Memoirs - Why do I love skateboarding?

05/08/05

Memoirs - Why do I love skateboarding?

Why do I love skateboarding? It's probably a never-ending question that skateboarders ask themselves but doesn't need answering. It's as if we rush into skateboarding as fools rush into love. Yet maybe it's precisely that - we are all fools caught up in our endless love affair with skateboarding, but joyous fools nonetheless. I found myself retracing my steps before I actually "met" my first love, and fell head over heels (in most cases literally) for skateboarding. To explain why I love skateboarding, carving out creative lines under cloudless skies, screaming in stoke at new skate vids, marvelling at the mad trickery the pros master, would take forever and my mind would be warped from unparallelled ecstacy as I relay all the times I've spent in absolute awe of skateboarding. But I'll try, here are my memoirs -

When I first started skateboarding it enveloped me completely, it was a giant force swallowing me whole and I couldn't escape, or at least I didn't want to. Reminiscing, I often wonder how such a simple act could give me such happiness but as I was initiated into its lifestyle I realised it was far from simple, and that's excluding the skateboarding part. It was a completely new, almost esoteric, culture that contained so many new facets and constituents it was truly eye-opening. I found myself opening new doors everyday, music that drove me and shaped my love for music today, magazines with artistic elements and literature (hmm..?) that sparked a creative fervour inside me, it was too good to be true, and inevitably it was. I picked up a susceptibility to idiotic injuries that was startling (how do you bust your elbow doing a harmless switch tic-tac, well I can comfort myself with the fact that it was switch.) I tried to come up with agonising explanations, maybe skateboarding wasn't meant for me (excuse me?) , maybe I was just clumsy, or perhaps that same force that had swallowed me was experiencing a little indigestion and wanted me out. Whatever it was out of the five years I've been "skateboarding" I've only been on a skateboard for about three. And it would always be the dumbest shit. Instead of cracking my knee on a 10 stair half cab, I cracked it on a ten brick ollie drop, instead of concussing myself on a helicopter acid drop, I concussed myself on my first mini-ramp drop in. Yet still I had developed a religous zeal for skateboarding that would have frightened even the early missionaries back to England. Whatever I did, whatever I didn't, revolved around skateboarding. I would rope it into all my conversations I had whatsoever, I would talk about skateboarding whilst others were talking about soccer, I would talk about skateboarding while others were talking about geology, I would even talk about skateboarding whilst others discussed the socio-economic progress of Argentina post-Evita, damn it was crazy. "Oh does your new car have four wheels? You know my skateboard also has..." It took over my somewhat academic tendencies at school, "So does thirty squared equal nine-hundred? You know Tony Hawk once..."

But it changed me into what I am today, shrugging my timid nature to scream at my parents when I couldn't go to the park (or maybe it was those teenage hormones) and creating a critical, discerning mindset in today's age of baa, baa, black sheep. Physically skateboarding has done my body far more harm than it has good, but mentally the pleasure it has given me is uncomparable. When I'm not skateboarding I long to go back, skateboarding is my drug, and I'm completely addicted.

(D)

Picture Perfect

Old McDonald had a diary...

21/02/05

Old McDonald had a diary...

The first column in Dclaim is an excerpt from the diary of the C.E.O of the McDonalds Corporation. A friend of mine found it in a burger while eating at McDonalds and I found it very interesting so I decided to put it on the site.

Today I signed a deal with Tony Hawk from that videogame. From now on Happy Meals will be known as 900 meals, I'm not quite sure why they're going to be called 900 meals. Maybe it's because there are 900 calories in the Happy Meal, but the scientists told me that it's actually 900 000 calories so Tony must have miscalculated. Those darned scientists were going to put the fact that there are 900 000 calories in a Happy Meal in a scientific paper, but they all agreed that fat payoffs were better than a stupid doctorate. Doctorates, who needs them? The last time I went to my doctorate was for the heart attack. My marketing advisor told me to sign the deal with Tony because 'he's a role model for the disorientated and impressionable youth and his influence will ensure boosted sales.' Disorientated is such a big word as well as impressionable, I wonder what they mean? I never really liked Tony anyway, that stupid videogame is so hard. I've only landed one trick playing it, it was called a wipeout. I wonder why my son laughed when I told him that? But in the end we all benefit because Tony gets a fat wad of cash, I get a fat paycheck and the kids get fat tummies. When I was coming home from work today, there were these stupid protestors outside the building. They all carried those skate,er, skate...,uh, rollerplanks around with them as well as placards and banners. One idiot had a sign that said 'stop jumping on the bandwagon.' What a dumbass, I drive a Mercedes Stationwagon not a Bandwagon. I wonder if my friend at K.F.C has these problems? He has a clever new way of killing the chickens for his stores and it saves him lots of money too. His employees break the beaks off the chickens and break their necks off while they're still alive and fully conscious. They also stamp and jump on the chickens until they die. He says it saves him money on machine maintenance. I wonder what maintenance means? My sister says they don't have any heart. They probably don't have any heart because all the strength from their heart is used in their hands to kill the chickens, clever guys. I have a heart, well at least one quarter of it. One quarter was lost in the heart attack when my arteries were clogged with transfatty acids from all the burgers I've eaten at my stores. And then I gave away half of my heart when I gave the go ahead to cruelly cut down millions of square kilometres of rainforest to make way for cattle ranches. Now that the rainforest is gone there aren't enough trees to produce oxygen , and with all the Carbon we breathe out not being absorbed it leads to global warming and the killing of many other animals and plants,as well as famishing farmers in Third World countries, not to mention all the animals who lost their lifesource and lives when we chopped down the trees. Animals, shmanimals! We've still got cattle right? Who needs endangered leopards and butterflies anyways? I asked Tony what his favourite animal is and he laughed and told me that its a stale fish. I wonder why he laughed, a stale fish isn't very funny, but what is funny is watching my customers choke on the stale fries I serve them. Well the 900 Meal deal is my conniving trick for the day and I'll earn myself another French Chateau with the money from this one. I asked Tony what he got from this trick and he said stoke. I wonder what stoke means, I wonder if it's better than a French Chateau?

M.C Donald

(All Rights Reserved - D)