Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Unbearable Grossness of Boyhood

Little boys are gross. Always have been, always will be. Blood, poop, boogers - that is their realm. As a pre-teen I was briefly the publisher of Constipated Illustrated (it was not a journal of or about the movement.)

Kids today don't have to self-publish, today's boys are served by vast industries of grossness. (As always, I don't write out of contempt for today's soft generation - I write it of jealousy.) The exemplar of this realm is Dav Pilkey, creator of Captain Underpants. If I were seven or eight, I would be obsessed with Captain Underpants.

Pilkey's website has great little online games that my son plays. In general they are knock-offs of a video game classic (antique?) like Frogger or Space Invaders. Then there is the Booger Buster 2000. It is Tetris, except that the blocks are boogers sneezed out by a giant monster. There are sounds effects. It is disgusting. My stomach churned as I showed my son how to play. However, it is also Tetris so I couldn't stop playing. Except that it was disgusting. But it was still Tetris and it is so satisfying to line up those little blocks/boogers.

I'm just writing this to warn you.

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