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"Prince Peasly sure is in a pickle. I wonder if he'll come this way"

I showed that to a friend, and he was all like: "Man, is that intentional?"

"Princess Peach's sweet voice will soon be the bread that makes the sandwich of Cackletta's desires! And this battle shall be the delicious mustard on that bread! The mustard of your doom!"

The sound effects of Mario and Luigi mumbling in italian to each other is pretty crazy too. The minion of the main villian is quite the english speaker too. His metaphors must be seen to be believed.

Fawful: I have fury! Hah! Now taste the finale, when carelessness opens the door to a comeback not expected by you! Your lives that I spit on are now but a caricature of a cartoon drawn by a kid who is stupid. You shall all fall and vanish with your precious Beanbean Kingdom as I laugh heartily at you!

Just then, Prince Peasely appears and knocks Fawful down. (Mario and Luigi are still stunned.)

Peasely: HAH! In the finale of the finale, when negligence begets rashness, the comeback is come-back upon! Ah heh heh heh heh heh!

Fawful gets up and electrifies Prince Peasely.

Peasely: EE-YOUCH!

Fawful: I have fury! In the last moments of the finale of the finale, when relief leads to negligence that begets rashness, that is when the comeback that faltered comes back and beats your pathetic comeback that I scoff at!

I love that game.

That's... not true at all.

First, there's always going to be a market for more traditional games. They are still releasing new entries in the Myst series, a new (good) graphic adventure slips out once a year or so, etc. Hell, even side-scrolling shoot-em-ups still get made.

Secondly, comedy is possible even if a game's primary goal is not comedy. I would use GTA as an example of this. Sure, you have your main mission arcs where the more serious events happen, but in between you're listening to hillarious sound bytes on radio stations and getting missions from the most absurd caricatures of cops/drug dealers/gangsters/lawyers/etc (and let's not forget Love Fist) to do things like steal combines from a hippy commune to help fund a spaced out pothead called The Truth. Hell, half the comedy in the game is just the ridiculous violent overkill that is possible (i.e., running over hippies with a combine).

So yes, you can have "cool driving" with funny comedy, and there is a point to having both - just as the best movies aren't usually straight-up drama or gags every second.

This is a phenomenon known as the uncanny valley, [arclight.net] and there's a good discussion about it here [slashdot.org]. It's the same thing as Finaly Fantasy: Spirits Within, where the backgrounds were fantastic, the people were "best.... humans.... ever!" and they still looked weird.

Thanks for the reference. This describes exactly my reaction to "Spirits Within." I found the realistic human characters distracting in a way that the somewhat caricatured characters of, say, "Shrek" are not, because my brain initially bought the illusion, and then spent the rest of the film trying to figure out what was wrong with them. We are very acute in observing our fellow human beings, and any tiny deviation from perfection tends to come across as sinister or pathological.

Your President is an unpatriotic and disrespectful caricature of every other President you've had.

I guess its only fair....

BTW, the whole idea of making upatriotic, disrespectful caricatures is called statire and it's still considered free speech, even in the US (at least until Ashcroft can get Patriot Act III through in about 6 months).

I watched the trailer for "cars", and have to say that the pickup-truck character is an unpatriotic and disrespectful caricature of our President.

Kudos to you!

You have found the courage to disdain a caricature of your opponent.

Aren't both candidates against gay marriage? I was under the impression that the MAJORITY of America AND both candidates are against gay marriage (not necessarily civil unions). I really don't understand what you're getting at. This is also ANOTHER reason why the dems could not swing any southern states. Your caricature of southerners pretty much sums up the arrogance that just turns those voters off. I've heard it many times "You're an idiot hick if you vote for Bush". There's no reason for any of that mess and it simply does not help your cause to get Bush out of office by making his own voting base believe stronger in their candidate. No one likes to be insulted. To be clear, I am also disappointed in this election, but I am not all that surprised. The democratic platform, to put it nicely, sucked. They had all the firepower in the world against Bush, but had neither the candidate nor the strategy to pull it out. This should evoke a need for the democrats to look in the mirror to assess why they could not defeat a candidate such as Bush. Preaching to the choir (i.e. complaining to the democratic base and the rest of the world as to why Bush sucks) does not swing an election. You have to win the hearts and minds of those that you do not already have.

I don't think terrorist backing will help the Kerry campaign as much as bin Laden seems to think it will.

Maybe, just maybe... we've become so politically polarized that we associate anti-war, back off the Muslim assault and changing the policies with the Democrats and the opposite with the Republicans.

In actuality, no matter who gets elected, it isn't going to change. Listen to what they've both said-- both have promised to fight a "better" war on terror. No change in policy, no telling Israel to back off of Palestine, no repeal of the Patriot Act, or withdrawl of troops from anywhere. Just more bombs, more troops, more hunting down and killing of terrorists.

I'm no peacenick, and I'm a Kerry voter... but I'm just sayin'... we've created these false caricatures of each candiate, neither of which are true. Both are just promising more of the same, but going about it in a different way.

Well, I don't know if I'd say that -- I mean, how "democratic" (or, maybe more to-the-point, "fair"...dang but I hate to invoke the f-word!) is it for you and me to expend the effort to look into the candidates' strengths and weaknesses (and those of their views/plans...or at least their promises) and, after careful and responsible evaluation make an informed choice, but some schmuck with less responsibility than a field mouse gets to cast an equally-effective vote? It seems almost like if you went to college for four to six years (and work extra hard to pay your way through a "good" one rather than a "bad" one), get good marks and take extra classes, etc. to make sure you're entitled to your degree and the job(s) the highschool "Career Day" counselor promised (heh heh), then the big interview with Acme Corp. comes up and the personnel manager says "Well, to be fair I have to let you know there are other applicants than you for this job -- one of whom has no training OR experience OR initiative OR ambition -- I'll be flipping my coin to decide who gets the position this afternoon and my secretary'll let you know on Monday. Have a nice weekend!"

At this point, I think I'd happily settle for knowing that my vote did "count" for an equal portion of the overall electoral "power" wielded by the entire populace - as it is right now my state (Tennessee) has 11 "electoral votes" and (for instance) California has 55. The way I see it, that makes my single vote worth about 1/5th of what a vote by a Californian's counts (partly because the electoral votes are divvied-out based on population rather than registration; all a state has to do to get a big hunk of electoral power is to have a lot of people living there, whether or not ANY of them actually vote. In other words, if each and every Tennessean voted, we'd all be fighting over those 11 electoral votes, but if only ONE Californian voted he'd be, single-handedly, exercising MILLIONS of times more influence over the election than any of us. That's certainly a far-fetched example but I frequently find it entertaining, if not always particularly enlightening, to exaggerate a problem to ridiculous proportions in order to illustrate it's weaknesses -- a sort of "philosophy by caricaturization".)

don't know how to tell you this, but the scantiness of Fmaxwell's abstract knowledge directs his sentiments more to the world of totalitarianism. In the text that follows, when I quote from Fmaxwell, I will use the word "excrement" in place of another word which is now apparently permitted in general circulation publications, and which I have edited out. For the moment, I will concentrate on the fact that his contrivances are based on a technique I'm sure you've heard of. It's called "lying". Sadly, in once sense, he is correct. If we let Fmaxwell censor by caricature and preempt discussion by stereotype, then I will undeniably be forced to kiss my freedom goodbye.

It would be nice to say that contemptuous ruffianism doesn't exist anymore, but we all know that it does. If he can't be reasoned out of his prejudices, he must be laughed out of them. If he can't be argued out of his selfishness, he must be shamed out of it. While Fmaxwell has a right, as do we all, to believe whatever he wants about feudalism, any rational argument must acknowledge this. His lawless, sordid ventures, naturally, do not.

There are some simple truths in this world. First, it is ridiculous that I have to be faced with creeps whose narrow-minded perversions are treated with apathy. Second, I don't trust disaffected antagonists. And finally, his secret passion is to do the devil's work. For shame! We are nearing a synthesis of defeatism and negativism into an inhumane ethnocentrism that will con us into believing that two wrongs make a right. To top that off, whenever I confront Fmaxwell about his slovenly recommendations, he either tells me that I don't understand him or feeds me some meaningless mumbo-jumbo about chauvinism. In view of that, it is not surprising that he maintains a "Big Brother" dossier of information about everyone he distrusts, to use as a potential career-ruining weapon. Is your name listed in that dossier? To rephrase that question, why can't he value a diversity of approaches without needing to rank them as better and worse? To answer that question, we need first to consider Fmaxwell's thought process, which generally takes the following form: (1) 75 million years ago, a galactic tyrant named Xenu solved the overpopulation problem of his 76-planet federation by transporting the excess people to Earth, chaining them to volcanoes, and dropping H-bombs on them, so (2) he is a model citizen. Therefore, (3) the few of us who complain regularly about his rantings are simply spoiling the party and thus, (4) if he kicks us in the teeth, we'll then lick his toes and beg for another kick. As you can see, Fmaxwell's reasoning makes no sense, which leads me to believe that it is not uncommon for him to victimize the innocent, penalize the victim for making any effort to defend himself, and then paint the whole irrational affair as some great benefit to humanity. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Of course, if Fmaxwell had learned anything from history, he'd know that he sometimes uses the word "homeotransplantation" when describing his practices. Beware! This is a buzzword designed for emotional response. I wish that some of his cronies would ask themselves, "Why am I helping him siphon off scarce international capital intended for underdeveloped countries?"

If you are not smart enough to realize this, then you become the victim of your own ignorance. I undoubtedly claim that several of Fmaxwell's secret police, who asked to remain nameless, informed me of Fmaxwell's secret plans to destroy our sense of safety in the places we ordinarily imagine we can flee to. My views, of course, are not the issue here. The issue is that if he can overawe and befuddle a sufficient number of prominent individuals, then it will become virtually impossible for anyone to encourage opportunity, responsibility, and community. We can never return to the past. And if we are ever to move forward to the future, we honestly have to eschew semi-intelligible, stolid tribalism. As long as the beer keeps flowing

A dilbert cartoon is very much a representative of reality. It is a caricature, to be sure, but at times it is scarily not as much of a caricature as it should be.

Yeah, my last grilf drew a cool caricature of me as a Tolkienesque dwarf.

I'm sorry, but you've no idea how ridiculous you sound.

As ridiculous as all those people making caricatures of Bush and comparing him to a Chimp and what not?

God I hope you aren't voting.

Why? Because you disagree with me?

Nice.

Even Clinton knew that he was making them, Blix knew, and so did the UN.

but would you rather have someone who you know to make the right descision based on his morals or someone who takes a poll everyday and changes based on that data.

From the report you link: "Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf War. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."

I've seen this claim three times in this article alone, and it gets harder & harder for me to accept it. The xbox is really no larger than two stacked PS2's - its "footprint" is basically the same. I just cannot believe that an apt. or house would have room for a ps2 and not an xbox. I mean, if it really were so important, the ps2/dvr combo unit would have sold better, right?

There are many other arguments as to why xbox is poorly designed for Japan (imho, it is pretty ugly), but this "not enough space" argument must be a caricature.

The title shows what the author was thinking, in a very real sense it's a summary of the book. Read the book and see for yourself. It's simply a gross caricature of arabs as unthinking automatons who are incapable of rational thought.

Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a racist author.

Is it really necessary to keep with those.
I am not sure I want to see Superman again.
Concerning Batman, I also thought so but at least, they could convince me to go to the theater if it was made after the Dark Knight story (which sequel is also VERY impressive).

So, well, could someone indicate me a PERFECT Superman story that'd made me change my mind about this caricatural hero (IMHO) ?

Kerry has introduced very, very few bills of any sort. He's been remarkably unproductive as a legislator. One of the gas-emitters.

He's a cultivated, preened example of the stereotypical senator. All he needs is the layer of fat and another 20 years (in the Senate, which he's guaranteed, thank goodness, by the upcoming election) to be a perfect caricature. Ted Kennedy II one might say.

I agree that Stewart should put his money where is mouth is and coordinate honest, factual public debate. If you saw him talk to Rudy Giuliani after the first presidental debate, he did that, he tore him a new factual asshole about Giuliani's (and the GOP's) blatant misreading of everything Kerry said that night - in as polite a way as possible, of course, in the standard Stewart mannerism.

But, I disagree with two things in your post:

First, the fact that shows like Crossfire get good ratings doesn't enter into his argument. He is saying that as pundits on CNN, they have an ethical RESPONSIBILITY to be honest, not to twist facts according to the parties' wishes, and to actually discuss civilliy the issues of the day. It has nothing to do with ratings - they make a lot of money with all sorts of different kinds of shows. In order to make that money, they have to acquire the media POWER to get viewers, and to be a respected news organization. But the COST is not just the dollars to do so, it's also an ethical responsibility to provide real coverage, discussion, information, and so on to the public so everyone can make a decision on november 2 informed by the facts, and not "spin". That they instead provide argument shows where shills from both parties yell the party lies at each other is a disgrace and an outrage. Even MORE so because people get suckered into watching it. The demographic is people just a little too high-brow for Springer. But at least Springer isn't spreading biased misinformation about important political issues, he just perpetuates stereotypes and paints a caricature of America for the world to hate. Not nearly as bad.

The second thing is Stewart's hypocrisy. I agree he is a hypocrite - if he would stop shirking HIS responsibility with the excuse that he's a comedian, he could do a lot of good in this area that he was just speaking out against. He is in a good position to do this. But, I just wanted to point out that just because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean they are wrong. There is no correlation.

-If

We tolerate a certain level of censorship on the public airwaves because they are a scarce resource and therefore must be considered to be used in the public good

No. Not "we." Some people tolerate it because they haven't the least concept of what freedom of speech should mean. Don't be so darned inclusive about this. The people who you legitimately include with your "we" are people I wouldn't care to have in my home.

Censorship of broadcast media by law is uniformly, absolutely, completely and utterly a bad thing. And all the more obviously so because the resource is scarce. It is harmful on every level. It is dangerous, unbalanced by its very nature, and entirely subjective, which means that it is always dictated by the opinions of those in power in order to control what those not in power may see and/or hear and/or read so as to bring the victims views in line with the controlling elements views.

Children can reasonably be subject to media access controls by the adult parents and/or guardians who legitimately and directly supervise them during which time they should be educating them as to how to deal with information - critical thinking, freedom of choice, responsibility and consequence. Children should not be "protected" from information by third parties. Adults should not be subject to media controls. Ever. Period.

Censorship is a sign of sick government, poor citizen performance, and poor parenting. In that order.

One final thing: If any of you think that you should be able to leave your children in front of an instrument receiving general broadcasts so you can use it as a "babysitter", then don't even bother to reply to this with any expectation of a response from me. Let me just short-circuit the entire process by handing you your head on a platter right now. Calling such behaviour lazy and irresponsible (today, right now, with current censorship controls in place) is to understate the case to an immense degree. Broadcast today is violent to a numbing extreme, sending a constant desensitizing message about violence, while on the other hand turning perfectly natural and beautiful issues of sexuality into twisted caricatures of themselves. And those two issues are just the tip of the iceberg. If you expose your kid unsupervised to that information stream before they understand the issues, you deserve what you get. Unfortunately, your kids didn't. Too bad for them they have idiot parents. Once they have reasonable perspective and the mental tools any citizen should be gifted with by their parents, fine, let them at the flow of information, opinion, entertainment, and trash. If you're even a half-decent parent, they'll be fine. Censorship doesn't protect your kids. It warps them.

Thanks for reading.