Predator: Badlands Comes To Disney Plus Next Week

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Bitten By A (Non-Radioactive) Spider

Image by Cosplay_Images from Pixabay

In late August, 2023, I woke one morning to realise my hand had been bitten by some insect, possibly a spider.

I wasn't tightly bound in webbing like Frodo after his encounter with Shelob nor, rather disappointedly, did I later develop spider-themed superpowers (à la Spider-Man).

The morning after the bite before

By the next day the dome-like structure that had grown where I was bitten was very itchy and my hand had puffed up a bit. But I coated the bite in Savlon, kept it covered as best I could, and about a week later the wound had gone down and nearly vanished.

While I have to say I feel I handled this odd situation well (given my usual habit of catastrophising and freaking out about any kind of change, particularly in regards to matters of health), it was still an unusual week.

Puffing up!

This isn't something I recall ever happening before and I had to rely on Google for medical advice and guidance.

The lasting impact has been that I am now very wary about going to sleep with my hand under the pillow, or even hanging over the end of the bed. Which is daft because if an insect, for whatever reason, wants to nip you while you're sleeping it's going to do it!

Return to normality

Miniature Haul At A Miniature Price!

Money Well Spent: £7.38's worth of tiny terrain for the tabletop

Because I can't help but be spinning multiple plates at once, even though I'm trying to streamline and focus all my hobbies, I decide to pick up some bits online that could make scatter terrain for either roleplaying games or my Dead Man's Hand skirmish wargame.

I can't recall if it was an Amazon advert or I was searching for something and found myself on the site, but this was the first time I'd explored Amazon Haul, its low-price Aladdin's Cave of affordable odds-and-ends.

Obviously, I knew of its existence, but had always assumed it was for household goods and fashion items... i.e. no interest to me.

But it turns out there's quite a bit of miniature modelling items on there.

The prices are so low that I thought why not chance a tenner (the minimum purchase to get free shipping)?

I got a pack of 10 transparent blue d12s (for £4.49), which shipped from within the UK and were with me a couple of days later, but the balance of my order turned out to be coming from China.

Yet, it only took a week to arrive and Amazon provided tracking details for every stage of the journey.

For £7.38, I picked up a collection of resin rocks and tree stumps, two packs of miniature trees, an ancient Roman column, and a tiny well (painted and ready for use). 

None of this stuff was produced with wargames' tables in mind, they're advertised as being for "fairy gardens", ornamental plant displays, bonsai decoration etc but they all look as though they will work perfectly for what I have in mind.

I need to base the trees, find a 'statue' to fit on the column (and probably drybrush the whole thing to make it look more aged), and possibly paint up the resin rocks but that part of the hobby is well within my limited skill set, so I'm looking forward to that.

As I said, I've never used Haul before - and won't be a regular customer - but I reckon I got good value for money on my first purchase.

A gamer can NEVER have too many dice!

You Come At The King (Kong), You Best Not Miss

Kong. Godzilla. Titan X.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters returns February 27 on Apple TV.

Based on the Monsterverse from Legendary, this dramatic saga — spanning three generations — reveals buried secrets and the ways that epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.

Conan The Librarian

New shorty short box (on right) for my Conan The Barbarian comics

Part of my ambition to get through my massive backlog of unread comics also involves tidying up and organising those that I have read.

I've long wanted to get my Conan The Barbarian comics in one place and so have started with that phase of the operation.

I picked up a new short box (unexpectedly shorter than the short boxes I already owned), labelled it with a sticker I got from Etsy for just this purpose, and began going through the individual issues I had that would now take up residence in the new box.

Barbarian sticker from Etsy

So far, my efforts have focussed on the current Titan/Heroic Signatures-published Conan The Barbarian titles, the event mini-series they've produced, and their Solomon Kane comic books (to keep the Robert E Howard theme going).

I've also filed away some miscellaneous titles like an old Kull comic and a guide to The Hyborian Age that Marvel produced back in the day as part of its Official Handbooks line.

But these were the easy ones to find and sort, as I had most to hand. Now I need to decide if I also include Marvel's most recent run of Conan The Barbarian (which are scattered through piles under the bed and in the office) or even the few stray issues from their original, legendary run.

I don't own many of those issues from the '70s or '80s as I have a decent library of the omnibuses of both Conan The Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan.

This, in turn, reminds me to think about the new iteration of Savage Sword. As a magazine-sized publication it doesn't fit in standard comic book storage containers. However, it does slide nicely onto my shelves, so I'm pretty certain I won't much problem keeping them in order: most already have a home on the shelf next to the omnibus collection.

The Reality of Hedge Life?

Dexter Sol Ansell is phenomenal as Egg

This week's episode of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms was brilliant. While I always expect to be shocked by stories set in Westeros, I didn't expect to tear up... twice!

Check out the trailer above for a taste of the next episode - now things are kicking up a gear. 

Below you'll find a couple of official behind-the-scenes featurettes about episode three and as an added bonus this week, Jason Kingsley - head honcho of multimedia company Rebellion, publishers of 2000AD, and medieval reenactor supreme - examines the reality of "hedge knights":

New Stranger Things Show Takes Us Back To 1985

Something from the Upside Down must’ve survived… Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 premieres April 23, only on Netflix.

Do we need this... so soon after the main show ended (and especially with none of the original cast seemingly returning to voice their characters)? Is it even canon? Does that matter? 

The animation style will probably take a moment to get used to, but we see the kids are playing Dungeons & Dragons in the trailer so that's a bit tick in the "yes" column. 

It's set between the end of season two and the start of season three... but clearly nothing that happens in this series is ever mentioned in the later seasons of Stranger Things!

This is why, as a general rule, I don't like prequels (and this is... kinda) unless they are earlier enough in the timeline to have faded into legend or they are specifically written to answer unanswered questions from the original material (and, yes, I am referring to the Star Wars Prequels).

I'll definitely be watching the first episode, of Stranger Things Tales From '85, to see if it can hook me as quickly as live-action Stranger Things did.

And, honestly, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

The Roll of the Ancient Mariner: Dice, Dice Every Where...

Of course I love dice. I'm a gamer. I have way more dice than I could ever possibly need, yet I still keep buying them. Like I said: I'm a gamer!

The latest acquisitions for my infinite dice pool are all six-siders, but are devoid of numbers.

The first is a giant - 1.5" x 1.5" per face - red, wooden "yes/no" die. Why flip a coin when you can roll a die, amirite?

Now, as gamesmaster, I can divest myself of any responsibility and blame the die.

Is there a guard coming round the corner as you try and climb through the merchant's window this evening? <rolls big red die> The die says: "yes".

Next up is a hessian bag of wooden cubes with letters on (a couple have 'yes' or 'no' on them). They are pictured below.

These are possibly a dice-based iteration of the classic Ouija board, although - deliberately - no instructions were included, so you can use them how you like.

Don't want to accidentally summon Captain Howdy in the middle of a game!!!

I'm picturing the player-characters encountering a fortune teller armed with a set of these, generating random, on-the-fly predictions that will (somehow) come true later in the campaign.

I welcome this opportunity to hone my improv skills (or lack thereof), conjuring up meaning from a splatter of random letters. It is human nature - apophenia - to see patterns in randomness.

HEALTH UPDATE: It's A Wash Out!

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

This week's planned walk (and tree safari) was washed out by the good ol' British weather. We were getting ready to leave but the rain started to bucket down and (according to Alexa) was here to stay for several hours.

I don't mind being caught in the rain while I'm out, but voluntarily leaving the house when the rain is this heavy just seems daft.

And to be honest, this weekend my guts have been misbehaving in ways so disgusting that I don't want to share. Rachel, kindly, attributes it to my body adjusting to my new diet.

It's probably safer that I stay in today (close to the toilet). I'm not a bear after all!

This shock to the system comes at the end of a particularly rough week. My regular nerve/muscle pains - largely in my chest and arms - were back early on and it was the worse I've endured for a very long time.

This was the closest I've come to crying off Biscuit Club, but I soldiered on and went anyway. However, this year's first scheduled meeting of Monopoly Club did have to be cancelled as I was in no state for a riotous evening of capitalist-driven board game fun and frolics.

I also couldn't escape the inevitable pain-induced black cloud that washed over me, and I found myself unenthused by anything I really should have been doing, instead collapsing in front of the television, bingeing nihilistic documentaries about outlaw biker gangs on the History Channel.

Thankfully, both the pain and the depression passed within about 36 hours and I was much more upbeat by the time of this week's medical appointment: to get the results of my recent blood test and learn the state of my blood sugar count.

The news, unsurprisingly, wasn't great - yet the nurse was wonderfully positive and upbeat. Between her and Rachel's input, I came away feeling this problem might not be as insurmountable as I'd initially feared.

As the nurse put it: my diet had been so bad that it was very easy to see where to make changes.

Yet, changes have consequences... as my body has been demonstrating today and yesterday.