Kasuto's Ramblings

Heil linkshändig!
¡Viva izquierda!
Long live the left-handers!

      I don't know if any of you have noticed, but our little hero, Link, is left-handed. You might say, "big deal" and just shrug it off. Well, you know what mister? It is a big deal! The fact that the hero of all the Zelda games is left handed makes an important point: left-handers are better than right-handers. Now, you might be thinking, "this guy's totally gone off his rocker"; well, I haven't. It may pain some of you to know that your good friend Kasuto is-that's right!-left handed. I'll tell you from personal experience that being left-handed is no walk in the park.
      Here's the part where I gripe about everything. One thing I hate is the fact that I always end up smudging my own writing. Now I use quick-drying pens so that's less of a problem. But pencils suck, too. I quit using pencils four years ago because the bottom of my hand would end up being gray after I was done with my math homework. So pencils suck. And do you righties know what it's like trying to write on one of your damn desks? You know what I'm talking about: those desks they have in high schools that have the desk attached to the chair with that armrest thing on the right side. Oh sure, those are great for right-handers. They have a nice comfortable place to rest their right arm while they're writing. But what about us lefties? We don't have special desks. You wouldn't believe how uncomfortable it is to write on one of those desks. I'm sure that lefties who use those things end up getting carpal tunnel syndrome. I think schools should provide special desks for their left-handed students. We have wheelchair ramps, special classes for retarded kids, and Braille on ATMs for God's sake! Where's the accomodation for lefties? I don't see special left-handed desks in classrooms, or an aisle in Wal-Mart with left-handed merchandise. Sure, you can buy left-handed stuff, but it costs three or four times as much as "regular" right-handed stuff. A left-handed keyboard (with the numpad on the left) costs over a hundred dollars! That's highway robbery if you ask me. It should be a law for there to be special accomodations for left-handers. We make special accomodations for evey other thing imaginable, and I think ten percent of the population is enough to warrant special treatment. After all, what percentage of the population is wheelchair-bound? Not a lot. When you walk down the street how many people do you see in wheelchairs? Not many. In fact, I haven't once seen a person in a wheelchair when I was in a store or something. Don't get me wrong, I respect all those people who use wheelchairs. I just think that lefties deserve the same appreciation.
      How about those so-called "ergonomic" mice? Sure, those my be ergonomic for righties, but what about us? I used to own a right-handed mouse becuase it came with the computer. I'll tell you, it's uncomfortable to say the least. The computer lab at my school is full of them and I hate them. I want a left-handed ergonomic mouse. Of course, when I'm in the school computer lab, I have to move the mouse over to the other side so I can use it. I'm lucky that in my house the two main users of the computer, me and my little dork brother, are both left-handed. So we have our computer set up to accomodate those of our kind. It's funny seeing my parents try to use the mouse with their left hand, now they're the ones that have to accomodate us!
      The whole point of this article is to make it known that Link is left-handed. In fact, all of the Links are left handed. In the old NES games and SNES, they didn't really show that because of the limitations of the graphics. They simply mirror-imaged all the pictures of Link so they didn't have to program his left-handedness for each possible orientation. But if you read the instruction manuals, you'll notice that they specifically mention that Link is left-handed. I have a few hypotheses for why this is so. The most obvious one would be if Shigeru Miyamoto is left-handed. I'm not sure if he is, but it wouldn't surprise me. There is another fact about lefties. Studies have shown that we tend to be smarter, more artistic, and more creative than the average righty. A large proportion of "radically thinking" scientists and artists have been left-handed. These people have changed our whole perspective on the world. Some neurologists think that lefties use different parts of their brains to perform language tasks. Whereas in right-handers only one side of the brain is used, left-handers sometimes use both. This decentralizes brain functions and makes it easier for lefties to recover from stroke or other brain damage. So we've got that in our favor. But what about Link? He is obviously very different from the other people in his world. He is that hero who only comes by once every generation. It would only make sense for such a unique person to be left-handed. After all, left-handers think differently. We aren't satisfied with the way things are, we like to ask questions. We tend to think in completely different ways. Of course, there are is a larger proportion of lefties who are insane or mentally ill. Then again, the line between genius and insanity is very thin. I think genius and insanity are two sides of the same coin. You have to be a little crazy in order to be a genius.
      I think Link is a misunderstood genius, and being left-handed makes that clearer. Left handedness is not simply writing with a different hand, it is a whole different state of being. It is a way of thinking that is physically manifested as left-handedness. I could go on ednlessly about why lefties are better than righties, but I have other things to do. I'll conclude this with a list of famous left-handers.

James A. Garfield	Herbet Hoover	Harry S Truman
Greald Ford	Ronald Reagan	George H. Bush
Bill Clinton	Benjamin Franklin	Col. Oliver North
H. Ross Perot	Napoléon Bonaparte	Alexander the Great
Charlemagne	Julius Caesar	Fidel Castro
Henry Ford	Helen Keller	Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin
Dave Barry	Ted Koppel	John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Richard Simmons	Jay Leno	Mark Twain
H.G. Wells	Jimi Hendrix	Paul McCartney
Michelangelo	Pablo Picasso	George Burns
Dan Aykroyd	Tim Allen	James Cromwell
Tom Cruise	Robert DeNiro	Michael Dorn
Richard Dreyfuss	Marilyn Monroe	Keanu Reeves
Julia Roberts	Jerry Seinfeld	Dick Van Dyke
Bruce Willis	Oprah Winfrey	Oscar de la Hoya
Ken Griffey, Jr.	Babe Ruth	Leo Laporte

Kasuto of Kataan

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