Shopping Win

Today I shopped the sale rack at Charlotte Russe and bought two new skirts for work, a new purple/orange top, and the best Christmas shirt ever (see below), all for under $13 total. The best part? One of the skirts I bought for $2.99 is eerily similar to this skirt at Express selling for $69.50. Muahahah!

Double Dipping

I've been thinking a lot about buying a new TV. My current television is still functional, and I don't really have the money right now, but I'm looking ahead. And while looking ahead, I might as well think extravigantly. So, while I'm buying my fancy widescreen HD TV, I might as well pick up a blu-ray player. Blu-ray players will play all my current DVDs, so I don't technically need to replace my collection, but it's an interesting thought: Which movies do I love enough to buy again (or will benefit most from improved picture/sound)? From a quick scan of my shelf, here's my list:

1- Almost Famous. It's my favorite movie, so it automatically makes the list. This is technically a triple-dip, because I owned the one-disc version of the DVD before upgrading to the two-disc director's cut. A quick search of Amazon and Ebay shows that apparently it's not available in the US, but it doesn't look like it will be hard to get in a US compatible format.

2- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Another of my personal favorites.

3- The Godfather Collection. There's a new remastered DVD collection out, and I think it's also available on blu-ray. The original DVD collection (the one I own) isn't a very good digital transfer; the picture quality isn't as good as it could be.

4- The Matrix. I've never seen any of the sequels, but the original is just so cool. I think it'll definitely benefit from improved picture and sound.

5- Moulin Rouge! Once I'm living on my own, I won't be able to steal my sister's copy. I guess this isn't technically double-dipping, since I don't own it myself, but I just think it'll look fantastic in high def, so I included it on the list anyway.

6- Serenity. Another triple-dip. If I decide to double-dip on TV series I already own, Firefly would be on the top of the list.

7- The original Star Wars trilogy. This might not count as a double-dip, because I only own it on VHS. 

8- V for Vendetta. Of my Natalie Portman movies, this is the one I think will benefit most from blu-ray.

So, Abby, which of your DVDs would you replace with blu-ray?

I'm so sick of jewelry commercials...

I'll be glad when the holidays are over if for no other reason than we'll finally be rid of all these damn jewelry commercials. But I really really hate this one:

I can't really pinpoint what it is exactly in this commercial that pisses me off. I guess it's that the man is getting praised for giving the dog a bath. And that makes him some sort of ideal man. I'm assuming they live together, so it's his dog too. He should be washing the dog every once in a while. I guess I'm supposed to be impressed that he skipped out on watching a sporting event with his friends in order to bathe the dog? I'm not. I'm confused. If I came home and found that my significant other had blown off plans with his friends to give our dog a bath... I'd be suspicious about his motives. Is there something romantic about abandoning your social life for no apparent reason? But I guess the point of the commercial is that men like this don't actually exist, so buy your woman's love with diamonds. I think the commercial enforces unfortunate gender stereotypes (men should be praised whenever they do something domestic! ) and paints a weird picture of relationships.

Here's a brilliant episode of Target Women that pretty much sums up what annoys me about Jewelry commercials. The only thing she doesn't mention is that the jewelry in the Christmas tree commercial (the first one she makes fun of) is ugly. That's my biggest issue with that one.

If you can't view the video, go here: http://current.com/items/89614245/target_women_jewelry.htm

The Wish List Personality Test

Play along at home.

Tonight I was examining my wish list on Amazon and I discovered that pretty much every item on the list falls into one of two categories: "Nerdy" and "Nerdy?" That question mark is very important. The items in the second category are things that aren't stereotypically nerdy, but having them on my list doesn't in any way make me "cool." Here we go:

Nerdy
The Original Star Wars Trilogy (the one that includes the original versions of the movies)
The first Four seasons of The X-Files
Heroes, Seasons 1 and 2 (I almost put this in the "Nerdy?" category, but then I remember it's about superheroes)
Bones, Season 3 (same as above, except it's about forensic anthropologists)
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition
All seasons of Futurama
The Princess Bride (book)
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Special Extended Edition)
Freaks & Geeks Special Yearbook Edition (This also very nearly made it into the "Nerdy?" category, but I put it back here because I added the special edition with 2 extra discs of bonus features to my wish list instead of the significantly cheaper 6 disc version)
Pretty in Pink Special Edition (only on the Nerdy list because I already own the $5 Wal-mart bargain bin version of the dvd, which means I'm asking for this one only for the special features)
Trivial Pursuit 1990's edition

Total Nerdy Items: 21

Nerdy?
Psych, Season 2
The Watson Twins, Fire Songs and Southern Manners
Waitress
Pulp Fiction (I almost created a third category for this one ("Relatively Cool") but that would have been a lot of work.)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones
The Shawshank Redemption
Beverly Hills, 90210, Seasons 3,4,5, and 6 (this probably should have gone in the first category, I know)
Gossip Girl, season 1 (Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures!)
To Kill a Mockingbird (the movie)
The Royal Tenenbaums
High Fidelity soundtrack

Total Nerdy? Items: 15

So I guess I'm officially nerdy. Without the question mark.

Bookworm

I will freely admit that I have not read all the books on my bookshelf in my bedroom. I even have a select few that I have no intention of reading (Project Pope, I'm looking at you. You were purchased for humor and irony). However, the vast majority of my books were purchased with the intention that one day I will read them. They were not purchased to decorate a shelf or to make me look smart. I'm already smart and, honestly, my room could do with a little less clutter.

Apartment Therapy today linked to a company that is selling three themed sets of paperback books. While the idea of grouping similarly themed books together isn't a bad idea, what pisses me off is that the books are listed in the HOME DECOR section of the company's website. These are for people who are far too concerned with what other people think of their book collections. Read all about it here.

Warhol

I just bought four Andy Warhol posters from allposters.com. I'm really excited. Two of them were only $5, which is even more exciting. I'm going to frame them when they get here and arrange them on my wall. I'm actually going to get some of my other posters framed as well, at least my Rilo Kiley and Joe Firstman ones. I'll be sure to post pictures once I've got my "art" "collection" more organized.

Anyway, here's the Warhol posters I bought:

Three's a Party
Waiting
Love Affair
and Art

You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

So, have you seen the new J.C. Penney commercials that rip off The Breakfast Club? Or, as Pajiba put it: "Do you know what it’s like to feel your heart atrophy in under 60 seconds?"

So many things about this commercial piss me off. Let's start with the fact that apparently 45 kids have Saturday detention. Although, the commercial is so lazy in ripping off TBC that they never actually say that the kids are there for Saturday detention. They could very well be in homeroom, unsupervised. Because the only adults shown are the parents dropping off the kids at the very beginning. But the Principal and Carl the Janitor are the best! They don't even warrant a cameo?

Back to the kids. While the actors in the commercial are racially more diverse than the original TBCers, they all look exactly alike. Obviously they're all dressed in JCP fashions, but they're all dressed as preppy as possible. The girl who I guess is supposed to be Ally Sheedy's character is dressed in a magenta polo-style dress. WTF? I'm sure JCP could have found something black in the Juniors dept to throw on that actress. The entire fucking point of the movie is that 5 kids from different social groups are thrown together for one Saturday and they bond and become friends until Monday morning when they go back to being strangers. Ok, that last part doesn't actually happen, but I'm guessing.

The point of the commercial? I'm not entirely sure but I think it's "You're all exactly the same already, you might as well wear cheap JCP clothes."

Also, I hate the cover version of TBC's theme song they use in the commercial. So happy and uuugghhhhhh. That just reminds me of how happy all these little fuckers are to be in Saturday detention. They're losing an entire Saturday! They should be pissed! Not all smiley!!!!!!

Raise your hand if you think JC Penney should have kept the scene where the kids all smoke pot. Thanks, Ab, for raising your hand. If they kept the pot scene it would at least give the kids a reason to be so happy to be in Saturday Detention.

I really can't go on anymore, or my head will explode. Thanks, JC Penney, for taking a cherished film and bastardizing it so that you can sell some shitty clothes to children who don't know any better. But you forgot one thing: These kids you're selling to? It's their parents who are buying. And their parents were teenagers themselves when The Breakfast Club came out. Way to fuck it up, JCP marketing.

JC Penney sees us as they want to see us: as mindless idiots who won't recognize that they're trying to capitalize on our fond memories and sentimentality by putting forth a lazy hack-job version of a generation's favorite movie. I rarely shopped JCP to begin with, but I'll avoid it like the plague now. To paraphrase John Bender: "Eat my shorts, JC Penney. Eat. My. Shorts."

The New Camera

After much debate, I bought the Canon Powershot S5 IS.

So far it has taken great pictures. I've only owned it about four hours at this point so I haven't had a lot of time to play with it. The only complaint I have is that, as you can see, it's not a small camera. In fact, it's fairly massive. Not quite a dslr, but it still has some heft to it. I'm worried that it's too big, that I won't be able to use it like I want to because I'll be too lazy. My Florida family is in town and we're having a 4th of July celebration tonight, so I'll take some pictures then and try and get used to the camera. If I can't, I guess I can take it back, even though there will be a 15% restocking fee, which kinda blows.

Spending Money -- UPDATED!

I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but do you know what happens when you have a paying job but very few expenses? You end up with a lot of cash and nothing you need to spend it on. I'm still used to my apartment living mentality: I have no money, but I can justify entertainment purchases every once in a while. I still think that way, I'm still justifying all of my unessential purchases. I spent my tax return money on a trip to South Carolina and the collectors dvd sets of Buffy and Angel. I thought of that money as "extra" money. And since I haven't been spending, I've unintentionally been saving my money. Which is nice, because there are a few expensive things that I need and/or want.

First: I really need a new digital camera. My old one is... old. The zoom button is breaking and the battery is wearing down (not holding a charge as long) and it's from the ancient times before digital cameras could record real video (it'll only record in 15 second blocks.) I really like taking pictures, but I mostly only take pictures at parties and concerts, so it's really not necessary to have a DSLR. Even though that would be hella cool. I've been reading product reviews all afternoon and I think it's down to one of the Canon PowerShots and one of the Sony Cyber-shots. Sony is winning so far in that I can get a cool looking camera in red. Yes, I'm superficial.

Speaking of red and superficiality, I want a new laptop. I don't necessarily need it, but mine is getting quite old, and it's about time to upgrade. I'm thinking of getting a Dell, possibly one of the Studio computers. In red. It's so worth another $25 to get it in red. All I really do on my computer any more is the occasional word document and Sims. I know the Sims is a really lame game when you think about it, but it is really graphic-intensive and hard on my poor Lappy. Once we get the wireless set up in this house (I think I'm going to have to pay for the router, because it will only benefit me) I'll be internetting on it too, and as well as my Toshiba has served me over the years, I'm ready for an upgrade, and it wouldn't hurt to have the built-in web cam.

One more thing on the shopping front: Despite vowing not to buy any more books for the rest of the summer, I've bought two new books this past week. One doesn't actually count as breaking my promise, because I knew that I was going to have to buy it anyway. So I threw $10 down on the last book in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. It's one of my semi-guilty pleasures, and the second movie is coming out this August, and from what I've read it pulls stories in from all of the last three books, so we'll see how that works out. The other book I purchased I have no excuse for. I bought Jonathan Safron Foer's Everything is Illuminated. I saw the movie a while ago and I've been wanting to read the book. I was just goofing around on half.com last night and ended up buying it, and part of it was because the seller mentioned that it had the pink cover. I don't know why that appealed to me, but it did, so pretty soon I should have a pink copy of Everything is Illuminated arriving at my doorstep.



UPDATE: I've been going over product reviews online all day, and I think I like the Canon Powershot s5 IS. My only worry is that it's going to be too bulky, so I think tomorrow after work I'm going to go to Best Buy and check out how it feels. I want a camera that's more advanced than the standard point-and-shoot deals, but by no means do I need a digital SLR. I really like that this camera comes with a dedicated movie button, which is pretty sweet. My goal was to spend no more than $500, and this one should come in on budget when I add on the protection plan. It would be nice to be able to fit it in my pocket like the camera Laura has, but I want it do do more than just take pictures of my drunk friends. I mean, that's a nice feature, but I'd also like to take pretty pictures of flowers. I also like that this camera has a swivel LCD, which, to quote VMars from memory, is "nice for overhead shots and ground-level macro shooting." So, this may be my new camera, depending how I feel about when I actually have it in my hands.

Trapped in the Dressing Room

So tonight I was doing a little shopping at Kohls. I was very disappointed by the fact that they currently seem to only carry clothes in my size that make me look like I'm five years old. I did manage to find a few things I liked, a few dresses, a couple tops. So I head over to the dressing room.

I try on the shirts first. The first one is a winner, very adorable, the next two, not so much. None of the dresses were winners. The worst part wasn't that the clothes didn't fit, oh no. It was that in the next dressing room over, there were four very loud, very annoying teenage girls. You read right, they're all in the same dressing room. One of the girls apparently has large breasts and can't wear halter tops. It's been a while since I've studied her particular teenage-body-issues dialect, but I think she blames her large breasts on skinny girls. Um... Sorry?

I finally excape from their brain-dead chatter and make another round through the racks. I've found a few more dresses and tops to try on, so I head back to the dressing rooms. I'm relieved to see that the gaggle of airheads has left the area.

I'm trying on the last dress when I hear a familiar voice in the next dressing room. Boobs, the Skinny Bitch Hater is back! She's even more annoying this time around because she's talking to people outside of the dressing room, so she's talking louder. It's painful. I just want to escape.

But I can't. I'm stuck in the dress. The zipper won't unzip. It's like a nightmare come true. I'm trapped in a small enclosed space listening to annoying teenagers deal with their body issues by contributing to mine.

There is only one person in the world that could possibly be interested in hearing about my predicament, so I decide to text Abby. However, apparently the secret to getting out of the dress is to bend down to reach for your phone. I threw my street clothes on as fast as possible and got my ass over to the shoe department.

After Holiday Sales

"Sale $39.99- Hydraulic Jeans - Reg. $38, you save $-1."

Well, with savings like that, how can I afford not to buy?