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Saturday, June 29, 2002

Tim Schafer Tim

We won another award! Check it out!

Okay, whatever. So we made it ourselves, so what? It’s been ten days since we won an award. What are we supposed to do? Sit here and stew in our shameful, awardless filth and do nothing?

Speaking of do-nothing filth, Penny Arcade has still not returned my yo-yo. I think it’s pretty obvious from this unsolicited fan art [which you can’t see anymore because the Internet ate it] that the spirit of right-thinking America is behind me, and not them, and I clearly have a national mandate do to them whatever I want. Luckily for those cartoons I am too busy today.

I have come down to the office, not for revenge, but to fix a light in the downstairs hallway. There is no one here but me, and the rat that lives in the ceiling over my desk. At least, I think he’s a rat. I hope he’s a rat. But really, he makes so much noise up there I think he might be a full-grown raccoon, or one of those miniaturized horses gone bad. Judging by his demonic scampering, I have to imagine that he’s wearing four tiny, Gene Simmons-style KISS boots, and that he’s dragging a two-foot long tail made of exposed bone, like a museum t-rex. Or that his tail was chopped off years ago, and he made a new one out of little wooden spools strung together, to help him cope with the phantom pain. Or maybe he has his long, rat hair braided with Bo Derek beads and they drag on the floor as he runs. Clackity-clack clack, CLACK! Hello from the attic! I am a filthy rat! Clack-clackity clack!

Okay, I really don’t want to fix this light, so I’m going to talk about the rat some more. Why must he run so much? Why can’t he be still and just ponder his easy life? If I were a rat, I think I would content to just lay around and think about chewing on stuff. That’s pretty much all I do now, except I manage to squeeze in a lot of TiVo-watching on top of that. But if I were a rat I wouldn’t have TiVo, so I think I would focus on the laying around. But our rat can only manage to do that for a few minutes, and then he’ll suffer an explosive burst of energy and gallop across his little crawlspace or live+work loft or whatever it is he has up there.

Actually I haven’t heard it for a hour or so. Man, I hope it’s dead. I hope it’s not just being quiet—like, TOO quiet—because it’s morphed into some sort of queen alien rat who’s hanging from the ceiling, squeezing a floorful of slime-covered eggs out of a long, translucent birthtube. Oh, wait. There it goes again. Scampering like there’s no tomorrow. Hold on. Let me get out my lute…

Scamper no longer, my little roof possum.
Your work day is done. Say, isn’t that awesome?
Be still! Be still!
Or you, I will kill.
My frisky-fun friend, my plague-bearing blossom.

P.S. Yo-yo card from Blaze “PBD” Marley-Flamestrike. Wicked E3 award by wicked animator Chris Schultz. Chris asked me to pass along this message to his fans: “Wicked!!!”

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