Wordless Wednesday: Might this Unreleased Campaign Poster Have Made a Difference? We Will Never Know.

Disclaimer: This is in no way intended to express my
political views.  It is merely a campaign poster that the
Romney camp did not use and I happened to stumble upon.
Enjoy.

Ignorance is Bliss, then Facebook Ruins It

As I published hear a few weeks ago, the Transformer Generation Dad Retro-Gaming Museum (TGDRGM) is up and running (and accepting donations).  I have collected several old systems of mine, pooled the cartridge collections of any friends and family that were willing to contribute and constructed an impressive library of titles that you can play on their original systems.

There is also a rumor that I am in possession of an old Xbox that has been converted to play thousands of video games from retro systems including old stand-up arcade consoles.  While this would make the TGDRGM even more impressive, this is only an urban legend (I wrote so here myself).  Regardless of the awesomeness of the TGDRGM, I was well aware of just how many consoles and games were missing from my museum.  Collecting every video game ever made would be a near impossibility, but I was pleased with what I had managed to assemble.

Then someone sent me this picture that they found on Facebook...

I cannot attribute this behemoth to anyone as its origins are a mystery to me

...and I hung my head in shame.  Here it was, the ultimate goal, the unreachable ideal I held in my head of what a retro-gaming museum might look like, the shrine to gaming history that I thought could never be achieved and someone had actually created it.  More importantly, that someone was not me.

I Could Get Used to This...But Probably Shouldn't

When I started taking online classes at Coursera a few weeks ago, I thought it would get me back into routine of being a student without the precise scheduling.  I figured it would be a low pressure way to recondition myself to committing to schoolwork and serve as a stepping stone towards going back to school for real in the near future.

Little did I know that the site would completely ruin the traditional educational format for me.

Yes, three assignments into my very first online Coursera course, I expect that I can not only wait until the last minute to finish my assignments, but I can cram all the lectures into an afternoon.  Depending how alert I am on a particular day, I can even use the video player's speed option to make the professor ramble on faster so that an hour lecture can be heard in half the time.  Granted, he then sounds like the old Micro Machines Guy, but it saves time.  If I had to show up to a lecture hall two days a week to do my learning now, I would surely distract the rest of the class with my loud, annoyed sighs.

Furthermore, I don't see how I ever made it through all my previous schooling without the ability to multi-task while attending class.  I can get all sorts of things done now as I carry my laptop with me around the house and listen to the professors.  I do laundry, eat lunch and browse other websites.  If the option of cracking open a beer in the middle of class were now taken away from me, I'm not sure how I would react.  Don't even get me started about how many lectures I've already listened to while sitting on the toilet.

Yes, the site is amazing.  Yes, you can take classes from real life professors from the likes of Harvard, Princeton and Yale.  Yes it is undeniably convenient.  Yes, I am learning a great deal and having a lot of fun.  However, I am no longer able to function as a real world student and I am afraid of what this may mean for me when I attempt to return to school and pursue an actual degree.

My biggest fear is that since I have become so accustomed to dressing down, often taking in sessions from the comfort of my own bed, that those terrible dreams I used to have about showing up to class in my underwear may finally come to fruition.

TGD is Now Accepting Donations

With my Retro-Gaming Museum now fully functional (and fully awesome!), we here at Transformer Generation Dad just cannot get enough of the old school majesty that was.  My sons have held still to date for several history lessons and have even come to accept the realization that learning their times table via the Atari 2600 is a better option than flashcards.

Now I turn to my loyal readers for help.

Sure, I have collected a good number of classic video games, spanning five different consoles (Atari 2600, NES, SNES, N64 & Gamecube), but for history's sake I am constantly looking to amass even more titles.  I may even be willing to gather some other as yet unrepresented consoles.

Do you have any games you are looking to get rid of?  Would it pain you to think they may end up in a landfill?  How environmentally responsible of you.  Are you hoping to send them to a good home where they can be repurposed for the education of our youth, that they might learn to appreciate the games you used to play as a child?  Are you eager for your old game cartridges to be fired up again for the sake of enlightening future generations of their gaming roots?

The Transformer Generation Dad Retro-Gaming Museum (TGDRGM...yes, that is the official name henceforward) would be happy to accept your donation.  Let us dust off those cartridges, blow gently across their contact surfaces and install them in their rightful place: the reception port of their intended functioning consoles and the halls of gaming history.

Your donation would be greatly appreciated.  While the TGDRGM is not considered a charitable institution (yet), you will receive for your donation our undying gratitude and the promise that, if you are ever in our neck of the woods you might have the honor of watching your cartridge live the remainder of its golden years in a happy home and even partake of a few beers from the nearby fridge.  Who knows, if you donate a significant number of cartridges, perhaps a TGD t-shirt might be in order.  If you are interested, feel free to email me at madcap1417@gmail.com and I would be happy to discuss the details regarding how to donate your piece of gaming history with you.

Here's to we gaming geeks working together to keep our history intact.  Do it for the children...in all of us...but especially in me.

Space and Math: Both Daunting Frontiers

I was saddened to learn over the weekend of Neil Armstrong's death.  The legendary American astronaut took his fateful steps upon our moon's surface nearly a decade before I was born.  This may explain why, during the first several years of my life, I believed him to be the slightly less amazing brother of Stretch.  Once I reached school age, however, Neil Armstrong was a hero in my mind, even if his arms couldn't be pulled between myself and my brothers to cover the expanse of our basement.

In fact, Neil Armstrong was to me, as a child, what many children need to get through their schoolwork: inspiration.

Self described as a "nerdy engineer," Neil Armstrong was a role model.  His life and accomplishments were goals I kept in mind when faced with challenging lessons.  I didn't know if I would ever have an opportunity to walk on the moon.  If lucky enough to be faced with the opportunity, I realized I might very well shake my head, hold on to the nearest fixed object and loudly protest, "I'm not going out there!"  Nevertheless, the embodiment of hard work, dedication and persistent study habits lived for me in Neil Armstrong and during the tougher moments of my education I often thought to myself, "If I am ever going to do something amazing and groundbreaking like that I had better learn this s***."

Whether it be the direct result of the inspiration of Mr. Armstrong, fear of disappointing my parents, plain old luck or, most likely, a combination of those, I did well in school.  I haven't done anything particularly amazing or groundbreaking (yet) but I certainly think that my studies were not in vain.  I feel I use my education on a daily basis, though few would recognize it, and I want to encourage my sons to work as hard as I did in school, if not harder.

The first few days of their new school year having passed, I see already that my sons need a real world example of where their hard work might lead.  As they struggle to begin and/or perfect their times tables they protest extra practice and would give up if the option were presented to them.  In fact they already show a great deal of dedication and persistence toward getting the option of giving up to be made available.

Over the coming weeks as math drills abound and many a tear of frustration will no doubt be shed (by me and maybe even my sons), I plan to tell them more about Neil Armstrong.  With the unprecedented speed at which technology is progressing, they may very well have the opportunity to achieve something amazing as he did.  Perhaps one or both of them (Pioneer astronaut brothers? Be still, my heart.) will be featured in historic footage much like the nerdy engineer was so many years ago.

But this time, the backdrop may be a rusty red instead of gray.

Sometimes, the Bad Sport Wins

Over the last several years, I have watched as the St. Louis Cardinals and Green Bay Packers, teams that are direct rivals of teams that I root for, have won championships.  But the stinging pain or jealousy that forced me to avoid watching Sports Center for weeks at a time and grit my teeth at the mere mention of their success pales in comparison to how I felt recently.

Last Thursday night, the Miami Heat won the NBA Finals, Lebron James won his first professional title and my summer of sulking over what might have been officially began.

I did not watch the final game.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  The news came as I arrived at work for the night, checked my trusty ESPN Score Center app and cursed the heavens, much to the bewilderment of my coworkers.  Never had I hoped more for a win out of the Western Conference, but Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden (don’t forget ex-Bull and defensive specialist Thabo Sefolosha) had let me down.

As I sat at work and tried to harness my fury into the constructive task of staring blazing laser holes into the tabletop in front of me, I realized that my anger over the Miami Heat’s success was not like the frustration I felt over the Cardinals and Packers.  I wasn’t dreading the fact that I was going to hear it from Heat fans.  It was not the fuel of rivalry that stoked my frustration of the Heat’s win.  No, I was legitimately upset because Lebron James won.

You Are What You (R)Ea(d)t

Writing non-fiction or satiric commentary on this blog requires sensory input.  Things of that matter are easy enough to come by.  Someone famous on television annoys me, I hear of an awesome new movie to be released, my kids say something funny or ridiculous or an average day to day event causes me to obsess over the twists and turns my life has taken through a neurotically judgmental lens.

However, much like our digestive systems, the output is directly affected by the input.  If that taken in is all stuff and nonsense like mental junk food, that which is produced will be just as unpleasant like mental diarrhea.  Sure, it flows out freely, but it really stinks.

I write this as my wife and I have taken a jaunt (there’s a bygone word…let’s all resurrect it together, shall we?) to our old college campus.  I look around at the young scholars and hallowed halls of learning that I once navigated and realize that I used to be smart enough to attend school here.  My next thought is, “What the hell happened?”

So, for the remainder of the late morning and early afternoon, I’ll be soaking in the springtime weather, the gothic architecture and menacing looking paintings of former university administrators while reading some H.P. Lovecraft (expect a sci-fi/horror story this Thursday).  Perhaps it will inspire me and I’ll get a chance to update the weekly features before it is time to return to my life as chauffer and baseball coach when the kids get home from school.

Of course, if my writing process is anything like the digestive process as I suggested (and as I suspect it is) then regardless of what I take in, the product is still going to stink, just not as badly.

It All Comes Out in the Wash

As most people out there are well aware, parents of younger children perhaps even more acutely so, there are some days when free time abounds.  You make every green light.  Your carry out order is ready faster than usual.  You head down to the laundry room to find that the clothes you were going to throw in the wash have already been cleaned and your kids come home and say they were assigned no homework.


On such days, one gets to enjoy the extra time to relax.  The book that's been sitting on the nightstand is cracked open.  That last episode of your show gets watched.  You finally get passed that level or maybe you just take a nice long nap.


 There are days when the world makes you its b----.  You wake up late to take the kids to school.  The errands you had to run take longer than they should have because of the two cars that seem to be purposely driving at exactly identical speeds right alongside one another.  You don't realize you are in over your head on the do-it-yourself project you undertook until nearly every piece of your driver's side door is laid out on the street and you realize you have no clue how to put it back together again.  That giant television you picked up from your in-laws' house was much harder into your garage than you anticipated it would be (because your age is more of a factor than you anticipated it would be).  The tent you promised you would set up for your sons is found to have broken poles and you still have to get ready for the baseball game you're coaching.


But here's something you might not know, though parents of young children may figure it out sooner: It works out.  It always seems to anyway.  Somehow all the stuff you needed to do gets done and you still end up spending time with the people you love.  And the win for your pee wee team ends up as the icing on the cake.


When you lie down in bed that night, you will definitely be exhausted and you will probably be sore from all the running around, but there will be that sense of accomplishment.  And when you wake the next morning, you will feel like a million bucks.


You will smell like humid gym locker because you completely forgot to shower in your exhaustion at the end of the previous day, but you'll feel like a million bucks.

Sweet Distraction

Producing material worth posting here is not always my top priority.  As a husband, father and pee wee baseball coach, it simply can't be.  Other things are constantly popping up that take priority.  Of course, even when I have some spare time on my hands, the quality of my posts could still be questioned (and I would be the first to question it).


Then again, even with time and a willingness to post crap, I still find myself sitting in front of my computer from time to time with absolutely nothing to say (hard to believe, I know).  I am reminded at times like this of advice I received from my fiction writing professor in college.  "Creating quality output requires quality input."  This was said to remind us to read while we write and heeding this advice has served me well over the years.


But, when you are wide awake at one in the morning because of your terrible work schedule and your wife is sleeping next to you on the bed that you don't feel much like getting up from, turning on the light to read a good book is not a viable option.  When the television remote is within reach, however, and you know that's something she can sleep through, you hope that at least one of the eight thousand channels has some quality programming available in the wee hours of the morning.


So it was that I navigated past infomercials (a word that does not get underlined in red when I type it, which scares me), took in some late night talk show interviews, caught up on episodes of Modern Family and became puzzled by the trend of NBA players wearing nerdy glasses during post game interviews (now there's some fodder for a future post, but in the meantime...those belong to us, jocks!  Give 'em back!) before I found the way I was going to end my night.


Thousands of torchlights burned in the valley and an ominous thunderbolt burst across the dark sky.  Beads of sweat broke out on the foreheads of several hundred soldiers at once as they stood along the wall and prepared for battle.  With a monstrous cry providing the signal, the Uruk-Hai marched forward on Helm's Deep.


And that's all she wrote.  Good night, everybody.

Dreams & Nightmares of Pee Wee Glory

During a rainy evening in March, the inklings that I had made a grave miscalculation began to creep up on me.  I sat that night on a rusty metal folding chair in a large, echoing room in a musty park district field house and listened as the names of the children who would constitute my Pee Wee baseball team were read off to me.  I had only begun to realize how completely managing said baseball team would consume my life.

But I remained positive and shortly after our team’s first practice, I began to have the dreams.

We had won the league championship and the tiny arms of my players, strengthened by the adrenaline of their victory, hoisted me into the air as the crowd cheered wildly.  The parents who had been skeptical at first of my abilities as a manager rushed to be the first to pat me on the back and I rode off into the sunset on the motorcycle they had all chipped in to buy me in appreciation for my hard work and dedication throughout the season.

The night following our first game, the nightmares took over.

Sorry, Earth...I Suck

It’s Earth Day and the Earth really is something to celebrate, isn’t it?  It has been a spectacular place to live (at least for the past 2.4 billion years or so, prior to that the lack of free oxygen would have made it pretty smelly and awfully suffocating) and has provided us with some really awesome natural wonders.  You have Mt. Everest, the Amazon, the Serengeti Desert, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore and the Great Wall of China.  Wait, those last two were us…well, you get the picture.

I am a lover of the outdoors and all things nature (except mosquitoes; I hate those little bastards).  While I haven’t exactly hugged any trees, I climbed a lot of them when I was a kid and played outside any chance I could get until the invention of the original Nintendo Entertainment System.  However, if I am to be honest with myself, the conservation of this great planet and its current state of affairs has never been as high a priority in my life as it probably ought to be.

Whether it be Styrofoam, alkaline batteries or dog poop I am not great at making the effort to properly dispose of potentially harmful substances.  I will give myself credit for not carelessly discarding obsolete electronic devices, though.  I keep most of them tucked away in the storage spaces of my house or garage, convinced that in the future, when the zombie apocalypse hits, I may be able to assemble some sort of time machine out of the harvested parts and go back to create an antidote.  At the very least, they will provide heavy objects I can hurl at the heads of the lumbering monstrosities that mean to eat my brains.  Kudos to me.

Save the Drama

Several years ago, I started watching a new show at my wife's request.  I had never been a big fan of medical dramas, but my wife assured me that this one portrayed the doctors as real people with real life problems.  It was supposedly engaging and entertaining.


"Doctors are real people?" I asked myself.  "This I have to see."


For six long seasons, I watched the lives of the characters on Grey's Anatomy with great interest.  I watched as the over-worked, over-sexed, melodramatic interns turned to residents.  I followed the flurry of relationship-related stress and did my best to keep track of who was dating who and which one hated the other.


Then, somewhere near the end of the sixth season, I threw my hands up and folded.  "That's it," I said.  "I'm done.  I give."


It had broken me.  The constant drama, the overwhelming strife, the ridiculousness of the challenges faced by the constant rotation of characters who seemed to enter and exit through a revolving door proved too much for me.  I can't even tell you exactly which plot detail shoved me over the edge.  Perhaps it was the exploding bomb technician.  Maybe it was Meredith's nineteenth nervous breakdown (any Stones fans out there?).  Maybe I never recovered from the grief of George's horrific, disfigured death.  It could have been the constant repetition of Owen's teeth-gritting, bearded, pained expression.  Or maybe it was a culmination of all those things.

I've Created a Muttation

Once again, an attempt to manipulate my family’s actions in order to accommodate my selfish intentions has backfired.

Christmas morning revealed a hardcover set of the Hunger Games trilogy under the tree for yours truly.  I didn’t get to them right away but once I did, like most geeks reading a story set in a dystopian future, I was absolutely hooked twenty pages in and burned through all three volumes pretty quickly.  My goal was to complete the trilogy before the first film was released.  I did not only that, but managed to complete Mockingjay before allowing myself to see the teaser trailers for the first movie.

I was prepared to see The Hunger Games in the theater upon its release except for one fatal misstep in my planning.  Who would I see it with?

My wife had not read the books and since I am a staunch believer in book first, movie second (provided the movie is based on the book, not the other way around…books based on movies suck), I needed to get her to read at least the first tome.  I was reluctant to sit by myself in a movie theater and feel like a creep, a feeling which would only be magnified by all the teenage girls likely to be in attendance, to go see The Hunger Games on the big screen.

My Boys of Summer

Leaves are budding on the trees.  The voices of children can be heard frolicking outside.  Tiny black ants are being massacred by the dozens around the perimeter of my home as they make their futile attempts at invasion.


What does this all mean?  Spring is in the air, which, in turn, means baseball season is upon us.  You may be the type of person who enjoys watching spoiled millionaires spit and grab their crotches in public, and I will not deny you that guilty pleasure.  However, it is not MLB Spring Training of which I speak, but something infinitely more important: Little League!

How Cleaning House Led Me to Rediscover My Manhood

Everyone has a place in their home where all the crap goes.  In our home that place is our office.  It is technically a third bedroom that we have filled with desks, computers and bookcases.  Thanks to the fact that we have two boys and bunk beds, we can retreat there from the noise of the average day and try to be productive doing things like paying bills, writing a blog and spending way too much time on Facebook.  At least we can do so when the crap hasn't piled up.


To clarify, this is metaphorical crap I am talking about.  Certainly, we have a room (two of them in fact) where the literal crap goes.  Some crap technically ends up in the yard, but that is 99% of the time at the hands of our dog ("hands" here is also used metaphorically in that dogs have paws and hopefully neither hands nor paws are ever involved in said crap's placement...ew).

Life is a Journey...Down a Spiral Staircase...After Slipping on a Banana Peel

My last post described the events of a day that sucked.  Having the support of my family around me helped me keep my sanity, but they couldn't put any more hours in the day despite my begging them to do so.  Thus, the days that have passed from that to this have left me with little opportunity to sleep properly, much less write any blog posts.


The past week of my life has been a sleep deprived haze of work, neglected promises, pulling uniform pants from the dirty laundry pile and trying to make them look presentable for one more day, apologizing to my kids for not telling their mother about the thing they needed for school the next morning and swearing that I just closed my eyes thirty seconds ago when the alarm was suddenly going off.


Sometimes, life runs away on you.  Then again, sometimes it runs away from you.  Then even further again, sometimes it runs away with you tucked under its arm like a screaming football of a toddler crying to get just that one toy because life never lets you get anything you want and you hate it, you hate it, YOU HATE IT!

I Got People

Everybody has a bad day once in a while.  Even the most prolific planners have things turn south on them from time to time.  And once the first unfortunate event occurs, more inevitably seem to pile on.  It begins raining, then starts pouring.  Before you know it Murphy's Law Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks you in the proverbial face and all bets are off.


An old college friend of mine had a saying that has stuck with me.  Translated from his native Turkish tongue, it went, "An umbrella up the a** cannot be opened."  That was a very graphic and disturbing manner of saying that things can't get any worse.

Is Kirby a Chicken?

There's a picture circling the internet, which I happened to see on the site where most of my insight into any world news not having to do with sports, cartoons and Lego comes from (I speak of Facebook, of course), that has disturbed a lot of people.  If you haven't already seen it, allow me the opportunity to show you the horrifying image:

So you are probably thinking, "What's so bad about that?"  You might be thinking it's some sort of insulating material or maybe even Play-doh.  I readily admit, the image is pretty innocuous on its own.  The repulsion comes after finding out exactly what you are looking at.  Ready for it?

Only a Few Hours Left to Nominate TGD

Readers, if you haven't done so already, please click the big yellow star at the top of our right hand column to nominate Transformer Generation Dad for the 2012 Weblog Awards.  It would be a great honor just to see this blog as an available nominee.


You need to nominate at least three unique blogs so, as I mentioned here before, feel free to use our list of Fellow Bloggers (also a feature of our right hand column) to come up with some other nominees.


If you need further help in determining which categories to nominate TGD in, here is a list of the categories I'd like to compete in, so you can type our url into any or all of these:

• Best Parenting or Family Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best Writing of a Weblog
• Best Kept Secret Weblog
• Weblog of the Year

Thanks again for your help and support.  Nominations close at 10:00 PM EST so you have about four and a half hour left as I write this.


Make me proud.

The 2012 Bloggies are Accepting Nominations!

The twelfth annual Weblog Awards are now accepting nominations!


Why do I tell you this?  No reason, just thought you might like to head over there and nominate some of the cool blogs you read from time to time and allow the authors of said blogs to receive some credit for their efforts.


Wait!  OMG, I have a great idea!  You could nominate this blog!


See what I did there?


Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as I have been known to do form time to time, I have decided to participate in shameless self-promotion and downright begging and pleading in order to get you, my loyal, avid, attractive readers, to nominate Transformer Generation Dad for the 2012 Bloggies.  How awesome would it be to win any category or maybe even be recognized as a runner-up?


Transformer Generation Dad needs your nomination sometime between now and January 15th in order to even be considered for voting.  So please head to the 2012 Weblog Awards site and nominate TGD for any one or all of the following categories:

• Best Parenting or Family Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best Writing of a Weblog
• Best-Kept Secret Weblog
• Weblog of the Year

Some of those may be a bit presumptuous, but a blogger can dream, can't he?


But don't stop with a nomination for Transformer Generation Dad.  The nomination process requires that you nominate at least three unique blogs, so take a quick gander at our right hand column at our Fellow Bloggers section where there is a veritable cornucopia of potential nominees.


You might nominate Achoo! - Adventures of an Allergist Mommy for Best Health and Wellness Weblog.  Mamihlapinatapei and Adventures in Parenting would both be good Parenting or Family Weblog candidates (provides Transformer Generation Dad makes your list too).  Perhaps I Should Really Get Out More, Incidental Comics or TGD's own graphic design specialist SOC Design would fit for the Best Designed Weblog.  BlueZhift would certainly qualify for Entertainment Weblog.  The choices available are many and all very qualified.  I will merely make suggestions and not impose my will up your nomination process.


Just remember my most important suggestion:  You should nominate Transformer Generation Dad for one or all of the above suggested categories...if you know what's good for you.