The Hodge and the Podge and the barely contained rage:

1. Starting with three seconds of enjoying myself, which is about as much as you can hope for these days.

Jada Toys had these little "Nano Hollywood Rides," which are non-transforming and diecast; but roughly in scale with the World's Smallest Transformers. Very roughly, but you'll make do. With a little luck, you could maybe find both at Target right now!

I probably should've put a quarter or something in the picture for scale. The World's Smallest is smaller than the Dollar Store PVC's from earlier this year, and has three points of articulation.

I like wee little Transformers, although it'd be swell if they did more than Optimus and Bumblebee every time. Rarely get super deep down the roster...

There was a little blind-box Masters of the Universe mini-figure at Wal-Mart, and I got Jitsu I think? But I really wanted it for the container, a miniature Castle Greyskull! I thought it would be ballpark close to action figure scale, and I know there are World's Smallest MotU figures out there as well. Which makes me wish I'd picked up the Hot Wheels Wind Raider...which I did!

2. On Twitter, Dustin Davis posted a head's-up that GameStop had their Power Rangers in Space Psycho Blue Ranger on sale for $2.99 early Thursday; so I grabbed that for pickup.

I'm a casual Power Rangers fan, but for the price, yeah!

3. School starts soon for my Youngest, and I think they're doing a couple days in-school, couple days at-home. So you can get good and COVID'd up and then take it home...I don't know if it's a good idea, and he's going to a different school district as well now. I think he had been doing a good job, but thought a lot of the online learning portion thus far had been pointless; although honestly that maybe could apply to the rest of it. Otherwise, locally a lot of stuff is almost what's going to pass for normal right now: wear a mask, wash your hands, keep your distance. I sure as fun wouldn't chance going to a movie, though. It's up in the air as to whether I miss the movies themselves, or proper movie popcorn. I probably wouldn't have paid full price to see Tenet, though.

4. I'd better remember to get a flu shot this year; even if I'm finally tired of hitting Walgreens for figures.

Their website swears one store locally has Moon Knight. They specifically don't. Some folks are already finding the Silver Centurion Iron Man. I honestly don't really need the MK since I have the Mezco One:12, but I'd hate to break my streak.

5. I also mailed my Christmas cards last week! You know, while we still have a post office. I'm originally from Montana, and I have no idea why everyone in the state isn't throwing a goddamn fit: without the USPS, who's going to get letters or packages anywhere in-state? UPS and FedEx use the postal service a lot for the last leg of deliveries there; if they had to carry it the whole way themselves it's going to be a massive increase in price, or a hard 'nah' to delivering everywhere.

Has anyone's mail been slow? I may have had a couple eBay items take a day or two longer; and some items ordered from overseas are taking forever. The latter could be COVID related, I guess.

6. In case it's been unclear here: Black Lives Matter. Trump is a worthless, weak, petty grifter AT BEST, that's about the nicest thing I could say about him; he's also a lying sack of crap. The Republican party is garbage, willing to turn a blind eye to his crimes and covertly encourage racism in order to keep corporate interests happy. The post office is an incredibly important service, voting by mail is fine, and the police absolutely should be defunded. Cops are asked to do a lot of jobs and are almost across the board terrible at all of them: listen to any random true-crime podcast, and I can almost guarantee there's at least an episode about how the police botched the investigation, if not outright ignored it. Cops and cop bootlickers often say if you don't believe in cops, don't call them when you're in trouble; which isn't the threat they think it is, and oh, isn't how doing the job you're paid for works, but okay.

I saw something on Twitter recently--and, kind of wish I could find it for credit--that guns in video games or TV shows? Awesome. Guns in real life? Absolutely unnecessary; they should be as science-fiction as a lightsaber. I'm not quite 100% of that feeling for guns, but I may be 110% that for cops.

If any of that offends your delicate sensibilities, well, there's the door, spaceman. I don't have a lot of readers, but by this point it should be pretty obvious I don't care, I do this for me.

7. Back to our usual brand of nonsense, I did order the Haslabs Marvel Legends Sentinel! Which should show up sometime next year. Fear of missing out twisted my arm on that one; I was afraid I'd have an idea for a joke that needed one if I didn't. Like the Sentinel teabagging Wolverine or something, I don't know. I guess I've got a year to see if anything occurs to me.

8. Partly the way I've set up my stupid house, and partly out of depression/inertia, I have not watched much of anything besides Star Trek reruns for...honestly, decades, but more so lately. Like I don't have the energy to pick something out, start it, pay a bit of attention to it; but Trek can just run like background noise for hours. I did finish watching the few new shows I followed: Stargirl, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Bulletproof. Feels like it might be a hundred years before any scripted TV comes back? That's probably not right; and I could probably cough up for CBS All Access for still more Trek, but not yet.

I did just pick up the John Wick movies on DVD, I hadn't seen any of them. Soon, maybe. And I found a good double fistful of crappy horror movies from the Dollar Store, just in time for Halloween! A couple were Wal-Mart overstock with fancy covers, Child's Play and Killer Clowns from Outer Space. Both of which, I'm now not positive I've ever watched all the way through? Well, I guess I can now.

9. Ooh, right, comics. Well, Humble Bundle has had a bunch lately; there's a Dredd/2000 AD one and a Hasbro/IDW crossover bundle still going as of now. You could get that whole Rom and the Micronauts mini-series for like a buck, with some others! Nothing wrong with that.

I think I mentioned getting a couple of X-Men: Empyre (no cover there on the GCD; even though I like Kyle Hotz somebody else can post the damn thing, Wolverine isn't even in this damn issue) and not liking it much. 31 story pages, a recap page, two-page title card, closing page for the next batch of X-books, for $4.99. The latter four pages always feel like a waste to me. Nightcrawler shows up, briefly, for the last two issues; even if he doesn't have a helluva lot to do: large chunks of the last issue are Dr. Strange being a bit of a dick to set a ticking clock for the rest of the story, and a new character who may or may not ever show up anywhere again. There is one pretty solid bit with Magik that I can't spoil; though I'm still not sure when everyone decided she was the X-girl. I swear she's gotten more page time and covers than, say, Storm or Rogue? (Story by Jonathan Hickman, pencils by Jorge Molina and Lucas Werneck, inks by Adriano Di Benedetto and Werneck.)

Savage Avengers had an Empyre tie-in issue as well; that worked about as well as any of the others I've read: not especially? I think it threw away a perfectly good opening, too: catching a fight in Mexico City, Conan badmouths wrestling as fake, and starts a brawl. That could've maybe carried an issue by itself, but aliens invade, and Venom shows up to help Conan fight them off. Okay. But the premise of Empyre is that the Cotati, the plant aliens, are such a threat to everything the Kree and the Skrulls have put aside millennia of war to team-up against them. And the Cotati are suddenly bad now; this issue they seem pretty enthusiastic about mulching the entire population of Mexico City. That's more than a bit of a reversal, they were always peaceful plant guys before; but honestly it just feels like an excuse to have bad guys the heroes can mow into compost en masse. Not unlike the X-Men issue, there's at least one joke that lands, as Venom tosses Conan a weapon, but...well, the regular Savage Avengers title hasn't really been what I wanted either, so...By the way, I wouldn't expect the writer or editor to have read every Conan appearance, and his continuity is shifting sand anyway; but back in Savage Sword #146 there was an extended storyline with Conan as a gladiator, in largely staged fights! So I felt like Conan might not have been as openly disparaging of wrasslin', but that's super nitpicky and just 'cause I read that Savage Sword again pretty recently.

The last issue of the Question was late as I write this; I need to read the first three again or maybe the lot at once. (And I did!) Other than that, I'd largely checked out on DC: Death Metal, Three Jokers, Bendis's stuff; if I find it for a dollar a pop sometime next year obviously I'll read it, otherwise life goes on. I will say McFarlane seems to be doing an admirable job of getting figures out based on recent-ish books; even if I haven't the slightest bit of interest in them. That and the scale: I think I saw the movie Wonder Woman the other day, but she would tower over most everything else.

10. Man, I wrote all this before the news broke about Chadwick Boseman. He did so much, while fighting cancer. Anything you want to do, make it happen while you can. Even if it's just for you.