Doing Battle Again

I've been doing battle with lawn crews and their roaring leaf-blowers and weed-eaters recently. The other day, I had big plans to record stories all morning long, and make tons of progress on the audiobook of Three Vampire Weekend. Guess what happened.

That's right, 17 minutes and 42 seconds after I started recording, a lawn crew pulled up and cranked on their leaf blowers. They went on for at least an hour. I think they must have been servicing the lawns of three different neighbors at once. I had to twiddle my thumbs for a while, and I got a lot less done that I hoped I would.

I did get one whole story narrated, though. "Onward, to the Breech" is done. That's something. Still a lot more to go, though.

A few days later, I was back at it. I had to record a bunch of retakes, because, when I was recording "That Damned Cat" before, I was up too close to the mic, and my plosives punched through the pop filter leaving ungly thumping sounds in the audio.

I finished those up, and started into the last part of "The Frayed Ends of Sanity". I only have chapters 8, 9, and 10 left to go, and then I can start into "The Elephant in the Room" which is about half the word count of the book, so even though it's the last story, I'm nowhere near almost done, unfortunately.

I narrated about three paragraphs, when suddenly a f@#$ing leaf blower started roaring again. 

I sighed, realizing that, even though I'd only just begun, I was going to have to stop for now and take it back up later.

I went to click stop on the recording I was making and save what little I had, when something weird happened. The counter on the record time started up when I clicked the stop button. Wait a minute. What was going on? Oops! I realized that I'd gotten prepared to start recording those chapters in "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" but I'd never pushed the record button. The paragraphs that I'd narrated for the last couple of minutes had simply been for fun...for practice. I wasn't rolling on them.

In fact, the f#$%ing leaf-blower had saved me. I would have kept going all the way to the end of the story and through the author's note before realizing that I wasn't recording if it wasn't for the leaf-blower guy.

I guess, nothing can be all bad...not even a f#$@ing leaf-blower.

Burrata? Nikto!

When we went grocery shopping this week, my wife insisted that we stop in at Costco, because she wanted Burrata, and she claimed she'd seen it there before. Burrata? I didn't know what it was, but every time she said the word, it sounded like the line from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Those words have been mentioned and parodied many times over the years. The one that stands out to me the most was when they used them in Army of Darkness, but Ash can't remember the last one.

Another famous parody of those words comes from Star Wars. After the Return of the Jedi was done, Kenner was making toys of the various aliens in Jabba's palace and on the skiffs, and they asked George what the names of these things were. When he sent them back their answer, there was one alien named Klaatu, one named Barada, and one named Nikto.

When my wife started talking about Burrata...which is apperently some kind of cheese thing, and they didn't even have it at Costco, but we found it later at Aldi...all I could hear was Barada instead. Particularly because I've been finding those skiff guard aliens at Ross in the last while. I did a post about when I bought the Nikto (Skiff Guard) for example. Then, I did a post just a few days ago about when Rish sent me a Klaatu from a huge lot of them he'd bought off eBay.

So, when we bought our Burrata the other day, I could only think about, and then had to assemble this:

Thus works the mind of a middle-aged Star Wars fan who likes toys too much to truly be considered an adult.

Halloween Decorations Post #3

Okay, I was thinking today I could try to include the shots of all the figures that come from horror films. I've acquired a few of those figures since the last time that I put up the decorations. First, there's this Mego version of Dracula from the Hammer Films Dracula movie.

The coffin I made him coming out of was actually a box of candy of some sort or another that we got a few years back. It was cool enough that I figured I'd save it and see if I could use it.

Then, there's Ghostface from the movie Scream. And, since he's in the same picture, there's the Gill-man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I paid top dollar for that Ghostface one day when I was feeling down and looking for something to make me a little happier. I shouldn't have, but that's water under the bridge now. The Gill-man at least was at Ross at half its usual price.

Next, we have Pennywise the Clown from the recent adaptation of Stephen King's It. He's a really cool figure, I think, though I also paid full-price for him. Another one I shouldn't have done. Here and there I go for that crap, though. Next to him is another movie monster, The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.

Those two were in competition with the hanging pumpkin lights I blogged about last time. I had to stuff them back behind to get the shot.

Since we're doing Ghostbusters, I ought to include this as well. Here's the four Ghostbusters showing us how they ain't afraid a no ghosts.

Let's see, next, I have this cool black & white version of Frankenstein's Monster. I threw the goofy graves I got from that At Home store Rish recommended I check out behind the figure, because he was so tall, which meant I had to put him in a big cubby hole. It was pretty empty looking without the graves though.

Since we're doing Frankenstein's Monster, here's another one I got recently when the Universal Monsters figures showed up at Ross. I also managed to get his blushing bride.

By happenstance, there's another Frankenstein's Monster just beside them. That's the one from Scooby-Doo...should I include Scooby-Doo stuff in this post? It's from a TV show. That's kind of the same, right? Oh, that's also a Fortnite Zombie figure up above. I ought to mention that one, because I don't think I'll show the picture again when doing another post in the future.

Since we're talking Scooby-Doo figures, I figure I ought to show my Toony Terror figures. Those came into Ross earlier this year, and I bought a few of them. Not that many, because they tried to charge what was basically the full amount of what you might have paid for them if you'd bought them new. I got Freddy Krueger.

I got Leatherface.

Who is sharing a shelf with fellow Halloween decorations Jack O'Lantern from Marvel Comics and Mumm-Ra from The Thundercats.

And I also got Ash from The Evil Dead trilogy of films.

And, I guess I should go there, here are the other "monsters" from Scooby-Doo—The Headless Horseman and the Ghost Knight.

There's also a little pumpkin and a bird skeleton...which I'm pretty sure Rish gave me one year, though I could be wrong about that. My memory is getting fuzzy.

I've already shown you the Scooby-Doo Werewolf guy in a previous post, so I won't do that again, which means, I guess, that it's time for the piece de resistance of this whole section. Here is where Scooby-Doo and Toony Terrors collide. My Toony Terror figure of Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th ran into the Mystery Gang from Scooby-Doo, and unfortunatley, it wasn't just Old-Man Witherspoon who used to run the Old Abandoned Amusement park, it was the real Jason Voorhees. The Mystery Gang finally met their match, I guess.

Zoinks! Shaggy and Scooby better skeedaddle!

Anklecast 71 - Undo (Part Two) Available On Patreon

I just published the next episode of The Anklecast over on Patreon. If you are a member, then you can check it out. If you're not a member, you should consider it. I'd love it if you joined, and you get access to every episode of the Anklecast a week earlier.

Rish Outfield finishes his reading of "Undo", a new story that I just published a little over a month ago. It's a pretty dark story yet, but hopefully it has a message for you in there. It's the story of a kid in high school who happens upon a stopwatch with an unusual feature. If you push a certain button, the stopwatch skips back one minute...and so does everything else. What would you do if you had the ability to go back a minute in time any time you wanted to?

Head over to Patreon, and you can listen to the story now. You won't want to miss it or even wait until it hits the regular feed, I bet.

One Of Those People

Last year, we stopped in and spent about an hour at Dead Horse Point State Park while we were on a vacation.

While we were there, Little decided that he wanted a sticker for his souvenir. It was one of those stickers you would put in your back window or on your bumper. Not really sure why he wanted such a thing, but that's what he picked.

Months went by, and he did nothing with the sticker. When my wife told him to take it off the bar in the kitchen and go put it away in his room somewhere, he decided that he didn't have anywhere for it to go. Instead, he asked my wife if he could put it on her car. She frowned, but couldn't really give a good reason why she shouldn't allow him, so she said okay.

The next day, I went out to get into my truck...and found that Little's sticker was on my back window, not my the window of my wife's car. Little changed his mind on the way out to put the sticker on, and decided he didn't need to bother asking me. So, I had a big window sticker on my truck.

For a long time, that's how it stayed. But then, just a few weeks ago, we went out to Yellowstone National Park, and while we were in the gift shop, I thought, "What if I got another window sticker from Yellowstone, and I become one of those people who has lots of stickers from their travels in their window?"

I went for it. I got a sticker for Yellowstone, then one for Lewis and Clark Caverns when we stayed a day there, and then one from Waterton National Park in Canada when we spent a day there. My single sticker in the window was now four. But I never do anything part way (that's not generally true, but sometimes it is).

When we got back from our trip, a big pack of stickers that my wife had ordered from Amazon for Little to decorate his school folders with. They were camping related stickers, and there were 200 of them. Little went through them and chose the ones he wanted, and when I asked him if I could use some of the other ones on my car, he agreed. 

These stickers were basically the kind of thing you might find in a visitor center somewhere. It was possible that they might fade really fast or something, because they were so cheap, but I rolled the dice and gave it a shot. I went through and picked all the stickers that were portraying something that I had been to, from Cancun and San Francisco to Arches National Park and Yosemite National Park. Now I had stickers on both the driver and passenger side windows.

My wife told me I could get stickers like these even cheaper from Temu. I don't have a lot of trust in Temu, but my wife loves it. She ordered me a pack of National Park stickers from Temu, and we waited for them to arrive. When they showed up, they were minuscule. Way too small to work on a window. The last set of stickers I used were a little small, there were about half the size of those.

"Whoops, sorry," my wife said, and we put the stickers in a drawer in case we ever wanted to use them for something in the future. They had only cost $1, after all, so it wasn't a big deal. I decided to give Temu a second chance. This time, I went through and bought separate stickers, rather than a huge pack, because the stickers in the packs were too small. The separate stickers must be larger.

Well, those stickers came last night, and I hadn't considered how much larger those stickers might be. Look at the sticker compared to the size of my hand!

That thing is as big as my hand with the fingers outstretched. It's huge! And almost all of them were that large. Only two of them were the right size to be a window sticker. I was irritated. I sorted through the stickers, and took the few of them that were on the smaller side of the huge ones, and still put them on. So, my windows look like this now:

If you can't tell, the Grand Teton National Park sticker is one of the new ones...it was the smallest of the big ones.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and the Glacier National Park stickers are the new ones on this side. Those are both really big, but they're narrow at least, so they don't look as ridiculous. I considered using another one, but I just couldn't do it. Too freaking big.

I guess I'll have to see if I can't find some stickers somewhere on Temu or maybe even go over to Amazon and pay full price to get new stickers to replace the ones that I got that are too big. We'll see if I can't manage.

But I am definitely one of those people now.

Give Me Sight Beyond Sight

We were at the Japan Festival last weekend, and one of the booths was all different kinds of swords to choose from. They were mostly katanas for people who wanted to pretend to be ninjas. There were several anime swords and video game swords as well. My son was pretty interested in the Zelda swords, because he's a huge fan of that game. He's tried making his own foam versions of those swords several times over the years.

There was only one sword that was familiar to me, though. The neat part about it was that this wasn't a foam or plastic sword. This thing was made of actual metal. Check it out:

"Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight."

Yes, at a risk of being further mocked by Rish Outfield, I took a picture of myself with the Sword of Omens from The Thundercats. I have to say, it was a pretty awesome sword. I looked, but they didn't have the He-Man sword (Does that thing have a name?).

It was almost completely made of metal. I was impressed. It felt really solid and high quality. It wasn't even as expensive as I would have thought. That sticker you can see on the blade says it costs $119.95. That seems like a good deal for a metal sword of that size. Then again, I've never bought a sword before, so I have no idea. It might actually be an outrageous price taht no one would ever pay.

Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | On A Roll, Can I Keep It Going? | Week 68 Roundup

I did really well last week, and I really wanted to keep it going. Was it possible? Can a person just keep that ball rolling? Or was I bound to slow down? Watch the video and see!

Last Thing From Rish

A while back, I got an email from Rish that said "I'm SERIOUSLY considering buying this." It had a link to an eBay auction selling lot of ten Star Wars figures still in their package for $59.99. They were all the Klaatu (Skiff Guard) figures.

That was a figure that I didn't have. I was all for it if he was actually considering it. If he had ten of them, he could surely part with one to sell to me.

Rish made an offer and managed to get it for ten dollars less, and we were off. He sent me my Klaatu in the package that came the other day.

So now, I've got another alien for my space station. I won't get anymore, though, I swear, until I build a building. I think maybe I'll see if I can't build one this weekend. Or maybe next week during the morning.

More From Rish

I talked yesterday about the Halloween Star Wars zombie droid that Rish sent out to me...but that wasn't all he sent out. There were two more figures in the package. I'll talk about one more of them today, and then the other one tomorrow, I guess.

I want as many droids as I can get in my Ankletown space station, so any chance I have to get one, I take. The Disney Store had TC-14 available for purchase, and after being up for a while, they decided to put it on clearance. Marked down to $10 instead of $15, I jumped at the chance.

This is the robot from The Phantom Menace that brings Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan a drink right before the Neimoidians decide to gas them. So, it comes with a tray and a pitcher.

It could make a nice waiter at the bar or restaurant, or something. Although that pitcher doesn't look like a pitcher at all.

Zom-B From Rish

I know that I just swore that I wouldn't buy anything for Ankletown Station until I at least made the first building for it, and I swear to you that this doesn't go against that. A few weeks ago, Rish told me that he was buying some stuff from the Disney store online. If I wanted to, I could order too, and then there would be no shipping to get the guys.

They had a Halloween figure available there that I'd been thinking about, and this was my chance. I probably wasn't going to buy it myself and pay the shipping, but combining our orders would make it worthwhile. The figure is called R5-Z0MB. It's a zombie version of a Star Wars droid.

Doesn't he look spooky? Okay, maybe not, but it's pretty fun. He came in the mail just the other day...but I bought him before, so I didn't break my word.

The hole in its head is pretty fun, although I wish there was something inside of it. There ought to be wires or something poking out now that the head is broken open. I guess that astromechs don't have a lot going on upstairs.

He's not exactly right for Ankletown Station, but it could be fun to have him in pictures when Halloween comes around.

Since he's a Halloween figure, I put him up on the shelf with the other Halloween stuff. Here is his space for this year:

New Story, "Black Angel" Now Available

This is a story that I've never shared anywhere before. It's never been available in any way. It comes from many years ago, from the second time that Rish and I did a Broken Mirror event together. The premise on this was, "A person is given a revenge crystal, only to discover that it works all too well..."

I think the story that came out of it is pretty good. I really like it, and I think you will too. Or, to put it another way, YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE!!! Or at least, you'll enjoy having the story in your life. It'll entertain you for the time it takes to read it. In fact, you should head over to Amazon right now and grab it. It's available for the low, low price...I mean, it's as low as Amazon will allow, because I want y'all to give it a go...of $2.99. Check it out.

Halloween Decorations Post #2

I have a bunch of orange lights for Halloween, but I didn't bother putting them up on the shelves. They just don't seem right for Halloween. I put up lights for Christmas every year, because that is basically intrinsic to the holiday, but lights and Halloween are not so married. Companies have been trying to make it that way, but nobody's really buying.

You can get away with lights for Halloween on a smaller basis, though. I used to have a string of ghosts that lit up from inside, and I hung them up on the shelf. Those lights don't work anymore, though. I chucked them out this year, and replaced them with these lights instead.

It's little orange pumpkins with lights in them. They're not amazing. The ghosts were better, because they lit up much more, but these will do. You don't see them as well when it isn't dark, but that's fine.

You can see how hard it is to see them from afar, but in real life, rather than a photo, it works better.

They string around the room going across the same shelf line.

I'm thinking about getting a new set of ghosts too, and if I do, I'll put them along the ceiling line. That'll be cool, but I don't know if I want to spend the $12 that it would take to get them.

Frankie Berry

The other day, I made the pledge not to buy a single new thing for Ankletown Station until I had at least one building created. The only thing I was able to buy for now on was Franken Berry...if I could find it.  

Of course, I also told you the other day about how I couldn't find it anywhere, and I figured I was going to have to rely on Rish Outfield to mail me out the one that he set aside for me. I asked Rish to mail it right away, since it was already almost Halloween, and I was going to want it on my shelf as soon as possible. He discouraged that.

"What if you find it next week?" Rish said. "You're going to wish you didn't buy it from me and pay the shipping to get it out to you."

That was true. I guessed that it was best to hold off for a little bit...and it certainly was, because only a few days later, look what I found.

I'm pretty dang stoked. I'd be happy with just Franken Berry and Count Chocula, to tell you the truth. I know they made a Boo Berry as well, but I don't want it nearly as much as the other two. I pulled Franken Berry out and set him up on my dashboard.

Looks good. He comes with two choices in head. This one was the alternate, but it's definitely my preferred one. When I got him home, I made a space so that he could be up there next to Chocula.

That looks nice. I'm happy. Don't get me wrong, if I find Boo Berry, I'll buy it, but if I never do, I won't be all that upset. Halloween decorations have been so fun this year.

Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Did I Finally Pull It Together? | Week 67 Roundup

For a couple of weeks of been spinning my wheels, unable to keep to my goals that I set for myself. But it's a new week, could I turn it around and get myself back on track? Find out on the newest exciting episode of Big Anklevich on Health!

Yoda and Artoo?

Went out to Ross, and I didn't find Franken Berry like I was hoping. Rish found Franken Berry at his Ross, but not me.

He said he would send me one if I never find it myself, so I guess I don't have to be too worried.

I did find something I hadn't seen before.

This is Yoda's Jedi fighter, from the Micro Galaxy Squadron line. I've been collecting as many of these ships as I can to use on a 1/72 scale space station I'd like to create. since I'd never seen this ship before, I figured I ought to pick it up.

Rish tells me it's from Revenge of the Sith, but I don't remember it at all. He said that Yoda flies away in it at the end of the Order 66 scene. I looked that up on YouTube, and it wasn't there. Maybe it was a little later in the show. I don't know.

Anyway, while I like the Jedi Starfighter, this particular model seems strange to me.

It's kind of bulbous and goofy looking. I'm not sure why. Yoda is smaller than other folks, he could easily fit in their ships. Why does he get one with a bigger bulb than them?

It's wings open up in an attack position, and the cockpit opens to a seat made especially for Yoda.

It also comes with an Artoo-Detoo, but I'm not really sure what Yoda is doing with Artoo.

I already have an Artoo that came with the X-Wing, so I could repaint this one and make him look like a different R2 unit. I wonder how hard that would be to paint a figure so small.

I guess, in the end, it's a cool little ship and it'll be fine with the space station, but I certainly don't need more of these. I probably paid too much for it as well. They wanted $5 for this thing. I pay less for a Vintage Collection figure at Ross, and I think they're much more worthwhile.

You know what? I think I've got to stop buying anything for any Ankletown Station space station until I actually get the gumption enough to actually build at least one building first. I'm going to make that pledge right now. The only thing I'll buy from Ross is Franken Berry from now on. Until I have at least one building made for the space station, I'm not spending another dime on figures or ships. I should have done this long ago.

Then next post you see with Ankletown Station in the tags will be my report of making the first building. I'll see you then. May the force be with you.

Halloween Decorations Post #1

I finished getting all the Halloween decorations up in my study the other day, and I'm kind of proud of myself for doing it. I know that sounds very Millennial of me to be proud of doing something basic or useless, but it's been several years since I managed to drum up the wherewithal to achieve the task. 

I have a huge plastic tote filled with Halloween stuff, so taking all the regular toys down and replacing them with the Halloween ones is actual pretty time consuming. I made sure to start all the way back in August so that I would get them up with enough time to actually enjoy them before I had to take them down again.

I took pictures of it all, and I figured I'd share them with y'all over the next month and a half as we build up to Halloween. It'll take that long to show all the pictures, there are so many.

I thought I'd start with the Skull Face Squad. I've been building this bunch up for years, and documenting each acquisition on the blog for you, though almost none of them have had any time on the shelf yet, due to my laziness for the last few years. Let's see what we've got. 

First is an old-timer. This is Reaper. He's been on the shelf since around 2018 or maybe even 2017. I found him at Five Below when you could still find worthwhile stuff there for five bucks, back before the dark times, before the inflation.

In case you were wondering, the pumpkin is a Halloween addition too. I don't usually have pumpkins on my shelf. The Coke thermal detonators and the bounty hunters stay up year round, however.

Now there's this group. I put them together because they all look like fantasy/sword and sorcery kind of characters. The two on the right are He-Man guys, Scare Glow and Skelegod (which is what Skeletor morphed into in the Netflix cartoon that I never watched). The ones on the left are from Fortnite and The Witcher.

This next one is a Marvel Legends figure...I forgot his name, but looking it up, it is D'Spayre. I guess he was the villain in the second season of the Cloak and Dagger TV show. I never watched season two. Season one wasn't all that good, so I never bothered to go on. The ghostly zombie sorceress next to him is called Shadow Weaver, and she is from the She-Ra show. She's not part of the Skull Face Squad, but I figured I'd introduce you to her now, rather than show the picture again in another post in the future. It's a good figure, and a pretty good design for a character. I really like the way she looks. Sexy, hot zombie sorceress Orko woman? Yes please.

This guy is from Fortnite too, but I can't remember his name either. I think it might be Voyager. Oh, almost. The internet says he is called Eternal Voyager. He's a guy in a space suit, and his normal head is just that...like a helmet or whatever. I was interested in the alternate head that is a skull floating in blue flames. That's pretty badass. I wanted him for my Skull Face Squad.

Here we have the Skullies who look like high-tech warriors, guys in space armor, but with skull-faced helmets or whatever. The first one is the Taskmaster from Marvel. He's been around since the beginning like The Reaper. The other two are Fortnite guys. The gold one is a particular favorite. He's pretty cool looking. Notice, of course, the pumpkin and the Scooby-Doo werewolf bad guy in the dividers above them. Those are Halloween things as well, as I'm sure you notice.

These are the last ones. They're the modern mercenary-looking guys. The guy in the middle is Crossbones, the Captain America villain. To the left of him is a Fortnite guy called Warpaint. He almost seems like a ripoff of Crossbones, doesn't he? Same general idea, slightly different look. The guy on the right is called Metal Mouth, I think. He's also Fortnite, though he's pretty cool, and I think he would fit in easily on the shelf with all of the Cobras in their never ending quest for world domination.

So, there you go. That's post number one for the Halloween decorations. I won't be back tomorrow with more, but I will be back with more eventually. A couple of times a week, probably. I don't want to overdo it on you guys and make the two people who actually look at the blog decide to stop, so I'll keep it at that level.