Tuesday 27 July 2004

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Life is meaningless

Once you come to terms with this home truth, the next *dramatic booming voice from above* Big Question to clamour for your attention, assaulting your grey matter at every turn, should be, what can I do to while away the hours when I'm supposed to be working and squander my employer's resources? Note the emphasis on the word 'and' - that's critical here - half-hearted, time-wasting digressions are all well and good, but having successfully fulfilled criterion one, you should really be looking to 'push the envelope'... that is whenever you're not strangling your glib colleagues with their own blackboard-scrapingly nauseous corporate buzz-phrases.

Hark! What's this? Something furry this way comes. It's a rodent riding on a gleaming white charger. He's clutching a bundle of blueprints of some kind. Could they be the templates for a range of multicoloured, miniaturised replica arcade game cabinets, lovingly crafted with pinpoint accuracy by the dexterous critter himself? By Jove, that's precisely what they are! There's a design for every 80s video-gaming progenitor you care to mention; Galaga, Dragon's Lair, Pac-Man (and his better half, Ms Pac-Man), Donkey Kong, Defender, Gauntlet, Gravitar, Robotron, Tempest and even that unforgettable moolah-chomping, pixelated gem, Change Booth. I think that's the one where you get to play the role of a club-wielding cave-sprog who, to complete each mission, must defend the Dinobabies by bludgeoning to death hordes of marauding trolls who try to thwart their retreat to a primordial utopia of some kind... but I could be wrong. It has been known.

Each blueprint can be downloaded as a PNG image from the Way of the Rodent web site and scaled to fit whatever size paper or card is available to you in your company's stationary cupboard. In a few snips of your scissors' blades and with a dab of glue here and there, you'll have your very own pint-sized amusement arcade to gawp adoringly at as you reminisce over your misspent youth. Your chums will poke fun at you for unwittingly being the perfect parody of a dopey Labrador puppy tilting its fluffy head in anticipation of its next roll of Andrex, but then they're not the ones who have just passed the Kookosity duel time-wasting/resource-consuming challenge with flying colours are they. Heh. ^_^

The nice chaps over at WotR suggest you might like to heighten the exhilaration of the retro experience by buying some dolls to populate your new amusement arcade. If you ask me that's utterly ridiculous; everyone knows dolls don't have pockets, so where are they going keep their spare change? Come on guys, think. *confused*

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