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.
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