thanksgiving spending
so much spending of money. so much. let's see.

mario party 5 (GCB) - $49.99
mario and luigi: superstar saga (GBA) - $29.99
final fantasy XI (PC) - $49.99
final fantasy XI hintbook - $16.00
wavebird platinum - $34.99
wavebird platinum - $29.99
PS2 dualshock ocean blue - $22.88
dreamcatcher - $5.38

too many good video games. too many! too many cool systems. not enough money. not enough time. and just when i was getting back into the old ones too, morrowind and super smash brothers.

there's so many other games i want, too. wild arms 3 and final fantasy x for ps2 are each only 19.99. final fantasy x-2 just came out. i want mario kart double dash and prince of persia for gamecube. but they just came out. and greyhawk: the temple of elemental evil was just released as well for PC. for GBA, i intend to buy golden sun: lost age at some point, and fire emblem just came out. it always hurts like a punch to the gut when you see a game you paid 49.99 for priced at 19.99 (kingdom hearts, dbz: budokai, which anyone who doesn't own should buy). that always happens with rpgs like baldur's gate or icewind dale. oh, and for PS1, chrono cross is finally released as a classic, for 19.99. i loved chrono trigger, so i intend to buy and beat that one day too. i was actually worried about that one, some of the best PS1 RPGs are really hard to find and sell for 40 used in most places, which sucks.

does anyone still follow me?

reason for the wavebirds. i'm so cheap. i saw at bestbuy that the wavebird white was 29.99 and the platinum was 34.99. 5 dollars for a different color! i was so angry. but the line was so long that it wasn't an issue. later at the same mall, in electronics boutique, i saw both for 34.99. there was no line, and according to my reasoning, they were priced the same here so i was _not_ being ripped off. plus, we needed another controller if we wanted to play mario party 5 with 4 people at home. so i bought the platinum one. that was yesterday. today, at the target at the enfield mall, i see both wavebirds for 29.99. i buy it, thinking to return this new one from target at electronics boutique, liberating the 35 dollars they swiped from me and giving 30 to the store with the better prices. on the drive home i realized that i had thrown away my EB receipt while attempting to clean the family room (my nieces are like godzilla, but cuter). oh well, looks like i picked up 2 wireless controllers while at home.

i bought mario party 5 in the hopes that it will bring back the glory days of 4 player multi action. we played it some here, it's pretty good. i wouldn't have bought mario and luigi because i just purchased FFXI, which is an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game, and those suck up your time and charge per month), but mario and luigi is supposed to be much like paper mario, which was behind many of my As turning into Bs freshman year. and if i register my gamecube, mario party 5, and mario and luigi with nintendo.com, i can get that zelda bundle disc!

in case anyone's interested, here's the link. if one does not wish to check out that link, it basically says that one can either subscribe to nintendo power, or register one's gamecube along with any 2 of these 4 games: 1080 snowboarding, mario kart, mario party, or mario and luigi.

so i own all these video games that i do not have the time to play. not to mention all these video games i want to buy so i can play one day when i do have the time. stupid life, with its eating and sleeping necessities and not fun stuff.

i realized, when i came home and saw it on my bookshelf, that i did in fact own neuromancer. and i'd already tried to start reading it, twice. this time i had nothing else to do and a sleeping schedule that kept me up til 4am at the earliest, so i plowed through it. it was amazing! i don't know why i didn't get past chapter 1 the first two times i picked it up. i read half the novel in one night, and finished it the next day. really good. but after i read the last word, i put the book down, looked up, and said to myself, "i don't... the hell??" i have the feeling that the book means something, but i am completely in the dark as to what it is. i even tried reading the afterword, hopign it would provide some clue. nope. someone tell me what the book MEANS.

i always used to behave like a plague when i found an author i liked. as soon as i read a book i liked, i read everything else the man or woman had ever written. like some sort of scourge that just devours a book, and as soon as it's gone, moves on to the next. hmm, the imagery does not translate well from head to blog. nevermind. regardless, i've become jaded. an author has a vision. a world with its own rules and physics and races and magic. with heroic, compelling characters and a tale of epic proportions. but it inevitably begins to suck, as the authors, inspired by the thought of more royalties, explore every niche of their world and dispel all magic and mystery with more companion books and novels based on what were supposed to be minor, supporting characters, and so on and so on. my ranting is incoherent and unconvincing. i'm sure people know what i'm talking about, though. right? i'll try to name examples from personal experience. oh man, and when the spouses or children of the authors start writing books with the him or her, you know that's trouble.
and when they start playing around with prequels, you know that's because they're desperate.

david eddings is bologna. the belgariad and the mallorean and the elenium and the tamuli are all right. that's 2 decent quintologies (or whatever a 5 book series is called) and 2 decent trilogies. 16 books! but no, he has to write belgarath the sorceror, polgara the sorceress, the rivan codex, the min (is that right?) codex, and crap crap crap. nothing sacred. and then the redemption of althalas, i thoguht about picking up, but i read from reviews that it's just another rehased belgariad. lame.

as is brian jacques with his redwall. redwall and mossflower are really good. the animals as people, the rhymes full of clues, and the massive vegetarian feasts were fun at first. but really. how many books has he written now? and they're ALL THE SAME. the plot is the same every time. who told me about that interview with the author of the hardy boys? tao? He just follows the same formula every time and fills in the blanks, like madlibs.

robert jordan blows so much. him and his wheel of time can suck it so hard. his shit is just rampaging out of control and needs to be put down.

terry goodkind has written 8 books so far in his sword of truth series. the first 5 were good. the 6th was a weird commentary on communism. the 7th was from the perspective of a half-sister of the main character, that we never knew existed. both could be cut out from the series with no loss. i haven't read the 8th yet, it only came out recently.

i read book 1 of dune and barely made it through. only half the words in the damn novel are in the actual English language. i bought 2-6 when i was bored and suffered an immediate headache when i opened book 2. haven't read any of them. but his damn son keeps coming out with new books about the stupid houses.

i read books 1 and 2 of the sword of shannara. bad. unimpressive. but he keeps coming out with new books about some fucker named Jerle Shannara. every two months i see a new one out. the bastard.

i just read dragonflight, book one of the dragons of pern trilogy by anne mccaffrey. i'm working on book 2 now. it's good. but i won't even consider anything else by her once i finish this trilogy. there are so many pern books by her that it can't be anything but trash. i really only bought this one because i had to pick 5 books when i joined the science fiction book club, and it was a 3-in-1 omnibus, and i'd heard it was a classic. when i went to barnes and noble today i saw a new book by her and her SON.

i read the icewind dale trilogy and the legacy trilogy about drizz't do'urden by r.a. salvatore. good. then i tried the demon something something series by him, and it was the same book, with different names for the damn characters. some beautiful woman and some massive man slice through armies invincibly. gay. now he's working on some new series with drizz't, i think it involves him killing an army. i just saw book 2 on the shelves today. not interested.

one person who has not let me down so far is orson scott card. i loved ender's game. i loved the continuation of the series that a lot of other people didn't enjoy at all. and i've loved the companion series about bean so far. i'm still waiting for the next one to come out. i also read the homecoming series and the alvin maker series by him, and they're not too bad. not as good as ender's game, but decent.

mickey zucker reichart and her last of the renshai series is real good. i was worried when she began another trilogy that took place in the same world but a few hundred years later. but she uses an immortal to anchor the series and pulls it off really well. and the second trilogy has a purpose; it resolves something pretty big from the first.

as for john irving, all his books draw on each other, and they're all related. but he's so autobiographical i don't find it annoying. and it's almost always funny and fresh. the only book i didn't like was (surprise?) his last, the fourth hand.

to any author who kept his or her work to a single series, thank you.

the reason this is bothering me is william gibson. what else should i read, by him? i don't want neuromancer to be sullied by any inferior work. amanda, any suggestions?

i'm tired of typing, all of a sudden.