Raccoon!

So there I am, in the middle of one of my irregular eBay browsing sessions, and what do I find but Heinlad, the time-travelling raccoon TransFormer with a fondness for sake.

It's a bizarre model - great looking raccoon mode (though the clock embedded in its chest is odd, and having the 'spark crystal' on one testicle must be embarrassing... Not so much wearing his heart on his sleeve as his allegiance on his scrotum, and bringing new meaning to the idea of being kicked in the family jewels), and a reasonable - though excessively humanoid - robot mode. I can't wait to get my hands on this model. I've passed him up so many times, both at conventions at while browsing web shops (yes, and eBay on previous occasions). I guess what swung it for me this time was that I'd just bought Stampy and Break at Memorabilia last week... something which, according to my spending habits, pretty much amounts to a Beast Wars jag. As I told the guy on the stall at Memorabilia, I don't collect Beast Wars per se, just those few molds which amuse me. Heinlad fits the bill ;)

On another note, it seems that my phone has gone offline again. BT admit that there is a fault on the line (should be old news to them by this point, as it goes wrong in exactly the same way every few months), and reckon they should get onto it after Easter. How fortunate that I seldom use the telephone, and that my Broadband connection is - as usual - entirely unaffected.

Now that Spring is here (really here, as opposed to "Hi, I'm Spring... Ha! Fooled you! I'm still Winter!") the sun is high enough in the sky for the light entering my room to be diffuse enough to get good photos of my models. I've taken several shots of my recent purchases, and a few more pictures of Masterpiece Starscream, all to prepare myself for the burst of photo-snapping that will inevitably follow the arrival of Masterpiece Megatron, Alternator Rumble and the two TFCC exclusives, Astrotrain and Airazor (does it bother anyone else that it's spelt 'Airazor' rather than 'Airrazor'? Am I the only one who feels the single 'r' is somehow inherently wrong?).

On the quiet, I'm getting quite excited about their arrival. I was hoping all last week that they'd be waiting for me when I got home. I suspect that Easter has buggered up the international postal services, and that they're much more likely to arrive mid-to-late next week than anytime sooner. That's not all bad, though, as it should be just in time for another weekend.

All of that said, more and more I'm thinking I should stop buying these things. There just isn't room for any more until I move into a place of my own... On the upside, there aren't too many more that I want now. I'd quite like Gen 1 reissues Hound and Sideswipe, because I like the molds, and perhaps a Gen 1 reissue Megatron that doesn't need plastic rods stuck inside its legs to stay upright. The movie toys look great, so I'm likely to buy some of them... but after that, who knows? Binaltech is apparently over following the release of BT-17 Black Convoy (which I'd quite like to have in place of my Alternator Nemesis Prime, if it didn't cost an average of about $200 due to its rarity). Alternators, even, have a very hazy future because Hasbro can't figure out how to market them. Classics are done, bar this year's BotCon set, and it's rumoured that the next line will be 'a new direction'. Niche products like the MP3 Soundwave might be fun... but I doubt I'd bother with the Rumble/Frenzy earphones, or the iPod Convoy.

Perhaps I should just try to get my hands on the gorgeous Yamato YF-19 (oh, and the recently released SV-51y from Macross Zero), and then call it a day...

And on the subject of enormous life changes (hah!), I've had a couple of ideas about reworking my dull old website. Nothing concrete yet, but enough to possibly have a stab at it over this weekend. Not sure whether the entire site will be re-templated so it's a bit more consistent or if it'll just be changes to a couple of sections... Who knows? In my head, it's sort of steel / blue / black, but these things have a habit of changing. The logo will remain, but be altered, kind of like it was several versions ago, only not. I think the whole 'version number as part of the logo' thing has been somewhat stifling. I'd quite like to use frames, just to show myself I still know how to use them... but I may go for something far simpler.

Got an email this morning from Amazon, offering a pre-order on the new Nine Inch Nails album, Year Zero. Now, personally, I've been very impressed by what I've heard on the MySpace page, and was particularly disappointed that only one new track was played at the Brixton gig (Survivalism is great, pounding stuff, but In This Twilight will be beautiful live). The whole idea of NIN doing a concept album would have been impossible to imagine only a couple of years ago... now it seems like logical progression.