December 24, 2006
My dad's out of town for Christmas, since some of you jerks insist on flying on holidays, so we celebrated last night.
My mom is pretty cool, as you may have heard in a previous post about her being able to get anything allegedly out-of-stock in the Christmas season. She got me a PS3. Now, I badmouthed it before -- to her even, minutes before we began opening gifts, but as soon as I found out I had one, I immediately forgave Sony and forgot how I previously had cursed their name. So now I have a ridiculously overpriced next-generation gaming system.
But really, $700...I mean, when you break it down -- it comes with "Talladega Nights," which I just saw tonight, and even though I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would purchase it, I would guess it retails at about $20.
Also, it comes with a game (that I've never heard of), so say that would have ordinarily brought in another $60, had I for some reason purchased that on my own.
Next, it's a DVD player, and I was going to have to invest in one of those anyway, so let's just go ahead and knock another $70 off there, presuming I would have purchased a mildly credible one.
Also, I was going to invest in a PS2 to play all my old games on and replace my broken one, so there's another $150.
So really, my PS3 was only $400, which is the cost of the other consoles out right now. SO IT'S TOTALLY VALID for me to have let my mom pay this much money for a gift for me...right, guys?
Well, guilt is part of my family holiday spirit, and besides I got my parents a book of pictures of my cat, so it's like totally worth it.
Anyway, I hope everyone else has a delightful holiday. My brother and I are going to take advantage of the free day by going skiing! On Christmas! So all the lift operators can curse our names for making them work!
December 20, 2006
You know what I'm tired of? All these hasty apologies made milliseconds after the career-shattering infraction is uttered/done/snorted.
I'm sure I'm missing some at the beginning of the year, but let's see.
Mel Gibson.
Mark Foley.
That one (?) Gay Meth Politician.
Kramer. (I would say Michael Richards, but come on. I don't think he was close to bawling on Letterman to save his reputation in Weird Al's hit "UHF.")
And now Miss USA.
And she got to keep her job! Her apology was accepted by Donald Trump -- a guy who would fire you if you sneezed and messed up his comb-over. Now, I'm not going to get into whether underage drinking, drug use, and girl-on-girling Miss Teen USA is a worse offense than saying a bad word on a comedy stage, but I will say that between the two of them, even as a completely heterosexual female, I think the choice is clear as to who America would rather forgive.
But I think this trend is getting a little sad.
I realize that it is a Christian ideal to forgive, but these last few months have proven my worst fear that it's apparently fine to do whatever you want, as long as you apologize later. Sure, a few of the guys on the list are still jumping through hoops, but, well, Apocalypto just opened in theaters, and I'm sure a lot of people didn't even know "Seinfeld" Season 7 was being released on DVD, so in Hollywood terms, there really is no such thing as bad publicity.
I've struggled with this problem as I've gotten older when I realized, wait, I really COULD have sneaked out, drank underage, maybe actually done what teenagers were supposed to do when they are teenagers and my mom WOULDN'T have disowned me and I really WOULDN'T make Baby Jesus cry?
No, I'm glad I didn't do any of that stuff, and you know what?
I don't know if I'm going to accept any more of these apologies.
I love Jewish people, I have never homosexually IMed a congressional page, I have never done meth, I love black people, and I have never done coke/drank underage/made out with Miss Teen USA, and LET ME APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE for saying that, yes, that makes me better person.
And I'm pretty sure all of you reading this can say the same thing. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure a good portion of America can say the same thing, which is GOOD FOR US.
This is such a mom thing to say, but I'll forgive someone when they actually act sorry for what they have done, not just sorry that they were caught and/or posted on TMZ.com.
December 11, 2006
You ever have one of those weekends where nothing seems to go right? I feel like I'm some Technological King Midas, except instead of gold, everything I touch turns to broken.
My PS2 is broken. It started going about a year ago, when it hilariously decided to only play games half the time, and that half was usually right when you were furthest from a save point at the most crucial part of the game.
It was also my primary DVD player, and even that part started going a few months ago.
So I bought the DVD adapter on my Xbox, even though I was viciously against purchasing a $20 peripheral just to get the already-existing DVD function to be enabled. Whatever. I guess $20 is less than a real DVD player. You win again, Microsoft.
Justin attempted to fix my PS2 with that laser-straightening tutorial floating around the internet, and I believe it worked for perhaps 24 hours after that.
Well, about a month ago, my Xbox started flashing an "Error 07 Call technical support" message instead of the "Hello, here is your game or DVD, please play or watch it, as you have shelled out hundreds of dollars to do just that" message I have gotten used to seeing. A little footwork around the internet has informed me that the particular 07 error is some kind of serious hard drive malfunction that can't be fixed without selling Bill Gates your kidney.
Then my laptop has been getting slower and slower each day, and I can't seem to locate the culprit. I have run every ad-destroyer and Windows cleaner/fixer software in the world, and all they have done are inform me how many things I have installed that are not viruses or adware at all.
I'll run the search for three hours, and it will come back to me reporting: "Good news, we have found 2 viruses on your computer! One is something called a "Fire fox" and the other is a humorous picture of your cat, Scamp. Should we quarantine these evil viruses and delete them forever?!"
I tried to ignore it, but it's gotten so bad that I can actually click on another tab in my firefox window, and then go and make a sandwich before the thing actually decides to open. I actually started writing this sentence last Thursday, and, well, here we are.
So, you can imagine my frustration, when I just want to watch a frigging DVD before going to bed, and not one, not two, but all three of my available DVD players are broken. Yeah, I tried watching it on my laptop, but it was sort of like being at some lame rave that flashes 1 frame of a Buffy episode every couple seconds instead of using a strobe light. Only somehow less fun.
So I guess I'll go read a book before bed, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it will burst into flames or something the minute I open it.
December 08, 2006
It was touch and go for a while, but Scamp has officially been vomit-free for 2 days. It was what some might call in hindsight "unnecessarily worried" about him, and I sort of didn't want to blog, watch TV, sleep, or eat for a few days, which is why I caught this year's Killer Death Disease from my coworkers who apparently sneeze into my mouth when I'm asleep at my desk.
But I think warm tequila and honey and an endless supply of old Buffy and Angel episodes is just what the doctor ordered.
December 03, 2006
Scamp threw up a bunch of times last night, and it got to be so painful to watch, that I took him to the emergency vet. They're not sure what's going on. They said it's probably nothing, but they wanted to keep him overnight to give him fluids and do some x-rays and bloodwork.
He's probably really scared there, and I won't get to pick him up until tonight. I called again this morning, and he hasn't thrown up since, but I sort of wish he would so that they could diagnose something. I really don't want to bring him home after they say he's fine and just have him start throwing up again.
Well, it hasn't been a fun day, and I think I'll go clean the whole house so I don't have to think of anything. I didn't get much sleep last night, but when I did, I had a dream that I was in high school with Lindsey Lohan and she said she would be my friend if I did her English homework for her.
So, yeah, it's been a little surreal. I keep expecting to see Scamp walk around a corner, but hopefully I'll just have to wait until tonight for that.