Things I can do with one arm part 2

Hello happy campers! Yes, I'm back with more things I can do with one arm! I know you are all dying for an update on the health and strength status of my body. I know you are all wondering what I have in store for you! So what can I NOW do with one hand after a three weeks of being in a cast? Let's see...

GO ON CAMP.
I still managed to attend a week long camp which involved lots of lifting (with one hand) and getting wet (with a purple, scented plastic bag on my arm). It was really difficult but I got through the whole week somehow.

SEW TOGETHER KNITTED SQUARES TO MAKE A BLANKET.
On camp, the JFS were given three huge bags of squares to sew together (4x4) to make blankets for poor babies in India. I managed to make two because I am a compassionate person, obviously.


WORK ON EXPRESS REGISTERS.
That's right people, Renji is moving up in the world of Safeway and can now work not only on self serve, but also on the 12 items or less register (with one hand). Customers thought I was a bit slow but I thought I was doing a fairly good job with only half of my appropriate bagging limbs working.

FEED THE DOG.
My dog is on a special diet of kangaroo meat because the vet thinks she is allergic to some of her food. Kangaroo mince is gross and sticky and hard to get out of a bag with one hand. Her antihistamine tablets are also hard to put into little kangaroo treats so she wont notice them, but you know what? I did it! She ate those damn pills and her kangaroo meat looked delicious (to her) in her bowl. She still loves me!


COOK PASTA.
Ok, I can't really COOK pasta, but dad left the sauce in a pot and I put the boiling water in another pot and added some pasta and waited for it to not be hard and fragile so it could be eaten by my family. I think that was an ok effort in helping around the house. It was the most delicious pasta EVER! (But not really because it was just ragout instead of something super interesting, although I love ragout)

MAKE A SANDWICH.
I was at work today and I needed to eat some lunch, so I bought a roll, some Dodoni fetta (only the best), and some salami. I then discovered that cutting a roll in half with one hand is incredibly difficult but after much struggling I managed to cut it in half to fill it with the deliciousness that I had prepared for it. It took ages but it was definitely worth the struggle because it was an amazing roll/sandwich.

So I apologise for the lack of any interesting stuff that I can do with one arm; I didn't really try anything that dramatic or difficult because my arm hurts. This time however, I will set myself a challenge for next week that I will make a report on (whether success of failure) in my next blog along with any other little victories I have over my heavy, dead arm. This week's challenge: clean my room. Cleaning my room is not a big deal for me as usually it is spotless and everything is in its correct place (nothing is homeless), but with a broken arm it is incredibly hard to clean. At the moment it is littered with my luggage from camp, my luggage from Sydney, my dirty laundry, my clean laundry, and just things that were too hard to put away. With my recovering arm I think I can do it this week! Stay tuned for the report on this challenge, accompanied by entertaining photos no doubt. Thanks for reading.
-Renji

Things I can do with one arm

Hi there kids of Blogville! I have a rather funny story to tell you involving rollerblades and a broken arm... Well that's the whole story really (damn I wanted it to sound more interesting on paper). I, the invincible Lieutenant Renji, am facing a minor setback of a snapped radius that was pushed towards my elbow and had to be yanked into place by a doctor; anaesthetic you ask? Lieutenant Renji has no need for numbness, a person so tough can withstand the pain of bones moving inside them! Anyway, after a week and a half of difficulty with general things in life I have learned to do a few things with one arm and I have decided that everyone wants to hear about my great achievements as I discover little by little the boring, everyday things that I am able to do while covered in plaster.

Use the computer.

My typing skills were already so great that I was able to type with one hand on the first try, which was as soon as I got home from the hospital so I could Facebook all my friends to see who would be first to shotgun writing "milpool" on the cast.

Write a blog.

Evidently I am able to write a blog.

Fold clothes.

At first it was incredibly hard to clean my room and put away my clothes, but with the help of my teeth and a bed I am able to manoeuvre a tshirt into a perfectly folded position only to find that I am unable to put it back into its proper colour coordinated spot because I cant lift up the other shirts while holding the folded one. Soon I will learn to satisfy my OCD. PURPLE DOESN'T GO NEXT TO RED!

Open bottles.

That's right folks, with the combined power of my thighs and my right hand I can open a bottle from the fridge and pour myself a refreshing drink! Simply delicious.

Play UNO.

This involves teeth and some clever card placement. I am yet to play it completely without the help of someone else but I will get there; my sister is sick of taking cards out of my mouth that lead to her UNO demise!

Take photos.

Well I actually did this with the hand on my broken arm (obviously since my other arm is not in it) and it really hurt, but I am committed to the blog!

That's all for now, stay tuned for more things I can do with one arm, brought to you as I discover them myself. I'm sure they will get more impressive... well I hope. Thanks for reading.

-Renji

WISH (I) WERE (THERE)

Good evening everybody.

I get the sense that I haven't been pulling my weight around here lately what with less posts and a failure to show up at all blog related functions. So this is my post. It is not a very well constructed post. It is not a very well written post. It's mine.

Like always the end of the year always seems to be a crescendo of weirdness. Just weirdness. Weird in that you do, see and think things you normally wouldn't. I don't know if this is the same for anyone else but I get really weirded out by the last couple of weeks of a year.

Yeah. I don't know where I'm going with this. I haven't thought this through at all, so I apologise, but this will be more like reading the frantic notes I've scrawled in my life's margins...

Well, I thought after Christmas that I was really getting sick of my house. Too many things. Too many gifts, too many photos... too many dreams and too many worries. Too much of the past and future, none of the present. I could say something annoying like you can only get self realisation out of pockets of occurrent experience or something, but that wouldn't be true. It wasn't something I'd thought about. I decided I'd pack a bag and head out for a week. Because what was the alternative? What was the worst that could happen?

I'm already rereading this post. Trying to think where I want to steer it. Away from some rocks, towards a light... maybe give up and run it aground here. I'm thinking, maybe this is why nobody ever wants the truth. Because it's nothing. It's definite. It's the truth, there's no way around it. It's like the cuckoo's egg hatching and pushing the others out of the nest. When you get the truth you don't get anything else... just this bigger, uglier, hungrier mouth to feed.

Well, I did some things. That's what I did. I spent time with some people, said goodbye, made my way to my next destination, rinse. repeat. rinse. repeat. It's boring. Like doing the dishes.

Boring.
Simple.
Nice.

I suppose I liked the travelling. I like train rides. Not many people talk on a train, and when they do it's pretty black and white. One hand is the people travelling in a group who send out where they're going and for what little reasoning and the ones who bridge the gap and talk to other travellers about the places they've been. I like conversations. More other people's than my own.

I read this in a monotone in my head. I'm starting to question whether or not I want to keep typing. Now I know the little pieces I'm saying. I think I'm starting to see the picture they'll make when I fit them together. But I'm still hesitant. This is inside my head. This is probably not where it belongs. It might not be understood properly... or worse, it might not even want to be understood. Scenarios float up from murky depths to the surface of my mind. Now I see separate thoughts... how do I say it?... separated from the rest. To mingle with the thoughts of others. I could be judged... I don't care much about that. I could be similar though. These could be the inner workings of someone else. If so, why do I type mine out? Am I allowed to do that? Is it right? What justifies my... hmmm... I don't think this is sadness, or happiness... it's not really expressive, it's just vague. Well, why do I type this when noone else will? What makes me special? I don't know how to say it any better...

On one of the trains I caught I sat opposite a girl in goth makeup. This was at the onset of a four hour trip, shortly before this my MP3 player died... and if I remember I'd been wanting all day to listen to one song. Astronomy Domine, by Pink Floyd. I wanted to hear the first verse specifically.

Lime and limpid green
a second scene,
A fight between the blue
you once knew.
Floating down the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground
Jupiter and Saturn
Oberon Miranda and Titania
Neptune Titan
Stars can frighten

I like the alliteration, I like the names and I like the image it makes in your head. Well, I wasn't afforded this liberty and it would be days before I'd hear the song again. I knew to entertain myself I'd be reliant on sketching, writing, reading, looking out the window and succinct glances at other travellers. The goth girl's story was already writing itself in my head...

It was a crude translation.

I saw a desire to fit in.
Three phone conversations in ten minutes later I saw the desire was met in her. Desires go when they're attained.

I saw a precisely constructed caricature of alienation and moroseness.
The fact that she was having unrestrained fits of laughter a podcast she listened to made me see no fear of happiness.

I liked being wrong.

I also liked seeing the young couple who boarded wearing peacock feathers in their hats and the old cowboy guy they traded travelling stories with.

I hate this post now. I hate it because I don't even know what it's saying. Right now there is no fleeting glimpse of something. It's just words. They aren't making me think anything, I'm not attached to them, they don't make me feel good.

The simplicity of travelling is brilliant. You only carry what you know is your life with you. Everything you find you get attached to. Everything that isn't worthwhile either remains where you came from or at your destination. It's freedom. You don't have all the good things at your fingertips, of course, but you can't find a luggage rack for what's really tied to your neck. In a way, past and future lay themselves out clearly for you to really look at.

I want to end this now. I don't want to write anymore. I can't think. I can't do it. I don't know what I'm saying. No, now I do know what I'm trying to say, and how I'm trying to write it. But the last piece can't be written down. Can't be written down yet. The last piece is up to whoever reads this. I'm sorry if it's cryptic and annoying, there's no ulterior motive behind it. It just came out and put itself together. Don't be intimidated. You're not intimidated by stupidity, why be intimidated by something else uninspired and unplanned?

Right now things are just happening. All cause and effect crumbles in this overlap of years

'It was me, waiting for me'

Tongs away... to the last piece of post... hehe

A great big warm welcome to myself.

Please ignore the euphemism that is my title. I was just wanting to say a hey to this big, gleaming sphere of blogos (it's like calling someone a wino, but with more pretentious wit and less blurring of grammar rules. Actually, strike out that last bit) that I've just recently joined. Soon, you will realise the complete lack of ability I have in the worlds of narrative and the written word but, let's be clear about this, it should be fun. Perhaps. With some luck.

Moving on.

Recently I've been suffering from the worlds most horrendous terminal illness. Well, terminal in a creative sense of the word. I've become a sufferer of writers block. This is not as it sounds, a giant piece of cobblestone tied to my pen (I know you Minecraft addicts were thinking it) but instead the complete lack of inspiration to write. So I find myself here exploring the great beyond of my mind thanks to a sense of melancholic despair and a Justin Bieber track I found that had been slowed down 800% and sounded like someone exploring the electric impulses of my synapses.

Surprisingly, given my writers' block, I found it overgrown. The pot plants of my psyches' front veranda overflowing their bounds, the lawn unkempt and unruly with the crabgrass of my subconscious slowly winning the turf war (...cause it's lawn...get it?) against my boring self and last weeks newspapers piling up in the farthest corner where the annoying paper boy throws them seemingly on purpose to test his aim just to get to me. What was I talking about?

I found many ideas, but realised quickly and abruptly:

None of this is interesting.

You see, being a gamer, I like to talk about games. Unsurprisingly. However, people don't want to read a blog about your latest foray into the world of nerdery if it involves anything past a controller and a terrorists' head being blown into the gritty brown wall behind it somewhere in Afghanistan.

I retreat back into my boarded up house, finding more talk of miniatures, cards, indie puzzle games, final fantasy jokes. On and on, I wade through the flotsam and jetsam of a games junkie. Soon I feel despair that I'll ever find anything interesting or entertaining for the mass blogosphere until I hit something that overlaps in the great venn diagram of games and philosophy.

Ludology.

A really cool concept in dismantling games. It simply looks at gameplay, how a game is structured, made. It judges it's rules, it's complexities, it's way of levelling the playing field for everyone. The tactics.

Interestingly, you would think that a complex, academic way of dismantling and analysing games would eschew you're gamer staples, such as the Call of Duty series or even things such as Super Mario 3. The great thing is, often and knowingly, it encourages these things.

The thing about COD: Modern Warfare and it's successor was that it played well. Really well. These were games that were spit shined and spit shined until they played well, looked beautiful and encouraged people to introduce themselves. This isn't to say there aren't problems, the fact that the "noob-tube" exists is contrary to my previous argument, but no game is perfect. And the 'tube' serves a purpose. An awe-inspiringly exploitable, annoying and obvious purpose. It helps noobs.

However, using the same tools that you used to judge this AAA title, with millions of dollars poured into it's mixing pot of production, you can judge a game made in someones' little scummy meth (read: games) lab in a matter of weeks. VVVVV is an indie darling made by one man and it involves 8 bit graphics, an eerie soundtrack and only 3 action buttons. One to move your character left, one to move your character right and one to change the direction of gravity. This game plays smoothly and has a generous checkpoint section that makes it's difficulty bearable as well as making the game more user friendly. It's puzzles can be worked out in a variety of methods, with the trial and error method probably not being a great one but often used. Check it out, it's pretty cool.

Ludology can deal with any game from any background. However it falters greatly. I recently realised that this made the method unusable for me. And many others. Ludology ignores the story a game tells for it's nuts and bolts build. This means that, despite a game like Final Fantasy X with it's amazing storyline, great character design and set pieces, it becomes broken in the eyes of ludology. Because there is no "jump button" and this lowers user accessibility, because the movement is linear, because the combat isn't overly shaken up during the entire story and because the levelling system is broken in more ways than one. But this is one of the classic games of our generation! Ok...maybe only for gamers, but still. The method is broken.

It's like saying: "I found Inglorious Basterds only OK. The scenes are really long, and the action only happens very occasionally". You ignore the tension in the dialogue, the acting, the entire reason for the film! Ludology is the main form of games deconstruction, yet it ignores such a basic premise of creation. Games don't just have to made for fun. They can say something too.

...It would be good if they were fun too of course...just saying.

On second thoughts, perhaps ludology isn't really a big overlap between my interests and others. Perhaps I have been searching through my minds proverbial loo instead of my fridge and given you the meal of un-related turd instead of spicy Italian thought sausage. But I enjoyed this rant. And Damn right you better enjoy my rants to come!

Because Shady is here folks, and here to stay!

(Hey next week I might post something good, so stick around, eh?)

a look

In the fear that people will forget this place exists I have taken it upon myself to relate the fire that is this blog. Now considering all past attempts at doing such results will be bleak and nothing will come of this but it is nice to pretend. 

I feel that it must be mentioned that the writers of this blog come together in a meeting of dumplings that on paper just barely rivals a meeting of the chess club though in actual fact was at least twice as cool. Much irrelevant matter was discussed in true DID a mess style and I can safely report that for you the reader there were no benefits. I myself had a glorious meal in the presence of respectable company (Crucible Tongs was unable to attend due to apparent fake illness). To summarise this was a paragraph that benefits you little but allowed me to subtly insult CT which as fair as I am concerned is all that matters.

Now on to the post… Being a poor student who cuts corners in all ways possible I find that I am doing a frequent amount of walking late at night after taking cheap public transport. See the night is really the best time to be out on your own. There isn’t the safety of daylights bear hug thus keeping you on edge and actively in thought. See I like to reflect on every irrelevant moment of my life in those ridiculous what if scenarios that don’t hold an ounce of probability. I don’t wish to be confused as some sort of pseudointellectual junkie because that is really not me. I don’t have the patience or the time to look up enough Wikipedia articles to be like that. I like to focus more on just the everyday moments of life side of things in plain speak.

So I come to where I have been heading all this time and it really is possibly more a cliché tabloid kind of topic but I would like it to be treated with a little more respect. The intimacy found in a shared daze between two individuals. If there was such a feeling as floating on a cloud this would be it. Those moments were possibility is endless and realism has no place for those few seconds can set a person free. Eyes are what I would undoubtedly say are the most beautiful feature of the human form. They don’t age like the rest of use and are a gate into everything about a person. Nothing is hidden in the eye.

This little piece came up when the other day when I made eye contact for a few seconds with a person I could never have the guts to meet but that little moment gave me everything I needed to keep going. It was a passing thing in an everyday situation but it is just a pleasant feeling that all of a sudden makes life easy again.

There is not a lot more to add to it I mean it is only like a 15 min walk that I do each night and I have a tendency to harp on only one point per trip but hopefully this is something a little different to kick start this thing all over again a positive piece is always a nice change.

…..MF

So finally free.

I'M FREE! My year of hard work and study involving assignments, research, laboratory reports, tutorials, and lectures is over! Who am I kidding? I have been pretty much free all year. I have been hearing my friends, one by one, rejoicing about their new found free time that they have after exams and study have finally finished, and I felt the same upon leaving my last exam. Chemistry; the bane of my existance. I vowed to drop chemistry at the end of this year and after my exam I walked out with a skip in my step because not only did I not have to study chemistry anymore... I didn't have to study anything for about 5 months. Now, I am not the type who really studies at all; I feel bad for people who wanted to be in my course but missed out on the enTER who probably deserve it more because they will work harder. The freedom that I feel is not freedom from study, it is freedom from worry about how I will get through the next biology lab without having read the chapter about microbes, or how I will join in the discussion during my criminology tute when I haven't been to a lecture since week 2. This freedom, I thought, was just as good. Alas; it is not.

I finished my exams less than a week ago and already I am hearing the boredom attempt to creep up behind me; it is failing to creep as it is a dirty whore who wears high heeled shoes and my house is full of hardwood floors... THAT'S WHY I CAN HEAR IT! If it would only be sensible and wear flats it would be able to pounce on me without me noticing its presence until it was already too late and I was engulfed by the gluttonous belly of the boredom beast. (Yes boredom is gluttonous; boredom is a fat whore in high heels with too much pride to wear flat shoes after 6pm unless she is going to the supermarket on a Tuesday after 11pm in which case she is often seen wearing too much make up, tracksuit pants, a singlet that is too small for her, and some ugg boots). Anyway, the freedom that many of my friends are enjoying allows them to finally relax and concentrate on earning a bit of money while still making time to hang out with their friends during the hot, sweaty, summer months. I have been relaxing all year while concentraring on earning a bit of money while still making time to hang out with my friends, the only difference now is that I have lost the excitement and drama of having deadlines that I constantly ALMOST miss. Without a little drama in my life I will probably just shrivel up and die.

My school slash uni holidays usually fit into the same pattern where everything I do falls into 5 categories and 1 almost category.

CLEANING SLASH ORGANISING
The most exciting passtime for me during these periods of nothing involves 3 day long adventures in which I move everything out of my room and rearrange it all so that my cupboard is colour coordinated, my DVDs are in alphabetical order, and my shelves are spotless. Once my room has been taken care of, I inconsiderately move things around in other rooms and sift through our storage to find things that we put away before extending the house many years back so that I can laugh about how lame my diary was or jump for joy at finding a book containing an Aboriginal story about a baby sun getting lost from the mother sun and then getting bitten by a snake, which upon reading will still make me cry. Being organised makes me so happy and usually it lasts about a month before everything is moved and nothing has a real home; but this time my room is still immaculate from last holidays so I have NOTHING TO REARRANGE. I may just die a little bit.

SEX
During the school year I seem to have an adequate amount of this, but in the holidays there is too much time. There is no need to study or to get up early, and so the result is endless opportunities to have 'the sex' and do other things relating to 'the sex'. The thing is, during the uni year there is also a lot of time for 'the sex' in comparrison to the school year, so this year the holidays wont be that much different. Again, we lack the drama and excitement here.

WORK
I have been working 5 days a week for some time now because I am an absolute machine (working on front end at Safeway really takes a lot of effort). In the old hell hole of a store which I loved to pieces (literally, it was falling to pieces) we had heaps of fun. In the old store and during renovations we had many interesting adventures, usually involving the roof collapsing from excessive rain resulting in a flooded store, but in the newly renovated place nothing crazy ever happens. I will admit that our 2IC of front end getting punched in the throat was pretty crazy but I wasn't there so I don't count that is excitement for me (he is ok by the way... nobody panic). In the new store I basically just stand at self serve and listen to customers complain about how these machines are taking the jobs of young kids; I smile and nod while wishing I could yell something along the lines of "IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO FUCKING USE MY MACHINES THEN LISTEN TO ME WHEN I TELL YOU WHY IT ISN'T WORKING INSTEAD OF YELLING AT THE SCREEN AND THROWING THINGS TO THE GROUND! WHY ARE YOU EVEN USING THE MACHINES IF YOU THINK THEY ARE STEALING JOBS OFF POOR YOUNG CHILDREN! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOU COMPLAIN! I AM THE ONE WHO SHOULD BE COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW MUCH I HAVE TO LISTEN TO COMPLAINING EVERY DAY! NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET OUT OF MY STORE YOU TECHNOLOGY ILLITERATE TOSSER!" Something along those lines, not exactly that of course. Anyway, holding back the urge to punch many customers right in the ovaries does not exactly count as interesting or exciting; it just kind of makes me need to pee.

COMPUTER
There isn't really much that can be said about how uneventful a computer can be. I spend about 80% of my day on the computer if I am not working on that day. About 70% of the time I spend at home involves a computer. This includes facebook, terrible blogging, tumblr, youtube, downloading music, and watching television shows from my hard drive on my computer screen because I am too lazy to get an HDMI cable for my mum's house and also too lazy to take the one from dad's with me to both places. None of this is very exciting, except when you hear that pre-battle music on Bleach that is the same before nearly every intense fight, then you know shit is going down.

FRIENDS
I am not the sad loner that I sound like on D.I.D a Mess I swear; I actually do have friends who I hang out with on the odd occasion. This category includes going out without drinking because I haven't been paid since Wednesday, going out and getting a little tipsy, going out and getting really drunk so that I am stupid enough to enjoy the music and the Hawthorn, and getting aboslutely slaughtered so I am stupid enough to text everyone in my phonebook with an impressively coherant message stating that I need to take a massive dump, or something of the sort. It also includes shopping trips on which I have fun, but always spend too much money which results in my being poor and not being able to drink when I go out. My friends are incredibly fun and interesting, but not very dramatic. CURSE YOU HOLIDAYS! Why can you not provide me with the intesnity that I so desperately crave?!

FOOD
Now, food doesn't really need its own category because it fits into all of these categories, but I love it so much that I wanted to give it a little bit of a mention. In the first category, aka cleaning slash organising, food lives just in the next room in the ice cave of wonderment (aka the fridge). I make multiple trips to the ice cave of wonderment to retrieve snow juice (usually milk or delicious coola cordial; and what the hell kind of flavour is 'coola' anyway?) or delicious fluffy snow treats (such as cheese, hazelnut chocolate, green olives, and savory shapes which are by far the best flavour, that's right all you BBQ lovers.. BBQ shapes are just awful). These snacks are brought back to my batcave (aka my room) during the cleaning process to keep my energy up for the long task ahead. In the second category aka sex, you wouldn't think that food would have any part in it right? Or you would think that food only had a dirty 'I-want-to-smother-you-with-whipped-cream-and-chocolate-sauce-so-I-can-lick-it-off' sort of inclusion; but you would be wrong. I don't know how many of you out there are like me, but there are certain food that I eat that just make me want to make out with somebody; and no it's not the normal things that people say make you randy like oysters anad crazy herbal tea! If I eat some tira misu you better believe I am going to find someone to make out with. After a good souvlaki all the boys better hide because the first one I see will be face raped. What can I say; I love my food. In the third category aka work, food is most important on my breaks. Sure, at the service desk we often have a packet of lollies that were found 'broken' and needed to be written off, but on a long shift in which I have 3 breaks, I feel the need to buy food in all of them even though by my ast break I am never hungry. Work makes me fatter! In the fourth category aka computer, the food is often right next to me while I munch away and watch Bleach. This is why there are many food crumbs inbetween my keys. In the fifth category aka friends, food is just food. We always eat way too much especially when we are bored. The worst offender is Shady Lewis from my other blog; when we are together we just eat sugar coated sugar and drink. Food fits in with all the otehr categories but in its own special way. It is amazing and one of my favourite things in the world; I would die without it (wait... duh). The thing is, food is not DRAMATIC!

As you can see there is not much excitement to be had in the holidays. There is, of course, many fun times to be had, but nothing that can't be done during the uni year and nothing that involves enough tension and excitement.

I apologise for the long post today, but I know how you all love me and miss my writing so I thought I would give you a large helping on which you will probably choke and die. Anyway, the point of this story is that if nobody provides me with some sort of deadline that will impact on my happiness I may have to to move to America to join the Russian Mafia to provide myself with some sort of excitement. I thirst for the blood of the innocent...
Thanks for reading.
-Renji

Reminiscing with Uncle Tongs

*falls out of rocking chair and drops pipe full of embers down shirt and managing to curse profusely and with unmatched innovation at the same time* Well, I'm gonna try a segment again, because they don't last and I can blame a lack of quality on subject matter. Hello and welcome to Reminiscing with Uncle Tongs... because it makes me sound like a loveable old slave from Song of the South or something. *NOTE: This is NOT an example for the level of insensitivity in this post, I'm talking about MY childhood, a series of crude exaggerations of sexual inadequacy... I'm liable to lose my shit at some point and put Mel Gibson to shame, THIS IS YOUR WARNING*

Okay so I got bored and decided to catch a moth alive today, because I'm of good old(er by the day *violent shuddering*) Gen Y, I've been conditioned by the mass media to associate any and all barbarism concerning animals with Pokemon. Nice one guys! Now you know the only one's kicking up a stink about cosmetic testing had hilariously deprived childhoods that never involved the excruciating complex of having 'Catching 'em All!' carved into their brains right before starting off by deciding on the two. fucking. pokemon. you. could. never. ever. own.

Anyway, I've decided, I'm on holidays and to stop me planning the slayings of D-list celebrities I'm gonna play through Pokemon until I get stuck, lose interest or rip my laptop in half because Sand Attack used nine times is FUCKING CHEATING!!!

Oh yeah, I'm playing this illegally too, if you don't realise, but fuck the Nintendo corporation, I bought enough pokemon related shit as a child to retire them all into next week. So here I go, I'm booting this up...


Yeah, it's the newfangled colourful homosexual one, for the record, I wanted BLUE because I'm obsessive over these things

Oh god, how quaint... 'New Skool Pokemon for pussy children who don't know shit about anything' is explaining how to play... If I recall, you press A to talk, B to back out of a selection like I wish I could've done with all my past relationships and directions to walk in them... kids these days suck, you know it. ALRIGHT, LISSEN TO ME GAME AND LISSEN UP GOOD. I HAD 150 FUCKING POKEMON BY LIKE THE END OF 1999 AND THE ONLY REASON I DIDN'T GET ANY CRED FOR IT WAS BECAUSE YOU BASTARDS TACKED THAT MEW THING THAT LOOKS LIKE ABORTION, DON'T. TELL. ME. HOW. TO. DO. THIS.

Well, the ball is rolling, fates are turning... you get the point


'So you'd basically flip out if during the throes of passion I accidentally yelled Digimon Doctor?'


Oh for fuck's sake, I do this to escape the horrors of my reality, I don't need everyone over 60's definition of manhood haunting me here as well...


I want to say NO, I really do, it destroys all social convention... but I'd have to spend another four minutes typing out an alias and working out how the hell I find lower case letters


What the hell is rivalry at the infant stage? Or is it just some other fucked up element of this backwards culture of pitting everything against everything for NO GOOD REASON?!?

Okay, so I call my rival GARY because I'm a purist slut and TWATSODWITHBETTERHAIRTHANME didn't fit. I go downstairs and head off to Prof. Oak's mysterious back shed 'lab' for my free goddamn pokemon to nurture into a merciless killing machine without a hitch, oh, apart from the fact that it makes that funny noise that sounds like a beepy frustrated groan when you try to walk into space occupied by some other character... yeah after eleven minutes of going 'Oh, Ash's mum, OH, OH, OH'... WHAT?!? I'm trying to catch the perspective of immaturity alright?!?, I'm allowed. I arrive at a building that smells like sweat and acetone.

I enter the lab... and the music changes, to some stupid upbeat theme that isn't the battle music... or that really epic Route #-- song that I had for my ringtone for ages because it made me cry with nostalgia... Well, I do what anyone else about to receive their FIRST. REAL. POKEMON. would do... I check out every bookcase looking for free potions, hey, free shit... and I might find whatever kind of distressing pornography that I have no doubt in my mind the old professor is into...

CUT TO THE CHASE, I pick squirtle, that thing's a beast. It evolves and gets guns. I'm pretty sure I could wipe one of these small towns off the map with those... For all you bitching about charmander because it's a dragon, grow up. Charizard is a sexual fantasy that can never happen... The fire breathing dragon WILL. NEVER. BE. YOUR. LOYAL. COMPANION. TO. FEND. OFF. BULLIES. AND. LONELINESS. Get over it. Oh and as for Bulbasaur, it's a matter of consistency. You see, Squirtle at least rhymes with 'turtle'... Bulbasaur DOESN'T rhyme with 'cancerous frog'. Cry me a river... you seriously fucked up people for not picking Squirtle...


'Don't choose me, Don't choose me, Don't choose... Oh shit... SHITSHITSHITSODDINGFRIGGEN!!! NO, PLEASE, DON'T LET THIS KID EVEN TOUCH ME, LOOK INTO HIS EYES?!?!? DO YOU SEE A SOUL?!? DO YOU?!?!?!


Just so he knows what kind of person he's dealing with... FOR THE REST OF HIS NO DOUBT SHORT AND HORRIBLY-LADEN-WITH-AWKWARD-SOCIAL-OBLIGATION-TO-AVERT-MY-TEARS-LIFE

GARY goes ahead and takes Bulbasaur. Dick move, GARY, dick move.

And what's the first thing that cocky little bitch does?


Rubs in how my sense of style is more than a decade old now...

So now I'm thrust into yielding my Pokeginity... at least I've known the guy all my life... and so I awkwardly fumble around to determine what I'm comfortable with and trying recall stuff I've seen in the movies. He gets a little weirded out when I try to figure out what other people have done in this situation through subtle questioning and struggling not to look like I'm defensively obsessing over some of Gary's more experienced past RIVALS (because that's what the kids must be calling it now).

Like men of this land of pokemon, we duel to determine our fate...


Yeah, I'm already in tears... I get to watch my first friend get eaten alive while I flail around panicking uselessly... "JUST RUN, WE CAN'T WIN"


TAIL WHIP IS A FUCKING ATTACK. IF I WHIPPED SOMEONE WITH AN APPENDAGE IT WOULD BE CLASSED AS ASSAULT MAKING IT A DAMAGING ATTACK. SERIOUSLY, THEY USED IT AS AN ATTACK IN THE SHOW ALL THE FRIGGEN TIME?!?!?!

So yeah, I lose horribly and everyone is kind of looking in stunned silence at this display of terrifying inadequacy and what it says about the fact that I'll be a voting member of society one day... then they recall this is pokemon land and there's nothing remotely close to democracy, any ol' criminal organisation can run the show... A series of increasingly teary and reluctant retries tricks GARY into commanding his toad to fight like an acid dropping hippy... I'm serious, his attacks just started to miss me regardless... Forcing the game to let me win WAS my scheme however, so I'm cool with this... but for his passive aggression in letting me win I might go let FREND-1 relieve himself in GARY's room later...

So I leave the town... CLEARLY NOONE MISSES ME... and proceed to let FREND-1 eat as much of the native species he feels inclined to. Introducing a grossly dominant species to a fragile ecosystem gets me stupidly drunk on my newfound sense of power over a world that's wronged and ridiculed me for so long. In a stupor of violence I begin nourishing myself on the prospect of an unholy beast army cleansing the world of it's sins... Through imprisonment and extensive waterboarding I convince a small bird that it was placed on this earth as a saviour for all of mankind. Now it can only say it's own newly christened name, over and over again, but it still has claws, which will do nicely... 'FREND-2, FREND-2' it screeches in a euphoric joy as it pulls mice apart at my whim.

Now that society is aware of my deviance, I'm left with no choice but to flee to the woods. The woods are infested with filth. The filth of man's progeny. You see in pokemon land people don't have children, they have Bug Catchers, which sit among detritus the bottom of the predatory chain.


'THEY WILL NEVER FIND YOUR BODY'

Oh god, OH GOD?!? Is there even a pokemon god?!?! NO, I'm in no fit state for worship... I've just assisted my FRENDS in the slaying and subsequent partial consumption of a child?!... oh and I like, totally threw a pokeball at his caterpie, which is a hangable offence in pokemon land... I think I need some serious help, I have a condition... OAK! He's a professor!! Surely he'll know what to do... No maybe I'm taking this all way too seriously, all I need to do is hide what's left of the body and then I'll just chill out and go play some Pokemon on my laptop, yeah, that's it. I've got a feeling everyting will turn out... juuuuuuuuuuust fine...

Mel, the ball is in your court ;)

TONGS AWAY