the Dalaverse

Hokay, so I went shopping today in an attempt to supplement my casual wardrobe for San Diego next week, as it basically consists of of three shirts, one pair of jeans, and one pair of cropped cargo pants. Problem being it's summer, so attempting to find clothes that fit and that don't make me burst into tears is a questionable endeavor. I spent about an hour and a half trying shit on in Target and eventually settled on a single pair of pants, a single shirt, and a bra (necessitated by the shirt, as it is a low-cut tank top and I didn't have a thin-strapped black bra to wear under it). Brief digression: 1. why are all t-shirts now made of toilet paper 2. why do all t-shirts fall to mid-thigh which is only flattering on people with long, lean torsos and 3. why are extra-large shirts with a defined bust section made to contain nothing larger than an A cup? (In the actual store there was much more !!!1!!).

So naturally, I was fairly grumpy by that point. I'd already dropped my 40% coupon at Borders, so I couldn't cheer myself up that way. No, I decided, what I really wanted was a tiny plastic Kirk and Bones to cuddle and love and put in compromising positions. Except of course, Target didn't have them.

It seems like everybody on ontd_startrek bought their figures at Walmart, so I wandered over there (I believe the last time I was in a Walmart, it was called Asda). It was hellaciously crowded and deeply unpleasant. I wandered up each and every toy aisle, including the bikes, but all they had were effing Transformers and SW figures and WWF shit. FAIL, WALMART. I ask so little of you and still you cannot deliver. I did almost buy a super cheap DVD player (ours broke because it too was cheap and because Dad didn't think anything of plopping the heavy DirecTV box on top of it), but talked myself out of it at the last minute. Which is good, because I had to go pick up my prescription and they'd somehow refilled it for three months instead of the one I thought I had left, so yes, I had to pay three times what I'd figured. Sigh. I won't have to worry about it for the rest of the summer, at least.

By this point my shopping expedition had stretched to nearly three hours, I was bored and tired and wanted nothing more than to retire with Artoo on the sofa...and yet I could not. If I was not going home with a tiny plastic Kirk and a tiny plastic Bones, then I WAS NOT GOING HOME AT ALL. So I hit Toys R Us because the KB at the mall went out of business (sadness - I still remember getting there like half an hour before the store opened to get some toy I wanted, once). And it was there I finally found them.

There was an endcap display with all the different sizes. At first I was all butthurt because I could only find Kirk among the smallest (The Littlest Kirk, if you will) and Bones among the bigger ones. They had both of them as twelve-inch models, but I was not prepared to spend $60 on this particular day (I might later, though ::shifty eyes:: What? It's the only Bones with his blue uniform shirt instead of the cadet uniform!) So I decided on larger Bones, then realized at the register that they might have more in an aisle somewhere. And lo, this was so! They had a much bigger selection of the figures, plus a couple of TOS ones, including a set - I shit you not - of Kirk and Spock from the fight scene in "Amok Time." With KIRK'S SHIRT RIPPED to show a thin line of blood on his plastic torso. I almost bought it just for the lulz, but I had a mission, goddammit!

I had to choose between buying the cheaper tiny figures, or the slightly larger, pricier figures. In the end it came down to one single factor: The Littlest Bones' expression was not sufficiently bitchy. The larger one has a clearly raised eyebrow and supreme bitchface (and lips that were slightly less bubblegum pink), ergo he was my guy. Of course I immediately took them out of the packages when I got home, because I was never That Kid.

I was never much for action figures; I had my stuffed animals, my American Girl dolls, and my Breyer model horses. Oh, and my dinosaurs, the best of which was a green Tyrannosaurus with jaw-snapping action. His name was Elvis. I lost interest in baby dolls once I got Samantha and began to collect all her cool shit. I did have Barbies, but once I started riding and got into collecting Breyers, I abandoned the vacant blond tarts and gave all their soap opera plot lines to the horses (the slutty mare was this chestnut named Colleen, if you wanted to know, which is why to this day I associate whoriness with the name Colleen. Jessie and I used to have the stallions fight over the girls until we realized they were getting all scratched up and we were total idiots. Also, I had my beloved Misty of Chincoteague shod at this fair thing at the barn. Yes, she has actual tiny horseshoes glued onto her tiny plastic hooves). I didn't discover Star Wars until I was twelve, remember? All I had for that was a bunch of Pez dispensers, one tiny Amidala action figure and an Amidala Barbia where her "painted" face is a mask that you can take on and off her normal Padme face, which is actually really fucking creepy now that I think about it, way creepier than the Beast Ken I had whose Beast-head came off. Also, Beast Ken was way hotter than my cousin's Ken because of his non-plastic blond hair).

But these dudes are pretty awesome (aside from the fact that Kirk's eyes are brown, WTF). They each come with a Starfleet emblem stand, a utility belt, a phaser, and a communicator; Bones also has a PADD and a medical tricorder (which doesn't stay in his clenched hand like the rest of the accessories). ALSO THEIR SHIRTS COME OFF. Well, the sleeves are molded to their arms, but the body part is this rubbery shit that peels off to reveal some impressive muscular torsos (they have BELLY BUTTONS). I assumed that Bones' wouldn't because it's the cadet uniform, so this was a pleasant surprise. However, the box is a lying liar who lies - Bones is NOT fully articulated and poseable because his feet are molded to his legs, so he can't turn them. Therefore he cannot kneel, so no tiny plastic blowjobs for Jim. His tiny plastic life is so hard. And their thighs aren't fully jointed so they can't do yoga like my Wolverine. They can, however, hold hands; and if one of them is on his stand, he can carry the other one Scarlett O'Hara style without falling over.

But we'll start slow. Right now they're just standing around - Jim is waving a hand in the air and McCoy's got his fists planted on his hips, so I can only assuming they're arguing about something. Possibly the fact that Kirk seems to have lost his communicator. Fucking typical, ten minutes out of the box and one of his three possessions is already missing. I feel you, Bones ::shakes head::

...I have totally been reading too much Secret Life of Dolls.