Finally I can see those PG-13,000 movies

Today is my 13,000th day of being alive. I call it my birthousandth day because I've lived a thousand times the number of the day I was born on, the 13th. I have not been this excited about a living related milestone since my 13th birthday fell on Friday the 13th back in '87. 13,000 days is a momentous occasion and as if to celebrate, the people at Animation Supercon Flickr'd four great pictures of me at their convention I attended a week and a half ago when I was only 12,988 days old. I kind of feel bad for people born on the 31st because they won't get to celebrate their birthousandth day until they're 84.

Me getting there	Me sitting there
Me buying there	Me standing there

I ONLY HAD TO LOOK THROUGH 13,000 PICTURES TO FIND THEM

If anyone is interested in more pictures from Supercon or just interested in pictures of Snowtroopers, Sailor Moons and wrestling Batmans in general, check out the thousands of Supercon 09 shots they put up over at the Supercon Flickr. I would like to especially thank the Supercon people for posting these pictures of me because that last one was taken during the sewing panel I forgot to take pictures at. When I saw a guy with a camera set up in the corner of the room and take a couple shots I figured he was either the official con photographer or a huge fan of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. What a great 13 birthousandth day present. I wonder what the internet will do for me in 13 days when I turn 13,013. HOPEFULLY NOT A CASE OF THE TINJA NURTLES.

In my Zen contentedness I want for nothing (except multimillion dollar powerball jackpots) or: I NEVER KNEW I WAS BUYING SLURPEES FROM GALACTUS

The 35th annual IRONROBOHELLACON fell on Friday the 13th last week as it is sometimes known to do and we all had a great time here in the Kingdom. A couple days prior, the Queen of Macrocrania called from her current outpost in a galaxy far, far away to ask if any gifts or presents may make this year's convention extra special. I, feeling very enlightened in a way only Zen masters and Care Bears feel, said 'No, IRONROBOHELLACON is not about presents'. Then the rest of the conversation turned into me reciting a song by the Goo Goo Dolls about being content and complete, and since the Queen doesn't know who those guys are she wondered if I was singing Care Bears songs again. I honestly felt those feelings of contentedness, at least until I saw what the Powerball numbers were that week.



FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (OR AT LEAST TO THE LOAF'nJUG ON THE CORNER)

There was a comic book once about how all of existence joined together in the hope that it could destroy one single being of immense power, which is how I feel while driving with all these crazy people in downtown Rapid City. It was an issue of Secret Wars where Mephisto comes up with a plan to kill the Beyonder but it would only work if he assembled together all the magical beings of eternity and attacked in a certain place within a very specific timeframe. Mephisto is me planning to win the lotto by assembling the magical lottery numbers at the corner gas station before 8:00 pm. I don't have a problem with this metaphor making me the devil, but it is odd that the gas station clerk essentially becomes the living embodiment of all eternity. Plus she sells me hot dogs and gas. Once I dropped a Slurpee on the floor and the little ice balls spread out in a spiral like the Milky Way galaxy.

THERE IS NO GIFT AS GREAT AS LOVE BUT 35 MILLION DOLLARS WOULD HAVE BEEN PRETTY SWEET, TOO

This isn't going to be one of those "If I only had played my birthdate and age I would have won the lottery on my birthday" stories. Honestly, if I picked numbers based on my birthday and age in the way I usually do I would have only won 3 bucks last week. But there is a sort of cosmic synchronicity in the balls that did drop (3, 7, 13, 34, 47, 30) and I've been thinking about it ever since. The 3 and 13 correspond to March 13th and I was 34 last week. 47 is the last two digits of the year I was born, but backwards. I had never thought of playing that variant of 74 and since the form numbers don't go up to 74 I usually just play 7 and 4. 47 makes infinitely more sense. Now I know. DUH! The last number 30 would have been impossible for me to guess. There is some comfort in knowing even if I had played my usual 1,3,4,7,13,34 I would have only won three bucks. But then the second guessing and self doubting and what iffing come into play and I think things like-If I had only bought my regular numbers 300,000 times I would be a millionaire!

IT'S NOT WHAT YOU GOT, IT'S WHAT YOU...GET FOR IRONROBOHELLACON

That was the last lotto drawing before IRONROBOHELLACON 35 and when I went to the Powerball website I realized that my chance to kill the Beyonder that is my horrible, terrible future was past. Losing was a blessing of sorts because now I can stop fearing the horrible, terrible future and start living it. I understand that I will never again be that cosmically close to infinite wealth and ever since I accepted that, the true contentedness has begun settling in. And if I learned anything from all this, it's that true contentedness sucks. When my wife called again later on in the week I asked her if it was too late to get me anything. And she said "But I thought you were a Zen master who wanted for nothing! Plus it's too late to get anything shipped to you in time!" And I said, "I should have been more careful what I wanted for nothing for, because I got it. PLEASE TELL ME IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO ORDER ME A ROBOT TYRANNOSAURUS!"

Heroic Ultra Magnus didn't have a birthday because Jesus never went to Cybertron (this is also why heroic Ultra Magnus is going to burn in hell)

When I was a kid I used to count down the 100 days until Christmas. Every year from around '86-'89 I would make a big calendar from 22 by 28 inch posterboard and tape it to my wall above my bed. Whenever I got a toy or a comic book during that period I would write it in on my calendar. That third of the year was special to me more than any other time because it held the beginning of the new Saturday morning cartoon season, Halloween and Christmas. If somebody put 12 year old me in charge of calendaring the world, there would only be 100 days in a year and New Year's Day would be September 15th. I guess to my childhood self the passage of time was only worth noting if it involved cartoons, candy and toy robots.

I think my intention was to track on my calendar the 'birthdays' of my toys and comics as I got them. I never actually had birthday parties for my Transformers but for some reason it was important to me to mark the exact day that they entered my life. I may have been influenced by an episode of the Transformers from 1986 where the little kid tries to figure out the birthday of one of the Autobots, the heroic Ultra Mangus. After nearly getting killed when he goes searching for the robot birthday computer, he ends up looking stupid at the end of the episode when the Autobots tell him they don't keep track of that stuff. And I think everybody starts laughing at him.

This being leap year I hear a lot of those heartwarming human interest stories about people born on February 29. I am a little confused about whether or not these 40 year old people are laughing about how they're really only ten years old or if they're crying because they got fucked out of 36 birthdays.

Having a birthday at all is a luxury. I remember hearing of a Bosnian guy who didn't know his birthday. At first I thought it was shocking but when you think about it there are lots of parts in the world where buying a new Hooters calendar ranks far below other priorities like surviving long enough to see tomorrow. Instead of being a manic depressive birthdate obsessed leap year weirdo, lots of birthdayless people are just happy to be alive. Some sperms never even hit the egg! Imagine how they feel, whiny leap year baby bastards!

I think birthdays should be totally abolished and forgotten, just as they are on Cybertron. No cakes, no reminiscing, no reflecting on the past or getting presents or any of that. All that stuff should be done every single minute of every day. I was thinking about how any given specific day from the calendar-any birthday-happens over and over throughout eternity regardless of whether or not we are still alive. Think of the calendar month and day you were born-your birthday. There will be infinite repetitions of that day well after you are dead. In fact, there will be more repeated occurrences of your birthday throughout infinity than the total number of days you were actually alive on earth!

I think just celebrating life on that one day and living out the other 364 days in a zombie trance is forgetting that our real purpose while we're alive is to get down to the business of being the best heroic Ultra Magnus we can be constantly all the time. To some that means working hard to help improve the human condition, for others it means watching cartoons and buying assloads of toy robots. For me it meant redirecting the misplaced sentimentality I wasted observing birthdays or the 100 days until Christmas or Halloween or Christmas and focusing instead on the true purpose of my life-preparing for the coming of Galvatron.

Back from Laramie

I used to live in Laramie, Wyoming and I left there in 1993. It's been 13 years since. I decided now that I live close enough that I would go back. So I left Saturday at 4 am and came back this morning-it was a 6 hour drive each way from Rapid City.

I found that the comic book store I loved named 1,000,000 Comics and one other place I used to frequent called Books-A-Go-Go both closed down. Back in 1993 those were the two places that I used to live at when I wasn't in school. Finding that they were gone forever sucked!