Through computer glass

The dim blue hue of a computer screen,

Masks the oily blackness of the window it opens.

A man thrusting his hips into a woman’s most private place,

But without the tenderness of a lover.

They are merely two hollowed out forms that dance in the twilight of a red-eyed camera.

What happened to the dreams of the little girl within?

At her soccer games or dance recitals, was this always to be the same godless outcome?

A deterministic nightmare from the mind of a depraved Calvinist bastard.

Can’t she be saved?

Not by me, for I am weak.

For the love of gold she did it, and for the love of lust I watch it.

This is business… and I am a customer.

Ninja Turtles movie

As Ninja Turtle mania spread like wildfire throughout Middle America in the late 80’s, New Line Cinema had a simple but brilliant idea: Bring the turtles to life in a movie. As I was too young to see the film when it premiered in 1990 (I was only a year old), I had to settle with a VHS copy. Well, in the span of my childhood I put that tape through the grinder. While I’m aware that TMNT is a flawed movie, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lot of fun.

The main problem that comic book aficionados had with the cartoon version of the Ninja Turtles was that it was too slapstick. They liked the humor, but felt that the violent edge of the original graphic novel was lost. Luckily for everyone, the TMNT film combines the best of both worlds. The turtles are still reciting their goofy jokes (“You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket”), but they’re ready to kick ass and take names while they’re at it.  

So, the Ninja Turtles are still crime fighting heroes, and they still confront the evil Shredder. There’s Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello… as well as Splinter, their giant rat mentor. It’s a classic good versus evil yarn, and I really don’t see a problem recommending it to kids as young as six or seven. There’s a little cursing (I remember thinking it was the coolest thing when Raphael said “damn”) and some stylized violence, but you’re not going to get Game of Thrones type content here.

The fight scenes are pretty cool though, Raphael’s battle with the Foot soldiers on the roof of an apartment building deserving special mention. The soundtrack is also surprisingly good, with Turtle Power tapping into that cheesy 80’s hip hop, and Shredder’s Suite being a legitimately thrilling piece of music. A shout out must go to Jim Henson, as this was the last project he worked on before his death, and the actual turtle costumes look amazingly expressive and vibrant.

TMNT is made for children, so I feel that a lot of the bashing it receives is redundant. As the great film critic Roger Ebert once said, TMNT is, “probably the best possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.”

Bush and torture

In case anyone thinks I’ve somehow left my liberal roots altogether, let me assure you, I still lean left. I am a liberal in the truest sense of the word: I believe in liberty. I also believe in human dignity. In the past few years, Republicans seem to have forgotten that whatever scandals Obama is dealing with right now, be it Benghazi or the IRS, they are absolutely insignificant compared to the atrocities committed by George Bush. George Bush is the worst president in modern history, perhaps going back to James Buchanan. Put simply, if you think Obama should be impeached, then Bush should have been executed by firing squad… that’s just being consistent.

I’m not even going to talk about Bush lying us into the Iraq War under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction, (which he actually joked about once at a dinner by looking under a table and saying, “Nope, no weapons under there”) or his botched handling of Katrina (“You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie”), I’m just going to focus on how he turned many of America’s military and intelligence personnel into torturing thugs. As a follower of Jesus, I am also stunned at conservative Christians’ attempt at rehabilitating Bush’s legacy.

So, after 9/11, I actually thought Bush did a good job. I remember the scene where he was standing atop some rubble with the megaphone, saying, “We hear you” or something like that. I was actually impressed by him as a kid in middle school. However, it wasn’t long before I started hearing things about what we were doing as a country that made me a little confused. I heard about a place called Guantanamo Bay, and how “bad” people were being sent there. Well, they had to deserve going there, right?

In case you’ve been living in a bunker near the Earth's core for the last decade, Guantanamo Bay is a prison… where you’re sent without a trial. Did you catch that last bit? I hope so. We take it for granted now, but just think about that for a moment. Let it sink in. We’re assuming that someone is guilty. We don’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, we just guess. Does that terrify anyone else? That they’re statistically going after brown people doesn't reassure me.

So, we’re already off to a bad start. As if going there isn’t enough, the conditions once inside are even worse. According to the “torture memos” written by John Yoo and approved by Donald Rumsfeld, the “severe pain” prohibition of the U.N. Convention is only defined with "death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions" and that prolonged mental impairment is only associated with a duration of “months or years.” So, if you’re beaten and don’t die, you’re good to go according to the Bush administration.

Of what we know of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” a.k.a. torture (which is limited due to the CIA destroying multiple interrogation videotapes in 2005), we know that there was little off the table. Torture included simulated drowning, use of attack dogs, being kept in a freezing room, being forced to lie in “stress positions” for over 40 hours, the use of insects, waterboarding, and sleep deprivation for days. Sadly, these are only the most well-reported incidents. Go to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and you’ll see a whole hell of a lot worse.

In 2004, it came to light that horrible atrocities were being inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib detention facility. I don’t even know where to start with this one… American soldiers raped, and sometimes outright killed, Iraqi inmates. There were even incidents of soldiers pouring phosphoric acid onto the prisoners, or jumping on an already broken leg with such force that it would never heal properly. Abu Ghraib is best remembered by the public as the photograph of a prisoner with a hood on his head, standing on a box, thinking that if he moved an inch he’d be electrocuted. This was a dark stain on America, one that was spilled by George Bush.

The bottom line is that I refuse to believe that Abu Ghraib didn’t operate on a higher authority. All evidence pertaining to it has probably already been destroyed, but I know that Bush and Rumsfeld were behind this. Even if they somehow weren’t, the fact is that Bush created the template and atmosphere for this to occur in the first place. If he hadn’t used torture at all, and taken the moral high ground, this never would have happened. If you take away even one person’s dignity, then you’ve sold the pass to go all the way. There’s no limit to human depravity.

Don’t just get the government to torture suspected terrorists for you; ask yourself, could you, personally, rip the fingernails off another human being? Could you make him think he’s drowning to death via waterboarding? If you can’t, then please, choose to protect life both publically and privately. Also, if you’re a follower of Jesus, as I try to be, ask yourself if God would approve of torture.

Nintendo halcyon days

I was never sure if I liked the smell of his house,

Mac and cheese, always mac and cheese.

As a den of memories, carefully tucked away in the corridors of my mind,

There could be worse smells associated with this Golden Age.

The blue carpet was a rough, matted mess,

Each prickling fiber creating new wrinkles of childhood delight.

Their fruit roll ups tasted the best,

As does anything that you take without asking.

My friend, my best friend, hated that I loved video games so much.

Yet for all his miniature brilliance,

There was an acceptance of me,
And my scrambled, electronic preoccupation.

When I think back to those days, dominated by my friend’s ridiculous bowl cut,

I think of myself blowing into the reaches of that magic box.

I think of the red, 8-bit curtain rising on a hulking tube television,

With a friend sitting by my side.

Abortion and Worldviews

“A rat has a heartbeat, too.” I used to say this, as a pro choice atheist, in response to the fact that a fetus has a heartbeat. How could I say such a thing? What was wrong with me? Well, I will argue that as an atheist, absolutely nothing was wrong with my line of thinking. In fact, it was only natural.

I’ve tried to stay away from the abortion issue, but for the first time today, I found out what, exactly, partial-birth abortion is. Now, all abortion is horrible, but this particular method, once legal in many states, is just beyond the pale of all evil. Partial-birth abortion is very true to its name. Once the pregnancy is too far along, like 25 or 26 weeks (which the baby is viable at that point), the doctor can no longer just use forceps for an abortion. They artificially force it to be born. Except the head, of course, because if the whole body was delivered, it would legally be a child. I honestly am struggling how to describe this… so I will let Brenda Pratt Shafer, a nurse who worked at an abortion clinic, describe the partial-birth abortion of a 26 1/2 week old baby with down syndrome.

“Dr. Haskell brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby. On the ultrasound screen, I could see the heart beating. As Dr. Haskell watched the baby on the ultrasound screen, the baby's heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby's legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby's body and the arms-- everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus. The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp.”

     

Brenda’s account has been corroborated, and the clinic even admitted that she worked there as a nurse. I just don’t know how anyone can read that account, or look up a video of the procedure being done (which is easily found on Youtube), and not fight the urge to vomit. Thankfully, there is a ban on partial-birth abortion in America since 2003, but Planned Parenthood has been seeking to overturn it via the courts.

Which brings me to my next point… Do you want to know why Planned Parenthood is trying to reinstate children’s brains being sucked out by a tube? It sure as hell doesn’t have to do with women’s health, I can tell you that. They’re doing this because they don’t believe in God. Put simply, if you don’t believe that God created humans in His image, and that we all have a soul, then of course you’re not going to care if fetuses are killed. After all, even a rat has a heartbeat, right?

This godless problem is rampant in liberal Hollywood circles (and I say that as someone whose blog is called liberalmuffin). One of the most high profile defenders of abortion is Peter Singer, an atheist professor who somehow has tenure at not just any university, but Princeton. He literally has argued not just for abortion, but for infanticide. He claims that since a newborn baby is incapable of rational thought, then it is not a person. His views are succinctly summed up in this one quote from him, “Membership of the species Homo sapiens is not enough to confer a right to life.”

I have a question for Peter Singer though: Where’s the cutoff? Why not euthanize a five year old with Down Syndrome? I mean, our culture already aborts them as babies. Maybe we should just jump ahead to the logical conclusion of all this and execute everyone who is “unfit.” Where have I heard that before? I’m sure a certain mustachioed man would like Peter Singer… and I ain’t talking about Mario.

Please, if you’re thinking about getting an abortion, know that there really are options. Your child deserves to be loved.

The many faces of Dragon Ball Z

As an anecdotal segue, think of Star Wars for a moment. Can you think of a more influential and iconic movie series? I certainly can’t. Yet how many variants of the original trilogy did we get? Well, there are four of them if anyone’s counting. The theatrical, 1997, 2004, and 2011 versions. Lucas also refuses to release the theatrical cuts in remastered, high definition… so there is no ideal version of Star Wars for fans who grew up with the originals.

Incidentally, there are also four adaptations of Dragon Ball Z, and like Star Wars, there is no perfect version. The original rendition of DBZ is obviously the Japanese original. The Japanese voicework of the 291 episode series concluded in 1996, yet the fledgling American dub didn’t begin until 1997, with the very first season. So, there it was that DBZ began to fracture into many different faces.

4. Japanese original

Personally, I can’t stand watching DBZ in Japanese. It’s probably because I’ve been used to Goku speaking in English since I was seven. In any case, this was the original, and all 291 episodes are here, albeit in a lackluster mono sound format. Of course, many Otaku will probably have me burned at the stake for disliking the original, but it just seems that DBZ wasn’t meant to be shown this way. The music (barring the excellent Chala Head Chala opening) sounds like a soundtrack from a Godzilla movie. Lots of trumpets and cymbals; it sounds like a parody of music. Really, I hate it. The composer evidently did Kamen Rider, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it sounds like it came from a 1970’s nightmare. Also, I’m sorry, but Goku’s voice sounds like a little girl in this… and that’s not okay.

3. Ocean dub

Ah, the very first English DBZ dub. Ocean Group dubbed the first 53 episodes, before Funimation started doing the voiceover work in-house. While this is the version that got me hooked (How awesome is the Rock the Dragon intro?), it’s quite clear that television censorship took away a lot of the show’s original meaning. Ocean didn’t even allow characters to make mention of death in any way, instead making a vague reference to being “sent to the next dimension.” Also, in one scene, when Vegeta is about to transform into a great ape, he says that Goku’s father, Bardock, was “an average fighter, but a brilliant scientist.” Uh, what? If Ocean had watched the OVA, Bardock: The Father of Goku, they would know that Bardock was not only not a scientist at all, but he was actually incredibly powerful and cunning in combat. Still Ocean paved the way for Funimation’s dub, and I should make note that Vegeta’s actor in this version is chillingly amazing, “You won’t escape my wrath!”

2. Toonami Funimation dub

This is the adaptation I remember the most. With Bruce Faulconer’s electronic rock score making a crater-sized impression on my young mind. Seriously, the music in this is perfection. Every major character has their own theme, and I thought that heaven and earth coalesced together to form the scene of Goku turning into a Super Saiyan. That scene is made impeccably badass due to Faulconer’s sense of ambience. Seriously, look that scene up now… The censorship is also gone, with the high octane fisticuffs of DBZ coming through loud and clear. Tien’s arm is shown getting broken off, as well as Raditz getting a bloody hole blown through him, and Frieza getting chopped into tiny little bits and then blown up. There’s only one problem with this version… the filler. Oh, God, the filler. Out of the 291 episodes in DBZ, I’d say well over 50 of them are complete bullshit, waste of time, filler. You get to see such important scenes like Gohan befriending a robot, or Chi-Chi whining and complaining, or, my favorite, Bulma getting into an episode long misadventure with a giant crab. I love DBZ, and I think it’s one of the best good vs. evil stories ever told, but you really have to put your finger on the fast-forward button.

1. Funimation Kai dub

Here it is, the perfect version of Dragon Ball Z. In Kai, the filler has been taken out and the show brought to a very manageable 98 episodes. The dubbing is also more accurate to the manga, and the footage has been meticulously cleaned and remastered. There’s just one problem: The music sucks Sasquatch feet. Yes, my friends, Funimation stupidly decided to use Kikuchi's original Japanese scoring. Godzilla’s back in Tokyo, folks. Why, oh why couldn’t they just use Faulconer’s music? As if this wasn’t bad enough, the only thing that I liked about the Japanese soundtrack, Chala Head Chala, has been taken out and in its place is an unspeakably awful English cover of something called “Dragon Soul.” It sounds like a boy band in a Sonic Adventure game.

So, there we are… Dragon Ball Z suffers from the profound problem of me being unable to recommend a definitive version. It boils down to this: If you have a lot of time on your hands, and just absolutely cannot stand to hear cheesy music, then stick with Toonami’s Funimation dub. If, however, you don’t want to see 291 episodes worth of power-up sequences, and just want to get to the meat of the story, then watch Funimation’s Kai dub. Maybe one day, DBZ will be done right. One day… 

The magic of Ray Harryhausen

In an era where the only computers you had were glorified giant calculators, Ray Harryhausen was a special effects wizard of the highest order. He didn’t have cgi, so he used his hands instead. Back in those days, you could have the dinosaur, skeleton, or what-have-you actually on set with the actors. There’s something to be said about that kind of tactile input. You know, where the action in a scene isn’t just a video game created by some guy tapping away on a keyboard. Ray Harryhausen made things… and he made magic. To honor Ray’s recent passing, here are reviews of my three favorite films utilizing his signature “Dynamation.”

3. First Men in the Moon (1964)

Honestly, the first half hour of First Men in the Moon is very slow-going… in fact, you might say glacially so. It’s just a crazy scientist and his assistant bumbling around in the laboratory for a prolonged period of time. Yet once they finally go to the moon that’s where the fun begins. You’ll see giant space slugs and intelligent, insectoid aliens, all rendered with the loving care of stop-motion. Also, I like how the aliens walk; they remind me of the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts. The film is pretty lighthearted, and the ending has a comical twist.

2. One Million Years B.C. (1966)

One Million Years B.C. is on here instead of the Valley of Gwangi for one very important and beautiful reason: Raquel Welch. The Amazonian darling of the 60’s; people had the movie poster just because she was on it. Raquel Welch in a fur bikini aside, did I mention that fur bikini? Um, like I was saying, the other main attractions here are the wonderful dinosaurs. I’ve always felt that dinosaurs above all else deserve to be stop-motion. Maybe that’s because I saw too many animatronic triceratops as a kid. Anyway, the scene that stands out most to me would have to be the allosaurus attack on the blonde-haired tribe. Here, you get to see a pretty awesome fight scene, as cave-men spear the dinosaur (yeah, it’s not a science documentary). My only complaint with the movie is that I wish somebody would say something and not just grunt.

1. Clash of the Titans (1981)

“Release the Kraken!” Ah, Clash of the Titans. Ray Harryhausen’s masterwork. This film is a swan song to the great monster films started all the way back to King Kong. By the 80’s though, people were getting tired of the traditional effects that Ray used. Star Wars was in, creature features were out. Yet after one watches Clash of the Titans, it’s hard to have any real criticism of it. There are giant scorpions, a two-headed dog, a winged Pegasus, Medusa, and, of course, the Kraken. All of them are gloriously hand crafted in loving frame by frame camerawork. The Medusa fight in particular is astonishing. You really feel that the monster is real, right on stage. How she slithers on the ground, her snakes writhing, as she arches her bow at the hero. Oh, and there’s a mechanical owl named Bubo… he’s pretty annoying though.