I went like seven kinds of insane during my quest to acquire this figure.

Man. This isn't the worst headache I've ever had, but it's certainly one of the worst in recent memory and undoubtedly the longest lasting one since my college days. Usually when a headache hits it signifies a lack of sleep, so I hit the hay, wake up after a two or three-hour nap (or the next whenever if I am due for my scheduled circadian downtime), and am fine. Tonight I lay down for roughly four hours and my head is still throbbing like mad. It makes no sense, I tell you. Argh. ARGH. And I don't have any Aspirin or Tylenol or makey headache go away drugs at my disposal. A-R-G-H.

Anyway, these are some of the gashapon figurines I picked up in Shanghai -- from left to right, Rei Ayanami, Ringo Noyamano, and Kamen Rider 2, all of whom are from media that I have never actually seen. Would you believe that these came out of vending machines? Whereas we get gumballs and rubber bouncing balls and cheap plastic spider rings and crap, kids (and adult anime enthusiasts and figure collectors!) in the East get high-quality figurines in their vending machine capsules. I totally think they need to bring gashapon to the West as well.

Okay, going to get some food and hope nutrients make the hurting stop. 🙁

Okay, not really -- the Martha stand-in is Kyushi from the Shadowrun line and the Judoon representative is Rocksteady of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame -- but still. I also dug up my Liada figure from Shadowrun -- I may have to use her as Romana or a native of some new alien planet.

And speaking of the Doctor and crew, the rundown of the second Doctor's Dalek encounters is up at Retroactive Continuity Redux. Check it out!

All for now, then.

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. 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!