No.

I would not even pay $1.29 Canadian to relive duck hunt, and I have no particular fondness for ducks.

I had hoped it would be sufficient for me to say that much but I foolishly had to read the page and now must comment on that.

Modern televisions do not flash light in the way that is necessary for light gun games, such as duck hunt, to work properly. And people know that because they have tried to play Duck Hunt on modern tv screens. The solution proposed here is to buy a kit of things called “Modern Mallard” with which to make the game work on a modern television, at the price stated. No other things are included. This means you need to already have a working original Nintendo Entertainment System or the redesigned version from the mid 1990s, a working light gun for it, which were NEVER reissued, a real duck hunt cartridge, which admittedly were manufactured in great amounts, the desire to PLAY the duck hunt cartridge, the willingness to do technical manual labor on it, and 129 dollars with absolutely nothing better to spend it on. Such as apparently a device that puts BLACK LINES on your screen!

We get to pay 300 dollars to make our screen dimmer and blurrier! What a world we live in! back in the soviet union, the screen puts scanlines on YOU Since the original screens that old games played on had these lines, that means those lines are MEANT to be there! They weren’t just a side effect of outputting graphics at a lower resolution than screens could show which created an idiosyncratic appearance that was retroactively associated with video games, they were part of God’s Plan.

Also: you have space enough for all that stupid retro purist garbage that it has not gotten shoved around or stepped on at all in nearly 30 years but NOT a cathode ray television set even though those are physically sturdy and are perfectly capable of receiving modern television signals and people who never played video games in their lives owned them. I had a cathode ray television in my house until just yesterday and I fervently believe in console emulation. I have emulated video games off my hard drive without having to assemble and preserve clunky fragile obscure peripherals for eesh twenty years now and I had no idea I couldn’t play NES Duck Hunt because I never had any reason to care enough to try.

You could probably acquire an original duck hunt arcade cabinet for the same accumulated amount of hassle as getting and installing this product and you can actually shoot the jerk dog in that version, because you are just going to shoot every fictional animal you see. Either way you will probably realize after about 3 minutes what a boring game it is. But since the Modern Mallard system patches the light gun itself that should make it work on other gun games, right? No, it literally only works on Duck Hunt (AND apparently has a chance of STILL NOT WORKING if you have an orange gun like I did, and like THEY do judging by the header graphic, instead of a grey one which I have never even seen in person). The manufacturers do not rule out the idea of patching other games in the future but grips then suppose you want for some reason to play Gotcha! The Sport! instead of duck hunt, would you still have to buy the duck hunt version to get the gun alteration kit? Or if you wanted to play both, would you have to possibly buy two sets of the gun attachment since none of the game patches are sold separately?

Am I a jerk, making fun of a niche enterprise so soon after I expressed my own frustration with being niched? I do not think so; this is not somebody creating an original product, this is somebody trying to milk the supposed nostalgia of others to justify a hobby, and isn’t even going to make this thing for you, in the event you want it, unless nearly a thousand other people also do, so it isn’t like this is a work of passion. If you are the only person in the world who wants this, you can’t have it because the unpopular thing you like isn’t popular enough. And if there ARE others who would buy this but they don’t learn about this scheme fast enough, then they apparently don’t count even though the game is probably older than they are. Whoever runs the page claims in the comments section that a thousand units is the minimum amount at which this endeavor makes financial sense. Maybe they CAN be made individually but would cost even more than the already ludicrous sum pitched here, but then why put the one month time limit on it? You probably need a system of smoke signals to reach some of the people who still give a quack about playing Duck Hunt. This really can’t go very far before any attempt to explain an odd aspect of it seems even odder because this is not something that anybody remotely needs. I doubt the onceler could sell a thneed for $129.

I have been told by people off the internet who don’t realize that not only have I never had any clout online, I have less than I did ten years ago, that I “should” make a kickstarter page for my comic books. I don’t think I would do that. That means if I fail to generate an arbitrary amount of interest, I don’t get to make my comic book, like that’s the only reason I thought of making one. And then I would look like a bigger doofus than usual when it flops. There are apparently a decent amount of people willing to pay obscene money to buy and rebuy crummy old nintendo games but this one seems like it is overreaching.

Hey partners! A conglomeration of people trying to resell a ludicrous childlike urge to you. No they’re not crazy! They’re shrewd and calculating looking for a guaranteed financial profit off of someone else’s 30 year old bland game! There is probably more text on that kickstarter page than there are bytes of code in Duck Hunt. I prefer people admitting that they are calculating compared to the “welp i think i made a thing guys?” scumbags but in the end they are all charlatans.

I say all this as somebody who can’t tell a playstation 2 game from a playstation 4 game, or a $50 million dollar 1998 movie from a $200 million dollar 2018 movie. I think a lot of the “progress” in electronics is frivolous and potentially imaginary, just to keep people employed, and I think the mass commercial media’s co-opting of “social media” has homogenized a greater quantity of people into infantile dolts than ever before, but I don’t believe in hiding in a fake wood-paneled bunker and pretending it is still 1994 either. I think people will pay a lot of money to prove they are at an extreme edge of technological belongingness. Just playing old video games isn’t enough; you need to be willing to spend as much money going out of your way to make it totally authentic and de-enhanced as somebody at the other end gets talked into by Best Buy representatives to prove they are totally enhanced beyond human perceptibility. And then you have to up/downgrade everything else you use to be compatible with this fringe ability/inability. I was trying to figure out what software I used to record video a few years ago and came across

which can record at 144 frames per second. I didn’t even know you could put that many frames in a second, much less determine you have seen less than that to be willing to pay extra to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. And there is 4 scale high definition! Who is that for? Who has a screen so big that you could even tell the definition was that high? Alex Trebek?

I tried discussing this matter with somebody else recently and I think this created an unpleasant mental state

[1:50 AM] pookydooks: well then how about tht
[1:50 AM] frabaginarf: game recording software for gamers
[1:50 AM] pookydooks: I assume the U in UHD stands for ULTRA
[1:50 AM] pookydooks: I mean it pretty much has to
[1:51 AM] frabaginarf: i might have said it stood for unnecessary. or maybe “uhd” is just a noise i make when i hear about 4k video
[1:51 AM] pookydooks: it seems like the sort of thing that strains your eyes and gives you a headache after watching it for too long
[1:51 AM] pookydooks: 144, how overkill can you get
[1:51 AM] frabaginarf: that car is coming OUT of the screen! that would create a number of health risks
[1:52 AM] pookydooks: it’s a crummy TV that can’t even contain its images
[1:53 AM] pookydooks: you wouldn’t buy a fish tank that won’t hold water, wouldja
[1:53 AM] pookydooks: 144 FPS, that’s fish per second!
[1:54 AM] pookydooks: and that’s a lotta fish to be breaded and fried!
[1:54 AM] pookydooks: in oil heated to 4K degrees, naturally!
[1:55 AM] frabaginarf: this is more serious than i thought
[1:55 AM] pookydooks: Don’t forget to stream it in UHD! Wait I think we caught the fish in a stream! WOW
[1:56 AM] pookydooks: we’re steaming while we’re streaming before we even knew we were streaming, intense! awesome! tubular, dude!
[1:57 AM] pookydooks: I’m leaving before I find out what such a beastly boob tube costs! Cowabunga!

a july 17 update: it appears that this mallard matter will not reach its funding goal, which means something I thought was dumb will not go forward and be rewarded, for once, but I wish dumb stuff would be prevented on a grander scale; I would have traded letting this happen for ensuring the computer animated Lion King replacement celebrity voiceover remake film did not!

I would just like to remind you that I am not looking for ducks of any sort. It has been said that Hitler had some good ideas. Ducks also had some good ideas.

Asterix and Cleopatra, 50 bc (English translation, 1969)

Beat em and Eat em, 1982 (note that Dynacom owns the registered trademark of all video games)

Asterix and Cleopatra, superfluous English retranslation, 1995

Soup and Rainbow Duck, 2012

What does this prove? Morals have slipped through the ages, to the effect that eating beets in public, forbidden in the ancient society of 50 bc, has been reinterpreted as a positive so now fools flagrantly flaunt their bow ties and order singular beets on plates in the company of ducks in our finest restaurants. I mean the wretch went to a restaurant and ordered one plain, uncooked, unadorned beet on a plate. That is all. It could have gone to the beet market and bought one beet and eaten that in its own home on its own plate and not had to have gotten into anyone else’s business, but it enjoys dominating people and lacking scruples. Even Bat-Man, known to associate with some crooked sorts

too cowardly to reveal their identities, could not stop this horror.

He hasn’t been seen since. He definitely wasn’t in that Dark Knight Rises movie. Yes between that and the new Spider-Man I’d say both could benefit from having Bat-Man in them.

Back in the lusty month of May, I received a most curious bit of information following a routine update on the state of the jelly bean crop following its widespread ravagement by gummy worms from my field operative, code name Scarlet Fever Rodriguez And Other Stories. That is a facebook profile, but I believe the news about booby-trapped ovens and sneezes as jet propulsion are matters that the public would be well served to have greater awareness of. However!:

In other news, as the attached documents show, it appears that the skeletons are now attempting both to indoctrinate the yoof

as well as to gain popular support by declaring themselves as a force for fiscal responsibility in this era of high national debt and uncertain finances. This is a distressing development indeed.

I quickly requested permission to retransmit the information…

You are indeed most welcome to draft a report on the skeleton affair; it is important that people be made aware of these propaganda campaigns so that they may better defend themselves against them. If we let these ones pass in silence, next thing you know they’ll be declaring themselves to be skele-FUN, and that’s just unacceptable on multiple levels.

But I was weak. A coward. I feared the skeletons and allowed myself to be silent for too long. Now I realize I must speak out, before more damage is done. The first skeleton, first of all, is way too proud of itself for being first. I know everybody on slashdot admires and congratulates you for it but your spooky pioneership only serves to incriminate you elsewhere, monstrous marrowfiend! You are no longer my first skeleton. As of today, I have no first skeleton. And I suppose that second skeleton thinks I should be impressed that it hired the smallest and cheapest skeletons for its opposition force. While I do fear the mischief tiny skeletons can bring forth (such as, for example, hindering our tiny Belmonts), a greater fear has taken me, and it has today driven me to action. A thing I cannot keep hidden:

DUCKS EVOLVED FROM SKELETONS

I remember seeing this and thinking that the display needed more skeletons. I am appalled at how foolish and naive I was. Skeletons are a thing we most certainly need less of! I mocked the thrifty skeleton for hiring such cheap tiny skeletons but now their purpose is only all too clear! It’s so sad to see a proud and noble race like pirates have their powers corrupted for nefarious purposes.

So pure and tragic is their corruption that they have even seen fit to ally themselves with ducks. We sent forth a champion to steal their treasure, but not in time to halt development on their secret weapon:

SKELETON PIRATE DUCKS.

Alright, this is too stupid to finish. For one thing, everybody knows real pirates keep macaws, not cockatiels. That’s just ignorant.

I’m going to try posting short things again to save myself rage. We will see how that goes.
Actually it went pretty bad because I wrote this to be short weeks ago and then it got long and I gave up on it.

If the ocean was Booz And I was a duck I’d swim to the bottom And drink my way up But the ocean’s not Booz And I’m not a duck So pour another shot And let’s get Fluffed up!!!

Up doesn’t even rhyme with duck once, much less a second time. The success of the “try, try again” method hinges heavily on you not publishing your failed attempts. You try until you succeed, and THEN you show people. You could try to rhyme up and duck forever and it would never work, and therefore you would never show this poem to anybody. What went wrong? Keep in mind that these people / their parents are paying serious money to come here. I know this because one of them said as much to me when I identified myself as “Potato Margobian” during one of several nigh unbearable introduction sessions roundabout late August. I will tell you about this some other time. I know I say that a lot but I’ve already told some people so in theory I need only type the story I already told and we can be done with it. I probably won’t.

Not surprisingly, there are countless googly results for variations on this little sonnet, most with “vodka” or “whiskey” in place of “booz.” Which makes sense; all the other words are spelled properly. Sometimes ocean is water, and a variety of things precede “up” in the last line. Sadly, the duck rhyme is non-negotiable. Somebody thought “gosh oh gee, apart from the vodka part, EVERYTHING LOOKS GOOD TO ME.” My favorite edition replaces the word with “Jack Daniels,” which adds a minimum of one extra syllable, making the thing even more awkward than it already was.

Anyway, with this basic fact ungrasped there seems little need to investigate what bodies of water ducks actually swim in nor which side they do it on, or even how much of it they care to consume. I am curious about the spelling of “booz” and its capitalization. Perhaps the architect of this mass of words is actually speculating upon the circumstances likely to occur if the ocean was Boos, the drunk from Return to Zork. My guess is that by being a digitized actor rather than ultra corny early 1990s pre-Myst computer graphic effects he would still be a more convincing likeness of one.

Although to be fair, even though I needn’t bother because I’m going to insult it again in a minute, whoever recorded most of the Zork youtube videos doesn’t have the game on the highest detail level. The graphics are not supposed to be QUITE as bad as they appear, but I was too afraid to play the thing back when I had it and I’m even more scared of it now that I see how corny it is, and the lower the detail the scarier it is, especially if you select ADLIB as your music source. So let us not Return to Zork at this time.

We should also not watch The Legend of Cryin’ Ryan, a boring straight-to-video movie about some kid becoming friends with a ghost, in which the Boos actor Harold Smith (II) appears as a gravedigger and announces that “if you knock over a tombstone, you die the same way,” because that seems a terribly pathetic way to die. Or maybe he means I will die the same way as the person whose grave it is, and he knows that because he killed everyone he buried and took notes and doesn’t appreciate his apparently very delicate and knock-overable craft being disturbed. He is even clutching a shovel in this picture, which suggests he’s burying people fairly regularly. He recently killed Jay Leno to make his beard. His previous beard got 43 million dollars to leave instead of being re-purposed as a mustache but is still complaining for some reason. Oh ho ho I’m almost culturally relevant a year ago.
…I told you it was boring. I just needed proof that game was made by real people and not highly intelligent computer mechanisms that wanted us to give up on advanced technology so we would leave them alone, allowing them to run chess simulations and de-fragment their hard drives endlessly.

Sadly, the duck epic was cleaned off shortly after I took that picture. Thankfully, this classy, elaborate graffitos in the same stall remains.

You know, I’m sure, I have displayed a disturbing number of pictures from inside restrooms lately. Let us break from that tradition for a moment.

I’m starting to think my last camera jumped into the waterfall on purpose.

“WASH”
Right to the point, I like it.

This really is the best place for soap.

If you’re wondering about the “janitor” from the other post month or so ago, I was correct in assuming pay was not the issue; it’s a blooming tree. And way past blooming season, at that. Do you see what we’re up against? Don’t try to negotiate with them; they’ll threaten to leave in any situation.

Also:
“The actual line is “a lie told often enough becomes the truth,” often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, which puzzles me, given this sector’s clear aversion to commie ideology evident in replacing vodka with generic booz.”
I said that in the previous post also. It was a reference to this one here now, even though this did not yet exist, and therefore ought to have removed it, but I forgot to, because I hate this site and don’t read it. Thus not only did I say something that made absolutely no sense, I included it with a most obvious spelling curiosity. Whoopth.

UNACCEPTABLE. PUNISHMENT COMMENCES.

They’re ALL in on it. I’d say “I should have known” but I DID KNOW and have REPEATEDLY SAID SO.

=========================================

Sunday… I can tell “you” already that this site won’t be properly updated again until Thursday at the soonest, and I may just decide to have a nap instead. So watch out.

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Hello, today is thursday, December the two. I will come back later tonight and post something I already regret.

===========================================

In frap I have changed my mind. What can I show you instead? More of these?

*I* don't even want to read all this, ducks, NEMITZ, popular with the robots | How to lose a guy in (2) days | !

Why does the Red Robin need to ride around in a dirigible? Birds can fly on their own. Get to work, bird! More importantly, why is the passenger chamber an enormous, hollowed out hamburger? What is keeping the pieces together? Not a sense of unity inspired by strong leadership, definitely. I’ve seen that facial expression on an incompetent aviator before.

Here is a clearer view I found on the website for the crooked masterminds supposedly [ir]responsible. First of all, COKE BOTTLE PROPELLERS! More importantly, what business has this confessed commie flying the stars and stripes? American robins are not robins at all. They are thrushes. Therefore, one way or another this lofty Leninist is a feathery fraud. How could anybody trust it?
It’s bad enough that this treasonous pteranodon advocates factory bred livestock meat consumption, but using its product to construct your personal chariot is just decadent and probably more than a little bit gross.

Even the person who ordered that this television box be installed in the FLOOR thinks you’ve gone too far. I reckon.

Additionally, beef is one thing (or rather, many, many things whose constant production dooms our planet), but this egomaniacal erithacus has, in a move that surprises me less and less these days, sold out some of its other feathren…

“Clucks!” The chicken fingers are called “clucks!” They were good tasting chicken fingers, but if I at any point heard one CLUCK I might have felt the need to CHUCK. See also: actual chicken fingers.

But hey, what ho*: free refills on so. Da. I will deliberately abstain from soft drinks when I know I will be attending an appropriate dining facility so that I can better make use of such unlimited imbibement potential. Of course, for 2.39 I could probably buy half a case of the stuff and drink it at my leisure rather than all at once, and spare myself the carbonation sickness for the remainder of the evening, but this is one of few areas in which I am capable of “showing off” to others, and so I will take it, because I have a sad and empty life. This and eating the pickle chips that come with my french fries. In fact, if I don’t get any I will ask for some. I like pickles with my french fries. What I don’t like: morally mishapping plumed passerine poltroons.

You agree with me, don’t you?

*I am no ho.

I’d love to explain this to you.

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What did I do yesterday? Can anybody tell me? I did not get any work done yet I most certainly did not do anything fun, either.

These things are sort of fun, though.
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I’m going to miss you, too.

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Hey, that which I posted recently regarding Madmartigan reminds me of some crazy rambling essayoid I wrote about MadMartigan two years ago. It went a little something like this. A big something like this, actually.

I thought for certain I’d have taken a picture of the box or one of the numerous stupid sights of the film at some point, but none seem to exist. I show instead Whoopi Goldberg in Burglar, which you will be glad to know that despite the suggestive themes I did not steal. Clearly that is a big problem at Wal Mart, though.

I saw the 1988 Lucasfilm classic “Willow” recently. A DVD copy of this was the thus far apparent culmination of an inside joke the likes of which cannot be understood (it involves diapers). Surprisingly, it was much worse than I thought it would be. It may also be surprising, perhaps, that I expected it to be good. It did make me wonder, though, how anyone expected much from Star Wars “episode 1” when a George Lucas movie with many of the exact same faults had already existed for ten years, but without any past franchise success eager to jinx it. Quite simply, they, much like meself, had not seen Willow. It’s one of those movies where seeing things continuously not quite fall into place is more disappointing than had there been no chance. If the movie had been a total disaster I wouldn’t be bothered theorizing alternate versions that are better.

There is a point, for example, where Madmartigan is stricken with magic love dust and then rushes into the tent of Sorsha, his female adversary, and wakes her up while telling a stupid poem. In theory, it could be funny, except Sorsha becomes conflicted over the act, rather than just kicking Marty in the face and calling some guards, none of whom were apparently watching the prisoners or their leader.

And then I was thinking “how about there is no love potion, and Madmartigan sneaks in there planning to kill Sorsha, but he can’t bring himself to do so because because because but she wakes up and Martigan must pretend to be crazy and that would have made more sense…” I have more important things to think about than that. Specifically, just Madmartigan in general.

He isn’t even Mad Mart-igan. He is Madmartigan. He is not a man named Martigan who has a reputation for flipping his matters out at people. His birth certificate says “Madmartigan McMeeplesworth” on it. I have found myself just speaking “madmartigan” repeatedly. And he’s really not that important a character. He’s supposed to be, but again, the movie is just badly done. Here, he’s in a cage. Next, he’s just nowhere, and he’s lost the baby Willow trusted him with. Look, he’s disguised as a woman and running away from some ramshackly establishment. Hmmm? Oh, now he’s captured again. Fight? No, escape. Now he’s falling down a snow-covered mountain’s side. “He’d better not turn into a snowball,” I quipped. Now he’s turned into a snowball. Ah, now a fight. But what’s going on? Where did these monsters come from? Who is hitting who? Why did people load all these crossbows and catapults and then abandon the fortress? Who is this talking rodent again?

I have no problem with the “dated” visual effects. I love stop motion monsters and cartoon lightning bolts. The only things that look totally out of place are the “brownies,” regular sized people meant to seem tiny, filmed separately and inserted into the main picture with a pre-bluescreen era process that makes them appear really far away rather than small, but they’re in the foreground and ugh. A bit like that Buddha “statue” in Mortal Kombat that looks more like somebody’s desk paperweight. Focus on the focus, people! But that’s not important, because my nonexistent “ideal” version of the movie hardly has brownies in it at all (except for the part where Airk Thaughbaer happens upon one of Willow’s “magic” laxative-laced confections, intended as a housewarming gift for the villainous Kael, and hilarity ensues when Airk tries to conceal his deed). They look out of place because they are out of place, in more ways than two. This is why people write fan-fiction. I don’t want to write fan-fiction. “Fan-fiction” being stories about characters one likes enough to write stories about. The inventors of the quote-marked phrase seemed quite sure non-fans would not bother.

The Willow arcade video game makes more sense as a video game than the Willow movie makes as a movie. The real question is whether that sentence made any sense. But see: in the game, Willow’s too busy throwing sparkle glitter at soldiers and rat dogs to carry a baby. You find out Bavmorda (the villain who desires the baby) already has the baby in the first level. That’s fine, since after 90 minutes of movie in which Willow is supposedly going towards some place safe Bavmorda gets the baby anyway. Additionally, I have great fondness for the method used to digitize the intermission scene people, even if the Willow a player actually controls looks as much like Chucky as Warwick Davis.

As I said, I don’t want to write fan-fiction. I said that to lead into this paragraph. But then I didn’t. But now I have. I like to think that at best I could amount to more than Phillip Jose Farmer, the kook who invented the “Wold Newton Family,” the concept that all the pre-established characters he’s spent his life writing his own stories about or as not only logically coexist but are related to each other. I probably won’t but my aspirations ought to.

Not that I think Mr. Farmer is a bad writer; I don’t really remember. I went through a bunch of stories by him back when I read and it wasn’t until years later that I realized how crazy he is or has been. He was most prolific in the 1960s and 70s but yet lives, and yet writes, even if the Wold section of his official website strongly implies he became dead some time in 1997. At any rate he’s done well enough that his work typically isn’t referred to with a deprecating label like “fan fiction.” But it’s the same thing.

And now here’s a rebuttal, also by me, from only one year ago.

Is the inclination to write asinine fan-fiction really so indicative of maladjustment? All of the most “beloved” animated films are freely interpreted from pre-existing works and using pre-existing characters. The only real difference is that the subject matter was sought out rather than received and gobbled up gleefully. Even wholly authorized and admitted “adaptations” seem to feel no lack of validity inventing new stupid situations at the director or whoever’s contrivance. In the time of ancient Greece any yahoocles could write his own story about Zeus (women and slaves, obviously, were not permitted to do so) magically transforming into a duck and doing unlikely sexes to the goddess of the author’s choice. Our modern fanfictioners are part of a greater tradition than they realize and/or deserve. Just instead of Zeus it’s Nick Jonas and instead of a duck it’s Vulpix and instead of a goddess it’s Jesse from Full House. The fact that popular fan-written characters aren’t all-powerful masters of all things who we might presume to have such powers (and in fact rarely exceed average functionality) or living in a time which predates the concept of moral decency need make no difference. Maybe it ought to, but it doesn’t need to.

I should know better than to rebut myself in public.

ducks, sizzlin' | How to lose a guy in (4) days | !

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Most of us like to believe that the Obama election will prove to be a comparatively good thing for United Statia, and therefore the whole world which must deal with that, but I don’t like that he’s giving birds ideas. And my disapproval comes not from there being a lone brown bird among a gang of grey birds. What it comes down to is just that birds are not entitled to ideas. Look at them, hopping around on rocks all day. You’re missing the point, birds! They’re like lizards with feathers. I can’t stand it. And then a more important issue arises:

I don’t have a problem with there being a brown bird, just one that seems to think it is a duck. Guess what, bird! You’re not a duck! You’re just a regular, dumb old bird. Why would you want to be a duck? Birds which are not ducks but think they are must not be tolerated under any circumstances. They have lost that privilege. This bird needs to stop using the existence of racism as an excuse for it to act like a duck without consequences.

Try and imagine my uncontrollable discontent when I see a bird, glance away momentarily and suddenly it has no legs. And is floating toward a place it could easily have flown to. What a decadent bird! Why do we allow them to have so many methods of transportation? I would suggest making it an honorary duck, but I don’t like to imply that such a wasteful scoundrel is in any way honorable, nor that any duck could potentially be. And in fact upon reexamination I realize this bears no similarity whatsoever to Tuesday’s vote results. Thinking about ducks breaks my mind, sometimes. Now it only remains for me to decide whether to seek monetary damages or revenge.

Related news: on a previous occasion which might be documented directly below this occasion depending on your local listings, I used the subject line “His chair goes up, his chair goes down, the dentist is my pal” and followed that immediately with a picture showing, in part, NEMITZ in a chair of the sort one might expect to be adjustable. I would like at this time to clarify that NEMITZ is not licensed to perform dental work and more importantly not my or hopefully anyone else’s “pal.” Additionally I would not refer to nemitz with such a specific, personifying pronoun as “he” because the thing does not deserve it and may not meet the qualifications, besides. I decline to more closely examine this situation.

The suggestion that I pal around with nemitz is absurd, irresponsible, and perhaps just a bit offensive. Nemitz is my nemitsis. Arrrgh, I’ll throw a tugboat at nemitz. I think we appeared on the same season of Temptation Island together but that’s it. And this story that I attended a fund-raising event at nemitz’s house is the most ridiculous of all. Nemitz does not have a house. Nemitz lives in an abandoned Geo out in a field somewhere and besides that we didn’t raise much money anyway.

Never-you-mind dental work, I’m not even sure nemitz is licensed to be nemitz. A proposition was recently approved in eleven states making it illegal to be nemitz. Being a dope is illegal in all 50, but one must keep in mind that it’s a lot easier to ban every dope than to specifically ban nemitz. I consider it a victory for democracy.

You don’t want to get to a point where you’re asking people at the borders “are you nemitz?” While sure, nemitz would be dumb enough to respond favorably were nemitz smart enough to say something resembling “yes,” it would be a hassle for everyone else.

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This could be the most important decision you ever make.

I, personally, have a policy of never accepting waterfowl from persons who willingly wear red buckled boots. Conversely, when I am offered red and/or buckled boots by a duck, I generally turn down the offers.

baconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbacon

Because I insist on doubting myself, I watched another dreadful aspiring president debate. Somehow much of what discussion there was regarded how many taxes a plumber named Joe would be required to pay and whether he’d be cold at night with winter coming and whether he has enough fiber in his diet.

As I understand it (and you may find that I do not), plumbers work out pretty well with the dollars. Among professions popularly regarded as “blue collar,” whatever that means, they make kind of a lot of money. The only time I knew of a more lucrative like-hued collar it was on Scooby Doo. I’m not filled with sympathy that this one will have to wait a bit longer to buy some company. Additionally, the most successful plumbers often go on to highly profitable careers in fields such as turtle stomping and brick punching. Some discover that they earn enough floating gold currency to last several lifetimes.

One of my major problems with the democrat club, and why I can never fully assure myself that they’re the best we can get is their willingness to play along when the opposition makes huge deals of asinine childish nonsense like this. “Joe, I’m talking to you! I won’t make you pay any taxes ever! And gays have to wear beekeeper suits and you can keep your land mines out all year and I’m appointing St. Francis of Assisi as secretary of public nudity and making Mexico illegal.” I’m trying to wrap this up because I want to take a nap.

It has been pondered who will portray Joe the Plumber in an inevitable Saturday Night Thursday sketch about the debate which I rather wish I wasn’t in such a position to actually understand. Shelly Goldstein, who I don’t know at all but whose name I think sounds kind of funny suggests John Goodman in the very last sentence, but knowing that show, it is my belief that Joe will play himself and be rather awkward once the “wow! That’s the real Joe the Plumber!” excitement wears off. And then why even live when we can’t have that anymore?

By the wuh, I hate those ads for the Thursday supplement always showing Tina Fey pretending to be Sarah Palin pretending to play a flute. Hey, citizens! Tina Fey will not be appearing on the Thursday night version! She’s not actually employed by the program anymore, hasn’t been for rather some time, and I doubt they’re going to waste such an apparently big draw on a variant of the program less people know about! Oh, hey, and have you seen some of the sketches they’ve been putting on after Tina gets out of there? I interrogated the one other person I am in contact with who watches awful comedy shows, and she seemed not to have. And so I said to that “verily, a ninety-minute length may reasonably be perceived as superfluous” because I’m even phonier in person, and I optimistically pondered such an eventual horrible presentation that I at last could have no more of it. And then NBC invented a version one third in length just so I couldn’t say that was a good idea first. So I’m not telling anybody about my great idea for a pumpkin flavored dessert.

In Canada, I’m glad Stephen Harper was elected to be the prime minister again. It took me years to remember his name.

This is one of the final frames from the astounding Arabic opening to the rarely remembered 1978 pop pop pop pop Pop-eye cartoon. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the video online, and at the time when I could I had not yet gotten into the habit of saving such things for later viewing. What’s important right just now is this picture and the important question it raises. Do we really need six Popeyes? It is not as if there are six Blutos! Certainly never at the same time, the Brutus factor notwithstanding (I think I used that word right). And yet somehow that is the amount of popeyes present.

Though a wise man once said “Once you pop, you can’t stop,” therefore explaining how, we have yet to determine why there must be so many Popeyes. Two-thirds of the characters on this program are Popeye! That is not good. There’s regular Popeye, old Popeye, an astounding four miniature Popeyes, who will, unless we act, one day be fully grown Popeyes, and… while Sweepy (akadaka “Swee’ Pea”) is not biologically related to Popeye, he has spent nearly his entire life under the influence of regular Popeye, and has been known to emulate that Popeye’s habits and behaviors. So really, there are six and a half Popeyes. This is more than my mind can comprehend.

Additionally, I will assume, by the distance, that the three popeyes on the left are nephews and that the one small popeye in the middle is a direct descendant, delivered by stork (or more likely pelican) to normal Popeye. However, any Popeye scholar knows, just to show he’s better than Donald Duck, that regular Popeye has four nephews, one of which is merely estranged. Somewhere in the world is a seventh Popeye, bitter and resentful, looking for revenge. I’m scared.

Now I am even more scared. We can only hope before causing too much damage they meet and settle their differences. We haven’t even discussed the fact that in order to have nephews Popeye must surely have other Popeye relatives not acknowledged here. I don’t think I could handle it, quite honestly.

Boing

Wow, I can’t believe Meet the Spartans opened “yesterday.” Not so much that I can’t believe it would be allowed to open at all, I just feel like I’ve been seeing its ads for two years. To put that in perspective, I’ve only been seeing ads for Strange Wilderness for six months.
I’ll not give it credit for breaking the naming convention of its forebears, as that only happened because epic movie was such a failure, the unmistakable mistake of a sequel wanted to trick us into thinking it wasn’t that which it had no problem with being. I guess they reason, sure it’s obnoxious, stuffed with overused, underthought topical acknowledgments which aren’t quite jokes, all of which will be in the spartan-like assault force of ads, why don’t we give it a different name? Why they’d choose an even worse naming convention is just because they’re bad bad people.

Excuse me my good man, but is this the sequel to Epic Movie?

No, look at the name. It’s the sequel to Meet the Deedles.

Cor, what a scoop! Color me deedled!

Ha ha, fooled you! It really is the sequel to Epic Movie.

Say, this movie is swell! I’m glad you deceived me!

Carmen Electra is in it, that’s all the proof you need.
A better question, really, is why, if the previous fared miserably, and everybody hated it/them, it gets a sequel at all. Why are these being made? Who watched any of the previous movies and said “your antics amuse me. Here, have 30 million dollars to make another movie with.”? Ehhh, but that much is known. Part of it is said to have come from Regency Enterprises, which also funded a real who’s that of the movies I’ve complained about the existences of or merely wanted to plus Fight Club. Epic Movie, Firehouse Dog, Big Momma’s House 2, Deck the Halls, things I did not think there could be any connection between aside from my scorn. Regency also funds “Baby First TV,” and that stuff is always loathsome, with typically as much non-market research driven thought behind it. I truly do not understand. Let’s go to the phones. Klube from Mipwip Junction, you’re on the air.

Don’t you see? “1984” is happening! Meet the Spartans is the two minute hate! It trained in seclusion for 22 years to swell to 4200% its previous size.
Sir, turn off your radio, please.
Also, FDR let Pearl Harbor happen! JFK tripped on his shoelace! OJ did 9/11! Spencer Nilsen ruined Sonic CD!
Sir, sir, could you please turn off your radio! Oh dear.
Well that situation is unlikely. There are also a great many things I hate which Regency was not involved with. I simply hate many many things. They fund what they think people will purchase tickets for, and that’s as far as it goes.

And George Orwell, fortunately, was wrong in guessing men who want power would be able to by now have separated themselves from their undoing agent, the craving for wealth. “They” would never give us Epic Movie for free, and that is why they will always fail. Although some of the ads feel like two minutes, there is at this time no penalty for not watching them. Not horribly long ago I read some mumbling and bungling about technology to force unskippable ads into dvd movies, and it’s already implemented in some fashion, but it can’t force anyone to care. Not yet. And they only do it because they want money, not to make us hate imaginary enemies as a distraction from our real problems. They don’t respect us that much. Also, that would alienate potential customers.

Elections are a different matter, because only citizens may vote. The next time a politician insists gays are signing up children in the streets and another proposes a bill to ban streets rather than investigate the charge, and that the ghost of Saddam Hussein is after not just yellow cake but our vast natural deposits of chocolate cake as well, and so we ought to devote all our resources to producing a cake so big that it cannot be stolen, be glad you live in a country where the government respects you. And if you don’t you may also find things to be glad about. I realize this paragraph has no foundation in reality but I bet I could get applause if I ended a commencement speech with it.

Long time, part time or morphin’ time readers may know I have an ongoing feud with ducks. The Aflac duck, akadaka “The Aflac Duck” usually doesn’t factor into our dispute… I consider the rivalry to be of an honorable sort, or as closest a wretched scoundrel duck can come to that, but this duck is but a dirty uncouth rapscallion without even the minimal decency of its fethren. I’m sure some person, some place thinks it is comendable that advertisers attempt to make their filths tolerable to larger audiences then those who might have an immediate “need” to purchase insurance, but that ignores the fact that there’s no reason for anyone to watch ads or accept that they are shown. And insurance in general is a dire, dire dock scam against humanity. And also that that duck is a magnificent distance from tolerable.

It’s bad enough when every fumblewig who can afford ad time thinks they’re so clever commissioning wooden puppets of themselves roundabout December, but this is… slightly more bad than that.

I don’t even like stupid rudolph the dumb red idiot nosed moron reindeer and I think the recent aflac ad, which I can easily embed in this page but never will, is, was despicable. Like worse than the other ones. I suppose it’s good that the ad was “unauthorized,” meaning whoever owns the rights to the characters and situations and such gave no assistance or permission, but it’s also bad because that means anybody can make a cheap daft Winnie-the-pooh-job ad with any characters they want and get away with it. Not that anybody really “owns” Santa Claus, but I think we’re smart enough to know when something’s an obviously derivative work which exists exclusively to sell a product or service and only attempts to be entertaining to distract us from that while it takes our nostalgia behind a barn and shoots it in the head. Fortunately, the ad is so quick and crowded -and I knew it was coming! I was mentally prepared in advance when I watched it online- plus the addition of that tiresome duck which never wasn’t annoying that no one could possibly like or excuse it.

Also, am I the only person who’s bothered by these vague “smart dates” that show up all over the place now? That really messes with the accuracy of my screen grasps if I don’t use them right away; all my rudolph abuse occurs past immediate relevance so you know I mean bidness. I prefer to see a simple calendar figure. It doesn’t matter to me if you put the month number first or second. I’ll figure it out from the context the first time and remember it after that. I’m smarter than I eat.

Even at the moment the dates are generated, when they’re correct, I have no immediate concept of what “four weeks ago” means. Was that in November? Was that in… no, that’s twenty eight days, right? Almost a month. So what about “1 month ago,” then? And how do I know when something occurred beween 1 and 2 months ago? As far as this system is concerned everything happened on the same day. Grapety purple, I need to know these things! We aren’t talking about veoh comments, after all. Stop trying to make the past seem like uncertain memories of insubordinate importance which are worth knowing with decreasing specificness the older they get! We have the technology to know exactly when these messages were left! If I choose to say an event took place one month, two weeks, three days, back to back law and orders and a belt buckle ago, it should be my choice! And it won’t be! Screebidy deebidy!

I’m tired of idiots standing around with their hands like that! Do you think you’re in charge? You aren’t! Maybe if you looked where you were going instead of at nothing you would see the helpful label floating in front of you. Not that you’d be able to read it at that angle. Not that you’d be smart enough to move to a position where you could. Not that you can read.

No! Don’t turn to face me! Didn’t you hear the abuse I just directed at you? I want nothing to do with you! Arrrgh! What’s wrong with you? You look like an idiot! (you are.) And don’t smile! You’re biologically unfit to do so!
Ubggggggigiggg…. There’s no excuse for that beast. None at all. How do these things find me?! I want to throw a sock full of rocks at that thing! I want to throw TV’s Roc Charles S. Dutton, at it! You hear me, lizard? I’ll throw a very special Roc at you! In front of a live studio audience! I wish that show got better ratings so I could shame you in front of as many people as possible, not necessarily because it would have lasted more seasons then, because I always found it boring. I learned about racism through Family Matters. But I didn’t learn enough, evidently, because I thought the family on Roc were essentially the same people, and I was disappointed when they weren’t as wacky. I was eight years old. But anyway. What’s important is that I want to throw a large fat man at that thilly thmiling theropod up thither.

Whaaaa? That’s too stupid! And don’t you dare try and make that my problem! I hate ducks and I hated you before you were a duck! I hope this will at least serve as a warning to other dumb animal people that would attempt to address me. I will have none of it.

Fool, how could you not see that coming? Look at the original juxtaposition of the images! You are beside yourself with imbecility! And… and… I drew you at 2:50 am! That’s not afternoon at all! If it was, it would not be good! You made it bad!