LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 5

Another weird day in the Advent Calendar. Another build that I had to look up to see what it is. As much of a Star Wars geek that I am, I really only know the movies I through VII, plus Rogue One and the Han Solo movie. I don't know the animated ones, and totally don't know the video games, or that other weird one from Day 3, the animated series the name of which I cannot remember and don't feel like looking up.

So far, Day 3 and Day 5 (today) have required looking them up online, and Day 4 (yesterday) would have required a lookup except that I remembered the design from the large build set that LEGO made last year.

Day 5: Imperial Dry Cleaning Droid

No, not really, but it could be. Let's try that again:

Day 5: IG-88

Yep - that's right - IG-88, the droid bounty hunter from Episode V that everyone knows, and that I should have recognized, but didn't.

So yes, my above rant is somewhat justified, but not really. IG-88 is obscure to the layperson, but should not have been to me. Today was not a weird day at all - it was an appropriate day. A good day. Argh! I apologize if I lost some street cred with you on this. But in my defense, this is a much thinner and minimal version. LEGO has a difficult time with a lot of the droids because it has such a small set of possible pieces to use to make one, so they all end up looking the same except for color.

But in the case of IG-88, the head - definitely the same head as the real one. Crap. Dead giveaway, and I missed it.

So, excuses aside, this is me, failing. To think that was another weird build and part of LEGO's bizarre careening through the Star Wars universe was totally errant. Embarrassing. But I'm a pastor, so I'm willing to be embarrassed in public to show that we don't have to be perfect and that we can be honest and vulnerable about our limited abilities. Especially during Advent, as we await the One who came to remind us, as God had been trying to remind us for millennia, that it's okay to be imperfect. Even a self-identified Star Wars nut.

The gift for today is very cool. All bounty hunters in Star Wars are cool. I want a whole set of them now.

There is the Star Wars Bounty Hunter Speeder Bike set that has the four non-Boba bounty hunters (including an IG-88 with a different blaster), which might be worth buying just to have the four minifigures in it. I haven't gotten it because the speeder bike is ugly and I have no interest in it. But now that I have one version of an IG-88, and a few Boba Fetts, I feel kinda stupid for not having the others. I'll keep you posted if I decide to get it.

Speaking of getting things: I did go out today and get the Republic Fighter Tank, LEGO 75182, because I liked the Advent Calendar version so much. Got it for $20 at WalMart, which is $4.99 less than the LEGO store - and even with VIP points, buying anything for less than 95% of the store price is a win, or during double VIP points, anything less than 90%. Yeah, I know, WalMart, but I had a meeting with Prevent Suicide Chippewa Valley at the Goodwill next door, so popped in to check out what they might have had on sale. And getting it for 80% of list price? It's a win, even though my internal social justice warrior is disappointed in myself for supporting WalMart.

Pretty sweet!

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 4

Okay, the Advent Calendar is swerving madly all over the Star Wars world by giving us another build, like yesterday, that isn't from any movies.

Day 4 sees a Republic Fighter Tank as I was pretty sure was seen in Episode III, but according to the Star Wars wiki page, it's only showed up in games, books, and animated shows.

It's perhaps as good a model as one can expect given the 23 or so pieces in it.

LEGO released a large build of this last year, and I always thought it looked pretty good, but not something I wanted, so I don't have one.

So, here it is:

Pretty cool!

And it came with a spare turret, which are good to have around as extras to spice up other models that could use an antenna, or a laser cannon, or a bzzzzt thing.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 3

Today, we go away from the movies entirely and into the realm of animation with The Freemaker Adventures. I have no idea what they are, because I've not watched them.

I did, however, know that this build is called The Arrowhead, because LEGO released a large scale build of this last year and it seemed pretty similar. I did not get the large-scale Arrowhead because it's an ugly ship, IMO.

To me, that's a very unpleasing ship design.I'm curious what the ship looks like in the cartoons. So bear with me a moment - I'm going to look for one.

Here it is, to the best of my knowledge - not having seen the show, I don't know if this is a picture of the actual one or a fan-person's rendering. But close enough.

It's a bit better than the LEGO realization, but it's still not a ship I would want to be flying in the Star Wars universe. I'd feel cheated. Might even join the Empire just to get a cooler ship.

Anyway, the point here is to show what comes in the calendar, so here is today's build of the Arrowhead.

Somehow the low-piece-count version turns out kind of charming and cute in a way that the original doesn't manage. It's a close approximation, I'll give it that, but not very close. But for a build that is, I think, 16 pieces of what is a kind of complex design, this is pretty impressive.

It's a strange choice, though, to go to a somewhat fringe version of Star Wars. I mean, I've known about the animated Clone Wars for a long time, even though I've never watched any of them, either. But Freemakers? Brand new to me today.

When I saw the Arrowhead big build at the store when I came out, I just assumed it was one of the number of lackluster forgettable ships we've seen in Episodes VII and VIII.

So,well, there you go! I'm actually pleased with the little thing. Like I said, it's kind of charming and fun.

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 2

The second day of the Advent Calendar takes us away from the original trilogy, and away from the second trilogy, and into the third with a minifigure of Rose Tico. I was surprised to get a minifigure so soon, and to move from Episode IV to Episode VIII in one day.

But I'm not complaining! The minifigures are often the most exciting ones to open in the Advent Calendar. The ships and tech thingies are fun, but because they have such a limited piece count, they just will never be as nice as the full-size models. For example, the landspeeder from yesterday is a really good version of the landspeeder using just 18 or so pieces, and I quite like how they made it look, and anything from Episode IV is always going to be a big hit with me; but it'll never match the coolness of the versions made with hundreds of pieces.

Minifigures, however, are just like they are in the larger sets. They are not reduced versions of what one gets in the larger sets, they're the same thing

I wouldn't mind if the Advent calendars focused much more on the people. Because let's be honest, the Advent Calendars usually have a good 8-10 days' worth of prizes that aren't particularly well done or models of some of the less interesting Star Wars ships, devices, or other tech.

So here is Rose Tico, as seen in the Last Jedi. A good, strong character who confronts Finn for wanting to bail on the heroes (even though that wasn't what he was doing), then they o searching for Maz the coder and have a great adventure in the casino city (and ride those crazy animals and meet those children, one of whom at least has Force powers) and then go to Crait to battle the First Order where she keeps Finn from making a suicide run, which leads to her getting seriously injured. She's a great character. She's a super mission-focused hero, and should be an inspiration to all Star Wars fans. Unfortunately, after Episode VIII came out, the world was witness to the fact that Star Wars has terrible racists and terrible misogynists in its demographic, and the character - and even more unfortunately, the actor, Kelly Marie Tran, was the recipient of much racist and sexist abuse, along with a lot of the other female characters and actors. Knock it off, Star Wars fans. The only racists in the Star Wars universe were the Imperials, who felt that humans were the only valid sentient life forms. Don't be like them. Jerks. Episode VIII was awesome partly because it was filled with humans of many races, and many strong and capable women. Grow up.

I mean, how small and cowardly does one have to be that one is threatened by a **fictional character** in a space fantasy such that one must go all Internet-warrior and post racist/sexist things and send threatening notes and make sure that ol' ALL CAPS key is always on? Pathetic. It's not the year 1 any more, you throwbacks to a thankfully-lost time.

Here she is:

And in case you've not done one of these Advent Calendars, here are some photos of what the "playmat" area looks like. It's really quite silly of LEGO to do this, because there is no way to have this box open and display the daily builds on the playmat while still also being able to open the doors. The doors are far too difficult to open without tearing them that one has to hold the box in order to do it, which means any figures on display have to be taken off every day. Kind of defeats the whole purpose. So I display my daily builds on a table, and then once Christmas arrives and there are no more doors to open, the box goes to the recycle bin because I don't like having things lying around taking up space if I don't need them. Then the whole batch of Advent builds go into a plastic display box, nice and tidy. :D

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar Day 1

Hello, all -

Another time of Advent, and another LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar! I've gotten the calendars for a few years, and always enjoy the daily surprise. Sometimes they're kind of disappointing, most of the time they're pretty cool, and sometimes they're really exciting!

I posted the calendar to Facebook last year, and this year I thought I'd post it to my blog.

Today is the first day of Advent, so I opened the Day 1 window and got the pieces to build this:

Day 1 is a landspeeder. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell exactly what a build is supposed to be, but I'm quite certain this is supposed to be Luke's landspeeder from Episode IV.

It's really quite an efficient design and well - for only having 17 or 18 pieces, it does the trick!

And as much as I love all the Star Wars related stuff, my heart will always be for Episodes IV-VI, so getting something on Day from the very first episode is a super treat. The "playmat" that comes with the Advent Calendar box has a lot of ice and snow on it, making me think of Hoth, so hopefully we'll be seeing some Episode V goodies, too. I'd love an imperial probe droid, medical droid, an AT-AT, and/or a snowspeeder. I could look at the front of the box to get an idea of the stuff that's coming, but I don't like to do that. I prefer to be surprised. What would be really cool from Hoth would be Luke in an eviscerated Tauntaun.

Which reminds of a joke my Amazon Echo told me - 

Q. What is the internal temperature of a tauntaun? [highlight the line below to see the answer]

A. Lukewarm!

Come back tomorrow to see what Day 2 offers!

#NeverAgain, #MeToo, Good Friday, Easter, and Dickens Duality

I wrote this essay for the Faith Walk insert for the Leader-Telegram for their Spring 2018 Edition, which was printed on Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018. The essay is not available on-line at the LT website, so I post it here:


Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities famously begins, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”

Dickens’ words are in my head because we are coming to Holy Week, a week that has Good Friday crucifixion and Easter resurrection, truly the worst of times and the best of times. We live post-Easter so ostensibly we live in the best of times. We humans are imperfect, though, and fall to the lull of false idols and are quite clever in convincing ourselves of only noble intentions, refusing to see just how much we allow ourselves to live in a Good Friday time. A time when the innocent are crucified just as Jesus was crucified by the Roman Empire, an empire that lived by the ways of death, weapons of war, and state-sponsored murder while falsely calling it the Peace of Rome.

We live in a Good Friday time, watching over the decades as our school children are killed as sacrificial lambs, as well as church-goers, country music attendees, soldiers on military bases, shoppers in malls. We’re now five months past the church shooting in Texas, five years after Sandy Hook, eighteen years after Columbine, thirty-four years after the McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro (1984 - the first mass killing I remember, which was my senior year of high school). Plus far, far more, and yet nothing has been done. We haven’t even been allowed to have a conversation about it. “Now is not the time,” we are told, as though we should shun the truth until it’s convenient for us. As a follower of Jesus, I believe that the time for truth is always right now.

Yet the week I am writing this, a dog died in an overhead bin on an airplane and already a senator has introduced legislation to keep it from happening again. Immediate action for a dog, but we are forced to helplessly watch our children, neighbors, teachers, fellow church-goers or concert-attendees murdered while Pilate washes his hands and offers prayers. Surely, the worst of times, an age of foolishness, a season of Darkness, a winter of despair. This is against the gospel of Jesus Christ and the good news of Easter.

But like the times of Dickens, we are also in an age of wisdom, an epoch of belief, a season of Light, and a spring of hope. Truth-speakers are calling us back to the way of Easter and away from the ways of Good Friday. The student Walk Out happened this week, students rising up to say #NeverAgain and demand that we adults fix a problem we have been complicit in allowing for far too many decades. Women (and men) have been rising up to say #metoo, exposing their abusers and calling for an end to normalizing sexual harassment. The Black Lives Matter movement is raising awareness of the many ways racism plagues us. Millions have marched and continue to march supporting science, women, the environment, and the many who are left behind. Local governments are passing laws that state and national ones won’t, supporting the Paris Accords, sustainable energy, living wages, school safety, better health care, less imprisonment, religious diversity, protections for minorities.

An Easter movement is happening here and abroad, an Easter movement elevating hope, life, and love, and it gives me great hope. We have a young generation demanding a better future, we have formerly silent voices demanding to be heard, and some who hold power admitting their abuse of that power who are starting to listen and invite in these new voices. As a pastor of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God who came to liberate and bring hope, life, and love, I find that this is, in so many ways, an Easter time, which is surely the best of times.

The United States' messed up health and health-insurance system

Our health industry in this country is messed up. I was prescribed a med back in the spring, and for ease of everything, I had it filled by the pharmacy at the Mayo clinic where my doctors are. All I had to do was walk downstairs. It cost me $15. I didn't think much of it, figuring I must have a $15 co-pay (my insurance has changed co-pays a number of times the past ten years, and since this is my first long-term prescription, I hadn't really paid attention to the current values of the co-pay).

The second month I refilled the prescription and it was $15. Woo hoo - consistency! At least the price wasn't randomly changing.

Out of curiosity, I asked the clerk if that was my co-pay amount, or if the co-pay was larger and this medicine was just $15. She said, 'You have no insurance on this.' 'Oh pfffft,' I said to her, 'I assumed that since Mayo has my information that the pharmacy would have it as well. 'No,' she said. I banished her to serve at the Ice Wall for her frostiness, and I trotted off to get my insurance info and brought it back to the pharmacy later. So to recap: the full price of the medicine was $15, for me, an apparently insurance-less person at the time. $15 is the price without any insurance interference.

After they got my info, the cost of the medicine went down to $5.60, of which I paid $1.80. So the medicine that cost $15 for uninsured people now cost just a bit more than 1/3 of that (and my cost was now less than a third of that new negotiated price). I went from $15 a month to $1.80, and the insurance was charged $3.80. The pharmacy gets $9.40 less from the insured than from the uninsured. And now that I have to mail order, the pharmacy gets nothing.

Then, after using my insurance that one time, I got a letter from my insurance saying that this medicine needs to be fulfilled by their own mail-order prescription system, and not the pharmacy, or else I would be charged more than that one-time co-pay. 'Fine,' I thought, 'Mail service for me it shall be. How wonderfully old school, but also convenient, that they'll automatically send me my medicine every three months.' I filled out on-line the information they needed, and the prescription for three months was $4.60.

So, to recap, I went from $15 a month to $1.80 a month to $1.53 a month. The mail-order price also includes shipping.

That was three months ago. Today, my second shipment of medicine for three months arrived. This time it cost me $3.16, which is a third of a cent more than $1.05 per month.

I am blessed to have health insurance! But the system is so rigged. A person without health insurance, and let's assume they work a full-time job but it's a minimum wage one which is why don't have insurance from their employer. would be paying more than two hours of his/her labor per month for this medicine. A total of $180 for a year. That is three days of full-time work plus one more hour. Or let's assume our person in need is homeless - and so many of the homeless that our street ministry work with need prescription medicines and most don't have insurance (some have medicare [or Medicaid, I can never remember what the difference is between the two, and that's not important now anyway] or here in Wisconsin, they might have BadgerCare). For an unemployed homeless person, even a $15 a month prescription can be an impossibility. Hell, let's be honest - it's damn near impossible for them to even get to a doctor to have a check-up and have a prescription written out, so whether they can afford is itself a moot question. They can't even get to a doctor to get a prescription. That's outrageous, and a shameful state for the supposed greatest country in the world, or for the factually country with the largest GDP in the world that exceeds #2 by about 70%. And we can't afford to help our homeless brothers and sisters? Can't afford to offer healthcare to all our citizens? Pshaw. It's not a matter of money, it's a matter of too many people not having the moral will to make it happen.

And yet my insurance company, because of their power and ability to negotiate, would pay the clinic just over a third of that, $67.20. [But of course, now the clinic gets nothing because of the mail-order requirement.] I don't know what the insurance company gets charged now from whomever they are buying the pills, because that information isn't on the paperwork I receive, but I'm sure they're paying less than the $5.60, because a) otherwise they wouldn't require the mail order service since they'd be paying more, and it must be less than $5.60 b) because the cost of shipping the meds is included in the amount they charge me.

And that's one example of what's wrong with our for-profit health-care system that is also so employer-dependent for people to have coverage - yes, the ACA has really helped get a lot more people covered, but it's still a system in which employer's are paying for most of us. Basic universal healthcare for everyone - a moral society would say "We have the money!" and make it happen. Let the insurance companies and employers offer bells and whistles plans and coverages if they'd like, but We The People ought to be taking care of one another to ensure that no one goes without preventive care, no one goes without the medicine and medical care they need, and no one should ever have to declare bankruptcy or steal money or sell all they own simply because they got sick.

This Thanksgiving, I am very grateful for the insurance I have - I've had a lot of medical this year, and if I'd had to pay it all by myself I'd be in a lot of hurt. But there are far too many people who cannot be thankful because we who are rich and well off refuse to give them anything to be thankful for. To continually ship people's jobs oversees, to reduce their healthcare or to deny it altogether, to consistently refuse to make it a law that employed people should be paid a living wage, to continually increase the pay and benefits to CEOs and other executives while reducing pay to the folks low on the ladder, or just firing them because it will make this quarter's earnings look awesome, to continue to imprison the poor at ludicrous rates instead of helping them, to introduce a "tax plan" that will benefit the rich and harm everyone else even as the "Christians" who wrote it constantly bear false witness about it... --- and then to constantly harp on how folks ought to be thankful? That's immoral.

We're better than this, America.