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You may have seen this before (it's been around a couple of years). And if the phrase Load "" means nothing to you, then neither will this, but it amused me anyway...
http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/
http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/
Dec. 2nd, 2006
Hershey's Milk 'Chocolate' tastes of vomit
Dec. 2nd, 2006 12:32 amWell it does. Hellsbells at work had been on holiday to New York and brought back a selection of Hershey's miniatures for the office (standard practice at our place, although I did point out that when I went to Brussels on a course, I brought back a load of Godiva - now that's proper chocolate).
There were two flavours - plain (with, ooh I dunno, all of 20% cocoa solids or something) and milk. I said just how awful Hershey's chocolate was and got accused of being a chocolate snob by MissPink. That is until everyone tasted the milk chocs - and everyone agreed that they tasted of vomit. Then some malicious sort started putting the milk chocolates in plain chocolate wrappers to see who would gag first.
Perhaps somewhat inevitably, it was TheWarriorPrincess. Most of you won't know this girl, but if you did you would know that this is exactly the sort of thing that would happen to her.
There were two flavours - plain (with, ooh I dunno, all of 20% cocoa solids or something) and milk. I said just how awful Hershey's chocolate was and got accused of being a chocolate snob by MissPink. That is until everyone tasted the milk chocs - and everyone agreed that they tasted of vomit. Then some malicious sort started putting the milk chocolates in plain chocolate wrappers to see who would gag first.
Perhaps somewhat inevitably, it was TheWarriorPrincess. Most of you won't know this girl, but if you did you would know that this is exactly the sort of thing that would happen to her.
The Traveller Collector
Dec. 2nd, 2006 01:33 amMany of you will be aware that I'm a big fan of the SF role-playing game 'Traveller'. Some of you will have played in one of my campaigns over the years. Some of you may be aware that as my income has increased and my available time has decreased, I have become more of a Traveller collector and less of a Traveller referee. So I thought I'd write a bit about collecting Traveller.
In the old, old days (the 1980s), it was simple - you wanted a Traveller supplement, you went to your local game shop and bought it. Your local game shop was possibly a branch of Games Workshop. Younger readers may not realise that Games Workshop used to mostly sell other companies' games. Now of course, Games Workshop stores exist only as research labs for the scientists who develop cheap but powerful deodorants. Anyway, the point is that in those days there were lots of companies producing lots of books for Traveller, and that you could buy these books in your local games store. As well as GDW (who actually made the game), these were companies like Judges Guild, FASA (they only started doing other things like Battletech when they lost their Traveller licence), Gamelords, Group One etc.
Then, GDW took back the licence, moved on to making MegaTraveller (set just after the original 'Classic' Traveller, during the Imperial civil war), and then Traveller: The New Era (set in the aftermath of the collapse of interstellar civilisation) and weren't so free with the licence. GDW went bust, the game's original creator, Marc Miller, released 'Marc Miller's Traveller' (or 'T4', set at the birth of the Imperium, some 1,100 years before Classic Traveller) and the original Traveller material became difficult to get hold of. But people still wanted it. Then T4 withered away, to be replaced by T20 (Traveller using the d20 rules, and 200 years before 'Classic' Traveller - my least favourite version) and GURPS: Traveller (Traveller using the GURPS rules and pretending that the civil war never happened).
In the old days, it was harder to buy older Traveller material since it was no longer being produced and most of the games shops had closed down anyway.
But then along came the internet, eBay and, to bring us right up to date, the $2 pound. All this means that there is a thriving eBay community of Traveller collectors. And yours truly is a very active (and spending) member of that community.
I've now got pretty much the complete set of original GDW Classic Traveller material, and a pretty good proportion of the licensed material. Some of this goes for pretty high prices nowadays. I recently saw Issue 1 of 'High Passage', FASA's Traveller magazine which ran for five issues (I have 2, 3 and 5) go for US$200. This is for a 30-page A5 magazine. I've got almost all MegaTraveller stuff (in fact, I'm onto obscure Japanese and German language editions), the complete New Era set, almost all of T4, most of T20 and almost all of GURPS Traveller. To make matters a little more complicated, there are now companies producing officially licensed stuff as downloads. The collector in me is torn - I don't know whether my collection will ever be complete without downloading the .pdfs and printing them out.
Particular highlights of my Traveller collection:
Azhanti High Lightning - during the old days, this was the Holy Grail for Traveller collectors. Now, it's almost common, but I'm still pleased to have got it.
Imperium - this was a real find for me. Imperium was a GDW boardgame that pre-dated Traveller by a couple of years, but introduced the Imperium setting. I was able to buy the second copy ever printed , signed by Marc Miller, from someone on eBay.
My title. Mr Miller has worked out that particularly sad, particularly devoted Traveller collectors will pay him good money for a piece of paper supposedly signed by the Emperor Strephon awarding them noble title over a particular planet in the Imperium. I paid him good money for the planet of Hiroshi, in the Solomani Rim. You should now address me as 'Baron Hiroshi'. I'm serious.
I have both the GURPS Traveller and T20 rulebooks signed by Marc Miller (in fact I bought them direct from him after noticing that there was someone called Marc selling Traveller stuff on eBay from an address in Bloomington, Illinois).
'Traveller', a concept album by an obscure, but critically-acclaimed (by metalheads) Californian hard rock group called 'The Lord Weird Slough Feg. These are the lyrics from the second song on the album, 'High Passage / Low Passage', to give you some idea:
I am a space pirate, you know my name
Asteroid mining is a dangerous game
Imperial navy can't keep up my pace
Chasing a rock into Zhodani space
You heard about me in the frontier wars
Psionic menace carrying alien spores
A living legend in the asteroid mines
Outvoting tarrifs and imperial fines
One-thousand credits is my humble price
Whether it's nickel, iron, stone or ice
Only the wayfaring patron would dare
A merchant cruiser, a skyway corsair
It's not a mineral that I seek here
High passage, low passage
Any way I'm outta here
I was born in colonies
On fringe worlds of the galaxy
Meanwhile in Zhodani space
Imperial flagships follow me
ChainmailMaiden has heard it and she thought it was pretty good. As far as I'm concerned, she's the ultimate arbiter of taste for all music metallic.
So there you go. Role-playing is a sad, geeky hobby. Combining role-playing with obsessive collecting doesn't make it any better, does it?
In the old, old days (the 1980s), it was simple - you wanted a Traveller supplement, you went to your local game shop and bought it. Your local game shop was possibly a branch of Games Workshop. Younger readers may not realise that Games Workshop used to mostly sell other companies' games. Now of course, Games Workshop stores exist only as research labs for the scientists who develop cheap but powerful deodorants. Anyway, the point is that in those days there were lots of companies producing lots of books for Traveller, and that you could buy these books in your local games store. As well as GDW (who actually made the game), these were companies like Judges Guild, FASA (they only started doing other things like Battletech when they lost their Traveller licence), Gamelords, Group One etc.
Then, GDW took back the licence, moved on to making MegaTraveller (set just after the original 'Classic' Traveller, during the Imperial civil war), and then Traveller: The New Era (set in the aftermath of the collapse of interstellar civilisation) and weren't so free with the licence. GDW went bust, the game's original creator, Marc Miller, released 'Marc Miller's Traveller' (or 'T4', set at the birth of the Imperium, some 1,100 years before Classic Traveller) and the original Traveller material became difficult to get hold of. But people still wanted it. Then T4 withered away, to be replaced by T20 (Traveller using the d20 rules, and 200 years before 'Classic' Traveller - my least favourite version) and GURPS: Traveller (Traveller using the GURPS rules and pretending that the civil war never happened).
In the old days, it was harder to buy older Traveller material since it was no longer being produced and most of the games shops had closed down anyway.
But then along came the internet, eBay and, to bring us right up to date, the $2 pound. All this means that there is a thriving eBay community of Traveller collectors. And yours truly is a very active (and spending) member of that community.
I've now got pretty much the complete set of original GDW Classic Traveller material, and a pretty good proportion of the licensed material. Some of this goes for pretty high prices nowadays. I recently saw Issue 1 of 'High Passage', FASA's Traveller magazine which ran for five issues (I have 2, 3 and 5) go for US$200. This is for a 30-page A5 magazine. I've got almost all MegaTraveller stuff (in fact, I'm onto obscure Japanese and German language editions), the complete New Era set, almost all of T4, most of T20 and almost all of GURPS Traveller. To make matters a little more complicated, there are now companies producing officially licensed stuff as downloads. The collector in me is torn - I don't know whether my collection will ever be complete without downloading the .pdfs and printing them out.
Particular highlights of my Traveller collection:
Azhanti High Lightning - during the old days, this was the Holy Grail for Traveller collectors. Now, it's almost common, but I'm still pleased to have got it.
Imperium - this was a real find for me. Imperium was a GDW boardgame that pre-dated Traveller by a couple of years, but introduced the Imperium setting. I was able to buy the second copy ever printed , signed by Marc Miller, from someone on eBay.
My title. Mr Miller has worked out that particularly sad, particularly devoted Traveller collectors will pay him good money for a piece of paper supposedly signed by the Emperor Strephon awarding them noble title over a particular planet in the Imperium. I paid him good money for the planet of Hiroshi, in the Solomani Rim. You should now address me as 'Baron Hiroshi'. I'm serious.
I have both the GURPS Traveller and T20 rulebooks signed by Marc Miller (in fact I bought them direct from him after noticing that there was someone called Marc selling Traveller stuff on eBay from an address in Bloomington, Illinois).
'Traveller', a concept album by an obscure, but critically-acclaimed (by metalheads) Californian hard rock group called 'The Lord Weird Slough Feg. These are the lyrics from the second song on the album, 'High Passage / Low Passage', to give you some idea:
I am a space pirate, you know my name
Asteroid mining is a dangerous game
Imperial navy can't keep up my pace
Chasing a rock into Zhodani space
You heard about me in the frontier wars
Psionic menace carrying alien spores
A living legend in the asteroid mines
Outvoting tarrifs and imperial fines
One-thousand credits is my humble price
Whether it's nickel, iron, stone or ice
Only the wayfaring patron would dare
A merchant cruiser, a skyway corsair
It's not a mineral that I seek here
High passage, low passage
Any way I'm outta here
I was born in colonies
On fringe worlds of the galaxy
Meanwhile in Zhodani space
Imperial flagships follow me
ChainmailMaiden has heard it and she thought it was pretty good. As far as I'm concerned, she's the ultimate arbiter of taste for all music metallic.
So there you go. Role-playing is a sad, geeky hobby. Combining role-playing with obsessive collecting doesn't make it any better, does it?