Disclaimer:
This post has nothing to do with anything deployment related. It is a response to an article written
about the latest campaign by PETA.
The article can be found here:
You might want to read or at
least glance over the article to understand what in the world I’m talking
about. You also may need to know a
little bit about Super Mario Bros. to completely understand, but if you don’t,
I’m pretty sure you’ll get my point.
Finally, please understand I apparently took my sarcasm pill this
morning. If you aren’t a fan of
sarcasm, or are a fan of PETA, then don’t waste your time reading this!
Dear PETA:
I am writing to address some concerns I was recently made
aware of concerning the alleged animal abuse by Super Mario. This information is both alarming and
concerning, and I regret to have to be the one to inform you, that Mario has
more than likely been abusing animals for years, if not decades.
The earliest allegations of abuse stem from the early
1980’s, when Mario was believed to illegally own a large gorilla named Donkey
Kong, somewhere in the slums of Japan.
I am not exactly sure what led Mario, an Italian plumber, to the streets
of Japan; perhaps he was moonlighting as a plumber, when he was really deeply
involved in illicit monkey trafficking, but that I have no proof of.
It seems, after years of being mistreated, Donkey Kong
managed to escape his deplorable living conditions. After his escape, he went on a rampage through the streets
of Japan, climbing ladders and throwing barrels at innocent bystanders, and
destroying portions of the Japanese city he once inhabited. The destruction was so bad the
inhabitants of the city still cringe at the mention of Donkey’s name.
Outdated file photo
of Donkey Kong during destructive rampage
To escape prosecution stemming from that event, Mario left
Japan. No one is exactly sure of
his whereabouts over the next few years, but what is known is that he fell into
bad company and hard times. During
this time, he gained a group of dedicated followers. His closest accomplices were:
His brother Luigi
(also a plumber)
A midget who was fond
of magic mushrooms, who went by the alias of “Toad”
And his girlfriend “Princess”
Toadstool aka “Peach”
At some point, Mario’s girlfriend was kidnapped by a drug
lord named Bowser (aka “King Koopa”), who was miffed over the amount of drug
money owed to him by Toad. It was
during Mario’s attempts to rescue Princess Toadstool that evidence of far more
terrible abuses came to light.
It started with Mario smashing turtles and small beetles
with his feet. Mario believed that
these poor defenseless animals were being sent to attack him, and were being
controlled by his arch enemy Bowser.
He would even skin the helpless turtles and hurl their shells at other
animals, knocking them unconscious and leaving them at his mercy.
It then escalated to burning animals with a powerful
chemical accelerant, believed to be made from a rare flower. This chemical was so powerful, it
allowed Mario to hurl fireballs long distances, and coupled with the effects of
the mushroom drugs Mario was so fond of, led to even more maniacal behaviors.
Sometime after this, the first evidence appeared of Mario
wearing the tails of what appeared to be raccoons. In his drug induced state, Mario believed that wearing these
animal pelts would make him fly.
Skinning animals quickly turned into an obsession for
Mario. In fact, a quick internet
search yields multiple pictures of Mario wearing the skins of various animals,
such as frogs, bears, and even penguins.
(Though I think the bigger question here is, where in the world did he
find a frog large enough for a full grown man to fit inside?)
PETA, I know that you want to teach the children of America
to not follow in the footsteps of this crazy animal skinner, but I am afraid
that you are already too late. The
children in our country have also been skinning poor helpless animals for many
years, specifically around the end of October. In fact, my own son is guilty of this atrocity.
It started before he was even a year old. I thought I had sheltered my son from
the influence of Mario and his hoards of animal skinners, but in hindsight, I
was wrong. This picture is from
October of that year, when I caught him dressed in the skin of a very small
(and I’m sure equally helpless) baby giraffe.
He doesn’t even look remorseful there, but does look
surprised he got caught with the skin…
The next year, once again without my knowledge, my son was
able to skin an even more elusive animal, the dangerous wild Elmo. That year, he wore the skin proudly,
and even had the nerve to go around and ask people for candy while he was
wearing it.
I thought that I could forgive his actions from those two
years. The first year, he was so
young, he didn’t know any better.
And I could completely understand him skinning Elmo the next year, that
thing was kind of creepy anyways, and kept asking for you to tickle it. If he hadn’t have skinned him, I would
have.
But this year, his skinning got out of hand. You see, I’m pretty sure my son skinned
a member of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. This blurry picture is the only
evidence I have, so I can’t be completely sure.
Not only that, but I think he has convinced his friends to
join in with the skinning. That or
they too have fallen victim to the sordid tales of Mario. I’m afraid one of his friends even
skinned a local handyman named Manny and paraded around with my son at a local
church collecting candy.
So I agree PETA, we must stop
the wayward influences of Mario and his gang of animal killing/skinning
followers, before their influence spreads and further infects our children with
its venom….
Ok PETA, in all seriousness and without all the (well, most
of the) sarcasm, I have this one plea.
PETA, please get a life.
Or at least get a hobby, take up knitting or something, sit
down, have a big steak and a beer, and relax for a second. I completely agree that animals
don’t deserve a lot of the cruel things that happen to them. I even like (most) animals! I think puppies and kittens are
cute! For a long time, I thought
veal were poor baby calves stripped from their mothers at birth, and forced to
live in tiny, dark cages where they couldn’t move until the day they were slaughtered,
and I thought that was horrible. I
still have a very hard time eating lamb because I can’t get the picture of a
tiny baby sheep with big ol’ baby sheep eyes about to shed a tear staring up at
me from my plate out of my head.
You know, I hit a cat on my way home from work the other
day, and I really felt bad! Did I
stop to check on the cat I hit?
No, I’m pretty sure it didn’t stand a chance against my 3,000 lb Chevy
Malibu barreling towards it a 60 mph.
(And had it been a dog, or had the hit-and-run occured in front of someone's house not out in the middle of nowhere on a little two lane road, I would have stopped.) Did I swerve to try and miss the cat? No, I wasn’t about to endanger my life or the lives of other
humans because of a kitty cat.
I’ll chalk that one up to natural selection, and move on. But I digress…
So anywho PETA, this isn’t about your mission to save
animals. What this is about is the
fact that with the amount of time, money and effort you put into this “Campaign
to Stop the Youths of America from Turning into Maniacal Raccoon Skinners,” you
could have done a lot of good things instead. You could have fed lots of needy children. Imagine, providing them all Thanksgiving
dinner, complete with Tofurky and 1000% certified organic green beans and vegan
pumpkin pie, their little eyes smiling up at you at the sight of such a
bountiful meal.
*Yummm…..*
(* denotes use of
sarcasm again)
Or you could have provided toys and clothes to needy
children at Christmas, and you could have made sure that none of it was tested
on animals or contained any animal byproducts. You could have bought equipment to provide people in third
world countries with fresh drinking water, unless you think it is wrong to kill
the dysentery causing microorganisms in the water or something. In that case you could have provided
mosquito friendly mosquito nets to help prevent malaria in underdeveloped places
instead.
You could
have used your money and time to promote the ethical and humane treatment of
animals in a positive and caring fashion, while at the same time helping the
fellow HUMANS around you. But your
response was to start some off the wall, gory, scary campaign about how
horrible it is for a cartoon character to dress up like a raccoon (or what you
call a Tanuki or “Raccoon dog”. If
I saw a thing that was a cross between a dog and raccoon, it’d probably scare
me so much I’d kill it too), and in the process, you made your group look like a
bunch of crazy dingbats once again.
The last time I checked, there are still many, many atrocities happening
to humans all around us, and until that ceases, I have to say I have little
sympathy for the horrors little tanuki dog-things go through from day to
day.
Plus, I’m pretty sure that’s not what the Mario creators
were after however many years ago when they first gave Mario a little raccoon
tail and the ability to fly.
Sincerely,
Your meat eating, milk drinking, cat running-over-friend
Les
*Final Disclaimer*
I do not claim rights to any of the pictures or ideas
associated with Super Mario. Those
belong to Nintendo or whoever owns that name now. I also in no way believe Mario promotes harming or skinning
animals. In fact, I was a huge fan
of Mario as a child (ask my sister, she’ll tell ya) and I think he’s a heck of
a lot better than all these gory shoot-em-up games from the present! That is all.
Love it!!
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