This is the same exact kind of card as Kormus Bell, except it is a green spell instead of an artifact and it affects forests instead of swamps. The fact that it is a green spell affecting forests leads me to believe it was meant to turn your own forests into creatures at the end of the game and overwhelm your opponent in one last wild, mad rush.
It would have made a great cover for Kenneth McKenney's "The Plants" too. I read that at about the same time I was getting into Magic. It was an obvious ripoff of du Maurier's The Birds, but I hadn't read that yet, so it was all good to my teenage self. I've never been tempted to re-read The Plants though ;-)
(This is a product review that is not endorsed by Loopearplugs.com)
All Mechanical, the way Nature Intended!
A couple of months ago I was talking with one of the elders at church and he mentioned how his kids had gotten him some earplugs for Christmas that allowed him to get rid of background noise while still listening to people talk to him. It was strictly mechanical, without any electronic doodads or mucking around with your phone kind of garbage. I was very interested, as the "worship" time at our Sunday church has come to resemble a low level rock concert and the noise is enough to make me want to storm out. (for the record, I have, multiple times)
They have about 12 different products, or more and I settled on the Experience 2 Plus option. It is meant for a music scene, to damp down the noise without actually cancelling any of it. I got the "Plus" because it comes with an added "mute" ring to reduce the noise even further.
As you can see in the above picture, there is a black rubber ring inside the metallic ring. That is the "mute" and provides up to 17dB protection, as opposed to just the 12dB of the regular Experience 2.
There are various sized ear pieces depending on your ear size. It came with "regular" (I guess?) and I replaced them with the extra small. Fits very comfortably in my ears without making me feel like I was trying to jam a carrot in them. If you've worn those disposable foam earplugs, you'll know what I mean.
They fit tightly in a little clamshell case. As you can see, I got the silver edition and added the white mute plugs to them.
This shot is to give you a "little" perspective on just how small these are. I keep them in my messenger bag and right before the worship time starts, I pry them out of the clamshell and pop them into my ears.
Due to biometric security, I do NOT use pictures of my own eyes, ears or nose. This poor schmuck doesn't seem to care though. Bully for him.
I put them in and then rotate them backwards, so they fit snugly in my ear canal and the metal ring is in that open area leading to the ear opening.
Now the important part, do they work? Yes they certainly do! I could still hear everything, the piano, the singers, the guitars, the drums, the people around me singing, but it was much softer and didn't feel like I was being assaulted. There have been times in the past where I am just gripping the pew in front of me as hard as I can and white knuckling through the worship time. Now? While I don't enjoy the worship time (that's a completely different matter), I can stand there and not stress out or freak out. My shoulders aren't hunched up and my fists aren't clenched. What's even better, I can still hear when one of the singers speaks or the Pastor gets up and says something between songs, as is his wont. I will say that when I'm wearing these with the mute plug, I do not feel comfortable trying to carry on a conversation, as I can't judge the volume of my own voice. But I haven't walked out of a worship service in over two months, so that alone makes this an unqualified success in my books.
I have not used these in any other situation except the one described above. I could experiment and try removing the "mute" plug and see if I could wear these in a crowded area to improve hearing the person I'm talking to, but I have zero desire to remove and add a little piece of rubber, as I know I would lose it. If I wanted to use these in conversation, I'd probably buy the "Engage 2" version and just carry the 2 pair around. I'm seriously thinking about doing that, as I want to be able to talk while wearing them. Sometimes at potluck it gets down right noisy (with over 120 people packed into one area) and if I can cut that background noise down, it would be great.
These can be bought on their website (loopearplugs.com) or online at Amazon, Walmart or Target. I hope if this has been an informative post and possibly helpful. If you've got questions, ask away in the comments and I'll do my best to answer.
This
review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained
therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to
copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions.
Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
Spellbound Series: Grimnoir Chronicles
#2 Author: Larry Correia Rating: 5 of
5 Stars Genre: Urban Fantasy Pages:
402 Words: 150K Publish: 2011
Another
home run. This Grimnoir trilogy just hits all my good buttons and I’m
as happy as a clam.
There’s
threats from a government agency, there’s threats from the Imperium
(japanese), there are threats from other Actives (what magical users
are called in this trilogy) and finally, you have threats on a cosmic
scale.
Correia
does a good job of balancing all of the threats, while expanding the
cast of characters. We also get a good twist with one of the Imperial
Iron Men (the ultimate bad guys in the previous book) helping out the
Grimnoir because he knows the cosmic threat is real and only the
Grimnoir are taking it seriously.
When
I read this back in ‘13 I had an extremely visceral reaction to the
first reveal of the major villain of the book, code named Crow. It
was so intense that I had to put the book down back then for an
entire day. I was extremely interested in how I would react this
time. Oh man. I reacted the exact same way. Even down to putting the
book down for 24hrs. I knew what was coming, but even so, it hit me
like a runaway freight train. It’s good to know that some things
about me haven’t changed.
The
book ends in such a way that I kind of wondered if Correia had
modeled it after The Empire Strikes Back, the second movie in the
Star Wars trilogy. The good guys strike a dramatic blow but in the
end are still scattered and on their own. That didn’t stand out to
me last time and even now, I wonder if I’m reaching, but boy, it
really had that feeling. In all fairness, it might also just be
Correia using that kind of trope and not necessarily aping ESB
directly. But he’s a couple of years older than me and could have
seen ESB in the theatres and it would have struck him deeper than it
did me. Who knows. It’s vague and baseless speculations like this
that make re-reading so much fun :-D
The
final battle was awesome. The Grimnoir, the cops, the airforce, all
fighting against a demon god of a previously devoured world. And it
all comes down to little ol’ Faye to stop it. Jake Sullivan the
smart heavy can’t do it. Toru the renegade Iron Man can’t do it.
Not even a full squadron of the American Airforce/Navy can do it. But
Faye does it and she does it smart. That’s what I like about these
books so much, the characters might make mistakes, but they aren’t
obvious author created mistakes just to create hardship or drama. Or
because the author is a stupid twit who can’t write themselves out
of a brown paper bag. So go Correia, keep those smart characters
coming!
★★★★★
From
the Publisher
The
Grimnoir Society’s mission is to protect people with magic, and
they’ve done so—successfully and in secret—since the mysterious
arrival of the Power in the 1850s, but when a magical assassin makes
an attempt on the life of President Franklin Roosevelt, the crime is
pinned on the Grimnoir. The knights must become fugitives while they
attempt to discover who framed them.
Thing
go from bad to worse when Jake Sullivan, former p.i. and knight of
the Grimnoir, receives a telephone call from a dead man—a man he
helped kill.. Turns out the Power jumped universes because it was
fleeing from a predator that eats magic and leaves destroyed worlds
in its wake. That predator has just landed on Earth.
Resident Evil: Extinction, the third in the RE film series, really amps up the tension but falls down pretty hard in most other areas. Decent but my least favorite of the series.
Paid our taxes. We have the minimum taken out, so we usually owe some at year's end. I began doing that a long time ago when someone told me that "getting a refund" from the Feds was just giving them an interest free loan with MY money. I've never looked at the "refund" the same again. Took me about an hour, as I had all the paperwork necessary on hand. Just glad it's over with for another year.
Spring is here and we're already in drought conditions. I really don't understand that, what with all the snow we got this past winter, but that's what the weather people say. Considering how early it is for that, I foresee a very uncomfortable summer with lots of ticks.
The bot views are back, with a vengeance. March had kind of tapered off and I was hoping maybe I could use April though the end of the year, but nope, after the first week I kept getting hit. 600-1200 views a day is NOT normal for this blog, especially when I see the same posts getting hit day after day 10 times a day. Makes me wonder what Wordpress is doing, besides absolutely nothing I mean.
My Devilreads experiment is going decent but no better. Not doing reviews has kept me out of reach of the wokescolds and other such finger waggers there. The feed is atrocious though. I can't customize what I actually see so I end up with a lot of garbage as people "update" the percentage of the books they are reading. Overall, the site is not conducive to someone as words oriented as I am or who wants one on one interaction.
Cover Love:
The Tower of the Elephant, a Conan novella by Robert Howard. While not quite accurate, it really does portray the situation very well. And it's just plain cool looking :-)
This
review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained
therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to
copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions.
Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
A Son of Thunder Series: ----- Author:
Henry Mayer Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre:
Biography Pages: 504 Words:
178K Publish: 1986
This
was a biography of Patrick Henry and came across much more as someone
telling a story than a hard facts and dates kind of biography that I
kind of expect when I think of that genre. I like that story telling
aspect quite a bit. Made the reading sail along smoothly instead of
clumping along through boggy swamps. There is very little about his
growing up days and most of it centers around his rise to fame
through the American Revolution and then his subsequent hand in
crafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I
enjoyed reading this, sparse as it was. Henry was apparently a
private man and took that to great lengths. Good for him I say. Also,
the reason he was so adamant about the Bill of Rights, everything he
feared about a centralized government, has come to pass. He would
look on us today as the most abject of slaves, and he was a slave
owner himself, so he would know. It’s not that he was prescient, he
simply knew, as did most men of his time, how Power worked and how it
affected mankind.
From
the few interactions with George Washington that he had, I think I’d
like to investigate Washington at some time and read a couple of
biographies about him. But that’ll have to wait as I’ve got about
15 other non-fiction books in the queue.
★★★✬☆
From
the Publisher:
Patrick
Henry was a charismatic orator whose devotion to the pursuit of
liberty fueled the fire of the American Revolution and laid the
groundwork for the United States. As a lawyer and a member of the
Virginia House of Burgess, Henry championed the inalienable rights
with which all men are born. His philosophy inspired the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution, and, most significantly, the Bill
of Rights. Famous for the line “Give me liberty or give me
death!” Patrick Henry was a man who stirred souls and whose
dedication to individual liberty became the voice for thousands. In A
Son of Thunder, Henry Mayer offers “a biography as [Patrick] Henry
himself would have wanted it written
Another disgusting organic looking "thing". I never understood why artists would do that. Eh, whatever.
Life gain is definitely a "green" thing, but it is like a slow drip coffee maker. You only get 1 extra life each turn, which is fine if your opponent is playing a slow deck, but if they are playing a more aggressive deck, you'd want some other cards in your deck to deal with that instead of this. Once again, it would take a very creative mind to find a good use for this card. I probably wouldn't play it anyway, just because it looks gross :-)
