Chogokin Holocaust!!!

Well, it's been an interesting day. The 'Rents were passing through on their way from Florida back home to Connecticut, and they stopped by to take me out to dinner. We dined at The Cheesecake Factory, they'd never been, and I'd only gone for the first time a few months back. If you've never been, it's actually quite a surprise, the name conjures up images of an old style bakery, specializing in Cheesecakes that also serves sandwiches. In actuality, the Cheesecake Factory has a very diverse menu with well in excess of 200 distinct meal options. We really enjoyed ourselves, I had the Bang Bang Chicken and Shrimp ( a spicy Thai style dish), my Mother had Chicken Madeira, and my Dad had the Hungarian Goulash. We split 3 different types of cheesecake between the three of us, and enjoyed them all.


I returned to my office and was met by a scene of carnage that nothing could have prepared me for. As I entered my office, Chogokin were scattered everywhere! My priceless collection of robots were strewn throughout my office. The Temple of Grendizer itself was desecrated!!! My Daigokin Grendizer had taken over my seat at my desk, GaiKing was sprawled across my trackball, my Garada K7 was riding my tape dispenser like it was a horse. My Grendizer mini-metal was standing atop the docking cradle for my PDA. Mazinger Z's scrander was balanced (shockingly well) atop my LCD display, some of the smaller Shogun Warriors were perched atop push pins on my bulletin board, somehow the 3” tall Getter Poseidon was standing atop the canister of lens cleaner. I don't know when I last laughed so hard!!!


Tomorrow, I'm bringing my camera in so I can post pictures of the carnage. I'm also pretty sure who did it, and I'm hoping to walk in and act traumatized at what was done to my robots. :P


This business of workplace automation has gone too far!!!



I had to fight my way past GaiKing to use my trackball!

I'm still trying to figure out this balancing act; I can barely get this guy to stand up on my desktop!!

Finally, Someone who can make a Duran Duran song sound good

Well, as someone who survived adolescence in the 80's, I'm amazed that anyone could take one of those monstrosities that Duran Duran passed off as singles and make them sound good, but if anyone could, I guess this is the man.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go put on some Old Spice.

Ahoy!!!

My Next Car

I finally found what might almost be a suitable replacement for my Bronco. I'm a little unsure of the exact retail price, or what first year depreciation might be, but I think this might be a Chrysler I could happily own. Not sure how thrilled I am with a convertible, and I hope they offer other color options. But, it seems like it would be great in Rush Hour traffic. Take a look:

It looks like we're about to find out more about Banks's shadowy past

Don't look now, but Banks; Physics teacher, Olympic Bobsled coach, GQ Editor, bacon-o-holic, anthropomorphic canine, and pilot of Barkeater Lake's only airline; seems about to reveal more about his mysterious past. It seems there is some bad blood between Banks and and a member of the Rolling Corpses. I mean the Rolling Stones...

Seriously, check out Barkeater Lake, it's worth a chuckle or two.

Banks's Past

Barkeater Lake

Any day you can walk away from....

Well, it's certainly been a mixed day. Work started out pretty rough, after beating my head against this one particularly nasty action item for around a week, and feeling as if I was making no progress, I discovered it was totally unnecessary. On a positive note, I found the reason the action item had been so challenging was that it was in a format about 3 revisions past obsolete – no wonder it had looked totally incomprehensible. From that point forward, I managed to blow through 3 other action items, so my day was vastly improved.

So, I'm leaving work and get to my car, and some nitwit has shoehorned his Chevy into the space next to mine, leaving between 6 and 9 inches between my driver's door and his passenger door. Idiots like this make me completely understand vandalizing someone's car (not that I did, but I sure would have loved to have introduced Mr. Chevy Trailblazer to Mr. Tire-Iron). This was followed by an endless litany of idiots on the road – it was like “Night of the Moron Drivers” - I'm driving on a deserted two-lane road, and two cars in front of me someone stops to make a left hand turn in the left hand turn lane, only he's about a foot or so into the left hand travel lane. Rather than swerve a foot and a half around this guy, the guy in front of me stops completely, blocking the entire lane, nearly causing me to rear-end him. This is followed by the idiot who, as I'm about to change lanes has to accelerate so there isn't room for me.

I get home to find an unexpected Fedex package in the hallway, containing a VERY AWESOME Captain America T-shirt (my godmother comes through again)! I almost walked right by it – I have three housemates and I hadn't ordered anything online recently. Thanks, Aunt Pat!

All in all, the roller coaster of my day certainly ended on an upnote.

A good way not to get repeat customers...

So, today, I got a very long overdue haircut (I had threatened my better half with shaving it all off), I got it cut about half again as long as a standard crewcut, and the girl at Supercuts pointed out that I was losing my hair; with anyone else this would not have gone well, but me, I'm looking forward to the day I can pull a Jean-Luc Picard and never have to worry about it again. Still, it is far from the ideal method of inducing repeat clients - I more picture 22-year-old Anna-Nicole-Smith-look-alikes saying to 50 year old guys with 6 strands of hair, "Oh, no, that comb-over is sooooo sexy!!"

Well, I'm prepared for it, someday, I'll be simonizing my head instead of using dep. In fact, I'm looking forward to it - it's sure to be less work.

Good deeds

It's amazing how that little act of random kindness can brighten a person's day. Yesterday, as I was leaving work, I noticed someone behind me in the lobby; and stopped to hold the door open for them. Apparently, this woman had had a very rough day, and this microscopic courtesy acted as a salve to her emotional stress. Her gratitude for this moment's effort was completely out of proportion to the amount of effort involved in performing it. As a matter of fact, seeing how much my minor act had put a bright spot in an otherwise grim day brightened my day far more than it should have.

It's almost silly, person #1 holds the door for person #2. Person #2 responds by saying, "Thanks, I really needed that," and relating that they had had a really rough day. Person #1 and person #2 both walk away feeling much better than they had 30 seconds ago.

The human condition - go figure.

Let's break the journey now on some lonely road.

Sit down as strangers will, let the stress unload.

Talk in confidential terms, share a dark unspoken fear.

Refill the cup and drink it up. Say goodnight and

wish good luck.


Synthetic chiefs with frozen smiles holding unsteady courses.

Grip the reins of history, high on their battle horses.

And meeting as good statesmen do before the T.V.

eyes of millions, hand to hand exchange the lie ---

pretend to make the clasp.

- Jethro Tull - "The Clasp"

Units of Measure

For the Robot geeks out there, I present to you the Chogokin System of Measurement. Now, first off, it was up to me, the basic unit of measure would be the Grendizer, however, I did not create the Chogokin System of Measurement (CSM), I am merely bringing it to the attention of the world at large. The basic unit of measurement is the Mazinger. In terms of size, one Mazinger is the equivalent of approximately 7 inches. However, the CSM is most useful as way to estimate values across different systems of currency

1 Mazinger (1 Maz) is equal to approximately 50 U.S. Dollars.

1 GaiKing (1GK) is equal to approximately 100 U.S. Dollars.

1 Grendizer (1 Gren) is worth 4 Maz, or approximately 200 U.S. Dollars. (Rates of exchange may vary)

This is very handy, for instance if you were car shopping, you could purchase a 2001 Ford Escape 4x4 XLS for around 44 Grendizers, a far more palatable number than 8800 US Dollars.

Imagine the joy of confused looks on everyone around you when you complain about your mortgage payment: “It costs me 32 Mazingers a month!!”

If you're 6 feet tall, you are approximately 10.3 Mazingers tall.

You might want to buy your sweetheart an engagement ring, but is it really worth 180 GaiKings? A very serious question.