Elysium has always been one of my favorite tracks of all time. Relatively recently it got lyrics put to it, and it only made it better, and now S3RL has done a version of it and I'm still in love with it.
https://soundcloud.com/s3rl/elysium
I just wanted to share that here because it was a good track and I haven't posted up here lately.
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 18, 2016
The Bounce
I was listening to a song, and I'm trying to find the version that I heard because there's a part of it whee it goes into an electro bounce section and it is exactly what my brain is in the mood for today, which means that now I have to hunt it down and share it with you.
It's from Hard Dance Mania 5 - Don't Stop Pushing It Now - by Dan Winter - or it could be 7 Days - by Megastyle. Either way, one of those two tracks in the mix have a super bouncy section that I love in the mix, and now I'm trying to sort out where the bounce is from.
Never mind, found it. It's totally not Don't Stop, it is 100% 7 Days.
It's from Hard Dance Mania 5 - Don't Stop Pushing It Now - by Dan Winter - or it could be 7 Days - by Megastyle. Either way, one of those two tracks in the mix have a super bouncy section that I love in the mix, and now I'm trying to sort out where the bounce is from.
Never mind, found it. It's totally not Don't Stop, it is 100% 7 Days.
Mar 16, 2016
I Don't Follow My Own Advice - My American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/129/advice
I give myself advice all the time - I rarely take it.
Spoiler - I write. I write a lot. It's how I think through things as I've said before, and it's one of those things that writing helps me think through things. It's like my own advice that I write and respond to. I write and I write my way through problems. I come to a solution to the conflict that I had in my mind, and then I get stuck because although I mentally know the solution, in the real world, it rarely goes into effect.
This is such a crazy thing that I've done that it goes to the point that in one of my emails I have a draft that has been sitting there for months now. I haven't read it for a while, and I have no where to send it to because I'm talking to myself, but every single time that I log into that specific account I see the draft and I'm one of those that gets irked by any unread message, so I instantly see it and remind myself of the message that I wrote to myself. The catch to that - I've had it sitting in my email for a long time, and I've yet to take my own advice.
I know exactly what I need to do.
I know what I need to do at work.
I know what I need to do with my relationship with Alicia.
I know what I need to do to be a better dad.
I know what I need to do at church.
I know exactly what I need to do, I've written it down and I have almost a daily reminder of what I need to do, but I still don't follow it.
This is the most depressing part of my life.
Any time that I get upset about my life or anything like that, this is the one that gets me the most upset. I know that I could be doing better. I know that I could be doing more. I know exactly where my weak points are at, and instead of choosing to be better, I'm choosing to be stupid.
It's a weird thing when it comes down to it. It's such a weird contradiction. I know exactly what I need to be doing, but I'm choosing to take the easy/lazy way out. It's times like this that I'm deeply afraid that because of my stupid choices now that I'm limiting myself in the future. Just because I chose to be lazy on Tuesday and do things like take a nap instead of working my butt off, what is that going to do to me long term? What about those bad choices where I take the lazy way out more often than the hard working often? What is that going to look like in the long run?
That's what scares me.
I know what my advice is to myself. I know exactly how to make my life better (this is not saying that it's not already good, because it is, I just know that it can become better), but I'm choosing not to do it.
I give myself advice all the time - I rarely take it.
Spoiler - I write. I write a lot. It's how I think through things as I've said before, and it's one of those things that writing helps me think through things. It's like my own advice that I write and respond to. I write and I write my way through problems. I come to a solution to the conflict that I had in my mind, and then I get stuck because although I mentally know the solution, in the real world, it rarely goes into effect.
This is such a crazy thing that I've done that it goes to the point that in one of my emails I have a draft that has been sitting there for months now. I haven't read it for a while, and I have no where to send it to because I'm talking to myself, but every single time that I log into that specific account I see the draft and I'm one of those that gets irked by any unread message, so I instantly see it and remind myself of the message that I wrote to myself. The catch to that - I've had it sitting in my email for a long time, and I've yet to take my own advice.
I know exactly what I need to do.
I know what I need to do at work.
I know what I need to do with my relationship with Alicia.
I know what I need to do to be a better dad.
I know what I need to do at church.
I know exactly what I need to do, I've written it down and I have almost a daily reminder of what I need to do, but I still don't follow it.
This is the most depressing part of my life.
Any time that I get upset about my life or anything like that, this is the one that gets me the most upset. I know that I could be doing better. I know that I could be doing more. I know exactly where my weak points are at, and instead of choosing to be better, I'm choosing to be stupid.
It's a weird thing when it comes down to it. It's such a weird contradiction. I know exactly what I need to be doing, but I'm choosing to take the easy/lazy way out. It's times like this that I'm deeply afraid that because of my stupid choices now that I'm limiting myself in the future. Just because I chose to be lazy on Tuesday and do things like take a nap instead of working my butt off, what is that going to do to me long term? What about those bad choices where I take the lazy way out more often than the hard working often? What is that going to look like in the long run?
That's what scares me.
I know what my advice is to myself. I know exactly how to make my life better (this is not saying that it's not already good, because it is, I just know that it can become better), but I'm choosing not to do it.
Mar 13, 2016
Madge and Mable - My American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/128/four-corners
On the corner of Madge and Mable.
I grew up on the corner of Madge and Mable in Las Vegas, and the more I look at the corner that I called home for my entire childhood explains a lot about me.
Street View
My house has since been painted a new color, lost a lot of it's original 'charm', but it's still the best house on that corner. All while growing up, I thought that I was the person who had the nice house. In my neighborhood, we were the ones that had a yard, and the grass even looked alive most of the time. If you were able to pull up street views from forever ago, my house was one of the only houses on the street that looked like someone cared enough to pay attention to it. All of the other houses that I was surounded by were "desert landscapes" which roughly translated out to the people living there not caring a bit about what their house looked like and just letting the desert decide what their yard looked like for them.
This meant that my entire life I thought that I was one of the better off kids. This was not the case. I was just one of the only people in my neighborhood that decided to turn their sprinklers on on a regular basis. As much as I want to imagine, my house was ghetto. I drive back on the street when I go home, and I can't see the world that I thought I was in when I was a kid. I thought that my street was a little weird, had some character, but normal. Now I go down the street with many of the houses still with the same people inside of them, and I see anything but normal. My street, my corner, wasn't in the world of normal, it was the weirdest thing that you could find in metropolitan Las Vegas.
On my corner of the world there were people that owned horses in their back yards, raised chickens, rabbits, peacocks, camels, roosters, and donkeys. Not only did that raise the crazy that was my neighborhood that I took for granted, but then a Las Vegas celebrity bought a house (mansion) that was a block away. Lance Burton being the back door neighbor to your friend's house down the street was just a normal day for me. Seeing him washing off his birds that he kept in cages in his garage while I rode my bike around the block was a totally normal thing.
My childhood corner was on the corner of weird, crazy, and Vegas, and it made me who I am. That weird corner of my home that had no side walk, no street lamps, and had enough divots and bumps in it that when it rained there would be giant puddles that were long and deep scattered throughout the street, was what sculpted me. I never saw myself as the crazy one, it was always everyone else. I was the perfectly normal one that had a neighbor who would occasionally light fire his cannon on the 4th of July . . . and whenever he wanted to celebrate a good time. I wasn't the weird one, the person that had no electricity to her home and was as much as a hermit as any person living in Las Vegas valley could allow, was the weird one. The fact that we shared a street was just chance.
I was never the weird one. Even when people would try to point out to me just how weird I was, and just how much my corner of the world had seeped into my life, I didn't believe them, because in my eyes, I wasn't the crazy one. I tried my best to push the crazy away from me, or to find other flavors of crazy around me, but now that I look back at it, I was not as crazy as the people around me, but by no stretch was I completely removed from the crazy.
I had a back yard and then a back, back yard.
My dad would occasionally sit out with his .22 and shoot at gofers in our back back yard.
We would go into our back back yard and try to smoke out the gofers by saving the smoke bombs from the 4th of July, lighting it and throwing it into one end of the tunnels they lived in, just so we could see the smoke rise from any other entrances that we missed. Ultimately we'd cover all of the entrances up which meant that we either buried them alive, or gas chambered them in their own tunnels.
For fun I would play in the wash, which was behind my house and when growing up neither paved or cleaned regularly. It was the first time I ever had a beer bottle thrown at my head. I was maybe 10 years old and we were throwing stuff at each other.
For the longest time behind my back, back yard was just acres of desert, which doubled as my playground. Kids in the neighborhood had different stacks of bushes that doubled as their hide outs. I never spent time to make one, but please believe that I played in them.
With the massive amount of animals in the area, and every house having at least one dog (seriously, every single house) by the time I was in 4th grade, I had picked up a semi-convincing bark just to play around with the dogs any time I'd travel by houses. If the dogs weren't barking when I biked by, I'd bark just to get their attention and keep driving past.
As much as I'd want to think that I grew up in a normal neighborhood doing normal things, I look back at my corner and the world that I came from and realize that a lot of who I am came from that weird, crazy, back country, metropolitan corner.
On the corner of Madge and Mable.
I grew up on the corner of Madge and Mable in Las Vegas, and the more I look at the corner that I called home for my entire childhood explains a lot about me.
Street View
My house has since been painted a new color, lost a lot of it's original 'charm', but it's still the best house on that corner. All while growing up, I thought that I was the person who had the nice house. In my neighborhood, we were the ones that had a yard, and the grass even looked alive most of the time. If you were able to pull up street views from forever ago, my house was one of the only houses on the street that looked like someone cared enough to pay attention to it. All of the other houses that I was surounded by were "desert landscapes" which roughly translated out to the people living there not caring a bit about what their house looked like and just letting the desert decide what their yard looked like for them.
This meant that my entire life I thought that I was one of the better off kids. This was not the case. I was just one of the only people in my neighborhood that decided to turn their sprinklers on on a regular basis. As much as I want to imagine, my house was ghetto. I drive back on the street when I go home, and I can't see the world that I thought I was in when I was a kid. I thought that my street was a little weird, had some character, but normal. Now I go down the street with many of the houses still with the same people inside of them, and I see anything but normal. My street, my corner, wasn't in the world of normal, it was the weirdest thing that you could find in metropolitan Las Vegas.
On my corner of the world there were people that owned horses in their back yards, raised chickens, rabbits, peacocks, camels, roosters, and donkeys. Not only did that raise the crazy that was my neighborhood that I took for granted, but then a Las Vegas celebrity bought a house (mansion) that was a block away. Lance Burton being the back door neighbor to your friend's house down the street was just a normal day for me. Seeing him washing off his birds that he kept in cages in his garage while I rode my bike around the block was a totally normal thing.
My childhood corner was on the corner of weird, crazy, and Vegas, and it made me who I am. That weird corner of my home that had no side walk, no street lamps, and had enough divots and bumps in it that when it rained there would be giant puddles that were long and deep scattered throughout the street, was what sculpted me. I never saw myself as the crazy one, it was always everyone else. I was the perfectly normal one that had a neighbor who would occasionally light fire his cannon on the 4th of July . . . and whenever he wanted to celebrate a good time. I wasn't the weird one, the person that had no electricity to her home and was as much as a hermit as any person living in Las Vegas valley could allow, was the weird one. The fact that we shared a street was just chance.
I was never the weird one. Even when people would try to point out to me just how weird I was, and just how much my corner of the world had seeped into my life, I didn't believe them, because in my eyes, I wasn't the crazy one. I tried my best to push the crazy away from me, or to find other flavors of crazy around me, but now that I look back at it, I was not as crazy as the people around me, but by no stretch was I completely removed from the crazy.
I had a back yard and then a back, back yard.
My dad would occasionally sit out with his .22 and shoot at gofers in our back back yard.
We would go into our back back yard and try to smoke out the gofers by saving the smoke bombs from the 4th of July, lighting it and throwing it into one end of the tunnels they lived in, just so we could see the smoke rise from any other entrances that we missed. Ultimately we'd cover all of the entrances up which meant that we either buried them alive, or gas chambered them in their own tunnels.
For fun I would play in the wash, which was behind my house and when growing up neither paved or cleaned regularly. It was the first time I ever had a beer bottle thrown at my head. I was maybe 10 years old and we were throwing stuff at each other.
For the longest time behind my back, back yard was just acres of desert, which doubled as my playground. Kids in the neighborhood had different stacks of bushes that doubled as their hide outs. I never spent time to make one, but please believe that I played in them.
With the massive amount of animals in the area, and every house having at least one dog (seriously, every single house) by the time I was in 4th grade, I had picked up a semi-convincing bark just to play around with the dogs any time I'd travel by houses. If the dogs weren't barking when I biked by, I'd bark just to get their attention and keep driving past.
As much as I'd want to think that I grew up in a normal neighborhood doing normal things, I look back at my corner and the world that I came from and realize that a lot of who I am came from that weird, crazy, back country, metropolitan corner.
Shooting For Shackles
In the thread of me trying to put things up here that I keep trying to find - here's Shooting for Shackles. I'm always able to find the earlier version of this, but for some reason I can never find this version which is the later version that's been edited and is finished.
If you're wanting to publish this because of how awesome it is, feel free to contact me. Seriously, I would love to see this one published.
If you're wanting to publish this because of how awesome it is, feel free to contact me. Seriously, I would love to see this one published.
Shooting for Shackles
With the
last name Zahovich, the back seat on the bus is my home, just like the last
place in a roll call. You’re not the first one through the gauntlet; you’re the
last one through, and get to learn from everyone else’s mistakes.
That
afternoon on the back row of the bus I could see the nastiest gate I had ever
seen. It was solid steel, fifteen feet high, just wide enough to fit the bus
through, and had loops of razor wire circling around the top like masochistic
halos.
From the
back of the bus I heard the hydraulic doors hiss open. Before any of us could
stand up from our seats three uniformed men boarded the bus and started
yelling. Stand up. Grab your gear. File out in order. Some didn’t listen and
rushed out; which meant more yelling. Some forgot their gear, more yelling. A
few froze in place from the sensory overload, more yelling. I sat in the back
and waited.
When it was
my turn, the bus was cleared out, I grabbed my gear from the overhead bin, and down
the aisle to the last spot waiting for me.
Standing in
front of us was a solitary officer with his chest puffed out. He dropped his
hands behind his back and began pacing in front of our line starting with the
A’s down to me, and then back again. “Good afternoon scum. We all know why
you’re here. The draft is open and your country needs you in our war. It is my
job to take you from scum to soldiers. Here, you follow orders. Do I make
myself clear?”
The row of
us tried to answer. Yes, yah, and mmmhm made their way out of our mouths. The
drill sergeant continued yelling. “When addressing a drill sergeant you end all
sentences with drill sergeant. Do I make myself clear?”
We were a
bit more organized and chanted out, “Yes, drill sergeant!” At the very end of
the line I mumbled under my breath, “Gotcha.”
“I didn’t
hear you!”
The line
shouted, “Yes, drill sergeant!” with my voice stretching out past the crowd,
“10-4.”
“Let’s see
if you scum can really follow orders.” The drill sergeant walked us through a
song and dance routine of introducing ourselves to him. One step forward with
your right foot, stand at attention, say the magical words, introduce yourself,
wait for a response, wait for the salute back to you, and step back to line
with your left foot. “Do you scum need me to make it any easier for you?”
“No, drill
sergeant!” came out of the line from A to Y with the muffled, “Well, if you’re
offering I wouldn’t say no,” poking out from the Z.
“Let’s
begin.” As my luck with naming always stands, he walked to the other end of the
line and started with the A’s. We learned that the first mistake got yelling
and the demand to start again from the top. Every mistake after got more
yelling and a cumulative five push-up punishment. The first guy, cursed with an
A last name, worked his way up to fifty pushups, eleven mistakes, before he got
it all right. The next handful of guys progressively made fewer mistakes. Some
started to act annoyed by people that couldn’t do forty pushups without
stopping, but it made sense. You take a college student that spends their life
in a library, who gets exercise from by walking from the accounting lab to the
computer lab, and there’s no hope for them to do more than twenty consecutive
pushups.
The drill
sergeant worked his way to Young. I didn’t want to worry about what was going
on next to me so I stood there passing the time by trying to do my exponent
tables. It was something that I learned back in high school to think about
anything else besides what was going on. I made it through my first and second
powers list, and was started on thirds. Third is: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125 . . . when
it was my turn.
I stepped
forward with my right foot, making sure not to slouch, and held out my hand to
shake the drill sergeant’s. I was never one for strict formalities.
“What are
you doing scum?”
“Where I
come from we shake hands when introducing ourselves. Normally, this is the
point where we shake.”
“Are you
retarded, scum? You are to address me as sergeant!”
I took my
hand back because I took the wild guess that he wasn’t going to shake it. “No.”
“If you
don’t want the next month of your life to be a living hell, you have to call me
drill sergeant.”
“Actually,
according to the Bill of Rights, I don’t. Freedom of speech and what not, ya’
know?”
The drill
sergeant took a step towards me. “Drop and give me ten.”
“No, thank
you.”
“That’ll
give you another ten. Twenty! Now!”
“No.”
“Each time
you say that it’s another ten!”
“Keep up
then. No. No way. No how. Not now. Non. Nej. Nein. Not a Snowball’s chance. Absolutely
not. Hell no. Oh, hell no. I’d prefer not to. Blow me. Bug off. Wait for it. .
. almost there. . . no.”
The drill
sergeant folded his arms back behind him and started pacing the line, away from
me and up to the A’s. “This scum wants to be funny. Time to teach you that one
of you affects the rest.” He pivoted back towards me when he hit the top of the
row. “That means that the rest of you get to do his pushups for him. If my
count is right, you each get to do 180.” The sergeant made his stop at me and
glared at me. “Drop and give me 180!”
“No.”
“190!”
“Let me get
this straight.” I said smiling at the realization of the power I had just
gained. “I say no, and the rest of them get punished?”
“Exactly.”
“Awesome.” I
took a deep breath and made it through twenty-six no’s. “That’d be an extra 260
pushups. Actually . . .” I pulled out four more no’s. “Let’s make it an even 500.”
I took a
step off of the line towards the drill sergeant and stood next to him, facing
the group of guys trying to pump their bodies off of the ground. I leaned over
to him and whispered, “Can we just assume that form here on out, I’m going to
say no?”
“You will
drop and give me fifty now, plus the extra 500 you made the rest of your
company do, or else I will make sure you don’t eat a thing for the next twenty
four hours.”
“I ate a big
breakfast.”
He shoved
his face a hair’s width away from touching me. He didn’t yell, he knew that
wouldn’t make me do anything so he talked. “Drop. Now.”
I moved my
face forward the extra millimeter, and put our noses together. I could feel the
muscles in his face tense up through his nose. I always had the bad habit of
trying to push things just a little bit further than they should be taken. I
took a deep breath, filling my entire chest with air. “Sir, no sir!”
For The Record
I've always wanted to put out a glowsticking video to this song. I just like it. I always forget what it is until I hear it on Trance Around the World, which only plays a portion of it, so here it is for future reference for when I really just want to make a video for no good reason.
Mar 10, 2016
Pimping 'Aint Actually That Difficult - My American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/127/pimp-anthropology
Pimping is easy, and so is prostitution.
This is the weird thing about growing up in Las Vegas, and knowing people that have chosen to do some rather . . . interesting things with their lives. As much hype as there is about pimping and hoe-ing, it really isn't that hard at all. It's not what Hollywood makes it up to be, but pimping really isn't that difficult.
Stupid people in high school start to do stupid things. There are those that start playing around with the idea of easy money, so they become drug dealers. Those same people who are looking for cash are the same ones that start talking about how to make easy cash. That leads to people who want to pimp. It's easy money. All you have to do is make sure that you have clients, that there's a girl or girls that will work for you, and after that you're dealing with protection and safety, not with sex trafficking. As for the girls, it's just about as stupid for the motivation. All it takes is to find a girl who is legitimately a whore. Who likes sex for the sake of sex, and likes money even more. It happens that people just enjoy sex, so a good whore is one that want a lot of it and doesn't care who or what gives it to her. Mix those two entrepreneurial sparks and you've found yourself in the pimping game. It's a weird corner of the world, but it's not that weird to me because I know people that have either tried to be part of the game, or are still in that very odd game.
It's one of the weird things of Las Vegas and growing up in the weird world that is Las Vegas. While in the mix and seeing it around you, you don't think anything of it, but now outside of that world, that is a messed up place. Just like it would be totally acceptable for people to quit school and become a dealer at a casino, girls their senior year would pick up stripping at a local club to make a lot of cash. The really weird one, and it gets really weird, is while a life guard it was an event that most of the employees would go out to amateur night at a club, and cheer on as two (or sometimes more) of their co-workers would try to win cash from the competition.
Let's take a step back and work on that one messed up thought from the world of Las Vegas. Not only does this involve going to a strip club with your co-workers, both male and female, which is super weird and awkward before anything else kicks into gear, but then you cheer for your co-workers as they strip for you and strangers in the hopes that they might win the prize for the night as one of the best amateur strippers. No where else that I could even begin to imagine would that be possible, let alone socially acceptable, but the group of people that I worked with did it fairly frequently.
Being a stripper, pimp, hoe, or anything else that you'd think of as the 'seedy' side of Las Vegas isn't that difficult to get into. Think of it this way - who are the people that are even doing things like that? Typically, that stripper that tells that they are dancing so they can pay for tuition isn't doing that great in classes to start out with. And typically the people that are involved in a strip club on any sort of regular basis are not exactly the most intelligent people in this world. Now, if a high school drop out and sort out how to become a pimp, or even how to sell themselves on a street corner - can it really be that difficult? A person who has trouble with showing up to class on time, occasionally turning things in, and staying awake for seven hours, is the person who says pimping 'aint easy. The same person that dropped out because they felt like homework was just too much to ask of them, is the person that you're judging something from should never happen.
Pimping is easy, it's just the brain dead people that are doing it aren't used to a 40+ hour work week, so it's a shock to them when they have to spend more than two minutes on something.
Pimping is easy, and so is prostitution.
This is the weird thing about growing up in Las Vegas, and knowing people that have chosen to do some rather . . . interesting things with their lives. As much hype as there is about pimping and hoe-ing, it really isn't that hard at all. It's not what Hollywood makes it up to be, but pimping really isn't that difficult.
Stupid people in high school start to do stupid things. There are those that start playing around with the idea of easy money, so they become drug dealers. Those same people who are looking for cash are the same ones that start talking about how to make easy cash. That leads to people who want to pimp. It's easy money. All you have to do is make sure that you have clients, that there's a girl or girls that will work for you, and after that you're dealing with protection and safety, not with sex trafficking. As for the girls, it's just about as stupid for the motivation. All it takes is to find a girl who is legitimately a whore. Who likes sex for the sake of sex, and likes money even more. It happens that people just enjoy sex, so a good whore is one that want a lot of it and doesn't care who or what gives it to her. Mix those two entrepreneurial sparks and you've found yourself in the pimping game. It's a weird corner of the world, but it's not that weird to me because I know people that have either tried to be part of the game, or are still in that very odd game.
It's one of the weird things of Las Vegas and growing up in the weird world that is Las Vegas. While in the mix and seeing it around you, you don't think anything of it, but now outside of that world, that is a messed up place. Just like it would be totally acceptable for people to quit school and become a dealer at a casino, girls their senior year would pick up stripping at a local club to make a lot of cash. The really weird one, and it gets really weird, is while a life guard it was an event that most of the employees would go out to amateur night at a club, and cheer on as two (or sometimes more) of their co-workers would try to win cash from the competition.
Let's take a step back and work on that one messed up thought from the world of Las Vegas. Not only does this involve going to a strip club with your co-workers, both male and female, which is super weird and awkward before anything else kicks into gear, but then you cheer for your co-workers as they strip for you and strangers in the hopes that they might win the prize for the night as one of the best amateur strippers. No where else that I could even begin to imagine would that be possible, let alone socially acceptable, but the group of people that I worked with did it fairly frequently.
Being a stripper, pimp, hoe, or anything else that you'd think of as the 'seedy' side of Las Vegas isn't that difficult to get into. Think of it this way - who are the people that are even doing things like that? Typically, that stripper that tells that they are dancing so they can pay for tuition isn't doing that great in classes to start out with. And typically the people that are involved in a strip club on any sort of regular basis are not exactly the most intelligent people in this world. Now, if a high school drop out and sort out how to become a pimp, or even how to sell themselves on a street corner - can it really be that difficult? A person who has trouble with showing up to class on time, occasionally turning things in, and staying awake for seven hours, is the person who says pimping 'aint easy. The same person that dropped out because they felt like homework was just too much to ask of them, is the person that you're judging something from should never happen.
Pimping is easy, it's just the brain dead people that are doing it aren't used to a 40+ hour work week, so it's a shock to them when they have to spend more than two minutes on something.
Mar 9, 2016
The List
Okay people, let's do the list. Here's what's on the official Chaos Space Marine list, versus whatever I actually own. Now with fancy colors just to clear things up.
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Warhammer-40-000?N=102352+4294967254&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=96&sorting=phl&view=table&categoryId=cat440130a-flat
Khorne Lord of Skulls - Don't have one - don't want one.
Land Raider - Don't have one - sure, I could have one.
Heldrake - Have one - always nice to have another.
Maulerfiend - Have one - meh, don't need another.
Forgefiend - don't have one - same thing as maulerfiend.
Defiler - don't have one - yup, want one.
Vindicator - don't have one - could use one.
Predator - don't have one - could use one.
Hellbrute - have one - could use a spare.
Obliterators/Mutilators - don't have them - meh, could possibly use one.
Terminators - have 10 - don't need any more, ever. Seriously, just don't.
Plague Marines - don't have them - possibly, but it's not my army and doesn't fit.
Havocs - don't have them - sure, go for it.
Bikers - don't have them - would be nice to have them.
Chaos Marines - have them - don't need more - seriously. Just don't.
Rhino - have multiple - don't need any more.
Nurgle Daemon Prince - don't have one - doesn't fit my army but it's an interesting model.
Daemon Prince - yes have one - always nice to have more.
Traitors of chaos - don't have one - don't want one because it makes no sense - just no.
Raptors - have them - could use a bit more of the actual model not the proxy ones that I'm running.
Warp talons - have 5 - could use another 5 but low priority because they suck but look amazing.
Possessed - have them - don't need more.
Warpsmith - don't have it - could use one.
Attack Squad - don't have it - don't want it.
Terminator Lord - have it - it looks awesome - have a spare - don't need any more.
Lord with jump pack - don't have it - meh, low priority, don't know how I would fit it in.
Typhus - don't have it - doesn't fit my army, but an interesting addition.
Abaddon - don't have it - want it.
Ahriman - don't have it - want it.
Thousand sons upgrade - have two of them - could use more, I like them, make sure to get a normal pack of marines to go with them because it's just the upgrade pack and need a regular group to work with them.
Aspiring Champion - Don't have it - could possibly use it.
Marine Lord - don't have it - could figure out someplace to put it, but low priority.
Kharn - don't have it - see Typhus - it's interesting, but not necessary.
Fabius Bile - don't have it - again, not really quite sure how to naturally fit it in, but could be fun.
Sorcerer - don't have it - not necessary, I've already got me 1k sons stuff to fit the sorcerer job.
Lucius - don't have it - not a natural fit, but could use one.
Huron - don't have it - not a natural fit, but could use one.
Dark Apostle - don't have it - not a natural fit, but could one
Cypher - don't have it - no clue, but sure, why not?
Noise marine - don't have it - sure, why not (just need more marines to splice with)
Warsmith - don't have it - not a natural fit, but why not?
Cultists - have some - don't need more
All of the other packs and stuff - No. Don't do it.
Then comes there's the stupidity of Forgeworld.
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/Warhammer-40-000?N=102643+4294966032&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=64&sorting=phl&view=table&categoryId=cat2140034
Oh my, this is expensive city. They're big, they're bad, and they're expensive. This is when you need a present to instantly make me forget whatever it was that you told me before. If you want to forgive you of whatever just happened, forgeworld is the place that you would turn to. I'm going to just show the green light ones because wow - they're awesome (but totally non-necessary and most people won't even allow a person to field forgeworld stuff because it's too broken and over powered).
Titan - Warhound - not Reaver. Yes, you could figure out a way to do a reaver, but that's just too much. Stick with the smaller one. Still expensive as all get out, and no real reason to ever get one any time soon. Remember that you get the body, and then you have to get the arms that go with it. Yes, they're separate. As awesome as it is, they're really low priority. Super low.
Brass Scorpion - Yes. Want. They look lovely. I don't even know how/when I would field one, but this over the titan. This I could try to convince someone to let me field, and when in doubt I could throw in this and proxy it as a defiler.
Chaos Knight - This over one of the titans. The bigger the model, the less and less chance I have to ever run it.
Hell Talon - This is just lovely. This is up there on the Scorpion level of awesome. It's also possible to have this and then if someone is too upset about it just say it's a Helldrake.
Hell Blade - Same thing as the Talon. They're just lovely.
Thousand Sons Dreadnought - Oh yes. This is the thing. Again, you're going to need some arms to go with this awesome thing, but this would fit lovely in the army that I have and want to run. This is the purchase that I play in my head and would love.
Thousand Sons upgrade sets - there's torsos, there's heads, there's all sorts of things. ALL OF THE UPGRADES FOR ALL OF THE THOUSAND SONS! Just as long as you make sure there's an equal set of legs, torsos, heads, right arms, and left arms, if it says thousand sons, I want it. I am running a Thousand sons army. Anything that works towards that is what I like.
Of course there's the crazy world of chaos deamons. It's the sibling army that goes hand in hand with what I want to play, so if you decide to go that route, get anything that says the words Tzeentch on it.
That means things like a Kairos Fateweaver, Lord of Change, The Blue Scribes, Heralds on a disc, Burning chariots, with or without heralds, screamers, pink horrors, flamers, or even the changeling are all great options from GW's site. Big things like the lord of change, only need one of those. Units of things like the screamers and horrors, send packages of.
That is one, and only one of my hobbies. But now you know. I know that no one reads this, but I'm at least throwing this up here so that there's a possibility that next time presents start rolling around (Christmas) you'll know what to get me (because I know that I'm not going to be buying anything new any time soon).
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Warhammer-40-000?N=102352+4294967254&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=96&sorting=phl&view=table&categoryId=cat440130a-flat
Khorne Lord of Skulls - Don't have one - don't want one.
Land Raider - Don't have one - sure, I could have one.
Heldrake - Have one - always nice to have another.
Maulerfiend - Have one - meh, don't need another.
Forgefiend - don't have one - same thing as maulerfiend.
Defiler - don't have one - yup, want one.
Vindicator - don't have one - could use one.
Predator - don't have one - could use one.
Hellbrute - have one - could use a spare.
Obliterators/Mutilators - don't have them - meh, could possibly use one.
Terminators - have 10 - don't need any more, ever. Seriously, just don't.
Plague Marines - don't have them - possibly, but it's not my army and doesn't fit.
Havocs - don't have them - sure, go for it.
Bikers - don't have them - would be nice to have them.
Chaos Marines - have them - don't need more - seriously. Just don't.
Rhino - have multiple - don't need any more.
Nurgle Daemon Prince - don't have one - doesn't fit my army but it's an interesting model.
Daemon Prince - yes have one - always nice to have more.
Traitors of chaos - don't have one - don't want one because it makes no sense - just no.
Raptors - have them - could use a bit more of the actual model not the proxy ones that I'm running.
Warp talons - have 5 - could use another 5 but low priority because they suck but look amazing.
Possessed - have them - don't need more.
Warpsmith - don't have it - could use one.
Attack Squad - don't have it - don't want it.
Terminator Lord - have it - it looks awesome - have a spare - don't need any more.
Lord with jump pack - don't have it - meh, low priority, don't know how I would fit it in.
Typhus - don't have it - doesn't fit my army, but an interesting addition.
Abaddon - don't have it - want it.
Ahriman - don't have it - want it.
Thousand sons upgrade - have two of them - could use more, I like them, make sure to get a normal pack of marines to go with them because it's just the upgrade pack and need a regular group to work with them.
Aspiring Champion - Don't have it - could possibly use it.
Marine Lord - don't have it - could figure out someplace to put it, but low priority.
Kharn - don't have it - see Typhus - it's interesting, but not necessary.
Fabius Bile - don't have it - again, not really quite sure how to naturally fit it in, but could be fun.
Sorcerer - don't have it - not necessary, I've already got me 1k sons stuff to fit the sorcerer job.
Lucius - don't have it - not a natural fit, but could use one.
Huron - don't have it - not a natural fit, but could use one.
Dark Apostle - don't have it - not a natural fit, but could one
Cypher - don't have it - no clue, but sure, why not?
Noise marine - don't have it - sure, why not (just need more marines to splice with)
Warsmith - don't have it - not a natural fit, but why not?
Cultists - have some - don't need more
All of the other packs and stuff - No. Don't do it.
Then comes there's the stupidity of Forgeworld.
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/Warhammer-40-000?N=102643+4294966032&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=64&sorting=phl&view=table&categoryId=cat2140034
Oh my, this is expensive city. They're big, they're bad, and they're expensive. This is when you need a present to instantly make me forget whatever it was that you told me before. If you want to forgive you of whatever just happened, forgeworld is the place that you would turn to. I'm going to just show the green light ones because wow - they're awesome (but totally non-necessary and most people won't even allow a person to field forgeworld stuff because it's too broken and over powered).
Titan - Warhound - not Reaver. Yes, you could figure out a way to do a reaver, but that's just too much. Stick with the smaller one. Still expensive as all get out, and no real reason to ever get one any time soon. Remember that you get the body, and then you have to get the arms that go with it. Yes, they're separate. As awesome as it is, they're really low priority. Super low.
Brass Scorpion - Yes. Want. They look lovely. I don't even know how/when I would field one, but this over the titan. This I could try to convince someone to let me field, and when in doubt I could throw in this and proxy it as a defiler.
Chaos Knight - This over one of the titans. The bigger the model, the less and less chance I have to ever run it.
Hell Talon - This is just lovely. This is up there on the Scorpion level of awesome. It's also possible to have this and then if someone is too upset about it just say it's a Helldrake.
Hell Blade - Same thing as the Talon. They're just lovely.
Thousand Sons Dreadnought - Oh yes. This is the thing. Again, you're going to need some arms to go with this awesome thing, but this would fit lovely in the army that I have and want to run. This is the purchase that I play in my head and would love.
Thousand Sons upgrade sets - there's torsos, there's heads, there's all sorts of things. ALL OF THE UPGRADES FOR ALL OF THE THOUSAND SONS! Just as long as you make sure there's an equal set of legs, torsos, heads, right arms, and left arms, if it says thousand sons, I want it. I am running a Thousand sons army. Anything that works towards that is what I like.
Of course there's the crazy world of chaos deamons. It's the sibling army that goes hand in hand with what I want to play, so if you decide to go that route, get anything that says the words Tzeentch on it.
That means things like a Kairos Fateweaver, Lord of Change, The Blue Scribes, Heralds on a disc, Burning chariots, with or without heralds, screamers, pink horrors, flamers, or even the changeling are all great options from GW's site. Big things like the lord of change, only need one of those. Units of things like the screamers and horrors, send packages of.
That is one, and only one of my hobbies. But now you know. I know that no one reads this, but I'm at least throwing this up here so that there's a possibility that next time presents start rolling around (Christmas) you'll know what to get me (because I know that I'm not going to be buying anything new any time soon).
Mar 7, 2016
Based - Warhammer
I know that I should have been working on my Thousand Sons, because I've got five of them with good color blend, and the other five looking rough and there's a lot of detail work that needs to get done on them, but instead I decided to do something entirely different and make my army look even more unified.
Bases!
That's right, I finally got over my fear of basing and gave it a shot. It's not amazing, but wow, it makes a difference. It's just another cool thing that I can throw out there to make my guys look great. I did manage to mess up here and there and splatter a bit too much with the base brown on some of their feet, but it's an easy touch up when I want to do it.
As for my other writing, it's taken a back seat. I SHOULD be grading a ton of stuff, and when work says that I need to be working, that means I work and don't have much time for anything else. Stupid work not ending when I stop work. Either way, in the hour (or two) that I give myself to relax and not think too much, I managed to do this. Now it's time to do the thing I've been trying to avoid and get back to grading.
That's right, I finally got over my fear of basing and gave it a shot. It's not amazing, but wow, it makes a difference. It's just another cool thing that I can throw out there to make my guys look great. I did manage to mess up here and there and splatter a bit too much with the base brown on some of their feet, but it's an easy touch up when I want to do it.
As for my other writing, it's taken a back seat. I SHOULD be grading a ton of stuff, and when work says that I need to be working, that means I work and don't have much time for anything else. Stupid work not ending when I stop work. Either way, in the hour (or two) that I give myself to relax and not think too much, I managed to do this. Now it's time to do the thing I've been trying to avoid and get back to grading.
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