#is it blinkin hilarious

[bobobkins]

so, the cosmonaut decides the only way to save his sanity...is to fall in love with this sound

[channoticedmeuwu]

Thoughtless Zombie | A Screenplay by kai | a story involving me, who rejects donghyuck yet again for @radiorenjun, ft. @lebrookestore

warnings : deadly spoons and horrible humor, made by a script generator i found online, it was hilarious. 

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INT. HATFIELD HOUSE, ENGLAND - AFTERNOON

Funny princess - KAI - is arguing with clumsy prince - DONGHYUCK -. KAI tries to hug DONGHYUCK but he shakes her off.

KAI : Please donghyuck, don't leave me.

DONGHYUCK : I'm sorry kai, but I'm looking for somebody a bit more brave. Somebody who faces her fears head on, instead of running away.

KAI : I am such a person!

DONGHYUCK frowns.

DONGHYUCK : I'm sorry, kai. I just don't feel excited by this relationship anymore.

DONGHYUCK leaves.

KAI sits down, looking defeated.

Moments later, flirty lady-in-waiting - ANGIE - barges in looking flustered.

KAI: Goodness, angie! Is everything okay?

ANGIE : I'm afraid not.

KAI : What is it? Don't keep me in suspense...

ANGIE  : It's ... a zombie ... I saw an evil zombie squash a bunch of elderly ladies!

KAI :  Defenseless elderly ladies?

ANGIE : Yes, defenseless elderly ladies! 

KAI : Bloomin' heck, angie! We've got to do something.

ANGIE : I agree, but I wouldn't know where to start.

KAI : You can start by telling me where this happened.

ANGIE : I was...

ANGIE fans herself and begins to wheeze.

KAI : Focus angie, focus! Where did it happen?

ANGIE : Kings Cross Station, London! That's right - Kings Cross Station, London!

KAI springs up and begins to run.

EXT. A ROAD - CONTINUOUS

KAI rushes along the street, followed by ANGIE. They take a short cut through some back gardens, jumping fences along the way.

INT. KINGS CROSS STATION, LONDON - SHORTLY AFTER

BROOKE - a thoughtless zombie terrorises two elderly ladies.

KAI, closely followed by ANGIE, rushes towards BROOKE, but suddenly stops in her tracks.

ANGIE : What is is? What's the matter?

KAI : That's not just any old zombie, that's brooke -!

ANGIE : Who's brooke -?

KAI : Who's brooke -? Who's brooke -? Only the most thoughtless zombie in the universe!

ANGIE : Blinkin' knickers, kai! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most thoughtless zombie in the universe!

KAI : You can say that again.

ANGIE : Blinkin' knickers, kai! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most thoughtless zombie in the universe!

KAI : I'm going to need spoons, lots of spoons.

brooke turns and sees kai and angie. She grins an evil grin.

BROOKE : kai -, we meet again.

ANGIE : You've met?

KAI : Yes. It was a long, long time ago...

EXT. A PARK - BACK IN TIME

A young KAI is sitting in a park listening to some orchestral music, when suddenly a dark shadow casts over her.

She looks up and sees BROOKE. She takes off her headphones.

BROOKE : Would you like some gummies?

KAI's eyes light up, but then he studies BROOKE more closely, and looks uneasy.

KAI : I don't know, you look kind of thoughtless.

BROOKE : Me? No. I'm not thoughtless. I'm the least thoughtless zombie in the world.

KAI : Wait, you're a zombie?

KAI runs away, screaming.

INT. KINGS CROSS STATION, LONDON - PRESENT DAY

BROOKE : You were a coward then, and you are a coward now.

ANGIE : (To KAI) You ran away?

KAI : (To ANGIE) I was a young child. What was I supposed to do?

KAI turns to BROOKE.

KAI : I may have run away from you then, but I won't run away this time!

KAI runs away.

She turns back and shouts.

KAI : I mean, I am running away, but I'll be back - with spoons

BROOKE : I'm not scared of you.

KAI : You should be.

EXT. MIAMI BEACH - LATER THAT DAY

KAI and ANGIE walk around searching for something.

KAI : I feel sure I left my spoons somewhere around here.

ANGIE : Are you sure? It does seem like an odd place to keep deadly spoons.

KAI : You know nothing angie -.

ANGIE : We've been searching for ages. I really don't think they're here.

Suddenly, BROOKE appears, holding a pair of spoons.

BROOKE : Looking for something?

ANGIE : Crikey, kai, she's got your spoons.

KAI : Tell me something I don't already know!

ANGIE : The earth's circumference at the equator is about 40,075 km.

KAI : I know that already!

ANGIE : i have a blue birthmark on my shoulder-blade.

BROOKE : (appalled) Dude!

While BROOKE is looking at ANGIE with disgust, KAI lunges forward and grabs her deadly spoons. He wields them, triumphantly.

KAI : Prepare to die, you thoughtless patato!

BROOKE : No please! All I did was squash a bunch of elderly ladies!

DONGHYUCK enters, unseen by any of the others.

KAI : I cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour! Those elderly ladies were defenceless! Well now they have a defender - and that's me! kai - defender of innocent elderly ladies.

BROOKE : Don't hurt me! Please!

KAI : Give me one good reason why I shouldn't use these spoons on you right away!

BROOKE : Because kai, I am your mother.

KAI looks stunned for a few moments, but then collects herself.

KAI : No you're not!

BROOKE : Ah well, it had to be worth a try.

BROOKE tries to grab the spoons but KAI dodges out of the way.

KAI : Who's the mummy now? Huh? Huh?

Unexpectedly, BROOKE slumps to the ground.

ANGIE : Did she just faint?

KAI : I think so. Well that's disappointing. I was rather hoping for a more dramatic conclusion, involving my deadly spoons.

KAI crouches over BROOKE's body.

ANGIE : Be careful, kai. It could be a trick.

KAI : No, it's not a trick. It appears that... It would seem... brooke - is dead!

ANGIE : What?

KAI : Yes, it appears that I scared her to death.

ANGIE claps her hands.

ANGIE : So your spoons did save the day, after all.

DONGHYUCK steps forward.

DONGHYUCK : Is it true? Did you kill the thoughtless zombie?

KAI : donghyuck how long have you been...?

DONGHYUCK puts his arm around KAI.

DONGHYUCK : Long enough.

KAI : Then you saw it for yourself. I killed brooke -.

DONGHYUCK : Then the elderly ladies are safe?

KAI : It does seem that way!

A crowd of vulnerable elderly ladies enter, looking relived.

DONGHYUCK : You are their hero.

The elderly ladies bow to KAI.

KAI : There is no need to bow to me. I seek no worship. The knowledge that brooke - will never squash elderly ladies ever again, is enough for me.

DONGHYUCK : You are humble as well as brave!

One of the elderly ladies passes KAI a healing pendant

DONGHYUCK : I think they want you to have it, as a symbol of their gratitude.

KAI : I couldn't possibly.

Pause.

KAI : Well, if you insist.

KAI takes the pendant.

KAI : Thank you.

The elderly ladies bow their heads once more, and leave.

KAI turns to DONGHYUCK.

KAI : Does this mean you want me back?

DONGHYUCK : Oh, kai, of course I want you back!

KAI smiles for a few seconds, but then looks defiant.

KAI : Well you can't have me.

DONGHYUCK : WHAT?

KAI : You had no faith in me. You had to see my scare a zombie to death before you would believe in me. I don't want a lover like that.

DONGHYUCK : But...

KAI : Please leave. I want to spend time with the one person who stayed with me through thick and thin - my best friend, angie.

ANGIE grins.

DONGHYUCK : But...

ANGIE :You heard the lady. Now be off with you. Skidaddle! Shoo!

DONGHYUCK : kai?

KAI : I'm sorry donghyuck, but I think you should skidaddle.

DONGHYUCK leaves.

ANGIE turns to KAI.

ANGIE : Did you mean that? You know ... that I'm your best friend?

KAI : Of course you are!

The two walk off arm in arm.

Suddenly ANGIE stops.

ANGIE : When I said i have a blue birthmark on my shoulder-blade, you know I was just trying to distract the zombie don't you?

THE END

[kylo-wrecked]

“Do you sometimes dream about things?” Ziv leaned against the pilotseat, looking over Bens shoulder into hyperspace. In her paws, hot and steaming was a cup of caf that looked hilariously too big for the Tynnans small paws as if a child was holding their parents favorite cup. “Hey-” she continued promptly, not waiting for an answer as she pinned her fluffy ears back:”-do not even think about getting kriffing cocky here,I mean we all love beeing kriffing smartasses but for kriffing seriousness here, I mean no normal dreams I mean a kriffing Force hammering through your head in your sleep like a kriffing sledgehammer and your head is the kriffing anvil. Like- you know something like a vision? But it feels more like a dream? Like you wake up and know that kriffery that does not let you sleep restful and makes you into a even worse kriffing insomniac wants to tell you something and you are just too kriffing stupid to understand?”

A frown drew a long line between the Tynnans furred eyebrows and she looked down in her mug of caf- it was dark like a open mouth ready to swallow her, remainding her of that black spot on her dream. A black spot like a dark mouth with rotten teeth, a black spot like from a dark flower petal, a black spot like from a dead eye. Ziv pulled in the air with a huff, suddenly looking up and blinkin rapidly as if she had startled awake from a shor, restless sleep.

“Hypothetically of course,-” purring sweetly the Tynnan gave the other a thin grin with a mouth full of razorsharp, uncomfortable pointy looking teeth that looked more like a snarl. Ziv had been a refugee since she had been a fifteen year old pup and the word ‘ Hypothetically ‘ had become so prominent in her vocabulary, she wondered if she could ever lead a serious conversation without that word. Not that she often had serious conversations in the first place that went over the normal conversation a medic had with their patients they kept on a armlenght away: “-I have no idea of having kriffing visions send by the kriffing universe and I doubt you have that too, hm? So? Your thoughts? Am I going kriffing mad and will die of insomniac exhaustion or is there still a kriffing flicker of hope for me that its normal?” @irrfahrer​

“Mother of stars,” he chuckles. “When did a little thing like you learn to use all those big words?”

Ben loves the way Ziv speaks. There’s something artful to her offbeat cadence and her forceful, descriptive narratives. Her teeth made no difference to him because she was always good company.

“I dream things, Ziv. I’m just careful about who I tell.” Ben suppresses a grin as he reaches up to switch controls. Stars streak by, silver bullets rattling the heavens.

His humor fades as hyperspace spits them out into the black. It takes a while for him to register what’s wrong. Then it dawns on him. It’s still here. Empty. Ben could feel it right upon entry. His dark eyes scan the horizon, his gaze matching its bleakness.

“Where the hell are we?”

He glances warily at the nav comp. Nothing in their immediate surroundings feels familiar to him. Ben checks the coordinates again, reminding himself that ‘a star is a star, wherever you are,’ and that they had enough energy to reroute if they needed to. That in itself was enough to ward off his growing panic.

“Ziv?” He asks. “Hypothetically, what would these visions entail?”

[ducktracy]

134. shanghaied shipmates (1936)

release date: june 20th, 1936

series: looney tunes

director: jack king

starring: joe dougherty (porky), billy bletcher (captain, hippo)

perhaps inspired by MGM’s mutiny on the bounty in 1935, as well as coupled with jack king’s love of adventure cartoons, shanghaied shipmates (as the title suggests) details the harsh conditions porky and his shipmates endure thanks to a dictatorial captain.

on occasion, i’ve likened jack king to frank tashlin—both directors with a keen eye for cinematography. while tashlin is inarguably the better director, more confident and ambitious than king, king certainly thought in cinematographic terms, as the opening scene suggests. a mist overlay shrouds a seaside town as we hone in on a bar. our favorite pig is doing a dance front and center while a gang of rowdy drunkards cheer him on. a hippo plays tickles the ivory on dueling pianos, and a goat tugs ferociously on a rope connected to some heavy object offscreen—a giant mug of beer. all is well.

inside the bar, that is. the mist overlay compliments the foreboding atmosphere as we get a shot of a docked ship and a lone captain pacing around on deck. suddenly, a tiny little bespectacled dog (one of the supporting members of the i haven’t got a hat gang) hilariously ambles on deck, even climbing over the captain and hopping back down onto the floor, declaring “the crew’s deserted the blinkin’ ship!” the captain is far from pleased, snarling in his assistant’s (christened mr. stew) the only suitable comeback would be to shanghai the crew.

the two pace through the streets of town and break into the bar. there’s a rather tashlin-esque camera angle as the captain analyzes one cowardly drunk in particular. it comes off as random and slightly misplaced, but certainly an interesting angle that’s worthy of a kudos for experimentation. king experimented with his cinematography, but not much else. with a steely glare, the captain pummels his victim and sends him whirling back onto the ship. the process continues, and one by one victims whirl back into their place, the bar growing emptier by the second.

finally, all of the shipmates are back on deck... except one. porky attempts to hide, diving into the inside of a piano, but his tail sticking out of the doors tells on himself immediately. the captain drags him out, grinning condescendingly as porky insists “you can’t do this to me!” of course he can! the captain, relatively unbothered, shoos porky along, giving a bellowing laugh and smacking porky in the butt to get him to go.

highly amusing setup as porky now scrubs the deck of the ship with the most contemptuous expression, glaring absolute daggers at the captain who surveys his every movement. porky’s disdain gets to him, and in an act of rebellion he slips the soap from his grip and slides it all the way to where the captain is marching. and, of course, the captain slips, none too pleased. porky acknowledges what he’s done, naive mischief now replaced with visible anxiety as he braces for punishment. said punishment: a bar of soap shoved down his piggy gullet. once more, porky insists “you can’t do this to me!”, but a hiccup spawning a multitude of bubbles destroys any sort of authority or credibility.

porky goes back to scrubbing when one of his shipmates checks to see what all the fuss is about. a hiccup later and porky attempts to explain himself, hindered by not only a stutter but an entire bar of soap lodged in his throat, eventually gagging “agh-agh-aghh, soap!” thankfully, his buddy is a good sport. the shipmate pulls porky’s tail and slingshots it back, propelling the soap out of his mouth and back onto the deck... where it ends up perfectly in position in front of the lumbering captain, who falls victim to the bar of soap once more. a hippo sticks his head out from inside the ship just to guffaw at the captain—he gets his as the captain placed him in stocks, forcing a cat to lick his feet while the captain bellows in laughter.

after some more mismanagement of the shipmates, we now go to lunch as a dog blares the lunch fanfare through a tuba. a stampede of starving shipmates trample him in seconds, the dog weakly blaring out a few more notes after the fact. a gag very similar in nature to boom boom, another king entry.

certainly nothing can go wrong at lunch, right? an expectant porky observes as the captain stalls with his heaping bowl of fried chicken. porky is so deprived of food that he can hardly contain his unadulterated glee, slapping his face and bouncing up and down and running his hands together. at first i found the scene to be much more disconcerting than anything, but now that i rewatch it, it’s pretty funny in a very unconventional and off-putting manner. funnier than what was intended to be.

paul smith animates the shipmates receiving their hearty meals: nothing but a plain old bone, the captain stripping every single piece of chicken of its contents. the shipmates are not at all happy. a hippo folds his arms in rebellion, a dog resorts to scarfing down his own hat as a means of sustenance, another chopping his bone to pieces and rolling his eyes all around, and even porky tearfully pouring salt on his bone and pitifully licking it off. the scene is unfortunately hindered by the restrained simplicity of smith’s animation, and thusly doesn’t reach its potential in terms of humor. once more, wannabe rebel porky reaches out for a fully packed chicken leg, receiving a slap of the wrist and a bone down the throat in shock instead.

a week crawls on, and the shipmates are more stir crazy than ever. they bang their mugs against the dining hall table, all chanting “we want food! we want food!” in unison. finally fed up, porky crawls onto the table and signals for the rest of the gang to huddle in as he whispers a plan. just then, mr. smee mr. stew pokes his head into the dining hall and is surprisingly smart enough to put two and two together. the animation of him going to alert the captain, scrambling all around the deck and twirling around a pole, is very amusing and funny. “mutiny, captain! mutiny!”

the rowdy shipmates continue to demand for their food as the captain barges into the dining hall, armed with duel pistols. a ballsy porky marches up to the captain and asserts “we demand food!” but, of course, his diminutive size is nothing for the giant captain, who merely blows him over and pins him against the wall with a deep breath. with that, porky orders “c’mon, men! get ‘im!” and thus sparks mutiny on the bounty as all of the men tackle the captain, gunshots firing in defense.

porky himself sets his sights on mr. stew. certainly one of the funniest moments in a king cartoon as porky pins mr. stew down, mr. stew holding up a hand to pause for a second. he signals to his glasses, lifting them up as if to say “would you hit a guy with glasses?” even better, mild-mannered porky gingerly places them aside, and then wastes no time as he decks mr. stew in the face repeatedly. great timing and great unspoken dialogue.

now the fight rages on on the deck of the ship, some shipmates even flying overboard and jumping ship. porky leads his crusade to victory as they all charge towards the captain. in retaliation, the captain whips a menacing cannon right in front of them, threatening to knock them all over like vengeful bowling pins.

however, his plan backfires (no pun intended): he shoots, and the force of the shot is so tremendous that the captain is scooped onto the cannon as it rolls backwards and propels itself into the air. he lands in the comfort of a bunch of crates. crates labeled as explosives. one explosion later, and the shipmates are singing merrily, lazily drifting across the ocean current on a raft, porky in the lead and armed with a whip. pan over to the captain pulling the entire caravan of crusaders, receiving a few hearty whips from porky as we iris out.

i didn’t think much of this cartoon when i first saw it, but i certainly appreciate it more now. not phenomenal by any means, and still hides in the shadow of tex and friz. the gags don’t always hit, some scenes suffering from a lack of confidence and conviction. however, with that said, this was an ambitious cartoon and certainly adventurous. though it didn’t always work out in his favor, king worked ambitiously and experimented with camera angles and surreal ideas, but his execution was where his cartoons were bogged down. good ideas that struggled to be realized. i give him credit for attempting experimenting so much! i’ve certainly gained respect for him (though his cartoons unfortunately don’t really rival the others during this time period.) this was a high energy cartoon that had its moments, such as mr. stew’s run cycles, porky contemptuously scrubbing the ship deck, and the fight scene between porky and mr. stew. i think this is one of king’s more interesting cartoons and would fare well as a single watch, but that’s probably about it.

link!

[bounnostra]

Full Hunter || Cowboy || Trial 3-2 || RE: Orwell, Obama, Rookie

Cowboy looks in Orwell's direction. The chutzpah! The daring! The pot stirring! ...Alright, it wasn't quite all that, but it was something interesting. Maybe the wrong kind of interesting.

"Startin' to feel like yer narrowin' in on somebody over there? I'm not so sure yer barkin' up the right tree. I'll tell ya why in a moment."

There's a brief sound of chains rattling as he frees his silver pocket watch out of—where else?—his pocket. Cowboy pops the lid open and closed while he responds to Obama's inquiry, adding a rhythmic click around everything he quotes from a note.

"Been chewin' over that one for a while now. The combined ability part mentioned on the note, yeah. Combinin's s'posed to be somethin' that'd make 'em 'even stronger' together. We've also gotta remember the other note, the one talkin' 'bout...hm, what was it? '...Asking a great deal from you. You've already shown me a glimpse of what you can do,' and then the doubt about how tough their abilities are."

He glances at Ivey, his lovely neighbor he shares a lonely trial island with. Once he's sure he won't hit her with his shenanigans, he holds up his watch's chain to let it dangle in front of him. Cowboy swings it like a slowly moving pendulum. He speaks at a similarly relaxed pace.

"Can't say that whole doubt thing gels with Rookie t'me. A glimpse? He's been our darlin' Matilda from the get go. That shit's not a glimpse. He's been a billboard with blinkin' lights. And what's there to test out if yer gonna go co-op mode with some Carrie type shit and some Wingardium fuckin' Leviosa? Needin' to test things doesn't make sense. Even if y'look at it the other way, that it's Rookie who wrote that to Amita... Hell, look at it from anybody's perspective, really. What'd be enticin' about workin' with somebody who just floats shit and gets wrecked by tomatoes? So, it was definitely Amita who needed somebody, but Rookie as that somebody? Dunno 'bout that."

Cowboy lets his watch go still, its momentum bringing it to a stop.

"As for Amita makin' illusions... Nah, don't think so. We were real cool with each other. She woulda shown me."

Everybody had seen that shitty paper. Even if it was hilariously off as to the real meaning, the proof of their closeness was there. He covers his mouth and tells her something quietly into his hand, "In case yer watchin' this, girl, y'have my permission to get me back for that tomato line later...but y'gotta admit, y'did get wrecked."

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #492

Top Ten Team 17 Games

I’d already been thinking a lot about old Amiga games this week, because news came out of the blue that some kind of Zool update was on its way. Now, I really liked Zool back in the day, and I thought that it was fondly remembered, but if the comment section on that Eurogamer article is anything to go by, I seem to be in the minority. I don’t care; Zool rocked and I’m glad he’s on his way back, with his sticky hands and feet and gloriously sugar-coated levels. Frankly, in a world that seems mostly populated by people who spent the entire 1990s playing Metroid or Zelda, I could do with an Amiga renaissance.

This was exacerbated when I discovered that Team 17, beloved purveyor of 16-bit computer classics, has an office in Media City. Quite how this passed me by I do not know (I, er, guess I just didn’t see the Tweets), but all the same it’s very good news; perhaps I’ll stop some of them in the piazza and bore them about the good old days. Especially if they’re, like, 25 or something.

Anyway! All this is a boring preamble to me listing my ten favourite Team 17 games. If you don’t remember, T17 was a major player on the Amiga: tons of classic games, phenomenal graphics, and – something I didn’t quite appreciate properly at the time – a nice Northern sense of humour. I don’t want to do much more preamble, because really I wanna let the games do the talking. One thing I will say, however, is I’ve taken advantage of their more recent moves as a publisher to include some games that they didn’t develop too – because I do feel like they’re really good at picking publishing projects that reflect the core tenets of their “brand”, such as it is (as opposed to Core tenets, which is probably something to do with Chuck Rock).

So here we go: my ten favourite Team 17 games. Enjoy! And bring them all out on the Xbox.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault (1994): the Alien Breed games were almost platform-defining, atmospheric blastathons that evoked the tension and exhilaration of Aliens, with superb (and difficult!) twitchy gameplay. Tower Assault, with its less linear, more explorative gameplay, was the best of the bunch. Back in the day, this was the equivalent of a Mass Effect or BioShock to me: an intense action game coupled with an enjoyable amount of back-and-forth. One thing I’ve always been a bit sad about is never having played the 3D Alien Breed games; I graduated to PC just as they were coming out, and I’m not even certain if they ran on an ordinary A1200. I wonder what they’d be like to play nowadays…?

Worms World Party (2001): how do you differentiate between the Worms games? I mean, I’m old enough to remember the “Total Wormage” demo that marked the first appearance of the little critters. But there was a point there when the gimmicks were still new, but they’d had a couple of releases under their belt, and there was a short run of games that were utterly hilarious, gameplay out the yazoo, and still a slight air of rough-edged weirdness. Can you still get the Yorkshire “Tykes” voice set in new Worms games? I mean, the formula is still unbeatable, but the Golden Age of Worms will be the World Party era for me, when my brother and I played it all the blinkin’ time. Get under that.

Assassin (1992): if Zool was the Amiga’s Sonic, then arguably Assassin was the platform’s equivalent to Strider or Shinobi (er, despite those games actually being released on the Amiga; never mind, just go with me on this). I remember the game mostly for its acrobatic movement, allowing you to climb walls (hey, shades of Zool again!); also, you had a boomerang, which is really cool, apart from when they re-released the game after two years and got rid of the boomerang. Basically, I really dug it for a lot of reasons. I also think it’s the Team 17 game which had an hilarious spoof of the “Reg” ads for Regal cigarettes, a joke I thought was incredibly clever thirty years ago but which I can find no evidence of on the internet.

Body Blows (1993): back when Street Fighter II ruled the world, and everyone was going gaga over the Super Nintendo, the Amiga suffered in comparison; it couldn’t do the multiple parallax layers of animated backgrounds, and most common joysticks didn’t have the button configurations to do the special moves justice. Step up Body Blows, a gorgeous, chunky, responsive fighter that’s still probably my favourite beat-em-up (I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, to be honest). One of the few games I remember really trying really hard to complete it, but I’m pretty sure I never saw the final opponent (some kind of Terminator-style robot, if I remember right). I always wanted the sequel, but never played it.

Yooka-Laylee (2017): feels a bit of a cheat, as this is really a Playtonic game, but they published the physical release, so it counts! And in many ways the cheeky British sensibility of the game fits right into the T17 ethos. I remember getting so excited for this game – I backed it on Kickstarter, in fact – and it didn’t disappoint: a colourful, meaty-looking platformer with a nice line in terrible dad jokes and a slowly-unfolding roster of abilities. It might not quite coalesce the way the old Rare platformers did in the late nineties, but it’s still fun; and it was a very popular game in our house with my wife and daughters.

Superfrog (1993): would probably be higher, as it’s thought of as one of the classics, but it didn’t quite hook me the way it seemed to everyone else. But even back then I could see everything about it that worked even if I didn’t fall in love; a beautiful, colourful world, with a tremendously designed lead character who looked like he’d leaped from a Cosgrove Hall cartoon. It also had a pretty naughty sense of humour. All in all, a good game, and one I’d love to revisit with a more refined palate.

Overcooked (2016): I think I first started to fall in love with this game when I saw it on Go 8-Bit; an anarchic and crazy-looking multiplayer fun-fest. And, sure enough, it’s a delightfully chaotic experience, really funny, with colourful and nicely-designed characters. However, it loses points for being one of those games that give you an odd-numbered Achievement. Multiples of five, people! Multiples of five!

Arcade Pool (1994): this one feels a bit niche, but I loved this back in the day. After the full-3D polygon wonderment of the Archer McClean pool and snooker games, going back to a simplified top-down aesthetic might have felt like a step back, but for me it was an excellent and really, really fun pool game. It’s the sort of experience I’ve chased in years since – a totally hassle-free arcade pool game – but nothing’s quite scratched the same itch (or, at least, the itch I remember, if that makes sense).

Golf With Your Friends (2020): the most recent game on the list, and another one that’s just damn fun. A wild and rather weird crazy golf game, with a succession of increasingly-bonkers courses, but one that’s easy to get into and – yes – persistently entertaining. I started playing it due it being available for cloud streaming on Game Pass, and it’s a pretty good phone game, even if the touch controls don’t give quite the nuance needed for some of the trickier shots. Also it’s worth saying that I am just terrible at the game. Really, the worst.

Project-X (1992): a bit like Superfrog, this is a game I respected rather than adored, hence it being a bit lower on the list. I think the big problem is just that I was utterly shit at it; I mean, I was flat-out rubbish at all these side-scrolling shooters, even if I really wanted to be good. But this game was a stunner way back when, and I think one of the ones that really cemented Team 17’s reputation as a graphical powerhouse of a studio. It also had a tremendous score from Allister Brimble, T17’s resident maestro. It’s funny, because I remember this as being heralded as “the new masterpiece from Team 17” upon its release, but it was actually one of their first titles; so either they hit the ground running or this is one of the games that secured their reputation. Either way, it’s still a classic of its type. And apparently there was a sequel on the PlayStation. You learn something new each day.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down Commodore Memory Lane. Yes, I know, some of the games are a lot newer than that, but I’m afraid I’ll always think of Team 17 as “an Amiga studio”. They did sterling work back in the day, they really helped define the Amiga and give the platform its own identity, distinct from consoles (even though a lot of their games were, obviously, ported to other systems). And thanks to the success of Worms, they’ve endured, even as most of their contemporaries have fallen by the wayside. And now they’re in Salford! A Yorkshire invasion of Lancashire. What could go wrong?!

[a-butterfly-on-his-tummy]

Day Twelve: Happy Christmas

Gracie’s eye’s shoot open as she wakes up the morning of Christmas. Without wasting any time, including skipping the loo, Grace bolts into the master bedroom where her parents are asleep.

“Daddy!” Grace whisper yells as she approaches her father’s side of the bed. “Iss kiss-muss!”

Harry opens one eye, peeking over at his little girl. Harry may look like he was sleeping but he actually has been awake for the last two hours, too excited to sleep.

“Morning Bug!” Harry whispers to daughter whose curls are currently all over the place. Much like his own: bedhead for curly hair people is a real thing. “Happy Christmas!”

“Happy kiss-muss daddy.” Grace steps on the bed frame; Harry reaches his arms out to hoist his daughter into bed. Grace cuddles under the blanket, lying on Harry’s chest. Harry wraps his arms around his daughter, snuggling her close.

“Okay! Goodnight.” Harry closes his eyes and pretends to fall asleep, snoring quietly so to not wake you up.

“No daddy!” Grace pats her father’s cheeks, giggling at how silly he is being. “Iss Kiss-muss! Pes-ants!” Her eyes expand as wide as round Christmas ornaments. Harry continues to snore, moving his hands across Grace’s back to her sides. Harry starts to tickle his daughter. Grace wiggles as her giggles fills the room with happiness.

“Shh baby Bug! Mumma is still sleepin’.” Harry whispers to his daughter, ending his tickle attack.

“Sing me kiss-muss song, daddy.” Grace taps Harry’s nose with her Christmas-colored fingernails.

“Only if yeh sing with me!” Harry says. Grace nods her head. The fact that Grace loves to sing as much, if not more than Harry makes his heart so happy.  Harry loves this Christmas tradition he has with Grace. Every Christmas morning  since she was born, Harry and Grace have a moment just to themselves while they allow you to sleep. They talk, and sing their favorite Christmas song. Harry secretly hopes this tradition will last for the next 50 years, because it is his favorite.

Harry starts to sing softly, while Grace sings along to the parts she knows.

Silver bells, silver bells

It's Christmas time in the city

Ring-a-ling, hear them ring

Soon it will be Christmas day

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks

Dressed in holiday style

In the air there's a feeling of Christmas

Children laughing, people passing

Meeting smile after smile

And on every street corner you hear

Silver bells,  silver bells

It's Christmas time in the city

Ring-a-ling,

Hear them ring,

Soon it will be Christmas day

Strings of street lights, even stoplights

Blinkin' bright red and green

As the shoppers rush home with their treasures

Hear the snow crunch, see the kids bunch

This is Santa's big day

And above all this bustle you hear

Silver bells, Silver bells

It's Christmas time in the city

Ring-a-ling, it fills the winter air

Hear them ring, you hear it everywhere

Soon it will be Christmas day

Harry leans forward, kissing Grace on the forehead as they finish the song together. Singing with Grace is the best present he could have received on this Christmas morning.

“Pes-ants?” Grace is giddy; she feels like she has been waiting for a million years.

“Let’s wake mum!” Harry whispers. “Kiss attack?” Harry raises his eyebrow mischievously.

“One… two… freee!” Grace says, her voice shaking with excitement.

“Go!!” Harry and Grace attack your face with kisses, kissing every inch of skin that is visible above the fluffy comforter. Waking you up with a big smile on your face.

“Happy Christmas!’ You voice sounds like it is full of gravel as you wake up and stretch.

“Happy kiss-muss mumma! We open pes-ants?” Grace is now bouncing on the bed, too excited to contain herself.

“Let’s go!” You say, rolling over to get out of bed. Before you even have a chance to set your feet on the ground, Harry and Grace have hopped out of bed and are bolting towards the door. You pick up your dressing gown from the chair and jog to catch up to the two excited children.

You and Harry hold Grace’s hands as you take the stairs slowly. You can see the family room from the stairs. You see that the lights on the tree have been plugged in, meaning your husband has been up before your daughter.  Taking a final hop as a family, the Styles clan lands on the wood floor ready to see what Father Christmas has brought them.

Grace pulls away from her parents, running at full speed, causing her mess of curls to fly all over the place.

“Ah-Maze-ing!!!’ Grace claps her hands on her cheek in amazement as she looks at all of the gifts left for her by the jolly old man in a red suit. “I so site-ed!!!” Three-year-old Grace runs in place bursting with excitement.

“Should we see wha’ Father Christmas brought yeh?” Harry says with a chuckle, as he watches his daughter explode with happiness.

“Yes!! Yes!!! Yes!!” Grace shouts, pumping her hands high into the air.

“Go for it love Bug!” Harry encourages as Grace jumps in carefully tearing away the paper of each package.

The rest of the morning is spent opening gifts from Father Christmas and each other. Laughter and tears of happiness fill the Styles home.

-------

The doorbell rings and Grace skips towards the front door. Her maroon velvet Gucci dress swings against her legs as she makes her way to answer the call.

“Happy Christmas!!” Anne, Gemma and Michal shout as Grace opens the door.

“Happy kiss-muss!” Grace envelopes her Nan, Aunt, and Uncle into a big hug. “Dinner all weady!!” Grace grabs her Nan’s hand, leading the family into the kitchen that has been beautifully decorated for a Christmas Feast.

“Happy Christmas!” Anne says, giving you and Harry side hugs, as Grace refuses to let go of her hand.

“Happy Christmas mum!” Harry says. “Happy Christmas Gem, Michal!” Harry walks over, giving both of them a classic Harry hug that makes the receiver feel warm and safe. “Dinner is almost ready! About 15 minutes.”

“Cwackas!!! Pwease!!!!!” Grace picks up a Christmas cracker from the dining room table, begging her father to allow her to open them.

“Good idea Grace. Give a cracker to everyone!” Grace walks around the room, passing out the red and green Christmas crackers to everyone in the family.

“On the count of three!” You say, smiling as the crackers are your favorite part of Christmas.

“One… Two… Three!” The family chants together. Everyone cracks their cracker with a big “Pop” and laughter fills the kitchen.

“Alright, read yeh jokes!” Harry smiles. “The jokes are my favorite I hope yeh know!’ His smirk is the cutest thing you have seen all year.

“I’ll go first!” Gemma says opening her joke. “How do you know when Santa's in the room? You can sense his presents.”

Harry bursts into laughter. Leaning over and smacking his leg as he tries to control the giggles that have hit his body.

“That… was… Hilarious!!!” Harry says. The whole family stands with wide eyes, watching Harry laugh himself silly over a joke that was just fine.

“You are a dork!” You say, chuckling more at the fact that Harry has lost it. “But I love you.”

“A… Cown!!!!” Grace has eyes the size of saucers as she pulls out the paper crown that is inside her cracker, the sweets falling to the floor, obviously forgotten about. “Wear your cown!!” Grace smiles as everyone in the family pulls out their paper crown, placing it upon their heads.

“Wow! “ Anne says looking around at everyone.

“So… Fas-on!” Grace smiles, causing everyone to chuckle at the thought of flimsy paper crowns being fashionable.

“Happy Christmas!” You say to the family.

“Happy Christmas everyone!!”Harry smiles, “Thank you or making my life the best life anyone could ask for.” He adds, wiping a tear from his eye, thankful for his family and wonderful Christmas traditions he looks forward to each year.

A/N: It’s over!!! A big massive thank you to @whoopsharrystyles for all she has done for me and this series!! Thank you to everyone who has read this series and for loving it as much as I do. I am excited to get back to writing Grace as well as something new!!! Happy Christmas!! I love you all!! Check out my Masterlist and Wattpad pages!

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 29

(a question was asked about who Zack was in reference to my life before this summer. Zack was the other boy who arrived in Kendrick when I was in the 7th grade. He was the one who smoked and did drugs before all the other students. He was the younger brother to Whitney – the pretty girl I mentioned having seen in the store that one day.)

and so...

Maintaining a dream can be hard, particularly when it is mainly composed of abstract future dealings that may or may not come your way, and a fantasy of what life will be like when the day that you get what you want finally arrives. If you imagination is grand, can it ever truly be as great as what your mind has in store for you? Life is never anything like we think it is going to be like, and I don't believe there is any exceptions to that rule if you break it down. We are always six seconds behind schedule of the now. We don't even know what compels our thoughts. There is no free will involved in the sense that we think there is. And life is one big hallucination based on fragmentary incomplete sensory data that gets interpreted in our thoughts to be what our minds intend it to be, long before we are even consciously aware of ourselves.

Going into 9th grade, I felt that if only I could simply hold onto my dream of a female pop punk band and eventually marrying Benji Madden (despite the contradiction that I also seemed to detest most female musicians on the basis that they were – like me – a female who dreamed of being a musician [brain wash by my father and the media]), than nothing could hurt me anymore. That someday, all this pain would be over, and I would have made it to this spiritual place of power and adoration and recognition for who I was, and all the misery would have been worth it. When my dad yelled at me, I didn't break as much. I had found something in me, some kind of spirit that I didn't know I had, and I was open and vulnerable to the world around me – ready for anything, and yet I seemed to have this fantasy that guarded me from the pain of my existence, which was an impossible future I had decided for myself that no one could touch. The forces around me didn't like this. Dare I say this, I believe it is an unspoken rule, that part of education in the United States at least is to educate to a degree yes, to socialize us to the world also, but the unspoken reality is that we are all being institutionalized before we can consciously understand why. So you don't end up getting any big ideas about your place in the world. It's always been this way, in some form or another.

On the first day of school, which is always an uncomfortable day – particularly when you are in a high school and you have to find your classes, many of them not being with your friends which is daunting when you are always a little on the fight or flight like I am. On my first day of school, I realized with horror that I was automatically enrolled into FFA (Future Farmers of America). The reason for this, I do not remember, but it would have been essentially impossible for me to take another class had I not been in that one, and I think my only other option was Choir, which I would never have participated in. It was ran by the same woman who ran the woodworking course I had taken in 7th. She was humorless, and masculine and a psychological bully looking for the nails that didn't get beaten down. She had a natural talent for making the air thick with tension, and incorporating long intimidating stare downs. She brought teaching to this level that was militant and made you forget that life was a game that you never signed up for. And she didn't like the looks of me, naturally. And I was all alone. None of my friends were in that class.

But Zack was.

As we all filed in and got yelled at by Mrs. Gulke on our first nervous day, I tried to ignore him. Wherever he was in the room, I could not not know where he was, and what he was doing. I didn't look at him. I looked down at my paper. My stomach hurt, and I wasn't consciously aware of my situation. Honestly, I could barely understand what propelled this nervous tension. I'd gone to school with him for years. He was just the gangly loser boy who sat in the corner of the class. I didn't feel that bubblegum pop fancy of a crush, and at the time, I didn't think that was what I was feeling in any way. I was waiting for Benji after all. It felt harsher, and more painful, and inside I was frightened. I felt like at any moment everything would disappear or a bomb would drop. I could almost feel my own death. There was no certainty in existence anymore. I had somehow been kicked out of that club.

I looked up from my paper, and Zack was staring straight at me, with no sense of shame. It had none of the oogly boyish vibes that you would ever have picked up off a typical teenage boy. This was something else altogether. Even though he was across the other side of the room (the desks formed a half square) and we were parallel to one another, and I had avoided doing anything strange, avoided looking at him, or really doing anything, it was like he was reading my thoughts, or putting them there, I wasn't sure anymore. What was this? He was staring straight into my eyes. I tried so hard to pretend that I couldn't see him staring at me like that, but my heart was racing. His eyes always reminded me of wolf eyes. He had very dark piercing pupils. There was never a point in that class session where he was not looking at me intently. Finally, in the last ten minutes, I took a deep breath and looked back over at him. He smiled at me and whispered my name so quietly that the class could not hear it.

I couldn't tell if he was fucking with me or not, so I frowned and whispered 'no' back at him. He only smiled more. Then he showed me his hand. To be cool, I had drawn the Nirvana smiley face on my hand, mostly for edginess. His hand also had the same Nirvana smiley face. I covered up my hand defensively. I felt powerless somehow. He pointed to his chest, and then to me. I think he was trying to indicate something about us two. He smiled. The bell rang and we all filed out, me rather desperate for air that I could breath. All of this had happened in the backdrop of an old fashioned corporal punishment style teacher barking at us and demanding answers in the background. The FFA class, was I in a small building with a shop in the back that was separated from the rest of the school by a parking lot and a dirt road that lead up into a hilly wooded area that split into hunting grounds, sparsely located homes and farm roads. He walked right passed me, and didn't say a word.

One of the last hours, I was able to reconnect with all my friends in an overcrowded history class that had the class above as well as our own. Ava's hilarious attention drawing behavior was endearing and calmed me down quite a bit. Ava always made me rather hyper as well. There was a boy that was sitting next to us. He was a little pudgy, he wore oversized pants that seemed to be falling down, and an enormous hoodie. He was new to the school. For some reason, Ava and I decided to use him for our games, I uncharacteristically decided to start calling him Blinkin. Why the name came up, I am not sure, though I think in my distant faded memory of being eight, it was a name that was used in the first Barney the Dinosaur movie for some kind of silly star-creature that came to earth. Which didn't remind me of this kid at all.

His real name was Kenny. He was from California and he really liked rap music, particularly Tupac. At first he thought we were making fun of him in a mean way, and he was defensive, but after awhile, he came to realize that Ava and I were just insane and didn't have boundaries and preferred to live in this free-form spiral frenzy, taking anything and anyone down with us in the process. I had no negative or positive intention of behaving as I did, and ultimately it was an ice breaker to feel more comfortable with everyone. Later on in the year, Kenny – though we weren't close really, turned out to be a pretty nice guy who would drift in and out of our circle. He didn't conform to the standards held for the boys in school. He never really had one group of friends, and instead he just moved around a lot. He wasn't afraid to be a nice guy, or give a compliment, and he didn't seem invested in getting into girl's panties, which was nice.

I decided to go vegetarian. It just kind of came upon me. I didn't read anything that led my to this decision. I think a few celebrities were vegetarian and it compelled me to be curious or to see it as socially interesting, and then there was always this little part of my thoughts that didn't think it was right to simply kill things and eat them when there were other foods. However, I realized that my father cooked a lot of meat. So to make a compromise, I instead decided to still eat fish and chicken. I think this is called a preso-prescatarian or something like that. And right from the get-go, I started doing terribly in school. At some point, within the first three months of 9th, the principal called me into the office yet again to inform me that I had finally done it. I was officially the worst student in the school, possibly one of the worst students he had ever come across. My average grade was at 19% and often times that was because teachers were giving me a tiny bit of credit for writing my name at the top of the paper. Honestly, I already didn't understand algebra already and it was just getting more and more complicated the further the lessons went. I felt like I needed more days to soak in the math lessons. I was too socially awkward to share the microscopes in science, and I didn't get my FFA papers turned in, which caused Mrs. Gulke to abhor me even further.

Roxanne and Jody finally split up. Jody went on to marry the other woman he had babies with, a woman named Crystal who had gone to school with Roxanne and had been obsessed with hatred for Roxanne since they were kids. She might have taken a fancy to Jody in some ways because he had been Roxanne's. Crystal of course was jealous of Roxanne's outgoing fun teasing nature, and her beauty. Crystal was someone that the entire town made fun of. I personally am not someone who thinks of people as ugly. I like and accept people to the degree that I accept strange looking trees, and I think to label people as ugly is not only empty, shallow and base, but it also an affront on being able to expand as a person, since so much of what we derive from life is aesthetic and based on lucid concepts. You cannot grow if you cling to shallow identity. If you close your mind off to other people, you in a sense have closed off potential for personal growth. With that being said, I still do find some people strange looking and people have preferences no matter if we realize them or no, and Crystal was certainly strange looking. She had a pig's nose. It was just a fact. And what was even worse was, she had at one point in the late nineties, ran her mouth at another woman that my sister Maria had been friends with, and that woman had dragged Crystal out to the train tracks and beat her face in. That face beating actually fixed Crystal's nose a bit, which made her even more of a laughing stock. Her face was literally fixed.

What had happened was, this person named Jeremy Frye had been friends with Jody for awhile Jeremy Frye was a drug dealer. He had caught onto Roxanne when she had that money. But before he had had the opportunity to help her spend that money, he had been thrown in prison for a year for assaulting his then-girlfriend and stabbing her in the leg with a pencil. When he got out, he had kept a note of Roxanne's naive youth, her helpless situation, her money, and he sniffed opportunity. As soon as he got out, he found Jody and asked if he could live with them until he got on his feet, which Jody cluelessly allowed. Jody of course was busy visiting his other kids with other women, and Roxanne was furious because she knew he was cheating on her still, and always coming down from drugs. The bipolar was starting to show as well. Jeremy moved in. Roxanne hooked up with him, and left Jody almost immediately. Roxanne is not a cheater, but under the circumstances she was extremely vulnerable.

So, in school, the entire Brown family had decided I was not one of 'theirs' anymore. They came up to me in the hallway as I was in my locker, arms crossed, and trivially informed me that I was not under their protection anymore, essentially. They faulted me for this whole Jody Roxanne thing somehow, and looked at me cockeyed in the halls when I passed. I was intrigued that they had ever considered me a family member to begin with. I never spoke to them, and had always been passively put off by their homes, the crude jokes and their smell.

There was a quiet jaunt and thin boy in our art club in 8th, named Jason. For some reason, we had called him Taco (this was not some kind of racist ethnic joke as Jason was half Native, and I think it actually pertained to a joke about the food itself). He was two years older than us. He was a cousin of Billy's, the guy that all the girls loved who I talked about in detention and also the uncle to my niece Sagen (Roxanne's first baby she had at 13). He was really into drawing roses, fairies, mushrooms. He seemed to have only one pair of clothes, an orange hoodie which hung on him and smelled like sweat and cigarettes. He liked to keep to himself for the most part and hated everyone. He had a history that I didn't know too much about, but it involved some level of violence and drugs and rebellion that was more than most of the other students in the school. He'd been to a few schools. He was in our class, yet two years older than the rest of us. I was not there when my friends had  first started talking to him in 8th, but now as this year was progressing into 9th, it looked like he was one of ours. He just kind of melted in with our group, and we really enjoyed his company. He was also in my FFA class which made that course better. He was barely literate, from what I could tell. His handwriting was like that of a second grader's and his spelling even worse. He had no other friends in high school. All of his friends were years older, some of them the elderly. He had learned to befriend lonely old men, who, if he sat around and listened to their stories long enough, would supply him with cigarettes, alcohol and sometimes weed.

Jason did a lot of drugs and also a known thief. This really caused me to re examine my theory about drug addicts not being people, and that whole DARE rhetoric. Not that I was interested in doing drugs myself. But if I had to be honest, I would much rather have hung out with Jason any day for nearly any reason rather than I would some preppy cowboy jock who everyone was in love with. He was so much more real than them. He really didn't give a fuck about what anyone thought in a way that was unique and special and totally untouched by society. He didn't follow social codes, or even seem to acknowledge that they were there. If someone had made him mad, he would do something or say something. Sitting in the desk and not walking out was about as much as he could mentally handle and teachers were weary of him in their classes. He held back very little when he was upset or happy, though he was withdrawn and introverted by nature. He was like some kind of adult that was being forced into high school.

Befriending Jason changed how other boys treated me. If anyone had fucked with me even a little, Jason would go after them. So the whole thing where guys would come after me and say whatever they liked ended rather quickly. The football players liked to think of themselves as manly and tough, but they were all scared to death of Jason. Probably for good reason. I remember one time Jason had a band aid on his ear, and of course it had to be Kyle who was sitting behind him. Kyle asked, in a sort of pretentious voice 'What happened to your ear??' There was nothing wrong with this question. But the way that it was said had this intonation of judgment, and Kyle had a subtle look on his face to go with. This was an enormous mistake of Kyle. Jason turned around, with this rage in his face that was sudden and frightening. 'NONE OF FUCKING BUSINESS!!!!'. It was this roar of murderous rage. Kyle was shaking in his boots and looked away scared. I always worried that someone would make Jason mad and he would murder them. He didn't have a particularly violent history, but if you knew him, you could see that there was a boiling vat beneath the surface.

Of course, with us, he was always giving us hugs and drawing us pictures and telling us all he loved us, not in a sexual way, but like we were his family. He would share everything he had with us. He was incredibly protective over all of us. He seemed to love children and animals. And he was so thin. When you hugged him, you almost had a moment where you couldn't find his torso through the clothes. He was 5'8 and weighed only 100 lbs and it was a wonder that he kept himself up at all. He forgot to eat all the time, was anemic and the drugs didn't help. When he laughed his Adam's apple jiggled, and when we laughed at that, he only laughed more. He had a soft look in his eyes most of the time.

Football games were even more of an event this year since it was in a way the opportunity for us to all be freely together. In the background, a hundred and fifty people would have gathered around to be a part of the sports event, and another seventy-five like us would all be there to socialize, to fight, hook up and so forth. Nights were cold sometimes, but we would all just bundle up close, shoulder to shoulder. It seems unclean to me now, but we used to pass around a bottle of soda till it was gone. It was a symbol of our unity. It passed between all five to ten of us until it was gone. We never concerned ourselves with germs. Zack would eventually join our group too, and he would always bring his hackey sack. I was never really good at hackey sack, and I guess there is just this part of me that doesn't see the point in the game, but everyone else played and I watched. Sometimes we would get some of the loose kids in the circle with us, but they would eventually drift away. A lot of people were a little jealous of all of us and felt like we had something that made our group special. It felt funny to me then suddenly having a strong sense of support from friends. And it seems strange to me that we would all hug one another and tell each other we loved one another and there was nothing awkward or weird about it. There has always been a part of me that, even as a withdrawn and standoffish person, knows instinctively that this is the way that people should be. In my adult life, I have failed to see that kind of vulnerability between people.

I'd always go to the football games and look for Zack in the corner of my eye. I always noticed where he was in proximity to where I was, and if he wasn't there, I would feel a tinge of simultaneous relief and frustration. He usually came to football games though, often high – as he generally got high everyday after school. He could be found in the far ends of the parking lot, or in places behind the school. He didn't have any friends in the class anymore. His sister Whitney had dropped out. She had been popular, kind of a stoner, but also accepted by many, and a cheerleader. Everything seemed to be going rosy with her socially at least, until she became dissatisfied and sullen. She got involved with shoplifting with another girl or something, became friends with Melissa and her older brother, and lost all interest in school. Despite having been a straight A student. She stopped hanging out with people, and by the third week of  her 10th grade year she quit.

Melissa, though he and her were both very close and he visited often, had moved up to Moscow and this left him with only Jason, who connected us by association. I didn't have the courage to talk to him, or the conscious self-knowledge to know that I wanted to. I would often try to lead Ava to the area that Zack was if I could. Sometimes he brought his acoustic guitar and would be smoking a cigarette and be playing. He always wore a flannel and converse. He dressed like Kurt Cobain did sometimes and you could tell that he was putting in some effort to sound like Kurt Cobain. His legs had grown so long that I remember that the jeans came down above his ankles. Years later, I was reading a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, and there was this character, Kilgore Trout, whom Vonnegut explained as having a similar predicament, and I had to laugh.

I would also find Zack in the store, or in the park. Ava had grown accustomed to the act of finding him and talking to him. I would eagerly tag along. I swear, I could always feel him around me. Zack would be smoking and looking off in the distance wherever he was found. I couldn't tell if he was waiting for us, or if he just did this because. We would approach him, and he would take the cigarette with his angular long hands, and we would begin talking. Honestly, I wish I could remember how Ava talked to Zack that brought him out of his shell. Sarah and I were mostly quiet watching I think with some fascination. Sarah talked more than I did. And yet, I couldn't help but notice that when Zack would look at all of us when he talked, his eyes would linger on me just a little bit longer.

It seemed to me like Katie had disappeared from this world altogether. The things she said seemed like things a child would say, and I was having problems relating. I should have reached out to her, but I never did. I was drifting into this lucid dreamlike world where music became more real to me than drawing anime did and adults couldn't get me. In my mind, I didn't think I could ever be like any of these teachers or my father. A sort of dissonant dark new world had descended upon me, and Ava always took a level of charge in our lives at any level that might ordinarily have given me the sense that I needed to say or do something. All of this came to a head, as Katie was also furious at Samantha for having yet another boyfriend, a nerdy gamer boy she met online named Adam who lived thirty miles away up in Moscow. She called Samantha a slut. Then Ava also called Samantha a slut. Somehow everyone was mad at Sarah and wanted her to take sides – something Sarah really, really didn't want to do, and nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. Somehow, Ava had pulled this other girl into it, named Teal, and I never understood why since she hadn't really been around us. In fact, I still held a grudge against her, as, she was the one that shoved me really hard in order to chase that Kevin boy in sixth grade. I didn't really trust her.

So this football game happened, and finally everyone was together actually fighting it out. There wasn't a lot of clarity. I remember thinking in the back of my mind that Ava was being deceitful and intentionally making herself out to be the victim. Samantha had played a bunch of boys in Orofino I think, and it was true that the way she defined herself sexually and with men was a lot different than how Katie or I did, but I didn't think it was fair to call her a slut and I was mad that everyone had, even some part of me had felt the thought coming on. Sarah just wanted to go back home where it was warm and to stop fighting. I was in the larva stage of what would become the person I am today, and I was trying in my way to dissect the entire situation and reach an emotional understanding, which was something nobody wanted that night.

To make matters worse. Cody was still acting out because of Ava, and because all the girls he tried to date wouldn't date within the first few weeks of school, and he felt this sense of entitlement over women that was like that of a classic villain. In fact, by his own doing or by no one's he was completely rejected the the school, and this made some very destructive ugly side of his come out. He had turned to Teal as someone he wanted to date. She had been heading to the bathrooms, and he had hid behind a car, came out and grabbed her, shoved her up against the wall and demanded that she fucking kiss him, holding her wrists and locking her into a corner, with the classic lines of 'You know you wanna bitch' or something like that. She had gotten away, but this was all going on as this fight was going down.

In the end, Katie walked away. She really didn't know how to mentally grasp what was going on, and she would not fess up and tell us what Ava had told her, or what Ava had spun from nothing, and Katie was gone for good. I remember going home a little shocked. I mean, I had seen it coming. But the loss of Katie brought on a strange realization for me. She never really talked to me personally, or said goodbye. So I just was left feeling a strange emptiness that I couldn't put into words. I remember thinking about how people couldn't help what they were. Behind every action, there was something that happened before that made that action happen. We were all the victims of damage and sooner or later everything ended. Just this sense that the experiences I had had for the previous two years were over, and I was becoming a new person. I could sense that I was probably forgetting more than I would ever remember. Life was so fleeting and why did we do anything at all?

At some point, Sarah invited me up to her house late one night after a football game. She wanted to show me something she had said. We went to her kitchen table, and she put on a Beatles record on the record player. I had never heard the Beatles. I had somehow gone through fourteen years of my life with only the very most distant understanding of who they were at all, and that was mostly because there is a Beatles spin off band in the 90's cartoon show Doug that was based on The Beatles. I generally thought that sometimes people were actually fans of that cartoon band rather than a real one.

The album she chose to put on was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I remember looking at that album cover with fascination. And the songs were so real. I loved everything about it really. I had never heard music like this before. Choices for me back then were the options of J-Lo, country music, emo, and Nickelback. I knew who Queen was a little, Nirvana a little, CCR, Tom Petty, and Oasis a little bit. But I had never heard anything like this.

She also introduced me to another album as well. This one was Led Zeppelin's IV. I recognized a few of the intro songs as car commercial stuff, but I had never really listened to this seriously before. This music was amazing and it gave me this great connection to myself and sense of things that I hadn't realized were possible. I was blown away, and I don't think I ever was the same since. Sarah explained to me that her mom had these old records from her youth. I am not sure why Sarah had been quietly experimenting with old records without telling anyone. For some reason, I had always avoided the idea that old music could be any good, and was always looking for something new. Listening to this, I realized just how much I was missing out on.

PART 28 - http://tinyurl.com/yagdlo47

PART 27 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcj5fgf

PART 26 - http://tinyurl.com/y73nvl73

PART 25 -  http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

PART 24 - http://tinyurl.com/ycak5d8r

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 -  http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 -  http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8