I Want Mine

Dear Santa,

Thank you for buying me a used Wii off of eBay with four games and a controller. I know it was hard to find given all the Wiis on eBay.

Thank you, Kristen
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Dear Person Who Santa Bought My Wii From,

It's called a post office. Go there with my Wii and fucking mail it. Now.

Thank you, Kristen
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Dear Nintendo, You have a fundamental supply/demand problem with your Wii (I know a lot of boys have that problem too). If it weren't sold out from now to eternity, I could buy a Wii for $249.99. Prior to Christmas, one could only get a Wii on eBay for $400 to $450. Here's what's going on:

Makin me feel dum

Let's be honest: no one actually reads Pitchfork except people who write for Pitchfork (and UVA graduates). I like Pitchfork cause they listen to a whole hell of a lot more music than I do and they boil things down to simple numbers that assist me in making my music purchases. But really, why they gotta write such esoteric prose? I doubt I'm the only music fan who wasn't an english major.

Aside: Blogs are fun cause even if no one reads them you can be way funnier than in a diary. like way. who's fucked up dairy sounds like this post? not my diary. my diary says: Dear diary, Today I went out with OOMA, and he laughed at my joke. In a blog you're all: Whatever motherfuckers everyone laughs at my jokes.

Ok, but let's briefly examine the impact of reading Pitchfork on the brain of a person who graduated from a polytechnic institute (me).

From this about Panda Bear's Person Pitch: "When it came out this spring, Person Pitch seemed like a soundtrack to the thaw. Coming two-and-a-half years after Young Prayer, Panda Bear (Noah Lennox)'s spare and quietly devastating predecessor, the new album brought with it the vague expectation of that first warm breeze. [...] The music's oranges and reds and golds were perfect for the fall, and now that the days are short and the ground icy, Person Pitch sounds like something we'll be curling up with in hibernation. It remains a fixture. "

My brain (doctors are currently looking into the presence of all those numbers on my brain):

My brain on pitchfork:

Do you know what that paragraph is saying? The writer is basically saying that he's liked the fucking album all year. He liked it in the spring. He still likes it in the winter. Here's how I review Person Pitch: "It's fucking good. Go buy it. If you don't like it, you are stupid and have no taste."

Oh, and here's something else that is so upsetting:

At least Pitchfork has good taste. Ick. You can stream that shit online. Click Audio.

Why?

Why is there a boat store and repair center here?


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Favorite Albums of 2007

First a confession. I am not classy. Like at all. That part of the title is what those of us peering into the writing business call irony. Ask Alanis Morisette for clarifiaction. I am a bitch, but that's for later. What I also am is a COMPLETE DORK.

Enter complete dork...

Fuuuuuun

"We wanna be friends with you. Everyone wants to have a good time. We can do this if we work together. We can have a very good time together." BYOP

Republican Presidential Candidates want to be friends with you:

John McCain - This guy has the temerity to believe in the Geneva Convention. He's so done.

Mitt Romney - His first name is Willard which is lame. His second name is Mitt which is lamer. We're not sure what exactly makes him a Republican other than the fact that he's Mormon.

Rudy Giuliani - He happened to be in New York during 9/11. This is very important. He likes abortion but he doesn't. He likes fiscal conservatism but he doesn't. He's a moral man and believes in the sanctity of marriage but clearly doesn't. He's everyone's candidate. If you have a position, he's held it. Like doggy style.

Mike Huckabee - He's golden right now. You know why? He likes god and hates brown people.

Fred Thompson - this space left intentionally blank

Ron Paul - If you took acid and listened to one of his speeches, you would die. Really. He believes in the gold standard.

Tom Tancredo - This dude hates brown people. Like way.

Democratic Presidential Candidates want to have a good time:

Hillary Clinton - Her husband was President before Bush which means he can help her with all the stuff that's too hard for women to do on their own.

Barak Obama - He's wanted to be President since he was in kindergarten which is bad according to Hillary. Oprah likes him. Fucking Oprah.

John Edwards - Whatevs whatevs haircut whatevs whatevs trial lawyer whatevs whatevs southern. Boring.

Bill Richardson - He's really just in it to be VP.

Joe Biden - He was born in Scranton, PA which is where The Office takes place. And that's what's interesting about him.

Dennis Kucinich - Insert mandatory joke about UFOs and his hot wife.



Here's what you get if you work together:

Here's what you get when you have a good time together:

Bitch vs. Pussy

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time in a TXDOT meeting far far away, the Council of I-1o Wizards gathered to discuss the endless congestion faced by drivers on that road. After the introductory chant and opening ceremony, the Grand Poobah got up and said, "Fellow Wizards, we have a serious issue. Our humans are spending up to one hour at a time driving to and from downtown."

One wizard suggested hesitantly, "Perhaps they should have thought of that before moving to Katy?"

"SILENCE," shouted the Grand Poobah. "These humans need relief. These humans need help. These humans need a great Katy Freeway Expansion project."

The Council of I-10 Wizards was stunned. No wizard had ever dared to expand I-10 since the last expansion. This Grand Poobah was a grand one indeed.

In the great tradition of councils everywhere, the Grand Poobah set up a sub-team of wizards. That sub-team was tasked with creating a team charter, a list of goals, a timeline for achieving those goals and a communication plan for communicating the goals to the council at large. The sub-team was then required to regularly communicate its goals with wizard council, the Grand Poobah and the team sponsor who was required, by the wizard council's charter, to be a non-council member. This was all achieved in the reasonable time of 2 years.

After those two years, a sub-sub-team was created to develop the construction plan. They came up with this:

The Grand Poobah was not pleased. Neither was the council. Neither was the team sponsor. So, in the grand tradition of sub-sub teams, the charter was modified, the communication plan was retooled and a new leader was appointed. This leader was called the Grinch. The Grinch was a very unhappy man. He felt that working on this project was beneath him. He also felt that humans were lazy. He felt that they had been driving along in peace for far too long. Yes, they had to sit in traffic for hours on end, but that was better than flying a broom through the very cold night sky. This wizard felt that humans were going soft since the invention of fire. He had no sympathy for their plight. At the same time, he was a capable bureaucrat. Therefore, he came up with this plan:

Now, this plan has two advantages. 1) It achieves the goal of the sub-sub-team in alleviating traffic concerns 2) It does so in such a way that all humans that travel anywhere near it will suffer nervous breakdowns at the rate of 1 per week for the duration of the project which you say is only 3 years but will turn out to be the worst and longest 3 traffic years ever.

Santa

Dear Santa,

I live in the United States of America which is the most bestest and the coolest country in the world. America is probbly your favorite place cause we worship you the most and you bring us the best presents. Well, this letter isn’t for me Santa it’s for the President of my country. The President is the smartest man in the world and he has the hardest job cause people all don’t like him and he has to be nice to them anyway. And he has to make tough decisions like which bills to sign and pay. Anyway, today he found out that the people he thought were the bad guys are really not as bad as he told us all. The intelligent people wrote him a letter that said you can’t fight the people in Iran cause they don’t make big nucular weapons. Now my president has no one to fight with so what I want you please to do as well as bringing me a Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii and a new iPhone with unlimited texting so my mom doesn’t get mad at me when I text too much is bring my president someone to fight. Do you think that it would be ok if the president bombed the north pole? We could make sure that he misses all of you deer like Donnor and Blitzen and Comet and Cupid and Rudolph and he will miss your mommy and your elfs. Or maybe you could give him an island from Dubai that he could bomb. He gets so sad with no games to play.

Thank you,

Hizzo

A thin thread connects these....

I heart Keith Olbermann. Even though he has silly eyebrows. I like his special comments. They are special and they make me happy. I like his newscast even though he talks about Britney Spears and the war in Iraq in the same hour.

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You guys should all watch Brian Williams on NBC nightly news Monday night to see how sales of RVs are going down because white trash everywhere can no longer afford to fill them with gasoline. And how declines in RV sales lead to recessions. You'll see a graph like this and you'll think, "How come all the economists don't know about this?

__________________________________________________

Now watch Puff Daddy and Ma$e act like doofi in front of a camera. You know why people think Puff Daddy is cool? Cause he told people he was cool. If you don't believe he's cool then just ask him if he is. His rapping is widely acclaimed by deaf people everywhere.

Fotoshop

I desire the ability to make cool photos with photoshop. This desire is becoming burning. But like so many desires, once fulfilled could leave me empty with a piece of software I never use. That happened to me with Quicken. I was convinced it would change my life. That I would magically become responsible with money and that magically, I wouldn't have to wonder if I could afford my over-priced hair do. And it didn't. In fact, it just pissed me off: "why can't it just do it like my spreadsheet does it" was the oft repeated lament. It just takes up space on my hard drive.


As with all my burning desires, I have become slightly inquisitive. Which is to say that my level of research is becoming obsessive. Now, Adobe's website is not very helpful. You go here and there are these people who are all: "We use Photoshop and our lives are perfect. See Photoshop make men want to fuck me. See Photoshop make me a successful person with power and money." Whatevs. There's no entry for dorky wannablogger who wants to paste her face next to Brad Pitt's nipples with amazing realism. So now we list our options:

1. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended ($999) - Cause that $1 will really make the shit expensive. Basically, with this version I could not only paste my face next to Brad Pitt's nipples, but I could animate it so I was chomping down on them in 3D and then busting Angelina's ass just for fun. It's good for film, video and multimedia professionals. I'm none of those, but I could be if I were as creative and visual as I am anal retentive and engineer-like.
2. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended ($999) - Ok, so this is listed as a different thing, but it really looks like the same fucking thing to me. Again, cause I'm not creative. Or, in this case cause I'm not a manufacturing and design engineer, medical professional, architect or engineer/scientific researcher.
3. Adobe Photoshop CS3 ($649) - This is not extended. This is good for graphic designers, web designers, and artists. I am none of those. According to the webiste with this product, I can: "Experience powerful, multilayer editing with live, re-editable Smart Objects and more than 100 effects filters, including new, nondestructive Smart Filters." Which in English translates to: we had someone who knows nothing about explaining technical things to non-technical people write this cause we are a bunch of dipshits here at Adobe marketing.
4. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ($199) - This is an add-on to number 3 for professional and serious amateur photographers. What this thing does is turn your house into a dark room. Seriously, it's totally fucking cool. It takes over your light bulbs, turns them all off and allows you to feel like you are really developing photographs when you are, in fact, doing no such thing. But it's totally worth that $199 to feel like an old-fashioned photographer. It's called nostalgia bitches.
5. Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 ($99.99) - Cause the $0.01 will make that shit out of reach. They wrote the description for this product in English: "Make your photos look their best with step-by-step editing assistance and amazing compositing capabilities." Words like step-by-step are much more enticing to me than multilayer editing. And I will make my photos "look their best" not "enable 3D editing while tweaking Brad's nipples".
6. Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition (Free) - This is made for housewives who want to look at pictures of their kids. This product is probably one of those things that has a bunch of greyed out buttons that when you roll the mouse over them say "Available with Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 which costs less than $100"

What these people need is an application that let's you enter your requirements for the system and then spits out which one you should use. Like this:

Now listen up Adobe, I'll sell this idea for a web form to you for less than $1000.

Christmas Songs

I have a whole thing about Christmas. Basically, it makes me tense. Christmas decorations make me tense. Christmas songs make me tense. Buying gifts makes me tense. Receiving gifts makes me tense. Whole fucking thing makes. me. tense. Now, admittedly, I have a problem with being tense in general. But that does not excuse the commercial demons from making my ass tenser.

Point in case:

How can that shit not make you tense? Franlky, it makes me want to dig a hole in my own head with an immersion blender. Like this:

Avril - Teh Suck

Last night, while in the comfort of my own living room, I made the huge mistake of switching to MTV Hits. The first thing we must address: why would a classy bitch go to MTV Hits? Because there are only so many times you can watch the same LSU touchdown during football highlights before you wonder: DIDN'T ANYTHING ELSE HAPPEN THIS SATURDAY? CAN'T YOU MAKE FUN OF NOTRE DAME FOR BEATING DUKE? So yeah, a litte insanity causes bad decisions.

Bad decisions. During my brief, ill advised visit to MTV Hits, I was treated to Avril Lavigne's latest suckfest, "Hot." This song, off her latest epistle Best Damn Thing, is so clever that one can hardly process it.

First let's talk about the video. It starts with our dear heroine getting out of a limo in a bad wig. The heroine then blows kisses at all of her adorable fans who are screaming and yelling. This is an innovative concept for a video, and I'm surprised our little girl was willing to risk making such a statement. The dramatic juxtaposition of Avril herself, who presumably endures such lines of fans in her actual life (though not in a bad wig) playing a character who is forced to endure such drama is quite startling. It's as if you, the viewer, must think about the hall of mirrors her life has become. How does one, once entering such a hall, find one's way out? Glad you asked.

By performing in a bustier. See, the real Avril, identified by the streak of pink in her hair, (a statement of rebellion and happiness so lacking in the hall of mirrors Avril), bravely goes where no Avril has gone before and performs in a small night club, on a stage, in front of adoring fans and lip synchs in a green bustier. Why? For dramatic irony fools.

Unfortunately, the whole two Avril concept is not really allowed to play itself out, and we are left feeling like the whole situation was set up just so we could laugh at the wig. But maybe that's just me. Or that the whole situation was was set up cause they needed 30 seconds of video and there's only so much green bustier and pink hair we can stand before we wonder if we are just meant to gawk at her punk ass legs.

Now to the real crime perpetrated on millions of pre-adolescent girls by this song: the lyrics. Viola le chorus:

You make me so hot.

Make me wanna drop.

It's so ridiculous.

I can barely stop.

I can hardly breathe.

You make me wanna scream.

You're so fabulous.

You're so good to me baby, baby.

You're so good to me baby, baby.

First I must point out that this song and the rest of the disc was, in fact, written by Avril and SOMEONE ELSE. It took two people to come up with this. I'm not surprised: the rhyming of "hot", "drop" and "ridiculous" is so raw, so daring, so modern that one person can hardly been expected to come up with it.

What one wonders by the third line is what exactly is ridiculous? Is it the desire to drop, in and of itself that is ridiculous? Or the rendering of ones temperature to a higher level by a single person? Perhaps the combination of both leaves our singer baffled.

Then she tells us with stunning honestly that she can "barely stop." Which is, in and of itself, an interesting statement. We are left to guess which of the following she is attempting to stop: being hot, dropping or thinking this entire line of thought is ridiculous.

Her being unable to breathe is not surprising given all the dancing she's doing in a green bustier.

"You make me want to scream" One sympathizes.

Now, this next line is where things really take a strange turn. The entire chorus, to this point, has lead the listener to believe she is singing about a straight man with which she wants to have sexual intercourse. But then, she calls him "fabulous" which everyone knows is what you call women or gay men. Has Avril just come out of the closet? Is she calling her husband of less than one year gay? Or has she spent so long in the hall of mirrors that she doesn't realize you just don't call straight men you want to fuck fabulous?

In all, this stunningly bad song (which is, in the humble opinion of this writer, only slightly better than her song "Girlfriend" whose suckiness is below my sarcasm) reminds us all of why the music industry is going down the tubes.