Back to School Week: The Learning Game Vol. HA HA FOOLED YOU It’s Super Mario Time!

HOOLIGANS

As of noon on September 9, 2010, there were at least 25 hooligans roaming the streets within a mile and a half mile radius of my home. I know it’s not Yom Kipper yet and according to the local school district’s website, these kids should be in school today. How am supposed to post the last volume of The Learning Game with today’s students blatantly skipping school to smoke cigarettes, knock over statues and terrorize dogs?

I’ll post the final volume of The Learning Game tomorrow, when these hoodlums decide that school is where it’s at. For now I wouldn’t feel right talking about education when so many of our youths are blatantly ignoring it. But fear not; sweet, sweet content is just a scroll away. As I’ve know since I was a small, annoying child, Super Mario fixes everything!

OR DOES HE!?

The Other Side of the Flagpole

You think it’s fun to stomp on our heads. You think it’s fun to kick us around. You think it’s fun to steal our coins, eat our mushrooms and pull up our flowers. Well you know what? I think you’re all SICK. Did you ever stop to think how we feel? Can’t any of you people think for yourselves?

Do you even know what you’re doing to us? I assure you, this is no game. All of our poles are ruined, because that fat man keeps tearing down the flags! We had to install many a spinning fire stick security system around our precious flagpoles, but he keeps jumping over them at the right time and stealing the flags anyway. Not even our best question mark blocks hovering randomly in the sky can stop his demented lust for our flags. No castle is safe from his thieving ways either! He just walks right in and starts stealing money and breaking things. You can forget about building anything out of bricks too, because that red ruffian comes by and smashes them all, looking for money! I bet he spends it on drugs, too! Anyone as obsessed with mushrooms and eating flowers as he is has to be a druggie!

And for the love of Zelda, do you have any idea what it’s like to tell a child that his father was murdered by that sinister mustachioed man?

By Silent KV

“Mommy, why hasn’t Papa Goomba been home for the past three weeks?”

“I’m sorry, son, but your father isn’t in another castle like I’ve been telling you. He’s… dead!”

“Dead!?”

“Yes son! It’s true! He was – oh, I can barely say it! – he was stomped to death by Super Mario! And then that evil man robbed your father’s flat corpse of all 100 of his points!”

“Daddy! Nooooooooooo!”

Maybe if you knew the real deal about that Super Mario guy and his brother, what’s-his-name, you’d think twice about killing our people and ransacking our homes. We’re not the villains here, he is. Him and his brother, what's-his-name.

Everything was fine before he showed up. We lived as a tight knit community. We all had steady jobs: some of us walking back and forth on the same piece of terrain all day, and others periodically popping out of pipes, throwing a fireball, and ducking back inside. Then, after a hard day’s work, it was back home to relax by walking back and forth in the same room until daybreak. Everyone enjoyed their existence and had no reason to complain.

But then one day, a fat, sinister shadow befell the land. The man in red had arrived. We were helpless against his futuristic technologies; we had never seen a creature that large move with such agility. For example, if he’s walking, he can stop and go in the opposite direction without having to bump into a pipe first! And he can go faster than just walking; he can run! How could we even begin to compete with advanced military strategies like that?

It'sa me, MURDER-O

Knowing he was physically superior to us, he began ruling over us with an iron fist. His first move was to have is girlfriend, Princess Toadstool, imprison our kind and handsome leader, King Koopa. With him out of the way, he and his brother were free to begin stealing our money and killing us any time they wanted.

So I beg of you all; please stop assisting this man’s heinous crimes! He’s brainwashed you all into thinking that we’re somehow bad, and yet, what proof has he ever given you? When, besides the few times our fearless King Koopa has escaped from the Princess’ evil grasp, have any of us attacked you? Well, besides the Hammer Brothers; I guess sometimes they get a little careless with their tools.

We all just want to go back to our normal lives! We want to be able to walk aimlessly again, and pop in and out of pipes without fear! Please, I implore you! Don’t let the man in red seduce you to a life of crime!

Why can we all just be goombas?