Screaming like Goku

People say strange things to me. I think it's just me, but you never know. I told of a person who recently said to me "I can't sell my car, it smells like fish" and just today someone said to that "I have small birds in my chimney". I'm still not sure whether that was a metaphor.


People seem to do strange things too. I once knew a chap that collected empty liquor bottles. Most of them he hadn't even drunk the liquor, he had just found the bottle. He was careful not to have two bottles the same (although he considered a different label made it a different bottle) and he basically had a room full of empty bottles, from ordinary beer bottles to strange, curly bottle of exotic liqueurs. They weren't displayed, just packed in boxes and lying around the spare room. Sometimes he would sit in the room and look at them, but that was about it.

Yet another chap I knew collected pushbikes. In his case there seemed to be a method to it as many of them were apparently valuable, but they just seemed to me to be a collection of old pushbikes. Yet another lady collected rocks and painted them to look like small animals. She did it in a remarkably lifelike way too. I asked her if she sold them and she did, but it seems that she only sold them so she could buy paint and brushes to make more of them. I guess it was a sustainable hobby, so my green friends would be pleased.

Yesterday I was having a quick cigarette in the smoking area and some of the folks were talking about what they had planned for the weekend. One of them, an otherwise fairly normal chap with a predilection for bright ties, said that he was going to "scream like goku".

"You're going to do what?" I asked.

"Scream like goku." he said again. I have to add that he seemed very excited about it too. "It's on at Hyde Park"

I looked around at the group, who seemed amused and my confusion. They were obviously in on the gag.

"You know Dragonball Z?" he asked.

"No."

"YOU MUST!"

"OK then, I do, it's just that I've forgotten everything about it."

"It's a Japanese cartoon thing. An anime"

My heart sunk. I have encountered fans of Japanese cartoons before (yes, they're called 'anime', short for animation). The fans are invariably obsessed by their particular cartoon and often refer to themselves as 'otaku' without realising that in Japan the term is

• a. pejorative and 
• b. so vague as to be meaningless. It's a little like calling yourself an 'employee'.

The photo above is a pretty good example of a fanboy. The character itself (GokU) is heavily muscled and presumably wanders around screaming and saving the world from bad things. The fanboy above, undeterred by his Cameroneque arms, has gone to a great deal of trouble to make himself look like Goku for reasons that are probably not clear to anyone. Including himself.

"OK. And Goku is a character?"

"Yeah, he screams when he transforms. It's awesome!"

"And you're going to go to Hyde Park and scream like goku?"

"Yep, there's going to be 10,000 people there!"

I may have muttered a profanity under my breath upon hearing this. "10,000 people? What are they going to do?"

"Scream like Goku." he looked puzzled now.

"Yes, but after that?"

Now he looked as though I had asked him why water is wet, or why cows eat grass. "I don't know," he said, "probably hang around the city or something."

"Let me get this straight, you and 10,000 other people are going to go to Hyde Park tomorrow, you're going to scream like a cartoon character and then you're going to leave?"

"Anime character"

"OK, anime character. That's it?"

Apparently that was indeed it. I checked this morning and found that the event was indeed happening and I wondered briefly about the benefits of going to view the spectacle. I decided against it, which is probably just as well. Based on their facebook page, I suspect it was a little under 10,000. Fortunately, there are more events coming up should you be interested.





Photo courtesy MiNe (sfmine79) http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfmine79/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfmine79/1105406108/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons