Top 10 Most Hated Villains by Rhino Water

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Adam Randall

(This week on my blog I am posting an entry every day, and each entry will be written by somebody other than me. Today’s entry is written by somebody I can’t write the name of, so I shall call him Rhino Water. He has a very large number of video game related countdowns and this is one of his favourites. Also, just a quick warning, there are spoilers in ths countdown. Enjoy!)

Number 10 is King K. Rool (don’t kill me.)

I hate King K. Rool, he is so annoying. All he does in Donkey Kong: Jungle Climber is laugh, talk and have an annoying final battle. His design is bad too, I mean, it looks like he was drawn by a ten year old. Also, he steals crystal bananas, isn’t that more the kind of thing Donkey Kong would do? Lastly, his name. What is the ‘Rool’ about?  King K. Rool. Fair enough with the K, but Rool? Really? Sorry but Rool is a stupid name. But he is not as bad as the next villains…

Number 9 is, a Crash Bandicoot villain, (no it is NOT Dr. Cortex): The one and only Emperor Velo XXVII.

Yes, him. He is in Crash Nitro Kart. I love the game, but the villain sort of ruined it. First he gets the bandicoots, Dr. Cortex, N. Gin  and Tiny just to race. I mean, why them?  Can’t he pick Sonic? He’s fast. And another thing, he could use his own species to race instead of going all the way to another planet to get people to do that for him. Also he is mean to his four friends when they lose. Lastly, he is a sore loser, when you beat him he says go home, but then says he will destroy the planet because you’re refusing to race, but he said they could go home if they beat him… But noooo, they have to get the relics then beat him again. ANNOYING. But who is a worse villain than him?

Number 8 is Wario.

I mean, he does not act as a villain. He helps Mario in Super Mario 64 DS. He is supposed to beat Mario, not help him! And all he does is steal money… Wow. Also, he is stupid. In Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, all he does is steal a Wii Remote and then just puts it back at the end. Yeah. He is a stupid villain.

Number 7 is Tabuu.

Okay, his theme and battle were cool, but everything else was awful… First his design, what’s that, with a full leg and a half leg? Secondly, how can he beat all the Nintendo characters (and Snake) in one go, but not Sonic? WHAT? It just made the Nintendo characters look bad. I mean couldn’t Yoshi use his speed? Or Pit and Link use their arrows? Or Fox use his gun? Lastly, why is he a villain and what is Tabuu? We don’t know what he is, where he came from or even his back story. But he did not get higher because of his cool battle and theme, just everything else was bad.

Number 6 is Baron Dante from Croc.

I mean, really, he looks like King K. Rool’s brother. Also, he is a bully because he picks on the little hair ball creatures for no reason which left Croc all alone. He’s also a coward, he gets animals to get rid of Croc for him. Really. When you finally battle him it takes forever and when you beat him, guess what? The final battle it just him as a ghost, but very easy. I only played the first game, not the second one, but he is so annoying though. He’s just missed the top five…

Number 5 is, a Sonic villain, Merlina (from Sonic and The Black Knight.)

I mean, the game had weird story, like who could be the villain? First it was the black knight, then Amy for giving him the power, then Merlina’s granddad for creating him and then it was Merlina. Now, let’s see, when she becomes the villain, she looks stupid and then she could have won when battling Sonic: She summoned Sonic  when she could have desummoned him and send him back, then she’d have won. Lastly, her battle is so annoying, it took me lots of tries to do it and the monster looks like Tabuu’s father.  When you defeat her she is happy at the end and everyone is…

Number 4 is, a Pokémon villain, Ghetsis.

He is the one bad Pokémon villain. The others, they’re awesome. But back to Ghetsis, I mean, he walks left and right when he is just talking to you, I am saying, time waster! Also, he makes Team Plasma bad by saying we shall save Pokémon from humans when at the end was that only he can have Pokémon and no one else, and all to take over the world. He’s bad to his son and insults him, and he cheats in his battle with one Pokémon. When you beat him he says “I am invincible” (well, something like that). Stupid. But he is only number four…

Number 3 is Fawful.

One word to describe him: annoying. He is the most annoying character EVER! There is one good thing about him: his theme. That’s all. He looks like a yellow blob with glasses and also he makes Bowser look like an idiot; he turned his castle in to a theatre. What? He brain washes his minions too. Also, his annoying voice and he repeats some lines over and over again. His battle is very annoying. Grrr, I hate him! But who can be worse?

Number 2 is Ashera from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

I mean really, her final battle is not fun. She needs to have a hobby, I mean, all she thinks about is war. She also turns everyone except the Fire Emblem characters into statues. I mean, if she had turned Ike in to a statue she could have won. Also, her voice is stupid, and what’s the point in falling asleep? Okay, Yune falls asleep but she could have kept her awake. But what can be worse than her?

Number 1 is The Dark Master.

Man, I can’t stand him! He is from Spyro. Now, first thing, he is hateable and his voice is rubbish. In fact he has one thing in common with each of the other villains.
Let’s start with King K. Rool: both have stupid names:
Velo: Both sore losers.
Wario: Both stupid.
Tabuu: We know nothing about their backstories.
Baron Dante: Both bullies and cowards.
Merlina: Both could have won.
Ghetsis: Both selfish.
Fawful: Both annoying.
Ashera: Both need to think of something else.

The Dark Master has all of them, and he made the Spyro series go downhill, which is sad because I really liked Spyro until The Dark Master showed up. So, he’s not just the worst villain, he also made Spyro bad. I really hate him, and that’s the end of my countdown.

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Fury Thy Name is Woman by Ben Wood

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Adam Randall
(This week on my blog I am posting an entry every day, and each entry will be written by somebody other than me. Today’s entry is an anecdote written by Ben Wood (a friend of mine I’ve know for about seven years). Enjoy!)

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As you can probably assume from the title, this anecdote is about women and anger. Firstly, though this is in no way meant to be offensive or sexist, it could be considered to be by those who are easily offend, so if you are easily offended you have been warned!

Firstly some background information to this anecdote, several weeks ago my girlfriend, as part of her University course, had an interview for a placement year in Middlesex. Since we live in Wiltshire I offered to drive her to the interview, with the help of a Sat-Nav, so she would have one less thing to worry about.

Now my Sat-Nav is quite a few years old so it’s not fully up-to-date with some of the new roadwork changes, for example the Sat-Nav didn’t know about a fairly recent road that lead into a tunnel underneath a hill and decided to yell at me, in its female voice, until I was ‘back on route’.

So now we begin the actual anecdote, yay! While driving along, my Sat-Nav was nagging me the majority of the way in its derogatory female robotic voice, which was eating away at me inside. Especially because it believed I was driving through fields and rivers when in fact I was on fairly recently built roads. Anyway after about seventy-seven miles worth of unneeded criticisms and “recalculating routes” we arrived in Middlesex. We decided to pop into the local supermarket for some lunch, since I do love a nice meal deal. To be honest I was just happy to be out the car and away from the Sat-Nav nagging me. Whilst paying for the meal deals in the self-checkout machine area, my girlfriend lovingly nagged me to tell me to “quickly, put the food in the bagging, otherwise it’ll nag you to do it!” which was immediately followed by the checkout machine nagging me, in its female robotic voice, to “place items in the bagging area” to which my girlfriend replied “See! I told you!” she seemed not to notice the irony of nagging me so that I wouldn’t get nagged.

So, after a day of being nagged from a variety of female/robotic voices I half-jokingly said to my girlfriend, “No wonder they use female voices for all these machines! All they do is nag you!”. My girlfriend was not amused, and as I learnt when I immediately turned round, neither were all the other women who dominated the supermarket. I tell you, the looks those women gave me could have turned me to stone! So I walked out of the supermarket with my tail nicely tucked between my legs before any of the women could nag me further! Ha!

But I suppose in all seriousness, if there were to be a moral to this anecdote, it would be that they should REALLY change the voices on the talking machines nowadays! Instead of a critical female voice why not have a celebrity voice on the self-checkout. I would MUCH prefer and enjoy Samuel L. Jackson Saying “PUT THE MOTHERF***ING ITEMS IN THE MOTHERF***ING BAGGING AREA NOW MOTHERF***ER!!!!” every time I buy a lovely meal deal.

What do you think Samuel L. Jackson?

 

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Love is Blind

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Adam Randall

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Fiesta Crafts Finger Puppets can be bought here (though Buster and Gabby are from discontinued lines).
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Colin Makes a New Friend

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Adam Randall

I mentioned recently, that I had spent a small amount of time in London. It was during that evening that my friends decided that they would like to visit a nightclub and so I came along with them. We visited a nightclub called ‘Mother’ and it was the standard affair: hundreds of people crammed into a tiny space in the boiling heat while deafening music played with water bottles not permitted.

After I’d been in there for an hour or so I realised that a woman was looking at me and headed in my direction. I became slightly concerned when I saw her, because in the past I have had unpleasant experiences in nightclubs. She got closer and closer and held her hand out, reaching towards me.

“Well, you look nice,” she said and I braced myself, preparing for an unhappy grabbing.

It was then that I realised that she wasn’t actually talking about me. Instead it was Colin, who was sitting in my breast pocket, that she was referring to. She pulled him out of my pocket and started examining him.

“Yes, he is very nice,” I said. “His name is Colin.”

She gave Colin one last look and then popped him back into my pocket and left. It was nice to see him making new friends like that.

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Fighting

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Adam Randall

I’m not really one to do any fighting (though I do know what a punch in the face feels like). In fact, I do rather like to consider myself a pacifist, the pen is stronger than the sword after all (and I did manage to talk myself out of being stabbed, so that seems to be working out alright for me). But today’s blog entry will be about the time when something happened which is the closest I’ve ever come to being in a fight.

Back in 2008, there was somebody who I didn’t quite like. He would often tell jokes which were immature, homophobic, racist, sexist or just otherwise offensive. As such I was venting about him to a friend of mine and I got a little carried away with my criticism. I started (quite rudely) to insult his appearance and described him as an ogre. I do realise that was quite childish and mean of me, but, I guess I just went a little too far since I didn’t like him very much. Sadly, this friend of mine also happened to be a friend of his, and, I suppose through feelings of loyalty, felt that they had to tell him what I said. As I’m sure you can understand, he was more than a little unhappy with me when I bumped into him on the school field a day or so later.

“So, you don’t like me then? Think I look like an ogre?” he asked me.

“Well, uh, yes, I guess so, sorry!” I replied.

“Well guess what? I don’t like you very much either. It’s about time I taught you a lesson.”

He then picked up a huge branch from the ground and started swiping it towards me. Since I didn’t want to get hit by it, I decided to grab the end of it and try and pluck it out of his hands. Unfortunately, he had quite a strong grip on it, and, with me holding the other end, he waved it (and so also me) around.

Once I’d realised that being swung around on the end of a stick wasn’t the most effective manoeuvre, I decided to let go.

“Hmm,” I said. “Where are Ben and Laura? They’d normally defend me in a situation like this.”

“Well, they’re not here. You’re just a pathetic person who can’t do anything without depending on other people.”

He swung the branch and I narrowly avoided it.

“Yes, I guess so,” I replied.

He swung again.

“By the way,” I said, “have you realised the irony of this situation?”

“What?”

“Well, you’re offended because I said you looked like an ogre, but have you considered that using a tree branch as a club and attacking me with it is rather ogre-like behaviour?”

I suppose it’s rather unsurprising that this made him even angrier.

After dodging a few more branch attacks, I decided that the best course of action was to run away. After I’d gone a short way, I was lucky enough to run into my friends Ben and Laura. He was a little behind me (it was probably hard to run so fast when holding a big branch) and so I decided to wait by them. When he did arrive, they defended me just as I had imagined: they were both friends with him and he obviously didn’t want to do something so violent in front of them, so he put down his branch and I managed to successfully escape any harm!

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Protector

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Adam Randall
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The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Adam Randall

PictureThis is a psychology book which has basically been written in order to try and help people to be happier in life. The main point of the book is that there are two sides to your mind: the ‘human’ side and the ‘chimp’ side. The human side is the rational side which works logically and thinks based on evidence, whereas the chimp side is the emotional side which can be illogical and thinks based on emotions and feelings rather than facts. The ‘paradox’ of the title is that the chimp can at times fill you with confidence and make you believe you are wonderful, and other times it can fill you with self-hatred.

The main premise of the book, the chimp/human differentiation is one I quite liked and which I find very agreeable. Before reading it I’d kind of made the distinction between rational and irrational states of mind, so it’s quite nice to have it confirmed by a psychologist. It also offers some handy advice: if you can identify when you’re thinking irrationally, why listen to those thoughts? Which was a very good point, I thought. I did think, however, that the main chimp/human difference was repeated far too often and it did feel you were reading the same thing loads of times by the later chapters.

There were also two aspects of the book that I did find disagreeable and seemed to be in there, not as a part of humanity’s universal psychology, but as products of our society, and negative ones at that!

First, I don’t think that this is the book to read if you are somebody who struggles a lot with their weight. Our society is already bombarding people with the message “you need to be thin” all the time, and this book does nothing but add to it. It says that, when somebody is on a diet and they give in and eat a slice of chocolate cake (for example) that this is their chimp hijacking them and forcing them to eat badly. This is likely to make people on diets feel even worse when they give in like this. Instead of saying “Oh well, it’s just a piece of cake” it’s saying “Oh, what have you done you silly chimp?” I think a far better thing to say would be: you don’t need to be thin to be healthy or attractive; the need to lose weight stems from your chimp and it is forcing you to diet so it can be what society expects it to be, punishing itself when it fails.

Secondly, the book said something along the lines of “If you’re in a relationship and find yourself attracted to somebody else then that is your chimp has hijacked you again!” which seemed, to me, to be quite close minded. There have been (and still are) societies where polygamy is perfectly acceptable, and there are people in polygamous relationships where all those involved are perfectly happy. Therefore it’s only reasonable to assume that some people are naturally polygamous and some people are naturally monogamous. So, I didn’t think it was right to ascribe that behaviour to the chimp.

So, on the whole, it was a little bit of a mixed bag. There were times when I’d read bits and think “What an excellent and helpful idea!”, times when I’d read something and think “but that’s not how my mind works at all” and other times (like I mentioned above) where I’d find it plain disagreeable.  Luckily, I think the good outweighs the bad.

Rating: 7/10

Buy it here.

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Champion

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Adam Randall

I spent a large chunk of this weekend in London with my friend Dalfino Madrigal Keyte (and actually got material for a few blog entries from it!) At about midnight we were wandering down the streets as I played with my yoyo. I must admit, I was very surprised by the very large number of people who were wandering about even at this late hour. I guess that’s just how it is in London.

“Yo, yo, yo, yo!” shouted somebody. It took me a moment, but I eventually realised that they were talking to me.

“Hello,” I said, as I turned around and smiled at the group of three people who were looking at me. We were in no hurry, so I decided to head over and have a chat with them.

“Do a trick with it!” said the one who’d caught my attention.

“I can only really do the regular up and down. Well, actually, I can do a kind of loop the loop thing with it, I’ll try and do that.”

I tried to do the loop the loop thing, but, it went badly.

“Don’t be modest,” he said, “I saw what you were doing before I spoke to you! Man, you’re the Yoyo World Champion!”

“I’m not!” I said. “I couldn’t even USE a yoyo until six months ago when a good friend of mine bought me one and taught me how to do the basics.“

“Can I try and use it?” said a young woman who was with him.

“Oh, of course!” I said as I handed it over. “Just pull upward as soon as it gets to the bottom.”

She successfully yo-ed it once, but, the second time she failed.

“Aw, I am terrible at using a yoyo…” she said sadly.

“Well, don’t be sad about it, its main use is entertainment. It’s not a contest,” I said.

Meanwhile, I realised that the man who had spoken to me first was now videoing Dalfino and asking him to tell a joke. Dalfino couldn’t think of anything, so he turned the camera on to me.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “I did only meet you a minute ago after all!”

“That’s good,” he said and smiled. “Now tell me a joke!”

“Well, I’m sorry but it’s a little hard to think of one on the spot like that,” I said.

“C’mon, lots of people are watching you, don’t let them down!”

“Okay, well, I did actually just think of a good one.”

“What is it?”

“What do you get when you cross fireworks with ducks?” I asked.

“I don’t know, what is it?”

“Fire quackers!” I said with a laugh. They all laughed too.

“And that’s the best joke you know?”

“Yes, it’s very good isn’t it?”

“Heh heh, yeah, alright mate. Goodbye!”

And with that I said goodbye to my new friends and continued on through the streets with Dalfino.

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Victim Number 3

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Adam Randall
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Oh gosh, they got Girlock. So now this strange ‘infection’ will begin to spread across all of Finger Puppet Land…

Puppets can be bought here.

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The Murders in Rue Morgue (The Dupin Tales) by Edgar Allan Poe

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Adam Randall

PictureEdgar Allan Poe created a character named C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin is often called the first detective and is certainly an interesting and original character. All of the stories in this collection are about Dupin and an unnamed friend of his (the narrator), and the crimes they investigate in Paris. Poe wrote three Dupin stories and all of them are collected in this book.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, rating: 8.5/10
This is the story which introduces us to C. Auguste Dupin. It starts with a section on analysing, then goes on to explain how is was that the narrator came to meet Dupin before we find out about the actual murder. People who like to be able to solve the murders through clues in the story might be disappointed with this, as it must be almost impossible to determine the solution based only on what you’re told. There are funny moments in the story, but there are also horrific moments and, at one point, it’s downright surreal. All this adds up to make this a great story.

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, rating: 7.5/10
This story seems to be a lot more serious than the first, which is probably due to the fact that it involves Dupin investigating a real life murder (kind of.) Aside from a few humorous moments where Dupin is very critical of false theories about the murder, this whole story is a lot darker than the first. I did enjoy the shift of tone, but what was slightly tedious was the fact that the entire story is basically one long monologue by Dupin, I felt the characters could have actually done a little more. This was a generally interesting and enjoyable story though.

The Purloined Letter, rating: 7/10
After how grim the last story seemed, there’s a big change in tone with this light-hearted tale. Here Dupin is given the task of finding a letter which has been stolen, which he does very quickly and cleverly. Still a good story, but my least favourite of the three. This one just seemed to lack the substance of the other two.

Buy it here.

(Originally there an a post called “Video Call” here, but it had to be taken down and, as such, I have replaced it with a review!)

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