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And now a bunch of ducks going up a down escalator:

Yesterday I gave a lot of thought to some things I would like to own. Today I am reversing engines and looking at things I most certainly do not want. The same rules apply, however:

* Nothing bigger or more complex than I could use myself and no vehicles. Though there are many, many vehicles I wouldn’t want (Kite-Man’s kites, say) this list would be all vehicle if I allowed myself even one. So I won’t.

* I can only list 5.

* I can only list items I can find pictures of. Why? Because I felt like making this a rule.

And then I came up with a list! So here it is in no particular order.

Lightsaber
A lot of people seem to want lightsabers in their life. I have never really understood why. Let’s think about this for a second. Here is a sword that can supposedly cut through anything (except most railing, floors and walls – except when it randomly CAN) and can deflect energy weapon fire. Sounds awesome, right? Well first of all, all that stuff it can cut through except when it can’t except when, I guess, it can? I don’t like that. I don’t like weapons where I am never sure if today the sword slices through the wall and brings the building down on me or if that’s tomorrow. Also, sure it can block laser fire – if you’re so fast you can block laser fire. If you had a mirror shield you could block it too. It isn’t the sword so much as the wielder. And that isn’t going to be anyone you know. No, we’d all be on the ground with a smoking hole in our face wondering why the shot wasn’t blocked. No thank you.

Robotic/A.I. Minion
Pictured are Ultron and Computo. Both illustrate my point. These things always go bad and try to kill everyone around you. Best case is Computo, where the thing kinda stomps around and lasers the hell out of the joint, kills a teammate and then goes down easy. Worst case is Ultron. Not only does he have a complex about thinking his creator is his father, but he has created a version of himself based on his “father’s” brain patterns, as “mother” who he then tried to mate with. Never mind it was a robot trying to mate with another robot (the sparks from the friction alone!) but come ON! Ultron has issues. Also he is up to like Ultron-9483739 by now, since he KEEPS coming back. He’s wiped out entire countries and then, for an encore, started and ran an intergalactic war. So sure, a robot A.I. assistant/helper may seem like a good weapon – they can protect you and fight for you, but really? Nothing but grief. Right, H.A.L.?

The Cosmic Cube
There are any number of things I could have put here. I chose the Cube because someone mentioned it yesterday. The Miracle Machine (see the other list) was fun. The Cosmic Cube was … like a lot of other reality warping, bends-the-universe-to-your-will type of things … really just the Monkey’s Paw. Shit always went wrong. Oh sure, Skull, you want the Nazis to win WWII and now they can! But the Nazis will also then betray and kill you. It’s never worth it. Also the Cosmic Cube specifically created the Beyonder (well maybe but let’s not go there) who then came back and incarnated as a human with a white-fro and white disco-type suit. No good can come of that. None.

Lasso of Truth
Wonder Woman has this lasso, right? And when it is wrapped around you, you are compelled to speak only the truth. Does that sound awesome to you? To me it sounds horrific. First of all, it is the opposite of subtle. “I really want to know the answer!” and then lassoing someone might give it all away. But what do you care, now you have the truth! Except, see, I don’t know … the truth is one of those things. If you’re fighting crime with it? “Where did you hide the bomb?” “Damn you, Lasso Wielder! I hid it in your mom!” “WHERE?!” “Her spleen, all right! In her SPLEEN!” and now you know where the bomb is. In your mom (that’s what she said). But in every day life? “Is this butter?” “What, why are you putting rope on me? what the hell? No! It isn’t butter!” “I can’t believe it!” It just isn’t practical and is fairly intrusive. Truth serum works better, quieter and it doesn’t force you to learn how to lasso someone just to find out the truth.

Star Trek Teleporter
Now I have nothing against teleportation, in general. It would be awesome. I am just against Star Trek’s methods. Why? Well look at it. You have to stand on the platform to beam down but they can beam you up from anywhere. Even if you have never been on the ship they can beam you up, so it isn’t like you have to start there. Why is it, then, in an emergency, the crew has to run all the way to the “transporter bay” instead of just having someone lock on to their position and yoink ‘em right from where they are on the bridge, or the hallway, and drop them off to the hotspot? It seems off, and it worries me. Also they have issues, sometimes, with things moving at speed, they need to get a lock on you. From a ship in orbit they can get a lock on a person on a planet but not if they are falling? Relative to that ship think about how fast that person on the ground is moving. Think of it like this. Earth rotates on its axis at roughly 1037 mph (at the equator) and then the planet also revolves around the sun at 66,660 mph. But let’s assume they’re matching solar orbit around the planet. Not stationary, they almost never are, so we can knock 66,660 mph off the list. Still, you see the ship there and a planet revolving under them. So they can lock on a signal moving at 1000+ mph but add, say, 80 mph to that and the system can’t cope? What? And sometimes they aren’t even close to the planet so add back another 66,660 mph. They can still do it, unless the person on the planet is falling or some shit. What what what?! No, the Star Trek teleporters bother me on a lot of levels. I’m with McCoy on this one, I’ll take a shuttle.

So I was thinking what absurd tech would I want, if I could have it? I tried to impost a few limits on my list. Here are the limits, totally self-imposed:

* Nothing bigger or more complex than I could use myself and no vehicles. No Death Star, for example, or gun that took two men to fire. No vehicles because then I end up with a TARDIS / Batmobile type list and I bore myself.

* I can only list 5.

* I can only list items I can find pictures of. Why? Because I felt like making this a rule.

And then I came up with a list! So here it is in no particular order.

Sonic Screwdriver
It can do almost anything! It has been used for opening doors, interrupting teleportation, fixing barbed wire, burning things, cutting things, augmenting sound, intercepting signals, and well – turning screws. I mean, really, it may be used as a Gailfray ex Machina on occasion, but the sonic screwdriver is still just all sorts of fancy. Invented by the Doctor to be a multi-use tool that couldn’t be a weapon, the sonic screwdriver is presented as the ultimate device for adventurers. Jack Harkness may have asked “Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ‘Ooh, this could be a little more sonic’?” but the answer is obvious – all of us. It is the ultimate widget device and I need me one.

Doctor Doom’s Time Platform
Most times I come across time machines they are built into boxes, Police or otherwise, and seem to have a stodgy air to them. Maybe it’s me. But Doctor Doom found a way around that problem. He built a time machine that was a big yellow square. you stood on it and it moved you through time. That was it. A glowing bit of floor. So he called it a time platform and used it to banish the Fantastic Four to the past. Like that stuck. Still, the time platform comes back again and again, as you would expect a time travel device to do. It isn’t my favorite time travel device (that’s be a time bubble, ‘natch) but I did say no ships.

Iron Man’s Extremis armor
By now most of you are familiar with Iron Man and his many, many suits of armor. Well, for a while he had one which was known as the Extremis suit. So-called because to operate it, Stark infected himself with a nanotech virus called Extermis. The suit is controlled directly by his brain and functions as an extension of Stark, instead of as a thing he wears. There were other benefits as well, generally surrounding control of other machines and satellite feeds and so on. Extremis made the other Iron Man suits look like they were made by Tonka, really.

Zorg ZF-1
An adjustable handle for easy carry and a simple four part breakdown that also renders it uncatchable by x-ray would both make this a good contender for great weaponry. But then you look at what it can do: it has a titanium recharger, a 3000 round clip with bursts of three to 300 (with a Replay Button so the operator can fire one shot and, by pushing a simple button, send every following shot to the same location, regardless of where the gun points), rocket launcher, arrow launcher with exploding or poisonous gas heads, a net launcher, a flamethrower, and a freeze gun. Just don’t push the glowing red button on the side. That makes it blow up and take you with it.

Miracle Machine
This one, I admit, feels like a cheat. Back in the late 60’s, in the Legion of Super-Heroes, they introduced the Miracle Machine. It has the power to convert thought to reality. Seriously. It is a reality altering wish machine. So dangerous it has been destroyed more than once (eaten the first time, no lie!) but somehow seems to pop back up. Once you have a Miracle Machine what else do you need, really?

And then I made this:

Are you sad? Feeling EMO? Well, all you have to do is add an L and the whole day can be more fun! Neil Patrick Harris was sad, one day. Very sad. Emo. But then he added an L and now look:

Chef OMGWTFBOYARDEE presents a revolution in food! I Can Has Internet Fud! Combining your love of pre-cooked, canned, microwavable food with your unholy love of the Internets, I Can Has Internet Fud will satisfy your every need, so long as your every need is those two, and only consists of those two needs!

What kind of foods are offered in the I Can Has Internet Fud line of products? We’re glad you asked, so that when we tell you it doesn’t seem quite as self serving!

* Goat.cx’oli! Specially shaped ravioli, filled with cheese and extra sauce!

* Someone Set Us Up the Mac’N'Beef! This meaty, saucy meal is good for every Zig!

* Numa Numa Musical mini-bites! Tiny pasta shaped like musical notes to help you hit the right key, every time!

* OMNOMNOM-ables! Mini-ravioli, available in either meat or cheese varieties!

* U HAS BUKKIT! A large serving of beef stew, in an easy-open can!

* …and MORE!

So go out today and find I Can Has Internet Fud products at your local supermarket, only from Chef OMGWTFBOYARDEE!

So I realized something last night. Something big. Mario is nothing more than a metaphor for the internet. Hell, it was a metaphor for the internet that, in many ways, predicted the internet as it stands!

Mario goes along one day, minding his own business and ends up in a series of tubes. Once there he finds that he has to keep moving because there’s no going back once you’re stuck in a series of tubes. He finds lands that seem to be outdoors, and yet, they are all somehow inside. While there he can only run forward as fast as he can, zooming through life as fast as possible, slowing to leap up and crush things smaller, slower and weaker than himself. Everything he sees is incomprehensible compared to what he grew up with but it quickly becomes commonplace.

At first the creatures take two major forms: Small troll like beings that lumber back and forth and back and forth forever exploring ground they’ve covered and slightly faster beings that, when hit, can come back to hit Mario even worse.

Mario has only one true quest – to find an actual female in this strange land. Every time he gets close he has to dodge flames and fight a large troll, only to find that the female is not where he was told she would be. No, he is given another site to try and fight his way through. Untangling false promises and never-ending sluggish stupidity, Mario races forward in blind hope of reward.

Eventually he gets the girl. Except then she goes back into the tubes and he is back where he started. He drags family and friends along, some of them he only met in the tubes themselves. Now growing his social circle, they all compete, even the token female of the group, in finding this mythical woman.

This is his crew: Luigi, Mario’s brother who moves much faster than Mario and yet is totally spastic, Yoshi who would have once frightened Mario and yet now aligns with him, eating anything in his way, consuming media and people as fast as he spots them and the Princess searches for the lost female who is “just like her” fulfilling Mario’s dreams of girl-on-girl action.

Later chronicles include: Mario posing as a doctor, Waluigi, a guy who claims to be evil and yet just plays millions of tiny mini-games in his spare time, Toad who looks like a possible troll creature and yet uses this to mask his amazing strength, used to remove other troll beings by simply throwing them right off the tubes.

The longer this all goes on the more Mario seems to forget what he had before he was lost in a series of tubes, choosing to find new friends and abandon his old life. He lives there, gather friends and fighting them, racing them, playing games with them and exploring new sections of the tubes. He doesn’t see his own sickness, choosing instead to dress up in furry animal costumes, take untested drugs and anger troll beings until he decides to search for more theoretical women.

Nintendo was ahead of its time.

From Japanprobe.com, a new Japanese TV game show clip! This time they have to ride a foot scooter through a narrow space.

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Also Bo Burnham’s song “Love is…”

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Also a reminder for why you should prepare and think ahead before you have sex in the kitchen:

I love cereal. I always have. A day started, or sometimes ended, by a nice bowl of cereal – ice cold milk frosting up a bowl – always made things better. Except at some point I became mildly lactose intolerant. Mostly for raw milk.

I still enjoy a grilled cheese sometimes, or cheese on a burger. Milk in my coffee is good, but quiche isn’t (good in my coffee or for my stomach). A bowl of cereal with milk is right out. And some of you might suggest one of two solutions:

1) Lactaid, or the equivalent. I’ve tried it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I also have an ulcer. Now when you have a lactose issue and an ulcer it means that if lactose sets you off that will set off your ulcer. That is a fate unkind and painful. So for something that has never worked 100% I have to simply not trust it and keep moving.

2) Soy milk, fake milk, some fucked up percent of milk … no. I want milk or not. Cereal doesn’t taste right with non-milk.

So there I am. I love cereal but I can’t have it.

Well sure I can. Only dry. You quickly learn which cereals you can eat dry. Flakes are pretty much right out. Captain Crunch is, of course, an exercise in pain. You want bigger cereals, or things like Cheerios. Rice Krispies is mostly out if only due to the size.

Except, possibly, in the post-Auschwitz form of a Rice Krispie “treat.” I’m sorry but when you take someone and tell them “Here, hold this marshmallow” and then you put them bodily into an oven? I call German shenanigans. So the whole Rice Krispie “treat” thing is highly suspect to my way of thinking. But anyway I did like Rice Krispies once upon a time, they were just so small and annoying to eat dry.

Today in the market I saw a box. It said “JUMBO Rice Krispies” on it. I suppose the Krispie Mengele had worked genetic magic on them and grew them to abnormal size. But I simply had to buy some. I rushed home, tore open the box and almost got a floor full of cereal. Woops.

Regardless!

These things claim to be three times the size of a normal adult Krispie. I wondered how this would affect them. I mean the tiny little exploding Pop Rocks of the cereal world were just right for what they were.

These are closer to the Sugar Pop family in size and shape. And, oddly enough, taste. They’re like non-overly-sugar-coated Sugar Pops. Sort of … cake-y in taste, even. Strange shit, I tell you! They have a weight, a mass to them … a presence… if you will.

I’m not sold on them, frankly. But it had to be tried.

I wonder what German cereal experiments will yield next.