Oh yeah, while no one was looking, a few days ago I updated the links page. Yay.
posted by Slade at 10:10 PM

Imagine this:

Dusk. The faint sliver of the waning moon generates just enough light to see far enough in front of your face to not smash your face into the various trees spreading the wooded clearing. The crickets have suddenly fallen silent as they wait for the customary high pitched screech of an owl mercilessly slaughtering some small mammal. Of course, this is all moot because you're not in this part of the world. In your part, the sun has just begun her westernly descent toward the horizon. You're walking through your favorite mall, and have just left disgusted yet again from Electronics Boutique. You've only managed to sell your mint copy of Symphony of the Night for three dollars, and were forced to watch as the store owner slaps a 60$ price tag on it. Your mood only worsens as you realize that your favorite non-descript-clothing store has just closed, and will soon be reopened as a Gap, right next to the other Gap. You enter the arcade, some crappy corporate chain "Cyberstation", and lament that none of the kids today know what it's like to beat Turtles in Time, or the Simpsons, or play Virtua Fighter One on a fifty inch screen. And then, your radar goes off. For from the rounded corner of your ear, you catch this phrase: "Aw man! Episode Three is going to be even better than Episodes One and Two combined! I'm gonna see it sixty times!"

Yes, you have just spotted a fanboy. This is the social degenerate that makes even you look like a prime target to talk to, despite your disdain for all of humanity. Why is anyone with an IQ in the double digits afraid to make any contact with this creature? Why is it wearing a mask of Jar-Jar Binks and doing a piss poor job impersonating him? Well, here's the thing. This low life suffers from an incurable disease. Something non contagious, but so unpleasant no one will come within twenty feet of it. You can call this disease being a dumbass, "smacktarditis", or elephantasmical mogophobia, but it's all the same. This "person" possesses an infatuation with something. An obsession so strong that they must know every piece of trivia, own every action figure, be able to recite the dialogue of their chosen addiction. Despite the fact that it is just about the worst movie/book/television show/band on the planet. Rather than start blathering about things fanboys are obsessed with, I will instead impart upon you, faithful reader, with the knowledge to spot and shoot down a fanboy before he or she can even start to explain to you the exact trajectory of a bullet needed to bounce off of a wall, onto a frying pan, and around a corner to kill the protagonist's enemy. The fanboy comes in a few different types.

Let's start with the most profound. The most obvious fanboy constantly wears his favorite character's costume to remind everyone in the vicinity that rocks can out-think him. He walks around telling everyone in the area that Greg Proops was indeed one of the two headed announcers. These, sadly, are rare, as they most often get signs that say "Beat the living shit out of me!" stapled to their oblivious hides, and anyone who can read will be only willing to oblige.

Next is the tough one. He looks just like me and you. Well, like you, anyway. He has on jeans, and a black T-shirt that says something like "I'll count to 100 while you go hide... forever." in white lettering on it. Now, STOP! Before you begin to remind him of the length of the book and that the director couldn't possibly keep every little detail in and still keep the motion picture short enough to hold the audience's attention, bear this in mind. Some of these people are not fanboys, but simply people who have difficulty finding shirts that will not turn them into a walking advertisement for a faceless corporation, so they opt for the silly ones. Always wait until the person says something stupid to make sure. It's like the "wait until you can see the whites of their eyes" thing. Don't go off proclaiming to non-fanboys about how much that show sucked, because then you become the moron. And you don't want that.

The third type is very elusive. He/she always travels in a group with other fanboys, but it is very difficult to tell whether or not any or all of them are fanboys or not. You know that you did a great job as best supporting actor, your Oscar says so, but you never can tell when you'll be ambushed by a group of obsessed fans that know more about your personal life than even you do. Luckily, with all of that money you made over the last two movies, you can hire three full time bodyguards, who move in whenever someone even brushes you on accident. It could be the girl with the pink hair, or the guy with the "I see white people..." shirt on, but you are saved the torment by Rufus and Bruno, who have already tazered them both.

Now that you know what to look for, what can you do about it? Well first of all, you must be at least the same size as the fanboy. You don't want to try to put a six hundred pound guy wearing a "Boba Fett vs. Jaba, who would win?" shirt in his place, unless you also happen to weigh six hundred pounds. Secondly, you don't even have to have seen the movie/show/band/book to attack the fanboy. Simply invent something that applies to universal subjects, such as "I found the constant philosophical jargon quite unentertaining." Or "The show was really about racism, you Nazi asshole!", or "There was absolutely no character development in that book. The scenes were all drably described, and the plot was poorly executed." While you can use these, you can also invent your own. Simply use as many extensive vocabulary words as possible, and the fanboy will be so busy trying to figure out what you're saying that he won't realize that he lost as soon as he opened his mouth in earshot.

Well, that's all for now. I'm really tired, and have standardized tests all week, so my brain might be too fried to do much this week. I might do stuff next week, when they are over, until I go to North Carolina to visit my grandmother (the one that asked "which floor" when going on an elevator in a two story hotel.) I may make fun of that, but she's really a nice woman. I'm out of here. I need my beauty sleep.
posted by Slade at 10:07 PM