Remember that post from the other day with the unknown food item? Well, it's time to reveal its true identity:

DOLLAR STORE STUFFING!!! Well, dollar store stuffing mix, mixed with frozen vegetables (last time okra and mashed up Brussels sprouts; here with stir fry vegetables), flax seeds (fiber supplements = win), and occasionally other stuff like fake crabmeat, cheese, and/or mayonnaise. Once all this stuff is in the bowl together, I usually add a generous portion of oil, some water, mix the stuff up well, and then nuke it in the microwave for upwards of fifteen minutes or so -- basically until most of the mixture is cooked out of it and I'm left with a semi-spongy but mostly crunchy sort of casserole. It's pretty good! And as long as they keep selling stuffing mix at the dollar store, it'll probably be a staple of my diet for quite some time... or at least until I finish the two bags of stuffing mix currently in the cupboard.

I've also become quite fond of fake crabmeat and cream cheese sandwiches lately. I got the idea from Boston sushi rolls, which I quite like, but somehow these sandwiches manage to be even more palatable. I'll have to start using light or fat-free cream cheese to make them, though, so that I can even start claiming that they're healthy and low in calories.

Other random photos: a shot of the cups from which I usually drink and one of the figures currently decorating my desk. I've had the Foot Tech Ninja and Donatello since December, and Skeletor has been here for a few years (and if you can see Cubone behind him, he's been here even longer), but I took this photo primarily to showcase Emma Frost -- a new addition courtesy of the delightful Mickey! She'll make it down to the basement and get a proper photo shoot in a few days -- I tend to keep new figures in my room for a bit before relocating them to the subterranean studio -- but for now I'm very much enjoying having her upstairs and placing her in various poses and whatnot. Not pictured is the Transformer Landmine on my bed. I keep new Transformers in my room to fiddle with as well -- they tend to stay until I get another Transformer to replace them. Landmine has been up here for a couple of weeks, though I imagine the turnaround period will be much shorter whenever those new Animated toys hit.

And I had a very strange set of dreams during today's nap. One of them involved alligators entering via some hidden entrance and attacking me in the living room, which prompted me to contact the Justice League of America for help. Just before I woke up, Batman was on his way and Firestorm was creating an anti-alligator enclosure to keep everyone safe until he arrived. Yep.

My hands must be secreting some sort of anti-Batdude chemical. First my new Movie Masters Batman snapped in half at the waist this weekend (luckily I was able to return him), and then I managed to snap off Batzarro's arm during today's photo extended shoot. The fit of the arm is tight enough that I can still wedge it back into position and have it stay (the extreme tightness of the joint requires some pretty forceful motion to turn the arm to begin with, which is likely how I managed to break it off), but I'm still not too pleased about that.

Anyway, here are the figures I picked up this weekend and some of the ones that arrived in a box today. Click on the thumbnails to see larger pics!

I've actually had Edward Scissorhands around here a while -- my sister gave him to me for Christmas several years ago -- but I didn't take him out of his package until last Friday. Although he's not superarticulated (though he gets a fairly high joint count because all of his scissorfingers move individually), he's still pretty cool. The Scarecrow, however, is completely new to the collection. I actually considering ordering him on eBay a few weeks ago -- I was thinking of using him in my Legion of Doom, although this Scarecrow is the Marvel version -- but dropped that idea when I happened upon a legitimate DC Scarecrow on clearance. Still, I thought it was pretty amazing that I happened upon this figure for $3.97 at KB Toys this weekend, since he's pretty much been out of retail circulation since 2006. (He must have been hidden away in the back room, since I've been to that KB before and never come across the toy.) It almost felt like this Scarecrow was destined to come home with me... and so he did. (more...)

Any guesses? My diet has pretty much consisted of this stuff -- with slight variations, of course -- for the past two weeks or so.

So after nearly six weeks of waiting (or maybe less, but it felt like at least as long), the additional dual background for my light tent arrived towards the end of last week. I finally broke it out yesterday and lost a good seven hours photographing and repositioning and photographing action figures -- time truly flies when one is shooting little plastic people! -- and continued with the experimenting today. Whereas shooting with the grey background was relatively easy and unproblematic, the new black background (much like the old blue background) shows up very bright for some reason, which meant that I had to fool around with a bunch of settings I'd never previously touched in order to limit the camera's light intake. Very strange.

Anyway, here are the best of the results. I'm also trying out a new plugin for displaying the larger versions of images, which you'll see when you click on the smaller photos below. I'm not sure if I'll keep it (I'm not the biggest fan of javascript and fancy effects, hence my choice of this simpler plugin over the Lightbox JS-based variants), but let me know what you think.

Is this the first time that I've featured Buffy figures on Wesoteric? I forget. Anyway, I've had Spike, Angel, and Willow around for ages, but Cordy and Xander are new! Well, kinda. I got a Cordy for $4.88 a couple of weeks ago with intent to use her as Lois Lane, but a) she was far too tall compared to my previous Superman figure and b) I found an actual Lois Lane figure (albeit a super one) soon afterwards, so she got set aside. Also, her arm had broken right out of the package, which was no fun. But then, this past week, I came across the same Cordy and Xander for $1.88 each, so I picked up two more Cordy figures (one of which is seen here, and yay her arm did not break!) and a Xander. I've always thought this Xander looked really weird, and I'm not the biggest fan of the character anyway -- he's kind of a dick -- but $1.88 is pretty tough to beat.

Now all I need is a Buffy, eh? Not to mention a Faith, an Anya, maybe one of those superarticulated Willows...

I really, really like that Superman figure. Anyway, five down... two to go!

Did I mention how much I like that Superman figure? And here he is surrounded by friends and foes -- note that I have much more of the former group than the latter. Darkseid eyeing Jimmy Olsen is deliberate, btw.

And with the addition of Black Manta and a proper Scarecrow (as opposed to that huge scarecrow from some other toyline), my SuperFriends Legion of Doom now has five official members. Eight more to go!

And that is all for now.

Rawr!

Still working on that "official" new year's post -- it's currently in the form of a half-finished draft -- but here is a quick photo post in the meantime!

I'm planning on redoing Scary-Crayon's site info page and including a proper "About Me" blurb, so I decided to take a new photo for it. I know how much you were pining for another shirtless Wes pic, but I decided to try out the new SC shirt I ordered and pose with the original site mascots and inspirations for the design (as well as the site's name). Behind me on the top shelf is somewhere between 30% and 50% of the insane amount of Transformers toys I acquired last year. If you look closely, you can also see Yoshi and some Creepy Freaks on the bottom shelf. (more...)

What the title says: it's time for another photo post!

We had our first snowfall of the season last week, so I stood on the porch and took a few pictures to capture the occasion. Most of the photos came out a bit blurry due to the motion of the falling snow, but this shot of the neighborhood turned out pretty well.

Click here to see more photos!

And finally, here is a cute pic of Bacardi on the pillow outside my door. He has this plush lobster that he's fond of fetching, but when nobody is around to throw it -- or when he's not in the mood to run about -- he sometimes curls up with it and licks it. He really likes that lobster.

All for now, then. Hope y'all are having a happy holiday season!