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Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
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August 24, 1990
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Cartoon Laws
Contributed by Trevor Paquette & Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
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Cartoon Law I.
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made
aware of its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further
pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing
flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this
point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second
per second takes over.
Cartoon Law II.
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid
matter intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on
foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their
momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize
boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of
motion the stooge's surcease.
Cartoon Law III.
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this
phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-
pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are
so eager to escape that they exit directly through
the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-
perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony
often catalyzes this reaction.
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Cartoon Law IV.
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is
greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked
it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to
capture it unbroken.
Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt
to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.
Cartoon Law V.
All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a
shock to propel them directly away from the earth's
surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature
sound will induce motion upward, usually to the
cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a
flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or
the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the
ground, especially when in flight.
Cartoon Law VI.
As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights,
in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging
from the cloud of altercation at several places
simultaneously. This effect is common as well among
bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A
'wacky' character has the option of self-replication
only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls
to achieve the velocity required.
Cartoon Law VII.
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble
tunnel entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled
generation, but at least it is known that whoever
paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an
opponent will be unable to pursue him into this
theoretical space. The painter is flattened against
the wall when he attempts to follow into the
painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not
of science.
Cartoon Law VIII.
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the
traditional nine lives might comfortably afford.
They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-
pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot
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be destroyed. After a few momentsof blinking self
pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or
solidify.
Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.
Cartoon Law IX.
For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that
also applies to the physical world at large. For
that reason, we need the relief of watching it
happen to a duck instead.
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Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
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