There is not too much to say about this plastic centipede, I had taken a picture of the object some time ago and thought I might as well use it for a post. As you can see there is very little detail here. The rubbery plastic creature looks larger than it actually is-the magic of photography. It’s one enduring quality is that it glows in the dark.
'Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage. A blade of light crept across the floor towards us. My brain was growing clearer. The place had a damp, earthen smell. It was slimy—some noisome cellar. A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern. Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the slime-coated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square—shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who stood watching us, upon the malignant, intellectual countenance.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.
At last they were face to face—the head of the great Yellow Movement, and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race. How can I paint the individual who now stood before us—perhaps the greatest genius of modern times?
Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan. Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence. Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent. Together, chained to the wall, two medieval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.
He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward, carrying his high shoulders almost hunched. He placed the lantern in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze of those eyes which must haunt my dreams forever. They possessed a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye of the cat—and the film intermittently clouded their brightness—but I can speak of them no more.
I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense a force of malignancy could radiate—from any human being. He spoke. His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen; his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.
"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far. I have seriously turned my attention to you." '
Chapter 13, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer
After being aperhended, drugged, and brought to the domains of Dr. Fu Manuchu.
"I (Dr. Petrie) WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger things to which I awakened. Since, out of a blank—a void—this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble. It was thus:
I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable. My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my burning body.
This, I thought, was death.
Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within. Panting, but free from pain, I lay—exhausted.
Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold. I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable. I wondered why I could not see the windows. The horrible idea flashed to my mind that I was become blind!
Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily. I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
Then—a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away. It grew steadily in brilliance. It spread like a bluish-red stain—like a liquid. It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.
But this was not my room! Nor was it any room known to me.
It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a kind of awe such as I never had known: the awe of walled vastness. Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound. Its hugeness had a distinct NOTE.
Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible. These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile. And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design—stealthily.
At the farther end of the hall—for hall it was—a huge table with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet. It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with instruments of a type unknown to Western science—a heterogeneous litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor, forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet. A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from the ceiling—which was so lofty that, following the chains upward, my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.
In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind this table. The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow. From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.
From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention. I had eyes only for him.
For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!
Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the carpet, left me. Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche. I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry. The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became a normal carpet—extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet. But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to me.
Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke faintly penciled through the air—from the burning perfume on the table—grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror. It enveloped me, clammily. Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied brain acclaimed him a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits. The green eyes showed filmy through the fog. An intense pain shot through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I looked down. As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore increased in length, curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat and choked the breath from my body!
Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness; but it was a false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed my throbbing forehead. Confusedly, as though in the remote past, I recalled a kiss—and the recollection thrilled me strangely. Dreamily content I lay, and a voice stole to my ears:
"They are killing him! they are killing him! Oh! do you not understand?" In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had died, and that this musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact of my own dissolution.
But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.
For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me. I never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating—a metallic, jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains. I thought that, then, I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands. The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri, and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error to the paradise of Mohammed.
Then—a complete blank."
Chapter 13, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer
"I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton. They were hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I had jotted down the following queries:—(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza? (2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How had the murderer escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper? (5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist a mere subjective hallucination—a figment of Croxted's imagination—or had he actually seen it?"
Chapter 12, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer
Dr. Petrie reviews his findings of the case so far.
"My view of the case to date stands thus:
"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China, is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way to stay in England.
"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.
"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room coffee. An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia.
"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations are made for his return. These lead to:
"(a) The death of Denby's collie;
"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;
"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.'
"The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms was a mystery; a mystery which defied Western science: one of the many strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu."
Chapter 9, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
"Better a voyage begin in blood than end in blood."
Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton, page 100.
This 1/87 scale Highway Miniatures Old Farm Wagon kit includes three sprue molded in polystyrene. The three sprue, include sets of highly detailed and delicate parts. Two of the sprue in a cream color contain two half’s of a horse, the parts for wagon driver and other miscellaneous parts for the wagon. The third sprue, in grey, contains parts for the wooden body of the wagon.
Clearly written instructions with an assembly diagram are included. Attesting to the delicacy of the molded parts, there is a small order form printed on the instruction sheet that can be used send off for parts that might break during assembly.
The parts, assembled with liquid model glue produce a highly detailed model that will look great in a country scene on a train layout.
Since many of the parts of small and delicate, I would be very careful with the amount of glue that you use. It is very easy to mar the surface of the plastic parts with your finger prints. It should go without saying, but the removal of parts from the sprue should be done very carefully.
"It was a breath of the East—that stretched out a yellow hand to the West. It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu, as Nayland Smith—lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy."
Zombie Hunters
I have created a game for my S.L.U.G. Zombies. Here are the instructions for creating the game board and the game rules.
What you will need:
Game BoardGame Board
Game Rules
Zombies from 12 to 6 inches:
1 |
Miss |
2 |
Hit |
3 |
Miss |
4 |
Hit |
5 |
Hit |
6 |
Kill |
A 1 will always indicates a miss and a 6 a kill. A 2, 4, or a 5 are hits. If a zombie is hit the zombie is moved over one point to the right and loses their ability to move on their next turn. Use some type of marker to indicate a hit.
Once the zombies get to the 6 inch mark the scoring changes:
1 |
Miss |
2 |
Hit |
3 |
Hit |
4 |
Hit |
5 |
Kill |
6 |
Kill |
With the exception of the additional chance for a kill it works just like it did above a 2, 3, or a 4 is a hit, the zombie is moved one point to the right and loses its next turn.
If and zombie makes it to the zombie hunters, that is to the 2 inch circle, the hunters get 1 last shot (1 dice). A 1 is a miss, a 2 is still a hit, and anything from a 3 to a 6 is a kill. If any zombie is still “a live” at this point, the hunters have become infected, the game is over.
Special Note: I suppose it is pretty obvious, but you will probably want to shoot at those zombies closest to you. Shoot at zombies in front of you. If all the remaining zombies are located on one side both of the zombie hunters can fire at these zombies, but not until then.
“And there, alas! Within sound of the Fountain of Youth whose waters tint the skin till the whole body glows softly like the petal of a rose-there, alas! In the new world already blooming, THE ETERNAL ENIGMA I beheld, in the flesh living; yet it faded even as I looked, although I swear it lived and breathed. This is the Sphinx.”-Ponce de Leon
In the Search of the Unknown, Robert W. Chambers
Weston miniatures are high end 1/87 pewter miniatures that come pre-painted. My small collection includes a street cleaner and cart, a linemen, a railroad conductor and an engineer.
I have just completed my reading of the third book of Verne’s The Mysterious Island. I have read through this volume once before, but came upon the third part of this novel entitled the Secret of the Island. Assuming that it was a take-off from the Mysterious Island I downloaded it and read through it. It is actually the third part of Verne’s The Mysterious Island.
"Mobilis in mobile." (Moving in a moving thing). The Nautilus is the name of Captain's Nemo's submarine.
Chapter 19, The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne
Although his plastic toy car only measures 15 x 35mm it has a surprising amount of detail. It has the following markings on its bottom: 1994 LGT. I cannot say for certain, but this model seems to have been modeled after a 1994 Ford LGT Convertible.
"Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening; but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors; to my ears, every sound a signal of dread. For the deathful hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates."
"Thus, then, the storm blew over. Yet I had never experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril—of a sinister presence—as oppressed me at that moment. The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume. And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream—the scream of a woman in direst fear."
Chapter 7, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer
"He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.
Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table, I despair of writing convincingly. It was that of an archangel of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green. But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess (it made me think of the membrana-nictitans in a bird) which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all their brilliant iridescence."
Chapter 6, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer
The log cabin ruin has a lot of detail that are cast into this resin casting, including what is left of wood floor, trees, rocks and a discarded barrel. This Rusty Rail mini-scene measure 4" by 3" by 2". I did find a few small holes, left over from the casting process, which had to be filled with Squadron putty.
After the putty dried I sprayed painted the casting a flat white. After the under coat dried I started picking out different objects with splashes of color appropriate for the object. I followed this with some dry brushing and washes. I usually use light washes on dark colored objects and reverse the colors if I am painting a light colored object. Sometimes I will even go over an object with a second dry brush color.
I laid down a coat of diluted white glue, something like a four to one ratio. I sprinkled fine green blend and an earth blend turf on separate occasions. I fixed these areas with matte medium and then added course materials like green dyed saw dust, some very small gravel bits, and turf materials in a verity of textures and shades of green.
"First, we went ten days’ journey to Nankin, a city well worth seeing; they say it has a million of people in it: it is regularly built, and the streets are all straight, and cross one another in direct lines. But when I come to compare the miserable people of these countries with ours, their fabrics, their manner of living, their government, their religion, their wealth, and their glory, as some call it, I must confess that I scarcely think it worth my while to mention them here. We wonder at the grandeur, the riches, the pomp, the ceremonies, the government, the manufactures, the commerce, and conduct of these people; not that there is really any matter for wonder, but because, having a true notion of the barbarity of those countries, the rudeness and the ignorance that prevail there, we do not expect to find any such thing so far off. Otherwise, what are their buildings to the palaces and royal buildings of Europe? What their trade to the universal commerce of England, Holland, France, and Spain? What are their cities to ours, for wealth, strength, gaiety of apparel, rich furniture, and infinite variety? What are their ports, supplied with a few junks and barks, to our navigation, our merchant fleets, our large and powerful navies? Our city of London has more trade than half their mighty empire: one English, Dutch, or French man-of-war of eighty guns would be able to fight almost all the shipping belonging to China: but the greatness of their wealth, their trade, the power of their government, and the strength of their armies, may be a little surprising to us, because, as I have said, considering them as a barbarous nation of pagans, little better than savages, we did not expect such things among them. But all the forces of their empire, though they were to bring two millions of men into the field together, would be able to do nothing but ruin the country and starve themselves; a million of their foot could not stand before one embattled body of our infantry, posted so as not to be surrounded, though they were not to be one to twenty in number; nay, I do not boast if I say that thirty thousand German or English foot, and ten thousand horse, well managed, could defeat all the forces of China. Nor is there a fortified town in China that could hold out one month against the batteries and attacks of an European army. They have firearms, it is true, but they are awkward and uncertain in their going off; and their powder has but little strength. Their armies are badly disciplined, and want skill to attack, or temper to retreat; and therefore, I must confess, it seemed strange to me, when I came home, and heard our people say such fine things of the power, glory, magnificence, and trade of the Chinese; because, as far as I saw, they appeared to be a contemptible herd or crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves, subjected to a government qualified only to rule such a people; and were not its distance inconceivably, great from Muscovy, and that empire in a manner as rude, impotent, and ill governed as they, the Czar of Muscovy might with ease drive them all out of their country, and conquer them in one campaign; and had the Czar (who is now a growing prince) fallen this way, instead of attacking the warlike Swedes, and equally improved himself in the art of war, as they say he has done; and if none of the powers of Europe had envied or interrupted him, he might by this time have been Emperor of China, instead of being beaten by the King of Sweden at Narva, when the latter was not one to six in number.
As their strength and their grandeur, so their navigation, commerce, and husbandry are very imperfect, compared to the same things in Europe; also, in their knowledge, their learning, and in their skill in the sciences, they are either very awkward or defective, though they have globes or spheres, and a smattering of the mathematics, and think they know more than all the world besides. But they know little of the motions of the heavenly bodies; and so grossly and absurdly ignorant are their common people, that when the sun is eclipsed, they think a great dragon has assaulted it, and is going to run away with it; and they fall a clattering with all the drums and kettles in the country, to fright the monster away, just as we do to hive a swarm of bees!"
Chapter XIII, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie had just escaped from the clutches of Fu-Manchu and are now foating down a river.
"Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light—vaporous, mysterious—flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain. It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.
"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been watching those elfin fires. "But it always reminds me of a Mexican teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."
The simile was apt, but gruesome. I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder."
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer, Chapter 5
This three wheeled rocket car is a Mattel Hot Wheel toy and measures 1 1/8 by 3 1/4”. It has following markings: Mattel, Hot Wheels, 1979. This model is constructed of a metal and plastic components. Although there is a little wear on the one side of the body it has nothing like the wear of Yellow Banana Flash bus. Perhaps it didn’t get the same attention as the yellow bus, or it was flown more often than it was raced around. As far as I can remember of my own playing habits, vehicles that were pushed and raced often found their way crashing into other toys of the same kind.
This vintage Yellow Banana Flash bus that has seen some wear. It has the following markings on the bottom of its chassis: 1983 Hallmark Cards Inc. The toy bus measures 25W by 53L mm.
"Who knows? Miromar is not the only one who says so."
"Does he call it the end of the world?"
"No, no, it is the rebirth of the world —of the true world, the world as God meant it to he."
"It is a tremendous message. But what is amiss? Why should so dreadful a Judgment fall?"
"It is the materialism, the wooden formalities of the churches, the alienation of all spiritual impulses, the denial of the Unseen, the ridicule of this new revelation —these are the causes according to him."
"Surely the world has been worse before now?"
"But never with the same advantages —never with the education and knowledge and so-called civilization, which should have led it to higher things. Look how everything has been turned to evil. We got the knowledge of airships. We bomb cities with them. We learn how to steam under the sea. We murder seamen with our new knowledge. We gain command over chemicals. We turn them into explosives or poison gases. It goes from worse to worse. At the present moment every nation upon earth is plotting secretly how it can best poison the others. Did God create the planet for this end, and is it likely that He will allow it to go on from bad to worse?"
The Land of Mist, Arthur Conan Doyle
Sao Feng, played by Chow Yun-Fat, is the leader of the squadron of Chinese pirates that the crew of the Black Pearl tried to enlist his help. Sao Feng would eventually betray his comrades to the British.
“We are like vapors dispersed by the wind; we are like waves of the sea roused up by a whirlwind; like broken bamboo-sticks on the sea, we are floating and sinking alternately without enjoying any rest.”
Chang Paou (pirate captain on the South China Sea)
Pirates of the South China Sea
Chinese Junk that the crew of the Black Pearl have on loan from Sao Feng. The crew takes the ship to "Worlds End" to try to rescue Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones Locker.
“Without darkness, there is not light; without virtue, there is no splendor.”
King Chung Ho
Pirates of the South China Sea
Images are from Pirates of the Caribbean-At Worlds End.
'"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal. He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth for centuries. He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY! Do you follow me? He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher, and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it." '
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Sax Rohmer, Chapter 5
Hobbit-The Battle of the Five Armies
“During the Third Age Galadriel became filled with foreboding, and with Celeborn she journeyed to Lorien and stayed there long with Amroth, being especially concerned to learn all the news and rumors of the growing shadow in Mirkwood and the dark stronghold in Dol Guldur.” (J.R.R. Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales, 256)
The Hobbit-The Battle of the Five Armies
"Anon Lana, “Naked Hill” was the highest point in the highland at the south-west corner of Greenwood, and was so called because no trees grew on its summit. In later days it was Dol Guldur, the first stronghold of Sauron after his awakening.” (J.R.R. Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales, 292)
The Hobbit-The Battle of the Five Armies
Dol Guldur- “Hill of Sorcery” was the treeless height in the south-west of Mirkwood, where the Necromancer dwelt until he was finely revealed as Sauron (The Dark Power). He would eventually be banished by Galadriel and the other members of the White Council.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Dol Guldur, the place where Sauron dwells was visted first by Gandalf and then by the rest of the white council in order to drive Sauron from his place.
“That seething, half-luminous cloud background held ineffable suggestions of a vague, ethereal beyond-ness far more than terrestrially spatial, and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this un-trodden and unfathomed austral world.”
Chapter 3, Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
