Quimsical's European Adventures (part 1?)

What the fuck. I haven't been in the blogosphere in like, many months and, for that, I apologize because I know how much my presence has been missed: page views have been off the charts - not. Flatline. You've all killed me with your lack of love. Just kidding, I did this to myself.

Anyway! I have so much shit to fill y'all in on. Since the last time I wrote a post on this majestic blog, I have been to 5 European countries and am now residing in one. I'm not gonna say it because I don't want to get stalked. Just kidding, it's France. The point of me telling you this isn't to be like, "oh, I'm so worldly now and I only condone wearing leather jackets and high top sneakers.. Meehh," in fact, it is simply to tell you all how much WEIRD shit has happened to me, or I have witnessed since being here. I will tell my anecdotes in order of least strange to most strange, or on the scale of "public toddler urination to gypsy curses."

1. I was admiring the gorgeous architecture in central Berlin and glanced down at my arm to see two bugs fucking each other on it. I flicked those shits off but later reflected on it and decided I was actually kind of flattered. My arm screams sketchy motel hookups.

2. An elderly woman was walking down the stairs as I was walking up them in a beautiful old castle. She must have been super excited because she decided to skip a step and consequently fell into the wall nearest her, ricocheted off of that wall and was making a beeline for me. My instinct for self preservation manifested itself in me sticking my arm out (I also hoped to save her from falling down stairs made of pure stone). Did I save her? No. She has already semi-caught her footing and I ended up punching this poor, old German woman directly in her chicken cutlet breast. Needless to say I blushed and wanted to fly away like Russel Edgington in True Blood.

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3. "I just wanna go out and dance tonight!" The harmless utterance that resulted in.. Well, you'll see. So, Wrocław, Poland has a pretty decent nightlife and my mates (friends don't exist in Europe..) and I decided to give it a try. Ah, the bar with the red awning looks good! Enter we did. The bar had a nice vibe and the downstairs dance floor was pretty decent. As the night went on and the shots started to wear off, strange things were noticed.. Like, the portrait of Mao Zedong on the wall and the one of Stalin opposite him. Oh, then the one of Che Guevera. Then I began to notice that everyone was at LEAST 38-45 in this bar and all dancing like they had no arms. As I rested on the guard rail, I observed the fine detail work. Hmm, a sickle. Man, all of the lights in here are red... And so was the awning. In .002838 seconds, my eyes widen, my buzz dies like it was shot in the face, and I realize that we are in a middle-aged Communist bar. The despicable dancing should have been the first sign.. We left alive, un-sacrificed, and uninitiated into any sort of underground gang.

4. To begin with, public transportation isn't my strong point. I am always clammy-handed thinking that I will end up on the wrong side of town. So, with this worry floating around in my mind, I wait for my tram. Waiting at a tram stop late at night is also not one of my favorite things to do, which is why I always pretend to be talking to someone, whether it be texting or speaking, on my phone. Not the best strategy. Noot the best strategy. I'm approached by two men. My heart's pace quickens and I get really involved in the 'text message' I'm composing, only this time I wonder if I should actually compose something - a cry for help or my will. I'm spoken to. [I'll translate the french into true English]
Guy: "Eh, j'ai besoin de ton portable" = Yo, bitch, I need your ghetto ass phone, you're not even texting anyone.
Me: "Euh.. non, je ne fume pas." = Umm, no thanks, I don't smoke. <-- me being a fucking idiot
Guy: "Non! Ton portable. Donne-moi ton portable." = No, you piece of shit, give me your phone, I wouldn't ever offer you one of my cigarettes anyway.
Me: "Uhh, non merci. Je n'ai pas de..." = Um, no thanks.. I don't have <-- me stopping myself from saying that I don't have a cellphone.. because I realized that it was in my hand.
Guy: grabs phone from me and calls his girlfriend, then shoves it back in my hand.
Me: "Merci!" = thank you for not killing me, do you have any hand sanitizer?

See how that played out?? I was the one who ended up saying thank you! After being harassed for my phone, I said thank you; probably because I was thankful that I still had a heartbeat and that I had my phone back. Fuck. At least I got on the right tram.

5. Just chillin' in the park. Little toddler walks by with her mother and she is complaining about something ridiculous. Oh, she has to pee. Well, hold it like the rest of civilization. No. That mother was on her game and spared no time de-robing her very own daughter in public by ripping her frilly tutu off. Then, something happened that looked way too well rehearsed: the mother lifted the child up so that the child's back was against the mother's stomach and her legs were in stirrup position. What ensued, I have not words to describe. Shameless, the child exploded a stream of pee that made Niagra Falls blush. It went on for a solid 25-30 seconds, too. This little girl was not kidding. Tutu was pulled back on, scooter was remounted and off they went into the sunset.

6. Waiting to pay for a delicious dinner of mystery-meat dumplings in Poland, a pregnant gypsy and her son began to approach my group's table. Let me say, dis ain't no Esmerelda. She looked like she had just crawled out of Katy Perry's garbage can, if that helps you visualize her. I immediately girded my loins and felt for my wallet in my pocket. It was there. She would have to cross many a boundary to get to it, however, I felt that she wouldn't object to violating me. Her squinty eyes scanned our table and then, of course, because my life is a joke, the kid next to me, who has decided to pay with nearly all coins, drops them ALL on the ground. Her tongue flicks and she whips her head in our direction. "Jesus, pick it up!" I say, keeping my eye on the gypsy kid, I can tell he's already a swift thief. Phew, all the coins have been picked up and the gypsy slows her pace. All is well until HE DROPS EVERYTHING AGAIN. This time, the gypsy screeches and throws her hands in the air and her son turns into the devil and runs straight for me. At least, that's how it went down in my head. He picked up the coins again, this time in the nick of time, as the gypsy rounds our table. She then murmurs some ugly words and makes some hand motions in our direction, the whole time, her stare unwavering. And that was the day I was presumably cursed by a gypsy.

These are just some of my stories and I'm more than certain that more will come.. Until next time!

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Childhood in the 90s - A Stallion With Pedals

Here is the second post pertaining to my Olympian-status childhood in the 90s. I feel like those were the days when forming a bike gang was cool, accepted, and feared by those not included. Fuck no we didn't wear bike helmets. That would have made us the Steve Urkel of bike gangs. My friends and I, including Audecdote, were much more better..

We would meet up in the morning, not on the sidewalk like any dumb old kid, we met up in a bush. You heard me. We had a completely concealed sanctuary shrouded in shrubbery, with enough room to stand. Eat your heart out sheet-fort kids.

Once we had met and written down a detailed account of the current and predicted weather forecast in a Harry Potter journal, it was time to ride.

I'm going to ask you to play this song while you read the next part:

Imagine the silhouettes of three comrades, faintly coming into view against the blazing backdrop that is the morning sun. We rode with conviction, plowing mercilessly over any ant or twig that came in our way.

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We fucked bitches on the reg. Or did we? No, we didn't. We glided over the concrete coming to our final stop. A final stop that only a regular Evel Knievel or Jackie Chan would dare attempt. What was it you ask? A poor excuse for a hill in my Grandmother's back yard.

We lined up our bikes as they whinnied and neighed in protest. Here's where I'm gonna mind fuck you. We pretended our bikes were horses, no, not horses, but GIANT stallions, their muscles rippling and their hooves the size of garbage can lids. The sweat dripped down the sides of our faces from the velvet riding helmets that sat atop our heads, secured by a delicate and choking leather strap. Remember when I said we were way too cool to wear bike helmets? T'was because we had access to fucking velvet riding helmets. Let me reiterate that we were the cool bike gang.

"HIYA, Lightning!" I shouted the name which I had bestowed upon my bike, pointing forward and then quickly retracting my hand to get it back on the bike handle.. I mean, mane. My stallion cautiously descended the hill that was at a near-90 degree angle, and by 90 I mean 35.

"Magnum, ride!" Audecdote shouted on my coattails. The name came from the brand of the bike, however, I now realize that it sounded like she was shouting some sort slogan for a condom campaign.

The third, in elegance as usual, simply acted as if she was giving the horse a firm kick to the sides to get her horse moving.

Down we rode in slow motion, the wind blowing in our faces, forgetting about the world around us and focusing only on the task of making the next jump: the drop-off of the driveway into the neighbor's lawn (a good 2 feet).
 

Most importantly, what happened when we came into contact with another bike gang? I'll tell you this much, the kids with the velvet helmets definitely owned.

It went something like this:

Clearly we were Liv Tyler. 'Nuff said.

Childhood in the 90s - Pokemania

I'm thinking that I would like to write a series of posts about being a child of the 90s. Probably one of the better decades to have grown up in. I mean, I did some of the craziest shit in the 90s. Crazy as in "would I dare attempt to swing from that tree like that nowadays?!" as well as "You're literally fucking crazy, Pokemon do not exist." (they might).

Speaking of Pokemon, I think that is the first thing I will focus on. Even typing the word gets me all excited and giddy, yearning to earn some official pokeleague badges! Rather recently, my family and I moved, thus requiring a thorough cleanup of my room and of course, the inevitable process of deciding what gets to stay and what goes.

So, I sat there and cleaned my room up, finding things like old pamphlets from musicals I had been in, books I had forgotten I had, old drawings shoved into a binder, and something that was a translucent purple. SWEET BEAN POD! I had stumbled across my old Gameboy Color! I was the cool (?) kid who had this one:

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I actually remember my step-brother once saying: "I want the one you have. That queer lookin' one." I simply believed he could not say "clear" and had some unheard-of speech impediment. Not the case.

I picked it up and held it with such care and reverence that it seemed impossible to me how indifferently I had treated it when I was younger; tossing it aside when I was done with it, allowing the screen to get all scratched up, losing the cover that goes over the batteries. What was once simply a toy was now a treasure and an all too tangible link to my carefree days as a child riding his Big Wheel with his Game Boy in his pocket. The nostalgia set in and I realized I kind of had to shat.

What was more glorious was what I found when I turned it over to inspect it:

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MY FRIENDS! That was the first thing I thought. I mean, how goddamn pathetic. But seriously! Every day I had played this game and trained my little monsters! It's like when there were all those articles in the paper that instructed parents how to care for their child if Harry Potter died in the final book.... only vastly different. There was no article about how to cope with the fact that Pokemon was technically on the outs and that young men in their late teens probably shouldn't be caught playing it in public.

Y'know whuh I says? I says FUCK DAT!

I started a new game and played to my heart's content. I'm still playing, in fact. I played this morning. I then found my Gold Version:

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This required some surgery, seeing as how the battery inside of it had died. Yeah, there is a battery inside of the cartridge. So, if your game doesn't hold a save, Google how to replace the battery and you'll be gold (pff... no pun intended). I went so far as to use a butter knife, two miniscule screw drivers, and a chopstick, I'm pretty sure, to pry that cartridge open and replace the battery by gracefully taping it into place with scotch tape. It worked!

My life became so much brighter! I had a REASON to finish my homework. I was training myself to get all of my work done by like, seven o'clock on a weekday (unheard of) so I could play my game. It worked wonderfully, my grades were steady As, I had time to relax, I was super happy. I even got sucked back into the TV show. Another throwback to my carefree days as a rockin' fourth grader.

 The 8 or 9 year old me was back. The one who adamantly supported the theory that Pokemon, in fact, exist. They just don't want us to see them because we're not ready for them just yet. I convinced a few and drove away a lot more.

My obsession grew and I ended up buying two games from the newer generations (not as good.. noooot as good Nintendo/Gamefreak). I even asked for one for Valentine's Day. Things got out of hand.. I refused a VERY nice offer because I was in the midst of an Elite Four battle.. I mean, you just don't mess with that shit. I tried to re-initiate the offer I had been given once I saved the game.. apparently the moment was gone.

My point: If you can find time to relive something that made you SO happy as a kid (in some semblance of moderation), you will be a happier person. I not only find fun in replaying the games but a sense of comfort in the nostalgia of it all.

Find the time to become a child again for a day or two. It puts trivial worries in perspective and gives you a chance to enjoy the day :)

To close, I shall provide you with the most epic song ever composed:

Comment back with your own childhood adventures!