Written by Fidel Martinez

Tonight, South Park will air its 200th episode. In honor of the best animated series on air right now (Family Guy sucks, The Simpsons stopped being funny ages ago, and Archer is too new to merit the title), we’ve compiled our five favorite episodes from the show’s entire run.

5. Trapped In The Closet (Season Nine)

We’ll kick off our list with Trapped In The Closet, an episode that managed to piss off Isaac Hayes (the voice of Chef and a long-time Scientologist) so much, he demanded to be released from his contract because it made fun of his (pseudo-) religion. In Trapped In The Closet, Scientologists come to believe that Stan Marsh is the reincarnation of their religion’s founder and prophet, L. Ron Hubbard. The highlight of the episode is Tom Cruise locking himself in the closet after Stan–who he thinks is the Messiah– tells him his movies suck, forcing others (like John Travolta, Nicole Kidman, and R. Kelly) to convince Tom to come out of the closet. This is hilarious because Tom Cruise is probably gay.

4. Le Petit Tourette (Season Eleven)

Eric Cartman is a tour de force in the South Park universe, so it’s no surprise that more than a single Cartman-centric episodes made it on this list (ed. note: the other one is below). In Le Petit Tourette, the fat kid discovers Tourette’s Syndrome, a disorder that causes those who have it to spew out obscenities and swear like sailors. Cartman, of courses, tricks people into thinking he has Tourette’s, much to Kyle’s chagrin. Add to that a Chris Hansen/How To Catch A Predator subplot, and the end result is comedic gold. Interesting fact: Le Petit Tourette was the first South Park episode to have the ‘TV-MA LV” rating.

3. Make Love Not Warcraft (Season Ten)

Much like making fun of idiot celebrities, part of South Park’s long-term success can be attributed to Matt Stone & Trey Parker’s ability to satirize popular trends and fads. World Of Warcraft was no exception, and in Season ten, the series spoofed the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). In Make Love Not Warcraft, a griefer who keeps killing every WoW character fo the lulz, prompting the kids to bring down once and for all. This plan, however, causes them to become fat, overweight losers who spend upwards of 21 hours in front of their computers, not unlike the real people who play the game.

2. Scott Tenorman Must Die (Season Five)

Matt Stone & Trey Parker really outdid themselves this time. The episode is brilliant because of its simplicity. Instead of having multiple plots, the focus of Scott Tenorman Must Die lies on Eric Cartman’s mission to get revenge from Scott Tenorman, a ninth grade boy who sold him pubes for $10. Oh yeah, and having Radiohead play themselves doesn’t hurt, either.The final scenes are so outrageous, we remember sitting in front of the television agape and trying to wrap our head around what we just saw. Scott Tenorman Must Die transformed Cartman from annoying fat kid to diabolical mastermind. (Spoiler Warning: the clip below is the episodes ending.)

1. Good Times With Weapons (Season Eight)

We wanted to put the previous episode here, but at the end of the day, our hearts wouldn’t let us. Why? Because, hands down, Good Times With Weapons is so sublime, so hilarious, it’d be a grave injustice not having it in the top spot. In Good Times, the South Park gang buys ninja weapons (illegally, we should add) at a swap meet and pretend to be roaming fighters with super powers. Not to be outdone, Butters– our favorite South Park character ever– creates the Professor Chaos alter ego and confronts the boy. Needless to say, Butters ends up getting a ninja death star lodged in his eye. What makes this episode stand head and shoulders above the others is its brilliant use of Anime animation, the English/Japanese song ‘Let’s Fighting Love”, and Butters.

Bonus: Remember Google Wave?

Written by The Sarcasmist

10. “Goodness, I had no idea! For you see, I have been on Mars for the last decade, in a cave, with my eyes shut and my fingers in my ears.” (In response to Sideshow Bob: You know, I used to have a problem with killing people.) –Cecil Terwilliger

9. “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.” –Homer Simpson

8. “A sarcasm detector, that’s a real useful invention.” (Sarcasm detector explodes) –Comic Book Guy

7. “But I’m a public servant. I can’t use my judgment.” –Superintendant Chalmers

6. “Family, religion, friends… these are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.” –Mr. Burns

5. “I’m proud of you, Mom. You’re like Christopher Columbus. You discovered something millions of people knew about before you.” –Lisa Simpson

4. “No, I get my news from the internet, like a normal person under seventy. Farewell, dinosaur.” (In response to Kent Brockman when asked if he saw the six o’clock news) –Comic Book Guy

3. “Oh no! Now who will sell oranges on the off-ramp?” (In response to Lisa saying that Bart is throwing away his future). –Homer Simpson

2. “Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?” -Sideshow Bob

1. “Owww look at me Marge, I’m making people Happy! I’m the magical man, from Happy Land, who lives in a gumdrop house on Lolly Pop Lane!!!!…… By the way I was being sarcastic…” –Homer Simpsons

Bonus: The Simpsons Congratulate South Park on 200 Episodes!

A loving reminder on the occasion of South Park‘s 200th episode that The Simpsons Already Did It…

You can see more tributes at SouthPark200.com. And be sure to tune-in tomorrow night for South Park‘s 200th episode at 10pm / 9c.

(Source)

Written by Carl Sagan

If every person on our blue Earth watched this video, the world would be a much better place. At least for a few minutes. Listen closely to Carl Sagan’s words till the end. It won’t fail to get you teary.-JD

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It talks about the photo of the same name, Pale Blue Dot, taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.

The short film was produced by David Fu. Thanks to our friend Alex Pasternack—from Motherboard—for pointing us to this amazing video.