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The biggest hoax in history was perpetrated on this day, 22 years ago.

Not many people know what happened just the day before on September 10th, when Rumsfeld announced that the pentagon was mysteriously missing 2.3 trillion dollars. Then the next day, the Budget Analysis department of the Pentagon was supposedly hit by an airplane with magically disappearing wreckage, fitting into a considerably smaller hole with no damage from its wings.

After so many years have passed however, more and more people are waking up to the hoax that a bunch of rotten cavemen Muslim terrorists with magical box cutters who couldn’t even fly a Cessna could somehow perform expert aerial maneuvers in commercial airliners and cause them to slice through buildings like hot knives through butter and that Building 7 just magically evaporated, even though it wasn’t even struck by an airplane. That one never made sense to me, even back then.

As for myself, it was in 2013 when an Australian friend of mine challenged me to find footage of a plane hitting the Pentagon. It is the most highly-guarded building in the USA, so surely there must be a ton of cameras pointed at it, right? All I could find is a low-framerate video feed showing a small streak and then an explosion. Not big enough to be an actual plane. And after the explosion, there was no burning hulk of a plane with its tail sticking out of the building. The plane just vanished somehow. Bullcrap. The laughing Sandy Hook “father” was my first big wake up call to make me realize that we are being lied to, then the Pentagon and Building 7 thing is what really cemented the whole “conspiracy theorist” into my personality. I’m not a “conspiracy theorist.” I just don’t appreciate being lied to.

As far as the angry cavemen who cling to a cult created by a 7th century pedo psychopath, I’m not so much angry at hornets stinging people because that’s what hornets do. My focus is on those poking the hornets’ nest and using them as an excuse to start wars and invade countries.

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Arii 1:100 scale Macross Super Valkyrie VF-1S plamo box scan

Arii’s 1:100 scale model of Roy Fokker’s VF-1S. Well, actually Hikaru is piloting it at this point in the story. It’s rather nice box art, but notice that the thruster pod in the center is facing the wrong direction! Oops. The decals for this kit do not seem to be usable. I am thinking I might build this up as Jetfire from Transformers instead. I have plenty of Autobot emblem decals to use.

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Spy Family coffee

I dunno whether to call the show “Spy Family” or “Spy x Family.” I’Ve seen a lot of Suntory Coffee Boss Spy Family products at drug stores lately. The top picture is peanut-flavored café au lait. I bought this box, but I have yet to try it. I’ll show this in the next Japanese snacks video I upload to my YT and Odysee channels.

Unfortunately, the Spy Family movie won’t be out until December! By that time, it will have been a year since the 2nd season on TV ended. They’re making us wait a whole year.

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My Star Wars Rebel fleet plamo diorama is nearly complete

I’ve been slowly working on this project for seven years. It started out with me just wanting to build and light up the Rebel Transport. This was back when I worked for Aoshima. I had wired it for lighting, took it to work to show a coworker, then placed it on the front seat of my car so as not to upset the bosshole because that grumpy dingbat bitched about everything. But the sun shone on it for many hours, causing the air inside the empty shell to overheat and warp the plastic. It was a lost cause, but fortunately my friend Steve (SMKR on YouTube) sent me a replacement!

These model ships came from the old MPC/AMT Rebel Hangar diorama from the early ’80s. There was the Hoth Battle and this hangar, and both came with lousy vacuform bases. I had the battle with the AT-ATs and Snowspeeders when I was a child. The Falcon isn’t too bad when looking at it from the top and bottom, but the sidewalls are crap. The back engine is completely featureless, as are the docking rings on the side. I added greeblies and pipes to the sides to spruce the kit up. The same for the X-Wings, where I added sewing pins to recreate the laser cannons properly. The Snowspeeders aren’t too bad, but the Y-Wings were sculpted without proper reference material and were obviously made going off of someone’s memory. Nothing is really in scale with others, although the X-Wings are in scale with the Falcon. I’ve been chronicling the process of this build on my Tumblr account and will update it again once I am finished. I envision this as a scene between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.

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Arii’s old 1:100 Heavy Missile Regult battle pod plamo from Macross complete

I had posted a scan of the box art in an earlier post.

I completed the old 1:100 Arii Heavy Missile Regult plamo this week. Surface detail is in some ways better than the old Imai kit, with how there is molded detail for the lights on the head for this smaller Arii kit, whereas Imai’s larger Regult model only provides decals to represent those lights. As it is though, proportions on the missile pods is off and makes the model look a bit awkward because they are too large. I drilled out the cannons because those parts instead had protruding ends rather than resembling actual gun barrells. I used Wave’s H-Eyes parts for lenses and Kotobukiya’s M.S.G. verniers for the thrusters. This kit has molded detail for the lights on the feet, but they protrude way too much. I cut them off and used Wave’s lenses instead. The mono eye is simply molded into the face of the pod, so I first painted it silver and then clear red to give it more of a lens look.

I used Mr. Color 323 Light blue and 311 Gray for the white parts. The gray was a mixture of 32 Dark Gray and 72 Intermediate Blue. the decals were still usable after all these years. They were a bit yellowed, but I taped them to my window for several days to bleach them. They went on fairly well. I have a pre-order for the 1:72 Hasegawa version of this kit, which will be released after the first of September.

The proportions on the Regult itself seem fine, but Arii made the missile pods a bit too tall. It makes the model look a bit awkward. Also, there is no ball socket articulation with the cannons. They must be glued into place. I might add a bit of weathering to this. One thing I need to do is repair the knee joint. I had to replace the broken piece with brass rod, but the 2-part epoxy putty I used turned out to be soft because I didn’t make it the proper ratio. I might try polyester putty instead.

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Ulan is the friend to all dragonflies

We went to the trout farm in Katashina two weeks ago, and enjoyed the cool 28°C. As always, the air was filled with dragonflies flying about.

There is a trick to catching dragonflies. As you know, they like to land on the reeds standing out above the water, right? If you point your finger up, the dragonflies might land on your finger. Ulan is a master at it!