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!

A Minor Retraction

So maybe I was a little hasty with my last bout of ranting and raving.

Because apparently if you aren't home after the first delivery, you can arrange with UPS to go to their shipping center and pick up a package that same day, provided you don't mind the drive. Which, at this point in my epic OCD-level quest for video games, I'm totally fine with.

So I arrange with the UPS guy to pick up my package at their processing center, which is on practically the diametrical opposite end of Dallas from my house. Indeed, it's almost out near the airport like I suspected. But per his instructions, all I need to do is get there before 8:30pm. Since I've been hit with the American Idol sickness (see my upcoming post of epic, epic shame) I decide to head out there right after work, so I can be back by 7:00pm. I make the heroic trek down there, only to be told that no, I cannot have my package.

Because apparently the guy I spoke to was a bit confused on the specifics of this pick-up thing. Same day pick-up only occurs in the very precise half hour window of 8:00-8:30pm on the day that you schedule the pick-up. Seriously. You have an exact 30 minute span of time in which you must arrive, submit your order and get it processed, otherwise you have to rearrange a time and try another day.

So I drive back home and remake the exact same trek an hour and a half later. The lengths to which I will go to get this box are ridiculous, especially since there's really not that much I want to play right now. At this point it's just a matter of pride and determination. I will get this thing today, dammit.

When I arrive back at UPS (at 8:03), I am informed that they still cannot find my package, but I should wait around until all the truck drivers come back, in case they still have it on their truck. I wait another 28 minutes until I'm the only customer left in the place. The woman who cannot find my package looks over at me and realizes that, based on the fanatic gleam in my eye, she's not going to get to go home tonight until she finds my package. She takes off down to the warehouse herself to check on the last of the trucks coming in.

Meanwhile a random worker wanders out from the back and sees me, obviously surprised that anyone is left around. She asks me for my last name. I give it to her and start to explain that the other worker has gone out looking for my wayward package. The girl cocks her head to the side and looks at me with a puzzled expression. Barely even looking over, she reaches out to her immediate left and grabs the only large box left at the counter.

"Yeah, this is your package right here. I don't know what she was looking at."

Rather than pull my hair out and run from the office screaming, I hand over my driver's license and sign for the box. An hour or 14 later, I'm back at home and finally get to unpack my delicious Wii.

It's pretty cool, although the awesomeness was slightly diminished when Frnak proceeded to smoke me at both Tennis and Bowling in rapid sucession. I mean he destroyed me. It was so sad, y'all. My little guy can't bowl to save his life.

But whatever. Wii!

Wii Would Like to Play, Dammit

Sweet monkey damn, I am so fed up with people.

So I finally found a Wii last Tuesday morning, after months of searching - scouring web pages, haunting Target, and generally making an ass out of myself at Gamestop. I really wanted one, for no good reason, except that I really want to be able to play the new Smash Bros. game that comes out next month. It's not exactly a huge deal, and it seems like a whole lot of money just to play one game, but somehow it turned into this epic quest for me, finding this damn game system.

Whatever, it may be weird and dorky, but it gave me something else to devote my time to now that I'm back off the World of Warcraft.

And they aren't kidding when they say that they're hard to find. It's just insane. I was finally ready to give up when I determined that I would have to start getting up 45 minutes early each morning to go on speculative shopping expeditions. That would usually fail.

But then I lucked out and tracked this one down last week on the internets, although it has to come in from Marble Falls.

Which means it's gotta be mailed to me.

Which is fine.

Oh, it won't get shipped until Friday?

Well, I guess that's fine, I've already paid, but guess I can miss one more weekend without it.

It'll arrive on Monday and Frnak will be home to sign for it.

It doesn't come on Monday.

Oh well, it was probably just a President's Day thing, it's coming USPS so I can just pick it up from the post office when it arrives tomorrow.

Oh, it didn't get mailed out until Monday?

That's lame.

But to make up for it, now it's on overnight delivery UPS?

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Because now it'll HAVE to be signed for, and Frnak's at work all week and so am I. Meaning that I'll have to wait until they've done their three attempts (Tues, Wed, & Thurs), and then go pick the damn thing up out at the package center, which is somewhere out in the middle of nowhere by the airport, and it's only open during normal business hours. So I'll get the system something like two weeks after I paid for it, after I drive all over Dallas, the whole reason that I went with the online route in the first place. Sweet.

Why do people have to suck so much? I just want to play a Mario game by swinging my hands around like a fool battling an insect, possible smacking Frnak in the head "accidentally" in the process. Is that too much to ask?

Grr and Arg.

(This post is brought to you by Jason's utter lack of shame that he still plays and whines about video games like a 12 year old.)