W-W-W-WOW! April edition

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I'm still not back, by the way.

Soon.

Maybe soon...

Beast has The Freakin' Green Elf Shorts!

Yes, those vile and contemptible shorts that we equally loathe and covet are in the UK once more!

See with your eyes the pan-global journey the 'Shorts have taken since their inception back at Christmas in 2004:

No, your eyes do not deceive you. I have, at long last, recreated the FGES Map!

For a definitive history of the 'Shorts illustrious 'caretakers', please click here to visit MJ's.

You'd better get your thinking caps on (I just hope they're not as disease-ridden as the 'Shorts) as Beast will be holding The Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Caption Competition soon. I hope.

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By the way, this doesn't mean I'm back: I've had this post prepared since the 5th of February!
I may pop back at the end of April to post this month's wwwWOW!, but that'll be it for a while.

I hope you're all behaving yourselves?

* snort *
* snigger *

Ahem.

I Aten't Dead*

As you have no doubt surmised, due to my sporadic appearances both here and at your own blogs, I haven't had much time lately to visit the Blogworld. Hells, I've barely had time for any witchy activity over the Cusp! So, what I'm about to tell you shouldn't come as that much of a surprise:
I, the Host and the SubCs are taking a blog-break.
At the moment, I don't know how long this will be for. It may be a week, a month, or even longer. However, for those of you rejoicing and cheering, I will return at some point, so: Ha! Sorry to spoil your fun.

I was going to post this on the first, but thought you may misinterpret it as an April Fool, so, I've left it until now to ensure that all of you across the globe in your quaint little time zones, have left the first of April well and truly behind so there can be no confusion.

I'll leave you now with a few more cakes to keep you going - Lemon & coconut, for the curious amongst you. Oh, and if and when Beast receives those infernal 'Shorts, I'll pop back and post the new Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Map. I look forward to catching up with your various adventures when I'm back - Soon, hopefully.




Be good. Or at least not too evil.



* Click here and scroll down to the third paragraph to see where I nabbed the title from.

W-W-W-WOW! March edition

No time to write anything (other than this) - See you in April!

Gayer Cake

Note to self: Don't decorate cakes when bored...





... They turn out gay.

Shit! What was that?

Oh bugger. That was my youth.



Thank you, ExcelsiorUK.

Babysitting nightmare

So much for a relaxing night in in front of the telly. SP only agreed to 'babysit' Medusa's son - then promptly went out himself leaving me to deal with the gorgon-spawn.
I don't know why he even needs babysitting? I mean, he's bloody 19!

Oh, don't look the image in the eyes - That whole petrification thing still works.

Hmmm... Probably should have mentioned that first...

Who turned the Ley lines off?

Someone took out Norfolk's Ley lines last night causing no small amount of aerial consternation.

I was on my way back from Indescribable's last night, having had a 'consultation' about her wedding cake - She's getting married in May and asked if I would ordered me to make & decorate her cake. Anyway, after lots of shouting, arguing and gnashing of teeth, I left on Broom under the cover of darkness, nursing overloaded eardrums and the assaulted logic-centre of my brain. It was because of this that I wasn't really taking much notice of where I was going. I figured I'd just get to the Norfolk border and use the Leys to guide me home.
For those not in the know, Ley lines are not otherworldly, or magical in themselves, just alignments of certain places of geographical interest. However, for night flying, some enterprising entity illuminated the lines with a low-level thaumic charge to aid in navigation for those of us with second sight. Last night, however, Norfolk was dark.
It was only when I got to Evilden Elveden that I noticed how dark the countryside before me was. Luckily, I was flying over the A11 which went all the way to Norwich, so I just followed it, zeroed in on the illuminated Cathedral then turned right just before the airport (Norwich International, what with Norwich being a city and all), narrowly avoided a couple of nuns in a Mini-Metro* (who'd instigated a sudden left turn without putting their indicator on) by descending at speed into our cherry tree.
Needless to say, I am understandably livid. And scratched & bruised - When I moved in with SP, I thought I'd left cherry tree related injuries** behind me, but oh no, SP had to have a cherry tree in his garden, too. There must be some correlation between the supernatural and cherry trees...
Anyway, I have a feeling those Hoodie warlock hoodlums are at the bottom of the thaumic blackout, so I'm just off to do some sleuthing (think a cross between Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher and Eglantine Price but without the old lady costuming) to find out for sure, before giving them what for!
I just hope the Leys will be charged up again soon, as I have some important after-hours business to attend to imminently.



* Quite what they were doing 500 feet up in an ancient, usually land-based Austin, I don't know. Although, I have heard that the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl has opened a convent in the area, which would explain a lot...
** To read more about cherry trees, click here, here or here.

Star Trek: Voyages That Never Were IV

Continued from... Star Trek: Voyages That Never Were III

You may be pleased to hear that this will probably be the last of these Voyages That Never Were posts as, although I have loads of old sketches and designs left, none of them are worthy of publishing. Although, there's always the possibility that I'll create more 'masterpieces' when bored or full of flights of fancy!As you can see, I liked my spherical hulled starships back whenever I created these images.
The Valiant-class vessel (above) would have been a TOS-era ship, probably first commissioned circa 2235.
The little Darwin-class ship (left) never made it past the sketch stage even though I liked the front view and how the secondary hull looked like it was upside down in the side view.
The T'Seren-class ship (below) I envisioned being partially designed by Vulcans (hence the name-see the last point) and brought into service in the 2340s as science & research vessels. I liked the yacht-like lower secondary hull, the elegant nacelles-the front of which look slightly like the bow of a Vulcan long-range shuttle, and the smooth simplicity of the spherical primary hull. I named it after Mount Seleya, on Vulcan.



Here we have four starships from different eras. The Sagittarius-class starship at the top is my favourite - It's a kitbash using a refit Excelsior-class primary hull & shortened secondary hull with Akira-class nacelles & pylons.
The Corona & Valiant-class (a different design to the first starship of this post) are from the TOS era, and the Reliant-class (named after the Miranda-class USS Reliant that Khan commandeered in Star Trek II) from the late 2290s.
I believe I traced some of the components from the Star Trek Encyclopaedia - There's very little freehand detail in these four starships.

The Sirius-class starship (below) was my interpretation of a capital ship from the TNG movie era - Perhaps the late 2370s or early 2380s. The rough sketch bears the name Excelsior, and I intended it to replace the original Excelsior NCC 2000 after almost 100 years of exemplary service.



And that's your lot. Enjoy. Or ignore... And thanks for being patient!


Continued in... Star Trek: The Voyages That Never Were V

Star Trek: Voyages That Never Were III

Continued from... Star Trek: The Voyages That Never Were II

I've had a busy weekend tidying, sorting and rearranging, and, therefore, have had little time for blogging again. So, in the absence of anything more interesting, may I present to you the third in the series of the Voyages That Never Were. As before, all these sketches are from years past. I'd probably drawn them some time in 1997 as the quilted shoulder uniforms that inspired these were first seen in November/December 1996 when Star Trek: First Contact and Deep Space Nine Rapture aired.
As I said to Princess in the comments there, "My freehand sketches tend to have somewhat bizarre proportions - in or out of a black hole." So, here are some ideas and variations of Starfleet uniforms modelled by those small of head and broad of shoulder:

These uniforms were based on those designs of the late 2360s-early 2370s and 2373 onwards era but using the department colours of the late 2270s-2350s, or thereabouts.

And these are the final designs:



And just to finish off with, the following sketches are of a masculine suit inspired by Seven of Nine's first silver spandex costume. There are also some Borg & Xenomorph oddities to peruse, too:


Continued in... Star Trek: The Voyages That Never Were IV

Star Trek: Camelot

You can thank my sister, Indescribable, for bringing this to my attention and, therefore, to yours.

Where's Witchface?

Well, I expect you want to know what I've been up to seeing as I haven't been around much lately?

Don't you?

Ah, well. Even if you don't I'm telling you anyway!

Firstly, I'm going to let you know why I've been absent: It's because I've been exceptionally tired. And not for the reasons you may think.
No. I've been walking to work for the last few weeks. More, actually. I started walking when the weather was really bad and the foot or so of snow we had didn't disappear because it was so cold! Now, work is only three miles or so away, but navigating through the snow and avoiding incompetent drivers added about 20 minutes to the normal 10 minute drive. Plus, I usually park about a mile from work (because I refuse to pay the extortionate car park prices) which means I have a 15-20 minute walk anyway.
So, I decided to walk to and from work - 40 minutes each way - which meant getting up earlier and, therefore, getting home later than usual. And once home, I still have my Desperate Housewife duties to attend to as well as walking Moom!
To top it all off, work has been exceptionally shit lately which I find tiring. Depressing, stressful and frustrating - These are three of the nicest words I can use to describe it. Ug. I don't even want to talk about it anymore.
Now, you might ask why I don't use Broom for the commute? Well, it's because the mornings are too light now to go flying around for all and sundry to see. Plus, the Civil Service doesn't take too kindly to witchcraft, for some reason, and therefore doesn't provide the requisite landing facilities for non-VTOL (Vertical Take Off & Landing, for those not in the know) brooms.
[Broom via]
The one good thing about all this walking is that I'm not using Car so much. This is a good thing because petrol is now £1.27 a litre! Or at least it was a week ago when I last filled up - It's probably £1.30 now. £71.00 it cost me to fill up. Seventy one shitting pounds! And to make matters worse, I had to fork out £245.00 for a year of Road Tax. It's ridiculous! I don't want to talk about this anymore, either.

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So, I suppose I'd better tell you what I've been doing. Sadly, due to the above reasons, I haven't been doing much.

Along with SP, I've entertained various family & friends, including an exceptionally hot demon who works with SP. I'm going to have to keep an eye on their burgeoning bromance. Actually, it's gone well past the bromance stage - They're now calling each other Work Husbands!I've tidied up the garden and got rid of the corpses of those plants that didn't make it through the bitter winter, and there were a lot of them, let me tell you. This spring is going to be very expensive...
One of the casualties was an old 'friend':
Margaret 2.0's whithered carcass has been tastefully interred hacked to bits and dumped unceremoniously onto the compost heap. Unfortunately, SP wouldn't let her in the house due to her size (too many glasses of fertiliser on the paysho, methinks), so she was banished to the sunroom. Which gets very cold in winter due to having no heating and far too much ventilation - Basically, it's shed with windows. Poor Margaret couldn't cope with a second vicious winter in that room and gave up the ghost.

Here she is in happier times with Car:

Last weekend I half prepared the vegetable patch - I'll finish it off this weekend, weather permitting. I also pruned the cherry trees - Well, I pruned one and had a half-hearted attempt at the other before giving up after being stabbed one too many times in the eyes by errant twigs.Only a few books have been read, but plenty of Sudoku has been done!

Today I had a much needed day off work and went clothes shopping. It turned out to be most successful, to my surprise. I managed to find some slim-fit black casual trousers that were long enough in the leg, three fitted shirts and two thin jumpers to go over them, a nicely detailed long sleeve T-shirt plus some bargain hi-cut canvas boots (that I'm sure 'Petra won't approve of).I've also been making other worlds and living other lives.

Right. I'm off to unwind with my iTim.