D-O-R-K spells Dork.

The other day Sander and I, like any typical group of males, were throwing around some hypothetical Mortal Kombat situations, and a question came up about Rayden.

Rayden is, of course, a character in the hit 90’s video game “Mortal Kombat” that was based on the Japanese god of thunder and lightning “Raiden”.

The question was:
Does Rayden’s electricity zap in alternating or direct current?
If your answer to this question is DC, do you think he could zap people in AC if he wanted?

This was of course followed by the question:
Do you think Scorpion would be an expert spear fisherman if he wasn’t an undead hell spawned ninja?

It is only in retrospect that I realize we are extreme dorks.

22 thoughts on “D-O-R-K spells Dork.

  • 9/14/2005 at 7:27 am
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    Answer #1: Of course he could. He’s the freakin god of thunder and lightning. That’d be like saying Ra couldn’t make the sun turn pink if he wanted to.
    Answer #2: Assuming that Scorpion has polarized vision and can compensate for the glare, and also assuming that he has a mastery of light defraction and can adjust for the appropriate angle changes to his attack, I would say he’d be an excellent fisherman. However, his spear is quite large and would probably obliterate the fish. Picture hunting squirrels with a 30-06 … complete unneccessary.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 9:04 am
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    Clearly, it would be DC. If he wanted to make it AC he probably could. He could probably make it something you’ve never even heard about that’s so awesome it would literally BLOW YOUR MIND.

    And yeah, Tim, like he’d be fishing for trout. He dosn’t need to breath, so i can see him hunting sharks for fun in the ocean.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 9:42 am
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    I beg your pardon, Mr. Privett. I can totally picture Scorpion enjoying a relaxing afternoon on a backwooded stream trying his luck against the wiley brook trout.

    I bet that he’d even be drinking a tall glass of refreshing Crystal Light and eating some goldfish crackers.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 10:09 am
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    Goldfish is a Registered Trademark of Pepperidge Farm. I’m so calling the cops timmy.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 10:19 am
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    Crystal Light is also trademarked, and I’m sure that ‘scorpion’ in this context is trademarked somehow by Midway.

    So you’re telling me that you’re actually energetic and motivated enough to go ahead and call all of these companies?
    Goodluck, fatty.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 10:26 am
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    I bet that he could not only choose between AC and DC, but that he could use multiple phases! Think about getting slammed with 3-phase 220V current. While you are standing in a river, spearing trout with Scorpion. Ouch.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 10:58 am
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    I don’t think he could choose AC or DC. I think Rayden would be stuck with DC and he’d like it. Now as for multiple phases… I vote yay. I just like the visual of Rayden using an electrified bolo made of twist lock connectors to kill someone…

    And Scorpion would not have time to be a great trout fisherman because as soon as he got in the water, SubZero would take the opportunity to freeze his candy ass. Therefore, no time to fish.

    Now, if he were bored and wanted to spear something from the shore… or maybe from a boat…

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  • 9/14/2005 at 11:12 am
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    Rayden is clearly DC, as he’s all about lightning.
    As for AC, there’s just no way. You need a conductor to make it happen, and air isn’t going to cut it. Even if it’s raining really hard.
    As for 3-phase AC, yeah that’d be even cooler, but even harder to pull off.
    I’ve been hit with ~280V single-phase AC (1 phase of a 3-phase breaker to ground), it smarts.

    GET OVER HERE tasty bass.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 1:28 pm
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    Yes tim. You should know that when a cause is rediculous and you doubt my lack of things to do, I will do it. Luckily for you I did a little more research to determine if you had actually broke any Intelectual Property Laws and registered trademark regulations. Unfortunately you did not. It clearly states in their legal documents the following:

    You may not copy material from this site for commercial use. You may copy material in limited quantities from this site for your personal noncommercial use provided that our copyright notice is affixed to the copied material. Campbell Soup Company reserves the right to terminate at any time your permission to make personal copies of material from this site.

    So seing as you used their product in a personal setting and not in a commercial use I can safely assume that you will not prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I also checked in with Crystal Light, which is owned by Kraft Foods, has similar legal stipulations.

    Midway does have different information regarding their Intellectual Property. Here it is:

    Mortal Kombat® Deception® © 2004 Midway Amusement Games, LLC. All rights reserved. MORTAL KOMBAT, the dragon logo, MIDWAY, and the Midway logo are registered trademarks of Midway Amusement Games, LLC. MORTAL KOMBAT DECEPTION is a trademark of Midway Amusement Games, LLC. Distributed under license by Midway Home Entertainment Inc.

    It seems that Scorpion is not registered. I mean they can’t register or trademark any little Kid named Sonya, Johnny, or Barraka. So while I’m sure they tried to somehow legally bind “Scorpion” and his saying “Get over here!!” to their brandname, they probably failed. I’m sure mothers of the world would have been a difficult opponent to defeat in a court of law. I mean what would Moms say if they couldn’t say “Barraka, Get over here!”?

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  • 9/14/2005 at 2:25 pm
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    Regarding DC vs. AC: Considering DC requires a path the original source of the electrons in order to complete a circuit (as in, back to the battery, or earth/cloud in the case of lightning), I think Rayden would use AC. Plus, he would totally not even adhere to the wussy North American standard of 60Hz. Three-phase power wouldn’t mean anything other than getting hit with three lightning bolts, 120 degrees out of phase. Not that impressive. I think that a single, 20KHz, 30tV (that’s terravolt, he is a deity after all) arc would just rock the crap out of you.

    I thought Scorpion would be better as a harpoonist, hunting whales back in the late 1800s. Plus, it’d be hilarious to imagine the “Get over here!”, followed by him being yanked off the deck of the longboat by an angry sperm whale, his hell-ninja clothes all soaked and stuff. He’d be so cold.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 2:40 pm
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    Kurt, nicely done. I commend you for your research skills and your ability to copy/paste text from a website.

    congrats. your friend,
    Tim

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  • 9/14/2005 at 2:40 pm
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    The AC/DC comments have been hilarious. It’s also funny that not a single female has commented on this topic.

    odd.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 2:54 pm
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    That’s because everyone knows that both raiden and scorpion would get rocked by Johnny Cage. He’s dreamy.

    And what putz would honestly think that Raiden would use AC? AC is for wusses.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 3:01 pm
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    Rayden’s based off the god of lightening, lightening is a DC phenomena, he could turn it on and off very rapidly to get AC with a DC bias, but all that would likely do is just lower average voltage, ie lower the DC voltage. As for phases, you need AC to get multiple phases so that goes out the window.

    and of course scorpian would be a masterful spear fisherman.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 3:07 pm
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    Additionally the AC would give them a chance to get away since, twice per cycle it is apply zero volts. So even if he could do AC, he’d want to use DC.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 3:18 pm
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    While he might be fundamentally DC, Rayden might want AC so that he can have his electric shocks travel greater distances. Or perhaps because he wants to microwave a Celeste ‘Pizza for One’ and the power went out.

    I bet he could do it. Perhaps by forcibly removing certain electrons from part of his hand and moving them to the other side of his hand. Thus making his hand into a makeshift magnet which he would isolate from the rest of his body. Then he could turn his hand really close to his other hand which would generate electricity across his veins. It probably wouldn’t be too hard for him to amplify it, and then fire it out of his non-magnet hand.

    Just my 2 cents.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 3:40 pm
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    With one phase for each finger of the non-magnet hand!

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  • 9/14/2005 at 5:24 pm
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    Arg.
    1. DC on and off really fast is MAYBE half-wave rectified AC, but in no way AC of any variety.
    2. Microwave ovens use DC current, and lots of it.
    3. DC is just as capable of making it long distances, you just can’t break it down to lower voltages without as much loss and using a smaller transformer. This is no problem, as Raiden don’t need to lower voltages for nobody.
    4. DC doesn’t need to be in a loop. For instance, lightning, smaller household static shocks, downed power lines: There’s no circuit here, just stuff going to ground. This is fine for Raiden, as he’s obviously immune to electric shock, and even then he can cut off his ground by doing that thing where he flies accross the screen sideways.
    5. 3-phase AC has no zero points, thus a higher RMS voltage (and power) value. Great for motors, induction welders, killing people.
    6. Mike D’s “generator” theory is technically correct, but I’m not so sure if he’d just “amplify it.”
    7. Scorpion would be a kickin whaler.

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  • 9/14/2005 at 8:06 pm
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    By the way, the phrase in the first sentence “some hypothetical Mortal Kombat situations, and a question came up about Rayden.” should have been replaced with “a football” or “a frisbee” in order to be contextually correct.

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  • 9/15/2005 at 7:51 am
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    Can someone explain to me what the difference between AC and DC is, since I don’t know what you are talking about.
    I also agree. Scorpian and Ahab would have gotten along great.

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  • 9/15/2005 at 1:00 pm
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    DC power is like electrons falling off a cliff. You need to lift them to the top first by some method (friction, chemical reaction) to get the energy from them falling. And they all just go from the top to the bottom.

    AC power is like a wave, like over the water. The individual electrons don’t travel that much, their movement is transferred through the conductor. The source of AC power (generator) is what creates the compressions and rarefactions of electrons.

    Edison invented the electric chair to show how deadly AC power was (he and his patron, GE, were all about the DC power). We use AC anyways.

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