One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
Thoughts on the first presidential debate?
Billy, didn’t your mother ever tell you not to get your political commentary from obscure Pokémon blogs?
I do find US federal politics tremendously amusing, actually. For all its faults, this country knows how to put on a show; I wish New Zealand could sustain this level of spectacle and drama for months at a time. I did a running commentary for my friends on Facebook, which I shall reproduce below:
Continue reading “VikingBoyBilly asks:”how’d you sleep last night and how do you think you’ll sleep tonight
Um. Fine, I guess? Could be better, could be a lot worse? Probably predicting the same tonight, more or less. Had a bit of a spell earlier this year where I was waking up with back pain a lot but I seem to have that under control. Thanks for asking. I suppose.
Welcome back! How was it?
Okay so
What you have to understand is that archaeology is pain.
You get up at 5:00 am, swing a pickaxe all morning in the Greek summer heat, have intense debates about whether the soil at one end of your trench is a slightly different shade of brown than the soil at the other end, spend an hour or so each day cleaning the dirt to make sure the dirt isn’t dirty, have lunch which is Greek salad every day for a month, wash bits of broken pottery all afternoon, label every last goddamn fragment, have Greek salad again for dinner, get about five and a half hours of sleep, and then do it all over again.
Then at the end you go home and tell everyone it was amazing and you can’t wait to do it again next year, and somehow that’s true.
We’re strange people.
I just want to hug you.
Awww, that’s sweet. I want to hug you too, anonymous grey sphere.
Religious attacks aside, I think your recent post on the Orlando shootings were well stated. It sickens me that this kind of thing happens so often in our country, and I can’t imagine any logical reason to allow civilians access to assault rifles. I just want to say I know plenty of religious people on your side. And don’t feel guilty for being “spared” of this sort of attack. Ideally, we’ll reach a time where humans aren’t slaughtered for trivial reasons (or any at all). I’m glad you’re safe.
Thanks; I appreciate the message. I’m sorry if that part bothered you; emotions were running a bit high when I wrote that, but I have Christian, Muslim and Jewish friends, some of whom are gay or bisexual themselves. It’s just frustrating to see religion used to justify bigotry over and over again because a small minority still want to worship a bloodthirsty Bronze Age sky god instead of his 21st century reincarnation – as I’m sure many of the religious would agree.
Homosexuality in the Pokemon series? maybe realationship between human characters or the life style of some species, how feasible is it?
I’m not totally sure what you’re getting at here – by “feasible” do you mean “would Game Freak get away with it?” Because I imagine in Japan they would but in America it might be a bit of a tough sell, which is probably why we don’t see it in the anime (not that romantic relationships are a major theme of the Pokémon anime anyway). As for the Pokémon themselves… well, pretty much the one thing we know is that you won’t get an egg from two Pokémon of the same gender, and that Attract never works on Pokémon of the same gender. Since the only real constant in how the games talk about Pokémon breeding is that no-one actually seems to know much about how it works (not to mention the fact that some Pokémon species appear to be single-sex), that could mean just about anything.
Homosexuality is well-documented in many animal species in the real world, most famously giraffes (who, on average, actually seem to have more gay sex than straight sex), bonobos, penguins, and dolphins (who have been known to engage in – I swear I am not making this up – blowhole sex). I think it’s reasonable to assume that the Pokémon world works like the real one unless stated otherwise, so homosexuality is probably just as common; it just gets totally lost in the obscuring fog that surrounds everything even remotely connected to Pokémon reproduction.
Since you are an archeologist-kinda guy and also from the Pacific Ocean, is it your big dream to discover remnants of the lost continent, Mu?
…no? Not to be abrasive, but… I’m rather more interested in discovering things that exist. You can’t “lose” a continent; there would be geological evidence for it.
Hey you pokéstupid why do you think Australia and NZ are stupid countries? Your usa not america isn’t the center of the world, its the center of xenofobics like u
You misunderstand, gentle reader. I’m from New Zealand (I thought my use of the phrase “back home in New Zealand” would render all confusion impossible, but clearly not…). I was calling the United States ridiculous and backward (tongue firmly in cheek, of course… well, mostly).
Why are non-sexual relationships named after Plato?
It comes from a bit in Plato’s Symposium where he has Socrates talk about there being two different kinds of love, one that stems from admiration of the body and leads the lover to loads and loads of awesome sex, and one that stems from admiration of the mind and leads the lover to self-improvement and contemplation of the divine (and of course because Plato is a philosopher he thinks the second kind is obviously superior). It’s actually sort of a misnomer, though, because the way Plato describes the second kind of love, it’s not sexual, but it kind of is romantic, and really a lot more specific than what we tend to mean when we talk about “Platonic love” in modern English.
Happy new year! This question is random, but you do well at coming up with amusing responses to odd questions. Also I love your blog. Anyway: Do you have a new years resolution and what is it?
(Yes this is how far behind I am on questions; shut up)
I tend not to actually declare new year’s resolutions, because if you openly make a new year’s resolution and then fail to keep it, you’ll be cursed by Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways, beginnings and endings, and the new year. I know “god of doorways” doesn’t sound menacing, but trust me, you do not want to be on that guy’s bad side. But anyway… things that I generally want to do this year BUT ARE NOT FORMAL RESOLUTIONS, DO YOU HEAR ME JANUS include having my $#!t together more with regards to cooking for myself and keeping my apartment tidy, and also finding the time somewhere to go to Scotland and visit Jim the Editor because we haven’t seen each other (barring Skype) in over a year now.
Pokémaniacal 