gaggle64

A prime example of the British spirit if ever I saw it. Christ, we're a really depresed group of people as a nation.

The problem with Britishness is that it isn't real any one thing that any one individual can identify. The problem to seems to be that Britain as a whole is more of a weird amalgamation of a variety of different cultures. We've got everything from the ancient Celtic culture of the northen isles to the 21st-century hip-hop culture of the London urban estates. We live in an insane country where people are just as likely to visit a Punjab music festival as take a trip to hear the renidition of "The Planets" at the Proms. Fish and Chips are as popular as ever, but Chinese and Indian dishes regular sit on the same menu together. Hollywood epics are always goping to be popular, but Japanese pop culture continues to spread itself our youth, while Bollywood continues to take leaps and bounds in popularity. Religous tension may be rife in some areas following recent events, but with Muslims, Christians, Budhists, Seiks, Bahais, Hindus and dozens of other mainstream religons often exsisting around each other in small and densely populated spaces, it seems almost amazing that they all got here in the first place. With all these different cultures making their mark on our nation, it always going to be a struggle to identify ourselves as a single unified nation. I think it is important to celebrate our nation - we're not perfect, but we have plenty of things to proud of, in particular our great cultural diversity. It's not as if we're all fiercely patriotic war-mongering immoral imperialistic racists anymore, so why not celebrate that fact?

Grave of the Fireflies. Has anyone mentioned that yet? Grave of the Fireflies is quite simply, in my opinion, one of the best films Studio Ghibli has ever poduced. Set in war-torn Japan, it's about a young man and his little sister trying to survive after their home is destroyed by the US firebombs. It's a beautiful, touching, heart rending film, and is very adept at dealing with a contentious piece of Japanese history in the most sensitive way possible. It's not about Japan's role in the war, more about the suffering of those innocents caught in the conflict. Be warned though - it's a deep, emotional, horribly depressing, very real film about human suffering, so I wouldn't recommend to anyone looking for a light anime flick to relax with. Cowboy Bebop it aint.

Where the hell has this thread gone, and how is it so damn popular? DEMAND: Sticked cosplay discussion thread or the rabbit gets it.

Does anyone else have some kind of crazy urge to dress up as a Gerry Anderson related character of some description and spend three days at an otaku infested Anime convention? Ya know, just to be awkward.

Gotta love tea. Ovaltine is also brilliant. Coffee I've never enjoyed though. Now whisky on the other hand...

Is there a trailer of this somewhere? It almost sounds like some kind of cruel hoax. Almost.

I'm not what you might call a medical expert but, yes, it does appear you have a sugar addiction and, yes, it's not good for your health. If you find you can't stop, you should seriously see your GP or something. Also what else are you eating? Unless you get plenty of good vegtables, protein, complex carbohydrates and vitamins, and drink plenty of water, you are going to feel like crap. I would seriously seek some medical advice. Use the NHS, it is a free service after all.

I think I'm going to believe all those 2006s stamped all over their website. Ya' know, just out of spite.

Hey I just noticed this really interesting report that was broadcast yesterday about online games. I can't believed I missed it! It's a very interesting report, including newsnights first ever broadcast from inside a video game (Second Life). It's got some very interesting things to say about online gaming and society, like how some of us don't seem ready for the supposed freedom it gives us. Check it out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4583924.stm WARNING: Includes a virtual Jeremy Paxman.

These are the only video game flash parodies you will ever need. These things are like a way of life for me and my mates. Decline of Videogaming Decline of Videogames 2 Decline of Videogames 3 By the excellent Super Flash Bros. Check out all their other stuff on Newgrounds! The "Another Day" series especially. "I've snapped plenty of whips in my time!" is a well used catch phrase around here now.

Hell, I voted for him. I always thought he had some pretty cool ideas.

When you have almost the entire independent scientific community (a.k.a all scientists not hired by Texco) telling the world that mankinds CO2 emissions are poisioning the atmosphere and destroying the worlds climate, it's rather difficult not to listen. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of the fact that there is still any actual debate on the issue. The world has warmed up more in the last 50 years then in the last 5 centuries, and so has our levels of CO2 emmisions have increased. You only need to look at the crumbling ice caps or increasingly violent weather systems to see this. The mountain Killimanjaro in Africa will soon no longer have a snowy peak, despite being topped with perma frost for thousands of years. Unless you have scientific proof that this is just some kind of huge coincidence, it seems pretty clear that unless we start applying green-energy and energy conservation technologys on a united international scale today, Earth is fucked.

Hope evryone has a great Christmas and happy new year. For next year I'm hoping to research and possibly open my business idea - a video games arcade, but one that's full of pop and manga art, somewhere actually nice to hangout. I'm actually kind of nervous about spending at least a year doing it, especially after spending the last two years training as an actor! But it's my dream, and I need to at least try. Wish me luck!

NGC is a very, very reliable magazine, and I am more then willing to take this as the truth. My only hang up is that I won't be able to read it for myself until I can get back to my college in-box in January. Bah! EDIT: Now the news has been allowed to sink, and after having a quick brush over the scans, I am now positively wetting mysef with excitment. Seriously, I am drowing in my own piss. Great stuff.

How about Dumb and Dumber? Seminal American comedy.

Check it OUT! . Reggie and Iwata have been talking to CNN, and have a few things to say. Reggie apparently claims that WoW style MMORPGs would be something he would like to see on Revo. Meanwhile Iwata was busy confirming the Revo as the natural home for FPS. Also, Reggie said that they had even more Revo info which they would be letting slip piece by piece in the run-up to next years E3. Tantalising.

Obviously mike-zim is well entitled to what is perfectly justified opinion. I just think he seems to be a tad down in the mouth about the whole thing. No, it is true, some marriages do fail, but some marriages also succeed. Vows do ineviatably get broken, it's not a perfect world. People still make vows to each other anyway though, because they actually would like to try and do their best to keep them, and that is a beuatiful thing.

I disagree completely. If a child is being bullied or being made to feel different from other kids due to the fact that he/she has same-sex parents, the fault is clearly with societies attitude to same sex couples, and not with the couple themselves. I see no reason why two men or two women cannot be responsible parents to a child.

Really? *Looks it up* Dang, you're right. Sorry about that. I always get those two get confused. Anyway, you get my point. Note for later: Michelangelo was the tortured genius. Leonardo was the tortured genius who invented the robot.

The Christian right has yet to give any kind of reason with any kind of significant backing from the Bible or any other source as to why homosexuality and gay marriage is wrong. One idiot on another forum once claimed that homosexuality was a mental disease. I wonder if right-wing Christians would be so against homosexuals if more of them knew Leonardo Da' Vinci, painter of the ceiling of the Cistine (is that spelt right?) chapel, was gay? (Also, how can you call people like Elton John and Ian McKellen "mentally unstable"? Yeeesssh.) I think you're mssing the point of the traditional wedding ceremony. You can form a civil partenership just to get the legal stuff out of the way without having to do it in a church or large garden gazebo or whatever simply by popping to your local registery office and each of you signing on the dotted line. The reason most people want to get married is rarely for simple legal purposes. They want to get married to express their love and commitment to each other, their family and friends, the state and to their god (if they happen to be religous, at least). That's where the giant cake, wedding dress, church/gazebo, big family party and giant piss-up afterwards come from. It's sort of like, at the risk of sounding overly sentimental, a big of celebration of love, primarly the love between the couple gettin' hitched. What's so big about gays being allowed to form "civil partnerships" is that now they are allowed to do all this stuff too in a manner which is recognised by the state and without fear of persecution from some psycho-religious maniac from Christian Voice. Besides, why waste a good excuse for a party? Edit by Fierce_LiNk: Watch the double post.

This ON-thing has got to die eventually, surely.

Zach Braff has the lead role doesn't he? Or am I just making that up?

Apocalypse Now. Best war film ever (apart from maybe Patton or The Dambusters).

Wallace and Gromit. All of them. Buy them, rent them, steal them. Feathers McGraw = Most sinister anything, ever.