mY TOY ROBOTS HAVE BEEN my weiner's greatest enemy

There came a time when I was thirteen back in '87 that I had to make the same decision every boy made when they realized there was more to life than toy robots. I had to decide between boobs and Optimus Prime. But unlike every other normal teenage boy in the universe I made a concious decision that I would probably be more successful with toy robots than girls anyways so I picked toy robots. I told myself that no matter how strong the draw towards the dark side, I would continue to keep the Dinobots and their friends as my number one priority. As I expected, toy robots became the most powerful chastity pledge I ever took. It is only fitting that Transformers demands celibacy, just as the Catholic faith requires priests to be celibate. Based on my track record with girls in high school, I must have been the Pope of toy robots.

As I got into my teenage years I found it rather comforting to at least have a reason why I shouldn't try to go on dates or talk to girls. It was a convenient scapegoat for why I never got any in high school. The real reason was that I was a totally socially inept dorky nerd but blaming my total lack of interaction with girls on my toy robots hobby gave me a measure of control over the situation in my mind at least. I thought that were it not for the Dinobots I would be homecoming king or something, but alas I was too hardcore of a robot nerd and any hopes at a normal life would be dashed. I considered myself not asexual but robosexual. Robosexual is when you don't have any sex because you're into toy robots instead.

That scene in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure where he rejects the girl's advances with the line, "I'm a loner, Dottie, a rebel" captured perfectly the essence of my nerdy plight. Pee Wee was my not-getting-any idol, an inspiration in my martyr-like devotion to the roboplasticos. So that's how I got through high school, rejecting girls in favor of toy robots named Big Daddy. It's not like there were throngs of young teenage women throwing themselves at me, but I was prepared with a Pee-Wee like retort if that emergency ever came up. At the time I found the idea of my devotion to robots maybe costing me hot underage teenage sex extremely hardcore and even a bit tragically romantic but now all I can think is IDIOT! IDIOT! IDIOT!

There was this one girl that I was totally into who apparently had some sort of brain damage because she was very upfront and forward about being interested in me. But the robots got in the way and whenever we were around each other and she started making advances I would panic and retreat and try to think really hard about the Dinobots. Eventually she gave up but I still think about her and dream about her occasionally, which is what happened last night and is the reason for today's bloggerings. In my dreams I am normal and suave and debonair and not a toy robots nerd and my teenage years approximate 'normal' or at least they're really Dawson's Creeky.

I remember reading that firstborn children are statistically more prone to marrying their first love. I guess this girl was the first real crush I had and me bing a firstborn explains why I tend to fixate on her. I will keep telling myself that instead of considering the notion that I made a huge mistake by leaving home in search of adventures and my life is now derailed onto some bizarro world, alternate reality tangent that it never should have became. At the very least I am consoled by an issue of Barley Legal magazine that came out a couple years back where there's pictures of a girl that looks exactly like that girl in high school as I remember her. At least I don't have to imagine what I missed out on thanks to porn. It's weird but I guess masturbation therapy helps me cope with the choices I made in my life. I rejected boobs for you, Optimus Prime! I want you to know that!

Porkin' awesome

PS3 firmware update 1.90 is out and it lets me change the background of the PS3 main menu screen. I think XBox360 owners have been able to do this for the longest time so it's nice to see Sony catching up finally.

While the other people in line at the post office were looking at me I whacked my package around until it stopped making noise

I was in line at the post office last week mailing off some roboplasticos I had sold on ebay when one of my boxes started making a weird noise. The other people in line stared at me like I was some sort of mail bomber but I knew exactly what it was. It was that friggin' toy robot Shockblast I had in one of my boxes. Instead of a left arm, Shockblast has an electronic cannon that makes a sound like R2-D2 smoking a bong, which I guess is appropriate because the cannon arm looks like some sort of Cybertronian robot bong. I don't know what the Hasbro guys were thinking when they came up with the idea of a robot with a bong arm named "Shockblast". Hell, most of the robots from that year sound like street names for designer drugs. You could almost come up with a quiz like "Porn Star or My Little Pony" using robots from the Transformers:Energon line and street drug names.
Street Drug	toy robot
		Blue Nitro
		Downshift
		Afterburner
		Overload
		Roboshot
		Kicker
		Spectrum
		Knock Out
		Super Acid
		Skyblast
		Wheels
		Hot Shot

I'm not going to code cgi script for form validation so if you really want the answers you have to look them up yourself.

I made it through the line okay and after I left the post office I started wondering if the mailman bomb commandos would blow up my box before it got to its destination because it was making crazy noises. But no FBI agents raided my house and yesterday the buyer left me positive feedback so I guess Mr. RoboBong got there safe and sound.

HEY POLICE! HIS REAL NAME IS PETER PARKER!

Spider-Man Menace!

All you pro-superhero morons can eat my butt because Captain America and Spider-Man have gone on crime sprees, using their public status and superpowers to grope women and rob banks. Don't blame me, I totally voted for the 2006 Superhuman Registration Act.

P.S. Spider-Man's new costume totally sucks.

BIG FAT ROBOT CHALLENGE round 2!

If you ask me the exact prices of the handful of robots I've spent more than $200 on over the years my mind retreats to my safe place, which is a springtime picnic in a green grassy field next to a beautiful waterfall on the Death Star. That's probably the reason that I can't specifically remember any of the exact prices I paid for robots in the $200 range. I always default to the convenient estimate of $225. $225 is apparently my built in self defense mechanism and the upper limit of my mind's ability to cope with the insanity of spending more than five dollars on toy robots.

ULTIMATE NUMBER ONE VALUABLE ROBOT ROUND TWO!

This whole ultimate robot weighing thing isn't exactly going as I planned and there's probably some huge flaw in my logic that's causing World's Smallest Hot Rod (who is currently as valuable as uranium) to be pound for pound more valuable than Fortress Maximus. In fact, I think I've been doing the conversions wrong because I misinterpreted the charts at the site where I get the current prices for today's metals on the world market. Huge judging error! Fortress Maximus is pissed! But whatever!

ARE YOU READY FOR A NEW CHALLENGER?

Today we have Deszaras, a Japanese toy robot from 1989's Transformers:Victory cartoon. Wikipedia says he turns into a 'bird monster dragon' which is kind of what I was thinking even though it makes no sense. Smarter Transformer fans than me say he's an obscure Chinese Antarctica dragon. I always thought he looked like a mutant cyborg robot rooster. Regardless, he's another one of those I paid over $200 for around ten years ago so we'll go with $225 or else my brain gets stuck thinking about when I was in my 20's and I had more money than common sense.

Dez weighs in at 1.09 pounds or 17.44 ounces and $225 / 17.44 = $12.90 an ounce. $12.90 an ounce is currently about the going rate of silver! WE HAVE A NEW WINNER!

Tune in next time when Dez takes on a new challenger for the title of ULTIMATE NUMBER ONE VALUABLE ROBOT!

I've done such a good job rationalizing procrastination to myself that I have no concept of what "on time" means anymore

One of my guiding principles is something I made up called the theory of Chronological Irrelevance. Chronological Irrelevance dictates that it doesn't matter when I do something as long as it gets done. If I wait all day to make the bed and then make it five minutes before bedtime, then Chronological Irrelevance dictates that I have done just as good a job as if I had made it first thing in the morning. And if it takes me 23 years to finish my collection of all nine Autobot minicars from 1984 then it's just as good as if I got them all back then (more on that later). So when I tell you that there's going to be an update to the Vintage Space Toaster Palace this weekend, that means expect some new ads featuring Zoids and Starriors and post 1986 Transformers to go up sometime before 11:59 p.m. Sunday night. In fact, hell, don't check until Monday.

Of kites and men OR: Ghost on the machine

I accepted a long time ago that I will not amount to anything significant in life and while that would cause most people to eat antifreeze, it is liberating in that it gives me license to indulge in toy robots. For every Ben Frankin there's probably a hundred guys who accomplished nothing of note with their lives but they had tons of fun flying kites in a storm. As those men of little note risked their lives, so do I risk my future financial security by buying toy robots now with money that should be saved for retirement. With all the crazy ways there are to die a random unexpected death nowadays I may not even live to see retirement and hell, getting hit by kite lightning is an awesome way to go!

Which brings me to my latest toy robot obsession, the upcoming September release of Yamato's 1/60 scale VF-0S with QF2200D-B Ghost Booster. If the name means nothing to you, just know that it is another awesome $100+ toy robot that looks like two airplanes are humping each other. It was in a 2002 Japanese cartoon called Macross Zero that never got released in the US. You can get torrents of it and I think it's worth watching. It's another of Shoji Kawamori's incredible robot operas. At times the "War sucks, machines of war suck, we must live in harmony with the trees and the volcanoes" message is a bit heavy handed but thankfully that doesn't get in the way of the awesome scenes with big robots warring each other and blowing up trees and volcanoes.

Thanks to some legal issues over who owns North American distribution rights of Macross product, the toys will never see release here. I've bought Yamato robots before-the last one I got was the 1/48 Super VF-1S Hikaru from DYRL, which looks like a really big Jetfire but with the red and black reversed and the armor is greenish blue. It was created as proof of higher intelligences at work in the universe and so that mankind may know salvation. Usually I wait until a second production run on Yamato stuff because the first runs are buggy or they release better versions of the same robots later on. Like with the 1/60 VF-0S. First they released it by itself, then they released a VF-0A with the Ghost Booster, now they're doing the VF-0S with the Ghost Booster. So it's tempting to jump in early but I've learned that if I wait then they'll do the combination of features I want.

I'm sure that Yamato will eventually come up with a Reactive Armor version but I don't like the Macross jets all covered up in armor that makes them look like Gargamel's worst nightmare. So I'm happy with preordering the one with the ghost booster. Hey, I ain't afraid of no ghost!

I can remember my sister calling me from down the hall to hurry up and watch this!

She always saw the good commercials first. By the time I got to the TV room, the Jetfire animation part was over and all I saw was Shockwave.

Hasbro never released a Jetfire with a white pointy nosecone and rifle with firing missiles but this version appears in the commercial and in many newsprint ads.

Battle of the hundred dollar robots or BIG FAT ROBOT CHALLENGE

Once when I was in a shady used car salesam's office I saw a poster on the wall with some old Cadillac looking car from the 40's and the phrase "Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten". Well I've been thinking about that a lot lately as I've been both buying and selling individual toy robots for over $100 each. Spending more than 99 dollars on any single toy robot is not only insane, it's fuckin' awesome. Nothing says you've arrived and you're a big boy now more than when you plunk down $250 bucks on some big ass super shiny flashy lights toy robot and believe me, if I'm spending over $100 on a roboplastico it better be big or shiny or have flashing lights. But how do I gauge whether I'm getting my money's worth? Is it possible to quantify the value of a roboplastico? Now for the longest time I've admired how there's an easy to measure gauge for video games when it comes to estimating bang for the buck. You simply take the cost of the game and divde it by the hours of entertainment you got out of the game. So let's say a game that I bought for 60 bucks entertained me for 6 hours. That's 10 dollars an hour I paid. Then you take this number and compare it to the gold standard of entertainment, the cost of a movie ticket for a good movie. Typically I pay $8.25 for a movie and they last around 2 hours, giving me a $4.12 cost-to-entertainment ratio. If my game purchase comes in or under that, then the game was worth the money. In the previous example, the $10 an hour game would be indicative of a huge waste of money. Essentially the more you play, the more bang for the buck. Tetris is the all time cost-to-entertainment champion at my house because I bought that for ten bucks and it's been entertaining me for 15 years. But what about the roboplasticos? How do you gauge whether or not you got your fun out of a hundred dollar plus robot? All they're going to do in my house is sit on a shelf looking fantastic. But how do you discriminate whether a robot is performing at a $200 level of fantastic and a $100 level of fantastic? I think I have it figured out. What I am doing is weighing each robot I paid over $100 for and dividing the cost by that. This really tells me nothing more than how much plastic costs per pound, but I figure these more expensive robots are going to be more heavy per dollar spent than your average $10 look-what-I-found-at-WalMart robot toy. Once I get the weight to money ratio, I'll compare that to the market price of various metals on the world markets and the robot closest to the gold standard is the most fantastic-est ultimate number one valuable robot!

To start off with a bang, for today's weigh-off I will compare Japanese Fortress Maximus to World's Smallest Hot Rodimus. I paid $800 for Fort Max and $30 for Hot Rodimus. Let's go to the scales! I think Fort Max is going to be the only one I weigh on a scale meant for humans. He comes in at 8.6 pounds, and $800 / 137.6 ounces = $5 an ounce. This makes Japanese Fort Max slightly more valuable than copper. Not really that impressive for the largest Transformer ever made.

Next up is World's Smallest Hot Rodimus. He's only 2 inches tall and compared to the mighty 2 foot tall Fort Max, that's miniscule. But he makes up for it in sheer robot balls. Hot Rodimus weighs 2 tenths of an ounce! And $30 / .2 ounces = $150 an ounce. This makes World's Smallest Hot Rodimus today's winner! He's currently more valuable than Uranium! Tune in next time when Hot Rodimus takes on a new challenger for the title of ULTIMATE NUMBER ONE VALUABLE ROBOT!

If Americans did this the public outcry would be deafening

Little is known about how it was accomplished (espionage perhaps) but somehow Chinese engineers acquired the plans to a top secret mobile military superfortress from the Japanese and built it in a scale previously unimaginable to peace loving citizens of all nations. The rest of the world will be locked in an ever escalating arms race to catch up to what is now the pride of China, an unstoppable juggernaut of military might that will ensure their dominance as a superpower and possibly solidify their new position as the undisputed conquerors of earth. CRAP YOUR PANTS!

A more Meximation accurate Juan Ginrai

Back in 1994 when I was living in El Paso, a Mexican television station started playing spanish dubs of Transformers cartoons that were previously only available in japan. So I got to see the entirety of the Headmasters, Masterforce and Victory series all in spanish. The afternoon lineup also included spanish dubs of Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z. Not knowing these were dubbed, I thought they were Mexican originals. I got into arguments with anime fans because I would refer to Sailor Moon as 'Meximation'.

Masterforce ended up being my favorite cartoon of the three never-released-in-the-US Transformer shows. The Meximation versions had good voice acting and I recognized many of the actors as the same ones who did the G1 spanish Transformers cartoon. Whenever they could they used character names that would be most familiar to the North American audiences, but many Japanese character names were kept. In Meximation Masterforce, Ginrai ended up being called Optimus Prime but they kept Godbomber's name. Godbomber was a toy that was released only in Japan that combined with Super Ginrai (aka Powermaster Optimus Prime) to make a larger robot called God Ginrai. I had never seen the Godbomber toy before so I thought it was just some crazy thing the mexicans made up. I never knew it existed until 1998 when I was on the internet and I ordered one from Tony Preto's Tempting Toys.

But when you combine a Godbomber toy with a Powermaster Prime/Super Ginrai toy it really looks nothing like it did on the show. In the cartoon God Ginrai (their combined form) was a magnificent looking dynamic robot with big wings and a gigantic cannon and it looked badass. Unfortunately the toy looked little like the cartoon character and that to me was a tremendous letdown. The wings were all tiny and the arms were spindly and overall it was crap. But then in 2004 an independent kit maker released a set of add on vinyl parts that made the combined form look a whole lot better. I bought the parts this last week and boy do they make a world of difference.

The kit includes new arms, wings, a head (which I decided not to use) and a shoulder cannon. It takes a bit of work to put it all together-you can't just pop the parts on. There's some flash that needs to cut off on many of the pieces, some further assembly of the parts is necessary and the arms of the regular issue Powermaster Prime/Super Ginrai need to be removed. The modifications are pretty permanent and they essentially make the whole figure one giant Action Master. The arms don't swivel at the shoulders but they're not locked on with screws or anything so they can be rotated by removing and reattaching them at a different angle. I had an extra Super Ginrai and Godbomber lying around so I decided to do the mod to those. The one on the right in the picture below is a stock US release PMOP with Godbomber attached and the one on the left is a Super Ginrai with Godbomber and the super parts kit. It is very obvious which one is more Meximation accurate.

Hard act to follow

When God asked him what he'd done with his life.
and when God asked him what he'd done with his time.
He said with answer that shook all of heaven,
"I was the voice of the mighty Optimus Prime."

So they let him in and God turned to me.
What'd you do to earn divine eternity?
I bought an assload of toy robots, I thought rather sullen.
Why'd I have to be after that bastard Peter Cullen?

The sweet taste of victory OR: HOLY CRAP MY SUMMER IS TRANSFORMERED!!

the king of all robot collections

I dreamt last night all the toy robot nerds died
as a result of natural selection.
I was the last one who thought that robots were fun
so I bought all their robot collections.

Not everyone had gone, not everyone passed on
just all the crazy toy robots lovers.
Onto eBay they went, countless MISB sets
put up by their friends and their mothers.

Leaving robots behind was almost unkind
and it gave their families conniptions.
"Does anyone care about this crap anymore?"
said all the auction descriptions.

There was no need to snipe; they all became mine
no rival robot collector to consider.
Every Go-Bot and Cylon and even Alpha Trion
All auctions ended up with one bidder.

"Until all are mine!" was my cheesy line
but it happened in three-thousand twelve.
All the collections combined into one so divine
or was it really my own robot hell?

I had caught them all-my home an exhibition hall.
I'd built a massive toy robot shrine.
I was the last robot boss, I was the captain of the Macross.
I was the king of Optimus Primes.

And when I won that final toy I was an elated man-boy.
But almost died in my basement when
my fortress enormous collapsed into ruins ginormous
under the weight of little plastic robotical men.

In the end I grew old and decrepit and alone
as the king of all robot collections.
Soundwave's cassettes could not store my regrets
And I woke up with a robot erection.

Get your fingers ready because it's time to pick this month's MOCOs!

It's time to give out this month's Macrocranian Oustandingly Cool Orale award. But first off, let's start by giving out an anti-MOCO award to the guy who played Jorge Figueroa in the TINO (Transformers In Name Only) Movie. TINO the Movie features a character who I guess is supposed to represent Mexicans because he speaks spanish, but his few lines revolve around how he grew up eating cajun food. Unless there was a lost colony of Cortez that landed in Louisiana I could swear that people who speak spanish don't grow up eating jambalaya. Screw you, guy who played Jorge Figueroa! For being the most bizarre stereotype of a mexican ever, you get a P.M.F.F. award-Puro Medio Finger FuckYou!

This month's Wizard magazine has an interview with Nicholas Cage, who is my all time favorite actor and recipient of this month's MOCO award because I just saw Ghost Rider and that movie is brown trash heaven. It's awesome but not just because it has lots of Evil Kinevil style death defying motorcycle jumps. It's set in Texas where I was born and it has tons of skeletons, which Mexican people are obsessed with. We love us some skeletons and Ghost Rider is pure taco loving skeleton porn. We also love cowboys. I think I've written before about a certain ultimate mexican death metal supergroup named Skeleton Cowboy that just happens to be a figment of my imagination. Well Ghost Rider even has one character who is not only a skeleton, but a cowboy as well. I almost choked to death at the sight of that guy, who gets not only +10 skeleton and +10 cowboy, but who's also on fire. Holy crap. This movie also has Eva Mendes, who resembles every god-I-wanna-butt-rape-her girl I grew up with in high school. Plus it has Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train song which I thought was the national anthem of El Paso the way they played it so much on the radio when I was growing up. I am definitely getting Ghost Rider on Blu-Ray, even though I swear in one scene a lady on the street who was supposed to be mexican was actually native american and the whole movie was filmed in Australia.

Bid high NOW on the landfill of TOMORROW

Last night I woke up at 2 a.m. so I could snipe an eBay auction I got outbid on earlier in the week. Even after ten years of working rotating shifts and being a new baby daddy I still hate getting up in the middle of the night although I'm quite good at it. I got up all grumbly and when I finally sat down at teh computer I saw that the item got bid up to $13 and change. It might not seem like a lot but we're talking about a small one inch square sticker of Mixmaster the Constructicon that came in cereal boxes in 1985. The guy who outbid me had like 400 feedback and I sensed he was willing to go high so I'd have to beat him and then pay an additional $4 in shipping. The thrill of competition gets me pumped, though and I was all ready to enter my bid of $25 with 10 seconds left to go. Then it hit me-I was up at 2:30 in the morning so I could ensure I had the honor of paying upwards of $30 for a little sticker of a robot with self esteem issues. Screw that! I went back to bed, a little ashamed of what I was about to do and proud of myself for not having gone through with it.

Now tonight at 2:30 a.m. there's a Skywarp sticker auction ending and Mixmaster be damned, you better believe I'm winning that one.

I HAVE BECOME FAT AND BLOATED WITH THE WEIGHT OF ROBOPLASTICOS OR: You are not your toy robots collection

Having assloads of toy robots will not make you a hero or get you laid with actresses and porn stars.

Even if he existed, Optimus Prime would not come to your house because he wouldn't give a crap where you live anyways.

You are the all toy robot buying, all toy robot message board posting crap of the universe and your life is ending one Botcon at a time.

rejecting God is easy but rejecting Optimus Prime is a motherfucker

I never really believed in that whole idea of superheroes with magical powers living in outer space (also known as Catholicism) when I was a kid. My dad was all into that, though so we would go to church a lot. I really just wanted to hang out with him so that was the only reason I went. I'm not too sure why he'd go because he never took communion or sang the songs and he'd be goofing on people with me as we sat in the back pews. Good times! So if I can shrug off the opiate of the masses, why is it that I was so addicted to the high I got off of buying toy robots through all the stages of my life? I'll tell you why-because I wasn't as susceptible to the addictive properties of religion as I was to the addictive properties of Hasbro marketing.

I think the Transformers was more than just a line of toy robots for me. I think I bought into the idea that it was a lifestyle. I was sucked into the world at a young age and I looked at every new toy robot I attained to transform my life into something interesting. But it didn't happen. It started off innocently enough, being a ten year old pretending to be piloting the robots and driving the little cars, trucks and planes. But what I didn't see was that I wasn't driving the Transformers, they were driving me-to buy more Transformers.

There was probably a moment I could have walked away from it all and gotten into some other passing fad. But there was just something so appealing about Optimus Prime and his family of robots uniting to save the world from the bad robots. What sucks is that I ended up looking more to Optimus Prime than to my own dad. And let me tell you, Prime is the worst dad in the universe to have. He's so damn perfect. He's the father you wish you had and the man you wish you'd be. You can never do anything as perfect as dying in the 1986 movie, friggin' martyring yourself so mankind could live to buy more toy robots. Plus just when I thought I could move on and find a new hero, he comes back from the dead.

So his influence continued even after the 80's went by and I became a teenager, which meant he was right there helping me feel inadequate and lacking as a person as teenagers are want to do. Because having been raised by the greatest Autobot ever, I was very aware that I did not have a strength or skill or intelligence of "10" like Optimus Prime. And I never would. But I felt like if I could own a big ass army of toy robots, maybe I could be their leader, their Optimus Prime. I was acting as a surrogate father for them just as he was to me. And so that continued on and off for 20 something years.

But fuck that! Now I have my own son and I don't need you anymore, Optimus Prime! I am finally a real dad and you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to intervene in your corruption of today's children. I will keep you from doing to them what you did to me! I am going to print up little stickers warning the world of what you are! I am going to slap my homemade stickers on every Optimus Prime toy I can find at the Rapid City Wal-Mart so that people will see you for what you are, you Jesus hating horse fucker!

It's not as sexy and sanitary as saving snowflakes on microscope slides, but taping flies to the window sure does take a lot more skill

Yesterday I came up with a new hobby I call "flytaping" that also doubles as an insect extermination method. I wait for flies to land on the window then I grab a 3 inch length of "High Performance" Scotch brand clear packaging tape and I tape the flies to the widow when they're not looking. Depending on how they're caught in the tape, the flies get to gaze out at the world beyond my backyard which consists of miles and miles of sky and horse stables. Seeing all that big blue sky they could be flying in and all those horses they could be sitting on is undoubtedly the worst torture a fly could suffer as they die of starvation taped to a window. There are probably significant health hazards involved in doing this, but knowing these flies are suffering emotionally makes me feel really good.



Better yet, it acts as a deterrent for any flies looking in my window and wondering if they should risk coming in. Like if they see their dad taped to the inside all dead then maybe they'll get the hint that their kind isn't welcome here. Better than that, my flytaping also keeps my house resistant to attack from ninjas with slower reflexes than I. I have learned from watching G4 that today's ninjas are constantly trying to find ways to show off their ninja skills with outward displays of toughness and speed. It is a long standing ninja tradition to use files as a means of expressing skill. More old skool ninjas resorted to catching flies with chopsticks (probably because they'd have a hard time finding scotch tape in 15th century feudal Japan). I expect to be internet famous once the hip young urban ninjas of today start flytaping to show off their speed and quick reflexes. And if any of those ninja punks dares come by my house intending to steal my photoshopped pictures of Makoto Nagno, they'll take one look at my fly filled windows and go "OH SHIII---!"

LIFE IS NOT A SHORT ADVENTURE IT'S ACTUALLY A LONG AND BORING WAIT FOR THE ATARI DRAGON

I think to fill my empty frames I am going to photoshop some pictures of me hanging out with my Ninja Warrior idol, Makoto Nagano

Although nobody ever comes to my house, I like to hang up lots of pictures of me from my times in the military and when I used to work in Antarctica. It's to impress any burglars that break in since they're the only visitors I'll ever get. It is possible that my neighbors may want to come over but I want them to like me so I haven't invited them. I'm not a recluse but if anyone wants to come in this house they'll have to be proactive, and by proactive I mean bust the door down with a battering ram. Even if they do make it through the front door there's no way they're seeing the robot room without me going all Ace Ventura on their butts.

So I have one wall where I put up four big pictures of me in Antarctica along with a bunch of framed Antarctica postcards. Partly this is to remind myself that there was a time when I was awesome and not just some big stay at home dad, robot nerd loser. My mom was visiting from Texas last week and when she saw the pictures she said they were nice and she wished she had some like that. I heard once that if you go to a Japanese guy's house and compliment him on something he has, he will give it to you. I'm like that with my mom. I'm not like that with everybody, just my mom. So I gave her the four big Antarctica pictures figuring I'll just replace them later. It's not like anyone's coming over soon anyway, right?

What I forgot was that the next week we were scheduled to have the air conditioner checked as part of the monthly base housing maintenance checkups. So the air conditioner maintenance man comes and he's checking everything out and guess what happens just before he leaves? He catches his eye on the Antarctica wall, except instead of pictures of me being awesome, all he sees is four empty frames! Damnit! I missed out on a chance to impress a random stranger with pictures of me hanging out with penguins. All he saw was the postcards, and hell, anybody could have postcards. He probably thought I was an Antarctic postcard collector. He said, "One day if you save up enough money you may be able to go on a trip there." At that point I began punching myself in the face repeatedly.

She is the Paris Hilton of toy robots

I think the world's largest Transformers collection might be more than 275 pieces, but you go, girl!

Michael Bay nude pics podcasts dog cat sex!

So I've said before I think Incredible Change Bots will probably suck but I paid to see the Transformer movie so what do I know. Fanboy Radio Podcast interviewed Jeffrey Brown, the writer/artist of Incredible Change Bots in episode 402. Skip to the 32:00 mark to listen to the interview. It's funny because the host reminds me of James Lipton from Inside the Actor's Studio the way he kisses Jeffrey Brown's butt so much. Incredible Change Bots will be out the last week of this month and there's an exclusive ICB strip in Wizard now I think. (Fanboy Radio Episode 401 was an hour long Transformers extravaganza but I haven't heard it yet.)

I've never heard the Corey and Joel Radio Show before, but their Transformers movie discussion in episode 129 was great. It starts around the 22:00 mark (but the whole show is pretty funny). Who cares if they're a bunch of condescending assholes who make fun of Transformer fans and they have no idea what they're talking about regarding toy robots, they made me laugh.

And of course, just when I thought there was nothing funny left to say about the movie, The Paunch Stevenson Show kills me with episode 76.

My wife says I was a good example to the baby, but he's three months old and doesn't know the difference between me and a bowl of cereal

Last Saturday I was in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant just sitting in my truck and looking at people going in the store. I meant to get out but I started thinking about how I'll never know if I won a Pepsi Prime unless it comes in the mail and it was pissing me off. Well anyways a mid eighties sedan pulls up and this young guy gets out. He looked skinny and dorky and he reminded me of myself in my teens and he went into the restaurant. But as he got out of his car he dropped twenty bucks in the parking lot and he didn't notice. I got out of my truck, picked up the money and gave it back to the kid, who by that time was in line ordering his burger.

What an idiot I was!

There's like a million things right now that I'd like to have but that I think are a waste of money, and most all of them are around $20. Had I kept the 20 bucks I could have gone on a number of different self-indulgent splurge-o-ramas. It would have been an awesome time! Now I dwell constantly on all the cool stuff I could have done with the money that I could have just considered life's little way of paying me back for being an awesome guy.

There's so much great stuff I could have done with that kid's twenty bucks. I could have bought myself that colossal triple meat Baconator burger from Wendy's. For five bucks more I could have bought the awesome Nicholas Cage action thriller Ghost Rider, which I still haven't seen, on Blu-Ray. And of course I could have bought more shitty toy robots, specifically the Alternators Skids that's still on clearance for $16 at Rapid City's ShopKo. Hot damn that toy is my Moby Dick I'm so obsessed by it but I won't get it until it goes clearance for cheaper. On a more theoretical level, I could have won Powerball or at least got myself a nice big ass cowboy belt buckle like all the hokey farmers wear here in South Dakota.

All these wonderful things I denied myself, and why? So I could write "Oh look at me I am so friggin' moral and nice and don't worry if you're a dumbass who can't keep track of your crap because I will return it to you if it falls out of your pants." IDIOT! IDIOT! IDIOT! I almost want to go back and ask him for the twenty bucks!

Holy crap lady your eBay auction is such a downer that after reading it I don't know whether to bid on your toy robots or get myself counseling

One weird thing people do when they sell their roboplasticos on eBay is they describe the sad, sappy circumstances leading up to their decision to sell off their stuff. Apparently hocking little plastic robots on eBay requires intense soul searching and deep self analysis. Lucky for me these wackos are more than happy to share the mysteries of the universe that they unlocked or the terrible misfourtunes they encountered leading them to sell their Spychanger Tiny Tins.

But my fellow Marcocranians, I have found the queen of eBay auction drama. She writes a colossal 1,500+ word auction description for her Transformers collection auction. It's a tale of love and heartbreak that includes the heart wrenching trifecta of: a) being happily married to a Transformers fan, b) him being in a motorcycle accident, and c) him dying of AIDS. So in other words she just lived through Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart video, except after her husband died she decided to Unbuy his Transformers. While I don't doubt her story, I seriously doubt she intends to sell the collection. Why? Because she's set the auction's Buy-It-Now price at ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Doctor Evil would be proud.

What do you get for one million dollars? Well about 100 Autobots, 100 Decepticons and 100 licensed items like kites and soap dishes. Almost every boxed robot has been opened with missing bubbles and the majority of carded ones have damaged cards or the bubbles are stapled. Plus for all her hype about it being a complete set of everything from '84-'86, she's still missing Bumblebjumper. But the kicker is that if you do the math, it all breaks down to over $3,000 an item! I need to put my Optimus Prime kite up on eBay right now!

Reading all of the auction description reveals that she's intending to use the money for good, as in paying off her debt and paying for veterinary school. Okay fine, but what raises alarms for me is how she uses the auction to plug the book she's writing and her website. She's just using the current popularity of Transformers and her dead husband's collection to promote her book. I'll bet she has no intention of selling this collection. She's just like those attention whores in Ninja Warrior who dress up as Spider-Man or a real ninja and then when it's time to get down to it, they fall into the water on the first obstacle.

This whole thing is really sad. I guess her first husband who died at 40 wins at life because he went out with the most toys. But what they don't tell you is that even if you die with the most toys, your wife is going to sell them ten years later and use the money to go live with a guy half her age. All I know is I don't wanna die and leave behind a lot of Beast Wars.

P.S.: Selling toy robots on eBay because "I'm going to college and I need tuition money so the robots have to go!" is getting pretty old. Somebody please show me this Transformer college that everybody's going to with the money they made from eBay toy auctions. How good can the education be if you got there with money you made from selling used Dinobots? I wonder if you have to explain what you sold to the financial aid board at Transformers College. "Yes, I'm here on a 1985 Transformers scolarship." "That's nice sir, but would that be a Dinobots scholarship or an Insecticons scholarship? Because the Insecticons dorms really suck."

P.P.S. BUY MY CRAP THIS WEEK ON EBAY RIGHT NOW!

I can has 1986 finally! OR: My collection is now officially Post-daking

Here in Mount Rushmoreland there's all sorts of wacky crazy out of control wildfires burning up the miles and miles of cows and fields of nothing we call South Dakota. So faced with imminent doom and the loss of all my worldly possessions to the raging bovine inferno, I found myself thinking about how it sucked that I never put stickers on that Predaking I just got from a Japanese guy on eBay. [Tangent #1: I was going to write "I didn't have a chance to put stickers..." but holy hell I hate whenever people use that phrase. Whenever I hear someone say "I didn't have a chance to.." I want to scream "It's not a matter of chance! You just suck at time management!"]

PREDAKING STICKER PARTY AT MY HOUSE!


It's Predaking! No, he's not the greatest sex offender who ever lived, he's the combined form of the Predacons, the team of five beast Decepticons from 1986 with a higher ratio of carnivores to plant-eaters than the Dinobots had. I've been trying over the past twenty years to get one, but various obstacles got in my way. They are:

1) I did not have a job in 1986 when the Predacons hit the stores and I was 12
2) In 1988 when I was at a garage sale the little scalper boy who was selling his Predaking wanted $20 for it but I only had $10 I borrowed from my grandma
3) I still did not have a job in 1989 when Lionel Playworld by my childhood home in Texas went out of business and was clearancing the Predacons for $6 each.
4) The guy I met in 1997 who traded me his complete Jetfire for a set of lenticular Star Wars pogs from Doritos bags wasn't stupid enough to give up his Predaking
5) I still still did not have a job in December 2004 when Takara reissued Predaking and I was 30.

[Tangent #2: I remember seeing the 1986 catalog for the first time and thinking how horrid looking the Stunticons were. I think they were the first Transformers I didn't want, even as presents. They're just so ugly! I still feel that way but once I decided to take Transformers seriously I had to fill that hole, I had to check that box off. Motormaster and the Menasor were examples of toys I just got to fill in the blanks. At twelve years old I hated how blocky looking Motormaster was even for a G1 toy and at 33 or however old I am now I still dislike how tiny and spindly the Menasor looks next to other combiners. But I bought the Stunticons just because they're on the 1986 checklist. I guess they marked the beginning of the era in my hobby where I started buying crap I didn't like for reasons that still don't make much sense to me today. Predaking wasn't like that, though. I really wanted a Predaking and I wanted it on purpose!]

In the interim between 1986 and now I did manage to accumulate a couple of stray Predacons here and there in lots of broken toys I got off eBay. But I never got anywhere close to assembling the set. Finally with the money I made from the big collection downsizing I'm doing currently, I just said screw it and I bought a used New Year's Predaking giftset from some Japanese guy. [Tangent #3: It may seem like stereotyping, but if you buy used toy robots, always buy them from Asians. Even as little kids they take pride in keeping their possessions in great shape. This Predaking seller guy didn't even put the stickers on or take the toys out of the plastic or nothing-he just opened the box and that was it. I guess it's an Asian thing because I bought some fantastic old toy robots from little kids in South Korea that looked like they had just rolled off the toy robot assembly line, which is probably where those little South Korean kids worked.]

I really don't understand why so many people break the tape on their toy robot packages but then don't open them all the way. Crazy! Thank you, anal Japanese guy for keeping my Predaking in great shape for me all these years while it waited for the day that I would buy it from you and take its combiner virginity away and make the Predaking. So bring your asbestos underwear, grab a flaming cow and jump the fence of the Air Force base because it's Predaking Sticker application party time at my house!

Thanks to this movie I now live in a world where everyone has retarded things to say about toy robots, but I still don't feel normal

The fewer toy robots you had as a kid, the fonder your half baked memories are of toy robots.

Instead of "toy robots" I prefer the more exotic sounding "roboplasticos".

If the Throttlebots came out today they'd be called Super Bumblebee, Tracks, Sideswipe, Hound, Runamuck, and Orange Long Haul.



Michael Bay's movie robot designs are not just like ZZTop getting a haircut, these are like ZZTop getting a sex change and doing concerts where they put references to lazer tag and Unicron in Barry Manilow songs.

Ebay isn't auctions, it's more like two guys get into cars and play that chicken game accelerating into each other head on,except with thier wallets

Otay so a couple weeks back I found a big ass Optimus Prime toy at Wal-Mart on clearance for $50 but I didn't buy it and I got all suicidal because when I went back later it was gone. Well that same toy went up on ebay recently, except this one was signed by Peter Cullen. It was part of ebay's Transformers Movie prop auctions. I figured since normal retail on this toy that everybody already has (except me) was like $90, maybe this signed one would go for twice that. Heck, hundreds of people have gotten all sorts of Optimus Prime stuff signed by Cullen at Botcon so the novelty of his autograph has pretty much worn out by now, right? Holy crap was I ever wrong. It sold for $1,025! For that price you could buy a clearance one at Wal-Mart, book plane tickets to Botcon and still have enough left over for plenty of hookers and McNuggets.

And it's not just Transformers robots that people are crazy for right now. A Mighty Orbots cel just went for $997.99! For that price you could build yourself the Mighty Orbots and fly to Botcon on them! I hear that at ComicCon a couple years back there was one dealer who couldn't give Orbots cels away, kind of like how nobody wanted John Travolta autographs before Pulp Fiction but then everybody wanted them after. Pre-Pulp Fiction John Travola could have signed a five dollar bill and made it even more worthless. Orbots are the John Travoltas of robots.

Who am I to make fun of these guys. Part of me is jealous of these ebay high rollers because I wish I could be enthusiastic about anything enough to blow a couple grand on robot toys and drawings. How burnt out am I? If I was at McDonald's and Peter Cullen handed me a cel of Mighty Orbots that he autographed on the back of a hooker at Botcon I wouldn't even give him five John Travolta dollars for it. My robolust is gone. I am in robomenopause.

It's gotta be something really special to suck that bad

Holy crap what was up with that scene where Bumblebee fucked with the Jesus? I found myself oddly aroused by the sight of a big yellow robot peeing on John Toturro. Well played, Micheal Bay. Transfomers movie marketing has attempted to encroach on every other aspect of waking life with shirts, cars, blankets and bedsheets and all sorts of other non-toy merchandise-it might as well take over sexual fetishism, too. Quick! Somebody somebody start a perverty website called Bumblepee.com and put tons of pictures of Bumblebee peeing on people.

Is it just me or is it politically incorrect now to critisize this movie? I really don't understand people who don't understand people who don't like Michael Bay or this movie. I don't feel the need to justify why I think it's garbage and I'm pretty satisfied letting the suck speak for itself. But if you want to read some well thought out opinions that mirror my feelings, go check out Botch the Crab's review and Lamazoid's writeup on the movie.

However, I would like to say that Ian T. McFarland is an extremist moron. At first I thought claims of death threats against Michael Bay were fabrications conjured up by movie supporters to discredit those with opposing viewpoints. How serious could you take the opinion of anyone who would say or write something as retarded as a Michael Bay death threat? I thought surely nobody would be stupid enough to publicly threaten the life of a director doing a movie about toy robots. But holy crap McFarland takes the cake with his review titled "I want to murder Michael Bay". Doesn't he realize this movie legitimizes the liking of toy robots and consequently Michael Bay is helping thousands of young geeks like him to see vagina for the first time? What an idiot!

In the end this movie is just not for me. I guess I'm a little too old to appreciate jokes about pee and masturbation my science fiction movies. I am reminded of the feeling I got when they put poop references in the Star Wars prequels. Pudu anyone? Writing aside, I hope this new vision so totally supplants the old ways that from now on a flat nosed Optimus Prime is no longer considered the definition of the character. I hope over the top stereotypes like Jazz was in this movie continue to pass as characters in the sequels. That way my generation of Transformers can die off with some dignity and I can give up hope of ever seeing the 'serious' Transformer movie I wished for. Dumber concepts have been treated more seriously by Hollywood. I find myself envious of every taken-seriously Superman movie ever made, and he's a guy that flies around in bright red and blue underwear with a big S on his chest.

There are positives. This movie makes it more socially acceptable to be a robot nerd who is a) young, b) good looking and c) living with his parents. That's great but most of the robot nerds I know only meet one of those criteria (and I don't mean a or b). What I want is a movie that makes slutty Megan Fox wannabe girls start lusting after overweight guys in their thirties who buy toy robots. That would be impressive. And I guess one other good thing is that Bumblepee.com could make me a friggin' internet millionaire.