GET IN THE CAR, MARTY! WE'RE GOING TO GET SOME WINDEX! OR: Interdimensional travel is the only way I will ever experience being gainfully employed

I was reading an advice column about a guy who was cleaning his house and he rubbed his hand near a wall socket and it transported him to another dimension. And I thought, that's all it takes? My ticket back to 1984 was a hand rag, a can of Endust and the wall outlet all along? Those things aren't easily accessible to me because I'm living in a hotel right now so acquiring them would involve complicated secret missions to infiltrate the maid closet. Still, I was excited because this method is much more easily attainable and cost effective than DeLorean based time travel.

ONE OF THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING "HIGH-MAN" IS THAT YOU ARE NOT INVINCIBLE

If I was that guy I would be worried that cleaning the wall just gave me time travel powers and how could I control them and what should my superhero name be. But then the advice columnist told the guy that more than likely what happened was he got high on the cleaning chemicals he was using and no interdimensional time traveling occurred. The mind just does weird things when it's deprived of oxygen due to chemical interference (or in this case, when you're high). But it seemed so real to the guy that even if it was a mind trick, it was as genuine a reality as any other he'd experienced. If perception is reality then how can anyone tell him what he experienced was not 'real'? Reading all this led me to the obvious conclusion that dreaming may in fact be interdimensional travel and I should be careful what I do in my dreams because who's to say that I am not visiting other dimensions where fantastic incredible things really do happen like flying cars and I actually have a job.

DID I JUST INVENT THE CHICKEN PHONE OR IS THIS WHAT THEY CALL BEING HIGH ON CRACK

The other night I dreamt I was working as a stock boy at a Target in Antarctica and the guy helping me stock the automotive section was a six foot tall Soundwave the Decepticon cassette player. Then an awkward situation arose when Soundwave tried to take me to the back room and get me to smoke crack with him. I thought, I need to be careful what I do in this dimension because it might be actual events. Then my cell phone rung and it was a chicken. I started thinking this might be a dream but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna find a way to bring chicken phone back with me when I cross through the stargate and get back home as proof of interdimensional travel. So I stuck the chicken phone in my pants and started smoking crack with Soundwave. Oddly enough he sounded like Clint Eastwood. He told me, "You can't take things of this dimension back with you" and I told him, "What do you know? You're just a crackhead robot stockboy working at Target." Then our supervisor caught us and I was shocked back into this reality. I immediately woke up and reached for my chicken phone, only to find that in my bed I was not wearing pants. Apparently clothes do not pass through the stargate. Soundwave may be a crackhead Target stockboy but he sure knows his interdimensional physics.

The next best thing to reading there

Google has been archiving newspaper articles and in some instances, microfilm of the papers themselves have been digitized! This kicks ass because it's like a virtual microfilm machine that lets me strain my eyes and sanity searching through the Saint Petersburgh Times at home without ever having to go to Florida. The pull out ads are missing so its usefulness as a source for vintage space toaster ads is limited, but oftentimes I'll run into a great toy robots related article that makes the looking worthwhile.

Wicks Fulfillment OR: I now realize that 1985 was the start of a lot of people's bad habits

In the last few years I've been looking back and getting all emospective about life and wallowing in my own personal feelings of disappointment over what I have or haven't accomplished. But I've never wished I was someone else, although I joke about it a lot. I stopped wishing I was a rock star or a millionaire or getting free cable a long time ago. I'm not like the normal American toy robots nerd who wishes he was Japanese. Actually I've been wishing a lot lately that there was a Japanese me so I could see his website of old Japanese toy robots ads.

IF I WAS MARTY MCFLY I WOULD BE TRYING TO HOOK MY DAD UP WITH CHICKS IN GRADE SCHOOL

No, what I really wish is that I was born just a few years earlier than I was. Mostly so that I could be a little more sentient when all those things that formed my childhood years happened. So that I could be young during the 80s and have the presence of mind enough to appreciate everything as it was happening. Of course one more go around would be fantastic, but I don't necessarily have time travel fantasies so much as I have appreciation fantasies. I wish I would have realized how great I had it back then, you know, before the world turned into its current state of total crap.

OPTIMUS PRIME MASKS IS THE NEW DIAPERS

My latest attempt at self diagnosis and treatment of my toy robots fixation had me reading up on a similar condition called infantilism, where a person becomes infatuated with reliving their babyhood so they collect and surround themselves with baby items and sometimes even go so far as to wear diapers. Infantilism is essentially the same behavior as toy robots collecting but it skews towards a slightly earlier period in life and has a different wardrobe.

TRUE INFANTILISM IS ONLY ONE INTILISM AWAY FROM TRUE FAN

I've found an essay titled "What is True Infantilism?" that explains the difference between people who get off sexually on wearing diapers and people for whom the diaper is used as a comfort object of sorts to help them regress to an earlier time when they felt more comfortable and loved. That's all this toy robots hobby is, really. A collecting of comfort items that bridge the transition between the current suck of today and the wonderful gloriousness that was 1985. I think the way RoboPlasti-Holism works is the more robots I have the more my happy childhood memories are supposed to surround me, just like the more diapers you wear the more shit you can carry around with you. Something like that.

TIME TRAVELING FOR A BETTER TODAY

This all came to a head today when I read a book called Too Cool to be Forgotten. It's one of those hardcover comics that's a little over a hundred pages with one single self contained story. Other people have done better reviews than I ever could but the basic premise is that a forty year old guy named Andy Wicks tries to quit smoking by trying some regressive hypnosis therapy that ends up sending him back in time to 1985 when he was 17 and in high school. This comic character does all I fantasize about doing every minute of my existence-he tries to kill off a retarded habit and he goes back to 1985. Plus he's just a few years older than I was in 1985. Some kids wish they were Peter Parker but hot damn I'm wishing I was some balding forty year old comic character named Andy Wicks.

THERE ARE EVEN CHARACTERS IN IT WEARING IRON MAIDEN SHIRTS

If you look around on the internet you can find previews of almost the entire First Two Chapters of the book and that's what I was doing one night last June. My wife remembered I liked it and today in the mail I found she ordered it for me. What a surprise that was! I feel bad because although the preview pages were too cool, I had sort of forgotten about it. If my opinion matters to you, my fellow Macrocranians, then I want to say this book is nothing short of fantastic. It is my ultimate personal wish fulfillment realized and written in such a way that I felt changed for the better as a person after having read it. There are truths within this story that apply to anyone afflicted by any sort of shameful adult behavior, be it diaper wearing or toy robots collecting (which are pretty much equally embarrassing).

69 ways a Camaro is better than a girl

Thanks to the latest episode of GuyCast (#227) I got turned on to mechaphilia. Well I wasn't "turned on" but just made aware of it. Mechaphilia is when people are sexually attracted to and/or have sex with their cars. Although it sounds outrageous I don't think it's a joke or a prank, I totally believe that some young guys out there are fucking exhaust pipes and cup holders and gas tanks of their automobiles. There's an article about it called "I have sex with my car!" over at Closer Online featuring a twenty year old guy in an open relationship with his Volkswagen and who's simultaneously in a gay relationship with a Trans-Am named Todd. I also found the blog of a mechaphile featuring what I can only describe as autoerotic art. Maybe I should call it AutoZoneErotic?

Bumble got back

I love this stuff because mechaphilia is the logical conclusion to a certain train of thought I'd been developing about toy robots and puberty and how one influences the other. In the normal course of growing up I was thinking that masturbation fantasies involving other human beings were much more powerful entertainment than any prepubescent obsessions like toys or cartoons. But maybe it was possible that some teenagers whacked off to thoughts of Transformer cartoons or used Hot Wheels as visual aids in their masturbation sessions. It was so obvious and inevitable that mechaphiles existed seeing how American society fetishizes automobiles, starting early with toy cars (and worse-toy cars robots). The mechaphile blog I found contains a slideshow of Flickr pictures the blogger has titled titled "My Porn Show" and wouldn't you know it-there's pictures of Ultimate Bumblebee amongst the real life sports cars and toy cars in suggestive poses! What I love about mechaphilia is how the average Thoroughly Informative Transformers Themed Internet Entertainment Site would take a couple dozen pictures of Bumblebee's car mode, but the mechaphile only has one-of the tailpipes. It is the only angle he needs.

ROBOT CAMARO IS SEX WITH SUPERMODELS
I think a young man's sexual awakening plays a big role in their attraction to robots that turn into sports cars. I think sports cars are designed to outwardly mimic the female form with their curves and roundedness and racing stripes. Racing stripes have always reminded me of labia. I think this sexy car design appeals to young men on a primal level and then you have giant robots which appeal to adolescent power fantasies and on top of all that, cartoons that turn them into celebrity superstars. So transforming toy robot cars are a perfect storm of subconscious sexual attraction, idolatry and male power fantasy. They're irresistible. And that's why some guys stay attracted to toy robots long after most other kids have outgrown them. Because Tracks is sexy, damnit.

HOT ROD IS THE GREATEST MAGAZINE NAME EVER
Just as an aside, imagine being sexually attracted to automobiles-the most mundane aspects of daily existence like driving down the highway or getting gas or reading car magazines become cum in your pants exciting. I would love to live in that world. Even the most boring normal guy lives like Hugh Hefner if you think about how much time we spend washing our cars. Plus renting a car is legal in all 50 states. Lucky bastards!