If you ever wondered what the worst NES game ever created was, the answer is Athena. The premise of Athena was to guide the title character through the “Land of X” in order to, get this, cure her boredom. Apparently, the best way to cure one’s boredom is to don a ridiculous looking, crane-head shaped helmet and smash miniature giraffes with what looks like a powder blue sand wedge. If you manage to sustain upwards of thirteen minutes of this eight-bit pile of crap, you may find yourself in the third level, where Athena is magically transported to the “Land of Somewhere Else.” Only so much can be chalked up to bad translation. I am hereby announcing a program wherein you can redeem your copy of Athena for a kick in the ass from me.

I was pondering the teeth-grinding half-hour I once spent navigating this game, while attempting to test the functionality of a Nintendo Entertainment System that happened to be at Goodwill a few days ago. The best part about purchasing electronics at Goodwill is the fun game you get to play called “Find the Power Supply.” In this game, you get to dive into a swirling sea of twisted black cords and adapter cubes, surrounded on both sides by people with mutant sized elbows.

When my turn at the one functioning, exposed power outlet came around, I noticed I was being watched. Directly to my right was an eight-year-old boy staring at me like I was a brand new huffy with a porno mag tied to it. Or rather, he was staring at the NES in my arms.

“Can I have that?” he had the gumption to ask. It was perhaps, my older brother conditioning, but as soon as this young boy showed a moment’s weakness, I felt compelled to take full advantage of it, to the tune of an atomic wedgie. It then occurred to me that a twenty-three year old man sticking his hands into an eight-year-old boy’s shorts in a public place is frowned upon in pleasant company.

“No.” was all he got in response.

“Why not?”

There comes a time in a young boy’s life when he must come to the earth-shattering realization that not all people in the world are nice. I was hoping to be that powder blue sand wedge.

To digress for a moment, I want to mention that I was slightly hung over, and with only one cup of Goodwill café coffee in my stomach. I might also mention that my theory was proven correct when I witnessed the helpful, cheerful and incredibly obese woman working in that café straining that coffee through a thick, wooly camping sock. The only reason I was even at Goodwill was because Elise demanded we go so she could buy clothes.

I paused, released a dramatic sigh and proceeded the lay it on. All the animosity, the disappointment, and unbridled, unmitigated reality came pouring out. This child was coated with truth from head to toe. The Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, all bullshit. Elmo’s got a hand up his ass. The original Barney got hit by a bus. Two of the Teletubbies are gay, and are currently dating. Your parents cheat on their taxes. Your grandmother knows what you do at night. Your dog will eat your face off the first chance he gets.

It was this last one when I realized I’d gone too far. His eyes began to grow wider. His chin began to quiver. This, ladies and gentleman, was the face of innocence lost. I quietly put the Nintendo on the floor and walked away, leaving this poor soul to contemplate having just aged twenty years, and still not being able to buy beer.

Is Your Bumper Picking Up the Slack from Your Brain?

Portland, Oregon suffers from "bumper sticker mentality." This means that anyone possessing the lethal combination of a car and an opinion seemingly anoints the back of their Volkswagen as a public forum of information. The most common stickers are relatively benign. Meaningless quotes and worthless musings, most not attributed, are pasted on every thing with wheels here in southeast Portland. Tolkien's "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" is particularly frequent, as is the humorously obvious "Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History." What important historical figure, male or female, can be accurately described as "well-behaved?"

The first inclinations that some of these people might have agendas they don't mind pushing are Ghandi's "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," and "Equal Rights are not Special Rights." It also seems that every car that even comes within a twenty mile radius of Portland mysteriously develops the ubiquitous blue sticker proclaiming, "Attack Iraq? NO!" Perhaps the most confusing is the strange, but obviously pointed, "Question Gender." What the hell does that mean? How does one question gender? To what does this questioning lead?

Delving deeper into the fray, the statements get dicier. A personal favorite is "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" This guy's obviously not a golfer. I saw a Ford Aspire last week with the intellectually elitist phrase, "If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention!" The insinuation there, of course, is that if I don't agree with him, then I'm simply uninformed and need to be re-educated. Does this mentality sound familiar? Oh yeah, I think that I was very successfully employed by such not-so-well-behaved historical figures as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler!

But I digress.

Since coming to this city, I have been amused, enraged, and experienced odd combinations of the two. Generally, however, I have been able to shrug off most of this intellectual laziness thinly veiled with ideological elitism. (I really love to see the tattered remnants of "Dean for America" stickers having been hastily scraped off the back of the family Volvo.)

This Friday, however, was a different story.

I have succumbed to the habit of reading all the bumper stickers I see, not so much out of curiosity anymore, but mostly because I am a glutton for punishment. On Friday, I was biking to work and saw the holy grail itself pasted to the tail of a ninety-six Honda Civic. I squeezed the brakes on my bike and slowly backtracked a few feet just make sure I read it correctly. I was flabbergasted. The heavens opened and angels harked and a warm fuzzy feeling washed over my body. This was it. This was the Mother of All Bumper-stickers, let us call it the MOAB. The words on this sticker seemed to perfectly condense my difficult opinions on the whole tasteless mess into a bite sized chunk of truth.

It read, "Reality is For Those Who Lack Imagination."

The question remains, however, can mental masturbation make you blind?