Gaelic? More like Gay-lick, amirite?

Sorry about that, guys. I literally could not resist. My body was taken captive by ancient and primal spirits of crude humor, and I was forced to watch in horror as my very own fingers wrought this disrespectful pun. It absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that I am basically a 5 year old.

Anyway, at the request of one of my friends, I am going to talk about Irish and Gaelic Mythology. This was likely something that s/he (gender obscured for anonymity’s sake, even though the idea of me talking to a girl is laughable at best.) suggested jokingly, but it would seem that s/he underestimated just how desperate I am to write about absolutely anything, and how averse I am to coming up with my own ideas. So to him/her, I ask this: Is this the victory you imagined? Are you satisfied with what you've created? Because, if you are, then perhaps it is only because you have not read on.

So. Irish and Gaelic mythology? Well, honestly, I don't know a damned thing about either one. I couldn't even point to Ireland or Gaeland on a map. Holy crap! You know what literally just occurred to me? (As I am writing this, not as you are reading it) “Ire” comes from the latin root “ira”, which means anger or rage. Someone tell the stereotype committee! Their groundbreaking work in portraying the Irish as angry drunks was right all along! The Romans said so. Now might be as good a time as any to mention that I don't know the difference between “Irish” and “Scottish”. Now, I could say it's because I believe in the greater whole of humanity, and I dislike giving people labels, but in reality, I just don't give one thin shit about who you are or where you came from. Unless you came from the moon or something. Then I'll have my people call your people. Fun thought experiment: If a joke falls flat on a blog that no one reads, does the writer still make a sound when he cries himself to sleep at night? 

Now, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind when they think of “Irish and Gaelic mythology” is the Loch Ness Monster. Now, I'm actually fairly sure that Loch Ness is in Scotland, but as I've previously discussed, I don't care, and I refuse to look it up, or I'll run out of my already sparse repertoire of things to talk about. As we all know, Nessie is a creature that unequivocally does not exist. If you believe that s/he (Is Nessie the friend that prompted this post? Perhaps) does exist, please stop. Your field of “cryptozoology” is the worst thing to happen to the suffix “-ology” since astrology. Or maybe Scientology? On second thought, that joke was in poor taste. Scientology is definitely a legitimate religion, with which I have no qualms. This is an official statement that is in no way being made out of fear of legal prosecution.

Man, I really need to learn to stop trailing off my paragraphs into overly long jokes. But I digress. Like the vast majority of myths, Nessie is indeed mythological. It is a fantasy creature that could never exist, like a sane blogger. As you may know, the Loch Ness Monster is purported to live in Loch Ness, or “Lake Ness”, if you don't have a speech impediment. Stop laughing. Speech impediments are a serious problem, just like the racism necessary to assert that an entire country is incapable of pronouncing a word correctly. According to world-renowned monster expert, J.K. Rowling, The Loch Ness Monster is actually a kelpie. A kelpie, according to her, is a shapeshifting beast that spends most of its time as a horse. But in the water, for some reason. This is because a kelpie is a monster from Irish(?) mythology that looks like a horse, but sometimes turns into a beautiful woman to lure sailors (notoriously gullible when it comes to beautiful women in suspicious places) so they could kill them. The fact that Wikipedia describes the Kelpie, a figure from Irish Mythology, as looking like a horse, then shows a painting of a naked woman, is proof that Wikipedia has a sense of humor. It's the stealthiest bestiality joke ever made. Or was it the Scottish that were notorious for such affairs?

Another figure I vaguely remember from Irish Mythology is Finn McCool, who... killed people, or something? I remember hearing about him from the website "Badass of the Week" , which is about exactly what it says on the tin. Before you click that link, know that the author describes is as containing "an unnecessarily copious amount of profanity". So don't say I didn't warn you. From what I can tell, Finn was more or less like an Irish Kratos, at least as far as defeating the local pantheon's God of War goes. One of my friends describes his story rather admirably here, in a video that he honest-to-God turned in to an English teacher. He fails to mention how the salmon that Finn burns his hand on was a salmon of wisdom or something, which is the science responsible for his smart-knowing. Finn also apparently really hated cartographers, judging by all the geography he caused. He is said to have created the Giant's Causeway and the Isle of Man, making him roughly as strong as a tectonic plate. Also, “McCool” is a pretty cool last name. Like anything else that's Irish, it can be spelled in at least a baker's dozen different ways, but “McCool” is easily the best.

And now, at the suggestion of the same friend I mentioned at the beginning, (The one who takes full responsibility for any complaints you have about this post) I'm going to talk about something called a “bean sidhes”. Despite sounding like a painfully inauthentic new menu item from Taco Bell, this is apparently... a banshee. This is what I'm talking about, Scottland. No one will take you seriously if you keep intentionally spelling things with the intent to obfuscate what it is that you're talking about. Now, as you all know, a Banshee is a Covenant light aircraft that features two rapid-fire plasma cannons as its primary weapon. Its purple paint job and unusual cockpit clearly designate it as an alien aircraft, because humans would never design a vehicle so ridiculous for the purpose of warfare.

Clearly a work of advanced alien technology

I suppose it also bears mentioning that “Banshee” is also the name of a kind of ghost that screams a lot or something. Apparently they shriek when someone is about to die, kind of like how you see a doppelgänger when you're about to die. In fact, I think the concept of doppelgängers might also be Irish/Scottish/Gaelic/Celtic. A quick Google search... denies. Looking back, the umlaut probably should have tipped me off that they were German. This is a great disappointment to me, as I was all ready to link to an article about Doppelgangers. The more I can link to other people's work, the less I have to do myself, which is always the primary goal to which I strive. Anyway, Banshees scream when someone is about to die. But send not to know for whom the banshee keens, it keens for thee.

And, for the big finale, I'm going to talk about Cat Sith. Because the Irish are downright masters of deception, it pains me to report that these are not feline masters of the Dark Side of The Force. They are basically a race of fairy people, but they are also cats. Like all fairies, they are humanoids with wings, and they can do magical things, like cast spells and fly. What differentiates them from other fairies is their cat ears, which are totally kawaii. Some myths purport them to have a verbal tic that causes them to sporadically insert “nya” into their conversation, as well as refer to themselves as “neko”. And, because this section is purposely engineered to make my friend regret suggesting this to me, I'll say this: some rumors suggest that Cat Sith play a role in the plot of Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. I cannot say what they do, nor can I respond to any accusations that this is obviously just a joke. Or is it?!

A wistful guess of what could have been

So, to the reader that provoked this desecration of a once-proud heritage, I ask once again: Was it worth it? Do you now regret what you have inflicted on this world? Let me know in the comments! You know who you are.

A Few of my Favorite Things: Movies

I’ll be straight with you: I don’t care about movies. I am just not the kind of person who has opinions on them. If you’re lucky, this will keep this list delightfully brief. Then again, judging by my last post, I seem to have quite a knack for talking at length about nothing, so it might not be wise to read this if you have somewhere to be in a hurry. (The great thing about this statement is that no matter when I get around to finishing this draft, there’s a good chance that my last post had me talking at length about nothing.)

As you surely know, a movie is an objectively silly word that means “motion picture”, a phrase which is also rather silly. If you think about it, a motion picture sounds like how you would describe a film to a 3 year old. It’s a picture that moves. And calling them “movies” is every bit as silly as calling movies with sound “talkies”, which I think we can all agree is about as silly as the idea that there is some kind of empirical metric for silliness. Etymology aside, I should probably talk about the movies.

5. Breaking Dawn: Part 2

I already plumbed the depths of human disgust in my last list, so why am I doing it again? Well, fear not dear readers, for a reasonable explanation is at hand. You see, like any red-blooded citizen of the internet, I hate the twilight saga (their capitalization, not mine) with about as much of a burning passion as I can muster. I am proud to say that I have never watched this movie, and I do not intend to do so. I am including this film because its release means that Twilight is over. We staked it through the heart, decapitated it, burned its corpse, and found unsavory uses for the ashes. We are free from the shadowy pall that it draped over the public consciousness. We may once again feel safe in our knowledge that vampires are badass, blood-sucking creatures of the night, rather than golden-eyed, red-lipped morphs crafted from the quintessense of quivering schoolgirls by Stephanie Meyer, their blasphemous mistress. While it is true that her fell work has given a huge boost to the “Monster-love” genre, as long as we ignore it like the Star Wars expanded universe, we should be fine.

4. James Bond Skyfall

While it is technically true that I watched Skyfall, in that I paid to occupy a seat in a theater in which it was played, and remained relatively motionless (with respect to the screen) for the duration of it, I hardly remember it. I was supremely tired at the time, to the point where my most vivid memory of the experience was when my brother ate his ticket stub. On purpose. It dealt a death-blow to the theory that “James Bond” is merely a codename, and each new actor is actually a different agent (The movie, not my brother eating the ticket stub). This means that the “James Bond is a Time Lord” theory is once again the best explanation for the mire that is James Bond continuity. 

There was a gay villain, discussion of the effects of the internet and technology on the spy biz, and an explosion so huge that I suspect it must have been fueled by annihilation. I don’t recall the sky actually falling, but I do remember my friend saying “Skyfall!” rather loudly while Bond fell off of a bridge or something. It was definitely a “you had to be there” moment, but I thought it was so funny that I’d bring it up anyway. The next closest thing to the sky actually falling was the theme song by Adele, which everyone else liked, so I guess I might as well like. Despite this, I suspect that Chicken Little would be rather disappointed in this film, overall.

3. The Avengers

I may not be a comic geek, but I’m still a geek. And that was quite enough for me to enjoy The Avengers. It had just about everything a movie needs to be great, short of Oscar-baiting angst. And a clearly defined conflict, I suppose. The point is that The Avengers beautifully tied together the franchises that constituted it, with no one character hogging all the screen-time, and each character’s previous movies being acknowledged. (Did I mention how much I eat that shit up? Okay, that’s the last time I do that. I promise.) And while this happened, superheroes were beating the super out of each other, and then did the same to some aliens (maybe?). It was also perfectly witty, as we’ve come to expect from Joss Whedon, God-king of the internet. Praise him.

The Avengers is also surprisingly deep, discussing the nature of man, and his quest for power over other men, in a way that I found similar to George Orwell’s 1984. Then again, I also compared “Highschool of the Dead”, an anime with a character unironically nicknamed “Dr. Boobs”, to 1984, so perhaps I am to blame for that. As a completely unrelated note, I’m still angry that, despite the name, almost none of Highschool of the Dead took place in, or even around, a high school.

2. The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises claims the honor of being the only movie in 2012 that I saw in theaters twice. In fact, I think it may be the only movie I’ve ever watched twice in theaters, as of the writing of this list. So, why is it number 2 on the list, despite being the only one to receive such a lofty benchmark of quality? Well, it may be because I watched it again that it doesn’t take the top spot. It is a well-documented fact that this movie didn’t make much sense upon closer inspection. And, thanks to the second viewing, I made with the closer inspection. But I won’t talk about that. All the little flaws and plot holes of this movie are as chatted-about on the internet as they are forgotten by me, so I’ll focus on the good things. But before I do that, I should say that my primary complaint is that, for a Batman film, there wasn’t enough Batmanning. I realize that this was meant to be a Serious Film, discussing Serious Topics in ways that are Serious Business. But I paid to see a man dressed like a bat punch things, and it was disappointingly sparse in that respect.

So, now to focus on the good things… They were present? This movie had a story, and it was good. I enjoyed it. It also had plenty of quotable lines, which are things I treasure. Now, whenever I say, “Speak of the Devil, and He shall appear”, I do it with my hands in my collar, and my best Bane impression in my cords. Speaking of Bane, his voice was fun to listen to, like Morgan Freeman or Stephen Fry. Someone should make a GPS voice based on it. The movie also seemed to have a pretty good soundtrack, despite the fact that it seemed to be the same song playing in the background for three hours.

1. Wreck-it Ralph

As someone who cares far more about games than movies, it should come as little surprise that my favorite movie is one that is about games. As I’m sure you know, movies based on video games have a track record for being prodigiously terrible. I wish I could give an example, but I can’t think of one that isn’t terrible enough to be considered unmentionable. But Pixar avoided this curse by making up their own characters, and relegating recognizable stars to cameo roles.  When I went into the theatre, (spelled that way just to show spell-check that it’s not the boss of me) I kind of expected Wreck-it Ralph to just be a bunch of dumb video game references. In retrospect, this was tremendously stupid of me, as it’s made by Pixar, and Pixar makes some really great movies. This movie has the holy Triforce of things that appeal to me in movies: feels, references, and puns. It had deep characters, a great sense of humor, an interesting story, and an important moral (probably?). This movie had a minor character, who was a donut, named “Duncan”. If you are the intended audience of this blog, then that alone should be enough to convince you to see this movie, by hook or by crook.

Honestly, I would probably pay the price of admission just to watch 2 hours of the Nicelanders dancing. Any attempt by me to describe the way they move would be a terrible disservice. Their movement is a true masterwork of the art of animation, the way Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is to the medium of painting, or this blog is to the discipline of incomprehensibility.

 Conclusion:

There isn’t really much to conclude. I’ve watched a lot more movies in the last year than I did in years past, but I still haven’t really gotten used to forming opinions on them. 

Special Blogspot Notice: This time I might actually fix the picture problem, since the thrill of saying "hell" outside of church only lasts so long. But that's not a promise, that's a threat.

Actually, now that I've gone through the trouble to make these exuses, it's seeming likely that I'll never fix it. I hope you enjoy the tumblr loading animation.

XYZ Affair

The first thing they teach you at blog school is to stay topical. As it turns out, the adjective  that means “having to do with topology” is topological, so I can’t make a joke about that. Sorry. In reality, this means that I’m going to be talking about recent events. This is recommended so that when future bored-people read the archives of your blog, and see the kinds of things that were considered important in the past, they can have a good laugh at how silly we are here in the past. Also, if any of you out there are really excited to go to blog school, I’d really advise against it. I mean, I dropped out after they taught me the first thing, and look at how successfully I’m doing!

For awhile now, Nintendo’s been saying that they’re going to drop some juicy deets about Pokemon on January 8th (The day this was written). Despite being a Pokemon fanatic, more or less, I didn’t really much care. I thought for sure they would just announce remakes of Ruby and Sapphire, like everyone knew they were going to do. All that was left was to learn what the names were, and whether or not they’d finally nut up and release a Pokemon game for the 3DS. Personally, I was rooting for “Rapturous Ruby” and “Sinful Sapphire”, but that wasn’t the announcement. We still haven’t learned the names of the remakes, so it’s up to you guys, in the future, to figure it out for us, trapped here in the past (Don’t even pretend that there’s a chance that they won’t remake Ruby and Sapphire. That would be like if Call of Duty stopped being a yearly cash-grab bonanza. I really hope that joke seems prophetic in the future). But we do know that Game Freak’s deciding to elevate those nuts with a 3D Pokemon (Pokemon Rumble Blast doesn’t count, as evidenced by the fact that you’d never heard of it before now). Because, you see, Nintendo announced something that I never would have dreamed of: Gen VI.

That’s right. A new generation of Pokemon, within the end of the year. October 2013 is the worldwide release date. The names of the games are “Pokemon X” and “Pokemon Y”, presumably so they can release a “Pokemon Z” as a third title. Because the games are in 3D, this will be very mathematical and nice. Certainly, the rational part of my brain is thinking “Wow, that’s way too soon after the previous Generation. Only 3 years? That’s pretty sketchy”. But as anyone who knows me will know, the rational part of my brain is easily overpowered by the part that shouts “OH MY GOD NEW POKEMON NEW MOVES NEW ABILITIES NEW MUSIC NEW BASE STATS TO MEMORIZE”. So it seems that, against my better judgment, I’m excited for this. In addition, starters and title legends have already been revealed, with names for the former.

I guess I’ll start off with the grass starter, the way it’s always been done. As you can clearly see, it’s a… Pokemon. Honestly, I have no idea what it’s supposed to be. An internet friend suggested that it might be a chipmunk, but I’m not entirely sure that’s even a real thing. Regardless, this is probably my least favorite of the starters, as I have no idea what it even is. As a result, I also have no idea what the name is supposed to mean. Overall, pretty disappointing. However, it seems to be the very first grass starter that isn’t a reptile of some sort (Go ahead and review all the previous grass starters in your head. I’ll wait). So that’s something. If I had to make a prediction for the dual-type of this guy’s final form, I guess I’d go with… mono-type? Most Grass starters have been mono-type so far, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this fellow followed their dismal example, as I can’t really imagine what secondary type he’d have.

The Fire starter seems like it will probably break the long-standing trend of fire-fighting starters. While this is good from an originality perspective, it kind of sucks for the Pokemon itself, because fighting is one of the best types that fire can be paired with. As you can plainly see, it looks like a fox. Like the web browser. But a friend of mine seems to believe that it is a deer, a belief whose validity is greatly damaged by the existence of something called a “Fennec Fox”, which this thing’s name seems to be a reference to. It looks pretty cute, which is the best a starter can strive to do, but it reminds me too much of Vulpix to be my favorite. If I had to hazard a guess as to the secondary-type of this one, I guess I’d say fighting, because I really have no idea what else it would be, and it would be kind of funny if Game Freak decided to stone cold troll us like that. A different friend conjectured that it could be fire-psychic, which would be pretty bitchin’.

And finally, we have the water starter, my personal favorite. Maybe it’s the white puffs that look kind of like a beard, or the white dots that look kind of like tiny little spectacles, but there’s something about this Pokemon that just seems classy to me. Water starters have often been my favorites, and it seems that “Froakie” is no exception. As it turns out, my complaint about Fennekin (which sounds kind of like a knock-off beer brand, now that I think about it) being unoriginal is completely hypocritical, as Froakie is the third water-type frog Pokemon, after Politoed and the Tympole line of 5th gen. The one that ended with a frog made of tits.

If I had to guess the secondary type of this Pokemon, I guess I’d go with Poison, like a poison dart frog. If Tentacruel is any indication, then Water-Poison is a pretty workable type combination, so I’m looking forward to this Pokemon.

And these are the title legends for Pokemon X and Y. As you can clearly see, one looks like a Y, while the other… also looks like a Y. Serebii assures me that their eye-glints reveal that the left Pokemon is the X one, and the right one is the Y one. I guess this means that I’ll be getting Pokemon Y, so I can name my legendary Pokemon “Y Wing”. Now, ever since 3rd gen, we Pokemaniacs have come to expect our Pokemon to stand for something. Land and Sea, Time and Space, Yin and Yang (Or Truth and Ideals, whatever that means). So what do these new Pokemon mean? Well, that’s what I’m going to speculate about. I think (hope) that the X Pokemon represents reality, while the Y Pokemon represents imagination. This is a pretty nice duality, but how does it relate to X and Y, you may ask? As in so many other instances, we turn to math for the answer. Those of you with memories of advanced math education may remember complex numbers. A complex number is merely the sum of a real number and an imaginary number. The complex plane is a Cartesian coordinate system (the “regular” rectangular coordinate system, with ordered pairs and all that) where the real part of a complex number is represented along the x axis, and the imaginary part is represented along the y axis. Hence, the X Pokemon including the domain of reality in its portfolio (I actually made a joke without even realizing it. In math, domain is like, all the x values of a function. So it's like a pun), and the Y Pokemon ruling over imagination. If this speculation comes true, I will cry tears of pure math. I don’t know how they will fit the 3rd axis into this, but I’m still not entirely sure how they fit Kyurem into Black and White, so I’ll just leave it up to Game Freak.

Now, this next speculation has little to do with anything that’s been revealed about 6th gen, but it’s an idea that’s been knocking around in my head since 4th gen. Most hardcore Pokemon fans are familiar with Arceus, the Pokemon that created the universe, while paradoxically having descended from Mew (All Pokemon descended from Mew, remember?) Now, as creator of the Universe, most people have assumed that Arceus is the God of Pokemon, and you’ll find few people disputing that belief. But nothing in the games actually says that, and I think it’s not just to avoid theological controversy. You see, Arceus’s official Pokedex classification is “Alpha Pokemon”. But God is not “The Alpha”. He is “The Alpha and The Omega”. So what if… there’s an Omega Pokemon? Just as Arceus is the being that created the universe, this Pokemon is the being destined to destroy it. Now, the mythology of Pokemon is all good and interesting, but there’s something even more important to consider: Competitive implications. Arceus is perhaps the most powerful Pokemon of all time, thanks largely to his incredible stats and ability to have any type. It would be foolish to assume that his brother did not have similar competitive capabilities. So I conjecture that, much like Arceus’s Multitype, Omegamon (I’m going to go ahead and bet a slowpoke tail that that’s already the name of a Digimon) will have an ability that allows him to be customized with plates. But, instead of changing his type, these plates will alter his base stats, allowing him to take on the role of a sweeper, wall, or tank as needed. Needless to say, this would be hella prime, as specialized Pokemon almost always fare better than generalized Pokemon with the same base stat total.

Anyway, sorry about that. That’s just something I’ve been wanting to get off my mind for awhile. Now, since this is going to be for the 3DS, you might wonder what the graphics will be like. Specifically, how 3D they will be. The answer is all the 3D. Ever since 4th gen, Game Freak has been talking good shit about how totally 3D their new games are. Well, those promises are finally coming to fruition, as these graphics are as three dimensional as Land Super 3D Mario. In addition, the battles themselves will be 3D, with the Pokemon actually doing the attacks that they’re doing. 

As you can see, the Player Character looks wrong, like a 3-dimensional Bomberman. I can’t really think of a better way to describe it than “wrong”, so I’ll just leave it at that. The battles look pretty neat, but you’d really have to see them in action to get a good idea of how they look, and I’m not really sure how to embed video in this God-Forsaken medium. I trust you guys to be able to Google ”6th gen Pokemon trailer” or, failing that, scroll up to the video of the trailer than I will probably link to.

In the end, Game Freak is promising new Pokemon, so I can’t really afford to not be excited.

What’s this? EXTRA SECRET BONUS REASON!

0. If a Pokemon game comes out for the 3DS, that’s probably going to convince a whole lot of people to get a 3DS, because honestly, it hasn’t had “many must-have” games so far. Except for “Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward”. So the release of a new Pokemon game means that I might be able to more effectively plug the Zero Escape Series. This would bring peace to my heart.

That’s right, two different posts with the same twist ending. If I keep working at it, I could start writing stories for Professor Layton. Sorry Hershel, I’m just still a little sore over the ending of Diabolical Box.

5 Explanation on what exactly IS love

A follow-up to the previous Facebook post, requested by one of my friends. So he is to blame for the sketchy title.

5. The feeling one gets when fire blasting a Scizor on the switch in.
4. The special bond between you and your waifu. Society just doesn’t understand, man.
3. The Romance Theme of Skyward Sword:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7egFhuObEo
2. The taste of [REDACTED] sweet potato fries
1. The thrill of jumping of the rafters and driving your blade into an unsuspecting victim.

I guess the point is that love means whatever you want it to. The word itself is a treacherous hive of scum and villainy, far from the jurisdiction of the definition police. So you can say that it means whatever you want it to, and no one can stop you. Go nuts.

The vendor of sweet potato fries is classified. I don’t want nosy folks learning of my secret identity, on the off chance that this is ever read by someone who doesn't know me in real life.