Defenseload

Mustache Tie Fathers Day Treat Repost

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Mothers Day Printable

I always, always forgot that international Mothers day falls on every second Sunday of May. Please excuse my lack of Mothers day related printable/craft. Im hitting my head on the keyboard right now. 78#$^%!jasrey 6asd$%&*^&@s$d^*a&a34mp;  *  )jfh~#al#ir  ... There you go. I ruined my keyboard.

But, if youre also a last minute lovers like me (no offense, Mom, I always love you, no matter how big a procrastinator I am), I have these two cards available for you to download. TWO! for Free!! Please make you choice and pick a card more suitable to your moms aesthetics preference. You dont have to even leave your seat now, just download and print. And we all know, although your effort is minimum, your love for mother is to the max. Agreed? Cheers for Mothers!

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mothers day tea party

Hey friends!

Mother's Day is this weekend, and I'm here to remind you: BE NICE TO YOUR MOMMA. Send a card, an email, nice flowers, or whatever to thank her for all the hard work that is being a mom. And if you're lucky enough to live close to your mom, I suggest pulling out the big guns, skipping the traditional Mother's Day brunch, and whipping her up an English style tea party instead!

Admittedly I'm not an expert on English tea, but I've watched enough of The Great British Bake-Off to fake my way around the table. At my tea, there will be some sort of meringue, a Victoria sponge, and a light, refreshing beverage.


So on Crate and Barrel's awesome blog, I've got three recipes for the perfect Mother's Day tea party. Think — mini lemon meringue tartlets, hibiscus Arnold Palmer lemonade, and a strawberry shortcake trifle repping the Victoria sponge.

Who needs high tea at the Ritz when you can make it at home?

And on that note — Happy (early) Mother's Day, mom! Wish I could spend it with you eating these desserts.

get the recipe »

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Moving Day!

Well, as I mentioned to you last week, the end was nigh then, and it is upon us now.

This web site is done, leading to our NEW website...Comics Should Be Good!

Huh?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

Basically, this whole site is moving to Comic Book Resources for Comic Book Resources Presents...Comics Should Be Good!

Same bloggy goodness, new, prettier looking site (and since it is Wordpress, it is also easier for you folks to navigate and for us to use!).

So change those bookmarks! Goodcomics.blogspot.com becomes goodcomics.comicbookresources.com

Check it out!

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My Finale Day

And I baked. We decided to make it a bread, wine and cheese spread. And then popped a cork at the end of the night. It was nice.

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My Two Gaming Pet Peeves For the Day

Our newest game, Avernum: Escape From the Pit, has reached Release Candidate status. This means that weve made a version that seems complete and ready to sell, and we are touching it as little as possible while beta testers spend one more week trying to break it.

This means that I have a very, very important job: Doing nothing. Dont touch the app. Hands off. Anything I change has a chance of breaking something. So Im spending this week catching up on my game-playing.

(I also made a really spiffy trailer for Avernum. Turns out, theres this site called YouTube. Who knew?)

This has given me a precious chance to find new pet peeves to complain about. And isnt that what blogs are for?

I Need To Drop Three Pounds Of Gloves So That I Can Walk Again

Of course, like everyone else in the world, our house has Skyrim-fever. As you may have heard, its a good game.

But, like all RPGs Bethesda makes, you spend sooooo much time sorting through items. Looting the dungeons takes ten times longer than killing the monsters within. And you can only carry so many pounds of treasure. So every item you find requires tiresome "Is this hide shield worth enough money to justify the weight. OK. It weighs eight pounds and is worth 20 coins, or 2.5 coins per pound, so that is an efficient piece of treasure to pick up and ... AHHHH. MY BRAINS!!!!!" And then you pick up one suit of armor too many and you have to drop two pounds of stuff so you go through your pack to find something top drop and ...

Does anyone ever find this fun?

This is one of those things that gets hardcore gamerz mad at me, but screw realism. In my newest games, I give the player a Junk Bag. You can put infinite items in it, their weight isnt counted, and, when you reach a store, you can push a button to sell everything in it.

This is great for people who find even the awesome Dog Takes Your Stuff Back To Town To Sell It system in Torchlight too taxing.

Its the opposite of realism, and I really dont care. When I design a game, the first thing I do is decide what I want the player to spend most of his/her time doing. Hopefully, that part is where the fun is. The second thing I do is minimize time spent doing absolutely everything else.

If I can keep even one player from spending a hour picking through his or her backpack and trying to shed those three extra pounds, I have done my good work as a citizen of the Earth.

I Did Those Jumps In 61 Seconds Instead Of 59, So I Should Totally Be Punished.

In any game with a lot of jumping on platforms, it seems like a legal requirement that there has to be at least one room with a timed sequence. Youre at the bottom of some shaft with sheer walls and a tunnel at the top. You push a button. Ledges slide out of the walls. And then you hear that accursed, stress-inducing ticking that lets you know that you have to get to the top quickly, or not at all.

"Tick. Tick. Tick. TICK. TICK. TICK. TICKTICKTICKTICKTICK. [Sound of ledges sliding back into walls.] [Sound of you falling to earth, swearing all the way.]"

Is there anyone, anywhere, who pushes that button, hears the telltale ticking sound, and thinks, "This is so AWESOME!"

This isnt fun. Here is why. Gaining a heroic skill (Fighting. Leaping.) is fun. Using that skill is fun. Perfecting a skill is far less fun. Repeating a series of jumps until you can do them perfectly is even less fun than that.

There. I Feel Better.

Very therapeutic. Now I can finish my game in peace.

Also, I was going to write about how every shooter now has you go down one long corridor with no branches (or alternate paths to victory, or variety), but this design trend is contemptible enough to deserve its own post. I just need time for my blood to get more angry.

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Mothers Day Special Blog n Vid Flyin Mommas!

This pilot biz is tough enough as it is.  Wannabe pilots spend years of training and tens of thousands of dollars on the mere hope of a successful airline career.  But, historically, this has been a notoriously "macho" business.  From before the days of Amelia Earhart, "aviatrixes" have had to contend with that great glass ceiling in the sky—every single day they strap into the cockpit.

To that end, today we honor those women—many of them mommies—who have had a hand in this tough business.  Some are pilots, some are flight attendants, some are "stay at home pilots wives"...but ALL have overcome the odds to "make it!"






Joanna over at "Daddy...Daddy, Come Back!" (http://comebackdaddy.blogspot.com/) and "Pilot Wife Healthy Minute Meals" (http://pilotwifehealthyminutemeals.blogspot.com/) blogs quite candidly about the life of a pilots wife and mommy—warts and all.  Her life is not for the faint hearted!



Another aviation blogger and mommy is the host of one of my all-time favorite blogs...Miss TWA of http://misstwa.blogspot.com.  Shes got a wonderful, zany, haphazard writing style that is sure to put a smile on any readers face...


And no aviation mommies list would be complete without a salute to our intrepid "waitresses in the sky"—who in real life are highly trained and poised to save your lily a$$es in an inflight emergency—the Flight Attendant!


I would especially like to thank one of my personal favorites, Mary "Mug" Ann, who has been specially trained to serve ol Capn Aux his coffee in a preheated mug!  Uh, that is, as long as Capn Aux is nice to her first!



Between flying the often un-friendly skies and rasing her three rambunctious, twenty-something boys, Ms. Ann finds the time to be a competetive body builder—who consistently places in the Top 3!


Mary Mugs eldest son, Gino, is the talented graphic designer of the excellent new cover for The Last Bush Pilots!

And speaking of the Last Bush Pilots, one of my readers most beloved characters is a female "aviatrix" trying to cut a respectable niche in the notoriously macho bush pilot world—while escaping a dangerous past.

Well wrap up this tribute to our favorite female aviators with her story:

(Warning: this story is seriously PG-13+!)



The day her husband backhanded her into the china cabinet was not the day she left him.  Nor was it the time he bragged to her of the many waitresses on his truck route impatiently awaiting his services.  Nor the day he forced her to bare her breasts in front of his buddies to show off his prized property.  Not even the time he threw his plate of roast turkey back at her for being too cold, sending her to the emergency room for eight stitches to the forehead.  Afterward, she apologized to him for being so clumsy and inattentive to his needs, and he forgave her by mounting her briefly until getting off.
For Veronica Redding to leave her loving husband, it nearly took suicide.
Ever since she was a kid, Veronica dreamed of flying.  She would sit on her father’s shoulders and stick her arms out to each side, blonde locks flying and lips Brrr-ing as he trotted through the park.  When she was five, he took her on a small plane tour over their home town of Los Angeles.
Veronica was awestruck.  All those cars below looked like toy matchboxes, the people like ants.  The thrill of accelerating and pulling away from the earth’s gravity, like an angel flying to heaven.  And, perhaps most thrilling of all, the powerful aircraft responded so obediently to the pilot’s commands.  It was nothing short of magic.  She trembled with delight when, after the flight, the grey-haired pilot pinned a pair of plastic wings to her blouse.
Little did Daddy know, from that day on the hook was set.  Veronica was determined to become a pilot.
Later, Sergeant Robert Redding, U.S. Army, realized how serious his daughter was of the fool notion.  He sat her down on his knee and explained.
He said, “Honey, girls don’t become pilots.  All pilots come from the Air Force or the Army or Navy.  There is no such thing as an airline aviatrix.”
“But what about Amelia Earhart, Daddy?  She did it,” she said.
He laughed.  “Sure, and look what happened.  Her dingy, female sense of direction got herself lost at sea.”
At high school, guidance counselors, male and female alike, also urged her to reconsider her crazy dream and instead become something more palatable with society.  Say, a homemaker or a nurse.
But their “sage advice” clashed head-on with her dream, and she would have nothing of it.
One night at the dinner table, the Sergeant learned of the counsellors’ talk and his daughter’s disappointment.  He said, “Look, if you really want to fly, why not become a stewardess?”
Mother lay a hand on hers.  “Your father’s right, dear.  Who knows?  Maybe you could find a rich husband that way, maybe even a real pilot.”
Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t wanna marry a pilot.  I want to be a pilot.”
He slammed his fork down.  “Enough of this nonsense,” her father snapped.
“Now, Sam,” her mother interjected.  “Let’s not—”
“She’ll do what I tell her to do,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Mother said meekly.
Veronica threw her fork down.  “I’ll do what I want, goddamnit!”  She bit her lip, too late to catch the slip.
Crimson-faced, the Sergeant raised up, his shadow eclipsing her small frame.  He slapped her so hard she fell to the floor.
“Go to your room,” he boomed, “and don’t come out till you stop talking your idiotic little girl nonsense.”
Veronica sat at her vanity mirror, eyeing the welt as it grew and colored on the side of her face.  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the plastic wings pinned to the wooden frame.
Perhaps Daddy was right, she thought.  Girls, especially stupid ones like little Veronica Redding, didn’t have the capacity to become pilots.  She blushed in shame.  She yanked the wings off, tossed them in the bottom drawer and mumbled, “Might as well try to be an astronaut.”
She became despondent, lost, a plane without a rudder.  Her grades dropped.  Each night she came home late, in deliberate defiance of her father’s authority.  He spanked her, whipped her, grounded her; she would sneak out again.  Each confrontation drove the wedge further between the two.  After her high school graduation party, she didn’t come home until late the next day, still drunk.
“You’re impossible, young lady,” her father screamed between belt straps.  “What you need is boot camp.  First thing Monday morning, we’re taking you to the recruiters and you’re joining the Army.  Teach you some discipline.  Hah!  Try telling them you want to be a pilot.”
That Monday, Veronica snuck out early, withdrew her life savings from the bank, and left.  Plastic wings pinned to her backpack, she stuck a thumb out on the interstate.
She was seventeen, but a very naive and sheltered seventeen.  She was heartbroken, scared, lonely.  And strangely relieved.
Liberated, somehow.  She could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.  Her destiny lay in the power of her own tiny hands.  Remembering her silly old dream, she chuckled.  “Hell, I could even become an aviatrix,” she mumbled with a roll of the eyes.  But she knew she was too poor and too stupid.  Daddy had made sure she knew that.
In a truck stop between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, her plans—and her life—derailed.
His name was John Bolt, and like his namesake, he struck her like lightning.  He was tall, handsome, suave and worldly.  He had traveled all over the States in his rig, and he made it sound as exciting as a flying circus.
Spellbound, she lost herself in his endless, dark brown eyes.  From beneath a crop of slick black hair, they blazed at her with enthusiasm.
With one comment, he hooked her.  He said, “Drivin’ a big rig’s like bein’ captain of an airplane.”
Bolt bought the starving, wide-eyed girl a slice of lemon meringue pie and reeled her in.  He said, “You’re your own boss.  You take orders from nobody.  And you can go damn well wherever you please.”  He sat back and crossed his arms.  “Hell, it ain’t no big thing.  Why a cute little missy like you could do it.”
Drive an eighteen-wheeler!  So maybe it wasn’t an airplane, she thought, but it seemed the closest she’d ever get.  That night she left with him.
In the same night, she learned to drive a big rig and please a man.
The next two months were pure bliss.  Everything seemed so right.  In Reno, days after her eighteenth birthday, Miss Veronica Redding became Mrs. John Bolt.  His next road trip became their honeymoon, after which he moved her into his small Ulysses, Kansas trailer.
She called her parents to tell them the good news.  Against her mother’s pleas, the Sergeant hung up on her.  Abandoned, all she had left was her new husband.
But Mr. Bolt soon tired of the new Mrs. Bolt.  He began leaving her at home on trips.  And when he returned, his home never seemed to be in the order he liked.  She could do nothing right by him.  The young bride’s cooking was atrocious, he told her, and any decision on her part turned into disaster.  He made sure she knew, both physically and mentally, that he had married a worthless mess.
For six years she endured his abuse.  She couldn’t remember a world without John Bolt.  Each time he left on a trip, she dreaded his return yet longed for it, never knowing whether he would walk through the door bearing flowers or fists.  She filled the void of his absence with cigarettes and alcohol and food.  Over the years, she loaded her thin frame down with pounds of physical and emotional baggage.
His trips became longer.  Days went by without a phone call.  Finally, after two weeks away without a word, he called to tell her he’d picked up yet another run.
“When will you come home?” she asked him, her voice pleading, her words slurred by vodka.
“Come home to what?” he snapped.  “A fat, drunken pig in a stye?  I’ll be back sometime next week, if I feel like it.  Hell, I may never feel like it.”  He hung up.
She flew into a blind rage.  Minutes later, she sat crumpled on the floor in a pile of shattered dishes, broken ceramic statuettes and smashed bottles of booze.  Through the alcoholic fog and the raining tears, she realized that, upon seeing the mess, he would kill her.  Or worse, leave her for good.
Might as well spare him the pain, she thought.
She crawled through the rubble to John’s gun cabinet.  With trembling fist, she pounded the glass until it shattered.  She did not feel her sliced palm.  When she retracted her hand, it held an ancient Colt .45 handgun, loaded.  She put it to her head.
Everything went dark.
She was an angel now, her spirit flying away from her dead, battered human carcass, up through the roof and into the heavens.  She looked down and saw John Bolt.  He yelled at her to come back down, fists shaking above his head in rage.  But from way up here, her husband’s voice sounded comically high.  His rig looked like a matchbox, and he like an ant.
She woke up laughing.  She had no idea how long she had passed out.  Veronica looked at her hand.  The glass cuts, while deep, wouldn’t be permanent.  She stared at the pistol for one long minute.  She again lifted it and aimed, this time at a photo hanging on the wall.  A photo of John Bolt.
She pulled the trigger.  The rusty hammer jammed.  She looked at the gun quizzically.  Suddenly, the hammer dropped.  A loud explosion ripped through her ears.  The kick knocked the pistol from her hand.  Once again everything went dark; the bullet had hit the table lamp.
Her mouth, open in astonishment, slowly changed to a faint smile, then a larger one, then a Cheshire grin.  The grin turned to a chuckle, then a laugh.  She guffawed hysterically, rolling on the floor, her hands wrapped about her stomach.
She picked herself off the floor, walked to the bathroom, and showered for the last time in John Bolt’s home.  She dressed the wounds on her hand, then dug through her junk drawer.
Finally she found it, buried in the back.  Her most prized possession:  her plastic wings.  She pinned them to her chest.
She wrote him a ’Dear John’ letter.  This note, however, read slightly different:

Dear Auntie Em,
Hate you.  Hate Kansas.  Left for Oz.
Dorothy

In three days she hocked his car, pawned his furniture, cleaned out his bank account and maxed every credit card with cash advance.  That done, she took one final look around the wrecked and deserted home.
“To hell with you,” she said, and left for the farthest place from Kansas she could think of:  Alaska.
From Anchorage she called her mother.  Her father grabbed the receiver and yelled, “It was unforgivable of you to marry that man without our consent.  But even so, a wife should be loyal to her husband under any circumstances.  And now you have the gall to call us and blame him for your failure.”
This time it was she who hung up.
Divorce was foremost on her mind, but she feared the proceedings would flush her out.  To her great relief, she found that her marriage had never existed; there had been a previous Mrs. John Bolt, and still was.
Nevertheless, she knew her life was still in danger.  She cut and dyed her California locks and became just another Alaska brunette.  But appearance alone was not enough to escape him.
By court order of the State of Alaska, Miss Veronica Onassis Redding became Miss Holly Shannon Innes.
At an abuse crisis center in Fairbanks, Holly Innes began intense therapy.  But more than shrink sessions and weight loss regimens were needed to rebuild her.
Her counselor quickly found the key.  At Fairbanks International Airport, he enrolled her in flight school.
The change was dramatic and immediate.  Her first day of flying did more for her mental recovery than a year of therapy.  The booty snatched from John Bolt paid for lessons.  How appropriate, she thought, to use a nightmare to bankroll a dream.
After her first solo flight, she wept tears of joy.