This appears to be turning into some kind of regular event! We’ve got another gift box from our buddy Derek, The Border Geek, and it was PACKED with awesome items from TMNT, Harley Quinn, Red Sonja, Marvel VS Capcom, Power Rangers, Butchovision, and a super-special EXCLUSIVE item that I guarantee you we will be the one-and-only owners of. XD
Tag: Power Rangers
Channel Surfin Box Swap 2: The Swappening!
We’ve got another Channel Surfin Box Swap today! This time around we were sent a box by Mr Hyper Geeky Johnny Tellez, and we couldn’t have been more excited because we know that Johnny knows us SO well! He totally proved it with this box, that was jam-packed with all kinds of awesomeness that you just HAVE to see. Check it out, and then be sure to check out the videos of everyone else involved! 😀
I Got a FREAKIN’ LIGHTSABER!!! (Birthday Haul)
Yeah, okay, my birthday was well over a week ago. Sue me. 🙂
In this video I’m showing off the goodies that Jason and Adrianna picked up for me for my 33rd, and they’re all AWESOME, so you should totally check it out. ^_^
“F” is for “Fangirl” – An A-to-Z Blogging Challenge Post
For the A-to-Z Challenge 2017 I’m writing all about myself. Every post will be some random fact or bit of information about me that you may or may not have already known. Maybe you’ll learn something! Feel free to let me know! ^_^
I am an enormous fangirl in every sense of the word. I’ve often been teased – both on and off of my YouTube channel – for the massive number of Funko Pops I’ve amassed, but the fact of the matter is that it’s less about the Pop figures themselves and more about the fact that I love so many franchises. Let’s just try to list a few, shall we?
We’ve got… Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Supernatural, some of the DC television universe (Arrow, Flash), pretty much all of the Marvel cinematic universe (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Avengers, etc.), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a ton of anime (Sailor Moon, Dragonball, Attack on Titan, Gintama, etc.), lots of comics – specifically Deadpool, tons of video game franchises (Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Gears of War, etc.), X-Files, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Predator, Die Hard, Alien, Disney in general, Harry Potter (movies and books), Stranger Things, Power Rangers, horror stuff in general (but 80’s slashers specifically)…
Need I go on?
Basically, I just love so many things, and I rarely ever stop loving something. I’m still hooked on stuff today that I first discovered when I was a kid, and the list is always growing with new (and new-to-me) discoveries, to the point that I’m practically the definition of FANGIRL nowadays. And I wear that badge with pride. XD
Are you a fanboy/fangirl for any particular franchises, or a million of them like me? Feel free to leave a comment!
Loot Crate Unboxing and Review for May 2015
Continuing on with the super-late unboxings, today we have the Loot Crate box for May, for which the theme was “Unite”. Take a look at the unboxing video first:
So you can see that my reaction to this particular box was a little bit mixed. But is the value there? Let’s take a look:
“Power Rangers” Green/White Ranger t-shirt: Easily my favorite thing in the box, right here. I’m totally in love with it because not only is it something different, but it’s something that totally harkens back to my childhood. This is definitely a shirt that I will have no problem at all wearing. Like all Loot Crate’s shirts this one is exclusive to the box, but we’ll still give it the standard shirt value of $15.
“Rick and Morty” 300-piece puzzle: Well this is something different, at least. A puzzle! The only thing is I wish it was of something I enjoy more. I’m sure Loot Crate was trying to get more different things in the box, but I would have preferred an Avengers puzzle, or a Power Rangers one, or really anything a little more mainstream. Still, it’s kind of a cute idea. I believe this is an exclusive item to Loot Crate, but similar-sized puzzles go for about $10.
“Team Fortress 2” 4-piece button set: These buttons don’t do it for me at all because I haven’t played Team Fortress 2 and, as mentioned in the video, I’m getting a bit sick of getting buttons in my subscription boxes. Sometimes they’re cute, but we just have so many of them now, and I’m not the kind of person who, like, decorates their clothes and stuff with things like this, so they’re basically just sitting around the house. I believe this is an exclusive to Loot Crate as well, but similar button sets go for about $6.
Marvel Comics shoelaces: Now here’s something else a little different; decorate your shoes with Marvel comics! I’m fairly amused by these, although the images on them are actually really hard to see, so from a distance they’d basically just look like a funny black and grey design. It’s too bad they aren’t a little more colorful, but at least this color scheme will go with everything. As near as I can tell this particular design is exclusive, but there are tons of other Marvel shoelaces you can get and they retail for about $9.
Marvel Ice Cube Tray: Okay, I’m pretty amused by this one, mostly because it’s the fourth in my small collection of nerdy ice cube trays, and it would be pretty cool to have Cap’s shield floating around in my whiskey. I found this particular item on a number of different websites, but the average cost of it seems to be about $12.
Marvel Avengers car decal: Now this is pretty amusing, and the more that I think about it, the more I think it would be pretty amusing to have it in the driver’s side window of my car. I might wait until we get a new vehicle though, because the rapidly-falling-apart-piece-of-junk we have does not deserve to be adorned with the Avengers’ visage. I couldn’t find this particular design online, but similar car decals go for about $5.
Mini-Mad magazine: This is a cute idea, though not terribly interesting to me, as I’m pretty certain Mad won’t hold the same sway as it did when I was a kid. A regular issue of Mad goes for $6, but this is a kind of mini-issue, so we’ll go ahead and say $3.
“Bravest Warriors” comic: I’m amassing quite a little collection of loose comics because of Loot Crate, but that’s quite alright. This one doesn’t exactly thrill me because I know nothing about Bravest Warriors, but it’s still pretty cool all the same and I will accept it. These single-issue comics go for about $5.
Total approximate value of box: $65
Total cost to me: $37
So again we have a subscription box that seems to have stepped up its game as far as value goes. There were actually a lot of items in this month’s Loot Crate, and many of them were of a good value, which is very nice to see. By far my favorite item is the Green/White Ranger t-shirt, but the Marvel ice cube tray is a close second. I don’t really care about the puzzle, the pins, or the magazine, but I’m okay with the shoelaces, the decal, and the comic. Mainly I’m just amazed that there were so many separate items in this month’s box, as most of the subscription boxes tend to come with an average of 5-6 items. Nice job on that one, Loot Crate; I’m looking forward to June’s “Cyber” box.
What did you think? Did you receive a Loot Crate for May? What was your favorite item? Least favorite? Please share!
Still a Nerd, Just One Who Hates the Cold
I’ve always found it interesting how people change as they grow up; or rather, how they both do and don’t change.
A lot of it, of course, is because of what side of a situation you are on. When I was a kid, for example, I absolutely loved the winter. Snow was one of the greatest things ever. I could bundle up and spend all day outside, digging tunnels, making snow angels, building snowmen. Sometimes my mother would have to tell me to come in and eat, because I’d completely lose track of time. I didn’t even feel the cold, because I was too busy having fun. I could never understand how my parents could hate winter so much, and get more and more frustrated every time it snowed. How could they hate snow? Snow was so awesome!
Now, of course, I’m a grown adult and I’m on the other side of the situation. When it snows, my husband and I have to shovel. When it snows a lot, we have to shovel a lot. We spend a great deal of money keeping our house warm while it gets colder and colder outside. We have to put up with the disgusting mess that seems to end up everywhere as a result of the half-slush-half-mud crap that inevitably becomes the most common substance in the world during the winter months. We curse and growl while trying to de-ice the windshield in the morning while our daughter laughs from the inside of the car and declares that she loves snow. In short: I’m a cranky adult and I hate winter now.
This is an example of how people can change as they get older, and there are plenty more. I think a fair bit of the music I listened to as a kid is complete trash, because my musical palette has matured. Some of the foods I used to eat daily as a kid now make me gag because just knowing how bad they are for you changes my ability to taste them the same way. I care a hell of a lot less about what other people think about me because I’ve found myself in the excellent position to understand that in most cases it doesn’t matter two iotas what other people think of me. I’ve changed over the years. My thoughts and opinions have changed, sometimes dramatically.
But then there’s the exception side of the coin, because no one ever really changes completely, do they? There are always going to be remnants of who you were in an earlier time.
For me, you can see it in my nerdiness. I still love almost all of the fandoms I loved as a kid. To this day I can happily sit down and watch and entire season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without coming up for breath. I’ve been known to track down shows like Sailor Moon and Pokemon just to see if I can still stomach them and found myself curling up to binge-watch with a stupid, giddy smile on my face. I don’t watch Star Wars nearly as often as I used to, but I can still kick a lot of ass at trivia games because all that useless info seems so important to my brain for some reason. I was genuinely upset to find out that they only make three of the Power Rangers as Funko Pop figures because I would kill to have the whole set. I have almost every gaming console that has been available over the past two decades, but I will still happily curl up and play an entire run-through of Final Fantasy III or Chrono Trigger. And the thing is, maybe I’m wrong (because who can really tell?), but I don’t see any of this changing any time soon. I mean, if I’m still playing Final Fantasy III almost twenty years after first discovering it, then there’s probably a pretty good chance that I’ll be playing it in the nursing home when I’m 90, while complaining to the nurses about how this virtual reality junk that the kids play today is nothing compared to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
I don’t know. It just seems funny to me how some attitudes and options can change so dramatically, and yet other things can stick to you like glue throughout your entire life. There’s a psychology research paper in there somewhere, I think.
What about you? Which aspects of your personality have changed so much that the younger version of you wouldn’t understand what the hell had happened, and which things are so much the same that part of you wonders if you ever really grew up at all?
A to Z Challenge Day 2: Buffy Summers (the Vampire Slayer)
You wouldn’t know it by looking at the types of books I read or some of the scenes I, myself, have written, but when I was younger I was quite a wuss. I was a Disney kid who liked puppies and kittens and was too shy for her own good, so scary stuff wasn’t really my thing. To explain to you just how much of a wuss I was, it took several years for me to make it all the way through Pinocchio because I was scared half to death of Monstro the whale. I had more than a few nightmares about that devil-whale.
Yet, despite the adrenaline that would kick up the second something even began to consider being scary, there were a few ghosts-and-monsters related shows that I loved to watch, most of them on YTV on Friday nights. One such show was Buffy the Vampire slayer, which I began watching right from the very beginning. At this point in my life I’d never seen the original movie version of Buffy, but I took immediately to the show, and to Buffy in particular.
There have been many arguments on both sides of the fence when it comes to this particular show, but all I can say either way is that I’ve loved it from the moment I first discovered it, and Buffy immediately became one of my favorite characters ever. She was created by (in my opinion) a brilliant writer in Joss Whedon, and brought to live by (in my opinion) a wonderful actress in Sarah Michelle Gellar, but neither of those things were the reason why I took to Buffy so well.
When I was a kid things were starting to sway, but it was still the “way” of things for the guy to be the hero. The handsome jock would lead the team (Power Rangers), the men would be responsible for the most important battles (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo), the charming prince would rescue the damsel in distress (so many examples I couldn’t possibly list them all). In a world where, for the most part, the girls were the background characters or constantly being rescued, here was a female character who was front line and center. She was the main character, strong and powerful and could totally kick ass, and she was the one doing 99% of the saving. And for all her strength and Chosen One-liness, she was at the core just a regular girl. Her strength didn’t come from size, nor her abilities from super-intelligence. She was just a girl. She had been a cheerleader. She had been totally full of herself, as many teenage girls are. In other words, she could have been anyone. She could have been me, or my best friend, or that really quiet girl in my class who was sweet but shy, or the loud-mouth popular girl who everyone secretly hated.
That appealed to me as a kid. The idea that any random, completely typical teenage girl could just up and become a superhero was a huge thing.
But – and here’s the important part that Whedon and Gellar had a huge influence on – even though she was the center of the monster-slaying universe, and was the most important character, and was the kick-ass female hero, Buffy was not by any means infallible or invulnerable. She made huge mistakes. She got her butt handed to her on multiple occasions. She fell into deep depressions. She hurt the ones she loved and then made herself miserable trying to fix things. She saved the world, but she couldn’t always save all the victims. And that just made her that much more real, that much easier to relate to, that much easier to care for. Buffy Summers is one of those characters whom I became so fond of, so invested in, that it hurt me physically to see her in any kind of pain.
It’s been 17 years since the first time I watched a Buffy episode, and over the course of those 17 years I’ve watched every Buffy episode at least three or four times. Some episodes were better than others, and I will readily agree with some that the first couple of seasons were leaps and bounds over the last couple, but in the end I loved them all. Buffy was one of the first fictional characters to make me bawl like a little girl, something I am none too embarrassed to admit, but as crying for a fictional character is not exactly a common occurrence for me, I think that just goes to prove how awesome Buffy really was.
The Depressingly Difficult Rehabilitation of a Tomboy
I’ve never been accused of being a girly girl. Growing up I preferred jeans to skirts, ponytails to any other hairstyle, and sneakers to heels. I was the kind of girl who would rather play with her male cousins’ action figures than with Barbies. Some of my favorite shows when I was a kid were Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. And I wasn’t into that cutesy Pink Ranger…I wanted to be the ultra-cool loner Green Ranger.
I grew up around mostly boy cousins, I always got along better with the boys in my classes, and I chose a career path that had me constantly surrounded by guys. I was the first woman to ever be hired as a tradesman at the paper mill where I used to work. I play video games, drink hard liquor, and couldn’t give less of a rat’s backside about the lives of celebrities or reality show contestants.
You could say, I suppose, that I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy. And that’s fine. I definitely think I’ve turned out better for it, to be perfectly honest.
But in my advanced age (dude, I’m gonna be thirty next year!) I’ve begun to poke a little into the world of girly girls…or womanly women, I guess. Mostly this has come as the result of having a daughter. While I happily wear jeans, I just can’t help but think that it’s so adorable when she wears skirts. It’s some strange, motherly madness. But at least some of my foray into womanliness has come as a desire to simply start looking like I care a little more about my appearance. Jeans, t-shirts, and a ponytail don’t exact scream, “I spent more than five minutes getting ready this morning!” And honestly, I can look really nice if I bother to put in some effort.
So I started putting in some effort, in the form of pulling out the ponytails and wearing my hair down every so often. But there is a caveat to this decision. See, my hair is thick, wavy in a completely nonsensical way, and likes to frizz out like I just touched something full of static. This is the reason why I have to straighten it with a flat iron.
Given that I’m a technician by trade, you wouldn’t think this would be a huge problem, but I have come to establish that flat iron use is one of the most complicated things I’ve ever done.
The first time I tried to do it I did what any lifetime tomboy would probably do…I just picked up chunks of hair and started running them through the iron. What felt like hours later I had accomplished visibly bugger all. What the hell was I doing wrong, I wondered? My hairdresser always managed to make this look good during my one or two visits a year (don’t judge me).
So the next time I was at my hairdresser I paid attention I what she was doing instead of daydreaming about what my husband would say if I showed up home with my hair completely hacked off. What I found was that she would pick up 85% of my hair, pin it up on top of my head, and use the flat iron on the little bit that was left. Then she let a little more down and repeat, and repeat until the whole thing was done.
Ah. Do it in layers. I totally should have though of that.
So that’s what I did: I got one of those little alligator clip thingies, piled most of my hair up on top of my head, and went to work. And it worked! Slowly. Very, painstakingly slowly. Again it felt like hours before it was done and though the result wasn’t half bad I felt that it had been an outrageous waste of time.
It wasn’t until months later that my sister-in-law informed me that my straightener was a cheap piece of junk, suitable for women with super-thin hair, but not for my horse-like mane. I needed more heat, she told me. I needed the kind of flat iron that the hairdressers use, the ones that go up to “holy Christ almighty that is scalding!” levels.
So I appealed to my hairdresser, she promise to order me a decent iron that could withstand my Herculean hair, and since it was close to my birthday my parents told me they’d get it for me. Huzzah! A month later I held my brand new flat iron, all shiny blue, with a temperature rating just under the bowels of hell itself. Hot damn, I was finally going to have this thing figured out!
So I ripped the flat iron out of its packaging, piled 85% of my hair up on top of my head, and set to straightening my hair… And immediately cried out in agony. Turned out that the flat iron was so hot that the residual heat it left behind on my hair burned the hell out of the side of my face and neck. I had neglected to notice that when my hairdresser does this she uses a comb to hold the hair away from my head for a few seconds to allow some of the heat to dissipate. Achieving this same maneuver on your own head is surprisingly difficult and evidently requires a fair deal of practice, because I scalded myself at least a dozen more times. My pride was a wee bit sore after that one. So was my neck.
In the end, I’m still a rather large tomboy, and I’ll still wear my hair in ponytails most of the time, but I am also determined to get the hang of this thing if for no other reason than proving that the girly girls aren’t somehow better than me. Because, dammit, I’m a technician and I’m not going to let two strips of hot metal get the better of me!**
**The famous last words of Mrs Tracey Lynn Tobin
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