My Birthday

My birthday is August 3rd, you're all invited except almost none of you live near here and I don't know when, if ever, the celebration will be held.  Last year no one showed up.  Two people tried but one passed out from sleep deprivation (trying to maintain a night job and a daytime social life is difficult) and the other got irrevocably lost and had no way to contact me.

I didn't find these things out until later so on the day itself there was just a lot of distressed waiting around and no payoff.  It was all the Sad.

If previous times were any indication then jumping off a bridge may be involved.  (The correct answer to, "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" is, "Why the hell did I have to wait till last?")

But more likely at most one person reading this even has a possibility of coming.

So it was suggested to me that because I have constant money problems I ask for crowd funding of my life for my birthday... even though I didn't get you anything.  (Sorry.)  And also some of you have already given me much more than I would have ever expected.  (Thank you.)  Honestly I didn't really expect anyone to use the donate button at all.

This, on the one hand, makes sense.  If I were to say, "I have vague memories of Hostile Intent and Sleeping Dogs and might like to see them again," one of two things would happen.  Either no one would get me them (more likely) or I'd get multiple copies of the same one (less likely) either of which is sub-optimal.

Hostile Intent is sort of the anti-Sneakers.  For starters it's about a way to make computer systems impregnable instead of a way to break into any computer system, then it's an action movie (with a high body count), then it's crap where Sneakers will live on forever as an example of awesome.

Sleeping Dogs is a bad movie they showed on the Sci-Fi Channel back in the day.  Far enough back that they wrote it "Sci-Fi" instead of pretending that "SyFy" would be pronounced "Sci-Fi" when it clearly says "SeeFee".  If memory serves it's the one where the master thief doesn't know a damn thing about picking locks because everything is electronic and tries to give himself a peptalk by saying that the hand cuff lock was just "a tiny little mainframe."  Like Hostile Intent it is not in any way a good movie, but I grew up on it.

The point here is not that there are bad movies I'd like copies of (Primal Force [1999, Rob Perlman] never released on home video that I know of, Octopus [I think that's the one], The Beast, Deep Rising, many others whose names I have forgotten) the point is rather that asking for anything in particular will likely get me nothing and possibly get me several copies when I'd never need more than one.  (Though recordable DVDs and CD/DVD cases do seem to run in short supply a lot.)

Thus if someone does want to get me something (probably not) the best bet probably is to just use the donate button on the top right.  Also, I theoretically get a cut of purchases from Amazon made via this blog.  At least that's what the Amazon search box is for.

Or, you know, show up and meet me in person.  You could bring cookies or cake.  Or cookie cakes.  Or orange sherbert.  The possibilities are endless.

-

And, I just realized that I said "on the one hand" and never got to "on the other hand".  So, on the other hand, even though it makes sense it's a naked request for money on my birthday even though I never, ever, get any of you anything for your birthday.

So, yeah... do with it what you will.