sapote

I get the impression that not everyone who reads my livejournal/dwidth agrees on the abortion-access thing, and of the people that agree, it's not everyone's pet issue. But it's an issue near and dear to my heart, and I'm writing ( this doctor and his staff a nice postcard )

There were two people waiting outside the Gamestop this morning when it opened. One was a young man waiting to buy Assassin's Creed, and one was me.

Clerk to Assassin's Creed Dude: Oh man, you should have been at the launch party at midnight, this is pretty much the best thing to happen all year. ::carries on::

Clerk to me: Sims 3 expansion pack? I think we have one in a box somewhere around here. ::wanders off for a while::

Sometimes I wish I played real video games. Wtf-ever, though, I'm counting the hours until I can go home and take my sims on tiny twee vacations.

It's kind of twisted and indicative that of all the things involved in the new Sims expansion pack (yes, I know, already) I am mostly excited about 1) more modest clothing - though still no hijab, all I want is a sim in a styling headscarf, is that too much to ask? and 2) growing grapes.

Yes, the ability to construct fantastic Indiana Jones-style puzzles for your digital people means nothing to me, but I will gladly drop $40 to have baggy shirts and a greater selection of grape varieties. As a gamer, I lack a certain oomph.

Also, may I choose this moment to say that the new pay-as-you-go downloadable content scheme kind of sucks? There's a lot of really attractive official content in the EA store, but if you look in the background of the screenshots for the expansion pack what you see all over is the same damn base-game folding screen and row of sunflower pots over and over. I know that the expansion pack Adds Powerful New Gameplay Options and so forth, but the reason the Sims is my game is because I like arranging digital furniture, and I'm ... not expecting World Adventures to have much at all. Sigh. Ahem it is, then.

I wish the New Yorker article had full digital text, but here's an NYTimes editorial that leaves out the parts where if you criticize him, according to the New Yorker, he will 1) arrest you for disorderly conduct 2) stage a midnight raid on your home and 3) if you know anything about conditions in his jails, you know that being arrested by him is actually taking a chance on either dying of dehydration or being beaten to death by his goons before you go to trial.

I've been following the Honduran situation as closely as possible from here, and my contact-to-contacts-on-the-ground is talking about sending a delegation of "observers", i.e. Americans to stand there in case something happens so it will make the US newspapers. But I have to say that the way things are going down in Honduras so far is very 21st-century (negotiations and dispersed police brutality of the confused sort), while what's happening in freaking Arizona really starts to look like Olancho in the 70s.

Yes, everyone cares about my incisive political blogging. I will post about Draco Malfoy later, I promise.

It's not like I'm getting any vidding done these days anyway, but the whole "Pandora will help me build musical tastes in case I need vid songs!" thing is, so far, backfiring, and there seems to be one central reason:

For a song to be effective for fanvidding, I feel like it has to have at least some drama and musical variation, and it helps if the lyrics talk about feelings. It turns out that I like songs that are monotonous and talk about zero feelings if possible. I will accept some abstract metaphors about boats if necessary.

On the other hand, I've finally been able to own up to my love for overintellectual 90s electronic music. Oh yes, Hybrid Sound System. Entertain me more with your pretty and somewhat emotionally vapid progressive breaks. Because whatever "progressive breaks" means, Pandora tells me I enjoy it.

What is with the banana bangs and mullets? I am from Appalachia. Salon ladies kept trying to give me banana bangs and mullets well through 2002. It is not far gone enough to be retro; please stop.

Also, rattails on boys just makes me feel like I'm back at middle school in tobacco country in 1997. I'm just saying I would have chosen to retrocycle through the thirties, forties, and fifties another couple of times before everyone I saw at the coffeeshops made me feel faintly thirteen again.

I am so exhausted by this thing. I am pretty sure we are all really exhausted by this thing.

If anyone else needs to know, I usually warn for a whole bevy of things, mostly because to me "warnings" is pretty much a self-important name for "tags".

I gots the Sims 3! ( And I'm going to tell you all about it! )

This from the girl who has self-policed out nearly every mention of the only thing between me and couchdeath Wii fit because I didn't want anyone to feel peer pressure to get one of those expensive balancy cutepanels of fun things. And yet apparently I feel it's appropriate to laud EA Games. Sigh.