Okay, I'm not trying to copy annarama :P , this is just something I've been thinking about. It's actually highly unlikely that we really will buy another game console, definitely not any time soon anyway, but still. I've been thinking about it.

Note that for purposes of this poll we are pretending that price is not a factor. Also, online gaming is not important to me (but I'm open to advocacy on that point).

Poll #1290279 7th-gen consoles
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

in alphabetical order

Feel free to elaborate in comments. Oh, and I didn't include the Wii since we already have one of those (as well as a PS2).

Now I think I need to go play a video game to shake off some lingering annoyance from work today. I had a conversation with a very negative customer, and I know that any retail establishment is going to have people criticizing its products, but it bugs me. I just don't understand why this guy wants to waste his time and mine coming into my store and deprecating the chips in our MacBook Pros. I mean, really, what kind of person takes pleasure in going into stores and telling the employees he doesn't intend to buy some item? Does that make him feel superior? Well, I wasn't impressed, especially since I later learned that he was actually wrong.

So now I get to feel superior, heh.

'night, all. See y'all tomorrow!

Man, I have been experiencing the worst customer service trying to buy an e-gift certificate from sephora.com. Support my indignation and don't ever buy anything from them; I certainly won't ever try again.

In much more cheerful happenings, wallacecat suddenly got a hankering to play some old-skool NBA Jam, so he bought a Sega Genesis off eBay and it's been good times ever since. The graphics are so delightfully retro. But trying to beat Quackshot: Starring Donald Duck is seriously giving me quack attacks.

Also as part of our return to life in the early '90s, since Beverly Hills, 90210 has finally started coming out on DVD, we got the first disc from Netflix. And, wow, it is fantastic. By which I mean fantastically bad, but oh so amusing, and not just for the hair and clothes (although that's a substantial part of it). So, like 60 or 70 more discs of this? We're gonna be pretty busy for the next few months years.

Now, back in the 21st century, ( here's an update on life with my new MacBook. Cat pictures within! )

And finally, let us congratulate wallacecat, who tonight received his acceptance to Berkeley law school! California, here we come...?

First I have to ask k1cup, did you get the text we sent you last Thursday? I sure hope so.

Okay, so, I haven't been too good with the show reports lately. I could pull the lame excuse that I've been really sick the last couple of days (which is true), but that doesn't explain the few days before that. But anyway now that these two are nice and stale, I'll just do a quick two-fer and then take you to the crappy pictures.

OK Go on Thursday were great. There's a lot of showmanship on the stage when they play. But I think hobbitgrrl and I have decided it might be time to take a hiatus from them, or least only go to over-21 shows for a while. Too many teenyboppers screaming stuff like "I think my heart just stopped" when Damian flees from walks past the line of people waiting outside. Myself, I was more excited to see k1cup's nemesis Bob, also known as They Might Be Giants' tour manager for the past couple of years. After we saw him I kept hoping Andy Lala was also working the show, but instead it was, I think, the same guy who was teching at the zoo show in August (the one Dan Miller got so peeved at). He's okay in my book, though, since he gave me an OK Go tambourine. I don't think Lala would have done that.

All right, pictures here. Also 2 videos from their acoustic set, in which you can't really see much but which don't sound all that bad. Also, Andy does a pretty little guitar solo in What to Do.

I barely had time to recover before the Decemberists on Saturday. We got there sort of late but managed decent spots in the second row. However I was seriously annoyed by the girl to my left who kept pushing into me in what I assume was a misguided and extremely rude attempt to get closer to the middle. She was totally touching me and leaning onto me and I got pretty pissed off. I mean, that's just not concert etiquette: once people are in their spots you don't push them while you're standing around waiting. So at one point I actually turned to her and said, "Excuse me, I'm standing here," and—this was the best part—she stared straight ahead as if she couldn't hear me, which was completely implausible since her ear was about six inches from my mouth because she was physically pressing against me. Ugh! I was so mad. But happily she eventually moved further to the left, but into the front row, and then her mom was standing next to me instead. Her mom actually seemed pretty trashed, and when she started yelling in an embarrassing teenybopperish way, I was quite amused.

So I was in a much better frame of mind when the show started. But what can I say about the Decemberists? Just that they're always worth it, even when Colin isn't in perfect voice (as he wasn't at this performance; I read later that he got really sick after that, so perhaps that was an early symptom). Oh, a recording of this show is now up at archive.org if you would like to hear how it went. I think my favorite Colin moment is when he completely cracks up during the last verse of A Cautionary Song. It was all good, though, of course.

And photos, no videos. The pictures are pretty dark, but not as terrible as I expected them to be.

Oh my god, I hurt my knee so badly last night at the Sufjan show and now I can go up stairs, but not down. This wouldn't inconvenience me so much except that none of the classes I teach are on the same floor as my office. I'm also afraid I'm going to do something terrible to the knee during class and suddenly fall down in extreme pain in the middle of today's phonetics lesson. However, just regular walking feels fine. It's a good thing I live in the nice flat Midwest and not some crazy hilly place like San Francisco (yet, anyway).

More on the Sufjan show later, which was pretty good except for the bitch beside us. She was with a friend—leahrosmerta, I think you might have recognized them. You know, they're part of that group of fans who follow a certain local band and have severe entitlement issues? Yeah, it was two of them and it was hella annoying.

Anyway. Dang, my officemate has a clock on her desk that ticks REALLY LOUDLY. I guess I'll get used to it.

As much as I love Wilco, as transcendent a band as they are live, despite the joy of seeing Nels Cline in a miniskirt and as grateful as I am that tmhopscotch made the journey all the way from New York City to go to the show with me, I don't think I can bear going to an assigned-seating rock show again.

I suppose I'm spoiled from having gone to so many shows with great, fun audiences to keep me company, but if I were in charge, this is who would never be allowed to go to a rock concert:

• people who sit down for the entire show (while everybody else is standing)
  
• people who incessantly check their cell phones for messages (during songs!)
  
• people who leave before the encore (when it's not even 11pm yet)
  
• people who sing along very loudly and out of key during the quiet parts of songs
  
• people who put their fingers in their ears during "At Least That's What You Said"

I'm sure there are more that I've forgotten. Anyway, those people were to the left and right of me last night, ahead of and behind me...frankly, I was disappointed. Not by Wilco—the music was fantastic, the boys are beautiful, and Jeff was in rare, fine form—but the overall experience just wasn't that fun. If, as I've read, they plan only to play in assigned-seating venues in Chicago from now on, I'll probably just skip it next time. After all, somebody will record it and I can download and listen and have the experience of nobody standing next to me without having to leave my home.

Ow. Does anybody have a good remedy for intense guitar-induced fingertip pain?

( In other painful news, SBC still sucks ass. )

( And I don't know how anyone would imagine that a chili pepper would be a good shape for a cat toy, but Wallace seems to like it. )