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Less than 12 hours to go until the fat man is due to make his rounds and I'm prepped and ready. By my spreadsheet calculations, after tallying naughty and nice actions, I've come out of the year with a +1 credit on his list, which is still a positive and should get me on the delivery schedule. It helps that I was able to rationalise some naughtiness into neutrals. Goodness through bureaucracy!

Amazon in the UK is weird. Last night, I looked up small aquariums, anatomically correct model brains and LED deck lighting rigs and for some reason under the "You might be interested in" listing on the "Page You Made" it links me to two books here and here. I mean, ok, given why I want all three it isn't surprising the conclusion it jumped to, but still.

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Related:
Entries tagged as "Christmas"
16 Dec 2007 - Christmas Is Coming...
24 Dec 2006 - The Fat Man Cometh...?
28 Dec 2004 - More Santa Bashing...
24 Dec 2004 - "You Better Not Cry..."
19 Dec 2004 - "He's Making A List..."

I took a walk with Tim out to the Post Office sorting office this morning to pick up a delivery from Amazon, I've actually got the 4 or 5 mile round trip out to the office rather well-estimated on the timing. The sun was obscured by a bit of cloud, but it was still pleasant - it was still enough to black out my glasses.

The delivery was Tony Robinson's Worst Children's Jobs in History, which seems to include the adult jobs, but with the word 'apprentice' tagged on; the CD of Scala Girls Choir and Kolancy Brothers, Dream On, which is simply amazing and beautiful; the CD of My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade, which is good too.

I would love to hear Welcome to the Black Parade sung by the Scala Choir and an instrumental version by the String Quartet Tribute - I just have it in my head what that would sound like.

I'm a little peeved that I ordered the proper version of Worst Jobs in the Waterstones shop in town before I ordered through Amazon, it cost more and it still hasn't arrived.

I wanted a giant war death peace-keeping robot. I wanted one bad. I wanted one so bad that I placed an order with Amazon to get my hands on the LEGO Exo-Force "Striking Venom" mecha.

I thought maybe it could take pride of place on my newly cleaned desk at home, a sort of remember you are in it for the world domination trinket.

Today, I unpacked items from Amazon and Play. I got Real Ultimate Power, How To Survive A Robot Uprising and there was also my Mecha.

I then spent between 5 to 6 hours assembling the monster, and it was quite fiddly at times. It actually has some interesting features, including a disc launcher and a light pack that makes one of the smaller robots eyes glow a bright red. Some of the weaponry pieces and the canopy are held together by very small pieces, which require them to be handled delicately or they fall off completely. I found this a little difficult to assemble because of those joints, and it is had to envision how a child would be meant to play with one of these without it falling to pieces regularly.

However after much had labour, the end result was the LEGO Exo-Force "Striking Venom" is so large a model that once assembled I have nowhere it will actually fit. It required roughly double the surface space I have available on my desk.

Got my first order from Amazon through this morning, still waiting on the Madness stuff but got emails confirming them being dispatched.

My hair is all pulled back, but not long enough to look like anything more than a tied up tuft.

Oh, and apparently the American Chopper crew are going to be at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta this year.

I was going to bitch and whine about the kids and stuff throughout Weston today, especially the little sod who managed to smack me in the bollocks while waving and spinning in circles across the High Street from his dad - the kid just looked up at me and ran over to his dad, the dad looked quite sheepish as I glared at him and his waste of semen. However, the Tinkster beat me to it in her post So like.... Go read, nothing more to see here.

I ordered a couple more things off Amazon this morning once I found out that Madness had a nearly complete compilation out in the form of The Lot and the B-Side and One-off compliation of The Business, combined with the release tomorrow of The Dangermen Sessions. So, I gave in and ordered :

• CD - "The Lot", Madness, £21.99
  
• CD - "The Business", Madness, £16.99
  
• CD - "The Dangermen Sessions, volume one", Madness, £8.99

Pretty much every track for under £50, considering the individual albums would have hit £80 easily I'm happy.

The Dangermen Sessions is pretty much a cover album, but it's got such a great range on it and given 'that nutty sound' it should be quite good. The tracks include:

1. John Jones
2. You Keep Me Hanging On
3. So Much Trouble In The World
4. Dangerman AKA High Wire
5. Girl Why Don't You?
6. You'll Lose A Good Thing
7. Taller Than You Are
8. Shame & Scandal
9. Israelites
10. Lola
11. Rain
12. I'm Ready For Love
13. I Chase The Devil AKA Ironshirt

The Lot is so accurately named collecting their six albums (77 tracks) and 24 music videos. Unfortunately, it misses live performances from Madstock, but the listing is insane enough as it is :( The Lot )

And, The business is their most popular tracks which were released as one-off singles and not parts of albums (how is that for a gimmick), the collection is 69 tracks long and includes :( The Business )
Seriously, if you haven't heard Madness, you need to...dammit!

My performance bonus went in yesterday and already I'm blowing it on cheap booze, badly cut drugs and syphilitic prostitutes all those little luxuries of life. I've been to my Amazon wishlist and attempted to knock it down a few items, as it is slightly ridiculous to let it build up so much. Fortunately for me there is a sale on some of the DVDs I had listed.

My recent order :

• DVD -"American Pie", £2.96
  
• DVD - "American Pie 2", £6.97
  
• DVD - "American Pie 3: The Wedding", £2.96
  
• DVD - "Johnny English", £2.96
  
• DVD - "Pitch Black", £2.96
  
• DVD - "The Hulk", £2.96
  
• DVD - "Transformers - The Movie", £5.99
  
• CD - "The Simpsons Sing the Blues", £4.97
  
• CD - "The Finest 'arvest of the Wurzels", £4.97

Ok, so maybe they wouldn't be my first choice of DVDs, but considering the price I felt passing it up at this stage would be slightly moronic. I'll probably pick up a couple more mid- or end of month, or at least a couple of CDs.

Hey, even with P&P it was cheaper than Play.com, that has to be a first (well, other than GW, it appears)

I want to get some clothes at some point, when my fashion sense kicks in. Could be a long wait.

That voucher from the team came in very handy as I discovered that the maximum number of items that Amazon allows on it's Wish Lists is 1000 items, and after taking the suggestion to put up all the DVDs I need to replace videos I've hit that.

I managed to put in some other money with the Amazon vouchers and ordered myself Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Doctor Who : Gallifrey Chronicles (for Tim) and...wait for it...Guild Wars. Oh Hell Yes!!

It's also pay day on Thursday - when I'm meeting Nik and Heth for lunch - so I might get a couple more items off while the sale is on!

Well, I have the honour (dubious in some instances) of sharing the day with George Orwell, Carly Simon, George Michael and MS Windows 98, and the Anti-Christmas as celebrated by some Satanists.

Not going in to much detail, as I'm currently between a mix of tidying stoof up with my upgraded PC, tidying up my layer code for the look of LJ and looking through Amazon.

Tim took me out for breakfast this morning and then we went to get my computer upgrades (from him and my mum), he'd already fitted me a RAM upgrade after a PC burnout earlier in the week, and now I've got a nice 120GB hard drive added. I now have everything needed to run games like Guild Wars - except for actually having a copy of games like Guild Wars. Heard an interesting convo as I was coming out of the computer shop and passing the barred windows of Barclays, a little blonde haired son looked up to his dad :

Kid : Is that where the Police live?
Dad : The Police live everywhere, they're horrible people.

On the side of greed, I got quite a few items of loot and egoboo as well. An early, sung post from Tink that I tried to imagine how long a note could be held for, a pleasant reply from Spin to a post, money from my Nan, £20 for Amazon from my team mates (as well as a card that even had my previous team manager signing - I was touched!), a home-made card from Heth and the boys, and an interesting smelling body wash and socks from my Aunt Pat. All of which was most appreciated!!