A special installment of the NES Drinking Saga is up. It is not part of official NDS canon. Or maybe it is. I haven’t decided.

      According to a recent article in The Christian Science Monitor, moms say pop culture is counteracting their ability to instill good values in their children up through high school. Here’s an excerpt:

      What’s really happening with American mothers of all stripes – from full-time homemakers to full-fledged workaholics, all income levels, all racial backgrounds – is worry about popular culture, and what feels like a tsunami of forces threatening parents’ ability to impart positive values to their children, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 mothers. Moms report a cultural onslaught that goes far beyond Hollywood movies and TV, and into the world of the Internet, electronic games, and advertising.

      ”We heard mothers talking about the kind of hypersexuality that’s out there, about violence and disrespect, about body image, all the things that are not exactly news, but cutting across a huge and diverse sample of mothers,” says Martha Farrell Erickson of the University of Minnesota, lead researcher on the study, released by the Institute for American Values in New York. “What they would really like to see is mothers and fathers joining forces more effectively to take on some of these issues.”

      First of all, I take issue with any news that comes out the Christian Science Monitor because their religion is stupid. I don’t openly hate most religions, but these douchebags suck. They’re the ones that don’t believe in going to hospitals or using medicine because if God wants you to live, he’ll cure you. How do they know God didn’t use His power of divine inspiration to help us invent modern health care? More importantly, I don’t know for sure what else they don’t believe in. Maybe Christian Scientists don’t believe in things like “researching facts” or “checking sources” either because they think God should do that for them too. The only religions that are more bullshit than Christian Science are Scientology and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Scientology sucks because they gave us that shitty Battlefield Earth movie where John Travolta dressed up like Rob Zombie and tried to conquer Earth but humanity stopped him. Sadly, the people of Earth were unable to stop Travolta from doing Staying Alive. Also, the real Rob Zombie could conquer our planet at any given moment if he felt like it. In my opinion, Jehovah’s Witnesses are even worse. Any religion that forbids its followers from eating birthday cake needs to be personified and promptly hanged.

      Secondly, it’s not particularly fair or accurate to say that pop culture itself is the problem. One mother talks about trying to protect her child from bad influences by renting Sesame Street DVDs. Well, not only is Sesame Street on the fucking television, it is also PART of pop culture. Every red-blooded American knows who the fuck Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Elmo are. Pop culture is a combination of both new and old. The Ramones didn’t stop being part of our collective consciousness when Family Guy entered it. In fact, Family Guy is little more than a string of non-sequitur pop culture references that includes everything from Charlton Heston to Thundercats and it’s one of the most beloved shows on television. People who whine about the content of television probably don’t deserve to own one. If you get all upset that CSI isn’t approproate for your children, change the damn channel. It really is that simple. You have channels like Disney, Nickelodeon, and ABC Family that are very appropriate for children and they’re part of most basic cable packages. If that isn’t good enough, you can order premium packages that include channels such as Toon Disney, Noggin, Nickelodeon GAS, and Discovery Kids to keep Fifty Cent off your TV. If you want to block a channel, your cable box can do that. If you want to block shows intended for a mature audience, the V-chip can do that. Lawmakers have done enough. Stop your fucking complaining

      That being said, pop culture is far from perfect. Always has been, always will be. And yes, it may have gotten slightly worse recently. There is absolutely no reason that Paris Hilton should have the name recognition that she does. But whatever. For every Paris Hilton, there’s a Ronald McDonald, Coca-Cola Santa Claus, and Regis Philbin to counteract it. Trying to blame something as vague as pop culture, something that covers almost every aspect of media, is just a cheap attempt to diffuse blame from your own piss-poor parenting skills. Many of the people that these whiny mothers look to for moral discourse such as President Bush, Joe Lieberman, and Jerry Falwell are pop culture icons in their own right. Paradoxical, isn’t it?

       In summation, I would just like to say this: Fuck you, you lazy maternal fucks. Pop culture rocks.

The next article isn’t quite done, so here’s The NES Drinking Saga, Part X instead. It’s no substitute for an actual article, but it’s something.

The NES Drinking Saga, Part IX has been completed and posted.

Also, if anyone would like to review the site for Amazon.com, go for it. I could do it myself, but what fun is that?

The NES Drinking Saga, Part VIII is now up. In other news, Part II of the Mortal Kombat Fatality Fest has been up even though it’s not quite complete. It will, however, be done before the clock strikes midnight tonight. That’s midnight EST, not GMT. I feel it’s important to operate on Wall Street time.

      Whoa, it’s April 20th. That’s like… 4/20.
 
      I’m not above much. Since I launched the site I have said and done things that might shock, offend, or otherwise confuse some people. For example, I have:

1. Referenced skullfucking at least once
2. Turned Kirby into a vulgar drunken bastard
3. Beat down Garfield outside Crosstown High
4. Played some really bad Commodore 64 games
5. Proudly proclaimed that I’m not an organ donor
6. Drank a bottle of Pepsi Free that was over 20 years old.

      However, I am above pot jokes. There will be no How High review today. In fact, if I ever review How High, it’s a coded message. In the unlikely event that Method Man or Redman show up on the main page, you should assume that I am injured or dead and that terrorists have taken over the site. CALL THE POLICE!

      I am not above pope jokes however. Joseph Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI. Fantastic. For the second papacy in a row, the Italians have been shut out of St. Peter’s Basilica. The Italians are pissed, and well they should be. They had the perfect candidate: Super Mario!

      Mario had been a dark horse for the papacy from the beginning; his moderate views, warm smile, and take-charge attitude made him a favorite among Catholics hoping for softened stances on birth control and homosexuality from The Church. Despite Mario’s failure to win the hearts and votes of the College of Cardinals, the plumber will still play pontiff in Nintendo’s upcoming RPG, Paper Mario 3: Papal Mario.

      The chances of Mario becoming pope in the future are surprisingly good. While Mario is a timeless hero, Ratzinger is 78; the chances that Benedict XVI will survive another five years are marginal at best. Another bonus for Mario is that Ratzinger has drawn surprisingly little heat from the media over his time in the Hitler Youth. Mario has also shown support for Nazism in the past: under the not-so-clever alias of Dr. Mario Goebbels, Princess Peach’s paid protector sold Hitler his patented Megavitamins. Megavitamins gave Nazi troops the speed and stamina necessary to achieve blitzkrieg. Mario parted ways with the Nazis and renounced their cause when he discovered his longtime rival Wario was also on Hitler’s payroll.

Kirby and a new friend battle amateur photography and text-resistant backgrounds in the exciting seventh installment of The NES Drinking Saga.

I’m currently working on both Part II of the MK article as well as Article 23. Article 23 will probably be done first.

I also did a few quick updates to older articles:

      The Adventure Island feature now has a link to a terrible quiz.
      The Ten Weirdest Arnold Movie Moments now includes my favorite Last Action Hero clip.
      Schindler’s List II now has an audio trailer.

That’s it for now.

Part I of my overambitious 22nd article is now up. It’s about Mortal Kombat.

      The vagina dentata, that’s what. Or maybe Kirby. NES Drinking Saga, Part VI is now completed. I also added an NDS archive so that newer visitors to the site don’t have to search for the older comics. Just click on Comics under Links and you’re there.

      From director Michael Bay and the producers of Over The Top comes Schindler’s List II: Out For Justice!!! Bob Schindler is a simple man who loves his family. When his son-in-law and a gang of evil federal judges kill his daughter, Bob doesn’t get mad, he gets EVEN! Watch out, Michael Schiavo, this is one list that no one’s checking twice! Schindler’s List II – because EVERYONE has the right to die. This film is not yet rated.

      MEDIA – Click here to hear the trailer read by a 5th grader.
 

      Well, Wrestlemania 21 came and went and it wasn’t horrible like I expected it would be. In fact, Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle was spectacular and most of the other matches were pretty watchable. On top of that, Triple H finally lost the damn title. However, I still stand by comments that I made in my Wrestlemania article. The last several Wrestlemanias, particularly the much-hyped WM20, were total fucking trainwrecks. Aside from a few Rock vs. Hogan matches, they were almost entirely unredeemable. And while guys like Simon Dean and Carlito are hilarious, a significant portion of the WWE roster is still made up of unmarketable douchebags like Shelton Benjamin, Maven, Rene Dupree, and the Basham brothers. In the old days, there were plenty of guys who sucked ass, but at least they had hilarious gimmicks such as Bastion Booger and Isaac Yankem, DDS. Orlando Jones, on the other hand, has NOTHING. The other big thing is that it was rather disingenuous for the WWE to parade out Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Stone Cold Steve Austin at WM21 when it’s highly unlikely that any of those guys will return to the company on a full-time basis.

      Word on the street is that I wrote an article about Wrestlemania. Personally, I believe this rumor. In it, I cover three classic Wrestlemania main events, so go read it. If you hold your end of the bargain and read the article, there just might be some old Slim Jim commercials in it for you.

For no apparent reason, you get NES Drinking Saga, Part V only two days after Part IV went up. Maybe you’ll even get another one before next week, but I doubt it. I still have an article to finish.

My fraudulent web comic has been on more hiatuses than the average FOX fall series, but NES Drinking Saga, Part IV is now live. Unlike network executives, I’m able to at least pretend that I know what I’m doing.

Meaningless milestone alert! The twentieth SydLexia.com article is up. Of course, if you’ve been to the main page then you already know that. This one is on Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. This is a review of the Sega arcade game, not the movie or the Sega Genesis game. If I had more free time, I would have done all three in one mega review. Unfortunately I don’t, so I just picked one of them. I’m not going to explain why I picked the arcade game… I’m not on trial here. In any case, enjoy.

So… Terry Schiavo, Terry Schiavo, who’s got the Terry Schiavo? Every time I turn on the TV, someone is talking about the whole Schiavo thing. I haven’t addressed this issue because:

a) there’s no easy solution nor is there a moral high ground
b) it has nothing to with pop culture from the 80s or early 90s

However since I could use some hits, I’m gonna be an asshole and reference it. If I were a true asshole, I would have done this earlier in the week or last week. But I’m not. So what do I have to say about this issue? Absolutely nothing. But guess who does? The Ultimate Warrior. As a self-proclaimed pop culture analyst, I feel that no one is more qualified to address this complex and somewhat troubling issue than a roided-out 80s wrestler with a reputation for being hard to work with and mentally unstable.

SydLexia.com does not endorse or condemn the views expressed by The Ultimate Warrior.

For the second time in about a month, I got hit with a nasty cold. Last week sucked… When I wasn’t working at my actual job, I spent my time sleeping and drinking green tea and ginger ale. Now I’m two articles behind schedule. This is not cool.

The Crue kicked ass. Of course, I probably bought way too much merchandise. I am going to try and start using the digital camera a lot more extensively, because it’s fun. However, the NES Drinking Saga will definitely revert back to its 8-bit form at some point.

The long-awaited NES Drinking Saga, Part III is finally up.