Wednesday, May 30, 2012

How I Saved a Real Princess—A Nintendo Story



When I was a kid, I made some mad money by selling personalized stationery door-to-door in my various neighborhoods. At age 8, I used some of the sales proceeds to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System. I played Super Mario Bros. until I could save the princess every time, almost with my eyes closed.

I bought a few other games, too—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a couple of others. But Mario was where it was at.

At first, my mom barely tolerated having the Nintendo in the house. She said it was rotting my brain. But I wanted her to understand why I liked it so much, so I coaxed her and coaxed her to try playing Mario until she gave in and tried it.

To my delight, my mom actually enjoyed playing Mario. I was amused and pleased that she had finally come around to seeing things my way. We even played it together sometimes. It was fun at first.

A few weeks into her newfound interest, I noticed my mom would sometimes play Mario for hours. Sometimes I would try to get her attention, and she would get angry at the interruption. Other times, she could barely even hear me. There was Mario on the screen, doing his little back-and-forth dance, jumping on a Goomba, hitting a flag pole—and there was my mom staring at it.

My mom was disappearing. The princess needed saving. By observing her, I realized how pathetic I must have looked to her before she herself got sucked into the game. How vacant. It became clear what I had to do.

So at age 10 or so, I took it upon myself to sell that whole piece of shit—Nintendo, games and all—to a video game shop, and I never looked back. I got my mom back, I got myself back, and I had an actual childhood.

Today, I'm grateful for actual memories. Memories that smell like a rotten knothole holding up part of my fort in the woods, that grease my skin like baseball sweat at dusk, that take my breath away like the time I landed on my back while doing a double flip off a swing set.

I'm writing this in front of a computer screen. Hmm.



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All post content on Man of Many Words is created by Will Conley. Please feel free to share this post or any of my other posts with the whole world. Just make sure they know where it came from.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

For all you Minecraft addicts.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Y'all need to learn what this word means.

"Civilization." You think you know what it means. Civilization. Your eyes skate right through it. No problem. Civilization. You got this. It means "everything."

Well, maybe not everything. Just people. Humans. Civilization means humans.

Maybe just "humanity." You know, everybody, ever.

Wrong, sucka. Wrong.

Fact is, civilization is a very specific term. It is in no way interchangable with humans or humanity. You can't use civilization to mean history, sociology, ethics, manners, aesthetics, or whatever shit I'm talking about at the moment. It is mostly interchangeable with the word agriculture, but let's not get ahead of me.

Are you ready to get responsible with your use of the word civilization? I hope so, because we can't really talk about jack squat without first coming to some general agreement on at least a loose definition of the word. And that is exactly how I will define it—loosely. There's no sense in getting lost in the details. You just need to understand a little about what the word means in the context of shit that I say. Because I like to talk about civilization.

The Beginning of Civilization

Civilization began with agriculture. Uh-oh. Agriculture. Another word you think you understand. Fine. I'll back it up to agriculture.

The Beginning of Agriculture

Agriculture is the intentional human cultivation of land. Say you're running around in tribes of people, hunting and gathering, getting by, living and getting sick and using plants as medicine and fucking and raising families and playing games and talking your language and painting your pictures and honking on your didgeridoo. Life is fucked up, but it's also beautiful, and that's life.

But then one day, you sit around in the same place for a little longer, because, check this out, I can grow some rice from this other rice if I just stop moving all over Bumfuck, Egypt for long enough to let it happen. Hell, I can grow a whole metric shitte tonne of rice if I clear out a bigger garden plot. And hell, why don't we just stop moving altogether, as long as I can keep these fucking tigers from eating my sitting-duck family. Poky sticks or something. Whatever, we got this. By the year 6,000 BCE (give or take a few millennia), gardening is big business. The larger the garden plot is, the more efficient the harvest is. You now can produce huge surpluses.

And that was the beginning of agriculture. Agriculture allowed thousands upon thousands of people to gather in one place and mooch off the producers in exchange for letting the producers use their labor. And everyone could just stay there. Like, forever.

The Beginning of Civilization, er, Again

Obviously, when you're all stuck together in one place, you have all kinds of free time due to the advent of efficient food production. You're not hunting and gathering anymore. You are producing food via the miracle of agriculture. This is magical. This is a brand-new thing, when you consider humanity is somewhere between 100,000 years and a few million years old, depending on where you wanna draw the taxonomy lines. I really don't care where you draw the line, or whether you think a Neanderthal is a person, or whatever. Doesn't matter. No matter how you slice it, agriculture is brand-spanking-fucking new in the context of humanity as a whole.

So you have all this free time all of a sudden. Well, let's figure some shit out to fill it up with! Standardized written symbols, portable across hundreds of miles. The manipulation of those words. Money. Vast social heirarchies. Stone monuments to the boredom of fast-talkers and their offspring. Beautiful glass cathedrals carving the sky into awesome geometries. Motorized transportation. Telecommunications. Twitter. The Super Bowl. Cheese in a spray can. Complex industries requiring the lockstep cooperation of millions of communities all contributing their tiny, specialized widget to the iPhone. Gotye's "Someone That I Used to Know" music video.

That's civilization. You see? It's new. And it's a passing fad. Someone should create a graphic just to demonstrate what proportion of the history of humanity civilization takes up, and post it in the comments. Just to make it crystal clear for everyone.

It Matters.

The distinction between civilization and humanity isn't just some frivolous technicality. It's important. It's as important as knowing the United States wasn't always here, or that the semen stain on Monica's dress wasn't always there. It has a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Civilization has an origin in Time, roughly pinpointable through archaeology, geology, and other historical sciences.

This Is the End, My Friend. The Sad, Sad End (Not Really.)

I'm just reporting the facts, not saying whether civilization is a good or a bad thing. I just want you to understand what I mean when I say things like "Civilization is doomed." I'm not being negative. I'm being positive. I have such great faith in humanity that I can look at civilization's dependence on oil and, without batting an eyelash, say, "That thar's obviously a house of cards, pardner."

That's another thing I say. "That thar's a house of cards, pardner." Another: "When the oil runs out, it's Mad Max time." And: "It's gonna be fine, dudes and dudettes. This shit takes hundreds of years to go down."

Civilization. I'll see you on the other side.

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Author's note: this article was "dashed off." (That's writerspeak for "I have an alibi for my sucky writing.") I dashed it off after a brilliant, educated, passionate, moral, ethical, funny, charitable friend of mine digitally slapped me for saying civilization is doomed. She was one of many such people who seem to think I am being negative when I talk smack about civilization. I figured if she's misinterpreting me, everyone must be misinterpreting me. Thus the necessity for this article. I hope you found it tolerable. If you loved it, hated it, or are passionately apathetic about it, tweet at me. - Will Conley

I sincerely hope you're enjoying your weekend. That said, eat this!

Sunday, May 20, 2012

With respect.


Eclipse

This is TheWrongDictionary.com

Pen

I write fake definitions and post them on TheWrongDictionary.com. If you’re into satire, humor, mischief, and the occasional blast of profanity, please visit. If you’re a Tumblr user, you can follow the site so you don’t miss any of my definitions.
The Wrong Dictionary is inspired by The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, Dictionary of Received Ideas by Gustave Flaubert, and the Internets.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

*sniffle*

For more Famous Fake Quotes, please visit and like Famous Fake Quotes on Facebook, and please share it with your friends! "Sharing is caring." - Adolf Hitler

The quick brown fox...

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Martha Stewart stops by Famous Fake Quotes to impart some of her trademark homemaking wisdom.


Martha

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Monday, May 14, 2012

Yogi Berra. Tautologist? Malapropist? One thing's for sure...

Wikipedia inspired this Famous Fake Quote. (Text submitted by Jerry Abejo of Portraits of Nausea.)

Yogi

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Sunday, May 13, 2012

My response to the comment "I like pizza."

Your perspective is correct. In lieu of debating you and presenting you with some facts I made up, I will engage with you in a two-man circle jerk of buddy-buddy bullshit. Pizza is good. I like pizza. You like pizza. Let's have bro sex. But I'm not gay. Also, vote. For Romney, preferably. Actually, wait a minute. You went to Irondale High School? Your lifestyle choices are against my sacred text, which is the NASCAR standings.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Back in the 1960s, school yearbook editors could read your thoughts.


Mitt

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The great American theologian-philosopher Pauly Shore pays a visit to Famous Fake Quotes.


Pauly_shore

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Friday, May 11, 2012

The original deconstructionist philosopher's most inspirational quote.


Hey_you_gonna_eat_that

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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A Very Special Mother's Day Card from a Very Special Boy


Happy_mothers_day

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Russian President Vladimir Putin Weighs In on North Carolina


In_sovet_russia_2

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What God REALLY thinks of the gay marriage ban.


North_carolina

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Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Let's all look at the Supermoon on Cinco de Mayo!

The biggest full moon of the year is this Saturday, May 5th at 11:35 pm Eastern Time. That's el Cinco de Mayo to you Spaniards and such. Let's all look at that moon at the same time. Mark your calendars and set your reminders. Click the icon below to automatically add it to your Google Calendar.



I'll be howling. You?


Wolf-howling-at-the-moon

50 Cents, July 2010


Media_httpdistilleryi_vfbgo

Taken at Fall Branch, TN

Another Huge Moth, July 2010

Huge Moth, July 2010


Taken at Fall Branch, TN

Winston Churchill Settles the Old "Glass" Question


Winston