My first Christmas present + a holiday e-mail from Louis Wang

I made a very short remark in one of Gazebo's posts (an open post?) about never having received a Christmas gift. It was actually a very small part of something else I wrote, but Jolene picked it up something like 10 messages later and Jorian picked it up. I was expecting some sort of mail bomb or something else equally vial (maybe that will come on Tuesday? I think there's still no mail on Monday---obviously in celebration of Hanukkah!), but I am happy to report that I received Super Mario Strikers instead. We played that 4-player for a while, and unlike Mario Superstar Baseball, it has a lot of 4-player options. (The baseball game was cool, but there was only one way to play 4-player, and that causes a big drop-off. Not to mention the fact that the baserunning is messed up, the batting is a bit tough, and they even got at least one rule wrong. I'm not sure how many people would notice the rule violation, but I follow baseball religiously and it caused a rally-killing triple-play, which annoyed me greatly.)

The soccer that we played took on a sort of rugby feel as we punched the opponents into electric fences (where they screamed in pain at their shocks) and otherwise pushed them aside. The players would gloat after goals, and some of them were the Nintendo version of provocative---this was evident with, among others, Daisy and Peach, and OneMike's reaction to this was, to use an apt word, disturbing. He worries me sometimes. Also disturbing were the pink shells/outfits the Hammer Bros had when they were on Peach's team (including the hearts on the front of the shells). Peach + gay Hammer Bros was certainly a strange team. Oh, and I can't finish post with the comment that the Birdos were apparently wearing bondage outfits. Nintendo is going on some strange directions here. Personally, I really like the horried screams when Peach, Wario, and others hit an electric fence after someone smashes them into it. But I have no latent violent tendencies (some might use the word 'overt').

Anyway, the game is cool. I owe Jorian a gift, so they're going to have to settle for a late Hanukkah gift. My family is Jewish. Ergo, it's a Hanukkah gift if it's for a non-birthday December holiday. If someone like Lemming has an idea of what I can get that isn't already owned, purchased, or in the works, a private message towards that end would be much appreciated.

I also got a holiday e-mail from Louis Wang (originally from my class; in Lloyd). He mention that his wife is expecting a kid, so he should be testing his off-beat child-rearing philosophies (from old messages on The Usual Bastards e-mail list) soon enough. Actually, most of us thought he didn't believe precisely what he was saying and the odd stuff may not be relevant for several years, but I wonder if he'll try some of the things that were discussed? (For those who don't know, my group in Lloyd was called The Usual Bastards. There's a bit of a story behind the name, which didn't come into play until after we left Tech. I'll go through that another time. It's mostly Vincent Lin's fault, but Kin Chan and I get an assist, and the name stuck among ourselves despite the fact that it's kind of silly. The others contained therein are Vito Dai, Nelson Escobar, Varun Tansuwan, and Ben Williamson. Unfortunately, most of us have drifted apart to a large degree, and I keep more in touch with some than with others. I'll talk to Vito sometimes, for example, and we always had more in common because of the academic stuff, the chess, etc. I talk to Ben a lot because we're both misanthropes. I talk to Brian Limketkai, too, because of pool and academic stuff although he was never on that e-mail list. The whole drifting apart in this particular case saddens me more than most other things [and there's a specific occurrence related to this that I don't feel comfortable posting on a webpage where anybody can read it], but I think some of us were friends more through connections with a third party. There's nothing wrong with that, but then when you're apart, sometimes that increases the inertia for keeping things up. It's too bad. I think I actually thought we could stay together in spirit as a group in a lifetime sort of friendship thing and I was wrong.)

On a completely different note, my iPod over the course of three days has gone from a 12 hour battery to a 6 hour battery to a 4 hour battery. A slow decay is expected, but this is not good. I'm hoping I can do a reset or something, but I'm not going to look up the online faqs today.