Palladium Books still hanging on... still needing help

Awhile back, I'm not digging into the archives to figure out when, I wrote an entry on how Palladium Books, my favorite role-playing game publisher was having major financial woes. The company is doing much better according to the forum entries by Kevin Siembieda, the founder & President of Palladium. But they are far from out of the woods. According to Kevin they've received a great amount of support in the form of purchases and donations from fans worldwide, however they are running into the problem on not have the cash to print enough books both new and reprints of core titles to supply the book traders. Basically they don't have the money to make money yet.

So I'm throwing this out there to any current or past fan of Palladium great games, from the old Robotech and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game or the current epic scaled Rifts or Palladium Fantasy games. Show some support either morally or financially to the company. This one of the few major, none corporate game companies left out there. It'd be a shame to see this company die or be sold to a corporation as has happened to many great game companies and their licenses through the years.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/

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Palladium Books, role-playing games, rpg, Palladium, bankruptcy, Rifts, Robotech, TMNT, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Mechanoids, donations, Kevin Siembieda

Carvel Ice Cream

My bro,The Code Monkey Master, had me thinking about local commercials from our childhood with his post from last night. The ones that came to mind as memorable and amusing would have to be the Carvel Ice Cream ads from the 70's and early 80's. Any kid who grew up in the Northeast-Mid Atlantic region knows about Carvel ice cream. I have a couple of the commercials posted below. Highlights include seeing how many different theme cakes Tom Carvel could get out of one mold. Fudgie the Whale's mold could be turned a different way and decorated to look like Santa Claus for instance.. oh great fun. And that Tom Carvel, truly enforcing the idea that a company's best pitchman is always the owner...





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Carvel, ice cream, Cookiepuss, Tom Carvel, 80's, 70's, commercials, Fudgie

Fall Festivals... tis the season

Autumn is by far my favorite season out of the four. The weather is perfect in my opinion, a nice little chill to the air but not too cold. Watching the leaves change as the trees prep for the winter, makes the landscape so colorful and more interesting to the eye. Between my birthday, Halloween and Thanksgiving so of my fav holidays happen in the autumn as well.

However, what I look forward to the most during this time of year are the Fall Festivals. Over the weekend, we went up to Thurmont, MD for the annual Colorfest. Basically the whole town is decidated to this arts & crafts fair. There are so many vendors and visitors it's hard to convey just how big this event is with mere words. Now I know arts & crafts fairs aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I dig them. I like seeing other people's creations, I'm big on holiday decorations and I usually find one or two new things to add to our collections, and the big thing I love about these fairs is the FOOD.

Oh man the food is great... from the breakfast sandwiches served in the morning, to the pit beef sandwiches that you can eat in the evening. The Colorfest is the best fair for food, because of its size you can find everything there. My top favorites are the smoked turkey drumsticks which only a few vendors sell, the demand for these increases every year but that doesn't deter me & the Lady for getting ours every time. Of the snack foods, fresh kettle corn is a unique feature of this fair. Specifically the booth that makes kettle corn in a traditional copper kettle, not a new school stainless steel kettle, it makes a difference. Those who don't agree, don't know their kettle corn.

I went kind of light this year on the fair food, sticking to my guns and just having my choice favorites. I passed the deep fried candy bars, funnel cakes, caramel apples, apple dumplings, fresh cut french fries, and pulled pork sandwiches. I declined the fresh lemonade and strawberry smoothies. So many temptations and so little time... can't wait until next year.

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autumn, Colorfest, Thurmont, Maryland, Catoctin, funnel cake, food, fairs, arts, crafts, festivals, fall

FDA Is Set To Approve Milk, Meat From Clones

Alright, clones in the news. The FDA is on its way to approving the use of cloned livestock for food purposes. Meaning everything from our steaks & chops to coffee creamer could come from cloned animals in the near future. Personally I don't get the creeps from this kind of thing. If there is a particular cow that is known to produce a great roast or steak, then lets clone that thing as often as we can so I can have that great steak more often. These animals are a food product, if we can guarantee a greater amount of quality control I'm all in favor of it.

With cloned meat close to getting the seal of approval, makes me wonder how long before we see kill free meat on our store shelfs.

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FDA, food, clones, science, health, meat, dairy

Antique Cars and Candy Bars

On Saturday, the beginning of the 3-day Columbus Day weekend, Lady, her folks and I went up to Hershey, PA for the Antique Auto Club of America's annual Eastern Fall Meet. We left Little man with my folks the night before we left, since we were leaving at the crack of dawn to get to PA at the beginning of the events for the day.

My father-in-law is a Corvair enthuisiast, and an overall fan of classic cars. Tagged onto this event was a huge flea market that the women were initially excited about... however it turned out that my suspicions were correct and the flea market was all centered on car parts, car services, and car collectibles. They were quite disappointed. I however wasn't disappointed at all, I had some quality people watching at this event, lots of funny old guys to make fun of. I also enjoyed looking at the cars and I enjoyed my fair food combo of lemonade and fresh funnel cake.

This event was obviously setup by guys without any female input, the dealers were under no obligation to open their tables at any particular time. There was no obvious system or numbering code to the different dealers so using the program that was given to you to find a particular dealer was excercise in futility. We finally found the numbering system which was composed of little baseball card sized pieces of paper taped to the ground. The papers had some cryptic set of numbers and letters and really didn't give us much clue as to which direction to head. Even some of the vendors didn't know what way to point us in.

After we had enough of wandering through auto parts dealers on this cold PA morning we decided to drive through the town of Hershey and then visit the Chocolate World facility run by Hershey. Of course we raided the Chocolate World store buying a wide variety of chocolates, cakes, and other goodies.

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chocolate, Hershey, cars, classics, antiques, in-laws, Pennsylvania

Halloween Costumes for Kids... kids have it made nowadays

It's Little Man's first Halloween, not that he cares, so Lady and I have been looking at costumes for him online and in stores. The level of quality and materials in these costumes just amazed me. I especially mean some of the ones I saw at Target. Retailers have really upped the ante in regards to store bought children's costumes. I remember as I was a little kid in the late 70's when Halloween rolled around, you went to Toys R' Us and there were stacks of boxes costumes mainly consisting of a plastic or nylon shirt & pants with a plastic mask that strapped on your head with a white rubber string. The string was held on to the mask with two staples, one on each side of the mask. The costume sometimes looked like the character you were supposed to be dressed as... or sometimes it had a picture of the person you were supposed to be. The Casper the Friendly Ghost costume my brother wore for example had Casper's image and logo across the chest of his little costume.

Nowadays the Spider-Man and superman store bought costumes are made with cloth fabric that are actually padded to make a kid look like he has muscles. And the prices for these costumes aren't bad at all. Little Man has a monkey costume that we bought him and Lady might buy another for photographs.

Having a kid definitely makes these holidays fun again. Halloween has always been a day I've enjoyed. We have a good amount of children in the neighborhood, so we like to decorate for them and pass out decent candy. This year will be even more fun now that we have our little guy.

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Halloween, costumes, children, Casper, masks, Target