Kali Ma Will Rule The Arcade

Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom
Atari (1985)
My favorite arcade game of all time was reviewed by Pat the NES Punk as a part of The Video Game Years - 1985,

One Small Step...

With Her Through The Mirror
The TGArtist
This artwork was created by a transwoman who has since retired from creating transgender art.  While I completely understand and support her decision to step away, her work has been inspiring and helpful to me and to many other people.  Her artwork, and the statement she gave when she retired from it, has inspired me to be more open to others.

Last year, I created a separate online identity with a separate blog to express my thoughts, feelings, and personal experiences with being somewhere on the gender non-conformist spectrum.  This felt wrong because keeping these feelings segregated was a form of self-shaming.  I have been working through feelings of embarrassment and guilt about my gender identity since I was in grade school, so treating this as something to hide felt like a step in the wrong direction.  When you look at it objectively, the only reason that my gender identity stands out from any other aspect of who I am is because of the social stigma around it.  If we lived in a world where expressing your gender in whatever way feels right to you didn't come with so much baggage, it wouldn't be any more worth mentioning than the color of my hair or the color of my eyes, both of which could change without too much judgment from others.

I am not transitioning, nor is the focus of this blog suddenly going to shift to being entirely about gender identity, but this is a part of who I am.  With that sprit in mind, the text below started off as something that I wrote for that other blog.  I read it again and didn't feel like it captured what it is that I'm trying to express, so I spent most of the day re-writing it.  The text below these two National Geographic covers is about my eighth or ninth attempt and I still don't think I'm doing a great job of explaining how I feel, but it's the best I can do at the moment.

Gender non-conformity has captured the attention of the American public.  On one hand, I've taken some comfort in this.  It's nice to know that I'm not alone and that there are a lot of supportive people in the world.  On the other hand, it has shined a light on the hatred, bigotry, and violence that the trans community is faced with on a daily basis, and that scared the hell out of me.  The extra attention has also inspired quite a bit of hurtful sarcasm and jokes.

Artwork by Sophie (Assigned Male Comics)

Even if everybody in the world was supportive and understanding, this is a pretty damned confusing issue to deal with in and of itself.  In my case, this mental salad has a few extra croutons of autism, ADHD, and social anxiety tossed into the mix.  Fun, huh?

I'm 36 years old and I'm still not entirely sure where I fit.  Some days, I wake up and I know in my heart that I am a woman.  Other times, I tell myself that I'm being ridiculous and that I'm just a guy with a feminine side who has a hard time fitting in with others.  I suppose the label that makes the most sense is genderfluid, but I'm not sure if that's right either.  I would feel a lot better if I was assigned female at birth but free to express her masculine side instead of it being the other way around.  Maybe I'm just transfeminine and just too lazy or scared to see it through?

If I was born twenty years later, or was standing on more solid ground as it relates to my mental health, or if I was raised in an environment where I could have felt free to express these feelings with my family without being judged or dismissed, I might have considered transitioning, but I don't think think that's a step I could take.  I have all the respect in the world for the people who overcome all of the obstacles in their lives to live their truth, but I think that the negatives would outweigh the positives when it comes to my own peace of mind.  In the words of Dante Hicks, "I can't make changes in my life like that. If l could, l would. but l don't have the ability to risk the comfortable situations on the big money and the fabulous prizes."  I express femininity in ways that are comfortable to me, and those ways are more or less prominent depending on who I am around and how safe I feel to be myself.

Artwork by Maijin Rose

This artwork was commissioned from Maijin Rose on Tumblr.  I wanted to see an artists rendition of me as a transwoman.  While I'm sure I'd explore with styles that are a little more fun than this if I were to live my life openly, I asked her to draw me in t-shirt and jeans because that's what I typically wear today.

Look, I realize that I am coming as guarded, or uptight, or ashamed of who I am, or some combination of the three.  I wish that I could snap my fingers and be absolutely confident and fearless about all of this, but being transgender or genderfluid or whatever it is that I am is far from the only thing I've had to come to terms with in my life.  I've worked through a hell of a lot of other issues and have been lucky enough to get through it and find happiness, so if I'm overly protective of the peace that I've found, it's only because I remember what life was like before I found it.

I don't really have a graceful way to end this piece, but thank you for reading it.

Still In Our Hearts

"I'm hiding in Honduras

I'm a desperate man

Send lawyers, guns, and money

The shit has hit the fan"

Warren Zevon
Lawyers, Guns and Money (1978)
Today would have been his 70th birthday.

The Gender Revolution

National Geographic
January 2017
That's a powerful quote that speaks pretty loudly to me.  I applaud this girl's bravery and I'm thankful that we're getting closer to a place of acceptance for the transgender community.  Everyone deserves to be happy and to express themselves in a way that feels right for them.

I'm A Pukwudgie

House Pukwudgie
I took the quiz on Pottermore to see what house I would be sorted into in the American equivalent of Hogwarts.  Hmm... a grouchy porcupine.  That checks out.

Magical Creatures And Where They Live

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Cinema & Drafthouse - West Hazleton, PA

I haven't read the book yet, and I couldn't think of what it was called, so when my wife asked what movie was at the Cinema & Drafthouse this weekend, I said it was "Magical Creatures and Where They Live".  In other news, that is totally going to be the way that I refer to this book and film from now on.

I really enjoyed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  It's a spin-off / prequel to the Harry Potter books and films that expands its universe beyond the grounds of Hogwarts while still touching base with many of the things that are referenced in the series.  It reminded me of what Angel was to the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series - it took a teenage universe and turned it into a fantasy film noir that's geared toward an older audience.  I'm very interested in where they take the story from here.

Do The Math

Atari Jaguar demo kiosks
Atari Corporation (1994)
I worked at Wal-Mart in 1996-1997 when stores were selling off their stock of Jaguar merchandise at bargain basement prices.  I think I paid $20 for a brand new console, not including my employee discount.  I only had two games for it and neither were very good, but I was always intrigued by its potential (photo source: @ausretrogamer).

From The Wild World Of Wonka

Wonka confection enclosures
Nestle (2010'ish)

I started working for Nestle Confections, Baking and Ice Cream right out of college.  One of their recruiters had a table set up at a career fair on the first floor of the Henry Student Center at Wilkes University at the start of my senior year.  I didn't even know they were having a career fair that day and was just on my way to the third floor to grab something for lunch, and I spoke with the woman at their table and took a business card mostly to be polite.  I was a few months away from a psychology degree, and my thoughts at the time were on possibly going to grad school, with a flicker of hope still burning that I might be able to get into the Jet Programme.

The last thing I had on my mind when I took that card was a career in consumer relations, but life has a way of forcing people to change their plans.  A few months before graduation, my grandfather passed away and my father had a stroke which took away enough of his vision to put an end to his days of driving a car.  This left my grandmother, who hadn't driven a car in over 30 years at that point, by herself when it came to things like getting groceries or to her doctors appointments.  This meant that leaving the country for 1 to 5 years was off of the table.  I had one group interview with The University Of Scranton for their Masters Degree program, but I gave a half-assed effort at best if I'm being completely honest.  The school focused a little too heavily on god and faith, and I realized after about ten minutes that this wasn't the place for me.  I needed a job after I graduated from Wilkes, so I dug out that business card and ended up getting a job with Nestle CBI that I expected to have for a few months or maybe for a year until I found a social service job.  However, after my first Halloween and Baking Season with the team, I found that I really liked the job and the people who I worked with.  I ended up getting promoted to the Social Media Team, then to the role of Consumer Experience Specialist, which is what we called our monitoring and quality coach.  Finally, I was promoted to project trainer, and I've never before been so satisfied by what I do for a living.

In my early days of working with the team, I took phone calls from consumers on a variety of Nestle products, including those that fell under the Wonka brand.  When your first name is Will, and you answer calls by saying "Thank you for calling Wonka.  This is Will.  How may I help you?", the reaction you get from a lot of folks is "Oh, is this Willy Wonka?", which is sometimes followed with a joke about oompa loompas or something of that vein.  Any future employees named Will are not going to have this experience because Nestle has decided to retire the Wonka brand name from all of our confections and ice cream products.

In the process of updating all of my training material, I came across a binder with a set of enclosures that we would mail out to families with children.  These were available in our mail room for years before I came to work here, so if I had to guess, I'd say that they were produced sometime between 2008 to 2010.  I can't imagine that these are ever going to be sent out again, or that too many folks who have received one of them in the mail have saved them, so I thought it would be nice to preserve them here for anyone interested in the history of the Wonka brand.  Click each image below to see the image in full size.

Marenghi Rhapsody

Bill Nunn
Bohemian Rhapsody
The entire Queen classic has been written onto punch cards and played on Mr. Nunn's Marenghi Organ from 1905.  It sounds pretty amazing.  I'd love to hear this on the carousel at Knoebels.