Years ago, I accompanied my friend Mike to the Sears optometry department where his father was buying him his first pair of contact lenses for his 16th birthday. If you've never had the experience, it should be known that the first time you receive contact lenses the optometrist places them in your eyes for you, then teaches you how to insert and remove them yourself. This is a naturally awkward experience, docilely allowing some stranger to put foreign objects in your eyes. For some it's not so bad; Mike had a less-than-ideal time.

My first experience was private, tucked away in a back room of the eyewear facility, discreet, clinical and intimate. If it was a porno, and the women was my age, it would have been perfect for an illicit encounter, a cheesy porn with myself cast as the young stud, newly reborn without the offending spectacles, like Patrick Dempsey in Can't Buy Me Love. My friend Mike was not so fortunate: a middle-aged, frumpy and impatient women presided over his rite of passage right in the middle of the shop, on display for anyone and everyone, including Mike's father and I. Nor was she reassuring, understanding or sympathetic to Mike's obvious difficulty with the stated task of staring wide-eyed, unafraid and unblinking, as an umfamiliar finger with inappropriately-long painted nails made made a beeline for his naked and defenseless eyes. Horrified and horribly amused, I could do nothing but cover my mouth and stifle a giggle at this optometric lunacy.

But what really got me, and this is the whole point of this post, is when she unhelpfully chided: "Listen, you control your eyelashes, they don't control you."

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As I was browsing eBay looking for more Headmasters to buy, I chanced upon a very fortuitous find: the original Japanese Headmasters Laserdisc box set. Now, I have Madman's Headmasters series, and I don't even own a Laserdisc player, so why would I care about that? Well, it just so happens that the font and back of each disc sleeve is covered with Headmaster-era box art! Crisp, clear, bold, unobstructed and savory box art. Raiden! Twincast! Targetmaster Hot Rod! Even a wonderful Fortress Maximus (Japanese variant). Thirty-two new bots in all!

600dpi scans of these pieces have all been added to the Help the Archive section. If you have the talent, the time, and the desire to help out the Archive, now is your chance. (Experienced Photoshop editors only, please.)

Or, if you're graphically-challenged, consider donating a few bucks to the Archive. This collection set me back almost $300. While I am planning on re-selling it, I expect to take a loss. But, you know, anything for the Archive.

I've been pissing a lot. More... much more than I should be. And sometimes, no matter how often I go, I have this odd feeling that I should go again, even if there's not much there. Like eating Chinese food and still being hungry. So I took a little trip to the urologist yesterday to sort this little matter out. After an introductory discussion, the diagnostic session began with an ultrasound, which, being a guy, is something I never expected to ever have, and it determined that, yes, I'm successfully emptying my bladder. Draining the bucket. Loosing the juice.

Next comes the prostate exam. If you'll remember, I've recently had some experience with this. Well, apparently the first doctor was being gentle, or maybe my prostate was just having a good day, because this new exam HURT LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER. And made me feel as if I had to go pee-pee. This, apparently, is because I have some mild form of prostatitus. My irritated prostate fools me. My deceptive, self-absorbed, evil prostate is the culprit. Fuck you, prostate! Now I have to start experimenting with drugs that will either cure the condition or at least teach my prostate a little fucking respect.

But on a more positive note, I finally got Blurr, the motormouth Autobot data courier, who probably has never experienced any difficulties with his prostate at all. Yay! See, it all evens out. Let's try another...

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There's a reason I'm especially fond of the Terrorcons: they were among the first Transformers I bought with my own money when I got my first job at age 13 doing odds and ends at a local sporting good store. I would take my small weekly pay, head over to the local Clover department store, and agonize over which of the carded Terrorcons or Technobots I would buy (and which ones I would have to leave on the shelf). While I probably would have bought them all at once if I could, in retrospect I loved getting them individually because it gave me a week to savor each one for its own sake before a new acquisition could usurp my attention.

I was especially fond of Sinnertwin, the Terrorcon sentry, but let me tell you why. Years later, in my Queens apartment, when some friends and I were sitting around tripping, the girl I was sleeping with at the time asked if I wasn't in fact reading too much into the Transformers. In response, I went to my Cybertron bookcase, selected Sinnertwin, and responded along the following lines...

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I became an uncle over the weekend. It wasn't anything I personally accomplished, of course, it happened through no effort of mine. It was a title bestowed on me in absentia, on the opposite coast, through the labor of a young woman whom I have never even met.

I can honestly say that becoming an uncle was never a goal of mine or something that I aspired to, but neither did I object to it. Statistically, with three siblings, the odds were in favor of it happening at some point in my life; even if I had died in a (statistically unlikely) boating accident years before, I would probably have been considered an uncle posthumously. An inevitable uncleship, is what I'm saying.

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Throughout most of my life, I have been very untouched by environmental concerns. See, if you don't have any interest in children, and you believe that your involvement with the world ends with your death, then what is the point of conservationism? Disposable planet for me! I've never been a nature buff, either — I dislike being around trees and bugs and sticky wet unsexy things — so what's my incentive to live green? Virtually none, from that perspective.

However, I have of late become something of the amateur environmentalist. I recycle avidly. I bought some reusable cloth bags for grocery shopping, and I save plastic bags to return and recycle there when possible. When things are broken, I try to fix them instead of re-purchasing them. Generally, I prefer buying second-hand items to new, such as CDs and books. Whenever possible I try to sell unwanted things (comic books, cat water fountains, memory cards) either on eBay or to a local store, even if I know it won't make very much money, because I'd rather it continue to be used by someone than go straight to the landfill.

I have become one of those environmental pussies. But why?

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Because he is awesome and insane, Heroic Decepticon sent me a Japanese Transformers "collecting" book (here) that featured some sporadic but desirable box art within its pulpy pages. The resolution wasn't divine, but in a few instances it was still better than what we already had in the Archive. From this assemblage, I have posted a couple scans in the Help the Archive for you to edit out the backgrounds, if you are so skilled and inclined: Springer, Grimlock, Dai Atlas, and Raiden. Editable yumminess.

Some scans that didn't really need fancy editing have already been added to the Archive, including Sixbuilder and Grandus (seen above). I also updated the Victory back-of-the-box art, but the improvement is only moderate since I'm pretty sure both the new scan and the old are from the same source... but my new scan is better, so eh, why not? If you really think you could do something magical with my original 600dpi scan, let me know.

My first real piano. It's a starter piano, very used, a little beat up, it won't be tuned for another couple of weeks, but it plays nice and it's mine. Now when I hear the upstairs neighbor's new dog clickity-clack-running around, or the guitar studio in front practicing "Hey Joe" for the zillionth time, I can think to myself, "Jus' you wait, muthafuckas. Beethoven p'ano waltzez in tha crib, an' shit!"

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I have a few new scans I'm going to post soon for editing — all improved versions of existing pics within the Archive — but as a preview I've updated the art for Sixbuilder with the full "construction site gone awry" box art. Enjoy, and more soon!