Why Super Mario Bros. 3 Was Overrated - and Why EVERYONE is wrong about Super Mario Galaxy

A while ago I mentioned that I thought Super Mario Bros. 3 was overrated and that Super Mario World was far superior. I thought I would take some time to clarify my comments, mainly because they were brief and dismissive, owing to the fact that they were a one-off in a post on an unrelated topic. That, and I want to stat an oh-so-timely discussion about Super Mario Galaxy, which came out about a year ago. So, let's start digging at some old wounds, shall we?

The only word fit to fully describe Super Mario Bros. 3 (which, for brevity, shall henceforth be known as Mario 3) is "extravagant." To understand what I mean by this, let's take a look at the history of the series. The original Super Mario Bros. was clean and simplistic, yet depth existed, not in the form of thousands of collectibles or side quests, but in the form of its basic gameplay mechanics and the pure joy of movement. The fact that it was instantly understandable and fun, and its complex yet intuitive gameplay is what made it such a huge hit, and why it continues to be appealing even today. When the sequel was finally going to come out, there were certain expectations about what the game would be like.

Of course, all those expectations were broken. As we all know, Mario 2 was different. Very different. Even though it had the same characters as the first game, it was barely recognizable as a Mario game. Instantly this turned a lot of people off, people who simply wanted more of the same thing. When it was finally printed in Nintendo Power, for in those pre-Internet times Nintendo Power was our only source for game-related news, the news spread quickly that this wasn't a Mario game at all, but some unrelated Japanese game that had Mario shoehorned in to appeal to American gamers. Thus, Mario 2 was seen as an impostor, a pretender to the throne, a subpar game hiding behind the mask of our beloved Super Mario. In truth, these statements are unfair, as Mario 2 was a good game, and definitely better than Mario 3. It amuses me how people who practically worship Shigeru Miyamoto decry this game for ripping off his work, when it was Miyamoto who designed it in the first place, and in fact had nothing to do with what fans consider the "true" sequel, the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2. However, it also makes me sad, as this attitude is exactly what ruined Mario 3.

This attempt by Miyamoto to continue to innovate in games and take them in new directions was met by indifference by fans both American and Japanese, yet the Japanese took to the official Mario sequel. The Japanese Mario 2 was essentially the same game as the first, yet made arbitrarily harder, with new items and abilities. It played like Mario 1 with all the fun sucked out of it. Everything about the game was mean, from the ridiculous number of jumps that could only be made if your reaction time was about 1/30 of a second, mushrooms that would hurt you and were virtually indistinguishable from the good ones, and secret warp zones that actually sent you backwards in the game. Doki Doki Panic (the game that in America became Mario 2) was fun, and Mario 2 was soulless yet hardcore. At this time, gamers voted with their wallets that they preferred the latter.

Since the preferred Mario 2 was the same game with some extras, there was nowhere left to go with the third one except to release the same game with a fucking shitload of extras. Huge worlds, lots of crazy powerups, alternate routes through the level maps, the ability to collect powerups for use on a specific level, this game had a lot of extraneous shit. You can see this simply in a list of the powerups in the game. In addition to the classic mushroom, flower, and star this game had a leaf that turned you into a flying raccoon, a suit that lets you throw hammers into a useless upward arc, a suit that's basically the same as the leaf except you can turn into a statue, which serves no purpose whatsoever, a suit that made you hop around like a frog, making it extremely difficult to control, and a giant shoe that you could hop around in like a maniac, usually right into a pit. And to think people accuse New Super Mario Bros of having a lot of useless items.

I've heard it said that Super Mario World ruined Nintendo. This notion is wrong. World was an attempt to pare down the bullshit and return Mario to the state of being something fun, rather than being a "videogame." But the damage was already done, not just to Nintendo, but to the entire industry. From then on the focus has changed from creating interesting experiences to making things more "videogamey." There's a formula now, and it's depressing. It's all about stats, and scores, and learning curves, and it just needs to stop. Had Doki Doki Panic done well, the face of gaming might have been very different indeed, for the better.

In fact, between World and Mario 64, it seemed like maybe Nintendo was back on track again. Though World was still part of the same formula that would eventually suck the entire gaming industry dry of innovation, unlike the game that inspired it this was a game that believed that less was more. It replaced all those useless extra powerups with one, one which enabled flight with a wonderfully difficult and complex timing based mechanic that was entirely optional to the completion of the game. Mario 64 added the collection of stars, which was intended to expand the game and make it more open-ended, but really just ended up bogging down the experience with an unnecessary and tedious collection status. There was no logical reason to be collecting these things, other than that you needed them, and they ended up segmenting what should have been a cohesive experience. On the other hand, the game finally managed to recapture the original Super Mario Bros. in terms of fun and joy of movement. Sadly, only the tedious part would endure.

Super Mario Sunshine was, to reuse a phrase that should now have become all too familiar, Mario 64 with all the fun removed. You still had the quest of collecting all 120 thing-a-ma-doos, but without the wonderful physics or sense of presence of the previous game. People rightfully hated the game, but oddly enough praised the sections of the game where the water pack was removed and the player transported to a platforming world made of simplistic blocks. There are two problems with this. One, the water pack was the central mechanic of the game, so it's pretty fucked up that removing it makes the game better. Two, these parts of the game sucked. These sections were described by most people as "challenging," but what they really were was unfair. You would never miss these jumps because you messed up the timing or misjudged the angle. You would miss them because of the terrible camera and floaty physics. This was why the water pack was invaluable in that game, you needed that hover to compensate for these design deficiencies. However, despite the fact that the game was completely broken, there were some clever things going on with the use of water in that game. This became a sign of the Miyamoto to come for the next while, interesting ideas with poor execution. This can probably be owed to the fact that Miyamoto is now simply an idea man, giving birth to wonderful concepts and then stepping aside as others see them through to completion.

Which brings us to Super Mario Galaxy. No matter what you think of this game, you are wrong. Think it's a worthy successor to Mario 64? You are wrong. Think it's a poorly designed game? You are wrong. Think it's a decent game that was over hyped? You are wrong. Think it's exemplary of what has been going wrong with Nintendo for a while now? Guess what? You are wrong. Because here is what Galaxy really is, and I have never seen anyone ever point this out:

Super Mario Galaxy is the best Sonic the Hedgehog game ever made.

Take a moment to let that sink in. It's a heady idea to be sure, and one that is not free of irony. But think about it for a bit and it will begin to make sense.

Galaxy is a game where you never stop moving. Sure, you CAN stop, but then again so could Sonic. Yet for some reason you don't. In both games, some unseen force compels you to continue moving, to continue driving forward. This presence has never been felt in any previous Mario game, each one taking place at a fairly relaxed pace, despite the fact that the majority of them have time limits. In Galaxy, the impulse to keep moving is helped along by the fact that you always know where to go. If this were a Mario game, this would be called hand-holding, but viewed as a Sonic game, this is simply streamlining. Still not convinced this game is a Sonic game? Alright, try this on for size: Mario's main form of attack in the game is a spinning move that briefly makes him both invincible and deadly. Sound familiar?

Now that we've established Galaxy as Sonic game, on to the second part of my claim, that it is in fact the BEST Sonic game. The problem with the Sonic the Hedgehog games is that they are not just game, but also tech demo. For the Genesis to prove its superiority over Nintendo's systems, they had to demonstrate that their games could render at ludicrous speeds. So they made Sonic fast. Really fast. Too fast, in fact. Sonic's incredible speed is a hindrance to the level design of the games. Because the player cannot see the obstacles ahead, all of the levels either have to be nothing but a pretty roller coaster, or they have to throw up a vertical wall to slow the player down for a more slow paced platforming section. It's once you've started to memorize the layouts of these harder platforming sections that the true joy of the game comes out, moving at a brisk pace through dangerous terrain. Anyone who has ever truly loved a Sonic game will understand that it's not really about speed, it's about momentum.

Galaxy cuts the speed in order to preserve all that wonderful momentum while still letting you retain a sense of control and accomplishment. They've even managed to include the "wow" factor of the old experience of going through loops and spirals at full speed, in the form of the star cannons that launch you from planetoid to planetoid. When the idea of Super Mario Galaxy rocketed from Miyamoto's brain down to earth, whoever picked it up must have been someone who truly understood and loved Sonic the Hedgehog.

So, this concludes my brief history of the Mario games. The series rose, started to fall with Mario 3, and finally transformed into Sonic the Hedgehog. Meanwhile, the Sonic games transformed into utter shit. Growing up in the 1990s, one had to take sides either with Mario or Sonic, for the two were representative of their consoles, constantly at war. It's hard to say who won out, Sega for crafting such an incredible concept, or Nintendo for finally realizing it so fully. Either way, Mario and Sonic are now one and the same, and perhaps the fighting can finally stop.

Mission Accomplished

It saddens me to say that this will be my last post, because I have finally achieved the goal that I set out when I started this blog. It's been a long, strange, somewhat infuriating trip, but all good things have to come to an end sometime. Before I started out, I made a promise to my self that I would quit once I had reached the zenith of my blogging career, and not flame out after a long period of gross irrelevance, like some pathetic nobody. I don't want to be like that band that you see in the shitty dive bar, whose name sounds familiar, and it bugs you for a while until you realize that they were some big name band in the 80s, and now they're playing in some shitty dump just to make rent. No, much better to gracefully bow out when you're at the top. And I think once I explain how I came to this decision, that you will agree that this is the best, and indeed only, course of action I can take. Here is the situation:

I got a hit from the following Google search string: "The effect of fucking in the ass"

That's it. I can't imagine it getting any better than this. I can't even make fun of this person, because it's just so perfect. Someone was looking for descriptions (and possibly illustrations) of a stretched out ass hole, and instead they found my meaningless rant page. That is just too great for words, and you can't make jokes about it, because the situation itself IS a joke. Obviously I have no choice but to bow out of the world of internet self-publishing forever. Thanks for reading, and never forget to always check your prejudices at the door. Peace out.






















































Postscript:
As is hopefully obvious, I am just kidding. The truth is I'm not worried about becoming irrelevant, because my blog is already irrelevant to most people's interests. I have, and will, in the future, continue to write in this space in a way that purely serves my own interests. And no, I don't pity the washed up 80s band. I love washed up 80s bands. If I could be anything I wanted to be, I would be in a washed up 80s band, playing in a shitty bar for unappreciative jerks. That's right, I want to die out slowly and painfully. The fact is, I will continue to maintain this blog long after I and anyone I know has lost interest. In fact, given Google's proclivity for archiving, this site may well last for as long as the human species continues to thrive, because I'm sure as hell not taking it down (If you are reading this post in the distant future, I hope you enjoy my opinions on your now historically ancient software and deities. Actually, I don't care whether you do or not, I was just being polite, though I honestly don't know why. In fact, fuck you, the future. You've never brought us anything but total annihilation by robots anyway. Honestly, I think we should build some kind of device that stops time so we never have to see the fucking future, but shit, I just realized that that kind of technology only exists in the future. Fuck). So look forward to many great times to come, followed by not so great times, followed by downright excruciating times. But hey, at least there will be times, right? And that's what really matters.

Postscript to the postscript:
In that last parenthetical, perhaps I was a bit hard on the future. The truth as, I actually have some very humanistic tendencies, and I have every reason to believe that the future is actually going to be pretty fucking great. I think that I'm being fairly objective when I say that the world is a better place than it was 10 years ago, 100 years ago, and 1000 years ago. I believe that today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow is going to be better than today, every day for a long, long time. But the futures depicted in science fiction are some fucked up futures. Those futures can kiss my ass. Seriously.

Postscript to the post-postscript:
I'm pretty sure this section is already longer than the original post. David Foster Wallace would be proud (If he weren't dead, and if he had any idea who I was when he was alive, or cared about the type of shit that I write about (Also, he might be pissed that I dissed the science fiction futures (Or maybe not, being fucked up is kind of the point, after all))). But now things have just gotten convoluted and silly, and I don't really have any idea where to go with this crazy idea.

Postscript to the post-post-postscript:
I like pie.

On 'Athiests'

Here’s the thing: I love a good argument. This is because I don’t see them as a clashing of people, but as a clashing of ideas. History is made through arguments; new ideas are defined by pitting them against the old ones. More can be learned through the meeting of the minds than by any other method. Arguing with someone is inviting another thought process into your life, to present a point of view that you might not have considered. Mind you, I’m not talking about some kind of namby-pamby lovefest where everyone is right and everyone’s ideas are considered worthwhile and valuable, no matter how dumb they are. No, the most useful argument is one where no one holds back, and if you say something, you’d better be prepared to back it up. I say this so that when I say that I’ve been known to hit up religious message boards or chat rooms, you know that I’m not just some jackass looking for trouble.

On these message boards, an interesting misspelling crops up fairly often. The word, as depicted in millions of online message, is “athiest.” It is interesting to note, that it is always the religious who spell it this way, apparently all the atheists in the world know how to spell their own ideology. Now, one could take the easy way out and conclude that all believers are idiots (in fact, many do), but that doesn’t quite explain such widespread misuse of the word; after all, surely even some idiots own dictionaries. No, the answer is not intelligence, but rather the exercise of said intelligence. They misspell the word, because they are not used to using it. You see, these people don’t like arguments.

To love an argument is to not have any personal stake in it. My opinions are fluid, they can be changed. Not easily, mind you, I do have certain convictions that are powerfully cemented from years of observation and experience, but they can, and occasionally have been shifted. This cannot be said of the most vocally religious. These people are not fun to argue with. Anything you say to them will either be ignored or quickly forgotten. Instead of arguing a point, they will turn antagonistic, and either attack you directly or unpack their straw man and have a go at him.

I had an argument a little while ago with a mormon missionary when he mentioned he supported a certain upcoming ballot measure in the state of California that would outlaw gay marriage. Out of curiosity, I asked him what the difference between straight marriage and gay marriage was. He replied by pointing out the most obvious difference, which I guess is what I get for wording the question the way I did. I refined my query to “from a legal perspective, how is a marriage between two persons any less valid than a marriage between two other persons?” He replied that marriage is classically defined as between a man and a woman. That didn’t exactly answer my question, but I continued the debate anyway by pointing out that, in fact, marriage in this country was classically defined as between a white man and white woman, so obviously tradition is not a substantial reason to preserve an archaic law. He then said it was because homosexuality is unnatural, and no doubt in anticipation of my impending “how so?” elaborated that two persons of the same sex cannot have a baby. Well, obviously that was contrary to the facts, because there are lots of gay couples with babies, and I asked him if he thought that the “unnatural” practice of adoption was immoral. It went like this for a little while longer, until finally so many of his excuses had been shot down that the truth finally came out. It was because a preacher at a pulpit had said it was wrong. He said, “I know as an athiest (okay, it was a verbal conversation, but I could swear that the way he spoke it he put the ‘i’ before the ‘e’) that you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have faith.” I replied that the only thing I didn’t understand was how we had talked for over an hour without the topic of religion coming up, when this was clearly the basis for his decision.

Faith, it seems leads people to duplicitous actions. Or, then again, maybe not. After all, what is faith? I would define faith as a confidence that is not based on proof. The religious use the words ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ interchangeably, but I do not think that they are. You can believe in something without having faith in it. Faith implies more, that not only what you believe in exists, but that it has the power to make everything okay. I do not think this young man had faith. I’m fairly certain he believes in his god, but he does not have faith in him. If he did, he would not be using half-assed, poorly thought out “logic” to try to convince me. He would have spoken from the heart, secure in the knowledge that eventually god would sort everything out.

If you believe in god, then you have one of two things: faith or fear. In my experience, it is the ones who have fear who are the most outspoken. These people are so frustrated by every little thing that dares contradict the thing that they so desperately desire, that they will spit out the most hateful, vitriolic nonsense you will ever hear in an attempt to destroy it. If you truly have faith, there should be no need to destroy anything. No pastor delivering an angry sermon, no street preacher crying judgment day, no evangelical speaking in tongues, nobody in a suit handing out flyers, no shouting conservative on cable news, and certainly no boy with a name tag and bicycle, none of them truly have faith. If they did, they would not need to rely on cheap theatrics and social pressures. In fact, they would not need to do anything, because they should already believe that everything is going to end well.

I’ve talked to people who have faith. They are generally much more productive than the believers who lack it. I’ve had some interesting, and much more honest arguments with people of faith. They haven’t been able to convince me to change my views, nor I them, but in the end we’ve usually learned something about each other. For those of you out there who believe in a god and have faith, real, honest faith, then let me say how much I respect you for that. I still disagree with you, and I will defend that position with everything I’ve got. But if you’ll allow me, I’ll buy you a nice cup of tea and we’ll sit down and have a good argument about it.

A Post for Garfield

Here are some Garfield comics for your amusement. Be warned, however, the first one depicts severe bleeding of the dick. If that sort of thing upsets you, then you might want to avoid a career in medicine. For all you others out there, who do not fear or look away from injury to the genitals, enjoy.

Twatter

No, your eyes do not deceive you, there is in fact a New Thing(TM) on the side of this blog. That's right, I have embraced that lazy cousin of blogging, tweeting. That's right, you can now look forward to 140 character comments any time I care to describe an amusing hat I saw, or an amazing shit I took, or have come up with a Japanese version of a popular movie title, or any other fantastic witticism I have to share with the world. Don't expect me to update it too often, as my thoughts can rarely be condensed into 140 letters, spaces, and marks of punctuation. However, it certainly will be used to signal my army of trained bears to begin buggering all the members of Congress and key members of White House staff in preparation for my coup d'etat. When you see me twert the phrase, "Have a bear-y nice day," be sure to be prepared for the oncoming revolution.

Until next time, cats and kittens, I do hope you have a wonderful day.

Obama vs McCain, Round 2

Just had a few thoughts I wanted to share on the recent debate. I really don’t want this to turn into a political blog, but again, there’s not really much to talk about. I’ll try to keep things brief, and so as not to come off as an asshole, I’m going to try to leave my personal opinions out of it. This should be pretty easy, as I don’t really have any strong opinions on either of these candidates.

So, here we have the second presidential debate. The format of the first one I thought gave a slight edge to Obama, a formal setting with strict rules and guidelines, and since his campaign has been focusing on directly addressing the issues, this would appear to be his forte. And I think it is fair to say that in the minds of all those who aren’t blinded by partisan loyalty, Obama came out the winner that night. Tonight’s debate, I thought, would give the edge to McCain, as he has spent his whole campaign basically trying to befriend the American voters. I was interested to see how McCain would handle himself in this more comfortable, loose, roundtable type setting. I was surprised to see Obama pretty much blow him out of the water.

This was an Obama unlike we’ve seen before. Sure, he’s criticized McCain in the past, but never on this level. Normally I tend to be turned off by attack politics, but in this debate format it absolutely worked, and it was exactly the right time for Obama to take this strategy. McCain, on the other hand, I thought came off as weak and kind of pathetic. He kept cracking unfunny jokes to a deathly silent room, and when Obama broke the formula by essentially assigning himself some time for a rebuttal, McCain was actually whining that he was breaking the rules.

Personally, I thought Obama went a little too far in places, especially when he pretty much laid the blame for the Iraq war at McCain’s feet, but it really doesn’t matter what I think. To the American public the point has been made. Obama demonstrated the strength that voters want to see in the President, and McCain demonstrated that he is Michael Scott from the Office (Thursday nights on NBC!). Based on tonight, I think now is probably a good time for the White House to start printing letterheads reading “President Barack Obama.”

Because you really can’t have enough letterheads.

How People Find The FME

Google provides an amazing tool in its search engine. It can instantly return information on any subject on earth, arranged fairly smartly in order of relevance and usefulness. But there are some cases where Google fails, and one must get creative in their searches. Or sometimes, you can make a game out of it, typing strange and obscure things, browsing the dark corners of the Internet. And of course, net corners don’t come much darker than this little one I happen to be squatting on called the Frenzied Mind Effect. So, on occasion, these brave explorers end up crashing their boats on the jagged rocks of my conscious mind. My only hope is what they see there confuses, annoys, or, if I’m lucky, astounds them.

And judging by some of the search strings that lead people to my little corner of the interconnected web, we have quite the rogue’s gallery passing through here. The minority of results belong to phrases that I would actually want to lead people to my site, phrases like “anarchy gun control” or “belief in god the effect of a frenzied mind” (This is perhaps the one I’m most proud of. That, and the one person who found me by browsing all blogs tagged with the word “fuck.”). It also fills my with joy to see that I am the third Google result for “frenzied mind” (with a little luck, soon to be number two, you’d better watch your fucking back, lds.org!). However, the vast majority of searches only manage to confuse, annoy, and astound me (Such as the number of variations on the phrase “horse fucking.” Seriously, a lot of people show up here looking for equestrian themed pornography.). Now, for the purposes of shits and giggles, I would like to share some of these with you, separated by theme and vigorously annotated by my own snarky comments.

fuck apple and their shitty commercials
fuck apple corporation
shitty computer
fucking iphoto
fucking itunes deleting podcasts
a fucking number to apple
fucking apple inside ass

These are the majority of the search hits I get, people who apparently desire to hear someone bitch about Apple computers. This is, of course, only natural. Apple’s sucking is well documented, both at this fine site and elsewhere, and they will continue to suck until Microsoft finally collapses under the weight of its own irrelevance and Apple can no longer market their products because they have no one to make fun of. The last two items on the above list are very near to my heart. The first, because it initially appears to make no sense, but once you think about it, it still doesn’t make any sense, but it has begun to form its own logic, as though from twigs and leaves, and you feel as though to understand it is to discover some deep and crucial secret of the universe. The last one, admittedly does not have anything to do with computers, but yet the homograph creates the link, and thus this site is found. This is perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the search engine, that occasionally it can connect two unrelated ideas in a random and interesting way.

bioshock recorders
last words in bioshock
bioshock screen flickers
bioshock percent complete screen
bioshock family review
can you spend the adam after killing atlas?
bioshock save atlas’ family
bioshock atlas family death
fisting a cream pie

A surprising number of people come here looking for Bioshock spoilers or information. I’m not really sure why this is, I’ve only written the one blog post about the game, and it was actually fairly negative. As when I wrote it, there still isn’t much too say about Bioshock; it’s a game with a brilliant idea that shoots out the frontal cortex of its brain during the final act. I don’t know what the fuck a Bioshock recorder is, or why so many people are so concerned over Atlas’ fake family. If the fisting a cream pie bit’s inclusion in this section confuses you, it is because it’s a phrase I included in my review. Personally I would love to meet the person who typed it in as a Google search, and I am honored that my blog is the first, and in fact only, site returned by this search.

And now we come to the dregs. Be prepared, for some of these searches exceed the FDA’s daily allotted allowance for awesome. I have prepared comments for each of these individually.

dreams are the window to the soul
Fuckin’ a. It seems my ironic use of clichés is finally paying off.

Did anyone take the Redux Bonus?
I don’t know, did they? Also, don’t you just love it when people ask questions to Google, as though it were some sort of living thing? Actually, that’s kind of a disquieting thought.

horsing around fucking
This is one idea I cannot support. I demand that my pornography be straightforward and orderly. There is no room for horsing around while fucking, someone could get injured.

silent vision loose pant
This is another of those ones where you look at it and you try to reconstruct the thought process of the person who entered it. The mind boggles at the idea of how vision can be silent, and what role the tightness of one’s pants plays in the whole affair.

not in cruelty not in wrath the reaper came today an angel visited this path -cube
I can see what they were going for here, but the way they formatted it makes it look as though “cube” is the signature of this quote.

stupid xtians
This one impresses me because my blog does not appear within the first ten pages of results. Whoever pulled out this one must really hate those fucking xtians.

fuck congress
Yeah, fuck those guys! Actually, most of them are pretty old, I don’t think I’d want to fuck them.

frenzied fucking
Wow, I very much doubt you found what you were looking for here.

cons of butter
Man, I just can’t decide if I should eat butter or not. I know, I’ll ask the Internet! After all, the Internet is well known for its reasoned and articulate debates. I feel certain that no one will make reference to the fat content of my ass.

Finally, I’d like to say a few words in conclusion. Here they are:

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

Good night, everybody.

So It's Come To This...

I usually don’t like to talk about politics. People say this is because I am uninformed or apathetic, but neither is true. The real reason is because politics is where logic goes to die. It is a place where men of conviction solve their differences through sheer bluster and gnashing of teeth. Whenever I see a political “debate” all I can think of is French absurdists trying to determine whose hot air balloon is the fastest by throwing big piles of shoes at each other (maybe that metaphor is a bit too obtuse, point is these free soapbox hours are about the farthest you can get from an actual debate). I see all these things going on in the world, and then I ask the people who desire to represent me, what are you going to do about this? And all I hear is the constant warbling of turkeys.

This election year is being touted as the most important election of all time. Though I doubt that, as every election has been trumpeted as such since the beginning of our governmental system, it at least seems to be the one that weighs most heavily on the mind of the average citizen. The world scene has been eclipsed by this election, it casts a shadow which blots out all other news. Lots and lots of people are talking about little else. So, as I sit here, plotting my triumphant return from my long absence, it seem at last unavoidable, I must discuss that which I dread: the machinations of those who wish to rule.

First, I would like to talk about Sarah Palin. Actually, that is a lie; it is more like I must talk about Sarah Palin, and I’d like to get it out of the way. When she was first announced, my first reaction was, “who?” My next reaction was that of intrigue, at this handsome, well-groomed woman who kills moose with her bare hands. Then there was that period for the next couple of weeks where a new scandal would break about her every two hours. I mostly ignored these as reactionary hearsay, but I started to become worried that a few of these were sticking around, despite the fact that nobody cared anymore. In fact, the book banning and law enforcement scandals now appear to actually be backed up by credible evidence, yet nothing has come of it because the country has moved on to other things. As the weeks passed, I kept a suspicious eye on Ms. Palin, until finally that fateful interview aired. At last the truth came out: she is a dunderhead.

This woman is quite possibly the only Republican dumber than George W. Bush. It was obvious from the beginning that she was a half-assed publicity stunt, but good god, she is dumber than a bag of wet coats. She is a hand puppet being held up by a hand puppet. Honestly, I’m not sure she even realizes she’s running for Vice-President; it’s possible she thinks John McCain is some kind of magical troll who will grant her wishes if she says nice things about him.

Which brings us to McCain. What the fuck happened to this guy? A few years ago, he seemed like he had a pretty good head on his shoulders. True, I didn’t always agree with the guy, but at least he had the balls to be a pro-choice Republican. This guy didn’t care who he pissed off, and he made his own decisions. I don’t know if he suddenly incurred a large debt to the Republican National Committee, or if he’s just gone senile, but in his current state, McCain is just sad. They’ve made him fall in line idealistically with Bush, and when they forced Sarah Palin on him, they just cut off his balls completely.

Moving on, let’s talk about the economy. The economy sucks.

What? You wanted more? Ugh, fine.

As I am apparently a fierce goddamn romantic, I tend to see things in metaphor. And to me, the economy is a great big solid oak table, well built, and cluttered with stuff. The only problem is right now one of the legs is mottled and cracked, covered with duct tape and constantly creaking and quivering. If I were a self-important political cartoonist, the leg would be holding up a sign that says “Wall Street.” Now Congress has a choice. They can either put 700 billion dollars worth of duct tape on that leg, which ought to hold it for a while, or they can stand around and do nothing and wait for it to break (I guess the table metaphor isn’t perfect, because there’s no real world equivalent for “rip the leg off and replace it with a sturdy piece of wood,” but I still like it). Now, when the leg breaks, all the shit on the leg is going to come crashing down all over the fucking place: a catastrophe, right? Well, not really. I mean, most of that stuff was just books, so you can just pick them up and put them back on the table. True, your grandmother’s antique tea set is ruined, and you had a really nice watch sitting there that wasn’t shock resistant and now it keeps weird time, and you really wish you still had these things, but fuck, life goes on. There’s not going to be a depression over this crisis, it’s just a case of some idiots wanted to get richer, so they wished some phantom money into existence. It never occurred to them that that money would have to come from somewhere, and since it didn’t, the money turned back into ghosts, who stuffed their pockets with money and flew back away to whatever dimension they came from. Sure, I feel bad for the people who actually trusted and rely on those banks, but you can’t protect everybody from everything. Either way, bailout or no bailout, I think I’ll probably just take this thing in stride.

I suppose I should say something about the Democratic ticket. I feel the same way about Obama that I used to feel about McCain: his views skew a bit more liberal than mine, but he’s a real, intelligent person who is not just at the end of the strings of his political party. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Joe Biden. It could come out that Biden was at Disneyland, shitting into his hand and throwing it at people, and it still would not be enough to get me to care one way or the other about him.

So now you know how I feel about that thing that everyone’s talking about. I hope you enjoyed it. Now fuck off.