Come Pick Me Up

I really don't have much to update with, other than the fact that the Pirate Radio set was every bit as good as expected. That is to say that it's nothing short of fantastic, given that this is the Pretenders we're talking about. In other news, my 40 Years of the Avengers disc has been delayed yet again, going from 3/31 to 4/7 to "mid-April." Fuckers. I haven't yet gotten a digital-SLR, either, as the Canon Digital Rebel XT currently has a mail-in rebate that doesn't require my purchase until the end of July. One of my friends has one, so I'm going to fiddle around with it sometime this week and see how I like it. I'd still prefer a camera that's got some heft to it, but don't really want to spend the extra $400 for a magnesium-alloy body.

I haven't been back to That's Just Not Right since my world went into total-clusterfuck mode, and I've been turning off my instant-messaging utility for extensive periods of time, because I just don't feel like dealing with people on the internet for the time being.

Ooh, big news at Tarzhay. So, yesterday I missed some fun (they always have fun on my day off) when one of the service-desk guys got taken out in handcuffs by the cops. He'd apparently been picking up receipts somehow and keying in the items as gift-returns, which thereby put the amount on to a giftcard, which he then pocketed. In small amounts, I'm sure this would be hard for the company to trace, but he decided at one point to return a $150 chair, which the store doesn't carry, which meant the back-room probably noticed that it never got back there for shipping back to... wherever that shit goes. Anyway. So then he makes the mistake of taking these giftcards and using them to buy stuff with his discount, which sets off all sorts of flags in asset-protection, because the giftcards were the result of returned items for which no employee discount was ever used. It's a hard rule to explain, but it doesn't set off any alarms if you do it the way asset-protection asks you to. Unless you're a dumbass like this guy and you're returning things you never bought, all while you're standing under a fucking camera. Dumbass.

So, yeah, he got taken away in handcuffs by the police, because they checked how much he'd bought with giftcards that were issued by himself, and it was a lot of money. Not sure if it's like felony-level kind of stuff, but I think they're going to be telling stories about this guy for a few years as an example of what not to do when you're thinking about how you'd like your job to be more financially rewarding.

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed, because I'm probably going to head out for coffee in the morning or early afternoon. Yes, I'm quite the social butterfly lately, going so far as to actually singing at karaoke night on Friday. Yes, it was "Mustang Sally" again, and I really should have done "In the Midnight Hour," but my singing was pretty lousy, regardless; sort of like the time I made the very unwise decision to try and do "Try a Little Tenderness," which I can't hold together at all. This wasn't quite that bad, but it was bad, nonetheless. Was I as bad as the guy who seemed like he'd never heard "Walk This Way" before? No. Or the guy who sang "Luck Be a Lady" so badly that Frank Sinatra actually walked in and gave the guy the finger before returning to his grave? Certainly not. But, by my exacting standards, it was pretty bad. Another two or three beers, I would've been great. I would've probably fallen to the floor halfway through the song, but I could've just written it off as a James Brown kind of performance.

Anyway. I'm going to go now, and watch the remainder of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is a wholly unremarkable film in virtually every respect. I'm sure that one of these days, I'll dig out my copy of the book and come to much the same conclusion. I also bought the special-edition version of Crash (Haggis, not Cronenberg), and I've yet to watch that. I figured I might as well pick it up, given that it won a few Oscars. This week is the special-edition Mission: Impossible, which I have to get, because I still think the first movie is fucking awesome, thank you very much, Brian DePalma. Okay, so the helicopter chase through the chunnel leaves a bit to be desired, but it's still a pretty good suspense film for about three-quarters of the movie. The following week is apparently the HD-DVD release of a couple of movies, for those three people who will have HD-DVD players by that time, and then the following week is the release of Advent Children, which will have me absolutely giddy.

In the meantime, though, I'm going to bed. No, seriously, I am. And, if nothing else, my laptop is going to make me go to bed, as it's down to about a ten percent charge, which gives me about ... another twenty or so minutes to fuck around on the internet, but I can't do that if I'm busy telling you about my day. So there. Go read something interesting, like videogame news from Joystiq.


AIM: therbmcc71