birthday

Whenever i get a year older I kind of re-evaluate things. See what has changed. One thing i always try to do is psych myself up for beards. Every fucking year i think to myself. Yes. This is your year. Beardtown USA population Filardi. All year i see sweet hipster beards and lust after them. If i talk to Dane for more than an hour, he has a beard at the end of our conversation. Everywhere I seem to go, my naked chin mocks me in its nakedness. Once and a while i tempt fate. I try to grow one. Thinking- sure... maybe it just needs a couple days or something. I gotta give it time. Maybe i just have some slow face workers. The reward i get for that week of cringing looks on the subway is 8 weird half inch long hairs scattered on my face. I don't get a forest, i get a couple trees.

Imagine my surprise when i read on the huffington post today "obama: 'i can't grow facial hair." Maybe 2009 will be the year of the bare face with a few wiskers. If anyone can bring that bizare look into style, Obama can (yes we can).

My mother (god bless her!) picked me up a few things from amazon.

I'm probably most excited to read that John Hodgman book. Lately i'm on a daily show thats not the daily show kick. I've been listening to a lot of John Oliver's podcast with Andy Zaltzman called the bugle over at times online, and loving it. Then Hodgman showed up in another podcast i listen to called you look nice today: a journal of emotional hygiene and had some really fantasic and funny moments. He was pushing his book. I'll gladly accept the push. Daily show without daily show- i love it.

Incidently- you look nice today often jokes about a subject that I often feel is happening around me: not getting the MANual. Like- not knowing how to change a tire, or tie a tie. Not knowing dad things and feeling foolish. I guess I'm kind of at the age of feeling foolish with that stuff, getting over it and then learning it.

Birthdays are days of self evlauation milestones. I currently have over 50 physical games (this isn't counting intangible ones and zeros on the computer and console, or retro games beyond last generation of consoles) that i have bought and never played. This is getting out of hand. I atribute the huge splurge on games to acouple things. The last generation of consoles are on their way out over the next year or so. The ps2 is still holding on, but it won't be for long. So all those used games are going super cheap now. I can't resist the bargin, and with a finite number of used copies around I seem to panic and think to myself something along the lines of if I don't buy it now, it'll never be avalible again. Which- might be true, but probably won't be. Clearly, I am thrifty and paniced. I also atribute it to the fact that whenever i really start to collect or get into a new thing, i do it to a retarded extreme. The only thing that i've seem to collect at a moderate pace through most of my life has been comics. To change all this, or at least take it down a notch, I'm going to try not go into a brick and morter gamestop for video games for the next 4 months. It seems a little drastic to go from buying like crazy for a good six months (at least) to buying nothing, but i feel like i gotta get cut off. If i tell myself i'll do it in moderation nothing will change. Plus maybe now instead of buying games, i'll buy a few necessities that i always need but never seem to buy.

Speaking of- i got a pair of coffee mugs from the valve store. I don't know if this is a "speaking of games" or "speaking of stuff i always need but never buy for myself." Pretty much all the dishes in the house here are holly's. I'd like to pick up a few mugs at least considering my love of coffee. These do the trick.

The black mesa mug states "Delivering the Future" and the aperture labs one states "A trusted friend in science." Mugs are a nice low key way of displaying the pure nerd sensations i feel to valve without getting a really stupid nerdy shirt covered in text... although.... i do like that "good dog" shirt.

SO- nick filardi at 27: He is going to actually play the games he buys before he buys more. He is going to get the MANual. He is going to buy necessities. He is going to grow a beard, or bring weird wiskers into style. He might pay his taxes :)