Runt of the Captain Planet Litter

First and foremost allow me to express my feelings toward Captain Planet. In an age of TV shows filled with sex, drugs, and violence, this televised treasure stood above the rest, fighting for a cleaner world, breaking the border between education and entertainment, and filling the hearts and minds of our children with thoughts of a better, cleaner world.

How dare they? Who do they think we are, PETA? Television isn't the place for touchy feely heartfelt messages! Especially in a cartoon! From the beginning of cartoon history, the real classics, the makers of the genre have been greats like Tom and Jerry, Wile E. Coyote, and Bugs Bunny, all of whom relied heavily on violence. Not bloody violence, just good clean potentialy-deadly-in-the-real-world kind of things. In walks Captain Planet trying to fight crime with the power of a good clean fight? Come on. Even Bugs wasn't against dropping an anvil on someone's head for the greater good, but no, not Cpt. Planet, he's above that.

Moving on to my real point here, I would just like to say how bad I feel for Ma-Ti, the little Indian kid with the heart ring. It's not that talking to animals and feeling other people's emotions isn't a great super power, really it is. But when you're in a team of teens who can do things like launch literal streams of fire out of their hands or create attacks on the level of a natural disaster, I imagine it sucks really bad when the best thing you can do is communicate with a monkey.

If i had to place a bet on the first Planeteer to go postal and just flip out on the rest of them, I'd put any money on him. He's the youngest one, kind of a loner, never in on the jokes, and again his best friend throws his own poop. On the other hand I guess he's probably the best one to freak out too, seeing as the other Planeteers could blast him with gale force winds, bury him under a mile of water, cage him in stone, and light his chimp on fire while he watches.

I know it seems awful to say, but I just wish the kid had gotten something else too, like a compensation for the lame ring. "Wheeler, here's a ring that shoots blazing columns of rightiously environmental fire. Ma-ti, this lets you talk to that monkey over there, so here's a gameboy too. Just a little something so you won't be too bored while the other four are doing real superhero stuff."

A Little More Evidence

This is the last one of these for a while, I promise, and I'll make it as fast as I can. But the coincidences in my life regarding North Dakota, as well as all of the new information I'm finding out is really starting to make me worried, and I feel the need to share that crippling fear of the government with you.

Before I divulge another frightening personal tale, allow me to explain one more North Dakota fact. Ladies and gentlemen, North Dakota is the only state that doesn't use any kind of voter registration list. None at all. So in any federal records for voting residents of the state of North Dakota...nothing. Do they not vote? Would a registration list reveal to much about the population? Is it possible that not having registered votes allows them to fix elections one way or another seeing as its impossible to tell how many voters there actually are? You decide.

By the way, I finally found a celebrity from North Dakota. His name is Josh Duhamel. Apparently hes married to Fergie now of the Black Eyed Peas. Sounds like he's just famous enough to be proof, but not so famous that anyone would ever go looking for his home town of "Minot, ND." His father is a salesman, and his mother teaches elementary school. Oh how classic Americana. He played football for a local state college and always wanted to be a dentist. come on government! If you want to deceive me you're going to need to try harder than that!

After some more searching I discovered that Nicole Linkletter and CarriDee English, both winners of next top model, and Kellan Lutz, of Twilight fame, all hail from "North Dakota." Funny thing is, all three of them, as well as our buddy Duhamel all started as models. Now I know what you're thinking, ya, ya Doug sure, sure big deal. But really guys? It produces just enough C list celebrities to stay real, just enough strangely beautiful people to convince us it's there. But they can't hide the Grand Forks Air Base and all the other military establishments. There's something going on over there.

Anyway, onto my new personal references to the truth behind the lie. Another friend (who won't be named) heard my theory. The very next day she was on the highway in the left lane when a black Impala with tinted windows pulled up next to her and stayed even with her for about two miles and then sped off. A minute later, she heard a dedication to someone from North Dakota on a local Boston radio station. Really government? Really? You don't think I notice when I tell my friend about Ol' North Dakota and the next day she sees a ND licence plate at Applebees? Sure, sure just stake out places I go out to eat all the time waiting for me to show up so you can casually drive by and show me your "proof." Go ahead.

Make my day.

Breaking News

Instead of a brand new point of interest tonight, I have some new information about my original post that might sway a few more of you to believe as I believe. For new readers who may have never seen the idea that started it all, I began this blog by stating my theory that North Dakota doesn't exist. It might sound crazy if you've never read it, so you might want to go and check that out before you read this. I'm putting this here in light of a few new pieces of information regarding this "state," as recently some things have been brought to my attention that I feel the public has a right to know.

First of all, here are a few "North Dakota" facts that can be found online. Did you know that the only US state never to have an earthquake is North Dakota? It doesn't seem that suspicious until you think of all the government work that could be destroyed by one, especially all of the underground facilities. Is it possible that that area was picked simply for its resistance to troublesome tremors? Or is there some kind of tectonic plate restricting technology in use, perhaps technology found in the ships of crashed UFOs. You be the judge my friends. How about that in North Dakota there are more registered vehicles than people. Now let's try the math; if each government employee has a black Impala, a white, tinted-windowed van, and a Ford Taurus...indeed, that's three cars to every one person. This fact sounds feasible to me. Last but not least, how about the fact that if North Dakota seceded from the Union it would be the world's third strongest nuclear power. Seriously, come on people! Who do they think they're fooling! The place has conspiracy written all over it!

All right, besides these facts one more thing was brought to my attention just last night. Not an Internet site, not a theory, but a cold, hard eye-witness account. A close and trusted friend of mine was describing a business trip that brought him through North Dakota. He said, and I quote, "I went to a bar soon after I got into North Dakota. I swear it was the strangest place I had ever been in my life. There was the token Indian girl in the corner, the drunk guy, the poker players, the friendly bartender... it was like everyone in there was playing a role." Very Truman Show-esque, no? It's all a cover up. Everything in there that we can see or know about is fabricated to fool us folks.

Finally, some personal news that I need to say soon. Soon as in before they black bag me and take me who knows where. I think the government is on to me. There, I said it. I've noticed an increase in black and white cars with dark windows and government plates every where I go. And what I am about to say is completely true. I know some of what I say sounds like a load you-know-what, but this story really, honest to God happened to me. On a recent trip to the gym, I was parked in the lot getting my stuff ready to go in, when a black Impala with government plates pulled up in front of me. Inside were two men with sunglasses on who seemed to be looking right at me. So I reached into the back of my car, not to get anything, but to avoid looking at them. As I put my shoes on, I noticed one of them had left the car and walked up to a column in front of the gym. He stood there, not smoking or doing anything, just standing. As I walked up to the gym, as soon as I was in speaking distance he turned his head to me and said "How we doing?," to which I replied "Awesome." When I finished and left the place, they were gone, neither of them having ever set foot in the gym, or any nearby business.

Once again, that story is completely true, I am not lying at all. That's why I didn't give the name of my business tripping friend. They're on to me man. I'm just saying, if someone picks me up, you readers will know not exactly where I am, but why I'm there. Just remember that.

By the way, if and when that happens, someone please tell my government teacher where I am. He doesn't believe the whole North Dakota thing. Also, Danny, you can have my Wii, assuming that they don't take you too now that I used your name. My bad.

Board Games Are Not Your Friend

Before I begin to reveal to you the secrets that common house hold board games have been hiding behind for years, first allow me to apologise to those faithful readers who have been disappointed by my dry spell over the past week. An epic streak of things to do and a lack of ideas caused the blog to run barren, so thanks to you who kept checking to see if I would ever come back, I appreciate it, and indeed, I have returned. Now, onto the Board Game Conspiracy.

I would wager that most of us here in the good ol' US of A are familiar with the popular children's game "Mouse Trap." What most of us aren't aware of is the money grubbing scheme hidden boldly behind this game's little plastic pieces of doom. In theory, Mouse Trap is a great game; you build a mouse trap and then attempt to trap your friends and watch them rot to death in a little red cage until their cute mouse-y flesh just falls off the bone. The sweet thrill of literally starving your opponent to death is just to tempting for most children. But the slightly morbid concept of this rat race is not where the evil lies.

Having played Mouse Trap a lot as a child I'm not surprised that I never noticed it's dark side until now. Youngins are fast to forgive a board game when it doesn't work perfectly, and they probably won't remember what broke last time even as it fails to work the next time, but thinking about it recently I saw the true blatant money hunger behind Milton-Bradley, and it lies behind one little green diver.

Not once, in my personal Mouse Trap history, and nor in that of several of my board game playing cohorts (see. Tim and Emily Smith) has the little green diver ever landed right on that see-saw. I'm not asking for rocket science in my games, but I don't want the one trajectory based part of it all designed by a mentally unstable freshman in a Physics 101 class with a crippling case of ADD and the entire Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade outside to distract him. That little green diver my friends is the brilliant part of Milton-Bradly's scheme. Let's assume you're a parent with the means to purchase another set of Mouse Trap if your child requests it. When little Timmy comes into the living room, and interrupts Judge Judy with tears steaming down his cheeks because the cage never fell. His entire set of innocent little hopes and dreams was crushed when the diver didn't land on the see-saw and he never saw the Rube Goldberg style contraption reach fruition. What do you do? How do you respond to that show of infinite sadness? You don't have a physics degree, you can't solve the case of the Demon Diver. So you take a deep breath, accept that these were the duties you took on as a parent, and so help you God the second that Judge Judy is over you march yourself right out to K-Mart and you buy another copy of Mouse Trap, feeling more satisfied as a parent that you ever have before.

You, hypothetically, have been had by the Board Game Conspiracy. There's nothing wrong with that diver. The see-saw isn't broken. The game simply isn't designed to work. How else could they get you to buy another product? Expansion sets? I don't think so. And the worst part of the scheme is this my friends. Say you get home with that game, but now its 9:00. Not only is 24 starting, but its also coincidentally little Timmy's bed time. And tomorrow, his natural childlike attention deficit disorder makes him forget the game ever existed. But in a few months during a fit of boredom he'll take it out to play again, and once again his world will fall apart as that unholy diver lands refuses to land on that midnight sea-saw. Once more, you will trek to your local corruption dealer and buy into the Conspiracy. And the thing is, no one can complain, because the piece is perfectly intact. There isn't a single concrete issue with the game, so no lawsuits, no letters of complaint, no nothing. Nice work there MB, clever.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is why companies like Milton-Bradley can exist despite not producing a real game in over ten years. And by real game, I do not mean slapping Dora the Explorer on a previously made game. I want to see some ingenuity here people! I want a board game that will wake up the world! But it won't happen as long as they can keep making that nice little diver fail to stick his landing. And they will people, they will.