Hats

Last year, I talked about wanting to get Santa hats to put on the action figures on my shelf that don't get removed during Christmas decorating. I saw a listing on Amazon where you could get sixty of these hats for $15. That seemed like a really good deal, but I was afraid that the hats would be too big, and would be a waste of money. Then, just the other day, I saw that those hats got marked down to $10. Well, I decided it was time to pull the trigger and buy them.

They came Thursday, and this is what size they are.

They are, sadly, bigger than I hoped they would be. But they still kind of work. When I got home from work Thursday night, I spent several minutes trying to put them onto figures that I thought they'd look good on.

I started with the Incredibles. It was harder than I thought.

Dash has a pretty big head, so it looks pretty good. Others have smaller heads. Bumble Chewbacca has a goodly sized head, so he looks good.

Darth Vader has a big helmet, so it's not bad, but Obi-Wan doesn't...not as good.

I couldn't get it to fit on Russel's head, but it did good on Dug.

Not as good on K-2SO. I tried to squash it down so that the long side hangs out the back where you can't see it, but it's still not great.

Threepio's head is too small for this, but it doesn't look too bad anyway.

I figure I'll see if I can't put hats on Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Chewie, and probably even Artoo. I'll get them onto all the others as well. It's sadly, not as easy as it seems. The hats constantly fall off, and the figures fall over all the time too. I'll get there, though. After all, I have a lot of those hats.

Holiday Extravaganza: The New Stuff

I haven't done any posts like this yet this year, so I thought I ought to publish a couple of pictures of my Christmas decorations from my toy shelves. To start with this year, I figured I'd do a post of any of the things that are new for this year. First of all, my favorite new addition, the zombie Santa Claus and his little zombie elf friend.

This figure actually inspired the short story that I am writing right now as my final Christmas tale for 2024. I'm calling it "Eve of the Living Dead."

The elf probably needs something of a weathering, because he looks too clean next to Santa, but they look good, don't they? Fun stuff. I'm sad, because this same line had a Terminator Santa Claus too, but it sold out just before I decided to buy it...boo!

I also got several new elves from the Naughty or Nice collection to put with my standard Santa Claus.

I think I only had two last year, and now I have six. That might be a bit of an overkill, but I just like them. I only wish they were more poseable. The Santa is super poseable, but the smaller figures they articulated like classic Star Wars figures. 5POA only. Boo!

Since I got all these new elves, I got a bunch more accessories to go with them. Last year, I had stacks of presents all around Santa, but they wouldn't fit there this year since I had all the new elves, so I distributed the presents around to the other displays on the shelves. For example, I took all those Star Wars holiday figures I got last year, put them into their own little cubby holes, and gave them presents to give. Like the Bumble Chewbacca:

His present even matches his coloring. Pretty cool, eh?

Then there's the snowman snowtrooper:

There's the Santa Jawa and his collection of droids that he's selling for Christmas...nope, not giving away. This is a Jawa, he ain't giving away anything, no matter how much he looks like Santa.

Then there's the festive K-2S0. He came with a present too.

Most of these figures aren't made to hold anything other than a gun, so let me tell you, it was pretty hard to get them to grab a big square box like this.

That was it for the Star Wars Holiday figures, but I did have the new Mandalorian figure that Rish custom painted for me last year. I set him up with a present, too.

That other Mandalorian in the back is just a regular old figure, but I thought he would go so well with Rish's custom guy that I had to grab him when I saw him for cheap at Ross. This is the way...to the Christmas party, right?

I still had more Christmas presents, so I decided to start giving them to my non-Christmas figures. He-man brought a present.

So did Snake Eyes.

And even Cobra Commander is getting into the spirit.

Oh, I almost forgot about these Star Wars guys. I found them at Ross just after Christmas passed us by last year. I was amazed to find three of them.

I love the gingerbread look. I have big plans for these guys in a future year, I'm going to make a gingerbread version of the Endor bunker as their gingerbread house, and have them there guarding it. I know it's not quite right, because they're clone troopers, but it's close enough.

I only have a couple more new things. This here is a Starlord Funko Pop that I found at Marshall's, and I decided I couldn't pass it by. I don't even know if it was a good deal, because I don't buy Pops, usually. But I liked this one.

The one problem with Pops is that they could be anyone. Does this figure really say, "Starlord," to you? Me neither, but at least it has a big Santa hat on, so it definitely says, "Christmas!"

Lastly is this goofy Fortnite guy:

This is their character called Doggo. They made a Christmas version of him. I gave him some Fortnite gingerbread cookies to hold, but in general, I think he's kind of lame. I wish they made some of the more standard figures in Christmas skins instead. The hot chicks in Christmas sweaters and pajamas would work for me.

They did do the gingerbread girl, and I got that one. Hopefully, I can show you what I did with it soon. Gotta finish that, and I just never put the time in, but if I get around to it before Chriastmas, I'll definitely post about it here.

Well, that's all the new stuff, I think. I'll surely have another post later with more of my decorations. I really love them, so I love to show them off. I'll definitely be back.

Use The Force, Justin!

I saw this add online for the Thursday night football game.

Is it just me? Or does it look like the quarterbacks on those adds are wielding lightsabers? Particularly Justin Herbert, because of the way he's turned to the side like he might be holding it over his shoulder.

I don't know. Maybe not quite, but it's a little weird. They should have just left the last line in that series blue like all the rest if you ask me.

Early Christmas Present

My nephew, and fellow toy collector, John, just sent me a Christmas present the other day. I had a guess as to what it might be, because he had told me what he was up to in a text, but when I got it, I couldn't believe how cool it was. He sent me a 3D printed six-inch scale Skyhawk for my GI Joe classified figures.

This is an upsized reproduction of a toy they put out in the GI Joe line back in 1984, the height of my GI Joe collecting.

Here's a commercial from the day that shows it in action.

I looked for a video that shows it in the cartoon,  but, though I know it was in dozens of episodes of the cartoon, I didn't quickly find anywhere that someone had that information categorized, so I moved on.

There were a few problems that I ran into. Most notably was that one of the side panels of the ship broke in transit.

It glued back together pretty easily with super glue, though.

I think I'll give it a little weathering, and once that is done, I suspect you won't even be able to see the glue residue anymore.

GI Joe was, like Star Wars, a line a toys that centered around the vehicles. The figures were smaller than the standard had been, specifically so that you could put your guys into the turret of a tank or in the cockpit of a jet plane. 

They've made very few vehicles for the six-inch line, though. The scale of the figures seems to prohibit it. They started out making only the very smallest of vehicles...and charging you through the nose for the privilege of owning them.

First, was the Cobra Flight Pod, or Trubble Bubble. This is one of my favorite vehicles, and I owned one as a kid.

They also made Serpentor with his Air Chariot. Another favorite of mine that I had as a kid.

But I have neither of those things, because they wanted around $80 for the things.

It only got worse when they decided to make the first real vehicle for the line, the Cobra HISS tank. That was always one of my favorite vehicles from the 80s too. Usually, I only had the smallest of vehicles, like the Air Chariot or the Flight Pod because they were cheap, but I actually had a HISS tank as a kid despite its size. That wouldn't be the case with the new HISS though. They put it out as a part of their HASLAB setup, which is where they crowdfund toys. They wanted...I can't remember but it was either $300 or $400 for the thing. Sorry, but I have a mortgage to pay, and I ain't got money for something like a $400 toy, so I had to forego it again.

I think they've done one of the Jeeps from the line since then, but that was pretty costly too...not as bad as the HISS, but still beyond my abilities. I'll let the One Percent have those toys, I guess.

I did get the motorcycle they made for the line. That was the Ram Cycle, and my nephew, John, found that on clearance and picked one up for me and sent it out from California.

So, for the most part, I've been unfamiliar with the scale of the GI Joe Classified vehicles. The motorcycle didn't seem inordinately huge. I had heard that the HISS tank was huge, but I'd never really seen one.

The Skyhawk was always one of the smallest vehicles available for GI Joes in the 80s. It's kind of surprising that I didn't have one, because that seemed like the kind of thing my parents could afford as a present for me. So, getting this six-inch scale Skyhawk just kind of flabbergasts me. It's freaking huge! I took this picture to show the scale next to my 3.75 inch scale AT-AT.

It's basically as big as the whole body of the thing. Keep in mind that this AT-AT is an extra large, closer to actual scale AT-AT than what they'd given us back in the 80s Kenner toyline. Yet, it's still close in size...for the one man ship. It's so wild. No wonder Classified doesn't make a lot of vehicles.

It's pretty awesome to have a vehicle like this, and it automatically becomes one of the most impressive things in my collection. I'm not even sure if I have a space big enough for it on my shelves. I'll probably have to readjust some things to fit it. But I definitely will, because it's so neat. It's also great, because I didn't have to take out a second mortgage to afford it.

Although, in writing this post, I discovered that they have the Cobra Stinger for Classified now...oh man, do I want that thing.

They want $100 for it. I wonder if there's any chance I could raise that money...somehow...

Will Fasting Raise My Ketones? | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 80 Roundup

Last week, I tried to get my ketones up by eating my TDEE each day. It wasn't terrible, but it still had problems. This week, I was determined to get that good DBR, so I opted for some more heavy fasting. Did that get the ketones to the level I was after? Or do I still have to do more?

Does This Bother You?

Like it does me?

On the freeways here in Houston, there are little electronic message boards that government officials can use to tell you about important things like Amber Alerts or the accidents clogging traffic further along your journey. When nothing like that is going on, they just put up little messages encouraging you to drive carefully. They often make cute little pun-ridden messages on holidays, or little rhyming messages when it's just a normal day. This particular message, the good folks of the city of Houston seem to love the most, because it's always up:

I can't see this freaking sign without reading it aloud and shaking my head. I always change the vowel on the last word to make it match the vowel of arrive, alive, and drive. It drives me crazy (makes me want to drive aggressive?).

Does it bother you like it bothers me?

Redesign

I just finished publishing my first novel, Sunny. When I was working on getting it ready, I did things my usual way, creating my own cover for the book, but I just wasn't sure what was best. I had a couple of options that I couldn't decide between. 

So, I asked Rish. He gave me his opinion, but it didn't satisfy me. I asked my daughter, who is the one who created the fairy picture for me in the first place, what she preferred. Well...she sat down at the computer and took over.

She thought it would be better if the background had a kind of gradient, and if the font was different, and if the title and the picture were embossed, and so on and so on. In no time, it was quite different. This was the final version.

Just the comparison of the two yellow backgrounds is enough to make me think, what the hell have I been doing all this time? I have no sense of design whatsoever.

I at least have enough of a sense of design to know that the new image is vastly superior to the old one I'd done. It got me wondering what my daughter could do if she took a look at my old covers for books that were already out. I thought Christmas Creatures was the most likely suspect. Here's what it looked like right now:

She went right to work again, and smoke started rising off the CPU as it tried to keep up with all her changes. She never does anything halfway, and after a long time messing with it, trying several options, and abandoning some ideas, she had a cover that now looked like this:

She also re-did the wraparound cover for the paperback and hardcovers for me.

Original:

And new version:

I bought an eBook about marketing self-published books, and one of the main things the author stressed was having someone professional design your covers. He harped on that over and over, bringing it up again and again across various chapters and sections. Looking at these two covers helps me to understand exactly what he was talking about. I can't afford to hire some professional to design my covers for me...but, I did sire one of those people. She seemed awfully amenable to designing covers. I guess I really need to have her sit down and do all my covers for me, it seems.