Coming up next: an essay on Pac-Man cereal. The challenge here isn't describing ghost-shaped marshmallows or tasty cornmeal - it's figuring out a way to get at least 1,500 words out of it without forging eighteen pointless paragraphs. When I look back at some of the stuff I wrote around a year and a half ago or so, one of my biggest gripes is how often I just wrote and wrote and wrote for the sake of a longer article. Don't get me wrong, there's benefits to having a vast post and giving people enough to read so that they can spend more than a measly minute or so with the article. But if you just keep adding words when you ran out of things to say paragraphs before, the writing can go from inspired to insipid real quick.

Now okay, I know I'm a phony writer. I'm not particularly schooled, almost never read fiction, and I can't spell 'occasionally' correctly without using a spellchecker no matter how many times I try. But, I'm an experienced phony writer. This is something I see on the net a lot, particularly amongst the circles of people who want to be viewed specifically as good writers, not so much good webmasters. You'll see 8,000-word articles that could've easily been summed up in a fourth of that. Finding the balance isn't easy - it's something I continually struggle to learn. I used to believe that some people were just born with the ability to write. I don't think that anymore. True, maybe it comes more naturally to some, but you certainly get better with practice. Look at the tripe I was putting out when the site started compared to now. Who knows? Six hundred more articles, and maybe I'll finally learn the correct differentiation between "its" and "it's!" Nahhhh.

Anyway, the reason you're getting the Pac-Man Cereal article today is because my previously chosen topic just wasn't presenting enough material for me to nail a full feature. So instead of just throwing it down the tubes alongside my half-written four-part movie review of Logan's Run and an article about masturbating using your feet, I'll give it to ya here. What's it about? The Pokemon Board Game.

Clickity clickity click...

I picked this up for three bucks on clearance, marked down from its usual 20. Now, these things had been dropping in price basically since they arrived years back, and I can easily see why. I don't know any kid who could've possibly enjoyed playing the Pokemon board game. If Risk teamed up with Mouse Trap and made some weird alien hybrid super-game, it'd still be less complicated than what we have here. The reason I couldn't do a full article on it is because that'd entail a complete understanding of the directions. From what I see, it'd take me around four weeks to figure that out.

Still, for three bucks? A bargain. Even though I'll never ever attempt to play it again, it came with some really need game pieces and I desperately needed something to decorate my window sills with. Also, it comes with 45,000 Pokemon pogs:

It took a half hour to pop them off the boards. I made the mistake of holding all of them in one hand as I gathered the rest, and just before completing the mission, I dropped them all in such a way that they spread across my entire living room. It was at this point where I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to like the Pokemon game. It was a hard truth to face, me being such a Pokegeek and all, but once you've spent 45 minutes popping out Pokemon pogs and picking them all up off the floor, the fairy tale kinda loses its luster. I used to associate Pikachu with love and passion. Now I associate him with the rug burns on my knees from crawling around to collect all his dumb pogs. Pogachu.

After immense effort, the game was all set up and ready to go. Time to play. The set also comes with dice, two decks of cards containing directions I can't comprehend, player pieces, and a bunch of other stuff made out of cardboard. You know this thing was doomed to fail just based on the amount of cards and pogs and pieces it has - what kid can keep track of all this stuff without losing some of the necessary parts down the sides of the couch? Plus, while the Pokemon craze managed to attack an old man like me, it typically went after young children. You know what young children do when they see pogs, right? Chew the holy jebeezus out of them. Everyone knows kids eat pogs. Why didn't anyone tell Pika that before he spent all his arena winnings making zillions of these pointless board games? Poor Pika. It's a good thing he can only say his name, since the words that'll trickle from his mouth after finding out the truth will definitely be R-rated.

I considered which game piece and starting Pokemon to use only for a brief moment. Not because it wasn't an important decision, but rather due to the fact that my camera was rapidly running out of battery power, and I couldn't justify spending another six bucks to take pictures of Charmander pogs.

I picked the green-colored Ash player piece, with my starting Pokemon being Clefairy. One of Clefairy's Pokepowers is called 'Metronome' - a strange, mystical force that lets her do everything from creating blizzards to causing huge boulders to materialize right above her opponent's head. I didn't pick her because of any of that - I just really enjoy the idea of a Pokemon that looks like candy.

So I started playing, against myself, and I quickly realized that my brainpower just wasn't up to the task. The Pokemon Board Game seemed to go well beyond my mental capacities, which isn't surprising since I'm 23 years old and I still need a girlfriend to tie my shoes. I moved around the board, just as directed, and everything was going just swell until I picked up some cards and had no idea what to do with them. I checked out the manual to see what I'd missed, and that proved to be the final nail in this game's coffin...

Yeah, you try figuring that out. I can't tell if it's the recipe for a nuclear bomb, or one of those diagrams football coaches draw on chalkboards that look like fleas jumping off of jelly donuts. Either way, it's too much for me. I'm glad they included Mewtwo, but even he's not enough to warrant further suffering. The Pokemon Board Game now lives on a shelf, tucked away and wrapped in black cloth. I don't want anyone important paying me a visit and noticing that I own a Pokemon game. It's bad enough that I've got a string of chili pepper party lights hanging over my bed. I wouldn't want to commit a total social suicide.

Oh well. At least I got a hundred thousand Pokemon pogs out of the deal. For three bucks, what more could you ask for?