Wii're Not Gonna Take It.

Fun fact about me: I like to ask for awesome things for my birthday, receive them, then tell myself I'm not allowed to open them until I do some God-forsaken chore. As a result, I don't start raving about birthday gifts til months after the fact.  Personal record: the Neato XV-11 I received in early January and finally unboxed IN JULY. (The chore was cleaning my room. I still hadn't done it, but more than 7 months just seemed ridiculous.) (Also: the Neato XV-11 is highly recommended.) Anyway! This year I asked for a Wii! And I got it! In January!

Naturally, I did not open the box until 2 days ago (when I finally got rid of the chest of drawers which had substituted for an entertainment center for the past five years).

The Wii is part of my Master Plan for Living Room Domination, which is exactly what it sounds like: my personal mission to reclaim my living room from all the crap and junk mail that buries me over and over again. Sometimes I look back at the pictures I took of this place while I was still trying to decide whether to make an offer, and I sigh wistfully at all the space, the shiny floors, the unobstructed windows... It is my dream that someday I might show those pictures to someone else, tell them "that's my condo", and have them actually believe me. So in anticipation of opening the Wii, I culled my electronics collection. I donated my DVD player and my VHS player (yes I still had one, though I hadn't touched it in 10 years), and gifted my Xbox 360 to my brother. My reasoning was as follows:
1. There is not a single Xbox game I have any interest in playing. I was just using the Xbox for Netflix, Hulu+ and DVDs. But...
2. I don't need the Xbox for DVDs, because I have a PS2. And obviously I won't be getting rid of the PS2. I lived 19 long, boring, tedious, joy-deprived years without Crash Bandicoot. I don't intend to lose him again now.
3. The Wii could do Netflix and Hulu+ and do it wirelessly ("Xbox 360: because everybody loves having ethernet cords running all over the damn place"), and there are quite a few Wii games I quite like. And it can play some old Nintendo games from my childhood! And the menu screens play soothing elevator music, which I also quite like! And if - God forbid - my PS2 should someday go on to a better place, the Wii could be THE home base for internet-based TV, games, and DVDs!

EXCEPT OH WAIT A MINUTE WHAT?

The Wii doesn't play DVDs. I'm sure I'm the last person on the face of the Earth to learn this, but give me a break - it was hard to justify buying one when I still had an Xbox and a PS2, so I'm just now getting around to it. When my beloved Flight of the Conchords Season 1 Disc 1 failed to play after the 3rd try, I sat down at my laptop and, chiding myself for asking such a stupid question, typed "Does Wii play DVDs?" Imagine my astonishment! My consternation! My disappointment! My RAGE! ...when I learned that no, it does not. I did some additional looking around and came across a number of articles claiming that the Nintendo corporation essentially felt that a DVD drive on the Wii would be overkill because "there are already so many other components that play DVDs", citing not only other game consoles and dedicated media players, but laptops, desktops, and...oh wait those are all the things that play DVDs. This is the Dumbest Corporate Decision since Suntory handed Kim Kardashian a Midori bottle and took her picture* (YES I AM STILL MAD ABOUT THAT), and I will give you both reasons why:
1. "We aren't gonna do this because other people already did it" is just bad business. That's like Pepsi saying "Nah, let's not introduce a crappier version of every single product Coca-Cola makes." It's unheard of! And I bet people will read this and say, "Um, I believe it's COKE that copies PEPSI, stupid Atlantan Coke freak." And I will say to them, "Oh GO DRINK SOME PEPSI TOILET WATER!" And they will threateningly brandish a Mountain Dew pop top at me and yell, "DON'T MAKE ME CUT YOU!" And I'll grab a frozen Coke and be all, "You try it and I'll give you a brain freeze you'll NEVER forget!" And then they'll be like, "Did you even see Pepsi's Superbowl commercial? Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?" And then Elton John and Flavor Flav will come running up, and the three of them will start coming at me like a West Side Story dance sequence to kick my ass, but then I'll snap my fingers and a bunch of bloodthirsty polar bears will rush them and when all the screaming dies down, the polar bears and I will sit down with a Coke and they'll put their paws on my shoulder and we'll watch the Northern Lights, BITCH!

What was I talking about? Oh right: the Wii. My point is that businesses are supposed to try for customer loyalty and a cornered market. The [theoretical] ideal Wii consumer is a person who says, "I'm buying a Wii, and I'm not buying any other console or media player, because the Wii can do everything I need!" Then you've got the revenue from the initial purchase and you have that customer cornered for any number of services you can dream up to roll out in the future! Instead, they said, "We won't make our product do all the things it could do, because people can buy someone else's product for that." Thanks man! That's a great idea! I'll just get an Xb...OH WAIT I NO LONGER HAVE ANY USE FOR THE WII WHATSOEVER. Business FAIL.

I guess my other point, to a lesser extent, was that we're supposed to have multiple products that do similar things. The fact that you can say "Mello Yello is Coke's version of Mountain Dew" or "Sierra Mist is Pepsi's version of Sprite" or "Aquafina is Coke's version of Dasani and by the way THEY ARE BOTH 'WATER'" is not "proof of a redundancy in the market". Rather, it is the purest form of American capitalism, tapping into our cultural DNA's tendency toward irrational "My Team is Better Than Your Team and...What Did You Say I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!" behavior and using it to screw all of us out of our money. Just like politics!

2. The Nintendo people are absolutely right - we have a lot of products in our homes that play DVDs. Until 2 days ago, I had a DVD player, an Xbox, a PS2, and 2 laptops, and all of those things could play DVDs. I guess that's probably why my mindset, here in 2012, is: if I see something that has a DVD-sized slot on it and can be connected to a screen, I assume it can play DVDs. Or at least, I used to make that assumption. But the Wii people took a world where one could reasonably say "Everything already plays DVDs!" and used that logic to create a world where we say instead: "Everything plays DVDs...except the Wii." Way to go, guys! Way. To. Go.

*Seriously, are crappy decisions the new "in" thing for Japanese executives?

Kimberly Welsh Must Be Stopped.

If any of you sees Kimberly Welsh, could you please pound her stupid face in for me? Thanks.

I know what you're thinking. You're all like, "WHHAAAAAAT? But you're Kimberly Welsh!" And to that I say, "I KNOW RIGHT?!?!" But sadly there are a lot of people who don't know, and therein lies the problem. Because it is often said that the only thing you have in this life is your good name. And mine has been stolen.

I don't mean it's been "identity-theft" stolen (not recently, anyway), but I mean I have a name-doppelgängerin, and she is a law-breakin', bill-not-payin' MACHINE! I know this because I started getting friendly phone calls for her in the first month I lived in my condo. This period in my life is also referred to as "That Time I Spent 4 Straight Weeks Walking Around Wild-Eyed Screaming 'WHAT HAVE I DONE?'" Homeownership was not an easy transition for me. Just to paint you a picture: my cat tore the blinds down in my bedroom within an hour of moving in. On the first night, the smoke alarm malfunctioned, which is why I ended up standing on a chest of drawers trying to knock if off the wall with a broom (I succeeded). The next morning, the cat perched himself atop a box, which was sitting beside an open box full of measuring cups and other cookware...and then he puked directly into the box with the measuring cups and cookware. On my way to the kitchen to wash cat puke from my cookery, I noticed that the ratio of ants to food in my dog's bowl was approximately "so many ants that you can no longer see the food". That afternoon, I heard a strange noise and realized that the microwave had turned itself on and was gleefully heating itself up, completely empty, as it continued to do every few hours until I finally just unplugged it.

In other words: things weren't going well at 7pm, when I received my very first phone call on my shiny new phone and a VERY angry VERY pushy person wanted to know how and when I intended to pay off the balance on my Sears card, which I had incurred by purchasing a $2,000 sofa over a year ago. This confused me, because:

1. Do I look like a person who buys furnitureat Sears? I have no need for a Craftsman sofa.

2. Do I look like would rack up $2,000 of debt for anything other than pizza, Midori, or eyeliner? Girl, please.

I was even more confused when the person on the phone insisted that I was definitely the person he wanted to talk to. The issue was only finally resolved when I gave him the last 4 digits of my social security number, thereby confirming that there are, in fact, multiple (2) Kimberly Welshes living in this town. 

In the intervening years, as that Sears card debt has been passed from shady collection agency to shady collection agency, and they have taken turns calling me every 3-5 days, threatening to take a baseball bat to my kneecaps. Over a sofa. From Sears. I've learned that when they say, "Are you Kimberly Welsh?", the correct answer is, "I am a Kimberly Welsh, but I doubt I'm the one you're looking for." And then I take the earliest opportunity to do my SSN trick and escape, Houdini-like, from their bullying nonsense. (Sidenote: Seriously - those bad debt collection agencies are SHA. DY. The government should do something about them, as soon as they're done beating the living crap out of the credit reporting agencies, but that's another issue.)

I never understand why they call me. The debt is now at least 5 years old, and she has evaded them this long.  Do these people genuinely think they're the first ones to search her name in a phone listing? Why has no one thought of this before? Do you really think that after all this time, it's as simple as calling that number? Really? Do some work, lazyface. 

But this isn't nearly as perplexing as the one (and only) (knock on wood) time I got pulled over. I had allegedly rolled through a stop sign, but it's very a much a he said/she said, to be honest. Anyway, I dutifully gave the officer my license and waited patiently for him to run my information. When he returned to the car, he said, AND I QUOTE, "I thought I was going to have to arrest you." And I thought, "Wow. They're really cracking down on rolling stops on barely-trafficked surface streets." He continued, "I ran your name, and there's a warrant out for your arrest." And I thought, "Damn overdue library books!" And then he said, "Yep, you're wanted for...

[WAIT FOR IT]

driving without a license."

Pause.

"But, um, sir...you're holding my license. That's my license. Right there. In your hand."

"I know. That's how I figured there's a different Kimberly Welsh..."

"Oh you have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!"

So please. If you are on Team Law-Abiding Bill-Paying Licensed-Driver Kimberly Welsh, and you know someone who can put their hands on Law-Breaking Deadbeat Pain in My Ass Kimberly Welsh, yank her deadbeat butt of that Craftsman sofa and turn her in to the authorities. 

10 Ways to Deal with Writer's Block

1. Go for a run! Maybe you'll fall and break your hand and then you'll have an excuse not to write anymore!

2. Take a look through your Ideas Notebook! Maybe you'll find some inspiration there! More likely you'll read the whole thing, call yourself a rude name, and end up completely despondent. But you know - maybe you'll find some inspiration! There's, like, a 20% chance of that!

3. Get a lobotomy! We use this term a lot, but most people don't know what a lobotomy really was (they don't do them anymore). It involved someone "scrambling" your brains with long sharp metal sticks which had been rammed in through your temples. Still, that sounds better than staring at the screen any longer, amiright?

4. Call a friend or family member to chat. When they ask what you've been up to, say, "I'm SUPPOSED to be writing, but I CAN'T because I don't have anything to SAY and I SUCK, but THANKS FOR BRINGING IT UP!" Then slam the receiver down.

5. Try writing in someone else's voice. For example, I'm channeling Elizabeth Gilbert for this blog post, muthafucka!

6. Get out a sketchbook and try doodling to loosen up your brain muscles. Maybe you'll get a great idea from what you've drawn!

No?

7. Do some volunteer work! It'll make you feel better and HAAAA! HA HA! Oh God, I can never say that one with a straight face. AS IF you were going to do that! Next!

8. Try tidying up around the house. You know what they say: "A cluttered home is one in which the EMTs will have a harder time finding you when you finally get so drunk you need to have your stomach pumped!"

9. Get yourself an arranged marriage on the internet! This "writing" thing is clearly never going to support you in the lifestyle to which you'd like to become accustomed.

10. Give up on writing real text and just make a stupid list instead.

WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF? WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?...

I thought that would be a funny title for a blog post on Wednesday, 8/whatever-last-Wednesday-was/2011. I had just come home from a self-defense workshop with my fellow improv actors (what's funnier than improv actors doing improv? Improv actors doing self-defense!), and I was struck by the fact that in 2 hours of punching, eyeball-poking, kicking, and pinching, I had done no damage whatsoever to anyone or anything else. I had, however, really given my own right knee what for! I had kneed SO many fake groins SO hard that I had a combination bruise/swelling/friction burn thing. I hobbled for most of Thursday, and the scabs still haven't healed up and fallen off. Basically, if that night was any indication, a violent attacker in a parking lot or dark alley will be met with me yelling "GIVE ME THAT!", taking his gun, and shooting myself in the face. It seems this is how I roll. You're welcome, hardened criminals.

But that blog post title was substantially less funny when it occurred to me again today. You see, I live in a condo complex with a parking garage. Among this parking garage's ultra-modern features:
- grossly undersized parking spaces, so you have to enter and exit them with surgical precision, even if you drive a little Barbie's Dreamcar Mazda Miata
- lanes too narrow to accommodate more than one car at a time, so you must be ready to dive into a space at any moment to avoid collision
- MASSIVE concrete columns every 10 feet on either side of the lane, which are convenient for testing the efficacy of your airbag, blocking available space you might otherwise use to avoid collision, and conveniently preventing you from seeing what's coming when backing out of a space. I like to think of them as Complacency Prevention Measures.
- a 7-year old whose asshole parents categorically REFUSE to prevent him from zipping through the parking garage on various non-automobile conveyances, no matter how many times the newsletter specifically states that no one should be electro-scootering, rollerblading, skateboarding, etc. in the crowded and dangerous parking garage. Dear That Kid's Parents: Be sure to take out a life insurance policy on him! Love, Darwin

I lost my passenger side mirror to a concrete column the first week I lived here, but in the subsequent four years have developed good parking garage survival instincts and avoided further trouble. Until Saturday...

On my way to the gate, I found myself at one of the many points where the lane is not wide enough for 2 cars to turn in opposing directions at the same time. Being a fundamentally polite person, I stopped and waited for the oncoming car to move past me. Then I waited for the next one. And the next. And the next. Around car #6, I couldn't help feeling that in all fairness, my turn had come, and since car #7 had fallen a little behind, I figured I could start my turn, he would see me/stop, and then I could move forward. Instead, I pulled forward, he saw me...and decided to play chicken with me.

I am nothing if not a huge chicken.

Unfortunately, he was such an aggressive sportsman that he had advanced too quickly for a simple stop to be sufficient to avoid head-on collision, so I also had to swerve...thereby slamming the back half of my car into the concrete column on my right.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but people are HUGE assholes. Seriously.

I heard the crunch zone of my rear passenger door surrendering to the concrete, and I immediately went into my Vehicular Emergency Coping Procedure:
Step 1: Close eyes. Think "That did not just happen. That did not just happen. That did not just happen."
Step 2: Open eyes. Faced with the unavoidable reality that something bad did just happen, find the nearest place to pull over. Convey your vehicle to that point for assessment.
Step 3: Unlock all doors, knowing you are having a breakdown and are INCREDIBLY likely to accidentally lock yourself out. Then go have a look.
Step 4: Crumble into a heap.

And just in case you think I'm kidding about Step 1, I once had an accident in which I rolled into the car ahead of me in bumper-to-bumper rain-induced traffic. After the initial BAM, I commenced Step 1. When the car behind me rolled into me and I felt the subsequent identical BAM, I became completely and utterly convinced that I had been swallowed up into a temporal loop, and was doomed to sit in that bucket seat, slamming into the car in front of me over and over and over, for the rest of eternity. I am not kidding. The only way I eventually realized I wasn't in Purgatory was when I saw the rain-soaked face of the driver from the car behind me, knocking on my window and asking if I was alright.

But I digress. The thing is, I was completely devastated by Saturday's turn of events. Not because I'm that materialistic and can't cope with cosmetic damage to my car, but because 1) I DO NOT have the funds to cover the repair of the damage caused when I essentially drove into a concrete column of my own accord ("WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?") and 2) if you've stumbled upon my little "About Me" page, you'll know that I have a bad habit of naming/anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. This was not cosmetic damage to my car; this was me being wholly responsible for harming Arionrhod - a wonderful companion who has been nothing but good to me.

Rion in happier times, on the day I got her. MY POOR BABY! WHYYYYYYYYYY??????

I couldn't have felt worse if I had sucker-punched my best friend for no reason. And I would feel really badly about that. To make matters worse, these injuries to my current ride were eerily reminiscent of those sustained by my very first car, Rex, in my very first accident:

The Baby Jesus Dodging Incident

I was 17. I'd had Rex for about 6 months. Christmas was coming. I was going to go to Sunday School, mostly because all of my friends were there. I drove to the church I had attended from the age of 5. I turned down the parking lot aisle in which my family had parked since I was 5. But my way was blocked by the Christmas-y addition of a manger, in which lay the baby Jesus.

A dumpster prevented me from seeing traffic behind me, so I couldn't back into the main thoroughfare. But I also couldn't park in the middle of the lane, as I would be blocking the 4 cars that had gotten the only 4 available spaces. I assessed the situation.

This was the reality of the situation.

This was my perception of the situation.

As you can see from the illustration above, I was pretty sure my car was an aircraft carrier, and the son of God was, quite literally, all around me. Perhaps I should point out that the "baby Jesus" was not an actual baby, but a doll, as you probably expect. My paranoia was not about hitting him and/or caving his manger in on him. The problem was that I was 17 years old. If I had done anything that damaged the manger and/or the representation of the Christ child, I would spend the rest of high school being "The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus". NOBODY'S reputation can take that. NOBODY. So my focus was that I would not, under any circumstances, take out the manger. I took my foot off the brake and started to inch forward. Once Mary and Joseph were even with my side mirror, I figured I was in the clear.

That's when I heard the crunch of surrender on my passenger side and felt Rex come to a total standstill. In my concern to avoid hitting the manger, I had managed to get snagged on the rear corner of the church van. So I was embarrassed, devastated, and unable to free my car from the van's grip. Ultimately a kind soul sent his wife and daughters into the church while he stood in the cold and directed me through the steps to liberate Rex, at which point I engaged in Steps 3 and 4 for the first time in my life.

So I wasn't The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus. Instead, I was The Girl Who Destroyed Her Own Car and a Church Van in Order to Avoid Running Over Jesus. So I saved Jesus, who then saved everybody else, which basically means I am the savior of mankind. You're all welcome. I'm going to hell.

MY POINT IS: there are few things in this life that will make you feel dumber/more publicly humiliated than doing thousands of dollars of damage to your own car all by yourself. Arionrhod's journey back to wholeness will begin on Monday, but I have no idea when (or if) my ego will ever bounce back. I sure hope the asshat who spooked me into the column enjoyed his afternoon at the pool! I'm off to take some more sedatives to try and stop the flashbacks.

Sketch Challenge, 3rd Set: "Ack"

I'm applying the "Accountability" label here, even though it doesn't really fit. Because I am completely letting myself off scot-free.

According the various and constant warning alarms on my iPhone, iPod, and laptop, tomorrow is the deadline for the 3rd set of sketches. And John Finnemore blogged about having a show at the Albany tomorrow night, which is basically like a backup alarm for same. So what's my progress looking like?

Nothing. Not a single sketch. Please don't steal my terrible ideas, but this is what the current set looks like, compared with the last set:

Oops.

Wha' Ha' Happen' Was...

*Clears throat* I spent a day visiting my brother in Augusta and when I came back I found a stray dog and he kept me up all night and I didn't get rid of him until the next day and then I was supposed to leave town but my cat sitter went AWOL 12 hours before departure and I had to take an extra day off work to hunt her down or find a new one and I drove all over Buckhead to drop off a key and then I went to Florida with my family so there was no way I could concentrate and when I came back I was too sunburned to move and then I had to go back to work and apparently we're being bought so I had to go to a bunch of special meetings and I was going to write after rehearsal on Wednesday but it was the Summer of Fun so we had a surprise party and I stayed out til 11 and came home too drunk to focus and then I got cast in a show last night and now I have less than 24 hours to write 60 pages of sketches!!!!
(end of excuses)

I barely even scribbled down any ideas for sketches in my trusty notebook. It's been a real setback. And my initial intention when I got up this morning was to power through and try to finish on time, but I've had a realization, and it is as follows: The major problem was being out of town for 4 days. The other things were largely out of my control (with the exception of the sunburn and the drinking) and genuinely prevented me from writing. The perfectionist voice in my head feels very strongly that I have to adhere to the original schedule because the whole point was to write on exactly the same schedule as John Finnemore's Sketch Night. But just between you and me, I rather suspect that JF had some warning about this whole thing and could move his travel plans accordingly. Whereas I literally just woke up one morning and said, "Hey! I know what would be a good idea!" So the 3rd set is hereby postponed, and an additional fortnight of sketch-writing is hereby tacked onto the tail end of Kimberly Welsh's Agonizingly Slow Sketch Suicide, Currently With No Sketches About Coffee, Screaming Children, Or Anything Else For That Matter.

The focus for the next two days will now be internet writing (since I've only written one pitiful little blog post this week, and that was interrupted FIVE TIMES by lengthy phone calls). But it might interest you to know about the one thing I did manage to accomplish: I updated the photos and captions on the home page slideshow AND stashed 4 "pages" (which are not the same thing as "posts") around the blog. Secretly. Like Easter Eggs. Happy hunting!