Never Returning!

Yes, it's official: I am gone for GOOD. High school is more important than writing stuff on a blog, plus it takes more time, and I will soon be in college. And yes, that takes more time than high school work. So I will end by saying "Fight Hard Yeah!" If you want a laugh, you simply must check that blog out. It makes no sense whatsoever.

-Johnny

Childhood Memories

Yes, the blog is back. Hooray. Anyway, I'm a nostalgic freak who is obsessed with the 90s (because I was born in the 90s), and I want to talk about my favorite childhood memories.

Oh yeah, and I'll talk about the stuff I've recently written at another point.

Anyway, let's start off with something that I have always, always, always loved: computers. Yes, believe it or not, I've been using computers since I was 4 years old (I still have the first computer I ever used in my room, and it still works). I grew up using Windows 95, one of my favorite operating systems of all time (...Favorite operating system? Wow, I'm a geek!). When my dad bought a new computer, he kept the old one in storage as a backup and bought a Windows 98 SE computer (SE stands for Second Edition). That was our family computer, as was the old Windows 95, but for a much shorter amount of time. 56K Dial-Up and AOL became too slow for my dad's needs, so we got a high-speed DSL service instead. Unfortunately, our computer was too old to handle high-speed internet, causing the computer to not work at all and my dad to cry (it was the only time I have ever heard him cry). It still worked otherwise, but I never used it (and never even liked it, for that matter), so we kept it in storage until recently, when we donated it.

So, now that I've bored you with talk of old computers, let's move on to a more exciting topic: old books.

Kidding! Old books is an even less exciting topic, which I'm still going to talk about.

We had this set of "Help Your Child to Read" books by Allan Ahlberg and Eric Hill, such as Double Ducks, Poorly Pig, and Bad Bear. I loved them, but as I grew older, I no longer needed them. I was cleaning my room one day and idiotically decided to throw all of them out.

What a dumb**s I was.

Those books are rare, rare, rare! They're out-of-print, and they're worth hundreds--sometimes even thousands--of dollars if they're in the right condition! Dang.

Well, that's why there's Paperback Swap, and there's also my wonderful sister. Knowing I loved that book, and missed it so much, she looked on the aforementioned Paperback Swap (a website devoted to trading books for books) and lo and behold, there it was. She bought it for me and I decided to look and see if there were any others, too. They are all--I repeat, all--on Amazon, and they generally don't cost as much as they used to. Some of them are labeled "Out of print--limited quantities" or something to that effect, but still for a decent price. I will be getting my childhood back, one book at a time.

Now let's move on to toys (okay, I know you're bored of this, so go read another blog or something). My absolute favorite toy when I was four was the Playskool Talkback Voice Recorder. I have tried looking for this and have not found any results at all. I still have it somewhere, but the batteries desperately need changing, and they're button-cells.

Speaking of Playskool, I remember a book/toy hybrid called the "Magic Touch Book". I had the Winnie the Pooh one, "The Surprise Party Surprise". Here's a reenactment of the sound that played when you turned it on:

(really catchy, although ridiculously simple, music)

Welcome to your Magic Touch Book!

Open the book. Press the PageHopper! Then, touch a picture!

I always made fun of the way it said this. The guy they got to do this intro had some sort of accent, so "Your" sounded British, "Then" sounded southern, and "Touch" sounded like a combination of "Touch" and "Dodge" (Todge?). And he just sounded way too excited to be doing intros to kids' books.

Now, obviously, this was intended to help kids to read, but I would always turn it on, listen to the intro, and play the activities. That's one thing Living Books and Disney Animated Storybooks didn't have: you were forced to read with those, but with the Magic Touch Books, all you had to do was, as it said, "Open the book, press the PageHopper [a little character Playskool made up so the book knew what page you were on], then, todge a PICTURE!" No reading involved. That's why I loved it, and that's why it failed. It's also why I can't find it anywhere online, either: no one had the Winnie the Pooh one, just the 101 Dalmatians one (which I saw at Toys "R" Us once).

But I will get this one back, just so I can hear Kanga tell me that I've "made a... Honey. Honey. Honey. SURPRIIIIIIIISE cake!"

"Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

"Todge a PICTURE!"

Well, I'm boring myself at this point; I may as well start a new blog where I talk about stuff I remember from when I was a kid. Until then, I'll keep this one and do random updates!

-Johnny

Hey, a blog!

Oh, right, it's my blog. And it's dead. R.I.P., blog.

-Johnny

R.I.P. Ron Santo

A former Cub and my favorite sports commentator, as well as a local Chicago celebrity. May he rest in piece.

My reaction: Holy...!

...Yeah, that's basically an inside joke. The joke was that whenever someone messed up in a Cubs game (this happened a lot), Ron would say, "Aw," or "Holy," or something like that, and then we'd hear dead air. We imagined that he swore.

Well, now the air is not the only thing that's dead. I certainly will miss the most energetic Cubbie I had ever heard.

-Johnny

R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen

Yes, Leslie Nielsen is, in fact, dead. He will be missed, but I have the last word: FUSCHTA!

And if you don't know what that's from, go watch "Dracula: Dead and Loving It." Now.

-Johnny

My stuff!

Yeah, I'm going to be taking a looooooooooong break. Tune in in another month.

-Johnny

Quick Update!

I haven't done much writing recently, so I won't be updating for a while. If I don't update before Saturday, that's why.

-Johnny