that era, it was daring.“

“It just sounds like a very self-serving kind of word. I don’t want to go around describing myself as a ‘groundbreaker’ or a ‘difference-maker’ because I’m not and I wasn’t,“ he said. “But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren’t supposed to be said.“

The title of this entry is what Carlin said he’d like folks to say upon hearing of his death so it seemed only appropriate. The following is a bit called “Modern Man” from one of his HBO specials:

He was a funny man and I’ll miss him greatly.

Get ready to cue the various editorial cartoonists depicting his arrival in Heaven in spite of the fact that he was an avowed atheist.

This was too delicious not to share. It seems a producer for Bill “Douchebag” O’Reilly’s show The O’Reilly Factor attempted to do some ambush journalism on Bill Moyers at the National Conference for Media Reform. Moyer’s handles the situation very well indeed and then when the producer, Porter Barry, attempts to leave several of the other journalists start their own ambush interview of Barry:

It’s always nice to see the schoolyard bullies get a little of what they give out.

Update: Here’s all that Bill “Douchebag” O’Reilly bothered to use on his show from that confrontation:

Compare that to what was recorded above and you’ll see Douchebaggery at its finest taking place. And what the fuck is this bullshit about a Body Language Expert on O’Reilly’s show to analyze the clip? How is that in any way relevant to what was actually fucking said? It’s not, but it’s typical for what O’Reilly tries to pass off as journalism.

The internet is all abuzz this week about Aliza Shvarts, a Yale student who issued a press release claiming that she artificially inseminated herself, then took various herbs in order to induce a miscarriage. Repeatedly. Yale responded with a release stating that Shvarts was a performance artists, and that her announcement had been the art piece, forcing people across the world into a discussion of what is and what isn’t art. Shvarts has since released another statement claiming that at least portions of her original statement are true.

Which leads me to ask, like many other people across the world, just what defines art?

My initial, instinctive, answer to that is, if someone created it and says that it’s art, it’s art. Tolstoy wrote a whole book on the subject. At one point, he says,

Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf’s appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer.

What is the world coming to? Word has it that Kentucky Fried Chicken is about to start offering grilled chicken on their menu:

Doug Hasselo, KFC’s chief food innovation officer, says, “This is transformational for our brand.“

Louisville-based KFC, a subsidiary of Yum Brands Inc., hopes grilled chicken will lure back health-conscious consumers who dropped fried chicken from their diets, or cut back on indulging.

KFC announced last year that fried chicken at all its U.S. restaurants had zero grams of trans fat per serving after the chain switched cooking oils.

KFC says the grilled chicken has significantly fewer calories and fat, plus much less sodium, than its original recipe fried chicken.

Why it’s sacrilegious I tell you! Next thing you know we’ll have cats and dogs living together! Total anarchy!

And another part of my childhood passes away:

Dungeons & Dragons co-creator dies at 69 - Yahoo! News

MILWAUKEE - Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.

He had been suffering from health problems for several years, including an abdominal aneurysm, said his wife, Gail Gygax.

Gygax and Dave Arneson developed Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 using medieval characters and mythical creatures. The game known for its oddly shaped dice became a hit, particularly among teenage boys, and eventually was turned into video games, books and movies.

I’ve not played D&D for years, but I spent years in my teens and early 20’s playing it along with a host of other pen and paper RPGs. I have many fond memories of hanging out with Bill, Bob, Tom, Mark, Daryl, Dan, and Herb rolling dice and consuming vast quantities of pizza and pop and arguing over rule interpretations. Probably explains my addiction to video games like World of Warcraft which is, in many ways, a pale imitation of those older days.

And, yes, I realize the title for this entry is a really bad joke, but you know I had to use it.

It’s a sad day for toilet paper obsessives everywhere as Dick Wilson, best known as the neurotic grocer who defended Charmin bathroom tissue from the groping clutches of lonely housewives, has passed away:

The man famous as TV’s “Mr. Whipple” died of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his daughter Melanie Wilson, who is known for her role as a flight attendant on the ABC sitcom “Perfect Strangers.“

Wilson made more than 500 commercials as Mr. George Whipple, a man consumed with keeping bubbly housewives from fondling toilet paper. The punch line of most spots was that Whipple himself was a closeted Charmin-squeezer.

The first commercial aired in 1964 and by the time the campaign ended in 1985 the tag line and Wilson, a former Canadian airman and vaudeville veteran, were pop culture touchstones.

Seriously though, what the hell was up with those housewives? I mean, check this out:

The second woman in that first commercial looks like she’s on the verge of having an orgasm or something. Which just shows that people in commercials come from an entirely different planet.

I’m not a big fan of The View and haven’t been ever since former host Star Jones publicly derided atheists and said she’d never vote for one. So it shouldn’t be any surprise to me to find out that yet another host of the show is an idiot. This time it’s Sherri Shephard who starts off her idiocy by saying she doesn’t believe in the Theory of Evolution. Then when newly added host Whoopi Goldberg challenges her on it by asking if the world is flat Shephard confirms her status as a moron by saying she doesn’t know and tries to use the excuse that she’s too busy being a mother to worry about it…

It also shouldn’t come as any surprise to find out that Shephard is a conservative. Now that I think on it, does anyone know of any liberals who are dumb enough to argue that Evolution isn’t real?

Link via The Daily Background.

Poor Jerry. Comedy is hard at the best of times, but it can’t be easy when you’re 81 years-old and in the 18th hour of a 24 hour telethon. I suppose that’s why I’m willing to cut him a little slack for the slip up he had during the most recent ‘thon:

The 81-year-old showman — prowling about the stage during the live telecast Monday in Las Vegas — was goofing around and dodging his cameraman, then went into a ramble about imaginary family members.

“Oh, your family has come to see you,” he said, speaking to the camera and gesturing toward thin air.

“You remember Bart, your older son,” he said, and motioning toward another unseen character, “Jesse, the illiterate f——-.

“No,” Lewis said, quickly stopping himself before continuing.

The folks at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation were, understandably, annoyed and released a statement condemning the reference. To his credit Lewis isn’t making excuses and has offered an apology:

In a statement Tuesday, Lewis said he was making “a joking comment to a member of my production team.”

“I apologize to anyone who was offended,” he went on. “Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well.

“That something like this would distract from the true purpose of the telethon pains me deeply. ... I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses,” he said.

I’m not a big fan of Jerry Lewis and I have no idea how much good his telethon does for his “kids”, but it seems to be popular with some segment of the population and it’s impressive the man is still giving it his all at this late stage of his life. Personally I think we should let this one slide. Considering the crap that comes out of some Republican Senator’s mouths about gays, Jerry’s slip of the tongue is hardly worth getting too upset about.

The South Carolina representative in the Miss Teen USA pageant, the winner from her state, shares her thoughts on American education.

Shamelessly stolen from BobHarris.com.

Have you seen this new Dominoes Pizza commercial?

Gives me the heebie jeebies every time I see it. Especially the dude with the big eyes. They haunt my dreams. Always watching, staring, blinking with enough force to blow over small children and pets.

...but they’re working really hard to speculate the living shit out of the possibilities. It seems every little crumb of info the news media can get their hands on is being slapped onto a taffy puller and stretched as far as they can manage. For example: When paramedics arrived her heart wasn’t beating (a common occurrence when someone dies) so heres a list of 50 or so possible heart related problems she might have had but didn’t know about including some so obscure her chances of dieing from it are a million to one against.

They had one solid fact: Anna Nicole Smith is dead. Beyond that it was all just idle speculation by the news media. Was she murdered? Did she O.D.? Was she crushed under the weight of her own tits? What happens to her son? Is she a modern-day Marilyn Monroe? Was John F. Kennedy’s corpse spotted anywhere near her motel room?

I don’t know if the media is just so sick of reporting the awful news that’s coming out of Iraq on a daily basis or they think the public really gives that much of a shit about what was easily one of the most successful white trash women around, but it’s another one of those events that makes me ignore the news for a few days until it blows over. Of course Nancy Grace will be all over this for months to come I’m sure, what with being a fellow white trasher and all.

That’s why I need to start my own news network: LNN - Les News Network. Our coverage of Anna’s death would’ve been like this.

HEADLINE: ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS DEAD.

Anna Nicole Smith, famous Playboy playmate and gold digger, is dead at the age of 39. She was found in her hotel room unconscious and not breathing. No one has a fucking clue as to how she died yet and we’re not about to sit around and dream up possibilities when there’s other news to report. When we know more, you’ll know more.

And that would be it.

The man known as “The Crocodile Hunter” has kicked the bucket, but interestingly enough it wasn’t a croc that got him:

The naturalist and television star Steve Irwin has died in a diving accident in far north Queensland. He was 44.

Police say he was stung through the heart by a stingray while diving off Port Douglas.

He was filming a documentary when the accident occurred around midday AEST near the Low Isles.

A helicopter arrived with paramedics on board to try to resuscitate him, but it was too late.

A more detailed account is available through The Sydney Morning Herald:

Friends believe he may have died instantly when struck by a stingray as he filmed a sequence for his eight-year-old daughter Bindi’s new TV series.

Irwin’s friend of 20 years, Ferre De Deyne said Irwin had been struck by the stingray while filming. “The stingray just happened to be swimming around and out of the blue whacked his tail at him,“ he said.

“It is absolutely tragic. I have dived so many times with stingrays and they are usually very placid things,“ he said.

...

Irwin had been filming a new documentary called Ocean’s Deadliest with friend and manager John Stainton at Batt Reef, off Port Douglas about 11am.

“He came over the top of a stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and went into his chest and put a hole into his heart,“ Mr Stainton said.

“It’s likely that he possibly died instantly when the barb hit him, and I don’t think that he ... felt any pain.

“He died doing what he loved best.“

That he did. I wasn’t a big fan of Irwin myself, but I did find him at least slightly amusing in how much he seemed to annoy everyone else. One thing that can’t be denied is how he had become a pop icon all around the world.

Big thanks to LJ19 for sending this in via email.

Looks like Mel Gibson might have a bit of a drinking problem:

“He was going 87 miles per hour in a 45-miles-per-hour zone,“ Whitmore said.

Deputies conducted field sobriety tests. A breath test indicated Gibson’s blood-alcohol level was 0.12 percent, Whitmore said. California drivers 21 and older must remain under 0.08 percent.

Hell, around some parts of Michigan people do 87 in a 45 without having had a single drink. Wonder what sent Mel to the bottle? I hadn’t heard of him having much of a drinking habit previously and he’s supposedly a good Catholic boy. Probably the stress of trying to figure out how to spend all his money.