Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (Or 'How I learned to stop worrying and love my childhood')

It will not have escaped the notice of those that know me well, that I am effectively a man-child. The reasons for this are many-fold and perfect fodder for future posts, but the main one should hopefully be easily related to - reality kinda sucks.

We barrel through life with very little semblance of control. Hurtling through space, circling a phenomenally large nuclear explosion, clinging to a rock filled with wild animals, natural disasters and other people who want to kill us for our iPhone, it's easy to see why some people shy away from reality.

But there is some small hope. Some tiny aspects we can control, form and bend to our will. Naturally, I'm talking about LEGO.

"Look sir, Droids!"

It's a simple thing, really. Highly engineered plastic blocks that squeeze together to make the things from my childhood that filled me with wonder. The tactile experience, the thrill of creation and letting ones imagination take flight are all part of the joy. One might argue that some similarities to the writing process exist in these little bricks. Taking the building blocks of an idea and giving them structure, shaping them, seeing where the creation takes you. 

Or, it could quite simply be that it's goddamn fun and I'm easily amused. Either way, I made out like a bandit this Easter and by god it was good.

Being shallow and materialistic is often decried as the doom of our civilisation. I would argue that in some small ways, there is room for shallow and materialistic. Remember what you were like as a child. Shallow could simply be another way of saying you lacked the horror-filled knowledge of worry, of concerning yourself with the piddling bullshit that so fills our lives as we age. Materialistic could be interpreted as having purpose, knowing what you wanted without having to take into account the vast complexities of life and all it throws at  you. That kind of shallow and materialistic, I'll take. I absolutely loved my childhood, evidenced by my ceaseless efforts to hold onto it through comic books, fantasy novels, video games and LEGO.

I think these things take even more precedence in an age where we worry about everything as it goes rapidly hellward in a flaming hand-cart. For the love of all that is holy, hang on to what takes you back to those innocent, empty years, where shallow and materialistic were the only things you needed to get by.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make Superman fight the Hoth Wampa before work.