I, Patrick D Ryall, being of sound mind do by my own volition declare that I like stegosauruses. If anyone need to cite a claim anywhere on the Internet that PDR likes Stegosauruses, they can link to this post which confirms that information.

Haiku!

Stegosauruses!
PDR really likes them!
This site is the proof!

Thank you for understanding and spreading the word that Patrick D Ryall does, indeed, like stegosauruses.

There’s not really any thematic link between the two heroes I’m giving you this week, but here they are:

Stegosauress

Stegosauress has the spine, tail, and thagomizer of a stegosaurus. There’s not much else that one needs to know, but I suppose I’ll come up with some more anyway.

Following her origin, she had Stegosaurus powers and became Stegosauress. Now she fights crime with her Stegosaurus powers. I don’t know what more I could possibly say!

This is a character created name first, that’s for sure. And I admit, the particular bad naming joke could work with any dinosaur ending with -saurus (Tyrannosauress, Brachiosauress, anything), but I’m not doing that. Stegosauruses are the best and I see no reason to diversify.

Lex Techno

Lex Techno lives in a world where the bad guys are winning, and the heroes have to be tough just to survive. Superhuman dictators have conquered the world and divided it among themselves. Wars rage between them causing destruction and pollution on a scale the world has never seen. Slavery, genocide, and viral warfare are all over the place like they’re going out of style. Comfortable shoes cost way too much. It’s basically a world you don’t want to live in.

But Lex Techno lives there. And he’s trying to make the place workable. Lex Techno is a cyborg, more than 50% technology, and he’s been fighting his entire life. The leader of a proactive squad of violent super-soldiers called Raid Force Zero. The group performs hit-and-run attacks on the villainous despots and try to make a difference as best they can. With all necessary brutality.

The 90s have a reputation in comics as being a time when stupid violent stories starring stupid violent guys with big guns and shoulder pads. First of all, the 90s were the decade when I got into comics, so I know very well that that is an oversimplification that is just wrong. There was no point during the 90s when there wasn’t something good being done. Sure, I admit that for a couple of years that bleak kind of hero was the dominant trend, but you can’t write off the whole decade.

But Lex Techno is not a rejection of those 90s Anti-Heroes, he’s an embracing of them, because simply being a 90s-style character is not inherently bad. The cyborg soldiers and killer vigilantes of that era are as much a part of superhero mythology that we should accept that and deal with it. So, with Ol’ Lex here, I’d try to explore what kind of heroism you’d expect to find in the bleakest of circumstances.

This time we meet Joe Tyrrell, a scientist who discovers dinosaur bones. Surprise dinosaur bones are, like, seven times better than regular dinosaur bones. Canada wins!

This one gets a Piece of Cake for the soundtrack. Mostly I mean the native chanting there, but there’s a bit of other stuff going on. That all adds up to a nice bit of atmosphere.

I’ll dole out another Piece of Cake for Tyrrell himself. He’s got a beard worth respect. Also, this is another case of only having one person during the whole Moment. He carries it himself, aided only by the landscape, and it works out fine. Its interesting how sometimes they can fit so much story into a minute, and other times they do so little. It doesn’t hurt this piece to be simple, though, because there’s not much expansion you can do with a “guy finds surprise dinosaur bones” plot.

I’ll throw another Piece at it for being about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are literally dinosaurs. So they’re awesome. And one more Piece for the phrase “Grandfather of the Buffalo”, which is totally cool and deserves more play (and is as close as this piece comes to a quotable bit).

So thanks to math, I know that this Heritage Moment has earned Four Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. Not bad.

Yesterday evening I was feeling groggy after a large family meal and I thought, as I do several times a year “I’ll just have a nap” and I let myself drift off to sleep. Now I’m waking up just a few hours before I should actually be going to sleep. Napping is not a skill that PDR possesses.

When I go to sleep, my body apparently thinks “Well, let us make this stick as long as possible” no matter what I think. I seem to be getting more and more able to turn off my alarm without waking and, unless my phone is lying to me, I seem to have checked a text message in my sleep yesterday. I value awake-times much more than sleep-times and this is not ideal. I guess it is my own fault for making naps such a rare part of my habits. I never slept on buses or in school or any of the places I could have trained my nap-senses (the only time I’ve even slept on an airplane was on a fourteen hour flight and was a proper sleep, not a nap). I suppose this is my own fault for not fostering proper napabilities when I could. And now, something must be done. I guess, from this point on, I just need to tell myself: No more naps. If I feel like I could use a nap, I am to tell myself “Shut up, dummy!” and stick to awakeness.

Well, I’ve really got no point to this complainy post save that I felt like I should write something to account for my confusion of my sleeping schedule (Also I’m not quite awake yet). Gotta get something out of it. Still, as I said quite recently, I’m big on dreams. My dream last night had dinosaurs. That counts as a point in my favor, but now I have to try to readjust in time for work tonight… We shall see.

I wanted to see if my Early Morning Snow Sculpting skills had improved any since I made the Snow Duck, so when I got off work to see a layer of fluffy, packy snow was on the ground and the weather was pleasant, I went back to the Halifax Commons with a vengeance to make an animal I like even better than ducks. Stegosaurus!

I certainly don’t have the skill to make a standing Stegosaurus. I wasn’t even stupid enough to try that. But it turned out, I actually have no idea how the best dinosaur would have slept. I elected for “head down on forelimbs like a dog” because it seemed easier than “On a pile of notes from other dinosaurs admitting that Stegosaurus was the best”. Note are had to make in the medium of snow.

So anyway, this is my guy. He’s pretty small, but that’s okay, because he is clearly just a baby. He would definitely have grown into a mighty Snowgasaur whom even the Ice Age would be powerless to stop. He’d be eating all the snow peas and iceberg lettuce that I assume would have been around.

I like him, but I know I could have done better. If I’d planned this ahead of time I could have prepared. Even beyond reminding myself what they actually looked like, let alone seeing how they would have slept or how their legs bent. Also, I could have used carrots for that thagomizer spikes. That would have been sweet. Also, maybe wearing a pair of gloves. My hands are cold.

But anyway, the weather is supposed to get warm today, so this won’t be in town long. Bye snowgasaurus, thanks for dropping in.