Veni Vidi Vici
* * *
Fact of the Day
Napolean Bonaparte was actually 5'7". Average height for his time.
* * *
And now, for your feature presentation...
* * *
A scintillating chord of what could only be Alvin and his Chipmunk friends squealing rang through the trenches of the audio before we can even get a feed. Even the emptiest of unstained imagery can capture a fleeting emotion. A passing eternity of internal sensation. Imbue a vibe that triggers an action potential. Working along the synaptic gaps, our disjointed neurons can send a brooding message or a beautiful message to the central nervous system in mere milliseconds. Likewise, we make decisions everyday in such a time frame.
Most of us can barely even fathom the sheer convolution involved in a simple thought. The simple task of hearing something involves a lofty transmission of the sound waves. Many of us presume sound is a mere byproduct of longitudinal waves entering the ear canal. They neglect the sheer processing involved in the temporal lobes and Wernicke's area.
Following the excess glee and pitch of the unseen voice, the words of what we can presume to be a young man ensnares unto its equilibrium, crooning in an Italian/New York hybrid accent.
Ripplemagne:
"He's so adorable! I just wanna squeeze 'im!"
Vibrant and untamed, his voice could stand alone to give credence to the Patriarch of Pretty's vagabound-esque lifestyle. You could sense an air self-actualization in his complete disregard for etiquette and social pleasantries. In his palm was the ability to granulate social dichotomies for the simple pleasure of freedom.
And that's what could be reaped from his awesome charisma. Freedom. In life, we are presented with order and discipline. We wait on lines to get what we want; we move orderly along the sidewalks as we wait for the little machine to tell us when to walk and when to stop with a white man or a red hand; we are burdened by homework and occupational assignments, utterly decimating our freedom to aspire to a personal satori.
Gaze out the window and your pupils will dilate when you see the ghostly images of those around us; dressed up in business suits because it's the 'proper' attire. They walk down the dank city streets with a suitcase in hand and a boss's ass to kiss for six-to-eight hours a day before going home to a domineering wife and a parental unit they're too afraid to be themselves around. Around their wrists and ankles are shackles weaved with a transparent, opaque, paranormal thread. You could see through them, but you could not pass through them.
In our prisons, we are both the inmate and the gatekeeper. We are intimately bound to rotted catacombs, where we're knee-deep in a bay of charred, bodily remains; mostly skeletal in nature. It was like a quicksand of corpses. Perhaps these were the souls of men before us who did not escape these catacombs and were doomed to a life of depression and spiraling down.
No. They did not spiral. That was the problem. Behold a dreidal as it spirals across a hardwood surface, buckling under its own wait and gyrating over the kinetic energy inputted. Much like our planet, it gyrates on its axis; supported by the next revolution it makes. Much like Kaoru Hanayama in an endeavor that doesn't involve S&M, it cannot remain erect. Its own weight drags it down to its axis.
But Kaoru does not spin. He sinks deeper and deeper into the sewage of decaying defeat. Life has already beaten him.
'The faster you spin, the more free you are.'
Notice verily that as a dreidel spins on its axis, its earliest revolutions veer it off the given point. It becomes free over its own kinetic energy giving it lift-off around and around; its tilted axis giving it free reign over a table-top and beyond (in my case, the dreidel always falls off the fucking table.)
Herein lies the challenge of the free. The free must be infused with a gratuitous supply of continual kinetic energy or they will eventually burn it all off and land. Hard. It is inherently why so many fall, unable to keep spinning and why many others don't even try.
Ultimately, one's choice to spin is usually met with disappointment. The first few times they spin -- their axis gives out from beneath them or they haven't the energy to keep it up, drilling a course through diamond stalagmites to infinity and beyond. Ridicule, odd looks, public perception, frustration... all of it is tantamount to the self-fulfilling prophecy that we cannot do it. In obeying these gods of 'no'; the Nephilim in our lives -- we shut the door to spinning so fast that we become our own perpetual motion device. We seize the day with so much fervor that we create our own kinetic energy to keep moving.
This is why the bottom feeding pessimistic supersedes the bottom feeding optimist, but in the days beyond, the honorific pessimistic is obliterated by the honorific optimist.
Lina Zalizati:
"I suppose you are thinking he are 'adorable' is better than you think he is a woman."
The Slovene dialect of the young girl was embroidered in -- among broken English -- a similar stained glass window of ascent. Though, her's was more... gappy. It was as though her's was still being constructed over the portcullis of her life. If it were Church, the rendition would be that of Yeshua Ben Yosef in his Jesus Christ pose, but the wooden stakes would not yet be behind him. For her, she had her delicate fingers latched around a coarse rope as she uplifted herself from the crunches, creaks and crumbling of the osseous lake.
The delicate flesh of her fingers were torn and her splintered flesh was coiled in bits of brillo'd weaves whisked and insulated over the barbed rope. To see the brillos burrow and cleave into her flesh and snap from her hands like the cap of a milk jug, cleaving entire pavers of skin from her would make one sick. This ascent was merely metaphysical, but in the green eyes of the two Your Feature Presentation stars -- it was culminated.
She wished to be free and was tripped up by her own weight as she attempted to spin on her axis. But all along the way, she had a hand reach down to her, help her up and tell her that she could do it.
That was the journey that could be seen in their eyes. Eyes that began to encapsulate perception as our feed finally ignited before the young man and woman standing before an empty classroom.
Ripplemagne:
"Ayo, it ain't my fault that Kaoru is the name of the broad from Rurouni Kenshin. How a nigga gonna know that it's a unisex name?"
Lina Zalizati:
"There is guitarist in Dir En Grey with name Kaoru."
To a sound → color synesthete, their voices were more than just Richard Cytowic's description of fireworks. Young Lina Zalizati's voice was like boric acid ignited in a blaze of lime green flames roaring through a medium of the rain forest like a roller coast. An emerald Human Torch weaving around plumes and oak trees as the bustling leaves gallantly rained down all around it. The dew on each leaf was like an oasis in-of-itself as it seemed every standing tree was an obstacle to be overcome by the boric roller coaster.
On the other hand, Ripplemagne's voice was almost impossible to look at. The vibrance and eccentricity of his voice was like a strobe light at rapid pace in a never-before-seen palette. Just to absorb it, you'd need to refine the palette you thought you knew the world was. To those not overwhelmed by the synesthesia of this man's eclectic voice, they'd witness a hot pink infernal cyclone meeting a nuclear reactor on a crisp, amber Autumn day. The everblue skies were lavished in a firework show that impeded upon the territory of even Atlantic City; to the astute, potentially the trigger for the tornado of flames.
Ripplemagne:
"Ahem. Just because I am the epitome of dapper and resemble a chrysanthemum on a hot spring afternoon does not mean that de Magne is into that visual kei hobknockery."
The quirky fellow at the forefront was insulated by an orange-dominated tie-dye t-shirt, a pair of acid washed white jeans and a fuzzy white top-hat. As if it were sprayed on, Ripplemagne's t-shirt seemed to hug every inch of his Olympic body for optimal tightness. You could literally see the outline of his nipples at the plateau of his tightly packaged pectorals and the lining of his ripped abdominals. The bombastic fellow wiped a strand of gleaming gold hair from his eye as his blue-green peepers glanced back to a one of those pull-down posters that teachers normally use to pull down a map. But in this case, it was an image of Kaoru Hanayama.
Ripplemagne:
"But c'mon! You don't think that chico is simply adorable?! He's like a teddy bear and a trampoline all built into one! Nigga has all that hostility built up inside, but all he need is a coochie-coochie-coo and a hug to make all the dreadful Tengu in his life flutter away. Can't you just see his blubbery, oriental face pop with excitement when ya wrinkle your index finger into his love handles?"
Lina Zalizati:
"No really."
The beautiful, Slovene girl seemed to play dress-up for this episode of Your Feature Presentation. It was obvious that she was suited up for the props on the set as she was clad in a brown skirt, white dress shirt, brown blouse and round reading glasses. It seems that Ripplemagne had her dress up as a teacher for this edition. Even her coastal auburn hair was bundled back conservatively into a bun.
Ripplemagne:
"Well, you're also a Jew queef, so it's all good."
A scowl materialized on the innocent features of the young girl as she stepped back when Ripplemagne snatched the lecturing stick from her hand. I don't quite know why she's the one dressed up as the teacher when Ripplemagne seems to be the one about to do the lecture...
Raising his finger in the air, the King of Hearts raises his voice to a shrill cacophony that melds into a charismatic oration in mere seconds.
Ripplemagne:
"First things first, ladies and gentlemen. This ho' right hurr is the teacher, but the Ripplemagne is your educator. As the Malefactor of Modesty has never quite seen licensed teachers as proficient educators, he is humbly shafting the teacher from this demonstration."
The brisk young man skips over to the black chalkboard and snatches a trunk of chalk from its podium before turning back to Lina Zalizati, who seems to have a confused look on her face.
Ripplemagne:
"Well? What are you waiting for? Shoo. Shoo!"
With an almost imperceptible grumble, the agitated girl slinks from view as Ripplemagne's face beams with satisfaction out of getting to tell her what to do. What an asshole. Giggling to himself, he quickly writes the name 'Charlemagne' on the board in perhaps the worst handwriting any of us have ever seen.
To put it into perspective, it looked like a paraplegic fourth grader attempted to write A Tale Of Two Cities with a serrated sharpie between their lips. Yeah, that bad.
Ripplemagne:
"Kaoru Hanayama, mon ami. It would seem that the bulk of your promo against the Patriarch of Pretty revolves around the blessed nom de plume of the Most Electrifying Magne in Sports Entertainment Today. Predictably, you lavished it with the ever-so 'clever' criticism that because I -- the infamous Ripplemagne -- make jokes... surely that means that I am easy pickings. No, no, that one didn't get old the last forty times some sycophantic mamaluke attempted to convince themselves that the hype built around me was nothing more than a passing breeze. It didn't even get old after they were left grief-stricken in the ring when the awesome terra that is Ripplemagnia ran through them like the Bullet Train through a bumbling oriental who lost his way.
I'm sure James Magnum will attest to how utterly boring it is going week-in and week-out with your opponent dishing out nothing, but criticism's of your name, thinking in the back of their head 'oburn'. To be fair, you're the first to actually try to understand what the Ripplemagne's nom de plume means. Unfortunately, as the witless cafones on 4chan would say, you're doing it wrong!"
Shaking his head, the young man underlined the word 'le' in 'Charlemagne' and placed the beam of chalk down for a moment.
Ripplemagne:
"While, yes. 'Charlemagne' does translate to 'Charles the Great', you made the blunder of presuming that 'le' was a component of the word 'Charles' rather than its own particle.
As I'm sure you're aware, the French equivalent of 'the' is 'le'. As such, the name more appropriately translates to 'Carl the Great'. Hence, 'the great ripple' does not work.
No, no. I'm afraid the real story a great deal less artsy fartsy than 'the great ripple' and some such. For all of the apparent knowledge you have of my conquests, 'cheap competition' and credentials though, I'm sure you've come across the edition of Your Feature Presentation where I vaguely explain it."
Sucking his teeth, the Patriarch of Pretty adjusts his hat and uplifts the stalk of chalk that he set down before. Vivaciously snapping his body to the screen with dilated pupils, the young man seems quite gleeful...
Ripplemagne:
"So, lets see what we got here..."
With a titter haphazardly escaping his lips, the nimble young man skips over to the other side of the chalkboard and pulls up the picture of Kaoru Hanayama to reveal a checklist. The quirky lad glances back at the camera for a mere moment before edging back to the checklist and raising the piece of chalk gallantly to the first element on the list.
Ripplemagne:
"Attack Ripplemagne's moniker. Check."
As his his smug tone emits the word 'check', his svelte fingers and wrist weaved a checkmark in chalk in the box next to the words 'Attack Ripplemagne's moniker'. Through the next series of elements, he did the same for each.
Ripplemagne:
"Deduce that because Ripplemagne has a sense of humor, he will lose the match. Check.
Equate Ripplemagne to some meaningless celebrity in an attempt to psychologically 'frame' him better. Check.
By the way, Lady Gaga is thug. Ironically, Ripplemagne equated himself to the male Lady Gaga on his Facebook, but a mere week ago. Oh-ho!
...Ahem.
Imply that all of the Ripplemagne's previous competition was cheap competition with -- at best -- knowledge of his matches from as far as a month ago. Check.
Claim that Ripplemagne is not funny despite the fact that Ripplemagne never claimed otherwise. Check."
It was a twisty-turny tapestry of irony that Ripplemagne's moniker's association with Charles the Great was so fitting. Less so the actual name 'Ripplemagne' than the inverse 'Charlemagne'. For the name Carl or Charles are derived from the common Germanic term 'churl', which described a 'free man' that was not of noble descent.
Having been raised in near-poverty and illuminating the darkness around him with the refined glyph that was his heart, he was emblematic of the word 'churl'.
Ripplemagne:
"Be honest with yourself, Kaoru. In spite of your hollow declaration that my victories are cheap, you can't even name ten opponents that I've faced. I know you're frantically googling my match history, so that you can come back in your next promo and pretend that you knew all along who I've faced, but the simple fact that you were unaware of the explanation I gave for my moniker -- which was relatively recent, actually -- speaks volumes of how vastly you're formatting your reactions to me.
You could, of course, explain that inconvenient truth away by claiming that you've watched my matches, but not Your Feature Presentation. But if that's the case, then you claiming that I'm 'not even funny' is also dribble, isn't it?
You can even attempt to pull the typical 'I don't care anything about your history' card and try to come out of this smelling like lemons with pseudo-apathy. But in the end, you shoot yourself in the foot twice by doing that because it simply invalidates everything you've said about me.
The more likely possibility, which I've outlined above, is that you've maybe watched the last one or two matches I've been in -- which, admittedly, were yawn-worthy. Considering this, though, we can deduce two things:
1. You've come to the conclusion that I'm everything negative before even knowing anything about me. Hence why I'm unfunny despite you only viewing a small portion of my material, which wasn't even the highlight of Your Feature Presentation's comedic trills. Once again, reaction formation.
2. Your words are utterly meaningless.
I'll admit, you've got a sharp tongue. The Ripplemagne is never one to beguile by presuming an opponent to have nothing but negative attributes. But the problem is that your sharp tongue works against you. You try too hard to find a backdoor into your opponent, where you can frame them in your mind to make sense of them. When you're up against someone that you legitimately cannot frame, you are left in a tizzy because it becomes a golden hammer.
'It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer -- to treat everything as if it were a nail.'"
There was an air of pleasantry even when Ripplemagne was dissecting his opponent. Even though his immortal technique of stringing words together could singe flesh from bone, he orated the venomous delivery of his words with a smile as if this were all just a game to him. In the past, Ripplemagne had dug his talons into the psyche of others and seemed to treat the entire situation as though it were leisure. A game of Candy Land.
The smile on his face made it all the more enraging. It was a smile that grew even more poignant with every insult you could deliver to him.
Ripplemagne:
"You claimed that I fancy myself someone other than myself -- an obvious attempt to give you semblance of who I am and believe your own lie when you look in the mirror and tell yourself that you understand Ripplemagne.
I don't claim to be complex. I don't claim to be funny. I don't claim to be anything, so your presumption is based on your own conscious. You say I'm not funny despite me never stating otherwise because you truly believe me to be so, but don't wish to admit it.
Now, I know you didn't use the word 'complex' or anything synonymous, but psychologically, I know that's what you're thinking. I know that it's what you're thinking because you spend your entire promo trying to make sense of me by comparing me to other people and why they are failures, rather than dealing with what is actually in front of you.
You spend all of this time attempting to shatter a meta-illusion -- an illusion that isn't even there. But rather than gaze at the speck in another man's eye, why not remove the plank from your own insipid cornea? I'm not going to bother dwindling down your contrived persona. The faux cackle you etch at the end of your promos to lavish yourself in a gimmick of meanness and anger and rar is enough to do it for me."
Feeling as though he'd done a satisfactory job in dismantling Kaoru's argument, Ripplemagne discards the stalk of chalk with a gleeful snicker and edges toward the camera.
Ripplemagne:
"You very well may be the storm and I very well may be the ripple. But remember that the storm always ends... with one... last... ripple. Believe it!"
* * *
Fin.
* * *
Fact of the Day
Napolean Bonaparte was actually 5'7". Average height for his time.
* * *
And now, for your feature presentation...
* * *
A scintillating chord of what could only be Alvin and his Chipmunk friends squealing rang through the trenches of the audio before we can even get a feed. Even the emptiest of unstained imagery can capture a fleeting emotion. A passing eternity of internal sensation. Imbue a vibe that triggers an action potential. Working along the synaptic gaps, our disjointed neurons can send a brooding message or a beautiful message to the central nervous system in mere milliseconds. Likewise, we make decisions everyday in such a time frame.
Most of us can barely even fathom the sheer convolution involved in a simple thought. The simple task of hearing something involves a lofty transmission of the sound waves. Many of us presume sound is a mere byproduct of longitudinal waves entering the ear canal. They neglect the sheer processing involved in the temporal lobes and Wernicke's area.
Following the excess glee and pitch of the unseen voice, the words of what we can presume to be a young man ensnares unto its equilibrium, crooning in an Italian/New York hybrid accent.
Ripplemagne:
"He's so adorable! I just wanna squeeze 'im!"
Vibrant and untamed, his voice could stand alone to give credence to the Patriarch of Pretty's vagabound-esque lifestyle. You could sense an air self-actualization in his complete disregard for etiquette and social pleasantries. In his palm was the ability to granulate social dichotomies for the simple pleasure of freedom.
And that's what could be reaped from his awesome charisma. Freedom. In life, we are presented with order and discipline. We wait on lines to get what we want; we move orderly along the sidewalks as we wait for the little machine to tell us when to walk and when to stop with a white man or a red hand; we are burdened by homework and occupational assignments, utterly decimating our freedom to aspire to a personal satori.
Gaze out the window and your pupils will dilate when you see the ghostly images of those around us; dressed up in business suits because it's the 'proper' attire. They walk down the dank city streets with a suitcase in hand and a boss's ass to kiss for six-to-eight hours a day before going home to a domineering wife and a parental unit they're too afraid to be themselves around. Around their wrists and ankles are shackles weaved with a transparent, opaque, paranormal thread. You could see through them, but you could not pass through them.
In our prisons, we are both the inmate and the gatekeeper. We are intimately bound to rotted catacombs, where we're knee-deep in a bay of charred, bodily remains; mostly skeletal in nature. It was like a quicksand of corpses. Perhaps these were the souls of men before us who did not escape these catacombs and were doomed to a life of depression and spiraling down.
No. They did not spiral. That was the problem. Behold a dreidal as it spirals across a hardwood surface, buckling under its own wait and gyrating over the kinetic energy inputted. Much like our planet, it gyrates on its axis; supported by the next revolution it makes. Much like Kaoru Hanayama in an endeavor that doesn't involve S&M, it cannot remain erect. Its own weight drags it down to its axis.
But Kaoru does not spin. He sinks deeper and deeper into the sewage of decaying defeat. Life has already beaten him.
'The faster you spin, the more free you are.'
Notice verily that as a dreidel spins on its axis, its earliest revolutions veer it off the given point. It becomes free over its own kinetic energy giving it lift-off around and around; its tilted axis giving it free reign over a table-top and beyond (in my case, the dreidel always falls off the fucking table.)
Herein lies the challenge of the free. The free must be infused with a gratuitous supply of continual kinetic energy or they will eventually burn it all off and land. Hard. It is inherently why so many fall, unable to keep spinning and why many others don't even try.
Ultimately, one's choice to spin is usually met with disappointment. The first few times they spin -- their axis gives out from beneath them or they haven't the energy to keep it up, drilling a course through diamond stalagmites to infinity and beyond. Ridicule, odd looks, public perception, frustration... all of it is tantamount to the self-fulfilling prophecy that we cannot do it. In obeying these gods of 'no'; the Nephilim in our lives -- we shut the door to spinning so fast that we become our own perpetual motion device. We seize the day with so much fervor that we create our own kinetic energy to keep moving.
This is why the bottom feeding pessimistic supersedes the bottom feeding optimist, but in the days beyond, the honorific pessimistic is obliterated by the honorific optimist.
Lina Zalizati:
"I suppose you are thinking he are 'adorable' is better than you think he is a woman."
The Slovene dialect of the young girl was embroidered in -- among broken English -- a similar stained glass window of ascent. Though, her's was more... gappy. It was as though her's was still being constructed over the portcullis of her life. If it were Church, the rendition would be that of Yeshua Ben Yosef in his Jesus Christ pose, but the wooden stakes would not yet be behind him. For her, she had her delicate fingers latched around a coarse rope as she uplifted herself from the crunches, creaks and crumbling of the osseous lake.
The delicate flesh of her fingers were torn and her splintered flesh was coiled in bits of brillo'd weaves whisked and insulated over the barbed rope. To see the brillos burrow and cleave into her flesh and snap from her hands like the cap of a milk jug, cleaving entire pavers of skin from her would make one sick. This ascent was merely metaphysical, but in the green eyes of the two Your Feature Presentation stars -- it was culminated.
She wished to be free and was tripped up by her own weight as she attempted to spin on her axis. But all along the way, she had a hand reach down to her, help her up and tell her that she could do it.
That was the journey that could be seen in their eyes. Eyes that began to encapsulate perception as our feed finally ignited before the young man and woman standing before an empty classroom.
Ripplemagne:
"Ayo, it ain't my fault that Kaoru is the name of the broad from Rurouni Kenshin. How a nigga gonna know that it's a unisex name?"
Lina Zalizati:
"There is guitarist in Dir En Grey with name Kaoru."
To a sound → color synesthete, their voices were more than just Richard Cytowic's description of fireworks. Young Lina Zalizati's voice was like boric acid ignited in a blaze of lime green flames roaring through a medium of the rain forest like a roller coast. An emerald Human Torch weaving around plumes and oak trees as the bustling leaves gallantly rained down all around it. The dew on each leaf was like an oasis in-of-itself as it seemed every standing tree was an obstacle to be overcome by the boric roller coaster.
On the other hand, Ripplemagne's voice was almost impossible to look at. The vibrance and eccentricity of his voice was like a strobe light at rapid pace in a never-before-seen palette. Just to absorb it, you'd need to refine the palette you thought you knew the world was. To those not overwhelmed by the synesthesia of this man's eclectic voice, they'd witness a hot pink infernal cyclone meeting a nuclear reactor on a crisp, amber Autumn day. The everblue skies were lavished in a firework show that impeded upon the territory of even Atlantic City; to the astute, potentially the trigger for the tornado of flames.
Ripplemagne:
"Ahem. Just because I am the epitome of dapper and resemble a chrysanthemum on a hot spring afternoon does not mean that de Magne is into that visual kei hobknockery."
The quirky fellow at the forefront was insulated by an orange-dominated tie-dye t-shirt, a pair of acid washed white jeans and a fuzzy white top-hat. As if it were sprayed on, Ripplemagne's t-shirt seemed to hug every inch of his Olympic body for optimal tightness. You could literally see the outline of his nipples at the plateau of his tightly packaged pectorals and the lining of his ripped abdominals. The bombastic fellow wiped a strand of gleaming gold hair from his eye as his blue-green peepers glanced back to a one of those pull-down posters that teachers normally use to pull down a map. But in this case, it was an image of Kaoru Hanayama.
Ripplemagne:
"But c'mon! You don't think that chico is simply adorable?! He's like a teddy bear and a trampoline all built into one! Nigga has all that hostility built up inside, but all he need is a coochie-coochie-coo and a hug to make all the dreadful Tengu in his life flutter away. Can't you just see his blubbery, oriental face pop with excitement when ya wrinkle your index finger into his love handles?"
Lina Zalizati:
"No really."
The beautiful, Slovene girl seemed to play dress-up for this episode of Your Feature Presentation. It was obvious that she was suited up for the props on the set as she was clad in a brown skirt, white dress shirt, brown blouse and round reading glasses. It seems that Ripplemagne had her dress up as a teacher for this edition. Even her coastal auburn hair was bundled back conservatively into a bun.
Ripplemagne:
"Well, you're also a Jew queef, so it's all good."
A scowl materialized on the innocent features of the young girl as she stepped back when Ripplemagne snatched the lecturing stick from her hand. I don't quite know why she's the one dressed up as the teacher when Ripplemagne seems to be the one about to do the lecture...
Raising his finger in the air, the King of Hearts raises his voice to a shrill cacophony that melds into a charismatic oration in mere seconds.
Ripplemagne:
"First things first, ladies and gentlemen. This ho' right hurr is the teacher, but the Ripplemagne is your educator. As the Malefactor of Modesty has never quite seen licensed teachers as proficient educators, he is humbly shafting the teacher from this demonstration."
The brisk young man skips over to the black chalkboard and snatches a trunk of chalk from its podium before turning back to Lina Zalizati, who seems to have a confused look on her face.
Ripplemagne:
"Well? What are you waiting for? Shoo. Shoo!"
With an almost imperceptible grumble, the agitated girl slinks from view as Ripplemagne's face beams with satisfaction out of getting to tell her what to do. What an asshole. Giggling to himself, he quickly writes the name 'Charlemagne' on the board in perhaps the worst handwriting any of us have ever seen.
To put it into perspective, it looked like a paraplegic fourth grader attempted to write A Tale Of Two Cities with a serrated sharpie between their lips. Yeah, that bad.
Ripplemagne:
"Kaoru Hanayama, mon ami. It would seem that the bulk of your promo against the Patriarch of Pretty revolves around the blessed nom de plume of the Most Electrifying Magne in Sports Entertainment Today. Predictably, you lavished it with the ever-so 'clever' criticism that because I -- the infamous Ripplemagne -- make jokes... surely that means that I am easy pickings. No, no, that one didn't get old the last forty times some sycophantic mamaluke attempted to convince themselves that the hype built around me was nothing more than a passing breeze. It didn't even get old after they were left grief-stricken in the ring when the awesome terra that is Ripplemagnia ran through them like the Bullet Train through a bumbling oriental who lost his way.
I'm sure James Magnum will attest to how utterly boring it is going week-in and week-out with your opponent dishing out nothing, but criticism's of your name, thinking in the back of their head 'oburn'. To be fair, you're the first to actually try to understand what the Ripplemagne's nom de plume means. Unfortunately, as the witless cafones on 4chan would say, you're doing it wrong!"
Shaking his head, the young man underlined the word 'le' in 'Charlemagne' and placed the beam of chalk down for a moment.
Ripplemagne:
"While, yes. 'Charlemagne' does translate to 'Charles the Great', you made the blunder of presuming that 'le' was a component of the word 'Charles' rather than its own particle.
As I'm sure you're aware, the French equivalent of 'the' is 'le'. As such, the name more appropriately translates to 'Carl the Great'. Hence, 'the great ripple' does not work.
No, no. I'm afraid the real story a great deal less artsy fartsy than 'the great ripple' and some such. For all of the apparent knowledge you have of my conquests, 'cheap competition' and credentials though, I'm sure you've come across the edition of Your Feature Presentation where I vaguely explain it."
Sucking his teeth, the Patriarch of Pretty adjusts his hat and uplifts the stalk of chalk that he set down before. Vivaciously snapping his body to the screen with dilated pupils, the young man seems quite gleeful...
Ripplemagne:
"So, lets see what we got here..."
With a titter haphazardly escaping his lips, the nimble young man skips over to the other side of the chalkboard and pulls up the picture of Kaoru Hanayama to reveal a checklist. The quirky lad glances back at the camera for a mere moment before edging back to the checklist and raising the piece of chalk gallantly to the first element on the list.
Ripplemagne:
"Attack Ripplemagne's moniker. Check."
As his his smug tone emits the word 'check', his svelte fingers and wrist weaved a checkmark in chalk in the box next to the words 'Attack Ripplemagne's moniker'. Through the next series of elements, he did the same for each.
Ripplemagne:
"Deduce that because Ripplemagne has a sense of humor, he will lose the match. Check.
Equate Ripplemagne to some meaningless celebrity in an attempt to psychologically 'frame' him better. Check.
By the way, Lady Gaga is thug. Ironically, Ripplemagne equated himself to the male Lady Gaga on his Facebook, but a mere week ago. Oh-ho!
...Ahem.
Imply that all of the Ripplemagne's previous competition was cheap competition with -- at best -- knowledge of his matches from as far as a month ago. Check.
Claim that Ripplemagne is not funny despite the fact that Ripplemagne never claimed otherwise. Check."
It was a twisty-turny tapestry of irony that Ripplemagne's moniker's association with Charles the Great was so fitting. Less so the actual name 'Ripplemagne' than the inverse 'Charlemagne'. For the name Carl or Charles are derived from the common Germanic term 'churl', which described a 'free man' that was not of noble descent.
Having been raised in near-poverty and illuminating the darkness around him with the refined glyph that was his heart, he was emblematic of the word 'churl'.
Ripplemagne:
"Be honest with yourself, Kaoru. In spite of your hollow declaration that my victories are cheap, you can't even name ten opponents that I've faced. I know you're frantically googling my match history, so that you can come back in your next promo and pretend that you knew all along who I've faced, but the simple fact that you were unaware of the explanation I gave for my moniker -- which was relatively recent, actually -- speaks volumes of how vastly you're formatting your reactions to me.
You could, of course, explain that inconvenient truth away by claiming that you've watched my matches, but not Your Feature Presentation. But if that's the case, then you claiming that I'm 'not even funny' is also dribble, isn't it?
You can even attempt to pull the typical 'I don't care anything about your history' card and try to come out of this smelling like lemons with pseudo-apathy. But in the end, you shoot yourself in the foot twice by doing that because it simply invalidates everything you've said about me.
The more likely possibility, which I've outlined above, is that you've maybe watched the last one or two matches I've been in -- which, admittedly, were yawn-worthy. Considering this, though, we can deduce two things:
1. You've come to the conclusion that I'm everything negative before even knowing anything about me. Hence why I'm unfunny despite you only viewing a small portion of my material, which wasn't even the highlight of Your Feature Presentation's comedic trills. Once again, reaction formation.
2. Your words are utterly meaningless.
I'll admit, you've got a sharp tongue. The Ripplemagne is never one to beguile by presuming an opponent to have nothing but negative attributes. But the problem is that your sharp tongue works against you. You try too hard to find a backdoor into your opponent, where you can frame them in your mind to make sense of them. When you're up against someone that you legitimately cannot frame, you are left in a tizzy because it becomes a golden hammer.
'It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer -- to treat everything as if it were a nail.'"
There was an air of pleasantry even when Ripplemagne was dissecting his opponent. Even though his immortal technique of stringing words together could singe flesh from bone, he orated the venomous delivery of his words with a smile as if this were all just a game to him. In the past, Ripplemagne had dug his talons into the psyche of others and seemed to treat the entire situation as though it were leisure. A game of Candy Land.
The smile on his face made it all the more enraging. It was a smile that grew even more poignant with every insult you could deliver to him.
Ripplemagne:
"You claimed that I fancy myself someone other than myself -- an obvious attempt to give you semblance of who I am and believe your own lie when you look in the mirror and tell yourself that you understand Ripplemagne.
I don't claim to be complex. I don't claim to be funny. I don't claim to be anything, so your presumption is based on your own conscious. You say I'm not funny despite me never stating otherwise because you truly believe me to be so, but don't wish to admit it.
Now, I know you didn't use the word 'complex' or anything synonymous, but psychologically, I know that's what you're thinking. I know that it's what you're thinking because you spend your entire promo trying to make sense of me by comparing me to other people and why they are failures, rather than dealing with what is actually in front of you.
You spend all of this time attempting to shatter a meta-illusion -- an illusion that isn't even there. But rather than gaze at the speck in another man's eye, why not remove the plank from your own insipid cornea? I'm not going to bother dwindling down your contrived persona. The faux cackle you etch at the end of your promos to lavish yourself in a gimmick of meanness and anger and rar is enough to do it for me."
Feeling as though he'd done a satisfactory job in dismantling Kaoru's argument, Ripplemagne discards the stalk of chalk with a gleeful snicker and edges toward the camera.
Ripplemagne:
"You very well may be the storm and I very well may be the ripple. But remember that the storm always ends... with one... last... ripple. Believe it!"
* * *
Fin.
* * *
