Sleepless In Lubbock

I can't sleep. It's 4:00am. I have a final in 6 hours. And I can't sleep. This is what I get for throwing my sleep schedule into the trash heap during finals week. Sigh. One more test, and I'm done for the year though. Yay Christmas. It really is my favorite time of year. Why? Because I'm human, I'm greedy. Christmas is the one time of year when people give me stuff for being alive. And, yes, I give them stuff too, but I'm special because my birthday is then too. So I end up getting not quite twice as many presents... thank goodness for Santa Claus. Yeah, I know, I'm too old to believe in St. Nick, but the beauty of having a big family is, there's always SOMEONE young enough to still believe. Santa isn't mean; he wouldn't slight the rest of us just because we didn't believe, and only give Lena and Clara presents. So I end up with about a dozen gifts from family members, and then around 10 more gifts from S.C. Of course, there is always a difference in the quality of gifts. Santa never brings us the PS2s or guitars or what have you, those are always from a family member. Best I can expect from a Claus gift is a GBA game. Oh well. In any case, the over-all present quality drops between my birthday and Christmas Day, but only because it is diluted by a bunch of lesser North Polean gifts. Not to say that I don't appriciate everything I get, because I honestly do. I have a terrible tendancy to complain about things in my life, but really, I shouldn't. I have it really well. I am somewhat scarilly reminded of the whining of Harry Potter's cousin Dudley, complaining that he only has 37 presents when he got 38 last year. "Ah, yes, but some of these gifts are quite a bit larger than-" "I don't care!!!" *Sigh.* I'm not like that, honest. I'm lucky, and I know it, most of the time. I guess that's why I like the Christmas season. It reminds me how truly blessed my family is, to be so happy together with each other, and really, quite well off, for the time being. I'm fucking spoiled, if I hadn't mentioned that before. I do hope I don't come off as spoiled rotten, but just spoiled, I won't argue about.

Got a couple of gears to shift through before I'm done tonite. First I wanted to point you to this little discussion I've got going on at the PSPvsDS forums. I've pretty well flip-flopped my earlier decision on the DS. Of course, my earlier decision was made well before the DS was released, and was partially based on the fact that the forums two admins were pretty obviously PSP fans. Since the entire site is based on which system is better (an argument I think should be null and void, but I'll get to that), I felt a little counter culture was in order, so I raised my flag in support of the DS. Of course, as time went on, I discovered that A) the DS wasn't going to be able to run any of my older Game Boy games - for some reason they decided to only let it go back as far as GBA, and I have no idea why, and B) the DS's launch titles weren't all that great. It's for those reasons that not only did I refrain from saving my cash to buy a DS, but I have actually made it known that I do not want one for Christmas, thus my current position on the system. Here's my take: The DS is an expensive toy. I mean, yes, all video game systems are, but the DS is more like a Virtual Boy than a PS2 or GBA, in my book. If you don't remember what a Virtual Boy is, then you are a luckier person than I. It was, for all intents and purposes, a gimmick system, much like the DS. The DS's primary pitch is not "Look at the amazing games you could be playing, it's "Look! I got's two screens! And one's touchable! Ain't it cool? Don't you wanna touch it?" That's not what I look for when I decide to get a game system. I look for the games I want to be able to play. Which goes back to where I thing the forums premise argument is a moot point. The PSP and the DS shouldn't be competing. They're two different animals. The PSP is a high end multimedia system, primarily for gaming but it could just as easily be a pocket PC. The DS is an experimental system, and even Nintendo says it isn't meant to be the next level in Game Boy Evolution. More like an offshoot. So the two shouldn't be competing. Ah well, people are dumb. But like I say, I'm not deciding that the DS is worse than the PSP. I don't know enough about the PSP yet to really decide whether I want one, though I'm leaning towards yes. I've decided though, as far as the DS, that not having one is better than having one. It's just one of those things I don't want, just like the other things I've listed in the thread - Virtual Boy, X-Box, Segway, Aztek, Super Mario 2, etc. Anyway. I've got to get a move on.

As I stayed up tonite, I glanced through various people's blogs in my insomniatic state (no, they weren't really updated). And I wondered. Who the fuck reads this? The last comment I got was from Gina being a sobbing mess because I'm a dumbass, and she didn't even care enough about what she was saying to reply to the right post. What does that say about this sad excuse at journalism? That people only write in it when they're mad me, and even then they don't care enough to make it clear why they're mad at me? Unless Gina was mad at my hot dog contest thread, in which case she's got further issues than me. (And no, I don't think she does. I know she was just upset, and I'm up too late to make good jokes.) But seriously, why do I write in this thing? Does anyone care that I don't like the DS, or that I'm listening to the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack (which I'm loving by the way ^_^)? I mean, really, who am I? Some random college student who's never done anything for anyone. I'm a non-player character for 99% of the world. And I need this shirt to identify that fact to people. Anyone wanna get it for me for Christmas? ^_^?

Oh well. I've been blogging for a good 40 minutes. I should try and get back to sleep and get ready for that test. Sigh. I hope I do alright. Nah, fuck that. I KNOW I'll do alright. Night folks. Folk. You there, my ~1 person audience. Thanks for listening.

Oh yeah, I still owe y'all that treatise on my religious beliefs. I'll get it out tomorrow, again, after the tests.