Steam is the worst thing that has ever existed, WORSE THAN HITLER

RAGE. It's not just the name of id's latest game. As it turns out, the name isn't so much of a metaphor as it is the actual physical product itself. Maybe that doesn't make much sense, but you have to understand that whatever the fuck is in that $60 dvd case, it sure the fuck isn't a god damned video game.

So, I've got this video game sitting here, right in front of me, and I can't play it. Why? I don't know. I've been searching for a solution for an hour now and nothing really works. What I've found out is terrifying. For one, the game isn't even on the fucking disc. I'm sorry, the three discs. For two, even if the game is installed on the fucking computer it WILL NOT RUN. FOR NO FUCKING REASON.

Just to reiterate:

 - The actual fucking game is sitting right FUCKING NEXT TO ME
 - It is already INSTALLED ON THE MOTHERFUCKING COMPUTER
 - Despite that, because I'm not the person who installed it, I can't PLAY OR EVEN INSTALL IT

I CAN'T PLAY A FUCKING GAME I HAVE SITTING RIGHT IN FUCKING GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF FAGGOT ASSED CUNT-SWALLOWING TURD WAFFLE SHIT-SUCKING BALL-LICKING FRONT OF ME.

HOW AM I FOLLOWING MY OWN BLOG?

Did I accidentally click something when I signed out? What the crap happened?

...and I thought somebody liked me. :c

Some THINGS you might want to know...

...if you were as giddily optimistic about the Thing prequel as I was.

1. Not EVERYTHING matches up with the original movie. Lots of nods are made, but there is one outright glaring error that made the climactic scene to hard to watch. The whole time I couldn't pay attention to what was happening because I was all "why is there still ice covering the fucking space ship?" We also don't get to see one of the deaths... that's kinda a spoiler since there's no way to hide it. Yeah, the guy who gets his wrists and throat slit? We don't see that happen, just some cutaways at the end, which is the biggest red flag for a deleted scene since not seeing the swamp in the 2006 King Kong.

2. Don't worry, the subtitles are there. Only thing is, there's only one crazy swede who doesn't speak english in the whole damn movie, so it is never an issue. A monster who uses paranoia as a weapon... and they miss the chance to put up a language barrier. Lame, but whatever. There is about one minute of playing norwegians against americans, but it's just a shouting match and doesn't actually go anywhere, and ends as quickly as it began. So, the paranoia between the crew this time is the exact same flavor as the last time. A missed opportunity, for sure, but it doesn't really hurt the film so much as...

3. In the credits, you can see Tom and Alec (from, you know, 5 of the 6 alien movies?) listed as special/make-up effects... but there aren't... um... any, to be quite blunt about it. Being completely honest here, there's only one scene that features a living Thing created practically. But you can't really see it. It's in its original form, which is way different from what you'd expect (but nicely explains where the arthropod-like legs it uses came from), hiding under a shack. And it's only the legs. So, Alec and Tom, who made the fucking rod puppet from Alien 3, made some squiggly spider legs. That's what they did.

And OH MY GOD is the rest of it horrible. I would have laughed if I wasn't so disgusted with all the grave pissing going on, and I'm like 90% certain Rob Bottin is still alive, so they're just pissing in some guy's face.

Yes, that's the best way to describe the sub-plan 9 effects going on here: like pissing right in Rob Bottin's face.

All that aside, it's still a "good" movie. It's enjoyable, has some of the same feel as the first one, and the ending is awesome. Actually, the ending is the best part. And not like the "time to wait in the cold" part, but the good part, where you find out who was shooting at the dog in the beginning of the first one. I need to specify because they intercut the fucking end titles over it. Like, it's the best part of the entire movie and they're trying to file people out of the theater. That's bonkers.

So it does mean that you will have to wince and cringe through the entire movie. This was not the great fuck you to the second renaissance of CGI as I was hoping. It only manages to make things worse.

Which makes me just want to ask, in case anyone is listening:

WHY are people STILL using CGI? Honestly, I need to have a real answer at this point, because the more I see the worse it gets. At first it just looked out of place, like in Jurassic Park. But a 90's audience can easily ignore that because at the time it was new and cool, and computers were the future man. The information super highway and all that. But as more and more films made use of it, it grew old fast. It became really apparent really fast that it looked fucking awful. Like, really bad. REALLY, REALLY bad. And it took awhile because kids are, as a rule, retarded, but by the early aughts it was a discredited trope, and people started using REAL special effects again.

So... why did this second renaissance happen? I remember being really impressed with GMM and the SH movie's use of integrating the two technologies, but is it their fault? A Godzilla movie from 2003 and an art film based on a video game about personal trauma with tank controls that only people like me play surely doesn't have any real influence on hollywood, right? CGI is a hell of a lot more expensive, right? And if the technology really has gotten better, the new CGI shouldn't actually look WORSE than the old stuff, right?

So what is it, then? Why do people make creatures 100% in a computer, when they couldn't composite a sticker in an album, they have no fucking clue how physics work, they don't understand heavy things move slower that lighter things, they don't understand that not every single movement is smoother than the rockies, they can't stop the FUCKING TEXTURES FROM STRETCHING, they have no fucking sense of style, and... well, they can't do a god damn thing right at all.

I've been bitching about this since Godzilla lost his crown, or perhaps more accurately, since one of the american producers on GINO 2 outed the projected as, you know, GINO 2. I never gave Cloverfield much shit because working from a camera literally on the streets of the city itself, a hollywood faggot like Gay Gay Fagbrums would obviously resort to the most expensive and, for him, easiest solution. Sure the movie looked like shit, but we all knew it would be a B movie from the start, so no one cared. Before this, with the AVP movies, the Underworlds, and all the independent Japanese stuff, CGI had become such a non issue I stopped affording it any credibility.

Now it's killed off the king of the monsters and turned a prequel that's been trying to happen for, geez, 10 years or so, into, effectively, a forgettable B movie unless you are obsessed with the original as much as me.

Meanwhile, Ultraman is going 3D. That's super bad ass, but because Tsuburaya has an irrational fear of any type of currency other than yen, I'll never see the damn thing.

The world of monster movies could really use a hero right now...


Oh, I'm not implying Prometheus will be that hero, but I just remembered and this is important. Here are some leaked pics I know next to nothing about, only that almost everywhere I hear about them, Fox asked for them to be removed. Since I'm not a faggot, these aren't going anywhere. Could they be red herrings? Maybe, but I'm moderately sure these are the images Fox doesn't want being seen.

Gee, those sure look like eggs, don't they? And what do you think they need to use that flamethrower on? You know, I like Rodan too. Atragon is amazing. Frankenstein vs. Baragon is the greatest iteration of the Frankenstein story ever told, bar none. So, I have absolutely no problem with a non-alien alien movie. Space Jockeys are wicked radical to the max, and 90 minutes of them is a sweet deal as far as I'm concerned, even if that dipshit Ridley "gay faggot" Scott has anything to do with it. Another stupid, boring movie that doesn't understand there is a limit to how long you can hold an audience's suspense if you don't give them a reason to keep caring? As long as I get to see a new, practical monster, I'll still get the DVD. Or maybe see it in a theater once and then download it if I can find the motivation for it.

But, yes, apparently the egg chamber is gonna be a set in the film. If it's that closely connected to the first Alien movie, then the obvious choice is to show us the Jockey Alien. Because I have no faith in cuntbags with massive misplaced egos who have shown time and time again they have no interest in coming up with new or interesting ideas, I'm guessing we'll probably... just see more aliens.

Ridley Scott is a pretentious sack of shit who thinks he owns abstract concepts. I actually wrote like two more paragraphs of mouth-foaming nonsense about how fucking terrible that guy is, but you probably don't want to hear it. Thing is, the alien fanbase is the absolute worst I have ever seen in my entire life, so I can go off on it for the longest time, but I don't need to get into that now. I've already badmouthed two series I really like, so, let's wrap up by saying something nice about both of them:

The Thing: the new movie isn't as bad as it could have been, and special effects aren't the most important part of a movie... unless it's a monster movie. Ok, I still liked it though. In a Megalon sort of way. Well... when there's no monsters around, it's actually really good.

Alien: Ridley Scott's movie wasn't THAT bad. It introduced the character (designed by Dan O'Bannon and H. R. Giger... and, you know, NOT Scott) fairly well, the chestburster scene was dead on, and a genuine shock for the audience. There must be fans who still buy into the franchise, or else Fox would drop it altogether. I'm sure that Prometheus will have at least one scene, like the chestburster thing, that some actual thought was put into, and it will be great. It can't possibly be as bad as Manos. And if it turns out to be super boring, I can have someone wake me up when the monster shows up.

See guys, there's always a silver lining. Both of these series (for The Thing, only counting from the 82 film and up) have been incident free since the outset, so, isn't it about time they had some Megalons? You can't be perfect all the time, right? I'm sure things will get better again.

At any rate, Prometheus isn't going to be as stupid as AVPR. Of this I'm sure. Whether the monster will be interesting enough to counteract the boringness of it is different. It's hard to make a movie so bad I won't watch it even with a praetorian predalien, and I've wanted to see a Space Jockey for a lot longer.



...fuck that's a lot of ranting. At this rate, I'm liable to reach trekkie depths of nerd-rage. :O GODZILLA ISN'T GREEN HE'S GRAY GET IT RIGHT!!!!111!!1!!!one >=/

Xros minis are stupid.

What is this shit? This is fucking stupid. I don't care who the fuck you are, War Greymon doesn't fucking digivolve in Seadramon. That's just stupid.

I love the parallel of the megazords and super organisms (see, because it's multiple multicellular organisms working as one organism... get it? It's cool, dammit), but you can't make that mesh with traditional digivolution.

Like, lets say the original five dinozords are like the champion level, and the megazord is an ultimate/perfect. Okay, cool, makes sense. Because the Dragonzord is about equal to the megazord, it would ALSO be an ultimate, right? Fair enough. And when you have the Dragonzord combine with the other 5 dinozords, you get one that sacrifices speed for power. So, it's still really an ultimate. So the Dragonzord is an ultimate that, because of the technicalities of megazords, digivolves into another ultimate. I can understand that, and it makes perfect sense, especially if you then say Titanus is another ultimate, and the Ultrazord is a mega/ultimate.

But instead of working like that, what the xros minis do is mix in digimon whose level we don't know (or they technically don't have one, ala Ohakadamon or Apocalymon, although Shoutmon is pretty obviously a champion at this point) with older digimon, such as Agumon and Triceramon, who we already know everything about.

So, what you get is, to go back to the analogy, individual zords combining with individual zords, both of which we know the levels of, to get a third individual zord that we also know the level of already. Like, if the Pteranodon and Mastodon combined to get the Triceratops. That's fucking stupid.

That's just the analogy. The reality is that if you xros any of the champion leveled digimon Greymon, Seadramon, Tyrannomon, or Monochromon, or either of the ultimate leveled Metal Greymon or Triceramon, or even the mega level War Greymon or Imperialdramon with the also mega level Magnadramon, the result is the rookie level Dracomon.

This is why the xros minis are stupid.

But more than that, the way that you xros is to beat an A.I. digimon in battle, and what species you kill will determine what the resulting xros will be. So... if you can get a War Greymon by killing ONE enemy, and all of the digimon you can obtain are equal in power anyways... what's the fucking point of even playing it? If you aren't raising your digimon to get a specific one... why ARE you raising it? Wouldn't it be simpler just to let the stupid fucker die?

Or, better yet, just never buy one to begin with? I certainly think so.

I fucking hate these xros minis, dude, I'm serious. I can't wait until like G10 or whatever when the xros thing is old hat and digimon do something that makes more sense. Maybe there will be a mass extinction and only the "metal" digimon will survive or something. Whatever, damn.

This is the dorkiest thing I have ever written...

You know what Google? Fuck you. No, seriously, fuck you to hell

So I just found out SDA sent me an email. That's Scott David Aniolowski for the non-cool kids. This was in response to that big ass post I made about the GOO family tree.

Thing is, Google+ is fucking bullshit. It ruined everything forever and I hate it. I told Google to delete my fucking account but it was like "no thanks."

Why is that important? My Google+ page was basically an unbelievably private thing that I only used for one extremely specific purpose related to an extremely small group of people who were really close friends at the time. When that purpose was negated, it didn't need to exist anymore.

But Google+ is NOT gmail, right? So why does my Google+ name (which I FUCKING DELETED) show up on my emails? Probably I'm the only one that cares, but it pisses me off in ways I could have never imagined.

So in case my last post wasn't a clear enough indication, I'm never signing up for any social networking site ever again ever. If they can come in and change whatever the fuck they want on your god damn email, then I can't trust them ever again. Any of them. Fuck them all to hell. I hope google goes bust and yahoo wins.

But in case you're wondering, the name was a joke based on a video game that CERTAIN FAGGOTS (>=/) took WAAAAAY too seriously. I'm not looking forward to explaining that crap in the future.

Also, since I've gotten a lot of attention for writing about Yog-Sothery, I'm going to continue that trend, I suppose.

Maintaining a Presence in Social Networking

Takes up more time than I care to commit to it. I'm not really wired to treat social networking with anywhere near the same importance as, you know, real life. Updating stuff on a regular basis becomes a second job because you have to make yourself do it. I'm not really interested in that.

I still do things in a social networking perspective sporadically, but I don't feel like I should have to go out of my way to tell an audience of no one something stupid just to let them no i'm alive.

Now, that said, there are some things I do WANT to do as far as social networking is concerned. Usually, though, they get sidetracked or they turn into something else. There was this thing I got into for a while where I was gonna fill a book with accurate sketches of as many GOOs and OGs as I could cram in there, and then put them up on deviantart. Thing is, there are some things on dA I'd want to clean out since they were sort of meant for a really small audience (like 2 people), and it means that I would have to scan something like a billion pages out of a book without tearing out the pages, and it meant having to track down a fark load of stories that I'd have to either special order or that, in some cases, I have no real interest in reading, etc. etc.

So that book is just sort of sitting on my impromtu coffee table now.

Or, what about the time, on this very blog, I set about tracing the timeline(s) of the entire Godzilla/Tohoverse-Multiverse? That was taking an extraordinary amount of time. Eventually, I became interested in other things. Then, when I'd come back to it, I would be intimidated by the amount of work it would take to finish, plus no one was actually reading it anyways.

There are other unfinished projects on this blog, too: the ideas for the Eddie Dombrowski-centric Silent Hill game, the original idea I had for a Silent Hill game, how to fix pokemon, other dinosaur stuff, alien life cycle, and a whole bunch of stuff I never even finished or posted!

Now, maybe you think it's ironic that I'm writing a whole blog post about how I don't really care about keeping up with blogs, and it is, but it should serve a purpose as a disclaimer or something.

At any rate, I wanted to get it off my chest. But I'm seriously bored with this now, so I'm going to watch Freelance Astronauts play Oregon Trail now.




...no, I still haven't played the new Alice yet. Yes, I will soon. Before I turn 24 for certain, because then it will lose a good portion of it's impact. Yes, I've avoided spoilers because I have some REALLY OBNOXIOUSLY HIGH expectations for it. Yes, that means I am going to assume that there is a REASON she relapses outside of just wanting to be darker and edgier for darker and edgier's sake. It's not Tim Burton, after all, although the only things that bothered me about that movie were the homogenizing of the red queen and the queen of hearts, and the fact that Johnny Depp is now officially playing the same character over and over and he completely fucking ruined the mad hatter, and I hate him and never want to see him in anything after Edwards Scissorhands again.

Harumph. =/

How to Fix Pokemon

Hey there, audience of nobody! So I did a "how to fix Silent Hill" thing a while back, which was riddled with typos (probably because I was so engrossed in it I was only half paying attention), but I ended it by saying I was gonna post the possibilities for an Eddie Dombrowski game and a third, new idea I had that seemed rather obvious yet no one has used for a SH game before. Fat chance I ever get back around to that.

So THIS idea is even more rickety. The thing is Pokemon is an unrecognizable clusterfuck of stupidity nowadays. Pokemon happened, and it had a sequel, but after that shit went to hell and it's been hard to get back into it. There is one single unifying mistake that keeps me from playing any pokemon game post-Gold/Silver, but it's only one of a gazillion.

Thing is, though, pokemon is an extremely simple formula, and as such it is easy to get right as well as easy to twist the formula around. This post will cover what the problems are, how to fix them, and at least one or two redesign/redux pokemon. Maybe even the first four if there's time.

from DeviantArt I guess. SH+Pokemon is a terrible idea, by the way.

SECTION I: Identifying the problem

First things first, the huge glaring plot hole that keeps me up and night: THERE ARE ONLY 256 POKEMON! Where the fuck did this blue furry that's a clone-but-worse of Mewtwo come from and more importantly, how do we kill it?

Obviously the stars of pokemon are the mon themselves, so this one is impossible to ignore, and why are so many people okay with just abrubtly adding 400+ pokemon with no explanation whatsoever? Where did they come from? How can they exist? Where were they for the first two games and whycome nobody noticed them before?

Because some are okay with this, I feel like I need to qualify this and explain why there are only 256 pokemon. It's sad that I do, sure, but here we go:

Think back to the first pokemon game. How many pokemon were there? Professor Oak would tell you assertively in his "i'm older than you so you have to believe me" tone that there are EXACTLY 150 pokemon. No more, no less. Realize that this means he knows all about Mewtwo at the beginning of the game, and fully excepts it's reality. Realize this MUST mean he knows for a fact that Mew, #151, exists as well and is not just a pokemon cryptid. So right away he either means Mew, or is lying. Since the guy wrote the fucking pokedex himself, and numbers Mewtwo before Mew, he must be lying.

And remember how thick the lies were about Mew? You couldn't find any information on him from official channels at all. He was like a ghost, by contrast Missingno. was a complete unknown at this time.It was at least a year later before Nintendo finally admitted Mew's existence... even though you can't really deny it since Mewtwo requires Mew to exist.

But it didn't stop there did it? If Mew was #151, then what the hell was that thing in the first episode of the cartoon? It wasn't Moltres, and when Ash asked Oak about it, he flat out denied the possibility that the creature was ever real, and dismissed Ash's story entirely. That pokemon cryptid, when it was numbered, ended up as #250 not #152.

But there were also assertations that we "didn't really know how many species of pokemon there are." With Mew, Ho-oh, and Missingno., this was not surprising to hear. And when leaked images of G/S pokemon appeared, and Togepi, Slowking, Donphan, Pikabl... I mean Marill, and others began to appear in cards and the cartoon, it wasn't quite as surprising. The "pokegods" may have been fiction, but all myths have some basis in fact, and what once were the Giant Squids and Okapis of the world began to be found and acknowledged as real pokemon.

Now about pokemon genetics: Mew, the "all-embryo" pokemon, is a pokemon with all bases turned "on." Or Mew is the original pokemon genetically, whose dna (or whatever) contains all pokemon's information flipped on. He is the ur example. On the other hand, Missingno., number 000, is a pokemon severly lacking in genetic information, presumably with all bases turned "off."

That sounds like a sloppy explanation, so let me explain it this way: Missingno. is 00, Mew is FF. Now, Mew's actual hex address was never FF, but it gets the point across. Get it? So pokemon have a set number of genetic variations, or there is a finite number of possible pokemon that can be created from a limited and-not-prone-to-mutation poke-genes. They don't evolve like earthlings or Digimon, so they can't change the number of variations.

But what is that set number? Well, considering nobody ever said anything about there still being undiscovered pokemon after G/S, we must assume that at that time all possible pokemon had been discovered. Not surprising, since the level of technology in the pokemon world would easily allow scientists to alter the poke-genetics of a ditto or something to artificially simulate every possible pokemon in Mew's genes. So there are 252 pokemon, it's done.

So then this new game comes out and says, with no cryptozoology or mythology to back it up, "oh look, there's like 100 more fucking pokemon that no one has ever heard of until right this second and they're RIGHT OVER THAT HILL!"

Bullshit. You don't get to do that. Play by your own rules, and quit making shit up. Now, remember that example I gave about comparing poke-genetics to their hex addresses? So there are 256 possible pokemon in the original games, with one slot used for and egg and one being #000. In G/S, that leaves three Missingno. clones (instead of 104 in R/B). In fact, they were almost exactly the sameas G/S Missingno., so it would be wise to assume that there could still be four (or three depending on how you interpret the egg) pokemon that scientists have yet to artificially create yet. Hence, we stick to the original hexidecimal system and get 256 pokemon counting 0, going from #000 to #255.

Simply put, the in-game mythology of the series directly opposes any pokemon with a higher number than 255 existing.

Another thing: Missingno. sucks now. He's my favorite pokemon of all time and without him there's absolutely no reason to play.

Another thing: Pokemon is an rpg. Kinda a minor complaint since it didn't make the first games less enjoyable, but it's an awful genre is all. Pokemon are in Smash Bros., so why can't we do something fun to play? It'd be nice, but in truth pokemon is one of the handful of rpg's you can actually sit through (about 5 in all).

Also: What's with the versions? Why the hell would I buy a game twice? Memory limitations my ass, you can obviously fit information for all the pokemon in the cart, so why are the encounters fucked up? Quit money grubbing and just make a completed game. And while I'm on that, put it on an actual console. I don't want to squint to play a damn game.

SECTION II: Some Advice

So really the main problem is the number of pokemon. At first it seems like you can just say "well delete the other ones" and get on with it... but hold on. If we go with the hexidecimal system there are still three spots left. I know Leafeon was in some game in an official capacity, and he's been a pokegod from the beginning. So it would make sense that Charcolt, Sapusaur, and Rainer be included as well. Might as well stick Mewthree in there.But that brings it to #256, or 257 total pokemon...

Well, it is possible to avert the number if we are creative and play by the rules that pokemon has already set for us, something Nintendo never bothered to do. Case(s) in point: Porygon, Porygon 2, Mewtwo, and the fossil pokemon.

Both Porygons and Mewtwo are artificially created, meaning they don't need to, nay, they CAN'T be contained within the genetic material of Mew, they are manmade aberrations. Mewtwo is even supposed to be a clone of Mew, so we can go so far as to say it has the same genes as Mew but is interpreted differently.

Let's take a page from Final Wars and call this human folly the "M" base. Porygon could be 0M, Porygon 2 is 2M, and Mewtwo is M2, just for fun. Adding this to the naturally occuring poke-bases makes 17. To calculate how many species of pokemon are possible with the expanded natural and artificial genome, just square it, and we get 289, that's still including #000, so up to #288. Further, there is a "pokemon" called Porygon Z which is evolved from Porygon 2 in one of those newer games, but with just a little imagination and if we bother to justify his existence, he now fits in perfectly with the rest of the cast! Even better, it allows more space for artificial, man-made pokemon.

Now the fossils: as stated before, poke-genetics are static, Mew is everything any pokemon could ever be, and pokemon do not evolve. So, how does that explain fossil pokemon? We can't throw everything out the window because not only does the evidence weigh heavily against pokemon actually evolving, but Mew can still transform into Kabuto, presumably the oldest of the fossils, so Kabuto MUST fit in somehow.

But Mew can transform into Porygon too, right? Sure, but Porygon is still created from poke-genetics, and like Mewtwo, we should assume that the "M" base stands for metaphorical, because I'm trying to explain poke-genetics in hexidecimal, and Mewtwo IS a clone.

So whatever the alteration is, Mew can duplicate it even with non-altered pokemon dna. If this is the case, might there be other, completely natural bases that have simply disappeared over time? The thought is a little scary once you realize pokemon cannot increase their biological diversity over time, and will eventually boil down to one species before going extinct forever, but it is a fair assumption. An "extinct" base is completely fair game too, since they "we would have found them by now" is no longer an excuse, although the idea of living relic poke-cryptids is exciting, and I've always kinda thought Tyranitar was one such pokemon... no basis for that, I just always considered him the official version of "Tyranticus" or whatever that pokegod's name was.

So, let's add another base that was lost to time in all pokemon other than Mew, and call it "P" for prehistoric. That brings the total number of pokemon up to 324, or from #000 to #323.

By simply taking the game's own explanation for pokemon's existence and scrutinizing the pokemon that are already there before all the ass-pulling and shark-jumping and using the power of our imaginations, we have expanded the number of possible pokemon from 252 to 324! Thats 68 pokemon that make sense in the in-game universe!

It's that easy, and we haven't even gotten darker and edgier yet.

SECTION III: Darker and Edgier for the 90's

by Canyx or something like that. It's Tyranitar if you couldn't tell.

The pokemon themselves are a hodgepodge of mismatched origins, dumbed down awesomeness and loose ends that are ignored. For instance, did you know Butterfree and Venomoth's designs are backwards? Really? Then why the hell does Butterfree look exactly like a Venonat, and Venomoth look like a Metapod? Ever stop to think about why Kangaskhan's child, who is clearly different from Kangaskhan proper and since going through a metamorphosis counts as a new species isn't accounted for? Well, who was Cubone's mother? The first and second games are full of this sort of thing.

But the games continue to stagnate and wither when there are obviously mistakes and a lot of potential that is just being ignored. This is sad, and for this hypothetical "fixed" game, somebody seriously needs to stop fucking around and update the now decade old pokemon. They gave Rodan three horns and a beam weapon in 1993, so why the hell doesn't pokemon even try?

That said, edgier for edgier's sake is retarded, and Todd McFarlane is a hack. What we need is just a simple redesign. Jigglypuff should still be cute, but Dragonite should look like an actual dragon, is what I'm saying.

So I lied. There is one other thing I want to talk about other than the actual redesigns, but I will get to both next time (assuming there is one). That will be fixing the settings and at least Missingno.

And The Award Goes Too...

Now this is just silly. I stumbled onto some website that was run by this film nut who kinda does the same thing I do (see: any post I've ever made here, they're all ranting monstrosities), only he watches people movies too. No big deal, but it does mean that it opens a guy like that up to bitching about the oscars as if they meant something (unlike me, since I learned immediately that Godzilla movies didn't show up on their radar, which I thought was complete bullshit at the age of... I don't know, seven or something, and disregarded any authority it claimed to have right then and there, and haven't changed my opinion since), and all the heartaches that follow with that.

Here you will find the article where he goes through and chooses his own ponies. First off, I don't understand what the prize is. A little statue of some guy? Who cares? It's gold... I think, is that it? Don't all these hollywood jack-offs already have a bunch of money? And it has to be money that makes gold valuable, because it sure as hell isn't pretty or useful for anything (other than a conductor, but any damn metal can do that). The praise or bragging rights? No one respects "the academy," as I have illustrated myself and with that link which clearly indicates even people who give a shit about hollywood, people movies disagree with pretty much every decision they've made. I just don't understand why they still have these giant circle jerks when the only parts of the lord of the rings-esque run time worth watching is the very beginning where they usually have a pretty funny guy do a skit before the whole show starts to die in a baroque cacophony of gaudy ivory tower masquerade pretentious "we ARE movies" bullshit extravaganza-thonic pointless high-fiving fucktards.

Whatever. I got to reading this and I thought "well wait a minute, this guy thinks HE'S critical of this crap? Ain't no way somebody who cares enough to debate the awards as if they were important can out-cynic someone who... doesn't." And with a magic pothole, I found myself with all the material I needed to have my own "YOU-GOT-IT-WRONG-ASSHOLES!!!" awards. I'll call them, the "avacodies" after my random picture I pulled out, the rare and priceless avocado colored TamaGothi, which do not physically exist in our dimension, so all I have is this picture:

I would have made white transparent and inserted a little gif of a Murphygothi or something, but I don't have that on me and I kinda just pulled this out of my ass like just right the fuck now. I didn't want it to end this way, you know.

So there it is. Now, on with the awards!

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:


"Visual Effects" is a politically correct way of referring to cgi, but when I first heard the term I thought it meant, you know, actual effects. The nominees were Star Trek, Disctric 9, and Avatar, which won. Now, there isn't much to say here because all cgi looks the same and it all looks like shit and will never get better despite the decades of hollywood jack-offs convincing themselves that they aren't watching a pile of badly composited donkey shit dance across the scene at impossible angles with a bizarre motion that makes stop motion look downright perfect, but Avatar was in 3D, and that's cool. In fact, all movies that aren't in 3D should lose automatically.

Granted, Avatar has SO MUCH cgi that it looks more like a 90's full motion video adventure game than a real movie, whereas the other look like modern video games with slightly less fake looking actors, but, again, it IS in 3D, and that's one step above in "visual effects" terms.

AVATAR

for Best Visual Effects

for Best Animated Feature

BEST EDITING


Nominees were Hurt Locker, some other movie, some other crap, Avatar again, and a bunch of movies I've never seen or heard of. Of the ones I have seen, Avatar's compositing effects are good in a 90's video game hauntology sort of way, which I just said, but that isn't really editing. As in, the editor doesn't do that. Also, Avatar already has one avocadie, so it's done. NO ONE WINS.

BEST MAKEUP


Where the special effects would go if there were any movies with special effects. The nominees were Star Trek, and two other movies that are probably made up. Star Trek HAS no special effects, only "visual" effects, so it doesn't win. But, since this was the 2010 awards, which covers movies from 2009, and the absolute best effects from any movie from 2009 was hands down Gehara (Raiga can suck it, and you're all thinking it, so shut up). Gehara was just the fucking bomb. Recently the rash of indie films filling the void left by Godzilla, Gamera, and everyone else in the late aughts (including Clover, who died in the womb) has made the whole "look" of the time be not that of genuine hauntology, but of a low budget Full Moon video or Ultraman episode that tries to make fun of it's budget, but still makes you cringe; but not because of the handywork involved, the sets and props and suits are gorgeous, but the shoddy compositing looks worse than that infamous shore scene from G2K. That said, Guilala (who is, after all, one of the big four G's, and is officially one of the big boys) has some Ariel Pink-like precision with it's hauntology scenes. I SWEAR TO GOD I watched those scenes over and over and COULD NOT believe they were recreated and not stock footage. It's still hard for me to tell which movie certain clips come from (I mean, on youtube and stuff).

But yeah, Gehara wins.

GEHARA

for Best Makeup

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE/SHORT


Documentaries aren't art. NO ONE WINS.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

The only DRAWN cartoon left in the lot is, wouldn't you know it, the last real disney movie, the one with the frog and the racism... probably not specific enough, but you know, it's the LAST ONE. Now, I know I should give it to the shoe in, but Up, a pixar joint, won the award. It's time I accept the western world's continued rebuttal against the much, much worse japanese cartoons and gave credit where credit is due.

Avatar has got to get this one. Now, I know there are some actors in it, but didn't Roger Rabbit do that too? And Space Jam? We shouldn't ignore a cartoon simply because it has a few non-smurfs, we should embrace the spirit of the work, which is clearly that of a cartoon, rather than force some role upon it which it doesn't rightly deserve. However, it shouldn't have both, so I exempt it's earlier award in favor of this.

For Best Visual Effects, NO ONE WINS.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE


Nominees are: Up, Avatar (what the fuck, again? That's it, you're disqualified from nominations), Hurt Locker, Sherlock Holmes, Something about a fox.

So furries are just plain vile, and I'm incredibly pissed off at the person who told me about those things, as I DID NOT need to know there were actual, real life people who lusted after cartoon smoldering cheetah temptresses. More to the point, these people should be exterminated, rounded up into some sort of... camp... hold on, I'm trying to concentrate... basically, the one with fox in it's name loses because I assume it's about creepy assed weeabos.

Also, I've only ever seen Avatar, and that soundtrack was fucking terrible. They didn't bother changing it to match an alien environment when they stole the rest of Ferngully. Whatever. I can't recall a soundtrack that I've liked particularly from this year either, so  fuck it. NO AWARD FOR ANYONE.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG


This one's easy. Nine Inch Nails's theme for Tetsuo 3 (or bullet man or whatever). OH! No, wait, I forgot about the song from Stilyagi with Ariel Pink! Tough choice, but at least I know for a fact that the new Tetsuo was from 2009, so they get it.

TETSUO: BULLET MAN

Nine Inch Nails - Theme from Tetsuo: Bullet Man

for Best Original Song

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM


So basically, every film that WASN'T made in America. Cool, that's fair, so they're exempt from every other category, even though none of your own films were worth watching?

What else came out in 2008? '06 through '09 is such a blur for me, film wise. And the fragmentary situation with the news since Monster Zero died (Sci-Fi Japan is the most ridiculous piece of crap I've ever seen, they're nothing but contests and cartoons, no actual monster movie news) has made sure I always find out about movies at least 6 months after they're released. With that said, this one goes to the first Digimon movie, so suck it, bitches.

DIGIMON ADVENTURE (1999)

for Best Fucking Movie Ever

I'm gonna blaze through some of these:
BEST ART DIRECTION - Same group of five or six nominees again. NO ONE WINS.
BEST SOUND MIXING - Same dickheads. NO ONE WINS.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Same again. NO ONE WINS.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN - Guess what? NO ONE WINS.

For the actor awards, the only name I can attach to a face AND stand to look at for more than five minutes is Mo'Nique. But aren't we forgetting something? Avatar had both Sigourney Weaver AND Michelle Rodriguez, while Star Trek had that kid from the White Castle movie, the other guy from Shaun of the Dead, and Sylar... FUCKING SYLAR!

Sylar wins everything.

FUCKING SYLAR

for All Of The Acting Awards

The only ones left are best Director and best Picture. Duh and Duh-er.

JAMES CAMERON

ALIENS (1986)

for Best Director

GUILALA ATTACK THE G8 SUMMIT

for Best Damn Comeback Since Gamera's Heisei Movie, But Only The First Two Because G3 Sucked Balls And They Forgot The Whole "Monster" Part Of The Monster Movie

And that's it, Guilala is truly one of the big boys now, and with only on impossible to hate X-treme B-movie and one hauntology done right actually funny kaiju comedy under his belt, there is literally nothing to hate about the guy's entire career. Godzilla, Gamera, and Gappa (who cares about him?) can't say that. Plus, Guilala surprised everyone by beating Clover to the punch of being an established, big name monster with an actual series (it's 2, that counts), instead of just some faggot calling out Godzilla for no good reason and then never actually trying to prove yourself and dieing right before you had a chance to ever live. It's been three years now, and now sequel. You know how long it took Godzilla? One year. King Kong took even less than that.

Point is, Guilala is better than Gamera... and, if Toho fucks up the pacing and misses the king's 60's anniversary waiting for that legendary turd to drop, Guilala can just have the fucking throne, because Godzilla is obviously not in the mood to defend it.

I'm serious man, Guilala means business this time. Only took him 41 years, but whatever.

BEHOLD! I AM GUILALA, THE NEW KING OF THE MONSTERS!!!

Ruining Godzilla 29 a Full 2 Years Before Release

When I saw this poster, I squealed like a hysterical schoolgirl. For obvious reasons. It took a whole 5 minutes for me to go from "jonas brothers screaming" to "star wars nerd rage."

Remember Godzilla 29 and how cool it was going to be, and how it was totally going to be the movie Banno has been waiting to make for, like, 40 years? Yeah, well, guess what. Hollywood fucked it up already, and the film isn't due for another 2 years.

Yeah, I know, the poster looks so cool, and it was confirmed (like you NEED a confirmation) that Godzilla will be X-ing at least one other kaiju, but then they had to go and use the c-word.

So that's it then. Nevermind that Godzilla single handedly INVENTED special effects, or that CGI is a discredited trope that hasn't been used in a monster movie since... uh... Peter Jackson's King Kong (and we all know how THAT turned out...), or that the ability to use CGI as an enhancement to existing practical effects creating a whole new field of integrated technology that would have been Eiji Tsuburaya's dream come true and is responsible for some of the most gorgeous monster movies of all time (Silent Hill, GMM, AvP, any recent Werewolf movie, the new Gamera, etc.), and I guess it doesn't really matter that not only does the movie going audience despise the very idea of CGI characters in modern films, but the niche market a Godzilla film occupies hinges, uh... 100% of it's audience based on whether Godzilla is done practically or not, something that YOU'RE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO ASK ABOUT!

This is non-negotiable. Fucking fix it or I walk on the franchise. I've been obsessed with Godzilla since I was 2, it was my one insane fanboy thing that I could really call my own, the one thing I got irrationally pissy about when the status quo was nudged a little (remember when they made King Ghidorah a good guy? Those were dangerous times to try and talk to me), and now I can't even have that.

Fuck you, Godzilla. Maybe it isn't too late to change my major. Looks like it's time to quit film school and drop the "armchair" from "armchair paleontologist."

Although, if Satsuma walks, then Godzilla himself is still cool, and we just have another GINO on our hands. That would be a very sad turn of events, but at least it means there is a better future to look forward too.

R.I.P. Godzilla (1954-2007)

P.S. It would be really nice of you to somehow rise from your grave just one more time, and get this "cgi" thing dealt with. Just sayin'.

There Are No Crazy People Anymore

I wrote about two half articles, one with Ariel Pink chords (turns out I'd gotten Artifact wrong, though, so no harm no foul, I guess, whatever that means) and one as a reaction to something Tricia (some girl who likes dinosaurs, art, and dinosaur art whose blog I read when I can) saying that, even though dinosaurs have feathers, they don't have TOO MANY feathers, which is a damn lie and you know it. Peacock. End of story.

But as I was driving back from not finding the location of the shoot for Preacher's Daughter, I was starting to feel really uncomfortable. We're shooting out in Alvin, which is a little podunk hick suburb where they still fly confedrate flags. Now, I'm omnigendered (as in, all of them), and to the Nth degree at that, and while that may not seem like a very big deal in a time when most people are well-adjusted, multi-faceted, complicated individuals with copmlex feelings and personalities that can not be represented by a shallow, superficial system such as gender roles that haven't been updated since the 1950's, it does make me a tomgirl. Hillbillies, you may have heard, are among the last remaining people who give a shit about these things, and they don't like it. So, driving 10 miles under the speed limit because of a spare an hour away from home in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere is disturbing to me. Of course, with all those extra genders, I can hide the feminine crap without pretending to be something I'm not... but having friends who can't hide things from the crazies (such as the black people, yeah, you forgot there were still racists didn't you? Yep, they're still around, just not in public anymore) doesn't make me sleep any easier.

And then I started thinking about the word "tomgirl." No one uses it. Why? It's like, one of my favorite words. You know tomboy, right? You probably had a best friend in elementary school who was a tomboy, right? Weren't they kick ass? Everybody loves tomboys. Tomgirl is like that to me, as it makes more sense than "trap," but still has a really positive connotation. I just... like it. But why isn't it ever used?

Then I was poking around on google and found this neat little blog called accepting dad, and a year old post with comments as recent as two months ago. It's called Tomgirls vs. Thing Without a Name, and it explains why tomgirl never really caught on... something I'm glad I didn't notice as a kid. But it also got me thinking about this same sentiment I keep HEARING (note: I'm hearing the sentiment only, keep this on file for later) but never seeing in... anywhere.

There is this idea among all us normal, non-crazy people that the crazies have infiltrated every aspect of society, that they control everything, and we all must bend to their unflinching hateful will. Turns out, this is dead wrong. Let me explain what I think happened to make everybody believe this with an analogy:

Let's say we have a group of 10 normal, sane people with different personalities, viewpoints, and whatever, but who all respect each other's right to be who they are. They are all holed up in this bar, and outside are like, 50 guys who hate all of our 10 bar guys for various reasons. 10 of the people outside manage to get into the bar. They start spouting all this hate, and things get tense. One of our 10 guys politely explains that, even though the 10 people in the bar are different, they get along with each other just fine, and they have no ill will towards the people on the outside either, but rather the conflict between them was entirely conceived by the people outside the bar. Moved to tears, 8 of the intruders decide to stay inside the bar, while the other 2, unable to tolerate any human being different from them in any way, storm outside to gather more of their hate-mongering army.

The score:
Drinking and having a good time and sharing ideas in an accepting atmosphere
18
Stubborn assholes who want to lynch anyone different from them
42

Now this goes on for a while. Gradually, it gets to the point where most of the people inside the bar can actually go outside and talk to the assholes, because they have been accepted for so long, or perhaps, were once part of the crowd of crazies, that the line between who is and isn't acceptable begins to blur. Now we have 42 people in the bar, and 18 people outside. Of the 42, 30 of them are free to wander without prejudice between the two groups. The jerks outside can no longer tell the difference, and for many of them, if they could, they wouldn't care. This leaves 12 people in the bar who are still paranoid about going outside, because a slightly larger group of people outside will be immediately able to tell that our 12 are part of the "unacceptable" group.

The score:
People inside the bar who will be immediately persecuted by the jerks outside
12
People who have an easy truce with the crazies, and/or can slip by them unnoticed
30
People still clinging to guns and religion
18

The parallels should be obvious, but this isn't the end. It turns out that about a third of the crazy people outside the bar are secretly just like the 12 who refuse to leave. Under the ruse of going into to get the infidels, these 6 go into the bar with no resistance whatsoever, admit everything, have a good cry, are immediately accepted for who they are by 42 other people, and of that group, 3 still decide to go back outside and continue to live a lie.

The score:
People who are staying in the bar to avoid prejudice, including the ones you just came in
15
People who are completely removed from the conflict at this point
30
People outside who really are fucking psychos
12
People who are pretending to be psychos because they are afraid of how their psycho buddies would react if they knew the truth
3

Now things get interesting. Our 15 people who would not leave the bar suddenly grow a pair, and with the protection of 30 (secretly 33) other guys, leave the bar, catch some flak from crazies, but go on and do other things with their lives. The 12 true psychos enter the bar, and the 3 pretenders say they'll catch up later. Now what happens? Well, those intolerant assholes are still out there. So, the 48 sane people (3 in cognito) get together in a park with a live band and have a big festival celebrating acceptance. It's kind of a gay party, but the band is good, so people enjoy it. One of the prominent leaders of the "sane-ies" gives a speech. He says he's proud of all these people who embrace who they are and refuse to comprimise, and that even though they all get alot of crap from the people around them, and it's hard to even go outside anymore, remember to stand tall and never back down from who you are, and all this other shit. Everyone agrees. People are jerks, but stick with it, and together we'll give our children a better future, or some nonsense.

Do you see what I'm getting at? These people all had to deal with being around the crazies for a good portion of their life, and, to them, jerks were always the majority. But the problem is we have have 48 of this sample group of 60 all in the same room talking about how they are not excepted by... 12 drunks in a bar who nobody likes.

And I'm not trivializing this, if you are one of those 12-15 people the other 12 simply can not tolerate, they will not be nice to you. But, remember, all you have to do is avoid one bar that, and I can not stress this enough, NOBODY goes to. Nobody.

I'm fully aware that in the bustling metropolis of Pieceofshitville, South Carolina, population 4, all kissin' cousins, there will be hell to pay if you are one of those 100 things that crazy people don't like. Thing is, I live in Houston, a pretty big city that's in south Texas. Yeah, Texas. So where the fuck is the discrimination? The looking askance? The unfair judgement of character based on any number of superficial criteria? It simply isn't here.

Because what's happened now is that we are all a huge population of completely sane people who don't bash each other for unimportant nonsense, but rather we are ALL so concerned about the rednecks under the bed that it actually unifies us. We hate those boogeymen, all of us, in the entire city. You know, wherever they are.

And I've given the jerks plenty of chances to make themselves known. Plus, I don't have the ability to associate with people of any type of crazy. Religious people, 9/11 conspiract theorists, racists, sexists, whatever-ists, Tea Partiers, drama professors, whatever, I can't deal with those people, so I walk away. I've met them, I know they are out there, but even then these people keep these feelings to themselves, so that you really need to befriend someone for a period of time before it comes out that they are actually unbalanced, because THEY are the ones who are discriminated against.

But what happens to me when I'm wearing a tomgirl outfit? Do I get called a fag by everybody and their dog? No, of course not. Most boys at school have a crush on me, true story. But I'm not saying this to brag, I'm getting to another point here, and it's about why the word "tomgirl" isn't used in the first place.

Now let's say you come across a tomgirl, and you assume that their life is an endless nightmare of persecution and you want to make sure you treat them with the respect any human being deserves (except, of course, drama professors). How do you address them? Who knows? Don't ask me, I certainly have no clue. Actually, no one does. What is considered polite? Further, with so many uneeded distinctions about why any given individual fills any given gender role or identity, how do you know the polite way to refer to that person?

We know that if it's a transexual, you use the pronouns that apply to the sex that person feels that they are. But then we already have subtle sexism at work, because why does a feminine gender role become the only diagnostic factor in identifying someone as a MtF transexual? That's fucking sexist right there, just because they feel as though they are a certain sex, doesn't mean they have to fill an outdated gender role based off of it.

But what if they do? Are they trying to hide their sex? Are they wearing a choker to conceal an adam's apple, or just because they thought it was pretty? Is it just an ugly woman? Or a hot woman with an unfortunate shoulder width and a sharper looking face? How can you tell? Can you ask them? Is that impolite? Should you assume they want to be female, or is that sexist too? Can you complement them on their outfit, or is that sexual harasment? Wow, if they're hot, were you gay for dudes this whole time?

And it's neat because you can actually see the wheels turning in people's heads as they struggle with how they are supposed to treat you, what's considered "right" and "wrong." The truth is there is no right or wrong yet, and the revelation that genders are fucking stupid in the first place has only started working into the mainstream public for the past 20 years or so. People aren't being rude on purpose, they just truly don't know what to say.

Because of this, "tomgirl" never gets used, or even thought of. It's funny, though, because there are no terms for primarily neutral or androgynous people. What would that even be? Tomperson for neutral and... tombowie? I don't even know. Plus, except for maybe connecting andros with hermaphrodites, N & A were not based on a sex, so EVERYONE who has a N/A gender identity or role is a tom-whatever.

And what about me? Sure, I've got an outfit for each one, but that just ignores the fact that I'm all of them depending on what mood I'm in. What do you call that? Tom-everything? The answer: you would ONLY come up with different nomenclature when I'm wearing a skirt + heels, because for some reason, being neutral, masculine, and androgynous doesn't really seem to warrant a special name, and THAT'S sexist.

But that's where we are right now. We are just now feeling our way around in a pretty murky area, and no one really knows the right way to handle it. Fine with me, because I don't really care about pronouns or whatever, but it creates an illusion of a cold an unfeeling world that refuses to accept who you are when the reality couldn't be further from that.

And really, that's the best kind of sexism. The I'm-so-nervous-I-don't-know-which-pronoun-to-use kind.

And one last thing: I don't want to make it seem like I'm ignoring the fact that some transgendered people (which, again, is EVERYONE, you neutral bastards) do live in the vicinity of genuinely crazy jackasses. They are out there, and they are Complete Monsters, but those people are in an unlucky situation, rather than me being in a lucky one. That's got to be a terrible situation, and believe me when I say that everyone (again, I do mean everyone) is on your side, and you need to get the hell out of there before you get hurt. But those people are the ones we need to be careful with our rhetoric with and do everything in our power to protect. Not me, I'm fine. It's the other guys who get put in a bad situation that you need to be helping.

And this is the last fucking time I'm doing this. I mean, really, it's over. The well meaning people are the only ones you can run into in your daily life who make shit look harder than it needs to be. Thanks for making a huge deal about nothing, but please, leave me the fuck alone. You're smothering me with your "well-meaningness." I ain't gay for dudes either, so no means no, you pig.

...I'm exaggerating in that last paragraph, but you can see what I'm getting at, right? You're making a mountain out of a molehill, and I'm not the one who wants to hear how "brave" you think I am.

Next time: Who the fuck am I kidding? Like I can keep track of junk.

bullshit

Well, I had a huge post I had written about the new Godzilla movie and the new Ariel Pink album and id tech 5 + DOOM 4 and all the other games, but as I was adding a picture the whole thing closed, and even though this form continuously reminds me it "saves," it does not, in fact LOAD.

So fuck all y'all, I'm not posting shit.

Tawa is a Jerk

Tawa. Four little letters that are simultaneously breathtaking and infuriating. What the heck is a Tawa you ask?

Yes, I know you didn't ask. If you did, you wouldn't have typed "Tawa" into the search bar. I love it for because no matter what other bullshit it caused, it will always be remembered by me for setting the "Coelophysid-Averostran" monophyly thing in stone, and that's nice, but it wasn't strictly necesary. I don't anyone really still though that Coelophysids were Ceratosaurs or anything stupid like that anymore.

Whats disturbing about it is the reactions real, honest-to-goodness, professional scientists are having to it.

So, Tawa is basal to both Coelophysids and Averostrans, forming a sort of sister group while still being recognizably Theropodan. The trick is it also holds on to some Herrerasaurid traits, traits that a) you'll have to go to tetrapod zoology or something similar to read about and b) decisively indicate that Herrerasaurs are close to the ancestry of Theropods, and must have occured after the Theropod-Sauropodomorph split, which then makes "Eusaurischia" paraphyletic and therefore not real except in magical Linnaen fantasy land.

I'm jumping straight to the point here because I already wrote something like this on my faceplace and because I assume if you searched for this you're already familiar with what I'm talking about. Tawa has been cited as suring up Herrerasaurids AS THEROPODS! This makes absolutely no sense to me, and I'm not going to pretend what the hell is wrong with some people just for the sake of argument.

First, the analogy: Remember when Pluto stopped being a planet? Didn't we all have a pretty curious reaction? Sure, anybody with a brain and an interest in the way the world actually works must maintain an objective viewpoint with all this science stuff, but saying Pluto was not a planet was a bit of a jolt to a lot of people. Funny thing is, it actually is still a planet.

You see, they redefined Pluto as part of a new category of celestial body called "dwarf planet," and said that they say is not a planet. For those of you who figured out the answer already, go ahead and skip this paragraph while the others catch up. The new category is a great idea in itself, because at the time countless numbers of little pluto-sized planets were being discoverd all over the solar system, so it seemed that Pluto is not an odd man out, but just a member of a different type of family, which makes perfect sense. "Dwarf Planet" is a perfect name for object like Pluto, as well as Sedna and Ceres, because that's what they are... small rocky planets that formed under similar conditions. Nothing wrong here, all the work is sound... so how do we get from Pluto being a new class of celestial body to it being legal to own dwarf people as slaves, being that they are no longer considered people? Who's job was it to proof read this stuff? Still don't get it? Here's the answer: a dwarf PLANET is still a PLANET, because the word DWARF does not negate the following word. If Pluto was a NON planet or ANTI planet, it would not be a planet. But Pluto is a DWARF... PLANET... a small planet that is now part of a special class, just a GAS GIANT, which doesn't eve have PLANET in the name. And nobody is saying Saturn isn't a planet are they?

So that's the situation with Tawa. Maybe some of you haven't figured out why calling Herrerasaurs "theropods" is a pretty stupid idea yet. That's okay, I'm going to illustrate it for you.

This is a cladogram of the relationships between Saurischians before we found Tawa. It features the now known to be paraphyletic "Eusaurichia." Notice the position of THEROPODA and Herrerasaurids:

SAURISCHIA
|--Herrerasaurids
`--Eusaurischia (I bet Eoraptor goes here)
   |--+--?Guaibasaurids
   |  `--Sauropodomorphs
   `--THEROPODA
      |--Coelophysids
      `--Averostrans
         |--Ceratosaurs
         `--Tetanurines

So, I'm not certain on where Guaibasaurids were supposed to fit, since I heard they were closer to both Theropods and Sauropodomorphs. Just for shits and craps, I'm putting them up with Panphagia. Pay close attention to the organization of Theropoda, so you can see just how much turmoil Tawa has thrown it into... truly it must be heinous. Here is the family tree after Tawa:

SAURISCHIA
|--+--?Guaibasaurids
|  `--Sauropodomorphs
`--THEROPODA

   |--Herrerasaurids

   `--+--Tawa hallae
      `--Neotheropoda
         |--Coelophysids
         `--Averostrans
            |--Ceratosaurs
            `--Tetanurines

Do you see it? Do you see the unruly state of affairs that the Theropods have been reduced to? 'Cause I sure as hell don't. So right away there's the obvious fact that nothing actually changed within Theropoda. It's now called "Neotheropoda" for no good reason. Go back and look at the other cladogram, go ahead and scroll back up, I'll wait. You see the yellow text? It's the same isn't it? Yeah, it is.

Now i'm going to introduce my new cladogram, based on a bunch of heresay and subjective nonsense that has no real basis in reality. Surely, this table is is amatuerish at best:

SAURISCHIA

|--+--?Guaibasaurids
|  `--Sauropodomorphs
`--+--Herrerasaurids
   `--THEROPODA
      |--Tawa hallae
      `--Neotheropoda
         |--Coelophysids
         `--Averostrans
            |--Ceratosaurs
            `--Tetanurines

The joke here is that, of course, this isn't my amatuerish cladogram, it's the same one as above, but proof-read. I moved the word THEROPODA to it's original position, included Tawa because I can see the kink in the jaw from where I'm sitting, and just to be nice, I even kept the "Neotheropoda" part.

The moral of that: Tawa didn't change anything within the cladistic structure of Theropoda, it only reaffirms the monophyly of the whole "Coelophysid-Averostran" set-up. It DOES INDEED move Herrerasaurs into a position close to Theropods, but it does not MAKE Herrerasaurids Theropods.

Let me repeat that: Tawa is a Theropod that retains traits from the last common ancestor of Herrerasaurids and Theropods, but DOES NOT place Herrerasaurids within the pre-established and recently strengthened monophyletic "Coelophysid-Averostran" Theropoda.

There is no need to say Herrerasaurids are Theropods. Turns out a lot of our old ideas about the placement of Herrerasaurids was indeed not the case, but our understanding of what is and isn't a Theropod actually looks clearer now. So there's too more things I need to address: 1) Why can't we move Theropoda to cover Herrerasaurids anyways, and 2) What makes a Theropod a Theropod anywhichways?

1. Herrerasaurids as Theropods is far from a new idea. Idiots have always argued for their inclusion. Does that sound harsh? Take a look at the facts: the ancestor of all dinosaurs was obviously a carnivore, probably an omnivore but let's not bet on it. Therefore, all basal saurischians closer to Coelophysis than Panphagia should have been carnivorous as well. So, a small meat eating dinosaur from the late Triassic could be almost anything. So meat eater does not equal Theropod.

Now, like the Pluto thing, Theropods are a personal issue for me, so I have a hard time being objective about these things. That said, the more radical the idea, the easier it is to be openly biased. I agree that outwordly, Herrerasaurus does look like a Theropod, but that isn't enough for me to except him as a relative to something like Tyrannosaurus or Aquila. Theropods are special for a reason, a whole slew of physiological reasons that some primitive saurischian just can't compete with.

So, I can back up my personal feelings in this case because Theropods really are very different than other dinosaurs, I could say better too, but then that's crossing the line.

2. Quick, name one thing only Theropods have and all Theropods have. It's okay if only very specialized forms that no one debates are Theropods don't fit, I'm looking for something clearly identifiable in Coelophysis and 90% of it's descendents, but NOT in any other animal.
Give up?
Well, the answer I was looking for was a wishbone or furcula. I've never heard of any other animal having a true wishbone. I have heard that Massopondylus (and I guess all Massospondylids?) have something LIKE a furcula gained from convergent evolution, but that's about it.

And that was the last nail in the coffin for me. According to Tom Holtz, who I'm going to totally trust on this because I can't find any other source on the matter, no known Herrerasaurids have been shown to possess a furcula. So, they can't be Theropods. It's all really very simple.

I am pretty stubborn about this, sure, but I've got a damn good reason. The case for Herrerasaurids being Theropods is valid ONLY when you find a Herrerasaurid with a wishbone. I except the conclusion that they are closely related, so don't bite me, Tawa.

I think I've already beaten this to death, but the real moral here is that scientists need to proof-read and stop missing such obvious crap. It's irritating when you hold someone's logical reasoning ability to such high esteem only to find out that they didn't realize calling something a dwarf planet does not mean it isn't a planet.

Also would someone please write a god damn Averostra article on wikipedia? It's 2010 now, this shit is getting ridiculous.