Baxter Stockman is black!

I have always been quick to condemn the changing of a comic book character's skin color. For some reason, the people in charge of making decisions like to change white characters into black characters. It really doesn't make any sense. If you want a black character, make a black character. With my strong feelings about this topic, one could imagine my surprise when finding out about Baxter Stockman. I was raised on the original TMNT show so I knew Baxter as a white guy. Lo and behold he was originally a black guy! I was so upset at how characters were being turned from white to black that I never thought for a second that it could happen the other way around. How did I feel after finding out that Baxter was supposed to be black all this time? Angry! Why was he ever made white in the first place? What they should have done is made a whole new white character if they wanted one so bad. It doesn't help their cause that Baxter is completely different in the comics. Black guy in comics turns into cyborg. White guy in tv show turns into bug. This whole business is stupid. If they want more characters of a certain skin color, they should just make more. And on that note, I think the Falcon is cool.

Vocabulary lessons from video games

Video games are often connected with the rotting of children's minds. Actually, one can learn quite a bit from video games. One thing, which may be surprising, is that one's vocabulary can expand by clocking in hours behind a controller. The following is a list of five words that I was exposed to by video games.

Strafe - game unknown
I don't recall what game it was but it was certainly a first-person-shooter of some kind. If I can't remember the game, what makes me so certain I learned the word from one? That's simple. I cannot recall ever hearing the word "strafe" mentioned outside a video game setting. Never. Who says "strafe" in real life?

Raze - Warcraft 2 on the PC

At first hearing, one could think the word "raise" was said. In this context, the two are, despite being homophones, opposites. Like strafe, does anyone use this in real life? This one however, I have heard outside of a video game setting. In the Judas Priest song Ram It Down, there is a line that says, "razing the place to the ground... ram it down!"

Quota - Shenmue on the Dreamcast

That's a good word to know. It wasn't until playing Shenmue up to the part where you get a job that I learned the word "quota." In the game you have to transport crates from one warehouse to another. If you go beyond your quota, you get extra money. For some reason, operating a forklift was surprisingly fun. I bet it sucks IRL. I'm so web savvy.

Plains - Super Mario World on the SNES

Plains seems like a pretty basic word and, yes, it is. It does have to be taken into consideration that I was pretty young when I first played this game. Seeing that there was a place in the game called Donut Plains I immediately thought of "planes." After finding out what a "plain" was, the mental image wasn't as cool.

Loom - Loom on the PC For me, the word "loom" will always have a kind of magical sound to it. I don't know if that has to do at all with the word itself or just with the game. When I hear the word "loom," this game is the first thing that comes to mind. Certainly not the weaving device. By the way, it is worth noting that Loom was the very first game I played that featured voice-overs. That was pretty impressive for 1992.

More evil than Hitler

Disclaimer: The genocide of the Jews and other people during WWII was horrible. RC4 does not approve of any genocide nor would he wish to belittle the events of the 1930's and 1940's.

A disclaimer? Yeah, I thought it might be necessary. The other day I was watching a show on tv that claimed Hitler was the most evil man. I found this hard to believe. The most evil? Here is my list of five people I think are more deserving of the title. I tried to pick only those who were in a high position of authority so there will not be any serial killers and the like. Only heads of state.

Vlad III Prince of Wallachia - This guy, better known as Vlad the impaler, was the inspiration for Dracula. Most of what is said about him has been mixed with folklore and myth. It is known however, that he impaled thousands of people. I am hard pressed to think of a worse execution method. Vlad had a place called the "forest of stakes" which was an area covered by the impaled corpses of 20,000 people. It has been said that an invading army decided to call off its attack and turn back after seeing it. He also had people coated in honey and dropped into bear pits.

Mao Zedong - This guy was a bit full of himself. His face was on the money, on giant posters throughout China, and on buttons pinned to almost every person in China. Was he really that bad though? Well, his policies are responsible for the death of over 50 million people. That's a lot of people. He had many people executed because they were educated and by virtue of that percieved as a possible threat. If he found out about someone who was educated and successful over seas he would command them to come back to China. If they refused he would imprison any family they had back in China.

Qin Shi Huang - I don't mean to pick on China. There are just so many people from there that it makes sense that they would have more evil people as well. This guy was the first emperor of a unified China. It took a lot of wars to get China unified. Does that make him evil? I don't think so. Like Mao, he had a problem with a lot of educated people and had them killed. I cannot site this and do not know for sure if it is true, but the following is his main reason for being on the list. After attacking the Zhao capital, he had all of the city's children buried alive. That is evil.

Gaius Julius Ceasar Augustus Germanicus - Better known as Caligula, this guy was crazy. Literally crazy. Like insane. He demanded he be worshiped as a god, tried to make his horse a consul and priest, and declared war on the god Neptune. What makes this guy evil is the fact that he was completely unbalanced. It is said he killed people for fun and found it acceptable to sleep with anyone he felt like including other people's wives and his sisters. I think true evil cannot always be contained in a mind that is sane.

Leopold II - This king of Belgium controlled all of the African Congo. To maintain a constant supply of rubber to his country, he had the natives forced into slavery. If quotas were not met he had the workers hands cut off. A person without hands could not work and therefore would be a burden on those that could and would have to be replaced by some other slave. This would most likely end with the mutilation of the slave who replaced the last one and so on. A visiting missionary wrote a letter to the king wishing that he would have mercy and kill those who failed him rather that mutilate them and render them helpless.