AMC has made all 17 episodes of Patrick McGoohan's classic series, The Prisoner, available online.

This series is required viewing for anyone who's ever ...

Well, for anyone.

Anywhere.

Especially in this day and age.


I am not a number!
I am a free man!

---

Since my brain is currently actively engaged in other matters, my Magnum Opus* has finally decided that it wants my attention, as well.

(Obviously, this only happens when there are other things that Actively Need Doing; I don't think I've really done any serious work on the Opus since I finished my capstone, though I was actively working on other story ideas over the long commute during my three months with the civil engineering firm.)

I'm looking for good software to help me organize my plot -- and just to make it hard on the audience, I'm looking for Ubuntu software.

If I were doing this analogue, I'd get a pack of 3"x5" cards, and write down the Important Plot Moments that Must Stay In No Matter What, figure out what order to put them in, and start "inbetweening", as the animators say: adding the transitions and the bridge scenes and the character development moments that get me from Scene to Scene to Scene.

If the inbetweening process suggests a different order for the Keystone Scenes, I could then start shuffling them around.

I'd like to find software that does this sort of thing gracefully. Wikis don't work (I've tried'em). Mindmap software is kind of close (discrete ideas in boxes on a blank desktop), but the radial paradigm is all wrong.

I'm downloading a few outliners from the Ubuntu repositories, and I'll mess around with'em later. I was wondering if any of you out there in LJ Land might have some suggestions for something more graphical, more like a Big Ol' Bulletin Board/Table Top that will let me have a bunch of ideas and plot elements all out in front of me at the same time, and shuffle them around without awkward copypasta. Don't be hesitant to suggest Windows Application X or Mac Application Y -- I can always use them as a search term to find open-source software that's like those programs.

---

* No, I'm not going to give any details about the Magnum Opus at this stage of the game. I will say that, yes, it has dragons. And dinosaurs. And sorcerors. And maybe even swords.

---

Why is it so hard to find a portable radio or, hell, even an entertainment center-style stereo that has a nice row of programmable radio buttons, so you don't have to twiddle up and down the dial every time some hockey game clutters up your classic rock station?

---

Comments from people who don't listen to the radio because of technology X, Y, or Z will be deleted. Do not open Pandora's Box.

---

Better Off Deadbeat

Craig Cunningham is suing abusive credit companies and bill collectors.

It's one of those framing issues: "oh, no, he's trying to weasel out of debts he racked up, fair and square" -- but, you know, we've all been manipulated into this debt-based economy anyway. We're expected to play nice and be cooperative and toe the line, while they don't even see fit to follow the rules that already favor them.

The only way that's gonna change is by telling the bastards to take a flying leap. And sometimes, that takes another bastard to lead the way.

More power to ya, Mr. C -- and back to you, Howard.

---

For the record, I'm not seeing this as some kind of easy way to deal with my own economic woes;
for one thing, I don't have a whole lotta debt right now, myself. This just pleases me.

---

After sleeping in far too late yesterday, I went to bed earlyish last night, determined to roll out of bed at a decent hour, hop in the shower, and fire up the computer for the usual rounds of email and job boards.

I did indeed wake up around 7-ish, looked at the clock -- and, rather than blurry LED numerals, saw nothing. The power was out.

No Net. No TV. No lights in the bathroom.

I wound up going back to bed until 8:45, then taking a shower by candlelight.

(I do so love bathrooms in candlelight.)

Needless to say, the power came back five minutes after I got out of the shower.

It was only a few minutes ago that I realized that it was the Second of February, and that I had gotten up, seen my shadow, and gone back into my hole.

Looks like six more weeks of winter, from here.

---

More water-themed dreams last night; how much of them were due to the sound of rain outside, I can't tell. Not the usual crystal-clear water, this time; in this one, the nearby creek actually ran through the backyard. The usual gang of Generic Dream Friends and I were looking it over. The water was higher than usual; I noticed that conditions were exactly right for a flash flood, and suggested that we should get back over the creek and into the house. Of course, everyone blew me off, right up until the big muddy rush of water hit.

For some reason, I was wearing robes of some sort, as was at least one of the others.

---

Last night was gaming night, and, as a result, I caffeinated for the first time in a week and a half. As a result, I didn't get to bed until after 01:30, and when sleep finally came, all manner of vivid and surreal dreams occurred (with recurring water symbolism, for the record).

The dream that left a real impression on me, however, happened between "Well, I guess I'm awake now" 07:15 and "Wait, how did it get to be" 08:30, a time more associated with hypnopompic states than REM sleep.

Like the dream of the Dolphin in the Library, I was watching this one unfold from a third-person vantage. The protagonist in this case was a female lion-like creature, not anthropomorphic in the humanoid sense, but definitely possessing language, culture, and some degree of tool use. She was pregnant, and not entirely "with it"; in retrospect, there was a hint that those caring for her had her drugged. They her kept giving her puzzles to solve, and treating her solutions as oracles for the fate of her unborn offspring.

The most distinctive feature was an entity that looked like a cave painting of something a gaunt coyote, visible only to the dream's protagonist -- and not entirely visible, at that. It seemed more a fleeting shadow of an entity that whispered in the protagonist's ear, giving different interpretations to those oracles, or dismissing them entirely. Despite its sinister appearance and bearing, there was a suggestion that it was actually more benign and well-disposed toward the protagonist than the tangible and superficially-benevolent people caring for her.

It called itself "Nine-Moons-Winter"; the dream's protagonist thought of it as "the Winterthin Thing". Either name was an obvious reference to its gaunt appearance: as gaunt as something that had survived a winter that lasted nine moons.

The Winterthin Thing was more visible than the "real", tangible creatures, as if I were observing the action from the Dreamtime -- which I was, I suppose. There was definitely some Ursula Vernon influence here, visuals of cave paintings twining around and interacting with vaguely-seen but definitely "real" creatures, vivid black charcoals over soft gray pencils; the captions were even in the same font ursulav uses for Digger.

(Yes, there were captions. The "format" of the dream was somewhere between a comic and a movie. And yes, I can often read very clearly in dreams, contrary to popular lore that says you can't.)

It was a very vivid dream, one that stayed with me on awakening and fairly well demanded that I record it here.

... did something just introduce itself?

---

As I noted earlier, this was the first FC in six years that I didn’t present the (non-adult) Dragon Panel, and that I was seriously considering returning to those duties next year. That prompted some discussion in the comments about species panels in general, and what they covered. Evidently, both the Dragon and Avian panels were a bit on the aimless side this year.

Under my auspices, the Dragon Panel hewed pretty firmly to “Dragons In Mythology, Folklore, Heraldry, and maybe, just maybe, Modern Fantasy”. eclipsegryph runs the Gryphon panel in much the same way; Eclipse has done a LOT of research on kittybirds, going back to their earliest mentions in ancient Greek lore. He always seems to have something new to add, though, and I try to do the same in mine.

The other species panels I’ve attended (and co-presented) have centered around beasties that are, shall we say, less elusive than gryphons or dragons: reptiles/dinosaurs, avians, and bats. Those panels have presented more tangible data about the critters in question, as well as their traditional roles in folk culture. We talked about echolocation in the bat panel, for instance, but we also discussed how bats tended to be sinister in Western culture, but lucky in the East (rather like dragons, that. Hmmmm.).

I’m not sure if that’s true across all the panels, though. Maybe the more obscure and arcane critters attract those of a more academic/analytical/geeky bent. Does the Fox panel talk about Reynard and the Kitsune? Does it dive into how the vernacular term “foxes” covers a wide range of species across a wider range of clades that are only loosely related? Does the Canid panel discuss pack behavior and the ridiculous genetic diversity of genus Canis? Does it compare and contrast White Fang and The Big Bad, or the distinct pop-culture perceptions of Wolf and Coyote?

I simply don’t know.

And I’d like to.

I want to know both what the other species panels cover, and what the audience is interested in hearing.

---

*To be generous.

---

Does anyone out there know how to open/convert/break down an .avb avatar file from the old, old Microsoft Comic Chat program? Way back in the Dark Ages, Malathar made a custom file for me, and I'd like to convert the various emotions and gestures into LiveJournal icons.

---

Despite the Unusual Circumstances of my life right now, this was a terrific con.

I only attended four official Con events, and only made a couple of turns through the Dealer's Room and Art Show -- most of my time was spent socializing. I spent lots of time with lots of folks, and always seemed to be able to find someone to pester. (Discovering that my phone could send texts to multiple recipients helped a lot there.)

After five straight years of presenting the Not-Adult Dragon Species Panel, I skipped this year, and finally got to see the Masquerade -- the NADSP has been scheduled opposite the Masque for three years in a row, thank you so very much. The Masquerade was fun to see in person for once.

On the other claw, I pitched in at the eleventh hour to help eclipsegryph give the Gryphon Panel, and had a blast and a half. Presenting panels has always kicked up a con into high gear for me, and I'll probably volunteer to take back the Dragon Panel again next year.

(Who went to the Dragon Panel this year? How did it go without Your Obedient Serpent at the helm? I've only heard feedback from one person who heard it from another person.)

I think the best part for me was the new location. I've always liked downtown San Jose, though I don't go there nearly often enough. The new hotel is in a splendid location, and is a pretty decent venue for the con, though I suspect we'll outgrow it quickly.

The afore-mentioned Unusual Circumstances allowed me to take public transit into the con with little difficulty, so I avoided the trauma of downtown parking this year. That's unlikely to happen again next year.

Having decent food and little conveniences like a grocery store and a drug store in the immediate vicinity was pleasant enough for us as attendees, but there's a hidden benefit that a lot of attendees have neglected. Being smack in the middle of downtown -- and the Fairmont is as close to dead-center in the middle of Downtown San Jose as you can get -- gives us the opportunity to become a local institution, to be part of the community in the same way that AnthroCon has become part of Pittsburgh. The local businesses certainly enjoyed our patronage, and the local populace seemed downright enchanted by our brand of madness.

This is an opportunity and an experience that we simply didn't have hiding in the Doubletree, stuck in a part of town that's flat-out dead on the weekends and not overly lively during the work week.

Furries are always worrying about how to improve their media image, and I submit that a goodly part of it is simply to be VISIBLE, being happy, friendly, fun people getting together to have a good time.

---

Most of the news outlets are nattering on and on about Apple's new tablet as today's top story.

NPR, however, knows what's really important.

---

Packing up the laptop, grabbing the bus back home, and then, off to work again!

Thanks to everyone; this was a great con. More later.

---

You know it's a classy hotel (as opposed to merely an expensive one) when housekeeping neatly makes up the air mattress on the floor, as well as the beds.

---

I was originally only going to attend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but I wrapped up all my chores by 5 PM last night. I discovered that I could get everything I needed for five days into a single, small suitcase, including my laptop -- and suddenly, taking the bus into downtown instead of driving became VERY PRACTICAL.

So I did. 45 minutes and two dollars later, I was at the Fairmont.

Picked up a cheap air mattress from Walgreen's, just down the street from the hotel; at $9.99, I may just leave it behind if I decide I don't want to cram it in the suitcase on the way home. It doesn't have one of those battery-powered inflation pumps that so many of them do these days -- but it DOES have a big ol' deflation valve in addition to its beach-toy style INflation valve. I looked at that, and looked at hafoc's CPAP breathing compressor, and made a joke about using that to blow the thing up.

... it worked. A one-inch air fitting is a pretty standard size, it seemed.

Spent some time downstairs in the lobby, hanging with rikoshi, tealfox, and a few others. The hotel had a band playing, and it was ... bad.

These guys were so obviously off-key that even I noticed. Teal insisted that they were singing the harmony without the melody, which sounds about right -- but they kept getting worse. Please understand: quelonzia will attest that I have a tin ear. Eventually, these guys were playing at the resonant frequency of tin.

Finally, I went to bed. The air mattress was fine, but odd dreams plagued me through the night -- including one in which Scully and Mulder had been dragged out of retirement to infiltrate a furry convention.

And they were working for Jonathan Winters.

Don't ask me where THAT came from.

---

It's Old English for "Noble Serpent".

I've been using it since the early '80s, originally assembling it from a "Random Old English Name Generator" table in an early issue of Dragon Magazine. If I recall correctly, "Lind" (serpent) was only on the prefix table, not the suffix, so from a gamer standpoint, I "cheated" -- no idea how well or poorly it may work on a grammatical standpoint.

The original "Athelind" was actually a Champions character, a centuries-old dragon who decided to take up superheroing as a lark.* A decade or so later, when "The Boojum Snark" decided that it would be more comfortable for the rest of alt.fan.dragons to address him by a name rather than a title, he adopted it as his nom de guerre.

And the rest is history.

---

* At almost exactly the same time, a comic called The Southern Knights, and that Atlanta-based superhero team included a centuries-old dragon who also decided to take up the crimefighting trade. Needless to say, my fellow players immediately brought it to my attention.

---

A lot of people keep defending President Obama's mediocre track record on progressive causes,* citing the close margin he has, and occasionally even acknowledging that he can't even rely on his own party members in Congress.

bradhicks points out that Roosevelt, Johnson, and every other President who managed to accomplish anything of lasting significance faced the same kind of opposition, but knew how to use the power, prestige, and clout of the Chief Executive of the United States to get shit done.

The ones who didn't?

They didn't accomplish jack shit, for any cause, progressive or otherwise.

This is not the change I voted for.

---

*Most of his defenders also ignore his reprehensible track record in sustaining and expanding frankly regressive causes, including some of the worst stances of the Bush Junta on privacy, security, and copyright law, just to name a few.

---

Okay, kids. Politics time.

First: On Elections.

rodant_kapoor just said everything that needs to be said about yesterday's special election in Massachusetts.

Second:On Activism.

I've heard some comments that there's more to participating in democracy than just saying, "I voted; now it's their turn to sort things out."

I really want to do things. I really want to make my voice heard. I really want to do that activism thing.

Unlike Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man", I haven't "passed the age / of consciousness and rightous rage". I just don't know what to do with it.

The only leads I've found in that direction have been canvassing, either door-to-door, on the phone, or stuffing envelopes.

You cannot convince me that this is significant or effective.

I don't treat political solicitors any differently than I do commercial or religious ones. At the door, on my phone or in my mailbox, they are an uninvited intrusion on the sanctity and privacy of my home.

I will politely turn away a political canvasser on my doorstep. I will rather less politely inform an unsolicited caller that I am "not interested". I will briefly glance at political mail to see if the candidate in question expresses views that coincide with my own, and if so, I'll put their name on my list of candidates to consider.

I almost always assume that the claims being made for or against Proposition X or Candidate Y are unreliable, at best, and flat-out lies, at worst. When election time rolls around, I troll the web looking for independent analyses and recommendations, but I don't trust unsolicited opinions.

And this is my reaction for the canvassers that I agree with. I have a hard time believing that this kind of activity is actually going to change anybody's mind.

Am I just stubborn? Am I too cynical to believe that J. Random Doorbell might be swayed by the presentation of reasonable arguments and evidence-based debunkings of misinformation? Or, despite my adherence to Colbert's memorable statement that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias", am I too cynical to believe that "my side" will provide me that kind of good, solid data to present?

Am I just an antisocial jerk who likes to hang up on people and slam doors in their face?

Really, are independent voters any more eager to have zealots idealists concerned citizens pounding on their door or ringing them up in the middle of dinner or the latest episode of Supernatural than Your Obedient Serpent is?

Heck, if I were an "independent" rather than a liberal technocrat, I'd probably wind up voting for the party that bothered me the least.

I suppose this boils down to two questions:

One, are my door-slamming habits atypical?

Two, what kinds of "grass-roots activity" are out there that don't include pestering the neighbors?

---

It's a little late at this stage, but just to clarify matters:

Despite previous reports to the contrary, both quelonzia and I will be attending Further Confusion this year.

Quel will be there on Saturday; I will be there on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with possible cameos on Thursday night and Monday morning.

Caution: Due to circumstances that should be familiar to anyone who reads this journal regularly, my moods will be erratic. I may be cheerful and energetic; I may be quiet and wistful, I may be irritable and flat-out bitey. I may be all of these things in rapid succession.

I intend to be cliquish. There are a lot of good friends that I only ever see at FC, and my main reason for going this year is to see them.

Warning:
When approaching the dragon, do not initiate hugs. If the dragon is huggable, he will initiate.

Do not skritch the dragon.

---

Oh, and this does seem to be allergies, after all. I am not Patient Zero!

---

Two days before the con, I have the sniffles, and it's clear that this isn't just an allergy attack.

Bed rest. Fluids. OTC medicine. I should be okay by the weekend.

---

Fasten your seatbelts, kids; this post starts talking about current Pop Culture, then veers into politics, philosophy, personal development, and metaprogramming.

It all started when I was doing something I normally avoid: reading comments on an internet blog. Unmoderated comment boards are usually overflowing with ill-considered, insulting, infuriating nonsense that can completely ruin an article I may have otherwise enjoyed.

In this case, however, the opposite occurred.

The io9 Blog's review of James Cameron's Avatar is the same blah-blah-blah-Mighty-Whitey-IN-SPACE critique that I've heard over and over. Nothing new here. The comments, on the other claw, are full of feedback from non-whites and non-Americans that undercut that as a being a white-Americans-are-the-center-of-the-universe interpretation that's at least as insulting, if not moreso.

I think my favorite comment thus far is this one:

All stories are about someone leaving a group or joining a group, it's just that some of these groups are a racial group. Outsider Luke Skywalker joins the rebels and becomes their number one gun. That's a heroic journey story, but if Luke was the only human and all the rest of the rebels were aliens suddenly it becomes a white guilt story? I don't buy it.

And now, Mood Whiplash. This shook some things out in my head, and I think they're worth sharing:

I've been sorting through the cognitive baggage cluttering my mind lately, and you know what? I think that "White Guilt" is a particularly toxic meme. To be more specific, there's a pervasive idea that any action that may have "White Guilt" as a motivating force is automatically invalid, or just more cultural imperialism. This is bullshit. It is an invitation to inaction.

Your Obedient Serpent, when he's not a dragon, is a middle-aged Anglo-American, raised in a middle-class suburb, who's seriously considering an opportunity to teach middle school science in a "high-need", inner-city environment. The very idea of standing in front of a classroom is a massive paradigm shift for him, and coming to this decision has involved jumping over a lot of mental hurdles.

You know what? True Confession Time: One of them was "Mighty Whitey".

"What right do you have to come swooping in with your degree and your laptop and your melanin deficiency, to try and "save" these kids? That's no different than England coking along to "civilize" India!"

Sounds really stupid when you verbalize it, doesn't it?

But people keep saying this, over and over: these stories are bad, they're unprincipled, they're just new and different ways for the privileged to lord it over everyone else. And if these stories are morally suspect, and your life-choices parallel them, why, then, those must be bad choices, right?

Once again: it sounds really stupid when you verbalize it. Stupid and arrogant. The only thing more arrogant than casting yourself as The Great Savior is to walk away from helping people because you're afraid people will think that's what you're doing.

That's part of the point: there are a lot of unexamined assumptions that mass media promulgates on an entirely sub-verbal level. It's good to examine them, it's good to scrutinize them -- but it's an iterative process. What unexamined assumptions are the critiques carrying with them?

One of the big ones, in this case, is the assumption that any real person's real life is simplistic enough to use fiction as a valid model. This isn't the first time I've fallen into that trap, and I'm sure it won't be the last -- but at least now I'm aware that trap is out there.

Or in here.

---

Multiple Choice Dragon Game

(Found by normanrafferty)

This was too much fun -- as in, "I'll check this out, but I really can't spend much time on it this morning. Well, maybe a few more pages. Oh, hell, I'm done!"

But all told, it only took about 20-30 minutes, and some of that was getting up for coffee. Some mornings, torching a few knights and conquering a kingdom or two are just what you need to wake up and face the day.

It's a Multiple-Choice Text Game, in the tradition of those venerable Choose Your Own Adventure books. Clever addition: your actions and choices directly influence your attributes, and those, apparently, have further impact on your successes in your later endeavours.

The core Attributes are arranged in opposed pairs: as one of a pair goes up, the other goes down. They're delightfully Draconic:

Brutality vs. Finesse
Cunning vs. Honor
Disdain vs. Vigilance

As the game progresses, you also accumulate Infamy, Wealth, and Wounds -- well, some of you might accumulate the last; Your Obedient Serpent went unscathed until the grand finale, and still took only a single Wound as he dispatched his adversary.

This was a pleasant diversion, perfectly suited to the grauphy mood I found myself in upon awakening -- and quite probably the only time you'll ever see a computer game review in this blog.

---

Argh.

Last week, a flare-up in joint pain heralded another bout of Serial Flu, that one-symptom-at-a-time never-really-sick variation of influenza that hits me now and then. Body aches most of last week; congestion and post-nasal drip over the weekend; digestive upset on Monday, after work. As usual, I never felt bad enough to really consider myself sick, and, aside from a general air of lingering blah, I thought I was pretty much done with it.

This evening, I've got the Extreme Tiredness symptom, along with a slight resurgence of stuffiness, and a mild, general achiness that's not quite the same as the Crippling Arthritic Agony of last week. It's not done with me yet.

I had my flu shot this year (though not my H1N1, yet); in years past, if I had my immunization, "serial flu" would almost never progress to full-on flu.

I doubt I'm contagious; I'm not really in virus-spreading sneeze/sniffle mode. I don't really feel sick, honestly, just run down. rikoshi and tealfox, I'll give you a heads up if I'm not fit to share breathing space with the Saga group on Saturday. I should be good, though.

---

eggshellhammer and I just had an online conversation about gaming and pop culture that might be worth sharing, at least for my own future reference. It started out being about gaming and pop culture, anyway ... .

eggshellhammer:

I've been in this noir DnD game, for... I dunno. Maybe 20, 24 sessions now.

And it's getting hard.

Not that it isn't fun -- but it's hard to endure it.

Because the world I exist in when I go there is such an agonizing moral vacuum. and even though my character has such great power to kill and to endure suffering, I can't make things better.

I don't have anything I can punch that will make a better day rise.

Because in noir, there are no good decisions.

And my only power is violence.

I'm constantly trapped in cycles of violence, and I can't escape them. I can't resolve them.

Your Obedient Serpent:

Sounds frustrating.

The secret in noir is to play the Hard Boiled Detective: do the best you can, help who you can, and maintain your own integrity in the face of a hopelessly corrupt world, because, if there's any moral dimension to that existence at all, it's what you bring to it.

Your quest is noble because it's futile.

The difference between Philip Marlowe and Don Quixote is that Marlowe knows that he's not going to win in the long run, and that even his little victories are often Pyhrric. But he keeps pushing on, because there's an important difference between "Not Winning" and Giving Up.

When you give up, you've lost.

If you keep pushing, and fighting, and striving, then even if you haven't won -- you haven't lost.

If you were playing in a Gothic-Punk game like the old World of Darkness, that would be part of it. Part of playing that game is embracing the Emo. Noir isn't too far off from that. You're a Tragic Hero, and you know it -- and that's what gives you strength. You're standing in front of the tank in Tiannamon Square, and flipping it off.

The Hard Boiled Detective doesn't back down, doesn't compromise, and if he gets the shit kicked out of him or gets killed, he does so knowing that he did it on his terms.

The people who look at an "agonizing moral vacuum" and decide it doesn't matter what they do, that they can kill and torture and do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals?

They've already lost.

The people who curl up in despair because they're not Saving the World? They've lost, too.

...and somewhere along the line, I think I might have stopped talking to Eggshell about his game.

---

And no, I didn't realize the inherent pun in advising "Eggshell" to play a "hard-boiled" character until I was almost ready to post this. Observing this in the Comments is both redundant and unnecessary.

---

Same thing.

Because I miss her.

---

There was a stuffed rabbit named Juniper, long gone, who was my favorite stuffed animal.

There were the Colorforms Outer Space Men, also departed, who tapped into every child's "cool monster" center decades before the current wave of "Mon", and who left me with a life-long tendency to empathize with The Alien.

There was a teddy bear my sisters brought back from camp one year, who was just another stuffed animal in my childhood days. Somehow, though, he survived all the moves and cleanings and purges of belongings, and gained my respect and affection. He lost an eye along the way, and, when I first went off to college, I gave him an eyepatch, turned an old sock into a turtleneck, and dubbed him "Nick Furry, Agent of B.E.A.R.". He's held that name for almost thirty years now, far longer, needless to say, than he was just Oso The Random Teddy Bear.

My favorite. by far, however, had to have been my very first G.I. Joe. He was, originally, one of the Mercury astronaut Joes that Hasbro produced, starting in the year I was born, though I suspect he dates from a couple of years after that. This was Archetypal Joe: 12" tall, no "Kung-Fu Grip", not even the fuzzy, flocked, "life-like hair" of the early '70s.

I had a bunch of G.I. Joes, as did most of my friends as a kid, but this one was always the senior officer. The whole neighborhood respected the obvious air of authority bestowed by painted-on hair. He was the Old Soldier, hailing from the days when G.I. Joe was "America's Movable Fighting Man", and those "Adventure Team" tyros paid him his due, by gum.

His foil-coated space suit is long gone; he's dressed in the green fatigues of a later acquisition. When all the rest of my collection was bestowed onto my younger cousin, I held on to him, making some excuse about "first run" and "valuable collectible", but that was smoke and mirrors. Valuable he may be, though the collector's market has little respect for toys actually well-used and played with.

It's a moot point, though.

You don't sell your best friend.

Somewhere in the depths of quelonzia's garage, both Nick Furry and the Old Soldier slumber comfortably in a box, awaiting the Day of the Great Unpacking, when they shall, once more, be seated upon a shelf, displayed for all the world to see.

And sometimes, maybe, just maybe, when nobody's watching ...

... someone will play with them again, too.

Because that's what toys are for.

---