Taliban TV Guide

MONDAYS:
7:30 – “I Dream of Fatima”
8:00 – “Husseinfeld”
8:30 – “Mad About Everything”
9:00 – “Suddenly Sanctions”
9:30 – “The Brian Benben Bin Laden Show”
10:00 – “Allah McBeal”

TUESDAYS:
7:30 – “I Love Sheep”
8:00 – “Wheel of Terror and Fortune”
8:30 – “The Price is Right If Osama Says Its Right”
9:00 – “Children Are Forbidden From Saying The Darnest Things”
9:30 – “Afganistans Wackiest Public Execution Bloopers”
10:00 – “Buffy The Yankee Imperialist Dog Slayer”

WEDNESDAYS:
7:30 – “Talibantubbies”
8:00 – “U.S. Military Secrets Revealed”
8:30 – “When Northern Alliance Attack”
9:00 – “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pita Bread”
9:30 – “Just Shoot Everyone”
10:00 – “Veilwatch”

THURSDAYS:
7:30 – “Hanging With Mr. Hijacker”
8:00 – “Matima Loves Chachi”
8:30 – “M*U*S*T*A*S*H”
9:00 – “Veronica’s Closet Full of Long, Black, Shapeless Dresses and Veils”
9:30 – “My Two Baghdads”
10:00 – “Diagnosis: Heresy”

FRIDAYS:
7:30 – “This Old Tent”
8:00 – Movie of the Week “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”
8:30 – “Khalid and his Camel”
9:00 – “Captured Northern Alliance Rebels Say the Darnest Things”
9:30 – “Achmeds Creek”
10:00 – “No-Witness News”

5000 years of technology

After digging to a depth of 100m last year, Russian scientists found traces of copper wiring dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network one thousand years ago.

Not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, American scientists dug 200m, and headlines in the US newspapers read: “US scientists have found traces of 2000 year old optical fibers, and have concluded that their ancestors already had advanced high-tech digital telephones 1000 years earlier than the Russians.”

One week later, the South African press reported the following: “After digging as deep as 500m, S.A. scientists have found absolutely nothing. The government have concluded that 5000 years ago, their ancestors were already using mobile phones due to cable theft problems.”

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! anime review

After watching what I could stomach of Darker than Black, I wanted to try something a little more lighthearted. I often download stuff at random, but this time I read the description and it sounded funny: Italian hitman who looks like baby trains Japanese high schooler to become Mafia leader. What could possibly go wrong?

I watched 10 episodes of Katekyo Hitman Reborn! before giving up, but I won’t say anything went “wrong” with it. More like something was right, so they took that something and reused it over and over again, thereby flogging it to death.

Basically each episode was like the one before it. The same things happened, the characters had the same reactions to it, it ended the same way, on to the next. Tsuna acts like a flabbergasted moron, Reborn is all-wise and all-knowing, Lambo is cute but annoying, Haru is also cute and also annoying, Kyoko is cute and clueless, Yamaguchi is an idiot who thinks everything is a game, etc, etc. You can tell what’s going to come out of everyone’s mouth before they even open it.

I found the first episode or two pretty funny, seeing all the crazy things Tsuna would get up to after being shot with the Dying Will bullet. But after that it was just “Bullet of the Day” ad nauseam, and Tsuna didn’t seem to be getting any brighter or more likable. Also I hate manipulative know-it-alls like Reborn. That smug bastard just pissed me off, episode after episode. If the two main characters suck so hard, there’s very little a series can do to redeem itself.

I hear eventually there’ll be some tournament-style fighting and some time travelling, and nothing could be less appealing to me, so I figured I’d quit while I was ahead. At least I laughed my head off at the Organ Block, so that’s worth something.

Farewell Tokyopop!

I heard yesterday that Tokyopop was closing its doors for good. No word on what will happen to most of its licenses, but the majority of its cash cows were taken away by Kodansha a while ago anyway. Pretty much all they had that people cared about was Hetalia, Alice in the Country of Hearts, Future Diary and maybe Aria. None of these are series I’ve ever cared much for, anyway. The only Tokyopop manga I have in my collection is a few volumes of Sgt. Frog, which I always thought they did a smashing job with. So in that respect I’ll be a little sad to see them go.

These are the signs of the times, though. The great anime/manga boom of the early 2000s is long over, now it’s sink or swim. Viz has canceled future releases of series like Gintama and Katekyo Hitman Reborn that weren’t selling too well, and I think they’re on the right track with that. It’s time to slim down and pare away the chaff.

The surviving companies have to approach manga from a business perspective instead of a fan one: what sells? Get that, license it and sell it. If Tokyopop had done that instead of licensing hundreds of unprofitable series, wasting time developing Original English Manga that few people cared about and recently, insulting the fans with that horrible America’s Greatest Otaku series, maybe they’d have had a better chance of surviving. Maybe.

Of course, the fans might cry foul if only stuff like Naruto and Bleach gets licensed. Those people can count on Vertical to release niche titles that sell, I suppose. Or they can suck it up and realize that ‘artistic merit’ means nothing if it leads to bankruptcy. Face it, manga costs a lot to produce, license, translate, typeset, market and sell. If you go through all that trouble only to sell 200 copies of that manga, you might as well not bother at all.

Quite frankly, I don’t think the average anime/manga fan who has gotten used to watching or reading his/her favorite manga for free is going to change his/her behavior any time soon. They might say “OMG, I love series X, it should be licensed!” but when it is, they just come up with some flimsy excuse (I don’t have money, I don’t like the translation, I don’t like the cover, I don’t like the company, It’s too expensive, It’s not coming out fast enough) to ignore it and keep reading their illegal scans.

So instead of trying to get those lost fans back, it’s up to manga companies to study who DOES buy manga, what they do buy and how they make their buying decisions, and then sell manga to them. I think they’re beginning to do that.

I also think they should go after the surviving aggregate sites. They did well taking down Mangahelpers and OneManga, but they didn’t go far enough and others have sprung up to take their place, most notably MangaFox. They might not succeed in taking them all down, but they have to make a public and well-publicized effort to show the world that reading manga for free is not the way it’s supposed to go. I swear, there are fans now who think manga naturally comes in free, low-quality, online packages and that anyone who tries to charge for it is ripping them off. Even if you can’t stop them pirating, they should at least know that what they’re doing is wrong. (Plus it pisses me off to hear them thanking the aggregators like they did anything except upload scans downloaded from somewhere, but that’s another matter for another time.)

So, farewell Tokyopop. All things must come to an end someday, and yours was a long time coming.

A New Navigation Technique

There was a pilot flying a small single engine charter plane, with a couple of very important executives on board. He was coming into the Seattle airport through thick fog with less than 10 miles visibility when his instruments went out.

He began circling around looking for a landmark. Finally, a small opening in the fog appears and he sees a tall building with a guy working alone on the fifth floor. He banks the plane around, rolls down the window and shouts to the guy, “Hey where am I?”

The man replies, “You’re in an airplane.” The pilot rolls up the window, executes a 275 degree turn and proceeds to perform a perfect blind landing on the airport runway 5 miles away.
Just as the plane stops, so does the engine as the fuel has run out. The passengers are amazed and one asks how he did it.

“Quite easy,” replies the pilot, “I asked the guy in that building a simple question. The answer he gave me was 100 percent correct but absolutely useless, therefore, that must be Microsoft’s support office and from there the airport is just five miles due East.”