At first I thought of Wally making a little hand monster and telling Osbourne it was some sort of creature that had a diet of rock, paper and scissors. Then I had to think what Osbourne would pick with his flipper… then came this version of the comic.

I decided to look up the origin of the game, apparently it dates way back to ancient China. I guess it would have to have been some time after scissors were invented in Egypt around 1500 BC. They played cloth instead of paper though, I believe it was the Japanese that adapted it to paper.

Apparently the game has its own society and tournaments.

Actually looking up Rock, Paper, Scissors, I found an Edward Scissorhands reference that hadn’t occured to me. Edward, with his scissor hands, asked the kid he was staying with if he wanted to play “Scissors, Paper, Stone”, who of course didn’t because it was boring and he was sick of winning. I guess if we got Edward matched up against Osbourne, Ed would always get to win. Wally on the other hand…

Disney Takes A Bite of Antarctica
To Regurgitate It For the Kids

There’s a new movie coming out next month called Eight Below. I’m not even going to provide a link. It’s inspired by a true story of a Japanese exploration in Antarctica in 1958 involving sled dogs. Due to extreme weather, the team had to abandon their 15 dogs, thinking the next team was on their way. The dogs were left chained to posts with a limited food supply. The second team also had to abandon their expedition due to the storms and the dogs were left there for an Antarctic winter. Apparently when the original team was able to return, two of the dogs had amazingly managed to survive, escaping their chains and learning to hunt. Not much in the way of animal life there in the winter though, maybe they would get emperor penguins busy laying eggs and raising young. The dogs’ names were Taro and Jiro and they were considered heroes in Japan. There are even monuments to honor them.

Well, the Disney take on this does not star Japanese scientists but rather an American team headed by Paul Walker, the model-turned-bad-actor who single-handedly ruined Timeline for me (you may also know him from the Fast & the Furious). Also it appears to take place in modern times. Sled dogs have not been used in Antarctica for a long time, dogs were actually banned from the continent in 1993. So the movie has to be filmed in Greenland and Canada, maybe they’ll even have a polar bear in it, heh. The poster and trailer look pretty cheesy, showing the dogs wrestling an apparently computer generated leopard seal, and also jumping up into the sky to catch birds out of it. Way to go Disney.

There was actually a Japanese movie done about the story back in 1983 called Nankyoku Monogatari (Antarctica). Apparently it was a very nicely done movie and the score is by Vangelis (Bladerunner) which is a bonus. So I think I’ll be trying to track down that movie to watch instead. 😉