Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
April 2, 2007
New plugins, taxes, NYC swag
Category: Technical Stuff … Toys … TV, Film, & DVDs

I'd been using the WP-PageNavi 2.10 plugin on Scary-Crayon to display the number of pages and links to a set number of them instead of just the previous/next links. Now I am using it here as well! (Still need to update the blurb at the bottom of the sidebar to reflect that info, but yes.) It didn't originally do what I wanted it to do, so I had to do a bit of hacking to get it to suit my needs... hence my calling this version WP-PageNavi 2.10w. See, the "w" is for Wes. :mrgreen: Anyway, apparently Wesoteric behaves slightly differently than Scary-Crayon (possibly a function of some of the other plugins I'm using over there), so I had to do some additional tweaks to get the plugin working over here. It also means that you may encounter some SQL errors -- please let me know if you do so I can try to fix the code accordingly. Thanks!

This is also my first trial of a plugin called Hide or Cut Post Text, which apparently works like the LJ-cut feature. Whee.

I did my taxes today. It didn't take very long -- two hours tops -- but it was still rather painful. Being anally raped by the IRS is not fun. 🙁

I shall now proceed to list some of the swag I picked up during my most recent NYC trip!

DVDs acquired:

1. The Poet
2. Demi-Haunted
3. Expect a Miracle
4. Hong Kong Spice Gals
5. The Cat
6. Here Comes A Vampire
7. City of SARS
8. The Imp

Of the films listed above, The Cat is the only one with which I am remotely familiar, as I saw most of it (I missed maybe the first fifteen minutes or so) at an anime convention a few years back. I'd heard of City of SARS... and that's about it. Only The Poet, The Cat, and The Imp (hey, I notice a pattern here) even had plot synopses in English on the backs of their DVD box covers, so I was mostly shooting in the dark here. But at 4 for $10, I had to make sure I got a decent amount to tide me over. Hopefully they won't be utterly abysmal.

Music CDs acquired:

1. Seventy-One the Beautiful by Hadley
2. East Side Drive by The Heartdrops
3. Social Misfits by The Fades

Never heard of any of these groups, but hey, the CDs were 99 cents apiece at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square! Judging from the condition of the packaging, inserts, and the discs themselves, they appear to be new, too. The Heartdrops CD kinda sucks (every track sounds almost exactly the same, bleh), but I definitely look forward to giving the others some more thorough listening time.

I also picked up some free mp3 CDs and a DVD at Pho Tu Do that I thought contained songs from a local group, but they instead contain lectures or speeches (or something) in a language that I totally do not understand. Oh well!

Toys acquired:

1. TMNT: Karai action figure
2. Street Fighter II/Darkstalkers MiniMates: Morrigan, Demitri, Evil Ryu, and Akuma
3. Kamen Rider Ohja chess piece figurine

Funny that I'd go all the way to NYC to return with a Karai figure that one can ostensibly get anywhere, but I'd literally been looking all over for this figure and had only come across it twice -- and both of those figures had exceedingly poor paint jobs, so I left them there. They had a bunch of Karai at the Toys "R" Us in Times Square, though, so I decided to go ahead and get one there. That is also where I picked up the MiniMates figures. I already have a couple of these (M.Bison and Chun-Li; you might have seen them on the new Scary-Crayon content pages) and they're kinda neat. Actually, in addition to the figs mentioned in the parenthetical, I had already picked up a Morrigan and Demitri two-pack as well, but seeing as how I paid $2.50 and hadn't opened it and that these figures were $3.99 and had two additional ones that I don't have, I figured I'd get the new pack and leave the other one unopened. So unless I end up accidentally breaking the ones I got in NYC, I'll probably end up giving the ones I already have away, either as inclusions in a gift package or as a prize in an upcoming SC contest. We will see.

In addition to the DVDs, CDs, and toys, I also ended up with a H.P. Lovecraft anthology from Dave (pretty interesting stuff so far; once I finish the first story I am determined to draw a picture of one of these Great Race creatures) and a smushed penny from the Central Park Zoo. (On that note, here is a link to Molly's Alligator Juice article entitled The Joy of the Smushed Penny Machine.)

That is all for now, then. Ja ne, minna-san!

-posted by Wes | 8:28 pm | Comments (3)
March 14, 2007
I hate the Tyra Banks show.

God, seriously. It's like she reeeeaally wants to be Oprah and highlight "pressing women's issues," except she lacks the clout or exposure to attract guests who actually have problems. So instead, she has these guests who kinda sorta have a few minor issues and go out of their way to overstate them and make them look like HUGE debilitating difficulties. For example, tonight's episode is about women with body-related self-esteem issues and eating disorders (again). They say one of the guests has an eating disorder because she doesn't eat. But actually she does eat, because she's hardly a skeletal stick figure -- she just eats infrequently. She eats when she's hungry. OMFG CALL OUT THE NUTRITIONIST BECAUSE THIS WOMAN HAS NOT BEEN BRAINWASHED INTO EATING THREE SQUARE MEALS A DAY AT SET TIMES REGARDLESS OF THE STATE OF HER APPETITE! They filmed a segment with her staring at a chunk of salmon while she whined about not wanting to eat it and crap. Um, isn't that why refrigeration and Saran wrap were invented? Toss that shit in the cooling unit and come back in a few hours -- problem solved.

And now they've got this chick on there and are like OMFG SHE IS A 30-SOMETHING MOTHER OF TWO AND YET SHE CAN WEAR CHILDREN'S CLOTHING SIZES. Hello, the woman is fucking 5'1" -- she's just tiny! There would be a problem if she couldn't fit into children's clothes. I can wear children's sizes too, but I don't think that I need to be on Tyra whining about it. And they just brought on the "self-esteem and body image expert," who is clearly overweight. Not that she should necessarily have a problem with that, but if she's supposed to teach these women to gain unnecessary weight to look like her and then be pleased about it, she should lose whatever crackerjack degrees and certification she has and plop her heavy ass down in the driver's seat of a city bus. I wouldn't take any weight-loss advice from Dr. Phil, either.

Conclusion: Tyra Banks should be exterminated.

-posted by Wes | 10:01 pm | Comments (13)
February 8, 2007
Freecell, Toys, DVDs, and Reviews
Category: Toys … TV, Film, & DVDs

Hey all! How've you been? Whatcha been up to? I've been playing Freecell. My streak is currently at 168 wins. Fantastic.

I have also been buying toys and DVDs, as usual. Lately I've been on a Transformers kick in terms of toys -- in the past week, I have added four new ones to my collection (bringing my TF count to a grand total of six, or eight if one includes Bootleg Prime and a Go-Bot I have had since I was four years old). I think I will probably stop with them whenever this Megatron is released in a month or so, though. I also picked up a few TMNT figures at Wal-Mart this weekend -- two because they were reduced to $2 each, one because it came with a TMNT PC game. The game is kinda crappy.

I picked up way too many DVDs yesterday -- The Goonies, Team America: World Police, The Last Samurai, Secretary, Meet Joe Black, and Lost in Translation. They were only $5 each, but that's still more than I like to spend during a given outing. Seriously, I am not buying any more DVDs until I have at least put a significant dent in my current queue. Knock on wood.

So, now I will briefly review the movies I have watched thus far this year in an average of five sentences or less. (more...)

-posted by Wes | 3:41 pm | Comments (6)
January 23, 2007
DVDs, Daleks, images, and anniversaries (!!!)

Becky is right -- if those DVDs mentioned here had been $4, I probably wouldn't have put them back. (They were actually only $6 -- maybe even $5 -- but oh what a difference a dollar makes!) $4 price tags were enough to get me to pick up Election, Pump Up the Volume, and The Island of Dr. Moreau at Best Buy last week, and I've never even heard of the second and have heard horrible things about the latter. But I like Christian Slater and Moreau is one of those movies that I knew would sooner or later come into my possession simply in virtue of the subject matter, so I figured I wasn't likely to find a better price. Besides, even if it's terrible, the presence of Ron Perlman, Marlon Brando, and Fairuza Balk make it worth a viewing in my book. And Election is just hilarious.

It is a desk clock.

So the other weekend we found this while cleaning the basement. It doesn't work anymore -- it was apparently a promo thing given to my dad by some drug company many years ago -- and there doesn't appear to be any way of replacing the batteries, so it would otherwise have been thrown away... but I have other uses for it. Any guesses as to what I could use it to represent? Read on for a hint... (more...)

-posted by Wes | 11:43 pm | Comments (4)
December 14, 2006
And Bats makes 400

Towards the middle of November, I was thinking maybe my online DVD collection count wouldn't make it to 400 after all before the end of 2006, but my initial speculations have proven incorrect -- the arrival of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm today did indeed push the collection into the next level.

And for the record, those of you who think that Batman Begins is the best Batman feature film are totally wrong. Totally.

-posted by Wes | 5:11 pm | Comments (4)