Getting on a bus in less than an hour. You kids be good.
Author Archive for Justin
If you schedule a vacation in advance it is the law of nature that the time between now and when you leave must become twice and slow and anything that could possible go wrong before then, will.
I was casually perusing some books at Barnes & Noble on my lunch break when this duo (brother and sister, maybe?) of white trash psuedo-goth teenagers (it’s a strange breed to describe but they are rampant in the south and if you’ve seen them before you know what I am talking about) rush the manga shelves and start making a bunch of noise. I wasn’t really bothered by them, but they (particularly the girl) were loud enough as to catch my attention. I guess the fact that she was loud wasn’t as obnoxious as the fact that she kept repeating everything she said until her counterpart paid attention (”Robbie, it’s over here. The big manga section. Over here. Robbie. Robbie. Robbie, it’s here. The manga section. Over here, by the comics. Robbie.. Robbie..etc.”) Later on I crossed paths with them again:
Girl: “Oh my god, look. ‘Manga For Dummies!’ Look. Manga. For Dummies. MangaForDummies!”
Boy: (silent)
Me: ….
Girl: (holding up book) “Manga For Dummies!”
Boy: (still silent)
Me: That’s certainly repetitive!
Girl: “I know– what’s ‘repetitive’ mean?”
You don’t know what “repetitive” means? These kids were easily 13 years old. Maybe older.
I don’t feel one way or the other about manga. I don’t know much about it. I do know that every time I go into one of the “big box” bookstores I always seem to see a collection of dorky kids languishing on the carpet and reading manga for hours. This bugs me a little, but I don’t think its damaging to society or anything, though I think that you would get your ass kicked out of the store if you were doing that mess in a real comic shop.
Kim, on the other hand, sees another side of manga at her job. Kim views manga the way that parents viewed American comics in the 1960’s: They’ll rot your brain, make you even dumber than you already are and they have no redeemable value. She’s hypothesized that manga is a ploy created by the Japanese to get America back for the H-Bomb (actually I think I was the one who came up with that ). Her venom for manga is serious and to me its seriously entertaining to watch her get all worked up about it. I think she really snapped when she saw something like this, but really she probably just has a better understanding of people that are checking manga out of the library. After my little run-in with the dumb kids at Barnes & Noble, I kind of see how easy it is to generalize them all as dumbasses.