posted
This is probably one of the funnier things I've seen. The latest video is on Net Neutrality, and is kinda funny, but the older stuff is hilarious Especially the one on ninja colds - Linky
*sorry if this is a repeat. I did a search and couldn't find anything*
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
**random** My ex-boyfriend is a ninja, and he's a psychopath. The (ninja) training he went through for 8 years seriously screwed up his head. No kidding. He really thinks he's a ninja and bases his whole life around it.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: There's a huge difference between thinking he's a ninja and being a ninja, you know.
Well, technically speaking, he is a ninja, I just think the whole thing is a little weird. Being a ninja is not altogether practical in this society.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
But how does he know he's a real ninja? I mean is there some ninja licensing board out there? You apprentice as a ninja for so many years, take a comprehensive exam, send in $35 and BAM! you're a ninja.
Or can you just self-declare as an ninja? If we can just self-declare and be what we want, I think I'd like to be a pirate. Pirates are cool.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Tom, you don't have to kill people to be a ninja. Haven't you seen 3 Ninjas? Or even just the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for that matter...
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Ninjas are what they do and not what they are. Its like saying your a mafia don without actually participating in organized crime. Even then you can at least be a part of a mafia family - something you can't say for the Ninja who are trained assassins for hire. Not that either of those things are good.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Methinks you are using an outdated concept of ninja. Just look at ninjas as portrayed in the media and discussed popularly - they are not all trained assassins who actually go out and assassinate people, although they presumably could if they wanted to. Or consider Avadaru's ex-boyfriend. He thinks of himself as a ninja. But does he consider himself someone who would actually kill people for pay? If not, then I don't think the concept of "ninja" that he is using is a concept that entails actually killing people for pay. In the same way that these days you no longer have to actually steal from ships to be a pirate, you no longer have to kill people to be a ninja. Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:But does he consider himself someone who would actually kill people for pay?
Yes. I told you, he's a psychopath. To my knowledge, he hasn't actually ever killed anyone, but I don't doubt that he would if the price was right. And as much as I hate to say it, I'm pretty sure he's good enough to get away with it.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Methinks you are using an outdated concept of ninja.
Nope. Even realultimatepower.net admits that a Ninja's main purpose is to "flip out and kill people."
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Cool. I'm going to consider myself an empress.
My concept of "empress" doesn't involve actually ruling anything or being married to an emporer, but I do get to wear a crown.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
After due consideration, I shall consider myself a Space Tyrant. Nevermind that I don't actually have an armada of spaceships to back me up, I will be expecting Earth's tribute shortly.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Ninjas, if you study the literature, were not considered especially dangerous or capable fighters. As assassins, they mastered disguise, make-up, moving unseen/unheard, and poisons. Their martial skills were of one of two types: 1. Kill you when you are asleep or otherwise unaware, from behind, etc., or 2. distract you with a non-fatal attack as they run away.
The best fighters, in my experience, are often monks and those who train with monks. Monks often chose to learn to fight in China and Tibet, to feel safe from tigers and robbers in the mountains over long distances during pilgrimages. Most monks, not all, were/are sworn not to kill humans.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Belle, there's a new manga about a school for ninjas or something (Naruto). I've heard it's pretty popular, just like Pokemons used to be. Maybe the guy's read too much of it? Posts: 218 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:The best fighters, in my experience, are often monks and those who train with monks. Monks often chose to learn to fight in China and Tibet, to feel safe from tigers and robbers in the mountains over long distances during pilgrimages. Most monks, not all, were/are sworn not to kill humans.
You have CLEARLY not seen enough kung fu movies. Hello? Shaolin monk kung fu action? That's some serious human-killing!
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Start Googling, Scott. I have studied closed-door martial arts for years, and that's the source I trust most on the subject, but I have seen this discussed intelligently on some website, somewhere. In ancient Japan, the samurai were the ones to fear in open battle. The ninja were the ones who stabbed you in the neck while you slept.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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The Tick (brushing shuriken off his shoulders as he walks away from a rooftop full of badly beaten assassins): Ninjas. They're whacky.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Proof that most ninja were inferior to the samurai in sworsmanship? The straight sword fsvored by the ninja is not nearly as good a weapon for open combat. Their swords were mainly designed for slicing your belly open as they ran away. The slightly curved samurai weapon is much more versatile and is more useful for the advanced combinations that were used in pitched battles.
Really, thid all comes down to facts--the good guys in Asia have access to the best information. They are the most unassailable fighters. The "bad guys" are limited to things other than pitched battles. I am saying "good guys" to mean "those who are sworn not to kill" versus "those who kill as a matter of course". Perhaps it is not that simple, but the ninjas were never the equal of the samurai in open battle. You can master cheap tricks, or you can master straight-up throwing down.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Who on this thread said that Ninjas were the equal of Samurai in open warfare? Samurai specifically trained for just that. Of course they were superior. That's like saying that Michael Jordan isn't a good athlete because Michael Phelps killed him in a 200 fly.
quote:Ninjas, if you study the literature, were not considered especially dangerous or capable fighters.
This is what you said that Scott asked for clarification on.
But please, tell me some more 'facts'. You've proven yourself to be full of little nuggets of wisdom. No, wait, not wisdom. Crap.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I'm curious. Is a ninja still a ninja if he's not wearing his black PJs? I mean, if a ninja puts on a lime green leasure suit and goes to a mojito bar to hit on some fiesty young filipino boys, is he still a ninja?
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:I'm curious. Is a ninja still a ninja if he's not wearing his black PJs? I mean, if a ninja puts on a lime green leasure suit and goes to a mojito bar to hit on some fiesty young filipino boys, is he still a ninja?
Definitely - he's just in disguise. Unlike a police officer, who has a much more limited ability to act as an officer of the law out of uniform and off duty, a ninja suffers no obstruction to his rights and privileges as a night assassin just because he is not wearing the official uniform.
And before anyone disputes this, it's an unarguable fact. My sources are anecdotal evidence, hearsay, common sense and, of course, Real Ultimate Power.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:You don't get to decide what other people's concepts of anything is, Tresopax.
Nope, but neither do they.
Concepts are what they are regardless of what you'd like them to be. You can't just decide to change them. For instance, I might want to be a pirate, but I can't just decide to conceive of pirates differently in order to make myself a pirate. I could just decide "starting today, I'm going to consider all people like me to be pirates" but that would not make it so. Rather, I'd have to change myself in order to fit what a pirate is (to me.)
So, you could claim you fit your conception of what an "empress" is, but if you don't, you don't. Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:But if I did, it still wouldn't make me an empress. It would make me delusional.
Delusional or not, if you fit the definition of whatever it is you are calling an empress, then you would be whatever it is you are calling an empress.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Oh, I see, Steven. You thought I was challenging your authority on the subject because I asked, 'What literature,' and then asked for historical documents.
But see...I'm just a curious kind of guy. If you'd kindly point out where you get the literature that "Ninjas...were not considered especially dangerous or capable fighters," I'd like to read it.
When you said 'literature,' did you mean literature as commonly accepted by most of the population? Or did you mean something different, some internal definition of 'literature' that is obscurred from the rest of the English speaking world but STILL somehow correct as a definition? (And if Tresopax says you can do that, BY ALL MEANS!!)
Please clarify. Or hook me up with amazon links to your amazing, enlightening ninja-ologies.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: The Tick (brushing shuriken off his shoulders as he walks away from a rooftop full of badly beaten assassins): Ninjas. They're whacky.
I like it when he turns the ninjas standing in a row into Newton's balls.
The sight of ninja heads bonking each other back and forth is funny to me. And, somehow, this motion gag looked better in the B&W comic.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
We had a group that shared dojo space with us who studied "ninjitsu". As far as I could tell, it looked like pretty standard Japanese jujitsu.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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