I just watched the last episode of what I thought to be a fantastic anime series, and I was so impressed by it that I had to share. It’s called “Black Jack: The 4 Miracles of Life“, and it was a 4 part special that originally aired last year in Japan. Black Jack, for those of you who don’t know, is a classic character created by Osamu Tezuka, the God of Comics and creator of Astro Boy. An amazing but unlicensed doctor who charges outrageous amounts of money for his services, Black Jack’s stories have been grounded in realism, since Tezuka himself was a doctor and used his knowledge of medicine and anatomy in his work as a comic book artist.

These special 4 episodes were recently fansubbed in anticipation for the brand new Black Jack series currently on the air in Japan, with fansubs forthcoming as well. The first episode starts with a flashback detailing how Black Jack became the man he is, but other than that each episode stands alone, and assumes that the audience already has a familiarity with the character. But even if you don’t know the character it’s still easy to get into this show, and I’m sure you’ll be a fan by the time it’s done.

The only prior exposure I’ve had to Black Jack is a 1996 movie released in English in 2001 by Manga Entertainment. That had a different animation style and was much grittier and graphic than this more recent series, which is more or less appropriate for all ages. There is more Black Jack animation out there as well, and after seeing “The 4 Miracles of Life” I think I may have to track it down and see for myself. The character is just so dark and cool, and the stories are unlike anything else I’ve seen put to animation before.

If you’re an anime fan, I urge you to check these episodes out. The fansubs are by Froth Bite who did a great job. There’s not much in the way of fancy digital effects or eye candy here, and it’s really nothing revolutionary, but it’s good, solid anime inspired by the guy who started at all.

Sayonara.

Had a great weekend with family up North to celebrate Thanksgiving, as well as my Grandmother’s 80th birthday. There was a lot of travel involved, though, and all in all I wasn’t even there for 24 hours. But it was worth it because pretty much everyone was there and I got to see all of my cousins at once. I’m the oldest of all of the grandchildren and it’s important to me to be able to spend time with them all. It was unfortunate to wake up on Monday morning and hear the news that Christopher Reeve had past away. That’s a true shame. He was a great man and he didn’t deserve to go out like that. He’ll be missed.

We drove back through the US to get home, thinking that it’d be a quicker ride to beat the Thanksgiving traffic on the Canadian side. Wound up at a Target department store along the way, and lucky for me I found this brand new exclusive Transformer:

Transformers Universe: Nemesis Prime!

This evil Optimus type character is an awesome new recolour of the previously Japanese exclusive toy, Big Convoy. I’ve got a Big Convoy as well so it’s really cool to have his Evil American Doppelganger. He turns into a Mastodon with bloodstained tusks. The box even has a bio for him, rare for Transformers these days, which tells the story of how he was created by Unicron as a twisted clone of Optimus Prime, and carries the Dead Matrix, which can destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. Too bad his box art sucks. Since Nemesis Prime is a Target exclusive, it’s highly unlikely that this guy will ever see the light of day on the selves of a Canadian retailer, so I’m glad to have picked him up when I did. A very cool addition to the collection.

Sayonara.

Well, it’s been several days since I threw the gauntlent down, and Darcia, that craftiest of all foes (ha ha), has still refused to answer my challenge and send me an e-mail explaining he reasoning behind his constant barrage of crude unprovoked insults. What a shame.

Instead he insisted that I be the one to e-mail him, even though he was the one with so much to say that he visits my website with the sole intent of harassing me several times a day. The best excuse he could come up with was “Ladies first“. Oh, please. That’s like saying “Oh yeah, we’ll … you’re actually a girl!” Ha ha. Good one. What’s next? Are you going to call me a “doodoo head“? And besides, like anyone is ever going to belive that a dirty little clod like you would ever try to be polite.

I can’t say that I am surprised that he wouldn’t stick up for himself like I told him to. After all, it should be blatantly obvious to everyone that he is a coward. But due to my morbid curiosity, I have to admit that I am a little bit disappointed. What can I say, I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment.

It’s too bad that we couldn’t find a way to work this out, Darcipants. I gave you the opportunity to present your case in a proper manner, but your unwavering insistence on complete and utter ignorance has made that impossible. I suppose that it’s just as well, since I have no doubt that the level of conversation you would provide couldn’t be much higher than that of an oxygen deprived infant scribbling on the walls of their parents’ living room with a blunt yellow crayon. After all, that’s a fairly apt analogy of what you’ve been doing in my guestbook so far.

I gave you your little moment in the sun, and I even went so far as to give you the chance to immortalize your stupidity forever, but still you cower like the pitiful little creature you are, only emerging to attempt to insult me. So, I am finished with this. As far as I am concerned, The Supreme Lord Master Darcia no longer exists. I will no longer speak of this again. You are dead to me now, Darci. And how ironic is that, when you are the one who started all of this by saying that you hope I will die, just because you didn’t like my website. Well, you’re going to have to do a lot more than hope if you want me to die so badly, because I’m not going anywhere any time soon, and the obscenity-laced spam of an inbred little brat is going to do nothing to change that. But before I end this for good, I have to thank you, Marcia. Thank you for unabashedly verifying everything that I’ve ever said about you and other people like you. Now everyone knows you’re an idiot, and you’ve proven that I’m a better man than you. Congratulations!

Goodbye forever, Darcikins. But don’t fret to much, I’m sure we’ll finally get to know each other when I see you in Hell. I’ll be the guy jabbing you in the spine with a pitchfork.

Sayonara.

You know, I try to take the high road, but there’s only so much garbage that I can deal with before I have to say that enough is enough. I can’t just ignore this anymore, because this is completely ridiculous.

Yeah, Darcia, I’m talking about you, punk.

Darcia has been signing my guestbook with negative remarks. That in and of itself is not a problem, because I’ve dealt with such things before and that’s well documented. The problem with Darcia is that he’s often insisted on using extremely crude language, and since kids also visit this webpage, I can’t tolerate that. And since these comments of his did nothing but insult me personally without actually saying anything about my webpage, which is what guestbook are actually supposed to be for, I simply deleted them and paid them no mind. People can say those things about me if they want, but to do so in a public place using swearing where kids can see it, that I have no choice to erase.

But it didn’t stop. Darcia had nothing better to do then to visit my site several times a week for the sole purpose of spamming my guestbook with his softmoric antics. I suppose he was offended that I actually ignored him. It seemed like every single day I’d have to delete another piece of Darcia’s derogatory filth. And it just kept rolling in! Now it’s gone so far that Darcia, who despite his girlish name continues to insist for whatever reason that he is a male, has told me that I will die if I delete his posts. Yeah, he actually said that I’ll die. Big man! So, fine. Screw it. If Darcia wants everyone to see how big of an idiot he is, I’ve left his latest musings intact for the entire world to observe. He’s wishing death upon me because he doesn’t like my website. Wow, logic at its finest!

Though he did eventually wind up saying something about the content on this website. He said that he could draw better than me by shoving a pencil up his ass and drawing with his butt. Interesting technique, but personally I prefer using my hand with the pencil. Good luck with that though.

But even though I didn’t delete two of his posts, he still came back! So if flat out ignoring this moron isn’t going to work, then I guess I’ll just have to apply some blunt force. So here’s an open letter to Darcia.

All right Darcia…. can I call you Darci? All right Darci, I know you are reading this. This is where it ends. I don’t know you. I have no idea who you are. I have done nothing to you. I have said nothing about you. I have no idea why you are so insistent in repeatedly insulting me, but it’s absolutely pathetic. You’re making yourself look like a fool. Stop wasting my time, and stop publicly embarrassing yourself, Darci.

Darci, I’m calling you out. I’m an easy guy to find. My e-mail address is ninjatron@sykografix.com, and that’s no secret. Whatever problem you’ve got with me, and with the lengths that you are going, it had better be a doozy, you just e-mail me and I’ll respond. But stay the hell off of the guestbook.

Darcia, if you really are man like you insist you are, you’ll face me like a man. Stop prancing around like a coward and show yourself. E-mail me whatever crap you have to say, and use a real address, don’t hide behind a fake. If you really hate me that much, then let’s settle this once and for all.

Honestly Darci, your actions beg the question: If you don’t like me, and you don’t like this website, then why the hell do you visit it every day? Just to see if I’m saying anything about you? Well, if that’s the case, then you’ve got what you want. Now give me what I want and stay the hell away from my website. If you still insist on flinging your crap like a primate, then stand by your statements and send me an e-mail. I’ll be waiting, tough guy. Bring it!

Sayonara.

I haven’t been feeling well recently. This past weekend I had a bad headache and a dizzy feeling that has been lingering for awhile. Ugh. But I couldn’t let this stop me because I had an important mission to accomplish.

My cousin J.P. is an English teacher to French speaking students in grade 7. He had made plans to travel over the weekend, but had given himself too much to do for his classes. So I was hired to help him out by marking his students’ work while he was away. It was an in-class dictation, where he would read an excerpt from the classic story “The Princess and the Pea“, and the students would write it down. It was my job to underline all of their spelling and grammar mistakes and total them up. It was an interesting experience, made much more difficult than it had to be by the fact that I had a splitting headache at the time (and don’t feel much better as I right this, come to think of it).

One might think that this would be a very simple task. I mean, the “Princess and the Pea” isn’t exactly a complicated story, and they are in grade 7, so how many mistakes could there be? Well, keep in mind that these students predominately speak French, so they often had some very, shall I say, creative written interpretations of certain spoken English words. “Princess” was often spelled “princesse“, and I noticed the word “pea” spelled a myriad of different ways, “pe“, “pee“, “pi” and “pie“. Yes, pie. Pie is so good, after all. I don’t think anyone spelled “Hans Christian Andersen” correctly. Though it didn’t ultimately count, I marked it anyway. There were some spellings that were so completely wrong that I wondered just what they had heard, like “Hungs Kristen Henderson” or something like that. Some of them went fairly quickly, with very few mistakes, but there were a few that were just completely atrocious. I counted 78 mistakes in one, and that was me being generous! I might as well have just taken my red pen and underlined the entire page. Instead of putting commas (,) and semi-colons (;), someone actually wrote the word “comma” and “semi-colon“. It was hard to believe that it was real.

So that’s what I did with my weekend. I have no point in saying all of that. I’m not trying to make fun of anyone, and it’s not like it’ll matter since nobody there knows who I am. I’m just saying. Though I hope that I didn’t make a big bunch of spelling mistakes just now.

Sayonara.