MacGuffin

      A common plot device, a secret motivator, the MacGuffin is well known to film afficionados. From the Alfred Hitchcock back in the 1930s, to the mysterious briefcase of Marsellus Wallace, MacGuffins spark our imagination and make us form wild theories as to what the secret might be.


      I have posted about Brainstorm before, but at that time, I never mentioned his mysterious MacGuffin. He carries a briefcase that he swears that if it is opened outside a controlled environment, it will be the end of the world.

      I went to Ebay to find a suitable briefcase which turned out to be a GI Joe accessory. My Brainstorm loves it. Lifeline will never miss it

This Bug's Life

      I have come to the realization that I am more a grasshopper than an ant.


     Aesop's fable tells the perils of improvidence and failure to plan. The problem is that I have a really hard time saving unless it's for a specific desire. And I think I have more fun pursuing my collection that I would scrimping and saving. I don't think I am constitutionally built to be any sort of an ant.


       The downside of this is any sudden big expense such as car or doctor stuff can hurt me and really put me into a dark mental place. Sometimes it takes me a tick or two to bounce back. Thank you all for sticking with while I work through the stuff.


      I would like to state that the only kickback I get from this Blog is this Kickback:

     And while we are at it, here is Shrapnel

Hunger Games

      To start off- full disclosure #1: this post is being written on my android tablet.

      Full disclosure #2: this is entirely from my perspective, and the other dramatis personae involved probably feel very different

      Full disclosure #3: I'm still kind of pissed that I got charged more than double what I normally pay for an office visit with my doctor's office
BT

       So ya ever have one of those weeks where your body decides to flip you the bird and say " you're not 20 anymore" ? I just had one. It started with feeling simultaneously hungry and bloated, and wound up with me being woken every 4 hours with what felt like sudden, intense hunger pain in my right side just below my ribs. And it wouldn't go away until I fed it.

     My research online pointed to either gallbladder or ulcer.

     Oh, full disclosure #4: I am having teeth issues and taking far more aspirin than should be consumed

     So- to speculate, ulcer seemed to me more likely.

     I hauled my sick and disgruntled ass to the doctors- not my usual physician, she was booked to March. This doctor was the head of the practice. He came in,talked to me,, probed my side, biopsied my wallet, and decided I needed an ultrasound. He did recommend omeprazole for possible acid issues.

      So where I am today. I made a fast change to my diet and eating intervals, started a run of omeprazole and cut aspirin completely. I am no longer waking with gut pain in the night, so so far so good.

      Back to fun posts soon

New Shelf Space

     I have wanted, lusted after, dreamed of, and finally purchased the Vittsjo shelf from IKEA thanks to a couple of IKEA gift cards for Christmas. I have been looking forward to this for a long while, since my first IKEA trip back in fall of last year (OK, feels longer)

I took some snaps during the construction, as her superstructure rose against the office skyline

Shelf Supports in

Middle supports and shelves

My roommate looked right at it and asked "when are you putting the shelves in?"
umm... well, there they are

and level as it gets

 and up go my toads, and my oriental decor

plus the JJ Abrams edition with lens flares

    Now who to put up? first, move some guys who are suffering from bad cluttered display

the Masterpieces

we are missing someone to enforce the Tyrest Accord. do we need to duly appoint
someone, or wait around for UltraMagnus?

My Dinobots and some Voyagers

 and some favorites

while by no means done-no display of mine can ever be done- I will always add, subtract, mess, and transform it. but for now- for this weekend...

I AM DONE

Remember, My Son

.....To use your powers for good, not evil.


         Last night we were doing laundry, and I took my android tablet along with me, because I thought maybe the laundry offered free wi-fi to customers (I was wrong) what I did find, searching for hot spots, was a printer, unpassworded.

.....and I thought....

........and I chuckled........

but finally resisted the urge to send it something like:

"HELP! I'm being held prisoner in a toner cartridge!"



     Years ago, I had in my library a book by comedian Alan King which played upon a similar joke. A man opens a fortune cookie in a restaurant to find a message stating "Help! I'm being held prisoner in a chinese bakery!"

     I'm not sure if I ever read the book, and I'm sure I was too young to appreciate the satire, but the title stuck with me, and the situation. Sort of a low tech prank phone call. My only ever Prank call was to a record store on east Colfax- I asked if they had "Pete Townsends Chinese Eyes", the clerk went to check, reported that yes, they did.

     "Well, give them back, he can't see."
     My older sister was complicit in that, by the way. The statute of limitations ran out on this a long time ago, but I hope the clerk got a chuckle.

for more:

George Takei on Google+
Floating messages
Prank Calls

How do you Stop a Charging Triceratops?

     So to continue my Prior post...


     Just before Christmas I placed an order for, and received the last of my Classics Styled Dinobots.

     Fansprojects Cubrar was to me the best looking aesthetic of the offerings I had seen from the various companies, and a pretty reasonable price by comparison. I had heard high praise of Fansprojects engineering and quality, but this was my first figure from them, compared with five from Toyworld.

     Once Called Slag, Hasbro officially changed his name to Slug- not for copyright reasons, but because Slag is an offensive word in some cultures

his Battleaxe is a tinier Man

     According to The Dinosaur Heresies(which I have mentioned before) and based upon the muscle attachment points found on the fossil bones, the triceratops was a fast, nigh-unstoppable charging behemoth, like unto a rhinoceros

where the bayverse Dinobots are "techno-organic" looking, and the Predacons are more organic, the G1 style Dinobots are pure robot- they are not really disguised, they look like robots in robot form, and robot dinosaurs in dinosaur form.

     Aesthetic-wise, they are not a 100% match. there are variances in gray, in gold, and in to chrome or not to chrome. But I like each of these pieces for various reasons, and  I like them all together, and that is what counts in my collection- how much I like it.

we

Are going to

need a bigger

lightbox

and a wider angle camera

If you remain a slave to the lightbox, forever will it dominate your pics

    Tango was helping and playing nearby while I worked on these two posts

Beast Machines

     A Transformation Revelation by Mr Smith


     We have had beast mode Transformers from the first G1 season, with Ravage and Laserbeak, and later with the Insecticons and the Dinobots. 1996 brought us Transformers: Beast Wars which was all about the beast forms.

     Overall, the Beast form transformers were characterized as...bestial; the Insecticons were ravenous and unreasonable-the Dinobots slow and not bright. I attribute it our hubris at thinking the Dinoasaur age as a failed series of lifeforms because they largely died out, when the reality is that they existed as successful organisms for millions of years. I attribute it to our human-centered tunnel vision that makes us see ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, when we may be just another experiment from good old mother nature and father time

     I am highly amused by the fact that in Transformers Prime season 3, Megatron and Starscream both treat the Predacon with contempt, as a dumb beast, like nothing more than a cumbersome weapon that gets in the way at all non-weapony times. Meanwhile, when they are not watching, it is accessing the data terminals, and finally...transforming. When the Decepticons realize that the Predacons could potentially "outevolve" them, they take steps to wipe out all of the gestating Predacons, leaving the newly crowned "Predaking" as the last, enraged survivor.

Voyager Predaking

Leader Class Target Exclusive Predaking

Size Comparison

And transformed

But even though they did not appear in the show...Hasbro made more Predacon toys

Ripclaw

Grimwing- What sort of Portal would he have to use to enter a
room? would it be a Griffin-door?

More Gargoyle than Dragon to my thinking

Movie Dinobots. The Bayverse Versions have their particular aesthetic-Spiky and kind of skeletal

And movie Dinobots give way to Fall Of Cybertron Grimlock

And thus to Grimlock from the new Cartoon, Robots in Disguise(coming soon!)

First toy I bought this year

First one broke-probably an assembly issue

replaced by TRU, I enjoy his very innovative transformation

     The moral of our tale is that when you see what you might think is a lesser creature, bear in mind that it is something perfectly suited to it's environment- a survivor. And if you see it near your home...it's adapted to your environment too. For more on this, see here on how Squirrels recycled our neighbors pumpkins.

I think this post has gotten long enough. More Dinobots and dino-thoughts next post

Toy Reviews

     A quick note about this- I don't really do 'em. there are plenty of people out there doing really good and useful toy reviews. If I feel I need to add anything about a toy to my post, I will do it.

     So if my pic sets are less than comprehensive of a particular piece, I will try to link you to a better photo set and review. What I like to focus on is how things relate to other things, and to thoughts they bring up for me. I like to relate my collection to my world and the one you live in too.