And It's Boxing Day

Otherwise known as the day of tidying up, putting things away, and asking oneself "Why did I buy those jars of pickles?"

So, my haul: I'd bought TakaraTomy's awesome Masterpiece-05 Starscream and THS-01 Galaxy Convoy myself, and they were given to me as presents by my parents and sister respectively. Starscream is a true work of art. Ignore any and all fanboy whinings that it's not 'Gee-Wun/Show Accurate' or a particularly realistic choice of colour for the jet (OK, it's neither 'sky blue', nor 'metallic', nor 'desert type'... but you could say it's sort of 'open ocean greeny-gray-blue'), and focus on the fact that it is a truly excellent and detailed scale model F-15 Eagle... which transforms into one of the most iconic characters in the many TransFormers series. Not only that, but it has a 'face change' gimmick which lets one show him off with his characteristic smirk. Personally, I'm not so keen on the molding of the smirk face... but it works quite well. THS-01 is a miniature, part die-cast version of Galaxy Force/Cybertron's Galaxy Convoy/Optimus Prime. It's wildly detailed, very poseable - possibly slightly more so than the full-size toy), and comes with a selection of hands to aid in posing. In terms of its alternate mode, while it's obviously not modelled on any real firetrucks, it seems more convincing than that of THS-02... largely because THS-02 was clearly designed with the miniature Masterpiece-style robot in mind, rather than the truck, while this was designed to be a miniature, part-die cast version of the original. Though, obviously 'flight mode' is still completely unbelieveable.

The only 'surprise' (which wasn't, because it was easy to predict) was Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, the latest in his series of children's books set on Discworld and starring Tiffany Aching. This was from Maternal Grandmother, as usual.

Additional to this, an old friend of mine got me a couple of the 3" Titanium TransFormers - Jazz and Smokescreen - which, while they look better in person than in the average photo, still really look like playing pieces for a board game. One oddity is that Jazz has something akin to his Gen-1 paintjob, but the figure is modelled on Binaltech/Alternators Meister.

He also got me the collected edition of IDW's TransFormers: Infiltration series, written by Simon Furman and drawn by EJ Su. It's not a bad story, overall. Furman's contemporary retelling of the Gen-1 story works quite well, and looks fantastic. Considering I wasn't terribly impressed by the spoiler-filled reviews I'd read, I was very pleasantly surprised. That said, it reads like an introduction, rather than a story in and of itself.

From a friend and colleague, I recieved a very cool mechanical beetle kit by Tamiya ("Obstacle Avoiding Type", meaning it has a horn which swings it out of trouble), a crazy Eeyore pen (which makes Eeyore glow red when one writes) and... A year's membership to the TransFormers Collectors' Club. How cool?

So now I have to figure out how best to reorganise my cabinets (again) to fit the newcomers. This will probably happen over the course of the next few weeks, as I move items from one cabinet to another, from one shelf to another, then look over everything and move things around again until I'm happy. Or need to add something else.

Christmas Day itself was pretty much like any other day when most of the family are over. Discussions of work, eating a massive dinner, watching rubbish TV...

Whenever work comes up, and particularly any talk of my possible advancement within the company, my father is swift with scornful remarks about how "everyone and his uncle is a manager these days". I've never really wanted to be a manager, but I wouldn't mind giving it a try... The thing is, my father never became a manager of anything, so his remarks are more annoying than they are hurtful. Sure, both he and I have had our fair share of shitty managers, but that doesn't mean all of them are shitty, or that I'd be a shitty manager. And when he starts saying that there are too many managers where I work, frankly, I'm inclined to agree. Each magazine's sales team has a manager, then there's a 'Commercial Director' above them. My sister suggested titles like 'team leader' would be more appropriate for the magazine managers and, again, I'm inclined to agree... but these morons like to feel important because they all know that salesmen are ten-a-penny. They get promoted more through brown-nosing than through good work, so we have a situation where the class clown becomes a Commercial Director, even though one of his subordinates is a better salesman, and the manager of another team was a far more sensible choice. On my side of things, the only reason there's more than one manager is that we've inherited one from the company we bought, and he can't be demoted. Certainly not on the money he's earning...

There is a good chance that I'll have a very good opportunity coming my way soon... And, while I'm not happy with the company on the whole, I'd be daft to ignore this opportunity, whether it puts the word 'manager' into my job title or not.

OK, work rant over.

I'd been really looking forward to the Doctor Who Christmas Special and, unfortunately, felt very disappointed by the end. On the plus side, David Tennant's Doctor didn't do much shouting... but that was largely because his temporary companion, Donna, was shouting at him most of the time. The plot was odd, and worked largely by making integral things which were previously unmentioned. The monster, while wonderful to look at in all its animatronic glory, didn't actually do much. On the whole I'd say that, if this is a taste of things to come in the series - which is supposedly to be set mostly on Earth, because those episodes have received the highest viewing figures - it's going to get pretty boring, very quickly... The trailers at the end looked interesting, though.

I managed to avoid the Christmas Special of The Vicar of Dibley... Though it had my sister shrieking with laughter.

She and her husband stayed the night, and have now gone home... Boxing Day is looking very dull and grey. I have a few other things to do so, for now, I shall sign off.