![]() 11/24/06 - 01/01/07 |
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In The Face! Welcome to 2007. It's been a pretty busy week, good times all around. Last Thursday I accepted an invitation to a Moustache Party at Playland Skate Center, and it definitely lived up its name. Wilby and the Cecils came with. A cheesy oldschool soundtrack and lots of can beer set all our moustaches ablaze with pleasure. Ridiculous pictures. The royal we and a bunch of the usual suspects spent a fantastic New Years Eve at the Cecils. Adios 2006, you were quite a long-ass year. I think I'll miss the butt-naked Wednesdays the most. I've been meaning to mention this since I read about it at Penny Arcade - a playable Firefly universe sounds like a pretty good time. Personally I think I'd choose the black (and blackly comedic) Zen assassin class. Go around asking people what they really thought was going to happen, just before kicking their ass in the blink of an eye. I took an interesting Wiki-ride the other day: Alger Hiss to Richard Nixon to Detente to The Secret War in Laos to the Hmong people, ending up with a disturbing UN report about the current plight of the Hmong. Comment on this entry... |
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A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
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Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest (2006)
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Hot Lead Coming Through My latest army, the Tiefwalders 54th Regiment (the infamous "Red Rifles") of the Imperial Guard, is coming together nicely. I decided to sell my old Cadians and their dated heavy weapons teams together with my Witch Hunters, so some time ago I Ebayed a Catachan army box and a bunch of loose special weapon troops (plasmas, meltas, grenade launchers) to replace them. I also picked up 3 more heavy weapons teams that were bundled with a SM Vindicator in a weird package deal that saved me a ton of money. Using regular Catachan foot troops and a bunch of extra 85mm bases, I was able to double each heavy weapons team into a missile launcher team and a mounted gun team, the latter of which can be switched out at will thanks to the wonder of rare earth magnets! The army box also came with a couple of Sentinels, which I magnetized as well and combined with some of the heavy weapons that came with the teams. I'll probably stick with the lascannons because they’ve already served me well that way a few times. Of the fifty or so models I have to paint, the Sentinels are completely done and all the foot troops have four of the five initial colors. I also spent a lot of time trying to put little extra touches on the tanks to make them consistent with the rest of the army. There’s still plenty of the primer-white visible, but in my excitement I put my pride aside and used them in a few games over the last couple of weeks against Mucky's Chaos and Mackus' Necrons. They've done fairly well, a few wins, a few losses, but most importantly they've performed just like the Guard should: big tanks, a shitload of men and guns, broadside-of-a-barn BS, and the "ability" to break and run after suffering even the most insignificant losses. Last night's 2000 point match against the Necrons was a very tough game, in which I lost absolutely everything except for the LR Demolisher but still managed to hold a draw. Because my mission allowed no special rules, most of the Tiefwalder magic was wasted - I've designed them to be an ambush force and normally the entire force minus the tanks infiltrates and a few suicide squads even get to deep strike. I tried to set up a long firing line along my deployment zone edge and get as many shots in as I could. In the end, the Necrons made it far into my battle line and it was pretty much open season on the Guard. Luckily a last minute friendly-fire incident and a Wraith killed by my exploding Basilisk denied Mackus his victory. Suck it bud! Comment on this entry... |
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Lady in the Water (2006)
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How Are You Gentlemen I made it out for the Saturday portion of the Mills Bachelor experience. The day began with some classic games of sport at Stacey Park, including dodgeball and four-square. Local youts were greatly entertained by the sight of silly grown ass men enjoying diversions that they themselves had abandoned many years prior. Mackus inspired everyone to their own feats of athletic excellence by bravely hurling his crotch in front of not one, not two, but three speeding red dodgeballs. This may have slightly impaired his enjoyment of the group’s later festivities, the details of which shall remain undisclosed at this juncture for the sake of prudency. Good day to you. I said good day. Comment on this entry... |
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Bullypicks 2006
Every year, a certain sacred tablet is brought down from a certain secret mountaintop and
shared with a certain humble writer, in order that the words there inscribed may ring forth
through the hills and valleys, over the flatlands, beneath the oceans, and so on.
Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Time’s Person of the Year, which,
though frequently spoofed as an over-inflated gimmick of dubious real
value, is actually quite crucial to our understanding of exactly "wha happen" over the
preceding year. For instance, this year’s person, "you," is actually not the most
cheap, Shooter Mcgavin-bullshit anyone’s ever heard of, but rather a deliberate and
thoughtful choice sure to inspire exceedingly productive navel-gazing for a very long time,
or at least until the next issue appears in a month.
Anyway, I was actually referring to the 4th
Annual Bullypicks, containing my personal favorite records of the year. Witness:
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Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2003)
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Miami Vice (2006)
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Nacho Libre (2006)
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The Iraq Heheheh, check it out, I got my own copy. Heheh. The whole group signed it for me. Gonna sell it on Ebay. Heheheh. Maybe check it out when they make the movie. Sue Sue, where's the nearest dermatologist's office? Comment on this entry... |
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Stop Making Sense (1984)
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Deep in Cat Junk Rummy had a surprise waiting for him in our schefflera the other day - the neighbor's cat. Luckily it was accustomed to regular canine harrassment at its own home and thus quite able to tolerate Rummy's anxious bouncings and sniffings. Anytime he got a little too friendly, the cat would give him the ole left hook to the nose and send him skittering. Apparently the cat came over the fence from just next door but could not remember how to climb the fence to get back into its own yard. Eventually the owner came and got him, bringing an end to yet another thrilling adventure in suburbia. Another step closer to a digital babelfish - at least one thing I'll probably get to check out in my lifetime. Did I just feel a lil timequake there? If this guy is killed under mysterious, cyborg-involved circumstances, I'll know its time to walk to the nearest city playground, get a good grip on some chain link fence, and try to ride out the impending nuclear war. I'll probably just wither and burn though. That's just how it goes. Spooky. Exxon-Mobil upside yo whole head, kid. We own this shit. All your children are belong to us. Interesting debate. Comment on this entry... |
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What Can I Say, I Love the Bastards The new Tom Waits triple-disc, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards is very good. Most of the time I put it on full shuffle, let the various flavors that make up each of the three really mix together and breathe, get a nice kooky melange going. My favorite tracks: from Brawlers, I like "2:19," "Road To Peace," and "Sea Of Love"; from Bawlers, "Long Way Home," "Little Drop Of Poison," "Tell It To Me," and "Down There By The Train"; from Bastards, "What Keeps Mankind Alive," "Books of Moses," "Two Sisters" (I can't stop humming that shit), "Home I'll Never Be," and of course the hilariously depressing "Children's Story." Nothing too far off of the Tom Waits trail, but still very enjoyable. Bastards has several spoken word-type tracks which are dark, crack-up, and full of character as usual. The new Joanna Newsom, Ys, is definitely less accessible than her debut album. That seems like a ridiculous statement considering how strange The Milk Eyed Mender sounded at first listen. Most people I've talked to either really loved the whole package, or were, in their tasteless decrepitude, so turned off by her voice that even her incredible musicianship on the harp was rendered unlistenable. You can probably guess which camp my tent's pitched in. In any case, the new one is very dense, with ornate orchestral arrangements filling in the space between the harpstrings with color and texture. The five tracks are all on the long side, and each is less self-contained than the songs on the previous album, with the same kind of eerily catchy refrains, but the new ones just take a bit longer to sink in. This seems too good for me not to have seen it before... I dunno if it's been out for a while: the Bro Rape epidemic. Comment on this entry... |
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dropPod Another monthly DL tourney come and gone; here's some pictures. I came away with best army again, although it did come down to a coinflip to resolve a 3-way tie for the award. I wish they would just go to a 1st/2nd/3rd place voting system to determine the winner, because the grading system ends up in ties almost every time. Even if every person voted for their own for first place, which I doubt they would, the person who got second place should and would theoretically win out. I'd much rather lose decisively to a better painted army than randomly win the prize. There were several other cool armies there, notably the Tyranids and the World Eaters, the latter of whom I fought in the second round and by whom I was utterly slaughtered. I used some of my prize money to get some new dice, replacing these old 2nd edition/Heroquest dice that, though they have served me for a long time, have gathered too much negative warp energy, and the 1's and 2's were starting to pile up at exactly the wrong times. We can't have that. So I got some nice blues to match the Wolves army. I played a couple more games with Mucky over the last few days using the same army, and I really like the Drop Pods. It makes the Wolves much more mobile and tactically flexible, and though the arrival times can be unpredictable, I've packed enough firepower and assault whompers into the squads that even one coming in alone can turn the tide. Results against Mucky's chaos were: crushing victory and draw. Very interesting games. Comment on this entry... |