Announcements, Crossposted

Watch Me Play D&D Tonight!

Tonight (Tuesday, June 4th, 2019) at 7pm (9pm EDT) I’ll be a guest player at the Typecast RPG table. That link leads to their Twitch stream, so you’ll be able to watch live as I make a half-orc of myself.

The game is run by Dan Wells, and the three core players are Charlie Holmberg, Mari Murdock, and Brian McClellan. The setting is a D&D 5 home-brew featuring magical flying cities and other stuff I still need to read up on.

I really do need to read up, because tonight I’m playing a half-orc bard, a traveling scholar who does bounty hunting on the side. It would be pretty embarrassing if I didn’t know at least some of the lore of the place. Especially if the occasion calls for me to set some of it to song during battle.

Here’s the Typecast RPG home page, and for good measure another link to the Typecast RPG Twitch stream.

Crossposted, Reviews

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I’m not sure what I was expecting from Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but it neither surprised me nor disappointed me, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, so I guess what I was expecting was a Godzilla movie with lots of monsters in it.

The show stealers for me were Mothra, Millie Bobbie Brown, and Aisha Hinds. All three were so compelling on-screen it was hard to pay attention to what the other actors were getting up to. You might take issue with Mothra being grouped with “actors,” but the film’s credits very clearly listed Mothra as being played by “herself.”

My only two¹ complaints were that King Ghidorah seemed less realistically-rendered than the other monsters, and the orchestral score fell a bit short of the utter brilliance delivered by Alexandre Desplat in the 2014 Godzilla film. YMMV, of course.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters clears my Threshold of Awesome, and will definitely be going in the Blu-ray collection as soon as it releases.

¹ Okay, I suppose I have a third complaint, which is that the movie didn’t have enough Kong in it, but since we’re getting a Kong vs. Godzilla movie in 2020 that complaint falls into the category of “I am impatient,” and it can’t fairly be levied against this film, which already had plenty of monsters in it.

Crossposted, Essays, Food

MTHFR and Avocado Toast

I got my genes scanned, and we found cool things. For starters, we found that we could get my genes scanned by using FedEx to send a Q-tip to a laboratory. The 21st century has its problems, for sure, but it’s really, really cool, too.

MTHFR looks like an abbreviation for something impolite. It isn’t—not unless you think words like methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase are impolite. The salient point here is that the MTHFR gene, which codes for the production of that methylwhatsit folate stuff, is not working quite right for me. Most folks can get the vitamin B12 they need from folic acid supplements. I don’t do very well at turning folic acid into usable B12 folate, so I either need to go back to nature and eat lots of leafy greens, or I need some special folate supplements.

Did you know that avocados have lots of B12 in them? And I like them a lot more than I like kale.

We found other things, including a strong indication that my current antidepressant, bupropion (Wellbutrin), isn’t the best choice for me. Over the next few weeks we’ll be changing my meds, feeding me some methylfolate supplements, and putting more avocados in my diet.

Probably not on toast, though.

 

 

 

Announcements, Crossposted

Originals on eBay! Discounts in the Store!

First, the inciting incident:
We’ve had a few months of unexpected expenses, including one major appliance failure, two dental emergencies, and the urgent replacement of a video card and 32gb of RAM. Add to that the scheduled expenses of a kitchen remodel and two kids heading to college in the fall, and finances here at Chez Tayler are currently rather tight.
To the auction block! 
We’ve listed a few my originals on eBay. All of these are one-of-a-kind items, and some of them are unusual, like this  rare bit of fan art I did for Warmachine,  or the hand-painted ABS plastic Game Chief screens I did as prototypes.
We’re listing seven sheets of original card art for Munchkin: Starfinder, and four of those sheets are uncut (like the page to the left), so they have TWO originals on them. Each sheet comes with the card(s) that Steve Jackson Games made out of what I drew.
We also have several things discounted in our store. including XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery (I illustrated it ) which is out of print, so if you want it, probably don’t wait.
Looking for Schlock Mercenary coinage?
All of our commemorative and challenge coins are back in stock, including the the Maxim 70 coin, and the new key fob version of that coin, which has a hole for a key ring.
Other Ways You Can Support Us

If you register with Schlock Mercenary via the right-hand sidebar, you can pledge monthly support via either Patreon or Stripe. Supporting members get access to high res versions of the strips, week-at-a-time browsing, and can even read Schlock Mercenary ad-free!

 

Writer, Illustrator, Consumer