Nostalgia, a reason to complain about todays tv shows

Well as the name suggests I've decided that blog number 2 is going to involve me talking about.... *DRUM ROLL* ...... Television. I've also decided that its probably for the best if I dont spend the entire post complaining....i probably will for a lot of it though.

So....lets talk about some cartoons, cause nothing says nostalgia like talkin bout some toons (not to be confused with the music related "tunes", they'll come up later on i suppose).
Well I must say the high point of cartoons for me would definitly have to be the late 90's to the early 2000's  ,a time when Toonami was still on the air and the Disney Channel was almost entirely free of annoying wannabe pop stars.

Toonami, for people who cant remember it or were unfortunate enough never to see it, was probably the best kids tv channel EVER, it was basically made up of great anime shows (like Dragonball and Digimon), then the equally great superheroes shows (like The Batman and X-men Evolution), and then a collection of shows such as Ed,Edd and Eddy, Xiaolin Showdown and (lets see if anyone remembers it) Cubix (Robots for everyone =P)

Now, as i've learned in english class, your going to have to probe deeper. The reason I say this is, besides the obvious fact that I always find it funny to say, is because it's probably very hard for a lot of people to remember a time when the Disney Channel was actually enjoyable to watch. From what I've seen, and I can assure you I havent willingly watched that channel in years, the Disney channel is now comprised of shows about American teenagers of different sorts in situations that might be interesting if they were written even half as well as the average Twilight novel (ya....I dont like Twilight). These situations range from: a bimbo hillbilly popstar leading a double life, a wizard family living in New York pretending to be normal people and some psychic girl that can see the future and doesnt want anyone to know.
Two things occured to me while typing the last sentence:
1) The Disney channel really likes to promote lying
 and
2) Despite what I said earlier, I doubt even Derek Landy could write these shows and make them interesting,well he probably could, but he doesnt, so theres no point in living in that little fantasy world

Anyhoo, time for some Disney probing. Really, its sort of like one of them reality makeover shows that seem to get an entire channel to themselves; they took the original disney, (anyone remember shows like Dinosaurs, which was basically 'The Honeymooners' with dinosaurs, Gargoyleys or Home Improvement?) well anyway they took them and Im not sure how many other enjoyable shows, cancelled them, and replaced them with what i can only describe as mind numbing bull-crap that seems to have created an air of sluttiness with younger children nowadays.

Now that all seemed a teensey bit narcassistic so I'm going to go back to a few of the shows I think really deserve more of my attention than theyve recieved.
Anime, aka Japanese cartoons, are definitly some of the best drawn and written (I know not everyone likes the english dubs but thats one of the reasons you have youtube isnt it) cartoons that you can watch, and there was a hell of a lot of them to choose from a few years ago (for some reason they seem to be reduced down to only a few now, well in Ireland at any rate). As I said before, you could see a lot of these on Toonami or most of the other kids channels, these included:
Dragonball
Dragonball Z
Dragonball Gt
Yu-Gi-Oh
Beyblade
Digimon
Pokemon
Sailor Moon
Gundam Wing
and so on.....
The great thing about anime,in their original dubs at any rate, was that they had all the violence, nudity and swearing that most american shows were never allowed to have. In Dragonball Z for instance, about half of each season involved the main characters either fighting, blowing things up or being killed, and i must say it was probably my favourite thing to watch when i was younger. There were a few changes made, obviously, before these shows were shown over here, from what i can remember the changes to different shows included covering up the nudity to a good extent, changing one of the Sailor Moon characters from a lesbian to a tomboy, and in the remake of  dragonballz (known as dragonball kai) the blood seems to have been removed from most of the fight scenes (because apparently people in fight sequences dont require blood....well i suppose they dont if the characters are robots, but they werent so......).
Out of the ones mentioned above another two of my favourite childhood shows were definitly Yugioh and Digimon, at one point the a lot of boys i knew had a deck of yugioh cards and would bring them into school to play with, thems were some fun times there and I actually watched the Digimon Movie a few weeks back with two friends of mine (the result of letting nerdy people go through your belongings) and I must say it was actually quare funny to watch, when one of the digimon digivolves his catchphrase was "Raidramon- The Storm of Friendship". Now as a child you dont tend to notice how stupid some of the things your watching actually sound, but try looking up something you used to watch and you'll probably find at least one thing thats idiotically hilarious to some extent. Another thing you shud really watch is Yugioh: The Abridged Series , which is basically a condensed version of the show thats been dubbed over and made really funny.
The sad thing about both Yugioh and Digimon i must say is that the most recent series of both of them are just terrible, in Yugioh 5d's they, for some reason, now play the game on motorbikes, and then in Digimon Data Squad theyve started using Ipods for some reason to make theyre digimon digivolve (I havent actually watched either of these,just seen parts of them while channel hopping). The other problem with both shows though is that they're set years after the events of the original story so none of the main characters that people actually liked make any sort of appearance in the shows. (if your wondering how i know this, I looked it up a while back when i was thinking of something to talk about for a public speaking class)

The thing about nowadays of course is that theres a lot of cartoons aimed at older people (Futurama, Family Guy, American Dad, and I know its not technically aimed at adults but the Animaniacs has a lot of really funny bits that you wouldnt get until your a bit older....Im not sure if thats still even on anymore though so never mind ) and all of these shows are actually really funny most of the time. Futurama was a great one, but then it got cancelled by Fox so it was a few years of re-runs followed by its return with four movies which were all broken up into episodes to make season 5 but now the trouble is season 6 has been out for ages now in america but it still hasnt been released here which is a real pain thanks to the removal of a certain website by a certain organizaion. Still though, the old episodes are always good and theres plenty of other great things to watch.....like Misfits, but thats an entierly different blog in its self.

So thats all the rambling I have left for tonight.....hope you enjoyed reading this to some extent. And, as always
May the Oud be with you

there was a problem with cookies...

Well....I suppose the best place for me to start would be the begining, that logic seems to have worked out well for a lot of people over the years.Then again, Inception and Kick Ass started fairly close to the end and they did well for themselves.

Never the less......I shall start at the begining (technically speaking im starting over 17 years after the begining but thats just me rambling, I do that.... a lot...).
Anyways, my names Ethan, I'm Irish, I'm a 17 year old student and have decided to take up blogging, I'm sure youve noticed this last point on your own.

Now, on to business....
Well I suppose the reason I've decided to write this is because a lot of my friends seem to  have started blogging over the last while and I thought I'd give it a go as well ( for funzies ) and I must say it does seem enjoyable
That being said....I appear to be constanlty hindered by a combination of a bad internet connection, caused by the recent snow fall, and a problem with cookies of all things. Now usually I have no problem with cookies, they're crunchy and chocolatey and they led to the creation of everyones favourite monster, but these arent usual cookies- these would be internet cookies which you apparently need to "allow" before you can sign up to a certain website.

Another reason for my sudden interest in blogging would have to do with being trapped indoors for a second week due to the afformentioned snow. Admittedly the snow was welcomed by most people I know as it meant that our christmas tests would have to be put off while the snow melted, but after just a week of it most people seemed to have grown annoyed with it.....that being said, i must say I didnt seem to notice many people actually enjoying the snow. Most seemed to get the basic 'build a snowman and such' out of the way by day two and have spent the last while on Facebook or just being indoorsy in general. The whole indoorsy thing suited me perfectly really seeing as how most of the things i enjoy tend to work better inside; Xbox, internet chatting, reading and so on, so I've been quite content.
I could try saying that being stuck indoors all week has driven me somewhat insane but I tend to be insane at the best of times, then again so do most of my friends so I cant really say its a bad thing. Another thing you'll notice, if I decide to continue blogging and you decide to read more of these hypothetical blogs, is that I can be incredibly nerdy, so if you do read on expect anything from books to comics to sci-fi to Xbox games.

Well thats all from me for now, thanks for reading and such.......bye

May Oud be with you