250 LEGO REVIEWS: 70835, REX’S REXPLORER

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Time for another 250 Lego review, and this time I’m going to go with my most recent acquisition, 70835: Rex’s Rexplorer.

If, like me, you were alive in 2014, you went to see The Lego Movie. Your enjoyment level may have something to do with whether you see Lego as a fun toy for innocently building creativity in both children and antiquated children who may or may not have been 43 at the time; or as a soulless international conglomerate exploiting generational brand loyalty to hoover up an ever-greater range of access vectors to your wallet while simultaneously spewing out an endless supply of non-biodegradable solid-form poisons and destroying the environment.

It’s possible these views are not mutually exclusive.

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OCCASIONALLY, MY BRAIN PLAYS ROLEY-POLEYS.

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It’s not unusual: you watch one movie, and realise just how perfectly a line from that movie would fit into another movie. So, you know, you download an image, and open it with Paint, and, you know…… right?

Anyway, I was washing the dishes, and my mind was wandering, and that’s how the first one happened. And then I was watching The Untouchables, and I was getting bored (it really hasn’t aged well), and my mind was wandering……. and anyway, it amuses me, and there’s bound to be more, I’ll post ’em as they happen, ‘k?

‘K.

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250 LEGO REVIEWS, THE FIRST

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I’m not saying it’s an addiction. I’m not. But I’ve just picked up my 250th Lego set, and what the hell: in the absence of any other form of life, I’ve decided to rebuild the lot of them. And while I’m at it, I may as well write a little review of each one.

So let’s do that, then.

There’s only one candidate to be the first. A set that’s made up of equal part awesomeness and joy……

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RUTGER HAUER. 2019. OF COURSE.

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I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Let’s be honest: it’s the greatest death soliloquy in cinema. Delivered by Roy Batty, the hero (YES, HE IS!) of my favourite movie, and classic SF dystopia, Blade Runner. Now the actor who delivered it, who created it as perhaps the most brilliant ad-lib ever devised, has died. 2019. The year of Blade Runner. The year Batty died.

Of course.

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DIPS TOE BACK IN WATER……

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It’s been a long year and a bit.

After the emotional battering and non-stop workplace bullying I experienced in my last couple of years at The Job That Soured, I was without mojo. All my mojoes had gone. No mojoes for me. Then we moved Very Far Away ™, and settled into A Very New Way of Life ™…

And there was a new industry to work in…… and a new role within the family…… and, well, a whole bunch of various things and thangs and otherthangs…… and long story short, my writing career took a Titanic pill and sank without trace.

Last year I completed a novel, sent it to the publisher who had been nagging me for it, and had it bounced back to me in less than a fortnight. At which point I pretty much quietly packed away my pens to no public outcry or notice whatsoever, and that was all, folks.

But it’s officially up-to-a-bit later, now. I’m six months into a regular teaching gig, and while I’m new in the role, I’m also experienced in an awful lot of the skills required to fill it, so I’ve adjusted. For the most part. And we’ve settled into life here in What Used to Be Far Away But Now Feels Like We’re Here and You’re All Far Away rather nicely. For the most part. And something quite seismic occurred to me while we were traipsing around Perth and Fremantle on our recent trip back for the school holiday– my first since we’ve come up here.

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I WILL NEVER NOT SHARE THIS.

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Because it keeps coming up on my Facebook feed, and frankly, it’s just the greatest thing ever done in the history of the world, and you should all see the Universe as I do.

I don’t have the provenance, so if anybody knows the original freaking genius artist, let me know and I’ll happily include the correct acknowledgement.

 

Grover rain

 

 

DADDY GAVE ME A NAME

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My father died yesterday.

He’d been suffering from dementia for quite some time, the result of a condition called Primary Progressive Aphasia, as well as the degenerative effects of a lifetime spent in dangerous manual labour, with its attendant injuries. The decline was underway for several years. He’d been in steep decline for the last couple of years. Three days ago he slipped into a coma from which he never awoke, and at 9.30am yesterday morning he took his last breath. He was 75 years old.

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