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Been meaning to dig these out and start something like this for a while. With the news of people starting to get their packages through from Mongoose and seeing Dark Jimbo's cracking citi-def squad I thought it might be an idea to start a thread for everyone to show off their skills. Or lack of in my case.

I don't have anything new to show at the moment, so here's the drybrushed highlights of my old Citadel miniatures collection rescued from my mum's cupboard. It has to be said that, while I used to enjoy painting these, I was never much good at it but I don't mind making a fool of myself so everyone else can look good.

First up: Judge Quincy, resplendent in his spotty boxers. If you ignore the awful face, Johnny Alpha is only some proper shading away from looking reasonable but that Gronk is a disgrace. Might be worth dipping him in paint stripper and trying again.


Next, some accomplices who I never got round to painting. I vaguely remember reading some article in White Dwarf about using different colours of undercoat, hence the wacky schemes going on here.


What appears to be a bunch of random perps. Might try my hand with these as a refresher.


Finally, part of a light-hearted set with nowt to do with 2000AD.


Right, you've seen mine so now it's time to get yours out.

As I am not currently in a shared working environment, I can no longer abuse my employer's stationery to print out personal documents. I'm looking for a cheap, reliable printer to print letters, Ryanair boarding passes and the like. High quality colour photo printing is not a requirement but being able to get decent quality scans of a load of old photos would be useful.

Basically, I have no idea what to look for or what I need to consider beyond how expensive the ink is going to be.

Just been looking through the 2000AD shop here and noticed a few of the more recent collections seemed to be missing. Does this mean they're out of stock, not to be sold through the shop or just not been added?

The ones I was specifically looking for were:
Judge Dredd Restricted Files 4
Rogue Trooper Tales of Nu Earth 3.

Which is to say, when you get this week's Prog, will it be "eighteen-fourteen" or "one thousand eight hundred and fourteen"?

Mostly, when I'm reading the paper, I'll read 500,000 as "half a million" rather than "five hundred thousand" but not always and I'm not sure what the difference is or why. So, how would you read it? In fact, is it weird to read something and sound the words out in your mind? Shouldn't you just translate the symbols directly into meaning? I'm confused now.

[The Master]

So I asked Roger in the yap shop the other Wednesday what his picks of the year had been. He opined that, while technically excellent, The Master was perhaps too enamoured with being technically excellent to fully connect emotionally. As a result, his number one choice had to be Here Comes the Boom.

Lacking the same pithy analytical skills, I thought I'd just give a quick rundown of the more memorable things I saw in the pictures last year. Feel free to offer your own lists, argue or pick holes in my own. Also useful for reminding you of things you forgot about and might want to catch on DVD.

Fantastic films. See immediately.
Beasts of the Southern Wild. First film I've seen at the pictures more than once since, ah... since Attack of the Clones. It's a lot better than that.
The Raid. Fantastic kung fu action with no flab at all and a first rate evil henchman. First film I've ever consciously rushed out and bought the day it was released on DVD.
Martha, Marcy May, Marlene.
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes. Would've been top of the pile if the new print I saw had been subtitled rather than (badly) dubbed.

Top class entertainment. Recommended without reservation.
Haywire
Killing Them Softly
Dark Knight Rises
Death Watch. A young Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton wandering the mean streets of Glasgow.

I enjoyed but it didn't blow me away or had big flaws and I can see why others wouldn't.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Shame
Avengers
The Hunter
Skyfall
The Hobbit

Not that great but watchable and elevated because of my own fondness for a particular element (in brackets)
Premium Rush (cycling)
Dredd (Dredd)
Underworld: Awakening (Kate Beckinsale's arse)
Expendables 2 (seaplanes)

Films no amount of Beckinsale arse could save
Total Recall
Prometheus
War Horse

Films I really wanted to see but didn't get round to it, hence their ommision from the above.
Amour; Resident Evil: Extinction; Rust and Bone; 2 Days in New York; The Man with the Iron Fists; Lawless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-20791740

Almost every morning at work I have a cheese scone for breakfast with lashings of butter about half an inch thick. If there are none left I will sometimes make do with a plain scone but I'd never entertain a fruit one. My pal agrees with my scone choice but her husband (who can't even pronounce it properly, so what does he know, eh?) thinks we're mad and that a scone should always be eaten with jam.

Now, in truth, I'm not at all keen on sweet bread products. Brioche? No thanks. Pain au Chocolat? I've already eaten. I mean, if your auntie had got them in special I'd eat one but I certainly wouldn't buy one for myself.

Just wondered what the general consensus was on this crucial issue.

Edited to add: doughnuts are delicious.

I find myself with a fair selection of doublers acquired over the past few years. These are currently taking up space that could be filled with some other crap. Condition is predominantly readable secondhand. If you're interested in any (or preferably all) of them, they can be yours for postage and/or a copy of Crisis 27.

900-904, 908-928, 937, 939, 959, 960, 962-964, 966, 999
1014, 1035 (first Dante), 1040, 1042, 1043, 1045, 1048, 1050, 1066 (the SEX Issue), 1073
1168, 1178, 1181, 1185, 1187
1236 (first appearance of Carver Hale; must have double bag issue), 1238, 1239, 1243, 1245, 1289, 1298
1307, 1309, 1419, 1586

Says on tin. I've embarked on a complete Third World War adventure and discovered that there's a single issue missing from my box of mature readers thrills.

If anyone has a spare, I'd gratefully exchange cash, other comics, assorted tat (can you really live without a copy of Alien Vs Ninja with a hologram sleeve?) or favours of your choosing.

I doubt I'd be able to find it if I tried, but some time ago we talked about an outing to see Dredd in Glasgow. Possibly involving a couple of pints.

Unfortunately, there are no more 2D showings anywhere in Scotland so how about 8pm next Tuesday at Cineworld? If it's sold out when we get there, we can always go to Anna Karenina at quarter past.

Or flying boats for that matter. I've never understood the attraction of the wrist chronometer: they're ugly and uncomfortable. Why on Earth would someone want to spend their money on some Tag Heuer rubbish when they could be island hopping the Pacific Rim in a Catalina?

Does anyone want to tear their attention away from discussion of the Dredd film long enough to take issue with my ill-conceived, ungrammatical attempt at courting controversy?

NB I do think pocket watches are quite smart but not as smart as Short Sunderland.

Alright everyone? I'm going to be down in Manchester for a couple of days to see some of this: Future Everything. It's a good few years since I've been down so just wondering if anyone would care to recommend any comic or record shops, boozers, restaurants and cultural activities of the museum or gallery sort.

I remember being in some sci-fi themed bar years ago and I hope Picadilly and Eastern Bloc records are still where I left them.

Equally, if there's a decent listings site for Manchester, fire a link to that my way.

[cover]

A surprisingly enjoyable Meg this morning. A vibrantly silly cover from Mark Harrison bursts forth from the plastic envelope presaging the fun within.

Breaking with years of tradition I flipped straight to the last story as none of the other stories had the same claim on my interest as the climax of Strange and Darke. I've really enjoyed this series. The conscious decision Colin Macneil's made to go with a sort of bawdy seaside style gives it a really interesting dynamic, like Beryl Cook's Garden of Earthly Delights or something. It ended well, despite the promise of plot threads that Mr Smith will take years to even think about following up and there was a moment in the middle of the episode which, even though I'd seen it coming, made me snort and chuckle in my own home. Good stuff.

The prospect of another Simon Spurrier Dredd pastiching some Marvel superheroes wasn't filling me with anticipation but I really enjoyed it. It was light, frothy fun which reminded me how much I sometimes miss the silly side of Dredd. I don't want to presume too much as I realise there is probably more to their working relationship than I appreciate but I thought it was telling that the art on this story was credited solely to Carlos as, to my eye, it's comfortably the best looking Ezquerra work I've seen in an age.

Wasn't as keen on Snapshot this month as last but happy to give it the benefit of not being American Reaper for another couple of months. Samizdat Squad was the real weak link in an otherwise decent line-up. Not sure how next month's Meg will bear up with two resolutely mediocre Dreddworld strips in town.

Well it turns out LOVEFILM INSTANT streaming servive is pretty much the equivalent of going to a Video shop at 930 on a Friday night.  There's no good/recent films there at all. I don't doubt that I shall manage to get my £10 worth in the next six months though...

I actually meant to reply to this when you first mentioned it. It's certainly worth a tenner for six months, especially if you're a fan of second rate and obscure action films, but the streaming selection is very limited as you've already discovered. I just checked my own account and I have fifty currently available films in my queue, only fourteen of which are available to watch online. This may be slightly skewed because I primarily use Lovefilm as a way to catch up with stuff that I can't easily get from my local video shop. Lots of documentary, kung fu and other foreign films.

The other thing worth considering is that it's probably not for you if you're bothered about picture quality (fortunately, this is one of the few modern snobberies I don't subscribe to) as you can't download or buffer the films and the picture quality adapts according to the strength of your broadband connection.

A couple of weeks ago at work, a friend mentioned in passing something about standing up to wipe after he'd done a poo. I was flabbergasted. The very idea seemed anathema. A lengthy debate ensued, punctuated with regular exhortations for us to shut up, as you might expect.

Ultimately, the wisest view on the matter appeared to be from here: http://www.collegehumor.com/article/859490/standing-vs-sitting-how-do-you-wipe

Leave your room. Ask the first ten people you see, "Do you wipe your ass while standing up, or while sitting down?" You'll have five people for each way, and ten people who can't believe that there is another way to do it.

Not content with being mildly offputting to my colleagues and real world friends, I thought I'd find out how my fellow Squats dek Thargo feel about the idea.

So, how do you deal with your big jobs?

What do you stand for?
Do you prefer to get whet with a bidet?
Or perhaps you get frustrated with your significant other's habit of taking fifty sheets of bog roll with the right hand and fifty with the left but never thinking it too many.

Spotted this a while back and now it's almost upon us. The Edinburgh Film Guild are having a loosely connected season of what loosely grouped as cold war science fiction films.
http://edinburghfilmguild.org.uk/wordpress/?page_id=40

Some pretty interesting sounding stuff in there that I've never heard of. The H-Man and In the Dust of the Stars particularly appeal and who knew there was a Pirx the Pilot film?

In other news, the Filmhouse have a screening of The (real) Thing at the end of the month.

Was in FP tonight and saw that Marvel have put out one of their lovely bloody expensive big hardback Omnibi of Pete Milligan's X-Statix. I've often read good things about it and Milligan was once my favourite writer, but nothing he's done in the last four or five years has worked for me at all.

So, my question to you: is this worth shelling out quite a lot of money for?

So as not to be completely negative, I should mention that I picked up the Vertigo reissue of The Eaters a few weeks ago. The main story was great fun but the best thing was what came after. To bulk up the page count, it was packaged with half a dozen short (4 or 5 page) stories which I assume must've started life in those old Vertigo samplers they used to do. I'd read none of them before and they were all great examples of the wit, invention and heart that his best work has.

A warning to us all. Or, if you live in a flat, our downstairs neighbours.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-16166722

is on BBC1 in ten minutes.

If anybody's at a loose end tomorrow night and fancies seeing some daft films (most likely in the company of a bunch of twats although, to be fair, Stereo and its little offshoot are actully pretty nice pubs) then you might want to try this.

http://www.stereocafebar.com/index.php?m=event2&c=view&id=196269:197004