I know, I'm a terrible caretaker. Not only have I been more missing in action than Julia Gillard's capability to run a country (political snipe! Hardly relevant), but I did in fact miss INAKA's second birthday. It's hard to believe that I've been parading out toys like animated corpses for two years now. It's easy to believe that I've managed less than three a month.
But regardless, we press on. Because occasionally, I'm put in a situation where somebody actually needs one of those lonely old toys/books/games/embryos, and I dutifully offer it for service. Inevitably, it always remains my fiancé needing items for her classroom, and having already sunk thousands of dollars into materials that most people wouldn't even notice. Seriously, being a teacher is expensive. Especially when you have to support my burgeoning drug addiction.
So today, like the faithful servant I am, I present to the class of 2013 a box of Lego. I intend to get it back someday, because it was a Christmas present, and damned if I don't intend to construct some very important Lego structures in the near future. Phallic ones, mostly.
Did you have Lego as a kid? I hope so, because it's fantastic for imaginative play. No preconceived story lines or marketing demands, just creating tiny little people who suddenly have lives to go about, before you inevitably grow tired of them and just dismantle every single piece. Kind of like Satan in the Mysterious Stranger, only less traumatic to small children and aforementioned tiny little people.
Fucking terrifying. Though it makes me want to conjure up some grapes.
My first goal when playing with Lego was always to create a house. I don't know why I always stuck with that theme, but I dare not stray from it today. So away I went, constructing my house. To call it garish would frankly be an insult to garish things the world over, because this house is simply hideous. I blame it entirely on a lack of red Lego blocks, the only sensible colour with which to construct a Lego house.
Then, I attempt to furnish the abode. Due to a limited amount of options, and a shocking realisation that half of the materials I've used to build the house were actually meant to be used on some sort of flying device, I keep it simple. There is a table with a clock on it. It is the pièce de résistance.
I also add a tree, some flowers, and a lake, because I can never find an alternative use for those circular blue blocks. I'm using the same cheap tricks I used nineteen years ago, and for that I'm sorry. I swear, next time I'll make it be a gigantic blue Smartie.
Finally, I must populate the residence. There is only one appropriately sized man included in my set, so I go with him.
And Jesus Christ, he looks just like me.
So at long last, I have completed my house. The more pedantic version of me from the past would have also used up all of the remaining blocks until the walls were sky high, but I'll pass on that today. For one thing, I have to knock this all down before someone comes home and sees me playing with Lego. I do have a job, I swear I do.
Miniature Tony lives his life alone in this house. He has no friends, mostly due to his dreadful choice in architectural ambience, and he also has no arms. But that's okay, because underneath that Lego shirt he has thirteen legs, so he does just fine, thank you very much!
But one day, local thug Raoul Sepulveda comes rolling up on his discount segway, pounding upon Tony's door and demanding his presence.
"Open up!" Sepulveda snarls in a thick Montenegrin accent, "I know you're in there, for you have very short walls and I can see you perfectly!"
Well, shit, that photo looks much more indecent than I had intended.
Anyway, Tony answers the door (he does this by climbing atop it, because apparently the lovely black path I made blocks the door from opening), and meekly asks why Sepulveda is there. He knows that Sepulveda is a violent man, and his very presence has made a nearby tree collapse.
"My clock, you rapscallion!" Sepulveda replies, flailing one arm wildly in an effort to intimidate Tony, and also as a means of not falling over, "I demand you return it at once!"
"This clock?!" Tony says with a gasp, hovering over the clock because I just found an unused propellor piece and have now decided that Tony should be able to fly, "This was a present from my dear aunt Duplo! You cannot have it! Cannot, I say!!"
Things are getting pretty tense, when out of nowhere, an angel appears. Its soft, soothing voice puts the gentlemen at ease, and they stand in awe of its impressive structure. Jesus did not have wheels, but our angel certainly does. It comes offering a solution to end all of their strife and suffering.
"Dear, sweet angel!" Tony says graciously, tears welling in his eyes, "Please! We accept whatever help you may bestow upon us... But pray tell, what is your name, benevolent one?"
"Satan."
No one knows what was spared and what was destroyed during that time...
