Why haven’t I updated my blog as much as usual?  It’s the tryptophan, I swear.

Figure 1 - I found the turkey had an enlarged prostate and wasn't long for this world, so we were right to kill and eat it out of mercy. Tasty mercy.

It’s that time of the year. You barely see some family members the whole year, then you see them all, a lot, in the span of two months.  Kind of like that rash I’ve been ignoring, except less itchy, and with presents.  It’s a busy time of year for a lot of people, including me. I made a choice to let my blog suffer to spend time with my family, get some shopping done, and play video games.  The opportunity cost between that and my approximately $0.12 a month in ad revenue made it an easy choice.  I don’t do this blog for money, though, I do it for my own enjoyment. I just enjoy my family, turkey, and PlayStation 3 more than blogging.

So they won out.

Thanksgiving was relatively uneventful, and that we made it the whole meal without any burping contests or audible flatulence. I also got to carve the turkey with my brother (Figure 1).  Nothing whets the appetite like being elbow deep in a turkey’s ass.  The food was awesome, the football games sucked, and nobody reading this blog probably gives a crap.

After all, you’re here for my…um…

Figure 2 - "Twilight's" influence is unstoppable now.

Anyway, I also took the time off to get some holiday shopping done. Thankfully, nobody was trampled when I was shopping.  If your priorities are so misaligned that you put a good deal on an HDTV above somebody’s life, I suggest you approach said TV and tip it over on your face.  Congratulations, you saved a couple hundred dollars on a mediocre TV and all it took was somebody’s life.

Shopping on “black friday” is usally something I avoid, but with the economy cratered, I figured it wouldn’t be that bad…and it wasn’t. I do recommend that if you’re ever shopping for women and they’ve given you a list, be prepared for “cute” to be used as a qualifier for at least half of the things on that list.  You will not know what this means. If all else fails, just shoot for things with flames and stuff on it.  Speaking of flames, I noticed that “Hot Topic” is taking measures to prevent fires started in the interest of halting the spread of “vamp kids” (Figure 2).  You know, because of the bricks.  Okay, I thought it was funny enough to look like a douche for the 4 seconds it took me to take a picture of the store with my cell phone.

Figure 3 - The most fun...well, legal fun one can have for $60.

The other occupant of my time recently has been none other than “Sackboy”, the star of the recently released PlayStation 3 exclusive, LittleBigPlanet (Figure 3). This game is Mario on crack.  A nearly never ending platformer.  For those who don’t know, LBP is a side scrolling platformer, though I still consider it 3-D due to 3 levels of depth in the levels. In the story mode, you go through the levels, collecting objects and materials with which to build your own stages.  The level creator is intuitive and surprisingly easy to use given the fact that you’re on a console with a controller. There are tutorials aplenty, and the customizations are limitless.  After creating a level, you can publish it online for others to play, rate, tag, and favorite.  What you end up with is a seemingly endless supply of levels to a very well designed platformer. The physics and graphics are top notch, as is the fun.  Games like LBP only come along every so often, and are often unappreciated.  Mario Paint is the last game I can think of anything like LBP.

I’d write more, but I need to add another fire pit to my level.

…and perhaps a zipline.