Categories
Critters

Turtles: the LARP

Turtles!In the old arcade game Turtles, you’re supposed to pick up baby turtles and carry them someplace safe.

On the way home from picking up dog food this afternoon, me and Little E saw a little turtle crossing the road. Keep in mind, this is the road where people take a blind corner so fast that I’m scared to let my kid play in the yard (and I worry about anyone living in the pasture too). Do I think someone’s going to stop for a little turtle? Aw shell no.

But we did. … Read more

Categories
Home Base

My day in a nutshell

Little pieces everywhereI noticed, with some irony, the words “E-Z INSTALL” on a shard of the plastic diffuser lens on my ceiling-mounted fluorescent light fixture as it shattered as a result of my following the directions to flex it for removal from the fixture so I could change out the bulbs. The whole thing just went to splinters right on top of my head and into the floor (that I was going to have to step down onto from the stepladder a couple of moments later… in my bare feet).

And then I cleaned up that mess, changed the damn bulbs anyway, and discovered that it wasn’t the bulbs themselves, but the fixture, that’s shot to hell and needs to be changed out.

This is turning out to be a week of Mondays.… Read more

Categories
Television & Movies

Big Ten!

Some people will remember him from American Top 40. Others will remember him as the voice of Shaggy. My formative memory of this legendary voiceman will always be fixated to a slightly more obscure character.

And starring the voice of Casey Kasem as...

Keep your feet on the ground, keep reaching for the stars… and transmute.

… Read more

Categories
Critters

Count Puckula

As soon as Friday the 13th rolled around, my black cat knew it was his day to shine. And by “shine”, I mean “basically lurk in the shadows like he always does.”

Puck

He’s pretty good at that.

Puck

Black cats are pretty good luck. Even the ones fat enough to take up a lot of real estate on your desk.… Read more

Categories
ToyBox

Cthulhu fun funded!

Not only did Warpo, the makers of the prospective “Legends of Cthulhu” retro-style action figure line, reach their minimum funding goal, they did it in three days.

Legends of Cthulhu
See, I wasn’t the only one who thought this figure was awesome!

Keep an eye on their Kickstarter – stretch goals (which may include other product announcements) are due to be revealed soon. But what convinced everyone to part ways with their money for the greater good of Cthulhu? The answer may be simple: the visual presentation and support for this was pitch-perfect. … Read more

Categories
Television & Movies ToyBox

At the mountains of little plastic madness

This morning, my attention was drawn to a Kickstarter campaign to fund a short-run, homebrew toy company making a new line of Star Wars action figures based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. The donation/invstment thresholds at which you got Neat Stuff – including a full set of all four figures, a print of the packaging artwork free of text and logos, and other goodies – were really reasonable. I was in love! With the 3 3/4-inch spawn of Cthulhu!

(Before going any further, those interested can find the Kickstarter here.) And at the same time, I realized that this has got to stop. The boutique, niche-interest toymakers of the world have got to stop tempting me with things specifically engineered to appeal to multiple flavors of retro nostalgia at once. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part three: Space (the final frontier)

An enterprising visitHaving gone to Arkadia Retrocade on Friday night in Fayetteville, followed by a Saturday morning visit to the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma, we headed homeward, but with one more stop planned in Oklahoma City itself (40 minutes east of Weatherford) before returning to Fort Smith.

The second leg of the central Oklahoma space pilgrimage took us to Oklahoma City proper, in a part of town that we might not have visited otherwise but for the presence of a starship. In a rented space next to a roofing repair company in Oklahoma City is one of the only two 360-degree classic Star Trek bridge sets in the United States, replicating – if not improving on – the Enterprise set from the original ’60s series.

Starbase Studios was holding one of its rare open house events. They’re rare because the bridge is a working film set, and exposing it to the public puts it at increased risk of suffering accidental damage. Keeping the entire set fully lit (rather than the usual practice of only lighting those sections needed for a particular spot), and running fans to make the already-warm studio space tolerable for visitors, runs up a considerable electric bill, even for a single day.

We joked en route that the directions to the nondescript studio building sounded like a ransom note – in between lines of the directions I had printed out from the studio’s web site, I was riffing helpful additions like “place the money in an unmarked paper sack inside the newspaper vending machine on the corner; do not look around you, you are being watched.”

The verdict? Totally. worth. it. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 And Beyond The Infinite Gadgetology

Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part two: Space (race)

Gemini and ApolloWith everyone in agreement that the two space-related destinations in central Oklahoma were worth going to, we set out from Fort Smith in the Martins’ vehicle to strike out westward. The kids were surprisingly well behaved for the whole trip; it occasionally got a bit noisy, but since the back set was filled with boys, that’s hardly a surprise.

Our first Saturday destination: the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma! And then to the stars. Warning: there are over 50 photos after the jump. … Read more