I try to be as much of a moving target for social media algos as I can, battering it with strange data; the best guess TikTok could possibly make is that I'm an ancient moth with zymurgical inclinations who works part-time as a welder. At least, that's what I thought. Somewhere in that hostile nonsense it managed to constellate a route from point A to point B and put my whole deal into stark relief. I am someone who likes robots that turn into shit, and vice-versa. I was under the impression that Transformers ruled the roost - by and large a metaphorical roost, but I assume Swoop has a literal aerie in addition to the rhetorical one. But there's a whole industry now around making things not as they were, but as you remember them. Sorcerous.
I always think I'm being discreet with my fandom and I'm learning that hasn't been the case. I felt like I was sheepishly revealing the hidden extent of my perversion to Brenna, confessing all, and she paused. "You talk about Transformers a lot," she said. "Like, a lot."
There are incredibly fancy modern versions of this shit that I could never bring myself to buy; they got Devastator shit now like to flip your wig. Or flick your wib, or something. It's gonna leave your whole fucking wib in tatters. But I can't do it. I'll feel like I got got! But do I spend a lot of time looking at them, in a fruitless, almost pornographic way? The answer isn't no.
Now, where I got into a little bit of trouble is around something called a Beastbox. I can hear it now - "Are you talking about the musical collaboration between The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Ben Mirin, the one that lets you layer animal sounds over sick beats?" It's a good guess - maybe even a great one. But what I'm describing is more sinister.
The first one I saw was a box that turned into a Kangaroo that featured an irrepressible cyber-joey. That's where it started to go downhill. I'm talking about a cube that turns into a handgun and also some kind of military pigeon soldier - and then, improbably, back into a cube. And it comes with a little stackable clear plastic box you can store it in and when you get another one it has a cube too. Now it doesn't matter that my dad died when I needed him the most.
I have one that turns into a really cool Ant - Brenna got it for me for Father's Day. But it also turns into a truck that can carry other Beastboxes around…? Plus a heavy duty industrial crane?! Then, it can sleep soundly in its little house because it is very tired from changing into cool shit all day. He's tuckered out.
(CW)TB out.
