atoms2ashes:

Evangelion Angels presented via Digital Collage

Since I left the dojo and came to Portland with all its good food and beer I’ve gotten soft in literal ways. And hey, it’s biking weather now and we’ve got a weight set in the basement so no excuses. Biked down GNC to pick up some protein and creatine.

Jesus christ, I forgot what a difference creatine makes. After my first day’s dose I could suddenly climb the Alameda ridge without stopping or even dropping into too low a gear (I mean, not that supersteep one way street, jfc), and I don’t decide to give up partway through sets.

My goal is to every day do 3 sets each of 3 different lifts, at least a third of the old dojo exercises, and climb the ridge at least once, twice on weekends.

❝Let's live our lives heroically, let's live them with style.❞

Muscular Christianity is alive and well in our own town.

I was at a pinball tournament at the Belmont Inn, saw a guy complaining to a friend at a table about his marriage, which seems like a very traditional bar thing to do but I realize I’d never actually remembered seeing before.

The friend had that facial hair halfway between soul patch and goatee that I’d heard described as “the international symbol for ‘youth pastor’”, but that was always a secondhand experience to me so it was kind of a shock when his advice segued into a comparison to the awesome power and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I guess youth pastors grow up with their youth and they’re “emergent church” pastors now all doing their church planting.

Not sure if the pastor was with Mars Hill but I wouldn’t be shocked - Mars Hill’s this big Seattle-based church - chain? franchise? I don’t know the terminology - that planted its first Portland branch 3 blocks from the bar.

I don’t really know the specifics of their theology - an atheist from a Catholic background (of the “Irish branch of mainstream Protestantism” type) their professed doctrine reads to me as generic Protestantism, though I’ve picked up enough to recognize that “substitutionary sacrifice”, say, is a specific thing, though I couldn’t tell you what it is or what it means for us. The rest of their website talks about doing everything for Jesus, but in a vague and nonspecific way, which is pretty much how that pastor sounded.

(interestingly, if you look around online, a lot of their critics from within enthusiastic Christianity complain of their elevating an extensive doctrine at the expense of Jesus-focus)

But their social praxis seems to be pure sexual complementarianism - men should be men, bold and strong and true, and Jesus (a carpenter and rebel, after all) should be understood as a model of masculinity, not a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ… a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy.” Women should be women, gentle and caring and loyal. And together they should form families, each taking to their proper sphere.

I can’t find it on their website now, but I swear a month or two ago I saw, prominently linked from the first page, testimonials playing up the appeal of the church as a place to find worthy mates. And in both men and women’s testimonials, and more subtly, in the pictures of each testifyer, you could see the angle, a pitch to the educated urban 20-30s demographic that they can have both their of-the-moment playful hipster aesthetic AND the comfort of a well-worn way of life where all the questions have known answers.

Men - you want a cute, hip girl with indie rock glasses and hand-knit accessories AND a woman who will relentlessly support you and yield to your leadership? Women - you want a hot guy with full sleeve tattoos who plays guitar in a band but ISN’T a drifty flake who thinks of you as his girlfriend “for now”, as long as you offer more than the three girls on the back burner?

(And definitely men with women – in this complementarian understanding homosexuality is not only a sinful way of life - we’re all sinners after all - but perhaps more damningly an incompetent one)

And this is definitely how that pastor sounded - the man’s complaint seemed to be that his wife wanted more control in their relationship, but wasn’t in turn offering to bring anything more to the table, and the pastor’s advice seemed to come down to the fact that yes, this was a disordered situation, but one that had come about due to the man’s failure to exhibit strong leadership.

I dunno, maybe there is something to the idea that the twee indie aesthetic, cupcakes and yarn and '50s dresses is masking an unironic longing for a '50s way of life.

(And hell, glass house here, I’m developing an only half-joking taste for Norse paganism based largely on cosplay photos of beardy dudes working at anvils and girls with daggers and braids and mead horns standing around in nature.)

I wonder if those guys who go out dressed like pirates have their own religion. I saw a bunch of them hanging out in Director Park, like 2:30 on a Monday, maybe it was a prayer service.

glory pain

glory death

glory pain

glory death

limegl0wstix:

DJ Stompy — Take My Hand
TKK (The Killah Kuts) [TKK 002], 2004

Been jammin this like an insane person.

german-expressionists:

Egon Schiele, Standing Male Nude with a Red Loincloth, 1914 

almost all of my recent followers are scam blogs, but they’re all scam blogs posing as graphic design or fashion blogs, and there’s a really good tumblr joke in there but I just can’t put it together.

I joined Facebook really early, like when there were 3,000 or so people on the whole site and 600 of them might pass into my actual field of vision in any given week.  In the beginning you were segregated into networks based on what school you attended and you could do like an OKCupid search on your entire network. It had a plugin architecture and one of the most popular plugins (this was before the news feed) alerted you when your friends broke up, so you could swoop in and mack on your crushes before anyone else claimed them.

Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

Got around to seeing the first of the new Evangelion movies. Saw it subbed, which was something - that was one property I always preferred dubbed. Maybe I was missing something, because there seemed more texture to the voice acting - Shinji came off less wimpy and more panicked, with less snivel and more shriek in his lines; Misato’s flightiness comes through more, creating a greater contrast in her scenes with Ritsuko, and with her “Commander” decisiveness during operations. Even Gendo seemed a little less impenetrable, with some of his steeliness passed on to Fuyutsuki instead.

Actually I wonder if that was even true in the original series; so much of this movie seemed to be the original highly polished in a way that brought the psychological stuff to the fore early on. (I mean how many episodes deep did the seiyuu even know the plot when recording episode 1? Hell, how many deep did Anno?)

Hands seem to be a more noticeable recurring theme in this one, I like how Shinji seeing Rei’s blood on his hand when they meet played as a callback to his “I’m so fucked up” scene in EoE. (For that matter, hospital beds, or just beds, come to the fore with the other stuff trimmed down.)

The story condensation was pretty good in that looking back I can’t even recall what it left out. Maybe some slice-of-life scenes at the school or Misato’s place?

Finally seemed to depart from the source material towards the end. That seems to be the tradition with Eva properties - they all start the same way and then find different ways to turn batshit crazy.

So yesterday I was going to go to a friend’s Cinco de Mayo party at noon, and so went to bed at 3 am which is relatively easy for me but instead I woke up at 7 and couldn’t get back to sleep because I have insomnia and it’s aggravated by the intention to get up for anything no matter how trivial.

So I go over and think I’m maybe a little late even for this competition he was going to do, bring my bike into his backyard and like no one else was there so I’m like “oh, ok, I have time to get some coffee and pick up some beer and grilling meat” only as I leave I have the terrible sense that I screwed something up and check my phone and oh shit it’s only Quatro de Mayo whoo boy dodged a bullet of awkwardness there.

So I decide I’d always been intending to bike around North/Northeast in the daytime but never got to it so perfect chance. If you ride down side streets in Portland long enough you always run into a park with water fountains and whatnot so that’s nice. Eventually I decide to ride up until I hit the river and follow that. There’s a marina and stuff and I ride east until 33rd and I’m thinking of turning back down but hey there’s a specific bike path and I’m thinking I’ll ride that a while further and then turn inland.

Except that path is between the airport and the river so there’s no turnoffs until like 90th and the I-205 bridge, it’s hard to realize how huge an airport is until you traverse its perimeter under human power and this isn’t the longest bike ride I’ve ever taken but the longest in years, and at one point I’m seriously afraid my junk has withdrawn into my body but nope, just gone numb. A few passenger jets take off over me and some F-18s land on I guess Air National Guard business. Like, I’m pretty sure they’re 18s from the wingform but on the ground the canopies look bulbous and raised like a 16 so maybe they’re 2-seater trainers?

Anyway eventually there’s a turnoff through the airport parking lot, and then somehow I go up a normal curb cut, turn, and for some reason sprawl out across the pavement. Get up, wave myself OK to the bus driver, but now my palm’s scratched up and from the bruise and swelling I probably sprained some extensor digitalis. On top of all the grease from having to dislodge my chain, which was getting stuck between my rear gears and the frame for some reason.

And I’m like “what the hell even is this place” but then I remember there’s a big box center here, like to take advantage of the Washington sales tax on the other side of the bridge, and it has an IKEA, so I go get some meatballs. Except they’re not as good as I remember, and the salad is terrible, and walking the store circuit doesn’t relax me like it always did, and it’s bugging me that the people seem so much more like stereotypes of the “ugly American” than I remember but I can’t put my finger on it, I definitely see overweight dudes in cargo shorts and t-shirts every day.

So I steel myself up for the ride home only for some reason on going out I find my bike has a flat tire, which was maybe the result/cause of that fall earlier. I drag it over to Sports Authority, realize that even with the $15 charge to upgrade from 72-hour service having them fix it is cheaper than either buying a patch kit and pump or getting a cab home to my garage where I have one.

Had to wait for the bike repair guy to get back from lunch, talked with the tennis stringing guy about his growing up in farm country, we felt out some common ground on guns (he was mainly the gun guy in the store), he declared himself a “far-right-winger” who’d voted for no Democrats since Nixon and blamed the collapse of the American bike manufacturing industry on “Bill Clinton and his cronies, who came in after Reagan” for ending our long and noble tradition of defending the American way of life through protective tariffs by giving China most-favored-nation trading status (this was actually a legislative formalization of a presidential prerogative that had been exercised continuously since the Reagan administration, but hey) Held the manufacturing companies blameless since what could they do.

Rode home along Columbia. First really warm weekend, everyone was out on their porches, which makes you realize how monolithically white the neighborhood isn’t (Had a professor once who pointed out that people usually judge the ethnicity of a neighborhood on stores & restaurants, and even Little Italy in NY was at peak only 35-40% Italian by population).

Got home at 5, showered, prepared to collapse into bed, looked on Facebook, realized the party was in fact on the 4th. Headed over.

Thoughts on Eva 2.22

Haha wow that English is way too clear and even. Is that what I sound like when I speak Japanese? Also wow Kaji’s (&later Mari’s) seiyuu are obviously doing this phoenetically.

(Also wtf with how Mari specifies Japanese interface and then all the stuff comes up in English?)

They’re really big on tilt-wing VTOLs this series of movies. I guess the Osprey might be a bigger thing for Japan, still kinda being part of the USMC branch of the American imperium.

Hands again. Oooooohhhh, stigmata, I get it.

Shit, did Kaji just make a Wild Zero reference?

I guess this movie has all the lighthearted, slice-of-life, Pen-Pen, fanservice bits the first one lacked (is Mari the… fun parts of Asuka?) and

Wait. Okay, the 9th angel is the first time you didn’t know what’s going to happen and in retrospect they were kind of being light for a while so they could set you up for this sucker-punch

And holy shit, the 10th angel fight as a mashup of Mari doing Asuka’s EoE Mass Production fight, Rei2’s sacrifice, and the 3rd Impact female-form that’s interest…

Wait whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

FUCK.

(shit though they aren’t going to dance like they want to win, are they)

Eva 3.33 notes:

Hey new character design. Uh, hey new everything design. Hey butch Ritsuko. Is that flagship the fucking Nadesico?

Aw, they worked puffy underwater Unit 02 in!

Hahahahaha holy shit its Nadesico AND Ragnarok and at least 8 more references off this and most of them probably refer back to something I missed and man fuck steampunk I forgot how amazing Japanese airship design was

Finally, after 2 movies of useless, absurdly massed Cold War ordinance, we get useful post-nuke bioform guns, that’s some pretty classic anime themes right there.

“So that’s the power to kill God” - haha yussss, this is all getting pretty Utena

Yuss, yussssss, this is what I miss growing up with ‘90s Japanese pop culture - fuck all that 2000s indulgent moe/visual kei glam bullshit - rococo and biomechanical and dieselpunk design and elegant piano and German romantic esotericism and beautiful clear wistful summer days in the middle of absurdly huge ruins, yuss, this is what life was supposed to be and what I was supposed to die about

Wait does that SDAT player’s cord on the ground read “foe” in cursive?

Kaworu and Shinji DPing the Eva with their plugs OBVIOUSLY

Uhh… what?

No seriously, what? I see we’re now firmly into the “incomprehensible apocalypse” part of an Eva story cycle.

Oh god the preview looks like someone’s FINALLY going to dance like they want to win BRILLIANT

“psst hey kid, want to achieve some instrumentality?”

kyaryarchy:

Remember when they did the episode about an Enchiridion? What does Epictetus’ Enchiridionsay about favorite cups?

With regard to whatever objects either delight the mind, or contribute to use, or are tenderly beloved, remind yourself of what nature they are, beginning with the merest trifles: if you have a favorite cup, that it is but a cup of which you are fond, - for thus, if it is broken, you can bear it; if you embrace your child, or your wife, that you embrace a mortal, - and thus, if either of them dies, you can bear it

fuck i love this show

Specifically, how much weight to give it when you hear that some ancient culture celebrated this ceremony, or venerated this figure, or whatnot.

Like, I could say “Americans venerate a divine figure named Jesus Christ associated with life and rebirth”, and that would be correct. Even if we’re not all believing Christians, he’s a big part of the culture, most of us could give a fair sketch of his legend, and he plays a big role in two major seasonal festivals.

But I could also say “Americans personify the yearly cycle as a man, growing from infancy to senility as the seasons passed”. And I mean, recognizing what the old man and baby with the sash represent in early January cartoons is a minor part of cultural literacy, but it feels wrong to give it such weight.

And in between we have, say, Santa Claus. Whose current mythology is almost entirely developed in America, with storytellers developing new takes and refinements on it almost every year. Some share of the population is supposed to believe in him, but some share is supposed to not. So where does he fit in?

I’ve long believed that Santa Claus is in fact the appropriate modern American understanding of the Judeo-Christian God, actually.

God in the time of desert nomadism created food and water out of nothing and rearranged inconvenient geography to allow for straight-line travels; God in the time of early settlement influenced victory in battle and enforced tribal distinctions; God in the age where pastoral societies coalesced into Mediterranean empire was a fisherman/shepherd who united the tribes; God in the time of kings and a bureaucratic churchly world-government was at the head of an angelic hierarchy and people who did his work on earth would be rewarded with facetime with which to serve as an intercessional patron for their clients.

So of course God in the time of democratic industrial capitalism is a kindly factory-owner who rewards socially approved behavior with material goods.

related to below: well I finally saw some porn from a tube site shared to my Facebook feed, I was wondering if anyone ever used that function