Ever notice how you never have a normal dream? There's probably no such thing as a 'normal dream', just dreams that are less bizarre than others. Anyways, this one I had last night REALLY stood out.
First it started off with dinosaurs running around some island and Marvel's Wolverine. Then it was flashed to Australia, where Steve Irwin was feeding a crocodile some corndogs before fish because of a stomach condition it had. Then it's flashed again, some fat kid lost his mother's giant pearl, and is in the Australian Ocean, looking for another one. He is on a large raft made of extremely burnt sausages. And who else is on this fine craft but me! I'm not exactly sure how I got there, but there are two things of french fries hanging off the side, as well as some delicious pickles in the middle. I'm pretty sure it had something to with that (got a first person perspective of eating french fries....they were the best ever!)
Now, this is where it gets trippy. There was a hot babe (probably one of the local Australians) who we had to pull aboard our burnt sausage raft. She starts hitting on the fat kid (which makes no sense at all, since I was shirtless, and he was twelve) and I'm like WTF?! She's not on long before the whole craft starts to fall apart. She's the first one to fall off, and I jump/fall in after her. After getting us both floating safely, she starts to hit on me ("Well aren't you handsome?") and I'm really liking it. But then there's some old lady lost out at sea, so I toss the hot chick to the fat kid (fat's lighter than water, he should be ok) to save the old bag. But when I do, she starts hitting on me and I freaked out (did I mention that we all miraculously kept our belly buttons above the water?) Swapped girls with fattie, and he also handed me the giant pearl he had found while I wasn't looking. I put it in my cheek and started Frenching with the hot chick.
Flash forward to the fat kid coming home to his mother. "Mom, I wrecked your pearl, but I got a new one from Australia!" "You can't get them from Australia! You have to get from from much further North!" I look at the pearl. It's a large yellow-brown sphere of stone.
"EUGH! That thing was in my mouth all the way here from Australia!"
And then the old lady was there again, talking about how I was her 'Special Friend' that day.
In retrospect, the hot chick probably swapped out the pearl when we were frenching. That thieving little wench!
So, morale of the story:
Never French a Girl When You've Got a Pearl in Your Mouth
This is something I had to do for math class a few months ago. Might as well upload it, as it's pretty lulzy.
Mearth: A world where everything is purely mathematical. The sunrise, the sunset, the shift of the moon and stars, the ever changing seasons, everything was laid down by equations the gods formulated in the very beginning of existence. In Mearth, one’s ability to survive depended on their mathematical prowess. Building, acrobatic, magical, even physical and combat skills depended on the being’s numerical processing power.
Mearth was a harsh world; for hundreds of millennia, the 4 racial groups, Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Greenfolk, fought for their own survival. After the casualties climbed into the millions for every side, the war reached a stalemate, and all of the races prayed to the gods for victory. And one day, the gods gave them an answer. Mathis, King of the Gods, Lord of all Math, decreed: “Whichever race can first find the Golden Ratio, where a:b =b:a+b, shall gain control of the MathHammer, and none other.”
But the MathHammer was not a weapon, no, but it was the greatest tool a mortal could ever wield. It was capable of creating anything given the correct materials and a small fraction of the time it would to build by any other tools. The clash of weapons was replaced with the scribbling of writing devices and the clunking of abaci as each race rushed to find the Golden Ratio.
The Dwarven King, Thresnik the Tripler, personally found the Golden Ratio himself and presented it on the temple altar of Mathis. Mathis looked down from his heavenly throne high above the mortals, nodded his divine head and turned the blessed paper on which the Golden Ratio was inscribed into the MathHammer. Thresnik used the MathHammer to build his capital city’s defences to the point at which the entire Greenfolk army could not penetrate its outer walls.
The Emperor of All Humanity, Aerith Mattic, realized that his chances of ever gaining control of the MathHammer were gone, and that his only hope was to make an alliance with the Dwarves, despite his xenophobia. He sent an ambassador to Thresnik, offering an eternal alliance. Thresnik first scoffed at the offer, for Dwarves are just a xenophobic as Humans. But then he saw how close the Human mathematicians had come to beating him to the Golden Ratio; indeed, had he took 2 days longer to find it, it would be he offering an alliance to Aerith! Realizing that Humans could still be a dangerous enemy, he accepted the offer, and the races thrived together.
The Elves, who had always thought that they were the smartest of the 4 racial groups, were shocked when it was the Dwarves, not them, that Mathis handed the mighty MathHammer to. Algeysia, Queen of the Elves (later derogatively nicknamed ‘Algae Bra’ by the Humans), sent a messenger to Aerith with a letter offering a military alliance to crush the Dwarves. This letter and the messenger’s severed head were sent to Thresnik as a sign of Aerith’s loyalty. Unable to ally with the Humans, unwilling to ally with the Greenfolk, the Elves slipped away to the Islands of Lust, planning to increase their number and amass their armies in secret.
The Greenfolk were enraged. They claimed that the gods hated them, and had given the Dwarves the MathHammer out of favouritism. Abandoning the gods, they began to worship demonic entities. These demonic entities strengthened the Greenfolk, but ultimately put the MathHammer out of their reach.
It has been 3 generations since the MathHammer fell into the hands of Thresnik the Tripler. The Greenfolk constantly siege the cities of Humans and Dwarves, and the Elves have made their return to the battlefield. With the struggle to survive growing more difficult by the day, the newly crowned Emperor of All Humanity, Pascal Pythagoras, prayed to Mathis for help. And Mathis answered: “I shall create a second MathHammer, and bestow it upon Humanity when I am provided the exact value of pi.”
At that point, the mathematicians had been able to find a thousand digits of pi, but it was not enough for the Great Mathis. Human soldiers and mercenaries valiantly held the line, assisted by Dwarven troops…….
And so it begins…….
I had to research this essay since the second semester started and write it this Monday and Tuesday, so I thought to myself: Hey, my top world's slipping. Perhaps I can publish this and shoot my rankings back up!
Anyways, let the essay begin!
Some things in this world should not be sugar-coated. That’s why Buckley’s tastes so bad: Medicine should never taste good, or children may think it is candy. It’s also why adults don’t put chocolate on steaks: The sweetness would ruin the unique meaty flavour. Instead, we use more suitable spices to augment the taste of beef, such as salt, pepper and garlic. Unfortunately, these metaphors do not always carry over to the mature side of the media, and it often ends up with a sugary glaze. Sometimes this is to make it ‘more suitable for children’, sometimes to make it a better product for its target audience. Either way, the results are not as intended. Censoring, self or otherwise, of mature media both insults the mature audience and leaves the immature audience less prepared for reality.
In recent events, videogames have been blamed for youth violence. But before videogames, comic books were the scapegoat of western society’s violent youth. It seems that this western paranoia has affected our imports: In the Japanese manga/anime Naruto, characters swear and try to kill each other (because they’re ninjas). While the American dubs (translations) can only tone down the violence from killing to knock-outs, they were proficient in removing all the swear words. Which is quite pointless, come to think of it. The audience of this series is teen based, so there is little use in editing out curses. Also, I could just go on youtube and find the episodes in their original Japanese dubs with subtitles made by independent/underground groups. On top of all that, the characters are of such an age group that, when put in those life threatening situations, you KNOW they would swear. There’s nothing more insulting to a mature audience than hearing a “Darn” when they were expecting a “DAMN YOU TO HELL, BASTARD!” In Naruto Shippuden (part 2 of the series), the titular character shouts the f-word. It is a much pondered question among the fans: what is the American dub (several months behind the Japanese version) going to do then? Make him say ‘firetruck’? And just to add salt to the wound, the Japanese dub has one of the characters using a technique known as the Drunken Fist (whenever he drinks alcohol). This technique became the ‘Loopy Fist’ in anime and the ‘Potion Punch’ in manga (when he drinks an elixir). This is insulting not only because he is quite clearly drunk yet we are expected to believe that it’s just an elixir, but because it’s in such a mature series. One character believes he exists only to kill, and another seeks to kill his older brother as revenge for exterminating his clan, but no alcohol references allowed? What’s next, removing swear words from pornography?
Sadly, the story about the home-brewed stuff isn’t much better. For example in X-Men 160, Juggernaut says “How about option 3…..WE KICK YOUR BUTTS!” right before he bodyslams crowd of Chinese soldiers. What I want to know is: why did he not use “ASS”? Come on, let’s face it, the Juggernaut is, well, a juggernaut. He’s unstoppable once he starts moving, super strong, and immune to physical damage. He doesn’t need to look both ways before crossing the street; I bet this guy crosses even if it’s a red light. Surely, a man of such power would develop a certain speech pattern. In the same issue, he calls a ridiculously large opponent he’s about to attack “Chicken Legs”. I, personally, would’ve said something more among the lines of “Sh*tface” or “Pig F*cker”. 2 issues later, and the villain Sabretooth asks the guys “Who needs to take a leak?” before attacking the X-Mansion. But it feels a little out of character: “Piss” is more Sabretooth’s word. I’m not saying we need a lot more swearing in comics, I’m saying that we need just enough swearing to make sure that the characters are ‘in character’. This works out great for everyone, as the only Marvel character I imagine dropping the F-bomb is the Hulk, but I don’t think it’s in his vocabulary. (Still, it would be hilarious) We need to show children characters that swear: children will learn that people who swear a lot are probably angry at something. Those who swear all the time tend to have certain personality traits, some admirable, some not. We need to get back to the good old days, when Wolverine would say “Let’s nail the bastards!” and jump into a mob of enemies, then Cyclopes would chastise him later for being such an aggressive loose cannon. It is actually quite possible to turn bad words, images and ideas into lessons that everyone benefits from.
(Paul McMasters, 27)
The internet is a minefield of censorship issues. Take http://www.theotaku.com/ for instance: it is a relatively small website that allows users to upload fan art (comics, pictures, wallpapers, etc) and make blog posts (fanfiction, essays, and all that good stuff) I am proud to be part of this online community, but there is one aspect of it with which I am discontent: There are no genitalia or female nipples allowed. I understand why this is (to protect children), but I have seen pictures where the nipple are covered by black boxes, and let me tell you: it REALLY ruins the artwork. Sure, I could just be saying that because I’m feeling perverted, but if I wanted to see nipples or vaginas as something to turn me on, I wouldn’t bother hanging around some dumpy little fan art site. Very large portions of the internet are dedicated to pornography, and any mature audience doesn’t look at the boobs on a fan art site just because they are boobs. I am dismayed by the fact that there is no maturity filter available on the site. Many other fan art sites have installed this simple feature (most noticeably devianArt) and it can be customized to a reasonable degree. Maybe you have to be 18 to see genitals, but you’re okay for boobies if you’re 14. Nudity has always been a part of art; sometimes, a piece of art has to be controversial to be artistic. If you take away the nudity, controversialism and mature themes from a mature audience, you’re going to be treating them like children, and NOBODY wants that.
Staying on the topic of fan stuff, turn your eyes to Fanfiction.net: A massive collection of fanfiction. Although it is rated according to maturity, there is no censorship whatsoever, and people can put up whatever the hell they want. Most of it is absolute sh*t that is poorly spelled and written at a level well below high school education standards. However, there are a few good ones in there, albeit most of them are humorous, satirical and/or parodical in nature. As said before, no censorship here. No, our problems are in the forums, where people have discussions about many things (like which pairing is the best, what is considered cannon, writing techniques, etc) Sometimes these discussions turn into arguments. No problem with that, except on the internet, arguments often become flame wars: unintelligent, dislogical online shout fests where everybody tries convince everybody else their opinion is right. Hate speech, cursing, and many other atrocities are common in flame wars. As a result, admins will use the banhammer to resolve flame wars. However, I believe that using this ultimatum all the time is irresponsible. Sure, sometimes you need to use the ultimate power, but would it not be more ideal to intervene at an earlier stage, say, just when things started to get nasty? When people start getting emotional in their arguments, there is a good opportunity to pull the opposing sides apart to give them time to chill. In that time, you can teach them skills and tactics important to constructing and using a good argument: finding evidence to support your thesis, extrapolating that evidence further to make more points, how to counter-argue, how to deal with counter arguments and, probably the most important skill of all, how to agree to disagree if not definitive outcome is determined. These are skills both immature and mature audiences would benefit from, and I’m sure that if the admins of any forum were more PROACTIVE (by teaching people how to argue) than they are REACTIVE (when they use the banhammer on people) that both the web and the real world would be a much more pleasant place.
Videogame are a controversial axel of censorship issues, largely because kids end up playing them so much. Then the parents (who let them buy the game in the first place) criticize the industry for churning out best-selling virtual slaughterfests. They say “Videogaming requires a Zen-like approach: one shot per kill; no time to celebrate a score or curse a miss. You have to go onto the next obliteration.” (Michael Brody) One could easily argue that many normal activities require a Zen-like approach, and that the ability to swiftly move onto the next task with no celebration or regret carrying over from the last task is a gift. But although “Simulated combat has always been part of children’s play…..” (Jacob Sullum), there are some games some kids certainly shouldn’t play. Take the Diablo series, for instance. It’s an isometric click-and-pwn RPG that puts you in control of a powerful warrior/wizard/assassin/whatever who is on an epic adventure to prevent demons from overthrowing the world. I have only played the first Diablo a few times, but I am ecstatic to hear of a third installment in the series, and eagerly seek out every detail of knowledge about it I can obtain. The class I’m looking forward to playing the most is the Barbarian, who comes in 3 flavors: Beserker (leaps into combat and deals high damage), Juggernaut (more of a slow, hard hitter with massive hitpoints) and Battlemaster (uses shouts to encourage self and teammates.) All the Barbarians fight close range, use physical weapons, have high strength and hitpoints, and can even wield some weapons single-handedly that other classes would need 2 hands for. In the demos, the Barbarian has been shown as a very dynamic fighter, jumping around, putting cracks in the earth with his foot, breaking open doors, bringing down the roof and liquefying/mauling/ripping apart opponents. But one thing disturbs me: the fansites inform me that Diablo III is not going to contain any nude statues. Well, okay, not going to miss that too much. Oh, and the demons with human female tops? Yeah, you can’t see their boobs either. What? Why is this happening? Well, according to the Man, you can have half naked chicks in 2d pixels (like Diablo I & II) but when you go into the 3d zone (like Diablo III) it’s verboten. This is just plain rude to a teen/adult audience. Not only are you crimping the game artist’s style, but you’re telling a mature audience what it can and can’t see. We don’t like it. I’ll admit that the Man sometimes accepts violence in mature games, but the gaming industry will never grow up and achieve its full potential if this situation continues.
There are some videogames, however, that are definitely suitable for children, but also enjoyable by older audiences. The Sly Cooper series is one of these. Sly is a raccoon who comes from a long line (all the way back to the time of the pharaohs) of thieves who choose only to rob other criminals. He has his own squad of teammates to help him out on his heists. In the second game of the series, one of the crime lords you take down is Rajan: an Indian kingpin who deals in illegal ‘spices’. These ‘spices’ make its users very angry, and as another crime lord in his gang demonstrates, susceptible to hypnosis. In fact, most of his gang’s money revolves around the ‘spice’: Dimitri distributes it among his nightclub patrons in France (and makes his real money by counterfeiting it), the Countess uses it to hypnotize other criminals into giving up the locations of their stashes, Jean Bison owns half the trains in Canada and uses them to distribute ‘spice’, and the gang leader uses the ‘spice’ as part of his master plan. Clearly, the word ‘spice’ is just a substitute for narcotics and/or hallucinogenic drugs. I was originally going to use this as an example for insulting a mature audience, but then again, it is clearly aimed at younger children, and this is necessary censorship. Or is it? In the game, one of your gang members is captured and held by the Countess. She uses the spice and her advanced hypnosis techniques in an attempt to break his mind. It almost works, but you are able to retrieve your teammate in time to save him. Of course, he takes considerable effort to bring him out of his unstable state. Since no characters used the spice to get ‘high’ at any point, could the developers not have used this as an opportunity to show children the negative consequences of drug use? You wouldn’t even have to call them ‘drugs’; ‘bad medicine’ or ‘herbs’ might be a little more ESRB friendly. Perhaps this could’ve been a lesson, but probably not the way things are now. Maybe in the future, then, things will change, and every child’s videogame will be both entertainment and a subtle life lesson.
So much censorship in this world, so many ‘reasons’ why. “Protect the children!” You think your children aren’t going to grow up one day? They’ll be exposed to it all eventually, its better you get them weaned off sugar coated stuff as soon as you can without messing up their minds. But when is that? At what age should people be exposed to certain things? I believe this is a personal decision, and should be decided by the parent at first, then the child as they grow older. But the Man sometimes decides that under a certain age, NO ONE should see something. In fact, sometimes, NO ONE should see certain things EVER. Usually, he is not right in his thinking, as it is driven by fear and exaggerations made by his own psyche. The speech police of this world believe that we are drowning in sex and violence. They would convince us that the reading, viewing or playing of violent entertainment is just as bad as committing violent crimes. (Paul McMasters, 26) But we’re not drowning. At most, as a society, we’re wading. The only time someone drowns is when they’re dumb or clumsy enough to fall in face first and not get their head back out of the water. But don’t get everybody out of the water just because a few idiots drowned…..just give those clumsy fools some water wings. Of course, why save them? If they’re so dumb as to drown in shallow water, how long could they really have lasted on dry land?
Jacob Sullum, Reason, May 19, 1999
Michael Brody, The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behaviour Letter, November 2000
Paul McMasters, Speech Should Not be Restricted, Mass Media: Opposing Viewpoints, 2004
But there is hope: To learn more about reintroducing wolves to the Scottish highlands, go to http://www.wolftrust.org.uk/.
I love computers.
