#Mr and Mrs Watterson were very bad people

[feralxe]

WALTEN FILES THE RETURN OF THE PUMPKIN RABBIT MOMENT? NEW VHS TAPE RELEASE HAPPENING??!?! OUGHHSHHW??!?!?!

Version with meme redraws under the cut ^_^

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc III: The Blood Curse of Tako Shak (7)

Chapter 7: Tako Shak Part III: The Shak is Whack

           It was a Sunday when it happened. At least, I think it was a Sunday. Tako Shak, at least the back part, seemed to exist in its’ own little time bubble apart from the rest of the universe. Even Father Time has to wait in line for his extra churro sauce, it seemed. Say what you will about the Shak, it is a jerk to everyone and everything equally and indiscriminately. But really, we all know you’d come back for that five takos for $5 deal. Everyone does.

           ANYWAY as my soul was being grinded away by monotiny I started dreaming my fairy Godmother would come, turn a Tako into a carriage, and take me away from the stupid place forever. ‘Course, with the Blood Curse and all, I couldn’t step ten feet out of the restaurant without getting the sensation of ten thousand cattle prods burning into my skin. So steel wool in hand, I scrubbed that stupid floor until I could see my reflection it, took customer orders so fast I gave out change for guys who wouldn’t be arriving until next week, washed the dishes so spotless I could have sold them as diamonds, and several other things that by all means should have killed me from exhaustion. But I could not die, because I was still bound to the stupid Blood Curse. All the while, I found myself singing the old camp songs, having finally found something that made them look darn near like heaven by comparison. Also took my mind off my Mom, who would probably be none too pleased her firstborn ran off to join the fryboy life. Better than being a gangster, I guess, but still, I wished SOMETHING would happen. And you know what they say about being careful what you wish for…

I was mopping the back, on account of a fry spill while Howard handled the front. Knowing he liked to slack off, I peeked through the door splitting the front of the store from the back, just in time to see an all too familiar face cross those automatic sliding doors.

“Bienvenido from Tako Shak, Senor!” Howard greeted with a voice so deadpan it practically lurched out of his mouth. “What can I get for you today, Mr…”

“Silverstein. My name is Shel. Shel Motherf*cking Silverstein.”

Then Howard did the worst thing of all: He breached company protocol and started chatting with the customer! With fifty people behind him in line!

“Oh! Famous guy! So, Mr. Silverstein, what brings you to our humble little tako town?”

From behind the door, I saw the bald man glower, eyes dark as coals in his face.

“Demotion, that’s what! There’s this dumb kid I sent to the Underworld, but NOW, he’s escaped.”

“So what’s the big dealio? Guys escape Hell all the time.”

“Because that’s my job as a seraph: leading souls to the afterlife. But now that I BOTCHED that, the Angelic Council has decided it’s my responsibility to track him down since I sent him there!”

Despite it being over a hundred degrees in the back, a slight shiver ran down my spine.

“And until I do, I’ve been demoted from Seraph to Magical Girl! MAGICAL GIRL!” He turned his head skyward “Do you forks not know who I am?! I’m Shel Motherf*cking’ Silverstein, and I will reclaim my rightful place as a seraph!”

As if my day couldn’t get any worse, Howard just had to drop this line:

“So who is this fugitive, anyway? I’m all ears.”

“Some punk kid named Wuterdon or Watson or something. ‘Bout this high.” He held his palm flat beside his body, he around exactly what my height.

My mind began racing with a single thought: Please don’t tell please don’t tell please don’t tell…

“As a matter of fact, I think I do know a kid like that.”

F**k you, Howard. 

For a moment I considering throwing myself in the deep fryer. Might be less painful than being dragged back to the Underworld.

“-But that costs 50 cents extra. Would you still like to add that information to your order, sir?”

Silverstein wasted no time slamming two shiny silver quarters on the counter.

“Okay. He has black hair.”

The great poet stared, realizing just what a bad purchase he made.

“What?! But I thought-“

“Listen Mr. If you want to get good info, you have to pay for good info.”

Silverstein slid a $500 dollar Canadian Nickel down the counter.

Howard lifted a hand to his chin, grinning all smug-like. “I dunno… If you want the real good stuff…”

It was then I caught on the Howard’s game. There was a rumor among us Tako boys that if you managed to make an order of over $10,000 and became employee of the month, you would get you freedom. And dour as Howard was, it looked as if he was holding onto a glimmer of that hope after all. At the moment though, as a shouting bargaining broke out between Howard and the customer, I didn’t know if whether to call him a low lying snitch or my savior. Either way, I snuck back to do dishes, so full of despair I’d started singing camp sham  songs. Forking Camp Sham songs!

At least, until someone nabbed my shoulder.

“Hey, nice singing. Did you attend Camp Sham, by any chance?” Whoever was holding me, they had a smug, cheeky tone that could only be the Manager’s.

Steadily, I looked behind me, expecting to face my doom. What I saw instead was a familiar face. Sure, he was now wearing a blonde wig and three piece suit with a tag labeled ‘Manager’, but his face was unmistakable.

“Freddie the Ferret?!” I said.

“Watterson?” He answered back.

“HOLY CRAP!” We cried together, followed by “How’ve you been?!”

           We struck up conversation real quick after that, me having to take the occasional break to make sure the dishes in the sink got cleaned. (We might have been old acquaintances, but he was my boss, after all.) Basically, I told him everything I’ve written until now between him giving me bits of survival advice (“Don’t just throw knifes in the sink, kid, you’ll scratch your hand and it will hurt, really, really bad. Most painful thing in America.”) By the time I’d finished, Howard was still trying to squeeze more money out of Silverstein.

           As for old Freds, it turned out he really DID flee to the butterfly farm and didn’t, y’know, die. And while he was there…

“I struck this oil deposit. A big one. We’re talking YUGE! I had the whole place paved over and employed all the butterflies. Made the most profitable oil rig in the state. We made so much money and created so many jobs. It was great, you should have seen it. Truly, amazing.”

He sold the rig for a tidy trillion dollar profit and from there, it was just a hop, skip, and jump to becoming the district manager of Tako Shak. Of course, being manager wasn’t all perks. For some reason, he now had a weird obsession with firing people and wearing crappy blonde wigs.

“So, have you been to camp recently?” I asked.

“Yeah. Hilda turned it into a Siberian Gulag.”

Around me, time seemed to freeze as I processed what Freddie had just said.

“What?”

“Hilda turned the camp into a SIBERIAN GULAG. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand. I said it smartly, like a smart ferret. Which I am. Smartest Ferret in America.”

“She WHAT?!”

Once I’d taken a good half hour to cool my jets, Freddie explained in more detail.

“Alright kid, this is gonna sound crazy, but you know all that stuff Hilds said about freeing the camp? That was what the people in my business call a fact: something that’s only half true. See, she wanted to free the camp… but only so she could take it over and rule it with an iron fist! Really powerful, dignified stuff. That involved her Dad or something. Very interesting. . .You should ask her yourself sometime.”

“Show me.” I demanded. Something had stabbed me in the heart, but not the killer death sort. No, this stab had sent a life, a burning passion inta me I hadn’t felt since getting to the final boss in Super Luigi Bros. II.

The ferret shrugged. “Watt, I’m contractually obligated to only tell you half-truths at most, but if you insist….”

He pulled out his wallet. Opening it, a ladder of pictures tumbled out, depicting such scenes of inhuman horror that it had not been for my rigorous training at Tako Shak, most likely would have driven me mad. Also made me throw up a bit in my mouth.

Freddie looked at the photos “Well shoot! Those aren’t photos of csmp! Those are of my Aunt Carol’s 4th of July party! Word to the wise kid: never put more than four ferrets in the same place or things go downhill real fast. Terrible, not good, very bad things happen then.” He fished out more photos from the wallet (which I was starting to suspect he didn’t actually keep money in). “Here’s the Camp photos.”

Even though the photos showed scenes of gaunt, hollow eyed kids laboring away at some sort of quarry while soot covered their backs, even though these kids were shown so beaten down they no longer had tears to cry over their sawdust-loaf breakfasts, I’d been so broken down by the things I saw at the Shak the most emotion I could muster was a single, passive

“Huh.”

            Because as far as I was concerned, camp really wasn’t much worse than when I left. But beneath the dark, grey canyons of despair, beneath the cabins, completely gutted to create firewood to burn those who misbehaved, there was a picture of me, or to be more specific, my sleeping body, stuck in a case like Snow White waiting for her prince. Despite there being a guardrail, Freddie was leading his shoulder on the case, mugging the camera so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it gave him all its money.

“But wha-? How?! I’m right here!” I cried, too shocked to form proper sentences.

Freddie waggled a finger at me. “Correction: That’s your body. Right now, you’re not really in Pennsylvania. At least, not totally. See, this right here is limbo, where all the ghosts and elves and stuff live. The fact you can see me in my true form is proof of that you are at least as dead as my rap career. Which, by the way, was a great rap career. Really fantastic!”

“And why am I in Limbo?”

“Because you died, you moron!”

I thought back to that time I ate the millipede in the woods. Yeah, that made sense.  Sorta. 

“So, what exactly is Hilda doing with my body?” For some reason, I did not like having someone else having control over my body like that.

“Oh, you’re just the founder of Communism.”

Communism. That word echoed around my head like a stone falling into a well.

Communism.

See, it might not seem it, but my Mom had raised me well. And the most important thing she ever taught me was

“Sweetie, no matter what you do, I will always love you. Unless you turn out to be a commie, then we are no longer related.” It was a lesson that stuck with me to this day. And with that, the latent passion within me erupted into a furious desire to get my body back.

“I need to get fired.”

The ferret looked at me all funny like for a second before realizing what I was saying.

“Look kid, if you’re thinking of escaping, its’ NEVER going to happen. You’re a valuable employee. And by that I mean I’ve seen seagull poop worth more than you, but that just means we can pay you whatever we want! It’s a great, wonderful, absolutely terrific deal that works out for everyone!”

“You can do that?”

“Of course, you moron! The Blood Curse exempts you from every child labor law in this universe and the next five dimensions!” He pulled my contract from his furry little pocket, pointing to a sentence written in text so small you’d need a military-grade microscope to see it.

At the counter, I could hear, Howard get Silverstein up to $9,500, and I wasn’t exactly eager to find out what that old poet was going to do once he got his hands on me. Still, there was one last, desperate gambit I could make, one that, if I was lucky, would save my skin. I breathed in slow, like the school guidance counselor taught me. If there was ever a time where I could sink or swim, this was it.

“But Freddie. You have to fire me! For YOUR sake!”

The ferret’s ears perked up at this. Looked serious. “Explain.”

I pointed to the front. “See that guy in front of all those angry customers? That’s Shel Silverstein-“

“Well, of course it’s Shel Silverstein! I can see that with my two, good, very good eyes. Absolutely incredible. What they are seeing. Right now.”

“Not the point! The point is, I’ve escaped from Hell, he’s looking for me, and if I’m found out, he’ll put you in deep, deep, trouble!”

Freddie smiled (more like a ‘u’ shaped slit in his face, really). “But why don’t I just hand you in, then? I could get famous for turning in a criminal. The publicity would be good. Very good.”

His smug grin made me nervous, yet my mind was now racing at a million miles per hour. It was to late to stop now. “And the publicity would be good HOW?! Think about it, dinkleburg! If he finds me, it’ll be proof Tako Shak was keeping a refugee. And if THAT happens, you’ll be fired by you bosses for making a scandal!”

The U on Freddie’s face flipped right upside down. “Y-you’re bluffing! They can’t fire me! I’m a very, very, valuable manager!”

The tables were turning. Now it was my turn to grin. “Face it, Fred! Everyone here is a cog in the Great Tako Masheen! There’s probably a billion ferrets who were possessed by demons out there who could do your job just as good, if not better!”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Oh yes I would! And if I get caught, I’ll even tell the news you were employing ACTUAL MEXICANS!”

The little fuzzball finally kneeled in defeat. “I’ll never be able to go home to my mansion if that happens! Okay! You win! JUST! LEAVE!”

“But I can’t! I still have the Blood Curse keeping me here.”

Trembling, Freddie took the contract and ripped it into a million pieces. I don’t know what my blood experienced in that paper, but whatever it was made it jump right back through my finger into my vein.

Freddie pointed his index finger at me, all dramatic-like.

“Watterson Tostig, YOU. ARE. FIRRREEEDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!” right as Howard had gotten old Shel up to a $9,999 dollars.

With one powerful kick (ferrets can kick pretty darn hard!) he punted me like Charlie Brown would have punted that football, right through the ceiling on that fastfood hellhole and into the wild blue skies of the PA countryside. I shot up like a rocket, at least half a million mosquitoes smearing themselves against my face before I reached the peak of my flight. For a few tranquil seconds I floated in the air so high I saw the peak of Mount Davis, the highest mountain in the state. As far as I could see in every direction, there was nothing but forests, while a red-tailed hawk soared below. It was the most peaceful thing I’d ever experienced.

At least until I realized that cheapskate Freddie had forgotten to give me my last check! The dirty rotten cheapskate!

And, you know, freefalling from thousands of feet in the air. That tends to put a damper on your day.

                     Part III: The Blood Curse of Tako Shak: End

[syang16]

Wk 03

Like the video title says, the whole world is created with existing content; therefore it’s a remix. That music playing on Spotify is probably a remix of an existing song. Your favorite text could probably be found in Google Books text search engine in various books. Of course, remix doesn’t mean it copies everything verbatim. It could be just a small bits of the content, but the video covers that topic pretty well already, and my effort of remixing it will be barely tolerable at best. With that being said, I’ll jump straight into an example of a remix that I believe pretty much checks all the list.

             Last Thursday I took critical practice, we went over the remix culture, and the first thing that popped in my head was a dearly show I loved: The Amazing World of Gumball. People often refer the show as TAWOG, as it does make the long name a bit easier to mention. TAWOG is a British-American television series created by the genius Ben Bocquelet. What’s so interesting about the show at a first glance is that the character designs are very inconsistent and out of place, and that’s not a bad thing, because Ben actually manages to work them out together in many unthinkable ways. The Watterson family members, Gumball and Mrs. Mom (Nicole) are cats, and Anais, and Mr. Dad (Richard) are rabbits, and we know that they have no relations whatsoever in the real world. I almost forgot to mention Darwin, Gumball’s pet but more in the brother side, even though I love that cute little fish with legs. Yes, he’s a fish. Fish, rabbits, and cats living under the same roof just raises more questions why Ben decided to go this way. On top of my head, there are some side characters with very distinct identity. Ms. Simmons, this CG monkey with a Mountain Everest planted on her head is school teacher of Darwin and Gumball. Bobert, a CG robot running Bobert OS that heavily represents a mixed version of Windows and Mac OS, and Ocho is an 8-bit spider that looks like something from Space Invaders. They’re all so distinct because they’re all rejected characters put together in a show. The show is basically filled with designs that were rejected but was given them a second chance to shine, and now it’s an ultimate success.

             It’s not only the designs that were all remixed from previous existing designs. Most of the content is full of references and parodies which are most if not all very well executed. One primary example I’d like to use is an episode called The New Bobert. Essentially the episode begins with a man introducing the new Bobert Operating System that was released on a white background. The camera pans to various new Bobert units showing off its aesthetics presented with more colors. The whole ad screams a remix of an iPhone ad, but for Bobert. In the end, Gumball and Darwin ends up installing the newest Bobert update for Bobert, as a result Bobert almost dies from lagging and freezing. Gumball and Darwin takes BSOD’d Bobert to customer service and is suggested to buy another because they’re designed to fail, which I found to be crazy accurate.

             One ultimate remix was a remix of its own show. That’s right, a remix of a Chinese Gumball knockoff in the episode called The Copycats. On YouTube, a Chinese version of TAWOG creeped in YouTube. The characters weren’t quite the same, but the plot, the sequence, and the dialogue was exactly the same. Only thing that was different was the watered down animation quality, characters, language. A user managed to do a side by side comparison for easier analysis, and eventually shed some light. As a follow up, TAWOG redesigns the knock off characters and challenges them with the Wattersons. In the end, Wattersons kill off the characters entirely by sending them off the bridge which was surprising to see in a kids show. The great thing about the revised knock off characters was that they looked so much better that many others preferred that redesign of that knock off character over the original Watterson characters. It’s a bit sad to admit, but the execution was too good to pass off.

             This entire show is created with parodies, memes, and remixes of previous existing content. TAWOG continuously surprised me with great parodies and content that often made me think that they did better than the original. Without them, the show would be probably not stand out as much and would be just another generic show with generic inspiration to play.