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[PA Comic] Friday, July 20, 2012 - The Proxy, Part Two
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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Personal Quote: "I stare into the void as her molted carapace unfurls, her soaking thorax begging for my gentle touch... and she whispers: "krev unda xcryu!!!". Her slender neck riddled with eggsacks and vestigial maws beckons for my tender head, but what is that I see? Tis a hedgehog, nested upon one of her seven shoulder, her quills beckon for me as well. I now surrender myself as I am filled with countless fertilized eggs and my hands grace the spiky sensuous quills... Yes, yes - a thousand times yes..."
My mum worked at my secondary school, though, so there were always a few assclowns who would claim that she did all my work for me.
I remember those days, clumsily learning to use a small hacksaw to cut away at that block of pine. Painting it a completely ridiculous shade of blue with terrible lightning bolts on the side. Gluing googly eyes to the front. My dad would supervise to make sure I didn't hurt myself, but the construction of that little racecar was completely up to me.
I never won. Someone would always show up with some perfectly aerodynamic work of art belt sanded and lacquered to perfection.
I don't think either of us truly enjoyed the derby, but it was fun to make those little cars.
Gabe standing behind his son who is seated at the play table, his hand on his shoulder. Standing across from another 30-something dad in the same position behind his own son. Both of their gazes locked upon one another, stern expressions staring the other down, the burning desire to see the other fall and laid low in this game of cards based on imaginary japanese monsters.
Their two sons chatting, laughing, and playing innocently, oblivious to the mental battle raging between the two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_derby
Oh that kid. I hated that kid.
Fortunately what Block of death lacked in aerodynamics it made up for in weight.
I still lost but I felt satisfied that my second place was legitimately earned.
That made me quite happy here.
Thing is we drilled holes in the backs of our racers for CO2 cartridges, so your car would take off with no lack of spectacle, and naturally because it was an in class deal dads were out of the picture.
My car still sucked, but I was proud of the Killa from Raycilla.
i got second and third place sometimes though
I did see this sort of thing at Chess tournaments. Always felt for those kids, because parents could make things downright nasty sometimes.
THAT kid wins those fairs every time.
I have been active with my son in Scouts since he was six. He is now 17 and nearing Eagle Scout. His first pinewood derby was the Saturday after the premier of the first Sam Rami Spiderman. He was super excited about spiderman, and painted his simple wedge shaped car blue with red spiderwebs. There was also a spoiler hot glued to the back he made from wood chunks discarded. It was a terribly ugly car...but he made it. From cutting, to sanding to painting it was all his.
He never won a race but he did win the award "Looks most like a scout built it" 3 years running.
Turns out everyone else did the same thing and I still didn't win shit.
One kid glued a lego windshield on his wood block. He glued a lego person in the indent. He put the wheels on the block. That's IT (I think there were a bunch of lego stickers around it.)
Dude won 2nd place.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
My own pinewood derby career was characterized by falling heartbreakingly just short of glory. Finished third one year (to this day I blame a hair caught in the rear axle I noticed just before the championship race but didn't have time to extract), second the year after that.
What really bugged me was the injustice of the car design contest. My last year I had a car cut into the profile of a diving hawk, with matching paintjob - feathers, eyes, beak, talons - and the prize went to...
...a kid whose car was a flat plank with piano keys painted on it. I mean, people just have no fucking taste or appreciation of creativity when they see it.
Nah, yours probably looked too much your dad did most of the work
Actually, there was one guy with a nice saw who did all the actual cutting work for everybody. We just marked off the design we wanted in pencil on the side of the block, and then gave it to him - no kids (or dads) were doing any of that. So there was no issue of "Dad did this," it was just a matter of how imaginative (or overly imaginative) kids were in coming up with a design and how well saw-guy was able to execute it. Then once we got the cut wood back we (and yes, dad sometimes too) had to sand, paint, etc.
we were expected to carve a wooden boat and stick it in one of several parallel chutes of water, and then blow out little lungs out at the sail to get our boat the end before the other kids
which is remarkably less interesting from a design and ingenuity perspective than the pinewood derby but at the same time WAY more fun to just blow as hard as you can to beat your friends
my father, whom i had known to be a natural handyman, had revealed to me the secret to success for this particular gauntlet: instead of just carving a point on one end the flat wooden block for aerodynamics, we would also round out the bottom of the block, just like a real boat! not only would water pass more fluidly around the boat, he assured me, but it would also be lighter and go farther with every gust of air i could muster out of my seven year old throat
my inevitable victory was so undeniable, he insisted we wouldn't need to test the boat beforehand at home in the sink or bath
the day of the race arrives, and one by one we line up next to the water chutes, holding our little boats steady before the whistle blows for us to release them and blow and blow and blow until we grow faint
the race starts, and my boat immediately throws in the towel, flipping onto its left side with the little sail resting on the side of the chute
i right it, and it flops on the other side
panicking, i look back to my father, the smartest man in the world, for aid. his face shows no signs of doubt or remorse, only because i'm not old enough to have learned them yet. he insists i keep at it, since the other kids are pulling way ahead, physics be damned
i gulp down as much air as i can and throw all my weight into propelling this miserable failure of a boat down the chute
it moves an inch, sail scraping down the side of the chute
i blow again, another inch
for what seemed like hours i blow this piece of shit boat down the chute while the rest of the kids, who had finished the race decades before me, looked on with huge grins
i didn't let my dad help me in scouts after that