I constantly wonder "Why do I like toy robots?" and although all signs point to me being retarded, I'd like to think it's something else

DENIAL
My friends Joe and Fred were on the internet the other day discussing why keeping toy robots unopened in their boxes is ultimately futile because the boxes will not only decay, but destroy the toy along with them. Their discussion induced slight despair amongst a couple of other collectors because the truth dawned on these people that nothing lasts forever. One day all of our toy robot dinosaurs will end up as decomposing lumps of plastic and metal no matter how well they're taken care of. This sucks because I kind of thought Hasbro was selling me indestructible toy robots in future-proofed time capsule packaging for ten dollars each. As it turns out I may as well have been collecting ice cubes wrapped in chocolate bunnies.

ANGER
The sadness I observed on the parts of some collectors seemed to transcend the sorrow felt over their own deaths. It's as if they expected their toy robots collections would last indefinitely beyond their own lifespans. I think this may be because collectors view their plastic robot collections as their descendants, a sort of male equivalent of the female biological drive to have children. I'm not surprised that many of my robot collecting acquaintances don't care to have kids. Why should they? They've got robots. It all works out the same in the end.

BARGAINING
What I am worried about is the possibility that my subconsious DNA may be driving me to have children so that they in turn might collect more robots. Maybe robot collecting is a genetic trait and robot collectors have kids to ensure that future toy robots get collected. This is bigger than robo-collecto-monofranchise-tosis. It's robo-collecto-deoxyribonucleic acid. Somebody needs to invent a DNA rewriter for me so I can fix that.

DEPRESSION
I don't think that kids are necessarily preferable to a nice robots collection or vice versa. It's all a moot point anyways because it's not like I'll get to appreciate whatever legacy I leave behind in flesh or plastic because one day I'll be dead. What also sucks is whether it's my kids or my robots collection, once I'm dead nobody will appreciate whatever I made as much as I did. I've written before about how I think nobody will ever care about your crap as much as you. Is anyone really so full of themselves that they believe their son will become the next Bruce Dickinson or the Smithsonian is going to confiscate their toy robots collections to preserve and display for future generations? (Well okay, I'll admit I sort of believe those things.)

ACCEPTANCE
I try to appreciate my roboplasticos for what they are-little trophies from different eras of my life that serve as reminders of memories that would otherwise be forgotten. A good robot is like an old song that takes me back to a happy point in time. A lot of my childhood sucked but thanks to robots I've forgotten all that and only remember the happy times. Yay for robots I guess. But when the day comes that my Optimus Prime turns to dust and takes all my memories with him I'm going to be really screwed. Will just get on with my life or will I roam the Canadian wilderness in some sort of amnesiac berserker rage, relying only on my mutant healing powers to survive the Canadian government's inhumane attempts to turn me into their secret killing machine ultimate weapon? HASBRO SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE THEY MADE OPTIMUS PRIME FROM CLAY!

The places I've lived have been less Seven Cities of Gold and more Seven Cities of Poop, but not just any poop-huge flaming Triceratops POOPY

Last week my wife asked me where we'd like to live next. The way her job assignments system works makes us feel like maybe we have the slightest bit of control over where they send us next even though we really don't. But there comes a time every two or three years when we play the little game and fill out our "dream sheet" of places we'd like to be sent. I told her to put the UK and then Japan in that order because those choices put me in geographic areas with a high probability of Iron Maiden concerts. I can stop dreaming about living for a couple of years in some awesome overseas location frequently visited by Bruce Dickinson because it won't matter. What'll probably happen is once all the paperwork is filed and orders are cut, her employer will end up giving us a choice between a base in friggin' North Dakota and one inside a volcano somewhere off the coast of New Jersey. I know how the assignments system operates-I used to work for those fuckers, too.

Damnit, I'm getting derailed again. This was supposed to be the post about Zoids but I'm remembering some things about other places I've been that make North Dakota seem all flowers and sausages. Some people might think spending a couple years in Turkey would be pretty cool and for the most part they're right, but I tell you those Turks took seriously their law against "insulting Turkishness". You couldn't even write on Turkish money or you'd be disrespecting the Turkish George Washington whose face is on all their lira. They're very sensitive about insulting each other, too. Everybody drove terribly but people were afraid to honk at each other for fear of hurting the other driver's feelings and getting a ticket. I think it was even against the law to curse at somebody. Americans may not have invented yogurt but at least we can flip each other off and draw penises on our dollar bills. It was so crazy that Turkish Hasbro changed the name of a toy robot from "Midnight Express" to "Euro Express" because Turkey is still sensitive about the movie by that name that they felt was unflattering towards Turkish prisons. Usually I don't concern myself with the politics of the countries I live in, but that was the first time I saw toy robots censorship and I found it intriguing.

1st appearance of the Deceptercons!

One great thing about knowing I won't be living in Rapid City forever is that I feel absolutely no loyalty or kinship with the local comic book store. They have done a terrible job of ordering the comics I want even when I tell them to. The last time I left on business I asked them to save me the issues of a certain monthly magazine and when I came back three months later, they never did. I suspect they don't even know much about comics because I saw them selling Amazing Spider-Man #289 as the first appearance of the Hobgoblin. Even after I told them their description was wrong they never changed the little sticker on the comic with the misinformation. Talk about indignant nerd rage-that pissed me off for weeks. Did I mention they close at 6 p.m. and aren't open Sundays?

So why do I keep going to this comic book store of infinite torments when they're incompetent and don't listen to me? Well I like our no strings attached relationship. When I go out of town for a couple months it's not like they miss me and I don't feel bad about buying comics from other cities. The best way to describe it is that we're comic book fuck buddies or they're like a cheap $4 hooker I go see every once in a while and she doesn't do anything right but that's expected.

I almost have a hard time figuring out which place was more of a suckfest between Turkey and South Dakota. Hopefully Buddha Jesus is keeping score of my suffering on his karmic balance sheet and I'll get to live next somewhere where there's more comic book stores and less robot censorship. I figure I deserve at least Japan after surviving Turkish drivers and all these missing issues in my comic book collection. Right now I'm praying that Buddha Jesus works in the assignments office at my wife's job and he can appreciate that Castle Donnington is my Mecca. Maybe planning the direction of one's life in accordance with Iron Maiden's tour schedule isn't what most people would do, but they don't call it a dream sheet for nothing.

Death by Styrofoam OR: I don't want my only enduring mark on this world to be an indestructible shrine to hermetically sealed toy robot Volkswagens

I am a toy robot volkswagen
laying buried in a junkyard, abandoned
Many parts missing, rusting away
Enchanted nonetheless
by a past where I've been blessed
Reflecting on my glory days
Played with and bruised and very well used
My life-a tribute to fun and abuse
My legacy-a childhood well played

I am a toy robot volkswagen
sitting on a shelf, still in my package
Accessories in baggies sealed within
Still decaying nonetheless
from the pvc decomposition process
In my inner packaging styrofoam coffin
Never played with or abused, sitting here all unused
My life-a tribute to secondary market value
And I'm wondering what might have been

I am a toy robot volkswagen collector
self appointed toy robot volkswagen protector
My incredible collection would make you go WOW
But I look up at my shelves
And I wonder about myself
Why having fun is something I can't myself allow
Overcompensating for the day
I broke one and threw it away
and I'm wondering where that first one is now

Full Metal Taxationist

I went to go see my Canadian doppleganger Hayden Christensen in that Jumper movie last night. I can think of a couple times within the past week I would have liked to have some teleportation powers. I would rather have been anywhere else when my wife and I were doing our taxes. She pretty much runs the finances in our house so when she said we needed to report the toy robot selling I did on eBay last year, I just went along with it. I was really pissed off, though. I don't know of a single other person who reports their eBay activity as income and I didn't see the need to do it either because I wasn't doing it as a business. However, she thought the measly $1,800 I pulled in from selling toy robots last June was something the IRS needed to know about. I'm still a little pissed off but the more I read about it the more I realize claiming the income is worth the piece of mind. I figured I may as well cave in and pay my robot taxes now instead of living on the lam where I'll really need teleportation abilities to run from the IRS.

I still feel totally screwed because no matter how much I insisted this wasn't a business, the tax preparer kept asking me questions pertaining to the eBaying as if it were. She wanted post office shipping receipts, eBay invoices, Paypal invoices, internet bills, estimates on how much time I spent writing auction descriptions and she even wanted to see "inventory records" when there were none because my "inventory" was my collection. She wanted to see receipts for when I originally purchased the toys to compare them to the auction end prices. "IT'S JUST A HOBBY!" I kept saying. "IF I WERE RUNNING A BUSINESS I WOULD HAVE KEPT TRACK OF ALL THIS SHIT BUT I DIDN'T BECAUSE IT'S JUST A HOBBY!" From my lack of record keeping it should have been totally obvious that I was no businessman but in the end I ended up paying $200 in robot tax to the IRS for my toy robots "business". Fuckers!

What I did learn is that only the profits for what I made on eBay were taxable and there's certain ways to figure what defines profit margin. The reason tax lady wanted all those other numbers was to cut down my profit margin. Stuff like eBay fees, Paypal fees, shipping fees, time spent on the computer, internet bills, and the original cost of the items sold could all be deducted from the gross income I made on the auctions. I doubt I'll ever sell anything on eBay again, but if I do I'll keep better track of crap to lessen the Dinobot sized butt raping I get from the IRS. It all seems so unfair especially since I didn't see Hayden Christensen's character in Jumper pay taxes on all the money from the banks he robbed. But just as Wesley Snipes has learned, this is real life and no matter what movie star action hero powers you have there's no escaping the IRS.

In addition to eating and sleeping I was going to complain about sitting on the toilet but that's where I play Tetris so it counts as recreation

Man, sometimes my defeatist attitude really gets to me and sabotages my chances at doing fun things. I got asked to co-host a toy robots podcast recently and I turned it down because I'm just too busy with the baby, the dogs, the fish and all my other responsibilities at home. I feel so overwhelmed by the mundane day to day life maintenance stuff required to keep my kingdom running with a minimum of damage to equipment and personnel. Plus just basic human necessities like eating and sleeping take up excessive amounts of precious time. What little free time I do have is devoted to reading comic books, writing poems about toy robots, and of course learning the ways of the Force. So I had to turn down the podcasting because all my time is taken up maintaining my meat body and keeping my son Trypticon from setting the fish on fire with his destructo-beams.

The stress can be crazy but every once in a while Botcon comes around and I get to leave behind the hustle and bustle and charred aquariums of daily life. One of my absolute favorite things to do at Botcon is sell my homemade toy robot themed creations, although every time I try selling some little resin cast robot thing it's always an embarrassing and awkward experience. Not for me, but for my friends I'm trying to sell my crap to. There's nothing like having to prove your friendship by buying something you don't want from some weird guy you only know from the internet. I suppose that when they give me their 3 dollars it's a sign of the true devotion and undying loyalty my friends have for me. I also suppose this is why as the years go on, fewer and fewer people hang out with me at toy robot conventions.

But forcing myself on friends and total strangers is a convention tradition and this year at Botcon will be no exception. In addition to whatever poorly crafted resin robot thing I'm going to make at the last minute, this year I will sell a booklet with all the poems I've written here at PSMR. I call it "The King of all Toy Robots Poems Collection" and it will be the most complete collection of poems I've written until I write some more. In addition to every poem I've done so far at PSMR, it will also include the Botcon '08 exclusive poem titled "I Only Feel Alive at Botcon (and That is Why I Want to Die)".

Actually, what usually happens when I undertake endeavors like this is I make about five copies and then come home with four, usually because I was too nervous to ask anyone if they wanted one and I probably dropped one in the airport somewhere. When any friends do ask if I've got anything to sell them I usually get overcome by irritable bladder syndrome and run away. I don't expect this year to be any different so after the show I'll sell off the remaining stock here as a special internet mail away offer for one dollar and four robot points. However if you send me five bucks I'll include a sketch of Voltron humping the Incredible Change-Bot of your choice. Judging from my site statistics, the poems are the least read things I write so I know my readers won't want to pass up the chance to pay to not read them in print.

I noticed that it's not appropriate to yell MOTHERFUCKER! after Barry Manilow sings a song,but I swear at Iron Maiden concerts it happens all the time

I've been feeling crappy ever since about Sunday when I went to see Cloverfield, but not that kind of crappy where you vomit because your eyes aren't connected to your brain right as has been the case for tons of young people bitching about the camera work in their online Cloverfield reviews. I'm talking about real sick, sick like you're congested and sneezing and totally miserable and you just want to see all the beautiful people who do wonderful things die horrible awful deaths. Thankfully Cloverfield delivered and for at least a few moments my headache subsided as imaginary New York was being eaten by an imaginary monster killing scores of imaginary people. It's the feel good movie of the year I suppose.

When the movie ended the headache came back and my other symptoms got worse as the day went on. After the movie I went to Wal-Mart and sneezed all over the Star Wars action figures, coughed on the Voltron DVDs and when I was playing the Guitar Hero in electronics I farted. Well, honestly those last two things never happened but I was in that sort of crappy mood.

Before I sneezed on the Star Wars I noticed that toynology is most impressive nowadays. I haven't bought any toy anything since before the year started so that was my first visit to the toy aisle in a while. For someone who wastes so much time on the internet looking at toy news sites I sure don't pay attention much because I was blown away like I'd never seen that stuff before. I guess when it comes to Star Wars I'm a last clapper, which is the lowest level on a scale by which I determine fan intensity based on weird fan behavior I noticed during a Barry Manilow concert.

Damnit, this post was supposed to be about ZOIDS

I think it was back in 2002 in Tucson Arizona when I took my wife to go see Barry Manilow. You gotta be pretty hardcore to go to a Barry Manilow concert because the last time I heard him on the radio was over 25 years ago. So a Barry Manilow concert is a pretty good thermometer by which to measure fan devotion because nobody ends up there accidentally. Everybody claps during concerts, but what I noticed that day is there were certain concentrated bursts of applause during certain points of a song that could be used to calculate just how big a fan the clappers were depending on when they clapped. Here's the breakdown:

End of song clapper-Claps at the end of song. These last clappers are usually people drug to the concert by someone else and they don't have any connection to the music, but at least they decided to stay so it's enjoyable to them on some level. Either that or they're just trying to get laid. Last clappers are usually just casual fans at most.

Chorus clapper-Recognizes song at chorus and claps. If it takes you until the chorus to recognize the song, you're probably someone who heard it on the radio or internet and you're most likely a bandwagon jumper. Chorus clappers are bigger fans than last clappers, but that's not saying much.

First word of song clapper-Sometimes artists play alternate versions of their songs in concert and the intros don't match what you have at home on your CD player. So people who recognize the song at the first word are relatively hardcore. They probably own much of the artist's discography and are most likely to buy the overpriced tour shirts and jackets and all that crap.

First note clapper-Holy crap these people recognize songs on the first note, regardless of the version. They've probably been following the artist all along the tour, which is either a sign of mega devotion or that they're looking to collect overdue child support. First note clappers run multiple fan websites or have over 5,000 posts on the official message board or do other OCD shit like that. Yet, first note clapper is not the most hardcore fan of all! That honor goes to the...

Doesn't clap at all clapper-The person who never claps at all but instead yells, "FUCK YOU MANILOW! YOU SOUND LIKE SHIT COMPARED TO WHEN I SAW YOU IN JAPAN BACK IN 79 YOU LOSER!" during the breaks between songs.

There are parallels between Barry Manilow fan behavior and other fandoms. Like for example the first note clapper would be equivalent of the toy collector guy who buys the prototype action figure from some chinese factory worker on eBay months before the mass released version ever hits Wal-Mart. The categories are general archetypes that have to be tweaked a bit to fit the genre. Actual clapping usually doesn't happen depending on what it is we're talking about. If the guy sitting behind me at the movies would have started clapping at the first word of Cloverfield that would have been weird, and anyone I see clapping in the action figure aisle is a total moron. But I tell you, I see people at Wal-Mart farting during Guitar Hero all the time.


Godzilla would have totally kicked this guy's ass back in '79

PSMR

I got a blog comment the other day
From a guy who felt toy robots were gay
And that all toy blogging was pointless and lame
And every blog writer's writings just all looked the same

"You're all following the calendar and commenting on news
You're all just fuckin' robots typing out the same views
You all don't really have anything profound to say
other than what toy robots you found at Wal-Mart that day

All you toy bloggers are just self absorbed nerds
Your toy blogs are just piles of self absorbed words
And who are you to think you have interesting thoughts?
That you can write better than the other robots?"

And I started to think about my reply
and just what I would write back to this guy
I started with a sentence I carefully thought through-
I'm the fuckin' King of Macrocrania, who the fuck are you?

But then I changed my mind and that sentence I smote
And I took a hard look at just what he wrote
In some mindless machine was I being a cog?
So I read through the archives of my own blog

Yeah, I don't write about science or new dimensions
I write about comics and toy robot conventions
I write about old broken roboplasticos I miss
I write about having collecto-mono-franchise-tosis

I write about robot Jesus in long poem sermons
I write nine hundred word essays about Simon Furman
I write how loving robots is like having infections
I write about the King of all robot collections

I stepped back and thought about what a great time it's been
And if I'm just a robot blog robot, I like the company I'm in
Because sometimes those robots are the only ones who understand
And they save me, those robots, and I'm glad they're my friends

In lieu of blog updates, at Botcon I will hold my robots in front of my stomach under where my shirt says "LOOK WHAT I BOUGHT: LATEST GALLERY"

The Transformers internet fandom is cashing in on the tremendous consumer demand for ugly shirts to wear at Botcon. Good for them! If the official awful Botcon shirts weren't so expensive we wouldn't have to resort to making our own. Is it just me or have the official convention shirts sucked ass since about 2003? If I'm going to wear something stupid with robots on it, I want to at least make it myself so it sucks on purpose. Here are two fantastically obnoxious shirt designs I'm thinking of making for the big Carbiecon:

Loathing Drive OR: I can see your planet dying from here

I once found the pain
I keep locked in my brain
to be quite potent and very explosive
It was power unseen
and Emperor Palpatine
kidnapped me for further diagnosis

My emotions of course
the darkest side of the force
and the Emperor dubbed me Darth Emoticon
Days later Darth Vader
hooked me up to the Death Star laser
and all my self-loathing blew up Alderaan

Some japanese dudes
must've learned of my aptitudes
because they jacked my mind to the Macross main gun
To fight the Zentradi
and the evil they embody
My angst became the ultimate weapon

I humped Lynn Minmay
and found out Roy Fokker was gay
And when our fight with the aliens begun
I'd thought of the throngs
of things I had done wrong
And my regrets blew up the Zentradi sun

Then there was this once
I met the Prime Optimus
His chest matrix had gotten all empty
I have no more power
to light our darkest hour!
He said as he handed it to me

Though I had felt
my last bit of self doubt
and hate was totally gone
I remembered some children
that pissed me off in kindergarten
And one day that matrix fuckin' blew up Unicron

The intimidation factor of seeing Godzilla on a SpeederBike is probably lost on Ewoks but they'll get it once their heads explode into furry fireballs

No matter how hard I try I can never consistently remember specific lines of dialogue from my dreams. Once in a while I'll wake up remembering that I just had a dream conversation with someone famous like Kermit the Frog or Omega Supreme but I never remember the exact words. Only very rarely do I wake up knowing exactly what was said, but even then most of the time it's just gibberish. Like one time I remember I was flying in a helicopter piloted by Olivia Newton John dressed as the hot Sandra D. from the end of Grease and she told me in Australian "Only the sky is real-the ground is made of gold and yellow." It was great remembering crazy bullshit like that so I went and wrote it down immediately. However I was somewhat disappointed by the content of her quote since I was hoping that in my dreams Olivia Newton John would be telling me how she desperately needed anal sex.

I have this theory that dreams are garbage thoughts my mind is trying to erase or write over. I figure my head is like a VCR and when I need to record over something, the VHS tape of my memories gets rewound so my mind can start recording at just the right spot. All this rewinding is done while I'm sleeping and that's what dreams are-old or useless memories played one last time before they're erased. That's why they're all scrambled and backwards and they don't make sense. They are not meant to be remembered and sometimes a couple of tapes get played at once to make it more confusing, resulting in cross contamination of different elements like helicopter rides and Olivia Newton John. The only exception to the erasure theory is when I dream about awesome events I wouldn't get to normally experience like marathon Iron Maiden concerts that last 6 hours or however long I'm asleep. Imagine how awesomely wet my mattress was after waking up from a six hour Iron Maiden concert where Bruce Dickinson tired out after the first hour so I had to fill in and sing their whole friggin catalog! I dreamt that once and only once back in '89. Because unfortunately those awesome dreams get all mixed up and contaminated, too so the majority of the time I end up dreaming instead about Barry Manilow doing a concert of Iron Maiden covers for 6 hours and then telling me afterwards how he desperately needs anal sex.

So yesterday was absolutely fantastic when I woke up remembering part of a dream interview I was doing with George Lucas about Speeder Bikes. I guess playing with that 12 inch Biker Scout doll was so scarring to my psyche that my subconscious was trying to erase all recollection of it. But who cares because although I don't remember much of what was said, I did recall the most fantastic Star Wars quote of all time-


Holy crap that is the most incredible thing George Lucas has ever said to me in my dreams ever. I think it came from thoughts I had when I was writing yesterday's post about the 12 inch Speeder Bike I opened. Early in a rough draft of that post I wanted to include a picture of the bike so I could give my blog readers a sense of how big the toy was. I figured even pictures wouldn't work well unless I had an object alongside the Speeder Bike that everybody is familiar with to give people a sense of scale. But what common everyday object would I use that's universally recognizeable? Oh hell, that's easy. I was going to use my Godzilla from Shogun Warriors because who doesn't have Godzilla from Shogun Warriors lying around? But I scrapped the idea because maybe not everybody remembers where they put theirs. Still, the Godzilla idea implanted itself into my subconscious just enough for George Lucas of dreamland to use it as if it were a thermal detonator to wreak havoc on my mental VHS library of dreams and memories. Kind of like how real George Lucas wreaked havoc on my memories when he put Hayden Christensen's face over Sebastian Shaw's head at the end of Return of the Jedi special edition. That fucker!


I think Godzilla on a Speeder Bike is probably the most extreme and terrifying idea I have ever had ever. I am still quite stunned by the real-world implications of it. Every horrible thing ever imagined by man could not possibly be more terrifying than Godzilla on a Speeder Bike. No matter what horrific situation I may be in, whether it be a bloody war battlefield or hideous car crash or another Transformers movie directed by Michael Bay, they all pale in comparison to the mind-numbing nightmare it would be seeing Godzilla coming at me on a Speeder Bike. Because normal Godzilla could be outrun by a really fast car or a plane, but if Godzilla gets on a 500 kilometers per hour Speeder Bike, there is absolutely no hope of escaping his fire breath or atomic blast. This could possibly be infinitely terrifying, with Barry Manilow singing Iron Maiden on a Speeder Bike coming in a close second.

I guess its possible if TIE Fighter pilots piloted Tie Fighters and AT-AT drivers drove AT-ATs, then by that logic Biker Scouts ride Scouter Bikes

My son's first birthday is coming up so that got me thinking about how presents are wasted on babies and everybody should just buy me stuff instead. All he ever does with any present I buy him is eat the box, but maybe I'm being close minded and that's his own special way of showing appreciation. The Queen of Macrocrania also has a strange way of showing appreciation-she leaves her presents lying around for months without using them. It drives me crazy. That new Eagles CD I got her last year is still sitting on top of the CD organizer, only opened once. It was really hard for me to find that super limited deluxe collector's edition version with the special red cloth silk screened case at Wal-Mart. Of course, whatever I find at Wal-Mart couldn't possibly be limited by virtue of it being found at Wal-Mart, but I would like to commend Wal-Mart marketing for tricking me into feeling like the packaging of the stuff I'm buying actually matters in real life. The least my wife could do to show me she likes it is nibble at the red silk screening a little.

I decided to confront her about not listening to it but before I got all emo about a CD I bought her a couple months ago I needed to anticipate what arguments she may use to make me look dumb. I don't know if it's because she's been going to Toastmasters or if it's because we've been married for ten years but I've been thinking a bit more about what I say to her before I say it in anticipation of complex verbal retaliations. It's all unnecessary though because to win any argument all she has to do is say "toy robots collection" and I collapse onto the floor, curl up into the fetal position and start crying and begging for her to make the hurting stop. It doesn't even matter what the argument is about, I feel the credibility of anything I say is so compromised by me owning assloads of toy robots that I can't criticize even the most heinous of evil deeds. There have been one or two guys throwing babies off of bridges lately and when we're watching the news in our living room I want to say, "What an insane lunatic psycho!" But I just kind of calm down and figure if they knew me they'd probably say "We may throw babies off bridges but you with the assloads of toy robots-you're fuckin' crazy!"

So I'm thinking of what specific weaknesses she could exploit involving presents I haven't opened and that's when I remembered the 12 inch tall Star Wars Biker Scout doll and ridiculously huge Speeder Bike toy it came with that she bought me back in August of 2000. It's literally the biggest argument she could have made that I'm a dork for getting mad about unopened presents since I've been sitting on that one for over seven years. But holy fuck it's a doll riding a bike. Maybe eight years ago when I was 25 playing with big gay Star Wars dolls would have been cool, but in my twenties all sorts of stupid shit seemed cool like volunteering to be put in sleeper holds or writing blogs pretending to be a Ninja Turtle.

I knew I needed proof that I opened the 12 inch Biker Scout but what I wanted was subtle knowledge of its workings instead of blatant, in-your-face proof like using it as a dinner table centerpiece all of a sudden. So I opened it and I figured out that the bike had a rolled up tan poncho attached to it that could be taken off and put on the figure. This was huge because removable tan poncho is the sort of carnal Biker Scout knowledge you could only have if you opened the damn thing and played dress up with it like the doll that it is. Now if she hit me with, "Well what about that Scouter Bike Barbie I got you seven years ago?" I could say, "Oh, that one with the cute little tan poncho that detaches from the rear of the bike?" in the most nonchalant sort of way as if that were a small detail I barely remember from a long time ago just like our anniversary I keep forgetting.

Secure in my knowledge that I could win any possible challenge and that I was totally in the right, after dinner last night I asked her, "Why don't you ever listen to the Eagles CD I got you? It's been lying on top of the CD holder for months!" Then she turned to me as if I were a puppy that pooped on itself and said, "I ripped that to my work computer the day after you gave it to me and I listen to it everyday!" And I said, "PONCHO! IT COMES OFF! HE CAN WEAR IT!"