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 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 specialty
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.
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 generations, 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 be destroyed. After a few
moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate,
snap back, or solidify.
Corollary:
A cat will assume the shape of its container.
Cartoon
Law IX
Everything
falls faster than an anvil.
Cartoon
Law X
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.
Cartoon
Law Amendment A
A sharp
object will always propel a character upward.
When poked
(usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (often a pin),
a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with
great velocity proportional to the size of the sharp object.
Cartoon
Law Amendment B
The laws of
object permanence are nullified for "cool" characters.
Characters
who are intended to be "cool" can make previously
nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will.
For instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to
express himself without speaking.
Cartoon
Law Amendment C
Explosive
weapons cannot cause fatal injuries.
They merely
turn characters temporarily black and smoky.
Cartoon
Law Amendment D
Gravity is
transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths.
Their
operation can be witnessed by observing the behavior of a
canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feet will
begin to fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the
wave reaches its torso, that part will begin to fall,
causing the neck to stretch. As the head begins to fall,
tension is released and the canine will resume its regular
proportions until such time as it strikes the ground.
Cartoon
Law Amendment E
Dynamite is
spontaneously generated in "C-spaces" (spaces in which
cartoon laws hold).
The process
is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which
postulated that the tensions involved in maintaining a space
would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite
quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit).
Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated by
feelings of distress in "cool" characters (see Amendment B,
which may be a special case of this law), who are able to
use said quanta to their advantage. One may imagine C-spaces
where all matter and energy result from primal masses of
dynamite exploding. The "big bang theory" indeed.
Cartoon Law Amendment F
Any bag, sack, purse, etc. possessed by a cool character is
a tesseract -- any number of objects of any size may be
placed in it or removed from it with no change in its outer
dimensions.
Cartoon Law Amendment G
Characters can spin around and change into any set of
clothes appropriate to the situation.
Cartoon Law Amendment H
Rabbits can dig a burrow from here to there in less than 20
seconds and emerge spotlessly clean.
Cartoon Law Amendment I
Movements are accompanied by funny sound effects.
[http://www.iap.fr/useriap/beaulieu/Pages/toonslaw.htm]
