Christmas Loot! (pt. 1)
My wife and I didn’t get each other anything for Christmas.
Our philosophy is that we try to make every day special, nullifying the need for extra effort on holidays like Christmas or Valentine’s Day, when the average yahoos of America have to run around compensating for the last three months of ignoring their spouses or taking them for granted. We have pretty high standards for marital conduct and communication, so we don’t have to make up for bad behavior with trinkets and doodads.
Plus we’re so broke that we’ve been eating rice almost exclusively for the last three or four weeks. A production that wrapped in November still owes us almost $800, but I don’t want to talk about it.
We’ve told our parents and family members that we aren’t getting anyone anything for Christmas and that we’d like them to reciprocate, and when objections are raised we inform our parents and family members that we’ve spent the last several months throwing away or ebaying most of the consumer garbage that has accumulated like plaque on every flat surface of our tiny apartment, including the floor, and that we’re quite happy with our now-manageable collection of stuff and that any gifts will promptly wind up either in the garbage or on ebay so they’d really be better off saving their money and just giving us a phone call on Christmas instead, which is all we really want anyway.
My father, the contrarian I inherited my difficult personality from, sent me $170.
My mother, the perfect mother, really, in terms of regularly sending me things I need badly but never think about like towels, new shirts, comforters, etc., sent me a jacket that I immediately wanted to return to prove the point I had made about sending gifts, but once I realized that the Kenneth Cole peacoat she picked out is lighter, warmer, and a better fit than the 30lb wearable workout I’ve been lugging around since last Christmas that is down to just one button, which I am only able to fasten by lightly ripping the stitches on each wearing just enough to wrap the fabric all the way around my ever-expanding bulk, I decided to let her make a liar out of me and kept the damn thing.
When I got all that extra money from my Dad I had no idea what I was going to do with it, so I decided to just go around buying things that I wanted, keeping track of the money so I didn’t overspend.
1. $10 – Psychonauts – Purchased via Steam during their fabulous holiday sale. I’ve been hearing about this game and how horribly, tragically undersold it is and considering it came from the fabulous man behind some of my favorite games of all time (Full Throttle? Grim Fandango?) I’ve been meaning to get it pretty much since it came out in 2005. Karen and I sat down together and played it all the way through in just two sittings (one ten hour session and one four hour session) and had a blast. Please buy this game, if not for the team that spawned it then for yourself. You deserve it.
Karen on Psychonauts: (sheepishly) “It had an innovative storyline and it was really fun.â€
If you’re still unconvinced, watch this:
Also: The team behind Psychonauts is about to come out with a new game that is a little bit beyond my capacity for explanation. It is a metal-themed sandbox game featuring Jack Black, Lemmy from Motorhead, and Ronny James Dio.
2. $43 – Tripod - I bought a cheap, light tripod that I can carry with me just about anywhere. I got it so I can take long-exposure photographs. You’ll see some posts about it later. I love having a tripod.
3. $20 – 2007 Best American Essays and 1984 – Karen and I stopped in to the Strand, the one place in NYC that can turn a bitter anticapitalist cynic like me into a drooling consumer. I want just about everything at this store. On this trip I settled on a great collection of essays, edited by David Foster Wallace, and I picked up a copy of 1984 for Karen.
4. $15 – Plastic cups, a rawhide dog bone, and a pack of Camel Lights cigarettes – Just some crap I picked up for a Christmas Eve party I went to. To be discussed in greater detail later.
5. $30 – A subscription to Open City, my favorite literary magazine. It’s the journal in which I Most Want To Be Published. Maybe a subscription won’t help my chances any, but at least I’ll keep getting the kind of fiction they do publish in the mail, and maybe that’ll help steer me in the right direction. And even if I never get published there, I love it so much I’m going to be thrilled to just get it in my mailbox.
6. $36 – A subscription to A Public Space – They’re a new magazine, kind of like what Tin House would be like if they had lower standards and were based in Brooklyn. But they make up for the lower standards by publishing things a little more exciting and out there. I like them, not as much as some other literary mags, but their local flavor pushed me over the edge and I signed up.
7. $15 – A subscription to Poets & Writers Magazine - Whenever I see this in the magazine rack I always cringe a little bit, because I want desperately to be a successful writer and I want to attend all the workshops and retreats described and advertised within the pages, but number one I can’t afford them and number two I really loathe the vision the magazine seems to have of writers, which is that writers are all deep, sensitive, intelligent people who write deep, sensitive, intelligent work while wearing comfy sweaters at beautiful wooden desks in beautiful Victorian country homes that overlook small lakes. If you don’t believe me, peek at their website. My big fear, which is admittedly hard to articulate, is that Poets and Writers Magazine isn’t actually for Writers at all, but is actually intended for ordinary people who want desperately to be Writers, one specific kind of a Writer, the kind with a beautiful wooden desk etc., the same way that karaoke isn’t for singers, just for people who wish they could sing. Maybe subscribing to this magazine is a subconscious signal to myself so chilling and horrifying that I cannot articulate exactly the sort of surrender I have made by this act of purchase.
I swear, I just want it for the listings of requests for unsolicited manuscripts.
I am up late and a bit wired and exhausted and consequently sentimental, so take this with a grain of salt:
I found this entry inspiring. I don't have a a strong desire to spend a lot of time with anyone, but every so often I yearn for some kind of companionship; when I do, I fantasize it being something like the image I got from the post, two people genuinely enjoying each other's company and not caught up with a lot of overly sentimental nonsense and just making the best of things.
I was briefly at b'ton at the same time as you and never knew you; although that really has nothing to do with anything, I felt like mentioning it. You have given me hope.
P.S.
I love Full Throttle and LucasArts adventure games in general, with Grim Fandango probably being my favorite. I'm gonna give Psychonauts a try.
Well, thanks a lot for reading and I'm glad to hear from you. It's really, well, you know, the thing Karen and I have is exactly what I've been wanting and waiting for for a long time. I really don't know what else to say about it, but I was glad to hear from you.
Did you get a chance to play Psychonauts? What did you think?