Culpeo Talks: Childhood Oddities

Odd topics require odd titles.

This journal exists because the other one's getting old and i needed something to keep this interesting. Also, the amateurish journal skin i created years ago annoys me and since i'm an absolute N00b when it comes to CSS i thought it would be best to finally remove it.

The last nights i was biking through our town to do nightshift (i love doing that. Not a single soul around and you realise how quiet even the civilised parts of the world can get) and while letting my thoughts flow i was grabbed by some intense nostalgia for some reason. I remembered my childhood especially and....how ridiculously naive i used to be back then. The way i saw the world, all the things i had to learn and understand first (the very anatomy of „sarcasm" for example).

I remembered some cases that appear especially wondrous to me nowadays when i think about it so i thought it would be funny if i share some of them.

Childhood Oddity 1:
Black and white television.



I grew up with many old movies and loved watching those. The interesting thing here is, though, that i never understood why these movies were black and white while others had colours.

So what is the conclusion naive little Culpeo came to? „The world must have been black and white back then!" No shit, i really thought the world was colourless when these movies were made and was convinced that it turned into colours somewhere later in history (people, like devious Norman Bates shown here, included). That brilliant argumentation was also strengthened by black and white photographs.


Childhood Oddity 2:
Eating.



I remember a period in my early life where i seriously wracked my own brain about what actually happens with the food after you ate it (it never came to me that going to toilet has something to do with it). „We eat and eat and yet we never explode? Blimey, WHY?"

For some weird reason i started to imagine that there must be some little crablike animals living in our stomach that shrink what we eat with their claws and consume the food themselves. I have NO idea how i ever could come up with that. So apparently i was either very dumb or very creative.


Childhood Oddity 3:
Jurassic Park.



It was one of my earliest movies i ever watched and the following special memory came back to me when i saw that it will be re-realeased in cinema very soon (and i will watch it not for the 3D (couldn't care less about 3D) but for the nostalgia only. Because i dearly LOVE this film.). I remembered how amazed and awestruck i was about – what else - the dinosaurs.

Holy smokes, i couldn't believe how real they appeared. Starting from the scene where Dr. Grant and Ellie meet the Brachiosaurus i couldn't help but think of how the hell they did that (remember, back these days CGI was a very new and revolutionary thing and as a kid i of course had no idea that computers could actually do that. Much like Alan Grant, you know. I was super-suspicious when it came to computers.)

So at first, i thought they actually built a 50 feet huge Brachiosaurus. I sticked with that – until the other dinosaurs appeared. The T-rex that broke out of its fence. The Gallimimus herd. The Raptors in the kitchen (boy, i was so terrified of that scene. And yet, that very scene was responsible for my Raptor addiction which still flourishes). Dear God, they looked SO real. Therefore, i threw my earlier thought of building lifelike puppets away and was convinced that these dinosaurs were indeed: Real. I recall that i had a bunch of sleepless nights where i pondered about HOW they got and trained the living dinosaurs and if there's a zoo (like...an actual Jurassic Park, haha) or something where you can visit and see them – until it was shown in TV where a documentation behind the scenes followed. And suddenly, all the magic of film-making was exposed.

I know that people or kids today who saw Jurassic Park in more recent times would just laugh at me, pointing out how outdated the Jurassic Park-technique is by now. But gosh, i was a kid and i will never forget my obsession and fascination. Have you seen Scorsese's adaption of Hugo (which is wonderful, by the way) and the depiction of that popular happening where people saw a movie for the first time (a simple recording of a train that quickly approaches the screen)? People screamed in fear and ducked because they thought the train would hit them. This is the exact impact the Jurassic Park dinosaurs had on me back then and i love recalling this memory.

Childhood Oddity 4:
South Park.



(the chosen picture is the perfect depiction of what will follow now).
Here comes an extra weird one. You gotta know: I love South Park. Hard. The jokes, the balance between superclever humour and superbad taste, the characters, the absurdity, - it's just a show made of poop-shaped gold and they never cease to make me laugh my ass off.

That wasn't always the case. I did not love it. You wanna know what it was instead? As a kid, i was friggin' terrified by this show. 8')

All of you know the disclaimer that is shown before each episode: White letters on a black background, saying in silence:



The thing with the last sentence is...i believed it. I believed that this was some sick tv series that they only play at night for this very reason, that it would contain something that could harm my psyche or something - in short, being something forbidden that only adults should watch, on par with pornos and splatter movie stuff (well, that's not all that far away, but seriously, i was afraid). This notion was strengthened as soon as i would watch the mere opening: Weird paper cut animation style, a super wacky song...it was just disturbing.

It's kinda weird now to go back and think about it. But still, it is a certain memory that'll always stick with my mind whenever i think about South Park, for whatever weird reason. 8')



This should be it by now from me and i hope you are entertained („Are you not entertained?!"). And since i know i CAN NOT be the only one – it is your turn now.
Do you have similar childhood oddities, one of these naive views of the world or experience that kind of embarrasses or simply make you laugh today?