Let's Build Some Kaiyodos!

I recently won an ebay auction for the (apparently) complete Series 3 set of Kaiyodo/UHA Dinotales miniatures. I haven't bought on ebay for a long time, but it was too cheap to pass up and since I just got a job and happened to have paypal money... well anyway I paid $35 WITH shipping and handling from Hong Kong, for 24 figures, which is way less than $2/figure. If you bought them individually they are anywhere from $3 to 15+ depending on the figure... you do the math.

I've had a really bad few weeks due to overwork, getting sick again, and exam week on top of it, so here was an afternoon well spent.

How do they fit all those into a tiny box that fits in my mail slot? Anticipation...



Turns out they were all sealed, i wasn't actually sure whether they were loose or not. First one is Trochosaurus, a cynodont thingie. Ruler for scale.



Partially-assembled Plesiosaurus skeleton. This was probably the most delicate figure.


I really love how this one came unassembled, it's the Maiasaura hatchling and egg... look at the detailed base with leaves on it. The plastic was a bit translucent red, painted over.


Detail where it's not even strictly needed. Shown: Glyptodon, Hemicyclaspis, and a trilobite.


Apatosaurus is one of my favorite. He just looks fantastic, the paint job is beautiful, he's so lively.


Looks so real I want him swimming in my aquarium. MARKETING IDEA: Cambrian creatures for your aquarium???? Is it done yet??



All of it assembled. Got this random shelf last week from a thrift store, don't know if it's their final housing but it was lucky I had it for now since I'd have had no safe place for such tiny things.

Weirdness: in the end I had 25 figures altho it's a set of 24. Ended up with three duplicates (a happy accident as it happens) and I don't have either Acrocanthosaurus, the live or skeleton, or the skeleton Deinonychus. I'm not that bothered, I got all the ones I REALLY wanted, not that I'd turn down Acrocanthosaurus but it's not really my favorite. I don't understand though how I got 22 here on my shelf, but am missing three from the set. Was the T-rex or another a 'secret' extra figure? Regardless, even with duplicates, even if I'd gotten a couple of damaged ones, etc, it was worth the pittance. I think the only reason it went under the radar was that the seller didn't label them as Kaiyodo but just under generic 'dinosaurs' tag. Would have been worth bidding higher, really.

Conclusion: If you've ever thought about getting some Kaiyodos you shouldn't hesitate. Despite the size they are every bit as quality as reputation has it. The plastic is hard almost resin type (?) and contrary to what you'd expect, the tiny little pieces snap together easily and soundly. They are very well made, and amazingly detailed. I love and treasure them... the only off one, Hallucigenia may need some glue on the tail end, everything else fit together with no problem.

AGENDA 21!!!!

Article

Holt and other tea partiers are taking their cues from people like Henry Lamb, a WorldNetDaily columnist and founder of Sovereignty International and Freedom21, groups designed to fight Agenda 21 and its ilk. He has been arguing for decades that the UN is secretly plotting to herd humans into crowded cities so that the rest of the world can be devoted to wildlife preservation.

Huh... is it wrong to think that sounds pretty cool?

Grab bag, now with MOAR Chinasaurs!

LOLcat for scale.

JPIII Tapejara
The only real damage is small paint rubs. It still makes a noise when you press a button on the back, although it's supposed to make another when you push the neck forward to open the mouth. This is really exciting for me.





Jasman T-Rex
Minor Chinese company that, according to dinosaurcollector, made some remote-control dino's, plain models and this in the style of Jurassic Park. Apparently it would have made noise and had glowing eyes when it worked.





Polacanthus
Playskool Definitely Dinosaurs from 1987.





This Thing
A 2010 McDonald's premium from some movie (?) that looks like a mutated ankylosaur. It seems to have done something at some point, because when you push the button on its back, it opens its mouth and a red fireball looking tongue thing comes out (also pictured: a horse-thing from Avatar, which does light up. Found another, different Avatar creature but its leg was broken T_T ) The tabs on the side move but don't seem to do anything now. What is it? I just threw it in the 3-dollar bag along with a Breyer colt in nice shape.



You can never have enough plates and saucers, or old Russian language primers (2 more saucers for kitties' wet food)




Assorted Chinasaurs, a few from last time and some from yesterday. Actually a few of them aren't bad for cheap knockoffs... and I really like the Monoclonius type in front.

Ugliest Dinosaur 2010 WORLD CHAMPION

GOOD LORD!!



Not only that, but its entire 'family' is pictured below. I don't think I've ever seen a more hideous bunch. I want them....

I have discovered that Sega makes Dinosaur King figures, and they are actually pretty cute.

Icky dinosaur 2010: Safari Apatosaurus
I saw this figure a couple weeks ago when I dropped by a local hobby shop. It looks really nice at first until I realized the neck is totally ****ed up. I guess it's supposed to be saggy wrinkled skin. I don't know what in hell possessed someone to dream this up, but for some reason it gives me a sensation of visceral disgust, like shivers in my gut as if it reminds me of something really gross that I can't remember. It's just really... repulsive somehow, and I can't get OVER IT enough to consider buying this otherwise nice figure.

I wonder if anyone else feels the same, or if there's something wrong with me.




Bought this on sale at my work place, out of the boys' clothing section. That is awesome.

UPDATE!!! I found out what those weird ceramic figures I bought were based on: Sinclair World's Fair figures (See the third photo) As a kid I actually had one of these figures that came out of a machine, but it was from the St. Louis Zoo and was an elephant. You put your money in and it molds the figure right there. Very weird... Anyway, you can see the fugly Trachodon and the fairly cute Stego here. I wonder if someone made a mold from the original figures and used them to make ceramic ones, or what...


Music that isn't actually Touhou this time


The animation they put to it is Touhou, but the music is totally unrelated. I really like this music and I don't know why.

Black Mountain - Queens Will Play This is not even Japanese. I heard it playing in the coffee shop I go to, and looked up the lyrics. It turns out some of their songs are really good. For all I know however, this is the most popular band in the universe and I'm the last person to hear them, so don't laugh at me if this is the case. All I listen to lately is freakin video game vocal trance remixes, Lithuanian neo-folk and random symphonic metal so I wouldn't know. (It wasn't always this way, for years it was chiefly indie rock and alternative and seeing lots of shows at tiny clubs, but I can't be arsed lately to pay attention and vocal trance/etc is more suited to what I'm creating at the moment)



I'm not sure what this is, but it's pretty much the best thing ever


In other news, I have to go to work at 4:00 AM this Friday because people are insane consumerist zombies... Well I suppose that's one way to have an adventure. Or screw up your sleep quality even more for a whole week, whichever. I foresee total physical collapse around noon when I get home

Rubber dinosaurs interim post

Found these at a thrift store last week, they're thin, hollow ceramic, bottom is unlabeled, just firing marks as if they were home made or something. Was something like this commercially available, I wonder? They're delightfully ugly, well okay, the Stego is pretty cute but the other one is rather unfortunate.



I can't remember where the models for these figures are from, I know it's some old illustration and maybe a vintage toy mold based upon such. Particulary the crippled-looking hadrosaur I know I've seen before. Maybe I'm just losing my memory. Can't find anything at the moment in my image collection nor on the toy dinosaurs site I had bookmarked.

This is new (to me)


JP Dilophosaur, ugly and wrong and he's missing part of a finger! But kind of cute anyway.




Old, found this trike and baby at an antique store in Portland. There was a sauropod (of some kind) figure with it, but it wasn't nearly as cute. To be honest Trike isn't my favorite but I still like this one. It's a resin-type figure and there's no mark or ID on it.


New Carnegie and Safari
I want the Inostrancevia and Miragaia... Guanlong looks 'shopped right now, so it's hard to tell how it will come out? T-Rex is cute, but I'm bored of rex. Kaprosuchus looks pretty lively, though.

These are really pretty models

__

I saw two dinosaur-related books at the store the other night and both of them were a bust. Is there a really good explanation for why the publishing industry seems to be violently allergic to non-3D paleo art right now, or is it just cheaper for them or something? Because all of it is horrible.

There was also another re-packaging of something-or-other into a Children's Encyclopedia of dinosaurs, judging by the fact that most of the illustrations were from this Dixon encyclopedia I just posted about last week... but I couldn't tell if anything else in the book was new.




There are actually three versions of this track, I discovered after realizing the one on my mp3 player was not the same as this one. It took a long time to figure out that the one I had was the original, while this was the Cross-Hearts/Re-miniscence version, and there's a third version on an extra disc from the 3-disc Re-miniscence issue (3rd disc is instrumentals.) Anyway, this is the most energetic version, but all of them are good. Since it's from the same game, which I've played lately (Perfect Cherry Blossom), I'll add this other one that I'm also obsessing over



It's from the same album(s) so all the above holds true for this track as well, but this is a mashup of two pieces (stage 5 theme, and ending theme you get when you complete the game).

Say what you like about the old bastard,

but he made some brilliant quotes

What the public once learned to believe without reasons, who could refute it to them by means of reasons? on the marketplace one convinces with gestures, but reasons make the populace distrustful.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Need some more proof of this?

(I'm sorry, it's simply impossible to remember or keep track of the number of mindbendingly stupid things I see on that site every single day, so the crazy I've linked here is not even close to representative.)

Wish I could have been here today, but I can't find a job and have no money

EDIT: Apparently Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow were both there. Maybe it's better I wasn't.

Jerks and Tropical Fish

What a jerk

O'Donnell is as ignorant as a box of hammers and shouldn't be anywhere near a national political office, but this guy is still a douchewad in the extreme.

I have to agree with the following comment:

I think the real story here is an adult dude in a boy scout uniform unable to perform unless a vagina looks like that of an 11 year old.

Speaking of 11-year-olds, your daily kawaii:




Amazing~ See also:
Wink
Vocaloid + Touhou I love how they programmed the entire original dance

I tried to upload cat pictures but the internet isn't cooperating

Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Illustrated Encyclopedia

Four books on the right from the Goodwill. I sold a bunch of books and cd's I'd had for a good amount of money and used part of it for the dinosaur books on the left. The Greg Paul one was just published within the last month, got it half off. And I was just recently getting depressed because I couldn't afford to buy it.

Dixon's "Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia..." is an update of a book I've had for a while, that was published in 2006 and mainly features dinosaurs with some pterosaurs and marine reptiles thrown in. For that reason I never thought much about this book when I saw it, but it's been expanded pretty greatly. (I have yet to go through more carefully and see what dinosaurs were added, though.) There are no 3D illustrations, which is awesome.

Random diapsids!

Gorgonopsids!

Litopterns!

For a general-interest level book it's very worth getting.


I particularly liked this section in the Field Guide about biology and anatomy:

Daily cute

More books tomorrow.

More Fun With Creationism

,

For those previously unacquainted, this is how young-earth creationists/Biblical literalists calculate the age of the earth.

****ing flamingos, how do they work?!


Disappointed... I have yet to see any creationist nonsense that includes extinct mammals on the ark, like Moropus or Elasmotherium or Pakicetus.


Some interesting information in the book, such as the idea that there was no rain before the Deluge-- something about mist coming out of the earth.

The rivers were fed by artesian wells, plant life was lush and abundant, and there was probably just one large cotinent instead of several. The mountains were most likely rolling hills compared to wat we see now. It would have taken far less water to cover the highest mountains at the time of the Flood than it would today.

...

The layers of the Grand Canyon are all flat, one one on top of the other. There is no evidence of erosion.

Um... no. (the squiggly lines indicate erosion and/or gaps in time.)

The book also uses the example of stratification in fast-cooling lava flows as proof that any sort of geological strata could have been formed really quickly. Geology fail again, all rock is not equal and forms under vastly different conditions and time intervals.. I should have posted a picture of their geology diagram fail, it claims that the flood created all the mountain ranges. (read more about the creationist geology-think here, and scientific stratigraphy here)

Later, evidence for a young earth based on their ideas about population:

But suppose man has been around for one million years, as evolutionists teach. If the present growth rates are typical, there should be about 10⁸⁶⁰⁰ people alive today!

???

The famous photograph of the Japanese Zuiyo Maru 'sea monster' is used as evidence for the post-Deluge survival of dinosaurs. (This carcass has been thought to have been a basking shark for quite a while now

.On dinosaur diversity: "The fossil record shows that there were several kinds of dinosaurs and often varieties within the kinds." There's a reason for this sort of phrasing; the 'kinds' are called 'baramins' in creationist terminology and the book takes great pains to emphasize the word 'kind' with repeated italics.

Really, you could go on forever about it.

But hey, the artist is competent at least.

Found: One Calico Kitten

I'll paste what I wrote elsewhere:

Iwas getting read to go for a walk, and this kitten runs up and nyaaa's at me, immediately started rubbing on me. Actually I saw this kitty a couple days ago sleeping on the balcony in front of some other apartment, noted that she was beautiful and assumed she was their cat. But when I petted her I saw she was emaciated-looking, her stomach is so hollow and she's thin. You can feel the individual bones of her spine. I went to get some food to see, and she started wolfing it down like its the last food on earth. I gave her a small dish of water and she started gulping it like a fish.

Got a box with a towel in it, and luckily had a plastic tray I can use for a small litterbox. she immediately jumped in and started using it. O___o I wonder if she's someones kitten who got lost, maybe i could like put up an ad or something. Immediately after I dosed her with flea killer and gave her a belly rub, she conked out into a deep sleep in her bed. That's probably the first good meal and safe bed she's had for at least a few days, considering how skinny she is.

Naturally my cats are suspicious, and watching her, but luckily they aren't aggressive aside from a little growling and have never attacked other cats (they pretty much run away.) Would be easier if I could keep this one inside, but she could have fleas and probably isn't immunized either.

So... bothersome.


___

I'll have two Touhou vids today.
TAMusic violin/piano remix of "Reach For the Moon, Immortal Smoke"



Guy whose NicoNico Douga Name I can't Remember, Who Makes These Indescribable Things: A Thing I Can't Adequately Describe


I'll leave you to ponder that one...

And now for something completely different

Well well, this needed its own post, for sanitation purposes. You'll notice in the photo of the book haul, the skinny red book Jokes for the John. (c) 1961 Kanrom Inc, no author is credited.

Excerpted from the preface:

IT'S A GAS MAN!!! (sic) For the prennially pooped, we offer you hormones in print. Someone has pulled our chain again, so relax, loosen your tie and get ready to howl around like a hopped-up Tomcat.

Here, for your idle reading enjoyment is a new volume of lusty, gusty,and busty humor, that's been responsible for more blushes than an open zipper at an old maid's picnic.

This is the book that put the smoke into the clubcars.
This is the book that Lolita is afraid to bring home to father.
This is the book that everyone out of their skulls are consulting their psychiatrists about.

(formatting original)

To be honest, most of the cartoons are tired jokes about boring marriages/cheating on your wife, lame things that don't make a lot of sense nor have a lot to do with sex (false advertising!) or just innocuously 'naughty' boredom.

However, there are exceptions which I've taken the time to scan, just for you. Please look beyond the cut, as content may be borderline questionable or even offensive depending on your sensitivity level...

Ufufufu-- atarashi hon wa sugoi deshou

Epic haul; kittie.



Peterson First Field Guide, Dinosaurs' 1990.
Very small slim book, but IMO it's pretty cute and the illustrations are nice in their own way.






How and Why Book of Prehistoric Mammals
Score, I was eyeing this one and dinosaurs version. Nothing really special, but classic cos I remember these from my childhood. I rented every dinosaur/paleo related book from the public library many, many times. (c) 1962, 1981 printing O_O Man, they really got the mileage out of these old things.





Audobon Society- Prehistoric Life 1965.
I had a few of these books when I was younger, they either came from my grandparents' house or my mom got them at some estate sale. They originally, I gather, came with some sort of case, and were an educational program with different nature and science topics. Inset pictures were actually stamps that you glued in. Just happens to be luck I found the paleo one. Meh, lots of Knight and Zallinger and ripoffs thereof, but it's good times nonetheless.





Around the World Library- Attack and Defense: Antlers and Horns

"Illustrations by Hubert Meeze, Adapted by ellen M. Dolan, from the text by Edgard Kesteloot. McGraw-Hill, 1967. Really interesting illustration style. Sample below...




Bonus image from the large book, for you-know-who-you-are, cassowary fetishist. I'll use a separate post for the other pics of this, because they are excessively large and include full fold-outs.



*Thank you, this has been the latest post from a future star of "Hoarders" when I am swallowed by my vintage book collection.

Eocornus

preliminary sketch only

Eocornus, the "Dawn Horn"

It's not always possible, but I wanted to try to draw a creature every day, or every other day or so. This is modeled after Hyracotherium (referenced fossil photos, skeletal drawings and various reconstructions as usual)


Guess what, first page of Google search for "Hyracotherium" turns up lies and stupidity. You may also want to try Googling "Tiktaalik": more lying lies and lies all on page 1 of the search.

It scares me, because there are people ignorant enough to think if it's on teh Google, it must be true.

_____

(Please let me repay you!!) Guess who's coming to dinner...Carnegie Giganotosaurus and Papo Allosaurus,

(Also Included: Teh Rei)

Paleo News: Concavenator & Balaur + Bonus FAIL

(AP image by Raul Martin)

Concavenator corcavatus, hump-backed theropod
The fossil skeleton of Corcovenator is well preserved. And in addition to the small bumps that may have once hosted quills, it has a more showy claim to fame: its eleventh and twelfth vertebrae jut about twice as far from the animal's body as the rest. Unlike dinosaurs such as Spinosaurus, which had continuous fins or sails on their backs, Corcovenator seems to have had more of a short crest.

I can't figure out why they keep calling it a 'hump' when it seems to be more of an ornamental crest... well, whatever. Possibly even more notable than the crest, considering that it is not a dromaeosaur but related to 'carnosaurs' (not a very scientific term, but it works for our purposes) like Allosaurus, is the fact that it may have had feathers on its arms.

Holotype at nature.com
It's beautiful

Oh hi, super-quick feathered-Concavenator art!

___

From last week: Balaur bondoc, relative of Velociraptor. Advertised as having 'double' sickle-claws, I've read evidence that the first digit may not have been used in the same fashion as the famous rapier-bearing second toe (in most other dinosaurs of this type, digit 1 has been reduced to a hallux claw and no longer supported the animal's weight.) Unfortunately, the missing skull is a problem when it comes to accurately classifying it just yet.

Theropoda
If you're interested, there is MUCH more speculation about Balaur on Andrea Cau's blog, in multiple posts.

Note: the name Balaur comes from a Romanian mythological creature similar to a dragon. Now you've learned something about paleontology, theropod phylogeny specifically, AND Romanian folktales.

_____

While looking up articles on Concavenator, I found this hilariously sad state of affairs on the Huffington Post site


What does any of this mean? Why do I need to know it? And what on earth is it doing on the same page as actual science? Oh Morrissey, how the mighty have fallen... T_T

Growth Is Not Sustainable
Go here, instead of reading about Paris Hilton's privates. And start complaining really loudly if you find a good way. I haven't found one yet, I think I need help.

Humanity: failing at life since the advent of organized religion!