After my pathetic one-entry Halloween celebration and my complete lack of Turkitron for Thanksgiving, I think it’s time I get my ass in gear and start writing again. So put on your Santa cap and come on in, ’cause it’s time to deck the halls with a good old-fashioned Sci-Fi Guys Christmas.
Here’s the deal: I was totally in the mood for Halloween this year. I was jazzed about it. The whole month of October I immersed myself in bat-shaped candy and spider web decorations. I listened to “Dead Man’s Party” a minimum of 7000 times. I was just enjoying Halloween so much I didn’t feel like taking time to write about it. I’d find something noteworthy, I’d enjoy the hell out of it, then sit down in front of the keyboard and think “Fuck this.” Why spend all that time typing when I could watch Addams Family Values and Creepshow 2 for the 27th time that week? I caught a serious case of the fuckits, and I’ve let it ride for the last two months right up until now.
But I admit it; I’m ashamed. I’ve let myself get lazy. I feel like I owe you an apology and an explanation, so here it comes. My reasons were twofold.
Reason The First: Sitting in front of a PC is emotionally deleterious. The depression of unemployment constantly looms like a storm cloud. I try not to spend too much time listless in front of a computer, ’cause that won’t help at all. That’s about as depressing as it gets. I also try not to talk about it too much, but when you’re out of work it becomes everyone’s favorite topic. Don’t get me wrong, I know people are asking because they’re genuinely concerned. It’s just that the people who care about me the most are naturally the people I see most often, and are therefore the ones I have to talk to about it the most.
It’s embarrassing and depressing enough to have to tell your friends and family that you got laid off at the time it happens, but when you have to explain it all over again every fucking time you see them, it gets downright bleak. No, Aunt Betty, I still haven’t found anyone who wants to hire me. Please be sure to ask me again when you see me in four days, because there’s nothing better than having to constantly re-examine the pathetic state of my life. Also, be sure to ask me when no one else is around so that I have to explain it to them separately when they inevitably bring it up. You know how much I love talking about how bad things are for me? Well, if there’s one thing I love even more than that it’s having to repeat myself a hundred million fucking times. I’m also fat, broke, bitter, angry, and lonely for yet another holiday season, and I can repeatedly discuss those things at length, too, if you’d like. I live but to serve.
Reason The Second: I can’t afford replacement parts. Those of you out there who have been laid off like me know that the job market is razor thin right now. Thus cash is thin, too. This is directly related to the lack of original images on this site lately. You see, sometime in the last two months I lost my USB cable for my digital camera. It’s a cable specially designed by Kodak to fuck the customer right in the ass if lost, and I can’t afford to replace it right now. I have three articles worth of photos on that camera that I can’t get to. I hate the idea of stealing images from other sites when I know I have superior pics of my own, but that’s what I’m stuck with right now. That does not increase my eagerness to pen new material. So until I get up enough cash to pay Eastman-Kodak to skewer me in the poop chute, I’m going to have to keep posting questionable sexual imagery like the ones so far in this article, which I do because I’m ridiculously horny and I haven’t been laid since the Coolidge administration.
But now I’ve got the spirit, and that spirit is “Fuck it; it’s Christmas.” So let’s make with the sci-fi.
Every year the whores at Lucasfilm trot out more Star Wars themed Christmas junk with the words “Limited Edition” and “Collectors Series” and “Exclusive” printed in gold foil on the packages, and every year toy collectors and Star Wars fanboys buy into the lies and shell out wads of green to own yet another version of Darth Vader wearing a Santa hat and doing something vaguely Star Wars-ish and/or Christmassy. It’s all very sad.
These toys will never be worth anything. You can print all the limited edition serial numbers on them you like, but the truth of the matter is that these things are produced in such mass quantities and there are so many would-be “investors” hoarding them that they will never be rare. The big money from toy collecting has passed, because now that the ’70s and ’80s Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Barbies, and Transformers toys are selling for a mint, every toy manufacturer in the universe is packaging their toys as if they are the next craze. Seriously, go to a mega mart and check out the toy aisles. It’s repulsive. Every other toy in the fucking store will be packaged as “limited” or “exclusive,” which is true only in the sense that the toys are “limited” to the millions they can sell and have already planned to produce, and “exclusive” to that range of humanity which fits the criterion “any carbon-based life form that wants to buy one and has enough money.” Collecting these toys as an investment is logically and financially idiotic. There’s only one reason to collect any yuletide Star Wars plastic these days: because it’s cool.
Ah, feast your eyes. Now that’s cool. I will break off my car’s antenna and use it to mercilessly whip the nuts off the next fanboy douchebag who thinks his Vader/Yoda/C3P0 head in a Santa hat ornament is clever or original. It isn’t. It’s been done to death and I’m sick of it. But this… well, this is just pretty. I love everything about this, from the “To: Jabba” gift tag and the candy cane blaster right down to the little Christmas bow on the thermal detonator. This is how Star Wars Christmas should be done. Of course it’s not cheap; $50 for an 8 inch statue seems a little steep in the current economy, which means I won’t be owning one of these any time soon. But if you were to drop a Grant on one, I’d be hard pressed to criticize you. These things are cherry. The icing on the cake is that they’re not produced by Hasbro, so all you hard core Lucas haters out there can rest assured that ol’ Georgie boy won’t profit too greatly from your lack of fiscal responsibility this holiday season. And isn’t the petty intention to screw an aging, dim-witted millionaire out of a few cents really what Christmas is all about? God bless us, every one!
