Pokemon

Alright muchachos, you wouldn't believe the week I've had. And that's because nothing happened. I'm a bit concerned they might be underpaying me at work, but of course they are. That's what these places do. They dodge taxes, carefully weave their way through loopholes and go out of their way to keep pay rates as low as possible. If you want something, like more money or for someone to teach you the skills required to do the job so that you're not just doing dishes every shift, than you have to make demands.

That's what I do.

There are a lot of Pokemon memes floating around the internet at the moment. Particularly on Facebook. The past couple of years have also seen a surge in Pokemon LPs on Youtube. It's like a decade on we're celebrating what defined our collective childhood - how it came along, shoved everything else aside and bathed in our attention until we got sick of it and moved on to Digimon or whatever came next. I can't remember because I had trouble letting go of Pokemon. I just can't get over my appreciation for the genius marketing put into this franchise. At some point, a group of people in a meeting must have asked "what do kids like? Cute animals? Collecting things? Fighting? Video games? Well let's mash all of that into one thing. We shall call it...Tiny creatures. No, wait...how about...Pocket Creatures? Pocket Monsters? That's it! Pocket Monsters! We'll shorten it to Pokemon!

Hence Pokemon.

Suddenly kids everywhere were spending twenty-four hours a day on their Gameboys, training their little animals into giant beasts capable of starting earthquakes, tsunamis, searing their opponents with lightning, manipulating the Sun's energy into some kind of solar beam, or stomping their enemies, tackling them, punching them, throwing eggs at them, throwing rocks at them, slashing them, breathing fire at them, poisoning them, paralysing them, confusing them, freezing them. And all of this led to the same outcome, which was that your critters fainted. Because if you killed them off or body slammed them into paraplegia the kids would get upset.

Then the cards came along and suddenly the schoolyard had an economy. Seriously, anthropologists need to study this phenomenon! Back in the day, whoever had the most/best Pokemon cards basically ruled the school yard, kind of like the real world and money, eh? As soon as Pokemon cards went out of fashion, ie. became worthless, the playground plunged back into chaos and would remain that way until the next big thing came along. Are you reading this, people who study human nature? Don't bother going to Africa and living with its weirdest tribes. Look no further than your local Primary School.

So anyway, that's the story of my 1999. I think my 2000 was more about Dragonball Z or some other Japanese brainwashing scheme.

The end.