Your Consumer Whore Report for September

Have a huge pile of disposable income that you need to get rid of really fast?

If so, today's your lucky day because I just happen to have a huge pile of things that you should really want to buy. I know that I do.

1. Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Absolutely awesome new album from Amanda Palmer, i.e. the voice of The Dresden Dolls. When you buy the preorder right now, you get a free electronic download of the whole CD and a couple of bonus tracks, so there's instant gratification for your purchase that will come later in the month. It's like two purchases in one! It also helps that I love the entire album with reckless abandon, now that I've had a couple of days to listen to it a few times. It's weird that I picked up The Dresden Dolls because of Amanda's association with Regina Spektor, since I can't think of two more opposite types of piano girl singers. There's no polish with Palmer, but the emotion she packs into her songs overcomes any limitation you might expect.
   
   
2. Zoe's Tale, John Scalzi - I'm pretty sure I've gone over (at length) my love for the Old Man's War series, and for that matter my general love of Scalzi's writing (see Elsewhere links for his blog). This latest installment is more of the same, following a parallel storyline to the last book in the series (Last Colony) that fills in a lot of the blanks from that book, while telling a compelling story on its own. I have my list of quibbles with the book, almost all centering around Scalzi's skirting of some serious action scenes towards the end of the novel, but on the whole it's a great companion to the series, with an entirely unique voice. I dug it a lot. Now I just wish I had hard cover copies of the original trilogy, because now my collection looks a little lopsided on the bookshelf.
   
   
3. Dallas is about to receive an embarrassment of riches in terms of live music this fall. Just off the top of my head in the next two months: The Swell Season (AKA:the girl and the guy from that awesome movie Once), The Fratellis (my absolute favorite new band I heard this year), Ben Folds (on his new album tour), A new Hotel Cafe Tour (with Ingrid Michaelson again AND Meiko), Sara Bareilles (doing her own show this time), and Kings of Leon (with We Are Scientists(!!), the real reason I want to go to that show).
   
   I can't even fathom how much money it would take to see even half the shows I want to. And this is after Steel Train cancelled their Dallas stop.
   
   
4. In the video game world, Spore came out this week, and it's taking every willpower molecule in my body to not run to the store right now. I have spent far, far, far too much of my freetime just playing with their creature creator (which you can download for free. Because the first hit is always a giveaway. Then when you're hooked, that's where they get you. It's like cocaine, in a way). I'm dreadfully afraid that owning the full game would ensure I didn't see the light of day for until November.

And you know what? I'm just gonna stop right there because I'm practically drooling over all of these purchases that I want to make, and listing anymore is going to drive me right over the edge into poor consumer choices that you make when the industry you're employed in is folding like a bad hand in poker.

But don't let that stop you. Shop, my peoples, shop!