And a Little Extra-Crispy Extra Collateral Damage

An update to my Prior post , these addtional items are in the collateral damage file

• Winters Tale and Django Unchained at Target
• Exclusive Minecraft Horse pack with Hostile Mobs from Target (and those were fortunately the only hostile mobs I encountered there)
• From Walmart- The Hangover Trilogy(all three movies) Anchorman 2, Red Dawn- I tried for Super 8 but the one copy I found was sliding free in the case and would have been a scratched up mess 

Black Friday 2014

     I did this last year, so I'm going to make a tradition of it. My post thanksgiving report

     So first, bear with my while I bore you by crowing about my dinner. This year was my first year cooking the turkey- Sam backstopped me and gave assistance, but I did the heavy lifting, chose seasonings, and kept "abreast" of it cooking. I guaranteed it would come out of the oven warmer than it started because...physics. What I could not guarantee is that it would come out edible, or non-toxic.

     But it came out tender, moist, and Deeelicious. And as of this writing, apparently non-toxic(despite what my sister the vegetarian might think); I had some, Sam had some, Tango had some. It was accompanied by carrot and cranberry salad, Pillsbury biscuits (from the cardboard tube!) (which Sid got some of)pumpkin pie (Tango and Wallace got some), and martinellis sparkling apple cider. The one error was in my preparation of the gravy packet that came with the turkey- I heated it in a pan, but what I should have done was toss it in the kitchen wastebasket and possibly set fire to it. No worries, I will remember that for next year as a serving suggestion. It was a mellow evening, and Sam and I watched Godzilla

     Now on to the categorized Swag

SURGICAL STRIKE: all from bestbuy.com, and shipped today, leaving me far from the madding crowds

• Arrow, Season 2, $9.99
• Supernatural, Season 9, $9.99
• Longmire Season 1, $9.99
• Longmire Season 2, $9.99
• R.I.P.D. $5.99
• Pacific Rim $5.99

COLLATERAL DAMAGE:
Red and Red2 at Target, $5 apiece

COINCIDENTAL ARRIVALS: showed up weds- pics to come

• MMC Azalea from BBTS
• Toyworld Hardbone also from BBTS\

Of note: 11/27/14 was Tangos third bird-day(based upon best calculations to his hatching date)- my baby continues to get smarter and sometimes brattier

Thanksgiving 2014

     Last year I wrote as a League assignment but the League is a dream that is no more, and I have not found any blogging challenge to replace it yet. So here is my 2014 list

     I'm thankful I am back in the groove of blogging again; thankful for Tango and Wallace, my collections, my apartment, my job, my car. I'm thankful, oddly, for IKEA, and the furniture of theirs I like. I'm thankful for the online merchants I can use when the stores don't stock my new toys, like Bigbad, TFSource and HTS. They help me treat my plastic addiction

     I'm thankful for my decent relationship with my ex, her birds (Sid and Aldo). I'm thankful for great entertainment such as the Marvel Studios movies, the DC TV shows, and Agents of Shield(Because Coulson lives). I'm Thankful for authors like Louis L'Amour, Tony Hillerman, and Terry Pratchett, like Jim Butcher and Scott Sigler, for stories you can pick up and read over and over.

     I'm Thankful I am alive in this most interesting of times. I am Thankful for my family, my friends, and even a stranger who will share a moment or two of conversation or a dark unspoken fear. And I am Thankful, so very thankful for everyone who stops by and reads a post of mine because this is where I tell the universe:

I WAS HERE, I HAD A UNIQUE VOICE, AND I MATTERED

Dr Wu and the Cybertronian Arms Race

     Ok first- this will not just be Dr Wu- there are several really good Arms Suppliers to the transformers toys- what this post is about is buying toys for your toys: buying collectibles to enhance your other collectibles.

    I Could (but won't) Meticulously track my purchasing history on these items. I know that the very first transformer add-on I bought was to reach out and get my generations Kup an IDW comics accurate head

this is the non-smoking head- I found that the transformation
Broke the Cy-gar on the other head, so it was fixed and put away

     I purchased a Cartoon Accurate gun for Transformers Prime Powerizer Optimus Prime, based upon the gun that came with FE Optimus

Prime characters generally have their weapons built into their
arms so this covers his hand

Rainstorm for Generations Springer

     And BLADES! Blades galore of many shapes and sizes

UFO blades for Optimus Prime ROTF or DOTM leader

     Cybertronian War Axe by Corbot V(modeled by Toyworlds "Orion")

the Sky-Breaker- Dr Wu's ode to the Star Saber of TF Prime

This wonderful piece comes in a variety of colors
from silver metallic to far more exotic
Primes first action with this weapon in the Anime was to
cleave a mountain in half

Heavy Gear- the Forge of Solus Prime and a big gun for TF Prime UltraMagnus

love the way the forge caught the light

Courageous- Guns and blades for TF Prime FE Arcee

usually with Arcee it is either blades or guns,
not both at the same time

SXS A-03 add-ons for Generations Blitzwing- Head, gun, missiles, and shoulder fixer-uppers

Cavalier- the Sword from Age of Extinction

and yep, I bought it for MP10 Optimus Prime and he looks great with it

New Banner Announcement

new banner with more placticky bubble

Old Banner

New banner

Bruce Banner

Hulk hate Puny Banner

Follow-Up to Winters Sounds-Furnace Room Lullaby

     As I posted here, we had some November furnace trouble, and I spent part of the morning working with my landlord to resolve it, both for my warmth and the warmth of the dwellers above (which sounds way cooler than "my upstairs neighbors")

This is "Furnace Room Lullaby" by Neko Case and her Boyfriends. this sounds almost exactly entirely unlike the sound of pipes banging and rattling due to air pressure where water should be.

     On the other hand...the scene in a war movie where the submarine has burst pipes and there is water pouring into the engine room...it looked a lot like that when the boiler let off pressure (it can hold up to 35 P.S.I.)

     So I managed to get steamed, sprayed, lay in water, hold a hose with water at 180 degrees (f) + in it as we watched to make sure the line was free of bubbles; the upshot for now? We have heat

    and what I learned was this:

 

Tiny Bubbles

In the Pipes

Make the Pipes Rattle

Make you Feel Gripes

 

Tiny Bubbles

Keep the Pipes from wa-a-arming

(sorry- all I came up with)

 

but here is Don Ho with the Original

 

 

The Sounds of Winter

     From the furnace closet cometh a sharp, metallic rattling-intermittent yet persistent. Is it the pump? Is it the pipes? Is it as Sam theorizes Tommyknockers? Or my own theory, that Spyware/Malware got installed on the furnace and it needs a scan and clean done.

     I guess I will know more after my Landlord takes a look at it, and a listen.

Language Warning

     Just a random bird related thought- Tango talks, but he also has an array of conure noises, some of which I try to emulate back to him. He clicks at me, I click back at him, and it seems to go OK, until I try to click a different pattern pack to him. His response is silence, possibly bordering on stunned silence.

     Is it possible that my clicks back to him are the equivalent of a human screaming gibberish lightly laced with random touretticisms? And he is sitting there thinking..."Daddy? What the hell is wrong with you?"

     Think on that next time you meow back at your cat or bark at your dog and they look at you like you are an idiot...

A Frozen Wasteland

    Also known as: A Song of Ice and Fire-Breathing Dinobots(which means I thought of that after I published)

 Ned Stark said it best-Winter is Coming. Put another way, it looks like Elsa was mildly concerned, and she let it go.

     An age of Ice has come to my home city of Lakewood. an Age of Ice, of Snow, of Blistering Cold and Poor Drivers. A sad and terrible end to my cargo shorts for the year, traded for something longer. On the other hand, I love my wool coat and love wearing it.

     But this weather makes me think of...Dinosaurs. Not long ago, I read a fascinating book called "the Dinosaur Heresies" of which the main point was that dinosaurs were likely warm blooded, highly active and incredibly successful creatures. The author agrees with the conventional wisdom that a meteor impact put up a cloud of debris into the atmosphere and cooled the planet was the final (tho not the only) nail in the coffin of the largest land animals. And what survived was ...

Tango and all his kin- the birds.

     They were small enough to find shelter, and had small enough food needs that they could subsist on what was available. They survived to give us a world full of color and song. Birds are the last dinosaurs according to Bakker, and I agree with him. The book is convincing and worth a read or two. I bought mine at ARC thrift store

     In related news I took a trip last night over the streets. Denver Drivers tend, in the opinions of this blogger, to forget snow driving over the spring/summer until that first snow of the year. At that point they either drive super slow or like maniacs. But I took a trip to the post office, for my power bill and for the dinosaurs, or rather for the Dinobots. 

     I now have three good neo G1 style dinobots- Grimlock came about thanks to ToysR'us re-release of the masterpiece figure and a lot of calls asking when he would be in. A lot of calls, a lot of annoyed TRU employees and a persistence even I was impressed by. To sweeten the pot, I got him for a price match that was nearly obscene

  

     Planet X's version of Swoop, Caelus has graced this page before, but here he is in context. his engineering, and the intricacy of his transformation is truly a pleasure, I only wish, from an aesthetic viewpoint that he had a face rather than a faceplate. A big part of G1 Swoops Charm for me is his face

 But wait...who is the shadowy figure in the middle? could that be someone I drove across town on icy streets to the post office to get? Resplendent with gold chrome and armed to the teeth, this is Toyworlds "Roar",(their version of Snarl) the first of their dinobot figures, which will eventually form a combiner of what appears to be huge size. I have several pieces from toyworld already, and their toys always impress me. If I have one gripe on this it's a minor one, which is that the tail comes off to accommodate the eventual combiner toy- he is the left lower leg/foot. But he is big, feels solid in the hand, and well articulated

 NOTE: each of the back plates is ball jointed and moves- likewise the tail plates. I'm pretty happy with him. storage of his sword is between the halves of the tail

This post was photographed with my Canon A2300 point and shoot camera, and my brand new (to me) Arc thrift store tripod

because if you are trying to shoot a Dinobot, you had better use a Canon

Floored by a Flightless Seabird

     I have been watching Gotham from the first episode, and have been semi-impressed.

     Let me give a little background- back a trio of years ago, Once Upon A Time started up, and my feelings were complicated- I felt that there was no mystery- or very little- of who most of the characters were- that rather than going for the slow reveal, it was all out there in our faces. yet somehow, Once Upon A Time has kept jumping the shark and making me look forward to a bigger shark. it's kept me coming back for more, and pretty eagerly.

     So along came Gotham...and, yep, we figured out that Selina "Cat" Kyle is going to be Catwoman. We had an intimation that Edward Nygma would be the Riddler. No mystery there. And we are treated to a Penguin with what appears to be such psychopathically poor impulse control that he caused this sentence to begin with a conjunction (which is apparently OK).

     Episode 7- Penguin's Umbrella changed all that. 

SPOILER ALERT FOR THE GOTHAM DISADVANTAGED

     In the pilot, James Gordon (honest cop) is convinced under threat of harm to his fiance' to execute Oswald Cobblepot for the mob boss Falcone- Gordon fires his gun next to the Penguins head and tells him to disappear, never come back to Gotham. Which lasts...not very long- Cobblepot is back, slinking around the city and trying to create advantages for himself by ingratiating himself with rival boss Maroni. We are left with the impression that the very presence of this whack-job murderous Penguin is a danger to Gordon

     In Episode 7, we find out that the Penguin asked Falcone to have Gordon be his killer, because Gordon might spare him. And in return, the Penguin will be gathering information for Falcone. In other words...poor impulse control or no, The Penguin is pulling a whole puppet show's worth of strings behind the scenes. 

     I'm not gonna lie- my jaw dropped, I leaned in close to my screen and said "what the...hell???" Never saw it coming. Now I'm eagerly awaiting the next episode. And my Semi-Impressed got a whole lot more impressed

Why the Plastic Bubble??

     Way back in the old days of 2012, I did a post for the League of Extraordinary Bloggers about  my plastic bubble. There was a story behind the post that was never told...

     My Then Wife, now Ex- Wife and Roommate made a comment that I viewed the world through a "plastic bubble". I do, and I admit it- and I think it is not neccessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, I am influenced at times by the plastic monkey, detailed here. So to stave off his attacks, I can shop, or I can handle odd stuff from my collection...take pictures of it...write odd things about it. So the Plastic Bubble Protects me from the world, the world from me, and my wallet from the monkey on my back.

     The effects of a plastic monkey on ones back are many and varied, and they are both beneficial and less so. I recall one day I was talking with someone on the phone when I looked up and realized...

Jetfire...was...mistransformed

 

so with my blood pressure slightly elevated, I started calculating the length of the phone cord and what it would take to get to him safely. And I realized...it could not be done. I could not ease him out from behind Bumblebee without a very practical lesson in how few Autobots can fly.

     You bet I fixed it as soon as that phone hit the hook. Did you have to ask??

 

     On the other hand, I have access to fascinating knowledge about my collectables, and what they represent. If I need patience and understanding, I pick up Optimus as a reminder to be overflowing with the Energon of cybertronian kindness. If I need Cold ruthless logic, Shockwave comes down from storage. If I need daring...Springer- and so forth.

 

 

     So I'm a boy in a plastic bubble(not this boy), of my own making. Rather than be trapped in a world I never made, I get to be at home and comfy in one I did make. I have a plastic bubble. If you don't have a bubble you might want to look into forming one- I highly advise it. It's nice in here

 

more pix coming soon

Not Gone, Not Forgotten

I am not gone, nor has my blog been removed- I did change the URL and I suspect it will take about 24 hours to populate fully- please be patient

Shedding Baggage

      I have been trimming labels, removing labels that have one or two posts attached to them, and buffing up the labels I use a lot.

     In most cases this is fine, but there are some labels I really just should use more

     Like Steampunk. I need to find more Steampunk stuff to write about

Who is this Upstart Mr Smith???

      There is a quote, near the end of The Amazing Spider-Man: "I had a professor once who liked to tell his students that there were only 10 different plots in all of fiction. Well, I'm here to tell you he was wrong. There is only one: "Who am I?""

     So who is Mr Smith?

     Well, that answer is is complicated as it would be for anyone. I can tell you What he likes. He likes Transformers... good Sci-Fi, bad Sci-Fi... Books by Terry Pratchett and Jim Butcher ...Fantasy(good and bad)...Westerns. He loves his family even when they don't understand him and his ways. He loves his bird, sassy and moody as that little parrot can be

     I can tell you what he does- he cleans and fixes computers for users. He podcasts with skeptics, and provides artwork for the podcasts. He was a member of the League of Extraordinary Bloggers before they folded.

     So why shed the Primordial Badger shell? There is another quote, this one from a movie I have only seen the trailer for- Observe and Report

"The world has no use for another scared man." It's time for me to like what I like, own what I do, and not hide behind a pseudonym. So who is Mr Smith? The answer to that question may be different tomorrow than it is today. But for today...this is the answer.

I am Mr Smith

Under Construction

for the next day or so

Famous Last Words

      "So long, and thanks for all the fish" comes to mind...

that, and one from Reaper Man

“...no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.”


and the famous

"I have… seen things you people wouldn't believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments… will be lost in time, like [small cough] tears… in… rain"


but what most applies is this:

"Above all, do not lament my absence, for in my spark, I know that this is not the end, but merely a new beginning. Simply put, another transformation."


I'm not dying, not any faster than most people are. I'm not leaving the web, or stopping my posts. what I am doing is ending my time as Primordial Badger. That was a cocoon, and I am a deadly and beautiful butterfly now...

Kidding- no way I would ever user a cocoon/butterfly metaphor in seriousness- phoenix/ashes maybe

so it is with some sadness, some trepidation, and a lot of anticipation that I say farewell to the first phase of this blog and hello to the next

Soon Primordial Badgers Media Hoard becomes...easier to spell- see you then