January 2007 Archives
At the end of Part 1, we had the new Westinghouse television and the old small television hidden behind it. Life seemed good. C-Man had his big shiny television that did not emit a high-pitched whining noise. I had the emotional security of knowing that my long-time companion was waiting for the day when I regained a room of my own. C-Man made a few speculative comments about selling the Westinghouse on craigslist so he could buy something at Costco due to their superior return policy, and I told him to do whatever he wanted as long as I didn't have to hear about it. Nothing happened. I was fine with that.
At the beginning of the holiday shopping season, the PS3 was released. To make a long story short, C-Man spent about 100 hours engaged in PS3-hunting, and ended up with exactly one (1) PS3, which he was completely unable to sell on craigslist or EBay for a profit, so he kept it. I agreed to accept that as long as it would play my beloved Max Headroom DVDs better than the XBox does, which turned out to be true.
Then my sorrows began.
The thing you must understand about lawyers is this: when they feel like they're being screwed over, they can lawyer up FOR FREE. And it turned out that the Westinghouse and the PS3 didn't talk to each other correctly, so C-Man was feeling very screwed over indeed.
C-Man called Westinghouse. Then he emailed Westinghouse. They argued. He spent an entire evening with boxes stacked on the coffee table and the digital camera perched atop the boxes. He took pictures of the television screen. He took Quicktime movies of the television screen. He emailed them to Westinghouse. He emailed them to Sony. He did internet research. He took the PS3 to Costco to plug it into other televisions. He took it to work to plug it into another monitor. He argued with Westinghouse some more. Westinghouse blamed the PS3. Sony blamed Westinghouse.
He finally decided to return the Westinghouse to Best Buy on the grounds that Westinghouse was refusing to honor the warranty. He had built his evidence file to support his case. He also had the citation for the federal law that allows chargebacks to credit cards for transactions in which the cardholder is not able to resolve a dispute with the merchant, and he was prepared to quote that law to the Best Buy customer service staff.
The original packaging for the television, however, was missing. Disposed of by someone who shall remain nameless (who is not C-Man and me and not The Dog). Even assuming that Best Buy would accept the return of a television over six months after purchase, the restocking fee would be 15% of the purchase price. C-Man announced his intention to hold the disposer accountable for the sum we would forfeit due to lack of packaging.
We bundled the television into the back seat, restrained it with a seat belt, and cushioned it with blankets. C-Man put together his evidence file, and we set off for the Best Buy in Georgetown. Since the television had been charged on my credit card, I had to go. My plan was to dissociate from the entire experience, because I've seen the look on this man's face when he's angrily typing a retort to someone on a message board about copyright issues and I didn't want to see how bad this was going to get.
We parked in the loading area and carried the television to the customer service desk, then C-Man went to move the car. A customer service person approached me.
Customer Service Person: So what's going on with this television?
The Princess: I am not talking to you about this. He is talking to you about this. He is moving the car out of the loading zone.
Customer Service Person (backing away slowly): OK, sounds good.
As soon as C-Man came in, I put my credit card on the counter and ran away to hide between the rows of refrigerators.
Not long after, C-Man appeared.
He was smiling.
It was scary.
I figured he'd killed that nice boy at the customer service desk.
While I waited for the alarms to go off and security to appear, I thought I would make conversation.
The Princess (backing away slowly): So, what happened?
C-Man: They took it back.
The Princes: Um...what?
C-Man: I'm really glad you have a digital camera.
Yes, it's true, the photographic evidence brandished by my dear husband had been enough to convince the customer service person that the television just did not work. No law citations were needed, no annotated warranty and paper trail of customer service interactions. Just a printed photograph of some squiggly silver lines on a television screen. And they had been apologetic that they had to give us store credit because it had been too long to do a credit card rebate. They didn't even charge us the restocking fee.
As we left, C-Man started to veer towards the television section.
I said "You told me to remind you that you're only allowed to buy cutting-edge electronics at Costco."
So we left.
(To be concluded in Part 3....)
You go to Google and type in your name along with the phrase "last I heard he/she was" and see what you get. Find out what you're up to these days...
So I did, and I have grouped some of the resulting scenarios into how well I could tolerate them.
Not a major disaster:
- Last I heard, she was in Palo Alto California and had a great husband
- Last I heard she was in New York and was nominated for an Oscar for a short film
Um, well, I guess it's better than a stick in the eye:
- Last I heard she was going to Ft. Sam Houston
- Last I heard, she was getting some feeling in her arm?
- Last I heard, she was in East Timor, working for the Red Cross
Someone kill me:
- Last i heard she was dating that heroin boy from Silverchair
- Last I heard she was hosting for Martha Stewart
- Last I heard she was on WWE raw
Hello all, I hope you're still in bed this morning. Unless your children need you, in which case I hope you were able to get up and go help them without too much pain. I guess it depends on whether they let you sleep through the night, huh?
In place of morning cartoons, I offer the following snippets from the web.
Know-It-All on The Talent Show contained some good information, so please review post haste if you missed it:
Science has stood completely still since DNA was discovered thirty years ago...in 1953.
I guess I need to clarify more at Peter's Cross Station may only be of interest to those who care about adoption issues, but it's tremendously well written and I liked this part:
My knee-jerk response when looking for a side to take is the side with the least power. And that includes times when I personally, individually may lose something by siding this way. I know that people in the position to adopt often feel like they are powerless. But they are not. Most often, they are people who have a lot of power, but have lost a piece of that power--assumed fertility for example. Generally speaking, however, adopters have more power than prospective first parents. Flood me with your exceptions, but that is the fundamental, basic truth.
Dooce took inspiration for Having Dated Walking Red Flags from Maggie Mason's book No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, which I own and love. But I doubt I'll do a post like this of my own, because Dooce's is so amazing that I'd rather read hers:
It wasn’t until I realized that his aversion to butts was just Chapter One in his memoir The Innumerable Ways I am Out of My Fucking Mind, and by Chapter Four: I Cannot Bring Myself to Sleep With Women Who Have Vaginas, I knew that I had stumbled into the wrong section of the library, if you know what I’m saying.
Wow, this next one is old. Economic Talking Points For Democratic Leaders on Burnt Orange Report:
You see, we live in a 30-second sound bite world. You have to speak in simple sentences and say the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. That's what Bush has done with such phrases as "9/11 changed everything" and "war on terror." Why the hell do you think everybody says, "9/11 changed everything?" Because Bush says it in every speech! So, that's what we have to do. Just to make sure you see these phrases
I HAVE HIGHLIGHTED THEM IN BOLDFACE AND CAPITAL LETTERS.
And finally, a 2006 wrapup entitled Feminism & Gender in 2006: The Good, Bad, and the Underwearless, by the talented Suzanne Reisman of Blogher and her own blog CUSS and other Rants:
The South Dakota government banned abortions. The voters overturned the ban. Sometimes the people know what they are doing. Other times, they elect George W. Bush as President. I can’t explain it.
That is all for today. Someday, I might actually get into pointing out good posts from 2007...
I just took an online survey.
First question: Where do you access the internet?
First answer option: I do not access the internet.
I can't believe I never posted a link to this web comic that made me laugh so much that I almost cried.
In 1995, I lived in Minnesota. I was working in a stockroom behind a retail store in the Mall of America for $6.25 per hour. Somehow, I managed to buy a television. I had lived through most of my first two years of college without watching television regularly. In fact, I can't remember watching much television at all during those years, except for a cramped dorm-room group viewing of the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
But dammit, I was working now, and I was going to buy a television. So I did. And for the next 11 years, that television kept me company. Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, Earth2, Highlander, The Tick, Deep Space Nine, the X-Files, Buffy, Farscape, and many more - plus hundreds of movies - played on its screen while I ironed, sewed, filed papers, studied for the math section of the GRE, recovered from various illnesses, or sometimes just sat there and watched. We had a good relationship.
Then C-Man became a regular in my apartment. "Can't you hear it?" he said. By which he meant a high-pitched whine that the television allegedly emitted when turned on. "My god, it's awful," he said. (Actually there was also some profanity involved too, but I won't bore you with the details.) After a while I had to admit that I could hear it if I concentrated, but even without concentrating I could hear C-Man whining and that was getting really annoying. So after much discussion, I told him to buy a television.
He looked on Craigslist for a replacement with similar characteristics, minus the whine. But since he is a geek boy, he was pretty much going to buy a new shiny toy. So he began to research. Over the next few months, I heard more than I ever wanted to know about LCD, plasma, projection, 1080p, and various other terms that I don't remember because OH MY GOD I DID NOT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT TELEVISIONS. I just wanted him to make a recommendation based on our household's needs and desires. He finally did, after much boredom on my part.
The television he selected was made by Westinghouse, and it was on sale at Best Buy for some ridiculously good price, so we drove up there (about 35 minutes) and got one. It didn't look very big at the store. I knew we were eventually going to have a house, and we'd be sitting further away from the television, and I didn't want to buy another one at that point to fit whatever that new space would be, so I was worried.
We brought it home. It dwarfed the old television. It was like I had a miniature television for 11 years and didn't know it. It turns out that if you put a 37 inch television next to 55 inch televisions, it looks like a tiny wisp. If you put a 37 inch television in front of a 27 inch television, you obliterate all evidence that the latter exists.
We had agreed I would put the old television on Freecycle, so I dutifully typed up an offer. When someone agreed to pick it up, I gave her directions. Then I started crying. Inconsolably. For over an hour. Did you see the list of television shows up there? For years, they and many others were my friends. Significant chunks of my life were spent tangled up in those characters' imaginary lives, and for someone with a deep need for narrative this is a big deal. I just could not get over the idea of separating from that television, despite the silliness of keeping 2 televisions in a 500 square foot apartment.
I don't know what C-Man made of it. My guess is that it boiled down to "girl crying, must fix." This is the man who bragged that he had never bought a television. In fact, the according to the FCC, anything without a tuner is a monitor, not a television, and the Westinghouse did not have a tuner of its own and thus was not actually a television. C-Man found this very pleasing, because he regards television programming as more dangerous than heroin. Don't ask me to explain how that coexists in his head with massive consumption of box sets of Buffy, Babylon 5, and Farscape. I don't know.
But he loves me, so he agreed I could keep the old television. I retracted the Freecycle offer (sorry!), and the old television waited contentedly behind the new television for the day when it would once again tell me stories.
To Be Continued...
Here are a few things to read this morning in case you don't like any cartoons that are on. Yeah, they're old, but so what? Good writing on the internet is forever.
Shark-Fu at AngryBlack Bitch posted Girl, get your suffrage on! right before the elections in November, but it's timeless and fabulous.
If you think politics doesn’t have anything to do with you…if you think the only things on ballots are candidates and issues that don’t apply to you…you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Right after the election, A whole new world! The first three hours was documented at Finslippy:
7 a.m.: The radio alarm wakes us up. NPR briskly announces that the Democrats have taken the House. I’m trembling with glee. No, wait, I’m trembling with cold. I look out the window. It’s pouring rain. The Democrats never said anything about rain.
Though this post is from June of 2006, I still think it's important to point out that You're not allowed to kill civilians. Fred Clark at Slacktivist:
This is neither new nor controversial, yet putting the matter in such stark terms always seems to upset people.
Miss Zoot says Be glad I don't have your cell number, but hell, I'd give her my number after reading this:
You are not going to believe what I just did. I just ordered a corsage for a GIRL that my son is taking to a DANCE tonight. A CORSAGE. A DANCE. A GIRL. MY SON. Did you hear me? Can you believe it? I’m freaking out. Do you know what I did with boys at dances? I kissed boys at dances. KISSED.
Skip past the t-shirts to find PART TWO! in the post Free Don't Suck at Fussy. Or don't skip the shirts, they're kinds of fun. But you have to read the story by Jackson and Sophia, plus the brilliant literary commentary by Mrs. Kennedy. Too short for an excerpt, that would spoil everything, sorry!
Oh wow, this one's really old. But still good. Love in the time of terrorism at Sepia Mutiny details one man's struggle for love in the face of transportation adversity:
I’m a 30-year-old single male. There are fewer opportunities for me to meet eligible women (according to my parents). A desi friend’s wedding is supposed to be a money venue. But just look at my predicament. I cannot shampoo my hair (hotel shampoo doesn’t count) or apply even a modest amount of styling gel to my hair in order to achieve that proper look between sophistication and slackerdom.
Our last entry is a really good movie review. Really good. It manages to give information about the movie without being dry, and the reviewer's opinion without being pedantic. That's hard to do, and she does it very well. Idiocracy Movie Review by my good blog friend Suebob:
It's a great movie concept and an ok movie. It is hard to hang a movie on one character whose claim to fame is that he is completely average, one stereotypical woman character (the sassy prostitute) and a supporting cast of complete and utter idiots.
Enjoy your Saturday.
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Thank-you notes are the foundation of a civilized society. Miss Crankypants links to a handy guide on how to write them.
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Many commenters to this post state that no one should have children until they can financially support them. If we lived in a society where everyone had an equal chance to do that (without killing themselves trying), I might agree.
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Striking image of a female athlete. Well done, Raqaya al Ghasara!
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Because we all love to gawk at hideous consumer products.
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Pots for plants, made out of plants. How do they do it?!
Many years ago, a friend thought he could get me into video games with SimFarm. Three sheep later, a tornado destroyed everything. What kind of fun is that? Since that day, my involvement in video or PC gaming has been strictly as an onlooker. But with this post, I embark on my new path as a video game reviewer. Yes, dear readers, this is the first video game review in the almost five year history of Flooded Lizard Kingdom.
Please note that I have not actually played Final Fantasy XII. This makes me more qualified to review it. I can be more objective because I haven't spent countless hours getting my ass kicked by a giant turtle.
The Characters in Your Party
Lady Ashe is depressed because most of her skirt was destroyed in a tragic accident, and there's only a tiny scrap left. Her late husband "Wrassler" would surely have bought her another one, but unfortunately he's just a ghost now. Ashe's battle cry is "I must endure." Scholars believe this is a reference to her wedding day, when she was forced to wear two dead blue birds on her head.
Vaan has an extra vowel in his name in case of emergencies. He was the original blonde half of the 80's pop duo Wham until that bastard George Michael stabbed him in the back. Here is Vaan in a scene from his next music video, "It Hurts To Be This Pretty."
The Raver Girl wears her hair in pigtails. Her secret weapon is giving Ecstasy to all of your enemies so they're too blissed out to fight. When she gets killed, she says "I can't..." and falls down in a heap. A cute heap, though. With pigtails.
These two guys tried to make a living working at Renaissance Festivals, but couldn't quite make the rent. They turned to product testing for hair gel companies to survive. The results aren't pretty.
Next we have the the Bunny Rabbit Drag Queens. They come from a far-away land where everyone is a Bunny Rabbit Drag Queen.
The Bunny Rabbit Drag Queen in your party for Final Fantasy XII is named Fran. Fran looks like this:
Fran is cranky all the time because none of the other Bunny Rabbit Drag Queens like her any more. Or maybe it's because her butt is cold from hanging out of that outfit.
Then there's Reddas and his pants. Oh my!
Setting/Atmosphere
The Final Fantasy XII takes place in a land with many wonderful destinations, like Rahamanahamana and Mt. Ong Bak and the Island of Go Vegan! and a few more whose names I can't remember. The people who live in these places have developed a good system for social interactions. If they are willing to talk to you, a quote bubble appears over their head. This saves a lot of the rejection that can arise when you're trying to chat up strangers.
The game uses music to set various moods. Early in the game, you hear "Heroically riding horses through the desert, about to crest dramatically at the top of a hill at dawn" and also the hit song "Heroically venturing into a dark cave, surely we'll be attacked by something nasty." Later, we hear "Waking up heroically to face a new day" and "Exploring a dark passage heroically."
If you are not familiar with the game, I'll tell you that it's kind of a high fantasy world with big airships. However, the game does not always stick to its milieu. For example, Vaan's battle cry is "How 'bout summa this?" This is hardly in keeping with this atmosphere of the game. I suspect Vaan is using these moments to brand himself with today's youth in hopes of rekindling his music career.
Plot
Your party is supposedly trying to liberate the kingdom of Dalmasca from a neighboring kingdom that stomped it like a bug. However, about 12 minutes of effort is spent on this endeavor in the first bazillion hours of game play. Instead, your party runs around tackling different quests so they can steal tons of stuff from various creatures. I can only assume that all the loot is hidden in well-camouflaged supply vehicles because with the amount of shit they steal, they would otherwise need frame packs.
As you go, your entire team is transformed into zombies. They die, you revive them. They die, you revive them. After a while, you can't even remember how many times they've died. Thank goodness these zombies don't have the usual brain-eating hangup. That would get difficult.
In between all the bouts of fighting and looting, they spend their time in places that look like luxury resorts while selling off the spoils of war. The revolutionary life is a hard one. With all the money they make, one wonders if they couldn't just buy back the damn kingdom already.
I assume that after the pack of looting zombies has worked their way through all the available quests, eventually you win back the kingdom... but SOMEONE hasn't gotten that far yet, so I can't say for sure.
Strengths of Final Fantasy XII
First, the Final Fantasy XII characters are way better than Kratos, the main character in God of War:
Who wants to be covered in the ashes of their dead wife and children? Ew.
Also, none of the characters in Final Fantasy XII seem to have the same inner-ear disorder that afflicts the God of War guy. You see those ropes up there? Those are for safety. For a bad-ass warrior, that guy has no balance at all. The Final Fantasy characters don't seem to spend all their time falling off things. Even the Bunny Rabbit Drag Queen manages to stay on her 6 inch platforms, which is a gift given only to drag queens.
Final Fantasy also offers many opportunities for players to use real-world knowledge to overcome obstacles in the game. For example, just like in real life, the best way to win a big fight is as follows: get your friend really drunk, beat the crap out of them until they're really angry, then point them at your enemy. In no time flat, you'll all be singing kumbaya over the enemy's charred corpse.
The best part about this game is that other people have already done all the work for you. If you get stuck, you can just ask your wife to google for instructions on winning any given fight.
Weaknesses of Final Fantasy XII
There are only two weaknesses that I can detect.
First, since you don't ride horses, you run everywhere. It looks fucking exhausting. Except sometimes you ride a giant chicken, but how good could that be?
Second, the music is really annoying, becase it just. won't. go. away. Although I have mixed feelings about God of War, I was surprised to find out that it actually had background music. This is the preferred behavior to provide protection for innocent bystanders who are trapped in a 625 square foot apartment with the game for days at a time.
Resemblance to Star Wars
There is absolutely none! I don't know what you're talking about. STOP SAYING THAT!
Conclusion
I give Final Fantasy XII about 8 stars out of 10.
I hope you have enjoyed this review and that it provides you with some assistance in planning for your future entertainment needs. I promise that when I am rich and famous due to my video game reviews, I won't forget the little people.
Today we are moving into our new house. Isn't it lovely?
Oh my god would you please stop losing yourselves! It's very stressful!
Thanks!
Last year I made resolutions in October and March. I did pretty well. I finished up all nine of my major unfinished sewing projects between October 2005 and January 2006, except for one which was completed and donated in December of this year. I made 3 more kid quilts and delivered them across the country. Then the March "resolutions" were actually just a list of areas in my life that had gone bonk and that I needed to fix. I got most of those cleared up as well. Notably, I did a good job giving The Dog at least a short walk every day.
Now we're buying a house. We've been packing this weekend, even though we haven't heard back on the appraisal yet. I'm just not going to be superstitious anymore. Our realtor is a consummate professional. The inspector and C-Man's architect dad thought it was in fabulous shape. Our financing has already cleared. The house was already bought by someone else who backed out, and he was going to pay more than we're paying. The house is not going to unexpectedly appraise for dramatically less than the value everyone thinks it has.
Part of my brain is convinced Everything Will Be Different when we move into a house. We will cook more, eat better, play with The Dog more, have friends over more often. We shall see.
However, I know it will change our Ecological Footprint. Living in a small apartment without a car, I was at about 1.9 planets to support my lifestyle. I didn't want to retake the quiz once I bought the car; we use it for errands so often. I really don't want to re-take it now that we're moving from 625 square feet to 1740+ square feet. C-Man's drive to work will be shorter, but we'll still need to focus and crank our resource usage down to compensate for the house.
So, my first New Year's Resolution is to reduce our newly enlarged footprint. The foremost decision is that we are committing to buy pre-owned furniture and decorative items. (Details of other ideas for implementation are at the end of this post, so I can keep track throughout the year. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.)
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Hmm, are we thinking about a second dog, assuming the purchase of yard (with incidental house) goes through? Of course!
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Check out this artist's work, especially the piece at the end titled "Priceless."
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Super cute Robot Rock t-shirt made in New Orleans. Buy it for someone you love who loves robots.
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Percentage of chart which resembles...
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I never really thought of it that way.
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If simple kindness and acceptance were as widespread as they should be, no one would have to be so surprised when it happens.
Me Elsewhere
