Dakota

I had the day off today. My body would never know it. It's very tired.

I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen. It doesn't really look like it, though. Well, it looks better, but the bedroom and the living room are still war-torn nations. I wanted to do more, but I just kinda crashed.

I sat down in the bedroom, by the closet, listening to Madonna remixes on a laptop (preferable to my CD player because the laptop records my last.fm stats), and the never-ending DVD menu to Kissing Jessica Stein (the movie is what Matt fell asleep listening to; I couldn't turn off the TV without him sensing the noise dropping, and him waking up) from behind the closed door. I was going through papers. I found stuff I wrote in 1995. It's all pretty bad, but kinda sweet. I was actually doing the "blogging" thing on a Word Processor before I knew it would eventually be called that. I was writing about a superhero team that I "created," or rather constructed from snatches of elements from other, successful comic book characters.

They were called The Metros. I named them that after seeing the word "Metro" in The New York Times. I decided that the name inferred that they worked in the metropolitan area of New York City. Sure. The characters were Muscles, who was a variation of Superman; Twist, who I later renamed Spin, who could spin in circles very quickly, slicing things into smithereens; Bad Breath (oi), who was a 2'4 adult that had a huge head and tiny body, and could expel horrible smells from his mouth; Pole, a black boy with a square M.C. Hammer-type haircut, who could length his neck "79 million yards"; Pyramid... who could do something but I was never important enough to mention a lot; Scarlet, who could scream loudly and fly; and Thundra, a blonde version of X-Men's Storm, but with a better outfit. Eventually joining the ranks were Sonic, who could sonic blasts with her hands, and Jaguar, a savage jungle man with super-speed.

I had villains (Crab, the aquatic beast; Oyster, his mermaid assistant; Dr. Chillingstone, the mad scientist; Venus (who later turned good) and Sapphire, daughter/mother demigoddesses with diamonds in their foreheads that they used for telepathy; Alternate, who could control time; Chicken Legs, who... had chicken legs?; Stretch, who could bend his body into freakish shapes; Midnight, a shapeshifting sociopath; and Yuka, a shapely, blonde 40-something ninja-wannabe.

They all had extensive back histories. At one point, I went crazy and killed half of the heroes off in an epic showdown between the good guys and the bad guys. By epic, I mean six or seven pages of hand-drawn carnage. I renamed the trimmed team The Enforcers, and then again The Force, before eventually tiring of the troupe and shipping Muscles off in a spaceship aimed at the sun.

God, I worked on them every day, and almost no one read them. Yes, they were contrived and bland, and poorly constructed, and morally bankrupt... but it was something I really loved. I only have a few scattered sheets of actual "comic," and a few more actual text write-ups; behind-the-scenes, explanations and what to expect in the future...

I also found some college material; a notebook of nearly almost all notes between Danielle and myself during Western Civilization, and notes from the English class I really should have gotten an A in.