Hentai Vs. Self expression revised

    I am not some 11 year old american kid who's only contact with japanese animation is the chopped up dubbed DiC versions of sailor moon, nor am I a freaky internet pervert looking for naughty tentacle pictures. I am a 26 year old female college graduate who happens to understand the meaning and value of self expression. This is why I see nothing wrong with "hentai". What is Hentai? By popular definition it is "dirty anime". Any number of things can fall under this category, such as profanity, blood, violence, nudity of any kind, or even a kiss. Hell, an uncut sailor moon episode happens to fall under the american definition of "hentai". American's do not understand that anime is a major part of the everyday culture in Japan and, there are many more "adult situation" pieces than those made for children. Heck tons of anime that is made for children is considered "dirty" in the united states. Try to find your self a few un-cut episodes of sailor moon super S! You will find lesbians, strong violence, and profanity. The only "safe" anime in the US is cut to crap or made for 4 year olds. IF you can not deal with that than don't watch it.
When I was a kid, we had Tom and Jerry cartoons rife with racial prejudice, Road Runner with all kinds of violence and then there was popeye who beats his girl friend on a daily bases. Popeye incidentally and some what amazingly managed to escape the scissors of political correction, but that's a whole other rant...
Now, about people who draw or edit images into "naughty tentacle". Come on now! Like you never drew boobs on something! In most cases these things are just a form "self satisfaction" if you will. Example: When I am totally pissed off at someone, rather than lashing out at the person physically I sit down and draw evil comics about them being killed in wonderfully wicked ways (thank you Jhonen vasquez for johnny the homicidal maniac). Now what would you rather these hentai artists do? Go out and rape people or just draw it? I think I would rather them draw it! We all need a release from time to time and if you can find it in art or text then more power to you! I completely respect many hentai artists for their abilities and their means of "staying sane" and I thank them for standing up for self expression!
Anther point to this rant, I hear a lot of people saying they get tons of hentai sites when they do a search for anime on the web. I'm sorry to say this people, BUT I have been on line for 8 years and NEVER once did I come across hentai when I wasn't actually looking for it and even then I came up with 50 million "anti- hentai" sites. If you are getting these sites on search engines maybe you should switch to a different one. You could also set your censorship controls to block out certain key words such as hentai, porn, sex, xxx and what have you. After that your alleged problem is solved. I'm done bitching now bugger off!

Blockbuster Video... Oh how I hate thee!

This weekend my husband and I went to our local blockbuster video store, usually they have everything all nice and sectioned off, but this time, oh the evil that had befallen the store.... In place of the anime, sci-fi, and fantasy sections was one big huge jumbled up "action" section. After seeing this horrid mess I run like a bat out of hell to the nearest clerk asking him "what the hell happened in here" and he calmly explained that they got a new manager and now they no longer have individual sections for the various genre. Now rather than being able to go to an anime section and browse for new things, you have to know exactly what you want before you get there, and then search through 15 isles of unsorted crap to find it! You know, in this modern time you would think that having nice neat sorted sections of films would be a good thing but NOOO not to blockbuster! I was told also that they no longer carry older movies (past 1980) unless they are high volume rentals. What the hell is that about! All of then sudden Air Bud is more worthy of shelf space than Casablanca? What ever happened to expanding your horizons or going to the video store to find something different? Now it's all "legally blonde" and "Clueless". After the whole talk with the clerk I wrote a little note to this new manager explaining that their poorly thought out improvements cost him a client then I handed over my blockbuster card and walked out never to return. I haven't the slightest clue where I will be going to rent movies from now on because the over lord blockbuster has forced all the good mom and pop video stores out of business but it sure as hell won't be back there!!!!

Scan Theft? give me a break!

    You see, much of the stock art (anime, dingbat fonts, photographs, and illustrations) that I use come from all over the place. I try my best to get permission from or give credit to these other artists where it is due, sometimes however  I screw up or I don't actually know where the piece came from. If you see a piece on here using art that you recognize as yours or you know the particular artist PLEASE drop me a line so that I can either remove the piece or give the stock artist credit for their work. This includes the anime pictures as well, which brings me to the second point of this message...
   In the last few weeks I have been noticing an out break of sites such as "diff'rent star" who claim to be against thievery of anime art work. No I don't mean fan art or original manga character art I mean anime art scans. Such as when a person buys an art book and scans in the images to place on her/his web site. That's all well and good and can usually be combated by placing a no right click script on a web page BUT these stupid (yes I said stupid) little people have neglected to realize one small (large to the Lawyers and the original artists) point and that is copy right infringement!!!!! By scanning without proper consent from it's artist in the first place you are breaking the law! It doesn't matter one bit if you paid for the image! If somewhere on the book or image is a copy right notice you do not have the right to scan it and you sure as hell do not have the right to claim it as your own! You did not take hours to draw that, you did not go to animation studios and pay to get it made into anime and you did not break your ass to promote it! It does not belong to you!! Do not go about bitching and carrying on that someone stole a piece of your property from a web site if you were not it's original artist! Just because you scanned it in does not make you it's copy right holder, and if you are so worried about someone stealing it from you in the first place do not place it in public view! I guess it's just me, but it really pisses me off that people make such a big deal out of it...
    It's like my own art on these pages, I really couldn't care less if people linked back to me when using my sets, I put them out for every one to use and unless you are silly enough to link images directly from my site to yours I will most likely never see how you use my art (except that one background that keeps popping up everywhere, that's just spooky though). If you like my stuff enough to link back to me that's totally fine with me I welcome the hits! But it's not mandatory! I am not about to go visit every single site on the internet to hunt down people who don't link back! That's just insane!