Moe Lane's Blog, page 92

Tweet of the Day, You’d Think This Would Be In The Operator’s Manual edition.

Heck, you’d think there would be an Operator’s Manual. For kids, I mean. Nope, they just send you and your spouse home from the hospital with a highly complex, multi-decade project in tow, with nary a bit of real documentation. If you press them, maybe they give you some website links. Maybe.

So you’re NOT supposed to do that?

File this under “things I could have been told YESTERDAY.” pic.twitter.com/pgAdt7eU2m

— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) January 29, 2025

I meant this as a joke, but now I’m maybe getting a little peeved about this. Or maybe I’m just hungry.

‘March of the Codominium Line Marines’ (Jerry Pournelle)

This is stupidly difficult to find online, so I’m going to fix that now. This was checked against Pournelle’s compilation book Falkenberg’s Legion; there are slightly different versions elsewhere.

#commissionearned

March of the Codominium Line Marines (Jerry Pournelle)

We’ve left blood in the dust of twenty-five worlds
We’ve built roads on a dozen more,
And all that have get at the end of our hitch
Buys a night with a second-rate whore.
The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls,
The orders come down from on high:
Now it’s “On Full Kits” and “Sound Board Ships”
They’re sending us where we can die.

The lands that we take, the Senate gives back
Rather more often than not;
But the more that are killed, the less share the loot
And we won’t be back to this spot.
We’ll break the hearts of your women and girls,
We may break your arse as well,-
But the Line Marines with their banners unfurled
Will follow those banners to Hell.

We know the Devil, his pomps and his works,
Ah, yes, we know them well!
When you’ve served out your hitch in the a Line Marines
You can bugger the Senate of Hell!

Then we’ll drink with our comrades and throw down our packs
We’ll spend ten years on the flat of our backs,
Then it’s ‘On Full Kits” and out of your racks!
You must build a new road through Hell!

The Fleet is our country, we sleep with a rifle.
No man ever begot a son on his rifle.
They pay us in gin and curse when we sin,
There’s not one that can stand us unless we’re downwind,
We’re shot when we lose and turned out when we win,
But we bury our comrades wherever they fall,
And there’s none who that face us, though we’ve nothing at all.

We’ve left blood in the dust of twenty-five worlds
We’ve built roads on a dozen more,
And all that have get at the end of our hitch
Buys a night with a second-rate whore.
The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls,
The orders come down from on high:
Now it’s “On Full Kits” and “Sound Board Ships”
They’re sending us where we can die.

‘Dead.’

This entire album has been in my head all day.

Dead, They Might Be Giants

#commissionearned

This has not been a productive month.

Sorry about that! …Well, I guess it has been productive, in its way. I’m just not doing well with deadline stuff. I need to reorganize.

The SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 Honest Trailer.

Honest Trailers noted this both in the video and in their blurb: the Sonic franchise is remarkably good, all things considered. I went to see SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 with my kids – and while I wasn’t wowed, particularly, I am neither a teenager nor a player of the Sonic games. Even then, I wasn’t clawing my eyes out, or anything. Jim Carrey was funny. There were some good shots. It did its duty.

Which isn’t nothing. Nobody really expected the franchise to get this far. Well done!

#commissionearned

The Secret World-North America TTRPG Savage Worlds and 5E Kickstarter is live.

I’ll likely be doing the Savage Worlds version. It’s half-tempting to put Morganey in this one, too, but three hundred bucks is a bit much to do it twice.

(The Secret World-North America TTRPG Savage Worlds and 5E Kickstarter)

‘The Golem Job’ is up on Patreon.

To quote from there because I’m feeling lazy:

This is one of the things getting added to the Fermi Resolution Worldbook – it’s also available as part of TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION Vol. 2 – and I’m putting up this version here for free as an enticement. The Backerkit starts in a week! Sign up now (Sign-up link)!

Again, free.

‘Eve of Destruction.’

Some day, maybe they’ll be able to sustain a good version of The Stand.

Eve of Destruction, Barry McGuire

#commissionearned

Today was a Real Life Day, alas.

Oil changes and errands and vetting homework and cooking and all the rest of it. I plan to buckle down for the rest of the month, though. Since I don’t really have a choice anyway.

So you *can* get value out of advertising. Good to know.

Prepare the viands, prepare the foods, prepare the strange wines, for tonight
is indeed a great night!

Guess when I started the Facebook ad campaign for the Fermi Resolution Worldbook Backerkit!

…This isn’t sarcasm, or a twist. The Facebook ads worked. Let me repeat that: the Facebook ads worked. And all I had to do was reflexively follow Backerkit’s instructions, to the letter, and with as little originality as I could muster.

Note that the right lines mark how many followers I’ve gotten for this project in total, not how many I’m getting per day. If I had pulled four hundred followers out of this advertising junket I’d be making entirely different plans for next week. I’m happy with the numbers I’ve gotten, trust me.

Now I just have to figure out what it all means.