Wolf Gnards

There’s a certain nudist streak that lurks in the hearts of cartoon animals everywhere. Shakespeare said it best: To pants or not to pants, that is the question, whether ’tis nobler in the fur or to wear the bow ties and tiny hats of outrageous fortune. Some cartoon animals wear pants, some do not, and I’ve always found it difficult to navigate the difference. When is it alright not to wear pants? Should Donald Duck be ashamed of his nudity, or is bare nuked duck a thing of beauty? Who decides? Are there even rules?

Nudy toons come in a few varieties: pants but no shirt, shirt but no pants, and nearly nude (maybe just a tie).

States of Cartoon Characters Undress

*SpongeBob is technically fully clothed, but with such a large sponge torso there is a vibe of shirtlessness.

Fashionable Fur

It’s best to remember that animal cartoons are never really nude. Daffy Duck is fully clothed except when all his feathers are blown away or plucked off. Or a turtle is only naked without his shell. Feathers and furs counts as appropriate attire. Bugs Bunny always wears a rabbit fur coat, and it’s only until he’s skinned does he experience nudity. In the hierarchy of animal hide feathers are more clothing than furs, furs more clothing than scales, and scales are more clothing than bare skin. However, this doesn’t explain Porky Pig who is technically the most naked of all then.

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Jeff Goldblum does stuff, the sooner we learn this the better. He’s the best, he’s the brightest, and let’s not forget: Jeff Goldblum is not dead. And most important, Jeff Goldblum is the answer to every mystery. Aliens? Goldblum. Big Foot? Goldblum. Loch Ness Monster? They’ve all been Goldblummed.

Other webbiness:

Universal Pictures covers Natalie Portman up with a digital bikini bottom. That’s like a crime against humanity. When I go to a movie, I’ve paid good money to see Natalie Portman’s bare or semi-bare butt. I wouldn’t see movies like Phantom Menace, Black Swan, or The King’s Speech if there wasn’t the off chance I’d see Portman’s bottom (Side note: I found The King’s Speech very disappointing for it’s total lack of Portman butt or Portman at all).

Superhero fashion show. Come on, hipsters, don’t take comic books away from me, too. I’ve been wearing the same Batman t-shirt since 1989, don’t make it fashionable now.

$2 million script for sale on eBay. I can undercut this guy, you can have any of my half finished projects for a mere $1.9 million dollars. Just know that I don’t do coherent plots, female characters, or check spelling (but if you’re a regular reader of Wolf Gnards, you already knew about spleling).

It’s strange that I’ve never met a bicyclist that could be classified in any way as a good human being. I see people on bikes every day and yet I’ve never seen any hint of humanity in their eyes. All glory to the bicycle! And the more into bikes a person is the less of a good person they can be. Which is strange because someone who’s into bicycles should go hand in hand with someone who cares about things. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving money, and getting exercise all seem like good aims, but they come in a very douchie package. Riding on side walks, swerving through the streets (because every lane is a bike lane), darting through traffic, shouting “on your right” when they’re clearly on my left, or riding through red lights (in fact, I’ve never seen any bicyclists ever obey any sort of stop sign, yield, or traffic law).

One might think that bicycles, like booze, lower a person’s inhibitions. Not true. Most researchers agree that bicycles, while annoying, have no actual drug-like properties. Most bears riding tricycles for instance are gentle, noble beasts, so the harmful nature of bikes cannot be inherent to the bicycle. It’s something about man and bikes, the seductive power of two wheels! It’s something that those insecure unicyclists can never fully comprehend. Though the real reason bike riders are jerks is because of karma. Bicyclists live by a perfectly balanced karma system (or Karma Cycle) meaning equal parts good karma need to be counterbalanced out by equal parts bad karma. All the good deeds they’ve collected on their bikes get canceled out by bad attitudes and belittling glares (the what’s-wrong-with-you-dude-where’s-your-bike glare). Being an ass is sort of their reward, by lowering their carbon footprint they’ve earned the right to really lord it over everyone.

However, if you separate a biker from his bike do they revert back to human form? Yes and no. Douchiness tends to linger. It depends on when they last rode their bike and how far away their bike is currently from them. If someone hasn’t biked in a couple months or if their bike is in another part of the country then they’re able to act quite normally. Basically, if you still have sweat on you generated from your bike, you’re still under the bikes sway. So, how good a person a bicyclist is depends on both the amount of time they’ve spent away from the bike and the distance they are from their bike. This is why your friend who rode his bike to the bar is just awful when he first gets in—constantly pointing out which streets don’t have bike lanes and the total lack of bike racks immediately adjacent to your favorite bar—but gets a little less awful as the night goes on. To break the cult of cycling there needs to be an intervention, the biker needs to be separated from the charismatic Schwinn.

Three Keys to Deprogramming a Bicyclists

1. Get him off bike
2. Get him away from bike
3. Beer

The other day a friend told me, “I like to read Wolf Gnards on the toilet,” which I took as a tremendous compliment. Who wouldn’t? In fact, I won’t rest until my face is in bathroom stalls everywhere. There’s nothing wrong with being bathroom reading. It’s the best kind of reading of all really: you’re both at your most vulnerable and at your highest levels of concentration. To have that level of intimacy with a reader is an honor.

But the whole concept of reading my blog in the bathroom got me thinking: Are there more people out there reading websites in the john? With the decline of print magazines, newspapers, and literature, and the rise of readily available internet access and inexpensive mobile devices people can now bring their iPads and smart phones into restrooms with them. Has People Magazine been replaced by People.com? Is this the natural progression of technology and biology? If my friend’s colon is any kind of gauge for future trends then yes it is.

The best part of this new generation of toilet reading is that not only are we using high tech reading materials to pass the time, but we can actually track that high tech reading material that we use to pass the time. Or in other words, I know when you’re pooping. Google Analytics makes it possible to track so much about my readership—how many viewers, what part of the world they’re coming from—I can even track when users are bringing Wolf Gnards into the bathroom.

Google, of course, could make it easier by creating a poop button in Analytics, but until that day we’re forced to figure it out for ourselves. It’s not too hard, though (depending on your diet… wokka, wokka). All you need to know is what time people move their bowels. Which is just a Google search away. The average person has their first bowel movement 3 to 4 hours after they wake up, and if the average person wakes up between 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM, this means the average bowel is passed between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. I can filter my visitors in Analytics by mobile devices and I can go into advance segments to create a filter for just the time between 9 and 11. Which means in the month of January, 227 people brought Wolf Gnards into the bathroom with them.

However, there are two major flaws with this breakdown. One being that not everyone that came to my site between the hours of 9 and 11 went to the bathroom, this time just represents the highest probability of poopage (or HPP). So, only a fraction of that 227 were actually going to the bathroom at the time. The other major problem being that other people could have gone to the bathroom outside the hours of HPP. People aren’t statistical automatons and are fully capable of going to the bathroom at random and varied hours of the day. More people use the bathroom than what the HPP can determine. Although, these flaws are saying there should be more bathroom activity on one side, and the other saying there should be less, so they could potentially cancel each other out. While not an exact figure I do think 227 is a fair estimate.

A third flaw is that I assume all Wolf Gnards bathroom readers use a mobile device. Grandma could very easily drag her Commodore 64 into the bathroom with her, or Junior could use a bedpan while playing WoW. I’m willing to concede that these people exist, if we’re willing to just promptly forget about them. Maniacs like them don’t deserve to be included in studies, they’re almost as bad as someone who would put time and effort into figuring out when people go to the bathroom… oh.

So, 227 is my poop ranking, what’s yours?

And if you happen to be on the toilet as you read this, please feel to drop us a line, but, maybe, you should wash your hands first.

Happy Groundhog Day! Groundhog Day is the most sacred of holidays here at Wolf Gnards, and although Punxsutawney Phil and I are currently buried under two feet of snow I wouldn’t dream of not making a post. And even though parts of the country may have canceled Groundhog Day, Wolf Gnards will hog on.

Here’s a little something inspired by the How to Piss Off Nerds meme:

Because if you really want to piss off a nerd this is the way to do it. If there’s one thing I’ve found in my geek studies and travels throughout the interweb, it’s this: Nerds. Love. Bill. Murray.

I just discovered the Fake Criterion collection, and some of these fake DVD are borderlined genius.

One of my favorites is the Weekend at Bernies. I mean what kind of maniac would take time to put serious thought into Weekend at Bernies… oh wait.

Is this a Rufio Bulldog? It sure looks like it. Courtesy of the Surf City Surf Dog competition. Dog-Gi-OOOoooooooo!

Also:

What would happen if you drilled a tunnel through the center of the Earth?

Darth Vader in Type

Handheld Atari 2600!

The Origins of “You got Beef”