Hajimemashite

Welcome to my blog. In this first entry I suppose I ought to introduce myself.
My name is Tom, and I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am 23, single, and am currently in college.
I am Roman Catholic, straight, white, speak English very well, French decently, and Japanese rather erratically.
My political ideas are rather difficult to categorize, but I tend to support the center-right on most issues--not that I agree with them (my ideas are radically different from anything currently abroad in the land); their goals are just the least different from mine.

I am the world's biggest geek--no, seriously, in the geek-races I could give Alton Brown a run for his money and beat him by two lengths. I am a geek about, just off the top of my head:
Movies
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Comics
Anime
Manga
History
Food
Science
Religion
Philosophy
Mythology
Mysticism
Linguistics
and so much more.

This blog is mainly going to be concerned with pop culture, and my mind-bogglingly picky opinions about same. Its name, "Lady Wisdom's Favorite," refers to Sophia, the Greek goddess of Wisdom whose friends the Socratics claimed to be--philosophia. Yes I'm sure you've heard it translated as "lover" of wisdom, but philia is the love of a friend, so "friend of wisdom" seems a closer translation.

I had considered naming it "Buddha-killer," referring to the Buddha-killing teaching of Rinzai Zen:

If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet the Patriarch, kill the Patriarch. Not held by anything, not bound, all there is, is simply to live your own life.
(as quoted by Tou Genjyo Sanzo, Gensoumaden Saiyûki, and translated by me)

What it means is, "disregard any ideas/preconceptions/authorities that keep you from seeing the truth." Now, I don't happen to think that what Rinzai thought was the truth, was the truth (not being a Zen Buddhist), but it is a very valuable attitude. There is, of course, a place for authority--to sound very Zen about it, "We ought to kill the Buddha. How much more, then, ought we to kill Rinzai Gigen?"--but letting ideas like prestige, rank, street-cred, or popularity blind one to simple facts (as, for instance, that a particular show sucks, no matter how critically-acclaimed it is) is the cause of most of our problems.

But I was slightly worried that hyper-sensitive illiterates would think I was saying something nasty against Buddhism, not that they'd know Buddhism from a hole in the ground.

So instead I chose the name Lady Wisdom's Favorite, slightly egotistically, because I consider philosophy the single most important thing of which humans are capable. It's more referring to me--yes, I realize I'm implying that I'm the best philosopher--than it is to the topic of the blog.

I shall try to keep the blog apolitical, save where politics enter into (i.e., whore out) the storyline of a work I'm discussing.