LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 18

A remote surprise
Imagination on wheels
Plastic avatar

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 17

Christmastime gestalt
Wholesome parts multiply glee
Building joy faster

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 16

Tired of Christmas
Hard rubber smells like burning
Deflating our hopes

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 15

He wears red and green
For the Xmas Day Gran Prix
High octane jingles

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 14

Magic music boxes
Rustle of tearing paper
Squeal of childish glee

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 13

Unlucky 13?
Not for Christmas astronauts
A donum stellis

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 12

Obelisk of pine
Soft needles caress, not sting
Shelter our presents

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 11

Christmas BBQ?
Down south perhaps possible
Here flames freeze solid

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 10

Friendly firefighter
Keeps the home fires from burning
And brings extra dogs

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 9

Day 9 seems chintzy
But suddenly it's all clear
Table needs more parts

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 8

A Christmas dinner
Pizza, wine, drumsticks and grapes
But no one to share

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 7

An innocent bench
Weary carollers rest on
Snowy silent nights

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 6

Mugs for a mugger
Stealing LEGO Christmas cheer
Coal in his stocking

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 5

Day 5 of Christmas
Santa offers deadly tools
What is this, I don't...

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 4

Frosty the snowman
Is a shambling faceless horror
Two noses but no smile

LEGO Advent Calendar Haiku Day 3

Allergic to dogs
Yet LEGO offers this pet
Throw me a bone here

LEGO Advent Haiku

Several of my friends have made it a tradition to purchase and enjoy the craft beer advent calendar, opening and sampling one beer a day. But because I don't drink alcohol, this tradition is lost to me. But while shopping for other gifts I spotted the LEGO advent calendar. Open one portal a day starting December 1 until December 24 and enjoy a tiny LEGO surprise! What middle-aged kid could resist? Not me.

But I am already a day behind, and as punishment I now promise to write a haiku for each portal I open.

December 1
Police officer smiles big
With an extra cup and hat
Always be prepared

December 2
Sad lonely fireplace
Flames beckon on silent night
Warm bricks, cold hearth

The Forest Gate

There's nothing particularly interesting about this photo except the slender branch-less tree that bisects the frame. Well, that and I appear to be holding a wand of some kind. I selected the area to the right of the branch and added a few filters to make it look as though that side of the picture represented a portal or gateway to another dimension. Some experiments, needless to say, are more successful than others.

The 1980s-est Book Ever Written

...just might be William Gibson's Neuromancer, which I have at last read, a mere 30 years after it was published. Cyberspace, the matrix, mirrorshades, hacking, exotic drugs, exotic fashion...I didn't expect it to be about AIs, though, nor was I expecting an outer space habitat. You can't learn everything by cultural osmosis, it seems.

As I grow older, catching up on cultural touchstones takes on a melancholy air. I'll only be 45 next year, but even so I feel the weight of time bearing down, reminding me that if I don't get to War and Peace (to use just one example) sometime in the next couple of decades, it's not going to happen.

Well - Neuromancer is off the list, at least. Was it worth the investment? Hard to say. At least now I know what the fuss was about, way back when I was 15.

The Lost Star Wars Magazine

It's quite possible I've blogged about this before, but it's a story that still haunts me. Sometime in the summer of 1978, I bought a science fiction magazine at the drugstore in Leaf Rapids.How many science fiction magazines could possibly have been distributed that far north in the 1970s? We had a spinner rack of comic books, Cracked, Mad, and maybe, maybe, Starlog.

And yet I don't think it was Starlog, because Starlog was never in the habit of publishing fiction.

This magazine - I seem to recall that the interior was black and white pulp, like Creepy or Vampirella back in the days of Warren publishing, with a glossy full-colour colour of mostly aqua and yellow - featured at least one very creepy Star Wars short story.

It took place just after the end of the first movie. Luke, Han Leia and the rest were all still gathered at the Rebel base on the forest moon of Yavin. Darth Vader was still spinning out of control in his TIE fighter. Luke and Leia's romance blossoms, while Ben Kenobi's ghost plays...some kind of role. I don't remember.

Han Solo winds up leaving the base, meets Darth Vader and gets turned to the dark side; he even becomes some kind of scary cyborg. Chewbacca is devastated, as are Luke and Leia.

It all goes bad. I don't remember how the story ended, but I do remember I thought it was an awful but compelling way to continue the Star Wars saga.

I wish I still had that magazine.If it ever really existed, I'm sure Lucasfilm's lawyers must have shredded every copy by now.

10,000 Page Views!

Sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. last night The Earliad crossed the threshold of 10,000 page views in a single month for the first time. I'm pretty excited by this milestone, even if a certain percentage of the hits are almost certainly spambots, judging by the junk comments in my spam folder.

When I started this blog back in 2003, I envisioned a hardcore readership of perhaps a dozen friends and family members. I'm gratified that there's a larger audience than that for my silly nonsense, and I'm very thankful to anyone who stops by to visit. I like making people feel good, and if any of the photos or articles posted here are entertaining, I'm delighted.

Oddly enough, this is my 1,705th post - not quite as poetic as 1,701 would have been, but close enough - 1705 is the Excalibur's registry number, which is still very cool.

Dustin the Renegade Tank Commander

Last night I dreamed that our Dungeons and Dragons group was trying out a different roleplaying game for a change of pace, one set in a world of Conan-like high fantasy but with World War II era military technology. So instead of each of us carrying a sword and shield or what have you, each character had his or her own Sherman tank - and the miniatures, as you can imagine, were wicked cool, with each of us standing in the turret of our respective tanks, overlooking the field of battle.

During this session of play, the evil Thulsa Doom was about to sacrifice a maiden strapped down to a stone (plastic, really) altar atop a green felt-covered hilltop. We moved our tanks into position, but Dustin fired his main cannon early, blowing up both Thulsa Doom and his comely captive. My character raced up the hill in his tank to survey the carnage, and aside from the dead Thulsa Doom, the dead princess and a bunch of dead snakes, I spotted a whole bunch of dismembered innocent bystanders, who were represented on the board by LEGO minifigures.

"Dustin!" I cried. Did you sneak in here earlier and kill all these innocent people?"

"They needed killin'," Dustin replied laconically.

Audrey shook her head while Jeff rolled his head around on his shoulders with a "WHOA! Nice going, dude!" Stephen, even though he wasn't the Gamemaster (who mysteriously never made an appearance), took on a GM-like mien and said "Okay, player versus player it is, then."

Somehow I'd become the de facto squadron commander, and I started to issue orders to destroy Dustin's tank. But before the battle could commence...I woke up.

What Do You Mean, "Rise AND Fall...?"

Spaghetti Lattice

Sylvia and I tried to cram ourselves into the pantry at the same time a few minutes ago (I was putting away a vase, she was looking for something for the food bank) and as a result our spaghetti flew out of the box to land in this quasi-artistic three-dimensional lattice. It was prettier in real life than this mobile phone photo suggests.

Never Too Old for Santa