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The Rumours of Wild Particle’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.

Did you think I had abandoned you Dear Reader? Not Non. Nyet. It was merely a prolonged absence over the festive season.

But did I really need to stay away so long? Could I have not managed an occasional post? After all, was I Christmas-ing in some god-forsaken remote hinterland with no internets to be found?

Well, no – I wasn’t. So please accept my apologies. There, I said it. I was wrong. I was wrong to leave you and I’m sorry. It was entirely my fault. It’s not you it’s me. I’ll try to do better next time.

Things just got away from me; the getting ready for the long trip home to the family mansion, the trip itself, all the eating, the giving and receiving of presents. Then the intense costuming preparation for Steampunk New Year Celebrations, followed by the recovery from said Steampunk New Year Celebrations…

Things like this distracted me.

How am I supposed to concentrate when Santa is leaving things like this in my stocking?

After all, it NEVER WEARS OUT.

Post-Apocalypse, Earth’s inevitable robot successors will be wielding these things in their endless territorial wars.

I doubt the authenticity of their “300 Shots Per Potato” claim, though. How did they work that out?  There is obviously some kind of International Standard Potato Sizing Bureau whose existence has been hitherto unknown to me.

I am particularly drawn to the beatific countenances of the children playing with this vegetable-fuel ballistic marvel. They look like little Bodhisattvas, achieving profound Enlightenment from their prolonged use of novelty weapons. And why not I say.

Anyway, I am back. You are back, Dear Reader and all is forgiven I hope. Here is to a great year together!

And remember…

KEEP YOUR POTATO GUN CLEAN AND IT WILL GIVE YOU YEARS OF SERVICE.

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Post-Postage Post

I did it. Pictured below is Theo for number 11 and I think he was definitely the best thing in the package. It was hard to part with him actually.

I couldn’t find the raw cane sugar single serve packet so I made a custom Kane-from-Command & Conquer version.

The whole competition entry consumed a surprising amount of time. But it was great.

And just think how many hours FORTY COMPUTER GAMES could eat up? I do so hope I win. It felt like a bit of an anti-climax sending off all the stuff knowing I probably won’t hear a peep from the magazine. Ah well. I did my very best, this I know to be true.

Also – I now have practice extracting myself from a Public Meeting at a Jehova’s Witness Kingdom Hall. Who knows when that might come in handy?At one stage I didn’t think they were going to let me get through the door without leaving my contact details. They were very nice though. As was the man at the post office. I think he thought I was a bit weird, but that’s just because I freaked out at the last minute and had to re-open the package, and put a number label on a a tiny plastic spoon.

I labelled all the objects and included a legend.

And this is the answer to the question at 12 in case you have a burning need to know…

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Manicurists Beware – I am coming for you…

I’m not really big on entering competitions. I usually read the details, raise my eyebrows at the offered prizes, then forget to actually enter. Anyway, I usually figure the odds of winning are too slim to bother. Unless of course the competition is judged rather than just randomly drawn – then I am a little more likely to give it a go.

(I tried so hard to win a G.I Joe colouring-in competition as a child. I spent hours and hours on my entry, I used everything I could get my hands on pencils, textas, crayons, glitter – I even glued on a sheet of transparent plastic so I could add my own gun-sight modification. And I won. My prize was a giant G.I. Joe vehicle – somewhere there exists a photograph of me being presented with the oversize box of American military propaganda plastic, an improbably wide smile on my face…)

Anyway, I recently came across a competition in PCPowerplay that got my interest, firstly because the prize is FORTY computer games. That’s right, you heard me, FORTY. I could spread them all out on the floor, lie back on them and make a Game Angel. No, I WILL do that. But first I have to win.

Here’s what I have to do…

So far I have the train ticket and the party hat.

(Orc Raider included for scale.)

There is about a week until the competition deadline. I need to get moving. Number 3, the cane sugar one, worries me, I don’t spend enough time in coffee shops to know if such a thing is going to be easy to obtain. Number 7 SHOULD be easy, but where are those Jehovah’s Witnesses when you actually want their literature? Nowhere in my neighbourhood, that’s for sure.

And I guess Number 12 is going to be the clincher so I’ll need to start thinking about that.

If anyone needs me I can be found in my local grocery store looking for something priced $1.59.

Wish me luck!

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Of Baked Goods and Brawn

Who knew that I’d be writing about He-Man again so soon. But this particular page from the salvaged Colouring/Activity Book was just too good not to post.

It is the last page of a three page comic feature where you got to fill in the blanks in the story. I have left them blank so as to preserve the mystery and wonder of the unaltered version. (But feel free to print this off and write in lines as you see fit.)

Why do Teela and Skeletor look like they were sharing canapés and polite conversation until He-Man came roaring up in his Attak-Trak and interrupted?

And did He-Man really just say ‘Torte’? Oh yes. Yes he did.

Behold He-Man’s cake hurling prowess and sleep safely and soundly in your beds citizens of Eternia!

Skeletor’s nefarious dessert-based schemes will trouble you no more.

‘night all.

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So what shall we call his powerful sword?

(Image courtesy of an ace colouring-in book I found in a shed at my mother’s house.)

There is something I find oddly compelling about He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Sure, the cartoons were on when I was just the right age, and I had many of toys so it has a pretty serious nostalgia kick. But it’s not just that.

Looking over the line of toys and the accompanying television series (the other way around you might think? Not so..) even now I am struck by how the creators just came right out with it. There was no beating around the bush here, no time for subtlety or nuance. It was all absolutes.

I like to imagine two hard-drinking guys over at Mattel circa 1980 just sat down one night on a deadline and wrote the whole thing out on bar napkins. Then went out and bare-knuckle-boxed a grizzly bear just for kicks. Their thought process would have gone something like this…

Who are these guys? Are they important? Are they powerful?

Well they are the MASTERS of the fucking UNIVERSE so you do the math!
Looking for nice, strong, masculine name for your leading man? Well go no further than HE-MAN. That’s right, you heard me, HE-MAN. (Because just calling him MAN isn’t enough and MALE-GUY-BLOKE-MAN just doesn’t have the same ring to it…)

And it didn’t stop there, either.

A big beast-looking guy? BEAST-MAN. A guy who like ramming things? RAM-MAN. A cat he rides in to battle with? BATTLE-CAT. Bad guy who looks like a skeleton? SKELETOR. (Which was stepping up the creativity a notch. I bet their first idea was SKULL-MAN. Or maybe just BAD-GUY.)

An evil female character? Well, I like to think that at this point one of them just kept mumbling the name of his ex-wife. But just LYN by itself doesn’t do the job. So EVIL-LYN it is! Any ambiguity as to who’s side she is going to be on? Not goddam likely!

And where do they all live?

That’s right, ETERNIA! The place is going to be around until the END OF TIME, way after all us Earth-dwelling pansies are gone!

And so on, and so on.

You have to admire their chutzpah, really.

And now, in case you begin to think there was a kind of noble logic to their approach, here’s a photo of Castle Grayskull,

Which was, of course, green.

N.B Apologies if you found my over-use of profanity and exclamation marks in this post distracting or offensive, but I dusted myself down in He-Man talcum-powder before I began writing and the stuff had a pronounced effect on my tone.

No really, I did.

(Shakespeare mini-bust included for scale. And for its cultural cache.)

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Dance Performance Instruction Time

These are the instructions that came with the dancemat we bought for our Playstation2 recently…

I can’t decide my favourite. It’s definitely a toss-up between, “… do not apart, separate or fix it anyway. Or the damage can not be guaranteed.” and the bit about how you especially shouldn’t keep it far away from your fireplace.

N.B. I didn’t scan the other side, but it included the gem, “!Warning. Forbidden to use this product if your feet are seriously injured. Stop immediately the abnormal phenomenon in your foot, waist and back when using it.”

Love to stay and chat but I’m off to bed.

“Make sure to have the cushion.”