: (Ho)³

Best. Christmas. Ever.

As each year draws to an end, most of the world can feel a dark shroud grow over them... Every year it has become more and more of an excuse for blatant consumerism, all under the accepted guise of joy and celebration and sharing. This is called Christmas, and I don't like it.

The gift-receiving part of this ceremony is always uncomfortable for me. I don't mind giving stuff to others, I just really don't like people getting stuff for me, even though they feel they have to. The same cycle seems to happen practically every year:

1. Folks I know ask me "What do you want for Christmas?".
2. I always say that I would prefer to get nothing for Christmas. Honestly.
3. They then either persist with the same question or often just skip straight to Step 5.
4. After enough whinging, I may provide a short list of items I was planning to buy myself. Most often these are either very specific and/or relatively expensive items.
5. The folks then get me a seemingly obtuse gift that I have no particular need or use for.
6. Come Christmas day, I have no idea what to expect.
   Having delayed some of my own planned purchases (on the off chance that I may get something from the list from Step 4), the day usually ends with me in tears because I didn't get that one item that I totally had my heart set on... :(

Instead of holding my breath and hoping that my Christmas wish will magically be fulfilled, this year I've gone out and went on the offensive. I have ventured out and bought practically every single item on my immediate I will be purchasing this soon list, which means the list in Step 4 above is completely empty.

While I'm guessing this wont prevent the inevitable obtuse gifts, at least this year I've guaranteed that I wont be in tears come Christmas day, simply because I've gone out and bought myself a camera and a crapload of DVDs & CDs from my buddies at Amazon.

Regardless of what happens tomorrow, I'll have plenty of stuff to keep me entertained, even if I had to pay for them all myself...

: Pooparazzi

Idiocy prevails yet again...

Last Friday I became the proud owner of a Canon EOS 20D camera, one of only about 500 to exist in the country at the moment... After playing around with it for a week, I'm happy to say that the new toy feeling of excitement hasn't worn off just yet, and better still I'm actually starting to imagine that I'll put the camera to good use eventually.

It certainly is a lot bigger than what I was using before, as shown by the third picture below:

I should take this opportunity to thank the people who sent in suggestions after I asked (in the last news update) what I should do with this new camera when I got it. While I acknowledge the couple of hints involving the upcoming Pants erotic newsletter archives (trust me, I would if I could...), I have to appreciate bolt_vanderhuge's simple suggestion of "Take pictures with it".

: No Turning Back Now

It's done.
And I'm an idiot.

Happy day for me today... After months of procrastinating and soul-searching, earlier today I decided that it was time I donate some of my vast (*cough*) wealth to a worthy cause.

I have put my name on the waiting list for the next shipment of stock for the Canon EOS 20D digital SLR camera. I've already had a nifty Pentax Optio S for just over a year now, but I think my fascination for hi-res photography has just turned into an expensive hobby. To be honest I haven't really taken that many photos with my Optio S, so I'm hoping I can find something interesting to photograph with the new camera to justify the $5,000+ purchase!

It is a very strange feeling though; on one side of things I've got the excitement of having some shiny new expensive toy to play with. That's a great feeling, the last time I felt excited about a new toy was when I bought the pantsnetwork.com domain for $100 around 18 months ago. That joy then turned to misery in about 5 minutes after people started bitching for updates... :)

On the other hand, there is just a little inkling of anxiety, considering I don't know how much I will use this new camera. It's also (by far) the most expensive item I have ever bought; this 770-gram lump of metal, glass & plastic has already cost at least twice as much as my car...

My camera is expected to arrive sometime in the next week or two hopefully, so if anyone has any suggestions on what to use the camera for, let me know. I wouldn't know where to begin!

: "Dear Diary..."

Getting remarkably close to invalidating my "This is not a blog" claim, if it were only a bit less ambiguous.

My, how so much can happen in just one short month...
I don't consider myself a particularly superstitious person, but I often find myself discovering patterns & strangely recurring coincidences whenever something stupid or negative happens to me in life. I now keep a sort of mental checklist in my head.

Warning bells tend to start ringing in my head whenever an item on The List is introduced into a situation I'm involved in. With good reason too...; time and time again, I've conclusively found that if a List item is brought into (or even mentioned in) my personal proximity, shitty things are going to start happening, I can pretty much guarantee it...

Examples of items already on The List include fruit salad, Gary Busey, the name "Derek", and oversized animals in RPGs. After careful consideration of what some may consider as several purely coincidental series of events, the latest item to be added to the avoid this at all costs list is Teddy Bears. Simple, innocent, stuffed teddy bears. Yep.

At the rate things are going, the next List item might just be Honesty, that'd really screw me up big-time...