Scalpel - RTOT #868

Day 868

I generally don't like most people. I know this is a shocking revelation to you, right? Yeah. Sure. So when I do like someone, I generally consider them a friend. Or at bare minimum, someone that I don't actively dislike and they become part of the white noise in the background of my life. We all have these people. We just often don't think of them like that because it seems insulting, but really... that's all that they really are. They're the buffer zone between the people we like and everyone else. And for that reason, they're the white noise.

And when an of those relationships reach its inevitable expiration date, I simply cut it off with a scalpel, not entirely unlike a gangrenous limb. I cut it off. I move on. I give very little thought to it again with only a handful of exceptions and I generally feel little to no sense of loss. Maybe it's a personality disorder. Maybe it's a coping mechanism. Maybe I'm just too distracted or disaffected  or cynical to care about any sense of loss when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that that's probably a sign of said personality disorder. That's probably that whole sociopathy thing coming back out again.

But in the end, I harbor no ill will towards the limbs that I amputate. I look at them not unlike a rock on a beach. It's there. It doesn't matter to me. And I keep walking.

So when I see people that feel compelled to get angry at the rock or the dead limb that has already been amputated and is rotting away in a dumpster or something somewhere, I don't entirely understand it. Will yelling at it or talking too much about it make that limb somehow come back to life and reattach itself? Will that rock turn into something that matters with enough quiet sniping or venom or whispered comments? Will it even care?

Frankly, I just don't understand why relationships end and then somehow continue as something else more negative. Is it Newton's Law of Relationships instead of Motion or something where it has to require an opposite emotion when it's ended? I mean... I generally hate human beings as a whole, but I don't make that kind of effort to be a venomous jackwagon towards everyone unless there's a necessity.

Or unless I'll get some form of amusement out of it. But then again, I'm a dick. Not everyone is willing to admit that they're a sociopathic prick like me.

And yes, admitting it absolves me of any guilt or responsibility for anything I do or say in the past, present and future.

I was probably going somewhere with this, but I kinda stopped caring. Maybe that was the point though... things end & giving more time to it seems pointless.

Here's Your Trophy - RTOTD #859

Day 859

Some Texas highschool football team beat another team 91-0. What do you think the response to this was?

A parent of the losing team filed a "bullying" complaint with the district. I'm not joking. Needless to say, the charges were dropped and rightfully so. They had no merit.

I would say that I have no words, but well... come on. This is me we're talking about. I always have words for something that amuses me.

Have we really reached the point where getting your ass beat in sports is a "bullying" accusation? Are we really that much of a load of pussies in this society anymore that sports are now a source of bullying? When they snapped the ball and ran it and got into the open field on every 3rd play with a clear track for the endzone, were they just supposed to sit down and wait to be tackled because it would be nicer for the other team? Would kneeling down and letting yourself go 3-and-out every possession after it was 49-0 so the other team got a chance be better for their self-esteem?  Maybe mix up the teams and let them split the talent, because the other guys obviously suck and even if you let them score, they'd find a way to fuck it up. Maybe some own-goal type shit? Would patronizing them make them feel better?

Hey, I mean... we all knew there were those couple *cough* most *cough* guys on the football team in highschool that were pretty big douchebags. But if you're playing competitive sports at any level, you gotta sack the fuck up and learn to live with an ass beating. Even one of epic proportions.

And this is also why parents are horrible human beings that need to be tested before they're allowed anywhere near their kids sporting events. This should be the litmus test for that. I'll even make it multiple-choice:

"If your kids team gets handed a beating that would make the Old-Testament God envious of its severity, would you:
A) just tell them to quit after they stop crying because overcoming difficulty isn't a useful life lesson
B) give the kid a participation trophy
C) console them for a few minutes & then tell them to work harder so they never have to feel that kind of beating again or
D) complain to the school district that it's not fair and hurt his self esteem"

If you answer anything other than C, you're not allowed to be there anymore. Period.

Participation trophies. No keeping score. Equal playing time for everyone. Charges filed when you win too convincingly. Or pretty much any of that touchy-feely bullshit. Can we find the people that started this shit and beat them with sacks filled with pennies?

The world is filled with that asshat highschool football player that tries to bully anyone that crosses their path that day. Deal with it. And that does not include going Columbine on them or crying to your mommy, daddy and teachers. Man the fuck up. Girls and boys get pushed around by other people all the time. You're not going to change them. You're just going to end up looking like a whiny bitch. You're going to lose at a game. You're sometimes going to get your ass beat at something so bad that Rodney King would think he got off easy. You're not a delicate special fucking snowflake and the sooner you learn that, the sooner you're going to learn how to exist in the world.

Except me. I'm a super special fucking snowflake that's specialer than the specialest special snowflake ever made. So when I bully you or insult you or make you look like you don't even belong in the same room as me, just remember it's because I have the right. I'm just better than you.

Nananananananananana... Affleck!! - RTOTD #830

Day 830

Seriously? Ben Affleck? As Batman?

Is his suit going to have nipples? Did I fall into a time-warp where the same guys casting for Joel Schumacher's Batman movies that gave us George Cloony and Val Kilmer (pre-fatass) as Batman never got fired? Cause it seems like it.

Or maybe Kevin Smith is going to direct it and it's ACTUALLY going to be the real Bluntman & Chronic movie. Cause that's something that I could maybe get behind.

Or maybe it's going to be the most fucked up genre twisting meta bullshit ever.

For instance:

Superman from the movie that came out this summer somehow ends up inside that Christopher Reeves Superman movie where he fights the nuclear not-superman guy that Lex Luthor built and throws missles into the sun. But it turns out that that is actually in the same universe as the Adam West Batman. So when he runs away from that mullet-wearing fake Superman guy and runs into Adam West Batman it's actually Ben Affleck in the costume because why the fuck not? And when BatFleck falls asleep, he dreams that he's actually Adam West from the tv show. And the Adam West Batman tv show is actually US watching HIS dreams that he projects into our reality because it turns out that he's REALLY superman that's been mind-switched with Batman and he's got all the weird Silver-Age Superman powers like super knitting and that chest cellophane thing he used in the one movie and the little tiny miniture superman that can pop out of his palm and fight on the microscopic level. Dream projection into tv waves is one of those Silver-Agey powers.

And in the end, Affleck ends up as Superman and that guy from Man of Steel finds out the he was just a fever dream of Silver-Age Superman who is also Adam West Batman. And somehow Brainiac is responsible.

Dum dum dum......

Seriously... this is going to be a bigger disaster than Daredevil and Elektra combined. DC/Warner Brothers really doesn't have a fucking clue what it's doing, does it? Shit, this is a worse idea than Greedo shooting first.

Why Is Captain Power Standing On My Desk? - RTOTD #821

Day 821

I really wish that the 1980's would have saved some of it's boatload of comic-book-like fictional cartoon and tv show and action figure characters for the 90's. It would have helped prevent the "everything is a fucking anime!" thing that's been going on for the past 15-20 years.

I only thought about that because I came across an old toy that had as a kid back in the 80's. Captain Power. Does anyone even remember captain power? I only have a vague recollection of him but he's about eh same size as a GI Joe, so I think I let him be the awesome future soldier that would come back to prevent COBRA from taking over the world in the epic basement warfare scenarios that I would often orchestrate on a regular basis.

I'm pretty certain he was one of those "let's make up a character and then make a toy of that character and then make a tv show of that character so that we can use one to sell the other but not really certain which one sold which one" things that happened all the fucking time in the 80's. And to be honest, he got lost in the shuffle of the heyday of the Transformers and GI Joe and MASK and a dozen or 4 other tv/action figure-hybrid sales/rating model marketing campaigns of the same era.

And then the whole model died on the vine for a little while and was replaced by a comic book speculator bubble. Not because of lack of quality (though the quality did certainly suffer) but because of over saturation. Or maybe those reasons go hand-in-hand. Mattel and Hasbro and ToyBiz and all the other ones kept pumping new material out into the market but didn't really give any creative behind it. Honestly, it wasn't much different than 90's comics. It was "hey, this shit looks cool that I just drew/designed... let's make a new franchise" and instead of investing the time to actually build that franchise, they just kinda say "oh look, I drew another cool thing. Another franchise!" and on and on until there were 74923953 new fucking franchises without a single coherent story behind them.

And that's where it all fell on it's face. GI Joe and Transformers in the 80's were huge hits because someone actually told some stories with them before moving on to the next 83 franchises being launched that week. And once there was a significant number of stories out there for people to reference and kids to enjoy, the sales just kept going.

Although a business plan of "grow it every quarter to sell people another half dozen versions of Snake Eyes" is one I still don't understand. A kid still isn't dumb and can't play with all (legitimately) 66 different costume variant versions of Snake Eyes at the same time. He only plays with 1 because there's only 1 Snake Eyes. And 1 Duke. and 1 Road Block. No matter how cool that other version of him is, they still know inherently that they can only use 1 of them in that particular battle.

But I got off onto a tangent there. The point I was making was that the other 9234945921 franchises like Captain Power that were launched at the same time didn't really HAVE any story. They had a little bit, but at least with Captain Power, I was always confused at how it was supposed to work. As a kid and now.

See, the thing that happened was that you'd get this action figure and with the toy came a VHS tape. And some sort of gun thing. The action figure had a hole right thru his chest and you were supposed to do this thing where you'd play the VHS tape and stick the gun into the hole on the back of his chest so that it would shoot out thru the clear plastic window in the front. And then the VHS tape was supposed to be some sort of video game.

Except that even as a 7 year old kid I realized "something here doesn't make sense... it's a VHS tape. Even if you don't play the "game" and just press play on it, the same things show up on the screen. The same video game "blam" noises happen and nothing changes whether you play the game or not. Because it's a vhs tape and it's not fucking interactive. And it couldn't be. You can't do a choose-your-own-adventure VHS tape without fast forwarding to certain times or changing to another VHS tape but that's essentially what this was. Or what it was portraying itself as.

And see... when even a 7 year old can tell that you're insulting their intelligence, that's a bit of a problem. And your "franchise" is going to fail.

I guess I got off topic a little just because I got into a little rant. But what I'm saying was that there were like 9000 of these fucking things created in a few year span that all fell flat on their face because there wasn't enough thought put into it ahead of time. They totally could have tried holding onto a couple of those ideas for the 90's when they totally fucking lost any ounce of creativity. And just imported Anime cartoons and made a bunch of confusing card games.

Then again, now that I think about it... how the fuck did Duck Hunt work? It wasn't VHS, but still... that's going to bug me now.