Ain't Wastin' Time

Only two days past Halloween yesterday, and I was at work recording football games for the sports guys when this commercial came on during one of them.

Please excuse the crappy pictures, but I tried as quickly as I could to get my camera out to get a shot before the commercial ended. Yessir, that is the John Travolta as Santa Claus commercial. Already running while Halloween's corpse isn't even cold yet.

What's in your wallet?

Well, if you're anything like me, there ain't a damn thing in your wallet. Inflation done emptied that thing out. Thanks for asking, Santa.

Do I Really Need To Add Lars Ulrich?

Having Ollie's nearby may not be a good thing after all. I've been spending a little too much money there lately. Case in point, the other day, while I was chatting with Rish on the phone, I was doing my usual trip to Ross. Ollie's is nearby, so it's now been added to my list of places to stop. I went into the Ollies, and to my surprise, among the usual cast off figures that nobody wants were four Figrin D'ans from the Star Wars Black Series. That's the six-inch scale figures. It's mostly what I collect for display. All the 3.75-inch collecting that I do is only for the Ankletown Station setup.

Four of them! That's a lot. That's more than half of the band, and now I could get them all for half of their original price. I wanted to, but had decided against collecting a set of the Modal Nodes, because getting seven figures would be prohibitively expensive. I've got three kids on our car insurance. We can barely afford our electric bill and don't get me started on the prices at the grocery store. But, if the figures are half price...maybe?

I debated it for a while, (They were $10 a piece. That's $40, and I seldom spend that much money at once on toys. I shop at Ross for a reason. Oh, and I did mention how everything costs way more than it used to? I sure haven't gotten a big raise to make up for that disparity, that's for sure), however, I finally gave in and bought the four guys.

They're pretty cool. Each one comes with three instruments, so even though they're identical, they can pass as different guys in the band...they're aliens after all. Who can tell one Bith from another, right?

They look pretty good all lined up blowing their space-horns.

I have an awful lot of leftover instruments though.

I guess I could probably use them in designing stuff on Ankletown Station. So, I'll find a use for all of this.

Now, there's two different figures in the Black Series Modal Nodes. They're both identical figures, but one comes with the three horns, the other one comes with the three larger instruments, and is sold as a deluxe figure. That one's name is Nalan Cheel. 

All I need is one Nalan Cheel, which is selling for a lot more than those Figrin D'ans are going for on eBay right now. I could get one of him, one or two more Figrin D'ans, and have the whole band. That's going be at least as expensive as what I've bought so far. I did run out to the other Ollie's that opened up on my way to work the next day, and they had no Figrin D'ans. So, I may have to pay full-price...or worse...to get the others. 

Is it worth it? Maybe I won't bother. Those four get the point across, right? Star Wars band. Awesome! Who cares about the drummer and bass player and keyboardist in a rock band anyway. All that matters are the lead guitarists and the singers. Quick, without looking on Google, tell me the name of the drummer and bassist on Van Halen...or AC/DC...or Aerosmith. Pretty much the only way a drummer gets his name out there is by being an asshole like Lars Ulrich or by having a huge schlong and giving it to Pamela Anderson like Tommy Lee. I don't see Nalan Cheel managing that kind of fame.

Wizards and Angels Now Available In eBook!

New short story collection available now! It's Wizards and Angels: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Four.

This will be my last short story collection for a while. I've used up all my short stuff, and it's pretty much all available and out there now. From here on out, I'll have to start publishing my novels. 

This one has a really good mix of stuff. It includes nine stories: From Another World, The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told, Undo, Unfortunate, Dr. Claw, Pre-owned, Long-Term Memory, Black Angel, and Digital Wizards. A few of those are from many moons ago, such as "The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told" or "Black Angel" and some of them are from this very year such as "Pre-Owned" or "Digital Wizards." "Digital Wizards" is a novella, and takes up the lion's share of the page count. Rather than describe each story separately, I just linked to the post where I released them in their standalone versions.

So far, Wizards and Angels is only available as an eBook on Amazon. My next order of business is to get the other formats ready for publishing. The paperback and hardcover will certainly be next, and over the next two months I will get the audio recorded and edited. So, depending on what your favorite format is, you can get it now or expect it to be a long shortly. I'll do a post when each format comes online as well so you won't miss it, don't worry. I hope you enjoy.

Halloween Decorations Post #8

Okay, folks. This is it! It's Halloween today, so this is the last one. In today's post, I'm sharing the Halloween decorations I have that don't readily fit into a category.

We'll start with Pez. I have this group:

They're up there with another one of those foam pumpkins. So cute, amiright?

Every year or so, they add more dispensers to their holiday choices while dropping the older ones off. Here's another set of them:

I'm always adding a few every year or so. I even have one bat dispenser that I had to leave off the shelves this year, because I had nowhere for it to go. Maybe next year I'll have a friend to go along with it, and it'll work better.

The last group of Pez is this one:

What better group to put up at Halloween could there be than the Mystery Gang. Next to them is a werewolf figure that I picked up this year. It's from a video game that I don't think I ever played called Altered Beast. I bought it just because it's a werewolf, not because of any appreciation of the game it comes from. I considered getting a few of them, and giving them custom paint jobs so that there could be a whole pack, but I didn't go that far.

Okay, now, we move on.

About ten years ago, my friend gave me this zombie viking statue for my birthday. He got himself the Green Bay Packers version of it and liked it enough to get another for me. It stays up all year round, though it may get supplanted soon. I'm full up on the space, so soon, whenever I get new stuff, I'll have to take old stuff off. Then this guy will go in the box and only come out for Halloween. I gotta be careful, though. He's kind of fragile.

Next is my Knight of Asperity.

That skeleton faced guy is a Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. figure. I was really into these guys for a while, and considered buying tons of them. However, I only ever picked up this single one. It's really cool, and I love it. Also, the bad guy from my book The Gauntlet is based off the look of this guy. Fun, right? Hopefully, this year, I'll get that published so that you can read it if you'd like (he says, knowing that no one will).

Next is Carrot Chomper.

This is an Imaginext guy. They had these Imaginext blind bag figures for sale at the local grocery store by my house, and for a while, Little and I had a good time collecting them. Little was the one who gave him the name Carrot Chomper. I guess seeing all the teeth on the skull face made him think of chomping down on carrots, hence the name.

But wait, there's more. Here's another Imaginext guy names Pumpkin Stealer.

He's a ghost pirate with a pumpkin on his head. You can take the pumpkin off, and he has a translucent green face underneath. Altogether a pretty fun character. Not sure if Pumpkin Stealer is the best name for him, but it's hard to convince a three-year-old to pick something different, so I just let it stand.

Pumpking Stealer has another one of the plastic jack o'lanterns there beside him. It has a light in it, but I don't think the thing has worked for years.

Now, the final Imaginext guy...who doesn't have a name.

This grim reaper came out years later than the other two, and by that time, Little was old enough that he didn't care to bother giving it a name. He does have the cool feature like the old jawa figures from Star Wars back in the nineties. He has that spot on top of his head, and if light shines into it, it makes his eyes glow.

After that, we have the bone spider.

Yes, spiders don't have bones. They're arachnids, and have exoskeletons. That didn't stop people from making creepy Halloween decorations depicting bone spiders. I complained about this once on a blog post many years ago, and Rish thought it would be fun to mess with me, get one of those spiders, and even give it a custom paint job for me before sending it out.

Ever since then, I hang it on my books every Halloween. It's silly, but fun too, I guess.

Now, to the pièce de résistance. Years ago, not long after getting into the Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. figures mentioned above, I discovered Mythic Legions. They were these really well-made, detailed and beautiful figures set in their own little fantasy realm. They were super expensive to buy second-hand on eBay, but if you paid attention and waited for one of their waves to launch, you could buy the figures for a normal price.

Well, one day, they had a special sale of their All-Star figures, the most popular ones, and I was paying attention, so I grabbed some. Particularly, I grabbed skeletons, a demon, and a vampire knight. I made a graveyard for the skeletons to be rising out of, and some spooky trees to be in that graveyard.

This year, I added a couple more skeletons to the group, but I think I've probably taken it as far as I can. I don't think any more figures can fit on this shelf without making it look bad. Here it is, this year's Mythic Legions graveyard scene:

So, there it is, the 2024 decorations. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you next month with a whole new exhaustive set of posts detailing my Christmas decorations. They may well be more extensive than the Halloween ones. Sorry.

Anklecast 72 - The Frayed Ends of Sanity Available On Patreon

The new episode of The Anklecast is now available over on Patreon. If you are a member, then you can check it out. If you're not a member, you should consider it. It may be a long time before the new episodes are available on the free feed. I host those files on archive.org, and they were attacked by hackers a while back. They are most of the way back, but uploads aren't allowed yet, and I have no idea when they will be again. Until that happens, Patreon will be the only place you can get The Anklecast. So, you know, it would be the perfect time to take that plunge and sign up.

This time, we have the story of Greg, who is going through a nasty divorce, which is the worst thing happening in his life...until the day when his phone starts ringing and whatever is on the other end of the line has the power to take over his mind and drive him toward thoughts he's never entertained before. How far will the mystery caller take it? You can only find out by listening to the end of "The Frayed Ends of Sanity."

Afterward, Rish and I talk about Metallica song titles, Broken Mirror events, and doing things differently for a change.

Head over to Patreon, and give it a listen. You won't want to miss it!

My Birthday Week, Did I Blow It? | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 73 Roundup

Another week trying to maintain a positive attitude, and I did pretty good, I think, but Sunday was my birthday. Could I handle that? Or would I give in and go crazy eating cake and candy and other garbage? Could I handle it? On top of that, it was a generally depressing day. Who wants to get older? Particularly, who wants to have a landmark birthday like their 50th? Did the depressive nature of the day get to me? Watch the show and find out.

Still One More

This one, I don't really have an excuse for. I shouldn't have given into this temptation.

A few years ago, Hasbro went all in on Lando Calrissian. They made figures of Lando in all of his different costumes in several different scales, and made them available all at once in high numbers. This led to Lando being the biggest pegwarmer ever. Any store you went to was overrun with Lando figures clogging the pegs and keeping new merchandise from ever arriving. The demand for Lando just wasn't anywhere close to the supply that was available.

I avoided buying any of these Landos, because I knew that they would definitely make their way to Ross. There were just too many of them for that not to happen. Eventually, all the figures disappeared, but I'm pretty sure they weren't slowly bought by Lando fans. Instead, stores realized they'd never sell, and they pulled them off and sold them away to secondary retailers.

Well, just the other day, I saw my first Lando at Ross...oh, wait, let me be more accurate. I saw my first ten Landos at Ross. Yeah, they had them on the pegs there now, and there were a bunch of them. At least ten.

I only wanted one, and I'd be done. I bought it, and took it out to the car.

It's a pretty good figure for a 3.75 inch scale guy. That really looks like Billy Dee Williams to me.

The cape is a little wonky, but I'm sure some work on it would make it look alright.

I thought about buying more of them and using the heads on other figures, but that's not going to work. There's only one Billy Dee. I can't just put a Lando head on somebody else and pretend like it's a rando, because it definitely isn't. It's Billy Dee. 

So, this will be the only Lando that I buy, and sadly, the rest of them will probably warm the pegs at Ross for months or even years from now on. Hopefully, Hasbro will learn their lesson, and only produce figures in the numbers they need to sell so this doesn't happen again...of course it will. There's always some pegwarmer or another.