I Found a Unicorn!

Okay, I didn't actually find a Unicorn, and I can't be credited to any of these findings in terms of the proof of Unicorns. I did, however, use the internet to find an animal I didn't know about, and am now taking credit for it because I can. So, here we go. We've all wished that Unicorns were real. Some people will argue to the grave that they are, but you know what, they are unfortunately just idiots. Because, and I'm going to just say it, Unicorns aren't real.

I'm sorry, Unicorn lovers, I know I've hurt you, but give me a chance to redeem myself. Here's what I think happened. Unicorns did exist, once. But there was that whole "Unicorn horns are magical and provide crazy powers to the person that posses it" thing. So, the Unicorns got together one day and just said "fuck this shit, I'm going home." I mean, wouldn't you want to get away from people who are constantly trying to kill you? So what did they do? They went somewhere humans couldn't follow. They went back into the ocean.

Being mammals, however, they didn't turn into fish. They used their magical horn power to speed up evolution and grew flippers and tails, and into the water they went, away from human hands. The swam out into the coldest parts of the world, where there was tons of ice, because they like white stuff because as Unicorns that was their colour and all. And they hid. They swam around doing ocean Unicorn stuff, reproducing and making more and more ocean Unicorns until someone stumbled upon them on some ocean expedition.
So Unicorn lovers. Here's your Unicorn. It's called a Narwhal. Embrace it.

Saving the World, RPG Style

Role Playing Games (RPGs) drive me crazy. I love them, but seriously, they can be infuriating. I mean, let’s take a look at the go-to RPG story structure. You are nobody. You live a crummy, normal person life in a normal person town with normal friends and a normal culture. Then shit hits the fan, someone you know and possibly love is kidnapped, hurt, or put at risk of serious harm in the not-too-distant future. Then, you kiss normality goodbye and begin a quest to stop the rampage of destruction that is now plaguing your world and putting your lifestyle or normality at risk.

So, off you go, to save the world, acquiring skills and learning how to become the most epic warrior of all time so that you can confront evil head-on. Sometimes you band together with some other people, sometimes you go it alone. Who cares, you’re suddenly awesome, and you’re out with a pure heart to save the universe! But you don’t necessarily know that. You might think you’re just out to help a friend, or out to help your town or your community. But eventually, you always end up saving the world.

So why does this annoy me? It’s about the structure. A good RPG has anything from 50-500 hours of game play built into it. The main story is anything from 8-20 hours of this total. So what’s with the other 480 hours? Well, that’s the most important part of any RPG! That’s all the shit that you can do while saving the world when you don’t quite feel like saving the world. Someone lost a puppy. Go find it! Someone needs a haircut. Buy them scissors. Someone wants a mine full of zombies and walking skeletons cleared so he can steal the treasure that you’re going to go steal in the process of clearing the mine for him. Go clear the mine.

What makes this awesome? The whole time you’re out collecting bottles of water or catching fairies or chasing puppies, the evil power that is destroying the world is apparently sitting on his ass eating grapes and jerking off. He’s the laziest villain ever, because as you are rising to power, he’s just hanging out saying to himself “I’m going to wait to make my next step in global domination until someone comes to throw a wrench in the machine.” He has no drive, no ambition! He’s just hanging out waiting for you to roll up into his space and stab him in the back before he reaches global domination.

What I expect from a RPG and a villain is this: “Warrior, while you were out collecting some chickens for the farmer that let them all escape because he’s lazy and left the gate open, Super Villain X decided to kill the king and took over the kingdom. Way to waste time.”

That’s what I want in a RPG. Someone, go make that game so I can lose at it for collecting horse poo in a jar.

The Mario Years

I have been thinking about Mario Bros. lately. I can’t tell you why other than the simple fact that sometimes I just get stuck in a thought process and can’t escape it. Then, when I’m trapped, what started as something simple and stupid, i.e. “why does Luigi always help Mario save Peach when there’s no reward for him? Mario gets cake, and Luigi gets nothing?” evolves into something far more detailed, like the rest of this piece.

Mario and Luigi started in 1983. They are plumbers, or at least they were, because since 1983 they haven’t had any time to hold a single plumbing job given the fact that they are always busy rescuing Princess Peach from the clutches of a dinosaur-turtle that seems hell-bent on bestiality-rape. Since Bowser showed up, I’m assuming Mario and Luigi had to sell their plumbing company just to make ends meet. Those overalls aren’t free, and both Mario and Luigi seem to enjoy colour-coding what they wear with whatever power they have acquired. That means they had to buy their default overalls, white and red for fire power, blue for ice, frog suits, penguin suits, and then small versions of everything in case they can’t find an Alice in Wonderland type growth mushroom to wear their adult overalls. So I think it’s safe to say they are currently out of the plumbing industry, and have been so out of practice since 1983 that they probably couldn’t even re-open a business even if Princess Peach managed to hire some guards that weren’t tiny toadstools to protect her from Bowser.

So how do they make money? I think this is why Luigi always helps his brother save the Princess. I know that Mario is doing it for cake, which I firmly believe is a metaphor for sex, but I think Luigi is looking at the big picture. Worst case scenario, I’m sure Princess Peach has enough money to offer up some sort of reward for saving her. Best case scenario, Mario marries Princess Peach and lets his brother live in the castle with them. Honestly, I think the latter would be the best case scenario. I don’t think Bowser would keep trying to steal Princess Peach if Mario and Luigi lived with her. They would be an enormous deterrent, given the fact that they keep hurting him every time he tries to steal her. I mean, in Mario 64, they even threw him into exploding spike balls until he needed hospitalization and quite possibly extensive surgery.

Which brings me to my next point; throwing Bowser into spike balls must be hard. He’s heavy. I mean, he’s a giant dinosaur turtle with a spiked shell that’s at least twice the size of Mario in the original Mario Bros., and about 100 times the size of him in Mario Galaxy. By Mario 64, Bowser was about 10 times the size of Mario. That’s a lot of throwing power. To make things even more interesting, Mario spent some time doing community service work in Mario Sunshine. There he would run around with this interesting water-cannon backpack that would fire enormous amounts of water on pollution scattered across the city and neighboring areas. I would assume that the water cannon held about 50 cubic feet of water before Mario had to go find a nice clean water hole and fill it up. Water weighs roughly 62.5 pounds per cubic foot. That means Mario is not only lugging around 3125 pounds of water, but he’s pulling off triple jumps that are well over 3 stories high at the same time.

So why is Mario still fat? He jumps 3 stories high carrying 3125 pounds of water and about 200 pounds of body fat. How is he still fat? He must have some serious metabolism issues. Either that, or he has such enormous muscle mass (which is very likely given his strength) that it has to roll on top of each other and shape itself like fatty tissue in order to fit into his short little body. I mean, we’re talking about a guy that breaks brick with a light tap of his closed fist. This little guy is strong.

I don’t really expect answers to these questions. I would like them, but I don’t really expect them. I guess I’ll just have to go day-to-day in being unsure. But on a final note, what kind of dinosaur is Yoshi? And also, why when he’s hatched from an egg, is he already wearing a saddle? That’s just strange.