I got my state refund already. It feels kind of empowering to get earned income credit - nice to know I've actually made some money. Of course I'm still dirt poor but that does not bother me as much as it used to. I feel like if I got rich I'd get lazy and turn into some kind of asshole.

But speaking of money, since I've got such a fat refund coming, I'm thinking of getting an Xbox. Yes, I can finally catch up with all the bratty overpriveledged 12-year-olds on my street in terms of personal propery value. I swear to fucking god kids these days have so much crap, it's worth more than my car. An Xbox seems like the logical choice for a "casual" gamer like myself - all of my friends have Wiis so the few titles I'm actually interested in for that are accessable - and anything on PS3 will most likely be ported to the Xbox, so I can play it without shelling out an extra two-hundred dollars for essentially the same thing. I'm not huge fan of Microsoft but I must say I'm interested in the indie gaming culture that's forming thanks to Xbox Live and XNA. If you are unfamiliar, XNA is a Microsoft-funded game development suite where people who are good in C++ (curse me for learning Java) can program their own stuff and distribute it on Live. Some of the stuff I played with at college was pretty awesome, the running favorite being a title called "In The Pit," a non-visual game, with added bonus points for the silly voice-over.

And speaking of games and gaming, I've come to a kind of sad realization that I have nearly nothing in common with anyone I grew up with anymore. It isn't just the poor thing - while none of my childhood friends are rolling in dough, I end up being the one who opts to keep going in school instead of jumping into a career. And as for interests, that territory has been barren for quite some time. I've stuck with writing, for better or for worse, and writing about stuff other than games, which is all any of them are really concerned with. It isn't that my childhood friends are bad people - I'm lucky as fuck to have had and still have them - but there just isn't that intellectual connexion anymore, and that is sad.

It doesn't help that I have not fully going into the whole internet thing - I'm 26, have been to college, and don't have a Facebook, so people need to go out of their way and email or call me to invite me somewhere (in my defense, if it's really that much of a hassel, fuck off.) I got rid of my MySpace years ago and while there are some rather silly pictures of me still floating around out there on the Interwebs, I don't exist. And these days that makes staying in touch with people pretty damn hard.

But what are you going to do? Everyone has to grow up sometime, and that implies that people can grow apart. It's sad but thats life. And by now it's tme to get the hell over it and move on.

Oh yeah, as far as my projects go, I'm distracted, so fucking sue me. Everyone else is.

Yep. I finally made enough money in one year to partake in the government's big offering of pie to the American people. I get a whole three-hundred big ones included with my tax refund. Hold on, I think I've heard this one before. You know, the story where a nation was going bankrupt and the president needed to shut everyone up so he gave them a chuck of change with their tax refunds? If this sounds at all familiar, either you can't form new memories like that guy in Memento and everything sounds familiar (in that case, get back to looking for John G, lasy asshole), or you remember the same story from a couple years ago. Point being that Obama's latest placaction of the American people is the exact same thing his predecessor did. You know, The One Who Must Not Be Named, the guy who all of us pretentious, enlightened types are suppposed to joke about while we blog on our Macs in Starbucks drinking a shitty, overpriced Iced Coffee? (DISCLAIMER: I do not own a Mac, blog in public, or pay four dollars for coffee.)

It sounds mean but I find the irony quite delicious. And not delicious in that prepared tofu way, more delicious in that lemon merange pie way. I can already feel the well-oiled gears of Obamamania starting to sqeak with the rust of dismay, and while it does not mean things are looking particularly good for me, at least I have the pleasure of being one of the few who can say, "I told you so" when your grandma loses her pension and has to live in a hotel.

No, I will not apologize for that.

Throwing money at things is a solution, and sadly in the current state of things it's the only solution. However, the concession that saving the companies will screw over all of the people who got Obama elected in the first place must be made, and while the documents have been signed for a while, nobody is admitting it. It's like a family not dealing with their drug addict cousin, and when he dies of an overdose, everyone says, "Oh, he was so strong and healthy," at the funeral.

Instead of feeding the junkie, the more intelligent solution is to throw his ass in rehab. Instead of telling companies that they need to stop outsourcing factories and bringing industry back to the 'States, the Obama solution is to create a thousand jobs here and a thousand jobs there, and at the same time let GM can ten thousand folks so they can "show enough fiscal responsibility" to get their slice of the pie. And we good American citizens are expected to take our measly three hundred and quietly look away.

It might sound like I'm being overly critical of Obama, but come right the fuck on. How is General Motors going to help me: a 26 year old college grad who has no interest in working in the auto industry and can't afford one of their crappy cars anyway. Why should a company that's been sinking its country into debt and embarresment (look up Ford factories in Dresden, Germany around 1939 - interesting stuff) for years get anything they want, while an educated citizen who could potentally have a long life of paying taxes and producing for his country get smacked in the face with a meat mallet?

In other news, Pandora is cool.