When I go to a convention, it’s usually not with the intent of blowing a lot of cash. About once per year, I allot a little to find something cool to add to my growing collection of spooky “cursed” objects. This year, I found these three guys (on the right) just hanging around, and I just had to take ’em home.
I’ve put them all over the links pages (because that’s about as evil as they come). Enjoy!
Two people were having a conversation on a recent television show. One makes the (paraphrased) comment “Everyone wants something that’s in perfect condition.” The other person counters the notion with “Sometimes, it’s the damage that makes something unique and often increases its value.”
What an interesting thought, especially since they may not have been talking merely about antiquities.
My last two cars were Saturns, including the one I have now. It’s a 1998 SC-2 sports coupe with the loaded package: aluminum wheels, leather steering wheel, dual overhead cams. It doesn’t look like an eleven-year old car, thanks to state-of-the-art body panels that kept it looking great even after being hit and/or whacked on every side of the vehicle.
The last time I was at the dealer (following a friend and fellow Saturn owner for maintenance), the few remaining sales zombies shambled toward me hopefully. Sadly, the current fleet had nothing to offer me; my car’s paid off, looks and runs good, and gets close if not identical mileage to anything Saturn has. Plus, the new fleet lacked features that used to make Saturn stand out, such as the impact resistant body panels they stopped making five years ago.
With my own interior upgrades, there’s really nothing new they could offer, and the sales zombies shambled away. Soon they’ll be standing with the rest of the living dead at the unemployment office when not chasing down a job lead, and that’s just not how I ever thought Saturn, “a different kind of car company,” would go out.
On second thought, plastering a logo on a Pontiac Solstice and calling it the sportiest thing you have to offer wasn’t the smartest idea, either. Face it, GM… you treated Saturn and its customer base like red-headed step children and they all would have been better off without you. There! I feel better now.
Here’s a question: if the wizarding world of Harry Potter is so much more sophisticated than what Muggles must endure, why not use a cell phone to get a message through than an owl? Walkie talkies? How about CB radio?
Over at NeedCoffee.com, there’s an interesting article about just how different the state of the world of magic might be if wizards had access to cell phones and shotguns. Remember, “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
I operate mostly in two modes: hyper-focusing on one thing (and nothing else) or focus on everything (which I have learned to endure). Like most geeks with undiagnosed ADHD, I dwell on any problem that intrigues me until a solution is found. The feeling of happy frustration while problem solving suddenly turning to euphoric epiphany upon finding an answer is like winning the multi-state lottery. Repeatedly.
What becomes utterly frustrating is when others cannot see nor fathom your solution (or sometimes that there’s even a problem). It’s like realizing your lotto winnings will be paid out in $1.00 increments daily for a million years. Your solution is rendered pointless because, while you believe it’ll work, you have no chance of implementing it to be sure. Still, having found an answer, everything be okay because you can stop thinking about it.
Continue reading “Happy Frustration Without the Euphoric Epiphany”
If you’ve ever committed two to three weekend afternoons per month to gathering with friends, a fistful of dice, and a little cooperative storytelling, you also know how rarely it is seen to fruition. Long-term campaigns often fall apart due to other commitments, changing goals, moving away, changing jobs, or just real life generally intruding on the best laid plans.
Still, when you can manage to hold a continuing storyline together for nearly two years (say, for a class of up-and-coming high school-aged superheroes secretly training to better use their powers and ending up one of the world’s premiere super teams before actually graduating), it is a thing of beauty to behold. Later today, all the story lines converge into a single point, an epic final battle with a winner-take-all ending, and it’s likely not all of the characters will (or should) survive.
Through it all, there’s one person that deserves the lion’s share of the credit, the deity to whom the fabric of time and space bends their very will, and without whom there would be no opposition, no secret goals, nothing to struggle against. That person is the Game Master, and it’s been a hell of a ride, Chris. Salute!
How did you spend your Labor Day? Out and about, getting in a last-minute summer BBQ, or visiting somewhere out of town?
My best friend, my girlfriend, and myself wound up having a semi-impromptu film festival. Suffering with merely a 46-inch screen, we relived such classics as John Carpenter’s The Thing and The Fog, Constantine (which brought up the question: does a male or female actor makes for a more convincing sexless/androgynous angel?), the original Child’s Play and the first Saw film (in prep for this year’s Halloween Horror Nights), Silent Hill , two short films (featuring actor Doug Bradley) called “On Edge” and “Red Lines,” and a bizarre film called La lengua asesina (The Killer Tongue) featuring Doug Bradley again, Robert Englund, and a very young Jonathan Rhys Meyers (before he became King Henry on HBO’s “The Tudors”).
And a good time was had by all…!
If you watched broadcast television last season, you might have picked up on a show starring Tim Roth called “Lie to Me.” The premise follows a company called The Lightman Group that assists in interrogations to determine if people are being deceptive (figuring out why when they are is another matter). It all sounds very convincing, but how real is it?
Besides being fun to watch, you can’t help not playing along after being introduced to micro-expressions and other “tells” that are reinforced by similarities to celebrity photos (a glance down for shame, a slight grin at mentioning someone’s hardship when you secretly think they deserve it, etc). Cleverly, the show has also introduced reasons why these tells could be wrong at times, such as an inability to express surprise after a Botox treatment.
One of the reasons I moved my personal blog to WordPress.com is because, when I want to post something, I don’t want to have to program anything. “Set it and forget it” themes are nice when you can find them, and limited access on WordPress.com discourages me from tinkering too much once I have a theme configured (because once I get sucked into a tweaking session, time becomes a blur until I’m hungry and it’s dark outside).
On occasion, new stuff is always fun to add in, and after a new upgrade in the WordPress software, a new theme appeared, iNove. It looked clean, bold, and organized better like an OCD’s kitchen junk drawer. After over two years, I decided to retire the cemetery banner as a design element and opted instead for a digitally-enhanced image of my favorite accessory, my Alchemy Gothic “Death Ankh” (on the right). It hints at my interests and has started quite a few conversations. Enjoy!
Have you heard about the “End of Life” consultations being talked about in the new health plan reforms being drawn up? I think I’m a little bitter today about the thought of how the elderly are treated in America at the age of “no longer useful to society.”
Walking around an elderly care home, hearing shouts or screams of protests, everything with a permeating smell of decay. The places I’ve been in don’t seem to be anything more than holding cells for the discarded, staffed by thankless and underpaid orderlies who try not to attach themselves to the almost dead.
Talk about a place for legitimately angry spirits to reside, hmm?
Kevin A. Ranson 