• My wife was 4 or 5 years old when she first saw Star Wars, and she developed a mad crush on, you guessed it...no, not Han Solo, but Chewbacca! She even went so far as to proclaim sternly to her mother that when she grew up she was going to be a Veterinarian so she could marry Chewbacca and take care of him forever!

• "I once punched a man for saying Hawk the Slayer is Rubbish.... I was defending the fantasy genre with terminal intensity, when what i should have said was dad you're right but lets give Krull a try and we'll discuss it later"

• Went and saw the Dark Knight in theaters. My friend tried to argue that the producers of the movie were WoW fans, because they made mention of the Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object (Both items in WoW). While I argued that both sources got the idea from (ta-da) a book! I had to slap him and tell him to read once in a while...

• @Patracolos I thought that your mention of your definition of sex was in the section referring to sex with Professor Xavier, not dealing with the Snark/Cheetara argument. To give the full paragraph where you mentioned this: "@Fondoofushu: What about being a parpalegic? That would rule sex out if his junk isn't working. He may be able to read your mind and maybe give you an orgasm with his mind (mindgasm?), but it isn't sex unless there is penetration with a penis..." It was only after that you brought up bestiality. Not only is it a two-sex definition, but it discriminates against people with disabilities. So I still have a problem with your definition and the context it was used in.

• Typos are temporary, but grammar Nazi-ism is forever! Sex between members of two sentient species with human-like intelligence and reasoning capabilities wouldn't be bestiality simply because neither participant is an animal. Otherwise Captain Kirk is quite the offender. That's if we widen the definition to include sentient, reasoning non-human species in fiction. If we don't, then it still can't be bestiality because there are no humans involved at all.

• It still isn't beastiality because Cheetara isn't HUMAN. So it makes no difference as to whether Snarf is a humanoid or not. One participant of the joining must be human for it to actually be beastiality. It is possible that the Thundariens have a word to describe sex between themselves and another species from their original planet. And just a side question: What would you call sex between cheetara and Slythe or Jakalman? They are both obviously not of the same race as Cheetara, so would you consider that to be beastiality as well?

• @The Man With Two Brains: The Snarfs seem to be used as servants, or slaves, not as pets. (In Osbert's case he was the nanny of Lion-O, Lord of the Thundercats.) The Thunderians are an alien Species that look like humans/Earth feline hybrids. The Snarfs are more cat-like, but they still speak the "human" language, have their own society, like the Thunderian Nobles that they serve. If Cheetara fucking Snarf is Bestiality, then Pumyra fucking Hachiman is Bestiality too?

• Gah! Sorry about the double post!

• @Kenny Strife: The difference is that Snarfs aren't properly humanoid, and are still treated as an animal species while elves are a seperate humanoid society. And it's "vein" not "vain" in that usage.

• @Kenny Strife: The difference is that Snarfs aren't properly humanoid, and are still treated as an animal species while elves are a seperate humanoid society. And it's "vein" not "vain" in that usage.

• @Doc_Ock_4mugen: Pet/nursemaid... whatever. Nana from Peter Pan showed that an animal could still be both. And anyway, it's NOT the same thing as you describe because SNARF IS ALSO THE SPECIES NAME. Snarfs AREN'T the same as regular Thundarans, so it IS beastiality!!!

• I recently got into a fight (on the internets, mind you) as to whether Hitler's zombie creations would be immune to fire or not after having been frozen in a glacier since the 40s. In my defense, I don't think I was taking it as seriously as the other guy. He started bringing up Pokemon logic, as in fire beats ice. Which is all very silly to argue about anyway. Everyone knows Hitler worked on werewomen, not zombies.

• @The Man with Two Brains The difference is that while dolphins are very intelligent, they aren't as smart as humans. I hesitate to say they aren't sentient... but they are most definitely animals. Meanwhile, Snarfs are most definitely an intelligent, sentient species capable of human-like reasoning. He's definitely not the same species as Cheetarah, but it wouldn't be bestiality. Just some inter-species nookie. In the same vain, it isn't bestiality when elves and humans do the nasty to produce those oh-so-popular half-elves, is it?

• Years ago my Shadowrun players got into a argument with a group of AD&D players, over who's characters would win in a fight. Both sides got very intent and used a GURPs template to square up in a fight. Round 1. Their mage casts a spell to nullify gunpowder, que much merriment from them. Unfortunately we had a chemist in the Shadrowrun team, who pointed out that modern weapons didn't use black powder but instead white powder. This pretty much ended the battle, and we got into an intense loud argument about the chemical makeup of our bullets. The A&D group knew that they'd last about 3 1/2 seconds if we kept our guns and refused to back down.

• And by "embarrassing" I guess I mean shameful. Either way, it's shondah.

• This wasn't so embarrassing for me as for my cousin, who I was intentionally trying to make look like a dork. So back in college, my cousin Perry drunkenly gets some cute girl's number at a party. He decides to utilize the digits at some point afterward, but she doesn't call back. Then, on the way to a class, we bump into her in the hallway, and and awkward conversation ensues where homegirl tells my cousin that, you know, her phone was broken (for two weeks) and that's why she never got back to him. Perry is too excited to be talking to her again to face the blatant fact that he's being fed some bullshit, so I decide to intervene. In my extraloud militant-nerd voice, I launch into the Biggie v. 2Pac of superpower debates. "So Perry, I was thinking about it, and I've decided I'd definitely rather be able to teleport than fly. I mean, you could get places faster, and you could sort of mimic flying by very rapidly teleporting short distances, almost like how animation works." I then turn to the girl. "What do <i>you</i> think?" She has no opinion and scoots away on the quick. Perry turns crimson. When he finally lets me explain what I was doing, he actually grudgingly thanked me.

• Okay, folks. this deals with comic continuity, specifically about the Golden Age Sandman's girlfriend Dian Belmont. I got into an argument in the late 90's on the Comic Book Resources chatroom. Somebody on there wanted to know why Wesley (the Golden Age Sandman) and Diane (his girl Friday) never got married. Simple. She's dead. NO! no she's not! Why did Wesley never marry Diane? Because she's dead. Well, NOW she's not, so why didn't they get married? It's Dian. No, It's Diane! This went on for a couple of hours or so with me trying to explain that, until recent (mid-90's DC comic books that I hadn't read), Dian had been D-E-A-D. But the guy wouldn't take "dead" for an answer. The guy was like, "but...what about current continuity? Why didn't they get married in current continuity?" for which there really wasn't a definitive answer, other than a character depicted as being alive in a couple of issues of then-current 90's continuity, makes absolutely no sense in light of all the previous continuity. The character was written into the Sandman's 1940's stories as his "Margo Lane". A couple of years later, Simon and Kirby decided to give him a costumed boy sidekick (the purple and yellow tights costume redesign was months earlier, probably the work of Cliff Young) and ignored the chick who was never heard from again. She wasn't around in the 50's, she wasn't depicted in the 60's, when the Sandman reappeared. In the 70's, where both Sandman's (Wesley Dodd's) house and the former kid sidekick (who had been turned into a mutant.) were depicted, but not Dian. In the early 80's, Roy Thomas wrote into continuity in the retro-1940's era All-Star Squadron issues (he wrote both that book and Infinity Inc which depicted many, many other obscure 1940's characters) that the reason Dian had not appeared in current continuity for all these years was because Dian had died impersonating the Sandman in the early 1940's. It made sense, since Dian had not appeared or even been mentioned in some 40-odd years. Post 1986, DC had this huge "apple cart turnover" called Crisis, ostensibly to keep from "confusing new readers" which basically meant that continuity went out the window and it could be whatever the editors wanted, from this week to the next. Basically, it pissed me off and quickly drove me from buying DC books every week to basically stop and think before ever buying anything with a DC slug on it again and concentrated all my fandom and money on Marvel Comics and independents. (I bought to finish the run of "Who's Who", DC's character index and then basically quit the modern stuff. Outside of reprints, I'm proud to say I haven't bought any "new" DC books in the past seven years or so.) Some snooty European writer started writing a "new" Sandman comic book series in the early 90's that became insanely popular because it had psuedo-Goth characters way, way before Hot Topic existed (the "old" Hot Topic, that is, back when they were a pretentious, prefab "Gap-store-for-Goths". They aren't even that anymore.) This was back in the early 90's when kids I knew primaraly got their "ooh-I'm-SO-trendy-look-at-me-I'm-a-Goth" fix from reading Anne Rice novels and watching Edward Scissorhands a few billion times. Anyway, this lead to the company doing a "new" Golden Age Sandman Series, which was done solely to exploit the fandom that had developed around this new Sandman series. This retro book, which took place in the 40's, featured Dian as a supporting character. The problem comes in when a writer, ignoring ALL previous continuity, decided to have these 40's characters make an appearance in another book he's writing, a "modern era" comic in the mid-90's, therefore violating the continuity so that Dian, a character who had not made a current appearance in DC continutiy for nearly 60 years and not depicted as being alive post-1942 was suddenly alive, well and still working as the character's girl Friday. I've had a lot of geeky arguments in my life but this one STILL annoys me to this day.

• &#64;Chelsea I have a buddy who pronounces it "Chacoba" as well. It bugged the shit out of me when we talked about Final Fantasy.

• &#64; The Man With Two Brains: I'm pretty sure that Snarf wasn't their pet... HE was more like a nursemaid, or babysitter for Lion-O. So Cheetara having sex with Snarf would be like having sex with a (I'm trying to say this as politically correct as possible...) a Thunderian Bushman with down syndrome and dwarfisim.

• &#64;Oeste While I did ignore lesbianism, it was only in the context of the described situation. Cheetara and Snarf. Cheetara is obviously female, and Snarf obviously male. Unless you believe some of the fanfic that is most undoubtedly out there. So your point is taken and if it had been a single sex scenario, then I would not have limited my statement to a dual sexual position.

• Also, of course I'm not referring to the Vulcan mating part of Pon-Farr, but the type of battle Kirk and Spock had while the latter was under the influence of it in Amok Time.

• &#64;Aingeal dar Cathu: Pon-Farr it is.

• If this is too late for the contest then that's fine, but I'd still like to share. :) Last year, I finally discovered Gundam Wing thanks to some guy friends of mine. I had completely forgotten about it on Cartoon Network for some reason even though I pretty much spent my entire childhood watching TV. So basically, I was obsessed with Gundam Wing as a female high school student last year. I've been going to anime conventions for years now and I snapped some photos of Gundam Wing cosplayers last year. None of my guy friends who are obsessed with Gundam Wing are actually into the "otaku scene" like I am, so I put the pics up on facebook for them. The next day at school, one of the guys who had lent me his Gundam Wing DVDs came up to me excitedly. Guy: Ohmygod, you know those con pictures you put up? That Heero cosplayer was so good!! Me: What do you mean by "good"? Guy: I mean he was PERFECT, like the physique and everything! Me: ....What? Guy: Yeah, he was really good! Me: ...Now I don't want to hate on the guy or anything but I mean well he wasn't THAT good... I mean he wasn't fat or anything but he wasn't nearly fit enough to match Heero Yuy. Guy: But he had the hair and the shorts!- Me: Wait, wait, OKAY I think my opinion AS A GIRL is higher than your opinion here. Guy: Well I thought he was pretty good- Me: NO! I mean, he wasn't ugly but he wasn't that cute! I mean he's awesome for doing that costume but, ohmygod he was not a perfect Heero Yuy! My friend still does not agree with me. I do not understand high school boys.

• My nerd friends and I used have had lengthy discussions about which is the truest nerd late night hangout: Denny's or the Village Inn. This wouldn't seem so sad except we were always in one or the other, seriously discussing the reasons we should or shouldn't go to the other so we could load up on caffeine and have other shameful nerd fights until the sun rose. I always won because I met my wife at Denny's and have therefore actually known the touch of a woman.

• I had two nerdy friends argue whether the OS Linux is pronounced "Linn-ucks" or "Line-ecks." I wept for the fate of humanity.

• &#64;The Man With Two Brains: I challenge you to a duel, sir. With no thought to how foolish I'm going to feel when they're all talking at my funeral about how I went down for the Thunderean non-beastiality cause. At least the nerd half of the room would be proud of my sacrifice. When they weren't too busy coming to blows over the argument themselves. My long suffering family, on the other hand, would probably be ashamed to be seen at the event. But they're pretty well used to that by now. I'm also now kind of concerned you might be that creepy guy who first introduced the internet to the hows of dolphin-fucking. I don't want the only thing people remember about me to be that I got my ass kicked by a Flipper-humper. :/

• dear lord I've got some embarrassing ones, i used to hang out with a bunch of anime fangirls (the rabid "this character is MINE and no one Else's" kind of fangirl) now it was safe to say these girls counted as "weeaboos" and would spout out random Japanese words in normal sentences and would generally mispronounce them, one of the girls that i hung out with often would constantly mispronounce Zelda names; for example she would pronounce "Saria" as "Sarah" and "Navi" as "Navy", and she would correct me if i pronounced them way they're actually pronounced, and later when i brought up proof she would just say "oh i know that's how they're pronounced, i just like saying them this way" and being a guy who takes pride in knowing his pronunciations this just served to piss me off royally. but one argument in particular still irks and shames me today, now this one involved at least 3 out of 5 of these girls, and we would argue constantly on how to pronounce... wait for it... we would argue on how to pronounce the word "YAOI", i shit you not. now I've actually found proof of how to correctly pronounce it (as in I've heard it pronounced by the Japanese) and anyone who can sound out words can probably figure out that its pronounced "Ya-ow-ee", THEY on the other-hand, pronounced it "Yoi" (like "Koi") now once again let me bring up the fact that these were girls that would devote a LARGE chunk of time to drawing/writing yaoi fan-fiction and that's practically all they talked about with each other, so you must know that as a Man, and as a man who is also a semi-Grammar Nazi, this was absolutely mind-numbing and we would argue FOREVER on this topic and one of them kept retorting with "There's no W in there!!!", no matter what proof i laid before them they would always just shrug me off, and in the end this was one of the steps that led me to cut off all contact with them. in the end, neither side one, they were still retarded weeaboo fangirls, and i argued about the pronunciation of gay anime porn. probably one of the lowest points in my life as a man.

• i thought over and over in my head whether or not to post this. i tried to remember a different argument, but none came close to this one. when i was in sixth grade, i had to go to aftercare after school because my mom worked late hours. most of my friends were in it with me. usually, we watched movies and tv. the teacher this day had brought in the direct to video sequel of the little mermaid. so me and my friends and watching this stupid movie, and i absently mention to my friend how its sort of funny how Ursula's sister is really thin. he turns to me and says "that's not her sister, that's her daughter." well, this simply was not correct. earlier on in the movie, she has specifically stated that she was her sister. and she also mentioned how "mother always loved Ursula more". how could he be so dumb? "no, its her sister, they've said it a few times now." i tell him. he whips his head around to me and yells "ITS HER DAUGHTER STUPID" well, now it jumped up a notch. "um, no, its her daughter. they've said it a gajillion times, idiot" "NAME ONE TIME THEY SAID THAT" i proceed to describe the opening scene where she tries to kidnap Ariel's baby, and she states she is ursula's sister very clearly. "SHE NEVER SAID THAT" "IT WAS IN THE FIRST FUCKING FIVE MINUTES, HOW STUPID ARE YOU THAT YOU CANT FOLLOW A MOVIE FOR FIVE YEAR OLDS WITHOUT GETTING CONFUSED?!" we shouted at each other until we were red in the face. but i couldn't back down because i was a huge disney nerd. plus, i always have to be right (which i completely was). eventually the teacher intervened and she made me move my chair to the row in front of my friend so we weren't facing each other and, in theory, could no longer make conflict. but then my friend started to complain he couldn't see with me in front of him. i knew he was lying because the tv was elevated and i was not directly in front of him. plus he was just a whiny little bitch. he decided to kick my chair over and over until i moved. i tried to ignore it, but he kept kicking it harder and harder, until i turned around and started to hit him in the face with my tiny girl fists, and then he kicked my chair so it slid across the floor and i couldn't reach him, but i climbed over it like an animal and my other friends had to restrain us. the whole time we were screaming at each other "SHES HER SISTER YOU STUPID SHIT" "ITS HER DAUGHTER YOU BITCH" me and my friend came to blows over the villain in a crappy direct to video disney sequel. where's my shirt?

• &#64;JimmyPL: It is bestiality. I'll Pon-Farr duel anyone who says otherwise!

• Doug, Rob really seemed to be taking the mickey out of himself in that article intro. I have been reading his style on this site for over a year and that is how I read it. In addition he has admitted his own bias in writing, although he admittedly lacks compensating for it most of the time. He didn't mention anyone by name, the story clearly shows a lack of evidence to the oppositions point, a hallmark of a nerd's POV on their argument. Not bestiality. Helen Keller wouldn't see it coming. HA! Klingon Hymen would be a really good band name. After the deadline but amusing story that happened this weekend on vacation with the family. My brother in law chastised my niece for reading Twilight, saying Edward was on the hunt... for hair products. My 10 year old niece commented correctly that my brother in law has the exact same hairstyle as Edward. Pause. He turns around and storms out of the room.

• That this site is worth the time, effort and energy of my Nerd friends... to no avail...

• So I have not one but three arguments to share. The first one is quite simple, I was arguing the fact (while watching Land of the Dead) that Zombies can't breathe underwater with a friend of mine who said they could, because I said it would be impossible for the zombies to reach the city by river-walking. The 2nd, deals with this jackass I know. He states one day that he knew FOR A FACT the villain of the 3rd batman film was going to be the Riddler because the Joker says 'They'll be doubling up the rate the city loses their minds.' In pure confusion, I yell 'WHAT? How does that make the villain the Riddler?' And I shit you not, he had the gull to tell me the following, 'Because the riddler's power is that he takes people's minds.' I stared at him from a moment with look of shock trying to decide if I should answer this guy who doesn't know anything about batman. I decided to educate him. I said calmly, 'No...you must be thinking of the Mad Hatter. He's been know to use mind control. The Riddler has no powers.' Of course, again, he told me the riddler did. I responded, 'No he doesn't. The riddler just commits crimes and leaves riddles behind for people to try and stop him.' He interjected, 'Yea, he takes thier minds with the riddles.' 'No, he leaves riddles because he has a complex of some sort that doesn't allow him to lie. He has no powers. Mad Hatter uses mind control.' Then he told me, 'Well, in The Dark Knight series he did, and that series is what the movies are based off of.' (I haven't read Dark knight returns or strikes again, and found out later the riddler isn't even those books) 'Dude, seriously? Only the car is taken from the Dark Knight. Even if he did have those powers in that series....we're talking post apocalyptic world, where robin's a girl, and Joker is a muscle head. That argument holds no weight.' After this he stomped out of the room for a cig. the 3rd is bad because this argument was held over the course of a couple months on several separate occasions. It started as an argument about if Robocop was considered to be a robot, a cyborg, or an android. I forgot who was on which end.....but the argument continued to several fictional characters in general who had some semblance of robot parts on them (such as Vader, Vash, or Jet from Cowboy Bebop). It eventually spilled out to if we consider people with prosthetic limbs in real life to be considered androids or whatnot. It got to the point where we were looking through the dictionary to find literal definitions to support our arguments. This might be the most shameful for me because not only did every argument turn into a stale mate, EVERYONE around us asked the three of us to stop....even other geeks and nerds.

• A buddy of mine got into an argument with me while I was acting as Dungeon Master on whether or not Avarial (sp?) would be closterphobic. In Second Edition they were, and it made no mention of it in Third Edition's Faerun supplimental stuff. I said they were, and was enforcing will saves for him to go deeper underground, and he started throwing a sh*t fit. Finally, I told him, "I'm the Games Operating Director, now what the f*ck does that spell, bucko?! You don't like it? Take your dice, and go the f*ck home!"

• I've spent the better part of my life under the impression that I am infallible. I'm the bitch that argues with you for hours and hours and finally ends with "You can think you're right, but you'll never convince me. I'm okay in my own knowledge that you're wrong." That little statement usually leads to exasperated screams from whoever I'm arguing with and surprisingly, not with a fist in my nose. The longest running and most violent of which has been my Mac vs. PC argument with my friend. He claims PCs are the superior machine is ALL aspects. I maintain that the only thing they're usually good for is beating him over the head.

• Two: In eight grade my lab partner and I could not agree on whether we had distilled ethanol or isopropyl. It got heated and someone pushed the other and the next thing you know we were throwing punches and a bunch of desks got knocked over. Luckily it got broken up and happened when the teacher was out of the room. He and I joked about it in the yearbook. I had two running debates with a guy at my church about a) which was better: DC or Marvel? and b) who knew more about comics in general. I was the DC guy, but it didn't really make sense because I read Marvel books too, I think his constant dissin' of DC just bugged me. We would make up questionnaires about each our respective companies and submit them to one another to demonstrate who had superior comic book knowledge. Finally, to settle it once and for all we had a big comic book trivia "show down" at our church youth group where we grilled each other and also submitted questions to the other kids. I was pissed because his questions to the group were considered "harder" because this was back in the Super Friends era and kids were more familiar with DC characters. I think we tied in the mano-e-mano showdown. I was totally serious and humorless about the whole affair. Totaly shameful. Totally nerdy.

• While I've certainly had my fair share of nerdy arguments (alignments in D&D, my dislike of Harry Potter as a fantasy book, and my hatred that burns like a thousand suns for Twilight, amongst others), I will forgo those tales to take this on. @Patracolos There are many problems I have with your statement "it isn't sex unless there is penetration with a penis..." Probably the biggest one is how incredibly sexist and heterocentric it is. According to this two girls are completely incapable of having sex with each other. I assure you that is incorrect. There are many definitions of sex, also referred to as sexual intercourse. One was agreed upon between my group of friends to prevent arguments during rounds of "Never Have I Ever." There we gave a general definition that would cover all variations of sexual acts which one could make more specific with modifiers. We defined sex as "physical stimulation of a partner with intent to orgasm whether or not that orgasm occurs." Many people seem to have a problem with this definition. I am uncertain exactly why people get so twitchy over that. But that's not the argument at hand. That definition is usually how I see things. However I do understand that it is not at all a widely known or accepted view. Instead I shall take the more academic approach. While there are definitions of sexual intercourse as only involving a penis penetrating a vagina, that is never the sole definition. Yes it is one of the original uses of the term (dates range from mid 18th to early 19th century), however if we were to pull that argument we would only be able to use the word "nice" to call someone an idiot (OED "Of a person: foolish, silly, simple; ignorant."). Language is a constantly changing aspect of culture, and the definitions of words get morphed and updated all the time. Here are a few examples: Oxford English Dictionary - "sexual intercourse n. sexual relations or union between the sexes (in early use often with the), copulation, coition; (now esp.) intimate sexual contact between two individuals involving penetration (PENETRATION n. 1b) and typically leading to orgasm, which serves (between a male and a female of various species) as the means of sexual reproduction, and (in humans) typically expresses feelings of love or desire; = INTERCOURSE n. 2d; an instance of this; (also in later use more generally) any form of sexual contact of this kind between members of the same sex." Merriam Webster Dictionary - "1 : heterosexual intercourse involving penetration of the vagina by the penis : coitus 2 : intercourse (as anal or oral intercourse) that does not involve penetration of the vagina by the penis" Dictionary.com (just for kicks)- "genital contact, esp. the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by orgasm; coitus; copulation." (note, it gives penis and vagina as an example of genital contact, not the sole form of it) This opens it up to a large range of options including allowing the two girls I mentioned earlier to finally get around to having sex. Have a nice day. (tl;dr version: Sex is more than penis in vagina. Yay lesbians!)

• I grew up watching Batman TAS. One thing I learned from that, as well as other DCAU shows was that Bruce/Batman has a plan for every eventuality. Nothing escapes him and he has defeated every foe that has come at him. It has been covered in the books extensively as well. After we got home from the second Lord of the Rings movie we got into a discussion about Gandalf and how powerful he was as a magic user. My wife had been really upset he apparently died in the first movie, and begged me to tell her whether he lived or not. As far as I'm concerned the 3rd rule of nerd club is you don't talk about spoilers. She read the books and fully understood just how powerful this gray become white wizard is. Her opinion was that he was the most powerful wizard in ever and him versus Dumbledore would be a good fight, but anyone else would fall almost immediately. A long running discussion with my best friend and I is figuring out how Batman would dispatch non DC foes, and the only person we think he might have trouble with is Logan/Wolverine. Magic users don't stand a chance versus the Dark Knight. Things got hot. My wife eventually ran to the bedroom crying. I called my friend and while he agreed with me, he pointed out that perhaps if she was crying I had gotten a little too involved. Later that night we made up. In Summation: I made my wife cry because I think Batman could beat Gandalf.

• So I'm a HUGE fan of Rocko's Modern Life since its inception, and watched it even into college during the reruns. Even found a few friends who were into it (one of which I'll call Javier, or Javi, since that's his name). So one of the last season episodes, From Here to Maternity, had Filbert the Turtle and Dr. Paula 'Hutch' Hutchison, a cat, expecting children. Opening with Filbert, Rocko, and Heffer racing the stork to the hospital (literally), the trio find Hutch with their egg. Ever the working girl, Hutch leaves the egg in Filbert's care, despite his natural instinct to bury it. With his posterior not fit to properly nest the egg, they recruit Heffer's gluteus maximus to finish the process. After a series of hilarious misadventures, the trio and the egg wind up in jail, where it proceeds to hatch. The result: two sets of turtles (Gilbert and Shellbert), a kitten (Missy), and...a baby steer resembling Heffer (Norbert). It is with Norbert that our debate begins. Javi stated that Norbert is the by-product of an affair between Hutch and Heffer. I countered that such a baby was the product of osmosis, as the children were still being developed within the egg and since Heffer sat on it, many of his characteristics were absorbed by the fetus that was closest to the portion of the egg directly touching Heffer's ass. I felt that my argument was more valid, as Norbert's eyes were very reminiscent of Filbert's, which could not be a sole product of an affair between Hutch and Heffer. Javi, however, was not convinced, and pointed to many of the show's numerous adult innuendos and entendres cleverly hidden within the show since its inception, as well as a telling line of dialogue within the penultimate episode 'Future Schlock' where, upon his brother Gilbert (or is it Shellbert?) commenting that Norbert resembles 'Uncle Heffer', Norbert responds with the heavy 'Hey, what do ya MEAN?' Still, I would not accept that theory, as despite the adult humor the show has gotten away with, I would not believe that after all the trouble Filbert and Hutch went through to get married in 'The Big Question/The Big Answer', I couldn't believe that she would throw it all away and give it up for a fat bastard like Heffer (Rocko, maybe...he was voiced by Officer Garcia of Reno 911, after all). Luckily, we reached a compromise: since the show established that a company employing a stork LITERALLY delivers children to expectant mothers, we concluded that Norbert was simply a mix-up in deliveries. Of course, one would have to believe that somewhere within the universe of the show, there existed parents that resembled Heffer and Filbert...which honestly is not hard at all to believe. So I guess two nerds (well, one nerd...I won't out Javi without his permission) can reach a compromise. But the worst part: I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the tubes of the internets, there's a graphic fan fiction that fully validates, maybe even expounds upon, Javi's original hypothesis...and even worse, that it will appear on this site someday.

• My friend and I used to argue over which phaser configuration would cause the least amount of wrist strain on the user. I believe that the Original Series or Enterprise phasers allow the crew member to hold and fire it in the most natural positioning of the outstretched arm. The Next Generation phasers require you to hold it like a television remote and makes aiming difficult at eye level.

• Ok here we go... This is the most recent in a fairly long line of nerd arguments. This one revolves around Wolverine from Marvel Comics and whether or not he had superhuman strength.... It started when I mentioned that wolverine had superhuman strength according to the way he was portrayed by marvel. I pointed out how this was rationalized by his adamantium skeleton causing his muscles to adjust to the added weight. I clarified my position by stating that wolverine barely qualifies for superhuman but he does in fact have superhuman strength... One of my friends decided that this wasn't the case as you weren't super strong unless you could lift 100 tons, and throw a bus around like the hulk or ben grimm... we disagreed, and in the end it was about 5 people on my side and just him on the other... we thought the argument had died... fast forward to two days later, I had received a volley of text messages and voicemails about the nature of wolverines superhuman strength and how unless I could explain how he was superhumanly strong he was not super-strong... So thus began the argument. I contended that if Captain America is to be taken as the paragon of humanity, any physical characteristic he possessed would be the ultimate a normal human could achieve, and as wolverine was demonstrably stronger than the cap, wolverine was by definition supernaturally strong. It was at this point that I realized we were headed down the rabbit hole as I was citing comic book fact as hard evidence and building logical syllogisms to prove the strength of a comic book character... but frankly I didn't care. I thought the argument had been won... boy was I wrong. Fast forward to three days from that point, and now I get a message telling me that unless I could provide documentation saying that wolverine was superhumanly strong... he wasn't. I was told websites of any type did not count, it had to be published in print... basically my friend wanted me to buy the newest encyclopedia marvel to prove my point. I accepted the challenge and me and a few friends drove around to a couple book stores looking for an encyclopedia of marvel characters... we found one in a bookstore in a nearby city but it was forty dollars and I was not spending that much to prove my point... I was getting ready to give up when I decided to call a friend of mine who probably already owned it, turns out he did and I drove over to his house to borrow it. When my friend heard that I had the book in hand he suddenly was "sick" and no one could come over (he was fine not but four hours before). He knew that the friend that had the book was getting ready to go on a trip and was banking on the fact that I wouldn't be able to borrow the book while he was out of town... he was half right. The next day I told him I didn't have the book anymore, and he invited us all over to hang out. Right when we sat down I handed him my phone to reveal photos (fairly high res) of the book in question revealing both wolverines strength, captain america's strength, and what the names of each strength category in the marvel universe was. Wolverine was not only stronger than cap, but he had "Supernatural Strength". I was told that I might have shopped the picture (the one I took with my phone) so it was not reliable evidence, and nor were the words of any of my friends... To this day the argument has never been settled as any evidence shown to the contrary is not reliable as while marvel may say that wolverine has a certain level of strength my friend says otherwise, and his opinion is fact...

• My friend and I were at Olive Garden enjoying some unlimited breadsticks, salad and soup lunch. We were talking about Star Wars, and said how improbable it was that the planets were based off single biomes, like Endor is all Forest, Hoth all ice, etc. She brought up the point that in Firefly, the planets are all desert-y. I countered that the Firefly universe doesn't count because the planets were terraformed incorrectly, thus their barren desert appearance. We were getting a bit loud, as as we looked around at the other patrons giving us weird looks or outright avoiding our glances, we decided an Olive Garden at 3pm was not the correct venue for this argument. I was still totally right.

• I once witnessed a knock down drag out arguement about the exact meaning of level 1 of D&D, does it mean that you have been in a few battles or did you just pick up a sword and leave the village. All I could say is that's why I play Runequest :)

• &#64;xvbones: You were completely in the right. I still think it's an amazing movie, but it would've been still better had it kept truer to its fairy tale roots. Example: "The Death of the Little Hen" the hen and the cock say they'll share whatever they find. The hen finds a huge nut and quickly tries to eat it all so the cock won't see. She dies. Then everyone in the forest dies as they try to give her a funeral. So yeah, do what you say you're going to do, or you're completely fucked. @Hellhound: I'd say chaotic good. All his actions are for what he believes is right, but aside from his one rule, he'll do whatever it takes to accomplish his tasks.

• &#64;xvbones: You were completely in the right. I still think it's an amazing movie, but it would've been still better had it kept truer to its fairy tale roots. Example: "The Death of the Little Hen" the hen and the cock say they'll share whatever they find. The hen finds a huge nut and quickly tries to eat it all so the cock won't see. She dies. Then everyone in the forest dies as they try to give her a funeral. So yeah, do what you say you're going to do, or you're completely fucked. @Hellhound: I'd say chaotic good. All his actions are for what he believes is right, but aside from his one rule, he'll do whatever it takes to accomplish his tasks.

• I once got into an argument with my friends as to what Batman's alignment would be if he were a D & D character.

• (addendum) her arguement was that it was all taking place in her head, the satyr and fantasy elements were all concoctions of her mind as her reality became increasingly oppressive and horrifying. I said that this only compounded my point - if all this was taking place in her own mind, and she is obsessed with fairy tales, she STILL shouldn't have been forgiven so easily. She'd have been completely familiar with the very black-and-white morality of fairy tales (you're either obedient or you're fucked). She pointed out that the little girl died anyway, and the Satyr didn't forgive her right away, he made her do a 'test' to see if she'd sacrifice her baby brother. I called bullshit, she called me an argumentative prick and it went downhill from there.

• Some time ago, my then-girlfriend and I went to see the movie Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo Del Toro. The two of us were/are both big fans of Del Toro's work, and as I'm a fairly huge mythology/folklore buff, I was really looking forward to this movie. And it was brilliant, it really was. The performances were excellent, the visuals were stunning, the sudden and brutal violence was harrowing and then. And then. It got to the part of the movie where the little girl eats the food off the table she's been forbidden to eat, rousing the horrible monster who kills the girl's two faerie companions. She returns to the Satyr, who, upon realizing that she disobeyed his orders not to eat that food, shuns her and leaves. This is brilliant. This is exactly how fairy tales go - they are moral lessons and there's never any 'backsies'. She screwed up and now she has no escape from the horror that is steadily overtaking her life. The flights of fancy up to now had been marvellous escapism, anything to keep her away from her real life, and now she has no escape. Brilliant. And then, near the end of the movie, the Satyr shows up and forgives her. WHAT. NO. THAT NEVER HAPPENS. EVER. FAIRY TALES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. Once a rule has been broken in a fairy tale, that's it. There's no going back. There's only punishment, never ever ever forgiveness. I brought this up with my then-girlfriend on the way out, stating that this fallacy ruined part of the movie for me - the little girl was reading OLD-SCHOOL fairy tales, which either end in blood and pain OR salvation, entirely depending on, usually, a single choice the protagonist makes. Our protagonist made the wrong choice. The Satyr shouldn't have come to her, if she wanted forgiveness, she should have gone out to find the Satyr. She disagreed with me. The resulting argument lasted about four hours and ended with the outright termination of our five-month-long love affair. I never faltered. Even as she was threatening to leave. The little girl shouldn't have been forgiven, not if Del Toro was paying closer attention to the rules of a fairy tale universe. Sometimes I miss her. Then I remember the arguement and immediately my mind goes to NO, DAMN IT, I WAS RIGHT.

• While this may not stack up against some other entries, here I go: Okay, so my best friend and I are both nerds. I've always known it, but he was reluctant to admit that fact until just a year or two ago. What changed his mind, you ask? I'll tell you. One day we were playing a game on Xbox LIVE. Though I can't remember the game, the conversation is burned into my brain. We had been playing for several hours with a few of our friends, but all but one of them signed off for the night, with the remaining friend taking a quick bathroom break. I mentioned to my best friend that I had went and picked up my comics from the local shop earlier that day, to which he replied "Okay, yeah, I know you're a fucking nerd. I don't need you to remind me every Wednesday." Now, I found that very ironic. Without skipping a beat I said "You know, you call me a nerd like it's supposed to insult me. You DO know you're just as nerdy, right?" He scoffed at the idea. He honestly couldn't see how he was a nerd, despite how obvious it was. So he returned to making fun of me over my love of comics. I couldn't listen to it anymore, and decided to point something out to him. "Uh, you DO play D&D, right?" I asked. To which he replied, "Yeah. So? How is that nerdy?" And all I could do is laugh. "Dude, when people think of the ultimate nerd, they think of D&D players every friggin time." What followed was a 10 minute shouting match as we both argued over which was the nerdiest hobby. Now, my friend is a Texan, and the kind who you just CANNOT argue with. Not because he's right, but because he THINKS he's right about whatever topic is at hand. I was becoming infuriated by his insistence that my hobby was somehow worse than his, so I simply had to feed more fuel into the fire. "Oh yeah?!" I shouted, barely able to contain the rage in my nerdy little heart. "Well AT LEAST I DON'T PLAY WoW!!" That was the final straw, and I knew it. The gloves had come off. "How the hell is World of Warcraft any nerdier than the other games I play online with you?!" He shouted back over his mic. "Do I really have to answer that?" I asked calmly, with a smirk on my face he couldn't see. He thought it over for a short while, reluctantly speaking his next sentence. "Fine, I'll give you that one..." I was victorious! Or so I thought. Before I could even dance in my seat in triumph, he shot back with another burn. "But at least I'm not the one who collects toys!" -GASP- HOW DARE HE?! He proceeded to tear apart my love of plastic action figures made to look like characters from my favorite comics, movies, and games. THAT, in my mind, was a LOW BLOW. I don't want to make this too much longer than it already is, but I'll break it down for you: My defenses were: Comics are a way of escape for me, and transport me to a world where super powers exist and each hero saves the world once a month. I stated that I only read about character I'm attached to, such as Deadpool, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. Heroes who all have their flaws, much like myself. As for collecting action figures, I told him those were a way of holding on to my inner child and that the ones I keep in the package may someday be valuable, while the ones I open proudly decorate my game room and fill me with joy whenever I look at my collection. His defenses: D&D was HIS way of escaping his everyday life, forgetting his troubles as he takes on the role of a character involved in a grand fantasy, the likes of which can never really happen in the real world. For WoW, he said the game was a way for him to pass quite a bit of time when he felt reality had failed him, and that much like D&D, allowed him to become someone else during his hours of play. All in all, we argued for almost two hours about which of us was the bigger nerd. Had we been next to each other at the time, we probably would have ended up trying to end the discussion with our fists, but over Xbox LIVE it took something else to end it. At the peak of our anger towards each other, our epic conversation was suddenly interrupted by the annoyed shouts of another. "Will you idiots shut the hell up!! Good god, I'm embarassed to know either one of you now!" As it turns out, our friend had returned from the bathroom just a couple of minutes after our conversation started, and sat there in amazement over what was being said. My fellow nerd and I turned silent; our shame keeping us from saying a word while the third person sitting in the lobby of our game went off on a rant about our stupidity, and how we should off ourselves. His rant ended with one final, blunt sentence: "You know what? You're both the most hardcore, fucking pathetic couple of nerds on the planet. If EITHER of you deny that, I will fly in to murder you both in cold blood. I'll TALK TO YOU TOMORROW!" His gamertag disappeared from the lobby as he made his exit at roughly 3AM, leaving the two of us to wallow in our shame. Except, we didn't. We started laughing our asses off like we had never done before. From that day on, my friend has embraced his nerdery to the fullest and makes no attempt to hide it, and we even have a mutual respect for one another. Now I'm 18, he's 19. He recently joined the air force and has even been married for about a month now. Me? Still single, living at home. I guess as of right now, he wins.

• I'm not really ashamed of this cuz I think I handled it pretty well, given that it was a lose-lose situation. I was with a friend once at a Wendy's restaurant. We had a deal: he'd help me figure out any particularly cryptic sections of a particular textbook I was using, and I'd buy him food. So we got our food and got settled at the only available table with decent lighting. Sitting behind my friend, with his back turned to us, was a particularly rotund guy in aged, stained sweatpants and a too-small red t-shirt with the obligatory wolf painting on the front. He had thinning, greasy, shoulder-length hair, but as he was alone, we figured we were safe. How wrong we were. After too short a while, his two friends -- your stereotypical unwashed, lanky middle aged gamer, and a shorter woman with limp, uncombed hair to match -- shuffled up and sat down. And started talking. Thus I began an epic battle with my dignity (not to mention my sense of humanity). I managed to blow Coke all over my textbook trying to muffle my laughter into my straw. I really wish I had had a camera. Sadly, I don't remember all the details of what we heard, but I do distinctly remember the key points: in order of appearance, the words "T'pol," "Berman," "Millenium Falcon," "Hayden Christensen," and "Klingon hymen". At that last, we valiantly cleaned up the Coke, and took our food elsewhere. We laughed so hard once the door closed behind us that people actually stopped to check we were ok.

• &#64;Aingeal dar Cathu: Being that Cheetara is a humanoid and snarfs aren't, if Cheetara and the particular Snarf we all know and loathe were to bump uglies it would indeed count as bestiality! Doesn't matter whether he could consent or not. I mean, dolphins try to fuck human women all the time, and it'd still be bestiality if someone let them, so how is this any different? Answer: it's not. @loci: You haven't been around here very long, have you? It's been pretty well-known around these parts for quite some time that Rob used to be a big part of Anime Insider.

• This isn't so much a shameful nerd argument as a shameful put-down but here goes. A couple of friends and I went to our city's yearly convention and one of the events was a Muggle Quidditch game. For some reason (so not my idea) we decided we were going to play and tried to get up a team. We managed to get a full team after a bit of struggle and we played and, I will admit, it was ridiculously fun. So afterwards, one of my friends and I go up to another friend and start telling him off for not playing Quidditch because it was so much fun. He listened to our rant for awhile and then, as we ended with, "You should have played Quidditch with us!" he responded, "I got laid instead." Our response: "So? You can get laid anytim-oh." Most shameful argument but an admittedly great putdown.

• Asat: yes, we were talking about if Anne Frank and Helen Keller fought each other to the death. after much debate, we settled on Anne Frank would slaughter Helen Keller.

• I've had way too many of these to count, but for the 'best nerd argument' I think I'd have to take the challenge literally. So in high school, I was the rarest of breeds, a geek-jock. I was a standout player on the football team, and thus actually pretty popular, but when not on the field or working out, I had no interest in cars, hanging out at the mall, etc., but I had been an avid gamer since gradeschool, so I hung out with the gamer geeks. This threw the whole social balance out of whack. The 'popular kids' had no idea who they should be able to tease or look down on, and who were my friends. This was particularly important, since the defensive line, which I played on, was particularly tight knit, and my main workout buddy made a point of threatening to beat up anyone who gave my friends any trouble - all in all, those years, the main nerd collectives at the school had it a lot easier than the horror stories I've heard from friends since. Anyway, eventually, this protected status was finally challenged. One of the other guys insisted that not all of the school's social rejects for one reason or another could possibly be my friends. I off-handedly told him, that no, only the geeks were my friends, the nerds were fair game. I was joking, partly having recently read an article in some gamer magazine or other about the differences between nerds and geeks. Apparently this caught someone's interest, or someone was really trying to partially put right the great ladder of social order, as for the next week, the locker room turned into the hub of an argument over the differences between nerds and geeks and how one could tell the difference. Because, obviously, its not a cut and dried thing, and I had no interest in singling anyone out, and most of them certainly didn't know most of the people in the select subgroups by name, it just kept devolving. It turned into yelling, screaming and throwing football helmets. It carried into the weightroom. I was at the center of the argument, but wasn't the only one involved. Potentially the height of it was showing up at one of those 'students gather around, two guys are fighting' things, to hear two of the guys on the defensive line with me arguing loudly with a couple of the other guys on the team while a very confused nerd looked on. The argument? DL guy: You can't stuff him in his locker, dude, he's a geek, not a nerd! All the while, the other guys were insisting equally loudly that he was a nerd, not a geek. They'd been somewhat broken up, so by the time I got there it was just shouting, but they'd actually gotten into a fistfight with each other over this, with each side passionately defending and listing off long-since-confused points to prove whether the guy at the center of all this was a nerd, and thus fair game, or a geek, and thus protected. So, speaking literally about 'nerd arguments', that would be the best one I've ever been involved with.

• Okay, I'm a huge Nintendo nerd and I love the Smash Bros series. I had a friend who also really liked Smash Bros and we'd talk about Brawl a lot before it came out. Once it came out, we started talking about what could and should be in the next one. Because as nerds, we like to look ahead to the future because nothing is ever good enough. One character I brought up that should be added is Starfy from the Legendary Starfy series. He has five games in Japan and one recently released here which sold relatively well, I think he deserves. I was really adament about it. I came up with a moveset and a stage he could claim as his own. But my friend, being a dick who likes to put me in my place, came up with one arguement against him; he can't hold items. Starfy is a starfish with little stubby arms. My friend claimed he'd never be able to pick up let alone hold any of the many items. This upset me. So I instantly came up with excuses as to why he could hold items. I argued that starfish can stick to thinks so he could use those suction thingys that you clearly can't see on his design to have the items stick to his hand. I argued that his stubs are just long enough to be able to slightly clutch the items in his fist. I argued that if Kirby and Jigglypuff can pick up items, so can Starfy. This arguement went on for far too long for no reason. I was agruing about whether a fictional Starfish, one that can not only talk, but fly and transform into a dragon, can weild and use a fucking baseball bat. Eventually the argument was ended when I got fed up and just shouted "It's a video game, they can do whatever the fuck they want!" I'm a huge nerd with no life. Please permit me to wear a t-shirt with the logo of a nerdy blog to further prove that I am a huge nerd with no life.

• Many, Many years ago, I was running a heavily modified version of Shadowrun. My players had a bad run & they were all captured & knocked unconscious. (Yes, I admit it, I was railroading them into the next adventure.) They woke up in the middle of a blistering desert, wearing nothing more than their skivies. I explain how INCREDIBLY hot the sand is, & tell them that they take a point of damage every other round, just for walking in it. Soon thereafter, a monster battle ensues. One of my players gets his hand bitten off. I tell him that he's now taking additional damage each round due to blood loss. He replies that he shoves the stump into the sand. I look at him for a moment, & then say, "Ooookay. It really hurts. Now what do you do." He tells me that he's taken care of the blood loss. "By packing the wound full of sand?" I ask. "No, the sand's hot enough to burn us, so I'm using the hot sand to cauterize the wound." I fell out my chair laughing. I told him it WAS hot, but not THAT hot. A two hour argument began about if you could or could not cauterize a wound with hot sand.

• That wasn't an embarrassing story. It was disguised as one so you could let us know you worked for an anime magazine.

• At Squirrelnut I'm an ADnD2 DM, in the psionics handbook there are invisibility spells where the creature with an int lower than 13 automatically fails their saving throw. I think it's a similar ordeal with illusionists and I know it works the same way with the priest spell: Command. I think that illusion in the ADnD2 world illusion is changing the self (especially if you're using spell components) and psionics is changing the self from another's perspective (because you have to have mindlink and contact in order to perform some of the abilities). That was pretty geeky. The most geeky argument I've had was with a television screen the first time I saw 'The Grinch who Stole Christmas.' I loved it until the very end when the Grinch punked out and gave everyone their presents back. I was irate and from that point on wouldn't watch the last 10 minutes of the movie, I would just end it before he got all soft and pretend he went on with his bad self. (Yeah I was a pretty cool kid.)

• I don't think I can describe how much I'm loving this post. (And jotting down some crib notes just in case some of these arguments come up in the future)

• So I'm 25 and I'm somewhat intelligent, I graduated high school and have some college. One of my former co-workers a high school graduate and army trained cook, were having a conversation one day about GI Joe, and how they were the LEAST EFFECTIVE covert team in the history of the world wether real or fake. Now anyone that is twenty something and has any nerd cred whatsoever "knows" and they also "know" that "knowing is half the battle" as a kid that was one of my favorite parts of the show (what can i say i was immpresionable and would be a morally remiss murderer smoking drug addict had duke shipwreck and the rest of the gang not been there at the end of each episode to teach me right from wrong. fuck mom and dad what do they know?) So I immeadietly question his line of thinking and ask "why the fuck would you say something like that?" Ed looked at me and said "Having been in the military and knowing something of combat and tactics i can say they are ineffective because for a covert team they killed alot of bad guys but also because of the mass amount of damage done to military equipment. IE the cobra blew up alot of their vehicles so alot of joes died." I stopped peeling potatoes and composed myself because i was a little pissed and dumbstruck. After a moment i looked at Ed and said "Ineffective because they killed a lot of bad guys? Did you ever watch the fucking show??? I never saw a single cobra die in my entire time watching that show! The only Joe that ever bled on screen was Duke and how dare you even mention combat and tactics! The only thing you learned in the military of combat and tactics was how to silently and skillfully serve the officers table as to not disturb their dinner conversation!!!!! Ed didn't speak to me much for the rest of the day but i didn't care. The joes are friggin awesome and don't know how to lose. Let that be a lesson to all who doubt. GO JOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• &#64;Izandra That was some night. All I know is my character (mage) ended up stealing all of the treasure and running away. LOL. And we never played D&D again...

• Okay, I don't know if this qualifies as "nerdy" per se. All I know is that I come from a house divided - over whether or not the person whom Marion drinks under table in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark is a man or a woman. My mother and I insisted that it had to be a man, my brother and dad were equally adament that it was a woman. The whole episode led to rewatchings, detailed sociological arguments about sex and physicality, until finally, we went through all the credits to look for the real name of the actor/actress to find: "Pat". And that is DEFINITELY a MAN.

• This story isn't really nerdy in the sense of trivial nerd knowledge but in the sense of over the top science geek. That said I will continue. A few years ago I worked part time as a line cook at a breakfast place. It was one of those places where the servers are either young high school girls working part time or single moms. I was 20, I had a high school diploma and was going to the university full time for engineering (I'm 24 now so I'm really just finishing now), and, for the most part, my fellow cooks were in their 30's and 40's and had never really finished any type of schooling for one reason or another. Anyway, I was working with a cook friend of mine at the time, he was an exception in that he was educated and going to school. When our middle-aged large uneducated manager walks up to us and tries to help us out. During this time he says something to the effect of "Yea dawg, Swiss cheese evaporates in the oven." This sounded like a load of shit. My buddy and I explained to him that in order for that to happen the cheese, which was the same color of the egg in most omelets, would have to melt, which it did, and then boil, which it very much did not. He thought that was a load of shit. We explained that not only is the oven not hot enough to boil the cheese, but that if it was, there would be some evidence of it. HE was not convinced. We had to resort to SCIENCE, in a more direct manor to prove it. We weighed a plate on a scale and then added a handful of Swiss cheese, and weighed it again. This gave us the weight of the cheese. I know that you (the reader) already know where this is going, but it can't be helped. We placed the plate in the oven and waited the average time it took to make an omelet, then took weighed the plate containing some much melted cheese. No change. Then we put the plate back and left it in the oven for some time, perhaps an hour or so. Again we took the plate out, weighed it and again, no change. We reported our findings to my manager, and by "findings" I mean, we told him he was an idiot and we were ashamed that we felt it even had to come to this, and all he had to say was "I'm not paying you to waste food on science experiments." Now that I've written all this out, the story isn't nearly as entertaining as it was at the time. It also sounds quite pathetic.

• The biggest argument I can remember was back in the days of the original Super Smash Brothers-so, '99. My buddy and I, we were both 9, and neither of us had really heard of Ness before. He'd never even heard of EarthBound, and I'd only heard of it because of an article in Nintendo Power. But he was convinced that that little EARTH (goddamnit) behind Ness' damage counter was a Pokeball and that Ness was a character from Pokemon. Of course, this started up a screaming match, and there's nothing quite like a screaming match between two pre-pubescent 9-year-olds. That was his only argument, by the way. The symbol was a pokeball and THAT was THAT. Later on, when Melee came out, he was showing me his trophies, and we got to the one of the 8-bit Ice Climbers. He was positive that the trophy had "glitched" because "he knocked his GameCube while the trophies were loading" and, again, refused to listen to the FACT that, GODDAMNIT, THE ICE CLIMBERS CAME FROM AN NES GAME AND THE TROPHY WAS LIKE THAT BECAUSE OF THAT BLLAAAAGH. At least we had learned how to swear by this point, so the argument was a little more interesting.

• &#64;Nick, Don't worry, you're not alone. That slip-up has got me many a time as well.

• &#64;Fondoofushu: What about being a parpalegic? That would rule sex out if his junk isn't working. He may be able to read your mind and maybe give you an orgasm with his mind (mindgasm?), but it isn't sex unless there is penetration with a penis... Just my two cents on the Cheetara/Snarf argument, Beastiality is "the practice of sexual relations between humans and animals" by definition. So since they are anthromorphs and not humans it isn't really beastiality. Why do these things get stuck in our heads, and we continue to discuss horrible horrible things just to prove... What exactly? That we are right? Is being part of being a nerd just having to always be right?

• The ones that my friends and I tend to get into spats about recently is whether lightsabers can cut through Wolverine's adamantium

• I think the most shameful argument ive ever had was. Was Which X-man would be best to have sex with. We Firgured That Scott would just be boring, and maybe if he orgasmed his glasses wouldnt be enough and they would break. Beast would a....well a beast in bed, and might possibley rip you apart if he got too into it. We didnt even consider rouge. And Then we eventually got to charles xavier, and though he doesnt have a lot of strength, he can read your mind and know exactly what you want when you want it, making Charles Xavier the prime canidate for our terrible disscusion

• My most shameful nerd argument was a fairly tame one; just a discussion about Superman and Batman with a non-nerd. This little high schooler could not grasp the concept that THE Dark Knight is, at the very LEAST by being on the Justice League without a single superpower, a greater force to be reckoned with than Superman. In hindsight, I became far too animated on this subject considering I'd initially arrived for a church meeting. The initial discussion went on for at least an hour and a half while I brought up comic and movie point after point after point, even as the meeting began going on around us. The discussion wound up being tabled by the meeting's host politely knocking our heads together(figuratively), where the brief shame of getting reprimanded for an argument over Batman quieted me. The instant the meeting was over it began again, of course, and will not die until the lass submit's to the Dark Knight's power. I think the "man of steel, woman of kleenex" article may boost Batman's favor...but there you have my tale!

• Not really a single argument, but embarrasing none the less: my dyslexia often gets me into shameful debating positions on Science Fiction topics. I probably know more about the exact design of the Enterprise then the great Spaghetti Monster has ever wanted me to, (which is sad, I know) and yet, while I am a walking encyclopedia of Star Trek wisdom I STILL occasionally slip up and say 'Star Wars'. Noooooooooooo! I can't help it, truly. It always ruins every inch of my credibility at conventions.

• The Man With Two Brains: Oh, come on, it's completely different! Pluto can't consent, short of waggling his floating eyebrows suggestively at Mickey... Snarf can actually speak English and be all, "Yes, Cheetara, spank my ass, SNARF!" So, if you think about it, he's really asking for it. ...which had nothing to do with my point.

• So my husband and i just got stationed in WA state from Kodiak, AK. We find the perfect house and a few days later our household goods arrive. Before i even get a chance to check the inventory and figure out which box has what in it, husband person is already unpacking the Death Star Lego Set for rebuilding. I argued against the Legos and for the furniture but alas, was soundly defeated by the pitiful whining of a 30 year old man. Not a particularly boisterous arguement between the two of us, but i still resent having to sit on the floor to build the Death Star instead of the Couch. In retaliation I'm trying to teach our new kitten Starbuck how to use the force to blow up the Death Star.

• When I was in 3rd grade my would drop me off at a babysitters house before school and pick me up there after school while they were at work. The woman's oldest kid was in 1st grade and one day after school he wanted me to play Ninja Turtles with his action figures. I got a Turtle and he was some Villain character (I don't really remember). We're kinda making them fight each other, he makes his guy swing at mine with a sword, and I make the turtle jump a foot or so into the air (or what would be maybe 10 feet if it were to scale). He loses his mind. He yells at me that Turtles can't jump that high, and yell back asking if he's ever even seen the show. They jump like that in the opening credits! He argues that it'd be impossible to jump that high, and I argue that they're Mutant Fucking Turtles. And Ninja no less. He wouldn't budge so I gave up and walked away, throwing the Turtle at him as I turned. He yelled "Hey!" and I turned back around as he sucker punched me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. At that age I didn't even know you COULD have the wind knocked out of you. I panicked as I was doubled over and unable to breathe for a few seconds. When I finally got a lungful of air, I looked up at him and he was pretty smug and proud of himself. I clocked him square in the eye and he dropped to the floor. Then he ran crying to his mom and I got in a shitload of trouble for beating up a 1st grader. It was the only fist fight I've ever been in. And I won. Cuz I displayed - TURTLE POWER!

• Psylocke. My cousin and I got into a debate about how to pronounce her name. Not even as interesting as telepathic v. ninja, or English v. Japanese. How to pronounce her good damn name. I was arguing psi-lock, he was arguing psy-loak. Like cloak. And the biggest problem? I still have no idea. I live in Australia, so can someone ask Chris Claremont at the next Comicon for me?

• One night, my friend, my room mate and myself were idly competing in a thread on our anime club's forum called 'Red 5, Standing By,' or some such nonsense. The point of the thread? Ala the trench run in episode IV, we start naming red things to stand by, much like they did in Family Guy's Blue Harvest. We were pulling crap like Omega Red, standing by, and Aka Red (from gekiranger vs. super sentai, i think) standing by. Well, I had done the character Red, the main character of the Poke'mon manga. My room mate then said 'Poke'mon Red Version' standing by. I got pissed, and said that the red version was BASED on the character Red, so they were the same charater, and therefore his entry was invalid. (Turns out it was the other way around, btw.) He and I argued for about twenty minutes, and he then began running from his PC to the living room where we were hanging out, back and forth, checking wiki and righting DESPERATELY to prove me wrong. At first, I was just a pissy nerd wanting to be right too badly, but then, it got funny, so I just kept insisting I was right to piss him off. He finally started yelling at me to admit I was wrong of he was seriously going to hit me, that I knew I was wrong and to tell him he was right. I still pretend that Poke'mon Red is based on the character Red around him, just to make him angry. So, the argument is actually... nearly a year long now!

• This afternoon, my friends and I were playing Soul Calibur 4 and decided to make a custom character based on a Metal Gear Solid character. I decided to make one based on young Ocelot, but my friend angrily yanked the controller from me and demanded to ask if I ever played Metal Gear Solid in my entire life. He then proceeded to make a character that looked like Snake. Miscommunication or not, the argument was intense and there was a lot of unnecessary yelling over something that wasn't even worth arguing about. Regardless, seeing Snake do Amy's taunt is utterly embarrassing to watch.

• &#64;Aingeal dar Cathu: It's bestiality because they're two vastly different species. Doesn't matter that Snarf is sentient, he's their pet! Pluto shows signs of sentience, too, but if Mickey fucked him, it'd definitely be bestiality, so it's no different with Snarf/Cheetara!

• &#64;Aingeal dar Cathu: It's bestiality because they're two vastly different species. Doesn't matter that Snarf is sentient, he's their pet! Pluto shows signs of sentience, too, but if Mickey fucked him, it'd definitely be bestiality, so it's no different with Snarf/Cheetara!

• x-men gold team vs. blue team.

• &#64;LJSLarsson: That makes ME angry, too. Thanks. I first read them fifteen years ago, when I was ten. My copies had been passed down through my entire family by my grandmother, uncles, and mother. Too bad the books are so obscure no one's ever heard of them, huh?

• A good college friend and I will post interesting things back and forth on Facebook. He LOVES Batman, and so if I find anything about the Dark Knight, I post it to his profile. I 'found' an animated version of 'The Dark Knight Returns' in the style of Bruce Timm on YouTube, so I posted it. He then chastised me for assuming that I had not seen the video, and then went on a tanget about his comic superiority. I conceded my inferiority in the realm of D.C. Comics, but retaliated with the fact that though he may hold a candle in the realm of comics, I held a blow-torch in anime-geekery: I collected 72 Dragon Ball Z t-shirts over the course of 10 years, being able to wear a different DBZ shirt everyday for three months straight, and spending more than $2000 dollars on a horribly odd collection. My friend than admitted that in the argument I was the winner, but in reality I was the loser....

• I once got in an nerdy argument while eating dinner with my wife´s family. I and my sister-in-law (who isn't a nerd) where discussing what was better - movies based on books or the books that the movies where based on. I was of course speaking for books' superiority, she was advocating the movie medium. One of her argument where that movies where great because it helped the books publicity. Her example for this was that NO ONE HAD HEARD ABOUT THE OBSCURE BOOK 'LORD OF THE RINGS' BEFORE THE KEWL MOVIES CAME OUT!!!!!! I got so angry that I called her an idiot, said that I couldn't stand being in the same room as her and stormed out in the room. I did this in front of my wife and my mother-in-law. Not a very proud moment. Man, thinking about it still makes me angry.

• &#64;Asat: I'll consider that being on my side, because you still agree it's not beastiality, whether for the reason that they've both got animal characteristics or that neither of them is an animal. And so I can rub my friend's face in being confirmed wrong by another "ironclad internet source", which I can describe in vague terms and make sound more legitimate than Some Guy On a Website. Kyahahaha.

• &#64;yIntagh Damnit. Now I have to watch that episode again. Brb, nerd investigation. M.

• Did Naboo kill the Spirit of Jazz with Johnny Rotten's safety pin or just wound him?

• My cousin introduced me to RPG's when I was about 9-10 years old by having me control a character in Final Fantasy 3. We never got in a fight over me "messing it up", as one would expect, but every single time we played the game(it was a 3-5 day marathon during Summer break), we would argue over the pronunciations of certain things in the game. He always seemed to be in the wrong. Figaro Castle= Fi-gar oh was how he pronounced it(i usually conceded that one because it sounded better for a place name). These are how he pronounced things, and in parenthesis is how the name was spelled, and my assumed pronounciation afterwards when not obvious). Then there was Rag-nork(Ragnarok), Chick-a-boo(Chocobo), Tri-uh-totch(tritoch(tri-tock)), Buh-Ha-mutt(Bahamut(ba-ha-mew)). There had to have been tons more, but the most important one of note here was how to pronounce Chocobo. I never really argued with him on this point, but when FF7 came out I looked at the name of the bird really close and realized there was no way in hell it was pronounced "Chik-a-boo". Needless to say, about two weeks after the game came out, my cousin Josh heard through the grapevine that I had already bred a golden chocobo and he wanted me to do the same for him, and that his buddy was going to pay for me to do it on his game too(that was pretty awesome). Anyways, when I got over there, everytime he said "chick-a-boo", i would correct him with my pronunciation. Eventually, he got sick of me correcting him in front of his friend(we were 13 and 15 years old at the time, his friend was probably 17), and out of a little girl hissy fit, he decided to "correct" me by pushing me off the couch and onto a 2-liter soda bottle. I kicked him in the ankle(sending him to floor crying), and then took his memory card home with me and proceeded to wipe clean all of his saved games. Needless to say, that little incident made us stop talking for at least 2 years. Funniest part about all of it is that when Final Fantasy X came out, when I finally heard a character say it's name, I was wrong about the pronunciation too.

• Asat: not necessarily, depending on where you're at. for instance in NJ, you apparently have to cause "torment" to the animal. http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2009/09/25/news/doc4abc330f2a3f3353796294.txt it's too short and too funny an article not to quote the whole thing: "MOUNT HOLLY — Because prosecutors couldn't definitively prove that the oral sex performed on Moorestown Police Officer Robert Melia Jr. by five cows wasn't consensual, the animal cruelty charges against him were dropped. Bestiality is legal in New Jersey, so the burden was on the Burlington County Prosecutor team to prove that the five underage cow calves didn't enjoy fellating Melia. Judge James Morley ruled Wednesday that prosecutors did not present enough evidence to jurors that Melia's video-recorded actions constituted torment to the animals on a Southampton farm. The judge disregarded the prosecutions claims when they reportedly said the suckling calves' repeated head-butts to the officer's stomach when they didn't get their expected drink of milk was a clear indication of at least mild annoyance to the cows. Melia was charged with tormenting the animals after police found the video footage of the officer and his barnyard pals while they were investigating allegations the officer and his former girlfriend Heather Lewis together molested three young girls. Those charges remain against the officer."

• Aingeal dar Cathu: I'll throw down on that one. It's NOT bestiality because neither participant is a beast. Both are reasoning anthromorphs fully capable of giving consent. Bestiality is generally regarded as unethical on the grounds that you're humping something that can't tell you beforehand whether it wants to...man, I'm already ashamed of this one and I haven't even finished making my case.

• since we have had two posters argue about both the joker and superman doing the wild thing. i do not feel so bad about mine entry. for the nerdest and shamefull argument i have had is with my friend who being a star wars fan to the highest order . over whether before Lei finaly whacks Jabba if Jabba actually managed to do the wild thing with Lei which would be proably rape since doubtfull lei would have consented. not after my friend shocked wound up spitting out his beer over such a thing. being suggested. thus proving that sex should not be talked about with a star wars fan considerning jabba

• What company was the bigger rascist- Hostess with Twinkie the Kid or Fritto's with Fritto Bandito. One side had the stereotypical Mexican bandit the other was a delious spongecake creamfilled Nazi (well he was supposed to made up from John Wayne the biggest Nazi on Earth!). The Hostess "white flour" gang won! Yea! That was a sad and boring day at the mortuary to say the least!

• I can't tell you how many times I've gotten in fights over Sony vs. Nintendo. And I've been on both sides.

• It should come as no surprise that my biggest nerd argument involved Power Rangers. After ten great years under the Saban umbrella Power Rangers changed ownership to "the mouse." In the very first episode of the new season (Power Rangers Ninja Storm) the character of Dustin started talking about the spandex-clad heroes. Another character then remarked that Power Rangers only existed in comic books. WHAT?! How dare he?! Is Disney restarting the show from square one? Are we pretending like the 11th installment is the first and the previous ten don't matter anymore? I argued until I was blue in the face for days and weeks about how Disney was slapping fans in the face. It turns out that the executive producer was Doug Sloan from the early seasons of Power Rangers and he was making his return to the series after about a 6-7 year absence. He was floored. He thought it was just a throw away line that meant nothing since the characters who were making the comments became the actual Power Rangers by the end of the episode. Needless to say he was confused and I felt like a major ass. This just goes to show folks that "the mouse" isn't all bad. P.S. The current, 18th season of Power Rangers will most likely be the last. Disney has decided to go in a different direction and we won't be getting new, love action PR for at least the considerable future. Dang it.

• I've argued both sides of the "Is Popeye a Superhero" debate.

• &#64;avenon: And if he *didn't* remember boinking her, couldn't it lead to the same choices being made, trapping him in a boinkloop forever?? Deep. :x

• the argument was over whether lois lane would survive a full-on encounter from superman. well, given how interspecial love-making is a nebulous affair at best, it was more of a series of inquiries. but there was furious discussion, nonetheless. first is the thirst. if supes isn't even eyeing other women--which rarely and inexplicably it seems he didn't, he's gunna have a whole mess of jittery, faster-than-a-speeding-bullet energy, too much to contain. it's a blunt instrument, sure, but given how fast it's coming at her, it may as well be a well-honed dagger. lois's only hope is to slip supes a mickey and further hope it's in the right shape and direction, because if that guy's made of steel there isn't any way she's going to bend it to her will. second, if clark kent is super pent, the pressure at which he erupts could be disasterous. i've seen water at high pressures cut steel like butter. it'd be like laser surgery for that poor woman but with a blind and drunk doctor pointing every which way but south. third, well third is a temporal concern which may yet be too far ahead of me. if supes killed lois in the heat of passion(the good kind) and then flew around the planet in the opposite direction to reverse time and undo who he did, would he still remember boinking her? then there was the question that if superman was incapable of sexual relations with anyone from earth, would sex with his hot cousin be abnormal and wrong for him? with our sympathies for our superhero, and the way supergirl looked in a skirt, debate always ended on this matter.

• When I was younger, I used to LARP for about two straight years at a Dragoncrest chapter. The chapter ended up dissolving, but I still love LARPing to this day. However. I've gotten into many an arguement where the other person just didn't seem to get the point of playing around in a forest with swords made out of plumbing pipe, foam, and duct tape. And spell packets made out of birdseed and cloth. They just didn't get that it was FUN. Sure, we got weird looks when we went out to eat in full gear, but it was a blast. I felt just a wee bit pitiful, though, trying to explain this to people who think that LARPing is prancing around in the woods with imaginary friends.

• This thread somehow spawned a two hour argument last night on AIM about whether it would be considered beastiality for Cheetara to boink Snarf, considering she's half cheetah herself. It got pretty heated at one point, with both of us degenerating into bold italic'd caps and trying to outshout each other's text, which oddly enough doesn't seem to work, with much technical Thunderean jargon and referencing of supposedly ironclad online "sources". It finally ended when I made a siderant about how much I disliked the New Thundercats, and Pumyra in particular, and my friend called me a moronic heathen and metaphorically stomped offline saying she was never speaking to me again. I then proceeded to write a three page email defending my position, but I came to my senses somewhere at the beginning of page four and let it slide. :< (Note: I swear I'm not a furry. But it seems OBVIOUS to me that it can't be beastiality if it's two animals who're going at it, it's just logic! ...excuse me, having one of those "this is not my life" moments.)

• &#64;Zerosys - You win, it was probably Venus, which doesn't tend to look colored to the naked eye, and is usually pretty bright.

• I was friends with this guy named Chris at school. We rode the same bus to and from school. I am one of the biggest Star Trek nerds in the world and of course, all the bullies at school totured me worse then a farm animal about it. So, one day, in a moment of insanity, he decided to join the bullies and turn on me and tell me Star Trek sucks and tries to pull the Trek book I am reading out of my hands. So, I grab his head and actually break the school bus window with it. For some reason, we stopped being friends period and the bullies all backed all for a while. Hmmmm, actually this is one of my favorite moments, not shameful...

• Either the time I was arguing with a friend of mine whether light and sound can exist in Outer Space in real life the same way it exists in Star Wars and Star Trek (no matter in space means no sound and no dust means no reflected light), or the time I was arguing with a friend who's the better and more "outgoing" gamer

• It all started when we started a new D&D group with a new person as DM. We were all fine with this until he pulled out his d12 die... Yes we argued and fought over die shape. His d12 had a rhombus for each face where as mine and the former DM used the correct type of die with a pentagon as each face. One roll of the new die, i gave it a fair shot, and i knew instantly this could not be an accurate way to roll. So long story short, 10 thousand rolls of each die, 2 notebooks full of results. Math and engineering majors arguing with physics majors. By the time we had finished we had the amount of friction calculated, tested on different rolling surfaces, even tested rolling in a vacuum chamber. And at the end of it, i got the first roll of the game over turned almost 4 months after the roll. What makes this shameful was the spell i was rolling for, fireball against a rat in the tavern where we all met up...

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