**NOTE: The words CLAS_S and STYL_E are not allowed in Gamespot blog posts due to a bug that they seem reluctant to resolve. As such, those words have been replaced by the misspelled words CLAS and STILE.

A Discourse on One of the Most Obvious Truths of Animated Cinema

The above title is a pretty bold statement to make; to declare that an entire genre of animation is mostly trash. I'm certainly not attacking that there isn't any good anime. I'm simply stating that the majority of anime is worthless, and even further, that anime is not intrinsically good or worthwhile. It seems that the more I look at it the more obvious this conclusion becomes.

There has been much backlash against early forms of this analysis, almost entirely due to the misunderstanding of complicated words like "most" and "majority". Some have even gone so far as to accuse me of never watching any anime at all. This of course raises the question of where I got my material or why I even care. But angry mobs will not be assuaged by logic. So instead, a story:

I was a big anime fan up until, one might argue, I reached the age of reason; about 18 or 19. Very quickly and very clearly it came to me that most of my anime collection was crap. I was scrounging through 12 DVDs of junk just to get to 1 show that was watchable. I realized that I had two choices: stop watching or lower my standards. Since I was incapable of the latter, which made the former my only choice, I was understandably frustrated. I liked a lot of my anime. However, there was much that I didn't. So after much deliberation and research I decided to write this little ditty in the hope that maybe I might be able to effect some change, or at the very least fill my inbox with hate mail. It's good to have a realistic plan B.

The Layout

First, a little clarity is in order. What do I clasify as anime, and what do I mean by sucks? I don't think I have to define "Why" and "Mostly", even for Clinton (1).

My definition of Anime (2), I hope, is quite clear: Any form of animation done in the Japanese art stile that is from Western Asia. For the purposes of argument, I'm going to ignore any anime outside of Asia, such as American and French animation that mimics the styl of anime. I ignore these since anime "purists" will argue that French and American "anime" is not real anime. I tend to agree, but not for reasons they'll like.

By sucks, in this case, I mean that the condition fails based on observable criteria. For example:

Condition: Uwe Boll is a director.

Criteria: A good director makes films that are, at the very least, watchable.

Warrant: Uwe Boll does not make films that are, at the very least, watchable.

Conclusion: Uwe Boll sucks as a director.

My method of inquiry will be fairly straightforward. I'll specify an area of anime (Animation, Dialogue, Story), develop criteria for comparison, and proceed to beat it like Robert Blake's wife.

In the various incarnations of this essay it has been made clear (over and over and over) by anime fans that there are exceptions to every problem I point out. And to that end, they are correct. This however, does not sway my main argument that a majority (most) of anime sucks (is sub par for animated cinema). But in the interest of being fair I have included an exception section to each grievance in an attempt to show that not all of anime is trash. Just most of it is.

Animation

The distinguishing feature of any animated film be it anime, a Disney film, or a Saturday morning cartoon is that it has hand-drawn characters and backgrounds. Anything that does not have hand drawn animation is not true animation (Machinimation, and CGI not withstanding). From this, we can argue that what "makes" anime, is the stile that it is drawn in. Remove the animation, and not only do you not have anime anymore; you have the world's only subtitled audio book.

Animation is described by the Random House dictionary as "the act of animating". Animating is cited by the same dictionary as a verb meaning "to give motion to". Using logical deduction we can conclude that any so-called animation that does indeed not have pieces that are in motion are indeed not animated, and therefore: not animation.

Most anime fans will see immediately where this is going and won't need further explanation. So for the rest of you, here's a breakdown. A lot of animation in anime is in fact not that. There are long scenes (usually accompanied by a lot of "Huh?" "uh!" and other guttural utterings) where a single picture is panned across from one corner to another, occasionally multiple times. This means that there are many sequences within many anime that are no more animation than the Windows Magnifier (Record of Lodoss War).

The other argument along these same lines deals with a motionless character plastered, usually with their mouth open for some reason, against a lined background that fluctuates slightly. While from a technical standpoint this is animation, as there is motion, it doesn't matter whether it fails our animation test since this has been successfully argued that this is one of the many features of anime "stile". It may indeed be called stile but it comes off to anyone who's familiar with fluid animation as just lazy. It's far easier to show a still character against a streaked background yelling "AAAAHHHHHH!!!" than it is to actually show action or, God forbid, progressing the story.

Ideally, all animation would be fluid like Disney films, which use an animation process called "Full Animation". In Full Animation each second of film has at least 18 cells (drawings) per 24 frames. However, anime and its ilk use another type of animation called Limited Animation which animates every other of the 24 frames, making it clock in at around 12 cells, sometimes less per second. This is done for monetary reasons, since paying to have a third less frames makes the whole enterprise cheaper, but has the side effect of making the animation choppier and less appealing. If we're doing a comparison of Full Fluid Animation in a thirty minute cartoon (32400 animation cells) to that of anime's Limited Animation (21,600), Anime comes up quite a bit short, 10,800 cells to be exact.

But 10,800 cells is just where it begins, since the anime "stile" also has a few other cost-cutting tricks up its sleeve. These include, but are not limited to: a single stationary character is plastered against a moving blur, the camera panning across a non-moving picture (which obviously counts for less than 1frame per second), and looping video (where an action is repeated over and over using the same animation cells such as in flashbacks and unnecessary stare downs). All of which leaves you with a poorly animated, repetitious, borderline-slideshow animation feature. To put it quite simply, most anime is outdone in the animation department by a second grader's art clas flipbook.

So in conclusion, a lot of anime is indeed not animated (as animation, by very definition must have motion), of that which is animated a portion is either animated poorly and/or repetitious.

One of the exceptions noted multiple times in reference to the animation argument is the anime Appleseed. While it is excellent in many respects, it isn't anime. Hate to break it to you, but the film is technically CGI with cell-shading. To the many who brought up this computer-generated gem, in the most collegiate way possible I respond: "PPPFFFFFTTTT!!!"

A true exception to this case is one of my favorite animes, called Iria. Granted, it's not going to win any animation awards, but it's all hand-drawn, and unlike most anime, it doesn't look like the animators were forced to complete it at gunpoint. Also, Iria doesn't have crazy giganto boobs, another anime oddity.

Dialogue

Dialogue is a difficult area to argue, given that even though Japanese and other Eastern languages have some similarities with their Romantic language counterparts, they are indeed two very different beasts. It's easy to chalk up poor dialogue to the fact that most of us English speakers don't speak many, if any, Asian languages. I'm not so convinced that the sum of all the verbal atrocities in anime can be attributed to "translation dysfunction".

First of all, if you have a stupid story, you're only going to get so far, even with the best written dialogue. To test this, you can try an experiment. Go to anyone you know, and in the most functional and eloquent way possible, attempt to explain an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode with clarity (3). It was hilarious when you watched it, the show is still funny in your head, but in words repeated to someone else, though carefully chosen, its painfully clear to them that you need psychiatric help.

Even if this is the case, and all the dialogue issues can be directly related to average or poor translation that doesn't excuse it from getting into the film in such a state. At some point along the way some native English speaker had to have read or listened to the English translation of the dialogue and realized that this can be either clarified or redone so it doesn't read like stereo assembly instructions.

For giggles, I'm going to give you a bit of the beginning of a certain anime called "Voices of a Distant Star", which is an anime about cell phones. No really, it's about cell phones, look it up.

There is a word, "world". Until about the time when I was in middle school, I vaguely thought the word meant the area where the signals from my cell would reach, but why is it my cell never reaches anyone. Hello? Say, isn't anyone there? How far should I go? I'm lonely. Noboru? I'm going home okay? Say, where am I? Oh, that's right; I'm not in that world anymore.

Functionally there's nothing wrong with it, everything said has a point that's reiterated or explained to some extent throughout the film. But the question is: Is this the best way to word the dialogue? Or, reducing our standards even further; is this even just a GOOD way to word the dialogue? Go where? Who is Noboru? Where is home and why is that important?

Some have argud that the point of this intro was to introduce questions to the viewer, and that may be so. The argument I'm making doesn't require every piece of dialogue to be perfectly informative or in the BEST possible format. I'm simply stating, using this pretty tame example (there are far worse examples) that the dialogue is either defunct to begin with, in its Japanese form, or that after translation no one bothered to make sure that it was as clear as needed to be to keep the English reader/listener focused. We need to be clued-in to what is going on and not trying to make sense out of a ridiculously estranged set of sentences that's barely passable for an AOL chat room conversation.

Lastly, but certainly not least, speeches are a constant source of aggravation. This relates partially to the animation section as mentioned above because in a lot of cases it's cheaper to have a character flap their mouth for a bit to kill some screen time than to animate anything interesting. While I certainly can't prove that this is the case, I can point out that most of what is said in these long winded speeches falls into one of three categories:

• Information that we, the viewer (and probably the characters) already know.

• A long "morale boosting" sequence in which the phrases "human spirit", "determination", or the like are used.

• A quick recap on what they are about to do or just did. Again.

In summary, while most would agree that the dialogue for anime ranges from mildly confusing to utterly incomprehensible, the reasons are a bit more complicated than "because it used to be in [Insert Eastern Language Here]". That poor or mismanaged dialogue is finally brought to the person watching the film is unacceptable even if the dialogue was badly written to begin with. Furthermore, even dialogue in anime which is well formed has a bad habit of being both repetitious and irrelevant to moving the film forward in a meaningful way.

An exception to this one is pretty hard to find. I'm a big fan of foreign films, and I'm not talking about hoity-toity-no-soundtrack-let's-just-have-the-actors-stare-at-each-other-for-two-thirds-of-the-film-cause-we-think-it'll-be-intense-not-boring foreign films. I'm talking about kick-ass foreign films like District B-13 and Downfall. These films are written in French and German respectively and I have a fairly good idea of what the characters are talking about in both because time and effort were put into the translation process.

Even the most hardcore "otaku" (6) would probably admit that most animes' weaknesses lie in the dialog area, however, it shouldn't get in the way of me understanding what's going on. So in this case it is not logical to point to an exception per se, but to a film that doesn't butcher the English language completely. This "non-violent" offender would probably be Armitage: Dual Matrix (4). It still has a few areas of dialog punctuated with the viewer muttering "do wha?", but it is film is probably one of the easiest anime to understand.

Storylines

When I argue this topic with others who are convinced that anime, by nature, is superior to all other forms of animation I am constantly told that yes, the animation may be sub par, the dialogue may be weak and the characters aren't particularly likeable or original, but it's worth it "for the story". I put "for the story" in quotes because I have heard that verbatim constantly. I have to say with a degree of certainty that most of the anime I've seen has trite and two-dimensional storylines (pun intended) that follow predictable patterns.

Due to the differences between every storyline, even if they follow some common rules, I'm going to have to use more examples from individual anime than I did in previous sections. I chose shows/films that I felt reflected themes, patterns and conventions that could be attributed to the widest possible range of anime. So my basic word of warning is this: while I may make an example using Dragon Ball Z, I'm not arguing that every anime or even most anime follows DBZ's patterns to the letter. I'm simply pointing out a few conventions that can be applied to a substantial number of films.

The first pattern that I noticed almost immediately in anime is that ugly things are almost always evil, and attractive things with big boobs are almost always good. While examples of this are too numerous to mention (and anyone who's watched more than 2 hours of anime can attest to this) it bears pointing out because evil, if indeed you believe that such a thing exists, does not necessarily equate with ugliness. If that were indeed true construction workers everywhere would be jailed on suspicion alone. Looking at the flip side of this, one of my ex-girlfriends had big boobs and let me tell you, she was not one of the good guys.

Another problem with anime storylines and specifically character development is that females, even the super-hero types become stumbling idiots in a crisis. While this, in moderation, might be cute or funny, the constant repetition of the same system of events in many anime makes it not only aggravating, but almost insulting. The general theme of many films seems to be that women cannot take care of themselves, or at the very least, when it gets really tough they need a male counterpart to save them. Generally, you can count on the male, super-powered or not, to have to save the girl who suddenly becomes horribly inept in even the most basic skills such as punching or running (Inu-Yasha).

Inept might be the best way of explaining one of the overarching themes of anime, and cinematography in general; that love conquers all. Now this isn't a theme that is specific to anime, since many live action and other types of films constantly dabble in the love area (5). But, anime has constantly pelted audiences with the idea that love can stop or prevent anything. Especially if that anything is an advancing alien armada (Macross), in which singing to the aliens will stop them from wanting to kill humans. We have love, and that makes us superior and unassailable. I haven't done the experiments, but I have it on good authority that you cannot stop a bullet with love. Feel free to get a gun and try it.

If you live through that, you might need a joke or two to cheer you up (bullet wounds can be a real downer), but don't look to anime for relief. I occasionally fancy myself a funny person. Sure I don't make any kind of living from it, but I think I have the ability to at least tell the difference between highbrow and lowbrow humor and that which isn't funny at all. I clasify Highbrow as being humor like "Eddie Izzard" and lowbrow being "The Three Stooges" and not funny being "Anything that Will Farrell was in". Using this as a tentative guide I think you'll find most anime that is considered "humorous" falls in the Three Stooges to Will Farrell range as most "funny" sequences resort to excessive amounts of physical humor that isn't near as good as anything done by Moe and the gang (Zombie Loan).

There are more conventions that I could go on and on about that are over used in anime, but I've hit on the main ones that bring down the quality of the story just by their mere existence in the genre. Love doesn't conquer all, females are, as far as I can tell, just as good as their male counterparts at defeating evil serpent kings, but most of all, the majority of anime isn't funny. At all.

An obvious exception to the storyline issue is the film Ghost in the Shell, which has a pretty interesting, if incredibly strange and winding narrative. Unlike many anime titles that seem to confuse "intriguing" with "unintelligible" Ghost in the Shell's story is twisted because it (mostly) has to be. However, the sequel Innocence was just retarded.

Conclusion

Throughout this essay I've pointed out many parts of anime that are weak or poorly delivered. Taken on its own with the criteria here, almost every other genre (even the bargain bin of animation, Saturday morning cartoons) beats out the majority of anime on several levels. As shown here anime is not intrinsically good, and by its very nature should be considered, as a whole, bad. Poor animation, laughable dialogue from cookie cutter characters, and sloppily written storylines create a type of animation that is not worth anyone's time. This leads us to the only logical conclusion: Anime (mostly) sucks.

 **ENDNOTES and SOURCES are placed as comments by me. Gamespot's Blog system has a maximum character limit which I hit when attempting to post these sections.

The world is a big place, full of confusing electronic devices, most of which are from the future and want to kill you. How do you stay safe in these turbulent times? While moving to the forest and hiding in a shack seems like a good idea, its no fun crapping in the woods, and getting a pizza delivered is more trouble than its worth.

So to help you, I've made this guide to help you understand your computer. Crafted from old Nintendo Power magazines and specifically for old peop… erm… any person who wants to know about computers but doesn't have a lot of time to read a book I give you:

Evil Machines: A Primer Guide

The best place to start when talking about computers is the big shiny box with all the little pictures on it. This is called the monitor, which is so named not because you can monitor what your computer is doing, but so the internet can monitor you. This replaces an ancient inefficient system used back in the 90s where we would have to wait until you went on vacation before we could break in and bug your house. By the way, nice wallpapering job in the living room.

The first thing you'll want to know is what kind of computer you have. This can be done by looking at the left hand side of the screen (turn it on first). There, you will find either a multi-colored window or an apple. If you have a window, congratulations! You are part of the horde of Windows users that make up 90-95% of the computer base. This is means you are unoriginal and easily lead. If you have an apple, congratulations! You have purchased an Apple Computer. This means you are easily influenced by commercials. If you have a Tandy or Xerox logo, congratulations! You need to upgrade to a computer made in this century.

If you follow the cords from your monitor (remember, the big bright box), one will go to the outlet, and the other to another box. This other box is called a desktop or tower. The term "tower" originated when the first computer was built by IBM in 1538. During a war, England was able to post archers on top of the tower to defend the city of London from the French. These towers were quickly dubbed Turing machines.

These ancient computers get their name from their ability to "Turn" equations into easy-to-use numbers such as long, incredibly complicated strings of 1's and 0's. Unfortunately the letter "N" was not invented till 1605 so it was simply called a "Turing" machine.

Nowadays though, these towers are smaller and can actually fit on top of a desk. Also, the term computer has taken over giving us the obvious name: desktop computer. However, names are not the only thing about computers that have changed. Computers today are made out of silicon, replacing the more cumbersome vacuum tubes. These vacuum tubes were the size of houses and replaced an older system of trained rodents operating kerosene lanterns (the origin of the computing phrase "using a mouse"), which replaced the even older system of lead piping used by the Romans.

But enough with history, what is the computer made up of? The computer consists of three main components: The CPU, memory, and manual.

The CPU, or brain of the computer, is a piece of silicon made of tiny little jail cells. In these cells, tiny little bugs work on tiny little Abacuses tirelessly to make sure that yahoo.com displays properly for you. They are kept there, working in a sweatshop of numbers, with only one fan on top to cool them. This is why it is important to keep your computer in a well ventilated area.

The memory, or warehouse of the computer, is the place where all the work is stored until the CPU needs it again. When one of the bugs from the CPU escapes and hides in the upper memory area (which has the best real estate) it shacks up with your otherwise productive programs, drinks too much and causes trouble. This type of issue is generally referred to as having a "bug" in the program. When the bug gets loose, the CPU has to shut down and send out a special police program called a debugger. This debugger finds the bug and returns him to the CPU so it can start working again. Since a program telling the bug it can come to the upper memory area is against the law, this is known as an illegal instruction.

The computer lets you know what is happening by displaying a helpful error screen. However, unless you are a Nobel Laureate these strange symbols will mean nothing to you. This is because the machine is talking to you in "machine code" and as a human your mind is too weak and fragile to understand what it is saying, but rest assured that the issue is being taken care of. Computers are holy, blameless creatures that should not be questioned.

The manual, or manual of the computer, is useless and should be discarded immediately. The manual only contains useless pieces of paper with strange writing on it that you can't possibly understand. Plus, it has a number printed on the inside cover that, since you already discarded it, will give you a reason to argue with Dell tech support. It's a conversation starter more than anything.

And that's the basics of a computer. Hope you found this fun and informative. Next time we'll discuss things such as:

Can I do other things with a browser than just browse?

What is a Linux user, and how do I avoid them like the plague?

My Inbox is empty. How do I fill it up with worthless junk?

And much more!

10 Reasons Why I'm Glad Videogames Aren't Real

Master Chief is pretty cool. Along with Armitage, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, and Lacey Chabert's underwear. In fact, I wouldn't mind being any of those. Well, except Armitage. Robot babies from the future really isn't my thing*.

But especially Master Chief, since that would automatically bring me the "badass" title. Being able to fly around the galaxy shooting things has a grandeur about it that is only matched by flying around the universe shooting things.

However, as awesome as it might be, it's probably a good thing that it isn't real. For one thing, I'm not willing to have my DNA altered just so I can wear some clunky, puke-green battle armor. Also, I'm not a big fan of getting shot at. Bullets whizzing over my head only mean one of two things:

A) I'm in a war.

B) Uncle Jim is drunk again.

Neither of which is very appealing. But this still doesn't make me stop thinking "Damn that is cool". I sympathize with anyone who feels the same about any number of fictional videogame characters, but this doesn't stop me from realizing how incredibly infantile the whole process is. It also doesn't stop me from making fun of it.

So in the interests of not keeping the peace, I give you 10 reasons why I'm glad videogames aren't real. Enjoy or else.

10. Big Boobs

I'm not going to argue with you about the fact that big boobs turn any hot woman into an even hotter woman, or any ugly woman into an ugly woman with big boobs. I do take issue with the absurd assumption we would want this in the real world. Boobs are great and all, but when they're so big that tiny dwarves can hide behind them, it's a sign it's time to get some surgery. Besides, there could be tiny dwarves stalking you right now and you wouldn't even know it. And that's scary.

9. Guns, Bullets, Bad

I don't know if you know this, so I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Bullet wounds hurt. A lot. If indeed FPSs were real and we could take twenty pistol shots to the chest, we'd all still be writhing in pain for much longer than would be acceptable to kill the next room full of DeathGuards.

8. NPCs

When most of us picture ourselves in a videogame we immediately assume that we're going to be the hero, running around saving people, shooting aliens and being a general "Ninja with a Gun". What most fail to note is that most games are FILLED with characters whose only job is to spout one line of dialogue or sell wooden shields. So unless your idea of a dream job is one where you stand on a corner and say "WELCOME TO GOFGAVILLE ADVENTURER!" for the rest of your natural life, I think it's better that we at least get to do other things once in a while, like selling wooden shields.

7. Ancients

If there's one thing that game characters must get sick of, it's having to constantly fight some "ancient" something. In battle after battle, game after game, it's an ancient evil that's been around for centuries, and for some reason just now decided to become p****d off. We should count our lucky stars that Abraham Lincoln doesn't come back from the dead every hundred years just to pick a fight with some teenager and lose.

6. Clothing

If there's one thing I think everyone who's done any cosplay (read: loser) can appreciate is that it's a good thing that clothing in videogames aren't catching on. They're always needlessly complicated with straps that don't do anything, hoodies with no sleeves, or some other nonsense that make Snoop Dogg look like a French fashion designer. Don't even get me started on whatever the heck Rinoa is wearing in Final Fantasy 8. Her dress is the illegitimate child of a pair of gym shorts and a sweater.

5. Super Evil Job Market

Excluding Republicans, we really don't have to worry about any great big bad guy coming along and screwing it all up for us. There isn't much of a market in the real world for a Mad Scientist, and giant robots are hard to hide from UN inspections. The closest we've ever gotten was Hitler all he did was bomb a bunch of people and kill himself in a bunker. Not quite The Covenant Armada.

4. Sequels

You don't have to worry about Konami coming along two decades after your death, resurrecting you, and making a crappy spinoff called Your : Act Zero, and then selling overpriced copies of your pitifully remade self. Once you're dead, you're dead. Game Over.

3. Amnesia

I can't count the number of characters in video games who wake up one day and don't remember who they are. It's a big plus that here in reality the majority of us can remember the little things like our names and that this isn't our bed we're peeing in. And we can accomplish this even after consuming copious amounts of alcohol the previous night. In the videogame world, amnesia has reached epidemic proportions, and nobody seems interested in curing it. This isn't surprising since the all the scientists in games are either evil or have been eaten by zombies.

2. Boss Battles

Almost every videogame has some big bad dude that you have to kill in order to progress any further. While I'm not arguing that boss battles, say on your way to work every day, wouldn't liven up your life, I'm just a bit skeptical that the following lawsuits would be worth the trouble. I can see it now:

Judge: You, CJ, are charged with assaulting your Shift Leader at Denny's with a deadly weapon, first degree murder, and theft. Is this correct?

CJ: Yes, your honor.

Judge: You plead, and I quote, "He had the Archangel's Boxer Shorts of Protection, which I needed to fight the Lich King. After I defeated him I was awarded with three dollars and twenty-five cents."

1. Save Points

While initially this sounds like a good idea, since you can replay that night that you banged one of your sister's friends over and over again, do realize that everyone will have it too. All humans will have the ability to do everything as many times as they want with no penalties attached. We'd all be living in a world that was about 2 days long, where nothing bad happened, and everyone simultaneously picks the winning lottery numbers. You could never really die and Shatner will be able to make as many albums as he wants, for eternity. Sounds like hell to me.

-cjdaweasel

*If you get that joke add +1 to your YOU RULE attribute.

He was behind the couch

The Bible Game Review

Phallus Problems*

At the risk of being the last person on the internet writing about it, I'd like to give my thoughts on Spam. God knows they're listening and me b****ing about it will surely bring the whole Spam ring to a grinding halt.

In case you don't know what spam is: leave. I have no idea how you reached this site, and you've obviously lost your way. Also, I'd like to point out that A) This is not the forum to explain it, B) This is not the TV and C) No we don't want to see pictures of your cat. We have enough cat pictures thank you.

The internet can be broken down into nine fundamental elements.
1- Wikipedia
2- Youtube
3- Google
4- Porn
5- Cat Pictures
6- Gross Porn
7- Really Gross Porn
8- Email
9- Bittorent

Just like Resident Evil, if you mix certain things together, you get something entirely new, some good, some bad. On the good side if you mix Youtube and Bittorent, you get iTunes or if you mix email and google, you get Gmail.

On the bad side however, things can get pretty dark. For example, when you mix Wikipedia and porn, you get cjdaweasel.com. Even two good things put together like Email and Porn get you Spam.

As you can see, just like atom bombs, which I'm pretty sure is the combination of atoms and Jager Bombs (two very good things), Spam is really just the combination of two good things gone wrong. And too much good has a tendency to lap itself and breed evil (see: Star Wars).

To say Spam is evil is to oversell it. Spam doesn't bother me when it makes sense, such as "Get a BIGGER penis since we could all (small rodents included) use bigger penises. In fact, our pensises could probably use bigger penises.

But when spam comes along and both clogs my inbox and confuses me, is when I start getting angry. Take the one I got the other day with the subject "Interpose up to tonsils!". Beyond the fact that I had to look up three of those words, what the hell is that supposed to mean? That isn't an advertisement, that's what you get when Thesauruses marry thier cousins.

See, I run a website where I make fun of people less fortunate than me (fat people, stupid people, religious people), so those reading my site must automatically assume that "Hey! He makes fun of others because he has a small penis I'll send him some free literature to help him with that issue."

While I certainly appreciate the thought brother, though it seems to be misplaced, and despite the title I don't see how I can interpose anything with Viagra knockoffs. That would be forgivable if Spam were confined to my email.

But Spam is not only in email, this is a common mistake. Ads on webpages are spam, in boxes (see? in boxes? instead of inboxes? I'm so clever). Really, they're practically the same thing. Advertisements for stuff you don't want in places that could be used for other things. Other things like ads for porn.

Ads for porn don't count as Spam since they allow me to look at naked girls at work without getting into trouble. I just have to loudly exclaim every sixty minutes or so "HOW WILL I EVER GET ALL THIS WORK DONE WITH ALL THESE ADS ON MY SCREEN?"

I do that not so I have a cover, but so everyone will avoid my cube. Who wants to be seen with the crazy guy who shouts the same thing at consistent hourly intervals? Except for that guy named Billy. Billy would hang around even if I was stripping naked and dancing the Macarena every time the second hand passed the number three.

Come to think of it, that'd be awesome. Maybe get a goofy hat and a banjo. On second thought, you're alright Billy.

I've totally lost track of what I was talking about, so I guess the whole point of this post is: stop putting ugly-ass cat pictures on the internet. It's pissing me off.

* See the whole title is "You Have Male Phallus Problems" or "You have Male PP". It's only funny if you think about it too hard.

-cjdaweasel

The Future of Weapons and Leg Injury

There are a lot of weapons out there. We've got revolvers, machine guns, nuclear missles and other weapons for war and sport. This is directly related to the fact that humans have spent century after century learning fantastically interesting ways to kill each other under various circumstances.

Do we want to kill just one guy? If so, a pistol will do. What if there's more than one guy with him? Then we'll use a machine gun. What if the whole town tries to fight back? Then we'll use a missle. What if he runs away? Then we'll nuke the whole damn country. We're a versitile race in some respects.

So what happens when we get so many weapons that we start running out of names for them? Tommy Guns, Patriot Missles, and Cop-Killer Bullets are examples of everyday names that have been commandeered by weapons as descriptions for how they work. Well, the cop killer bullets anyway. So far no one named Tommy that I know owns one of these guns, and the Patriot missle has a bad habit of not making very many patriots.

But this is all beside the point. What names will we have to use in the future of weaponry, and how will they work? To resolve this I've taken several technical terms (some not), and dropped them into a weapon. Then, based on what said word means, explained how the weapon works, and how we can go about shooting ourselves in the foot in order to get out of military service.

Super Happy Joy Fun Weapon List

Ethernet Gun: You cannot shoot yourself in the foot while anyone else in your neighborhood is simultaneously shooting themselves in the foot.

Token-Ring Gun: You get the shotgun once a day, whether you need it or not. You can only shoot yourself in the foot with this rifle, with one bullet. If you miss, too bad.

ISDN Gun: No one is exactly sure how the rifle works, but shooting yourself in the foot requires $300 worth of equipment, and a $150 /mnth.

Frame-relay Gun: If you have a dedicated rifle, you actually can't shoot yourself in the foot because you haven't specified which logical barrel to use.

DSL Gun: Anyone, who has the correct number of fingers can shoot themselves in the foot. But first you must make sure that you have silencers on all the other guns in your house, whether you use them or not.

Cable Gun: You have the most sofisticated gun available, and are garunteed a certain number of bullets every day, but you have to share the gun with the rest of your block.

Mac Gun: You can shoot yourself in the foot in five easy to remember ways, but if the gun locks, then no one will be able to help you.

Windows Gun: The gun takes 10 minutes to load, and then locks constantly.

Linux Gun:
$sudo passwd root
$sudo passwd -l root
#mkdir usrshootfoot

Remote Desktop Gun: You log into your companies gun and shoot yourself from three states away.

Recycling Gun: Exactly like the Trash can Gun, but you feel better about using it.

Tech Support Gun: One of our trained rifles will be with you in a moment.

Schwarzenegger Gun: Terminates your foot. It'll be back.

Fundamentalist Gun: Shoots your foot and then sends it straight to hell.

MPAA Gun: Shoot as many feet as you want with the gun, just as long as you aren't naked while doing it.

ESRB Gun: Very much like the MPAA gun, but makes less sense.

RIAA Gun: Did you pay for those bullets?

HMO Gun: It looks like a great gun until you try to use it.

Marlboro Gun: There are no conclusive studies showing that feet have died as a result of gunfire.

Star Wars Gun: The first three bullets fired (which are actually the 4th, 5th and 6th bullets respectively) work great, but any after that jam.

Star Trek Gun: If you invert the tachyon field matrix and the flux diameter you can make a phase-varience web around the stock of the gun, allowing you to fire at your foot more accurately.

Dusty: Shoots himself.

Take that History Channel

-cjdaweasel

From Places Where It's Easy to Steal News

Mom Microwaves Baby

The Story in Brief:
In a hearing regarding the case of China Arnold, who microwaved her 3 1/2 week old daughter Paris Talley in 2005, the judge ruled statements made by Arnold on the day Paris died were admissible. Arnold never admitted putting the baby in the microwave.

You know the good ole days when people used to kill themselves in the oven? These days we can't even bother with that. We have to zap-fry our kids if we want them dead. Also, what do you suppose the Conventional Oven instructions are for a child under the age of two?


Cellphone kills Woman

The Story in Brief:
Rachel Begg was imprisoned for causing a fatal accident by texting while driving. Begg rear-ended the car of Maureen Waites, 64, who was driving to the airport. Begg, 19, used her phone 9 times during the 15 minute journey which ended in the crash.

Well that does it. This unequivocally proves something about cars that I think we all already knew: Women can't drive.

Someones set Application up the Bomb

The Story in Brief:
Emergency crews evacuated an Eastern Illinois University building Friday, after a campus postal carrier discovered a disheveled-looking package heading for the college's admissions office. "There was no return address, it was poorly written, poorly addressed to the university, there were misspellings," school spokeswoman Vicki Woodard said Saturday. "There was some tape over it. Just the overall appearance was rather strange."

Having your dorm room jokingly declared to be a "Biohazard Disaster Area" is one thing, but having your college application confused for a bomb takes ineptitude of the highest order. If you don't put a return address on your application, the terrorists win.

Captain America Gropes Woman

The Story in Brief:
A doctor accused of groping a woman while he was dressed as comic book superhero Captain America has agreed to apologize to her as part of a bid to avoid trial, his lawyer said.

Donald Duck joined the Nazis.
What does he get? Nothing
Private Snafu lost a whole series of battles for us in World War II.
What does he have to do? Nothing
Capatain America gropes some woman.
And what does he have to do? Publically apologize or go to court. He's been framed.

The Japanese Hate Whales

The Story in Brief:
The Humane Society International (HSI) on Tuesday accused Japan of whaling pregnant whales this southern hemisphere summer. Overall, Japan killed 505 minke whales, 262 of which were gestating, according to the HSI.

I guess they had to try that new microwave baby reciepe.





"Mom Microwaves Baby" "Cellphone kills Woman" "Japanese Hate Whales" all pulled from Shortnews.com

"Someones set up Application the Bomb" "Captain America Gropes Woman" all pulled from MSNBC.com

A Discourse on One of the Most Obvious Truths of Animated Cinema

Now this is a pretty bold statement to make; to declare that an entire genre of animation is mostly trash. I'm certainly not attacking that there isn't any good anime. I'm simply stating that the majority of anime is worthless, and even further, that anime is not intrinsically good or worthwhile. It seems that the more I look at it the more obvious this conclusion becomes.

First, a little clarity is in order. What do I clasify [sic] as Anime, and what do I mean by s**ks? I don't think I have to define "Why" and "Mostly", even for Bill Clinton.

My definition of *Anime, I hope, is quite clear: Any form of animation done in the Japanese art styl [sic]. For the purposes of argument, I'm going to remove any anime outside of Asia, such as American and French animation that mimics the styl [sic] of anime. I ignore these since anime "purists" will argue that French and American animation that appears to be part of anime is in fact not. I tend to agree with them, but not for reasons they'll like.

By s**ks, in this case, I mean that the condition fails to meet the criteria for its existence. For example:

Condition: Uwe Boll is a good director.
Criteria: A good director makes films that are, at the very least, watchable.
Conclusion: Uwe Boll does not make films that are, at the very least, watchable. Uwe Boll s**ks as a director.
Logic: The Condition, when applied to the Criteria, reaches a conclusion that is negative.

My method of inquiry will be fairly straightforward. I'll specify an area of anime (Animation, Dialogue, Story), develop criteria for comparison, and proceed to beat it like Robert Blake's wife.

Animation

The distinguishing feature of any animated film be it anime, a Disney film, or a Saturday morning cartoon is it has hand-drawn characters and backgrounds. Anything that does not have hand drawn animation is not true animation (Machinimation, and CGI not withstanding). From this, we can argue that what "makes" anime, is the styl [sic] that it is drawn in. Remove the animation, and not only do you not have anime anymore, you have the world's only subtitled audio book.

Animation is described by Random House as "the act of animating". Animating is cited by the Dictionary as a verb meaning "to give motion to". Using logical induction we can conclude that any so-called animation that does indeed not have pieces that are in motion, they are indeed not animated, and therefore: not animation.

Most anime fans will see immediately where this is going and won't need further explanation. So for the rest of you, here's a bit of help. A lot of animation in anime is in fact not that. There are long scenes (usually accompanied by a lot of "Huh?" "uh!" and other guttural utterings) where a single picture is panned across from one corner to another, occasionally multiple times. This means that there are many sequences within many anime that are no more animation than the Windows Magnifier.

The other argument along these same lines deals with a motionless character plastered, usually with their mouth open for some reason, against a lined background that fluctuates slightly. While from a technical standpoint this is animation, as there is motion, it doesn't matter. This is one of the many features of anime "styl [sic]". Some may indeed call it styl [sic], but it comes off to anyone who's familiar with fluid animation as just lazy. It's far easier to show a still character against a streaked background yelling "AAAAHHHHHH!!!" than it is to actually animate the person running anywhere or, God forbid, actually moving.

Anime, to be considered worthwhile animation has to be argued to be full fluid animation. Fluid animation is used here to describe any animation that has over 10 frames of animation per second on average. If you factor in all the time that a single character is against a moving blur, the camera pans across a non-moving picture (which obviously counts for less than 1fps), looped video (where an action is repeated over and over using the same animation cells such as in flashbacks and unnecessary stare downs), and the generally low animation-cell count per second through the rest of the picture, you're left with a poorly animated, repetitious, borderline-slideshow animation feature. Most anime is outdone in the animation department by a second grader's art clas [sic] flipbook.

So in conclusion, a lot of anime is indeed not animated (as animation, by very definition must have motion), and most of that which is animated is either animated poorly and/or repetitious.

Dialogue

Dialogue is a difficult area to argue, but fairly easy to defend. Even though Japanese and other Eastern languages have some similarities with their Romantic language counterparts, they are indeed two very different beasts. Its easy to chalk up poor dialogue to the fact that most of us English speakers don't speak many, if any, Asian languages. I'm not so convinced that the sum of all the verbal atrocities in anime can be attributed to "translation dysfunction".

First of all, if you have a stupid story (I'll get into this later), you're only going to get so far, even with the best written dialogue. To test this, you can try an experiment. Go to anyone you know, and in the most functional and eloquent way possible, attempt to explain an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode with clarity. It was hilarious when you watched it, it's still funny in your head, but in words repeated to someone else, though carefully chosen, makes it painfully clear to them that you need psychiatric help.

Even if this is the case, and all the dialogue issues can be directly related to average or poor translation this doesn't excuse it getting into the film in such a state. At some point along the way some native English speaker had to have read or listened to the English translation of the dialogue and realized that this can be either clarified or redone so it doesn't read like stereo assembly instructions.

For giggles, I'm going to give you a bit of the beginning of a certain anime called "Voices of a Distant Star", which is an anime about cell phones. No really, it's about cell phones, look it up.

[There is a word, "world". Until about the time when I was in middle school, I vaguely thought the word meant the area where the signals from my cell would reach, but why is it my cell never reaches anyone. Hello? Say, isn't anyone there? How far should I go? I'm lonely. Noboru? I'm going home okay? Say, where am I? Oh, that's right, I'm not in that world anymore.]

Functionally there's nothing wrong with it, everything said has a point that's reiterated or explained to some extent throughout the film. But the question is; Is this the best way to word the dialogue? Or less than that; is this even just a GOOD way to word the dialogue? Go where? Who is Noboru? Where is home and why is that important?

Some may argue that the point of this intro was to introduce questions to the viewer, and that may be so. The argument I'm making doesn't require every piece of dialogue to be perfectly informative or in the BEST possible format. I'm simply stating, using this pretty tame example (there are far worse examples than this) that dialogue is either defunct to begin with, in its Japanese form, or that after translation no one bothered to make sure that it was as clear as needed to be to keep the English reader/listener focused on what is going on and not on trying to make sense out of a ridiculously convoluted set of sentences that's barely passable for an AOL chat room conversation.

Lastly, but certainly not least, speeches are a constant source of aggravation. This relates partially to the animation section as done above because in a lot of cases it's cheaper to have a character flap their mouth for a bit to kill some screen time than to animate anything interesting. While I certainly can't prove that this is the case, I can point out that most of what is said in these long winded speeches falls into one of three categories:

1) Information that we, the viewer (and probably the characters) already know.
2) A long "morale boosting" sequence in which the words "Human spirit", "determination", "for [some area like Earth or the Kingdom]" or the like are used.
3) A quick recap on what they are about to do. Usually includes a lot of Number 1.

In summary, while most would agree that the dialogue for anime is difficult at times to understand, the reasons are a bit more complicated than "because it used to be in [Insert Eastern Language Here]". That poor or mismanaged dialogue is finally brought to the person watching the film is unacceptable even if the dialogue was badly written to begin with. Even dialogue in anime which is well formed has a bad habit of being both repetitious and irrelevant to moving the film forward in a meaningful way.

Character Designs

This is going to be a relatively short section as there isn't a lot to put here, but I felt it deserved special consideration beyond the Animation section. While this is mostly opinion, generalization and conjecture (as what is "neat" or "cool" is rarely backed by any testable criteria), I wanted to make a singular point: Anime has probably the worst of all animation styls [sic] in making characters that look the same or nearly the same.

Males are generally white with big eyes, which is a curious state of affairs considering the makeup of the Asian facial features. They also generally have either a spiky or long and flowing hair. More often than not the weapon of choice, if there is a weapon at all, is a bladed weapon of some sort. Clothes are overly complicated, having straps and buttons that serve no useful purpose and involve far too many trench coats or trench coat-esque getups for my taste.

Females follow a similar pattern, excluding that they usually wear as little clothing as possible and have every hair color in the optical spectrum (Neon blue is apparently a natural hair color). And, this aggravates me to no end; every girl is hyper-skinny with a DD or better chest size. Even the ugly girls are hot white chicks. Now, being a straight male I've not ever taken issue with hot women or large breasts, but is it really necessary or realistic to have every girl built like a starving silicone strapped model? And if so, why?

Granted, I have no answers to the two previous questions, but I do have a theory as to why this is the case. The reasoning behind wild hair styls [sic] and color, and goofy-ly illogical clothing styls [sic] (and I base this on hundreds of hours of anime watching and observation, but nothing more) is that due to the anime styl [sic], characters are drawn so much alike that the only way to tell them apart by just looking at them is either their hair, clothing, or other accessories.

And thus, I want to return to my previous point and add on to it: Anime has probably the worst of all animation styls [sic] in making characters that look the same or nearly the same due to the nature of anime itself which makes it difficult to create genuinely unique characters based on look alone.

Storylines

When I argue this topic with others who are convinced that anime, by nature, is superior to all other forms of animation I am constantly told that yes, the animation may be sub par, the dialogue may be weak and the characters aren't particularly likeable or original, but it's worth it "for the story". I put "for the story" in quotes because I have heard that verbatim constantly. I have to say with a degree of certainty that most of the anime I've seen (not all of it mind you) has trite and two-dimensional storylines (pun intended) that follow predictable patterns.

Due to the differences between every storyline, even if they follow some common rules, I'm going to have to use more examples from individual anime than I did in previous sections. I chose shows/films that I felt reflected themes, patterns and conventions that could be attributed to the widest possible range of anime. So my basic word of warning is this: while I may make an example using Dragon Ball Z, I'm not arguing that every anime or even most anime follows DBZ's patterns to the letter. I'm simply pointing out a few conventions that can be applied to a substantial number of films.

The first pattern that I noticed almost immediately in anime is that ugly things are almost always evil, and as mentioned before attractive things with big boobs are almost always good. While examples of this are too numerous to mention (and anyone who's watched more than 2 hours of anime can attest to this) it bears pointing out because evil, if indeed you believe that such a thing exists, does not necessarily equate with ugliness. If that were indeed true construction workers everywhere would be jailed on suspicion alone. Looking at the flip side of this, one of my ex-girlfriends had big boobs and let me tell you, she was not one of the good guys.

Another problem with anime storylines and specifically character development is that females, even the super-hero types become stumbling idiots in a crisis. While this, in moderation, might be cute or funny, the constant repetition of the same system of events in many anime makes it not only aggravating, but almost insulting. The general theme of many films seems to be that women cannot take care of themselves, or at the very least, when it gets really tough they need a male counterpart to save them. There are few exceptions to this rule (Iria being one of them) but generally, you can count on the male, super-powered or not, to have to save the girl who suddenly becomes horribly inept at even the most basic skills such as punching or running. (1)

Inept might be the best way of explaining one of the overarching themes of anime, and cinematography in general; that love conquers all. Now this isn't a theme that is specific to anime, since many live action and other types of films constantly dabble in the love area**. But, anime has constantly pelted audiences with the idea that love can stop or prevent anything. Especially if that anything is an advancing alien armada, in which singing to the aliens will stop them from wanting to kill humans. We have love, and that makes us superior and unassailable. I haven't done the experiments, but I have it on good authority that you cannot stop a bullet with love. Feel free to get a gun and try it.

If you live through that, you might need a joke or two to cheer you up (bullet wounds can be a real downer), but don't look to anime for relief. I occasionally fancy myself a funny person. Sure I don't make any kind of living from it, but I think I have the ability to at least tell the difference between highbrow and lowbrow humor and that which isn't funny at all. I clasify [sic] Highbrow as being humor like "Eddie Izzard" and lowbrow being "The Three Stooges" and not funny being "Anything that Will Farrell was in". Using this as a tentative guide I think you'll find most anime that is considered "humorous" falls in the Three Stooges to Will Farrell range as most "funny" sequences resort to excessive amounts of physical humor that isn't near as good as anything done by Moe and the gang.

There are more conventions that I could go on and on about that are over used in anime, but I've hit on the main ones that bring down the quality of the story just by their mere existence in the genre. Love doesn't conquer all, females are, as far as I can tell, just as good as their male counterparts at defeating evil serpent kings, but most of all, the majority of anime isn't funny. At all.

Conclusion

Throughout this essay I've pointed out many of parts of anime that are weak or poorly delivered. Taken on its own with the criteria here, almost every other genre (even the bargain bin of animation, Saturday Morning Cartoons) beats out the majority of anime on several levels. As shown here Anime is not intrinsically good, and by its very nature should be considered, as a whole, bad. Poor animation, laughable dialogue from cookie cutter characters, and sloppily written storylines create an styl [sic] of animation that, on the whole, is not worth anyone's time. That's why anime (mostly) sucks.

I want to leave you with quick quote from an another anime fan describing Dragonball Z+

"Every episode was the same thing, constant and pointless fighting... [E]vil person comes to earth and we don't know why the heck he's evil to begin with > good guys get stronger > long, drawn-out, and boring battle ensues > enemy is defeated > new enemy comes, and the cycle repeats."



Endnotes

* You'll notice that I don't use the word "Japanime" in this article. This is directly related to my IQ being greater than 60.

** Almost every movie in existence has a love story behind it or in it somewhere. While I find this a very aggravating recurring theme, its in there for a reason. Love stories sell. My argument here is not that they shouldn't be included, since that would be futile claim to attempt to uphold, I'm simply pointing out how Anime constantly beats you over the head with this concept as a whole.

(1) As an endnote I'd like to inject a anime fan's description of Fushigi Yuugi which I feel clarifies the point I'm trying to make here in ways I cannot: "Fushigi Yuugi, the anime version of a soap opera. I LOVE YOU TAMAHOME, BUT I CANT LOVE YOU, OH NO IM BEING CAPTURED AHHHHHHHHH!!"

[sic] I also want to point out that Gamespot's posting system won't let me spell the words "clas sify" or "sty le" correctly due to a bug. This is because, well I'm not going to sugar coat it, it's because their posting system is terrible.

Sources

Comments obtained from thread at anipike:
http://forum.anipike.com/showthread.php?t=361
User cited:
Kenshin
Alaghelediel

Iria: Zeiram the Animation (1993)
Publisher: d-rights
Media Blasters
ISBN 1-58655-274-0

Voices of a Distant Star (2003)
Publsher: ADV Films
ADV Films
ASIN: B00008G8QC

Trascript of Voices of a Distant Star (2005)
http://www.silywily.com/voices.html
Director's Cut/English subtitles

"animation."
Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2005)
Publisher: Random House Reference Publishing
ISBN: 0375425993

"animating."
Dictionary.com Unabridged (2007).
Pulisher: Random House, Inc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/animating

Dragonball Z (First Season Only)
Publisher: Funimation
Funimation Prod.
ASIN: B000KWZ1T1

Fushigi Yugi Perfect Collection
Publisher: Studio Pierrot
Studio Pierrot
ASIN: B000GVD17W

Stupid Questions

Games are complicated. More complicated than even the ones that play them are willing to admit. Of course I'm not talking about how to code for linear processors, what a linear processor is, or how it differs from a food processor. I'm talking about the mythology, the characters, places and stories that create the world.

There is a LOT to know about games. Can everyone really be expected to know all the intricacies of Headcrabs, all your base, and that blue things are usually hurt by fire? And which of all knowledge is "Underground" or "Elitest" knowledge? And the most important question, especially to those of you who arrived here via Google, what does this have to do with 401(k) plans?

The answer to the third question is that it's called "Verg" Financial Group not "Zerg". That would just be silly.

To those of you who are still with me, we need to clear up some definitions. General gaming knowledge is anything that a person would pick up not having direct contact with said game. Such as a forum, gaming magazine, or by picking up the box, looking at it and gently rubbing it on their belly skin. But at that point the guy at EB games usually makes me buy it.

Elitest knowledge is knowledge that you would have by playing the game, or doing serious research on a game. Elitest knowledge expands to, but does not necessarily have to include anything that is considered knowledge for completing the game, and the intricacies of said game. Elitest knowledge is a broader range of information ranging from things you'd just pick up just playing a game all the way up to what can be only described as "who-gives-a-f***" *

To put it more plainly, knowing that Master Chief is the main character in Halo would be general knowledge. Being able to distinguish between Grunts and Jackals would be Elitest knowledge, as well as how to get your head stuck in the ceiling in the Halo 3 beta and Sarah Kerrigan's bra size**.

Why bring this up I don't hear you ask? We need to have a system by which we can berate people for not knowing information, but we have to make sure that we don't expect them to know too much. Everyone should know who Samus is, but no one cares about her favorite color.

Below I've created some mock (pun not intended, but needed) scenarios, rating the question against how many posts should be used to mock the person before actually explaining what it is.

What's a Jaguar?
Mockibility: 3 posts
Reasoning: Everyone should know two things, if ONLY two things about games:
1) Atari made the Jaguar.
2) It sucked.
Suggested Lines of Attack: Mock the price tag of this alleged powerful system, and the series of unhelpful add-ons that followed. Also you must have at least one jacka## respond: "A cat."

Who's James T Kirk?
Mockibility: 15 posts
Reasoning: Not only do they have to have no knowledge of gaming, they have to not been watching TV in the past 30 years.
Suggested Lines of Attack: Toupee jokes are always good.

What's a Limit Break?
Mockibility: 236 posts
Reasoning: I think it's safe to say that you'll never find someone who hates FF7 as much as I do, and I know what a freakin' limit break is.
Suggested Lines of Attack: Challenge the fact that they've ever even been to earth.

What's a BFG?
Mockibility: Err: Overflow
Reasoning: Anyone who doesn't know what Doom is... well they should be beaten to death with a keyboard.
Suggested Lines of Attack: Compare their mother to various household appliances.

There's a tier of mockibility related to how well known a certain fact is. This can be charted with a cross section of levels of information showing how we can better gauge the mockibility of a given question or statement.





Combining this chart with the situations from earlier we can correctly estimate how much derision we must heap on a unwitting poster for not knowing a particular fact.

Using this ballpark guess we can see if we've made adequate fun of a person, or if we need to continue to quote and repost to prove that they're stupid for not knowing what should be known before they even hit the "new message" button.

Or we could just explain it to them. Whatever.



* This category of information is the upper range of Elitest knowledge that was developed by the most awesome person I know (me). I created it to clasify [sic] information that is so obscure, the only people who are interested in knowing it already know it. Sometimes confused for actual knowledge.

** C

Period ! Exclamation Point ' Apostrophe.

The faster everyone comes to terms with this, the faster we can be on our way to world peace, and wouldn't that be nice?

But it seems that a false prophet has arisen in the form Chuck Norris, who is, unfortunately, a complete puss. Now I could go on a movie by movie basis and prove why Arnold is better, but let's face it, that'd take quite a bit of time that neither of us have to reach a conclusion that both of us know. Also that'd be so many Arnold movies in one post that your pants would hereafter be in a permanent state of "blown off".

Let's size up our competitors. The first is an Oklahoma native who had an Cherokee/Irish alcholic father, while Arnold was born in Austria to a Nazi alcoholic father. Using the playground "My dad could beat up your dad" argument we have an Irish Indian (Here "Irish" and "drunk" are used interchangably) fighting a drunk Nazi

While the basis for a short but totally awesome fighting game, my money is on the Nazi Nazis killed several million people while Indians, with the exception of that awesome strategist named Custer, never even had a shot at that number.

Score:
Arnold: 1
Norris: 0

Now let's compare names. Chuck Ray Norris sounds like a gas station attendant that everyone calls "Ray". Not really manly at all. Hard to take someone seriously when their name is "Chuck".

However, Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger, not only is hard to pronounce and would work well in an RPG, it DOMINATES the movie screen. Every time Arnold's name appears in a movie's opening credits it's always by itself. That's because there's no room for anyone else's. One name to rule them all.

Score:
Arnold: 2
Norris: -1 (for having two hillbilly names in one)

Next up is tag lines. Arnold always had cool things to say when he killed someone. Like when he snapped a guy's neck and laid him on a pillow; "He's dead tired". Not Monty Python by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't need to be. He was always sunshine, jokes and roses even when something horrible just happened. That's a positive message for today's youth.

Example tag line:
Situation: Arnold sticks a knife through a man's chest.
Line: "Stick around."

Situation: Arnold is pulled out of a movie and into real life where everyone can guess what he's going to say.
Line: "Rubber Baby Buggie Bumpers. Bet you didn't know I was gonna say that!"

Norris hasn't any really cool tag lines, or any tag lines AT ALL really.

Example tag line:
Situation: Norris does something that Arnold could've fixed in half the time with no pesky survivors to take to jail.
Line: "Walker, Texas Ranger"

Score:
Arnold: 3
Norris: -1

Arnold and Norris have also found themselves in similar circumstances but in every case Arnold handles it far more awesomely than Norris.

Arnold: Fought an alien from another planet armed with only a few gernades and a jungle.
Norris: Fought illegal aliens from another income bracket armed with enough weaponry to make the south surrender.. again.
Winner: Arnold

Norris knows: Several forms of martial arts to kick your a**.
Arnold knows: How to use a gernade launcher to remove your a**--permenantly.
Winner: Arnold

Norris knows: That being well dressed is most important.
Arnold knows: That if you can't fit 8 gernades and 200 rounds on it, it aint worth wearing.
Winner: Norris (Haha, yeah right: Arnold)

Final Score:
Arnold: 6
Norris: -520

As you can now see from this scientific study, not only is Arnold cooler and more manly, he's just plain better. So if Chuck Norris's tears really cure cancer, we need to get Arnold over there to rip his tear ducts out and say: "It'll be alright, don't cry." Always positive, that Arnold.