Before yesterday, I really didn't think Jeremiah Wright was all that bad. Well, I admit that I thought he was "out there" -- and certainly a liability to Obama -- after first seeing the snippets of Reverend Wright's sermons on YouTube early this year (or maybe even last year; conservative websites were harping on them long before they became the talk of mainstream media). But when I had the opportunity to listen to the full sermons I found it obvious that they had been taken entirely out of context for the purpose of vilifying the man and, by extension, Barack Obama.

Sure, "God damn America" sounds pretty harsh, but Wright was chiefly talking about the American government -- and the injustices towards "racial" minorities that he attributed to it in that sermon, for the most part, have been well documented. When he thundered that "America's chickens are coming home to roost," he was quoting former US Ambassador Edward Peck and highlighting that our country is far from being an innocent bystander on the international stage. Far from gloating that America had gotten its just desserts with 9/11, Wright was simply pointing out that "violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism" -- and that, as we move forward, we need to recognize this reality and stop perpetuating the cycle. And the sermon from which Obama lifted the title of The Audacity of Hope was probably one of the best and most interesting sermons that I've ever heard. I haven't heard all that many sermons, of course, but considering that I'm hardly Christian I was surprised by how engaging I thought it was. I listened to it twice. (more...)

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. 🙂

it was warming up
now it's cold and wet again
nature is fickle

...that the search was broken? Not that you were supposed to notice, mind you -- I just found out myself when I went to search for an old post and couldn't find it because it wasn't among the first five posts and the handy page navigation thing wasn't there!

Turns out that when I updated the corresponding plugin in January I forgot that I made the structural organization of Scary-Crayon and Wesoteric different, so there's a subtle difference in the code for each plugin that causes the SC version to fail under certain circumstances on Wesoteric (and vice versa). But now that problem has been fixed (I think/hope so, anyway!), so feel free to search to your heart's content. 🙂

This post was almost accompanied by a photo of the recently trimmed Bacardi, but he just ran away when I went to get the camera! Some other time, then... but so as not to deprive you of cuteness, here's an old linked page that I came across while searching for that post. I do love the blue. 😉

...since it's been about six months.

cat face.