Friday 40K: The Littlest Waaagh!

Not done this in a while, innit. It's been... fucking hell, sixteen months since I last finished a model. Partly that's moving house, changing jobs, etc., but also it's because I've been in the process of painting eighteen Ork boys at once (along with three Intercessors, three Plague Marines, a Tyranid Warrior brood, a Tyranid Ripper brood, a spy from Talisman and five miniatures of various sizes from Dreadfleet), in a manifestly stupid way.

Look at them! All arranged in step order, in a most un-Orky manner. I had hoped to have this picture set up so the first mini was entirely unpainted, and the last completely done, but tragically my painting process ended up having nineteen stages rather than seventeen. Thus was my otherwise brilliant and sensible plan dashed upon the rocks of reality.

Not to worry, though! After taking the above photo (in my brand new collapsible lightbox, which thus far is significantly less dogshit than both my previous collapsible lightboxes), I took the dude at the front right and finished him to completion.

Rather proud of this guy - it's the most thorough paint job I've ever done on anything other than my first four Dreadfleet vessels (well, maybe my Hammerfall bunker, depending on how you judge these things). Certainly it's the most ludicrous ratio of time expended to points cost, with this guy being worth... FUCKING HELL, just eight points. Half a point a month is taking the piss even by my standards.

Still, a major milesone. My first Ork model from Assault On Black Reach, released just fourteen years and four 40K editions ago. And hey, the next one is already 84% painted! I'll have a proper Waaagh! together before you know it.

Poetry Hexadecagon

This is ludicrously niche even by my standards, but as part of the general policy round here of trying to keep everything I do in one place, here are sixteen poems I wrote over the last two months, each about an episode of The Magnus Archives. 

(If anyone's reading this who hasn't actually listened to that show, then a) spoilers!, and b) you should get right on that if you're a horror fan.)

Anatomy Class

Hearts want what they want
Even false, spasming, wrong
They want what they want

Family Business

There died a young scion of Von Closen
Whose soul in a tome was then frozen
Until a deal he got done
Brought the page count down one
To ensure he'd no more be arosen

The Eye Opens

Statistics are the numbers of tragedy
A case study: the first day of the end of everything
Number of avatars: 3
Number of fools (hubris): 2
Number of fools (romantic): 1
Number of poor choices: Uncountable
Number of years: 200 (approx.)
Number of fears: 14 (approx.)
Number of victims: 7,000,000,000 (at least)
But the most tragic number?
Number of good cows: Unrecorded

A Guest For Mr Spider

The scratchy hatchy spider spun what Jon would read
John caught a pleb
Who’d fill the spider’s need
Out rang the knocks
And so much for the pleb
And the scratchy hatchy spider knew how to read its web

Bloody Mary

There once died a man who took Keay out
And was bound to the Beholding’s redoubt
Saw no threat in Keay’s bed
Tore the eyes from his head
And the double-blind trial saw him bleed out



Another Twist

The Last

Dear God, people are completely unacceptable
Every one, one too many
Look at this guy!
And that one!
This one has an umbrella! Fucking hell
Go away
GO AWAY
Fuck these seven billion people in particular

Do Not Open

Josh away to get dazed to praise a phase now passed
Nosh and hash, days on the lash, costs that dosh, costs that cash
Takes his bevvies, breaks the levies, and then things get heavy
Mate’s heavy like “dense”, makes no sense, ten grand makes things tense? Steady!
Any levy gets buried until he’s good and gone and ready

So dangles a year, no wrangle, no fear, till “Got I an angle on the Triangle, y‘hear?”
Sod nods, blows his wad, stows all he had for a pad on his tod,
And two mans in a van land to hand off contraband
Bam! Now there’s a coffin, stoppin for nottin, for bare ten grand?
Damn scam’s got heavy; got outta hand by the sand

In deep, there’s scratching and crawling, can’t catch himself falling
Asleep, that’s when the freaks start their calling
“Doubt I’ll make it out of a bout with that lock twice”
Stout lad outfoxed that box with his icebox; nice!
No dice, won’t pay no price, trap best entice new mice

Then John comes a calling, he’s done with the stalling
When’s someone bound underground? There’s one clown down for a mauling
But ground’s bound by no rules, fool, swallows all into its hollow
Choke’s just stoked some bloke gets broke, compressed to coke, do you follow?
So John’s gone, plans gone wrong, and Joshie wonders if he’s won

Our Sims sounds grim on this pick, now it’s out the doubts come thick
Highs and lies in profusion, the conclusion? Prick’s took the mick.
File in the pile styled “Worth Dick”. Recording ends. Click.

Lost John’s Cave





Nothing Beside Remains

I once suffered a man upon my deck
He said – “One day I called my sculpture home
He stood before me, sure he’d hold me in check
Half ruined, half shattered, half husk, all frown
And flame-scorched fist, and sneer set o’er black neck
Telling of a killer, feral and scarred
Yet he survived, stamped by these fearsome things
The hand clenched tight, and the throat set hard
And from dry chapped lips, these words spring free
My name is Jon, the Archivist, all truth I bring
Reveal your Works, ye Mighty, I must SEE!
Nothing beside remains, so cold and dim,
Jon, this colossal wreck; his eyes on me
Yet blind to me, and to where I’ll send him.”



The Panopticon

I watch monsters surge together, thrown
Like waves that meet at jagged stones
And rising from the undertow
A pattern only I could know
Pleasing Jonah Magnus

Once b­­lue, now red in tooth and claw
(So no real change from years before)
A loping hunter guards the fort
This trap in which her mate is caught
Hating Jonah Magnus

The creeping wrong that takes your place
And tears from time what was your face
Is freed from rock to kill again
And so hold ground that I need claimed
Helping Jonah Magnus

Our newest monster, barely born
Alone, yet not, heart whole but torn
With lonely eyes worn like a mask
He sets to Peter’s latest task
Killing Jonah Magnus

When hunters take your face as cue
(As if a mirror wouldn’t do)
It can get awkward ‘for too long
‘Cept these two dickheads went for Jon
Missing Jonah Magnus

Poor Peter really should’ve known
There’re downsides spending life alone
You’ll never catch a gambler’s tell
Or hopeless love, and so he fell
Cursing Jonah Magnus

Now blooms the rose I fed for years
With ninety-three percent of fears
The flower I grew in the dark
Now knows the light, and knows my mark
Seeing Jonah Magnus

Omniscience means I keenly feel
Risk in the villain’s big reveal
But one last trial, and one last brick
Then endless life with one weird trick
Being Jonah Magnus



Checking Out

The Overlook has nothing on
The joys of Hotel Richardson
Don Henley’s vision pales beside
The wonders you’ve in store inside
The corridors that stretch for days
Free you from noise from motorways
The endless rooms where each one leads
Suit of all your convention needs
Just married? Sip on our champagne
And honeyed moon shall never wane
And do not fear you’ll too long stay
Our checkout times all read “N/A”
So join our guests who as one cry
“Walk out that door? We’ll sooner die!”

Monument

Academia isn’t where we keep the smartest people
It’s where we trap those most desperate for validation
And there’s never enough to go around
We demand respect, but we crave attention
Like naughty schoolboys, no tactic too shameful
Half of us riddled with Imposter Syndrome
The other half deliberately stoke it within us
Delighting in how they’ve made bullying into a career
Push back the frontiers of human knowledge?
Mostly you’re pushing against pressure that means to kill you
And even if you do find an idea, sell an idea, deliver on an idea
Half the field will say it was obvious, the other half; obviously wrong
And no-one else, ever, will ever knew you found it at all
The Spiral’s true madness is in thinking me trapped within it
As though insanity pretending to structure is new to me
As though an impossible mansion is harder to navigate than an HR policy
It promises fear, but it offers relief
I have built my life on shifting stone
This new futility finds me well-prepared
And at least I need not compete for grants
Work alone at the impossible, without pay or hope?
That’s what academics call “a holiday”
“Sink or swim” takes new meaning when drowning cannot kill you
But even there, little has changed
Academia always felt like drowning, forever
There’s a calmness with hope drowned too

Grifter’s Bone

Bone! (Bone!)
Let our music set the tone!
This dancefloor’s a battle zone
Your auditory canals
Will always be bleeding

Cos we’re Bone! (Bone!)
Grifting for motives unknown
Can kill live or through headphones
The Slaughter’s deep blood canals
Are never receding!

Bone!



I Guess You Had To Be There

This is a ghost story
I saw a ghost
Who stole our friend in London? The Government!
I saw a ghost
A Spiral’s victim met our gaze
I guess it was on fire?
His statement twisted like a maze
All dogs and roasts and turns and bends
The scratchy hatchy spider webbed shut Brian’s door
I saw a ghost
Whose arms stretch ‘neath rain or sun? The Government
Who’ll choke us with their foul mess? The Government!
Brian felt alone
Spilled his guts on the floor
Now where do I get my money?
And then he said he’d start again!
Whose lies grow best in darkness? The Government!
Dear God, people keep showing up where I am
Every one, one too many
In came Lukas
I’m only here to see Jonah, which is bad enough
Look at this berk!
And made Brian alone
Whining about spiders keeping his friends away
As though that isn’t the dream
And the scratchy hatchy spider knew the score was blown
Fuck this one guy in particular

Tale Of A Field Hospital

At Frere ‘twas typhoid dug his grave
At Spion Kop, gangrene
At Chieveley with the camp plague
The restless man was seen

Dead and deathless Amherst seems
Pursuing his sickening plan
A virus spreads across my dreams
I fear the restless man

A Girl Stays Home Alone At Night

The Night House is one of those films that disappoints not by being less interesting than I'd expected, but by being much more interesting than I'd expected, right up until it completely isn't. It's like expecting you'll get no action tonight and instead getting an aborted blowjob. Sure, you ahead of where you thought you would be pleasure-wise, but come on.

Spoilers below

Final Combination

So... this is done. Quite proud of it - not bad for six year's work.

Maybe I'll have more time to paint now.

No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.13 - "California Waiting" (Kings Of Leon)

Kings Of Leon hit early in the roughly two-decade long stretch in which I had both the disposable cash and disposable time to actually keep up with what we so sloppily call "the music scene". At this point, I probably remember the conversation around them better than I do most of Youth And Young Manhood's album tracks. NME loved them because they weren't another "The" band. The internet purists scorned them because their debut was co-written by the dude who gave The Mavericks their biggest hit. It's hard in retrospect who to pity more.

I guess NME were at least circling an approximation of a photocopy of a point. Kings of Leon saw the arch remove of Strokes-pushed New Wave, and figured "Fuck that". Kind of like how Oasis kicked back against the last alleged crisis point in rock music nine years earlier, only with, you know, actual tunes.

Key to this was Caleb Followhill's agonised bark, the voice that launched a thousand metaphors. A weasel drowning in a mustard vat. Fingernails hate-fucking on a chalkboard. A live recording of the failed exorcism of a haunted bouncy castle. Whatever. In an era where coolness was defined by how little of a fuck you could give, the Followhills sounded like they really, really wanted to be doing this. They just didn't care if you wanted them to be doing this. "We're here, he's unclear, get used to it".

It would be easy to conflate the two approaches as both refusing to give a shit about whether the audience exists at all. That would be a mistake, though. The Strokes really cared that you thought that they didn't care what you thought. Kings Of Leon didn't give a shit. The Stokes ended their debut with a song called "Take It Or Leave It". Kings Of Leon start "California Waiting" with a fucking cowbell.

In fact, "California Waiting" is the lynchpin of that first album - not quite the strongest song (though only "Molly's Chambers" is better), but the one that most fully maps out their position of being desperate to play, and thoroughly uninterested in being heard. It's essentially a standard "fame is hard" song, except that it's arrived before the fame. You can read that as a statement of cocky arroagance, but you can also read it as all the ways in which everything about being a band sucks apart from the bit when you're playing. The weightlessness of touring. All the people you're interacting with who ultimately just stand between you and your instruments. Fidgeting behind stage while the crew get everything arranged just so. You only wanted to howl into a mic while your cousin laid down some tasty licks. "While you're trying to save me", Caleb droolhowls, "Why can't I get back my lonely life"? Just fuck off, everyone. You're trying to fix the wrong things.

It's not exactly original, clearly. It's not even persuasive - if you wanted to just keep playing in your garage, that option was entirely open to you. Nor can I ignore that this would become a recurring problem for KoL once they were fully established in the bigtime - the "oh woe I have to do promos" churlishness of "The Bucket"*, the skeezy-as-fuck "At least we keep getting laid" of "Fans".  Right here, though, the approach works, because it's fast, it's fun, and it at least wants to convey something. One more idea you can go with or not, because the band is just here to have fun.

Fun rock music, huh? What a concept.

*Which also absoutely rips off Led Zepplin's "Going To California", which suggests that the Followhill's at least knew that by that point they were repeating themselves and literally everyone else.

B-side:

 

A Load Of Balls 2022

This year's Crucible final prediction: O'Sullivan 18-13 Trump.

Actually got it bang on last year, so let's see if I can make it two in a row.

Edit: Tidy once more.

State Of Play

It's been very quiet around here for a long time. This was never intended, and stil isn't intended, to be a permanent state of affairs (if nothing else, I'll be putting up my 2022 Crucible prediction next week, which doubtless you're all desperate to see).

So let's do a brief update, ahead of trying to get a bit more active on here going forward. The big news is that IDFC, the website that has kept me so busy over the last year, is coming to an end. It won't actually run out of material until the tail end of June, but as I write this (indeed, while I write this as a displacement activity from actually working on Trek), I've only two essays unstarted, with a third half-finished. What happens after that, IDFC-wise, we shall see, but at least for a while I'll be free from the need to get things out on a tight schedule.

Roddenberry isn't the only reason I've been quiet lately, though. Last year was an exceptionally difficult one for me. My sister passed away in September, which is something I'm not ready to write about in detail. As well as that, though, it became clear the job I had been in for over half a decade was no longer tenable, for reasons I won't and indeed cannot go into. The resulting change in employer also brought about a change in county, which in turn necessitated the buying of a house. Perhaps most horrifyingly, it also meant I wasn't able to do any painting between the end of September and, well, last week, when I finally worked out which box I'd packed my painting supplies in.

With pots and brushes now liberated, the production can continue, and sporadic updates on what I'm creating can resume.