'Twas (almost) the Night Before Christmas This cold boomeranged on me Sunday and has laid me low once more. Chills, meds, a pile of tissues and bedrest became my world by nightfall. While I'm doing better now I fear most of the recharge on my batteries may just enough to get me through some final holiday prep while wife and kids are back visiting my in-laws. (I'm not fit for travel and the last thing everyone back there needs is a new source of holiday infection.) I've momentarily mislaid the tracking slips, but odd boxes should have/be arriving in Louisville and Chicago today. Hastily packed, each is an embarassment in its way, but especially one of them as the horribly generic, non-personal card was jammed into a slot in the side of an already packed box... Please, keep in mind I was likely running a fever as I rushed to get a couple things out before the post office closed Saturday. While I'll want to be back on later for some other bits, I've strung...
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H o - H o - H o r r o r s Part One: Conditional Santas Crypt Leak was a big fan of a virtually defunct website, Who Would Buy That? , where readers would send in links to online auction oddities. Every so often the lack of an outlet overwhelms him and he gets into a theme of searches and will point some of them out. Around this time of year, especially, he and Abbygal look for yuletide grotesqueries. He's sent me quite a few, including identifying tags, so he's made this fairly easy for me. Here's wave one: Medical Condition Santas. (Note: Hopefully no one will be cruelly offended by these being presented this way. If there's any ire to be directed, point it at the sick minds who created these questionable Clauses.) Pyromaniac Santa Spina Bifida Santa Dipsomaniac Santa Carbon Monoxide Exposure Santa Hypothyroid Santa Tourettes Santa Other holiday horrors and embarrassments coming as the season proceeds. Thanks again, CL !
Act of Will Whew! I see I've been away since November 10th. This may not be much of a re-launch. We'll see. There's certainly no deficit of things to spark entries, just a lack of sufficient interest to do anything with them. A few times in the past few months I ventured past a few blogs but I was immediately bored by the thought of anything I might write, and the ennui drained the puddle of energy that had gotten me that far. Aside from some very light email exchanges the only spot I was writing anything online was over on HCRealms, where the simple fact that it's about something as completely unimportant as a game involving little plastic super-heroes, -villains and monsters kept it inconsequential. The general pace picked up for me as mid-November approached, interest in writing anything diminished, and then I started to physically run down and then become sick. I'm doing better, but there's still a good deal of congestion in the lungs. No solid down-time ...
Another Saturday Check-In A gray start to the day hereabouts, it's been a sleep-in Saturday. Last weekend was a wet, dirty nightmare as we had a substantial plumbing problem that did a number on the downstairs -- largely the den, bathroom and laundry room areas, as the upper floor is our main living floor (the place is built into a hillside, and our parking ground level is the same as the upstairs) -- so a great deal was trashed. The blockage was beyond the lowest point in our plumbing, so everything started trying to come up out of the toilet and bathtub in that bathroom. Trav and I hauled a huge amoung around for pick-up this week, including our couch that was down there. The love seat's fine, but the couch was a lost cause. There's still plenty of work to be done down there, including more to battle mildew, but the mood's considerably less tense this weekend. Over on my Clix blog I most recently posted something about the set due for release Nov. 21. A week fr...
Time make another prayer circle, Dawg Dog the Bounty Hunter's in the dog house with A&E following the posting of a tape of him repeatedly referring to his son's girlfriend (Monique Shinnery) as a nigger. Apologies have been made, but A&E has halted production on the show.., presumably until they see what the news does to its ratings. Ha. Check the National Enquirer piece for other details and the audiotape itself. That he was using the term as part of a rant concerning how he didn't want to risk losing everything because she might hear him use the term "nigger" and report it to the National Enquirer demonstrates why one should never speculate aloud on worst case scenarios. It reminded me to wonder if the question of extradition to Mexico was still lingering on the table, but upon searching I see that that was dropped by the Mexican government in early August .
Wiping the tears with $100 notes I find it darkly amusing to see all the coverage "embattled" Merril Lynch CEO Stan O'Neil is getting. I'm not saying that the pieces are necessarily intended to elicit sympathy, but the focus on him gives it that tint to me... which is laughable considering what the man was paid in a single year . Sure, if one subtracts the $26.8 million that were stock grants based on their market price at the time (why, the poor man could have seen the value of those drop to an abysmal $20 million!) that still leaves over $21 million... in a single year. I know it's nothing new, but how obscene of a system is this? How many people will make $48 million over the course of their entire working life? Someone gets a single-year income like that and I'd support a law that says they have to retire, or at the very least a nearly loophole-free progressive tax system would have re-absorbed 70% or so of it into the national coffers. Taking 70% of $21 ...
FEMA Flap While this "press conference" was a sham , considering the kid gloves the "legitimate media" has handled the Bush regime for most of its tenure, I'm not sure there would have been much difference if reporters had actually been there. Here's the ABC News piece for the archive: FEMA Apologizes After Sham News Conference White House, Homeland Security Department Angered by FEMA 'Stunt' FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson talks about the agency's response to the California wildfires at the FEMA press briefing room in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. It was later revealed that reporters were not given adequate time to travel to the event, so instead, the agency's public affairs staff asked questions. The decision prompted backlash from the media, DHS and the White House. (Bill Koplitz/FEMA) By PIERRE THOMAS, THERESA COOK, JASON RYAN and JACK DATE Oct. 26, 2007 It looked like any other Washington press briefing, with a...
Feed! Test and potentially feed your vocabulary while helping to feed the world . Answer correctly and the next word will be more obscure, incorrectly and the next will be more common. Seems like a win:win. It doesn't demand you sign up or otherwise register nor visit any of their advertisers. Each correct answer essentially generates 10 grains of rice for the United Nations. Thanks to Crypt Leak (and, in turn, to Abbygal ) for the tip!
The best thing to come out of Freakazoid was the Johnny Quest spoof -- Toby Danger . While The Venture Brothers have vastly surpassed this, it was still fun to find it saved online. The most I can offer of Venture Brothers themselves is a few clips someone roughly strung together of Science vs Magic debates between Dr. Venture and Dr. Orpheus. The third season is scheduled to debut sometime next Spring.
Mid-Weekend... Once More! Today wrapped the Starro event series for me (I've quietly shifted my Heroclix postings over to a new blog for reasons stated in the first post there, back on October 5th), so with that done I'm back into the rest of the weekend. I have dinner cooking (a pot of steak and bean chili), tonight we might do most of the Halloween decorations (might even buy the pumpkins, but I'm not going to cut, gut and carve them until next weekend), and tomorrow (despite the reviews) at least Nick and I will be headed for a matinee of 30 Days of Night . Aside from that, I have some projects to attend to, and will finally be making a decision on which new comics service I'll be using, as I want to place my order for the month soon.
Run! He'll Turn Your Children! Ah! I see that J.K. Rowling has poked the social conservatives/Right wing Christians with another stick. She revealed last night that the wizard Dumbledore is gay . Ah, if only I had the luxury of being troubled by such insignificant crap. Edit: Ah! I see Tony Collett posted something about this Friday.
What's Eating You? I'm not a big fan of yogurt. Intentionally ingesting bacteria, much less in some culture medium that tries to deliver taste elements of dairy and a lemony acidity that tells me something's gone off and is no longer safe to eat, isn't high on my list of activities. That inappropriate combination of flavors is a big part of why (East) Indian food hasn't been a big hit with me. I don't even need the flies to scare me off. (Yes, I know that some of what's sold as yogurt doesn't contain live cultures, but it's close enough.) I wonder if whatever funky cheese and questionable dairy products in ancient times made for similarly off-putting flavor combinations leading to some of the original Jewish kosher laws, or if that was simply history's first recorded bit of OCD? Could it have just as easily have been " Thou shalt not allow thy string beans to toucheth thy mashed potatoes ?" Well, that's not what I'm here to writ...
What Am I Not Looking At? Under normal circumstances I'd be either all caught up on what's happening in the comics I read or I'd at least have the resources in hand to be able to do so. Not so this weekend. As noted from time to time, for years I've been using Westfield Comics to place monthly orders and, in my case, have them delivered twice per month. While I've occasionally mused that there are almost doubtless better deals to be had out there, the service was sufficiently reliable that the comfort of inertia and fear of the unknown conspired with good old American laziness to keep me from looking around and doing anything about it. But that was before the dark times. Before DHL. This weekend I was due for another shipment of comics, which would cover all the items I'd ordered which had hit stores this week and last. Normally, this would have been coming via FedEx, and so normally I'd have had them Saturday or - has happened from time to time - a...
Relevance I finally took the time to take another look at the current calendar of presidential primary caucuses and elections, and as a Pennsylvanian I'm no more pleased than I was three years ago. Oh, there's been a furious flurry of repositioning, so much so that several states have dates yet to be determined. New Hampshire's petulant child statute , demanding that they be first for any primaries, means that in order to maintain that they will currently have to hold their primary in 2007 unless they decide that Wyoming's Jan 5th caucus is sufficiently outside the "similar election" phrasing of their law, which seems to be a fair assumption considering that Iowa and New Hampshire seem to each be secure in their individual stations as political bellwethers. Here's the current list as pulled from NPR's site : Updated Sept. 4, 2007: The 2008 primaries are scheduled earlier than ever, and some dates remain in flux, as states jockey to make their primaries...
<A HREF="http://tesla.liketelevision.com">Visit LikeTelevision</A> Here's what I believe is the full version of a low budget, somewhat gory for the time, horror film from '73 that came bubbling up in conversation last week while I was at Crypt Leak and Abbygal 's a week ago. Mostly remembered for a few eccentric performances, it was a scene at the 18 minute mark on this presentation which came to mind, btw. Known alternately as Don't Go in the Basement , The Forgotten , Death Ward #13 and here in the states as Don't Look in the Basement . I haven't re-watched the entire thing, but this appears to be the version released in the US, at least according to the stated running time and the titles. An odd item to suddenly break blog silence with, but as I came across it while following the trail of something very far afield of it this early Saturday morning, I thought... "Why not?...
A little pick-me-up As part of a random selection of people who'd posted on Wizkids ' boards recently I was sent an advance booster of their upcoming Justice League set, which I otherwise wouldn't have had a serious shot at before September 5th. I wasn't able to spare the time for an entry here Wednesday night, so one this morning will have to suffice. I will likely get around to updating this with some pictures, but I'm not sure when. Obviously, this post is labeled with s Spoilers warning, though it's nothing one can't see over at one of the fan sites, particularly in this thread . ( Update: I'll be adding some pics to the post, and have already appended the two best shots of the Batman & Robin duo I'd seen posted.) Having a booster dropped into my hands found me getting into the details of the set sooner than I'd expected and even than I'd wanted to, wanting to save as much as I could for the reveal as I moved through boosters. Still...
Subroutines I'm sick, and I'm caught in a loop. Before I get into that, I want to thank Abbygal and Cryptleak for, once more, having me over this past Saturday. Such time as we do it again I'll try to be in better health. Between the head cold and a huge spike in allergic reaction (I'd never felt so under assault by nature as I did while sitting out back, shortly after arriving) I was more of a passenger than a participant. Okay, back to the rambling entry. The "sick" part goes back over a week now. The week between July 30th (just after I was last here) and August 3 I was putting in a great deal more time at work. This was mostly due to my assistant being away on a week's vacation, so I was moving to make sure the ongoing work was finished on time and all incoming work proceeded smoothly. I'd been the solo act as lab for our company for over 10 years, but a couple years of forcing myself to delegate much of the work left me used to other rou...
The Weekend Rolls Away Winding down for the night. If Crypt Leak and Abbygal went ahead with ice cream plans, etc. on Saturday I'll find out about it tomorrow. All fell silent on that front this weekend. Saturday saw it confirmed that the big Heroclix announcement of the convention was that Heroclix based on NBC's HEROES show are in the works. It would almost certainly have to be as an Action Pack - roughly seven characters from the show, complete with a map, rules, and probably some bystander tokens of other people from the show. New figures in civvies. a new map, who knows if they'll get their own TAs or simply have keywords and special powers? No word yet on when these are scheduled for, but indications are the deal came together both suddenly and recently, so it's now a matter of how far into 2008 we'll be before these are produced. I could only speculate how the finances of the deal have been worked, and there's little point in doing so. Back to hereabout...
Quick Shuffle One of those Saturdays begun early and foggily, where nothing seemed rushed until I suddenly realized how late it was getting. An annual company cookout function yesterday after work was nice enough -- everyone else seemed to really enjoy it, but I become so wound up during these things that it takes a while to unwind. I don't handle most social functions well, much less ones connected to the workplace. I have week 3 of the 5-week Coming of Galactus tournaments coming up shortly (11:30 this morning), the timing of which meant I had to turn down a last minute invitation to get together with Abbygal , Crypt Leak and whoever else might have said "yes" to go into the city for some ice cream event. I'll be tied up until heading for 3 today with the game. After that I'm largely open (as in having much else to do this weekend, but that's all at my discretion to schedule) but I don't know how long they're planning to be down in the city and wha...
The Coming Of Galactus: Week Two Pictured here is the participation prize - Terrax the Tamer - from this week's Coming of Galactus tournament, which, for me, began at 11:30 Saturday morning. The sculptor is to be commended for capturing the look of the character from John Byrne's original presentation of the character. As with last week's kick-off, the turnout was good and the event was fun. Not pulling an assortment I really felt like fielding straight from the booster, I fielded last week's participation prize, the Silver Surfer , along with the 65 pt Grim Reaper , who was present as a Perplex assist to the Surfer and a secondary attacker. I was amazed that so many of the Surfer players (though quite a few didn't play him) didn't seem to have a clue about Soaring. My first round was against a Surfer, Crossbones and a Ken Hale bystander. He was definitely one of those competitive players who did not take the road to defeat well - not that anyone enjoys a loss....
Belated & Overdue The clip collection of the unintentional self-parody that is David Caruso was emailed to me by Abbygal most of a week ago, though it was to my work email where cruel Cyberlords have blocked all things YouTube. I'd forwarded it to my home email and, today, finally got to take a look. Speaking of herself, congratulations to Abbygal , whose hard work, determination, creativity and combined forces of will & personality recently saw her offered and accepting a new position with a new department in a prestigious academic setting. Give her two years and she'll be officially running the joint. (Give her two weeks and she'll be doing it unofficially.) (While I'm thinking of it, a belated thanks for Abbygal & CryptLeak for having me over a couple Saturdays back, and being such fine hosts.) Congratulation, too, to Darren for being among the winners in a recent short fiction contest by On The Premises e-magazine. Other congratulations to the harri...
Welcome to the Third World. Look Familiar? I've long said that one of the fundamental problems in this nation is the way healthcare is treated as a for-profit industry, and such benefits as are available are generally job perks. This is an inhumane and even inhuman practice, no news to me there. Having just returned from seeing Michael Moore's SiCKO , I see that if anything the situation is even worse than I'd allowed myself to realize, and the choice to correct things even simpler. The link above is to Michael Moore's site, where he is continuing to counter the counter-attacks and attempted undercuts of his documentary's message. As I'd predicted upon watching the latter section of the movie, his use of Cuba as an example part of the attempt to shame us about the selfish state of our healthcare system has drawn in other enemies, as there's a powerful lobby that will not brook anything approaching a hint of positivity about any aspect of Cuba as it has exist...
Battles! This weekend, at least for me, kicked off the Coming of Galactus series of weekly tournaments. For me, they'll be Saturday events. Getting some packages to the post office was most of the first order of business, an unexpected problem and delay in the mix, but that's since been dealt with. By Monday the last bits will be on their way and hopefully by Wednesday all will be where it's supposed to be. The first event went off well. I not only pulled a Super Rare, I pulled one that was solid for this format and was one of the two I was looking to bring my set closer to completion: Winter Soldier . Another Guardsman in the mix (not that I played him, but if I'm going to pull another duplicate at least this virtually generic bit of armor is one I'll be aiming to hold onto; that makes 7 for me, so if I want a bunch of lame-ish flying guards for a Vault scenario, I'm on the way; they will help dress up a SHIELD force, too) and the Angry Surfer, along wit...
Heraldry The heralds of Galactus that will be participation prizes in a succession of four events starting next week have begun to arrive at venues, and the info's being spread around. (Updated: Wizkids posted the info.) Week One: The Silver Surfer A somewhat angry-looking Surfer, eh? The special power (Cosmic Speed) is similar to the super rare Quicksilver's from this set, and presumably represents a savings over what simply giving him Hypersonic Speed for those clicks would cost. A very active piece, as with all of the heralds in this series the Power Cosmic's immunity to Outwit and built-in Willpower will allow him to be active two out of three turns. He should do nicely in this format, and since a herald from the previous week can be substituted for part of one's team in the following week, I expect to see many Silver Surfers during week two, though perhaps the lack of a prize to be won will find more people deciding to simply have fun by playing teams made strict...