The Principal’s Office (or: “Dabid vs. Net Nanny”)

Posted on 09/18/2021 by Dabid!09/18/2021

Attending prom wasn’t the only unforeseen event that occurred because of my being part of the newspaper staff during my senior year of high school. For the one and only time in my public schooling career, I got called into the principal’s office.

For this school year, a “web-nanny” software had been installed on the school computers to keep students in the computer labs from going to websites with objectionable content not suitable for minors (stuff like pornography and… well, I don’t really know what else, but apparently porn is a big concern with high schoolers). It also blocked what I considered to be perfectly acceptable websites about video games and action figures, which raised my ire as needless censorship.

And so, as my justice-loving self, I decided to write up an editorial for the school paper decrying the content-control software as being unnecessary censorship. I don’t think anyone had said I was “cool” since I was briefly super-popular as a Freshman, but I did get some props on that article from classmates who wouldn’t normally engage me.

Some time after my article was published, during one of my morning computer lab classes my classmates discovered mysterious, thin scraps of paper on the floor. Each of them had a URL written upon it—a URL that when entered into the school web browsers, would allow the control software to be bypassed so that students could visit wherever they wanted on the internet.

My righteous teenage brain saw this as justice prevailing through some sort of divine intervention, so I immediately and enthusiastically went and told one of my newspaper staff mates about it and gave her one of the papers. She, in turn, told other students about the bypass method, who came to me asking how to utilize it. Within an hour or so, every student in the school computer labs was happily bypassing the content-controls. And shortly thereafter that, there was a teacher tapping my shoulder and escorting me down to the administrative office.

As an adult, I can look back and see how this must have looked to the school administration: a senior student who had publicly denounced the school ‘s Internet content-control system caught distributing information to potentially hundreds of other students on how to circumvent that software. In retrospect, this seems like an open-and-shut case and a suspension.

In actuality, I had a brief and honest chat with the assistant principal, where I explained that I had simply found the papers with the workaround for the filtering system randomly on the floor during a class, and that I saw no issues with distributing it to other students as there weren’t any school rules prohibiting sharing website URLs. I wouldn’t know what “Lawful Good” was another two decades, but I was definitely exhibiting it here, working within the boundaries of the school rules toward a result that I was dead certain was good and just.

The assistant principal cited my editorial and tried to convince me that despite my optimism and good intentions, some of my fellow students might try to visit harmful or inappropriate websites. But I stood firm with my simple argument: that I didn’t believe they would do such a thing (which I whole-heartedly believed to be the truth).

I’m legitimately not sure the assistant principal knew what to do with my (delusional) genuineness, because I was dismissed in a sort of agree-to-disagree fashion with no punishment, teachers were alerted to be on the lookout for students using the censorship bypass, and the issue was never brought up to me again. And so ended my only public schooling run-in with The Man.

Shawshank Redemption (or: “Dabid’s Movie Reviews & Analysis I”)

Posted on 09/15/2021 by Dabid!09/16/2021

I saw a movie this week that most people my age have already seen—about two decades ago or more. But for me, it was a totally new experience: The Shawshank Redemption. Several of my friends have cited as being contention among their favorite movies of all-time, and I’ve even had a still-sealed limited edition Steelbook of the movie sitting on my shelf for many months.

Honestly, I avoided this movie for many years based off of the drab, monochromatic iconography I had seen for it and the false assumption that this was another gritty war movie (which I always do my best to avoid). Had I know the film would have the amount of character depth and philosophical content that it does, I would have watched it much earlier. But that’s my loss.

Even so, the fact that I am experiencing this film right now for the first time gives me the unique opportunity to share my raw thoughts, review and character analysis as part of this blog. And so, let’s take a look at this movie in the form of an analytical character study of the five characters who stood out to me the most in the film (for better or worse)…

Tommy

Of all the characters in this film, it is young Tommy that I hated the most, beginning almost immediately after he was introduced. From virtually the second he first appears on-screen, this movie blatantly wants us to LOVE poor, doomed Tommy—so much so that the transparent nature of Tommy’s character development is insulting to the viewers:

“Oh no, this young kid just can’t seem to get it right and keeps messing up and landing back in jail!”

“Awwwww, he wants to earn his high school diploma so that he can make a life with his never-seen-but-mentioned-once young wife and daughter! The world is against him and he never learned to read—but do-gooder Andy is here to save the day!”

“Sniff! Poor Tommy threw a tantrum because he believes he is a complete idiot that can’t even pass his GED test! But he just needs to have more faith in himself—it turns out he passed after all!”

And of course—OF COURSE—Tommy is the character who fate (okay, the script) has decreed happens to have the direct knowledge to free Andy from his wrongful lifetime imprisonment. And as a result, Tommy fulfills what was so badly telegraphed by every moment of his screen time—serving as a sacrifice to make the audience feel sad when he is brutally gunned down, murdered by the corruption of Shawshank.

I have heard that this character is played differently in the novel (which I haven’t read) that this film is based upon, and I’m glad to hear that. Because in the film itself, I cannot stand this character or the derivative way that he’s written to pull at the viewer’s heartstrings.

Brooks

While he is a relatively minor character with only a handful of minutes of screen time in the movie, the elderly inmate Brooks Hatlen is among my favorite and the best-written characters in the movie.

Kindly Brooks served his sentence in Shawshank so long that he became institutionalized and unable to cope with the reality of being paroled and living in the outside world. While he tries to adapt to life as a free man by getting a job and a place to live, he feels afraid and out-of-place in the unstructured world he finds himself in.

Brooks decides to—and does—kill himself via hanging. It’s a sad end to the sweet, grandfather-like character—but also a laudable one. Brooks decided on what he wanted from life (and death) and followed through, regardless of what anyone else would think of his decision—a decision that is a largely controversial and debated one in our society. To me, that’s one of the most admirable things a man can do, and worthy of respect.

Warden Norton

Warden Samuel Norton has to be among the best antagonists I’ve seen in a movie, because he is just so DISAPPOINTING. When we’re introduced to this character at the prison, his devotion to an intensely stringent Lawful Good style of running the institution immediately appealed to me. Here was a man who knew how to use rules and the law and protocol to brutally exact change in his inmates!

But as the film went on, I learned that the warden himself was corrupt, choosing money and power over justice and truth. Warden Norton even goes so far as to incite murder in order to keep the innocent main character incarcerated and under his control.

Ultimately, he shows his hypocritical nature and true colors by committing suicide rather than facing justice when the truth about him comes out. This hasty action to evade paying for his crimes feels wholly different to me than the deliberate choice made by Brooks, who owed nothing to anyone and carefully determined that there was nothing he wanted to live for in this world anymore. While Brooks’ decision was respect-worthy to me, Warden Norton’s feels like pure cowardice to escape from paying his debt to society and honoring the system of rules and laws he was supposed to stand for.

What a colossal disappointment of a man—and what a wonderfully easy-to-hate, truly villainous antagonist.

Red

And having discussed the two men who committed suicide for two very different reasons brings us to Morgan Freeman’s character of “Red” (Ellis Boyd Redding). Like Brooks, Red has spent the majority of his life in prison and is doubtful that he could survive in the world outside of jail.

Red jokes he is “the only guilty man” in Shawshank, but the first two times we see him appear before the parole board he gives a bottled response about being rehabilitated and shows no true signs of remorse.

After Andy’s escape, Red gives a truthful response to the parole board, citing his genuine remorse for his crimes as a youth and admitting he doesn’t know what “rehabilitated” actually means and doesn’t care. This earns Red his parole, where he lives in the same home as Brooks did and works at the same job as Brooks did.

But whereas Brooks chose to die, Andy gave Red something to live for—a promise to fulfill. Red ultimately chooses life and to go on living as a result of this promise, rekindling hope in his heart for himself and his place in the world.

Andy

I don’t have much to say about Andy himself, but I do love that he functions as a sort of savior in the movie. (Technically Andy is a “white savior” since he is white, but I don’t think that’s relevant to the story being told here.)

Seeing the brutality and corruption and despair that goes on in Shawshank, Andy spends his decades in the prison enacting to make life better for all of the inmates while working toward his own escape. He creates an unthinkably unlikely library for the inmates to enrich themselves with intellectually, tutors Tommy to achieve necessary educational goals and even acquires the evidence necessary to end Warden Norton’s evil reign over the prison.

Perhaps most importantly on an emotional level, after experiencing the death of Brooks and prophesizing a similar end for Red, Andy implements a (successful) plan to prevent the same fate from befalling Red.

While Andy is a bit flat himself personality-wise, I can relate to his ideals and praise him for efforts to act as a sort of “hero that saves everyone” to the rest of the cast. These actions are not always successful, but it is the effort itself that make Andy a true hero—even if his name is never cleared and he is wrongly recorded by the law as a double-murderer forevermore.

So who or what is redeemed in the The Shawshank Redemption?

There’s a wide variety of answers to this question depending upon the angle or framework that you’re looking at the movie from. But from my own specific perspective, this is an easy thing to answer. Andy himself is blameless–he committed no crime and is sin-free, so he needs no redemption himself. But through his own determination and sacrifices as a sort of savior, Andy created the opportunity for the institution and its inmates to achieve redemption.

Overall

I found this to be a beautiful movie… of the prison/fantasy genre. The lovable portrayal of the inmates with hearts of gold (besides a few psychotic rapists here and there) is hard to accept as realistic, as are some other facets of the actual overarching plot. I particularly hated the insufferable depiction of Tommy and the convenience his story added to the plot.

But even so, I found myself invested in the characters and having feelings and thoughts about them long after I finished the film. There are some wonderful quotes, themes and lessons to be learned from this movie, and I genuinely love that it is able to portray both “getting busy living” and “getting busy dying” in a balanced and positive light.

I don’t know that this is necessarily the greatest movie of all-time as many rankings and lists would have it be believed, but it is certainly a content-rich movie worthy of viewing and reflection.

GRADE: A (91 out of 100)

Scalper Grandma (or: “Dabid’s Collecting Arch-Enemy”)

Posted on 09/14/2021 by Dabid!09/14/2021

As part of reflecting on my life for this blog, I’ve been reviewing some of my past adventures in collecting—and while listening to some old Star Wars collecting podcasts last night, I came across a legit gem (of a sort).

When there are new toys I hardcore want, I generally consider myself to be the most obsessed and dedicated fan in my area to snagging the latest figures. When in the zone and on the hunt, I can be downright scary with how many stores I hit in a singular day and how many times in a week. But in April 2010, I failed to secure the newest wave of Star Wars 3.75” figures… and didn’t take it well.

I had been prowling my local Toys R Us in Clifton Park, New York, daily (sometimes multiple times daily) for the hotly-anticipated Star Wars Expanded Universe wave of figures (including characters from the novels like Jacen and Jaina Solo–I was heavily invested in the Star Wars novels at this period in time, so the inclusion of these previously unmade characters was a huge deal).

And on one fateful day I found them—but was beaten to the punch by a floral-wearing, white-haired grandma who proceeded to snatch all 21 new Star Wars figures–three of each of all seven new figures in the Toys R Us exclusive assortment–from the pegs and dump them into her cart.

To say that I went off the deep end a little bit would probably be accurate. How psycho did I go? I made a post in a fury to the (sadly now-defunct) Star Wars Action News forums, and the host of the podcast got such a kick out of my righteous indignation that he did a dramatic reading of my post on the air.

I wasn’t sure if a recording of that podcast still existed anywhere, but I managed to track down the full episode on Podbean and saved that three minute snippet, which you can view and listen to below:

While I felt rather embarrassed and freaked out by my post being read for thousands of fans way back when, it turns out to be something of a blessing, as it allows me to re-transcribe what I wrote now below, years after the forums themselves have been deleted (although I have to admit that the transcription really does not convey the same amount of pathos and power as Arnie’s dramatic oral recitation of the post):

“Scalper Grandma Screwed Me Out of the Star Wars EU Wave [by R2-DB]

So I’ve been going to the local Toys R Us once a day–sometimes twice a day–every day, for over two weeks now, looking for the final wave of Legacy Collection, the Expanded Universe wave exclusive to Toys R Us. Until today, I’ve never seen ANYTHING from the wave. No repacks–NOTHING.

This morning I got to Toys R Us about 15 minutes after opening. There was your typical, spectacled, floral-wearing white-haired grandma standing in front of the Star Wars display with an empty cart, pursuing the figures.

I was PSYCHED to see the pegs totally bursting full with the EU wave, at least three cases’ worth, as there were five rows I could see. I couldn’t really get at the display, since Granny’s cart was blocking the area and she was standing there, so I figured I would walk away and leave for a couple minutes while she picked out the Clone Wars figures she wanted for her grandkids or whatever.

Five minutes later, I walked back to the aisle and she was still there–except now her cart was FULL!!!–of figures, all of which the new black-carded Toys R Us exclusive Legacy Collection EU wave.

They were all there: All 3 Dark Troopers! All 3 Jacen Solos! All 3 Jaina Solos! All 3 Space Troopers! Etc! I got back just in time to see her toss the last Shaak Ti in her cart and rifle through the pegs before leaving, with not a single new figure left behind. 😨

Not ONE Clone Wars figure was in her cart. Not ONE older Legacy figure was in her cart that I could see. Her trail of destruction was so calculated and thorough that she had managed to take all 3 of the EU wave exclusive alien Bespin Guard Utris M’Toc, while leaving every one of the human Bespin Guards behind! EVERY ONE of the 21 new figures contained in those cases had been taken!!

If you wanted to tell me that MAYBE she wanted to get all of the Darktroopers and Spacetroopers for her grandkids and have an army or something, I MIGHT be able to force myself to believe it. But the NOTION that she went there to get Sonny 3 K’Kruhks and 3 alien Bespin Guard Utris M’Toc–NO! There’s just no way. This was a total Scalper Grandma. 👿.

So my only local Toys R Us put out three cases this morning, and all the nearly two dozen new figures were wiped out in the first 20 minutes by Scalper Grandma. I’m pretty sure that’s all the cases of this wave my Toys R Us will be getting, so I’m feeling pretty crappy.

Man! I’ve missed plenty of figures before, but never quite like this. The hunt for these definitely isn’t worth the spike in my blood pressure. I think I’m gonna go for these off ebay… ”

For some time after this incident, I had a bit of a fixation on hitting stores even more frequently and earlier in the morning, so as not to be outdone by Scalper Grandma. (I did secure that whole wave of exclusive Star Wars EU figures not long after for normal retail price, including all of the pieces to put together the BG-J38 Build-A-Droid).

My wife and I briefly talked about doing a comic strip called “Collector’s Wife” portraying a relationship where one partner was involved in a collecting lifestyle, in which I imagined Scalper Grandma might appear as a sort of recurring nemesis for me.

I never encountered Scalper Grandma again. But whenever I go on a toy run and see evidence that the latest series of figures has been there and gone, I still sometimes picture an old woman, skulking away and snickering as she pushes her cart filled with all of the newest and most scalp-worthy toys.

If I had not fully illustrated yet in this blog exactly just how much collecting means to me, I hope this story drives the point home: Collecting is serious shit.

Lawful Good vs. Lawful Neutral (or: “Why Dabid Hates Dwight Schrute”)

Posted on 09/09/2021 by Dabid!09/14/2021

I’m presently watching a sitcom called “The Office”, a few episodes per week, because it is a favorite of several of my friends and I have been told that it is a sort of modern cultural touchstone that it will be useful for me to have an understanding of when interacting with others. This has been a bit of a difficult show for me to relate to, as I’ve never worked in any kind of office/cubicle environment, and the majority of the characters all seem like unbelievable caricatures to me.

Of all the characters, the one I instantly hated on sight was the Assistant to the Regional Manager, Dwight Schrute. His fussy need for logic and structure and his obsession with following rules and laws annoyed the crap out of me immediately, and I hated his awkward ways of trying to strengthen his bonds to people and his single-minded loyal devotion to his duties.

And then a terrible thing happened: my best friend said that I didn’t like that character because he behaves in a lot of ways that I do. And then I REALLY hated Dwight Schrute.

The episode I watched most recently, Season 2 Episode 20 – “Drug Testing”, serves as a good illustration of why I hate this character. Upon discovering evidence of illegal drugs on company property, Dwight begins an investigation to determine which of his friends or coworkers may have broken the law and company policy. He goes as far as even serving as the catalyst for drug testing being done in the office, an action that could potentially lead to one of his friends being fired or even arrested.

This sort of black-and-white, polarized thinking made me angry—both because of how it could lead to harm for people Dwight cared about, and also because of the fact that I could EASILY see myself doing the exact same thing at points in my life if I wasn’t careful.

Remember when I talked about role-playing games a couple entries back? In those types of games, there’s something called “character alignment”, which is a system of categorization for a character’s moral and ethical perspectives on life.

The character alignment in role-playing games that I like the best is “Chaotic Good”—characters who act according to their own conscience for what they see as the greater good, regardless of whether or not it goes against societal expectations.

So it’s no surprise that I outright dislike Dwight Schrute, who I believe is confined by a “Lawful Neutral” alignment, intractably obeying rules and laws, even if those structures will cause harm unnecessarily to people he cares about.

The resolution of the episode briefly gave me hope for Dwight, however, as he broke the rules by helping his supposed closest friend—the perpetrator—to subvert the drug testing and get away with his technical misdeed. A devastated and conflicted Dwight then resigns as a Volunteer Sheriff’s Deputy out of shame and deference to the law, which disappointed me since he was ashamed of deciding to surpass the structure of laws he’s ruled by in order to help someone close to him.

Regardless of any comparisons made between me and Dwight Schrute, I am resolute that my natural alignment is different from his. My ethics certainly also veer towards “Lawful”, as my instant inclination is always to follow the rules as they’ve been set out, and it makes me upset to see other people circumventing them and acting “illegally”. However, my moral compass points toward “Good” and not “Neutral”. I strive to work within the laws to find loopholes and ways of using the rules to achieve what I think is ultimately morally right–I’m unwilling to be a puppet to the rules.

I don’t particularly like the lawyer-like boring predictability of being “Lawful Good”—my ambition is to become something much cooler like “Chaotic Good”. But given my own savior complex and ideal of wanting to save everyone, I definitely can’t accept any “Evil” or even “Neutral” alignment wherein someone would abandon others in need out of deference to rules and regulations.

And THAT is why I hate Dwight Schrute.

Normie (or: “Dabid Watches Stuff”)

Posted on 09/08/2021 by Dabid!09/11/2021

I’ve been trying to put in an effort lately to expose myself to some media (you know–movies, TV, books, video games) that I ordinarily would not pay attention to—or would actively avoid—for a couple of purposes.

Because of the fact that my brain primarily fixates on toys and collectibles, it’s typically difficult for me to dredge up enough interest to sit still and watch something that doesn’t have any merchandising I’m interested in. There are exceptions to this when a story manages to gel with another one of my interests (my mind is not entirely one-track), but for the most part I avoid things that look scary, boring or “normie”.

For that last descriptor, please note that I’m not saying or meaning it in a derogatory fashion—it’s just that I have a difficult time relating to a lot of mainstream tastes and perspectives, and I’ve traditionally been too unmotivated (or lazy) to try to learn anything about those types of media. If there’s not a hook somewhere that manages to catch my attention, it’s a real battle to force myself to stay still and watch a thing, whether it be 22 or 220 minutes.

However. Having driven my friends and acquaintances practically insane an uncountable number of times over my life with my sheer obliviousness and inability to recognize references to popular shows and movies, I am beginning to understand the value in experiencing these things that “everybody else” (hyperbole) knows about already.

I’m not saying that everyone everywhere should try to watch, read or listen to stuff that they have zero affinity for, but I’ve discovered that having a lack of what’s considered common popular culture knowledge is an issue for at least me specifically. Why? Because it further isolates me and distances me from others, when I don’t actually want to be isolated. I think.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t love all social interaction (I dread a majority of it, honestly). But I also don’t want to be so ignorant of common knowledge and poorly-versed and inexperienced at being social that I alienate people I do want to interact with.

In addition, if you care about a person, it makes sense to me that you can learn more about them by learning about the things they love. So if a show or song or movie or video game is important to someone else, you can get to know that person better by consuming that same media to try to discover why it is important to that person and have a better understanding of them overall.

And so, I have begun my study of certain pieces of media that have been recommended to me that I otherwise would have outright rejected. Things like Alien (which apparently has a cutely named sequel named Aliens). Things like Beastars (which, incidentally, I’ve included a related Dabid Unboxes! video alongside this entry). And things like The Office. Which, strangely enough, is going to tie together these two latest entries…

Complementary Video: Dabid Unboxes!: Beastars Original Soundtrack OST – Satoru Kosaki 3x LP Vinyl Record Set

Zero Cool the Mysterious Rogue Hobbit (or: “Dabid’s 1st ‘D&D’ Character”)

Posted on 09/07/2021 by Dabid!09/14/2021

In 2017, I somehow ended up playing several games of Pathfinder, a Dungeons & Dragons-like role-playing board game. I say “somehow” because these types of games generally require social interaction with multiple other people (which I am traditionally quite poor at and anxious about partaking in).

Even so, my best (and only) local friend had ambitions to serve as a “Dungeon Master”, and somehow my wife and I ended up roped into attending a few sessions of table-top adventuring with him and two random people (“a few sessions” because the campaign abruptly ended without resolution).

My first character I ever created was a Hobbit (I rejected the use the official name of “Halfling” that the game tried to insist upon for the race): the mysterious Zero Cool, a thief and opportunist of the Rogue class. I chose the name in honor of Lelouch vi Britannia’s masked identity from the Code Geass anime, Zero, who became a symbol of rebellion and a messianic figure to the subjugated Japanese (you may have noticed by now that I have a real thing for saviors).

It was uncomfortable for me having to work on a “team” where I didn’t know half the other people at all and they weren’t familiar with my quirks or personality, so I don’t think we gelled very naturally. I actually don’t have a very solid recollection of those games at all, beyond that Brienne of Tarth the Paladin was in our party (played by a dude) and my wife was playing as some classic (I think Ranger) that could control a bird as an animal companion. Had we kept playing, I have little doubt she would have eventually had a dinosaur familiar. Alas.

I’m not sure how the “Cool” part of Zero’s name came about, but I’m guessing it was someone else’s suggestion–I would have wanted the name kept as one word to make it simpler and more enigmatic, I think. I had all sorts of potential plot twists and story arcs masterminded for Zero, but none of them were ever able to come to fruition during our brief campaign (since we ultimately only played about 3 or 4 quests before the party fell apart forever).

Even so, in just a few hours of role-playing I had developed the template and playstyle for all the future characters I’d play in other tabletop RPGs: the trouble-making rebel who breaks off from the rest of the party, striking out on their own to claim every treasure chest for good and devastate all of the enemies in the name of success for the group as a whole, regardless of the characters’ actual attributes or intended gameplay.

Rebellious in all manner of unexpected situations, confident in their own abilities and comfortable breaking the rules, this is the type of character that I naturally gravitate toward liking and playing as. It’s the kind of personality that’s always appealed to me and that I’ve always sort of envisioned as having myself.

But as much as I love role-playing that type of person in a game, doing so also highlights to me the fact that the actual ethics and morals hardwired into me that I can’t get past are nowhere near as cool as those of the made-up characters I can take control of and briefly live vicariously through. It’s a bitter reality, but having knowledge of and being reminded of it pushes me to work to grow and change so that I can surpass my limitations.

Blogs (or: “Dabid’s Blog 2.0”)

Posted on 09/06/2021 by Dabid!09/14/2021

Shortly after the events of July 24, 2010 (I’ll get to that eventually), I started my first official blog. Previously I had had a Livejournal–and I made daily posts on various defunct forums and newsgroups for years before that–so I was no stranger to writing on the internet. But this blog was a little bit different from what had come before, because I was a little bit different from my previous life.

Titled “Dabid’s Blog“, it was a hodgepodge conglomerate of various random things I crammed into it, including toy and comic book reviews (of course), lists of worthwhile things I had done on any given day, song lyric interpretations and music analyses, a discussion of the merits of Pepsi Throwback, chronicles of my first experiences with coffee and baseball, a trip to Chiji’s restaurant and much more. (Though not necessarily much more of substance, mind you–I was pretty shocked when I revisited this blog.)

By early 2012, though, something went askew inside me again. I gave up on experiencing life outside of collecting and let it fully consume me (again). I created and published a multitude of toy-related blog sites, and was quickly having my work read by millions of collectors every year. Eventually, I let Dabid’s Blog die and allowed the domain name registration I’d purchased for DabidsBlog.com to lapse without a care, as I never thought I’d be writing a personal blog again.

It took almost a decade, but at some point over the last year (and largely for reasons still to come in this book), my heart changed again. I knew I was going to write a book about my life (beyond but including collecting, which is a core component of me, after all), and eventually I settled on this blogging format.

I briefly planned on re-registering “dabidsblog.com” and reviving that site for this project, but something unexpected occurred: the Internet has changed somewhat in the last decade, and someone had already purchased that domain name–for the intent of selling it for about a thousand dollars to some poor schmuck named Dabid who wanted to have an on-the-nose domain name for their blog.

While it was a bit irritating at first to see my old domain name being used in such a manner, ultimately I decided a new title would be best for my book anyway. I toyed with the idea of “Collecting Life”, but that domain name was already being scalped for $2500–and I’m glad it was, since it not being available forced me to the final title I came up with.

What I like about “Penguin Dome!” as the title for this book is that it’s an idea I had that says a lot about me as a human (if that’s really what I am)–and it’s also the idea I’ve had that’s most personal to me and not about collecting. If not for others, it’s at least good for me to be reminded that there is more to my self than just collecting.

There’s one more metaphorical reason I’m really content with the “Penguin Dome!” title, but it hinges on something we haven’t come to yet.

But I have said enough to start filling in some of those blanks in the header image and tagline for the site, so I’ll document the original and revised versions here before we move on.

Goodbye, “Penguin Dome! – A Blog About __________, Life, ______, ____, ______, _____ and ____ “.

Hello, “Penguin Dome! – A Blog About Collecting, Life, ______, Toys, ______, Anime and ____”.

I wonder what we’ll fill in next…

A Word About Collecting (or: “Dabid Unboxes!”)

Before we go any further, I think it’s important to stop and say a few words—and also introduce a continuing series of videos—about collecting. For those who don’t know, Oxford Languages defines collecting as “systematically seeking and acquiring (items of a particular kind) as a hobby”.

Now, while that’s a fine definition and all in general and a suitable starting point for discussion, it kind of falls apart for me at the last three words. Collecting is the central driving element of my life. More than food, more than friends, more than money, more than sex, more than comic books or video games, more than anything. It cannot be overstated just how integral collecting is to my existence—it consumes me, but it also gives my life structure and joy.

When I wake up in the morning, my first thoughts are about whether any new toy or statue or collectible news has transpired overnight. When I play a game or read a book or watch a movie, my mind is always barreling forward, contemplating what would make the best merchandising items for that property and what I would want to have on my shelves. As much as I love different mediums of storytelling, its primary function–to me–is fueling my specialized interest in collecting.

I think it may be difficult for outsiders to grasp my words and really comprehend exactly how much of my life is dominated by collecting, so I decided to make a series of videos—“Dabid Unboxes!”—to give a visual representation of my obsession as a supplemental to this book (made possible by the fact that this book is a blog).

These videos will be interspersed sporadically throughout the blog, and may or may not be accompanied by written commentary, depending on if I feel it enhances them. We’ll really have to see.

You may not care about gardening statues that look like rabbit cactus monsters or stylized wrestling championship belts or post-it notes shaped like the various forms of the frozen yogurt Pokémon, but I think if you watch some of these unboxing videos, you’ll learn something about me and the way I see the world, respond off-the-cuff verbally and experience life that you may not absorb just from reading my words.

Or maybe you won’t. But I have many, many things to unbox. You can find all of the videos made to-date on my YouTube channel. And this is the first…

Prime (or: “Dabid’s Birthday”)

Posted on 09/04/2021 by Dabid!09/04/2021

I was born on September 4th, 1982 (or 9/4/82).

For most of my life I have had a strong dislike of this as my birthday for a variety of reasons, not least of which that none of the separate numbers that make up the date (9, 4 and 82) are prime numbers. 9 and 4 are perfect squares of the very first two prime numbers, which is kind of neat, mind you, but that’s simply not as compelling as being prime numbers themselves. And 82, well… that number is just boring.

In addition, no genre-defining, generational movies that would spawn decades of imagination-capturing toys and merchandise would come out in 1982 (instead, we got E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial—a movie that to this day looks creepy and I have no interest in, despite having ridden an outdated amusement park ride themed for it and being intrigued by the legend of the millions of copies of the Atari video game adaptation allegedly buried in a New Mexico landfill).

Hasbro wouldn’t unleash Transformers upon the US for another two years (although it would become the first love of my life when they did), and even the inaugural year of 3.75” GI Joe: A Real American Hero action figures wouldn’t be upgraded from unusably limited “straight arms” that only moved at the elbows to having the new “swivel arm battle grip” until 1983.

Disney opened a new park in 1982, but even that isn’t as big of a landmark as it could be for me, as it’s “just” EPCOT (“Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow”, although it has strayed quite a bit from that as its defining concept over the years). In theory, EPCOT should be one of the most fascinating theme parks ever envisioned, but the reality of the park–especially in its current state–has left me disheartened and discouraged. But more about Disney later on in this book.

So what historical things did happen on my birth date…? A handful of relatively obscure anime characters not worth mentioning have birthdays on September 4th, and a few franchises like Tron, My Little Pony and Buffalo Wild Wings (BW3, or “B-Dubs” as I affectionately call it) that would eventually have varying degrees of relevance to my life came into existence. But overall, it is a very insignificant and uninteresting birthdate.

Basically, it is an ordinary day. And if there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s being ordinary. Not because I think I’m better than anybody else, but because I’m bad at being similar to everybody else. My mannerisms, my speech patterns, my behaviors, the intensity of my interests, what and how I eat, the ways that I feel and communicate… they’ve all been deviant from societal norms for as long as I can remember. And if I’m going to be so wholly different from others, I feel like I should have a birthday that stands out in some regard too. Not in a way that’s “special”–just “apart”. I don’t like doing things halfway.

But alas. Life is full of little disappointments (as well as lots of positive surprises, too, hopefully). And if the humdrum historical context of someone’s birth date was even worth ranking amongst the disappointments in their lifetime, that’d have to be a pretty good life.

Whether or not my life has been so unspectacular–or blessed–that something as lame as a birth date is worth mentioning on my list, well… let’s read on and see.

The Penguin Dome (or: “The Best Idea of Dabid’s Life”)

Posted on 09/03/2021 by Dabid!09/14/2021

I had hoped to put off talking about the title of this blog for as long as possible, but it seems I’ve written myself into a corner and provided the perfect segue with the previous entry. And so, against my better judgment, it’s time to talk about what I fully believe is the singular best idea of my life.

In 2005, I saw a nature documentary movie called March of the Penguins with my then-future-wife, Jen. The movie documents the true story of the Antarctic Emperor penguins that need to complete an arduous journey each year in order to breed. While the natural habitat of these penguins is the ocean, the logistics of breeding necessitate that the breeding ground be a specific spot that is solid ice year-round and able to support the weight of the colony. Unfortunately, by the end of the winter in Antarctica, this spot is over 60 miles from the nearest open water.

In order to facilitate the survival of a baby penguin chick, the monogamous (monogamy is the best policy!) penguin parents need to work cooperatively, with one parent walking extreme distances to bring back food while the other keeps the penguin egg (and eventually chick) warm and safe from the intense cold. Even when a chick is successfully born, the penguins still have to survive against hardships such as fierce winter storms and dangerous predators, and the movie documents the deaths of many adult and baby penguins.

I don’t like March of the Penguins!

I like to think that I’m generally a pretty mild-mannered person, but it makes me immensely angry that humans went all the way to Antarctica for months and months to film all the footage for this documentary–and then stood by and watched and did nothing while a multitude of these penguins suffered and died. To me, and taken in light of my previously-stated ideal of “The Hero That Saves Everyone”, this is unconscionable–if you can save someone that can’t save themself, then you should.

And so! I proposed to Jen the aforementioned greatest idea of my life: The Penguin Dome.

Wherein: Rather than leaving these penguins to their own accord and allowing for uncountable numbers of them to die in the future, instead humans build a humongous dome and create an ideal habitat for the Penguins to safely breed in–a Penguin Dome–with all of the food, resources and medical care necessary to make the Penguins secure and happy. A place to insulate them from the world outside and make sure that they’re safe and can survive without getting extinguished by the reality of the world.

Why should the emperor penguins have to travel 100 kilometers or more to the water to look for fish and potentially get eaten by seals or freeze to death, when humans can just provide them with food?

Why should the penguins have to stand out in extreme temperatures of almost -80 degrees Fahrenheit to keep their eggs warm when we can temperature-control everything so that every egg and penguin survives?

If humans can heal injuries and diseases that used to be fatal; can travel into outer space; can send probes out to explore planets across the galaxy–then why can’t we do something simple like saving the lives of other creatures that aren’t as advanced as us?

Jen. Did not like this idea for reasons I cannot comprehend. I swear that I have tried, but it is beyond my capabilities to comprehend why something like this–maybe not exactly the same, but similar–would be “wrong”. This film continues to haunt me, so I have re-proposed The Penguin Dome again and again–sometimes with slight tweaks, sometimes without–for the last 15+ years.

I propose similar things often. For example, we have a surprisingly robust population of rabbits living outside in our neighborhood right now. I did some research and discovered that outdoor rabbits only live 1/10th as long as indoor rabbits because it’s a dangerous world outside and wild rabbits are heavily predated. I wanted to lure the rabbits into our house so that we could keep them safe.

I’m pretty sure that the rabbits would be much happier inside with us in an air-conditioned environment and with infinite food and total safety, even if they needed to be tricked into coming into the house to be shown that. But Jen refuses and says I am trying to “Penguin Dome” them.

Is that really such a bad thing? I wonder.

Penguin Dome!

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Monthly Archives: September 2021