If you’re like me (and I know I am), you’ve occasionally seen this image posted around the interwebs, often attributed to Dungeons & Dragons or associated with it for obvious reasons:
Usually it’s accompanied by jokes about the old “I put on my robe and wizard hat” meme or the knight coming home to find his wife has taken up with the local mage. As someone who has D&D supplements from when the game was throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck, I could believe that this image was from some loopy adventure module or a cover for Dragon Magazine. After some searching, I found it actually came from Marvel Comics.
Here it is as the cover of Marvel Preview Presents issue #22 from the summer of 1980. The story itself is a “Arthur & Merlin vs. a Satan Stand-in & Son” story, at least according to the only summary and review of the comic I could find. It doesn’t sound like there’s a scene where a shirtless Merlin flex-summons something from a book while Guinevere reclines in horror, which is a bit of a disappointment.
And while we may laugh at what came out of fantasy stories and games from the 80’s, let’s at least give credit for it coming from human brains and not from neural network experiments. In my opinion, true fantasy silliness requires deadlines, lack of sleep, and some unholy mixture of coffee and alcohol. No computer, no matter how badly its code was abused, could ever have given us the Flumph. 🙂
Last Sunday, my 1997 Honda Civic was stolen from a grocery store parking lot at around 11:00AM. I got it back yesterday, still more or less intact, which is a relief. It’s going to need a bit of clean-up, as the thieves basically tossed the whole car looking for valuables. They also stole two large boxes of what we think were books and toys from my wife’s preschool supplies. I’d helped her move to a new classroom, and these boxes had yet to find a place in our house for proper storage.
One thing that happened also demonstrates how old the car is and how things just don’t occur to most people anymore. The windows were left rolled down halfway, and they remained that way on the impound lot… and it rained. When I got there and pointed this out, the attendant said that without a key they couldn’t turn on the battery and roll up the windows. He trailed off a bit as he saw me operating the crank on the driver’s side door.
Whoever took it is far shorter than I am, judging by how they moved the seat. They also favor talk radio, as the station was set to 103.7 for some reason. They took the license plates off, of which I’ve recovered one (it was in the front seat). Among other missing items that perplex me a bit (apart from the aforementioned preschool items):
• A Happy Meal plush Jack Sparrow I had hanging from the rear-view mirror.
• One of my Superman floor mats.
• A non-functional Hard Rock Cafe digital clock/timer in the shape of a backstage pass.
• My son’s child-sized skateboard helmet.
I guess they took what they could and sorted through it later? They didn’t take the stereo, which I only use for FM radio, but that kind of surprised me. There wasn’t any information left for me at the impound lot about where they found my car, but it did have a sticker on the window that said it was in violation of being parked somewhere without a valid ID sticker in the window.
I’m glad the ol’ Honda is back in my driveway, and apart from the damp interior I think it’s okay. Cleaning out the soaked paper bits did make me realize how rarely I make an effort to tidy up all the places you can put things when you’re not thinking about them. For instance, I found a peel-and-win game piece for a free sandwich at Burger King that was a promo for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Maybe I should visit a car wash and use their vacuum after the cabin dries out? 🙂
• Unless you like waiting until Thanksgiving for NPR’s Science Friday broadcast of the event, here’s the winners of 2018’s Ig Nobel prizes for science that makes you laugh and makes you think. I also heard the winners described as having done science that might not, and probably should not, be repeated. I especially like the work done in literal “voodoo economics.”
• Following the “Monkey Christ” icon “restoration” in Spain, another amateur artist has taken paint to some antique religious statuary. I get the impression they didn’t warm up on those plaster holiday ornaments we used to paint as kids.
• You’ve probably seen those jigsaw puzzles that are all one color, but now the ante has been upped with a lenticular color-changing puzzle. I’ll leave it to those who are really committed… or should be.
• One could say folk tales are formulaic, but one person has worked out mathematical functions for Russian folktales. Nifty!
• I’m still not sure Fallout 76 is for me, though I find myself humming “Country Roads” more than usual lately. Bethesda would like the game to go on for quite a while, possibly until the end of time itself. I saw no mention of this in any of the Star Trek documentary programs, so I don’t think it’ll happen, but maybe JJ Abrams will change the timeline again.
• We’ll close with a musical number. Actually, several of them, in list form. i09 has a history of sci-fi musicals, from famous classics to rather obscure productions. I never knew anyone made a musical from The Last Starfighter until today.
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