Exhaustive and exhausting

The Homestar Runner Wiki.

I thought it was miraculous anyone had enough time to be responsible for Homestar Runner, much less a site about it....

Sims 2 University preview....

The Sims 2 University introduces a whole new age for your sims that we call young adult, which is one where your sim has all the new freedoms of adulthood but without the restrictions of being a teen. It's a time that's filled with excitement and begs to be explored. You can create these young adults immediately and then send them right to college, or you can take teens you've been playing with already and send them there. When your sims get to the university, they'll have wants and fears that relate to their new adventures, all of them guided by their aspirations, of course. When it's all done, if your sim has done it right, he or she will have great new friends, a hot job prospect, and some great memories of a special time in his or her life.

Yeah, that all sounds about right. Except the "hot job prospect" part. What about English majors? (Should that be "Simlish" majors? "Myshuno! Slamma jamma!")

And they pull pranks. I'm not sure if it's the Animal-House level or the querldox-level esoteric and intricate, but I'm willing to bet more on the former. The latter would take too much RAM.

The haul

I feel sorta obliged to do this. I've complained long and hard that my family doesn't know me well enough to get appropriate Christmas presents for me, as evidenced by the year when my sister got me food. Not just any food, building blocks of food. Like a potato. Which -- with my nascent cooking skills at the time -- could do nothing safe with. The potato eventually grew tentacles and escaped. But the potato remains my low watermark for presents. And it's too starchy to forget.

They done themselves proud this year, though. From my bro and my nephew, Star Wars Galaxies and Atari Classic Games. Which in and of itself is not so hot -- I have a prohibition against playing online games (especially those you pay for), and I already have 2000+ Atari 2600 games, so that was a loss. What matters is that my brother -- being the smart man he is -- saved the receipt. Awesome. So we essentially used that to get Return of the King:EE (watched in one sitting, which is great, but for an eleven-hour film saga with umpteen redundant moments of exposition, could they not spare just a few words about the Eagles, for the love of God, Pete?) and the Battle for Middle-Earth, which Muffin is helping me through. He's my little general.

My sister got us coffee -- a sorta holiday-flavored coffee box treat, which usually we'd flee screaming from. We're kinda coffee snobs. The good stuff we get from our contact in Cali is awesome and it honestly spoils us. But we figured, okay, holiday coffee, give it a shot and y'know, it's not bad at all, it's a pleasant change of pace. The hazelnut was decent. The white chocolate smells intriguing. But I'm steering away from "yule nog" flavor for now. Sis also got us a gift card which we were gonna use to get Arrested Development's first season, but they were sold out. Waugh. Later.

Dad, being uber-practical, got us money, and more of it than we deserve. I don't need to tell you that he rocks.

All this is super and swell and good. Except that I'm now sick. Whether this is just nature kicking me in the face or maybe Muffin's sickness spreading to Daddy we don't know. I do fervently hope the former, else I'm a Public Health Threat and the proper people will have to be notified. So it's like moving to Manhattan all over again.

Tsunami headlines and semantics

A lot of good points made about today's front-page headlines re: the tsunami relief effort. First there's just the tacky metaphors ("pouring in," "tidal wave" of assistance), then there's the contradictory metaphors ("pouring" vs. "trickling"), then there's just a few odd assertions ("U.S. military leads relief mission" and "Rich nations one-up each other over aid").

And there's a shot of the Morning Call's front page, too. Hrm. Shout out to all my homies in Allentown. Wussup, peeps?