Mindless Ones

Occasionally, certain men of a certain age will run out of things to say to each other. Conversation grinds to a dry halt, and the only course of action is to resort to a comfortable zone of the collective consciousness, and wallow in the soft haze of nostalgia, of endless Saturday mornings in pyjamas, and Robots in Disguise. Let us call this place the Transformers Room. If you crack the door open and gently peer in, you can see the Mindless Ones sitting around, comparing their first Transformers and touching their winkies with excitement. Awwwwww! Come on, let’s go and join them…

Zom: Sideswipe was the 1st Transformer I ever owned. Loved and still love the bonnet-chested autobots.

Other faves:
Sunstreaker
Bluestreak (I like the streakers)
And especially Smokescreen

Botswana Beast: Are Sideswipe, Bluestreak and Smokescreen not essentially repaints of one another (I think Sideswipe was first)? Great fucken toys anyway. I suddenly recall I think Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were in-cont twins.

Zom: They must’ve come out of different moulds ’cause they were shaped differently, but they transformed the same
Amy’s first Transformer was Soundwave. I got Sideswipe the same day. Was a good day.

(TBMD: Hmm. Quite a badass. ‘Lives his life to the fullest’. Is it me or does it also seem like Sideswipe is the kind of robot who’d fuck your wife. And punch you out when you confronted him about it? With his fucking piledriver fists?

Stay away from my wife Sideswipe. )

(TBMD: Oh wow. Sunstreaker’s a sociopath? I thought the Autobots were good guys? Basically he’s likle some hardbody LA fitness-fascist isn’t he? I bet he goes to see Ratchet for a bit of cyber-cosmetic surgery every now and then.

Preening wanker.)

TBMD: Hey Optimus? You need to check your boy Bluestreak. He’s on drugs.

TBMD: So basically Optimus Prime is the Martin Luther King of robots ‘Freedom is the right of all sentient beings’. Unfortunately that all encompassing benevolent philosophy comes a bit unglued when your looking down the barrel of that grinning sadist Megatron’s fucking arm-cannon. Doesn’t it Optimus Jesus?

Amy: Soundwave pisses on optimus prime. he *is* the eighties. also his voice *is* electro. in fact he is electro. and bodypopping.

(TBMD: Oh Soundwave is so boss isn’t he? The only problem being that the only way he could suitably disguise himself nowadays is by squatting on the shelf of some hipster ironist’s wank-pad. Though it would be nice to see Ravage ejected into a room full of partying Vice readers, lazering the bumfluff off their stupid faces.)

BB: I’m kind of willing to cede that Soundwave is basically the best, Decepticons are much cooler anyway. But what I really wanna know is.. are you gonna, no, hold on: were your roles, Zom/Amy, essentially set thus thereafter, brothers at war (over the precious Energon resource)? Amy: airborne, cunning, Zom: steadfast, unyielding?

or is it not like that?

Zom: It was like that. Amy may be right about Soundwave but I’m an autobot ’til I die. Also autobots are teh coolest (sic).

Illogical Volume: Soundwave superior, autobots inferior. My first transformer was one of the decepticon jets – it wasn’t Starscream, but I’m not sure which one it was since that thing’s been scrap for over two decades now. Scorponock was my favourite as a lad. The toy was too big & too boxy by far, but that might have been seen as A GOOD THING at the time. Mostly I just thought the character was badass, because: Simon Furman.
All of which is to say that, like Marky Mark Waid, I am evil.

Amy: and i am a decepticon, yes.
but then there was this guy.
Tracks.
i loved tracks.

(TBMD:Merde! La Collaborateur!)

BB: If you can at all remember the colour, I could tell you which of Ramjet (grey/red), Thrust (mauve/black), Dirge (dark blue/orange), Skywarp* (black/purple) or Thundercracker blue/black) it was. My 6-7y.o. best pal at the time’s first was Thrust, this was something of a mismatch.

*Skywarp, pace his name, could teleport which I think they never made nearly enough of. He would of been nails-hard.

Amy: thrust was totally my fave plane.

THRUST!

(TBMD: Some heavy Nietszchean shit there Thundercracker. Would it help erase your exitsential doubt if I pointed out that your name is extremely close to being ‘Undercrackers’? No? Oh go and divebomb some underlings then you supremacist fuck.)

(TBMD: Christ will these guys lighten up? It’s like a therapy session in here! That said Dirge is pretty cool. Dirge could probably play the next ATP.)

(TBMD: Ahh Ramjet. The brains of the outfit. I get the feeling Ramjet will never be promoted to Starscream’s middle-management status.)

(TBMD: The Office joker.

Prick.)

(TBMD: THRUST! When I was 10, I never really imagined him as a pornstar, which is clearly what he is. JOHN THRUST!

He’s also well metal – ‘My engines roar is my enemies song of doom!’ It sounds good if you imagine him shouting it like Brian Blessed. But then so do most things)

Gary Lactus: Mirage was the first Transformer I saw for real.
Bluestreak or Hound was my first Transformer.
Not sure which one was my favourite.  I loved them all equally.

(TBMD: Another prancing tit. ‘Unsure of their cause’? What he’d rather ally himself with a bunch of planet-rapers like the Decepticons?

Optimus? – a word. Take Mirage outside and give him a pasting. God he’s even got a face like Ralph Fiennes. Sack him the fuck off.)

Zom: This guy is best and his mates (Grimlock)

(TBMD: Hey, remember when the Autobots let this guy be in charge? And they totally fucked up all the time and constantly did stupid, reckless ill-thought out things, and Megatron and Co just basically fucking laughed at them? Well did they ever let Benny be in charge of the firm in LA Law? No they didn’t. They made him in charge of the photocopier.

I’m  just saying.)

TBMD: Smokescreen was my first Transformer, and always my favourite. His red, blue and white colourscheme was fucking boss, and his area was ‘espionage’. Double boss. I had Starscream too, but those firstwave Decepticons were a real let down beacause of their lack of mobility.

(TBMD again – Ooooh! He’s like that nasty two-faced psychotherapist in Mad Men!

LEAVE BETTY ALONE, SMOKESCREEN!!!)

Bobsy: My virgin transformer was Mirage. His function was ‘intelligence’ – so he was a spook i guess – and he could make hologram doubles of himself to freak people out and use as decoys and stuff. underused, though he had a few moments in the early cartoons and comics.

(TBMD: Well tough shit Bobsy, because we’ve already had Mirage. You should have been a more original child.)

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Ahhhhh. Let’s leave the Mindless Ones to their infantilised droolings, and close the door of the Transformers Room.

Wasn’t that a treat? Didn’t that take your mind off your bills, debts , mortgages, drug-habits, STD’s, neuroses, concerns about the impending ecological apocalypse, worries about air-borne viruses, and the endless stark horror of the fact that we’re all just imminent worm food on a treadmill of pointlessness, despair and ignorance, sliding relentlessly towards oblivion.

Just for a little while?

Good. Glad to have been of service.