Halloween DIY

Hi Blog! So, I realise that it's been a while since I've written in you. I'm so sorry.

I have been working on writing some stuff, which I need to man up and finish off. In the meantime though, I've been doing other productive things! For instance, this year, me and my friends are doing The Avengers for halloween. I called dibs on Iron Man, and obviously, that meant I had to build my own Arc Reactor. So, here we go!

Step 1: The Ingredients

For the main body of the reactor, I took a trip to the Dollar Store and got myself a sink filter, a smaller mesh one, and two rubber washers. A quick trip to the hardware store got me some copper wire. I cut the white plastic stopper into the desired ring shape, and started wrapping the copper around it. It fits pretty snugly on top of the sink filter, which is going to eventually hold all the inner electronics. A little mesh filter sits in the middle.

Step 2: The Body

Here it is with the copper rings all wound up, with the inner mesh filter, black rubber washer and main ring all glued together. The whole thing is maybe 0.5-0.75 inches thick.

Step 3: The Lights

Now on to the fun stuff! I've never made anything electrical before, so I was pretty much starting from scratch. Some research into LEDs and a few basic circuitry lessons later, I figured out what circuit I'd need. I ordered the LEDs online for super-cheap, and for the wire, solder and resistors I found a place on Canal street that was tucked behind a bootleg luggage store and run by a geriatric Chinese man. Who was super-helpful!

I soldered each 'leg' of the parallel circuit together separately, which is what you see above. Turns out soldering millimeter-thick pins to wire is kind of finnicky.

And here they are wired up together and connected to the battery! It's aliiiiiiive! Turning this on was a big 'hold-on-to-your-butts' moment, lemme tell ya.

Step 4: All Together Now

And here it is! I forgot to snap a picture of the inside of the reactor with all the wiring in place, but I basically had the two battery lead wires running through a hole in the bottom, and everything else kind of mashed around in the middle. I tried to get the LEDs spaced out roughly evenly inside, to create an even glow.

Step 5: Put That Camera Away, You're Just Embarrassing Yourself

Obligatory awkward under-the-shirt shot. SELFIES! But as you can see, it shines through nicely even through a t-shirt! My plan is to super-glue this bad boy to a belt and strap it to my chest. My costume is basically going to be 'Tony Stark on his day off', since I'm too lazy to contemplate making/buying an actual Iron Man costume.

Although, now I think of it, I do have an idea how I'd make a pretty sweet glove. And I do have plenty of spare LEDs and wire... watch this space?

Nothing to Remember - 1

Sam Walker was in his third day of cornfields when he saw her standing there at the side of the road. 

It was incredible, really, how much of nothing he'd seen in the past week. He'd been warned about it before he'd left, but he'd never really believed it. Each little diner he'd stopped in, he'd had the same conversations. The accent was always the first topic of discussion, quickly followed by the list of acquaintances and friends-of-friends who lived in England, did he know them? (Of course! was always the answer, Insert-name-here! What a joker! But then he'd feel bad when they got all excited and he had to fess up. Sam was quickly learning that different rules of humour applied out here). Then they'd get around to asking him what he was doing out here, and he'd always have to answer truthfully because he honestly couldn't think of any other way to explain it: 

"Oh, I'm just getting away from it all for a bit. I needed a change. I thought I'd try driving around the midwest a bit." 

Then there was always the silence, the grimaces, the attempts at clarification. "You mean, down through to Dallas or Phoenix?" "Or up to Chi-town?"

"Nope. Just... you know. See a bit of the countryside. The great frontier, you know?" 

And they'd shake their heads, chuckle, and mutter something about crazy Brits. It seemed to endear him to them more, though, and once or twice he'd even gotten a free breakfast out of it. If you could call it a breakfast, at least... for the supposed leader of the free world, they seemed to have a distressing baked beans famine. 

They'd told him, you're not going to see nothin'. You want the nature, you want the full amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties, you wanna go out West into the Smokies, or East and down, get into Bayou country or the Appalachians. Hell, even Arizona's got something goin' for it. But the Midwest? Son, don't nobody hang around the middle of this country unless they ain't got a choice. He'd been told - and this was a fact, he'd looked it up - that more Apollo astronauts had come from Ohio than from any other state. By a big margin. And didn't that tell you somethin' about the place, that you don't just wanna leave the state, you wanna clear leave the Earth! 

Sam hadn't really taken it to heart. It came from growing up in a village that was barely big enough to host a good game of tennis, and coming from a country where a 2-hour drive to Margate was considered Going On Holiday. He'd rented the cheapest car he could find from a crooked little dealership in Tulsa and had been driving around since, taking the back roads where he could (despite the alarming protests from the car's suspension, brakes, and Everything), and firmly expecting that he'd be in Minneapolis by teatime.

Five days later, and he was still driving.

Sure, he was taking the back roads, and his route probably looked like a snake with vertigo. But it was incredible! This place was huge, on a scale that he still found it impossible to wrap his head around. And for days now, it had been cornfields - corn and corn and corn and corn with the occasional tired-looking barn or windmill or rusting watertower. He'd come across a town once or twice, and that had felt like downtown London during the Six Nations. But for the most part, it was just mind-numbing. Sam would keep his eyes focused on the middle distance and his mind would just turn to cotton wool. He'd made a game of how many bugs he could squish on his windscreen, and was up to 439 so far. It was all running together because there was absolutely nothing going on. Sometimes it felt like it had been a day. Sometimes a week. God, oh god, it was boring.

Sam couldn't have been happier. 

This, he told himself, was exactly what he needed. What he needed was nothing, and that's exactly what he was getting, and in great quantities. His cup overfloweth'd with nothing. He had nothing coming out of his ears. Just sweet sweet monotony and boredom. No idiot coworkers, no harebrained schemes, no old people, and - best of all - not a frozen chicken to be found for miles. Just him, the road, a rickety old car that smelled like Oxo gravy mix, and all the corn and lack of stimulation a young man could dream of. 

So when he saw her on Corn Day Three, standing there by the side of the road with her thumb out and a dusty backpack slung over her shoulder, his first thought was, '...great. Just great.'

I'm ashamed that I'm barely human / I'm ashamed that I don't have a heart you can break

Merdraut

   It had started raining. Again. That's all it seemed to do in this godsforsaken place. He could hear it, pattering maddeningly against the sodden canvas, a ceaseless tattoo that pounded inside his head and threatened to drive out all rationality. Medraut pulled himself from his bunk, lifted a moulding flap of his tent and poked his head out, looking around in disgust and taking a deep breath.

   "Ugh. This entire place smells like a shitheap." He laughed and spat on the ground.

   In all fairness, this wasn't entirely inaccurate. The army had been camped out here for days now, and it wasn't made up of the kind of men for whom 'military discipline' or even 'basic hygiene' were ever big motivating factors. Tents sprouted haphazardly from the ground like particularly noxious mushrooms, a metaphor made particularly apt by the fact that, by and large, they were erected on a great churned-up mess of mud and manure. Not all of it was from the long-since-butchered cattle, either. This thrice-damned rain had long since flooded out the middens. Everywhere Medraut looked, surly roughnecks were clutching their spears and swords and growling at each other, wading about shin-deep in their own shit. Oh gods, it was so wonderful, he could just die laughing.

   Medraut took another deep, satisfied breath and turned back into his tent. He glanced at the mess in his bunk. Ah well, he was growing bored of this one anyway. Pity how none of them seemed to really last. He reached for his tunic, buttoned it up, and strapped on his sword belt. The blade slapped naked against his thigh, reassuring and heavy. He laid a hand on the pommel and felt that familiar - almost orgasmic - rush of energy. Thus enlivened, he turned from the gurgling, bleeding figure on the bunk and strode out into his camp.

   He strode along through the rain and nodded amicably to all the sellswords and thugs around him. Some shrank from his path. Funny, really, the camp had seemed so crowded just moments ago, but wherever he went there was a clear, broad avenue in front of him. Men who could punch out draft-horses scattered before their slight leader. They'd all heard the stories, some of them had been unlucky enough to have witnessed them first-hand. His eyes, too, they whispered to each other... there was something wrong with his eyes. And for whatever reason, though no-one would dare meet his gaze, none could help but stare at the sword that swung unsheathed at his hip. 

   Medraut grabbed at one unfortunate who was a little too slow in getting out of the way. "Ah, Moreg!" He threw a friendly arm around his shoulder, and Moreg - who was built like an ox and was rumoured to have killed his own father for fucking his mother - felt the blood drain right out of him.

   "A-aye m'lord?" Moreg gulped and prayed his legs wouldn't give out.

   "A small favour." Medraut pinned the man down with a sincere grin. He was always grinning, like the world had told the best-ever joke and only he had gotten it. There was a distant rumble of thunder. "I've been a bit naughty, you see, and I've left my tent in a bit of a state. You know how it goes. I'm going to need you-" he patted Moreg on the shoulder, and the man choked on a low groan, "to make sure it's all nicely done up when I get back." 

   He stared at Moreg. The smile was still there, but oh gods and spirits, those eyes. Moreg couldn't help but notice, too, that the other hand was resting on the sword-hilt. He closed his eyes and nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was shaking.

   "Good man!" Medraut gave Moreg a clap on the back that damn near stopped his heart. "I'll be back before long. I shouldn't dawdle, if I was you." He strode on without looking back, and stifled the urge to scream with laughter at the sound of a grown man stumbling, slipping in the rain, and falling face-first into crap. 

   And now Medraut was alone, standing in the plain outside of the camp with the rain driving down around him, soaking his hair, running over his face, down his back. He had his sword gripped tightly in his hand. He wasn't smiling.

   The moors were an utterly forsaken place. Just like the rest of the surrounding country, really. Gods and spirits, what the hell was there here that was worth anything? Grass and lichen and great big fucking rocks. There was nothing around for miles, and when you finally did reach something, it wasn't much. How could you make so much out of so little? It was offensive. It was disgusting. It was boring. 

   Oh, it had once been great. A great kingdom, a light in the darkness, a real paradise. Justice and nobility and chivalry, and all of it gone to hell now. Medraut allowed himself a little smirk. He had seen to that.

   Now it was a lot of nothing, just another shitheap, just another windblown rain-soaked midden in the middle of a land that even the Romans had given up as a bad job. How bad did something have to be for those pious fuckwits to abandon it?
   And somewhere out there, probably not too far out, he was there. Him, with his perfect wife and his perfect god - him, in his sin and his hypocrisy and his utterly tedious holier-than-thou attitude. And now he had an army all of his own, a lovely collection of shiny knights and toy soldiers. Merdraut stared into the rain. They were out there, somewhere not too far away, cowering under this angry sky. And before much longer he was going to march all his shiny knights and toy soldiers up to Merdraut's rabble, and the two of them were going to duke it out - to the death, hopefully - all for this godsforsaken had-been-a-kingdom. 

   Ah, but that was it, wasn't it? This country might be desolately, insultingly boring; it might be a pathetic discard of the old Empire; but that was all beside the point. It wasn't Merdraut's. It was that other bastard's. His. He was the one who had built that something out of this nothing, all those years ago. The hubris! The sheer pious arrogance! And so long as this land was his, it was the most precious thing of all. Merdraut didn't give a beggar's ass about anything beyond that. He had long ago decided that he would do anything - he would laugh as the whole fucking world burned down around them - so long as he got to make sure that he got to watch his precious kingdom burn too.

   The storm was almost on them, now. Lightning crashed down on the moors. Merdraut grinned wildly, slashed his sword upwards, and screamed defiance as an answering bolt stabbed into the sky. Take that, you bastard. Take that, you fucking god of his. 

   Raindrops sizzled and danced along the flat of the blade as he thrust it back into his belt. Merdraut let out a long, manic laugh, spat against the rain, and stalked back to the camp.