Christmas Gift Guide

(Updated 10/2 with specifics about Nintendo games, if anybody’s interested)

Hi everybody! It’s Christmas shopping season, and since I know I’m a tough guy to shop for, I thought I’d post a list of ideas to help get you started. Don’t interpret these as limitations, just as jumping off points for people who would like to get me a great, personal gift, but don’t know where to begin. I’ve separated it into three levels based on general level of expensiveness, and I’ll be updating it throughout the holiday season if I think of anything else that might help.

==Gifts==

• Food of any kind
  I’m not kidding, buy me some cheese or something, I’ll love you forever.
• Clothes
  Give the gift of covering-my-naked-body! Pants! I wear a 32×32 and don’t have nearly enough dress pants or slacks. Or if you want to go with something more fun, I love a great t-shirt. I wear a small. A few places to look would be Urban Outfitters (in the Rice Village or the Galleria), or Threadless.com or something neat like the Kaoru Betto shirt or the Caduceus shirt from Found Item Clothing.
• Weird things
  You know I like weird things.
• Alcohol
  Were you aware that I can now legally buy and consume alcohol? You could get me some of that! I leave the variety of alcohol to your discretion, though I’ve been particularly trying to educate myself about red wines lately.
• A Very Shiny Belt Buckle
  I recently got a belt that accommodates such buckles, and a very shiny State of Texas buckle, and it’s got me thinking, why doesn’t everybody wear these things, with everything, all the time? I sure don’t know.
• A Good Book
  Anything you think is interesting would be good, but in particular right now I’m looking for a good book on photography (something that can help me figure out how to better use my dad’s old 70’s Canon camera), or other cool how-to type books. I feel like making things.

==Kind of more expensive gifts==

• A Wii Game
  Shane and I bought a Nintendo Wii and there are some cool games coming out for it between now and Christmas.
  Specifically, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is out now and looks really good, and Elebits is coming out December 19th and Far Cry: Vengeance is coming out December 5th. All three of those are games we’re looking forward to; if you’re interested, pick the one you’d most like to play, and come try it with us!
• A Board Game
  I still play a lot of really dorky board games. These tend to run from about $40 to about $60, just to warn you. Ones I’m looking for right now are El Grande by Rio Grande Game and Tigris & Euphrates by Mayfair Games. I am quite sure they will have one or the other of these, or both, at Nan’s Cards and Comics on 59 and Shepherd. Or you can try a reputable online game store like Thoughthammer.
• Nintendo DS Games
  Particularly Final Fantasy III (expect to pay abou $39) and Yoshi’s Island DS (expect around $29). Used is totally fine if you can find it!
• A new battery for my laptop
  It’s really dying. These are kind of expensive though, like about $130, so I wouldn’t actually expect this as a gift. But maybe you can find a deal on one or something. It’s an idea. I have a Powerbook G4 12″.

==Pricey but Priceless==

• A session with a really good professional headshot photographer
  This is a professional necessity for me but costs anywhere from $150 to about $300. I’m not expecting anybody to give me any gifts of this magnitude but if people wanted to do a group thing or something, this might be a really phenomenally awesome gift.

I’m still working on this list, come back later and I may have come up with more great ideas.

Hearts and Minds, man, Hearts and Minds.

via Metafilter:

A video of American soldiers taunting Iraqi children with a bottle of water. This is sick.

 

(link to the YouTube page, if you can’t see the embeded video)

Tryst

I’m going to Tryst tonight, at the Alley. 8:00 pm. Show up early for student rush tickets.

From the Alley Theatre website:

In British playwright Karoline Leach’s subtle, provocative play, handsome con-man George Love enters into a questionable relationship with Adelaide, a lonely milliner in Edwardian London. A smooth-talking gigolo, Love’s plot to swindle Adelaide out of her money is slickly underway when he encounters a few surprises. A tantalizing glimpse behind the doors of Edwardian England, Tryst is a wonderful, twisted, suspenseful and surprising play with an oversized heart. John Simon of Bloomberg recently described the romantic thriller as “provocative, absorbing, and overwhelming.”

Recommended for mature audiences. Adult content, sexual situations and nudity.

Most adjectives per paragraph I’ve seen in a long time. Here’s that paragraph again with all the adjectives in bold italics.

In British playwright Karoline Leach’s subtle, provocative play,
handsome con-man George Love enters into a questionable
relationship with Adelaide, a lonely milliner in Edwardian London. A smooth-talking gigolo, Love’s plot to swindle Adelaide out of her money is slickly underway when he encounters a few surprises. A tantalizing wonderful, twisted, suspenseful and surprising (FIVE ADJECTIVES IN A ROW!) glimpse behind the doors of Edwardian England, Tryst is a play with an oversized heart. John Simon of Bloomberg recently described the romantic thriller as “provocative, absorbing, and overwhelming.”

So this is pretty much going to be the best play ever performed. Or, excuse me, the most tantalizing, wonderful, twisted, suspenseful, and surprising.

The Wii

So I bought a Wii.

I got it the day it launched, so yeah here it is four days later and I’m finally blogging about it. It’s that much fun.
Jamie and I waited all night in the blistering cold to buy them. She was being a good sister and getting one for her brothers, I was getting it for myself. We waited 8 hours, all night, in front of a Target.

It was totally worth it.

You just have to play the thing.

It’s got these motion-sensing pointer-style controllers that really are fantastic, and all these cool features, like a “virtual console” where you can download old games, from the NES through the N64. I’ve been playing a lot of Red Steel, which is a first person shooter that uses the Wii Remote like a gun, and it’s better than any light gun game I’ve ever used. Totally great controls. Nintendo has already won the console war.

Anyway, if anybody wants to play it let me know. Otherwise, you may not see much of me for the next few days.
Unless you’re Jamie.

Get off the Internet and vote!

You heard me! All you people staring blankly at your screens in anticipation of my next post! Get off the Internet and Vote! Do it now! Or at least today!