the lackadaisical blog: Gambling - it's a terrible thing.

Of all the activities that one can partake of in either one's leisure time, in order to spice up one's life or simply to try-and-provide, finally, for the old family... gambling has got to be the worst of all. Or in the top five worst of all. Even as a simple distraction, it reeks of destructive seeds that bring disarray, chaos and... worse still, eventually... into just about any environment it is introduced into. It doesn't even need be considered as a potential past-time, for it is one of the worst ways to kill time, quite certainly - is it not? Judging from these few examples, kiddies, made for the kiddies and by big kiddies, it is definitely not something you might want to take up as a habit when you grow up and all... (No matter how lazy you are about going forward with thy job prospects, career plans or lack thereof; no matter how languid you get in said process; no matter how lackadaisical your lifestyle can get to be or already is! Don't go now and make it worse - fool!)

Don't listen to that silly old goose Kenny Rogers - he is only half (or a fifth, most likely) Portuguese, so he cannot truly be wise in the least way...!

Truth be told, even Johnny Cash wasn't worth listening to on this subject...!

Much less this poor sap right here; don't you even dare bother listening to him...!

For the whole blamed world will tell you the same thing: which is to still go ahead and play the damn game! Nooooooooooooo! You mustn't! In the immortal words of some obscure Star Wars alien dude (words recently recuperated by the uninspired, unexciting, all-around inept DC scribes du jour and put into the mouth of a certain sea monarch in that insufferable Injustice video-game...!) - ''it's a trap!'' And when this entrapment is successful, you are hooked - for life! Hook, line, sinker-style (now that is not in the dialogue used by the aforementioned sea monarch in what follows or at any moment in his recent triumphant run in two simultaneous series, mercifully: said royalty which we will be seeing a lot of, very shortly too, right here... what-a-coincidence-eh.)

But let's veer back towards the heart of the subject at hand - and all of its negatives!

The examples we have assembled shall not disappoint and you will be forced to come to the exact same conclusion yourself: that gambling is simply not going to be good for you!

First conclusive evidence of that: the Batty So-Called Knight. Now, everybody looooves the Batty So-Called Knight - RIGHT? Why? Because he is perceived as a winner -hey, he's Batman!- prepared for any eventuality, he will always come out on top - when given prep and/or recuperative time anyway, he will! But let's see what happens when the Batty So-Called Knight gambles at a level befitting, say, Bat Lash rather than Batwoman! Here he hosts a high stakes poker game (the kind that sees the winner take all, y'know what I mean?) one of those dark nights there, in his Bat-Cave - we presume... Bats invites his two big buddies from the JLA to this (Aquaman and Superman) and even pushes it so far as to invite three rivals from the dreaded competition too (Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the quite out-of-place, poor, pathetic, inedible Bulk... uh, Hulk!)

And what happens? Bats loses all! This became known, in the annals of ''non-canonical sequential art-related crap'' (what an oxymoron! And sacrilegious, too; but that's another story...) as the night of the king - the Sea King, that is! It is chronicled, in part, thanks to a Rabid Mongoose (now THAT's more logical than a Rocket Raccoon! Just saying...) and we can see the horrid results of that night immediately: now, forget about the Batty Fool already! I do not mean it for him: who cares if he loses all and winds up on the street, probably pimping out his Robin-du-jour there, still clad in that ridiculous Halloween costume...?!? And who cares if IRON MAN is revealed to be a hardcore fetichist (probably a sado-masochistic - on top on an alcoholic) in his night of all-perversions here... Who cares if Soupesy-Whitebread-Man there (spoilers! spoilers!) dies during the proceedings, of some totally unbelievable case of poisoning... And speaking of unbelievable, that totally unsavory -thus inedible- bulk of a clod - well, who cares about him?!? (That bimbo named Betty - right...) No, my brethren - the lesson learned here is that when a good man indulges in gambling (presumably because he was weary of fighting the good fight - hopelessly - as his oceans are being polluted 24/7 non-stop from millions of points around the globe; and he is just one man - one Aquaman!) he will lose track of all that is important even as he wins, succumbing to that most horrible of all fevers...!

Have a look right now...
And watch out for the special cameo appearance by the Olsen Twins, too...!

Next up, as a convincing display of gambling-gone-wrong, is animated-in-the-more-traditional-way fare: the cheaply and lucratively (for hastily and cost-efficiently) put-together Marvel's Avengers - a Disney XD production! - with very special guests one half of the Fantastic Four! In this extremely (the true significance of XD...? Extreme Disney?) difficult-to-gobble-up plot, the two most colorful members of the Fantastic Four (The Thing and the Human Torch) decide to come over one day and invite themselves to a poker game with a great many members of the Avengers - those being Hawkeye (not surprising he's a gambler; in his case, it is totally believable) Captain America (well, if Aquaman can't play...) and the Black Panther (ditto.) For some totally unexplainable reason, the Hulk is there, too - AGAIN?!? Bulky & green-as-vomit really does have a problem...

This time, as any other Disney fare, the message is crystal-clear: gambling can only bring you BAD things. Not only the host-avengers lose to The Thing's full house; but the entire poker night serves as the ideal occasion for the diabolical Doctor DOOM to launch a simultaneous EXPLOSIVE attack on both teams' headquarters...! Quite convincing as a detractor, Disney-Marvel-XD... whatever!

I don't know what is the most hilarious on that last shot:

Hulk's displeasure of seeing The Thing pulling one on him

or Black Panther's aura of meekness - or air of disbelief

Finally, and definitely DEAD LAST AND LEAST on this short list of dissuasive material for the youth and young at heart, is this Adult Swim (but hardly ''aquamusing'' - hardly!) snippet from another one of those lurid episodes of ''Robot Chicken'' - perhaps the one titled ''The Deep End'' (which would fit the bill, though - but forget it about it already; let's not give it any credit whatsoever now...!) for who gives a fish tail, really...

Suffice it to say, in this ridiculous parody of a reality TV show (this one having not super-heroes but really old-style Mego dolls, animated into life, shacking up under the same roof - HA, hilarious stuff... NOT!) we have a poker game going horribly wrong again... (Well, let us keep calm and remind you that these are only Mego doll replicas - and not genuine Mego Doll Collectibles now! There - you can breathe better already, cantcha?) Note, also, that this is but a terrible, odd, utterly wacko dream sequence and it never happened - never!!! (For, if it did, thought or telepathic abilities being faster than totally-preposterous heat vision abilities, Aquaman would have seized the moment of madness to give his ''rival'' -on the reality TV show there- the mother of all seizures waaaaay before Soupesy would even LOOK in his direction!!! The Kryptonian brain being turned into mush, that would pretty much end it all right there - FOR LIFE! Misogynist {and worse!} Batty-Bats wouldn't even have a CHANCE to raise his kevlar-padded hand on the cat burglar feline femme fatale; she would have clawed him and gouged his bat-eyes out first! And as for Wondy and Bulky - get serious! The Amazon would have torn his heart out WAY SOONER THAN THAT! Just wait for the big goof to doze off in his own vomit and turn back into a pale imitation of Doctor Jekyll - and do it! Just like she would have, ah, gunned down the feline, like, immediately instead of limiting herself to petting, thus repressing her, ah, ''Amazonian'' urges in the process... But that's another story. That would leave Aquaman alone with Wonder Woman - and, this time, he would go all Injustice on her scrawny neck there...! Falcon? I forgot Falcon, you say? Hulk squashed him first! And do not mistake this explanation to signify that we are incensed in any way by the crap and utter nonsense dished out regularly by Robot Chicken's writers now - nooooooooooo! Perish that thought... NOW! Capisce? For none of this hogwash is real - or didn't you know? LOL {Oh yeah; maybe the nerds who debate the question ''who is stronger'' pitting an endless array of muscle-bound clods that are entirely fictional - thank God - maybe they do not realize...? Lord Have Mercy on America!} The truth of the matter here is... Seth Green's crew just annoys us, that's all. This was but yet another entry onto a long, loooooong list of annoyances; as most of you should know by now! But that's another story - again.)

Still... despite its many (oh-so-many) flaws and failings, the crap below does succeed in illustrating the dangers of gambling - especially when you would indulge in this with very unstable people!