The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: MattFish on August 03, 2005, 07:51:32 pm
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AMEN, man. AMEN.
I will be playing with little kids toys forever. All building Lego cathedrals when I'm sixty-four.
ALTERNATE TITLE: Oh no! I'm tipping over! SINKHOLE!!!
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Do sinkholes often figure prominently in childhood play? I still don't think I'm clear on what a sinkhole is, and I certainly wasn't as a child.
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I love Ray's usage of the word "stimuluses".
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Oh man, look how fuck*ng HAPPY Ray is playing with his truck in the first panel, and then again when he's impressed that Teodor engages in the play with GUSTO.
Hell, man, I just did some of the quarry missions in GTA: San Andreas and was all like "Oh man, dumptrucks!"
So Ray could play with dumptrucks AND use computers!
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This is why I still have all my He-Men/M.U.S.C.L.E./G.I. Joe/&c. Because playing is for winners.
If I'd come here and somebody hadn't already commented on "stimuluses" I would've died a little bit inside.
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Playing is RIGHT ON. I am so happy that other people share my interest in getting back to the simple pleasures in life.
On the other hand, the LEGO corporation seems to have gotten rid of the "build whatever you want for $5" LEGOs of my youth and replaced them with "Build this Hollywood Movie Product Placement Model for $80," which pisses me off to no end. I keep wanting to settle down for an afternoon with some LEGOs and keep getting so pissed off I have to take a nap. Which is OK, I guess. Maybe I'll switch to K'Nex - they'll never change.
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I'm loving Ray's "kid kid kid" moment.
Sure, he can be simple, he'll have forgotten all about this by tomorrow, but when in his "moment" Ray is quite the inspiration.
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Playing is RIGHT ON. I am so happy that other people share my interest in getting back to the simple pleasures in life.
On the other hand, the LEGO corporation seems to have gotten rid of the "build whatever you want for $5" LEGOs of my youth and replaced them with "Build this Hollywood Movie Product Placement Model for $80," which pisses me off to no end. I keep wanting to settle down for an afternoon with some LEGOs and keep getting so pissed off I have to take a nap. Which is OK, I guess. Maybe I'll switch to K'Nex - they'll never change.
PREACH IT!
I was so pissed when they started making these pieces that could only be used for one single purpose. It sort of defied everything that made Legos, well, Legos to me.
Did you every try to play with the Legos *****s?
I still want that bigass K'Nex roller coaster for christmas. Maybe I'll buy it for me and my daughter.
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Actually, I'll admit to the LEGO Mindstorms ***** thing being damn cool. My roommate freshman year of college had a huge set of those, because he was an engineer and part of their freshman-year curriculum was to make a badass ***** out of those. I played with it a lot, and it was FUCK*NG AWESOME. Although, I'd never pay that much.
Also, the KNEX roller coaster is badass. I had the ferris wheel as a kid, which was pretty cool, but not half as cool as the roller coaster. Let me know how that works out.
Single-purpose LEGO pieces are the beginning of the end.
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Yeah, Legos seem to have moved out of the "Toys every kid ought to have laying around" category and into the "Insanely expensive shit almost exclusively for creepy hobbyists" category. I remember having a few stray Legos involved in pretty much every Playtime, in some capacity or another; I'm sure that I had enough in aggregate to hobble an infantry battalion (if they could be convinced to walk barefoot across our living room). It's a serious question - what happened here? It's not like we've placed crippling embargoes on the Lego Mines of Belgium or anything.
I never really minded the Legos that were meant to be something specific, because the finished product, as designed / intended by Lego, always had a really pleasant way of making even the relatively mundane (e.g. that perennial favorite, the gas station) seem sleek and cozy and beautiful. Plus, when you take Legos that are very clearly meant to be one thing and one thing only out of context, and then (over time, or whatever) forget what it was meant to represent, well, you can get some pretty bizarre and wonderful ideas.
I had an opportunity to mess around with the Lego *****ics kits many, many years ago. The impression I got was that THIS SHIT IS COMPLICATED. If I remember right, you programmed them with BASIC and LOGO. I have never, ever had a head for either engineering or programming, so there you go.
EDIT: Speaking of roller coasters, did anyone ever get a chance to play with those toys that let you design a track layout very much like a roller coaster, but for marbles? That was Covet City, right there.
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The revelation that there are differing schools of dump truck play alone made my day. Sheer geniousity.
Bravo, Onstad
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I had an opportunity to mess around with the Lego *****ics kits many, many years ago. The impression I got was that THIS SHIT IS COMPLICATED. If I remember right, you programmed them with BASIC and LOGO. I have never, ever had a head for either engineering or programming, so there you go.
Ahh, see, that's what separates us. I'm a programmer, and I think I'm a programmer now mostly because I learned LOGO in like the 5th grade. I was makin' 128-pointed stars and all kinds of crap. I wish C were so easy. C needs a turtle in the middle of the screen, just to remind all the hardcore programmers that they're still playing around.
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I still mark out for Lego castles. Dammit I loved those things. I used to stage house-wide wars between the forest guys with their lame Robin Hood feather caps vs. the actual knights.
I also had the Marbles and Blocks + like 3 expansion sets. That was quality time right there. All trying to line it up so that after a marbles rolls down the ramp it falls off the dress into the next section of track.
And I totally want one of these (http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/6a7c/). And, to a lesser extent, this (http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/3627/).
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I still mark out for Lego castles. Dammit I loved those things. I used to stage house-wide wars between the forest guys with their lame Robin Hood feather caps vs. the actual knights.
The old giraffeer-Price castle (http://www.globalgaragesale.net/gallery/castle.JPG) was the damn bomb.
TRAPDOOR INTO A SWAMPY JAIL
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I still mark out for Lego castles. Dammit I loved those things. I used to stage house-wide wars between the forest guys with their lame Robin Hood feather caps vs. the actual knights.
The old giraffeer-Price castle (http://www.globalgaragesale.net/gallery/castle.JPG) was the damn bomb.
TRAPDOOR INTO A SWAMPY JAIL
My parents only bought me the Old West version of that playset. Because they didn't love me.
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You can still get "box of basic Legos"; I believe it may even be possible to get "big ol' bucket of Legos in a specific color". I am pretty sure that it is still quite possible also to get non-licensed set-types, like "pirate crap" and "knights crap" and "automotive crap".
However, except for tiny pocket-sized sets maybe, these are not what you will find at Generi-Mart's toy section, because they are simply less profitable than the Harry Potter Elf Hutch or Star Wars Dagobah Latrine set. A market environment where the toy store is replaced by a small toy section in your local Conglomo means that you will tend to have a narrowing of selection both to facilitate cost-saving bulk purchase and make the most of valuable floor space. The items that survive the narrowing are two groups: those with high and obvious profit potential (that is, licenses) and cheapo throwaways/knockoffs of aforementioned licenses. (The cheapos also sometimes get squeezed out of Huge-Mart and must be sought at drugstores and supermarkets.)
The net outcome of this is that you will need to either shop online or find an actual toy store to get basic Legos. I would encourage anyone who wants to buy toys to go to an actual toy store anyway, but they seem to be depressingly dying out.
As far as the "Legos targeted at creepy collectors" goes, that's actually not quite true in the sense you might think; Lego collectors do buy the odd licensed sets, but generally not (to my limited knowledge) for the purposes of building the indicated object. Rather, they do it to get the potentially useful unique blocks in that set. I'm told that, for example, the Hogwarts Castle set has some very useful pieces for a Lego builder who wants to make Gothic cathedrals.
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You can still get "box of basic Legos"; I believe it may even be possible to get "big ol' bucket of Legos in a specific color". I am pretty sure that it is still quite possible also to get non-licensed set-types, like "pirate crap" and "knights crap" and "automotive crap".
However, except for tiny pocket-sized sets maybe, these are not what you will find at Generi-Mart's toy section, because they are simply less profitable than the Harry Potter Elf Hutch or Star Wars Dagobah Latrine set.
Sadly my local mall has a Lego Store. I was all excited because I was sure it would have a huge selection. I was sorely disappointed. They were still all about the Harry Potter. It was such a Lego tease.
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Wow. Well, I have no idea what's wrong with your Lego Store but I am sad that this is the case.
Anyhow, I poked around lego.com and while they push the licensed kits the hardest, there are plenty of nonlicensed theme sets and you can also order things like fifty green 2x4 blocks or 62 miscellaneous yellow blocks or 36 arches or (my current favorite) 50 assorted little lego-man hats and hairdos. The "288 wheels and axles" set is kind of appealing, too.
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Ray reminds me of Dean Moriarty in the last panel.
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i had mad lego envy as a kid, my friend had like this big glass display box of all these ridiculously complicated lego models he'd made himself from scratch, and here i am using them as dnd miniatures.
although you know, it is a kickass dungeon crawl made ten times better when you have lego luke skywalker as your character i have to say.
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Hells yes they still make plain ol' Legos! We got a BIG ASS box of 'em upstairs. Lego software is also pretty cool.
Having toys around is a serious fringe of having kids around.
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I still buy the toys, but not having kids means I don't have to pay for food for them. Unfortunately I don't have space for all my toys either...
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Hells yes they still make plain ol' Legos! We got a BIG ASS box of 'em upstairs. Lego software is also pretty cool.
I thought Lego Star Wars would be the most retarded thing in the world until I played it. Turns out it's straightforward, easygoing fun, and whoever recorded all the wonderfully evocative Lego-esque sound effects - plastic clacking on / against / into plastic - should be given some kind of medal, even if it's chocolate wrapped in gold foil.
Having toys around is a serious fringe of having kids around.
Yeah, but what if you end up with a kid with very specific preference for sucky toys? I know how this kind of O. Henry shit works out - it can totally happen.
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Having toys around is a serious fringe of having kids around.
Yeah, but what if you end up with a kid with very specific preference for sucky toys? I know how this kind of O. Henry shit works out - it can totally happen.
Parenting is all about education...
Actually, I have a smiliar situation. I have a kid who loves sucky TV. Full House reruns. Family Matters. and Godohgodohgod the sheer horror Step by Step.
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Actually, I have a smiliar situation. I have a kid who loves sucky TV. Full House reruns. Family Matters. and Godohgodohgod the sheer horror Step by Step.
I was in this boat when I was a small child. The best cure, I think, is just to be bright around the kid and expose them to bright entertainment until they grow out of it and move onto less stupid stuff. Eventually, you will have a kid who is ashamed of your guilty-pleasure TV -- or so it worked with me, anyway. ("Jesus Christ, Dad, Drew Carey? Are you serious?")
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I have a kid who loves sucky TV. Full House reruns. Family Matters. and Godohgodohgod the sheer horror Step by Step.
There are two complete seasons of Rocky & Bullwinkle on DVD, you know.
Stat.
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People. Do you think I have not tried these elementary solutions? I said this was a problem, not a mere situation. I have left these subtle strategies behind and have been forced to rely on blatant ridicule. But it's just not working.
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This strip is fantastic. my favourite panel is four.
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Ray is full of shit.
~Paul
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Actually, I have a smiliar situation. I have a kid who loves sucky TV. Full House reruns. Family Matters. and Godohgodohgod the sheer horror Step by Step.
I feel your pain. Seriously. All I can say is "this, too, shall pass". My kids go through some really abysmal phases in TV preferences (I still shudder when I think about the Full House and Fresh Prince jags of '04), but I find that they do move on. Sometimes to something good, sometimes to a fresh new Hell (like that Krypto the Superdog thing that my daughter watches now. Bleh.)
It helps to constantly have alternatives laying around, like good anime series, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Mr. Bean, and The Adventures of Pete & Pete -- all now available on DVD for purchase or rental at Netflix. You can't offer these, or even suggest them, but you can keep them on hand and watch them for your own enjoyment at strategic moments.
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I have not brought myself to watch Krypto yet. However, my daughter (age 6) does watch 'Totally Spies' which is such dreck. Also Ed, Edd and Eddy which has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Kids Next Door I find mildly amusing.
On the bright side, she also watches the Aqua Teens with me so that's a good thing. And she loves Family Guy although her mother makes her/us change the channel.
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The Adventures of Pete & Pete
What an excellent show that was.