I'm Writing A Letter
You'll have to forgive me for sounding like a Pitchfork editor, but early in the career of the Smoking Popes--think early Green Day, with a guy who sounds like Mel Torme crooning about love and... well, smoking--they recorded a song entitled "Writing a Letter." Some of these lyrics will be relevant later, I assure you:
I'm writing a letter to my baby
My baby so far away
I'm writing a letter to my baby
And this is what it say:
"Ba da ba bop be dop bop ba da
be dop bop ba da be dop bop ba da"
Later he writes a love song to whomever cares to look his way, but the main point is the same: there's not a lot in the letter, unless you speak scat.
Ah, you see where I'm going here? Man, I can't put layers of meaning past you, the Viewers. Who knows how far Josh Caterer got with his baby so far away, but I don't see us getting past first base with Nintendo, so long as we continue to yell bas and bops at them.
"But Liar!" You say, adopting the Jimmy Stewart voice saved for these particular impassioned speeches, "This was a web site founded upon the principle of petitioning incessantly! We filled books! Decorated them, too! Sent 'em off to Nintendo! Petitions are too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders! Men should hold them up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak, and to have people sign their names on things!"
Very impassioned! But every man on that transport died, George! It's true. Starmen.Net has been doing petitions since there was no such thing as Starmen.Net. We do petitions like Young MC wrote 80s rap hits: about three times. But here's the thing: you've no doubt heard the recent "hivemind cult" comment directed our way, or the bit from Nintendo Power about our... well, zealousness. Back then, during the petitions, we EarthBound fans were a tiny, underground minority; Nintendo had no idea their supposed US failure had produced such a devoted cult following. But now, 40,000+ signatures, some fine letter art, and countless call-ins and letters later, they're well aware. Now we're just being annoying.
Here are some things they no doubt know: we like EarthBound; we follow it closely; we want it translated very much. More letters and online petitions to Nintendo Power, who doesn't really have a lot of pull with the folks at the Home Office, aren't going to do anything to make those points even clearer.
So you can bet that, should a few months pass without word on a US translation, we'll be hitting up the phone lines and filling sacks of mail like old times. But for now, when you want to write that letter to whomever cares to look your way, stop for a moment, and think to yourself--think:
"Ba da ba bop be dop bop ba da
be dop bop ba da be dop bop ba da"
Because it's much easier to not write a letter when you're thinking about awesome music.
You'll have to forgive me for sounding like a Pitchfork editor, but early in the career of the Smoking Popes--think early Green Day, with a guy who sounds like Mel Torme crooning about love and... well, smoking--they recorded a song entitled "Writing a Letter." Some of these lyrics will be relevant later, I assure you:
I'm writing a letter to my baby
My baby so far away
I'm writing a letter to my baby
And this is what it say:
"Ba da ba bop be dop bop ba da
be dop bop ba da be dop bop ba da"
Later he writes a love song to whomever cares to look his way, but the main point is the same: there's not a lot in the letter, unless you speak scat.
Ah, you see where I'm going here? Man, I can't put layers of meaning past you, the Viewers. Who knows how far Josh Caterer got with his baby so far away, but I don't see us getting past first base with Nintendo, so long as we continue to yell bas and bops at them.
"But Liar!" You say, adopting the Jimmy Stewart voice saved for these particular impassioned speeches, "This was a web site founded upon the principle of petitioning incessantly! We filled books! Decorated them, too! Sent 'em off to Nintendo! Petitions are too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders! Men should hold them up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak, and to have people sign their names on things!"
Very impassioned! But every man on that transport died, George! It's true. Starmen.Net has been doing petitions since there was no such thing as Starmen.Net. We do petitions like Young MC wrote 80s rap hits: about three times. But here's the thing: you've no doubt heard the recent "hivemind cult" comment directed our way, or the bit from Nintendo Power about our... well, zealousness. Back then, during the petitions, we EarthBound fans were a tiny, underground minority; Nintendo had no idea their supposed US failure had produced such a devoted cult following. But now, 40,000+ signatures, some fine letter art, and countless call-ins and letters later, they're well aware. Now we're just being annoying.
Here are some things they no doubt know: we like EarthBound; we follow it closely; we want it translated very much. More letters and online petitions to Nintendo Power, who doesn't really have a lot of pull with the folks at the Home Office, aren't going to do anything to make those points even clearer.
So you can bet that, should a few months pass without word on a US translation, we'll be hitting up the phone lines and filling sacks of mail like old times. But for now, when you want to write that letter to whomever cares to look your way, stop for a moment, and think to yourself--think:
"Ba da ba bop be dop bop ba da
be dop bop ba da be dop bop ba da"
Because it's much easier to not write a letter when you're thinking about awesome music.
