Chapter 1 of ?

I'm just going to throw this out here with any typos intact, for now. I don't have any readers so I don't think it'll make any difference to anyone, but I'll come back and clean it up later, possibly adding to it. Right now, it just needs to be out of my head.

There is a garden gnome looking at me from across the kitchen island. He is holding a football. His dead eyes are staring at me and my hangover won't let me look away. Behind him, the morning sun makes the invisible, visible as dust motes are revealed to me in a sort of frozen moment that exists only in the pain behind my eyes and the taste in my mouth. My mouth, by the way, tastes like something with fecophilia died achieving tantric orgasm. In a word, like ass. Which is technically two words. Fuck off. My head hurts.

Bits and pieces of the night before swim slowly and break the surface of the dead calm, lukewarm lake that passes for my mind this morning. Did I steal a spruce tree? The rash from the needles on the inside of forearms would suggest that I was involved with a spruce tree in some way. There are also no more buttons on my shirt and it is hanging open. I distinctly remember having a problem with buttons at some point. I remember a montage of shots, in a montage of bars. Even Rocky had a montage. The music was the same in every bar, I remember that too. I hate bars, always have, always the same stupid dance music everywhere you go, but everyone else wanted to go out so I went out.

It's painfully early. As in, the sunlight is coming through the windows almost horizontally and it hurts my eyes, painful. But that damned gnome won't let me move. Where did the gnome come from? I think I'm the only one awake. I can never sleep more than a few hours after I get wasted, for some reason. There are very unconscious people on every available reclining surface, and all the bedroom doors are closed firmly.

I'm glad somebody got laid last night, at least, because I sure didn't.

I spent the night on dance floor of every bar we went to, but not because I was picking up. No, the ladies in my life have learned that for I'm fun to dance with, for a white boy. Hell, I'm fun to dance with by anyone's reckoning but unfortunately said ladies seem think of me as a Non-Threatening Male Friend, or NTMF for short. This basically means that they love me, but they don't want access to my man bits. It also means that they cock-block the shit out of me and don't seem to realize it. Oh well, at least it's fun.

Gnome.

The gnome is my only company, beyond the sounds and smells of the somnolescent and slumbering seriously sauced salary slaves and post-secondary students. He's not bad company, really. He's quiet, clean, and doesn't make much of a mess. I wish I remembered where he came from, and what we named him because I can't keep pretending I know his name forever, calling him "Man" and "Dude" and "Guy" when I run into him on campus and introducing my friends to him while not introducing him back hoping he'll take care of that and I can catch his name in passing. I want to call him Chompsky, but that's probably not right. Gnome Chompsky. Heh.

I hope somebody else wakes up soon so that we can assemble a breakfast posse. I need eggs and bacon and copious amounts of coffee with disgusting amounts of cream and sugar. These things are restorative and even if they don't make the pain go away from where it sits patiently behind my eyes, I will at least be competent enough to get home and waste away the day on something undemanding.

all work and no play makes jack a dull boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy all work and no play makes jack a dull boy all pork and no whey makes jack a full boy all work and no play makes jack a dull Holy Crap, Force Unleashed II? Please more Jawa Punting Please more Jawa Punting Please more Jawa Punting.

I think I'm going to start a blog.

It was a Wednesday, like so many others have been and will yet be. Nothing stood out terribly about this Wednesday. It was a little blustery, quite cold, and I was studying for my upcoming exams. I also worked at the offsale, as I am wont to do from time to time.

note: Offsale is a Saskatchewan term, for a very Saskatchewan thing - a store that is allowed to sell liquor long after the government-run liquor stores have closed down, and usually attached to a bar. The prices are inflated, but the beer is refrigerated and whereas Liquor Board stores, or LBs, are few and far between, offsales abound.

As I said, nothing in particular stood out about this Wednesday, other than that I had acquired, that very day, the complete Steven Spielberg Presents Pinky and The Brain. Now, this in and of itself isn't terribly out of the ordinary, I have been on an inexplicable nostalgic kick for the last few weeks, this is merely an extension of that. However, Pinky and The Brain stand out for being not only as good as I remembered it being, but better. Yes, Pinky and The Brain is far, far better than I had recalled. Granted, it's been a over a decade since I last sat down and watched an episode, but the show is loaded with gloriously sophisticated humour concealed beneath the expected slapstick veneer that in my youth, I failed to properly appreciate. Historical references, accurate scientific jargon, movie spoofs and, last but certainly not least, "I think so Brain, but what if the chicken doesn't want to wear the pantyhose?"

High. Quality. Absolutely brilliant writing.

That, friends, stands out in my quest to fulfill this yearning, this yen, this desire to revisit the media of my youth. For I have tracked down many programs that I cherished, once upon a time: Dexter's Lab; Darkwing Duck; Earthworm Jim; Silverhawks; Bucky O'Hare; and more. Also, this is certainly not the first trip down memory lane I've taken, but it has been one of the most fruitful, and I have this to say: Very little is just as incredibly as you remember it being. Time, distance, age, experience - all of these fog our perceptions of the passions and joys of our childhoods, so when you come across something that truly is every bit as wonderful as you recall, it is to be savoured and shared with others who remember it fondly. Every so often, you are rewarded in your efforts with a nugget of nostalgia that is, as I've said, not only as good, but better than your rose-coloured glasses vision from the past and it justifies the revisit entirely.

I was going to include a list of cartoons and movies that you should and should not track down, but midway through it, I realized that I was going about it all wrong, because even the ones that were truly terrible were still fun to see again, even for a short time. And even those brought my friends and I some solid entertainment, even if it was laughing at, not with, three or four episodes, some hungover saturday morning (we like saturday morning cartoons after parties and so should you). Take some good humour and low expectations with you, like you would on a blind date, and you'll persevere.