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by Mike Jones I am rad at the claw game. You know the claw game. I’m not sure if that’s the proper name or whatever, but that’s what I call it and for the duration of this manifesto I will continue to call it the claw game. You know the one; various stuffed toys both cute and cuddly – the sort that boyfriends win for girlfriends – are sitting in a glass box and for a coin or two you can control this robotic claw and take a stab at plucking one of them from the pile and then dropping it down a chute that opens at your feet. Yeah, that one. Well, I’m rad at it. You’re probably sitting there at home or at work or something and you’re reading this going I can’t believe that this guy wrote an entire manifesto about something as juvenile and pointless as the claw game. Well I did, so believe it. I have a total plan as well. You see, the claw game is more than just a game; it’s a means to an end. What I plan on doing is to keep playing the claw game and being rad at it. Eventually I am going to get noticed by more than just the usual crowd of onlookers who are envious and jealous of me repeatedly hauling big-ass Pooh Bears from the very same pile which they themselves have failed to conquer despite numerous attempts and tons of cash. That’s right. First there will be a bit of a buzz, like Hey, did you hear about that guy that plays the claw game all the time? Apparently he’s really, really rad at it. And this buzz will carry and build and soon it will catch the ear of some sort of rep from say, a sports drink company or perhaps one of those athletic lines that make track suits. Once intrigued by this buzz, these reps will begin hanging out at arcades near the claw games, looking for someone who meets my description. It won’t take them long to find me because like I said, I’m rad at it. Once they find me, they’ll approach me and say that they are interested in sponsoring me. I’ll agree to their sponsorship deal (unless theirs is one of those unethical sweat-shop type companies, in which case I’ll politely decline and hold out for a different sponsorship deal), and money will start rolling in. I’ll reinvent the image of the claw game player, like how Tiger Woods did for golf. I’ll start marketing a whole line of strategy guides, DVDS, CD-ROMs, tracksuits or maybe sports drinks and it will be huge. So huge. I’ll have my very own claw game machines all over the world. Signature models. People won’t be able to get enough of it. There will even be special names coined for people who are totally devoted to being rad at the claw game. Something like “Clamers” – you know, “claw” and “gamer” mixed together. Anyway, I’ll be raking in these obscene amounts of money at this point. I will be in the top five of one of those lists that ranks the richest people in the world. I’ll have so much money, in fact, that I will begin to turn my sights on to another entirely different venture. Real estate. Yep, I’ll take my earnings and start buying apartment buildings and condos in every city of every country in the world. By the time I’m finished doing this I will have a complete housing monopoly. Next I will have all my claw games around the world emptied of their stuffed toy booty and replaced with the keys and addresses of each one of my real estate holdings. They’ll be inserted in those plastic globe sort of things that prizes sometimes come in and all of them will be put into my signature model machines. Then, once people win a key playing the claw game, they can have the apartment that corresponds to the key and address inside the little plastic globe that they grabbed on to. They will be allowed to live there rent free. It won’t be theirs to sell or rent though, because it will always be legally owned by me, but they can live there for as long as they like, for free. No strings attached. If I catch anyone trying to be greedy and sell the key that they have won, I will sue their pants off. There will be signs on all of the machines warning of precisely this. There will also be special security type people who I have hired to make sure that no one sells their keys. They will wear flashy tracksuits and get paid a thousand dollars an hour. Their breath will smell like berries, maybe cassis. Soon enough, the homeless problem will be taken care of worldwide. As a result of all this, the real estate market will be completely devalued and suffer a total collapse. Landlords and rent will become a thing of the past. People will be happy because they’ll have nice places to live in. Winos will live in apartments on Park Avenue; single mothers will sit on their balconies overlooking the Seine, their children playing happily in the spacious next room. Punks and anarchists won’t have to fight with the cops over squatter’s rights because with a few bucks and some luck, they’ll have beach front condos or better. And that’ll pretty much be that. I guess that you’re probably wondering what I plan on doing with all the stuffed toys which were removed from the claw games in order to make room for the apartment keys in their little plastic globes? Of course you are. That’s a reasonable concern. Well, I’ll still have a bunch of money left over from being so filthy rich, so I’ll hire a bunch of people all over the world to drive these big garbage trucks around, except that the trucks won’t be filled with garbage, they’ll be filled with stuffed toys. Did I mention that the garbage trucks will be solar powered? No? Well they will be. Also, all the trucks will play Stevie Wonder songs over loudspeakers because Stevie Wonder songs are great for making people happy. It will be like the ice cream man except instead of ice cream it will be free stuffed toys handed out to anyone who looks a little down on their luck. And then at night in all sorts of cities all over the world, you’ll be able to hear people giggling or sighing or singing or sleeping and sometimes you’ll be able to hear that whiney sound that the claw game makes, but only if the wind is just right. But that’s okay, even if you only get to hear any of these sounds for just a quick second or two, you’ll still be really glad that you heard them at all because no matter what, they will always, always, always be so much better than all the other sounds you could ever possibly hear. About the Author: Mike Jones is really sunburnt as he writes this. Pain. Aside from that, his fiction can be found in The Duck and Herring Co's Fall Pocket Field Guide 2005 and is also forthcoming in Better Non Sequitur's See You Next Tuesday anthology and Monkeybicycle's comedy issue. On line his words laze about at McSweeney's, Opium and Wandering Army. Email: wizzosan@yahoo.co.uk |
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