Awesome Children of the 90s Ad

Children of the 90s, you got to watch this ad for Internet Explorer, because it seems like they are very well aware that we've all moved on to bigger and better things and just want to remind us that IE is still around. Please bear with some shameless commercialization knowing that I'm not making a dime from this, but am posting it here because of how awesome this ad is! You could do a "90s Kid bingo" with this ad. And the message is true, the internet as we know it is technically also a 90s invention, like many of us (unless you're like me and were actually born in the 80s...like the internet)...

 

"We met in the 90s. We are members of generation Y, as in yin-yang, as in yo-yo. Life moved a little slower. Disks were square. Desktop folders had personality. Extra storage space was just a zipper away. There was only one social network, but most of your friends died of dysentery. The only thing buzzing in your pocket was a pet, until that died too. But at least a troll was still a friend. Lunch was puzzle, not a picture. You were pumping jams, water, shoes. You didn't have to worry about a newsfeed full of farm animals. You were busy feeding wild animals. A haircut didn't cost 60 dollars. It cost 4 minutes. You really had nothing to lose. Unless of course, you were playing for keeps! The future was bright. You grew up, so did we." 

Leap Day!

I really have no idea what to say, but how often do you get to blog on February 29th? If it was my birthday, I'd technically only be seven years old. I'd like to think I am sometimes.

I don't know what I was doing on February 29th, 1992, or 1996, but I wasn't enjoying the extra school day in 1996, that's for sure. It was a Thursday (I looked it up)... which as memory serves meant tater tots in the cafeteria... not that I ate lunch from a Styrofoam tray, but tater tots were pretty cool. I literally remember Thursday for being tater tot day at the elementary school, (Pizza was Wednesdays)...which means the cycle of lunches must've been altered in 1996 because of the extra day. Think about it. Maybe there was two tater days!

Maybe I don't know how the calendar works.

Console Wars 2

I don't know, they both had parlor Jeopardy games...

BLAST PROCESSING!!!

Spring Cleaning!

Spring is in the air, and that means if you're like me, and by that I mean a 90's kid, then you probably have this song running through your head... and if you don't, allow me to permanently put it there (Update: unfortunately you got to view it on youtube because every year many poor starving Viacoms go hungry).

Rocko was my favorite cartoon as a kid, and easily one of the most perverse, most mind-f@#%ingly awesome shows ever produced that isn't Ren and Stimpy. So without further adieu, the lyrics to Spring Cleaning:

Summers for fishing, and for lounging around...
Fall is for raking all the leaves off the ground...
Winter is for skating like Torville and Dean...
But we all know that spring is the season to clean.

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
We deodorize and sanitize and harmonize too!
Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
We're gonna make this town look all shiny and new!

Spring cleaning! (I'll sweep off this mat!)
Spring cleaning! (I'll vacuum the cat!)
Spring cleaning! (Where'd I get this dead rat?)
You'll find a lot of stuff when your spring cleaning!

We got a lot of junk that we have just been dying to get rid of,
And there's so much garbage in this can that it's about to blow the lid off

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
Our disinfecting prowess is second to none! K?
Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
It's a sick digusting job... sick disgusting job... sick disgusting job...
But it's gotta get done! *fart*

Dinosaur Underpants

Just about everything I touched as I crawled into bed from 1994 to 96 was Jurassic Park related: from the bed sheets to my socks, my pillow cases and pajamas, and yes, even my underwear. They had dinosaurs, big "Caution" signs, and random shapes. I remember these bedsheets well. I remember learning how to spell "caution" by reading the words on this. At first I thought it said "cussion," which is gibberish, but to a kid like me still looked pretty badass in that stencil font. I friggin' loved these sheets.

But what's the big fascination with matching outfits and bedsheets as a kid, and what's more, underwear too? Who's cares about that? Don't those "DANGER!" signs take on a whole new meaning when you're wearing them down below? And I shouldn't have to tell you where the "Keep Out!" was. (I really hope I'm just joking about this, I don't remember that much detail.)

It's because they're the "underwear that's fun to wear." They're what you wear when you're seven years old and don't give a damn about dignity, you just want to be covered, head to toe, in Raptors and T-Rexes as you snuggle up between sheets of Raptors and T-Rexes. I had no idea that the bedsheets, pajamas, and underwear I had as a kid would eventually be termed "vintage" on Ebay, but now it makes me feel like the dinosaur.

"Naturally you might have dinosaurs on your...on your dinosaur bedspread?" 

Lego Creations

Here's a few pics of some cool Lego works by a cool 8 year old who most certainly isn't a dork. He has kindly submitted them to this blog (with the help of his dad) for all to check out. It looks like an X-wing from Star Wars, and some other ship from the newer movies. 

Great job, Kyle.

Flash, Crash, Rumble and Roll

If you need something to read while you ride out these April showers and scary thunderboomies (the ones I hear as I write this), the 8-year-old me provides you from his warped bookshelf Flash, Crash, Rumble and Roll. This was a book I must have read a hundred times before bed, whether it was raining or not, and it was one that taught me everything I know about thunderstorms and why they're too funny to be afraid of. Well, this, and the scientific fact that thunder is just the sky farting ("flash, crash, rumble, and roll"). That's just science.

Look at that cover (the old one I remember). Every page told a funny little story like that. Mom waits at the door of their 20-square-foot abode (attached to a lighthouse!) for blondie and pop who're racing in from a fishing trip gone wrong (everyone gets caught off guard in this book... no Weather Channel apps in those days). Clouds are always these menacing BLACK (not grey... BLACK) lumpy toasted marshmallows, and usually a dog or cat factors in somewhere too. The illustrations always told a story because there wasn't one (other than a storm blowing in, people running from it, and then going out). It was one of those 'educational books' about thunderstorms, as it taught you what to do and especially, what not to do, during one.

Did you know that lightning bolts can be over a mile long? Or that they may come from clouds that are ten miles high? Storms can be scary, but not if you know what causes them. Before the next thunderstorm, grab this book by veteran science team Franklyn Branley and True Kelley and learn what causes the flash, crash, rumble, and roll of thunderstorms!

Let's see, what did I learn? Lesson one, don't take a shower in a thunderstorm, lest you absorb any of those little lightning bolts on the medal shower head and handles. Lesson two, don't sit under a tree, lest lightning strikes it and sends it crashing down on top of you. Pretty dark right? Lesson three, cars are the safest place to be (it's not because of the rubber tires by the way). Lesson four, if you're on a bus coming back from camp during a storm, sing "Found a Peanut." Most importantly though, and I can't stress this enough, after you see a lightning flash, count the seconds until you hear the thunder (to find out how far away it is)... and if there is no time between flash and BOOM, then don't sit near the window and look for flashes!

Doom By Asteroid!

To this day I can't hear Richard Kiley's voice without getting short of breath. I hold nothing against him personally, it's just his voice has come to be, in my mind, the voice narrating the Apocalypse. The only bad thing about the 90's was that with the new millennium fast approaching, out of the woodworks came all the doom sayers, and following close behind them, the scientists backing them up. Hollywood and science teamed up to inform us that... some serious shit was about the hit the fan, so we better buy out all the stores just to be safe.

After all, weren't we all treated to documentary after documentary, blockbuster Roland Emmerich movie after Roland Emmerich movie, low-budget Roland Emmerich rip off after low-budget rip off, all foretelling Earth's sure destruction through multi-character plot lines? There was nothing our parents loved to watch more than people running for their lives as New York City went up in flames, and nothing I hated more than being forced to watch it too, and I don't even live there!

Anyways, I single out the voice of Richard Kiley especially, for his narration of the 1996 Discovery documentary "Three Minutes to Impact,"--a film that planted the seed into this brain that not only are we going to get hit by an asteroid "the size of Texas", but it will hit a metropolitan area (preferably a world landmark), and it will hit sometime soon enough for people to still be driving around '96 Corollas (as featured during the animated impact scenes). And seeing as how people are still driving '96 Corollas, I can only to assume that doomsday is long overdue! Is it time for a change of pants yet?

Let's be honest here. The first thing anyone thinks when they see asteroids plummeting into Paris, London, or New York is, "thank God that's not close to me."

Every two minutes of this thing I was squished up on the edge of the couch, begging the scientists, "say it isn't so! Oh, say it isn't so. Say it won't happen to me!" And sure as the Apocalypse itself, they just kept retorting, "Oh yeah, it's a mathematical certainty. We will be hit again, in fact, fairly soon too!"

I think the 90's wore my disaster reflex out though. I've seen so many of these things pummel into New York, Vegas, Paris, Rome, London...etc., throughout my childhood, that I don't think the real thing is even going to shock me much. Let's get our hopes up that if it's going to happen though... it'll happen to all those sorry saps living in cities far, far away from me. I'm calling you out, Aprophis.

All About Reptiles

This is but a mere re-creation.

In selecting the new font for the glorious header of this blog, I came across this oldish Fraktur Nazi-esque one that reminded me of how much I appreciated the Old English font as a kid. I don't know why, perhaps it connected me with my humdrum "I say good sirs!" roots, but something about it could always class up any run of the mill school assignment. All those unnecessary lines, serif hooks, and random hairs, really made me think I was submitting something of quality when I handed in the 4th grade hyper-pixelated masterpiece "ALL ABOUT REPTILES" (in full caps, no less). Now that was fancy!

This was of course back in the day when computers were interesting. The one in the classroom had a really kiddied-up word processor that came with three fonts, and for whatever reason, Old English was one of them. It also had three sizes for header type: large, huge, and "make that, two pages." It allowed you to sort through what kind of image you wanted to adorn the header of your document from a list of severely pixelated and random clipart. Back then it was cool if you had a picture on your reports, whether related or not... so I went with the giant Indian with full feathery headdress.

Between these stylistic choices, "ALL ABOUT REPTILES" was complete at maybe 100 words, and it was pretty badass.

Blowing Smoke

Yes it was possible to get away with smoking when I was a kid, but only in the winter. All you needed to do was raise your ring and index fingers to your lips as if you were holding a cigarette, or a stick or pencil likewise, and then blow a long breath straight as an arrow into the air. A few puffs and you were indeed smoking... and only the weirdos ever got hooked on it. I hear it's still legal in some parts.

Of course it didn't always have to be cigarette smoke. One prance around the backyard in the winter time could have me thinking I was fire-breathing dragon or steam train in one of those make-believe movies I'd direct in my head. And it wasn't just the smoke from within. We also used to run through the car exhaust as the car warmed up, busting its plumes to pieces with chops and stomps or even playing "smoke signals" in it until we were told to stop. The bus either came while we were brushing our teeth or after twenty minutes of waiting around in the driveway, so we had plenty of time to be breathing in all those fumes before school (which probably explains a lot).

You know we're in a special zone when "playing with auto exhaust" counts as a idyllic childhood memory for me. BUTT... let's probe this even further.

Here's a question my inquisitive 8 year old mind never ceased to ponder: If warm things steam in the winter, like breath and car exhaust, why not farts? I wanted to see steam shoot out back there on a cold day, but try as I might, it never worked. Why don't we give off exhaust smoke from our tail pipes like cars? It seems like it'd be helpful thing to have in the winter time, but then any fart super power would've been decent to the 8-year-old me. How about farting lasers, or heat rays, nuclear blasts, or even just fart sonar? What about being able to unleash a smell that is literally toxic? The possibilities are endless!

But the 8yo Me digresses.