3412617 and Luna on the side of Sunlight shippers.

Happy Burned Animal Flesh Day!

Imma have cow for breakfast, chicken for lunch, and pig for dinner. How about everyone else?

Okay I guess it's my turn now. So, um.

No more slacking off like against Algeria. That world cup isn't gonna win itself!

Schland!
Schland!
Schland!

Oh, and happy 4th of July everypony in the states

3414061
I'm rooting for you! I want to see Klose get that record!

Edit: Or should I not root for Germany? it didn't really work out for the US...

3414093
Go for it! Every bit of support counts

And yeah, that Klose record, I wants it too

10

3417367 to what?

3413829
I, um... I had a veggie burger topped with lettuce, grilled pineapple and blue cheese dressing on a brioche bun. It was pretty bitchin'.

in other news, I think my sister got me sick.

super animals.

9

You know, I always thought District 9 was an underrated movie. It had a nice balance of storytelling-using a mix of mockumentary, Cloverfield style personal camera, and traditional filming-that really showed what happened in the movie from every angle.

The setting was inventive as well. Instead of aliens coming as saviors or conquerers, they came as refugees. It took the trope of two cultures trying to find a way to coexist peacefully and turned it on its head, making the aliens subservient to the humans. There was no real conflict leading up to the events of the movie, because the aliens had no choice.

While the plot was thinly veiled commentary on immigration, it was executed nicely. The human main character's journey of slowly transforming into an alien made sense. He got a taste of what it was like to be an alien in this film's setting, and his decision to help the alien main character escape the planet didn't feel forced.

If Avatar didn't come out four months after District 9, I think this movie would be more popular.

3421173
July 15th, huh... a friend of mine's birthday, but I kinda don't think that's what you're countin' down to

8

3421463 Days 'til the second contest's deadline, of course!

time to learn some science!

3425684
I coulda known that. I shoulda known that. I'm participating, probably, so um. Embarrassing

7

I saw you with the box! What was in the box? What's in the booooooox? What's in the ing box?!

Please, please tell me someone gets this.

Go Klose! And rest of team

3426854

13

3426887
And now I feel the need to write an alternate ending to Twilight's Kingdom...

3426854
I know of the scene and I haven't even watched the movie yet!

6

Do you actually think I'm just counting down to the end of the contest?

3430460

I think I know what you're counting down towards.

Edit. No, I didn't.

5
That piece I wrote on Balto is still my favorite one of these.

5 goals in half an hour. On to the finals! On to victory!

3433807

I watched that four times... It was amusing.

4

It used to be good. I promise the younger generation...it used to be good.

Here's a picture of a ninja turtle about to fight a brain controlling a giant artificial body with wings while riding a hover board:

That same game had you fight robots riding dinosaurs. It was fun. Even the other video games, fighting holographic paper tigers on your way to fight a cyborg samurai or invading the island of Manhattan after the Shredder lifted it into the sky, they were all fun.

The whole franchise is four wisecracking, pizza eating, robot fighting, giant turtles given human size and intelligence because of radioactive slime that also turned their owner into a rat, leading him to teach the four turtles the way of the ninja because what the hell else was he going to do. It's not meant to be...

NO!

Even the earlier live action movies were fun:

I have something planned for the 15th. Place your bets!
How the hell hard do you have to try to suck more than something associated with Vanilla Ice?

3435783 Go ninjas, go ninjas, Go!

3435783
I actually saw that one in the cinema. The good one with the cheesy body suits. Not that modern-age CGI stuff. Don't remember anything though

Fun fact: the cartoon show was called "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" in my part of the world, apparently because "Ninja" was too violent for a kids' show.

Also, want pizza, nao.

3435804
Is it true what Raph says in the Casey Jones video? Do you have to know what a crumpet is to understand cricket?

And crap, those first two videos don't work. They worked on Youtube.

3435812
As a non-citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, I believe that it is impossible for a non-citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations to understand cricket. Looking up crumpet on wiki is much easier. So I guess he has a point.

3

Apparently, my brother realized yesterday that he never asked me how I liked the Godzilla movie that came out in May. His question took me to a dark, dark place. I wrote this following bit two months ago, and I stand by every word of it.

The fact that the director of this waste of time and money was selected to direct a movie in my beloved Star Wars makes my fury burn with the rage of a thousand suns (or one last-minute cross from Ronaldo leading to an equalizing header).

The new Godzilla move ing SUCKS! I prefer the 1998 one. Yes, I know how insane that sounds, and yes, I am super serial. That movie might have been Godzilla in Name Only, but this was Godzilla with no Soul, Heart, or Effort.

At least 1998 had to common sense not to kill the best actor in the whole thing. Seriously, Bryan Cranston could have carried the whole thing and he's killed off in the first half hour or so. Ken Watanabe is stuck making his death face from The Last Samurai for the whole movie, and no one else is any better.

Godzilla himself is pathetic. The director seems to think no one goes to see a Godzilla movie to see Godzilla. The first time we see him, he confronts another giant monster, roars, and THE ING MOVIE CUTS AWAY! All we see are a few second of fight footage on CNN! The other monster gets away some-ing-how and Godzilla spends the rest of the movie chasing it.

That happens three times! Godzilla catches up to the monster after Ken Watanabe delivers his only halfway decent line, "Let them fight," and the movie cuts away from the fight! They show us the entire HALO jump from the trailer! A bigger monster shows up, Godzilla grabs it by the throat and smashes it into a building, AND THE MOVIE CUTS A-ING-WAY! A slow burn is only effective if there's actually an EXPLOSION afterwards!

And the fire breath...no. Just no. It's no bigger than a lightsaber. From Godzilla. The fire breath is iconic. What would happen if Woverine only had one claw on each hand, each one only two inches long?

It's supposed to be forceful. It's his go-to move. It's Nature's fury unleashed. It's ironic. It's Nature saying, "You made this monster, humanity. Your atomic bomb did this, now reap what you've sown." It has no force. It has no impact. It has no fire. It has no energy. It really describes the entire movie.

The bigger monster that Godzilla fights actually reacts more to military rocket launchers than it does to the fire breath. I'm going to repeat that.

THE ING MILITARY IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN GODZILLA!

That is just offensive.

I paid to see Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun Li. I paid to see Dragonball Evolution. I paid to see Meet the Spartans. I paid to see Godzilla.

I am only ashamed to admit Godzilla.

3438565

Here's my take on
3

Related, I am now happy I skipped that movie. The 1998 one was alright

2

Mega Man 2

'Nuff said, but I will say more for the hell of it.

Besides / having / the /greatest / soundtrack / in / a / video game / ever, the game is pure evil and genius in it's design. The player is free to challenge the eight robot masters in any order they choose, but the game is designed with a specific order in mind to make it easier for you.

Not only do the weapons you get from the bosses do extra damage to another later on, but certain items in a level can only be reached by certain powers you only gain by completing other certain levels. Genius. The game can be beaten in any order, but figuring out the right one makes your life so much better.

Also, the Metal Blade. The Metal Blade. If you ever play this game, go after Metal Man first to get that weapon. Eight directional rapid fire buzz saws in a 2D platformer is GOD.

I'm not sure about this, but this game may have also invented the boss rush. Oh yeah! The boss rush! So after you kill the eight bosses, and fight your way through the massive skull fortress of Dr. Wily, you have to fight all eight bosses all over again. Nothing fancy, you just step into a teleporter and go kick ass or get your ass kicked.

Then the final boss, in another early example of modern video game staple, has multiple forms. Three, to be exact. You drain his life bar, his spaceship transforms, you drain it again, and his ship explodes. Game over?

No! The game drops you in an empty cavern with nothing but dripping water to occupy you on your way to the final, epic showdown. It it genius.

(Oh yeah, only one weapon will kill this boss. If you run out of ammo, you let him kill all your lives or reset the console and start the whole game over. EVIL.)
If I was that good at building suspense, I would be in Hollywood.

And that ending! That is one of the most beautiful endings I have ever seen. The unstoppable robo-warrior take his sweet time walking home, enjoying the peace that he's won. Then he leaves his helmet on a hill overlooking a quant village as a warning to all who would threaten it. Like a badass.

Also,

2

The number of World Cups that Klose's record will stand until Muller breaks it.

Missed my cue, didn't I

This is the fourth final match with Germany in it I get to watch (and the third time it's Germany - Argentina, actually). Not that I remember a lot of the one in Mexico wouldn't mind if it turned into the second one with Germany winning

3442013
I was whacking my head trying to find a World Cup related "2". I like your take

1

Something comes...

Place your bets now, ladies and gentlemen!

Now the hour has come at last! Cue epic fanfare!

(Epic fanfare begins at 1:50)

Welcome to this thing that you will find out what it is at the end!

Nonsensical dancing that segways into something unrelated!

I earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do back in high school, so I'm apparently pretty good at hitting things. Allow me to tell you this: only two kinds of people in this world punch other people in the face, professional fighters and morons. If you get into a fight, you probably aren't wearing special gloves, so if you punch someone in the face, what does that make you?

Your fist is nothing but skin and bone. The human face is nothing but skin and bone. Thick bone. The body, shockingly, does not like the idea of blunt force trauma coming to the brain. Punching someone in the face is just as likely to hurt you as it will them.

A few years ago, a high school kid I knew got in a fight and punched his opponent in the face. The opponent got a black eye and went to school the next day. The kid broke his hand, had to have surgery, and wore a cast for weeks on his dominant hand. He was from an immigrant family too, so I can't imagine money was easy to come by for the bills. Did anyone win that fight?

Don't punch people in the face. Use a palm strike instead.

Quick, make a fist. See that fleshy bit between your knuckles and wrist? You know what that is? Meat and muscle. Now curl your fingers out of the fist, but don't straighten them. Touch that same bit again. See how tight it is? That's what you use for a palm strike. Smash that into someone's skull a few times and they'll love and tolerate whatever you damn well please.

What makes Dragon Ball Z so gorram popular? Seriously, it started back in the nineties at the earliest with dubbed over episodes that were so horrible people later made internet memes about them. Even after better quality episodes were released, a lot of it was nonsensical screaming with impossibly spiky hair. It has to be the only show in existence in which a rerelease with less footage was met with triumphant exultation.

And I love it. I own 26 volumes of the manga. I own four seasons of the DVDs. I still fire up one of the fighting games. Why does this show about screaming muscle men shooting fireballs at each other captivate me so? Well, other than that description. People shooting fireballs at other people is always entertaining.

I think the answer is anger. I, like I'm sure many others have besides me, discovered the show during my oh-so-wonderful teenage years, 13-14 if I recall correctly. I was picked on in school, and I was always told to just ignore it, but ignoring it didn't change anything. It didn't change how pissed off I was. I was angry, and DBZ showed me what anger can do.

Anger is a primal emotion, I would go so far as to call it a reflex, and it can serve many purposes. This weird show about screaming maniacs had anger aplenty. One character got angry when a villain killed his friends, and he exploded into newfound power to avenge that crime. Another used his anger at his inferiority to break his own limits. A third repressed his anger until his friends were almost killed, and unleashing it let him save the world.

To balance that out, the villains got angry too. Their anger turned them berserk, making them lose reason and aiding in their own defeat. One got so angry he forgot about his own energy attack, and it cut him in half. The third character I mentioned in the paragraph above? He let his anger get the best of him too. He saved the world, but he let his enemy prepare one last effort to destroy it.

There was a method to the madness. Anger can be useful, but surrendering to it does more harm than good. As big a Star Wars nut as I am, the Jedi Order is full of s***. "There is no emotion" my ass. The trick is to acknowledge your anger. You can't control what you don't understand.

Sorry, couldn't find a short video of this scene, so here's a brief transcript.

Don't be ashamed of your anger. ... It's OK to hurt. It's OK to feel the rage. Harness it! Use it as a tool! ... Don't be afraid! Let it go, let it all GO!

Obi-wan Kenobi is the most overrated lightsaber duelist ever. Of the three victories he earns in the movies, one is against an opponent who isn't even a Force user, one was him taking advantage of his enemy's arrogance with a desperate move that should never have worked, and the final one was him doing to Anakin what Darth Maul should have done to him. Anakin survived anyway, so Kenobi only has two notable kills, one of which isn't that notable. Actually, make that one kill because Darth Maul survived in The Clone Wars cartoon.

And yet he's regarded as this great master at the art of lightsaber combat. Why?

His chosen form, Soresu, is one of the classic styles in Star Wars canon. The third of seven forms, developed in response to blaster technology spreading across the galaxy, is the most defensive form. It is stated in Jedi vs. Sith: the Ultimate Guide to the Force that Form III masters are considered invincible. While not always victorious, no true master has ever been defeated.

Obi-Wan is not a master. He gets his ass handed to him twice by Count Dooku in the movies alone. Taking The Clone Wars cartoon into consideration, he gets dominated by Darth Maul and his brother, even though one is a novice with the Force (against a Jedi Master) and the other is cut freaking in half. He doesn't even have a clean win against Assaj Ventress, a character so lethal and impressive that she is neither seen nor heard of in the movies.

"You are what awaits all living things from the moment they are born."

That line is spoken by Mitsuru Kirijo in the video game Persona 3. She says it to the avatar of Nyx, death incarnate, at the end of the world. You and your party just fought your way to the top of a tower, a journey that took almost an entire year (took me over 90 hours of real world time,) the last month of which was spent knowing that Death was coming, and was unstoppable.

The game is set in high school. High school kids spend a year fighting monsters in an invisible hour of the day to save the world only to find out it's pointless, because Death awaits them all. They go fight it anyway.

I don't exaggerate when I say this game changed my life. Investing that much time and effort into those characters and their story, seeing how they dealt with the knowledge that they were going to die, helped me get over my own personal fear of death. The fact that I knew I was going to die one day used to make me cry in the night. After I played this game...I'm cool with it.

Who says video games aren't art?

Also, during the last battle, you hear a message from your dead teammate. "Alright. Let's do this." Not much, but it came in so faint you wonder if you heard it at all. One of only two times in my life I dropped my controller in shock.

And you can summon a monster that resembles a giant dick. It can use a move called "Primal Force" that deals piercing damage, and is animated by shooting a stream of white at the target. Of course I'm serious.

Just wanted to throw this last one in. I had the image link saved on one of my blogs, and it's too damn good not to use again. Fluttershy is best Celestia.

Happy Birthday to el Possenreisser's random friend!

And with that...

It is over.

3447367 are we ever going to give the other contest thread any love?

ever want to know how Pinkie did it, just click right here!there Backen cup cakes in this.
Note Zhe you might not want to click this, it's a guy trying to see if Cupcakes could ever happen witch includes baking.