Working at Perfect/Perfekt: Does Perfect Mario Really Exist??

The Super Mario Bros 1 World Record was just broken again so it seems like a good time to re-visit a topic this blog has hit a coupla times before.

In case you are dyin' to know the specifics, here is the footage of the official new record as implemented into the ol' nintender-box by one "darbian":

4 minutes and 56.528 seconds.

If you're new to the world of people trying to beat Mario One really really fast there's things in that video that probably stick out to the average Mario layman such as the obvious exploits of "glitches." Yes, there's some things in there the Mario layman might deem controversial.

Controversy has been ABOUNDS in the Mario-sphere ever since the first person broke 5 minutes and 8 seconds which was BELIEVED at the time to be a "perfect" time ... yet as new glitches were found through TAS* attempts and then that knowledge applied to man-runs the 5:08 kept being shaved lower and lower and lower .... and then Andrew Gardikis beat the game in UNDER 5 MINUTES and everyone collectively just freaked out.

The "official" video game records committee, the Twin Galaxy one you see in the Fist Full of Quarters documentary film, does not recognize these Mario records due to these glitches being 'sploited and still lists 5.08 as the official record. So, in some regards controversy still surrounds these feats.

I think claiming that 5:08 is still the record for Mario 1 is silly .... the record is 4:56528 ... and that's that.

Those glitches? They are not cheating ... they are doing these runs on the actual device the game was made for and are using the actual cartridge. These glitches exist in the official and non-altered versions of these games. The runners getting sub-fivers in Mario are people who can get 5.08 in their sleep or with their eyes closed ... so it's not like if these glitches weren't there they couldn't get the record. These people can five-oh-eight no problem ... but five-oh-eight WASN'T ENOUGH FOR THEM. They needed to go faster ... they needed to.

Like the plant jumping? You can jump through the plants in Mario 1 on Nintendo (not remakes though ... you can't sail through the back-end of piranha plants in the SNES version). The Nintender roms were so small (8-bit) that the programmers needed to cut a lot of corners to fit all the graphix, music, and animations in there .... the damage-event only ensues if you hit the front-end of the plant ... they saved space by not writing a damage-event to ensue on the back half of the plant.

The warp glitches fall under the same category too, those warp-events are written on screen to ensue and sometimes they carry over in the wrong place on some "frame-rolls" it seems so the warp event is played when the player interacts with a tube instead of the stalk for example ... or when you back the screen up a bit while a tube had a warp event that event might scramble into another closer tube. Using TAS runs, they found these glitches and used them.

Look, obviously this can be taken too far, some glitches are waaaay too over-the-top like this one:

This glitch is going too far, man.

To purport that this fellow "beat" Mario World in under six minutes is asinine and wrong. No, he did not beat Mario World ... and I know I just did a few paragraphs saying glitches are okay but there's a line in the sand where they stop being okay.

I define "Beating Mario" as the following:

Mario Must defeat Bowser and Save the Princess

(obviously except for in Mario 2 ... whereas Mario must Defeat Wart and Wake Up)

That's the essence of engaging in this feat of strength and wills. You are becoming a plumber who needs to save a princess and you must defeat a reptile to accomplish this. That's what Mario is plain and simple... and whatever it is you do to arrive at Bowser and defeat him is irrelevant. The only criterion to "Beating Mario" and finishing the game is to beat Bowser and get the Princess, no ifs/and/buts 'bout it.

As for the above scenario in Mario World where this fellow gets a glitch in the first level and mashes up the game where it starts running the credits screen? No sir. No sirrrreeeee, sam. You did NOT beat Mario here. You did not even confront Bowser let alone BEAT him! So, no glory here. No glory? No dice, man.

All glitches are 'sploitable 'cept for ones that bypass the Bowser-defeating portion of the event. If you don't beat Bowser and Save the Princess ... you did not beat Mario.

When I look at the Mario World records I look under the "11 Exit" category ... I don't really care who has the gimmick records. It's a cool glitch but it's too glitchy, y'know. To me "11-Exit" is the real Mario World leader board.



*TAS is an acronym for Tool Assisted SpeedRun which is a pain staking process of using emulators with save-state functions and macros-functions to find what are the most time efficient "routes" to take in a video game. This description was too long for a bracket so I footnoted down here, baby.

Workin' at Perfekt

Mario Speed Running is no longer a competition to see who is the best at Mario. These young people are Working at Perfect/Perfekt now. 

There's no competition between the handful of people who do this. If you read the forums for Mario Speed Running and other datum ... these people don't compete. They TAS-out glitches together, discuss route strategies, and cheer each other on. The handful of people who do this are like a small community of Mario Perfectionists who work together to try and achieve something almost unattainable in nature ... Perfection at Mario.

I remember a long time ago when I first wrote about this like 5 years ago, I made a joke that it's akin to the story of Icarus where he kept wanting to go higher on higher on his feathery wings that one day he touched the sun and his feathery wings melted.

It's sort of true though, there's no real definition yet of what truly the Perfect time is in Mario 1. We thought 5:08 was written in stone then we thought 4:59 was the new stone-written time ... and now it's 4:56 .... there doesn't seem to be a time low enough so the attempts never end.

Working at Perfect is a concept that is both very noble yet also wrought with danger. My understanding of Perfection comes from the song "Working at Perfekt" by Geddy Lee where he describes the concept as:

Working at Perfekt

Draw A Line
Strong And Clear
Make It Bend To Your Will
All The Lines
In A Face
So Hard To Make Stand Still

'till The Flaws Disappear
'till What's Wrong Disappears
'till All That's Wrong Will
Disappear

Working At Perfect
Got Me Down On My Knees
Success To Failure
Just A Matter Of Degrees
Success To Failure
Just A Matter Of Degrees

All The Colours Of The Day
Have Somehow Disappeared
All The Colours Of The Universe
Are Closer Than They Appear

Are Not As Close As They Appear
Are Not As Close As They Appear
Not As Close As They Appear
Nothing Is Perfect
Certainly Not Me
Success To Failure
Just A Matter Of Degrees
Working At Perfect
Got Me Down On My Knees

But When It's Right
It's Right As Rain
And When It's Right
There Is No Pain
And When It's Right
You Start Again

Working At Perfect
Got You Down On Your Knees
Success To Failure
Just A Matter Of Degrees
Success To Failure
Just A Matter Of Degrees

          (-Lee, G.)

Perfection is this. It's a work that is painstakingly time-consuming yet you feel amazingly rewarded  when you finally get what you're attempting to do "Right" ... and then you feel as of Rain ... yet even when you get it "Right" ... you still Start Again ... all over from the start and try and make it better. Perfection never really exists because the perfectionist will always thrive to out-perfect what is considered "Perfect".

It will get to a point where to achieve "Right" the difference between success and failure will begin to get thinner and thinner ... to the point where the difference between success and failure is just a mere matter of minute degrees. It's a process that literally can get you Down on Your Kneeeeeeees.

I watch these speedrun attempts sometimes and the glory of getting the route down and the frame rolls to hit and the glitches to snap .... is PAINSTAKING looking. I mean, these Mario Runners have probably made a million attempts at Mario.

I'm speaking from experience too. I used to have Mario in my routine of waking up. I'd start my day: 1. Eat 2. Shower 3. Coffee 4. Beat Mario (either 2 or World) then go to work. This is probably in like early 2000s like in my early 20s-ish ... the internet speed run Mario stuff hadn't begun yet. It was just routine ... it was eat something, clean my dirty-ass self, then become PERFEKT, then go to work and start the old day.

I was a speedrunner at Mario 2 (the whacky one with Wart and stuff) and World (the Yoshi one) ... I never dabbled too much in Mario 1. So, I'm not speaking about the process from some sort of alien perspective ... I dabbled in elite Mariomanship for a stitch in time.

The saying in that song, "Success To Failure is Just a Matter of Degrees", is true as true can be in the world of Mario SpeedRunning. I mean, I wouldn't place myself and my abilities even in the same league as the people who have sub-5 times. I'm not even close to that ability. They are hardcore at this. If they don't get a frame-roll synced up right ... reset and start over. If they don't get a glitch to snap .... reset and start over. If they get one firework to set off over the castle instead of zero .... reset and start over. If they don't get a certain enemy to spawn at a certain point that they need to get a glitch ... reset and start over..... if all the flaws don't disappear? Reset and start over. If all what's wrong does not disappear? Reset and start over.

And over and over and over.

When I first saw these videos online and saw people can rip and house and plex Marios more faster than me ... I thought I was gonna get back into the ol' mess and try and get more better .... and I tried to do the shit they do like the Bird-Jumping in 6-2 in Mario 2 ... and after a few tries I was like .... I dunno, I think I'm gonna call a Murtaugh on this shit and proclaim that I am simply too old for this shit. I knew in 6-2 that fateful day, that I wasn't gonna put the time and pain into this endeavour ... I simply was not strong enough to be the best at Mario-ing.

Like, these guys who Mario Run are pretty good at what they do, man ... and it took years of hardcore training to get there. I mean these guys have worked at Perfekt for years and won't stop .... they want to touch the sun with their Mario Wings.


Someone Make a DAMN MOVIE ABOUT THIS

I loved the Donkey Kong one called Fist Full of Quarters and I loved the Tetris documentary about the dude who got to level 30 on NES Tetris ... and I cannot believe no film maker has not reached out to the Mario 1 Speed Running community to do a movie of it.

I know in documentaries there's a lot of Spinal Tap elements and Kayfabe elements that seem to flourish ... and I loved Billy Mitchell's heel character in that Donkey Kong film ... but these Mario runners are all pretty young and it doesn't seem to be their style ..... Spinal Tap and Kayfabe stuff isn't the route to go with this one if someone is interested in making a Mario 1 speedrun Dock.

Going on those Mario forums from time to time over the years and reading some of the stuff they talk about and seeing what a community of like-minded people these handful of Mario runners seem to be ... a film maker should focus the film on three main themes which are Team Work, Friendship, and The Quest for Perfection.

The "characters" (yes even in documentaries the people are characters) in the dock could maybe Work Together to plan out how to be the best, they cheer each other on to out do each other and see their strategies implemented .... and then this beautiful display of friendship helps guide them down the Yellow Brick Road to Perfection.

Maybe it's just because I have dabbled in Mariomanship and Runnin' that I find the goings-on in this e-sport so intriguing but I think there's something here. I do.

It's a Modern Day Icarus Story .... a quest for Never-Ending Perfektion.

Baseball: Those Saint Louis Cardinals

Montreal has some new spring training baseball games coming in March of next year. I like these games, I go to 'em ... to be honest I like the pre-game ceremonies better than the exhibition baseball (where 3rd stringers tend to enter the lineup at the 4th inning mark).  A lot of old favorites have cruised on in over the last few years from 70s/80s Expos stars, to 90s Expos stars, and other key figures to take part in the opening ceremonies.

I don't have that many ideas left to write about anymore, but writing is a fun exercise and a cool mental tool to exercise. There's certain times of the year, probably because they are topics I've done annually, where I get a sort of writin' bug. I wrote about the previous MTL Exhibition games over the last 4 or 5 years and it's becoming a yearly routine for me. I really liked the format of the Cincinnati Reds article I did where I focused on the Reds and my memories of 80s/90s baseball surrounding them. I tried to mix it up and go a different route with the Pittsburgh one last year ... and do modern "memories" of now-a-times stuff ... but who am I kidding? I'm a Nostalgia Man, I love the past pretty well.

I'm gonna go back to the Cincinnati-one format for this where I think it had the right mix of Comedy, Baseball History, and Montreal Baseball Return Promotion (45% Comedy, 30% Baseball History, 25% MTL Baseball Return Being-Down-Withness).

In the meat of that one, I talked about the Best Red, and My Favorite Red. So, let's do that but for those Old St. Louis Cardinals this time who are venturing to baseball-less Montreal to play some friendly old baseball games in March (these are like Monday and Tuesday I think not Friday and Saturday like the previous four times).


Cardinals!

I know the Cards got into some murky water last season or two ago with something about attaining some informations in a "by hook or by crook" format ... but that's not the Cards I know and like ... my main thoughts of that team that come to mind when I think of them are from the "Whitey Ball" era (no that's not a bad term for white people playing baseball, it's based off the stratagems of one Whitey Herzog ... who was the main tactician for the Cards for many years).

Note the Napoleaning of the hand.

Baseball now a days thinks the fans want homers or strikeouts ... and they are kind of altering the game (for what they think is better) to achieve more HR and K ... but I loved Whitey Ball, baby.

I remember in Earl Weaver's book, the man who basically was the key influence on wanting walks and home runs ... he said the reason he set up his lineup for the "3 run homer" was because he coached in Baltimore and hitting homeruns out of Memorial Stadium was particularly easy (the corners of the fences for example stood at 309 feet out which is ludicrous). Weaver says in his book that if he coached in Kaufman in Kansas City (corners there were 330 feet out) he'd load his lineup with speedsters instead of power hitters.

Basically, how you design your stratagems is dependent on the battlefield in baseball. What was Whitey Herzog dealing with at Busch in the 80s? He had 330 corners like at Kaufman (I guess Missouri likes far out corners) so he designed a strategic deployment based on vicious unrelenting speed and thus Whitey Ball was born.

Let's do a leaderboard of stolen bases for the 1985 Cards (this is ONE TEAM mind you, not the entire league leader board):

1985 Cards Stolen Base Leaders:

Vince Coleman 110
Willie McGee 56
Andy Van Slyke 34
Ozzie Smith 31
Tom Herr 31
Lonnie Smith 12

In 2017 that's not even the combined NL/AL leaderboard let alone the leaders of a single team! Whitey Ballers weren't just running .... they were RUNNING THEIR DICKS LOOSE!

When the Cards won the Trophy in '82 you know who had the most homers on the team? One George Hendrick and you know how many he had? A whole 19 of them. They didn't even have one 20 homerun hitter when they went all the way in 1982.

Look at ol' Whitey in that photo ... with his hand all Napoleoned in his pocket like that. There's only one sort of very specific person who comports themselves in that fashion ... only Dynamic Strategists comport themselves as such. When you see a dude nonchalantly looking about the place with a single hand in the pocket and one hand flappin' loose ... he may seem to be nonchalant as shit but that person has a myriad of scenarios being calculated and re-calculated in his mind. Yes, a person who comports themselves like that are always Dynamic Strategists.


The Best Cardinal

Lots of choice here with a team that was founded in 1900 ... you've got quite a lot of names to chose from but I still think the choice isn't that hard. From glossing over historical stats only briefly it's not hard to settle on this name as the Greatest Cardinal of Talent-Wise of All Entire Time....

Bob Gibson. 

He was 251- 174 for the Cards in his career with a 2.91 ERA and 3117 strikeouts. That's some amazing numbers for a pitcher. His best year is almost unreal ... in 1968 he was 22 and 9 with a 1.12 ERA over 304 innings pitched!! That's the closest thing to total Absolute Ultimate Dominance that there is for a pitcher.

A starting pitcher of today would not even fathom pitching 300+ innings let alone while maintaining a 1.12 ERA throughout. People think Nolan Ryan was the pitcher who came the closest to Absolute Total Ultimate Dominance on the mound but Nolan never put up anything like that in his career. Nolan did get under 2 in ERA one year but in the strike shortened 1981 season where he had a 1.69 over 149 innings pitched.

1.12 over 304 by Bob Gibson .... is just .... Dolemite-esque in Nature. It's As Bad as Can (be). He was basically a Human Tornado in 1968.

I never saw him pitch other than in archived videos but I don't need any live-scoutage under my wings of analysis to proclaim Bob Gibson as the greatest Card talent-wise ever  ... I mean great googly moo this man was a House of Utter Pitching Fire, truth be told.

Runner Up for this Award: Stan "The Man" Musial


My Favorite Cardinal of all time

Now, this section is where I let my personal bias seep into the mix and I gently toss my analytical abilities out the old window, and relate to the reading audience who my favorite Cardinal was. As an 80s kid and 90s teen ... the 1980s and 1990s are my area of most nostalgia for baseball so the player will be from that 20 year period no doubt. 1900-1980 and 2000-2017 are not my area of nostalgic expertise.

The criteria to be awarded the championship of this section of the article isn't the same as the Talent portion where deep analytic thinking helped derive Bob Gibson for that honor ... this section is more "Did I like that dude's name a lot?" .... "Did the dude do a helluva lotta sick back flips before taking his position in the field?" .... "were his baseball card photos funny and/or cool looking?"

I had a shortlist but I narrowed the shorty down to two finalists. Al Hrabosky and Ozzie Smith.

The Mad Hungarian is a slight notch or two on the chronoscale ahead of my time ... but I'm not doing a Cardinals article without getting a quote of his in here. I mean, here, check out this one ... wait it needs set up. The Cards management asked Hrabosky to shave his iconic facial hair and after doing so his performance dropped off substantially and he claimed it was due to his now lack of facial hair and explained the need to have it to compliment his "psyche":

lookin' guuud.

"To be perfectly honest with ya, I feel that, I maybe have average physical ability, but when I get my psyche and my self-hypnosis goin', then I can compete with anybody and anything..."

-The "Mad Hungarian" Alan Thomas Hrabosky








The man's whole modus operandi was being wickedly wickedly pumped. Now, I'm gonna just go out and say it .... That is COOL. I would really like to know the procedure he used to self hypnotize himself into the Zone. For some reason I have a feeling it might have involved listening to the Doobie Brothers whilst drinking semi-warm Schaefer beer ... but that's just speculation on my part at this juncture.

  
Nextly, the Wizard of OZ! Ozzie Smith .... complete with GIFS OF HIM DOIN' FLIPS EVERYWHERE!!!!!

Wut the .... OH MY GOOOODNESS!

What is gonna ... OH WOW!

SLOOOO MOOOO SHUUUUNNNNN!

Ozzie don't, don't you're gonna get .... HE DID A BACK FLIP!!!

Sorry Al Hrabosky but you lose. Ozzie Smith is one of the mainest mainest mainest men of the 80s/90s. I, over the years, have equated happiness to doing back flips and Ozzie Smith would take the field by doing back flips. It's almost too much. It's .... the greatest thing.

So the award for my Most Favorite Cardinal of all time goes to ... Ozz....


......A CHALLENGER APPEARS!

OH NO!

Oh no, Willie ... no. No, I can't. I can't. I wrote a pretty long article about Willie McGee back in the day like five or six years ago. It was one of the first articles that got a lotta hits on my blog. It was a pseudo art review of photos of Willie McGee that went on for, I dunno, like 2000 words. It had a complete fictitious backstory, copy-pasted french poems, and everything else. I'm sorry, Willie, I can't include you in this one because I've done like thousands of words on the Subject of Willie McGee already. 

I can use the remainder of this space to work in a Dane Iorg joke or something .... Who am I kidding? Let's get Willie in this article.

People might have thought back in 2012 that I was making fun of Willie McGee in that "The Highest of High Culture: The Appraisal of Photographs of Willie McGee" piece. I wasn't. As a kid in the 1980s, photos of Willie McGee when found in various packs of baseball cards genuinely confused and intrigued me. I'd open a pack and flip through the cards and I'd be like ... "Oh a rookie card, cool", "YEAH! AN EXPO! YES!" ... and then ..... "????" .... total bewilderment and confusion.

I wasn't making fun of Willie's appearance in that 2012 piece, I honestly think Willie McGee baseball cards are art. They are. I would look at them and really wonder things like "What the heck is this dude thinking about to be making a face like this whilst getting his baseball card photo taken?" ... I mean if you made me choose what is the greatest baseball card of all time I'd say with perfect aplomb and genuine honesty that the 1986 Topps Willie McGee is the greatest baseball card of all time.

Players wanted to look cool, tough, professional, or snapped doing an interesting action/play in these cards ... but not Willie McGee. He wanted to take these photos with the most confounding facial expressions possible ... and they are just that ... confounding. I still think to this day that what Willie McGee is thinking about in his 1986 Topps trading card is ..... "Gee whiz .... that's a funny lookin' dog over there."

Ozzie Smith, I apologize, you're the greatest .... but the award for my Most Favoritist Cardinal of All Time goes to...

Willie Mcgee.

Conclusion

I like this article, it's pretty good.

Robots

In the last blog thing I wrote, I talked pretty highly of our steel-girded friends known as robots. I was saying that robots are gonna take over politicians jobs and it'll be really cool in like the 3000s .... but people shouldn't take that statement out of context.

The crux of the pudding of the last article was like to cheer people up because the political scene is getting all wonky lately. I re-read it just now and it's pretty dark at some parts for a cheer-up article ... like the kool-aid stuff and whatnot ... but the end was like a humorous sort of pick-me-up along the lines of "Don't worry gang ... robots will be our presidents soon ... so chin up y'all!"

A Robot

I don't want people to think I'm some sort of dirty robot-lover though. I actually in all personal-honesty don't even really like those cold-steel synthetic sons-of-whores and of bitches. I mean, those robots are stealing everyone's jobs with their cold uncaring robotic hands!

I guess I don't really hate robots though, I just wanted to clarify the last article where it probably came across (assuming anyone actually read it) as if I was looking forward to the collapse of humanity and the rise of the Ungodly Era of Murderous Machina ... which I'm not. I don't ever want humans to die ... I love humans.

I don't even hate all sorts of robots either just the dumb ones. Okie-doke, let's define some types of robots now.


Term Define
 
1. Automaton: These are fake humans that are just like puppets ... they can't like do stuff or think about stuff but they are made to look like real-ass humans. Sometimes they can achieve Uncanny Valley where they look so real that when real people look at them they get really freaked out.

The only time in my life I ever felt the effects of "uncanny valley" wasn't for a robot though, the only time I ever felt this was over a cat. I was delivering something, like a couch or something, to a house and they had this cat on the couch .... and I was looking at it and something was up with it .... I kept looking at it and then slightly approached it but it didn't budge or make eye movements .... then the customer told me it's a stuffed animal .... and I was like "it is?" .... and they said it was from a company that makes life-like replicas of people's departed pets and boy-oh-boy was it life-like ... like really life-like.

As my mind was transported in that moment to the Valley of the UnCanny ... I really thought to myself ... "Gee whiz, that cat is TOO life-like!"

So yeah, automatons are just like gimmick puppets ... they can't hurt nobody so who really cares about them?

Yes, Worker 8 was a faithless killing machine ... but he was also my friend.

2. Machines: Machines aren't really robots they are just serieses of mechanical components that can execute procedures. They can't think, feel, love, hate, or be alive ... they are just cold lifeless drones. The Russian word for "Work" is something like "Robota" .... to work is to robot and to robot is to work. I'm not Russian though ... and I don't think robots are work-machines ... to me robots are the fun friends from movies and video games who not only can execute procedures in an orderly fashion .... but who can also become your Best Friend. Those are only in the fictions though ... real life machines have no rhyme or reason and are just faithless steel giants.

Machines are super dangerous because they can be programmed by humans to execute a variety of pre-conceived functions ...  and as we all know ... humans can think up some really really fucked up shit for machines to do .... from killing to very badly killing to very very very badly killing like everything.

Oh no, not MORE ANDROIDS!?!?!

3. Androids: These are just fiction these ones. They are synthetic humans. Like say someone somehow thought up a way to re-create a human from scratch out of common shit on earth (i.e. not frankensteining other humans together or altering an existing human) ... as of right now we can make skin-like polymers and shit in real life, bone like shit, hair like shit and other shit .... but there's one thing that science hasn't even come close to creating from scratch yet and that's the human-ass BRAIN. The brain is so intricate and took layers and strata of millennia to achieve. Those millions upon million of years of evolution can't be re-created from scratch by anyone at this juncture. Even a chicken's brain is more intricate than any synthetic brain out there.

Are Androids dangerous? No, you silly goose, they don't even exist and won't for a few thousands of years so who cares about them?

(Frequently Asked Question: Is Frankenstein an android because he's a synthetic human? No, Frankenstein/Frankenstein's Monster is a MONSTER cobbled together from various parts of other humans ... he's like a Hybrid Human ... but more specifically Frankenstein is a big scary Monster and not a robot.)



4. Humanoid Robots: These are cool ones from fiction who look like tin cans or barrels but under those shabby tin cans they call bodies lies the caring and beautiful heart of a genuine human being. The Tin Man from Wizard of Oz is like the proto-type for this character trope ... the Tin Man literally didn't have a heart but by the end he learned that a heart doesn't come from some store or some shopping mall .... it was inside of him this whole entire time.

I love some of these robots, I cannot tell a lie, I really do. Pee Wee Herman had that Konky 5000, I have great respect for the Konkster, he brought joy and screaming to the Playhouse each and every Saturday. One time, Konky broke down and couldn't print out Today's Secret Word and Pee Wee had to call Jimmy Smits (before he was famous) to come fix Konky 5000 .... I was so happy that Saturday morn when Konky re-booted up as his old self thanks to Jimmy Smits's timely repairsmanship.

I like that swell-hearted Johnny Number Five as well from "Short Circuit" and "Short Circuit II" .... but my favorite humanoid robot is the main man himself .....

.... Robo.

Robo.... respect, brother. You're more than just a tin can, you're the best.

5. Cyborgs: Cyborgs are cool. They are regular-ass humans like me and you but with upgrades and decals and stuff. Unlike Androids these things exist. Like, do you have a grandpa with a pace-maker? Your grandpa is a fricken CYBORG. His heart is beating thanks to a machine implanted into his chest .... that's literally cool. 

Who says the legless can't have a foot race?

You ever watch those Para-Lympics where like dudes and chicks are cruising around the racing tracks with like bouncing-blades for legs? Man that's cool looking. In a sense, those paralympians are Cyborgs if you think about it. They had their legs replaced with the miracle of science's equivalent to legs. Those guys are amazing.

 Anyways, man I love Cyborgs .... they are so cool. One of my favorites is RoboCop. My heart gets filled with so much emotion and joy whenever I think of RoboCop. People think RoboCop was a Humanoid Robot or an Android but no .... RC was a Cyborg. 

RoboCop

I don't recall chronologically every piece of the RoboCop continuum but if memory serves me right, RoboCop was a Man until the dad (Red Foreman) from The 70s Show repeatedly shot him with a shotgun until he almost died .... but RoboCop didn't die .... he just got really badly shooted.

So what they did was, they put RoboCop's brain into the chassis of an elite crime fighting humanoid machine built for protecting and serving Detroit society. So, yes RoboCop was mostly Machine ... BUT .... the one component science can't create is the complex-as-shit human-ass BRAIN .... so RoboCop was still a Man. He was a Man with severe upgrades and decals made to his body but he still had his brain ... so RoboCop is 100% a Cyborg.

If you need proof that RoboCop is still a Man, look no further than the scene in RoboCop 2 (or is it 3?) where a gang of drug addicts and some 12 year old kid beat RoboCop with clubs and then jack-hammer him apart with a jack hammer. The remains of RoboCop are refurbished back at the precinct following the defeat .... and they install a new thinking program into RoboCop to make him a newer more better RoboCop 2.0 .... a RoboCop that is polite and nice and follows protocol to a tee .... and the audience is led to believe that the Man inside RoboCop was no more. Or was it?

RoboCop briefly regains control of his dying human side and walks to an electric transformer near the police precinct, tears it open, grabs the insides of the transformer with his bare robotic cop hands, lets a gajillion megawatts of power surge through his robotic veins .... and BAM .... RoboCop breaks free from his shackles of programming and regains control of his halcyon Human-Self and re-begins his mission to capture the elusive drug-dealing bandit known as Kain.

What a powerful film that RoboCop 2 (or maybe 3) was. Powerful film. I heard the RoboCop statue that will grace Detroit is coming along nicely. Building a monument to RoboCop .... outstanding. That's the smartest thing someone in Detroit has done since the Tigers drafted Jack Morris in 1976.

Ow! Ora Mantane! SUUUUU-PER! OW!

The Cyborgs portion is going on long but there's one more Cyborg I like pretty well and that's Franky from One Piece. He's a shipwright/leader-of-a-street-gang/rock-n-roll-singer/pirate who rules. His Japanese voice actor is soooo good (I can't in good faith say the English voice actor captures the uniqueness of the JPN voice actor in the english dub) ... the JPN voice actor inserts a lot of James Brown "Ows!" into the shtick that just fits so well. Most of what the Japanese voice actor says as Franky is English but like busted-up James-Browned-Up Engrish. Like, I would describe Mr. Kazuki Yao's voice as Franky along the lines of if the Godfather of Soul Mr. James Brown flew to Japan and drank all of the sake wine and then learned some Japanese to impress some Japanese chicks but only a bit of the language .... and it winds up sounding like this:

OOOOW! RITE REFF RITE REFF RITE REFF! PSYCHO!!!

I don't think I'll ever write on the subject of Japan and James Brown in the same breadth ever again so let's jam this in here while we'll charting down this obtuse course:

 YA! OW! SCREAM ABOUT THOSE NOOODLES JAMES!!! Good GOD! OW!

Anyways, in the English version of One Piece, The ENG voice actor plays the role as some drunkard ruffian. It's not even comparable to the original ... not even close. Comparing Franky's JPN voice to Franky's ENG voice is like comparing Sushi to ANUS.

We're charting way off course here in the section but, look, guys look, Franky is not some common thug drunkard bozo ... ok? Franky's voice is what you'd get if the Hardest Working Man in Show Business took a bath in a boiling roiling HOT TUB of MISO Noodle SOUP and soaked in there for a good solid week. How in the name of everything did the ENG voice actor come up with something not-even-remotely in the same ballpark as that awesomery? Who knows.

Let's get back to Cyborgory for a bit .... Franky's a Cyborg that's why he's in this section. He got hit by a train but then painstakingly rebuilt himself from shit lying around the crash scene... which is so badass. Looks-wise he's very reminiscent of Teddy from Mother (for the NES) who is another character I've always found very fascinating as well. 

If your character is like if Teddy from Mother 1 got hit by a train and self-rebuilt himself like MacGyver into Inspector Gadget and is voiced by a guy talking like a heavily sake-soaked James Brown ... you are speaking my language Japan ... you are speakin' my language, baby. Ow!

Man, both RoboCop and Franky fill my heart with a powerful zest for life. Yet, if I had a choice to become a Cyborg and you asked me to choose between being RoboCop or Franky ... I'd choose Franky. Why? Because he still has his dick.

Yes, it is demonstrably proven in One Piece that Franky's genitals are still his human-born dick-and-balls. There's a scene where his street gang steals his speedo and are playing monkey-in-the-middle to keep it from him when the sexy lady Nico Robin takes the opportunity to grab and clutch onto Franky's nards ... of to which Franky cries in terror and his two Square-Afro Groupies/Girlfriends cry along with him. He's got his full on dick .... it's not like a Robot Dick.

If I was to become a Cyborg .... there's only two human pieces I need in tact. My Brain, and my Weiner (oh and my balls of course). Franky is the ideal cyborg as his whole body is SUPER souped-up but he retains the humanity of his brain and his balls and his dick.

Where Am I Going With This?

I don't really know, but you know, sometimes though, like .... I think technology is moving too fast. I know this blog always promotes science, technology, etc .... but there's another side to every coin.

One hundred years ago do you think people were trying to figure out all the different kinds of real and theoretical robots of planet earth? Do you think people were signing petitions to ban killer robots 100 years ago?

(See: Elon Musk and 116 Experts Call for Ban on Killer Robots via The Guardian) 

Tech experts want to pre-emptively enforce a ban on killer robots hedged on fears that Robo Cops and Metal Gears of the future will go haywire and put the raw death on all our stinky asses? Well Son of Santo Domingo 'aint that some shit?

It's not just robots though ... all of technology is growing at a pace that I don't think humans really have the time to learn, grasp, and come to an understanding of. Is technology evolving at a pace that is outpacing us?

I wrote early on in this blog about the show The Prisoner starring the great Patrick McGoohan. That article explored the theme of Individual vs. Society which was the main focus of the Prisoner but another theme of the show was that technology was out-pacing humans. The end credits showed a wheel become a bicycle and then a bicycle becoming a flying bicycle .... in the old days people thought that was fast pace tech .... The Wheel to Flying Bike. Man, imagine if McGoohan was still alive .... he'd be freakin' out loose! And maybe we all should be?

No one had a name in the Prisoner .... they were all numbers. Number 6 tried and tried and tried to win his humanity back whilst on the Prison Island and in the end many still question if he did. Maybe he should have grasped onto an open electric transformer to win his humanity back .... it worked for RoboCop at least.

Conclusion

I don't know, I see the best of both sides of the coin I think. I still want to be an individual human with a cool zillion-years-of-wicked-evolutionary Brain ... and my weiner too.

But ...

I wouldn't mind having some Cyborg components. Like, shitting for example. That's so stupid and disgusting. Can't like we invent something where the shit tubes in the body output the shit to like a bio-plastic replaceable orb and you can open a component in like your buttock, remove the shit-filled orb, throw it in the toilet bio-degradable orb-and-all ... wouldn't that be so much better than actually shitting? Like I drink coffee often man .... I HATE SHITTING SO MUCH IT'S SO GROSS. Like, the first Cyborg component I'd be looking at if I was a MacGyver type person would be an alternate bowel expulsion method ... I mean .... the current method is honest-to-betsy and heavens-to-murgatroyd DISGUSTING AS HELL.

Spinal cords too ... we need more better cords, baby.

Okay let's Summarize: I want to be an individual person not a cold robotic number - but I want to move my bowels with a bio-orb implant component system and I want a more better souped-up spine cord.

That's what I'm all about.

Gunna Write a Book

I'm gonna semi-retire now from "bloggin". I practiced my writing skills for the last 7 years or more and I think I've improved enough where I can now concentrate on my Manuscript (as such).

It's gonna be a doozy. Like, it's gonna be about 4 people who do a helluva lot of walking ... I mean a lot of walking. Big time. It's going to be about 7000 pages (small text too not big text) .... split into two volumes. These volumes are gonna be heavy like drop it on your foot and you break your foot heavy.

I'm gonna do all the description of stuff in the book in italics and centered ... thus if you want to skip the description parts and just read the main story you can too. Like the format's gonna be:



"Main story, important stuff, doings a transpiring left and right, call-back to something that happened two chapters ago, conflict, macguffin, main story, important stuff etc.

Poetic description of the surroundings, very flowery description of what the room looks like. It'll probably even rhyme too or be in some kinda pentameter (whatever a pentameter is). Beautiful language to describe the person the main character(s) just met .... etc, etc.

Then back to the main story after the descriptive poetic break,  important stuff, doings a transpiring left and right, call-back to something that happened two chapters ago, conflict, macguffin, main story, important stuff etc."

-example



So that way if you don't wanna read all the extra fluff description parts in the 7000+ pages you can get through it more faster if you skip the poetic description parts (which don't alter the main story but just add a descriptive flavor to the whole shebang). The main story is tool-oriented where nothing is mentioned or brought up if it isn't focal to the story .... the italic parts will be like wicked poetry about how people look and stuff. That way you get the best of both worlds. The meticulous and methodical weaving of a well segmented story interceded with italic/centered description which is not central to the story but is extravagantly crafted as if by an expert poet.

I'm not lying that my goal with this thing is a 7000+ (small text) page meandering foot-based journey so it's gonna take up most of my time devoted to writing I think.

The post stats said over the last 7 years I wrote about 35+ essays per year. That's gonna be a lot less now. I'll probably do about like 5 a year. I'm basically retiring from this. It was a great learning experience but as of now my writing tools/skills are probably good enough to like "level up" I guess and attempt a bigger-more challenge.

My book is gonna be good but I don't know how shit gets published and whatnot and it's gonna take a long time so chances are the only person who's ever gonna read it is me ... but whatever. It's my new "writing goal" so to speak and I'm gonna smash it loose as they say.

As for bloggerin', I thought it would be so bad ass to just like delete everything cause like that's so bad ass ... but then I thought some of this shit is actually pretty good. So I'm leaving this archive up .... a "best of D" I guess. It's around 175 essays this archive. The heavier ones are omitted. I'll keep a couple of religious/political/heavy ones up but most of them didn't make the Best Of D.

New essays, barring insanity afoot mind you, will be more uplifting and positive in nature. There's enough angry silliness in the world today as it is.

I don't wanna say bad stuff about religion no more. Everyone believes in something, you know? You got to. I found my personal religion in the form of combining the intriguing world of Baseball Statistics with the Tenets of Buddhism. That's all these things are anyways, these religions, just numerology and mysticism. Baseball stats as Numerology and Buddhist folklore as philosophical Mysticism sits pretty well with me. I'm a Baseball-Buddhist ... and my religion is surely not anymore smarter than any of the other ones so I'm done saying bad stuff about religions.

I also want to apologize to Oprah. I wrote a negative article about her very early on, it was about her and humorist Zach Anner circa 2011 ... back then I was less cooth at writing and I won't include it in this "Best of D" archive. She's a great lady ... and if she's serious about running for the President next time around... I hope she does. She's a great lady and she could even win.

So, yeah, any new entries here are gonna be more positiver and more better. I'm a new D.

I am now D 2.0

Has Expos Fever Reached its Crescendo ... It's Fever Pitch?

Montreal is a festive City, it is a City of Festivals galore.

But last weekend that festive nature was transported to a small hamlet by the name of Cooperstown, New York. A total of four tour buses came to see the great man Tim Raines elected to Baseball's most Respected of Shrines ... The Baseball Hall of Fame.

I've written every winter time over the last six years on Tim Raines' Hall of Fame candidacy and now I can finally retire that tradition now that Tim Raines has a plaque in Cooperstown and will forever be enshrined in the temple of the immortals of Baseball. It's no secret that my childhood idol was the one and only Rock Raines.

There was about 3,000 Montreal Expos fans there in full Expos Regalia (I see this couplet of words used sometimes and I think I was one who invented the cool term of "Expos Regalia"). Judging by the news that surrounded it ... it looks like people noticed.

Many national American and Canadian media outlets did stories on this, for example:


ESPN: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20204017

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/sports/baseball/tim-raines-expos-hall-of-fame.html

CBS: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/look-raines-dawson-bring-expos-flavor-to-cooperstown-with-help-of-guerrero/

CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/tim-raines-hall-of-fame-montreal-expos-nation-fans-1.4225928

NewsDay: https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/tim-raines-baseball-hall-of-fame-induction-brings-out-expos-fans-1.13861669

CTV: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/tim-raines-inducted-into-baseball-hall-of-fame-1.3525197

RDS: http://www.rds.ca/baseball/mlb/mlb-cooperstown-est-assaillie-par-des-partisans-aux-couleurs-des-expos-1.4592524

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/07/29/tim-raines-hall-of-fame-induction/523005001/


.....Lots of news. Lots of news.


As a LIFE LONG Expos fan, this media attention for the city is so good. But as someone who's been following the "Journey" as Cromartie calls it of getting the team back, I knew that the last Expo going into the Hall of Fame with an Expos cap might be the crescendo-ing Fever Pitch of this Movement. Where will the Momentum come from after this?

What's next? Maybe I wrote all those articles about this moment because I knew it might be the last time ever we Expos Fans really have a moment like this. A moment of the entire Baseball World giving us shout outs and stuff.

But something tells me it 'aint over. Something tells me this isn't the last hurrah ... this is not The End to this Journey .... something tells me this is only the Beginning.


The Fever

Lots of Expos things are popping up left and right these days it seems.

1. The Cro is down in Japan and he's decked out in FULL Expos Regalia!
See: https://www.facebook.com/mtlbaseballproject/videos/1443391762410061/ 

2. Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) has billboards ALL OVER TOWN selling Beer with Expos Names on it (Rock's 30, Vlad's 27, and Alou's 18). Check it out:

Merci Montreal | Thank you Budweiser pic.twitter.com/CnemoEHlB7

— Vladimir Guerrero (@VladGuerrero27) July 24, 2017

Budweiser? That's a big big company man ... and all their Beers have Expos names on them! Vlad's speaking in his native Spanish with French subtitles in that above video ... it translates to English as him thanking Montreal fans for cheering him on.

3. Mr Batting Stance Guy has an Expos Hat on:

All-Star? MVP? Hall of Fame? 125 win season? Tim Raines, you have climbed every mountain. pic.twitter.com/CsmUWp2pHO

— Batting Stance Guy (@BattingStanceG) July 29, 2017

4. Oh Snap. Look at this one. A Very Popular Journalist is in Full Expos Regalia, getting full of emotion over Expos related matters. Wow, look at this:

Here are the couple of minutes @TimRaines30 spent talking about @jonahkeri: pic.twitter.com/M4eQ3JpAfe

— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) July 30, 2017

5. Oh man. This is too much .... too much Exposness for me in one sitting. Oh man, if I hear a Rap Rock n Roll song about Tim Raines and the Expos right about now I might just lose it myself:

Oh my gosh. Yo, I was in the grocery store the other day buying my frozen Jamaican Patties and my sundries and whatnot .... and I saw FIVE people in Expos t shirts one after another in there. I haven't seen five people with Expos shirts in a public setting since like 1997, man. Like, this Regalia is EVERYWHERE!! I thought I was in a Twilight Zone episode seeing people in every aisle of the grocery store with Expos shirts ... I thought I was dreaming and that Rod Serling threw me back into like 1993. Expos stuff is everywhere I look right now. I cannot honestly believe it. The whole place is getting all Expofied.

Conclusion

Has the Fever hit its High Note and will start receding from here on? I don't think so. I don't think so. I got so much Expos Fever right now I'm rightly breaking out into a Cold SWEAT! HA! A COOOOLD SWEAT! HA! I GOT THE FEVER! OOOOOOH! I GOT THE FEVER!

OOoooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW! 

I was worried this would be the last Expos Hurrah. That Rock making the Hall would be last time we'd be tippin' these caps. But, it's not. At least I don't believe so.


Bill Boards talking about Expos, Rappers are Rappin' 'bout Expos with a rip rock n roll sorta sound, and people are in the grocery store DECKED OUT IN EXPOS REGAAAAAAAAALIAAAAA!


OW!


This is not The End of This Story .... This is only the Beginning.

The Seeds of Human Forgiveness ... The Most Powerful of Seeds that Can be Sewn.

When the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series a lot of thoughts crossed Baseball's collective mind. Jubilation obviously, Triumph especially, apparently Sex as well as Chicago's health authority reported a HUGE spike in pregnancies in the area after the Cubs won the World Series.

Everyone was laughing, dancing, singing, and experiencing merriment.... except for one.

One man was in hiding, living a life of fear, solitude, and abject hate cast-upon him like a headstone of shame. A headstone of suffering followed this man wherever he went. Shackled by Shame, this man lived a Life of Pain.

And this man's name was Steve Bartman....

A lifetime Cubs fan, who had a ball hit to him in the 2003 NLCS .... and like any fan would do he put his arms up to catch the foul ball .... yet in the heat of the exciting moment of having a piece of history hit directly at him .... he failed to notice that Moises Alou had a beat on the ball and would be able to lean into the crowd and seize the ball for an Out.

This all happened in probably the span of 3 seconds ... but his torment and suffering for that 3 seconds would go on to last for 13 Years.

Lots of people think 13 is an unlucky number .... and this man's bad luck lasted exactly that ... for 13 years. For in 2016 the Cubs finally did break the seal on their thought-to-be unbreakable curse and won the World Series.

Meanwhile, Bartman made his exit from Chicago many years prior, tormented by hate-pieces by journalists and death threats from fans. A man cast upon with a black mark .... a pariah cast off from Chicago society to live in Chicago-Exile.

True fans must have had a solemness in a small part of their hearts even during the Jubilation, Triumph, and Sex that went on after the 2016 World Series. Even during the celebration some felt that something was off ...... that something wasn't right in the great order of the Baseball Universe.

That something was Bartman.


Forgiveness

Today, The Chicago Cubs organization tracked down this scorned-upon man and offered something to him. Something to say, "Hey Steve, this is for you, man."

It's not some Cracker Jack prize, baby, it's not some cubic zarconian rip-off, no sireee, this is real deal. Steve Bartman is getting his own World Series ring.

If you live in the greater Chicago area and hold hatred in your heart for this man .... it's time to let it go now. He's paid more than enough for his mistake. The Aura of Punishment which follows this man wherever he goes must disintegrate.

When I look at that photo of Steve Bartman, I see a little bit of myself in there. Like looking in a mirror. I've never played baseball professionally, I've never been a GM or anything, or even a bat boy ... I'm just a Baseball Fan .... and when I look at the photo of that man that's all I see .... I see another Baseball Fan.

There's a little bit of Steve Bartman in every single one of us. We all make mistakes.

But .... we also all deserve Forgiveness for those mistakes.

Respect, Steve Bartman.

And Thus Concludes Today's Cubs Sermon from the Mount...
Praise be to Ernie Banks, and may Ivan DeJesus be With You Always
(and also with you....)

The Wheels of the World of Satire Move On an Axle of Speed These Days....

I was following a big Twitter burst last week where someone put up a photo that showed that the talented Thespian and Impressionist Mario Cantone looked very similar to the newest White House Wise Guy in the cavalcade of whackiness that the White House has become of late.

I'm familiar with the comedic stylings of one Mario Cantone because I dig impressionists and I feel the field is sorely lacking now-a-days. I've seen old timers like Will Jordan state that the reason the impressionist trade has died over the years is that no Hollywood persons have deeply unique characteristics anymore and are just good-looking super-model types. I tend to agree with that.

Some people are still good at impressions now-a-days though and Cantone is of that select crew. He doesn't do topical people though which is maybe why he doesn't have mass-appeal. He does .... Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Carol Channing, amongst others .... and yeah, these aren't people anyone under 35 has ever heard of.

I read an article once that Johnny Depp pitched a movie where he wanted to play Carol Channing in a full length bio-pic and it sounded pretty cool ... but I can see why an exec would turn that down, I mean who in their demographics their aiming at knows who the heck a Carol Channing is.

I doubt Depp can give Channing due justice anyhow. Mario Cantone does a good Channing though. I heard this guy do a duel of voices with Gilbert Gottfried once (another guy who does impressions of people no one over 35 has heard of) ... it was Gilbert as Hervé Villachez versus Cantone as Carol Channing and it was a dueling of banjos that would probably annoy an average listener to tears .... but I loved it so much. It was so good.

Anyways,

The tweet someone did that suggested Cantone would be a great choice for new White House Press Secretary Impersonator went pretty viral and the next morning people starting suggesting/pushing/demanding that Mario Cantone be the new press secretary on Saturday Night Live's weekly lampoons of the White House and its various goings-on.

Turns out SNL is in reruns right now and off for a while ... so a curious thing sorta happened, everyone kind of realized that this new White House Wise Guy might only be around for like a couple of months or so (turned out to be 10 full days).

Oh well, what can you do you know? But, then another show called the President's Show, caught on to this fan swelling of fan support for this to happen and flew Mario Cantone down to do a live intro on their show.

I've never seen this show but I checked it out that night, President Show is on after the New Daily Show with Trevor Noah in my region. Cantone did a live open and it was pretty good:

....the World of Satire didn't let the fans down in this case. When it looked like White House Wise Guy #4 wasn't going to last until SNL comes out of re-runs and it seemed as if Cantone as Mooch would never occur ... it did. Which was beautiful and great.


Final Thought

The Wheels on the Train of Satire have begun moving at a feverish pace of late. I mean take the variables that were at play here:

The New White House Wise Guy was Born: July 22nd

The Original Tweet of Cantone's likeness to Him went out: July 22nd
It blew up on Twitter: July 25th
Cantone is flown out to do President Show: July 27th

The New White House Wise Guy was Fired/Resigned: July 31st

Wow, this White House person only lasted 10 days but someway and somehow the World of Satire managed to lampoon him and do it with the man an outpouring of demand grew out of social media for. This was a bang-bang play on this one. Wow.

As a person who follows the Wide World of Satire ... I could barely even keep up with this one. This was Lightning Satire.

History Channel: The King of Dumb-Cumentaries

I love the field of History, I always did and always will. If you don't know where ya been then how you gonna know where you're going ya dumbo? Y'Know? So yeah, I love me some old History.

One problem I have with History is that most of it is not adequately documented with concrete proof and evidence of claims and thus I find it can be speculative and romanticized at times.

Romanticization is alright because the author/producer of it usually states something along the lines of "Based on a True Story" and the audience should understand it's like 85% fiction and 15% fact ... but Speculative History on the other hand isn't usually offered up as entertainment data and the author/producer usually states it is to be taken as a truth with no disclaimer or warnings.

I find my personal hobby-related interest in Historical events is usually confined to the area of Baseball and of Hollywood Movies/Tv Shows. I know that sounds weird but as a Historian of those fields the most interesting thing about them is the amount of evidence and records those fields record. (They're not the only two fields with extensive records, mind you, these are just two fields that interest me).

With Baseball, every play for the last 100 years has been recorded and since the invention of the camera many/most/all games in MLB have been recorded with visual evidence so any claim made in the History of Baseball is usually demonstrably provable. And this is the same with Movie/Tv History because now with Youtube it seems everything ever is available to view ... so if someone claims that something was done before or some such actor invented some bit then claims of this nature can be verified 100% because all records of this field have been recorded and are available for viewing. So even though you might find Baseball History or Tv History to be of the trivial/mundane variety .... I think they are very interesting fields of History due to the ease of proving claims thanks to the vast amount of records these fields have made available.

With History in general, once you start going back before cameras, before media documentation, it starts to get a little greyer and claims are less easy to prove. You can say .... Hannibal crossed a trench with 100 Elephants .... and we'll just have to take some historian's interpretation of some ancient text as proof for that ... there's no photos of how many elephants Hannibal had .... there's no videos of it .... maybe there was 200 of them, maybe 2 of them ... maybe none at all. We can never ever know for sure since there's absolutely no proof that it ever even happened. Maybe it's just a fairy tale .... who knows. Y'Know?

At least in more modern eras, in which heavy records were kept, and visual documentation in many cases exists ... we have a good idea of History. From about the 1800s and on we have access to a lot more written data, photographic evidence, and in many cases now-a-times multi-media evidence. It's easier to understand what happened from about 1800 and on thanks to record keeping and cameras.

Nonsense 24/7

Extremely Speculative History of more modern times is still in demand however. The biggest purveyor of Speculative History is the History Channel who will offer the most asinine shows and documentaries that I've ever seen ... and they will offer it with no disclaimers or anything.

The History Channel will air Bigfoot "investigations", Aliens Live Amongst Us "investigations", Robots will Kill us All "investigations" ... and that's fine and good ... it's entertainment and all but they should have some sort of disclaimer on these things telling the viewer it's for entertainment purposes. Bigfoots, Aliens, and Robots aren't running amok, ok? These are fun little stories and nothing more.

Most of the time the media doesn't latch on to a History Channel Nonsense Fest and report it as news ... but recently a case has come up that has graced the pages of just about every news media publication ... and it's a story about a new History Channel Documentary about Amelia Earhart.



Amelia Earhart: History Channel's Newest Dumb-Cumentary

Every media outlet has picked up this story and they offer it up in the headline and in the article without any second-thought or skepticism.

The claim being made in the new Dock is that Earhart didn't crash her plane and perish but she crashed and washed up on shore of a small island where the Japanese kept her prisoner until she died. This is a pretty bold claim and they offer what they call concrete evidence this happened. The evidence in question? A photograph, this one:

??????? Evidence that Japan kept Earhart as a Prisoner ?????

Okay, that's a pretty nice photo. They say if you zoom in you can without a shadow of a doubt see the back of Amelia's head in here... let's see now:

Yeah ... okay there. The back of this person's head is being offered up as concrete evidence that Earhart was taken prisoner by the Japanese after she washed up on a nearby South Pacific island? This is pretty silly stuff to be 100% honest here.



Occam's Razor 

An opposing theory on the internet has appeared today offering up a much less assumption-laden origin of the photo. There's an origin for this photo I saw today on Brian Dunning's twitter feed where one  Samantha Adams has the photo dated in 1935 and a link to a mass produced Japanese travel book:

See: http://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1223403/99?platform=hootsuite 

I put the caption of the 1935 book through a standard OCR program available online as to which we get the basic google translation of the OCR as:

 

The caption of the photo is along the lines of "Lots of interesting goods come via ship into this quaint little harbor".

So we have two competing theories here:

Theory 1: This is a photo where the back of somebody's head proves that Amelia Earhart didn't die but washed ashore this small island and was taken prisoner by Japanese soldiers.

Theory 2: This photo is from a 1935 Travel publication and depicts a small quaint harbor where boats come in to unload various goods.


Now, it's up to you to decide which theory makes more sense and there's two types of people in this world. There's people who will always choose theory 1 over theory 2. Why? I don't know. There's people who flat out will refuse a simple explanation and always prefer the more entertaining one. What if you pile more and more and more speculation on it? Let me make up a crazier speculative theory now....


Theory 1: This is a photo where the back of somebody's head proves that Amelia Earhart didn't die but washed ashore this small island and was taken prisoner by Japanese soldiers.

Theory 2: This photo is from a 1935 Travel publication and depicts a small quaint harbor where boats come in to unload various goods.

Theory 3: This is a photo of Amelia Earhart and D.B. Cooper re-united at last on the Falkland islands after both their daring high air escapades ended with each of them being sucked through a time vortex thanks to the efforts of Ancient Aliens, Bigfoot, J.R. Bob Dobbs, Elvis Aaron Presley, and Papa Legba who's combined secretive powers allowed each daring high flyer to escape death and settle on the Falkland islands where Amelia and DB Cooper had sex and made a baby and that baby grew up to become ...... 

..... Kurt Cobain.

 

Speck is German for Bacon Fat.

Fuck man, my speculative theory makes History Channel's speck look like kindergarten shit. Speck theories? Shucks homie, I was through with it before you even knew what to do with it. If you dopes at History Channel are gonna go Full Nonsense then go full throttle or go home. Go Big or Go Home, History. If you're gonna go full throttle nonsense then do it right. Your speculation/speck theories need I'd say about 700% more Elvis in them. Seven hundred percent more Elvis and maybe about 400% more Papa Legba ... and some Ancient Dwarfs couldn't hurt either. Speck it real good if you're gonna speck it up, baby.

Get a nice ol' fryin' pan there History Channel ... get a POUND of SPECK .... sizzle it up real good .... now you start with Elvis as the base ingredient, then you sprinkle on some Aliens (not too much just a drizzle of Aliens), the real scary aliens the Lizard Aliens I'm talking 'bout, now you let the fat coat up the theory 'til it's a nice golden brown then you cut up some Big Foot cutlets and really work the Big Foot meat in to the Speck fat theory ... really woooork it in there. Now you're cooking, bubba. Now you're cooking with heat there bubba. Now you're cooking up a Speculation reeeeeeeeal good.  

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo-Weeeee!



Conclusion

History, if you're gonna go full deep fried german bacon fat on these theories then please just completely lose your mind. I have no problem with you H-Channel, I think you make entertaining nonsense at times.

Media, I got a major beef on how many outlets ran with this offering zero skepticism with this story. I mean this story is abso-ludicrous. You're talking big outlets running this story as fact too not just the dumb ones like Daily Mail ... I'm talking like real news outlets here doing this story.

On a serious note, Brian Dunning who has been following this story and where I got most of my info from on this has a nice new movie out that he's offering to schools for free (it's available free online as well) ... in order to teach Critical Thinking to young persons. I think this is important and since I got most of my info on this story from his site/twitter-feed I should give his work a shout out. He's doing good stuff.

Dunning's new film aimed at introducing young people to Critical Thinking is called "Principles of Curiosity" and it's free so teachers can use the material in schools for free.



(Edit July/12/2017: I stated wrongly who first linked to the photo in the 1935 Travel publication. Dunning and Gold tweet is the first place I saw it referenced that day but according to the follow up pieces that media outlets are doing on this story the person to point out the 1935 photo was this writer: http://yamanekobunko.blog52.fc2.com/blog-entry-338.html)