So yeah... the new Matrix Reloaded movie came out a little while ago. It thickened the story a lot, made things make more sense as well. But the Matrix is really a philosiphy movie as well as a action movie. It raises some really huge questions, and is even changing some screwed up people's faiths around. Other than questions of faith, however, it leaves several questions about the mechanics of the world. Like these:

Why can the french guy make spanish fly cake and I cant?!

The Oracle garunteeded Neo would feel better after he ate her cookie. Was that a ganja cookie?

Wouldn't you get caught up if you had sex with bolts and metal plates all around your body?

Why is the designer of the Matrix Colonel Sanders, and his woman The Oracle?

On the screens in Colonel Sanders' office, why wasn't one of Neo's faces saying "damn, I need to take a leak?"

The crew of the ship connected via sattelite to the Matrix. What would happen if you lagged while connected?

If you bled in the Matrix, you bled in real life. What would happen if you secreted OTHER bodily fluids in the Matrix?

I also had another question, but since I asked it, it got answered by a friend. I wondered why they fired the guy who played Dozer, the only actually decent actor in the entire movie. (But don't be mistaken, it IS easily one of my top 3 favorite action movies.) Well, kids, this is why alcohol is bad. Don't get drunk off your ass on a movie set, or the director is liable to kick you out.

Why Saddam Hussein is the Bitch of the Dictators
Ben Bradford - April 22, 2003

Saddam Hussein. The name rings with infamy every time it's uttered. He's ranked up there with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as one of the all time most vile people. But really, Saddam doesn't have shit on either of these dictators. First off, you can tell he is a bitch just by how he looks. Fat, green fatigues, normal moustache. What kind of a dictator are you if your moustache is normal? You are a bitch one, that's for sure. Look at Stalin... he rocked a nasty handlebar 'stache. And Hitler's facial hair was beyond words. The style! Two little stubs under his nose.... how chic. How genius.

Now we come to the statistics of Saddam's army. Reputed to be one of the most powerful armies in the world, he went up against a pansy ass, unorganized army in 1982, from a country that had just undergone a revolution. Yes, I'm talking about Iran. And at the end of an 8 year war, NOTHING at all was accomplished, and the war was at a stalemate. But still, Saddam's "military might" was feared. Then he invades Kuwait, which had almost no military, and thinks he's all badass because he wins.

The Gulf War main operations took 36 hours to execute. Think about this for a second. 36 fucking hours. Now think of what happened to the Iraqi military after that. They were completely annihilated. Then, in the 2003 version of the war, the entire government was taken out in less than a month. And it was pretty much two countries who did the entire thing! Think about Germany in World War II. The US, USSR, Britain, and the remaining free world with an army remaining (yes, France got the shit kicked out of it) fought Hitler, and it took almost the entire duration of the war to get him out of power. Hitler put up a fight. Saddam bitched out, and his troops ran away, and surrenedered, and pretty much lost in general.

But the real important thing -- at least to the dictators themselves -- would have to be the issue of how many of their people they slaughtered. Here is a dialouge of the trio themselves having a little conversation in hell.

Hitler: "Ja... ju guys are zee bitches in dis room. I killed about 10 millionz of da facking jews!"
Stalin: "Vat zee fack are you saying, leetile German punk? I keeled twventy millionz of de rich land-oening Soviet peoplez, juwst becauis they peesed me owff!"
Saddam: "Yais... I keeled... lyke... 200,000 of those Kurd guys... juwst becauise theyr naimes sownd lyke turd. I'm so badass. Get it...? Guys?"

Yes. We now realize that even in hell, Saddam will be hated. Even by the dictators who committed atrocites far more devious than Saddam's puny mind could think of. Saddam Hussein's name should no longer be infamous for being a ruthless dictator, but for being a stupid dick, who doesn't even know how to oppress his own minorities.

TRIGUN VS. COWBOY BEBOP
Ben Bradford - 23:56:02, 16 April 2003

Well... ever since Trigun came out on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" segment, I've gotten the chance to watch the show's English dub. After watching a few episodes, plus a few in Japanese, I think I now know enough to make a decent comparison between the two. I've broken my comparison down into several parts, and then holistically graded them against each other.

ANIMATION/VISUAL
Well, Bebop has got it clinched in the animation departmnent. The combination of CGI and traditional animation, plus the general smoothness and "artsy-ness" of the show make it a real treat to look at. Conversely, Trigun has nice visual character design. Vash's suit is just... wicked. There isn't quite much like it. And the glasses? Not bad, I have to say. And though he's not really a replacement for Spike, the preist Wolfwood in Trigun has a Spike-esque look, and a badass cross strapped full of guns to boot. What's lacking in the visual character design in Trigun, however, is T&A. Trigun doesn't have Faye. Of course, you have to give it credit for not going overboard like Outlaw Star. That show is basically shitty robot fights, and huge bouncing breasts.

SOUNDTRACK
Well, Bebop has given us one of the all time most badass songs: Tank! First of all, we need to mention the fact that Yoko Kanno is a genius, and her band for this project, The Seatbelts, just sets the PERFECT mood for this show. But on the same note, I looked closely in the credits to see just who mixed the music in Trigun. And lo and behold... another genius. But this one was really unexpected for an anime: Les Claypool. Now if you're ignorant to just who Les is, I SHOULD smack you in the face several times and call you Susan. He's the frontman of the band Primus. Yes, that crack induced group of musicians from the 80's and early 90's. Yes, that band who does the theme song for South Park. Yes, they did the song about race car driving from the first Tony Hawk game, and other popular songs like "My Name is Mud", "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver", and "Mr. Krinkle", just to name a few. If you don't know who Primus is, and don't care, I hope you rot in hell. Anyways, Les Claypool turned shitty Japanese anime music into guitar riffs and other stuff to spruce your general anime up, and did a damn good job of it. The big question though... does it stack up to the music of Bebop?

No. Not really. But it's still good.

CHARACTERS
Sorry Trigun fans. This is where your show really falters. We'll just take Vash and Spike for an example. Vash is happy. Now another word we like to use for happy around here is GAY. Yes, Vash has a "I like to wrestle with little boys, constantly smile, and never kill anyone ever, but I'm loveable and I can't die, and everywhere I go I get into trouble because I'm a gay bastard" mentality. Now who do we liken Vash to? I know this sounds a little bit extreme... but.

GOKU.

Yes, the DBZ character. Yes, the fucking idiot who wants to make other people save the Earth even though he could do it in half a second, and kills himself and huge portions of the population in the process. To me, Vash just seems like that type. You know, the type of anime character in a constantly euphoric state, looks like they have a heroin IV and a 5% blood alcohol level. And like Goku, he likes to wrestle little boys! Of course, Goku likes to wrestle them naked in a hot tub, but you're picking up what I'm laying down, right? But I'm just messing around. Unlike Goku, the ass has good moments, and a little reason.

Now Spike has got to be one of the most slick characters I've ever seen. And he is not a child molestor. In fact, he hates children, and he only hangs with women to nail them. Main case here: Faye. Yes, he screwed Faye. If you want a video of it just send me an aim. It's authentic Sunrise material... yeah. I swear.

But anyways, Spike nailed Julia too, as shown in the last episode of Bebop. Not to mention he has an afro, and a wicked zoot suit. And he has emotions, most importantly. Vash, is perpetually euphoric, and gay, as we have established. But Spike has changing moods, and a well developed history. He was in the Mafia for God's sake. And his history comes back to haunt him constantly, a good feature of the show. And I don't even want to get into supporting characters. It's just not worth the insult to Trigun.

DUBS
Unfortunately, I've just got to say... all English dubs of ANY anime don't compare AT ALL to Bebop. Though Trigun nicely captured how much of an air head Vash is through the voice, as the voice actors on Bebop sucessfully potray their character's emotions: Spike's coolness, Ed's fucked up-ness, Faye's "I have a lot of STDs"-ness, and Vicious'... viciousness. I mean, frankly all of the voices on Trigun have some sort of fucktarded element to them, because the characters are idiots. Not in comparison to the "mondo cool"-ness of the DBZ English voice actors, (which ironically, are better than the Japanese ones. I mean a chick does like all of the guys voices, what the fuck do you expect?) however still uber stoners; one aspect quite overused in all animes.

OVERVIEW
First off, some comments I couldn't fit in to the other sections. CB and Trigun both have reocurring, pointless characters, that get popped into random episodes. Both are gay. Bebop has the old men who play cards, and talk about how hard it was in the old days, and how they built the city. And I bet when they aren't on the show they talk about how they fucked Faye before she got cryogenically frozen too and got herpes, and how much it pissed them off. But that's besides the point. Trigun has a black cat with huge ass yellow eyes, constantly popping up. Ok, it's some gay prissy woman anime thing you would expect out of Hamtaro, and I'm not going to even question that bullshit. This affects my comparison of the two as well. Let it be a lesson to future anime writers: if you're going to have fucking gay pointless reocurring characters, at least make them dirty old men, who talk about screwing one of the lead female characters. Sex sells.

Ok... and the moment you've all been waiting for. Of course if you read this fricken article you'd already know what I'm about to say; Cowboy Bebop reams Trigun a new ass. But I've still got to say, Trigun is a very good anime. If we exclude hentai, it would definitely make my Top 10 list. You know what would make it loads cooler? Constant drug refrences. Hey, it worked for Dragon Ball, and it fits in with the whole child molestation motif Vash has going on there.
END

I LOVE THE 80'S (AND THE 80'S LOVES COCAINE)
Ben Bradford - 01:28:32, 18 April 2003

Holy... fucking... shit. I watched 15 hours of TV today, which in itself is a miracle, seeing as I usually can't watch TV for more than 2 hours a day. But what, you ask, would I watch on TV? My dial fell on VH1 for a super, 10 hour marathon of their show, I love the 80's. Yes, every God damn year in the 80's has an hour long show dedicated to it.

Anyways, as I'm watching this, it occurs to me that the 80's is really like a theme park. It's interesting and fun for a little while, but the longer you're in there, the faster you run out of cool shit to do, and the less fun everything is. This is because of one basic fact. The 80's revolved around cocaine.

To prove my point about cocaine, I'll go back a few months to my 20th Century US History class. I'm sitting there, with my friend Phil, and we're watching a movie about the 80's. I look over to him and say, "Dude... everything in the 80's revolves around cocaine." A little more than a minute later, the man on the video said; "One of the largest influences of the 80's was cocaine! Most everyone in the city was on it. To some cocaine just wasn't good enough anymore, so a new drug was made from cocaine, called crack." Blah, blah, blah, and it goes on for like ten minutes. Well I was right there.

Then, as if the ten minute sermon about cocaine in the 80's didn't sink in they had to show a Macintosh computer commercial. It featured a lady in a leotard with a belt around the waist (as if the leotard might slip off), a lavendar headband, and a pair of those foot warming... things. She was carrying a hammer, and ran into a room with a bunch of people watching a movie screen with a guy's face on it. She throws it into the face, and then it says Macintosh on the screen, the logo alongside.

Wow. When I see women from an aerobics video tossing hammers at movie screens, I think personal computers. Actually, not really. But if I were on cocaine, I bet I would. Hence the reason I don't call myself a child of the 80's, though that's the decade I was born in. I'm glad I was only slightly cognitive during those four, sick years of my life. Yes, I had a mullet. No, I wasn't old enough to have any clue what the fuck my parents did to my head.

Every day, I live my life, wondering why... why I didn't realize I was contributing to the cocaine induced lifestyle that is the 80's. It was almost normal to me though. At the time, my dad had hair like he was in Poison, and he wore purple-brown patterned lifter pants. I have a picture taken at Riverside (now Six Flags New England) with me in a mullet, him, and a clown. But you couldn't tell which one was the clown. It was crazy... sick even. And you know what's to blame? Cocaine.

Closing thoughts... my dad still has those pants. Holy shit, I'm going to steal them. Why Macintosh sucks now; people stopped doing cocaine in droves, and no one could understand their marketing campaigns. Mullets vs. White Boy 'Fros? The fro owns. Will I ever watch a 10 hour 80's marathon again?

Fuck no.