Well, the last Nightmare Weekend Before Christmas open house for 2019 is Saturday starting at 6:00 pm, so it’s time for that one song that best sums up the reason for the season. Sadly, we’ll never get an updated live … Continue reading →
Yesterday, I successfully implemented private/direct messages between users of this site. It was a feat, but my next sentence may seem like a non-sequitur, so bear with me a moment.
I sometimes worry about the trap of nostalgia.
It can keep you from advancing, from trying new things, or, while trying new things, keep you from accepting the way newer, more derived things are. The differences become magnified and made larger at the expense of more meaningful things.
This was not a bad deal for a budding wargamer in the 70s and 80s... less than 3 bucks gave two good large armies, with working artillery... It wasn't very accurate historically as regards, well, any of it. It's hard to tell what era of Rome they were going for, Cavalry appears to mix late imperial and 15th century armor. Foot troops are mid Imperial-ish, but with spears which were no longer appropriate after the era of the Social Wars (mid Republican times)...though they work pretty good for later Greek phalanxes...
Lucky Toys, also sometimes Helen of Toy, sold cheap toys in the back of Comic Books. They were a small two man operation with a PO box, and moved the address around a lot. But they made an investment in art; hiring a great comic book artist to illustrate their advertisements. The, sadly now Late, "Uncle" Thor Sheil wrote a nice page about them on his site; http://www.thortrains.net/milihistriot/comictoys/comicbooktoysoldiersintro.html a word on "uncle" Thor.
Well, Christmas is almost here. 5 more days. This first one without Dad has me sad, wistful, nostalgic, and pondering my bad life choices. It also has me thinking about Dungeons and Dragons, one of the most fundamental parts of my psychic equipage for adulthood. As I've said before, Christmas of 1980 was my first brush with the game. Santa had it under the Christmas Tree, the Otis cover was enthralling, and I remember staring at it for hours.
Right, well Thursday was quite a marathon. Deb had two appointments, Katie needed to shop for foods for xmas day (the whole famdamily is coming over in the AM) but Wal mart had no riding carts, so she hoofed the whole grocery section, which for her is dangerously exhausting, and not so easy on my legs either. wore them out, so they rested this afternoon, and I went on a galavant with Cindy, checked the mail in Palmer, and had coffee at the Valley Ho. so I didn't do much fun stuff today but a bit of internet, and a few more shrines on Breath of the Wild.
What have I been doing on the site lately? I've added feeds as nodes, sorting remote RSS feeds within the "Front Page" aspect of Orc.One (I should think of a clever name to call this aspect had by most websites, through which you can click or tap to get further back into the past—a timeline?—nah, too trite). So far, there are two:
