Another Alien Race Discovered by Simon Wagstaff

Simon Wagstaff, the protagonist of Farmers Venus on the Half-Shell, at the start of his 3000 year odyssey discovers another alien race.

“The grass was about two feet high, violet-colored and topped with yellow flowers with five petals. Moving through and above these were about forty creatures which were about thirty feet high. Their skins or shell, he wasn’t sure which they were-were pink. They moved on hundreds of very short legs ending in broad round feet. Halfway up their bodies were eyes, two on each side; eight in all. These were HUGH and round and a light blue, and the lids had long curling eyelashes. At the top of each pyramid-shaped body was a pink ball with a large opening on two opposing sides.”

Venus on the Half-Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

Invincible Army Men

The package contains four rubber like soldiers in various poses, two scenery pieces, and a grenade launcher with three rubber grenades. The grenade launcher is like a rubber band launcher. You hook the grenades on the launcher’s hook, pull the grenade back, aim it at one the army men, and let it go.

There are eight different sets, all with the same components, just in different colors. There are blue, tan, red, and green sets. It might be kind of fun to have two sets of these toy soldier sets and see could can knock down the opponent’s pieces first. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

My Summer 2017 Reading List

I have started my reading with D.H. Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer, a set of disturbing short stories. I have two of Rohmer’s “Yellow Peril” novels; Bat Wing being left over from my Spring Reading List. I have one SCIFI story by Vonnegut, two by Arthur Conan Doyle that make mention of Professor James Moriarty, three from John Buchan-the Richard Hannay series dealing with pre-and post WWI espionage, and one by Philip Jose Farmer on one said character of Simon Wagstaff, the Space Wanderer.

• Bat Wing, Sax Rohmer
• Fire Tongue, Sax Rohmer
• 2BRO2B, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Valley of Fear, Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Last Bow, Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Prussian Officer, D.H. Lawrence
• The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
• The Greenmantle, John Buchan
• Mr Standfast, John Buchan
• Venus on the Half-Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

P. J. Farmers Elixir

Philip Jose Farmer has few threads that run through a lot of his literature one of which is his mention of an elixir. My first encounter with the “elixir “was from his “The Other Log of Phileas Fogg”, my second…I will have to research that one. My last encounter was in my latest reading of Farmer-his Venus on the Half Shell. Here is the first mention of the elixir from that text:

“Simon got over some of his indignation when the woman explained that the average life span of a Shaltoonian was ten thousand years. This was due to an elixir invented some two hundred thousand years before. The Shaltoonian’s weren’t much for mechanics or engineering or physics, but they were great botanists. The elixir had been made from juices of several different plants. A by-product of this elixir was that a Shaltoonian seldom got sick.”

Venus on the Half Shell, Philip Jose Farmer

The Walking Dead Hospital Doors Scene

This highly detailed model includes 112 pieces and represents the AMC Walking Dead Hospital Doors “Don’t Open, Dead Inside” scene. There is also a articulated Rick Grimes in a hospital gown figure. The model kit is manufactured by Mc Farlane.

Zombie Clown Joker Cards

These two joke cards are from the Bicycle Zombie playing card deck and are illustrated by Rob Sacchetto. There are fifty-four different zombies included on this deck. The two joker cards are just a preview.

Lord Tyger’s Poem

“White is the skull in the green,
Green is the grass in the white.
White is her ghost in the light,
Light as her voice in the blue,
Blue of the grief in the black,
Black of the pain in the night,
Night of the worms in the red,
Red of the scraps on the white.
White is the skull in the green,
Green is the grass in the white.”

Lord Tyger, Philip Jose Farmer

The Mad Spider

“What starved and diseased thoughts could possess a mad spider; tiny, red things hobbling on absurdly crooked crutches across the black spongy floor of the minute mind? Hobbling toward a mote of a glow, the cracked diamond in the heart of a fleck sized brain, to worship there or to warms their claws before its crystalline blaze? Overhead, jagged fissures through which light fell from each eye, light filtered by the webs within the stalks which held the eyes?”

Lord Tyger, Philip Jose Farmer

The Bird of Igziyabher

"The Bird of Igziyabher, or in English, God, was like no other bird, although the other birds had also been created by Igziyabher. The Bird was especially created, long after the world was created. It watched over the world and especially over Ras for Igziyabher. Indeed, it contained in its belly an angel, or so Ras was told.

It was larger than fifty fish-eagles put together and its body was shaped something like a deformed fish. Part of the body reflected the sun-shine; the rays bounced of it. Its legs were rigid, hanging below the belly and held out a little too both sides. Its claws were very strange; they were round and never opened.

Its wings were attached to a bone that projected above the Bird, and the wings went around and around so fast with a chop-chop-chop, that Ras could see them only as a blur."

Lord Tyger, Philip Jose

Zombitzz Zombies

I have acquired four more zombies for the museums’ Zombie collection and exhibits. The four zombies are cast from vinyl and were manufactured for Global Holdings, Inc. The Zombitzz zombies stand anywhere from 2.5 to 3.5 inches tall (at least from the sampling that I have). These four zombies are from series 1. There are twenty zombies in this series.

Every zombie has one “gruesome” feature in its skull. You may find ink stamps, erasers, or a super-ball, to name just a few. These figures are well detailed and painted. Whether it is still available or not I don’t know, but there is or was a Zombiezz app for some virtual fun.

Captain Maggot

Bill Guts

Chuckles

Cindy Innards

The Eraser Under Captain Maggot's Hat

HO Scale Barn by IHC

Here is another scale model from International Hobbies Company. Although IHC is out of Philadelphia this model was manufactured in Germany. Judging from what IHC offers on their current website a lot of IHC structures are no longer available from IHC. Some of the dies for these models seem to have gone to other companies like Life Like. Or is it the other way around and they still being offered by other manufactures?

Mfg. No	Description
602	Interlocking Tower
804	Colonial Church
707	Endoline's Funeral Home
805	County Court House
708	Store Front Apt. Building
806	Herald Star Newspaper
712	Old Time Gas Station
810	Luigi's Restaurant

This model kit is cast from polystyrene and as you can see it even has wood grain molded into the casting. I believe I still have a few more of IHC structures packed away that need to see the light of day and the flash of a camera.

Cimmeria

This is the first post in the new collection named Conan. Conan or Conan the Barbarian, is a sword and sorcery character created by Robert E. Howard for publication in pulp magazines. Conan was born in Cimmeria during the Hyborian Age. This is a poem about the fictional country of Cimmeria.  

"It was gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far away
I have forgotten the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
And hunts and wars are like shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that somber land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night."

Robert E. Howard

The House on Curwen Street

"Knowledge is power. But knowledge is also madness, and it is not for the weak to take arms against these hellish beings."

The House on Curwen Street, August W. Derleth

An Umbilical Cord

“The umbilical cord is no longer a permanent leash, a stranglers noose, or a silver-plated life-line stretching back to the womb."

This Crowded Earth, Robert Bloch

O Sleeper, Awake!

”The year of the dragon had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. The black plague stalked through the streets of Belverus, striking down the merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his banquet board. Before it the arts of the leeches were helpless. Men said it had been sent from hell as punishment for the sins of pride and lust. It was swift and deadly as the stroke of an adder. The victim's body turned purple and then black, and within a few minutes he sank down dying, and the stench of his own putrefaction was in his nostrils even before death wrenched his soul from his rotting body. A hot, roaring wind blew incessantly from the south, and the crops withered in the fields, the cattle sank and died in their tracks.

Men cried out on Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow, throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king was secretly addicted to loathsome practices and foul debauches in the seclusion of his knighted palace. And then in that palace death stalked grinning on feet about which swirled the monstrous vapors of the plague. In one night, the king died with his three sons, and the drums that thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that rang from the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the rotting dead.”

Chapter 1, O Sleeper, Awake!, The Hour Of The Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Star Wars Millennium Falcon

This Hot Wheels Star Wars Millennium Falcon is a die-cast metal miniature that is approximately 6.5 wide by 7.6 long. This one of many Star Wars vehicles in Hot Wheels Star Wars line.

I apologize for the blurry image.

Awaken the Dead

"The long tapers flickered, sending the black shadows wavering along the walls, and the velvet tapestries rippled. Yet there was no wind in the chamber. Four men stood about the ebony table on which lay the green sarcophagus that gleamed like carven jade. In the upraised right hand of each man a curious black candle burned with a weird greenish light. Outside was night and a lost wind moaning among the black trees.

Inside the chamber was tense silence, and the wavering of the shadows, while four pairs of eyes, burning with intensity, were fixed on the long green case across which cryptic hieroglyphics writhed, as if lent life and movement by the unsteady light. The man at the foot of the sarcophagus leaned over it and moved his candle as if he were writing with a pen, inscribing a mystic symbol in the air. Then he set down the candle in its black gold stick at the foot of the case, and, mumbling some formula unintelligible to his companions, he thrust a broad white hand into his fur-trimmed robe. When he brought it forth again it was as if he cupped in his palm a ball of living fire."

Chapter 1, O Sleeper, Awake!, The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Ten Farm Animals

I found these hard plastic farm animals at a local discount store. They are made in China; where else? It seemed that the packages contained a random selection of animals. This package contained a verity of animals. The figures stand anywhere from one to three inches high and up to 4 inches long.

There are a horse and colt, a cow and calf, a pig, three sheep, a goat, and a farm dog. Although I feel like their paint jobs could have been applied with a little more care, their molded detail in is tolerable.

Journey into the Unknown- Kwasin and the Bear God

With this post I am instituting a new sub collection Journey into the Unknown. I will use the Journey into the Unknown to explore some of the topics that were covered within the text, regardless of the outcomes.

“In the beginning was a formless which gave birth to Kho, the great goddess. She fashioned the earth, the air, the sky, the stars, the moon, and the sun.” The priestess Adythne recited these words to a bear that stood ten foot high, as she proffered her small honey soaked hand to the bear."

Wold Newton Prehistory-Kwasin and the Bear God

Miscellaneous data from the text:

• Ancient African civilization of Khokarsa
• Kwasin
• King Minruth
• Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar, and Hadon & Kwasin
• Descendants of Sahhindar
• Saasanadar Mountains
• Gulf of Gahate
• Kho-Bird headed mother:
• East African cryptid- Nandi Bear
• Gokasis-pirate king
• Dance of Klaklaku

A Slave-drivers Song

Mariel of Redwall is the forth in Brian Jacques’s Redwall series. Although I do have the next in the series on the stack, I may not visit this series again for a while. The series tells of the exploits of the woodland characters of the Redwall Abby. The series has provided many ideas and fodder for future fantasy war-games.

‘Up an’ one down an’ two,
Bend yer backs an’ curse yer birth.
Up an’ one down an’ two,
Pull those ours fer all your worth!’

“The grating voice of the slave-driver echoed across the benches. As he strode up and down he flicked his cruel whip.”

‘Up an’ one down an’ two,
Some have backs without hide,
Up an’ one down an’ two,
Those who couldn’t row have died.
Up an’ one down an’ two,
Here is a gift from me to you!’

Down came tip of the slave-drivers whip on the back of poor oar-slave.