Asinine Awards, Part 1

The glory... the power... the ill-fitting striped shirt...

For those of you who've never heard of Ghyslain Raza, "The Star Wars Kid," then... welcome back to society, I hope the rock you've been under for the last three years was comfy! The SWK, as the ever-lethargic internet community immediately abbreviated him, became an overnight internet phenomenon about three years ago, when his martial arts prowess was exposed on a neglected video in his high school AV room. At this point, I should probably stop typing and give you a link, if you've never seen this goofball... because words cannot do the trainwreck justice. Check out the original video, and some of the modified versions: SWK

You just been SERVED!

Ah yes, a goofy, chubby, bespectacled doof taped himself playing "Darth Maul" from Star Wars, and then forgot to get rid of the video. Well, a couple of his fellow highschoolers inadvertantly discovered the abandoned tape - and predictably shared their excrutiating, shame-inducing, gold with the international internet community. Before long, creative artists would modify the original footage with special effects, graphics, and clever editing. Everybody was laughing... except for Ghyslain.

SWK becomes yet another of Seth McFarlane's pop-cultural references that no one will understand in 5 years.

No, the shumbling troll didn't exactly take the whole experience with a grain of salt. It wouldn't take a genius to extrapolate that Ghys wasn't exactly sitting at the "cool table" in the school's cafeteria before the SWK incident... and afterwards he was apparently so ridiculed he had no other recourse than leave school and enter a psychiatric hospital. But if you're expecting me to don sackcloth and weep lamentations for poor chubby Ghyslain, you'd be wrong. While embarrassing to be exposed at playing a Sith Lord in an empty AV stage, manically swinging sticks around, making crude sound effects, and clumsily executing karate kicks, this entire incident is at least partly his fault as well. I have little sympathy for gibbering infants who can't deal with consequences of their foolishness. Pathetic Ghyslain's wounded self-esteem would evolve into something of an eye-roll-inducing internet cause célèbre, with coddling sympathizers even urging others to help them raise money to buy him an ipod for his woes. Ghyslain is probably quite comfortable in his lifestyle of victimhood - even his name is derived from the Germanic word gisel meaning "hostage." Why should he have to deal with the problem he created?

And here I thought that Vincent Pastore was supposed to be "Big Pussy"

My first obstacle towards more sympathy is the inarguable fact that he taped himself doing it. It never ceases to amaze me when people get so righteously indignant when their potentially embarrassing home-made videos get leaked to the internet. If someone had set up a hidden camera and taped him, it would be a completely different story. But he taped himself. He had this brilliant idea, which probably popped in his head after a fruitful afternoon of sitting and eating, of taking the high school's golf ball retriever (that stick thingy), go into the school's AV room by himself, and show off his light saber skills to a video camera. Why would anyone think to do this? I don't know. But it's fairly obvious to anyone watching that Ghys appears to be a couple of muppets short of a Jedi Council, if you know what I mean. Which is probably also the reason why he didn't have the cerebral capacity to remember to erase the videotape or take it home with him and hide it away in a deep, dark place forever and ever. It seems that in addition to the mean bully conspiracy theory, SWK is somewhat, if not mostly, to blame for his predicament.

Ninja, Please!

Between the ages of 11 and 14, my mission in life was to become a ninja. No, seriously. Way before it sort of became a Chuck-Norris-esque- internet-hipster-ironic-retro-thing. To be more specific, I actually wanted to be a Ninja Turtle. Unfortunately, radioactive mutagen is somewhat hard to obtain when you're in the 6th grade, pet turtles aren't sold anymore because they can breed salmonella, and you have to have your Mom sign for katana swords when they're delivered by UPS. (Funny story, actually - that really happened. Mom wasn't too thrilled with the idea of me swinging around large bladed objects, and made me send it back, along with the throwing stars and grappling hook I ordered). I took out books on Ninjitsu from the library, I even fashioned Ninja masks from my t-shirts (ask me and I'll show you). I felt no need to actually take martial arts lessons... I had already sat through all three Ninja Turtles movies, and I memorized all the cool phrases to yell when you're punching and kicking hordes of anonymous, clumsy bad guys.

"When the evil Shredder attacks, these Turtle Boys don't cut him no slack!"

I identify with SWK to the point that I have zero sympathy for him. I, too, hung out during my early teens in my backyard, fashioning wooden ninja weapons, having practice ninja battles with my two similarly socially-misfit friends, collecting smokebombs and planning nighttime patrols to fight crime (I wish I was kidding). I was so painfully geeky, I can't help but laugh at how earnestly I loved it all. While writing this article, I figured I'd dig through my family photo albums and find some atrociously awful picture of me posing with my bo staff in my jams and neon green t-shirt, or something, and put it up on the blog. But no, I found no such pictures. Apprently, amidst my carefree days of whacking myself in the family jewels with my nunchuks and preparing to be a superhero vigilante - I had the common sense to NEVER RECORD ANY OF IT! That might be a good bit of advice for all you people out there that want to videotape yourself doing something you don't want other people to see. If you videotape or record it in any way, you are intrinsically acknowledging that it may be seen by others. Tommy Lee, Pam Anderson, Paris Hilton, Fred Durst, Chyna, X-Pac, Rob Lowe, Brett Michaels, Pam Anderson (again), Tom Sizemore... you all should have known better.

Those are the whitest sneakers I've ever seen not on an 80-year-old person...

So, as you can see above, hands down, I beat Ghyslain for biggest geek in the universe. I was old-school dork, back before school administrators were more obsessed with self-esteem and bully-prevention, than... you know, education. Mercilessly harangued by the knuckle-dragging upper-crust of middle school, I had to grow up fast. So maybe this is why I have nothing with disdain for Ghyslain Raza - SWK, because his parents went and sued the kids who originally put the video onto the internet, for mental cruelty and other assorted new-wave, hippy bullshit.

Without a doubt, the worst picture of me... ever. Sorry I put this in, bro.

It is my fervent belief that the moment our legal system began doling out cash rewards for "pain and suffering," the very fabric of human society began to unravel. This abysmal legal precedent has encouraged the utterly absurd notion that we are all somehow entitled to a life without suffering, pain, injury, or danger. When did this happen? Since the dawn of human civilization, back in the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates, people have, on occasion, tripped over their feet and scraped their knee. It didn't matter if they were in front of Mabooboo's thatched hut, they just said, "Oh boy, I skinned my knee... I guess I should be more careful." Only in the last thirty years or so, do people feel entitled to extort money from others because something bad happened to them, and our legal framework has somehow justified it. Now if you skin your knee in front of Mabooboo's hut, you can sue him for medical costs and damages for gross negligence because he didn't have to forethought to provide clearly marked signs warning pedestrians of slight bumps in the dirt. I don't object to someone being reimbursed for some finite, known amount. If someone drives their car into you, destroys your car and puts you in the hospital, that person is without a doubt responsible to replace your car and pay your hospital bills. But that's it. Bad things happen to people, and the world is a big, mean place. So in the words of Dennis Miller - "Wear a cup!" Because you never know what might happen.

Thus, the fact that the Razas sued the two kids who put the video on the internet, and lamentably won around 300,000 dollars (Canadian), is atrocious. On behalf of the millions of nerds in the world, who've grown up amidst the taunts and scorn of our Neanderthal contemporaries, and somehow grew above it, you are hereby stripped of any status or depiction of "nerd," "geek," or "dork," and are permanently relegated now and forever as "helpless loser for life." Congratulations to the newly wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Raza for raising a gigantic infant who will never be able to cope with the real world. My snidest regards for the coddling hippies that raised money to buy that idiot an ipod. And nothing but my deepest and most utter disgust for Canada's own Ghyslain Raza - you guys can keep him. Also, no more Star Wars for you. We're taking that back, too. Jackass.

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