Mayhaps We Should Have Discourse: HOLIDAY LOOT

Christmas was just...off...this year. Maybe because it was so fucking warm. We went to this Christmas carnival thing and they were blowing fake snow all over it...and it was like 70 degrees. At night. It didn't help that the kids actually saw Santa like two weeks before Thanksgiving, which sort of mistimed the whole thing. I didn't even get to watch a couple of the regular Christmas specials/movies that I _always_ get to- Christmas Vacation and How the Grinch Stole Christmas chief among them.

But it was still a good one, and I managed to get to bed before 4am Christmas eve after setting up Santa Claus. We got a ton of great stuff. Let's talk about our Christmas presents.

- Rock Band 4 (River: "I guess Santa knows that we like to rock" Scarlett "Can we play 'Jailbreak'?"- defining moments of my parenthood)
- Lots of Star Wars stuff...the cool diecast Hot Wheels ships, Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren figures, Rey on her speeder, a really cool Revell Snap-Tite kit of Poe's X-Wing, a Darth Vader costume, pajamas, Inquisitor's TIE Advanced Prototype Lego Set, T-shirts, a compendium of all the DK Visual Dictionaries...none of the really tacky or weird stuff, which I expected from my parents.
- Three Minecraft lego sets (River is REALLY into Minecraft right now)
- Scarlett got a full "Jasmine Suit" as she calls it...including a wig. Wore it all day and is wearing it now.
- Turntable with a giant stack of book and records...the classic Disneyland/Peter Pan brand ones. Kids LOVE this thing.
- Viewmaster with a giant stack of reels...I paid out the ass for it, but I got the vintage 1950s Dracula, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and WIzard of Oz sets. They are BEAUTIFUL. They just don't make anything like this anymore.
- Mario Maker and Skylanders Superchargers with a couple of sets of drivers/vehicles
- Not one but two Doctor Who coffee table books, which shocked the shit out of me because my wife got them for me. She HATES Doctor Who and usually doesn't get me anything like this. The books are awesome- "The Vault", which is a 50 year retrospective and "Impossible Worlds", which is focused on the production design.
- My wife got her Mac. Which was punishingly expensive, but she really needed it.
- My wife got me this thing to go to a nature conservatory where you can help feed/tend to wolves, lions and primates. It should be awesome
- Lots of fancy high-end candy, which I love.
- A Toblerone bar, which weirdly I have never tried before. It was pretty good, but some of the fancy high-end candy was better.
- The illustrated Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone, which is wonderful.
- Scarlett got Starlily, the Magical Unicorn. Has proclaimed that "[she] is the best unicorn ever".
- Lots of Frozen stuff. Again. Scarlett got the big Barbie doll sized castle from my parents.
- My parents got River that gigantic Imaginext T-Rex. At first I sort of groaned at it (it's so freakin' big), but then we played with it and I had to agree that it was pretty awesome. It shoots several different types of projectiles, makes incredibly load noises, stomps around and is piloted by these quite politically incorrect savages.

So lots of loot...there is literally a mountain of toys in the living room right now, they've been building various building sets all day and doing craft stuff. I haven't heard my wife swearing at her laptop upstairs so I guess that worked out too.

Yay Christmas. What did you get?

I got a pillowcase and a 20$ gift certificate to Starbucks. There are children in Africa who did better than me this year. Well, at least I get to have another xmas

I got a pint of chunky monkey and a pint of old granddad then brought them into the shower with me and cried until the water turned cold. Pretty standard.

The adults don't get many gifts in our family. I ended up with Super Mario Maker, the Merchants and Marauders expansion, and Fury Road on Blu-ray. What a lovely day!

My birthday is on Saturday, so I am probably getting one or two things more then.

I swear, Super Mario Maker would be a whole Christmas in itself. I lucked out by getting into it just as that bookmark site launched, because it's basically essential.

I got the day off work.

I had some ham and some Glenfiddich. These are both illegal so I feel I have done some good.

A reasonably small Christmas here, but some cool loot none the less. Mostly it was about my oldest son since the baby is only four months there wasn't much to do there. Sunderland wanted Yoshi's Wooly World (which I'm really enjoying) and some Dinotrux more than anything. Which he got along with some transformers and a DC super hero's lego set.

I rocked it. First was my SS getting me 51st State which looks pretty cool, next is the amazing Doc Mabuse who gave me his copy of Wiz War complete with both expansions! An incredible gift. My mom got me 504 which looks really cool and I'm already going through the modules to see which combinations most appeal to me.

Somehow the most interesting item was a random gift from my very cool Uncle. Here's a pic of it




Yes, that is a picture of Hitler, riding a motorcycle, away from a rocket and a giant swastika. This looks very interesting and you absolutely need to read the summary of. Here's wikipedia's version of it.

The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents an unexceptional pulp, post-apocalypse science fiction action tale entitled Lord of the Swastika. However, this is a pro-fascism narrative written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler, who in this timeline emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp–science fiction illustrator and later a successful science fiction writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed adventure stories under a thin SF-veneer.

Spinrad was intent on demonstrating just how close Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces—and much science fiction and fantasy literature—can be to the racist ideology of Nazi Germany.[1] The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic, Homer Whipple, of New York University, which is said to have been written in 1959.

The cover alone is worth the price of admission but I am very excited to read this thing. I've never heard of it before but I imagine someone here must have.

Then my old man got me this:





Which I'm also very excited about. This is an anthology of 25 years of Drawn and Quarterly. The introduction of Chris Ware shows up, early Daniel Clowes... lots of very cool stuff. Good choice Dad!

Then there is booze, long johns, a cool hat (from SS and from my brother in law - I love hats), a couple of iTunes cards (got Fargo season 2 out of that and season 2 of Silicone Valley).

Mostly it was just awesome to not work and be with my family. I also helped out a little on a buddies Christmas album playing some mandolin and I put bailey's in my coffee every. single. day.

I got some jumpers, which will be pretty useful. I bought myself WHQ the card game, so there's that for entertainment.

JonJacob wrote: Somehow the most interesting item was a random gift from my very cool Uncle. Here's a pic of it

Yes, that is a picture of Hitler, riding a motorcycle, away from a rocket and a giant swastika. This looks very interesting and you absolutely need to read the summary of. Here's wikipedia's version of it.

The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents an unexceptional pulp, post-apocalypse science fiction action tale entitled Lord of the Swastika. However, this is a pro-fascism narrative written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler, who in this timeline emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp–science fiction illustrator and later a successful science fiction writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed adventure stories under a thin SF-veneer.

Spinrad was intent on demonstrating just how close Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces—and much science fiction and fantasy literature—can be to the racist ideology of Nazi Germany.[1] The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic, Homer Whipple, of New York University, which is said to have been written in 1959.

The cover alone is worth the price of admission but I am very excited to read this thing. I've never heard of it before but I imagine someone here must have.

The Iron Dream! I remember that from back in the 80s. If it's your first Spinrad then you've got some interesting reading ahead when you decide to catch up on his work. Bug Jack Barron is one of my favourites.

Man Barnes, I hear you. I had a seriously hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I caught some of it once we vacationed in New Mexico after the semester, but it's been such a grim grind this year... it was hard to shake it off.

Main loot was:
-Everyone chipped in to buy me an automatic espresso machine. So nice. One touch grinds the beans and gives me an espresso or coffee. Will even make a cappucino if you hook it up to milk. Really nice.
-in laws got me a GC for clothes
-parents got me a couple things, biggest one was the Wii U super mario world
-wife got me some outdoor gear, some other cool little stuff.

Overall just a really low key Christmas, no travelling. I liked part of it, but I hope that next year if we're under less pressure I can get much more into the swing of things.

I always beg for people to not get me anything, but it never works. A standout gift is my dad made me a case for my fly rod out of Ash, Mahogany, and Maple which looks almost too nice to use, it is really quite nice.

My kids were spoiled rotten by both families.

I got a copy of Argent, one of these cubes:



and my parents bought me a backyard meat smoker. Pretty solid Christmas. They also bought my kids this awesome marshmallow cannon, which is basically a potato cannon scaled down to marshmallow size. Uses Bianca breath spray for the fuel/air mixture. Really loud.

Kids got way too much stuff, mostly because of their giant extended family.

Well, I get a Darth Vader plastic mug and a straw hat.

A nice Seiko mechanical (self winding!) and a 10 inch Kindle Fire which is very fast. It's also big enough to read magazines full-width on, so I'm enjoying it.

A couple of Wings of Glory challenge coins and new storage containers for planes.

Over 70 here on Christmas Day, felt weird.

S.

We had a proper White Christmas. About 3" of snow on during the day of the 24th, then no more.

Been in the 20s since then, so we still have that snow hanging around.

70s on the East Coast must be Secret Satan at work, that's some bullshit.