Behind Enemy Lines Vs. The Insider

* = STOP JUDGING ME!











The Christmas shopping is almost done. ALMOST! It’s not even December and I may finally have gotten out in front of the potential nightmare and put myself in a position to just survive the next week in style. Once we get through the Thanksgiving arrival of ‘The Fam.’, I think that I’ll be able to just breathe a sigh of relief and get my screwed back on straight. Not to mention I hope to be FAR less busy, as there are a LOT of Nerdy things that are being sort of neglected right now.

So apparently my sister was ‘irked’ at my bringing up my anxiety at their visit on the Podcast last week. At first I felt bad to have caused her distress, then as she proceeded to hold three conversations with people she was there with and leaves me holding on listening to said useless babble I remembered THIS is why I get full of anxiety around them. They think differently than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister and brother to death; in fact I love them so much that sometimes I want to kill them. However they view the world and everything in it differently. The idea of four days or so with little to no escape from them is not an easy thing for me. This doesn’t even take into account that basically I have met my brother’s wife all of 10 times. She seems great, but I don’t know her. At least with Luke he’s a kid and kids I get. I guess I look at from the perspective that I have every right to freak out a bit. Holidays are hard enough, throw in a family you don’t really understand and barely see and it can be very difficult to not be worked up over.

It’s not like it won’t be fun. It’s basically a Christmas in November, lots of good food, my sister on the Podcast, and a chance to spend a bit of time with my Family. It’s just hard sometimes to rectify my anxiety at dealing with them and my desire for it to be a wonderful time with the fact that I know them and know how difficult it can be for me to deal with them. I just keep telling myself it won’t be as bad as I think, and hope that it’ll be something they enjoy.

I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year. There is so much to enjoy, while there is so much stress. Is it strange to pine for a time of year where you get to see unbridled joy in your friends and family and at the same time loathe the fact that the vast majority of humanity loses all semblance of civility during the same said time? Perhaps it’s the birthday doldrums of getting older, or the anniversary of my father’s death, or any number of other neurotic and annoying ‘things’ that bother me. Because I know when I get to see my friends and family open up gifts that it’s all worth it. Every stinkin’ bit of it.

Anywho, another week another Shattered Star preview;

This week we only were graced with one preview, and it is the Uncommon Wyvern! I’d always thought of Wyverns as being dark in coloration, mainly brown, as to better ambush their enemies. That being said I LOVE this paint job! The blue and orange color pop together, in fact I could see the ambush scenario coming from this beastie dropping out of a clear sky to eat your horses. 

The other big thing about this mini I love is that dynamic pose. The sculptor should be lauded here.This mini just looks great. That pose screams ATTACK! Add into that the sheer size of this mini, as you can see in the second picture when compared to a Medium mini. It’s not Giant or Gargantuan, it’s a steady Large mini. It looms, but doesn’t take up so much room that you feel like you couldn’t use this beastie in a swarm. In fact a flock of hungry Wyverns raiding from the sky like a pack of hungry wolves would be a pretty damn entertaining encounter. Put your PC’s on a cliff or mountain pass with some potential environmental hazards and then have three to four of these monsters swoop in with those slavering maws and poison stinger tales and I think you have a recipe for fun, fun for me at least. If you can’t tell, due to sculpt, the paint, the size, and the Uncommon rarity of this particular beastie this one is going to be a MUST BUY for me.


Big Podcast week! David and I have planned a Podcast on Wednesday night were we will apparently be sans guest, at my cohort’s request. I have no earthly idea what we’ll talk about, but I’m thinking we’ll hit up some of our old ‘bits’, perhaps I’ll try and figure out some new ones as well. Then Friday night, Sarah is on. I think I want to talk about what we are ‘thankful’ for that night, as well as what we are thankful we don’t have to do or put up with any more. The thing about Sarah is I won’t have to work very hard with her there. She’ll take care of that just by talking. I look forward to tales of pooping one’s self, Black Mormon, midget obsessions, and her insatiable love of reality television. I’m not sure it’ll eclipse the first Nephew Philip episode or the Dangerous Dan episode, but it has that potential.

I am not much of a Rick Remender fan, he’s not bad, but he’s just never blown me away. As anyone who frequents this blog or gets into a comic discussion knows I have serious issues with the current Marvel Universe as well. In fact I really hated what happened to some of my favorite characters in Avengers Vs. X-Men, which just wasn’t very good. The fact that Cyclops basically lost his shit, offed Professor X, and is now a ‘bad’ guy bothers me. I get it Marvel you need to change characters to ‘grow’ them, but it just seems sort of an odd choice even with all the buildup. All that complaining aside Uncanny Avengers has my attention. Rick Remender and Steve McNiven have my UNDIVIDED attention.

Look at that line-up! Cap, Thor, Scarlet Witch, a suddenly NOT dead Wasp, Rogue, Sunfire in his classic outfit, Wolverine, Wonder Man, and Havok in the leadership role has my attention. It’s just chock full of potential. Not to mention it looks as if Remender is going to try and do a bit of character rebuilding with Wonder Man after Bendis took his patented ‘dump’ on him by having him become a pseudo-villain. Also wasn’t Sunfire a bad guy most recently? With Marvel I sometimes lose track as it changes so damn much. Sunfire is a personal favorite of mine, and that classic costume is fantastic. Every team needs an arrogant prick on it, especially one who is a fervent Japanese nationalist. You have a post ‘AvX’ angry Rouge who apparently is NOT going to be with Magneto any longer, who is going to have to deal with the fact that most stalwart Avengers, and fans, remember her as someone who wrecked them in her early appearances. That could add significant tension. Oh yeah, I’m sure all the Mutants on the team aren’t that fond of Scarlet ‘No More Mutants’ Witch either. Back to Wonder Man for a bit, I think in reading Remender talk about it we are FINALLY going to get some resolution to his relationship with Scarlet Witch. It’s so strange that some writers have always gotten these two’s relationship while others have done everything in their power to screw it up. It’s really simple; Simon Williams is unabashedly and utterly in love with Wanda Maximoff, always has been always will be. She on the other hand is a hot mess. She's Magneto's daughter, she married an synthoid who had Wonder Man's brain patterns, she had kids with him who were erased from reality, she went bonkers and killed a bunch of her long time friends, then created a reality with her powers where Mutants ruled, and to top it all off after that uttered the whole 'No More Mutants' nonesense.  Which of course left us readers dealing with that crap.  I'm glad she's back, but this is a major league reclamation project.  I also am digging the idea that according to Remender Wonder Man is going to be a pacifist, so one of the strongest and most un-killable heroes in the Marvel Universe is going non-violent! It’s fantastic little twist. Throw in that this is a direct reaction the X-Men and Avengers having a serious throw down, the attempt to curb Mutant hate in the populace, the Red Skull being the main antagonist early, and Havok being the leader and I think there is ‘gold in them there hills’. The dynamic of Cap and Havok alone could be gold. Maybe I’m just excited that between Hickman and Remender we’ll have an Avengers title with ‘No More Bendis’, either way I’m sort of excited to see what happens next again.

How about we start wrappin’ this thing up with some…

RANDOM CRAP!

- Speaking of Super Heroes, I’m thinking in March of doing a CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS using the fantastic Super System Rules. People who want to play will simply have to choose their teams roster, gather up or secure minis with, and then ‘build’ their characters, using the easy to learn and use Super System Rules. Then we’d pit our ‘Dream Teams’ against one another in my basement. I’ll have to gauge interest.
- Thank you to Mick for the Holiday shopping excursion on Sunday.
- Since Hostess is going out of business I hit up the outlet store in our neck of the woods the other day. Holy crap was it creepy to see a store that empty. I grabbed two heaping grocery bags worth of goods, mainly Zingers as they are Cassandra’s favorite, and spent like $14.00. I felt bad for the gals who work there as they’ll soon be out of work and you could see it on their faces. It’s strange to think that the company that made so many sweets that ate as a kid will be gone.
- Thanks to Mike for ‘hookin’ up a brutha’ with some Holiday deals.
- So we bought a new television. It’ll be here any time from Wed. to next Tuesday. It’s a technological step up from what we’re rocking right now. I’m hoping that a co-worker will take our current monstrosity. The beast served us well for like 7 years. In fact it still runs like an engine, we just wanted something a bit lighter and bigger. I had hoped to have it before ‘The Fam.’ arrived, but the reality is I’ll take what I can get. Thanks to Charlene for helping us out in the process of making this purchase.
- David finally blogged again! Thank you Dave.
- The blower/mulcher we have is amazing. Saturday morning I spent like 2 and a half hours filling up the yard waste bin. Without that thing we would have needed at LEAST another two weeks of filling that thing just to get most of the leaves gone. As it is we just need to either bag the bit that’s left or hope that they’ll take yard waste one more week. Plus it’s super fun to blow the leaves across the lawn like a wave.
- We went to ‘The Cloud’ on Saturday for Cassandra’s B-day. While were there we picked up two doors, solid oak baby, to build our head board with. It’s going to be these two boards, sanded and stained, with a piece of decorative wrought iron between. We might even use some bannisters on the side to secure it. I think when it’s all said and done it’ll look incredible. At the same time I have to again say thanks to my Mom-In-Law for the amazing homemade pizza. Every time I think she’s topped herself, she blows me away again. She’s ruining everyone else’s pizza for me.
- Lots of ‘thanking’ going on today.

Well I think that’s about all I have in me today.

“When the time comes to documentary what we did here
The transcription won't really be that hard
'Cos i'm a woman eating monster
With a suitcase full of fire
And pink flamingos decorate my yard

Yeah! Pink flamingos decorate my yard!

Do you remember that young girl who did all those things with her body?
Yeah, I guess you could say it was me who gave her her start!
I hear she's working for President Clinton the way she used to work for me
But my pink flamingos keep pecking at her heart

My pink flamingos keep pecking at her heart!

And they never fly away
In my front yard they stay
And, you know, baby
I sometimes find it odd
You've got to climb the statue of the demon to get closer to God!

Woah!

Woah!

Now there's a crowd outside demanding my resignation
And a policeman about to draw his gun
Seems I've lost this battle
But the war has just begun
'Cos my pink flamingos will outlive everyone

Yeah my pink flamingos will outlive everyone!

And they never fly away
In my front yard they stay
And, you know, baby
I sometimes find it odd
You've got to climb the statue of the demon to get closer to God!”

* = That's for you David...