A Somber Christmas

While I inexcusably glance at what I’m told is the news, I see average Joe’s fighting to get loans and survive credit and background checks, only to watch ‘our’ government throw money away to hog-ish companies that will give their echelon raises before the overall economy will ever see a cent, and I just shake my head when when no one seems to know where the money exactly went to.  Anyone else reminded of that scene in Armageddon when Bruce Willis is talking to Billy Bob about drilling on an asteroid?  Sounds more believable than what’s happening right now anyway.

Harry Stamper: What’s your contingency plan?
Truman: Contingency plan?
Harry Stamper: Your backup plan. You gotta have some kind of backup plan, right?
Truman: No, we don’t have a back up plan. This is it.
Harry Stamper: And this is the best that you c – that the-the government, the *U.S. government* can come up with? I mean, you-you’re NASA for cryin’ out loud, you put a man on the moon, you’re geniuses! You-you’re the guys that think this —- up! I’m sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking —- up and somebody backing them up! You’re telling me you don’t have a backup plan, that these eight boy scouts right here, that is the world’s hope, that’s what you’re telling me?
Truman: Yeah.

Thank-you again, imdb.com.

So…millions of people need loans, go through the motions to try and get approved  and if they are very lucky (almost to the point of not even NEEDING the loan in the first place) they might get it for some thousands of dollars…but several companies that claim to have failed so terribly solely due to greed, are given BILLIONS of dollars and we don’t even know what they spent it on.  Well, other than bonuses to stock holders in order “to get them to do the jobs for which they are well paid in the first place.”  To break this down simply, these companies were paid billions of dollars to pay their high ranking officials on top of their usual millions, if not billions already…and when asked where the money actually goes they refuse to tell the public.  “The public”, ie their sole source of income outside of the most recent Wallstreet Welfare drama.

So, as I turn the ‘news’ off in disgust, I look around my messy area, (still have to finish a few Christmas gifts by-the-by) and think: 

I’m fortunate enough to have time to make gifts for my friends and family in place of spending a lot this year.  What about the people that don’t have time OR money?  I feel bad enough at the amount of gifts I bought this year is down compared to last year, and I know to some that might sound snooty but the gifts I’m giving are far from top of the line.  Dollar stores and Goodwill made up the bulk of gifts this year, and I’m making the rest of them by hand.  I know it’s rough out there currently, but even with that in mind I almost feel guilty that I didn’t get more for the people I care about. 

And then you have companies saying they suddenly need an extra fifty billion and in exchange for that sum, promise to only use one of their twenty private jets. 

 And then someone actually gives it to them.

Christmas, She’s-a Here!

Well, looks like snow’s-a comin’.  It hasn’t started to fall yet, but it’s due any time now.  Skilling took a little jab at other weather persons and said “If you were expecting the snow to mess up rush hour on your way home today, you didn’t watch our program because this snow is moving right along schedule.”  You tell em Tommy, friggin’ weekend weather men ain’t got the cahones to tell it like it is, you tell em Tom!

Then he showed the map of what’s expected, and he paused it during the morning rush hour and said “And this here is…well this is just a mess” with such a straight face and professionalism that it made me laugh just typing about it.  But that’s enough about The Weatherman for one night.

After hearing his predictions for the night I, for some reason thought about decorating outside with lights.  Be it the fresh snow to get me in the Christmas season, or lack of fresh air getting to my brain due to all this central heating as it’s some 10 degrees outside, I was on a mission.  So I sent my Dad outside to get the lights.  (It’s cold out there!)

So now I sit and wait.  Can’t do the lights yet as I got a plan for them that involves the supposed foot of snow we are expecting here.  Hopefully it’s not the wet and heavy snow, but just snow, then ice after it falls as that would be excellent for what I have in mind.  Just gotta wait a few more hours for it to be about half done falling…

As for crafts, I made my girl friend’s friend and ex-boss a shrinky dink key chain.  Thought of and completed it in under two hours.  I did plan on making him something, especially after his fiancee’ got all druggy emo on my girl friend a few days ago.  (“I’m not addicted to drugs!  I just smoke pot!”  Well if that isn’t sound logic…)  Start out as a shrinky dink key chain but the hole I made ended up being a smidgin too small and my girl friend ended up breaking it while trying to take it off the chain itself.  So I turned it into a coin.

As for the rest of the crafts…eh.  Time is running low, methinks some gifts will be belated.  I finished the main gift I had planned for awhile now for my little lady, but I had another planned that might have to wait for her birthday in February.  I feel like I could have done so much more for people this year, bah.  Probably need to do one final round of gifts before wrapping time.  If I can afford it anyway.

X-Men Origins Impresses

Took a break from painting sun catchers and cross stitching to check out what Comcast is telling me is news.  Blagojevich, blah blah, Ellen and Britney sings carols, Tom Cruise isn’t nutty anymore, new X-men movie?  There’s something actually interesting.

Heard about this one, supposedly has Wolverine teaming up with Gambit to take on Deadpool, and based on the video I like.  X-men 3 had it’s moments, few and far, but it had it’s moments.  Two was all right…the first one was the best,  but again only in moments.  I guess you could describe the whole series by saying: “Special effects and nostalgia do not an epic movie make.”

I had to look up Deadpool because I’ve never been a big comic buff, my dad was really into Marvel and mostly Spider-man (got my sister into SuperBall…who changed drastically into Penance semi-recently.  I liked Ghost Rider back then as in typical male fashion skulls, motorcycles, chains, and fire are all badass.  I was also much younger then, but I still defend my appreciation to the guy, something the makers of the movie sharing his name certainly did NOTdo.)…that was a long run on.  Anyway, Deadpool sounds like he’s pretty cool.  Gambit looked a hell of a lot like a mix of a My Chemical Romance music video spliced with Clockwork Orange and a mop of hair.  Also I thought this guy was French?  Didn’t sound like it/didn’t show him enough to know in one watching of the preview.  But all in all the preview did it’s job; I’m interested in seeing the movie when it comes out.

My House Is A Freaking Sty

I decided that I was making gifts this year awhile ago, and only recently have I actually started on them.  Very quickly this tidy place has turned into just…ugh.  It’s not the ‘crazy cat lady on Animal Police’ level of dirty, as everything under these random messes *is* clean and doesn’t have dead animals stashed like trophies to some unknown idol in the corner of the room, but it certainly is an eye sore that’s almost enough to motivate me to organize the place.  I’m spending the day finishing as many projects as I can to finally quarantine my work area.  It started by the couch, then my computer desk…then the infection spread…

Making Christmas Gifts, Finally

After quite a while, my gifts are finally underway.  So far I’ve completed two gifts, and spent the past few hours on the third one which has a bit left to go, but the fingers are going to be in pain tomorrow.  Much like when ‘breaking in’ your digits while gaming on your system of choice, my fingertips are achy from several hours of forcing a blunt needle through several layers of fleece.  I do not own a sewing machine, and while I prefer to make all things by hand (even making whipped cream by wisk instead of electric beaters) after today, if I ever plan to make more of these things and sell them on Etsy or something, I’m very willing to at least borrow someone else’s machine to do them. 

Or offer both hand-made and sewing machine options.  The items would generally look the same but hand-made items would be twice as much as machine made ones, as the time involved is quite high.  Several hours of pointer-finger numbing work is enough to make anyone ponder about better, faster, and less painful options.  I can’t say exactly what I’m working on lest the receiving person stumbles upon this, so all I’ll say is the deviantart user Clearkid has a tutorial for it, and it is quite helpful.  (The link there is your spoiler warning, potential person that may receive a gift from me.  And no, Joe, that’s not for you in case you are wondering…though I doubt you are as this is nearing 300 words and you probably just skimmed to the link anyway, ha.  GL in Naxx tonight, told you I wouldn’t get in there…and my ISP decided to shut off for like an hour just before raid time…yay.)

Oh, and while I was sewing I had Colbert and Daily Show on in the background, and just now watched the recent Daily Show interview that talked about blogging that said blogging is all about emotion and spontinaity, which is far from what I’ve done in the past.  Generally I think of something I can try to make interesting and then work at it a few hours until I’m happy, then hit Publish and spend the next hour editing things that just don’t sit right with me.  Hell, my articles for Hammer took me a good two days each, so I’ll try to do more posts like this that take less than an hour, woot. 

Note to self:  Schedule time to be spontaneous.

Wintergrasp and Faux Scars

Wintergrasp, zomg!  Blizzard *can* make a decent pvp area!  Color me surprised.  (Though in all fairness I will say it might not always be their fault, as it could very well be all the retards I get stuck with from the other servers.  The players from my server seem to know what they are doing, so props to you all on ET)  So far my ‘best moment ever’ in there was just yesterday:

It was a pretty even fight, occasionally we’d get the Tenacity so I know we were outnumbered but all in all it was a solid match. It came down to the wire for sure, 1:30 left when I respawned and their final door was damaged but not down.  I mounted up and hoped to at least distract the defenders from our vehicles as I knew the siege weapons wouldn’t go fast enough to get me there on time. 

I rode up to the final courtyard and ran through a tank that was inching it’s way to the door.  A good twenty horde were all pounding the hell out of anything that was red to them, so I stayed ’stealthed’ within the tank’s shape, unsure really how to help the situation.  Less than a minute to go, the tank is slowing closing the distance to the door, ranged sieges are still firing, Horde’s honor count is going up faster than gas prices a few months ago, and time is ticking down.  The tank and I reach the stairs at the bottom of the door, either his Ram ability was in range, or the catapults behind us did their part, the door crumbled just as we started climbing the stairs.

The tank is low on health but keeps moving, I’m still ‘hidden’ but the AoE’s Horde are laying down are taking their toll on me as well.  Down to 20  seconds now, the tank makes it up to the Orb of Winning (or whatever the hell the thing is in the middle) and I bolt out and start ‘using’ it to capture the objective.  The tank was close behind and was soon destroyed.  Luckily I’m a gnome, and the way the rubble of it fell it actually covered me up again.  Half a bar to go.

Some how, probably due to tab-targeting, a pally sees me and just before he gets close enough to hit me, someone stuns him.  I saw he had me targeted, spinning in a Mortal Kombat daze just feet away.  I honestly don’t know how long the stun on him lasted, or even what caused it,  but (probably more-so for the pally) it seemed to last a really long time.   But luck or other teammates prevailed, and the capture went through with exactly six seconds to go until we lost.  The first words in the raid pug chat was “Wow” and “how the hell,” but shortly after that they were all cheering and “grats”-ing.

Then later on we did the 10 man instance, I tanked it, and two (what I’m told are T7) plate armor dropped.  I thought it was cool because I was in the running to get the pieces, only I didn’t notice it is also class specific, and I was the only warrior in there.  So I got chest and glove pvp items to boot.  Woot!

As for RL, that pesky thing, I think I had a ’sleeping dog running’ moment yesterday morning.  You know how they twitch like they are running now and then when they sleep?  Well I remember my eyebrow itched or just felt like it needed to be, so I did, and I remember doing that in a twilight-state.  I’m not sure how long I dipped in and out of consciousness, but when I finally made it the bathroom to wash the sleep out of my eyes, I had about an inch long red ’scratch’ on my eyebrow.  It didn’t hurt, but it was deep red and looked badass.  I walked around like Squall for a day, and it was a present I gave to myself for sleeping!  Double-Woot!