Mr. T Vs. Narbonic
May 6, 2007 ~ 11 Comments
I have no excuse for this, besides a) I was in a silly mood, and b) it’s friggin’ hard to keep coming up with material for Sunday features. I’m very sorry. I originally planned to make Studies in Internet Humor an ongoing feature, but I couldn’t think of enough “all your base” jokes.
The convenience store exteriors on the second page are lifted from my high-school comic, North of Space, meaning that the art is extra hideous.
I know what’ll make me feel better: new Narbonic Sunday material! I have here a mad-science song written by Andrew Plotkin. Enjoy!
Hymn to a Mad Scientist
Come with me
We’ll make free
With a beam of pure disintegration
Look around
And you’ll see
Desperation
Want to change the world to paradise?
Simply go ahead and shoot it
Set aside your qualms and do it
Pretty soon you’ll find
There’s nothing
to it
Come with me
We’ll make free
With a beam of pure disintegration
See the light
All will be
Radiation
If you want a new way of life
Activate your ray and do it
People run and scream, but screw it
They try to flee the beam
They’ll run right
through it
There is no
Life I know
That survives this pure disintegration
Where it goes
We will show
All will truly
cease to be
I think Andrew chose the right tune for this ditty, because Willy Wonka really is a mad scientist of candy. This is especially evident in the much-maligned Tim Burton movie, which I enjoyed. There’s a scene where Mike Teevee completely loses patience with Willy Wonka because Wonka has invented a freaking teleporter, and he only plans to use it for candy-related applications. Asked if it could be used to transport people, Wonka replies, “Why would I want to send a person? They don’t taste very good at all.” That’s mad science right there. I got a little tear in my eye. Also, Mike gets pissed at Wonka for thinking that something can be both a particle and a wave, which is pretty good. Now that I think of it, there’s a certain degree of Roald Dahl influence on Narbonic.
After reading this episode, I have come to the conclusion that I love you.
Andrew Plotkin wrote you a song. With this in addition to Rachel Spitler being honourably mentioned in Adam Cadre’s Little Lytton contest (as well as me – I’m the “Leon” who got third place), the Internet universes of webcomics and interactive fiction are dangerously close to colliding.
(Yes, almost as close as when Adam Cadre and J. Robinson Wheeler made their own mad science webcomic – which is both unrelentingly awesome and sadly defunct.)
P.S: Mr. T vs Donkey Kong.
Did I say that Adam Cadre’s webcomic was sadly defunct? Because just now I’ve discovered that it might be making a comeback.
What is the tune? You never say.
Also: Who’s maligning the Burton/Depp Charlie? I pity the fool messes with that movie!
Ya know, every time I go through the archives, I almost always skip past this Sunday feature, because it’s such a one-off. It really is a shame you couldn’t think up enough “all your base” jokes.
And if you had managed to keep this going? LOLNarboniCats.
I liked the “Crunchy Bits: 42¢”… We need more cheap crunchy bits.
I was going to say something about how awesome this usage of Mr. T is or how the filk makes me grin, but I think I just got mentioned in the same paragraph as Andrew Plotkin, so instead I think I’m going to go into extremely happy cardiac arrest. See you in the morning.
We’ve seen Interactive Fiction and Lolcats both mentioned at once, but no reference yet to Stephen Granade’s winning of the Internet with <a href=”http://granades.com/2007/05/02/loltrek/”>LOLTrek</a>.
There also hasn’t been any mention of Mark Sachs (of the webcomic A Miracle of Science) and his game <a href=”http://wurb.com/if/game/2953″>Star City</a>.
These flaws have now been corrected.
Waitasec, how many IF-related people are reading Narbonic anyway? You’re here, Michael; Andrew’s writing songs for Narbonic; we’ve got ties into Adam’s Little Lytton contest.
Now’s my chance to mention my Narbonic spotting in the wild. I was on the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow panel at Dragon*Con this last year. At one point, while taking questions from the audience, a woman stood up near the back of the hall. I squinted at the pink writing on her shirt and said, “Say, is that a Narbonic shirt?” And lo, it was.
MetalFatigue: The song is “Pure Imagination.” Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-uV72pQKI