The more I think back to my youth, the more I wish I wouldn’t have taken it for granted. I used to hate that I grew up in the 80’s, because big hair, loud and obnoxious clothes and a severe lack of technology. My kids would die if they knew that I made all the way through high school without the internet. In fact, I made it all the way through college. I literally took a class in my senior year of college called Introduction to the Internet. We learned how to surf the web.

In a huge contrast to my life now where I’m partially implanted into my couch or work chair, I was actually was one of those 80’s kids that went outside from time to time. I would grab a bike, leave the house without telling my mom, and go for a ride for hours at a time and only come home when it was time for dinner. There were even times when I didn’t GASP wear a seat belt when I was driving. Speaking of driving, I got my driver’s license at 14, and didn’t even drive with my parents like I was supposed to. In fact, I got a ticket from a cop before most people even got their driver’s license’s, at the tender age of 15.

The 80’s cartoons were way better than anything they have now. There was Transformers of course, but also He-Man, GI Joe, Duck Tales, Thundercats, Smurfs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a slew of other epics. In the 80’s, I would wake up at 7 am on a Saturday and be able to watch cartoons straight until noon. Now if you wake up at 7 am on a Saturday, you get infomercials, Animals in the Wild, and the Pioneer Woman (don’t get me started about her). Cartoons don’t exist except on the Disney Channel and most of them are hot garbage (except maybe Phineas and Ferb).

Obviously, you know my favorite cartoon of all time is Transformers, because I barely ever talk about it on this channel. One of my favorite Transformer gimmicks was the Combiners. There were a bunch of them. The OG was Devastator (made out of 6 construction vehicles), and when he became a hit, they saw dollar signs and made a bunch more of them. There was Superion (made of 5 jets), Menasor (made out of 5 stunt cars), Bruticus (made out of 5 old war vehicles), then Defensor (made out of 5 emergency vehicles), then Computron (made out of 5 technological vehicles), then Abominus (made out of terrifying beasts) and Predaking (made out of lion like beasts).

I was so obsessed that I actually learned a new word because of them. The German word Gestalt basically means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. These combined monsters were much stronger than the collective strength of the 5 or 6 Transformers that made them up. The reason I thought they were so cool was because in my mind, they were so original and unique, like nothing had ever been done like that before. But I just asked AI this morning, and there was something called Getter Robo from 1974 that had combined multiple vehicle like robots.

As we all know, nothing in this world is really “unique”.

There are only 7 basic story plots, there are only seven different types of ways a song can be structured, every English word comes from a combination of only 26 letters in the English Language, etc.

Uniqueness comes from remixing, combining, retelling stories from different angles, places, settings or time periods. I’m sure there are blogs out there that just complaining about things that make them angry, resentful or furious. My blog is no different from the main structures of those blogs, I just remixed their formulas into things that make me bitter. All I had to do was add my name which starts with a B, Bitter which also starts with a B, and put it in a blog, which also starts with a B. Poof, all of a sudden, you have a blog that sounds cool because it’s an alliteration.

The combination effect even created a whole new genre of humor. Back in the 80’s, we had these joke books. I loved them because I wasn’t very funny, thus making me pretty unpopular. I did my best to gleaned jokes from these books in hopes that I could memorize the funniest ones. I hoped that in case a pretty girl ever talked to me, I would have a funny joke in the chamber ready to make her die laughing and immediately make her want to be my girlfriend. Unfortunately, I didn’t realized that the jokes in those books were just a bunch of puns and quips, that kind of jokes that aren’t really that funny. But somebody found a way to make jokes like that relevant by renaming them…dad jokes. The combination of bad jokes and puns mixed with dads (who aren’t supposed to be funny, because they don’t have time to develop stand up routines) and you have a cringe, but acceptable type of humor that dads can use with their kids. It provides cover for kids to pretend their dad is lame in front of their friends, while deep down wishing they were as funny as their dad (I should know). Just ask my kids and they will tell you that I have a horrible dad joke sense of humor, while I see them snickering at my blog posts. It’s okay, because I pretend I’m not funny in front of them too, so I don’t embarrass them in front of their friends.

The combination effect has created really cool games like Palworld. Nintendo thinks that they should own the collecting and battling creature space, just because they created Pokemon. But Palworld is an inventive way to use the creatures that Pokemon could never do. In Palworld, you do collect creatures and they help you in battles and a lot of the creatures look similar to Pokemon. But in many ways, it is a lot different. There are guns, and the “Pals” help them build forts, make food and other such things that are way different.

Many people think that Harry Potter is like Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings. I’m sure there are a bunch of story structures that are similar, but I’m sure when those books and movies came out, people thought stories before them were similar to books that came before them. I bet there were even stories about wizards and witches going to school. But Harry Potter was different than all of them in a bunch of different ways.

Remy the Rat from Ratatouille is a good example of someone found different ways to combine foods to make a new flavor. The movie itself was a combination of two things that I never thought would work, a rat that could cook. But somehow, they both worked, despite what critics would say.

Nothing is completely original. After all, we are all just made up of the same cells. The only reason we are unique at all is because we’ve combined our cells slightly differently than everyone else. The people that don’t think you are unique are called critics and they think that all humans look and think exactly alike. The only thing critics are good for is driving creators like us to make even more unique combinations. And they are just critics because they don’t have the imagination to create anything.

While you are going back to the lab to create new combinations, take some time to view these Bitter Friday Giftures which probably shouldn’t work…

Some would say the 80’s…

While some critics would say…

After all…

We also weren’t the first generation…

We definitely weren’t the first generation…

But we might have been the first ones…

Including my favorite…

My favorite gimmick in Transformers…

Which I thought was totally unique…

But critics always say the same thing…

Back in the 80’s we had bad jokes…

But what critics don’t see is that uniqueness comes from…

Like combining foods…

Or combining things that are unexpected…

ARRRRGGGHHHHHHH

Bitter Combinations Ben