I've been in a pretty pissy mood lately, so I've decided to write a pretty pissy post. I'm going to attempt to flesh out an epiphany of sorts that I had a while back. Admittedly, this realization came to me while I was in a pissy mood, so it may come off as a bit salty, but I've also found myself to agree with this point in non-pissy moods. It may not be necessarily groundbreaking, but it holds some merit nonetheless, and is stated as follows:
Seventeen year old's are pieces of shit.
I know, sounds harsh, but I really don't mean it to be as condemning and condescending as it appears. It's not to say that seventeen year old's are detriments to society and inherently evil, but more to say that seventeen year old's are just generally shitty people... I'm not really making a good case for this "not condemning and condescending" thing, am I? Alright, how about this.
It's not their fault that their shitty. It's just the way things are. Seventeen, or basically whatever year that you're a senior in high school, is just the prime age for shittiness. It's not done out of malice or spite, but out of the sheer lack of experience and knowledge of how not to be shitty. Consider the social position of a typical seventeen year old: too old to be treated as a child, yet too young to be considered an adult. That's a prime recipe for shittiness. The world is infinitely more complex than a child can comprehend, and seventeen is right about the age when people start to figure that out.
Remember learning how to play basketball? (Or guitar, or anything, really) Remember how you were generally shitty at it until you got a feel for how to dribble and shoot? Or even if you were a natural at it, dunking on fools since day one, do you ever remember noticing improvement in your game as you worked at it? Being able to read defenses better, seeing passing lanes more clearly, making decisions more quickly? It's pretty safe to say that anyone who's ever tried to learn how to play basketball, became less shitty of a player as they gained more exposure to the game. The same basic principle applies to seventeen year old's, sure they're shitty, but it's mostly because this is the first time they've ever held a basketball.
Let's say someone gets their drivers license at seventeen and their parents manage to get them a car. They know how to drive, they're pretty good at navigation, and they're a pretty safe driver, so everything's set, right? Well what about gas? A large part of their previously free spending budget just got taken away by one of the realities of owning a car, so either they can find ways to expand their budget, or they can learn to manage what's left of their budget and adjust their lifestyle accordingly. For some seventeen year old's, the former option is as simple as asking for more allowance, which can to more of a financial strain on the family, and for others it means taking on more hours at work, which can affect other areas of life such as academics or socializing. The latter option (managing a reduced budget) may include cutting back on things such as eating out, going to movies, or ordering hookers. But that's easy, everyone knows cars need gas, and that's usually something people take into account when considering a car. That's also just the tip of the iceberg. The minutia of having your own car can include simple things like keeping the car clean, closing the windows at night, learning where it's best to park in certain areas, knowing not to park behind your dad's car when he has work in the morning, knowing to leave your keys in an accessible place in case someone needs to move or use your car (at home), checking your tires, monitoring your oil levels, keeping in mind how much weight you're carrying in the car, and remembering not to hit people. It can all add up pretty fast, and that's still just one aspect of your daily life, and a seventeen year old is bound to be shitty at some aspects of it before they learn how to manage it all.
I know, some seventeen year old's are probably out saving baby goats in Zimbabwe or something, so maybe my original claim that seventeen year old's are pieces of shit was taking it a little too far. I guess a more accurate statement would be that seventeen year old's are shittier versions of their adult selves. That's usually the case as I see it, anyway. I'm sure some people find ways to be shittier versions of themselves as they get older. But even as I look back on my seventeen year old self, I find that I was pretty shitty at being me. People around me probably haven't noticed some grand transformation, but rarely in life do things magically get better all of a sudden. Progress is usually a road traveled upon, not a room entered (that was kind of a good metaphor, no?). So generally, as people become less seventeen years old, they become less shitty people.
The caveat to that rule is that you don't become less shitty just by breathing for more consecutive days, you actually have to work at it. American society has a pretty nice deshittifier that they like to call the school system. Yeah, I know the education system is flawed and needs major improvement and all that noise, but the concept of being in school has value beyond what is being taught in the classes. Did you ever notice that all kids are a little weird? Maybe not in a "we need to get him checked out" kind of way, but just little reminders here and there that they've only been doing this life thing for a short time. You may not consider their actions to be weird, but if you run into a twenty five year old who has the social awareness of a twelve year old, you instantly classify that as amiss. The mindset of a child is very different than that of an adult, even if the only difference may be the capacity to understand what is expected of a person. Institutions such as school and sports help us realize and understand those expectations, and our reactions to them shape how we're perceived by society. Learning subjects such as math and history serve their purpose, but learning to function in society is an equally valuable experience.
This is starting to run long, and I'm losing focus, so I'll wrap it up. If you're seventeen, you're shitty, at very least relative to how not shitty you'll be one day. It's not your fault though, the world is set up for you to be shitty at seventeen, it's normal and expected. It is, however, your job to learn how to not be shitty. So do that. Twat.
C
Friday, March 9, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
New York and Sports
New York is arguably the biggest market in sports. To be honest, it's not really much of an argument. The only other city that holds a candle to New York in terms of revenue opportunities, media coverage, and whatever the hell else goes into classifying a city as "big market", is Los Angeles, and they don't even have a professional football team (of which New York has two), and seeing as how football draws in more revenue than any other sport, I think that gives the edge pretty handily to New York. And besides, its New freakin' York. No, I haven't checked the facts or done the research, but it seems pretty logical, doesn't it? (Update: I still haven't checked the facts or done the research, but New York is definitely the biggest market in sports. I was too lazy/tentative to make that claim previously, but it seems pretty silly in retrospect. Feel free to disregard the previous paragraph.)
Either way, I'm not writing this to prove New York's merit as the biggest market in America, this post is about the sports themselves in New York, so any dissenting opinions or facts you might have (you, oh contentious imaginary reader) can twiddle their thumbs while I get on with this.
In New York sports, most things come in twos. There are the Giants and the Jets, the Yankees and the Mets, and the Rangers and the Islanders. The exception to this dichotomy exists only in basketball, and only for the time being, with the Knicks being the only New York pro basketball squad until the New Jersey Nets move to Brooklyn. With different sports teams sharing the same town, the expected result is that the different fan bases must also share the same town, leading to all sorts of cross-town rivalries and bad blood. This is true to an extent in New York, but is generally hamstrung by the varying degrees of success experienced by each team. The Yankees have been vastly more successful than the Mets, making it understandable that young sports fans will tend to become Yankees fans. The same can be said, to varying degrees, with the Rangers vs the Islanders, and the Giants vs the Jets. Usually, even when one team is clearly better than the other (ha, Jets fans), there exists bickering and trash talking between squads, as unfounded as one side's claims may be.
The Knicks should be immune to this though, right? (Lets discount the Nets, 1. for the sake of this argument, and 2. because they're the Nets) Wrong. Knicks fans take the high road and find ways to argue amongst themselves. New York has always had a reputation for having generally sports-savvy fans, and it resonates as a source of pride within the city, but comes with its set of repercussions. Everybody's a critic. Everybody's a pundit. Everybody knows we should have done X instead of Z, that we should have zigged instead of zagged, and, most importantly, everybody knew this was going to happen. "Called it". This isn't particularly new or exclusive to New Yorkers and the Knicks, but at some times the arguments can escalate to the point where it may seem that there are two different teams in question.
I know it sounds as if I'm just complaining about other people complaining, and I am, to a degree, but I'm actually largely unaffected by all this. What's the point of watching sports if you can't make an opinion and voice it? Everybody loves imagining themselves as the owner, general manager, coach, or player in question, and why not? It's half of the fun. Nobody wants to pay to sit around and watch a bunch of millionaires play a sport that the rest of us play for free if we're not allowed to be upset about a team's shortcomings. By that same logic, there would be no reason to be happy about a team's success. Everything's bigger in New York (screw off, Texas), why wouldn't the critics be?
So I'm fine with all that, go ahead and voice you're opinion. You're entitled to it. It's like having your cake and eating it too. But seriously, who the hell would have cake and not eat it? That might be my least favorite popular analogy of all time.
What I find particularly interesting, and rather confusing, is the concept of the "true fan" versus the "bandwagon fan". Everyone knows bandwagon fans are annoying. They jump on to your team's success like a remora onto a shark and then fall right back off at the first sign of distress. Sickening. They weren't there when you were in tears over your teams ineptitude, so why should they get to bask in the glory of your teams undeniable might, right? It doesn't matter if they were preparing for an interview, on a date, or in the hospital with a loved one, or just generally weren't into basketball at the time, if they weren't devastated by the way the '99 NBA Finals turned out, they are officially no longer allowed to be Knicks fans. Ever. Period.
It doesn't matter if they just recently started playing basketball and decided to root for the local team, if they have a relative on the team, or if they just got out of jail and decided to follow sports instead of burn down forests. If you don't fit the strict qualifications of a "true fan", then you're not allowed to claim stake in our team's success. You don't know the name of the twelfth man on our bench? Get out of here. Can't name our leading charge taker from last year? Pathetic. You were too busy volunteering at a hospital to catch last night's game against the worst team in the league? You sicken me.
I think you can see the point I'm trying to get at here (well maybe not you, Sheldon). A fan is a fan. Some are die hard, some are casual, and like everything else in life, the extent to which someone derives happiness from a team's success varies from person to person. Sure, bandwagon fans can get annoying and in extreme cases, infuriating, but so can "true fans" in the same context. Think about it, are you really so invested in your team's fortunes that you'll get upset at someone else for being happy along with you? Aren't they taking your side? Does it really diminish the moment that much for you, that you have to go out of your way to admonish someone else for whatever marginal amount of pleasure they're getting from the situation?
Maybe yes and maybe no, but this is starting to get a little to preachy and ranty for me, so I'm going to cut it at that. It's entirely possible that none of this is exclusive to New York, and happens in every town, but I'm from and live in New York, so I can only speak to what I know.
C
Either way, I'm not writing this to prove New York's merit as the biggest market in America, this post is about the sports themselves in New York, so any dissenting opinions or facts you might have (you, oh contentious imaginary reader) can twiddle their thumbs while I get on with this.
In New York sports, most things come in twos. There are the Giants and the Jets, the Yankees and the Mets, and the Rangers and the Islanders. The exception to this dichotomy exists only in basketball, and only for the time being, with the Knicks being the only New York pro basketball squad until the New Jersey Nets move to Brooklyn. With different sports teams sharing the same town, the expected result is that the different fan bases must also share the same town, leading to all sorts of cross-town rivalries and bad blood. This is true to an extent in New York, but is generally hamstrung by the varying degrees of success experienced by each team. The Yankees have been vastly more successful than the Mets, making it understandable that young sports fans will tend to become Yankees fans. The same can be said, to varying degrees, with the Rangers vs the Islanders, and the Giants vs the Jets. Usually, even when one team is clearly better than the other (ha, Jets fans), there exists bickering and trash talking between squads, as unfounded as one side's claims may be.
The Knicks should be immune to this though, right? (Lets discount the Nets, 1. for the sake of this argument, and 2. because they're the Nets) Wrong. Knicks fans take the high road and find ways to argue amongst themselves. New York has always had a reputation for having generally sports-savvy fans, and it resonates as a source of pride within the city, but comes with its set of repercussions. Everybody's a critic. Everybody's a pundit. Everybody knows we should have done X instead of Z, that we should have zigged instead of zagged, and, most importantly, everybody knew this was going to happen. "Called it". This isn't particularly new or exclusive to New Yorkers and the Knicks, but at some times the arguments can escalate to the point where it may seem that there are two different teams in question.
I know it sounds as if I'm just complaining about other people complaining, and I am, to a degree, but I'm actually largely unaffected by all this. What's the point of watching sports if you can't make an opinion and voice it? Everybody loves imagining themselves as the owner, general manager, coach, or player in question, and why not? It's half of the fun. Nobody wants to pay to sit around and watch a bunch of millionaires play a sport that the rest of us play for free if we're not allowed to be upset about a team's shortcomings. By that same logic, there would be no reason to be happy about a team's success. Everything's bigger in New York (screw off, Texas), why wouldn't the critics be?
So I'm fine with all that, go ahead and voice you're opinion. You're entitled to it. It's like having your cake and eating it too. But seriously, who the hell would have cake and not eat it? That might be my least favorite popular analogy of all time.
What I find particularly interesting, and rather confusing, is the concept of the "true fan" versus the "bandwagon fan". Everyone knows bandwagon fans are annoying. They jump on to your team's success like a remora onto a shark and then fall right back off at the first sign of distress. Sickening. They weren't there when you were in tears over your teams ineptitude, so why should they get to bask in the glory of your teams undeniable might, right? It doesn't matter if they were preparing for an interview, on a date, or in the hospital with a loved one, or just generally weren't into basketball at the time, if they weren't devastated by the way the '99 NBA Finals turned out, they are officially no longer allowed to be Knicks fans. Ever. Period.
It doesn't matter if they just recently started playing basketball and decided to root for the local team, if they have a relative on the team, or if they just got out of jail and decided to follow sports instead of burn down forests. If you don't fit the strict qualifications of a "true fan", then you're not allowed to claim stake in our team's success. You don't know the name of the twelfth man on our bench? Get out of here. Can't name our leading charge taker from last year? Pathetic. You were too busy volunteering at a hospital to catch last night's game against the worst team in the league? You sicken me.
I think you can see the point I'm trying to get at here (well maybe not you, Sheldon). A fan is a fan. Some are die hard, some are casual, and like everything else in life, the extent to which someone derives happiness from a team's success varies from person to person. Sure, bandwagon fans can get annoying and in extreme cases, infuriating, but so can "true fans" in the same context. Think about it, are you really so invested in your team's fortunes that you'll get upset at someone else for being happy along with you? Aren't they taking your side? Does it really diminish the moment that much for you, that you have to go out of your way to admonish someone else for whatever marginal amount of pleasure they're getting from the situation?
Maybe yes and maybe no, but this is starting to get a little to preachy and ranty for me, so I'm going to cut it at that. It's entirely possible that none of this is exclusive to New York, and happens in every town, but I'm from and live in New York, so I can only speak to what I know.
C
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Angular Velocity
So that last post started off alright, but ended up being a bunch of moral pontificating goo, so let's try something else.
I was reading an article on Cracked.com (a humor website I frequently visit) a while ago regarding the theoretical difficulties associated with time travel. There were a bunch of interesting points, but the one that stood out to me had to deal with the correlation between space and time. Depending on how much Discovery Channel you've watched out of boredom in your life, you may (I was going to write "may or may not", but seriously doesn't saying "may be" or "might be" automatically imply that the opposite can be true? I guess that's for a different post) be familiar with the widely understood notion that the universe is expanding (or contracting, whatever), with galaxies and such moving throughout the void in all directions. So what was proposed on Cracked was that should we actually devise a way to travel back in time to, say, the same spot 20 years ago today, the time traveler would likely find him or herself in the middle of space, since the earth would not have reached that point in space yet. So the solution would likely be extensive calculations, and charting, and blah, and blah, and blah, and that's not the point I'm getting at.
What I am getting at is that we're all moving. All the time. Whether you're sitting still, or being trapped in a block of ice by some evildoer, despite being completely motionless, you, along with the rest of the planet and everybody on it, are always traveling across some distance in space as the earth rotates around its axis, revolves around the sun, and orbits some massive black hole in the center of the milky way or whatever.
The reason we're not constantly holding on for dear life is the same reason you can walk around on a moving train car without being Spider-man. There's some scientific name for it, but it escapes me, so basically it's that when on board an object moving at a constant velocity, you can pretty much move freely relative to that object. The same applies to skateboards, cars, and airplanes. Trouble, from a balance standpoint, only arises when the object accelerates (or decelerates, which is just accelerating in the opposite direction), that's when you should consider holding on for dear life. As a quick aside: that would make for a half decent movie plot, either the earth starts accelerating and no one knows why, or some villainous scheme is hatched to accelerate the rotation of the earth. Buildings would fall, there would be floods, storms, the whole shabang. I'll keep that in mind, but it's all besides the point.
The point to take from that is that despite your personal action or inaction, you always have some velocity relative to a stationary point in space. An object at rest has a velocity of 0 on earth, but in terms of the universe has a velocity of 0 + the Earth's Velocity. Simple enough, right? Well, no, since it's really a matter of angular velocity, acceleration, centripetal force, gravitation constants, and a whole bunch of other physics variables. But I'm no physics major, so for the sake of this post I'm going to stick with velocity. If anyone ever reads this and happens to know a bit about physics and wants to call bullshit on this whole thought process, go ahead, I'm just throwing ideas out here.
So we're all moving, all the time, so what? Well where this becomes interesting is when you take into account that velocity is a vector, in that it has both a magnitude and a direction. Going 35 mph north east is the same as going -35 mph southwest, moving at a high velocity in one direction is the same as moving at a low velocity in the opposite.
This comes into play when considering the whole expanding universe thing that I previously mentioned. For simplicity's sake, let's say the Earth is traveling, along with the rest of the galaxy, eastward at a speed of 5 mph. Now lets say you decide, while on earth to drive westward at a speed of 20 mph. While you've increased your speed by 20 mph on earth, you've actually decreased your speed relative to the rest of the galaxy by 15 mph. Again, the way the universe moves is much, much more complex than that, but it's interesting to think that depending on the direction you're facing while walking, you may actually be decreasing your velocity in the universe.
As I've mentioned, I'm no physicist, not even close. A lot of this is probably so wrong that Newton's ghost is plotting his revenge, and after typing it out, I don't even know if the logic of it all is sound (Or maybe it's all right, and I've just made some kind of ground breaking discovery! [Definitely not]), but it was an interesting thought nonetheless. Now that I look at it, it probably would've made more sense and had been easier to explain using airplanes, but oh well. It's fun to flex the old brain muscle from time to time, even if the brain isn't a muscle and what you're thinking is very probably horribly incorrect. So...uh, yeah.
C
I was reading an article on Cracked.com (a humor website I frequently visit) a while ago regarding the theoretical difficulties associated with time travel. There were a bunch of interesting points, but the one that stood out to me had to deal with the correlation between space and time. Depending on how much Discovery Channel you've watched out of boredom in your life, you may (I was going to write "may or may not", but seriously doesn't saying "may be" or "might be" automatically imply that the opposite can be true? I guess that's for a different post) be familiar with the widely understood notion that the universe is expanding (or contracting, whatever), with galaxies and such moving throughout the void in all directions. So what was proposed on Cracked was that should we actually devise a way to travel back in time to, say, the same spot 20 years ago today, the time traveler would likely find him or herself in the middle of space, since the earth would not have reached that point in space yet. So the solution would likely be extensive calculations, and charting, and blah, and blah, and blah, and that's not the point I'm getting at.
What I am getting at is that we're all moving. All the time. Whether you're sitting still, or being trapped in a block of ice by some evildoer, despite being completely motionless, you, along with the rest of the planet and everybody on it, are always traveling across some distance in space as the earth rotates around its axis, revolves around the sun, and orbits some massive black hole in the center of the milky way or whatever.
The reason we're not constantly holding on for dear life is the same reason you can walk around on a moving train car without being Spider-man. There's some scientific name for it, but it escapes me, so basically it's that when on board an object moving at a constant velocity, you can pretty much move freely relative to that object. The same applies to skateboards, cars, and airplanes. Trouble, from a balance standpoint, only arises when the object accelerates (or decelerates, which is just accelerating in the opposite direction), that's when you should consider holding on for dear life. As a quick aside: that would make for a half decent movie plot, either the earth starts accelerating and no one knows why, or some villainous scheme is hatched to accelerate the rotation of the earth. Buildings would fall, there would be floods, storms, the whole shabang. I'll keep that in mind, but it's all besides the point.
The point to take from that is that despite your personal action or inaction, you always have some velocity relative to a stationary point in space. An object at rest has a velocity of 0 on earth, but in terms of the universe has a velocity of 0 + the Earth's Velocity. Simple enough, right? Well, no, since it's really a matter of angular velocity, acceleration, centripetal force, gravitation constants, and a whole bunch of other physics variables. But I'm no physics major, so for the sake of this post I'm going to stick with velocity. If anyone ever reads this and happens to know a bit about physics and wants to call bullshit on this whole thought process, go ahead, I'm just throwing ideas out here.
So we're all moving, all the time, so what? Well where this becomes interesting is when you take into account that velocity is a vector, in that it has both a magnitude and a direction. Going 35 mph north east is the same as going -35 mph southwest, moving at a high velocity in one direction is the same as moving at a low velocity in the opposite.
This comes into play when considering the whole expanding universe thing that I previously mentioned. For simplicity's sake, let's say the Earth is traveling, along with the rest of the galaxy, eastward at a speed of 5 mph. Now lets say you decide, while on earth to drive westward at a speed of 20 mph. While you've increased your speed by 20 mph on earth, you've actually decreased your speed relative to the rest of the galaxy by 15 mph. Again, the way the universe moves is much, much more complex than that, but it's interesting to think that depending on the direction you're facing while walking, you may actually be decreasing your velocity in the universe.
As I've mentioned, I'm no physicist, not even close. A lot of this is probably so wrong that Newton's ghost is plotting his revenge, and after typing it out, I don't even know if the logic of it all is sound (Or maybe it's all right, and I've just made some kind of ground breaking discovery! [Definitely not]), but it was an interesting thought nonetheless. Now that I look at it, it probably would've made more sense and had been easier to explain using airplanes, but oh well. It's fun to flex the old brain muscle from time to time, even if the brain isn't a muscle and what you're thinking is very probably horribly incorrect. So...uh, yeah.
C
Friday, March 2, 2012
Se7en, Fullmetal Alchemist, and the Perfunctory Nature of Man
So here we go for this whole blog thing, time for my first
non-introductory post! Judging by the page views, approximately no one
has stumbled upon this page, and I kind of like it like that-- for now
at least. I was considering making this post some take on the Linsanity
phenomenon with a race angle (you know, like EVERYONE else is doing),
but I'm not for all that zeitgeist-y stuff. Maybe I'll get back to that
at a later date. For now, I'm just going to write about an off-hand,
outside-the-box type topic that I thought up before falling asleep. I
sort of imagine this as being a shorter version of a paper I wouldn't
have minded writing in college, if I didn't abhor literary research so
much. Thankfully this isn't being graded, so no sources needed, just
throwing thoughts out there like a monkey flinging crap at a wall, then
trying to make sense of it like some type of monkey poop analyst. Yeah.
Let's just get started.
Last night I happened to catch 90% of a movie I had been searching a while for: Se7en (or Seven), starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The movie was released in 1995, and I had heard some things about it, but mostly made sure not to look it up or watch bits and pieces, as not to spoil any twists or the ending (I really hate when that happens). So after getting home from work, I noticed I had only missed the first 15 minutes of a TNT airing and decided to hop in, figuring I would have only missed introductions and trivial matters. The movie didn't disappoint. I'm no critic, but I thought the plot was great, the acting at least slightly above average (Pitt was meh, at best), and all that other junk that goes into movies was good enough to discourage me from flipping the channels during commercial breaks. I'll try not to ruin anything for anyone who hasn't seen the movie (and miraculously found this blog), but the story focuses on two detectives (Freeman and Pitt) as they try to solve a string of murders by a serial killer (some guy, who I'm sure is famous, but whose name I don't know off hand) whom bases his murders on each of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Envy, Pride, and Wrath. Each of the murders is gruesome in it's own right, from forcing an obese man to literally eat until he dies, to making a model (I think) choose between calling for help and living without a nose or overdosing on sleeping pills and dying before anyone can see her without her beauty. As far as being most cringe-worthy, the lust murder takes the cake, and almost by a long shot. But more than being incorporated for pure shock-value, each of the murders invokes trains of thought and serve as cautionary tales regarding the dangers of our modern world, where it is often easy to access and indulge in such vices. (Geez, I feel like some sort of preacher already, on to the next paragraph). At the end of the movie, the murderer reveals his ultimate plot, which also serves as a giant middle finger to the detectives, and really sets it apart from your run of the mill detective movie/ thriller.
After watching the plot resolve itself with a semi-expected, but still satisfying twist at the end, I got to thinking about one of my favorite anime series of all time: Fullmetal Alchemist. The story of FMA revolves around two teenage brothers in a world where it is possible to alter the physical construction of matter (like say, turn a pile of junk into a working clock) through the science of alchemy, and comes in two iterations: Fullmetal Alchemist--which was the first to air on TV-- and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood--which was released after the manga reached its conclusion in Japan. Brotherhood is not a continuation of FMA, but rather takes place in its own separate universe. (I won't link to the second one because the plot is seriously too good to allow someone to just read about it on Wikipedia. Seriously, watch that show. If not, you're an ass and I hate you). The two series feature mostly the same characters and basic plot, but the later version includes many more twists and turns, as well as involves a much larger scope and a much more detailed background. So yeah, the second one is better, in my opinion (and anyone else who isn't a turd). So what's the connection to Se7en? Well, besides both being awesome, FMA and brotherhood both also use the seven deadly sins as a main theme. The main group of antagonists of the series were creatures known as homunculi, or fake humans more or less. There were seven of these creatures, each which bore a human resemblance most of the time, and each was named after, you guessed it, one of the seven deadly sins. Predictably, the homunculi tended to go about their evil ways in a fashion that was in some way tied to their name and the deadly sin it represented. Lust took the form of a beautiful women who mostly tried to seduce her way into getting evil done, Gluttony was a ravenous, impish-looking character who was mostly concerned with his next snack (people!), and Greed generally wanted a lot of stuff. Between the two series, the homunculi take on different iterations and personalities (Sloth and Wrath are arguably the two best characters in Brotherhood, but are relatively forgettable in FMA), but the motives generally remain the same: do evil stuff that's related to their sin-name and tied into some intricate overarching plot that's unbeknown to the viewer and protagonists.
So let's tie these together! I've already spelled most of it out, both works used the seven deadly sins in connection to some overarching theme or plot, simple enough. More interestingly, both works used the seven deadly sins as major plot points and/or characters as a means to shed some light on the human condition. As with the murder victims in Se7en, each of the homunculi in both FMA iterations ends up becoming a victim to the principle vice it associates itself with. The extents to which these sins are carried out are so extreme that the characters associated with them begin to transcend conventional protagonists and antagonists, they become the sin itself. Gluttony from FMA doesn't eat because he's hungry, he eats because that's all he is motivated to do, all he can do. The fifth victim in Se7en isn't a woman so vain she couldn't stand to live without her beauty, as soon as she takes the pills she is vanity. All are examples of what can happen when you leave one aspect of your personality unchecked for too long. The take home message here is obvious; either don't sin in excess, or don't sin at all, and you won't end up being a casualty to your own actions. Since a four year old could probably come up with that sentence in less convoluted wording, I'm going to try and dig a little deeper, and that's where "the Perfunctory Nature of Man" comes in.
For one last little bit of background, no, I didn't watch Se7en and the FMA/Brotherhood series and think to myself, "Man, there seems to be a lot of perfunctory ish going on". Up until a few days ago, I only knew of the word perfunctory in a passing, I've-heard-it-used-in-context-before-and-wasn't-confused-so-I-guess-I-know-what-it-means sense. My knowledge of the word would likely have remained as such, but the other day I woke up mid-train-nap and the word was on my mind. Was it some sort of sign? Unlikely. It was probably more along the lines of my brain doing some random cycling while I slept (brains do that, right?) and me waking up just as it was trying to remember every P-word I've ever heard. A few more seconds before or after and the word might have been completely different (yeah, I know what you're thinking). Regardless of the possibilities, it was what it was and I had the word stuck in my head so I looked it up on my iPhone. Perfunctory more or less means programmed, but in a more human, just saying "Hi, how are you" as an automated response, as opposed to really caring, kind of way. The types of interactions you have with coworkers or neighbors when you run across them while handling your daily business. Good word to know, probably interchangeable with polite in a lot of contexts. Anyway, back to the issue at hand. We've got this all set up pretty nicely, so let's try to finish it off cleanly. That's what she said.
The seven deadly sins weren't chosen at random out of a hat, and there's a reason no one really disputes them (unless I'm missing some larger, probably stupider debate). They seem to sum up pretty nicely the spectrum of different ways someone could go about doing bad things, drug addiction can be seen as gluttony, violent acts obviously go under wrath, and ignorance and bigotry can be filed under sloth and pride. We're all human, and we're all susceptible at some level to all of this, so what keeps us from eating ourselves to death and hurling rocks at each other? That's where society comes in. By establishing a set of rules to govern our day to day existences, which of course vary from culture to culture, we're conditioned from a young age to avoid the recesses of the ugly side of our nature. Movies like Se7en and shows like FMA/Brotherhood play a part in reminding us why these rules exist. This isn't to say that all of us are naturally predisposed towards violence and lust and lack any capability for virtuous acts, but better safe than sorry, right? Better a society of people absentmindedly saying hi and bye to each other than one where douchebaggery and violence goes unchecked, right? Worth thinking about next time you get annoyed by all the "fakeness" and messages being pushed by the media.
That conclusion royally sucked. I started writing this on a Tuesday and finished on a Friday, and lost more and more focus with each passing day. I ended up just throwing a bow on that half-formed fetus of a composition and hit publish. But hey, at least there's a lot of room for improvement.
C
Last night I happened to catch 90% of a movie I had been searching a while for: Se7en (or Seven), starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The movie was released in 1995, and I had heard some things about it, but mostly made sure not to look it up or watch bits and pieces, as not to spoil any twists or the ending (I really hate when that happens). So after getting home from work, I noticed I had only missed the first 15 minutes of a TNT airing and decided to hop in, figuring I would have only missed introductions and trivial matters. The movie didn't disappoint. I'm no critic, but I thought the plot was great, the acting at least slightly above average (Pitt was meh, at best), and all that other junk that goes into movies was good enough to discourage me from flipping the channels during commercial breaks. I'll try not to ruin anything for anyone who hasn't seen the movie (and miraculously found this blog), but the story focuses on two detectives (Freeman and Pitt) as they try to solve a string of murders by a serial killer (some guy, who I'm sure is famous, but whose name I don't know off hand) whom bases his murders on each of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Envy, Pride, and Wrath. Each of the murders is gruesome in it's own right, from forcing an obese man to literally eat until he dies, to making a model (I think) choose between calling for help and living without a nose or overdosing on sleeping pills and dying before anyone can see her without her beauty. As far as being most cringe-worthy, the lust murder takes the cake, and almost by a long shot. But more than being incorporated for pure shock-value, each of the murders invokes trains of thought and serve as cautionary tales regarding the dangers of our modern world, where it is often easy to access and indulge in such vices. (Geez, I feel like some sort of preacher already, on to the next paragraph). At the end of the movie, the murderer reveals his ultimate plot, which also serves as a giant middle finger to the detectives, and really sets it apart from your run of the mill detective movie/ thriller.
After watching the plot resolve itself with a semi-expected, but still satisfying twist at the end, I got to thinking about one of my favorite anime series of all time: Fullmetal Alchemist. The story of FMA revolves around two teenage brothers in a world where it is possible to alter the physical construction of matter (like say, turn a pile of junk into a working clock) through the science of alchemy, and comes in two iterations: Fullmetal Alchemist--which was the first to air on TV-- and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood--which was released after the manga reached its conclusion in Japan. Brotherhood is not a continuation of FMA, but rather takes place in its own separate universe. (I won't link to the second one because the plot is seriously too good to allow someone to just read about it on Wikipedia. Seriously, watch that show. If not, you're an ass and I hate you). The two series feature mostly the same characters and basic plot, but the later version includes many more twists and turns, as well as involves a much larger scope and a much more detailed background. So yeah, the second one is better, in my opinion (and anyone else who isn't a turd). So what's the connection to Se7en? Well, besides both being awesome, FMA and brotherhood both also use the seven deadly sins as a main theme. The main group of antagonists of the series were creatures known as homunculi, or fake humans more or less. There were seven of these creatures, each which bore a human resemblance most of the time, and each was named after, you guessed it, one of the seven deadly sins. Predictably, the homunculi tended to go about their evil ways in a fashion that was in some way tied to their name and the deadly sin it represented. Lust took the form of a beautiful women who mostly tried to seduce her way into getting evil done, Gluttony was a ravenous, impish-looking character who was mostly concerned with his next snack (people!), and Greed generally wanted a lot of stuff. Between the two series, the homunculi take on different iterations and personalities (Sloth and Wrath are arguably the two best characters in Brotherhood, but are relatively forgettable in FMA), but the motives generally remain the same: do evil stuff that's related to their sin-name and tied into some intricate overarching plot that's unbeknown to the viewer and protagonists.
So let's tie these together! I've already spelled most of it out, both works used the seven deadly sins in connection to some overarching theme or plot, simple enough. More interestingly, both works used the seven deadly sins as major plot points and/or characters as a means to shed some light on the human condition. As with the murder victims in Se7en, each of the homunculi in both FMA iterations ends up becoming a victim to the principle vice it associates itself with. The extents to which these sins are carried out are so extreme that the characters associated with them begin to transcend conventional protagonists and antagonists, they become the sin itself. Gluttony from FMA doesn't eat because he's hungry, he eats because that's all he is motivated to do, all he can do. The fifth victim in Se7en isn't a woman so vain she couldn't stand to live without her beauty, as soon as she takes the pills she is vanity. All are examples of what can happen when you leave one aspect of your personality unchecked for too long. The take home message here is obvious; either don't sin in excess, or don't sin at all, and you won't end up being a casualty to your own actions. Since a four year old could probably come up with that sentence in less convoluted wording, I'm going to try and dig a little deeper, and that's where "the Perfunctory Nature of Man" comes in.
For one last little bit of background, no, I didn't watch Se7en and the FMA/Brotherhood series and think to myself, "Man, there seems to be a lot of perfunctory ish going on". Up until a few days ago, I only knew of the word perfunctory in a passing, I've-heard-it-used-in-context-before-and-wasn't-confused-so-I-guess-I-know-what-it-means sense. My knowledge of the word would likely have remained as such, but the other day I woke up mid-train-nap and the word was on my mind. Was it some sort of sign? Unlikely. It was probably more along the lines of my brain doing some random cycling while I slept (brains do that, right?) and me waking up just as it was trying to remember every P-word I've ever heard. A few more seconds before or after and the word might have been completely different (yeah, I know what you're thinking). Regardless of the possibilities, it was what it was and I had the word stuck in my head so I looked it up on my iPhone. Perfunctory more or less means programmed, but in a more human, just saying "Hi, how are you" as an automated response, as opposed to really caring, kind of way. The types of interactions you have with coworkers or neighbors when you run across them while handling your daily business. Good word to know, probably interchangeable with polite in a lot of contexts. Anyway, back to the issue at hand. We've got this all set up pretty nicely, so let's try to finish it off cleanly. That's what she said.
The seven deadly sins weren't chosen at random out of a hat, and there's a reason no one really disputes them (unless I'm missing some larger, probably stupider debate). They seem to sum up pretty nicely the spectrum of different ways someone could go about doing bad things, drug addiction can be seen as gluttony, violent acts obviously go under wrath, and ignorance and bigotry can be filed under sloth and pride. We're all human, and we're all susceptible at some level to all of this, so what keeps us from eating ourselves to death and hurling rocks at each other? That's where society comes in. By establishing a set of rules to govern our day to day existences, which of course vary from culture to culture, we're conditioned from a young age to avoid the recesses of the ugly side of our nature. Movies like Se7en and shows like FMA/Brotherhood play a part in reminding us why these rules exist. This isn't to say that all of us are naturally predisposed towards violence and lust and lack any capability for virtuous acts, but better safe than sorry, right? Better a society of people absentmindedly saying hi and bye to each other than one where douchebaggery and violence goes unchecked, right? Worth thinking about next time you get annoyed by all the "fakeness" and messages being pushed by the media.
That conclusion royally sucked. I started writing this on a Tuesday and finished on a Friday, and lost more and more focus with each passing day. I ended up just throwing a bow on that half-formed fetus of a composition and hit publish. But hey, at least there's a lot of room for improvement.
C
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