If I don't have any hobbies then where did all this crap come from?

I was doing a lot of thinking about the nature of hobbies and if I really have any when I recently lost all interest in toy robots during the time I was sick. It was kind of liberating but also scary. If I wasn't sick and suddenly didn't care anymore about my hobbies I would be worried because loss of interest like that is usually associated with early stages of dementia, or suicide. You always hear about the guy who sold off his collection of super rare NASCAR calendars or Franklin Mint Simpsons Collector Plates or Farrah Fawcett posters before he offed himself and really, who wants to be that guy? But the only alternatives according to mental health professionals are you're either a) demented, b) dead or c) the owner of a vast second hand collection of Farah Fawcett posters you got from some demented dead guy. I guess I just stuck with the toy robots thing after 1985 out of inertia because you have to have hobbies, but then try doing that well past adulthood and BAM! It turns out that in the land of NASCAR calendars, somehow grown men buying toy robots is only sligtly more preferable than dementia.

IF I AM NOT COLLECTING WHAT ARE ALL THESE WAL-MART BAGS?

So there's societal pressure on one hand to have hobbies but on the other they have to meet some sort of criteria I've never really understood but I have figured it's not just about being age appropriate. After much pondering it dawned on me that "real" hobbies require some sort of skill like playing a guitar or painting or even at the very least, making those latch hook Care Bear rug kits. It is the constant refining of skills through practice that makes for a rewarding "real" hobby. But I look at this toy robots thing and the only skill it seems to require is finding a good parking spot at Wal-Mart. That's actually harder than it sounds because although the garden center is closest to the toys, sometimes they close while you're in there and you have to go out through the front registers and walk all the hell the way back to your car on the far side of the parking lot. Hey I can say whatever I want about action figure collectors because I used to roll like that when I was in my twenties. I was every horrible thing you could imagine on both sides of the stockroom. I was the corrupt stockboy stashing cases of Star Wars in '95 and I would scalp Treasure Hunt Hot Wheels with the worst of 'em and crap like that. But now that I'm old and senile in my thirties what I call a hobby is even more super pointless than hoarding little plastic people because I never even buy anything. I'm like a birdwatcher but of toy robots. I don't know why I bother wandering down the toy aisles looking at stuff I don't buy-I guess it's just so I can complain that everything sucks compared to 1985. I'm better off being a curmudgeony old robotard because I've see some people's action figure collections and they make me wonder if dementia is actually a better alternative instead of turning your house into a Smithsonian-ish tribute to the last 25 years of the Wal-Mart toy aisle.

IF I DON'T LIKE THESE MOVIES WHERE DID ALL THIS SHIA LEBOUF COME FROM?

I end up in a situation where I feel alienated from the people within my hobby who are really good at toy robots but also from the people outside of it who I imagine are really good at something else. Everyone has to be good at something and the greatest thing I can imagine being good at is having huge pectoral muscles (as Ren Hoek would say). Living here in the Miami area I see lots of incredibly fit beautiful people at the malls. I wonder if aside from being in the same approximate space with them at that moment if we have anything else in common at all. These are no doubt the people with real mature adult hobbies that my stunted man boy mind can't even begin to comprehend, like they probably enjoy watersports and watching Dawson's Creek and sexy fucking. I'll see the occasional incredibly good looking young teenage tan guy who works at Abercrombie & Fitch as a door greeter or whatever he does and I'll think to myself-that guy doesn't check out the toy robots when he's at Toys R Us. That is the defining difference between him and me. Hell, that guy probably never even goes to Toys R Us. We live in entirely different worlds. I know he's probably seen the Transformers movies but that's the one brief point where our intersecting lives meet. Were it not for Michael Bay I wouldn't have anything in common with people I have nothing in common with. It really boggles my mind that there are a whole bunch of people who were born after 1989.

IF I AM NOT CRAZY WHY DO I FEAR MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS?

My point is I was trying to figure out if what I do in relation to toy robots can really be classified as a hobby and if I exhibit traditional fan behavors or if what I have defined as a hobby is something more like alcoholism. Under close examination there are parallels, like I only buy toy robots mostly in a social setting. I wonder if the friends I've made at Botcon are people I really like or if anyone looks good after I've had a couple Zybots. Hell I wonder if I even like Zybots. I wonder if throughout my whole life I've never really been interested in anything so I continued to feign interest in childhood interests so that mental health professionals wouldn't think I was crazy. Well touche', mental health professionals. You got me acting crazy for fear of thinking that if I didn't, people would think I was. But the joke is on you, mental health professionals because I am not going to pay you to cure me. I see now that all I really need is to stop worrying about this insanity and get myself a good hobby.

NEXT TIME ON ROBOPLASTIC DEMENTIOCALYPSE: Latch hook Farrah Fawcett rug calendars!

To stop me you have to catch me influenza OR: It's hard to stay preoccupied with 1985 when you're dying in 2009

The last three weeks have been incredibly miserable and I am just now feeling better after coming down with some sort of hellacious lung catastrophe that was either the flu or divine lung-based karmic retribution for all the terrible things I've ever said about the online Voltron fandom or that one thing I wrote about Incredible Change-Bots one time. My lungs and gut felt like they were 30 pound garbage bags loaded with broken shards of mirror. Then with sudden explosive force, various toxic vapors and shard debris would escape from my body from different orifices simultaneously, giving new meaning to the term 'glass gas'. During the few minutes I wasn't coughing or farting to death my lungs were so congested my voice sounded like Megatron ate a volcano or Doctor Claw had a baby with Godzilla. Being able to talk like a Predator with lung cancer was pretty cool and it got me wondering if Frank Welker is really talented or if he's just built a career by having the world's longest and most profitable respiratory infection.



I HAD AN OUT-OF-HOBBY EXPERIENCE

Perhaps the worst side effect of my latest bout with super Naganosis was on my attitude. Everything I previously liked doing or found joy in seemed especially pointless. It made me feel like one of those guys who think writing internet diaries about toy robots from 25 years ago is a big waste of time (aka a normal, well-adjusted, emotionally mature person). I would sit down at the computer to write something and I just couldn't get in that frame of mind where old toy robots newspaper ads were interesting or something somebody said about Tranzor-Z would piss me off. It sucked because there have been some legitimately amazing things happening in the field of toy robots archaeology recently that I'd normally be writing dissertations on and I couldn't care enough to blog about any of it. This happens whenever I get sick. I get glimpses into what it's like to live in a world where old toy robots provide no distraction or comfort. Knowing that being sick may have cured my robotardation I went to Wal-Mart to see if I would be tempted to buy the Revenge of the Fallen movie shortly after it came out, which is what all the cool neurotypicals were doing about three weeks ago. I remember feeling insignificant in the presence of the super shiny Wal-Mart exclusive IMAX edition Revenge of the Fallen 2 disc BluRay (which incredibly cost only 20 bucks) and boy was I tempted. Yet despite my sickness-induced mainstream frame of mind (and the shiny box) I didn't get it, so I guess that means I still don't get it. It reminded me of how the American Lung Association's slogan is "When you can't breathe nothing else matters" except I was thinking we should all be grateful because when you can't breathe Michael Bay blows for you.



WORDS FROM D. WISE OR: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER(GLIDE WITH A $10 GIFT CERTIFICATE)

During the last three weeks of lung hell (that I have self-diagnosed as most likely pneumonia, swine flu, a respiratory infection or maybe even a combination of all three) I chose not to see the doctor, instead relying on the alternative therapies of eating countless bowls of Frosted Flakes and downloading lots and lots of podcasts. Suffering through the physical part was miserable but losing interest in everything I enjoyed doing was most worrisome so I listened to those podcasts like they were an IV force feeding me intravenous injections of toy robots pointlessness to keep my fandom alive. When I get sick my attitude is the first thing to go but thankfully when I get better it's the first thing to come back. Last night I was at Wal-Mart again and I saw another one of their tempting toy robot related exclusives, a gigantic version of Powerglide the Transformer on the shelf and I picked it up and walked around the store with it as I marveled at how amazing it looked. Back in '85 this guy was tiny but now he's all gigantic with lights and sounds and the box is so so shiny. I'd just finished listening to a podcast that had a great interview with David Wise, the guy who wrote the G1 cartoon episode "The Girl who Loved Powerglide". So the red A-10 guy was on my mind and I would've really liked to have bought it because I'm "The Guy who Loved Powerglide as Long as He didn't Cost a Lot". Of course I put it back because 30 bucks and 25 years later is too much too late*, but realizing I was interested in anything robot at all gave me a good feeling about my recovery. The end result of these last two trips to Wal-Mart may seem the same but they're not. The difference between the sick me being a disinterested Geewunner closet robot hater douchebag not buying new toy robots stuff and the healthy me being a disinterested Geewunner closet robot hater douchebag not buying new toy robots stuff is that when I'm healthy I feel like telling the internet how much of a douchebag I am.

NEXT TIME ON DISINTERESTED ROBOPLASTIC DOUCHEBAGALYPSE: A return to discussion about the medicinal benefits of toy robots and cereals from 25 years ago that did not come in shiny boxes but may or may not have had mascots voiced by Frank Welker's profitable lung infection.

* also because everytime I buy something at Wal-Mart I can usually find a better deal for it online at Wal-Mart

HOUSE of Unpacked HORRORS: The ROBOPLASTIC BOXPOCALYPSE

Okay honestly I ripped this box myself in 1985

It's been four months since the movers packed up my robots in South Dakota and now as I unpack everything in Florida I'm finding out if all that worrying I did about them mutilating, breaking, stealing and raping my toy robot Volkswagens and their associated transforming dinosaur cohorts was justified. Over the last 14 years I've moved to a new place every 36 months and you'd think I'd figure out by now that rolling this massive Katamari ball of roboplasticos around the world and expecting them to survive unscathed is unrealistic, but General Grievous had a mean lightsaber collection and he went everywhere with it so why can't I. Grievous is my patron saint of traveling gypsy toy robots collecting because that guy really knew how to transport his acquisitions as he wandered the galaxy looking for more lightsabers to add to his collection. That whole "killing the previous owner" bit is a little over the top for me, though. If I was selling lightsabers a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away on the Star Wars eBay I'd be very suspicious of a bidder with lots of lightsaber transactions but zero feedbacks. If General Grievous won one of my lightsaber auctions I'd send him an email saying dude, what's up with the killing? If you're not happy with the condition of the item or my shipping charges just leave me a negative.



DARTH VADER COULD MOVE YOUR BOXES BUT YOUR WINDOWS PROBABLY WOULDN'T SURVIVE

Grevious' organization and showmanship I admired-he'd bust out his buttloads of lightsabers collection for anyone to see. The problem was Grievous showed it to the wrong guy and in a fit of jealousy Ben Kenobi broke a lot of Grievous' light saber collection and probably stole some of it, too. Such was the wrath of Ben Kenobi-a man who hated big robots, bigger lightsaber collections than his and most of all, big robots with bigger lightsaber collections than his. There was so much collateral property damage from their fight I'm sure that if the Jedi gig didn't work out Kenobi could have been a furniture mover. I had to hope my movers were less like destructive rampaging Ben Kenobis and more like Jawas, the little brown people who talked funny but were good at transporting robots.



DEZCREASING

Ultimately any damage to my robots collection is my fault because there are things I could have done to make sure the packing went well, like monitoring the guy doing the packing and letting him know not to bend the flaps on the old Transformer boxes. But when the guy was packing up my robots I was busy in other parts of the house and also in a little bit of denial so I never straightened that out with him. Getting bent flaps was my biggest concern because I had a couple of 20 year old Transformers with boxes in pretty decent shape. The average neurotypical furniture mover without roboplasti-bergers isn't going to understand the beauty of an unbent box flap. When you're packing old Transformers it may seem like the easiest thing to do would be to bend those flaps down to make them all the fit in the shipping box. Just like how the easiest way to fit more cats in a box is with a meat grinder and getting more exotic cars in my garage would be easier if I had a car crusher. Furniture movers probably get hard-ons from contemplating how the entire galaxy will eventually collapse in upon itself so they'll be able to fit all of existence into a little cardboard moving box, which I admit is convenient and does save a lot of space but my only problem is that side effect where everybody is dead.



BEING OLDER DOESN'T MEAN I TAKE CARE OF MY THINGS, JUST THAT I AM MORE INDIRECTLY INVOLVED WITH THEIR DESTRUCTION

I kept imagining all the different scenarios that mover guy could have gone through as he molested my Transformer boxes. Did he bend the flaps or treat them caringly? Why would he bend my flaps in the first place? Didn't I give him Kool-Aid when he was thirsty? How could he do that to me! What I really wanted to know was how did my hobby turn from having a great time breaking my own robots when I was 10 to having a terrible time worrying about someone else breaking my robots now that I'm 35. What's worse is the movers are essentially getting paid to destroy my stuff. How retarded is it that after 25 years my robots are still getting broken except as an adult I pay other people to break them for me. I can't wait for my son to get a little older because the advantage of having kids is they break your stuff for free.



PERFECT MEMORY LOSS

I accepted a long time ago that my toy robots packaging would not survive multiple moves. Hell it's pretty pointless to get upset over damage to these boxes that are already 25 years of faded with discolored styrofoams and in some cases have the robot points cut out. But there was some stuff that got scuffed, scratched, creased and thrashed during this move that made my heart sink a little. Like the original art to my favorite Shortpacked comic or the now partially shredded up cover of my Macross Perfect Memory book or the now badly warped old issues of Japanese toy robots magazines I loved so much. Seeing how that stuff got scrunched up hurts a lot and reminds me why it is probably not a good idea that I buy nice things while I'm going through this galactic gypsy wandering Jedi phase of my life that won't be stopping anytime soon. As I open each moving box up to reveal more mutilated belongings I feel like Ben Kenobi is shooting me through the heart with my own laser beams and making my internal organs explode. I thought I could get through this unpacking mess with my sanity intact as long as I took a lot of breaks to play Turbografx-16, except right now I haven't found the box with the Turbografx-16's power cord yet. WHEN ARE THEY RELEASING STAR WARS ON TURBOGRAFX-16 SO I CAN BEAT BEN KENOBI'S ASS?

We can't all see Rob Thomas: How I survived my wife's fantastic birthday thanks to the winning combination of bad luck, jealousy and mucho bit torrent

Right in the middle of moving into the new place and during all the commotion of unpacking 400 boxes of aggravation and robots my wife had to go and have her birthday this week. Usually I would welcome the pressure of trying to make it special with presents and crap but this is not a good time during all the upheaval, stress and chaos of the move. Plus in our current situation she's the one with the job so anything I "buy" for her is technically her buying herself something with her own money, except I'm the surrogate handing it to the cashier. I didn't know what to do that could possibly be special or exciting. Then blessed misfortune stepped in and ruined my day in a lucky way. Last month we got 2 tickets to a Rob Thomas concert that's happening tonight but we couldn't get a babysitter. My wife wanted to just get rid of both tickets but I told her not to, instead we kept one so she could go to dinner and the concert with a girlfriend of hers from work while I stayed home. The Queen of Macrocrania ended up extremely grateful and I end up smelling like roses, taking one for the team and giving her the gift of Rob Thomas.

ToysRUs 11/21/86

It sounds like it'll all turn out fantastic and this'll be one of her best birthdays ever except for one small detail-I am ten billion times the Rob Thomas fan she is and she never would have heard of him if it weren't for me and half the time she doesn't even know it's him when the radio's playing Matchbox 20 and it all really pisses me off and I'm really disappointed at not being able to go. Not only am I jobless but now I am Rob-less. Now that I think about it, we need to get groceries so I am also corn on the cob-less and ever since I sold off my GI Joes I am Snow Job-less. Also, tres miserables!

WINNING THE LOTTERY IS STILL NOT USEFUL AS CELEBRITY MIND CONTROL

Accepting that I did not have the power to overthrow Rob Thomas' brain and take over his life by displacing his soul in his own body was very therapeutic for me. I'd always put that guy up on a pedestal and it was painful but I accepted I couldn't be him a long time ago. I was always kinda hoping I could at least see him in concert, though. Maybe life is trying to tell me that the road to happiness runs not through Rob Thomas' cerebellum but a lot lower. As in I need to get crappier heroes. It reminds me of this Toys R Us ad from 21 November 1986. Toys R Us knew your heroes should be furrier than you. I should have been looking up to Garfield the slob and Snoopy the dog suffering from World War II post traumatic stress disorder and that Pound Puppy guy on doggy death row. With depressed and insane heroes like that who needs self confidence? I guess if I grew up worshiping Pound Puppies I'd probably get bouts of low self opinion when my wife went to the dog pound and I'd be finding reasons to wish I was one of the animals. I could hear myself now thinking, 'Man those dogs may not have a real home and they may be sentenced to death but they're probably all better than me in that they are not lactose intolerant'.

THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL IS LEARNING TO LOVE YOUR FAILURE

So on this night when I celebrate every wrong decision I have made in life that has led me up to this point I think I will turn to the ol' standby, that opiate of the masses, that secret weapon against mental breakdown, that trump card in the game of life-BitTorrent. While my wife is away I'll download a bunch of japanimations and watch them while she's out listening with all those countless other posers to songs Rob wrote for me and me alone! Songs about my life, like that one called "Bent" that he could only have written knowing the pain of getting a dent in the plastic bubble of a carded G2 Stunticon. Somehow with the help of Bram Cohen, Tranzor-Z and several gallons of Mountain Dew I will make it through this night and emerge triumphant and know a success that all the neurotypicals who go to Rob Thomas concerts will never know. I will have the strength of character that can only come from staying at home while everyone else is at the Hard Rock watching Rob Thomas sing about my life while I am watching Japanimation toy robots cartoon marathons alone! I will turn this thing around! I will unbend that which is bent! I will free all the lactose tolerant Pound Puppies of pessimism from the dog pound of discontent that is my mind! I will make being a loser my greatest strength! GODDAMNIT I WILL FIND A BABYSITTER NEXT TIME!

REVERSE VACATION: When the movers take your stuff its like your life is taking a vacation from you

The movers have been packing up and taking away my kingdom over the last few days, transforming what was once a vintage space toaster palace into nothing more than an empty room with a bunch of holes in the wall where my shelves used to be. I will miss my shelves and the roboplasticos that used to fill them. But when I think back on my time in Rapid City, my favorite memories are not of the toy robots I bought on ebay or at KMart while I was here, what I will really remember and what makes this move hard is leaving this house where my son took his first steps and laughed for the first time and all the other countless things that make this the place he spent his first two years. I guess I should be used to it since over the last 14 years I've never stayed in the same place for more than three years. Still it is never easy leaving. Moving so much has taught me how to say goodbye but I still haven't learned how to let go. Either the roboplastic apocalypse is upon me or maybe this is just how everybody feels before they move to Florida.

DID BABY DARTH VADER THINK EVERYTHING WAS "MOST IMPRESSIVE"?

My son took one last look at all the robots in the laundry room the other night before the movers came. I know he doesn't have the faintest clue what they are but he still said wow. When the movers came they too said wow (although like the baby I don't think they had the faintest clue what all those toy robots were either). One of the movers asked me what was my most expensive piece-what was the most money I could get on eBay for my most valuable toy robot. I guess this is the gauge by which people measure the worth of something when just being impressed is not enough. We talked about it a bit but all I could think about was if this guy really knew anything about Transformers this collection would not be all that impressive. Still, judging by my toddler son's reaction and that of the furniture movers I think there may be an untapped blog audience of babies and sofa lifters who like robots that I haven't yet exploited. The problem is I wouldn't know how to write stuff catering to this niche market because I've never moved furniture for a living and it's been a long time since I was two.

THE ROAD TO MIAMI IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS (AND PROBABLY MY COLLECTION IF THAT TRUCK EXPLODES)

This is the point where I was sure I would stop blogging for the rest of eternity as I left South Dakota for a life of adventure and excitement like Luke Skywalker leaving for Alderaan (except he took some of his robots with him). This is the point where, stripped of the toy robots that were the source of my blog powers, I was sure there would be nothing to write about and no motivation to continue. But as it turns out the ideas keep coming. Or what I really mean is I keep buying crap on ebay that I want to write about even though I won't have a mailbox anymore soon. So I still have much to write about and there's still a lot of robostastic acropolypses to go around. I'll just be taking an internet break for a few months as we drive down there and get settled and find a nice safe place to live amongst the robot collecting alligators and hurricanes and drug dealers from Cuba. But no matter where I go the writing urge will still be with me and one day I'll have more ideas for you, and you'll have things you'll want to talk about. I will, too. And so I leave you now with something that occurred to me as I was looking at the empty room that once was my very own vintage space toaster palace. My fellow Macrocranians, it doesn't matter how much robots you have or what they're worth in the eyes of babies and guys who move refrigerators, if you like the toy robots you will always be a weirdo.

CHANGES FROM CHILDHOOD TO ARMAGEDDON AND BACK!

Hello my fellow Macrocranians and welcome to the Roboplastic Apocalypse. If there is one thing I have learned it is that in life and toy robots I may not find salvation but I will find lots of changes. Changes of pace, changes of heart, changes of address, changes from car to helicopter to robot. There's climate change, social change, and the ones that have ruled my life over the last few years-Micro Change and diaper change. Hence there comes a time in an Evil King's reign where he can no longer blog four times a week about 25 year old toy robot Volkswagens and their transforming dinosaur cohorts (although I would really like to). But that doesn't mean I must give up entirely. Maybe once a week is still possible, maybe on Sunday mornings. Welcome to the Roboplastic Apocalypse.

I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SAY THEY HATE IT WHEN BLOGGERS BLOG ABOUT BLOGGING

One thing that always bugged me about Please Save Me Robots was how pathetic that title sounded. I always imagined being at Botcon and interviewing some toy robots celebrity and then he asks, "Hey what's the name of your blog?" and I say "Please Save Me Robots" and then the whole room goes silent and everybody in the whole convention from the little kids to the cosplaying Cheetaras looks at me and pees a little in their mouths (or however that saying goes). After buying the PSMR domain and using it here on Bloogler and watermarking a thousand ads with it at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace I felt like I was kind of stuck, but that didn't mean I couldn't change the most fundamentally defining aspect of my online existence-the banner at the top of my blog.

"ROBOTASTIC AL-QAEDALINKS" WAS ALREADY TAKEN

I wanted to change it, but to what? My first idea was "Robotarded Anonymous" but that had a dorky toy robots support group feel to it, and the Thoroughly Informative Transformers Themed Internet Enertainment Sites' message boards already have that angle totally covered. I wanted something more rock and roll-a name and a logo that would look good in a heavy metal shirt kind of way. So I came up with "Robotastic Armageddon" but that sounded like a corny swedish death metal band. What I needed was something with the dorkiness of a toy robots support group but the rock and roll of a corny swedish death metal band. And that's where we are now. Welcome to my new old blog, updated less frequently and changed most radically. Welcome to the Roboplastic Apocalypse.

SAVED!

We're moving to Miami, Florida! Finally finally finally my wife's job gets us moved somewhere that I am really excited about. I haven't been this excited about anyplace since we lived in Tucson, Arizona. We're not leaving here until June and my wife is still far, far away saving the world from the aliens. She doesn't get back until May so the Prince of Macrocrania and I still have a bit more to go in the ice and the snow. But the move is big news and it's all I think about lately. And the more I think about it, the more I realize it means the end of the road for Please Save Me Robots, which is actually pretty cool.

CLOUD CITY IS ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL THEY CARBONITE YOU

Beginning in 2006 I found myself in an overwhelmingly boring period where I was living in Rapid City and occasionally working in support of the US Antarctic Program. Living near Mount Rushmore and hanging out with penguins might sound fun, but between South Dakota and Antractica all the snow and ice had me feeling like I was living in figurative carbonite. The reason I started bloggering was to talk about my life during this time, or actually to not talk about my life-to talk about anything else. Filling up the hours with poems and stories about Star Wars and toy robots really helped me get through. But as we get closer to the big move it feels like the carbonite is slowly melting.

AND I WENT TO SLEEP WITH A ROBOT ERECTION

I want to thank everyone who ever commented here and made me feel like I was being read by more than the ten friends that were actually tuning in, plus the occasional Megan Fox butt looker. My old ad collecting hobby isn't dying and the Vintage Space Toast Tour will continue. The only change is that between living in Miami and raising my son I won't have the time to write 900 word essays every week about some ad I found for 25 year old toy robot Volkswagens. So instead of seeing PSMR slowly wither away to only occasional postings with half baked content, I've decided to just end it altogether. If I ever do find the time and desire to write again I'll start another blog, probably more focused on the Vintage Space Toaster Palace but not updated anywhere near as often as I was able to manage here. Thanks a lot, guys. Like I said in the Paunch Stevenson Show-you really saved me.

EPIC CONCLUSION WEBOMIC-"The Witty Wickies" starring Sparky Wicky and his son Willy: Episode HELL IS THE NEW CHRISTMAS

ZOID RAGE-surviving the intensely suckstalgic onslaught when memories attack

I was nine during Christmas of 1983 was when I got my first Zoids. They were a big deal for me that year because Star Wars got old and Transformers wasn't out yet. I was inbetween serious toylationships and looking for a good time and here they were-motorized robot dinosaur models. They were fantastic. I had two of them-the Tyrannosaurus looking one and the elephant looking one. My parents also got my younger sister the duck one. I don't think the first wave models had names but at nine years old it didn't matter. Mr. Tyrannosaurus, Mr. Elephant and Mr. Duck all worked good for me. I thought they were awesome with their little gold driver pilots. I guess they were the very first robot toys I ever loved. All that changed though and when I think about those Zoids now I feel like smashing my skull in with a sledgehammer. Nostalgia isn't just the warm fuzzy feelings I get from old toy robots-sometimes it cuts the other way, too.

I remember a couple days after Christmas I was playing with all three Zoids when my sister came in the room and noticed her duck Zoid was broken. I don't remember breaking it but a very important plastic piece was snapped off and he couldn't walk anymore. Then she started crying and she said, "Why do you always break my things! You always break my things!" I felt horrible and that memory has lived with me to this day. For some reason it didn't bother me much when I destroyed my own toys but seeing her all upset made me feel like I was some sort of robot duck killing monster.

Well 23 years later in 2006 those same three Zoids got rereleased in Japan in a big box set along with two other Zoids from 1983 and at first I was excited but I couldn't bring myself to order them. Every time I looked at Mr. Duck Zoid on that reissue box I just kept remembering my sister crying. Later in 1983 when commercials for the Omega Supreme of Zoids-the Giant Zrk-played on television constantly, I really wanted it but I knew I didn't deserve it after the assassination of Mr. Duck Zoid. Later on in life I used the martyrdom of Mr. Duck Zoid to convince myself that I didn't deserve nice things like lobster thermidor and hookers. It's been over twenty years! You'd think I could get over it and order something decent at Red Lobster, but it's like my brain likes to fuck me over constantly by bringing up Mr. Duck Zoid at the most inappropriate times.

Stuck living life with my Zoid albatross, I began wondering if I was the only one for whom nostalgia is a sort of rabid brain attacking chupacabra. Everyone else is always describing nostalgia as fond recollections of good old days. Why then does Mr. Duck Zoid set off an avalanche of disastrously sucky childhood memories? Why do others get nostalgia and I get some sort of suckstalgia? Well I've been reading an old article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled Nostalgia: Content, Triggers, Functions and it turns out I'm not so alone. In fact, the paper kicks off by explaining that nostalgia the word is derived from two greek words , nostos (return) and algos (suck) and it literally means the suck you feel from wanting to go back. Nostalgia was regarded by people in the 17th and 18th centuries as a neurological fuckuppedness. Back then if you were nostalgic the doctors thought it meant something was wrong with your brain! And although doctors don't think that anymore, I think it still applies.

Glidoler? I never even knew her!

The paper explores what exactly nostalgia is and how it works. It finds that nostalgia is often triggered by a shitty mood. It's a response that's activated when a person is feeling down so that their brain can look back on happier times and try to feel good again. Nostalgia then is the refuge of a lonely and depressed mind. But why would my brain try to take me back to crappy times when I see or think about Mr. Duck Zoid? Why do old Zoids give me sudden urge to claw my eyes out with my thumbs? Maybe this isn't nostalgia I'm feeling at all but a new phenomenon that psychologists have yet to diagnose-Zoid Rage. I'm only up through the ninth page of the nineteen page paper so I don't have definite answers about Zoid Rage but it's starting to look like there are reasons for negative nostalgia. Maybe my mind needs an extremely negative experience from the past so that things now won't seem so bad by comparison. Maybe I don't really like hookers and lobster thermidor. Maybe my mind doesn't want to spend 90 bucks on a reissued box of five Zoids. Maybe I'm supposed to go to weddings and teach random guests that we must love all Zoids that JesusBabyJesus made, both great and small. But I doubt it.