Manlio Rules

so, i had to go to toys r us today to find the following things:

1. a large ball. like a nerf ball, something that has some weight but wouldn’t hurt if you got hit with it
2. a buzzer. like the one in the taboo game
3. a bell. like what you would ring for service

I figured that 1 would be easy, 2 would be ok if i wanted to buy taboo, and 3 was a long shot. this is what i learned in 20 minutes

• there are balls everywhere! and they’re cheap! I got a nice orange one. i almost bought one with hannah montana on it, and i promised myself that if i had to go back for another one, i would follow through on that impulse

online casino

• taboo is no longer sold there. wtf?
• there is a new risk, called Risk:Godstorm, where you take over the world with elephants, and i think you’re a god. looks really awesome, made by Avalon Hill, makers of other such fine games as Fortress American and Axis + Allies.
• Wizards of the Coast bought Avalon Hill? really? now they almost officially own my geeky childhood, they just need to buy Lego and Broderbund.
• legos are really expensive. $100 for the pirate ship? get outta here.
• there are some AWESOME looking race track legos.
• A watchmen action figure of Rorshach is only $16. I came very close to buying one, but then that scene from the simpsons where milhouse asks alan moore which of the watchmen babies is his favorite flashed in my head, and i decided against it.
• the dolls that talk as you walk by are really creepy, and one chirpy doll nearly got her head torn off by a slightly over caffeineated and jumpy manlio.
• how is it that i can find a little device that lets me play old atari games on a self contained joystick, but i can’t find a damn buzzer?
• actually, i could BUILD a buzzer pretty easily. i think my first pcomp project for ITP was a more advanced form of a buzzer.

and i’m pretty sure this is why i’ll never grow up.

So, the other side of being busy is that sometimes things happen all at once. like, instead of you kicking ass at work and going to a great dinner and then having a rocking night out, you have a shitty day at work, your date cancels on you, and you find yourself at home snarfing a whole box of cream cheese and chive wheat thins (for example) and wondering what’s going to happen next.

And that can be tough. I used to have a lot of problems getting past bad things that would happen. I still do, to some degree. When i get really dissappointed by someone or something, i have a tendency to dwell, to wallow for awhile before something happens that pulls me out of it.

But the thing about having so many things going on at once is that there are more “things” to pull you out and balance the bad ones that happen. and yeah, sometimes you have a bad day, and it’s unclear what’s going on at work and at the same time you’re breaking up over text (this is hyperbole) and someone’s IM’ing you with more changes to your freelance project and it seems overwhelming…

BUT, since all those things happened at once, and only took 3 hours all said and done, the rest of the day can actually be quite nice, if for no other reason than it’s quiet.

and by “you” i mean the lingering problem from my tumblr blog export where i had 100 extra categories. and by “got”, i mean i went into phpmyadmin and deleted all the extra categories because for some reason the wordpress mechanism wouldn’t work, i imagine because doing a group delete it looks for a category name and i they were all blank.

so to tally up today’s scores

Manlio: 1
WordPress: 0
PHP: 5
Music: a little douchey