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.

Last Christmas

Okay, day three of publishing this year's Christmas stories on Amazon.

I was talking with Rish on the phone the other day, and if I remember right, I quoted that goofy line from The Beach Boys "Little Saint Nick" song.

"Christmas comes this time each year," I said.

"Yeah, about that...we need to put a stop to that. I'm going to declare it right now. This is the last Christmas. No more of this coming back again and again, year after year," Rish said.

It was a throwaway joke in the middle of our conversation, but something about that really interested me. What if Christmas wasn't coming back next year. What if this was the last Christmas ever? What would that be like? And how could that happen? (And of course, the story had a built in title because of that hit Wham! song).

I was in need of a new story idea, because I was about to finish the story I was working on, so I put some thought in, and after skipping past the first few obvious answers, I found an idea that I liked. I started writing, and just a few days ago, I finished it up. Now it's ready for you to enjoy on this fine holiday season.

It's the story of Adrian who has a friend who has a strange talent. Every now and then, the guy stares off into space. Then his eyes roll up in his head and he pronounces some kind of prediction of the future. He's been doing it since he was in middle school, and the predictions always come true. Always.

Today, Adrian's friend performed that routine and said that this would be Adrian's last Christmas. Adrian's eyes bulged. Did he hear that right? Did his friend just predict his imminent death? What could he do? What would you do?

If that sounds like a good story to you, you can check it out over at Amazon. It's now available. I hope you enjoy it.

A Christmas Miracle

Here's another Christmas story that I wrote this past month for y'all to enjoy. I just got it published over on Amazon.

In this one, Eric inherits the sheet music to an old Christmas carol written by his great-grandfather. When he plays it, he finds that, not only is it a catchy, earworm of a song, but it has remarkable qualities. It's heals people of their maladies. Amazing! It's "A Christmas Miracle!" He can't believe it...except that the carol also has a dark side...

You can find it now on Amazon. Head over there and check it out...and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Eve

Here's a new Christmas story that I just published on Amazon!

This story is my attempt to do a Rish Outfield story. What do you think, does this sound like a story Rish could have written?

When Frank took a retreat to a remote Scandinavian village in search of peace and quiet to write his novel, he never expected to run into the mysterious and frightening Christmas tradition of the local residents. It's vile and and evil, and goes against everything that he believes. They say it's for his protection, but how could it protect him? And from what? Surely it won't matter if he refuses to participate...

So, if you're interested, it's now available over on Amazon. Check it out. It will certainly bring you some holiday cheer...or something like that.

Project Hail Mary

After a couple of dour Richard Bachman books in a row, it was nice to take a break and try something else. This time around, I grabbed Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I wasn't prepared for this book. It turned out to be one of those books that I loved so much that I just wanted to be reading it all the time. Of course, I do almost all of my reading via audiobooks, so binge reading an audiobook is a different prospect. You can only listen to an audiobook for as long as your mind is unoccupied. If you do something too mentally taxing, you will stop paying attention to the book and find that you are lost and don't know what's going on, but because you don't have to sit on the couch looking at a book, you will find something to do. I think it's just generally more difficult to pull off.

I found that I was able to listen to my audiobook while formatting Sunny & Gray for publishing. That wasn't too much for my mind to concentrate on both. So, that was nice. I was able to get two things done at once.

The book was completely delightful, and not at all what I suspected it was going to be at the beginning. I won't talk too much about the plot to avoid spoiling it, but it's high-concept stuff (as my screenwriting teacher, John Lee, used to call it) and there are some very touching moments that will bring tears to your eyes even though the events are only playing out on the stage of your mind.

I loved The Martian by Andy Weir. Now, I've loved Project Hail Mary. I'm going to have to get Artemis, the one book he's done that I haven't read, and go after that one soon. This guy does good stuff.

What If I Eat My TDEE for a Week? Will That Beat the Plateau | Lion Diet Carnivore | Week 79 Roundup

I've been stuck on a plateau for a pretty long time, and I thought I'd try something new this week to see if I couldn't get myself off it and headed down to my eventual goal again. My plan? I calculated my TDEE (that's Total Daily Energry Expenditure) and ate that amount of calories each day to see if it would get me going again. Well, how did it go? I guess you gotta watch to find out.

Sunny & Gray

About a decade or more ago, I came up with an idea about a boy named Robbie who catches a dragonfly with a net, and when he tries to take the dragonfly out it panics and bites him. When he gets bitten, everything changes. His eyes are opened to a world that he never guessed existed. The dragonfly in his net is not a dragonfly at all, but a fairy in disguise. Humans aren't able to see through these disguises, but now Robbie can see the truth.

Robbie is enchanted and amazed by this new world, and spends all his time learning about it. He becomes friends with the fairy who bit him, bringing him into this new reality, and their adventure unfolds from there.

I posted the first chapter of this book on here all the way back in 2014, and I struggled my way through the story from there. I posted chapter two as well a few months later. Then, as was usually my problem, I couldn't keep at it. I never let it go, though. Several years later, I got back on the horse, and posted chapter three in 2017.

That was the turning point for the book and for my writing in general. It was the first time that I ever managed to start writing with any frequency. In 2017, I wrote every day for nearly four months. The majority of that time was spent on Sunny & Gray. I posted chapter four in March of that year, and I pushed onward until I finished the whole novel on, from my calculations, April 20th.

I remember that night, because I was so excited. I'd just written "the end" on my very first novel! I couldn't believe that I'd actually achieved such a feat.  I was now, officially, a novelist! I'd actually achieved something positive for once in my life! I felt like Fezzik in The Princess Bride. "Then I saw them. Four white horses, and I thought, there are four of us, if we ever find the lady...oh, hello lady!" I could just imagine Inigo Montoya smiling down at me and saying, "You did something right!"

Don't worry. I didn't let it go to my head. I stilll kept struggling. I lost my mojo with writing less than month later, and had to fight to gain it back over and over again...but something good did come from that day. I wrote a book. I wrote my very first full-length novel. 

It's been seven years since I finished it, and there have been plenty of struggles since then, but I'm finally in a position to put it before you and allow anyone who wants to read it to do so. That's right, Sunny, book one of the Sunny & Gray trilogy is available on Amazon.

I made sure to put all three formats, eBook, paperback, and hardcover, out at the same time this time. The audiobook will have to wait. My voice still hasn't come all the way back yet from when I was sick, so my audio production is falling way behind, but I'll get there. I think I'm going to try to really step it up over the next while once my voice returns to full strength.

I really love Sunny. I think it's a great book, and I hope y'all will agree. Check it out and enjoy. If you're wondering whether you would like it or not, read those first few chapters that I posted. That'll probably be a pretty good indicator.

Book two of the trilogy is already written, and I'll be preparing it for publication next. Book three still needs to be written, and I guess, depending on how the first two are received, I'll get that done in due time. It's one of my favorite worlds to visit, so I'll be happy to finish it off.

Blaze

This one has been on my shelf for a while, but I've never gotten around to reading it until now.

But, as I said in my last book post, all my Stephen King holds were coming in at once on Libby. So, this was what came up next. I should have found something else, especially considering that I disliked the Richard Bachman book I read last.

This one wasn't as bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Blaze is a bit of an homage to the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. The main character, Blaze, is the Lennie of the book. He was abused as a child, suffered a head injury, and came out of it mentally disabled. His partner in crime...yes, the guy was named George...died a few months before the start of the book. The two had been planning their biggest hit of all, kidnapping a rich guy's kid and getting the ransom from it. But now, Blaze is left rudderless. He tries to pull the scam on his own, but he doesn't have the intellect to manage it.

The book is sentimental and cute, but not particularly good. It's not terrible or depressing like the other Bachman Books that I mentioned in my last post. This one was written by King in the early days of his career, but turned down by the publisher. He decided to put it out back in 2007 as a Bachman novel, but it doesn't really feel very Bachman-esque. Which made it a little more pleasant, but it did still have the sad ending.

I can't really say much about it. It's probably good that King didn't put it out as his follow-up to Carrie, because the best I can say about it is meh.

Anklecast 73 - That Damned Cat

The new episode of The Anklecast is now available for all!

Even though I could barely talk, I didn't want to leave y'all without an episode this month, so I'm still presenting a story, but the pre and post-show banter has been basically done away with. Hopefully you still enjoy the story.

Darren hates the cat his family has as its pet. He decides to dispose of the beast. However, the cat might not be an easy mark like he expected, because the cat came back the very next day...

As always, thanks to Kevin McCleod at incompetech.com for the music.

You can find the episode on The Anklecast feed now or you can download the episode by right clicking HERE.  You can also just click the play button on the player below.

Roadwork

I mentioned in my last book post that I had gone through and placed holds on pretty much all of the Stephen King books that I had never read before.  They all started coming up available in the last few days for me...all at once. I had to push most of the holds off, and pick one to go with. The first one that came up was Roadwork, written by Stephen King under the name Richard Bachman.

I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of the Bachman books. I used to have the omnibus edition of those that they published a years ago called The Bachman Books. I thought I'd read the whole thing, but I never did get to Roadwork. I only read The Long Walk, Rage and The Runnning Man. I remember being blown away by the ending of The Running Man, considering that it was originally published in 1982 and made into a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987. ***Spoiler Alert for anyone who hasn't read it*** It ends with a man purposefully crashing a plane into a building to kill the TV execs. That was almost twenty years before 9/11, but I never read it until after. They could never make an accurate movie rendition with an ending like that. Not anymore.

Anyway, it turns out there were four books in The Bachman Books, and Roadwork was the one I had missed. It may be that I did that on purpose. I might have grown tired of the cynicism and dour tone of those books. It seems like writing under a pseudonym gave King the freedom to be as dark and dreary as he wanted without any repercussions to his income.

Every one of those Bachman books were dark, depressing, jaded, and grim. Life sucks. It's not worth living. There is no meaning and there's nothing worth saving. It's no surprise that they all end with dour BD Anklevich-style unhappy endings.

Roadwork was another book in that same tradition. Because of that, it took longer for me to get through it than I had been doing. There was definitely less to get excited about and keep me coming back for more. Luckily, it wasn't that long, so I did make it to the end, but there wasn't a whole lot in it that I found to recommend.

It's kind of funny to hear a review like this from somebody such as myself. I've written too many dark and dreary stories of my own to be complaining about reading one, right?