The swimming pool in my apartment complex is decent.  It’s actually fairly deep and pretty big, but I never swim in it.  I never would swim in it, or go near it at all.  No way, no how.

Why, you ask?  Well, my pool is infested.  At any given moment during any given day, it’s clogged with vile, shrieking little creatures called…um, what are they?  Er… they’re short and dirty and smell bad and sorta resemble miniature people… Children!  Yes, that’s what they’re called.  Children infest my pool.

I suppose at some point in my life I turned into that grumpy old man who hates kids.  That guy in your neighborhood whose house you tell your kids to avoid trick-or-treating to because the man that lives there will turn the hose on you or put razor blades in the apples.  In some ways, I guess I am like that.  For the most part, kids don’t bother me if they’re well-behaved and quiet.  I understand that children have no attention spans or concept of hygiene, but for the love of God why do they have to scream and shriek all the time?  Having fun playing with your friends is fine, but there’s no reason to scream repeatedly.  I was a kid once, back in the 16th century, and I don’t ever recall the need to shriek incessantly for no reason.  It defies logic.

My pool is right across the street from my place.  I can see it from my bedroom window or my balcony, and more importantly, I can hear it.  There are always people in it too, all hours of the day.  Mostly children, because unless parents are involved (which is rare), adults won’t go near it either.  It would be spectacular to spy on some bikini-clad hotties or catch some sun myself, but the little creatures have taken it over.

I hate to think about what’s in that water.

For the record, I don’t hate kids, despite what people may think.  I have many friends who have kids and they are darling and cute.  The thing that all of these darling and cute kids that I actually like have in common though, is that they are well-behaved.  Obviously, they aren’t perfect all of the time, but they know when they get out of line.  That’s how kids should be.  Attentive, quiet, and well behaved.

I think my pool should have restricted, adults-only hours.  Hours when every child under the age of 16 is taking their state-mandated, possibly chloroform-assisted nap.  Wouldn’t that be great?

So I sit here at my computer, trying to get some work done, and all I hear are kids screaming and shouting from across the road.  It’s hot and humid in my room, and a nice dip in the pool would surely feel heavenly.

Not a chance.

(Click for a larger, readable size.)

Ok, so it’s not technically a blog.  A blog is a web log, a term specifically created for the digital age.  You can’t just call any old bit of writing a blog, but there are similar characteristics, so I’ve decided the moniker is still a fitting one.  This would be a "blog" of mine from the dawn of the online age.  Well, not the dawn so much as maybe early morning… but still… way early on.  The year?  1995.

I came across this one whist searching an old folder in my possession.  This folder contains lots of loose bits of notebook paper, tons of photocopied sheets, and several fresh-off-the-dot-matrix printer articles written by yours truly, and a very good friend of mine, the always entertaining Claire of Claire De Lunacy fame.  There are also a few written by other contributing parties as well.  These bits of paper all came together at one time to create a masterpiece of literary importance and historical significance called, "It’s All in the Attitude."

First, a bit of history.  The Attitude came about sometime in early 1995 as a request from management for a newsletter aimed at the service department of a regional retailer named Meijer that Claire and I both worked for.  This retailer was one of the first hypermarket one-stop-shop kind of places, where you could buy all of your groceries as well as clothing or sporting goods or whatever all in one place.  These days, Wal*Mart has the corner on that concept, but this was before Sam Walton’s kids descended upon every single community on the planet with huge mega-mall parking disasters full of white trash and loiterers.  No, before Wal*Mart Supercenters, the white trash and vagrants belonged to us.  The Attitude was our release from the mayhem and our voice.

Anyway, Claire and I both worked in the customer service department as cashiers.  We’d met a year earlier when I started working there, and our personalities just seemed to click instantly.  I don’t know what else to say, but despite our differences in almost every other conceivable aspect, somehow our brainwaves just match up perfectly when we come within a certain radius of each other.  We think on the same wavelength.  At any rate, management noted our talent for humor and extreme intellectualism, as well as our propensity to charm co-workers and clown for people, and thought we’d be the perfect people to detail the daily life of a Meijer cashier in a nice, corporate-conforming newsletter aimed at the wonderful service side of a major retailer. 

Boy were they ever wrong.

Right now, Claire and my other Meijer bestest friend Jess are chuckling to themselves in a knowing way, and who’s to blame them?  Management really should have seen this coming in my opinion, and I think it’s their fault for encouraging us.  You don’t take a oppressive, horrid environment like retail, mix in a brain-dead customer base, some "colorful" management, and hand it over to the two most creative and outspoken people on your staff.  People that have the pulse of over 100 cashiers and the power of the written word at their disposal.  It is folly, to be sure.

In the beginning, we set out to adhere to conformity.  Management wanted a simple, two or three page newsletter that attended to things like dealing with customers, and shoplifting, and coupon abuse, and stuff like that.  We obliged.  Of course, all of that stuff is pretty boring, so we thought we’d spice it up a bit with some humor and inflict our own brand of wit.  After all, it must be informative as well as entertaining, right?  The first issue was pretty straightforward.  Nothing controversial at all really.  It was released to eager employees who gobbled it up and asked for more.  Management was pleased.  "Do another one!"  They said.

The second issue was anything but the first.  In it, we included our thoughts and feelings on the working atmosphere of Meijer, as well as taking a couple of shots at various procedures.  We knew this going in of course, which is why I wrote what I wrote in the article posted above (assuming you clicked it.)  It became more of a platform to express our issues than an informative newsletter, and management was not amused.  It was pulled from circulation by the store director, who had a "talk" with the service department manager, who in turn had a "talk" with us.  There were to be no more issues of the Attitude that weren’t approved beforehand.  Of course, this didn’t set well with Claire and I, who pointed out (correctly) that the employees in the store (by this time the newsletter had expanded beyond customer service) loved our writing.   We were popular and liked by the masses, because we were willing to say out loud what everyone usually only whispered to each other.  In the end, it didn’t matter.  The Attitude was over after only two issues.

There was a third issue, but it died on the operating table.  As far as I know, only one thing remains of it, even in my giant folder of goodness.  I do seem to remember that it was even more scathing than the second issue, and was bound to get us into more trouble, but at that point we didn’t care.  Claire and I were moving on to other things at that point, and Meijer was the least of our concerns.  We had fun, and in that type of environment, that’s all you had to look forward to really.

I still have a full copy of the first edition, along with all of the edited copy and loose-sheet hand-written pages, and I have the notes and a couple of articles and the artwork for the second.  The only thing left of the third is a cover picture I made.  It would have been grand, let me tell you.

I’ll close by posting Claire’s article from the first edition.  You can really get a sense of the writing styles we both possess from these and recognize them, styles that would later become blogs in the 21st century, transmitted not only to a few cashiers, but to millions of people all over the planet.  With both of our blogs, and both of our styles accessible to anyone, the Attitude lives on.

I’m not much of a gamer.  I never really have  been, save for a couple of exceptions.  Video games just aren’t my thing.  I’m not very good at them, and I get bored easily after a few plays.  I played World of Warcraft until my free 30 days ran out, then shelved it.  I managed to make it almost all of the way through Half Life 2, then stopped for no good reason.  I haven’t owned a gaming console since the Atari 2600 (except for a Nintendo Wii which I purchased, played maybe twice, then sold.)  No, you could say that video games don’t hold my interest for long.  It’s not even something I’d even typically blog about.  I’m a terrible Gen-Xer.

Seems that’s bound to change soon.  The game Spore is nearing completion.  It’s intended release date is sometime in September, but today the creators released a Creature Creator in trial version, giving a tiny little taste of the game to come.

For those who don’t know, Spore is probably the most ambitious game ever made.  It has five phases, each lasting however long it takes to complete the evolution of your creature.

Evolution you say?  Exactly.  You start out in this game as a single-celled organism swimming about in the primordial soup of some planet.  Your goal here is to eat other cells in an attempt to grow into a multi-celled creature, whilst avoiding predators and the like.  After that’s accomplished, you crawl out of the ocean and begin your life as a land creature.

This is where it gets interesting.  You have to guide your evolution from sluggy invertebrate to intelligent citizen of the planet, all the while finding food, potential mates, shelter, learning about fire and the wheel, having children, etc.  The complexity abounds.  And if that weren’t enough, the entire game is massively multiplayer, which means the other creatures vying for dominance of your planet are other players connected to you through the Internet.  Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

The final phase, after you’ve conquered your planet, (or destroyed it via global warming or other disaster) is to spread out into space and explore new worlds.  You’ll be able to terraform planets, or guide the evolution of lesser creatures, culminating in eventual mastery of the galaxy.

This is the Sims times one million.  The game has elements of RPG, 3D adventure, 2D, and multiplayer games.  All wrapped up in one.  This is finally a game I can get excited about.

Today I downloaded the Creature Creator and played around a bit.  I recommend that everyone go and get it, because it’s seriously a lot of fun.  You basically turn your little blob into a creature using some pre-defined things like eyes and legs, then you paint him and walk him around a bit.  You can save your creature as an animated avatar, load a movie up to YouTube, or just take a picture.  The combinations are endless. 

So without further ado, I present the vicious and powerful SovereignSaurus, teaching her new hatchlings the art of the hunt.

If this simple tool is any indication on how much fun this thing will be, I’m all for it.  I’m so getting this game.

Check out this video.  It explains the game better than I can, and gives you perspective on just how complex it is.  Truly awesome!

If anyone makes a creature, please give a link in the comments, ok?  We all wanna see.