Category: ToyBox

Some random, unrelated notes from today:

In what must be the 6 and 9/10th sign of the Apocalypse, I walked into a national chain store in Fort Smith, Arkansas today and bought a Doctor Who action figure right off the peg. Not a special order or anything like that – it was already there. I hadn’t picked any of these up since I got a couple of loose Cybermen last fall from someone on eBay who had already imported them, so I was just utterly stunned. I’m under no illusion that this means that Fort Smith is stepping up in the world; I’m sure they wound up here because they never left the pegs in the Hastings in Little Rock or Tulsa. 😆 One final note: as difficult as it is not to win yourself some snickers or at least weird looks when you’re 30-something and bellying up to the checkout counter with an action figure, a new layer of difficulty is added when the figure in question is a baroque, frilly-costumed Clockwork Man from The Girl In The Fireplace. Trust me, funny looks are guaranteed…and despite that, I hope they get the Ood, Cassandra and/or Captain Jack figures that I’m missing. My trip to northwest Arkansas has been delayed until next week, so maybe I can check any Hastings stores that might be lurking up there. Inasmuch as a store can possibly lurk.

After I went there and went to get dinner to bring home, I stopped to get gas at one of the ubiquitous Murphy Oil stations perched next to Wal-Mart Supercenters. There was a youngish guy ahead of me, I’m going to say 20 or so, who was tweaking. He was extremely agitated, cursing up a storm for no readily apparent reason, and got pissed at the girl working the checkout booth when it turns out he didn’t have enough money for a pack of cigarettes. He then turned to me and asked if I’d buy them for him and I just shook my head. I had half a thought about offering to buy him some nicotine patches instead, but it’s just as well that I didn’t say a word, because he then proceeded to go off on me. Of course, I can already hear the argument that he needs his next pack of cigarettes as much as I need a Clockwork Man, but y’know, if I hadn’t been able to afford that…I wouldn’t have gotten it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have asked anyone else to pick up the tab for me for something that isn’t exactly – okay, not exactly and not remotely – essential to my continued survival. (I’m sure the jury is still out with my wife about whether or not I needed a Clockwork Man, but hey, at least he’s not gonna damage my health. 😆 )

I’ve finally started getting GreenhouseFX.tv put together. A lot of what I’ve put on there so far is copied over and modified from the original 2002 version of the site. The list of services is still in “flux” – there are a couple of things under “what we do” that I won’t, in fact, be doing. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but hopefully in about a week it will be.

I tried to watch the premiere of Painkiller Jane on Sci-Fi tonight. I’m not familiar with the comic that it’s based on, so I can’t vouch for how faithful it is/isn’t to the source material, but overall I found it just left the taste of apathy in my mouth. Kinda like…I dunno. Dark Angel Minus The Barely-Engaging Backstory.

Tomorrow I’m going to get some dog food, as well as some new cat food that we’re going to see if the kitties like. We’re going to start out mixing it into their Iams dry food, but hopefully we can wean them off the Iams completely, very very soon. The food we’re getting is from an outfit that grows its own ingredients rather than buying them in bulk from, oh, say, Menu Foods, especially since it seems as though damn near everything Menu is putting on the market is either already on recall, or is about to be recalled. The fearsome threesome have checked out just fine so far, and I’d like to keep them that way.… Read more