The Empirical Manifesto

I played Lego's yesterday. A lot. And by a lot of Lego's, for those of you prone to misunderstanding me, I played 10-hours of Legos.

Staying home with sick children is almost never fun - especially when you choose to work from home to be available. That's why I took a day off instead of working from home. I thought that might be easier. And while little girl was feeling well enough to play 10-hours of Lego's, she was under doctors orders not to return to school until this morning.

Fine. I dumped out the ever-growing bucket of Lego's smack dab in the living room floor, and began to build.

Ever since my son began playing Lego Star Wars the video game, we've moved from Lego cars and trucks and planes to Lego Star Wars. He has an impressive collection. Throw in the massive hundred-dollar Bionicle sets he got on sale after Christmas with his combined birthday money, and we've got ourselves enough bricks to actually spend that amount of time, given a ripe enough imagination.

When I was but a lad in shortpants, our bricks were larger, at least height-wise. These are what I call, "full height" bricks. Today's "sets" are awfully specific to the item you are making, while being just as configurable, often time you simply don't have any other need for a Naboo Starfighter engine nacelle. And while my children enjoy playing with the creations they've made, they are very frustrated that all I do is build (hitherto only assumed, last night directly articulated) instead of play.

And while I constantly fight with you, my FL concerning the self-awareness of my lack of creativity, I did manage to actually build something to capture the mind of an eight-year-old. He loves ships - we build lots of spaceships, and I try to vary my design every couple of attempts. He likes to see the engines, and the guns. Is interested in the cockpit, and the controls. He's very detail oriented. If I build two ships, he wants to know which one is faster - the one with more engines, or the smaller one? And as his affinity lies with the fightercraft, I generally build troop-transport ships for him, to ferry his entire army.

I noticed that every time I added a piece of moveable equipment, his fascination swelled, be it a control panel which moves into place, a radar which rotates, or most impressively, swiveling engines (inspired of course by Firefly) which rotate on landing. It was late last week when we were building our current motorpool that we collaborated on some foldable shielding, as the cockpit was high atop the craft and unprotected. Thus began my journey to create a ship in which everything moved.

And as I am not an engineer, this took me...10-hours:


The 'secured' mode reminds me of H.G. Wells Time Machine.

It doesn't look like it, but this unfolds like a flower, turning into a gunship, replete with antenna array, revealing a hidden third engine. Those people who build enormous LEGO creations sure have my respect. They build both complex items, and large recreations. I can't fathom it. I dreamed last night I was snapping little pieces together, and woke up screaming.