Five Crates in Search of an Exit

 

Luxury Vampire Coffin

Gilt in gold for the discerning nosferatu. 
 

Fearsome Ferryman

Looks like Charon dropped his lamp. Styx to be you! 
 

The Mummy

Pretty happy with this mummy! 
 

Shirts vs Skins

Edmonton's current heat wave triggered a painful memory today. Back in junior high, we sometimes played team sports in gym class. I didn't (and still don't) care a whit for sports, but I would have been fine with participating had the gym teachers not divided the teams by forcing half the players to strip to the waist, a practice known as "shirts vs skins." 

I hated being on the skins team. I was very uncomfortable in my own skin, thinking myself too scrawny. I also felt incredibly vulnerable, perhaps because I'd been a victim of bullying pretty constantly at the time. (Things got better in high school.) I remember thinking it seemed incredibly unjust, that teachers could force us to take half our clothes off against our will. 

As far as I know, no one else in my class complained, nor did they seem bothered by the practice. I stopped protesting, but I hated every moment. Those classes definitely raised my already present antipathy for sports. 

I also remember a communal change room in junior high, another agonizing rite of passage. There were communal showers without any privacy dividers, too, and while I'm sure we were made to use them, I have no memory whatsoever of showering at school. I suspect I blanked those memories out somehow. Is that even a real thing? 

In retrospect, I'm rather amazed that "shirts vs skins" was ever seen as acceptable. A cursory search reveals that some schools still do this. 

I recognize that I might have been overly sensitive about this. But given how sensitive teenagers can be, I feel like exemptions should have been allowed, at the very least. 

The Cry of the Town Crier: Oyez, oyez!

Oyez, oyez! 
In the Empress' name, be it known she has honoured us by naming her new clipper ship the Ottumununggungdammerungdungeon, after the very town we call home. Hail the Empress! Hail Ottumununggungdammerungdungon! 
 

He is (Curiously) Yellow

 

Smilin' Smilodon

He found a watering hole in the desert. 
 

Night Caravan Guitar Player

Decent hands, face, and beard! Huzzah! 
 

The Blue-Haired High Priestess

At last, a face that looks okay. So few and far between. I'm starting to think that sometimes the sculpt has an influence on the end result. Or maybe it's just me. 
 

Fallen Friend

In games, sometimes even the most valiant fall. This was a simple paint job, but I'm really happy with the drybrushing effects on the pullover and pants. 
 

Cowboys Playing Pool

 

Grizzly "Sand" Castle

Here's an Old West rifleman scanning the horizon for varmints. 
 

Small Gargoyle

I am a gargoyle--here I lurk
Barely suppressing a basilisk smirk
At the visiting ghost hunters
And their silly butterfly nets

 

Bigfoot

In my mind, this sasquatch is the alien robotic Bigfoot from The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. I think he looks pretty good, and I even managed eyes with pupils. 
 

Cliff Horse

Of the half-dozen or so horses I've painted so far, I think this one has the most natural colouring. Giddyup! 

The Way I Consume Eggo Waffles

Today I had a couple of Eggo waffles for breakfast. As is my usual method, I ate each waffle by nibbling off the rounded edges, leaving behind a square grid of waffle cells. I then ate a row of squares from each edge, leaving a smaller square, and so on and so on until I swallowed the last cell.

Does anyone else eat their waffles this way? 
 

Night of the Nightstick

Here's a policeman who looks like he came straight out of a 1930s Warner Brothers gangster flick. He even looks a little like Ward Bond. 

 

Barnabas Thugg

I see this fellow as a surly, skinflint merchant. 
 

Villainous Vixen

With a bad attitude and abhorrent beliefs, she's the kind of villain you love to defeat. If only beating back fascism was as easy in the real world. 
 

If This Be Doomsday

Within the Great Game, many rolls of the dice
The end of the world in a single device
Why not take a chance with the fate of the Earth
Surely the Turtle is tired of our girth
Better the bang than the depressing whimper
Let's die in the fire of a nuclear winter 

Theda Lane

What started as yet another attempt to paint 28mm scale eyes has turned into sunglasses once again. Ah well, at least there's a hint of lip colour this time. 

Like Tim Chan, Theda Lane is one of the Student Investigators from Pulp Figures. What strange mystery is she about to solve? 
 

Leaping into Action

This Pulp Figures miniature is posed quite dynamically, and I'm pretty happy with my paint job, though my photo hasn't captured it very well. The sculpt is clearly inspired by the Spirit and the Shadow, and so I feel this character's name should evoke those inspirations. Spirit Shadow? Shadow Spirit? Shazure Sprite? 
 

Ming Bust

 Hail Ming! Ruler of Mongo and Emperor of the Universe! 

Sgt. Prestown and Bark

I've been painting many minis lately, and Canada Day seems the right time to show off Sgt Prestown of the Yukon and his trusty Husky, Bark - so named for the sound and the skin of trees, of which there are many in the Yukon. It's a pun! 

This miniature set was created by Bob Murch of Pulp Figures, a Canadian company based in Kelowna, BC. Bonus points! 


 

Dragonclaw Cook

Here's the Dragonclaw's cook. What can I say . . . faces are hard, especially at this scale. 
 

Nefertiti

Her skin turned out so dark! But maybe it really was this dark. 
 

Tim Chan, Torch in Hand

Here's patriotic teen Tim Chan from Pulp Figures' Student Investigators line. 
 

Splinter Me Timbers

Here's the dwarf lookout I painted for the Dragonclaw. He must get splinters running about on the deck in bare feet. Or perhaps he has very thick calluses? 
 

Captain Boone

Here's the master of the RSS Dragonclaw. He looks more like an admiral than a captain to me, but then I suppose you can be both, depending on circumstance. 
 

Lancebegot

Here's another crewmember of the RSS Dragonclaw. I wanted this guy to have a knightly personality but to be somewhat unloved by his captain, so I named him Lancebegot. Now that I look at him close up, I feel like I should have drybrushed a little bit of paler brown on his face and hands to give those features some dimension. 
 

Loudmouth of the Jungle

Ohhhhh eeee ohhhh eeee ohhhhh, eeeee ohhhh eeeee ohhhhhh!
 

Mini Lenin

 

Remembrances of Friends Past

Earlier today, I met with four old friends to honour the passing of a fifth. 

Behind me are Jeff Pitts, Kevin Kelly, Vern Ryan, and Ray Brown, old schoolmates and friends. In the 1980s, we regularly met with our other friend, Paul Ravensdale, to play Dungeons & Dragons, Supremacy, Villains & Vigilantes, console or computer games on various Atari machines--and we even raced around outside too, back in those days before cell phones and the Internet. 

Paul was a tall, strong guy, the kind of person that would have made a terrifying bully for smaller kids. But while Paul had a temper that could be set off under certain circumstances, he was absolutely not a bully, but a stalwart friend with a sadistic sense of humour that really resonated with me. Paul took sinister delight in making things very difficult for our characters when we played roleplaying games in modern settings such as Recon or Top Secret. If we made stupid decisions in Paul's games, we paid dearly. Harsh, but fair, and we always had a blast. 

As often happens, I fell out of touch with Paul (and everyone else in this photo but Jeff), though I did have coffee a couple of times with Paul in the early 2000s. Paul joined the Canadian Armed Forced before his wedding back in 1989 (an event those above attended), and served most of his time in Manitoba. But he worked in Edmonton for a short interim, and that's when we briefly reconnected. 

Paul retained his friendly demeanor, but his experiences overseas had affected him deeply. He didn't speak in specifics, but it was clear he was traumatized by his experiences in the former Yugoslavia during its breakup in the 1990s. 

One of those lunches with Paul in 2002 or 2003 was the last time I saw him. It's a truism that any time we see someone could be the last time, but realizing the reality of it still hits hard. I learned later that Paul experienced further trauma during his military career, and I regret not reaching out again immediately. You never know when it will be too late. 

Ray and Vern were able to travel to Brandon, Manitoba, for Paul's funeral, and organized today's gathering for us to celebrate what would have been Paul's 55th (I believe) birthday. We caught up with each other's lives, shared some laughs, and exchanged some thoughts and memories about Paul. We all remember him fondly; he was a big (literally) part of our lives during some of our most important formative years. 

Miss you, pal. I hope you're at peace. 

 

Catch of the Day

 

Loaded Chest

A carelessly stored firearm is never a good thing. 
 

The 2030 NHL Expansion

Sean (and many others) were quite happy about the latest Edmonton Oilers win in the current NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. During a text discussion, the Florida Panthers were misnamed the Florida Planters. I jumped on the typo, saying that Atlanta should have a team called the Georgia Planters. Sean responded with some AI-generated art, including an adorable mascot (above) and a couple of jersey designs: 

Inspired, I turned to Bing Image Generator and asked it to create some jerseys for hypothetical future teams. Sports fans, please welcome

The Saskatchewan Saskatoons! 

The Halifax Schooners!

The Tijuana Fiesta! 

And the Reykjavík Vikings!