The Clan of the Cave Bague

In which rampaging political correctness strikes at the very heart of all that is sacred.

So, Wifie – the Christmas Spirit being upon her – decided to buy a “Best Ever Christmas Songs Ever Ever Volume 29″ album. You know the one, Noddy Holder, Chris de Burgh – the kind of thing you can only ever stomach at christmas time but without which, well, it just isn’t right.

So there I was, archiving off some old Oracle logs while the Christmas CD was playing in the background. And then Fairytale of New York came on. “That’s strange,” thought I, “that doesn’t sound like Shane McGowan.” And indeed it didn’t because it wasn’t. It was Ronan Sodding Keating. With some other nontentity.

“What what what what what?” quoth I. “You can’t have Fairytale of new York without The Pogues? What possible reason could they have for sticking a really crap cover version on the CD when the real version has been on every christmas album ever made?”

I’ll tell you, ladies and gentlemen. The Lyrics. They’ve. Changed. The. Lyrics.

You know, those beautiful perfect lyrics that paint a vivid and eloquent picture of two old has-beens having a cat fight and then making up on christmas eve. They’ve taken out the word “faggot” (you know, “you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot”) but, bizarrely, left in “arse” (remember? “Happy christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last”).

This is NOT political correctness. This is abusive political revisionism, and the only place this can possibly lead to is the burning of books.

Five whole Larrys, all to itself, and it’s a damn fine movie to boot.

OK, so posting via the web interface is nice and all, but sometimes I just want to fire off a quick thought with the minimum of effort. Firing up Firefox on these occasions is too much like hard work so I thought I’d look for something slimmer.

At the moment, I’m posting via a nice little Gnome application called “Post Blog Entry” (lives in the Ubuntu repositories). It’s nothing clever – doesn’t support images or anything like that, but it lives in the task bar and will happily accept the odd bit of text. Like this!

ZOMG! I actually played a game! AMAZING SCENES ((C) 2007 DeKay). And it only took about 30 seconds of play to remember just how awesome Super Paper Mario is. I was climbing up the inside of a tree and getting up to all kinds of wierd puzzly switch-pressing antics before have a mini-boss battle with Dementio (who, incidentally, has some of the best dialogue in the game – but what does she have against tiny angry workmen?). Then it was END OF CHAPTER time.

So, I’ve now got into the big castle where the geeky guy lives and I had to turn it off cos I know what kind of dialogue to expect and it’s too late at night for such foolish hilarity.

I’ve been seriously lapse of late – Chewbury.Net has become a place of Endless Echoing Silence, and The Temple of Bague has been reduced to an electronic Larry-count. I guess it’s just cos of all the other stuff that’s been going of late – the run up to christmas, rediscovering miniature painting, working, kids clubs, everything else. She Who Must Be Obeyed has started painting again (which is ACEBEST) and she’s even got some stuff up at an exhibition.

I suspect it’s because we’ve spent so long planning things that we’ve never actually got on with anything, and now that we’re settled we’re up to our eyes in catch up.

So – here’s a databurst of the last month: Oracle, Brass Instruments, Warhammer, Paint, Lord of the Rings, Larry, Exploding Cars, Parents Nights, OMG its nearly Christmas (yeah, you heard me, that’s CHRISTMAS – not “the holiday season” or “the festive season” – actual real CHRISTMAS), Dr Who, Ubuntu 7.10.

Right, so I was playing Breath of Fire and really enjoying it. I was also playing Paper Mario and really enjoying that. And Phantom Hourglass. And Super Paper Mario. And Sin and Punishment. And Endless Ocean.

And then I stopped.

And I don’t know why.

All the gaminess has gone from my life. Metroid Prime: Corruption was released weeks ago and Mario Galaxy was released last Friday. I have neither. I saw them in the shop and went “meh.”

I think I’m broken.

 Well, I thought I’d put on a couple of posts about Warhammer models. I’m not sure why, exactly, except I like being all beardy and playing the game and being all pony-taily and painting the miniatures. Should get it clear first of all, though, that I’m by no means an expert miniature painter and my models tend to turn out adequate at best and mediocre most other times, but then everyone needs to start somewhere.

This handsome chap is Slugdrool. He’s a troll from the “Battle for Skull Pass” set. He has the nice characteristic of being stupid. This basically means that there’s a fair chance he’s just going to rampage blindly about the place regardless of what you want him to do. The paint scheme in the picture was pretty easy (and a complete cop out). Essentially, an initial basecoat of Chaos Black to start with, then a full body coat of Goblin Green. As you can see. The statue he’s holding was coated with Codex Grey and the helm with Dwarf Bronze. His “clothes” are Blood Red and the spines down his back (out of shot) are Snot Green (who comes up with these names?). The skull details were coated with bleached bone, as were his teeth, and a spot of Scab Red (ewww) lines his big flappy gob. That pretty much covers the flat colour.

Gave him a bath next – one part Goblin Green, one part Chaos Black, three parts water to make a nice dark green ink. Using the ink, I washed all the green bits, making sure it worked into the cracks. Everywhere else was washed with a black ink – one part Chaos Black, three parts water.

All that was left to do was the drybrushing – old brush, put some paint on, wipe it all off again on something absorbant (toilet paper, kitchen roll, etc) and then carefully brush too and fro to pick out raised areas and highlights. For the red and green areas, a blend of the base colour with a dab of Skull White was mixed and applied. For the rock, a straight drybrush of Bleached Bone did the job.

Next up – the base. This one was simple. One coat of Graveyard Earth, then brushed over with watered (50/50) PVA glue, and then an application of Static Grass. Leave to dry, shake off the residue, and there we have it!

Dwarven artillery FTW! This one it really really easy. Base coat of Chaos Black (as usual), and then dry brush the whole model with chainmail. Then just pick out some highlights with Dwarf Bronze and that’s you done! Most people (from pictures I’ve seen of better painted examples) seem to do a lot more of the trim in bronze, but I like it a bit more functional. Shiny brass has no place on an engine of war. Grime is where it’s at.

1998 was clearly in the Golden Age of Larry-involvement.

Four, ladies and gentlemen!  Four!

Zero.

Half the population of Earth were involved in making this movie.

No one called Larry.

Great movie, but only one Larry? Pretty shocking really.