Action Comics #1000
A week?
I must have been busy. Or lazy. Both?
I spent part of my weekend cleaning stuff around the house, like the upstairs bathroom, among other locations.
I’ve been hitting my elliptical for about 10-20 minutes for the past week. I hope to make it back up to 30+ minutes, if not more.
I caught up with my TV watching, the CW DC shows are surprisingly keeping me interested. Black Lightning is good, so far.
I used my instant pot TWICE in one weekend, making some chicken in salsa thing, and pork ribs. Both turned out pretty good.
More games that I’ll (maybe) eventually play came in.
More porgs were acquired. And dice.
And it’s almost February. Yikes.
Snubbed
I’ve been kicking this around in my own head for half the day, after there were no Oscar nominations for this movie.
As great as I thought this movie was, it was no Oscar contender, except maybe in some of the technical categories, like Best Costume Design or Best Cinematography. But they were snubbed there, too.
I dunno. Maybe the other genre films that did get nominated deserved it more.
And it’s not like the Oscars mean anything in the grand scheme of “what Chris likes.”
Raiders of the Lost Ark lost to Chariots of Fire for Best Picture in 1981, after all.
The 50s
January 19, 1968: premiere date of Star Trek episode ‘The Immunity Syndrome’.
The crew of the Enterprise encounters an energy-draining space creature.
The space amoeba!
In which we also learn that there was a starship manned solely by Vulcans.
WAS.
Spock has a bad reaction to the death of over 400 Vulcans.
Eventually, a Shuttlecraft is sent in (with Spock aboard) to gather information about this organism, and the Enterprise crew end up destroying it with a probe armed with an anti-matter warhead.
This episode is not to be confused with the Space: 1999 episode of the same name:
While on a survey of a planet to replenish food and water on Moonbase Alpha, an alien form attacks a crewman who seemingly goes mad; after a brief struggle with the crewman, Tony Verdeschi is attacked by the alien as well. Koenig and the survey party must find Tony and help him regain his senses before the madness kills him and solve the mystery of the alien life form. All their technology breaks down, preventing them from leaving or receiving aid; all food – native and their own supply – become toxic.
Popcorn
I bought a microwave popcorn popper bowl.
It works fairly well.
You fill a small amount of popping corn in the bottom of the bowl, up to one of the lines (oil optional), put it into the microwave, and then either pop for 2-4 minutes, depending on the wattage, or press the ‘popcorn’ setting on your microwave.
The first time I did it for 2 minutes 15 seconds, and there was a lot of unpopped kernels in the bowl, so I put those back in and hit the ‘popcorn’ setting, and they all popped, but I should have turned it off manually because it then burned some of the popped kernels.
Available here.
LEGO Responds
I picked up this LEGO set over the weekend, mainly because of this little guy:
A LEGO Porg.
I then emailed LEGO to ask if it was possible to order more porgs, and they sent me this response:
I’m sorry, but we aren’t able to help you get the LEGO® parts you requested. The pieces you need are based on a story and characters we didn’t create ourselves. Our licensing agreements with their original creators specify we can only sell these “licensed” pieces as part of a set.
Bummer. But I understand. No way I’m buying that $800 Millennium Falcon, though, just for two more porgs.
Tiger Leader
I played the first week of my first game of Tiger Leader.
I think I’ve got most of the game mechanics down.
It’s the 1939 Poland campaign, and my forces annihilated a Polish battalion.
Which is all fine and dandy, but now I have 2 more weeks to defeat way more battalions in order to finish with an acceptable victory point total. A minimum of 13 VPs gets me a ‘good’ result.
I currently have 2 VPs. Because I sent all my forces against one stinking battalion in the first week of this 3-week campaign.
I’ll be spreading my forces thin during the last two weeks of this campaign.
I also forgot to add 5 to the move rolls for the Polish.
We learn by doing.
Finding my voice
I don’t speak my mind about many subjects, because there are others who speak better for and against my own position on such matters.
As the saying goes, “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Though some think I’m a fool either way. And they’re right.
I write what I know about. I talk about what I know about.
Which isn’t much lately, beyond the realm of sports and pop culture.
It’s not that I have no interest in politics, for example, but most of that either bores or depresses me. And I don’t like being bored or depressed. So I generally stay out of such discussions.
And as much as some subjects don’t interest me, many people would not be interested in subjects that do interest me.
I be me.
It’s what keeps me sane.
