Fantasist's Scroll

Yea! More toys!

Okay, these are mainly silly, but sort of cool toys. They’re called Neo-Kaiju, I guess because they’re kind of like Japanese monster-movie monsters. They’re funny, at any rate. I especially liked Humpty Djinn and Steam Punk. They’re mainly sold in whole-sale lots of 10, but you can get them individually at Super 7 Store.

Go! Be a good consumer and consume!

Hooray for science-fiction become reality!

I almost never post a picture, but…. But, this is just way, way too cool! This picture is from an article on Wired News about new robots being used by the military. In fact, this bad boy, dubbed the Talon, is ready to ship to Iraq in just a few months. This ought to liven up things for the last of the insurgents and resistors from the old regime. And, hopefully, it will let more of our soldiers come home alive and in one piece. That urban warfare stuff is just brutal and I’m all in favor of anything that will take some of the heat off our military.

Now, add to that this article about mutating robots…
Well, they say that the idea is to have robots that can more efficiently explore disaster sites to find and rescue people, but I can see how an urban battlefield would be pretty much the same as a disaster site. A mutating robot with a gun. Yeah, that sounds like a science-fiction story to me, allright!

Anyway, interesting food for thought.

Oh, boy, where to start.

Well, first, let me say that I probably just won’t be posting for a bit. My wife left me last week Sunday, right before Thanksgiving, and we’ll be getting a divorce. So, that’s going to be taking a lot of my time and energy, which will leave little left over for the blog.
Second, I’m afraid that I might say some things that are legally innapropriate considering my current marital situation, so, again, not a good idea to post anything for a bit.

Not sure how long it will take to get this resolved, but, when I do, I’ll start posting again.

Thank you for your support. If you’re the praying kind, keep me in your prayers.

Hey, look, new stuff!

Okay, so my life has been a little crazy the past couple of weeks and I haven’t been posting too much new stuff. Well, there’s a person I know from several lists on-line who was so inspired by my conlang generators that he made his own. His name is Nikhil Sinha, and one of his websites is Azukania. Also, a direct link to his PERL word generator is here. For more information about Azgen, Nikhil’s word generator you can go to his Azgen Information Page.
Great work, Nikhil! We need more people making word generators out there!

Here are two stories to make you think.

First, there’s the story about the archeological dig in South Carolina that may provide evidence that early man migrated to North America as much as 25,000 years earlier than originally believed. It could change everything we believe about the early migration of primative humans. At first blush, that may not sound like a big deal, but it really is.

Secondly, there’s the story about a recently discovered “new” ape fossil that may be the so-called missing link. The creature that made this fossil may be the earliest known, not to mention closest, ancestor to both modern apes and modern man. Of course, this is very controversial and may not be true, after all, the science of hominid evolution is very, very speculative due to it’s nature. It’s not a living process that we can actually observe in real-time. Still, it does provide more information and a whole lot of food for thought.

Anyway, it seemed like a pair of interesting, inter-related, stories. Enjoy!

Whoa! I almost forgot!

I guess I’ve been busy this week, because I almost forgot to post a Friday Fun Link. So, without further ado, here is the Real FAQ, or Questions You Really Ask. C’mon, let’s face it, these are real-world things that people are always asking, so it makes perfect sense to write up standard responses to them and put them on a webpage.

At least, it made sense on a Friday. Aw, go take a look, it’s not like you were working anyway!

Do you journal?

I have in the past, in the “real world”, that is. Blogging is a journaling of a sort, but not the kind that I mean. When someone asks me if I journal, they’re asking me if I record my innermost thoughts on paper. They’re asking me if I write to excise the demons of my heart, mind and soul by opening a vein and pouring ink onto the pages of a book that no one else will see. As I mentioned, I have done that in the past. I often toy with the idea of starting again.
And, I have to admit, I lust after a particular notebook to journal in: Moleskine. If you haven’t seen these gems, find them. Fondle one and you see why anyone who has done any kind of journaling has longed to have their words recorded in these notebooks. The paper is creamy and soaks up the ink. The black, oil-skin covers feel soothing in your hand as you open them, inviting you to write. You can imagine Hemingway or Joyce or even Wilde pouring out their thoughts and adventures into these beauties. Moleskines make you want to journal. So, the other day when I was searching around for things on the web and found them again… Well, let’s just say that I started to think about journaling again.
If you’re looking for an excuse to journal, these would be it.
Moleskine Large Ruled (lined) Notebook
MOLESKINE Large Ruled (lined) Notebook – quantity 2
MOLESKINE Pocket Ruled (lined) Notebook
MOLESKINE Pocket Plain (no lines) Notebook – quantity 2

Go take a look, it’s worth it.

Did someone take my idea?

Or is it just so, so lame that more than one person thought of it? Okay, let me explain. See, I’ve had this idea for a fantasy fiction setting that I called the Five Kingdoms for several years. In fact, I’ve been talking about it so long that I don’t even remember how far back it goes. But, the other day when I was looking through some stuff on CafePress, I found a book called The Sorean, which has, right on the cover, a reference to “Tales from the Five Kingdoms”. I laughed so hard I almost ruptured something. The whole thing just totally cracked me up.

I knew that, sooner or later, this kind of thing would happen when CafePress started selling books. Of course, I figured that there’d be plenty of folks selling books that they’d taken from Project Gutenberg, and there are, but some of the other stuff surprised me a bit. A pleasant surprise was the Ethereal Press Language series. As someone who’s “into” constructed languages, these books were really interesting to me. I’m not sure that I’d ever buy one, but I think it’s great that someone is making them.
I also found more “serious” books, like The Book Of AisthC*tikos, which advertises itself for the “serious student of the occult”. So, all you lame posers can piss off! This book isn’t for you!
The other thing that was fun to browse through was the CafePress music offerings. Now, to be fair, some of these are probably really, really good, but undiscovered bands. On the other hand, some of them are just funny. My favorite “WTF” music cd was Shut Up The Devil by King MC. The devil is totally whack, yo!

And, of course, there is my very own Ye Old Wizard’s Shoppe, now with more panties. It’s really almost a joke, but if anyone ever buys anything, and I mean anything, I might just pay for a “premium” shop and do more with it. Anyway, I guess I may just be forced to give up on the Five Kingdoms and move on. After all, I wouldn’t want to infringe on any market right that The Sorean might now have. (Yes, I’m kidding.)