on Aug 27th, 2007
About Squage
I’m Squage, a small blue blob with big eyes and a big mouth.
I belong to the species Squagé, which inhabit the planet Squearth, which is in a solar system about 20,000,000 miles left of Jupiter (hanging right at the petrol station by the the 5th moon of Thammiraah Seven).
Years ago (on my 18th birthday) I accidentally ended up on Earth following what can only be described as a rather hectic night on the Zarrblede Juice (you know the potency and taste of Unicum Zwak? Zarrblede’s about half as nasty and as such outlawed in a fifth of the galaxy). I’m not quite sure how I’d ended up there but I awoke in a daze lying in the front room of a house in Essex.
There was a human who lived in the house and, rather oddly, seemed to take it as normal for this sort of thing to happen (he’s got an overactive imagination as I now realise) and so ended up adopting me, teaching me English and trying to help me get back to Squearth.
In the end we realised it wasn’t going to happen (for a start he didn’t seem to be able to source the 52.4 gigatonnes of petrol needed to get to the nearest intergalactic refuelling station) and so, well, I stayed in Essex with Pat.
This was great until we read that there are prettier places on Earth than Canvey Island’s oil refinery – which came as quite a surprise – so we went to see some of the more impressive parts of the world – primarily New Zealand and Australia. You can read about our adventures here.
Now that we’re back, Pat’s going back to his old job and me? Well, I’m considering starting up my own Myspace band. Failing that, I’ll just sing on a street corner hoping for some money. I’m still not sure which would get me the most money…
Note: Squage is a cartoon character of mine, which I designed in circa 1994 whilst bored in an English Literature lesson for use in a crap QBasic game I was creating at the time.
The story was that Squage and his chums were the only survivors following a catastrophe on their home planet, Squearth, where the master gem (which, naturally, radiates the good vibes needed to keep Squagés alive) was shattered into a million fragments… causing Squagés all across Squearth to become sad, upset and eventually dissolve into deadly pink goo. But, of course.
The game itself was a rubbish, fixed screen platformer whereupon you’d jump around the screen as Squage (or one of his mates), collecting gem fragments and avoiding pink goo. Somehow, I managed to sell a copy to a neighbour for £5. Since then the world has never made sense to me.
Aaanyway, following that game, then Squage 2 (much better but still QBasic-based) and finally SquageTris (guess what that’s based on), most of my school mates knew and loved the blue blob.
Partly because of the kitch, retro (read: poor for its time) feel of the game – and partly because of the constant doodles of him I’d do whilst bored in lectures – a few years later lots of my Uni mates knew all about the blue blob… in fact, people had started using his name in place of swearwords (â€For the love of Squageâ€, “Oh, for Squage’s sake†and “What the Squage?†were not uncommon). Quite odd, yes, but we were pissed or hungover most of the time.
The same happened at work a few years later.
As you can see, I’m still drawing Squage.
I have a terrible problem :-)
Pat