Hi, Ford here, editor from The Vintage Toy Advertiser
Welcome to The Atomic Mage – my brand new blog focussing on poetry, fiction, art, books, comics, retro publications and more!
My previous blog of ten years standing is The Vintage Toy Advertiser which has entered a period of hiatus, so if you know me from TVTA then feel free to join me at my newest venture here.
Look out for the official launch soon!
This is a test post.
placeholder logo: (the actual robot is arriving soon!)

Shaker Man
Shush!
Shaker Man’s coming. Boogieman. Urban legend.
Campfire antagonist. The monster under your bed.
Why’s he called Shaker Man?
Does he make you shake with fear?
No. He imprisons you in his globes of snow, rain and ash,
And each time he’s mad he shakes those globes until
Nothing remains but your broken bones.
Shush! I hear him coming.
Run!
(by Ford, 2021)
Linger
To Kurt Cobain. Written 5th April, 2004.
Ten years on –
The spirit lives on.
Loved as much now as you were then.
Except now they call you ‘muppet’ and ‘loser’,
And throw soggy tomatoes in a post-Lollapalooza.
And the Aberdeen bands and Seattle scenes
Will still linger –
Touched by your songs,
The trigger and the finger.
The guns of, stomach pains of Kurt,
Cramped up and fetal in a blue checkered shirt.
Did you feel some kind…
Some kind of hurt?
(by Ford, 2004)
Image tests



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test over, thanks for looking 🙂
the cat sat on the mat
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the dog sat on the log
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the goose sat on the moose
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man, was the moose unhappy about that
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the cow sat on the prow 🙂
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the finch sat on the Grinch
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The Mage entered the maze
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the pigeon sat on the linen
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the sparrow sat on the barrow
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FT,s making a robot?
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He needs a moving target for his NERF practice 🙂
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Hm, I sensed you talking about me…powerful in the Force am I! Great to see the early progress oh Atomic Mage!
Funnily enough I do have a droid I modelled based on the one seen in the Playstation computer game Jedi Knight Fallen Order! I called him “dROYd”.
Anyhoo I am subbed and following!
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Brill to see you here FT. The dROYd sat on the void!
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So, you are using the blockhead editor!
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Hi Resa. It really is awful. I’m trying my hardest to learn it. When I make a post and go to set the tags the block disappears and won’t come back. Have to go into classic and add them from there. What a joke.
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Joke??? I’m not laughing!
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Have you heard of AI creating a new Nirvana song? Lost tapes of the 27 club is kinda disturbing.
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Thanks, no I hadn’t. Just listened. Brilliant technology, but yes kinda like having to ransack through graves to get there. It’s being done in a good cause to raise awareness for the mental health of artists, and at this experimental stage sounds like rough rehearsal songs the band(s) might have made in a garage back in the day. It could well create issues later when improvements to the tech and AI learning happen.
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I do like the cause … it still freaks me out though 😉 I feel like this weird inbetween version … not old enough, not a real millenial … I even have friends who never signed up for Facebook! They still kinda like read books!!!
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