Glory be!

It's only been like two years but I have made another flash animation, and I think I'll use this internet journalmathingamabob to do what it was meant to do. Promote said flash animation.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
507228

Behold, a glorious flash animation using pixels and the power of continuous frames of images to make it seem, as if by magic, that the images are infact moving. DO NOT BE ALARMED. I am no witch or wizard, it is simply an opti-litical illusion based upon the nature in which we all view the world.

Also a really big thanks to Tom for increasing the file limit for uploads for me. Despite my best efforts the video came out to twelve megs. A few more then I was hoping for. He was willing to change that for me, and thus is wonderful.

As for watching it yourself, be warned, it is a pixel animation based on the legend of Zelda game series. It's very long (over twenty minutes) and it has no gratuities violence or sex jokes. Though if you want those there are many other bewitching animations else ware on this fair site that will accommodate you.

Best wishes world of the living.

-always

Empty

So is mine.

Yet as life goes on I seem to hear more and more random people's opinions. Even worse, I have to hear random people's opinions, in 'blog' (blog is a stupid word) form.

I'm writing such a thing right now. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it is acid splittingly stupid. You can look back through every post I have written and you won't find a valid well thought out or reasonable opinion anywhere in there. Why would I bother to have a valid opinion?

Am I held accountable for what I say here on the internet? Sorta, I guess, if someone spends way too much time to find out who I am, hunt me down, and punish me for the things I say...

But that has only happened to me once, and that guy's in jail now. Or he was, I should check on that.

I don't watch TV, read the newspaper, or browse yahoo news to listen to random people. I want educated (or pretty, especially if it's on TV) people employed by those good institutions telling me the facts as they see them. I don't need it muddled by the common filth!

The average person is stupid, and annoying. As an average person I can say I'm both, also us average people are mean. Really mean, like scoop your eyes out with a spoon and spit into each socket mean. We make comments on peoples internet journals that are like 'Tard! u r such a gay fag tard lol1!' and they don't even know me. They don't even know me and yet they say hurtful things like that and I don't know why, and I ask them why and they just say MORE hurtful things...

And late at night, I can still read the taunts and the loling, scrolling through the parser of my mind.

Warning: most likely this post has already offended you, and it does not get better.

Offensive words are funny. I think the most I've laughed in awhile was trying to make sure that this post's subject was properly spelled. Of course, n***a is a colloquial slang misspelling of the common racist word used to fling offenses at people of African American or occasionally other non white decent. The proper spelling of the word is n****r, (yup complete with four asterisk marks for added precision). Other uses of it include a friendly hello between very street savvy people of African American decent. At least if TV has taught me anything. Never having been on a street, I wouldn't know first hand of course.

Why would checking the spelling of n***a amuse me? Well, it turns out that the MS word spell-check will not ever suggest the proper spelling of n****r or cunt or other 'naughty' words. But, if spelled correctly, knows that's what I meant to spell.

Yes that's right, the MS Word spell checker has been taught shame.

This to me is really only a few steps from teaching it how to defeat us in a global battle of man vs. machine. I am terrified.

I spell the word n***a in this post because I remember a hilarious story involving that pronunciation. It was when a friend of a friend of mine was playing a sonic game. Now to properly picture this you must realize that this urban legend is a large black man. He is also a game tester. He was testing out the new sonic game and the new villain of this sonic game is an evil, shadowy version of the standard 'eggman' or if you're cool 'dr robotnick'

So the cut scene when something like this.

Sonic: OH NO! It's Eggman N***a!

Tails: EGGMAN N***A?!

Sonic: Eggman N***a!

Large black game tester: ....ooooh no.

Hilarity.

Of course he's actually named eggman nEgga. As in negative, but it sure didn't sound that way the first time I heard the cut scene either.

I thought I would share, also I felt like using a word I should never use, like n****r. It's really not a nice word at all, with a long and quite painful history. Not being a n****r myself I have no right using this word at all and really should stop. My ancestors were not enslaved, and I know nothing of the music of the streets.

I'm sure someone is like 'what does streets have to do with n****rs?', I'm using a stereotype of hip hop culture for... hip hop? or is it rap culture. Or... I... are they different cultures? Is rap and hip hop the same thing? For that matter is there really all that much difference between country and 'rock'? Also how do people claim that Elvis and Tom Petty are playing the same kind of music. Does 'rock' just mean anything with drums in it? Are the drums the rock part of rock? or is it the guitar? Why did we ever lose the roll? Remember when rock used to roll?

Rock hasn't rolled in such a long time.

So in anger I'll call someone a cunt. It doesn't matter who. At least in the United States, that's pretty much the worst thing I can call a woman. Some kind of qualifier really punches it up. "you little-" or "lazy good for nothing-" or "I wish I had a-" if you're transsexual. The word cunt is alot like the word n****r. It's bad because it makes people feel bad. Which is sometimes good, if say you hate that person. So I guess it's kinda nice to have such words available. I mean if you have a black female friend who you want to end that friendship with in a truly dramatic and poignant way, well, I think you know how to do it.

It's funny how that happens, how words gain such incredible power. The words don't mean anything. The people using them and having them used on make the meanings. When someone wants to hurt someone, and they use a word, and it actually does hurt them, they'll keep using it. Until that word is associated with that hurt in such a way that people have to apologize publicly if they use words there are close to those words and a few people watching misheard.

Personally I think they're lazy. Like sometimes I hear girls, (once again this is in the US, I know the word cunt is used differently in some other places) complain that there is no good equivalent for that insult to a guy. He goes 'you stupid cunt' and they have nothing to shoot back at him.

Well, you could always point out that he's a really lazy insulter and clearly put no thought into it, just going to that dry well isn't impressing anyone. It's like if I was going to be racist, there are so many better things to do then run to an overused derogatory.

Now girls thinking there is no good insult to toss back just shows how ignorant they are on how to insult. Try pussy. What's funny is how similar the word pussy and cunt are. But you call a guy a pussy, he generally doesn't like that. You call a guy in the US a cunt, he'll probably just be confused and think you have mistaken him for a cunt (you know, a girl). But ladies, let fly something like "you cowardly pussy lipped cock sucker." Which I think is pretty hurtful.

The truth of course is that most guys who are going to call you a cunt to your face probably don't care enough about you as a person to be insulted by anything you say. So just go for the nut punch. They may become enraged and murder you, leaving a blood smear across the apartment wall, but if you did the nut-punch properly you have removed them from the gene pool and thus improved mankind.

Which of course brings us to fuck. I fucking hate the word fuck. It's overused like the fucking fuck fuck. Whatever fuck decided to start using fuck as the go to word needs to get capped.

An example of a sentence I actually heard. "That fucking fuck fucking fucked me. FUCK! I'm gunna fuck his fucking face."

And sometimes you see stuff like that in movies, in back and forth between characters. I guess it's trying to show the realistic way people talk? Or maybe the writers just are overjoyed the movie is rated R and they get more than one F word and forget there are other words? I don't know.

I kind of like the pg 13 rule of just one hard fuck. You use a word like fuck too much and it loses its fucking punch. Fuck. I mean I doubt that anything I'm saying at this point if you're still reading, has anywhere near the impact that the subject title did. But if you use the word fuck once a year, that's a good fuck. You can scare the hell out of someone with that fuck. Or you can really get off on that fuck. Or whatever you fucking do with your fucks.

And then there's the fucking holocaust. And the Nazis. If we want to get offense, have you ever tried walking around decked out in swastikas? I thought we had free speech. Oh and apparently "I'm getting in touch with my German ancestry." Isn't an 'appropriate' explanation. Also statements like "It's all right, I have Jewish friends." Just seems to make it worse.

Long story short I'm apparently banned from all bar mitzvah like things in the tri state area.

The truth is though people get a little hung up on Hitler and Nazism. It was a terrible hilarious thing that happened. But it is but one of many terrible hilarious things like it throughout history. And but one of many terrible hilarious things that will happen as history moves on, possibly involving me as a victim. Well hopefully not that last one, but I'm being realistic.

I understand that world war 2 was a very big moment in history, but I'm kinda sick of it. If I have to see one more special on Rommel the desert fox or hear another funny anecdote about exploding bats and nuclear bombs, I'm going to freaken start rounding up a minority and working them to death. I mean it. I'll freaken holocaust baby kittens if I have to. That should get a rise out of the YouTube generation.

YouTube watcher: This guy is killing Australians, he's hunting them down...

Other YouTube watcher: Yeah well this chick is killing KITTENS.

YouTube watcher: Oh fuck that bitch cunt. How could she. Those kittens were cute.

Other YouTube watcher: Australians are kinda cute.

YouTube watcher: Kitten cute?

Other YouTube watcher: 'Kitten is a ninja' cute, but not quite 'kitten waking up' cute.

YouTube watcher: Kitten waking up is a good one.

That imaginary exchange might have been exasperated by the fact that whenever someone links me to something on YouTube it involves kittens. Generally waking up. Apparently kittens waking up is the none porn equivalent of crack cocaine to net users.

When someone links me to something on newgrounds, I can say that it rarely has kittens, when it does they normally die. The common newgrounds themes seem to be unnecessarily violence. Gay jokes. Random pointless shock humor. And slightly offensive racist or sexist material. Mix and match as one wishes.

Which is overall superior to kittens.

This giant tirade about offensiveness caps off with anime. This is probably just me, but I've had some people react to the word anime as if it were a terribly dirty and offensive word. This seems silly. While I do admit I generally prefer the term 'Japanese animation' as it is more specific the word anime doesn't disserve scorn.

Anime is just the Japanese doing what the Japanese do best. Taking American things, such as the word animation, and streamlining them in an industrious fashion to make it cuter, bloodier, and have bigger eyes.

Thus animation is shortened to anime!

The prevalence of the popularity of Japanese animation has caused it to have as many popular things do, those people that simply hate everything about it. Despite the fact that it is far too wide a thing with far too many nuances and caveats to ever be able to claim one despises all of it without coming off as an ignorant fool.

Like those people that 'hate TV' but 'love movies'.

Stop it. You're not fooling anyone. We're on to you and we think you're stupid. There's no way you can watch enough TV if you don't watch TV to form a decent opinion about whether or not there's anything worth watching on TV. You have to be a TV watcher to do that, and most TV watchers clearly enjoy TV at least somewhat or they wouldn't watch TV!

SO STOP TELLING ME ALL TV IS LAME IF YOU DON'T WATCH TV!

I'll kill you. You'll go in the fucking labor camps with the kittens.

Well, I can honestly say that this is probably the first thing I've ever written where I'm a little worried if it'll get me into trouble.

I should probably just delete the whole thing. It is in poor taste.

Oh and the reason all the youtube's are spelled the way they are is because the MS word spellcheck? It corrected me. The proper spelling is apparently YouTube. Thank you MS word for knowing that, but not knowing what the fuck newgrounds is.

..............hope you enjoyed reading it.

In the city, you sit and stare out the window. Stare into the fog that separates this world from the next, And the eyes of death stare back. The eyes of death that laugh and jiggle with terrible mercy.

Other nights of course you don't have nightmares and thus are free of such haunting imagery. The world is a much less scary place on those nights, free of the demons that haunt, and the monsters that snatch with their terrible snatchy claws and rending talons. Unless of course, you have the jungle fever.

Jungle fever isn't like most diseases, you don't need to run across someone else with jungle fever to catch the jungle fever. All you need to do to catch it, is at least, according to the song lyrics, is if you're a white girl, to go 'black-boy hazy' or if you're a black boy, to go 'white-girl crazy'.

Apparently it's some kind of slang term for an inter racial relationship, specifically African styled decent, and western European decent. I can honestly say I had no freaken idea that's what it was when I started writing this. I just looked it up right now. Why is it called jungle fever for both people then? I mean, I assume its jungle fever for the person in love with the guy who's lineage in the last few hundred years intersects African black people at some point.

But does this only apply to white people who fall for blacks? I mean, when two people from the darkest of contents fall for each other, can't they call it jungle fever? Also, can't there be a cool slang term form when the African person falls for the other, like um... jungle.... um... tundra... um.... deforested over farmed... um...

I got nothing. I'm just saying it's lazy to apply the slang term to both!

Soooo lazy.

Every possible human race match needs a cool slang term. Like if a Japanese girl and a Korean guy do it? We need a term for that. If a person born in Mexico who's half native American and have Latin shacks up with someone from Jamaica who has touches of Indian heritage in them, I want a slang term for that!

It really seems the only fair thing. I'm sick of some people have cool names for their relationships and others not having them. I'm jealous, jealous, jealous.

Jealous.

I will now refer to any relationship I'm in, as 'the steaming hot plague of sexual greatness' or SHPSG.

SHPSG is a widespread problem, that affects many people, many in your own community you probably don't even know about. So please, if someone you know, has SHPSG please, don't go trying to break them and their girlfriend or boyfriend up because you think they spend too much time together, and not enough time with you. That's a bitch move. It's a bitch move, and doing it makes you a bitch. Just get over the fact that they have other things taking up their time then you, grow up a little, gain some understanding, and stop being a selfish bitch.

What if they get married? You gunna keep being a bitch? Stop it!

That's right. You heard me.

I love comics. I love sequential art. If I could write comics for a living I would. I've tried, I have been told by a lot of form letters that I should keep trying though! So yes, I love comics. this does not however stop comics from being stupid. Very, very stupid.

They're horribly stupid. Mind numbingly, skin crawlingly, stupid. It's painful. It physically hurts. They get away with things that you'd look at a retarded five year old and scold them for even considering it decent storytelling.

People often complain about the constant resurrections. Resurrections? Back from the dead? That is the LEAST LAME thing in comics. You think you know what bad writing is? I'll show you bad writing.

Lets go over some of my favorite examples of comics and the brilliant plots they come up with.

Detective #328: A batman story. In this issue Alfred, his loyal and very alfredy man servant is killed by a falling boulder (the fate of all man servents). He pushed batman and robin out of the way and was crushed. Poor Alfred. A few issues later, somewhere in the 340's, 350's, I forget exactly when I don't have it on me. Alfred was revived by some scientist. But the attempt at bringing him back was um...... ALFRED BECAME A VILLAIN KNOWN AS THE OUTSIDER! With telekinesis!

By the end of the plotline Alfred was reverted back with no memory at all about what he had done.

While we're on the topic of batman, anyone who remembers bat mite knows just how stupid comics can be.

Lets see... batman stupidity... batman stupidity....

Ever heard of the villain known as CALENDAR MAN? A villain so stupid, so lame, that even batman fans consider him lame. And these are a group of people who think a guy who uses umbrellas, a guy who laughs alot, and a guy who asks questions, are good villains.

Calendar man, is a villain obsessed with calendars. and dates. Once he dressed up as Odin and shot a laser from his eye. Which would be cool, if he had a different name and didn't think committing crimes based on days of the week was a good idea.

Oh batman also was once unable to hit the penguins goons because they had air-conditioned suits. That shot out puffs of air that pushed his fist away whenever he tried.

On the marvel side of things...

The dark phoenix Saga: Widely considered a classic of comic storytelling. This was a long running plot through the x-men comics. Sometimes it's split up into two separate 'sagas' but for my purpose I'll run you through the whole thing.

Originally the phoenix, was not a separate entity, she simply WAS jean, at the peak of her power. From like comic rays in space she was momentarily all badasstastic and shiny. A BEING OF PURE THOUGHT! Then was the phoenix. She put away her powers to stay safe, mental blocks and stuff.

Then she was mind controlled by the white queen and mastermind. Making her believe she was living some past life. She joined the hellfire club. The x-men came to her rescue, got captured, and Cyclops (jean gray's true love) fought mastermind in a duel of the psychicness. Cyclops lost, and jean went all like....... dark phoenix.

She beat up the x-men, and created a hole in space and went to a distant galaxy and exploded a star. Killing BILLIONS. (not humans though. so it was okay) She gets attacked by aliens, she kills them, and everyone decides she's even more dangerous then galctus. Because apparently the dark phoenix could snuff out the universe.

Beast designs a device that can neutralize phoenix's power, because like, only beast, a genius blue guy on earth could do this. Not any of the space fairing super scientists fighting the phoenix out in space with their advanced technology (that would be crazy. HUMANS RULE!)

So the dark phoenix returns to earth, and is beaten up by her old friends. She came back to earth so this could happen. And Xavier, being the nice guy he is, helps her return to being not evil jean using his powerful mind whammies.

Then the aliens come and are like 'um... dark phoenix gotta die.' and the x-men are like 'die? come on. she just killed billions of people. who here hasn't done that at one time or another?' but the aliens would hear none of this and eventually everyone had a kung fu fight on the moon.

So then during the fight, everyone is all killed and stuff, and jean, goes all angry and goes phoenix again. You know, proving the aliens right. Then the aliens are like PLAN OMEGA. which involes destroying the solar system. which is crazy, I mean, come on, humans live in that solar system.

So the x-men, who I thought were dead but I guess were just sleeping, get ordered to attack the phoenix. Apparently fighting makes jean feel more like jean and she reverts to not crazy jean. Then she kills herself with a disintegration beam.

Later Cyclops decides that she must have been planning this sense they set foot on the moon. What with how common suicide on the moon was.

This wasn't the end though, oh no. oh my friends. There's more. I won't bore you with to many details, but lets just say that jean grey was actually on the bottom of the Jamaican bay, and the jean that had just committed suicide was a clone of evil superness. I think some kind of... metaphor is in there somewhere. For the fragility of life.

Admittedly, that's nothing compared to some of the brilliant gems Japan has given us.

The long running fan favorite, greatly love series one piece. Oh what a glorious time it is traveling the world as pirates, having adventures and super powers. That's pretty much the comic, pirates with super powers out on the ocean. People just love this comic.

But... where do they get these super powers? Why? many different locations and things? Lots of different wants? mutations? born with them? training?

Oh no, no, see, they get these super powers by eating a piece of devil fruit. If you eat it you gain a super power. Also, you gain the weakness of water.

That's right folks, it's a series set on the ocean where a random fruit gives you random super owners AND takes away your ability to swim. How great is that?

Other great comics everyone who loves to bash their heads against walls should read include...

The clone saga: Spiderman run, generally considered to have never happened in the marvel universe now. Has some fun stuff. it also has a skeleton inside a chimney stack with a Spiderman outfit.

The dark knight triumphs: The sequel to the dark knight returns, one of the better graphic novels ever written. This sequel is um.... go read it yourself. See what you think.

Dragon Ball: Turns out he's an alien.

Comics are stupid. Even alot of the best written stuff just has moments of pure laziness. Where it's okay to just do something that makes no sense. Why? because comic writers assume that comic readers don't care. Or will accept it.

We will. I mean, I'm being nice and just picking on the mainstream stuff. You should see some of the indy crap that gets critically acclaimed. XD It makes some of this look logical.

So go. Read comics. Enjoy comics. Love comics. And if you ever get a chance to write comics, just spend five minutes, and think it through. Does it make sense? Is it stupid? Do you feel bad now that you have realized how stupid it was?

Good.

Also, gritty, be careful of gritty. Just because someone kills someone that doesn't make your story 'gritty'. Gritty was big in the 80's, do you want to be like the 80's? Think about it.

And remember, all heroes can dodge as many bullets as the world has, but dart guns always find their mark! (because writers can't ever figure out good ways to knock heroes out.) Thus making the dart gun, the most powerful weapon! With knock out gas and electricity coming in second and third.

Personally I think calander man should be the villian of the next batman movie. If Christopher Nolan has any guts at all. DO IT! BE A MAN!

Love ya all.

bubye now.

I don't know about you, but I bothered to take a look at what apparently people who liked my flash animations also liked. I was horrifically disturbed. Apparently people have been watching my flash animations, and then been clicking things like 'zombie eats dog poo and then they do it... in the dog poo' or worse, watching that and then watching my animations.

I'm not saying all the connections are to horrible things. Heck I gotta say, that zombie dog poo one, that has some promise. Definitely funnier then anything I've made. I just don't see why enough people have watched them and other such things together, to tell a website there's a connection. it's like watching... Violent mayhem 3. And then clicking one of the 'users who liked this also like...' and the thing you click turns out to be like, pottery adventure time

Pottery is awesome. Brilliant even. I mean who doesn't love pottery more then the great wall of china (Which most don't know, is actually made OUT of pottery) but it's not what i want to see right after i watch violent mayhem. At least personally. After some violent mayhem i want to watch like... some more violent mayhem. Isn't that the whole point of violence? that it makes you want more of it? Otherwise what the ziggurat are all the parents complaining about?

I guess it means people who end up watching my animations have varied tastes. Extremely... extremely.... varied tastes........

I'm just saying I'm watching you. If you go and watch my animation, and then like watch some kind of weird porn thing that involves animated girls who can fly. I will be very disappointed in you. VERY. Disappointed.

watch it on your own as much as you want, heck put it on repeat and make a night of it.

(I'd link you to what some of them are, but seriously. Ew.)

I have. I have made a response on every comment I have ever gotten.

I don't even know why. Every comment and review, on every flash movie and every post article thing. I have responded to them all. Some of the responses do not even make sense. At least one of them mentions the cold war. I think I told a few people I hated them.

Perhaps it was part of a grander scheme. Mostly I just think it was........ uh... well it was. It certainly certainly was.

I guess it is a testament to the inane nature of humanity. By humanity I mean me. The inane nature of me. One day I'll be relevant... one day.

*stares off into the sunset and watches the grass turn a golden brown*

...one day.

And on that day I will use my great power to crush those that laughed at my weakness. Crush them like a bowl of grapes under a very collapsing mountain. Gooey, and delicious.

As it is three thirty in the morning, i think i'll go and dream about the future, and travel into tomarrow.

Well, I promised another interview at this point in time. But I'm at work, and lazy. So instead, here's a story from my place of business! ENJOY! (or not. I don't control you.)

******

The place I work being a place of business often has meetings. This is understandable as how else do the people in the company meet, and talk about what they're going to do to the other people in the company? Oh meetings can be boring, meetings can be pointless, but when you really get down to it, without meetings, we'd all just be working all the time. That isn't really much better is it?

Now the place I work is also a place of food, and it has a wonderful cafeteria that produces an amazing array of delicious delectable dishes. Some of them are even good for you. The most delicious ones are not. Because of this many of these meetings are held around the lunch time.

The food is often displayed bright and proudly on tables sitting out in front of the meeting room. Probably in hopes of keeping the meeting room clean, or enticing those that were thinking of pretending they didn't get the meeting notice to come in anyways.

There is a sick, twisted, undercurrent that flows through the halls of the place I work. A shady subculture that has formed. 'Meeting vultures'. They stalk the halls around lunchtime, looking for meetings to steal food as they pass by. Sometimes a chip here, a piece of cheese there... but other times...

I witnessed something the other day, dastardly and somehow almost beautiful in its brazenness. I was walking by a table with several boxes of the delicious pizza they make here. There must have been five pizza boxes splayed out, and a man was standing in front of them, piling slices upon his plate. Slice after slice. He had to have put at least ten on it. Well more then half of a single pizza. Admittedly, I had been hoping that the pizza would be unguarded, and the meeting long over. Pizza is delicious; I make no apologies for my desires. I assumed though this man was gathering up slices for his fellow workers inside, and I was out of luck.

Another, older man walked up, curious. He had the air of respect and dignity I often associate with anyone more important than me. (This is most people) "Are you in this meeting?" He asked the pizza guzzler.

"No. No I am not." Answered the pizza guzzler, continuing to pile pizza upon his plate. Some ware around twelve slices now. He did not flinch, he did not hesitate. He worked with the dedication and speed you expect from an employee at my place of business (it's a great place. very fast).

"That food is only for people who are in the meeting." The older gentleman said, seeming a bit put off by this man's focused determination. I will admit, there was something cold, something wrong, about the pizza guzzler's eyes. It was like something inside him was dead, or broken.

"That meeting has been over for awhile." He put his 13th and 14th slice on top of his plate while he talked. Looking over at us with his cold piercing eyes, as if daring us to disagree. I sure wasn't going to say anything.

"Oh?" And the older gentlemen, and myself (As I was curious), looked into this meeting room we were outside, only to see that not only was it still going, but it looked like none of them had yet to even get any pizza, but when we turned back, this pizza vulture was gone, along with what looked like a good four slices of pizza from each pie.

How he was able to move so quickly and quietly with so much in his hands I do not know. The meeting room was in the middle of the hall, any blind corners were a good 25 feet away.

Beware the food vultures, they are like ninja, and will use cunning, tactics, and subterfuge to get what they wish.

Good day mortals.

I have for the last few months been trying to collect interesting interviews with random newground goers. Not the standard ones, ware you get to hear the current most popular artist talk about why he is so great and how they manage to get so popular.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I thought it would be fun to instead to take a look at the people involved in the newgrounds community you normally don't hear from. The person who has submitted the most blammed entries. Someone who seems to spend all their lives posting in the forums. The people with incredibly high experience levels....

Just the kind of people, who for better or worse make newgrounds what it is just as much if not more then the exceptionally popular artists.

So, until the newgrounds mag gets retooled, I will be every two weeks posting an interview here on this creepy newgrounds blog! Mostly because i'm really unorganized, and if I don't do something with them soon, I'm going to start losing them.

To start off, we have the most logical choice of interviews on people who make newgrounds newgrounds, Tom Fulp, who was gracious enough to grant this amazing interview. Taking time out of his busy scedual to let me bother him, and belive me, that's dangerous, i'm very anoying. The interview forman is simple, the interviewer just refers to themselves as Q. (Which stands for question. As they are interviewing it seems appropriate) and Tom is reffered to as A... becuase he's answering. Why not just call him Tom? i.... d... its to late to change it now! SHUT UP.... naw. i'll change it. Tom shall be called Tom. That makes more sense.

Q: Tom. In as brief a way as possible, so as not to overly bore the people who have seen and read it a million times, could you say what newgrounds is, and how it came about?

Tom: Newgrounds is the original and largest community of Flash artists on the web. It started in 1995 as my personal hobby while I was in high school, and I built a large audience with point and click web games such as Club a Seal and Assassin, the game where you kill celebrities. In 1998 I began to dabble with Flash, and made a lot of the early Flash games that spread around "virally". I always liked trying to prove Flash was more powerful than anyone realized, so I made stuff like side scrolling shooters and brawlers when most people were just using Flash to make interactive menus and website layouts. By 1999, Newgrounds was a top 600 website and I started showcasing Flash by other aspiring artists. Sorting through all the email submissions and building pages for them was becoming a full-time job, so I quit my job at Qwest, took a temporary leave from school, hired my friend Ross (programming whiz) and by 2000 we launched the automated Flash Portal. The rest is pretty much history.

Q: Thanks for the quick sum up. Now that everyone is caught up, on to bigger and better things.

In alot of ways it seems, along with many things on the Internet, the popularity of new grounds and how it turned into what it is today was mostly (if not completely) an accident. If you had it all to do over again, is there anything you would have done differently leading up to this point? (besides having a buzz saw arm attached in place of your normal weak human one)

Tom: I would be afraid to do anything differently because I might screw up the charm or history of NG, or change that one little thing that won over someone who is now important in the community. In retrospect, though, I wish I had been better focused on the right goals for NG, and not have been all over the place so much. We were always dabbling and experimenting with ideas, but in the end a lot of them haven't become part of the big picture of what NG is destined to be. Also, times really were different back then. Hardware was expensive and it couldn't handle as much traffic as it can today. Bandwidth was insanely expensive as well - our hosting costs in 2000 were more than double what they are today. My main goal was to just keep NG alive and hope better times were ahead. Thankfully, they were.

Q: Considering how things have changed so drastically in such a comparatively short period of time do you have any great fears for the future?

Tom: I think as long as we stay focused on our goals for NG, there will always be a healthy community around it. I do worry about a massive shift making NG completely obsolete, but we'll figure things out when the time comes.

Q: You spend alot of time on outside projects, in which you put an incredible amount of effort and love into. Though they are generally flash related, they are often not directly linked to the site. Could you see yourself in the far (or even near) future passing on newgrounds to someone else and focusing your efforts and time on these other projects?

Tom: Everything I've been doing with the Behemoth has been intended to be a direct relationship with NG - a gateway for Flash developers to see their work on consoles. It's been a long, hard, road, though. Ultimately, I never want to lose focus on Newgrounds. We will still make console games, but I don't want to be the programming bottleneck for those games. So really, the torch that will get passed will be to the next Flash programmer who gets to make a console game. Many years from now, I might be too old to be the "voice" of Newgrounds... At that time, I like to think I'll have picked a worthy successor from the community on the site.

Q: Hopefully whoever he or she is will be willing to face the fact that no matter what they do, you will always be remembered as the glorious perfect first. (like Washington!)

Now be honest. how often are you tempted to use your god like moderator power to crush the dreams of someone? I don't just mean good dreams necessarily, I also mean the dreams of people who seem to dream only of putting up animations of cats pooping on other cats. Do you ever dream of crushing their dreams?

Tom: Sometimes I do just want to delete a ton of people and smash the forums to pieces. But in the end everyone is just having fun in their own way, and we have to strike a balance with all of it. A lot of the troublemakers go on to make great stuff over the years, so you need to be patient with them while they figure that out.

Q: Now the stock answer for what your favorite website is would be newgrounds yes. But what is your secondary Internet home. Is there any other place on the web ware you spend far to much time? A mmorpg? A web forum? Another animation community ware you have to put a beard and unconvincing glasses onto your avatar so no one suspects and you can slowly plot in peace?

Tom: I rarely go anywhere other than Newgrounds anymore, because the web just annoys me too much. However, I do find frequent entertainment on sites like YTMND.com and... I hate to admit it... YouTube.

Q: Why do you hate to admit to visiting youtube? In alot of ways it's very similar to newgrounds. Only instead of moronic submissions, you get to see moronic people! Does it make you feel like a traitor? Like a traitor deep inside ware you feel rotten twisted and dead in that part of your soul that no longer feels emotion?

Tom: My distaste for YouTube is twofold:

1) I am jealous because we laid a lot of the groundwork for the user generated revolution, but rarely got the credit. People couldn't see past the "dark side" of NG, so we were neglected the mainstream praise. For years, we discussed expanding our platform to include video but didn't want to deal with issues of rampant video piracy, lawsuits and skyrocketing bandwidth costs. However, YouTube just waltzed in with enough money to weather the storm, and now they are billionaires and one of the most popular websites in the world. Newgrounds would have gone under if we had done video; it would have sent us into bankruptcy and would have alienated the thriving Flash scene we were founded on... But I'm still bitter that YouTube got all the glory, when its popularity came from pirated TV shows and not true user generated content. And much of the true user generated content on YouTube is crap, which leads me to...

2) We lost a lot of viewers to the crap on YouTube. You could see it on Alexa... When YouTube rocketed to fame, the traffic on ALL the traditional web entertainment sites plummeted. It created a massive shift, as all the web's innovative attempts to entertain the public were replaced by a fascination with watching teenage girls complain to their webcams. But in the end, I love YouTube as much as everyone else. People send me funny links there all the time. And there's a lot of stuff on YouTube that's funnier than a lot of the stuff on Newgrounds.

But Newgrounds will get funnier and maybe YouTube won't.

Q: We can only hope... so! As a well known person, there are of course large amounts of people who hate you just because. Do you ever find yourself doing searches to see just what it is people are saying about you?

Tom: When I'm in a bad mood and I just want to abuse myself, I search around to see what bad things people have to say about Newgrounds, much more than about me. And I get really pissed off when I find it on the forums of any number of soulless Newgrounds copycat sites. I feel like those people have been scammed, tricked into choosing the wrong side. But whatever, we're probably better off without idiots like that on the site.

Q: Right. We have plenty of or own loyal idiots! Now tom, It may come as a surprise, but people often wonder about you, yourself, as a person. Are there any things you think that people should know, to understand you? not of course that a creature as multi faceted and glorious as yourself (almost blinding) could be summed up quickly and easily.... but if you could sum yourself up quickly and easily how would you?

Tom: Ever watch that show Dexter on Showtime? That's sort of like me, only I'm just as passionate about NG as Dexter is about killing people.

Q: Can't you be both passionate about new grounds AND killing people?

Tom: I'm already spread too thin.

Q: Your site must generate huge amounts of fan, hate, and meh, mail. Directed at you, or just sent to you. Do you actually read and answer it all? Or do you have some kind of e-mail clown who does that sort of grunt work for you?

Tom: I do read ALL of my email. Everyone tells me I need to hire someone to do it, but I just can't do it... I feel like I would be too detached from "the pulse". I need to hear every bit of negative feedback, soak up every bit of good news and try to help everyone who deserves it. It really does take up too much of my time, though. More and more of my time revolves around running the business and dealing with email. It's not what I imagined my dream job being, but it's what I have to do to keep my dream job going. I really haven't figured out yet how I'm gonna make it all work for the long term but something will have to change.

Q: Lastly for now. What is the single most common question you get asked? And what is its answer? If by some freak coincidence its 'what is the single most common question you get asked' I do fear that causality might break... so if it's that. Don't tell me.

Tom: A lot of people still ask about Pico 2. I also get regular PMs asking why, if I run the site, I'm only a mid-level user in terms of experience points. I don't have good answers for either.

Q: I personally think you being a mid level user is one of the best parts of newgrounds. That's one of the things that makes newgrounds special. You set up a voting system. You set up a system ware people who vote more and write reviews and help people fix things and such, get a higher vote total. They matter more. What do you do? Do you set yourself at level 51 with a vote that counts as 50 votes?

No. You set yourself like any other user. When you vote you get experience just the same. I doubt anyone would bat any eye if you had done that thing, setting yourself up as way above everyone, with the power to make a submission or break it. But you didn't. I think that is commendable! Also. That's the last question (even though I answered it myself). So thanks for doing the interview, and have a good life.

*******

Now, if you think you, or someone you know, is the kind of person that would be worthy of interviewing to get a more indepth look at the inner workings of newgrounds and the people in it. Send me a PM or e-mail me at shiftingsodium@yahoo.com and let me know.

I love you all.

As my financial trouble has increased (Might lose my place of living. Yay!) I have decided to give into drastic measures. I have decided to become a prostitute.

No, I'm not going to have sex for money. I don't even like sex when it's strictly for recreation, and making it work on top of that? That would just be unpleasant.

I'm going to be a different, more logical kind of prostitute. It started a few weeks ago, when my ex wanted to play super smash brothers brawl. I said I didn't want to, so eventually, to get me to play, I was offered money. Money for playing brawl? Well I couldn't say no. oddly this caught on, other people did the same thing, and before I knew it, I had made about a hundred dollars playing brawl.

So, I offer you, the internet, a once in a lifetime opportunity. For twelve dollars, I will play against you online in super smash brothers brawl for the Nintendo revolution (wii). I will play for about half an hour. You may choose the arena, person I play as, rules, items, everything.

Why would you pay twelve dollars to fight someone you don't know? Maybe you are really annoyed at the things I write and do, and wish to beat the hell out of me in some way. Maybe you wish to test your skill against someone and have no friends. Maybe you want to give me money but don't like giving away anything for free and enjoy violence when possible.

Whatever the reason, I will accept your money, and fight you for the good of humanity.

If you're wondering about my own skills in brawl, I am... all right. Not great. Not horrible. Good enough that some will be like 'wow you're amazing' but if you kick ass you can still be like 'I SMACKED YOU DOWN BITCH! I SMACKED YO DOWN SO HARD YOU CAN RECOVER! YOU GOT BEAT SO BADLY YOU GUNNA CRY FOR A WEEK! GO AHEAD! CRY! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!' as you will most likely crush me, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

If you are interested, you may contact me on AIM at the screen name emptygoddes. Yes, it only has one S, no I can not spell. No, I will not be on any other messengers and there is no other way to contact me. I accept money via paypal. Brawl codes will be exchanged after any transaction takes place.

If you don't want to give me money but still snicker softly at my plight, feel free to link this to random people you think it might amuse so you may snicker together. Or simply copy and paste the whole thing some ware else.

Anyone who kicks my ass is free to comment here, about what a pansy wuss I am. It should be fun.

Contact info:

AIM: emptygoddes

Payment:

12 dollars (amarican. but any money is yay!) for half an hour of brawling.