{"id":4542,"date":"2014-06-26T08:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T13:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2014-06-23T11:36:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T16:36:47","slug":"festivus-in-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4542","title":{"rendered":"Festivus in June"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I briefly mentioned once that last year, I participated in Talking Time&#8217;s yearly Festivus gift exchange. It&#8217;s essentially an internet Secret Santa (here dubbed Ninja Santa), with each forum member who signs up given the mission of sending out a gift to an assigned recipient.<\/p>\n<p>I have very little confidence in my ability to pick out gifts for people, and I was panicking pretty hard to get my gift done and sent before Christmas, but I did it. I spent a little more than I&#8217;d hoped to, but my &#8220;victim&#8221; was happy, and so was I. Then all that was left to do was to wait for my gift to arrive.<\/p>\n<p>I waited, and then I waited some more.<\/p>\n<p>By the time March rolled around, I&#8217;d accepted my giftless fate, and figured that I&#8217;d just have to be content in knowing that I&#8217;d done my part. &#8220;More important to give&#8221; and all that jazz.<\/p>\n<p>Then last week this showed up.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/festivus01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I was not particularly shocked, as the fella who organized the whole affair had said that he&#8217;d be sending out consolation gifts to everyone whose Ninja Santa had flaked. Apparently the flake rate was really high this year, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nichronomicon\">Nich<\/a> was paying for these consolation gifts out of his own pocket, so to say that he&#8217;s a pretty good dude would be a serious understatement.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at what&#8217;s inside, shall we?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/festivus04.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A big book of ghost stories! <em>Mammoth<\/em>, even, if the cover is to be believed. I&#8217;m so very happy to have received this book, as I&#8217;ve been crazy about ghost stories since I was a wee lad. In my adult life, I&#8217;ve not read a single one, so this fills a long-neglected niche.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth mentioning that I am also legitimately <em>terrified<\/em> of ghosts, regardless of whether they&#8217;re real or not, so this book will probably contribute to more than a few sleepless nights. I can&#8217;t wait!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/festivus05.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Also a collection of old horror comics! This is exactly the kind of thing that I would spend my own dollars on if I had some to spare, so I&#8217;m also really happy with this.<\/p>\n<p>For whatever reason, I have a deep appreciation for Golden Age comics. I don&#8217;t have a clue where it comes from, but I look at this book and I think that it&#8217;s exactly the kind of thing that I want to be reading.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not very familiar with EC Comics on the whole, but I&#8217;ve had a life-long fascination with <em>Tales From the Crypt<\/em>, so a publication of a similar theme should be right up my alley, yes? Only time will tell for sure, but I can&#8217;t imagine any reality in which I end up disappointed after reading through this volume.<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s my Festivus haul. I&#8217;d say that it goes above and beyond being a simple &#8220;consolation gift.&#8221; I know that if I had to shell out to supply gifts to all the folks who didn&#8217;t get, I&#8217;d probably have just sent out the same generic tchotchkes to everyone, rather than hand-picking personalized gifts. So it&#8217;s a good thing that I don&#8217;t ever plan to run Festivus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I briefly mentioned once that last year, I participated in Talking Time&#8217;s yearly Festivus gift exchange. It&#8217;s essentially an internet Secret Santa (here dubbed Ninja Santa), with each forum member who signs up given the mission of sending out a gift to an assigned recipient. I have very little confidence in my ability to pick &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=4542\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Festivus in June<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,22,30,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-holidays","category-reading","category-spooky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4544,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions\/4544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}