Sung to the tune of Camelot's Guinevere:
Scooby-Doo
Ooby-doo
Scooby-Doo
Where are you?
We have got some
Work to do
So where are you
Scooby Doo?
“Holy Durn!
He must burn,”
Said old Crabtree
“He must burn.
He’s been meddling
For too long”
So he shouted
To the throng!
“Hiss and boo
You’re a goob
You know that we
All love Scoob.
Mr. Crabtree,
You’ve no clue
How much we love
Scooby Doo
Scooby Doo!
Scooby Doo!
Cross the field
Through the wall
Came the Van
At a crawl
And the whole gang
Was there too
Just to save poor
Scooby Doo
Bashing heads
Killing knights
Cross the yard
Shaggy fights
And he comes to
The rescue
Of the burning
Scooby Doo!
“Meddling kids!
I hate you!
You just saved
Scooby-Doo!
I would have managed
To do it, too
If it wasn’t
For all you!”
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
The Pirates Would Win, I Tell You!! The Pirates!!!!
The time has come to consider the age-old question that was once important to us all, and probably still is, although you may have forgotten about it; it is, of course, "Who would win in a fight? Pirates, or Ninjas?"
The answer that I hear time after time from my classmates is, "the Ninjas".
THIS IS WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WRONG, I TELL YOU!!!!!!!!! WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!!!!!!!!!!
I believe that this widespread delusion is due to several factors, which I will list below, in order of influence.
1. Gamer Misconception Syndrome - This disease causes people who play many video games to think that liberties the games take with history are factual. Since there are many games about Ninjas, this syndrome runs rampant in the Pirate-Ninja debate. Many Ninja advocates cite such ludicrous reasons as...
-Ninjas can turn invisible. Not true. They are merely good at hiding.
-Ninjas can take superhuman amounts of punishment. No. They are just wiry guys in black jumpsuits.
-Ninjas can jump five times their height, and fall twice that distance without getting hurt. Nuh-uh. They're just people.
-Ninjas can climb up walls and stick to ceilings. Maybe, but only with big clunky climbing spikes.
-Ninjas can disappear into thin air. No. That's just stupid.
2. Poor knowledge of history - In addition to their video-game fueled false knowledge, Ninja Advocates often have a lack of real knowledge about ninjas. I happen to have that knowledge - for instance, Ninjas, like their white-robed Samurai counterparts, would commit ritual suicide at the drop of a hat. They were solitary agents, operating in, at most, groups of three. They did have spectacular weapons, but nothing magical.
3. Ninja Charisma - Ninjas just have a certain mystique that clouds the judgement of ninja advocates. Actually, they are pretty cool. Maybe they would win... stop that! *slaps himself*
An here's why the Pirates would win.
-This confrontation would not be a video game - the teams would not be evenly matched in number at the start. If this actually happened in history, it would have been maybe six ninjas working together against a whole shipful of pirates, because, as mentioned above, the ninjas are fairly solitary, aside from at their base.
-Pirates have home turf; their ship. Since ninjas are constantly traveling, it would be the ninjas attacking the pirates on the ship, not the pirates attacking the ninjas. Thus, the Pirates have the advantage of a familiar place.
-Pirates wear fancy clothes with lots of funky layers. Ninja stars wouldn't hurt them that much through the clothes.
-Pirates have guns. Ninjas don't. Simple as that.
-The aforementioned ritual suicide. If it looks like the ninjas are going to dishonor themselves, they'll take out their swords and kil themselves.
-Cannons. Need I say more?
-The only pirates that ninjas would have come into contact with would be the oriental pirates, who formed vast navies of a hundred or more ships, and with thousands of lackeys who would gladly fight to the death.
So there.
The answer that I hear time after time from my classmates is, "the Ninjas".
THIS IS WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WRONG, I TELL YOU!!!!!!!!! WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!!!!!!!!!!
I believe that this widespread delusion is due to several factors, which I will list below, in order of influence.
1. Gamer Misconception Syndrome - This disease causes people who play many video games to think that liberties the games take with history are factual. Since there are many games about Ninjas, this syndrome runs rampant in the Pirate-Ninja debate. Many Ninja advocates cite such ludicrous reasons as...
-Ninjas can turn invisible. Not true. They are merely good at hiding.
-Ninjas can take superhuman amounts of punishment. No. They are just wiry guys in black jumpsuits.
-Ninjas can jump five times their height, and fall twice that distance without getting hurt. Nuh-uh. They're just people.
-Ninjas can climb up walls and stick to ceilings. Maybe, but only with big clunky climbing spikes.
-Ninjas can disappear into thin air. No. That's just stupid.
2. Poor knowledge of history - In addition to their video-game fueled false knowledge, Ninja Advocates often have a lack of real knowledge about ninjas. I happen to have that knowledge - for instance, Ninjas, like their white-robed Samurai counterparts, would commit ritual suicide at the drop of a hat. They were solitary agents, operating in, at most, groups of three. They did have spectacular weapons, but nothing magical.
3. Ninja Charisma - Ninjas just have a certain mystique that clouds the judgement of ninja advocates. Actually, they are pretty cool. Maybe they would win... stop that! *slaps himself*
An here's why the Pirates would win.
-This confrontation would not be a video game - the teams would not be evenly matched in number at the start. If this actually happened in history, it would have been maybe six ninjas working together against a whole shipful of pirates, because, as mentioned above, the ninjas are fairly solitary, aside from at their base.
-Pirates have home turf; their ship. Since ninjas are constantly traveling, it would be the ninjas attacking the pirates on the ship, not the pirates attacking the ninjas. Thus, the Pirates have the advantage of a familiar place.
-Pirates wear fancy clothes with lots of funky layers. Ninja stars wouldn't hurt them that much through the clothes.
-Pirates have guns. Ninjas don't. Simple as that.
-The aforementioned ritual suicide. If it looks like the ninjas are going to dishonor themselves, they'll take out their swords and kil themselves.
-Cannons. Need I say more?
-The only pirates that ninjas would have come into contact with would be the oriental pirates, who formed vast navies of a hundred or more ships, and with thousands of lackeys who would gladly fight to the death.
So there.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Glatorian
Stupid Word of the Day - Glatorian - n - a nonsense word that doubles as the title of the new wave of Bionicle sets that the LEGO company is distributing in 2009.
I hadn't heard of Glatorian until a couple of days ago, when I received the November December LEGO magazine. It warranted the entire back cover of the Bionicle comic book. If you want to see the back cover, you can probably find it online somewhere. But if you have seen it, here are a few things I notice. (I am recording these as much for my own memory as that anyone will read it.)
Firstly, we are in a desert, complete with an awesome looking rhino-beetle-type rahi. This suggests to me that, if the place we are in has the six elemental areas to which we have become accustomed, we are in the "Po-" area.
Secondly, the large sculpture-ish thing is undoubtedly a huge version of a restricted ball and socket joint, the most common type in the knees and elbows of the most recent Bionicles.
Thirdly, and most interestingly, is the figure in the mid-ground. Having seen the cover-art for the new Glatorian sets, I can say that he is not a Glatorian. The shoulder plates, forearms, and lower legs make him a Toa Inika, and the silhouette of his mask is distinctive enough to pinpoint the character exactly: In this new universe, we are seeing Toa Ignika Matoro! Perhaps the massive energies of the Kanohi Ignika, instead of killing him, transported him into a different universe. Perhaps this is the same universe that Makuta blasted the Kanohi Ignika (and with it the spirit of Mata Nui) into. Perhaps...
...we'll have to wait until the next issue to find out. :(
I hadn't heard of Glatorian until a couple of days ago, when I received the November December LEGO magazine. It warranted the entire back cover of the Bionicle comic book. If you want to see the back cover, you can probably find it online somewhere. But if you have seen it, here are a few things I notice. (I am recording these as much for my own memory as that anyone will read it.)
Firstly, we are in a desert, complete with an awesome looking rhino-beetle-type rahi. This suggests to me that, if the place we are in has the six elemental areas to which we have become accustomed, we are in the "Po-" area.
Secondly, the large sculpture-ish thing is undoubtedly a huge version of a restricted ball and socket joint, the most common type in the knees and elbows of the most recent Bionicles.
Thirdly, and most interestingly, is the figure in the mid-ground. Having seen the cover-art for the new Glatorian sets, I can say that he is not a Glatorian. The shoulder plates, forearms, and lower legs make him a Toa Inika, and the silhouette of his mask is distinctive enough to pinpoint the character exactly: In this new universe, we are seeing Toa Ignika Matoro! Perhaps the massive energies of the Kanohi Ignika, instead of killing him, transported him into a different universe. Perhaps this is the same universe that Makuta blasted the Kanohi Ignika (and with it the spirit of Mata Nui) into. Perhaps...
...we'll have to wait until the next issue to find out. :(
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Oh, and by the way, here's my award-winning scary story
DREAMLAND
All was still, all was quiet. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, a clock chimed midnight. Allen lay in his bed, unable to sleep. The clock stopped chiming, and once again, all was silence. A single splinter of moonlight jabbed through the curtains.
The splinter of moonlight slowly disappeared.
Suddenly, a mass of fur and claws and teeth and tail and muscle and scars threw itself through the window. The creature hurled itself at Allen, ripping through his sheets, through his pajamas, through his skin and bones. Pain worse than anything he had imagined could exist coursed through Allen. He saw teeth glimmering, eyes glowing, smelled the foul stench of flesh incubated in a stomach…he screamed, sitting bolt upright in bed. He was drenched in sweat, breathing heavily, heart beating a mile a minute. He looked around.
All was still, all was quiet. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, a clock struck midnight. It was a dream, he thought, only a dream. Allen looked by the window, now intact. The splinter of moonlight was there.
It began disappearing.
Allen’s breath caught.
A creature ripped through the window, snarling and growling, ripped through him again, hungrily going for the throat. A flickering tongue filled his field of vision.
Allen screamed again, waking up, frantically surveying the room.
All was still, all was quiet. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, a clock chimed midnight. A single splinter of moonlight jabbed through the curtains.
It began to disappear…
All was still, all was quiet. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, a clock chimed midnight. Allen lay in his bed, unable to sleep. The clock stopped chiming, and once again, all was silence. A single splinter of moonlight jabbed through the curtains.
The splinter of moonlight slowly disappeared.
Suddenly, a mass of fur and claws and teeth and tail and muscle and scars threw itself through the window. The creature hurled itself at Allen, ripping through his sheets, through his pajamas, through his skin and bones. Pain worse than anything he had imagined could exist coursed through Allen. He saw teeth glimmering, eyes glowing, smelled the foul stench of flesh incubated in a stomach…he screamed, sitting bolt upright in bed. He was drenched in sweat, breathing heavily, heart beating a mile a minute. He looked around.
All was still, all was quiet. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, a clock struck midnight. It was a dream, he thought, only a dream. Allen looked by the window, now intact. The splinter of moonlight was there.
It began disappearing.
Allen’s breath caught.
A creature ripped through the window, snarling and growling, ripped through him again, hungrily going for the throat. A flickering tongue filled his field of vision.
Allen screamed again, waking up, frantically surveying the room.
All was still, all was quiet. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, a clock chimed midnight. A single splinter of moonlight jabbed through the curtains.
It began to disappear…
followtics
Stupid word of the Day - Followtics - n- the practice of choosing a political party to follow based on who most of your friends are following, then constructing a political philosophy by parroting campaign comercials issued by the chosen party.
As a middle schooler, I have seen followtics in action almost non-stop for the past few months. Fellow students bitterly arguing about who is better, McCain or Obama, kids wearing "Nobama" and "Gobama" pins on their backpacks, a redneck kid naming his hog Palin (it remains unclear whether he ever put lipstick on it), classmates quoting the SNL debates back and forth in endless volleys, all without really knowing the pros and cons of either candidate. The closest I heard anyone come to a legitimate reason was the aforementioned redneck kid saying of Obama:
"Heeyell take awayer goons!" (Translation: "He'll take away our guns", an accusation which I doubt is true, but which could seem legitimate to him.)
Their's nothing really wrong with followtics in middle school, which at the pre-voting stage mainly consists of liking the same candidate one's parents do. But if we kids never figure out that there are reasons to vote for someone other than the fact that they started riding the elephant or the donkey a few years ago under their parents' influences, POOF! We suddenly have a candidate who was elected for the sole reason of being either a democrat or a Republican. He (or she) could probably promise that they would sit on the whitehouse lawn and kill puppies for their entire term, and still get elected.
The reason I bring this up, is that followtics is not a recent phenomenon - in fact, there are many practitioners of it who are over eighteen right now. In 2008. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Remember to vote!
As a middle schooler, I have seen followtics in action almost non-stop for the past few months. Fellow students bitterly arguing about who is better, McCain or Obama, kids wearing "Nobama" and "Gobama" pins on their backpacks, a redneck kid naming his hog Palin (it remains unclear whether he ever put lipstick on it), classmates quoting the SNL debates back and forth in endless volleys, all without really knowing the pros and cons of either candidate. The closest I heard anyone come to a legitimate reason was the aforementioned redneck kid saying of Obama:
"Heeyell take awayer goons!" (Translation: "He'll take away our guns", an accusation which I doubt is true, but which could seem legitimate to him.)
Their's nothing really wrong with followtics in middle school, which at the pre-voting stage mainly consists of liking the same candidate one's parents do. But if we kids never figure out that there are reasons to vote for someone other than the fact that they started riding the elephant or the donkey a few years ago under their parents' influences, POOF! We suddenly have a candidate who was elected for the sole reason of being either a democrat or a Republican. He (or she) could probably promise that they would sit on the whitehouse lawn and kill puppies for their entire term, and still get elected.
The reason I bring this up, is that followtics is not a recent phenomenon - in fact, there are many practitioners of it who are over eighteen right now. In 2008. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Remember to vote!
Monday, November 3, 2008
Why the economy should keep how fun halloween is in check, but didn't
Stupid word of the day - Dutchophobia - n - An irrational fear of the Netherlands and everything Dutch.
Generally, the economy ought to keep halloween at equal levels of fun, no matter how much it fluctuates without totally crashing; my logic is that when it is good, people will have more money and buy more and better candy. However, they will also buy store-bought costumes, which are a snooze. When the economy is bad (such as it is now), people will buy less and cheaper candy, but ought to make their own costumes, which are cheaper and more interesting than the storeboughts. This is known as... well, it isn't known as anything, becaue I just came up with it.
On Friday, I went dressed up as Seymour Krelbourne, from the movie turned musical turned movie musical "Little Shop of Horrors". I am already a nerd, so all I had to do was put on a long - sleeved, patterned shirt, a sweater vest, a dorky, canvas -y jacket, some jeans and a plain hat, then pick up plant puppet we made - voila! Suddenly Seymour.
True, the plant was a little difficult - but it only took us two evenings. Some styrofoam hemispheres, two larger, two smaller, coated in masking tape, the green duct tape, with a hole cut through the middle of the bottom and some spots for my hand. Paint it to look like the plant, attach the entire pod to a dryer vent tube painted green, tape that to some cardboard, mount it in a flowerpot, attach some leaves and pipe-cleaner vines and add some last-minute masking tape teeth - the resemblance was uncanny, and I was able to open the mouth as a puppet and have it eat my candy (it went down into the flowerpot). It may sound complicated, but the entire thing cost less than twenty dollars, and will last for a long time. Plus, everyone loved the costume (except for people who hadn't seen the movie. One person thought that it was an alligator, and another called it a "watermelon parrot". Whatever that is.)
So I had a great costume - I was all ready to see the others that would be prowling the streets. Surely, I thought, things would follow the rule of Halloween economics stated above?
No. There were only a few homemade costumes out and about, most of them in the 3-5 year old male or strollerbound dog groups. Jokers, Commander Codys, and little bloody hockey masks, however, were in no short supply.
So what does this tell us? Well, there are two ways that I interpret it. The first is that we don't know how to save money very well, if we're willing to go out to walmart and buy hundreds of thirty dollar costumes. But the second, and, I think, more accurate, interpretation is that we are lazy dullards. We, as a nation of individuals, don't have the ingenuity or motivation to make a new, creative costume every year, or even once. We just don't think that way anymore. If you need something, you don't make it - you go to walmart! Which is great in some respects - I wouldn't want to make my own bleach - but it makes things that are supposed to be diverse and personal (like costumes) uniform and industrialized. And boring.
I, for one, will continue to come up with new costumes.
Generally, the economy ought to keep halloween at equal levels of fun, no matter how much it fluctuates without totally crashing; my logic is that when it is good, people will have more money and buy more and better candy. However, they will also buy store-bought costumes, which are a snooze. When the economy is bad (such as it is now), people will buy less and cheaper candy, but ought to make their own costumes, which are cheaper and more interesting than the storeboughts. This is known as... well, it isn't known as anything, becaue I just came up with it.
On Friday, I went dressed up as Seymour Krelbourne, from the movie turned musical turned movie musical "Little Shop of Horrors". I am already a nerd, so all I had to do was put on a long - sleeved, patterned shirt, a sweater vest, a dorky, canvas -y jacket, some jeans and a plain hat, then pick up plant puppet we made - voila! Suddenly Seymour.
True, the plant was a little difficult - but it only took us two evenings. Some styrofoam hemispheres, two larger, two smaller, coated in masking tape, the green duct tape, with a hole cut through the middle of the bottom and some spots for my hand. Paint it to look like the plant, attach the entire pod to a dryer vent tube painted green, tape that to some cardboard, mount it in a flowerpot, attach some leaves and pipe-cleaner vines and add some last-minute masking tape teeth - the resemblance was uncanny, and I was able to open the mouth as a puppet and have it eat my candy (it went down into the flowerpot). It may sound complicated, but the entire thing cost less than twenty dollars, and will last for a long time. Plus, everyone loved the costume (except for people who hadn't seen the movie. One person thought that it was an alligator, and another called it a "watermelon parrot". Whatever that is.)
So I had a great costume - I was all ready to see the others that would be prowling the streets. Surely, I thought, things would follow the rule of Halloween economics stated above?
No. There were only a few homemade costumes out and about, most of them in the 3-5 year old male or strollerbound dog groups. Jokers, Commander Codys, and little bloody hockey masks, however, were in no short supply.
So what does this tell us? Well, there are two ways that I interpret it. The first is that we don't know how to save money very well, if we're willing to go out to walmart and buy hundreds of thirty dollar costumes. But the second, and, I think, more accurate, interpretation is that we are lazy dullards. We, as a nation of individuals, don't have the ingenuity or motivation to make a new, creative costume every year, or even once. We just don't think that way anymore. If you need something, you don't make it - you go to walmart! Which is great in some respects - I wouldn't want to make my own bleach - but it makes things that are supposed to be diverse and personal (like costumes) uniform and industrialized. And boring.
I, for one, will continue to come up with new costumes.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Global Warming
Stupid Word of the Day: The Copernican Principle - states, essentially, that you aren't special. Y'know, in a cosmological sense. Nothing personal.
Typically, when one of my fellow students asks me about global warming, I'll throw them off course by saying something like
Typically, when one of my fellow students asks me about global warming, I'll throw them off course by saying something like
"Actually, analysis of the current data concerning sunspots and the solar magnetic fields suggests that we may be entering a period of solar quiesence, similar to the one that caused the so-called 'Little Ice Age' in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which could more the offset the effects of global warming, and actually result in a net cooling of the Earth in the coming century."
They will say
"Really? Is that so?"
Or something along those lines, then walk away.
And although the above statement may be true, it is not my real view on global warming.
The truth is, the earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling. Sixty-five million years ago, the Earth was ten degrees warmer, on average, than it is today. Ten degrees! It was so warm that even places deep in the arctic circle were as temperate as the southernmost part of Alaska today, with lush forests and lovely dinosaurs running around and killing each other all over the place. To quote Biden, let me say that again; ten degrees. And Al Gore is getting all worked up about a measly .57 or whatever.
To say that man is completely responsible for all of the drastic snail-paced climate changed is arrogant in the extreme. To think that we as a species could, through the emmision of certain gasses which have been hypothesized to trap a fraction more heat than a regualar atmospheric mix, completely alter the entire biosphere, is like thinking that a kid, as a student, could throw the entire school into disarray by covering one teacher's whiteboard. We've shifted from the we humans art better than thou, animalia mindset of the middle ages, where it was thought that humans were blameless, and not animals at all, to a mindset that goes more along the lines of oh my gosh, we're destroying the environment! We're the most horrible things ever to tarnish the beautiful surface of the planet! How I wish I was a blameless cow! But really, both are equally arrogant. At first, we thought we were special enough to be perfect. Now, we think that we're special enough to be the opposite.
To take the Copernican Principal out of its lofty cosmological origins, and apply it to biology, presents a pretty accurate picture. Humans are arrogant creatures, and we always like to think that we're special - that we're in the center of the universe, that we can destroy the world without trying, that sort of thing. The Copernican principle blocks this out. We aren't special. We're just another species. We may be a particularly viscious and destructive one, but we are still just one of the crowd. No other species in the past has unintentionally destroyed the world, so why do we think that we should be able to?
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
A philosophical review on humanity of great profundity, and importance, to us all.
Actually, this will be the first post in which I don't include a broader look at life related to the topic. Today's topic is...
Stupid word of the day: Fatman - (Proper noun) - Like Batman, only less batty, and more fatty.
One of my friends and I came up with this one day at school, and ever since, we have been coming up with villians for Fatman to fight, all of them about one letter off from the names of the Batman villians. Included below is the most complete list, with the name of the character and a brief description.
Fatman - fat rich guy by day, fat caped crimefighter by night, his powers include immense weight and the ability to swing massive rolls of fat at people. He is almost immune to health food and other such weapons, which are often employed by the likes of....
The Poker - Fatman's arch nemisis, the Poker is utterly unpredictable; he can't even get the meaning of his name straight. Sometimes, he will make fatman engage in a high-stakes game of Texas hold'em, while at other times, the thing he seems to enjoy as a villian is poking people. Sometimes captured and used as a bargaining chip during the Poker's poker games is...
Bobbin' - Fatman's sidekick, a high-schooler who involuntarily bobs his head up and down like the guy in the Pepsi Max commercial whenever he puts on a cape. It is unclear what purpose this serves, which is why Fatman eventually hired a new sidekick named...
Bitewing - yes, that is the thing the dentist puts in your cheek to get an X-ray. He is also the lesser known of Fatman's sidekicks, but is the most powerful, possessed with X-ray vision and extreme durability against saliva. Neither of those powers, however, will save him from...
Scare 'Fro - basically a scary guy with big hair, which he uses to store all sorts of aerosol cans, some of which are harmless haircare products, and others of which have more sinister uses. These, however, would be useless if he ever came into a confrontation with...
Mr. Peas - once harmless Dr. Peaze, he enjoyed a steady job researching peas at the university, until one day, the fat-logo in the sky distracted him during the middle of a crucial part of an experiment. The equipment exploded, and Dr. Peaze found himself stuck with a condition that could only be cured by eating peas three time a day for thirty-five years, wearing a special suit. He vowed that one day, Fatman would share his veggie-induced misery, and will go to any lengths to make sure that it happened. Even more sinister, however, is...
Poo-face - a disgusting villian, with dog poop covering his face. All of his crimes are related to poop, as are those of...
Scat-woman - also a scatological villian, Scat-woman dresses up in a brown suit to steal important poop-related artifacts, such as Thomas Crapper's first indoor toilet, or the silken toilet paper of Persia. She isn't nearly as sinister, however, as...
Killer Frock - once a slightly eccentric performer who insisted on dressing up completely in period wear, now the scourge of antique gentlemen's clothing shops everwhere, Killer Frock was already on the run at the end of his acting career, after a scandal surfaced from his shadowy past. It was Fatman who gave the police the information they needed to close the case, and also Fatman who caused the explosion that grafted the Frock Coat he was wearing as he fled the theater to his body. Killer Frock has had a vendetta against fatman ever since.
The Piddler - do we really need to explain it?
Gray-face - He, uh, yeah, well, he has a gray face. I guess we didn't think that one out.
That's all for now!
Stupid word of the day: Fatman - (Proper noun) - Like Batman, only less batty, and more fatty.
One of my friends and I came up with this one day at school, and ever since, we have been coming up with villians for Fatman to fight, all of them about one letter off from the names of the Batman villians. Included below is the most complete list, with the name of the character and a brief description.
Fatman - fat rich guy by day, fat caped crimefighter by night, his powers include immense weight and the ability to swing massive rolls of fat at people. He is almost immune to health food and other such weapons, which are often employed by the likes of....
The Poker - Fatman's arch nemisis, the Poker is utterly unpredictable; he can't even get the meaning of his name straight. Sometimes, he will make fatman engage in a high-stakes game of Texas hold'em, while at other times, the thing he seems to enjoy as a villian is poking people. Sometimes captured and used as a bargaining chip during the Poker's poker games is...
Bobbin' - Fatman's sidekick, a high-schooler who involuntarily bobs his head up and down like the guy in the Pepsi Max commercial whenever he puts on a cape. It is unclear what purpose this serves, which is why Fatman eventually hired a new sidekick named...
Bitewing - yes, that is the thing the dentist puts in your cheek to get an X-ray. He is also the lesser known of Fatman's sidekicks, but is the most powerful, possessed with X-ray vision and extreme durability against saliva. Neither of those powers, however, will save him from...
Scare 'Fro - basically a scary guy with big hair, which he uses to store all sorts of aerosol cans, some of which are harmless haircare products, and others of which have more sinister uses. These, however, would be useless if he ever came into a confrontation with...
Mr. Peas - once harmless Dr. Peaze, he enjoyed a steady job researching peas at the university, until one day, the fat-logo in the sky distracted him during the middle of a crucial part of an experiment. The equipment exploded, and Dr. Peaze found himself stuck with a condition that could only be cured by eating peas three time a day for thirty-five years, wearing a special suit. He vowed that one day, Fatman would share his veggie-induced misery, and will go to any lengths to make sure that it happened. Even more sinister, however, is...
Poo-face - a disgusting villian, with dog poop covering his face. All of his crimes are related to poop, as are those of...
Scat-woman - also a scatological villian, Scat-woman dresses up in a brown suit to steal important poop-related artifacts, such as Thomas Crapper's first indoor toilet, or the silken toilet paper of Persia. She isn't nearly as sinister, however, as...
Killer Frock - once a slightly eccentric performer who insisted on dressing up completely in period wear, now the scourge of antique gentlemen's clothing shops everwhere, Killer Frock was already on the run at the end of his acting career, after a scandal surfaced from his shadowy past. It was Fatman who gave the police the information they needed to close the case, and also Fatman who caused the explosion that grafted the Frock Coat he was wearing as he fled the theater to his body. Killer Frock has had a vendetta against fatman ever since.
The Piddler - do we really need to explain it?
Gray-face - He, uh, yeah, well, he has a gray face. I guess we didn't think that one out.
That's all for now!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Science Fair - and how it sucks any last vestiges of enthusiasm for science out of the marrow of your bones, and replaces it with tedium.
I like science, I really do. But I hate the over-legislated guts of science fair. The name itself is misleading. When you think of a fair, you think of an event consisting mainly of nauseatingly wild rides, nauseatingly unhealthy snacks, and nauseatingly grotesque teenagers, while still being fun.
All that the science fair is, and I know from experience, is a bunch of nerdy kids sitting around in suits that they don't want to be in, in front of large cardboard monoliths, which are pasted with large words that no-one cares about. Old people, also in suits that they generally don't want to be in, shuffle around, reading the words that they don't care about, putting little round stickers on the cardboard monoliths, and writing stuff on clipboards. This takes about fifteen minutes, and then the kids continue to sit there in suits for about three hours, for no apparent reason. After all this excitement, the event comes to a culmination with the awards ceremony, where old ladies from some high school read a bunch of names, and the nerdy, suited kids walk up to the stage, where old people who no-one ever sees shake their hands and hand them plaques.
It's about the same at the State Science Fair, only the kids have to sit around for seven hours for no apparent reason, instead of three, and the awards ceremony is twice as long.
But none of these is the reason that I don't like the science fair.
I don't like the science fair because it has too many rules! Here's a list of some of the things that you're not allowed to work with;
Alcohol
Animals, deceased
Animals, extraterrestrial
Animals, invertebrate
Animals, vertebrate
Animated tissue in any form
Bacteria
Bleach
Calculators
Chemicals of any kind
Electricity
Flame, Open
Fruit
Human Subjects
Letter 'Q', The
Light
Magic
Magic, black
Matter
Mathematical calculations whose variables could be construed as offensive if rearranged
Money
Occult, the
Oil
Rocks, very small
Software, analytical
Vegetables
Wikipedia
And so on. As a result, on can rarely do anything that even approaches something that someone, somewhere, would find remotely interesting. However, as I approach high-school, at the same time that the rules are becoming more restrictive, the expectation is that my projects will be less 'elementary'. So what's causing this strange clamp-down on anything fun? What is the root of the problem? Why, they're the same roots of most of the everyday problems facing citizens today; stupid people, and the American legal system.
You see, back when the constitution was written, either you were smart, and lived, or you were stupid, planted your crops in the same field you kept your cows, and died of starvation. So the founders, naturally, based the American legal system on the assumption that everyone in the country was smart enough to seperate your cows from your crops. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart and other stores came along and alowwed stupid people to prosper, they quickly grew to become a majority in the country, and have now discovered the legal system to have this wonderful feature called a lawsuit. Now, some of these stupid people, believe it or not, thought that if they got hurt, it wasn't because they were being stupid; it was because whichever company was involved with the making of the item that was related to them getting hurt was being stupid for not putting a label on every ladder that says "Do not use on trampoline!"
Now, as the American saga progressed, the stupid people had children, who, once they reached fifth grade, were forced to do science fair projects. If the kid got hurt while doing the science fair project, who could they sue? Not the companies who made the components for the science fair project; They had already wised up and put a hundred and seventy two warning stickers on everything. The stupid people decided to sue the Science Fair people. Thus, as another arm of the "Stupid people; ruining it for all of us" phenomenon, the Science fair people were forced to also include on hundred and seventy two warning labels on everything, this time in the form of fun-sucking restrictions like the ones listed above.
Isn't suing great?
All that the science fair is, and I know from experience, is a bunch of nerdy kids sitting around in suits that they don't want to be in, in front of large cardboard monoliths, which are pasted with large words that no-one cares about. Old people, also in suits that they generally don't want to be in, shuffle around, reading the words that they don't care about, putting little round stickers on the cardboard monoliths, and writing stuff on clipboards. This takes about fifteen minutes, and then the kids continue to sit there in suits for about three hours, for no apparent reason. After all this excitement, the event comes to a culmination with the awards ceremony, where old ladies from some high school read a bunch of names, and the nerdy, suited kids walk up to the stage, where old people who no-one ever sees shake their hands and hand them plaques.
It's about the same at the State Science Fair, only the kids have to sit around for seven hours for no apparent reason, instead of three, and the awards ceremony is twice as long.
But none of these is the reason that I don't like the science fair.
I don't like the science fair because it has too many rules! Here's a list of some of the things that you're not allowed to work with;
Alcohol
Animals, deceased
Animals, extraterrestrial
Animals, invertebrate
Animals, vertebrate
Animated tissue in any form
Bacteria
Bleach
Calculators
Chemicals of any kind
Electricity
Flame, Open
Fruit
Human Subjects
Letter 'Q', The
Light
Magic
Magic, black
Matter
Mathematical calculations whose variables could be construed as offensive if rearranged
Money
Occult, the
Oil
Rocks, very small
Software, analytical
Vegetables
Wikipedia
And so on. As a result, on can rarely do anything that even approaches something that someone, somewhere, would find remotely interesting. However, as I approach high-school, at the same time that the rules are becoming more restrictive, the expectation is that my projects will be less 'elementary'. So what's causing this strange clamp-down on anything fun? What is the root of the problem? Why, they're the same roots of most of the everyday problems facing citizens today; stupid people, and the American legal system.
You see, back when the constitution was written, either you were smart, and lived, or you were stupid, planted your crops in the same field you kept your cows, and died of starvation. So the founders, naturally, based the American legal system on the assumption that everyone in the country was smart enough to seperate your cows from your crops. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart and other stores came along and alowwed stupid people to prosper, they quickly grew to become a majority in the country, and have now discovered the legal system to have this wonderful feature called a lawsuit. Now, some of these stupid people, believe it or not, thought that if they got hurt, it wasn't because they were being stupid; it was because whichever company was involved with the making of the item that was related to them getting hurt was being stupid for not putting a label on every ladder that says "Do not use on trampoline!"
Now, as the American saga progressed, the stupid people had children, who, once they reached fifth grade, were forced to do science fair projects. If the kid got hurt while doing the science fair project, who could they sue? Not the companies who made the components for the science fair project; They had already wised up and put a hundred and seventy two warning stickers on everything. The stupid people decided to sue the Science Fair people. Thus, as another arm of the "Stupid people; ruining it for all of us" phenomenon, the Science fair people were forced to also include on hundred and seventy two warning labels on everything, this time in the form of fun-sucking restrictions like the ones listed above.
Isn't suing great?
In which I introduce te stupid word of the day.
Ok, seriously, I've got to stop titling these things with "In which..."
Today's topic is; the stupid word of the day.
I will endeavour (Did I just spell that like a Brit? I haven't read many American books that used that word lately) to include with each post a stupid word of the day, much like the area that I maintain in the top corner of the white-board in my father's classroom. It is a stupid word, generally not in the dictionary, and it's definition. For instance, a few days ago, the stupid word of the day was;
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - (noun) - an irrational fear of long words.
This word is in some dictionaries, but is still pretty stupid, for obvious reasons.
But that's off the point. Today's actual stupid word of the day is;
Veggie Monster, the - (proper noun) - 1. A blue, fuzzy character, formerly named "Cookie Monster" on the children's show "Sesame Street". 2. An abysmal blight on humanity.
Yes, it's true. Cookie Monster, after eating cookies for longer than I have been alive, has had his name changed to.... Veggie Monster.
It all started a couple of years ago, when his song change from "C is for cookie..." to "A cookie is a sometimes treat...". With this change came the inevitable conclusion that if he thought a cookie was "a sometimes treat", which, of course, it is (not), he simply couldn't be named Cookie any more! Thus, that horrible abomination, the Veggie Monster, was born. If I was a five to seven year old, I would be scared to death of the Veggie Monster! I would think that the blue furry cretin would crawl through my window and force me to eat spinach in the middle of the night! What could be scarier than that?
I suppose that it's a 'good' thing that network television is promoting 'health initiatives', but if they want to go so far as to replace cookies with cabbage, I fear that it may destroy the show. What's next? Putting Big Bird on weight watchers until he's Little Bird? The three (sorry, four) bears only eating low-cal porridge? Rubber Ducky on a diet? Dorothy eating only one pellet of fish food instead of two? Oscar the Paunch (negative example)? Celery Street? Is nothing sacred?
Apparently not. Nothing must stand in the way of the health-food initiative. Maybe it will be Celery Street soon. But it will still have been brought to you by "Chuck-E-Cheese's".
Today's topic is; the stupid word of the day.
I will endeavour (Did I just spell that like a Brit? I haven't read many American books that used that word lately) to include with each post a stupid word of the day, much like the area that I maintain in the top corner of the white-board in my father's classroom. It is a stupid word, generally not in the dictionary, and it's definition. For instance, a few days ago, the stupid word of the day was;
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - (noun) - an irrational fear of long words.
This word is in some dictionaries, but is still pretty stupid, for obvious reasons.
But that's off the point. Today's actual stupid word of the day is;
Veggie Monster, the - (proper noun) - 1. A blue, fuzzy character, formerly named "Cookie Monster" on the children's show "Sesame Street". 2. An abysmal blight on humanity.
Yes, it's true. Cookie Monster, after eating cookies for longer than I have been alive, has had his name changed to.... Veggie Monster.
It all started a couple of years ago, when his song change from "C is for cookie..." to "A cookie is a sometimes treat...". With this change came the inevitable conclusion that if he thought a cookie was "a sometimes treat", which, of course, it is (not), he simply couldn't be named Cookie any more! Thus, that horrible abomination, the Veggie Monster, was born. If I was a five to seven year old, I would be scared to death of the Veggie Monster! I would think that the blue furry cretin would crawl through my window and force me to eat spinach in the middle of the night! What could be scarier than that?
I suppose that it's a 'good' thing that network television is promoting 'health initiatives', but if they want to go so far as to replace cookies with cabbage, I fear that it may destroy the show. What's next? Putting Big Bird on weight watchers until he's Little Bird? The three (sorry, four) bears only eating low-cal porridge? Rubber Ducky on a diet? Dorothy eating only one pellet of fish food instead of two? Oscar the Paunch (negative example)? Celery Street? Is nothing sacred?
Apparently not. Nothing must stand in the way of the health-food initiative. Maybe it will be Celery Street soon. But it will still have been brought to you by "Chuck-E-Cheese's".
In which I explain the nature of the blog, and its future contents
Firstly, the title to this blog is not the best I could come up with, although now I am stuck with it. It is fairly accurate to the nature of the blog; the only things that all the posts will have in common is that they will have been written by me, a gifted middle schooler. My parents teach at my middle school, as well as blogging here; they are wordpictureguy and oldnewteacher. I also have a sister who, at the time of writing, does not have a blog.
This blog will generally contain my thoughts about what's going on at my school, different trends that I see in my 'peers', anything else that comes to mind, really, and sometimes short pieces of writing. It'll be just like any other blog, I suppose, but with better punctuation. And I'll try to make it funny.
This blog will generally contain my thoughts about what's going on at my school, different trends that I see in my 'peers', anything else that comes to mind, really, and sometimes short pieces of writing. It'll be just like any other blog, I suppose, but with better punctuation. And I'll try to make it funny.
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