Dear Senator,

I don't often write letters, but there is a very damaging issue in my mind that has not been rectified. I think it is time to pass legislation for regulation on names parents can give to their children. While I can list several examples, I can think of nothing worse than the Hertz family naming their child Richard. This is especially true for us Missourians from Holden. Embarrassing names can lead to childhood bullying and even PTSD in the adult years.

We need this regulation now. Children and adults out there are suffering, and we should not allow this to continue for future generations.

Sincerely,
Dick Hertz from Holden

Ugh, time is passing much too quickly. It's time for another anime season and it seems to be a doozy this round. There are lots of series coming out and I'm quite sure I'll be chastised for that fact that I will be ignoring most of them. Mitsudomoe, High School of the Dead, Sekirei 2, and the glut of others are being summarily ignored by me due largely to complete indifference and my growing remorse over what passes for anime nowadays. What follows is a list of series that I dubbed worthy to watch for the season, but I may regret it as time goes on (and I may cast my eyes longingly at the "don't care" list shortly). At least Bakemonogatari finally aired its final episode, and it was good. As usual, they are listed in order of enjoyment.

Kaichou-wa Maid-sama
Genre: romantic-comedy

I'm not one to "squee", but... SQUEEEEEEEThe best series from last season returns with the second half. It's funny, has a great cast of characters, and, most important of all, it's entertaining. Try not to screw it up.

Amagami SS
Genre: romance

Sing along! No one knows what it's like to be the bad man~ To be the sad man~For a series with SS in the title, this one is quite adorable. It appears to be a straight romance that I just fawn over. It also has an interesting premise that I hope to see become a success. Each of the girls in this "harem" will be given her own story arc, as if it was a proper visual novel. Maybe if it works out, more visual novel adaptations can take this route. I'm looking forward to it.

Seitokai Yakuindomo
Genre: comedy

Brr, I'm having flashbacks to that one, certain Inukami ED.I'm having mixed feelings about this series. It appears to be a satire of visual novels in a school that has recently become co-ed. In a bizarre twist (for which I am grateful) the lead character isn't out to acquire large amounts of a certain orange-flavored beverage, and is instead enlisted, Haruhi-style, into the student council. What follows is a comedy… of sorts. I can see all the times it tries to be funny, but I have yet to actually laugh or even crack a smile. I can hardly sit through an entire episode without getting up to do some dishes or take out the trash. It is so banal that I would actually prefer to get up and do some chores. It's not bad (it does earn its place in the middle of the list), but it certainly doesn't blow my mind either.

Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi
Genre:  un-funny comedy

What do you mean "fisting pussy" is a double entendre? I was amazed at just how generic this anime presented itself. It's almost as if they didn't even try. Every character is basically a carbon copy of another anime's character. The narrator explains the most obvious of details. The quiet, "average" male confesses to the attractive, long-haired lady character. There are frequent breaks in the dialogue to comment on the protagonist's small bosom size. Uncharacteristically, however, the pace is unnaturally fast, with the kokuhaku and the onsen scene occurring within the first episode. Hopefully, this pace will carry on throughout so it can finish in half as many episodes and spare me from another awful, drawn-out series.

Asobi ni Iku yo
Genre: ecchi

This is totally going to be my wallpaper at workOkay Japan, it really isn't funny anymore. Just how many more anime will you need to sacrifice for the sake of sex jokes and tits? You took what would otherwise be another generic and boring sci-fi action series and tried to "spice it up" with a nekomimi alien in a goofy-looking Evangelion swimsuit. I put that phrase in quotes because it does no such thing. It's a boring series that does nothing that hasn't been seen many, many, many times before. If it doesn't reform soon, I'm liable to just drop it. There are plenty of other series on the sidelines waiting to be called on (if only for the chance of disappointing me as well).

I remember many, many moons ago finding a box of Hanukah cookies at the grocery store shaped like little dradels and Stars of David. I also remember posting about it and declaring it one of the coolest things ever for sale at Ye Olde Grocery Store. In a recent food run, I think I found a new contender for the title.

Apple & Eve brand apple juice. I tell you, whenever I go out to buy a bottle of apple juice, Original Sin is not one of the first things to come to mind. Fortunately, that situation is rectified with this ode to Eve's temptation. "Apple & Eve". Really, what else can they be alluding to? It made me smile so big that I just had to buy it. No regrets. It's ORIGINAL SINFULLY DELICIOUS!™

Why is evil always made out to be some kind of negative trait? Whenever there is a movie with a diabolical protagonist, there is always some attempt to "fix" his ways and turn him good. They did it with the Grinch, and now they did it again with Despicable Me.

The first few moments of the film were absolutely great. The main character, who was named after the sound my stomach was making since I got the showtime that bisected dinner, Gru, was a schadenfreude prick that left destruction and despair everywhere he went. I thought, "finally, a character I can relate to." I was ready to sit back and enjoy watching him strut about while brushing aside the filthy proletariat with one hand and building a doomsday device the size of a Monopoly cannon with the other for the remaining hour and some minutes. Unfortunately, some corporate bigwigs thought that misanthropy was a negative trait, had him adopt three adorable little female spores, and get all mushy and caring. Crap!

I would be lying if I said I didn't expect this. I went in to the movie hoping to see the personalities of the characters bounce off of each other in hilarious ways, and in an alternate universe where the sky is orange and Google spelled its company name properly I would've gotten my wish. Instead, I got a movie that was rather boring with only two moments that stick out in my mind as being genuinely funny. I was especially moved by a joke about Lehman Brothers. The kid sitting behind me actually had to shush my laughing. I was the only one.

To be honest, this is the first movie where I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly what made it boring. Maybe it was the main character's voice? I suppose after having my ears lovingly caressed by Niko Bellic's svelte Eastern European accent, any attempt by Steve Carrell would be like a Texan trying to impersonate James Bond.

The characters also did little for me. The movie, for some bizarre reason, decided to get a bunch of potentially enjoyable characters together, but not bother to flesh them out at all. Aside from the Gru of the first ten minutes, I connected to none of the characters. This is a bad move when the story (or, specifically, lack thereof) revolves entirely around them.

I also hated (best read in all caps with three or four exclamation points) the little potato minions that the advertisements used about as shamelessly as they used Jessica Simpson for the Dukes of Hazzard remake. The movie just spent too much time with them. This was time that could've been better spent with, y'know, the actual characters that mattered. Focusing on those little cheese puffs is like taking The Three Stooges and focusing on their rugged handsomeness. It just isn't entertaining and subtracts from the whole.

To sum things up: I don't care how much 3D you throw at something, it does not instantly make a great movie. You have to actually earn that. Overall the movie gets a mere 6.22753 / 10.23. Let's try harder, okay?

I saw something interesting at CNN not too long ago. It's a poll that states 1 in 4 Americans don't know what country America declared its independence from. Amongst 18-29 year-olds, only 60% got it right. Now, this is fairly depressing by itself, but what made it sadder was the plethora of ridiculous comments from readers. They tried to extrapolate all sorts of crazy assertions from this measly batch of sensationalist statistics. Blame was thrown every which way: Democrats, Republicans, teachers, the moral decay of society, &c. It was bizarre!

After reading those numbers, I thought, "that sucks", but I knew that it gave evidence to nothing specific. The statistics were, to put it bluntly, largely worthless. I suppose it does point out that there is a problem somewhere, but it acts more like a "check engine" light than anything else. It tells you there is a problem, but cannot be tied, in any way, to prove that a specific thing is to blame.

I would also like to point out that this was a college poll, presumably taken on a college campus. College campuses are one of the most diverse plots of land anywhere, so it is not safe to assume that all those polled are US citizens or even in the US for very long. Also, most college students are complete pricks, so it's entirely possible many of the younger subjects were just jerking the pollster's chain.

In short: Remember kids, question everything! Especially statistics!

Happy birthday America! Your grey hairs are starting to show, but I still love you anyway. I found this little snippet on, of all places, 4chan. Go figure.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration. At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school. After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department. I then log on to the Internet, which was developed by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how socialism in medicine is bad because the government can't do anything right.

There's a certain behavior that I would like to add to the canon of proper social etiquette. Here's what I want: If a person walks past another in a hall and it's possible to still smell the other's perfume/cologne from three metres behind, it should be perfectly acceptable to turn around and say to the other person, "gee, do you really smell so bad naturally that that much anti-stink liquid is needed to keep it down?"

Truly, I don't see why the public doesn't do this already. People should be commended for helping others by alerting them of their horrendous stench.

Maybe it doesn't catch on for the same reason telling someone they have a big nose isn't thoughtful: there isn't anything the person can immediately do to fix it. If they come in to work smelling like the fell into the raw sewage of an artificial fruit flavouring manufacturer, they can't just brush it off like they would lint on the shoulder. They would have to shower, change, and, if they're feeling daring, apply a more reasonable amount of Masque de Stenche.

Of course, this will never happen, because humanity doesn't like the truth.

I have a serious problem with narrators in anime. This has been building for some time, accelerated during the last season, and came to a head this season with Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi (Ookami-san). I can think of no series where I thought, "gee, this story and dialogue was great and kept things structured, but if they included a calm-voiced old-lady narrator, it would be much improved." That never happens. Occasionally, some series employ a narrator to explain back story or try to put a little more spin on the message, but they act more like MCs than narrators describing the obvious; Princess Mononoke and Aoi Bungaku are good examples. Outside of those few examples, most of the great series shine their brightest without a narrator.

Ookami-san displays the greatest breakdown of narrator worthlessness. Every single thing the invisible old-lady said was, at best, inane or, at worst, worthless. Most of what she said could've been implied from the character's actions or setting. The rest was just a repeat of what the characters had said less than three lines ago. In one scene, a character is introduced by another, only to have the narrator reintroduce her at the very next line! I could practically feel my brain cells committing suicide from the sheer insults to my intelligence. The most memorable slap in the face came about seven minutes in after we saw the two lead characters beat up a bleached-hair thug in an alley. It was stunningly obvious that these two characters were the leads, but the narrator had the sheer gall to tell me, after all of that, that those two characters were, indeed, the main characters. As the marketing head for a practical joke company said in a presentation for a new constipation powder, "no shit!" It's disgusting, and looking back at recently passed series, it looks like a trend that's only getting worse. I'm worried for what autumn has in store for me.