Previously on "Pudge"

Hey again,

My first day I double post, I think the planets are aligning.

Anyway, while I was at Slave Port Square getting my wages, I thought I should catch the Internet up on my doings in the past year and three months. Kinda an update on my first post, when I posted about what I like and don't like (wow, I was a horrible writer back then... I'll try to get my points across better this time around). Here's a year of events in the life of Pudge!

• First off, about a week after my last post before today, I fell asleep at the wheel of my first car, which was called the PudgeMobile. I was coming back from a Zion Lock-In with a couple of my buddies, I didn't get enough sleep, and an SUV got in my path at 35MPH. Luckily, all I got was a fat lip, but my 400lb buddy Jdsnut was pretty badly hurt. I try not to think about it as I really liked that car, but my insurance rates are through the roof. I AM a better driver now, and my second car, the PudgeWagon, should hold out through college (cross your fingers). I'm pretty sure that's the reason I first stopped posting in the first place, although the reason why this caused it is lost to time...
  
• I've lost interest in Magic: The Gathering, not because of lack of good stuff coming out of WoTC (the cards in the Time Spiral block were inspired, I wish I would've bought more of them as they came out) but due to moving from one high school to another because of the aforementioned accident. Only a few people play it at my new school, and their decks are a little on the cheap side (SLIVERS). I still have my decks, and hope that someone in college shares a passion for this TCG and it will rekindle my interest.
  
• I've also sadly lost interest of Saturday morning cartoons, which really saddened me. However, it was required because the shows they are pushing on Kids WB and 4Kids are ridiculous in their attempts to entertain. It sickens me to even think that the time that used to give us gems like Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, the first seasons of Pokemon, Tiny Toons, and Freakazoid now has crap like Loonatics, Johnny Test, Xiaolin Showdown, and Mucha Lucha.
  
• I now have an Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. I actually waited out 19 hours for my Wii, and I still believe that was one of the funnest days of my life. 10 player wireless Mario Kart DS and the chicken from the Wal-Mart Deli. Good times.
• I still play on XBL all the time. My current multiplayer games I play often are Shadowrun, Halo 2 (gotta get some kind of Halo before the 25th), and sometimes Gears. I've actually been focusing on the single player recently though, with BioShock and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. I'll try to put the gamercard on the blog as soon as I'm done typing this post, which should be easy as I'm taking an HTML class at school now.
• Zion has fluctuated, with many Zionites moving on to higher learning, leaving me at one of the top spots. I still annoy most of the old school folks that have stayed local, but it's mostly people I've recruited or befriended now, and we still rape at Halo 1. M6D Pistol forever!
• I've been sucked into the world of Pro Wrestling, with old ECW PPVs acquired from various sources becoming a weekly source of entertainment. I also watch all current forms of WWE and TNA (even Heat...). Some of you might be wondering what a older teen like me is doing watching this. Well, my father disapproves of it, so I never got to see it as a kid, and I guess I'm making up for lost time. My favorite "Superstars" are Adam "Edge" Copeland, The Bogeyman, The Dudleys (Currently Team 3D on TNA), and Mr. Kennedy.
• Otherwise, I feel like I've matured since you last heard from me. I'm less cynical, I've come to terms with my religious beliefs (as in, I'm an Agnostic, religion's version of not caring), and I have more friends for it.

Well, that's all I can think of. BTW, the name of my work is actually South Port Square, which is a retirement home where I'm a waiter, but Slave Port sounds much better to me. It at least explains why I'm doing some of the things I have to do there for people who have no idea where they are anyway.

23 Days till we Finish the Fight!
-Pudge
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Listening to: Three Days Grace - Riot
via FoxyTunes

Saturday Morning Cartoons and why they're going to die

Hey,

I know that most people don't care about stuff like this, but I've always been a huge fan of Saturday Morning Cartoons. After a week of school, kids wake up early and are bored. Before they get older and can leave the house, they need something like Saturday Morning TV to entertain them. It works like primetime TV. Instead of "Did you see what happened on the OC last night?" the third graders say stuff like "Did you see who Yugi defeated on Saturday?" Sadly, due to several factors spiraling out of control at the same time, Saturday Morning may be no more, and sooner than you think.

1.The FCC's ridiculous regulations on both content that must be edited, and so called E/I show requirements. On Saturday Morning cartoons, no one can die, no one can be seriously injured, no one can say crap or heck, every kind of firearm must have the sound effect of a laser gun.

2.Anime. Sadly, instead of coming up with original ideas, Saturday is taking the best Anime aimed at teenage boys (Shaman King, One Piece, Pokemon, etc...) and hacking it up in a dub that is rarely even close to the original and tries to aim it at everybody from 5 year old girls to 14 year old boys. You have already heard my gripes with 4Kids, the company that makes most of these dubs. You can find one of these dubs in every half hour of Saturday morning, and FOX's morning (4KidsTV) is 95% of it (the only exception being TMNT)

3.24-Hr. Networks. Kids can be entertained every minute of the day by Nick, CN, or Disney, so it's that much harder for Sat. Morning to compete. Instead of stepping up to the challenge and making their shows truly special, they badly mimic the popular cable cartoons and sometimes even run reruns of them (Teen Titans, PPG)

4.Mergers. with mergers happening left and right, the owners of networks like CBS, NBC and ABC came into possession of kid centric cable outlets. So, for their Sat. Morning programming, they just show lite versions of the cable network's shows. (if you were wondering-CBS=Nick, NBC=Discovery Kids, ABC=Disney)

You might be thinking, who cares? The kids can watch everything now. They get their own channels. That's enough. NO, it's not enough. Saturday morning brought many wonderful cartoons to the world. How good would the Spider-Man movie have been without Spider-Man, the Series on Fox? Where else could small franchises like Sam & Max or The Tick or Ghostbusters have gone with a cartoon show? Would there be a Game Boy without the success of Pokemon (which was a GOOD dub for the first season) on Kids WB? The answers are that it would be a very different place if Sat AM cartoons weren't there, and, god damn it, I wanna see the next TMNT or Pokemon explode on Saturday morning. Not get decent ratings on CN.

-May you always enjoy the weekend as I do
Pudge