Robot Claw – Page 509 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Squirrels Of The World, Rejoice!

November 29, 2012

Here’s our new squirrel feeder:

The screw on the left is for a corncob, the and right hand side is a top-loading container designed to hold ‘squirrel food’. The squirrels can get into it by lifting up the hinged lid.

I installed it about a week ago, and it was a few days before any of the furry little buggers showed any interest. Here’s the first guy we saw using it (these photos are a bit blurry since they were taken at range with my phone and zoomed in):

Initially, as you can see, they just sat on the roof and ate the corncob. of course it didn’t take long for the cob to be stripped, at which point they immediately worked out how to get at the delicious mix or corn and sunflower seeds packed into the hopper:

Aren’t they fat!

When I say ‘they’, this could of course always be the same squirrel. But we think there were at least two, based on the ears. Here’s a ground level shot of one of them enjoying his all-you-can-eat banquet:

What a fatty!

Here’s a shot of the same guy, from inside the house:

It only took them a couple of days to empty the hopper. Right after this post, I’m heading out to refill it once again 🙂

Review: Peter Davison’s Book Of Alien Planets

November 27, 2012

I recently picked up this gem:

For those unaware, Peter Davison is a British actor, probably best-known for his role of Elmer in The Tomorrow People:

He’s also got a famous daughter who played a character in a show called Doctor Who:

Her character was the genetic child of the main character, known as The Doctor, and ironically enough, in the real world she would end up marrying the actor that played The Doctor. Who, at the time she was in the show, wasn’t this dude:

Because that is – of course – once again Peter Davison in his beloved role as the ‘dish of the day’ in the original 1980’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy BBC series.

So, amidst all this co-starring on 1980’s sci-fi shows, Davison managed to put out the abovementioned book, which I read in two sittings.

For starters, the book is just a collection of mostly public domain (ie. from the 1930s and 1940s) science-fiction yarns, none of which were written by Davison himself. For seconder’s, the vast majority of the stories are the usual ‘twist ending’ sci-fi short stories that tend to fill collections such as these. You know what I mean, with lots of hinting and mystery and then a big payoff at the end. I’ll write one such story, in a single paragraph:

On the planet Juiblex, Kron-pirr waited in the grand hall and traced the lines of the artifact using his fifth tentacle. On this, his coming-of-age day, he would finally be allowed into the ranks of the Elevated, and the secrets of his ancestors would be revealed to him. As he considered that he would never again speak with his friend Glork’fth, his attention drifted once again to the artifact. It was said it had been in existence since before his race was born, but in all that time no one had deciphered the strange markings ‘Apple’ and ‘iPhone’ marked on the metallic side.

Not bad eh? The above is positively Arthur C Clarkson in it’s originality, and truth-be-told several of the stories in this selection are interchangeable with the above. Swap an iPhone with a Disney movie, or Kron-pirr with Jal-Gynyr the Myrb.

Speaking of ACC, that man was obsessed with God! One of his stories is about a supernova that caused the Star of David, and another is positively messianic in the way an alien race treats human artifacts.

It’s all wishy washy stuff. Not particularly good, not particularly bad, and absolutely nothing to do with Peter Davison!

Verdict: save your pennies 😉

Retro Comic Advertisements (part 2)

November 21, 2012

I recently came into possession of, well, lets say many old comics. A good chunk of these will end up being Christmas gifts, so I’m not going to discuss the comics themselves here. But, as I did once before, let’s look at some of the advertisements for a trip down memory lane 🙂

Here’s one from a 1978 comic, and as far as nostalgia goes this one is high up on the scale:

Very cute, isn’t it. What with the fan club being based on Yavin, and “prices slightly higher outside the solar system”! And, the inclusion of an iron-on transfer gives me another blog idea…

Here’s another period SW advertisement, this time from 1984:

A few Christmas’s ago I believe I gave out some of these kits as gifts? Adverts for model kits are very common in 198X comics by the way. As I said to KLS: “That’s what kids did before video games!”

Or maybe they did this:

So much cringe-worthy content in the above ad. And that’s even before you realize what it is actually for! Go on, read it and weep 🙂

Here’s another in a similar vein, this time from 1989:

Ignoring for a moment how ludicrously verbose this ad is (Was it written by someone on their first day of work?), let’s consider this is for a handheld LCD game in 1989! That’s years after consoles had caught on, and in fact even the same year the Gameboy was released. Hard to believe this was money well spent.

Let’s switch gears, and revisit an ad which I suspect was targeted at girls (based on the comic it was in) from 1978:

OMG! Witchcraft?!?! Go ahead and read it! Amongst other things, this ad claims to teach you telepathy, mind control, ‘inhaling cosmic energy’ and THE ABLILITY TO CONTROL TIME (on page 126, no less). Holy smokes I wish they were still in business because I could make things happen if I had those powers!

Speaking of making things happen, here’s another way to make money, again from 1978:

I really have no comment, except to say that younger readers perhaps don’t understand the appeal of the above ad since they didn’t live through stuff like this:

What’s that you ask? More fanclubs? How about this one:

“Alf’s favourite menu”? The mind boggles…

Oh, here’s an ad for…

… a cardboard box! I wonder how many could they have possibly sold?

The early 1980s are when action figures started in a big way (1977 actually, with Kenner’s 3.75″ Star Wars figures). Of course this led to Masters Of The Universe, and the many knockoffs by other companies. Such as these guys:

They look so much worse than I remember. And yes I do remember ladies and gentleman, and if I ever find my sticker collection I’ll explain all in that post 😉

Speaking of Masters Of The Universe, check this gem out:

I had a rage attack when I saw this one, gibbering on about how there was no way the screenshots could have possibly looked like those obviously painted images on the bottom right. So I did some snooping, and let’s see if I was correct…

I rest my case!

I end with one last ad. In comics of the 80s, it is quite common for ads to contain superheroes, probably to get kids attention even better. This is a classic example of one such ad:

Let’s ignore for a second the fact that Superman apparently can move at sublight speeds and has a computer-brain and consider what is being sold here. A Magic Snake is a piece of plastic that can be folded into 23 trillion shapes and looks about as much fun as, well, reading the comic this was printed in. Even with the assistance of Superman, it’s hard to believe what sort of child would have found this product interesting…

Yes, I’ve had it for 30 years 🙂