A Challenge!
My favorite podcast at the moment, recently having overtaken Back to Work on the mighty 5by5 media empire, is easily Hypercritical. Since doing a Google Lucky search for the term ‘hypercritical’ gets me to the show’s site, I’ll trust that many other people feel the same way. Mr. Siracusa’s dry wit and quiet, nerdy charm combined with his detailed knowledge and extreme desire to be accurate make for one heck of a pop-corn-poppin’ time!
So, it is with an extraordinarily heavy heart that I must point out that the cake is a lie.
The slogan of the show, in various forms, is that “there is nothing so perfect that it cannot be complained about” by Mr. Siracusa., hereafter referred to as ‘the defendant’. In fact, in some of it’s more extreme forms, what the defendant is referred to as doing is ‘destroying’, ‘desiccating’, ‘bringing beneath the bottom level’, ‘beating beyond any shred of recognition or humanity’, ‘destroying in such a way that has not been seen since the great alliance of men and elves confronted the might of Morgoth in the glory days of Numenor and cast the fowl sorcerer into the abyss along with his balrogs and goblins’, etc.. Mind, these are all direct quotes. To the defendant’s credit, the defendant did complain about these alternative slogans and got Dan Ben-jammin to stop saying them. However, such an admission is not relevant here. Given the slogans, I’ll assume that it is clear what the show claims to be.
The defendant has admitted on more than one occasion that he is a fan of tele-screen gaming in the data age with journey. In fact, one of the first episodes that I listened to was episode 49 in which the defendant waxes on ad nauseam regarding the design of console controllers. Again, I’d like to remind everyone that the defendant does this in such a way that makes me smile over and over again and in no way impeaches his character.
The defendant has said on at least one occasion that he is an especially big fan of the first-party Nintendo games.
Recently, I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with my father in law and noted that the controls were not as slick as I would expect them to be. The graphics were slightly grainier than I thought they should be. There were lots of little nit-picks that I thought brought the game down beneath even the likes of Twilight Princess, which I happened to enjoy a fair bit.
This got me thinking, I can’t find much to complain about in many of the first-party Nintendo games, but I bet the defendant could! I mean, he destroys topics like Grignac! How could he not, given the slogan of the show?
My a disappointment shall become evident…
I expressed my interest in such a show or 5 in a tweet to the defendant, 10:48 AM EST, 21 March 2012, or, perhaps in a language more parsable to the defendant, 1332326880. I waited with baited breath to see when my dream would be fulfilled and all of the little plot-holes and dark years and poor iterations evident only to the mind of the defendant would be dissertated upon and exposed for the black marks on the universe’s fabric that they are.
Only to find very quickly that the defendant lies!
In a t00t marked 1332358080, the defendant informed me that any show of such a topic “wouldn’t be very critical.”
I’d like to remind the court of a our situation:
Dan Benjamin and, by proxy, the defendant claim that there is ‘nothing’ so perfect that it can’t be complained about.
The defendant claims, in writing, that a he couldn’t fill a show with critical things to say about all of the first-party Nintendo games. Not one show!
That’s only 3 of the first-party Nintendo games!
There are far less iterations on the concept of a video game controller than even the sum of those 3, ((+ 200 12 17) => 229 for the curious), and the defendant was able to fill up a sizable chunk of a show talking about them.
But, no, apparently not enough material here.
Incensed doesn’t even begin to cover it. I immediately turned purple. My co-workers had to learn how to use a defibrillator and then perform a double heart and lung bypass operation combined with brain surgery to revive me. I tore down the entirety of my cube farm in a rage the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Cambrian era.
The lies!
The burning lies!
What can the defendant and his co-host Dan Benjamin do to make this situation right?
They could try their very best to do a show on the first-party Nintendo games, a feat that the defendant has already shrunk back from, like a VB6 coder shrinking back from the heady heights of Haskell.
They could change their slogan. I would demand a change to the following: “Nothing is so perfect that it can’t be complained about, except first-party Nintendo games.” This would have to be read and elaborated upon, every show, in the way that only Dan Benjamin (and other pod people) can.
If no action is taken, I won’t be surprised. After all, scumbags do scummy things, and scum can be found in wells, and liars have fallen in to wells, and Dan Benjamin and the defendant have been proven to be liars, and therefore they are scumbags (Q.E.D.). Scumbags aren’t ashamed when they’ve been found out because of the scummy things they’ve done. They’re only sad that they got caught.
And they’ve been caught. Oh boy, they’ve been caught.
By the by, my name is pronounced Thyme Supercalifragilisticexpialadotious, in case that becomes necessary.
