Ironhold

Rachel Dolezal, the woman who lied about her race to the NAACP, is back in the news again. In spite of the slew of recorded statements she made in the past about how difficult it was for her as a "black" woman and how afraid she was of whites, she's now saying that race is a construct. Yeah.

If you have a Dollar Tree store in your area, go check them out. Over in the section with the trading card packs there should be a box that has random, vintage, M:TG packs. It's 10 random cards in a pack for $1 a pack. Good way to get older cards for cheap.

...for the environment. UK's "The Independent" is reporting that under certain circumstances, the process of growing various items of produce is worse for the environment than meat. Yeah.

If nothing else, you can ask us right here and we'll do our best to answer you.

A sorority's fundraiser was declared a "microaggression" because the girls refused to join a protest that was going on. The protesters were apparently upset because they had purchased all of the candy canes that were for sale, and so believed that this essentially obligated the girls to come join them. Instead, the girls chose to stay where they were in order to continue raising funds.

In The Heart Of The Sea. Can't recommend this one at all.

A church group in New Braunfels, Texas made state news after a Secret Santa effort didn't go as planned.

I had the audio going just now, and my mom asked if the woman in the video was a blonde. She can't figure out how anyone could be so stupid (her words).

It could well be. Wanted drug lord El Chapo has reportedly threatened war with ISIS after they destroyed one of his shipments to the Middle East. Let's just... take this one in for a few minutes...

The protesters are brazen enough to actually barge into a church during Mass. As the commentary points out, what these people did is illegal under Nevada state law. Here's hoping that they'll face the appropriate consequences.

FYI - For those who live in Texas, pay a visit to your local H-E-B Grocery store. Their "store brand" die-cast cars retail for $0.75 per individual car, which is cheaper than what Hot Wheels or Matchbox go for individually. What's more, the cars (so near as I can tell) are actually made by Maisto, which has a fairly good reputation when it comes to to-scale die-cast vehicles (not so much play sets, though, but definitely vehicles). You just don't get as much in the way of variety, since it seems that they're using "economy of scale" to keep the costs down.

A group of special snowflakes are upset over a college building named "Lynch Memorial Hall". Never mind the fact that Mr. George A. Lynch was a former president of the college...

The Yale prof who proposed that Halloween costumes shouldn't be restricted by political correctness has been forced to resign. I think it's safe to say at this point that Ivy League diplomas are now officially no longer worth the paper that they're printed on.

Thing is, US law stipulates that if a vehicle is to be sold in America, spare parts must be available for so many years past the model year (10, IIRC). Because of this, no matter how garbage this vehicle is, the Chinese factories are legally on the hook for providing replacement parts, and the dealer is on the hook as far as the warranty goes. The cars themselves may be cheap, but warranty, repairs, and whatnot may come back to haunt them.

What stores are you looking at? They're readily available where I live. ** Other ideas - *Small books, especially paperbacks *Trading cards / sports cards

A New Jersey woman has been charged with making a false report after she lied about a cop pulling a gun on her during a traffic stop. What's more, the cop chose to ticket her for a lesser offense (not having a current address on her driver's license) than for what he actually pulled her over for (failure to stop at a stop sign). In other words, the cop in question cut her a break and this was how she repaid the kindness.

Saw "Krampus" this week. Definitely something to skip.

Three universities have basically declared Christmas to be offensive.

Dude better be grateful it wasn't the German polizei. He'd have been taken to the emergency room or even the morgue if it was. You do not mess with the polizei.

Yeah. It's been my experience that most rank-and-file critics of the church know nothing more than what their ministers spoon-feed them. ...as regards not only us but their own theology & history as well.

A "special snowflake" issued a fake terrorist threat in order to generate more racial unrest on her college campus.

Most of the people who I've seen have issues with the use of "adieu" have never had first-hand experience attempting to translate words between languages. Generally speaking, translation isn't an exact science. Your better translators will understand this and so will frequently use "close enough" words rather than attempting to force a translation for a word or concept that doesn't exist in the language they're trying to translate things into. In this sense, "adieu" is likely being used as a "close enough" word because the sentiment expressed on the plates didn't have a proper modern-day equivalent.

Warning: Long post ahead. What most people don't realize is that in Japan, you can find anime for every genre and every age. As such, "anime" runs the gamut. At one end of the spectrum, we have kid-friendly titles like "Hamtaro" and "Mon Colle Knights". At the other end of the spectrum, we have hard-core porn (known as "hentai"), some of which I understand have been banned in different countries. Furthermore, Japanese television operates far differently than most Western television outlets. Japan uses seasons known as "cours" when planning television shows. Each cour is 13 weeks, roughly corresponding to a given season (spring, summer, fall, winter). Why is this important? Japan doesn't normally rebroadcast episodes. Once an episode of a show airs, that's it; if you miss it, then you've got to wait for the home video release or for someone to put the episode online. What's more, a lot of shows are only given a single cour at a time. Put this all together, and we can literally have about 50+ anime shows debuting or broadcasting subsequent seasons in a single year. From there, we have anime intended for theatrical release. Some of these theatrical releases are stand-alone works, such as the various Studio Ghibli films. Others are meant to tie into an existing franchise; for example, the Pokemon franchise generally gets 3 - 4 theatrical releases per "region" that the main characters are travelling through. On top of that, the 1980s saw the rise of Original Video Animation (OVA / OAV are both used). This term is used to describe features that go direct-to-video. In some instances, these are shows that couldn't originally get enough traction for television broadcast, if they were even put forth for television broadcast; some franchises, like the "Tenchi" and "El Hazard" franchise, do so well as direct releases that they're eventually given the chance to broadcast on television (although the television series and the direct-to-video series are generally different "continuities", meaning "mostly the same characters, but entirely different stories"). In other instances, these represent subsequent installments of once-popular television series that either could not get renewed for another season or were not put forward for another season, such as "Irresonsible Captain Tylor" and "Fushigi Yugi". We also have situations in which the direct release is essentially a more traditional direct-to-video movie, such as "Tokyo Vice", albeit with a run time too short to qualify for a feature film. However, a lot of these direct releases contain content that the production team knows well ahead of time won't make it past broadcast censors; these can be titles that push the boundaries like "M. D. Geist" or even the aforementioned hentai. Put it all together, and you literally have hundreds of anime titles coming out of Japan each year. Not to mention live-action adaptations thereof. In the early and mid 2000s, we had a slew of companies shot-gunning anime to Western audiences. Saban. 4Kids!. ADV. Central Park Media. Manga Entertainment. Right Stuf. Software Sculptors. Funimation. Media Blasters. Bandai. Pioneer. DiC. Nelvana. Tokyopop. Disney. World Events Productions. Et cetra. But even this only eventually represented a small fraction of what was coming out of Japan each year. These companies simply couldn't dub and distribute anime fast enough to do more than scratch the surface. They got the popular titles, a number of "cult" titles, and a few of the more obscure ones that they were able to locate. But that was it. Thing is, the recession caused a crash in the global anime market as luxury spending of all sorts went down and foreign exchange rates went pear-shaped. Subsequent factors, such as the bankruptcy of Borders bookstores, International Channel going off-the-air, FYE / Suncoast Entertainment's ongoing financial troubles, the decision to cease broadcasting non-educational cartoons in America, Fox's disastrous divestment to Disney, and Cartoon Network's sudden allergy to anime all conspired to blow a hole in the anime industry. Several anime importers just in America & Canada were forced into bankruptcy, with only a handful actually emerging. Others either quit dealing in anime, or found themselves living off of their past archives and not bothering to handle anything new. Some multi-nationals were either locked out or were forced to use local firms as middlemen. This means that we have even fewer companies importing anime nowadays, making for an even smaller fraction of titles coming over. In that sense, it's not fair to lay the blame for everything on Japan itself. There are simply too many titles competing for too few import companies.

Is it just me, or does the title scream "We don't want to admit it, but we have to."? The only "evangelical" body that comes close to us is the SDAs.

You'd be surprised what all you can find out about if you hang around the internet long enough. ...and probably more than a little disturbed.