The Holy Grail Press
Proudly Made On Earth By Earthlings
Word of the Every So Often
scupper: (noun) When big waves wash over the deck of a ship, that water has to have somewhere to go, preferably back into the ocean. That’s why there are scuppers on ships – holes for that water to drain through. You can also have scuppers on a building, such as you might find on a rooftop. And, I suppose, you could put them on your dinner plate. Then you could have scuppers with your supper.
Everyday History
In September of 1985, havoc was descending on New York City. Strange creatures were coming out of the sewer – giant flies, crabs, and turtle... things. The outlook was grim. But then, on September 13, 1985, humanity was saved by two plumbers, Italian brothers named Mario and Luigi – the Mario Brothers, the stars of one of... No! The greatest video game of all time: Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers. There have been scads of sequels, but the original is still the best.
In 1983, the gaming industry was at an all-time low. Poor quality games that had flooded the market caused the “gaming crash.” Pretty much, if that’s the best gaming companies could do, then the heck with it. Until the Mario Brothers saved more than New York City. Mario, without Luigi, had been around since 1981, appearing in one of the first platforming games: Donkey Kong. A platforming game is pretty much that: A bunch of platforms that characters have to jump to, climb to, or run across. The Mario Brothers defined the genre, as well as 3-D characters in video games. In short, Super Mario Brothers was good. Really good. And it was fun. And in the end the Princess would give Mario or Luigi a kiss... maybe. Sometimes it was a piece of cake. I’m good with either.
Mario may have saved the entire gaming industry (and he did), but he especially saved Nintendo. Before Mario and Luigi came along, Nintendo was struggling, to say the least. Since then... yeah. The Mario Brothers have made Nintendo over 60 billion dollars. They are the best video game franchise of all time. And it’s not just video games. It’s marketing, too. T-shirts, lunch boxes, toys, tattoos... if they could exploit it, they did. Don’t forget the movies: Two animated and one live action. There are even TV shows.
Behind the Mario brothers is the designing genius of Shigeru Miyamoto, an engineer at Nintendo. Because he worked as a salaried employee, he didn’t get super rich off of his creation, just around 40 million dollars. I wonder if his parents ever told him that he’d never be able to make a living playing video games.
Cartoon of the Week
After a lifetime of work, Martin had succeeded
in making a mountain into a molehill.
Stuff
History of the Future: The Last Really Good View
Following using the Grand Canyon as a landfill in 2060, and the collective nuking of Iguazu Falls in South America so the countries concerned would no longer have a reason to fight over it, the writers of Traveler magazine began to ponder just how many places were left on the earth that were truly worth going out of your way to see. After two years of intense scrutinization, they found only one. A hillside overlooking the James River just northeast of the small town of Hurley, Missouri, was determined to be the last picturesque place on the planet on August 11, 2063.
Real estate prices there immediately increased by 200,000%, and it instantly became a magnet for the super-rich, who had finally come to admit that the Moon was downright boring. Those who could afford to be on that hillside just outside Hurley immediately began figuring out how to make money off those who could not.
High rises soon appeared where people were willing to pay 1,000 U.S. adjusted dollars for a one minute (adjusted time) view. Whenever one high-rise would block the view, the one behind it would just make theirs higher.
Finally, in what has become known as the Great Collapse, on October 6, 2076, 100 square miles of high rise condos, hotels, and timeshares, spontaneously collapsed in on themselves and fell into the valley, obliterating everything that was once there to see.
Since so much of the world’s wealth was tied up in what simply became known as “That Place,” the world’s markets suffered a simultaneous collapse. Many of the 2.8 million wrongful death lawsuits are still making their way through the courts as of this writing. And it is estimated that there isn’t a chance in hell that anyone will ever figure out who is really responsible for reimbursing those people who had placed deposits so their grandchildren might someday be able to eventually go there.
The only person to profit off the whole affair was a man named Gweev Flood, who bought the whole place for a song (which he didn’t even have to sing). Gweev has since begun charging people a dollar apiece just so the could see what was once “That Place.” There are plans for condominiums.
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