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Today we have a movie review (THX 1138), which I liked for use of lack-of-color and for, yeah, pretty decent technique. Plus I'm a big old softie for evil-state dystopia stuff, always have been. I probably should not have lusted over the robocops nearly as much as I did, but shit, they were dressed in shiny, black vinylish stuff with tall boots AND big sticks. (Signify much?) I didn't see much to not-like there, personally. Besides, the one faceless-robocop guy just fit those pants way, way too well. Mmmm, good!

Also spotted, in this interview with Buck Angel, a guy who's an FTM transsexual adult entertainer, the following quote regarding FTM phalloplasty: "It's somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000. And it doesn't even work. You don't get a boner. You can't come. I'm not spending $70,000 on something that doesn't work." This strikes me as an eminently sensible, practical assessment of the situation. Full marks, there. Also, if I ever wanted boob-removal so that I had a chest that looked like a guy's, I'd talk to his surgeon, who did one hell of a job. Looks nice, and I don't often say that about plastic surgery.

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Shit, this came to me earlier today. It's been beating against my mind all day like a moth at the window and I've totally been not fucking paying attention. However, I am currently in the zone (Tezuka Zone!) and now I can hear the faint click, click, click of the moth. See, I was watching PoT (テニスの王子様) this morning and I had a moment of enlightenment.

Lately, ozarque, who is a lot smarter than I am, has been talking about verbal attack patterns in English. You can read some of the VAP discussion here -- note in particular the line the part of the utterance that carries the hostility and makes the utterance an attack is the tune the words are set to -- especially the extra emphatic stresses on words and parts of words. (ozarque has lots more to say, but that tiny slice is what is important for my post.) Anyway, the enlightenment I had this morning was that you can learn assloads about VAPs (in what art students would call a "negative space" way) when you listen to English spoken by people who DO NOT SPEAK IT. How's that for damn nifty?

See, in Episode 152 of PoT, Bobby Max insults SENGOKU Kiyosumi, who isn't one of the players I lust after because if he were, I wouldn't have had to have doublechecked his name. The insults Bobby spews are kind of junior high insults, which makes sense because they're (supposed to be) junior-high tennis players. The insults are in English because Bobby Max is allegedly American, but the guy who does Max's voice does not actually speak English, so these verbal attacks TOTALLY DO NOT WORK because the rhythm of the speech is so flat, monotonic, and entirely un-English-like. They DO NOT have the singsong part that would make them effective taunts. What I'm saying here is that you can really see the VAP when it's missing.

When I get home, I will be busy like beaver and make these into .mp3 files and put them online so that all ya'll can hear taunts shorn of VAP. It's enlightening. Next time I claim to be able to do something, please slap me upside the head because I am an idiot. (I have, however, taken NOTES this time so that I know how to do it, should any future need arise. Notes: Virtualdub (refer to doom9), Audacity. D'oh. Why did this take two hours? Am I stupid?)

The long-awaited non-VAP taunts:

"Hey, sissy, I'm gonna beat you flat." -- flat.mp3
"Go home to your mama." -- mama.mp3

The first one has a half-decent rhythm, but the second one really lacks any authoritative smackdown.