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Family Values

What, exactly, are "family values"? You hear this a lot from politicians and clergymen. Usually conservatives tout their adherance to traditional family values. It’s an interesting buzzword. It’s sort of the right wing version of political correctness. I have some news to break to any halfwit who hangs on the words "family values", though: there isn’t any such thing as family values.

No unit of people has any shared system of values. Values only exist to the individual, as well as value itself, which can only be assigned to individuals. Families, traditionally, are units that were formed with the intent of holding land and property. Somehow, in the past few decades, politicians have expoused their fondness for "traditional family values". If you value the sterile, unloving concept of merely existing to propogate the species and own material goods, that’s fine. But, of course, politicians never mean that when they say "family values". read more

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Batman: The Dark Knight Review (SPOILERS)

Tuesday afteroon I saw the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight, at a local theater. Pre-movie, I scoped out the trailer to Christian Bale’s next no-doubt-blockbuster, the fourth Terminator movie (which means now there’ll be two too many). I also sat awkwardly through the trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen, directed by Zack Synder, who also directed the adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300. While it does seem like it might make interesting watching, I still think some comic stories are best left on page. Watchmen deconstructed the superhero comic genre, the movie isn’t going to do anything so bold. I can see it going over people’s heads, that is, even if they do it justice. But hell, who am I kidding? I’ll go see it. Sorry, Mr. Moore. Really, I am. read more

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Layman’s Gunpla Guide – Airbrushing Tutorial

Introduction

Airbrushing can be sound pretty daunting to a lot of folks. It may not be the simplest way to go about painting your kits. Nor the least expensive way to start out. Yet the time and energy spent into learning, using, and maintaining your equipment will no doubt pay off with some of the best paint jobs imaginable.

Starting off with airbrushing requires a bit of an investment; airbrush, compressor, and various little bits and pieces to bring it all together. Setup can run anywhere from $75 all the way to $500 and beyond. Buying the most expensive equipment doesn’t mean you’ll be a master anymore than lower end products will ruin your kit, it’s all in how you use it. Currently I use a Badger Renegade Velocity along with a Badger Airstorm compressor. read more

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FCC closer to allowing XM/Sirius merger, but not without throwing shit into mix

According to Twice the long awaited* XM/Sirius merger is closer to approval from the FCC. Unfortunately they have decided to throw a wrench into the gears with a some bullshit additional requests…

The conditions would require the merged company to include HD Radio on any satellite radio product it subsidizes that also includes an AM/FM tuner, according to an Associated Press report. Stipulations would also include a six-year freeze on service fees and that Sirius and XM devote 25 percent of spectrum to minority and public-interest programming, said the AP. Adelstein’s staff could not confirm the conditions at press time. read more

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ArtsNow.com: Shirt Review Part 1

The other week on /m/ a link to ArtsNow.com appeared along with a few nifty coupons. Taking the opportunity I ‘designed’ a few shirts and placed an order. A week and a half later a bag arrived on my doorstop, a customs declared gift, complete with return address to a random Hong Kong P.O. box. This is the story of those shirts…

About the Designs

For the designs I used some nice vectors with transparent backgrounds. If you’re interested…

Team Gurren Logo (Gurren Lagann) (close, looking for original version)
Kitten (Gurren Lagann) [I Plan to upload soon] Whole Group (Gurren Lagann) [I Plan to upload soon] Skull Squadron Logo minus Shield & Sword (Macross Frontier)
Sector 9 Logo (Ghost in the Shell) read more

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Ways today’s youth sounds like completely uneducated apes (oh and please stop…)

Grammar. Punctuation. Spelling. Verb usage. Common Sense.

What has happened to these five terms? The more and more I browse the Internet, the more and more I regret doing so. I have always known the general public of this country to be less than scholarly, but the younger generation (even younger than me) makes me fearful of the future. This may be harsh (and possibly exaggerated for effect), however it needs to be said because it holds grains of truth – for more than one reason.

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“F**k You” “No, Fuck You!”

Fuck

Of the 600,000 plus words in the English language fuck is probably one of the most versatile and the most used. Yet for some bloody reason it remains the most censored, something I can’t quite wrap my head around it.

I could go go on and on about how words are simply sounds clumped together for communication. I could go on and on about how these hodgepodges of noise mean nothing without the meaning behind them, their syntax and situation, their semantics. That, however, is really for another time and place. (In this case, another article)