My in-laws gave me a little bit of cash as an early birthday present, and I’m having trouble deciding what to do with it. It’s enough for almost half of the two things I am currently coveting, so I turn to you – the trusted internets – to tell me which of the two I should buy.

Thing One:

A second LCD monitor. I never really bought into the whole dual monitor setup thing, until my PC died and I started using my Macbook + monitor at home. I also have a dual setup at work, because I need to be able to see many things at once while monitoring the effects my nefarious chemicals are having on my Frankenvictims. Now that my PC lives and is excellent again, I really find that I miss having two windows to the world at home. I’d like a second monitor, at least 21”. It would be the main screen, and my 17” LCD would be the secondary.

Pros:

• two monitors means I can view two porns at the same time!
• No longer will I be at my keyboard but unreachable because I am too busy playing stupid little shockwave games and can’t be bothered to alt-tab out of it to see what you want
• A dual monitor setup is totally the future, and I am all about the future

Cons:

• Have you seen the size of my desk? It is tiny. I will have to work some heavy duty magic to make a dual monitor setup work in the space I have available (pro: I love reorganizing things!)
• I am not sure that my video card will support dual monitors, as it was made in Mexico sometime around 1969
• Will I stop at two? What if some day I think a TRIPLE monitor setup is the way to go? What then? Is a second LCD panel just a gateway gadget?

Thing Two:

A pair of Fluevog shoes. I’m thinking these, or perhaps these. They are so sexy I can barely breathe. It would be an utter splurge, but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with birthday money? Sure, I could do something responsible like buy orphaned bread or double-paned windows, but that is boring. I don’t want boring. I want flashy. I want exciting. I want passionate whirlwind romance atop the Eiffel Tower with tall handsome men or women with thick accents and a bow tie. Those shoes would get me closer to that, I am sure.

Pros:

• Sexy shoes!
• Whirlwind romance!

Cons:

• I don’t know that I can honestly bring myself to spend that much money on a pair of *shoes*
• Flying to Paris for romance would ruin my whole “no flying in 2008” thing, and I would feel guilty the entire time because I warmed the globe with my emissions
• No double-paned windows means my heating bill will go up in the winter
• All my pants are so damned long you would never see my sexy shoes anyway

I’m torn. Help me, internet! Which frivolous purchase reigns supreme?

VS

Last night (okay, early this morning) I finished the main story of The World Ends With You, and I have this to say:

Square Enix, I forgive you for Final Fantasy X.

The game is fucking amazing. It has everything you could want in an RPG, and just when you think you’ve got it figured out the game throws more stuff at you and it’s a giant, beautiful mess of intricacy and fun.

I suppose my forgiving SE is a little trite yet overdue – three of my top ten DS games were Square Enix titles, and it HAS been a very long time since I suffered through the horror of Final Fantasy X. Hell, I even played through Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates, and while it wasn’t my *favourite* game out of the last 75 or so I’d played, it certainly wasn’t terrible. The World Ends With You more than makes up for any angst I had towards SE. I fucking *love* this game, and I’ve played enough DS titles to know what I like.

In fact, in no particular order, here is a list of DS titles that are my favouritest:

title – publisher – genre

• The World Ends With You – Square Enix – JRPG
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords – D3 – Bejeweled with zombies
• Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol – Nintendo – Action Squirter
• New Super Mario Bros. – Nintendo – Platformer
• Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime – Square Enix – RPG
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village – Nintendo – Puzzle Adventure
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – Capcom – Courtroom Adventure
• Space Invaders Extreme – Square Enix – Pew pew pew *
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass – Nintendo – Adventure
• Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland – Nintendo – Adventure **

*: imported from Japan; North American release is June 17th 2008 and you really ought to do yourself a favour and import a paddle
**: not available in North America; was only released in Japan and Europe which is unfortunate because it’s a hoot

Good times.

Other items to note:

• Today is Shan’s birthday. Happy birthday, Shan! You are keen!
• We leave for Edmonton in two days. Yesterday I packed clothing and shoes. Today I will pack toiletries and electronics. I have a separate duffle bag for device chargers alone, and I see no problem with this.
• I am boycotting my vagina.

Hooray!

I miss my PC.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my MacBook and I’m truly enjoying the whole “two monitors” thing – it feels like I am totally the future. I just miss all the little things that I can’t do without my PC – IRC, those stupid Shockwave games I play nonstop when no one is looking, browsing through my collection of naked people that I know. I miss my files; all my MP3s and pictures that I didn’t backup to my external drive. I miss the control key, damnit. I think this weekend I should go buy myself a new power supply (again) and get my computer back up and running. It’s high time I returned to a lifestyle of idling on IRC for weeks at a time, never saying a word!

I am very tired today. I’ve slept poorly for two nights in a row, one night even featuring imaginary or possibly real cigarettes. I awoke at 2:30 in the morning because I smelled really strong horrible disgusting pipe clogging choking cigarette smoke, and it made me unable to breathe. I drifted in and out of sleep, but the smell was really strong and I was getting really concerned because my throat was closing up and breathing was not only difficult but painful – basically, what happens every time I have the misfortune to be around smokers. I eventually fell asleep, but my dreams were of violent confrontations with smoking hobos that I had poured water on from my fire escape in an attempt to douse their stink. The dream was really vivid, which led me to wonder – did I dream the initial cigarette stench that woke me up in the first place, or was someone really smoking in very close vicinity to my bed? The smell was REALLY strong, but Ed slept through it all. Was it real? Did someone sneak into my room and hide under my bed, smoking? One thing that I remember thinking strange was the strength of the smell, and the silence – usually when our neighbours sneak out for a late night smoke, they aren’t exactly discrete about it. They talk or sing or get into fights or make some kind of noise, but other than the stench there was no noise whatsoever. If I dreamed the entire thing, I would appreciate not having those sorts of dreams because frankly I really do enjoy being able to breathe. Also, I hate cigarettes. I am allergic, I do not enjoy cancer, and just .. eww.

Josh and Shan are in Vegas. Miranda and Reilly leave for Cuba tonight. Ed and I have no plans this weekend, and I am excited – I can finally crack open GTA IV, I don’t have to wear pants, and there are many good things to be said about not dining out for 6 days in a row.

It’s been a crazy few days ‘round about these delicious parts, and I’ve barely had a moment to sit down and regale the internet with my heroic and naked deeds. All that changes today, though – I am in the Lab early, there are very few fires burning that I must tend to, and I have a breakfast burrito. Clearly, things are looking up and not just because I have extra salsa.

I did not, unfortunately, make it to the midnight launch of Grand Theft Auto IV. I would like to be able to say that I thought better of the entire thing, having realized the sheer folly in being awake at midnight on a work night just so I could join the sweaty nerd thugs in being able to purchase something a full eight hours before the rest of the population, but that’s not why. I had brilliant intentions to leave the house at 11:30 and scoot on over to my favourite EB Games, but .. well, I was just too tired to do it. It was still raining, I had a truly horrific day what with being wet for 15 hours straight, and no one would come with me, so .. I bailed on the midnight adventure. I am somewhat worried for my nerd cred, but I have faith that any one of the other thousand nerdy things I’ve done this year alone will prove that I am totally badass in strange, strange ways.

Besides, I picked up my copy yesterday morning. I figure I’ll have some free time to play it sometime on Friday night around 11pm.

That is, if I can pry the TV out of Ed’s clammy hands – we picked up Mario Kart Wii on Sunday, and it is a laugh riot of epic proportions. Ed’s taking a shine to playing online, and since the 360 and Wii are on the same TV, we will have to fight it out real time before we can fight it out in a virtual setting. I took heavy advantage of EB’s trade-in bonuses, and when everything was all totaled up they owed ME money. Good times. More people should owe me money.

So, about my rage dainties. Yesterday while attempting to get dressed so I could leave for work, I discovered that not one not two but THREE of my bras are royally fucked right up beyond normal repair. The hooks on the back have been straightened or just plain ripped out, and the underwires snapped into multiple pieces. BAD. My boobs deserve nothing but the finest in bra technology, and finding that three whole bras are wrecked is just infuriating. In a fabulous rage, I stormed to the internet and within five minutes, had ordered six new bras to replace my destroyed ones. TAKE THAT! I managed to find a sale and a coupon, so the 6 new bras are coming to me for the low, low price of $135. Since $30 of that is shipping, I am pleased with my discounts – after all, my bras need to be made of mithril with an adamantium core so $18 a piece is a friggin’ bargain. I’m not happy about having to buy new bras so soon, but this time around I bought nothing but function – no fur trim or sequins or crystal chandeliers; nothing but good old fashioned danger cleavage baring brassieres.

In other news, more than half of the 53 girls between the ages of 14-17 taken from the polygamist compound in Texas either are pregnant or have already given birth. Moral America, however, is too scandalized by the nude back of teen sensation Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus to give half a damn. Good game, America. Your priorities are clearly in the right place and once again, your common sense and compassion are stellar examples of the good our species is capable of.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go throw up in my mouth a little.