Grouch Potato #5, April 2008

[Jesse]

Dear Grouch,

Why is the campus inbox size so small? Every time I get an email, I get four emails saying that I’m over the size limit. If they didn’t send so many size warnings, my mailbox wouldn’t be so full!

- Smiling Bob

Bob,

Normally, I would agree with you. Since I never leave my basement, email is the only connection I have with the outside world. It is for this reason that the email limitation affects me quite dearly. In this case, however, the Grouch can make an exception -- and once you learn what I’m about to tell you, perhaps you will as well.

You see, what few people realize is that the 1996 Will Smith classic movie, “Independence Day” was no mere work of fiction! Indeed, the only reason that we do not recall the invasion that occurred in June of 1993 is that Steven Spielburg’s “Jurassic Park” was released shortly after, and we were all too in awe of the T-Rex to remember a bunch of humdrum genocidal aliens.

The real aliens, like in the movie, had massive, city-destroying lasers that could disassemble Washington D.C. in mere moments. Yet their most powerful weapon proved to be their Achilles’ heel -- they hadn’t expected to go up against America’s daring, highly-trained special mission force: G.I. Joe. By the time of the invasion, the Joes had been dodging lasers effortlessly for nearly eleven years. And so, when the aliens unleashed their ultimate weapon, the Joes ducked. They ducked reaaaally low. And then, thanks to the aliens’ careless decision to run their entire network on Macintosh-compatible equipment, Flint and Lady Jay were able to sneak aboard the mother ship and upload a catastrophic alien-killing computer virus. Sgt. Slaughter was tasked with cleaning up the aftermath, and as a gesture of thanks, he was later granted the position of Governor of Minnesota.

And what does this have to do with our campus email? Well, let’s just hope you never need to find out.


Dear Grouch,

It’s been over a year since the Nintendo Wii was first released in America, but I still can’t find one. Why are they so hard to come by?

- Giik

Giik,

Anyone who has played a Wii can attest that it is an amazing system. A little too amazing. Prior to the arrival of the Wii, video game consoles were an expensive commodity. The Xbox 360 was upwards of $400. The PlayStation 3 exeeded $600. Yet the Wii stood firmly: Cheap, accessible, revolutionary.

But they are still rare. Why? Nintendo claims to have built more factories to accommodate the massive demand for their system, but that didn’t seem to put more Wiis on the shelves. They’re as hard to come by today as they were the day they were released. People still line up in WalMart at midnight by the dozen. So we must ask: What is the secret of the Wii?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the scarcity is not due to Nintendo’s ability to manufacture their product. After all, Rubik made a couple billion of his cubes in the 80s without breaking a sweat. No, I suspect the Wii shortage is due to a much more sinister cause -- a lack of the raw resources needed in order to manufacture these mysterious, miracle devices that sprung out of nowhere. And what was that resource?

It was people. Soylent Wii is made out of people.