Shorthand for Nothing

The Legend of Zelda has been around for as long as I’ve been aware of Nintendo, and I was a bit of a dork when I was a kid. (If you’re curious, I started playing Zelda around Ocarina of Time, and yes, it is still excellent. I’ve been playing Nintendo for about as long as I can remember.) Most Zelda fans and probably a good chunk of nonfans have probably heard rumor of the short-lived cartoon series. They have probably heard rumor of it because it is really fucking terrible, in the best possible way.

Each episode runs for about fifteen minutes, and there’s thirteen of them. Watching more than a few at a time tends to be kind of painful, but one or two can be hilarious.

Link is an obnoxious slobby teenager who goes out of his way to shirk his responsibilities (which, for some reason, include cleaning up the castle), and is constantly demanding that Princess Zelda give him a kiss. He shoots laser beams out of his sword. He and Zelda spend most of each episode trying to thwart the latest evil schemes of Ganon, the evil pig-wizard, whose idea of a clever scheme is to send a single easily defeated minion to attempt to kill or kidnap our heroes. It’s noteworthy that the single greatest threat to Hyrule is incapable of cooking up a scheme that can’t be thwarted in a fifteen minute cartoon.

Ganon has at his disposal some really powerful magic, however–in one episode, he uses a thought-control amulet on Zelda. Unfortunately, instead of using the thought-control amulet to install a puppet ruler on the throne of Hyrule and usher in an era of corruption and bring Hyrule to slow ruin in that way, he instead uses the power to have Zelda almost marry him. He also ruins any chance of subtlety by abducting her in plain view of Link, the kingdom’s sole defender.

On the plus side, this Zelda is actually kind of a badass, if you can ignore the fact that she’s stuck in the worst possible television series and is wearing the distilled essence of the late 80′s as her princessing attire. She fights and does flips and actually does more than get abducted constantly. That would get old real quick.

You could definitely find worse things to do on a boring Sunday afternoon than hunt these down and watch them. And if you feel the need for a bad movie but only have fifteen minutes to spare, I can’t think of any better suggestions.

No Responses »

Variously, discussing the recent news concerning Bristol Palin has been described as cynical, an invasion of privacy, or otherwise something that should be avoided. While there are definitely snarky, cynical posts out there, I feel that it’s a legitimate conversation–and yes, even the snarkiness of Gawker is not going to kill anyone. (more…)

No Responses »

I found this article on Twitter.

It was written by one of those old media types who hasn’t quite come to terms with Web 2.0. He probably dearly misses the days of snail mail, when a cell phone was just for emergencies, when if you had a friend you called them or wrote them to keep in touch. Before the days of ambient, user-created updating.

Twitter is an interesting phenomenon. There are a number of people who believe they know exactly what it’s for, and who deride those who use it differently–but really, they’re just being sort of prescriptivist. If I only want to use Twitter to follow my friends, nobody is stopping me. If I want to use it to meet people and dazzle the world with my 140-character wit, that’s fine too. You can use it to network, even, if you want. I’ve come to one real conclusion: as soon as you start saying what you think Twitter is all about, you’re wrong. It’s a communication tool.

And it’s a powerful communications tool, at that. Most people use it, to borrow the term from a friend, ambiently. I check Twitter to see what my friends are doing, as well as a few other people I find interesting. It’s a way to fairly unobtrusively keep people updated–I can learn about my Senator’s activities on the Hill while I’m finding out if anyone is going out to lunch in Cambridge.

The author of the article linked earlier believes there is no meaningful conversation happening on Twitter, that it is people in love with the tool. I think he might be missing the point here. Perhaps that’s what happens when you write for the Daily Beast. But you can’t blame the medium for the way you’re using it. (I recommend TweetDeck, by the way, if you want to follow a bunch of people without actually paying attention to them. Crisis averted.)

Oh, and one more thing:

Twitter is useful for building networks of followers–as the writer of the article mentions, Lance Armstrong is building cancer awareness. But let’s remember one thing. If Twitter were not already being used for building networks of communication–if people didn’t use it to inform the world they were excited or had a bad day or to find out their friends are hungry or tired or need help with something–it would never be useful for that sort of thing.

No Responses »

I have CNN.com in my Google Reader, though as time wears on I find myself wondering why I would do such a thing. It has articles with consistently terrible ledes and some really terrible commentary, which for some reason people are getting paid to write.

Their latest assault on the dignity of the English language is written by Roland Martin, who is apparently a nationally syndicated columnist. It is an article complaining about Valentine’s Day, which is super original! It’s pretty much the same sort of anti-Valentine’s rant you hear from anyone who has ever been burned by some of its more absurd adherents, or felt that roses are overpriced, or complained that society felt they needed a special day to demonstrate their love for their significant other. I’m not a devoted adherent but I don’t personally feel the day needs abolishing or anything. But the article bothered me, so here is my little defense of the holiday.

The article starts off with the false assertion that it was “created by rabid retailers who needed a major shopping day between Christmas and Easter in order to give people a reason to spend money.” Which is, you know, completely false!

Valentine’s Day is a Saint’s Day, for one. It became associated with romantic love in the High Middle Ages, before Christmas and Easter were shopping days. So, nice fact-checking there, Roland Martin! By which I mean ‘oh you appear to be completely wrong.‘

Then he does the traditional “I love my wife but why do I have to buy her expensive roses today?” thing. Answer? You don’t, actually! Society doesn’t really expect much of you. But it’s a day traditionally associated with romantic love, and do you really do nice things for her every day of the year? If money is tight or you want to avoid crowds, it’s still a nice time to watch a nice quiet movie with the missus and maybe have some candlelit dinner at home. Is there something wrong with having a day set aside out of the year for this? Anyone who’s likely to do it spontaneoussly is going to do it whether or not there’s a holiday on.

What really gets me is that this guy is getting paid, probably substantial sums of money, to complain about Valentine’s Day, without fact checking, inaccurately, and unoriginally–everyone who’s ever complained about it has said the same thing, and they have said it better, and without the self-righteous “I’m getting paid to do this!” sort of attitude. And it wasn’t polluting my feed reader.

No Responses »